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Derived from the article?

"However, all of what is contained in an infobox must be derived from the article."

This is one of those things that is true in the ideal article but very much not the case in practice, isn't it? In fact, I suspect if we get eyeballs on this proposal outside this circle, we will quickly find people who disagree that it should be true at all. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 15:05, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

• I think I said it, though: if it isn't the same information that's in the article, then it is, effectively, a displaced paragraph or a counter article. If it's novel information, then the people who put it up there should go in and make sure it appears in the article as well. This is at the heart of the distinction between an infobox and, basically, a new piece of the article. E.g. in a textbook (which is where, I think, most of the boxers get their inspiration), there will be a little box for the MTV-addled reader, and it will be "the thing you need to study for the test because we know you're not reading and can't extract notes." That box has to represent stuff that's in the textbook, or else it's not an infobox. Geogre 16:19, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

• • quickly find people who disagree that it should be true at all hehe sorry but I'd like to throw in a thought here. When thinking of Infoboxes, I'm minded of the sort of information sometimes found in the Architects Journal building studies. The article proper will give a discourse of the buildings context, construction, precedents and quite a bit of specific pertinent data. However infoboxes are included at the end of the article listing information which is quite useful for reference but otherwise too dry to be unnaturally crow-barred into the prose such as price per square metre, total area of cladding, mechanical and service engineer's addresses etc. I wonder about the nature of an enclyopedia. Policy suggested we should use a summary style in our prose. Maybe the infobox is where supplementary data should be located?--Mcginnly | Natter 21:18, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
    • Also, I thought proponents of infoboxes argue that they are valuable because techy-types can extract all of the information across multiple articles to compile erm......lists I suppose. Is this mentioned in the page?--Mcginnly | Natter 21:28, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I did mention the "compare across articles of a type," but if a box has information that isn't in the main article, then I maintain that someone is doing something wrong. The box becomes a separate article and can't be added as "no harm, no foul" because it's then an editorial change. In the past, the boxers have said that the boxes are just helpful, that they're not changing anything, that no one should complain, because they're harmless. Well, if they're including information that isn't researched, isn't cited, isn't in the article, then either the article needs help or the box is out of line. Anyway, people will disagree with anything said about boxes, to some degree. My goal is a process rather than a ruling, to try to come up with some general guidelines for how we approach gluing things onto existing articles. Boxes and tags differ from other edits because they inevitably come after an article is more or less complete. Geogre 02:22, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

That's not really true either. You can find plenty of stubs with infoboxes. (Especially in the music area, but really everywhere). Some of the time the infoboxes were added by the original author; sometimes not. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 02:37, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

As I say, that's wrong. That's the equivalent of ornaments without a Christmas tree. If someone is putting in a box without putting the information into the article, then I'd AfD it. Seriously: we are not constructing trading cards, here. Geogre 04:23, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't know what to say. The realities of the situation on the ground are there. As an example, I invite you to look at any five or ten articles in Category:2000s pop album stubs. You'd have literally thousands if not tens or hundreds of thousands of AfDs to enter. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 05:11, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

A particularly good example of a bad infobox is the one found in some runestone pages such as Burestenen. It contains some repeated info that really doesn't need repeating in such a short article, some stuff that isn't in the actual article text (and which is now, for no particular reason, pushed down below the edge of the screen, at least on my monitor) and it forces the image to be much smaller than would be desirable just to fit in the box. (I guess it would be easier to deboxify runestones than pop albums, though...) Tupsharru 11:26, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

• Alright, well, the poptarts should have their articles AfD'd, if they can't manage to write as much as is in the box, and the box authors need to be shamed: if you had to look up stuff to make your box, get off your duff and add the information. The runestone box has a good bit of information that's kind of ... irrelevant. I suppose it's useful, if you're going on the Grand Tour of Runes, but there are a lot of irrelevancies in it. Anyway, we're getting hung up on the "derived from the article" phrase. I thought the procedure section is what folks would be upset about. The section about infoboxes is, I think, a particular verity. Some lone scholar is informed that a Project is moving in and taking over, and there's nothing he can say about it. The boys has decided to put up a box, and nobody get any ideas of being a wise guy. Geogre 11:38, 5 August 2006 (UTC)