Talk:Templates

I view the templates as nothing more than a quick and unfounded branding of articles. If someone believes the articles are unfair or wrong, they should state their reasons, not just slap a preform template at the top of the page.

People are reasonable here, make the case for bias.

--Hugh Manatee 09:12, 9 Aug 2005 (EDT)

I view the templates as a higher level of editorship. The same way a teacher or professor would mark an essay and suggest areas of improvement. They're not going to rewrite the essay, nor research the subject thoroughly. Or, if you prefer, it's like a magazine or newspaper. Someone writes an article and submits it to the editor. The editor says "these changes should be made," and the article is written with those changes. Giving people the opportunity to act as managing editors and not just article contributors helps the articles. What if the templates have to clearly include the name of the person who posted the message? As in, "User Benapgar suggests that this article should be checked for fairness". And maybe even include "User Hugh Manatee disputes this suggestion." or "Dissenting opinion: User Hugh Manatee is satisfied with the fairnesss of this article."

Consider a fictitious front group called "Democracy for votes." Let's say the article says:


 * Democracy for votes' is a supposedly non-partisan front group run by the Republican party. Though their mission says they want free and fair elections, do they really? No. Evidence may suggest that they in fact want to manipulate election results, just like other groups who have done so. In reality, the GOP will do anything to achieve a victory for their party. It is obvious that the underlying agenda of Democracy for votes is anything but neutral. Just like the Nixon administration, the Bush administration is manipulating voter results across the country, and Democracy for votes is just one of the ways they are doing it. Bush's win by only a slim margin in the 2000 election, even though it was clearly stolen, showed the GOP that they needed to create more of these front groups. Democracy for votes was created in 2002, at approximately the same time as numerous other GOP front groups, ones which have been exposed as such, were created. Bush eventually went on to win the election, even though in some states the exit polls were incorrect and Democracy for votes was heavily involved in these states.

Apart from it not really making sense, it is clear that the perspective is biased, and for the most part does not even deal with the organization, using the article as a soap-box on election fraud and unfairly casting the "Democracy for votes" in a bad light; the only evidence provided is "Evidence may suggest that they in fact want to manipulate election results." The rest is a big diatribe about front groups and election fraud. Now consider you are not really interested in this organization. Would you take the time to rewrite the article? Or would you simply find it easier to suggest it needs to be checked for fairness? And if you would do neither, what about people reading the article?--Benapgar 20:03, 11 Aug 2005 (EDT)

SW: Proposed deletion and redirect to SourceWatch:Templates
I propose that this article be deleted and redirected to SourceWatch:Templates for these reasons:
 * 1) The article is in the wrong namespace. It is in the main namespace rather than in the SourceWatch or Help namespace.
 * 2) The proposal to use these templates has not been acted on for nearly 18 months. No one has used the templates linked to from this page. It would seem that the proposal is dead.
 * 3) SourceWatch:Templates is actually useful and helps editors use the templates on the wiki. However, because it is in the SourceWatch namespace, it does not appear in searches at first. By installing a redirect we can help editors find their way to this help page more quickly.

I also propose deleting the templates linked to off this page. They appear to be copies of earlier versions of related Wikipedia templates, so they can be easily copied again if people want to go in that direction. In general I think it is good housekeeping to remove templates that are not used and have not been worked on in more than a year.

Unless I hear from those that wish to keep the templates and this article, I will delete both at the end of this week. --Conor Kenny 12:00, 23 January 2007 (EST)