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Archive 1Archive 2

Rationale for this template

There were multiple very similar templates doing very similar things but not exactly the same, and some grouping the same agency attributes differently in different places in the infoboxes.

This template provides a standardisation for articles about all law enforcement agencies, to give their infoboxes a common look and feel, so that readers know what to expect when they look at a an article about a law enforcement agency of any type.

Templates deprecated by this template that I have found are:

No allowance has been made for an image of the agency head in the infobox because it is an infobox for the agency, not a person. If an image of the agency head is relevant to the agency article, then it should be in a relevant section in the article.

Peet Ern (talk) 03:18, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Overkill?

As can be seen on FIOD-ECD, this template creates multiple strangenesses:

  • It places 4 references to Wikipedia articles into the reference list. I believe these should be made straight links if linked at all - they are certainly NOT references for the article.
  • It places the article in categories that don't exist - apparently conflating the country name with the agency type.

I wonder if it's appropriate to embed this much behind-the-scenes magic in a template. --Alvestrand (talk) 10:33, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

References:
Resolved
I am not sure that there is any problem with an article referencing other Wikipedia articles, in this case for definitional things, as distinct from further information which would be links. If the concensus is that they should be links I would be happy to change them.
They really ought to be links, at the moment they are just wikilinks with footnotes containing the same wikilink, which is superfluous to requirements, and is confusing a lot of article. I implore you to just them as wikilinks, please :) --SGGH speak! 14:24, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Agreed then. I do not have time right now - and dialled into the internet at only 28kbps is not a good feeling - I will fix in the next 36 hours though. Peet Ern (talk) 21:42, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
 Done Peet Ern (talk) 14:12, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
Categories:
The template expects standard categories for the type of article to be in place.
Overkill:
While it does more than most templates, this has been a deliberate strategy. The categristion is a good example. The philosophy is to try to get authors / editors to better categorise articles. I have taken the liberty and created the expected templates for this article.
Cheers. Peet Ern (talk) 21:39, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

categories

please correct me if i'm mistaken, but for Brazilian Federal Railroad Police it categories it as a Brazilian Federal LEA (Category:Federal law enforcement agencies of Brazil) but leaves it in the Brazilian LEA cat (Category:Law enforcement agencies of Brazil). can you change it so if Federal = yes then it doesn't also put it in the national cat? ninety:one 15:24, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it was a bit redundant, changed as suggested.  Done Peet Ern (talk) 02:37, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
The article will not be categorised by country if it can be categorised as National, Federal, or a country division (state).
thank you! ninety:one 20:22, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

ok, got another Q. what about Category:Law enforcement agencies of France? here, i've categorized by force name (Police Nationale and Gendarmerie). how does those cats work with this infobox?

The template would have resulted in red linked missing categories, which you could then just create the first time.
I have taken the liberty and put a first cut of the infobox into National Police (France), by way of example, and set up the required first time categories.
Please keep the questions and comments coming. Cheers. Peet Ern (talk) 01:54, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Post script:

I might have misunderstood your question. The basic LEA infobox does not do anything with LEA based categorisation. However, if you are categorising all articles related to National Police (France), then you might want to look at Template:Infobox Law enforcement agency/doc#Snapshot information boxes. This will let you put a collapsible transclusion of the main National Police (France) article's infobox into each related article, and have the National Police (France) categorisation done automatically for you.
Peet Ern (talk) 02:04, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
so Category:French Gendarmerie and Category:French National Police can go under Category:National law enforcement agencies of France. think i get it now. thanks again! ninety:one 16:09, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes, you can do that too. Peet Ern (talk) 22:35, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

A request

Could you please reduce size of this template? It is huge and occupies a lot of space.Biophys (talk) 05:00, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Another question. Should this template be used for Gestapo, KGB and NKVD?Biophys (talk) 05:18, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
Size: I presume you refer to the size as being the full list of possible paramters? All these paremeters are used somewhere by an article, or will be soon. However, is there a problem just deleting the ones you do not want out of the skeleton after you have copied it over into an article? This can dramtically reduce the "size" of the template. But, I am not entirely sure of what you mean by size? Do you mean the size of of the generated infobox?
I simply mean that template is very wide and long. It occupies a lot of space, which does not look good (usually we have smaller boxes). Can you make it more narrow at least? Thank you for reply.Biophys (talk) 12:54, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
I will see what I can do to reduce the width of the generated infobox. Peet Ern (talk) 23:23, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
Gestapo: - As far as I am aware, yes. The dissolved and superseding parameters can be used.
KGB: - As far as I am aware, yes. Its successor(?), the FSB already uses the template. The dissolved and superseding parameters can be used.
NKVD: - As far as I am aware, yes. The dissolved and superseding parameters can be used.
Peet Ern (talk) 05:48, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
I still believe that we need to make a distinction between the "law enforcement agencies", "intelligence agencies" (like KGB), and "secret police organizations" like Gestapo. The latter are NOT "law enforcement agencies" because they operate beyond the law instead of enforcing it.Biophys (talk) 12:54, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
These are interesting points, but go much further I think than the template. I agree that these organisations operated in a manner which most reasonable people would regard as beyond the law. However, the debate then becomes one of how is law defined, for example, the law is in reality the set of social behaviours enforced within a society, whether or not they have been legitimately codified, are conscionable, etc.
I fully agree that these organisations are not just law enforcement agencies. They are also typically intelligence agencies, and should be categorised as such as well. Note that this applies to many current day legitimate law enforcement agencies too. Their primary role though, and I am happy to stand corrected, as I understand it, was to enforce the law, even if the law was draconian, arbitrary, illegitmate, unconscionable, . . .
I will look at including secret police as a characteristic in the template too. I did not do this initially for two reasons, one, I simply had to draw the line somewhere, and two, secret police labelling can be an emotive and controversial issue. I think to include it will require explicit secondary references to be provided.
Please keep the feedback coming. It is the only way to improve the template.
Cheers. Peet Ern (talk) 23:23, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
  • Thank you! I checked the narrower template for the FSB article, and I think this is much better. So, could you please include this at least as an option? Probably this narrower template should be used in all articles (not as an option), but this needs to be checked. Your current template seems to be flexible enough to include details, such as defining an agency as "federal", "intelligence" or even "secret police". The template does not show automatically a title: "Law enforcement agency". This is good because people who edit individual articles can decide what details should be indicated in the template.Biophys (talk) 16:07, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Military police

as you can see from the list at the start of that article, the phrase 'military police' has many different meanings. i am therefore categorising provosts here Category:Military provosts. can the automatic categorisation in this template be altered to meet this please, i.e. don't use this cat Category:Military police agencies because it's too wide ranging.

 Done
Ninetyone,
I have added a new parameter for military provosts.
| provost         = Yes
The template will now try to autocategorise articles as follows:
If provost is set then Military provosts of 'country' else 'country' military provosts else Military police agencies of 'country' else 'country' military police agencies else Military police of 'country'.
If only military is set then Military police agencies of 'country' else 'country' military police agencies else Military police of 'country'.
I accept your request to not categorise as military police agencies, but if the provost categories do not yet exist then I need to put them somewhere if I can.
There is also a new parameter for gendarmerie
| gendarmerie     = Yes
If gendarmerie is set then Gendarmerie of 'country' else Gendarmerie.
NOTE: It would appear that many categories for military police, gendarmarerie, etc. DO NOT comply with any accepted naming convention. These should be fixed (to match the above).
Peet Ern (talk) 03:24, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Simplicity and readability

The naming of multiple-word parameters are concatenated, instead of spaced with underscores; I believe this makes the template hard to read, and breaks old articles.

I guess this comes down to personal preferences. For my eye the underscores are very distracting and make it harder to read. Generally, words are concatenated or hyphenated in the "real" world and rarely "underscored". So I would think that concatenation is generally more readable, unless one is used to looking at software all the time. Peet Ern (talk) 06:10, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
On the part about the "real world," I refute your statement that "Generally, words are concatenated," (unless we are speaking German) while I would generally concur that when words are sometimes combined when writing English, generally hyphens are used. Templates are not in English; they are in a interpreted language. Even in Java like syntax, concatenated words are capitalized. I would submit that no one, with respect to programming in interpreted languages, simply removes spaces with hyphens, capitalization, or underscores. It makes for extremely difficult reading. Int21h (talk) 04:28, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
List of templates that use underscores: (last edited: Int21h (talk) 06:18, 16 July 2008 (UTC))
  1. {{Infobox Country}}
  2. {{Infobox Government agency}}
Two examples does not make a case, but no doubt there are more.
Interestingly (?) {{Infobox Government agency}} does not fully underscore, for example:
| nativename        =
| nativename_a      =
| nativename_r      =
instead of:
| native_name        =
| native_name_a      =
| native_name_r      =
I am still of the view that it really is what one is used to looking at.
If you prefer to look at underscored parameter names then you can now do so in articles. See alternative skeleton.
I do not think that this is really that big an issue.
Cheers. Peet Ern (talk) 06:19, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

An example is the edition of this template from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation article. Since then (correct me if I'm wrong), the template has removed the underscores representing spaces from the template arguments. These underscores are (mainly) included for readability (in my opinion), and I believe their use is by far more common, and superior, then template arguments without underscores. What are the benefits of removing the underscore other than 8-bits per underscore?

Actually I am suprised it works at all! The relevant editor changed templates from {{Infobox Government agency}} to {{Infobox Law enforcement agency}}, by just editing the template name. This is incorrect in my view. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation as far as I can tell, while part of the justice system, is NOT a law enforcement agency. The template change should be unpicked and reverted. Peet Ern (talk) 06:10, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
The CDCR enforces decisions of the courts to imprison (and execute) people. They do nothing but enforce the law (albeit mostly certain sections; but then again so does the California Highway Patrol.) Under California law they are peace officers, and the CDCR IS a law enforcement agency. If that needs to be changed, so should the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and I'm sure quite a few other prison agency articles. Int21h (talk) 04:31, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
I think we need to be very careful here. There are very important differences between law enforcement and custodial responsibilities. Many democracies specifically separate responsibility for incarceration from law enforcement. Indeed I think you will find that even within the powers given to the CDCR, they cannot enforce the law AND incarcerate. (Note that arrest and detention are not incarceration.)
In general, law enforcement means forcing subjects to comply / detering subjects from not complying with the law with the law and-or "catching" subjects who do not comply with the law, etc. Incarceration is NOT law enforcement. Incarceration (and other correctional mechanisms) is complying with the law and complying with judicial directions to correct or punish the behaviour of "criminals".
As I understand it CDCR is primarily not a law enforcement organisation. It may/does have a law enforcement section, but this I think you will find is legally and constitutionally seperate (in terms of powers) from its incarceration role, even while it enforces the law in CDCR facilities?
The CDCR should not be categorised as a law enforcement agency. However, its law enforcement section can be categorised as a law enforcement agency (assuming it is sufficiently notable to have its own article), with its parent agency stated as the CDCR.
The above I would think applies to correctional institutions in all(?) democratic / open societies?
Peet Ern (talk) 06:45, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Below is the template used in the aforementioned article: 

| agency_name     =
| nativename      =
| nativename_a    =
| nativename_r    =
| logo            =
| logo_width      =
| logo_caption    =
| seal            =
| seal_width      =
| seal_caption    =
| formed          =
| reorganized     =
| headquarters    =
| employees       =
| sworntype       =
| sworn           =
| unsworn         =
| budget          =
| chief1_name     =
| chief1_position =
| website         =
| footnotes       =

Compare this with the current template and the suggested template usage: 

| agencyname      =
| nativename      =
| nativenamea     =
| nativenamer     =
| logo            =
| logocaption     =
| formedyear      =
| formedmonthday  =
| headquarters    =
| sworntype       =
| sworn           =
| unsworntype     =
| unsworn         =
| budget          =
| chief1name      =
| chief1position  =
| website         =
| footnotes       =

Note that the seal* arguments are no longer accepted.

({{Infobox Law enforcement agency}} can accept a seal, or any other image, by picking any image parameter and setting the relevant caption.) Peet Ern (talk) 06:10, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Int21h (talk) 05:23, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

See also User talk:Dodgerblue777#Infobox in California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Peet Ern (talk) 23:52, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

defunct military provosts of nation

see Feldgendarmerie. It has not put the article in category:Defunct military provosts of Germany. I guess it doesn't get much more complicated than this, but still :p. ninety:one 20:26, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Technically I can do this without too much difficulty.
But, it might be best if you got an opinion from CfD(?) regarding triple intersection categories, before I do. Category:Defunct military provosts together with Category:Defunct law enforcement agencies of Germany are both fine, but I would think that Category:Defunct military provosts of Germany is a member of a class of categories which will be sparse in existence and mostly sparsely populated when they do exist.
Let me know what the outcome is.
I would also remove it from Category:Military provosts of Germany
Cheers. Peet Ern (talk) 22:35, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
actually yes, i was thinking about this from the wrong angle... i agree that "defunct" cats should not go into such distinctions so consider the request withdrawn. ninety:one 22:40, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Width problems with hqlocmap

hqlocmap's width is a little too wide. You can tell because the documentation itself is pushing the page toward the right. The map is about 5 pixels over the padding. Please fix!!!! .:davumaya:. 15:50, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, but I cannot see what you seem to be seeing. Making the image wider, or even narrower seems to have no effect on anything (other than the image iteslf) for me. Can you give a bit more detail please. Peet Ern (talk) 00:24, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Country

If the country is USA, can you make it not automatically add the category? The category for US lea's may be a duplicate. In other words, the department may better fit into a state subcategory, and the country is unnecessary. Also, if I try to enter [[United States|USA]] in the country field, it repeats the brackets surrounding USA. Is there a way you can fix this? I don't know how. Thanks! Cmcnicoll (talk) 07:51, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

As per the template documentation, the template will link so you get double brackets. However, I have now added a new parameter countryabbr, so please try:
| country       = United States
| countryabbr   = USA
Please let me know how it goes.
I will fix the country categorisation versus state categorisation in the next 48 hours.
Peet Ern (talk) 14:12, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
 Done The template will now only categorise by Country if it cannot categorise by the division (state) in the country. Peet Ern (talk) 13:28, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
to come back to this, with the California Highway Patrol, how do i stop it being in LEAs of California? State LEAs of California is the correct cat. ninety:one 10:06, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

'speciality' parameter

Can you please add multiple specialty parameters - UK Border Agency needs more then one and I'm sure many others would benefit as well. Thanks! ninety:one 19:20, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I have been thinking about this for a while, but have not had the time. With a bit of luck I should be able to get it done in the next two weeks or so. Peet Ern (talk) 06:13, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

 Done There can now be up to 6 specialities specified. There are also new values of 'primary', 'secondary', 'tertiary', 'nontertiary', which are all described the same as 'education', but are categorised accordingly. Peet Ern (talk) 01:27, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

formedyear & formedmonthday

Resolved

Why is the content of the parameters formedyear & formedmonthday used to construct a displayed date which seems to me in conflict with MOS:DATE? Where is the format YYYY MMMM DD sanctioned?

 Done Peet Ern (talk) 06:47, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Side-issue: I understand MOS:UNLINKDATES says dates should no longer be linked. Michael Bednarek (talk) 05:51, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

 Done Peet Ern (talk) 06:47, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
The date processing is a hangover from some template ancestry and loose evolution. It has not been reviewed or checked. I will not have time to look at this for about two weeks. If I have not either "fixed" it or provided some other response by then, please feel free to remind me. Peet Ern (talk) 12:07, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Template is placing U.S. articles in a nonexistent category

Notwithstanding the issue (raised earlier on this page, and supposed to have been resolved) that most U.S. law enforcement agencies should not be placed in the U.S. level category because they belong (and are already placed) in more specific categories, this template is putting U.S. agencies into the nonexistent Category:Law enforcement agencies of United States of America. The real category is Category:Law enforcement agencies of the United States. The promoter and maintainers of this template mavens need to fix this. --Orlady (talk) 16:14, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

 Done use United States not United States of America as the parameter. However, the two articles in question (Georgia Department of Public Safety and Tennessee Highway Patrol) are not now categorising into states - I thought this had been fixed? ninety:one 19:34, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
It looks like an error was made in adding the templates to those two articles, and you fixed it (at least in Tennessee, which is the one on my watchlist). Thanks! --Orlady (talk) 20:33, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

UK police forces

UK police forces don't use Category:Law enforcement in the United Kingdom, but Category:Police forces of COUNTRYNAME. The one place where this template was used was Gwent Police, and I disabled autocat there. Can you add a parameter whereby you state the constituent country (ie England, Wales or Scotland) and it categorises the article as Category:Police forces of COUNTRYNAME? ninety:one 21:29, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

 Done United Kingdom police forces are now autocategorised by the country within the United Kingdom. Set divtype to country, divname to Wales, etc. Fixed for Gwent Police as follows: 

|divtype         = country
|divname         = Wales
|subdivtype      = police area
|subdivname      = Gwent

(I assume you meant Category:Law enforcement agencies of the United Kingdom and not Category:Law enforcement in the United Kingdom? Also, "Home Office" LEAs shound not use the div parameters. They are still UK agencies.)

(Note that the use of div would have sort of worked before hand. It would have tried to use Category:Law enforcement agencies of Wales.)

Peet Ern (talk) 02:40, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes I did mean the latter cat, and thank you. What do you mean by '"Home Office" LEAs shound not use the div parameters'? ninety:one 21:33, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
Actually my use of "Home Office" was probably not correct. I meant the "whole of UK" agencies do not use the div parameters . . . Peet Ern (talk) 22:57, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
Yeah - not the same thing! We're so confusing over here... ninety:one 23:56, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

More

I've started implementing it nationwide, and have come across some issues:

  1. Is it possible for |chief to have the same override as |minister1 does with |electeetype? (ie make "Agency executive" a parameter)
    1. It is certainly possible, but at the time I made a deliberate choice not to, for world view reasons, fearing that just alternative but probably equivalent but no one knowing for sure rank titles for the heads would be used.
    2. For example, what is not covered by chief1name and chief1position?
    3. agency was meant be as in generic law enforcement agency, not as in Governmant Agency. Perhaps organisation executive might be better?
  2. Can you stop the automatic linking on |subdivname? The boundaries of UK forces are often only used for that purpose, and it some cases you need to list the district councils which make up the area.
    1. I would like to think about this, as generally (around the world) if an area is important enough to have its own police agency, then it has its own article.
    2. Have you tried using subdivdab to force a link to the section describing the list of councils covered by the agency if there is no separate article? For example, subdivdab = #Police area should link the subdivname to the Police area section within the article. If this is no good then let me know and I will look at the most flexible way of fixing the issue. I do not want to make a non world view hack if at all possible.
  3. in the UK, police forces are not generally described as "Government Agencies". They are Bodies Corporate. Any way you can alter |nongovernment to remove the "Non-governmental:" preface when you fill in the parameter?
    1. Yep. I have had this one on the back of my mind for a while. Government agency or not was always going to be too restrictive. One immediate question though is, "What does bodies corporate mean? For example, it might be useful if we could get people to pick from a list of legally defined legal personalities, for example from Government agency, Government coporation, incorporated entity, cooperative, partnership, body corporate (which in Australia refers to the collective of tenants of poly title real estate), etc."
  4. "Divisional agency (Operations jurisdiction)" makes no sense in the context of the UK! We talked about it on Talk:Metropolitan Police Service and came up with a new title - "Geographic area of primary responsibility". Is it possible to change this for UK forces? ninety:one 20:57, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
    1. Yes this does need fixing. Initially it meant where the operations jurisdiction is smaller than where the legal jurisdiciton actually allows operations. But sometimes it is the other way around! Although I thought it did work for most UK agencies, because a local UKPol agency for example has legal jurisdiction across all of England and Wales but does not normally operate outside of its "home area" by formal convention - A Met officer still has the full powers of constable at the far west of Wales? "Geographic area of primary responsibility" looks to me like what "Divisional agency (Operations jurisdiction)" was supposed to mean, but if it is causing confusion then it needs to be fixed.
    2. Met officer perhaps not the best of examples, instead perhaps a Gwent officer.
  5. Above second level numbers from Peet Ern (talk) 11:21, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
    1. To help me here, can you explain there, in the Talk:Metropolitan Police Service#New Info Box discussion, HS == Home Secretrary?, and sorry, if so, is the HS the elected Minister or the appointed head?, and who is Boris? I think I got all the other contractions, but if you could check for any "non obivious" ones please.
    2. Any further discussion re the structure and jurisdiction of the Met pleas keep there too, and I will dig out or ask what I need there.
  • It's the "executive" part - it implies there is a "non-executive chairman"-style position above them, when there isn't. In the UK, agency almost exclusively refers to an Executive Agency, an altogether different beast to a police force.
  • I made |subdivdab = #, as the description is a vital part of the lead (Avon & Somerset Constabulary)
See below. Peet Ern (talk) 02:33, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
  • The last two look like acceptable solutions. "Divisional agency (Operations jurisdiction)" is far too confusing for the average reader, and the nongovernment update would be good.
Sorry, but which last two? Peet Ern (talk) 02:33, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
I found out linking to "#" doesn't work... ninety:one 19:53, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
It needs to be a valid wikilinkable token, for example <namespace>:<pagename>, <pagename>, <pagename>#<anchor>, #<anchor>, etc., where anchor is either a section name or a span tag id value. Because the description of the area in the Avon & Somerset Constabulary article is not in its own section, for example called Police area you cannot use subdivdab = #Police area. Note that # by itself is not a valid/normal token for a link. You could just put subdivdab = Avon & Somerset Constabulary which will result in a redundant circular link. I think I have come up with a entirely world view / content independant way of getting around any red links, for when subdivdab is not used. You could if you wanted to try <span id="Police area">county of [[Somerset]] and the districts of [[South Gloucestershire]], [[Bristol]], [[North Somerset]] and [[Bath and North East Somerset]]</span>, but I think this is a bit too much. Peet Ern (talk) 02:33, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

To do list

Enhancements:

Bugs:

Things that might need changing

In the wider context of the whole world, having learnt from the UK implementation above and from other cases:

  1. "Divisional agency (operational jurisdiction)" is too confusing. In the UK, we came up with "Geographic area of primary responsibility". Other ideas welcome!
  2. "Agency executive" should be replaced with "Organisation executive", as "Agency" implies the LEA is a government agency.
  3. |nongovernment needs new choices, or else changing altogether. Possible entities to make choices would be government agency, privately-held company, government-owned corporation, government ministry and body corporate. Slight problem would be that companies in different countries are called different things. Whilst the term "privately-held company" is understood in the UK to mean any company not owned by the government, in the US it means any company in which shares are not publicly traded. We will need to think of a "one size fits all" term for these (relatively few cases). ninety:one(school account) 14:40, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

How to proceed

I have been holding off jumping in and implementing solutions regarding the above couple of discussion threads to see what else fell out of the wood work, but things seem to be rather quiet.

Perhaps we leave it one more week, and then you and I can get a final list of the current issues and their solutions together, and I will make it happen?

Peet Ern (talk) 06:36, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

But people only seem to care when we mess it up :p Sounds good. ninety:one 22:18, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
Sorry - my week is up! My wiki time is getting less and less . . . I will start doing up a "spec", but it might be another week or two. Cheers. Peet Ern (talk) 10:47, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

How things are to be done

A mini spec below of how things might change to address the above issues.

Comments?

Peet Ern (talk) 11:40, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Operations jurisdiction data title

If divtype or subdivtype is set to police area then the data title will change from Divisional Agency to Police Area Agency. This data item title is meant to show what type of area jurisdiction the agency has. The data value is then meant to be the descriptive name of the jurisdictional area.

There will be a footnote added to the infobox bottom as follows:

For Divisional Agency the footnote will be Division of the country over which the agency has usual operational jurisdiction or Subdivision of the country over which the agency has usual operational jurisdiction.

For Police Area Agency the footnote will be Prescribed geogrpahic area in the country over which the agency has usual operational jurisdiction.

The footnotes will be cross linked and collapsible.

 Done except the footnotes are not collapsible. I think this is not necessary. What do you think? Peet Ern (talk) 11:03, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for this, but "Police area agency" doesn't mean anything! "Police area" is an adjective and "agency" is the noun - and that doesn't make sense because the field is for an area not an agency. Removing "agency" would work (and then also "Police area of xyz" from the field) ninety:one 23:39, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
I am not too hung up on the particular title for the infobox item. I called it Police area agency to show that it was an agency whose operations jurisdiction was of the type police area, as distinct from an agency whose jurisdiction a was division of a country and hence a Divisional agency. I repeated Police area in the infobox item's field to distinguish the police area from State, Province, Territory, etc.
Perhaps instead of:
Divisional agency
Operations jurisdiction		 State of Fooland in the country of Fooia
Police area agency
Operations jurisdiction		 Police area of Fooshire in the country of England

we have:

Operations jurisdiction State of Fooland in the country of Fooia
Operations jurisdiction Police area of Fooshires in the country of England
the footnoes would remain to describe divisional agency, police area, etc.
Peet Ern (talk) 11:53, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
(Police areas are unique to the UK, and "police area agency" translates as territorial police force.) The second suggestion looks good. ninety:one 17:03, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
 Done Peet Ern (talk) 12:25, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Operations jurisdiction linking

Automatic linking of the operational jurisdiction will still occur, but only if the relevant page exists. If the page does not exist it will not red link, and instead place the page into a hidden category Category:Law enforcement agency articles with no operations jurisdiction link. If divdab or subdivdab is provided then this will be overidden and it will always try to link - not done, it will cat as no link.

 Done Peet Ern (talk) 11:03, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

There will be a new parameter legalpersonality which will deprecate nongovernment. For backwards compatibility if legalpersonality is not set then it will be set to whatever nongovernment is set to. If legalpersonality is set then any setting of nongovernment will be ignored.

If no value is provided for legalpersonality (or via nongovernment) then the LEA will be deemed to have a legal personality of government agency. If legalpersonality is set to any of government agency, privately-held company, cooperative, partnership, government-owned corporation, government ministry, or body corporate, then legal personality will be shown accordingly. If it is not one of these values it will be shown as now, that is Non government: {{{legalpersonality}}}.

 Done but I suspect it might need more work to get it correct. Peet Ern (talk) 11:03, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks again, but the British forces are bodies corporate which are still governmental. Could body corporate be changed so it is prefaced by "Government:" instead of "Non government:"? ninety:one 23:48, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
Are all bodies corporate in the UK governmental? In Australia a body corporate is typically non government.
Is a UK police agency body corporate a government personality, or is it a non government organisation whose membership is (all) governmental ?
Peet Ern (talk) 11:28, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
In the UK, the police authorities are bodies corporate (S3 PA 1996). They are governmental as opposed to non-governmental, but (save for specific instances) are not controlled by anyone. The membership is comprised of councilors, magistrates and the like, but their position on a police authority is not directly linked to their position as a magistrate etc. In the UK, the vast majority of bodies corporate are not-for-profit organisations linked to the government (like the BBC).
Surely "privately held company" will do for bodies corporate which are non-governmental? ninety:one 16:24, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Agency executive

I have decided that I do not really like organisation executive. While obviously correct generically, it is too general I think, especially as we currently distinguish between law enforcement agency and law enforcement organisation.

I suggest that we get a little bit smart and have, for example, based on legal personality:

  • government agency == Agency executive
  • government ministry == Agency executive
  • privately-held company == Company executive
  • government-owned corporation == Company executive
  • body corporate == Corporate executive
  • cooperative == Cooperative executive
  • default == Agency Executive

etc. ?

Peet Ern (talk) 11:40, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Good to see you back, thought you'd forgotten about us!
  1. The only people who use the term "police area" are the UK territorial police forces, so it would make sense to change "Police Area Agency" to "Territorial police force".
  2. Fine.
  3. Fine.
  4. Certainly in British English, an executive is a body of people, like the Shareholder Executive or the Scottish Executive. Whilst the intentions are spot on, I think that use of the word "executive" should be discouraged where possible and replaced with some other word. ninety:one 11:55, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Happy new year . . .

No, not forgotten. I had an unplanned wikibreak . . .

My wikitime is dropping off dramaticlly due to a change in circumstances, but I will do what I can regarding the above . . .

(I am dialled in now at only 41kbps . . . very painful! I thought about breaking my wikifast over the last two/three weeks but it would have meant dialling in at only 28kbps and then at very strange hours of the day when I needed to sleep - not very enticing. I am going to have to work off line mostly from now on I think - which makes debugging/copyediting very very painful. My "spec" above was done off line, for example.)

Cheers. Peet Ern (talk) 12:51, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Issues

  1. State LEAs are going into Category:Law enforcement agencies of STATENAME as well as Category:State law enforcement agencies of STATENAME.
    1.  Done Peet Ern (talk) 05:16, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
      1. Now lots of LEAs which shouldn't be are going into Category:State law enforcement agencies of STATENAME (eg Nassau County Police Department)! ninety:one 01:32, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
      2. Fix in progress. I have to implement more of the standard for lower levels of categorisation. Peet Ern (talk) 15:03, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
        1.  Done If things are not working still, please check that the relevant standard categories exist first. Peet Ern (talk) 14:21, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  2. Defunct LEAs are not categorising by State.
    1.  Done Peet Ern (talk) 05:19, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
  3. Municipal LEAs aren't being categorised into Category:Municipal police departments of STATENAME.
  4. Specialist LEAs are categorising into Category:Specialist law enforcement agencies
    1. This will happen whenever the relevant specialist category is not available. There are still several particular specialist categories to be created. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (law enforcement agency categories)#World view common category structure and naming. If a particular category is not available, then the template goes up the category tree until it finds a suitable parent category. Peet Ern (talk) 04:29, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
  5. We need a 'corrections' speciality parameter. I'll see if I can do this. ninety:one 19:43, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
I will try to get these done this week.
I can do corrections this week too - but see below.
In progress I have done more work on corrections. I think the template code is ready, but I have a lot of article checking to do and there might be a bit of category creating to do. And, the documentation will need some work. If all is okay then we will get probations soon after too. Peet Ern (talk) 14:21, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Ninetyone. To give me some independent test cases, can you list some example articles of the above please. Peet Ern (talk) 03:46, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Respectively:
  1. California Highway Patrol
  2. New York City Housing Authority Police Department - is still in specialist cats as well, even though it's defunct.
    1.  Done It will still go into the general specialist categories, otherwise we lose the nature of the agency, but it will no longer also go into the country division specialist category tree. Peet Ern (talk) 05:25, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
  3. New York City Police Department
  4. New York State Forest Rangers
    1. I have created Category:Environment and heritage law enforcement agencies. Peet Ern (talk) 04:29, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
ninety:one 22:33, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Corrections

But one question: Are corrections agencies law enforcement agencies? Many corrections agencies have law enforcement divisions / roles, for policing their institutions, but their primary role is NOT law enforcement, it is implementing a judicial order to incarcerate / correct/ rehabilitate an offender, not to enforce the law, but rather to carry out the law (a lawful direction to "correct"). They are part of the justice system, but I do not think they are law enforcement agencies. Indeed even agencies which have both law enforcement powers and "corrections" responsibilities are, as far as I am aware, at least in all democratic / open societies, have these two powers constitutionally or executively separated, they cannot arrest and incarcerate. (Note that detention is different from incarceration.) They can only incarcerate subject to a judicial order / sentence. Comment? Peet Ern (talk) 23:17, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

In most cases they are responsible for policing populations larger then many towns. For the sake of ease of coding, surely it is far easier to use this infobox rather then the government one (for the purpose of autocats?). In the interests of standard categorisation, it makes far more sense to include them with other LEAs - a jurisdiction (be it a sovereign or US state) will only have one agency, so having a category just for that would be silly. If a reader was looking for a DOC, they would expect to find them amongst LEAs. ninety:one 22:13, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
It is "easier enough" to have the LEA IB autocat them as "corrections", but where in the category tree sould they go? I have just found Corrections (which needs some work). There are also "half way houses", "community service order supervisors", "diversionary counselling services", etc, which are all part of the "corrections" set of entities, but getting further and further away from a "law enforcement agency" in nature. I have a similar problem with "probation departments". These are obviously all part of the justice system, but I do not think they are part of the LEA category tree. I am happy to autocat them all, and I think we should, but perhaps they should be part of another category tree, for example something like, Corrections Agencies, Probation Agencies, Law Enforcement Agencies all sub categories of Justice System Agencies? LEA IB can still do this, but I would probably have sub calls fixing the speciality, for example, from Template:Infobox Corrections calling Template:Infobox Law Enforcement Agency. Peet Ern (talk) 01:34, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
That's the best option I think. New York State calls them Criminal Justice Agencies, but there's no US-wide (let alone worldwide) term at all. I prefer Criminal Justice Agencies over Justice System Agencies. ninety:one 22:22, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
An I presume we also include commercial / priviately funded corporations which run prisons and provide other types of corrections services? Peet Ern (talk) 06:57, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
As we do for the private police forces of NYC. ninety:one 21:33, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
Resolved

I came across this template while cleaning up links to disambiguation pages, and found that when State is specified for the parameter divtype, the link points to the disambiguation page at state. Ideally, the link would point to a more specific article such as U.S. state. If there is any way this could be resolved, it would be greatly appreciated, and significantly reduce the number of articles that needlessly point to the disambiguation page. Peloneoustc 08:26, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

 Done Template will now link to State (administrative division) instead of State. Peet Ern (talk) 14:35, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Related: |divdab doesn't appear to work for autocat, cases in point: Atlanta Police Department, Georgia State Patrol and Georgia Bureau of Investigation. ninety:one 00:25, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

General ridiculousness involving redirects

I was editing Sûreté du Québec when I noticed that the link to the jurisdiction, Quebec, was Quebec (province). The latter is an unnecessary redirect, and figuring that someone had just made a mistake, I resolved to change the error. As it turns out, the error is hardcoded into this template, which I frankly find infuriating. For many if not most first-level subdivisions of countries, the name of the jurisdiction is the name of the article. For instance, none of Canada's provinces or territories need disambiguation; only one US state (Georgia (U.S. state)) requires disambiguation; similarly, only one state of Germany requires it (Bremen); only a few states of Brazil require it; and on and on and on. The point is, parentheses should be the EXCEPTION AND NOT THE RULE, and should certainly NOT be hardcoded in the template.

Other examples: Michigan State Police's infobox links to "Michigan, United States"; Massachusetts State Police, New Jersey State Police, New Hampshire State Police, etc., all link to "[their state] (state)", which is, as noted above, unnecessary and kind of silly.

In short: Please make it so that if divtype is "Province" or "State" the article it doesn't automatically go to divname (divtype); place the onus upon the editor to disambiguate. It's not impossible.

A more minor gripe: Generally speaking, links to "province" or "state" or whathaveyou go to the specific ones of the country in question, so a link talking about provinces with respect to Canada would link to provinces and territories of Canada as opposed to just province; similarly, when talking about the US, "state" links to U.S. state; when talking about India it links to states and territories of India. This isn't terribly important, but I'm just getting it out there. Lockesdonkey (talk) 17:34, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Over categorization

As it currently exists, this template over categorizes by placing articles into categories when the article is already included in multiple children categories. Given that the guidelines specifically recommend against this for this very reason, I believe that the removal of some, if not all, categorization by the template is warranted. The current strategy also places articles in categories that are intended to only include sub categories! Vegaswikian (talk) 22:15, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

It is a work in progress and I have been away from Wikipedia for some months. I will look at it over next week or two. Most of these issues are related to inconsistent and incomplete category structures for LEAs. Peet Ern (talk) 08:28, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
From what I can tell, all the US LEAs are still in Category:Law enforcement agencies of STATE even when properly categorised in Category:Municipal police deopartments of STATE etc. ninety:one(sch acct) 09:33, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
As a result of the template they may be in both. So the current template may be both the cause and your proof. If they are correctly categorized by the guideline they should only be in a sub category. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:57, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Washington state category

Hi, I'm trying to migrate all the Washington categories from "Washington (U.S. state)" to "Washington (state)" after a series of XfDs. However, I can't seem to change some of the contents of Category:Law enforcement agencies of Washington (U.S. state) to Category:Law enforcement agencies of Washington (state), specifically King County Sheriff's Office (Washington) and Washington State Patrol. I think it's because of some intricate coding in this infobox, which I'm loath to mess with. Can someone with better template kung-fu fix that for me?--Mike Selinker (talk) 00:57, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

It uses "ifexist", so if you delete it, it will stop using it. Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 02:26, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
Seems all set now. Thanks!--Mike Selinker (talk) 02:53, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

(Over)-Auto-categorization

This is generally regarded a being a bad idea - reasons at WP:Category

However, it is recommended that articles should not be placed in ordinary content categories using templates in this way. There are many reasons for this – editors cannot see the category in the wikitext; removing or restructuring the category is made more difficult (partly because automated processes will not work); inappropriate articles and non-article pages may get added to the category; sort keys may be unavailable to be customised per category; ordering of categories on the page is less controllable; and the "incategory" search term will not find such pages.

Also as per above I propose to remove this, transferring the categories to the article pages. Comments , suggestions, tips etc: welcome. Rich Farmbrough, 21:12, 1 May 2010 (UTC).

It was all part of a masterplan that Peet Ern, the creator of the template, had. When it works properly, it's invaluable (especially when it comes to the myriad of LEAs that is the USA). But when it doesn't, it's a bloody nightmare. I wouldn't be too sad to see it go, and that is due in no small part to the many messes I've had to clear up (mainly by turning it off and... doing it myself!). It'll take a lot of effort and co-ordination to do though. ninety:one 00:00, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
Can you turn it off for the US? That's where we currently have an over categorization problem. I took a look but did not find the source of the categories. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:15, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
We never did reach consensus on this; it's now got to the point where it's ridiculous: Category:Specialist law enforcement agencies is full of broken categorisations and I dread to think how many others there might be. Should we go ahead and maniually categorise as much as possible, and then knock the auto-categorisation on the head? ninety:one 15:45, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
I did another look and found up to three categories being added in {{Infobox law enforcement agency/main}}. Since there was no opposition above, any objection to removing those categories which are being added? Vegaswikian (talk) 19:05, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
I would support removing the entire autocategorisation component of this code, and just adding the categories manually. Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 22:15, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
It's vital that we manually categorise first, because a lot of articles do depend on this for categorisation and will be uncategorised if we just turn it off. I'll see how much I can do over the next few days. ninety:one 01:18, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
Thank you. Vegaswikian (talk) 01:31, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
Polícia de Segurança Pública – this page was auto-categorized under the syntactically incorrect "Category:National law enforcement agencies of the Portugal." I had to check the autocat template code to learn that the page would be autocategorized under the syntactically correct name only if page "Category:National law enforcement agencies of {{country}}" (without "the") already existed, but would default to "Category:National law enforcement agencies of the {{country}}", no matter if such page existed or not. I personally believe it should not try to be smarter than it can be, and default to not categorizing if no category page exists. Objections? --hydrox (talk) 21:32, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
I guess the question is, are we ready to turn auto categorization off? Its well past the three months listed above. If we break anything at this point, it can be fixed by manually adding in any required categories. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:06, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Problems with template

  1. Autolinking the nation contravenes WP:OVERLINK. Can this functionality be removed?
  2. The "month, day" parameter ignores the dmy date convention used in most countries outside the US. Could this also be fixed? --John (talk) 17:33, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Infobox does too much

I very strongly feel that pluralizations (among other things, such as article space categories) should be done in the article edit window, not in infoboxes (or other templates). It can lead to things like "Sniffer dogs (bombs and narcotics)[2]s" in the Kerala Police article. 71.197.246.210 (talk) 02:51, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Use of "Areas" as divtype

About 32 uses of this infobox have "Areas" as the divtype. These all link to the disambiguation page Areas. It would probably make more sense for the divtype to not be a link at all in the case where "Areas" is used. Hope somebody can improve the template to eliminate this problem. Thank you. SchreiberBike (talk) 01:34, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

The best way to do that would be to pluralise divtype automatically when there are multiple entries in divname. However I'm not really sure how you would differentiate that when you only have one divname field. If however you would apply the same logic as with preceding1, then it would work. That would require adding divname1, divname2, etc. and pluralise divtype, when divname2 has a value.--Ahmerkhan (talk) 08:26, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Categorization only in mainspace

To reiterate one of Rich's concerns above, could someone please change this template so it only categorizes in mainspace and not in userspace (e.g. User:Livitup/sandbox and User:SaltuFidei/sandbox) per WP:USERNOCAT? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 16:17, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Please add a parameter for flags

Please add a flag parameter. A lot of law enforcement agencies have flags of their own and it would be nice to have in the infobox. Illegitimate Barrister (talk) 04:17, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Add a 1px border outline for the flag parameter

Please add a 1px border outline for the flag parameter. This will help with some flags that are the same color as the background. Illegitimate Barrister (talk) 04:51, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Date format

Not sure why the date is formed through separate formedyear and formedmonthday parameters, but it creates a problem with date formats. The template was presumably created with the American mdy format in mind (i.e., formedmonthday, formedyear) but for articles using another date format, such as the British Metropolitan Police Service which uses dmy format, this template inserts a superfluous comma (i.e., "29 September, 1829"). This contradicts MOS:DATEFORMAT which states:

Wikipedia does not insert a comma between month and year, nor does it insert a full stop after the day (10 June 1921)

and provides this example of incorrect use:

9 June, 2001

—sroc (talk) 10:16, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I've just noticed this. This needs to be changed. Authors? Inglok (talk) 15:22, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Can someone fix this?

Osceola County Sheriff's Office links to Osceola, not Osceola County, Florida. There's also, for some reason, an entry on Special:WhatLinksHere/Osceola, Florida. --NE2 02:55, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

I fixed it using another Florida example. The display is not pretty, but it is linked to the correct article. Is there a way to specify a county in the template and have a simple name display? Apparently I did not spot it and some other editors also seem to have the same problem. Vegaswikian (talk) 03:33, 23 January 2014 (UTC)
Found it! Someone probably needs to go through all of these in the US and fix the ones that are incorrect. In trying for a fix here I found 2 out of 2 that I looked at with problems. Vegaswikian (talk) 03:38, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

‘overview’

This should read ‘oversight/supervision’ (noun) ‘overseen/supervised by’ (verb). – Kaihsu (talk) 18:54, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Request: Unmarked Vehicles Section

As many articles include information regarding details and specifics of "unmarked vehicles" i would like to request a section for these types of vehicles to be added to the infobox. Twillisjr (talk) 23:29, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Is this really sourceable? Also what exactly does "unmarked vehicles" mean? Department vehicles driven by officers or vehicles driven by civilians or both? Vegaswikian (talk) 23:59, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
Citing the Hamilton, New Jersey report here: http://www.hamiltonnj.com/filestorage/83868/202181/Police_Division_Annual_Report_2013.pdf
I was referring to a numerical figure, such as the "34 unmarked vehicles" mentioned in the article above. Twillisjr (talk) 18:33, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
That really does not answer the question. If you look at the document you see three (2) police motorcycles, one (1) civilian township vehicle, two (2) SMART Traffic Trailers, one (1) hazmat vehicle and one (1) township fleet. Obviously the three (2) indicates that the information is not accurate. Then why are the civilian township vehicle, SMART Traffic Trailers, hazmat vehicle and township fleet vehicles not counted as unmarked or better, marked? Bottom line every jurisdiction will count these differently and updating will be a nightmare with no guarantee that the number for one department will in any way be counted in a similar manner for a different department. Also note that this department does not consider the motorcycles as marked vehicles! That is simply incorrect. So I still see no reason to include this. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:29, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Upon reviewing the article, you are correct that three (2) can certainly confuse readers and writers alike, as it does not indicate an exact number. Twillisjr (talk) 18:46, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Auto-categorisation (again)

When there are |country= and |speciality#= parameters included, the template categorises the page into both "Category:Specialist law enforcement agencies" and "Category:Specialist law enforcement agencies of <country>". Can you please implement a check that prevents adding the main specialist category whenever there's a |country= provided? De728631 (talk) 14:10, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

De728631, can you provide me with an example article so I can debug this? Frietjes (talk) 18:44, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Facilities parameter needs changing

The "aircraft1" parameter displays the word "aircrafts" when it is used for fixed-wing aircraft. As the plural of "aircraft" is "aircraft", could this be changed please? I have also seen "motorcycless", but it was a simple edit to fix that. Cheers YSSYguy (talk) 23:21, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

YSSYguy, should be fixed. Frietjes (talk) 21:58, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
Indeed it is; thank you. Cheers YSSYguy (talk) 23:22, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Conversion to use infobox

I have converted this template to use template:infobox, but saved the old version (temporarily) in the sandbox for comparison on the testcases page. please let me know if there is a problem. Frietjes (talk) 16:56, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Autocat in "the Scotland" category

@Frietjes: Hello,

The template is currently placing four articles in Category:Defunct law enforcement agencies of the Scotland. I tried to have a quick look at {{Infobox law enforcement agency/autocat}} and did not find an obvious solution. Do you have an idea on how to correct this behaviour?

I think that the created category should either be Category:Defunct law enforcement agencies of Scotland or, as no such category exists, Category:Defunct law enforcement agencies of the United Kingdom or Category:Defunct police forces of Scotland. Actually, as these categories are already present in the article, it would be fine if the template didn't add any non-existing category. Place Clichy (talk) 18:11, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Place Clichy, fixed by adding another ifexist check. Frietjes (talk) 18:17, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
Thank you Frietjes! Place Clichy (talk) 18:21, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Brazilian military police

I've been working on some red-linked categories, this isn't my subject area at all, so I'm kinda hoping I can leave this one with you guys. <g> At the moment the template tries to put articles like São Paulo Highway Patrol into the red-linked Category:Military police agencies of Brazil whereas all its equivalents are in Category:Military police of the states of Brazil so I don't know whether the template needs to be more clever or the latter category needs to be renamed. Le Deluge (talk) 02:01, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Unhiding Notables

Hi. How do I nuke the [Hide] link? On National Guard of Russia there is no reason to [Hide] since there is only one notable. Is there a switch to turn off the [Hide] feature? Ping me back. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 19:54, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

@Checkingfax:  Done Will now auto only Hide/Show collapse if more than one notable item. Aoziwe (talk) 10:30, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

The parameter "officetype" gets an 's' appended when it is displayed

This appears to be by design, as what follows is expected to be a count and/or a list of offices. But the results are not right when "Headquarters" is specified as officetype, producing "Headquarterss" in the display ("headquarters" has no singular form, being a plural noun). See Dorset Police as an example. These are impossible to find using the current WP special:search function, but the new search back end CirrusSearch easily finds them. Also, "unittype" and "stationtype" have the same issue. Should the documentation warn editors about this, or should something be done to the template itself? This usage is suspect anyway as there is already a "headquarters" parameter. Chris the speller yack 17:13, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

possible to remove any trailing s, before adding it back again, but it would add some more complexity to the template. the same potential problem exists for most of the labels. Frietjes (talk) 17:54, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
@Chris the speller and Frietjes: I just found this issue on Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police Department. The "stationtype" variable in the template incorrectly displays as "Commands/Facilitiess". I changed the value to "Commands/Facilitie" so the output would correctly show "Commands/Facilities". Is there a better way to handle this? —danhash (talk) 18:15, 19 July 2016 (UTC)
danhash, now fixed. the code will now support adding the s to the label, without making it a double s. the next step would be to (1) create a tracking category with all the transclusions which are being auto suffixed, (2) have a bot change them all, (3) remove the hack. Frietjes (talk) 18:26, 19 July 2016 (UTC)
@Frietjes: Is the correct usage of this field to leave the "s" off, even in the case of a plural (such as "Facilitie")? —danhash (talk) 20:18, 20 July 2016 (UTC)
danhash, I think we should add the s to all of them, then remove the s-adding-hack from the template. removing the s-adding-hack would dramatically simplify the template. Frietjes (talk) 20:20, 20 July 2016 (UTC)
@Chris the speller and Danhash:, now tracking the pages which are being auto pluralized with Category:Pages using infobox law enforcement with automatic label pluralization. definitely not the best name for the category, but hopefully we won't need it for long :) Frietjes (talk) 22:46, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

date format

There is a problem with using formedmonthday and formedyear with standard formatted dates (only works in the case of US-formatted dates). An example is at Vehicle and Operator Services Agency where the "Formed" infobox entry comes out badly formatted. Alistair1978 (talk) 14:08, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

Are you referring to the comma inserted between the month and the year? Aoziwe (talk) 13:37, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
Alistair1978, I fixed it for you. Frietjes (talk) 14:55, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Categorization errors

At Mundy Township, Michigan, I have a section (subarticle) for the Metro Police Authority of Genesee County. I added this infobox. I have given the field its correct designation, legalpersonality = Governmental body corporate, per its governing document. How ever the ibox is appending "Non government:" before in and apparently categorizing it as a "Non-government law enforcement agencies". I am unsure of what would be an equivalent in the list show on the template page. Gendarmerie field is set to no, but the corresponding category is appended to the the article. Would removal of the the field help? Spshu (talk) 20:10, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Spshu, is this better? if not, tell me which category (if any) should be automatically added. if none, we can add a parameter to suppress the autocategorization. Frietjes (talk) 22:21, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
That does seem to be the closest government type that WP allows to what the interlocal agreement indicates that it is. The setting is gendarmerie = no, but it isn't suppressed. --Spshu (talk) 12:58, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
Spshu, we can make |legalpersonality=Governmental body corporate work if that's the most precise description. we just need to add that to the switch statement in Template:Infobox law enforcement agency/autocat. Frietjes (talk) 14:49, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
I just notice that it is displaying in the General nature field "Military provost","Secret police","Religious police". Removing those fields removed them and the Gendarmerie category. Spshu (talk) 21:14, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

mission

I'd like to propose removing mission statement from the infobox. Looking through articles which use this field, I've not found one mission statement that tells the reader anything. Examples:

  • Working in partnership to make our community safer
  • Policing <insert municipality here> 24 hours
  • Making <insert municipality here>safe for all the people we serve
  • Making <insert municipality here> safer for everyone through professional, progressive policing
  • To enhance the quality of life and well being of <insert municipality here> for all people by contributing to making our State a safe and secure place.
  • War on crime, care for victims
  • Safe, satisfied and confident communities

The words may be different but the messages are all pretty much the same. Additionaly, these statemetns are generally only referencable from a single source, the agency itself, mostly because no one cares about them outside of the agency. Dont confuse this proposal with a proposal to remove mottos from the infobox. Mottos are better known and more readily referenced in 3rd party reliable sources than mission statements and should remain in the infobox. Thoughts?--RadioFan (talk) 18:17, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Are there no objections to removing this item from the infobox?--RadioFan (talk) 17:00, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
I have no objections - most police officers in the UK have no interest in them either by the way...meaningless PR! Fairly obvious what a police force mission should be! I suppose the only thing of interest would be how the various police services try to say the same thing differently! Dibble999 (talk) 18:19, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
Now removed form /main as well... Rich Farmbrough, 13:57, 1 May 2010 (UTC).
  • I just came across this now, as the missing "mission" parameter now shows a warning notice at the top of the edit preview page for one of the agencies I was editing;
Warning: Page using Template:Infobox law enforcement agency with unknown parameter "mission" (this message is shown only in preview).
I have no idea how many other pages this affects (there's at least 7, per the 'examples' listed above, but I suspect there's many more). I wonder how much thought went into this before 1 guy arbitrarily removed it, because 2 other guys decided they didn't like it ("meaningless PR!") and an essay. This was poorly executed. It should've gone before a larger segment of the community for consensus. IMHO. - theWOLFchild 22:46, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Categorisation

I cannot work out why this infobox is categorising any agency directly in Category:Law enforcement agencies. It should only be categorising in subcats. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:02, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

  • That would be because you've stripped a necessary parameter to it across hundreds of articles, and you're at ANI for persistently refusing to rollback your changes.
You've claimed this "error" repeatedly now, yet we're still waiting for you to give either examples of it doing so, or to give an agreed specification for what it ought to be doing. In the absence of either of those, you're simply defending your own disruptive edits and throwing mud at others. Andy Dingley (talk) 23:03, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Categorisation

I cannot believe how none of the infobox afficionados here have realised quite how appalling the automatic categorisation imposed by this infox is. Is it not possible to turn the bloody thing off? For those of us with no skill in the arcane language of infoboxes it's far too complex to edit the categorisation to make it make some sort of sense and not bung agencies into endless categories that they shouldn't be in and don't need to be in. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:04, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Do you have examples of this? Either diffs, or if you have an example of relevant param values in, vs. categorization expected and actual categorization delivered. Thanks. Andy Dingley (talk) 18:51, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
Template talk:Infobox law enforcement agency/autocat#Specification? Test data? Andy Dingley (talk) 09:24, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Auto-categorisation by Template:Infobox law enforcement agency

I closed WP:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2018_April_1#Category:Specialist_police_agencies_of_India as merging/renaming various categories "Specialist police agencies of FooCountry" to "Specialist law enforcement agencies of FooCountry".

However, some pages are stuck in the old cats where they have been auto-categorised by Template:Infobox law enforcement agency:

Template:Infobox law enforcement agency looks fiendishly complex, and I can't see how to modify it. Can anyone help? @Rehman and Plastikspork can you fix this? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:00, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi BrownHairedGirl. This problem is almost fixed (see section immediately above). I will attempt to switch versions tomorrow. I was intentionally holding back the change, in case anyone wants to raise any concerns. Regards, Rehman 17:08, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, @Rehman. I didn't expect your fix to cover this, but good to know it does. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:15, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Trim brackets

I added some {{Trim brackets}} for Border Guard (Poland) and others. my personal preference would be to remove all autolinking, but if we are going to be autolinking, we need to avoid double linking. Frietjes (talk) 21:10, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Gendarmerie

Please change the link for "gendarmerie" so it points to the article about gendarmerie rather than a section of law enforcement agency as follows:

  • under data29, modify [[Law enforcement agency#gendarm|Gendarmerie]] to just [[Gendarmerie]] i.e. remove the pipe.

Thank you. 2A02:C7D:3C1A:7300:A441:A10D:AA3F:154F (talk) 22:15, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

 Done –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 00:36, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

Random space

There is currently a problem with this template. There seems to be an unnecessary gap after the "headquarters" parameter and whatever the next parameter is, and I have looked at the source and I can't work out what the problem is. Can someone please fix this. For example, look at British Transport Police and Metropolitan Police Service, both of which have an extra line of space after the headquarters and before the "police officers" parameter. ElshadK (talk) 19:38, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

ElshadK, this is fixed. Thanks for raising it. Cheers, Rehman 14:43, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Template cleanup and fixes

Hi User:Plastikspork. May I ask for your kind assistance in listing parameter usages for this template please? I'm currently working on some cleanups and fixes based on this thread. As always, thank you for you help :-) Rehman 13:30, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

@Rehman: see User:Plastikspork/Law enforcement agency. Thanks! Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 16:44, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
Thanks a lot User:Plastikspork! Deeply appreciate the super fast response! Rehman 02:19, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Hello @Rathfelder:, @Pigsonthewing:, @Canterbury Tail:, @Necrothesp:, @Waggers:, @Mangoe:, @Swarm:, @Paul August:. Apologies for the late action (I've been busy in RL and was also occupied with other wikimedia tasks). I've simplified much of the existing template; the template now generates from Template:Infobox law enforcement agency itself (instead of another universe of subtemplates and sub-subtemplates), and all autocategorisations are removed. Please have a look at User:Rehman/sandbox2 and let me know your thoughts. Both versions (current and sandboxed) are displayed for your ease of comparison.

Minor adjustments may be necessary depending on your requirements (i.e. style or function) - feel free to do so directly, or let me know and I'll do my best to do it. One major concern I see is that a fully filled infobox is gigantic. If you look at Plastikspork's scan on all parameter usages, you can see that despite having so many parameters, only the top 67 are used by over 100 articles. So maybe you (those who are familiar with the law enforcement subject) could help start a separate discussion on significantly shortening the template? Of course, that can be done as a separate task.

Looking forward to your inputs. Cheers, Rehman 09:08, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

Apologies folks. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Things might have been different if I had not had a seven year wiki hiatus. Lesson learnt. Aoziwe (talk) 11:47, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
Hello again @Rathfelder:, @Pigsonthewing:, @Canterbury Tail:, @Necrothesp:, @Waggers:, @Mangoe:, @Swarm:, @Paul August:. Any objections in changing the current version to the sandbox version? If not, I'll go ahead and make the change, and then after about a week (to see if any issues pop up), clean up all the subpages and documentation. Cheers, Rehman 05:02, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
Fine by me. Rathfelder (talk) 08:20, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
Seems good to me. Canterbury Tail talk 12:15, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

@Rehman: I just spotted that autocategorisations are removed. That is a good idea in principle, and will resolve the issue I raised below ... but it will probably also have some unwanted consequences. In at least some of the >1600 transclusions of this template, the article will be relying on the autocategorisations to categorise the article.

If autocategorisation is simply switched off without preparation, then those articles will no longer be properly categorised. What preparations have been made to identify and fix the relevant articles?

Pinging the editors who you pinged above: @Rathfelder, Pigsonthewing, Canterbury Tail, Necrothesp, Waggers, Mangoe, and Swarm: ?--BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:55, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

I am very happy to go through them. Most were overcategorised, so the problem may not be as bad as it looks. Rathfelder (talk) 20:58, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
Hello @Rathfelder, Pigsonthewing, Canterbury Tail, Necrothesp, Waggers, Mangoe, Swarm, Paul August, and BrownHairedGirl: I've done the transition. Please do flag any issues here. P.s. I'll be flying on Monday evening (Colombo time), but will be available before and after. Once everything seems settled, I'll proceed to update trackers and documentation. Happy editing! Rehman 15:09, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
On a small sample the categories seem fine. But there is a problem with the Legal personality in the infobox. I've restored all the countries I removed from the infoboxes. Rathfelder (talk) 17:56, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
Hi, just want to report something here. When I read the Royal Malaysia Police and Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency articles which using this template, there is something that missing like the website link and the addition of some unnecessary comma that probably caused by the recent template update. Night Lantern (talk) 13:42, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
Night Lantern, thank you, should be fixed now (fixed numbering error and used {{comma separated entries}}). Frietjes (talk) 14:45, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
Thank you for fixing it, Frietjes. :-) Noted that Rathfelder's concern is also fixed. Cheers, Rehman 16:21, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
Thank you very much. Rathfelder (talk) 17:29, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
Well done everyone, good to see we got there in the end. WaggersTALK 13:43, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
Happy to have been able to help. I'll be working on cleaning up the subpages and documentation within the next few days, and then we can close this case. Cheers, Rehman 14:39, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Hello again. Cleanup of subpages, and merging of code to doc pages are complete. Someone who is familiar with the template's parameter usages may need to review the documentation though, as it seems quite complicated/messy (to me, at least). Other than that, this thread can now be closed. Cheers, Rehman 07:06, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Parameter not displaying

|speciality1=border does nothing. There is a list here of all the enumerated values; I experimented a little and found some display as expected and others (e.g. border, postal) don't. Frietjes, can you take a look. Example is Podlaski Border Guard Regional Unit. Thanks. MB 03:26, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

User:MB, I would suggest asking Rehman who removed border from the list of valid types with this edit. using a subtemplate like Template:Specialist lea type descr seems better than a copy-and-paste of the exact same #switch: statement times. at the very least, there should be a warning/error and a tracking category when the input is invalid. Frietjes (talk) 13:00, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
Special Operations Command (Singapore) is another example. This also has |unittype= that does not display or cause an error. MB 16:59, 1 December 2019 (UTC)
Rehman, still waiting for a response. MB 22:57, 13 December 2019 (UTC)
Hi MB. Apologies for missing the pings (my RL situation has changed, hence I'm unable to dedicate as much time here as I used to, at least for a couple of months). As this was a bug missed in the previous reviews, I'm moving this as a subsection of the previous discussion, and pinging the previously involved editors: @Rathfelder, Pigsonthewing, Canterbury Tail, Necrothesp, Waggers, Mangoe, Swarm, Paul August, and BrownHairedGirl:
Would you, or anyone pinged, please confirm what that function is supposed to do? From what I understand, adding any of the short codes ("code" column) mentioned at Template:Specialist lea type descr, should simply output the corresponding values in column "Description". Is that correct? If so, I'll attempt to add the functionality (or worst case at least restore part of the old code). Cheers. Rehman 15:00, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
@MB, would you be able to confirm please? I'd be glad to sort this out. Cheers, Rehman 09:36, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
Rehman, I have not been involved in this template before and don't know much about it. I just happened across this issue by doing gnomish cleanup work on articles in Category:Pages using infobox law enforcement agency with unknown parameters, so I was waiting for others to respond. It seems reasonable to me to allow all the values in the table, unless there was some reason previously given not to. Frietjes suggestions on implementation should be used also so there is tracking of invalid values. MB 16:20, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
Hi MB. As a number of articles was impacted, I went ahead and integrated that template into this infobox. The parameter codes should now work as before. Furthermore, the trackers are already in place (it just didn't work for this case, as it was nested in another template). Let me know if there are any further issues/changes. Cheers, Rehman 10:23, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
Rehman, I looked at the cases I identified previously and now they are displaying the values in the infobox as I would expect. But I don't see any tracking of errors. I tried using |speciality1=xyz (xyz is obviously not a valid value in the table) and there was no error message or maintenance category. Did you mean something else by "trackers"? MB 04:48, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
MB: Yes, I meant the error would be generated if the user used something invalid like |special1= instead of |speciality1=. Rehman 08:28, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Well, it would be useful if, as Frietjes said above, "there should be a warning/error and a tracking category when the input is invalid". Could you add it sometime if you have time? MB 18:29, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Horizontal image arrangement

While we're on the subject of improvements to the template, I have an idea. May somebody more skilled in template editing please rearrange the images ("patch", "badge", "seal", "flag" specifically) so that they appear side-by-side (like they do in country and settlement infoboxes) instead of vertically? This would save space and thus look better on horizontal displays. An example of what this would probably look like can be seen here. – Illegitimate Barrister (talk • contribs), 10:42, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

I've edited the template so the images now display horizontally. Let me know what you all think! – Illegitimate Barrister (talk • contribs), 12:39, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
Hi Illegitimate Barrister, I think it is best for this infobox to have its own sub template instead of using Template:Infobox settlement/columns. The code used from Template:Infobox settlement, this infobox does not use parameters |flag_size=, |flag_border=, |flag_link=, |flag_alt= and the same for logo, patch and badge. The caption for the images now does not default to "Patch/Logo/Badge/Flag of the". The infobox used to use |imagesize= for all images I think and you could tweak the images sizes otherwise it defaulted to 140px, imagesize doesn't work anymore. For example, Bedfordshire Police only 1 image the logo, and it's small I couldn't increase its size. In 2018, 165 articles used |imagesize= from User:Plastikspork/Law enforcement agency.--Melbguy05 (talk) 07:06, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
That looks horrible the vertical was just fine the way it was - FOX 52 (talk) 18:22, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Add a national spelling option?

@MB, Rehman, and Frietjes: Greetings and felicitations. Currently the template uses British/Commonwealth spelling, and has no option to change that. This means that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program has "programmes" listed in its infobox, which violates MOS:TIES. I'd like to add the option to change the field to "program" for agencies/articles that use American spelling, but I'm not familiar enough with the markup to do so with confidence. Would someone please be so kind as do it for me? —DocWatson42 (talk) 06:26, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

DocWatson42, if you change |programme1= to |program1= it should change the spelling in the label (e.g., fixed here). Frietjes (talk) 13:26, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
@Frietjes: Thank you very much! ^_^ —DocWatson42 (talk) 03:38, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
"Fictional" parameter also has the spelling issue, defaults to UK spelling with no parameter for other varieties. – Illegitimate Barrister (talk • contribs), 17:13, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
For clarity: "This is a fictional organisation" only, with no option for "This is a fictional organization". (If it puzzled me, it might puzzle other editors.) —DocWatson42 (talk) 04:17, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Preceding and superseding parameters

Why does the preceding agency parameter include a bullet point, whilst the superseding agency does not? This doesn't look consistent. See the example of the Royal Ulster Constabulary infobox. The template should be re-written to not include a bullet point when there is only one preceding agency. Elshad (talk) 16:57, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

@Elshad: the preceding agency parameter is a bullet list of up to six entries |preceding1= to |preceding6=. If there is only one entry it still gets bulleted. The parameter might be able to be coded if only |preceding1= no bullet otherwise bullet. Superseding agency is not a bulleted list as it is for only one entry |superseding=.--Melbguy05 (talk) 23:42, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
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