Talk:Comparison of temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Dates
I think we need dates to be a standard format, and links to the day and year are appropriate. Hopefully we can get the template to handle such links. Bytebear 23:13, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Ordinance rooms
I think the number of ordinance rooms should also reflect whether they are progressive or freestanding. Bytebear 23:13, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Agree - I think we should use live, prog, or nothing. And put a note on the heading that unless noted otherwise the ordinance rooms contains a freestanding movie based ceremony. Live indicates Live actors in a progressive ceremony. Prog indicates a progressive ceremony using a movie. (probably need better wording :) -- Trödel 19:54, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Sortable columns
I added sortable columns - this creates an issue regarding the use of headings every 10 entries since these get sorted as regular rows. We can remove them - I think that this would be acceptable since the sorting is such a useful feature. -- Trödel 19:51, 30 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree that you should get rid of the middle headings. Being able to sort the list is very useful.


 * In response to your request for comment on my talk page:
 * I like the additional info, but the table seems to be getting a little too wide. Maybe we could combine a few similar columns, for example, announcement, groundbreaking and dedication could be one column like this:
 * {| class="wikitable"

! style="background-color:#DCF0FF; font-size:93%;" | Name ! style="background-color:#DCF0FF; font-size:93%; width:50px" | ... ! style="background-color:#DCF0FF; font-size:93%;" | Announcement Groundbreaking and Dedication ! style="background-color:#DCF0FF; font-size:93%; width:50px" | ...
 * style="text-align: center;" | Kirtland
 * style="text-align: center;" | ...
 * style="text-align: center;" | 27 MAR 1836 (D)
 * style="text-align: center;" | ...
 * style="text-align: center;" | Nauvoo
 * style="text-align: center;" | ...
 * style="text-align: center;" | 30 APR 1846 (D)
 * style="text-align: center;" | ...
 * style="text-align: center;" | St. George Utah
 * style="text-align: center;" | ...
 * style="text-align: center;" | 9 NOV 1871 (A) 9 NOV 1871 (G) 6 APR 1877 (D) 11 NOV 1975 (D)[2]
 * style="text-align: center;" | ...
 * }
 * Ordinance and sealing rooms could be combined similarly. The whole table would be taller, but it would make it easier to see all the info for an individual temple.  I don't know how this would impact the sortable columns feature.
 * I don't know if you thought of it, but "clothing rental" might be a useful column. Many of the newer (smaller) temples don't rent clothes - an important consideration if you're visiting somewhere unfamiliar. Jaksmata 21:22, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
 * }
 * Ordinance and sealing rooms could be combined similarly. The whole table would be taller, but it would make it easier to see all the info for an individual temple.  I don't know how this would impact the sortable columns feature.
 * I don't know if you thought of it, but "clothing rental" might be a useful column. Many of the newer (smaller) temples don't rent clothes - an important consideration if you're visiting somewhere unfamiliar. Jaksmata 21:22, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I've talked with several users - and the utility of this list is so that one can sort and compare different temples. Thus the intention is to not include mutliple fields of information in the same cell.

Additionally, After some experimenting I've discovered that use of ISO 8601 dates will allow correct sorting. And use of numbers without seperating commas or spaces for area and height will allow correct sorting. Thus the format will look something like this:
 * {| class="wikitable sortable"

! style="background-color:#DCF0FF; font-size:93%;" | Name ! style="background-color:#DCF0FF; font-size:93%;" | Region ! style="background-color:#DCF0FF; font-size:93%;" | Country ! style="background-color:#DCF0FF; font-size:93%;" | Announcement ! style="background-color:#DCF0FF; font-size:93%;" | Dedication ! style="background-color:#DCF0FF; font-size:93%;" | Floor Area Comments? -- Trödel 15:17, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * style="text-align: center;" | Nauvoo
 * style="text-align: center;" | Illinois
 * style="text-align: center;" | USA
 * style="text-align: center;" |
 * style="text-align: center;" | 1836-03-27
 * style="text-align: center;" | 54000
 * style="text-align: center;" | St. George Utah
 * style="text-align: center;" | Utah
 * style="text-align: center;" | USA
 * style="text-align: center;" | 1871-11-09
 * style="text-align: center;" | 1877-04-06
 * style="text-align: center;" | 110000
 * style="text-align: center;" | São Paulo Brazil
 * style="text-align: center;" |
 * style="text-align: center;" | Brazil
 * style="text-align: center;" | 1975-03-01
 * style="text-align: center;" | 1978-10-30
 * style="text-align: center;" | 59246
 * style="text-align: center;" | Mexico City Mexico
 * style="text-align: center;" | Distrito Federal
 * style="text-align: center;" | Mexico
 * style="text-align: center;" | 1976-03-03
 * style="text-align: center;" | 1983-12-02
 * style="text-align: center;" | 116642
 * }
 * style="text-align: center;" | 1976-03-03
 * style="text-align: center;" | 1983-12-02
 * style="text-align: center;" | 116642
 * }

Additional Columns
(Copied from User_talk:Bhludzin) As a contributor to the different lists of temples, I was wondering if you could give some feedback concerning the addition several columns to the Comparison of temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints page. thx -- Trödel 22:38, 29 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I think that it looks great. I don't think I mentioned anything since you did it, but I am very happy with the breakout of the Comparison list and the regular list.  Now there is no confusion of priorities.  The comparison list is serving it's purpose better than ever, and the original list is a great overview of Temples - visually, geographically and discursively and it's not bogged down with the other data.  And the person that did the graphics on the Geographic List did an incredible job as well.  Now that I'm on the subject though, I do think that the pictures should be put back in the Comparative list (leaving them in the regular list as well), and that the Style data item might be removed from the regular list.  I see the regular list almost as "an introduction to temples" list.  Simplify it and make it more understandable, approachable and interesting to the person looking at it for the first time.  The comparison list is like the "everything" bagel for the person who knows about temples and is looking up something.  The pictures are very helpful for that.
 * Bhludzin 20:38, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

What about a days from announcement to dedication and/or days from groundbreaking to dedication as additional colunms (I am getting more adept at the math parser functions and think this may be doable). -- Trödel 15:15, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Standards for Temple Data
I setup a page to outline the standards for the data going into the temple here: WikiProject Latter Day Saint movement/Temples

It will effect this page in the following way: Please comment on the standardization WikiProject talk page, and please edit the proposed standars where appropriate. -- Trödel 00:08, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Dates will be in the YYYY-MM-DD format and not linked so that the temples can be sorted by date (without this it sorts based on the format each person has in their "my preferences" date tab, thus 1 Jan will be followed by 1 Jun and not by year at all.
 * The column list will remain wide so that things can be sorted by each column. This will make the list wide, but I agree with User:Bhludzin this list would be used by people who are familiar with temples and thus can scroll left and right to see the specific information they want to compare. The names of the temples will have to be repeated periodically so it is easier to do the comparison.
 * The data on this page will no longer be needed but will be a subpage of the talk page of each temple.
 * The LDSTemple2 template will need to be edited to reflect the new format.

The standards that are at WikiProject Latter Day Saint movement/Temples have been implemented for the first 10 temples and the new templates are used on this page.
 * Notice

The are also used for the Infoboxes on the individual article pages for the first 10 temples (see Salt Lake Temple for example). Please register any bugs/concerns on the talk page. Thank you -- Trödel 06:25, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Question
am trying to spell out numerals 5 and 8 (after 127) (being numbers below 10) but am not able to see them after i hit 'edit' - b - betswiki (talk) 01:19, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Since that data changes frequently, and is shown on many pages of Wikipedia, it is in a shared "template" so that it can be edited in one place and shown in many. The actual sentence is at LDS Temple status. (I agree that small numbers should be spelled out, so I went ahead and changed it.) –  j ak s mata  13:54, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Far West, Missouri
There's an article on the Far West Temple. Far West is not a community anymore and does not have a population. The LDS owns the grounds where the temple is and the COJC owns a church across the street. I'm not familiar with this table format so can't link it directly for you. Americasroof (talk) 20:46, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
 * P.S. I think the unified table is the best approach. My understanding is that temples are still planned to be built at all three Missouri locations (although it's a low priority since two of them are literally in very rural cornfields and the third one is on property not owned by LDS. Americasroof (talk) 20:50, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the feedback. I think the unified temple works better as well. The Location links are not intended to be populated legal communities, but the location of the temple geographically with links to the appropriate cities/towns/etc that make up the area. If it was in an unincorporated area that also would be indicated by linking to the county it was in if a smaller subdivision did not exist.
 * To edit the information that is being put on the table click the edit button under the name of the temple - and it will update it in at least 3 locations on wikipedia. -- Trödel 21:19, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Index sorting
The index (far left column) does not sort correctly; seems ISO 8601 suggests leading zeroes are needed.DanB 23:41, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I think I fixed this issue so that it will sort now - However, I made a decision that may not be the best. I elected to sort the discontinued temples near the top in basically chronological order instead of near the bottom as it is when the list is originally displayed. I like it this way but it may be counter intuitive - i.e. I can see that a reasonable person would think that clicking by the status would revert it to the way it started. That would be just as easy to implement but wanted some feedback first -- Trödel 21:52, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

How do you edit the table
I have the 2011 Church Almanac in front of me with the most up-to-date information on many of the temples. Even much older temples have some clear problems like some with listed heights of no feet, so I wanted to edit this, but it does not appear the normal edit function works, how do you edit the table?John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:21, 2 February 2011 (UTC)


 * There is a separate template for each temple that holds common information for these structures which is used across multiple articles. These are found in Category:WikiProject Latter Day Saint movement templates with names like Template:LDS Temple/Aba Nigeria Temple. Please be very careful in how you edit these, as a single mistake can cause temple data to no longer display properly in many articles. -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 15:28, 2 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Underneath the name of the temple (in the second column) is the word "edit" as a clickable link. Click it, and it will take you to the data page for that temple.  You can edit that page normally, and the changes you make there will be visible here too. –   j ak s mata  20:14, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Ideas for improvement
Wow, folks, great work on this list. I have a few ideas for improvement that I want to run by the regular editors of this list.

1) There are way too many columns, way more (21!!) than any other table I've seen on the 'pedia and I've been editing here for 11 years. As a dataholic, I'm all in favor of exhaustive data, but how about we trim a few of the columns so we can, for example, see all of them without spanning two monitors? I don't know about the rest of you, but my browser (Firefox) doesn't even let me scroll over and see all the columns unless I scroll all the way to the bottom of the list. I suggest trimming these columns:


 * 1) Groundbreaking by: not all that notable, and this information is included in the temple article itself.
 * 2) Rededication: not all that notable. Temples are "undedicated" and rededicated all the time for refurbishment, so this column isn't even complete. It can only include the first or last time each was rededicated and why would a reader even care to compare such data? For dataholics, a table of this information could be included in the temple's article, and that table could even include ALL the dates they were undedicated, rededicated, who did each, etc.
 * 3) Rededication by: see above.
 * 4) Food: temples are not restaurants, not all that notable. Info can be included in the temple's main article.
 * 5) Designer: while certainly interesting, not really one of the most important or "comparable" aspects of a temple. Can be included in each temple's main article.

Next, I see you tried to save space by using abbreviations (e.g. "Rms (1)", "Rms (2)"), but, even though I'm an active Mormon, I have no idea what rooms these numbers are referring to. Endowment rooms? Sealing rooms? Baptism rooms? And I likewise have no idea what "Center (3)" is. The table needs a Legend somewhere with an explanation of all the cryptic abbreviations.

Lastly, how about breaking out the last seven rows into a seperate table? They don't have numbers (first column) and clash with the rest of the content. The table could exist in the same article, but could omit information that just doesn't apply to temples that don't exist. Putting them in a seperate list would also make them more prominent.

Just some suggestions, folks. I don't want to be too bold and stomp on other people's hard work. Thoughts? &mdash; Fr&epsilon;ckl&epsilon;fσσt | Talk 15:16, 22 January 2014 (UTC)


 * "Center" is if there is a visitor center associated with the temple, but your right that the headings are cryptic much of the time; perhaps we could put inline notes associated with each of the less-than-obvious column headings in the table, where a reader could just roll-over that note number to see a more complete description of what that column describes. I also like your ideas above, but would like to see what others think as well. -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 16:45, 22 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I added floating hints for the "Center" and "Food" columns, but I'm a little mystified by the (3) and (4) underneath them. Purpose? I also (still) don't know the difference between Rooms (1) and Rooms (2). If someone could tell me the difference between them, I could put floating hints for those columns as well.


 * But, as I stated before, what I think this list really needs is fewer columns. Just my $.02. &mdash; Fr&epsilon;ckl&epsilon;fσσt | Talk 15:02, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

I think groundbreaking and rededication data is interesting, and not commonly available in some other lists of temples. Groundbreakings are often performed by members of the Twelve or Seventy, and I found it interesting to note who had or had not presided at a groundbreaking. It was also interesting to note which temple groundbreakings had been presided at by a President of the Church, since that has been relatively uncommon. It helps to justify the inclusion of this list beyond the List of Temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints page. Designer is also significant. Whether food is available might not be that notable--you could also include the presence of laundry facilities, which would probably match up. That may be helpful for some for planning purposes, however. The scrolling isn't that bad, and the most traditionally significant details tend to be on the left side anyway. I would vote to not remove any of the columns. Ryan Reeder (talk) 15:25, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Template usage
The usage of templates in this article has lead to a pretty bad formatting disaster. Many of the referenced templates aren't correctly formatted and don't participate in this page constructively. Is there a centralized project or working group which has been coordinating work on the templates and their cleanup? -- Mikeblas (talk) 18:19, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Metric units
I think the metric units should be added in parenthesis in the table. This is standard on wikipedia (see for example List of tallest towers or List of tallest church buildings). OnchePower (talk) 20:02, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Table is now officially too large
I just finished updating the table with all temples that have been announced. But in doing so, I received the following message when editing the page:

"Warning: Post-expand include size is too large. Some templates will not be included."

Upon saving the page, many templates did not display correctly. (Specifically, the last several rows of the table, all the templates in the footnotes section, and all other templates that followed such as the portal box and navbox.) This can be seen here. I made a temporary fix here by simply adding arrows around the last several rows of the table and the navbox so that everything that does display actually displays correctly.

But that makes 22 rows in the table that are not displayed at all, and this is clearly an issue that will only get worse as the number of temples increases.

Either the table will have to be broken up (which defeats the purpose of having a sortable table with all the temples listed in it), or the amount of data included in the table will have to be reduced (meaning the number of fields/columns will have to be reduced).

Or perhaps there are other possible solutions.

Thoughts, anyone? Jdaloner (talk) 10:37, 13 October 2021 (UTC)


 * I decided to be bold and solved the problem (for now) by removing rededication information from the table. I chose this because, while being a valuable piece of information (which will still display in infoboxes on the pages for the individual temples, as well as List of temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), it isn't necessarily that useful in comparing temples. Most temples have never been rededicated (only about 40 out of 265 entries), so there's nothing to compare, and it's just a lot of open space. I admit it did have some use, but something had to go (and smaller items like the "Food" column didn't make enough difference to fix the problem). At least all rows of the table can now be displayed. Reversing this change would be easy, and I'd be happy to do it if anyone has a better idea. Jdaloner (talk) 20:47, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

Recommend use of new table
Great news! I found a fix to solve the issue for this page. This may also fix the memory issue the page was having and allow navboxes, etc. More formatting is needed & label headers. Documentation for the template will need to be added with use/editing instructions.

Draft Page: Draft:Comparison of temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints‎ Draft Template: Template:LDS Temple compare/sandbox2

Improvements with this new formatting include:
 * Simpler table design, closer to basic standard Wikipedia table allowing a greater pool of users to edit/fix. Design reflected in Draft Page & Template. Easy to add/remove categories.
 * Memory issue solved. Template uses much less memory.
 * Other templates such as navboxes can now be used.
 * Because it splits temple number/status, it Allows one to search temple number or status separately.
 * Abbreviated text using abbr template function. Key at bottom of table no longer needed.
 * Works well - even if temples don't have numbering or when other fields are blank.

Feel free to do additional formatting/labeling to these draft pages.

Thanks-Dmm1169 (talk) 09:34, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I think you should just move forward and implement the new compare from sandbox2. Many of the more specific table formatting existed because of some of the limitations in the standard table format at the time the scheme (for consolidating all the data to the data template and using format templates) was developed. The standard template and separation of the number and the status are great ideas. --Trödel 00:02, 30 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and replaced the table and the corresponding template. Feel free to further format this table as much of the formatting (appearance) was removed with this edit. The data should still be the same.-Dmm1169 (talk) 03:47, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Remove Cafeteria from table?
Reference newsroom article:

Remove temple cafeterias from table? -Dmm1169 (talk) 09:40, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I can't seen any controversy in eliminating this information now, so I just went ahead and did it. I haven't been able to look at the draft version yet, but I'll try to do so tomorrow. Jdaloner (talk) 12:57, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I agree - most templates do not have one anymore, and many of those that do are unused with no plans to reopen except as a dining room without food preparation or sale. --Trödel 00:04, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Additional Table
As you may have noticed, the original wide table was split so to get the width of the table can be seen on an average size screen (ie. midsize laptop/desktop). Because of the length of each table, I made both tables collapsible. There's a number of ways to present it. Is the arrangement of the fields sufficient or is there a better order? Was 2 tables sufficient or should it have been divided into three (ie. stats; milestones; location and design)? Because of the format of the tables, reconfiguring of these tables is relatively easy. --Dmm1169 (talk) 20:38, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Excellent Job User:Dmm1169 thank you for making these changes! --Trödel 20:46, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

New fields, removing unnecessary fields
Proposal to add rededication/open house fields and merge/remove unnecessary fields in the process. These fields may be used in infobox templates, the extended list template shown in LDS in [Country]/[State] pages, possibly the temple comparison pages, and potentially future pages. The fields cannot be added until all LDS Temple templates have it included, otherwise it will cause an error in the display. See Template talk:LDS Temple for discussion. -- Dmm1169 (talk) 12:51, 21 July 2022 (UTC)