Jump to content

User:Sandrileine/sandbox/Infoboxes

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Going in

[edit]

Welcome to your scratchpad for today's exercises!

We will use the contents of this page and Wikipedia's sandbox (scratchpad) feature to learn about infoboxes and practise editing them.

We will focus on Wikipedia infoboxes today, although variations of the infobox are found on multiple Wikimedia projects (Wikipedia, Wikidata, Commons, etc.). Wikipedia is a well-used general reference source, and allows us to experiment with edits in the sandbox.

Slides from May 2020 presentation providing an overview of Wikipedia infoboxes and how they work.

Setup

[edit]

To begin, click "Edit source" and copy and paste the contents of this entire page into your own sandbox.

  • ⇧ Shift + click Sandbox in the user toolbar in the top right corner. This opens your sandbox in a new window.
  • If your sandbox already has stuff on it, make a new subpage directly from the sandbox URL. The URL is in the address bar in your browser: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:____/sandbox. After /sandbox, write /something.
  • Once you are on the new subpage, click Start the... page or Create source (to the left of the search bar)
  • Copy and paste the contents of this page into your new subpage.
  • Finally, publish the page. You now have a copy of this page which you can freely edit.

How to use

[edit]

Under each section, you will see instructions on what infobox to use and how. If you click Edit source on each section, you will see an editing area marked out with comments. These comments look like this: <!-- I am a comment -->. They are hidden text often used to communicate helpful information (e.g. instructions, warnings) to other editors.

On the text (source) editor, press Show preview to display the results without saving.

Press Publish changes to save changes.

Rule of thumb

[edit]

You will find anything and everything you need to know about using a template (infoboxes included) in the documentation page for that template.

To "investigate" a template, view the page in edit mode and identify what template is in use. Then, find the page for that template (in the search box, type Template:(name of template)) to see the documentation. For example: if I want to look up {{Infobox film}}, I would search Template:Infobox film which gives me this page

Remember, templates are wrapped in squigglies ({{foo}}) and transclude some pre-written function.

In other words, our goal today is to:

  • Get comfortable using transclusion via Wiki markup
  • Get comfortable looking up a template and reading its documentation
  • Practise editing various parameters on infobox templates

Use an infobox

[edit]

Think of the most recent movie you watched. Then, insert an {{Infobox film}} below.

Tokyo Godfathers
Kanji東京ゴッドファーザーズ
Directed bySatoshi Kon
Screenplay by
Story bySatoshi Kon
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyKatsutoshi Sugai
Edited by
Music by
Production
company
Distributed bySony Pictures Entertainment Japan
Release dates
Running time
92 minutes
CountryJapan
LanguageJapanese








Use a Wikidata-powered infobox

[edit]
Georges Duhamel
Georges Duhamel, c. 1930
Born30 June 1884 Edit this on Wikidata
Paris Edit this on Wikidata
Died13 April 1966 Edit this on Wikidata (aged 81)
Valmondois Edit this on Wikidata
Resting placeCemetery of Valmondois Edit this on Wikidata
OccupationWriter, poet, physician Edit this on Wikidata
Spouse(s)Blanche Albane Edit this on Wikidata
ChildrenAntoine Duhamel Edit this on Wikidata
Awards
Signature
Position heldpresident of the Société des gens de lettres (1936–1936) Edit this on Wikidata


Let's try using a WD-powered infobox with {{Infobox person/wikidata}}.

Generally, the template page documents everything you need to know about using that infobox.

Since we're in a sandbox, we will need to manually assign a qid and a name.

For example, the code below returns:

{{Infobox person/Wikidata|qid=Q20733|name=Georges Duhamel|fetchwikidata=ALL}}

You can also organise this more nicely:


{{Infobox person/Wikidata
 | qid=Q20733
 | name=Georges Duhamel
 | fetchwikidata=ALL
}}

Do this exercise for one figure of your choice with a Wikidata item, and for Ludwig van Beethoven. Once you succeed, try different variations using the following parameters:

suppressfields
dateformat
noicon
onlysourced



Ludwig van Beethoven
Born16 December 1770 Edit this on Wikidata
Bonn (Holy Roman EmpireEdit this on Wikidata
Baptised17 December 1770 Edit this on Wikidata
Died26 March 1827 Edit this on Wikidata (aged 56)
Vienna (Austrian EmpireEdit this on Wikidata
OccupationComposer Edit this on Wikidata
WorksSee list of compositions by Ludwig van Beethoven, WoO, list of compositions by Ludwig van Beethoven by opus number Edit this on Wikidata
Awards
  • Bröckemännche Award (posthumous, 2020) Edit this on Wikidata
Websitehttps://www.beethoven.de Edit this on Wikidata
Signature


Seanan McGuire
Seanan McGuire at the US National Book Festival in 2019
Born5 January 1978 Edit this on Wikidata
OccupationMusician Edit this on Wikidata
WorksOctober Daye, Wayward Children Edit this on Wikidata
See Seanan McGuire bibliography Edit this on Wikidata
Awards
Websitehttp://www.seananmcguire.com, http://www.miragrant.com/ Edit this on Wikidata


Fully automatic infobox

[edit]

{{Infobox gene}} uses its own module customised to pull and display Wikidata without local manipulation.

Since we're in a sandbox and not the article (which contains the interwiki link), we will need to manually provide some input. Reference the template page and reproduce the infobox in Beta-2 microglobulin below.



Archives at (P485) workaround

[edit]

Use {{Archival records}} as a workaround for the block on archives at (P485) on English Wikipedia infoboxes. Thi

Location (institution where archives are held), Inventory number, and Description URL parameters pull from Wikidata if left blank.

It is recommended that you also specify the following parameters:

title

For example, the code below produces:

{{Archival records
| qid=Q77729
| title=Ursula Franklin fonds
}}

I can also insert any field manually:

{{Archival records
| qid=Q77729
| title=Ursula Franklin fonds
| inventory_number=12345
}}

Produce the template for a figure with an archives at (P485) property in their Wikidata entry. If you don't have anyone in mind, try Ella Maillart.