Template talk:Infobox person/Archive 1

Discussion
WTF? You can't "win" one discussion, so you just bugger off and ignore others' comments?

James F. (talk) 03:06, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * Please don't be beligerent. I've "forked" the development of this concept, because I think people will prefer this format. -- Netoholic @ 03:12, 2004 Sep 13 (UTC)


 * Guys, please stay civilised. AAMoF I like both versions. The one with the quotation is not suitable for all pages, but I like it too. [[User:Halibutt|Halibutt]] 23:45, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

Image bug
There seems to be a image scaling bug that manifests when the image is narrower that the box. It gets unneccessarily scaled and distorted. Kpjas 1 July 2005 07:38 (UTC)

Image bug
There seems to be a image scaling bug that manifests when the image is narrower that the box. It gets unneccessarily scaled and distorted. See Stanley Kubrick. Kpjas 1 July 2005 07:40 (UTC)

Member of field
Hello, has there been any discussion regarding an optional "member of" or similarly named field in the Infobox? It would be especially useful to have that for articles about individuals who are for example a member of multiple governing boards. Kurieeto 14:56, 19 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I've added an optional "boards" field to contain this information. It sits between the party and religion rows, and can contain former and current board of director/trustee/governor memberships. Kurieeto 02:10, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

This box should be merged with Persondata
In particular, if an article or more specific template uses this box, then they should get "persondata" metadata for free. Right? Pcb21 Pete 14:45, 28 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I would concur. I've just posted a message about this over at the Persondata talk page, suggesting that Persondata is merged into this template. Mike Peel 21:01, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Sorry guys
Guys, sorry! i did something terribly wrong. But now I changed it to its previous one. 192.38.83.6 09:51, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Formatting issue
The way this sits at the top of each page is not very pleasing to the eye. How about making it float:right? It would make all the articles that use it look much nicer. - Dave C.talk 06:33, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

"Dead" fields
There seem to be a number of dead fields in this box.

I cannot get entries in the employer, birth name and other fields.

Also, should there be a background color to the header on this box?

trezjr 02:11, 29 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Has anything been done about this? What is the resolution status of the issues raised here? —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93;  ‹(-¿-)› 20:09, 6 August 2007 (UTC)


 * At the time this comment was posted in January, the template documentation listed these parameters but they were not actually implemented. This issue is resolved. -- Zyxw 06:04, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Nationality
I tried adding nationality as an option, but Nationality undefined

from Template:Infobox NBA Player was not very useful. Can anyone help? You may have to look at the edit this page screen to see the full code I included. Kenallen 00:22, 1 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Please see WP:FLAGCRUFT. Flag icon code should emphatically not be put into this template!  Whether to include a flag icon at all, for any infobox, is currently a contentious issue, and far more to the point, there are many cases in which it is not appropriate at all. If flag icons will appear it must be because someone (hopefully with consensus) has made a human judgement call to manually add that to the "nationality" field at that article. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93;  ‹(-¿-)› 20:12, 6 August 2007 (UTC)


 * At the time this comment was posted in April, the template did not have a nationality field. This has since been resolved. The template does not include any flag icon code. -- Zyxw 06:04, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Relations
Why does the "relations" field display as "Parents", or why is the display for "Parents" triggered by the "relations" field? I just saw that at Tom Parker Bowles, someone had listed his younger sister under "relations", which caused her to be listed as one of his parents. --Metropolitan90 17:42, 20 May 2007 (UTC)


 * This was fixed on 7 June 2007 in an edit by User:Skeetidot. -- Zyxw 09:22, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Merge
All of the fields in Infobox Celebrity are now in this one. There are only two minor stylistic differences: 'Celebrity' places the name above the box and uses right aligned field headings, while 'Person' places the name inside the box and uses left-aligned field names. I propose that 'Celebrity' be deprecated in favour of 'person' (and that we consider a further merge, into 'Infobox Biography'). Andy Mabbett 07:16, 14 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I just updated Infobox Person to add "education", the only parameter from Infobox Biography that isn't already here. I also added the alternate parameter names from Biography for fields that already existed here: subject_name=name, image_name=image, date_of_birth=birth_date, etc. For an example of a page that uses Infobox Person but retains all the field names from Infobox Biography, see this edit to Alexander Graham Bell. -- Zyxw 09:22, 14 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Thank you. Should the final template be called ...Person or ...Biography? Once the templates are unified, a bot should be used to rename all the fields in articles using the one we loose, so that only one set is in use. This will aid future bot work and make parsing more straightforward. Andy Mabbett 09:50, 14 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I've added a formal merger proposal for Infobox Biography. Andy Mabbett 09:56, 14 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I oppose. There's no point and too much hasstle in changing articles around.Dalejenkins 09:17, 17 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Neither of those arguments (sic) are very convincing. Andy Mabbett 21:14, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

I support merging Biography into Person. Also, too many career templates have fewer fields than the "person" template. Tim Long 22:30, 28 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I also support the merger. As a fairly new user I am finding the proliferation of infoboxes very confusing. It seems that for an article on a writer I can use Biography or Person or Writer infoboxes and each is slightly different. You would think that the Writer one would be best but it only has the option of Pseudonym. However, some writers simply had earlier or later names - maiden names etc - rather than pseudonyms. So which Infobox to use?? I understand that you can ignore headings in an infobox but you can't add headings?? I've consequently been changing from one infobox to another and not feeling very happy about what I've been doing. The ideal would be to have a base template containing general headings to which specific headings are added rather than quite different templates as is the current situation. The current situation re other names/pseudonyms/alternate names etc is quite bizarre (to my newbie mind)  Sterry2607 12:47, 3 July 2007 (UTC)


 * For pseudonyms, use Other names. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 15:52, 6 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree with the merger with infobox biography. -- (Cocoaguy ここがいい contribstalk) 17:37, 4 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I support the merger, no sense in having three templates that all do essentially the same thing and confuse new editors. Calliopejen1 13:54, 6 July 2007 (UTC)


 * All that is left is to redirect them to this infobox, correct? But what about Template:Infobox Writer or any of the other infoboxes in Category:People infobox templates? --Farix (Talk) 13:39, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Can we complete this process? Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 15:25, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Nudge. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 14:40, 6 August 2007 (UTC)


 * If Celebrity and Biography have already been made redundant to this infobox (as appears to be the case) then there's nothing left to discuss. Proceed with the merge. PC78 15:02, 6 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes; but how? What needs to be done? Do we need a bot? Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 15:49, 6 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I think it is a good idea to merge all three into Infobox Person. However, since they are highly used by thousands of articles, we need to bring more people to discuss about this merge. I made the following table for easier comparison among the three templates. Apprently, Infobox Person is missing a 'Nationality' section. eDenE  15:17, 6 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I've added Nationality. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 15:49, 6 August 2007 (UTC)


 * All that is required for a merge is to redirect the other two templates to this one. However, looking at the below table there are a few problems, in that some of the fields are named differently in each of the templates (i.e.  and  ). Perhaps we could get this template to accept either wording (Edene knows far more about coding templates than I do); manually updating these fields in hundreds of articles would hardly be practical, and I don't know much about bots. As for gaining a wider concensus, it would be best to list Infobox Biography and Infobox Celebrity at WP:TfD. PC78 16:46, 6 August 2007 (UTC)


 * A nationality parameter was added to the template in July and this template already supports the alternate parameter names used in Infobox Biography and Infobox Celebrity:
 * * name       (name)
 * * image      (image)
 * * image_size (image_size)
 * * caption    (caption)
 * * birth_date (birth_date)
 * * birth_place (birth_place)
 * * death_date (death_date)
 * * death_place (death_place)
 * No editing of articles or deleting of templates is needed. The old templates can just be redirected to Template:Infobox Person. -- Zyxw 19:47, 6 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I've redirected Infobox Biography; but Infobox Celebrity is protected. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 20:01, 6 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Job done then. :) Have you requested that Infobox Celebrity be unprotected so that the merge can go ahead? PC78 21:41, 6 August 2007 (UTC)


 * This sounds like it may have been too hasty; see the subtopic immediately below - the fields don't match! —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 00:06, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I believe you're mistaken. The code for this template will accept either image_size field. PC78 00:48, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Conclusion

 * Conclusion: Clearly Infobox celebrity can be merged into Infobox person right now with zero fallout of any kind (just redirect the former to the latter, voilá). Just do it.  The problem of mismached fields between the latter and Infobox biography will need sorting out.  I think there should be a consensus discussion, probably based on a survey of topical bio userboxes to see what they do, what field names they prefer, then when the field names are settled, a bot can can be devised change them all and change to Infobox person, then Infobox biography can be sent to TfD after no more pages use it.  Immediately for Infobox celebrity and later on for Infobox biography I think it would be prudent to keep an eye on their "what links here" and keep those blank, then after a month of blankness TfD them away so people stop referring to them at all (I may be showing my colors too much here; I think that the vast majority of redirects in the "Template:" namespace should be deleted; they only sow confusion).  As a further step, I would like to suggest that the ultimately resulting Infobox person "megatemplate" be used as a model for all others, and that they (the topical ones I mean, e.g. Infobox Snooker player) be brought one by one into basic field-name conformity with Infobox person.  Some day Infobox person can be made into a meta template and a whole lot of infobox code can be removed from all topical bio infoboxes, which would instead simply call this one and provide it custom fields for that particular topic.  Ambitious, but it can be done. PS: Another option for the second half of the merge would be to simply add code to Infobox person that recognizes the Infobox biography field names, but not document them, such that they eventually just fall out of use; if we did that, all of these templates could be merged today.  The choice of whether to do that or whether to do it more cleanly is most a question of whether anyone participating as the bot-creation skills to do it the cleaner way. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93;  ‹(-¿-)› 20:03, 6 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Woops, I take that back; there's a fieldname conflict between imagesize and image_size in Infobox celebrity and Infobox person, respectively. It is the only fieldname conflict between the two.  Again, this could be handled in a klugey way by changing Infobox person's code to simply accept either parameter name, or someone can create a bot (or spend 8 days in AWB >;-)  to normalize them. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93;  ‹(-¿-)› 20:09, 6 August 2007 (UTC)


 * This template already accepts both  and  . I think it is okay to redirect the Infobox celebrity to here. I think the administator would want to protect thist template, becuase Infobox celebrity is fully protected. However, I want to leave this template unprotected (or semi-protected) to adapt more fields so that we can merge other person-related templates into here.  eDenE  00:46, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * It is best to merge/redirect to one template (infobox person). It is simple to get the code to accept all the parameter names.  After that, you just need to decide which names are best and have a bot go through and swap out the old names to the new names in all the transcluded articles.  When the bot is finished, someone just needs to remove the old names from the template code.  A bot could do the brunt of the work in a day or two. Simple. Therefore, I say merge/redirect, then TfD. &mdash;MJCdetroit 02:43, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * bot requested. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 12:10, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I feel that there needs to be documentation for depreciated fields. I was just editing the page on Mark Cuban and it took way too much time to figure out what a Infobox celebrity was and I think that this talk page is the only documentation that mentions it.  Depreciated subjects cannot just be ignored and hope they go away.--Zeal17 (talk) 07:42, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Redirects completed
I merged Template:Infobox Celebrity and redirects to it in here and cleaned up several redirects to Template:Infobox Biography. The merge notices had been in place for about two months and consensus seemed to favor the move so I went ahead. I haven't protected this template because it looks like things are still being adjusted, but it should be locked down soon. If someone wants to run a bot to standardize the parameter and template call names that can be done now too, but is not strictly necessary. --CBD 11:54, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Thank you. bot requested. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 12:10, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * It looks to me that the redirect of the Infobox Biography to Infobox Person has left some ugly looking articles. See this for an example (as long as nobody fixes it first).  BTW - looking at it via diffs doesn't show the redirect.  Was that the intended result?  -- Mufka (u) (t) (c) 22:06, 8 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I examined the Alan Turing article as it existed at the time of your posting, also using a copy of the infobox code from that date. It seems to have displayed properly both then and now. If you are still noticing any problems, please be specific as to what the issue is and I will try to resolve it. -- Zyxw 07:37, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Bot work all done
I have gone through all the translcusions of Infobox Biography and changed them over. The template has now been simplified, there should not be any problems (cross fingers) but some one may need to revert for a while if there is until they get sorted out. :: maelgwn - talk 09:29, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Awards and honors
A number of persons have received several notable awards and honors. Currently, these are either worked into the article to some point, placed in a list in a separate section or ignored. I have been using a table at the bottom of the infobox to neatly include this information (see George J. Fisher). I would propose a new field for "awards and honors" to appear at the bottom of the infobox. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 12:54, 18 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Support. Seems like a reasonable addition, and would do away with a page-bottom template of dubious usefulness. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93;  ‹(-¿-)› 20:06, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Resting place
For dead people, we should, I believe, have optional resting_place and resting_place_coordinates parameters. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 14:39, 6 August 2007 (UTC)


 * On reflection, I added them. First use is at Louis Braille. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 16:01, 6 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree on resting_place, since it is a logical replacement for residence when the person dies. However, I think adding the coordinates is overkill. A linked location is adequate, and if further information is available it should be incorporated in the article. -- Zyxw 06:04, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * One of the advantages of adding coordinates is that the person's resting place will then appear on mapping services which parse our geographic data. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 12:17, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * If coordinates are included, the separate headers should be replaced by a multi-line format similar to what was implemented for the birth and death sections. Examples follow below. -- Zyxw 03:02, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I've no problem if someone wants to do that. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 09:22, 8 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Done. To see it in use, look at the Louis Braille article (as mentioned above). -- Zyxw 03:37, 9 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Thank you. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett#

Please do not add resting place coordinates unless you know the exact location with sub-metre precision. It shouldn't be the same coordinates as in the article about the resting place in general. Nobody wants to see Panthéon for example cluttered with 75 placemarks at the exact same coordinates. --Para 08:11, 9 August 2007 (UTC)


 * "Nobody wants to see..." Much that you might like to claim to speak for everybody, I don't recall you asking me; and I therefore question your ability to do so; your point seems to be no more than a personal preference. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 10:47, 9 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Adding redundant coordinates damages the quality of geocoded data on Wikipedia. Users clicking on a coordinate link get an arbitrary location that may have been appropriate for the lieu, but not for a resting place or another smaller scale subject. It doesn't give any more information to the reader than the article itself and will seem to be more specific than the article, when it's actually just incorrect information. Users browsing location placemarks on a map get a big cluster of placemarks where only one (which?) may be related to the location. Having such inaccurate coordinates will force all reusers to have to start selecting the good Wikipedia data from all the clutter, and apply all sorts of category walking filters to get rid of the unwanted data.
 * It's also not just my opinion: this was discussed earlier at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geographical coordinates/archive011, where User:Dschwen made the same point "not to have coordinates unless they can be given with a precision comparable to the object size (that would be sub-meter). It makes no sense to clutter the map with gazillions of markers all at the exact same coordinates".
 * If someone still insists on placing coordinates in articles that aren't about a location related topic, please at least use a specific type parameter after having discussed it with WP:GEO people. Using landmark is not appropriate. --Para 12:30, 9 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Imprecise != inaccurate. Please stop spreading such FUD. WP:GEO says: "landmark - Cultural landmark, building of special interest, tourist attraction and other points of interest." which seems perfectly applicable to graves and mausoleums. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 13:12, 9 August 2007 (UTC)


 * You also misquote Dschwen, who actually said "I'd like for those paintings not to have coordinates unless they can be given with a precision comparable to the object size (that would be sub-meter)". I'm not aware of many people whose graves are "sub-meter". Perhaps everyone you know, who died, was buried standing up? Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 13:21, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Nesting templates
I wonder if it possible, and desirable, to nest templates, such that this and all templates about people (celebrities, artists, politicians, sports-players, musicians, whatever) would include a bare "biographical details" template, and then add career-specific parameters? Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 16:10, 6 August 2007 (UTC)


 * See comments above, after the comparison table. I do think indeed that this template should eventually also serve as a meta-template, and that all of the "basics" code in topical bio infoboxes should simply call this template.  I think we're a ways off from that, though.  We need to get these three merged, then go through every bio infobox type and make them conform to the fields here, and bot-update all article which use non-standard fields.  Only after that can this be meta-templated. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93;  ‹(-¿-)›


 * I'd think that any 'career specific' information could be handled within a single template using optional parameters. It could be done with sub-templates also, but then you get the same situation we had here... separate 'lawyer', 'barrister', 'advocate', et cetera templates with the same info and different parameter names. Likewise, formatting on the sub-templates may differ. --CBD 11:13, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Bug in template (nationality)?
I just added this infobox to Alan R. Moon and the Nationality is appearing twice in the infobox. I double checked and it's only appearing once in my source code.&mdash; Timotab Timothy (not Timdagnabbit!) 00:14, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I saw the same issue in several biographies and noticed it was listed twice in the actual infobox coding. I removed one instance of it, so it should be fine now. RyguyMN 01:11, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Where do I see the coding for the infobox?  Not that I intend to change anything, but seeing the source would help me see how it all works.&mdash; Timotab Timothy (not Timdagnabbit!) 01:29, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Never mind, looking at the page wiki source, I understand now.&mdash; Timotab Timothy (not Timdagnabbit!) 01:31, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

The next merger?
Which of the templates listed at WikiProject Biography/Infoboxes or Category:People infobox templates are suitable for merging into this one; and which should we tackle first? These seem likely (listed with their key unique fields; some of which may apply more generally):


 * Infobox Criminal - alias (use "other_names"), charge, penalty & status (e.g. "in prison", "executed", "released").
 * Infobox Pope - Papacy began, Papacy ended, Predecessor, Successor, other ("other popes named...")
 * Infobox Gunfighter - years_active, notable_opponents
 * Infobox Chef - style, education, restaurants, television
 * Infobox journalist - ethic(icity), alias (use "other_names"), credits, agent, status (used for "marital status")

They lack a number of the "generic" fields used by this template.


 * Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 13:25, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure that merging more specialized infoboxes such as these is a good idea - perhaps they lack some of the more generic fields for a reason? To use Infobox actor as an example, fields such as "height" and "weight" have been removed by concensus as being too trivial for inclusion. Also, do we really want to be flooding this infobox with potentially dozens of specialist fields? I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad idea, but I think we should proceed with a bit more caution here. PC78 10:14, 10 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Fields or parameters such as "height" and "weight" which may be trivial for an actor could be notable for an athlete. As stated in the documentation: "Do not use all these parameters for any one person. The list is long to cover a wide range of people. Only use those parameters that describe why the person is notable." I agree that some of the specialized infoboxes (including Infobox Actor) should not be eliminated. The candidates for merger should be those where Infobox Person has a similar look and and would require few additional parameters, as was the case with Infobox Biography and Infobox Celebrity. -- Zyxw 20:48, 10 August 2007 (UTC)