Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Objectivism/Cross talk

Question for administrator
This template is intended to be proliferated accross alot of talk pages, and the template content is to be considered *discussion* for the articles its included in. Question: any known issues with this usage of templates? --Karbinski (talk) 21:17, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
 * First of all, don't use helpme tags on anything else than your own user talk page. You might be better off asking at the help desk, or directly asking an admin. Ten Pound Hammer  and his otters • (Many otters • One hammer • HELP) 21:19, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Cross-Talk for Ayn Rand and Objectivism articles
This is a proposed new template for the footer of Ayn Rand and Objectivism related articles. The purpose is to centralize discussions that involve more than one article. We can edit the template directly. What are people's thoughts on including this in the various articles? (There is a discussion page for the template as well, but I think we should first talk about the template's creation before we engage in detailed discussion on the template itself) Karbinski (talk) 23:24, 6 April 2009 (UTC)


 * As a first question, are there any policies or guidelines relevant to this kind of template usage? Karbinski (talk) 23:43, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
 * To answer my own question: Help:Template Karbinski (talk) 22:44, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Location on talk pages
Is there any standard for where this template should be placed on a talk page? On some pages it is towards the top, just below any warning boxes, etc. On others it is at the bottom. The bottom puts it below the "local" discussions, which could be good in terms of giving talk-page priority to article-specific discussion. But this causes a problem, because if an editor uses the 'new section' link, it will add the section below the cross-talk template, so the cross-talk ends up in the middle. Having seen it both ways, my preference is to put the cross-talk near the top, below any boxes but above the local discussion sections. If there are no objections to making this the standard, I'll move the template on any talk pages where it isn't already in that position. --RL0919 (talk) 16:01, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
 * After being reminded of this situation by the discussion immediately below, and seeing no objections to my earlier proposal, I did what I suggested. This template is now consistently at the top of the discussion (but below any boxes) on all talk pages where it is used. --RL0919 (talk) 20:24, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Unorthodox use of templates
This template is... really weird. I don't think there's any other like it. I see the reason behind it - to host a discussion on multiple related pages at once - but it's pretty strange to come across it on a talk page (especially when it's not at the top or the bottom, but right in the middle, like at Talk:Objectivist epistemology!). Is there a Wikipedia policy anywhere governing the use of templates like this? And isn't this whole template kind of redundant to WikiProject Objectivism, anyway? Robofish (talk) 23:33, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Imagine a world where you never came accross this template --Karbinski (talk) 15:44, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
 * It is unusual, but it has been very helpful in organizing and publicizing project discussions. Perhaps other projects should do something similar. I doubt there are any guidelines related to it because it seems to be an innovation (AFAIK). I agree that the inconsistent placement is a problem, which is why I raised the question in the section above. I'd suggest that it always go at the top of the talk pages so that the "new section" button works without creating situations like the one for Talk:Objectivist epistemology. When we find legacy cases like that one, we should fix them (which I just did for that page). We might also want to think about when it is or is not appropriate to have it on a talk page at all, since not every page associated with the project has this. For example, we might want to remove the template from the talk pages of redirects like the aforementioned Objectivist epistemology article. --RL0919 (talk) 16:01, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Namespace for this page
Related to some of the discussion above, I realized a while back that this page probably doesn't belong in the template namespace. The key to its function is that it is transcluded on the talk pages of the various articles, but a page does not have to a template in order to be transcluded. I think it would be better placed as a sub-page of WikiProject Objectivism. For example, it could be moved to WikiProject Objectivism/Cross talk and still work the same as it does now. I think this would be more appropriate, because other than being transcluded on several pages, this page doesn't really function like a typical template, but it does function very much like a WikiProject sub-page. Any objections to moving it, or alternative page name suggestions? --RL0919 (talk) 23:47, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I know some folks have this page watchlisted. Last call for objections to me moving the page as described above. --RL0919 (talk) 22:22, 23 February 2010 (UTC)