The visual way the content is displayed should not be controversial.  It
only gets complicated if the developers/designers start making
editorial-decisions about *what information* should be inside the infobox
(without tons of input from the editors).
Ie.
* Changing the look would be relatively easy. (Making the
sections/items/images/captions clearer, changing the box design including
header-background-color, etc)

* Changing the method for entering infobox-content might be complicated,
depending on how much editors have to learn new workflows, or overhaul
millions of existing pages. But it should be achievable, because there's a
wide agreement that having ~100 lines of template code at the top of
articles is not ideal. (We could change this fairly easily, e.g. with
subpage transclusion but...:

* Changing where the infomation is stored is very complicated, because
anything that separates content from the central page that the editors are
watchlisting, suddenly becomes a lot more susceptible to
vandalism/inaccuracy, due to lack of scrutiny. There is an option in
Special:preferences to "Show Wikidata edits in your watchlist" - but I find
using this tends to be a bit annoying, because of the uninformative
edit-summaries and lack of navpopups support for diff-links (so I have
visit every change, to see what it did).

* Changing what information is included in an article/infobox, should be
left in the hands of the editors. (With discussion encouraged, and change
being possible; but it would need to be a very well-researched and
cross-wiki discussion)

I would suggest that as a first step: someone needs to do a deep-dive into
exactly how many items there are in
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16
vs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada 's (infobox)
etc: for a handful of topics, and language-projects.


(exhaustion disclaimer. Jet-lagged and not thinking clearly)


On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 2:44 PM, Jon Robson <[email protected]> wrote:

> Infoboxes cause a huge problem on mobile and I've been asking us to be
> guinea pigs for this sort of thing.
>
> I would like mobile to scrub infoboxes and then generate them in a
> more appropriate place in the UI using Wikidata. I was told this would
> be controversial though...
>
> On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 2:26 PM, Amir E. Aharoni
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Just an idea inspired by Brandon's Wikimania talk and some discussions at
> > Wikidata-L: We can completely remove infobox templates. More precisely,
> the
> > templates may stay, but the code that places them in the article can be
> > removed.
> >
> > Let me explain: Wikidata makes it possible to write an infobox without
> any
> > parameters - just {{Infobox settlement}} without any |, = and all that.
> > Wikidata even has a property called "infobox's main topic", a kind of
> > "meta-property" that can automatically identify which infobox does the
> > article need, so that you can simply say something like {{Infobox}}.
> This is
> > implemented in the Russian Wikipedia using
> > https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Module:Universal_infocard , which is used
> on
> > hundreds of articles there. So it hasn't replaced the usual templates
> yet,
> > but the theoretical possibility is there.
> >
> > Thus, the only thing left to the editor's discretion is where to place
> the
> > infobox.
> >
> > This, however, can be handled by Winter. Winter puts infobox-like
> > information on the info rail*, and if we plan to be bold enough to take
> it
> > completely out of the article's prose flow, why not just remove it from
> the
> > article completely? If an article has an appropriate infobox template,
> it is
> > shown on the info rail, and that is it. (The Community will then ask for
> the
> > __NOINFOBOX__ magic word, but that's a minor thing.)
> >
> > Thoughts?
> >
> > * That's how I call the "right rail" until there is consensus on a better
> > name. See
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/design/2014-August/001897.html
> >
> > --
> > Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
> > http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> > ‪“We're living in pieces,
> > I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > [email protected]
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Jon Robson
> * http://jonrobson.me.uk
> * https://www.facebook.com/jonrobson
> * @rakugojon
>
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