Problem: despite being optional, the infobox is a great summary tool. And there is a huge list due to the diversity of topics in the encyclopedia.
Proposed solution: Or having a button with a list of infoboxes to add quickly, or when creating a new article the assistant suggests a related infobox; for example: article biographies, biography infobox. In addition to adding the option to hide the infobox, this is good on mobile.
I did some work on this at the 2019 Hackathon, but paused it when WMDE picked up template UI improvements. That project is now finished but they didn't get around to browsing templates. My patch from 2019 is still up and wouldn't take a lot of effort to improve. ESanders (WMF) (talk) 14:46, 31 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This sounds like something that will benefit some Wikipedias more than others. Most Wikipedias do not have a large number of specialized infobox templates. For example: enwiki has thousands, dewiki has hundreds, tlwiki has dozens, igwiki has 8. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:30, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Elilopes, I agree that we need Global templates. The smallest wikis need Wikidata-enhanced infoboxes. Most of the articles at htwiki are bot-like articles made from the 2000 US census. They simply don't have enough editors to update the population numbers to the 2020 census data. But why should they? That number could be pulled in from Wikidata instead. They shouldn't have to update it personally; nobody at any of the ~300 smallest Wikipedias should have to update it by hand. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:27, 15 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You can easily go to WP:IB to see a list of infoboxes and see what you need. There are articles that use multiple such as Antonio Inoki for example. There are three in that article. Pro wrestling, Chinese, and officeholder. So auto suggest wouldn't work in cases like that. Drawbacks and limitations need to be considered. Mr. C.C.Hey yo!I didn't do it!10:08, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I have a personal script (it's not production-ready) that uses SPARQL query to find proper infobox using Wikidata, and it works pretty well (example for Michael Jordan). So I think that the solution could be more intelligent than just an extended search interface. We have a lot of data about templates (not only infoboxes) and can suggest the best ones for the current article. — putnik14:50, 13 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It would be a very nice thing to have, but until we have Global templates, the configuration for infoboxes will have to be written for each wiki separately, so we'll get stuck with the same problem we have now: some of the larger wikis will enjoy this feature after investing some effort in developing this configuration, and the smaller ones will have nothing. So this should be done after we have global templates. That's exactly what I meant when I wrote the Semantic section in the project proposal. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 11:54, 22 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Totally agree. As an 3x5ension, it would be nice if the choice was part of the new article wizard and brought up the notability requirements. Wakelamp (talk) 01:23, 20 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I noticed the Catalan Wikipedia has moved to single-line infobox utilizing Wikidata as source. I was impressed by their accomplishment, that we also implement that in Indonesian Wikipedia, although for now it's still limited to Biographies, Geographies, and Species. ✒Bennylin09:56, 13 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Integration with Wikidata would be desirable. Fields can be populated from Wikidata, but having visual feedback during editing would also be useful (for example, look up in advance which fields have available data in Wikidata and show the data in the editor before publishing). Lion-hearted85 (talk) 12:24, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yep. Wikidata integration is the future of infobox. More projects should adopt the Catalan Wikipedia approach (I'm under the assumption that they're the first to do this, I apologize if this is not the case, and it was based on another project's codes) ✒Bennylin09:57, 13 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support We should have a fast way to include infobox in the article, or edit infobox. That accounts for a majority of lead section -- moreover navbox in the end of the article would have an add / remove button. Thingofme (talk) 15:52, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support Short and succint proposal. This is inline with mw:Global templates/Discuss that has been discussed more broadly (and harder to implement). But the spirit is the same: make adding infobox not a nightmare for non-techies communities. I suggest to utilize Wikidata, and make it an opt-in gadget or per project site setting. ✒Bennylin09:54, 13 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]