Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 17:06, 12 July 2013

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• Congrats on bringing the Dispatches back, and a very good job indeed Brian. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 07:26, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

• Don't you mean prolific reviewing rather than "profligate" reviewing? Voceditenore (talk) 07:34, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
  • Uh, yes—my fault. Thanks! Ed  07:36, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Apart from that minor point, a very thought-provoking piece. Thanks to both Brian and you. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 07:44, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

• I think people just need to start using collapsible infoboxes where only the most important information is shown uncollapsed. e.g. Reelin. --Tobias1984 (talk) 07:59, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
  • I like collapsible infoboxes as well. Using one on Template:Sclass- allowed me to include an extra image and hide statistical information that many readers won't care about. Ed  08:51, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
    • I prefer collapsed parameters to collapsed boxes that don't reveal the parameters to the reader. Incidentally, I just collected my thoughts on the topic, see if you think it's funny. This is ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:51, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
      • Depends on the article. For the ship article, there is really only one parameter, so I hid it all. Ed  16:48, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
  • Collapsing infoboxes, or parts therein, is a bad idea. It defeats the purpose of providing our readers with a quick and convenient overview; and it makes it likely that editors who are updating facts in the body will see that they also need to to so in the infobox. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:53, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
    • One of the key points of the article is that many infoboxes are neither quick nor convenient due to the unreasonable level of detail they contain for something giving a quick snapshot of a topic. Collapsing detail into relevant sections that readers can rapidly scan and expand as desired serves that purpose rather well. I don't think it's 'a bad idea' at all. Ale_Jrb 14:15, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
• Funny stuff! I didn't twig to the satire until the bit about geographic coordinates being out of place in an infobox for a geographic location. And the Empire State Building "example" which is simply the result of {{infobox NRHP}} being nested inside {{infobox building}}, not actually a clever scheme to randomly duplicate listed data? Brilliant. I look forward to more comedy at this level in the future. - Dravecky (talk) 09:21, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
  • Well, it's not as clever as it might be: the co-ordinates really don't need to be listed twice in what is already a massive infobox. — This, that and the other (talk) 09:59, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
  • I've removed the duplicate data from Empire State Building. It took seconds to do so. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:53, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
• Let me add my voice in agreement with Brian here. Although I am inclined to agree with Dravecky's point as well: co-ordinates seem like a sensible thing to be in an infobox, especially since the link allows a map of the location to be viewed. — This, that and the other (talk) 09:59, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
  • I find coordinates useful in infoboxes. It's a pity that Brian seems only to have considered his own personal preferences, and not the circumstances of others. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:53, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
    • You miss the point. I am not saying that coordinates should not be in infoboxes per se. They would for example be vital information for an article about a mountain in Antarctica. I am saying that they are pointless information for buildings that have fixed locations in cities; what is the point of knowing what the geographic coordinates of the Coliseum Theatre are? And how can this be justifid as "key information" on the subject such as to justify its appearance in the infobox? Brianboulton (talk) 13:50, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
      • On the contrary; I addressed your point directly: you don't see the need for coordinates in an infobox about a building in a city, so think those of us who do should be deprived of their usefulness there. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:55, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
        • The question I am addressing here is whether, for buildings with known addresses in cities, the geographic coordinates represent "key information" about the building, such as justifies inclusion in an infobox. It's not a matter of whether you or a few other souls might find it convenient to have it there, it's whether its importance merits inclusion. However, I realise that you will never understand or accept this. Brianboulton (talk) 14:35, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
• Thanks for this article Brian - I've been feeling the same thing. A problem with large/complex infoboxes is that they also can turn into resource-sinks, with editors (and especially newish editors) tending to focus on the infobox rather than the body of the article. Nick-D (talk) 10:09, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
  • Editors are free to choose the aspects of Misplaced Pages to which they devote their efforts. Why should they not? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:53, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
• Great article Brian. I agree wholeheartedly. Also agree with Nick's comment above. —Cliftonian (talk) 10:41, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
• Ack, that Winston Churchill one is horrible. That said, as we can see from the discussion above, any attempt to chop them back down to the basics will be difficult because everyone will have two cents to contribute on their own favourite bits of information. Lankiveil 11:44, 12 July 2013 (UTC).
  • I agree that the succession/ prime minister information is superfluous in {{Infobox officeholder}} on that article; it's already in the succession boxes at the foot of the article. That infobox should also display persona biography (dates of birth and death, etc.) ahead of posts held. Discussion on how best to remedy these issues should take place on the template's talk page. I've started a discussion there. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:42, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
• Amen! Infoboxes should be the basic facts about a subject, and not a dumping ground for any bit of information that can be communicated in four words or less. I strongly support any effort to cut them down. Infobox devotees should start a parallel website for non-encyclopedic, non-cited data about a subject. The predecessor/successor information is particularly silly and I would be happy to eliminate it completely. —Designate (talk) 13:10, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
• Now that we have Wikidata (I’m surprised it is not mentionned in the piece, actually), perhaps we do not need to cram infoboxes with all possible data − just like we do not need to stuff articles with image galleries, as we can simply link to a category or gallery on Wikimedia Commons. No? Jean-Fred (talk) 13:43, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
• I agree with above, Wikidata has changed matters. It should have been mentioned, but alas you may not have really known why it is important to Wikipedians. Wikidata is important for many of the reasons you gave. This has become a standard usage of infoboxes, to cram as much data as possible. Pushing the data into Wikidata will go a long way towards solving this problem, as it will provide a structured way to store, and recall, this rather important, yet in some ways superfluous, data. Maybe we can start creating "VerboseInfobox" versions for the bottom of the page to replace those rather numerous succession boxes currently in use? (Hopefully that automatically pull the relevant information from Wikidata.) Int21h (talk) 14:57, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
• While I would agree that coordinates should not be in an infobox if they also appear at the top-right of the article page I would strongly dispute that the information is not important. The location of, say, a building is its prime identifier – it my be rebuilt, renamed, re-purposed, or even demolished: its location is its main and unchanging definition. I recall that I have myself in the distant past used the Misplaced Pages coordinates of the Empire State Building to find out where it was.   Oosoom  15:40, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
• Yes agree totally that infobox bloat has become a cancer. As much editing, a very valuable skill is deciding what to leave out. As discussed above, one set of coordinates is probably fine for many articles. One good start would be to scale infoboxes to article size. This could be quite a subjective judgment, but there are other similar ones editors deal with. A couple more related complaints: biographies that put birth (and sometimes death) dates and other details like cities into the lead, the body, and the infobox. Only in perhaps a few very long and complex articles can that make any sense. Worse yet are company articles I have been dealing with recently that have a litany of all the "chief this or that officers", often without any sources, and probably out of date fairly quickly. Talk about vanity, when little startups of "three kids and an app" can give themselves all grandiose titles. Thanks for this much-needed discussion. W Nowicki (talk) 16:41, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
• I disagree with this op-ed. I like infoboxes and we should have them on every article. They bring out key facts for those that don't want to read the article itself. Your example of Denmark was a poor choice since the infobox doesn't protrude past the first level 2 heading on the article. I can see where you're going with the Winston Churchill example, but someone of his career and stature would naturally have more information in the infobox to display. I think the op-ed should have made the point that infoboxes should not evolve to replace/supplement navboxes, which is where this is heading. Ultimately, control of what fields belong in the infoboxes resides with the wikiprojects. Weak wikiprojects result in editors being too bold and letting things get out of control. Chris Troutman (talk) 17:06, 12 July 2013 (UTC)