Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Guitarists/Guitarist infobox

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[edit] Infobox being replaced by musician box

M_project members have been subst. the guitarist infobox with their generic musician box(following its addition of the notable instrument line at the bottom) The arguement against the guitar project box is that, now, there is basically no difference between the boxes so swapping should not be an issue. They are correct in that the guitarist box isn't much different from the musician box. I personally can't stand the other box because of the ridiculous colur schemes but that's just me. SO...in order to remedy the situation I guess the only thing we can do is make the box more "guitarists-centric" I'd like to open a discussion here on just how we can go about doing that. What can we do? A header at the top?...Some sort of small icon or graphic beside the guitarists name?....we have notable guitars, how about amps/other equipment?....signature solo(s)?...solo soundbytes? Anyone have any thoughts? Cheers! Anger22 11:00, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

I also dislike the color schemes for the other infoboxes, especially since the color for a instrumentalist is that pinkish color. Our infobox had color at first, but other members didn't like it so we changed it to grey. I have a feeling that this isn't going to go away though (at least until WP Musicians dies again) so we should take steps. I think we could set our infobox apart and make it unique to guitarists. Maybe the parameters could be:
  • Genre
  • Affiliation
  • Notable Guitar(s)
  • Amp (would be whatever amp they are known to use the most)
  • Soundbyte (love this idea)
  • Web site
This way we are really setting it up as guitarist information. I think we can lose "born", "died", "label", "alias", and maybe "years active" because they are normally redundant to the lead paragraph of the article. Thoughts? --Aguerriero (talk) 14:55, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
Soundbyte IS a great idea...whoever thought of that is a genius!. But you're heading right where I thought we should go. The infobox needs more "guitar" less "life". Birth/death are usually covered in the lead. I don't know of any articles that have filled in genre yet? or alias...unless it's 'real name' which is kind of the opposite to alias. Getting little solo soundbytes in this day and age is easy. Is it possible to add a small icon/graphic to the top of the box?(having never designed one...I didn't know). I was thinking a small black clipart of a guitar headstock to the left of where the guitarist name shows up. Maybe/probably this isn't possible but no matter where we go....NO COLOURS!. Even regular Wikipedia editors don't know what they mean. And the casual Wikipedia reader could care less. Anyone else? Anger22 16:20, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
Here is somewhat of a prototype with some field changes. I left "alias" in but it's not in use. I am still working on finding a little icon to go by the name. --Aguerriero (talk) 18:57, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
Lookin' good! I am off for a bit. Perhaps post out to 75pickup and some of the other active members to get some feedback. Cheers! Anger22 19:24, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
A) any fields you add to this infobox, I can add to musical artist infobox. B) I strongly question whether "Amps" is an encylopedia-worthy field (but if you feel it is, I'll happily add the field to musical artist). C) not everyone agrees that color is evil. D) if you dislike the particular colors on the musical artist infobox, why not make some suggestions for alternate color schemes? The group that originally created that infobox is pretty much gone, and those of us who have sprung up in their place may be far more reasonable (I dislike the red as well). I'm trying to offer some choice to editors, and Anger22 seems to be fighting tooth-and-nail against even the possibility of allowing options! I'm not trying to inflict my preferences on anyone, merely to offer choices. But if you want to make me happier, change the layout (not the color) of this infobox to be more consistent with that other "evil" infobox. That's the main thing that bothers me most about it at the moment. (And, as an aside, I've seen many articles that use genre and alias.) But again, my goal is to try to make everyone happy! Not just color-haters or color-lovers. And I would dearly love an excuse to change (and some support in changing) the too-rigid (and admittedly somewhat ugly) color choices of the musical artist infobox. But that's starting to get off-topic for this discussion. Xtifr tälk 19:26, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your input Xtifr. My opinion is (and I think I speak for Anger22 also) that from the perspective of maintaining templates, what you are trying to accomplish with the Musician infobox is a little bit too large of a scope. Consider that it is more reasonable to create specialized infoboxes for specialized articles (like guitarists) instead of having one giant infobox with a dozen or more options. Note that other WikiProjects (like Military History for example) have different infoboxes for different types of articles. Here's why:

  • If you offer too many options in one infobox (as you are proposing to do), if an editor decides to use them all, you have a giant infobox with many redundant or inappropriate variables. If we decide that "birth date" doesn't belong in a guitarist infobox, we don't want to even present the option, as the Musicians infobox does.
  • Again, if we decide we don't like color in the infobox (and I have stated that I personally like it but I was going with consensus) then we don't want to give the option, as the Musicians infobox does.
  • I have previously stated my well-founded concern that the Musicians WikiProject will be abandoned again, because it suffers from the exact same problems it had before - overly large scope, conflicts with other wikiprojects, and poorly defined standards. If you or other editors go around changing the Guitarist infobox to the Musicians infobox, and then the project folds, we will have to go back to all of those articles and change the infobox back so they can be managed.

So we aren't "fighting tooth and nail" against allowing options. We are trying to communicate quite reasonable concerns about having the Guitarist infobox replaced with the Musicians one, no matter the additional options available. Make sense? --Aguerriero (talk) 20:08, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

The musical artist infobox was already in use on thousands of articles before I came along. Despite the fact that the musicians project was supposedly dead. Whatever you or I may think about its scope, it seems that Wikipedia in general thinks its scope is just fine. And if you guys come up with improvements to this template, I think it's my duty to Wikipedia to see that those improvements get into the other widely-used similar template as well. On the other hand, if you come up with useless, non-encyclopedic fields (as I would judge "Amp" to be), then I probably won't add it to any other templates. But I'll also protest its addition to this template. I'm also willing to help make more templates if people feel the existing set of templates aren't wide enough, and/or more specialized templates are needed. That's a great suggestion. (But you're suggesting that change in the wrong place.) And I'm very, very flexible. And I want to try to make everyone happy. And I'm certainly not a huge advocate of any of the existing templates. But I want to register my strong objection to A) adding non-encylopedic fields to this template, or B) changing this template deliberately to try to discourage people from using other templates. Because I'm seeing people complaining about this template, and I think the editors of articles should have some choice and some say in the overall look of the articles they're creating. If some editors prefer this template, then I think they should be allowed to use this template, and if they prefer musical artist, I think they should be allowed to use musical artist.
p.s. if you're looking for improvements to this template, I think a HUGE one would be some external indication of the fact that the person is a guitarist! Because right now, it provides no clue whatsoever as to what the person does or is. Xtifr tälk 08:08, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
The changes we discussed to the guitarist infobox are just that: a discussion. Your problem with the "amp" field is certainly valid and you'll note that I have neither argued with it nor implemented that field in the template that's in use. That being said, I'm attemping to take a step back and reflect on this situation, especially on the question of why it's even a situation. In the end, I am open to changes that help the project. If you are agreeing to maintain the musicians infobox and maintain open lines of communication with us, I think we can find something that works for everyone. --Aguerriero (talk) 14:34, 13 October 2006 (UTC)