[WikiEN-l] The Madness of King Infobox

[K P]

On 5/18/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
> MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> > I see infoboxes as an "article at a glance" thing. What's in the box is
> > usually repeated somewhere in the article, but the point is to have
> > bite-size bits of info easily accessible to people who don't want to
> read
> > the entire article.
>
> Sometimes infoboxes are more than that, though. The infoboxes for
> various articles on planets, stars, countries, chemical elements, etc.
> have a lot of detailed statistics that aren't presented elsewhere in the
> article and would make for dreadfully dry reading if they were (eg,
> Rambot articles). Infoboxes work well for that sort of thing.
>
> As for the voice-as-instrument thing, that makes sense to me too. If
> someone were to make beautiful music by cracking his knuckles I'd call
> his knuckles his instrument.
>
>
> O


Organism ones (Taxoboxes) also include information that is not necessarily
presented elsewhere in the article, for example the taxonomy of the organism
up to kingdom level, or, oh, I forget what Cavalier-Smith calls his higher
level.  The problem is, the box is so abbreviated that it doesn't include
enough information to be accurate--like the fact that some of the taxoboxes
are based on five kingdom systems, some on 7 kingdom systems, some on
clades, others on mere groups, some mixed assortments of clades and groups,
mixed taxonomies by various taxonomists.  One of the users we had tremendous
trouble with on Wikipedia is now redoing all the Commons taxoboxes with a
particular taxonomy--anything is better, imo, than the random stabs at
taxonomy included right now, without clarification, in the taxoboxes used
now.  I try every few months to get the Tree of Lifers to agree to include
the taxonomy systems being spelled out in the taxobox, but this, making the
information accurate, is apparently too much information.

KP