Help:Infobox
An infobox is a fixed-format table designed to be added to the top right-hand corner of articles to consistently present a summary of some unifying aspect that the articles share and to improve navigation to other interrelated articles. The generalized infobox feature grew out of the original taxoboxes (taxonomy infoboxes) that editors developed to visually express the scientific classification of organisms.
What do infoboxes do?
Infobox templates contain facts and statistics that are common to related articles. For instance, all animals have a scientific classification (species, family and so on), as well as a conservation status. Adding a {{taxobox}} to articles on animals therefore makes it easier to quickly find such information and to compare it with that of other articles.
Infobox templates are like fact sheets, or sidebars, in magazine articles. They quickly summarize important points in an easy-to-read format. However, they are not "statistics" tables in that they are only supposed to summarize material from an article—the information should still be present in the main text, because it may not be possible for some readers to access the contents of the infobox. In particular, infobox templates may hide long columns of data inside collapsing tables, which means readers using assistive technology may miss their presence entirely.
Many infoboxes also emit microformats—see our microformats project.
What should infoboxes contain?
In general, data in infobox templates should be:
- Comparable. If a lot of different subjects all share a common attribute (for instance, all people have a name and a date of birth), then it is useful to be able to compare these across different pages. This also implies that where possible, material should be presented in a standard format.
- Concise. Infobox templates are "at-a-glance", and used for quickly checking facts. Long bodies of text, or very detailed statistics, belong in the article body.
- Materially relevant to the subject. A common problem is including material which is trivial and would not otherwise be included in the article body: for example, a fictional character's blood type may be referenced in passing in a work, but it is not especially useful to understanding the subject. Infobox templates should not be used for detail which is trivial to the point that if it were placed in the article body it would be removed. Furthermore, as mentioned above, some users may not be able to access the contents of the infobox and so would not be able to access this material in that case.
Finding an appropriate infobox template
Infoboxes are an extension of MediaWiki's template feature, and as such their implementations are kept in the Template namespace. There are two ways that editors typically want to access the underlying details of an infobox:
- First, editors can browse the comprehensive set of all infoboxes via Category:Infobox templates.
- Second (and more commonly), when an editor is inspired by an infobox in a particular article, he or she can map the infobox onto its template implementation in the Template namespace.
For example, the article D-Terminal contains an infobox. Simply edit the article to determine which one:
{{ infobox connector
...
}}
The start of the template identifies the markup between the enclosing braces as an infobox instance. While the next word identifies the specific kind of infobox (in this case the "Connector" infobox), the underlying template is still located in the Template namespace under {{infobox Connector}}. Note that MediaWiki properly handles differences in capitalization so that {{infobox connector}} maps to the appropriate template as well.
Designing infoboxes
Main article: Help:Designing infoboxes
You are well-advised to seek the opinions of other editors before embarking on a design of a new infobox or redesign of an existing one. If your ideas are welcomed, consider prototyping your new design. Once prototyped, propose the infobox changes to the appropriate WikiProject and gain consensus before deploying your new design.
For detailed guidance on how to design infoboxes, see Help:Designing infoboxes.