Template talk:Anthropology

Hidden text
I changed the template so it works now. I am going to document this below. Meanwhile there been quite a bit of discussion concerning this and that. I don't want this to distract you from the specification so I am placing it in comments as a temporary solution, just until the template gets fully in use and you can find examples of how it works. Access the commented-out area by clicking on edit.Botteville (talk)
 * An issue came up so I am making this visible so that we may discuss it.Botteville (talk) 07:42, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Error in template
There seems to be an error in the picture function of the template. You can put the picture and its caption in all right. However, it puts the name of the picture and the caption in below as well. If you look at the linked list for the few instances of articles with anthropology box pics you will see that that is true. I discovered it by trying to put a picture in myself.

After a few hours I discovered what I believe is the problem. There are two ways to specify a parameter, by number or by name. Our box changes method, but that is not the problem. This box is actually an instance of a sidebar. It is a named sidebar. Now, the editor who put in the fancy iff statement uses, as parameter names for this box, names also in use as variables in the sidebar. So, when you think you are setting image to your topimage, you are, but you are also putting something in the sidebar "image" field, which also appears below the title.

I am bringing this before you because you seem active in maintaining this box and because there are a few different fixes. I favor going entirely over to a number scheme to match the first item, which seems to be a fixture in some other collapsible boxes. A second possibility is to change the parameter names in THIS box so they do not collide with the sidebar names. I want to know what you think is the best solution or if you have any other solutions. Please state your reasons. Fix it if you like. If you do not fix it I will, along the lines I suggested, and soon. Also, I think we should have a choice, picture above and picture below, as the sidebar offers those choices. Moreover, I think we should be able to set box width, as also the sidebar allows that capacity. Of course such changes would affect instances in use. Each picture use would have to be fixed. However I noiced that no doubt because of this error people have been avoiding trying to put in pictures, so there should be only a few instances to fix. I volunteer of course. The iff statement approach, if we have two iffs, one for pic below and one for pic above, they should not impact each other. But why do we need an iff, as parameters that are not filled in are ignored? I hope that you will not ignore this problem and that shortly we will be able to procede.Botteville (talk) 15:54, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
 * There was an effort to fix that one line in the template, but it failed. The problem remains. There is a sandbox, you know, you are not stuck with whatever you enter. The revision did not address the issue of the parameter names, so of course the "image" parameter put the entry in two places, the one defined by this named box and the one defined by the sidebar. I guess I am concluding I need to do it myself. Let me try a few things in the sandbox and see what I can come up with.Botteville (talk) 01:48, 23 March 2015 (UTC)
 * OK I fixed it. I went with the KISS principle, an advanced programming technique. Only we high old programming savants and tech writer gurus are familiar with its noble principles. It especially is triggered when you hear the signals spoken in a mystic tone of voice, "when are you going to be finished?" with the added inducement of high old customary negative remuneration, reserved for the chosen many. I don't get paid of course but it bothered me that we couldn't get it to work. It seemed best to me to keep the mixed style of parameters. The user wants to be sure exactly where he is putting the picture, at the top or below the title. I am doing a specification on this page. Since all this discussion will distract you from it I am commenting it out with a note that it is commented out.Botteville (talk) 08:58, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Reversion of meme
I note your reversion. You seem to have a stong opinion on that. Frankly I need to do more work before I could have an opinion as stong as that. It looks pretty basic to me, a basic unit name for a cultural feature. What do YOU call them? I got two concerns, one with NPOV and the other with best location. We seem to have a gap in the box between articles that everyone considers basic and just general articles. Where are the general articles? Do we need a general article section of this box? I'd like to hear some of your reasons why you think memes are not basic.Botteville (talk) 15:54, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
 * No one in anthropology works with memes, and most anthropologists consider it a fundamentally misguided approach to culture, based on a bad analogy with biological organisms. Memes are used by evolutionary psychologists and gene-culture co-evolutionists etc. They dont generally work in the field of anthropology or consider themselves anthropologists. The concept of the memeplex I have never encountered in the anthropological literature at all - and it seems tangential even to the literature on memes. I could be convinced to add meme, if it could be shown that it is treated as an important concept for example in anthropology textbooks (it is not in the books I know and use when I teach). But "memeplex" is a non-starter there are at least a thousand other concepts that are more central to the field of anthropology than that.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 16:38, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
 * All right. I can accept that, at least until I have had a chance to take a good look. I got no doubt there are a lot of topics that could go in here. No one seems to be putting them in. If you see any, put them in, hey? An empty box is not doing us much good. Also there is still the problem of where general articles go. I'm looking at it from a page design point of view. An article with nothing interesting to the right is rather dull in appearance. Good design helps to "sell" the product even thought we are not actually selling anything, except perhaps Wikipedia by the "soft sell"; that is, showing people its merits. So, the box is an attention-getter and the best box has a picture. When I see an anthropology article with nothing to the right I want to throw in a box with a pic. There are other boxes no doubt but sometimes people prefer this one. If you could keep that in mind I would appreciate that. Right now the box is broken and needs work but that should be fixed in a week or two. Ciao, and I'll let you know if the meme and memeplex turns out to be more popular, meanwhile we need a way to advertise it; that is, put it into the network somehow. There is a system of categories and that is the bottom line but it is at the bottom and no one ever looks there.Botteville (talk) 20:43, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I think templates and boxes are useful too, but only if their links are carefully chosen to be a handful of the most relevant links. Overcrowding templates with more links than the reader can easily maintain an overview of is counterproductive. If you would like we could make an RfC or a discussion at wikiproject anthropologys project page regarding which links to include and how many.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 21:48, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
 * All right. There are a number of anthropology boxes possible perhaps we should do a summary of what sort of thing goes in each. That would probably be the WP way to do things and would represent some sort of precedent. The same sort of thing is happening with the linguistics boxes where we have one uncollapsible box for a huge number of articles. I made a suggestion that that box be made collapsible but I have no confidence that anyone actually cares. You're right about the boxes - you can only fit so much in a box. Anthropology has already started down the path of subordinate boxes but maybe that needs to be defined. There should be clue somewhere that the planned content of a box can be found in the portal. We need the portal indicator in every anthropology article. The portal could have a section on subsections of the topic as presented on WP and the box appropriate to the subsection. I could see from the articles there might be starting to be an overlap problem. For example, linguistics articles are turning up under anthropology. Except for the language capability in man covered under physical anthropology the two are kept pretty much separate even though language is culture too. So, I'm interested. I got into this line in the overlap between classics and religion. I noticed a lot of NPOV was being said on the anthropology side so I decided to check it out. I found a lot of general work to do. But basic definitions should be the first concern. Absolutely. Oh by the way I think boxes need the abilty to vary width, add pictures and control collapsibility, for page design purposes. It always used to frost me that for page design I was stuck with fixed elements that did not fit. At the time I did not know how to fix it. But, altering much-used boxes is a matter of consensus. Well those are my general thoughts on the topic. Glad to see there is some interest.Botteville (talk) 22:42, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I came here for the same reason. Memes are not one of the key concepts in anthropology, by any stretch of the imagination. I honestly assumed that this was part of the template due to vandalism. CircleAdrian (talk) 08:34, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Box content
I'm truly impressed by the anthropology portal with its striking colors and logical organization. My goodness, I should think it is all one editor can do to keep up with the portal. I didn't see any discussion of Anthropolgy template content there. Never mind, no matter. There are so many anthropolgy articles, with the list getting longer by the minute. I think we might be a little short on physical anthropology. I see there have been some additions to the box. I think this process will go on. It reminds me of the time when Wikipedia was taking a stand against all the long and creative disambig pages that were being churned out. All of a sudden I started getting attacks from administrators objecting to the lengths of some of my disambigs and the exact content. Oh what an awful row. So I left it alone for a while and then one day I saw that the policy had been reversed. There were now several kinds of disambig and informational pages, and people were going right to town on it, and I never heard a word after. Those disambigs can be really useful. The disambig situation took its own direction. People created what they wanted to see. WP finally decided to quit fighting it and help it out. I think it is the same situation here. People are going to make of this box exactly what they want, and there are more of them than there are of you. So, I'm not concerned with exactly what goes in there but with whether the design is attractive. Design can make it or kill it. I'm reminded of another WP situation. There used to be a famous admin from Germany, dab I believe. Oh, he was the terror of Wikipedia. No one could say one word in academic scholarship of which he did not approve. At one point he took a stand against boxes when they were first coming in. No, no, he insisted, we don't want any boxes around here. They clutter up the place. Well, we can see exactly how far he got with that. I guess my point is, fixed ideas don't always fly on Wikipedia. It is like evolution. It can change into something else and usually does. Well, but that is neither here nor there. It must be dull to have to defend the castle for five straight years, or in the case of some articles, ten.Botteville (talk) 02:20, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Current documentation for dummies
We programming dummies need a few pointers. The template has been altered a few times. Here is the current use of the template, provided it has not been changed since I entered this:Botteville (talk) 11:13, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
 * There is a question whether number 2 will be in the box - it has been removed recently. Whether it needs to be put back is up for discussion. Discussion at end of page.Botteville (talk) For myself I think it should be in, to provide a means of aligning right design elements of clashing widths. However, I do not currently see any such examples so I defer action until they show up. The alternative view is the KISS principle (keep it simple stupid), keep eveything at the default width to avoid any issues (or design improvements) that might come up.

where all the parameters are optional. If you use 2 without 1, you must leave the vertical lines for 1; e.g., ||2 gets you 2 but not 1. If you use just what you think is |2 then it will be interpreted as |1. You can leave 1 and 2 off. In that case you get the default collapsed box with the default width.
 * 1 is the value of list1name, or list2name, etc., in the template as it now is. The official documentation gives you the initial values, but they are changeable and have been changed. Use of any of those may have no effect. You can find out what they now are by clicking the v or the e at the bottom of the template and looking at the code. The names are pretty easily identifiable. You must use a name exactly as it is, including case. Parameter 1, as it is called, specifies to expand the listname into its articles. If your article is listed below the listname, its name will be bolded. Except for the names of the lists, the official documentation applies.
 * 2 is the width of the box in ems; e.g., 20em, 28em, 29.5em. Those are "m" spaces. If you don't specify the width, you must take the default. Currently, only the default box width is available. Any attempted use of 2 is ignored.
 * You have a choice of picture placements within the box. Uses of topimage and topcaption put the picture and the caption above the title. Uses of image and caption put them below the title. You could theoretically use both or any combination, but what would be the point of that? "Use" means an explicit assignment such as topcaption=the caption on the top. Numbers will not work in this type of specification. Explicit specifications can go anywhere in the list. Whatever optional parameter is not specified is ignored.
 * topimage and image are the file names WITH the file: prefix; that is, you can just copy the name at the top of the commons picture. No need for any parameters on the file name. Frankly I have not investigated what will happen if you DO put in parameters. Try it in a sandbox if you really must. I recommend your own. If you don't know what a sandbox is, maybe you should just not use the traditional image parameters until you find out.
 * topimagesize and imagesize are in fact the px parameters of the picture specification. You must use the px. Frankly I have not investigated what will happen if you use em or in. Again, the sandbox, if you must. You can use the px to adjust the size of the picture within the box. Frankly I have not investigated what happens if the px exceed the width of the box. Again, sandbox. My preference is to align the box exactly under or over the blue line, but that is only my preference.
 * topimagealt, topimagelink, imagealt, imagelink are special fields designed to help people whose images are disabled or otherwise need special access. They basically use words to describe the image. You may find complete specifications at WP:ALT. However, most people wil not be specifying these fields. They assume default values.
 * topcaption and caption are the captions on the pictures. The text is centered and wrapped. No entry, no caption.Botteville (talk) 11:13, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Width discussion
Should the user be able to set the width parameter? I don't know yet myself. The box design was different when I put it in there and now the boxes are being made more uniform. Just to summarize for you, the box originally allowed no picture, a grave omission. There was an attempt to put the capability in but it failed due to the failure to distinguish between image and topimage. I fixed that and added width. Frietjes, a long-standing and credible user, recently modified the fix code, taking out the width. The picture capability is still there as far as I can tell but the width is gone. However, the isse in general in not that. The problem with the boxes was the number of articles and which should be included in the voluminous box!. Maunus arrived at.a solution that seemed good to me: there would be subsidiary boxes and you would pick the box that fits the article. The boxes can be seen in the anthropology article. Things have been looking good since then. I don't see any instances of ill-fitted boxes or other elements. Following the principle of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" I'm letting it stand. If any develop and I see them my thought would be to consider restoring the width option. This is now a somewhat larger task since a lot of articles now have multiple boxes and we don't want to mess up those width adjustments. It might be easier to adjust the non-consonant elements. Whew. I thought there probably should be some discussion in here on the width capability. Place discussion here. Note that "programming for dummies" has to be modified or other documentation provided. The users aren't programmers but they need to be able to place pictures. Note that, if frietjus' code works I will be placing it in the other boxes as required, it it is not there now. Boxes need pictures and previous efforts were made to add the capability so I'm not alone.Botteville (talk) 07:42, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Navbar?
Can this been displayed as a navbar, of the sort usually seen at the bottom of articles? Is there an alternate that serves this function? I'm not a fan of the present style, which adds clutter as a sidebox. - Sitush (talk) 16:41, 25 September 2016 (UTC)