I've been operating on wikipedia since 2002. Small edits here and there, I only created an account when I felt the need to add pictures.
During the last year I've noticed the alarming increase of a type of user that makes people swear never to use wikipedia again: the rulebook banger. I don't mean a rule nazi that sticks by the rules no matter what. I mean a person who will make it his personal quest to beat you and your edits into the ground because he has some sort of unfulfilled desire in real life. He literally knows all the rules of wikipedia by heart and will use them to enforce his point and his view only disregarding them or brutally enforcing them when it suits his needs. He will say your sources are not valid, remove your images and revert your edits just because it makes him feel important.
This my friends is the rulebook banger and he is the main reason people quit wikipedia.
Do not put spaces between parameters. The other parameters are optional and can be placed in any order. Some infoboxes do not require the brackets. Keep parameters in lower case. The other parameters are:
Type
'thumb' / 'thumbnail' or 'frame'. This causes image to be displayed with specific formatting. "thumb" is normally preferred.
Location
'right', 'left', 'center' or 'none'. Determines placement of the image on the page. "Left" or "right" is the norm, but large panoramas or timelines can be displayed in the center.
Size
{width}px or {width}x{height}px (e.g. 50x40px, would limit width to 50 pixels and height to 40 pixels). Normally only one variable is used. Use common sense when determining the sizes; you can use the "Show preview" button if you need to. If thumb or thumbnail is chosen, size should normally be left out, so that the size defaults to the size set in a user's preferences.
alt=
(keep it lower case). This is the "alternate image" parameter used to describe the image for screenreaders or for people with low-vision. It should be more descriptive than the caption alone. Do not use this for another copy of the caption or of the article title, as the reader will already be aware of these.
Caption
Any element which cannot be identified as one of the above is automatically treated as caption text. It is traditional to put this last. The caption should identify what the image is, and ideally be a complete sentence that adds to the article by pointing out something a casual reader would not have noticed otherwise, or add information the pertains to the image. Full sentence or multi fragment captions require full stop punctuation.
If you have created a picture that is not already in Wikipedia's image collection on the Commons that you want to include in an article, you will need to upload it first. Bonus tip: Similar formatting is used to insert basic audio or basic video clips into articles.
This user feels that out of processdeletions subject to an administrator's whims rather than consensus damage Wikipedia more than any userbox ever could.*
.svg){kind=small}
.svg){kind=small}
