Template talk:Infobox language/Archive 6

Official status not showing
Why is the "nation" function of the language infobox no longer visible on articles? The list of countries that are supposed to be under "official status" on the language infobox are still available on the edit page but are not included in the actual article page. Only minority status and institutions that regulate the language are visible. - 01:48, 20 March 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.142.27.223 (talk)
 * seems to be working, see Swedish language. Frietjes (talk) 14:56, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

You can't force infobox speaker dates
I've noticed how the current format of the infobox has caused problems in Swedish language. The number of speakers of Swedish does not really have a single definitive answer. The number of native speakers is rather difficult to pinpoint. There are conflicting figures which is partly due to the reluctance of Swedish authorities to collect any census data that can be construed registration of ethnic background. If non-native speakers are included, most Danes and Norwegians have to be added. And then there's a very significant number of Finns who speak Swedish to varying degrees.

But the infobox doesn't really tolerate nuances. It forces editors to focus on a single figure related to a single source that doesn't necessarily match that what is in the article. Or every single available figure has to be stated, which is an unworkable solution. The infobox is basically a variant of the lead and a summary of facts elaborated in the article. If so, it obviously contradict it in any way.

So either the figure for speakers goes altogether, or the infobox has to allow for some leeway.

Peter Isotalo 11:34, 31 January 2015 (UTC)


 * You can put as much ambiguity and as many sources in the info box as you like. The fact that you don't want to is not a problem with the info box.  The reason we track these things is that hundreds of articles suffer from falsified data and nationalist exaggerations.  We want to be able to verify the data quickly, and for that we need references.  For exceptional cases (not that Swedish actually is exceptional in this regard), we could, say, add a non-breaking space to prevent the automatic tracking, and a comment in the coding to let other editors know why there is no ref.  — kwami (talk) 20:08, 31 January 2015 (UTC)


 * I suspect this is actually more common than you think. It would apply to the other Scandinavian languages for one thing. Any major influx of immigrants will complicate matters. I believe it holds even more true for languages like Yiddish or Welsh and the complexity of the infobox space for speakers kinda confirms that. And I don't really see why we need to provide pinpoint accuracy, with infobox refs, for really major languages like English or Hindi. In my view, they can imply unmerited certainty.
 * Keeping the automatic categories for patrolling is all fine and well, but it should be possible to remove both date and the referencing without forcing a "(missing date)".
 * Peter Isotalo 20:28, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * You can. Read the doc for how.  But it needs to be done purposefully; if you simply omit date or ref, the article will be tagged, because that is almost always due to someone either forgetting to add the info, or adding spurious figures that have no ref to back them up.  — kwami (talk) 23:09, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Ethn. tracking categories
The coding for the tracking categories for which articles cite which edition of Ethnologue can be removed, as it is now supplied by the reference templates themselves. But we'll want to wait until E17 is updated to E18, as these cats can take quite a while to populate. — kwami (talk) 23:11, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

"Official," "minority" & "?"; Suggesting change
Currently there is a choice between "national" and "minority" in classification of languages, but there are languages that do not fall in either category - such as Somali in Djibouti. Suggesting changing that by adding another statutorily recognized language category, or changing "minority language" (which is problematic anyway). See discussion at Talk:Somali language.--A12n (talk) 12:38, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

IETF language tag
Hi. I intend to add the IETF language tag for articles such as Austrian German. I had already added it WP:BOLDly but User:Alakzi took it out again. Let me explain. Austrian German can only be identified by its IETF language tag de-AT. It has no ISO language code of its own, being the national variety of the German language (ISO 639 de) that is used in Austria (ISO 3166-1 AT). The corresponding article on the German wikipedia, de:Österreichisches Deutsch, shows the IETF language tag in the infobox.

Other articles that would benefit from the IETF language tag include American English, Canadian French, Brazilian Portuguese, etc. etc. All these articles on language varieties currently lack their code, even though that code exists – the IETF language tags en-US, fr-CA, and pt-BR respectively – and is being used by countless people. I think all these articles would greatly benefit if the language infobox showed their codes. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 01:01, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Official minority languages
Being officially sanctioned does not equate to it being used for official purposes, as the label would imply; therefore, it is a misnomer. Usually, at a bare minimum, it means that the language is taught in primary education in some localities. Sometimes, it might also be used by local councils, and thus in official capacity. At other times, the designation has no practical implications (take Romani in Sweden). "Official" has got the potential to mislead. Alakzi (talk) 23:36, 17 May 2015 (UTC)


 * "Recognized" means "officially recognized" in this context. I'm very skeptical about the assumptions you just made about how readers will interpret a single word. If the two terms have distinct and clearly defined meanings in the context of minority languages, the argument is relevant. If not, it's a matter of taste. And I was trying to make fix a potential conflict between American English and British English.
 * Peter Isotalo 00:39, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
 * The context is ambiguous. An official language is a language that's used for official purposes; by inference, one might reasonably conclude that an official minority language is an official language that is also a minority language. Furthermore, "recognized minority language" is the standard terminology. Alakzi (talk) 00:50, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
 * The implications of minority language status differ considerably, so that will always be a potential source for confusion. But we don't deal with any of that because we only list languages with official recognition. In this context, it seems completely unambiguous.
 * And, again, there's the AE/BE problem. Do you have a better solution?
 * Peter Isotalo 01:45, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, the implications vary - that's what I said at the beginning. Yes, we only list languages with official recognition - that's not the issue. The issue is that, the way the label has been phrased, the word "official" can be - and surely will be - misconstrued. I don't think that style is more important than meaning. We seem to have managed OK with "recognised" for so long; why change it now, when nobody's even complained? Alakzi (talk) 01:56, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Well, we seem to disagree regarding the potential for confusion. Other than that, it doesn't seem like "why change?" is something that can be really argued with. Except pointing to WP:STONE.
 * Peter Isotalo 13:03, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Then you should revert your change and invite others' feedback. Alakzi (talk) 13:29, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Nice gatekeeping.
 * Peter Isotalo 21:59, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Links to SIL website down
The links to the SIL website have not been working for some time now. The problem apparently is that "http://www.sil.org/..." was changed to the weird "http://www-01.sil.org/..." . I have no idea where the link is specified (I can't find it), so I hope someone who does know can come by and fix this. --JorisvS (talk) 08:47, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
 * It's been fixed in Interwiki map, but it'll take some time before the change propagates. Alakzi (talk) 10:50, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Okay, thanks for the info. Is there no way to force the change to propagate? --JorisvS (talk) 11:11, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't know. You could ask on the talk page there. Alakzi (talk) 11:30, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

'Minority' parameter
Text for the parameter 'minority' was amended to read 'Other legal statuses in', causing the infoboxes of many minority languages to be less informative than they were and this page's template documentation to be incorrect. I have reverted. The edit summary (“Changed label "Recognised minority language in" to "Other legal statuses in" to make the infobox more versatile and better reflect the actual usage of this sub-section on many articles.”) indicates an adtional parameter may be needed for some languages, but that is no reason to change the current parameter, which reads "Recognised minority language in", which works as it stands for those languages that use the parameter correctly. Please provide an example of a language page that uses the 'minority' parameter but is not a recognised minority language. Daicaregos (talk) 12:12, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

OLAC link
I was considering adding an OLAC parameter to the template for a link to the OLAC page of the language. Anyone who doesn't agree? --SynConlanger (talk) 09:51, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Better documenting (and handling?) of native vs. non-native "speakers"
As for native vs. non-native speakers, our code logic does needs better explaining. As presently documented, speakers2 appears to only be an adjunct to speakers, as used in the sample infobox for English. We're not documenting that it can be used as a replacement for that parameter, as used at Esperanto to inserts "Users:" instead of "Native speakers". This is what we need for practical conlangs (Esperanto, Interlingua), fandom conlangs (Elvish, Klingon), "dead" languages that retain fluent non-native speakers/readers (usually for religious and scholarly reasons, e.g. Latin, Koine Greek, Sanskrit), surviving languages with no remaining true native speakers only SL leaners (Manx), revived languages with enthusiasts but no native speakers (Cornish), etc.

We should actually replace "speakers" with "users", and then get rid of the "signers" code. There's no reason for us to use "speakers", as it is prejudicial against the mute and most of the deaf, and may misrepresent the data reported by the source (some people with a working, semi-fluent knowledge of a language are not really speakers of it in a conversational sense but are working entirely with texts, and some population-of-users information may include them while other may not). This also would obviate the necessity to use the obscure term "signers" for users of sign languages. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:26, 16 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes, doc should be updated.
 * "Signers" is not used by any article, so we can remove that coding. I'd've done it myself years ago but it's rather entangled and I'm afraid of breaking something.
 * "Speakers" is not prejudicial to the deaf. It's common to refer to "speaking" ASL.
 * I doubt there's a single article where the number of mutes with native knowledge of a language affects the estimate, and "users" would imply that we're counting pen-pals who barely know the language. If people are otherwise not really speakers, then they shouldn't be counted as native speakers, no matter what we call the parameter. If we were to change it to anything, I'd prefer "native speakers", "native", or maybe "L1" (though that would be rather obscure for newbies), but it's hard to get bot approval for changes that have no effect on the article. If we do change a parameter name, we should also get the bot to reorder the parameters to match the doc. — kwami (talk) 19:59, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Distinguishing dialects from languages
We need a parameter that noticeably changes the template's output to make it clear that the template is being used in an article about a dialect/variety/register/code, not a language proper. This template is frequently used on dialect, etc., articles (e.g. at Canadian Gaelic), where it provides useful information to readers (compare Texan English with no infobox), but which misleadingly implies that it's an independent language and that the actual language of which it is a subset is a language family. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  23:43, 23 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Nowhere does the box define the scope as a language. It's also very difficult to distinguish language and dialect, and making a black-and-white decision for every article would be a real headache. Often the "language" it's a "dialect" of arguably is a small language family (dialect continuum). — kwami (talk) 00:21, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Edit war
Kwami stop edit warring, you're both over 3rrr-- Lerd the nerd wiki defender  22:58, 16 November 2015 (UTC)


 * How do you figure? I reverted Mach twice, he reverted Taivo and me 3x.
 * And why would you report only me (with fake "reverts", no less) when Mach is reverting others? — kwami (talk) 23:30, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I think Lerd is mistaking this as a revert. But 3rr is a hard line. It still counts as edit warring even if you don't technically reach that hard line. — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 23:55, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Plus Mach raised a good point, you know better Kwamikagami. You have a very long long rap sheet for edit wars. He has none (Except possly this first one.-- Lerd the nerd wiki defender  00:30, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * "A long history of edit wars" simply reflects the fact that Kwami is one of the most active editors on the site. It is also absolutely irrelevant here.  He has not even come close to violating 3RR.  --Taivo (talk) 00:37, 17 November 2015 (UTC)