Template talk:Democracy sidebar

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I'm curious. With the advent of categories, what is the purpose of this template? -- Stevietheman 14:25, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I believe in the use of templates as a possibility to place an article in the right context. If one is interested in elections, one can find directly all kinds of related articles, without first searching categories and sub-categories. It is an extra dimension to Wikipedia. --Gangulf 15:05, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

You should probably consider creating a WikiReader for this topic. The outline that you have would make a good start. However, it doesn't make a good template for inclusion in all of the pages you've included it in. -- RobLa 04:05, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

This template is so huge that it is no longer useful. Break it into smaller interlinked templates or delete it. --Jiang 00:48, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

This template is ridiculous. john k 01:50, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

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This template is no longer necessary as it contains only one link. Overview democracy should be renamed List of democracy-related topics to sound less Canadian and linked directly? --Jiang 06:03, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

You might be right (the title has changed allready in List of democracy and elections-related topics, but it will take some time to make in every related article a direct link. Wiht this existing category, it is done in one step. --Gangulf 06:07, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I added a link to List of democracy articles to the template. This is material that was originally incorporated in the democracy (disambiguation) page. Note that I don't necessarily support giving "List of " type articles this much prominence, but until Democracy (varieties) can be improved, and some better organizing chart can be created for these articles, I don't this this is an unacceptable stopgap. - David Oberst 18:04, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was not sure how the type of democracies were picked for the template since there is no "purpose" listed on this talk page. I added Social democracy to the template because it seems to be one of the major types. If it clashes with the purpose of the template, feel free to revert.--207.230.48.5 03:36, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect some of the entries (such as anticipatory democracy got added hodge-podge after the template was created. Figuring out a useful format for this is on my to-do list, but I haven't got around to it. - David Oberst 03:41, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I see you are facing similar problems as the political ideologies where me needed criteria for inclusion. What we did there was combine a criterion that selected ideologies parties actually have (in this case types of democracy a lot of a countries actually use) with a criterion that selected ideologies that play an important role in the contemporary debate in political philosophy (in this case types of democracy that play an important role in the academic debate about democratization). This way all significant types of democracy, either empirically or theoretically are included. For the exact criteria, take a look a the ideology template talk. C mon 07:43, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please do not put red links like religious democracy in a template! C mon 21:50, 7 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• It was made up. I deleted it.--Patchouli 14:32, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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I have removed religious democracy from the template, which was added again recently. The current article is essentially an essay at present. - David Oberst 08:23, 4 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Why have you removed religious democracy from the template, David Oberst and C mon? Would you explain? Farhoudk 10:06, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I removed the article about half a year ago, because it was a red link (i.e. there was no article. since it was created in january 2006). Now I don't care either way although I think there are too much insignificant forms of democracy on the template. C mon 16:30, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I removed the link to the current article because it reads like an essay, not an encyclopedia entry. It might be more useful to take any further discussion to the Talk page there. - David Oberst 16:40, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It still has a flag as an essay and needs work but as long as we agree it is a notable subject it should be included in the template: that's how people get recruited to work on lower quality articles. --BozMo talk 11:43, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The reason I changed the width to 25% is that for those reading from a tablet, like me, the template can get as wide as the text to the left. Frankly, I can't see why the template should be larger than the text it containes, but I said to myself, "25% is decent, if someone has that space why not let it strech up to that". I am glad to see someone is watching, In my opinion it is much better to set some width than leave it empty. So, if you prefer some other width, just set it. I'll answer here how it looks on my end. Yaniv256 (talk) 23:09, 7 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I would support a maximum width of 25%, but otherwise it's going to be really big on large screens. the default set by {{sidebar}} is 22em, which is the same as about a hundred thousand other infobox/sidebar templates on WP. Frietjes (talk) 23:11, 7 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't think 25% might be too big ... The smaller the better as far as I am concerned. What would be the best size on your end? Yaniv256 (talk) 00:42, 8 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I understand where you're coming from as I tend to get on Wikipedia using handhelds myself, but stretching the width of only this template (and the other you recently edited) will create an inconsistency with the default template size used by the vast majority of templates on Wikipedia (as Frietjes pointed out). You have a commendable interest in improving the Democracy-related pages on Wikipedia where this template is likely to be seen (and have done a really good job!), but what of the other templates on Wikipedia that use the 22em width default? They will cause the same problem when you view them on your tablet. Rather than changing the template width of only the Wikipedia templates that you personally come across, I would suggest leaving the template width the default size for now but sparking a discussion to change the default settings on Help_talk:Template or Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Templates to take into consideration tablet viewing restraints. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 02:10, 8 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(Side note... the 20% width looks much better than the 25% you originally set it at. On my end, setting it to 25% actually stretched the template size, which given your previous comment I don't think was your intention.) –Prototime (talk · contribs) 02:15, 8 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! I agree in principal that this should be addressed on a higher level, however, I have little interest to push big projects like that. Wikipedia is also bottom up ... If you feel strongly about this, well, I guess it is not very important to me anyway. Yaniv256 (talk) 02:23, 8 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't particularly feel that strongly about it, especially now that the width is at 20% and looks great on my own screen, but I haven't a clue what it'll look like on other people's screens, so they may complain and want it changed (in which case, the default template size would probably be the best comprise, since it favors no particular individual user's screen size... but then again, this 20% may not bother anyone, and no one would complain.) Just to clarify, when you set the width at 25% originally, did it actually shrink the size of the template on your end? It stretched it on mine, and given Frietjes' comment, I think it stretched it on their end too. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 02:32, 8 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. For me the infobox shrinks for anything between 50% and 30%. At about 30% it hits the size of the text and stops shrinking. Anything below that looks exactly the same. →Yaniv256 ^talk _contribs 03:46, 8 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I added a max-width:22em to prevent it from consuming the screen on a wide display. by the way, if you set width to "auto" it will shrink the box to the width of the longest line, which is probably what you are after. however, this will cause an inconsistency between stacked boxes. Frietjes (talk) 15:39, 8 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]