Template talk:Infobox Writer/Archive 1

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents

Similar Template

There is a similar template at Template:Author. Carcharoth 13:32, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I find the other template a bit lacking. -- LGagnon 15:55, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
I agree. But what should be done about it? It falls under the WikiProject Books purview, so I'll comment there. Carcharoth 19:46, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
  • In the case of Harper Lee, the implementation provides only 5 pieces of information, Four of which are covered more effectively by the opening sentence of the article. (And all of which are presented before one makes it halfway through the second sentence). In other cases, the infobox might be a nice frame for the author's photograph, but where none is available, I fail to see the point. --Dystopos 01:52, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Writing Period

Perhaps the definition of "period" should be more related to when the writing was actually done rather than published. It is particularly non intuitive with works that were published posthumously. Also with the publishing definition this window can, in principle, be extended every time some lost essay or collection of letters is found and published. --WCVanHorne 04:03, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Agree - it should be the period when the writer was actually writing works which were subsequently published i.e. unpublished childhood eassys not included.--JBellis 08:32, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

screenwriter

could this template be used on a screenwriters page? -- 216.232.214.23

I assume it could. It's meant to be very open for any type of writer. -- LGagnon 15:00, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Magnum Opus

This field is inherently POV; even in instances where we can find a reliable source to call one specific work by a writer his "magnum opus" or "greatest work," it will usually be possible to find another source to counter it. I suggest we remove the field. | Mr. Darcy talk 04:26, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Maybe just reduce it to "Major work(s)"? This allows more than one book to be listed, or maybe, even better, just a link called "bibliography" to allow people to jump to the section where all an author's books are listed. Carcharoth 06:20, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
I'm comfortable with either of those solutions. Any objections? | Mr. Darcy talk 13:52, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
There are about 380 pages using this template, so the best thing to do, I think, is to remove magnum opus from places where you disagree with its use (you can tweak the template to detect the pages using the magnum opus field), and then change the magnum opus field to major works. The bibliography link would be a totally new parameter, and to kickstart that, someone will need to find a new articles with good bibliographical sections and use the field to link to them. I'm not brilliant with template coding, so hopefully someone else can do this sort of thing. Carcharoth 14:59, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
you can tweak the template to detect the pages using the magnum opus field OK, I'll bite: how do I do that? Sounds like a useful thing to know how to do. | Mr. Darcy talk 15:40, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
I think it is as simple as changing the current link in the title of the field. At the moment, that points to magnum opus. If you changed that to something unique, like 425164361, and then waited several weeks for the "whatlinkshere" index to be updated, then you could see what links to that link you added. That's the theory. In practice, you have to do this in such a way that the reader doesn't notice. One thing people sometimes do is put a category tag in the template, so if the magnum opus field is used, the page is added to a category like "Pages using the magnum opus field in the Infobox Writer template". But that too disrupts the encyclopedia, as this category tag will appear at the bottom of the page. I'm sure there are much better tricks than the ones I mentioned above, and there is a really simple way as well. Click on "what links here" for the template (as I said before, around 380 pages. Then click on "what links here" for magnum opus (453 links). Then compare the two lists. The ones that appear in both lists are the ones you are after. There will be some pages where "magnum opus" is linked in the main text but not used in the template, but those can be manually weeded out. But the category idea is best. And that can be done without even creating the category. When you go to edit the category red-link, it will give you the list. You can then quickly copy the list, cancel the category creation, and revert the edit to the template. Hang on a mo. Carcharoth 16:26, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. Category:Magnum opus writers is there now. And the category tag is at the bottom of George Orwell and J. R. R. Tolkien, two authors whose Infoboxes I know use the magnum opus field. But the category isn't populating. There is probably a reason why, but I don't know. I'll wait a bit (maybe someone will come along and explain what has happened), and then remove the category tag and put the category up for speedy deletion, as it is a bit of a silly category really. Carcharoth 16:39, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Hang on. The category is populating now. Alex Haley has appeared in it (and now Jim Butcher). I guess there is a job queue somewhere that needs to run first. I'm a bit worried now, as I think I should have asked someone about this first. I guess it can't do too much harm though. I hope. Carcharoth 16:44, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
We'll clean it up. There are over 200 authors in that category now. Before either of us tries to tackle some of them - and I may post a note at the Pump to look for volunteers - we need to agree on what we're altering those entries to read. "Bibliography", with a link to the #Bibliography section? | Mr. Darcy talk 18:00, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
I'm a bit uneasy about leaving things in this state (I will be away over the weekend). This was only meant to be temporary, and the category tag really shouldn't be at the bottom of all those pages. With this in mind, I've turned that category into a list, and put it at User:Carcharoth/Magnum opus. Please feel free to copy or move that to wherever you think best. Carcharoth 22:12, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
I've removed the magnum opus field from the master template; it doesn't seem to have broken anything, and in the absence of a viable replacement, we're better off without it. | Mr. Darcy talk 00:55, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
The template still works, but you've removed the magnum opus infobox entry from hundreds of articles.I would have preferred the "major works" phrasing, as that is more vague and gives people less room to argue. ie. the parameter remains "magnum opus", but call it "major work(s)". I'll wait a bit though, and see if anyone turns up to object to what you've done. Carcharoth 01:09, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Removing it from those 220-odd articles was my intent; as I said earlier, it's inherently POV, and not verifiable, and therefore had to come out. Even with "major works," I'm not clear how we draw the line; e.g., William Faulkner arguably has four major novels to his credit, so how do we decide which to include in the box? All four would be overkill, but there's no way to choose just two. Let the infobox just be an box of info - vital stats, all verifiable. | Mr. Darcy talk
For future reference, you can do the same sort of thing largely 'invisibly' by adding something like; "[[FakePageName| ]]" inside the conditional statement for the row in question. That adds a blank space to the displayed output, but if placed at the end it should not have any visible impact. Since there is no actual content there is no link created to click on (though if there were non-markup characters immediately to the right of the closing brackets they WOULD be picked up as a link). However, the 'what links here' for 'FakePageName' will then show every page which contains that conditional row. Note that this 'link' really can be to a page which doesn't even exist... as it is possible to get 'what links here' for pages which have not been created yet. I don't think the category method is too disruptive if cleaned up quickly, but if there are alot of them that will require time to deal with the above should be less intrusive. --CBD 11:12, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
I'm going to re-run the experiment for some other parameters, or maybe even this one. There is something strange about the history of this template. Both the parameters 'magnum opus' and 'main work' have been used in the past, and lots of articles seem to use one or the other, but not consistently. Carcharoth 14:25, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Capitalization

Per wiki guidelines, should this be Template:Infobox writer ? *Sparkhead 12:35, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

People don't worry too much about naming conventions when it comes to templates. The important thing is that the wording is clear, not what the capitalisation is. Carcharoth 13:15, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Language

I believe there is place to add the language of writing in this template since, especially nowadays, writers may write in several languages and nationality alone cannot tell us what language the writer is using. A few examples:

I could go on, but I think I've made my point. AshcroftIleum 02:20, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

This is a good idea. Easily verified data point. I agree it should be added. Carcharoth 18:54, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Religion and political opinion

User:Flammingo recently tried to add parameters for religion and political opinion. I was asked why it didn't work - the reason is that the edit only added the parameters to the visible bit, not to the actual template code (the bit with lots of #if and !---> bits). Don't touch that code if you don't know what you are doing! I've removed the addition and raised this here for discussion because I don't think that religion and political opinion are suitable for a writers infobox. They are more suitable for a religious figure's infobox, or a politician's infobox, but not a writer's infobox. If a writer is noted for his or her political opinion or religion, this fact needs to be mentioned in the article, along with a clear and careful explanation of why it is relevant to the article. Just mentioning it in an infobox with no explanation is the wrong way to do this. Discussion would be very welcome. Carcharoth 19:01, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Agree 100% Xanthoxyl 02:26, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Magnum Opus (II)

This parameter was recently added. While it is more relevant to a writer's infobox than religion or political opinion, there was a discussion above that concluded that it was not relevant. Indeed the previous parameter "main work" got removed after that discussion. This new 'Magnum opus' parameter would just be redoing the work that was involved with adding the 'main work' parameter, so I removed it. If anyone feels consensus has changed, please discuss here. Carcharoth 19:04, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

'Major Works' makes the most sense to me. I would remove 'Debut Works' as well (these are usually either minor and unimportant, or could fit into the 'major works' category), and just list two or three seminal works. AshcroftIleum 07:37, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
The problem then is which works to include and which not to include. This is precisely the sort of nuanced information that is better provided in the article, instead of an infobox. An infobox should be reserved for clear data points, like name, date of birth, etc. Anything more than this, and it risks becoming an introduction to the article that skews people's first impressions of the subject of the article. Carcharoth 11:19, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
I can't really see how an infobox can skew opinions one way or another, but it seems to me that if someone just wants to get a general idea of the writer he/she would be better off if two to three major works are listed. For most writers this would not be an issue (for example, you may like Hemingway's To have and have not, but it is The Sun Also Rises that made him famous and defined his style; you may think Tropic of Capricorn is a better book but Tropic of Cancer is more widely read; Underworld may be a better book, but White Noise is the one people think of when you say DeLillo, etc.) Much like the Actor infobox, we are not trying to encompass the writer's whole work, just give a sense of it. I don't really see the point of an infobox about a writer that doesn't name any of his/her work. Debut works, as I've said above, doesn't cut it. AshcroftIleum 16:00, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Stability of infobox templates

Recently there have been changes to this infobox.

  • (1) First, after the first discussion up above about Magnum Opus (actually called 'main work', that parameter was removed because it was too subjective. But this was done by removing the template parameter, but not going to the articles that had this parameter activated, and removing the text from the articles. This feels untidy. What is the best way to handle removing widely-used parameters that are later agreed to be not suitable? (Note that the removal didn't seem to be noticed, as it wouldn't have shown up on talk pages of the articles concerned).
  • (2) Second, a proposal to add language was given above, and this sounds sensible. When new parameters are suggested like this, what should the process be for adding them? Discuss and reach consensus? Then update hundreds of articles to include the new parameter?
  • (3) An addition of politics and religion parameters was tried, removed and a discussion started above. Again, if something is rejected, should the articles transcluding the parameter be tidied up to have this fully removed if it was added?
  • (4) The Magnum Opus parameter was recently re-added. I removed it per the initial discussion, and have started a new discussion above. What should be done when the wheel is reinvented like this?

Comments on how to handle the specific cases above, and how to handle infobox stability in general would be welcomed. Carcharoth 19:15, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

People are not allowed to alter the code of widely-used templates without discussion on the talk page. This fact ought to be pointed out on the template page itself.
You can tidy up the articles using abolished parameters if you want (it is not strictly necessary, because they are invisible). Xanthoxyl 02:12, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Wife and Kids?

Someone added wife and children to the template without prior discussion. I removed them for now and claim there is no real reason to add them at all. First, such details are usually irrelevent to the writer's work. Second, such a listing could not only be too lengthy for an infobox (several wives/husbands, several children), but also provide an opening for other irrelevent details of the writer's private life, (parents, brothers and sisters, maybe pets, shoe size...). Lastly, the purpose of the infobox is to give us a general idea of the writer and position him/her in terms of period/genre/movement/etc. It is not meant to present a full account of his life and work - that's what the article is for. AshcroftIleum 07:37, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

An old discussion, but an interesting one. I totally agree with AshcroftIleum. However, Edgar Allan Poe failed an A-Class review a couple months ago and one reviewer criticized that the infobox was missing information about relatives. (I think it's just getting harder and harder to pass anything these days). --Midnightdreary 14:55, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Width of first column insufficient to fit the label "Occupation(s):"

The label "Occupation(s)" in the first column often gets split, with "Occupation" appearing by itself, and "(s):" then following on the next line. Doesn't look good. Why does it happen? Can the width of the first column be adjusted to fix this? Jayen466 20:13, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Other than just removing the ugly (s), there are a few solutions that come to mind.
  1. Making the width of the first column fixed. Problem: depends on font size in use
  2. Inserting   (non-breaking space) between Occupation and (s). Problem: makes a space
  3. Inserting  (zero-width non-breaking space) or ⁠ (word join) between them. Problem: Unicode, not understood by all browsers
Here are the results for the second and third options. Tell me what you see.
  • Non-breaking space... Occupation (s)
  • Zero-width non-breaking space... Occupation(s)
  • Word join... Occupation⁠(s)
  • Narrow non-breaking space... Occupation (s)
My choice would be the zero-width, or , but I don't want to make a change until I can be reasonably sure it will work for almost all users. Xanthoxyl 01:45, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
In IE6.0, only this line
  • Zero-width non-breaking space... Occupation(s)
looked as intended (the final two lines each had a square box appearing before the "(s)"); in Mozilla Firefox 1.5, the following lines came out right:
  • Zero-width non-breaking space... Occupation(s)
  • Word join... Occupation⁠(s)
  • Narrow non-breaking space... Occupation (s)
The non-breaking space also worked fine in both, but the gap is unsightly. Removing the (s) might indeed be the easiest solution – right now, the loss incurred because of the display problem outweighs the value that the (s) might conceivably add, IMO.
Cheers, Jayen466 00:03, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
Okay, I've removed all parentheses from the left-hand column. If anybody shows up to complain we'll try  and maybe think about using #pos to detect commas if it gets implemented. Xanthoxyl 11:43, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks a lot, looks great now. Jayen466 16:41, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Adding rfu

I tried to add {{refu-c}} to J. K. Rowling, as her image is up for rfu, but it doesn't work because the 200px paramater and closing brackets are there; the image doesn't show up. Can anybody mess around with parser functions to automatically close the image off when template brackets are detected? Hbdragon88 07:41, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Did you subst it? There isn't really room for this template inside the infobox. I'd suggest that you copy and paste the text from {{rfu-c}} into the Caption parameter, maybe with <small> and </small> around it. Xanthoxyl 02:20, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, I added subst to it. Either the image didn't show up or 200px]] showed up (If I added the brackets manually to have the image show up)). Hbdragon88 23:09, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Have you tried placing it at the beginning of the caption field? --PhantomS 23:11, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Just tried that. Apparently someone inserted <nowiki> brackets in there or something, as it doesn't work. Hbdragon88 00:24, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, all I can say is I just did it and it worked fine for me. Xanthoxyl 11:24, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Brith date shouldn't be required

Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons#Presumption in favor of privacy specifically mentions that for marginally-notable people, that there may be cases where it's best to avoid discovering and posting their birthday in the article. However, the template currently requires the birthdate to be filled in. Could that field be made optional? (granted, it should be filled out for 95+% of articles, but BLP clearly states that there are at least a few cases where it shouldn't be) --Interiot 17:20, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

You can just put the year, or "private", or "unknown", or anything else you think fit; if the subject is a marginally-notable person who just happens to be a writer, the bio infobox might be more appropriate.
If there is somebody in particular you have in mind, I can alter the template to make it optional. Xanthoxyl 02:48, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Debut Works field

Instead of a field that says 'debut works', it would be a better idea to have the field say 'important works' or something to that effect. Most often a writer's 'debut work' is not their best nor their most influential work.ILuvTea 10:29, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree, see discussion of "Magnum Opus (II)" above. Isn't it about time we did something about it instead of conducting this circular discussion? AshcroftIleum 18:33, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
I concur. Maybe it could just say "notable works"? Is someone going to change it? I'm new here so I'm not sure how it gets done. It seems that people are in agreement that some change needs to occur. Uluwulu 07:30, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
This is not a good idea. Who determines what is notable? Even among academics who study individual authors, there is debate about what is most "notable" or "important," so inevitably the field would descend into edit wars. These kinds of theories (what was the writer's most influential work, etc.) should be discussed in detail in the article, with all sides' opinions clearly articulated. Awadewit | talk 00:18, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
I think that it is a good idea to choose Important Works rather than Debut Works; for most authors, it's usually easy to choose their most-well known or admired work, and for ones where it is most difficult (imagine doing this for Shakespeare!), it could be discussed on the talk page.--Gloriamarie 21:31, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Are info boxes mandatory?

In that Wiki policy discourages lists in general, and in that the info box is one big list, is having an infobox mandatory for all writers? In the case of William Shakespeare, for instance, I find the info incredibly redundant, subject to challenges, and it only increases the size of an already long article.Smatprt 14:16, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

No, infoboxes are not mandatory. Awadewit | talk 00:18, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Influenced/influences section

While well-intentioned, the influenced/influences section just isn't working. What objective criteria can be used here? Most authors are incredibly well read and thus are influenced by hundreds of other authors. Similarly, any major author is read by everyone. Who wasn't influenced by Shakespeare or Dostoevsky or Hemingway? On every author page I watch this part of the infobox is the subject of near-constant edit-warring. Something as nuanced as influence needs to be dealt with in the text of an article -- not in the infobox. --JayHenry 19:03, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree. This section asks us to take writers who may have influenced the article subject in completely different ways and list them side-by-side in an out-of-context list. It's inevitably misleading. You'd never get through FAC if you did that in the body of an article, or at least I hope you wouldn't; it shouldn't be encouraged in an infobox either. —Celithemis 20:26, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
I agree that this is a ridiculous field. Any set of influences is in the end probably going to be original research anyway, even if each individual influence can be demonstrated. Often the influences listed in the box are not even discussed in the article. The box should stick to easy to verify facts, not interpretative theories regarding a vague "influence." Awadewit | talk 00:18, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
Okay, so people agree. I don't want to spark a widespread edit war by removing these in bulk, so I'm going to try to solicit further opinions by contacting the Books and Novels Wikiprojects. I see two options -- one would be to remove the influences/influenced section completely, the other would be to only allow influences/influenced if they are specifically mentioned in the body of the article. I see either as acceptable, though (I think) would prefer outright removal. --JayHenry 19:54, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
I realize that this is a relatively old conversation, but I was just coming here to raise much the same idea. It would seem to me that, if these sections are left in the infobox, they would need to be sourced. I would advocate removal of the sections. —  MusicMaker5376 21:24, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Occupation field

I'm going to take the liberty of making occupation optional: We've hit a situation where the infobox is causing layout problems, and so I have to cut it to a minimum, and it seems pointless to have to cut more relevant information while leaving that in (And it's not like you can really place a poet-dramatist-short story writer-critic like W.S.Gilbert cleanly anyway!) Adam Cuerden talk 16:55, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Excellent choice. Awadewit | talk 00:18, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Image problem

Something has changed with the infobox and the images that is not helpful. Although one no longer has to put [[Image]] in front of the image one wants, whenever an image file is placed in the image field but no size is delimited, the image does not appear. Apparently, one has to remove the "imagesize=" line. This is not very intuitive as other infoboxes (at least those that I work with) do not require the removal of lines to make them operate correctly. See the history of Sarah Trimmer for an example of the problem. What can we do about this? Awadewit | talk 00:18, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

I second that. I notice it happening in Mircea Eliade and Tudor Arghezi. It is frankly a shame when users start editing an infobox without taking in view the consequences - I mean, I suppose that a lot of the changes were constructive in their nature, so reverting the changes may prove disruptive, but also disruptive is what some of those edits amounted to. Are we expected to go and update the infobox in every single article just because editors would not review their own mistakes? Dahn 11:18, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
apparently the current template adds an extra "l" after the image name if there is an imagesize line. if no one else is game I will try to find the bug, but I've never hacked a template before...--Jaibe 21:02, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
In my case, I'm not sure it was that: I was actually able to fix the problem a couple of hours ago, by adding specifications to the "image size" requirement (the articles where this happened had none specified). Dahn 21:11, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
well, it was still broken where I vieweed it, maybe your change hasn't propogated to Europe? I just reverted it back two edits & was about to notify the 14 June editor --Jaibe 21:13, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
What I meant was in relation to those two articles I cited (Eliade and Arghezi, see above). This probably means that the problems are different in nature (depending on the infobox?) or that the changes were not tried in other articles. Dahn 21:24, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

If you want to test your change, look at the most recent but one historical version of Alison Bechdel -- the most recent one I fixed by deleting the image size line, but then I went here to figure out the real problem...--Jaibe 21:15, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Mea culpa. I had removed a trailing vertical bar from [[Image:{{{image}}}|{{{imagesize|200px}}}| ]], which prevented the image from displaying if the imagesize parameter appeared without a value ( imagesize= ). I did review my changes by checking some articles using the infobox, but never saw any that had this problem.
  • After becoming aware of the problem, I started checking ALL the 2000+ articles using this template. In the first 1000 or so checked, only about 40 articles had been affected (and those were fixed when my edits were reverted).
  • There is another problem which existed before my edits: using imagesize without a value displays the image at its native resolution, expanding the infobox if width is larger than 250px. For an example, see Jonathan Coe.
  • Back in June I started fixing the affected articles to include the actual image width if smaller than the default of 200px (the original intent of the imagesize parameter). I will get back to this project shortly and once I've gone through the remaining articles I will update the template to use the default width when the imagesize parameter is omitted or blank.
Zyxw 07:21, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Could you please fix the infobox? Currently, the format creates a stray "image" and stray size figures before and after the image. Thanks. Str1977 (smile back) 22:07, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

  • My changes were reverted on 18 June 2007, so there shouldn't have been issues with the infobox itself. This was likely a caching issue that should have eventually resolved itself. -- Zyxw 07:21, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Comment Additionally, I can't link to images I've uploaded to Wikimedia Commons using it, because of the appended Image: at the beginning - it turns links to any other project to read Image:commons:Image:filename.jpg, instead, invalidating the use of commons as a way of collecting images. --Thespian 05:37, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

  • To my knowledge, all images uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons are accessed the same way as images uploaded to Wikipedia. For an example, see the Terry Pratchett article where the infobox contains image = terry_pratchett.jpg. That displays Image:terry_pratchett.jpg, which is stored on Wikimedia Commons, not Wikipedia. -- Zyxw 07:21, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Bibliography Link

A standardized "Bibliography" link would make a lot of sense, it could be shown for any author that has a bibliography page. As an example the Stephen King infobox now has a link in the Debut Works section.

There is now a template:Book list that may be used to create bibliographies.

--Deflective 02:17, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Flag icon?

I don't think we would want to use flag icons to mark writers' nationalities, places of birth and death, would we? I wanted to take the little flag out of the Kurt Vonnegut article, but thought I would enquire here first. WP:FLAGCRUFT seems like it might be relevant here. --John 17:55, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Good question. I was wondering the same. I kind of like flag icons. For American writers, I've been using either a country's flag for nationality or state flags for place of birth and death (especially when they're not the same state)... but never all three. --Midnightdreary 14:58, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

I personally like the flag icons. Since writers' works are often studied by country or culture (British Literature, etc.) it seems apt that a writer would be identified as such.--Gloriamarie 21:33, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Oh, please don't encourage this habit here as well.As much as I like flags myself, they are of absolutely no use in most infoboxes (and definitely of no use in writer infoboxes). All the little squares with the bright colors clash with both the background and the text, and can get really annoying — especially when they mean absolutely nothing. Dilemmas like the one above can be solved simply: don't use them at all. And, yes, WP:FLAGCRUFT clearly applies here. Dahn 21:54, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

pseudonyms

Question, in the pseduonyms section of the infobox I've noticed that an editor is bolding the names, not just in one article but in all that they edit. I understand the reasoning, sort of since the MOS states "In the first paragraph of any article, put the article name and any synonyms (including acronyms) in boldface," but is this correct for the infobox? I've taken a look at a few others and haven't noticed bolding being used on pseudo. and just want to double check. Thanks. --ImmortalGoddezz 15:44, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Relations field

I used the relations field in the infobox on Eiki Eiki, for adding her notable grandfather and brother. However, the field's label reads: "parents". Can this be changed to just "relations", so it can be used as indicated on the template page? Ninja neko 07:40, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

I've made this change. --Canley 03:57, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Dates

The template appears to force American-style dates (i.e. month before day). Is this so, and if it is, is it desirable? -- Picapica 21:43, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Prizes

Query: Could there be a field added for "Notable prizes" ("prizes") as in the infobox Scientist template: see Template:Infobox Scientist? For example, that would enable one to add the Nobel Prize in Literature and Nobel icon in that field instead of as a image (icon) beside the name field (which has caused some dispute). (In the scientist infobox the Nobel Prize in Physics appears for at least one scientist's infobox that I recently examined, which gave me this idea; cf. Albert Einstein, who has three prizes listed in that field, including a Nobel Prize. It would be good for the inboxes for Writers and Scientists receiving the Nobel Prize to have this feature/field as an equal possibility. --NYScholar 21:52, 21 October 2007 (UTC) [added emph. --NYScholar 02:07, 22 October 2007 (UTC)]

Only writers in influences/influenced?

In many cases, some of a writers biggest influences and those they influenced most (significantly) are non-writers. Why exclude them? Skomorokh incite 05:01, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

The infobox lists "influences" and "influenced"; I agree that such influences may be various kinds of influences. See, e.g., the infobox for Harold Pinter; among his influences is a literary and artistic movement (Surrealism); and among those he has influenced is former political dissident/former Czech President Václav Havel, who is also a writer/playwright; Havel's early plays were influenced by playwrights associated with the movement that Martin Esslin named the Theatre of the absurd and included in his book of that title [Ionesco, Beckett, Albee, Pinter, etc.]; Pinter was originally in section of a chapter; Havel discusses these influences (individual playwrights, the "theatre of the absurd") in his book Letters to Olga. The description of the field does need to be more open and not limited only to other writers. I've revised it accordingly to be more in line with reality. --NYScholar 23:54, 8 November 2007 (UTC) [additional info. --NYScholar 00:53, 9 November 2007 (UTC)]

Prizes?

Scroll up re: "Prizes"; could someone who knows how to construct the template properly please add the field? Thanks. --NYScholar 23:57, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Problem with image formatting

New proposed infobox writer template fix

Religion

Works

Add major works

Remove debut works

add "Literature Portal" tag in the infobox

Default image size

Contents of Influences, influence fields no longer displayed

nobel

Nationality

Nationality causes problems. I feel that there should be 2 catagories - one for ethnicity and another citizenship. In Eastern Europe the borders changed numerous times which caused problems in Nationality. By having both citizenship and ethnicity these problems can be over come.

i.e Gogol was ethnically Ukrainian but a citizen of the Russian empire. Liudkevych was ethnically a Ukrainian but initially a citizen of Austro-Hungary, then th Western Ukrainian Republic, then the UR, then Poland, then the Soviet Union, then Nazi Germany, the the Soviet Union. Now the city in which he lived in is in Ukraine. Bandurist (talk) 14:58, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely agree. Concept of nationality is completely different in Western and Eastern Europe. English Wikipedia still has Western bias in this issue. - Darwinek (talk) 20:32, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
I propose that we eliminate nationality parameter completely and not add ethnicity or citizenship parameters. Nationality, ethnicity, and citizenship can all be included in the article itself. --pete 08:43, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

request multiple websites

Some writer's have multiple sites. This infobox breaks if you try to put in two links. Thanks.DavidRF (talk) 19:38, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Website should be the Official website only. Unofficial websites should be placed under ==External links== in the body of the article. In your case with John Sickels, simply make a choice of only one. I would say to use johnsickels.net as it appears to be registered to a john sickels. --pete 23:01, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
I changed John Sickels today to reflect johnsickels.net as his Official website. I am also rewording the documentation to state only one address. --pete 08:46, 4 April 2008 (UTC)


I would like to second the request for multiple websites. An author may have more than one, especially under different pseudonyms. For example, Faith Hunter has official websites with both that name and her Gwen Hunter name. Both are appropriate for the info box. The box used to support multiple websites - why was this broken? Aleta Sing 16:40, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

See the updated documentation. You may also be surprised that new parameters were added as well as removed. (see Template:Infobox Writer) --pete 17:05, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
I see it. That doesn't solve the problem though. Something that worked fine was broken, and the new parameters are irrelevant to this issue. Aleta Sing 17:15, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

References for infobox

We used to be able to cite references in the infobox. This seems to be broken now. What happened? Aleta Sing 16:41, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Excuse me but I do not understand your question? Could you be more specific with what you mean? --pete 16:51, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Well, I had ref tags in the infobox in Faith Hunter. One of those defined a named ref (i.e. <ref name="example"> which was used later in the article. When I looked at the article today, the tags from the infobox did not seem to be recognized, and where the named ref was used again, an error message displayed saying no text had been specified for that tag. Simply taking the named tag out of the infobox and putting it in the text made it work again - but leaves no citation in the infobox. Aleta Sing 16:56, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Oh, perhaps it is because the citations were for "debut works"? Aleta Sing 16:59, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Ok, I now see what you mean. You are trying to enter information on the debut_works parameter which was removed earlier this year. I suggest you read the new documentation for the template. see Template:Infobox Writer. --pete 17:01, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Well, it's not that I was trying to enter anything there - it was already there, and removing the parameter had unintended consequences. Aleta Sing 17:13, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Parameter: religion

As many writers have been deeply influenced by their religion imo it would be quite convenient to include such a parameter. --Eleassar my talk 20:11, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I see it was suggested before. I have missed the discussion. Anyway, my proposal is to reconsider the decision. This is an important type of information. --Eleassar my talk 20:15, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Writers can be influenced by a great many things, including their politics, their economic class, their level of education, etc. But for many, it's just a piece of trivia. The ideal role of an infobox is to summarize the kind of information that applies to all members of the group it is for, and I wouldn't want to see people hunting down the religious affiliation (or political party etc.) for an author for whom it isn't relevant. - JasonAQuest (talk) 03:42, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
The basic problem is that a person's private opinions can change, and they can be difficult to assess or label from outside. The infobox is intended for information which is simple and clear-cut. If it is very important, it should be explained in the lead. Xanthoxyl (talk) 04:15, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Many of the parameters that are already included can often be just a piece of trivia (like spouse, children, domestic partner, signature etc.) It is at the editors' discretion to determine what is important and what not in particular cases (i.e. which parameters should be included in an article).

As for the basic problem: If the information is sourced it may be included in the article and if it is important enough to be included in the lead it may also be included in the infobox. When a person's private opinions will change and this will be reflected in reliable sources the information will be corrected too. Many things about a person can change (even his/her name) so I don't see this as a viable argument not to include the religion parameter. --Eleassar my talk 09:05, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

adding Lit Portal (part 2)

Someone said a while back that trying to add the Lit Portal tag in the infobox didn't work, but I see that it's been done in Template:Infobox Christian biography. What's the difficulty with adding it to the Writer infobox? Aristophanes68 (talk) 21:39, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

See template documentation. Literature portal was added as an optional parameter. If there is a dispute between editors if this parameter should be used be used in the article, it should be brought up on the articles talk page. If no consensus can be developed for a particular writer, the portaldisp parameter should be marked with:
<!-- Please do not use this parameter in this article. See talk page as mutual consensus could not be achieved on this article. --> --pete 10:41, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Converting infobox writer to new parameters

Well out of 3711 articles that have the infobox, I have converted 1822 of them. Interesting what you find in these boxes. They really need some major cleanup. Mostly I am just taking out the defunct parameters and renaming to the new conventions. --pete 10:52, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Birth date

What should be the proper way of editing when the a writers birth date is unknown? Should it be just left blank? After going through 2000+ pages there seems to be no real consensus. Some editors leave it blank while others place 19?? or ?. --pete 07:30, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Never mind. Got my answer from wp:mos and wp:date. --pete 20:16, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Visible website address please?

Many infoboxes show the website address explicitly rather than just providing a link (see Nick Clegg, Beatles, City of Leeds as a collection of examples). This is more useful for anyone who has printed out the article. Could this infobox be changed to display the website address? If some writers have website addresses which are felt to be too ungainly to display, perhaps there could be an option (either by using a different field, or having a field to hold a yes/no parameter) to suppress it and display "official website", but in the vast majority of cases I suggest that the web address displayed would be more useful. PamD (talk) 18:08, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Done. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 19:30, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Chris, I am reverting your change until we can come up with a better solution to this. PamD's request is logical in some ways. She even states of the ungainly display. I am updating all the articles that use this infobox, and there are some really long addresses. Here is just one example I just happened upon whilst doing my changes (Michel Houellebecq): http://web.mac.com/michelhouellebecq/iWeb/Site/Blog/Blog.html
I simply do not feel that the infobox is the place for an website address explicitly. If a user wants the web address they simply click on the link. I can also point out a collection of examples that use this format. The reason for the link is to keep the infobox clean and neat. Also a printed copy just shows the current, at the time of viewing. A split second later, that explicit link can become obsolete, thus making that printed page obsolete. This change also changed a recently featured article. --pete 21:09, 13 April 2008 (UTC)


Michel Houellebecq
(real name Michel Thomas)
Born February 26, 1958(1958-02-26)
Réunion
Occupation Novelist, filmmaker and poet
Influences
Official website

Here is the example what happens to the page with website address explicit. --pete 08:04, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Firstly, that looks fine to me in my browser. (Both Firefox and Safari 3 wrap the URL.) Secondly, other infoboxen (at least the ones I help to maintain) don't preformat, so this adds inconsistency. PamD's argument is another good reason for not preformatting. The counterargument is of course that it causes fallout in older browsers in existing infoboxen. It isn't difficult to fix these individually, by doing the formatting on individual articles as opposed to doing it in the template code. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 16:36, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Suggestion: for the time being, a temporary new parameter (called "url") could be added for unformatted URLs. Then we can have template code like:
{{#if:{{{url|{{{website|}}}}}}|
! colspan="2" style="font-size:smaller; style="text-align:center; font-style:italic; border-top: 1px solid;" {{!}}
{{{url|[{{{website}}} Official website]}}}
{{!}}-
}}
Templates can then be migrated gradually to use "url", "website" can be deprecated and the attrubute then renamed again. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 16:41, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Chris, all my pc's are expanding this infobox to fit the url. None are wrapping it in any of my browsers (firefox, ie, maxathon). I am going to go get safari now and see what happens. The template is based on actor pl;us others which I have helped out with. That suggestion makes no sense to me. Why would we add another parameter like url and then deprecate website. I'm sorry that makes no sense to me. Enlighten me, please. pete 18:13, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Just installed safari on 2 different computers (I do not own macs) and they both displayed the infobox enlarged to fit the url. pete 18:34, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
Hmmm. Firefox 3 is definitely wrapping it here, anyway.
As for the attribute: the point is that the unwrapped version is superior for a few reasons (it allows individual articles to display the link as they wish) but you disagree with changing the default behaviour right now. So the best way to transition to an unwrapped version is to add a temporary alternative param (unwrapped) which can be used in the meantime until articles are adjusted to use it. After that we can deprecate the wrapped version and eventually remove it. Pretty standard approach. It won't break (or even change) anything unless articles are adjusted to use it. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 23:07, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
Ok, Chris show me how. I will get back to you later. After installing safari, everything just bummed out my main system. I am going to have to restore before installing that software. Later pete 23:59, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

What about the above solution. Still display the link but have a show/hide of the url. pete 14:22, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Woo. Cool. Good enough for me. :) Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 16:02, 16 April 2008 (UTC)