- The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the template below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was delete, move wikitext to User:Erik9/ILRepresentatives and User:Erik9/MARepresentatives to assist in the creation of individual district templates. Erik9 (talk) 14:29, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Template:ILRepresentatives (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)
- Template:MARepresentatives (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)
After the recent lengthy deletion debate on Template:NYRepresentatives was closed as "delete," I reviewed the other templates in Category:United States House of Representatives delegations navigational boxes.
Most of the templates in Category:United States House of Representatives delegations navigational boxes are for small states whose congressional delegations total, over the years, a dozen or so members: ((Hawaii Representatives)) (14 links to representatives), ((Alaska Representatives)) (14 reps), ((D.C. Delegates)) (3 reps), ((NevadaUSRepresentatives)) (38 reps), ((Virgin Islands Delegates)) (6 reps), ((DelawareUSH)) (60 representatives), ((OKRepresentatives)) (~105 reps), ((IdahoUSRepresentatives)) (~51 reps).
Those templates are all of a reasonable size: they do not overwhelm the articles visually, nor do they add so much code that to articles that the size becomes a problem. They work well, by providing a compact listing of articles in a small set.
Some of the remaining templates are significantly bigger. ((LARepresentatives)) lists over 172 representatives, and ((MNRepresentatives)) (~158 reps). As a rule of thumb, I wouldn't create a template with over 100 links, but those two are not humungous.
But two are in a different league:
- ((ILRepresentatives)), which lists 609 representatives, add when fully expanded occupies two complete screenfuls on my 1200X800 pixel laptop display
- ((MARepresentatives)), which lists 525 representatives, and occupies about 1.5 screenfuls when fully expanded
Both these templates add a significant bulk to the download: ((ILRepresentatives)) renders as 86.0 KiB of HTML, and ((MARepresentatives)) renders as 50.2KiB.
While neither is as big as the ginormous (and now deleted) ((NYRepresentatives)) (it had 1,909 representatives, 163.2 KiB of HTML), this is still just too much for something intended as a navigational aid. These templates are not particularly helpful to navigation, because they present the reader with a huge wall of links, without most of the details or presentational aids which can be included in a standalone list. These walls of hundreds of names include no dates, no first names, and no parties, and they are not sortable. In useability terms, they are comparable to a category listing; they improve on a category by helpfully breaking up the list by district, but their small type and lack of full names is a disadvantage compared with a category listing.
If a complete list of a large state's congressional delegation is needed, then the reader would be much better assisted by a link to well-presented standalone list (for which this data would make a good start). That would significantly reduce the size of each individual article, 'and allow much better presentation of the data. (There is already such a list for both states, though a lot could be done to improve the presentation of both lists.)
The fact that it is possible to create a huge template does not make it a good idea. There are many other ways of providing navigational information from within an article, the all-in-one template soen't work for large sets.
Other alternatives, as discussed at the deletion debate on Template:NYRepresentatives include succession boxes (using ((USRepSuccessionBox))), categories and templates for each individual congressional district. All of those methods offer a small download to the reader, and offer better navigation by avoiding overwhelming the reader with irrelevant information.
There is one significant technical point to consider here. A reader who views 20 pages with a graphic logo will download that logo only once, and future pages which load it will pull it from the browser's cache. Howver, a template is integrated into the page as rendered, so a reader who views 20 of the pages which transclude ((MARepresentatives)) will download that rendered template 20 times. Twenty times 86.0KiB equals 1.72MiB, which is a ridiculously heavy payload, particularly for anyone on a slow connection (not everyone has broadband!)
There may be be some editors who think that disadvantaging readers on slow connections is an acceptable price to pay for navigating between congresspeople. But even if you disregard the bandwidth issues and the poor usability of these templates, that's assuming that this monster-template approach is not copied by editors in other subject areas. Many congrespeople also have notable careers in business, sport, entertainment, or in the executive arm of government: what happens if a former sportsman turned businessman enters congress and goes on run a govt department and ends up with three or four of these monster templates?
(Quick note: My estimates of size were obtained by saving the page source from my browser, stripping out everything above and below the HTML code for the template, and checking the size of the resulting file. My counts of links were obtained by stripping the template code down to one person per line, and while I don't promise that the figures are 100% accurate, any errors are likely to be small. Yes, the count of links does include any duplicates, because those duplicated links are all part of the overall size of the template). --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:54, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Reply Tony, my method is absolutely correct, and it would help if you had read what I wrote before replying: I don't think I could have made it any clearer. The links you provide show the size of the wikitext in the template source, but wikitext is not what is sent to the reader. The wikitext is converted to HTML, which is much more bulky.
- For example, the wikitext [[Charles Slade|Slade]]((·)) is converted to HTML as follows:
- <a href="/wiki/Charles_Slade" title="Charles Slade">Slade</a><span style="font-weight:bold;"> ·</span>
- ... and the HTML is what is delivered to the reader. The wikitext doesn't go near the reader unless and until they edit a page.
- And once you again, you have ignored all the reasons why there are better ways of creating navigational aids. Simply saying "they are useful" without addressing the problems amounts to WP:ILIKEIT. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:50, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Alternative: I would expect to encounter these templates on the pages current and former members of Congress from these states. For instance, the Mass. template should appear at the bottom of Charles L. Gifford's article. Why not limit the list of names displayed to those districts he represented, the 15th and 16th. I propose, but have not worked out how to implement, that ((MARepresentatives)) display the 15th and 16th district rows exactly as they are and display two additional rows that would list links to current districts and obsolete districts. I envision it displaying something like this. Feel free to tinker in that sandbox. -Rrius (talk) 05:33, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Why not just use a succession box, which provides a link to the immediate predecessor and successor and to the Congressional district? It's simple and lightweight. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:53, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- There is actually some use to the other form of navigation template. This brings the footprint more in line with the templates you suggested you don't have a problem with, so why would you have a problem with this one? -Rrius (talk) 06:28, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- From a reader's POV, I think that succession boxes have some advantages, just as small set templates have some advantages. But creating and applying a selective-use template seems to be a difficult exercise (otherwise it would presumably have been used from the outset), which is why I suggest that the simpler-to-apply solution of succession boxes would be an easier way of providing succession info.
There's something odd about the way these templates are being used. In this edit, the creator of ((ILRepresentatives)) applied it to an article which already had a full set of succession boxes for the congressional districts represented. What's the point of that? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:02, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Likewise, this edit, the creator of ((MARepresentatives)) applied it to an article which already had a full set of succession boxes for the congressional districts represented. It adds a huge lump at the end of an already long list of boxen. Not an improvement to navigation! Rendering takes a long time, even on a cable link.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 12:51, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Support delete. I am the creator of both ((MARepresentatives)) and ((USRepSuccessionBox)). BHG is correct that the Mass. Reps template is too bulky for rational use. Either split it up into 21 different templates (20 numbered districts plus 1 at-large) or 2 (Active + Obsolete) or Delete altogether. I agree with BHG's important premise: Just because we CAN make the big template, doesn't mean we SHOULD. Please also consider using USRSB when possible. —Markles 12:13, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Proposed Alternative My main problem is that the current system is approved for some states and not for others. I am "from" large states (born in LA, raised in NY, live in IL) and have created templates to follow what was in place for other states. The best way to scrap the current system would be to convert all states to a system like supreme judges use. Create a template for each state by year ordered by seniority. Then add all years that are relevant for a given biography to that persons page. Some states have already done this for some of the recent years, but I don't recall which ones so that you can see what I am talking about. I would prefer that a system be used so that the reader can see consistent implementation across all states and get use to looking for a certain format of information. This system could be complemented by a set of templates for each district of each state.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 13:14, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment I have to agree that these boxes are more than helpful for people interested in political history. But seeing as there's precedent from the NY Template debate. I doubt these two will survive. I do agree with Markles point of splitting the IL template into 29 different ones plus the at large districts. Astuishin (talk) 21:46, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Delete - to be honest, I don't see the use of these templates. Listing all the Illinois representatives ever is more what categories are for; as a template, it's just too large and unwieldly. They fail the basic requirement of navboxes, which is that it must be plausible that someone looking at one of these articles would want to navigate to many of the others listed; for most of the links here, that probably wouldn't be the case. I didn't see the now-deleted New York representatives template, but it sounds like it suffered from the same problem as these. Robofish (talk) 03:36, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Convert to USCongRep scheme referenced by Tony - (see here) --Philosopher Let us reason together. 09:33, 6 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Can we get some commentary from the other discussants (Markles (talk · contribs) and BrownHairedGirl (talk · contribs) in particular) about this possible solution.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 18:37, 7 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Tony, I replied on my talkpage to your message there: see this reply.
But look, there are plenty of ways to replace these bloated monster templates with other succession info. This is not the place to decide exactly what the replacement should be -- that discussion belongs on the appropriate wikiproject. Interested editors can decide afterwards whether just to use succession boxes or to use some of the components of the bloated monsters make smaller templates, but the question for TFD is the much narrower one of whether to delete. I'm surprised that this discussion has not been closed, because nothing on the keep/delete decision appears to have been posted in the last ten days.--BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:41, 7 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Delete all -- replacing with ((USRepSuccessionBox)) as needed. As soon as a decision is made, I'll try to handle that — as I did for ((NYRepresentatives)) — by adding ((USRepSuccessionBoxNeeded)) on those that are missing a succession box. A bit tricky, but possible with a little programming. That gives a handy transclusion list for editors to know where to work.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 21:45, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- delete both. Way too large to be useful enough for the trouble they cause (i.e. download size) - Nabla (talk) 14:39, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.