[WikiEN-l] A proposal to de-table Wikipedia infoboxes

[Ray Saintonge]

Gwern Branwen wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 8:09 AM, Andrew Gray wrote:
>   
>> On another note, wow. I hadn't realised how much stuff was in our
>> infoboxes. The five lines of government I can understand, the two GDPs
>> ditto, but do we really need a quick-reference for "proportion of area
>> which is water", the Gini coefficient, or the side of the road it
>> uses?
>> --
>> - Andrew Gray
>>     
> All of those are pretty interesting things - what side of the road
> tells you both historical information, and also is terribly practical
> if you're there*; Gini coefficient is an excellent concise indicator
> of economic & political development; and water-proportion affects
> recreation, economic focuses, and historical course. Given the minimal
> space they take up and their subordinate position, I don't see much
> ground for complaining.
>
> * Although one certainly hopes that anyone driving in a particular
> country will not need Wikipedia to tell them something like this!
>
>   
It is easy to argue that any specific factoid is significant about the 
subject, and that it should thus be included in an infobox, but the 
present issue is a broader one about how many factoids can an infobox 
contain without degradation of its usefulness.  The primary infobox for 
a subject needs to be limited to the most important information which 
the average reader is most likely to seek, and which he can find in a 
predictable place.  I don't have much basis to make a specific 
recommendation about how many factoids a primary box should contain, but 
a good rule of thumb might be: If you need to scroll to see it all, it's 
probably too long.

That said, nothing in this prevents separate secondary infoboxes.  If it 
is agreed that per capita GNP for a country belongs in its primary 
infobox, nothing prevents having a secondary box containing a broader 
selection of economic indicators.

Ec