Template talk:Buildings and structures in Birmingham, England/Archive 1

Archive 1

NEC

Why is the NEC listed as a sports venue? And it's in Solihull anyway, not Brum. DWaterson 21:27, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

I removed it. Unsure why I added it there. - Erebus555 10:42, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

What links here?

I was intrigued to see this new template in use. I have one concern though - with such a large number of buildings in the list the What links here feature of Wikipedia becomes rather useless for tracing real links as they are swamped by articles for buildings with no real connection. For example, before you could see that The Mailbox was linked from Pebble Mill Studios and BBC Birmingham, but now you can't discover that easily as ther are 119 links. Surely categories would be the best way to categorise and cross-link to types of buildings? Oosoom ^{Talk to me} 21:36, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

I have modified this template to use one-way links (External links) for a selection of articles. It makes maintenance of those easier by only including the real links, but it does create an external link arrow, which is rather ugly. Comments? Oosoom ^{Talk to me} 09:14, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

It's not so much ugly as confusing, as it makes it look like they are external links, so when one clicks on them, it's surprising to go to an internal article. DWaterson 11:31, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I am proposing putting all buildings and new categories onto the template. This will make the template large however I will add the button which says "Show" or "Close". The template will be automatically closed on an article unless someone presses the show button. This should help sort out why some buildings have the template on the article yet are not included in the template. - Erebus555 12:10, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think having the series box normally invisible will address my worry. The more articles you cross-link by putting them in a box, the harder it will be to keep track of what really refers to what. Back-links were designed into the system for reasons - to allow editors to make sure that the hyper-linking is sensible and maintains the integrity and confidence of the reading population, and also to provide a realistic guide to which articles are significant. By following back-links I have managed to remove links to and from UK Birmingham articles which relate to Birmingham, Alabama. This quality checking is impossible if there are pages of back-links.

I agree that the external arrows are ugly and misleading. I don't wnow whether they can be switched off? The alternative is to empty the template temporarily (and perjhaps the system cache?) to do quality checking. I don't think that is sensible though. But basically, I think the idea of an always-increasing series box is flawed. Categories are the mechanism for grouping like-minded articles - they are discrete to the reader, do not upset quality checking, and are automatically correct in that you don't need to update a horrendous template every time an article is created. I'm sorry to pour cold water on such an intriguing project. Best wishes. Oosoom ^{Talk to me} 14:55, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

It does seem this has done more bad than good and a better system of categories for the Birmingham category may be the preferred and best option. Will I put this template up for deletion? Comments? - Erebus555 15:12, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Have another look. The arrows have gone, thanks to technical advice from the Village Pump guys. Is this better? I would still prefer categoris though(;} Oosoom ^{Talk to me} 15:45, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Nice to see the arrows are gone. The colour still remains, however. You can change the colour of the link by putting font tags within the link tag itself, I believe. I still think it maybe best to delete it. A network of categories would most likely be better. I was hoping this template would do some good and make it easier to look at articles of buildings in Birmingham without having to click on the category and constantly browsing. - Erebus555 16:15, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

No, you have to use a CSS class; not everybody wants blue links. I must admit that this solutions seems to be worse than the problem it solves. Flooding WLH is annoying but this template will likely break on any mirror of Wikipedia. —Ruud 16:46, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

So are you proposing a deletion?--Erebus555 17:12, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Uhhm.. no? (..well I do think most navigational boxes are pretty useless and probably should be deleted yes, but I didn't say that here) I meant: it might not be a good idea to use this hack because is created more problems than it solves. —Ruud 17:47, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Well I'm most likely going to put this up for deletion (unless someone beats me to it) because it seems a network of categories would be more helpful and would not cause all the problems this has caused. Comments? - Erebus555 16:27, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd prefer a category or categories. Andy Mabbett 19:14, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Removal of fake external links

I recently turned the external links into internal, taking for granted they were mistake (why using an external link for an internal page?). I see this is not the case, but I still disagree with the rationale:

• Wikipedia is written for the readers, not for the editors; an external link makes the reader think that the linked page is external, which is not; maintainance is something done by editors, so it is given lower precedence;

• Wikipedia pages are not designed for working only on wiki.riteme.site: the idea is that one could possibly get a db dump and make a CD/DVD or mirror; the use of external links in this way complicates such process; In particular, it is far from obvious that every such external link is to be converted into a internal one; some links are supposed to link to Wikipedia directly (and not being a self-link to the local copy), e.g., in Wikipedia, one is supposed to have a link to http://wiki.riteme.site, not to Main Page. This is particularly bad as the number of Wikipedia articles having a Wikipedia-related subject is ever-increasing (I have tried to limit this but wes almost always unsuccessful; see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Inuktitut Wikipedia for a particularly egregious example).

I agree that the naviagation templates so big are not particularly useful. If it cannot be turned into a category (because there is something more in it), it can be made a list. Tizio 14:25, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Theatres

There are a number of notable theatre's in Birmingham - e.g. The Rep, Old Rep, The Crescent and a number in the surrounding area - have you considered adding these. --Stuartjmanton (talk) 20:27, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

I think that this template needs an entire revamp really. There are so many more articles on buildings in Birmingham than there were when the template was created and these should be included. I think that a discussion on the way to incorporate these should be conducted so a consensus can be reached. - Erebus555 (talk) 20:52, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

whoops, I never noticed the creation date —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stuartjmanton (talk • contribs) 06:24, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Missing highrise

I noticed this template doesn't have the Hyatt hotel included in the Highrise section. IIRC this building is the second tallest hotel and amongst the tallest buildings in the city. Astronaut (talk) 03:37, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

There was an article for the Hyatt Hotel building but this was deleted following an AfD discussion. - Erebus555 (talk) 17:36, 28 January 2009 (UTC)