Template talk:Infobox artist discography

This template is within the scope of WikiProject Albums, an attempt at building a useful resource on recordings from a variety of genres. If you would like to participate, visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.AlbumsWikipedia:WikiProject AlbumsTemplate:WikiProject AlbumsAlbum

Discographies

This template is within the scope of the Discographies WikiProject, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's collection of discography articles and lists. If you would like to participate please visit the project page. Any questions pertaining to discography-related articles should be directed to the project's talk page.DiscographiesWikipedia:WikiProject DiscographiesTemplate:WikiProject DiscographiesDiscography

Archives

Archive 1

Linked title

The "Artist" parameter is part of the title ("__ discography"). The description says, "Use an internal link". However, this is a distinct contradiction with MOS:INFOBOX, which says under Consistency between infoboxes in bullet point #4, "It should not contain a link". It's also similar to what it says in MOS:HEADINGS: "Headings should normally not contain links, especially where only part of a heading is linked." --Musdan77 (talk) 06:18, 1 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Images

Using images with this broke at some point in the past. I've recoded the image handling, per the request of someone trying to use this template and getting strange results back, and it should work exactly as intended now. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 19:38, 8 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Style violations

This infobox violates multiple style guidelines, including:

"Do not include links to sections within the article; the table of contents provides that function" (Purpose of an infobox).
"... infoboxes should not be arbitrarily decorative" (Style, color and formatting) - the garish colors serve no purpose.
" If the material requires a reference ... and the information does not also appear in the body of the article, the reference should be included in the infobox" (WP:INFOBOXREF) - it is not possible to add sources to this infobox.

All of these problems could be fixed by converting the infobox to a more conventional style like {{Infobox artist}}. RockMagnetist(talk) 04:57, 18 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Here is a replacement template: {{Infobox artist discography2}}. It is designed so that it will work with the same fields as {{Infobox artist discography}} (it will simply ignore the color and link fields), so the only change necessary ~~in each article is to replace the name of the template~~ replace the code in the latter infobox. RockMagnetist(talk) 05:39, 19 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

See this template in action at David Bowie discography. It has the additional aesthetic advantage that it doesn't compete visually with the image of the artist. RockMagnetist(talk) 06:00, 19 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Please let me answer your points one by one:

"Do not include links to sections within the article; the table of contents provides that function". True, we don't need any links in the infobox.
"'... infoboxes should not be arbitrarily decorative' ... - the garish colors serve no purpose." These colours serve the purpose of helping to distinguish between the type of releases (albums, singles, EPs, etc). Since this is basically a table summing up the numbers of various releases it becomes much more readable when each row has a different colour than with a uniform background. The standard infobox template is designed for a mix of numbers and strings in the table cells which makes it more uncluttered by default than a repetitive pattern of "text | number". The colours are there for a purpose and apparently there is consensus for including them since 2007.
"'If the material requires a reference ... and the information does not also appear in the body of the article, the reference should be included in the infobox' (WP:INFOBOXREF) - it is not possible to add sources to this infobox." See the other "References & footnotes" discussions above. We just don't need references for this infobox because there is nothing to add that is not already referenced in the list itself.

That said I propose to remove the links from the original template and redirect {{Infobox artist discography2}} here as it is redundant. De728631 (talk) 19:18, 19 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the thoughtful reply. I will consider points 2 and 3 separately, in case there is more discussion of the points. 2. Color: I think you're saying that the color makes it easier to see which number goes with which label. It's true that the numbers are pretty far from the labels. However, the current color scheme probably doesn't meet the color guidelines in Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility#Color. And it's ugly. Here are some possible approaches:

Use the same color for all the entries (the white lines show the separation)
Use a plain table format with lines.
Decouple the table from the image, so an appropriate width can be chosen for both. RockMagnetist(talk) 21:49, 19 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Have a look at Template:Infobox artist discography/testcases, where I compare solution 1 with the existing infobox. RockMagnetist(talk) 17:58, 21 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It turns out that I can achieve the same effect with much simpler syntax using the standard infobox template in {{Infobox artist discography2}}. Check out the new look at David Bowie discography. RockMagnetist(talk) 18:25, 21 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That's actually an excellent solution. I was just about to code something of my own in my user sandbox but I think your latest version of {{Infobox artist discography2}} is just what we're needing here. It has a single subtle colour that enhances the table rows and it's also much easier code-wise. Now I think we should merge {{Infobox artist discography2}} to the original {{Infobox artist discography}}. De728631 (talk) 21:57, 22 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]