Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Moving infobox reviews into article space

100% complete Backlog: Infobox album with reviews Goal: 0 articles Current: 0 articles Initial: 52,700 articles

Project completed!

In an effort to deprecate the Reviews parameter of the {{Infobox album}} template, WikiProject Albums organized a drive to move reviews from the infobox into the article space. The reviews parameter, if used, showed a notice of deprecation to bring attention to this drive and to this page. An example of an infobox with reviews in it can be seen at this version of the Waiting for Cousteau article. Editors who saw articles with reviews in the infobox followed the step-by-step process listed below. The project was completed on October 24, 2012. This page is now kept as a record.

Articles with reviews in the infobox were found listed in the Infobox album with reviews category.

Graph of progress over the final two months.

History of consensus

In November 2009, consensus was reached to remove the Reviews parameter from the Infobox album template. For a short while, a bot was moving reviews into the article space, but eventually this fell through. Follow-up discussions regarding this parameter continued throughout 2010, with the removal of the parameter always reaching consensus. In June 2011, discussions were started again at WikiProject Albums, this time with the intent to push forward manually (note: there is a current request for DASHBot to resume working on this project). Editors with questions or concerns regarding this drive should add them at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Albums#Album reviews to avoid dispersion of subject discussions over several talk pages.

How to move reviews

Ideally, professional reviews need to be placed in a “Reception” section of the article using the {{Album ratings}} template, and each review should be summarized in prose. For the purposes of this drive, however, reviews only need to be moved into the {{Album ratings}} template, which is then placed immediately after the infobox template or in a “Reception” section.

Note: In accordance with Wikipedia guidelines set at WP:EL and WP:V, the external links that often appear beside album ratings should be converted to footnotes.

1. Click “Edit” on the album article, and copy and paste the following code into the article. If the article has a “Reception” section, paste the code at the top of that section. If the article does not have a “Reception” section, you may create one, or just paste the code immediately after the infobox:

{{Album ratings
| rev1      = 
| rev1Score = 
| rev2      = 
| rev2Score = 
}}

2. The reviews should be in alphabetical order. Copy them from the Reviews parameter and delete them from the infobox. Put the first review source in the rev1 parameter and the first review score in the rev1Score parameter; put the second review source in rev2 and the second review score in rev2Score; and so on. Add or remove rev# and rev#Score parameters as needed.

For example, you would move this:

| Reviews =
*[[Allmusic]] {{Rating|4|5}} [{{Allmusic|class=album|id=r842039|pure_url=yes}} link]
*''[[Stylus Magazine]]'' (B+) [http://www.stylusmagazine.com/reviews/voivod/katorz.htm link]

to this:

{{Album ratings
| rev1      = [[Allmusic]]
| rev1Score = {{Rating|4|5}} [{{Allmusic|class=album|id=r842039|pure_url=yes}} link]
| rev2      = ''[[Stylus Magazine]]''
| rev2Score = (B+) [http://www.stylusmagazine.com/reviews/voivod/katorz.htm link]
}}

3. Change each link to a footnote. If the ratings in the article already use footnotes, skip this step. (For more information about how to use and format footnotes in Wikipedia articles, see Help:Footnotes.)

A. For a regular link using a URL, replace the word “link” with a brief description — for example, the name of the source followed by the word “review”. (Optionally, you can use citation templates, to provide more detailed information about the citation.) Put a <ref> at the beginning and a </ref> at the end.

B. For the {{Allmusic}} template, you can also replace the word “link” with a brief description. Alternatively, you can remove the square brackets and the “|pure_url=yes” if present. (See Template:Allmusic for information on additional parameters that you can use.) Either way, put a <ref> at the beginning and a </ref> at the end.

Now our example looks like this:

{{Album ratings
| rev1      = [[Allmusic]]
| rev1Score = {{Rating|4|5}}<ref>{{Allmusic|class=album|id=r842039}}</ref>
| rev2      = ''[[Stylus Magazine]]''
| rev2Score = (B+)<ref>[http://www.stylusmagazine.com/reviews/voivod/katorz.htm Stylus Magazine review]</ref>
}}

C. Most articles already have some footnotes, but if the article you are editing does not have any, add a “References” section for them, near the end of the article, and {{Reflist}} below it:

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

4. You can fill out the edit summary with the following text that will help bring awareness to this drive:

Moved reviews from infobox to album ratings template. [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Moving infobox reviews into article space|You can help!]]

5. Click “Show preview” to see what the article will look like with your changes.

6. Click “Save page”. You’re done!

The final result will look like this revision of the Waiting for Cousteau article. Thank you for your help!

Reception sections with potential for expansion

Editors moving reviews in articles lacking “Reception” sections may choose to add a flag at the bottom of the {{Album ratings}} template, which will notify editors that the reviews listed will need to be expanded into prose. The parameter for this is noprose = yes, adding this parameter will place the article in the hidden category Articles with album ratings that need to be turned into prose.

{{Album ratings
| rev1 = 
| rev1Score = 
| noprose = yes
}}

Album ratings template is not mandatory

The purpose of this drive is to move reviews out of the infobox. The most efficient way to do this without losing potentially valuable information is to keep the reviews in a similar format, which the Album ratings template allows. As explained at Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Article body#Critical reception, {{Album ratings}} is not mandatory and is intended solely as a supplement to Reception sections containing a written summary or as a means of presenting information that should eventually be summarized in prose.