Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Captions/Infoboxes draft

Infoboxes and leading images

An infobox image and, in the absence of an infobox, a photograph or other image in the article's lead section, serves to illustrate the topic of the article, as such, the caption should work singularly towards that purpose. Depending on the nature of the subject and the image used, the ideal caption can range from none at all to a regular full-sentence caption. The following examples serve to describe the range of situations for particular infobox images:

• No caption — Infoboxes normally display the page name as the title of the infobox. If nothing more than the page name needs to be said about the image, then the caption should be omitted as being redundant with the title of the infobox.
• Short caption — Infoboxes for things that change over time should usually mention the year of the image briefly (e.g. "Cosby in 2010"[1]). If the image is of a person doing that for which they are known at an otherwise common event, the correct verb delivers the message: "Jackson performs in 1988."[2]. As an additional example, animals may differ from the one pictured, Noisy Miner "subsp. leachi" [3], photographs captioned simply "male" and "female" for Lion[4], and "Publicity photo for Jailhouse Rock (1957)" for Elvis Presley[5]. While more detail could be added, consider carefully whether it might distract the reader from the subject of the article or inform the reader about the importance of the subject.
• Full sentence caption — When the caption can convey the significance of the article by explaining the significance or context of the image, it should. For example, "Angelou recites her poem, 'On the Pulse of Morning', at President Bill Clinton's inauguration, January 1993,"[6] In this situation, take extra care that both the image and the caption stay sharply focused on the whole of the article's subject per MOS:INFOBOX. BioShock Infinite gives an example of an informative yet brief full-sentence caption describing the key element (the singular protagonist) depicted and its relationship to the article's subject. The need for a full-length caption in an infobox can generally indicate one of two things: 1) an exceptionally appropriate image or 2) an image that doesn't really belong in the infobox. Consider this distinction carefully as it depends on how precisely the image applies to the subject as a whole.

Additional descriptive information about the image should be contained in the image description on the image's page.