Wikipedia:WikiProject Aircraft/Infobox refactor 2023

Proposal by User:rlandmann in response to the recent TfD discussion about "aircraft" infoboxes

Let's welcome this opportunity to have a major re-think of how we're presenting information about aircraft-related topics. Wikipedia is a far more mature project than it was 15 years ago, and IMHO it makes good sense to work towards standardisation between different subject areas as much as practical. And I think that structured information is more important than ever in an era of Big Data.

I propose that:

Stage 1
1.1 rather than merge the infoboxes for Infobox aircraft type, Infobox aircraft career, Infobox aircraft engine, and Infobox aircraft program into one large template, we start by honouring the spirit of the TfD outcome by merging the Infobox aircraft begin template into each of the four other templates to create separate, "true" infoboxes.

1.2 we implement more modern infobox logic to combine the true aircraft type and aircraft career infoboxes in the relatively rare cases where this is needed

1.3 we consider a less ambiguous name for aircraft career, since the word "aircraft" is used in a fundamentally different way in the title of this infobox (Infobox airframe?)

1.4 this is also the time to re-think the fields of each infobox -- do they do what we need them to do? Is anything missing? Anything superfluous?

1.5 delete Infobox aircraft since the argument that it's handy when checking old revisions of articles "doesn't fly". (Fairly too, IMHO)

Stage 2
2.1 we replace the aircraft engine infobox created in Stage 1 with the various infoboxes used for reciprocating, turbine, and rocket engines, and electric motors used elsewhere in Wikipedia, merging where those templates do not yet contain fields we need. Note that this move might logically include moving engine specifications into the infobox.

2.2 we examine whether aircraft program can be merged into the existing Infobox project or similar; or alternatively, whether aircraft program can be generalised into an Infobox that would be useful in a greater range of projects and programs. (Note also the existence of Infobox future infrastructure project)

2.3 we perform an audit of the aircraft type and aircraft career infoboxes to see whether they meet current needs. In particular, let's address the elephant in the room and consider whether specs should be brought back into the "type" infobox.

I believe that this proposal is consistent with the spirit (although obviously not the letter) of the outcome of the TfD, and addresses the root cause of why the TfD was opened in the first place (that aircraft infoboxes are not true Infoboxes).

Rationale
Since 2008, WikiProject: Aircraft has used a modular infobox design to manage infoboxes on articles within its area of curation. The approach was intended to create a standardised "look-and-feel" among aircraft-related articles, and was modelled on a similar approach by WikiProject: Ships.

WP:SHIPS' need and rationale was substantially different though. Ship infoboxes contain extensive and detailed specifications of a very wide variety of different watercraft. WP:SHIP's modular template was designed to reduce template complexity, especially at a time when template logic was not as developed as it is now. Ship infoboxes that require two or more of these modules were commonplace.

On the other hand, WP:AIRCRAFT's need for a modular template was only ever cosmetic and administrative. Two implications of this are:
 * of the four modules available, it's extremely rare that modules are ever combined, and there are two modules (aircraft engine and aircraft program) that are never combined with any of the others.
 * one of the four templates ("aircraft program") is made up of parameters unique to itself, and another one ("career") practically so. The lack of overlap is visible in the audit below. Out of 49 fields, none are common to all four templates, and only two are used on three templates. The vast majority of fields are unique to a single template.

Pragmatically, there is really no reason why an infobox about a business project ("aircraft program") should be combined with an infobox that details a vehicle, or an infobox about an engine!

Discussion
Please let's discuss on this proposal's talk page. Let's take time to get this right.

A big misgiving I have about the alternative strategy of "let's smoosh everything into one giant table" is that right now, we have the opportunity to easily and programmatically identify which template is being used where. After a mega-merge, it's much harder to un-make the omelette...