Template talk:Infobox settlement/Archive 13

type:city(pop)
Please add the population after type:city for the generated coordinates. --Dschwen 18:16, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

overlinking redux
I was disambiguating Carol Williams, and I found that in addition to all the other Carol Williams there is a Carol Williams who is a county clerk in Iowa.

This template, very aggressively, IMO, seems to look at each named politician, and look to see if an article exists under that name. If it finds one, it renders the name as a link.

This is a very serious mistake in approach.

First, it is a mistake simply because it is opaque.

Second, it is a mistake, because the template writer seems to have overlooked disambiguation. There are multiple Carol Williams, and the county clerk is probably the least notable.

I suggest that no individuals names should be implicitly linked. Change the template so, if their names are going to be linked it is done manually, by contributors.

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 21:46, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Please remove the automatic linking for the parameter "leader". The current advice in the documentation to add a non-breaking space is a kludge. See also: Template talk:Infobox German location. Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:58, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
 * There are a lot of leader parameters. Can you please update the sandbox and then re-enable the editprotected request? Thanks! --MZMcBride (talk) 02:15, 28 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Editprotected
 * Apologies for my sloppy request (I could have sworn there was only one unambigous parameter "leader" — now it's not only my fingers & the keyboard I have problems with, it's my eyes & the screen as well; maybe the wife was right all along.)
 * My coding experience with templates is indistinguishable from none, but I tried my best to incorporate the unlinking of names in the sandbox; I recommend critical review. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 04:18, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
 * My apologies if I'm reading it wrong, but the description of the request above, does not seem to match the actual change to the code. If I'm reading the code in the sandbox properly, the change would remove the conditional "if" checks on several of the template fields, and thereby make them required fields.  If I've got it wrong though, please just get another trusted user to signoff on the change as one that's been tested and approved, and then re-submit the request. Thanks, --Elonka 00:49, 4 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Editprotected
 * I had another go at trying to implement the unlinking of "leader_name" in the template's sandbox; I am only a little more confident that it's correct now. In case it's not: is what's needed not clear from the request's description in this section? Michael Bednarek (talk) 01:50, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I think that the sandbox may have gotten out of synch with the live template somehow. For example, when I take the existing sandbox code right now, paste it into the live template page, and then click on "changes", I'm seeing more changes than just what is described with the leader name modification.  For example, right now it's saying that a sandbox port would also be modifying the XML code in the top part of the page.  I guess another way to see this would be to copy the live template code to the sandbox page, and click on the "Changes" button to see the reverse effect. --Elonka 01:40, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I give up. I thought reducing overlinking was a worthwhile aim, but this is getting too hard. shows what I did. Michael Bednarek (talk) 06:45, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Extinct Settlements WikiProject proposal
FYI, for anyone interested in extinct or historical settlements, there's currently a proposal at the WikiProject Council for a new Extinct Settlements WikiProject. Votes and comments are welcome. Thanks! Huwmanbeing &#9728;  &#9733;  13:33, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Coords title
When you set the coords to show in the title it's boldened. This makes it appear different from coord and what Geobox has. I believe the line  needs to be changed to make them all appear uniform. Thoughts? §hep  •   ¡Talk to me!  06:15, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Changing  to   seems to have fixed it. -- User:Docu


 * editprotected

When changed to   to  , he neglected to change   to   , and thus rendered the HTML of any page using this template invalid. Please will someone fix that. Thank you. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 21:05, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I've copied your comment to Docu's talk page (and "nowiki'd" the edit protect tag which I guess you meant to refer to the template rather than this talk page :)) -- Timberframe (talk) 21:30, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
 * editprotected is for use on the talk page of the article concerned. If I could add it to the template, I could make the change myself. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 23:36, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done. I fixed the  tag. --Elonka 03:12, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Elonka! -- Timberframe (talk) 09:45, 11 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks Elonka for fixing it further. -- User:Docu

Infobox appears broken
A recent edit appears to have broken this infobox. Look at Wasilla, Alaska in Internet Explorer. The census map, photo, and dot map all worked earlier. They're trashed now. I checked some other towns (e.g., Woodstock, New York) and they all have the same problem. Americasroof (talk) 19:15, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm glad it's not just me - the map seems shifted to the lower right sometimes to the upper right if that helps someone debug it - the error is likely to be in some transcluded function, because there seems to be no change to this template today. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 19:36, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Everything looks fine to me? Has the issue been resolved for you as well?  §hep   •   ¡Talk to me!  23:05, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I couldn't see a problem either. Maybe the bug was corrected.  &mdash;  MJC detroit  (yak) 00:38, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I also saw the misplacement described by Carlossuarez46 on 7 November (see my report at User_talk:Kotbot).  Seems someone did something to the template or one of its constituent parts on that day and quickly reverted it. -- Timberframe (talk) 10:48, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what happened. It's working in Firefox and IE7 although the renderings of the census maps doesn't look as sharp as before.  Weird. Americasroof (talk) 17:23, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
 * It's not working correctly in IE6. The maps are shifted down and to the right, outside of the bounds of the infobox.Skeetidot (talk) 18:33, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

please add the population to type:city -> type:city(2323)
please add a behind type:city in the Geobox coor template. Omitting this information makes all cities appear the same size on the map of the WikiMiniAtlas, and in particular prevents big cities from being displayed with higher priority than small villages. --Dschwen 22:34, 24 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Is anybody watching this page? Guys, it is a tiny edit, which would instantly increase the usefulness of thousands of Wikipedia coordinates. --Dschwen 02:35, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I tried this edit in the sandbox and it seemed to break one of the testcases (Beijing) on the testcases page. So, the questions are: how many other pages would this edit, if performed, mess up?  Would additional fields (like rank) be required?  What would happen if the coordinates are given but the total population is not?  &mdash;  MJC detroit  (yak) 14:49, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Maybe it should be something like ?--Kotniski (talk) 15:26, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, exactly. That is a standard template issue. The type parameter also should default to city (which I think it doen't currently, correct me if I'm wrong). --Dschwen 16:46, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * The problem is that the population isn't a raw number in that example. Kanguole (talk) 16:00, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * But that's what the population_note parameter is for, right? population_total can and should always be a raw number. --Dschwen 16:44, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Beijing isn't the only one with this error: Los Angeles, Sao Paulo and Windsor, Ontario, for example. Kanguole (talk) 22:29, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Ok, a first step could be a bot that finds population_total entries containing text besides the raw number data. This text could then be moved to population_note. --Dschwen 22:56, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * population_note isn't a faithful replacement; it loses the indication of which of the listed populations the annotation refers to. Kanguole (talk) 23:46, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, I'm sure we can find a solution for that. IMO facilitating reuse of the data by enforcing a clean consistent structure is most important. Machine readability will ultimately benefit the reader more than.. uhm.. layout gimmicks (whoops, I said it, sorry). As for population_note, simplest solution would be the creation of population_total_note, the contents of which would be displayed directly after population_total. A new field would also have the benefit of being completely safe for bot assisted conversion. --Dschwen 04:41, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Please add proposed code to the sandbox and I'll sync the template with it. (Don't want to break hundreds of pages accidentally. ;-) --MZMcBride (talk) 19:58, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * The first step is finding a consensus for keeping the population number fields raw numbers. Any textual data should be moved to population note (or similar fields). --Dschwen 14:03, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
 * That's always been the recommended usage I think. But how much does it actually break things if you have something like type:city(2,323)? Does this really foul things up at WikiMiniAtlas or elsewhere, or is it something we can cope with?--Kotniski (talk) 15:24, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
 * The problem is more that people are attaching notes (e.g. ranks) to the population figures. You'd need a new note field for each population (as Dschwen mentioned above) to give them a better way of doing this.  Kanguole (talk) 15:34, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Perhaps so, but does it really matter if the other population fields (besides total) are non-numerical? At least for the purposes of this feature, it's enough that population_total be raw number (and my question is how bad it would be if it weren't?)--Kotniski (talk) 15:54, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
 * It fouls up the infobox: have a look at Beijing in the testcases. Kanguole (talk) 16:12, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I think it essentially inserts a link into a link, breaking the resulting HTML. Hmm, I wonder why the urlencoding of the name parameter does not help. I can do (and in fact I do do) a lot of post-processing on the data. For example I filter out commata (used to make large population numbers more readable), and I'd love to filter out all the additional text as well. Unfortunately I don't have that option, as the infobox gets broken by the additional text. Aren't the rank list just below all population numbers? What about one more parameter, that inserts a note below all population numbers? Then we can keep population note for the references. I just need one clean figure for the type parameter. If it were up to me, the rest of the population parameters could just stay cluttered up. I made a similar change to the Infobox_Place_Ireland template recently (there still is some fixing left to do in the ireland articles). --Dschwen 16:27, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

I see now... I've been drilling down the various coord templates but I can't see where the problem is. There must be a parser condition to test whether something's a raw number, though (if there isn't an explicit one then it must be possible to fix one up - ifeq:expr(x+0)|x or something like that). Then we could exclude pop_total from the coord call anytime it's not raw numerical.--Kotniski (talk) 17:29, 5 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I had that approach in mind. But the problem are the big cities. They are the one which have the population parameter cluttered. And having those cities without a population number in the city type makes them literally drop off the map (because too low a priority get assigned to them, and the mapsymbol will make them look like a tiny village). I realize that the world does not revolve around my WikiMiniAtlas, but the issue here is more fundamental. It is about reusability of data, and a semantic-web approach. This could make the data in Wikipedia much more useful for various applications. --Dschwen 18:02, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
 * So what is it you're actually proposing? I hear there are some parser string functions in preparation (I'm not aware of their having gone live yet) which might make it possible to extract an initial number from a string. But at the moment I think we can only do the following things: (1) as a quick fix, have the infobox pass type:city if there is no pop_total given, type:city(N) if pop_total is a raw number or (say) type:city(1000000) if pop_total exists but is not a raw number; (2) add code which places pages which have non-raw-number pop_totals in a new hidden category, so that they can be corrected. Would those things help?--Kotniski (talk) 10:49, 6 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, good points. One way might be the iferror parser function

[{#iferror:|city|city}}
 * We could use this enforce really clean integers and then use template functions to generate nicely formatted numbers. --Dschwen 20:57, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

automatically prettyfying raw population numbers
Templates speedy deleted as per below (duplicates functionality of formatnum


 * I'm not sure you really need this template (at least, not with the explicit coding); we already have the #formatnum parser function which does mostly the same thing (except for the error raising).--Kotniski (talk) 09:08, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Now I feel kind of stupid. I thought documentaion was very incoherent on that matter. But I just realized that format num is not a parser function, but a magic word. That's why I overlooked it. Anyhow. Even better. We can still use both #iferror and formatnum to achieve this. --Dschwen 15:28, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh, and what's even cooler, formatnum can be reversed! -299,792,458.568 returns a proper number! So we could do something like


 * And later in the code we can use a similar construct to add a maintenance category, if the population number is neither a raw number, nor a prettyformated number (but let's say contains a reference):


 * The remaining few cases could be either fixed by a bot, or we could generate a big red warning message in addition to the maintenance cat, and have the users fix it (which would also educate them about the new parameters :-) ). --Dschwen 21:15, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Looks cool (I didn't know about that formatnum|R trick). Are there other keywords we can set as alternatives to city? This infobox is sometimes used for other settlements (towns, villages), but also sometimes for districts and administrative regions.--Kotniski (talk) 09:58, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, there are adm1st and adm2nd, for first and second tier administrative regions (in the US these would be states and counties for example, in germany Bundesland and Landkreis). City applies to any size settlement. --Dschwen 13:26, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) Maybe we could add that as another parameter then? Or make it dependent on settlement_type. I don't know how widely this infobox is used for administrative regions in other countries; I know it's used for the three tiers of admnistration in Poland (voivodeship would be adm1st, county/powiat adm2nd, and is there an adm3rd for gmina?) --Kotniski (talk) 13:38, 9 December 2008 (UTC)


 * A list of available types can be found on WikiProject_Geographical_coordinates. There is no adm3rd unfortunately. To make the decision based on settlement_type we'd have to compile a list of all available settlement types first. --Dschwen 15:15, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

can somebody fix these errors?
The infobox in Narathiwat looks terrible. Can someone fix it please? --hdamm (talk) 15:57, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * User:Obersachsebot, appears to be to blame. 67.149.106.110 (talk) 20:11, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't understand? What did he do? I cannot find any activity in the vicinity of this article/infobox? --hdamm (talk) 08:47, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
 * 67.149.106.110's apparently talking about this. What exactly is the problem you're seeing? -- Rick Block (talk) 16:58, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
 * What i see is this within a box on the right hand side of the article, where the infobox usually is:
 * Narathiwat [[image:BlankMap Thailand.png|250px|Narathiwat (Thailand)]]

[[Image:|xpx|Narathiwat]] Narathiwat Location in Thailand
 * while the "Expression errors" are displayed in bold red script. I emptied the cage of my browser already with no difference ... eh ... now its ok (after I edited the page)! Voodoo? Sorry for my agitation. --hdamm (talk) 18:42, 29 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm seeing this problem too, on Aryanah. It has to do with the "pushpin_map" field. If I change it from "Tunisia" to "Algeria", the problem is fixed. Unfortunately, Aryanah is in Tunisia, not Algeria, so I can't use that. Is there something wrong with Template:Location map Tunisia, or is it a more widespread problem? Can anyone else even see what I'm seeing on Aryanah? -kotra (talk) 22:51, 30 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I've fixed this. -- Rick Block (talk) 23:29, 30 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks! -kotra (talk) 23:32, 30 November 2008 (UTC)