Template talk:Infobox officeholder

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Edit request 3 June 2025

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Description of suggested change:

The formatting of native names in this infobox is inconsistent with that of other biographical infoboxes (e.g. infobox person) -- as far as I can see, only officeholder bolds them; they are usually in regular type.

Demonstration provided (person on top, officeholder below). Could this template be changed for consistency? UndercoverClassicist T·C 11:34, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Example Person
Persona Exempla
OccupationExemplary person
Example Person
Persona Exempla
Exemplary office

 Not done: please make your requested changes to the template's sandbox first; see WP:TESTCASES. This has been pending for more than a month and nobody has taken up the invitation to code this so it's clear nobody ever will. * Pppery * it has begun... 23:37, 11 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Template-protected edit request on 20 July 2025

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Change'Union for the Congolese Nation' to 'Alliance des Forces Démocratiques du Congo' The personnality has changed his political affiliation since December 2024. GoTT2024 (talk) 12:04, 20 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 Not done: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the template {{Infobox officeholder}}. If possible, please make your request at the talk page for the article concerned. If you cannot edit the article's talk page, you can instead make your request at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection#Current requests for edits to a protected page. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. – welcome! – 17:51, 20 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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On Martin Van Buren, the valid presence in this template of the string "British America" as part of the value for |birth_place= causes a "Script warning: AMERICA ("America") is not a recognized country in ISO 3166-1 (Module:ISO 3166)." in preview. (Removing those two words and the preceeding comma causes a "Script warning: No parameter for the country given (Module:ISO 3166)." error instead.) Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:40, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Both errors come from {{Country2nationality}}, which is passed the output of {{find country}}. In the first case, {{find country}} decides the country is "America", which {{Country2nationality}} does not recognize, while in the second it finds no country. Not watching, please ping if further input is needed from me. Anomie⚔ 16:02, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Why is the infobox doing that anyway? Birthplace is not necessarily an indicator of nationality.
Where is this supposed nationality being used? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:22, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Pinging @Anomie: as instructed in his signature. Bruce leverett (talk) 18:25, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This I have no idea about. 🤷 Anomie⚔ 19:22, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds like the problem is in {{Country2nationality}} or {{find country}}. Is the output "America" problematic, or is not supporting "America" as an input an oversight? I'd bring this to those two templates to work out. VanIsaac, GHTV contrabout 19:26, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"British America" or "British Colonial America" isn't something I usually see outside of FamilySearch. I would think New York Province should be enough precision here.--Auric talk 17:19, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I guess that the calls to {{find country}} and {{Country2nationality}} are an attempt to catch errors in the country name, and nothing more, since evidently the nationality is not used, but is just discarded.
So this error check is coming up with what I might describe as a false positive: it decides that British America is not a suitable country to appear in a birth place parameter, when editors seem to think that it is suitable for that purpose.
Part of the handling of this error is to issue the Script warning described above. Earlier, I think I remember observing that the article was also being put in a hidden category, Category:Wikipedia articles with obscure country. But I am not seeing that now; perhaps I am not remembering this correctly.
It would be possible to pursue this as a bug in one or more templates, either for the false positive, or for the confusing and obscure error handling. But I am not planning to pursue it at present. Bruce leverett (talk) 23:53, 23 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's actually trying to catch cases where the birthplace and nationality are the same and then hide the nationality, per WP:INFONAT which states "Omit when this can be inferred from the birth country". I tweaked the template so that it won't perform the check if nationality or birth_place are blank. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 17:35, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Issue displaying "alongside" data

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Currently, if an article uses "term=" to list the span of a term, any information added using "alongside=" will not display.

"alongside=" data only is displayed if "term_start=" / "term_end=" are instead utilized.

If this could be remedied so that "alongside=" information is displayed in either instance that would be much appreciated! Please ping me if/when this is addressed. Thank you! SecretName101 (talk) 21:26, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 Done. See this test case. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:00, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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Is it possible/appropriate to add social media links using this infobox? If so, how would I go about it? Eulersidentity (talk) 19:26, 9 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Generally no - the only link that should be added there is the subject's official website. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:16, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Affirmative. That said, do you or does anyone else have a suggestion as to what would be the best way to incorporate such links in an article? Eulersidentity (talk) 04:33, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In the external links section at the bottom of the article, but see WP:ELMIN. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:40, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! Eulersidentity (talk) 04:12, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Residence parameter

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After editing perhaps a thousand political BLPs since 2021, only just now am I seeing the description for the residence parameter. I have always operated under the impression that given that American politicians are elected within a constituency, where several municipalities can be represented at one time, the residence is useful information relative to the article subject. I am not referring to the personal address, but simply the name of the municipality.
The parameter description: Where this person lives. Only use for residences that come with the office. NOT for towns, cities, states, countries, etc..
Looking at this archived talk page section, it looks like there wasn't much feedback here. Looking at a handful of congressional BLPs, I see that the residence parameters are not present. Looking at a handful of state legislative BLPs the parameters are present.
Is the prime concern regarding personal information? Is the concern that the information is not encyclopedic? My belief is that this is core information that readers will look for and perhaps this parameter description should be revisited. --PerpetuityGrat (talk) 11:58, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That instruction was added in 2024. I don't recall a discussion about it. Maybe HTGS knows of a discussion. In retrospect, |residence= is probably a bad name for a parameter denoting the official home of an officeholder, since it has many meanings. The TemplateData report says that the parameter is used in 28,649 articles, FWIW. – Jonesey95 (talk) 12:49, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Nope, no discussion, just what I presumed most sensible. I added that advice after reviewing a lot of pages that listed essentially just the country or city of the office the person represents. In giving that guidance I may have been too bold, but (1) that is how many of the most-edited / most-important bios seemed to already treat the parameter (see: Droupadi Murmu, Emmanuel Macron, Bongbong Marcos) and (2) I do believe that adding the “area someone lives in” is more problematic than helpful as a practice and for most pages.
Other than (a) editors just filling the parameter with a place that they presume someone lives (part of parameter temptation), the main problem to me seems to be (b) a lack of continuous review, so that when the subject leaves office or moves we no longer have an up-to-date infobox, because unlike leaving the White House people assume that if your residence was Washington, D.C. before, then they assume it will still be Washington, D.C. after leaving office. Similarly, (c) we often just don’t get updates when someone moves house, so it would be very easy for even diligent editors to fail to keep the param up-to-date on the less-watched officeholders. And (d) when filling the parameter with an accurate region/city for where someone lives, a lot of the time the information is largely redundant and not terribly informative. (This last point is of course subjective, and we could recommend only filling the parameter when it isn’t implied by the rest of the infobox.)
(Thanks for the ping, btw.) — HTGS (talk) 06:18, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The documentation states (twice) Only use for residences that come with the office. NOT for towns, cities, states, countries, etc. This means that it should be blanked when a person leaves office. Sometimes, the official residence is not used by the officeholder: for example, the official residence of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is 10 Downing Street, whilst 11 Downing Street is the official residence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. But when Tony Blair was Prime Minister, and Gordon Brown was Chancellor, they each lived in the "other" house, because Brown was single whereas Blair had a wife and three (later four) children, and No. 11 has more residential space than No. 10. Since Blair left office, several prime ministers (most of whom have had children under 18) have also lived in No. 11 in preference to no. 10, see 11 Downing Street#Recent occupancy. In short: the officeholder doesn't necessarily live in the official residence. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:17, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
All very reasonable, and yes, I think bio editors will understand implicitly that once a person is no longer in office, their residence should be blanked. I have no objection to the doc being changed to account for the Blair–Brown nuance, but my reading of that situation is that Blair is in No. 11 because he is PM, not because he is renting some random flat in another part of the city.
I’d like to add, after a moment’s reflection: I trust editors at the bio article to understand situations like Blair’s, and make their own judgement, as informed by the current guidance at the doc. Sensible editors (imo) will know that they should be safe listing No 11. More cautious editors will start a discussion, and the community will reach a sensible solution (even if it is not what I would do): either they list the residence of the office (eg, No 10), or the actual residence as used by the officeholder (eg, No 11) or they will list no residence. Whichever way they choose to go, I don’t see a great need for more guidance than is written. — HTGS (talk) 09:25, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think the problem is that "residence" is too ambiguous and should be something like "official_residence" if the documentation's new instructions have consensus. The residence= parameter was removed from Infobox person in 2020. I wouldn't mind "official_residence" existing with the current instructions, but having "residence" is pretty inconsistent with Infobox person and has inevitably led to junk like we see in H. Rap Brown (residence = United States Penitentiary, Tucson). – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:38, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Seems sensible enough. Would you want to change the label as well?
I’m uncertain but cautious about the label “Official residence” myself, given the Blair–Brown case above, but I could see it being useful if we set it differently dependent on |residence= vs |official_residence= or something similar. — HTGS (talk) 00:44, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think the painful but sensible way to do it would be to add |official_residence= with clear documentation, add it to the template as a new label ("Official residence"), convert existing valid usages, and then deprecate and remove |residence= per the Infobox person precedent. It will take a while. People have been putting whatever they want in that field for many years. (The Blair-Brown situation is an edge case that could be handled with an efn note and an explanation in the body of the article.)– Jonesey95 (talk) 00:52, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I’m happy to support a change in parameter name—that part seems very sensible—but I’d rather get feedback from other editors looking at more biographies before backing a change in label name. Of course that should be easy to follow up on as a last step either way. — HTGS (talk) 01:06, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If the parameter is only for official residences, then do we even need the parameter? It's not like this information isn't covered elsewhere: Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland tells us the PM lives in 10 Downing and Chequers, for example. In fact, I'd wager that most if not all posts that come with an official residence have a Wikipedia article. Seems like we could save ourselves a lot of time and frustration if we deprecated the parameter here and left it to Template:Infobox official post. — Kawnhr (talk) 16:34, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Except they don't always. The residence of even the US President was Blair House during Truman's presidency, Octagon House during Madison's, and a handful of others besides the White House. The use of 11 Downing St under Blair, Cameron, May, and Johnson would be another example of divergence from the traditional 10 Downing St for UK Prime Ministers. That's the sort of thing that I feel this parameter was meant to represent. VanIsaac, GHTV contrabout 20:50, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
But we don't keep this info in their infobox after they leave office. Harry Truman doesn't say |residence=Blair House, David Cameron doesn't have |residence=11 Downing Street, etc — they're blank. We're content with the idea that, once they leave office, we can clarify that their official residence was different from the usual one in their article body (or the relevant pages). Why not do that all the time? — Kawnhr (talk) 21:25, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think this point stands for just about any fact in the infobox though. If you think some or all infoboxes shouldn’t list officeholders’ residences, that’s fine—I personally think far too many of these infoboxes are far too long—but I think you’d be suggesting that people looking up so-and-so officeholder aren’t going to want to see their official residence. — HTGS (talk) 05:30, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, that is not a prime detail viewers are looking for. Not saying that viewers are clamoring to find the city/town either, but it is significantly more important than official residences, especially when the official residence is tied to an office rather than an individual. --PerpetuityGrat (talk) 23:40, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Parameter for cabinet/commission

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Looking at articles of European commissioners (for example, Roxana Mînzatu), I see that they refer in the infobox to the "Commission" rather than the "President". This is achieved by "|1blankname = Commission" and "|1namedata = [[Von der Leyen Commission II|Von der Leyen II]]". At Talk:Jan Anthonie Bruijn, I have proposed a similar construction for Dutch political officeholders (mentioning "Cabinet" rather than "Prime minister". I believe in some European systems it makes more sense, as (1) it allows to distinguish between different cabinets headed by the same prime minister and (2) Dutch cabinet members don't serve under the prime minister (the prime minister is merely chairing the Council of Ministers).

Based on these repeated uses (for all European commissioners and potentially all Dutch cabinet members), I am wondering if it would be desirable to add "Commission" and "Cabinet" parameters to the infobox (like the "President" and "Prime minister" parameters). This, as opposed to using the construction with 1blankname and 1namedata. Happy to hear comments, as I'm not sure at what point this would become preferred. - Tristan Surtel (talk) 16:20, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]