Template talk:Infobox former country/Archive 8

Invalid centuries
This code -- {{#ifexist:Category:States and territories established in the {{#expr: ({{{year_start}}}-{{{year_start}}}mod100)/100+1}}th century the {{#expr: ({{{year_start}}}-{{{year_start}}}mod100)/100+1}}th century|{{{common_name}}}, {{{year_start}}}]] will happily place pages in Category:States and territories established in the 3th century, the "1th" century, the "2th" century, the 21th, etc. This needs to be fixed. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 10:22, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
 * [[Category:States and territories established in
 * Should be fixed now. TDL (talk) 10:46, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Top flag alignment
A recent edit on Falkland Islands Dependencies has added the Argentinian period of 1982. While this seems reasonable, it has misaligned the flags. Is there any way to customise how the left and right sides stack up? Thanks, CMD (talk) 16:31, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Demonym
I think this template should include an option to add the demonym, just like Infobox country does. People born in the then-country would have been called by the demonym at that time. &#160; thayts &#160;t&#160;  09:19, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Overcategorisation
According to this thread, this template is the root cause of an overcategorisation issue at Pallava dynasty and similar India-related articles. If this can be confirmed, please could we amend it to fix the problem? - Sitush (talk) 06:23, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

ISO 3166-3: Code for formerly used names of countries
The infobox is missing the ISO 3166-3 code which defines codes for country names which have been deleted from ISO 3166-1 since its first publication in 1974. Currently there is about 30 subjects with this code: ISO 3166-3. --pabouk (talk) 08:40, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
 * There is already the corresponding property on Wikidata: d:Property:P773. Could please any template guru implement this into the template? --pabouk (talk) 13:05, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

on-page "warnings"
Can we get rid of these please? Perhaps I do not want to specify "continent" because I do not want in Category:Former countries in Asia a page that is already in Category:States in ancient Anatolia, which is correctly included as a subcategory in "Former countries in Asia". --dab (𒁳) 11:57, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Edit request, 29 December 2013
I've made some edits to the Sandbox that check out ok on the Test cases:


 * 1)  a   for the government type "Principality" when  is set to the Holy Roman Empire, so that it links to Princes of the Holy Roman Empire, rather than to Principality. Visible on Bishopric of Trent test case.
 * 2)  redirect to List of countries and dependencies by area (plus removing five instances of line-terminal whitespace). Visible in all test cases, if you edit your common.css or skin.css to style.
 * 3)  superfluous "Prime Minister" code (which checked the same   logic twice). Implicitly visible in the ifexist test case.
 * 4)  the vertical alignment problem experienced in . Visible on   of the custom test case.
 * 5)  the missing empty-cell to the right of the  cell, which causes the right-border not to appear for most of the test cases. Visible to the right of: "Monarch" in the Nepal test case, "Head of State" in the Tanganyika test case and "The Long and Most Gloriously Titled Leader" in the custom test case.
 * 6)    to the  cells, for when  is multi-line.  Visible in all test cases except New Caledonia and Tuva. This edit also included making all   tags be self-closing and switching out the   tags, for the sake of syntax highlighting, which is visible in the slight difference in height of the flag rows in the Nepal and Tanganyika test cases. I also swapped in includeonly visibility of  for  after testing, for consistency with other numbered fields. (Sorry, both of those should have been separate edits.)
 * 7)  vertical alignment on date-less,  and  values when the appropriate titles span more than one row. Visible on  of the custom test case.
 * 8)  categorisation comment to refer to Template:Infobox former country/autocat. Not visible in output.
 * 9)  separation between the two flags when  is populated. Visible in the New Caledonia and custom test cases.

The edit I'm requesting is to overwrite the template with (or to remake, if you prefer), please.

Thanks! — OwenBlacker (Talk) 22:21, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Yellow check.svg Partly done: I copied edits 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, and 9 to the main template. I'm not sure that I understand edit 1... Why should "Principality" link to an article about princes rather than the principality article itself? As for edit 3, the first ifexist checks for "Prime minister of the ", while the second checks for "Prime Minister of ", and the third "Prime Minister of the " (note the capitalizations of "Minister" and additions of "the"). And I didn't copy edit 5 because I don't see the problem that you describe. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the right border seems to be solid in all of the testcases. Cheers,  Little Mountain  5  18:51, 30 December 2013 (UTC)


 * , Thank you. To answer your queries:
 * Edits 2, 4 and 6–9 are now done, as you explain above.
 * is because Princes of the Holy Roman Empire is more specific than Prince or Principality for fiefs of the Holy Roman Empire.
 * I've and  edit 3 from the Sandbox, as you're correct that I had misread that Prime Minister check. The edit I remade, though, ensures that it is the capitalised (Prime Minister of X) forms that are checked for (both with and without "the"), rather than the lowercased (Prime minister of X) forms. The latter forms do not exist other than redirects (compare) and is discouraged per WP:JOBTITLES.
 * is a problem that affects Chrome and IE but not Firefox:


 * So what I'm asking for now is to overwrite the template with (or to remake the three changes, if you prefer), please.


 * Thanks! — OwenBlacker (Talk) 01:38, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
 * All Yes check.svg Done. Edit 1 seems reasonable enough, edit 3 looks fine now, and I had a feeling edit 5 was browser-related, but I just wanted to make sure. Thanks for the detailed request and replies! Sincerely,  Little Mountain  5  03:35, 31 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Thank you, User:Little Mountain 5. Happy New Year! :o) — OwenBlacker (Talk) 12:58, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Other Symbol paramater
Can somebody add the "other symbol" parameters found in Template:Infobox country which enables to add a second symbol.--121.97.142.168 (talk) 09:44, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Agreed. I have a need for one to be able to display both a coat of arms and a seal (but not a flag).Morgan Riley (talk) 05:09, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Edit request 15 April 2014
In the article Sikh Empire the sixth and last Maharaja, Duleep Singh appears to be shown correctly in the infobox, as representative6, but does not show in the article. Is this a flaw in the template, or am I mistaken in thinking that it is correctly entered in the infobox? Apuldram (talk) 18:31, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Don't worry. I've fixed it myself now. The Maharajas were leaders, not representatives. Apuldram (talk) 22:56, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 18 May 2014
Please add

It's necessary at least for Habsburg Spain.

XXN (talk) 01:10, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
 * ✅ -- John of Reading (talk) 07:00, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Edit request: Set categories to only be displayed in mainspace
Could someone please update this template so it does not add article categories to userspace drafts? (e.g. User:Davidelit/sandbox) Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 16:43, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
 * ✅. For the categories added at the bottom of the template there was already a namespace check, though several conditional categories are added in the body of the template to save parser functions. SiBr4 (talk) 18:35, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Edit request 23 August 2014
Government should be changed to "Political system".. Makes it much clearer what it asks. --TIAYN (talk) 08:38, 23 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the template.  "Government" is used on similar templates, so change one, change them all.  Such would require a consensus among contributors.  See also this edit request. –   Paine Ellsworth   C LIMAX ! 02:53, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Also: to avoid a forked discussion, further talk should take place at a more centralized venue such as the Village pump. –  Paine  
 * Could we change "Government" to "Form of government" at least, since that whats "Government" implies (but not everyone seem to understand that. --TIAYN (talk) 07:17, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
 * The specific parameter is "government_type", so that should be difficult to misinterpret. Can you give an example where there is a misunderstanding of what "Government" means? –   Paine Ellsworth   C LIMAX ! 12:31, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I believe I have found the article, South Yemen, wherein the misinterpretation occurs. For what it's worth, I left my 2 cents about it on the talk page.  The problem, though, does not seem to lie with the ibox parameter, which is usually interpreted correctly as "type of" or "form of" government.  The problem lies with an editor or two who misunderstand the diff between that and "ideology".  It is my sincerest hope that nobody wants an ideology param in these iboxes.   –   Paine    14:34, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
 * thanks. --TIAYN (talk) 09:45, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Edit request 27 August 2014
I was asked to return here... Currently, both these template refer to simply as "Government" when the parameter refers to "government_type".. While its not a problem with liberal democratic states, its a major problem when referring to dictatorships and communist states in general. While the United States is correctly referred to as a "Federal presidential constitutional republic", former (and present socialist states) are referred to as (such as the USSR) "Marxist–Leninist single-party state" or in other cases as "Marxist–Leninist single-party socialist state", Juche single-party state or "Single-party socialist state"... First Marxism-Leninism and Juche is an ideology, and while it can be generalized, and states can be called Marxist-Leninist states or Juche states there never existed a form of government which was Marxist-Leninist or Juche. The socialist political system was conceived by Lenin, but its evolution has by both communists and non-communists alike been referred to as the socialist system. Since this form of government (in every case that I know since post-1923) was based upon both Marxism-Leninism and a single-party system, calling them "Marxist-Leninist single-party socialist state" is really saying the same thing three times. To quote a more articulated user; "I am no expert; however, from the little I do know, that statement gives two, main important pieces of this puzzle. Those are Marxist–Leninist and socialist state. Just a scan of those two articles can lead to truth here. The former describes an ideology, not a type of government, although forms of government may be based upon that ideology. The latter, 'socialist state', describes a type/form of government that may be based upon an ideology. Ideologies and types of governments are two different things, aren't they? It would seem that no matter how many sources one may provide, it is how those sources are interpreted that applies here. And they should be interpreted by use of the definitions of 'ideology' and 'type of government'. When a source refers to a country as 'Marxist–Leninist', the source refers to the ideology, not to the type of government. I could be wrong, but it strongly appears that when the ibox parameter is 'government_type', this country's entry should be 'socialist state'." Adding the ideological nature of the political system is not the point of government_type parameter, its task it to mention the form of government. But before I began editing it, that was not the case. For instance Democratic Kampuchea was referred to, in the infobox government parameter, as a "Agrarian socialist totalitarian single-party state". Yes, ideologically they may have been agrarian socialists, and they may have been totalitarian and they may have been a single-party state, but none of those terms actually answer the question; what form of government did Democratic Kampuchea have. The answer is a socialist system; therefore it should say Socialist state/republic (and just that). Since "Socialist state/republic" implies by definition a single-party state there is no need to mention it at all (similar we don't need to add the word "Democratic" to "Federal presidential constitutional republic" even it would spell out clearer then what it already does that the US is democratic).. Of course, this is not only a problem in communist articles, look at Nazi Germany; its referred to as a "Nazi single-party state. Totalitarian dictatorship". First, totalitarianism has no reason to be there; the infobox asks for "government_type" and not the political concept used to categorize the worst dictatorships. I don't know if "Nazi single-party state" is apt, as far as I know the Nazis never theorized on what political system a Nazi world would have. Of course I could be wrong. To make sure this doesn't happen again (and too stop edit wars over it), I propose of replacing the word Government in both infoboxes with either a "Form of government", b "Political system", c "System of governance" or d "Type of government" or e "Political structure". I am personally inclined to a or d. --TIAYN (talk) 09:45, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the template. – Once again, a discussion that ends with a consensus should go first and before the edit requested template is used.  It is also important that this discussion needs to be centralized, so you need to make it crystal clear on the other four talk pages, here, here, here and here, exactly where you would like to discuss this.  It might help to mention it at Talk:South Yemen as well. –   Paine Ellsworth   C LIMAX ! 15:39, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Missing flag2_type param
Trying to add a second flag at Republic of China (1912–49) and it seems broken: flag2_type isn't working; the param is missing entirely from the template. See the edited example of what I was trying to do at right. My parser coding skills aren't up to working out how fix it so suggesting a fix, so could someone else have a look at it. Thanks.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 17:13, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Edit request: correct name of parameter "coat_size" in documentation
The parameter "coat_size" appears as "coa_size" in the documentation. This is unfortunate, because appears to have copied it into article Bishopric of Utrecht, and then wondered why the coat of arms wouldn't appear. --ColinFine (talk) 20:29, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
 * The documentation for this template is at Template:Infobox former country/doc, which is not protected. Unless you're requesting a change to the actual template code, you can make this change yourself. SiBr4 (talk) 21:09, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Ah, right. I forgot that the documentation was transcluded. I've corrected it. --ColinFine (talk) 17:02, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Deprecate easter-egg links in successor/predecessor timeline?
I would like to propose formally deprecating the use of flag and similar thumbnails for indicating predecessor/successor states to the left and right of the "life span" entry near the head of this box. These entries are currently used on most instances of this box. In addition to the question of which states to cover (as discussed in the documentation page), there are several further problems associated with these:
 * 1) Few pre-modern states had a single, clearly defined visual symbol such as a national flag or coat of arms.
 * 2) Even fewer historical flags are widely enough known that they can be expected to be recognizable to the reader.
 * 3) At present, these images are displayed without any textual support, as image-only links. This means they are almost always "easter-egg links" – the reader has no way of knowing what they mean until he actually clicks on them. The use of such links is explicitly discouraged in WP:MOSLINK, for obvious good reasons.
 * 4) There is presently no viable alternative to use for states that don't have a clearly defined visual symbol. If you don't specify one, the template forces display of an empty white field, which is obviously completely unhelpful. In many cases, editors have taken recourse to other poor substitute solutions or whatever happens to be used as the top image of the infobox in the target article itself, e.g. images of coins (even less recognizable than flags, and so tiny at this size they are impossible to distinguish)  or even maps (even worse for the same reason) . Or they have used unsourced made-up symbols.
 * 5) The whole mess is made even more reader-unfriendly by the fact that these entries come not only without textual content themselves, but also without any textual heading explaining what the whole section is about. It relies entirely on the reader's intuition in recognizing the visual logical of the left-to-right timeline through the use of arrows and the juxtaposition with the year range in the middle.
 * 6) The alternative, of having predecessor/successor states displayed in an explicit textual list further down in the box, is obviously better, but this seems currently to be only supported for long lists of 5 or more entries; plus, the template will then include another white field with a downward arrow near the top instead – i.e. yet another useless easter-egg link. This link is only understandable to readers who are already highly familiar with Wikipedia's internal infobox conventions. We should never assume that readers automatically know what kind of info to expect in what corner of an infobox merely because they have seen such infoboxes in other articles previously.

My suggestion would be to completely drop the image/arrow lists to the side of the life-span field, and instead move all successor/predecessor entries down into a textual list as the default. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:19, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I would prefer to keep current flag use where it's working fine but the case you make is somewhat compelling. In cases like those, should we simply remove this functionality from the infobox entirely and allow predecessor/successor states to be represented in a navbar at the bottom of the article? Chris Troutman  ( talk ) 16:15, 29 September 2014 (UTC)
 * But how many cases are there where it is "working fine"? How many historical states (or even present-day states, for that matter) have flags that a majority of readers can be relied upon to recognize without text? Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:09, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

The "common_name" field
When it's filled, it doesn't seem to appear in the infobox? Timmyshin (talk) 02:27, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
 * That's intended. These fields are poorly named and documented, unfortunately, but the function of the "common_name" field is just as an internal placeholder to construct certain links, e.g. if you say "common_name=XYZ" then the flag field will automatically default to "Flag of XYZ.svg" and so on. The actual names displayed at the top of the box are only the "conventional_long_name" and the "native_name" parameters. Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:54, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Request for Comment
There is currently an RfC at Talk:Ryukyu Kingdom concerning this template, specifically the "|status", "|status_text", and "|empire" fields. Thank you.  ミーラー強斗武   (StG88ぬ会話) 19:45, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

nationalities
i suggest adding "nationalities" to this infobox, becouse it doesn't matter the same as language. --Winnetou14 (talk) 20:33, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Predecessor/successor wikilinks
Is anyone aware of a way to customize the text that appears as representing a successor/predecessor state? That is to say, if a country's article is, e.g., "Czechoslovak Republic (1948–1960)" and I want to have the infobox state "Czechoslovakia", as in "Czechoslovakia" ? Thanks in advance (I could have sworn I knew this.. :)) -- Director  ( talk )  12:11, 29 January 2015 (UTC)


 * See the source of First French Empire for examples of how to do that. 162.208.23.130 (talk) 21:19, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Year formatting problems (?)
Can someone who is familiar with the source code have a look at this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Republic_of_Crimea&oldid=654535435#Treaty_of_Accession_to_Russia

Where does the "2014" in "Annexed" come from, and why can't the sources be placed after the 2014? If I add 2014 to the field manually and the sources afterwards, another 2014 comes afterwards. The other fields don't behave in this way. - Anonimski (talk) 19:46, 1 April 2015 (UTC)