Template talk:Infobox person/Wikidata

Infobox person/Wikidata (usage)

I've added {{Infobox person/Wikidata|fetchwikidata=ALL|noicon=on}} to a number of articles recently (mostly when no infobox is present), and have found that fairly often other folks come along and replace it with a "normal" or "standard" infobox (one example, coincidentally, can be found in the Mark Farrow article discussed in "Suppression error" above). I have no vested interest in this, however it seems like a robust feature that we would want to expand the use of and continue to improve. Is there any consensus on how and when these wikidata enabled infoboxes should/should not be used? Cheers, Cl3phact0 (talk) 11:55, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Judging by the discussion above (and elsewhere), it's obviously not robust. If the results are wrong, it's better to use the standard infobox. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 12:34, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Fair enough. What would it take to make it more so? -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 13:25, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

I think the way that you are doing it may be the best way: use this inadequate template as a weak but passable placeholder until someone can come along and replace it with a real infobox. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:07, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Jonesey95, I find that if the wikidata side is in order, then it works very well here too. If one actually goes to wikidata and takes the time to fill in any egregious blanks (of course making certain they are properly referenced), better still. The upside of having this baseline information centralised in one place and useable across the board seems self-evident.

[NB: Bednarek, in retrospect, perhaps I should have said that it's potentially a very "robust" feature (and could do-away with a lot of repetitive, error-prone, and tedious busy-work), so let's continue to expand and improve it until it's as flawless as possible.]

One could even imagine a highly automated "Infobox Gadget" that taps wikidata, and with only a few clicks, generates a mostly complete infobox. Cheers, Cl3phact0 (talk) 17:01, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

There should not even be any need for that: the information being on Wikidata should suffice. There is a lingering resistance and hostility towards Wikidata, observable on the Wikipedias in several languages, that I am simply at a loss to explain. Rama (talk) 10:33, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Currently there is an error at Vera Bulich ("aged Error: Need valid year, month, day") due to another stuffup with Wikidata. That's one reason for resistance. Johnuniq (talk) 01:01, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

There are conflicting entries for both her birth and death dates. I've dialled it back to year of birth/year of death, however, if you have a good source for either or both, I'd be happy to clean-up the mess. Cheers, Cl3phact0 (talk) 09:57, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: For clarity (mine), in this case, what do you mean by real infobox? Do you mean a non-Wikidata, local infobox, or some as yet non-existent version of what the Wikidata version(s) might yet become? -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 11:58, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

I mean an infobox that works as an editor would expect, without surprises, errors, omissions, or items in the incorrect order. – Jonesey95 (talk) 12:44, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

Ok, got it. Thanks. I'm not sure that I want to die on this hill, but I do think there's merit in perusing a path towards improved implementation (here) of the underlying data (o'er yonder). A few incremental improvements here and there in the meantime won't do any harm (see below). It seems like a wasted opportunity not to try (although the LLMs, bots, drones, and droids might just gobble everything up and rewrite history whilst we dawdle). Cheers, Cl3phact0 (talk) 13:14, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

See my post below which points out that the template displays a wrongly-formatted URL in the infobox because it does not use ththe {{URL}} template which editors are instructed to use. PamD 08:56, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

@Cl3phact0: "Error: Need valid year, month, day" for Died at Pietro Colonna Galatino. Please fix. Otherwise the wikidata infobox should be removed. Johnuniq (talk) 04:23, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Doesn't use template URL

In Francis Hamel, the full URL is displayed, clunkily, in the infobox because {{URL}} is not used to display it.

Could this please be fixed?

None of the examples in the documentation have a URL to display, so the problem doesn't show up there! PamD 11:53, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

As an interim measure, individual parameters can be added to the Wikidata generated infobox if the native Wikidata information doesn't adequately serve the intended purpose (e.g., {{Infobox person/Wikidata|fetchwikidata=ALL|noicon=on|website={{URL|francishamel.com}}}}, which has now been added to the Francis Hamel article). This should be improved so that URLs display per MOS without having to manually add parameters. -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 08:29, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks - but I hope the template can be corrected so that this workround is no longer needed. The template is performingly wrongly, and needs to be corrected. PamD 08:53, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Yes, it would be welcome and valuable to see this template improved further! In principle, it is a marvel with the potential to eliminate errors and inconsistencies (across the whole project, not just enwiki), as well as reducing respective tasks and drudgery. It does seem that it is not universally appreciated – however, the same is also true about infoboxes full stop (see WP:DIB and WP:DIBR). -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 09:17, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

@Cl3phact0 Hmm, I'm pretty sceptical about importing Wikidata, as it sometimes seems less well sourced than would be acceptable in an article, or uses Wikipedia as its source which of course we know is unacceptable. I see that the template is supposed only to pick up sourced content from Wikidata (does that include stuff sourced to Wikipedia?) It seems to then be impossible for an editor to expand the infobox by adding other well-sourced content unless they go through the hoops of adding that content to Wikidata - am I understanding this right?

The infobox debate possibly took a turn for the better in the discussion at Talk:Erik Satie#Infobox RFC. PamD 09:39, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

This 2018 RfC covers a lot of ground that may also be of interest. -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 08:29, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

I don't know why I said, above, that none of the examples in the documentation included a website - for both the Tolstoy and Beethoven examples there is a website badly displayed, but this raises the question of "What is the official website for a dead person?" Do we know how Wikidata determines the "official" website? There could potentially be several sites preserving someone's memories, archives, etc, with different viewpoints. The articles Leo Tolstoy and Ludwig van Beethoven both have an infobox, but neither of these includes a website. PamD 09:45, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

The current enwiki versions of these articles (Tolstoy, Beethoven) don't actually use Wikidata infoboxes. As such, an update of the examples we're showing here might be in order. Also possibly of interest is the third paragraph of MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE, which touches on some of the other potential benefits of using Infoboxes and Wikidata resources in our articles. -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 14:34, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

The point I was making was that real human editors editing those infboxes had not thought it appropriate to include a website, but that this template evidently thinks one is appropriate in each case. PamD 15:01, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

I wholly agree with you, the template needs work. It has a lot of upside potential, but like most things of interest or value, it requires care and attention (of the sort that only real humans can muster). The template guidance clearly states:

When adding an infobox using data from Wikidata, please check for consistency with the article and its references, and to address the inconsistencies observed, which can be done by amending the article or the Wikidata entry, or by supplying a better value to the infobox as a local parameter if this is what emerges from the sources.

Also, for what it's worth, the "Beethoven-Haus Bonn" link turns up in "External links" section of Beethoven article as well as getting a few mentions and wikilinks in the text body. This entity also seems to have at least a passable claim to being an "Official" site and could arguably be added to the article's infobox – Wikidata or not (see Beethoven House). No so with the Tolstoy example, which also has a bit of a WP:LINKFARM that might need weeding. -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 16:14, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Re: Erik Satie discussion: this one will take some time to parse! Thank you for the link though, it looks like an interesting and informative discussion. -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 10:28, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Re: does that include stuff sourced to Wikipedia: no, these items are excluded from what I have seen. I'm only moderately skilled over in Wikidata, but it seems to be highly discouraged to use this sourcing option (not sure of the actual policy, but there are editors and bots that appear to be actively removing these instances). -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 14:41, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

 Fixed: In an excellent example of Wikipedia working the way it should, the URL formatting issue highlighted by this thread has been resolved in the template code so that the use of additional parameters no longer appears to be necessary. Thanks to all involved. -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 08:18, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

I updated Template:Infobox person/Wikidata so URLs extracted from Wikidata are formatted like the output of Template:URL, but using Module:WikidataIB § Function url2 instead. This eliminates the need to manually add the same URL as found in Wikidata property official website (P856), like with the Francis Hamel article. This change can also be seen in the documentation, where the last example for Ludwig van Beethoven has the URL from Wikidata displayed as www.beethoven.de. Official website URLs not in Wikidata can still be added to this infobox manually with |website={{URL|https://example.com/}}. I tested this change first via the sandbox and testcases § website, but let me know if you find any articles where it does not work as expected. Thanks. -- Zyxw (talk) 08:43, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, but I still find the idea of a Wikidata "official website" for a dead person to be very dubious. I don't think it should be in the infobox at all and certainly not added without human intervention. I think I'll start a discussion at the Biography eikiproject. PamD 14:07, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

That definitely needs human oversite (probably on the Wikidata side), but it is also very much a tangent to the central theme of this thread (i.e., fixing the display of Wikidata Infobox URLs), which now seems to have been resolved brilliantly – again, thanks to you for bringing the matter up, and to Zyxw for finding the solution. -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 14:19, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

• I have started a discussion at Template talk:Infobox person#"Official website" for dead person?. And yes, thanks to Zyxw for solving the original problem of the malformatted URLs! PamD 14:31, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

Another possible improvement

In cases where we are using a "native name" parameter, the Wikidata generated version displays the native language text in boldface (see Mitsuko Tottori or Stefanos Sinos), whereas the non-Wikidata version does not (see Shōjirō Ishibashi). Also, the non-Wikidata template places the text above the photograph, underneath the English title, whereas the Wikidata version displays the text below the photo. Ideally, these inconsistencies should be eliminated. -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 14:49, 22 April 2025 (UTC)
PS:The pencil icon is also displayed next to the native text in spite of the "noicon" parameter being set to "on" (obviously not top priority, but an annoying bug nonetheless). -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 15:12, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

Displaying the native name in bold is a MOS:NOBOLD violation. Japanese should not be in boldface. The native name at Mitsuko Tottori also does not have the correct {{lang}} attributes applied. The Wikidata infoboxes seem rather unprofessional and should be replaced by infoboxes that do not violate the MOS. —Kusma (talk) 10:57, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, that's exactly why I brought the matter here! Do you have the coding skills to make the improvements to the Template? Unfortunately, I do not, or I would just do so (per WP:1Q). Cheers, Cl3phact0 (talk) 11:04, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

I have neither the coding skills nor sufficient understanding of Wikidata to mess with this template. (I don't know what Wikidata properties we'd need or how to access them). —Kusma (talk) 12:52, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

I made a change to the template to remove the bold on native name. [1] Changing the lang attributes is trickier, I think. Andre🚐 17:57, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

This seems like it works (looking at Stefanos Sinos example used above). -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 19:35, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

Tried adding that [2] but I cannot tell if it worked. Andre🚐 18:04, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

I think it did not work, I have to figure out how to get the native_name_lang. Andre🚐 18:10, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand what exactly the second modification is trying to achieve. -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 19:36, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

If it worked it will add a <span tag with a lang="ja". However, on my machine, that does not actually affect the display at all. There also seems to be a span tag with the title "Japanese language text." That might be useful for a screen reader for accessibility use cases. Andre🚐 00:44, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

I'm not seeing anything (although I might not be looking for the right thing or simply looking in the wrong place). -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 15:17, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

I updated {{Infobox person/Wikidata}} so |native_name= is now displayed in the same position as {{Infobox person}} (where it was moved to a subheader in late 2019, after a discussion at Template talk:Infobox person/Archive 34#native_name pointer). Note that |native_name_lang= works as a parameter in the infobox, such as |native_name_lang=ja (see examples at Template:Infobox person/Wikidata/testcases § native name), but the language code is not yet extracted from Wikidata automatically (I am looking into the best way to extract it from the Wikidata property name in native language (P1559)). I also fixed the problem where an icon was displayed next to that and some other fields when the infobox contained |noicon=true or similar. -- Zyxw (talk) 22:29, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

Good work, thanks Andre🚐 23:59, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

Excellent, thank you. The display of the Mitsuko Tottori infobox is now much improved. In this example, another detail that the infobox isn't picking up is her employer and position (Japan Airlines, President and CEO), which, given that it's a women's first , seems crucial. -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 05:50, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

Curtesy link

There is a discussion over on Talk:MOS/Infoboxes that may be of interest to editors here. -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 10:37, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

Duplicate display of information

In a case such as Francine M. Benes or Stefanos Sinos, where a person has more than one degree from the same university, how should this be displayed in the "Alma matter" field (i.e., do we supress the duplicate entry or add extra detail so that both degrees are listed)? -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 15:12, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

I updated {{Infobox person/Wikidata/sandbox}} to show all qualifiers for each entry in Wikidata property educated at (P69). Here is an example of what Stefanos Sinos would look like if extra details were displayed.

Infobox person/Wikidata/sandbox	Infobox person/Wikidata
Stefanos Sinos Στέφανος Σίνος Born c. 1937 Athens Education Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (history of architecture) Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (doctorate) Technical University of Munich Occupation Architect, civil engineer, professor, university teacher Works The Late Byzantine Palace of Mystras and its Restoration	Stefanos Sinos Στέφανος Σίνος Born c. 1937 Athens Alma mater Karlsruhe Institute of Technology Occupation Architect, civil engineer, professor, university teacher Works The Late Byzantine Palace of Mystras and its Restoration

Output will vary depending on the qualifiers used and the order entered in Wikidata, see this example for Francine M. Benes.

Infobox person/Wikidata/sandbox

Infobox person/Wikidata

Francine M. Benes Born 8 May 1946 New York City Education St. John's University (Bachelor of Arts) Yale School of Medicine (Doctor of Philosophy) Yale School of Medicine (Doctor of Medicine) Occupation Neuroscientist, psychiatrist, professor Employer Brain & Behavior Research Foundation Creedmoor Psychiatric Center Harvard Medical School Awards Lieber Prize (2002) William Silen Lifetime Achievement in Mentoring Award (2005) Society of Biological Psychiatry Gold Medal Award (2015)

Francine M. Benes Born 8 May 1946 New York City Alma mater Yale School of Medicine Occupation Neuroscientist, psychiatrist, professor Employer Brain & Behavior Research Foundation Creedmoor Psychiatric Center Harvard Medical School Awards Lieber Prize (2002) William Silen Lifetime Achievement in Mentoring Award (2005) Society of Biological Psychiatry Gold Medal Award (2015)

If there is a consensus to show these details in the infobox, then {{Infobox person/Wikidata}} can be updated. -- Zyxw (talk) 07:21, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

To my eye, this looks like an improvement, absolutely. Your help improving these templates is greatly appreciated (I might even learn enough to make future improvements myself by watching your work). @Nikkimaria: as the editor who made this edit (which flagged the problem), does this satisfy your needs concerning this particular issue (leaving aside, for the time being, any broader discussion of the merits of Wikidata infoboxes)? Cheers, Cl3phact0 (talk) 07:46, 27 April 2025 (UTC)
PS: The second example is a bit less convincing than the first. Let me go see if I clean-up the Wikidata side (which is a bit of a test case as is). -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 08:57, 27 April 2025 (UTC)  Partly done

This looks like you're turning |alma_mater= into |education=; per MOS:INFOEDU, the former should be much more concise. (FYI there's also a current discussion at the main template which may impact this design). Nikkimaria (talk) 12:59, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

Thank you, very helpful. Obviously, whatever the consensus is for non-Wikidata infobox templates regarding the display of specific fields ("Alma mater" or otherwise), that is what the Wikidata versions should seek to achieve too. -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 16:25, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

Both of the above are reasons why I only implemented this at {{Infobox person/Wikidata/sandbox}} as a test. For educated at (P69), I added |qual=ALL to {{#invoke:WikidataIB|GetValue}}, which is what was already done with award received (P166). There are other options, like selecting specific qualifiers to display or not displaying qualifiers at all and figuring out how to remove any duplicate entries. According to the comment above, I can see where educated at (P69) might be better used with |education= instead of |alma_mater= and this template should follow whatever guidelines are established for {{Infobox person}}. -- Zyxw (talk) 15:32, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

I reviewed the links provided by Nikkimaria and MOS:INFOEDU says "The |alma mater= parameter is a more concise alternative to (not addition to) the |education= parameter, and will often consist of the linked name of the last-attended institution of higher education." Therefore, I think that might be the solution for |alma mater= here, rather than listing them all and trying to remove duplicates. Also, |education= here is currently using academic degree (P512), so that might be something else to reconsider after the current discussion at the main template. -- Zyxw (talk) 16:41, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

I updated the sandbox to move educated at (P69) to |education= and only list the qualifier academic degree (P512), which makes it closer to the format being discussed at the main template (I tried to display abbreviations for the degrees, since {{#invoke:WikidataIB|GetValue}} has a |shortname= parameter to enable that, but it seems not to work on qualifier names). I think the best solution might be to leave this infobox as is and update Wikidata to give the most recent educated at (P69) a preferred rank. I did that for the above two examples, which makes the output for |alma_mater= match what MOS:INFOEDU says is often used there. -- Zyxw (talk) 17:47, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

Cleaner, closer to what seems to be the desired standard practice (per Alma mater discussion). There's probably some way we could improve this on the Wikidata side too (i.e., the addition of abbreviated nomenclature for degrees). It also makes me think that hiding in plain sight here is another example of how we could be using Wikidata to solve problems. If all of this were semi-automated using an elegantly designed "Info-matic Magic Box" tool to help fill in the blanks (giving the editor final say, of course), and the data were coming from a centralised source, then it might help establish the sort of uniform format and nomenclature that's being proposed in the discussion that Nikkimaria linked above. -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 19:51, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

Another recent usage example in need of a small code tweak

Please see Talk:Karim Rashid. In this case, minor improvement to the way that the website displays is needed (i.e., short form URL without "www"). -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 17:10, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
 Fixed (simple solution – changed on Wikidata side). -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 17:33, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

Secondary vs. tertiary education

Another edit to the code on the Wikipedia side may be needed in order to resolve this issue (please see discussion on Wikidata): Secondary vs. tertiary education --> Wikidata infoboxes -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 17:24, 19 May 2025 (UTC)