Talk:Akira Toriyama (ophthalmologist)

Death place
If anyone can add the place of death, it'd be appreciated. EtherealGate (talk) 09:18, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Not a manga artist; not Paris, Texas; duplication in infobox; physician
Thank you for your recent set of edits, EtherealGate, which I'm sure were well intentioned and don't get anything wrong. However, I find it inconceivable that anybody reading an article such as this (as opposed to, say, an article about a pop singer) needs to be told that Paris in in France and Amsterdam is in the Netherlands; that anybody wanting to read about the manga artist Akira Toriyama would be reading an article titled Akira Toriyama (ophthalmologist), and that biographical infoboxes are of any use for people such as this (as opposed to people whose careers are straightforwardly comparable, such as baseball players, Playboy models or US preznits).

If I'm reading something that's clearly intended for a teen audience, I don't mind being told that Paris is in France, etc; if on the other hand it's intended for people like me, it seems insulting. (How ignorant does the writer think I am?)

Some dictionaries and encyclopedias of photography are pretty bad. But I can't think of any that has biographical infoboxes. (Maybe the Routledge Encyclopedia of 20th Century Photography does. Despite the valiant efforts of some of its contributors, it's a dreary affair, not worth a quarter of its immense RRP.) The Prestel / Thames & Hudson Photography: The Whole Story by contrast is excellent -- but it appears to be designed for very short attention-spans, with sidebars, timelines etc aplenty; however, even this book doesn't have biographical infoboxes.

Can we please skip this infobox?

Incidentally, I'm mildly surprised to read that Toriyama was a physician aside from being an ophthalmologist. (I'm quite willing to believe it, just mildly surprised.) Where did you find this? -- Hoary (talk) 12:54, 22 September 2015 (UTC)


 * OK, I guess we can delete the infobox, athough I do think it better organizes and improves the reading. I was just trying to be consistent with all the other biographies' formats on Wikipedia. As for the physician part, I got that from the categories at the bottom of the page. Anyway, I guess the recent set of edits were pretty mundane. Feel free to change anything that you don't like, I've got no objections. EtherealGate (talk) 20:46, 22 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Thank you, EtherealGate, for your quick and amicable response to my perhaps tetchy message.


 * I'm in a compromising mood. Let's tell our readers that Amsterdam and Paris are in the Netherlands and France respectively; and leave the hatnote. (I don't know why, but OK.)


 * However, I'm about to zap the infobox. I'm convinced that infoboxes are excellent for particular purposes and horrible elsewhere, for example, here. What does this one offer -- key facts? But most of the facts aren't key at all. I can't imagine why it might matter that he was born on June 20, 1898 and not, say, November 28, 1897, or why anyone should care, unless there happened to be another ophthalmologist+photographer with the exact same name (cf the confusable photographers Sakae Tamura and Sakae Tamura) and very similar biography, whereupon dates of birth/death would usefully help distinguish between the two. Actual key material would IMHO include: What did he achieve as an ophthalmologist? What did he photograph and how, and why/how is this of any interest decades later? (Of course this kind of material doesn't lend itself to tabular presentation.) Biographical infoboxes are not common for photographers: some people create them as part of the articles that they create (gods know why), but some people (not only me) never do.


 * When the article was young, there was no "Category:Japanese ophthalmologists". So somebody (probably me, but I can't be bothered to check) stuck our man in "Category:Ophthalmologists" and "Category:Japanese physicians". Thereafter, "Category:Japanese ophthalmologists" was created, and ding dong! The editor should have simultaneously deleted "Category:Japanese physicians", but didn't. -- Hoary (talk) 10:22, 25 September 2015 (UTC)