Template talk:Western Ghats

Template overwhelms many articles
This template is massive and overwhelms many little articles that it has been placed on. In some case it much much bigger that the article itself. In other cases it interfers with the template. Also, in many cases there is already a large template on the article and the two large templates - one orange and the other purple - does not seem like a good idea. Also, it has way more information that is needed for almost all the articles it it placed on, so it is very confusing. I removed it from a few articles that, in my opinion, the template reduced the enjoyment and quality of the article dramatically. If my opinion is in the minority, then forgive me. Sincerely, Mattisse 01:20, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Template usage
Thanks Mattisse for your ideas and also helping in improving the relevance/readability of some of the articles appropriately. My intentions of creating this templates (and few other templates) are
 * Wiki editors can share ideas from other similar articles that fall in the common interest
 * Increase the possibility of getting more relevant topics added
 * We can avoid "see also" sections

My request: Please feel free to improve the template - including appropriate content/presentation. Please feel free to add/remove the template at appropriate places (as you will be the expert in the specifics). --Pinecar 02:14, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that there's a category for the Western Ghats. Would this work better as a category? &mdash; goethean &#2384; 02:40, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your good attitude about the templates
These things are hard because people have such different views. But in general, Wikipedia approves of only very minimal templates, and there purpose is not supposed to be to get people to create lots of unsourced stubs to get rid of red links. The Feature Article editors will not allow templates on any article they are considering, unless the template is specifically and narrowly designed for the article. (See Hoysala Empire for an India example which I worked on.) For me personally, I will not work further on an article that has templates, except when the template enhances the article. And I will not create an article that has the possiblity of a template being put on it, unless it is a template taylored for a specific subject. I know people are divided on this issue. I am one of a group of editors who have managed to keep templates off the temple articles in South India. But there is a North Indian state where someone has put templates on the temple article so I have deserted those articles. (And now no one does anything on those temples -- the person who put the templates on was not interested in doing anything else for the articles.) On a recent Template for Deletion vote, an Indian template received an overwhelming delete vote because it was not narrow in the topics it included.

I guess the only suggestion I have is that you enable readers to hide the templates (There is a way to do it as on many templates you click it and it basically disappears and stayed disappeared for all articles that have templates with that feature. So people like me don't have to see them, and people who like them can leave them open.)

Also, some articles have one or two other templates just as large and irrelevant. Many of the river articles already had an Asian Waterways (or something) template on them. Then with the Western Ghats template and perhaps a Tamil Nadu template etc. there is no end to it on a tiny article. I don't intend to work on Western Ghats anymore anyway as the article is basically unsourced and a mess.

Sincerely, Mattisse 03:19, 16 February 2007 (UTC)