Template:Infobox Film/doc

Infobox Film may be used to summarize information about a film.

Usage
The infobox may be added by pasting the template as shown below into an article, typically at the top an an article above the lead section. All parameters are optional; any unused parameters should be left blank or omitted. 

Parameters
''Note: Do not link to an article more than once in the infobox. All parameters are optional. See also MOS:FILM.''

IMDb, Allmovie, and other external links
External links to resources such as the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), Allmovie and any official website are no longer included in this template. Nevertheless, these resources and others may be usefully added to the External Links section of the article using the following templates:



History
When this infobox template was first created, in December 2004, one of the parameters created an external link to the Internet Movie Database (IMDb). Irrespective of the fact that IMDb is not used as a reliable source for verifying content in Wikipedia articles, it still is a resource that many people, including editors and readers of Wikipedia, often turn to.

In more recent years, additional external websites have become increasingly useful resources, including Allmovie, Box Office Mojo, Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes. Also, modern films almost invariably have an official website. As a consequence, new external links were added to and removed from the infobox as consensus changed on the subject.

Discussions about the fate of these links took place in numerous places over some time, with a number of people advocating removal of all external links from the infobox, if not the article as a whole. Others spoke of the value of having at least a link to IMDb in the infobox. Eventually, a far from undisputed consensus arose to remove all external links from the infobox and to move them to the External links section where appropriate in view of the External links guideline.

Important points towards this consensus included fact that the infobox could not include all of the available links and that it would be inappropriate to pick and choose one or a few of those links over others. Suggestions that losing access to the most useful of the available links (typically IMDb) would damage the usefulness of film articles were not found persuasive by many since such links could still be included in the External links section and the table of contents linking to the external links section having all of the useful external links is adjacent the infobox.