Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Infoboxes: Difference between revisions

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To keep things neat, please post separate problems/issues in separate threads

Vanishing SVG images

At the moment, I am working on replacing the manual infoboxes used for the 16 states of Germany with a template. The template is currently stored at User:52 Pickup/Drafts/Infobox German Bundesland and the 16 new infoboxes are at User:52 Pickup/Drafts/Test states. The overall layout is not yet finalised, but you can see that there is a problem: some SVG images are invisible - not bad links, just not shown. The maps for 4 infoboxes are not visible, and one of the flags for Saxony is also not displayed. Any idea why? - 52 Pickup 13:54, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen this happen outside of infoboxes, so I suspect it's some sort of bug with how MediaWiki handles SVGs, not anything related to the code. Kirill Lokshin 14:05, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

An extra strange feature of this behaviour is that if you play around with the width of the infobox, then different images (dis)appear. I guess I'll have to use PNG images instead. - 52 Pickup 14:09, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It finally worked, after nudging the image widths N number of times. Very odd. - 52 Pickup 10:53, 5 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Very big request

Hello. I have a big request for you, guys. {{Infobox City Poland}} needs much attention and improving. It is probably the most ugly and not-handy city infobox on Wikipedia. Maybe 52 Pickup can help, he has made already wonderful job with German Location infobox. My personal idea is that the Polish one should be just like its German counterpart which is elegant, handy etc. Standarizing styles is a good way, I suppose. I am not much into programming and the like so I can't do that, I fear I would break some patterns or something like that. Thank you very much. :) - Darwinek 14:49, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You should put problems of boxes on their own page, thus giving us Wikipedia:WikiProject Infoboxes/Infobox City Poland for example. You also need to formalise your requests etc using templates and stuff. Anyway, enough from me, I will be around when/if I stop WikiBreak...TheJosh 11:39, 3 February 2007 (UTC) (moved from lower thread)[reply]

That infobox is huge! It needs liposuction or something... --TheJosh 23:04, 4 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the infobox as it stands now is very big and needs a bit of work. A version similar to German Location is possible, but I don't want to set up any broad standards (that one was specifically made just for the German WikiProject). Also, I'm on a bit of a wikibreak at the moment. But Josh is right, any proposed work done here for this infobox should be put up at Wikipedia:WikiProject Infoboxes/Infobox City Poland so we can all take part. - 52 Pickup 10:53, 5 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox City Poland <= continue discussion here

Just to throw some ideas out there

Here's some ideas and thoughts I've had about infoboxes that might be worth exploring in this project:

Intuitive infobox selection. Whether it be a template category or a manual list of links, it should both be fairly reasonable to find the most appropriate infobox for a given article.
Decreasing / discouraging extremely specialized infoboxes. While I think it's good to have specific formats when needed.. KISS can be applied to a great degree. A great many infoboxes are exact copies of other boxes, but with a different template name.
WP:PDATA, and how infoboxes might make this process easier? Also, the same idea of PDATA but for other things with common fields, such as movies, places, etc?
Discourage making separate articles just to use multiple infoboxes and/or creating infoboxes that can accommodate more than one topic of a multi-topic article.
WP:LIST talks about the pros and cons of putting info in a list vs in sentence form. While not directly related to infoboxes, some of that same logic can apply. There are some facts or stats that really aren't helpful without context, even for at-a-glance use.
Collect and gather new ideas. There are many infobox ideas out there that most don't even consider, and there are probably many outside of Wikipedia that we're not used to seeing. Not to say we should fix things that are not broken, but I think it's interesting to look at other ideas, even if we don't actually use those ideas.
- One idea I had a while back was to have some kind of.. (it might sound odd) "infobox fair" or something like that. Invite editors to make a "display space" on a page (maybe make it an event, with people working on the infoboxes then having a display deadline) and just show lots of different ideas. Encourage users just to try new formats, colors, tables, whatever, just to get the creative juices flowing. Even if no new changes are applied, it would at least be an interesting and fun learning experience. Just look at how many users like to experiment with their sigs.
- We should also look at what is already being used on Wikipedia in situations people might not consider. What seems to be working now and what seems to be not working? How many do we have? What kind of info/stats do people seem to be adding and are they useful or not?
  - To steal a term from the WP:1.0 project, work-via-WikiProjects comes to mind. A great many WikiProjects already maintain a topic or two's infobox, and more people will be involved because they won't feel like they're doing "another task" (so much to do, so little time) but working on something related to their existing projects, etc etc.

I'm a bit hyper right now thinking of all this, and I'm sure I could even probably word some of this better, but the ideas are flowing and jumping! I gotta just hit the save page button for now or I won't be able to get anything else done today. Throw the ideas out there, like how we can be integrated with existing WikiProjects and areas of Wikipedia that handle this stuff. We're a new collaborative area, not a replacement for anything, is a good way to think about new WikiProjects that deal with old ideas. That kind of open attitude with allow suggestions brought here to be spread faster and with more open minds. Don't think of this project as the "new kids in town", but rather think of it as the same users but with new tools and a chance to share great ideas.

Man, I'm not even keeping on topic! So many things I wish to talk about! I'm in infobox-nerd-heaven. -- Ned Scott 22:02, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

- PDATA would of probably required a wiki extension, so creating additional specialised data boxes will require a very slow development cycle, and plenty of bureaucracy. --TheJosh 23:01, 4 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - Adding PDATA requires nothing special from Wikipedia. The idea is that PDATA can be used by other things later on. It's like flagging data. -- Ned Scott 03:56, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's definitely a lot to think about. It will definitely be some time before we can come up with answers to all your suggestions. Thanks. - 52 Pickup 10:53, 5 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't really expecting all of them to be answered.. it's just a brainstorm of ideas :) -- Ned Scott 03:56, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Rwandan Genocide

Hi, I would be very grateful if you could propose some infobox for article on Rwandan Genocide. It currently has none and those proposed in the past were bad to say the least. I guess you are experienced in this kind of thing and I would really appreciate your help. Thank you.--Pethr 20:56, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what kind of infobox would be useful for a genocide; it's not really something that lends itself to being described too well with names and numbers.

(You could, of course, use a stripped-down {{Infobox Military Conflict}}, filling in only the conflict, image, caption, date, place, result, and casualties3 fields; it would be pretty basic, but should still be workable, at least in the short term.) Kirill Lokshin 21:16, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, I was looking at this template. Thank you, I will try that.--Pethr 22:48, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

eh, I think this is definitely the kind of article that does better without an infobox. An infobox should not be seen as a logical step for every article. It really depends on the subject matter and how useful a box might or might not be. -- Ned Scott 02:01, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Userbox

I've just created a userbox and category page for members of this WikiProject. To place the userbox on your userpage just add {{Template:User Wikiprojectinfoboxes}}. This will also add you to Category:WikiProject Infoboxes participants [1]. Also, can someone add us to the Directory of WikiProjects. I would do so but I'm not quite sure how to. And thank you to User:52 Pickup for creating this WikiProject. Happy editing! Yuanchosaan 07:51, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the userbox. The project is now listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory/Wikipedia - 52 Pickup 10:53, 5 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Why Not?

“

This is not intended to be a place for infobox standardisation, rather a place for designers to help each other.

”

Why not? Look at the success of {{Infobox Australian Place}}. --TheJosh 22:57, 4 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Because most infoboxes are maintained by active WikiProjects, who will look very dimly at some random group of editors coming in and "standardizing". Standardisation as agreed upon by the people working on some particular group of infoboxes is good. Standardisation as imposed in a hamfisted fashion across all of Wikipedia by a central group is not, because it's frankly unnecessary, and will involve far more virtual bloodshed than would be acceptable for such a minor issue. Kirill Lokshin 23:14, 4 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly. Furthermore, it is through the lack of standardisation that people find new ideas for their own work. Rigid blanket standards only hamper creativity. - 52 Pickup 10:35, 5 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

While some of that maybe true, there are templates where standardization helps by taking small rarely updated templates that are only edited by a few editors (if any at all) and switches to the standard template that is consistently updated and edited/discussed by many editors. I have seen both sides of the argument before and they should be argued on the individual template talk pages. —MJCdetroit 21:21, 5 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That is also true. Perhaps I should've been a bit clearer. Localised standardisation is fine (and in many cases necessary), but blanket standardisation is not right. For example, while Infobox Australian Place has done a very good job at standardising many disused regional Australian templates and manual infoboxes, I would not say that its format should be automatically used for places in New Zealand - but if people working on New Zealand locations want to incorporate some of its features, that is fine.
If a certain feature in a given template is particularly good, it will find its way into other templates. Now, if a rigid standard was in place, then the development movement of these individual features becomes considerably slower. - 52 Pickup 22:08, 5 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think if we make good ideas easy to find they'll standardize themselves :) -- Ned Scott 03:57, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps standards should be proposed here, and then discussion made on a per standard basis for appropriateness. Also, if a project (in our example, Wikiproject Australia) wants a standard, they can come to us and make a proposal, and then Wikiproject Infoboxes (who are the theoretical experts on infoboxes) can do the dirty work, and save them some effort. --TheJosh 10:18, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Templates

I have created some templates to ease development.

--TheJosh 11:14, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

WP:Films Infobox Backlog

If you're interested in helping add infoboxes to film articles, you can visit here or adopt a letter here. We currently have about 900 articles that don't have infoboxes and have completed about 200 in the last few weeks. We would appreciate any assistance in eradicating the requests. There are instructions and an example on the template's page and if you need any help or have any questions ask one of the members who are currently working on the infoboxes or at the project's talk page. Thanks, and I hope your new project is successful in improving Wikipedia! --Nehrams2020 04:47, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Question: Is there a standard infobox...?

Hello. Is there any standard infobox for administrative divisions? There are several regions, provinces etc. which still use (for several years) manual tables. See e.g. Midtjylland or Saint George Basseterre Parish. Thank you. - Darwinek 11:15, 24 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I switched SGBP to Infobox City and it worked just fine. In the settlement_type= field type "Parish" or whatever if it is not a city. If the name Infobox City bugs you, you can use {{Infobox place}} in the first line. Infobox Place is just a redirect to Infobox City. Check out my example at SGBP and you can try it out on Midtjylland. —MJCdetroit 19:00, 24 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, it is a good, possible way to go but maybe a different one for each country could be created. You know, many country issues are specific and e.g. in Infobox City it isn't a field for ethnic groups, ISO etc. Also several use of "parish" or whatever in Infobox City isn't much nifty. - Darwinek 20:30, 24 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

We have floated the idea of including "blank" fields in the Infobox City for things like ethnic groups and ISO etc. You can always add them to the footnotes field until such blank fields are added. I'm not sure that I understood what your last sentence meant; you don't like the use of parish? What did you mean? —MJCdetroit 22:06, 24 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oh. I meant that Area - Parish, Population - Parish etc. thing. You know it is obvious that the numbers would deal with parish when the article is about parish. - Darwinek 22:27, 24 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There is already a nice {{Infobox Province Dominican Republic}}. Maybe something similar should be created for subsequent cases. - Darwinek 22:33, 24 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hiding a column in a table infobox

Hi all,

For {{Infobox Weather}} I am trying to make the "Year column" optional. So far it does hide but adds extra spaces to the column before it (December) when hidden. The sandbox is here: Wikipedia:Sandbox/Weatherbox rebuild. Does anyone know what I am doing wrong? —MJCdetroit 22:20, 24 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The table preprocessor is sensitive to line breaks. When the column was hidden there were "extra" line breaks. I've restructured it so the extra line breaks don't show up. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:55, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Project Navigation Template

I've just made a template for the navigation of our Project: Template:The Infoboxwatch. I'm a bit of an amateur with this but it was the best I could do. Anyway, as you have probably noticed, there are quite a few non-existent links. It is my hope that we will soon be able to fill them all up. Some of the links actually have similar pages under different names, but I thought it would be best to move/create new pages so that they will be more centralised. I will soon be attempting to create some of those templates but would really appreciate some help. Tell me if this is a good template and I will place it on the Project page. Happy Editing! Yuanchosaan 02:17, 25 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Master Databases with all City/Town Data for the United States

Does anyone have, know someone who has, or can tell me where I can find databases with all information needed to create infoboxes for every single city and town in the United States? I'm looking to do this in the next few months, but can't find a single source with all the needed data. Right now I'm considering writing a bot to read through every US town/city article and extract the data, but it would much better if I could just find a set master tables (ideally from government databases sitting out there somewhere). I'll also take any information available on counties, census designated places, and any other geographic division that might require infoboxing.

The information I would need is: Town/City name, County, State, population total, population density (per sq mi and per sq km), population date, area total (sq mi and sq km), area water (sq mi and sq km), area land (sq mi and sq km), elevation (ft and m), coordinates, time zone, summer time zone, zip code(s), and area code(s). Optional data would include nickname, motto, type of government, leader type, leader name, website, and any other important notes.

Please let me know if you have anything, and I'll be happy to start compiling it all into a giant Excel spreadsheet for future processing into infoboxes.

Note that this will only be done for cities and towns that currently lack infoboxes (though I could theoretically use it to fill in missing information in cities/towns already having infoboxes).

Thanks, --CapitalR 14:55, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if zip code tabulation areas fits the bill, but I used it quite a bit for New Hampshire. BTW, NH is all done, so no need to work on those :) -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 15:03, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if this will help but take a look at the USGS's database. —MJCdetroit 17:14, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Scotland

I am working on the infobox Template:Infobox Scotland place. As it is quite long I want to take out the line spacing between each entry to make the box appear smaller but maintaining all the text. I am trying to make the main text section look like the Template:Infobox Indian urban area as it looks tidy, with less white space between the text. The page I am using it on is Aberdeen but there are a lot of other articles using it. Can anyone help me make this change? Bobbacon 18:43, 13 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think you must have missed the call for discussions and involvement here Template talk:Infobox Scotland place for this new resource: Template talk:Infobox UK place. This is a new unified infobox for all parts of the UK, including Scotland, where different maps can be supplied, etc. The aim you have has been realized in this new infobox. DDStretch (talk) 18:50, 13 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Library Infobox

Is there an infobox for libraries somewhere? I found one for museums, but no library and none of the library articles I looked at had one. Thanks. Aboutmovies 03:53, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There's the Infobox Library one that you can use. See San Diego County Library for an example article that uses it, or click on the "What links here" link from the template to see a few more examples. --CapitalR 04:25, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Aboutmovies 04:55, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

XY dot maps displaying dot differently in IE than Firefox

At {{Infobox City}} I implemented some manual XY dot map fields. They seemed to work fine for places like Sylvan Lake, Alberta but when I tried to use them for Kubul, Afghanistan (this version), the dot seems to move when viewed in IE compared to Firefox. If it was solely an IE thing then I would have thought that the dot would have viewed different in the Alberta map too. Although it maybe a svg vs png issue too. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? —MJCdetroit 19:01, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Its a difference in how margins and padding are computed in the different prowsers, and that affects absolute positioning. Sorry, there is not much you can do to fix this —The preceding unsigned comment was added by TheJosh (talk • contribs) 03:03, 11 May 2007 (UTC).[reply]

We actually solved it over at WP:VPT. Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive#Location map dot varies location between Firefox and IE; one correct, one not.. Seems to work pretty good now. I should have updated this post. Sorry. —MJCdetroit 03:39, 11 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Berlin

MJCDetroit has been working on removing single-use manual infoboxes and has come across a sticking point: Berlin. Meanwhile I have been working on the template {{Infobox German Bundesland}} which covers the 16 German states (of which Berlin is one). Berlin is the only place where there is a problem with the template - an editor of the Berlin page is not so keen to let go of his version, and swiftly reverts any attempts to implement something else - usually with less-than-flattering edit comments for such good faith edits.

Now, this is not a matter of "my way" vs "his way". I'm always ready for improvements to the templates that I've done, and admittedly there were some aspects that I wanted to fix up anyway. Together with this user, I've bashed out a number of modifications, and the appearance of the template has considerably improved. But now an agreement still hasn't been reached. The remaining sticking points are varied, some which seem owing more to personal preferences, but others have wider-ranging implications for geographical infoboxes.

Instead of repeating all the points, I'll just direct you to the discussion here. In the interests of consistency, and taking on a few new ideas for infobox design, I would like as many people as possible to get involved. - 52 Pickup 13:22, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

State/Province Supreme Court Infobox

I've been searching for an infobox for state supreme courts to replace the generic one I used at Oregon Supreme Court, does anyone know if one exists? If not anyone want to make one as it could be used at least 50 times. Thanks. Aboutmovies 17:34, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Bilingual template help

The template {{Infobox German Location}} was made to allow users to directly copy data from the German wiki, which uses de:Vorlage:Infobox Ort in Deutschland. To make this possible, the English template has fields that have the same German names as used in the German template - plus a few extra fields (whose names are in English). This works rather well but there are, understandably, some who would like to be able to use a template with all-English field names. I'm not sure how to go about this. The template syntax is pretty complicated as it is. The only way I can think of doing this is by using nested calls for each variable - eg. {{{population|{{{Einwohner}}}}}} - which would make the template code even messier. Any ideas? - 52 Pickup 12:56, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I would say that {{{population|}}}{{{Einwohner|}}} is a bit less confusing to the eye. Also, it seems on first blush that the template syntax could be simplified considerably, with many ParserFunctions removed -- I don't see the difference between {{#if:{{{imagesize|}}}|{{{imagesize}}}|270px}} and {{{imagesize|270px}}}, for example. Will try to take a look at this later. -- Visviva 12:07, 18 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the code does need a lot of rewriting. Most of it is simlply lifted from the German version, cobbled together with bits of code from other templates. I've never gotten around to a complete rewrite, just bits here and there. Maybe i should do a major re-edit before tackling the bilingual problem. You're right, {{{population|}}}{{{Einwohner|}}} looks a lot better. - 52 Pickup 15:01, 18 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Phantom links

Another problem relating to the German Location infobox. I was recently notified about the presence of many German cities appearing at Special:Whatlinkshere/Urban. It seems that they are there because the template call contains the parameter "Kreis = urban" or "Landkreis = urban". These parameters (actually the same thing, but the German wiki uses two different names) are responsible for saying what district a location belongs to - listed under "District" in the infobox. The value given here is either the name of a district (sample entry: Warburg), or "urban" to signify a German location that is a district in its own right (sample entry: Cologne). The funny thing is that the entries do not contain a visible link to [[Urban]]. These phantom links have got me completely stumped. - 52 Pickup 13:12, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

After several false starts, found the source of the problem in this code: {{#ifexist: {{{Landkreis|{{{Kreis|}}}}}} | [[{{{Landkreis|{{{Kreis|}}}}}}]] | {{{Landkreis|{{{Kreis|}}}}}} }}... the problem being of course that when "Landkreis=urban," a link to urban is created. I commented out the offending portion of the code as a stopgap, but a more general solution is needed. I'm not entirely sure why the link is invisible, although I suspect it might be because this would create an extra cell in the table, which is automatically suppressed. Interestingly this indicates that Special:ExpandTemplates does not work exactly as advertised -- when I fed in the text of Dresden there I did not obtain any link to urban. -- Visviva 12:59, 18 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's done the job. Thanks! - 52 Pickup 14:56, 18 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Composers

Editors interested in the use of infoboxes may like to see the recent edits to John Coolidge Adams, Michael Nyman, Steve Reich and Philip Glass; and their talk pages. Andy Mabbett 20:46, 13 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Stop forum-shopping, Mabbett. Ever read WP:CANVASS? --Folantin 20:54, 13 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

To put this in context, there is a broad consensus at WikiProject Opera and WikiProject Composers not to use infoboxes on these articles. Andy Mabbett (see his block log) has been engaging in an uncivil edit war over this since late April. See discussion here, here, here, and here. Fireplace 20:56, 13 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I made sure to express my request for third-party opinion in neutral terms. You've chosen to respond with an ad-hominem attacks. Andy Mabbett 10:54, 14 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've just had a look at this lengthy debate over at WP Composers. It does raise a number of interesting points about the use and abuse of infoboxes and is worth looking at the different opinions. - 52 Pickup 11:50, 16 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Template "Infoboxneeded" proposed for deletion

{{Infoboxneeded}} has been ~~proposed for deletion (not by me, I hasten to add)~~ deleted. Andy Mabbett 09:43, 16 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox Image size

It is not currently apparent that there is a consistent policy regarding the use of images within infoboxes. Albums states 200px, Discography none, Taxoboxes 240px / 250px - even the template talk page can't make its mind up. This is inconsistent with policy guidelines, as covered in WP:IUP and WP:MOS. Insamuch as it might be inferred that these policies and guidelines apply to the main article space, the reasoning behind them applies just as much to the infobox space.

I propose that these guidelines are adopted as policy for infoboxes, and any image in an infobox must be thumbnailed. If the policy is already applicable, this must be applied to the infoboxes, and made explicit in their adoption and application.

Thumnailing images allows users to set their own preferences, and reduces (actual and potential) distracting clutter, not to mention issues concerning rendering in different browsers. Instances where the use of thumbnails causes unwanted whitespace requires address at the template design level. - Tiswas^(t) 12:20, 16 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Can you suggest how to address this, at the template design level? The problem with thumbnailing is that it generally creates distracting clutter by adding unnecessary lines and whitespace. If there was a way to have the autosizing features of thumbnailing without the obnoxious auto-frame, I daresay this would already be in (nearly) universal use. -- Visviva 12:00, 18 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid that I'm approaching this from a fairly uninformed angle, in that I am unfamiliar with the technical workings of thumbnailing and infobox rendering. If nothing else, I would hope that raising this issue might perhaps promote investigation into a solution from those better equipped to deal with it. - Tiswas^(t) 12:13, 18 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This thumbnail problem looks like one for the image rendering people (probably over at MetaWiki). I'm not sure there is much that can be done about it here at this point. - 52 Pickup 09:44, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Any idea how to go about raising this issue with the MetaWiki overlords? - Tiswas^(t) 09:25, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed new infobox for Composer bios

Note: I'm cross-posting this here to solicit more opinion/help. Please don't respond here; rather post any comments at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Composers#Proposed new infobox. Thanks

There's been extensive discussion at WikiProject Composers (check the archives) about the use of infoboxes in Composer's bios. The consensus has been that, as currently designed, {{Infobox musical artist}} and {{Infobox Biography}} rarely add much to these articles and are often actively harmful (conducive to anachronisms, overgeneralizations and other inaccuracies). However there's been some passionate discussion and even a little edit-warring.

Since infoboxes seem to be in the ascendancy on most of WP, and since I think the general concept is a useful one, I've "boldly" taken a shot at designing a "New, Improved" infobox specifically for composer bios, trying to maximize the potential benefit to articles while minimizing the potential harm. The "beta" version is here:

User:Turangalila/sandbox/Infobox composer

The page includes a draft "template-documentation" page with cut-and-paste markup & instructions, plus a few hypothetical examples of the template "in action." I've tried to leave almost all the paramters optional, and to emphasize in both the markup and the instructions that they should be deleted if not applicable, oversimple, etc. Obviously if folks actually want to use it in articles it should be moved to the Template namespace.

I'd particularly appreciate some technical advice from the wikimarkup experts here on a couple of design issues:

Is it possible to limit the possible values for a particular template parameter, and treat it as blank if different value is entered?
I think the box's content would be clearer / more readable if the text were vertically centered in each table cell. Is that possible in an infobox-class table?
I don't know much about the "hCard" feature, so if anyone wants to look at that & optimize the code for it, that'd be cool.

Please have a look and comment/criticize/suggest improvements — please leave comments at the WPComposers talkpage, unless they're purely technical, in which case a comment on my sandbox page might be better.

Thanks, —Turangalila talk 17:14, 28 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Infobox music venue

Hi. I've been creating a music venue infobox as part of the Music venue WikiProject. I've based my design on Template:Infobox musical artist. However, when I place it on pages, there's a noticable gap at the top of the page between the title and the infobox and main text; see CBGB for an example. How can I fix this? Thanks! CloudNine 08:59, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed. The fault was caused by the HTML code that was used. For some reason, extra line breaks were created if a field did not have a value. This was why some entries with all fields filled in (eg. 9:30 Club) did not have this problem. After changing the HTML code to Wiki code, the CBGB entry now looks alright. - 52 Pickup 09:41, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Awesome. Thanks a bunch! CloudNine 10:45, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Underused infoboxes

Is anyone interested in tagging (with a category, perhaps), merging and/ or removing under-used infoboxes? For instance, {{Infobox District}} is used in just one article. Recently (in the process of adding the hCard microformat to geography infoboxes) I've come across a few like that. Andy Mabbett 09:23, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Various questions

What is the reason for, and differences of, class; specifically: class="toccolours" or class="infobox"?
How do you control 2 infoboxes (or an infobox and an image) to either stack on top of each other on the right-hand side of the page, or appear side-by-side on the right-hand side of the page?
How do you get a template to appear on the left-hand side of a specific page (as opposed to hard-coding the template to appear on the left-hand side on all pages)?

--Old Hoss 21:51, 9 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

1. Help:Tables#Style_classes—Infoboxes are just tables. The reason is to make it easy to style such boxes in a similar way, you just type in the style of the box and it's exact parameters are found in MediaWiki:Common.css. It also means it cold easily be changed in the future if wanted, for any reason, without needing to change thousands of infoboxes or hundreds of thousands of articles.

2. I think they would naturally stack. To make them appear side by side you could put them in a right-aligned table.

{| style="float:right;"
|{{Infobox one |parameter1=blue...}}
|{{Infobox two |parameter1=73...}}
|}

or with a picture

{| style="float:right;"
|[[Image:Example.png]]
|{{Infobox |parameter1=73...}}
|}

I would caution though, two infoboxes seems like a bad idea. The point of an infobox is to give over the most important details real fast. Wouldn't having two just confuse the issue? Just because something can be done, doesn't mean it should be done.

3. In the very first line of your infobox, you will have code like this:

{| class="infobox" style="font-size: 90%; text-align: left;"

The class="infobox" parameter automatically floats the infobox on the right of the screen. This can be overridden, however. Coding a float:left; parameter into the style would make the infobox float left:

{| class="infobox" style="font-size: 90%; text-align: left; float:left;"

If you only wanted this in certain boxes, you could put it inside a nifty {{#ifeq:}}:

{| class="infobox" style="font-size: 90%; text-align: left; {{#ifeq:{{{left|}}}|yes|float:left;}}"

This would mean that only when | left=yes was put into the infobox would it float left.

An alternate way of doing this is to put it inside a left-aligned table:

{| style="float:left;"
|{{Infobox name |parameter1=blue...}}
|}

Once again, though, I would caution. Is a left-aligned infobox really a good idea?

There are probably easier or better ways of doing these, I'm just an amateur. But, I hope I have answered your questions sufficiently :) --Severo^TC 23:45, 10 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Continued discussion on my talk page.--Old Hoss 01:32, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

About a month ago, I created {{Infobox Venue}} because I noticed that no venue articles had any type of infobox. I added the infobox to three articles, but no one has touched it otherwise. I was wondering if there was someway to "promote" this infobox because it has potential to be featured in literally hundreds of articles for music venues or theatres. –Dream out loud 20:12, 12 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, here's a start. I added DTE/Pine Knob. —MJCdetroit 03:14, 13 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Project Proposal: Template Toolkit

Currently creating a new infobox requires a fair amount of low-level parser function and table syntax. Not only is it a lot of typing, but much of the instructional material is unclear or out-of-date (eg: Template:Infobox Conditionals). And then there are infoboxes such as Template:Infobox country where they have abandoned wiki tables completely. I'd like to propose the creation of a series of templates to aid in the construction of infoboxes. A first pass should just deal with simple conditional parameters and a standard heading (title, image, caption). I'm guessing implementation might require two-pass templates like Template:Familytree. Vagary 22:05, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

For example, User:Vagary/Template:Create infobox/Sandbox uses substituted templates to produce a parameterized copy of Template:Infobox. (I don't know enough about templates to do it without substitution.) Vagary 23:23, 17 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Variable colored cells depending on the entered data

Over at Template talk:Infobox Weather, there is a discussion to try to make a cell's background color change according to what information is entered into a parameter. For example, if |Jan_Hi_°F =15, then the background color would switch to a predetermined shade of blue based on 15 being entered. However if 45 was entered the color would switch to a different shade of blue (or some other color). Does anyone know if this can be done using #switch or any other method?—MJCdetroit 18:04, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You'll need to use #ifexpr, I think. Kirill Lokshin 01:17, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Does anyone know if the above is the only infobox for cemeteries? It's the only one I found and it is pretty new, looks incomplete, and nobody is using it. Thanks. Aboutmovies 04:54, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There's {{Infobox Military Memorial}}, but that's obviously a rather specialized one. Kirill 04:56, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, but ya pretty specific. Aboutmovies 14:44, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Colliding infoboxes

A problem exists in Municipalities of Norway where two infoboxes partially occupy the same area. I've come across this problem before, but I haven't learned how to fix it. Could someone knowledgable about this take a look? __meco 09:36, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not quite sure what you mean... do you mean that the navigation box makes the table become too thin? Severo^TC 10:36, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As you don't immediately spot the problem I suspect it might be browser-dependant, and I'm using Firefox. To be a little more specific, the {{Politics of Norway}} infobox and the wikitable in the "List by county" section crash so that the eight and ninth column of the wikitable gets superimposed on the part of the infobox below the term "Government". If it doesn't look like that in your browser, at least you get an impression of what it looks like to me. __meco 11:08, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Okay I was slightly confused because neither are infoboxes. I found the problem after I messed around with text sizes (I also use FF). You could make the table start below the navigation box, by placing {{subst:clear}} above the level 2 heading List by county. Regards, Severo^TC 11:28, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

My ambiguous use of terminology is obviously to blame for the little confusion, but now I have implemented your fix, and it did the job! __meco 12:38, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Granularity and naming of address fields

In the process of adding hCard microformats (see WP:UF) to infoboxes for organisations, schools, etc. I have become aware that were a using a wide variety of field names of location/ address details, at differing levels of Granularity. I suggest that we should standardise on the properties (and their names, or close matches) from vCard, as that constitutes a widely-used international standard, and will ensure compatibility with the widest possible range of address book programmes and websites, parsing tools, etc. (hCard uses these properties for the same reason)

The most commonly used fields are:

extended address (e.g. "Room 24"; "2nd Floor")
postal-box
street-address
locality
region
postal-code
country-name

All, apart from 'street-address', are singular; and all are optional.

We should discourage template authors form using a single "location" field, in which all the above are entered as once string.

Elsewhere, high granularity should always be aimed for; so that name and nickname or local-name, for instance, should be separate fields, not one field separated by comma or <br>.

Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett

Suggested merger: motorsport "driver" infoboxes

There are are a range of "...driver" infoboxes in Category:Motor racing infoboxes. I suggest these be merged, into {{Infobox racing driver}}, as currently being discussed with WikiProject Motorsport. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 10:23, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

By looking at the discussion, it looks like those responsible for the templates have lot of things that need to be sorted out and - most importantly - agreed upon first. If they need help, then fine - but it is not for us to tell these people what to do. - 52 Pickup 12:57, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed - nor am I suggesting that we should; but we're all Wikipeida editors, and anyone can comment and contribute. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 13:35, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

High School Overkill

{{Infobox HighSchool}}, {{Infobox high school}}, {{Infobox High School}}, {{Infobox HighSchool (American)}}. Nuf said? Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 14:43, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Granularity of people's names

Further to the above comments about the granularity of location data, and again from the vCard spec, I suggest:

honorific-prefix
given-name
additional-name
family-name
honorific-suffix
nickname

(all can occur zero or more times)

So, for example:


honorific-prefix = The Rt Hon.
given-name = Anthony
additional-name-1 = Charles
additional-name-2 = Lynton
family-name = Blair
honorific-suffix = MP
nickname-1 = Tony
nickname-2 = Big ears

Names for display can be stored using "formatted-name ("fn" in vCard); if not "given-name family-name".

Honorific prefix and suffix are already used, in {{Infobox Officeholder}}.

Would people be content to add this list, with explanatory text, to the projects main page?

Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 14:52, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 373: / Line 373: @@
 Names for display can be stored using "formatted-name ("fn" in vCard); if not "given-name family-name".
-Honorific prefix and suffix are already used, in {{tl|Infobox Prime Minister}}.
+Honorific prefix and suffix are already used, in {{tl|Infobox Officeholder}}.
 Would people be content to add this list, with explanatory text, to the projects main page?