Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2012 February 29



Template:Faizal Tahir

 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the template below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the discussion was Delete; deleted by AnomieBOT ⚡  04:06, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Faizal Tahir

all red links. Frietjes (talk) 23:14, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete; template does not appear to be very useful; only the artist's main page has an article.  Gongshow  Talk 04:41, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Template:Infobox basketball player

 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the template below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the discussion was Merge Magioladitis (talk) 10:35, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
 * infobox basketball player
 * infobox basketball biography

Propose merging Template:Infobox basketball player with Template:Infobox basketball biography.

these templates are nearly identical. the only parameters which are in the basketball player template, but are not in the basketball biography template are nickname pro_club draft_league halloffame agents updated. there is also a minor difference with the medals expand parameter being called show-medals in the player template. I can add and/or fix all of these parameters, but I know that some other templates have removed the nickname and/or updated field(s), so adding those might be controversial. as for the halloffame field, there are multiple halloffame parameters in the biography template, so its possible that all could be converted to one of those, but will take some inspection. Frietjes (talk) 21:23, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Merge, I think it should be done. But I also think that it should leave the nickname and medals as option. Since thousands of articles use the infobox basketball player template and they use the nickname field, and they separate out the medals into a separate template, while the basketball biography one does not have nickname and combines the medals template into it. It is impossible to change the thousands of articles that use infobox basketball player, by editing them all to incorporate the medals templates. Just as so many articles are using basketball biography and do not have a nickname field (seems to be that NBA players are blocked from having this field). So I think it should be made optional that the medal templates not be included, same with nicknames - if they want to specify no for NBA players that is fine). This should solve the problem, rather than trying to change all the articles.173.216.237.132 (talk) 23:14, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Merge, keep nickname (c/f Infobox person), drop updated (not used by most infoboxes). Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:33, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment "agents" should not be merged. Per WP:IBX, infobox content should contain less info where possible;  knowing a player's agent, in most cases, seems trivial to their overall career. "nickname" seem to invite fancruft for names that are not that common. I would not merge that either.—Bagumba (talk) 00:40, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Please see my comment on this matter, below.
 * Comment I support the merge but I oppose the inclusion of nickname. In my opinion, nickname is not encyclopedic unless the nickname is used more often (by the media and other third party sources) than the player's actual name, such as Shaq, Dr. J, Big Baby Davis. In that case, the nickname could be added to the lead (see Julius Erving) or to its own section (see Shaquille O'Neal). Nickname field is also unnecessary because it encourage a lot of editors (mostly anonymous editors) to add unreferenced, unpopular and sometimes self-created nickname for the players. There used to be a nickname field on the old Infobox NBA biography (which evolves to Infobox basketball biography) but it was removed following this dicussion. — MT (talk) 04:07, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * We deal with fancruft by implementing policy (WP:V, WP:RS, etc); and by documenting how the template should be used, not by preventing the inclusion of encyclopedic information. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:21, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Per WP:IBX, "keep in mind the purpose of an infobox: to summarize key facts in the article in which it appears. The less information it contains, the more effectively it serves that purpose, allowing readers to identify key facts at a glance." If a field is already known to contain suspect information and it is not pertinent, its best just to not allow them.—Bagumba (talk) 23:51, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I honestly don't think nickname is encyclopedic unless the reliable third-party sources use the nickname more often than or as often as the player's actual name. In this case, only a small fraction of players qualify to have their nickname mentioned in the article. In this case, most of the nicknames are already mentioned (and referenced) in the lead or somewhere in the article and therefore I don't see the need to add a nickname field in the infobox for every basketball players. Anyway, why do we need to put an extra field that is difficult to maintain on an infobox that already has too many fields. See these edits from back in 2008 when nickname field is still in the infobox:, , , , , , , . We're lucky that plenty of editors was watching Bryant and James' articles and therefore these unsourced addition could be quickly reverted. In other articles, unsourced nicknames often went unnoticed for months. — MT (talk) 07:22, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree with Bagumba and Martin tamb. I think Andy's view is too idealistic. The nickname field was a constant pain-in-the-neck when it was live, and bringing it back would just add more work for the small group of editors trying to maintain these articles. Zagal e jo^^^ 20:06, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Why not just let nickname be the option for players that don't currently play in the NBA, as it is now? Obviously, the players that don't play in the NBA have the nickname field and lots of them have it listed, while none of the NBA players do because it is blocked as a parameter that does not exist in the basketball biography template. I don't see how that is actually any kind of a problem at all. Just merge them, add the nickname field to the merged template, then specify that NBA players don't have the nickname listed. I really don't see a problem there. It's the way it is now already.173.216.237.132 (talk) 13:10, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment While I think that, in theory, we should only have one infobox, I'm not sure this is something we really need to do now. It will be a lot more work than you think. An important thing to note is that one infobox automatically links the text put into the "team" field, while the other requires you to put brackets around the team name to create a link. If we do merge these infoboxes, we need to make sure we're not left with lots of malformed or broken links. (Look at what happens when I do this.) Zagal e jo^^^ 05:42, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * The usual way to do this is for one template to be converted into a wrapper for the other, and then transclusions substituted. That usually allows for a bulletproof transition, and should be fairly trivial in this case. As an aside, do we have another more common basketball bio infobox? It seems odd that we only have ~5000 deployments of these templates combined. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 10:25, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * About possible extra Basketball bio infoboxes: below Category:Basketball players I found ~11400 names (recursion only 4 deep, unique names, using AWB. With depth 3, the number was ~11000. ). -DePiep (talk) 13:16, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * There are some other infoboxes in use: see Template:Infobox NBL player, and Template: Infobox WNBA player. Zagal e jo^^^ 20:06, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
 * No intention of merging these too? Restart this TfD with four? -DePiep (talk) 11:55, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment So was it already decided not to merge them?173.216.237.132 (talk) 16:53, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment I Conditionally Support the merge if we can get a bot to fix the issue that mentioned and I am also interested in having the awards parameter be left justified. Jabari Parker is one of many that look a little bit odd with the awards being center justified.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 00:21, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
 * they are left justified in the 'basketball biography' template, which is the template into which the player template would be merged. I'm sure a bot (or AWB user) can take care of cleaning up the linking issue. Frietjes (talk) 21:39, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Merge preserving all parameters from both templates. Merge reason: templates are too similar. Mercy11 (talk) 15:55, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Template:Infobox scholar

 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the template below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the discussion was no consensus to delete. Plastikspork ―Œ (talk) 02:47, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Infobox scholar

redundant to Infobox person. The nominated template appears to have five parameters not in the latter:


 * era - redundant to birth/death dates or "flourished"
 * region - unnecessary; or redundant to nationality/ residence/ ethnicity
 * school_tradition - redundant to known_for, movement, or notable_works
 * main_interests - redundant to known_for, movement, or notable_works
 * notable_ideas - redundant to known_for, movement, or notable_works

The nominated template also lacks many of the other's useful features. A sensible approach might be to rebuild the template as a front end for Infobox person; then have a bot SUBST all instances. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:03, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Note: the template has only 106 transclusions. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:22, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Secondly, the noms assertion that school_tradition is redundant to known_for, movement, or notable_works is incorrect. Being known for something can overlap with being associated with a particular school of thought but it is not the same. The movement parameter is not a precise match either as it specifically refers to political movements. As for notable_works, I'm buggered if I know how it could supersede school_tradition.  Claret Ash  14:16, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep For the love of me, I don't understand this idea of merging everything into "Infobox Person", which is the vaguest and most redundant of all templates. It's like proposing we do away with all subcats and merge all of them into "Category:People". If anything, that template would need to go, and more templates like "Infobox Scholar" should be created from it. Dahn (talk) 12:53, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * If a "scholar" is notable for more than just scholarly works, such that more detail would need to be added to the subject's infobox than is presently supported by infobox scholar, that means either having an inadequate infobox or forking features out to it. This increases the maintenance burden on the project, leads to problems where similar features are supported with different syntax and semantics on different templates, and increases the amount of knowledge a general editor has to have about templates to work on infoboxes. Not every template can be merged, and IMO there are better ways of including domain-specific material like this in a generic person infobox (I've added "module" support to the main template such that domain-specific detail can be plugged into it), but this is in general a positive trend. The allegory to merging categories is off base as infoboxes are descriptive tools (where forks are purely an accident of history in that we built the encyclopedia from the bottom up) where categories are navigational ones (and are to a large extent designed top-down to cover existing articles). Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 13:11, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * (ec)Infoboxes are not categories, and are not used for categorisation. Otherwise, we wouldn't need infoboxes and categories. Indeed, the nominated template does not display the fact that its subjects are scholars, which Infobox person can do. The advantages of reducing the number of such templates (decreased maintenance overhead, reducing the number of unnecessary choices which we currently force editors to make; resolving issues of people who have two or more notable roles) have been made clear on these pages many times. But do feel free to nominate Infobox person for deletion, so that you can see it snowballed. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:15, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * As I see it, the main issue is with infobox person: that is sufficiently vague, crowded and underused as to be entirely unnecessary. Chosing one of the available or future infoboxes is not especially burdensome: I for one was surprised when first using infobox scholar that there weren't already specific ones for historians, economists etc. Glancing through them is not a major problem; assuming that one can fit all is just weird. And I note the paradox that we're debating whether there should be one for scholars, when nobody questions whether we should have one for basketball players. Dahn (talk) 16:40, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * What's your justification for saying that over 100,000 instances of infobox person make it "underused"? what about scholars who are also historians? Or economists? Or economists who are also historians? Or people who are all three? I'm also not clear what leads you to say that "nobody questions whether we should have one for basketball players", though it's worth noting that there are specific types of data about basketball players; which there are not for scholars (as indicated in the nomination). Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:58, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * My justification is with the all other instances where it is not used, such as the ones voted on elsewhere on this page. What about scholars who are also historians etc. - pick one, as we already do in countless instances (what about scholars who were also office holders is a good one to ponder). What leads me to say that basketball players get their own infoboxes by mutual consensus is a thread further up on this very page); and there is scholar-specific information to be featured in a special box, once we do away with the non-specific infobox person, with its inane "known for" - an invitation to rant. The least there is to interpret in a given infobox, the better. Dahn (talk) 23:10, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * We have separate boxes for royalty, politicians and athletes (amongst others) because there are lots of quite genre-specific details on those types of subjects which warrant inclusion in their infoboxes, and because assigning due weight to these details rather requires that less important information be excluded. That is not the case for every profession, and the maintenance burden for cases such as this one (where the genre-specific fields rather smack of having been drummed up to justify the existence of a new template) is greater than the benefit of having them. And there's little point in ranting about a consensus as settled as the existence of infobox person in 2012. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 12:23, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Disregarding the "I can't hear you" and the rude labeling of my post as a "rant", I will just note that those guys who allegedly endorse the person infobox do not necessarily rule out alternatives, and may "endorse" it only because they were led to believe that alternatives do not exist. And an argument about validity that is based on the supposed hardships one would meet in maintenance work are wholly irrelevant. It is like saying we shouldn't have many articles because many will be (or are) poorly written. And no, this is not a literal comparison, so don't bother reifying it. Regards, Dahn (talk) 19:56, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Comments First of all, the miniscule transcluding notice that alerts readers to this discussion doesn't appear to transclude correctly. At Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, for example, it links to a non-existent discussion at Templates for discussion.
 * "Known for leading the foo school of scholarship"; "Known for her work in the foo school of scholarship" I'll fix the TfD template, thanks. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:23, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
 * You and I can figure that out. But someone new to this template will need it explained. I'm not fussed whether infobox scholar goes, stays or is subordinated to person but I maintain there is a need for a "school of thought" parameter. To use "known for" for that purpose is no better than using it for every other parameter: "Known for being born on the planet Gallifrey" (for birth_place); "Known for being married to the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire" (for spouse); "Known for looking like a twit (for image). School_or_tradition is simpler and, I believe, what users (both editors and readers) would expect to find.  Claret Ash  23:20, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Please avoid slippery slope fallacies. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:33, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
 * ??? What sloppery slope? I said "X is no better than Y" not "X will lead to Y". I was simply trying to illustrate the fallacy that known_for is an adequate replacement for school_or_tradition by highlighting the vagueness of known_for in comparison with the specificity of school_or_tradition.  Claret Ash  12:48, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep: I don't understand the nomination. The nominee have found a similarity between tags with phrases that have vaguely similar meaning. The reasons for keeping is:
 * While the vague similarity makes some vague sense, the tag names wouldn't be easily recognizable to the editor that all the time is forced to consider: "what's now the intention I should put in this template slot?" The merger will cause more edit errors.
 * If Infobox person is enhanced with specialized scholarly information alongside specialized artistic information alongside specialized political information, then the template will be bloated indeed and it's documentation unwieldy and not easily readable.
 * Ref programmer moral: keep it simple and stupid – code copying is sometimes justified.
 * Therefore keep. Rursus dixit. ( m bork3 !) 06:18, 8 March 2012 (UTC)


 * If you don't understand the nomination, why are you !voting, rather than asking for clarification? You may find this FAQ helpful. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:33, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Now this is not a place for childish bickering and bending wills. I don't understand why you made this so obviously flawed nomination. I gave my reasons: you missed the point, which is that the template should be easy to use. The vague similarity between the templates is an off-topical argument in my opinion. My decision stand. Rursus dixit. ( m bork3 !) 08:40, 10 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep If the template is flawed, fix what's wrong with it. Mend it, don't end it.--WickerGuy (talk) 23:31, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep and delete Template:Infobox person instead, which has quite a zillion different parameters and is kind of usability super-gau because it needs so much tweaks for using it for all the different instances of persons. That's the same wrong development which we see with all the settlement infobox templates. Merging those templates into one global infobox template is the wrong idea. Each profession is specific (as are settlements in each country, compare the crap in the infoboxes of, say, Paris, Texas with de:Paris (Texas). --Matthiasb (talk) 17:43, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Template:BannedMeansBanned

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The result of the discussion was no consensus Plastikspork ―Œ (talk) 02:51, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
 * BannedMeansBanned

I am nominating this for discussion as I cannot see a legitimate use for it. Created "to restate WP's banning policy where it relates to banned users making edits", it seems to fall between two categories:


 * It looks like a user status banner, like Retired or Blocked, and indeed is used in this manner at the top of user talkpages in many cases. Yet it doesn't declare any status, it's a reiteration of policy.


 * Its function, however, is as a policy reminder, which is closer to the user warnings class of template such as uw-balkans. However, it seems to be aimed at watching editors rather than the editor on whose page it is supposed to be placed.

I would suggest that it be converted to an inline user warning template like the rest, but I can't think of a productive use for such a warning. You might want to explain to a third party why you've been reverting what otherwise unproblematic edits by a banned editor, but using standardised templates to explain yourself is inappropriate and condescending anyway.

In short, I see no proper use, current or potential, of this template. Skomorokh  13:55, 29 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Neutral: I created this template when I was dealing with a particularly prolific vandal, as we were trying to get through to him that he was no longer welcome at WP. It obviously didn't work as he's still at it. -- Gridlock Joe (talk) 21:12, 29 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep Even with banned users, communication is important. this template is useful in reminding them, usually when a sock is detected, that they are wholly unwelcome to edit here as long as their ban is in place. once they've been banned and resorted to socking, it is of course unlikely they will heed this warning, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't make it nonetheless. It also serves as a way to inform users curious as to why an edit by the user was reverted or a page they created was deleted. It suddenly seems as if every tool we have for dealing with banned users is being nominated for deletion or fundamentally altered in some way. This template is useful, it is in use on a number of pages, and as it merely restates policy there is obviously not any sort misrepresentation of policy. Beeblebrox (talk) 04:01, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete per Wikipedia_talk:Banning_policy Nobody Ent 11:35, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Could you please explain how that discussion about changing the graphics on a different template means that we should delete this one altogether? Beeblebrox (talk) 16:57, 4 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete I have never been a fan of these "You were a naughty editor" type of templates. They have always appeared to me to be a bit on the "Grade schoolish" side.  I think a simple "statement" such as
 * This editor is currently inactive (link or reason)
 * would be much more dignified as far as the project goes. — Ched : ?  16:47, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I think you've misunderstood the purpose of this template. It should probably have a doc page explaining it, it is not for tagging the user page of any and every banned user, it is for tagging user or talk pages of socks of banned users, to inform them and everyone else of why their edits have been mass reverted and/or pages created by them were summarily deleted. It is both as a warning to the banned user to stop evading the ban and to inform anyone curious about reversions or deletions as to why those were made. If it is kept I will create a doc page explaining how it should be used. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:54, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

I think there are several flaws in this nomination.
 * Nominator states that they can't see any proper use of this template. It is used over a hundred times so apparently others can. Unlike articles, usefulness is a valid reason to keep a template.
 * Nominator goes on to state that it is " inappropriate and condescending" to communicate using templates. That is an argument to delete all user talk templates, not just this one. As that is not the purpose of this discussion it is basically invalid
 * There are complaints that it does not look like what it is. I'm not sure I see the logic of those complaints but that is a reason to edit, not delete.

Beeblebrox (talk) 16:54, 6 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Weak Keep I wouldn't use it alone, as I saw it on the page that brought me here, but put it under the normal banned template on a case by case basis. Despite what the creator says, I don't think this is going to do much of anything to change vandals' behaviors, but it's useful in cases where there's conflict over whether or not to delete a banned editor's contributions.  S ven M anguard   Wha?  01:46, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep - Our patrollers need to be informed that they shouldn't be afraid to use rapid-fire on banned users.Jasper Deng (talk) 06:22, 9 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Got tired of waiting for a close, I went ahead and added a doc page and changed the graphic. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:50, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Template:Banned user arbcom

 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the template below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the discussion was Redirect to Template:Banned user.
 * Banned user arbcom

This template is currently only used to refer to two of the dozens of ArbCom-banned editors ( and ). It strikes me that if its use is not standard practice by the Committee, its clerks, or other enforcers, it should be deprecated.

Perhaps the best solution is for all bans to be denoted by Banned user, with parameters to identify the source of the ban as ArbCom, the community or Jimbo Wales. Skomorokh  13:38, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Or just deleting and re-directing, which I've done. It was broken anyway. I've swopped banned user arbcom at and  with the current banned user one.   Roger Davies  talk 14:54, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Template:Infobox UK ward
Templates for discussion/Log/2012 March 23. Anomie⚔ 21:01, 23 March 2012 (UTC)