User:Arg342/School sandbox

Arg342/School sandbox
Information
f4	f1

School sandbox is my sandbox.

Are there advantages to having separate infoboxes for schools and school districts:

• Appearance:
  • Nearly a draw. Both are fairly nice. ~isd is arguably a little nicer with more headings.
• Maintenance:
  • Single template solution has a slight advantage here.
    • Only one to maintain. ~is is already a monster (I count 260 possible parameters, many of which are currently undocumented and included for backward compatability); it would only need three simple fields added to it to make a redirect from ~isd work 100%.
      • asst_superintendent
      • schools
      • teachers
    • Two templates would mean one monster and one tame domestic pet to maintain. Since there is still a monster, I don’t see the advantage here, UNLESS there is going to be a future effort to untangle ~is, and I don’t know that there is enough energy and commitment in the community to warrant that.
• Usage instructions:
  • This can be a draw with clear instructions to future editors. As it stands now, it is unclear.
• Ease of use:
  • This again can be a draw, especially if ISCL is improved or variants are created.
  • My idea here is to either add parameters to ISCL or create variants so that editors wishing to create a new school related infobox would get a blank template with fewer fields, but aimed more specifically to what they want. For example, if ISCL could take a country code, then 1) they can get the country specific infobox, if there is one (such as Canada or UK) and 2) if getting the generic ~is, fields that specifically do not apply can be suppressed. A great deal more could be done here, including making a wizard of some sort to interview the editor and deliver a concise infobox template.

Solutions:

1. Clean up documentation and improve/supplement ISCL:
   1. ALL of the possible solutions would require this!
2. Direct editors to use ~isd or ~is as appropriate, but allow existing articles to stay as they are:
   1. Add a few fields to ~isd, improve documentation, and we can move forward.
3. Direct editors to use ~isd or ~is as appropriate, and aggressively move the districts currently using ~is to ~isd:
   1. While this could be done, I count about 900 articles using ~is that include "district" or "schools" (plural) in the title. This would be a big job and I am not sure it would be worth the effort.
4. Switch to a one template solution (~is) by doing a redirect from ~isd to ~is:
   1. This would not require a great effort as far as I can tell. It would require the addition of the three fields to ~is and making the redirect and it would be done.
5. Switch to a one template solution (~is) by editing the articles currently pointing to ~isd and changing them to ~is:
   1. Same as #4, but requires editing about 685 articles

name
File:Logo
Location
location region {{{country}}}
Coordinates	coordinates
District information
Type	type
Motto	motto
Grades	grades
Established	established
Closed	closed
Superintendent	superintendent
Asst. superintendent(s)	asst_superintendent
Accreditation(s)	accreditations
Schools	schools
Budget	budget
Students and staff
Students	students
Teachers	teachers
Staff	staff
Student–teacher ratio	ratio
Athletic conference	conference
District mascot	mascot
Colors	colors
Other information
free_label	free_text
free_label2	free_text2
free_label3	free_text3
Schedule	schedule
Website	website

name
File:Logo
Location
location region {{{country}}}
Coordinates	coordinates
Information
Type	type
Motto	motto
Established	established
Closed	closed
Superintendent	superintendent
Staff	staff
Grades	grades
Number of students	students
Student to teacher ratio	ratio
Schedule	schedule
Color(s)	colors
Athletics conference	conference
Mascot	mascot
Accreditations	accreditations
Budget	budget
free_label	free_text
free_label2	free_text2
free_label3	free_text3
Website	website