Wikipedia:Too many boxes

Infobox Liberation Organization
Leaders	Malvin Reynolds, Jr.
Ideology	Anti-Quadratarian
Status	overwhelmed
Size	does this really matter?
Annual revenue	banner ads, pop-ups, tile ads

“ When I retire I'm going to spend my evenings by the fireplace going through those boxes. There are things in there that ought to be burned. ” — Richard Nixon

The problem

The basic thesis is that Wikipedia has too many boxes. Userboxes were bad enough, but now we have the infobox virus, and dozens of superfluous navigation boxes spouting up all over otherwise decent articles. We have a multitude of boxes on talk pages claiming ownership by some project that typically has contributed nothing to that article, except of course the box. We have boxes appearing at the top of an article to warn us of 1004 different things.

Enough is enough. No more boxes. The fightback starts here.

Testimonials

“ As a wikinewbie, but with a bit of editing experience, I did my first "contribution" page, listed the references and found that a box had snuck up and enclosed them without my consent or any markup characters that I can see. Now my page looks ridiculous. The boxes have taken on a life of their own. ” — Ampherlaw 11:50, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

“ A box promises to contain, and things that can't be neatly contained can't be put in boxes. A box suggests "this is the real deal," and if the real deal could be put in a box, then there would be no need for articles. A box says, "Here is your PowerPoint bullet point list, so you can find all the world reduced to a reductive summary; please do not strive to understand complexity, for that is for suckers." A box says, "Wikipedia is just like your primary school text book: full of colors and 'bites' of infotainment." A box says, "I, the box maker, have just pissed all over this article and written a counter-article, and it's short, so read it instead." A box may be found useful by some people, indeed. We call those people "non-readers." ” — Utgard Loki, at Giano's Talkpage, 16:47, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

ABOUT INFOBOXES?

Celebrity endorsements:

“ Some of the most wonderful people are the ones who don't fit into boxes. ” — Tori Amos

“ I found myself in too much of a box situation. ” — Jimi Hendrix [Complaining about his info box]

“ I'm not ready to be put in a box. ” — Rachael Leigh Cook [Unfortunately, despite her protests, they did put her in a bio box]

“ In every one of those little stucco boxes there's some poor bastard who's never free.. ” — George Orwell

“ I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it. ” — Terry Pratchett

“ Come children, let us shut up the box and the puppets. ” — William Makepeace Thackeray

“ I'm moving to Mars next week, so if you have any boxes. ” — Steven Wright

“ Little boxes, little boxes,

Little boxes, all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses
All go to the university,
And they all get put in boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.

” — Malvina Reynolds, [1]

“ A box! Is it steel? Are there locks? Is it filled with a pox? A pox! How delightful, a pox! ” — Danny Elfman, The Nightmare Before Christmas

“ I do not like them in a box. ” — The other guy (not Sam), Green Eggs and Ham

This user believes boxes should burn in hell.

See also

• WP:DISINFOBOX
• Wikipedia:Disinfoboxes: a refutation
• Wikipedia:Overlink crisis (from February 2008)
• Wikipedia:Thinking outside the infobox (from December 2008)
• Wikipedia:Infobox too large
• See, this is where people should place links to relevant articles, not in stupid NAVIGATION BOXES!