Template talk:History of the United States navbox

United States Link

I made United States a link in this footer, but I'm not sure I should. Maybe it should stick to being a link to all of History of the United States. What do people think? Feel free to change this back --Jacobolus 12:39, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The planed sizes of this template

Are we going to try and add everything at Category:History of the United States to this template?Moxy (talk) 20:59, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

I was following a list about historical eras of the United states and the key events shaping them. I have exhausted the list and I am personally done with expanding the templete. Any specific items you would like removed?--Dimadick (talk) 21:47, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

perhaps we could divide the template up into sections by time period.Moxy (talk) 22:15, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

I disagree with this expansion - the template is now far too huge and unwieldy, and this template isn't really appropriate for that many places anyway. Picking topics without being prejudicial is incredibly hard as well - why does Second-wave feminism get a mention but not environmentalism? Why Negro League baseball but not jazz music? Why the Frontier Theory but not Arthur Schlesinger's historical theories? Best to just stick with the broad topic overviews, in my opinion.

I also think this template shouldn't go at the bottom of every specific bit of US history. This should go on overview articles of all US History; plenty of notable historical incidents have no need to link back to such an overview (in the old version of the template) or a grab-bag of random topics (in the new version of the template). SnowFire (talk) 05:24, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Not a grab bank but just an overview of a timeline spanning four different centuries. Second-wave feminism was already included in the broad timeline offeren in Template United States topics. The template already includes a link to history of United States music, so the emergence of Jazz should probably not get an individual entry. ry is the only article currently covering the end of the Frontier, which was the event suggested by the list I was following.

The broad topic overview is pretty useless in my opinion. I tried using it as a reader and it failed to lead to any of the relevant articles. Dimadick (talk) 07:19, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

The broad overviews are narrow, not useless. They also have the benefit of being concise. This isn't a template that "needs" to be big or needs to be everywhere. It's just impossible to pick 50 topics as an "overview" and have this be even remotely fair; once you start drilling down to the level of "Frontier Theory is a valid link from any article dealing with US History," you end up with any number of OTHER notable events being "valid" links too, whether it be Teddy Roosevelt reading the book on the influence of sea power or robber barons or the transcontinental railroad or whatever else, and that's just the 1880-1910.

There just isn't a home for this set of links. They're too disparate. That's what the search bar is for. For comparison, look at {{History of China}} - it's a broad overview template with many more thousands of years of history to go through, and it does not even attempt to link to every interesting event that occurred in Chinese history, because such a template would be utter madness and have 1,000+ entries. But that doesn't mean the template is useless as is. SnowFire (talk) 19:15, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Doesn't a template which doesn't link to any interesting event and claims to depict "history" serve as the definition of useless? Dimadick (talk) 08:40, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Templates shouldn't be too large, or else they just replicate a better process like Outline of United States history / Book:United States history / Index of United States history-related topics / List of United States history subjects . If a template grows large, it should be split apart, with only the main points in the top template, and child templates having subpoints, and if necessary, those also being split apart until reasonable sizes are reached. -- 70.24.247.127 (talk) 21:43, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

I notice there's no Portal:United States history either... something to do instead of making massive templates (this and other redlinks) ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.24.247.127 (talk) 21:45, 19 December 2012 (UTC)