Help:Infobox

An infobox is a fixed-format table usually added to the top right-hand corner of articles to consistently present a summary of some unifying aspect that the articles share and sometimes to improve navigation to other interrelated articles.

The use of infoboxes is neither required nor prohibited for any article. Whether to include an infobox, which infobox to include, and which parts of the infobox to use, is determined through discussion and consensus among the editors at each individual article.

What infoboxes do

Infobox templates contain important facts and statistics of a type which are common to related articles. For instance, all animals have a scientific classification (species, family and so on), as well as a conservation status.

Infobox templates are like fact sheets, or sidebars, in magazine articles. They quickly summarize important points in an easy-to-read format. However, they are not "statistics" tables in that they (generally) only summarize material from an article—the information should still be present in the main text, partly because it may not be possible for some readers to access the contents of the infobox. In particular, if infobox templates hide long columns of data inside collapsing tables, then readers using assistive technology may miss their presence entirely.

Many infoboxes also emit metadata such as microformats.

What should an infobox contain?

In general, data in infobox templates should be:

• Comparable. If a lot of different subjects all share a common attribute (for instance, all people have a name and a date of birth), then it is useful to be able to compare these across different pages. This also implies that where possible, material should be presented in a standard format.
• Concise. Infobox templates are "at-a-glance", and used for quickly checking facts.
• Materially relevant to the subject.
• Already cited elsewhere in the article. Infoboxes, like the introduction to the article, should primarily contain material that is expanded on and supported by citations to reliable sources elsewhere in the article. However, if necessary (e.g., because the article is currently incomplete), it is possible to include footnotes in infoboxes.

What should an infobox not contain?

In general, data in infobox templates should not have:

• Excessive length. Long bodies of text, or very detailed statistics, belong in the article body.
• Trivial details. A common problem is including material in the infobox which is trivial and would not otherwise be included in the article body. Infobox templates should not be used for details that are too trivial to include in the article body.

Adding an infobox to an article

There are two steps required to add an infobox to an article:

1. Finding the infobox
2. Editing the article

Finding the infobox

In order to use an infobox in an article, an editor must know its name, parameters, and how those parameters are intended to be used. Because infoboxes are kept in a namespace separate from articles, it takes some effort to identify an infobox by name. Once the editor has the name, however, it is straightforward to look up the infobox's documentation.

There are two ways in which an editor typically locates which infobox they want to use:

• By browsing the set of all infoboxes via List of Infobox templates.
• By determining the name of a particular infobox used in a similar article.

For example, the article Didj contains an infobox. To determine which one, simply edit the article:

{{Infobox console
...
}}

The "{{Infobox console" identifies the markup between the enclosing braces as a use of the "console" infobox. The editor can look up the documentation for the template, including a list of parameters, in the Template namespace under Template:Infobox console.

Editing the target article

Like Wikipedia's Manual of Style, infoboxes should be placed at the top of an article after any disambiguation links and maintenance tags.

The infobox documentation page usually contains a convenient "blank" template that can be copied directly into the target article. The template consists of opening ({{) and closing (}}) double braces that contain the name of the infobox and a list of parameters without values. An editor then fills in the value for each of the parameters to the right of the corresponding equals sign.

For example:

{{Infobox console
|title =
|logo =
|logowidth =
|developer =
|type =
|generation =
|emulated =
}}

might be filled out like this: {{Infobox console
|title = Didj
|logo = Didj.png
|logowidth = 310px
|developer = LeapFrog Enterprises
|type = Handheld game console
|generation = 7th generation
|emulated = {{✗}}
}}

In this example, the names of the parameters ("title", "logo", "developer", "type") are fixed in the design of the infobox and described in its documentation. A parameter that is misspelled, falsely capitalized, or is not supported by the infobox implementation does not display at all. To find out exactly which parameters are functional, look at the infobox's template page. Anything not listed there will be ignored, even if it works in some other infobox. If you believe that another parameter needs to be added to a given infobox template, then suggest that on the infobox's talk page.

The infobox documentation describes which parameters are required and which are optional. Required parameters display between triple braces (for example, {{{requiredparametername}}}) when previewed or published. Optional parameters may be left empty or omitted entirely.

Troubleshooting

If you added an infobox and it didn't display correctly, here are the common errors:

• You used a made-up or invalid parameter. You can only use parameters that have been pre-programmed into this infobox template.
• You misspelled the parameter name or omitted necessary punctuation.
• You capitalized the parameter name. Parameters are case sensitive. Nearly all infoboxes use lowercase parameter labels.
• You included the prefix File: before the image name (or you didn't, and it's one of the templates that requires it).
• You used the parameter name more than once: only the final instance displays.