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archive of past discussions for the period 2005–2014. 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. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 |
I'm going to try to reduce the size of this template by taking out at least major works and quote. I'll make sure that this information is not lost, but is moved somewhere else in the article. Also, I might attempt to make this look aesthetically better.
If you have any comments or suggestions please leave them here. Thanks!
Also, User:Silence has made some great suggestions that are on his talk page. I'm copying them here so I'll be able to work from them easier:
-- FranksValli 05:25, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
Looking at the template on Friedrich Nietzsche again, it looks like this template's gotten quite ugly and redundant again, somewhere along the line. Its thinness is nonstandard and very unappealing, its Name, Birth, Death, and School/tradition sections are all redundant (or should be) to the opening paragraph of the article, and its "Notable Ideas" section is again useless without the proper context that a Wikipedia article requires: articles are written for people who don't already know anything about Nietzsche, not for the kind of people who'd gain any useful information from catchphrases like "Eternal Recurrence", "Will to Power", "Overman". I was (relatively) very happy with how this template was shaping up a few weeks ago, but now, again, it seems like the Western Philosopher articles would all become a great deal better if it was simply removed from them all and the article text was used to provide all of that information, as it should be. - Silence 03:52, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
I’ve adjusted the line-height for the picture caption to suit the smaller font-size; I’ve also changed the <span> to a <div> and added a little padding above and below. See Thomas_Aquinas for a multi-line caption that exhibits the adjusted line-height. — Goclenius 01:24, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Since the name is the caption to the box (let alone the title of the article), isn't a distinct name field redundant? TheGrappler 22:29, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
I removed the obviously redundant naming to the one with "Name: ..." in the template and increased the width of the template because it was too narrow. I hope this helps. Non-vandal 05:08, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
JA: I'm getting really fed up with not being able to read the leads of articles on major philosophers when I try to refer to them. If the template maker cannot figure out how to make the column width adjustable, or at the very least keep it under 250px, then I will very soon propose this template for deletion. Thanks, Jon Awbrey 16:12, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
JA: I think that you should look at something like Template:Platonism, that takes up a non-obtrusive 175px of column width. Maybe the sort of info that you want to include could be done with a bold head for each topic followed by an indented line of items under each head. Jon Awbrey 02:52, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
Bold text
I think we should remove these two fields. I've noticed on the pages I watch that use this template, there is almost constant alteration to the fields that describe who influenced the philosopher and who that philosopher influenced. These alterations go back and forth, and are the subject of rather petty debates. You can see this on the Plato, Niccolò Machiavelli, Friedrich Nietzsche (see talk), Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke pages, among others. The trend seems to be toward naming every philosopher before and after in the influences and influenced fields. In addition to this, I'm not sure how much these fields really contribute to the articles as a whole. Given their low information value and high revert magnetism, I think we should consider eliminating them. Because of the number of pages this would affect, I'm calling for a discussion to be concluded one month from now. RJC Talk 13:48, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Awadewit Talk 02:07, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
alternative proposal: the list of influences should be limited to people mentioned in the article. This ensures that they will have to comply with NPOV, V, and NOR standards. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:24, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Oppose/Strong Keep: If you are giving valid information about such topics like influence/influenced for a philosopher, especialy if philosopher himself/herself was wiling to convey that information, then there is no reason not to mention it. Wiki article on a philosopher is not about his philosophy, but about the philosopher, so such fields/topics giving valid information should certainly be there. In case you are not sure about this information you can mention so in the article itself. But why censor valid information about a philosopher, like Schopenhauer, who himself boldy stated it in his writings?? What is the purpose and intent in such a censorship and how do we know better than the philosopher himself/herself about what should be known about him/her and what not? Also, you can not simply give excuse that such headings will be or are misused. The whole article can be misused, that is why we can edit it and decide whether something is factual or not, so why you confuse misuse of a field with its validity in template structure? Skant ( talk) 04:55, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
Keep Please keep the influence/influenced sections, and especially the 'notable ideas'. I find all of it very helpful. However, Wittgenstein has apparently become too great for influences while Plato, Aristotle, and Kant have not. I added a long list of influences on the Wittgenstein page, but they keep getting deleted, since those who edit the page seem to think he is too great to be mentioned amongst other philosophers. -- 96.253.50.139 ( talk) 19:33, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
Endorse removal per Awadewit. These sections are cruft magnets and often cause extremely lame edit wars. Kaldari ( talk) 00:52, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
I've often wondered at the usefulness of these lists myself, and I agree with the rationale behind the original proposal to remove these lists from the infobox. I might also add, too, that the term "influenced" is far too ambiguous to be useful: every serious philosopher must, in one way or another, respond to or elaborate upon the ideas proposed by all major figures in philosophy, past and present, and so their own ideas are shaped -- or "influenced" -- by those figures. But is it really helpful to say that any given philosopher was influenced both by Hobbes and Locke? Or Plato and Aristotle?
I don't think so. And for that reason, I would suggest replacing the "influenced/influences" sections with a "Tradition" or "School" section. So, for example, in the article on Camus one could put "Tradition: Absurdist", even though such labels can't exactly capture all the proper nuances of the individual's philosophy (but that's what the article is for!). And even though there's bound to be debate over precisely what term to use here, I think that debate is almost entirely one of refinement: I don't think anyone will seriously argue that Camus doesn't belong to the Absurdist/Existentialist "school" in the way we're currently arguing over who may or may not have influenced him, and whom he in turn may or may not have influenced. -- Todeswalzer| Talk 22:53, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Endorse. Sure. That sounds much more reasonable.-- Heyitspeter 23:55, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
How about adding the most important writings for each philosopher to the template? -- D. Webb 05:17, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Might there be a case for creating a mystic/spiritual teacher template? There are a number of figures that fit neither the philosopher bracket nor the religious leader bracket. Examples might be Jakob Böhme, Meister Eckhart, or among more recent figures, Idries Shah, Gurdjieff, Osho, Alan Watts etc. Content could be
| century = xth-century mystic/spiritual teacher
| color =
| image_name =
| image_size = 200px
| image_caption =
| name =
| birth name =
| pseudonyms =
| birth =
| death =
| school_tradition =
| main_interests =
| notable_ideas =
| major works =
| influences =
| influenced =
| signature =
Any thoughts? Or is there an existing template covering this field? Jayen466 00:26, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
Hi — I've been seeing this template regularly now for a while and have started thinking that its space might be better used if there was only a single column after the Name, Birth and Death entries, i.e. each heading followed by list underneath using the full width of the template. Signature would be an exception. Yes, no? Sardanaphalus 20:53, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
|
I'm wondering which RJC and/or anyone else finds (1) a better use of space; and/or (2) (more) aesthetically pleasing...? (Example of Camus not specially chosen beyond being lengthy.) Sardanaphalus ( talk) 05:39, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Considering many philosophers have been awarded prizes(eg Nobel Prize), does anyone think we should add a Prizes section? Exiledone ( talk) 19:53, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
can someone remove the spaces between Name, Birth, Death, School/tradition, etc.? This infobox is much too big with the spaces, and the spaces really don't bring anything to the article. Kingturtle ( talk) 13:12, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
I've had the
ImageRemovalBot recently remove a link to an image from an article I edit. While this by itself was okay, it's shown a bug in this template: if there's something written in the |image_caption=
field, but the |image_name=
one is empty, the caption is still shown, now in a big font size and inside the header (
example). So, could someone please fix the template to completely ignore the caption text when |image_name=
is empty? --
alexgieg (
talk)
12:52, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
I propose we enable a show/hide feature on the influences and influenced field, like in {{ Infobox Writer}}. Thoughts? Skomorokh 21:05, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
... the "Influences" and "Influenced" sections of the Philosopher's Box. Nothing is more important as regards philosphers as who they refuted or built on, as well as who refuted them or took up their thread. The philosophers mentioned should also be listed in date of birth (chronological) order. I had to search around here and found the removed neccessity in sections 10 & 10.1. I was lucky. Please put them back!
On the 16 March 2009, User:Inwind modified this template by changing the birth and death parameters to birth_date/birth_place and death_date/death_place. In doing so he/she broke all of the many pages where this template is used. Now, to be fair he/she corrected about 40 of the pages where this template is used, but since hundreds of pages use this template, this meant that the vast majority were broken. I notice now (20 June 2009) that User:Bender235 has reverted the template, which was probably a reasonable action. Anyway, just for future reference can we just clarify which version of the template will be standard into the future? Singinglemon ( talk) 19:47, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
Notable_works Could this be a useful field? A line for notable essays or books could be a quick way to identify a philosopher's thought. Does this seem useful? — Justin (koavf)❤ T☮ C☺ M☯ 01:48, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
Hello, I am a philosophy/psychology double major at a state university. I have tried to fix the template on the Wittgenstein page twice, but those who watch the page deleted my edits. For some reason, they consider Wittgenstein too great to mention influences while Plato, Aristotle, and Kant aren't. It is obvious that Russell, Frege, Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche all had a profound influence on Wittgenstein, and not mentioning that on an encyclopedia is intellectual blasphemy! Wittgenstein has also had a huge influence on others, notably John Searle and his own mentor, Russell. Can somebody please help to fix this issue? -- 96.253.50.139 ( talk) 19:40, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
Other Infoboxes include such a field. Right now we have this situation with Sartre:
<!--
-->
Birth name does not exist. If you put that full baptismal name into the "name" field, then that becomes the title for the photo and the entire infobox, which is dumb, or as Sartre might say, stupide.
Varlaam (
talk)
04:30, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
In Hillel Steiner's infobox the show/hide thing looks a bit odd as there is only one influenced. Is there a way to switch it off? I know it doesn't matter much but it might help me understand the template things better. ( Msrasnw ( talk) 14:37, 19 December 2011 (UTC)) To learn more about templates, I would suggest first reading Help:Template then trying to make a userbox in your userspace that does something nifty -- the more nifty you make the userbox, the more experience you'll gain in understanding template syntax, and Help:Magic words, etc. Anyway, the template says:
| data11 = {{#if:{{{influences|}}} | {{Collapsible list
As you can see, it calls the {{ Collapsible list}} template. Now, the template could be rewritten to check for a new "collapsible" parameter, then if not present continue as normal, if present use a {{ Flatlist}} template instead, so that all current infoboxes wouldn't be affected, but future infoboxes would have additional options available to them. Something like this:
| data11 = {{#if:{{{influences|}}} | {{#if:{{{collapsible}}} |{{flatlist|insert parameters here...}} |{{Collapsible list|insert parameters here...}}
, but I'm about to suggest that references be required for these which will pretty much empty these categories out for a while, so the point may be moot. Banaticus ( talk) 02:19, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
I was doing some vandal review/reversion last night and saw someone adding more names to the Friedrich Nietzsche infobox. Now, it's quite likely that many, many people have been influenced by Nietzsche and that he in turn was influenced by many people that came before him. Without references, though, some valid and credible second-party source which says that he was influenced by someone or that he influenced someone, these sections should be deleted. Otherwise, how do we know whether or not someone was actually influenced by him or whether someone was just name dropping? Honestly, it's quite likely that every major philosopher in the last 50 years at least will likely have studied Nietzsche -- should every notable philosopher in the world since that time thus be listed in the "influenced by" section? That's not our call to make -- we should list those which a verifiable source lists, just like the rest of Wikipedia. (The gist of this statement was originally posted at Talk:Friedrich Nietzsche#The Influenced By and Influenced sections need references, or they should be deleted but after another person suggested posting here, I concurred because this problem of a lack of references likely pertains to more than just Nietzsche). Banaticus ( talk) 02:29, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
I think major cleanup would be better then deleting the whole stuff. Please take time to check people who were mentioned in the influenced section. There are many references on their own pages; such as Adler assimilating N philosophy or Nietzsche among others being early influence on Doblin and Kerenyi. And if you look closely Nietzsche like Schopenhauer has had more influence on writers(or critics of culture like Tonnies and Max Weber who have discussed and used many of his ideas and views (it is documented in books and is discussed first hand by the two thinkers)then on philosophers. Though i would really like to remove Fitzgerald and Kafka as two notable writers who have probably read N but for who (i at least) don't have any proof that they were influenced by him. Gustav Mahler has used a poem from Zarathustra in part of his third symphony..there is interesting link discussing their relationship(influence): http://www.sydneysymphony.com/learn_and_explore/audio_features/mahler_and_nietzsche/
These are but a few writers for my advocation of (not deleting) section. We should filter out those who were influenced from those who weren't instead of removing the whole section of a very influential philosopher. There is enough information about these thing on the internet. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.191.11.13 ( talk) 10:47, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
Please add the optional parameter "| resting_place =" just as it exists in some other infobox templates, e.g. template:Infobox religious biography. It will be helpful for infoboxes of some philosophers' articles, like Averroes (whose death_place is Marrakesh but resting_place is in Córdoba). Thanks, Khestwol ( talk) 11:08, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
I've started an RFC over at Stephen King's bio. As it involves information presented through this template, it might be of interest to editors who monitor or work on it. Thanks. § FreeRangeFrog croak 17:49, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
Perhaps the philosopher's infobox needs to add a parameter for native_language. For philosophers (and other writers), what language they wrote (& thought) in is quite important. Then we could leave nationality blank in cases such as Kant & be done with endless debates re nationality. -- JimWae ( talk) 02:15, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
This message is to notify you that there is an RfC ongoing on whether to add pronunciation info to {{ Infobox person}}, which this infobox transcludes. Your comments on the matter are appreciated. Thanks! 0x0077BE ( talk · contrib) 17:09, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
![]() | This is an
archive of past discussions for the period 2005–2014. 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. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 |
I'm going to try to reduce the size of this template by taking out at least major works and quote. I'll make sure that this information is not lost, but is moved somewhere else in the article. Also, I might attempt to make this look aesthetically better.
If you have any comments or suggestions please leave them here. Thanks!
Also, User:Silence has made some great suggestions that are on his talk page. I'm copying them here so I'll be able to work from them easier:
-- FranksValli 05:25, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
Looking at the template on Friedrich Nietzsche again, it looks like this template's gotten quite ugly and redundant again, somewhere along the line. Its thinness is nonstandard and very unappealing, its Name, Birth, Death, and School/tradition sections are all redundant (or should be) to the opening paragraph of the article, and its "Notable Ideas" section is again useless without the proper context that a Wikipedia article requires: articles are written for people who don't already know anything about Nietzsche, not for the kind of people who'd gain any useful information from catchphrases like "Eternal Recurrence", "Will to Power", "Overman". I was (relatively) very happy with how this template was shaping up a few weeks ago, but now, again, it seems like the Western Philosopher articles would all become a great deal better if it was simply removed from them all and the article text was used to provide all of that information, as it should be. - Silence 03:52, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
I’ve adjusted the line-height for the picture caption to suit the smaller font-size; I’ve also changed the <span> to a <div> and added a little padding above and below. See Thomas_Aquinas for a multi-line caption that exhibits the adjusted line-height. — Goclenius 01:24, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Since the name is the caption to the box (let alone the title of the article), isn't a distinct name field redundant? TheGrappler 22:29, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
I removed the obviously redundant naming to the one with "Name: ..." in the template and increased the width of the template because it was too narrow. I hope this helps. Non-vandal 05:08, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
JA: I'm getting really fed up with not being able to read the leads of articles on major philosophers when I try to refer to them. If the template maker cannot figure out how to make the column width adjustable, or at the very least keep it under 250px, then I will very soon propose this template for deletion. Thanks, Jon Awbrey 16:12, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
JA: I think that you should look at something like Template:Platonism, that takes up a non-obtrusive 175px of column width. Maybe the sort of info that you want to include could be done with a bold head for each topic followed by an indented line of items under each head. Jon Awbrey 02:52, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
Bold text
I think we should remove these two fields. I've noticed on the pages I watch that use this template, there is almost constant alteration to the fields that describe who influenced the philosopher and who that philosopher influenced. These alterations go back and forth, and are the subject of rather petty debates. You can see this on the Plato, Niccolò Machiavelli, Friedrich Nietzsche (see talk), Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke pages, among others. The trend seems to be toward naming every philosopher before and after in the influences and influenced fields. In addition to this, I'm not sure how much these fields really contribute to the articles as a whole. Given their low information value and high revert magnetism, I think we should consider eliminating them. Because of the number of pages this would affect, I'm calling for a discussion to be concluded one month from now. RJC Talk 13:48, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Awadewit Talk 02:07, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
alternative proposal: the list of influences should be limited to people mentioned in the article. This ensures that they will have to comply with NPOV, V, and NOR standards. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:24, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Oppose/Strong Keep: If you are giving valid information about such topics like influence/influenced for a philosopher, especialy if philosopher himself/herself was wiling to convey that information, then there is no reason not to mention it. Wiki article on a philosopher is not about his philosophy, but about the philosopher, so such fields/topics giving valid information should certainly be there. In case you are not sure about this information you can mention so in the article itself. But why censor valid information about a philosopher, like Schopenhauer, who himself boldy stated it in his writings?? What is the purpose and intent in such a censorship and how do we know better than the philosopher himself/herself about what should be known about him/her and what not? Also, you can not simply give excuse that such headings will be or are misused. The whole article can be misused, that is why we can edit it and decide whether something is factual or not, so why you confuse misuse of a field with its validity in template structure? Skant ( talk) 04:55, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
Keep Please keep the influence/influenced sections, and especially the 'notable ideas'. I find all of it very helpful. However, Wittgenstein has apparently become too great for influences while Plato, Aristotle, and Kant have not. I added a long list of influences on the Wittgenstein page, but they keep getting deleted, since those who edit the page seem to think he is too great to be mentioned amongst other philosophers. -- 96.253.50.139 ( talk) 19:33, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
Endorse removal per Awadewit. These sections are cruft magnets and often cause extremely lame edit wars. Kaldari ( talk) 00:52, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
I've often wondered at the usefulness of these lists myself, and I agree with the rationale behind the original proposal to remove these lists from the infobox. I might also add, too, that the term "influenced" is far too ambiguous to be useful: every serious philosopher must, in one way or another, respond to or elaborate upon the ideas proposed by all major figures in philosophy, past and present, and so their own ideas are shaped -- or "influenced" -- by those figures. But is it really helpful to say that any given philosopher was influenced both by Hobbes and Locke? Or Plato and Aristotle?
I don't think so. And for that reason, I would suggest replacing the "influenced/influences" sections with a "Tradition" or "School" section. So, for example, in the article on Camus one could put "Tradition: Absurdist", even though such labels can't exactly capture all the proper nuances of the individual's philosophy (but that's what the article is for!). And even though there's bound to be debate over precisely what term to use here, I think that debate is almost entirely one of refinement: I don't think anyone will seriously argue that Camus doesn't belong to the Absurdist/Existentialist "school" in the way we're currently arguing over who may or may not have influenced him, and whom he in turn may or may not have influenced. -- Todeswalzer| Talk 22:53, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Endorse. Sure. That sounds much more reasonable.-- Heyitspeter 23:55, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
How about adding the most important writings for each philosopher to the template? -- D. Webb 05:17, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Might there be a case for creating a mystic/spiritual teacher template? There are a number of figures that fit neither the philosopher bracket nor the religious leader bracket. Examples might be Jakob Böhme, Meister Eckhart, or among more recent figures, Idries Shah, Gurdjieff, Osho, Alan Watts etc. Content could be
| century = xth-century mystic/spiritual teacher
| color =
| image_name =
| image_size = 200px
| image_caption =
| name =
| birth name =
| pseudonyms =
| birth =
| death =
| school_tradition =
| main_interests =
| notable_ideas =
| major works =
| influences =
| influenced =
| signature =
Any thoughts? Or is there an existing template covering this field? Jayen466 00:26, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
Hi — I've been seeing this template regularly now for a while and have started thinking that its space might be better used if there was only a single column after the Name, Birth and Death entries, i.e. each heading followed by list underneath using the full width of the template. Signature would be an exception. Yes, no? Sardanaphalus 20:53, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
|
I'm wondering which RJC and/or anyone else finds (1) a better use of space; and/or (2) (more) aesthetically pleasing...? (Example of Camus not specially chosen beyond being lengthy.) Sardanaphalus ( talk) 05:39, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Considering many philosophers have been awarded prizes(eg Nobel Prize), does anyone think we should add a Prizes section? Exiledone ( talk) 19:53, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
can someone remove the spaces between Name, Birth, Death, School/tradition, etc.? This infobox is much too big with the spaces, and the spaces really don't bring anything to the article. Kingturtle ( talk) 13:12, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
I've had the
ImageRemovalBot recently remove a link to an image from an article I edit. While this by itself was okay, it's shown a bug in this template: if there's something written in the |image_caption=
field, but the |image_name=
one is empty, the caption is still shown, now in a big font size and inside the header (
example). So, could someone please fix the template to completely ignore the caption text when |image_name=
is empty? --
alexgieg (
talk)
12:52, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
I propose we enable a show/hide feature on the influences and influenced field, like in {{ Infobox Writer}}. Thoughts? Skomorokh 21:05, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
... the "Influences" and "Influenced" sections of the Philosopher's Box. Nothing is more important as regards philosphers as who they refuted or built on, as well as who refuted them or took up their thread. The philosophers mentioned should also be listed in date of birth (chronological) order. I had to search around here and found the removed neccessity in sections 10 & 10.1. I was lucky. Please put them back!
On the 16 March 2009, User:Inwind modified this template by changing the birth and death parameters to birth_date/birth_place and death_date/death_place. In doing so he/she broke all of the many pages where this template is used. Now, to be fair he/she corrected about 40 of the pages where this template is used, but since hundreds of pages use this template, this meant that the vast majority were broken. I notice now (20 June 2009) that User:Bender235 has reverted the template, which was probably a reasonable action. Anyway, just for future reference can we just clarify which version of the template will be standard into the future? Singinglemon ( talk) 19:47, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
Notable_works Could this be a useful field? A line for notable essays or books could be a quick way to identify a philosopher's thought. Does this seem useful? — Justin (koavf)❤ T☮ C☺ M☯ 01:48, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
Hello, I am a philosophy/psychology double major at a state university. I have tried to fix the template on the Wittgenstein page twice, but those who watch the page deleted my edits. For some reason, they consider Wittgenstein too great to mention influences while Plato, Aristotle, and Kant aren't. It is obvious that Russell, Frege, Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche all had a profound influence on Wittgenstein, and not mentioning that on an encyclopedia is intellectual blasphemy! Wittgenstein has also had a huge influence on others, notably John Searle and his own mentor, Russell. Can somebody please help to fix this issue? -- 96.253.50.139 ( talk) 19:40, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
Other Infoboxes include such a field. Right now we have this situation with Sartre:
<!--
-->
Birth name does not exist. If you put that full baptismal name into the "name" field, then that becomes the title for the photo and the entire infobox, which is dumb, or as Sartre might say, stupide.
Varlaam (
talk)
04:30, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
In Hillel Steiner's infobox the show/hide thing looks a bit odd as there is only one influenced. Is there a way to switch it off? I know it doesn't matter much but it might help me understand the template things better. ( Msrasnw ( talk) 14:37, 19 December 2011 (UTC)) To learn more about templates, I would suggest first reading Help:Template then trying to make a userbox in your userspace that does something nifty -- the more nifty you make the userbox, the more experience you'll gain in understanding template syntax, and Help:Magic words, etc. Anyway, the template says:
| data11 = {{#if:{{{influences|}}} | {{Collapsible list
As you can see, it calls the {{ Collapsible list}} template. Now, the template could be rewritten to check for a new "collapsible" parameter, then if not present continue as normal, if present use a {{ Flatlist}} template instead, so that all current infoboxes wouldn't be affected, but future infoboxes would have additional options available to them. Something like this:
| data11 = {{#if:{{{influences|}}} | {{#if:{{{collapsible}}} |{{flatlist|insert parameters here...}} |{{Collapsible list|insert parameters here...}}
, but I'm about to suggest that references be required for these which will pretty much empty these categories out for a while, so the point may be moot. Banaticus ( talk) 02:19, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
I was doing some vandal review/reversion last night and saw someone adding more names to the Friedrich Nietzsche infobox. Now, it's quite likely that many, many people have been influenced by Nietzsche and that he in turn was influenced by many people that came before him. Without references, though, some valid and credible second-party source which says that he was influenced by someone or that he influenced someone, these sections should be deleted. Otherwise, how do we know whether or not someone was actually influenced by him or whether someone was just name dropping? Honestly, it's quite likely that every major philosopher in the last 50 years at least will likely have studied Nietzsche -- should every notable philosopher in the world since that time thus be listed in the "influenced by" section? That's not our call to make -- we should list those which a verifiable source lists, just like the rest of Wikipedia. (The gist of this statement was originally posted at Talk:Friedrich Nietzsche#The Influenced By and Influenced sections need references, or they should be deleted but after another person suggested posting here, I concurred because this problem of a lack of references likely pertains to more than just Nietzsche). Banaticus ( talk) 02:29, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
I think major cleanup would be better then deleting the whole stuff. Please take time to check people who were mentioned in the influenced section. There are many references on their own pages; such as Adler assimilating N philosophy or Nietzsche among others being early influence on Doblin and Kerenyi. And if you look closely Nietzsche like Schopenhauer has had more influence on writers(or critics of culture like Tonnies and Max Weber who have discussed and used many of his ideas and views (it is documented in books and is discussed first hand by the two thinkers)then on philosophers. Though i would really like to remove Fitzgerald and Kafka as two notable writers who have probably read N but for who (i at least) don't have any proof that they were influenced by him. Gustav Mahler has used a poem from Zarathustra in part of his third symphony..there is interesting link discussing their relationship(influence): http://www.sydneysymphony.com/learn_and_explore/audio_features/mahler_and_nietzsche/
These are but a few writers for my advocation of (not deleting) section. We should filter out those who were influenced from those who weren't instead of removing the whole section of a very influential philosopher. There is enough information about these thing on the internet. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.191.11.13 ( talk) 10:47, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
Please add the optional parameter "| resting_place =" just as it exists in some other infobox templates, e.g. template:Infobox religious biography. It will be helpful for infoboxes of some philosophers' articles, like Averroes (whose death_place is Marrakesh but resting_place is in Córdoba). Thanks, Khestwol ( talk) 11:08, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
I've started an RFC over at Stephen King's bio. As it involves information presented through this template, it might be of interest to editors who monitor or work on it. Thanks. § FreeRangeFrog croak 17:49, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
Perhaps the philosopher's infobox needs to add a parameter for native_language. For philosophers (and other writers), what language they wrote (& thought) in is quite important. Then we could leave nationality blank in cases such as Kant & be done with endless debates re nationality. -- JimWae ( talk) 02:15, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
This message is to notify you that there is an RfC ongoing on whether to add pronunciation info to {{ Infobox person}}, which this infobox transcludes. Your comments on the matter are appreciated. Thanks! 0x0077BE ( talk · contrib) 17:09, 16 November 2014 (UTC)