Template talk:Infobox settlement/Archive 2

Combining Infobox U.S. City into Infobox City

Please see go to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cities#New comparison of Infobox city and Infobox U.S. city for a comparison between the two infoboxes and comment on whether we should have one standardized infobox. —MJCdetroit 19:38, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Please Vote at WP:CITY on the deprecation of Template:Infobox U.S. City and article conversion to Template:Infobox City. Infobox comparison and discussion is directly above the vote. harpchad 03:12, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Border around flags

The flags that appear on the Main Page are given a 1px border to separate white areas of the flag from the background. Can the same thing be done so that pages like Washington, D.C. don't have odd looking flags that blend in with the background? --MZMcBride 18:24, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, good point, I'll play around with it. harpchad 03:25, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I've added a subtle border, let me know if you think it's enough. harpchad 02:37, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

I did the same earlier, but screwed up the syntax - thanks for fixing that, harpchad. THEPROMENADER 08:17, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

One table row per row

I've created a version of this template at User:Rick Block/Template:Infobox City that is visually extremely similar but uses a separate table row for each visible row. This change is important for accessibility reasons (screen readers generally read HTML rows a cell at a time). If anyone objects to this new version, please speak up. Assuming no objections, I'll update the template to this version in a few days. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:25, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I think this template is more than acceptable. The only major visual difference I notice is the change from class infobox to class infobox bordered. It is (very) slightly less visually appealing to me than the borderless one, but I think it's a good tradeoff to gain the accessibility. Good work Rick. harpchad 03:23, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I just made this update. I intended to include all the changes that have happened since May 31, if anyone notices any recent changes that are missing please accept my apologies (and either redo the change or let me know the specific change that I missed). -- Rick Block (talk) 23:28, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Metric precedence

Average citizens in the United States do not think in terms of kilometers. Can this infobox be set to not use metric precedence in the listed measurements for specific cities? Nova SS 17:48, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I understand what you are saying Nova. There are two things from Europe that we as Americans have never really cared for: one is professional soccer and the other is the metric system. In order to make a universal template, we set up Infobox city to be used by any city page (not just U.S. Cities) and viewed by anyone—even European soccer players who think in square kilometers. Therefore, the metric system not only needs to be listed but it should be listed first in the infobox. We did include parameters for adding English meausurements in. So if you don't think in terms of square kilometers (or metres), then just look at the square miles (or feet). If the English measurements are not present then add them in. See the examples above. —MJCdetroit 18:51, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Flag Resizing

The new template seems to have the same trouble as the old one, in that it resizes flags to fit the template. This ends up looking grainy when it blows up a smaller flag. Could a flagsize variable be added?--Rosicrucian 18:44, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Imperial units for non-US cities

Can Imperial units be added to non-US cities, or will that get shot down? youngamerican (talk) 12:11, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

They can be added. Why not? Metric Units are in U.S. cities aren't they. See the example above in Usage. As for them getting shot down—per WP:MOSNUM conversions should not be removed. If you are worried about it you could place an editor's comment next to the value saying something like "Do not remove per WP:MOSNUM" or something. —MJCdetroit 12:53, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. youngamerican (talk) 12:59, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Converted back from infobox bordered to infobox. Any reasons why?

I noticed that Jnk reverted the infobox bordered (21:20, June 2, 2006). Was there any problems with it bordered?—MJCdetroit 03:15, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

See the WP:CITY talk page for my comments. I guess we should move all of the template discussion over here. harpchad 13:04, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

City subdivision

Why isn't there a field for subdivisions of cities? A pair of parameters "city_subdivision_name" and "city_subdivision_number" could correct that and allow template:Infobox city pt to be merged here. Circeus 12:32, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

I have to second this - just noticed it while testing this template's interchangability with Template:Major French Cities. THEPROMENADER 12:37, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

I'll add this, but before I do are city_subdivision_name and city_subdivision_number the best names for these fields? They do sound a bit confusing, especially since we already have subdivision_type and subdivision_name. Maybe we should call them city_subdivision_type and city_subdivision_number for consistency? (In city pt city_subdivision_name = No. of parishes and in the france template it would be either Subdivisions or Arrondissements). Also, what's the best place for this to go? Is right under subdivision_type and subdivision_name logical at all? —Jnk^[talk] 02:36, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Separate 'City' field from statistical info

Before getting involved here I had been toying since months, with much debate, on how to present city information in a city article. A problem I have quite often come across is an ambiguity between what "is" the city and what isn't - a limit usually confounded using statistical areas independant of all official administrative limits.

For this I thought it best to make things crystal-clear through the following method: having one section of the infobox dedicated to all that is officially 'city' within its official administrative city limits, then having another section below reserved for the agglomeration (urban area) and commuter belt (metropolitan area) that spread past these limits. I called this lower section "urban spread" but perhaps there is a better title. Also, I formatted the UA and MA lines in a different way - title with land area to its right, population below - that allowed for an instant cross-comparison for a clear idea of spread/density. Please have a look at the Paris article (or any of the articles using the Template:Major French Cities) for an example of this. This was the best clarity/space-saving solution I could find. THEPROMENADER 12:49, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Design Tweaks

(NOTE This section moved from Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Cities)

If there is no objection I would like to do a design tweak or two - reduced line-height, italics for the motto and things like that. I also found it useful to add a grey line around the box reserved for sity flags - some are white. If you would like an example of how this works have a look at Template:Major French Cities and the Paris article. THEPROMENADER 15:05, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

No objection here. Be bold. —MJCdetroit 15:16, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Ahh, I've been looking for a good way to add a flag border. Go for it... harpchad 16:05, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, guys. I can see to it tomorrow morning then. THEPROMENADER 23:21, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

One thing I'd like to change as per the template mentioned above: I'd like to put the coordinates underneath the plan - this would seem a logical place for info like this, non? THEPROMENADER 23:23, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

(Scratching head) I managed to put in the abovementioned line-height changes, but for the grey-line box, no go for the moment. Can anyone suggest where to read up on template syntax? I'm missing a thing or two in my repertoire, especially the {{!}} sign.
PS - there's a couple things I think could improve overall - getting rid of the three tones of grey (through title crossbar, left column, right column), for example. This should stand out from the page - how about some white? THEPROMENADER 21:47, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Locke cole used to know a lot about this kind of stuff but he deleted himself after a bad revert war with Netoholic. User:Rick Block maybe able to help you with any questions. —MJCdetroit 22:28, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

See m:Help:Advanced templates. {{!}} is template:! (!), used within a #if that generates wikitable syntax in place of | (which has a meaning within a #if that conflicts with its table-related meaning). -- Rick Block (talk) 22:36, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I added a subtle border to the flag, 1 pixel pad, 1 pixel grey. Right now it's just un-wikified table tags, looks ok in the gecko based browsers and safari. You windows folks might want to give it the IE test. Is it strong enough or should it be darker, wider? harpchad 02:46, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

(grin) harpchad, you just took the code I had inserted earlier and de-muxed it - thanks. I am not sure how to insert a 'wikitable' into a 'wikitable' in one line - is there some way of doing this? BTW, there's a note on this on the template talk page itself too. THEPROMENADER 12:34, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure, I played with it a little bit but it never came out right using the wiki tags. I need to go read up on the table tags a little more I think. harpchad 13:00, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

class bordered or not

I noticed that the class changed back to plain infobox. Rick has been doing some testing with this. It introduces one problem, now that all of the fields are in separate rows it puts a white line between every field. Before it only appeared between major sections because we aligned everything visually using br tags. Rick was able to achieve the same effect with the bordered class using the mergedrow styles and bordercollapse, but the unbordered infobox class doesn't have the extra styles to make this work (styles come from MediaWiki:Common.css). Until we can figure out how to make it work with borderless (perhaps by defining our own styles) I think we should switch back to infobox.bordered. What do you guys think? harpchad 02:58, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, it is not possible to remove the white lines between rows using the plain infobox style. This is because the border-collapse property for the unbordered style is not set to collapse (which means the border properties are unused). I changed the template to infobox.bordered so the gray background for the merged rows would be continuous, like it used to be. I played around with using a white border line with a bordered style to emulate borderless, but this seemed to interfere with the outside border. I strongly recommend we just live with the border lines. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:47, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

and the reason to go with separate rows for the items is to make the table accessible to folks using a screen reader. Having a collection of labels on separate lines in one cell with corresponding values on separate lines in an adjacent cell makes the contents extremely difficult to understand unless you can see the presentation. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:52, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

I have a strong aversion to the appearance of infobox bordered, but this is obviously a personal preference. Maybe one could try to use coloring more like Template:Infobox Town MA, Template:Infobox University, or Template:Infobox Company (example usage: Lowell, Massachusetts, Columbia University, ExxonMobil). All three of these have individual table rows for each label/data pair and use the infobox class. —Jnk^[talk] 17:08, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

I'd be OK with this format, but it seems more different from the current look than adding borders (the shading for the label column goes away). Although it actually uses infobox.bordered, the current version of template:infobox Country doesn't really have a bordered look. It's not obvious to me that it makes sense to decide this on a template by template basis, particularly similar templates within a broad topic (e.g. geography). IMO, the overall style (bordered or not, labels shaded or not, etc.) should be specified using a CSS style and not overriden template by template. To some extent I'm loathe to suggest this since the broader the scope of the discussion the less likely any consensus can be reached, but perhaps this should actually be a MoS discussion. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:05, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

I may be wrong, but as far as I could tell as of May 16 Template:Infobox Country doesn't use infobox or infobox bordered. I would hope we could come to a consensus on this template alone, rather than trying to create an MoS entry for geography infobox templates. Perhaps after we're able to form a consensus on what to do on this template it would be appropriate, and easier, to bring the discussion to a broader scale like the MoS. Another example to look at is Template:Infobox U.S. City, as well as all of the city templates listed on harpchad's user page. —Jnk^[talk] 18:54, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

I think Rick made a good point when he said the template shouldn't use inline styles. That makes a lot on sense to me. If at some point down the road MediaWiki stops generating XHTML and switches to whatever the next thing is, or some of the styles are deprecated, all they have to do is update Common.css (or replace it) to fix all of the infoboxes. Otherwise every infobox has to be updated by hand. It also seems like the best way to provide a consistent style for all infoboxes. Between the two I think I prefer bordered due to its border-collapseabiliy, and it's visual style is growing on me. I didn't prefer it at first, but It's defiantly better than what we have now, the white lines between everything is distracting. I'm going to flip it back until we come to a consensus on where to take it. If no borders is the decision then I think it needs to look more like the original template rather than the exiting one (make border collapse work). harpchad 21:36, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Jnk's right (my mistake), template:Infobox Country doesn't use infobox at all. It uses a mostly borderless border-collapse: collapse style with explicit borders added between groups of rows (embedded within a larger bordered frame, so the internal borders don't extend to the outside border) - which strkes me as excessively complicated for the task at hand, but hey, whatever turns you on. I'm not sure, but I think Template:Infobox U.S. City is likely going to be deleted (per WP:TFD) and replaced with this one which at least some folks are wanting to be the one and only true template for cities (i.e. the list from Harpchad's page ultimately will be deleted in favor of this one). I think this makes the primary consistency issue (for geography articles) simplify down to this template vs. template:Infobox Country (although there are still lots and lots of geography related templates that derive from the older, infobox.bordered, version of template:Infobox Country). I'm not a graphic designer, and not a CSS expert, and don't really have a strong preference for one visual look over another - but I think Wikipedia's appearance should be relatively consistent and I'm willing to insist that infoboxes not include features that make their content inaccessible to folks using screen readers (I don't think there's any argument about this - just stating my position). So, where to go from here? There's at least one user unhappy with the new look of template:Infobox Country, and it doesn't use a style from common.css either (which I think makes its look harder to copy than it should be). I suspect a lot of folks would argue that the current look of Template:Infobox_City (borderless, but with the shaded label column exposing borders between each row) is not acceptable. I think unshaded, bordered in groups is stylistically very similar to the current template:Infobox Country. Does your (Jnk) aversion to borders extend to the current look of template:Infobox Country? I don't think there's a way to create this look without nesting the table inside a frame, which I think means it can't simply be a table style from common.css. I'm not sure there's going to be a way to make everyone happy, but I'm willing to try to work it out here. How about bordered, in groups, no shading, and an even fainter border color? -- Rick Block (talk) 21:41, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

It sounded to me like people's objection to class infobox since the screen reader changes is the white gaps between all the cells. I've been bold gotten rid of those entirely and switched back to infobox, as we were before the screen reader changes. (This has also changed the outside-border look so it's a bit more like infobox bordered even though we're still using infobox. I like the reduction in the number of lines, particularly the vertical line down the middle. Please let me know what you think. —Jnk^[talk] 17:08, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

-'s

I would like to remove the -'s before the subheadings (i.e., -City, -Land, -Water, -Density, -Summer, etc.,), and just let the white-space that's already there do the job. If you look at San Jose you can see under "Country, State, County" what it looks like without the dashes, as they don't use them for that self-defined region. Do people have objections to this? —Jnk^[talk] 17:24, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

This sounds good to me. harpchad 18:35, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Since I didn't hear any objections to the removal of the dashes in the last two days, I've implemented the change. Rick, do you have more suggestions for the spacing in the right column? I'm not a big fan of the indents either, I just didn't quickly stumble upon anything better. —Jnk^[talk] 23:16, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Indenting

Can we dispense with the spaces on the value side? It looks highly awkward to me. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:18, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I just tried getting rid of those spaces and I didn't really like the look, especially in the area section. Right now you're visually attracted to the most important number because it's left aligned, without the indent it's more of a mess I think. Maybe if we make the sub-data a smaller font then the indent could be removed? —Jnk^[talk] 03:31, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I would suggest arranging things in a more 'instinctive' way - all looks fine to one knowing something on the subject of population, density, etc, but to one new to this type of info it takes a second or two to understand the correlation between each statistic. I've made a suggestion a few times before, but perhaps someone else has one on this? THEPROMENADER 23:35, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm having trouble visualizing what it would look like. There would be one section for each of city, metro and urban that would contain area, population, and density? I propose we create another template called Template:Infobox City/Test Where we can play with these ideas. Having our own sandboxes is good for initial expieramentation, but everybodys code gets out of sync with each other (and the main), making merging difficult after a while. With the test template we can promote our changes there for testing without affecting the main infobox. :) --harpchad 00:32, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps only two levels of indent, i.e. either left aligned or indented? Under Government, for example (at Template:Infobox City/Test) there are currently 3 different indentations. I understand there is meaning attached, but I think the general effect is pretty close to "random indentation" that simply looks sloppy. BTW - if we're going to use Template:Infobox City/Test for testing (which I think is a good idea) I think it would be good to have side-by-side examples with the current, actual template, on one side (left I suppose) and the proposed change next to it. I'll change it to show this. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:41, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

I think the "area" heading itslef makes the infobox longer than it really needs to be, especially since there is never any corresponding data on the right side. Perhaps we can change the heading to "Total City Area" and then the indents will be below that. I'm not sure about the wording of that heading though, doesn't sound right to me. Any ideas? —Jnk^[talk] 16:30, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Location of coordinates

ThePromenader had suggested that the coordinates be moved to below the map. You can take a look at this change over here. If there are no objections I'll put this in. —Jnk^[talk] 17:48, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Looks good as long as there is a map. If not there is no visual break between the motto and the coordinates, the location header doesn't display because it's tied to the image. We need some way to deal with infoboxes that have coordinates but no map, maybe center it down at the bottom above the website on those? harpchad 18:35, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

I hadn't thought of that. I'll work something up. Maybe if there is no map we should just leave the coordinate display as it is now, between population and elevation? —Jnk^[talk] 18:49, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

I decided it's better to keep the information in a consistent location, so if you're looking for the coordinates they're always at the same place in the box, whether there's a map or not. I added a delineation between motto/nickname that appears only if there's no map. Take a look without map and with map. —Jnk^[talk] 19:15, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

That's better, looks good to me. --harpchad 19:36, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Since I didn't hear any objections to moving the coordinates in the last two days, I've implemented the change. —Jnk^[talk] 23:16, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Looks Good, works well with all the cobinations of map, motto and nickname I tested. --harpchad 13:34, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Population density question

Is population density correctly calculated from total area or land area? I have noticed a couple of pages that provide conflicting population densities. In the two articles I noticed this in, it seems that the value reported in the infobox is based on total area, while the value from the Demographics section of the text is based on land area. For example, see New Orleans, Louisiana where the values differ by roughly a factor of two. The 1990 numbers on this pdf document from the U.S. Census site seem to suggest that they use land area rather than total area.--GregRM 00:22, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

This is from the U.S. Census Bureau's website

Persons per square mile is the average number of inhabitants per square mile of land area. These figures are derived by dividing the total number of residents by the number of square miles of land area in the specified geographic area. The land area measurement is from the Census 2000. To determine population per square kilometer, multiply the population per square mile by .3861.

Hope that helps.—MJCdetroit 00:31, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks.--GregRM 01:40, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

I've noticed this too, several of the articles are inconsistant. I think people aren't sure where to find the areas. Perhaps we need to create a section that links to good sources of infomation for the infobox. i.e. I've been using the Census 2000 U.S. Gazetteer Files from here. I imported the places2k file into excel and added the columns I needed. This is a good source for city information, the ua2k file is good for urban area and pop. I haven't found a relly good source for MSA's? --harpchad 00:43, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

If you are looking for MSAs, you can find definitions here or you can do a search in the American FactFinder to find something like this. —Mike 05:26, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Government section

Is it possible to have the ability to put what kind of "government" the city has. As well as a field to state the governing board and appropriate members? For an example see Template:Infobox Town NH which is used at Epping, New Hampshire. I would make the change myself, but I don't know how to do the coding. --Assawyer 01:36, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

I am currently working on this, but it maybe a little while before the bumps are worked out. I have been spending time just tring to get the all the former U.S. city infoboxs switched over to this infobox. For what it is worth here is what it looks like now (it will change) and it is for a Canadian city, but it will work for New Hampshire just as well. User:MJCdetroit/Sandbox3 —MJCdetroit 02:15, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Optional City council section added

I created (with some help from Rick Block) and added a city council section to the template. This is an optional field with up to 12 names. I put the council member names in the Detroit, Michigan infobox if you want to see an example. Feel free to tweak it if needed.—MJCdetroit 20:24, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the change to Template:Infobox City. Would it be possible to have a field to designate the title of the board, like is done for the "Leader." Some cities have a Board of Alderman, not just a City Council. I will make the changes, hope Thanks for all your hard work! --Assawyer 20:20, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Also, the names of the field should be more generic instead of "city_council," since not all cities have a council. Something like "city_board" would work. I will make the changes and hopefully I don't screw anything up. --Assawyer 20:39, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

I have made the appropriate changes. --Assawyer 21:23, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Why was the city council option added to the infobox? This adds WAY too much clutter to the infobox and is unnecessary. The city council info that was added to the Detroit, Michigan article looked horrible! A Mayor listing is all that is needed for the infobox and the city council listings are best left for the government section. Dr. Cash 22:34, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

It was added because not all cities operate on the Mayor's say so. The option was added because many cities have legislative/executive bodies that govern the city in lieu of the citizens' directly deciding on governance issues. By including the information about who runs the city it provides readers with a better understand of who governs the city and how the city government it structured. Plus not all cities are run by mayors, that is why that section of the Infobox is entitled "leader." I believe their should be a field to at least state what unit is the governing body of the city. --Assawyer 23:42, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Your idea of at least having a field to state what the governing body is actually a good idea. Actually, it might be nice to add a single option to the infobox that we could use to link to the city council (or whatever) page, that would have a listing as well as other information about how the city council operates. Dr. Cash 02:04, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Too bad Nashville has 40 city council members. Kaldari 00:24, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to revert back to the Infobox version by MJCdetroit/Assawyer. I think Dr. Cash has a valid concern, but since the field is optional I think it's more appropriate to revert the changes to the Detroit article rather that remove the functionality from the template. As Assawyer said, not all cities have a mayor/citiy manager type of government, so I think it's important to retain this functionality while we work out the details. Dr. Cash, can you work out the problems with the Detroit infobox over on it's talk page? If the feeling is that the board section is too obtrusive maybe you can help us work that out over here. In the case of Cities like Nashville, I think we have to stick with naming the Mayor and leaving the city councilmen to the main article. --harpchad 00:55, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

I've reverted back to the original infobox again. This is just a bad idea on so many counts. Yes, I understand that many cities (most, actually) have legislative AND executive areas. But the idea of an infobox is for quick information. Adding to much information greatly reduces the whole concept and it makes the pages look absolutely terrible. There's just too many city council members and probably way too many variations in the sizes to make this standard for an infobox. Dr. Cash 02:02, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

I do stress that it is purely optional. An option to be debated by the editors of the individual city pages. This option arose out of a specific need. If this template is going to be the standard template by which any city in the world can use it then there will be many other options included in the template. Also, perhaps Detroit was not the best example to use, but based on my name I think that it is pretty fair to say that I knew where to find those names the quickest and easiest. Therefore, I changed the example to Epping, New Hampshire. I am reverting the template back. Please, don't simply revert it back. It is only on one page. Give other editors (especially those from NH) a chance to look at the example. Remember, it is just an option.—MJCdetroit 02:14, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

There are over 1.000 articles using this template. Each change causes the software to invalidate the squid cache for all articles that use it. A revert war is simply unacceptable. Please stop it. Take this issue to the talk page. -- Rick Block (talk) 05:32, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

I do not find these new variables particularly useful in their current form. I am not opposed to the addition of this type of data, but as they are right now I would have to vote for their removal.

• Because the two column listing is relying on the outside table structure the two columns are not centered or equal in size. This doesn't look right to me, and if a city councilor happens to have a long name the entire left column will expand somewhat to accommodate it.
• The list is specifically limited by the template to 12 people. As Kaldari pointed out, many cities have many more than 12 people on their city council. Where this information is presented in the article should be consistent. The members of the city council should always be available in the infobox, or they should always be in the article, rather than deciding that the data will be in the infobox for small city councils, and not there for larger ones.
• I think that listing more than 12 names (or really, even 12 names) makes the infobox take up too much space in the article, and this information will quickly become out of date. Many casual viewers of the encyclopedia may notice that a new mayor has taken office and replace the name, but I think many people will not notice such an error for the city council members, whose terms vary, but usually don't last more than three or four years. While some of us may know this information, I think the average editor would probably have to look up their city council to know who was on it.
• The multitude of variable names for each potential member (14 new variables) also clutters what is already a long template structure. While this many not confuse anyone here who edits the template, I believe it will confuse new users who are trying to add the template to a page.
• If an editor of an article feels the need to list all of their city council members what's wrong with extending the use of leader_title and leader_name as is done on Keene, NH? In fact, I noticed that in San Jose's article the leader_title and leader_name data is now listed twice, both in the old field, and under these new fields. It seems particularly odd for the same information to be listed twice within the limited real estate of an infobox.
• Personally, however, I would prefer that a list of 8 or 12 names is not listed in the infobox. If the editors of the article want to maintain this information it seems more appropriate for it to appear in the text of the article. As Dr. Cash has suggested, I think we should add a general field for the type/structure of government. Please reference Template:Infobox Town MA, which already has such a field. For example usage see Arlington, Massachusetts (a town without a mayor whose government is made up of 258 elected individuals).

If nothing else, I would strongly encourage that these variables be removed from the template until we come to an agreement here, so users don't go around adding data based on this variable structure when we may decide to change it in the short term and make their work useless. The interim solution for articles where this data needs to be presented should be to list the information within leader_title and leader_name. —Jnk^[talk] 19:24, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the opinion of User:Jnk, it makes sense to have a "type/structure of government" (as he calls it) or a "Form of government. This would allow for the differing types of City governments. --Assawyer 19:33, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Due to the many issues that still need to be resolved here, I reverted the template one more time. What we DO NOT WANT is for people to start using these variables on many cities and then to change the city council information in such a way that we have more work to do in changing outdated info yet again. Because this was just added in the last 2-3 days, and is relatively new, I believe more discussion NEEDS to take place before making such radical changes. Please do not revert this template again. Dr. Cash 19:58, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree here. This controversial change needs to be sorted out before it is implemented to prevent confusion among users of the template. We will make more work for ourselves if articles begin using these variable names before there is a consensus to use them. —Jnk^[talk] 20:07, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

I also agree with Jnk's points above. It just doesn't seem like listing city council members is going to work well within this template. I would also like to point out that Infobox Country only provides for listing one leader as well. Kaldari 20:14, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Actually, Infobox Country provides for up to 5 leader names and titles.

If the concensus is to remove—then I have no problem with such action. I re-edited the example of Epping, New Hampshire. I placed the names of the board of selectman into the two leader title and leader name fields. This method uses many <br>s to separate the names and makes the box longer by only using one column. Although, Jnk makes a very valid point above about using two columns. I was only trying to have a real solution (field) to this problem and not just expand the leader_title and leader_name fields. Which is more like the Keene, New Hampshire example from above. The Arlington, Massachusetts example actually has a provision to add the names of the board of selectman but it is not used. It would be nice if the Arlington page actually had a link to a page about Arlington's governing board (Dr. Cash's idea mentioned above) and not just a general link about town meetings. Therefore, unless I get my way, I am going to revert the hell out of this template——just kidding. I am good with whatever the concensus of the tribe is. Just don't vote me off the island yet—MJCdetroit 01:28, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Overall Look

It seems to me that the layout of Infobox U.S. City is a lot cleaner and better organized than Infobox City. Specifically I think all the different levels of indention in this template don't seem neccessary and make the template look rather haphazard. Also the font preference for Lucida grande is nice since that font displays so beautifully at small sizes. Could we incorporate some of the design elements from Infobox U.S. City into this template? Kaldari 20:35, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Feel free to suggest specific changes or try them out at Template:Infobox City/Test and point us to them. Until about a week ago (2 June) both templates were nearly identical in format, US City Infobox City, but after it looked like Infobox US City was headed for deprecation/deletion in favor of this template Boothy443 revamped it. I preferred the older Infobox City look, as well as the current Infobox U.S. City look somewhat better than the current look. (Note, however, that some of the changes to this template in the interim were made to enhance accessability via screen readers.) —Jnk^[talk] 20:57, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, I'm playing around with Template:Infobox City/Test. Feel free to add to it as well. Kaldari 23:27, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

The one thing that bugs me is the font in the motto and nickname fields. It seems very hard to read (both on Windows2000/Netscape and Mac OS X/Firefox). Can we change that? —MJCdetroit 01:34, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Oddly enough, the font on the 'current' (left) template is a bit larger and spaced a little further apart than the font in the 'proposed' (right) template, which IMHO makes the 'current' one easier to read and appear cleaner. This is in Windows/Firefox. When viewed in Red Hat Linux/Firefox, the smaller text looks a little better. Dr. Cash 02:36, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, I double checked the font in the motto and nickname. It only looks really bad in Mac OS X/Firefox. It is OK in Mac/Safari and Windows/Firefox, /IE, and not as bad as I first thought on Windows/Netscape. Has anyone else had this problem on Mac OSX/firefox?—MJCdetroit 13:17, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

That's weird. The font on the proposed template looks great to me in Mac/Firefox, but maybe it's not a good idea to depend on the user having a certain font installed for it to look good. Kaldari 15:34, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry. I wasn't very clear. The 'proposed' (on the right) is OK in Mac/Firefox but the 'current' (on the left) is the one that looks horrible in Mac/Firefox (at least on my Mac). Maybe it is just that I don't have that font installed. If I am the only one that is having the problem then it really isn't something to worry about.—MJCdetroit 16:01, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Ah! That makes sense. The current template text has always looked terrible for me in Mac/Firefox. For some reason the small bits of text don't get anti-aliased (unless the font is changed to some other font like Lucida Grande). That's why the text would theoretically look better for people in the proposed version. But is this really an issue that should be addressed at the individual template level rather than perhaps at the stylesheet level? Just playing devil's advocate here. Kaldari 16:28, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Wow, it does look terrible in Firefox, I've been using Camino (Strange that it looks fine there since they're so closely related). I propose a speedy promotion of at least the font changes to the main template. --harpchad 02:14, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

I kind of like the look of the new font, but I think there are some issues to be resolved before we implement the change. Since Rick Block is working on a few other things on the Test template that can be merged in without as much complication I temporarily removed the font change from the shared test template. You can look at the edit history to see what is needed to re-implement the new font, but I believe this change to line 1 is all we had done:
{| class="infobox" style="width: 250px; font-size: 90%; font-family: lucida grande, sans-serif; text-align: left; padding: 4px 4px; border-collapse: collapse;"
{| class="infobox" style="width: 23em; font-size: 95%; text-align: left;border-collapse: collapse;"
I've changed the indent levels some more and made a few other relatively minor (IMHO) changes. Let me know what you think. —Jnk^[talk] 23:54, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Shouldn't the footnotes section be last, not the website? See Template:Infobox City/Test for example. —MJCdetroit 12:31, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Problem with template?

i just added the template to Richwood, West Virginia and it seems to work great. The doton.png, image, however does not seem to be loading. Can someone check out the page to see if the image loads and, if it does not load, to see what I did wrong when adding the template. Cheers. youngamerican (talk) 14:03, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Done. It seems that 250px was too big for the map. I reduced it to 200px. It also worked at 225px but not 250px.—MJCdetroit 14:29, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. It still isn't loading on my screen, but i think its a cache issue and not with the template. youngamerican (talk) 14:35, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

That's odd because now it is not working, again. I don't know the the problem is. It was working.????—MJCdetroit 14:44, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

It's working again and has been for a few hours. God only knows what the problem was. Maybe it's haunted. —MJCdetroit 19:43, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Map Size

I'd like to shrink the default map size. 250px is obnoxiously large. See Meridian, Idaho for an example. I tried adjusting it to 150px directly in the Boise, Idaho but the map won't generate (doing that works in Twin Falls, Idaho though). --Faustus37 02:36, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

If you'd like to experiment with the infobox a bit, please use the Wikipedia:Sandbox or something like Template:Infobox City/Test and test your ideas out on a copy. We've had quite a few edits to this template recently, and one just now that broke it by adding an extra character (though this has now been fixed). While it's always great for editors to follow WP:BOLD when editing pages, we have to use a bit of caution with this template, since it's used by quite a very large number of pages (as in, nearly every major city article). Dr. Cash 02:41, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

I fixed the Boise page for you. The variable was listed as "map size" rather than mapsize so it wasn't working. For skinny states like Idaho and Florida skinnier is better - but for a lot of other states/regions the 250px is the best. Fortunately you can easily override it by manually specifying the width so it's best to leave the default alone and simply adjust the page where it's too wide. If you want to change the default width then someone will need to check all the pages that use this template and verify that wider maps have 250px manually specified, and if not add it in (and there are 1,050 pages that use this template). —Jnk^[talk] 03:22, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

The overrides weren't working at 150px, but 197px as you suggested works fine. Thanks for your help. --Faustus37 04:12, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Accessibility issues

I'd like to fix an accessibility issue where adjacent cells include explicit line breaks to make "virtual rows" - my understanding is most screen readers read cell contents top to bottom, left to right, cell-by-cell, so for example in San Jose, California in the government the subdivision information is read as "country state county" "United States California Santa Clara". I made similar changes recently at template:Infobox Country. I'll do this in a backward compatible way, by introducing a set of pairs of new parameters for the explicit subdivision rows. Does anyone know if the top level subdivision is anything other than country? If not, the new parameters could be country_name, and then some number of subdivision_type1/subdivision_name1, subdivision_type2/subdivision_name2 pairs. I'll make these changes at Template:Infobox City/Test. It doesn't appear so, but are any other adjacent cells treated this way? -- Rick Block (talk) 13:45, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

established_title/established_date are often used in this way. See Idaho Falls, Idaho for an example. —Jnk^[talk] 13:49, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Per the Discussion above, Government section, what about multiple leaders? Will you have to include multiple fields like in Infobox Country?—MJCdetroit 18:09, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

If there are multiple leaders with individual titles, yes. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:34, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

I implemented new backwards-compatible fields for established_title and established_date and updated example usage on Template:Infobox City/Test. I also removed subdivision_type3/subdivision_type4. Feel free to put this back if you have an example page that needs it, I just didn't see one. I fixed the timezone listing as well, so standard and daylight time zones each have their own cells now instead of being merged. —Jnk^[talk] 23:47, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

City Seal title imput field

There ought to be a place for us to imput some sort of title for the City Seal, similar to the city leader title field. This comes in handy in the following cases:

• City will not release an official seal for Wikipedia use (or does not have one), but has made an unofficial logo available. Then this can then be indicated as such right in the infobox without one assuming it is official.
• The seal's official title is something other than "seal", for example: Emblem, Arms, Logo, etc..

This would cut down confusion in these sort of cases, as many of the cities that I am dealing with fall into these categories. Ajbenj 23:04, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Proposal for common look and feel for geographical infoboxes

I've created page for discussion about creating a standard look and feel for geographical infoboxes, please contribute at Wikipedia:Geographical infoboxes if you're interested. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:40, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Misunderstanding of "nickname" field

I see that where this infobox is used for Spanish towns, the "nickname" field is being used not for a nickname but for the standard Spanish noun/adjective used to name inhabitants of the town. I suppose, once the first editor makes this mistake, others follow. So far as I can see, there is no proper field in the infobox for this bit of information (e.g. Bristolian for Bristol; Calerogano for Caleruega: see Talk:Caleruega). Should there be? Andrew Dalby 22:01, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Pin coords parameter

Looking at how Reading, Pennsylvania got converted from template:Infobox U.S. City, it looks like a custom map was created rather than add a "pin coords" parameter to this template. If we're doing lots of cities with locator dots, it seems like it might be worth adding a pin coords parameter rather than creating individual maps for every city in the world. Does anyone know of any good reason not to use CSS absolute positioning to plunk a dot on a mostly blank map (rather than create individual maps)? I can imagine support for absolute positioning CSS might vary by browser, but haven't seen anyone complain about this anywhere which makes me think it's supported by relatively current versions of at least IE, Firefox, Opera, and Safari. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:52, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

I think most, if not ALL, cities using this template have a custom image as the map, not just Reading, Pennsylvania. If anyone knows anything about absolute positioning CSS and wants to give it a try, that would be good for the long term,... Just make sure that the instructions and actually placing the dot on the map are easy enough for most people to get it,... Dr. Cash 18:23, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

At least some cities using template:Infobox U.S. City used a generic map of a state with coords indicating the location of the dot. The CSS code is recoverable from the U.S. city template. I've asked the same question at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Maps#Locator dots (with no response in nearly a week). I don't know how many of the articles that referred to the U.S. city template have been converted, or how many of these used the pin coord parameter and may now be missing location maps. How about if I simply make it a standing offer to recover the pin coord functionality if anyone wants it? -- Rick Block (talk) 17:07, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Are pin coords something like Lat / Long? I've never used them, but I understand the concept. I think it would make things easier on whoever's updating pages. I spend almost as much time creating a map as I do looking up whether or not a town has an "Official Seal" :) --SatyrTN 03:22, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes. It's a way to indicate the spot on a dotless map to put the dot showing a specific location. I don't know if the input is lat/long (seems like that would require knowing the lat/long boundaries of the map being used, so would have to be a whole set of params) - I suspect it's more likely to be the absolute pixel coordinates (counting the lower left corner of the map as [0,0]) of where the dot should go. To convert from lat/long to this, you'd need to know the lat/long of the lower left corner of the map, and total width (in longitude degrees) and total height (in latitude degrees) (assuming it's a cartesian map, which I think at least most are). I'm not exactly sure how folks are currently positioning these locator dots, but I suspect the folks at Wikipedia:WikiProject Maps might have some clever ideas. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:43, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Seal Problems?

Is there a problem with how the seals are displayed - specifically the text showing up underneath the seal? See Meredith, NH as an example... --SatyrTN 06:25, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

The official_name parameter was bolded, causing this problem. I've fixed it. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:56, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

There still seems to be a problem? Moultonborough, NH for example. --SatyrTN 04:18, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Many cities apparently have an article about their seal, called Seal of Cityname. The template at this point does not do an existence check on this article, so if the article doesn't exist the link is a redlink. Given the #ifexist: parser function, it's entirely feasible to make this a link only if the article exists. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:15, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Would someone (Rick?) with more (read: any) knowledge about manipulating templates make the change to this one to fix the seal? -- SatyrTN 02:04, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, the argument for keeping the seal as a link is that it might encourage folks to create articles about city's seals. I'm willing to make this change, but then we might want to have some other way to make folks know that the link will magically appear if the article is created (any suggestions?). -- Rick Block (talk) 05:01, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

I would agree with Rick. However, a problem comes up when a city is bilingual. For example, the official name of Ottawa, Ontario is "the city of Ottawa" in English and "la ville d'Ottawa" in French. If you try to put both of those in the official_name field and separate them with a <br> it will break the links in the seal and flag fields (example). We may need to have a official_name2 field that is optional.—MJCdetroit 14:38, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

I have no problem keeping it a link. My problem is that it's showing up literally - square brackets and all - as

[[Seal of Laconia, New Hampshire|Seal]]

If it were just a broken link (for a page that doesn't exist yet), that would be fine by me. So is it just me and my browser that's seeing it like that? Or is there something wrong with the data? Help! :) -- SatyrTN 06:14, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry. I completely missed your point about the broken (not red) link at Moultonborough, NH. I've fixed this one. This is not a problem with the template, but a problem with how it's invoked in the referencing article. I don't think there's anything that can be done in the template to fix this, so they have to be fixed one by one in the article. The change to fix this one was this edit (the name parameter cannot be bolded). Checking the history, I see you added the template reference fairly recently. Is User:SatyrTN/InfoBox Towns Done the complete list of towns you've done? Checking a couple, it looks like you consistently bolded the parameter name. Can you go back an take the bold off (so this link works)? Thanks . -- Rick Block (talk) 15:32, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Rick - thanks muchly for pointing that out - I didn't realize the bold was causing the problem! Yes, that page has the complete list of towns I've done. I see you've updated many (all?) of them to fix it - I'll go through the list and fix the rest if there are any left. Thanks again!!!!! -- SatyrTN 02:59, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

New look, more similar to template:Infobox Country

I've created a revised version of this template using class="infobox geography" that looks much more like the current template:Infobox Country and template:Infobox U.S. state. Please see user:Rick Block/Template:Infobox City. If no one objects, I'll update to this version in a few days. My not so secret evil plan is to migrate all geography related templates to this class, see Wikipedia:Geographical infoboxes. -- Rick Block (talk) 21:05, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Maybe it's just me, but I kinda like the grey bars and all. It breaks up the data nicely into chunks, whereas the "new" version seems to be lumped all together. Just my $0.02US, however.

I do agree that there's some work to be done with respect to the division between "Geographical Characteristics" and "Population"... --SatyrTN 04:25, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

If you don't see horizontal divider lines at the same locations as the full width gray bars, please do a forced reload (shift+reload for most browsers). Another interesting thing you might try is clicking the national subdivision the city is in (i.e. the state in the U.S.) and then the country, paying attention to how the respective infoboxes look. I'm trying to make these all have the same "look and feel". -- Rick Block (talk) 13:36, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I still prefer the current version over this 'new version'. Even after doing a 'forced reload' (which wiki-users should not have to do) the grey areas and bars provide a much clearer view of the different areas of the infobox. Perhaps we should be modifying the other templates instead. Dr. Cash 18:04, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

And, as far as I can tell, there's a pretty strong consensus at template:Infobox Country in favor of its current look. I don't have a strong opinion either way about which look is "better", but it seems fairly clear that one camp or the other needs to agree to a change. Can we all at least start with an agreement, in principle, that there should be only one "look" for all of these templates (e.g. this one, template:Infobox U.S. state, and template:Infobox Country)? -- Rick Block (talk) 18:46, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

You're right - they should all look the same. I don't necessarily like the look, but they should look the same :) --SatyrTN 03:25, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I agree too that a more simplified version like the US States and countries infoboxes should be used. I took the time to work on a similar one. It can be seen at Template:Infobox City/Proposed. The only difference between this and Rick's one is that mine conserves the sub-headers. I would support whichever is proposed, they both look better than the current one IMHO. --Enano275 21:12, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Minor Change Request

I noticed today (after looking at many examples of this template) that it would look better if there were a <nobr> around the places where it says:

12.3 mi² / 456.7 km²
OR
12.3 / mi² / 456.7 / km²

I'm referring specifically to the sections Geographical Characteristics and Population Density

Secondly, I noticed that km² sometimes has a link attached to it, but mi² never does. Is this a case of me entering the information wrong? Or does the template only have links for the km²?

Comments? -- SatyrTN 03:16, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Could you provide some examples where you think this might make a difference? Looking at a number of examples with both classic and monobook skin, I haven't found any where this would make any difference. And, regarding the unit links, some of the invocations you've added aren't quite in the right format. There's a list of all the parameters at Template:Infobox City. In general, the area parameters are metric with separate parameters available for US ("English") equivalents if they're available. You shoud not provide parameters of the form "53.1/mi² / 20.5". -- Rick Block (talk) 03:48, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Doh! Reading the documentation... What a novel idea! Sorry for being a doofus - I see already that I'm doing things in a far less efficient manner than I could. Thanks for the reminder :) -- SatyrTN 03:51, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Okay - one final question on this and I'll shut up and go back to adding InfoBoxes and not bother you any more :) I've just updated Meredith, NH with the InfoBox as it's supposed to be done. The "km²" and "sq mi" are still not working correctly. Could you look at the InfoBox I inserted and let me know what I'm doing wrong? Thanks! -- SatyrTN 04:33, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I may be misunderstanding you, but I think that you want to have the area's magnitude linked. In this case it only links the km². You would have needed to input: area_magnitude = 1 E8 for Meredith, NH, for which I did. Take a second look. Is that what you meant? --MJCdetroit 12:34, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, MJCdetroit - that's it. But see how the magnitude is now a link for both km and mi for the total area, but then not a link for mi for land area, and not a link for either km or mi for water area?? -- SatyrTN 05:45, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, that's just the way it's set up. Besides, in this case both total area and land area would (if set up that way) both link to the same thing—1 E8.--MJCdetroit 12:18, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm guessing, but I think the idea is to try to avoid linking the measurements more than once. There are enough optional parameters that doing this is a little difficult. The template language is not quite a programming language, in particular it lacks assignable variables, so keeping track of state (like did we already show a linked km²) is not really possible. It looks like the total city area is always displayed, so I'll change it so the km² for the total area is always linked - by default to Square kilometre and optionally based on the value of area_magnitude and then not linked again. If sq mi are provided, the first occurrence (total area) is already the only one that's linked. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:53, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Demonym

Would it be possible to add a place for the demonym of a city—the name given to its inhabitants? Such names don't seem to be used often in English-speaking countries (at least, not in America), but demonyms are quite common in Spanish, and probably similar languages as well, so it would be nice if we could add them to the infobox.Salmar 20:25, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

New England

I don't see how this template can work for towns in New England, which typically do not have leaders, but are direct democracies operating under the New England town meeting form of government. I see that Template:Infobox Town NH was recently deleted, despite having the support of WikiProject New Hampshire. WikiProject Massachusetts uses Template:Infobox Town MA. For example, see Westborough, Massachusetts. This template, as far as I know, is currently in place for every Massachusetts town, per the work of WikiProject Massachusetts. Town meetings are further divided into "open" and "representative" formats, with some towns having town councils. Most towns have a Board of Selectmen, but they are neither legislators nor executives, merely administrators and facilitators. Most New England states do not have functioning county governments. There are the towns, and then there is the state. --AaronS 12:50, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

It is actually pretty easily converted to this template (Template:Infobox City). It took me about 8 minutes. This template, by its nature, is pretty versatile. Check out my user sandbox example of Westborough, Massachusetts and let us know if that is satisfactory? --MJCdetroit 16:53, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Let's wait until everything it converted, though, before nominating Template:Infobox Town MA for deletion. --AaronS 17:06, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of anyone starting to convert Template:Infobox Town MA over. In any case, when someone does start switching it over, it should be mostly converted before putting it up for deletion. If not everything is converted at the time of deletion, then Infobox Town MA will get put into a holding cell until everything is converted. Also, I am going convert Westborough since I already did the work as an example. --MJCdetroit 19:02, 1 August 2006 (UTC)