Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2007 January 1

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 page.

The result of the debate was no consensus. RyanGerbil10(Упражнение В!) 03:59, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Template:Contains Japanese text (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

While different, this template duplicates the work of the well-used Template:Nihongo. It also adds un-needed metadata to articles. --Kunzite 22:32, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Japan-related deletions. -- Kunzite 22:32, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. I don't see how a notice that you need rendering support duplicates Nihongo. Such a template exists for most other non-Latin languages. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Amarkov (talk • contribs).

They clutter articles and is a waste of space for things that have one line of Japanese text. People also have trouble displaying extended latin based languages on their computers. Should we going to make a template for Polish, Czech, and other latin-based alphabets? --Kunzite 22:39, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Possibly not, but extended Latin is more common than Japanese, Arabic, and other non-Latin scripts. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 22:40, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

• Strong Keep. This template comes in handy on many Anime and Manga articles that include Japanese text. We also have Template:Contains Chinese text so why not make one for Japanese too? It's not hurting anything but it does do a lot of help for users who want to know why there are a bunch of question marks or boxes in the article. There are no policys that I've read that say you can't put notice about rendering support,and as Amarkov said, how does it duplicate the Nihongo template? --Malevious Userpage •Talk Page• Contributions 00:33, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

It seems that you're adding a template for the sake of adding a template... because there exists a "chinese" template we have to have one for Japanese? Some of the articles that you've added it have so very very little Japanese text that it really serves no point to add the template. It's the reason that template nihongo (日本語, nihongo^?) was created. In lieu of these large ugly distracting boxes, it adds the question mark link to the pronunciation and browser support information. I would also ask you to refrain from adding the templates en masse to other articles until this TFD is over. Also, in the event that the template is kept, we need some concensus on the template's usage. I would suggest doing that at WP:MOS-JA. --Kunzite 02:02, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Comment. I think the existence of Template:Contains Chinese text is informative, but it just means that the fate of the two templates should be tied together - if one is deleted, both should go, and vice versa. Dekimasu 05:00, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

• Delete. For what Kunzite has said, as well as the inherent superfluousness of the template; if browsers are broken, it's not up to wikipedia to mollycoddle them. (And the template is distracting, too. yeech.) --moof 01:08, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete per nom and above. This is about as useful as a template that says "this article includes images, if your browser doesn't support images it might not show the images". Needless clutter. -- Ned Scott 02:08, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
• Comment 1) I added the template to the pages before the TFD started. 2) I didn't even notice the little tiny ? next to the letters for the longest time. Some of the articles have japanese text used frequently, and to a user new to wikipedia, might wonder why there are question marks all over the page. 3) A lot of times its not the browser that doesn't support the text its the computers. 4) have a template at the bottom of a page isn't distracting at all, thats why we decided to add to by external links. --Malevious Userpage •Talk Page• Contributions 02:21, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
• Comment. I hope everyone realizes it is not obvious what the question marks mean. It would not occur to me to click on one if my browser didn't render something. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 03:09, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
  • There's a big danger of clutter templates (they'll come and kill your family) on articles, and if the need really isn't there... then we shouldn't have them. There's soooo many possible templates we could make that have the same arguments as this one, and if they were all made... it would be bad. Maybe this is a problem, but it's not a major problem, and it's not one to fix via a template. Maybe Wikipedia's software could be updated to prompt such messages, or maybe it should be up to the web browser developers. Even then, it doesn't warrant a template eating up space (and your family). -- Ned Scott 03:15, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete I've already complained about this over at WT:Anime that we were overloading articles with yet another infobox. And if this template was to be used, it needs to be at the top of the article instead of at the bottom. But as others have said, this just creates clutter with the existing animanga infobox. --TheFarix (Talk) 03:11, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
• Comment Perhaps what really needs to be done is seperating the use of 'Nihongo' and 'Contains Japanese text' based on a usage basis. 'Nihongo' works fine sparingly, but when there's a lot of Japanese in an article there gets to be almost too many '?'s. And only using it for the first Japanese word wouldn't work, as it would be too easy to not notice it. Lists that contain Japanese titles can especially make use of 'Contains Japanese text'. For instance, its inclusion at List of manga. I say both templates are allowed to exist, but that 'Contains Japanese text' be used only if a certain amount of Japanese is used in the article. The extra template isn't needed if 'Nihongo' is only used once, but if it's used over, say, 10 times, then a significate portion of the article may be confusing to the reader and need extra notification.--SeizureDog 04:45, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. Many of the objections here seem to be the result of disputes about its application to individual articles. Whereas those are content disputes, this would seem to be a useful template in some contexts. Waka (poetry), Romanization of Japanese, Hiragana, etc. would seem to be good candidates for its use; they use a large amount of Japanese that isn't in {{nihongo}}s, and if the text isn't rendering properly, the article won't make as much sense. Dekimasu 05:00, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. It can be very difficult to include this template in some articles and it only adds one more useless template. Nihongo works well enough, as it is the template that got me to enable language support. – Someguy0830 (T | C) 21:40, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete per nom, Dogcow, Ned Scott, and TheFarix. Japanese is either already on (Mac OS X and Windows XP/Vista) or easily enabled in all modern operating systems, and all modern browsers support the UTF-8 encoding used on Wikipedia. Almost all of them automatically use it, too. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 22:04, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
• Comment I think instead of deleting this we should come up with a standard for its use. As Amarkov said It wouldn't occur to me that if there are a bunch of question marks to click the little tiny one. and to Nihonjoe, Windows XP doesn't have it install automatically. My laptop still displays the question marks and boxes for an asian txt (im too lazy to fix it since i rarely use it) --Malevious Userpage •Talk Page• Contributions 23:53, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete - useless clutter, plus most readers would realize that the question marks/gibberish represented a script they didn't have installed. -- Ynhockey ^(Talk) 22:25, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep, but only use on articles with very heavy usage of Japanese text--do not use on every article that contains a Japanese character. — Dark Shikari ^talk/_contribs 20:20, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep but use selectively. Not everyone uses modern OS systems even now. --tjstrf talk 10:33, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
• Weak Keep Nihongo is volatile apparently. It's best to assume the worst case scenario just in case somebody doesn't have Japanese text installed.Just H 22:22, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep, or merge with a general template which is used for all languages not using the Roman letters. - Privacy 03:51, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

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 page.

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 page.

The result of the debate was deletion. RyanGerbil10(Упражнение В!) 04:02, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Template:Infobox Weather 2 metric (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

Delete. This looks like a metric first spin-off of an Imperial only spin-off (Infobox Weather 2) of the standard infobox Template:Infobox Weather. There is no need for additional infoboxes when the standard already has provisions for which unit should be displayed first. It is always best to have one standard infobox that can be tweeked than have many different infoboxes. --MJCdetroit 19:39, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

• Delete unnecessary ST47Talk 19:43, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

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 page.

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 page.

The result of the debate was keep (withdrawn) Patstuart^talk|edits 20:30, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Template:Infobox hrhstyles (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

I found this template on a bunch of articles and would like to nominate it for deletion.

1. I clicked on a bunch of pages that use it and the styles are identical for everyone of the same rank, so it doesn't give any new information.
2. On a related note, there's already an article called Royal and noble styles which explains styles, so it doesn't give any unique information.
3. Most of the people using this template are dead, so it doesn't give any useful information.
4. The style of address for a person should be a minor part of the article, not a distracting box, so it doesn't have any important information.
5. Most (all?) of the articles that have this also have additional userboxes that mess up the formatting.

I don't think any of the information in the box is useful, but if people want to preserve it then a couple of pages have a section called "Titles, styles, honours and arms" (or something like that) and the info can go there.

There are also similar boxes that should be treated together with this one (Template:Infobox scotlandkingstyles, Template:Infobox_UKkingstyles, and Template:infobox consortstyles). Tocharianne 19:06, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Oppose. They're not always identical for everyone of the same rank (and there is quite a large number of different styles). I'd advocate merging the four templates into one and potentially making them less conspicuous on the page (by using toccolours perhaps?), but I'd oppose their deletion. — OwenBlacker 03:20, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

• Delete needless infobox cluttering up article. If this info is important then put it in the main article text. Not every possible tid bit should be in box form. -- Ned Scott 03:39, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. Per OwenBlacker, merge all templates together Brian | (Talk) 06:02, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete - the information is better provided in the text of the article (where it can be explained as necessary). Noel S McFerran 07:27, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep - I agree with all the criticisms cited by Tocharianne. But my understanding is that the userbox was an agreed-upon compromise to stop articles from being overwhelmed with these styles/titles by overly deferential monarchists who re-insert them if they aren't prominently shown somewhere in an article on royalty. Wouldn't it be bad faith to change that rule here and now without broader consensus? If the appropriate guidelines are first amended to direct this info into a brief, near-the-bottom section in royalty articles, I will support this deletion. Lethiere 20:38, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep I remember this discussion, if articles should include any references in the beginning of styles of royals. This was quite controversial and heated. The solution found was to use templates, which I find is a fair compromise. If the template "clutters" an article, then it should be placed carefully, or maybe the size should change. Either we include styles directly into the article, or a template is there, either way. Unless there is an agreement to include styles into articles again, this should be kept. Vote to keep. Gryffindor 10:46, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
• Comment: If that's the case then someone needs to put some kind of note on the template talk page. I had no idea there was such a debate and there's no reason I should have known to look in the Manual of Style. Tocharianne 14:58, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

It offers valuable information, which I think should be kept. Could the boxes not be changed for each person.

• Keep: This is used in a lot of articles and offers important information. Jake95 19:39, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

• Keep: I agree with Jake95. A lot of articles use this template. Perhaps we could make it a little smaller. --DWolf2k2 21:13, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

• • Keep: Let's not open old debates when a position that is acceptable to most or all has been reached. Greenshed 22:25, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

• Keep- but maybe re-code for better presentation and allow a "hide" option. Astrotrain 20:44, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

• Keep - it's apparrently the only way we'll keep aristophiles from adding "His Majesty King Alfred of England. . . " I can't believe so many people didn't encounter the vicious and frustrating wrangle on this topic. . . Slac speak up! 10:50, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. It's a simple and concise means of providing helpful information. It could be redesigned and probably made smaller, if it's felt that it "clutters up" articles. Alkari 23:56, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep It's not doing any harm, and the individual pages aren't linked to the page about royal and noble styles, so people would have to search for such information rather than having it easily provided for them.

Okay, okay, no point piling it on. this template obviously has a history I was unaware of, so I'm withdrawing the nomination. (Not sure how to do that formally.) I assume some reference to this discussion will go on the template talk page so that others can see it in the future. Also perhaps a discussion could be started there about modifying it since many of the "Keeps" agree that it could use some redesigning. Tocharianne 16:20, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

• I got rid of the deletion tag from the template as its obviously a keep.210.49.136.175 09:14, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

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 page.

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 page.

The result of the debate was deletion. RyanGerbil10(Упражнение В!) 04:03, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Template:Infobox Representative (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

Not in use, made redundant by Template:Infobox Congressman. Can be speedy deleted --American Patriot 1776 17:37, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

• Delete per nom. Just H 22:23, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

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 page.

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 page.

The result of the debate was deletion, as unhelpful - exactly what is not needed in an image licensing template. RyanGerbil10(Упражнение В!) 04:06, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Template:Insignia (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

Similiar to "coat of arms" that was recently deleted. This template serves no purpose that a category wouldn't, and this one doesn't even categorize them. It is also very vague, presumably the "restrictions" it is talking about are some copyright restrictions in an unnamed country, as it was originally copied from the commons. I don't really know what those restrictions are, and doubt they would be relevant on enwiki. -cohesion 02:58, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

• Delete. Unnamed legal restrictions are entirely unhelpful. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 07:10, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
• Strong keep. Legal restrictions will naturally differ from country to country, but we are not talking about copyright restrictions, we are talking about warning users and editors about e.g. putting an official insignia on somebody's own private correspondence, an act which would be very likely to lead to criminal prosecution for impersonating an official authority. This would be the case in most if not all European countries, and such laws can be severe. The template is an extra warning that legal restrictions apart from the copyright issue is at work here, and a category will not give the same warning. Better safe than sorry. Valentinian ^{(talk) / (contribs)} 14:12, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete The template actually offers no such warnings, nor should it. If there are special cases where legal restrictions apply, they need to be addressed, not templated. --Wetman 15:14, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - I asked what the restrictions were on commons when this was nominated, commons:Template talk:Insignia and it looks like they may be unavailable for commercial use in some countries. - cohesion 15:29, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
  • "Unavailable for commercial use in some countries" is also too vague to be useful. It would be useful only if you gave the specific ways in which a particular insignia may not be used, in which case it would be too varied for a template. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 16:54, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree, and still think it should go, just giving some additional info :) - cohesion 17:55, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Commercial rights is one thing, but some juristictions have further restrictions. I'll stick to Scandinavian law, since that's what I know best. The relevant Swedish law [1] states in §4 that misuse of official Swedish symbols will result in a fine. That means that misuse of Swedish symbols is considered a criminal offence. You'll have to ask a Swede to give a perfect translation of the text, my Swedish is ok, but no more than this. The Danish criminal code's §132 states that anyone using insignia or uniforms reserved for domestic or foreign authorities or military personnel in an unlawful manner (...) will be punished with a fine. [2] Unlawful use would first and foremost include using such symbols in ways that can make others believe that you represent an official agency. Similar laws probably also exist in many other countries. Does this mean that encyclopedias don't show these images in Sweden or Denmark? Of course they do, and books about official symbols naturally exist. I simply feel that it is a good idea to pay extra attention to the fact that non-encyclopedic use might in some cases involve other legal issues than merely copyright law and this template is merely an extra little warning. Of course most people can figure out for themselves that putting such symbols on your own private correspondence is a bad idea, just like it is a bad idea to try to pretend to be a police officer, but better safe than sorry. All books about official symbols I've read, contained a few lines of text in the introduction warning against unlawful use. If anybody feels that the text should be updated to make it more apparent what these legal concerns could be then by all means. Valentinian ^{(talk) / (contribs)} 23:25, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, by all means, you should give any relevant legal restrictions. But you should give the exact legal restrictions, which would be too varied for a template. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 23:26, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Exactly. As you explain it, the Swedish law only regard the assumption of swedish official designations as criminal; the Danish law regards unauthorized use of both domestic and foreign insiginia as criminal. I suspect the definitions in both would go far beyond the range of material which actually carries this template. DGG 23:44, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I skipped pretty easily over the Swedish translation, and I'm rather sure it covers the same ground as the Danish. I only translated a part of the text that I could do 100% correctly due to my limited abilities when it comes to Swedish legalese. But deleting this template gives some interesting problems. How should we e.g. classify images such as this if this template is deleted? The image was made by a Wikipedian, but any use of it in a non-encyclopedic content will likely result in procecution given that it imitates a government symbol. If we delete the {{Insignia}} template, I would say we would have to reclassify the image from PD(-user) to a fair use claim. This could apply even to images as old as this one. Valentinian ^{(talk) / (contribs)} 09:41, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Prosecution is only possible in an unnamed few countries that have laws regarding this. The template isn't helpful in that regard, nor is it helpful regarding what the specific prohibitions are. Let's not scare people for no reason. Further, if this template were deleted it would not necessitate falsifying license information. The image is public domain because the creator licensed it as such, if some users are unfortunately prohibited from freely using said image it doesn't make it any less public domain. - cohesion 03:09, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Note: This is similar to {{Nazi symbol}}, which was kept. 68.39.174.238 04:24, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

No it isn't. That template gives the exact legal restrictions on certain symbols. This just gives a vague "there may be legal problems" notice, which is considerably less helpful. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 04:26, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

• Strong keep. If necessary add text to the template to explain its use. -- Evertype·✆ 12:08, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
  • If you are going to have to change the text for every single use, why would you need a template? -Amarkov ^blah_edits 04:14, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. This template is a usefull warning. The deletion of the coat of arms template was a mistake in my view. The point is that a coat of arms has protection in some countries which differs from the types issues one has to deal with regarding other images. It is illegal in some countries to claim someone else's coat of arms to be yours, but it is not illegal to display that same coat of arms in other contexts. That will in practice mean that we on wikipedia only have to worry about the copyright status of that particular image. It is however IMO a nice favour to our users to inform them that some special laws may apply in connection with these types of images.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Inge (talk • contribs)

• • Like I've said before, yes, it is helpful to inform users about special laws that apply. It is not in the least informative to have a vague template that says some insignias may be illegal to reprint in some cases in some countries. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 15:21, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
• Delete. Completely useless template that provides no information. Kaldari 22:40, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

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 page.