Talk:Frank Sinatra

Info box should not be hidden

It's such a hindrance to readers. It's pointless. I've never seen a bio have a hidden info box before. People want to access info quickly and easily, and hiding it makes it just difficult. There's no need for it to be hidden at all. I've seen bio's with longer info boxes than this one, and they aren't hidden.  — Calvin999 09:56, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

This has been discussed at length quite recently. What is your purpose in bringing this up again? Cassianto^Talk 10:14, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

The purpose seems to be to make it pleasant to the reader. Support uncollapsed. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:20, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Calvin, you said the same thing about the Women project, "pointless". Yet it produces a few thousand articles every quarter and happens to be one of the most productive wikiprojects ever. Has it ever occurred to you that it might be you who is "pointless" and "just difficult"?♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:23, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

• I'm tempted to change the thread to "Info box should not be". If we're going to press ahead with this conversation yet again, I'll plump for Support total removal. For now, and for all the good reasons that brought up the consensus last time we had the discussion: keep the damned thing collapsed. – SchroCat (talk) 10:29, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Yes, it was done as compromise of course. As Gerda can no longer respect that, I support total removal now too.♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:37, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Support total removal -- Me thrice. Cassianto^Talk 10:51, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

I respect it. Otherwise I would have changed the article. I only interpreted ("seems to be") the purpose because it was questioned. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:58, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

You don't respect it Gerda because you just stated that you wanted it uncollapsed. If you respected it you'd have opted to keep it collapsed. I'm confused. Cassianto^Talk 11:06, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Respect is one thing. Preference another. I never like anything collapsed = hidden = needing an extra effort from the reader to retrieve information. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:24, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

This isn't about your preference, this is about a compromise between both camps. Cassianto^Talk 11:39, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

A suggestion for a compromise: show the first lines (birth and death, and what he did - the things formerly held in Persondata) and collapse from then on, if you have to. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:36, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

That's not a compromise. Cassianto^Talk 11:39, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

I believe I was the person who [reluctantly] suggested using the collapsed info box as an attempt to compromise; if the compromise is no longer acceptable, I would support total removal. SagaciousPhil - Chat 11:03, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

I'd go with Sagacious Phil and support total removal. Tim riley talk 12:45, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Why are we at this again, as there's been a discussion of the matter within the last year? To keep bringing this up when it's optional to have an infobox or not again and again, is a total time-waster of both sides of the infobox question. Right now, there are close to 2 million stub articles on WP; most are nothing but an infobox and a sentence or two. Time would be better spent trying to enlarge these stubs to serve readers. People using major search engines get an "infobox" before they arrive at WP: Bing Google. If this is all the information they want, they don't need to even come to WP for it; those who want further information are WP "readers"-people who want to know more. I support a "one discussion" limit re: infoboxes in articles to get people back to what the project is about--improving and enlarging content--not hashing and rehashing the subject. I am also in favor of removal of the entire infobox if the main editors of an article don't want one. We hope (talk) 13:16, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Wow, this has been active in the last few hours! Cassianto, I have never looked at this bio before. I only looked because his son died the other day. So how am I supposed to know that this had been discussed before? I don't have a crystal ball. Furthermore, my post here is the first thread, so nothing else on this talk page indicated to me that any form of discussion had taken place before. Collapsing/hiding things on Wikipedia just makes it more difficult for the reader to navigate around what it is that they have searched for. And Dr. Blofeld, I still think that WP:Women is a pointless WP and is too broad (I still don't believe that a WP Men exists? You know, gender equality and all), but we aren't talking about that here. We are talking about not being able to efficiently or easily navigate a well known persons info box which contains information that a lot of people are looking for, and will perhaps not be able to find as a result of it being hidden.  — Calvin999 13:59, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Why would anyone want to not have any form of info box at all? Why is this article getting a special treatment? What makes this article different to the thousands of other bio's which have normal unhidden info boxes. The answer is simple: unhide the info box, and let it be like every other bio info box on Wiki. If it works for all of those, then it will certainly work for this one. This is a discussion, not a vote on consensus, may I remind each one of you who want to get rid of the info box altogether.  — Calvin999 14:07, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

What, tapping on a collapse button is beyond a readers capabilities? Cassianto^Talk 14:05, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

What is the need for it in the first place? None of you seem to be able to answer that. Just looks like a lot of WP:OWN to me. Did you ask anyone if they thought it would be better collapsed? Did you do a poll on readers?  — Calvin999 14:07, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

old newsWe hope (talk) 14:18, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

?  — Calvin999 14:23, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Link to the previous discussion re: infobox. We hope (talk) 14:28, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

I agree with Calvin999. There is no need for it, and the page would be better without the box. (No suggestion of WP:OWN: there are those commenting here who haven't contributed a noun or comma to the page, but have reviewed at PR and FAC.) Tim riley talk 14:24, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Oh dear, the first signs of someone losing an argument is that old chestnut WP:OWN. Frankly, you're boring and your time is better spent elsewhere. Cassianto^Talk 15:26, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

I oppose an infobox in this article for the following reasons, among others: (1) The box emphasizes unimportant factoids, and all the facts it presents are stripped of context and lacking nuance, whereas the WP:LEAD section emphasizes and contextualizes the most important facts. (2) The most important points about the article are discussed in the Lead, or adequately discussed in the body of the article, so the box is redundant. (3) It takes up valuable space at the top of the article and hampers the layout and impact of the Lead. (4) Frequent errors creep into infoboxes, as updates are made to the articles but not reflected in the redundant info in the box, and they tend to draw more vandalism and fancruft than other parts of articles. (5) The infobox template creates a lot of code near the top of the edit screen that discourages new editors from editing the article. (6) It discourages readers from reading the actual article, making them feel that they can just glance at the box and move on. (7) It distracts editors from focusing on the content of the article. Instead of improving the article, they spend time working on this repetitive feature and its coding and formatting. See also WP:DISINFOBOX for more information. -- Ssilvers (talk) 14:38, 19 March 2016 (UTC)