Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 22:05, 5 April 2013

Scope

Problem

Quality editors are adding and removing infoboxes across a number of articles including, but not limited to, Classical music composers. This is at times reaching the point of edit warring which can lead to discontent, a lack of harmony, and even blocks and discretionary sanctions. A secondary problem may be the concept that there is a disagreement on community consensus vs. local consensus. (an agreement developed at a project level)

Proposed solution

To have a discussion to determine the best way forward, hopefully just an informal agreement and consensus, but if a formalized WP:RFC needs to be presented to the global community, then so be it. I'm not a big fan of instruction creep myself, and would rather not get into even more policy setting that reduces any flexibility, but the constant bickering isn't an option either. IF a "formal" RfC with "options" absolutely needs to be created, then I suppose that can be worked out here and we'll draft one.

Viewpoints Discussion

Pro-infobox

• (placeholder: may expand on this later) I like to see an infobox as a quick reference guide to a topic when I don't have the time or desire to read the entire article. — Ched :  ?  16:25, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
• something something metadata (someone else familiar with this argument can fill this in)
• Expectations: The norm in Misplaced Pages articles is to provide a very brief summary of key items in an infobox in the top right of an article. For the casual reader, an infobox has the same relationship to a well-written lead as that lead has to the rest of the article: if a lead provides a 2-minute summary of the article, then an infobox provides a 20-second overview of the lead. Redundancy is necessarily built in to an infobox, just as it is in the lead. --RexxS (talk) 22:05, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
• Recognisable element: An Infobox provides a consistent framework element for re-users like Google to automatically extract information - see Intelligence in Misplaced Pages. In short, Google uses infoboxes' label-data pairs to dramatically improve the accuracy of its natural language reading algorithms when extracting information from Misplaced Pages. An infobox is an "intelligent structure" for them. --RexxS (talk) 22:05, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
• Metadata: It also marks up many items with standard classes that can be recognised by others who scan our articles to collect information in microformats such as vCard. --RexxS (talk) 22:05, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Con-infobox

• If an article is just a stub, an infobox can be overwhelming or a distraction as far as formatting. Even if an article is further developed, an infobox can disrupt the formatting of a page.

• Can make the article difficult to view on small devices such as phones and tablets. However, I personally think that as Misplaced Pages is primarily a computer presentation, then the solution here is the development of various apps to provide some sort of screen reader rather than to remove function from the full platform. — Ched :  ?  16:25, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

• Infoboxes oversimplify information and/or mislead readers
• Infoboxes focus on quantifiable details rather than the most significant facts about a subject
• There is an inherent tension between the desire for a short-and-quick reference (=short box) and the desire for more metadata (=long box)
• They're just plain ugly
• Infoboxes present a barrier to editing for newbies
• They are redundant and inferior to a well-written lead, which is also meant to be a quick overview of the topic
• They lack flexibility
• There are, of course, many reasons why either an infobox or some of its contents may not be appropriate in a particular article, but each needs to be examined on an individual basis: sometimes the précis will oversimplify and be misleading; sometimes the amount of information in the infobox overwhelms a short article; but the case needs to be made. --RexxS (talk) 22:05, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
• Infoboxes tend to spawn narrower versions of more generic infoboxes that increase the task of maintenance and provide difficulties for intelligent extraction of data by Google, et al. --RexxS (talk) 22:05, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Comment

• The same reasons for an infobox exist in every article; while the reasons against will vary and often do not exist. It is true that the weight of argument will be against an infobox in many cases, but the onus is on the person wanting to remove an infobox to make that case. --RexxS (talk) 22:05, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Possible items to be addressed

1. the infobox in general - good or bad (should an infobox be considered default or status-quo?)
2. info box at Composers and or Classical music projects
3. local consensus vs. community consensus
4. input of major contributor

• is the term "infobox" correct, or is the term ??? ...

Possible solutions

Discussion

Related reading

• User:Surturz/Riggr Mortis on Misplaced Pages as a database
• WP:DISINFOBOX
• Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Composers/Infobox_debates