Wikipedia:Navigational templates

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This is an essay, a page containing the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. Essays may represent widespread norms or minority viewpoints, and they may be heeded or not based upon your judgement and discretion. It should be read in conjunction with the Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates guideline.

Shortcuts: WP:NAV WP:NAVBOX

For an actual guideline, see Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates.

"WP:NAV" redirects here. You may have been looking for Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation popups, or Wikipedia:Polling is not a substitute for discussion.

"Wikipedia:Navigational boxes" redirects here. For the historical archive, see Wikipedia:Navigational boxes (archive).

A navigation template is a grouping of links used in multiple related articles to facilitate navigation between those articles. Editing of a navigation template is done in a central place, the template page. Advantages of using navigation templates rather than listing all the links under "See also" sections include:

reduction of clutter in that area of the article before "References" and "External links",
compactness of the template compared to a standard list or table, in the case of many links,
if the most immediately related links are kept under "See also", the reader has a better idea of scope,
less directly related links are out of the way or in some cases hidden by default,
ease of maintenance in updating the template as articles get created or deleted,
aesthetically pleasing appearance to many users,
new articles in a subject area immediately gain the basic link structure of existing related articles, eliminating the need for many editors to individually build up their own links and rewrite background material.

They are categorized under Category:Navbox (navigational) templates. Some WikiProjects maintain a list of their navigation templates.

1 Properties
2 Alternatives
3 See also

Properties

The style of any navigation template depends on its series of articles, how they are most intuitively presented, and previously established convention.

Navigation templates provide navigation

The goal is not to cram as many related articles as possible into one space. Ask yourself, does this help the reader in reading up on related topics? Take any two articles in the template. Would a reader really want to go from A to B?
They should be kept small in size as a large template has limited navigation value. For article series with many articles, consider:
- Split them into multiple, smaller templates on each sub-topic. For example, {{EMD diesels}} lists all models of diesel locomotives built by one manufacturer, but is too large to be transcluded on each of their articles. Instead, the individual sections of {{EMD diesels}} were split out into their own templates: {{EMD GPs}}, {{EMD SDs}}, etc.
- Do the above with only one template using ParserFunctions.
- Link only the immediately related articles while hiding the rest, like in the case of {{Johnny Cash}}.
They should not be too small. A navigation template with less than a handful of links can easily be replaced by "See also" sections, or relevant {{main}} and {{see also}} links within the articles' sections.

Navigation templates provide navigation between existing articles

Red links should be avoided unless they are very likely to be developed into articles, and even if they do, editors are encouraged to write the article first.
Unlinked text should be avoided. For example, {{Axis of Justice}} lists non-articles under "Notable guests", but this content seems more appropriate in an article.

Navigation templates provide navigation between related articles

If the series of articles is not established as related in the actual articles by reliable sources, then it is probably not a good idea to interlink them.
For complex topics in science, technology, history, etc., a navigation box provides a comprehensive introduction to a topic. For example, {{Wind power}} links to subsidiary and supporting topics that provide background and context necessary for understanding the main Wind power article. While the main Wind power article already contains inline links to the subsidiary articles, the subsidiary articles themselves are smaller and their prose may not place them into the overall context with each other. Editors who work on the subsidiary articles in isolation may be unaware of this context. The navigation template provides an easy way for the subsidiary articles, even when they begin as stubs, to instantly inherit the conceptual structure of the main article.

Navigation templates are not arbitrarily decorative

There should be justification for a template to deviate from standard colors and styles
There are two basic layouts:
- On the right side of page - for example {{History of China}}.
- Footer boxes - for example {{Health in the People's Republic of China}}, designed to appear at the bottom of each article, stacked with other similar templates.
  - For footer boxes, {{Navbox}} is the standard.
    - Existing hard-coded collapsible tables or NavFrames should be converted to {{Navbox}} if possible. This standardizes the look and to eases future maintenance.
    - The width of footer boxes should be 100% unless the convention for that type of article is otherwise. It looks inconsistent if multiple boxes in the same article have varying widths.

Alternatives

In certain cases, there are alternatives preferable over the creation of a new navigation template.

If the series of articles overlaps significantly with an existing category, consider using {{otherarticles}} instead. Of course, since the category is already linked within those articles, {{otherarticles}} may not even provide extra navigational value.
For successive series of articles whose only shared characteristic is that they hold the same position or title, such as peerage or world champion sporting titles, consider using {{succession box}}. Variant templates for persons who have held several notable offices are discussed at Template talk:Succession box.
For relating articles across different categories in a logical sequence, use {{step}}.

Wikipedia:Navigational templates

Contents

Properties

Alternatives

See also