Template talk:Infobox telescope/Archive 1

options
Can someone enumerate or link up the possible choices for the parameters: style, and mounting? --SB 04:57, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Missing Alt Text option
For example,. WilliamKF (talk) 23:34, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Organisation
The template should allow for the "~ise" spelling. J IM ptalk·cont 06:54, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Why not be "overly precise" with coordinates?
A telescope has a very specific center—the position of the azimuth axis—which is scientifically useful to know and thus known to millimeters. The position of the Gemini Observatory telescopes is given on their web site to thousandths of a second. The NAD83 coordinates there give five decimal digits of arc seconds, which is better than 1 mm.

I understand the general principle, but what is "overly precise" in the context of a telescope? 71.41.210.146 (talk) 03:24, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Follow-up: which altitude?
 * The process of installing a telescope on top of a mountain starts with a peak height, which is then reduced a few metres as a flat platform is cleared down to bedrock. Then a telescope pier is installed, raising the telescope above the levelled ground, and the telescope is installed on that.  All modern telescopes use an altitude-over-azimuth mounting system, so the elevation of the altitude axis can be precisely defined.  For example, the Giant Magellan Telescope is to be installed on a peak 2424 m above MSL, that will be levelled down to 2516 m.  The observing floor will be 14.72 m above that level, and the telescope's elevation axis will be 25.39 m above grade.  (2541.39 m above MSL, if the levelling were perfectly accurate.)  Which elevation should be reported? 71.41.210.146 (talk) 03:53, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Title in italics?
Is there a particular reason why the title of this template is rendered in italics? It looks odd. From what I can see, italics in infobox titles is used only for films, books and other works of art (and not even for songs). Constellations, space vehicles and also the HST have all infoboxes with straight titles. --Deeday-UK (talk) 00:20, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
 * agreed, I removed the italics. Frietjes (talk) 15:09, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Documentation — missing parameter "image_size" Suggestion
I didn't find a parameter to set the image size. I tried "image_size=300" and it worked, the image width was set to 300px. Maybe the template description should mention this (useful) feature. I would do it myself, but I'm not sufficiently familiar with the documentation style for templates. Cheers, --  R fassbind  -talk   21:04, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata as a data source
It's great that this template can use Wikidata as a soure, as seen at, for example, South Pole Telescope. Unfortunately, however, the instance in that article uses neither Start date nor URL, as described in the template's documentation, to emit microformat classes. How might this best be remedied? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:17, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
 * . Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:18, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
 * To make a start, I've tried hard-coding the templates into the infobox. That seems to work for South Pole Telescope, but I'm not sure how much Start date appreciates values like "October 2006–January 2007". As I expected, problems start to occur when there's no "significant event (construction)" in Wikidata for a particular telescope like Very Large Telescope, because Start date isn't smart enough to return nothing when supplied with an empty parameter, so the infobox doesn't suppress the "Built" line. Of course we could use that as a hint that we ought to be updating Wikidata, but I suspect that's not going to be well received. --RexxS (talk) 17:18, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks,, I was in the process of making similar changes but you edit-conflicted me. I suspect that the start date should really be just the first value, but perhaps Andy can tell us his preference? --RexxS (talk) 17:30, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Does Start date need to be unique? Come to think of it, there's no facility to mark two different dates as a range, so shoving both in Start date would accomplish nothing. Alakzi (talk) 18:33, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Start date expects its input in the format ; where MM and DD are optional (but MM is required if DD is present). It requires a   switch if DMY rather than MDY output is expected. Where there is a date range for construction of a building, I tend to apply Start date to the completion date. The markup I would use on South Pole Telescope, if entering values directly and not calling Wikidata, would be  .  Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:59, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

We've now got duplicate coordinates in lots of these articles, e.g. Faulkes Telescope South. Alakzi (talk) 17:15, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, that will always happen when the infobox supplies coordinates as well as having them explicitly specified in the body of the article. I've now commented those out at Faulkes Telescope South. --RexxS (talk) 17:21, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I've commented them out in a bunch of other articles. Alakzi (talk) 17:30, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

There's a mangled display at South Pole Telescope, currently. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:14, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Apparently, Lua scopes local variables inside control structures; I'd broken Module:Wikidata with this. Alakzi (talk) 15:23, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Yup, we might have guessed that something as modern as Lua will only give the variable scope at the level it's defined. --RexxS (talk) 19:34, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Something as modern as Lua should name error when you try to access an undefined variable. :-) Alakzi (talk) 19:58, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
 * So one might think... but if you destroy the variable 'claims' at the end of the 'if', and the next line tests to see if 'claims' exists, then it's just going to drop through without flagging an error (otherwise we'd need a special function just to test if a variable existed). Too clever for their own good, these Brazilians. --RexxS (talk) 20:26, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

"bodystyle" parameter
Could you please explain what problem you're trying to solve? Allowing people to change the table style in whatever way they see fit is probably not a good idea. Alakzi (talk) 19:36, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I wanted to tweak the width of the infobox on the LSST, because there were too many instances of one word or one footnote wrapping to the next line. Using   is the way that Template:Talkback/doc shows how to do it.  Try reverting my most recent change there and see what you think. 71.41.210.146 (talk) 20:27, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
 * You could simply Nowrap the longest line, which is the coordinates in this instance. Alakzi (talk) 21:01, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Ooh, that's a much more direct solution; thank you! 71.41.210.146 (talk) 07:13, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

First_light parameter and reference not displayed
At the article Large Millimeter Telescope, the  parameter is used with a start date template and a reference. However, the parameter is not displayed in the Infobox. I may have missed something, but everything seems in order as far as syntax goes. Could someone take another look? --papageno (talk) 16:38, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I've patched it up. Alakzi (talk) 16:52, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
 * ✅ Thanks for the speedy work, Alakzi. --papageno (talk) 16:58, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

I tried to enter it at Q1513315#P793 in two different ways. Neither worked. Jura1 (talk) 15:47, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I assume you're trying to add "First light" to South Pole Telescope? You can either enter the value and reference in the infobox of South Pole Telescope, using Large Millimeter Telescope as an example:
 * | first_light = June 17, 2011
 * or if you are comfortable editing Wikidata, you can add the start date and reference to Wikidata at Q1513315 and then add:
 * | first_light = FETCH_WIKIDATA
 * in the infobox at South Pole Telescope to get the first light value from wikidata. In neither case do you need to edit this template (although it does need updating to deal with refs from Wikidata). --RexxS (talk) 20:33, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
 * The general idea is that the value from Wikidata is displayed directly. should be sufficient to display it. South Pole Telescope was even mentioned as a sample for that. Jura1 (talk) 10:07, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * In general, Infobox telescope does a good job of doing that, but it's not yet complete. Once you start wanting to include references in infoboxes - as is done in Large Millimeter Telescope - you need more sophisticated coding to cope with the possibility of multiple values for a property and multiple (or no) references associated with each value of the property. If you can devise an algorithm that produces better results than supplying the value and reference locally, I'm sure somebody will be able to code it. --RexxS (talk) 14:58, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * In general, Infobox telescope does a good job of doing that, but it's not yet complete. Once you start wanting to include references in infoboxes - as is done in Large Millimeter Telescope - you need more sophisticated coding to cope with the possibility of multiple values for a property and multiple (or no) references associated with each value of the property. If you can devise an algorithm that produces better results than supplying the value and reference locally, I'm sure somebody will be able to code it. --RexxS (talk) 14:58, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

The present invocation of Wikidata won't fetch the value of 'first light' as 'first light' isn't a property of the Wikidata item, nor is it a qualifier - it's a wikibase-item (at Q1306940). We'll need to write a call that finds the property 'significant event' (P793) and then scans its values for the numeric id 1306940. If we find that, then we have a first light value and we then need to look at the first light qualifiers for the property P585 ('point in time') and return that value. Then there's problem of using that returned value in the start date template and coping with the possibility of 'first light' being a range of dates. --RexxS (talk) 22:35, 18 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I've been using P585 to pull it out, but that's looking for "point in time" as part of "significant event", which probably isn't the best plan in the long-run!, perhaps the best approach here might be to put 'first light' forward as a property on wikidata? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 12:51, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Correction, the wikidata entries now seem to use P585 thanks to, they used to be using P575 ("time of discovery"). Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 12:54, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Village Pump (Policy) discussion
The use of WikiData in this template is currently being discussed at Village pump (policy). Jc3s5h (talk) 12:47, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Blank parameters
To any (with cc to ). If the full template is used will Wikidata still fill any germane blank parameters? Are there plans to have Wikidata serve more parameters? Or, to have the template call Wikidata for more data? Cheers! 14:41, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Checkingfax, if you remove parameters and the values are available at wikidata, the infobox will find them and add them. however, if you specify the values in the infobox within the article, the infobox will take those first.  as far as other "not yet included" parameters, for this template, there are only a few that aren't on wikidata yet (you can see which ones by looking at the template source). Frietjes (talk) 14:45, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
 * If the parameters are also completely blank, then if there are values on Wikidata then the template will also include them (I think). Otherwise, it's as Frietjes says. :-) There's also the list of Wikidata values against parameters at Template:Infobox_telescope. The ones that aren't covered by Wikidata at the moment are "caption" (I suspect this might have to stay locally-defined, or maybe removed), "weather" (I think this should be removed - it's only used inconsistently atm), "wavelength" (I think this needs a new Wikidata property), "diameter2" and "diameter3" (I'm not sure what to do with these), "mounting" and "dome" (again, probably new Wikidata properties). I'm hoping we can make this template 100% Wikidata-driven in 100% of the uses sometime over the course of this year. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:23, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I've just started a discussion about what to do with the last parameters over at Wikidata's project chat. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:55, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Mike Peel, completely blank, but not-omitted, suppresses the information entirely. for example, try adding built to LIGO, and use "show preview". see Module:Wikidata for details. Frietjes (talk) 17:09, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

Caption in another language
We are using this template successfully in Lithuanian Wikipedia. Here is the question: can we actually change the language of an image legend qualifier? The default is English but we want it to be in a local language.--Zygimantus (talk) 06:16, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
 * That's a very good question - I can't see an obvious way of doing this. I'm not sure how the different language feature works in practice here - I'd have thought it would automatically select the right language based on the wiki that's accessing it. please accept my apologies for sending yet another question your way, but this might be another you can help resolve? Also  is this something that needs a phabricator bug report to fix on Wikidata itself? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:03, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
 * , I looked at and it didn't seem to explain precisely what an image legend qualifier is. So I looked for examples at d:Special:WhatLinksHere/Property:P2096:
 * I examined . It has a property, which has three values: (1) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Europe_topography_map.png - (2) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Europe,_administrative_divisions_-_de_-_colored.svg - (3) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Europe_countries_map_en_2.png and I'm guessing you might want the qualifier for one of those maps expressed in a local language? The first map has two values for image legend: (1) "topography of Europe (English)"; (2) "Topografie Europas (German)". The second map has a single value for image legend: "Staaten Europas (German)", but also has a qualifier  with value . The third map has the same structure as the second.
 * I've now found that has a property  that has a qualifier  with two values: (1) "The South Pole Telescope in November 2009 (English)"; (2) "Pietų ašigalio teleskopas 2009 m. lapkritį (Lithuanian)".
 * The problem that I see is that there are potentially multiple images accessed from the same property, and potentially multiple values for the image qualifier available for each image. There's no way I can see of deciding in an automated way which image is the required one. If we could somehow guarantee that there would ever be only one image, then we could scan through each value of the image qualifier and match the one that contained say (Lithuanian) in a custom Lua module for the Lithuanian Wikipedia. But IMHO there are at present insufficient constraints on image properties in Wikidata, and a lack of consistency in implementation of (as evidenced in e.g. ) to make it feasible to create a Lua function that would be guaranteed to cover all cases. But I'll sit down later and have a good think about the problem.
 * Sorry I can't do more right now at this end. It would be best solved by the folks over at Wikidata implementing a scheme for internationalisation of values of properties like . --RexxS (talk) 19:10, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
 * The SPT example is probably a good, simple one to use as a starting point - one image, with multiple language captions. It would be good to be able to access those captions based on the language of the Wikipedia, somehow. Where there are multiple images, the ideal is that one of them is marked on Wikidata as the 'preferred' image (, in which case we would use the captions for that image (along with the image itself) - the fallback option where there are multiple equally-ranked images should probably be to use the first image and the image captions for that image. Hope that help? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:48, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, I don't know how to specify the "first" image of several equally-ranked images. The one with index [1] may or may not be the one you expect. If we do it the way you suggest, using SPT as the model, it would mean you have to ensure that one and only one image has a preferred rank. Then to find the language, we would have to establish and maintain a convention something like the values for the image label have to be terminated with a parenthetical indicator of the language (as they are in SPT). Or perhaps the ISO language code would be more universal? These sort of schemes are not very robust, as they are prone to editor and transcription errors, as well as simple vandalism. I think the coding can be done, but I do think that most of the work needs to be done at Wikidata end to ensure consistency between entries. --RexxS (talk) 21:29, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, I don't know how to specify the "first" image of several equally-ranked images. The one with index [1] may or may not be the one you expect. If we do it the way you suggest, using SPT as the model, it would mean you have to ensure that one and only one image has a preferred rank. Then to find the language, we would have to establish and maintain a convention something like the values for the image label have to be terminated with a parenthetical indicator of the language (as they are in SPT). Or perhaps the ISO language code would be more universal? These sort of schemes are not very robust, as they are prone to editor and transcription errors, as well as simple vandalism. I think the coding can be done, but I do think that most of the work needs to be done at Wikidata end to ensure consistency between entries. --RexxS (talk) 21:29, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

See if this works
Right. The language is actually stored separately in Wikidata, not as it looks in the interface. So it was somewhat easier than I thought. I got fed up of pasting into an article, so I made a function that can be called from anywhere (expensive call!!):

You should just use: inside an article. This is not an expensive call. If you supply an unnamed parameter locally instead of "FETCH_WIKIDATA", it will return that instead of the Wikidata value.

If you omit the lang, it defaults to English for now, because I'm too tired to add the bit of code that reads the local wiki's language code. It also only reads from images that are marked as "preferred", but I know how to do that. I'll do it later but I want to watch "Game of Thrones" now. Any thoughts? --RexxS (talk) 23:57, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Awesome. Are you going to transfer this module out of sandbox later?--Zygimantus (talk) 05:27, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I've added the code to fetch the local language if no lang parameter is supplied, but I obviously haven't tested it on another wiki. It does seem to work in English. You can paste this into an article to test:
 * I've also added code to look for an image with 'normal' rank if none is found with 'preferred' rank.
 * I added an image legend to where the image is 'normal' rank. The code seems to work when previewed in the LIGO article. Sadly I can't write in Lithuanian to add an image legend on Wikidata, so I can't test the language switch in that article. Here's the call as it would appear in LIGO:
 * I simplified the caption so that we can test against a locally supplied parameter in an infobox. Once testing is over, please amend the image legend on Wikidata to suit what you want.
 * , are you going to update this infobox telescope when this function is actually deployed?
 * , now that I've got the function working to my satisfaction, it could go into a functional module like Module:Wikidata. However, I was quite upset by the response the last time that I placed a new function into the module, so I'm averse to doing anything further right now. I hope you understand. --RexxS (talk) 16:52, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Definitely, once it's out of sandbox. I guess without this code then the language shown in the template at the moment will just be the first one that's been entered into Wikidata for that image, so this is a good way of avoiding future problems here. I think it will be of more use on other language wikis, though. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:36, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Yep, it works now very well. Maybe someone also can tell where can I find more information about Module:Wikidata localization? Etc., how to change date formats, number formats and so on.--Zygimantus (talk) 15:43, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I hadn't seen this sooner. Most of the localisation for Module:Wikidata is in the first section where it says . You need to supply translations for the second part of each statement, e.g ,   (or whatever the proper translation would be). The units for quantities should be handled by the code into the language of the wiki, but I can't guarantee that because it's built into the software at a higher level than I can change. The module documentation should cover how to specify dmy (day-month-year) versus mdy (month-day-year) formats. Hope that helps. --RexxS (talk) 16:16, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
 * , now that I've got the function working to my satisfaction, it could go into a functional module like Module:Wikidata. However, I was quite upset by the response the last time that I placed a new function into the module, so I'm averse to doing anything further right now. I hope you understand. --RexxS (talk) 16:52, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Definitely, once it's out of sandbox. I guess without this code then the language shown in the template at the moment will just be the first one that's been entered into Wikidata for that image, so this is a good way of avoiding future problems here. I think it will be of more use on other language wikis, though. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:36, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Yep, it works now very well. Maybe someone also can tell where can I find more information about Module:Wikidata localization? Etc., how to change date formats, number formats and so on.--Zygimantus (talk) 15:43, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I hadn't seen this sooner. Most of the localisation for Module:Wikidata is in the first section where it says . You need to supply translations for the second part of each statement, e.g ,   (or whatever the proper translation would be). The units for quantities should be handled by the code into the language of the wiki, but I can't guarantee that because it's built into the software at a higher level than I can change. The module documentation should cover how to specify dmy (day-month-year) versus mdy (month-day-year) formats. Hope that helps. --RexxS (talk) 16:16, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

I'm going to ask at Module talk:Wikidata to merge this code into Module:Wikidata. If you have any views one way or the other, please make them known there. --RexxS (talk) 16:16, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Errors
I just undid this change as it generating errors in dozens of pages. 39 38 when I noticed it in Category:Pages with script errors. possibly many more as the category takes time to populate. Here is the list of pages with problems in case it is any help tracking it down, but it may not be complete. -- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 20:25, 11 July 2016 (UTC)


 * 40-foot telescope
 * Aldershot Observatory
 * Algonquin 46m radio telescope
 * ARCADE
 * Atacama Large Millimeter Array
 * Caltech Submillimeter Observatory
 * Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy
 * Cosmic Anisotropy Telescope
 * Effelsberg 100-m Radio Telescope
 * European Solar Telescope
 * GEO600
 * Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope
 * Green Bank Telescope
 * Hale Telescope
 * Interplanetary Scintillation Array
 * IRAM 30m telescope
 * KAGRA
 * Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array
 * Lovell Telescope
 * Magellan Telescopes
 * Mark II (radio telescope)
 * McMath–Pierce solar telescope
 * NASA Infrared Telescope Facility
 * One-Mile Telescope
 * Overwhelmingly Large Telescope
 * OVRO 40 meter Telescope
 * Richard B. Dunn Solar Telescope
 * Samuel Oschin telescope
 * Sardinia Radio Telescope
 * Southern African Large Telescope
 * Square Kilometre Array
 * TAMA 300
 * The Dish (landmark)
 * United Kingdom Infrared Telescope
 * Warkworth 2 dish
 * Warkworth Radio Telescope
 * Yebes Observatory RT40m
 * Yevpatoria RT-70 radio telescope
 * Zaneq


 * Thanks for the revert. I tested the change on my usual list of telescopes, but that didn't include any articles where there was no image legend available on Wikidata. The module call now doesn't look any further if there is no image legend, so I've restored the call after checking the preview with a number of the articles from the collapsed list above. There doesn't seem to be any script errors showing now. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 21:29, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the revert. I tested the change on my usual list of telescopes, but that didn't include any articles where there was no image legend available on Wikidata. The module call now doesn't look any further if there is no image legend, so I've restored the call after checking the preview with a number of the articles from the collapsed list above. There doesn't seem to be any script errors showing now. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 21:29, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Four more have appeared in the category complaining of an error in the Sandbox version. Again this may be incomplete but as I’ve not reverted you can check the category yourself.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 21:36, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Hale Telescope
 * Southern African Large Telescope
 * United Kingdom Infrared Telescope
 * Yevpatoria RT-70 radio telescope
 * Thanks again. That was because I fixed an extra problem I noticed in the main module after I had updated it from the sandbox. I've now switched this template to use the main module version, not the sandbox, and the errors have disappeared from those four articles. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 22:04, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

missing articles should be redlinks, not links to Wikidata
Currently, if there is not an article for the location of the telescope, it creates a link to the wikidata item. This is very confusing and does not encourage users to create new articles for the missing content. If there is no article for the location, it should be rendered as a redlink, per WP:RED. Kaldari (talk) 13:29, 25 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Hi I know that behaviour is somewhat unusual, but I'm not sure it's confusing or discouraging for creating new articles - in the long run, hopefully those links will go to article placeholders, but for now linking to wikidata helps point out where other language articles exist, which may help with the creation of new articles (through translation). I haven't spotted a case where it's the location article that's missing, could you point me towards the telescope article where that is the case please? If we want to render these links as redlinks, then that's an issue for Module:Wikidata to resolve, perhaps  can help? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:22, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
 * It's definitely confusing. I don't expect to go to a completely different website when I click on a location in an infobox. One example is South Pole Telescope. Kaldari (talk) 17:54, 30 June 2016 (UTC)
 * OK, I've fixed it in the SPT article by correcting the country, but that doesn't help with the general issue here. I'm not sure there's much I can do here, as it's a coding issue either in the module, or more fundamentally in how Wikibase works... So maybe or  can help. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 16:56, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Having an interwiki link provides a start-point for any editor wanting to create the article here, and some will prefer to have that. If you would rather have a different behaviour in a given article, then it's not too difficult to add a local parameter that makes use of the Template:Red Wikidata link which will provide a red link for your satisfaction and a Wikidata/Reasonator link for those who will find them useful. --RexxS (talk) 21:05, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Having an interwiki link provides a start-point for any editor wanting to create the article here, and some will prefer to have that. If you would rather have a different behaviour in a given article, then it's not too difficult to add a local parameter that makes use of the Template:Red Wikidata link which will provide a red link for your satisfaction and a Wikidata/Reasonator link for those who will find them useful. --RexxS (talk) 21:05, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

WikidataIB
I must be misunderstanding how this module is working compared to Module:Wikidata, since when I imported your modified version of the template here, the SPT article suddenly looked like this. I thought the module meant it was possible to define parameters in an article that then weren't auto-fetched from Wikidata by the template? I guess I've misunderstood! Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:22, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Here's the diff of South Pole Telescope using infobox telescope/optin. As you can see, the whole point of "opt-in" is that the editor has to enable/disable options at the article level. I used  in SPT and it looks ok to me. I also checked it with   and that looks just the same (because suppressfields defaults to 'none' and onlysourced defaults to 'no').
 * Nevertheless, this behaviour isn't really what you want anyway. You want Infobox telescope/optout. Here's the diff of South Pole Telescope using infobox telescope/optout. I'd suggest you try it in a few cases and if it seems to be working, then consider merging it into infobox telescope in small stages, perhaps one parameter at a time, checking as you go along. That would make it easier to spot mistakes and bugs. Let me know how it goes. --RexxS (talk) 23:39, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks ! You're right that I'm after optout - I've merged that in with this page now. I've set fetchwikidata=, which I think allows switching between optin and optout (i.e., you can do optout using ), although of course that won't work quite right until all of the parameters run through WikidataIB (also, an extra if statement is probably needed for the location so that a stray ", " doesn't appear in the article).
 * I'll turn the /optin and /outout versions into redirects to the main template to avoid confusion, but feel free to revert if you want to continue using them for testing (or just edit this template directly!). Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:51, 18 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I'll turn the /optin and /outout versions into redirects to the main template to avoid confusion, but feel free to revert if you want to continue using them for testing (or just edit this template directly!). Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:51, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Broken instances
Two articles have broken instances of this infobox: Seems to be missing data on Wikidata, hopefully an easy fix for someone familiar with what data’s needed.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 17:40, 18 December 2016 (UTC)
 * QUIJOTE CMB Experiment
 * Galaxy H-Alpha Fabry-Perot System
 * Looking into it. I think I know the problem. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:53, 18 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Should now be fixed. Thanks for the heads up about the problem! Mike Peel (talk) 17:55, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Weather-parameter
This parameter seems prone to arbitrary subjective values like "good". I would rather have it removed.--&#42;thing goes (talk) 20:18, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree. Does anyone else have any thoughts on this, or shall we just go ahead and remove it? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 16:57, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't agree. "> X clear nights/year" (or similar, see Very Large Telescope) is a value available from the site-survey and/or periodically updated by the institution. The solution is to more accurately explain what the field should be populated with in the documentation, and at least give an example.  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:07, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
 * ✅ Updated weather description in doc.  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  19:56, 14 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Nights/year makes sense for optical telescopes, where that dictates observing time, but not so much for other wavelengths (e.g., radio frequencies). Maybe we should replace this with something along the lines of "observing time available"? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:30, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Renaming and improving the documentation are both much more sensible alternatives to removing the parameter altogether. 2 of the 9 pages with weather set used good (Atacama Pathfinder Experiment & ESO 3.6 m Telescope). I removed "good" and left a comment.
 * It's worth noting that McMath–Pierce solar telescope has 72% clear nights, so clear-nights could be an option.
 * Degree Angular Scale Interferometer in Antarctica uses Clear with occasional blizzards, however. It would be good to get a # in there if we want to move away from weather.
 * Are there any weather events that could disrupt radio telescopes? I assume some would.  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  21:36, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Sorry for not replying to this sooner. Weather events that disrupt radio telescopes vary by frequency: at high frequencies, rain/snow/clouds can cause problems (due to the 22GHz water vapour line amongst other things); at low frequencies it's the ionosphere; and in the middle it's more likely to be high winds.
 * In order for us to have a Wikidata property for this, it needs to be clearly defined (I can't spot any existing useful parameters, so we'll have to propose a new one). So we could go with 'clear nights', and only use that for optical telescopes, but I would still have a preference for 'observing time available', probably expressed in terms of the number of hours available per year. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 14:16, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
 * , thanks for the info. I see nothing wrong with having 1 parameter for optical (clear-nights) and another for radio (i.e. obs-time; your choice), since translating "72% clear nights" for optical into hours would be subjective/potentially-OR on some level, given the variation in night-length throughout the year.  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  19:25, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Another option: It looks like it's possible to use 'nights' as a unit of time, e.g. see this Wikidata edit (72% clear nights in a year is 263 nights, although we really need a ref for either number). Would that work for you if we just had an "obs-time" parameter?
 * In that example I've used the "duration" Wikidata property - I'm not sure whether that's the right one to use here or not though. A separate property is probably the way to go... Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:48, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Yeah that looks good in terms of functionality. Renaming it to obs-time is fine if you don't want 2 separate parameters for optical and radio.  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  20:05, 14 August 2016 (UTC)


 * After too long a delay (sorry!), I've proposed this property on Wikidata at d:Wikidata:Property proposal/Observing time available. Please comment there. :-) Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:15, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
 * It's now implemented. I've left the weather parameter for now, but once we've moved things over to the new parameter then that can be removed. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 23:37, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

Location box leaving trailing commas
I notice that on Square Kilometre Array, the Location field says "South Africa, Australia," including a trailing comma. I don't think that should be there, since it looks a little weird. --  numbermaniac  ( talk ) 05:28, 29 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for pointing this out - it was because the countries had been added to the "location" property rather than "country". I've now fixed this on Wikidata - how does it look now? In general, I need to revisit the location code so it can cope with more cases - I'll try to do this soon. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:21, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Looks good now, thanks! --  numbermaniac  ( talk ) 01:08, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

Map problem
QUIJOTE CMB Experiment invokes this template with no parameters so everything is populated from Wikidata. The country must ultimately cause the map of Spain to appear in the infobox, but this map is incorrect because this telescope at the Teide Observatory which is on a Spanish island that is not with the location map of Spain. There is no location point shown (because it is out of the boundary of the map) and cause a maintenance error category. s If there were a location map (unknown) that showed Spain and the Canary Islands, (similar to the map in Canary Islands), I wouldn't know how to force the template to use it.

I noticed that Teide Observatory uses the Observatory Template instead of Telescope and there is no map at all there, so I am changing QUIJOTE CMB Experiment to do the same at least temporarily or permanently if no one else feels anything else is necessary. MB 20:00, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

References from wikidata
Hi some of the entries on wikidata that are fetched from the template have URLs and accessdates associated with them, when these are fetched from wikidata and displayed they are displayed as a bare URL, with no title, author, publisher etc.. These need to be formatted and detail filled in in the appropriate format as per the rest of the the article and never left as bare URLs. How can this be done?

The specific URL that I am trying to eliminate is http://list.historicengland.org.uk/resultsingle.aspx by use of the NHLE template as it is now just a redirect URL and reports as a dead link from the archive BOT. Keith D (talk) 16:35, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
 * If you edit the references in the Wikidata entries for the articles (click on the 'Edit on Wikidata' link in the infobox), then they will update in the article. On Wikidata each fact has its own reference, and each part of the reference has a separate qualifier value, so you add the reference URL, title, access date, etc. as separate qualifiers. The easiest way to then copy that refernece to other values is to use the 'DuplicateReferences' gadget. Please give it a go, and let me know if you have any problems. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:11, 13 August 2017 (UTC)


 * I'm leaning toward disagreeing with, but I won't be sure unless tells us which article he's interested in.


 * The references in Wikidata should follow wikidata:Help:Sources; the structure of the reference shouldn't be disrupted just to make the citation look pretty when it makes its way to a Wikipedia article (just as you wouldn't put the date in the author2 parameter of a citation template because you liked the way the resulting citation looked). The "quick and dirty" Wikidata citation is just the "reference URL" property, which is similar to a bare URL serving as a citation in a Wikipedia article. A better WD citation will use the "stated in" property (one could also add the reference URL for convenience, unless of course the source is paper). The item containing the various claims (an item about a telescope for example) would have qualifiers about the source that are unique to this particular citation of the source. So if you're citing page 285 of a certain book to support a claim about a particular telescope, you would add the "page(s)" qualifier to the "stated in" property. But you wouldn't add the author, publisher, publication date, etc, because they would be centrally located at the item for the source, since they would be the same every time you cite the source. Jc3s5h (talk) 21:57, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
 * As I stated above I am trying to remove the specific URL, as that should not be held anywhere on wiki apart from in the template, the specific URL is formed in the NHLE template so I would need to make a call to that template on wikidata passing in the appropriate arguments for accessdate, description and the appropriate list entry number number. Keith D (talk) 22:15, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Thinking about the general case this may also be a short reference as the cite could be used elsewhere in the article and may not be the full information for the infobox item. Keith D (talk) 22:28, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I don't think we're disagreeing, but your answer is much more comprehensive than mine, and thank you for posting it. :-) As you say, just having the reference URL is "quick and dirty" - and it's relatively easy to improve this by adding a website title and an access date at least. Using stated in is much better (and this is supported by the reference code in the infobox) - but it requires a lot more work as it needs a Wikidata item containing the reference. For books, this works well, but not so much for websites. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:18, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Sorry but you have gone far beyond my understanding speaking about wikidata properties. Keith D (talk) 22:28, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

Equivalence of "area" to Wikidata P2046?
The Wikidata "area" property is defined as the "area occupied by an object", which would appear to be the real estate footprint of the dome and associated support buildings. This is different from a telescope primary's collecting area. Is Wikidata:Property:P2046 the correct parameter to use?

A second distinction occurs when you have sub-aperture telescopes like Arecibo Observatory and Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, whose effective diameter (and thus collecting area) are markedly less that their physical diameters. Arecibo has a 1000 ft (305 m) primary, but only 725 ft (221 m) is in use at any given time. Likewise, FAST has a 500 m primary, but only 300 m is in use at any given time, so the effective area is barely more than a third of the physical. I assume in the telescope infobox we want the effective area. Or list both? 104.153.72.218 (talk) 07:30, 24 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I've now implemented illuminated apertures (note that effective area is a different concept). Please have a look at the FAST and Arecibo telescopes and let me know how it looks. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:56, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

A few remarks
Nice to see that enwiki now has a few working templates seriously using Wikidata. I have updated fr:Modèle:Infobox Télescope based on this template. Just a few notes: Sorry for being tedious, but as enwiki is the natural reference point for other wikis, it seems important that things are particularly well polished here :). -Zolo (talk) 15:50, 22 August 2017 (UTC)
 * there is a field "Observatory" uses whatever value it finds. Seems to work for now, but P361 can be used many different things, and it's not sure that all values will be obsevatories. fr:Module:Infobox/Télescope has a function checking that the value is an instance of observatory, though it is a bit costly.
 * Some fields have a pencil for Wikidata-editing, but some don't. I know from experience that coding those pencils can be a pain, but not doing it make things somewhat consistent.
 * Hi, thanks for updating the frwp template and for the feedback! On P361, do you have any suggestions for other ways of doing this? A check could work, but could get complicated - particularly for the reciprocal of Infobox observatory linking to telescopes (as there are multiple types of telescopes that would have to be checked for). On the pencil icon, I agree, and I'll add that to the rest of the rows when I can (unless someone beats me to it). Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 10:20, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
 * in frwiki the module checks that at least one value is "observatory" or a  of it. That is somewhat complex to code and some Lua seems necessary (in frwiki it is the isInstance function of fr:Module:Wikidata/Analyse transitive), so probably only worth it if the function can be reused by other modules.
 * While I am here, two other points:
 * the template uses Wikidata aliases to provide "alternative names". I am skeptical about it. Aliases are useful for search results, but the can contain just about anything. For instance, "Keck telescope" does not sound like a valid alt name for W. M. Keck Observatory. Other properties might be usable like  for historical names.
 * Unless I missed it, there is no option for using another Wikidata item in the infobox. In Kopernik Observatory & Science Center, infoboxes should link to other Wikidata items. frwiki Lua infoboxes uses a  parameter that can also be used to disable wikidata completely  . Here   is already used for something else, so I am not sure how it could be done. --Zolo (talk) 11:24, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I've made changes to the infobox today to make sure that the pencil logo is consistently shown, adding support for short name for the alternative name (fallback to the alias for now), and various lines now support qid= which is the equivalent of fr's wikidata= parameter. There's more to do in the future with the qid support and the 'instance of' checking, but that's for another day methinks. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:25, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

Map support for multiple locations?
Hello. I'm not sure if I'm bringing this issue up in the appropriate place, but here goes. I was reading the page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIGO and noticed that the info box there (Infobox telescope) only showed one of the locations on the map, despite that it shows 2 locations under the "coordinates" label. The map is quite misleading. Later in the article the more appropriate "location map many" is used to show both locations.

Do any of the Infoboxes support rendering multiple locations on the map? Devinplatt (talk) 06:17, 3 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I haven't figured out how to support multiple locations on the location map using Wikidata information yet. It can still be defined locally, though. For now I've made this edit that moves location map many into the infobox. I'll look to see if that can be tidied up some more soon, but I'm heading offline right now. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 09:02, 3 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Wow, that's great! Thanks :) I'm very new here so I didn't know how to embed into infoboxes like that. Devinplatt (talk) 18:30, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

detect dates in future and display in italic script
Is it possible and a good idea to display all future first light dates in italic? --Rabenkind (talk) 10:03, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Need the ability to suppress parameter values from Wikidata
We don't always want all the data from Wikidata displayed in the infobox. For example, it's inane to say that the South Pole telescope is named after the South Pole. Please add a way to suppress certain parameter values from Wikidata. For example:  or even. Kaldari (talk) 22:06, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
 * The parameter you're looking for is 'suppressfields'. However, for the SPT, please don't remove that parameter, as there are multiple things called South Pole. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 16:20, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Kaldari (talk) 21:31, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

Wikidata
I'm a bit confused about how to classify telescopes with wikidata. I haven't seen any good examples. This template gives the Newtonian telescope a "telescope style" of "telescope". That doesn't seem too helpful. I guess this comes from the "instance of" from wikidata (P31). P279 (instance of) seems more helpful because it's set to "reflecting telescope". Pelirojopajaro (talk) 11:52, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
 * This template is more about individual telescopes than classes of telescopes, but it should still work there OK, and I don't know if there is a better infobox that could be used there instead (except for the catch-all Wikidata Infobox, which you can see on Commons). My canonical example of it in action for an individual telescope is South Pole Telescope. In this case, I've removed as that's used for individual cases,  is clearly a  - it's a type of telescope, there isn't only one of them. Hope that helps. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:27, 12 August 2020 (UTC)