Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/School related user templates

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was keep per WP:SNOW. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 04:19, 4 March 2008 (UTC) (Non-admin Closure.)

[edit] School related user templates

All of these user templates that can be deleted as {{User school}} replaces all of them. I have not been able to get them all marked for deletion just yet, that will take time, but it has been pointed out to me that the discussion should start as soon as possible. There are 776 user templates on the list. - LA @ 21:39, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Also, {{User school}} will not be userfied. - LA @ 21:39, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

• Keep. It takes away from the individuality of each school. Most of them are in private user space. Wikipedia is not paper. No good rationale for the new template. GreenJoe 22:14, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
• Keep Why would you go to all the trouble to delete these? As per GreenJoe Keep. They add to the individuality of each school.--CPacker (talk) 22:36, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
• Keep. For however nice the generic {{User school}} is, there is something to be said for consistency amongst users who want to display that they attended a certain institution. If we switch to this new template, you are going to have piles of different versions for the same school (different colors, different images, etc). This is not bad in and of itself, and people should be allowed to individualize if they want, but why should people constantly be required to reproduce the same template over and over again (as in look up the correct colors, the correct image, etc, etc), when there could be (and currently is) a standard for each school. I for one would prefer to put the onus on the people who want to individualize (as it is now) instead of those that want the standard version for their school (what will happen if all these templates are deleted). The {{User school}} reminds me more of a meta-template than a convenient replacement for all the school userboxes. - AWeenieMan (talk) 22:37, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
• Keep - AWeenieMan put it perfectly. Dylan (talk) 22:43, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
• Strong Keep This is an end run around the two previous deletion debates that resoundingly established consensus that these templates remain as they are. I am shocked that someone is opening this can of worms again. I am going to begin contacting everyone from those last debates so they may voice their opinion on the matter. I really am shocked, there is ESTABLISHED consensus on this matter. KnightLago (talk) 22:45, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Previous deletion review is here. KnightLago (talk) 23:06, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

• Keep we have several projects in Wikipedia that are school based (such as Wikipedia:WikiProject University of Florida) these user boxes provide a valuable tool through the automatically created categories they create to allow people in these college projects to solicit help from other wikipedians. It helps wikipedia coalesce as a community. The school template is far too complicated and it does not automatically/easily create a category... it is oranges compared to these apples.--Dr who1975 (talk) 22:47, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
• Strong Keep per it perfectly. While a generic is nice, however I have not seen any evidence at all that that Lady Aleena had any consensus for launching this template and then replacing every school with it. I would also like to see an admin revert those edits to all those school templates to claim they had been replaced by the {{user school}} one when no such discussion appears to have happened nor any community consensus made to support this extremely wide reaching action. Collectonian (talk) 22:53, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
• Weak keep, weak probably only because I understand it was a hard task to do all this, but perhaps a consensus had to be reached before implementing the idea.  ARTYOM  22:55, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
• Keep per AWeenieMan and Greenjoe. Why force users to reinvent the wheel? Why should school/college/university userboxes be compulsorily standardised? Plus I refuse to have any userbox that, at present, would make me say that I am an "alumni" of anywhere - an alumnus, perhaps, but there's only one of me... Bencherlite^Talk 23:02, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
• Keep Just because a new alternate user box exists doesn't mean all the old ones should be deleted. AWeenieMan also makes a good point. --Falcorian ^(talk) 23:10, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
• Keep. I don't see any need to chop away individuality from Wikipedia in this area. →Wordbuilder (talk) 23:12, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
• Keep per AWeenieMan and Dr who1975. The generic template seems to be an awkward attempt at standardization that will probably do the exact opposite. --Maxamegalon2000 23:16, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
• Strong Keep These userboxes help mightily with Wikiprojects. No need to delete them all. -Djsasso (talk) 23:21, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
• Strong Keep per AWeenieMan — Johnl1479^(talk) 23:22, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
• Keep - their individuality is part of their charm. Stepheng3 (talk) 23:26, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
• Strong Keep Seriously, we've been through this numerous times before as well as deletion reviews holding up the "keep" consensus'. 775 templates? Come on. And close this per WP:SNOW - ✰ALLSTAR✰ ^echo 23:28, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
• Comment: I'd just like to add that while I agreed to tag these boxes for deletion, as it was my suggestion to start the discussion now, rather than two weeks from now, I have no real opinion as to whether or not these should be deleted. I like the new way to create the boxes, but as the author of one of the nominated boxes, I also like having them separate. - auburnpilot talk 23:31, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
• Strong Keep per everything above. -Rosywounds (talk) 23:42, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
• Keep per all above. Individuality is important. Werecowmoo (talk) 23:57, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
• Comment Would WP:Speedy_keep be applicable to this discussion being that all have been keeps? Werecowmoo (talk) 00:00, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I believe so, except that these are userboxes and not articles — Johnl1479^(talk) 00:29, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

• Strong keep for all the reasons given above, but also because of the US-centric wording of the template that is proposed to replace this. I was at The Queen's College, Oxford. Nobody in the UK refers to it a "School" which is a US usage only. Speedy keep would be appropriate and I considered it, but I have an interest as I created two of these templates.--Bduke (talk) 00:07, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
• Keep and close per WP:SNOW. — Malik Shabazz (talk · contribs) 00:27, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
• Speedy Keep As a userbox, there are many far more frivolous ones that we see in userpages. This one actually has some value-added, and the individual school colors, etc., together with other customization, is helpful, too. JGHowes ^talk - 00:30, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
• Strong keep - Wow! Eliminating these from every single user page on Wikipedia. This may well the stupidist and most arrogant attempt I have ever seen on Wikipedia. I can't believe all those pages have the deletion comment on them now. The templates were fun and unique. We don't have to standardize everything. I have no problem if they want to put a link on the school page in case somebody thinks that filling several lines of code is simpler that copying one line of code. Americasroof (talk) 00:38, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
• Keep per AWeenieMan. SchuminWeb (Talk) 00:54, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
• Keep all. Variety is the spice of life. Chris (talk) 00:59, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
• Keep - I want my userboxes however I want to make them, unconstrained by some fancy super-template. —Disavian (^talk/_contribs) 01:24, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
• Keep I like the ability to choose which template I like better for my own page. If we generalize it, it'll lose that "personal" touch. Katanada (talk) 02:22, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
• Keep All of the above Pterre (talk) 02:25, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
• Keep If you are looking for a way to simultaneously piss off about 10,000 productive, hard working editors for absolutely ZERO benefit...this is the way to do it. The cost to Wikipedia to keep these things is about $1. They don't interfere with articles and have zero impact on the quality of the encyclopedia. If they help keep our editors happy then it's disk space well spent. SteveBaker (talk) 02:33, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
• Keep - The individual templates in no way have an effect on encyclopedic quality of Wikipedia. They are in the individual user space, not on articles. Let us leave them as they are. Absolon S. Kent (talk) 02:55, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
• Keep, User page is not an article page. Boxes help communicate in these pages and help editors probably freely put what they can not put in their contributions. Let`s not have user pages without personality.--Yusayr (talk) 03:14, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
• Keep for reasons above. Keep things individualized. Eightkinarrows (talk) 03:24, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
• Strong Keep All of the above. There is no reason to delete the school templates. It's absolutely ridiculous, unless you just want to keep people from identifying themselves individually. User pages are supposed to have personality, otherwise there's no point to user pages period and we might as well just toss all of them, which I don't think anyone wants. Absecon 59 (talk) 03:37, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
• Strong Keep All of the above. While it may seem like a good idea to put all under one template, it will require each user to reinvent the wheel on color scheme, university name (yes, schools often go by several different names), abbreviation, image, etc.). Keep the {{User school}} template for all the people who want it for their high schools or even for their universities. But don't delete the existing university userboxes and don't prevent new ones from being made. Vantelimus (talk) 04:06, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
• Strong Keep I tried to think of a new reason, but there are already a whole lot of them here. Sheesh. Qqqqqq (talk) 04:14, 4 March 2008 (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 page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.