Forum:Why are infobox fields so inconsistent?

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Opening post

This has bugged me for a long time; in infoboxes, certain fields are preprogrammed so that what you type into it automatically becomes a link. My question is why can't all of the fields do that? Filling out the fields requires having the really specific memory of which fields have that programming and which don't; putting something in a non-programmed field with no brackets creates plain text; putting bracketed text in a programmed field causes the field to glitch out. And implementing these new SMW infoboxes, that have randomly added new preprogrammed fields… it's giving me a headache. WaltK ☎ 18:09, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

While I am not sure why the fields are inconsistent, there are benefits to having some fields use [[ ]] 'cos of templates such as {{note}}; but I feel a bunch, like |director =, should be automatic. But I ain't a coding expert so someone with more knowledge than me could provide an insight to the way things are.

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

18:15, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

These auto-linking fields are a requirement for having data collected for use with SMW and similar systems (well, it’s not strictly a requirement. There are workarounds, but they’re far harder to set up and maintain). As more SMW data is collected, more fields are made auto-linking. The reason that not all fields are auto-linking is that, firstly, this means that more work has to be done transitioning pages over and, in my eyes, the less work here, the better. The second reason is something that I’ve learnt through developing {{Infobox Story SMW}} which is that there are always, and will always be, a ton of edge cases. These are hard and time consuming to deal with. As Epsilon mentions, having fields auto-link makes conveying nuance through {{note}} and similar far harder, and these all require special exceptions and work arounds to be hardcoded in. Therefore, when putting together the new infobox, I just stuck to what was necessary at the current time to get what I needed to do done. The fields made auto-linking are not random; they’re what I needed to achieve {{cite source}}. In the ideal world, I think everything would be auto-linking, but we’re not (yet) in this ideal world. In time, I do plan to roll out more auto-linking fields with the aid of a bot that I plan to write soon to aid with the {{Infobox Story SMW}} transition but, until then, things are just a little inconsistent. As for helping to remember which are which, would better documentation help? If so, I can put something together. Bongo50 ☎ 18:47, 28 July 2023 (UTC)