Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Composers/Infobox debates

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The following archives document the various infobox discussions:

Below is a series of extracts from the first discussion in 2007 about biographical infoboxes originally held on this project page. Please note this is not the only debate to have been held on this subject, either here or elsewhere.

Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents

Infoboxes for composers

Infobox,Episode 1 (Apr 11-12)

I am seeking a consensus for [classical] composer articles about Infoboxes. I had hoped that the soft consensus of those who edit the articles about classical composers would be respected, but apparently you must have a WikiProject behind you now in order to make suggestions on articles. I would put forward that Infoboxes are a net negative for Classical composers. They are redundant to a good lede paragraph, and they lead to stating things about composers in very black and white terms. In addition, they tend to take up the first editing screen and confuse new editors who might want to edit the beginning of articles, and might be scared off by the template format. In addition, they are difficult for the inexperienced to modify to special circumstances, and are easily broken.

I think infoboxes can be good for things for which taxonomy is important, such as plants and animals. I don't think they're good for things which require more subtlety, like people. Some specific examples of why infoboxes are, in practicality, bad, although I wouldn't be surprised if the technically savvy could fix some of them: In Ludwig van Beethoven the infobox says "born blah blah blah" when dozens of contributors have worked constantly to clarify that his birth date is not known, only his Baptismal date. Apparently, for some reason, the instruments he owned are particularly important. Wait, that doesn't make any sense. Moving on to Frederic Chopin, or whatever his name is, the last infobox included in the article gave his birth name as Frederic Chopin, the least likely of his name to be given as a birth name. Add to that the national flags added to all of them, even when at the time cities may have been parts of different countries, the mistakes which are introduced when people do mass-additions of infoboxes, and their lack of flexibility, I think in the long run it's much better not to have infoboxes on composer articles. Thanks, Mak (talk) 21:58, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

While I think it is possible to do a decent composer infobox, I pretty much agree with this. I've never really liked infoboxes for people because of the reasons Mak points out. Kat Walsh (spill your mind?) 22:12, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for bringing this up. I have to agree, and I think that the key point is that we are dealing with human beings. There are far too many subtleties for the infobox, definitely. The national flag has become an issue on the Liszt page, where we currently have the Austro-Hungarian flag, when it really isn't necessary to have a flag at all. I think if anything we should encourage users not to place infoboxes necessarilly, and to include them only if they're deemed necessary for a specific article. Not because of wikiproject beaurocracy, but because it's almost as if there is a certain pressure to conform and thus include an infobox, where in many cases they're neither necessary nor desirable. M A Mason 22:13, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
Gah, it's awful on Beethoven. In general, generic infoboxes are not good on people. People don't fit into nice little boxes. ;) I suppose it would be okay to code a fully custom infobox on each composer, but that would dramatically reduce the small value that infoboxes provide. I'm glad to see people trying to build consistency standards on Wikipedia, but it would be nice if they were working on ones like sourcing ... rather than on one likes this which are sometimes harmful (as demonstrated in your example). --Gmaxwell 22:14, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
Respectfully diagree. I think the infoboxes on all people are highly valuable and informative and gives a certain overall respectable appearance to the articles. Cricket02 22:22, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
But to the extent they are informative, they are redundant to the lede. I don't see how they add to the respectability of articles when they are sometimes blatantly wrong, or not nuanced enough to really be called right. Do we really need more pastel boxes? (Plus, sometimes the colors are really ugly). Just because textbooks tend to have lots of ugly reductionist pastel boxes doesn't mean we need them. Mak (talk) 22:49, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
I am in complete agreement with Mak, though I have long suspected I had a minority view. Infoboxes on composers, especially as you get to times before the modern age, are misleading at best. The most basic of facts need a nuanced view which is impossible in a box, but which is already available in the lead paragraph. Frankly I think we risk looking like amateurs when we have a box for a composer that baldly gives a birthdate (ambiguous), nationality (meaningless without an explanation), and genre (the worst of all--I've seen the word "classical" used in the sense it is in record stores, i.e. to differentiate the music of that composer from hip-hop, country, et al.) No, I cannot support adding infoboxes to composer articles. Antandrus (talk) 22:59, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
While I agree that infoboxes are often badly implemented, I am in favour of using them when they make navigation between articles easier. We have a number of infoboxes for opera composers that list their works and I think these are useful. Infoboxes also serve the purpose of breaking up text and making articles more accessible. - Kleinzach 23:10, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
Hey Kleinzach, I'm not opposed to all "boxes with information" in articles, I think those used for navigation and listing all of a composers operas, etc., can be very useful. I am talking specifically about {{Infobox Biography}} and related infoboxes, which are used to give basic information such as birthday, birthplace, cup size, instrument, etc. For examples see Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Liszt, it's the big box on the right. Mak (talk) 23:16, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
If we are talking about potted biography infoboxes then I agree with you entirely. The Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Liszt boxes (listing their occupations!) are grotesque. - Kleinzach 23:37, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
Yup, those are what I'm talking about. Mak (talk) 23:39, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
You know that Beethoven box is awful! Same as the Liszt one, that flag was NOT the Austrian flag in 1827. It's shocking and simplistic. They really should go. M A Mason 23:46, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
Have a look at the one on Josquin des Prez, which just appeared this morning. It even has a flag of France and one of (!) Austria. At the risk of being repetitive, I really think the composer infoboxes need to go. Thanks, Antandrus (talk) 00:42, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
I support removal of infoboxes, using Beethoven as a case study (some points were already covered by Mak):

Please consider the reason why an infobox is presented on a page like this. An infobox puts vital information in a concise, easy table for cursory readers to glean. In this case, an infobox is not ideal because the birth date, first of all, is contested, and it does not provide sufficient information about the peculiarities of his actual birth. Moreover, the rest of the information is misleading and confusing to those who are not musicians — Beethoven uniquely straddles both Classical and Romantic eras in music, and putting both there means nothing to those who don't understand his chronological ambiguity. The "Occupations" row is misleading, apparently stating Beethoven's work was part of some job or career. The "Notable Instruments" section still confuses me; is it a list of instruments he owned? Why is that info pertinent in summarizing his life into a small box?

(above is my comment) ALTON .ıl 05:21, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Get rid of the damn things. What's the point of having an "infobox" when the box itself is distorting the accuracy of the info it contains? The flags are being used in a hopelessly anachronistic way and complicated matters such as ambiguous birth dates and nationalities are being misleadingly simplified by this Procrustean monstrosity. It makes us look as if we're playing Top Trumps with composers. --Folantin 07:40, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I too oppose the biographical infoboxes, for the same reasons that keep recurring above. logologist|Talk 07:50, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
<rant, you might want to look away>One thing that perpetually gets my back up is that every time I write an article for flaming DYK, along comes someone from the Biography Project, adding a whole series of annoying templates to the talk: one of these, is invariably, "This article needs an infobox"! Well, no, this article doesn't need an infobox. For starters such articles are pretty short and an infobox would take up as much space as the actual content, and secondly the birth dates of fairly obscure 18th-century singers are invariably never known: usually we don't even know their birthplace, all that's survived is the date of their first musical appearance - and their last, because usually we don't know when they died, viz Anna Maria Strada: no birthdate or death-date. These ones for composers are particularly monstrous. Whack'em.</rant over> Moreschi Want some help? Ask! 08:15, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Infoboxes for composers (continued)

Infobox Returns (Apr 12-13)

Ouch! I've been following this discussion and wondering whether and how to respond. I would be one editor who is "guilty" of adding templates to talk pages, including "needs infobox". As a result of a very civil discussion with Antandrus , on Talk:Claudio Monteverdi, I learned the reasons why those who edit the articles about classical composers prefer not to have infoboxes, and have therefore ceased the practice of using the "needs infobox" parameter on Composers articles.

Moreschi, your reference to "Mr. Cretin" above (in my case it would be "Ms. Cretin"), is not very pleasant. Part of the process of Wikipedia is that one does things that one thinks is beneficial, and then one's behavior is refined by interactions with others, where people explain why they have opinions or preferences about doing things different ways. In the case of my adding the "needs infobox parameter" to the Claudio Monteverdi article, the next editor's response was merely to change the parameter to "No", with no attempt to "educate" me as to why - this could have been done via a note on my talk page; a note on the talk page of the article; even a comment in the edit summary. After seeing that change, I tried looking for documentation of a "soft consensus" in a centralized location, and couldn't find one, and therefore needed to solicit an explanation, in order to understand why my edit was changed. So, I'm glad that this discussion has been started here. But, I'd ask you to consider that any discussion on Wikipedia has a "public audience" and to be respectful of those coming from a different angle.

Many of you have been stating very strongly the reasons why you don't like infoboxes on articles about Composers. I would suggest, now, changing the direction of the discussion to focus on positive actions, rather than rants that may offend those who have (however mistakenly) recommended infoboxes in the past. How might you interact positively with WikiProject Biography to accomplish what you'd like to happen? Thanks in advance for your willingness to talk things over in a positive way, Lini 12:37, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Lini, I suspect that was me, and I apologise that you felt you needed an explanation and didn't get one. I assumed that you were going through tagging scores of articles, and wouldn't notice or care if the parameters on one were changed. Whenever I have tried to explain why a biography box was detrimental for a specific composer article, people have insisted that I should get higher level consensus. Say, on the Composers Wikiproject. I don't think we should need a consensus of all of WikiProject Biography in order to keep infoboxes off of composer articles, although if we get consensus (and it looks like we will as long as those involved in the discussion are those who edit composer biographies) we should probably let them know. Although I think infoboxes for people are generally detrimental, there are probably groups who strongly disagree with me, and whose subject areas work better within the confines of infoboxes. Mak (talk) 14:47, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
My apologies for being a complete jackass: that wasn't polite or civil, and I apologise. In fact, it was very, very stupid. I wasn't really so annoyed with the composer ones, which are borderline cases as I was in cases where an infobox would take up more room and go on for longer in the viewing window than the actual article does. I'll talk to WP:BIOGRAPHY over this - politely. Again, I apologise for being a dick. Sorry. Cheers, Moreschi Want some help? Ask! 13:33, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Moreschi, thank you for the apology and the nice note on my talk page; I kinda thought that your remarks were more along the lines of "not thinking the impact all the way through" than deliberately trying to offend anyone. Thanks for taking the time to "make it right". Cheers, Lini 19:15, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

A couple of side-notes:

  • While pottering around adding things like Template:Verdi operas to opera articles, I've occasionally run into infoboxes on composer pages that aren't the ones under discussion here, for example Template:italianmusic, which appears, for example, in the articles on Domenico Cimarosa, Francesco Cilea and Franco Donatoni. And I see that someone has completely unnecessarily added the Verdi operas template to the Giuseppe Verdi article, notwithstanding that this more-or-less duplicates the list of operas in the article, and the image at the top of the infobox duplicates the one already in the article. It looks as if some sort of territorial agreement (or summit conference) among projects might be useful - specifically, I suppose, where the activities of the Biography people overlap other projects. I dunno where the Music of Italy one comes from.
  • If anyone wants to look at discussion similar to the above, try the Shakespeare talk page where a discussion about "influences" in the infobox includes discussion of their general utility.

Add my vote to the biography-infoboxes-for-composers-are-a-waste-of-space camp. --GuillaumeTell 13:55, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

(General comment) Please bear in mind that some infoboxes are being used to contain structured meta data, to assist parsing by 'bots, and this kind of use is likely to increase the future, not least with the addition of microformats such as hCard. If the current infobox(es) are not notable, then I think we'd do better to replace or improve, rather then avoid, them. Andy Mabbett 15:04, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Not notable? Huh? I think if you want editors to use infoboxes as metadata catch-alls, you should make them a lot more flexible. We need to find a much more robust way to gather metadata, this is clearly not working for composers. Mak (talk) 15:27, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
s/notable/suitable - my typo. Where does this "you" come from? I thought this was supposed to be a collaboration? Andy Mabbett 16:04, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
Don't get me started on bots...We're an encylopaedia; our primary aim should be to provide accurate information; anything that hinders that (such as these boxes) should go. --Folantin 15:34, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
You appear to have misread or not read, my comment - if they "hinder" that aim then they should be improved until they do not. Good infoboxes help that aim. Andy Mabbett 16:04, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
Why not use the "persondata" template to collect metadata? That's what it's for. The infoboxes on composers do more harm than good, as discussed above, and you can collect good metadata using something like "persondata" which is invisible. Antandrus (talk) 16:07, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
Include Infoboxes – I am actually one of the undesirable people that add infoboxes to articles. However, on pages where there is a dispute over the inclusion of an infobox, I refrain from adding one but might make a comment on the article's talk page. I actually refrained from adding an infobox to the Beethoven page as the well-sized image looked quite nice there before, and saw the discussion from September 2006 on the Talk page. As for the instruments thing, it's supposed to be for well-known specific instruments played by a musical performer. (It was added to accomodate famous guitars for incorporating the guitarist infobox into the musical artist infobox.) It doesn't make sense for Beethoven but perhaps it does for Yo-Yo Ma and his Stradivarious Cello. I recently asked for a vote on the Chopin talk page on whether to include an infobox. I understand that the infobox does not illustrate the nuances of certain facts about a person's life. However, there is nothing in the musical artist infobox that explicitly states a person's nationality. It states their date and place of birth, date and place of death, and optionally their origin if it is different from their place of birth. Their origin is explained as where they started their musical career or the notable part of it. Notes can be added to birthplace or date, just as in the body of an article, where an interested party can look to find additional information. If no date is known, one can simply put the year, decade, or century with circa. If editors have a problem with a listed genre, change it or discuss it on the talk page. Editors that have a great deal of knowledge about a subject may find infoboxes simplistic, redundant, and rude. However, a student with little or no knowledge about a subject can use the infobox to quickly identify the subject by context. This is the greatest use of an infobox for the broad audience of wikipedia. For this reason, I hope that infoboxes can be incorporated into these articles, with every attempt to make the information contained within them as accurate as possible. - cgilbert(talk|contribs) 18:50, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
Well, in the case of Beethoven, for instance, they could get the same information (only more accurate) from the first two sentences of the article (if the places of birth and death were put there). The introductory sections to each article are supposed to provide an overview of the subject anyway - and they are able to do this in a far more flexible and intelligent manner than the infoboxes. --Folantin 19:17, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
I think perhaps you are missing some of our objections to infoboxes, or perhaps they are not problems for you. The point on Beethoven is not that I don't understand what the appropriate place for a performer's instruments would be, but that is entirely inappropriate for Beethoven's article to have it as one of the first things. As for giving a range or decade for his birthday, we know a definite fact about his birth - his date of baptism. It seems silly to give a wishy-washy date for his birthday when we can give his exact date of baptism. But this is not really the point - it is that infoboxes have a tendency to be inaccurate, inappropriate, and inflexible. The Beethoven article is just a particularly egregious example. If the regular editors could figure out how to make it good without hours of research into strange codes, they would. These infoboxes are not very wiki. The use of flags for countries which did not exist at the time the person lived, in Josquin for example, is just yet another example of a near-pathological need for consistency to the detriment of accuracy.
Also, this discussion is not about all infoboxes. It is just about Biography infoboxes on composer articles. Mak (talk) 19:56, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
Except that the infobox on the Beethoven page is not a Biography infobox but Template:Infobox musical artist, which has been slapped on a lot of composers' pages when it's really intended for performers (such as Alexis Korner, Britney Spears, Doris Day, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Throbbing Gristle - need I go on?) --GuillaumeTell 21:01, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
The basis for it is the Biography infobox. That there are a gazillion versions of almost-identicle infoboxes for biographies is an argument for why they are not very useful, to me. It makes it difficult for bots to parse them anyway, and highlights their inflexibility. My point with the above comment is that we are not trying to abolish them for those who feel strongly that Britney Spears needs an infobox, and we are not trying to get rid of all informative templates, but that we are only trying to get a consensus about the "potted biographies", as Kleinzach calls them. Mak (talk) 21:06, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
Exactly. It's not a problem, as far as I am concerned anyway, if people want to have infoboxes on popular performers, or even "classical" performers. Perlman has a verifiable birthdate, lives in countries, owns a significant violin, and plays it regularly. But Josquin?? I wouldn't want someone just reading about this magnificent musician for the first time to think he was born in Austria, died in France, and considered his occupation to be composer. All three are not only misleading, they are demonstrably false. Antandrus (talk) 00:57, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Infobox, the Revenge (Apr 16-17)

I've just raised this issue with the Arts Project to se how other projects feel about it, see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Arts#Biographical_infoboxes.2C_Biography_Project_banners_and_bots. Any other news? - Kleinzach 00:12, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the thoughts of those that oppose badly thought-out infoboxes (sometimes it is possible for an infobox to be well designed), and also those who oppose flags in infoboxes. I once started and advertised a centralized discussion on use of flag templates, but that ran out of steam. Doing one for infoboxes would take even more effort, but is urgently needed. Two reasons - (1) I read somewhere, but can't find the reference, that Google are trying to parse our infoboxes!! (2) We should really be using Wikipedia:Persondata to gather biographical meta-data for database-type applications. Finally, database concerns should be secondary to the need to produce a well-references and well-written encyclopedia article. Carcharoth 12:56, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

There are some interesting discussions at Wikipedia talk:Persondata as well. Carcharoth 13:01, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
Probably pointless dissent At the risk of spitting into the wind, I have to disagree with much of the above. I think some of the opposition is driven by the aesthetic concerns of experts/initiates, rather than strategic concerns wrt serving the general reader.
Infoboxes in general have a distinctly USA Today feel that naturally grates on us longhairs, inducing feelings akin to a passionate oenophile presented with a white wine spritzer. [I count myself as much a longhair musicgeek as any here--just look at the freakin username I took!] But while even the initiate can learn lots from the best WP articles, I don't think that's the only, or even necessarily the primary, goal of developing these articles. Ideally, while simultaneously affording a respectable scholarly overview, I think a perfect article should also provide a friendly intro to the most ignorant of the uninitiated. (Note: ignorant, not stupid.) It's the same reason we wikilink the most basic concepts (even music itself!). Try to imagine the reader who comes to the article wondering just who, or what, a Goss-kwynn is. He looks at the box, sees that he's the guy in the funny hat in the woodcut, & that he lived in Europe in the 1500's & wrote music. Maybe that's enough for him, or that's all he has time for today. He goes away seconds later (assuming a decent infobox) less ignorant than before. What's wrong with that?
Yes, infoboxes often duplicate the info in a good lead section. But take the common parallel of a good (broadsheet) newspaper article. Compare the infobox with the headline, the lead section with the lede, or front page, text, and the stuff after the TOC (the article proper) with the meat of the news article, "after the jump". News headlines and ledes almost always duplicate information. That doesn't mean they serve the same purpose. And leads aren't always much better. I took a look at Beethoven the other day after reading complaints here. I immediately edited the infobox to cut the occupation "conductor." But (as I said on the talk page) I had to edit the lead too--in fact the lead was worse. IIRC the phrase was "...he was also a celebrated pianist and conductor," which is so wrong my brain hurts. I just looked at Chopin (the top of which is really very anti WP:STYLE). I found myself really wanting an infobox so that I could quickly remind myself what his dates were or just how young he died, without digging through the 25 versions of his name (like it or not his name in common Anglophone usage is precisely Frederic Chopin; one can always just delete the "birthname" parameter).
To my eye the current iterations of the Josquin and Beethoven infoboxes are net pluses. It doesn't seem to have been that impossible to fix the problems, like just deleting the anachronistic flags. (I do think minimalism is good infobox philosophy.) Maybe Josquin didn't "think of himself" as a composer, but we certainly do; if he were just a great Papal chorister I dare say he wouldn't be on WP.
Finally on the technical editing issues Mak brought up way up top, as a pretty new editor (c. 40 days), I really haven't had much problem working with {{Infobox musical artist}}. Once you get a hold of the basic idea of a template (which any serious editor is gonna have to do anyway) it's not all that hard to work with. Actually, with it's named parameters and throrough "doc" page, it's one of the easier templates I've worked with so far. No it's not ideal for composers, but I think decent workarounds are possible and have already been achieved in some places. Terminology is a problem, but I think we have to meet the general public halfway in places--the lay listener may hear stylistic differences between Beethoven's 1st piano sonata and the 32nd, but she is almost certainly going to identify both as the "classical" genre. Has anyone tried bringing up modifications/additional parameters (say "Stylistic period=...") w/ the template's creators or WPMusicians? or just creating a fork? (...he asked, confident that his own technical incompetence would absolve him of actual responsibility...)
Apologies as usual for verbosity. There's alot up there to respond to...—Turangalila talk 15:16, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
Thank you Turangalila for your support and thorough explanation of the use of infoboxes. You explained the issue much better than I have been able to do. I've also noticed the Chopin page in particular for its stance against the inclusion of an infobox, and the awkward layout at the top of the page. I've made comments on the Chopin talk page in relation to the use of an infobox and to the position of the table of contents. I hope that the users who are against using infoboxes can read Turangalila's comments above and come away with a new appreciation for the value that they provide to uninformed and casual users of Wikipedia. - cgilbert(talk|contribs) 22:22, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
I'd like to add support for the viewpoint that Turangalila expressed, that it is OK that the content of infoboxes is redundant (they are supposed to be redundant), and that, in spite of the difficulty of presenting a nuanced view of the information in the very brief summary required, they are a net plus, when recognized as targeting "the most ignorant of uninitiated" readers (no disparagement intended by that terminology), who is just taking a quick look at the page. Turangalila, you did a good job of expressing eloquently, thoughts on infoboxes that I'd been trying to grapple with the day that I first read this discussion. However, I will also restate, for consistency with previous statements I've made, that although I agree that a decently designed and utilized infobox is a net plus to an article in general, that does not mean that I think a group of articles should be required to have them if the consensus of editors who are most interested in the articles is against having them. Thanks, Lini 02:18, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
I don't think anybody is against infoboxes per se. We certainly have used them on the Opera Project - but they should be fit for purpose. --Kleinzach 02:34, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Talk:Ludwig van Beethoven now has a To do list which states Wikify: On IE the Birth name appear as John Winston Lennon. The article has ben listed as a current candidate for the Article Creation and Improvement Drive. I am going to remove the infobox and ask for a vote, as we have had on the Chopin page. Everyone is welcome to express any opinion but please do us the basic courtesy of actually reading the article and thinking before you decide. - Kleinzach 23:04, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

BTW I got rid of the John Lennon business on LvB talk, which AFAICT was 4-month old vandalism noone had noticed. Is a possible "article improvement drive" somehow a problem as well? —Turangalila talk 02:05, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
After asking for a vote on the Talk:Ludwig van Beethoven infobox, the article has been automatically relisted on Category:Musicians work group articles needing infoboxes. - Kleinzach 00:24, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
I tried this, but doubt it will stick for long. As above, I think we're better without infoboxes on non-current composers, but it's not the end of the world if I'm overruled. Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 00:28, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
FWIW I agree that an automatic re-listing or parameter-changing is pretty bizarre...are you sure that wasn't some overzealous pro-infobox editor? Anyway, I tried some further "trimming" on the LvB talk page wrt birthday etc. Like I said, I'm all in favor of minimizing infobox content where any controversy etc applies, but if their net contribution to the page can be rendered zero or greater, I think inclusionism is the right attitude...—Turangalila talk 01:33, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Infoboxes for composers (continued)

Infobox vs Mothra (Apr 25-28)

Side note: Since people asked, Mothra was a frequent enemy or sidekick to Godzilla in bad Japanese monster movies, and a frequent afernoon guest on my childhood TV screen. I guess infoboxes had me in a "low culture" frame of mind... and I guess I'm getting old. —Turangalila talk 21:08, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

i find the attitudes regarding the infoboxes and composer quite odd. keeping in mind that not everyone who visits these pages are as familiar with the classical genre as some of the editors and patrollers of the composer articles. what infoboxes do is impart information quickly to those who may not be inclined or have the time to plunge into the depths of music theory to find something interesting. these composers are not deities and gods...just men with a truck-load of talent. let's not forget that wikipaedia is not for the learned...for those seeking information, and all this stilting and deifying serves only to is exclude the very people we should be woeing. --emerson7 | Talk 02:43, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

the above is copied from my STRONG OBJECTIONS early placed on the Puccini talk page.--emerson7 | Talk 03:54, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
User:emerson7 has replaced the Puccini infobox despite four editors asking for it to be removed and only one (two counting emerson7) wanting to keep it (see Talk:Giacomo_Puccini#Infobox. (He has also replaced the infobox on Rimsky-Korsakov again against majority opinion). --Kleinzach 05:02, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Hi everyone. Has anyone ever considered that this will have to be done with other well known people in history. Surely it would be the same. If we removed infoboxes, then we will have to remove the info boxes for philosophers like Ludwig Wittgenstein and scientists like Paul Dirac or Charles Darwin and novelists like Charles Dickens? Surely then we should collaborate with other groups of people. And to add to that, I would like to say that although the infoboxes do not seem to be useful, they make the profile look professional as if it were part of a database, like with the organisation of the period table. --pizza1512 Talk Autograph 05:36, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Well, as far as encyclopaedias go, "professional" means accurate. I don't care what it looks like, it's the substance that matters. It's obvious these infoboxes have forced editors into giving misleading, oversimplified or irrelevant information: wrong birth dates, anachronistic flags, erroneous genre classifications and so on. It's not important what other biographies do. We know infoboxes are making composers' articles worse (I suspect something similar is happening elsewhere). Accuracy is what is important here, not homogeneity. Therefore the boxes should be removed. --Folantin 06:45, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Agree with Folantin, Kleinzach and many of the others above. Let's please not impose uniformity for its own sake. The issues will be different in different areas: with composers some of the problems include the anachronistic nationalities, the oversimplified, misleading, or just mistaken "genre" classification (such as tagging someone as "Romantic" strictly as a chronological consideration). Has anyone considered making an infobox that would work for composers? I doubt it would be easy, but it could begin by dispensing with those odious "genre" and "occupation" classifications. Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 15:06, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Antandrus, I also am in agreement about not imposing uniformity, and I also have wondered about the possible value of constructing a Composer infobox template, which also attempts to deal with the "anachronisms" issues common to all biographical infoboxes.
Having such an infobox would give us multiple options - (a) to "lose" the biographical infobox altogether from articles where there is pretty strong consensus from all interested editors not to have one and (b) otherwise, to have a type of infobox that is more tailored to Composers (and hopefully less likely to lead to irrelevant, misleading, anachronistic, etc. info than the Musicians template that is commonly in use on the Composers articles). The Composers infobox could be placed on more highly trafficked articles where infoboxes keep appearing back after they are removed, or where there is a lot of debate over whether to have one or not.
I'd be interested in volunteering to help with this; I haven't created a template before, but I'm sort of a "tech-y" person and would enjoy the challenge of figuring it out, and there are probably places to get help with the technical aspects. If we went ahead with this task, I'd like some discussion of what we should/should not include. Cheers, Lini 18:03, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Can we have a complete moratorium on the use of these infoboxes until we have an agreed Composers Project version? The present type of infoboxes are made by people who haven't read the articles, for the benefit of people who don't want to read them. We need boxes that draw readers into the articles in an intelligent way, but I'm not sure how this can be achieved. (I see the one for Ludwig Wittgenstein is quite sophisticated). Technically it's easy enough to make the boxes, all you need to do is copy a template and re-work it, but putting Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner et al. through the same sausage machine just isn't going to work. --Kleinzach 01:15, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
That's intriguing: thanks, Kleinzach, for pointing out the Wittgenstein box. I could see a variation on that box actually working for someone like Josquin des Prez, or even Puccini, and it does have useful info that does not have an amateurish feel (every time I see "genre, classical" I want to throw things). Does anyone else reading this thread think it is worthwhile to try to devise an infobox that could be flexible enough to work for composers in all eras? (My doctorate is not in Templatology so I doubt it would be me) Antandrus (talk) 01:34, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
All you have to do is decide on the fields (currently birth name, genre, occupation etc.) and what they are called. There isn't anything technical to worry about (many of us have made boxes in the past).
The real problem is getting people to respect the Composers Project. At the moment we have people reverting pages with infoboxes in contempt of majority opinion (e.g. Puccini article). This is why I suggested a moratorium. --Kleinzach 01:55, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
I think we can both agree that it has nothing to do with majority opinion. It's rather biased when you think about it because the only people who are participating are the ones who want changes. It's not like the people who are fine with it the way it is now are going to go looking for discussion page debates. It's a very stupid system because the ones posting even here are the ones who want changes and the ones who like it fine just the way it is have no idea it's even going on.
NewYork1956 23:16, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
The Wittgenstein infobox is indeed superior. The composer infoboxes should be removed until someone comes up with a satisfactory new version. One thing I'd suggest is that we strongly discourage adding flags to any such revision. --Folantin 08:55, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
Please don't go around indiscriminately deleting all infoboxes on spec. If a particular parameter is over-simple, or not applicable, make it more general, or just delete the parmeter! Most of the boxes can be minimalized and rendered at least harmless for now; wholesale deletion, at least on high-profile pages, will likely just lead to other users, not part of this project, filling the void with something worse. It's already happened on Beethoven at least once. —Turangalila talk 02:11, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
No infoboxes have been deleted indiscriminately that I know of. They have been discussions on the Talk Pages and in every case a majority of editors have asked for them to be removed. IMO we should not be making small, inconsequential textual changes that will merely provoke more minority revertions. --Kleinzach 02:29, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
"No infoboxes have been deleted indiscriminately that I know of. They have been discussions on the Talk Pages and in every case a majority of editors have asked for them to be removed. " - well, taht's certainly not eth case now, is it? Andy Mabbett 09:19, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
That "majority" on Talk:Beethoven is a total of 4 users, out of the 8 who have left comments in the two infobox topics there. Five if you count the last editor to summarily delete the (at that point neutral at worst) box (plus re-add the ungrammatical and pedantic baptized December 17, 1770 – March 26, 1827 -- is that a lifespan or a baptism-span?). That editor participated in the discussion not at all, but he did leave a very snide edit summary, so I guess that counts. Maybe you think 5 of 9 is consensus, but I doubt it's stable consensus... We'll see how long it takes for another user to fill the gap (again) with something much worse. Meanwhile the body of the article is still a sketchy, unsourced, POV-filled mess, while time and energy are spent on this issue as if it's the biggest problem on the page. —Turangalila talk 06:04, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

(reset margin) I'm all for creating a composer infobox -- I might actually give it a shot myself, tech dope that I am, since there seems to be some decent "How To" help around WP. Some preliminary thoughts:

  • Whoever undertakes the design should probably do it on a user subpage & link it here for starters, before using up a "Template:..." page.
  • For those interested, there's a general how-to here, and a generic starter template here. Possible places to raid code are {{Infobox biography}}, {{Infobox musical artist}}, and definitely {{Infobox_Philosopher}}.
  • The cut-and-paste transclusion code provided for the new box should imitate the Philosopher box in using <!-- and --> tags to include hints, and polite suggestions, such as <!-- DO NOT INSERT ANY *%^#!ING FLAG ICONS!! -->.  ;-)
  • As much as possible, the parameters of the template should be optional, so one can delete them or leave them blank when not useful, or potentially harmful, to the article. A note in <!-- and --> tags should make that clear, since alot of trouble seems to have arisen here from folks not understanding they can simply blank offending fields w/o breaking the box.

Finally, I'd note that jazz and pop composers and songwriters like Strayhorn or Sondheim aren't much better served by the current "Musical artist" box than Josquin. Ideally the new box should be flexible enough to be useful from Perotin to Glass, and from Bacharach to Xenakis. —Turangalila talk 23:35, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Reply to Turangalila (06:04, 27 April): If there had been some consultation before the infoboxes were forced on us, we could have had a better-structured debate, but I am not going to repeat myself, let's look forward not back! If you want the boxes then the onus is on you to design a viable one (with accurate content, linked to sound articles etc.). How about starting with Beethoven as you are interested in him? --Kleinzach 07:08, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Apologies for returning late to the debate - I appreciate that those who wish to have infoboxes on composer articles are proposing better infoboxes. The problem is that in my experience a one-size fits all solution to infoboxes does not work for composers. Although these points have already been made many times, I will reiterate them - the simplest of fields do not fit every composer. Infoboxes are simply not flexible enough to fit every composer, and I don't believe creating a new template will make them any more flexible. For some composers a "Birth" field is fine. For others a "Baptism" field is what is needed. For some composers, you need a field for when they "flourished". Unless we create a ridiculously complex and huge template, it simply will not be flexible enough. I think it would be a better use of our time to make lede paragraphs better, clearer, and more readable.

As for the argument that they make us look more "professional", I have to strongly disagree, especially when they misstate information, or include false or anachronistic information. Wikipedia does not in fact have to be completely uniform... that is part of the purpose of having WikiProjects for specific fields. For some things, infoboxes work beautifully. For others, they don't work as well. I wish that those working on tagging WP:BIOs would respect a consensus among those who work on composer articles, even if that is a small group. If your only interest in composer articles is to tag them with templates, I would put forward that perhaps you should work on other groups, since adding an infobox to one biography is much the same as adding it to another, or if you are really interested in composers, that you work on clarifying the ledes, or expanding biographies or filling in the many gaps which still exist (if you're looking for something to do, just look at List of female composers). This may give people a better idea of why these people do not easily or simply fit into boxes - there are simply too many ambiguities, which may be hard to see unless you actually work on the articles. Cheers, Mak (talk) 15:18, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Makemi (and all), a couple "side notes" in response, for clarification: In re-reading above, please notice that some of us who were proposing a Composers infobox (i.e. "better" infobox), were not doing so because we particularly wished to have infoboxes on composers articles, but as a possible solution to deal with situations where other editors persist in adding an infobox to a particular article. (I suppose a summarization of the philosophy would be - "if you can't beat them, join them, but make it better.) I personally do not feel strongly one way or another about infoboxes on Composers article. I do care about considering creative ways to make the best of whatever the situation happens to be.
Regarding some of the debates that I've seen on articles where infoboxes have recently been removed (Beethoven and Puccini, for example); I'd like to try to exonerate WPBiography. We (meaning WPComposers members) may encounter various "random" editors adding infoboxes to articles, simply because they are interested in adding infoboxes; nothing to do with WPBio; also we may encounter editors with an interest in music, who have contributed text to an article on a specific composer (said editors not necessarily being participants in WPComposers), wanting to have an infobox on that article. Note that I am not saying here which opinion should prevail (individual editor or WPComposers) about whether there should be an infobox or not. My personal preference in this case is to abstain from making a blanket statement either way.
If any of you do happen to see, going forward, on particular articles, a problem with infoboxes being placed, that does seem to be a result of WPBio article assessment, can you please direct my attention to these cases? If it is a continuing problem, I'd like to attempt to deal with it "from the inside" at WPBio. (Not that I have any particular influence there other than being a fairly minor participant, but I'd see what I could do.) Thanks, Lini 20:11, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

A late voice chiming into this discussion. I am generally against these infoboxes and other tabular data which can be presented in just as easily in the opening paragraph. I even find the Wittgenstein infobox a negative that I'd prefer not to have for composers. For instance, in "Influences" there are two links which are never referenced in the article. How someone influences or is influenced by someone else is much more important to me than simply a list of influences. (Can you imagine the list for "Influenced:" on Beethoven?). I'm not even sure what people are supposed to get from a quick glance at these things. The infobox for Shostakovich still has him writing in the Romantic "genre"; should I infer that he's going to sound like Schubert.--Myke Cuthbert 21:35, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, having thought about it I can't see any way of creating a satisfactory infobox. The genres category is a complete disaster. Shostakovich a Romantic? And Debussy is apparently an "Impressionist" even though he loathed the term, as the arrticle introduction itself states. There is no WP policy saying we must have infoboxes, whereas WP is pretty keen on policies on accuracy. So goodbye boxes. --Folantin 08:22, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Infobox: No consensus (Apr 28- )

I note that, elsewhere, Mak is claiming that consensus against using infoboxes has been reached, That's certainly not my reading of the on-going debate. Andy Mabbett 08:55, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Nonsense. There's consensus here to dump the boxen and potentially replace them with one dedicated to composers. That will not be something easy to do and will take a while: in the meantime, the infoboxes should go. Moreschi Talk 10:29, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
There is consensus. Plus there's something more important than consensus: these boxes are causing massive violations of fundamental Wikipedia policies, such as factual accuracy and NPOV. I've lost count of the number of distortions of basic info I've seen in these things. There is no policy saying we must have infoboxes on articles. --Folantin 10:41, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
You are again conflating two issues. If there are problems with accuracy or PoV, then of course these should be addressed. That does not mean that there is consensus to cease using infoboxes at all. There is no consensus - QED. Andy Mabbett 18:56, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
If consensus means anything, we have it here. Policy also trumps consensus. There is no more fundamental policy on WP than accuracy. These infoboxes have clearly violated that policy. Therefore they must go. QED. --Folantin 19:04, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
You are again conflating two issues. Andy Mabbett 19:14, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
15-5 seems pretty consentual to me (hell make it 16, because I pretty much agree -- wrong info = bad). There will almost never be 100% agreement for anything. If that was required, AFDs would be a joke, as it'd be so easy to put in a single !vote against everyone else, if that's all it took. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 19:05, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
Please read WP:CONSENSUS. Andy Mabbett 19:14, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Part of the problem is that we have a layout issue (presenting neat database-style factoids and soundbites in a pretty box) versus an information accuracy issue. I think the best way to approach an infobox is NOT to take a generic biography or pop musician infobox and try and apply it to a classical composer's article, but to sit down and first ask the question: which bits of information can be summed up and presented in an infobox? Once that crucial question has been asked, and it should be asked for all articles where an infobox could be added, then the next step is to design an infobox to present that information. It is entirely possible to present the information in a nice box without using a template meant for hundreds of other articles. It will look horrible, and can then be moved to its own template, but it is possible to concentrate on the information presented in an individual article, rather than uniformity of presentation acrosss different articles. Carcharoth 13:04, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Do we need infoboxes at all? It's important to have typographically attractive, well-illustrated pages that people want to read, but does that mean infoboxes are necessary or desirable? If you look at print enclyclopedias you'll find that boxes are used sparingly. I don't believe there is any major reference book that has summary boxes for every biography. --Kleinzach 14:31, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
Exactly. No infobox, no problem. Factual accuracy is essential, infoboxes aren't. They merely repeat information already on the page in a distorted way. It will take an immense amount of time and effort to create an infobox flexible enough not to garble the facts. I think that time and effort would be better spent elsewhere. --Folantin 15:05, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Infobox proposal(s)

Okay, I've decided it might be fun to give a go at making a template. It may take me a little while, since I'm just starting to learn the wiki syntax required, but I have been thinking about precisely the question Carcharoth asked two comments up, and last night I sketched a few possibly useful parameters, almost all of which would be optional, with instructions to delete the parameter if not applicable / too narrow / etc. Here's what I have so far:

  • Required parameters:
    • Name — obviously, for the top of the box; also optional parameters for [Birth_name =...] and [Also_known_as =...], to go below;
    • Title — to go below name and above image. Default value = "Composer", but one could substitute, say, "Songwriter" or "Composer-conductor" etc.
  • Optional parameters:
    • Image and Caption — as in other boxes;
    • Lifespan — i.e. [Born =...] and [Died =...] as in the bio box, but w/ options to substitute [Baptized =...] or [Flourished =...];
    • Idiom — my version of the dreaded "record store" category. My thinking is that this would have:
      • a limited set of options, such as [Classical / Jazz / Folk / Popular / Musical theater / Experimental];
      • maybe coded to background colors, like the "Musical artist" box? Default would be the "Classical" color; maybe skip for simplicity's sake...;
      • options for "Idiom2" and "Idiom3" for composers like Gershwin or Bernstein;
      • instructions to delete the parameter for (most) composers before 1900;
    • Nationality — as narrow as "Viennese" or as broad as "European" (maybe a different parameter name?);
      • possibly to go above the pic as a modifier to [Title], so that the header might read (on two lines): Aaron Copland / American Composer ;
    • Historical era — e.g. "Renaissance", "Baroque", etc.;
    • Stylistic school(s) or Movement(s) — e.g. "Franco-Flemish school", "Verismo", "Les Six", "Futurism", "Bebop", etc.;
    • Principal genre(s) — e.g. "Opera" for Verdi; "Symphony, Song" for Mahler...delete for more wide-ranging composers;
    • Other occupations — e.g. "Pianist" for Liszt, "Conductor" for Boulez, "Insurance agent" for Ives, etc.;
    • Notable works — mainly for "one-(or two-)hit wonders", e.g. "Hansel and Gretel" for Humperdinck.

Thoughts? —Turangalila talk 16:51, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

  • Looks good; I think it needs to use optional alternative parameters, so that you have, say, birth date or baptismal date or flourished from. Likewise nationality or some category for non-national terms such as "European". Andy Mabbett 18:45, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
Sigh. It's got some good ideas, but even this is problematic. "Historical era" can be pretty subjective stuff: the divisions between, say, Rococo, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Modern are by no means clear-cut even on the level of individual composers - many are notoriously hard to pigeonhole - and certainly not over the years: you have Elgar writing alongside Stravinsky, for example. POV, especially misleading POV, must be avoided at all costs. For "stylistic schools", how to you sum up, for example, Puccini? Pastiche verismo? Verismo with some nasty cynicism? How do you boil that down to the one or two words required for an infobox? These things are nuanced and really need fuller explanation to avoid confusion. Moreschi Talk 19:58, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
What Moreschi said. I appreciate the effort, but it just isn't going to fly. Nationality, genre, style...all too often these are just too problematic to be reduced to any schema. We have plenty of controversies as it is; infoboxes would merely double the conflict. We could spend months tweaking these boxes then come across a composer who absolutely refused to fit the parameters. There is one obvious solution that is elegant, time-saving and conducive to accuracy: get rid of the boxes. --Folantin 20:13, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
I'd like to add (belatedly) one point. A good infobox (assuming it could be created) would of necessity be linked to articles explaining genres/periods/musical forms etc. If these articles didn't exist or were unsatisfactory then the infobox itself would not be viable. --Kleinzach 00:56, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Some points seem to need repeating:

  1. Like it or not, infoboxes seem to be generally in the ascendancy on WP. The guidance here may be fine, but it's swimming upstream. As someone above said, some users here may need to open their minds to the idea of "joining 'em" (and fixing it) rather than "beating 'em".
  2. See my marathon post above wrt what infoboxes are for. Briefly:
    1. they supplement a good article, they don't replace it;
    2. ideally articles should serve the musical "laity" as well as the hard-core folks that gravitate to this page; music-appreciation-class style shorthand is not an absolute evil... again, some of this discussion emits just the slightest bouquet of snobbery.
    3. even the initiated might want an instant reminder of Mozart's birthplace, or his age at death, without searching (or doing math).
    4. redundancy is not always a mortal sin (as an alternate metaphor, think of Britannica's "Micropedia" and "Macropedia").
  3. When facts are nuanced, (as they often are, and not just in this field) there are many solutions aside from "kill all infoboxes":
    1. If it's between two options, list both...folks are usually bright enough to look at the text if they're confused.
    2. Make the factoid in the box more general... readers expect generality in an infobox anyway.
    3. Do either of the above, then add a footnote with <ref> ... </ref> tags. Works just as well in the box as out.
    4. Or just delete the *&%$! parameter. Is the concept of an optional field really so difficult to grasp?
  4. Obviously, if consensus on a particular page is against the box, you don't have to use it. Why discourage the option?

Okay, enough. I tweaked Makemi's guideline on the project page to make it slightly less dogmatic, but I think s/he's done an admirable job summarizing the discussion below. I'm gonna retire from this discussion until I have a "beta" version of an improved template to show folks. If anybody has suggestions for that, or wants to collaborate, pls leave me a talk message. Shalom, —Turangalila talk 23:57, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Looks like you used to have an infobox for composers, but it was deleted in the process of being superceded by infobox musical artist. One possibility would be to get that undeleted as a starting point. –Unint 00:43, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

"Like it or not, infoboxes seem to be generally in the ascendancy on WP". And so what? When they contradict the most fundamental WP policies, they have to go. "Some users here may need to open their minds to the idea of 'joining 'em'". Well, the majority opinion here is to get rid of infoboxes, although some people seem to have a very hard time accepting that. "Redundancy is not always a mortal sin", but inaccuracy in an encyclopaedia is; none of the pro-infobox proponents here has addressed this essential issue in anything resembling an adequate way..." some of this discussion emits just the slightest bouquet of snobbery"...but they have resorted to ad hominem arguments and dreamed up a Hypothetical General Reader to back their arguments, claiming they have HGR's best interests at heart while showing a complete contempt for HGR's intelligence. --Folantin 07:19, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Infoboxes for composers (continued)

Infobox: Attempted summary by Makemi

In hopes of visualising consensus, perhaps useful only to myself, I will try to summarise the positions of people in this debate. (Note that I'm using big-umbrella classical in this summary)

  • User:Makemi (active in writing on (early music) classical composers) started it, doesn't want infoboxes for a variety of reasons, mainly having to do with accuracy and flexibility.
  • Kat Walsh (sometimes active in writing on classical composers) agrees that infoboxes for people are generally a problem, would be willing to look at an improved infobox.
  • User:M A Mason (active in writing on classical composers) agrees that infoboxes for people are problematic. Adds points about anachronism of flags in infoboxes.
  • User:Gmaxwell (not particularly active in writing on composers that I can tell) agrees that infoboxes for people are problematic, people don't fit in little boxes, not flexible enough.
  • User:Cricket02 (active in mostly contemporary classical composers) briefly disagrees, thinks infoboxes are valuable and informative, add "respectability" to articles.
  • User:Antandrus (active in early-music classical composers) agrees that infoboxes are redundant and tend towards being amateurish, particularly because of inflexibility in the fields.
  • User:Kleinzach (ringleader of Opera project, writer on various composers) agrees that "potted biographies" are "grotesque".
  • User:Alton (active in writing on classical composers, largely Romantics) agrees that while infoboxes can be useful in some areas, they are not good for biographies because they are not sufficiently flexible to deal with all the variations which people present.
  • User:Folantin (active in writing on classical composers (baroque?)) agrees that infoboxes are not useful for composers, and look unprofessional (Top Trumps:).
  • User:Logologist (active on Chopin, doesn't look like many other composers, although other Polish old bios) doesnt' like infoboxes for people, per others.
  • User:Moreschi (active on composer articles, mostly on the early side) thinks infoboxes for biographies are pretty rotten, and lets us know in no uncertain terms.
  • User:LiniShu (light editing on early composer articles), previously had (a few times) added "Needs infobox=Yes" parameter to WPBio template for composers articles (has never actually added an infobox to composer articles); would agree to respect consensus re not doing so. Asks that the debate be kept civil, and that interaction with WP:WPBIO be kept active/positive. Thinks creation of an improved Composers infobox provides a viable alternative solution, in addition to refraining from using them on articles where there is consensus not to use, but is not particularly "for" infoboxes. Content here "tweaked" --Lini 11:46, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
  • User:GuillaumeTell (active in composer bios) thinks infoboxes for composers are a waste of space.
  • Andy Mabbett (not active with composers, seemingly active in WP:WPBIO) worries that not having infoboxes will cause problems for bots and future meta-data gathering. Would prefer that infoboxes be improved rather than abolished.
    • Counter that Wikipedia:Persondata should be used for metadata instead of infoboxes, and that infoboxes actually encourage entering incorrect/misleading data, which will not be helpful as metadata.
  • User:Cgilbert76 (somewhat active on contemporary composers, seems to be mainly active in adding and adjusting infoboxes and WPBIO templates) strongly disagrees that infoboxes are detrimental, gives examples of how they can be adjusted, and mentions their utility in quickly informing the uninitiated.
  • User:Carcharoth (not active with composers(?) but with other older bios, and with Persondata) mentions that Google is experimenting with parsing infoboxes, but mentions that really persondata should be used for this. Opposes badly-done infoboxes, but thinks they can be improved.
  • User:Turangalila (active in composers) makes an impassioned plea for infoboxes. Mentions that perhaps they grate on the knowledgeable, but are very helpful for the uninitiated. Notes that while they may in some way be redundant to the lede, they serve a different purpose. (Note, User:Danny made a similar good point on IRC (zomg, cabal) that infoboxes can be useful for people who have a different learning style). Also notes (rightly, I think) that some ledes are also pretty bad and confusing. In the end run, this editor seems to believe that they could live without composer infoboxes, but the best solution is to create a new and better composer infobox.
  • User:Emerson7 (active in WP:WPBIO template adding, some acitivity with contemporary classical musicians) erm... accuses everyone of elitism? I don't see another argument here, but feel free to correct me.
  • User:Pizza1512 (seemingly active AWB'er, don't see real activity on composers except template cleanup) wants infoboxes on seemingly aesthetic grounds, thinks they make articles look more "professional", wants there to be uniformity with other biography articles.
  • Myke Cuthbert (active in composer biographies) thinks they should not be used in composer articles.

So, let's be annoying and vote-y. 15 think either there should not be infoboxes, or if there must be it should be a different format. Of those 2 are not active in editing composer bios. 5 think they should probably be used. Of those five, 3 are not active in editing composer bios. (So, 13-2) To me, this is pretty clear consensus not to use infoboxes on classical composer articles. I not that those people who think that infoboxes should be used are more active either on non-composer articles, or articles on contemporary classical musicians. I think this may be part of the disconnect, because it is much more difficult to box people about whom we don't know as much with certianty, and where there may be more than one "right answer". Mak (talk) 17:52, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Afterthoughts, congratulations, and recriminations

I suggest you read WP:Consensus; and that you stop raising red herrings. Anyone may comment, regardless of which articles they do or do not edit. Persondata is not available to parsers other than those accessing raw wikicode, from database dumps so you suggestion is unhelpful. Andy Mabbett 18:50, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

I think what articles people edit is very relevant to this discussion. This is trying to find consensus for one specific content area of Wikipedia. I have tried to gain consensus on individual articles, where all the vested contributors seem to agree with not having an infobox, only to have a mass-tagger come through, throw a wrench in the works, and claim that there must be a higher-order consensus on the WikiProject level. Now, when those who are actually involved in editing the articles concerned agree that for this specific content area infoboxes are inappropriate, or at least infoboxes in their current form are inappropriate, I think that should be respected. Otherwise what's the point of having a WikiProject consensus and specific area working groups? I don't pretend to know what the best style is for Science articles, and so I don't try to dictate their style to them, and I don't go off telling them not to use infoboxes where they find them useful. I think the same respect for knowing what is useful in a particular area and what is not should be afforded this WikiProject. Mak (talk) 19:22, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
Your edit summary was "consensus for WikiProject composers should be determined by those with and interest in (shock) composers": if you wish to re-write fundamental WP policies to enshrine that view, then this isn't the place to do it. When you've achieved consensus for that change, do please let us know here. Meanwhile, please also read WP:OWN and don't presume to talk about what interests you imagine that I or any other editor do or do not have. Andy Mabbett 19:33, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
Makemi, thank you for taking the time to do this; I think you characterized the positions well. I agree with you that it represents consensus, among project members--people who write articles on composers. The encyclopedia will be better without these infoboxes, boxes which, as currently employed, actually present misinfo. Antandrus (talk) 19:56, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
If somebody reads Wikipedia and reads nothing but the infoboxes, well, then I think it's better that he or she at least has read something about the person. That would still be rather funny, however. And there really is no way a box with the composer's name, portrait, birth date and other information that can be proven to be factual such as nationalities, could be harmful. Rather it serves as a good summary. Factual errors should be removed, of course, but still, there's a limit to which we can edit articles and make them factually accurate. I believe there are many cases in Wikipedia where a less detailed description is preferred instead of a more complex and correct one.--Wormsie 20:05, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
Um...Wikipedia's entire reputation rests on its accuracy. If we abandon that in favour of brevity, we can forget about Wikipedia's credibility as an encyclopedia. Most of these infoboxes are either ill-suited or inaccurate - Shostakovitch a Romantic just like Weber? Because that's what one implied! Moreschi Talk 16:00, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks to Makemi for taking the time to go through this long discussion and summarizing the debate with such equanimity. I hope that all of us will respect the position we have finally arrived at - and now get back to the job of building WP. Best regards to all. --Kleinzach 01:20, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

We haven't finally arrived at anything. Discussion is ongoing. Please stop pretending otherwise, Andy Mabbett 05:11, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
So when is this discussion over? Nobody supporting infoboxes has dealt with the essential problem that they violate the basic WP policy: factual accuracy. All we've had are attempts to dismiss accuracy concerns as some kind of elitism or snobbery (apparently it doesn't matter about the quality of the information, what matters is that it's in a box; or so we're told by editors with a hotline to the Hypothetical General Reader). I'm sorry, but trying to change another policy in your favour [18] won't resolve this fundamental flaw. --Folantin 07:52, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
Kindly refrain from making false accusations. Andy Mabbett 20:59, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
Please assume good faith and keep it civil. Cheers. --Folantin 07:41, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
You may be acting in good faith; that doesn't make your accusations any less false, and pointing out their falsehood is not uncivil. Making false accusaitions is uncivil. Andy Mabbett 10:39, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
I haven't made any false accusations so this is a red herring. Please let's drop this and stick to the point. --Folantin 10:46, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
You have falsely alleged that I am "trying to change another policy in [my] favour". Andy Mabbett 10:48, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Well, I wasn't quite certain what you were referring to. I don't think it was an entirely unreasonable remark to make in the circumstances, but fair enough. I will gladly withdraw it in the interests of civility. --Folantin 11:00, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Suggested procedure for finding a workable policy on infoboxes

I see this problem as being essentially as follows :

1. People who work within the Wikipedia composers project are against the use of infoboxes

2. People who are outside of the Wikipedia composers project are for infoboxes

3. The Wikipedia composers project is part of Wikipedia.

Therefore, the solution appears to be finding a solution for the problem which is acceptable for Wikipedia, not just for the Wikipedia composers project.

It would seem to me that discussions here are not going to create a solution. Where does one go to create a discussion which would a sitewide convention for infoboxes?

You can certainly claim consensus here. However, I rather doubt that you're going to be able enforce it on a site-wide basis. Better to find a compromise on a larger scale which is acceptable here. Gretab 20:13, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

This isn't about enforcing anything on a site-wide basis. You're scenario doesn't connect with reality. It's a logical fallacy. This is about removing inaccurate information from a relatively small set of articles - nothing to do with site-wide affairs! No larger consensus is needed. Moreschi Talk 10:27, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
So then, would you say that the project-wide decision to abolish spoiler warnings at both WP:Opera (which many here are a part of) and the Final Fantasy Wikiproject -- which is much more "pop culture" and recent -- should be abolished as well? How about the various naming conventions some projects have taken to? The whole very reason for projects is to help create a general focus on articles. If you say "there needs to be a sitewide consensus" for everything, NOTHING would ever get done. As long as policy isn't broken -- and there's no policy on infoboxes -- then a projectwide consensus is fine, and isn't in any way a violation of WP:OWN than it is on each individual article. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 21:58, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
I think those of us who are against infoboxes for composers have made it quite clear we aren't necessarily against every single infobox ever designed. Some of them are potentially useful (e.g. biological taxonomy), others are ridiculous and harmful (the Project:Novels one is particularly bad). I see no reason to decide these matters on a site-wide basis. Leave it to those who know whether the boxes work for a particular subject. There's no need for homogeneity. We've established that these composer infoboxes violate fundamental WP principles and damage factual accuracy. That should be enough. --Folantin 20:25, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
An encyclopedia does have homgeneity in terms of how subjects are presented. Regardless of what policy this small project decides, it will be impossible to enforce on a sitewide basis and will be challenged at some point by people outside of the project. Better to solve the problem before it happens. How could infoboxes become acceptable for composers? What would be in an acceptable infobox? That's the question which needs to be answered, since infoboxes appear to be the site's way of treating these kinds of articles. Gretab 20:30, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
We don't have a universal infobox. We have no policy saying we must have infoboxes. Even their defenders admit they are redundant. We do however have universal policies such as WP:V and WP:NPOV which these composer boxes have violated. These policies amount to a general, site-wide consensus. The primary aim of an encyclopaedia is accuracy, not homogeneity. Human beings don't fit into neat little packages so neither do their biographies. --Folantin 20:42, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
You are still conflating two issues; doing so is unproductive. Kindly desist. Thank you. Andy Mabbett 21:00, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
What two issues? Policy on accuracy isn't something you can ignore. As far as I can see, you haven't made the slightest attempt to address this fundamental problem. You seem more concerned with how convenient it is to package and process the data rather than whether it is false or true if this is anything to judge by [19] --Folantin 21:13, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
"What two issues?": The issue of whether infoboxes are useful; and the issue of the factual inaccuracy apparently brought about by the misapplication of a previous template. Your insinuations about my input and interests are bogus, though I'm flattered by your apparent interest in researching my previous comments. Andy Mabbett 22:21, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
I thought those two issues were intimately linked. How can a factually inaccurate infobox be useful in any way? I didn't need to do much research to find those statements of yours; they are linked by another user further up the page. The link shows you declaring your interest in putting infoboxes on all biographical articles simply to make data-processing easier for you. I can't see any other reason why you are pressing the issue so strongly here, because you've shown no previous interest in composer articles. --Folantin 07:18, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
"I thought those two issues were intimately linked": Then perhaps that mistake is the root of the problem.
"How can a factually inaccurate infobox be useful in any way?" Nobody is asking for the inclusion of "factually inaccurate" infoboxes. You're still conflating two separate issues; and it's still unhelpful for you to do so. Andy Mabbett 10:44, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Your unfounded assumptions, false assertions and lack of knowledge about my interests and motives constitute an unacceptable breach of WP:AGF. Kindly desist. Andy Mabbett 10:44, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Here I'm not so certain that I've misinterpreted you. Correct me if I'm wrong (and I might be), but your only arguments on this page appear to be related to technical data-processing issues and your points have been answered by Antandrus. I don't think it's unacceptable to link to your comments on this issue elsewhere (and I'm not the first on this page to do so). I'll leave other readers to judge their relevance to this debate, but I found they cast an interesting light on matters here. --Folantin 11:12, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
"Correct me if I'm wrong (and I might be)". You are. Andy Mabbett 11:20, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
OK, then please point out your other arguments clearly then we can have a debate about them below. Thanks. --Folantin 11:24, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
"Where does one go to create a discussion which would a sitewide convention for infoboxes?": WP:VP and/ or Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Infoboxes. Andy Mabbett 21:08, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
How would people feel about having the consensus here validated at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Infoboxes? Wouldn't that give this decision more weight and make it easier to enforce? Gretab 07:38, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
We don't need the consensus validated by the Infobox Project. They have no authority over anyone else. Their project has precisely eleven members, far fewer than the participants in this project and fewer even than the participants in this discussion. They also have an obvious bias towards infoboxes so contacting them to take place in this debate would be in violation of WP:CANVASS. We don't need to shift the goalposts any further. --Folantin 08:08, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Well, then perhaps a request for comment would be in order, in order to gauge a more general consensus? Gretab 09:38, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
No. Why? If information is misleading, it's removed. What's wrong with that? We don't need an RFC to decide that. Many of these infoboxes have been misleading. Nobody's trying to impose this on anyone else: it's just that for composers infoboxes are redundant and useless, and misleading. Moreschi Talk 09:42, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
The idea that we must have a site-wide consensus for a stylistic choice on a small number of articles which most Wikipedians don't give a flying fuck about seems ridiculous to me. I wanted to remove the infoboxes from one or two articles I was actively working on... people protested that there wasn't a larger consensus for composers not to have infoboxes, so I couldn't make an editorial choice on a /single/ article. Now there is clear consensus from people interested in composer articles to make a STYLISTIC CHOICE which helps us in following core Wikipedia policies of neutral point of view and accuracy, and outside people are trying to block it? This is just ridiculous. Just ridiculous. I shouldn't need to get consensus from all of Wikipedia to make a few articles better. This is not dictating anything to the rest of the encyclopedia, and I don't understand why it seems that people are so threatened at the thought of not having infoboxes. I will be removing infoboxes on composer articles where they seem detrimental. I encourage others to do the same. This is not WP:OWNing or any other annoying TLA, it's making editorial stylistic choices, just like every other editor or group of editors does. Mak (talk) 01:25, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Excuse me, but could you please tone down your language a bit. I do see your point, but perhaps the profanity is not necessary? Gretab 07:41, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Gretab, the discussion is over. You are a guest here. We have assumed good faith and sincerity on your part. We were grateful for your ideas. We believed you were not a troll who had come here intent on stirring up discord. Makemi expressed herself as clearly as she could, so that you would understand her point of view. If her language was too colourful for you, then perhaps the big, emotional world of serious music is not the right place for you. It's sad because I see it was Makemi who first welcomed you to Wikipedia, offering to be your friend on WP. One other thing, changing section headers to try to give the impression that your so-called "Suggested procedure" has some measure of support is disingenuous. Please leave section headings to us. --Kleinzach 10:08, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Excuse me. I was simply trying to add an outside view to try to resolve this conflect. It appears that you feel that you have resolved this, so I will stop making suggestions. Gretab 10:20, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Discussion is not over; you have no right to declare it so. Your suggestion that another editor is "a guest here" is outrageous; as is your "us" comment. Please read WP:OWN. Andy Mabbett 10:33, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Meaningful discussion probably is. Where the boxes are useless, they will be removed. Moreschi Talk 10:44, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
To be fair, that comment by Kleinzach is going a bit far, but this business of infoboxes does not require more suggestions that just don't help. Moreschi Talk 10:40, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Andy, you are the only person here who seems to think the discussion is not over, except some poor kid who's trying to mediate and getting caught in the middle. I can't but think that the only reason you insist that the discussion is not over is that it has failed to go your way. I refuse to let one stubborn editor stand in the way of consensus. Consensus does /not/ mean 100% agreement. For flailing so much about how the discussion is still ongoing, I see very little productive discussion going on here, including by you, Andy. Looking at the discussion on the persondata field, it looks like you disapprove of persondata because it isn't as easy to use as infoboxes, or isn't as easy to use yet as infoboxes. People note that some editors don't like infoboxes, which makes them a bad solution, and also they are often wrong since people fill in the fields wrong. I personally don't think metadata should be so easily messed with as infoboxes are. There's little reason that once a knowledgeable person has entered metadata that others should need to edit it. Basically, I have said for a very long time both on and off-wiki, infoboxes are a bad solution to article metadata. But, you see, that shouldn't be the issue here. If it is, I propose that you take that axe somewhere else to grind it. Maybe once I start library school in the fall I'll join the fray of a better metadata format. Infoboxes should not be mandatory because one editor thinks they are the solution to metadata issues. And consensus on editorial practices in one specific area should not be blocked by one vocal opponent. Mak (talk) 13:46, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Your comment is a litany of misapprehensions, misrepresentations of my views, straw men and red herrings, so I'll not bother to deal with it point by point. But thanks for acknowledging that discussion continues. Andy Mabbett 14:02, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
I don't think Makemi said that either. Discussion here is finished apart from you continuing to...do what? What exactly are you trying to accomplish? If you told us that, perhaps we could work towards some kind of compromise. I mean, look at this. His Associated Act was the Pittsburg Symphony? What the hell? Since when was that meaningful terminology for a composer? Yet that's the sort of confusion, mayhem, and disorderly mistakes that these copy-and-paste boxes have caused. Moreschi Talk 14:09, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
  • This has now been raised at ANI. [20]

Eusebeus 14:27, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Good morning (I'm on a different timezone here). I have written to Gretab directly to say that my comment (above) about her being a "guest" was clearly inappropriate and I've withdrawn it. I had intended to avoid involvement in the end of the discussion. I should have. I see Gretab has just contributed a fine article about an Offenbach work and I am looking forward to reading her future contributions. I wish her well. --Kleinzach 00:37, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Infoboxes again

User:Pigsonthewing is continuing what seems to be a WP:POINT edit war at Steve Reich and Philip Glass over infoboxes. His position seems to be that the consensus established above needs to be reinstated on each individual article's talk page to justify disincluding infoboxes. Fireplace 21:41, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree and have reverted his edit on Philip Glass. This needs to find resolution somehow, however. Eusebeus 22:54, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
See also Talk:Steve_Reich#Infobox. Fireplace 02:13, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
IMO we have already found as much resolution on this as we are ever going to. We spent days discussing it (above) and Makemi summed it all up in a remarkably thorough-going way. --Kleinzach 13:47, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
...And his behavior continues at Michael Nyman. After repeated edit warring, incivility, ignoring consensus, wp:point abuses, and an inappropriate ANI listing, I'd be happy to write/contribute to an ANI or RFC listing for disruptive editing if there's support for taking it there. Fireplace 20:21, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
Yes, it's getting beyond a joke. I warned him about a particularly ludicrous WP:POINT violation days ago [21] but he's still at it. He appears to know little or nothing about classical music (certainly not opera) so I have no idea why he's so obsessed with composer bioboxes. But check his extensive block log [22] where one admin says: "This user appears to be here to make nuclear war with contributers; not to write an encyclopedia". Sounds about right. --Folantin 20:48, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
You have never warned me about a "a particularly ludicrous WP:POINT violation", because there has been no such violation. It's worrying that you choose to threaten in this manner, and make unfounded allegations; doubly so when I have offered suggestions for compromise, which you (collectively) appear to have rejected out-of-hand. Andy Mabbett 20:55, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
Assuming good faith is getting hard, though I will say that most of those blocks were over a year ago.(ah, Fireplace's point taken) However, Andy, we're here, talk about Infoboxes with us if you want. I need to get back to writing a journal article on minimalism, not trying to make the same argument against infoboxes at John Coolidge Adams ("is associate with postminimalism"? great info! worth reverting), Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and Michael Nyman. --Myke Cuthbert 21:02, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
Looking at the log, most of the blocks were over a year old because he was blocked for a year. Fireplace 21:06, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Infoboxes. Mak (talk) 21:08, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
"we're here, talk about Infoboxes with us if you want" I have been trying to do so for some time. As I said above, I (and, indeed, others) have offered suggestions for compromise, which you (collectively) appear to have rejected out-of-hand. Once again (and I'm getting equally sick of having to repeat this) if there are errors or misleading information in infoboxes; correct it - do not simply remove the whole box. That's baby/bathwater. Andy Mabbett 21:22, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
Andy, some of us find that infoboxes lead to the condensation of information into bite-sized chunks whether or not the information works best that way. When all the misleading information is removed, what is often left is either information repeated immediately in the lede (birth date) in the first paragraph (birth location) is trivially obvious (occupation: "composer"...um, yes, that's why there's an article) or is pure trivia (daughters' names). At that point, I think they are best removed, and I believe the consensus of people who edit classical music pages is with me. (The only piece of useful information I've frequently found in composer infoboxes not immediately easy to find in the articles is death location, though these are often confused with burial location). --Myke Cuthbert 21:46, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
Then I would suggest (as I think I did some time ago) that you take the matter to the Biography and/ or Infobox Projects, and try to obtain consensus for your view on a WP-wide basis (or an understanding of why the contrary view has consensus), rather than trying to apply it on a project-by-project bass, which not only involves policy-breaching ownership, but is doomed to failure where two projects with opposing views coincide. Andy Mabbett 21:54, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
Consensus already exists -- "WP-wide" consensus is neither necessary nor appropriate for localized issues like this one. Further, Wikipedia:WikiProject_Biography/Infoboxes makes it clear that infoboxes on certain classes of articles should be approved individually before being added, and WP:Infobox "is not intended to be a place for infobox standardisation, rather a place for designers to help each other." Fireplace 22:06, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
Once again, you appear to be unwilling to cooperate or compromise, outside of the narrow focus of these two sister projects. Andy Mabbett 22:10, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for pointing out the Biography infobox page, Fireplace, which now also reflects consensus here. It's getting hard to find a place where there isn't consensus (not unanimity) against composer infoboxes. Andy, where does your base of support come from for infoboxes on the minimalist composers' pages? I know that Badagnani has supported your view on Michael Nyman, are there others? I'm just trying to figure out where this other consensus we're supposed to be respecting is. --Myke Cuthbert 00:10, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Another point: Pigsonthewing writes . . . if there are errors or misleading information in infoboxes; correct it - do not simply remove the whole box. This is unreasonable because (1) no editor should put unchecked information up on a page and then tell other editors to fix it, and (2) if an editor finds wrong information added to an article, that editor has to decide whether to retain some of the information, or delete it all. If there is no viable substance remaining after correction then it all has to go. The editor who created the false information should not come along and say, "you can take out this, but you can't take out that". --Kleinzach 00:06, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I don’t want to get caught up in a war about this. However I am quite opposed to the idea of removing the infoboxes from composer’s pages. If the consensus is uniformly against me, we should at least work with other projects to come up with a unified solution. Here are some reasons I support the inclusion of infoboxes on composer pages:
  1. WP:BIOGRAPHY still includes infoboxes in its pages. It would be ludicrous to be working against other projects in this regard.
  2. Infoboxes have been criticized for offering only a snapshot of information. Indeed that is their purpose. They allow the reader to see the basics of the article without having to first read several thousand words. This can help the casual viewer decide wither or not to read the entirety of the article.
  3. Infoboxes helps categories all the articles on a topic.
  4. Infoboxes adds some color to many otherwise drab pages.
  5. Whether we like it or not Wikipedia’s main viewers are not collage grads. Wikipedia is primarily used by students I believe. Now how long is the average teenager’s attention span? No offence to teens, but most teenagers (and many adults) have the attention span of a TV commercial. At least the infoboxes tells them SOMETHING about the subject.
  6. If the content of an infobox is wrong don’t blame the infobox. Be bold and fix it, or, leave that section of the box blank.
  7. Infoboxes often include some important information that would require a lengthy search through the text to find (examples: label, years active, notable instruments)
Anyway, those are some of the reasons I feel that all the major composer’s pages should include an infobox. (Or at least all articles for which an infobox would offer significant information.) S.dedalus 06:48, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't write/contribute/edit for 'college grads' or 'students'. I write etc. for the general public. --Kleinzach 07:31, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
What Kleinzach said (BTW we also have a "Simple English Wikipedia" [23] which might be of use). Sorry, there are no new arguments here. The composer bioboxes are redundant at best, sometimes downright silly (what does knowing the names of Michael Nyman's wife and children tell you about his music) and factually inaccurate in all too many cases. --Folantin 08:12, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
We have a responsibility on Wikipedia to make information as accessible as possible. Infoboxes help do this. There is no need to stop using them. Though occasionally redundant, that is far outweighed by their clarity. Has consensus already been reached on this issue here or on other Wikiprojects? S.dedalus 04:51, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
We also have a responsibility to make information as accurate as possible. "Clarity" has no value if what is made clear is inaccurate. While I see where you are coming from, I cannot agree that adding infoboxes in any way improves a composer article, for the numerous reasons cited above. There are too many issues regarding composers that require a nuanced approach, which brute-force presentation in an infobox ruins. Respectfully, Antandrus (talk) 05:00, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
To answer S.dedalus's second question: consensus has been reached on both the Composers Project and the Opera Project not to use BIO-infoboxes (as noted above by Fireplace). I believe that science projects have also declared against using them, presumably for similar reasons. I also note that a majority are voting for the deletion of the Infobox Needed Template, see Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2007_May_13#Template:Infoboxneeded -- Kleinzach 05:30, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
"Has consensus already been reached on this issue here..? " No, consensus has not been reached here. Editors speaking aginst the supopsed consenus include S.dedalus, Lin, Cricket02, Antandrus, Turangalila, emerson7, pizza1512, cgilbert, Wormsie, Gretab, ickbigd and me, Andy Mabbett 09:37, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
That's patent distortion. Plenty of those in your little list have spoken against the boxes. Moreschi Talk 17:28, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
They may have spoken against some boxes in some context or other; but they have also all spoken against a blanket ban such as you seem to desire; ergo there was no distortion in my post; and there is no consensus. Andy Mabbett 22:23, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
Well, one thing's for sure, Mr. Mabbett, you won't be adding any infoboxes for the next month. How about using the intervening time profitably by designing a composer biobox that doesn't actually violate WP policy on factual accuracy and is flexible enough to describe someone like Paderewski (without producing the dog's dinner currently showing on the page), for example? Then you can come back and get consensus to use it. You might have to do a shedload of reading first to avoid another embarrassing incident like the Comic opera fiasco, but I'm sure your evident passion for opera and classical music will see you through. --Folantin 10:03, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
Actually, the more I think about it that Paderewski page (back-up link here [24]) is the perfect illustration of the inherent ridiculousness of the "biobox". I'm not criticising the user who added it; it's the very concept of the box which leads to absurdities like this. And I predicted this would happen to that very page on the ANI noticeboard two weeks ago [25]- but I didn't need to be Nostradamus to see that one coming. --Folantin 10:26, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I have only just become aware of this debate via a post at WP Infoboxes, and have gone over it with some interest. My work with infoboxes has mainly been with ones of a geographical or historical nature, and I appreciate the problems with biographical infoboxes (the above Ignacy Jan Paderewski problem is a good example), although have had nothing to do with the development of the bioboxes.
First, to clarify what WP Infoboxes is: WP:INFOWATCH is not exactly a project, but a centralised location for designers to help each other with design and usage issues, and to be something of a help desk. It does not intend to create and enforce site-wide rules. Sure, we have no authority, but the people involved have a rather lengthy experience of what works and what doesn't. The group is definitely not biased towards the use of infoboxes everywhere - but it is heavily biased against their incorrect usage. Infoboxes have become a part of Wikipedia, like it or not - all we can do is make sure that they are used properly.
Now for my 2 cents. I largely agree with a lot that Turangalila has said, particularly regarding the supplementary and summarising role of an infobox. From this debate, there are a few points that I would like to address:

  1. Help with metadata: they can also help with categorisation
  2. Not everything deserves an infobox: I agree. If a suitable infobox does not exist, then I would rather not use one until the right one becomes available.
  3. No baptism field: this is clearly a fault in the template and should probably be added somehow - not just here, but probably in other biogboxes.
  4. Flags in biog-infoboxes: I don't really like them. I also don't like how the modern country is usually given and linked to when the country didn't exist during the life of the person in question. From my work on former countries, this is a big problem. That said, this same mistake is made even more often within the body text. So for this problem (the country problem, not the flag problem), the infobox is not at fault any more than the article itself.
  5. Infoboxes violate factual accuracy: This is a big claim, and a false one. How an infobox on its own can do this is beyond me. They are only inaccurate if the wrong information is given. This also applies for the rest of the article. So this claim is similar to saying that having an article at all violates factual accuracy. Because anyobody can edit, there is always the risk of the wrong information being given anywhere in the article: accidentally or deliberately

I'm sure there are more points that I wanted to bring up, but i can't think of them all right now. 52 Pickup 11:47, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Infoboxes have become a part of Wikipedia, like it or not - all we can do is make sure that they are used properly. Er no, there is no policy saying we need infoboxes and their use is best considered on a project by project basis by those who know the subject under consideration. They are also redundant in composer articles. Infoboxes violate factual accuracy: This is a big claim, and a false one. How an infobox on its own can do this is beyond me. Well, this one has managed just fine; it's forced editors to add ridiculous bits of information (Gluck was a leading pianist?), if not downright false "facts". Articles don't force anyone to violate factual accuracy and they're immensely flexible. Plain old text can cope with the multiplicitous career of Jan Ignacy Paderewski succinctly and elegantly, whereas the bioboxes are just a disaster. Wikipedia is supposed to be the encyclopaedia anyone can edit (anyone who knows what they are talking about, that is); you can't change the bioboxes without a good deal of specialist computer knowledge (plus the templates are often edit-protected). Again, you only need minimal technical knowledge to add simple text here. I'm sure infoboxes are useful on geographical matters; I know very little subject and I wouldn't dream of interfering with its editors. But these composer bioboxes are just ludicrous as the Paderewski page sadly proves. --Folantin 12:28, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
Er no, there is no policy saying we need infoboxes... - Hang on. I didn't say that there was a policy calling for them, I'm simply stating the fact that they are here. ...and their use is best considered on a project by project basis by those who know the subject under consideration. - I agree. Projects that I am involved in do the same, but it is always necessary that even projects do not assume total ownership (whether or not the Composer project is assuming ownership of these articles is none of my business). As I said, if the right infobox isn't available, then either 1) the right one should either be developed, or 2) don't use one. - 52 Pickup 12:45, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
OK, glad you understand. Option 2 is the obvious choice here. Total ownership isn't a goal, especially bearing the Paderewski article in mind, since he's the responsibility of several projects. But that page just shows the problems of having several project infoboxes when they clash. If in doubt, do without....--Folantin 13:10, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
"Option 2 is the obvious choice here." It's far from obvious that that would be the right choice.
"Total ownership isn't a goal - perhaps not; but its the apparent outcome of current behaviour.
Andy Mabbett 13:29, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
Well, as I've suggested, off you pop and use your encyclopaedic knowledge of classical music to design a new infobox with none of the flaws of the present one. Then you can come back here and see if you can get consensus to use it. Why are you waiting? --Folantin 13:39, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
[26]. Andy Mabbett 13:44, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
Yes, that's my ideal solution. No infobox, no problem. But you are quite welcome to try and prove me wrong and there's nothing stopping you from going ahead and making the attempt if you're so enthusiastic about these boxes. --Folantin 13:49, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
It was not an ideal solution, just an out-of-hand rejection. Andy Mabbett 14:13, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
It was a considered rejection based on the same knowledge of the subject that led me to predict the Paderewski disaster. But if your new infobox can address the problems I raised there, maybe you'll win me and other people over. --Folantin 14:22, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
Both Folantin and I spelled out quite thoroughly why that suggested box was not going to work. Moreschi Talk 17:28, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Infobox Discussion: It's over.

It's over. Composer project editors don't want infoboxes, the consensus is clear. Let's archive the (overly long) talk page and put this to rest. Eusebeus 22:28, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Composer project editors don't own pages about composers; there is no consensus; it's not over; and saying it is doesn't make it so. Andy Mabbett 22:43, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
Excuse me but it does appear to me that there is a clear consensus here. As per WP:CON no one person can declare consensus. Perhaps it is time to seek comment on WP:RFC? S.dedalus 00:20, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

I have done some archiving. It's time we all went back to working on the encylopedia. Enough of these disruptions! This is not a chat room for people to show off their TLAs. This is a project for writing articles about composers, maybe even to encourage people to listen to their music. -- Kleinzach 00:40, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, at present it does not seem that I can help further in this matter because people are unwilling to come to a compromise. So, I will agree to disagree about the handling of infoboxes and of this discussion for the time being. In the meantime I will attempt to consolidate some broader Wikipedia guideline on this issue. However, if we are going to stop advocating infoboxes on composer pages won’t this bring us into conflict with the WP:WPBIO people? Respectfully, S.dedalus 05:31, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
There is no conflict with WikiProject Biographies -- see Wikipedia:WikiProject_Biography/Infoboxes. Fireplace 08:27, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
It's over. For what it's worth, I suspect this had less to do with Wikiproject Biography and more to do with this project or - to be more accurate - one of its four members and his ambition to put microformats (whatever the hell they are) on every other page of this encyclopaedia [27]. This seems to be the source of a great deal of the recent conflict I've noticed on ANI involving other projects too. --Folantin 08:49, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
It's not "over"; and your suspicions are mis-founded. Again. Andy Mabbett 09:36, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
Andy - is it possible to preserve the (pleasing) appearance of the page Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and also introduce microformats to your satisfaction? -- roundhouse 10:41, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for the link Fireplace. S.dedalus 18:50, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Another reversion by Andy Mabbett

After Eusebeus suggested "Let's archive the (overly long) talk page and put this to rest", I archived most of the accumulated discussions. Pigsonthewing/Andy Mabbett then immediately reverted the section Infoboxes again (above). Consistency is a virtue in editors, but in this case? -- Kleinzach 09:10, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

You omit to mention that- before your archiving - I replied to Eusebeus by pointing out that his claim that the discussion was over was false. Do you really think it acceptable to archive an on-going discussion? That appears to be an attempt to stifle debate. Andy Mabbett 09:35, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
Andy can have that debate all on his own, since no-one is interested in discussing this with him. AND he has been happily banned from making disruptive edits, so we don't even to worry about reverting his petty, point-plagued edits. Now let's clear this infobox rubbish from the talk page. If Andy keeps reverting it, take him back to ANI and we can ask for a ban from editing this page. Eusebeus 10:08, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
Agreed. Mr. Mabbett seems unable or unwilling to fix the myriad problems involved with bioboxes, which were so spectacularly demonstrated on the Paderewski page yesterday. So there is nothing left to discuss. Archive it. --Folantin 10:16, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
It is now re-archived. -- Kleinzach 10:24, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
Your - collective - refusal to discuss compromise or attempt to reach consensus is disappointing. Andy Mabbett 10:52, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
Rubbish. Mr Mabbett, you are being disruptive for no good reason whatsoever. Knock it off or you'll be blocked. Moreschi Talk 10:54, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
So far as I'm aware, there is no policy of blocking people for pointing out lack od consensus, where none exists; or for pointing out that an on-going discussion has not ended. Andy Mabbett 11:21, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
No, but we do block for disruption, and you've done nothing but that on this completely stale issue for weeks. Please stop it. Refusing to acknowledge consensus is disruptive. I'm off to remove any more infoboxes that are causing problems. Moreschi Talk 11:27, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Outdent

I must say your attitude to all this Andy is hilarious. Your definition of 'lack of consensus' is 'lack of consensus with me'. The whole point of a WikiProject is to bring editors together to come to a consensus. So when the consensus isn't what you want ie. no infoboxes, you use very predictable arguments:

  • Firstly, you claim the discussion has not ended, when you're the one whose won't let the discussion end. You do realise the discussion won't end till you back down or the whole WikiProject backs down. At the moment, it seems neither is going to happen.
  • Secondly, you clain there is no consensus. Again, unsurprising and you alone are not giving consensus.
  • Thirdly, you start claiming WikiProjects do not own an article and therefore have no right in removing infoboxes. That's like saying a group of people reaching consensus have no right to impose article guidelines. Interesting then how you, as an individual are imposing your guidelines.

Andy, why don't you try this idea - until consensus is met to bring back infoboxes, we do not have infoboxes. Not the other way around. You don't own the page, so stop pushing YOUR views. Democracy has spoken, a group of editors who outnumber you have reached a consensus and want to remove the infoboxes. What's makes your view much more important than theirs? Centy 01:18, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

"Your definition of 'lack of consensus' is 'lack of consensus with me'." If you're gong to start off by posting lies, you're the one who's going to be laughed at. My definition of consensus is that at WP:CONSENSUS.
"you're the one whose won't let the discussion end." - Apart form the fact that you're the first person to post here on this topic for three days; so what?
"you alone are not giving consensus" I refer you to my recent post (almost immediately hidden in the archives), listing all the other people who do not agree with the current claim of consensus.
"you start claiming WikiProjects do not own an article and therefore have no right in removing infoboxes." - No, I don't "start claiming" it; I merely point out that it's Wikipedia policy.
"That's like saying a group of people reaching consensus have no right to impose article guidelines." - no, it is not.
"Interesting then how you, as an individual are imposing your guidelines." - No, I am not.
"why don't you try this idea - until consensus is met to bring back infoboxes, we do not have infoboxes." - and until consensus is met to remove infoboxes, we keep infoboxes.
"You don't own the page" - which page?
"Democracy has spoken" - Wikipedia is not a democracy. You really should try to understand why that is and what it means.
"a group of editors who outnumber you have reached a consensus" - they may outnumber me; but they have not achieved consensus. Consensus is not voting.
"What's makes your view much more important than theirs?" - Nothing. Where have I said that it is? Do you think that their view is much more important than mine?
Andy Mabbett 10:17, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
they may outnumber me; but they have not achieved consensus. - Andy, that's not true and that's where your argument falls down. If they haven't reached consensus why is everyone active from the WikiProject disagreeing with you? Oh and No I'm not is a very poor response to the points I've raised.
Do you think that their view is much more important than mine? - Yes, they view of many outweighs the view of one. There are individuals who wish remove their biographies from Wikipedia. Do you think the view of the majority of people who use Wikipedia and want it remain?
Which page? - Every page you are reverting and claiming there's no consensus.
Look the reason I mention this is I know as soon as your infobox probation is lifted, you'll start reverting again. You don't have a good history when it comes to accepting guidelines laid down by WikiProjects. I'm not trying to annoy you, I just want you to realise that your arguments for infoboxes if flawed things should just stay the way they are now. Centy 11:17, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
"that's not true" - oh, but it is!
"why is everyone active from the WikiProject disagreeing with you?" Whether or not "everyone active from the WikiProject" disagrees with me is irrelevant, since they do not WP:OWN the articles, and since not everyone who has expressed an opinion disagrees with me; so there is no consensus. Please do try to understand what consensus means in Wikipedia.
"they (sic) view of many outweighs the view of one." - not here they don't. Perhaps it is your fundamental lack if understanding on this point which is causing you to fail to appreciate the lack of consensus?
"Do you think the view of the majority of people who use Wikipedia and want it remain?" - I can't parse that fragment.
"You don't have a good history when it comes to accepting guidelines laid down by WikiProjects." - Wikipedia projects may "lay down" guidelines, but that's all they are: guidelines. They don't trump policy.
"I just want you to realise that your arguments for infoboxes if flawed things should just stay the way they are now." - I can't parse that fragment, either.
Andy Mabbett 11:28, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

..."accepting guidelines laid down by WikiProjects"? IMO, composers are persons; therefore their articles are biographies, in which Wikiproject Biography's guidelines use infoboxes. Composers are also musicians; in which Wikiproject Musicians' guidelines also use infoboxes. I would say that consensus would need to be reached with those projects as well -- good luck with that. Anyway, guidelines are just that - guidelines - a suggestion - not a hard and fast rule. So if a major contributor and/or author of a composer biography chooses to use an infobox based on two established guidelines, they should be left alone -- or at least consensus reached for or against an infobox on the talk page of the particular composer in question. Cricket02 05:48, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

This discussion has finished. Please feel free to talk about it somewhere else. -- Kleinzach 07:26, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
This discussion has not finished, and you have no right to declare it so, This is the appropriate forum for the discussion, and any Wikipedia editor is entitled (and should be made welcome) to post here as art of it. Andy Mabbett 08:00, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
and if you actually look at those guidelines you quote, you'll see that they specifically mention classical composers as a case to be careful on. This wikiproject is a sub-project of the Musicians' project, but that doesn't necessarily mean we have to follow exactly what they do (and I'd note that this project actually has more members, for what that's worth). Andy, if you can come up with a specific infobox (or other means of adding the microformat markup, which seems to be your main concern, I'm still not entirely clear what the real problem with PERSONDATA is) which meets the substantive objections made within the discussions here, re-open the discussion. Otherwise you are just going over old ground and not bringing anything new to the table. No progress will be made that way. David Underdown 11:46, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
"adding the microformat markup, which seems to be your main concern" - No. Andy Mabbett 10:06, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Proposed new infobox

I promised during the first marathon infobox discussion to try my hand at designing a new composer infobox that would maximize the potential benefit to articles while minimizing the potential harm, and to come back here when I had something to propose. It's taken some time & real life has interrupted the work a bit, but I finally have a "beta" version to show, so with apologies for resurrecting a discussion I'm sure many hoped was dead, here it is:

User:Turangalila/sandbox/Infobox composer

The page includes a draft "template-documentation" page with cut-and-paste markup & instructions, plus a few hypothetical examples of the template "in action." I've tried to leave almost all the paramters optional, and to emphasize in both the markup and the instructions that they should be deleted if not applicable, oversimple, etc. Obviously if folks actually want to use it in articles it should be moved to the Template namespace.

Please have a look and let me know what y'all think — I think comments should be posted here on this page unless they're purely technical, in which case a comment on my sandbox page might be better. I'm cross-posting this at a couple of other WikiProjects to solicit as much opinion/help as possible, but the consensus of this project carries the most weight for me.

Thanks, —Turangalila talk 16:25, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Strong support Excellent work, Thank you.
{{birth date}} already has class="bday", so you don't need to add that separately.
Also, be aware that using "birth date" templates for baptism dates will add the date to the hCard microformat as a birth date, though - I suggest we either avoid the template, or create a "baptism date" template.
I would wrap a class="note" around the whole "date of death" TR; and make the other "notes" apply to whole rows, also, so as to include their labels.
Andy Mabbett 17:19, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
Strong Oppose – Still wholly against infoboxes for composers, even this new version. Firstly, how many edit wars are going to start over what nationality to put in the second line for an Eastern European composer? Who decides which notable works make or do not make the infobox? There's just too many problems surrounding inclusion of information for an infobox.
If you really want infoboxes, have a page full of infoboxes for evert composer somewhere on WPComposers, but not on the article page itself. It just defeats the point of the article. Centy 18:24, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
Hmmm, interesting. Thank you. A few concerns, let's see...
I'm not altogether happy about this "Other occupations" lark. It tends not to be very helpful. Sometimes you get stuff where the field is useless as a summary, and you simply have to read the actual article for it to make any sense. Then again, an awful lot of composers moonlighted (not just moonlighted in many cases, made their living this way, for many centuries composing not profitable) as harpsichordists/pianists/organists - Dowland, Handel, Bach, Mozart, Stravinsky - and pre-20th Century you tend to assume this to be the case unless told otherwise. I'm not quite sure this belongs in the box. Even now, plenty of composers conduct as a matter of course. Does this really need to be mentioned straight up?
Notable works? Oooh eer. You're only going to have room for two or three at the most, and I can see endless fights over what gets in and what doesn't. Notable is rather POV, anyway. Perhaps "Most popular"? Grove actually does sometimes tell you objectively what's Mozart's most popular opera, for example (I assume they look at number of performances).
Notable students? Again, only room for not very many (I predict fights), and again "notable" is just a bit POV (that's before we get into the question of how many lessons you have to give someone to be listed as a teacher rather than a passing influence).
Nationality. Nationality then, or nationality now? Moreschi Talk 18:56, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Oppose. With all respect, I think infoboxes are in general a terrible idea, for the following reason. An encyclopedia editor should use his/her brain to decide what's important about a topic, and put exactly that into the opening paragraph. Infoboxes are a device for subverting this principle: they force the editor to emphasize aspects of the topic that may well be trivial and irrelevant. Hence, they're good only for simple topics that come in series and share most of their important properties, such as Magic the Gathering cards. Composers are much more complicated than Magic the Gathering cards. Yours sincerely, Opus33 19:15, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Oppose. Most composers on Wikipedia are historical figures, thus raising all sorts of cultural and evidential complexities that cannot be distilled into little boxes. Including works, students, and teachers raises all sorts of issues as well: Do we include 50 Mozart works? Probably not... 5? By what criteria? Whatever it is, it'll be so arbitrary that the information is valueless. What counts as a teacher? Did Buxtehude "teach" Bach? And so on. Fireplace 20:46, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Support. For crying out loud, I guess this is the reason most encyclopediae have people in charge. They make decisions on what to include and what not to include. They're not afraid of how editors are going to agree on what goes in the article. My gosh, we might as well not have any articles on composers because people will disagree on what should and should not be in the article. We shouldn't even have an encyclopedia, since we have to agree on what we should have articles on and what we shouldn't. I truly believe that infoboxes, in addition to the lead paragraph, are valuable and useful for people not familiar with the subject. They can glance at the infobox, read the lead, and decide for themselves whether the rest of the article is worth reading or not. - cgilbert(talk|contribs) 21:31, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Strong Oppose One of the major problems with infoboxes - exemplified by Turangalila's detailed work - is that the more important the composer, the more difficult it is to devise a suitable box. We have now been through all the arguments against them. Opus33 (above) explains the problem of the opening paragraph vis à vis the box. Centy and Fireplace point out the inevitable anomalies, anachronisms, criteria problems. We can also look at the aesthetic problems - clutter, repetition - that any print enclyclopedia would avoid. The solution recommended by Centy - seperate pages of infobox-type information for people who want crib-sheet-style minimal information is reasonable. That would satisfy those who require meta data/micro formats (or whatever), while providing information for those who don't want to read the articles. The article editors would no longer be responsible for accuracy - this has always been the main problem with having them here. (Compliments to Turangalila for his examples. Thank you for continuing to be the reasonable face (the Sinn Féin?) of the 'box lobby!) -- Kleinzach 00:01, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Obviously this isn't looking good, but just for the hell of it let me re-re-emphasize a couple of things that are on the sandbox page, if one actually reads it: The "notable works" category is there, as noted on the page, for "one-hit" types or at least those who's fame rests solely on 1 or 2 works (I mentioned Humperdinck). I even hesitated about mentioning the Four Seasons in my Vivaldi hypothetical, but I reasoned that for the lay person (and WP is supposed to be for the lay person) that's what he's about. Note that I left it out of the other three hypothetical examples, and of course for a Mozart it should just be deleted.
All of the parameters in the "work" part of the box are meant to be used only if strongly, prominantly, and nearly exclusively associated with the subject. Thus Beethoven isn't particularly associated w/ one or two works, but Humperdinck is; Bach isn't strongly associated with a particular teacher, but Czerny is; Brahms isn't associated with a particular stylistic group, but Auric generally is; Mozart isn't strongly associated with a particular genre, but Verdi is; etc; etc. My goal is maximum flexibility, not to dictate content at all: there's a bunch of parameters, but as noted on the page, no article would use all of them--many probably wouldn't use half of them. That's what "optional" means. "Nationality," like almost all the rest, can be left blank. Even "Composer" can be taken out, though as currently designed you'd have to replace it with something.
Yes, people aren't Pokemon cards or whatever, but we are a common species, and composers are a particular subset of the species who share a few observable variables. They're born, live, work and die in particular places at particular times. They have relatives. They do something or other for a living. They produce works in particular genres, sometimes few enough to fit in a table. They usually study with somebody and often teach somebody else. Their stuff sounds a particular way, and is often labeled in a way that the composer either accepts, rejects, or ignores. Etc. Etc. Usually if not always much of this is susceptable to summarization in a format that's convenient for the casual reader, the looker-upper on the go, or just folks who learn differently; a format which cannot replace, but can supplement, a well-written prose exegesis. If I've failed in designing that, fine, but I'd be grateful if folks could a) consider all readers, b) try to understand what "optional" means, and c) actually read the page and look at the examples before rushing to type "Strong Oppose". thx, —Turangalila talk 00:45, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Fine. I think most of us understood all that - and once again I think you've put a remarkable amount of effort into this. How about Centy's proposal - which I noted - about putting infoboxes in a separate place unconnected with the articles? Would that be an acceptable compromise? -- Kleinzach 01:03, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Well it actually doesn't seem as if most of us did "understand all that," as quite a few of the complaints above raise points emphatically dealt with on the "doc" page, as well as in previous discussions here, and evince neither any willingness to actually read the proposal nor, again, a basic understanding that you. don't. have. to. use. every. parameter...Please forgive me if I get overwrought but I did put alot of thought into trying to address people's concerns; if I addressed them inadequately, fine, but they're brought up again and again as though I didn't address them at all, and that's a bit grating; plus being accused of treating artists I've spent my life idolizing and studying as if they were cheap children's collectables also chafes a bit.
Thanks very much for the compliments -- as a descendant of Fenians I liked your metaphor, though I think the good Rev. Paisley might raise an eyebrow at your calling Sinn Féin "reasonable" (or were you being ironic?). To answer your question, the infobox-ghetto idea doesn't interest me. As I think I may have said before (ahem), I think infoboxes can usefully supplement articles, not replace them -- like WP as a whole, how useful (or harmful) they are depends on the editors of each article. Anyway Infoboxipedia sounds like a huge project I'm just not up for. Actually the reason I mocked up this template at all was to offer it as a "compromise" -- insofar as I see this as a negotiation at all, I'm not trying to be either Gerry Adams or Ian Paisley, but rather a kind of poor man's George Mitchell. Apparently, though, as Stephen Colbert might say, we're at war and I'm supposed to pick a side. Sigh, —Turangalila talk 05:35, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
List of composers by name – How long is it going to take to populate all these composers with an infobox? Because if we're having infoboxes, we better have a uniform policy of putting an infobox on every composer's page. Also, with some of these lesser known composers, what's the point of even having an article when we're just going to put all the the information in an infobox? Take Anatol Vieru, a student of Aram Khachaturian for example. Once we give him an infobox, either the lead becomes even shorter or we have massive duplication. Centy 10:18, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Not as long as it would have taken for a bot to upgrade the existing inofoboxes, before they were summarily removed. Andy Mabbett 10:21, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
"How about Centy's proposal [...] about putting infoboxes in a separate place unconnected with the articles?" - I've read a few asinine things on Wikipedia lately, but that one outdoes them all, combined.
From Help:Infobox (my emphasis) - "An infobox on Wikipedia is a consistently-formatted table which is present in articles with a common subject to provide summary information consistently between articles or improve navigation to closely related articles in that subject.".
Andy Mabbett 10:21, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

SupportI think it makes a lot of information visible quickly. Being able to navigate easilly backwards and forwards between pupils of Schoenberg or whoever sounds a good idea --Peter cohen 09:51, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

'couple o' quick responses:
  • Peter: well actually if navigation among Schoenbergians or the Bach family or whatever is the goal, that may be better served by a "navbox"—as for example {{BeethovenStringQuartets}}, or just a list page. In my mind anyway a Schoenberg infobox might link Berg & Webern but that would be it.
  • Centy: I don't see any pressing need for absolute uniformity; I'm trying to offer an option for editors of each article to use or not use as common sense dictates. Obviously on a stub or stubbish article an infobox is superfluous. I'm not familiar with Mr. Vieru but I doubt he would even make it into a Khachaturian infobox (though maybe in the article proper); however Rimsky-Korsakov and Stravinsky probably would merit inclusion in each other's infoboxes (if each article's editors decided to include one), so the option is there. I suppose on the "doc" page after saying "DELETE any parameters that are not applicable, oversimple, etc." we could add "if most or all parameters merit deletion, just don't use the box."
  • Andy: please chill out a bit and try to keep it civil.
FWIW one change I'll make based on this discussion is to kill the "Nationality" parameter entirely, since one can always add whatever adjective one wants to the "Title" field. I'll probably do that & some other futzing in a day or two. Gotta go work now, though. Shalom, —Turangalila talk 15:13, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
"Andy: please chill out a bit and try to keep it civil." - I'm perfectly "chilled", and civil, thank you. Andy Mabbett 15:17, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Clarification: AFAIK none of us are against navigation boxes, especially when they are well-designed, colour-coded or whatever. Infoboxes are a different matter. Instead of encouraging the reader to go further, they give the reader a means of avoiding even glancing at the article. From the editorial point of view they are a liability because they can also be set up without reading the text. That's what has happened in the past. For every one thoughtful Turangalila there are a dozen disinterested box makers working their way through AWB-compiled lists of popular artists with the odd classical music biography, with appalling results (Gluck: occupation pianist, Brahms: favourite instrument orchestra, Wagner: genre Classical, Puccini: genre Romantic etc etc.)
Ancillary material is always difficult to manage and coordinate with main content. If we were working on a print encyclopedia we could make Turangalila infobox-editor-in-chief to supervise the whole operation. On WP we can't do that, another reason why his proposal is impractical and should be rejected. -- Kleinzach 00:12, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Proposed new infobox continued

Basically, a nice portrait or picture and place and date of birth and death (where applicable) is about all the boilerplate info that is going to work across all composers. The rest (important students, teachers, predominant style, etc...) will likely result in fitting square pegs into round holes. If a very barebones infobox listing the core bio details of composers is considered useful, sobeit. But such information is inevitably provided in the lead paragraph so it is probably redundant. Beyond that and we get into the task of categorising what is, too often, the uncategorisable. I suggest we abandon the idea of infoboxes for composers in general. Eusebeus 00:35, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

  • Comment 1 of 2 Infoboxes and accuracy - I'd like to make a comment relevant to concerns raised in the previous discussion on infoboxes; the contention that biographical infoboxes are by nature inaccurate, and therefore in violation of Wikipedia policy. The reasoning as I understood it, was that because an infobox requires summarization, it is by nature inaccurate. What I'd like to point out is that all components of Wikipedia require summarization and possibly simplification to some degree: any biographical article is a summarization of the full story of the person's life; a lede section is a summarization and possibly a simplification; the entries on a list (take List of major opera composers, as an example, are summarizations, (also the organization of the composers into timeframes by birthdate on the opera composers list could potentially include simplifications of some nuanced information); the placement of composer articles into categories may require a simplification of nuanced information. My point is that infoboxes are not unique within Wikipedia in offering challenges in presenting possibly nuanced information accurately in a summarized or simplified representation. In each of the cases mentioned above, we do depend on the discernment of the user to understand the level of detail reasonably provided by the form of presentation, and to realize that "the complete story" may be more subtle and nuanced, and we assume that the user has the responsibility to use utilize the options made available to find out more, if needed (e.g. read the whole article instead of just the lede or the infobox; read one of the references cited instead of just the Wikipedia article). Respectfully, Lini 04:04, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment 2 of 2 - Turangalila's infobox, and what to do about it - Very nice, Turangalila. I appreciate the amount of work put into it, including the time spent to learn how to do it, all of the documentation, and the examples. Following is my personal opinion of what I'd like to see happen. Once Turangalila thinks the infobox is in a finished condition (taking into account any constructive feedback from this discussion), it would be made available on the list of biographical infoboxes at WP Biography. Then we would open up a new discussion here for a consensus on the Composers project page regarding infoboxes. The part about "currently available" biographical infoboxes would no longer be relevant. It would be up to the group consensus to determine if it is still a stylistic preference, in general, not to use biographical infoboxes on Composers articles, even though a better-designed infobox is now available. This time around, once it is determined that no new productive discussion is occurring (merely repetition of the same arguments), or after a reasonable time interval, then it would be helpful to announce in advance that the discussion will be concluding; to post a draft consensus statement (which is intended to go on the project page), and to allow a little time for any good-faith, non-disruptive feedback regarding the proposed consensus.
Regarding my motivation for the above point of view: I personally do not intend to add any infoboxes to articles on composers, as long as I am aware of any significant amount of ill-feelings toward the biographical infoboxes among editors active in the Composers project; that is simply my personal preference for how I work on Wikipedia. However, a couple principles that I wish we could see this project embrace more are: a) Improve articles by building upon what is there (taken from "Seven Suggestions" on Sam's user page and b) Different Wikipedians are good at different things. I would not be happy about editors just slapping on poorly designed or poorly utilized infoboxes just because of a mistaken assumption that all articles need to have an infobox ( a misunderstanding that I at one time was involved in, which I regret); however, there may be editors (Turangalila for one), who are knowledgable, responsible, and skilled, at usage of biographical infoboxes, and I would prefer that the project assimilate their work on the articles where they choose to add an infobox, rather than prohibit or automatically delete the boxes. --Cheers, Lini 04:39, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Still oppose I appreciate the work Turangalila has put into this (and AFAIK T is the only pro-box editor to have made such an effort) but I still can't see it flying per all the concerns raised above. --Folantin 09:39, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Turangalila, I do appreciate your efforts in making the infobox and your constructive reasoning as to why we should have infoboxes, but I just feel having an infobox kills the need for a lead. It's hard enough writing a lead paragraph for Wikipedia, but when most of your information is duplicated in an infobox, it makes it so much harder. If you want easy navigation between composers, navigational boxes should be used. It seems to me that the easiest compromise to all this will eventually be an infobox that says nothing more than the obvious (Mozart - Austrian composer, born 27 January 1756, Died 5 December 1791). Centy – reply• contribs – 10:45, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
"I just feel having an infobox kills the need for a lead. It's hard enough writing a lead paragraph for Wikipedia, but when most of your information is duplicated in an infobox, it makes it so much harder." - The rest of Wikipedia seems to manage that OK. How do you feel composers are different, in that regard? Andy Mabbett 11:10, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Huge support of Turangalila and T's work but Oppose reintroducing infoboxes: The great thing about this infobox (and not the other ones) is that it summarizes much of the most important information for contexts where a prose summary/discussion/nuance/citation list of the subject wouldn't fit or be appropriate -- but the encyclopedia articles are exactly the right place for these types of prose expositions, and the lede can organize the information from most to least important in a way that boxes can't. I think there are places for non-prose additions: timelines would be really useful for certain (not all) composers; in a section of "Biography 1810-1820" a sidebar could list the important works of this period, since they're unlikely to all be biographically significant. Etc. So I think having talented and creative people working on the templates will be a boon to Composers and other classical music projects; but I'm still against this particular template. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 16:39, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Update: Per comments here, I've made a couple of revisions: Most importantly, I've axed the "Nationality" parameter entirely, and changed the name of the "Title" parameter to "Description", which I think is more, er, descriptive. I've also revised the instructions a bit; and I futzed the hCard stuff some per Andy's suggestions (Andy, you may want to check the code, since I really don't understand the markup).
Obviously the majority opinion of the project seems to be categorically against the use of infoboxes, so I'll just leave this version in my sandbox for now (here's the link again). If anyone wants to use it on a particular article (subject to consensus of that article's editors of course), drop me a line on my talk page or an email; we can always move it over to the template namespace whenever.
Thanks for all the feedback (pos & neg). Tchuss, —Turangalila talk 16:19, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
"Andy, you may want to check the code" - done, thank you.
"the majority opinion of the project seems to be categorically against the use of infoboxes" - perhaps, but there's clearly no consensus; and clearly no intention to work towards one.
Andy Mabbett 19:36, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

I support infoboxes, but they should also be as accurate as possible. My main grudge with this whole argument is that in Wikipedia nobody can claim ownership of an article. But unfortunately there seems to be a loophole: Wikiprojects. As soon as you have created an article, sobebody tags it with the appropriate wikiproject tag, and soon the article's style will be subject to the project's "we do it this way because we say so"-rules. "Don't try to argue, we have reached consensus!!" It's funny how the Classical composers wikiproject says that "current consensus is to do this and this". What use is a current consensus when a project is growing in a multitude of directions all the time and members leave and join all the time? It's impossible to keep a consensus that way. And WHY are those few people who have joined the project the only people allowed to discuss the style and contents of articles - articles should belong to all wikipedia editors, not just a few who have chosen themselves!

It is very strange that of the 100 or so people who will edit an article, 12 have decided that they are more important than the others and decide to subject the article to their own rules. In effect, they "own" the article, even though they claim they are just working according to an abstract "project consensus", which is actually just their own decision, they just don't want it to sound like that, because "project consensus" sounds much more authoritative than "I wanna".

If an infobox contains badly misleading information, the information should be removed, not the box. If not, the box, and the information, should be kept. Just like with anything else in Wikipedia.--Wormsie 23:15, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Quite, there is, still, clearly no consensus on this issue. The claim on the project page is bogus. Andy Mabbett 08:29, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
Forum-shopping again, Mabbett [28]? This really isn't on. --Folantin 08:45, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
No, not forum shopping, and you don't get to tell me what I may or may not discuss, or where. I note that you're unable to refute my pointing out that there's clearly no consensus on the issue of infoboxes. Andy Mabbett 09:38, 16 June 2007 (UTC)