Editing Eurovision Wiki:Village pump (idea lab) (section)

== Collapsing infoboxes for mobile users ==

Article layout has been historically designed for a computer screen. Its width allows to present additional elements such as infoboxes along the main text column. This logic can't work on a narrow mobile screen, where additional elements are inserted between paragraphs. Mobile pageviews have surpassed desktop more than a decade ago, but the layout design is still desktop-oriented, with minimal considerations for mobile experience.

Infoboxes, a supplement material for the main text in the desktop version, are inserted after the first lede paragraph on a phone screen. This solution is problematic in multiple ways. The manual of style considers the lede the most important part of the article, and its priority is above any other piece of content. In practice, it is only respected for the ''first'' lede paragraph, because the majority of readers see an infobox next. With the size of infoboxes taking up to several phone screens and the amount of information inside, the comprehension certainly suffers by the time reader gets to the second lede paragraph, which is written to be read immediately after the first one. And huge infobox might be a nuisance itself, with tendency to fill it with tangential or technical data suitable for table form. [[Vladimir Putin]], [[Biphenyl]], [[Vietnam War]], [[Mars]], [[Arabic]], [[Nguyễn dynasty]], [[IPhone 15 Pro]], [[SS United States]] - it's neither editors' nor readers' choice to have articles introduced with these long tables.

I doubt that current state of affairs is considered desirable or acceptable. In my opinion, generally only the infobox illustration is important enough to be displayed to mobile readers by default, and the rest of the infobox would be better hidden. I suppose it could be a viable workaround to make infoboxes a collapsible element, such as [[commons:Template:Wikidata Infobox]], collapsed by default in mobile view. Better ideas might be suggested, but this is an important issue, and I hope it gets traction and some sort of solution gets developed. [[User:Qbli2mHd|Qbli2mHd]] ([[User talk:Qbli2mHd|talk]]) 22:03, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

:In the mobile apps, infoboxes are collapsed. I'm not sure if that is a good default but there really should be a button to collapse the infobox at its top. [[User:Prototyperspective|Prototyperspective]] ([[User talk:Prototyperspective|talk]]) 23:45, 16 March 2026 (UTC)