Template talk:Nutshell

(Just a note: This is an updated version of Template:Guideline one liner)

Overused

This template is being overused. Looking through the "what links here" I found it being used helpfully on WP:SOCK but it was sitting there and being totally useless on WP:NPA and WP:NOT. Don't use this when the article will not benefit from a one-line summary. Ashibaka tock 19:26, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Ashibaka that this template is vastly overused. Many if not most of the summaries fail to capture the essence of the policies, and the summaries contribute to the policy bloat they were intended to address. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 21:40, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Center text

Does anyone mind if I alter the template so the text is aligned to center? I think it looks especially wrong when the description is very short. - Drrngrvy 16:25, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Tricky one - center-aligned looks bad when the text is long (two or more lines). Do you have an example of text shorter than half a line? Stevage 09:31, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I think that left justification looks bad on multiple lines too. I hope noone minds that I was bold and changed it - along with the large picture size. Fresheneesz 22:38, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I think multi-lined, centered text looks amateurish. It's poor design IMHO. Rfrisbie^talk 23:02, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Now text alignment is a parameter. Rfrisbie^talk 23:46, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Good call. Fresheneesz 04:44, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Aw, nuts!

I should probably ask this some place else, but... what do people actually think of all the nutshells? One might argue they cause laziness and incomplete comprehension of policy, since in effect most policy pages cannot really be reduced to a single line. >Radiant< 17:17, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Parsimony is a virtue. ;-) Rfrisbie^talk 17:49, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

• And brevity is... wit! - R.

Beyond that, I think the nutshell summaries allow someone to know what they're reading when they do read the rest. It sets the stage. Fresheneesz 22:18, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

I just said this on a particular page discussing the use of the template there but should have made the comment here because the criticism applies to all the "nutshell" templates.

The "policy in a nutshell" idea seemed like a good idea at the time but now that we've got more experience with it, I think they just clutter up the pages for little purpose. The best "policy in a nutshell" is the policy title. No original research is a good example. It's clear, succinct and tells me exactly what to expect from the rest of the page. The next level of detail should be in the opening paragraph. In most cases, the "nutshell" sentences were actually pulled from older versions of the opening paragraph. This infobox tries to fill a middle ground between the two. Because of that, it's inevitably vague and general. I don't think it adds anything to the reader's understanding of the page.

Frankly, I doubt that most people even read them. When they're laid out on the page, they just blur into the generic "this is official policy" infoboxes and get discounted as administrivia. With very few exceptions, I think the pages would be easier to read and understand if the "nutshell" statement were merged back into the opening paragraph of the policy. Rossami (talk) 05:35, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

By the way, I encourage anyone new to this debate to also review Template talk:Guideline one liner where this practice was first discussed. In my opinion, the initial objections have never been satisfactorily addressed. I'm ready to call this a failed experiment. Rossami (talk) 05:38, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I have to say that I like them. I was the one who posted the question that Rossami made the original reply above to. I think they are useful, as long as they are simple, clear, and straight. Often when new users make a mistake, the reverting editor will point them to standard policies such as WP:NOT and WP:SPAM. Without the nutshells, some policy pages may seem overwhelming, confusing, or too boring to read. The nutshells are graphically more interesting than the rest of the page. They draw a user in and give them a quick summary that may either tell them what they need to know, or encourage them to read more. I think the nutshells should stay, but an effort should be made to make sure the summary is accurate and useful. -- Renesis (talk) 05:48, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

• That's precisely the point though, with the nutshells, people may (and in my experience, not infrequently do) draw the wrong conclusion. If a guideline can be summarized in a few words, the title suffices. If not, the nutshell won't suffice either. I concur with Rossami. >Radiant< 14:39, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree that with Rossami and Radiant that the nutshellisms are (a) a source of visual clutter, (b) in general are poor summaries, and (c) are prone to being gamed. I also believe that where the content of the nutshellism is valuable, it should be used as the opening sentence or two of the policy page. There is no need to set it apart visually. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 23:26, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I am not sure is this is the right place for this discussion, but let me add my 2 cents. I personally find nutshells very useful and visually appealing. When I first started learning policies, not that long ago, the nuts were very helpful to me to get a quick grasp of the highlights of each policy/guideline, and to some extent I still find them useful. I think we would lose this benefit if we forfeit this important tool. Crum375 23:40, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

• I should think that being visually appealing is not at all a goal for policy/guideline pages. I understand that people find them useful for learning policies, but the result seems to be that people misunderstand the policies. Crum, you seem to be opposing these things for no other reason than that "process wasn't followed" or "it wasn't properly discussed". On Wikipedia, those arguments aren't very convincing, and I'd hate to say this but it's quite possible that the nutshells are in part to blame for this misunderstanding on your part. >Radiant< 00:03, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Radiant, I'll try to address your points. First, I think visual appeal is important, as it helps most people grasp a concept quicker if it's presented in a clear and concise visual way. It sure helped me.

Second, regarding process over action, I am no stickler to process per se, but I do like efficiency. I think it's more efficient discussing a big change in format that applies to multiple pages and reaching consensus prior to just wildly making changes. Nothing to do with process - just makes life easier on everyone, and will get us there quicker. If it's a small change, yes being bold is good. Oh, and I do read the full policy pages nowadays ;^) Crum375 00:14, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

No, it is usually more efficient to just do it. Only a minor fraction of things that are just done are possibly objectionable. This is, as you say, only a visual formatting change, not major. —Centrx→talk • 05:54, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

I really don't like the nutshells. When I see one on a Wikipedia guideline page, I feel like the page is telling me: "This guideline isn't written well enough to be clear, so here's what the guideline is trying to say." Plus, the infobox that the nutshell is in pushes the rest of the page down, making it an even greater distance from the top of the page to any actual meaningful content. In my opinion, nutshells should be done away with, and the "nutshell" itself should be made the first sentence of the guideline. - Brian Kendig 15:30, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

As I noted elsewhere, the nutshells are part of a concerted attempt to make WP user friendly and graphically pleasing, especially to the newer users. Many new users (such as myself when I was one) are intimidated when they see a long complex dissertation, when all they want is to understand the overall scope and key concepts of a policy or guideline. The introduction or the table of contents are the next best thing to the nutshell, but a user never feels comfortable just skimming those as they are not guaranteed to deliver all the essential points, which could conceivably could be embedded deeper in the text. OTOH, following the nut icon is an easy way for a novice to get an overall feel for what our policies and guidelines are about and they user can be confident that the nuts cover, by definition, all the essential elements. If they need more information, the complete article is always there. I think that getting new users to easily grasp the core concepts of our policies is a worthwhile goal, that justifies moving the intro sentence down a little on the page, requiring just a bit of scrolling. Crum375 23:40, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

The nutshell is also an important learning tool. By providing a summary of the content beforehand, the reader is able to more easily assimilate the detailed information that follows, because it has already been given context. It also helps people scan through the various policy documents to find the one they need.Dhaluza 02:43, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

That's what the introduction is for. —Centrx→talk • 18:36, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree with your goals, but I still don't like the nutshells. In my opinion they make Wikipedia more intimidating, by adding more ugly infobox clutter to the top of the guideline page, and by implicitly suggesting that the guideline is too confusing to present its main idea concisely on its own. The opening paragraph of the guideline is supposed to provide a summary of its scope and key concepts, and if the opening paragraph doesn't do a good enough job of this, then it should be rewritten. Conversely: is there any situation in which the very first sentence of a guideline should not be the same exact thing as in the nutshell? - Brian Kendig 05:40, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

As several of us have commented above, we concede that the nutshells are well-intentioned but feel that they fail in their goal. While intended to make the page easier to read, they actually make it harder to read and understand. Nutshells should be deprecated in favor of better page-naming and better section headers and better introductory paragraphs. Rossami (talk) 14:10, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

The topic is unfortunately spread out over a number of threads here, plus various archived Talk pages, so there is redundancy and overlap. The bottom line is that there are at least 2 schools of thought: those who think that the nut is an important asset (like myself), and those who don't. I suggest you read all the related threads here, as they cover the pros and cons fairly well. Like anything else on WP, this issue, which applies to all policies and guidelines, should be decided by consensus. Crum375 21:18, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

The so-called "schools of thought" are not that complicated. Simply, you think that the nutshells are a "graphically appealing" summary and others think that the summary belongs in the introduction and that "graphical appeal" is for children, not encyclopedia editors. —Centrx→talk • 18:39, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps so, but aren't we all children at heart? Crum375 18:49, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

No. Rossami (talk)

Well, on a more serious note then, I think the novice editors who first encounter all the complex policy/guideline pages, who want to do a quick pass to get the essence of all that complexity before digging deeper, appreciate having a quick and simple guide. I know I did when I was a novice, as I do when I have a quick and simple guide included with a heavy and complex manual for some new complicated device. Crum375 01:00, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Not just for novices, it can also help more experienced users find the right document. The titles are descriptive, but if you have confused one with another, the nutshell will make it faster and easier to find the right document. And it is complementary with the intro. The title is a very brief statement (clause), the nutshell is a summary (sentence), and the intro is a more detailed statement (paragraph). This is building from simple to more complex, an effective teaching technique.Dhaluza 01:36, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

The opening paragraph's purpose is to be this "quick and simple guide" of which you speak. If the opening paragraph isn't serving this purpose, then it needs to be rewritten. We don't need the purpose of a guideline to be expressed three times in a row (its title, its nutshell, and its opening paragraph). Can you think of any situation where the first sentence of the first paragraph should not, or can not, explain the guideline in a nutshell? - Brian Kendig 23:29, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

We have been through these arguments many times before. Unfortunately they are spread out over many threads. To answer your point, the purpose of the nut is to allow a new user a quick understanding of the essence of a complex policy or guideline. Even if the intro paragraph is re-written and improved 1000 times, it will not change the simple fact that a new user coming to a new complex page does not trust the intro to really encompass all the crucial points, while the nut is by definition the essence. The new user may believe that the intro could simply be an opening salvo of a long dissertation, while s/he assumes that the writers have made a special attempt to summarize all the essential elements in the nutshell. This gives the new user more confidence that a quick read of the nutshell will allow him/her to come away with an initial and basic understanding of what this page is about, perhaps to be followed at a later point by reading the intro, scanning the TOC, and so on. The goal is to make WP friendlier to new users and make it easier for them to learn the ropes quickly. Crum375 23:44, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Proposed addition to the template:

Perhaps it ought to be made clear that nutshells are merely summaries of the policy, and are not binding. Otherwise, their use may create loopholes which allow circumvention of the policies themselves. --EngineerScotty 19:28, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Personally I think most users are intelligent enough to understand the difference between a nut and a shell. But a tiny (non distracting) disclaimer is always possible, if we ever find someone who seriously thought the nutshell was the whole nut. Crum375 23:53, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Adding extra text to the nutshell kind of defies the whole point. >Radiant< 00:03, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

I tend to agree. Crum375 00:15, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

The point of the nutshells is that any policy or guideline that can't be summed up in a clear sentence or two is probably ill-constructed. They should be useful both as an intro to new users and as a mnemonic to current users. A good nutshell is one you can read and not go too far wrong on acting on. This requires some remarkable feats of clear writing, but we have good writers.

People looking for loopholes will find them wherever they can. No rule can protect against stupidity and no rule can protect against malice. Trying will not work and will only make confusion for the clueful of good faith.

And I strongly question whether the talk page of the nutshell template is itself any place to determine a meaningful 'consensus' on them being a bad idea - David Gerard 11:13, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Your point then boils down to that many policies are ill-constructed (or at least, way too complex). I tend to agree and would be happy to work on simplifying them. Complex policy (or enumerating badness, for instance) only encourages misunderstood formalism and wikilawyering vexlits. >Radiant< 11:15, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I just came back here after thinking about it to say just that ;-) A good nutshell can help refocus a project page and be the guide in rewriting it - David Gerard 11:41, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

And conversely, a bad nutshell can derail a project page and cause its further erosion by people who misunderstood it. I see no reason to assume that all, or even most, nutshells are good ones. It would be better, instead of focusing on summaries, to rewrite the actual policy content and if necessary base a good nut on that - but for the best policy pages, the 'nutshell' is simply the title. >Radiant< 12:05, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

I personally find the nutshells a very useful reminder now, and a quick way to grasp the essence in the past. Are they perfect? nothing ever is. But I think minor tweaking can take care of most issues. One proposal maybe would be to set a hard limit of maximum words per nutshell. But I can see problems with that (some don't need the max, others may need more), so maybe just a strong admonition to keep words to minimum while expressing the essence would suffice. A nutshell writing guide, if not already in existence, may help too. Crum375 12:37, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

I fear more words on the subject may just turn into another attempt to define cluefulness for the clueless. Either people get it or they don't - David Gerard 15:24, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

True. But not all titles can be that long ;-) The nutshells came from Stevage asking me if summarising our vast and confusing pile of policy was a good idea. I said "no," he did it anyway, I saw that it was better than what was there before.

A good policy or guideline should be able to put well in one or two sentences. I think that doing so will help us in the quest to make our piles of process more usable. For great encyclopedia. - David Gerard 15:23, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

• I don't agree that Stevage's summaries were good overall. I'm sure that some pages can benefit from a nutshell (e.g. at BLP it is far from obvious from the title what the policy is about) but we shouldn't automatically use one everywhere (e.g. No Legal Threats is about as obvious as it's going to get, and we needn't insult the intelligence of our editors by adding a nutshell stating "do not make legal threats") and several of the existing ones need rewording or pruning. >Radiant< 15:53, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Why not place those overviews instead in the first paragraph of the introduction rather than in an ignorable template clustered at the top? —Centrx→talk • 18:04, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Centrx, those who want to 'ignore' will selectively ignore anything. I think we need to cater to two main categories of readers: those who are in a hurry and want a quick glipse of the essentials, and those who want to learn more deeply about the details. I think the nutshell format is ideal for the first kind - they will get the gist of the policy, and perhaps miss on the trees, but will at least see the forest. The second kind of readers will carefully read the intro, table of contents, and individual sections. Of course there are in-between cases - they will benefit from both approaches. As I have mentioned many times now, to me personally having the graphically crisp nutshell format was very helpful in the past as I was learning the ropes. I think other newcomers should also be able to benefit from this mechanism to get a quick and simple overview of each policy. Thanks, Crum375 18:16, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

• Centrx has a point though. People do tend to overlook templates, especially if a page has a lot of them. People who are in a hurry could plausibly read the first paragraph instead of the nutshell, which would be a good argument for placing the summary there. >Radiant< 18:22, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree that if the page has too many busy templates, the nutshell could be hard to find or easy to miss. One important helper would be the nutshell's distinctive icon and format, that a person who is already aware of the nutshell mechanism in other policy articles would specifically look for when reading a new (to him/her) policy page. The other would be to cut down on template clutter to a bare minimum. Crum375 19:00, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Why can't the hurried user read the first couple of sentences of the introduction? —Centrx→talk • 19:18, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Speaking for myself, because I never know if an intro is really the whole story at a top level view, or just the beginning. Seeing a 'nutshell' format assures me that the authors believe that the nutshell words are a summary of the key salient points. Crum375 19:22, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Then fix the intro and/or change the title of the page.
Putting the text in a template box may appeal to some readers. But I think that our growing experience with confused readers is evidence that more readers overlook them than are helped by them. Rossami (talk) 22:57, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

From my own experience again, I don't think that 'fixing the intro' would help any. After reading lots of articles in many diverse places I have my own expectations of things, and I just don't trust or expect the intro to cover all the important points in general, and see it more as an opening salvo, perhaps with the best or some keys points coming later. Therefore, as a new user, having the nutshell was a big helper for me, because I realized that here the authors kept the essence of their policy, so I can get a quick overview of the forest before delving into the trees, branches and leaves at a later time. Had I not such a convenience, since as I said I would not trust the intro, I would have had to scan the intro, read the TOC, look for what seemed to be important, randomly scan various sections, etc. - much harder work, taking much longer and with much more doubtful results. As I also noted earlier, in no case did I find the nutshell misleading. Now, this was me - maybe other newcomers are different. Crum375 23:22, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

If you don't trust the intro, why would you trust the nutshell? If the solution to misleading nutshells is to fix them[1], why isn't the solution to incomplete intros to fix them? —Centrx→talk • 23:35, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Let me try again - I am sure it's my fault as a lousy communicator, so please bear with me. What I am trying to convey is that as a rule I don't trust that authors will always present the key points in the intro, since intro could mean, to some, 'opening remarks with the best to follow'. On the other hand, I do trust that they will put the key points inside a box called 'the policy in a nutshell', since the mandate there is crystal clear - try to put the essential ingredients inside the box. This to me, as a (supposed new) reader, gives a higher degree of confidence that in that box I will find the real goods versus the intro, where it's "nice to have" a summary but maybe it's just opening remarks. I simply assume, perhaps incorrectly, that many or even most newcomers will think like me and will "follow the nut" when they read new (to them) policy pages. Hopefully this makes it clearer. Crum375 00:40, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

To clarify, my point has nothing to do with the actual quality of the intro - hence 'fixing' it would be irrelevant - it's the mindset of the reader. Crum375 00:44, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Let's take a specific case: WP:NPOV

First of all, "nutshells" are necessary devices for conveying to a new person the 1) decisions and 2) conceptual material treated in the individual modules of any complex system.

Likewise, a well-written "nutshell" for the WP:NPOV page could be useful in conveying to new editors the 1) decisions and 2) conceptual material treated in the detailed text of the WP:NPOV page. However, the policy text of the WP:NPOV page is murky, ambiguous, and self-contradictory. And to remove the "nutshell" from the WP:NPOV page only makes the situation much worse.

In any rational approach to problem-solving, the "nutshell" is both a 1) design tool to make sure the policy text under it is self-consistent and a 2) "mnemonic formula" against which the reader can make sense of the detail. May I quote a sage: "A good nutshell can help refocus a project page and be the guide in rewriting it."

I give you an example of the use of "nutshells" to make clear the 1) decision points and 2) conceptual material of the detailed text that follows. Robert Boyd & Joan B. Silk (2003), in their How Humans Evolved, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., use a "nutshell" on almost every page. Here is an example from page 176.

• Males do not care for their offspring when 1) they can easily use their resources to acquire many additional matings or 2) when caring for their offspring would not appreciably increase the offspring's fitness.

And of course in the following page and a half of text, the authors explain that they are not talking about individual "males"; they are talking about the behavior of the median male in a population consisting of males and females, where the population has evolved over millennia under stable resource conditions. But that "nutshell" serves to 1) focus the questions and challenges of the reader accurately and to 2) provide a quality control device to make sure that the following text is self-consistent.

For all of the above reasons, this template should be retained and filled with clear and concise text. The Wikipedia community refuses to do the necessary work to make its policy pages clear and self-consistent. And removal of this template is just another work avoidance. What do you think we should do to rectify the murky, ambiguous, and self-contradictory text of WP:NPOV, just for starters? --Rednblu 18:13, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

• Regardless of nutshelling, a self-contradictory policy (or even two mutually contradicting policies) is bad and should be fixed. >Radiant< 18:32, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
• Why can't the first part of the introduction serve these purposes? —Centrx→talk • 21:23, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Nutshells on policy documents

I like the idea of nutshells on policy (and other Wikipedia) documents, but some of the arguments against their use are also persuasive. Essentially though, Wikipedia policy is (or should be) mostly common sense. Most of the time I think about what I would do if there were no guidelines. Then I check the guidelines. 99% of the time, my common sense agrees with the masses and masses of policy pages out there. But what about those people genuinely seeking guidance. Do the nutshells help them? I think they do, and I think nutshells should stay. Also, a massive reorgansiation and summarising of the policy and guideline pages is still long overdue. That is more important than debating nutshells! Carcharoth 15:49, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

• That's a reasonable point of view. I think nutshells are useful on some policy pages, but not all of them (some are not easily summarizable, or already summarized in the title). >Radiant< 20:35, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

An example of the confusion caused by these templates

Here is an excellent example of why these templates cause more harm than good. Users look at the "nutshell" and incorrectly assume that they know everything about the policy page. They make it far too easy for users to ignore the nuance and the qualifications which the policy page describes. Worse, they make it too easy for those lazy users to attempt to bludgeon other users rather than engaging in rational discourse.

(Note: If the section-link doesn't work, you might have to look in the page history to see the discussion. DRVs are traditionally blanked when the discussion is complete.) Rossami (talk) 20:57, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Any tool can be mis-used or mis-applied. In most cases this is not a reason to toss the tool away. The nutshell allows new users to get up to speed quickly. Taking it away could force them to carefully read every word of a complex policy, OTOH it could just force them to scan quickly, pick up a couple of keywords, and leave with a bigger misimpression or misconception than a possibly oversimplified nutshell phrasing. In the issue in question, the nutshells are used to 'prove' that the AfD'd article deserves another chance. The editors are saying that the old AfD determined it was a 'howto' guide and non-encyclopedic, and it has not changed since, hence the conformance to the individual words of the policies does not magically convert it from a 'howto' to an encyclopedia article. I don't think the issue here is the oversimplification of the nutshells - the proponent could have used a lot more verbiage and still the same conclusion would have been reached. IMO, this is a case of WP:NOT a howto trumping the WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:N policies, not a reason to deprecate the nutshells. Crum375 21:18, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

They could simply read the introduction, which would serve the purpose of the nutshell, but not be a redundant fork. —Centrx→talk • 01:13, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I think, as I mentioned before, the intro and the nutshell serve a different purpose. The nutshell is a simple visual tool to let someone in a real rush get a quick overview of the essential ingredients of the policy. OTOH, the intro's job is to present the policy by introducing the main issues that will be addressed. Yes, there are a lot of similarities, and one can benefit from the other, but their missions are not identical. For example, we can let the intro run a little longer, maybe use some more background or rationale, whereas the nutshell should always be short and sweet list of essential points. Also, for someone used to "following the nut trail", going quickly from policy to policy to quickly learn the ropes, it is very convenient and visually pleasing to follow the crispy nut templates. To me personally it is a very useful tool, and I know the intro and all the rest are there for me, for whenever I have the need and/or time to dig deeper. Crum375 01:23, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

As the creator of this template, I'd like to make the following comments:

• People arguing over the text of the nutshell summary is good. It means they're actually debating what the policy means, which doesn't really happen when the whole policy itself is up for grabs.
• People reading the nutshell summary and "thinking they know what the policy is about" is the whole idea. The alternative is them reading nothing at all, and having no idea what the policy is about. We're all agreed that no one reads *all* the policies. So let's stick with a workable trade-off.
• Visual clutter? A question for the graphic designers. Floating boxes everywhere *is* a bad idea. So fix it.
• The best summary is a succinct title? Yes, but there are obviously limits. I would happily support renaming all our policies to be succinct summaries. Wikipedia:Username would be a great place to start.
• I'm finding the nutshell summaries a really good way to keep up with how the policies are changing. They really do capture subtle shifts in interpretation without forcing me to re-read the whole policy. Stevage 14:00, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Text alignment parameter

With all the modifications to the template, adding a text alignment parameter no longer works. Was this a by-product of formatting the caption for the template? If so, please restore the ability to specify how the text quoted in the template is aligned. (I'd do it myself, but I'm not well-versed in templates.) Thanks.—Chidom ^talk  06:24, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

The template is meant to be used in the official WP policy pages, and should be as much as possible standardized for uniform appearance. Can you give an example of which policy page you want a different alignment in? Thanks, Crum375 15:24, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

There was also an issue with this on Wikipedia:Verifiability. If it continues to be centered, it is not going to be used on that page. I also don't see why centering is necessary for every other page. Please explain; this was in fact left-aligned until a few weeks ago. —Centrx→talk • 07:07, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

I am looking at WP:V and the template looks nice and centered right now. What is the specific problem you are referring to? see below Crum375 14:37, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

As a former typesetter who understands how the human eye moves to read text, a numbered list should never be centered; the eye needs to move back to the same horizontal space to begin the next numbered item. It may be appropriate to center this text in the template when it is one or two lines of unnumbererd type; up until recently, there was an option to choose the appopriate text alignment based on the content of the template.—Chidom ^talk  18:46, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, now that you mention it, the list does look kind of ugly being centered. I guess part of the problem is that the 'nutshell' text there is kind of long, and maybe a list inside a nutshell is too much. I am for any ideas for improvement in that case. Crum375 18:50, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Centrx and Chidom, and I have restored the parameter-controlled alignment, with default=left. Crum375 19:56, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. It looks much better and, more importantly, is more readable. I appreciate the help.—Chidom ^talk  06:36, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Template:Nutshell2

I created a new Nutshell2 template with the image on the left for compatibility with template:style-guideline. I added it to WP:CONTEXT and I think it improves readability (compare to previous version).Dhaluza 23:39, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Your layout is better, so I've merged it into {{nutshell}}. —David Levy 19:20, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

OK, thanks. I changed WP:CONTEXT and tagged {{nutshell2}} for speedy delete. Dhaluza 21:04, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

And I've deleted it. Ah, the great circle of life... er... templates. :) --Brad Beattie (talk) 09:15, 21 January 2007 (UTC)