Template talk:Infobox officeholder/Archive 6

Should use caption instead of special top row
MediaWiki pipe syntax has a convenient facility allowing for captions, allowing us to title tables. Like so:

This comes from

I would suggest that the name field of this infobox bet moved from a row to the caption. I know the fibonacci numbers don't look that good, but it works better with this infobox.

Karl Dickman talk 04:20, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Generally more and more infoboxes have been moving away from using &lt;caption> as it isn't very well supported in certain browsers. See Template talk:Infobox Book for more. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:29, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

THE PICTURE!!!
Quick problem, quick answer: because editors have been playing with this, major and embarrassing errors have occurred in many articles. Take a look at Horace Sebastiani and tell me how I'm supposed to fix that problem with a template protection and no way to reduce the size. It's the indifference of all these edit wars that decreases wikipedia's credibility, not only with the public, but with many editors who actually want to do something constructive. Dahn (talk) 01:44, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
 * The field  determines the width of the template, not the image. To change the image size, use the field  . --Philip Stevens (talk) 05:30, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't find that answer satisfactory, I'm afraid. I edited the image months ago, and the specifications applied to the picture (or, at least, the picture changed size if that section was modified). Editors here went and changed all related infoboxes, and did not check to see what consequences that had for articles such as the aforementioned. I cannot and will not be expected to hunt down any such anomaly, and I hope the "change the image" and "use" are addressed to a generic "you", not to me in particular. Why? Well, the same problem was present with the article Charles-Frédéric Reinhard. Is it acceptable to leave any number of articles in that state?
 * Now, here's my suggestion (for this and any other such case in the future). When you make such changes, if possible, make sure that the new versions do not recognize the superfluous old script at all, and that they therefore cannot modify the picture (or whichever such detail). It's either that or the person who modifies goes and checks every article - because other editors are here to create content, not to troubleshoot creativity. Oh, wait, there is a third path: don't make such changes - instead of "fixing" competing infoboxes by merging them, create a new one, update it in every article where an old one is used, then delete and salt the old versions. Dahn (talk) 05:56, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Btw, uniting the infoboxes was a great idea. It's just that it was not carried out properly. Dahn (talk) 05:58, 28 April 2008 (UTC)


 * The change to the imagesize field, that created the problem to which you referred, did not occur because of the infobox merge. It was changed some months after. --Philip Stevens (talk) 15:36, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Took me a while to figure it out after discovering the problem elsewhere - the width and height (which is for the image btw - the code places them as alternatives to imagesize if imagesize is not provided) parameters had ceased to work entirely. The reason for the problem is most likely recent changes made to the MediaWiki interface (code which worked prior to last month doesn't now, there's been a number of issues like this elsewhere). As a result in some cases images were taking up 2/3 of the screen. Even changing "width" to "imagesize" in the article had no effect as the "imagesize" parameter in this template does not automatically insert px. I've basically made a substitution which makes the width the imagesize and ignores the height so that most images should work with it. If anyone can think of a cure for the original problem that accommodates height, I'm quite open to it. Orderinchaos 00:05, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Tánaiste requested
I'd like to request that Tánaiste be included in the template. The Tánaiste is the Deputy Prime Minister in Ireland, it is an Irish language word but is used in both the Irish and English languages, Deputy Prime Minister is never used. Currently for Taoiseach infoboxes, Deputy is used (See Brian Cowen) but it would be better and more accurate if Tánaiste were displayed. Please note the diacritic - á. Thanks. Snappy56 (talk) 06:30, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
 * This can already be done with the current code. I've changed Brian Cowen's page accordingly. --Philip Stevens (talk) 08:46, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I didn't know that, thanks for the example. Snappy56 (talk)

Request
Please can somebody revert Orderinchaos's removal of the height data, this is essential and its removal has effected numerous articles in a bad way. I requested on his talk that he undo this but he seems to be on a Wikibreak. Thanks. - Gennarous (talk) 16:21, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Email addresses
Many office holders provide official email addresses so that citizens can communicate with them. The infobox template already has a field for their official website, which is usually where they make their contact details available (see for example Tony Egginton). Could the template be extended to add a field for this piece of public information, to help keep people in better contact with their representatives? 19:33, 11 May 2008 (UTC) (posted by Special:Contributions/80.175.122.69)


 * Wikipedia is a highly visible site, and publicly posting email addresses like that, even official ones, could cause them to get flooded with useless spam. I'd highly discourage this. Hers fold  (t/a/c) 22:48, 11 May 2008 (UTC)


 * What is the threat model we are trying to defend against here? If we are trying to stop an automated email address harvester, then keeping an address off Wikipedia does not make the address significantly harder to find. If we are trying to stop someone casually viewing the article and thinking "I know, I'll send this office holder a useless message." then I think there is a better chance that someone will say "I know, I'll send this office holder a message about an important local issue." 18:56, 12 May 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.175.122.69 (talk)

Alongside field
Currently this field is automatically wikilinked. Would there be objections to dewikilinking this? My reasons are that I would like, for politicians who served alongside different colleagues at different points (all while holding the same office) to be able to have the field read something like "John Doe (1980-1984), Jane Roe (1984-1988)". Right now, that's not possible, since a pair of right brackets will appear at the end of whatever's in the field. We could have a bot go insert wikilinks in the articles that currently make use of the field. Thoughts/objections? Sarcasticidealist (talk) 05:27, 20 May 2008 (UTC)