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Wales

I've started on Wales. They seem to convert quite easy but most of the places do not seem to have lat/lon so they need to have an empty map_type= included to stop {{{map_type}}} appearing on the article. MRSC • Talk 20:26, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

We also need to accomodate this:

{{location map|Wales Gwynedd|label=|position=left|float=none|long=-4.1|lat=53.16|caption=|width=190}}

There may be more for each area. MRSC • Talk 20:32, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

What about places which have a Welsh map on them, such as Porthmadog. Should they be left or replaced with the british isles map. Personally I would prefer the latter seem as the Welsh maps are not used consistantly. G-Man * 20:34, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Gwynedd is on 15 articles and Dyfed is supported but unused. As there is such limited use I say we move over to UK maps. If localised maps are required later it will not be difficult to add as the lat/lon data is there, all that is needed is to change the map_type and implement an extra map here. MRSC • Talk 20:43, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I have uploaded a new version of the settings that adds map_type in on every change (whether there is one or not. So if it is already there it will need deleteing). On the subject of maps, when I have looked through User:Owain's contributions in the past there is at least one user who has an issue with him adding (as opposed to recplacing Welsh maps with) UK maps to Welsh articles. Therefore, it might be an idea to leave the map status as it is for now Pit-yacker 20:50, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

As it happens, I had a change of heart while updating and left the bespoke local maps in the map_type field. MRSC • Talk 21:18, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Also watch out for lots of +44-xxx dial codes. MRSC • Talk 21:23, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree, we should keep the Wales maps with the articles that already use them or have one avaliable to them. It is better to see a city/town within Wales, rather than in the whole of the UK.- Nick C 17:39, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I may be too late here, but can I suggest a slight change of tactic to be used here? We have done all the basic coding and design work for the new template. But when we are now turning to Wales, in the light of the reaction from other areas of the UK, I think it may be advantageous to consider an extra phase which formally may not be necessary, but which probably will be quite a good idea in the long-term:

We need to go on a "selling drive" to sell the new map to people editing welsh articles prior to any large-scale replacement. In short, we need to extol its virtues, etc over and above the existing template. Some may not feel it is formally necessary, but we need to bring people on board here, and so for that reason it may well be necessary.

So, I suggest we set up some examples, post them to the Wales WikiProject and ask for any suggestions or comments, including any suggestions of how their project might like any customisations made (in the same way as we eventually had User:Bobbacon do for the Scottish articles.)

It's only an idea, but perhaps worthy of consideration, as it would help try to avoid some of the rancour that we have seen in debates about deploying the new template elsewhere. And, in a strange way, we would be acting both in a civil way to those editors, as well as being bold, because it seems that such involvement at this stage does not often happen before a new development is deployed. As I said, it is just a thought.  DDStretch  (talk) 21:30, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes. I have fairly neutral ideas about what mapping features should be enabled for Wales. Let's see what the opinion is of editors in that area. MRSC • Talk 21:38, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

So how should Wales be approached? Should we sell the new template first? Who do we go to? As an example of a box I had previously converted Wrexham. Beyond the semi-automated conversion, I had attempted to fill out many fields missing from the old box. My thinking being that it is more likely to be accepted if the customisations which actually make it "more Welsh" than the old box are used Pit-yacker 15:46, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I've started converting Wales articles again now the TFD is over. I've accomodated any requests that have come up on this talk page (there is one further down about languages). MRSC • Talk 16:11, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

UK county infobox maps

Something needs sorting with calibrating the red dot which are placed on the Greater Manchester map. Some of them are well out of the mark. The worst one so far is Harpurhey, which puts it well into Cheshire.
I know a lot of hard work was done to create the Greater Manchester map, but unless something is done soon to fix the problem, then the |map_type= Greater Manchester field should be removed from the infobox which then automatically reverts back to the UK map. With the UK map any slight difference was negligible, but with the Greater Manchester map the difference is noticeable.
At the moment people can't rely on the red dot being in the correct place. I wouldn’t be surprised with the same problem with the Greater London or Tyne and Wear maps. Cwb61 20:51, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

The Greater London maps have been working OK. Could it be the data that has been put in needs tweaking? Sometimes the nominal "central" locations of places (say from OS) are off quite a bit of what you might expect, at least we found that in London (because of the scale, it doesn't notice on UK maps). Perhaps the calling syntax in the articles needs updating? MRSC 21:16, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I'll give it a go by trying to tweak the latitude and longitude figures and see what happens. Cwb61 21:41, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

How does one carry out this calibration? I'm intrigued. I'd like to see how it is done in practice, as I'm a nosey beggar. Only if anyone has the time, that is  DDStretch  (talk) 21:47, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

To calibrate the figures means altering in the infobox's latitude and longitude figures .

For example, the figures for Manchester City Centre are:

| latitude = 53.480556

| longitude = -2.236944

By slightly adjusting the figures, by going up or down, for examaple

| latitude = 53.480475

| longitude = -2.236848

then click Show preview shows the new positions of the red dot. If its not in the correct place, then just keep trying until you're happy its in the right place. Once you're happy with the new position, then click Save page. If someone else can find a better way, I'd like to know. Cwb61 22:30, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

--NO!!!!! Please don't do this!!! Manchester City Centre is actually in the right place - It is not in the centre of of the City of Manchester, it is directly adjacient to Salford and is correct! Moving the pointer to somewhere you think it should be is likely to produce wrong infomation for the actual location. Please just verify the co-ordinates use in the infoboxes. Jhamez84 07:18, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Jhamez84, randomly I picked Manchester City Centre as an example. I could have picked anywhere. I didn't mean that the co-ordinates were wrong and needed to be altered. I just used it for an example. Thinking about it now I should have used Harpurhey, that did need altering. Cwb61 16:01, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I also usually check the given location on http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/getamap/ and then put it where I think the central spot should be, then try that in WP (you can convert OS grid ref to lat/lon using http://www.streetmap.co.uk/). MRSC • Talk 22:35, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I have always used the OS survey map to get the lats/longs myself, though most of the settlements I have done this for are small. I'm surprised you are altering the actual longitudes and latitudes that have been provided by OS survey. There will be occasions when the central part of a settlements has not been given by OS survey, I imagine, but I'm not sure the solutuon you are implementing is the best way forward, though it might be the quickest.

I would have thought the calibration would have involved determining the nature of an intermediate step, realised as a function, which mapped the lat/long figures onto the map coordinates. I would expected some simple generalised "curve fitting" to have modified the nature of the function to minimize the discrepancies. There are mathematical routines that can do that, and they would only have to be used to discover the function to use in the mapping step, and not in "real life".

I can see future editors checking and then altering the lats and longs you have worked out for some settelemnts, since they do not agree with "verified sources" (i.e., OS survey) and this might casuse problems down the line.

Of course, this may just be my mathematical background and life as a research scientist reasserting itself here.  DDStretch  (talk) 23:09, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I've tried altering the latitude/longitude figures to the actual place, but when I look at the Greater Manchester map the red dot still looks in the wrong position. The only thing to do is to tweak the figures up and down to make the red dot to look in the right position in relation to the Greater Manchester map irrespective of the actual place’s latitude/longitude position. This now means the dot looks in the right place, but when someone clicks on the top right Coordinates: of the page and follows to one of the maps they’ll find the map they are looking at is in the wrong position. Good work was done to make the Greater Manchester map, but its not working out. Personally I prefer the UK infobox map to be put back, but the powers that be won’t allow it. Cwb61 23:17, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, I prefer the new maps, but I think the method of calibrating (which means altering the often-accurate and verifiable data, rather than the mapping function) is not, in my opinion, advisable. This is because it ends up providing inaccurate information at the end of the calibration phase, and this inaccurate information is liable to future good-faith editing by users interested in accuracy and the elimination of error, which will cause no end of trouble by placing the dot in thew wrong position (again). I wasn't aware that such a strategy was operating for this calibration.  DDStretch  (talk) 23:27, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia has the choice use the correct information for the latitude/longitude figures, but put the red dot on the Greater Manchester map in the wrong position. Or vice-versa. Either way Wikipedia is now giving out false information - wrong latitude/longitude or wrong map position. Cwb61 23:44, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with the map, or the settings which it uses, for Greater Manchester locations. If a location is marked wrong, it means the co-ordinates have been inputted incorrectly. I've checked throughly (you can too, see Orrell, Ramsbottom, Rochdale, Hale, Shaw and Crompton etc etc). Harpurhey was my fault (sorry)- I inputted the wrong figures someway, somehow. Places might not be where you think they are necessarily.

That said, you might be pleased to learn that the West Midlands Infobox map has been produced and uploaded for use. Jhamez84 07:01, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

No, there is nothing wrong with the Greater Manchester map itself. There is nothing wrong with the co-ordinates, check them on page List of United Kingdom locations. As far as I am aware they are based on Ordance Survey figures. The problem is that with some places they are made to look like they are in the wrong place on the GM map, but to follow the correct co-ordinates to a real map then it'll be found that they are in the correct place. Wikipedia is now giving the wrong impression with the red dots. I'd prefer the UK map be used again. Its all material anyway, we can have as many consensuses we like, but at the end of the day the small group will get their own way. Cwb61 14:42, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I was given the impression that there was some deeper kind of calibration problem that was being "fixed" by tweaking accurate lat/long data. I'm glad that is not the case.

While we are on the subject of maps, you very kindly produced an initial map of Cheshire for us. I wonder if there would be any serious objections to implementing that map on the new infoboxes at all? If we could find out how the linkage between the map and the lat/long data to produce the marker was made, may be the map could be used for things other than settlements, such as locations of ancient monuments, and so on?  DDStretch  (talk) 14:53, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

(in reponse to the last edit by Cwb61, which conflicted with mine): So, let me try to get this straight. (a) The map is all right (i.e., drawn correctly). Does "There is nothing wrong with the coordinates" mean: (b) the coordinates given by OS survey are correct. and (c) The coordinates given in the final infobox are the same as the coordinates given by the OS survey, and are therefore also correct, or what? If not, why not? And if they are correct, then what is the problem with the map? I just cannot sort out what is being claimed here.  DDStretch  (talk) 14:53, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

DDStretch, The red dot on the GM map conflicts to where the place's actual position should be. As I said earlier, its material, the map is here to stay. I'm wasting my time to create or edit articles if someone thinks the place is somewhere when it is actually elsewhere. Cwb61 16:41, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok then. Let's take Harpurhey, which you've already mentioned as being a case in point (heh!). multimap] gives its latitude as 53.5065 and its longitude as -2.2155 [E] (or 2.2155 [W]). streetmap says either lat=53.510008 and long=-2.205032 or lat=53.506448 and long=-2.215493 depending on whether you choose Harpurhey, Manchester [City/Town/Village], or Harpurhey, Manchester [City/Town/Village], respectively. Now, which ones of these gives the wrong position for the marker on the map, and, if all do, what exactly is the action that is done to correct the marker's position?  DDStretch  (talk) 17:07, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I've put the coords of the dogs' home into the article. The dot looks fine to me. Mr Stephen 20:59, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

(revert reset indent) Ah, I see what cwb61 was getting at, er, before. Horwich puts the dot high, just outside the boundary. On checking out Harpurhey carefully, the dot's also a fraction high, it should lie below an imaginary horizontal extension of the Salford/Bury border. Mr Stephen 22:23, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

The Greater Manchester map does look funny with the shape and position of the motorways though. The map has the M60 well south of the River Mersey through Stockport - in reality it is very close to the River. The M60 looks to go through urban Sale, but passes north of it - in the Mersey Valley. The A6144(M) does not need to be there anymore as it is no longer a motorway. The M62 west to Liverpool should join directly with the M602, rather than as it is currently shown on the map. Perhaps it's the slightly different position of these features which makes it look like the red dot is in the wrong place??? Richard B 16:29, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

<edit>Following on from my last post - it's clear that the position of junction 27 of the M60 does not seem to lie on the M60.Richard B 16:43, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Aesthetics

The template seems really squised up. Since I'm not really good with complex template syntax, maybe it would be possible for someone to: make the template slightly larger and the parameters more spaced out (larger breaks and slightly bigger font) and to make the images bigger? It's quite hard to tell (with England places) where the dot is supposed to be because it's disproportional to the size of the map. Geoking66 22:00, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

The initial motivation to construct this template was criticism that the earlier templates were too spaced out and occupied too much space. In terms of dimensions, layout and basic design there is no difference between this template and the widely used {{Infobox City}}. MRSC • Talk 22:32, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Aesthetics + (Wales et al.)

Forcing "(Welsh)" to appear after the Welsh name (see, for example, Aberdare) is not only overkill (the alternative name is not going to be in Basque or Korean, is it?) but looks ugly in my view.

I can see that there might just be a case for this in Scotland, where there can be two other names (Gaelic and Scots), but even there the main text of the article will identify these names (see Glasgow) so I think the visually intrusive labels are redundant in the infobox.

And why on earth have "Gaeilge" instead of "Irish" for places in Northern Ireland, when "Cymraeg" is not proposed for Wales? Finally, I do agree with User:Geoking66 (above) on excessive "scrunching up" -- to say that there was "criticism that the earlier templates were too spaced out and occupied too much space" is rather begging the question.

May I commend the infobox used at, for example, Belfast as an illustration of a good, well-spaced design which also deals in a visually pleasing way with the "alternative names" question. -- Picapica 15:47, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Welsh might be obivous to you. But what about to a president of the USA who had to ask which state Wales was in when meeting Charlotte Church? ;) Pit-yacker 17:13, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree that we should assume the reader of an article should possess no real knowledge about a place. What might be obvious and not in need of saying to us might need to be said to someone else. We're not writing this for our own benefit, but for others who may have no knowledge at all of the subject matter. I once knew a university graduate and teacher from the USA who was totally amazed when I told her that the UK was an island off continental Europe, for example, and this only croppedup because she asked me why there was a need to build "this Channel Tunnel thing"? I had to show her a map and explain it to her before she accepted that I wasn't playing a trick on her. She may not be typical, but I think we can be in danger of underestimating the lack of knowledge of others not from the UK at times.  DDStretch  (talk) 18:20, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

My intention is not to run Americans down, but I have met one who thought that Wales was part of London. I think we should assume the reader knows nothing. MRSC • Talk 19:31, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

DDStretch wrote:I think we can be in danger of underestimating the lack of knowledge of others not from the UK at times

I, on the other hand, am perhaps in danger of having overestimated the willingness of some of those backing the current form of this infobox to address the points I was making. Where in my submission did I argue that the Welshness of the Welsh name should go unexplained? All the articles about places with names in two languages currently begin as in these examples:

Aberdare (Welsh: Aberdâr) is an industrial town in...

Fishguard (Welsh: Abergwaun - "Mouth of the River Gwaun") is a coastal town in...

The inclusion of the word "(Welsh)" in the infobox therefore adds nothing to the article. I have the impression at times that some transclusionists have a tendency to get so carried away with all the programming that the straightforward reading of text for the purposes of gaining information can get overlooked. -- Picapica 07:56, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok, May be you are right about us being difficult to persuade, but we experience that amongst ourselves as well - we aren't a big monolithic cabal of people - I had to argue long and hard about issues surrounding civil_parishes, but I just got on with it and eventually it turned out that the position I was arguing for prevailed. It isn't a totally unfamiliar state of affairs for me, for such scepticism is an in-built feature of scientific research, in which I was immersed for all of my professional working life. In this instance, with the more complete information you've now just provided, it is possible to understand better what the problem is. If all Welsh articles are encouraged to start in the way the two examples do and perhaps they already do, then I think you have a point. It does seem rather redundant and by omitting "(Welsh)" some extra space could be saved, especially if there is the possibility of adding other non-redundant information to the infobox. What does the Wales WikiProject think?  DDStretch  (talk) 11:32, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure there really is the strength of feeling about this amongst editors here that User:Picapica seems to think exists. The Welsh language addition was just a copy of the already existing language options for other places in the UK. There didn't seem any reason to do it any other way. We could remove it, or provide the option not to have the descriptor but leave the name. Is anything lost by including the language descriptor and is anything potentially lost by taking it away? This still is perhaps unclear. MRSC • Talk 12:27, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, DDStretch, for your second opinion: now I think we may be at the start of a constructive dialogue. I am a little saddened, though, by the implication (If all Welsh articles are encouraged to start in the way the two examples do and perhaps they already do) that you, or others, are proposing to make a blanket change to a set of articles all of which you, or they, have not read :(

My reason for thinking that there was what you call a "strength of feeling about this amongst editors here", MRSC, was the rush to respond to a point that I was NOT making in my first post here (under the not idly chosen heading "Aesthetics +")! Is anything lost by including the language descriptor and is anything potentially lost by taking it away?. Just to make it clear, again, my own answers to those questions are, respectively:

– yes (prettiness - you may not think that this is important, but to see redundant information bolted on in this visually ugly fashion is annoying, to say the least; for one thing it destroys the centrally aligned symmetry of the two names, both of which, by the way, are official, though I will grant that in the English-language encyclopedia it is right to give more prominence to the English-language name); and

– no, neither actually nor potentially (the information is already there in the very first words of each article).

But how are we non-techies – providing we haven't already been scared off by the "go away -- this a techie page for techie people" intricacy warning on the template page – even to begin to test what potential improvements might be made? What brought me here in the first place was comparing the following two infoboxes (I have taken the liberty of tidying up the layout of the second: it appears a little more messily at Cowbridge).

Abergavenny
Population	14,055
OS grid reference	SO295145
Principal area	Monmouthshire
Preserved county	Gwent
Country	Wales
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	ABERGAVENNY
Postcode district	NP7
Dialling code	01873
Police	Gwent
Fire	South Wales
Ambulance	Welsh
UK Parliament	Monmouth

Cowbridge Welsh: Y Bont-faen
Population	390,616
OS grid reference	SS995745
Principal area	Vale of Glamorgan
Preserved county	South Glamorgan
Country	Wales
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	COWBRIDGE
Postcode district	CF71
Dialling code	01446
Police	South Wales
Fire	South Wales
Ambulance	Welsh
UK Parliament	Vale of Glamorgan

I wanted to see how the Welsh name Y Fenni could be added to the infobox at Abergavenny – ideally without the intrusive "(Welsh)" mention. But I'm damned if I can see how I can test that, even in a sandbox. So it looks like I will have to go on my technoramus knees and ask one of you cognoscenti to take pity on me and least show me what an Abergavenny infobox with "Y Fenni" in it, but no "(Welsh)", would look like. TIA. -- Picapica 15:51, 24 March 2007 (UTC) (PS: Is it just my browser, or does "Y Bont-faen" look bigger then "Cowbridge" to you?)

Firstly, I'm really sorry you feel at a technical disadvantage and are put off by that, there was no intention to exclude you or anyone else by design; if you feel that is the case, I lament it. Secondly, a bit of redundancy isn't neccassarily a bad thing for the reasons mentioned before. However, prettyness and redundancy need not be mutually exclusive, how about we remove the (Welsh) and make Y Bont-faen a link instead? MRSC • Talk 16:37, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Well now, that is what I call a superb solution ...and I'm only sorry I didn't think of it myself!

I take my hat off to you, MRSC! May I propose that this be the standard way of dealing with any other-language names in the infobox? -- Picapica 17:14, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your kindness. I've made it work the same way for all the others. MRSC • Talk 17:31, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Diolch yn fawr. MRSC. At the risk of appearing hyper-picky, might it be possible also to adjust the spacing so that the two names do not touch (or appear to do so) whenever descenders are involved? -- I've looked at the Abergavenny page, as now amended, in IE (which I normally approach only with very long bargepoles deployed) and the same touching of the names (or an impression of the same) appears there as in Firefox. -- Picapica

District question

Why does the Metropolitan borough link on articles go to Districts of England. Wouldnt it be better if it went straight to the metropolitan borough article? Same applies to Non-metropolitan districts. G-Man * 23:01, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

My thinking was you can see like-for-like on the same level, as Districts of England is an overview article. MRSC • Talk 23:44, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Hmm the problem is, on articles where places are part of a non-met district. It merely has a link to 'district' and links to Districts of England, that doesn't explain to the layman who isn't familiar with uk local government divisions, what type of district the place is actually in. How are they surposed to guess that it's a non-met? G-Man * 21:22, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes I see what you mean. Perhaps change the link to go to that section of the Districts of England article. The benefit of going to Districts of England is that it makes clear that not all districts are say non-met, which one might assume with no prior knowledge of local government districts. MRSC • Talk 08:02, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

West Midlands map

Map of the West Midlands county.

Is it possible we can accomodate a map for the West Midlands into the UK infobox? It contains the UK's second largest connurbation, and so I think it is wholly appropriate for an upload to this infobox, to bring the West Mids inline with other metropolitan areas. I can't see there being any objections, but thought it best to post here first rather than upload a map I've created directly to the syntax without due notice. ...Not that I know how to do it anyway!... Jhamez84 08:46, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes please add-in. It is great to see all these local maps included. MRSC • Talk 08:58, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure how exactly. Previous versions I've uploaded merely replaced existing imagery as part of an already established syntax framework - this one will be brand new. These maps appear to be popular (Cheshire and South Yorkshire members requesting them next), and so if someone does have the knowhow, I'd appreciate it if they could post to me how I can do it next time (or post the link to the official instructions?). Jhamez84 17:46, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Slight criticism. Coventry looks all wrong. It makes it look as if there's a rural area within the south of Coventry city boundary, which there isn't. G-Man * 21:24, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

The West Midlands map is wired up in this template. It is ready to be used, without needing further change in this template as soon as the Location map template for West Midlands is correctly callibrated. (see test Here (under large map) Pit-yacker 21:42, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I've ammended some of the discrepancies regarding the conurbation not aligning with the county boundaries - should be fixed now, but I'm always welcome to feedback. Jhamez84 00:01, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Missing from various articles

I have looked around some articles and found the following fields that need to be included to make this template. They are found with varying number of appearances in the articles: Blackpool (with custom infobox); London (with custom infobox), Newcastle upon Tyne (with custom infobox), Manchester (with custom infobox). As these are main UK population centres at least some of this should be included.

Fields that are exclusive to each example are left out (ie. Greater London Pop. Density)

STATUS - example: Borough and Unitary Authority

AREA - the total area of the place

AREA RANK - ranking of the place in the country- example: 330th with link to List of English districts by area

ISO 3166-2:GB - this is a geocode standard (ISO 3166-2:GB - example: GB-BPL

ONS CODE - another statistics code (ONS coding system) - example: 00EY

NUTS 3 CODE - statistics code for Europe (Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics) - example: UKD42

POPULATION RANK - ranking of the population in the country- example: 119th with link to List of English districts by population

ETHNICITY - ethnic make up of the place - example: 78% white, 1% black

LEADERSHIP - political leadership - example: Leader & Cabinet

CONTROL - political control - example: Labour

MAYOR - town leader - example: Ken Livingstone

REGIONAL AUTHORITY - example: Greater London Authority

REGIONAL ASSEMBLY - example: London Assembly

ELEVATION - example: 72 feet

TIME ZONE - example: GMT (UTC0)

SUMMER (DST) - summer time zone - example: BST (UTC+1)

HISTORIC COUNTY - example: Lancashire

I do not have time to implement all these as I am going to be on holiday from tonight. I will do the more important ones today when I have time. I hope these suggestions are useful, regards, Bobbacon 08:39, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

These relate to local government districts, not settlements. Way back in the talk archives of this infobox, we discussed preparing an infobox to cover any unit from parish up to region via district and county, after this one. MRSC • Talk 08:50, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok, the articles appear to be about the cites but as they all have the same style of infobox (customised to their own needs) so I guess they must be referring to the local government districts. Confusing. Bobbacon 08:57, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

In a limited number of cases the city and local government districts coincide which creates this anomoly. MRSC • Talk 08:58, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

With regard to the above, there are several fields I feel are unnecessary, (these are only my thoughts) -

• DST/Time Zone - they are the same across GB so seems a bit silly
• Historic county - lots of previous debate (I have no real preference)
• Mayor - as most are non-notable, it doesn't seem important, but doesn't bother me!
• Are all the 'codes' necessary?

-Just my 2p worth –MDCollins (talk) 11:34, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Tine zone should be included, for the benefit of people overseas. However, there's no reason I can see, that it couldn't be hard-coded. Andy Mabbett 12:02, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I am not sure if the codes are necessary as (from what I gather from a quick look) they represent more council and unitary areas but then every place in the UK falls into one authority or another anyway. They probably aren't necessary but I have noticed them cropping up before in other templates. If they were included they could easily be hard coded as they seem to be representative of unitary regions. I would propose a single code line (rather than three) in the format title: "ISO 3166-2:GB / NUTS / ONS" and data: "code/code/code" with relevant page links in the titles. I don't know if it is necessary, I'm quite neutral. Time zones (hard-coded), historic county, and mayor (lord provost/whatever they call in in each region) would all be useful. I also think area and elevation may also be useful optional fields- they come up a lot in templates I have seen in other countries infoboxes. Bobbacon 12:12, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I think we should leave anything extra for the infoboxes on the local government district articles. There has already been calls for less information to be included on this infobox, I think we have the balance right at the moment. MRSC • Talk 14:15, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I think we need to step back and think about how we are helping the structure of Local Administration as it interacts with settlements here. I think there needs to be some more real thought and more work about disentangling the two concepts of settlements and local administrative entities/areas. The two can become intertwined at the following "levels":

• Metropolitan Counties (though offhand, I don't knowm whether this is a legal or an accepted or readily understood term but what I mean is Greater Manchester or Greater London, and other entities at a similar level)
• Districts in a local administration sense. Concerning these, various towns and/or cities have been given unitary authority status, which may or may not contain areas outside the immediate central built up area of the main settlement. As examples, City of Chester versus Chester, or Warrington which has not distinguished enough between the "borough" and the "town", even though there are numerous civil parishes and villages contained within it which are not part of the town. From various discussions I've seen in various places about various other places, this is a continuing area for confusion and lack of clarity in writing.
• Civil parishes which may not even be present, or, if they are, which may or may not contain a number of settlements, one of which may or may not be given the same name as the civil parish.

Once we can really accept this hierarchy, or something like it that may emerge after discussions, then we can begin to think about the cases where it is appropriate, or not appropriate, to merge the two potentially separate articles together:

• (a) the potential article about the local administrative entity/area, and
• (b) the potential article that concerns itself with the settlement and settlement issues of places within the place mentioned in (a).

Each of the possible situations or combinations of settlement and local administrative entity (at whatever level) that might arise may require different kinds of things in any infoboxes, and it may worthwhile trying to associate each kind of potentially displayed piece of information for an infobox with its corresponding area or entity of local administration. That way, if, say, we have a unitary authority which has just one major town or city in it and nothing else, we know that we need an infobox that merges together the information about the settelement with the information about the local adminsitration and bodies that we have decided should go into an infobox for that level of local administration.

Now, I think that may be an accurate view of what I think we need to do, and I hope it is, at least a little, comprehensible. The basic approach can be carried out at an even lower level, if major suburbs of a large town need seperate articles written about them. It would be the basis of a completely unified apporach to describing in infoboxes settlements and local administration in the UK (or whatever parts of it "opt in" to doing it this way.) with all the benfits of maintaining them and ease of updating that builds on the work and experience of this new UK infobox.  DDStretch  (talk) 15:07, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I thought the point of this infobox was that it would be smaller than the old one. I think It's about right at the moment. G-Man * 22:43, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I agree with you. But how does one then handle a situation where, for example, an infobox about a district is constructed, and there is an article about a single settlement which is also a district. Does one put two infoboxes on the article? that is the kind of situation I am trying to get a handle on here.  DDStretch  (talk) 01:39, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

City Distances

In regards to a now archived discussion, distance fields for Cardiff and Belfast are now added. Bobbacon 08:47, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Suburbs

Having looked back at WP:Sheffield, and the various TfD comments, one of their concerns is that there is too much repetitive information. Could we introduce a couple of switchs like suburb=true and main=Sheffield that would turn off some of the entries (like phone code, police, fire and ambulance) and introduce a link to the area article where this information could be located? There wouldn't need to be hard and fast rules about where the switch is used, only that there must be a good quality parent article to link to. Just a thought. Regan123 12:55, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

This might also be a solution to a related potential problem if coded well: The problem of multiple settlements within the same civil_parish where separate articles are justified but which would be "overkill" in the infobox department (for exmaple, what would one put in for "population" if the population figures are given by civil_parish). It is a "parallel" kind of problem, and could be solved in very similar ways. I think it should be considered for suburbs with a view to its broadened application.  DDStretch  (talk) 16:14, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

So apart from the two of us, is there any interest? I'm thinking of the Sheffiled, North East templates as examples. I would also like to roll it out into suburbs in market towns etc that are not that notable. Regan123 23:09, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

But...(and it's a big but).... What constitutes a suburb? Where does it begin and end? What literature verifies a place is a suburb of another? What if it is divided by postal town, services, dial code? Why doesn't Cornwall have switches to localise it's content? What if it is split between local authorities or parishes (many are)? Is Pemberton, Greater Manchester a suburb of Wigan or it's own settlement (that's been an edit war of late)? These are considerable issues we'd have to overcome. Surely there was a consensus to delete local infoboxes? It could be a retrograde step. Jhamez84 23:44, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Providing the facility in one infobox would stop content forks. It is not about creating a POV war. Surely we can just apply the same verification criteria. I know (for example) Westbury Park, Staffordshire is a suburb of Newcastle-under-Lyme (borough) and the town. It's about a balance between standardisation and flexibility. Regan123 23:48, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree it's an absolutely honourable cause, but I maintain that introducing highly localised infoboxes for one area, would mean other, more controvertial territories, will do the same on the grounds of diversity. By picking what is useful and what is not for readers could also be a reason for traditional counties advocates to hide contemporary land division, on the grounds it is not needed and repetative.

I think adding more optional fields (population total, population density, OS gridreference, London distance are optional), but deciding upon and keeping others as mandatory fields would be a better approach to this, rather than switches. But it's just my humble opinion of course. Jhamez84 23:55, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree that suburbs should be treated differently to villages and towns. I realise that in some places there might be POV issues as to whether a particular place is a suburb or not, but I think that a simple rule might be whether or not a place has its own tier of government. Continuing to use the City of Sheffield as an example that would mean that of all the districts in the city only Bradfield, Ecclesfield, and Stocksbridge would be classified as being anything other than suburbs. I can't really speak for the people of Sheffield, but I think that most would consider that a fair assessment. Whether 'UK place' can be made into something suitable for suburbs, or whether suburbs should use some other option (my personal preference at the moment is no infobox on suburb articles), is a more difficult question. —JeremyA (talk) 00:57, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Are there any reliable sources as to what are and what are not suburbs? Wikipedia defines them as settlements along the fringe of a conubration, but I suspect that what we are aiming to achieve here is an infobox of reduced size for inner-city districts (though a district is, in the UK, also a legally defined entity which may conflict with the aims). I suppose fringe settlements benefit moreso from the extra content anyway, to establish it is part of a wider geographic system.

Just a thought, assuming we can work out a few pedantic issues (that I free admit raising here sorry), perhaps this approach is most suitable for places within districts with city status? Though then again, the City of Salford includes towns and other places that are not verifiably suburbs of Salford.

Another thought, is do we need articles on residential suburbs with no specific census data pertaining to them? Perhaps amalgamated articles like a Suburbs of Sheffield article would better serve these areas, particularly if they are somewhat banal? Jhamez84 01:32, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Your faith in your fellow Wikipedians is astounding Jhamez... While WP:IAR, Jeremy, the WPSheff and myself have tried until now to contribute enough to Sheffield suburbs articles, or districts, depending on how you call them, adding history, sites of interests to make them worthy of not being called banal. Not all districts have yet been catered for but you can witness the work done in Handsworth, South Yorkshire, Millhouses and more modestly, Attercliffe. Do these articles make these areas banal? Do the status of these articles justify merging them together, I think not. Districts of Sheffield already caters for that domain. The fact that no demographic data is available for such territorial entity does lower it importance or worthiness of an article for it. Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons 09:02, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

It was a suggestion, for residential suburbs or housing estates with no material exisiting in the published world other than on Wikipedia (Wikipedia is not an indescriminate collection of information). And my account name is Jhamez84 not Jhamez, so no nicknames please. Anyway, I maintain the contentions I've made that there are several issues that need to be worked out before using local switches. AFAICT, Ancoats, Hollinwood, Manchester City Centre, High Crompton, Didsbury are all small localities (not districts or suburbs - POV) that use the UK infobox effectively - it also removes any bias, for example of assuming an area is a suburb of another and that is merely shares the same culture, history and identity of a wider area. Jhamez84 10:32, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, the word suburb is probably the wrong word to use here; the article suburb points out that it means different things to different people. So I'm going to start using neighbourhood instead. I think that it is reasonable to have articles on individual neighbourhoods because for larger cities and towns trying to group them all in a single article would produce an unwieldy long and probably quite disjointed article. I still think that as it stands 'Infobox UK place' is inappropriate for neighbourhoods of towns and cities. My suggestions are 1) to have no infobox for these articles, as appears to be the case currently for most of these articles (apart from those in London and Manchester), or 2) given that the status of these neighbourhoods may differ from place to place, allow the development of infoboxes (or the choice to have no infobox) for these articles on a per city/town basis, or 3) to develop 'Infobox UK neighbourhood'. —Jeremy (talk) 17:01, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I would rather keep it all in one infobox if possible - that was the whole idea here. If things like fire/police/ambulance are in the parent article then we can surely find a way of switching them off? I personally don't have a problem with the full infobox in these articles, but recognise that some do. If we can stick to one box but restrict it, then that would be better I think. Another slightly different approach would be to collapse the infobox automatically and then have a hide/show button. Regan123 02:00, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

As per your original suggestion, a switch to turn off police/fire/ambulance would partially address my concerns with using this infobox for articles on neighbourhoods of cities/towns (I note that this is requested in at least one other thread). I have played with making a 'minimal' form of the infobox in my sandbox. To get rid of the police/fire/ambulance fields required breaking some of the other functions of the infobox. On that page I have also misused the 'local name' field for the name of the parent settlement, however this function could perhaps be better achieved by making a 'parent settlement' field (possibly analogous to your 'main=Sheffield' suggestion above. From the point of view of fitting neighbourhoods into the 'hierarchy' of settlements I would like to be able to list electoral ward as well as Westminster constituency, and link to the local districts category (or article) in the 'list of places' section at the bottom. —Jeremy (talk) 22:17, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Wow! I'm impressed. You have achieved what I thought would need a switch. My only suggestion would be a county entry. Adding a council ward should be simple enough to do and the rest of your suggestions seem sensible enough. Regan123 22:26, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Losing the county (and constituent country) is the 'hack' that gets rid of the police/fire/ambulance fields. Putting the county back in would be desirable, which is why a switch is needed. —Jeremy (talk) 22:31, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

OK. Not sure how to do this yet. I will be away for a couple of days apart from a bit of vandal patrol, so if anyone has some ideas, that would be great! Regan123 22:38, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

It looks fairly easy to include a switch, say a parameter called 'suburb', that turns off the police/fire/ambulance fields. I have tested this on a few articles and it works OK, so if no one objects I will add it to the template. —Jeremy (talk) 03:58, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Just do it. No one has objected so far. Regan123 14:31, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

OK. The police/fire/ambulance fields can now be turned off using |nopfa=yes. I'm looking into adding an electoral ward field, and including the option for a local place list (to add to the UK, county, and county lists at the bottom of the infobox). —Jeremy (talk) 14:46, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Erm, I set out some considerable objections above, outlining why this is not a good approach. At what point does a place become a suburb of another? Why does it not have the same importance as a town or city to have emergency services etc listed? Will this switch be used for villages, wards and/or inner-city districts? Will Rochdale be switched to a suburb of Manchester, or Rotherham to Sheffield by IP testers and trolls?- the same amount of literature exists for these being suburbs of another place as any other. I strongly object to this going live on the grounds aforesaid; there are issues of original research, assuming a place's status, and technical loopholes here. Jhamez84 14:50, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I have deliberately implemented the switch in such a way that does not mention suburbs—it need not be used for suburbs, and its use need not necessarily be restricted to suburbs. Without such a switch the police/fire/ambulance fields are afforded special status as being the only parts of this infobox that the end user cannot easily remove. I'm not sure why police/fire/ambulance were given this status as they seem to me to be the least important part of the template. This template has been sold on its versatility, this switch may never be used, but I think that it does no harm to give the end users the option to use it.

Regarding suburbs, I think that within most, if not all, major cities and towns there are named districts that can be regarded as parts of that city or town without any POV. There are likely to grey areas on the edges of major urban areas, but there are lots of grey areas in Wikipedia; we deal with them. Leeds editors seem to have made this distinction reasonably well with separate categories for districts and environs. Vandals, IP testers, and trolls will do what they do regardless of what we do—if we used the rule that we shouldn't do something because people might vandalise it or POV pushers might abuse it, there would be no Wikipedia. —Jeremy (talk) 15:14, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I changed 'nopfa' to 'hide_services' as this gives some clue to what it does. I'm unsure which (if any) locality articles should use this feature and perhaps it isn't needed. Where do these things not apply? Same goes for county, region and country. This is pretty basic stuff. I see no problem with electoral ward fields other than I don't beleive there is a verifiable source as to which localities match which wards. They often do no align with the wards of the same name. This need not be a barrier to their inclusion, but some means to verify the data needs to be found. I am also definitely opposed to any kind of forked 'local' or 'smaller settlement' infobox. Whatever is needed for UK localities (of any size) can be achieved here through discussion and consensus. MRSC • Talk 16:56, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

It's possible that a survey of what has been done elsewhere might be informative. In Chicago, the neighbourhoods are divided into official community areas—the main city article uses 'Infobox city' whereas community areas (e.g. Uptown, Chicago) use a 'Community area' infobox designed specifically for Chicago neighbourhoods. Zooming across to the west coast of the US, Seattle seems to be more similar to the situation prevalent in the UK where inner-city neighbourhoods are much more informal. The articles on these neighbourhoods (e.g. Beacon Hill) just have a location map without using any infobox. Portland, Oregon has gone more in the direction of Chicago, using a custom infobox for neighbourhoods (e.g. Alameda). Looking at Australia, for example Melbourne, they distinguish between inner-city suburbs and outer suburbs (see List of Melbourne suburbs) but the main article and the suburbs articles all use the 'Australia place' infobox. However, that infobox has been designed with a lot of suburb specific fields, and a 'type' switch alters the style of the infobox depending on whether 'city', 'town', or 'suburb' is specified. This means that the infobox at Melbourne Docklands, although generated using the same template as that at Melbourne allows the reader to easily see that they are reading about an inner-city area rather than a city/town/village. —Jeremy (talk) 17:25, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Isn't this covered within the lead section? Surely these articles begin with "W is an X, within Y, in Z."? Previous home nation infoboxes have never been used to suggest a place's status.

Ancoats is a locality within the City of Manchester, of course, but is it a suburb/ward/neighbourhood/district/residential area of Manchester? Is it not served by Greater Manchester Police? Does it verfifiably share a uniform city-wide Mancunican identity? Is it only a "sub-place"?

The sandbox tests for Crookes state "City of Sheffield" underneath it's name; this is a metropolitan borough, so do all parts of this borough use this approach? Does Swinton, Greater Manchester have City of Salford underneath it (that would be a contentious move)?

These issues aside, I really think this is broadly re-inventing the twice deleted Sheffield specific infobox. Jhamez84 18:05, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, the Sheffield specific infobox was only ever used on five articles, and it was put up for deletion before I even knew of its existence. The current default situation in Sheffield is to write about council wards rather than districts and only break out districts into separate articles once enough verifiable information has been written about them in the respective ward articles. This works reasonably well for Sheffield because the council has published a enough information about the wards to enable verifiable articles to be written. I understand that this may not work for other cities. Sheffield is also different to, say, Leeds because the number of places within the City boundaries that might have a case for being regarded as separate settlements (e.g. have their own parish or town council) is very small. For the most part, the limited number of district/neighbourhood articles that have been written about Sheffield neighbourhoods have no infobox; I am happy for this to remain the case. Browsing Wikipedia, my impression is that most articles about neighbourhood of British towns and cities also have no infobox; I am also happy for that to remain true. However, it also seems worthwhile to me to explore whether this set of articles could use the UK place infobox. In addition I think a reasonable enough number of editors have expressed concerns that the UK place infobox would not work well for neighbourhood articles that it is worth exploring what changes could be made to the infobox that would not affect its function in other articles but that would enable non-controversial use in neighbourhood articles. There are already special fields for different regions of the UK, and fields that are missed out in some articles (I note that Ancoats misses out population, population density, and OS grid reference), it does not seem unreasonable to me to extend this flexibility. —Jeremy (talk) 18:46, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

As someone who thinks the infobox should be on all locality articles, I think this compromise works quite well. Can we now roll this out where there has been controversey? Regan123 12:37, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Maps

The maps have all gone right justified. I think this might be a problem caused at Template:Location map, but I've not sure. MRSC • Talk 14:09, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

We seem to have a box around Scotland that wasn't there before. MRSC • Talk 19:28, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

It is still there today. Anyone any idea why? MRSC • Talk 05:05, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

It was a problem at Template:Location map. MRSC • Talk 05:16, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

GBdot

There are loads of articles which dont have a proper infobox at all and instead have the Gbdot map thing, just look at all of the articles which are linked to it. These should all be upgraded to a proper infobox. G-Man * 22:58, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree it has been my intention to do some at some point. There are a whole family of these templates:

• Template:GBthumb: In use by over 1000 articles. IMHO, these split between places which should have an infobox and attractions/landmarks which should use (the more flexible, easier to use and better contrasting) Template:Location map and/or {{coor title d}}
• Template:GBthumb-named: In use by a handful of articles. IMHO, much the same action necessary as GBthumb.
• Template:GBthumb-caption: In use by one article.
• Template:GBmap-named: Unused. Uses static image rather than dyanmic dot. IMHO should be deleted immediately.
• Template:GBdot-small: As above
• Template:GBthumb-bare: Previously used by Template:Infobox England place. However, was removed from use (and the template) before the new template was created. Consequently, IMHO, should be deleted as part of a "house-keeping" exercise even if the England infobox is saved.
• Template:GBthumb2 as GBthumb-bare.

Pit-yacker 01:08, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

As they are unused and obsoleted by Template:Location map I have put Template:GBthumb-bare, Template:GBthumb2, Template:GBdot-small, and Template:GBmap-named at TfD. see:

• Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:GBthumb2
• Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:GBmap-named

Pit-yacker 14:27, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Template:Infobox Sheffield place

This template was deprecated, and this was requested as its replacement; however, there were a few concerns as to how to adjust this infobox, so the other one had similar functionality. Whenever that is done, and that template is deprecated, feel free to request its speedy deletion. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 02:03, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

There are about 5 articles using this template, so a manual swap of templates would be the right step. Information contained within that infobox that won't be in the UK version, should just be included in the article prose. Jhamez84 02:19, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I've tagged it for SD. Jhamez84 12:53, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

And now it's gone. I'll check the England and London versions if they are orphaned. If so, I'll tag these for SD. We need to convert the remaining Scotland, Ireland etc templates per the administrator before all can be deleted. Jhamez84 14:07, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Templates for Deletion

The outcome of the debate as to whether or not to delete the various home-nation and city-region predecessors of this UK template closed with a consensus to delete. Thanks to all those who passed comment, regardless of standpoint. Roll-out should now be completed for all parts of the UK. Jhamez84 02:06, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok. Let's get on with the conversion task... MRSC • Talk 04:51, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Flags/lists straw poll

As the TFD is over, would someone like to set this up? There were quite a few possible options available and I can't quite remember what the position was. I don't want to offend anyone by missing anything out. Thanks. MRSC • Talk 04:55, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

--Guys we need to post to all the WikiProjects, noticeboards and the UK and C.C article talk pages!!!!!! I'll see what I can do again. Jhamez84 11:26, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Scotland map

I created a Scotland map and set it using the location of Aberdeen. However the dot seems to be static over Aberdeen and doesn't move accordingly to other places (particularly in Aberdeenshire places such as Crimond and Cornhill, Aberdeenshire). If anyone knows how to sort it that would be great as it is going to cause problems I think as the template is rolled out. The code is found at Template:Location map Scotland. Bobbacon 07:42, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

There appears to be some problems generally with images disappearing this morning, perhaps because of database problems. MRSC • Talk 08:16, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

The Scottish input code doesn't take into account the differing police forces and fire brigades. Also, agree with Warofdreams that the 'red dot' doesn't locate to the correct position using the latitude/longitude inputs. --Bill Reid | Talk 16:32, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, meant Bobbacon! --Bill Reid | Talk 16:35, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I took a peek in your sandbox and corrected a field which generates the services. Someone more map-orientated may be able to help with the red dot. MRSC • Talk 16:52, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Cheers! Thanks for that. --Bill Reid | Talk 18:43, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

That same person would be of great help for the Template:Location map West Midlands! I can't work this one out! Jhamez84 17:47, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Some of the services are still wrong the entire Strathclyde council areas where listed under Lothian and Borders for the fire services I have corrected them but the map is still not working I was going to apply the template to Glasgow but the maps is showing the location of Glasgow as being just south of Aberdeen the template should not be rolled out unless it it fixed. --Barry O'Brien entretien 22:25, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

User:Kalan keeps fiddling with Template:Location map. It is causing problems all over Wikipedia. The best place to raise such map issues is probably Template_talk:Location_map Pit-yacker 00:22, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Sometimes the effect of changes to the Template:Location map are not updated on the articles until an edit (or null edit) is made. For the services, let us know a specific locality that is not working and what it should be showing, so the look-up table can be updated. MRSC • Talk 12:22, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I have fixed the services but see here the map is way off location, and I have no idea how to fix that --Barry O'Brien entretien 05:36, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

(reset indent)How is the dot now? It looks Ok for Aberdeen & Glasgow to me. Mr Stephen 09:14, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

No, its better but not accurate enough. It puts Lossiemouth not by the Moray Firth but well and truly in it. --Bill Reid | Talk 10:34, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

You're right. I used Duncasby Head and the Mull of Kintyre to calculate the coords, and they come out OK. You can see all three here. Mr Stephen 12:14, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Lossiemouth, Buckie, Fraserburgh are all drowned while Inverness and Stornaway have been moved inland; strangely, Wick and Kirkwall seems to be correct. A bit of tweaking still needed.--Bill Reid | Talk 13:31, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I think the map may have been rotated a bit -is that possible? The way I have calibrated it, stuff on a line joining Kintyre & John o'Groats should be OK, stuff to the right will go up & right, stuff to the left will go down and left. We need a map in (checks) a cylindrical projection. Mr Stephen 20:43, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Location map transclusions - efficiency tweak

At the moment every type of location map that is supported by this template is transcluded into every article. i.e. an article in London will get a copy of the Manchester location map transcluded. AFAICT this cant be an efficient way to work. A few days ago I made a failed attempt to tweak this so that only the Location map that was needed was transcluded. However, for some reason that I dont understand this fell over when an article had an empty map_type i.e: |map_type= As more maps are added this is only going to get more inefficient. Has anyone got any ideas on how to address this issue? Pit-yacker 21:51, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Might automating the maps from various fields (such as metropolitan county) help? I think this would also stop the kind of strange edits seen to Horwich yesterday, resulting in the creation of the wholly inaccurate (per Google maps, Google Earth, Ordnance Survey, Streetmap, NASA WorldWind etc) and inappropriate Image:Horwich in Greater Manchester.png. Automating maps has been discussed before now. Jhamez84 02:10, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I thought this would be a good idea but there is the problem of places with bespoke maps set by map_type. Let's give it some thought, as it is not an urgent matter. MRSC • Talk 14:27, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Problems with Conversion

I cant get Police and Fire to display on Loughor Pit-yacker 16:38, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Swansea added to the template. Regan123 16:56, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

::Fire is ok, but Police still isnt showing? Pit-yacker 17:00, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

• Llanymynech: According to the article it stradles the England/Wales Border Pit-yacker 13:08, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
• Itton:Appears to be contradictory over its district/county Pit-yacker 13:20, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Distance from...

May I suggest, as part of the more advanced features of London_distance= and Edinburgh_distance= fields, that, as part of the documentation and usage, we include the direction which these cities are from the settlement being written about.

For example, Oldham would be inputted as follows:

|london_distance= 164 miles (264 km) [[Boxing the compass|SSE]]

With SSE (South-Southeast) being linked with Boxing the compass for context. I think this is the most useful to readers and should be the style guide used throughout UK articles.

A point for users, is that www.genuki.org.uk/ has a gazeteer which can calculate distances (and direction) from other settlements, including the City of London, for those wondering how to source or calculate the distance. Jhamez84 02:17, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Here's the Genuki gazetter link. Andy Mabbett 12:40, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

That's the one! Are we agreed this is most helpful to users and should be the approach taken from hereon? A point I should add is that if using the standard UK map, a nobreakspace may be required...

E.G. Middlewich:

|london_distance=       153 miles (264 km) SE

Jhamez84 14:32, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

List of Places on the infobox

The link to the UK list of places is being removed by one editor ([1]). I have restored it twice but before I do again, is there a consensus to include the UK list or not? Regan123 12:26, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it should definitely be there. Has the user in question been warned? What they're doing is an act of vandalism. Waggers 12:36, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't class it as vandalism, but clearly a point of contention. Hence the request for a consensus here. Regan123 12:58, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I noticed last night that the infobox had changed to "List of places" and linking to list of places in the country, IMHO this is meaningless and clearly nonsense. I thought of bringing it up but wondered if I had missed something in the flags straw poll. IMHO, the best option was to have list of places in <country> and list of places in the UK.

Since this appears to be a Scottish issue, perhaps for now we should just change NI, England and Wales? Pit-yacker 13:20, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

The result of the poll was 1. No flags whatsoever (keep lists of places). I see no reason for us to have anything different than what we voted for. If there was a problem with the lists, this would have come up in the poll. Also I note we turned a blind eye to the revert back to flags, despite the consensus to leave it as lists until the outcome of the poll. MRSC • Talk 13:24, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree with what the consensus agreed upon. I thought the list of places would include a list of places within the shire county, or other equivalent-level administrative unit, along with the wider lists. May be I was mistaken, however. Nevertheless, I would have thought it would be useful to have that extra list of places added.  DDStretch  (talk) 13:53, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Yep, I'm all for that. (If a list of places doesn't exist for a county, a redlink will be fine as that will prompt editors to create the missing list). Waggers 14:01, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok. I'm going to add in the subdivision list links. MRSC • Talk 14:22, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I also agree this was the intended, and right way forwards which was agreed upon. Jhamez84 14:29, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

This is now implemented in the main template. Template:Infobox UK place/footer needs to be filled in with links to the various lists. I've started England. I notice the Scotland links go to within articles. Should we link there or perhaps to the as-yet unwritten list articles (possibly redirecting for now)? MRSC • Talk 14:56, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

This is now complete for Northern Ireland, Wales and England. MRSC • Talk 15:38, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Some support?

As you are no doubt aware, I've been developing county/conurbation wide maps for use in infoboxes, largely to help pinpoint locations more precisely for readers. It's worked well for a long time on Greater London, as well as (though taking a few weeks to get it right) Greater Manchester in the last month or so.

I'm happy to keep making the maps for the various regions, but I struggle with the programming to set these images as a backdrop for a dynamic mapping system (a Template:Location map).

The following need verifiying and correcting:

• Template:Location map Tyne and Wear (are Ryhope and Hetton-le-Hole correct?)
• Template:Location map West Midlands (are Dudley, Blackheath and Halesowen correct?)

The following images need setting into the syntax. Both have seen support, but require trailing to demonstrate their effectiveness (or lack of):

• Image:Cheshire outline map with UK.png
• Image:South Yorkshire outline map with UK.png

I plan to create Merseyside and West Yorkshire maps next, with a possibility of a Glasgow or Greater Glasgow map being put to the various Glas-stakeholders!

I'm asking really to share the burden of work with the editting community for the syntax, as thus far I've used trial and error for Greater Manchester and other maps, with only limited success. Jhamez84 15:00, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Template:Location map Cheshire created. Some tests are here: User:Pit-yacker/Sandbox1 It may need further fine tuning? Pit-yacker 16:08, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Following Pit-yacker's lead, I have created Template:Location map South Yorkshire. —JeremyA (talk) 17:25, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

It's fairly easy to calculate the boundaries if you know the coordinates of two positions, both as lat/long and as positions on the map. I'll post the method as soon as I get half an hour to work on the math tag. Mr Stephen 17:51, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Here it is in spreadsheet form. I've left space for annotation. In pixels (1,1) is at the top-left, and remember to use -ve numbers to indicate west of the Greenwich meridian. The trick is to get two good reference points in opposite corners of the map. {{gbmapping}} will convert from OS refs to lat & long. I use Microsoft Photo Editor to get the positions, but any image package will do the trick.

B2        the width of the map in pixels
C2        the height of the map in pixels
D2        latitude of ref point 1
E2        longitude of ref point 1
F2        latitude of ref point 2
G2        longitude of ref point 2
H2        x-position of ref point 1 in pixels
I2        y-position of ref point 1 in pixels
J2        x-position of ref point 2 in pixels
K2        y-position of ref point 2 in pixels
L2 left   =E2 - H2 * (G2-E2)/(J2-H2)
M2 right  =L2 + B2 * (G2-E2)/(J2-H2)
N2 top    =D2 + I2 * (F2-D2)/(I2-K2)
O2 bottom =N2 - C2 * (F2-D2)/(I2-K2)

Mr Stephen 18:52, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Great stuff, I didn't realise there was a formula like this, it will be a great help. That said, South Yorkshire is up and running, and pointing accurately (Barnsley, Mexborough, Doncaster). Thanks to JeremyA for the expert calibration. Jhamez84 19:48, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I calibrated South Yorkshire using Google Earth: I added http:/upwiki/wikipedia/en/6/6e/South_Yorkshire_outline_map_with_UK.png as an image overlay, made it translucent and dragged the corners until I was happy with the positioning (checked by zooming in onto the motorways), then I placed a placemark on the top left corner to get the top latitude and the left longitude, then I moved the placemark to the bottom right corner to get the bottom latitude and the right longitude. —JeremyA (talk) 20:05, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

On the subject of maps to look at in the future. When I have been doing conversion of infoboxes I have thought that Wales could really do with a decent Wales-wide solution. There seems to be a bit of bickering about using the full UK map. Unfortunately, this has meant a "divided effort" approach has evolved (perhaps the reason why unified boxes are better?) with each county having its own, pretty poor compared to the rest of the UK, solution.

I find it a bit of a shame that what I can only put down to nationalist politics, the quality of Welsh articles are suffering. I'm guessing, that non-Welsh people "imposing" a solution on Wales wont go down to popularly though, so I'm not sure what sort of approach would be best to take. Pit-yacker 20:46, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I will try to develop a suitable map for Wales. If it is actually used is a matter for the community I guess! Jhamez84 20:58, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I have recallibrated Template:Location map Tyne and Wear. My own points of reference were Wallsend and Wideopen should be in North Tyneside (previously showing as in Newcastle), and Marsden, Tyne and Wear shouldnt be in the sea. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pit-yacker (talk • contribs) 21:59, 30 March 2007 (UTC).

Cheshire

Did we get anywhere with implimenting the map for Cheshire? Jhamez84 21:12, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

The map could still do with a bit more fine tuning, however, I am having a bit of trouble getting the callibration anymore accurate. The way I have been working so far is to find something that I can accurately locate on both maps. Motorway junctions are good for this as I can get the lat/long to a matter of metres and the corresponding point on the map to (generally) a single pixel. However there, arent any such junctions in the South of Cheshire which means I have had to try other things, which arent quite as accurate - getting an accurate match on the centre of a lake or town on both maps is a lot harder. Pit-yacker 21:33, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

The position of the red dot for Mow Cop can be partly done very accurately as I have set it up -- it should be exactly on the county boundary. Its a bit further south than the other markers. I'll dig out some more possible accurate markers sometime today, but it will have to be this evening before I can turn my attention to it.  DDStretch  (talk) 09:38, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Ok - I was deleyed and so took some time to place additional trial places in Pit-yacker's sandbox. I've added positions exactly on the border, and mostly ones where county boundaries meet (e.g., Ches/Shrop/Staffs and Wales/Shrop/Ches border points). Thye all tend to be down in the south of the county, and so give a broad spread of positions on which to judge precision. On the whole, I think it is now as best as may be possible, but others may disagree. Agreed? If so, I'll put some of the examples on the Cheshire WikiProject's talk pages to allow comments, and then, if all is well, it can be "rolled out".  DDStretch  (talk) 10:30, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately I personally dont seem to be able to get it more accurate. Others are welcome to try. Someone with better knowledge of Cheshire might be able to do a better job? Pit-yacker 18:33, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I've been trying to line this map up against another one, to try to match the features. I am *really* struggling to get them to match up. The coastline shapes and motorway routes do not seem to match particularly well - which would make it difficult to calibrate. e.g.New Brighton seems to be in the Sea. Now I'm convinced that this is the right way to go (in providing markers on a smaller-scale map), but if were suggesting that these are more accurate than the large-scale one, then surely we need to get the features on the map in the right places with respect to each other? I realise that simply tracing commercial or Ordnance Survey maps or something like Google Earth would be a breach of copyright - and the OS are extremely strict about this in particular - but there is another way to get open-source data for these that we can trace. Richard B 15:59, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

New Brighton is no longer in Cheshire (not since 1974), and so I'm not sure that this mis-calibration is one that should be a major one to fix, unless we are going to indicate the position of places that once were in a county on the map. However, if it is currently placed in the sea, may be the "final tweak" that I have in mind would sort that out a bit? I think the map needs to be "stretched" a bit both east and west. Not much, but just a bit. I'm still not sure how to do the edits to manage this. And, how can we make the map usable in infoboxes. At the moment, if you add Cheshire as the map_type, you get nothing: no map at all.  DDStretch  (talk) 16:24, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

I realise that New Brighton is not in Ceremonial Cheshire, but what I was saying is that the shape of the coastline and that of the motorways, does not match a couple of other mapping sources that I have. If these are not in the right place, then it will make the dots look like they're in the wrong place, even if the calibration is correct. Surely stretching it shouldn't make any difference - you could just change the calibration coordinates (i.e. latitude of the bottom of the map, lat of the top of the map, longitude of east and west sides of the map)? Richard B 16:36, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Confusing link text

Having a set of links reading, for instance:

Police West Midlands

Fire West Midlands

Ambulance West Midlands

with different link targets on the right-hand side, is, I think, less than helpful to users. It would be better to have simply:

Services:

West Midlands Police

West Midlands Fire Service

West Midlands Ambulance Service

What do you think? Andy Mabbett 23:52, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I support this suggestion. --Steve 21:47, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Northern Ireland suggestions

I replaced the templates in five of the six towns listed in Category:Towns in Armagh (Creeveroe only has a population of something like 60, so it's probably not a town!).

Firstly, I've noticed that the pin mapping is not accurate. The pin seems to be a few pixels south of where it should be: compare this with this.

Also, would it be possible to use all the maps such as those shown here, here and here for example? The one being used currently doesn't look good at that size.

Finally, would it be possible to add the Northern Ireland Assembly constituencies? As far as I'm aware, thus far they are identical to the Westminster ones, though the Assembly constituencies do seem to have their own, separate, Wikipedia articles.

Cheers. --Mal 03:02, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

The issues with the map here need to be dealt with at Template:Location map Northern Ireland. The issue could be resolved by simply replacing the map that is used there with a new one. I agree that the current one could probably do with being replaced, IMHO it doesnt look great and by surrounding it with blue suggests that Northern Ireland is an island on its own. There may be a couple of problems with the ones as used on the Ireland box though. Firstly, as far as I can tell, that is their full-size which could make them inflexible for location map templates. The second issue is that having the county highlighted would require a separate template for each county. Given that this tiny change is the only difference between maps, having a separate template for each county might be slightly extravagant (Although, there could be an argument for doing a close up map of each county).

As far as the accuracy of the map goes, this is a callibration issue (see the discussion above). I think Northern Ireland assembly constituencies are probably a good idea. FWIW, AFAICT for the most part Welsh assembly constituencies tend to be the same as well.

Pit-yacker 03:24, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I did notice, after I posted, the discussion about calibration above. I may turn my hand to devloping a map image for use with the template. I'll have a look over the weekend, between Grand Prix sessions! I might copy the script for the NI Assembly addition also, if its not overly complex to modify.. assuming nobody has updated it.

I have a strong feeling of deja vu... and I also forgot to sign. --Mal 04:11, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

The following is already posted at Template talk:Infobox Place Ireland since MRSC there wrote "please comment here" (which I took to mean "on that page") - but now I think he maybe meant comment here (on this page). Confused? I know I am.

The new maps are greatly inferior, in my view. Compare existing (left) and proposed (right) below:

{{Infobox Irish Place| name = Lurgan | gaeilge = An Lorgain | crest image = | motto = | map image = NorthernIrelandCraigavonBorough.png | pin coords = left: 126px; top: 101px | north coord = 54.441 | west coord = 6.356 | area = | elevation = | province = [[Ulster]] | county = [[County Armagh]] | NI district = [[Craigavon Borough Council|Craigavon Borough]] | UK constituency = [[Upper Bann (UK Parliament constituency)|Upper Bann]]| EU constituency = [[Northern Ireland (European Parliament constituency)|Northern Ireland]]| stdcode = 028, +44 28| posttown = [[Craigavon]]| postcode = BT64-67| population = 24,000 | census yr = est | web = | |}}

Lurgan Irish: An Lorgain Population Irish grid reference J080585 • Belfast 19 miles District Craigavon Borough County County Armagh Country Northern Ireland Sovereign state United Kingdom Post town CRAIGAVON Postcode district BT64-67 Dialling code 028 38 Police Northern Ireland Fire Northern Ireland Ambulance Northern Ireland UK Parliament Upper Bann

Is there any way the old maps can be incorporated into the proposed template?

The layout and included details in the proposed template are also pants. Old (current) one is far superior, it isn't just the maps. zoney ♣ talk 17:58, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

A possible alternative map for Northern Ireland. This version demonstrates that the country is contiguous with other land, and not an island.

I've been making maps for English counties (see articles such as Oldham, Dudley, Ryhope, Doncaster for examples). I've been asked to look into maps for West Yorkshire, Merseyside and Wales. I wouldn't mind including Northern Ireland in the list. Just a suggestion, I don't want a monopoly on map making for these infoboxes. Jhamez84 19:27, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

OK a relief map has since been added to the infobox, and as much as an improvement it is, it still shows Northern Ireland to be an island. I've developed an alternative PNG map as an option, thumbed to the right.

It may need subdivision boundaries adding yet of course, but I think it is more suitable for purpose. Jhamez84 20:50, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

In the first instance I think that with the relief map there is still a clash of colours.

Besides that, my own personal opinion is that I prefer maps that dont inadvertently and incorrectly portray countries as islands. Whilst, it is obvious to natives and those living close by, it may not be obvious to everyone in the world that Northern Ireland is connected to the Republic of Ireland or that Scotland and Wales are both connected to England. However, I am also aware that such issues, particularly in the case of Northern Ireland, invoke strong opinions from those directly involved and therefore I dont think a map should be forced on Northern Irish people. Pit-yacker 21:10, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Though strong opinion or no strong opinion, Wikipedia is not a democracy, and the threshold for inclusion is verifiability - we shouldn't use misleading maps just because of considerable nationalist objection - I doubt any other encyclopedia would take the approach of using these kinds of island maps.

That said however, I'll post to the Northern Ireland Wikiproject for some thoughts about how to take this forwards. Jhamez84 12:41, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Haven't seen this issue raised on the NI Project yet (that I recall.. but I've been ill recently!). There is no real reason to include the rest of Ireland, or the British Isles.. or Europe for that matter. The articles contain links to Northern Ireland if a reader is really stuck - that's pretty intuitive. Also, there are plenty of articles, I'm sure, that use the country outline in isolation. Here's one at random: Image:Dmap.PNG (Germany). --Mal 10:32, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Edit: Sticking with Germany, take a look at Cologne. --Mal 10:34, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Quite right, I forgot to raise this and carry this through to WP NI. I'm still happy to do so however. With regards to Germany, it doesn't use colours that (culturally and semiotically) indicate there is a sea or it is an island; it's just political divisions in black on white. I think that's why the existing map has been seen by a few as objectionable. Jhamez84 11:47, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Distances

As we know the co-ordinates for each of the four capitals in the distances section, it should be possible to include some syntax to work out the distance between the capital cities and any given place, provided the location coordinates are added to the infobox. As these are required for auto-map generation if we can get a syntax we should be able to auto-add distances to all the places with an auto-generated map

The maths is above me but if anyone else knows how to do it I will try to understand and help... Bobbacon 10:01, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I have found a worked example of the formula at Great-circle distance #A worked example. This explains exactly how to work it out. But I am not sure how to put radians etc.. into wiki formula. Bobbacon 10:08, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I think this would be a great addition to the infobox if it was possible to automate this feature. However, would this approach be able to include the direction of the city in question? Jhamez84 18:08, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

The equations for finding bearings from two coordinates can be found here. I think i could work it out quite easily and implement it into the infobox if someone could direct me to a help page on wiki calculations (if such a thing exists).

Also, another thought... I (and probably a lot of others) get the longitudes and latitudes from the auto link on the OS references in the infobox, from Geohack. If we could somehow include syntax to generate our longitude and latitude points automatically, this would mean from just a grid reference we can put an auto-map and auto distances into every article using the infobox and not have to bother with the extra step of finding the latitudes. Bobbacon 21:22, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Is distance to London, or anywhere else for that matter, really necessary for this infobox? It seems like a case of mission creep to me. —Jeremy (talk) 22:35, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I think so, it was originally included in the Scoland infobox and on the suggestion of others, was added to this template with support for the four countries. It is a useful statistic (in my view) and is being added to other templates. Bobbacon 09:59, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Useful does not necessarily equate to encyclopaedic—it might be useful to include a list of the phone numbers of local hotels in the infobox too. The infobox should summarise key facts from the article, not include extra facts just because it can. —Jeremy (talk) 15:30, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Do any other country place infoboxes include distances to capital cities? Jhamez84 15:33, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

The only example I know of is Template:Infobox Australian Place but there could well be others. Bobbacon 17:21, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Looking through the various infobox place/city templates that exist, most don't include this distance field, but, most don't include anything really! (We have the best infobox here!) So my point was redundant really. I still think it's a useful field, though don't have particularly strong views about it. Jhamez84 00:23, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Automation

I made the previous post about the possibility of automating distances/coordinates and after some research have found some other interesting things that can be automated. Template:Infobox German Location (not yet implemented or completed) has some features that could be considered for this infobox, for example by adding the two fields of area (in square km) and population it will automatically configure the area in miles square, plus the population densities in km and miles square.

I think serious consideration should be made to automate as fully as possible- the smallest articles especially will benefit. Bobbacon 21:44, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Agreed! Though do we have enough definitive source material as to how large a settlement is in terms of area? Doesn't the ONS only provide area outputs for urban areas, civil parishes, electoral wards and local government districts? If we have the source material (I'm concerned that smaller settlements won't have any), then this seems to be a good option to include, otherwise we may struggle. Jhamez84 22:33, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I have no idea about how available the area data is... but I think pop density is harder to find (for Scotland anyway) than areas from a start point.

Overnight I have been thinking that another real benefit of automation is that we can control poorly entered data- particularly for number formatting (in pop. densities etc..) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bobbacon (talk • contribs) 10:07, 3 April 2007 (UTC).

Three centuries were a dream

Can I bring to your attention that some editors in and around, not Northern Ireland, not Cornwall, not Westmorland but the Scotland area are breaking the (overwhelming) consensus set with regards to the use of flags in the infobox - (e.g. [2], [3] and [4]). Some edit summaries are misleading, and it seems to be the same editors repeating this process.

As always in these situations, communal support would be highly beneficial. Or perhaps the syntax can be set so that this kind of revision is not possible?

Whilst I'm on the topic, we may also need (as this is a UK infobox talk page) to consider the use of {{UK cities}} and {{Scottish cities}}. Some warring has occured of late. I think a consistent approach for the UK, whatever style it may be, would be the best approach. Jhamez84 15:16, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Please be mindful of the above is all I ask! Jhamez84 00:23, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

He didn't even vote! MRSC • Talk 07:13, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Template for deletion?

Should Template:Infobox Scottish island be nominated for deletion as part of this roll out? There are not many transclusions, though I respect that it iss island and not settlement based. If not, it may need some amendments to at least bring it inline with developments on the UK infobox (such as the flag issue, and new fields). If so, we need to take the right steps. I've also found the orphaned Template:Infobox Town Northern Ireland which I've nominated for deletion. Jhamez84 00:23, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Final push

Have we got AWB working for Scotland articles? I guess we should finish the roll out. MRSC • Talk 07:29, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Unless someone can fix the red dot problem with the Scottish map, then in the interests of accuracy the Scottish articles should be left alone. Most coastal towns are either moved into the sea or moved inland.--Bill Reid | Talk 08:08, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

It may be worth double-checking that the coordinates are correct. I've found a number of articles on places in England that produced strange results when adding a location map - but it was the original coordinates in the article, not the map, that was wrong. Of course, that can't be done with AWB so the Scotland articles will probably have to be done by hand. (But that's not an excuse not to convert them at all).-- Waggers 08:40, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

There are only 159 so it can easily be done manually. AWB also has a setting to preview results. MRSC • Talk 08:54, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I read somewhere on a talk page that the Scotland map may have been rotated slightly, so it is not pointing to the north. I can't find the link sorry, but this may be the crux of this particular problem. Jhamez84 09:45, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

See above. Mr Stephen 11:50, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

If no one has done AWB settings for Scotland I will look at it ASAP. Have been quite busy recently. Pit-yacker 18:28, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I have put a "first release" at User:Pit-yacker/Sandbox3. Release Notes:

• AFAICT Vehicle code in the new box is automatic. Therefore "Vehicle code" is removed
• Doesnt deal with "Metropolitan population". I was unsure what to map this to.
• Doesnt fully convert map or map caption - this is something I'm having a few probs with at moment.
• Functionality for England, Wales and London is now removed

Pit-yacker 19:21, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Do we have a soltuion to these issues as I am keen to get the final roll out done, then we can move on to converting the GB thumb maps. Regan123 09:39, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

I've also experienced difficulties in converting the infobox over. Anybody else having luck? I agree we really ought to complete roll-out. Jhamez84 17:22, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I have updated User:Pit-yacker/Sandbox3 and the map parameter should work now. Converting "MapCaption" so that becomes part of map_type is quite hard as it involves long regular expressions and I haven't worked out how to do it. Any suggestions for what to do about Metropolitan population? Pit-yacker 20:27, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

coor template

Does this infobox include a {{coor}} template? It really needs one if it doesn't. Otherwise we are not going to get any Google Earth mashing for UK places. Is it a big job to add one? Frelke 21:13, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

{{Coor title d}} is transcluded by this template. It produces the co-ordinates in the top right when you specify the |latitude= and |longitude= parameters

Pit-yacker 21:16, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Please be aware of {{coord}}, which is about to supersede the "coor" family of templates. Andy Mabbett 21:36, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I am pretty sure that because the {{coor}} is by way a transclusion, mashers like Google don't pick it up. If you look at, for example, {{Infobox CityIT}}, you will see that instead of using a pair of lat/long parameters they use a single {{coor}} or {{coord}} template, which achieves the same thing. But their version is used as an exemplar by GE themselves. Why not change this one to do it that way? Or at least allow it as an option? Frelke 00:22, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean, but note that development of {{coord}} is ongoing; see its talk page. I think {{coor}} is picked up by Google Earth. I also note that their page, to which you link, contains misleading advice (e.g. {{coor title dms}} should not go "anywhere on the page", but just before external links). Andy Mabbett 10:28, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Well it works just fine wherever its placed on the page, so I would suggest that they are correct. I think what you are referring to is a WP:MOS issue, are you not? Frelke 11:10, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

See Coor title dms#Usage. Andy Mabbett 11:35, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Exactly. Its a usage guideline. It will work wherever you put it (as Google suggest). The only reason to put it there is "so that other editors will always know where to find it". It will work wherever you put it. Google are not misleading anyone. That usage instruction could change tomorrow by consensus. So are you suggesting that Google should have someone watching that page for any changes so that they can update their guidelines? Were their guidelines written before or after that section was added to WP? It doesn't mislead anyone to say, as they do, "These templates can be used anywhere within the article text". can is the operative word. Its not must, nor should. Its can. Its a guideline rather than an instruction. Frelke 13:42, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I'd prefer it if Google linked to a page here, saying "for guidance on its usage, see...". Andy Mabbett 14:17, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Can I suggest that when you email them with your suggestion that you don't tell them that they are giving misleading advice. It may make them slightly less receptive to your idea. Frelke 14:44, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

To come back to the point in question, Is it possible to change this template to allow the input of a {{coor}} and/or {{coord}} instead of lat/long? Frelke 13:52, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I have no idea what you mean by that. Andy Mabbett 14:17, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Interesting. Changing the template per your suggestion would be as easy as having a single field for coordinates for which the proper input is {{coor(d)|foo|etc.}}. But that strikes me as more difficult (less wiki) for (new) users to implement - it would require them to learn the geo whatnots markup instead of just being able to input a latitude and longitude. Besides, the result would be the same: it's not Wikipedia's fault if Google is parsing wiki-markup page sources instead of the output HTML - I assume that's what's happening, because there's no good reason why Google can't "mash" this template unless it's parsing the source and looking for a string beginning "{{coor". — mholland 14:20, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

1. It IS WP's fault in that we are asking them (Google) to parse database dumps rather than parse the output HTML. The reason being that there is more structure in the dumps than the HTML, PLUS there is no load on our increasingly over-worked webservers from Google spiders nosing around.
2. Are you really suggesting that it would be more complicated for a newbie to have one less parameter to enter (38 rather than 39) here but having to enter one of the params as a template. Given the possible permutations and level of comprehension of not-just WP-markup, but the civil and political structure of the UK, required to use this template in anger, can I suggest that changing 2lat/long parameters to a single coor(d) parameter requires changing knowledge levels by only a relatively small amount. I have certainly never tried to add an {{Infobox UK place}} to an article, but I have amended several lat/longs therein and would be quite comfortable changing others. I think you are wrong here. Frelke 14:42, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. But yes, I am really suggesting that users nesting templates is more complicated (and less foolproof) than having two fields whose inputs are raw numbers, and letting this template do the work. Your suggestion is perfectly valid, however, and comes with a set of benefits and disbenefits, so I'd gladly participate in a consensus-building discussion or straw poll. — mholland 14:50, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

First of all, AFAICT this template would have to keep long/lat to allow it to do the map so it would actually be bringing in an extra value to the template. The second point being that as already raised I think the idea of putting a whole template as a parameter is far too complicated for the average editor, and just wouldnt work in the long term.

Whether we ditch the inclusion of {{Coor title d}} is perhaps a valid question - we could just switch it for {{Coor d}} at extra line in the infobox as with the old one and articles could add another instance as appropriate. However, it seems a little daft to me that we need to duplicate information just for Google. There must be a more elegant solution?

Pit-yacker 15:59, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I believe you are wrong on both counts and I'll tell you why. Have a look at the infobox in Florence. We have both a map and a coor template. So it must be possible. Unless, of course, Italian Wikipedians are somehow more technically gifted than the rest of us? But I doubt it. And given that the number of new inclusions of this template - i.e. new UK place articles - is relatively small, surely it is manageable to do. If the Italians can manage it, don't you think we can? The "average" editor is unlikely to bother with a complicated template such as this. It will take some keen patrollers to regularly add templates such as this to new articles.And they can manage to use a template. Frelke 23:20, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Template:Infobox CityIT works in the way which User:Pit-yacker described - you have to enter the coordinates twice: once in the {{coor}} and then in the mapx and mapy fields. I'm sure there is a more elegant way of doing it, as Pit-yacker suggests, but I don't see how nesting templates is an intrinsic improvement to machine-readability of Wikipedia's data. True, it fits in with the way in which Google is currently parsing articles, but Google doesn't make Wikipedia policy, and there's no way of knowing that Google won't adopt a smarter (perhaps Microformat-based) way of "mashing" this data. — mholland 00:13, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Scale ?

Does anyone else think it might be interesting to include (in the UK Place infobox) something along the lines of the "type" or "scale" options? (I prefer scale). After all, the info given when you move the cursor over the coordinates is something along the lines of "maps, aerial photos and other data of ...". I suppose it's a bit subjective, but I understand this to mean "maps, aerial photos and other data..." OF THE PLACE, and not just the location of the place in a larger context.

Since "Place" is a bit vague, the scale factor can be important;. for example a district of a city. My feeling is that clicking on the coordinates should take you to a map or photo of that district, rather than show the location of the district on a map or photo of the whole city. (Perhaps the latter should be done on a less detailed outline map in the infobox, anyway). Districts can vary in size enormously.

Any comments? cheers, Wikityke 15:20, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I think that a scale option could be implemented by replacing type:city with {{ #if: {{{scale|}}} | scale:{{{scale|}}} | type:city }}}} in the two lines of the template that use 'coor title' (I have tested this in my sandbox and it works OK). Any objections to my adding this to the infobox? —Jeremy (talk) 16:37, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Population question

I've come across two situations where the parish population and urban area population are different. These are Henley-in-Arden and Kingsbury, Warwickshire. In both cases I've gone with the urban population in the infobox. I assume this is the right thing to do. Any thoughts? G-Man * 00:55, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I think you've made the most sensible choice. The articles then deal with the two urban areas. In which case, you need to add the other (currently missing) civil parishes in the civil parish fields of the infobox. Finally, I would add the separate civil parish population figues in the section where you deal with demographics (It is effectively already done for Henley-in-Arden, though it might be clarified a bit more, and it can be found out and added for Kingsbury, Warwickshire.) Do you think that would help matters at all?  DDStretch  (talk) 01:15, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Ooops - just noticed that Kingsbury, Warwickshire appears to occupy only part of its civil parish so that, if my understanding is right, its urban area is located entirely within one civil parish. In this case, it is less clear what should be done. If you want the article to be about both the village and the civil parish, I would tend to put the parish population in the infobox, and clarify the population for the urban area in the article (along with the populations of the other villages if these can be found out). It does need a bit of careful thought, I think.  DDStretch  (talk) 01:23, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

It's primarily about the village, with a section about the parish which includes other settlements, so I thought that having the urban area population was best. G-Man * 18:48, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

In that case, I think you've done the right thing. Do you foresee there being any need for an article about the civil parish at all, in its own right?  DDStretch  (talk) 17:12, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Another one to merge?

Found Template:Infobox Newport electoral ward on my travels. Should this be requested for a merge? Regan123 09:45, 6 April 2007 (UTC) And Template:Infobox swansea electoral ward? Regan123 09:52, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I'd certainly welcome their deletion. Jhamez84 20:27, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Historic counties in administrative infoboxes

We still have historic counties in the administrative infoboxes (we all know who's behind that). I think there's even less justification for this then there is for the general infoboxes. Especially in Wales. Take a look at Cardiff for example, the historic county is right at the top. I cannot in my wildest imagination see a justification for this. As their inclusion was never agreed to in the first place and was done by stealth by a certain user. I think these should be removed. What do other people think. G-Man * 18:53, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

--I too think these should be removed; we've acheived consensus in the naming conventions, individual talk pages, and on this template talk page in the past.

On this topic, I've noticed, many settlements that form local government districts are using a faux-infobox (its basically a table pasted into the article), such as Manchester, Warrington, Sheffield, Metropolitan Borough of Oldham.

I propose we (by which I mean someone with the techinical knowhow!) create a proper infobox akin to this one, though more suitable for local authority areas. This would stop the inconsistency (compare Sheffield with City of Leeds) and content forking (as identified on Cardiff by G-Man).

I'd also like to see an infobox developed for the seperate Canals of Great Britain and the Hundreds of England and Wales.

Thoughts? Objections? Interest? Jhamez84 20:33, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I can't speak for the other articles, but the infobox used on Sheffield is as laid out by the UK subdivisions Wikiproject. I would suggest that any changes to this structure be discussed there. —Jeremy (talk) 21:31, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

The two relevant projects (UK Geography WikiProject and UK subdivisions Wikiproject) are effectively moribund in my experience. I did try to suggest how the Geography one might be reinvigorated (it will be on the talk page there), but this hardly got any response, though someone just dismissed my suggestion that it could be re-cast as a centralised resource for all things to do with Uk Geography as being uncesssary, which I think is very short-sighted. It could, for example, be one way of avoiding people saying they didn't know of certain editing moves to create more standardized infoboxes. However, I still think it would be worthwhile to reinvigorate them, and so I do think people could just join the two projects and begin to work on various topics and recast the project information. In this respect, I think Jeremy's suggestion is a very good one.

Structure of Local Government Entities in England

If the suggestion is followed through, the canals infobox might be best placed in the UK geography project, whilst the infobox(es) that deal with subdivisions would be better placed in the UK subdivisions project.

In this last case, I suggest that a unified set of infoboxes be devised that mimic the basic structure of Local Government in the UK. So, this would mean paying attention to the structure of levels (tiers) and entities within each tier that are shown in the diagram I've included, and the corresponding structures that could be illustrated for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

Returning to the more geographical subjects, there is a need for an infobox that covers neither an extended structure (such as a canal, river, railway line, or road might be), or a settlement or local goverment entity, but which might include some or all of: An historic house, Important gardens, Ancient Monument, Site of Important Event, and so on. These should be considered as well. My feeling is that some of these might be linked by a "core infobox", which covers many common aspect of the specific cases needing an infobox, with various customizations to add additional features that certain groups of things might need. For example, many need to include some fields that describe the location, though the infobox for an "extended structure" such as canal, rivers, etc, will need something slightly different. The customizations will then address the specific features that are shared by, say, Historic Houses, or Stone Circles, or Megaliths, or Gardens, and so on. In this respect, some infoboxes do exist (one for Megaliths, for example, can be seen in the Bridestones article).

Now does any of what I've written make any kind of sense?  DDStretch  (talk) 23:34, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Assuming you are at least in agreement for an infobox for Local Authority districts and the various hundreds of England and Wales (!?).... do you mean something like an Infobox UK Landmark - that would have at least some of the functionality of this infobox?

Rivers already have a generic infobox, as do many other articles, but many are unsuitable for UK articles, and are not used effectively or consistently, in my opinion.

I must say that I also agree with Jeremy that some WikiProjects are effectively defunct. This, in combination with the fact that we've managed to create one of the best infoboxes on wikipedia here, (even if I say so myself!) and we really ought to capitalise on the amount of quality users that have been around, and at least start to think about the next phases for UK articles (though this project is not yet complete). Jhamez84 01:13, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

DDStretch: I agree with the need to modernise the infobox system. I have proposed the disbanding of the UK subdivisions project altogether, as its sole content consists of out of date infoboxes and it appears to be entirely defunct. The UK geography project is not defunct, though it's not thriving as well as I hoped, as I've not had time to maintain it, and nobody else has kept it up to date. That project already has guidelines for counties and settlements, and you are welcome to use it to develop further infoboxes (and I'll assist in developing associated guides for writing the articles if I find the time) for the other subdivisions and geographical features. I would probably have done this myself months ago if other things hadn't got in the way. Joe D (t) 02:43, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Jhamez84: Thanks for the comments. Sorry I wasn't clear enough. I am very much in favour of infoboxes for local authority districts as well as the historical divisions (Hundreds, etc). My comment was that we should try to make sure we reflect or model in some way the structure of them in terms of how they relate to each other, as illustrated in the diagram I "quoted". After some viewing, I also agree that generic rivers infoboxes are not as suited to the UK case as they could be, and so, alomg with the guidelines for UKCITIES and other places, there is a need for new, well-tailored infoboxes for the UK situation. Your suggestion for a landmark infobox is exactly what I had in mind, with various "customizations" to make it relevant for the different classes of landmarks. At the time of night I wrote my previous contribution, I couldn't think of a suitable name for it.

Joe D: Also, thanks for the comments. Sorry I was perhaps overestimated the state of the UK geography project. I alos welcome your comments on that project's talk page in response to my earlier message on it about revitalising it. I really do think that the UK geography project needs to grasp the opportunity that can be easily lost by becoming a well-advertised central directory of resources for people writing about UK topics. It could also become a project that announces the development and discusses the need for certain new features (like Infoboxes, guidelines, etc) for UK topics. At the moment, there are WikiProjects for various counties and the higher-level UK structures (England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland) as well as one for the United Kingdom as a whole. How do these work together? Is there a need for them to work more with each other, being aware of what each project is doing so that pooled knowledge and expertise can be capitalised on? Although these are largely rhetorical questions, the potential for the revitalised UK project could also be to facilitate the projects working with each other more than I see happens at the moment.

I will be happy to contribute to this, but for this to succeed it needs more than one or two people working piecemeal on it, so that the initial work can be seen to be more than just a (feeble?) individual effort. I am glad, however, that some agree with me that certain projects seem defunct. If people think some kmind of action like that which I have suggested would be useful, therefore, perhaps we should set up a specific sub-page of the UK geography talk page in which the specific future of that project and what it plans to do can be discussed? This can be done at the same time as some initiatives are started that seem generally useful and probably non-controversial, so that it is seen to be more than just a "talking shop."  DDStretch  (talk) 10:34, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I would support merging the UK subdivisions project into the UK geography project. I would also like to see better lines of communication established between the UK geography project and the various projects that overlap with its scope (e.g. London; Cheshire; England). At the moment this talk page seems to be the most active place for discussing UK geography related issues, which seems odd to me. —Jeremy (talk) 17:35, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree wholly with Jeremy also. I'm mindful that cliques shouldn't be encouraged (leads to systemic bias), however I can't help but recognise the quality, teamwork, knowledge-diversity and general Wiki-ship that has been broadly demonstrated in the roll out of this infobox. It would be a shame to complete (in the fullest way possible of course) this project, only then for editors to dissipate, with our readers losing out on what would have been improved UK geography articles.

Many WikiProjects have a newsletter that goes out to members - perhaps this could address some of the poor (non-existent) communication seen by the two UK WikiProjects? Jhamez84 20:34, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Turning off maps

Unless/untill we get a specific template for council wards, can we have an option for switching off the auto-map? See Ashley Down for why I want to. Joe D (t) 21:28, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Just place the following in the infobox:

|map_type= nomap

This approach is used in the Saddleworth infobox, but should be used sparingly (in terms of usefulness to readers). Though that article is clearly a good example to utilise this function. Jhamez84 21:52, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Joe D (t) 22:41, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Hrm, I see this still leaves an empty cell. Is there any way with all all these new fangled template parsers to only create that cell IF map_type != nomap? More importantly, is it worth doing for the small number of articles it will affect? Joe D (t) 22:47, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Over-riding autogenerated fields

This has probably been asked before, but how do you over-ride the infobox when it gives wrong details in the autogenerated fields? Where is the data coming from for the Police, Fire and Ambulance fields?

This template setup seems to be far too clever for its own good. It's not user-friendly to display information with no indication on how to edit it. Tearlach 23:49, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Well said. The general consensus here seems to be that it is the best thing since sliced bread. I'm not sure about it at all. It is horrendously complex and seems totally inflexible. And I'm not sure of the need to know which ambulance service every village in England uses. Frelke 23:59, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

You will have to hunt for them as I did Template:Infobox UK place/police Template:Infobox UK place/fire you have to scroll through the list and find the error I am not sure about the Ambulance services. --Barryob entretien 00:05, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

I have fixed the issue and corrected Newport. If you use the infobox in the same way it will work everywhere. Perhaps next time you could actually tell us what the correct information was as I had to go and find it. Regan123 00:14, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

I have fixed the issue and corrected Newport

Thanks. Looks an utter dog's breakfast under the hood. Should people really have to get into scary stuff like "This template employs intricate features of template syntax. Please do not alter it unless you are certain to understand its setup and parser functions and are ready to repair/revert all collateral damage if results are unexpected" just to alter a simple detail about a town? Tearlach 00:44, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

That's what this talk page is for. Jhamez84 20:45, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Using inappropriate local maps

I thought I'd best float this up for any discussion now, rather than proceed much further, but I'd like some comment about this. A few days ago, I noticed that the map for Dronfield (A place clearly in Derbyshire) had had its map changed from the UK one to one for South Yorkshire, which it clearly is not in, and which makes the caption rather misleading (it isn't "within South Yorkshire".) I've now fojd that the same editor seems to have changed the map for more Derbyshire places so that they use the South Yorkshire map. I think they should be simply reverted, but I'd like some more comments about this, and whether reverting the maps is a good idea, given the grief that has happened over that particular area of the country and this infobox in the past.  DDStretch  (talk) 16:16, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

It seems like an incredibly commonsense approach to me to only use a local map if the settlement forms part of that local map's intended area (West Midlands for West Midlands settlements etc). If this is a sustained problem I'm sure a consensus would be formed quickly. Jhamez84 20:48, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Me too, but the change seemed so counter-intuitive I perhaps wondered whether some kind of issue had been raised and discussed which led to this being all right, and which I had some kind of mental block about, as it was so surprising. As well as Dronfield, I've now reverted Worksop (Nottinghamshire), Eckington, Derbyshire, Killamarsh, and Staveley, Derbyshire. Some of these aren't even close to being in South Yorkshire.  DDStretch  (talk) 23:08, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

A map of West Yorkshire.

It is certainly my intention to produce maps for every English county (ceremonial of course). If users are finding the British Isles map too vauge, I'm always open to requests to hurry through a map for a certain area.

Naturally, these maps include territory which is beyond it's intended limits, so I purposefully dulled the wider area to discourage inappropriate use like this by what I expected to be trolls, or IP testers.

I think the problem in the cases of the settlements you have found stems again from the Sheffield WikiProject, with some users using the Greater Sheffield city region as a reference frame. The problem with that approach is, these places (listed by DDStretch above) are not in South Yorkshire, and the city-region is neither legally defined, nor a common/useful frame of reference for readers, nor part of the naming conventions for geographic reference frames ("we use the current county"). It also granting Sheffield a status that encyclopedically, it shouldn't.

That said, I'm pleased to announce the uploading of a West Yorkshire map for use in the infobox. I would appreciate help with it's calibration and settings. Jhamez84 23:39, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Ok, the user who has been adding these inappropriate local maps User:Lewisskinner has now reverted my reversion to Killamarsh. His edit summary says that it gives a "clearer picture of where it is", even though it actually ends up being factually incorrect in the caption. What should happen now?  DDStretch  (talk) 23:35, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

He has been doing that all over the place. He switched Middlesbrough to Tyne and Wear map, the result was that the dot ended up half-way down the article. Pit-yacker 00:09, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I've sent the user in question a message highlighting that this is a contentious and inappropriate use of the local-maps, and not how they were, or indeed are (as I understand) intended to be used. Again, if it's a sustained problem, I'm confident a large and swift consensus would be agreed upon. I'm sure however that User:Lewisskinner's edits were good faith, and merely trying to outline where a place is within a more local context - but best to wait for the correct map for which a settlement accurately belongs. Jhamez84 00:31, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

It is possible that it is good faith, but he has yet again reverted my change back to the generic map for Killamarsh, and now for Eckington without any response to my own and Jhamez84's messages on his talk page to discuss the matter, both of which occurred about 30minutes before he carried out the latest reversions. I feel that he is pushing it to a 3RR situation and not discussing the matter, and so, given that he is not a new user, I suggest that these latest, or further changes should be flagged as disruptive. Can I have some comments about this course of action please? (Incidentally, he also changed the map for Chester to use a local map that is not yet ready, and I reverted that a day or so ago.)  DDStretch  (talk) 00:46, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

He seems to have stopped doing it now, possibly after the reversions of his additions by Jeremy (an admin). He did, however, make a sarcastic reply eventually to my message on his talk page that only essentially complains that I have failed to assume good faith in his actions.  DDStretch  (talk) 09:31, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Slightly off topic, and it may be best to start a discussion at WP:UK geo, but as far as I'm aware there has never been a policy decision on the styles of maps used. Red/pink on white with no details was rolled out for counties, districts, historic counties, etc, and is still very widespread. Green on blue was used for GBthumb, however, and the Cornwall WikiProject went and created their own system. Now we have yet another style (which I recognise is somewhat established anyway). Perhaps we should (a) make sure that this new style is the one that everyone likes best for this purpose (I think I do, though there's a lot to be said for the simplicity of the original style), and (b) start a policy discussion on whether or not to standardise the existing maps to this format? Joe D (t) 00:38, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

There was a breif discussion in this talk page's archives that had such a swift and unilateral consensus, it wasn't even codified - it also allowed users to highlight what style of maps they wanted to see. The discussion related to local mapping specifically, and which is the most useful. However, it was only really agreed that we use a local map where one exists (Salford > Greater Manchester, Dudley > West Midlands), but it wasn't agreed specifically which map we apply (I for one assumed it would be common sense).

I intend to look into Cheshire's map as it appears to have some discrepencies which I'm not happy about. I may have used a squashed/stretched source map. I'll double check.

Are their any budding graphic designers out there willing to help with producing maps? I could draw up some instructions including pantones and source material etc. Jhamez84 14:05, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm afraid I cant help with the mechanics of graphic design, but I could help out with the discovery of key points along a local map's border-line if that would help. For well-calibrated maps, the resulting red dots should all be positioned on the boundary lines, and other places entirely within the boundary lines could refine this further. Would that help at all for proposed local maps? (I can also add additional "boundary-line points" for Cheshire if that would help)  DDStretch  (talk) 18:55, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I think that, as Jhamez84 suggests, there may be more wrong with the Cheshire map than just calibration. I tried aligning it over the satellite photos in Google Earth but eventually gave up because getting one side of the map right messed up the other. Depending on how much graphic skill is required to create the maps I may be able to help (this is probably the best map that I have drawn to date). —Jeremy (talk) 19:04, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

With each map, I'm improving the technique, and finding better methods and sources to use. I'm certain that as one of my earliest maps, the Cheshire map could be corrected/improved upon. I'll take a look at this now.

As for the process of the map making, well, it takes a couple of good solid hours to complete, but someone with knowledge of Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop (recent editions) could replicate the conditions and style.

I would add that maps are inherently inaccurate, and will always have errors; it the nature of rendering real places into a 2D graphic with lines and colours. We won't get them perfect, but I'll certainly try to get them as close as possible. Jhamez84 23:01, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

How about having a set place for the "test pages" for the local maps? I know the Cheshire maps have been in a sandbox for User:Pit-yacker, and I don't want to dismiss Pit-yacker's extremely useful role in helping out with this, but perhaps it wouled tie things in with the infobox a bit more if it were some kind of sub-page of this talk page?  DDStretch  (talk) 00:22, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Looking at Template:Location map, on which the infobox is based - it looks like we have to use the equirectangular projection for converting into a 2D image - i.e. with equally spaced lines of latitude and equally spaced lines of longitude - for the pointer to be in the correct position (although the spacings between lines of longitude does not need to equal that of the lines of latitude). The Ordnance Survey uses a transverse Mercator projection. OpenStreetMap uses a normal Mercator projection. Both will therefore have distortion compared to what we need with these maps. Richard B 00:40, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Cheshire Map revisited

I've done a bit of restructuring and so on to make this section not get too unwieldy. Feel free to revert if that causes any problems.  DDStretch  (talk) 16:36, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I've uploaded a newer version of the Cheshire infobox map, per the comments left here, and also as part of the discepencies found by Richard B (thanks to all). With some re-calibration, we should be able to go live with this version, though again, as always, I'm open to feedback to get these as best as possible.

A map testing page, or map sub-page would be great! I'd really welcome that. I think a list of all the avaliable maps for transclusion would be particularly helpful to current and future contributors. Jhamez84 00:58, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I've had a go at calibrating the Cheshire map. The results are here. The border meeting points match reasonably well - but it looks like there's perhaps a very slight rotation of the map might help - some of the ones near the Wales border don't match as well as the ones on the East side. The M6 ones are mixed - Knutsford Services is pretty close, but M6 J16 is in the wrong borough. Richard B 11:59, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

The calibrations look good, and a vast improvement on the previous version of the map. Are the various settlements correctly placed? Google Maps suggests that J16 of the M6 is accurately placed, are you certain it lies within the Crewe and Nantwich borough? Jhamez84 16:18, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I've just looked at my OSMap (1:25000) "Crewe and Nantwich" (Sheet 257). According to it, Junction 16 is actually neatly placed exactly on the Cheshire and Staffordshire border (Barthomley civil parish on the Cheshire side, and Audley Rural Civil parish on the other, the map tells me), going in a south-west to north-east direction at that point.  DDStretch  (talk) 16:26, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

(Further info.) J16 actually goes from Staffordshire into Cheshire into the Crewe and Nantwich borough, and stays in it for about 2 kilometers before going into Congleton Borough, and so it seems to me that the map has the position of the motorway shifted too much to the east at the moment.  DDStretch  (talk) 16:32, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I think I've fixed these issues. Please take a look at User:Richard B/sandbox. Once the page is open, you may have to refresh your browser to see the changes. Jhamez84 17:18, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Looks better on the motorway now. I've added a lot of settlement locations to the above sandbox. Some places are close to the marker, others (particularly those near Crewe / Nantwich) seem a bit far away. Please feel free to add others to the sandbox if you want. Richard B 18:05, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for this. I'm still not happy with the Cheshire map - I will address the inaccurate settlements this evening. The problem I'm having is, as what I assume is related to it's non-metropolitan status (its the first non-met county map I've drawn), there is a lack of quality source material for Cheshire's urban areas. There is also considerable differences between different sources I've used.

I will get there eventually! These tests are invaluable. Jhamez84 18:20, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I've fixed some of the incorrectly placed urban areas. I think this should solve the latest discrepencies. Once the map is thumbnailed to infobox-size, the margin for visual error will be minimalised. Jhamez84 00:00, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Suggested field: pronunciation

'fraid I was on wikibreak when this was going through the suggestions phase. Couldn't see this idea mentioned in the archives though. How about a pronunciation field to go along with those alternative languages ones? I know several pages had them when using the old non-template table system... Joe D (t) 21:44, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

I think that's a good idea, although we'd have to ensure some consistency in terms of IPA or spell-as-it's-said notation. IPA is my preference since it's a universal standard. Alternatively, we could have a field for each (since many people, including me, are not IPA-literate). Waggers 09:26, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Maps Sub-page

The issue of maps is overtaking much of this talk page. As suggested earlier by another user, I've moved some content from this page to a centralised sub-page. I hope this helps. Any objections, please feel free to revert. Jhamez84 22:25, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

St Buryan

Um..the replacement of the old infobox at St Buryan with the new UK place one has lead to some inportant information being deleted (Village population, local council ward, dwellings, secondary settlements). There is also now no distinction between St Buryan the parish, and St Buryan the village. I did bring this up here when the template was being hammered out although it appears to have been overlooked...can we have a look at this again please and maybe include the option for these extra fields?Mammal4 13:19, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I have also raised the issue of parish information before. After coming to the conclusion that the new infobox is for places, not local administrative areas (such as civil parishes), I feel that a separate small parish infobox would be the best way forward. When you mention local council ward, do you mean the parish ward, the district council ward, or the county council ward (the three are separate entities, and, although in some cases, they may be coterminous, they must not be thought of as referring to the same things?) Such a parish infobox would fill in the missing piece in the local government hierarchy, since some kind of district council (or equivalent) infobox and county council (or equivalent) infobox already exists. It also needs to be small so that articles that combine together the settlement with the civil parish in the same article will not be over-burdened with infoboxes, and yet large enough so that separate articles for settlements and civil parish can be catered for.  DDStretch  (talk) 16:09, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

It would be better to build the necessary, optional, attributes - to achieve exactly the output you desire - into the existing template, than to create yet another. Andy Mabbett 10:29, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure why. In some cases, there are articles already written which are about civil parishes and which are separate from the articles about the settlements which they contain. If these articles are to be catered for, then a lot of fields currently not optional might have to be made optional, which might not be good. I think there should be as many templates as are required to mirror or model the local government structures in place in the UK.  DDStretch  (talk) 10:38, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

To fill in the history of why there are separate articles about civil parishes, I believe this is a result of the Insane Parish Project. To answer your main point, I agree in principle but that raises the question of what to do about articles that are about both a village and the parish containing it, or even about towns and boroughs or cities and city districts. Waggers 10:46, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Having written and researched extensively about St Buryan as well as other Cornish parishes, I would argue strongly against separating the village from the parish. The information about the two aspects, especially the history, as so closely interwoven that to separate them would create two smaller, average, articles with duplicated information, rather than one good article (which is what St Buryan is currently). Surely it would just make more sense to add a few optional fields to the place template?Mammal4 12:13, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

For those places in Cornwall, it just seems to be those in Penwith that use this parish template. Other districts of Cornwall use the long parish template. My personal view is that if I look for the name of a town/village, then I want information about the town or village, and the parish is very much secondary.Richard B 13:05, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

As you say, this is a personal view. I would want to see the village info in the context of the parish. The other parishes in Cornwall don't have any template at all not the long template, (as I started in Penwith with an aim to moving up through the county although I admittedly haven't got that far). The districts as you say, which are a tier above the parishes and not the same thing at all, use the district template which is in the same style as the parish template. The only other template in use is in parishes which have a large town such as St Austell or Truro, which have the UK place template, and ignore the parish information.Mammal4 13:51, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

In order to arrive at the best way forward to deal with this situation, one needs to get an overview of what is actually the case, and this should only be assisted by the individual experiences people might have in very local areas of the UK, or by their own personal way of using wikipedia. This is in contrast to allowing the personal or localised aspects to drive, in a large way, the methods of dealing with this. When I have considered the problem, it has seemed to me that over all the UK where civil parishes are still operating or operational, we have a number of cases that need to be largely catered for. Some cases may be sufficiently infrequent as to need special individual solutions, but the general solution should aim to try to minimize the number of these special cases without distorting or making very unwieldy the true picture of what is going on for the majority of cases. Restricting the case to civil parishes then, we have the following cases that, in the context of articles to be written on wikipedia, can be distinguishes in such a way that most settlement/civil parish combinations can be described by one of these cases:

• One civil parish containing the whole of one settlement. Name of civil parish and settlement are effectively identical. (Many examples.)
• One civil parish containing the whole of one settlement. Name of civil parish and settlement are NOT identical. (We can ignore "near misses" in names, but not sure how many of these there are.)
• One civil parish containing the whole of a number of settlements, or very few "split settlements". Name of civil parish is effectively identical to one or more of the settlements. (Another large number of examples.)
• One civil parish containing a number of settlements. The name of the civil parish is NOT identical to any of the settlements. (Some examples exist. I'm not sure how many, but I suspect more than just a few. One example is Odd Rode which contains Scholar Green, Mow Cop, and Rode Heath, this last place being quite insignificant compared to the others, and Mow Cop being split between authorities at many levels of local government.)
• One settlement containing a number of civil parishes where the settlement is not the whole of a higher-tier administrative unit, like a unitary authority. (This case has also a number of examples dotted around the country, such as Burton upon Trent, and I know other editors know of other cases.)
• One settlement that occupies an unparished area, but which conatins, either partially or entirely, one or more civil parishes. (An example of one is Chester Castle, and perhaps this is unique. It has no residents.)

Now, have I missed out any cases that actually occur at all?

In the above cases, the existing UK place template can be used with differing degrees of ease. In many cases, the use of the population figure will refer to the civil parish, which may be unsatisfactory without additional explanatory notes in the cases where more than one settlement occupies a civil parish. Additionally, in the cases where a civil parish contains more than one settlement, there needs to be a decision as to whether to write about all of them in the same article or not, and problems can occur depending on each decision made: If all are included in the same article, then the guidelines of how to write about a settlement need to be modified, and if they are not, then the problems of population, already mentioned, crop up as well as whether, indeed, to include an infobox for each article, which probably needs to be made on a case-by-case basis. Wjhere one settlement contains a number of different civil parishes, then we have some other problems. We can treat them as "suburbs", but they may not be organised in a way which suits the public perception of the way in which the settlement can be sub-divided.

All of the above, including a few other issues that I feel would be even more burdensome to read about, lead me to believe that, although there can be a close, intimate relationship between some settelements and particular civil parishes, they cannot be normally assumed to be always capable of being "run together" in the same articles. Sometimes, they can be, but there are significant numbers of cases where the existing guidelines and templates get more and more strained by doing so. We need to think of a way of dealing with this.

My solution is to have some means of ensuring that minimal disruption happens to existing articles, especially the cases where there are already existing articles about civil parishes separate from the contained settlements, such as Whitegate and Marton and Whitegate, both of which will shortly be expanded and joined with an article about Marton. In this example, where does the UK place infobox go? On one (if so, which one), or both of the existing articles? In the case of the civil parihes that are contained within Burton upon Trent and similar cases, what infoboxes, if any, should go on the exiting articles that are pointed to in the list of civil parishes? I think the simplest solution is to have a very minimal teplate written for civil parishes that would be applicable in cases where separate articles are required. The amount of information about a civil parish that could be written is greater than usually one reads at the moment, and, what's more, it is often quite easy to verify (for example, from the local government websites, and the history of some from the two volumes of Frederick A Youngs' "Guide to the Local Administrative Units of England" (1991) (relatively easy to get hold of, and I have the one dealing with Northern England: ISBN 0-86193-127-0.) So, for all the reasons I have given, and for the issue of logic and completeness, I do not see why a simple template for a civil parish should not be provided for those cases where it is otherwise difficult to fit the pattern of settlements and civil parishes into the same article.  DDStretch  (talk) 15:55, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Maps revisited

I thought the maps were supposed to be ceremonial counties. So why do we have a map for Southampton? L.J.Skinner^{wot|I did} 17:19, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Was there ever any agreement that they had to be ceremonial counties? The So'ton map is useful because suburbs of the city would be indistinguishable from the city itself on a Hampshire map. Joe D (t) 18:07, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I think it should be ceremonial counties that are used as standard for England. Simply to stop POV forking in the future. Manchester is covered adequately for example by the Greater Manchester map. Jhamez84 01:00, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Agreed, although that was a similar debate about Sheffield places. The Soton map should at least look like the county maps. L.J.Skinner^{wot|I did} 11:25, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Feel free to edit the map to bring it into line; I originally tried to copy the colour scheme from the others but found that using black roads and black place labels on {{location map Southampton}} made the labels difficult to read. As Joe says, suburbs of the city and neighbouring settlements would be indistinguishable from the city itself on a Hampshire map, and having both this infobox and a separate {{location map}} on each article is just silly. The common sense solution is to allow the Greater Southampton map to be included in this infobox. Waggers 11:44, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Can anybody either edit the Soton map, or show it within Hants? I'm useless with this kind of thing. Maybe Jhamez84 (talk · contribs) can help? L.J.Skinner^{wot|I did} 21:28, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

As far as showing it within Hants is concerned, the map already contains Image:EnglandSouthampton.png to show the location of the Greater Southampton area within England. Waggers 09:20, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Would it be better to use this map only for suburbs, and the Hants map for areas outside Soton? Contrast Rawmarsh with Millhouses, both in South Yorkshire. L.J.Skinner^{wot|I did} 17:02, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Could do, but even then it would be difficult to see the difference between, for example, Chartwell Green, West End and Hedge End, or between Otterbourne, Fair Oak, Colden Common, Twyford and Compton. Is there a really good reason why location maps of boroughs are to be excluded from the infobox (other than the sheer volume of maps involved)? Waggers 20:50, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Well of those, only Hedge End, Otterbourne and Colden Common actually have this map, so it would appear to be a false dilemma. Additionally, Greater Southampton is not a legal entity, unlike Eastley, Southampton and Hampshire, or say Sheffield and South Yorkshire, but not Greater Sheffield or Sheffield urban area. L.J.Skinner^{wot|I did} 21:20, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Is there a rule that all maps must be confined to purely legal/administrative entities? I haven't seen any such Wikipedia policy. Waggers 12:25, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Not that I can tell. However, I for one would oppose such a move. It is the thin end of the wedge to [psuedo-???]political groups such as the "traditional" counties brigade using it as justification to try and remove any mention of modern boundaries from Wikipedia yet again. Pit-yacker 13:09, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

District or Borough?

Would it be possible for those Districts of England that are non-metropolitan districts with Borough status to have "Borough" as it's district field? (If that makes sense...)

E.G. On the Bacup article, rather than "District" we would see "Borough", in the infobox, because Rossendale has Borough status.

It might be complicated to set-up to say the least, but I think it would be a great addition. Any thoughts? Jhamez84 01:00, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

If possible, this would be a good option. At the moment, in Cheshire, at least one likes to be known as a "District" (City of Chester, which I need to address in changing some templates, and even the actual full name of the article needs altering since the original creator got it wrong) and others are known as "Boroughs", so some solution based on a simple county-switch may not always be guaranteed to work, though I don't know how many "splits" there are like this.  DDStretch  (talk) 06:49, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes the same is true in Hampshire (New Forest is a district, most of the others are boroughs). With that in mind, it may be better (and indeed technically easier) just to add a new district/borough parameter (defaulting to district as that's the current setting). Waggers 07:58, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm glad you agree thusfar. The syntax in the infobox is beyond me I'm afraid. Though any thoughts about those districts with City status? - Do we have that field as Borough, District, City, or City district, or something else? City of Salford is a metropolitan district with City status; I'm not sure it technically has borough status. This could get complicated! Jhamez84 10:26, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

If it helps, the article says that City of Salford is a metropolitan borough. Similarly, City of Winchester is a district. I think we can get away with just "borough" or "district" as the name "City of..." itself should suffice to clarify the city-or-not issue. -- Waggers 11:06, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

If wikipedia is to be believed (and given what I've read in some articles, I'm not sure about that at all without further evidence in any particular case) the following is a useful guide: Borough status in the United Kingdom#Modern borough status, which seems to suggest that "borough" and "district" would suffice and can be verified relatively easily.  DDStretch  (talk) 11:20, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Currently we have loads of fields for "metropolitan boroughs" and "shire districts", though they all point to the Districts of England article. Wouldn't it be better just to have "district", "district1", "district2", "district3" fields, and a "district_type" field to switch the label between borough and district? Joe D (t) 12:40, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm keener on automation personally, though the functionality appears to have the same end-product of course. How rare/common are districts of England without Borough status? I'm sure some counties would be wholly "borough-ed", which could aid a simpleer automation. Just an idea however. Jhamez84 01:06, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

If there were some logic behind which are boroughs and which are districts, I'd be in favour of automation too. Unfortunately, there are no hard and fast rules to follow, so automation is pretty much impossible in this case. I've had a quick look at Hampshire, Berkshire, North Yorkshire and Surrey and none of those are 100 per cent borough or 100 per cent district. I think counties that are wholly borough-ed or wholly district-ed are pretty rare if there are any at all. Waggers 07:26, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Do we have a definitive source as to which districts have borough status? If we do, I think a switch would be the most suitable option. Jhamez84 23:15, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

The only one I've seen that goes anywhere near this is the wikipedia article I gave earlier (Borough status in the United Kingdom#Modern borough status), and I'm not sure how up to date or accurate that one is.  DDStretch  (talk) 10:03, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Try looking at List of English districts and Non-metropolitan district. G-Man * 19:33, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

The links you've given are useful, but not enormously. For example in the first link, next to many cities (for example Chester), is just has the word "City", which doesn't help too much. For the second link, the use of "Districts" is all right, but it does not then further go onto sub-categorize them into boroughs or not. Again, for example, Congleton and Macclesfield are two cases which are listed as Districts, but they are boroughs and are known as that in the official websites, as well as having Mayors (which seems to be one of the features of boroughs nowadays.)  DDStretch  (talk) 20:55, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

help

http://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Template%3AInfobox_UK_place&diff=124166931&oldid=123561740 that edit is making some article pages format really bad, but whenever I undo, pigsonthewing cancels it. Is there any way to stop him/her? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.167.168.29 (talk) 19/4/07 21:24

Could you provide examples please? Please also note that we have a three revert rule (Pigsonthewing ought to know better). Perhaps you would like to create an account? L.J.Skinner^{wot|I did} 20:11, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Before you get into an edit war about this, could you provide examples of pages in which the formatting has become really bad as a result of the edit? Richard B 21:36, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Otherwise perhaps, Richard, you would kindly restore the template? Thank you. Note also that this user's first edit, immediately preceding these reverts was vandalism with a PA against me. Andy Mabbett 21:39, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I'd be willing to assume good faith here - the new css classes might introduce a rendering problem in some browser or other. Of course, the anon. might just need to clear his or her cache. — mholland (talk) 21:47, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

There being no evidence of any corrupted templates, and only one, new anon poster claiming to have seen any, I request that this template be restored, ASAP. Andy Mabbett 11:01, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

The editor in question's edit history would suggest their may be a problem with Rotherham. I cant see anything wrong. Perhaps I am missing something or the page is cached? Pit-yacker 20:51, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Breaking consensus

Can I bring to the attention of the editting community involved with this template that User:Mais oui! has demonstrated repeatedly breaking the overwhelming consensus we agreed and acheieved with regards to the use of flags in infoboxes.

He's aware of the consensus, and removes instances of the the Union Flag icon from some infoboxes citing WP:FLAGCRUFT ([5], [6], [7]) only to restore the Saltire for others.

We have examples such as this and this, with unhelpful edit summaries.

Anyone willing to pass comment/provide support as we do have a codified consensus (which although I voted against it I am respecting)? Jhamez84 00:37, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I think that's called having your cake and eating it too. Although, User:Mais oui!'s position does seem consistent to me, if baffling. I'll not pass comment on his removals per WP:FLAGCRUFT, since they all seem to be from other infoboxes. The repeated addition of the St Andrew cross I would revert on sight if I came across it, per the consensus here. The argument that "the flag is not part of the Infobox code; it is part of this article - if you want to remove it you had better reach a consensus with the editors of this article" just doesn't wash with me. I disagree that consensus on a matter like this should be reached on a per article basis. I think that in the case of Aberdeen, the suggestion could easily be construed as forum shopping on Mais oui!'s part. — mholland (talk) 01:01, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

This pattern of editing from a long-standing and otherwise respected contributor is saddening. MRSC • Talk 07:52, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree - this behaviour is a bit worrying really. I too disagree with the argument that it each flag should be on an article basis - that just seems really daft, you'd have the same argument hundreds of times with no account of precedence. If on the other hand the flag was added into the 'article' and not the 'infobox', that might be a slightly different matter, but here we have consensus to remove flags from infoboxes regardless of 'code'. I will keep an eye out for any more instances. –MDCollins (talk) 08:38, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

It seems to be a situation where logic-chopping is being used in order to indulge in Gaming the system. Very sad.  DDStretch  (talk) 08:49, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Why does Reading have no police or fire cover

The invocation of this template at the article Reading, Berkshire displays null information for the police (should be Thames Valley Police) and fire service (should be Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service).

As best I can tell from the documentation, the template is supposed to work this out, but is obviously failing to do so in this case. I have some sympathy with the template, as the the subject of the article falls across three unitary authorities, and I can see no generic way for the template to resolve this. But for a human author, it is easy because I know all three authorities have the same police and fire service.

The obvious way to resolve this would be an over-ride parameter. And the older template we used to use allowed this, but this one doesn't seem to. Or if it does, it isn't documented. Can one of the template authors sort this out, or I do need to revert to using the old style template. -- Chris j wood 18:40, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I've sorted it out now. Somebody had used a intra-article (#) link for the Reading Borough parameter. Changed that and everything is fine now. -- Chris j wood 18:48, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Co-ordinate Problem

Do not know what has happened with this template recently but there is now a problem with the display of co-ordinate information at the top of articles using this template. The placement of the information is slightly too high and the top part is removed by the underline for the title of the article. It could be just a display problem with IE6 but for example when the {{coor title dm}} template is used directly in articles the placement is OK.

Keith D 14:32, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

See: Title coordinates gone wrong?. Andy Mabbett

Thanks for the link, will keep an eye on that page. Keith D 14:55, 26 April 2007 (UTC)