User:TrogdorPolitiks/templates

I believe that use of templates on Wikipedia should be minimized as much as possible. Here is why.

Work
One of the greatest problems I have with templates is the amount of work that goes into them. One can spend hours working on one's page, only to have some ignorant fool copy subst tags off a page somewhere and have a page that appears to be far more sophisticated. I personally find it comprable to pirating software and that sort of thing.

With a little bit of time, anyone can make their userpage look good without templates. But it does take a small time committment. Without templates, a fancy userpage would only be the product of a signifcant amound of time spent editing that page. Only someone who really worked hard to make an awesome userpage could do so. With templates, a fancy userpage has become the equivalent of a little kid's construction project; sure, it looks nice, but chances are that he didn't do much of it himself.

Vandalism
Another bad thing about templates is vandalism. Templates make it so that many pages (any page with the template on it) can be vandalized WITH ONE EDIT. If a template were vandalized in this way, it could go unnoticed until someone closely scrutinized the template--which wouldn't necessarily happen very often, especially in the case of userboxes.

Dead templates
When a template is moved or deleted, often articles that contain the template are not updated to include the new address. I see this a lot with userboxes; some userboxes will not appear, but instead have a red link in their place. This looks very bad and contributes to an overall sense of sloppiness on wikipedia that doubtless does not promote it as a good informational source.

User Pages
Even I agree that in some articles templates can be very helpful. For example, I think that the navigational bars in some articles that connect all subtopics of a certain subject. But in Userpages, there is no legitimate use for templates. I have not seen a single template on a userpage that is really necessary, and besides, things should just be coded by hand anyways.

Eye Candy
Templates are often used on userpages to put in things that the user would probably not put in their userpage if it wasn't massively facilitated by the template. For example, the picture of the day. I am sure that very few wikipedians would put that on their userpage if it took more than a few seconds to implement. As it is, many templates give information that often does not contribute to the function of wikipedia nor the general sense of community on the website. Many templates that I see, especially on userpages, serve as random fluff added on solely to improve the visual aspect of the userpage. Such things should be coded by hand if coded at all, as I stated above.

Server Use
I don't know if bandwidth usage is a legit concern, but I have heard a few people mention it, so I'm including it under the list of reasons. I do know that templates such as the picture of the day template must consume a lot of bandwidth, but I do not know if, in the grand scheme of things, it amounts to a high enough percentage of wikimedia's server to be worth worrying over.

To Summaraize
Templates hurt wikipedia by:
 * 1) Adding visually un-appealing matter
 * 2) Adding non-essential material that one has to read around to find useful content
 * 3) Providing an easy to use and especially effective vandalism outlet
 * 4) Providing an "easy way out" for those who do not wish to do work on their user pages
 * 5) Belittling the amount of time that some spend hand-coding their userpages
 * 6) Possibly taking up a significant portion of bandwidth

In my opinion, the wikipedia community should wean itself off of templates except where absolutely necessary. To that end, I oppose Userboxes and any other template that is not vital to the navigation of the informational content of the encyclopedia.