Template talk:Infobox person/Archive 18

Why do we show signatures? They don't tell you anything about the person

A person's signature doesn't reflect anything. People that write with their hands instead of using a computer, like old people did back in primitive days, have better handwriting than those who seldom write anything at all. Some people have steadier hands than others. It doesn't mean anything at all. Why do we show signatures of people? Dream Focus 18:59, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

I don't know. They're never sourced, either, and they're usually not a picture of the actual signature. Why do we allow editors to crudely trace people's signatures in order to convert them to SVG and pass them off without a source as the real signature? —Designate (talk) 19:14, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

If you have evidence of such images, nominate them for deletion. That's not an infobox issue. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:24, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Re: "Cleaned up images", I asked about that at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Typography#Handwritten_signatures - I'm still dubious that they ought to be allowed. Replies there, or someone taking this issue in hand, would be appreciated. –Quiddity (talk) 19:35, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Deletion of forged images may not be only an infobox issue, but Dream Focus's post certainly does identify an infobox issue. Infoboxes are fine for a quick overview of basic deatils about a topic, but we seem to have accumulated far too much unverifiable cruft in them, particularly in this one. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:25, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

I would like to see prior discussions that have surely occurred, around the topic of handwritten signatures in infoboxes - does anyone have time/interest to compile a list? (It's hard to search for, given our in-house usage of the word "signature"...). Thanks. –Quiddity (talk) 19:35, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

WP:SLP is an essay ("signatures of living persons"), and two discussions I know of are Infobox officeholder and BLPN. I'm pretty sure there are more. Johnuniq (talk) 01:57, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

There is actually an essay on this, Wikipedia:Signatures of living persons. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:02, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Other Wikipedia

Is there a way to use this infobox in the Wikipedias? Like in the Cebuano Wikipedia?

imported, but missing documentation. Frietjes (talk) 15:25, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

'Net worth' and icons

It is extremely unfortunate that we are promoting the exceedingly materialist attitude that one's worth can be measured by financial assets. If Net financial assets is what is quantified, then describe the field as such.

The example given exhibits (exhibited: I've edited) the very poor practice of an unkeyed symbol. Even if one were to intuit which of the three directions in which an equilateral triangle points is intended, and to guess that some kind of increase is the intended communication, the amount or timescale of the increase is not indicated. If it simply means that interest accrued has exceeded expenditure in some unspecified time scale, then in does not merit inclusion. The infobox instructions should advise against this. Kevin McE (talk) 09:10, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Influences/influenced

The influences and influenced parameters were disabled here two months ago. (Discussion still appears above, section 3.) {{Infobox writer}} followed one week later. This weekend I revised three biographies of writers that include the latter template with influences and influenced data. In each case I moved the infobox data to Talk, under the current header, with some explanation.

Furthermore, after providing a longish explanation for Ray Bradbury --whose long influences/influenced lists had been questioned under the current talk header-- I provided a short explanation with cross-reference to the Bradbury talk on the second and third occasions. Talk:Jeanne Birdsall#Influences/influenced

Comments solicited. Moments ago I solicited comment at Template talk:Infobox writer#Influences/influenced.

P.S. My incipient boilerplate includes a two-line comment referral to Talk, which replaces the two fields in the infobox code. Its text: Infobox writer no longer supports the fields influences and influenced. See TALK. --P64 (talk) 18:50, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

• Re: boilerplate - What exactly are you proposing? A change to the documentation (I'd support), or a change to the template itself (I'd want more detail)?
• Re: Article updates - Your efforts to move-to-talkpage and reference and replace-but-within-prose are perfect. Kudos.
• Re: other infoboxes (mentioned in the Ray Bradbury thread), I made a notepad list/draft[1] a few weeks ago. Once we've got the items above sorted out, I'll get around to pasting that draft below, and soliciting feedback at each of the templates. –Quiddity (talk) 19:58, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Boilerplate? I mean talk page boilerplate, maybe the wrong term, a standard talk page message about all this. If a robot were to delete all influences/influenced fields, there would be at least a standard edit summary. Perhaps it would be best that a robot, if any, copy the data to Talk with a standard new section there.

Oops, I didn't make it clear here, as at Infobox writer, that I used (copied) the same talk section at Talk:Clive Barker#Influences/influenced and Talk:Jeanne Birdsall#Influences/influenced; same infobox comment in those two biographies. That is my personal boilerplate, which I'll continue to use, but slowly as I don't seek out influences/influenced data. --P64 (talk) 23:11, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Ah, ok. That is fine then. :)

I don't believe there has been any suggestion/discussion about automatically moving/removing this content. I don't think it would be useful to delete it, as the info does no harm in its hidden state. Moving it to the talkpage automatically might be a good idea, but there is no rush to do that. –Quiddity (talk) 04:47, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

What Quiddity said, including kudos to P64's efforts. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 07:20, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

• I disagree, Quiddity, a lot of the "influences/influenced" information should be in the article if its sourced and probably summarized in the lede in a better written article. The infobox was just redundant. The other issue with it is--often these influences/ed are not sourced. Who am I to say Basil Bunting was inspired by T.S. Eliot? (He was, sorta, but became a decidedly un-Eliot modernist). That kind of nuance is lost in a quick, drive-by, infobox mention. Besides, policy says we're not to move content to the talk page just for "storage" or until we figure out what to do with it. It's best discussed in the body of the article.--ColonelHenry (talk) 13:21, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Bad news. Yesterday I said hopefully, "If a robot were to delete all influences/influenced fields, there would be at least a standard edit summary." I suppose that would be true of any dedicated robot that would be approved. But my watchlist today includes two nasty-comprehensive (Script-assisted fixes: per MOS:NUM, MOS:CAPS, MOS:LINK) that incorporate deletion of infobox writer} influences/influenced fields. Leiber diffs Ellison diffs(2) Those edits trouble me otherwise, recently discussed elsewhere (Overlinking and conversion of Retrieved YMD format).

Now too tired of Talk spaces to say more or to do anything :–(
Good night. --P64 (talk) 19:52, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

At the close of section 3.4 above, OhC seems to recommend a bot request to make such deletions. Good night, again. --P64 (talk) 19:57, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Just now I fixed the link named "Ellison diffs(2)". Previously I grabbed only the minor second one of two successive saves. Sorry about that.

About 30 hours ago I reverted both of those and moved the old influences/influenced to Talk (and same for Leiber). No surprise, the Ellison influences/d were one of more egregious with 13 bluelink names and zero references or other notes. --P64 (talk) 00:14, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Automatic deletion. Evidently we do now have one editor deleting influences/influenced data automatically and without identification in the edit summary, User:Nikkimaria (contributions). The current and intended target of that link is roughly the first 100 of 300 revisions dated today.

The edit summary is grossly inadequate, "per template documentation". For example, H. G. Wells (-857 bytes); Isaac Asimov (-262). Those two are the only ones on my watchlist, neither with any source data.

--P64 (talk) 17:59, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

It's not "automatically", it's manually reviewing and editing according to editorial discretion. And as those entries were inadequately sourced anyways, they shouldn't have been there in the first place. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:46, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Re deletion of the data please read section #Discussion and this one.

If you proceed, please provide a more substantial edit summary as the template documentation does not specify that unsupported parameter values be deleted. --P64 (talk) 02:11, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Already did. The template documentation specifies that "content of biographical infoboxes should follow Wikipedia's verifiability policy, infobox style guideline and biographical style guideline". The examples in question did not, even before the changes to the template. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:18, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Is it too much to ask to provide a more specific edit summary, e.g. "-unused infobox parameters influences/influenced"? That would give future interested editors a hint in the article's history where to look for these if they want to incorporate them properly. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 07:00, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Such a summary would not be accurate in either of the cases mentioned, as other changes were made to the template at the same time. Nikkimaria (talk) 07:48, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Nikki, why not just add "including infobox influence parameter" to the edit summary (where appropriate). I agree with P64 and Michael Bednarek here. It's not asking you a lot to add this and it would be a help to other editors. Voceditenore (talk) 12:19, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

The #Discussion shows, for example, "The proposal is to remove the influenced/influences fields from the template. The text would still be in the article wikitext, but it would not be displayed. ..." --User:Johnuniq. OhC suggests using a bot to remove all (still the last contribution in that section), which would also use a dedicated edit summary, I take for granted.

I suggested, and used in illustrations linked above, edit summary including "delete influences/influenced data (see TALK);" which other clauses may precede or follow. If do not take time to use article Talk pages, a cross-reference to this page--and later to its archive--will have have similar effect. Compare your use of "rm per WP:ELNO" in a subsequent batch of revisions (whose target is a content guideline).

Offhand I think "delete ..." or minimally "rm per WP:INFLUENCE" is adequate if there is such a shortcut with target here. (That blue link is a trivial redirect available for this use.) --P64 (talk) 16:33, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Spouse parameter mimics and is easily confused with (DOB-DOD)

The spouse parameter provides for a date range consisting of a year of marriage to a year no longer married, by whatever mechanism, divorce, death, etc. It currently reads (in relevant part):

Name of spouse(s), followed by years of marriage. Use the format Name (1950–present) for current spouse and Name (1970–1999) for former spouse(s).

The problem is that when we see a person's name followed by, for example, (1933-2003), that is the common way we indicate a person's birth to death.

I am not saying that if told, "no that's the marriage span", that would not also make sense as to what it could have been, but I do think the misunderstanding that it is a date of birth to a date of death is naturally made and likely to happen for many people. Indeed, it would not be at all unusual to write or read somewhere: "In 1950, X married Y (1916-2003), but they were divorced in 1974 after Y discovered X's extramarital affair with Z".

The incident that brought this up earlier today was a help desk post in which the apparent daughter of an article subject complained that her mother's date of birth was 1916, not 1933, and when I looked at the article I corrected it with the same misunderstanding the IP had of the import of the date range in the spouse parameter. I only learned when I was reverted of the issue that brought me here. I don't think this person or I was unreasonable or outré in our confusion.

Accordingly, I think the documentation for, and our way of describing this in, the spouse parameter should be changed. I am not certain about the best form of correction, and would welcome suggestions (if anyone agrees with the underlying issue), but I propose it be as simple as adding "married" inside the opening parenthese:

Name of spouse(s), followed by years of marriage. Use the format Name (married 1950–present) for current spouse and Name (married 1970–1999) for former spouse(s).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:35, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable to me. DrKiernan (talk) 15:19, 31 October 2013 (UTC)