Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2020 September 22



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 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the template below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review).

The result of the discussion was relisted on 2020 October 4. (non-admin closure) ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:12, 4 October 2020 (UTC)
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 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review).

Template:Infobox province or territory of Canada

 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the template below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review).

The result of the discussion was no consensus. While the overwhelming precedent set in the past is to delete low-transclusion wrapper templates of infobox settlement, in this particular case no one can seem to agree. Those in favour of keeping the wrapper make the point that there is an active WikiProject discussing the template, its maintenance, and other items such as which "trivial information" to keep out of the wrapper. Those in favour of merging/substing the wrapper have pointed out errors in the code, inconsistencies with the parameter naming, and potential issues with keeping the wrapper updated when the IB settlement is changed.

In my mind there are enough valid arguments to buck precedent, but with enough valid arguments in favour of merging this cannot be closed as anything except "no consensus." I do feel that the aforementioned WikiProject should look into addressing some of the concerns brought up here (in particular, parameter naming) as a show of good faith and willingness to listen to the concerns of others (ping me if you need a bot run).

Someone has mentioned a moratorium on new nominations, which is reasonable; I think until a larger discussion (maybe at one of the Village Pumps or other CENT-type location) takes place about wrappers, infobox consolidation, and when it is and isn't appropriate, I don't see any change in opinions in the future regarding this particular wrapper. That being said, it would definitely be counter-productive to hold a new discussion on this template within the next year or so (dead horses and whatnot). Primefac (talk) 16:45, 4 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Infobox province or territory of Canada
 * Infobox settlement

Replace and delete

Province-specific wrapper for Infobox settlement, with limited transclusions (13), on pretty stable sets of articles, and no other Infobox settlement wrapper has that few transclusions. Subst:itution will reduce the maintenance overhead, reduce the cognitive burden for editors, and enable articles to benefit more immediately from improvements to the current parent template.

Note: Despite being named "Infobox settlement" the template is not only used for settlements. Per its documentation, Infobox settlement is "used to produce an Infobox for human settlements (cities, towns, villages, communities) as well as other administrative districts, counties, provinces, et cetera—in fact, any subdivision below the level of a country". -- PK2 (talk) 07:21, 24 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Merge per nom. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:42, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Merge (Subst:) per nom. No effect on display. 77.191.9.108 (talk) 13:05, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Hate to be the one saying this, but gotta ask, has anything changed since the previous two noms? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:46, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * regarding changes since the 2019-07 TfD: The number of direct transclusions of Infobox settlement in articles about places in Canada increased further.
 * The number of special-purpose templates globally decreased : Template:Infobox Australia state or territory was deleted, maybe  can say more about it, there are only six states and three internal territories per States and territories of Australia, so that where only 9 transclusions; furthermore Template:Infobox Municipality BR was deleted, two for Portugal where merged into one and three for France into one - all after discussion. One for Romania was created without discussion.
 * On the nominated template itself 29 more edits have been made, absorbing time of editors. 77.191.9.108 (talk) 16:38, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep. No good reason to merge, well-defined scope which explains the number of transclusions, appropriate for those articles. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:48, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Not having a "well-defined scope" wasn't given as a reason for merging, so claiming the existence of one cannot be a reason for "Keep". Infobox settlement has a "well-defined scope" too. There is Template:Infobox animal but no Template:Infobox Canadian animal, there is Template:Infobox waterfall but no Template:Infobox waterfall in Canada, there is Template:Infobox airport but no Template:Infobox airport of Canada. There is none of Infobox state of Mexico, Infobox province of Chile. Most of the territorial entities of Canada already use Infobox settlement https://petscan.wmflabs.org/?psid=10057754 . There is no Infobox District municipality in Nova Scotia despite a "well-defined scope" per Category:District municipalities in Nova Scotia. 77.191.9.108 (talk) 16:56, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * WP:T3 - "No good reason to merge"? 77.191.9.108 (talk) 17:56, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Your arguments make no sense. The fact that the OP has presented a weak rationale for merging in no way restricts what arguments can be put forward for keeping, and of course municipalities, townships, etc don't use this template because that's not what it's for. Editors working in this topic area find this template useful; if eg. editors working on Mexican state articles would find Infobox state of Mexico useful then they should discuss creating it. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:33, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * "Your arguments make no sense." WP:NPA. But of course, you can claim they make no sense to you. 77.191.9.108 (talk) 19:02, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * "Editors working in this topic area find this template useful;" - and others not, that's what TfD is for. The template duplicates a lot of functionality provided by Infobox settlement. 77.191.9.108 (talk) 19:05, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * "The fact that the OP has presented a weak rationale for merging in no way restricts what arguments can be put forward for keeping" - noone claimed the opposite. And anyone can claim "well-defined scope" or "moon is yellow" to be a reason for Keep. 77.191.9.108 (talk) 19:09, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I repeat, your arguments make no sense - which is not a personal attack. The scope of the template is relevant to the number of transclusions it can be expected to have, and the topic area in which it is useful. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:22, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Of course it is a personal attack. wikt:your. "scope" is not mentioned in WP:T3. 77.191.9.108 (talk) 19:42, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * It isn't... &#124; abequinnfourteen 22:19, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Note that the OP has changed his nomination rationale without indicating that it's been changed. I continue to disagree with the rationale: it is to be expected that this template has relatively few transclusions given its scope, but it's working for those articles and the editors who work on them, and consensus has been that the set of parameters available are appropriate for these articles. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:00, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

| Flower             =     Mayflower | Dog                =     Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever | Tree               =     Red spruce | Bird               =     Osprey | Mineral            =     Stilbite | Gem                = Agate
 * Comment WP:T3: /T3. Duplication and hardcoded instances ... Templates that are substantial duplications of another template, or hardcoded instances of another template where the same functionality could be provided by that other template, may be deleted after being tagged for seven days./ There is more about duplication at WP:INFOCOL. 77.191.9.108 (talk) 19:47, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Bugs around that template:
 * Template talk:Infobox settlement. 77.191.9.108 (talk) 23:15, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * government_type was based on EntityAdjective, but the latter only present on some of the province articles. Editors would have to inspect the template code to know how to make a government type show up. 77.191.9.108 (talk) 23:20, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep as per all the other talks. Highly active Wikiproject template designed specifically to omit certain things and add other things. Done so to avoid unwanted parameters inserted over and over and over. Pls stop killing wikiprojects by ignoring consensus that made these types of sub templates.-- Moxy 🍁 01:24, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * WP:NPA, nobody is "killing wikiprojects by ignoring consensus". Re "Highly active Wikiproject template" - that would be bad if true: time spend on a template with only 13 transclusions, despite of this it and the articles where it is used are buggy. 77.191.9.108 (talk) 01:50, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Bugs around that template: parameters that are not implemented, e.g. Nova Scotia:
 * only half of the parameters are actually implemented. The dog is there since at least 2014 . 77.191.9.108 (talk) 01:54, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * We are trying to avoid edit wars like this. Sure what your doing is best for our readers fir these articles or your preference to add parameters that the project sees as non worthy for inclusion. One of the main reasons we have such a backlash on infoboxes over the past few years is because they are getting so bloated that many now impead the learning process. -- Moxy 🍁 02:04, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * "We are trying to avoid" - who is "we"? Bug fixing for mineral undone: "(The way the template has worked for over 2 years can't possibly have "too many bugs")" : for me, three bugs are "too many bugs". Would like to see another definition. 77.191.9.108 (talk) 02:20, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

|Slogan = Beautiful British Columbia |Flower = Pacific dogwood |Tree = Western red cedar |Bird = Steller's jay |Animal = Spirit bear ... Slogan and Animal were not implemented. 77.191.9.108 (talk) 02:23, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Bugs around that template: parameters that are not implemented, e.g. British Columbia:
 * Keep per the previous discussion. The template has only 13 transclusions because that's the number of sub-federal political divisions there are in Canada. If that's the only reason you keep coming up with to remove the customized functionality for the Canadian template, maybe stop nominating it. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 23:49, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep. It's not its own infobox, it's a wrapper. The idea of the wrapper is it makes it easier to make changes across all Canadian provinces. --Bsherr (talk) 18:29, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep The count is not a factor, there are only 13 provinces and territories. A province is considerably different to a Settlement. Having it as a wrapper is helpful rather than just creating a complete new non-wrapper template. As you say, only used 13 times so why go to the trouble of creating a complete new template when one exists that has some overlap. Canterbury Tail talk 19:59, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep It's an extremely useful infobox for those of us working in Canadian matters. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 04:15, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep and replace every instance of Infobox settlement in articles about Canadian territories with this wrapper to standardise them. --Soumya-8974 talk contribs subpages 05:28, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment - - Do you mean that this infobox template has fields that are useful for other data about a province or territory in related articles? Can you provide an example? I would think that would be accomplished based on the simple Infobox template rather than Infobox settlement. I think the only benefit would be some logo or image sharing if so. Alaney2k (talk) 14:55, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep A province is not a settlement, and obviously there would only be 13 instances as there are only 13 provinces and territories. This is a case of a "solution" looking for a problem. trackratte (talk) 22:13, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment: The general consensus in the English Wikipedia seems to be to delete the wrappers that have few transclusions:

Here are some of the following test cases:

-- PK2 (talk) 13:19, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Note that the display above appears broken due to the large number of edits subsequently made to the template. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:24, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Not sure why the box got 10 feet longer causing mass sandwiching in our articles and now implements sidescroll in mobile view. Can this be fixed? -- Moxy 🍁 14:07, 19 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Substitute and delete. The articles contain dozens of parameters in that infobox which the infobox does not support. The sorting of the parameters is terrible, and some user without any reason restores "ordering" which at least is no ordering by display at all. The alignment of the "=" was terrible too, I fixed at least that deficiency. Some functionality existed in the template that I removed after seeing it can be done by Infobox settlement, there might be more. It seems the template and the related articles are not well maintained. Bizarr are the texts promoting "Keep.": 1) "It's not its own infobox, it's a wrapper." 2) "The count is not a factor, there are only 13 provinces and territories." 3) "It's an extremely useful infobox for those of us working in Canadian matters." 4) "A province is not a territory, and obviously there would only be 13 instances as there are only 13 provinces and territories." (three days later changed to "A province is not a settlement") - either the claims state something everybody knows ("13", "province is not XYZ"), or something illogical "The count is not a factor" (what would the template help if only used on 1 page?) or don't provide evidence ("extremely useful") especially in light of only being used on 13 articles and the bad state the boxes inside the articles and the box code itself have/had. TerraCyprus (talk) 03:52, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
 * You/IP have raised a number of issues you believe to be bugs, and made a significant number of undiscussed changes to the template while this TfD was ongoing - some of which are fine, others which are disputed. But deletion is not cleanup. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:24, 19 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Admin note: The merge proposal is not properly advertised. The tag is missing on the target. And the extra promotion at WP Canada Wikipedia talk:Canadian Wikipedians%27 notice board is further increasing the bias. TerraCyprus (talk) 03:52, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Notifying interested WikiProjects is part of the TfD process. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:24, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Notifying only one interested WikiProject and notifying only readers of articles that use the template that is the delete-candidate leads to a biased set of people discussing the topic. TerraCyprus (talk) 17:31, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Anyone is free to inform more if they like...but informing the project that built it and has worked on it for over a decade would be a common courtesy that was neglected in this case.-- Moxy 🍁 17:46, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
 * , are you suggesting that it's unfair for a template's deletion proposal to be advertised to the editors who use this template in their day-to-day activities, and that the discussion would be less biased if it were restricted to the set of TfD regulars, which mostly consists of editors who propose the deletion of templates? – Uanfala (talk) 00:22, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
 * what I wrote can be found few lines above, I am sure you too can find it. It suggests nothing of what you wrote. "[T]he editors who use this template in their day-to-day activities" would have noticed the tagging performed during nomination by User:PK2 2020-09-12 11:28 and would have no use for an extra notification on a Canada-centric board 2020-09-12 15:49. Given the poor state of the template and the related boxes in the articles before TfD started, one cannot find any hint that such editors - if they exist at all - did include in said "day-to-day activities" much care to bring that template up to the technical standards of the English Wikipedia for infoboxes, e.g. checking for unsupported parameters or to the rules laid out in MOS:INFOBOXES mentioned further down by ProcrastinatingReader. But removing support for timezone_link timezone (edit comment "restore") timezone_link timezone (edit comment claim not based in reality: "It's the same link across the whole set, no rationale for change"), timezone_link (again), reverting parameter groupding and sort standardization, a second time including headline removal and removing soil from New Brunswick, animal from BC and dog, mineral, gem from Nova Scotia, website from the template (even when leaving, as done here, the values and calls in the articles) take up time, so maybe none left for the activities mentioned first. TerraCyprus (talk) 01:46, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Not everyone who uses a particular template in articles necessarily has that template on their watchlist, which is one reason why notifying interested WikiProjects is part of the TfD process. If you object to the edits you cite, you (I hope) know where to find the relevant talk pages. They mostly fall into two groups: reverting undiscussed and disputed changes by you/IP, and doing exactly what you complain about people not doing - addressing unsupported parameters. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:14, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Nikkimaria, this is "Templates for 'discussion", understand what other said, not make up something they didn't say. Nobody said: "everyone who uses a particular template in articles necessarily has that template on their watchlist". Insinuating users might be dumb by combining "If you object to the edits you cite [...]" with "doing exactly what you complain about people not doing" is obnoxious. And no, on Template talk:Infobox province or territory of Canada not you nor anyone else did explain why you reverted the parameter sorting, and whilst implementing the standard parameter sort order was not "discussed" beforehand, it didn't fall into the category "disputed changes". Help:Reverting says: "In the edit summary or on the talk page, succinctly explain why the change you are reverting was a bad idea or why reverting it is a better idea." - The reverting editor failed to do so. TerraCyprus (talk) 14:49, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
 * You stated that "'[T]he editors who use this template in their day-to-day activities' would have noticed the tagging performed during nomination". I simply explained that this cannot be assumed. And the onus is on you to seek consensus for your changes when they are disputed - for example, by being reverted. But that is best discussed on the relevant talk pages rather than here. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:17, 20 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Substitute and delete. The issues identified by TerraCyprus and the IP above are issues which tend to happen with wrappers, especially with low usage wrappers. The en.wiki infobox system was not built to support Inheritance (object-oriented programming) and while the wrapper system seems to support that, it really doesn't. It requires active editors to modify wrapper template to allow them to support new features of the main template. That requires editor time spent on looking up what wrappers are, modifying that code and, as can be seen by TerraCyprus's comment above, even then you might get reverted for no reason. Seeing as how this is a very low usage template with no foreseeable way of adding even one new transclusion, there is no issue with converting the current usages to use the non-wrapper directly. I'll also note that I'm a bit concerned by some of the comments of our Candian editors which use sentences such as Why won't people leave us to do what is best for our articles. Please see WP:OWN. --Gonnym (talk) 08:38, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes please read all of WP:OWN including WP:SHEPHERD. What many need to understand is there is a huge portion of content editors that feel that mergers of this nature lead to a huge amount of parameters causin bloated  boxes...and is why we have a new generation of editors that dislike the box's. Bigger is not allways better. -- Moxy 🍁 13:46, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
 * If you have concern over specific parameters, the correct way to address it is to gain consensus to remove them from the infobox (which then might be beneficial to many more articles and create a consistent style for our readers), not have a fork or wrapper and then claim ownership of "your" articles and for people to "leave you alone". --Gonnym (talk) 16:11, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
 * All backwards....What we have is a template build out of a decade's worth of talks. To imply that those involved with building this consensus over a decade now need to conform to I'll advised parameters for the sake of coding uniformity is forgetting that the reader is our purpose here. Main problems with arguments being made here is about who maintains the articles not about what is best for the readers and these specific articles. Currently the undiscussed changes have left some of the articles with accessibility problem. What we are looking for is relevant data and  accessability concerns to outweigh uniformity wishes of editors not interest with the articles themselves.-- Moxy 🍁 17:06, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * After thought, and on balance, Delete. Nothing exceptional done by this template, just a basic wrapper around IS. Two solely technical issues, however: (A) it uses non-standard parameters, e.g. a number of parameters are TitleCase. This violates the MOS:INFOBOXES guideline, it's also not helpful to editors to have to remember multiple sets of parameters, especially remembering a different set of params for a settlement via a wrapper (or having to look them up). It should be easy for editors of different IS templates to get stuck into this template without reading any extra docs. (B) it doesn't provide access to multiple IS parameters, and will continue to constantly fall out of date as more parameters are added or changed. It also makes maintenance more difficult.On a non-technical note, it propagates a bit of a "not-invented-here attitude" towards templates. This attitude mostly only remains on old legacy templates these days - if a new WikiProject or country tried to create eg Infobox Indian state (as a wrapper around IS), it would almost certainly get nominated for deletion and, with little opposition, be deleted. The leftovers are the thorns in this sense. This particular leftover is, at least, not visually problematic, hence I didn't care much to nominate it myself, but now that it has been nominated I don't see any reason that justifies keeping it. On a technical note of implementation, it should not be blindly substituted, as was done with the Australian template - that results in empty parameter fields. Please get one of the TfD bot operators to implement it properly. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:25, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, PK2 (talk) 12:46, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep (edited) Since the only reason given is to reduce templates, I would say no. It is not broken. The above example shows that it mangles the display of the infobox. I think that is an unacceptable compromise. If parameters could be added to Infobox settlement to make an identical/acceptable presentation, then I would say, ok, merge. Alaney2k (talk) 15:35, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Alaney2k, it is broken every time a new parameter is added. And it is unmaintained - bugs bugs bugs, I fixed several. Regarding display, this is already a wrapper of Infobox settlement, there is no single change in display in the articles involved. Any such claim that display would change is wrong. TerraCyprus (talk) 17:10, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep, and moratorium on further mergers with this template. Infobox settlement aims to cover all forms of human grouping. As such it takes functional templates and forces them into a super template that I imagine is both hard to maintain, and also hard to keep all the merged wrappers going. This results in a lot of discussion and effort for no benefit to readers or the encyclopedia. I do not agree with INFOCOL in this instance --Tom (LT) (talk) 01:33, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep Template is not broken and does what was designed for. No benefit in merging with infobox settlement. Walter Görlitz (talk) 04:42, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep per above . Mathew5000 (talk) 23:01, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the template's talk page or in a deletion review).