Template talk:Album infobox 2

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[edit] TfD nomination of Template:Album_infobox_2

Template:Album_infobox_2 has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:Album_infobox_2. Thank you. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 17:34, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

The debate can be found here. There was no consensus on what should be done. -Splash^talk 02:03, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

The discussion should be continued at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Albums. --Tokle 11:38, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Albums/archive_4#Album_infobox_2 (archive) andWikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Albums#infobox2? (current). Jkelly 17:17, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Use of this template

Discussion about the use of this template seems to have stalled without any sort of resolution. I'd like to try to summarize the situation as of now, with the hopes of moving forward toward a consensus. I assume that all parties agree that the only difference between this template and the template that is a guideline at WP:ALBUM is that it includes images of the preceding and next album covers. I would characterize the objections to the template's use, as being threefold. The first, and perhaps least contentious, is about bandwidth. Do the additional images justify the additional load? I am pessimistic about trying to evaluate this concern, and am unaware of any WP policy or guideline to refer to for clarity, so this issue is likely to remain one of personal preference. The second concern also has to do with personal preference, in this case an aesthetic judgement about the width of the infobox and whether or not the additional covers are pleasing. Some people find it so, some people do not.

The most contentious issue, however, is clearly the copyright infringement one. It appears to me that this issue needs to be further broken down into two "sub-issues". The first, and the one that has received a great deal of discussion that is, by its nature, purely speculative, is whether or not a court of law would find the copyright infringement covered by "fair use" doctrine. I suggest that this focus is unfortunate, and would go so far as to say that it is counter-productive. Every use of a copyrighted image on Wikipedia results in a non-zero chance that the Foundation will have to go to trial, an undesirable event regardless of whether that case would be won or lost. What is really at stake is what Wikipedia's fair use policy dictates; what the Foundation is prepared to go to trial over. The question should not be "Would we win?", the question should be whether or not it meets policy.

Relevant policy lines include:

• The amount of copyrighted work used should be as little as possible.
• The material must contribute significantly to the article (e.g. identify the subject of an article, or specifically illustrate relevant points or sections within the text) and must not serve a purely decorative purpose.
• For each article for which fair use is claimed, the name of the article and a "fair use rationale" as explained in Wikipedia:Image description page. The rationale must be presented in a manner that can be clearly understood and which is relevant to the article in question.

...and, arguably:

• They should never be used on templates (including stub templates and navigation boxes) or on user pages.

I have, in the past, suggested that the template be deleted. I later argued that Wikipedia's Fair Use policy needed to be changed to cover this template's image use. Neither argument was found by the community to be convincing. The issue came up again at Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates#Beatles_For_Sale, at which myself and another editor objected to its use, and one editor seemed to be under the impression that this template was demanded by the article's WikiProject guidelines. The current state of affairs seems to be problematic, and I urge movement towards either deprecating this template, or an initiative to change both our album cover fair use rationale and larger Wikipedia fair use policy if there exists that much investment in this template. Jkelly 20:43, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

I'll be brief because I'm not addressing all three issues you present (especially the copyright/fair-use one). I believe with regard to server load that the images are turned into thumbnails once and then cached. So the server load should be fairly negligible. As far as bandwidth costs go, I couldn't say. It might be useful to explore that by looking at the size of thumbnail image generated at the resolution used by the template. As far as how "pretty" it looks, yeah, I confess, I'm a sucker for things that look nice. The one thing you didn't mention was that, sadly, it's also non-functional as a navigational aid. If you click on an image, you're taken to the image page, not to the article associated with that image. If kept, I think that's something that needs to be worked out. About fair-use... I think fair-use, with respect to templates, desperately needs updating. I do think fair-use images should be allowed in templates. -Locke Cole 02:20, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree that the fair use rationale and fair use policy very much needs updating (this method of resolving the issue hadn't really occured to me, so cheers to Jkelly on that one). I would be very interested in hearing differing opinions about this. As for the other points, I agree with the opinions of Locke Cole, so I won't repeat them. --Qirex 11:04, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Delete. Noting that I'm not versed in the legalities of all this, but the addition of previous/next albums covers seems superfluous for the nature of the articles. Using a smaller version of the current album, only sized at 50px rather than 200px, seems needless as well. Looking at the fair uses concerns outlined by Jkelly above, I believe that that use of album covers unrelated to the specific article, while aesthetically pleasing to me personally, isn't something I believe we should support. Is this "vote" is misdirected, since the previous vote was already deemed inconclusive and closed, someone please leave me a note on my Talk page, and I'll be glad to copy/move it to the relevant page. Liontamer 18:07, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Liontamer (except that I don't find it particularly æsthetically pleasing, though I recognise that it's in keeping with the current fashion in journalism). Note also that it hasn't been accepted by the relevant Wikiproject; it's just a template created by one editor — my feeling is that the Wikiprojects are imporrtant in bringing consistency to aread of Wikipedia, and for one or two editors to try to impose inconsistency is unhelpful. (So far as I can tell, none of them has tried to convince editors of the Albums Wikiproject that this template should be adopted — perhaps because they didn't think thay'd succeed.)

Rather than making this a vote on the use of the template, there's nothing to stop this template being edited, so we could be trying to reach consensus on that. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:03, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] TfD nomination of Template:Album_infobox_2

Template:Album_infobox_2 has again been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:Album_infobox_2. Thank you. Monicasdude 20:08, 16 December 2005 (UTC)