Template talk:Infobox scientist/Archive 5

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Religion Field

Another Wikipedian farce.

The "Religious Stance" field is almost certainly the addition of some disgrunted god-warrior determined to commandeer dead scientists into their culture war brigade. The page protect serves only to permanently cement this spectacle onto some of the most important Wikipedia pages, and I have no doubt that shielding this particular item from removal is the ultimate purpose of the protect.

I note that the beaurucrats have gone through their usual rituals of talk pages, consensus votes and cabals, all ending up an inscutable maze of nested comments, WP Rules, and request pages and of course, the entire matter has long since been forgotten by almost everyone involved; All as intended no doubt. Frustrating as it is, one cannot help being moved by the speed and efficiency with which such impedances are erected by well practiced mandarins.

I am reminded of the debaucle surrounding the World War 2 infobox, which for over 5 months had an incorrect start date for one of the defining events of human history. At least in that case the administrators had the good graces to allow the embarassment to be corrected. However in this case, it would seem the world is not so lucky.

Any honest individual would recognise that an optional "Religion" field is appropriate, not a "Religious Stance" one. The latter drags the Scientist biography pages into the nonsense North American "culture war", which the rest of the world would rather see such pages out of. I understand that Americans have rather strong opinions on such matters. Notwithstanding this, it would be preferable if they kept their spats away from pages intended for public display.

I will therefore request that the page be unprotected, so that this foolishness can be brought to an end. The request is only a formality. I fully expect that the corruption endemic to Wikipedia will conspire against any such change. ObsessiveMathsFreak (talk) 14:00, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I can't make much sense of this comment. I don't see what is proposed.   Will Beback  talk  20:30, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

(ec)Hi ObsessiveMathsFreak, and apologies I haven't seen this sooner. Can you stop removing religions or nonreligions from articles until this is discussed further? It's a fairly nontrivial change. And yes, there was no response, so I'm not faulting you for doing so, but please stop until we can discuss it more.

Moving on to actual rationale, "no religion" is a valid preference for a religion. If an individual has stated they are an atheist, that seems fairly equivalent to explicit atheism- but the point is that it isn't field for individuals with only certain specific religions. Being a member of a category, like "not religious" is just as valid as being a member of a specific "genre" of religion, like TODO.

Further, being a member of a general category should be sufficient, like Freeman Dyson.

Finally, and importantly, this is an issue that has come up previously and has been hotly contested. It wasn't simply ignored for a month- it was ignored, but the onus should have been on you to see the previous discussions before boldly going out to a bunch of articles and removing the field.

To summarize, I'm saying that the current guidelines on religion for a scientist are sufficient. I don't see how it is anything like having a fact wrong, as you are stating existed for a WW2 infobox. tedder (talk) 20:37, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Following up to myself- here's the declined page protection. ObsessiveMathsFreak, if you'd seen that, your changes today indicate you didn't follow it. If you haven't seen it, you have now. tedder (talk) 21:11, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I never had an opportunity to read the reasons for the unlock decline as the reply was quickly lost amid the deluge of edits to that page. In addition it references a clutch of bureaucratic WP rules and guidelines which in my personal opinion are designed or used in large part to quell any objections to the status quo.

And I do object to the status quo on this tag. It's use on infoboxes of persons who are atheist is in my opinion incorrect and has more to do with the American culture war than any honest effort to provide factual information.

Not having a religion is not the same thing as having some kind of religious stace, or indeed having a religion, that being the original and indeed current purpose of this tag. If this logic is followed to its conclusion, there should be a tag in infoboxes which shows "Favourite Soccer Team: None" for people who do not follow football. It is more logical, and more honest, to simply leave the religion out for persons who do not have one.

And this is a religion tag. The "Religious Stance" sugar coat is just that, a sugar coating. Indeed, the code call for the tag still reads "|religion=atheism", a more obvious of intent, and a contradiction in terms. It's clear that the "stance" addition is a fairly transparent attempt to disguise the true intent of the tag. That being to label atheism as a religion, when it is not. These wikipedia pages are being co-opted into an outside political campaign.

Reading the previous discussions on this matter, it's not clear that there was ever any consensus on this issue. Yet you would argue that the very rules and guidelines which were the subject of such heated debate should be accepted solely on the basis of how long they have remained unaltered; unaltered behind page protects I may add. While this logic may seem sound to you, I have encountered an identical situation in relation to the start date of world war 2. These very same principals allowed an appalling inaccuracy to stand unaltered for months in one of the most important and most read articles on this entire site. So, you'll forgive me if I do not show much deference to these particular principals and procedures.

It is not a "Religious Stance" tag. It is a religion tag and always has been. Therefore my position is straightforward. Only religions should be put into the tag. Not terms that are not religions like "atheism" or "agnosticism". And not terms which are overly broad and vague like "Christian" or "Deist". Scientists indeed were members of religions, "Catholicism","Calvinism","Orthodoxy","Judaism", etc, and this is reasonable and indeed appropriate information to include with a religion tag in the infobox. But when scientists and other people were not members of any religion at all, then the reasons for remarking on this so prominently have much less to do with providing information than they have to do with making a political statement. Such information is anti-factual.

To sum up, my position is that "atheist" and related terms, as well as overly broad terms, should not be added to infoboxes using this tag. In addition, I do not view the last iteration of an old deadlock, however long lived, as evidence for a final consensus; particularly when that iteration was frozen under page protection for its duration.ObsessiveMathsFreak (talk) 16:54, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Note the long discussion on related matters above. It was mainly concered with whether it was reasonable to label a scientist in an infobox, but also discussed why "stance" was introduced. Johnuniq (talk) 01:05, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Religious views can be complex. In the case of some scientists, like Albert Einstein, they are too complex to summarize in a word or two. In another case, Freeman Dyson identifies himself as a Christian but does not belong to any denomination. Atheism is also a view on religion and is highly relevant to the biographies of scientists. Atheism is not limited to America, so I'm not sure why this is characterized as being a part of "the American culture war". I disagree with any change to the status quo on this matter based on these arguments.   Will Beback  talk  20:14, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Minor edit protected

{{edit protected}} Can someone change the "Image:" to "File:" please. --Yarnalgo _{talk to me} 00:25, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Done. - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 04:07, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Citizenship

The citizenship of a person born (or naturalised) in the United Kingdom is always described as British, so both the guidance ("state country only"), and the Dirac example are wrong, and should be changed. This is not a personal opinion; it is the official practice of the UK government, and has been for a long time. Macdonald-ross (talk) 18:31, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but the Usage states to list countries only, not actual citizenships. And the country is United Kingdom, not British. Admittedly, listing countries and not citizenships under |citizenship= seems wrong. Does anybody recall why it was made so? HairyWombat (talk) 21:12, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Caption text size

{{editprotected}} Has a recent edit accidentally altered the text size of the image caption? It looks far too big at the moment. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 20:13, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I can't see any recent edits that might have changed this, either to this template or {{infobox}}. The caption is normal text size and looks reasonable to me. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:00, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I was looking at the article "Robert Hues" on a desktop computer yesterday, and the text size was larger than normal. But looking at it now using my laptop, it appears the same size as the rest of the text. It must have been a quirk of that desktop computer. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 06:08, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Caption

{{editprotected}} The caption parameter is not working. Please fix it. -- Taku (talk) 01:14, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

As you didn't provide a test case, I had a look at your recent edits and found this one, which seems to be the problem here. There was already another caption parameter specified on that article, which I have now removed. Seems to be working fine. Not a problem with the template, so disabling the editprotected. (for what it's worth, editprotected requests are supposed to be accomanpanied by clear instructions on the work to be done, or a test case at the very least.) Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 12:47, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Image size

Does anyone know what to write to reduce image size with this box? Nothing that I try is working. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 16:42, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

The parameter is called {{{image_size}}}. I had a look at Wilhelm Reich (the article you were trying to fix?) and couldn't get it working - I then had a look at the code, which looks pretty obviously broken. It was changed in this edit, which should be reverted until it can be examined more closely. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 11:17, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

I reverted and now it's working. Thank you! :) SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 13:40, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Please, revert this! it's broken but was fine last week. See this article for example Abraham_Lempel. Shows a huge image! used to be OK. --150.241.250.3 (talk) 07:34, 10 July 2009 (UTC) (Alvaro)

You can reduce the size by editing the image-size parameter. Before the revert, that wasn't working. It is now. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 17:33, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I fixed the article that 250.3 pointed to. Just to be careful here, the parameter is image_size, with an underscore, and requires the "px" to be specified. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 12:08, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Chris, has there been any effort to have all the infoboxes coded the same way, if that's the right expression? Each of them seems to require something different to be typed in to change image size, width, and other parameters, and it can be pretty tricky to find out what it is, especially if you have no technical knowledge. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 15:05, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Some ({{infobox}} has been a great help, though it doesn't currently help with image coding), but it's slow going because of the required bot work. I'm going to try to increase my activity in this area over the summer, but first there needs to be discussion of precisely what we should be standardising to. I'll ping you if I see any movement in this area. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 17:01, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

That would be great, thank you. I've often tried adding infoboxes and ended up giving up, because the code that worked for the last one doesn't work for this one, and if you try adding or removing parameters, something else gets messed up. To have them standardized would be a big help. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 22:03, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

New Parameter

How about a new parameter for their home language? ChrisDHDR 17:43, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Do you have some scientists in mind for such a parameter would be useful? I can't think of any. —teb728 t c 00:40, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

I think the parameter 'resting place' should be added for those who have passed away. Khurramchaudhary (talk) 05:45, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Left justify signature

I strongly feel that the signature would look a lot better if it were left justified rather than centered. The info box would be more compact, and the look would have more symmetry.(For example see, Barack Obama) Best, Miguel Chavez (talk) 22:28, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Accessibility improvement for visually-impaired readers

{{editprotected}} For WP:ACCESSIBILITY by the visually impaired, it should be possible to specify alt text for images generated by this template (please see WP:ALT for details). I've implemented this in the sandbox with this sandbox edit, which adds alt= and signature_alt= parameters to this template. I have tested the sandbox version with the test case, and have updated the documentation to describe the new parameters and behavior. Can you please install the change into the main version? Thanks. Eubulides (talk) 19:33, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

 Done Let me know if there are any problems. Plastikspork (talk) 07:44, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Link, req. to change in source

I would like to change "Doctoral advisor" to "Doctoral advisor", i.e. [[Doctorate|Doctoral]] advisor to [[Doctorate|Doctoral advisor]]. -- Giorgio Gonnella (talk) 07:11, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Extended Guidelines for Template Use – no work

The Contents box on the template page includes "Extended Guidelines for Template Use", and this contains lots of sections. Unfortunately, clicking on any of these takes you nowhere. Displaying Template:Infobox Scientist/doc displays the same Contents box, and in this case these links work. They need to also be made to work on the template page. HairyWombat (talk) 12:46, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Infobox Systems scientist

Resolved

Could we merge {{Infobox Systems scientist}} into this template? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 23:59, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Clear

{{editprotected}}

This is rather trivial I know, but could someone please put a "clear" prior to the documentation? The infobox is squishing the display of the whole transcluded doc page. Dont' forget to put it within a noinclude section...
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 03:55, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, this seems to be intentional through the use of the {{Start_infobox_page}} —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:22, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

I do agree that it would look better as Ohm describes it, though. Right now you have to scroll vertically (yuck!) — Jake Wartenberg 13:26, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

A better fix would be to remove the "self-documentation" entirely, and include an example on the doc page instead. I am very close to doing this myself. It's impossible to read on a 12 inch laptop screen. Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 20:56, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

 Done I believe I fixed the problem. I moved all the "self-documentation" to actual documentation. Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 21:08, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Common error to avoid

Under the heading "common errors to avoid" it says:

'Jewish' is an ethnicity, whereas 'Judaism' is a religion. Do not confuse these two.

I don't think the above is all that relevant to the construction of this Template. I think such mixing up of a noun such as Judaism with an adjective such as Jewish is the sort of error that editors at an article can reasonably be expected to address on their own. Bus stop (talk) 14:15, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Common error to avoid

Under the heading "common errors to avoid" it says:

'Jewish' is an ethnicity, whereas 'Judaism' is a religion. Do not confuse these two.

I don't think the above is all that relevant to the construction of this Template. I think such mixing up of a noun such as Judaism with an adjective such as Jewish is the sort of error that editors at an article can reasonably be expected to address on their own. Bus stop (talk) 12:58, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

I think the documentation was specifying that "Jewish" would be suitable for the ethnicity field (but not "Judaism"), while "Judaism" would be suitable for the religion field (but not "Jewish"). I am pleased that in a quick search I was unable to find an example where these labels had been applied (although Albert Einstein does show the ethnicity field), since I regard these labels as somewhat pointless in general, and silly for a scientist. Nevertheless, I think the edit you made should probably be reverted. Johnuniq (talk) 00:13, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Religion

Why is this called religious stance? Religion is not a political or ideological stance, but a belief. This should be "religious beliefs", or merely "religion".—Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.115.166.174 (talk • contribs)

It may not provide enlightenment, but you may like to review previous discussions: Archive 4 and Archive 5. Johnuniq (talk) 02:03, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

I still think more needs to be done to resolve this. I now understand why "religion" isn't being used, but "religious stance" seems like it would be as offensive to religious people by classifying their beliefs as merely a stance (like a political stance) as a forced "religion" parameter would be to athiests. If there is a better wording, I think we should put that in (maybe "religious views"? it is similar to stance but seems slightly better.). Otherwise "religious beliefs" as an optional field seems to make sense. It would be fine then to have a value such as "None; athiest" or "complex views".—Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.115.166.174 (talk • contribs)

Or just remove it from the infobox, this isn't USA Today where every article needs a massive infobox. Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 22:23, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

It's my understanding that religious stance is thought, by some editors, to be particularly relevant in some fields, such as scientists working on WMD, or genetics/ fertility/ contraception. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 22:50, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

It is as stance - a position one chooses to take. Unlike say, skin colour or gender. That said, I (as an atheist) would be OK with "views", even though I don't see how that's any different. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 22:50, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

That field should be labeled "Religion."

The infobox should be flexible. All scientists do not have to have a religion specified. It is an editorial decision. The infobox should suggest "Religion." The editors of the article should have the option of leaving the field out entirely if they so choose. I don't agree with this notion, under common errors to avoid:

"If a field does not apply leave it blank. Do not delete it. This is because is acts as a place holder and future editors may find a field applies after all."

The Template should serve as a guide, to be altered in reasonable ways as the editors at an article see fit.

As concerns the sense of "stance," a religion may or may not be a "stance." Once again, it should be an editorial decision. Bus stop (talk) 23:00, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Atheism is not a religion, so that label should not be used. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 23:13, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Fields that are not found to have applicability in certain articles

The Template:Infobox scientist should be used as a reference, as a suggested starting point. Fields that have no applicability to an article should be removed from that article. I've made this edit to reflect this thinking. Bus stop (talk) 02:36, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

I support removing unused fields because when naive editors look at the wikitext of an article, they sometimes interpret a blank field as a challenge, and will insert whatever Google suggests without much thought. Johnuniq (talk) 08:17, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

I do not support removing blank fields. It is better to leave them in and comment them as "not relevant." If you remove blank fields you lose the integrity of the wiki process. You miss opportunities for others to fill out blank fields that one mistakenly thought could not be filled. That is why you have to keep it open and let others collaborate. One needs to promote the collaborative element of the wiki process. One has to work on the premise that no single wiki editor is perfect. PorkoltLover60 (talk) 11:32, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Request for link removal

I'd like to remove the links on this template for alma mater, doctoral, and the author abbreviations. I believe they have little utility and basically contribute to link clutter. People are more likely to want to go to the page for the alma mater itself and not the alma mater page. Gobonobo ^{T C} 06:35, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

New Parameter "Collaborators"

HI I'd like to add a new parameter to this template, "Collaborators". Could you please help me do this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mdwang (talk • contribs) 20:07, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I second this request. If others feel concerned about out of control lists then "Notable collaborators" (similar to the students field) would be fine also. Cheers, Ben (talk) 22:22, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

I second this request also. It can be "Frequent notable collaborators." It would be of great help in establishing science networks. After export to DBPedia, social networks software could be used. Adnakhwp (talk) 14:20, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Request that spouse be added

I think spousal information is particularly relevant and important, and that it should be added to the template. Richard Dawkins, for example, has had three wives, two of whom have Wikipedia articles themselves. Please consider adding a spouse field, perhaps we can do a straw poll?. — CIS ^(talk | stalk) 05:55, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

It appears that Template:Infobox person has a spouse field, but Template:Infobox scientist does not. I notice that "spouse" is used at Richard Dawkins but it does not have any effect. My view is that the infobox for a scientist should focus on the science aspect, and not on the celebrity side. Accordingly, I do not want a "spouse" field (although of course those biographical details should be in the article, where appropriate). Johnuniq (talk) 07:50, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Interesting though the dilemma it creates when a scientist happens to also be a celebrity. I've seen articles where scientists had two infoboxes, because they qualified for the philosopher infobox and the scientist infobox. I wonder if it would be ok to have two boxes in the case of a celebrity scientist? Anyone have thoughts on this?KnownLoop (talk) 22:33, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Considering that {{Infobox celebrity}} is just a redirect to {{Infobox person}}, I would say one infobox is fine. Thanks! Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 19:02, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

I'll add my mustard, even though no one probably comes back here: I wanted to place "spouse" information in the infobox here: Albert Szent-Györgyi : I tried copying the formatting from Nicole Kidman and, when that didn't work I thought maybe it was a scientist issue, so I copied it from Albert Einstein - a scientist whose spouses are listed. Worked for Einstein but not for Szent-Györgyi. But maybe, despite winning the Nobel Prize and discovering Vitamin C and almost being the Ruler of Hungary, Szent-Györgyi's not a enough of a celebrity to merit a wife. sigh. Saudade7 19:01, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Sure. But, if this infobox doesn't support what you need, then I see no reason why you can't just use {{Infobox person}}. Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 23:51, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

The scientist infobox has now been fixed to include spouse(s) thanks to a genius admin friend! Saudade7 17:35, 21 January 2011 (UTC)