Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Aircraft/Infobox refactor 2023

Thoughts?

At this point it looks better that what has been previously proposed. Are we going to see how these boxes would look and work, though? Right now it is all theory, will it work in actual use? - Ahunt (talk) 11:22, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Folding the parameters of Aircraft begin (which is mostly a name and image parameters ) into each of the templates it is used with means no effective change in appearance at all. I did test it myself, though I don't recall if I left it in one of the template sandboxes. GraemeLeggett (talk) 21:11, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Ahunt -- Yes, as GraemeLeggett says, converting the four boxes into standard Wikipedia infoboxes (stage 1) is really simple -- trivial even. As is "stacking" the "type" and "career" boxes using tools and tricks that weren't available to us 15 years ago. That in itself gets us to the heart of what the TfD was asking. Going further (stage 2) is just a bonus.

Having said this, once I feel like there's sufficient in-principle support here, I'll go ahead and mock up the implementation so we can all take a look. --Rlandmann (talk) 05:49, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

That would be great to see it! - Ahunt (talk) 11:35, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

I found where I had a go, it was the Aircraft engine infobox template. See the effect of me crudely dumping the aircraft begin template code into the template and another editor helpfully tidying the result at Template:Infobox_aircraft_engine/testcases#Test_Case_1. GraemeLeggett (talk) 07:15, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

I think any new version will need to follow the correctness manual and nest {{infobox}} instead of using table code. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 09:38, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

That would be the logical outcome, but as I recall it the merge discussion just said merge without saying it had to be updated to newer code. So the process could, I stress could not should, be..

1. Put the aircraft begin code in the eg infobox aircraft template (since parameters are not called in the template on articles, this should have no display outcomes
2. Edit all affected articles to remove the call to aircraft begin and move the param calls to within the infobox aircraft template call
3. Come back later and translate the infobox aircraft template to new code and incorporate any stylistic changes

This does break the conversion of articles to the template and the replacement of the old template with the new one into two discrete steps, you get an early tick on carrying out the merge, and the decision on changes to parameters in infobox and styling (currently the {{WPMILHIST Infobox style }} ) can be done at whatever pace works, and in parallel rather than a pre-condition to the removal of aircraft infobox begin usage in articles. GraemeLeggett (talk) 11:22, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for this GraemeLeggett. This could actually be a very useful stage 0 if implementing {{infobox}} runs into any early trouble. As this proposal takes shape, I'll include this as a possible preliminary step.

You're correct in saying that the TfD did not specify how to merge the infoboxes! And, at the same time:

• Since we're going to do this work anyway, I think it makes sense to take advantage of the opportunity to modernise and catch up to the rest of current Wikipedia practice
• Pragmatically, if we were to stop at that point, I have no doubt that eventually, somebody else would come along to force us to modernise anyway...

I know that you're not suggesting that we simply leave it as a "simple merge" -- just spelling out why I agree with you about the viability of this direction and also why I agree we can't just stop there! --Rlandmann (talk) 21:17, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Multiple templates

I do not like the all-singing, all-dancing aircraft templates because many editors will be confused by the huge amount of irrelevant fields and use the thing incorrectly; others will do so intentionally. Each template needs to be tailored to a specific usage. So I am very much in favour of individual templates. Clearly, we need to dump the tabular code and do things the politically correct way. That requires nesting {{infobox}} directly inside each locally-purposed template. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 16:09, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Nesting

Why not continue to nest {{Infobox aircraft begin}} above {{infobox}}? This would still avoid having to maintain identical header formats in multiple templates, while still allowing a choice of templates tailored to suit. The two nested templates needs to be the same width, so the rigour of the table column may need to be be replaced by skilful CSS tweaks, but the CSS gurus are not put off by such challenges, so let 'em at it. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 16:09, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Well, we certainly could do that. To my mind, however, there's little or no benefit in preserving the few scant, generic parameters of begin in its own, modular template. And, if we do proceed down the path of consolidation of engine or project templates, the imperative to do this becomes even less.

To be perfectly honest, the aim of having a unified header for as many aircraft-related topics as possible was mainly a way of asserting a project boundary back in the day, in a way that was more useful during that phase of Wikipedia's history than I think it is now. --Rlandmann (talk) 05:59, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

I am working on MediaWiki talk:Common.css/to do#Infobox and that would be a suggestion that I will have to fix later as a result of that work (or rather a followon effort enabled by that work).

I otherwise agree with Rlandmann that there is little-to-no value in it. Izno (talk) 00:08, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

I have been checking how {{infobox}} is intended to be nested, and it already has all that is needed. I agree that keeping the aircraft header above it would be an anachronism, and inconvenient to all concerned. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 06:24, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Engines

The big challenge with merging engine templates across WikiProject areas is that we all differ wildly in our approaches to specification parameters. In some cases, the change would oblige them to follow the aircraft approach and create a second, specifications template. I am not confident of obtaining a consensus for unification unless we can get the user-space developer community (template and infobox specialists) to take a view. I think we need to tackle that at say TfD rather than in any one transport/engineering project's space. But we don't want that to hold us up here.

For now, I would suggest a replacement aero engine template, on the same lines as the others. If we can see any useful way to begin generalising its content to include more info on any non-aero applications, that would be good.

— Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 16:09, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I 100% agree with you -- stage 1 would implement a straight replacement of the engine template while this project examines a way forward. I certainly hope that unification with other engine templates is possible; I believe that it's workable, but there would be a lot of technical and consensus-building work to do along the way. Thank you for pioneering this by reaching out to other projects too.

And yeah, attacking this in two stages is precisely because I agree with you that an ambitious final goal should not hold us up from implementing the TfD decision. --Rlandmann (talk) 06:03, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Scope of the work

Just thought it might be worth noting how many articles are affected in case it helps with decision-making

rough scale of affected infoboxes in articles

Infobox	number of calls
aircraft career	~ 260
aircraft engine	~ 1250
aircraft type	~ 12,500
aircraft program(me)	6-ish

Based on a estimate of transclusions in articles and linkcount at toolforge. GraemeLeggett (talk) 11:35, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks GraemeLeggett -- that's really helpful and already suggests a tentative way forward, I'll add that the only real complication here is the examples where type and career are stacked (the only actual uses of modular templates that this project ever used, AFAIK) --Rlandmann (talk) 21:07, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Airships

I just learned of this merge when trying to check parameters for the infoboxes at USS Macon. That and a handful of other articles are using {{Infobox aircraft career}} together with {{Infobox ship characteristics}} which is undergoing a similar refactoring to simplify multiple interrelated infoboxes. This may not be the ideal way to present airships, and I don't have strong feelings on the matter, but I wanted to point out that there may be some additional parameters/considerations to accommodate airships. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 14:33, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Summary 19 June

Thanks for all the input folks. There does seem to be a general consensus towards honouring the TfD by:

• merging begin into each of the four separate templates
• updating each of the four separate templates to use the modern infobox approach

I will update the proposal in the next couple of days to nail down a few more details and address some of the issues raised here.

I'll be suggesting that the first step will be to address aircraft program, since this is the least widely-used case; and also because it was already (prematurely, IMHO) replaced everywhere with aircraft then under development.

Thanks for your help and patience, everybody! --Rlandmann (talk) 12:23, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. That is a good way forward. Those who wish to be more adventurous can seek further consensus once we can all see the benefits/limitations of this solution in practice. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 12:47, 19 June 2023 (UTC)