Template talk:Infobox officeholder/Archive 1

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Multiple terms

Is there any way of having multiple non-continuous terms in office? The infobox has just been added to the article Alan García, Peru's president 1985-90, but he has just been elected again for 2001-2006. --Gabbec 06:07, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Try this -
| term_end=[[July 28]][[1990]]<br>[[July 28]][[2006]] – [[July 28]][[2011]]
--Elvis 21:04, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, that works pretty well, --Gabbec 05:06, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Auxiliary templates

See the backlinks of these for dead and alive, American and non-American presidents with this infobox.

I think it's bad taste to even have a category for "Place of death" and "Date of death" on presidents who are still alive. Perhaps there should be a separate template for living presidents. Or make the category just disappear when the president is still alive (see the template I made for Philippine presidents) TheCoffee 16:01, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Display problems are caused by the following line: 

{{Infobox President/{{{dead}}}|date of death={{{date of death}}}|place of death={{{place of death}}}}}

This shows up in plaintext on at least one page, as shown below. Hemanshu, I have no idea what you wanted to do with it, but dysfunctional templates must be fixed. It makes no sense to include it until you think it will work. 119 04:24, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

{{Infobox President/{{{dead}}}|date of death=June 15, 1849|place of death=Nashville, Tennessee}}
James Knox Polk (November 2, 1795–June 15, 1849) was an American politician and the eleventh President of the...
Template is no longer "dysfunctional". The page was changed to conform with the new syntax. The idea is to show date of death and place of death only when the person is dead. An extra variable is introduced: dead. The place and date of death will show if dead=dead and will not show if dead=alive. This is a workaround for the fact that there is no other functional way to show an empty variable as of now. Sorry for not having said this so far. I have a bad habit of not explaining my edits and assuming they explain themselves. (which they do if you do not assume bad intent on my part) --Just my 2 cents -- Hemanshu 05:21, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

First Lady

Not all First Ladies are wives and not all wives are First Ladies, so the template ought to have separate entries for wives and First Ladies. --Palnatoke 19:01, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It ought not to have an entry at all. I think the phrase is mainly used in the USA. And what about female presidents? I propose to remove this entry from the template. It's a bit sexist, isn't it? Gerrit CUTEDH 19:56, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
And homosexual presidents may exist as well, of course. Gerrit CUTEDH 15:55, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be correct to list the names of first ladies by their maiden names, e.g., Nancy Davis, Bess Wallace, etc.? --Leifern 03:45, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Order

Surely order should be included even for "non-American" presidents. Not all presidents have a vice president but all can be ranked in order. Iota 15:28, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

We could change the denomination american/not-american to order/no-order. —Cantus…☎ 22:55, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)
Done. I changed american to nationality. Now any country specific info can be added in subpages. —Cantus…☎ 23:01, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

Why order is not displayed? I think it'd be nice if the order was displayed... --Dijxtra 14:53, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Occupation field?

What about adding a field for the presidents previous occupation? --ZekeMacNeil 02:21, 27 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Alignment doesn't work

The August 11th edit alignment and borders don't work, at least on Opera. So, I've moved the george bush article to use the old infobox (moved to Template:Infobox OldPresident) for now, otherwise the article looks kind of odd.... Ryan Norton T | @ | C 05:31, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

The "infobox bordered" class works fine in IE/FF/Opera. Perhaps you need to clear your cache to load the new stylesheet. ed g2s • talk 13:31, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Nope - still no go. Maybe its the mac version that has the problems.... but it still looks really wierd Ryan Norton T | @ | C 19:12, 31 August 2005 (UTC) OK, I figured it out - the table alignment is messed up in the "simple" skin... any idea on how to fix it? Ryan Norton T | @ | C 07:24, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

TfD debate

This template survived a debate at TfD. The discussion can be found here. -Splashtalk 03:26, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Wife

We now have the rather odd situation of Margaret Thatcher having data saying "wife = Dennis Thatcher". Is there a way to fix this without invalidating lots of stuff? Morwen - Talk 14:29, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

I tried duplicating the "wife" syntax but with spouse as the parameter in the hope that it would work - but it seems the two optional parts interfered with each other. Morwen - Talk 16:36, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Page Alignment

How do you get this to right-align on the pages? The equivalent box on the Anglo-Saxon wiki is left-aligned, and I'd like to fix it. --JamesR1701E 01:23, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Copy the "infobox" sections from simple:MediaWiki:Common.css to the equivalent MediaWiki:Common.css page on your wiki. It's nearly the same as what's used here on en:, but a little bit more refined. I just haven't had a chance to get it copied by an admin to ours here. -- Netoholic @ 08:41, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Signature

A field for a signature field was added recently, but I don't see the value in it. Even if we had images of all their signatures, it seems out of place in our articles, especially in the infobox. Maybe someone could give some arguments for it? -- Netoholic @ 23:13, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I have restored the signature. The argument for it is the same as the argument for including a picture of the person. Please give a reason for rejecting it other than vague statements like "I don't see the value in it" or "it seems out of place". PAR 02:11, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

How about... are signature images even allowed or appropriate on Wikipedia? See Talk:George W. Bush#Signature. -- Netoholic @ 02:24, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

  • I see one person who brought that up, and two people explained that there was no problem.
  • I see four people against, three for (now including myself) - not a consensus.
  • I see no reasons against except the usual vague "not encyclopedic" etc. etc.
  • The question is not whether the signature should be included on a web page, but rather whether the option should be availiable.
  • And finally, you have not answered the question, why not? Why is a picture ok, but a signature not? PAR 03:45, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Can you please point me a source that says images of signatures alone are valid to be here from a copyright standpoint? -- Netoholic @ 05:22, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Not per se, but I cannot point you to a source that says that the use of the word "the" is valid to be here from a copyright standpoint either. I think its like the tenth amendment, anything not forbidden is allowed. I have been operating under the idea (maybe its not completely right) that signatures on government documents are PD-GOV. They are in the public domain, and in fact I downloaded the Bush signature from a .gov domain. I think that signatures more than 70 years old are in the public domain under PD-OLD. There are some signatures that are trademarks, I think Marilyn Monroe's is in this category, and I hesitate to upload her signature, but it might be all right under some variant of the fair use policy. Anyway, I was thinking of grabbing some more presidential signatures from this excellent page: http://www.theamericanpresidency.us/01st.htm Also, it may be interesting to write a page on the forgeries of Abraham Lincoln's signatures such as is found in http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/scams/lincoln_forgers/. That would be a tough page to write without examples! PAR 01:09, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Signature display

This is in relation to the use of the CSS hack to hide unintended template inclusions.

If you can make "Died" say "not deceased" for living presidents, can you at least make an empty signature field contain a dash character instead of showing raw wikitext on the page: "Signature [[Image:{{{signature}}}|128px]]"? —Michael Z. 2006-02-05 18:03 Z

I don't understand what the problem is. If there is a signature image, then include it and it will display. If not, don't include it and it won't. Having a dash for a signature is not informative and should not be displayed, whereas "not deceased" is informative and should be displayed. PAR 02:34, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Something's buggered

I think it's this template but I'm not sure, however something is screwing up the display of Jacques Delors, adding a huge margin to the top of the page. Can it be remedied please? — Nicholas (reply) @ 17:36, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes. My apologies for being only able to work at this around 18:20 UTC. It seems fixed now. Please, let me know if you notice other anomalies. --Gennaro Prota (talk) 18:46, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Code addition

I added code that allows another title to be added if necessary. This would be used in instances with a situtation such as George H. W. Bush where he was both president and vice president. Without the code, the successor/predecessor path for vice presidency would not work. --MZMcBride 03:42, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Langauges Spoken

My entry of "languages spoken" was removed on the grounds of "relevance"...

Frankly, I'm not sure why it isn't relevant... Its another piece of factual information.

Moogle10000 03:31, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Problems with template

I have noticed some problems with this template. The template is in many cases used for articles about a head of state, or prime minister, so it's used as a 'catch-all' template in some cases.

Problems arise when

  • a head of state/PM serves more than two terms of office, or broken terms of office (i.e. a gap between both periods in office);
  • it is compulsory to enter a birth date - the template formatting will not continue to work unless the birth date is displayed, and entered.

I feel these should be changed as a matter of urgency. The simple fact is that in many countries the head of state can quite legally serve more than two terms of office. CUrrently, to enter dates for 3 or more terms, one has to enter a carriage < br > space, fill in the second or third starting date below, and then 'cheat' and add an em-dash in order to make the text appear the same as that generated by the template. This is not necessary when adding the dates for a second term, so I do not see why it should be for adding dates of a third, or additional term. This may also apply where a politician switches roles for a period of time - or takes on an additional role, and then steps back up to the original role - hence starting a new term of office.

Also, it should not be compulsory to add a date of birth - for the simple reason that it disrupts the formatting, unless it is entered. Some members may be unsure, or unaware of this information, and this is another reason why it should be left blank, if desired.

I recently changed the Politician infobox template, to allow a third term of office, but unfortunately whilst this one is more easily adapted to heads of state/government, the formatting is more consistent [the 'job title' goes in bold above the rest of the data], and layout generally better, the template is fully protected.

Any views about this?? I'd be grateful if someone could fix this. (RM21 08:01, 19 July 2006 (UTC))

  • As a point of interest, the article which I wanted to change was about Willi Stoph, an East German premier, who became head of state for a short while, before becoming premier again. Compare it with Erich Honecker and Egon Krenz. In this case, it would seem logical to add the fields 'order3', and 'term_start3'/'term_end3' etc., but they just aren't there at the moment... (RM21 08:27, 19 July 2006 (UTC))
I've lowered the protection of this template to allow editing by registered users. Please be careful when editing this template, as it is used on quite a lot of pages. —Ruud 13:41, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was no consensus. -- tariqabjotu (joturner) 22:21, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Requested move

Template:Infobox President → Template:Infobox Officeholder – This Template isn't just on the pages of Presidents but Prime Ministers, Chancellors, Governor Generals and more. I don't feel calling the template 'Infobox President' is appropriate for those pages for people who are officeholders but don't have the title of President. Hera1187 09:12, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Survey

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~
  • Support. makes it more inclusive. GraemeLeggett 11:39, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose on procedural grounds. I suspect Wikipedia talk:Infobox templates is a better place to discuss this, with a notice at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Politics. It will affect many many pages. --Dhartung | Talk 08:17, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose Based on this list [1] it seems like the rename could be technically sticky. Can't redirects be used on a template to accomplish the same thing? — MrDolomite | Talk 22:56, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Support, it seems logical to me. Also, I think that Dhartung opposition is mute as there are notices on those pages anyway. Philip Stevens 06:04, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Discussion

Add any additional comments
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Party logos

A user has just added a party logo function. According to Wikipedia:Fair use#Policy "[Fair use images] should never be used on templates". I don't know if they are allowed in a switch function however. If they are then great, but if not they should be removed. Philip Stevens 08:01, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

  • I've removed them. They were showing up in other places than main namespace. Regardless, their use here was not illustrative but decorative. --Durin 21:11, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Image size

Could the template be modified so the image size isn't set at 200px?--Peta 01:44, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I think I got it. Make sure you add px, not just the number for the size. --MZMcBride 03:10, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks - I've got it working now.--Peta 05:22, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

The move

I overturned the decission as no consensus from the move discussion, as the one closing the discussion havn't read the arguments, and only read the "oppose" vs. "Support". The reason for I moved, is that the one who voted for oppose, shows limited technical expertise in the area, as their main argument is that there whould be many articles that had to been fixed. that's not the case, so I have made the move now, and updated the resulting double redirects (four of them total). →AzaToth 18:37, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Multiple times in office

I encounterd a problem. This template does not allow multiple dates if the person held the same office more than once. E.g.: Ion I. C. Brătianu was Prime Minister of Romania for five times, and, althow I'ce filled in all the dates, it displayes only the last term.

Please help me!

Thank you!

ES Vic 12:50, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

  • I've added the infobox. Feel free to add any information I have left off. Philip Stevens 15:16, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Nicknames?

has there been any though given to including a place for nicknames? For example, James K. Polk (Napoleon of the Stump, Young Hickory), Andrew Jackson (Old Hickory), etc? youngamerican (ahoy hoy) 19:04, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Help!

I've been trying to implement a version of this template with (hopefully) more user-friendly code, but for some reason it keeps introducing a gap at the top of the articles to which it's transcluded. I've tried working through the code but can't see how/where this behavio/ur is arising – assistance please!  Thanks, David Kernow (talk) 22:50, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

In the meantime can you please revert your changes? This is affecting many prominent articles. Can this editing be done in a sandbox until the problems are worked out? --ElKevbo 23:52, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
Glad to report that cesarb has repaired the template and indicated to me the subtlety involved. Re sandboxing, cf here. Thanks to cesarb!  Regards, David (talk) 01:25, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
  • The template isn't working for incumbents as the date they entered office appears directly beneath "In office since". I've tried and failed to fix this, can someone else give it a try. Philip Stevens 13:49, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
    As reported here, all should be in order once more. David Kernow (talk) 20:42, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Office titles lost amongst other information...?

From here:

...I was thinking the office titles "Nth Leader of Somewhere" looked a bit lost amongst the other information, so maybe they would benefit from (say) a slightly different background... What do you reckon...?
  • I agree, it's often difficult to pick out the order, especially when on the second office. You could try many things to make the order field stand out more, like change the background colour or put on a border or increase the text. I think it would be best to start a discussion on the template's talk page and let other users have their say.

What do folk think...?  Thanks, David Kernow (talk) 20:42, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

...Have given office/s lavender background, hopefully acceptable and compatible with lightsteelblue "Incumbent" background. David (talk) 06:26, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict)
...and have now also made "Incumbent" background lavender; better contrast and less distracting beside office/s. David (talk) 06:32, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

  • This seems to work, though the background colour is sometime difficult to see. Perhaps, if you think it's needed, add a thin border to help. Philip Stevens 06:30, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
    • It works much better with the new "Incumbent" background, good work David. Philip Stevens 07:43, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

"In office since" changed to "Assumed office" to get rid of an assumed present.

If there is a start but not an end date, it was shown before my edit as:

  • "In office since <date>"

This assumes a present day, which is not appropriate for a timeless work of reference. I have changed it to

  • ""Assumed office <date>"

which basically means the same but doesn't assume a present time: the term may be ongoing, or may have finished on an unspecified date.

I expect other templates could benefit from similar changes. Pol098 08:14, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

"Incumbent"

Personally I don't like the "incumbent" line; if an entry is not kept up to date, it becomes ridiculous. I would remove it, leaving "Assumed office" with no end date to imply incumbency at the time the entry was made. But others will disagree.

In fact, I would advocate making the template less clever, and not distinguish at all between an officeholder incumbent at the time of entry or not.

Thus, during a term of office:

"In office 1 January 2006 -" (blank space)

and later

"In office 1 January 2006 - 31 December 2006"

I expect other templates could benefit from similar changes.

What do others think?Pol098 08:19, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

  • I'm not sure how out-of-date Wikipedia might be as regards this kind of information; have you tried a spot test of (say) thirty officeholders whose articles should / should not indicate incumbency...?  Regards, David Kernow (talk) 11:10, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
  • No systematic check. I'd expect prominent people to be bang up-to-date, while less prominent persons are far less likely to. The issue with "incumbent" in templates is just an example of the principle that Wikipedia should not assume a present time; see my Talk page for more on this and links to discussions I've recently started. Certainly (and leaving the subject of templates), articles are full of references that become dated: "recently", "at present", etc. With a bit of care it's possible to word everything, including templates, to avoid built-in obsolescence.

Pol098 14:25, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

languages spoken

As I noted above, I added a section called Languages Spoken quite a while ago... Which was removed for "unencyclopedic" content. I disagree with that removal and if there are no objections here, as soon as this template is unprotected, I'll add it.

It will link to a page I created: Linguistic capabilities of modern world leaders

Intended Usage Would Be:

George W. Bush Langauges Spoken: English

Angela Merkel Langauges Spoken: German, English, Russian

(With the native language listed first.)

User:Moogle10000, 30 December 2006 07:13

I strongly support this addition. The numbers of languages spoken is of high importance in diplomatics and a major skill of every statesman. MikeZ 11:00, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Presidents who were also Vice-Presidents

There is a problem when using this template for Presidents of the U.S. who were also Vice-Presidents (and probably many other similar situations). The example given at the top of this page, Harry S. Truman, shows the problem: Truman was Roosevelt's Vice-President, but the line "President: Franklin D. Roosevelt" appears in the part about Truman's presidency, not Vice-Presidency. Is there any way of changing that? Thanks, Pruneautalk 15:40, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

You'll most likely have to wait until the page is unprotected and then the fix can be easily made. --MZMcBride 17:00, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
There was nothing wrong with the template itself. The problem was that the example at the top of this page was incorrect. The president parameter is supposed to be used in a manner similar to the way the vicepresident field is supposed to be used, showing the years in office. -- tariqabjotu 13:13, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Title font size

This is just a minor suggestion: I think the font size for the name displayed at the very top of the infobox is too large. Most infoboxes in Wikipedia tend to use 120% or 110% for the title, rather than the 140% used here. Reducing the font size a bit would make the infobox look a lot better, especially for those officeholders with longer names. KeL 05:10, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Successor

I've just changed (twice) "Successor: incumbent" to "Successor: —", as the former is at best ambiguous, at worst plain false (his successor isn't the incumbent, he is). I don't know how common this is, and I can't find any mention of it. Could advice/guidelines be included here? --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 12:54, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Some things from Infobox Politician

The template {{Infobox Politician}} has a number of fields which are not present here. Would it not hurt to include some of the fields used there, such as "children" or "website"? - 52 Pickup 14:48, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Problem

Can somebody fix this minor bug. When several seperate terms in the same office are shown, the past terms show the little "In office" line. See Milorad Dodik for what I mean. "In office" gets repeated three times, and obviously he's not "in office" if the term was 1998-2001. Help!--Hadžija 12:44, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

  • I have changed the Milorad Dodik page so it says "Assumed office" for the Prime Minister of the Republika Srpska. As for the other offices he has held, this is how the info box is supposed to look. Philip Stevens 13:55, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I see that know. Still, not too great.--Hadžija 13:58, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Edit Request

{{Editprotected}} I'd like to propose some additions to this template. I have created a page with the proposed changes here, look at the talk page to see all the fields in use.

The changes would allow Presidents who served as Vice Presidents (like Truman displayed above) to show the President they served under when they were VP. I have also added a Prime Minister field so Chancellors of the Exchequer can show the PM they served under and Governor Generals and Presidents can show the PM(s) they served over. My changes would also clear up a problem with the Winston Churchill page where Clement Attlee and Anthony Eden are both shown to have been Deputy PM in Churchill's first term, which is incorrect.

Could an administrator please copy the code from here into the template. Thank you. Philip Stevens 16:27, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

 Done Let me know if anything is broken now... dosn't seem to be. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 21:25, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Thank you, everything seems to be working so far. Philip Stevens 06:54, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
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