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Propval parameter

A discussion began at Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board#Review of infobox additions of real estate values regarding the usefulness of |propval= and the data included thereunder.

Defenses of the inclusion of property values include:

• Property price data acts as a socioeconomic indicator for a region.

Criticisms of the inclusion of property values include:

• Difficult to keep up to date:
  • Property values go out of date too fast
  • There are too many bounded localities in Australia for all to be kept up to date as often as necessary
• Census data such as household income and employment figures act as a more reliable socioeconomic indicator than property data.
• Sources for property value data may be unreliable (for-profit companies with a vested interest in keeping the real estate market hot)
• The parameter has a low usage rate.[1]
• If used at all, property value information is better placed elsewhere.

If anyone else has any other defenses or criticisms of |propval=, I suggest adding them above as it will help to clarify the relative strengths and weaknesses of each position.

All in all, property values seem to be a questionable inclusion where this infobox is concerned. But what does the community think? Do we keep it notwithstanding its weaknesses? Summarily send it to the great infobox in the sky? Or give it a facelift and change of address? LordVetinari (talk) 13:20, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

• I support removal of "propval" from the infobox based on the crtiticisms outline above.Melburnian (talk) 03:07, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
• I also (as I've noted elsewhere previously) support removal of the parameter for similar reasons. Orderinchaos 03:31, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
• Support removal as per list of criticisms above. It's useful to have a socioeconomic indicator in the infobox, but property value for a number of reasons is a poor fit for that purpose. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 00:45, 29 May 2011 (UTC).
• Support removal as per list of criticisms above. Not much else to be said really. --AussieLegend (talk) 09:43, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
• Support removal as well, agree with the criticisms listed. Bidgee (talk) 09:46, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
• Support removal property values arent a reliable socioeconomic indicator because other factors influence the price, eg Karratha where the price is because the town site was locked within protected areas. A veiwer has no understanding of the underlying dynamics to get a realistic interpretation. socioeconomic status of a place should be covered in prose Gnangarra 10:04, 31 May 2011

(UTC)

• + my latecomer support given it's such a dodgy metric. Donama (talk) 22:39, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Phantom category

I've temporarily restored the changes I previously made so that articles using propval can be identifed at the phantom category Category:Australian place articles with property values. It will take a little while for it to be populated. --AussieLegend (talk) 09:50, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Consensus

Erm, Does anyone know how to drum up some more discussion on this? No offence to those who have commented above but there is only six of us. Or can we consider such a dearth of discussion as consensus for removal? LordVetinari (talk) 05:50, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

There have been some attempts to include others[2] but six people is a big number for here so I think we can safely assume that we have consensus. We're pretty casual here, if the parameter is removed and somebody takes exception at a later date we'll be more than happy to revisit. --AussieLegend (talk) 06:43, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Give it a few more days (at least two days), it only has been about five days and I don't think it would hurt anyone. Most discussions are about 7 days. Bidgee (talk) 07:04, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I was just looking out for Steakdig. --AussieLegend (talk) 07:12, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Bidgee regarding leaving the discussion open for the standard 7 days, given that it involves deletion of information. Melburnian (talk) 07:30, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

A week makes sense. I briefly checked up on a few of those most involved in the early stages of building this template (hoping to involve them) but most of the editors I came across are no longer active. LordVetinari (talk) 10:29, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, seven days is up (22 if you take into account the AWNB discussion) so I think we can declare consensus. --AussieLegend (talk) 02:08, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Now, for the fun part. Does anyone know how to alter the template without breaking it? LordVetinari (talk) 02:10, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes. This change will keep Category:Australian place articles with property values populated so "|propval=" can be removed from the articles in which it is used. --AussieLegend (talk) 02:20, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Oh joy! I may as well start removing, then. Thanks for dealing with the template. LordVetinari (talk) 03:14, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

I'd removed all WA ones (the few that there were) a few days ago, and went through the ACT ones last night. NT and Tasmania also appear to be clear (Bidgee went through a fair few this morning). Orderinchaos 05:04, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Category:Australian place articles with property values is now empty. Bidgee (talk) 11:20, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Good effort Bidgee. Since there's now no need for it, I've removed the code that generates the category. Propval is no more. --AussieLegend (talk) 11:35, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

There's probably still infoboxed articles out there where the propval parameter is present but not in use (has no value entered). To avoid confusing and frustrating any future editors, I've left a note on the template's documentation. LordVetinari (talk) 12:26, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Now being tracked (with other parameters) in Category:Australian place articles using missing parameters‎. I can have a bot take care of it. Thanks! Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 02:46, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

The bot corrected a thousand or so. The remaining are mostly in non-article namespace. Thanks! Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 06:22, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

And thanks to all who cleared the category. We had a few more pop up after Steakdig's edits, but someone has told him/her that this was removed for a reason. Thanks again. Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 01:41, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Hi, just noticed the messages regarding propval. In several location pages, the ref tags and even URLs were broken that I managed to fix. However if there any issues, I am happy to rectify. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Steakdig (talk • contribs) 02:03, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

The parameter has been deleted and follow up rectification completed, so nothing should be added or restored regarding property value (propval) information in infoboxes.Melburnian (talk) 03:07, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Repeats

I had a bot run through all articles transcluding this template and it found the following articles with repeated fields

List of repeats

• Amphitheatre, Victoria - location3; dir3; dist3
• Bulgandry, New South Wales - location4; dist4
• Darley, Victoria - est; postcode
• Doncaster, Victoria - latd; longd; alternative_location_map
• Erica, Victoria - location1
• Mangalore, Victoria - lga; fedgov; stategov; url
• Park Ridge, Queensland - lga
• Rand, New South Wales - location1; dist1
• St Albans, New South Wales - image
• Thirlmere, New South Wales - fedgov

If anyone wants to try to fix some of these, go right ahead. You can remove the ones that you fix from the list, or I can just regenerate the list in about a day. Thanks! Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 06:16, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Done! Bidgee (talk) 13:29, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Great, there are still a few left. I updated the list above (note a couple have more than one infobox on the same page). Thanks! Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 01:33, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Done Bidgee (talk) 07:43, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Nonexisting parameters

I had a bot go through all transclusions of this template and look for uses of nonexisting parameters.

Nonexisting parameter list

Field	Article(s)
demonym	Burnt Pine, Kingston, Norfolk Island
dir6	Fifield, New South Wales
dist6	Burnt Pine, Fifield, New South Wales, Kingston, Norfolk Island
landdistrict	City of Glenorchy, Launceston, Tasmania
lga5	North Queensland
location	Ingleburn, New South Wales
location6	Burnt Pine, Fifield, New South Wales, Kingston, Norfolk Island
mean rain days	Adelong, New South Wales
popfootnotes	North Epping, New South Wales
pophistoric	Berrima, New South Wales
sister_cities	Cairns, Queensland
stategov6	Central Coast (New South Wales)

If you want to help fix any of these, go right ahead. May are just parameter typos. You can remove the articles that have been fixed, or I can just regenerate the list in about a day. Thanks! Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 06:21, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

"little town bigger than paris Warnbro, Western Australia" <-- LOL? Orderinchaos 10:37, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

I think these are done, could you rerun the bot to make sure? Bidgee (talk) 13:30, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Excellent work by the way Bidgee :) Orderinchaos 17:29, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, great. I updated the list. Thanks again. Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 01:34, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Done. :) Bidgee (talk) 07:43, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Include "Country" field?

I was stub-sorting Naring, Victoria and noticed that the infobox does not include "Australia". It has the state, Victoria in the heading of the infobox, but no mention of the country. A spot check of some places in South Africa, UK, Austria and France finds that these have the country in the infobox, and even the USA does too, so I suggest you should consider including it in this template too. PamD 09:51, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

 Done - Because all of the articles using this infobox are in Australia, there is no need for a "country" field. Instead, "Australia" has been hardcoded into the title on 1 July 2013, with this edit. --AussieLegend (✉) 08:05, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I've added microformat markup to that; using HTML classes adr, locality, region, & country-name. The existing documentation already describes these. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:58, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

ACTgov, NTgov

The addition yesterday of NTgov[3] lead me to check to see whether the new parameter was documented. At the same time I discovered ACTgov, which was added in 2007.[4] Neither of these are documented. Presently, they are used in 104 articles (101 ACT, 3 NT) but the parameters seem unnecessary. The headings link to Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly for ACTgov and Northern Territory Legislative Assembly for ACTgov, while stategov links to Electorates of the Australian states and territories for all states. The article also includes links for both the ACT and NT so separate parameters, just to provide different links seems unnecessary. If it's good enough for all states to link to the same article, then why not for the two territories? --AussieLegend (talk) 19:52, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, that was me (adding NTgov). The main issue is that the heading refers to "State electorate" and the ACT and NT are not states. Yes, ideally the same parameter could be used for all articles, and they should link to the Electorates of the Australian states and territories. Can the infobox code detect that the state parameter is "act" or "nt" and display a "Territory electorate" heading instead? Adding the NTgov parameter was about the limit of my infobox coding skills! Alternatively, the heading for stategov could be "State or territory electorate" but that seems pretty clunky. --Canley (talk) 05:57, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Somewhere Australian Capital Territory
Territory electorate(s)	Division of something

It could be changed to autodetect but, in the meantime, I changed the heading so that it covers both states and territories, which it should always have done. --AussieLegend (talk) 06:05, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Great, thank you. I'll change back the three NT towns I did and make a start on the ACT ones. --Canley (talk) 06:10, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Hundred

I've boldly removed the |hundred= parameter, which was only used in 2 articles. This was previously discussed here and here, where I was the only person opposing removal. My opposition was mainly to removal of county and parish from NSW articles, but removal of hundred was not opposed. Better late than never. --AussieLegend (talk) 22:08, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Request - additional field for LG map

The infobox is designed to support use in Australian local government area articles. However, it does not support a field for a map of the local government area which then is required to use the "image" field. See Weddin Shire Council for an example where an image suitable for the infobox has to be squashed down at the bottom of the article because the map is using the "image" field.

It would be preferable to use the "image" field for an actual photograph rather than the map. Is it possible to add an additional field for a map to appear immediately underneath the infobox photograph, in a similar fashion to how the infobox appears town articles, such as Grenfell, New South Wales? -- Mattinbgn (talk) 07:48, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Note that {{Infobox Settlement}} includes fields for map, image and "seal" (logo) - see Compton, California for an example. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 07:50, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

LGA maps are supported by use of alternative_location_map (see Joondalup (suburb), Langwarrin, Victoria and Arthurs Seat, Victoria), and use_lga_map (see Nhill, Benalla and Longford, Victoria). The problem is not lack of support for LGA maps, it's that we don't have the associated location map templates in Category:Australia location map templates. It's possible to display the LGA location using the locator map and still have an image, as in this version of City of Newcastle, but User:Rangasyd recently changed a number of articles, as he did here to City of Newcastle, eliminating the possibility of having both an image and a map. --AussieLegend (✉) 08:48, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. The examples you show are not exactly what I am looking for however. I know how to show towns in their respective LGA in the infobox. What I want to be able to do is to include this image in a map field and this image in an image field in this article so that both the map and the photograph appear in the infobox. I don't appear to be able to do this at present. The locator map only provides a point, not an area and is not what I am looking for. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 08:38, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

To use File:Old lga SouthMelb.png as a map you just need to create a suitable LGA template and then link to that in use_lga_map. The pin in the locator map would need to be set to the coordinates of the red dot in the image and that would achieve what you want. I can see the benefit of adding the ability to use an image, rather than having to go to the trouble of making a template. That would make things a lot easier. --AussieLegend (✉) 10:06, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

As I indicated above, we don't have a lot of LGA templates, but we do have a lot of LGA map images, and a lot of LGA articles suffer the same problem that City of South Melbourne does, or rather did. It was a simple process to add code for a second image so that both File:Old lga SouthMelb.png and File:South Melbourne Town Hall 001.JPG could be used in the article without the need to create an LGA template and this will benefit numerous other articles. I hope that's what you were after. --AussieLegend (✉) 11:09, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

looks good to me. I cleaned up the code a bit to make the handling of the image size and captions more robust. Frietjes (talk) 17:39, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Thank you - perfect! -- Mattinbgn (talk) 06:24, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Infobox conversion

See also: Template:Infobox Australian place/testcases

Raymond Terrace New South Wales
Population	12,725 (2011)

Recently I've been involved in some discussions where it was implied that older infoboxes like this may not be supported after implementation of Lua. I'm not sure how true that is but, at the same time the Australian roads project has been discussing conversion of articles to use {{Infobox road}} instead of {{Infobox Australian road}}. This was previously, vehemently opposed at two TfDs but that's another issue. The worst case scenario that is if the infobox is not supported, we could be forced to go to {{Infobox settlement}}. With this in mind I looked at converting the current format of this infobox to use {{Infobox}}, which I've now done, at least in the sandbox. I've setup some testcases and am interested in getting some feedback. The new version results in a more compact infobox in most cases. I've made some minor tweaks as well. It has become common to add a year after the population figure so I've made that simpler by adding a pop_year parameter which is autoformatted to produce the result you can see to the right. I've also added the ability to add alt text to the images (as we're supposed to). In the original infobox we had to use a properly formatted set of coordinates using {{coord}}. The locator map was added later, and if you wanted coordinates and a locator map you needed to provide both. The new version builds the inline coordinates display from the locator map and state parameters. You can still use {{coord}}, but you don't have to and it doesn't hurt to have both. This was necessary to ensure backward compatibility with the current version of the infobox. Although I don't see any problems, the new version needs to be tested well, as the infobox is transcluded to 9,719 articles, and obviously we need to ensure minimal disruption to articles. --AussieLegend (✉) 11:33, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Looks pretty good to me, the image border on the small image on some boxes doesnt really suit some of the images (esp. the adelaide one). Would you mind knocking up the one for the JBT (you mentioned you were interested in converting it to IAP earlier, just interested on how it would look). - Nbound (talk) 13:00, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

I've removed the 1px border that was around the images. There's no need for it. I haven't gotten to JBT yet. --AussieLegend (✉) 00:39, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Jervis Bay Territory now uses this template for its infobox and I've added a comparison to the testcases page. --AussieLegend (✉) 02:59, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

• Other enhancements

1. Previously, if |imagesize= was present but a value was not specified, the image would fill the screen. Now, the image defaults to 270px in that case, or when |imagesize= is not present.
2. In the new version, only the place name is coloured (city and state are not). To give a better indication of the type, labels are coloured according to type as well - see the testcases. --AussieLegend (✉) 00:39, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Looks even better now :), nice work -- Nbound (talk) 07:20, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, this looks good. I updated the image code to use the InfoboxImage module. Thanks! Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 16:06, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I was going to make the same changes to {{Infobox hut}} but somebody beat me to it. (After {{Infobox Australian Hut}}'s TfD, I created {{Infobox hut}} with some of the code coming from here. When I decided to update this infobox I started with Infobox hut's code - it's all been a bit circular) --AussieLegend (✉) 16:25, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

yes, this looks good. I made some minor improvements. the stray if type part was transcluding template:type. Frietjes (talk) 18:15, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Clarence Town New South Wales
Population	2100 (locality) (2006)Note1 794 (township) (2006)
LGA(s)	LGA1 LGA2

While wandering around Wikipedia testing the infobox I found that there are many examples where there are two population figures in the infobox. See Clarence Town, New South Wales for an example. To cater properly for this, I've added another set of population parameters. The output is formatted the same as for other fields like |lga=. --AussieLegend (✉) 21:48, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

I've now updated the infobox code and the documentation. In the articles that I've checked, there are no infobox errors. --AussieLegend (✉) 14:25, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

looks good, thank you for making it happen. Frietjes (talk) 16:45, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

It was fun. One thing that I did observe was not a fault of the template, but a fault of past editing, or rather a failure to edit. The ability to use coordinates in the infobox was added way back in 2007,[5] but there remain a lot of articles with {{coord}} still in use outside the infobox. Use of the locator map became popular after its functionality was added back in 2009.[6] Because the infobox now generates the {{coord}} string from the locator map information, articles with both a locator map and {{coord}} outside the infobox will see an error.[7][8][9][10][11] The fix for this is simple, just remove the extra template.[12][13][14] Of course, there is the odd article where a more aggressive fix is required, such as Darwin, where an incorrect entry in |state=, a south longitude of 75" and the extra {{coord}},[15] caused multiple issues.[16] --AussieLegend (✉) 02:48, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

yes, those should be easy to find since they appear in Category:Pages with malformed coordinate tags. better to find and clean them up then to not know about the problems/duplication. I fixed a few, but it looks like you found many more. Frietjes (talk) 17:53, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Kangaroo Valley
Population	319 (2011)

I've noticed that there now appears an error with the date formatting for population figures within {{Infobox Australian place}}. It shows the 2011 Census date as 2,011 in lieu of 2011. An example with Kangaroo Valley is shown here. But there are many more examples. Reviewing the NSW South Coast, I found the following non-exhaustive list of Bermagui, Cobargo, Moruya, Narooma, Pambula Beach, Tathra, Tuross Head, etc. that are showing the year incorrectly. Is it possible to find a fix to show the Census date in YYYY format, and not as a number? Rangasyd (talk) 13:11, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Bermagui
Population	1,298 (2006)

References

Ideally, articles should now use |pop_year=, but this is a long-term fix. I've modified the code so that if pop_year doesn't exist, it won't automatically format the population figure. You can see the effect at right, and I've modified Bermagui, New South Wales to use pop_year and pop_footnotes.[17] --AussieLegend (✉) 15:25, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks; and understand re use of |pop_year= and |pop_footnotes=. Rangasyd (talk) 02:54, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Municipality of Burwood
Website	[<span%20class="url">.burwood.nsw.gov.au Municipality of Burwood]

Another problem seems to have appeared with the width of the boxes when the |type= lga, where the {{URL}} template is used in |url= field. Instead of the text appearing as www.burwood.nsw.gov.au or burwood.nsw.gov.au, a long line of text appears as per the example at right with Burwood, NSW. The long line of text includes a reference number (as shown) and has impacted a large number of lga templates across New South Wales (the only state that I've reviewed). Is it possible to correct this template/field length/appearance? Thanks. Rangasyd (talk) 14:44, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I'll have a look at it, but the best fix is really to fix each article as you find it. We just went through and removed instances of {{coord}} in some 2,000 articles, as that was a better fix than disabling the coordinate generation. --AussieLegend (✉) 15:59, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I've just been through 600 LGA articles with AWB and, of the 130 from which I had to remove {{URL}}, the vast majority were from NSW. --AussieLegend (✉) 17:23, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

"The worst case scenario that is if the infobox is not supported, we could be forced to go to {{Infobox settlement}}." - Why is that the worst case scenario? It sounds like a sensible outcome to me. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:10, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Infobox settlement has been shown not to be compatible with Australian requirements, as you know. It would mean that we we have to reorganise 8,000 articles to compensate for the lack of Australia specific functionality. In any case, it's a non-issue now. This template is now based on {{Infobox}}, which has been fully "Luafied", while Infobox settlement uses its own code. --AussieLegend (✉) 21:33, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

I know no such thing. How is it incompatible? Why could it not be made so? I've also raised a request to convert {{Infobox settlement}} to use {{Infobox}}. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:37, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, you participated in the 2009 TfD and the incompatibilities were mentioned, and there is a lot of Australia specific functionality in this template that isn't in Infobox settlement. As a result, moving to IS would mean a loss of infobox data and require a complete rewrite of every infobox. I should mention that the statement that you question was made under the misconception that IS had already converted to use {{Infobox}}. As it hasn't, there would be no need to switch to that template at all. --AussieLegend (✉) 14:26, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

I recall that discussion; neither it nor your comments above support the assertions that IS is (subject to tweaks normal in such cases) incompatible with articles about places in Australia, or that conversion would result in the loss of any data. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:59, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

{{Infobox settlement}} now uses {{Infobox}}. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:11, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Suggested amendment

For type = lga, and with a date in the est parameter a category of populated places established in (the date entered) is generated. This is nonsense as the lgas were well-populated before their creation. Simple fix; did so, but challenged, so brought here. see City of Bayside for an example. Crusoe8181 (talk) 11:07, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

The physical area may have been populated in 1993 but City of Bayside was not populated before 1994 because it didn't exist according to the infobox. Using the logic you've presented here, if you believe historians, most places in Australia can't belong to "Category:Populated places established in {{{est}}}" because Aboriginals were living in most places. --AussieLegend (✉) 11:29, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

yes, we should remove this automatic-category-addition feature per WP:TEMPLATECAT. Frietjes (talk) 20:02, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

TEMPLATECAT says it is "recommended", so it's merely advisory. --AussieLegend (✉) 02:52, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

and what is the reason for going against the recommendations? Frietjes (talk) 15:25, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

LGA electorates

Could it be useful to include a parameter for LGA electorates, similar to the ones for state and federal level electorates? --Rekowo (talk) 12:04, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

The terminology would have to be customisable, the LGAs around where I live in Perth have wards, not electorates. - Evad37 [talk] 16:14, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

I've never even heard the term "LGA electorates". In NSW the term is "wards" as well. That said, I'm not really sure we need to go to this extent. We generally "stop" at state level for numerous reasons. --AussieLegend (✉) 16:44, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Category:Suburbs of City

This template automatically includes Category:Suburbs of City, but that category typically includes subcategories for one or more suburbs, into which it is usually appropriate to place the article. This implies that either:

• This template ought not include the Category:Suburbs of City, or
• This template needs to be clever enough to only include Category:Suburbs of City if the article is not already in a sub-category, or
• Each Category:Suburbs of City should be declared to be a non-diffusing subcategory.

Otherwise we end up with articles that are in a category and its parent, which is contrary to WP:SUBCAT – eg West Perth, Western Australia, which is in Category:Suburbs of Perth, Western Australia and West Perth, Western Australia, even though the latter is a subcategory of the former. Mitch Ames (talk) 12:33, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

We're pretty much stuck with automatic categorisation. If we remove it somebody is going to have to manually add 8,500 articles to various categories. We may need to look at your second suggestion. --AussieLegend (✉) 13:09, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

or just have a bot do it after making a bot request. there are many good reasons for not having this template automatically add categories (per WP:TEMPLATECAT). Frietjes (talk) 19:27, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

TEMPLATECAT is definitely appropriate where inclusion in categories is not cut and dried, for example in articles using {{Infobox person}}, but here we are categorising into a specific, small set of categories. Looking at Category:Suburbs in Australia the suburbs that are exhibiting the problem outlined by Mitch Ames are the exception rather than the rule, and it's a really minor problem that isn't worth the effort of getting a bot to fix the errors. It also seems that the benefits of autocategorisation here outweigh the disadvantages. --AussieLegend (✉) 19:42, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

This is trivially easy to fix. Chenge the template to add articles to a temporary category. Use Hotcat to copy all articles in that category to Category:Suburbs of City. Remove categorisation markup from the template. Ten minutes work, no bot, no 8,500 manual edits. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:11, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Won't that achieve exactly what's happening now? I think "ten minutes work" is a bit ambitious. --AussieLegend (✉) 05:24, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

No; it would leave us with articles categorised as they are now, but with the added ability to change or override the categorisation on an individual basis, which is currently lacking. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:07, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

As I've pointed out below, setting |_noautocat= turns off autocategorisation and can be done on an individual basis, so it's not currently lacking. See West Perth, Western Australia and Leederville, Western Australia as two exampes. --AussieLegend (✉) 10:03, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Autocategorisation in this template has caused problems from the beginning and should be removed. Yes, it will create some work but that is no reason not to improve the template. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 20:43, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Other than recent cases, when has it caused problems with categorisation in the past? Looking through the archives I can find some minor issues in 2007-08 (concerns about capital cities, an editor complaining about the order of cats etc) but nothing since then. --AussieLegend (✉) 05:24, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

In the small number of articles where autocategorisation is causing an issue, setting |_noautocat= turns off autocategorisation. That's a quick fix that I forgot about because I've never had to use it. --AussieLegend (✉) 05:29, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

I just looked at West Perth, Western Australia, which was given as an example of this problem. Regardless of what the infobox does, that article would be in Category:Suburbs of Perth, Western Australia because the cat had been manually added to the article. It has now been fixed.[18] --AussieLegend (✉) 10:11, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Documentation

Could someone update the template documentation to include _noautocat please. Mitch Ames (talk) 11:35, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

 Done. Mitch Ames (talk) 11:53, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Population density autocalculation

I have added autocalculation of population density from {{{pop}}} & {{{area}}} using {{pop density}}. JIMp _talk·cont 06:16, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

There is a formatting error on the density section of the infoboxes in the articles - could someone familar with this template please fix it.--Melburnian (talk) 06:50, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately. today's well meaning edits have introduced some errors that I'm in the process of fixing. --AussieLegend (✉) 07:15, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Just for the record, here's how it looks at Burswood, Western Australia.--Melburnian (talk) 07:37, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Burswood Perth, Western Australia
Population	1,279 (2006 census)
• Density	376/km2 (974/sq mi)
Postcode(s)	6100
Area	3.4 km2 (1.3 sq mi)

{{Infobox Australian place | type = suburb
|name     = Burswood
|city     = [[Perth, Western Australia|Perth]]
|state    = wa

|area     = 3.4
|postcode = 6100
|pop      = 1279
|pop_year = 2006 census
|pop_footnotes = <ref name=abs>{{Census 2006 AUS|id=SSC51216|name=Burswood (State Suburb)|quick=on|accessdate=2008-10-05}}</ref>
}}

That looks good now, thanks.--Melburnian (talk) 08:03, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

The cause was that {{{pop}}} was not a number as can been seen above. According to the doc page {{{pop}}} should be a number. I made the mistake of assuming that it always would be. Of course, what should be and what is are not always the same, sorry about that. The correct use of the template (according to the instructions on the doc page) is below (AussieLegend has fixed the page in question but there could be others).

Burswood Perth, Western Australia
Population	1,279 (2006 census)
• Density	376/km2 (974/sq mi)
Postcode(s)	6100
Area	3.4 km2 (1.3 sq mi)

{{Infobox Australian place | type = suburb
|name     = Burswood
|city     = [[Perth, Western Australia|Perth]]
|state    = wa

|area     = 3.4
|postcode = 6100
|pop      = 1279
|pop_year = 2006 census
|pop_footnotes = <ref name=abs>{{Census 2006 AUS|id=SSC51216|name=Burswood (State Suburb)|quick=on|accessdate=2008-10-05}}</ref>
}}

References

The template was stumbling on the non-number value for {{{pop}}}. I've used an {{#iferror:}} to eliminate this. Now instead of the error message it will just omit the density calculation.

I think I also see where the other problem occurs i.e. the incorrect formatting of the year. AussieLegend, you were right to revert me on that but I reckon I've got another solution. Instead of checking whether {{{pop_year}}} exists the solution I've implemented checks whether {{{pop}}} is a number ("1279 (2006)", for example, wouldn't be). The advantage is that {{{pop}}} will still be formatted even though {{{pop_year}}} might not exit. JIMp _talk·cont 08:33, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

pop = 1234 (2006)
Population	1,234 (2006)

pop = 1234
Population	1,234

Yes, that seems a better result. --AussieLegend (✉) 08:59, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

I don't get the programming intricacies, but is there a way to detect the character ( in a field (like an instr equivalent)? That may help weed them out. Orderinchaos 05:36, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

There are ways to tell the difference between a number & a non-number. We could add coding to detect pages which give non-number values to parameters which are meant to be numbers. These pages could then be placed in a hidden category. Jimp 10:44, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

see, {{isnumeric}} and {{ifnumber}}. Frietjes (talk) 18:54, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

the density field displays in the Infobox , but is also splashed into the first lines of text - Port Kennedy, Western Australia --Dave Rave (talk) 19:51, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Port Kennedy Western Australia
Population	12,816 (2006 census)

The problem was cause by inclusion of non-numeric data in the |pop_year= field. This edit fixed it. However, the root cause seems to be this recent edit to the template by Jackmcbarn. Reverting that edit stops the error. --AussieLegend (✉) 20:37, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Note that nothing in wikitext (like #iferror) can suppress Lua errors. Any Lua error on a page that makes it back to wikitext will end up in Category:Pages with script errors, even when techniques that normally suppress categorization (like #iferror) are used. My edit didn't cause the error; rather, it made the error visible, rather than having an error appear with no apparent source. If invalid data should produce something other than an error, that would have to be handled in Module:Pop density, not here. (Note that my recent edit there didn't add the errors; it only improved the clarity of the error messages.) Jackmcbarn (talk) 20:44, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Oh good, another Lua error. I did find it strange that your change would cause that peculiar result. --AussieLegend (✉) 04:31, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

coords N/S

As it is deemed Australian, and un-necessary, coords for towns are not shown on the edit screen with the N/S option. They show correctly displayed on the wiki page as S.

I've checked into some towns on FB and the markers show on my places map up next to japan (North).

Goulburn - https://www.facebook.com/pages/Goulburn-New-South-Wales/112997242047574

Hazelbrook - https://www.facebook.com/pages/Hazelbrook-New-South-Wales/104106379625227

Hill Top - https://www.facebook.com/pages/Hill-Top-New-South-Wales/112442708766723

Katoomba - https://www.facebook.com/pages/Katoomba-New-South-Wales/108487892509923

Does this need extra coding somehow ? Or 'was' it an error when those pages were made and maybe not a problem now ? Lawson, Mittagong, Bullaburra look okay - Dave Rave (talk) 09:05, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Maps on the Wikipedia pages for Goulburn, New South Wales, Hazelbrook, New South Wales, Hill Top, New South Wales and Katoomba, New South Wales all display correctly. Wikipedia has no control over Facebook pages. I'd suggest that you contact the owners of those pages and ask them to fix their maps. --AussieLegend (✉) 10:15, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Include flag and coat of arms fields?

Is it possible to add a flag and coat of arms such as the one on Moscow's infobox or is it not needed or applicable? — Preceding unsigned comment added by CodyLogs (talk • contribs) 10:54, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Flags and coats of arms aren't really applicable to Australian locations. --AussieLegend (✉) 11:01, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

This:

suggests otherwise. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:57, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

No, not really. There are 8,790 articles that transclude this template. None of the articles in the template use this infobox. Instead they use {{Infobox coat of arms}}. If we ignore that and look at the articles for the places, rather than the articles for the COAs of the places, only the 8 capital city articles use the infobox. In Australia, a COA is not generally used, even if the place has one, except on some official documents. Instead, the corporate logo of the local government area is used, and we do include a field for that. Category:Australian coats of arms and Category:Municipal coats of arms in Australia only include articles for 17 of the links in the template. Even on commons, there is only one image of a non-capital city COA. COAs aren't seen as significant enough to even mention in the vast majority of articles, let alone dedicate a field in the infobox for use in only 9 articles, 8 of which have a separate article dealing speifically with the COA. While it's not a place (at least as it applies to this infobox) I've had huge dramas in the past keeping the COA in the infobox for University of Newcastle (Australia), with university staff members claiming it's no longer used, even though there are brick walls around the university with the COA prominently featured. --AussieLegend (✉) 05:17, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

"In Australia, a COA is not generally used, even if the place has one, except on some official documents." So they are used. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:10, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Only on rare occasions. So rare that they're not worth mentioning in the infobox. --AussieLegend (✉) 11:55, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Existence

Remind me again while this infobox still exists? Distance from Jakarta for Perth is absurd. It would look a lot better as standard. What makes Australia the exception?♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:05, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

You might be better asking this at WP:AWNB. The distance from Perth to Jakarta has nothing to do with the infobox. That's best taken up at Talk:Perth. --AussieLegend (✉) 17:08, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Isn't the design of Hazelbrook, New South Wales a little amateurish looking? must we really use pink for an infobox? It looks like a Neopolitan ice cream.♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:09, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm a little over the colours. They were originally added to differentiate between the main types for which this infobox was originally used, but I don't really think they're needed any more, although the dark grey is a handy way to identify infoboxes with undefined types. It really requires a discussion with the end users to gauge their opinion on whether we still need colour. I only included the colour when I rebuilt the infobox because it was in the original. BTW, that pink is actually "Antique White". --AussieLegend (✉) 17:17, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Re Perth, Jakarta was added last year sometime. I've removed it. --AussieLegend (✉) 17:21, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Katoomba, New South Wales at least looks better with some good content and a better colour.♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:32, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

There's no reason why the colours can't be tweaked, although I'm not against removal. Ironically, I'd rather use the colour at Katoomba for other areas. Like I said, a discussion at WP:AWNB could sort that out. --AussieLegend (✉) 17:36, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

The temperature yearly average min and max isn't very informative. The compass could be replaced with the standard {{Geographic location}} at the bottom of each article. That's about all the features unique to this infobox. Alakzi (talk) 17:48, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

It's far more extensive than that. The direction information is used in thousands of articles and adding {{Geographic location}} to the bottom of articles would be a lot of work. Basic weather information is informative, especially in the thousands of articles that don't have more complex weather charts. Then there's a lot of automation in the infobox that would be a huge job to manually replace. It's far more complex than stated in these few sentences. Because the infobox is for "places", rather than "settlements", it's been used in many articles where infobox settlement would be inappropriate. Replacing this infobox with anything else would be a massive headache and in the end, it would require recreation of several other infoboxes that have been merged into it. --AussieLegend (✉) 18:00, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Agreed that it'd be a time sink to replace this infobox. It could be marked as deprecated, but - even then - it will literally take decades to phase it out. We've not even got rid of all of them {{Geobox}}es yet. Alakzi (talk) 18:17, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Time could be better spent elsewhere. I estimate that there are probably 2,500 articles that would have to be converted to other infoboxes, or have the infobox removed entirely, after they're identified, and I don't have the time. --AussieLegend (✉) 18:23, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

This infobox seems to work well for Australian places and appears to enjoy a high level of support from the Australian editing community. If it ain't broke, why change it? Changing it would be a massive waste of time and no doubt it would end up only half done, leaving an inconsistent mess. Let's go write some new content instead, that's a far better way to serve our readers. Kerry (talk) 03:05, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

I can see benefit in "if it's not broke, don't fix it", but there is also value in standardisation. I picked a random foreign town to see what a "standard" settlement infobox might look like and found {{Infobox UK place}}, so all I end up with from there is a WP:OTHERSTUFF argument to keep this one too. My second attempt got to {{Infobox settlement}} which looks more "generic". It's not clear to me how to include (for example) the LGA, state and federal electorates in that, nor the "nearby" box. If Infobox Settlement (and any other relevant ones) were updated to handle modules like {{infobox people}} does, then we could have modules for the nearby box, climate, Aus-specific government etc. Bots could migrate the current Aus infobox to modular form, then convert the Aus-specific box to a generic one using the same modules. That moves the workload away from lots of editors to a small number of specialist editors and some bot work, but I still struggle to find that the benefit outweighs the cost. We need some foreign readers to tell us how confusing they find it to be browsing Wikipedia and find the Australian infoboxes look different. If there isn't any reader confusion, it's likely not worth continuing the discussion, and certainly not worth the effort of migrating. --Scott Davis ^Talk 09:37, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Why should it be replaced? It is better to have a customised box that is unique to Australia. Discussions like these about changes to our box like the colours are best decided by Australians rather than having one box for every country in the world which would cause a nightmare to make even the slightest changes. Alec Station (talk) 02:13, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

dir1, dir2, etc - is the documentation right?

The description for dir1, dir2 etc says this is "The compass direction from the place to location1" but the generated text in the infobox appears to assume the opposite, that it is the compass direction from location1 to the place, e.g. Cunnamulla is "W of Brisbane". Unless I am misunderstanding something, I think the documentation for dir1, dir2, etc should be updated to say "from location1/2/etc to the place". Any objections to my changing it? Kerry (talk) 04:17, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

I have changed the first sentence to match this conversation and the third sentence, since you describe how I always use it too. --Scott Davis ^Talk 04:41, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Funny story... Way back in 2007, in only my 2nd edit to this template, I changed "This is the distance to another location" to "This is the distance and approximate direction to another location" while cleaning up the documentation.[19] A pre-existing error was picked up by another editor shortly two months later,[20] but the error picked up today was there for 1 day short of 8 years. That goes to show how many people bother reading the documentation. --AussieLegend (✉) 09:47, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

And, just to show how easy it is to happen, I saw Scott say he'd changed it, but when I looked at it, I could still see it was "back to front". It turns out that it is explained in multiple places, the narrative that Scott changed and in the table of parameters (that I have just changed). Hopefully in another 7 years when someone reads the documentation again, it will now be correct. Kerry (talk) 08:49, 6 October 2015 (UTC)