Template talk:Infobox school/Archive Education in the United States

State vs Province?
Maybe I'll try to fix that? I assume that the template is derrived from Template:Infobox Education in Canada? j-beda 15:24, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * OK, I think I fixed both the Province->State and postalcode->zipcode, and then I fixed the 10 articles that used the template to reflect the changes. j-beda 15:44, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

website vs url?
It looks like none of the 10 articles that reference the template use the "website" field - should we get rid of the "website" field entirely in order to minimize the complexity of the template? j-beda 15:44, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * OK I removed the "website" field - hopefully I didn't break anything. j-beda 17:35, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Can I offer a request to bring the "website" field back? It's not like it's hurting anything if it isn't used by all pages. Whitemage33 21:31, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Never mind, there is one. Wow. Heh, I guess it's been a long day. Whitemage33 21:34, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Fields to be removed
You'll most likely want to see the discussion over here as it affects this template. --Stéphane Charette 01:29, 24 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Arrrggghhh... strangling, choking noises I've been using this template, even replacing other templates with it, without having noticed this warning until I got whacked by the change.  Please change it back.  I just posted this rationale at Canada:
 * This seems to have just today affected Infobox Education in the United States, which I have used for several schools and school districts in California. Yesterday I saw either an "Address" or "Location" label with the data I had entered below, today it is gone.  I think that this is a change for the worse and would urge that it be reversed.  Providing the street addess in a 30K article about a high school does not make WP a directory.  It provides useful information to many readers in a succinct and obvious manner.  Having the fields in the infobox template also encourages editors to enter the data there in a standard format.  Without the fields in the infobox, the same information is going to be entered into the text of the articles in varying sections, including the lead paragraph.  One other point--I've been using the street addresses to find the geo-coordinates so I could add the geohack templates to schools.  This is a big plus, I think, and is clearly sanctioned for localities.  See Tamalpais High School, Bolinas-Stinson Union School District, and Sausalito Marin City School District for examples.  The Sausalito Marin City District provides another reason to keep street addesses--the existing Bayside and MLK,Jr. campuses have each had two to four different names since the first school buildings were built on their sites.  The MLK, Jr. name has been used at both sites in different decades.  I've been working on that article for quite a few hours and I'm having some trouble being sure that I've linked the correct former school names with the current names, which is why I haven't posted them.  I may acctually have to use an old phone directory in a local library to tie former school names to a real physical address.--Hjal 07:36, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Adding v• d• e links
I've just added the Template:Tnavbar-header template to the header of the infobox, which results in small v•d•e links to the right side of the navbox. This should improve the ability to go back and forth to the navebox template description and this talk forum - does it make things too cluttered? Is there some other preferable way of doing the same thing? -- j-beda 19:30, 21 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Did you look at the results of your effort? At two high school articles were I used this template, it is now broken.  See Tamalpais High School and Sir Francis Drake High School.  I haven't checked all of the rest.  I don't know how the thing you tried is supposed to work, or why it's not, so I will just revert it if it is not fixed soon.  If you make another effort (which would be fine with me), please check these two schools before wrapping up.--Hjal 03:43, 22 June 2007 (UTC)


 * ACK! I did look at Sausalito Marin City School District and Bolinas-Stinson Union School District and a few other random selections from the "what links here" and of course at at the top of Template:Infobox Education in the United States when I put it together - they all seemed to work - it was a fairly simple alteration. Let me see if I can figure out what when wrong and I'll put it back if I can't fix it. -- j-beda 14:27, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Humm, it seems as though fancy formatting of the school name (small caps/big/color/etc) seems to interfere with the Template:Tnavbar-header which is used for the navigation buttons.... j-beda 14:35, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I moved it around, so now it is on its own line - I think that clears up the conflict without needing to restructure things so schools with "fancy" titles get messed up - any thoughts? j-beda 15:05, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks, but now I wonder if I should change my "fancy" titles back to the standard. Somebody changed one infobox I had modified with colored text in both the title and colors sections, and used colorboxes in the colors section only, which I think I like better anyway.  If my fooling around is all that is requiring the extra line, then it probably isn't worth it.  I might go look to see how many titles are modified the way I did.
 * OTOH, while I think that the v-d-e links are useful in a county or state navigation template, since they have to be edited often to add smaller communities or modify links, I'm not sure that it's a good idea to invite people to edit the education infobox template like this. Maybe it would make more sense to have the -e- open the article where the infobox is located, as an invitation to update the information in the infobox, instead.--Hjal 16:26, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
 * A quick look through the schools using the template showed that there were a fairly large number with "fancy" text, so the "fix" addressed more than a couple. I agree that having the "e" link isn't so great, but I find it very useful to have the v and d links in boxes such as this since it is so much easier to get the template form for use in new listings if it is directly linked from where it is used. But maybe it shouldn't be there at all....  How's that for decisiveness?  -- j-beda 20:24, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, we just had our first drive-by. Is it possible to do the v and d, without the e?--Hjal 03:21, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Screw it, I'll just remove it since it doesn't really add much value - anyone who wants to v.d. or e. it is smart enough to figure out where it is to do so. If someone else thinks we should keep it, speak up. j-beda 03:39, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Coordinates
I've just added a coordinates parameter (and an hCard microformat) to this template. See Robinson Secondary School far an example of coordinates in use. i've asked User: The Anome if he may be able to convert postal codes to approximate coordinates by bot. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 12:25, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Standard infobox?
Which infobox is standard in American high school articles? Infobox HighSchool seems prevalent, but I see Infobox Education in the United States quite a bit in high school pages, as well. They're largely the same, except that Infobox Education in the United States has a more organized and nicer appearance. Is there a rule or guideline as to which template to use? If not, would it be a good idea to make one or the other standard? Tserton 17:22, 10 August 2007 (UTC)


 * These should be merged. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 17:28, 10 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Standardization is good. I think merging these 2 templates is beneficial.  (BTW, I just moved the merge tags to after "noinclude" since the merge text was appearing on every school article with an invalid link.) --Stéphane Charette 08:45, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Merger Proposal
I just added the tag to the page; here's my rationale for merging: Template: Infobox Education in the United States and Template: Infobox HighSchool are both very descriptive and adequate infoboxes. However, they are largely the same and it causes a lot of confusion, not to mention inconsistency, when editors use one or the other irregularly. Template: Infobox Education in the United States has considerably more descriptive and appearance options and is more attractive, as well. Merging the best of the two templates would remove the inconsistency and create an overall better infobox. I thought it would be a good idea to propose this, rather than just carry it out, since both templates are so widely used and important within school articles.


 * I think that the two templates should be merged to create a standard in order to ease confusion and every page looks the same. I have been busy putting this infobox into many articles in place of what was there (many had something substituted in!).


 * One thing I would like to see added, though i some optional fields for Accreditation, Newspaper, Yearbook, and Marching Band, since all three of these would fit into a high school infobox. I have seen these in a few infoboxes but do not know where they came from. Thanks very much, --Willy No1lakersfan (Talk - Contribs) 03:23, 18 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I looked at the list of Education infoboxes, and there are about half a dozen American school infoboxes that give largely identical information. I think it would be a good idea to merge all of these into Template: Infobox Education in the United States, because they're almost exactly the same and aren't specific to any one specific type of American school. I propose merging the following infobox templates into Template: Infobox Education in the United States:
 * Template:Infobox HighSchool (merge already proposed)


 * Template:Infobox HighSchool (American)


 * Template:Infobox VirginiaHighSchool


 * Template:Infobox K-12 School


 * Template:Infobox US school


 * Template:Infobox middle school


 * Also, does anyone have experience with merging templates? How will infoboxes appear when the template for them no longer exists under the same name? Will a redirect on the deleted pages be enough to fix it? Tserton 20:24, 24 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Wow, there's a LOT of redundant school infoboxes. Over the next few days I'm going to try to figure out the correct process to get them merged into something a little more comprehensive and less scattered. I'll post here when I've got more info. Pairadox 21:48, 1 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Any progress/updates on this? I just stumbled into editing (mostly just adding project headers and cleanup tags, at present) high school pages, and am similarly confused on which infobox to use for U.S. high schools.  Some of the Texas high schools have hard-coded (non-template driven) infoboxes, others use Template:Infobox Secondary school and others use Template:Infobox HighSchool. - Ageekgal 16:33, 8 October 2007 (UTC)