Template talk:Infobox settlement/Archive 3

message: There should be a postal code section on these things. Most international cities have postal codes, like the US has zip codes, right? --Goatrider 08:53, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah I was thinking the same thing. The MA town box has an option for zip code(s) and area code(s). I think they should be included on this page. Maybe someone could copy the code. Or I will eventually. → JARED (t)  14:25, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Someone copied it. But the section doesn't show up on the saved page. VolatileChemical 14:20, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, I did it, but I don't know how to fix it. → JARED (t)  14:44, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Oppose this. Large cities in the US have way too many postal codes to list easily in an infobox. howcheng  {chat} 17:49, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

text: I tend to agree with Howcheng —although, not strongly.  This could work for small towns, but it could be a mess for larger cities.  For large cities, the only way this could work (and be bearable) is if there was a link to a list of postal codes (or area codes) in the field entry.  I did something similar to this for MPs and MLAs in the infobox for Toronto —it really uncluttered the infobox.  Which leads us to the questions: Will this clutter up infoboxes?  Should we put it in as optional and let the page editors decide? Is this really needed?  —MJCdetroit 18:34, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's up to anyone. I just did it because it wasn't there. It's a good addition for small cities like the one I originally tried it for, but it doesn't work for some reason and I'm not good with ParserFunctions. → JARED (t)  19:05, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

text: I would agree that postal code is unnecessary on city pages. --23:58, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I seen that someone did add postal codes to the template.  I entered them in when I edited Waterloo, Ontario.  They showed up under "Motto" and above the map image.  It looked very out of place.  So I switch the postal fields location to near the bottom of template; where it looks better.  However, I am still not crazy about this field, but we'll see how it goes. MJCdetroit 12:24, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

text: I don't see the problem. Smaller cities have only one code, and for larger (let's take your example of Phoenix, Arizona) it's enough to write "85001-85099". There isn't even a problem when there are some of these numbers aren't used. Look at Dresden (the city with the lowest postal codes in Germany), the range is 01001-01326, but that doesn't mean that all 326 codes are or have to be in use. People aren't that dumb to write down every single code (at least I hope so). --32X 16:16, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Postal code? 

message: There a weird bug with this template on the Nashville, Tennessee article. Somehow the population and coordinate values are interfering with each other. As long as there is a reference cited for the population, it adds "[1])" to the beginning of the coordinates. Any idea what's going on here? Kaldari 02:02, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Per Wikipedia:WikiProject Geographical coordinates#Parameters, the "type:" parameter for the coor* templates should be, for example, type:city(population).  This template passes the value of the population_total parameter to one of the coor templates, and if a reference is included it apparently confuses the coor template.  I can't think of a reasonable way to strip a reference from the population_total parameter in "template language".  Assuming no one else can either, then we either need to make the coor* templates do it or add yet another parameter for the reference so we can make the coor template happy. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:26, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Can't the population be cited within the article instead of infobox? Normally it is mentioned in both places. --MattWright (talk) 18:15, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I'll just remove the extra citations for now, although I suspect others may run into this problem at some point. Kaldari 07:21, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It looks like Louisville, Kentucky is also experiencing this bug. Kaldari 22:28, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

text: To recap what Kaldari did (from a non-programmer POV).  Basically the information for population is still there but you have broken any "link" between the population total and the coordinates.  The problem being when there is a footnote superscript at the end of the population total (like in the two examples above), it gets carried over to the coordinates and would look something like this: [1]36°10′00″N, 86°47′00″W.  Breaking that "link" would remove the [1] from the front of the coordinates.  This fixes the bug and makes the infobox visually better in those cases.  Visually better —I'll agree to that. —MJCdetroit 12:46, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

text: The fix I would prefer is: 1) Remove citations from infobox and place them in the article where the population figures are mentioned or 2) Create a new field in infobox called population_ref (or something) that can be used for the reference and placed properly.  That would allow the coordinate population link to still work. --MattWright (talk) 22:16, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Side note / Just in case: If you folks here would want to go with 2), I think I could help converting the calls with my bot power. (This is not a voice for any particular solution – I'm not an expert on this template here). --Ligulem 22:29, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

text: Option 1 requires that every editor of city articles be educated about not using citations in the Infobox, and it adds another layer of instruction to an already complex template. Option 2 seems like extra work for no (or virtually no benefit). What's wrong with the current solution (i.e. not passing the population)? We already pass "city" as the coordinate type. Passing the population is just an extra nicety. I don't know of any mapping system that actually uses the population figure, much less one that is hooked up to the coor template. Is there any reason it would benefit anyone to pass the population? Kaldari 22:41, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I won't argue this too much, because it isn't that important to me, but the information can be useful to external services, such as geonames.org.  If you go to  and click on the Wikipedia link on that page, you can see it will popup city names, along with their population, which I think it is gathering from the coor template, although I am not 100% sure on that. I was the one that initially added the population to the city() type on this template, and prior to that, many cities on geonames did not have populations noted. --MattWright (talk) 23:54, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Geonames doesn't seem to be using Wikipedia's populations. Even if they were, it would be just as easy for them to scrape the populations from the population field as it would be to scrape it from the coordinate URL. Scrapers don't factor into this problem. The only case in which it would actually make a difference is if both the Map Sources Wiki and one of the mapping systems linked from the Map Sources Wiki utilized the population (since the parameter could theoretically be passed to them from the Wikipedia article). That would work like so: Click on the coordinates in the Wikipedia article to go to the Map Sources Wiki; the population gets passed in the query string and then dynamically tacked on to the URLs for the various mapping systems; click on a mapping system in the Map Sources Wiki; the population gets passed again in the query string and parsed by the mapping service. Right now, though, it doesn't even look like the Map Sources Wiki parses out the population (only the type). So it really doesn't matter to anything currently whether we include the population or not. Kaldari 01:52, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Weird bug 

message: Per the thread slightly above, #New look, more similar to template:Infobox Country, I've created a new version much more similar to template:Infobox Country and template:Infobox U.S. state, please see user:Rick Block/Template:Infobox City.  Enough time has passed that the new style in MediaWiki:Common.css should be available to all users.  Are there any serious objections to changing to this new style?  Note that once all three of these templates use class="infobox geography", their style can be changed in unison by updating this css class.  -- Rick Block (talk) 02:58, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree that look should be sync'd with state and country infoboxes. --MattWright (talk) 03:45, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Sounds good.  I still like the grey bars on the current version (Location, etc), but I'll live without 'em :) -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 06:53, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  New look, again 

message: Wouldn't it make more sense to have the highest and lowest point in the infobox instead? A single elevation value seems ambiguous -- is it the mean value (and how is the mean calculated) or is it the elevation at the centroid of the city or some other thing? A city doesn't typically have a single elevation. --Polaron | Talk 16:51, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There is often an official elevation, recognized by the city (such as Denver). Otherwise, the Infobox can already accomodate a range (as seen at Los Angeles). --MattWright (talk) 17:23, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. I think a range might be a good option, especially for cities that have large extremes. --Polaron | Talk 17:25, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If there is data to support a range that would be great.  However, for American cities, I found my elevation infomation from the USGS which only gives one value in feet and metres.  For San Jose, the elevation was reported by the USGS as "Elevation(ft/m):85/26".  This data is referenced in the San Jose reference section. MJCdetroit 18:28, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: FallingRain.com shows elevations for almost any location in the world.--enano (Talk) 20:21, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Elevation 

message: I've changed the template to use class="infobox geography" per the discussion slightly above.  I'm adding a new section here if anyone wants to complain about this. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:49, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Looks good except that the city picture is off-center and all of the labels are in bold except for "Summer" (time zone). Kaldari 05:13, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:56, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  New look 

message: Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) bobblewik 21:11, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reversion of [[metre|m]] 

message: Wasn't the decision above to not add more leader names and titles? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 05:37, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think we've agreed to not add city council members.  I've started going through the cities using this template, elinimating "virtual rows" (entries within one row of the table that look like multiple rows by including s).  The point of doing this is so these tables can be more easily understood by (usually blind) people using screen readers.  This generally means using the additional subdivision_type/subdivision_name parameters and I ran into Berkeley, California that lists both a mayor and a city manager.  Two (or three, or four) pairs of leader title/name parameters seem not too outrageous to me.  I should have brought it up here first.  -- Rick Block (talk) 15:35, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've created a subpage to help coordinate this activity, see Template talk:Infobox City/links.  I think it would be good to do with a bot, but there are enough irregularities that I'm not sure it's entirely possible.  I did something similar for the 200 (or so) references to template:infobox country a while ago which took a few days.  There are slightly more than 2000 references to this template, so it will take a good bit longer to finish this if I'm the only one working on it (and a bot is not used).  If anyone would like to help or has suggestions for a bot-based approach, please speak up. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:14, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

text: I have added 2 more pairs of leader title/name parameters.  The addition of these to pairs will greatly help get rid of the s in Canadian cities which all include the city's MPs and MLA's.  For an example see Toronto. MJCdetroit 17:43, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

text: I agree.  In the "great BR purging" that's going on, there are at least a dozen or so cities where more leader params would be useful.  In some cases, city council members are listed but as long as it's a single HTML row (labeled, for example, "city council") with multiple lines of "value" (yes, with embedded BRs) it's OK from an accessibility viewpoint.  As MJC says, there are a bunch of Canadian cities that list mayor, MP, MLA, etc. as well.  And there's one "city" (fictional, no less) that lists mayor, vice-mayor, and sheriff.  -- Rick Block (talk) 17:52, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another Leader? 

message: Moved here from: Template talk:Infobox City/Template parameter changes bot
I think the leader_title3/leader_name3, etc should be revisted because of the way that some of the Canadian cities are currently set up.  I know the city council members did not go over well but if we limit to 4 fields that should cover it pretty well.  If there are large numbers of leaders (such as MPs) then leader name3 can be a link to a list of names.  That way we would not have to use the  to break up fields for things such as MPs and MLAs.  Check out Toronto to see an example. —MJCdetroit 14:16, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree.  In the "great BR purging" that's going on, there are at least a dozen or so cities where more leader params would be useful.  In some cases, city council members are listed but as long as it's a single HTML row (labeled, for example, "city council") with multiple lines of "value" (yes, with embedded BRs) it's OK from an accessibility viewpoint.  As MJC says, there are a bunch of Canadian cities that list mayor, MP, MLA, etc. as well.  And there's one "city" (fictional, no less) that lists mayor, vice-mayor, and sheriff.  -- Rick Block (talk) 17:52, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  More leader params 

message: → moved to Template talk:Infobox City/Template parameter changes bot --Ligulem 10:12, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Template parameter changes bot 

message: I liked the indenting for subdivision_type1 and subdivision_type2! Anyone else? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 01:42, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A quick shot: I don't care. But during my recent serial edits I noticed some rare problems with wrapped lines. I saw several cases where an entry was wrapped to a second line (without a BR) and that second line was not indented, but the first one was (although I'm not sure why this happended, but I assume these problems went away with Kaldari's edit). If you guys want it intented, I would propose that you look for ways to make not only the first line indented, because longer entries can wrap around to multiple lines. I digged into my contribs looking for an example but gave up seraching after 20 minutes. But I'm pretty sure I saw some yesterday during my botting. Apologies if I might have overlooked something. Maybe some sandbox testing would be helpful (I'm too lazy right now ;-). --Ligulem 09:07, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think I found an example: Klawock, Alaska. --Ligulem 09:12, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

text: I could reproduce the aforementionend problem in my sandbox. See User talk:Ligulem/work/sandbox2. See the string "Prince of Wales-Outer Ketchikan", which is wrapped to a second line (not caused by a BR). --Ligulem 09:20, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I tried fixing this using margin-left rather than text-indent and it didn't seem to work (not sure why).  And, in case anyone is confused, this example wraps in monobook but not classic skin. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:52, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Indenting 

message: In order to stop the city name becoming hidden/overlapped by the box when the text wraps (i.e. for longer city names), I have moved the city name to within the border of the box.  We had a similar problem with the United Kingdom infobox and this seemed to be the simplest solution (as per Template:Infobox Country).  IMHO, it looks better this way too, but that is not really the issue!  DJR (T) 16:03, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Titling

message: This was moved here from the Detroit talk page. 13:13, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It looks like forcing the entire motto to be in italics and quotes is problematic on that article (aside from the font issue). They include a note in their motto field, which shouldn't be in italics and quotes. Isn't using both italics and quotes redundant anyway? Kaldari 19:16, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Font in motto 

message: Would it be possible to add to the template a link to the MPs and MPPs instead of having to find a list somewhere else on the page like in Toronto? Also, for smaller cities, could we make an option to have the MPs/MPPs on the template?   Wikada - Talk Contributions 23:48, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The Link to the MP and MPPs was removed from the infobox for some reason.  It was there October 5th?  The infobox for Toronto look like this: |leader_title3= Legislature|leader_name3= MPs, MPPs, and Senators.  I'll put it back in today. —MJCdetroit 14:56, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  In response to MJCdetroit, I have outlined my reasoning for removal on my talk page. In short, after a little searching I found no other city with this template that includes such a link. I removed that link to maintain consistency with the other articles, and also because I honestly don't see the usefulness of such information in the infobox. MPs and MPPs are not "leaders" or governmental bodies of the city, so the "leader" attribute seems inappropriate. I will appologize if there was a prior consensus on this issue that I am not aware of. KeL 04:33, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

text: Thank you for pointing this out as I was not aware of those examples before. I agree the links should be left there for the time being as a compromise. Personally I think the links should never have been there in the first place, so I want to respectfully say it here: MPs, MPPs and Senators are not part of the city government and it makes no sense to include them in the city infobox. I think Canadian cities should have their infoboxes like the American ones. As more and more cities have their infoboxes converted, I hope there will be a consensus to remove those links, for the sake of relevence and consistency. KeL 05:28, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: For example, in Canada, MPs and MPPs

message: Per Oz's third point above, I added the city Logo field.  While unlikely to actually happen, it is now possible to have a city infobox that shows a Flag, Seal, Coat of Arms (Shield), and City logo. To do this and not have it look like—well crap—was the hard part and thanks to some help from 52 Pickup and Rick Block it doesn't look like crap.  This is supposed to be used when a city does not have a flag but has a logo. However, we had to plan for the event that someone somewhere would add all 4.  In any case it's the best you're gonna get...see example to the right. —MJCdetroit 16:50, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I found the need to place optional size fields in the template. The first page that I edited with only a city logo had the logo very small.  Adjusting the size made the infobox look better.  The article was Brantford, Ontario.  —MJCdetroit 01:09, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: City Logo

message: I have removed the quotation marks and italics from this field, as it messes up any attempt to display a Latin (or other foreign language) motto and its translation.  It shouldn't have been in italics anyway if it was in English—the foreign language goes in italics, not the English.  Now the motto can be given its own formatting by the user.  For a more complicated fix for this, one would require three fields, all optional:
#The foreign motto field, which would be formatted in italics
#The translation field, which would be formatted in roman, but with brackets around it
#The English motto field which replaces the above two and is neither in italics nor brackets
└ OzLawyer / talk ┐ 15:08, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That issue has come up before, thanks for taking care of that.  We should probably identify what language the motto is in and being translated from; latin, french, etc.  —MJCdetroit 15:30, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Motto field 

message: I was wondering whether we could add a "subdivision" field, for cities that consist of a group of well-defined entities, such as the boroughs in New York City. Something like:
 Subdivision type    Subdivision entities
E.g. for NY city (just an example):
 Boroughs        The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island
Obviously, cities who do not have significant internal subdivision just wouldn't use the field.   --Nehwyn 17:50, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I added two more subdivision fields.  MJCdetroit 19:11, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, that should do it even for the more complex city subdivisions.  --Nehwyn 19:18, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Adding a "subdivision" field

message: Can we add a field for the city's gentilic? This wouldn't be too hard and would be useful. I noticed several other more specific infoboxes for cities and towns have this. 
--Alekjds 01:50, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that's what the "nickname" field is for. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 16:09, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's a little different.  Gentilic, or demonym, is what the residents of the city are called, not a nickname for the city itself. Like "New Yorker" for New York City. --MattWright (talk) 22:43, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Oops - you're right.  I misunderstood a Template_talk:Infobox_City/Archive_2#Misunderstanding_of_.22nickname.22_field previous post on this very topic.  My bad :) -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 02:40, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gentilic 

message: So what does that do?  How does it work? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 19:13, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: When you enter a year in the field "established_date", the template will automatically place the article in the category "xxxx establishments" if that category already exists. For example, according to the New York City article, the New Amsterdam settlment was founded in 1613. So I entered ";established_date = 1613" and now the article is automatically listed under "1613 establishments". At the moment, it is listed under the value given for "official_name" (City of New York) instead of the page name (New York City). Which is better? It is necessary to have the "if that category already exists" condition in case something other than a year (or a wikiliked year) is given - otherwise you get funny results. - 52 Pickup 08:56, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Good - so it won't break if I've already entered XXXX establishments as a category on the page, or if I've wikilinked the year already.  Kewl - nice job! -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 15:29, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, it shouldn't break - I hope we ironed out most of the problems when implementing it in Infobox Australian Place. If the wrong thing is added (ie. a full date including day and month), it should simply do nothing. If the category has been explicitly entered, it should also do nothing. There are a heap of other auto-categorisation things that can be done - for example, we have the Aussie infobox to assign cities to "Cities in " - but this probably shouldn't for such a global template as this.  - 52 Pickup 15:54, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Does this only work with "established_date"?  Or does it also work with "established_date2" and "established_date3"? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 23:06, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: At the moment, only with the first one. Changing it to work for the others is possible, but I'm not sure if it should be done for all of them. - 52 Pickup 10:31, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  auto-categorisation for established_date 

message: I've saved the changes 52 Pickup created to the template today (around 03:09, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: January 8th upgrade

message: Do you really have to indicate the area of a city? I mean, many cities in the world don't have official city limits, and even more cities have an "unknown" area. And shouldn't there be a possibility to write the denonym of the citizens??? --Escondites 19:07, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some suggestions for this template 

message: Why the tiny font? Think of the sight impaired. I believe we should use normal fonts everywhere on Wikipedia without exceptions. /81.170.235.234 13:14, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not a fixed size so users can increase the physical size of the characters using their browsers settings. --MattWright (talk) 15:28, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And you believe that everyone knows how to do that? Escpecially the elderly who have just got their first computer with an internet connection? I don't get why it's so important with a smaller font size. /81.170.235.234 22:43, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Because the average Wikipedian is in the twenties and thinks a webpage should look like coming out of a printer? :-). I completely agree with your complaint, but I have given up nagging about small fonts on this wiki. The majority here wants those (bad) small fonts, I was told. --Ligulem 23:16, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Can you give an example of where that is showing up? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 00:31, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There are several instances of the UTF-8 superscript 2 in this template. You have to view the template code in edit mode to see the occurrences. It probably got in there because it is one of the special insertable symbols that shows up in the box below the editing window in Wikipedia. —QuicksilverT @ 01:16, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  The reason(s) I asked for an example are that a) I just went through the whole template re-writing some of the tables and I don't remember seeing the superscript for anything, and b) doing a quick search on the code doesn't reveal any instance.  If you show me a page where it shows up, I can find it in the code much easier. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 06:39, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tiny font 

message: Would adding a  to be transcluded before the entire template or adding the br before  {{#if:|
! colspan="2" style="text-align: center; font-size: smaller; "  Coordinates:  {{#if:
| 
| 
 fix the clashing issues? Ddcc 05:10, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fix coordinate clashing with donation box 

message: Why did it change its appearance? It looked so organized and nice before, now it looks akward and disorganized? El Greco 20:21, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Did something happen to the CSS? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 22:29, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It appears so as all templates (infoboxes) which use the CSS classes "infobox" and "geography" seem to be affected. Caroig 22:41, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

text: User:Ed g2s edited MediaWiki:Common.css: , . I've reverted his last edit  as I couldn't find discussion/consensus for removing CSS classes that are in use on prominent templates like this here. You might want to comment on MediaWiki talk:Common.css#Removal of geography related classes. --Ligulem 23:32, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks Ligulem --El Greco 00:09, 25 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Appearance