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I don't know if you saw my nominations from thisOctober 28 Tfd, but very similar to your nominations, we have too many sidebars on almost every topic. For world leaders and politicians it is a complete mess. A lot of them are better of being navboxes. Similar to NENAN, I'm thinking of creating NENAS - Not everything needs a sidebar. I've updated myNENAT essay to make mention ofWP:Leadsidebar.WikiCleanerMan (talk)23:58, 10 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@WikiCleanerMan Hey, thanks for telling me! I didn't see those nominations, but I very much agree. The problem I'm currently facing is trying to justify the very existence/purpose of topics footers. At first, I thought they were an ideal replacement for redundant sidebars due to the great overlap that existed in practice already anway. But Moxy pointed out to me how topics footers are now blowing out of proportion as well, even if they are autocollapsed and don't mess up the upper-right corner of articles like sidebars do. Long story short: we seem to be moving the problem of overlinking, rather than solving it. AtUser:Nederlandse Leeuw/Culture sidebars#Purpose of topics footers, I've been gathering some thoughts, but it's not well-structured yet.
My preliminary conclusion is: topics footers emerged originally as duplicates of categories for purely topographical navigation between cities and local administrative areas within a given administrative division, such as U.S. states or states of India. The only 3 advantages they had (and still have) overcategories, is that you can
immediately see the other members (articles) of a category and
immediately navigate to them,
without first leaving the page you're currently on.
That's it. That's the only reason why these topics footers exist. There has never been a successful, concerted effort to develop standards for scope, inclusion criteria, or even layout for such topics footers. Many of them were soon expanded with arbitrary links to the History, Politics, Economy, Society and Culture (these 5 themes are the most common, but there are many more) of a given region,
without any discussion on talk pages whatsoever, without any clear names or documentation for the subject, purpose, usage or scope of the topics footer (in violation ofWP:TG no. #3Template function should be clear from the template name, and #5Templates should be clearly documented as to their usage and scope.),
and disregarding (existing) categorisation or lists (arguably in violation ofWP:TG no. #6Templates should not be used to create lists of links to other articles when a category, list page, or "See also" section list can perform the same function.).
The biggest ones now have well over 100 arbitrary links and have become almost completely useless (arguably in violation ofWP:TG no. #8Templates that violate the guidelines on this page, have poorly defined function, are redundant (...) or violate any Wikipedia policies may be nominated for deletion at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion.).
Of course, most of these topics footers are now autocollapsed to reduce their sheer size and obstruction to the reader, even if the layout of the rest of the article is barely affected due it being a footer below the article. But this is arguably in violation ofWP:TG no. #1:They should also not be used to "collapse" or "hide" content from the reader. Moreover, autocollapsing these topics footers also diminishes advantage no. #1, that you can immediately see the other members (articles) of a category. You're just forced to click 'Show' instead of the relevant category below (even though the categories are far more precise in leading you to closely related articles instead of a jungle of 100+ arbitrary links of articles that have soooooooomething to do with Fooland).....
Besides, I've noticed that the topics footers suffer almost as much from mismatches between links to articles and transclusions by articles as the culture sidebars do. To quote myself from 3 days ago:Template:Wales topics has 138 links (!), and 282 transclusions (!!). I think this is wayyy too much to begin with, even before we ask the question whether we should mergeTemplate:Culture of Wales into it or not. The fact that it has almost double the number transclusions to the number of links suggests that people are dumping the footerTemplate:Wales topics under lots of articles that they think are of general importance to "Wales", regardless of whether those articles are actually mentioned in the footer itself. That is a sign of poor editing practices.
This is simply not possible with categories: they will by definition ALWAYS properly link between articles and the categories those articles are in. Maintenance of categories is far easier and much more transparent than these topics footers.
So, I'm in a bit of a crisis. How am I supposed to justify the existence of topics footers if I don't see their purpose? And: should our conclusion be that all topics footers should just be deleted because they so apparently blatantly violate common guidelines for templates? I'm not sure I'm willing to embark on such a huge effort that will lead to much more pushback than with the phaseout of culture sidebars.
Sorry to unload all these thoughts on you. I hope I'm not overwhelming you, but as probably one of the most active users seeking to clean up templates around here (in which you honour your username very much!), you might be the exact person who could give me helpful advice on this. But please don't feel like you have to answer it all (at once). I value your input. Good day,NLeeuw (talk)15:02, 11 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A bloated navbox is never a concern even if it contains links relevant to the subject. For instance, Iran-United States relations and Soviet Union-United States relations navboxes are super huge, but don't violate any policy of size, linking of articles, navigation, MOS, or anything. Dividing up subjects to each and every navbox is not ideal unless it warrants it. But of course there are exceptions where it can be allowed. But it depends.WikiCleanerMan (talk)21:34, 11 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@WikiCleanerMan I do. But just like with the culture sidebars, the question is whether we are really "solving" anything by converting them into footer navboxes or merging them into existing footer navboxes? Or are we just moving the problem away from the top-right corner to the bottom of the article? As long as we cannot find an adequate answer to that question, I'm afraid that I'm wasting my time.
The alternative, as I tried to outline to you above, is to subject the very purpose of footer navboxes to rigorous scrutiny. We could see if they can survive standing up toWP:TG andWP:TFD#REASONS, amongst other policies and guidelines. In short, I don't think most of them do. Good day,NLeeuw (talk)06:50, 23 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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Hey @Nederlandse Leeuw. Your wiki edit anniversary is today, marking 16 years of dedicated contributions to English Wikipedia. Your passion for sharing knowledge and your remarkable contributions have not only enriched the project, but also inspired countless others to contribute. Thank you for your amazing contributions. Wishing you many more wonderful years ahead in the Wiki journey. :) -❙❚❚❙❙ GnOeee❚❙❚❙❙✉15:24, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Heyooo. Was going to try to tackle some of the mergers currently in theHolding cell that you initiated. Was curious if you had any tips or tricks for ensuring all data gets transferred? Any scripts you may have written for previous such efforts... Let me know!Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing)20:53, 15 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Zackmann08 Oh nothing special. I mostly just manually compared all entries in each template, and all the "What links here" articles, to make a proposal. If you sort those alphabetically, it's easy to see the similarities and differences.NLeeuw (talk)21:31, 15 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hey @Gonnym, I'll tell you the same as I told Zackmann08 below: Not until we've determined a purpose (and thus the justification for the existence) of generalised unscoped topics footer navboxes first. Otherwise, we're just moving the problem from sidebars to footers, not solving it.
If you do want to finish the efforts I started, feel free to do so. But I think you should be aware of unforeseen problems it may create, especially when proposing to merge sidebars into existing topics footer templates that are already very long.
One possible alternative I have proposed atUser:Nederlandse Leeuw/Culture sidebars is establishing an explicit scope for the template (if necessary, in a /doc subpage) before you convert it from a sidebar to a footer navbox. "Culture" has a tendency to become a catch-all for literallyanything vaguely related to a given country or region. (My professor of globalisation history used to say thatCulture is everything humans make, which makes for an extremely broad scope.)
Finally, I'm not (yet) convinced that a footer navbox will do a better job of helping readers and editors navigate between articles than the category tree ofCulture of [given country/region]. As long as it doesn't, there is aWP:TG #6 reason to just delete the culture sidebar in question altogether, rather than merging or converting it into a footer navbox:Templates should not be used to create lists of links to other articles when a category, list page, or "See also" section list can perform the same function.
And while I'm at it, I think@WikiCleanerMan: would also appreciate a ping from me, so here you go. :)
@Gonnym and @Zackmann08, if you haven't yet seen what I discussed with WikiCleanerMan above at#Sidebars, it might help you to understand why I suspended my efforts to phase out the culture sidebars until the deeper, underlying issues can be resolved. I found that I couldn't do so, at least not by myself.
Each of you three approached me separately on my talk page in the past few weeks, asking whether I would finish what I started. I appreciate that!
Maybe the four of us together (and others) could find a way to resolve the underlying issues I've raised? I know it isn't easy, but we do all agree that the sidebars should be phased out. It's just that especially in conversations with @Moxy that I found myself agreeing more and more that just merging them all into topics footer navboxes wouldn't really solve the problems with sidebars, just move them to a place where they bother us editors and our readers less. I'm open to suggestions.
Not until we've determined a purpose (and thus the justification for the existence) of generalised unscoped topics footer navboxes first. Otherwise, we're just moving the problem from sidebars to footers, not solving it.NLeeuw (talk)11:50, 23 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Good day,NLeeuw (talk)15:02, 11 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There is currently a discussion atWikipedia:No original research/Noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.tgeorgescu (talk)11:17, 20 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
