Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 62

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good, please keep going

Jguk,

I think your new first para is an improvement. I suggest you may want to continue.

There are still 2 questions that pop up in my mind:

1. When the 1st para says "there is very little prescription here" and some section midway down says "[do not] do such-and-such", then (a) is the "do" an exception to the "very little prescription", or (b) does the "very little prescription" mean that we aren't 100 percent insisting on the "do"?

2. A writer who really wants guidance can follow the suggestions in WP:MoS if anybody ever got around to saying anything about the style issue they want guidance on. But if nobody ever got around to saying anything about the issue, then we abandon that writer who really wants guidance -- because we don't ever have the courage (editorial, not moral) to say "hey, if you really want guidance, and we don't answer your question herein, then may we suggest [some guideline]".

TH 18:22, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Religions, deities, philosophies, doctrines, and their adherents

I will start by saying that I do not truly have a NPOV on this topic. As a Pagan (Wiccan), I feel very strongly that there is a problem here with a perception of dismissal of the gods of cultures other than the Christian one. When I refer to the Gods, I give them the proper deference by capitalizing "Gods". You will notice that when I referred to gods in a general, non-specific way I did use the lower-case, "gods".

An article I contribute to was recently edited to change all references from "the Gods" to "the gods". This was in reference to a fantasy game pantheon and yet I feel I was correct, as "the Gods" was referring to a specific set of deities. I came here to see if I had grounds to reverse the edit but find that, as it stands, I do not.

The deity of the predominant religion seems to be the only one worthy of respect here... --Bill W. Smith, Jr. 02:12, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I am calmer today. :) May I suggest the following rewrite, with my addition in bold?

Deities begin with a capital letter: God, Allah, Freya, the Lord, the Supreme Being, the Messiah. (Note that articles, such as “the” are not capitalized.) The same is true when referring to important religious figures, such as Muhammad, by terms such as the Prophet. Transcendent ideas in the Platonic sense also begin with a capital letter: Good and Truth. Pronouns referring to deities, or nouns (other than names) referring to any material or abstract representation of any deity, human or otherwise, do not begin with a capital letter. Thus while it is accepted correct usage to say, “He prayed to Wotan”; since Wotan in this case is a proper name, it is correctly capitalized, but the common use of gods in this sense is not capitalized. Thus one would not say "He prayed to the God Wotan," but instead would say "He prayed to the god Wotan." The following sentence would be correct usage: “It was thought that he prayed to God, but it turned out he prayed to one of the Norse gods.” One exception to this is when "Gods" is used in the specific, referring to a set of specific gods. The following sentence would be correct usage: "In his anger and loss, he cried out to the Gods of his fathers."

--Bill W. Smith, Jr. 17:12, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

The capitalization is not done out of respect. If it were, then personal pronouns referring to God would probably also be capitalized. But lack of capitalization is not a sign of disrespect, either.

The phrases the Gods of his fathers and the gods of his fathers don’t refer to different things. Either way, they’re talking about deities that had some connection to his fathers. These things he was calling out to, what were they? They were gods. They weren’t Gods. Each one by itself was a god, not a God. Which gods did he cry to? His fathers’ gods.

If you had written that he cried out to “the Gods of his Fathers,” capital F, that might be a different matter. In that case, it’s the phrase Gods of his Fathers that is the proper noun, not just Gods. I don’t see where gods ever refers to anything more than a collection of things that all belong to the class “god.”

Suppose his fathers only had one god. Then it would be, “he cried out to the god of his fathers.” If you want to capitalize it in that case as though it’s a proper name, then try replacing it with names of other gods and see if it still makes sense:

• he cried out to the Odin of his fathers.
• he cried out to the Allah of his fathers.

Those clearly don’t work, so neither does “he cried out to the God of his fathers.” Since it doesn’t work in the singular, it doesn’t work in the plural, either. --Rob Kennedy 20:07, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I see your point regarding the sentence I used as a usage example. I still find it hard to swallow the public relations masterpiece of the Christians, calling their god, "God", implying that either 1) He is all gods, or 2) He is the only god. Either way you hash it, it was a stroke of public relations genius which we perpetuate. He does have a name. He was the god of the Hebrews first, and before that He was a tribal war god.

If it is wrong to capitalize Gods, why is it ok to capitalize the Christian God? --Bill W. Smith, Jr. 23:09, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, Christians generally do believe that God is the only god, or at least the only one worth anyone’s attention. I’d hardly call it public relations, though. It’s been that way for centuries. That About.com site for atheism has an article about capitalization of god.

Whether to capitalize the Christian God depends on context.

Suppose we have the sentence “My brother thinks he is God.” But there are several ideas of what God is like, so that sentence might not give very specific information about my brother’s delusion. Which “version” of God does he think he is? The Christian one: “My brother thinks he is the Christian God.” Other proper names can get the same treatment: “As president, my brother will emulate John Adams.” But there were two presidents with that name. Which one? “As president, my brother will emulate the younger John Adams.” Both the adjective and the definite article need to be there.

Now, suppose we’re beginning a joke: “Zeus, Odin, and God walk into a bar. The god goes up to the bartender and says ….” We don’t know which one talked to the bartender, so we need an adjective there to distinguish: “The Christian god goes up ….”

See? It depends on the context. --Rob Kennedy 05:34, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, "the Christian God" is not correct, it should be "the Christian god". The word "god" here is not used as a proper name. Compare "Odin, the Germanic god of...", "Jehova, the Christian god", "the Christian god is commonly called "God" by his followers" etc. Shinobu 02:52, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

From that, I conclude that you didn’t understand the example I gave. Maybe I wasn’t clear. I think it’s easy: Would the word be capitalized without the adjective Christian? If so, then it should be capitalized with the adjective, too. Otherwise not. Maybe I muddied the waters with that John Adams bit. Here’s another example. Suppose two people, Johnson and Jones, have written about Odin, but they have differing accounts of his hair color.

“The Odin in Johnson’s account has green hair. The Odin in Jones’s article blue white hair.”

Those are valid capitalizations, right? Now let’s rephrase those sentences:

“The Johnson Odin has green hair. The Jones Odin has blue hair.”

Valid again. Now replace Odin with God, and it’s still valid, right? Now here’s the final step. Instead of getting accounts of God from Johnson and Jones, let’s get them from two different religions, say, Christianity and Judaism:

“The Christian God green gray hair. The Jewish God has blue hair.”

It’s not as simple as saying that every occurance of the three words the Christian God is always wrong. Things rarely are. --Rob Kennedy 04:33, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I think you missed my point a little.

@Would the word be capitalized without the adjective Christian?:

Without it, it says "the god", still without cap. You can only get a cap here in circumstances like this: "The God of Raphael looks much fiercer than the God of Michelangelo". However, then you would not use the "Christian" adjective. If you would, "god" would not be name anymore, and thus not capitalized.

Same holds for your other examples:

“The Christian god has gray hair. The Jewish god has blue hair.”

Here god is not used as a name, hence no cap. It might be slightly borderline, since you could argue on historical grounds that these are two views of the same being. However, if two religions view their gods differently, then they're different gods, since the view a religion has of a god defines it. The cap-less version of the example however is always correct, no matter your religious and/or philosophical beliefs and opinions. Shinobu 07:32, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

I am an atheist, but here are my thoughts on the subject. "God" is only capitalized for the Christian god because they use "God" as his/her/its name. The name "God" is used exactly the same as the names "Zeus" and "Odin" (or even "Tom," "Dick," and "Harry"). If you're talking about the Greek gods, or any other collection of gods, then they are referred to in lowercase. The new TV series Battlestar Galactica puts a twist on our culture by having the humans refer to gods (plural), while the Cylons refer to a single deity named God. It might seem unfair, but the Cylons would be "allowed" to capitalize the name "God," while the humans would be "forced" to lowercase their collection of gods. Presumably, the gods of Battlestar Galactica have individual names. If any of those names were used instead, they would, of course, be capitalized. BJ Nemeth 02:25, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

templates and linking in them

I originally posted this on WP:MOS-L and didn't get a response so I thought I would just post it over here and see if there's any response.

I've been editing a writers wiki page using the Template:Infobox Writer and another user changed the Website field from the way I had it (example) Official website to [1] citing WP:MOS. I personally think it looks better as official site especially since being in a template, or heck even www.catherinecoulter.com would do but the WP:MOS-L only says However, you should add a descriptive title when an external link is offered in the References, Further reading, or External links section. Is there any policy on this someplace that I'm not seeing? The template itself says nothing about the preferred style of choice. I bring this up here because I don't see it elsewhere and since that's the case perhaps it should also be on here, plus I don't want to get into an edit war. All other authors that I see using the Website field either have Official website or www.catherinecoulter.com so perhaps clarification for templates is needed? Anyway any answers are appreciated. Thanks. --ImmortalGoddezz 00:49, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm guessing the user was referring to the links MoS and Embedded HTML links. Regarding infoboxes, I never came across such a guideline but I see nothing wrong in what you did. You could easily contact the user and ask him if he can direct you to the guideline he was referring to. - Tutmosis 01:15, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

That particular change was inappropriate. The “[#]” style should be reserved for situations in which the link is being used as a citation. (And even then, it should probably be replaced with a real footnote citation to provide additional information beyond just the URL.) I see nothing at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links) to support the edit you’re concerned about.

Usually, I like to see URLs hidden behind regular linked text, the way your original text was, and as described at WP:MOS-L#Link titles. But there’s an exception, and that’s when the subject of discussion is the Web site itself. Then it makes perfect sense to have the URL appear in full. In the case of the template, that space is labeled for the writer’s Web site. There’s no need to hide the address of it — the address is exactly what that spot is for. What is her Web site? It’s CatherineCoulter.com, not “Official website.” (And I’d prefer the capital letters there, too, for the sake of readability.) --Rob Kennedy 04:26, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

It definitely shouldn't be "CatherineCoulter.com" unless that's the actual title of the site (a la Amazon.com). It should be catherinecoulter.com. It's a URL. – flamurai (t) 05:28, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Domain names aren’t case-sensitive. Camel case breaks the words apart without breaking the link. --Rob Kennedy 05:43, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your input, usually when doing citation I just use citeweb or <ref> instead of embedded links, but since there's no mention of 'in template linking' on WP:MOS-L I was really unsure. Template linking is probably something that should be added in Wikipedia: Manual of Style (links) since templates seem to be so abundant lately... anyway usually I try to go by policy but when looking this up I couldn't find it and I didn't really want to go up and say 'well that's inappropriate' to change "x" to "y" when "y" (in my opinion) looks inappropriate especially when I can't find a wiki policy that says one way or another. When using the template I usually like to link as Official Website since some of the authors names can be pretty long and push outside of the template whereas official website is at least somewhat uniform but either one seems better than just a plain [2] in the field parameter. The feedback is much appreciated, I'll change the link on her wiki page and mention it on the talk page as to avoid conflict. --ImmortalGoddezz 05:00, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Quotations

The examples on this page are not precisely clear: What should be done in the following case:

George writes that it "gives the impression that it is actively speciating to fill the many ecological niches through its range".

Or,

George writes that it "gives the impression that it is actively speciating to fill the many ecological niches through its range."

Is this a "fragment" or a "full sentence" that carries the meaning of the full stop? Either way, could an example such as this be added to clarify this problem? --Spangineer^ws (háblame) 06:05, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I doubt we will ever get agreement on this. Nor is it really important: either should be acceptable, it's a borderline case. - Jmabel | Talk 00:01, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Use of bold

When bold should be used in the articles, apart in the article title?--Panarjedde 13:37, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Almost never. Please refer to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (text formatting) for more information. --Rob Kennedy 18:53, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I see that there are many discrepancies between MoS and MoS(tf). Do we want to have two articles with so much overlap and such a burden of synchronization? TH 06:27, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, that’s a problem. It’s inevitable that MOS pages will brush into each other, but they shouldn’t overlap that much. It makes it hard to resolve style questions, and it fragments discussion about policy changes. Someday, I hope to do some work toward reducing the overlap, but not now. Maybe after the semester is over. --Rob Kennedy 03:05, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

It's often used in the first paragraph for alternate names, all of which should be redirects: e.g. "The Republican Party (often referred to as the GOP, for Grand Old Party)…" - Jmabel | Talk 00:04, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

What Is The Policy On {{see also}}, If Any?

Thanks.100110100 02:05, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

That's an awfully vague question. - Jmabel | Talk 00:05, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

What I think is meant is "when is it appropriate to use this template, and when is it not appropriate?". I don't know of any policy myself regarding this. FranksValli 05:45, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Essay on pop culture

Please read my essay on pop culture in Wikipedia and comment. Be nice, please! I welcome all constructive criticism. Mr Spunky Toffee 16:01, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Link: User:Mr Spunky Toffee/Popular culture in Wikipedia --Milo H Minderbinder 16:59, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Which was deleted as a "rant by indef blocked user". - Jmabel | Talk 00:07, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Why I restored after 2 reverts re italics/quotations, article/Article, punctuating quoted sentence fragments

To the reverter --

1. I don't understand the statement "that edit seems to change the meaning" nor the statement "you keep changing the meaning of the italics and quotations section". Please explain any objections.

2. I request that the reverter would not destroy all my changes (changes in unrelated sections, for example) when there is an objection to only a portion of my changes. For an extra 20 seconds of the reverter's time, reverting just one section would simplify the sequence of versions and would be courteous to other people whose questions I have attempted to answer.

3. I am requesting formal mediation on this dispute -- please join me in resolving this.

TH 18:53, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Let's see:

The major point of the section on italics is not the use of italics for emphasis within quotes, but rather the italicizing of the entire quote (which is the standard in a number of style guides, particularly older ones). Your changes entirely remove this.

As far as your other changes, they're not always an improvement. Going through them:

1. The use of boldface with article titles: why would the first letter be capitalized there? The convention is that, in the text of the article (as opposed to the title itself), normal capitalization rules apply, and the artificial capitalization of the first letter is dropped unless needed.
2. The change from "situation was 'deplorable'" to "situation 'is deplorable'" seems arbitrary; either could be the more appropriate form, depending on the context.
3. The retention of the initial capitalization of the quote is, again, arbitrary; the next paragraph, in fact, explicitly permits downcasing.

Kirill Lokshin 19:26, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Kirill,

Right you are on your item 1, I got carried away with the initial cap.

Re your item 2, Spangineer recently posted a question above about the fragment issue. I expanded the quote from "deplorable" to "is deplorable" in an attempt to make it clearer that anything short of a full sentence is a fragment, and the fragment rule applies. Both examples are correct. The longer one has the advantage of being a bit clearer, with no disadvantage that I can see.

Re your item 3, some time ago I posted a question saying that I didn't know the rule for initial cap inside a quotation. Then I found a citation. I quoted it in the "Go now" example. (Yes, the two sections should really be integrated.) Since we have a citation telling us to capitalize the first letter, and no citation saying otherwise, does WP:Verifiability tell us we must stay with the citationed alternative?

Re your item 0, yes, I didn't leave enough emphasis on the italicize-the-whole-quote issue. I had thought about splitting the italics/quotation into two sections -- one dealing with the italicize-the-whole-quote practice, one dealing with the more complex issue of partial italics. But then I thought that first section would be too short. Please check out the emphasis I put back on the first issue.

Thanks much for taking the time to write your response. As there is now progress on this little section, I have dropped my plan to ask for mediation.

TH 20:19, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't know why T00h00 keeps changing the main point of the section. I've restored. The point of it is to tell editors not to place entire quotations in italics, which many do. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 20:29, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

I restored changes near "is deplorable" ...

Folks,

1. Someone made a change here, and the Edit Summary says “never start quotes on ‘is’”.

I have never heard a rule against starting a quote with “is”. Please provide a citation. Without a citation to the contrary, I believe the writer is free to quote as much or as little as he or she wants, as long as he or she does not misrepresent the original.

All other things being equal, a longer quote has more force, and provides more benefit to the reader, than a shorter quote.

Suppose Arthur actually said this: “Even they admit that the fix they’ve gotten themselves into is untenable. In my estimation it is deplorable”.

Then it would be perfectly legitimate to write: Arthur said the situation “is deplorable”.

And that would be better than this: Arthur said the situation is “deplorable”. Because this second example has exactly the same words but provides less information to the reader.

2. A word is a fragment of a sentence. So it’s redundant to say “a word or sentence fragment”.

TH 16:05, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I restored changes re italics in quotes

1. The last edit summary says "better to give only one choice". No citation given for this opinion. So we need to go with the citation-supported format I just restored.

2. Also, the version I just overwrote says,

If ... you want to stress that the emphasis is the source's and not yours, you can [etc.].

But whether the contributor wants to stress anything about the emphasis is irrelevant. The contributor is obligated to leave no misunderstanding in the reader's mind about who provided the emphasis.

3. Also, the version I just overwrote tells contributors to put [emphasis added] inside the quotes but [emphasis in original] after the quote. That would be inconsistent with no compelling reason for being so. Also, no citation given for this either.

TH 16:16, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I've changed this back to the previous version. The writing should be as simple as possible, and it doesn't recommend one inside, one outside, quotes. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 23:21, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Names in all-caps

Some names are written in all caps, such as most romanised names made by Japanese, or something like .hack//SIGN, MISIA, etc. I've recently noticed Special:Contributions/Gerbrant changing quite a number of J-Pop album and singer profiles from all-cap transliterations (as written on the album cover) to grammar as it would be a proper noun. I'm wondering what should be handled for this. - Zero1328 _Talk? 10:53, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Some years ago, when companies started coming out with creatively capitalized names, Forbes or Fortune or some similar magazine set a policy that they would allow max 2 capital letters in a word and force the rest to lower case.

Long before that, Leo Rosten wrote a novel about a fellow who spelled his name H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N.

There's no limit to what some commercial enterprises will ask people to do.

TH 00:30, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

U.S.

I am concerned that the advice at the recently promoted to guideline page, Wikipedia:Naming conventions (acronyms) is that articles should be disambiguated as "blah (US)". This breaks conformity of the MoS in quite a big way. I should have brought the discussion here but foolishly I put it at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (abbreviations). (Mea culpa.) Please pop over and contribute to the discussion. Rich Farmbrough, 10:52 19 November 2006 (GMT).

(Comment moved to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (abbreviations)) – flamurai (t) 11:09, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Capitalization in titles

The guideline says: "When used generically, they should be in lower case: “De Gaulle was the French president.” The correct formal name of an office is treated as a proper noun." So this means that when you're talking about the office of the President of the United States, but using terms like "president" or "the presidency", that you don't capitalize it, right? I'm not sure I'm reading this right, because I've seen the opposite rampant throughout Wikipedia, for example: "The President of the United States of America (often abbreviated POTUS[1]) is the head of state of the United States. The office of President was established upon the ratification of the United States Constitution in 1788 and the first president took office in 1789. The President serves as chief executive and head of the executive branch of the United States government." (etc.) Is this correct? What about here: "Amendment XXV (the Twenty-fifth Amendment) of the United States Constitution clarifies an ambiguous provision of the Constitution regarding succession to the Presidency, and establishes procedures both for filling a vacancy in the office of the Vice President as well as responding to Presidential disabilities." Schi 23:05, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

It is some publications’ style to capitalize President. The place I notice that most, outside of Wikipedia, is Time magazine. I suppose it’s done as a sign of respect, but I think it just makes publications look stuffy. The article President of the United States is on my list of articles to remove excess capitalization from.

There’s really no reason to capitalize a title absent a name. Without a name attached, a title is just a job description. There’s nothing to lose by writing it without capitalization.

This business about the “correct formal name” can only lead to problems, the first of which is deciding what the “correct formal name” is. For instance, I rather suspect Mr. Chirac’s title isn’t President of France but actually Président de la République française. What happens when the correct formal name happens to be the same as the generic, casual name? George Bush is the president — of what? — the United States. So he’s the president of the United States — oops, that’s President of the United States. I wrote about title capitalization last summer at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (capital letters)#Titles. --Rob Kennedy 05:32, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

From recollection one of the "nine rules of capitalization" cited in an exam paper from a century ago that does the round on the web is that "President" and "Presidency" should always be capitalised when referring the US President. Somehow I'm sceptical this is an international rule. ;) But it does seem to be a common usage and some may be extending it to equivalent posts. I don't think we should be bound by this over specific one. Timrollpickering 01:01, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

The only place I can find any answers to the exam are on the Web site of someone who answered the questions for himself in 2000.[3] Even if those were the real answers from 1895, that doesn’t mean they hold the same validity now, over a century later. --Rob Kennedy 05:10, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Hatnotes section needed?

I haven't been able to find anything in the MoS on hatnotes. A year-old proposal at WP:HATNOTE might be suitable for integration into the MoS. What do people think? Is there something in the MoS already on hatnotes that I've missed? Carcharoth 15:39, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Clarification requested

• Use {{Commons}} to link to more images on Commons, wherever possible.
• Use captions to explain the relevance of the image to the article.
• In most cases the size of images should not be hardcoded.

The current image markup language is more or less this:

[[Image:picture.jpg|120px|right|thumb|Insert caption here]]

In this context, what does hardcoding mean? Thanks. - BillCJ 18:40, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Hardcoded probably isn’t the best way of saying it. What you’re really being told is that you shouldn’t specify the image size at all. When you do, then the image will always be presented at that size. Default image size is a reader preference (on the “Files” tab at Special:Preferences), but specifying a size as above ignores the reader’s preference. Instead, omit the image size and let the software display the image at the reader’s preferred size. --Rob Kennedy 19:16, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

OK, thanks. - BillCJ 19:25, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

New Section - Infoboxes

Hey! I have been doing a lot of work making infoboxes and other templates recently, and I would like to write some stuff that I have learnt about the process, etc. I have been working extensively on WP:IAP recently, and have leart a lot, and have (in my own mind) put together some policies that aid development of Infoboxes. --TheJosh 23:27, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

As long as they are "in your own mind" its pretty hard for anyone to comment constructively. I'm not sure of the purpose of this note. - Jmabel | Talk 00:12, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Infoboxes vary greatly depending on the subject area. Some people don't like infoboxes at all. Why don't you tell us what you have in mind, Josh? Carcharoth 01:18, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I was going to write about some of the policies i have found useful, such as:

• Keep it simple stupid Avoid over clutter of infoboxes.
• Never have red links Avoid red links in infoboxes as much as possible.
• Use intelligence Make use of ParserFunctions, etc. to make the infobox more usable.
• Keep things generic Ensure that each item in an infobox is applicable to a majority of uses.
• Don't double up When making a new infobox, check one doing a similar job doesn't already exist.
• Be reusable Build your infoboxes to be as reusable and diverse as possible.

How about a rule number 1? "Infoboxes should accurately reflect the article and not mislead the reader." By this, I mean infoboxes that are generically applied across a wide range of articles, with a parameter being available for use that should really only apply to a few articles. In short, my view is that: (0) Not all articles require infoboxes; (1) Infoboxes should be a tabular summary of the information in the article (like a tabular form of the lead section); (2) Infoboxes should contain the most important bits of information, not merely trivial metadata; (3) Infoboxes should not attempt to be databases of metadata across many articles - metadata should be dealt with separately by other methods (eg. persondata); (4) Infoboxes should not attempt to be separate articles within an article (the article comes first, and infoboxes remain subservient to the needs of the overall article); (5) Obscure or trivial numerical data can be put in a separate infobox later in the article (see Earth for an example where obscure data overwhelms the infobox). Carcharoth 02:53, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Is there any guidance on navboxes? A box can sometimes combine features of the infobox and the navbox to an extent - see the bottom of Ian Botham. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:58, 24 November 2006 (UTC)