Template talk:Coord/Archive 11

How to find all pages that use this template
Is there an easy way to find all pages that contain geographic coordinates? It seems that using this template doesn't automatically add the page to a hidden category. Andrew327 19:53, 3 September 2013 (UTC)
 * See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AWhatLinksHere&target=Template%3ACoord&namespace=0 - Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:38, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor and TemplateData
has a problem with the new visual editor/template data system. Basically coord makes heavy use of overloading with the meaning of positional parameters depending on the number of arguments. The template data system does not work well with overloaded templates and there is a WONTFIX on a bug request to handle this. This make the templateData documentation for coord very unwieldy, see Template:Coord/doc and the template hard to use with the visual editor transclusion dialogue.

As a way round this I've created three templates, and  which take fixed sets of parameters. These work well with the Template Data system. CoordDec has now been listed at TfD.

As a sidenote the geohack parameters look like a relic of a time before named parameters. It would be a lot easier to have named parameters dim region, type etc.--Salix (talk): 08:12, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

doesn't have a problem; the problem is with the new VE and its templatedata system (note that VE is said to be in "beta"). has been used nearly a million times, and for six years. As Richard Morris says at bugzilla:

"Its a template used on 863,827 pages, so I guess people have been able to use it just fine. Its not broken by design its just a template which makes heavy use of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Function_overloading which differs by the arity of its arguments, a well used software design practice. The problem is that the templatedata systems does not allow for this paradigm"

With a TfD already running, your partisan post is in breach of WP:CANVASS. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:45, 12 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I should have started this discussion earlier, which might have prevented some problem. The question is really how should we work round the problem with overloaded templates in VE? Given that a fix in VE is not likely. I can't even think of an elegant way it could be done without splitting the template.--Salix (talk): 11:41, 12 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Okay, we're aware of the situation. Do you have a request? —Stepheng3 (talk) 16:17, 12 August 2013 (UTC)


 * CoordDec works just fine, I was suggested to use it by the VE (Coord templatedata) after first having tried to include a coord template. I don't think its a biiiig problem that the two schemes co-exist? -- Stratoprutser (talk) 15:47, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Different colour markers on the map
Hello; would it be possible to add a new parameter to the template, allowing selection of different colours for the place markers that appear in Google Maps. For instance, at List of Places of Scenic Beauty of Japan (Nara), where there are places of National, Prefectural, and Municipal importance, I would ideally like, say, National places to be shown on the GeoGroupTemplate map with a blue flag, Prefectural places with a green flag, Municipal with a red; or at List of decorated kofun, for there to be a way of readily distinguishing on the map between tombs with paintings and those with carvings. Thanks, Maculosae tegmine lyncis (talk) 09:40, 21 September 2013 (UTC)


 * There is no means to do that I am aware of, not even for a specific mapping service like Google Maps. Do you know of a way?  —EncMstr (talk) 11:59, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
 * The Google Maps links that we generate, such as [//maps.google.com/maps?ll=40.689167,-74.044444&q=loc:40.689167,-74.044444&hl=en&t=m&z=16 this one] pass the data in a query string - here, it's  - which includes a list of parameters in the form of number of field=value pairs separated by ampersands. There are five such pairs in this one:
 * specifies the latitude,longitude of the centre of the map;
 * specifies the position of the marker;
 * specifies the map type (map, as opposed to satellite, etc.);
 * specifies the host language (English);
 * specifies the zoom level.
 * You'll notice that the field names (ll q hl t z) are somewhat cryptic; I've boldfaced the relevant letters. There are other parameters available: here is a list and here's another which might not be complete; I can't see anything in those that suggests that the marker can be altered. In order to vary the marker, we'd first need to establish that the feature is available; if it is, what is the field name that specifies it; and what are the permitted values? -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:27, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I've found a tutorial for [//developers.google.com/maps/tutorials/customizing/custom-markers custom markers]. Perhaps you can use it. De728631 (talk) 14:58, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I spotted that earlier. It's for website authors who access Google Maps [//developers.google.com/maps/tutorials/fundamentals/adding-a-google-map#loading_the_api through the API] (which we don't), so it's useless for our purposes. We need to generate a URL which includes all the data as a query string. -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:46, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the responses. I have no technical awareness though am pretty sure I've seen a (possibly doctored) multi-colour Google map before. Something for the developers one day perhaps, Maculosae tegmine lyncis (talk) 11:21, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
 * It's possible if you use Google's API to embed the map directly into your own web page - here's an example which uses the image http://www.britishmuseum.org/images/v2/mapping/bmIcon.png as a map marker. But we don't embed a map, we link to a page on the Google Maps site. -- Red rose64 (talk) 13:46, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Different icons for Moon, Mars, etc
Would it be possible to change the icon displayed if the coordinates given are not on Earth - for example if a location on Mars is given File:Mars dan gerhards 01.svg could appear in place of the image of the Earth. It's a little confusing to have an image of the Earth representing coordinates on other celestial bodies. -- W.  D.   Graham  15:51, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
 * It certainly used to... but looking at Template:Coord they're all Earth, so a bug has crept in somewhere. The globe isn't generated on English Wikipedia though, it's on a different set of servers - will know where. -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:55, 11 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Hello guys! Yes, the globe is generated in a piece of javascript (that also adds the interactive map). Having multiple globes is a neat suggestion. I'll look if I can find a few icons that stylistically match the earth globe. --Dschwen 20:54, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
 * ,, did anything ever come of this? -- W.  D.   Graham  21:54, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
 * There's nothing much that I can do about this - it's Dschwen's script. -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:55, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

wmflabs extremely slow
Since Template:Coord was changed to use https://tools.wmflabs.org/geohack/geohack.php instead of Toolserver, and now it would appear to be extremely slow, probably as a result (ie. 1—2 minutes to return a result). —Sladen (talk) 15:27, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata tracking
Please apply [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=582522176&oldid=542329301 this change]. If a template is used in the title and it's an article, this template will either add Category:Coordinates on Wikidata or Category:Coordinates not on Wikidata. More information about this at d:Wikidata:Coordinates tracking. This is already live on the Dutch Wikipedia. You can see more examples of Wikidata tracking in Category:Wikidata tracking categories. Multichill (talk) 13:52, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * My first thought is that this should probably go in Module:Coordinates rather than in Template:Coord. We want to avoid having half the template in Lua and half not. In fact, I would go further and say that the existing  parser function should also be moved inside the module, as that would allow easier parameter processing. Multichill, do you know any Lua? If not, I can maybe take a look at it some time this week. — Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 14:07, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure #coordinates is not in lua because Lua error handling is not very good. So please be careful with that.
 * I'm not very good with lua. Please apply it here and later on you can always move it to lua. That gives you the time to figure out how to properly implement it in lua and I don't have to wait for the functionality. Multichill (talk) 14:27, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Ah yes, I seem to remember reading something about #coordinates not playing nicely with Lua, now that you come to mention it. Probably best not to mess around with that. :) I've added the category code to Module:Coordinates/sandbox, and you can test it with coord/sandbox. I tested it at York Minster and Book, and it seems to be working correctly. I'm a relative Wikidata noob though, so I have a question: is it possible for the P625 property to exist, but for there to be no actual coordinate data there? The current script checks for the P625 property, but it doesn't check any of the individual data fields inside it. — Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 03:16, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, I tested on Grote Kerk, Haarlem and it seems to work as expected. Thanks for luafying this.
 * A claim can be set to "no value" and "unknown value". You could test for that and set the category to Category:Coordinates on Wikidata set to no value and Category:Coordinates on Wikidata set to unknown value. Multichill (talk) 09:38, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Can you give me an example of a claim which is set to "no value" and a claim which is set to "unknown value"? It can be any property; it doesn't have to be P625. If I can see how it behaves in Lua I should be able to code it up without any problems, but I'm not sure how to go about looking for an example. — Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 13:26, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Let's enable it without this feature, you can always add it later and than do it for multiple places where properties are used.
 * You can find examples in the history of d:Q1545193 or at Q4252870. Multichill (talk) 14:44, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Ok, it is Yes check.svg Done, complete with support for "no value" and "unknown value". Sorry to keep you waiting. At the moment the module checks for snak types of "value" (coords exist), "somevalue" (unknown value) and "novalue". If property 625 exists but the snak type is something other than these three, the page will not be categorised. If you become aware of any other snak types that need categorising, let me know. Best — Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 03:39, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Excellent! Thank you very much for your help Mr. Stradivarius. Multichill (talk) 20:11, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Input DMS but only display DM
For readability I only want to display degrees and minutes. Nevertheless if I leave out seconds, map markers are poorly aligned with features. How about adding an option to get the best of both worlds?LADave (talk) 02:49, 19 December 2013 (UTC)


 * How about if you use degrees and decimal minutes, like 37.546°N, -117.36467°W, producing 37.546°N, -117.36467°W? —hike395 (talk) 03:10, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The example falls in the middle of some empty real estate so let's move a little. Let's say we have an article about the airport in Lee Vining.  In text 37.95°N, -119.1°W already seems like an eyeful to read, but when you bring up the map it puts the pointer somewhere out in the sagebrush.  Adding seconds 37.95806°N, -119.10639°W or decimal minutes 37.95817°N, -119.10633°W clobbers readability but when you bring up the map it's a big improvement.  A half degree of imprecision is almost a kilometer of map slop and that is often excessive. This is why I often want to map to more precision than I show in the text. LADave (talk) 08:10, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * So why not use pure decimal degrees?: they are the most concise, easiest to understand the precision, and easiest to transfer to devices or other services.  37.958°N, -119.106°W  —EncMstr (talk) 08:20, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Especially if you think metrically. A degree is ~100km and .01 degree is ~1km etc.  However if you think in traditional units, a minute is a (nautical) mile and a second is a hundred feet. LADave (talk) 22:05, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Please do not try to hide data "for readability", nor for any other reason. (OTOH, beware of false precision.) Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:13, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * ...so the tail of consistency wags the dog of wanting more precision in maps than in the text? LADave (talk) 22:05, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Marking articles as "No coords" deliberately?
What's our practice for an article that deliberately has no coords, as they're unimportant and irrelevant?

Presumably as the article has correct ancestor categories that imply a geographical location, it gets tagged with coord missing. Removing this is likely to simply trigger another 'bot to put it back. There should be no coords on this article and we should have a means to label the article as such. coords irrelevant or such.

The article in question is Tower Belle. It's a mobile tourist boat in Bristol. It's not permanently moored, so coords aren't static, but it's part of "tourism in Bristol" so 'bots tend to assume an implied geographical location. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:02, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Change request
Any objections if I apply [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Coord/sandbox&diff=601271807&oldid=582620630 this edit]? It's needed because Template:Mars Quads - By Name uses coord on pages where it's transcluded, filling the database with bogus points. Max Semenik (talk) 23:45, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
 * ✅ since no objections were voiced. Max Semenik (talk) 09:15, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Proposal to change this template
not sure why it's not being discussed here, but see this discussion (pinging recent contributors to this template). Frietjes (talk) 16:06, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Non-breaking spaces
Is it possible to add an optional parameter to this template so that an editor can set the inline output to use non-breaking spaces? &mdash; Ipoellet (talk) 21:10, 7 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Use .  Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:23, 8 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Okay, I'm feeling a bit silly that I didn't think of and try that already. Thank you for helping jog my thinking. &mdash; Ipoellet (talk) 17:23, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

TfM
Please tag this template with:

Though why it's not editable by thsoe of us with template editor status isn't clear. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:09, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done -- Red rose64 (talk) 13:15, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

source:S parameter
Hi, just popping in to say that the doc on this parameter doesn't make it very clear as to acceptable values. It refers to a few specific cases such as GNIS, but it doesn't say what to do in cases that are not mentioned. For those cases, can we code whatever we think is appropriate, or will that cause problems down the road? Could the doc be clarified in that regard? (I would be happy to do that myself given the needed information, but I don't think I'm authorized to edit that page.) Thanks a lot and have a great Wikiday. Mandruss (talk) 17:35, 9 July 2014 (UTC)


 * I never use it myself, but some coord-adding bots do: if you're not a bot operator, you shouldn't need to worry about this data item. AFAIK it's plain text; but for technical reasons certain characters are not permitted. These forbidden characters include spaces, which won't throw an error, but will cause strange display. -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:55, 9 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks, . But again, in the interest of the whole editing community rather than only myself, could the doc be changed to clarify? There's nothing in it that tells an editor, if you're not a bot operator, you shouldn't need to worry about this data item. And, from the many uses of coord that I've looked at in the relatively short time I've been editing, there have been a lot of people coding that parameter unnecessarily. I'm sure it seems like a nit to you, and I suspect I would feel the same way in your shoes. It's been a long time since you were a noob editor! Cheers, Mandruss (talk) 20:19, 9 July 2014 (UTC)


 * I looked long and hard for this information in 2008, but did not find much. My conclusions are here.  —EncMstr (talk) 22:54, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

Adding a box mode
This monument is located at: 43.77192°N, 13.13148°W Is it possible (= do you think it would be useful) to add a "box" display option that generates something like this? When I have to place this template as inline in a particular section I never know how to introduce it. This would be a standardized and nice way of placing the coordinates of the subject of a subsection into a page. The word 'monument' would be an extra template's parameter that can be customized by the user depending on what he's geolocalizing. If you think it is good, somebody else has to implement it because unfortunately I don't know how to do it. --Bedo2991 (talk) 19:15, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Can we make a similar template for paleocoordinates?
As we all know, Earth's continents have moved over time. In light of this, scientists have worked to determine the historical locations of different geologic formations. I was wondering if a template could be created for those articles to display their "Approximate paleo-coordinates"? I think it woud be really interesting and informative. Abyssal (talk) 19:39, 10 July 2014 (UTC)


 * I have no doubt it could be done. But why?  What would it mean?  For example, how would 45.37°N, -121.7°W map to a paleo coordinate?  Maybe someone can start that article to explain the concept in a way that could be the basis of a conversion?  —EncMstr (talk) 17:56, 11 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Paleocoordinates describe the location of a rock unit when it was deposited. If I say that the Antrim Shale of Michigan has paleo-coordinates of -34.4°N, -29.2°W that means that about 385 million years ago, the US state of Michigan was in the southern hemisphere (!), at a location now far to the southeast of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (!). Abyssal (talk) 13:39, 14 July 2014 (UTC)


 * While I understand continental drift and plate tectonics and all, I have to wonder about what would form the frame of reference for a grid from 100 to 900 million years ago. Also, how accurate might that be?  It seems to me there are many variables and too little knowledge about prehistoric geography and astronomy.  Did the magnetic poles reverse, or did a large planetary body impact revise the Earth's spin?  Did plates move faster during one period and more slowly during another?  What about chaotic dynamics making them move in different directions at different times?  How could the coordinates be within 25% and what are the reliable source for such a grid?  There would also have be a time dimension as part of the coordinates:  How should that be encoded.  —EncMstr (talk) 17:51, 14 July 2014 (UTC)


 * I don't have any real background in paleogeography, so as for the accuracy of the science itself I can't comment. There are many reliable sources for paleocoordinates, including scientific journals, secondary non-fiction, textbooks, and such, but the best for our purposes would be the Paleobiology Database, since it could be mined using a bot and the articles tagged with a paleocoordinate template automatically. I don't think we need a time element for the template. How are you picturing it working? I was just picturing something like "Approximate paleocoordinates: -34.4°N, -29.2°W" being displayed in the upper corner of articles on geologic formations. Abyssal (talk) 18:48, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Import from Wikidata
Importing coordinates from Wikidata can be done with this syntax but its output is not formatted right to be accepted by this template. I'm asking if the functionality can be added to this template so that we can import coordinates directly from Wikidata, maybe in this format:. Thanks. -- P 1 9 9 ✉ 15:00, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: This needs doing, but it should be done in Module:Coordinates, not in the template, and also the code needs to be ready and tested before we can roll it out. See also this thread where a similar thing was suggested. — Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 15:29, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
 * This is a cop-out answer. The issue is raised here to get someone with the right programming knowledge to write the code (because I don't know how). To flag the issue as "answered" may indicate that it is completed and will prevent any future action. Anyway, I will reiterate the issue at Module:Coordinates. -- P 1 9 9 ✉ 16:41, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I think you misunderstand the purpose of the edit protected template. It's only supposed to be used when the code is already written and tested; requests for coding help can be made on template/module talk pages (without edit protected), or somewhere like Lua requests, which I see you've already posted at. — Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 18:53, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Apparently ignores name=
In the article on Grain Fort, I mentioned and gave the coordinates of the nearby Grain Tower Battery at 51.45168°N, 0.73125°W, I used the "name=XXX" parameter, with syntax 51.45168°N, 0.73125°W ; however in Google Earth via GeoHack the name is shown as the article name, "Grain_Fort", not "Grain Tower Battery" (and linked from this Talk page it is "Template_talk:Coord"). (I've played with the order and parameters used in the template in this section, but it has made no difference.) This isn't just me; clicking on an example on this Talk page with "name=Moscow", the Russian capital has acquired an additional name, "Template_talk:Coord". Pol098 (talk) 15:38, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I think that we need to amend Template:GeoTemplate - where it presently has  the last parameter should perhaps become   -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:31, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
 * P.S. I don't know if it's the same issue and will be cleared up by when the ignored name is addressed, but it's not great that the name is shown, on Google Earth at least, with spaces replaced by underlines. Pol098 (talk) 19:08, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
 * has spaces, not underscores. They're percent-encoded so that they can be used in a URL, since URLs cannot contain unencoded spaces. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:11, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Start and an end
Some geographic entities (such as roads) have a start and an end at different points. It would be convenient to have a Coord template that allowed at least two point to be inserted. -- PBS (talk) 19:11, 30 August 2014 (UTC)
 * That would need to be a different template (which could call, twice}. But see also WP:LINEAR. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:24, 30 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Calling twice does not work cleanly because the parameter display=title causes the values to be written on top of each other. -- PBS (talk) 12:13, 31 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Hence "see also WP:LINEAR". Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:58, 31 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Rather than continue this conversation in two places I have placed my reply into the next section. -- PBS (talk) 14:54, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Multiple locations
Template:Coord/doc says: "Note: the 'title' attribute indicates that the coordinates apply to the entire article, and not just one of (perhaps many) places mentioned in it — so it should only be omitted in the latter case."

[So] I removed the 'title' display of coordinates from two articles that cover multiple locations ([//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Uniroyal_Giant_Tire&curid=30601190&diff=623496898&oldid=621865423] / [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cosmo_Clock_21&diff=next&oldid=621642863]+[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cosmo_Clock_21&diff=next&oldid=623492433]) but the 'title' display was then reinstated by two other editors.

Does Template:Coord/doc need to be revised? Thanks. 183.89.112.183 (talk) 06:18, 31 August 2014 (UTC)
 * You didn't remove the title display (by changing it to inline), but removed the coordinates entirely. In the each of the examples given the coordinates displayed in the "title" position refer to the subject's current location; an earlier location is described in the body of the article. This is fine. The reference to "multiple locations" in the documentation refers to cases where the locations have equal prominence, such as "railway stations on the northern line" or "Edward VIII postboxes in England". Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:54, 31 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I removed the coordinates entirely? They were visible here - I thought inline was the default? Or am I missing something? 183.89.112.183 (talk) 11:19, 31 August 2014 (UTC)
 * The main thing is that there should not be more than one set of title coords; if there are two or more, you get overlapping of two links, which means that one is unclickable and both are unreadable; you also get a red error message and the page ends up in CAT:COORD.
 * When two or more sets of coordinates are warranted in an article, they should be judged as to which is the most important (WP:LINEAR has more on this). If one of them is clearly much more important than the others, that one gets title position; if no single one has a clear claim - like the intersections on a highway - they all go inline. For something like the Uniroyal Giant Tire or Cosmo Clock 21, each of which has had two locations and still exists, the current location is clearly more important than the original location, so deserves title position. -- Red rose64 (talk) 13:57, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

AFAICT WP:LINEAR does not directly address this issue. It would be convenient to have a Coord template that allowed at least two point to be inserted. -- PBS (talk) 14:54, 31 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Let me give an example. I am working on some articles that cover long since vanished lines of earthen fortifications (trench systems). There is nothing to see on a map today so giving a central point is is of little use because without further information one does not know whether to look on the compass for continuation from that point. Giving one geographic location for large linear structures is nowhere near a helpful as giving start and end locations. -- PBS (talk) 15:05, 31 August 2014 (UTC)
 * The coordinates are fed into this template through positional parameters. Several of these are already overloaded: what I mean is that if we ignore the named parameters display format name notes there are nine parameters, of which six can have two or more purposes:
 * Latitude degrees
 * Latitude minutes or Latitude hemisphere or Longitude degrees
 * Latitude seconds or Latitude hemisphere or Longitude degrees or Optional data
 * Latitude hemisphere or Longitude degrees or Longitude hemisphere
 * Longitude degrees or Longitude minutes or Optional data
 * Longitude minutes or Longitude hemisphere
 * Longitude seconds or Optional data
 * Longitude hemisphere
 * Optional data
 * The optional data is the  string. For each of parameters 2 through 7, there is more than one possible meaning; those parameters are said to be "overloaded". Adding another pair of coordinates would increase the list to 17 positional parameters, of which fourteen would be overloaded. -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:01, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Template:Infobox mountain problem
Can anyone explain why, at precisely 13:42 UTC, 27 October 2014, recompilations of Template:Infobox mountain started displaying a blown Coordinates field. I made a minor edit to Mount Princeton at 13:41 UTC with no problems. When I made a similar edit to Mount Yale at 13:42 UTC, "[" appeared in the Coordinates field. Subsequent edits to other articles invoking Template:Infobox mountain produced similar results. You can reproduce this by editing Mount Princeton and then immediately invoking Show preview without making any changes to the article. Neither Template:Infobox mountain, nor Template:Infobox coord, nor Template:Coord were altered during this period. I am stumped. Thanks for your help. Buaidh 15:28, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
 * See Village_pump_(technical)/Archive 131
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 15:32, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks.  Buaidh  15:40, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
 * You posted the same problem in three different places; please see WP:MULTI. -- Red rose64 (talk) 15:56, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Page status indicators
FYI: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Page_status_indicators ed g2s &bull; talk 23:10, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

displaying globe icon but neither coordinate?
Sometimes, I think, it might be useful to display the "globe" icon in-line, as a clickable hyperlink to the usual geohack page, but without displaying the actual coordinates, either in-line or in the title bar.

The example that got me thinking about this, though it's a relatively trivial one, is the page Boston Manufacturing Company Housing. This page, for whatever reason, concerns two historic buildings about half a mile apart. It's not clear how to properly geocode such an article, but my thinking was that ideally I would:
 * have the coordinates in the Infobox NRHP template, and therefore the coordinates in the title bar, be a lower-precision point roughly halfway between the two buildings
 * in the running text, "historic residential housing blocks at 380-410 and 153-165 River Street", have it appear as


 * historic residential housing blocks at 380-410WMA button2b.png and 153-165WMA button2b.png River Street


 * with the icons linked to more-precise locations for each of the two locations (as I have simulated).
 * Currently, if I were to use the Coord template with its  option, this would appear as


 * historic residential housing blocks at 380-41042.37406°N, -71.23158°W and 153-16542.37058°N, -71.22217°W River Street


 * which obviously looks terrible.

So is there, or could there, or should there be a way to do this? —Steve Summit (talk) 04:10, 8 November 2014 (UTC)
 * historic residential housing blocks at 380-410 and 153-165 River Street
 * Steve Summit, have you considered wrapping them in an efn? this would mean the text is still available for a print version, but in a notes section, and anyone with a modern browser could get them by hovering over the note. Frietjes (talk) 13:31, 8 November 2014 (UTC)


 * That would work! Nice idea.  Thanks.
 * I still think there's a place for a lower-impact invocation of the coord template. I was thinking it would be straightforward to add an option  .  I was thinking of making a sandbox copy of this template and trying to prototype it myself, but, man, that code is opaque!  So maybe not just now. —Steve Summit (talk) 23:15, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

Way to distinguish cities from their neighborhoods?
In the table for coordinate_type city can be used for both cities and neighborhoods. Therefore, if you search by coordinates, is there no way to distinguish between the two (concepts)? NyirNyir (talk) 16:49, 19 November 2014 (UTC)


 * The list of supported types is pretty small, and not comprehensive. But that's not a problem (so I gather), because the coord template is not really the place to be definitively categorizing a location.  On Wikipedia, the detailed type of an article's subject is generally found in the infobox and/or the lead sentence.  And then there's an even more definitive and comprehensive database relating things, types, and locations (among many other attributes) germinating over at Wikidata.  So trying to improve the coord template to be able to capture a location's type more accurately would be unnecessary and perhaps even counterproductive. —Steve Summit (talk) 16:20, 23 November 2014 (UTC)


 * I was made aware of wdq for Wikidata, so I'll play around with that I guess. For the detailed type on the article itself, AFAIK that's not machine readable (apart from not being available from the geo API)?  Anyway, thanks for the info. NyirNyir (talk) 12:28, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Template-protected move request on 25 December 2014
I think move this page "Template:Coord" to "Template:Coordinates" is better because this name show on the template.

333-blue 11:53, 25 December 2014 (UTC)


 * ❌ Have you established a consensus to make this move? If so, where?


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 12:24, 25 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Achieving consensus could be difficult.
 * 1. There are nearly a million uses of.
 * 2. Template:coordinates redirects to template:coord.  There are only 56 uses of the former.
 * 3. There are several bots and thousands of editors accustomed to coord.
 * 4. Coord was established as the official template mid-2008, replacing a plethora of templates:  coor title d, coor title dm, coor title dms, coor d, coor dm, coor dms, coor at d, coor at dm, coor at dms, and probably several others.
 * —EncMstr (talk) 20:44, 25 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Also, it's a WP:RM matter, not WP:PER. -- Red rose64 (talk) 21:36, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Suppress ss in ddd:mm:ss
On c:Template:Location I can use parameter  to suppress the display of seconds. Here I can apparently only remove the seconds completely, but then a linked map service at high zoom levels would miss the target. Example: Half Moon Island, decimal coordinates guessed based on OSM and Google Maps, converted to degrees on Half Moon Island, and inserted here. –Be..anyone (talk) 05:10, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

WikiData
There is a vague indication in the documentation that Coord can get data from WikiData, but there is no indication about how this works. It is also a concern; since WikiData is a wiki, it is not a reliable source. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:06, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
 * for example, go to Q316080 you will see 'coordinate location' which is used by the infobox in Madridejos, Cebu to generate the coordinates. I don't see how this is more or less concerning than the other method, which would be to use the coordinates specified in the article, since Wikipedia is also not a reliable source. Frietjes (talk) 21:42, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
 * The use of WikiData coordinates in "Infobox settlement" is a topic for a different talk page. "Madridejos, Cebu" only has one instance of the "Coord", which supplies the coordinates within the call to the template.
 * Your comment suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of the Verifiability policy and the Identifying reliable sources guideline. To minimise the spread of false information, the policy is that while each Wikipedia article is unreliable, it is contrary to policy to pass unreliable information from article to article by citing unreliable sources. If an editor were to use the "Coord" template to import data from WikiData (if that is even possible, which has not been demonstrated) and then provide a citation to a reliable source, the well-supported value could be changed to an incorrect value when WikiData changes, but there would be no edit to the Wikipedia article to alert editors that something had been changed. Jc3s5h (talk) 23:31, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
 * oh, I see this is a fork of another thread. I was under the impression you were interested in understanding how the WikiData feature works in Template:coord, but apparently not, since you immediately dismissed my comments as off topic (hint, there are two sets of coordinates in the article). Frietjes (talk) 23:55, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I can only find one direct invocation of the Coord template:
 * Jc3s5h (talk) 00:10, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * where do you think it gets the coordinates in the infobox? what would happen if I added a citation for those coordinates using coordinates_footnotes? Frietjes (talk) 00:14, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Every template has its own syntax. I am asking if there is a syntax available within the Coord template to bring in coordinates from Wikidata. Hinting that the coordinates in the infobox came from Wikidata doesn't help me know what the syntax would be in Coord. Jc3s5h (talk) 00:22, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Not really. The intention, I believe, is that if you use coord with no parameters it will report the WikiData value associated with the page (if any), but this doesn't currently work properly, because the #coordinates parser function will report an error.  However, one can use  with no parameters to get the WikiData value.  Obviously the infobox and the other tools have ways of accessing the WikiData values.  Dragons flight (talk) 00:57, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * FWIW, I developed ParseWDCoords which parses $(${#property:P625}$)$ into 8 separate elements. This was superseded by Frietjes' work. -- Unbuttered parsnip  (talk) mytime= Thu 17:46, wikitime=  09:46, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * FWIW, I developed ParseWDCoords which parses $(${#property:P625}$)$ into 8 separate elements. This was superseded by Frietjes' work. -- Unbuttered parsnip  (talk) mytime= Thu 17:46, wikitime=  09:46, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Microformats geo tagging: missing latitude & longitude?
In Template:Coord/link, shouldn't there be and wraps inside the ? I was testing a page with coordinates inside an Infobox Organization (hcard), and the Google Structured Data Testing Tool was complaining about missing parameters. Adding those (off-Wikipedia) fixed the problem.

Example: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?q=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FHockley_Highlands_Inn AndroidCat (talk) 16:59, 4 February 2015 (UTC)
 * The Bing tool seems smarter, or at least more flexible, and does pick up the coordinates. https://www.bing.com/webmaster/diagnostics/markup/validator?rflid=1 AndroidCat (talk) 17:59, 4 February 2015 (UTC)
 * No; see Geo (microformat). Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:12, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * The aim of adding explicit markup is to remove the need for being smarter and needing to use heuristics to extract data., I'm not sure this should be dismissed quite that quickly.  If there is a structure containing two members, and a method to fully tag that structures and two members then it would make sense to do that.  It would also be consistent with that is already generated in other situations.  —Sladen (talk) 14:05, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * You're welcome to ask the microfrmats commuinity to change the spec. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:08, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * The versions of the geo and h-geo specifications I'm looking at appear to expect &lt;div class="geo"&gt;&lt;span class="latitude" value="N.N"&gt;N.N&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span class="longitude" value="N.N"&gt;N.N&lt;/span>&lt;/div&gt;. I can't find a mention in the alleged citation references for any "single class" syntax being valid; so on that basis I've also removed the section to avoid further confusion.   At this stage it appears to make considerably more sense to bring the generated output inline with the specification, than attempt to bend the specification to match Wikipedia's broken mark-up in one particular instance where it the output is inconsistent!  Would you be help to help with this, so that we can hopefully get  to test and confirm the fix?  —Sladen (talk) 03:55, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Google's tool has changed since February. I have images of the results from a Wikipedia page and a related page on my own Mediawiki with a patch to Template:Coord/link. I'll have to nowiki the urls to mine due to Wikipedia's blocking rules. All differences aside, the diff seems to be the key to Google's tool seeing the geo coordinates or not.
 * Page: Hockley Highlands Inn Result:
 * Page: http://umbraxenu.no-ip.biz/mediawiki/index.php/AOSH_Canada
 * Here is the diff of the patch I made: http://umbraxenu.no-ip.biz/mediawiki/index.php?title=Template%3ACoord%2Flink&diff=41183&oldid=38377 It's late. I'll have another look after sleep and two coffees. AndroidCat (talk) 06:17, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. It seems to have changed, since I worked on it, and wrote the article back in 2007. What help do you need?  Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:45, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Nothing. I was reporting a peculiarity I noticed when I borrowed some templates. I'm happy with the patch on my wiki. :) (If it's only needed for Google's tool and redundant elsewhere isn't a problem for me.) AndroidCat (talk) 14:35, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

permpoly
I am adding geographical coordinates to the article "Peter F. Armistead, Sr., House". Wikimapia includes an entry for this landmark, and the Google Maps satellite image that it displays nicely highlights the entire area covered by this landmark.

When I look at the source code for this wikimapia page, I see "permpoly=31648770", which I assume creates the highlight.

How can I include the permpoly value when I'm adding the Coord template to the article? Knife-in-the-drawer (talk) 03:13, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Use page status indicator for coord?
Just throwing a ball... The new page status indicator system was designed to allow limited elements (like top icons) outside content space without having to resort to CSS hacks such as absolute positioning. Top icons and coordinate templates were the main target. All top icons have been converted, but coord still uses skin-dependent absolute positioning. How would you feel about utilizing the new indicator system instead? 11:00, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
 * . –Be..anyone (talk) 12:20, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't understand the details of how this would work, but I consider it important in quite a few articles to provide a citation to the source of the coordinate information. Anything that inhibits that would be a bad idea. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:32, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
 * As I understand it, we would fill in the parameters exactly as we do now. The only difference is in what the underlying module then does with the coordinate data - instead of it displaying at a fixed position on the screen, it would be passed into the new indicator system (introduced 29 October 2014 with MediaWiki 1.25wmf5, see T25796). That would construct the HTML/CSS/JavaScript that will display the coords at a position which should keep it clear of the FA/GA/protection icons etc. that also sit at upper right. -- Red rose64 (talk) 15:58, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
 * What Redrose said. It does mean that (in Vector for example), the coordinates would display next to the page title, instead of below the title, thus sharing the space (but not overlapping) with the other icons, such as the protection and featured article icons. It does require that coords should be shorter, ie. by removing the "Coordinates:" link.  09:59, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
 * You can see it in action on my user pages, excl. global user pages, where page status indicators do not work. –Be..anyone (talk) 01:56, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
 * At User:Be..anyone, using [ skin], the coordinates are so small (font-size:9px) as to be unreadable, and indeed are barely recognisable as coordinates. I wouldn't have known what this item was, if it had not been for the hint above. Readability is not helped by the monospace font, nor by sitting directly on the grey bottom border of the page heading. Is this normal behaviour for  in MonoBook? -- Red rose64 (talk) 08:32, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
 * +1 Also, I see the coordinates 'struck through' by the horizontal line which underlines the title. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:14, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's what I meant by "sitting directly on the grey bottom border of the page heading" - it has the appearance of a strikethrough; but zooming in to an excessive level shows that the grey line is behind the blue link text, not in front of it. -- Red rose64 (talk) 13:25, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
 * xx-small was (now back to smaller) a temporary hack after an unclear issue on wikidata, where the status indicator was pushed to the right over the window edge, forcing a line break between lat+lon. I tweaked it to be at least still aligned in this situation. The position here with Monobook is odd, yes, but I want the same source everywhere, ignoring some noinclude + BiDi magic on Meta for global user pages. "Does not work only on enwiki for xx-small" is apparently a local bug. –Be..anyone (talk) 19:36, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
 * That is just some badly formatted text, not the actual coord template. Best way to test is to use the template directly. Try putting the following on your user page:    16:26, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Just tested; the coordinates show, but not the globe... I get a hover box instead. Module needs work.  16:30, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Need help on Gravine Island
I'm obviously missing something. I took the coords from Google Earth right in the middle of the island. The push-pin map required some tweaking to get it close but the coords template is many miles off. What am I doing wrong? I'm not asking anyone to fix it, please show my error as I have several articles to create which will require proper coords. Thanks! JodyBtalk 18:36, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't know where you got your numbers but in the map location template you have:

| lat_deg   = 30.47
 * lat_min   = 18
 * lat_sec   = 99
 * lat_dir   = N
 * lon_deg   = 87.25
 * lon_min   = 43
 * lon_sec   = 35
 * lon_dir   = W


 * This looks like you've taken 30.471899°N 87.254335°W and attempted to make it be 30.47°18'99"N 87.25°43'35"W which is invalid (there are only 60 seconds for example).
 * I think the proper coord template should look like this:
 * Values from this template should also go in the map location template.
 * Or, if your source lat/long are decimal:
 * These values can also go in map location DD.ddddd and DD.ddddd with the matching minutes and seconds parameter left blank.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 19:02, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I switched to decimal degrees and it worked perfectly. DMS was obviously in error but now it is spot on. I appreciate the quick reply. 19:23, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Also, consider the appropriate precision. The island is about 2 miles long. Using the rule of thumb that a minute of latitude is about a nautical mile from north to south, that suggests your precision should be better than minutes. Seconds would probably be appropriate, but fractions of a second are not appropriate. Or for decimal degrees, no more than four digits to the right of the decimal point. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:32, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Precision is covered at WP:OPCOORD. As regards your original values, two issues should be pointed out: first, don't use decimals except on the least-significant value - that is, if you give degrees, minutes and seconds, only the seconds can have a decimal; if you give degrees and minutes but no seconds, only the minutes can have a decimal; and if you give degrees only, that may have a decimal. Second, the valid values for minutes and seconds of angle are the same as for minutes and seconds of time: 0-59, so 99 is well outside valid range. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:27, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks guys. Is there a general preference for DMS vs. decimal degrees? JodyBtalk 20:37, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Not as far as I know. Some infoboxes only accept decimal degrees, and in such cases the template may be used to convert DMS to decimal - I used it in . -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:42, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks guys. Is there a general preference for DMS vs. decimal degrees? JodyBtalk 20:37, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Not as far as I know. Some infoboxes only accept decimal degrees, and in such cases the template may be used to convert DMS to decimal - I used it in . -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:42, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

My understanding, although I've not looked deeply because I hate it, is that decimal degrees don't have directions: south and west are both negative. Although Wikipedia and GPS and similar e-mumbo jumbo are happy with decimals, I most certainly am not, being a person. Incidentally even though Wikidata holds coordinates as decimals, it emits them as dms. -- Unbuttered parsnip (talk) mytime= Sat 07:33, wikitime=  23:33, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't think anyone is in charge of what latitude and longitude notations are acceptable. I have never heard that cardinal directions could be used with degrees-minutes-seconds but not with decimal degrees. A counterexample to this idea is that if you enter "43.2°N73.1°W" in the Google maps search box, you get to the right spot on the map. Jc3s5h (talk) 23:49, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
 * There was an RFC a few months ago in which many agreed that decimal notation is preferable and many others agreed that neither decimal or DMS was preferable. —EncMstr (talk) 03:51, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
 * With DMS notation, N/S and E/W must be used. With decimal coordinates, N/S and E/W are optional; if omitted, + is used for N and E and - for S and W (just like in Cartesian coordinates).  —EncMstr (talk) 03:51, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

, do you mean N/S and E/W must be used with DMS notation in the Coord template or do you mean in general? Because if you meant in general, you would be incorrect. For example, page 144 of the Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Almanac 3rd ed. (Mill Valley CA: University Science Books, 2013) gives many negative latitudes in the DMS format. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:20, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I thought the context was clear: we are on the talk page for coord so I was talking about this template.
 * OTOH, mathematically, what would -11° 22' mean? Shouldn't it be -11° -22'?  —EncMstr (talk) 16:00, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
 * The convention is that the negative sign at the beginning applies to the entire angle, just as &minus;$1 3⁄4$ = &minus;1.75. The minutes and seconds are just another notation for writing a fraction. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:25, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
 * That may be the mathematical convention, but it's not how works.
 * In the template, if the position is specified as degrees and minutes, or as degrees, minutes and seconds, negative values are not allowed. The hemisphere must be indicated by the appropriate letter parameter: N or S, E or W. For positions north of the equator and east of Greenwich, both letters may be omitted; otherwise, both must be provided - you can't omit the N for a place in the USA, or the E for a place in Australia.
 * In the template, if the position is specified as pure degrees (which may be decimal), negative values are allowed. The hemisphere may be indicated either by a negative value, or by the appropriate letter. As with DMS, when a letter is used, it must be given for both; but in addition, you shouldn't mix the negative/positive system with the letter system - that is, for a place in Argentina, you can't use a negative value and omit the S at the same time as using a positive value together with W. -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:48, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Can we make a similar template for paleocoordinates?
As we all know, Earth's continents have moved over time. In light of this, scientists have worked to determine the historical locations of different geologic formations. I was wondering if a template could be created for those articles to display their "Approximate paleo-coordinates"? I think it would be really interesting and informative. Abyssal (talk) 12:44, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep the no original research policy in mind. First we would have to identify a well-accepted coordinate system for paleocoordinates; we shouldn't make up our own. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:54, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
 * The Paleobiology Database maintains a large database of paleocoordinates for fossil sites, geologic formations, etc. Abyssal (talk) 16:25, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
 * That site does not have any easy-to-find information about what geocoordinates they use. But as best I can guess from making a few maps, they provide the modern coordinates of where fossils were found, not what the coordinates would have been at the time the life forms were alive. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:46, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Here's an example of a fossil collection site with paleocoordinates. Abyssal (talk) 18:11, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Have a look at a (US) National Geodetic Survey (NGS) datasheet for a monument at the top of a mountain. You will notice that there is a great deal of text describing several coordinate systems used to provide the location of the monument. You might think this amount of detail is more than is necessary for the location of a fossil; the description you referred to only locates the fossil to the nearest tenth of a degree, which could be as much as 11 km. This is much looser than the 1 cm or so the NGS achieved. But on the other hand, the basic assumptions underlying modern coordinate systems become invalid, even nonsensical, when extended back billions of years. So something more than "paleocoordinates" is required to describe what system is being used. I would guess that several different systems exist, depending on what period the life forms were alive. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:29, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm just talking latitude and longitude coordinates. That page you linked to has all kinds of elevation information and historical estimates that aren't relevant. We only need current estimates of paleolatitude and paleolongitude. I don't think we need paleocoordinates to be more precise than those in the Paleobiology Database given that they probably can't even be known more precisely than that anyway given the margin of error involved. Abyssal (talk) 02:11, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
 * For latitude and longitude you need reference points. I suppose paleoposition of north and south pole can be used for latitude, but for longitude you still need a conventional origin, as Greenwich - whose position in old times is uncertain at best. If there were an accepted system to define paleocoordinates we could start using it, but first we should tell readers what we mean with such longitude and latitude. A good starting point would be writing a well sourced article on paleocoordinates.--Pere prlpz (talk) 08:45, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
 * +1. What said. -- Red rose64 (talk) 09:49, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Paleocoordinates do use Greenwich as far as I know. Using a pole wouldn't make any sense since earth reverses its magnetic field every couple of thousand years, so it doesn't actually provide an objective measurement. There is already some discussion of paleocoordinates in Paleomegnetism and Apparent polar wander. Abyssal (talk) 12:02, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Greenwich is on the London Clay, all of which was laid down in the Paleogene, so the position of "Greenwich" is meaningless for anything from the Cretaceous or earlier. Poles for measuring latitude should be taken as the ends of the rotational axis, which is independent of the magnetic field. -- Red rose64 (talk) 13:00, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
 * If you have issues with the philosophy or methodology of mainstream paleogeography this proposal is not the place to voice those concerns. Abyssal (talk) 13:46, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

, you seem to have missed the point of the datasheet I referenced above. Each coordinate system on that sheet has a name, together with all necessary information to identify which implementation of the system is being used. For example, the most up-to-date latitude and longitude coordinates on that sheet are in NAD 83(2011) which is the 2011 implementation of the North American Datum of 1983 which is described at http://geodesy.noaa.gov/CORS/coords.shtml.

If you want your proposal to go anywhere you must give us the official name of the paleocoordinate system(s) you want to use and references to the publication(s) that define it. You have not provided any information about "the philosophy or methodology of mainstream paleogeography". So in essence you are hoping someone else knows about how mainstream paleogeography assigns paleocoordiantes to a place and can write directions that would allow Wikipedia editors to put those coordinates in a template with the correct identification of the system used. But there doesn't seem to be anyone involved in the discussion that knows how to do that. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:19, 21 April 2015 (UTC)


 * There is a template called paleodb, which is a first step. Perhaps that can be utilized. As a second step, I suggest a paleocoordinate or paleo-coordinate article. Who can create that?


 * Would it be possible to create a timeinterval parameteter to coord? Does it exist any historical map today that can make use of that information? CAn it be connected to a parameter in a certain infobox?


 * Finally a paleocoord template, or a paleocoord parameter of paleodb or of coord, should be created. Does it exist any historical map today with an API that can make use of the paleo-coordinates? Mange01 (talk) 15:39, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

display=title bug
In, when coordinates is filled out, and yes then the link and mini-map in the top-right is hidden. Ideally is  is present then the expected minimap and coord link in the top-right should always be visible. —Sladen (talk) 19:35, 8 August 2015 (UTC) Also raised at Template talk:Infobox attraction.
 * Where are you seeing this problem? -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:45, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
 * This occurs on and is visible when toggling [hide]/[show].  The geolink in the top-right briefly flashes up during page-load. —Sladen (talk) 20:52, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I clicked [hide]/[show] four or five times: the coords are there all the time. Maybe it's browser-related - I use Firefox 39.0.3 -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:56, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Try: ; this exhibits it more reliably than the template link.
 * Minimal testcase at Template talk:Coord/collapse testcase, sorry, I should have done that in the first-case. —Sladen (talk) 21:11, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Ah, that's not  or . -- Red rose64 (talk) 21:48, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
 * It's a known issue. The title coordinates are hierarchically contained within the table; they are simply translated to the top of the page using a combination of style rules. When the table is hidden, so are all of its contents, regardless of their actual position. Alakzi (talk) 22:41, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
 * What's happening here is expected behaviour. Expected, that is, if you know how the show/hide links work in collapsible sections. The collapsible section is a table which has a number of rows; the first row, which has the show/hide link, is always displayed - although the linked word is different depending upon the collapsed state. When the section is collapsed, the linked word is set to "show", and the second and subsequent rows in the table are given a HTML  attribute. It is a documented feature of CSS that any element which has the   declaration is not just undisplayed, it is no longer present in the formatting structure, see CSS 2.1 section 9.2.4. So any HTML that is enclosed by one of those rows is also not present, so there is no HTML to display coordinates upper right. This is not a bug in  but suggests that a redesign of  may be necessary to ensure that coordinates are not placed inside collapsible sections. -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:44, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
 * This is an excellent description of why the bug is being exhibited, and so detailing the limitations of the present implementation. A bug is something not working as (the user, in this case) would reasonably expect; so the question becomes how to adjust the implementation method in order that the undesirable behaviour is not exhibited.  The  template outputs two copies of the geo snippet, the second of which which—as  notes above—is translated using absolute placement.  I have tried a few attempts at playing with on the existing schema in Firebug to avoid inheriting the   from the parent  ; but this has not worked.  Which would imply any solution is likely to require schema changes, in order to output the second coordinate instance outside the table hierarchy, (just as the current manual workaround has done).  I'm not completely au fait with the inner workings of Mediawiki, but this will probably require setting a hook or variable so that the duplicate snippet can later be inserted directly at the top-level into the footer or header.  Other workarounds could exist, such as never hiding to the Coordinates line, or on such articles, switching back to  or a template that does not have the coordinates within a collapse.  However, these are all workarounds to limitations of the present implementation rather than bug fixes for the underlying issue.  —Sladen (talk) 11:33, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I didn't say that it was not a bug; I said "This is not a bug in ", there may be a bug elsewhere, but it's not in the template for which this is the talk page.
 * You can't avoid inheriting the  from the parent element. I linked CSS 2.1 section 9.2.4, if you follow that you'll see that it says "Descendant elements do not generate any boxes either; the element and its content are removed from the formatting structure entirely. This behavior cannot be overridden by setting the 'display' property on the descendants." -- Red rose64 (talk) 12:51, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
 * (I don't think we're in disagreement…) And a solution would have to change the schema (ie, generate something different ).  So whether the "bug" is in an Infobox, or in, AFIACT the generic "fix" would need to be in , and use some kind of hook or variable to allow for delayed insertion into the tree.  —Sladen (talk) 13:24, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
 * There's no hook variable that we can use or anything like it; the output of a template can't be moved on the DOM tree. You're gonna have to open a bug on . Alakzi (talk) 13:55, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
 * ✅ #T108519. —Sladen (talk) 14:24, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you for taking the initiative. Alakzi (talk) 21:14, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Can Anyone help me with this template on a local Wiki?
I have been trying to implement this template to our dv.wikipedia, how ever the coordinates does not show up on the right/left top of the page and also in some infobox templates, the coordinates does not show up. I have been trying this for a long time. Any help would highly be appreciated. Cheers! --Glacious (talk) 09:55, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
 * For a preview Male' and Male' — Preceding unsigned comment added by Glacious (talk • contribs) 09:56, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Glacious, the "title display" feature may require changes to your MediaWiki:Common.css and/or MediaWiki:Common.js and/or MediaWiki:Monobook.css and/or MediaWiki:Monobook.js and/or MediaWiki:Vector.css and/or MediaWiki:Vector.js files. Frietjes (talk) 16:25, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Frietjes, its still giving error Latitude missing in red color.
 * now gives error Script error: You must specify a function to call.--Glacious (talk) 21:50, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Glacious, I tried switching the template:geobox coor to use an older "non-lua" version, and it appears that the problem is in the passing of the arguments to the LUA module. I would suggest asking  or  or one of the other LUA experts.  for simplified examples see [//dv.wikipedia.org/wiki/ފަންވަތް:coord#Examples coord] and [//dv.wikipedia.org/wiki/ފަންވަތް:Geobox_coor geobox coor]. Frietjes (talk) 16:24, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Fixed. Your wiki's version of Module:Arguments was out of date. Jackmcbarn (talk) 17:24, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks &, one last thing. I couldnt figure out how to float it to the top left of the page. It is on the top right, as in the english wiki. I tried reading the arabic and fa.wiki to help myself. But I couldnt do it. Appreciate your help! --Glacious (talk) 11:50, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Somewhere on your wiki (it's not in dv:މީޑިއާވިކީ:Common.css) there will be a CSS rule as follows:  notice how the word   appears three times here: once as a property name, twice as a value - you need to change all three of those to   -- Red rose64 (talk) 17:46, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
 * , Thanks. I added it, but didnt work!--Glacious (talk) 00:45, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
 * UPDATE: I added it to vector.css and it worked like a charm. Just letting you know. :) --Glacious (talk) 04:55, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, I should have checked dv:މީޑިއާވިކީ:Vector.css - after all, ours is in MediaWiki:Vector.css. -- Red rose64 (talk) 15:00, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Localization of N/S E/W abbreviations
Is it possible 'N' character to be substituted with something else? I've tried to change some lines in Module:Coord but to no avail. Is it connected with #coordinates parser function? And where 'nosave' parameter is documented? --Pl71 (talk) 16:43, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Pl71, which language? you can click on the interwiki links in the languages section in the left sidebar to find implementations in other languages. Frietjes (talk) 16:41, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm trying to implement Module:Coord in Bulgarian language, current implementation doesn't use this module.--Pl71 (talk) 10:37, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Displaying only degrees minutes from converted decimal degrees format?
I have a table with several coordinates in decimal degrees format like this one:

The output is: 8.4166°N, 123.8198°W

which has been converted to dms format, but the converted seconds are not that significant. Is there a way to display the coordinates in dm format (and possibly having it rounded and not simply truncated)? Sanglahi86 (talk) 01:26, 10 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Is there a reason not to use ? &#8213; Mandruss   &#9742;  01:43, 10 April 2016 (UTC)


 * It could, but I was trying to find a less tedious way since it would be extremely tedious to reformat the entire coord entries in the table(s) to fit the desired dm format. I was hoping there should be a "precision" parameter to display only degrees minutes without having to affect the original precision of the decimal degrees when viewed on the map. Sanglahi86 (talk) 10:18, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

In the table at Abra (province), it looks like seconds precision would be more appropriate for some of the entries, and minutes precision for others. This is using the square root of the area (a rough "diameter") as an object size and the table at WP:COORDPREC. But what you have now, minutes precision for all, is probably fine in my opinion; it's possible to overthink this stuff. If, for any of the municipalities in the table, omitting the seconds made it impossible to place a map marker within the area of that municipality, I'd probably use seconds precision for all—(1) a map marker outside the area would be unacceptable, and (2) there's something to be said for using a consistent precision in the table. &#8213; Mandruss  &#9742;  14:07, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm not aware of any such parameter. And the need for the template to do conversion has always been lost on me in any case; I just code the format that I want to display. As for the effect on a map marker, per the table at WP:OPCOORD, removing the seconds cannot move the marker more than 1.85 km—and that's a worst case of a truncation of 59 seconds at the equator. If you round instead of truncate, the worst case is half that, or about 925 m. In most cases, if moving the marker that much is a problem, the seconds precision is justified and needed.


 * Okay. Thank you very much for the input and info. Yes, I might have been overthinking about the coord length display/precision. In several other similar tables, I tried checking to adjust the minutes by 1 in some cities and the result in the map was significant (the pointer was moved away from the intended target; the town center). I would just leave the coords as they already are. Sanglahi86 (talk) 13:15, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Coordinates without showing them
In an article in the Swedish Wikipedia, I would like to have the coordinates for certain cities there, such that they would all be displayed in a map, but it would not look too good with having tens of coord-templates visible. So is it possible to have tens of coordinates in an article, all which are visible in the GeoGroup-link, without having them visible in the article? K9re11 (talk) 19:41, 11 October 2015 (UTC) . Tagged locations would still get parsed and included in the KML listing, generated by KMLExport. --Teslaton (talk) 18:04, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
 * @User:K9re11 If you use KMLExport/OSM4Wiki based tool to display set of coordinates on the map (e.g. using GeoGroup-like template), you can hide coord output like this:
 * Thank you! It works well. K9re11 (talk) 18:17, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Extending this discussion, I noticed below the example
 * and it struck me that to the user, hidden is just another format so logically the task should be solved by the parameter format=hidden or by display=hidden or both!-
 * Could this be coded into the template. (I am not touching this one- I am not insured against death threats)
 * Line 634 et seq of the Lua module has two simple functions to test for display= inline and title- these lead to an if statement which calls a . Now Displaytitle does include this line   so I assume that a further displayfunction could be written to to wrap the output in the span style brackets we have above.
 * Having looked at the code I am more convinced that my next irritation could easily be solved. Our first positional parameter (dec) is conventionally the latitude. My most common mistake is to cut and paste from Google Maps and elsewhere - loading lat;lon into that positional parameter- including the semicolon separator. The validation routine could be set to autodetect the semicolon separator- and autocorrect. A second call to this fucntion would then see correct code. I know both are minor, but our software is powerful and making the editors life easier produces a larger and better product.ClemRutter (talk) 18:43, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
 * If you mean what I think you mean, about fixing editor errors, then can't be done. Lua is not allowed to modify wikitext so all that can be hoped for is a meaningful error message or that the module ignores all of the cruft that doesn't look like valid data.  The problem with the latter is that now wikitext becomes littered with malformed parameter values and that junk may stay there for a long time.  Sure, that makes work for gnomes, but shouldn't we strive to put them out of business?
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 19:13, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I did but I have changed my mind. You have convinced me. So, we need to change the parsing rules for the character string in positional parameter 1, it already can accept positive and negative integers with four potential meaning- maybe more.
 * In pseudocode, we test whether var positional parameter 1 is a valid integer- if true we use existing tests to see if it represents latitude-dec or degrees_d- if this test fails we test if it is a string containing an ;-char, if this fails error message, if this is true we use a helper function to split the string into two integers, these become latitude-dec and longitude-dec. Further parsing of other positional parameters is skipped. I would set place the result in a hidden category Coordinates needing atention to assist future bots.
 * I have revised my previous pure ideals about always generating perfect code, as I train more and more exceptional people who are put off by the sheer number of ways to get edits rejected. I also observe IP users, Mobile phone users and our own 'Visual Error generator'. Still that one has been aired --have you any thoughts on the display=hidden topic? ClemRutter (talk) 20:32, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I do not have an opinion. Mostly because I don't clearly understand why one would want to use the  but not display its output.  The examples that I tried at  all failed to work for me so that was not help in understanding the issue.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 21:48, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I think I do - most probably so that the hidden coords may be utilised by something like, or harvested by something that creates a KML file. -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:29, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I think I do - most probably so that the hidden coords may be utilised by something like, or harvested by something that creates a KML file. -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:29, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Using coord to inherit co-ordinates from wikidata
I recently added co-ordinates for an event to Wikidata, and tried to use this template to inherit those values here, which I understood ought to work. It does work, but also prints red text: Invalid arguments have been passed to the function Does anyone know how to fix this?

(I previously asked this question at Module_talk:Coordinates, but no-one there was able to help.)

Cheers, Bovlb (talk) 03:19, 29 December 2015 (UTC)


 * This template uses sub-templates to translate different formats for coordinates into the format the template needs. Maybe someone can write a template that translates Wikidata's format. It shouldn't be too hard, the code would just have to replace all punctuation with vertical bars. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 17:06, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
 * It's not used subtemplates for over three years, not since . -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:41, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Using Lua, User:Trappist the monk showed me how to turn symbols into pipes. I tried making Template:WikidataCoord that does so:

But it still gives the same error when you put that into this template:
 * → °N, °W

I tried playing around with it to make it work, but nothing I can find helps. I feel like we're close. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 21:00, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
 * You're asking the wrong person. Lua is incomprehensible to me. -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:13, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Arctic.gnome: Module:Coordinates is complaining about what it thinks to be a bad latitude. Apparently the value returned from the string functions in  is treated as a single parameter.  We know this because the 'single' parameter is returned in the error message above.  To prove this we can intentionally bugger up the latitude portion of a  call:
 * → °N, -112.82861°W
 * where we see that only the 'xx' is the parameter value that is reported in the error message.
 * I don't know how to get round that by modifying . But, I did concoct a simple module that will do what it is that I think you want:
 * The module parses the return from the wikidata properties call and then calls . To support the  named parameters, add them to the   like this:
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 10:44, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Perfect! Thank you! —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 22:50, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
 * The module parses the return from the wikidata properties call and then calls . To support the  named parameters, add them to the   like this:
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 10:44, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Perfect! Thank you! —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 22:50, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 10:44, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Perfect! Thank you! —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 22:50, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

Just a quick note to say thanks for the idea of passing a Lua table to Template:Coord. I've added a call to Module:WikidataIB that will fetch coordinates from Wikidata and pass then directly into Coord. It's not an expensive call and is intended for use in infoboxes with a minimum of coding. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 20:24, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

For anybody who is thinking about fetching coordinates from Wikidata, I'll document what I've found. The call  returns latitude and longitude as a string that looks like this: nn°nn&amp;#39;nn.n&amp;#34;, nn°nn&amp;#39;nn.n&amp;#34;, i.e. it represents the minutes symbol (') and seconds symbol (") as html entities using numeric values (but not the degrees symbol (°). That is not immediately obvious until you use an iterator to pull out the numeric values. Hopefully this bit of info will save others from spending the time it took me to work out what was going wrong. --RexxS (talk) 21:22, 1 June 2016 (UTC)