Wikipedia:A navbox on every page
{{essay|WP:NBFILL|WP:ANOEP}}
{{nutshell|Navbox templates can be useful as a tool for navigation.}}
This essay explains the benefits of navboxes (navigation boxes), and explains the goal of placing navboxes on all articles where they could be useful. The essay suggests strategies for achieving that goal.
The goal
The goal is to have a navbox in every article that the reader might find useful. This would apply generally to articles in main namespace. Navboxes can also be used to link certain types of project pages (including essays, policies, and guidelines). Disambiguation pages and lists are exempt, though they may be used on some of these pages when editors agree.
Navboxes should not be placed in user space, on talk pages, on category pages, or in redirects.
There was a proposal to place one or more navboxes in every article, but it did not succeed.
There is no deadline to achieve this goal.
How to achieve this goal
There are various ways you can work to achieve the goal of having a navbox in every page.
=Before you start=
Before you start, one rule you should know is that an article should only be placed in a navbox if it truly belongs there. No one should go out of their way to place an article in an existing navbox if it appears incongruous.
Likewise, no navbox should be created just to accommodate a single article. A navbox should only be built if there is an existing group of articles in which a person who reads one is likely to want to read the others.
=Identifying articles in need=
There are many ways you can find articles lacking navboxes. You may know of some already because you have created, edited, or just read them. You can search for articles by using the random article tab. Or you can search categories to your interest for possible articles that can be placed in an existing navbox covering that category, or one that you plan to create.
==Navboxes to create==
Navboxes can be created to list groups of related articles. While categories can be used to help find these related articles, they do not have to be followed exactly. Please note that a navbox must be a listing of articles, and though a few red links that represent potential articles are acceptable, a navbox is not a directory of non-notable listings that have little or no potential to ever become articles.
Some examples of possible navbox topics can be:
- A broad concept and all the articles in that concept
- A group of jurisdictions contained within a larger geographic area
- A listing of all of something within a jurisdiction, especially when that place is well known for that item
- A company, listing all its key people, products, services, and other related articles
- A band, listing all its members, albums, songs, and other related articles
- A sports team, listing all its members and other related articles
- Groups of living species within a larger group in which they are contained
The typical navbox has and should have around 10–100 articles listed, though there is no blanket guideline on this number, and there are plenty of exceptions either above or below this range.
If a navbox grows to be so large that it cannot be seen in full on a standard sized computer screen, it should be split into two or more navboxes with links to one another within. Until it is split, it should be autocollapsed so it can only be viewed when the "show" link is clicked.
==Navboxes not to be created==
While it can be frustrating when you cannot think of a good navbox in which to fit an article, there are some navboxes that are not recommended or should absolutely not be created. These include:
- A collection of targeted redirects or piped entries to portions of the same single article. While these may make up some of the listings on a navbox, and doing so is often beneficial, a navbox should not be redundant to the table of contents of a single page.
- A collection of red links that will likely always remain as such. It is acceptable to include some red links in a navbox that may become future articles, and this is actually encouraged, since it lets others know what articles are yet to be created. But a navbox should not be a collection of titles that will probably never be notable enough to have articles or will not be for many years ahead given the pace of creation.
- A listing of articles for which there is no reasonable theoretical limit to the numbers of articles that can be included. Some examples are a list of people who are notable for the same reason but otherwise have no connections, or companies within the world or a country providing the same products or services.
- A collection of minimally related subjects. For example, people who are notable for having committed the same type of crime in unrelated incidents.
- A very small collection of articles that can be counted on the fingers of one hand for which that is the limit. It is preferable, instead, to find a broader category to create a navbox about, or to add such a listing to one that already exists.
See also
- Wikipedia:Avoid template creep — An essay on navbox overuse.
- Wikipedia:Avoid trivia sections — When the end of an article is cluttered with navigation templates, it often amounts to little more than a "trivia section", which should be avoided.
- Wikipedia:Not everything needs a navbox — One of the ways to fight template creep is to stop making so many templates.
- Wikipedia:You don't have to be mad to work here, but#5. The chamber of frames — The possible motivation of navboxers
External links
- [https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=3132847.3132899 Automatic Navbox Generation by Interpretable Clustering over Linked Entities] — Describing approaches to automatically construct Navboxes.
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