User talk:Brianboulton/Sandbox18

Holst

In a nutshell...

Gustav Holst
Gustav Theodore Holst, composer, born Cheltenham, Gloucestershire 21 September 1874, died London, 25 May 1934. Best known for his orchestral suite The Planets (1919), his distinctive and somewhat austere style prevented his achieving wide popularity. Much of his musical life was spent in teaching and in organising music festivals. His daughter Imogen Holst continued his educational work after his premature death aged 60.
Works	List of compositions

Pardon me intruding, Brian, but I think this is what you may be looking for. I could make it into a template to hide the html if you preferred. --RexxS (talk) 16:46, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

RexxSYes, that's a lot better, thanks. I'm still fiddling around with this idea when I get the chance – I've tried debolding the text – and I'm toying with a few more ideas. Eventually I'll open a proper page and invite a broader discussion. Although I may occasionally shoot my mouth off (generally through frustration or annoyance), my position on infoboxes is mostly conciliatory. I don't believe in a "one size fits all" approach, but I do accept that there is benefit in having all articles above, say "Start"-class, presenting a uniform appearance to readers, with a box of some sort in the top right corner. The question should be: what sort of box best suits this particular article? A few years ago I floated the idea of an minimalist box which I termed an "identi-box", which although in infobox format contained only the bare information necessary to immediately identify the article's subject. This approach was initially mocked by both sides, but from this has developed the kind of mini-box that is now quite widely used – the one on the Holst talkpage is an example. So there seems to be some acceptance already that one size doesn't fit all. What I'm doing here is considering the possibility of a further variant, which replaces the bulletted infobox date with a prose summary of key facts. This might be particularly useful for articles the nature of which defies the orthodox infobox formats (I am preparing a list of FAs which I think fall into that category). Anyway, as I say, I'm still at an early stage in my thinking. There may be some interesting comments when I open up the general discussion page. Brianboulton (talk) 16:37, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Brian. And you know that despite being "to the fore of the fluid group", I am a real admirer of the work you do for Wikipedia. FWIW, I'm attempting to create a sizeable essay in anticipation of an attempt to get far much guidance than currently exists at WP:INFOBOXUSE, which has not served us well. My initial thoughts are at User:RexxS/Infobox factors, and I'd quite like to see included your suggestion of a prose infobox as a sort of "half-way house", if I may? --RexxS (talk) 17:33, 9 September 2016 (UTC)