Infobox
An infobox is a digital or physical table used to collect and present a subset of information about its subject, such as a document. It is a structured document containing a set of attribute–value pairs,[1] and in Wikipedia represents a summary of information about the subject of an article.[2] In this way, they are comparable to data tables in some aspects. When presented within the larger document it summarizes, an infobox is often presented in a sidebar format.
An infobox may be implemented in another document by transcluding it into that document and specifying some or all of the attribute–value pairs associated with that infobox, known as parameterization.
An infobox may be used to summarize the information of an article on Wikipedia.[3] They are used on similar articles to ensure consistency of presentation by using a common format.[4][2] Originally, infoboxes (and templates in general) were used for page layout purposes.[2] An infobox may be transcluded into an article by specifying the value for some or all of its parameters.[5] The parameter name used must be the same as that specified in the infobox template, but any value may be associated to it.[5] The name is delimited from the value by an equals sign.[5] The parameter name may be regarded as an attribute of the article's subject.[6]
On Wikipedia, an infobox is transcluded into an article by enclosing its name and attribute–value pairs within a double set of braces. The MediaWiki software on which Wikipedia operates then parses the document, for which the infobox and other templates are processed by a template processor. This is a template engine which produces a web document and a style sheet used for presentation of the document. This enables the design of the infobox to be separated from the content it manipulates;[2] that is, the design of the template may be updated without affecting the information within it, and the new design will automatically propagate to all articles that transclude the infobox.[4] Usually, infoboxes are formatted to appear in the top-right corner of a Wikipedia article in the desktop view,[3] or at the top in the mobile view.
Placement of an infobox within the wikitext of an article is important for accessibility.[7] A best practice is to place them following disambiguation templates (those that direct readers to articles about topics with similar names) and maintenance templates (such as that marking an article as unreferenced), but before all other content.[8][9]
Baeza-Yates and King say that some editors find templates such as infoboxes complicated,[10] as the template may hide text about a property or resource that the editor wishes to change; this is exacerbated by chained templates, that is templates transcluded within other templates.[10]
