Template talk:Infobox superhero

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[edit] This template causes issues with images

I found the problem on Spectre (comics). The More Fun Comics image has been pushed down to the level of the bottom of the template, leading me to suspect the template as the reason behind the displacement. I know only the bare minimum of wiki markup, and less html, and though I've created a subpage of my userpage to investigate the problem (subst-ing the template) I haven't been able to solve it thus far. If someone else could try to solve this problem, I'd be much obliged. BookishAcolyte 02:27, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

The Infoboxes are set up to be a set 300 pixels across, minimum. They reserves that space from the right side of the page towards the center. This will cause the text to wrap to flow around the box.
If there is an image embedded in the text, the image will interact with the 'box. Images set for "right" of "center" will render under the box, no exceptions. Anything that's set "left" or defaults there shouldn't interact with the 'box, regardless of size, screen resolution, or font size.
As for the Spectre page, I'm looking at it right now. It looks fine, the More Fun and Adventure covers are on the left side and unaffected by the Infoboxes. — J Greb 02:46, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes, the image is on the left, as it should be... the point is that (as I see it, both on Safari and Firefox) that it's way down the page from where it ought to be, the top of the image being below the bottom of the infobox, when it should be part of the "origins" section based on where the code for the image is. The infobox below it doesn't seem to cause this problem. It could be Mac-specific... I'll check on a Windows computer.
Huh, that's funny. It shows up correctly on Windows XP, with Internet Explorer... in which case there's a problem with the way the box interacts with OSX (or with Safari and Firefox, could someone who has Firefox on Windows or Linux check it?).
The Adventure cover is being pushed down by the "More Fun" cover, but otherwise is fine, so I think the other infobox has no such problem.BookishAcolyte 04:48, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
Whoops, I forgot to mention that all the edit links for the sections above "Bronze Age Version" have been pushed down to that section as well. - BookishAcolyte 04:51, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
So there are 4, Fictional character history, Origin, Silver Age, and Bronze Age, lined up in a row with the Bronze Age header? I can't see how that is happening... the edit link should be locked to the related header. — J Greb 05:26, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
I guess you've both failed to consider the fact that there are two templates snadwiched together and into that near top right space? Even if one template is the main offender, it's never a good idea to use two like that. I had a similar problem with Blue Devil. Ace Class Shadow; My talk. 05:41, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
IIRC Ace, the situation implied on BD was that the "edit" links weren't all flush right and in a row. Hence my question to Bookish. If the entierty of the text shifts to the bottem of the character box on the Mac, with images and edit links in the correct, relative positions, then there may be an ordering problemwith the infoboxes, from a Mac stand point. If it's clumping the "edit"s so they are onlonger attacheced to the relavent section, that seems more catestrophic.
That being said I'd be interested in knowing if Bookish has hit the same trouble on onther pages, such as Justice League or Aquagirl. Both have multiple infoboxes, all be it in a different lay out. — J Greb 06:01, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
The exact problem: both images and edit links were moved down below the upper box, even the ones that clearly should have been higher up. In this case, that meant that four links were right next to the "Bronze Age" header (much like this [1]), which was vexing, and that an image overlapped it, which was ugly. The text was all in the right place and wrapped nicely.
I have no problem with either article. I do, however, have the same issue with this one. It probably is the two boxes smooshed together. Lemme test that. Oh good, I moved them around (though they still look like they're together) and now the formatting looks alright to me. Feel free to fix it if that screws it up for any of you, of course. I'll make the same change to the project page as well. Thanks for all your help! I had no expectation of such an outpouring of suggestions! - BookishAcolyte 07:21, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd say "I told you so", but that would be utterly immature.

...Right?

Aw, what the hell! Told ya so! Ace Class Shadow; My talk. 07:28, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Aw, play nice! I'm kind of sort of not really a newbie. ;)
So maybe you can tell me why the text overlays the Invisible Woman box on this page, and all the other boxes are way, way off to the right. Some of the edit links and text go way off to the right was well. It's the same in Firefox, and in Internet Explorer the Invisible Woman box is fine, but the other boxes are way off to the right again.
Sorry to be so much trouble. - BookishAcolyte 07:56, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
No trouble, it looks like it's an undocumented function that needed to be ironed out. It is likely that the 'boxes need a notice on this interaction with Mac and/or Safari and Firefox. It would, hopefully, avoid this in the future. — J Greb 15:09, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Changes

Changed "Supporting character of" to "supports" because the font size change threw the formatting off. --69.136.111.100 18:40, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I wonder if this will be the place will editors will be editing pro-registration/anti-registration/mutant independence now. --Chris Griswold (☎☓) 19:59, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
You might be right, that is such a terrifying thought I think I'm going to change it back. --69.136.111.100 02:38, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Affiliations

Currently the page says Affiliations include any current or previous team affiliations. Please stick to notable affiliations. Okay, but by the definition of a team, are we excluding all teams without names? For example 'Batman and Robin' can be seen as a 'team' easily by many people, only without a name like JLA etc, we would be obligated to exclude them from the SHB template. If it is the case that we only mean group teams, then the wording should be clarified to something like Affiliations include any current or previous team affiliations. Please stick to notable affiliations with team names (such as Justice League) and not individual team-ups (such as Luke Cage and Iron Fist).
Essentially I'm asking 'what defines a team in the superhero community?' -- Ipstenu (talk|contribs) 14:16, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Team - "A team comprises any group of people or animals linked in a common purpose."
Groups of people - defines team as "similar to a squad, though a team may contain many more members."
Group (sociology) - "defined as a collection of humans or animals, who share certain characteristics, interact with one another, accept expectations and obligations as members of the group, and share a common identity."
From these quick examples, it seems clear that a team has more members than a partnership. CovenantD 20:55, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
I don't see why the fuss is being made about the word "team" when the section of the box is marked "affiliations". But rather than quibble over semantics, I think it would be more beneficial to ask why the brief stint that Sleepwalker had on the Secret Defenders is considered notable enough to put in a superhero box, but a long standing partnership (as between Luke Cage and Power Fist) is not. The box gives an area for "affiliations", and by wiki's own definition, an affiliation is "a partnership between two or more parties." D1Puck1T 00:46, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
Look at the definition used to explain what is supposed to go into that variable:
"Affiliations include any current or previous team affiliations. Please stick to notable affiliations."
By that we aren't talking about partnerships ("Power Man and Iron Fist", "Blue Beetle and Booster Gold", etc) or "Boss/Henchman" relationships ("Employed by Kingpin" for example).
And as far as the Sleepwalker example... that seems contrary to the "Notable..." proviso, so it may be fair game to be struck. - J Greb 07:37, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

I'll have to talk about this too. For some people, such as say, Black Cat, who has an extremely long partnership with Spider-Man, as well as Dr Curt Connors, who also has a long history of partnership with Spider-Man, in his human form, how is this addressed in Affiliations? Lizard joins the Sinister Twelve for what, an issue or two, which gets mentioned in Affiliations, but his working together with Spider-Man is cut outright? Sera404 00:26, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

As per my post above, the current structure is that "affiliation=team", not partnership or long term working relationships. So listing "Spider-Man" in the field isn't right. And as for the Sinister Twelve listing, is it notable? If not, the structure is to yank it as well.
That being said, is there enough interest in changing this item of the 'box to actually try to discus it and reach a consensus? - J Greb 00:39, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
Would somebody please fix the template so that the "affiliations" field turns invisible/optional? I would fix it if I only knew how :( —Lesfer (t/c/@) 14:22, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
Actually, I was trying to treat "Affiliation" as a header when wither the team field(s) and/or partners field were present. Where those fields are blank, it shouldn't, and as near as I can tell doesn't appear.
If it's a major space/layout issues, it can easily be removed. - J Greb 15:27, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
I see the "Affiliations" field blanked. —Lesfer (t/c/@) 19:52, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
Hrm.... let me try something.... - J Greb 20:05, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
That should have fixed the problem. - J Greb 20:10, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
Now it looks fine, J Greb, thanks ;) —Lesfer (t/c/@) 21:17, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
"team" should be replaced with "organizational" to address things such as GCPD, etc. Thoughts? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.235.136.98 (talk) 16:49, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Move to Infobox superhero

To comply with the infobox guidelines, shouldn't this template be renamed "Infobox superhero"? GDallimore (Talk) 00:12, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Done, at last. I hope to standardise the markup against Wikipedia's state of the art for infoboxen in the future. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 20:33, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
With all due respect, this is one of a "family" of templates. There has been an attempt to keep them similar in appearance, that includes caption size and the colored bands. The name change is understandable, but the generic look is not.
And yes, some of the templates have been restructure to use {{Infobox}}, but the existing style elements have been retained. - J Greb (talk) 22:58, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
Adding the coloured bands and default sizes back to the new version is trivial and I'm more than happy to accommodate this. Given that relatively few editors are willing to take the time to tidy up templates, it'd be nice if we were given help to work towards compromise rather than expected to get everything right first time. Can you detail exactly what, stylistically, is wrong with the last revision so that it can be adapted to conform with the WikiProject's standards? Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 23:37, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
The quick and dirty?
  1. Over sized, seriously over sized.
  2. The colored bands.
  3. Caption size, style, and placement. Current use is small without forcing bold. And it follows the standard captioning for image, right up against the image.
  4. The "Wikitan" default image if not in article space.
  5. First appearance link.
  6. Losing information that has had inconsistent "variables" used across article. The one I know this happened with is "Alter ego" since 3 different variable were used. The syntax you put in place was only reading for one. Teams will also have this problem.
  7. No distinction between "current" and "previous" teams.
  8. Powers are not treats as a centers "trailing" text, especially since there are a mix of paragraph, list, and bulleted list in use.
And on a potential note, part of the move of the smaller related templates to {{Infobox}} is to allow for a forced default and max image size. The template allows for that but the "built from the bones up" versions don't.
Right now, the syntax in place works and there doesn't seem to be a good reason to move to a syntax that apparently works exactly the same way. - J Greb (talk) 00:28, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
In order:
  1. It follows standard infobox size guidelines. Various WikiProjects ignore these, but they rarely seem to do so out of anything other than habit. If there's a particular reason to adopt a lower default width, could you link to a rationale?
  2. Easy enough.
  3. Easy enough.
  4. It isn't up to templates to enforce policy. The Wikitan hack is cute but it's basically just pointless template bloat.
  5. Deliberately removed because I didn't see the value in the article, but easy enough.
  6. All variants should have been preserved. I'd like a test case if this was broken.
  7. My version had more obvious separation between these two. Again, test case.
  8. I consider powers to be one of the most important parts of the infobox. Their formatting across articles varies wildly already. Happy to make cosmetic changes, but I felt that giving them more space was an improvement in general.
The "move to a syntax that apparently works exactly the same way" helps template editors to maintain said things in future. The current markup is a mess and its aesthetic variations from other modern infoboxen appear to be arbitrary and based on nothing more than inertia.
Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 00:45, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
hrm...
  • 1) My understanding is that is if article or project level consensus is more stringent than a guideline, another project 's or Wiki wide, that's good enough. The comics project has come to the 'box size through consensus of use and creation of like sized boxes. Unless it is policy that the 'box be 300px, then there is no reason to alter what a project is using unless it exceeds that.
    As a side note, the comics project, also by consensus of use, inserts images to try and fill, left to right, the 'box. With the suggested guidelines re image size, most of them should fall around 250-300px across. 250px fills the current 'box.
  • 4+5) That sounds awfully presumptive. To be honest, if you are just updating the framework of a 'box, then you shouldn't be tinkering with what the project using has put into it unless it is a violation of policy or a more restrictive, relevant guide line. AFAIK, neither the Wikitan nor standing links fall in that category.
  • 6) Tigress (DC Comics) is a good case — 2 'boxes in use for 2 different characters in the same article. One uses "real_name" the other "alter_ego". Both work with the old mark up. With the new, only "real_name" pops.
  • 7) Rephrase: If you look at the old mark up, those two categories, along with "affiliations" all count as the same thing. The project came to the conclusion that just "Team affiliations" was preferable to that and a "Former" list given the fluidity of the topics. In other words, by splitting them up you moved the ;box backward.
    As far as the syntax... both "Team" and "Alter ego" of your version use the exact same method. If the AE isn't working, the Team won't.
  • 8) More a case of "It wasn't broke, why was it changed, potentially for the worse?"
All of that being said, (and making an assumption), what is the take on the project watching of this style of 'boxes of the template I referenced? - J Greb (talk) 01:20, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Is this "consensus" or "convention"? There's a difference. Has this actually been discussed in itself? If so, happy to change from 300px to 20em.
  • "Presumptive"? Templates aren't any different from article content. There's no requirement to seek permission before making edits to them so long as the project's rules on consensus and discussion are followed. Projects can set their own style guidelines and conventions, but they aren't closed clubs who have to approve of any changes regardless of whether they've been previously discussed or not.
  • Good catch on the alter ego param. I'd assumed that these were alternative names for the same parameter. Easily fixed.
  • I'm not seeing the semantic difference as clearly with the affiliations. I can change the output to look like the old version easily enough though. Is there a test case?
  • "It wasn't broke, why was it changed, potentially for the worse?" isn't a guideline. In fact, it's a rejection of the Wikipedia ethos. We don't prevent editors from making changes because of some supposed "non-brokenness" of existing content.
Happy to have the project chime in on any of these. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 08:17, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

(dedent ←)

  • Nuts and bolts — Best I can find is that 300px/25em is a suggested size within a guide line See here. At this point, given that the 'box has been in long use at the current size, and is under that, it seems incumbent for the person wanting to change to provide a reason better than "Being bold" or "It's allowed to be larger."
  • Presumptive — Yes it is. While you are correct that, aside from protected pages (which I thought this was...), permission is not needed. However, editing an article is not going to have much impact beyond that page. Edits to templates, since they are transcluded to numerous pages, can have vast impact. Static ones, like warning or consistent boilerplate, don't tend to result in serious unforeseen consequences. Complex ones like infoboxes though are all but guaranteed to. Especially ones like this one that are in use on over a thousand articles and have seen multiple revisions without all older variables being removed/updated.
    Common sense would be to, as much as possible, leave the content as is. The editors that have built this template have come up with something that works for the topics it's used with. Content guide lines and the practical way the content is entered in use are set up based on how the template is currently laid out. For an editor who is just cleaning up and "modernizing" the markup to tweak things without thinking to see how the template is currently used on a wide variety of articles, or thinking through how those tweaks will impact on that use is, politely, presumptuous.
  • Teams — I'll try to simplify this down:
    • "alliances" is the current preferred variable for listing the teams a character belongs or has belonged.
    • "alliances" was also used for this purpose in some versions of the 'box. Some articles still have it in place.
    • "previous_alliances" was used to collect teams that a characters was not currently a part of.
    • A consensus was reached between here and the project level talk page that maintaining separate "current" and "former" team lists was improper based on:
      1. WP:DATED
      2. The MoS at the time for writing about fiction. Upshot - anything written or placed in an in universe context had to be in the "ever present now".
      3. A maintenance night mare due to characters routinely leaving, joining, rejoining, founding, etc multiple teams.
    • Bottom line — In a deliberate move, the three variables were put into a single section with "if" statements structured make sure the information popped up.
  • It's actually a fair axiom when the tinkering doesn't improve what's tinkered with in good faith. And the content changes made were not improving the 'box, but moving it backwards. It's also curious to note that looking at WP:INFOBOX and WP:IBX (the MoS), it looks like there is a move to the template based 'boxes and away from the table based ones. - J Greb (talk) 03:00, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
I've taken as much as I can into consideration with the latest edit. I rather think there's still unnecessary cruft in the teams section, but I'd rather not get into an argument about it so I've used the existing code. If there are any breakages please let me know. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 18:15, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The colors! The colors!

In short; I was fine with the header colors, but the light blue colored bars need to die. They look horrible with the spacing, like some legacy web page from 1996; they clash with the rest of the article and almost every other infobox out there. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs (talk) 00:15, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

So, aside from the dramatics, you just don't like the colors. That about it?
Since this affects multiple infoboxes, I've posted the concern to the project talk page. - J Greb (talk) 00:52, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Placeholder image

Does this box really need a placeholder image? Why can't the default be no image, instead of a placeholder? --Phirazo 03:37, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Nutshell, it was suggested/noted/acted upon as a cross Comics imfobox item here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Comics#Placeholder image. And it looks like it may be a moot issue with the direction that Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Image placeholders is going. - J Greb (talk) 11:05, 5 May 2008 (UTC)