This is an archive of past discussions about Template:Infobox academic. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Aside from the absence of the fields "author_abbrev_bot" and "author_abbrev_zoo", how is this template different from Template:Infobox Scientist? And, if these are the only differences, is a separate template really needed? Thanks, Black Falcon(Talk)06:28, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
template broken?
Why does the template cause the Table of Contents for an article to be generated as a set of footnotes in the infobox? {{Infobox scientist}} doesn't have this problem, and this one does seem to be based quite a bit off that one. Esrever(klaT)19:32, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
No, please - give them their own little box. Much too crufty and against WP:INFOBOX principles. Of course adding them is an excellent idea, but not in the main box. Johnbod (talk) 18:00, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
One of the most important bits of information for a scholar is his education. The person infobox has a parameter for education, but the scholar infobox does not. I recommend that an education parameter be added to the scholar infobox. Other relevant parameters such as occupation, employer, and organization should probably be added too. --JHP (talk) 02:07, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
Agree heartily with JHP, and so disagree with Frietjes and Andy: This is not a merger candidate, but an improvement candidate, as this infobox fills an important role but is decidedly wanting. Please, all readers, compare it to "Infobox scientist", [1], and suggest a way forward. Most of the same informational components that are relevant to scientific scholars are as much or more relevant to those not in science. (For instance, a scientist almost never remains in the same particular vein of research of their graduate thesis, while most scholars in the humanities do so remain.) Note, I have also raised a general flag at the Infoboxes main talk page, here [2]; look for the late talk mentioning "academic / professor". Cheers, look forward to an informed, thoughtful discussion after this and the Scientist boxes are compared. Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 16:19, 30 July 2014 (UTC)
This message is to notify you that there is an RfC ongoing on whether to add pronunciation info to {{Infobox person}}, a discussion which may also affect this template. Your comments on the matter are appreciated. The discussion can be found here. Thanks! 0x0077BE(talk · contrib)17:23, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
Qualifications for 'Notable Students' and 'Influences' Parameters
|notable_students= - Who qualifies as a 'notable student' exactly? Are these people who had their dissertations supervised by the scholar, did they take a class with the scholar, or is it less restrictive than that?
|influences= - What qualifies as a third-party source? I'm not sure exactly what this means. If the scholar says that they were influenced by someone, wouldn't this count?
|influenced= - Above two questions apply; what qualifies as someone who is 'influenced'? Is there formal criteria? Further, what third party sources are required to qualify this?
This template has no TemplateData to go with it, and so there are gaps in how to apply it which are leaving me to guess— for example, the honorific prefix: in academia, I presume we are to put "Doctor" for most Ph.D.s, yes? And if the person is a university dean, do we put "Dean" here? Or is "Doctor" the preferential title when a person is both a Ph.D. and a dean? What about university presidents? Is the honorific title meant to be the title for the highest degree held or for the academic position held? As an academic, I feel I should know this, but Wikipedia has always made its own community-based rules for such things and I don't want to guess and be "wrong" in this sense. TemplateData would have been super helpful. What if the person were also a British knight? "Sir Doctor"? Documentation gives no clue. KDS4444 (talk) 21:05, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
The consensus on Wikipedia is to not use academic honorific prefixes/suffixes: see MOS:HONOURIFIC. So Doctor, PD, PhD, BA, MBA etc aren't used. What you can put in |honorific prefix= are other honorifics such as Rabbi, The Reverend, The Honourable, Her Honour, Sir, Dame, military rank, etc. Basically, this parameter IS NOT about academic titles; those would go in |title=. If it would go on your passport, it can go in |honorific prefix=; excluding doctor and professor. This would be acceptable, "Sir John Smith, OBE" but this wouldn't "Dr Sarah Jones MBA". Does that help? Gaia Octavia AgrippaTalk22:48, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
As I can't imagine there could be any objection, I would like to request that support for the Parents parameter be added (by adding {{{parents|}}} in the appropriate place). Thanks, 142.160.131.202 (talk) 22:27, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
There are the fields doctoral-students and notable-students. In one place, it says that notable-students must be notable but says nothing about doctoral-students leading me to understand that this field could be used for non-notable doctoral students. Elsewhere it says both fields must be notable. So what then is the distinction between these fields? Is it the doctoral-ness? Are we seriously proposing including lists of notable but non-doctoral students ("they supervised their lab class once")? What exactly is the difference between these fields? Or should we merge them into notable-doctoral-students? Kerry (talk) 08:58, 27 October 2017 (UTC)
Simply put |doctoral_students= is for students who as the academic in question as a doctoral advisor/supervisor (whatever the local terminology is, the person who is the lead or co-lead on their doctoral degree), while |notable_students= who be for other students (undergrads, masters students, etc). For universities where academics are hands-off in their influence on students until the doctorate stage, |notable_students= wouldn't be appropriate. However, at universities such as Oxford and Cambridge where on academic is meeting with a student every week over three or four years, it is appropriate. So |notable_students= is only appropriate when there is a similar level of contact/influence as one might expect at doctoral level at all universities. Does that answer your question Kerry? Gaia Octavia AgrippaTalk15:35, 27 October 2017 (UTC)
Not done for now: Have you verified that the functionality associated with |module= is unaffected with this change, as that too uses a child infobox? Izno (talk) 05:07, 12 November 2017 (UTC)
@Izno: I'm not clear on how |module= could be affected given that we'd be dealing with |module= in two separate templates (albeit one embedded into the other). I've tested the usage of the sandbox in {{Infobox person}} and I haven't run into any issues. And I'm not sure how this would be any different than the usage at, e.g., {{Infobox clergy}}, which also uses |module=. 142.160.131.202 (talk) 05:22, 12 November 2017 (UTC)
My concern is that the child navbox embedded in the module of this template should be unaffected by allowing this template to be a child of another template. Did you test that? The test case page is unedited of recent. --Izno (talk) 06:37, 12 November 2017 (UTC)
As I don't suspect there could be any objection, I would like to request that support for the Citizenship parameter be added (by adding {{{citizenship|}}} in the appropriate place) for cases where the Nationality parameter is inappropriate (as discussed in the documentation for Template:Infobox person). 142.160.131.202 (talk) 04:34, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
@142.160.131.202:YPartly done I've added the hyphen to "Sub-discipline", but could you provide an example as to when "citizenship" legitimately replaces "nationality" and doesn't make it redundant? Don't worry, I know it's in good faith... :) ToThAc (talk) 18:27, 24 October 2017 (UTC)
The field |website= does not appear in the doc but still works. The thesis fields also do not show up even if populated. Also, the template {{URL}} does not display correctly, nor does a simple [] around the url. See this diff. Is this some new feature?--Aurictalk13:11, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
{{URL}}
This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= parameter to no to reactivate your request.
Unlike {{infobox person}} and other personal infoboxes, this infobox uses {{URL}} in the website field, which breaks uses of {{official URL}}. Would this be able to be removed (i.e., by replacing {{#if:{{{website|}}}|{{URL|{{{website|}}}}}}} with {{{website|}}}), thus bringing it into conformity with other infoboxes of the same class? Thanks, 142.161.81.20 (talk) 23:46, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= parameter to no to reactivate your request.
As the parents parameter was recently removed without discussion on the basis that the parameter is "deprecated", I would like to request that it be restored given that the parameter is not, in fact, deprecated. 142.161.81.20 (talk) 03:07, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
If you insert "parents" and then try to fill out the parameter in an article, you get the message: "Page using Template:Infobox academic with unknown parameter "parents" (this message is shown only in preview)." I just tried to re-insert the parameter and check again and the same message appeared when I tried to fill out the parameter in random articles featuring Template:Infobox academic. Related templates have the same issue. Until someone more knowledgeable figures out what is going on here and fix it, we probably should not have "parents" displayed here. --Omnipaedista (talk) 16:59, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
I would propose a more general relatives parameter. This is already enabled by {{Infobox person}} and would allow editors to add parents as well as siblings or children, which are equally important. Ergo Sum22:42, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
I would prefer replacing the parents parameter with a more general relatives parameter. Is there input on this question? If not, I will go ahead and just implement an additional parameter called relatives. Ergo Sum03:16, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
I would like to ask that support for the home town parameter be added to the infobox (much like {{Infobox person}}, {{Infobox clergy}}, etc.) for subjects whose home town is not the same as their birth place. An example of its use would be at Vladimir Lossky. While Lossky was born in Göttingen, Germany, and died in Paris, France, he was raised and educated in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Thanks, 142.160.89.97 (talk) 18:27, 15 June 2018 (UTC)
There are about a hundred pages over at Category:Pages using infobox academic with unknown parameters that use the undefined parameter "fullname". In most cases, it seems the person has a middle name that's not included in the page title. Does it make more sense to move this to "birth_name" (if appropriate), "name", or "other_names"? Should this even be included? I'm inclined to use "birth_name", provided they were born with the name, and then "other_names" otherwise, but there's no description on the template page for when to use "other_names", and I'm not sure if "birth_name" is only used if the person's name actually changed at some point, so I figured I'd check first. Suelru (talk) 03:05, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
Suelru, I use |birth_name= if |name= is something like "AB Smith", and also with those who marry/otherwise change their names. They should never be repeats of each other. At Template:Infobox person, |birth_name= is described as "Name at birth; only use if different from name". I'd say that was clear, and if you agree, I suggest that we change the explanation at this infobox to match the "mother infobox". Gaia Octavia AgrippaTalk19:18, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
While the fields of {{Infobox scholar}} work perfectly fine for scholars who spent most/all of their career outside the academy, the headings "Academic background" and "Academic work" don't quite fit. In the sandbox, I've added a parameter called non-academic for such cases which replaces the headings with "Scholarly background" and "Scholarly work" respectively. It does not, however, affect academic_advisors as, even in these cases, that parameter would be for the scholar's academic education (if applicable). Thanks, 142.160.89.97 (talk) 05:52, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
Declined Can you state in what use cases this can be useful and why scholarly background/work cannot fall under academic background/work? --qedk (t桜c)09:21, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
I certainly understand its use. I'm asking for specific usecases, like which article(s) would benefit from this additional parameter. --qedk (t桜c)05:42, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
@QEDK: I had a specific use case in mind when I initially made the request, but as that was nearly a month ago, it's only natural that I can't recall which article I was hoping to use it on in particular. An example of another case where it could be used, however, would be Mary Kitson Clark. 142.160.89.97 (talk) 18:50, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
As the school/tradition parameter is now under "Academic work" / "Scholarly work", can we stop its use from triggering the "Academic background" / "Scholarly background" heading? The necessary code is in the sandbox. Thanks, 142.160.89.97 (talk) 01:37, 1 June 2019 (UTC)
This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= parameter to no to reactivate your request.
I would like to request that the residence parameter be added to the template for cases where a subject's residence is not the same as their birthplace (in line with {{infobox person}} documentation). 142.161.81.20 (talk) 03:10, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
Actually I didn't add it at all, the residence field was already an option, it was just missing from the docs. Apparently it can be accessed with both "region" and "residence" parameters. That is to say, {{Infobox academic|... residence=France ...}} and {{Infobox academic|... region=France ...}} have the same output. – by AdA&D at 15:09, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
The template says “only for those with Wikipedia articles”, but the text below that says “only for those notable enough for Wikipedia articles”. Which is correct? I certainly hope the template is wrong. The existence of a Wikipedia article about a person is only very loosely correlated with their importance. Will Orrick (talk) 23:20, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
The most recent edit to the template broke instances of the template that use the child parameter for embedding. Could it be reverted or, alternatively, could the template be set up such that the terms "child" and "embed" would be interchangable? (Pinging Omnipaedista.) Thanks, 207.161.86.162 (talk) 07:55, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
The academic background section is currently triggered by the thesis1_title and thesis2_title parameters but not by the thesis_title parameter. I have rectified this in the sandbox (and removed the line break at the top of the code). Thanks, 207.161.86.162 (talk) 21:52, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
I came to the article to see how main interests in an infobox should be formatted: separated by bullets with only the first item capitalized, or vertically in a list with the first word of each entry capitalized, or what? But the C.S. Lewis example, with only one interest, gives no indication on this. Is there a preferred style, or is any way of showing them acceptable? An example with more than one interest would be more helpful. Thanks. –Roy McCoy (talk) 19:18, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
This template doesn't support being embedded into another. Ng Cho-nam is a complicated situation and currently has two infoboxes, down from three. If this could be embedded, that article could use {{infobox person}} as the primary infobox. This is the only article I am aware of presently using many parameters from officeholder, academic, and Chinese - so it may not be worth the effort for just one article. But if it is easy to do, it would help at least in this example. Jonesey95?? MB21:52, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for the ping. I don't have the energy to research and test this one at the moment. If you dig up and link to a similar "person" template that is embeddable within infobox person, that will help me copy the relevant code. Try to find one and then ping me again. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:53, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
Jonesey95, I did check the documentation which was silent on this. I updated with the generic embed instructions which aren't quite right since they say embed and subbox work also, but its better than before. MB18:24, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
I was getting ready to add Infobox academic to an article, and noticed a red link. I saw it was for a Category that had been removed. I deleted this portion of the tracking category section from the documentation template:
Hi, I was wondering what people would think about adding ORCID numbers to this infobox? They are standarised unique numbers for individual authors and might help readers identify work better. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jamzze (talk • contribs) 19:14, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for finding my stupid error (which I should have spotted in the first place if I weren't tired at that time of the edit) and for also fixing the problem. -- 64.202.138.67 (talk) 21:25, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
The contents of the academic_advisors field normally appear alongside the label "Academic advisors"; however, when the field is used alongside the doctoral_advisor field, it uses the label "Other academic advisors" with a non-breaking space after the word "Other". In most use cases, this has the unfortunate side effect of substantially increasing the width of the label column and decreasing the width of the content column. While the effect of this may seem minor in theory, in practice this frequently results in numerous additional line breaks in the infobox, substantially increasing the infobox's length.
To avoid this, I would suggest that rather than using the label "Other[ ]academic advisors" when the field is used alongside doctoral_advisor, we instead use the label "Other advisors" in such cases. As the field normally appears under the heading "Academic background", this label would be no less precise than the existing one. And the fact that we are referring specifically to academic advisors is further reinforced by the fact that the label would only appear when immediately followed by the doctoral_advisor field. 207.161.86.162 (talk) 04:12, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
Thomas Nagel was what prompted me to suggest this. It's far from the most extreme example I've seen, but I count the addition of seven line breaks[a] and the loss of one line break (as the doctoral advisor label never needs to wrap when the academic advisors field is present) for a net addition of six line breaks. I've posted the infobox with and without the academic advisors field in the collapsed boxes below.
{{Infobox academic}} already has a tendency to be on the long side, so the addition of six lines makes a difference (and, in this case, amounts to a 16% increase in the number of lines in the infobox, excluding headings and the image). And the effect has been even more pronounced in articles I have come across in the past, particularly articles with a significant number of names in the influences and influenced fields.
^Namely, one in the alma mater field, one in the institutions field, one in the doctoral students field, three in the notable works field, and one in the notable ideas field.
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