Memory Alpha talk:Template for People

Image/caption in sidebar
Right now, there are three different styles in use (see sidebar) - I think we should decide which of those three should be used as the standard layout.

I personally prefer #3 - we already know which person is depicted and all additional information should be part of the article text anyway. This is also the style that is suggested by the existing template, and I think we should stay with this unless there are good reasons for one of the other styles. I like #2 the least - an additional table cell to mark the caption as a 'Caption' is unnecessary in my opinion. What do you think? -- Cid Highwind 18:03, 8 Jun 2004 (CEST)



I would much prefer option #4 -- using the wiki's automatic thumbnail generator to quickly and simply place the image on the side of the page. I know that I created the template with the table syntax, but that was intended solely for cases where we have a lot of tabular data about people. That's not the case with most of our biographies. -- Dan Carlson 18:27, 8 Jun 2004 (CEST)

I like #1. Even if the table only ends up having the picture, caption included in the lower cell, and a couple of data points, i still think it is a valuable reference to boil down data contained at various places in the article, even if the article is short. --Captainmike 18:48, 8 Jun 2004 (CEST)

Re:Dan That's fine as well - no images in the sidebar, perhaps not even a sidebar at all? We should at least include some rule of thumb in that case: Please use the sidebar only if there are more than X entries with available information. Or do we update the template, removing the sidebar completely? -- Cid Highwind 18:53, 8 Jun 2004 (CEST)

Re:Captainmike Captainmike brings up a good point, though. The sidebar is a good summary (if there is enough information to be summarized, of course). -- Cid Highwind 18:53, 8 Jun 2004 (CEST)

Yeah, Cid, that's what I mean -- use the table format if there's enough information to warrant it, but otherwise don't use the sidebar. -- Dan Carlson 21:16, 8 Jun 2004 (CEST)