Template talk:Infobox ethnic group/Archive 1

Turks
	File:Sezenaksu2.jpg
Total population	c. 66.7 million
Regions with significant populations
Uzbekistan	0.2 million
Language	Turkish
Religion
	Predominantly Muslim or nominally Muslim.; Small numbers of adherents of Eastern Orthodoxy and Judaism. Many atheistic or agnostic beliefs.
Related ethnic groups	Other Turkic peoples; Oghuz Turks

This is an archive of past discussions about Template:Infobox ethnic group. 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.

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Other discussion

Was there a discussion at WikiProject Ethnic Groups adopting this new template? If so, could you direct me to it, I must have missed it, and I'm not at all sure I would have favored this template: I find it less legible than what it replaces. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:44, August 8, 2005 (UTC)

I'm somewhat mystified by this template and where it is coming from. It does not appear to have been widely adopted, and with good reason. I seems to be of limited usefulness. One vital piece of information that is missing is an entry for "Name of ethnic group", as used by the ethnic group itself, and as known by others. This is particularly noticeable if you are discussing the minority ethnic groups in places like China, the articles for few of which seem to have adopted this template.Bathrobe 03:08, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

There is no specific field for the name, but you can put it in the fields "group" or "name" to achieve the same effect. I did that in several instances. --Joy [shallot] 16:42, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Joy, if you have been using this successfully, could you give us some usage examples (a canonical case and a couple of unusual ones) or just point us to articles you would consider good examples? -- Jmabel | Talk 04:12, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

I second the proposal about other names, but IMO what is needed is a single new field: {{{Self-name}}}, which must provide a native writing, transliteration and transcription. IMO in English wikipedia only two names matter: English and native. The rest goes into wiktionary, with interwikilink provided in the template: [[Wiktionary: {{PAGENAME}}|Wiktionary]] or smth. mikka (t) 20:11, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Mikkalai, for some groups that is clearly true (Bulgarians or Swedes, for example), but for others, not at all (Jews: what native language do you have in mind: Hebrew? Ladino? Yiddish? Judæo-Arabic? Etc.?). And there are many cases in between (Gypsies in English includes both Roma and Sinti; the Lakota also call themselves Teton or Titonwon, how could we choose one among these to the exclusion of the others?). I'd be all for adding to the template in a way that allows for the usage you propose, but we still need to account for these more complex cases as well. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:34, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Ethnonyms

Like mikka, I would also suggest that one extra field be inserted that reads either Autonym (i.e. the groups own name for itself) or alternatively Other names (i.e. other than the common modern politically-correct English name for the group). This addition would be analogous with the structure of the Language or Country infoboxes, which feature not only the predominant script of the language and country in question but also the English transliteration of the native name. //Big Adamsky 01:53, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I have no objection to this. -- Jmabel | Talk 08:32, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, a people's self-designation is very important in my opinion. --Khoikhoi 00:33, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Seconded. Thirded? --Chris S. 04:43, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Thirded. --Yenemus 16:23, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Related ethnic groups?

What is the "related ethnic groups" cell for? Currently is seems to be used for something that looks suspiciously like original research - classifying ethnic groups by the majority language spoken. Such classifications are purely linguistic and I'm sure there is no reliable source to claim, for example, that the Greeks are related to "other Indo-European ethnic groups". Is there such a thing as a group of "Indo-European ethnic groups"? --Latinus 15:58, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

http://en.wiktionary.org/ ¦ Reisio 03:03, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I am going to have to agree with you. It's kind of hard to define and people misunderstand what "related ethnic groups" mean. There was a whole (for now) revert war involving me and other people at Filipino people concerning this. --Chris S. 04:42, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

For some groups it is very clear. For example, the Ashkenazi are a subgroup of the Jews; the various Slavs are generally related to one another; the Transylvanian Saxons are related to the German people more generally. For others it is not so clear and the section should probably not be used. Probably we should turn it into an optional section. - Jmabel | Talk 01:34, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

In a few articles this infox is used for linguistic groups. There is some points which I want to ask: Is it ok to use Images in the infobox used for linguistic groups? some linguistic groups include several dozens ethnic groups: It seems that the images (which are limited in number) do not represent all of those mentioned people and there is discrimination which may be offensive to some of them (My oponion is to remove images from them. Secondly for the linguistic groups the last section is definitely problematic for example in the article Iranian peoples in the last section it is claimed that related ethnic groups to the linguistic group of Iranian peoples are Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Nuristani, Dardic and Indo-Aryans! This section is wrong because the correct term is related linguistic group. Do we need a new infobox? or there is already another one for linguistic groups? D iyako Talk + 18:34, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

In general, for a merely linguistic group, my gut would be that the only reasonable pictures would be things like a map of geographic distribution, an image of calligraphy, or an image associated with a particularly notable work written in the language (I could imagine a piece of Muslim religious calligraphy for Arabic, for example). Yes, for a broad linguistic group that is not particularly ethnic, pictures of people seem like a poor choice. That last seems to be the key here: the Iranic languages do not really correspond to an ethnic group, any more than English does. As far as I can think, none of the other aspects of ethnicity are even near-constant across the linguistic group. But I'm not expert on this, and would be interested if someone thinks I'm wrong.

In any case, {{Infobox Language family}} might be a lot more appropriate there. -- Jmabel | Talk 17:53, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Political Images and POV

Hi, Many Images are used for this infobox, among them images of politicians, rulers etc.. I want ask you that isn't it better to not use the images of politicians but instead use images of other ordinary people? The world of politics is the world of POV and most of political images used in the infoboxes have a POV. D iyako Talk + 22:26, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I'd certainly consider it a problem if a present-day ruler were included, or someone closely tied to a present day political party. I think that when those politicians are strongly associated with the ethnicity, that is fine. This makes sense in the case of ethnicities strongly connected to a nation state or empire (past or present) or an ethnically rooted rebellion/ uprising that is not too recent and where pretty much everyone of that ethnicity today would identify with it.

For example, for Romanians, the only politician or ruler out of four images is Vlad III Dracula: certainly not a well-loved figure, but probably the most famous Romanian in history. Similarly, Serbs has two political figures out of six: Stefan Dušan, the ruler of Serbia at the height of its late medieval power, and Karadjordje, a key figure in the rise of Serbian nationalism against the Ottoman Empire. Both of these seem appropriate. Germans also have one politician out of four: Otto von Bismarck, probably the key figure in the creation of a German nation state.

Do you consider these cases objectionable? And if not, could you indicate the cases you find objectionable? - Jmabel | Talk 23:46, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for information. D iyako Talk + 18:34, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Reason for my revert

Mainly because it made many of the templates on articles look a lot wider, such as on Turkish people and Sinhalese people. I'm not sure what the changes by David were for, if there were any problems with certain articles then I guess it's a valid reason. However, is there a way to do it so the templates don't have to be so wide? --Khoikhoi 04:13, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your understanding, Khoikhoi; I was trying to fix the layout in some other articles when viewed at lower resolution and/or with bookmarks or other such sidebars open. I've now tried removing the colons again and making a single change to the phrasing; I hope this compromise works for Turkish people, Sinhalese people, etc at your end. Thanks also to CJLL Wright for restoring the interwiki link. Best wishes, David Kernow 17:53, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Another thought: looking again at Turkish people, I'm wondering if the "Regions with significant populations" might work better as a horizontal rather than vertical entry...? David Kernow 18:29, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. It looks fine on those articles. No, I think vertical is best because it is consistent with the other entries. Anyways, I appreciate it. --Khoikhoi 19:10, 8 April 2006 (UTC) --Khoikhoi 19:10, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

How about this (needs simpler way to switch off borders within "Regions with significant populations", align column to right and set font-size for a column):

...? Seems a waste not to use all the space within the "Regions with significant populations" box in the current layout. Regards, David Kernow 02:08, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

That looks really good!! I like it. Should we change it for all pages? --Khoikhoi 02:10, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Wow, thanks for the fast feedback! I think we need to hear some more opinions / find a consensus; if other people keen, then we need to find someone who knows more about setting up tables (unless you know how to achieve what I've fudged for the time being...?) Thanks, David Kernow 02:14, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. One of the people that used to help me with templates is CBDunkerson. Some other template guys are AzaToth, Locke Cole, and Netoholic. --Khoikhoi 02:28, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

"Related ethnic groups" again

Is there a technical way of making that "related ethnic groups" entry optional instead of obligatory in the template? As Latinus said earlier, this line is often awkward, and in many cases it leads to silly ideological conflicts about what groups are "related" (which almost invariably leads to WP:OR arguments, as such notions usually have little basis in the scholarly literature.) See current problems at Greeks, earlier ones at Arvanites, and I'm sure in many other articles too. Would be nice if we could just silently drop it in those cases. Anybody code-savvy enough to make that change, or will I have to try and work it out on my own? Lukas ^(T.|@) 13:53, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I've given it a try at User:LukasPietsch/TemplateTest and User:LukasPietsch/TemplateTest2. Comments? Lukas ^(T.|@) 15:22, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I've made the change now, as nobody has objected so far. Lukas ^(T.|@) 20:47, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Native names

Germans (Deutschen)

Does anyone think it is a good idea to include the native names of ethnic groups in the infoboxes, just like in languages, like in these examples? --Telex 14:15, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I do indeed. I think it is useful to know how a particular ethnic group calls themselves just as we know what the language is in that language or the country is in that language. For ethnic groups that use a non-Roman script, I think there should be a transliteration. So (Έλληνες / Éllines) for Greeks and (日本人 / Nihonjin) for Japanese, etc. --Chris S. 19:30, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Fine by me, though presumably not applicable to every group, since some (e.g. Jews) are not closely associated with any one language. If you want to add some relevant instructions on the template page, or if you think this merits additional, explicit optional fields, go for it. - Jmabel | Talk 00:36, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Reason for my revert (2)

Reporting template damaged problem: Yesterday they were working fine, today all the ethnic info boxes on multiple pages are super wide, like 75% of the entire page wide. They used to be like 25%. So I came here and saw many edits made to it today (that were not discussed on this page). I reverted to last known working version (Revision as of 18:50, 13 December 2006 by Upshine ) trying to get it working the way it used to. Goldenrowley 05:38, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing, with my apologies for the unintended consequences of my edit. Curiously, I didn't see any oversizing on the handful of pages I tested, but I guess that's down to luck/browser. I'm going to try reinstating the edit with the width:22em parameter enabled – hopefully all will be well. Regards, David Kernow (talk) 14:56, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

...Have now tried (simplified version of) layout suggested above thus. David (talk) 16:30, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I've just reverted back as well. Template:Japanese ethnicity experienced major layout issues after the latest round of edits. Please do further testing. Thanks. (→Netscott) 17:23, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Darn... I think I'll leave this alone for the time being – which is probably what I decided previously! I have, though, transferred the amendments made to the documentation; hopefully, they're okay. Thanks for re-reverting, David (talk) 19:12, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I am tempted to revert back to the old template which I find more aesthetically pleasing than the new one. The new color arrangement looks like an odd juxtaposition for some templates like Egyptians and Greeks. The caption fonts are also too small. Can this be fixed? — [zɪʔɾɪdəʰ] · ☥ 20:50, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

To clarify, I think the color scheme should be consistent for all the templates. For example, orange or green not orange and green, which is what some look like at the moment. — [zɪʔɾɪdəʰ] · ☥ 04:31, 22 December 2006 (UTC)