Template talk:Infobox writer/Archive 7

Citizenship, Ethnicity and Nationality

Isn't it redundant to have both "Citizenship" and "Nationality" in the infobox as they are practically the same thing? Also, one might argue that "Ethnicity" can also be synonmous with "Citizenship" and "Nationality". I suggest removing "Citizenship" and replacing it with something else, like the "Cause of Death" that is used on many other infoboxes, as many writers and authors have had notable causes of death. Illegitimate Barrister (talk) 18:53, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Citizenship, nationality and ethnicity really are different things. Consider, for example, Andy Warhol. -Mardus (talk) 19:24, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

"Nationality" and "citizenship" are not the same, but they overlap. "Nationality" is very broad and ambiguous, whereas "citizenship" legally specified. Sometimes "nationality" is used to mean "citizenship"; other times is it us used to mean "nation of residence", and other times it is used to mean "ethnicity". It is very ambiguous, so I suggest we replace it with "nation of residence", which is unambiguous. "Citizenship", "ethnicity" and "nation of residence" together will cover all the bases without the need for the ambiguous "nationality". Gregcaletta (talk) 18:30, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

"resting place" guff

I propose that this silliness be replaced with "interred". I note this change was proposed some time ago, but wasn't followed though on. -- Rrburke (talk) 18:07, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

"Interred" isn't any better than "Place of burial", as "to inter" means "to bury in a grave". I suggest you join the conversation at Template talk:Infobox person#Euphemism, and whatever is decided there be done to this template as well. No need to hold discussion in two places. Anomie⚔ 01:24, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

It's hard to imagine any outcome from that infobox person discussion that we wouldn't want to adopt at infobox writer. Just in case that's a shortcoming of my imagination, I'm waiting to see what the outcome there actually is. :-)  --Pi zero (talk) 15:43, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Incorrect default image_size set

I recently noticed that this template appears to have a default value of "frameless" set for the image_size parameter (rather than a value of 200px as defined in the documentation). This recently caused a situation where an image was appearing rotated on its side on Stefan Fatsis since an image_size was not specified (issue since fixed by adding "|image_size=200px" to the infobox, but one can see the issue in an old version of the page without the "image_size" specified). I would assume that a number of other articles using this template may be experiencing a similar fate. My suggestion is to alter line 7 of the template code from:

| image = {{#if:{{{image|}}}|[[File:{{{image}}}|{{px|{{{image_size|{{{imagesize|}}}}}}|frameless}}|alt={{{alt|}}}]]}}

to:

| image = {{#if:{{{image|}}}|[[File:{{{image}}}|{{px|{{{image_size}}}|{{{imagesize}}}|200}}|alt={{{alt|}}}]]}}

This change should allow an editor to set either "image_size" or "imagesize" in the template and if neither is included will set the default width to 200px. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Deejayk (talk • contribs) 21:48, 17 February 2012

Just tried out your suggested change on the sandbox. I needed to add some pipes in otherwise the {{px}} template wouldn't recognise the sizes, ending up with the images displaying at full resolution. Also, I replaced 200 with 220 because the default thumbnail size is 220px so using this value would avoid changing the articles visibly for most users.

| image = {{#if:{{{image|}}}|[[File:{{{image}}}|{{px|{{{image_size|}}}|{{{imagesize|}}}|220}}|alt={{{alt|}}}]]}}

I'll preview this change on some articles, and if all goes well I'll add it in. Tra (Talk) 10:24, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Ok, I went back to the Stefan Fatsis article and unfortunately, setting the width to 220px made it go on its side again. Even worse, when I tried purging the image, it made it appear on its side for all thumbnail sizes. Eventually, I managed to fix it by downloading the image, rotating it a couple of times in Windows Photo Viewer and uploading again.

What this indicates to me is that changing the thumbnail size can only be a temporary solution to the image rotations, and it's really necessary to actually fix the images themselves or else the problem could easily reoccur when the images are purged. So I don't think this approach you're suggesting is the best one for in the long term - I think it would be better to handle any problematic images individually. Tra (Talk) 10:52, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Could you tell what it was about the image that caused this issue? The image appeared to be oriented correctly on its file page. If it is an issue with the image itself then I agree with you that a change to the template is unnecessary, however it seems very odd to me that just changing the display width of an image would effect its orientation. I did some poking around and couldn't turn up any other examples where this phenomenon was occurring. Thanks for taking a look, but I'm more confused now about what was up with this image (and perhaps with WP's image handling?) than I was before. — DeeJayK (talk) 19:35, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure. It could be related to Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-12-12/Technology_report#Image_rotation_change_mishandled.3F but with the various thumbnail sizes being cached, I don't know what was generated when (this would be why, before purging, the different sizes gave different results). Strangely enough, the image appeared the correct way up when viewed at full resolution and also when I downloaded it. It's only when the software resized it (for a thumbnail or for the image description page) that it appeared on its side after purging.

When I fixed the image myself, I had to rotate it clockwise, save it, rotate anti-clockwise, save it again. This would presumably have sorted out how the rotation was stored internally in the image. Tra (Talk) 20:28, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Website link

Most other infoboxes require {{URL}} to be used for the website link, and so it is confusing that this one doesn't. Liam987 12:46, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

influences/influenced

I would like to repeat the proposal that was made in July 2007 to remove the parameters |influences= and |influenced=. I understand that entries in infoboxes have to be derived from the body of the article – where they can be sourced/challenged/explained. Too often, this field is populated by fly-by editors with spurious unsourced entries. I suggest to remove these two parameters from the infobox. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 06:22, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Seconding the deletion of "influenced", as even with careful sourcing this seems broad enough to be become unreadable, particularly for popular historical figures. I've just seen the lead singer of Mumford & Sons being added in good faith as someone who G.K. Chesterton has "influenced".

We can probably live with "influences", as this will always be sourced to the subject and hopefully remain brief, but given that "influenced" is just the flipside of this connection and hence has no upper limit (and will get crowded out more every time a new person appears in pop culture and cites a few existing people as "influences"), I don't think it really helps the reader very much. --McGeddon (talk) 18:59, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

For context, there was consensus in 2008 to drop these same fields from Template:Infobox musical artist. --McGeddon (talk) 10:45, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

In periodic discussions of a possible religion field, the position gradually settled on over years is that religion should not have a separate field because it is not intrinsically relevant to being a writer, and if religion had a significant influence on a particular writer it should be listed under influences. --Pi zero (talk) 15:13, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Website parameter does not accept {{Dead link}}

Almost every infobox allows someone to put {{Dead link}} in the |website= parameter. When you try that on this one, layout gets messed up.

Why can't this infobox be like all the other ones? Blevintron (talk) 01:17, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

John Doe
Website
http://www.example.com/

John Doe
Website
http://www.example.com/ Archive index at the Wayback Machine

John Doe
Website
http://www.example.com/ Archive index at the Wayback Machine

Update to clarify: See how the website field is messed up in these three examples? This works perfectly in other infobox variants.

Where should one put the {{Dead link}}, {{Wayback}} or {{WebCite}} template if they want to correct a broken link that occurs in {{Infobox writer}}?

Blevintron (talk) 05:05, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Carlos Fuentes

For some reason, I'm struggling with the infobox at Carlos Fuentes; it appears to cut off at influences, where it transcludes, and the website won't properly display as a datum. This one's likely heading to the main page via WP:ITNC; would anyone be willing to take a look and see what simple fix I'm overlooking? Khazar2 (talk) 04:46, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Religion

Why not allow this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by BernardZ (talk • contribs) 17:32, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

There have been lots of discussions about the use of "religion" in infoboxes (search the archives at the top). Briefly, writers often have complex backgrounds, and where appropriate the effects of religion on the person and their work is described in the article. Summing all that up with a label in an infobox is often misleading. Johnuniq (talk) 02:05, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Yet the same could be said about these too. One of my grandfathers was a writer

occupation = He had a few

language = Spoke six languages

nationality = Had three

ethnicity = I have seen him listed with three different ones

citizenship = He had over his lifetime three

BernardZ (talk) 16:39, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

The items you mention are able, at least in principle, to be derived from objective data: if no reliable source says that writer X had an occupation as a boxer, then we won't put that in the infobox. Further, those items don't change (there might be additional occupations or whatever, but the earlier ones are still valid). However, "religion" is much more elastic, and means different things to different people, and can change. If X was raised as a Catholic to age 12, but then never did anything religious in later life, should X be labeled as "Catholic"? What if participation stopped at age 20? Or, if at 60, X mentioned that they had renounced religion? The article can remove all ambiguity by just describing the verifiable facts in plain English. Johnuniq (talk) 07:43, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

I would have no dispute about not using any tag that was not objective nor if it was relevant to that person. That is what we do now. Furthermore I think much of your arguments would be exactly the same for the examples I quoted above too. Please check this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus#Nationality

Copernicus nationality and ethnicity changes depending on the writer. To continue the example, if someone put in his tag Catholic, I think they would be right as it was something important to him. Also I wish to add for a large period of human history the most important belief system people had was religion. This is true often today too.

BernardZ (talk) 15:17, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

There is a place in the infobox where one can indicate traditions of thought that influenced the writer. If a religion influenced the writer, that's where it should go. Classifying writers by religion is a catalyst to religious discrimination. --Pi zero (talk) 15:00, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

RFC regarding signature images in biographies

I've started an RFC over at Stephen King's bio. As it involves information presented through this template, it might be of interest to editors who monitor or work on it. Thanks. §FreeRangeFrog^croak 17:48, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Occupation questions

Is it appropriate to use an unbulleted list in the Occupation parameter? What is the reason for specifying "please don't separate entries using line breaks <br>" in the Occupation parameter? How many occupations would you expect Roger Ebert's article to display in the infobox? Thanks, in advance, for your help. --108.45.72.196 (talk) 20:44, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

In short, yes. It's appropriate for any list. Answered at Wikipedia:Help desk § Template infobox writer -- occupation parameter. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 12:52, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Alan. I just saw your helpful answer there. --108.45.72.196 (talk) 22:59, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Nonstandard URL formatting

Twice in the most recent archive page this concern was noted. By using nonstandard URL formatting, this infobox can't handle the usual {{URL}} or {{dead link}} templates. Fixing this would be much appreciated. --BDD (talk) 19:24, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Caption

Template {{infobox person}} says "Caption for image, if needed. Try to include date of photo and the photographer." Here we recommend only the date and I have inserted many a comment !--when?--> or equivalent; never the template that displays [when?].

The photographer? --P64 (talk) 18:57, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Edit request on 25 October 2013

Please add a {{{patron|}}} parameter. Based on {{infobox person}}, this parameter should probably go on line 14, inserted between {{{alma_mater|}}} and {{{period|}}}. Thanks! ~ Michael Chidester ^(Contact) 21:36, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

I can't see any |patron= at {{Infobox person}}; what is this proposed parameter meant to convey? -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 04:01, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Ah, sorry, I was thinking of |employer= when I referenced {{Infobox person}}, which might be the better term anyway (since a patron is just one kind of employer or sponsor a writer might have). ~ Michael Chidester ^(Contact) 14:06, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

I think such a parameter would very rarely be a significant part of a writer's profile – Kafka and T. S. Eliot spring to mind. There are probably more with short term odd jobs and B-list authors, but I don't think that's worth creating a new entry in this infobox. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 14:47, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Not done: I'm closing this as not done for now, as there doesn't seem to be a consensus for it. (By the way, edit requests are only supposed to be made after consensus has been reached to make the change, except for trivial edits like spelling corrections etc.) You might wish to bring this up at a relevant WikiProject to get more editors involved in the discussion. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 03:33, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

"Last work to date" parameter

I think it would be handy to have such parameter in the infobox. So a quick check of the infobox can tell you if your favorite author wrote something new. --Ewigekrieg (talk) 21:17, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Guys, please react to the proposal. Ewigekrieg (talk) 12:59, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

It's an interesting thought, but I wonder if it's a bit spotty in its application. Could this be accompanied by a recommendation on when it ought to be used? --Pi zero (talk) 23:57, 4 November 2013 (UTC)