User:Hegvald/Sandbox

Navigational boxes

There are a number of issues I see with the use of navigational boxes:

• The tendency to add navigational boxes to articles seems to be in conflict with other guidelines that try to reduce the amount of linking. The contrast with the restrictive guideline for what to include in "See also" sections is particularly glaring: while these aren't supposed to include things already mentioned in the text, navigation boxes include everything and the kitchen sink; they include not only things mentioned in the article, but many things only tangentially related that there would normally be no reason whatsoever to mention in the article.

Example 1: {{Ballet}} includes links to a number of ballet topics and has been included in an even larger number. The result is that Marie Taglioni, Swedish ballet dancer active during the first half of the 19th century, links to topics such as the Queensland Ballet, a ballet company on the other side of the world, founded in 1960. There would normally be no reason to link either of these articles to one another. All links in {{Ballet}} should certainly be somewhere, in an overview article of some sort, but not in every article where the template has been inserted. (Since this was written the box has been edited and the specific claim here is no longer true.)

Example 2: Choral conductor Eric Ericson: it has two boxes relating to awards. But few if any of the names in these boxes have any direct connection to the subject. The indirect connection through the award will be clear from the articles about these awards, which also contain lists of awardees. Why is it necessary to list them in every single article on an individual awardee?

• The over-linking through boxes frequently makes the "What links here" function useless; when everything links to everything else, it is difficult to see which articles actually say something about a particular related topic.

• The arbitrariness of some boxes. This is not true for every box; some have a very finite number of links (all compositions by composer X; all holders of position Y, etc.), but there are certainly boxes where this is the case.

• Even when the content is seemingly finite and the selection appears obvious, there may be issues that simply cannot be explained in the compact framework of a box.

Example: Take {{Monarchs of Sweden}}. This may seem an obvious selection of subjects in an equally obvious order. The problem is that sources for early mediaeval Sweden (in this context early mediaeval can mean up until abt. 1200) are relatively scarce and conflicting; it is difficult to know who was a king, who claimed to be so, and who was merely a local chieftain whose importance may have been boosted by chroniclers in the service of later and more successful descendants. Some of these kings and "kings" no doubt overlapped in time, as co-rulers or dominating different territories. Making a neat list is actually impossible. The box force all these into a neat chronological list. It looks more like the type of fudged historiography produced in the 17th century, when names and dates were invented to fit whatever view of legitimacy and continuity suited the ruling dynasty.

• The selection not just within boxes but of boxes themselves is often arbitrary and subject to (sometimes subtle) POV-pushing. The inclusion of a subject in a box and the inclusion of that box in an article creates a taken-for-granted context for the subject that may actually be arbitrary and disputable.

Example 1: The earlier inclusion of such a navigational box in the article on Kelly Wearstler, a now rather prominent interior designer who was once a Playboy "playmate", linking her article to other former "playmates". This, along with the playmate infobox that some wanted in that article, clearly over-emphasized the importance of a few hours in front of a Playboy photographers camera compared to the entire rest of her career. One could imagine a navigational box with links to other interior designers, but such a box would almost certainly be arbitrary in its inclusion criteria.

Example 2: To get back to the seemingly uncontroversial {{Monarchs of Sweden}} (I take this again just to show how even this is problematic). The inclusion of this box in the article emphasizes the supposed continuity of the Swedish monarchy, but the relevance of most of the links in the box to the actual article subject is dubious. How much does the current constitutional king really have in common with one of the Viking Age kings of something that vaguely resembles parts of current Sweden, or the absolute monarchs of the Swedish great power of te 17th century? There is certainly continuity of sort but the relevance of these links isn't necessarily greater than between these respective kings and a variety of other topics (such as the 17th century king in relation to rulers of other contemporary polities, or other topics of Swedish political history of the same period).

It seems to me that there is a problem: one either has a small but arbitrary and not-clearly-explained selection of links in the box or boxes, or one includes anything anyone could conceivably think of, falling in the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink trap instead.

• Why all these boxes? I think one explanation is that people like making boxes. They are simple collections of seemingly well-ordered links; producing one give a sense of accomplishment. Once in an article, they look like part of the technical infrastructure and are unlikely to be challenged. Rather, they might attract additional boxes to outweigh undue-weight issues with the first one. (End result: everything links to everything else.)

• Another reason may be that there should be good main articles containing all these links, giving them context and actually explaining the selection based on good sources. In many cases these articles are lacking or of substandard quality. This is much harder to fix than to create yet another box. If these articles were better and had at least some section as well-structured as the navigational box that functions as its substitute, there would be little reason to include the box everywhere; one would just add a link to the main article on a subject, a good and well-cited list of related subjects etc.