Talk:Maddie Ziegler

Infobox

Why is there no infobox, only a note in the article that says not to add one without discussing it here? There's no mention of it here. - Dyaluk08 (talk) 16:02, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

An infobox has been discussed by editors on the talk page of this article a number of times since 2015 (as recently as March 2021). Each time it has been raised there has been a consistent consensus against the inclusion of one. As per the notice at the top of the talk page, threads with no replies in over 6 months are automatically archived. However links to archived discussions and and an archival search function is included in the header box at the top of the talk page if you would like to review the previous discussions covering this. MarsToutatis ^talk 20:47, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

As has been noted in the past consensus *not* to include the infobox, while sports and politician bios can benefit from infoboxes, most articles in liberal arts fields, as here, do not. See arbitration report: "Infoboxes may be particularly unsuited to liberal arts fields when they repeat information already available in the lead section of the article, are misleading or oversimplify the topic for the reader". I disagree with including an infobox in this article because: (1) The box would emphasize unimportant factoids stripped of context and lacking nuance, in competition with the WP:LEAD section, which emphasizes and contextualizes the most important facts. (2) Since the most important points in the article are already discussed in the Lead, or adequately discussed in the body of the article, the box would be redundant. (3) It would take up valuable space at the top of the article and hamper the layout and impact of the Lead. (4) Frequent errors creep into infoboxes, as updates are made to the articles but not reflected in the redundant info in the box, and they tend to draw more vandalism and fancruft than other parts of articles. (5) The infobox template creates a block of code at the top of the edit screen that discourages new editors from editing the article. (6) It would discourage readers from reading the text of the article. (7) IBs distract editors from focusing on the content of the article. Instead of improving the article, they spend time working on this repetitive feature and its coding and formatting. See also WP:DISINFOBOX. -- Ssilvers (talk) 21:00, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

I support an infobox, and appreciate Ssilvers well intended arguments repeated from 2017, but disagree respectfully with those arguments as follows (numbered to match original post):

1) These are not unimportant factoids, and are concise and comparable as described at Help:Infobox#What should an infobox contain?

2) You are correct that the infobox contains redundant information, exactly as it should. Help:Infobox#What should an infobox contain? recommends that infoboxes are should contain information already cited elsewhere in the article.

3) It is not taking up valuable space on many common clients, especially since there is already an image in this location. On a computer, it would be located in whitespace, and on a mobile client it is very fast and easy to scroll past to reach the expandable table of contents, which arguably prevents even more users from reading the contents of the article hidden behind the section titles.

4) The possibility of vandalism or misinformation is something that every aspect of every Wikipedia article faces constantly. The inclusion of an infobox neither increases nor decreases this possibility.

5) It is difficult to empirically state whether or not an infobox discourages editors. Wikipedia does have more readers than editors, so both user types should be considered. As far as a new editor, any good-faith edit introducing errors or problems is not terribly difficult to correct while steering that editor toward resources that may help them in the future.

6) This argument is redundant to the first and second arguments, and does not add any new logic to your point.

7) I disagree that an infobox would distract editors. While it does increase the maintenance of the article, an editor who does not wish to fuss over the 'coding and formatting' of the infobox may simply choose not to edit the infobox while 'focusing on the content'.

Now, for my own arguments, I argue that:

A) An infobox would add value to the article for readers, in the form of standardized formatting of commonly sought information (example: age, location of birth). I believe the infobox contents cover many common use cases for users of Wikipedia. See "Comparable" or "Concise" at Help:Infobox#What should an infobox contain?

B) Many other editors seem to feel that an infobox would be valuable, as indicated by the fact that this discussion has repeated several times since 2015.

C) Counter to any prior "consensus" on this article's talk page, a quick informal sampling of Category:American YouTubers or Category:Participants in American reality television series, for example, seems to show a broader consensus view on Wikipedia that including an infobox is considered worthwhile for this type of article. I would even go so far as to argue that this broader consensus is more significant than the past discussions on this talk page.

I welcome any further discussion, especially where my own logic or assumptions may be faulty or require clarification. A simple response of "I support this" or "I don't support this" is adding little value to this discussion without any explanations. Wikipedia:Consensus is about quality of arguments, not quantity of "votes" in the ballot box. Remember, we're discussing whether or not an infobox is helpful on this article, and not whether or not infoboxes should be used on Wikipedia at large. LobStoR (talk) 06:25, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Responding to your arguments: A: Do you think that the most important information a person needs to know when opening the article is the "location of birth". I think that is relatively trivial, and that the infobox would emphasize such information instead of the key information in the Lead section, which contains all the most important information about this person in a much more useful format. B. This is a fallacious argument. Arbcom has addressed infoboxes and emphasized that they are optional and particularly unsuited to articles in the arts. Again, see the arbitration report: here. The people who keep starting infobox discussions go around Wikipedia doing that, instead of creating content. I am a content creator who has worked on this article. I have thought about its content, rather than hopping from article to article starting infobox wars. C. Just because inexperienced editors in the pop culture area have mass-added them to articles doesn't mean that they are good, and in this case an infobox would be disruptive, not helpful to readers, in accessing the key information about this person. That's why, for example, the thoughtful editors at the Opera project and classical music project (where there are a lot of Featured Articles) have made an effort to exclude them from the articles within their scope. Don't readers of articles about other artists deserve to see high quality Lead sections instead of "standardized", boxes that highlight such information as the town where someone happened to be born? The first sentence of the Lead states that she is an American and gives her birth date. Do you really think that our readers are so stupid that they need you to say it again in a box? See also WP:DISINFOBOX. Actually it is the people who have not contributed significantly to the content of an article who are "adding little value to this discussion". -- Ssilvers (talk) 15:35, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Well, I tried to present my perspective. Thank you for informing me about the "infobox war" I actually didn't know about that. Now that I know that this is a hot issue for many editors, I am moving onward away from this. By the way, my comment on "adding little value" was not directed at you, it was about some of the other comments within this section. Seeing as I have no vested interest in this article, I surrender the debate back to the article's owners. Cheers, LobStoR (talk) 18:12, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

No one owns Wikipedia articles, but it always amazes me when people who have not contributed to an article drive by and decide to make an issue of some technical/minor/optional point (that covers every single person who has pushed an infobox here). That the "perspective" of such people could possibly be considered to add more value than the opinion of people who have contributed to the article (even if their Talk page comments are brief) especially where, as here, there is no WP policy or even guideline in favor of the change sought (in this case infoboxes), is always mind-boggling to me. -- Ssilvers (talk) 18:31, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Support infobox; infoboxes are the de facto standard for all biographies and people still warring against them have a WP:POINT rather than an objective case that they do any significant harm to an article. Dronebogus (talk) 22:20, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

I Support an infobox. The argument that they have errors because people don't update them is ludicrous. All articles have the potential to have errors if they are not properly updated in all sections, and the "nuance" that allegedly makes it difficult to express things out of their "context" is ridiculous. There isn't nuance to Ziegler's name, birth date, birth place, occupation, years active, or education, all of which have the easy potential to be expressed in the simple Template:Infobox person. EytanMelech (talk) 02:00, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

@EytanMelech: You’re responding to a dead thread here. The last RfC was a year ago and ended without a consensus so it’s probably fine to start a new one if you are so inclined. Dronebogus (talk) 02:04, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Haha sorry! I didn't see the date of posting until after I left my message. I don't care enough about RfC to start a new thread but yeah that was totally my bad! EytanMelech (talk) 02:22, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

I support having an infobox for this page. It would not be "oversimplifying" or "misleading"; it would simply summarize the subject in a way that's easier to read than in the lead. Addressing Ssilvers's bullet points:

(1) There is literally nothing in the infobox that would be out-of-context or unimportant. It would also feature some things that aren't in the lead; for example, if a reader wants to find out how old Ziegler is, it would be much faster to read it in an infobox than to have to do the math by looking at her birth date in the lead.

(2) No it wouldn't be. The infobox is simply a convenient box of information for readers who want to read that information—such as age, place of birth, or years active—faster than they can in the text of the article. It summarizes the subject in a nutshell.

(3) There is no basis for this claim. The lead is still going to exist and be perfectly readable.

(4) The lead section is just as prone to vandalism as the infobox, but I think we can agree that leads shouldn't be done away with just because of that. As for fancruft and arguments about what to include, simply because a handful of editors can't agree on what should be in an infobox doesn't mean we should burn the whole thing down and ruin the experience for all readers.

(5) How does it discourage anything? Editors can just scroll down to the section they want to edit and click [edit source] or, better yet, they can simply use CTRL+F to find the part of the article they want to edit.

(6) There is no basis for this claim. There's no reason anyone who intends to extensively read about Ziegler's life and career would be stopped by the infobox. Also, a good number of people who read Wikipedia aren't there to exhaustively read; in fact, no one should use Wikipedia as a reliable source for a research paper or anything else. Many of us just come to pages like these to get a quick look at the basics of who someone is, just like the "In a nutshell" templates. The infobox serves those readers very well. Wikipedia was created for the readers—many of whom find infoboxes useful—not the editors.

(7) This is simply false. On any page, only a handful of edits relate to the infobox.

The bottom line is, regardless of whether some editors like infoboxes or not, many readers do appreciate the brevity and convenience of infoboxes, and that should be respected. Songwaters (talk) 22:50, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with Songwaters argument and conclusion. In my opinion, an infobox would not be of value to the article. Somambulant1 (talk) 23:41, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

User:Somambulant1 are you a sockpuppet of Ssilvers? Ivar the Boneful (talk) 13:14, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Ivar, I typed a reply to you, but I deleted it. Your comment does not deserve a reply. Somambulant1 (talk) 19:13, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

• Support This is ridiculous that this page has not infobox. I understand if this was a page about a composer, where I have seen some composer-related pages without infoboxes but she's literally an actress and dancer. Everyone in that field here has an infobox. --TDKR Chicago 101 (talk) 23:48, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
• Support for obvious reasons; we need to be considering the WP:READER here. Additional comment: the WP:OWN-like behavior demonstrated by Ssilvers over this page is appalling. wizzito | say hello! 21:26, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose per previous discussions. These decisionsshould be made by the main/regular editors, as Arbcom has very clearly said, not drive-by editors (like me). Is it Discord stirring this up? Johnbod (talk) 03:44, 9 December 2022 (UTC)
• Support I think it is frankly stupid that this page does not have an infobox, when pretty much every other notable person page has one. I just don't get it. I believe there should be an infobox. Can we add one? Samuelloveslennonstella (talk) 00:40, 11 June 2024

Citation style

Before we get into an edit war about citation styles,@Philoserf, @Ssilvers, let's talk about it. WP:CITEVAR says the following:

"As with spelling differences, it is normal practice to defer to the style used by the first major contributor or adopted by the consensus of editors already working on the page, unless a change in consensus has been achieved"

Per this 14 February 2014 edit, the first non-bare-url citation format on this page was using citation templates. That was basically the modus operandi for 2014 and 2015 as far as I can ascertain. So without any established consensus, that should be the preferred citation format.

CITEVAR also says: "switching between major citation styles" should be avoided and that "imposing one style on an article with inconsistent citation styles [is] an improvement because it makes the citations easier to understand and edit."

So, to my reading, CITEVAR supports Philoserf's edits. I have already removed the language parameter per Ssilver's helpful suggestion. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 15:07, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

• I have returned it to the long-standing WP:STATUSQUO, which was changed a few days ago after several years. It is best to continue the discussion with the long-standing version left in place. SchroCat (talk) 17:06, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

  Just at a quick glance as this popped up on my watchlist (and for once people aren't bickering about an infobox!), it appears one of the things Philoserf did was remove tracking parameters from URLs, which is generally considered a Good Thing™. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:10, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Philoserf also deleted some citations without explanation. -- Ssilvers (talk) 17:38, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

This is true - the truncated versions are better, but they can fit within either system, and whichever version of citation is chosen, the shortened links should be the ones in place. Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 17:47, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

I've stripped out the tracking parameters I could see (although there may be others that should also be taken out. Going over the diff between the two versions, I was stuck at the carelessness with which the edit was undertaken - there were a stack of error messages generated by the change, with sloppy mistakes such as the author of one article being "last=News|first=A. B. C." and one being "last=Dazed" (with no first name) and one being "|last1=July 01|first1=Samantha Highfill Updated|last2=EDT|first2=2015 at 12:00 PM|"; "citation" templates were used in some places instead of cite web; and some title fields were missing or empty. Even when some bot or automated process is used, people need to check what they've done and clear up their mistakes. - SchroCat (talk) 12:15, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

sloppy mistakes such as the author of one article being "last=News first=A. B. C." and one being "last=Dazed" (with no first name) and one being "

Poorly implemented citation templates are not an argument against templates, they are an argument against poorly implemented citation templates.

Even when some bot or automated process is used, people need to check what they've done and clear up their mistakes

I 100% agree. I am an advocate for correctly used citation templates, not for templates in general. I would say it goes:
Correctly used templates >> Correct manual citations >>> Incorrectly used templates > incorrect manual citations. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 23:50, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

"Poorly implemented citation templates are not an argument against templates": rather clearly I have not said anywhere that they are. Your personal preferences are noted, but as WP:CITEVAR says "Editors should not attempt to change an article's established citation style merely on the grounds of personal preference". If it comes down solely to personal preference, the WP:STATUS QUO remains, as far as I am aware. As above, I have voiced no opinion on a choice of whether to retain the STATUS QUO or whether to change just for the sake of it. - SchroCat (talk) 08:31, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Whichever style is chosen, CITEVAR tells us it should be maintained uniformly across the article.

Using the non-templated style would be difficult for new contributors who largely use either bare-urls (which are deprecated) or template plugins. Templates also enable the use of bots and other tools to update and maintain citations, check for linkrot, etc. These are some of the many reasons why most articles use templates.

Are there advantages to the non-templated style that I'm missing? Or disadvantages to the templates? Any improper importing of the non-templated style is fixable. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 00:19, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

I agree that the citation style ought to be uniform. Your arguments against manual citations are essentially the same as your arguments for infoboxes. You prefer the templates, so you perceive that they are easier to use and better in various ways. I find them far more difficult to use, and my experience over the past 16+ years and 150,000+ edits is that they introduce far more errors and generally poor-quality citations than the manual style, and that it is easier for me to fill out manual citations and keep the article up to date. So, once again, we will have to agree to disagree and, once again, I would contend that editors who have not regularly worked on this article should defer to the preferred style of those who do, since it doesn't affect the content of the entry. -- Ssilvers (talk) 02:11, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Do you think every user who contributes to this article should use manual citations from now on? Because that is what your suggestion results in, given the MOS principles. its not "I prefer manual citations" its "which style should everyone use from now on?"

I would say this is tantamount to saying few other users should contribute, given that manual citations are so uncommon. This is the first BLP article in a while that I've found them in.

The compromise is writing correct manual citations, and then converting them to correctly used templates, as I suggested above. If you know of a tool for converting templated citations to manual ones, I would love to see it, as that would be another great compromise. Allow others to generate templated citations (correctly) and then convert them to manual ones. Or at least make sure they appear similar when viewed not in wikitext.

"So, once again, we will have to agree to disagree" The next step is actually to escalate the dispute, not to "agree to disagree", in my opinion. Such as garnering a WP:3O or starting an RFC (which I would consider a last resort here, as in most situations). — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 23:45, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Not everything has to be escalated. Turning everything into a timesink drama isn't a positive and constructive way to proceed.- SchroCat (talk) 08:38, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Vandalism?

@Ssilvers Could you please explain how this edit is vandalism? I was attempting to correct the fact that Sia received the Razzie for worst director. is, for some reason, included as part of the citation and not the article text. The citation also should be formatted, rather than a bare URL. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 18:04, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Your edits were not vandalism. The bad edit was this one, which your edits tried to clean up. -- Ssilvers (talk) 18:07, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Fair, but I think you also may have mistakenly reintroduced some typographical errors, as I described above (sorry for the edit conflict). I have no issue with restoring that STATUSQUO, but I do think we should also fix that error or otherwise entirely remove the sia mention and fix the bare url. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 18:08, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

There is no bare ref. The reference to Sia is within the footnote on purpose, because this article is about Ziegler, not Sia. It looks correct to me. Please take another look at the text and footnote 64, and let me know if you still see any kind of error. If the article had a separate "notes" section, it could go there, but I don't mind it in the footnote as is. -- Ssilvers (talk) 18:10, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

BTW, I now see that you had already reversed the bad edit by the IP, so thank you for that. -- Ssilvers (talk) 18:17, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Yaa3

Houu haa33 K 41.231.107.239 (talk) 17:12, 28 December 2024 (UTC)