Category talk:Articles using small message boxes

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What causes pages to land here?

I don't know what "small message box" is causing it. Jason Quinn (talk) 17:30, 5 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Small amboxes — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:43, 5 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the explanation. The category is including many pages that do not use {{ambox}} directly, the Adam Michnik article, for example; so pages must be getting included here that are using ambox indirectly. But this makes it very difficult to find out why an article is getting included. After some source code diving, the example article uses {{Multiple issues}} which may be the reason it's in the category (but it doesn't use "small=left", at least directly). And I'd have to check all the other templates just to figure out which templates may be causing inclusion. This seems unreasonable.
Regardless of the usability concerns, this category is so far failing my litmus test for a good maintenance category: it is not self-describing and self-justifying. There's no explanation to say if something needs to be fixed or acted upon. There's no linked discussion explaining the rational for the creation of the category (let alone a discussion showing consensus for creation). There was no list of reasons for category inclusion given or steps to fix. There was nothing. Jason Quinn (talk) 23:36, 5 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I can no longer remember why I created this category (when I populated it, I said it was "temporary"). You may be right that it is not useful, and there is no specific maintenance which is required on these articles. However there have been discussions previously about the use of these small amboxes, and whether we should continue to use them. So it was probably just to check how widely used they were. By the way {{expand section}} is a small ambox, and it is that template that is populating the category on the example you gave. However when it is used inside {{multiple issues}} it will behave the same as other non-small message boxes. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:53, 6 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
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