Template talk:US presidents

Previously unsectioned comments

I guarantee you the "8 Others" by tomorrow. - Wikipedia 23:18, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hm, that was fast... - Wikipedia 23:25, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

This table is ridiculous. Footers are not replacements for lists. Now we can't easily navigate from president to president. I will revert if i find no good reason to keep. --Jiang 00:12, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)

What exactly do you mean? If I can't make sense of a question, how can I answer? - Wikipedia 00:23, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Jiang, I don't really like it either, although I tried to clean it up. It's incredibly crowded, and it replaces the standard incumbent table. There's no real reason to leap from Eisenhower to John Quincy Adams, there is a reason to go from Eisenhower to Kennedy. Also, why is your username written as Wikipedia? That seems kind of sneaky. jengod 00:35, Mar 19, 2004 (UTC)

I'll write my name however I want! Is there a reason to jump from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban to Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets? Is there really a reason to jump from Arizona to the U.S. Virgin Islands? - Wikipedia 00:39, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Grover Cleveland should be put in once for each term to show chronological order. - Wikipedia 00:43, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)

A fact that used to be indicated by the incumbent table. I think this should have been discussed on Talk:President of the United States before you unilaterally decided to "update" the president pages. jengod 00:46, Mar 19, 2004 (UTC)

Is this really such a big change? I'm adding information and that is all! I'm not removing or changing anything, I'm just linking each president to every other president! - Calmypal 01:01, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)

You are making a stupid change. Harry Potter only has a few items. The Virgin Islands and Arizona have no clear chronological order. The presidents do. --Jiang

United States

I think that for things which come in chronological order (like U.S. presidents), the succession box should be used. For relatively short, absolutely-set lists of items, the listbox is occasionally acceptable. - Seth Ilys 01:05, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Don't remove comments that were not your own or attributed to you, Jiang. "Absolutely-set"? Why is this? - Woodrow 01:09, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I reverted your edit becuase your name was made to create mass horizontal expansion. --Jiang

Whatever you believe, you do not have the right to erase my comments. Whatever happened to the page itself, it had no real effect on the chat. - Woodrow 01:14, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hey, I reverted Timwi up to James Buchanan, but I have to go do another thing now. Could someone take over. I'm also adding this to VFD so it doesn't happen again. Thanks. jengod 19:27, Mar 20, 2004 (UTC)

What is wrong with this? There's reason to go from, say, John Adams to John Quincy Adams, or Abe Lincoln to James Garfield, and we can still go from Eisenhower to Kennedy. - Woodrow 20:04, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Where's Timwi to discuss and defend this? I guess I'll have to revert again. --Jiang 21:37, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Or not. - Woodrow 21:43, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Presidents of the Continental Congress were not U.S. Presidents, and the office of President of the Continental Congress was not a forerunner of the office of U.S. President. The two should not be mixed up in the same message. -- Nunh-huh 21:46, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Look, I think it's gratutious, clunky, overstuffed, superfluous and more, but I'm willing to compromise--how about we do both the incumbent tables and the msg:Uspresident? I think that the incumbent table is imperative, not least because several were also VP incumbents or other incumbents. The msg:Uspresidents is not just not an added-value. jengod 21:48, Mar 20, 2004 (UTC)

Whatever else happens, the predecessor/sucessor information should take precedence. I personally see no need for the larger box. If there is a meaningful link between James Buchanan and Woodrow Wilson, then it will appear in the text of the Buchanan article. Otherwise, it is link-bloat. The idea that a reader would have to wade through the the Continental Congress presidents to get to the successor of William Howard Taft is simply ridiculous. -- Decumanus | Talk 22:05, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

With the original version of this message, the Vice President incumbent tables were shown inside the box. If that would work now, I'd agree with this idea. The incumbent tables pretty much mirror information that's in the table at the top of the page anyway. - Woodrow 22:10, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

P.S. Please explain the meaning of that last sentence, Jengod...

You know what? I think I've started the largest edit war ever: one spanning about 51 articles. - Woodrow 22:16, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

From Calmypal's talk page:

Please stop adding the footer because it is a waste of time. I will revert it as long as you fail to convince us of its need and create a consensus to use it. --Jiang

As long as you can keep removing it, I can keep adding it. - Woodrow 22:05, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

What do you mean "who's responsible" (see page history)? - Woodrow 22:27, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I'm asking you to discuss this and you dont seem interested. --Jiang

I want to discuss this, but I'm losing patience. All evidence has been presented, all we can do is deliberate. It would be foolish of me to make a table of every company president, President of Georgia, President of Mexico, and so on, but the U.S. presidents are relevant to each other. - Woodrow 22:36, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The reason msg's like this are not encouraged is because there are some heads of state who are one in a list of hundreds. It would be completely unfeasible to have something like this for the Popes, for example. That is why there are little navigation tables with the previous and succeeding people, rather than a big list of everyone at the end. There is no reason to do it differently for US presidents. If you want to do something constructive, you could find a way to make the current tables more attractive. Adam Bishop 22:33, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Popes? No, completely unfeasible. U.S. Presidents? Feasible, obviously, for, as you can see, I have already done it. - Woodrow 22:36, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

That's irrelevant. Adam Bishop 22:37, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

From John Kerry's talk page:
Normally, we count George Washington as the first President, and John Kerry will be the 44th. However, according to a rectangular box at the bottom of George Washington's article, I now see 8 Presidents of Continential Congress, making George Washington the ninth President and John Kerry the 52nd. User 66.32.68.243
First of all, John Kerry will have to be elected before he becomes any number president. Second, we do not count Presidents of the Continental Congress in the sequencing, since they were presidents of that Congress, and not the executive of the United States. Cecropia 21:16, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC) jengod 23:22, Mar 20, 2004 (UTC)

I'm not calling them Presidents of the United States, I'm calling them Presidents of the Continental Congress. - Woodrow 23:25, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Look, it doesn't matter, the US presidents don't get a MediaWiki message like this because no heads of states do. That's really all there is to it. Adam Bishop 23:39, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The Sandbox doesn't get to stay because no pages that lack useful content get to. That's all there really is to it. - Woodrow 23:47, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The sandbox doesnt stay - it keeps getting wiped, and someone keeps restoring it. :) I think this might work if it was a sidebar, and if the Continental Congress Presidents were excluded. -SV(talk) 00:04, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Bush I and Bush II? L.B.J.? T.R.? If I'm looking for Teddy Roosevelt, I think I'll overlook T.R. I disagree with your changes, and I feel you're being a bit too bold, but I want to know what others think of the presidents you've changed the names of. I refuse to give up the Presidents of the Continental Congress, however. They were the first leaders of our country, which I consider to have technically been in a state of anarchy preceding the ratification of the Articles. - Woodrow 00:23, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

'"I feel you're being a bit too bold"' Snort. jengod 00:26, Mar 21, 2004 (UTC)

Huff. - Woodrow 00:28, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

MediaWiki messages are not the place to impose your point of view. The presidents of the Continental Congress were not presidents of the US, a nation formed after they were in office. It's misleading to imply the office has any sort of historical continuity with the presidency. -- Nunh-huh 00:30, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I have not given that office continuity with the current one. The United States of America was established under the Articles of Confederation. but it was then decided that they didn't work well. Until that decision was made, the Presidency of the Continental Congress was the highest position in U.S. government. - Woodrow 00:36, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Give them their own message. This one has already confused one reader, and would confuse more if left as is. - Nunh-huh 00:38, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Was it confusion or a sarcastic comment? - Woodrow 00:42, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I took it at face value. - Nunh-huh 00:52, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Oh, I should mention the main reason I put the Presidents of the Continental Congress in in the first place; George Washington's incumbent table has it that he was preceded by "Previous government under the Articles of Confederation". Are we supposed to pretend that George Washington was the beginning of formal government in the United States? - Woodrow 01:20, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

• No. Nor should we pretend that he succeeded Cyrus Griffin. - Nunh-huh 02:13, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Nor should we pretend that, alphabetically, American Samoa comes after Wyoming. - Woodrow 03:06, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

No we shouldn't, and that leaves us with the awkward situation of have two conflicting footers in the same article. --Jiang 00:15, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

What do you mean "not really president" and why do you say they conflict? - Woodrow 00:36, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The President of the Continental Congress was no more "President of the United States" than the "President of the Senate". They conflict because the top one says "Countries of the World" and the bottom one says "insular area". --Jiang 00:40, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Not quite answering my question...

The Continental Congress was unicameral. The President of the Continental Congress was in charge of the country. - Woodrow 00:53, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

No, the president of the Continental Congress was in charge of the Continental Congress. - Nunh-huh 01:10, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Which WAS the country. The Articles were more like a treaty than a constitution. Read them. - Woodrow 01:24, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Now you're just being silly. - Nunh-huh 22:33, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Last week I was just being silly. - Woodrow 02:24, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

NGI (If you can figure out how I pronounce that)! It appears to me to mainly be Jiang and jengod going against this by themselves. How many others have aggressively campaigned against this? If anyone else was disturbed by this, they would be the ones removing the notice from every page. Personally, I consider it acceptance when it is allowed to remain on George W. Bush! - Woodrow 00:53, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Look, I think it's gratutious, clunky, overstuffed, superfluous and more, but I'm willing to compromise--how about we do both the incumbent tables and the msg:Uspresident? SANS the Continental Congress nonsense. jengod 01:06, Mar 24, 2004 (UTC)

I don't have anything to add, but I want to chime in. I like the box and think it should be kept but agree that the Continental Congress prezes need to stay removed. Tuf-Kat 01:27, Mar 24, 2004 (UTC)

From VfD

• Being used to replace standard imcumbent navigation, unwieldly. jengod 19:30, Mar 20, 2004 (UTC)
• VFD should not be used for editorial decisions! This element is currently linked to by all of the president articles; if you dislike the change (I have no opinion on it), be bold and change it back. It's irrational to bring up a vote on an element used in 40+ articles. — Sverdrup 20:25, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)
• Keep this time. Please sort this out on the talk pages of the articles or the mediawiki message, not use VfD to short-circuit consensus-based discussions. If there's some agreement, list it here then. Jamesday 20:34, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)
• delete, of those willing to discuss, consensus on MediaWiki talk:Uspresidents is for deletion. --Jiang 22:41, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)
  • I gladly delete unused MW elements. This one however, was pulled into vfd while still being used by every president article, and it is still used in 10+ of them. Any Wikipedian could make the editorial decision of reversing the change. Why don't do that first, then bring it to vfd?! While you are still unwilling to actually reverse the changes in the articles, it's just silly to argue pro/con deletion. — Sverdrup 11:47, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)
  • I'm looking for the consensus described above but all I see on that link is a vote to keep. ? - Texture 17:27, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)
  • editorial decisions reversing the change will create edit wars and have less community input. When I made that statement, Calmypal was trolling on this page and what I stated was the truth.--Jiang
• Keep. I agree it shouldn't be used on every single President page, but that doesn't mean it might not prove useful for certain other pages. Anthony DiPierro 22:58, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)
• Keep, but remove the Continental presidents. Use standard abbreviations T.Roosevelt, FDR, JFK, LBJ, Bush I and II. The problem with this is that it needs to be as compact as possible. -SV(talk) 03:33, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)
• Keep. There are many possible compromises (e.g. removing Contental presidents, or breaking up by era). Nonetheless, the current myopic (<-last POTUS next->) thing looks pretty klunky too. -- RobLa 07:20, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)
• Keep, but don't necessarily link to every other president. e.g. to some of the lists instead. --User:Docu

Template not needed, redux

Now that we have categories, this is redundant. Some presidential articles are getting too long. This is one of the things we no longer need. --Jiang 01:44, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

• Category pages sort alphabetically, not chronologically
• The category has links on a separate page

- Calmypal 01:14, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Jiang. I still don't see the need. Johnleemk | Talk 14:23, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

One-year anniversary

We are now at the one-year anniversary of the beginning of the most interesting period of Wikipedia article history to study (How many of you Wikipedians can remember this time in Wikipedia history??):

On March 18, 2004, Calmypal brought up his President's template, taking all the President articles, removing the navigation tables, and replacing them with his template. Then, Jengod, finding the template, reverted them to the previous version with the navigation tables. and wrote a message on Calmypal's talk page. The argument went on for a while. Then came Timwi, who did the exact same thing; he took the President pages and replaced it with Calmypal's template. There was still no consensus to keep Calmypal's template. Then, several more times, Calmypal and Jengod argued on whether to use the navigation tables or Calmypal's template should be used. For a while after then, Calmypal's template remained absent. In April, it was finally a consensus; keep both the navigation tables and Calmypal's template. Georgia guy 02:20, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I've changed so much since then. For instance, I now know what "pecuniary" means. Having this argument today, I would definitely not have written some of the things I did, but I still like the box. What's funny is that today I look at it as some convenient thing that's just there. I've totally forgotten it's a personal accomplishment. - Calmypal 02:53, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)

Succession box redundancy

Hi there:

I noticed that the template has a row whose members are {{{before}}}, {{{after}}}, and {{{years}}}, and I'm going to eliminate this row once I've posted this message. Here's why:

• The succession row is redundant with the succession table which every President already has.
• We could theoretically remove the entry succession table instead of the succession row, but the succession table reports the President's term to a finer level of accuracy. Moreover, the succession table handles Cleveland's nonconsecutive terms much more elegantly than the succession row can.
• The {{{before}}} and {{{after}}} is redundant with the USpresidents template itself.

— DLJessup 04:59, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Template fix

This template needs repair. (The image of the seal falls outside and under the box. It should be inside, on the far right.) I'm going to try to read up on templates, to see if I can figure it out. If someone who know how could repair it, that would be great. Thanks. --Evb-wiki 04:01, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Navbox layout feedback

Looking for feedback on the layout of the template. Please see the version here which uses {{Navigation with image}} and the other version there which uses the {{Dynamic navigation box with image}}. Thanks. — MrDolomite • Talk 06:42, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Acting Presidents

Though their terms as Acting President were extremely short, they were the interim and should be treated as such. Therequiembellishere 01:58, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Convention disagrees with you: can you produce a List of Presidents of the United States that includes Acting Presidents? Biruitorul 03:22, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't need to, see Acting President of the United States#Invocations of 25th Amendment there were two official Acting Presidents: Bush (I) and Cheney. Therequiembellishere 04:04, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. As I replied on my talk page, prior to editing the template, I saw no links/info around the template space that confirmed or explained the interim status of Cheney and Bush. Did I miss those somewhere?--Riurik^(discuss) 04:55, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

I guess I haven't put up links, so I'll do that now. Therequiembellishere 05:00, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Last name only?

Is there any reason why only the last names are listed? If any list of people would deserve both first & last name, this would be one. Does anyone object to listing them by both first & last name, and an occasional middle initial?--Old Hoss 02:05, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I went ahead and reverted it back to full names; apparently when it was 1st created someone changed it to only last names because at the time (2004) footers were new and disliked, so last names were used to conserve space. However, currently it seems acceptable to list full names. If there is any objection, and a desire to revert it back to only last names, please discuss. Regards.--Old Hoss 21:48, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Adding of Clinton or Obama to the list

I happened to be reading about the presidents and noticed that Barack Obama's name had been added. I removed it, you may consider protecting this from editing.