Template talk:Infobox organization
| This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Infobox organization template. |
|||
| |||
| Template:Infobox organization is permanently protected from editing because it is a heavily used and/or highly visible template. Substantial changes should be proposed here first. If the proposal is uncontroversial or has been discussed and is supported by consensus, editors may use {{edit template-protected}} to notify an administrator or template editor to make the requested edit. Any contributor may edit the template's documentation to add usage notes or categories. |
| WikiProject Organizations | (Rated Template-class) | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
||||||||||||||
| WikiProject Infoboxes | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|||||||||||
This template was nominated for deletion. Please review the prior discussions if you are considering re-nomination:
|
Archives | ||
|---|---|---|
| ||
| Threads older than 3 months may be archived by lowercase sigmabot III. |
Contents
Motto[edit]
This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Please see Template_talk:Infobox_organization/Archive_2#Mission,_slogan and the links there, which resulted in removing "mission" and "slogan" from this infobox. "Motto" is still there, and is the same nonencyclopedic, PR-driven thing as the other two. Please delete it. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 18:04, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
Done — JJMC89 (T·C) 18:45, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
- @JJMC89: "Motto" variable is used in many other relevant cases. Please reintrdouce it. See for instance: Cavalry and Guards Club, Catholic German student corporation Saarland (Saarbrücken) Jena, and more. Chicbyaccident (talk) 15:07, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
- @Jytdog, Lordtobi, MjolnirPants, and Faceless Enemy: Thoughts? — JJMC89 (T·C) 04:25, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
- Please don't reinstate it. This is just marketing cruft. Jytdog (talk) 04:29, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
- @JJMC89: My two cents is that it should be reintroduced - it might be important or notable occasionally. But Jytdog is also correct - usually it's just something useless, like "Proudly serving our customers and the community!" Maybe emphasize that the importance of mentioning it needs to be backed by reliable sources? Faceless Enemy (talk) 01:54, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
- If there are independent sources that say something meaningful about it, this can be discussed in the body of the article. Leaving it in the infobox, just opens us to more promotional cruft and battles about whether there is sufficient independent sources to copy/paste the motto from the organization's website into the infobox. Too many people come here already wanting to turn WP pages into proxies for the organization's own website. Jytdog (talk) 02:12, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
- @Jytdog, Lordtobi, MjolnirPants, and Faceless Enemy: Thoughts? — JJMC89 (T·C) 04:25, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
- I updated the documentation page to reflect this change. Simply revert my edit there if discussion changes. – TheGridExe (talk) 14:38, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
- This template is used for such things as the Royal Society and the Linnean Society, societies that have histories going back many centuries, they also have mottoes. The mottoes are as important and historic as are the mottoes of Universities and other such institutions. The infoboxes for such pages need the ability to show their mottoes. Either include this facility here or create a "Learned society infobox", "Society infobox" or "NGO infobox". At the moment the organization infobox is not appropriate or fit for purpose for these types of society. Urselius (talk) 11:20, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
- @JJMC89: "Motto" variable is used in many other relevant cases. Please reintrdouce it. See for instance: Cavalry and Guards Club, Catholic German student corporation Saarland (Saarbrücken) Jena, and more. Chicbyaccident (talk) 15:07, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Given the parameter's utility in articles about older organizations like the Royal Society and the Knights of Columbus, as well as the fact that a consensus for its reintroduction exists here (all but one person being in agreement), I've re-added {{edit template-protected}}. 142.160.89.97 (talk) 19:35, 22 August 2018 (UTC)
@JzG:@Jeff5102: We need some consistent and neutral standard for if/when to put a motto in an infobox, not just that someone thinks a particular motto is "Orwillian" [1] or similar IDONTLIKEIT/ILIKEIT arguments or personal opinions on mottos being marketing, ect. Tornado chaser (talk) 15:04, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
- The correct answer is: Never. It's marketing fluff, not encyclopaedic information. No mottos, slogans, mission statements or any other such PR guff. And absolutely never when it's a self-serving bullshit statement about "your choice" made by a group promoting preventable diseases, and sourced only from their own webshite. A few organisations do have independently notable slogans, most do not. There is an exception: when an organisation has a grant of arms, then that grant may include a motto and could and probably should be displayed under the arms. Guy (Help!) 15:12, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
- @JzG: Then we need consensus to remove the "motto" parameter from the template, editing based on personal objections to an infobox parameter that has consensus to keep is disruptive. (personally I nave no strong opinion on mottoes, but would support remove of the parameter to reduce conflict). Tornado chaser (talk) 15:19, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
- Or we need correct documentation to clarify it is not there for marketing statements, but only for independently notable text or grants of arms. And I would exclude it from my old school, by the way. That's a marketing slogan (it changed quite recently). Guy (Help!) 15:30, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
- My stance is: mottos can be inserted in the infobox, so we can insert them. If there is a problem with that, then there shouldn't be a possibility to insert them. This is a huge case of IDONTLIKEIT/ILIKEIT indeed. Before I give my opinion on this: does anyone know why mottos became a parameter in the first place? Regards,Jeff5102 (talk) 16:22, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
- @Jeff5102: The "motto" parameter was added in 2007 without a specific reason given [2]. Tornado chaser (talk) 16:39, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
- @JzG: I am concerned that whether a motto is "marketing" is too subjective and prone to IDONTLIKEIT/ILIKEIT edits. Tornado chaser (talk) 17:04, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
- It's nothing to do with liking it or not liking it. Mission statements, slogans and mottos are marketing devices, they exist to promote. Consider the well-known infectious disease promoters the "National Vaccine Information Center". Their motto is "Your Health. Your Family. Your Choice" bbut, as the article shows, they spend their entire time feeding people disinformation in the hope that they will make the wrong choice to the potential serious detriment to both their and everybody else's health, because they don't believe in all that pesky science and medicine stuff, they believe that vaccines cause everything from autism to infertility and death. Reporting their Orwellian motto is a gross failure of WP:NPOV. Guy (Help!) 19:03, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
- @JzG: Mottoes are promotional, your right, but we need to be consistent, we can't say organization X is good, so we can list their motto, but organization Y is bad so we can't list their motto. Also, if we are going to keep motto in the infobox, the fact that mottoes are promotional is not a justification for removing a particular motto. Tornado chaser (talk) 20:43, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
- Oh I agree, so I say remove them except in the specific case of articles on noble families with a grant of arms, of which the motto forms part, or, perhaps, where the motto is notable enough to be discussed independently. Guy (Help!) 21:24, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
- @JzG: I would support that. Tornado chaser (talk) 02:13, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
- Oh I agree, so I say remove them except in the specific case of articles on noble families with a grant of arms, of which the motto forms part, or, perhaps, where the motto is notable enough to be discussed independently. Guy (Help!) 21:24, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
- @JzG: Mottoes are promotional, your right, but we need to be consistent, we can't say organization X is good, so we can list their motto, but organization Y is bad so we can't list their motto. Also, if we are going to keep motto in the infobox, the fact that mottoes are promotional is not a justification for removing a particular motto. Tornado chaser (talk) 20:43, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
- It's nothing to do with liking it or not liking it. Mission statements, slogans and mottos are marketing devices, they exist to promote. Consider the well-known infectious disease promoters the "National Vaccine Information Center". Their motto is "Your Health. Your Family. Your Choice" bbut, as the article shows, they spend their entire time feeding people disinformation in the hope that they will make the wrong choice to the potential serious detriment to both their and everybody else's health, because they don't believe in all that pesky science and medicine stuff, they believe that vaccines cause everything from autism to infertility and death. Reporting their Orwellian motto is a gross failure of WP:NPOV. Guy (Help!) 19:03, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
- @JzG: Then we need consensus to remove the "motto" parameter from the template, editing based on personal objections to an infobox parameter that has consensus to keep is disruptive. (personally I nave no strong opinion on mottoes, but would support remove of the parameter to reduce conflict). Tornado chaser (talk) 15:19, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
Template-protected edit request on 25 April 2018[edit]
This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
The merge notice should be wrapped in <noinclude>...</noinclude> tags. It is being transcluded across mainspace pages. –Ammarpad (talk) 09:01, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
Focus/Purpose[edit]
This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
The focus/purpose parameter seems essentially the same as the deleted[3] mission parameter, and should also be deleted. Tornado chaser (talk) 00:22, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
Not done: I checked a few instances of its use and they don't appear to be used similarly. |Mission=appears to have been used for just a copy paste of the marketing while|purpose=isn't Galobtter (pingó mió) 06:13, 24 August 2018 (UTC)
Mergers/Unions[edit]
Following label42 "Successors", please consider adding:
| label43 = Mergers
| data43 =
| label44 = Unions
| data44 =
Mergers would be applicable to notable organizations absorbed by the subject organization of the article. Unions would be applicable to movements, where multiple affiliates merge or prior successors rejoin each other. –Zfish118⋉talk 03:12, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
- That's a false dichotomy. Nonprofits are also legal entities, and undergo the same merger processes as companies. And these come in various forms. The assumption that a commercial merger always involves one organization being absorbed by another isn't correct. For, say, ancient institutions that pre-date the existence of corporations, there is no problem of any kind using the word "merger", which has multiple meanings and also pre-dates modern corporation law. I'm not necessarily opposed to allowing some wording variation, but this is not a proper rationale for it in this case. If we did do this, it should not be done by adding an entire extra label/data pair. See the "General Secretary" case below for a much more efficient approach. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 02:43, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
Template-protected edit request on 6 November 2018[edit]
This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Many organisations use the title "General Secretary" rather than "Secretary General". In fact, I suspect more organisations use the former title than the latter. Accordingly I propose a new parameter, "gen_sec" to produce the label "General Secretary" as an alternative to the existing "sec_gen".
The change required is relatively simple: modify label32/data32, and add "gen_sec" to the list of valid parameters at the end.
I have made the necessary changes in the /sandbox, and tested them on the /testcases page, on which I've added an additional test case.
I will update the documentation as soon as I can after the change is made.
This change is definitely needed, and I believe is uncontroversial. To implement the change, all that is needed is to copy the /sandbox version to the live template. Thank you.
--NSH001 (talk) 07:32, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
- @NSH001:
Done. Thank you for being thorough. So many of these requests don't have any sandboxing or test-casing (or sometimes just edit the s'box without first copying the current template content into it). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 15:10, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
- SMcCandlish - thank you for responding, and for the kind words. And yes, I can believe the rest of what you say.
--NSH001 (talk) 20:21, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
- SMcCandlish - thank you for responding, and for the kind words. And yes, I can believe the rest of what you say.
RfC on the removal of "motto" parameter from infobox organization[edit]
|
Should the "motto" parameter be removed from this infobox? Tornado chaser (talk) 18:08, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
History of the issue (to the best of my knowledge): A content dispute in which I was involved regarding (among other things) whether to include the mission and slogan of an antivax group [4] inspired the removal of the "mission" and "slogan" parameters [5] and an attempt at removing the "motto" parameter Template_talk:Infobox_organization#Motto. The removal of mission and slogan resolved the dispute at NVIC until the slogan was added under the "motto" parameter [6] and immediately challenged with the edit summery "No mottos, they are a marketing device and in this case the motto is Orwellian, what with the group being leading advocates for preventable disease and all"
. Seeing this, I restarted the discussion on this talk page under "motto" [7] but is seems that an RfC will be needed to address the issue. Pinging currently involved editors @Jeff5102: @JzG:. Tornado chaser (talk) 18:08, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
So the question is: should the "motto" parameter be removed from this infobox? Tornado chaser (talk) 18:09, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
!Votes[edit]
- Weak keep; for my considerations: see below. Regards,Jeff5102 (talk) 08:18, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
- Remove Just like
|slogan=got chopped in {{Infobox company}}. Matthew hk (talk) 08:22, 7 November 2018 (UTC) - Keep. Evidently broadly used in some areas. Chicbyaccident (talk) 22:43, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
- Keep. Non-profit organizations' mottos are distinct from advertising slogans of commercial companies, and some of them are quite famous, and a part of the organizational identity (sometimes for centuries). Companies change slogans at the drop of a hat; if it's worth covering commercial slogan, do it in the article prose. (And some of them are independently notable, like "Just Do It"; some non-commercial organization's mottoes might also be; I haven't checked.) Finally, I don't think that an an entrenched bickering match at one article is grounds for deleting a site-wide template parameter. By way of analogy, if your kids can't decide who gets to sleep on the top bunk, burning down the bedroom is not the solution. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 15:14, 9 November 2018 (UTC); clarfied, 02:39, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
- remove it - it is just marketing garbage. If some organization's motto has some actual importance as demonstrated by RS it can be discussed in the body. WP is not here to do organization's marketing for them. By the way, this applies to nonprofits especially. The notion that non-profits are not marketing themselves is not correct. There are paid editing companies that offer Wikipedia editing services specifically to non-profits (e.g. these folks) and people advising nonprofits to abuse WP to get their message out and maintain their reputations (source, source). In my experience non-profits (including schools) are some of the most relentless abusers of WP for promotion, made doubly ick by their self-righteousness. And we should not do marketing for for-profits either. Jytdog (talk) 03:04, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
- I would remove due to the fact that it's likely to pick up all the slogans and mission statements that we decided we don't want. Motto is, however, a valid parameter where there is a grant of arms, so if we keep this it should be clearly identified as not for mission statements, slogans or other marketing cruft, but only for very specific cases where the motto is either inherent to a coat of arms or has been the subject of significant discussion (e.g. Be Prepared for the Scouts). Marketing fluff we do not need. Guy (Help!) 15:55, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
Discussion[edit]
- Or: "would removing the "motto" parameter from this infobox contribute to better articles on Wikipedia?" From one view, I would say it doesn't. Mottos can be very indicating for the identity and purposes of the organization. This even goes for the antivax group: in a rather cynical way, the motto Your Health. Your Family. Your Choice. tells people it is their choice to keep their children vulnerable for, among others, polio, measles and diphtheria. This is Orwellian indeed, but I would say that it is easy to be seen through. On the other hand, mottos also can be a load of hot air, and they may change from time to time. Considering all this, I believe that keeping the motto-parameter is the best option, although I wouldn't make much objections when it will be deleted after this discussion. Best regards, Jeff5102 (talk) 21:48, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
- Actually it tells you nothing because their view of health depends on rejecting all credible advice and accepting in its stead the words of mad charlatans, their conflation of "your family" and "your choice" assumes that there is no societal cost from failure to vaccinate, a belief that is absolutely categorically false. Basically they are liars, and their motto is a lie. Guy (Help!) 15:58, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
@Jeff5102: for organization's sake I am making a discussion section and a vote section, your post looks like discussion but if you mean this as a vote feel free to move it Tornado chaser (talk) 23:22, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
- All right. I ~took the freedom to change the Votes and Discussion-headers in sub-headers. Then everyone can see that all this is related to the motto-discussion. All the best, Jeff5102 (talk) 08:22, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
I had said I supported removal(in the discussion under "motto"), but I am becoming undecided on this one. If I were King of Wikipedia I would restore the "mission" parameter, as well as keeping "motto" as it seems informative to get a bit of the organization's self description. I don't see how a slogan will misinform anyone so long as the rest of the article uses good secondary sources so as to avoid being promotional. That said, I don't see a slogan as an absolutely critical part of an article, and I am concerned that the objections to adding antivaxers' slogans are based on the fact that they are anti-vaccine, I cannot see how it is consistent with NPOV to remove slogans based on the fact that we find the organization objectionable. If consensus not to include the slogans of antivaxers develops, this would set a dangerous precedent in favor of POV-pushing, we NEED consistent standards, and it would be far better to remove all mottoes than to allow any editing decisions to be based on editors' judgement about an organization or other entity being "good" or "bad". Tornado chaser (talk) 03:22, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
- Mission statements can safely be left to their own webmasters. We are not here to promote them. We should describe what they do neutrally and from reliable sources, not from their own PR. It's not just antivax charlatans. There are nonprofits with high sounding missions about liberty and freedom that are merely front groups for the fossil fuel industry, for example. Guy (Help!) 15:59, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
- I think mission statements help people to see what kind of language is used to promote questionable groups, so when someone reads the mission statement about freedom(labeled as a mission statment) but then sees that the rest of the article talks about a fossil fuel front group, they might be less likely to fall for groups that misrepresent pollution as freedom in the future. But there are good arguments on both sides so I might not vote. But what we must be absolutely sure to avoid is selectively allowing mottoes depending on what the group promotes. Tornado chaser (talk) 16:13, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
"Infobox organizat on"[edit]
Pigsonthewing, your edit to the documentation page appeared to change "Infobox organization" to "Infobox organizat on" in the "Usage" section. The diff shows the change but the source code shows no change. Do we have gremlins here? StarryGrandma (talk) 22:21, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
- It did a typo Special:Diff/868702578. But the doc is located in Template:Infobox organization/doc and unprotected. Matthew hk (talk) 22:23, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
- Somehow I couldn't change the page. Even though I edited it yesterday. Trying again. StarryGrandma (talk) 22:37, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
- Changed "tion" to "tion" to make "t on" go away, had to add a space or the editor thought there was no change and didn't save it. However it still displays as "Infobox organizat on". StarryGrandma (talk) 22:41, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
- Fixed. I was confused by the double display and tried to fix the wrong spot. StarryGrandma (talk) 23:11, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
- Somehow I couldn't change the page. Even though I edited it yesterday. Trying again. StarryGrandma (talk) 22:37, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
Typo[edit]
This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Could an admin change "Nicknme" to "Nickname"? Tornado chaser (talk) 22:23, 13 November 2018 (UTC)