Template talk:Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio

WP:EXISTING
It's great to have more coverage of the Strange Tales here on Wikipedia, so all your sustained work across these articles is greatly appreciated, but I'm still concerned about the format of this navbox in a few ways:
 * 1) the abundance of redlinks and presence of unlinked stories
 * 2) the layout of the template by volume
 * 3) links not always going to short stories
 * 4) the inclusion of the template in Category:Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio

Navbox guidance says that navigation templates are "grouping[s] of links used in multiple related articles to facilitate navigation between those articles". One of the four properties listed for navigation templates (and the only one given a shortcut) is WP:EXISTING: Redlinks and unlinked text should be avoided, unless deleting them would give an incomplete or misleading impression. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but the stories given are not a complete listing of all the stories, but just a sort of curation of the ones thought to be most noteworthy (WP:OR?). As it's already an incomplete subset of the stories, it wouldn't be misleading to remove them until their articles have been written. The only argument I can see for preserving them is to allow each "volume" section to have at least one story, which brings me on to my second concern:

One of the advantages given for navigation templates is the "compactness of the template compared to a standard list or table, in the case of many links". This template is very atypical, not just in mostly having redlinks, but also in the layout. The volume-by-volume approach may seem "neat", but it makes the template very long, almost filling the screen when expanded. It also makes it harder to find specific stories, having to cast your eye down, and know which volume the story was in, and discard the clutter of redlinks and unlinked text to find the article you were looking for (which is the purpose of navigation templates). Is there any reason for listing them by volume, rather than alphabetically in a single section, which would make the template much more compact, and individual story articles much easier to find? How many English translations that readers are likely to be using still follow the original volume-by-volume story order, and how many of the readers would remember which volume number but not the title of the story?

There are also a number of links that don't go to articles on the short stories (and instead to articles that don't contain the navbox, which is also discouraged): Vol 1 "Squirting" links to Song Wan (poet), Vol 15 "Feng the Carpenter" links to Zhou Youde, the "Chang'e" article is on the godess not the story about her, "White Lotus Sect" redirects to White Lotus, about the sect itself, and "The Imperial Physician" article was deleted for lack of demonstrating individual notability (as an inclusionist I'm afraid to look into the other stories, but wonder how many of the remaining redlinks would suffer the same fate, even if they ended up being created!); these links to the subjects rather than the stories themselves, though quite often found on fan-written articles, are generally considered bad practice, and tend to be removed as they go against the purpose of navigation templates. They are more suited to a brief description of each story in a mainspace list article.

I've switched the template to use documentation, and kept the categories as they are, but am concerned at the muddying of water between mainspace articles and templates by including this template in Category:Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. To me, it re-enforces the view that this is being used as a list of the major stories for readers rather than a navigation template. If so, I would suggest that a mainspace list may be more appropriate.

I've created a sandbox version of the template to show how it could be made to conform to navbox guidance, and added a request for additional points of view at Wikipedia talk:Categories, lists, and navigation templates and Wikipedia talk:Navigation template, but I hope that won't be put off by my trying to throw other perspectives into the mix! &#8209;&#8209; Yodin T 10:31, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the feedback -- greatly appreciated. I'll focus on writing as many articles as I can (took a bit of a break, other things got in the way) and perhaps you can help with the formatting, etc. I just want the articles to be easily accessible, i.e. one can navigate from story to story. You obvs are more experienced with this than me! My only concern is providing coverage to these great tales. Of course it would be nice to turn all the red links blue -- working on it. There are, after all, a few hundred stories. We can work on this together! :) Cheers Kingoflettuce (talk) 13:43, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I'd be happy to help! :) &#8209;&#8209; Yodin T 22:49, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Maybe you could help reconfigure the titles so that they're alpha instead? Suppose that would actually make life easier for me too. I thought I was being a purist and all that by adhering to the volumes. Then again, just how many people read these? Hmm Kingoflettuce (talk) 10:36, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
 * ✅. I've also taken a look at the new articles you've made to see if I can help there at all, and come to the conclusion that they're awesome! The only thing I'd like to do is perhaps start adding the Giles translation to Wikisource, and provide links here so that readers can easily read translations of the actual stories. As for numbers of readers I don't know if you've come across the pageview tools, but the main article gets between 2,500 and 3,500 unique readers each month! &#8209;&#8209; Yodin T 14:15, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Sure, would love to see more Giles translations on Wikisource. Problem, though, is that Giles didn't so that many whereas Sondergard did all of them if I'm not mistaken. The main article is one thing, and I probably should prioritise that :P but more recognition should be given to the individual short stories -- too much attention given to the ones like The Painted Skin (some, yes, are obscure but are gems waiting to be uncovered!) Kingoflettuce (talk) 14:18, 7 June 2017 (UTC)