 | This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Don't overuse templates. Keep it simple, stupid! |
Template creep, also known as creeping templatitis, is the tendency for some Wikipedia articles (and talk pages) to become gradually cluttered with templates. While templates are intended to provide useful features and simplify the editing process (indeed, many are now vital to the functioning of Wikipedia), their overuse can violate the KISS principle (upheld in Wikipedia policy nuggets such as avoid instruction creep and ignore all rules), create a barrier to editing for newcomers, and may also infringe on what Wikipedia is not. Always keep in mind the scope of Wikipedia when adding new features or functionality to it in the form of ingenious templates.
Template creep should be avoided in general, but specific cases should be judged on their own merits according to the pertinent policies and guidelines. As of July 16, 2007 there were 94,631 pages in the template namespace, excluding redirects. Many of these are redundant, replicating functionality with only minor variation.
Always ensure that templates are categorized and named appropriately or intuitively to facilitate their proper use.