Disputatio Formulae:Capsa hominis/draft

About this template

I am not sure whether it is desirable to have this template in its current form. Reasons for my hesitation:

• It duplicates {{Data hominis}}.
• It introduces a large number of "pieces of information" and thus induces people to
  • present those "pieces of information" in the infobox instead of in the text of the article, in proper sentences
  • present those "pieces of information" without context
  • often present overly simplistic "pieces of information" (Monica Lewinsky: known_for = having a relationship with Bill Clinton. influenced = American politics. predecessor = Hillary Clinton. successor = Hillary Clinton. opponents = Bill Clinton (at least when there was public debate over what they did together), and Hillary Clinton. partner = Bill Clinton (at least for some time). Well, I am exaggerating a bit, but this is what might happen)
  • create an "article" by copying a lengthy infobox from en.wikipedia, with parameter values sometimes badly translated, and only one more sentence that somewhat defines the lemma, or just very few sentences (it is tempting to create an "article" in a language you barely understand in such a way!). Such articles would almost invariably be of bad quality and lower the quality of la.wikipedia.

I therefore would like to ask for other opinions on whether we would like to have this infobox or whether we should rather continue to use our present {{Data hominis}}. Thoughts? --UV 22:28, 9 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

You are probably right. However, I looked under Categoria:Formulae Capsarum for something to do with people, and didn't find one. So if we could at least add this to the category, and possibly have a redirect from Capsa hominis, I'd be satisfied. --Robert.Baruch 00:11, 10 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

Boxes of all types are excellent additions to articles, even when they duplicate (not replace) information in the texts, and Robert's work on them is highly welcome, at least on my screen! IacobusAmor 00:22, 10 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

Here's another problem: I can copy templates from en: and get them to work, probably 99% of the time. Having been used in en: for however many years, they're pretty much rock solid. But when I run into problems with "homegrown" templates (such as when I have to leave out the birth or death date of a person because nobody knows it, or they haven't died yet, causing Data hominis to look terrible), I have no idea how to fix them :( --Robert.Baruch 01:19, 10 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

And also... I guess I'm one of those people who scans the infobox of an article to get the gist, or to get the information I'm looking for as quickly as possible, and then read the article if I need more information. So personally I'm in favor of infoboxes as long as they don't devolve into trivia. --Robert.Baruch 01:23, 10 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

I think like UV on this. I would rather not see infoboxes about people. I have never gone so far as to urge deleting the long-existing {{Data hominis}} because it doesn't do much harm really ... it just looks a bit ugly, especially when the subject somehow doesn't suit it (e.g. by failing to die, see an example at Arthurus Balder, [the very case that Robert mentions above]). Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 09:51, 10 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

That's a failure of the programmer's art, and it says nothing about the concept of a box. A success in a precisely similar circumstance can be seen in taxoboxes. If, for example, a line of code starts with "|tribus =" on the left but nothing has been keyboarded to the right of the equal-sign, nothing from that line of code prints on the screen. IacobusAmor 12:51, 10 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

UV has now applied the programmer's art, and it looks fine. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 17:19, 11 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

Even the simplest information (e.g. name, date of birth, place of birth) is not always so simple. People often change their names, maybe several times, requiring sentences or paragraphs of information with footnotes: in such cases, to put one name in an infobox as if it's the right one is misleading. When it comes to really complex and questionable information, an infobox is just not the way to handle it. Examples are seen at all the pages that currently use this box, and I will enlarge if necessary: is it necessary?

I couldn't agree less with Iacobus's statement "Boxes of all types are excellent additions to articles". [Instead, I would say, "It depends on the article and it depends on the box." As with images, really.] Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 09:51, 10 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

It's partly a matter of graphic design. The frame that automatically pops up on my screen is a shade more than thirteen and a quarter inches wide. (If I click to make it a full-screen frame, the situation gets worse.) A line of text is therefore too many alphabets long for easy reading, and the presence of a box—on the right, with the lemma featured in bold on the left—greatly improves the design. So much the better if it has a picture in it! IacobusAmor 12:51, 10 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

As for catering for people who want to skim for quick information, it is rather uncommon, let's face it, for readers to come to Vicipaedia to read it, but they do. It is in the highest degree unlikely that they will come to Vicipaedia to scan for quick information, but, if they do, we should be ready for them: we should set out information neatly, clearly, briefly, accessibly, in Latin. Followed by added sentences and footnotes showing why the information is more complex and questionable than the reader first thought. You can do all that in Latin text, as well as, or better than, you can do it in any modern language. And we are here because we want to write Latin.

So, apologies for the work involved so far, and I must say it's been neatly done, but I am for deleting this. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 09:51, 10 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

Since no one came back on that, I will now delete this, or rather, make it a redirect (as Robert suggested) to Data hominis. I think there are only three pages using it; I'll deal with them this afternoon. OK? Again, apologies for the work involved. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 09:23, 19 Februarii 2012 (UTC)

Portalboxes (or whatever they're called)

The English wiki has some portalboxes (or whatever they're called) that seem unable to be imported as they stand. For example, in en:Pontus (mythology), see the box coded merely as {{Greek myth}}, nine letters and a space, elements that together generate the following data, albeit inside a box and much more nicely formatted, with links for all the nouns (I've added boldface for clarity here, but the typography is automatically set in the original):

Topics in Greek mythology

Gods

Primordial gods and Titans

Zeus and the Olympians

Pan and the nymphs

Apollo and Dionysus

Sea-gods and Earth-gods

Heroes

Heracles and his Labors

Achilles and the Trojan War

Odysseus and the Odyssey

Jason and the Argonauts

Perseus and Medusa/Gorgon

Oedipus and Thebes

Theseus and the Minotaur

Triptolemus and the

Eleusinian Mysteries

Related

Satyrs, centaurs and dragons

Religion in Ancient Greece

----------------

Greek mythology portal

Howsoever it's done, it can't be imported into other wikis without additional effort. The compression of the coding is presumably considered a virtue over there in Wikipedia; but until more programming is done here and elsewhere outside the English wiki, it doesn't help other wikipedias, at all. Or does some preexisting (but not generally known) link to these portals permit the desired importation? IacobusAmor 15:57, 10 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

It's only a formula, and it seems to carry over quite easily. If you want it, though, we'd need translations for all the terms that appear. You can go ahead and play with this one, and when you're done, copy the result to Formula:Mythologia Graeca. So the only thing remaining would be to define Porta:Mythologia Graeca. Do we have portals, though? --Robert.Baruch 02:11, 11 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

We have one: Porta:Antiquitas posterior, set up by Xaverius. I've always felt I wanted to get more pages written before having fun with portals, but if Iacobus wants to set one up for Greek mythology, I'd be very happy. No one could dispute that the topic needs development. Crying out for it, in fact. Go for it.

I lightly emended the redlinks in your message above, Robert. Hope that's OK. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 12:32, 11 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

OK, I've tried to domesticate it. The red that remains could entice people to write some essential articles on the topic generally. What do you think? IacobusAmor 14:14, 11 Ianuarii 2012 (UTC)

Not quite sure why this topic was raised here (well, probably because there seemed nowhere better). Anyway, it is no longer the last word. Someone else, independently of this, designed a navigation box for portals, which is now in widespread use. For an example see Formula:Ars Graeca. That is now the pattern to follow. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 12:19, 29 Iunii 2014 (UTC)