User talk:Wikiadam
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Hello, Wikiadam, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:
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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! DionysosProteus 16:50, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
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[edit] User boxes
That's that. I'm assuming you're a new editor, but perhaps that's not right? I notice you're adding infoboxes to Shakespeare plays. There's a discussion on those here, please feel free to offer your perspective. Thanks, DionysosProteus 16:50, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
Hi - we had a long discussion about infoboxes and, at present, there was no consensus to add them. Some of the reasons included the fact that we simply don't know a lot about the plays in terms of typical facts an infobox might provide (date of writing, first performance, number of performances, first theatre, starring actors, etc.). I had also thought that saying "Hamlet", by Shakespeare, location - Denmark, was simply repetitive with what was in the first paragraph of the article. Finally, from a visual standpoint, having a classic piece of art or a historical document was more interesting than an infobox, which didn't do justice to the greatness that is Shakespeare. Thanks. Smatprt 18:16, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
[edit] More about info boxes
I have just looked at the Macbeth page, and the addition of the info box is a total stuff-up!
Every time you make an edit you need to do the following things
- Use the Show preview option to find out whether you edit has been successful, before saving.
- If you've caused a stuff-up, fix it.
- If you don't know how to fix it, then don't save your info. Leave a message on the discussion page asking someone more experience to include your suggestion.
- Use the Edit summary box. Write in a summary like "Added info box" which is a major edit. This way, if something goes wrong, a person who wants to find out when and how and restore the page to a previous form doesn't have to search through page after page looking for the point at which it happened, which is what I have just done, in order to leave this message.
- What went wrong?
- Whenever you add a picture or box, it pushes aside the text. It also pushes down any other picture or box that is in the way.
- If the picture that is already present has writing underneath it, then all the writing gets pushed down to the same level as the picture, this leaves a big gap that is the same length as the info box. In other words, it wrecks the layout of te whole page.
- When you editted Macbeth, there was a nice large picture right where you put the box. The picture was at the head of the intro, so not only did the picture get pushed down to below the info box, the intro got pushed down the page as well.
- This left a couple of lines of notes and redirects, but the actual article itself started half a mile down the page.
If you add any more boxes or large pics to anything, the message is look at what you are doing and carefully rearrange all the other pictures that are affected. Sometimes several pics may be affected it the box you have added is half a mile long.
Basically, I hate boxes for this sort of reason. The info found in them is generally somewhere else in the article anyway.
The hard way to fix it is to fiddle with all the pics. The easy way is to simply remove the box. Amandajm 11:17, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Re info-boxes again
It is not my intention to be patronising. People who contribute here range from adult literary geniuses to nine-year-old children. I don't know where you fit on that scale, so I try to make points in a way that is clear.
This business with boxes happens all the time. As a major contributor to writing art and architecture articles, I find that the boxes that go vertically into article are almost always a space-consuming nuisance. On the other hand, horizontal boxes that go at the bottom can be very useful.
For example, a list of the characters of a particular Shakepseare play doesn't add much that is valuable, given that every major character will be (or ought to be) mentioned within the text of the article, and linked, if there is an individual article on them. But the box at the bottom that gives the names of all the other plays (and links to them) is useful because the info is not in the text of the article one is reading, but may be highly relevant to what one is studying.
Likewise, any large vertical box in a biography that takes up space merely stating the birth and death dates and reason for fame is, in my opinion, completely redundant, because all that information is contained within the first paragraph. But a horizontal box at the bottom linking to others that have worked in the field of interest (for example) is valuable.
Amandajm 04:13, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
