[WikiEN-l] The Madness of King Infobox

[MacGyverMagic/Mgm]

On 5/18/07, Christiano Moreschi <moreschiwikiman at hotmail.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >From: "Jeff Raymond" <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com>
> >Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> >To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> >Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] The Madness of King Infobox
> >Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 13:40:46 -0700 (PDT)
> >
> >
> > > For heaven's sake, you never call someone's voice their instrument.
> >Ever.
> > > The terminology is nonsensical. Again, the box just does not fit.
> >
> >To be fair, as a music student and vocal major in college for a time, our
> >voices were consistently referred to as instruments.
> >
> >No clue if it's widespread, but it's not as nonsensical to me as it
> >appears to you.
> > >
> > > The problems these bioboxes are causing are very widespread. You
> simply
> > > cannot twist the article beyond all boundaries of accuracy, correct
> > > terminology and common sense just to fit an infobox. Infoboxes are
> > > supposed
> > > to be a means to an end, not an end in themselves.
> >
> >What's frustrating the most is that the boxes don't break if you fail to
> >include information.  So no one ''has'' to put something for country of
> >origin or instrument or party or anything else, and the box is still
> good.
> >
> >There are constructive ways to deal with things, folks.  I'm not
> directing
> >this at who wrote what I'm quoting, but it seems like, more and more
> >often, the path of least resistance is being ignored.
> >
> >-Jeff
> >
> >--
> >If you can read this, I'm not at home.
>
> Yes and no - actually, reading some WP articles it seems that the voice is
> sometimes called an instrument, though I've never come across that in the
> UK
> (where I am). Seems rather odd to call Christiana Aguilera's voice her
> instrument, and I've never seen it done before. Oh, well.


As far as I know the GCSEs referred to by one of the people who did know it,
are only done in the UK. You probably just missed it all along. Voice is
specifically mentioned as an instrument on the infobox information page so
I'm assuming that music experts from the WikiProject Music took a look at
that before approving the box and recommending its implementation.

As for genre "classical music". I personally would love to be more detailed,
but I can't. If you can, please help and be more specific.

Mgm

Agreed with point 2, but only partially. On the Paderewski article, it was
> the main information provided by the box that was causing problems, not
> some
> small chunk that you could lop off. Check out some previous revisions.
>
> At best, the things tend to be redundant, by simply duplicating what's
> already in the article. Sure, they sometimes act as a summary, but often
> too
> much gets compressed. One infobox described Beethoven's genre as
> "Classical,
> Romantic". I know that brevity is a virtue, but surely that's going too
> far!
>
> Moreschi
>
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