Template talk:U.S. House of Representatives abbreviation

Better Rename A District
See the discussion at Talk:List of United States Congressional districts.

We're about to change the names of all the district articles, and then this template will change, too. This should be done by May 15, 2006. Right now, I've created a test template, ushr2. It uses the new naming method. Once all the articles are changed, then I'll copy the code from ushr2 into this template, ushr.&mdash;Markles 13:17, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Questioning the usefulness of this template
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that the only purpose for this template is to save a few keystrokes when creating a piped link to a congressional district, i.e. " Tennessee's 5th congressional district " instead of " 5th ". The cost of this one-time slight convenience, however, is a lifetime of increased server load and editing obfuscation. Although the instructions suggest substituting the template (which obviously makes the most sense), over 2000 articles are currently transcluding this template. That means thousands and thousands of extra server hits every day and confusion from editors trying to edit the articles who have no idea what "ushr" is. First, we should go through all the articles that transclude this template and change them to substitutions. Since there are several thousand, this will obviously require a bot. After that is complete, I would propose eliminating this template entirely unless we can successfully get editors to start substituting the template consistantly. What are other editor's opinions on this? Kaldari 19:52, 1 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Fair enough. I've now subst'd ushr when it is used in other templates.  That reduced it to about 350 articles.—Markles 12:06, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Ragarding s's for states ending with letter s
Discussion of this issue is taking place at Template talk:USCongDistStateIL (there are also some related comments at Template talk:USCongDistStateList). MisfitToys 19:58, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Bug: No pipe
When the pipe is blank, then a red-linked  comes out.

What ought to come out is the whole link: 's th congressional district]] without the pipe.

Fixed. --Dispenser 18:46, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

What about adding a fourth parameter
What about a fourth parameter to avoid typographical errors and mismatching link text and make sure to have consistency? --Diwas (talk) 00:02, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

sod=state+ordinal+district; od=ordinal+district; nxd=number+suffix+district; nx=number+suffix; n=number; ...

--Diwas (talk) 00:02, 7 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Interesting! Let me look back at this when I've got more time.  I'll program it in the next few days.—GoldRingChip  00:17, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 27 November 2018
Some of the states don’t seem to wanna display, i.e. Minnesota at Tom Hagedorn. Any way this can be fixed? Thanks! 66.87.148.125 (talk) 13:46, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: No issue with the template. Infobox needed passing a state parameter. &#x2230; Bellezzasolo &#x2721;   Discuss  14:09, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 30 December 2018
1 through 9 should automatically be sorted as 01 through 09. Otherwise, using the "sort" feature of tables results in e.g. VA-1, VA-10, VA-11, VA-2, VA-3, etc. HotdogPi 18:30, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think you're right. I'm happy to make the edit.  How would you suggest I change it? —GoldRingChip 19:46, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Please provide an example of two or three page sections where this issue occurs. That will make it easier to fix. If you already know how to fix it, you are welcome to edit this template's sandbox. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:03, 31 December 2018 (UTC)
 * 2020 United States House of Representatives elections. The race ratings section already has code to fix it, but the rest doesn't. Try sorting the "California" section by PVI or some other method, and then switch back to sorting by district. Same with any other state with at least 10 congressional districts. 2012 has the state by state results unsortable, but the race ratings section has the problem I'm talking about (after explicitly sorting by district, look at where CA-03 and FL-02 are). HotdogPi 13:45, 31 December 2018 (UTC)
 * You're correct that it's a problem.
 * It sorts by district number, but it puts 19 before 2.
 * Also sorts by state abbreviation (when used instead of state name), so Iowa ("IA") can go before Illinois ("IL").
 * Would you please suggest a fix? Perhaps going to Template:Ushr/sandbox to try it? —GoldRingChip 13:53, 31 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done This was too easy, which worries me. I think it may break something somewhere, but I created a testcases page, and everything looks OK to me. If I broke something, feel free to notify me here, or if it's really bad, revert my edits. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:36, 31 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Follow-up one minute later: Yep, it was too easy. I have made one more minor adjustment so that the districts are sorted by state name and then by district number. Let me know if sorting is broken anywhere. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:40, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

Territory input
What input abbreviations do need to be given for territorial districts that are now defunct? For example, if I want to refer to Hawaii Territory's at-large congressional district instead of Hawaii's at-large congressional district, how is that distinguished for this Template? Similarly, Utah Territory's at-large congressional district instead of Utah's at-large congressional district. The Philippines had two concurrent Resident Commissioners for a period, how would those be distinguished?

Agpuh2 (talk) 12:55, 31 October 2020 (UTC)
 * It would be nice if it were that simple, but territorial abbreviations have not been coded in to this template. Therefore, use the full name. So Utah Territory's at-large congressional district would be coded as:  . —GoldRingChip 14:54, 31 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the explanation. Does the template have any way to distinguish between concurrent at-large seats, which various states have done throughout their history? Agpuh2 (talk) 17:49, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure how that would be done. You mean, for example, MN's at-large congressional district, which had 9 seats in 1933–1935, right? Are you suggesting the template distinguish between seat B and seat C?  That would be tricky because those seats don't actually have a (out-of-Wikipedia) formal name. "Seat B" is just what it's been called here. —GoldRingChip 18:17, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Furthermore, the template does distinguish between at-large seats and at-large districts. For example, NY's at-large congressional district vs. VT's at-large congressional district.  The coding picks one or the other.  Maryland, Massachusetts, New York,  North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia have at-large seats, and the rest have at-large districts. —GoldRingChip 18:17, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 27 December 2023
On line B, change "At-large" to "at-large" so that the template output is NY at-large and GA at-large. This way better matches the linked articles New York's at-large congressional seat and Georgia's at-large congressional district, among others. Woko Sapien (talk) 19:46, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
 * ✅ * Pppery * it has begun... 19:59, 27 December 2023 (UTC)