Template talk:Infobox Crew

Thoughts on this template

This template has some weird dynamics; still not quite sure why it wants to throw a tiny ribbon of vertical space on the right side of pictures. Taking away the borders hides this flaw, so that it's kind of functional right now.

In general, though, I think it's somewhat flawed as a template because it seems to be focused on "big name" crew membes like writers and directors, but wouldn't be particularly practical for regular, day-in-day-out crew members. The vast majority of the crew have in fact worked on most every episode of DW, at least insofar as BBC Wales is concerned. This thing should have another way to mark time served other than just "episodes", because you'll end up with huge lists for people like Andy Pryor and Peter Chester and Tracie Simpson and Adrian Anscombe and Tim Ricketts and . . . well you get the point. I find it a bit weird that the template doesn't seem to have a variable for defining the kind of work that the individual performed. I mean, if you looked at the infobox as used on Chris Chibnall, you wouldn't get a sense that he's really the head writer of Torchwood. You'd think he was just an ordinary writer who'd sent in a few scripts.

In its current form, this template doesn't actually do what an infobox should do: give an accurate snapshot of a person's relevance. As such, I'd recommend it not be used until it can have a thorough overhaul. Otherwise, we're just going to have to go back and do/undo a lot of stuff.

What I'm finding as I actually do detailed crew work on individual pages is that most crew members have careers that develop and change over time. On one series they're credited with one job; on another, they've been promoted and got a new job. Production runners graudate to become 3rd ADs, costume assistants become costume supervisors, supervising art directors take a pay cut to keep working on DW as set decorators. I honestly think we should strip this thing down to the fundamentals. IMDB, check. Bithday, check. Deathday, check. Name, check. Pic, sure. Other works (not notable, but other), why not? But episodes? I dunno. "Series worked on", maybe. "DWU programmes worked on", maybe that too. "Credited titles", yep, that's possible, too.

We really need to think about how this template can best be used across all crew members, not just the big names we're all familiar with. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 03:08, May 10, 2010 (UTC)

The infobox really is ugly at the moment, can we change it back even if it has those weird border lines?

I'm think maybe just getting rid of this infobox might be better, it's just…we could have this on every page for every crew member but outside the "big names" a lot of the pages are one liners (sometimes with an ext link to IMDB).

The infobox is there as a summary of the relevant facts, as far as name and birthdate those are usually in the first line of the articles, a list of DW works is usually listed, so the things the infobox brings is a nicely placed image, and IMDB link.

I've been looking at other wikis to see how they deal with it, and I don't think we'll be able to make it work for everyone for my reasons above. We could have it for "major" crew but how do we define major? A Gaffer or someone may work on a lot of stories, but that may not translate to a large article. --Tangerineduel 05:14, May 10, 2010 (UTC)