Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Infoboxes

"Defining data" as the term for content in infoboxes

I set up Wikipedia:Defining data to describe the kind of content which goes in infoboxes. I then added a link to that from the documentation here.

Is anyone aware of anyone applying a name to this kind of information or setting up guidelines for infobox content elsewhere? Thanks for any guidance.

If anyone remembers any historic discussion, even if you cannot find the link, please share any details you can recall such as circumstances of conversation, topic, approximately when it happened, or whatever else seems useful. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:35, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

I don't agree that the standards for infobox data should be less than those for article text. The reliability guideline should be applied universally. There is some leeway from WP:CALC with regard to the type of data discussed in your essay. DrKay (talk) 15:59, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

@DrKay: I have some examples at Wikipedia:Defining_data#Examples where I think the reliability guideline fails for prose but works for infoboxes. What do you think? The need for primary source citations or original research comes up much more often for infoboxes. We might have a universal guideline but I want some clarity on this. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:32, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

@Lane: thanks for making a start on this topic. I have a couple of minor points to add. There's a formal distinction between "data" and "information". When the data has been organised and placed into context, as it is in an infobox, it becomes information. I've always seen the phrase "key information" applied to infobox content. The difference between "key" and "defining" is that "key" implies a limited subset of the information, and it seems to me a slightly more apposite term when considering the issues of infobox bloat. Hope that helps. --RexxS (talk) 16:22, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

@RexxS: I could go with "key information". How sure are you about this? I could make changes now, or we could wait a bit, or I could seek other comments. I did a search around and yes, "key information" is a term in use in various places. I am not aware of any other term in use. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:32, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

The reliability guideline, or notability guideline, applies in all those examples. If no sources ever defined Rani of Jhansi, then it wouldn't belong at wikipedia. In the case of the Rani, there are of course multiple sources that define the term. She was an important historical figure. We can't reduce our requirements for reliable information; it would just lead to people making things up about her. DrKay (talk) 16:42, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

• I would avoid the word “defining”... as we use that term in categorization to mean something different (as in: a defining characteristic). In that context, the word has more to do with notability and importance than with mere reliability.

All sorts of data can be reliably sourced... some of that data belongs in an infobox, and some doesn’t. Some types of information are best presented in an infobox format, while other types of information are not. Blueboar (talk) 17:18, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

On the contrary, it seems to me we should use "defining" for infoboxes in the same spirit as it has long been used in categorization, with a certain leeway for defining sets of information, like sports or ship statistics. Johnbod (talk) 18:50, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Multiple boxes per page

Is there guidance anywhere about the use of multiple independent infoboxes (ie. not one embedded in another, but entirely separate) on a single page? Nikkimaria (talk) 01:51, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

No. Sometimes it's reasonable and sometimes it's not. I've tried to remove it in an unreasonable case and been reverted. --Izno (talk) 02:12, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

It's hard to offer firm guidance because there is such a spectrum of cases where a judgement call is made to use multiple infoboxes in the same article. At one extreme, a song will often have a single article describing several notable versions by different artists. Our convention has been to create a section and an infobox for each version, and I think almost everyone will see that as reasonable. On the other hand, a single person who has more than one notable role will almost always be best served by embedding a child infobox. But there will be many grey areas, and it would take a lot of work surveying how each solution is used to try to distil good guidance. --RexxS (talk) 16:58, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

More than one completely seperate infobox should be seen as a rare exception that needs justifying, though it may be acceptable for songs. But the amount of different extra information such boxes hold is generally not worth "boxing". I very rarely accept it for works of art with different versions. One can normally be pretty sure that the person adding such a box has not given the question much serious thought. Johnbod (talk) 17:04, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Inferring citizenship or nationality

I've just reluctantly reverted an addition by MB. I'll reproduce the text below:

===Nationality & Citizenship===

Most biography infoboxes have nationality and citizenship. Generally, use of either should be avoided when the country to which the subject belongs can be inferred from the country of birth, as specified with |birthplace=. When needed, for example, due to change of nationality after birth, dual "citizenship", or other unusual scenarios, use |nationality= unless |citizenship= is more appropriate due uncommon legal reasons. Use of nationality and citizenship simultaneously should rarely if ever be necessary (complex cases should be explained in the article prose). Neither field should be used to specify ethnicity.

The basis of citizenship is usually derived from one of two principles: jus soli (right by "soil" or birthplace) and jus sanguinis (right by "blood" or heredity), but there is no hard-and-fast rule which can tell you which country uses which principle. Anyone born on US soil has the right to be a US citizen, but in the UK your citizenship depends only on your parents' citizenship, not where you were born. Unfortunately that means that the well-meaning addition by MB is misleading and is likely to result in editors assuming that being born in a country automatically grants you the right of citizenship to that country. In may cases, it doesn't.

There is considerable debate about the meaning of nationality and the situation is complicated in several countries; for example, the UK can be regarded as containing at least four nations. In Spain, there are 17 autonomous regions (comunidad autónoma), several of which meet our definition of nation: "a stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, history, ethnicity, or psychological make-up manifested in a common culture." – and so on in many parts of the world. The situation is often too nuanced to be summarised in one word in many infoboxes and those are the cases where the parameter needs to be omitted in favour of a proper description in the article text. Sadly, I don't believe we can give more comprehensive guidance than that. --RexxS (talk) 01:09, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

I did not want to get into that kind of discussion. I specifically said "generally" to allow for whatever makes sense is a particular situation (e.g. UK). But there are many cases of someone born in, for example, the US or France where editors add |nationality=American or |nationality =French. There are even infoboxes with examples in their documentation that have a totally redundant nationality. I was trying to say don't use them when they are redundant with |birthplace=, i.e. when the nationality CAN be inferred. MB 01:18, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

I'm sorry I wasn't clearer. In your text, saying "generally" doesn't help an editor decide whether your advice applies in a particular case or not. The qualification "when the country to which the subject belongs can be inferred from the country of birth, as specified with |birthplace=." is either ambiguous or plain wrong. It gives the impression that if |birthplace= is specified, then the citizenship can be inferred. That would be a recipe for arguments between editors when one of them inappropriately removes parameters, relying on their reading of your text. If we can't give accurate guidance, we shouldn't be giving any at all. --RexxS (talk) 17:13, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

I support this addition in principle, though the exact wording may need tweaking ("country to which the subject belongs" is a bit awkward). We have a continual problem that people who don't really know what they're doing treat the existence of a parameter as possible in a particular infobox template as something that "must" be filled if it's possible to fill it. This defeats the purpose of infoboxes, which is to provide an overview of key details for a particular topic. When this problem is compounded with the common "national pride" issue – people sticking nationality/citizenship labels (and flags) everywhere they think they can get away with it – we end up with really crappy infoboxes repeating the same nationalistic junk over and over again. MB is correct in the gist of this, and in supposing that this needs to be in the guideline instead of just in particular infobox's template documentation. I'll repeat what I said at User_talk:MB: We need to clarify that nationality and citizenship should be left out if inferred from birthplace, while retaining the advice to not use both, if they're redundant with each other, when using one of them for good reason. That is: usually birthplace is enough. Sometimes either nationality or citizenship may be useful to add when there's a mismatch, and it's usually nationality unless there's some very good reason to be legalistic about it. Only in rare cases will all three parameters be needed. I can't even think of an example. Maybe if Alex Pagulayan had been born abroad, e.g. in the UK, raised in the Philippines and establishing his adult career there, then taking on Canadian citizenship in later adulthood? He was born and raised in the Philippines, though. Anyway, it's probably worthwhile for the docs to explicitly say that in complex cases it is generally better to explain the matter in the prose of the article, not try to summarize it in the infobox. This has been said many times before about any complex scenario, in all the debates about infoboxes over the years. The consensus for this was so strong that we ended up removing the religion and ethnicity parameters from most infoboxes because they're simply too often too complex for infoboxing and are prone to generating more heat than light. Any birth/nationality/citizenship disagreement that also leads to raucous dispute is obviously a case for detailed explanation, not infoboxing (lest we start removing even more i-box parameters). PS: As for RexxS's objection, it seems to be missing the point. When citizenship or nationality can be inferred from birthplace, we do not need to re-add the same country name again. So, no discussion needs to happen here about cases in which such things cannot be inferred from birthplace; there will always be such cases, and the "when it can be inferred" proviso wouldn't make sense otherwise. MB's later comment gets to the core of the real issue: "There is considerable debate about the meaning of nationality and the situation is complicated in several countries" – Yes, and when it is complicated for a particular subject, that kind of detail belongs, with context and sufficient explanation, in the article body, not in the infobox.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:36, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: Let's see how we might move this forward, then, as I agree that it would useful to give some accurate advice. Put yourself in the position of an editor creating an infobox for Richard Burton. We have sources for his place of birth and for his Welsh nationality (he was a British citizen, but that's not a key fact for him). So what advice do you give to determine whether we should include |nationality=Welsh in his infobox? If you're giving guidance based on "Can you infer it from his place of birth?", then that guidance has to explain how to determine the answer to that question, not simply leave the editor hanging. Too many editors simply assume that US law applies everywhere, so they infer that someone born in Pontrhydyfen will automatically be Welsh, but that simply isn't true. We should not be giving advice that is so open to misinterpretation. Now put yourself in the place of an editor who likes tidying up infoboxes and spots an infobox for someone like Mick McCarthy, who was born in England to Irish parents, and sees |nationality=Irish in the infobox. They remove it, thinking the person was English because they were born in England. What advice are you going to give to prevent them making that sort of mistake? How about the case of someone born in France to Polish parents? What advice can you give them to help them decide whether to add or remove |nationality=French in the infobox, because that is far too complex to be decided by just "inferred from the country of birth" (although that's part of it)? Have a look at the two articles I linked above, and tell me the form of words you want inserting into the Manual of Style to help editors make the right decisions about including or removing nationality or citizenship. --RexxS (talk) 16:08, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

RexxS, we can't possibly give thorough instructions in a MOS on how to determine nationality/citizenship in all cases. We already "leave the editor" hanging with the existing instructions. The current info at {{Infobox person}} doesn't spell it out clearly and it already uses the phrase "inferred from the birthplace". I think my proposed addition here is an improvement because it makes the point that an editor should have a good reason to use the fields beyond just wanting to emphasize a person's nationality by repeating it two or three times. To answer your point above, in each case the editor should just do what they think is best and if someone disagrees, they work it out on the talkpage just like always. I myself do a lot of infobox "tidying" and would like to reference this section to explain my edits in edit summaries when removing redundant fields. MB 18:09, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

@MB: I agree it would be good to give better advice to editors than we currently do. I simply disagree that your wording is an improvement. The problem with putting guidance into the MoS that is capable of being interpreted in different ways is that it will be used by editors to bolster their own POV, even when that interpretation is wrong. No, if we are to improve our guidance, it needs to have at the very least a pointer to the articles that explain how to tell when citizenship/nationality can be determined from birthplace, otherwise we're no further forward. --RexxS (talk) 00:50, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

It sounds like the desired guidance has nothing to do with "inferences" at all. It sounds like what editors want to say is that if the birthplace, nationality, and citizenship are all the same, then only the birthplace should be listed.

(Of course, the other thing that has to someday be solved is whether that parameter means "relationship between you and a sovereign state" (e.g., not Welsh) or if it is meant to include the "An ethnic group forming a part of one or more political nations." What would be the "correct" thing to put in |nationality= for someone like Cesar Chavez, whose "political nationality" is American and whose "ethnic nationality" is probably best described as Mexican–American or Chicano? Wikidata has probably sorted this out by separating the two concepts into two separate properties, but we still cling to the answer that matches our own WP:ENGVAR.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:45, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

On en.wp, it's basically always referred to the nation-state when applicable, though with deference to a) disputed territories and the subject's identification with the "underdog" claimant (e.g. Yeats and Joyce were Irish writers, not British ones, regardless of the then-status of Irish independence), and b) subnational (in international-diplomatic-relations terms) entities still defined as nations in a way that is consonant with the supranation's own laws (thus Welsh, Scottish, English, and Manx are nationalities, but Northern Irish and Cornish are not, at least when it comes to modern subjects; if you go back many centuries, Cornish would be, but we'd also be in an era were nation-states weren't really a thing for the most part). But "Chicano" or "Mexican-American" are not nationalities for WP purposes. Even Native American tribes called "nations" in a particular, different, sense under US laws and treaties aren't. Things like Wales are special cases. Similar ones might be, say, the individual Soviet socialist republics under the USSR, though I'm not sure we implement it that way in the content and infoboxes when writing about Soviet people.

ANYWAY, yes, I agree that a) the gist here is to advise not adding redundant parameter entries, especially when some of them may be controversial ("only the birthplace should be listed" if they would all resolve to the same thing); b) yes, the template docs do get into it a bit, but have not done so consistently or clearly, and MOS:INFOBOX is a better place to do it; c) no, we don't need to wade into some big block of guideline text on how to determine "nationality", since d) yes, it can be complicated (and is a content/RS matter, not a style one), and it's generally done on a case-by-case basis.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:13, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing and SMcCandlish: If we were to give guidance to omit nationality when it would be the same as country of birth, then how does a reader know what is the nationality of someone born in London? How can they tell the difference between someone for whom we have a source stating their parents were English (and hence nationality=English, which you then advise to omit), and someone whose nationality we don't know because we have no source and is therefore omitted? It's not good guidance to omit sourced information when it leads to ambiguity. --RexxS (talk) 03:15, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

What's unclear about "when it can be inferred"? For example, the elder of my sisters was born in Oxford, but is American. If she were notable, it would not be sensible for her infobox to only have Oxford, England, as a birthplace and no indication of nationality or citizenship, since they don't match. That is, the nationality cannot be inferred from Birthplace.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:47, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

The options are either stating the same location twice (e.g., |birthplace=France and |nationality=France), or the potentially confusing |birthplace=France with no information specified about the person's nationality, in which case your guess is as good as anyone else's as to whether the nationality is French or merely unknown to Wikipedia editors. It is my impression from these repeated discussions that editors prefer to leave some readers confused than to provide (allegedly) redundant information. NB that I'm not saying that it's a good idea, even though for most people, and throughout almost all of history, your nationality, your birthplace, both of your parents' nationality, and your parents' birthplace were all exactly the same, sometimes right down to being born in the same house as one of your parents. I only present this as what editors seem to edit up saying repeatedly: they see it as a needless repetition, and are unconcerned about the occasional edge case. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:43, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

But |birthplace=France isn't confusing by itself, when |nationality=France would match it, especially since the lead is going to contain something like "Foo X. Bar is a French underwater basketweaver". Infoboxes are not stand-alone "mini-articles"; they're simply summaries of the most pertinent information, and should be as concise as we can reasonably make them.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:01, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Consolidating place-naming advice

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Never mind; the thread linked to did not produce a conclusive result before archiving away.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:08, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

---

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Consolidating place-naming details at MOS:PLACE. We have a concurrent thread open at WT:CITE also about coming up with some place-naming rules, and there's a danger of WP:POLICYFORKing conflicting rules if the discussion and what comes out of it isn't centralized. Given that we already have various bits of geographical naming style advice in at least two other guideline pages (MOS:LINKS and MOS:ABBR), it's probably past time to consolidate this material in one location anyway.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:25, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

RfC on birthplace, nationality, and citizenship parameters with matching values

Putting an RfC tag on this (with a 1-2-3 question format) since the discussion above is dwindling but without clear resolution.

Should our guidelines:

1. advise not using |nationality= or |citizenship= when the country would match that found in |birthplace=;
2. advise filling in at least one of |nationality= or |citizenship= even if the country would match that found in |birthplace=;
3. remain silent on the matter;
4. advise filling in |nationality= or |citizenship=, even if the same, when it cannot be automatically inferred from birthplace (i.e., for any country not listed at Jus soli#Unrestricted jus soli, for modern subjects)?

The original post opening the discussion is above (and was in turn a followup to discussion at Template talk:Infobox person and User talk:MB). PS: I think the material in question (under version 1 or version 2) belongs in MOS:BIO rather than MOS:INFOBOX, because it is bio-specific and doesn't pertain to infoboxes in general. However, I don't want to fork off another thread on another page rather than resolve this one; I'll just notify WT:MOSBIO of the discussion. @RexxS, MB, and WhatamIdoing: Notifying previous participants.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:29, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Comments

• Option 1, for reasons given in detail in the parent thread. In short: having something like |birthplace=Paris, France |nationality=France |citizenship=France is redundant in over 99% of cases (and remains redundant even if you remove one of the latter two). We only need to use |nationality= when it cannot reasonably be inferred from |birthplace=, and we should not use |citizenship= at all, except for unusual cases (which are often better treated in detail in the main text anyway). The lead will already say "French" in it, probably within the first few words. Infoboxes should be as concise as we can reasonably make them.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:29, 2 January 2020 (UTC); rev'd. 04:54, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
• Option 1, avoid redundancy, possible confusion. Hyperbolick (talk) 13:43, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
  • Hyperbolick, how could it be possibly confusing to state that a person was born in New York and also an American citizen? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:04, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
    • People put American. Italian, English, Japanese. Common error, actually. Hyperbolick (talk) 02:19, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 State nationality or citizenship when it can't be inferred from place of birth and is known. To correct SMcCandlish: having something like |birthplace=Paris, France and either |nationality=France or |citizenship=France is not redundant because the citizenship rules for France are far too complex for French citizenship to be inferred from being born in Paris. It is perfectly possible for someone to be born in Paris and not have French citizenship. So if we know the nationality of someone born in Paris, we should state it whether it's French, Algerian, or whatever. We should leave the citizenship blank for people born in Paris only when it is not known. If we followed option 1, we would not know when a citizenship is French and when it is unknown. Information loss. --RexxS (talk) 22:04, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

  Response in the ext. discussion section, below.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:54, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

• Option 1, as OP. Infoboxes are to summarize key information. MB 22:10, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
• Option 1, seems reasonable not to use the others for the sake of it if they are the same. MilborneOne (talk) 22:37, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
• Option 1. Can I just second everything SMcCandlish has said in this discussion? Bondegezou (talk) 15:45, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3. We don't need a general rule for this imo. I might explain more on this opinion later, but I can see this causing a lot of unforseen problems. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 01:05, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Extended discussion of the RfC

• The overwhelming frustration I have for the special treatment given to bios of British people, can't be overstated. We use Canadian for those born/live in Canada, American for those born/live in the USA, Italian for those born/live in Italy, etc etc. But, we don't use British for those born/live in the United Kingdom. GoodDay (talk) 13:57, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

  That's kind of off-topic (this RfC is about potentially redundant parameters, not about what specific values, like "British" versus "English" should be in particular parameters). I would direct you to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Using "British" vs "English" to describe a person/company/work. The same matter was also recently raised at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography#Nationality of people from UK, and at Wikipedia talk:Nationality of people from the United Kingdom.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:44, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

  You'll find that they're all interlinked with the 'special treatment' given to the UK articles. GoodDay (talk) 15:49, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

  The only reason why "special treatment" is given to UK bios is because the UK is composed of four distinct countries, while being a country in itself. The same "special treatment" is needed for any other country with that complexity in relationship. The sources recognise that Dylan Thomas had Welsh nationality while being a British citizen and we follow the sources if there is any question. --RexxS (talk) 22:04, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

  RexxS, are there any other countries with "that complexity in relationship", in which people from Countries A, B, and C join together as equal parties to form Country D, and then say that they are all citizens of D (thus D owes them certain duties associated with citizenship, such as intervening if another country tries to force you into military service), but some say they are nationals of only A (rather than members of ethnic group A), so that A owes them certain other duties (the ones associated with nationality, such as forcing its nationals into military service if necessary)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:58, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

  @WhatamIdoing: No two examples are identical, because the historical backgrounds are inevitably different, but Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and the USSR come to mind in Europe, Tanzania in Africa. France as distinguished from Metropolitan France is a pan-global country – even Metropolitan France contains the nation of Corsica. Depending on your viewpoint, Tibet is now effectively a part of China, and so on. Check out the difference between the number of national soccer teams and the number of nations represented at the Olympics to get more examples. --RexxS (talk) 03:09, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

  I believe that people who belong to Overseas France are French nationals and French citizens, not (for example) nationals of St Martin but citizens of France. You are telling me that someone can be a national of Scotland (but that nobody is allowed to be a citizen of Scotland) and a citizen of Britain (without being a national of Britain). Those are not comparable situations.

  To put it another way, I'm pretty sure that the standard in international law is that if you are a citizen of Country X, then you are automatically also a national of that same country (although the converse is not true, because non-citizen nationals are a thing, especially in past millenia). Saying that someone has British citizenship without having British nationality is ... maybe not technically possible? Like they're using the same words (possibly for very sound political reasons), but they're not actually talking about the same thing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:23, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

  I said that no two examples are alike, but it's easy to show some differences between examples and then claim you've refuted the point. That's not how to conduct a debate. I'm sure that just as many inhabitants of St Martin who regard themselves as a member of that nation as there are inhabitants of Wales who regard themselves as belonging to the Welsh nation. The problem with the terminology is that some folks understand nationality to be synonymous with citizenship, while others regard it as the condition of belonging to a nation – and there are many shades of grey in between. The examples I gave are very comparable when it comes to considering whether "special treatment" is needed. This is the point we were discussing, not the differences between citizenship and nationality. Try and tell a Catalan that the nation they belong to is Spain. Are you now going to tell me that Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, the USSR, etc. are not comparable with the UK as well? "British nationality" is not a sensible phrase unless it is simply being used as an alias for British citizenship, because Britain is not a single nation, and never has been. What's next, "united Kingdom nationality"? --RexxS (talk) 14:11, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

  Another annoying area (not sure if it applies to the Rfc), is the push to deny that Latvia, Lithuania & Estonia were ever a part of the USSR. We see this a lot, in bios of Soviets who were born or died between 1940 & 1991 within the Balitcs. GoodDay (talk) 02:08, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

• A few comments: first, it is obvious that the various nationality/ethnicity parameters are as complex as those for religion were. Second, these parameters are as prone to dispute as the religion parameters were. Third, place of birth is usually trivial information and can be omitted from most articles. Conclusion: these parameters are not suitable for infoboxs. If important to mention, mention in text. Blueboar (talk) 22:27, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

  We already got rid of the ethnicity parameter. See same VPPOL archive page as the RfC that got rid of the religion parameter. They were back-to-back RfCs.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:54, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

• @RexxS: To respond to your "Option 4" !vote: It's not "information loss", because no information should be in a bio's infobox that isn't already sourced and detailed with proper context in its main text. Infoboxes very optionally repeat and summarize facts, not uniquely contain them. And infoboxes are not for complex, nuanced information (it's why we removed the ethnicity and religion parameters). If French citizenship is such a complex matter, then it doesn't belong in the infobox. What you're talking about with France, however, applies to many countries and really isn't that complex (see Jus soli#Restricted jus soli). Despite France being a popular tourism country, on average and by an overwhelming margin, people born in Paris are French citizens, so there's no need for the i-box to say they're French. If the subject is really an Algerian national, that's worth saying. If they have dual Algerian and French citizenship, then finally we have a reason to use the citizenship parameter. It's not going to be common that we know a birthplace but do not know nationality; in such a case, the absence of any nationality/citizenship information in the entire article is what tells the reader that WP is missing information; not absence from an infobox. Various specialized bio infoboxes (sport, etc.) don't even have all these parameters, and we often don't use them even in i-boxes that do support them.

  Regardless, I added your option 4 to the list (with a link to the unrestricted jus soli countries, so people will know what that option resolves to in modern cases). The real problem with this option is that it presumes vast and highly specialized knowledge on the part of the readers, most of whom are not international citizenship law experts (much less ones with expertise covering multiple eras). I.e., virtually no one can really infer anything different for the US or for France, or for Australia before and after 20 August 1986. The WP:Common sense approach is of course that most people born in a country are born to citizens of that country, and thus we need not browbeat readers with the obvious, only clue them in to unusual cases. Example: born in the Philippines, permanent resident of Canada, with dual Philippine jus soli citizenship and Canadian naturalized citizenship, as in the case of pool player Alex Pagulayan. Example: born in British-occupied Ireland, technically a British citizen for much of his life, but an Irish national in an encyclopedic sense (and Irish nationalist), as in the cases of writers James Joyce and W. B. Yeats. Even in such cases, it is not necessary for the i-box to get into all this; Yeats has no i-box, and Joyce's doesn't mention British citizenship; Pagulayan's i-box has his birthplace, but glosses over the nationality/citizenship stuff with |sport_country=Canada.
   — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:54, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

  @SMcCandlish: there is information loss for anybody who is looking just at the infobox for a simple fact. By your argument we would remove all fields from infoboxes because the information therein is "already sourced and detailed with proper context in its main text". You're confusing what is complex: the process of working out the citizenship of Jacques Hulot, who was born in Paris to pied noir parents, is indeed complex; but whatever his actual citizenship turns out to be is actually a simple fact that we can source. Having a source that says "Jacques Hulot is Algerian" or "Jacques Hulot is French" is anything but nuanced and there's then no reason to exclude it from the infobox (unless different sources have different views, of course). We actually removed the ethnicity and religion parameters because they were a continual source of editorial conflict as a result of poor sourcing.

  Working out French citizenship is a complex matter, and not one we should trust editors to decide; that would be OR. As I was the one who first pointed out the issues we face with jus soli and jus sanguinis, I'm happy you've taken notice of the links I gave earlier, but disappointed that you still think it's reasonable to expect editors to be able to infer citizenship from birthplace for any of the countries in that list, or from any jus sanguinis country. If you can't infer the citizenship from the birthplace, you ought not to be giving advice to remove citizenship from the infobox, whenever that applies.

  Although most people born in Paris will be French citizens, there will still be many who are not, and we should not be taking such a cavalier attitude to facts. If we have a source that says "Hulot is a French citizen", we should use it in the infobox just as if we had a source that says Algerian. Your proposal would still leave readers guessing whether Hulot's citizenship was French or unknown, and there's no good reason to do that, other than the desire to save a few bytes of server space. Not worth it.

  It is very, very common for us to know a birthplace, but not know the citizenship – just look at a few random biographies of folks born in the UK to see that. American editors consistently seem to think that all the world deals with the issue like the USA does. That turns out to be not the case, and if a subject was born in the UK, we can only guess their citizenship, unless we know the citizenship of their parents. That's 99%+ of all UK bios.

  The purpose of an infobox is to present key facts about the topic, and it is heavily used by readers who just want quick access to those key facts. We should not be forcing them to scan through a sometimes lengthy article to find a simple key fact that is known and sourced and could be presented in the infobox. If the information is missing or unknown, you expect them to read the entire article just to establish that, when its absence from the infobox should convey exactly that.

  Joyce was undoubtedly an Irish national and a British citizen in any sense you can come up with, but the absence of that information from the infobox is an editorial decision based on long debates. It is not a carte blanche to give advice to wiki-gnomes to remove fields willy-nilly from articles, which will be precisely the result if your option 1 gains traction. --RexxS (talk) 14:11, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

• Sports bios and national teams Many sports WikiProjects regularly fill in a nationality/country parameter in bios, as it's relevant for national team participation and some domestic leagues have limits on foreign players. Some projects already omit country in birthplace (and deathplace) when it is consistent with their listed nationality (e.g. no need to append "U.S." when the nationality is listed as "American") At a minimum, bios should maintain the flexibility to choose whether or not "nationality" is relevant for the infobox, in which case the country does not need to be duplicated in the birthplace and deathplace. As an aside, nationality is typically in the lead sentence, so it seems to me that it would generally belong in the infobox, sportsperson or not.—Bagumba (talk) 08:54, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

  To expand slightly on this point, sports biography infoboxes will typically specify the nationality in terms of sports: what country the player is eligible to participate for, if they have not engaged in international play, or which country the player actually has played for. Thus the field reflects nationality as determined by the governing sporting federation, as opposed to citizenship. isaacl (talk) 17:44, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

  AFAIK, citizenship is generally required to be on a national team. So it's a matter of how each WikiProject displays multi-citizenship e.g. playing for a country where one was naturalized.—Bagumba (talk) 02:02, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

  There are cases like the World Baseball Classic where a player only needed a parent to be a citizen or to have been born in the country or territory in question. I agree that the more common case, as far as I know, is for citizenship to be expedited for the player in question so they can be eligible. isaacl (talk) 02:24, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

• Duel Citizens as can be the case and is a very significant issue in Australia a person can be exclude from various government positions if they duel citizenship. They also deported and have their Australian citizenship revoked, which frequently happens to many people how would be notable for their notoriety. Being bron in England, and becoming an Australian citizen doesnt mean you are not still an English citizen as well given that its separate process to revoke UK citizenship. Being duel citizen is an important factor that warrants being in the info box because it not clear by birth place alone. Gnangarra 10:58, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Where to put things like 'Acting', 'Elect', 'Designate', etc.

Myself & @Goodone121: have a disagreement at Mick Mulvaney. In relation to it, I believe about a year ago, an Rfc was held on the matter of where to place 'Acting', 'Elect', 'Designate' etc infoboxes of politicians. Only about 5 editors participated then. Perhaps we should have an another Rfc here? with hopefully more input. GoodDay (talk) 03:39, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

@GoodDay: Can you link to the previous discussion(s), especially that RfC?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:49, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Here is the Rfc-in-question. GoodDay (talk) 17:01, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure this needs another RfC, since the result was effectively unanimous (there was one neutral !vote – yours). The discussion would have been better held at WT:MOSBIO or WT:MOSINFOBOX, but if the regulars of WP:WikiProject Biography don't make for a good enough sampling of editors who care about how we write bios, I'm not sure what would be. I wouldn't object to another RfC, but I think the result will be the same, and the original RfC is a good enough rationale to just put its result in the guideline. I think it should be in MOS:BIO, though, since it's bio-specific and doesn't pertain to infoboxes in general.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:15, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

The only problem with the previous Rfc, was lack of participation. Can four editors impose their will on all infoboxes of related topic? GoodDay (talk) 14:00, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Yes, when an RfC is well-advertised, properly conducted, and the editorship at large accepts the result. There is no "there must be at least X number of editors present for a consensus to form" rule. It all really boils down to whether the editorial community accepts (explicitly or implicitly) the decision and generally abides by it – and that's most likely to happen when the conclusion simply puts already-dominant practice into words. Many WP:RMs have fewer respondents than the four in that RfC, yet still have precedential value under WP:CONSISTENT policy, as one example. RfCs don't even actually exist to be a decision-determination process, like a vote; they're requests for comments (for discussion) toward formulating consensus. Consensus can and most often does form without one, just by most editors doing something, and the editorial pool converging on it as a norm until we bother actually writing it down. I'm entirely neutral on the question asked in the RfC, and really don't care about it. I'm just speaking from a procedural position. If an RfC with five (counting the closer) total respondents wasn't valid, then the RfC process would have been abandoned the month it was introduced, as simply unworkable. Or an actual rule for min. number of participants would have been implemented (a form of quorum, i.e. a form of actual voting). Since we're all volunteers here, we can't force people to come participate in RfCs that they don't feel merit their attention. And since WP isn't a bureaucracy, we can't hold up something, in absence of any actual dispute over it, just hoping others say the same thing as the four who already did. If something like this turns out to generate more opposition as it does support/compliance, then obviously there's a WP:FALSECONSENSUS problem and a new discussion needs to happen. Or, yeah, you can just run another RfC, but we already have a lot of them, and a big closure backlog, so they're best reserved for actual disputes/confusions, not just potential ones.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:24, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

• Wish I had participated in that RFC... I would have !voted for “none of the above” - and added a proposal saying that we should WAIT until the office-holder is sworn in, and not rush to add inappropriate infoboxes. Blueboar (talk) 17:51, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

  I doubt that would fly. Someone can be the acting director of [whatever] for years, and be fulfilling the role exactly as if they were not "acting" (a label that might be dependent on something extraneous, like a parliamentary procedure that only happens on certain dates). And if we hadn't said that Trump was the US president-elect between November 8, 2016, and January 20, 2017, then our readers would have reacted very negatively, assuming widespread incompetence or an anti-Trump conspiracy. That said, it might not be necessary for such things to be in the infobox at all, as long as they're in the article text. I can't really picture it not leading to editwarring in many cases, though.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:06, 3 January 2020 (UTC)