Template talk:Infobox musical artist

Confusion with past_members field documentation?

From the template docs:

past_members

This field is only relevant for groups. Past members of the group, listed in order of joining with no other notation than names. If a group is inactive, all members should be listed here, and none in the "current_members" field. If membership of the group has varied over time, it should not be noted here, but may be discussed in the article body. Can also be given as |former_members=. Separate multiple entries using * list markup. For example,

| past_members = 
* Member 1
* Member 2
* Member 3

The "Past members of the group, listed in order of joining with no other notation than names" sentence seems pretty clear and seems to be the standard for just about every band with changing lineups over the years (eg. The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Jackson 5, The Beach Boys, Tool, Earth, Wind & Fire, etc. etc.). But then we have this sentence, "If membership of the group has varied over time, it should not be noted here". So, what does this mean? Does it mean that if the band is still active, the |past_members= field should not be used? Does it mean other info about "varied membership" should not be added to the name? But that was made clear with the earlier "no other notation than names" statement.

I've looked at past talk discussions, eg. #1, #2, but could not find something to specifically address this question. Most seem to just be debating who/which/when members should go into what category.

It could be I'm just missing what idea is being documented. In that case, clarification would be welcome, and that clarification added to the docs could help others. Thanks in advance. – ░▒▓ №∶72.234.220.38 (talk) 04:15, 10 July 2020 (UTC) ▓▒░

It means that if we do not list instruments, changes in roles, or any details about the players in the infobox, do so in prose and in the membership section.

It means that if members have come, left, returned, come again, left again (etc), don't list them all in the infobox, do so in prose and in the membership section.

It means that if the band has changed names, but continued to have mostly consistent membership, don't list the details in the infobox, do so in prose and possibly in the membership section.

It means that if there have been a lot of former members, don't list them all in the infobox, do so in the membership section.

The rule of thumb is simple: the infobox is to be a summary of the article's contents, it should not replace it. We don't list years that a band was on a label, but we list them in chronological order. We don't list how associated acts were associated, we expect that to be detailed in the article. We do not go into details about current and former members, we simply list them. Walter Görlitz (talk) 06:45, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Big thanks for the reply here Walter. That does help clarify. Seems proper, and I'm all for the MoS rules to keep infoboxes short 'n simple summaries. Although I don't see many(any?) following the "if members have come, left, returned, come again, left again (etc), don't list them all in the infobox" part. Members are just moved from current to past and back when they quit & rejoin. Also, the "if there have been a lot of former members, don't list them all in the infobox, do so in the membership section" would be hard, if not impossible, to adhere to. A group member is either a member, or they're not. Would it not cause endless arguments if people started deciding which member was "worthy" of being in the infobox and which not? (think of the Genre Warring battles that go on ad infinitum)

For long lists of past_members, I used to just wikilink to the article's contents. But, a few months back was reverted as this is a violation of the Infobox MoS. Who knew... and the WP:OTHERSTUFF argument didn't trump the MoS. This raised a couple of Catch-22's with policy and template documentation. I'd sure love to see this template's documentation clarified a bit.

Again, thanks. Regards. – ░▒▓ №∶72.234.220.38 (talk) 00:14, 11 July 2020 (UTC) ▓▒░

Collaboration on a single track,

What if, one artist collaborates with another on a single track, for a motion picture soundtrack? But both the artists have a significant popularity. Can it be counted as an associated act? IndieOKB (talk) 07:30, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

No – Template:Infobox musical artist#associated acts states quite clearly that a "one-time collaboration for a single song" should not count for inclusion in this field. Richard3120 (talk) 14:53, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Signature

I think a Signature line should be added considering how musical artists give out autographs to their fans. It shows how they really handwrite their signature so it's valuable information. Kj1595 (talk) 01:19, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

See the essay WP:AUTOGRAPH. There is no policy for or against including signatures in the infobox, but it would have to come from a reliable secondary source, and Wikipedia would have to make sure it doesn't cause any problems with the artist. Also, what happens with bands, are we supposed to have a line for every band member's signature? Do we remove the signature if they leave the band? Richard3120 (talk) 01:33, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Signatures can be trouble, because real people can be hurt by copies of it. Here's a recent request from the attorneys of an actress to take down her signature. Personally, I think signatures should be used for dead people, or for living people who have made their signature famous in some very public way. Binksternet (talk) 03:00, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Parameter native_name

I suggest moving |native_name= below |birth_name=, both in display and documentation. Now it looks ugly when it is below infobox enlarged bolded title: example. --Obsuser (talk) 18:10, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

For consistency for readers, it is probably best to continue to follow the practice at {{Infobox person}}; see example at Abu Bakr. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:18, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Background information heading

Change 'Background information' to 'General information'. It is not about any "background" of musicians. --Obsuser (talk) 18:13, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Member roles

"current_members" and "past_members" seem ideally suited to list musical roles (instrument/voice), yet the specification says "with no other notation than names", but without motivation. Now the user has to dig through the whole article parsing unstructured text to try to make sense of who does what, or which people filled a particular role in the past. Having only names in these fields might look prettier, but it's also pretty much useless and redundant: why is the former considered more important than the latter? — RFST (talk) 02:03, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

Don't start moving more of the article information up into the infobox. The infobox should be reserved for quick answers to simple questions. Musician roles can be very complicated, switching around over time. Some bands argue about who is lead guitar and who is rhythm. And what about bands with multiple lead vocalists who also play an instrument? No.

The table of contents should be used by the reader to quickly take them down to the band member section where they will see the details in all their messy, complicated glory. Binksternet (talk) 04:35, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

The infobox is supposed to be a summary of the article, therefore it's not redundant. When musicians are responsible for multiple roles over multiple years, the infobox would become unmanageable. I'm not sure that most readers are interested in seeing roles in the infobox either. Walter Görlitz (talk) 06:34, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

Agreed, it would make the infobox far too long. Even for a band like the Beatles, who kept the same line-up throughout their eight-year charting career, it would become very confusing: all four members took on lead vocals on various songs, and although Paul McCartney was principally the bass guitarist, he also played electric guitar, acoustic guitar, piano and drums, and that's just on various singles, never mind the album tracks.

It would also be kind of pointless on some articles - for example, the long-running Latino boy bands Menudo and Calle Ciega have both had 30+ members pass through their ranks, but as all of them were nothing more than vocalists, what extra information could the infobox hold? The same goes for many J-pop bands like AKB48, who have a constantly rotating line-up of vocalists, none of whom play an instrument. Richard3120 (talk) 13:45, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

Attempted summary: "Sometimes it could get too complicated/useless." Well, then list only the main role, or something like "(see text)", or nothing. But is non-complicated, e.g., <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Home_Free_(group)&oldid=972200646>, such a rare exception that general prohibition is appropriate? How would IMDB ever have survived if nobody liked lists of actors and roles? Why do concert programs have such lists? Oh well, just a suggestion... — RFST (talk) 18:29, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

I don't think anyone is saying not to include the information at all, just to not include it in the infobox in order to keep it as simple as possible. Everything in the infobox should be in the text in expanded form, so there isn't any need to say "see text". Some articles include a "member timeline" section to indicate who did what throughout the group's existence (see The Rezillos#Membership timeline, for example), but I know these timelines are not popular with some editors. Richard3120 (talk) 18:40, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

My basic complaint is that the article body is where all the details should go. The infobox should be trim and slim.

The infobox is where lazy people have their edit wars. For instance, the huge amount of genre-warring happens almost exclusively in the infobox. Lazy people zero in on the infobox because they don't want to invest the time to balance multiple sources to make a fair summary of the literature, and they don't want to learn how to cite sources. I'm sure many of them are not very good at composing prose. Whatever the reason, I would not like to place more facts in the infobox and thus give the lazy people more things to fight over. Binksternet (talk) 18:51, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

I don't think that an infobox should be considered subordinate to the text, mere illustration, "trim and slim" and pretty. Well-crafted lists and graphs and diagrams etc., perhaps in time-validated standard formats, are a high-speed conduit to the brain, they add value by saving time, and the effort to create them is amortised with the number of users, another dimension in which they can be worth a thousand words (to borrow a saying). The only alternative to making each user hoping to find this information trawl through the text is to have a separate roles list inside the article as well as the "trim and slim" infobox that by decree lacks this basic information, which would just be silly. I amend my attempted summary: "Sometimes it could get too complicated/useless/edit-warry." Seems more like a list of excuses than arguments to me. But I rest my case. — RFST (talk) 07:05, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

Yes, but article structure – specifically, section headings appearing in the Table of Contents under the lead – is in keeping with such a need-it-now approach. Band articles contain a Band members section (at least they should do), and readers see this in the ToC; and besides, those main roles may well be identified in the lead section itself. I don't agree at all with your opening statement that "the user has to dig through the whole article parsing unstructured text to try to make sense of who does what, or which people filled a particular role in the past" – at least, not if the article's of even average quality.

Infoboxes should be super trim. For music artists, this is also why the threshold for inclusion is so high for genres and associated acts. For albums and songs, it's the same with the number of genres included also, and why, say, recording dates are usually simplified into a time span, or a couple of time spans, rather than giving each and every session date. All non-text elements (infoboxes, quote boxes, images and captions, album review ratings boxes, any tables set within section of text) are definitely subordinate; the prose could easily stand alone without any of those elements, but it doesn't work the other way round in Wikipedia terms. JG66 (talk) 08:52, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

RFST worte, "I don't think that an infobox should be considered subordinate to the text". Have you read Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Infoboxes? What you described as your thoughts is not in-line with the project's goals for infoboxes: "to summarize (and not supplant) key facts that appear in the article... The less information it contains, the more effectively it serves that purpose, allowing readers to identify key facts at a glance." How does adding more information to the infobox align with this stated and project-wide goal for infoboxes? Walter Görlitz (talk) 17:26, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

What has been ordained by God, all men shall accept as unshakeable literal truth for the ages, and no man shall ever question! Verily, it is the sign of the righteous wikipedian that he shall never avert his eyes when he comes upon an infobox with information contained within it and not improve it by removing at least one item of information, following the Boy Wikipedian Rule to "always leave the infobox cleaner than you found it", because "the less information it contains, the more effectively it serves that purpose". Do not follow the evil example of heretics who were led astray and, under the guise that "as with any guideline, there will be exceptions", added "ICD codes in {{Infobox medical condition}} and most of the parameters in {{Chembox}}", for they will burn in the sixth circle of hell for all eternity! — RFST (talk) 03:48, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Wow. Reading between the lines, you're not planning to explain how adding more information to the infobox aligns with the MoS and since you have no consensus for the change should we just turn out the lights? Walter Görlitz (talk) 06:32, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

RFST's suggestion violates WP:INFOBOXPURPOSE which says "The less information it contains, the more effectively it serves that purpose". RFST's suggestion of moving article details up into the infobox would, if followed to its logical end, create a prose-free collection of infobox pages that we could call Infoboxpedia. I am voting against that. Binksternet (talk) 03:45, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Indeed, but why are we even still talking about this? RFST, you brought it up here for discussion, and I think it's safe to say the proposal's been met with a resounding "no", based on a combination of practice across the encyclopedia, the purpose of infoboxes generally, and other editors' preference. In a film article, the infobox lists the film's main stars; now, it might be nice to add the name of each star's character there to save readers having to locate a section in the Table of Contents dedicated to listing this info ... but we don't, do we? If a band article does not contain a similar, dedicated section ("Now the user has to dig through the whole article parsing unstructured text to try to make sense of who does what", etc.), then it needs to be created, that's all. JG66 (talk) 06:01, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 22 August 2020

"Dance-pop" in Mariah Carey's example-infobox should written lowercase. and, in the audioslave-infobox, the "image_upright" parameter is redundant when "landscape=yes" is already enabled 188.192.211.248 (talk) 21:21, 22 August 2020 (UTC)