29 replies to this topic

[felinoel]

Infoboxes should be at the top of the article in my opinion.

 

Only in certain circumstances like when one article uses more than one infobox because the article is about multiple things or something would be why I think any infobox shouldn't be on the top of the article.

 

Having things above an infobox looks messy and unnatural because infoboxes were designed to fit in the top right corner of the page.

 

Also if an infobox is not on the top of the article certain things like tags that showcase an article was Featured looks out of place.

 

We need to come upon a standard rule for the placement of an infobox, should an infobox always be at the top of an article or should thrown about wildly wherever it ends up be allowed?

Discuss.

[dgelessus]

(Mirror from User talk:timrem)

The infobox should be at the top of the article, it just looks better, like it is cleaner. ƒelinoel ~ (Talk) 17:29, 11 November 2014 (CET)
 
Every other time I can recall seeing the stub and interwiki templates, they've been above the infobox. I reverted it for consistency; if you'd like to propose that a standard be formalized, I'm certainly open for that discussion. --timrem (talk) 17:40, 11 November 2014 (CET)

Every time I see anything above the infobox I have always moved it down to normalize it. Where else have you seen those above the infobox? ƒelinoel ~ (Talk) 18:15, 11 November 2014 (CET)

Nine of the first ten transclusions listed here are above the infobox. --timrem (talk) 18:43, 11 November 2014 (CET)

edit: Looks like someone else also thinks templates above the infobox is standard. --timrem (talk) 18:48, 11 November 2014 (CET)

I don't look at Vanilla articles too often, I only came across the Wither article because every now and then I open a TON of random articles just to be sure I have them all Watched. Any interwiki articles I would not have seen. ƒelinoel ~ (Talk) 18:53, 11 November 2014 (CET)

Hai there  My two cents on this - although placing hatnotes above the infobox creates unused empty space on the sides, it actually looks cleaner to me like that. Especially templates like {{youmay}} and {{interwiki}} belong above the article so the reader is guaranteed to notice that kind of important information. Having the infobox, which is part of the actual article content, next to those templates doesn't seem quite right, there should be a clear line between meta-information and content. --dgelessus (talk · contribs)

[felinoel]

(Mirror from User talk:timrem)

(I moved the discussion to an article since tim wanted us to make a standardized decision. =b )

 

I never saw a difference between the "metainfo" and info, info is info to me?

[dgelessus]

Meta-info = info about info. The fact that the name is ambiguous or that there is a MCWiki article is not information about the item, but about the article. (Technically things like {{Old}} are not "meta-info", but they are still important enough to go at the top IMO.)

[ostPavel]

Stubs, youmays and other utility templates should go above anything else. That's just my opinion and I've been doing this for a while.

 

PS Decided to check out what the Big Brother does with stubs and... It was confusing. Let's play a Find The Stub game!

Went to Wikipedia:Stub and found out that

 

 

Per the manual of style, the stub template is placed at the end of the article, after the External links section, any navigation templates, and the category tags, so that the stub category will appear after all article content <...>

 I can swear I've seen Stub templates at the top of the page, and it was outside of ftbwiki.org :<

[felinoel]

Meta-info = info about info. The fact that the name is ambiguous or that there is a MCWiki article is not information about the item, but about the article. (Technically things like {{Old}} are not "meta-info", but they are still important enough to go at the top IMO.)

Yes but I still see info and any other info as info.
Keeping them at the top is fine but the infobox shouldn't have anything above it because it wrecks the page.
 

Stubs, youmays and other utility templates should go above anything else. That's just my opinion and I've been doing this for a while.

Why? It breaks up the article and looks messy.
 

PS Decided to check out what the Big Brother does with stubs and... It was confusing. Let's play a Find The Stub game!
Went to Wikipedia:Stub and found out that
 I can swear I've seen Stub templates at the top of the page, and it was outside of ftbwiki.org :<

A lot of Wikia sites have them at the top of the page outside of ftbwiki.org, you might have been looking at those.

Regardless, we are not Wikipedia.

People don't go to articles to read about the articles, they go to them to read the article itself. Why do we need info about the article above the article itself to hide the article itself?

[ostPavel]

When you have the infobox at the top of the page and utility templates go underneath wikitext-wise, they appear on the same level as the infobox on the actual page, which means the information about article and the article itself is on the same level, which is not good for reading.

[felinoel]

When you have the infobox at the top of the page and utility templates go underneath wikitext-wise, they appear on the same level as the infobox on the actual page, which means the information about article and the article itself is on the same level, which is not good for reading.

The reader can see for themselves the bounded box separating it from the article.

[timrem]

When the utility templates are above the infobox, the article itself starts at the same line as the infobox. This keeps all the disambiguation/cleanup/notification messages in one zone, and after they're finished, the article content begins in its own area. This also holds from an editing perspective: anything about the article comes first, then starts the article itself (with infobox). When the infobox comes first, all those disambiguation/cleanup/notification messages line up with the infobox, creating a weird mixed space of article data and article content, and the article content in the infobox is split from the rest of the article content by an arbitrary number of message boxes that have nothing to do with the item/mob/topic in question.

 

In terms of space usage, I think infobox-first does a better job, especially on a large screen (where using messages-first, there's a lot of blank space on the sides of the message boxes)... but it just looks wrong.

 

As for other wikis: Wikipedia has a different style of stub template which goes at the bottom of the page (just like their disambig pages put the disambig template at the bottom). Maintenance templates and disambiguation notices on articles, however, go above the infobox. Curse wikis, like the Minecraft Wiki, are rather inconsistent but look like they prefer to have infoboxen first. Wikia I avoid whenever possible, their bastardization of MediaWiki framework hurts too much

 

We might consider standardizing our message templates amongst themselves, though. As it stands, the Interwiki box especially is noticeably taller than other messages, taking up a lot of vertical space at the top of articles, causing a lot of blank space. Keeping these message boxes short and wide would eliminate some of that empty space.

[dgelessus]

Huh strange, I see no bounded box separating stublike templates from the infobox or article. Personally I find it easier to mentally draw a line between the top of the infobox and the bottom of the last stublike template.

 

re. Wikipedia stubs, what timrem said, they use a different template style.

 

infoboxen

If your location didn't say USA I woulda said you're German

 

PS:

re. Curse wikis, they might have never had this discussion, then this happened: http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Quiver

[timrem]

If your location didn't say USA I woulda said you're German

That actually comes from having played Kingdom of Loathing for years, where they have some... interesting pluralization. So much so that their wiki notes the plural for every item.

[ZL123]

If your location didn't say USA I woulda said you're German

Or just Germanic in general! *cough*scandinavianlanguages*cough*

[felinoel]

When the utility templates are above the infobox, the article itself starts at the same line as the infobox.

No, the article starts at the templates above the infobox.

That actually comes from having played Kingdom of Loathing for years, where they have some... interesting pluralization. So much so that their wiki notes the plural for every item.

O:
KoL was awesome, they deleted my account due to inactivity though... :'c

[ZL123]

So what do we say? Poll?

[felinoel]

So what do we say? Poll?

The last poll ended in an exact tie. I think we need to continue discussing things.

[RZR0]

Tl;dr

 

Cleanup => Stub => Infobox

 

That's how I do it and I think most people...

[ZL123]

Tl;dr

 

Cleanup => Stub => Infobox

 

That's how I do it and I think most people...

Yup.

 

(Although I'm not worried too much whether cleanup goes before stub or the other way around...)

[ostPavel]

Amen.

[ZL123]

Amen.

Plagal cadence.

[VanDerProtofsky]

If I may contribute my perspective; subjectively speaking, I find the wiki to be strained in horizontal space compared to other wikis. In the worst case scenario, the lead section of an article looks too busy and constrained with notices next to the infobox. When the notices are given higher priority, they are easier to read and the lead of the article does not look as busy ^{(wikipedia comparison)}.

 

I feel this should be taken into consideration especially for those browsing on tablets or smaller devices. Ultimately, I agree that the notices should go above the infobox.