Wikipedia talk:Navigation template

Navbox/sidebar duplication

Yesterday, {{Sappho sidebar}} was created, which has significant overlap with the pre-existing {{Sappho}}. I questioned this on the talkpage and Piccco pointed out that there are already other cases of navboxes and sidebars for the same topic – e.g. {{Socrates}} and {{Socrates navbox}} or {{MrBeast series}} and {{MrBeast}}. Looking further I found this page, which tells us that [navboxes and sidebars] are complementary and either or both may be appropriate in different situations.

Do we have any guidance as to when it is appropriate to have both a navbox and a sidebar? My instinct says that it should be virtually never: it just increases the maintenance burden when something changes for no increased navigational benefit (e.g. if I were to now write a new article on a Sappho poem, I have to remember to update two templates and add both to the article when previously it would only have been one). Clearly these duplications do exist, but I cannot find any previous discussions of when they are appropriate (or indeed an easy way to find examples). Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 10:37, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

It seems that WP remains vague here, leaving it up to editors' consensus to determine when this is appropriate and when not. For example, the Socrates sidebar does not seem to directly copy the navbox and, given that there are many stand-alone articles reated to Socrates, the existence of both could be warranted. Regarding Sappho's sidebar, my initial thought was to make Sappho's poetry (an area where Caeciliusinhorto has had significant contributions) easily accessible. If editors find it redundant, it could be deleted, or alternatively, as I suggested, it could be simplified to include only the poems. Piccco (talk) 12:49, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

The side-navbox usually contains much less of a selection and is kind of a summary of the full navbox placed at the bottom of the page. The side-box highlights, the footer presents the entire subject-map to Wikipedia's collection. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:10, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Right, that makes sense. Piccco (talk) 13:53, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Links to categories

I was linked to this guideline in the context of a TFD for a navbox (see here) with the implication that categories should not be listed in navboxes (or at least, not the majority of the links - I assume the 'category' at bottom of {{Madonna}} is acceptable). I've read this guideline before and frankly that wasn't clear to me - perhaps that could be explicitly stated with a bulletpoint somewhere on the page? Tule-hog (talk) 20:49, 17 February 2025 (UTC)