Talk:Renaissance Theatre Company

Metadata

If the {{infobox organization}} template is used, it produces the following metadata as far as I can see:

class="vcard" for the table as a whole
class="org" for 'Renaissance Theatre Company'
class="dtstart" for '1987'
class="dtend" for '1994'

All of these are useful pieces of information that then become immediately available to re-users by standardised means of scraping data.

I don't think that the small infobox is aesthetically unappealing in this case, although I accept that others may disagree. Nevertheless, at present, use of the infobox is far-and-away the most convenient means that editors have to make the metadata available, and I suggest that the advantage of its retention here outweighs the likely disadvantages that I can see (repetition of info and aesthetics, I assume). I'd be happy to discuss these issues here if there is a case to be made for removal of the infobox. --RexxS (talk) 19:31, 21 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Are the date-related metadata also emitted by {{Start date}} and {{End date}}, or no? Either way, I would disagree that the value of metadata would outweigh the redundancy to the first two sentences. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:02, 22 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

'1987' and '1994' are marked up with the classes from those two templates as well, but of course that leaves them disassociated directly from the name of the organisation and the overall wrapper (vcard), both of which are part of the standard that external re-users will be looking for. I can't agree that the decrease in redundancy makes up for the loss of metadata. If you're unable to accommodate any form of infobox, I find it difficult to see where any common ground is available. I'm disappointed that you are now forcing your version against two other editors, so it appears dispute resolution is the only option available to avoid an edit war. --RexxS (talk) 03:17, 22 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think perhaps you've misread again? There is currently an infobox in the article. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:05, 22 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

LOL - just put it down to senility on my part. I must have been looking at one of the numerous diffs I had onscreen late last night (3 am is convenient for insomniac dinosaurs like me, but not productive). I've scratched my commentary, so please accept my apologies for getting hold of the wrong end of the stick! Happy editing, --RexxS (talk) 17:04, 22 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Placing the infobox in the references section yields the same metadata, so there's no difference in that respect, although the unusual position may turn out to be a magnet for editors thinking it needs to be put back at the top because that's where infoboxes normally are. The downside for me is that I've been looking at ways of scraping the lead of articles to generate a 'micropedia' (I can't claim credit for the idea - but there's a rough demo at http://www.quwiki.co.uk/?art=Alexis_Bachelot) and I expect any infoboxes to be between the start marker "mw-content-text" and the table of contents "toc". It's not a big deal here as the article is too short to have a TOC. See how it goes, there may be developers who have made similar assumptions about where elements are placed, but we won't know until it's tried. --RexxS (talk) 20:01, 22 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Infoboxes#Hidden infoboxes

There is a discussion on hidden infoboxes in progress, which is relevant to this article. Voceditenore (talk) 19:22, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox

I restored the little infobox in the normal top position. Why would we deviate here? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:19, 16 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Why not? It stayed at the bottom for months without trouble. MBW said it was preferable to remove it rather than have it there, I don't know why, so I removed it. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:23, 16 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I would think it needs a good reason to be different position from normal, at the top. And a good reason (not one editor's remark that perhaps wasn't even serious) to remove content someone else created, however little. There is room for improvement. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:27, 16 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Precedent. I'm not going to edit war over this any further, (and sarcasm is obviously missed when in the written form) but frankly, a small infobox is better than none at all. If it's terribly offensive, then fix it. This is an encyclopedia and certain formatting and design standards should be observed. Many articles across multiple wikiprojects have incomplete infoboxes, but they are an integral part of the article. However, if we remove them, they never WILL be filled in because people don't even know they are supposed to be there. Montanabw^(talk) 17:00, 16 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"they never WILL be filled in because people don't even know they are supposed to be there" - you say that like it's a bad thing. They're not "supposed to" be there; they can be there, if they have more benefits than costs, but this one doesn't. It was at the bottom so it could provide metadata without being obtrusive; if it can't be there for some reason (and "precedent" isn't a reason, as the precedent for this article is to have it at the bottom, where it's been for months), then it would be better to minimize or exclude it. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:11, 16 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I do say it like it's a bad thing; I think every article that has enough in common with similar topics to be suitable for an infobox template should have some sort of consistent thing like an infobox or something similar. The ones without just look like unfinished articles and have no visual interest. But I suppose that's a debate for elsewhere. Montanabw^(talk) 22:43, 16 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]