Template talk:Politics of South Africa
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I removed the years because it is linked in the Elections section. What happens when there are more elections? We have seperate links for every single one of them? The template is supposed to be a link to the over-arching subjects of South African politics. Look at Template:Politics of New Zealand and Template:Politics of Australia for references.
- Since I created this template I think i can say what this template is supposed to be. It is more then you suggest, but offers also the possibility when you visit an individual election to jump to over-arching subjects and to other elections to compare results. It is helpful and doesn't take a lot of space (even with many elections). I would like to ask you to restore the links. The same goes for the Netherlands template. Gangulf 15:11, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)
- Nobody owns any page on Wikipedia except for their user/user-talk page and any subpages thereof. You have no more say over what the template should be than anyone else. This is elementary policy; please review Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines. -Fennec (はさばくのきつね) 17:24, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
[edit] My reasons for removing the election years
In order to prevent an edit war, I am going to list my reasons for removing the years, and I would ask that you do the same for including them. But, before you do this, I would recommend that you visit this article which talks about article ownership, a principle that I feel was not understood when you made this comment: "Since I created this template I think i can say what this template is supposed to be."
I believe that the years bloat the template, because the template is usually to serve to link the largest ideas first. For example, a template for the New York Subway lines would link to all of the subway lines, but not all of the stations inside of the subway line. To this end, a template for the elections in South Africa would, indeed, list all the elections. I am firmly against large templates that bloat and distort a page, as they are, again, in my view, totally unnecessary. I await your comments. Páll 17:45, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- Comment. Myself, I don't mind large templates. However, if one can reach the list of years by clicking on another part of the template, it would save much space - I don't think in this case years are necessary, the template already has lots of other info, and adding years expands it almost three times. Also, consider that many large templates are listed on VfD and more often then not deleted entirely. Apparently most people prefer small templates + categories. Therefore I would suggest to remove the years. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 18:10, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
[edit] My reaction
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- I agree that I do not own a template. I never claimed that otherwise. The only think what I said was that as a creator of the template I think I can say what this template was supposed to be. Off course I am ready for a compromise. The compromise I would suggest is not to include the years in the template, but at the other hand include the template at every individual election page. In that way a visitor of a election page will be shown the related pages. Gangulf 18:36, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
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- I agree to this compromise whole-heartedly. I'll start adding the templates now! Páll 18:58, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
