Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Alternative medicine/Infoboxes

Unlike most projects, the Wikiproject on alternative medicine contains a large number of different project pages that are designed to organize the data contained in articles about CAM. The infobox on the far right is designed to make it easier to navigate your way through the maze of different project and talk pages contained in this Wikiproject. It is suggested that your exploration of our project should start out on the main project page.

The rules are very simple here.
The rules are very simple here. -- John Gohde, aka Mr-Natural-Health 15:04, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * 1) If you want to edit this WikiProject, then we are asking for the simple courtesy of registering yourself as a Public Participant in this WikiProject in the main project page. Most WikiProjects follow this same practice.
 * 2) All comments made on our talk pages must be friendly.
 * 3) * Hostile comments and / or personal attacks are subject to being refactored out by any of our public participants.
 * 4) This talk page should be reserved for discussions about the infoboxes used by this wikiproject.

Why do we use such an ugly color for our infobox?
A number of people have complained about our color choice.

With all due respect, you should check out Infobox. Every WikiProject is supposed to pick an unique color. This is what we did. Our ugly infobox has been posted to Wikipedia:Infobox for quite some time now along with all the other ugly infoboxes. Our color choice of #ffcc99 happens to be a safe color which means that it is supposed to work on all kinds of monitors and computer hardware setups. We are the only project officially using this color choice. It has the virtue of being light in color so that the text is readable.

The hip-hop music infobox uses basically the same ugly color of orange. If it is good enough for the hip hop crowd, how bad can this color choice be?


 * On my monitor, the hip hop color is noticeably different from the alterative medicine color. I'm sure hip hop fans will be relieved.  :)  heidimo  18:45, 27 May 2004 (UTC)


 * Yeah! Our shade of orange is a whole lot better. -- John Gohde 19:11, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

I have grown to like this color, you will too. Try adjusting your monitor. You might have it set too bright or too dark. -- John Gohde 23:46, 18 May 2004 (UTC)


 * whatever. Its still too big, and should be at the bottom of iridology if nothing else. That article is way too crowded for this to be at the top of it. Sam [Spade] 02:16, 19 May 2004 (UTC)


 * When compared to the infoboxes of the other projects and those huge article series blue boxes of some other projects it is actually quite small. -- John Gohde 03:53, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

We are using several several different boxes in this project. For the branches of alternative medicine our customized infobox is required on top of the article.

For other articles, can be placed at the very bottom of the article. It looks as follows. -- John Gohde 16:20, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Project on Alternative Medicine Template Deletion History
I am interested in finding the deletion history for these Wikiproject on Alternative Medicine templates. Notes on their respective talk pages indicate TfD noitces were posted Aug - Sept 2004, yet the Deletion Log for Sept has no record of anybody voting on these templates. What happened?


 * CamMenu -- TfD notice was posted in Sept 2004.
 * CamBottom -- TfD notice was posted in Aug 2004.
 * Alternative Medicine ( Terms, Philosophy, Branches, People, History, Index )
 * CamFailed
 * CamPassed
 * -- John Gohde 08:07, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * They were deleted via Templates for deletion. If you scroll back in the history of that you'll find the discussions. Snowspinner 23:01, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

The Project on Alternative Medicine was started long after projects were an accepted part of Wikipedia. Our Infobox was modeled after the long accepted infobox for the Project on Buddhism. This fact has been stated in a number of different places, such on our main project page. And on the original edit summaries and talk pages of each of the articles used in our project's infobox. This fact is undeniable. Our infobox is actually better than the Buddha box because it is smaller and more compact. So, any of the vile comments directed against our infobox goes double for the Buddha box. I will ask this question. When will you guys get around to deleting the Buddha box and all the other project infoboxes? John Gohde 04:38, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Deletion History for CamMenu
Jumping back to the previous 5,000 edits I came up with this.

September 13

 * Template:CamMenu - More MNH alternative medicine spamming and an attempt to put in a lever to edit lots of articles at once without it showing in recent changes. Redundant with the category, to say the least - David Gerard 11:06, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. Snowspinner 17:33, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)
 * delete. --Jiang 20:36, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. CryptoDerk 22:50, Sep 20, 2004 (UTC)

May not be complete, as searching the history file is way too time consuming. I will say that the comments indicate a total and a complete lack of understanding as to how both infoboxes and projects work in Wikipedia. I also find them personally offensive due to the MNH and spamming comments. I will also add that categories don't come close to replacing project infoboxes. Anybody casually familiar with searching on Wikipedia should know this. I only know what categories are, because I am an editor. A person totally unfamiliar with Wikipedia probably wont even find that hyperlink, let alone know what it is for. Once found, categories are still extremely time consuming to use. And, they fall far short of categorizing subtopics, which is precisely what infoboxes excel at. John Gohde 05:44, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Template:buddhism
When it comes to alternative medicine, any excuse to delete is acceptable. See and then compare it to Votes for deletion/Wholeness.

Why the Project on Alternative Medicine's InfoBoxes are NOT Obsolete
Infoboxes share absolutely nothing in common with categories because Categories, lists, and series_boxes does not cover infoboxes.

Infoboxes, as well as our latest revision, are a consistently-formatted table which are present in articles with a common subject that provide classification information. Our particular infoxbox references a well-annotated list to related articles, if and only if a viewer decides to click on an infobox hyperlink. Viewers are only taken to other related articles when they click on a hyperlink contained within our well-annotated list. Please note that offical Wikipedian guidelines state that: I shall repeat that again: a well-annotated list is never redundant with categories, and our infobox has a single purspose which is not navigation.
 * 1) ''"Lists on Wikipedia have three main purposes:
 * 2) *''Information - The list may be a valuable information source. ... Examples would include ... annotated lists.
 * 3) *''Navigation... lists of related topics (also called list of links to related articles).
 * 4) *Development - Some lists are useful for Wikipedia development purposes. The lists of related topics give an indication of the state of the 'opedia, the articles that have been written, and the articles that have yet to be written."
 * 5) "A well-annotated list may duplicate a category, but not be redundant with it."

Therefore, our infoxboxes are part of an offical Wikiproject, are informative rather than navigational in nature, are not redundant with categories per Wikipedian guidelines, and are thus not obsolete. -- John Gohde 06:21, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)