Brief template history[change source]

In January 2013 I imported the then-current version of the template in enwiki to simplewiki. This replaced the previous version here, which was in turn based on an older version of the template in enwiki. After some minor fixing, the version that existed on March 7, 2013, was this one, although more of the links were red then.

After March 2013, and in the process of preparing the article Shabbat for Good article status, I started shrinking the template, on the grounds that many of the holiday articles with red links in the template were not going to be written at this wiki, at least in the short-to-medium-term future. Accordingly, in June I removed the section with links to the individual Hebrew calendar months, as well as the section with a link to a master list of Jewish holiday dates on enwiki.

In July, I drastically shrank the rest of the template. The approach and reasoning follow, pasted from the sandbox page where I originally worked this up.

Pasted description of reasoning

Step 1

Here, I gray out the items I just don't think need doing so quickly—or, in any case, just are not going to get done so quickly.

Step 2

I would also immediately do the following:

  1. Create High Holy Days as a stub/list that leads to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur
    Create Ten Days of Repentance as a redirect to the above
  2. Create Yom HaShoah as a stub that would, after a description, mostly redirect to The Holocaust

[These, in fact, were done.] That would leave us at

Step 3a

  1. Simchat Torah will be a redirect to Shemini Atzeret, which would cover both. So even though there are two items here, it is in reality one red link. And I would resolve to write Shemini Atzeret next.
  2. Possibly/probably there should be an article on Minor Fasts in Judaism that would cover Gedalia, 10 Tevet, Ta'anit Esther and 17 Tamuz

That leaves us at

Step 3b (simplification)

Finally, we simplify and get rid of all the gray items. This leaves us at

This still has a number of red links, but not nearly as many. All the articles left here are important, so leaving them red until they are written is appropriate from a public policy perspective.

After a few technical changes from other editors, this is now the available template as of July 22, 2013. StevenJ81 (talk) 16:14, 22 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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