Template talk:Infobox Politician

Shouldn't we include nationality (not all of us are Americans). Electionworld 07:49, 15 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It used to have nationality. Why was the template changed? A lot of places are now broke because the format changed substantially. Tbeatty

Color

Wouldn't it be cool if the box was blue for dems and red for republicans? - Ravedave 23:46, 2 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it would be. Color is arbitrary and until recently, if I'm not mistaken it described incumbency, not a particular party. Also, the box is for all politicians, not just those in the U.S. Plus, Red is almost universally associated with communism and would be confusing to those outside the U.S. Tbeatty 02:13, 3 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hrm how about an Elephant/R and Donkey/D image? -Ravedave 02:28, 3 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Makeover

Would anybody mind if the template was changed by me to look similar to Template:Infobox President? --MZMcBride 05:51, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Separation lines

Would someone please restore the separation lines in this template? I don't want to mistakenly lose other good changes, so won't revert for now, but without the lines the info in the box is often difficult to read. Thanks. stilltim 02:55, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

image size

I've added some additional tags for this template. previously, if an image was below the hard-wired resolution, it came out looking very grainy when expanded to fit. the user may now specify the size of the image with the width and height attributes. The old hard-wired values are set as the default, so current uses shouldn't be broken. -- stubblyhead | ^T/_c 17:43, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Note that to use the old sizing, one must delete the width= and height= attributes compeltely. If they are left blank, the image is not resized at all, which can mean a very large image. Also, units need to be specified when giving sizes, e.g. width = 200px JRawle (Talk) 23:40, 6 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:Emperork removed, what I think - I'm no specialist on templating, a crucial part of the code http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3AInfobox_Politician&diff=84789717&oldid=76842620 here]. I assume he did so to prevent all images from having the same size, which can become ugly for small images. It caused big images to become their real size however (i.e. huge). I've reverted it, but I hope some one can look at the code to make it work for both small and large images. C mon 11:36, 31 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox "name" field - use common name? Full name?

I've seen widely inconsistent names in the "name" field of infoboxes of U.S. Representatives (Congressmen) and U.S. Senators. For example, for Dick Lugar, his full name (first sentence of the article) is Richard Green "Dick" Lugar. Should the infobox name field be "Richard Lugar", "Dick Lugar", "Richard Green Lugar", "Richard G. Lugar", or "Richard Green 'Dick' Lugar"?

My personal opinion - and a change I've made in a couple of places - is that the name in the infobox should be the same as the wikipedia article name. But given the wide variety of formats I've seen, and my sense that less than half of the infoboxes out there do use the wikipedia article name in this field, I'd like to find out what others think. Is there is a (prior) consensus on this? John Broughton | Talk 16:08, 6 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, hearing no feedback, I'm going to start changing infoboxes, and see what happens, per WP:BB. John Broughton | Talk 22:13, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I, for one, disagree. This is something where consistency does not add much at all- it should be decided on a per-article basis, as this would affect thousands of infoboxes beyond even Politician which we can really say very little about. My thought is that in general, the full name (perhaps plus common nicknames) should be used in the infobox regardless of the page's title. The page's title has certain other constraints; the Infobox should strive to be complete. Look at Bill Clinton for example; the page title is Bill Clinton, but the Infobox prominently displays his complete name of "William Jefferson Clinton." SnowFire 02:32, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It would nice to be consistent on this; I'm less concerned about which way things are done than with the current inconsistency. I'd welcome the comments of others. John Broughton | Talk 18:08, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Consistency is nice, but I believe that you are seeking a false consistency, and unfortunately I don't know how many people will notice this discussion. This issue isn't substantially different than at Infoboxes like "Congressman," "President," "Actor," or even "Book." All of those have true name / common name / title name issues. If a consistency could be reasonably established across all these (or even just all infoboxes on specific people), that would be one thing, though I doubt it will happen. But a consistency among only "Politician" means little. I would humbly suggest that this be raised elsewhere, although I'm not sure where- the general Template:Infobox doesn't seem to get much traffic. Perhaps the Manual of Style guidelines on people? SnowFire 20:07, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Recent changes?

Was the infobox format change made recently really necessary? I spent all day filling out this infobox and replacing existing infoboxes for Maryland governors because this one looked better, and now they are all out of whack. Is it going to be changed back, or is it going to be subject to more changes? 'cause i don't want to go back and correct all the infoboxes if it's going to be changed again. please lemme know. Taco325i 20:12, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you look at the history, the recent change was made by an anonymous IP who has been banned before and did not discuss the change on the talk page. Feel free to revert it if it's messing anything up. SnowFire 23:00, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ok great, thanks. Please let me know if my revert is messing it up for anybody else. Taco325i 13:26, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]