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Infoboxes for composers (continued)

Infobox vs Mothra (Apr 25-28)

Side note: Since people asked, Mothra was a frequent enemy or sidekick to Godzilla in bad Japanese monster movies, and a frequent afernoon guest on my childhood TV screen. I guess infoboxes had me in a "low culture" frame of mind... and I guess I'm getting old. —Turangalila talk 21:08, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

i find the attitudes regarding the infoboxes and composer quite odd. keeping in mind that not everyone who visits these pages are as familiar with the classical genre as some of the editors and patrollers of the composer articles. what infoboxes do is impart information quickly to those who may not be inclined or have the time to plunge into the depths of music theory to find something interesting. these composers are not deities and gods...just men with a truck-load of talent. let's not forget that wikipaedia is not for the learned...for those seeking information, and all this stilting and deifying serves only to is exclude the very people we should be woeing. --emerson7 | Talk 02:43, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

the above is copied from my STRONG OBJECTIONS early placed on the Puccini talk page.--emerson7 | Talk 03:54, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
User:emerson7 has replaced the Puccini infobox despite four editors asking for it to be removed and only one (two counting emerson7) wanting to keep it (see Talk:Giacomo_Puccini#Infobox. (He has also replaced the infobox on Rimsky-Korsakov again against majority opinion). --Kleinzach 05:02, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Hi everyone. Has anyone ever considered that this will have to be done with other well known people in history. Surely it would be the same. If we removed infoboxes, then we will have to remove the info boxes for philosophers like Ludwig Wittgenstein and scientists like Paul Dirac or Charles Darwin and novelists like Charles Dickens? Surely then we should collaborate with other groups of people. And to add to that, I would like to say that although the infoboxes do not seem to be useful, they make the profile look professional as if it were part of a database, like with the organisation of the period table. --pizza1512 Talk Autograph 05:36, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Well, as far as encyclopaedias go, "professional" means accurate. I don't care what it looks like, it's the substance that matters. It's obvious these infoboxes have forced editors into giving misleading, oversimplified or irrelevant information: wrong birth dates, anachronistic flags, erroneous genre classifications and so on. It's not important what other biographies do. We know infoboxes are making composers' articles worse (I suspect something similar is happening elsewhere). Accuracy is what is important here, not homogeneity. Therefore the boxes should be removed. --Folantin 06:45, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Agree with Folantin, Kleinzach and many of the others above. Let's please not impose uniformity for its own sake. The issues will be different in different areas: with composers some of the problems include the anachronistic nationalities, the oversimplified, misleading, or just mistaken "genre" classification (such as tagging someone as "Romantic" strictly as a chronological consideration). Has anyone considered making an infobox that would work for composers? I doubt it would be easy, but it could begin by dispensing with those odious "genre" and "occupation" classifications. Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 15:06, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Antandrus, I also am in agreement about not imposing uniformity, and I also have wondered about the possible value of constructing a Composer infobox template, which also attempts to deal with the "anachronisms" issues common to all biographical infoboxes.
Having such an infobox would give us multiple options - (a) to "lose" the biographical infobox altogether from articles where there is pretty strong consensus from all interested editors not to have one and (b) otherwise, to have a type of infobox that is more tailored to Composers (and hopefully less likely to lead to irrelevant, misleading, anachronistic, etc. info than the Musicians template that is commonly in use on the Composers articles). The Composers infobox could be placed on more highly trafficked articles where infoboxes keep appearing back after they are removed, or where there is a lot of debate over whether to have one or not.
I'd be interested in volunteering to help with this; I haven't created a template before, but I'm sort of a "tech-y" person and would enjoy the challenge of figuring it out, and there are probably places to get help with the technical aspects. If we went ahead with this task, I'd like some discussion of what we should/should not include. Cheers, Lini 18:03, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Can we have a complete moratorium on the use of these infoboxes until we have an agreed Composers Project version? The present type of infoboxes are made by people who haven't read the articles, for the benefit of people who don't want to read them. We need boxes that draw readers into the articles in an intelligent way, but I'm not sure how this can be achieved. (I see the one for Ludwig Wittgenstein is quite sophisticated). Technically it's easy enough to make the boxes, all you need to do is copy a template and re-work it, but putting Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner et al. through the same sausage machine just isn't going to work. --Kleinzach 01:15, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
That's intriguing: thanks, Kleinzach, for pointing out the Wittgenstein box. I could see a variation on that box actually working for someone like Josquin des Prez, or even Puccini, and it does have useful info that does not have an amateurish feel (every time I see "genre, classical" I want to throw things). Does anyone else reading this thread think it is worthwhile to try to devise an infobox that could be flexible enough to work for composers in all eras? (My doctorate is not in Templatology so I doubt it would be me) Antandrus (talk) 01:34, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
All you have to do is decide on the fields (currently birth name, genre, occupation etc.) and what they are called. There isn't anything technical to worry about (many of us have made boxes in the past).
The real problem is getting people to respect the Composers Project. At the moment we have people reverting pages with infoboxes in contempt of majority opinion (e.g. Puccini article). This is why I suggested a moratorium. --Kleinzach 01:55, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
I think we can both agree that it has nothing to do with majority opinion. It's rather biased when you think about it because the only people who are participating are the ones who want changes. It's not like the people who are fine with it the way it is now are going to go looking for discussion page debates. It's a very stupid system because the ones posting even here are the ones who want changes and the ones who like it fine just the way it is have no idea it's even going on.
NewYork1956 23:16, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
The Wittgenstein infobox is indeed superior. The composer infoboxes should be removed until someone comes up with a satisfactory new version. One thing I'd suggest is that we strongly discourage adding flags to any such revision. --Folantin 08:55, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
Please don't go around indiscriminately deleting all infoboxes on spec. If a particular parameter is over-simple, or not applicable, make it more general, or just delete the parmeter! Most of the boxes can be minimalized and rendered at least harmless for now; wholesale deletion, at least on high-profile pages, will likely just lead to other users, not part of this project, filling the void with something worse. It's already happened on Beethoven at least once. —Turangalila talk 02:11, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
No infoboxes have been deleted indiscriminately that I know of. They have been discussions on the Talk Pages and in every case a majority of editors have asked for them to be removed. IMO we should not be making small, inconsequential textual changes that will merely provoke more minority revertions. --Kleinzach 02:29, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
"No infoboxes have been deleted indiscriminately that I know of. They have been discussions on the Talk Pages and in every case a majority of editors have asked for them to be removed. " - well, taht's certainly not eth case now, is it? Andy Mabbett 09:19, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
That "majority" on Talk:Beethoven is a total of 4 users, out of the 8 who have left comments in the two infobox topics there. Five if you count the last editor to summarily delete the (at that point neutral at worst) box (plus re-add the ungrammatical and pedantic baptized December 17, 1770 – March 26, 1827 -- is that a lifespan or a baptism-span?). That editor participated in the discussion not at all, but he did leave a very snide edit summary, so I guess that counts. Maybe you think 5 of 9 is consensus, but I doubt it's stable consensus... We'll see how long it takes for another user to fill the gap (again) with something much worse. Meanwhile the body of the article is still a sketchy, unsourced, POV-filled mess, while time and energy are spent on this issue as if it's the biggest problem on the page. —Turangalila talk 06:04, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

(reset margin) I'm all for creating a composer infobox -- I might actually give it a shot myself, tech dope that I am, since there seems to be some decent "How To" help around WP. Some preliminary thoughts:

  • Whoever undertakes the design should probably do it on a user subpage & link it here for starters, before using up a "Template:..." page.
  • For those interested, there's a general how-to here, and a generic starter template here. Possible places to raid code are {{Infobox biography}}, {{Infobox musical artist}}, and definitely {{Infobox_Philosopher}}.
  • The cut-and-paste transclusion code provided for the new box should imitate the Philosopher box in using <!-- and --> tags to include hints, and polite suggestions, such as <!-- DO NOT INSERT ANY *%^#!ING FLAG ICONS!! -->.  ;-)
  • As much as possible, the parameters of the template should be optional, so one can delete them or leave them blank when not useful, or potentially harmful, to the article. A note in <!-- and --> tags should make that clear, since alot of trouble seems to have arisen here from folks not understanding they can simply blank offending fields w/o breaking the box.

Finally, I'd note that jazz and pop composers and songwriters like Strayhorn or Sondheim aren't much better served by the current "Musical artist" box than Josquin. Ideally the new box should be flexible enough to be useful from Perotin to Glass, and from Bacharach to Xenakis. —Turangalila talk 23:35, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Reply to Turangalila (06:04, 27 April): If there had been some consultation before the infoboxes were forced on us, we could have had a better-structured debate, but I am not going to repeat myself, let's look forward not back! If you want the boxes then the onus is on you to design a viable one (with accurate content, linked to sound articles etc.). How about starting with Beethoven as you are interested in him? --Kleinzach 07:08, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Apologies for returning late to the debate - I appreciate that those who wish to have infoboxes on composer articles are proposing better infoboxes. The problem is that in my experience a one-size fits all solution to infoboxes does not work for composers. Although these points have already been made many times, I will reiterate them - the simplest of fields do not fit every composer. Infoboxes are simply not flexible enough to fit every composer, and I don't believe creating a new template will make them any more flexible. For some composers a "Birth" field is fine. For others a "Baptism" field is what is needed. For some composers, you need a field for when they "flourished". Unless we create a ridiculously complex and huge template, it simply will not be flexible enough. I think it would be a better use of our time to make lede paragraphs better, clearer, and more readable.

As for the argument that they make us look more "professional", I have to strongly disagree, especially when they misstate information, or include false or anachronistic information. Wikipedia does not in fact have to be completely uniform... that is part of the purpose of having WikiProjects for specific fields. For some things, infoboxes work beautifully. For others, they don't work as well. I wish that those working on tagging WP:BIOs would respect a consensus among those who work on composer articles, even if that is a small group. If your only interest in composer articles is to tag them with templates, I would put forward that perhaps you should work on other groups, since adding an infobox to one biography is much the same as adding it to another, or if you are really interested in composers, that you work on clarifying the ledes, or expanding biographies or filling in the many gaps which still exist (if you're looking for something to do, just look at List of female composers). This may give people a better idea of why these people do not easily or simply fit into boxes - there are simply too many ambiguities, which may be hard to see unless you actually work on the articles. Cheers, Mak (talk) 15:18, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Makemi (and all), a couple "side notes" in response, for clarification: In re-reading above, please notice that some of us who were proposing a Composers infobox (i.e. "better" infobox), were not doing so because we particularly wished to have infoboxes on composers articles, but as a possible solution to deal with situations where other editors persist in adding an infobox to a particular article. (I suppose a summarization of the philosophy would be - "if you can't beat them, join them, but make it better.) I personally do not feel strongly one way or another about infoboxes on Composers article. I do care about considering creative ways to make the best of whatever the situation happens to be.
Regarding some of the debates that I've seen on articles where infoboxes have recently been removed (Beethoven and Puccini, for example); I'd like to try to exonerate WPBiography. We (meaning WPComposers members) may encounter various "random" editors adding infoboxes to articles, simply because they are interested in adding infoboxes; nothing to do with WPBio; also we may encounter editors with an interest in music, who have contributed text to an article on a specific composer (said editors not necessarily being participants in WPComposers), wanting to have an infobox on that article. Note that I am not saying here which opinion should prevail (individual editor or WPComposers) about whether there should be an infobox or not. My personal preference in this case is to abstain from making a blanket statement either way.
If any of you do happen to see, going forward, on particular articles, a problem with infoboxes being placed, that does seem to be a result of WPBio article assessment, can you please direct my attention to these cases? If it is a continuing problem, I'd like to attempt to deal with it "from the inside" at WPBio. (Not that I have any particular influence there other than being a fairly minor participant, but I'd see what I could do.) Thanks, Lini 20:11, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

A late voice chiming into this discussion. I am generally against these infoboxes and other tabular data which can be presented in just as easily in the opening paragraph. I even find the Wittgenstein infobox a negative that I'd prefer not to have for composers. For instance, in "Influences" there are two links which are never referenced in the article. How someone influences or is influenced by someone else is much more important to me than simply a list of influences. (Can you imagine the list for "Influenced:" on Beethoven?). I'm not even sure what people are supposed to get from a quick glance at these things. The infobox for Shostakovich still has him writing in the Romantic "genre"; should I infer that he's going to sound like Schubert.--Myke Cuthbert 21:35, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, having thought about it I can't see any way of creating a satisfactory infobox. The genres category is a complete disaster. Shostakovich a Romantic? And Debussy is apparently an "Impressionist" even though he loathed the term, as the arrticle introduction itself states. There is no WP policy saying we must have infoboxes, whereas WP is pretty keen on policies on accuracy. So goodbye boxes. --Folantin 08:22, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Infobox: No consensus (Apr 28- )

I note that, elsewhere, Mak is claiming that consensus against using infoboxes has been reached, That's certainly not my reading of the on-going debate. Andy Mabbett 08:55, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Nonsense. There's consensus here to dump the boxen and potentially replace them with one dedicated to composers. That will not be something easy to do and will take a while: in the meantime, the infoboxes should go. Moreschi Talk 10:29, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
There is consensus. Plus there's something more important than consensus: these boxes are causing massive violations of fundamental Wikipedia policies, such as factual accuracy and NPOV. I've lost count of the number of distortions of basic info I've seen in these things. There is no policy saying we must have infoboxes on articles. --Folantin 10:41, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
You are again conflating two issues. If there are problems with accuracy or PoV, then of course these should be addressed. That does not mean that there is consensus to cease using infoboxes at all. There is no consensus - QED. Andy Mabbett 18:56, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
If consensus means anything, we have it here. Policy also trumps consensus. There is no more fundamental policy on WP than accuracy. These infoboxes have clearly violated that policy. Therefore they must go. QED. --Folantin 19:04, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
You are again conflating two issues. Andy Mabbett 19:14, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
15-5 seems pretty consentual to me (hell make it 16, because I pretty much agree -- wrong info = bad). There will almost never be 100% agreement for anything. If that was required, AFDs would be a joke, as it'd be so easy to put in a single !vote against everyone else, if that's all it took. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 19:05, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
Please read WP:CONSENSUS. Andy Mabbett 19:14, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Part of the problem is that we have a layout issue (presenting neat database-style factoids and soundbites in a pretty box) versus an information accuracy issue. I think the best way to approach an infobox is NOT to take a generic biography or pop musician infobox and try and apply it to a classical composer's article, but to sit down and first ask the question: which bits of information can be summed up and presented in an infobox? Once that crucial question has been asked, and it should be asked for all articles where an infobox could be added, then the next step is to design an infobox to present that information. It is entirely possible to present the information in a nice box without using a template meant for hundreds of other articles. It will look horrible, and can then be moved to its own template, but it is possible to concentrate on the information presented in an individual article, rather than uniformity of presentation acrosss different articles. Carcharoth 13:04, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Do we need infoboxes at all? It's important to have typographically attractive, well-illustrated pages that people want to read, but does that mean infoboxes are necessary or desirable? If you look at print enclyclopedias you'll find that boxes are used sparingly. I don't believe there is any major reference book that has summary boxes for every biography. --Kleinzach 14:31, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
Exactly. No infobox, no problem. Factual accuracy is essential, infoboxes aren't. They merely repeat information already on the page in a distorted way. It will take an immense amount of time and effort to create an infobox flexible enough not to garble the facts. I think that time and effort would be better spent elsewhere. --Folantin 15:05, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Infobox proposal(s)

Okay, I've decided it might be fun to give a go at making a template. It may take me a little while, since I'm just starting to learn the wiki syntax required, but I have been thinking about precisely the question Carcharoth asked two comments up, and last night I sketched a few possibly useful parameters, almost all of which would be optional, with instructions to delete the parameter if not applicable / too narrow / etc. Here's what I have so far:

  • Required parameters:
    • Name — obviously, for the top of the box; also optional parameters for [Birth_name =...] and [Also_known_as =...], to go below;
    • Title — to go below name and above image. Default value = "Composer", but one could substitute, say, "Songwriter" or "Composer-conductor" etc.
  • Optional parameters:
    • Image and Caption — as in other boxes;
    • Lifespan — i.e. [Born =...] and [Died =...] as in the bio box, but w/ options to substitute [Baptized =...] or [Flourished =...];
    • Idiom — my version of the dreaded "record store" category. My thinking is that this would have:
      • a limited set of options, such as [Classical / Jazz / Folk / Popular / Musical theater / Experimental];
      • maybe coded to background colors, like the "Musical artist" box? Default would be the "Classical" color; maybe skip for simplicity's sake...;
      • options for "Idiom2" and "Idiom3" for composers like Gershwin or Bernstein;
      • instructions to delete the parameter for (most) composers before 1900;
    • Nationality — as narrow as "Viennese" or as broad as "European" (maybe a different parameter name?);
      • possibly to go above the pic as a modifier to [Title], so that the header might read (on two lines): Aaron Copland / American Composer ;
    • Historical era — e.g. "Renaissance", "Baroque", etc.;
    • Stylistic school(s) or Movement(s) — e.g. "Franco-Flemish school", "Verismo", "Les Six", "Futurism", "Bebop", etc.;
    • Principal genre(s) — e.g. "Opera" for Verdi; "Symphony, Song" for Mahler...delete for more wide-ranging composers;
    • Other occupations — e.g. "Pianist" for Liszt, "Conductor" for Boulez, "Insurance agent" for Ives, etc.;
    • Notable works — mainly for "one-(or two-)hit wonders", e.g. "Hansel and Gretel" for Humperdinck.

Thoughts? —Turangalila talk 16:51, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

  • Looks good; I think it needs to use optional alternative parameters, so that you have, say, birth date or baptismal date or flourished from. Likewise nationality or some category for non-national terms such as "European". Andy Mabbett 18:45, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
Sigh. It's got some good ideas, but even this is problematic. "Historical era" can be pretty subjective stuff: the divisions between, say, Rococo, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Modern are by no means clear-cut even on the level of individual composers - many are notoriously hard to pigeonhole - and certainly not over the years: you have Elgar writing alongside Stravinsky, for example. POV, especially misleading POV, must be avoided at all costs. For "stylistic schools", how to you sum up, for example, Puccini? Pastiche verismo? Verismo with some nasty cynicism? How do you boil that down to the one or two words required for an infobox? These things are nuanced and really need fuller explanation to avoid confusion. Moreschi Talk 19:58, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
What Moreschi said. I appreciate the effort, but it just isn't going to fly. Nationality, genre, style...all too often these are just too problematic to be reduced to any schema. We have plenty of controversies as it is; infoboxes would merely double the conflict. We could spend months tweaking these boxes then come across a composer who absolutely refused to fit the parameters. There is one obvious solution that is elegant, time-saving and conducive to accuracy: get rid of the boxes. --Folantin 20:13, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
I'd like to add (belatedly) one point. A good infobox (assuming it could be created) would of necessity be linked to articles explaining genres/periods/musical forms etc. If these articles didn't exist or were unsatisfactory then the infobox itself would not be viable. --Kleinzach 00:56, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Some points seem to need repeating:

  1. Like it or not, infoboxes seem to be generally in the ascendancy on WP. The guidance here may be fine, but it's swimming upstream. As someone above said, some users here may need to open their minds to the idea of "joining 'em" (and fixing it) rather than "beating 'em".
  2. See my marathon post above wrt what infoboxes are for. Briefly:
    1. they supplement a good article, they don't replace it;
    2. ideally articles should serve the musical "laity" as well as the hard-core folks that gravitate to this page; music-appreciation-class style shorthand is not an absolute evil... again, some of this discussion emits just the slightest bouquet of snobbery.
    3. even the initiated might want an instant reminder of Mozart's birthplace, or his age at death, without searching (or doing math).
    4. redundancy is not always a mortal sin (as an alternate metaphor, think of Britannica's "Micropedia" and "Macropedia").
  3. When facts are nuanced, (as they often are, and not just in this field) there are many solutions aside from "kill all infoboxes":
    1. If it's between two options, list both...folks are usually bright enough to look at the text if they're confused.
    2. Make the factoid in the box more general... readers expect generality in an infobox anyway.
    3. Do either of the above, then add a footnote with <ref> ... </ref> tags. Works just as well in the box as out.
    4. Or just delete the *&%$! parameter. Is the concept of an optional field really so difficult to grasp?
  4. Obviously, if consensus on a particular page is against the box, you don't have to use it. Why discourage the option?

Okay, enough. I tweaked Makemi's guideline on the project page to make it slightly less dogmatic, but I think s/he's done an admirable job summarizing the discussion below. I'm gonna retire from this discussion until I have a "beta" version of an improved template to show folks. If anybody has suggestions for that, or wants to collaborate, pls leave me a talk message. Shalom, —Turangalila talk 23:57, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Looks like you used to have an infobox for composers, but it was deleted in the process of being superceded by infobox musical artist. One possibility would be to get that undeleted as a starting point. –Unint 00:43, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

"Like it or not, infoboxes seem to be generally in the ascendancy on WP". And so what? When they contradict the most fundamental WP policies, they have to go. "Some users here may need to open their minds to the idea of 'joining 'em'". Well, the majority opinion here is to get rid of infoboxes, although some people seem to have a very hard time accepting that. "Redundancy is not always a mortal sin", but inaccuracy in an encyclopaedia is; none of the pro-infobox proponents here has addressed this essential issue in anything resembling an adequate way..." some of this discussion emits just the slightest bouquet of snobbery"...but they have resorted to ad hominem arguments and dreamed up a Hypothetical General Reader to back their arguments, claiming they have HGR's best interests at heart while showing a complete contempt for HGR's intelligence. --Folantin 07:19, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
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