Talk:Alain Supiot

Infobox

RexxS insists on adding an infobox to this article that says only that Supiot is a jurist born in 1949. My contention is that this addition fails WP:DIB. Anyone can see the same information in the first line of the article — expanding that first line into an infobox provides no additional information to the reader, and only serves to obscure the actual content in the rest of the article by drawing attention away from it and towards this big waste of space. It would of course be possible to expand the infobox to contain other information such as schooling, but I don't see how that woiuld be any more help to the readers. RexxS has now re-added the infobox twice and shows no sign of having paid any attention to my edit summaries saying all this, and I'd prefer not to get into an edit war over it. Can we have a discussion here with other participants, discussing the merits (or not) of the infobox, please? —David Eppstein (talk) 20:03, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

That's not what the infobox says or does. The essay WP:DIB has no standing and has been clearly refuted at WP:MISINFO. A visitor can't see his alma mater in the brief first line of the article, but the infobox contains it. That's because I just added his CV as a reference which then passes the "unsourced filter" in the infobox. As more statements at Alain Supiot (Q1264247) gain references, they will appear in the infobox as well. Each edit naturally will appear on the watchlists of editors interested in this article.

David Eppstein's edit summaries:

• Rm disinfobox — the only thing it adds to the first sentence is a precise birth date with no source here and a bad source on Wikidata (sourced to DNB which gives only the birth year)
• Undo. Still fails WP:DIB — provides no information not already in first line of article. Why not just repeat that same first line ten times in a huge font? It would have the same effect

don't stand up to scrutiny and he is edit-warring here against two editors, Mike Peel and myself to impose his personal anti-info preference with no other reason than it being his preference.

If David Eppstein needs a lesson on the value infoboxes can add to an article, I'll direct him to User:RexxS/Infobox factors, which contains the fullest overview of the pros and cons of infoboxes on the 'pedia. I'd be happy to repeat the points made there on this page if anyone insists. --RexxS (talk) 20:23, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Wow, battlefield mentality much? I am not against infoboxes; I am against bad infoboxes, and this one still qualifies. (To be fair, the article is also not very good.) I am also against pretending that Wikidata's sourcing standards match the standards here when they plainly don't. And your claim that the only reason I want to remove it is "personal preference" reinforces what I said, that you are not even making a pretense of paying attention to my explanations for why I removed it (they are not hard to find: I put them right above your long comment). Also, your claim that changes to Wikidata will appear on the watchlists of editors here is flat-out false. For instance, I see no such appearance for your changes that put the school of his doctorate into the "alma mater" field. (And where is his pre-doctoral education?) —David Eppstein (talk) 05:07, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

@David Eppstein: I've expanded the infobox via Wikidata, how is it looking to you now? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 09:51, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

P.S. the article on the French Wikipedia also uses Wikidata for its infobox, so the edits I've just made also show up there, which is nice. :-) Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 09:58, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

The infobox is now sufficiently full and informative that I would not consider it as a candidate for removal. Thanks for the improvements. I still have issues with wikidata-populated infoboxes, but this individual article is not really the place to discuss that. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:03, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Great, so now we show "honorary doctor" as part of his education... Honorary doctor (for which we have an article, Honorary degree, even if the infobox pretends we don't) is not part of someone's education, but an award. Luckily the French article doesn't show this field in the infobox yet, otherwise this would have been a good example of "Wikidata, spreading wrong information to 300 languages at once". Fram (talk) 13:07, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Which took seconds to fix - no lnoger than it would have taken to change in an ordinary infobox here - at Wikdiata. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:42, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Errors often take only seconds to fix. it usually takes quite long for someone to find them at Wikidata though. Please don't override local values with Wikidata ones, it doesn't add anything but a number of icons. Adding the values on enwiki at least permits to see the history of the page much easier, otherwise one has to check the infobox here and the item history on Wikidata. Fram (talk) 14:10, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

It doesn't take long for someone to find them on Wikidata, either. You only have to click on that little pen icon that you so despise and you're taken directly to the section on Wikidata that the field was drawn from. Hope that helps. --RexxS (talk) 19:55, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

No, that doesn't help. Finding a factual error is not finding the field where it is stored in, but finding out that what you have in a field (record, item, whatever) is wrong. That pencil icon doesn't help in finding errors. Please try to be realistic sometimes. Fram (talk) 07:47, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Apologies for adding the "honorary doctor" to the wrong field, and thanks Pigsonthewing for fixing it on Wikidata. Mike Peel (talk) 21:43, 25 January 2017 (UTC)