This is an archive of past discussions about Template:Infobox company. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
I'm proposing to update the documentation of this template to better demonstrate what company "type" means in this infobox. You can see examples of how "type" is currently used at Walmart, Target Corporation, and Cargill, and the current documentation for that parameter at Template:Infobox company#Type.
The issue is that many people reading about a company are unlikely to understand the uncontextualized use of "type" in an infobox when the only word that follows is "public" or "private". The meaning may become clear on a clickthrough to public company and private company, but that violates MOS:EGG. (This issue is extremely similar to the one described in MOS:EGG's example.)
I started the discussion because I think it contradicts the manual of style? I'm not sure who "everyone" is supposed to refer to there. Ed[talk][OMT]05:13, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
We are dealing in the context of an infobox about a company and in the entry of referring to the type of that company. In this context, I think "Private" and "Public" are not amibiguous and do not need the suffix "company". IceWelder [✉] 10:19, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
@IceWelder: "Type" is ambiguous/unclear because I'm not confident that a large majority of people are going to understand that there are different company types. In addition, readers understand that they are looking at an infobox for (say) "Walmart". They do not see the wikicode to understand that it's built on a generic infobox shell for all companies.
@WiinterU: Correct, and that's why we have hyperlinks. This situation is exactly like the example described in MOS:EGG: you don't have to know what parton in particle physics is, but you do need to know that there is a link that will go to a specific article that will explain it. In this infobox right now, what a reader sees without a mouseover (desktop) or preview tap (mobile) is .... public. Or private. Ed[talk][OMT]17:21, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
@Primefac: the incorrect links were the point. What a reader sees is a bluelink to "public" or "private" shorn of nearly all context—MOS:EGG in a nutshell. I'm open to the solution below, which instead adds "company" to the type field. Ed[talk][OMT]18:20, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
You've missed my point entirely. They don't just see "public" or "private", they see "type: public" or "type: private". It's not just one of two random words in an empty void of which they must ponder the meaning. Your generic assumption that "a large majority of people" do not know the definition of "type" is... weird. (please do notping on reply) Primefac (talk) 19:45, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
Apologies for the ping; I assumed that was a courtesy. :-) Type is also uncontextualized in that context. It could easily be swapped with, say, "industry" in this infobox. That's why I'm also fine with Jonesey95's solution below—giving context to one of the two sides will help readers. Ed[talk][OMT]20:00, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
No worries about the ping (I watch the page, which you wouldn't know). I'm not particularly bothered with how things shake out consensus-wise (much like Jonesey below) - I was mainly attempting to straighten out what I thought was a bit of fuzzy logic - so I'll go back to lurking. Primefac (talk) 20:09, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
Oppose. It's only an EGG if the intended meaning is not clear from the context. But in the context of the company infobox it's clear that a company is being described, hence there is no need to repeat the word "company". Gawaon (talk) 14:32, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
@Jonesey95: This would also solve the EGG issue, and I'm a little ashamed to say I didn't think about modifying that field instead. Thank you for proposing this. Ed[talk][OMT]17:21, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
To be clear, I neither support nor oppose this change, but I am happy to implement it if there is consensus. I just thought it might help editors here reach a consensus. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:23, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
Basically, with this logic, Moana should really be Moana character. Not everyone knows who Moana is. Just like no one really knows what Public companies and Private companies are. If they want to know, they can click the blue link. It isn't that hard to understand. WiinterU (talk) 18:29, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
@WiinterU: Article titles are handled by Wikipedia:Article titles, an entirely separate policy. MOS:EGG applies to article content. We do not structure hyperlinks so that a reader needs to click through to understand what's being referred to. In the example you bring up, an article that includes a link to Moana should make clear where the link is going to go, whether that's through how the link is piped or included in the context in the sentence around the link. We do not need to explain exactly what it is, but we do need readers to understand what they may or may not choose to navigate to. I.e. that they would be going to public company and not public. Ed[talk][OMT]19:38, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
Apologies for partially misunderstanding, but the rest of my comment addresses why that's not the case even in an article. Ed[talk][OMT]19:08, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
Consensus is not built by vote-counting, so we don't need any kind of polling tool. If there is no consensus for a change, that's that. IceWelder [✉] 19:45, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
I know this is a little off-topic but the person who posted this "I think the change is a little silly personally, but I'm too afraid to comment publicly w/o knowing the full situation. Sorry if there has been any hostile comments towards you, and thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. You're appreciated, cheers!" is really really nice. I really appreciate the kind words from them and I would like to thank them for this. If you are the one reading this who posted that, thank you! WiinterU (talk) 01:18, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
I'm not clear where this comment was? And if you feel I've been hostile towards you, I apologize. I genuinely can't imagine which comment that would have sprung from. Ed[talk][OMT]04:01, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
I maybe shouldn't have copied the entire comment. It was from the Google form I set up. You weren't acting hostile towards anything. I apologise if I was acting hostile. WiinterU (talk) 19:27, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
The discussion seems have become a little sidetracked. Are we still looking at the original proposal or did we switch to discuss Jonesey's variant? As for my two cents: I still think that any change in this regard is unnecessary, although I would not be entierly opposed to amending the field title (especially since it would not result in thousands of required edits). IceWelder [✉] 22:32, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
Support Jonesy's "Company type:" version. It would at least have consistent results instead of depending on people to manually update every company article to do Public company or whatever. And if we decide it was a bad idea after all, then it would be easily undone by a single edit instead of thousands. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 02:00, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
Since we're already here: The documentation asks to use one of four values for this field, yet we allow free text. Should we maybe change it to a fixed-value field that always links and renders to the type correctly? IceWelder [✉] 23:18, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
I believe that would be a good idea. Another issue I've found is that some pages aren't up to date. Take Princess Pictures for example. It says "type" and not "company type". I think those infoboxes just need updating. Or, maybe you already covered that. WiinterU (talk) 23:30, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
This might be off topic but I've been struggling. One of the hardest things to do is finding out if a company is a subsidiary or a division when editing a page where it is not specifically stated and the company type section is not used. If it is wholly owned by a person or entity it will usually be private. Another hard thing to find out is what a company traded as before it went defunct. I had to use old SEC documents from the 1990s and early 2000s to find many and add them to their respective pages. Unfortunately, some companies went defunct before the SEC started to document this online. Any solutions to either issue? WiinterU (talk) 05:44, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
Good for future reference, but when all it involves is two edits I don't really see why I shouldn't just handle it myself. Primefac (talk) 18:57, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
Wikipedia is now trialling its dark mode, but some company logos used in this infobox have transparent backgrounds and are not properly visible in dark mode. It seems to me that different solutions are needed for different logos.
My suggestion would be: add a new parameter to this template called logo_dark, where:
if it is not present, the logo stays the same in dark mode (for logos like Google's)
if it is invert, the class skin-invert is applied to the image, inverting its colour in dark mode (for logos like Apple Inc.'s)
if it is background, the logo is displayed with a white or light grey background colour in dark mode (for logos like Porsche's)
if it is the filename of an image, that image is displayed instead of the current one in dark mode.
I would also suggest a value white which turns all non-transparent areas of the image white (possible using the arguably hacky CSS filter: brightness(0) invert(1);), which could be useful for non-black logos like Dr Pepper, where inversion makes them a light shade of their original colour which is not actually used by the brand.
