Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Infoboxes

Infobox: “Avoid links to sections within the article” – Is this helpful to readers?

I came across this deletion from an article‘s Infobox by Binksternet citing MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE “Avoid links to sections within the article” but the deleted link seemed to me to be useful to readers.

As best I can discover, the sentence “Avoid links to sections within the article ...” was added to the policy without discussion, either before or subsequently, by PL290 (who hasn’t been active here for almost 10 years, so I can’t discuss his reason for adding this sentence with him).

It seems to me that the link to list of episodes is useful to readers to show that such a list exists, and to allow a reader to jump straight to the list, irrespective of where the list is.

There could be other useful links from an Infobox to anchors within the article, whether sections or not, for example for significant works.

Unless there are objections I propose to delete this sentence from the policy.

Jim Craigie (talk) 09:56, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Generally, I would agree not to clutter an infobox with navigation that is already provided by the TOC. However, it's another story whether your case is an WP:IAR exception. Additionally, the reverter Binksternet provided an additional reason in the edit summary of ... and Template:Infobox television says only put a list article (a separate article) into that parameter—Bagumba (talk) 10:34, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

but this additional reason is incorrect – Template:Infobox television doesn’t actually say “only” – it just doesn’t mention internal links within the article.
Jim Craigie (talk) 10:39, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

FWIW, usages of Template:Infobox media franchise also tend to link to sections in the article, see Marvel Cinematic Universe as an example. --Gonnym (talk) 11:46, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

The WP:INFOBOXPURPOSE guideline as it stands makes sense to me. I see no great value in putting links in the infobox which would be redundant to the table of contents. There are lots of things we don't link, even though it might be viewed by some as useful, for instance wikilinks inside section headers are deprecated. To answer Gonnym's argument, I would also point out that lots of editors put small font into infoboxes even though WP:SMALLFONT says we should not do so, and people put national flags icons in pop culture articles even though WP:FLAGCRUFT says not to. Rather than look at random examples as an ideal model, I would rather discuss what we are trying to do with the encyclopedia as a whole. How do we want the reader to navigate? Binksternet (talk) 13:34, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

The guideline at Template:Infobox television says "If a Wikipedia 'List of' article exists for the show's episodes, put its name here." Very simple IF–THEN statement. If A, then B. It doesn't say if not A, then improvise. It doesn't say "If there is no list article then you may use an internal link." Binksternet (talk) 22:39, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Agree I am agree with User:Jim Craigie, it seems we also need another consensus for {{Infobox television}}. -- Editor-1 (talk) 12:41, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

 Disagree Avoid is a soft normative phrase. Avoiding intra-article links is a infobox best practice, not a hard rule. — BillHPike (talk, contribs) 13:01, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Agree When I created the page List of One Piece media made the choice to include links to each section when listing the number of instalments of each piece of work, I personally found this to be helpful moreso than to try to link every single instalment themselves, the same format was carried over to List of Scooby-Doo media as well.★Trekker (talk) 13:34, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Agree I agree with Jim, this is something I've done in the past when linking to list of episodes and would continue to do it. Never even realized that the text mentioned above was in MOS:INFOBOX. I don't find it redundant. TheDoctorWho (talk) 14:14, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

 Disagree As this goes against MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE. An infobox is not a mini-article and should only summarize key facts about the subject. Article navigation belongs in the TOC. MB 15:47, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Agree - I kind of agree and disagree. I think there are times when internal linking can be useful or necessary. For instances, for long running TV series it can be too much to link every starring role (if they hade a lot of change-over in that time) in addition to every producer, etc. etc. That can drive an infobox's length and become too much to read in a small space. In those cases, I see value in ignoring the rule and including a link that says "See below" for the appropriate section. Otherwise, you inevitably get people adding 30 names to an infobox because the section is there an empty.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 17:44, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Weak Agree - I don't see much of a downside, aside from potential minor redundancy with the TOC. I absolutely hate very long infoboxes that stretch halfway down the page, and this is a simple way to avoid that. As Billhpike pointed out, saying "avoid" doesn't make it a strict rule, more of a general suggestion. As such, if people want to challenge an edit where someone cited this one sentence to remove such a link from the infobox, they can do so on the article's talkpage and gain a consensus to re-add it. However, I know from experience with other infobox templates with similar cautionary lines that there will be people who don't interpret it that way and systematically make edits using this one line as their "proof", potentially making them unwilling to even engage in such a challenge. For that reason I support removing it or altering the current sentence to make it more clear that exceptions are allowed. Xfansd (talk) 22:47, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Section links of this nature is becoming more common as a compromise to a huge list in the box during talks related to clutter.--Moxy 🍁 00:06, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Agree I agree with Jim, but feel editors should still be selective to what, if any, section links are included. As others have noted, such as Bignole, there are instances, particularly in television articles or media franchise articles, where section linking might be appropriate to direct readers to these locations, if they are not immediately aware that this content is solely housed in the section. Additionally, section headings may be worded slightly differently in which case the TOC would not be fully sufficient. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 01:22, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Mostly- Agree - the issue with infoboxes on franchise articles, sometimes become far too cluttered. When this happens, it is "overly"-detailed and becomes a table of contents. In franchise infoboxes, should there be installments in the different medium - it has proven useful to navigate the reader to the section that applies - instead of listing the same information that can be found in the TOC. For example: When a franchise has various and differing stars/producers/studios/etc., it's more concise and effective to direct a reader to the appropriate section.--DisneyMetalhead (talk) 23:51, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Strongly  Disagree as per MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE. For the vast majority of articles, in-article links like this are completely pointless as the section is either level with the IB itself, or is at most "one scroll-screen" down. It's utterly pointless. And that's what a TOC is for. Reword it, maybe – but absolutely don't delete it from the MOS. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 15:47, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

 Disagree per MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE. Yes there are cases where this is genuinely useful, but we all know that if allowed links will proliferate endlessly. I think discussion of this potentially rather significant change should be more widely advertised - perhaps an Rfc? Johnbod (talk) 15:51, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Design inconsistencies

A problem we have from time to time, and this is often caused by unnecessary infobox forking, is inconsistent design across infoboxes of the same type. For example, an infobox on a city should look roughly the same in terms of design (the order of params should be roughly the same, it shouldn't have completely different colours or styling, it shouldn't have a completely different structure). It creates an inconsistency and creates a surprise when viewing different places. Differences, where appropriate, should be carefully considered so that the avg reader doesn't consciously become aware of them.

Thus, I propose adding to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Infoboxes § Causes of inconsistency something along the lines of:

Design inconsistency

Infoboxes, particularly infobox forks for the same category of articles, should maintain a consistent appearance with related infoboxes, particularly in relation to layout, colour and structure. For example, readers expect a degree of similarity when viewing the article for London vs New York City.

ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 21:12, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Can you give a specific example of articles or templates where you see this problem? Nikkimaria (talk) 21:15, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Nikkimaria, sure. Melbourne, Sydney and pretty much every Australian city or state would be one of the worst examples that comes to mind. They're completely inconsistent with every other world city infobox. The station infoboxes pre-merge would also have been good candidates for this issue. To a lesser degree we have {{Infobox award}} and {{Infobox military award}}. Whilst this change to MOS won't automatically change any of those, this is a practical issue we see currently, thus offering advice to editors to be mindful to keep such issues to a minimum seems helpful & valuable MOS advice, especially when prominent WikiProjects fork an infobox and customise it etc. (if it's to be done, it should retain constant style to the maximum degree) ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 21:21, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Parameter aliases

I think we should also start discouraging the use of various ways of writing a single parameter. It encourages inconsistency and confusion. By that I mean templates shouldn't allow |birth_date=, |BirthDate=, |DateOfBirth=, |date_of_birth=, etc... eg stick with |birth_date=, and editors should expect all templates accepting a date of birth to use that name. Right now we've got weird varieties of camel case in some templates and support/encouragement (via docs) for strange aliases in others. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 19:42, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

While I can see an argument for standardizing docs on a particular style, and for saying that all templates using a particular parameter should use the same name for it, I don't see a strong reason for disabling aliases. What is the benefit of causing an error message if someone accidentally writes BirthDate when they mean birth_date? Nikkimaria (talk) 20:14, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

I think that ProcrastinatingReader refers mainly to how the documentation of templates handles these aliases. I think the right way is to standardize and not mention in the aliases in the documentation, thus tacitly discouraging them. After the standardization, a bot could take care of changing all the aliases to the newly-accepted parameter name, after which the aliases can be deprecated without having a great amount of errors. El Millo (talk) 20:44, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

No, I think he is clearly talking about standardizing the actual parameters, as well as updating the docs to refer to the "standard" parameter name. Agree strongly this would be a great idea. I waste a lot of time trying to remember the variation for a particular template before giving up and checking the documentation. Also agree with Nikkimaria that there is no reason to disable all the aliases, or updating all the articles to use the standard names - that would cause hundreds of thousands of bot edits. Using the new "standard" name should be encouraged by way of not documenting other variations, but changing existing uses should be optional - only done in conjunction with other edits. MB 20:58, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I'm going for from this section. I'd like to get to a stage where we can update docs to only show the standard name (hide the aliases in template code for backwards compatibility), and making sure all templates support the aliases as the primary option. Amazingly enough, quite a few templates don't even support the standard param name (instead only a non-standard TitleCase param).

In the long run, yes, I would also like at some point bot replacement to deprecate parameter names over time (this is generally not classed as cosmetic edits afaik), but that's not part of my suggestion in this section (it's also outside scope of MOS). Overall, my belief is editors should not be surprised by different templates, and should be able to work with different templates without much thought or need to familiarise themselves with a new doc, to the max reasonable extent possible. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:32, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Why would that not be classed as cosmetic? Unless you're actually getting rid of the aliases, having a bot change the parameter name in use does not impact the rendered display. Nikkimaria (talk) 17:21, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

It would be the other way around, first change the aliases for the standardized name and then deprecate the aliases, in order not to have errors appear in lots of articles. El Millo (talk) 17:37, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

This presumes getting rid of the aliases entirely is a good idea. See MB's comment above. Nikkimaria (talk) 17:39, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Well it's not a bad idea. It's just a big undertaking. El Millo (talk) 17:54, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

From experience, I recommend focusing on one parameter, or set of parameters. Wikipedia:Coordinates in infoboxes was a HUGE undertaking, resulting in edits to a couple hundred infoboxes and hundreds of thousands of articles. If you are interested in a similar, stalled project from 2017, take a look at Wikipedia:Maps in infoboxes, which failed to launch. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:48, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

Category:Pages using deprecated image syntax nominated for deletion

Please see this CfD discussion about Category:Pages using deprecated image syntax. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:38, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Apparent contradiction for infobox facts not in article

I recently came across some feuding editors who had two opposing interpretations of this page. One side cited MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE in support of the claim that infoboxes should not have any facts which are not in the text of the article. The other side cited WP:INFOBOXREF in support of the claim that facts in the infobox but not in the article are allowed even if discouraged (otherwise there would not be a rule that facts in the infobox but not the article need a reference in the infobox.) It would probably help avoid such disputes in the future if this contradiction was resolved. (And maybe these sections need to cross-reference each other so they stay in sync?)

I've not considered this issue before, but personally I like the idea that an infobox can give a quick, orientating summary at a glace of the most important facts about a subject, and that the article text will amplify in more detail. This organizing principle helps scope what we might consider missing from the infobox. It's also nice that there's a standard layout so readers get use to the same info being in the same place, which is less true with prose. However, in practice I also see lots of infoboxes with minor, typically technical facts, that don't naturally fit anywhere in the article and aren't mentioned in it. These are classic reference department facts, and it's great that with infoboxes readers can quickly look them up without having to skim the article or even read the table of contents. I use these a lot on language and country articles. For example, when I need to know the ISO code for the Turkish language. My husband is often needing scientific parameters, like the heat capacity of carbon dioxide.

Given that experience and difficulty imagining a successful alternative, I'd lean toward affirmatively allowing these exceptions. Or maybe we actually want to stop universally discouraging this and instead identify certain classes of fact that actually we'd prefer not to repeat in the article? These technical facts are often found lower down in the infobox, often after a section divider. Maybe different guidance is needed for the first part of the infobox vs. the farther-down parts? What do you think? -- Beland (talk) 07:39, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE already says "As with any guideline, there will be exceptions where a piece of key specialised information is difficult to integrate into the body text, but where that information may be placed in the infobox. Prominent examples include the ICD codes in Infobox medical condition and most of the parameters in Chembox." That would seem to cover your examples, like the ISO code for Turkish. I think the current text is fine and doesn't need changing. What I think we shouldn't be encouraging is the expansion of infoboxes with minor facts: infoboxes should be brief. Bondegezou (talk) 09:12, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

You're right; not sure how I missed that. I guess I just stopped reading that section before I got there. That seems fine, then. -- Beland (talk) 09:26, 5 February 2021 (UTC)