Talk:David Widdicombe

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Infobox

This article doesn't have an infobox.

I recently encountered a handful of contributors who very aggressively claimed that placing an infobox on a BLP article required talk page consensus. If no one responds, after a reasonable period of time, I will place one here. Geo Swan (talk) 10:08, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I object. And please note that the ArbCom sanctions (about which you were warned three weeks ago) states that insults and personal attacks, soapboxing and casting aspersions are ... unacceptable. You post, bearing examples of that (as well as being untruthful), breaches those restrictions. – SchroCat (talk) 14:33, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose. I am not against a large majority of infoboxes, including science, geographical, sports, royal, political, and military, but I am for the arts. My reasons for opposing info boxes unilaterally are as follows:

1. Undisciplined expansiveness: A maximum-inclusion approach to fields that leads editors to place repetitive, sometimes downright silly information in the box. (There needs to be clear, prominent advice about not using every single field in every circumstance, and rather the need to ration the information, shaping it to the context.)
2. Visual degradation: The way infoboxes squash the text to the left, particularly on smaller screens, and restrict the sizing of the lead picture.
3. Prefabrication: The prefabricated feel infoboxes give to articles: here's quick and dirty info if you can't be bothered to read on—the very name of the boxes says it all.
4. Disconnected particles. Their domination of the very opening of an article with chopped up morsels that seem to contradict the continuous, connected form and style of the running prose. (If the justification is that adding an infobox provides both genres, the problem is this utter visual domination at the top—and see the next point.)
5. Uncertain benefit for readers: The failure of anyone who promotes infoboxes to explain how they are read. (Do readers look at them first, before embarking on the lead? Does the existence of infoboxes encourage readers not to absorb the main text? Do readers hop from article to article looking only at infoboxes—an argument I've heard put for retaining blue-carpeted linking practices within infoboxes? Do readers just glance quickly at the infobox and then read the article proper—in which case, what is the relationship between the infobox and the rest, and does the former reduce the impact of the latter through pre-empting basic information that the reader will encounter in the running prose? What functionality is missing when an article does not have an infobox?)
6. Better as lists: The fact that infobox information seems, in design, to be for comparison between topics. (If this is the case, the information would be far, far better in a WP List, where the form is much better suited to comparison, and the relationship between lead and table can be made to work very well indeed; see WP:Featured lists for what I mean.)

Infoboxes such as the one proposed here seem to pander to the lowest concentration span going. Their premise seems to be that readers can't absorb the key facts from extended text, or that they want isolated factoids hammered into a prefabricated shape. They judder against the lead as a summary of the main text, but are prone to deceive (not by purpose, but in effect). Their inclusion would be derided in any culture that wasn't saturated with 30-second television ads and news broadcasts featuring 5- to 10-second grabs from politicians, PR consultants and disaster witnesses. Infoboxes are at loggerheads with WP's goal of providing reliable, deep information about the world; they intrude between readers and their all-important engagement with the opening of the main text.

Infoboxes should only be used occasionally, with great care. They should not be a formulaic part of articles. Those who are pushing the project to accept infoboxes everywhere would do better to put their energy into creating more lists. Cassianto^Talk 18:11, 16 June 2020 (UTC)