Template talk:Infobox UNESCO World Heritage Site/Archive 1

Archive 1

Caption?

Can someone please edit this template to include a (non-compulsary) caption? Thanks. -Malkinann 23:11, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

WH Link

Does anyone oppose editing this template so that the WH Link appears to the right of the identification number and instead of showing the URL it just links the text "WH Link"? That URL expands the box more than needed and there is no reason to show the actual URL that I know of. --MattWright (talk) 19:31, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Different post scripts symbol

If an article already contains inline referencing then the indexing used in the infobox is not appropriate. The superscripts in the infobox I am changing from 1 and 2 to a and b. STTW (talk) 11:32, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Conflict with article format

As noted, most World Heritage Sites either have an infobox aready or will have one more appropriate to the article then the fact it is a world heritage site. It is always mentioned in the article and a link provided to the World Heritage Site. This Template is huge and messes up carefully crafted articles by editors who have worked on the article over time. It has a footnote on it that goes nowhere. World Heritage Sites have their own category. Just click on that if you want to see all the world heritage sites. A World Heritage Sites receives that designation because of some special qualities. The qualities are described in the article. So the World Heritage Site designation is secondary to the site's unique characteristics. This is my opinion. Sincerely, Mattisse 12:37, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

• I have fixed the table, it was an absolute mess and the reason why most of the articles showed awfully. The colspans were all incorrect. Now all the articles I have loaded look fine, the big size of the table was because of the incorrect colspans. If any article still looks bad it is because the template is still in the server cache, a simple edit to the article fixes the problem.David 12:19, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Conflict with other infoboxes

Great idea, but having this infobox in articles that already have an infobox is redundant and messes up article layout. So, since almost all World Heritage Sites have or should have a more specific infbox, I would much prefer to add optional variables to those templates for the most important fields covered by this separate template. This separate template should only be used in cases where another infobox is not appropriate (if any such situations exist). --mav 14:36, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

It's a nice template...although it is rendering quite large on Yellowstone National Park. I think we can add a few parameters to the protected areas infobox template to be able to encompass world hertiage site information, rather than have two infoboxes near the top of articles. If there is no infobox, then by all means, this templaet would be an improvement.--MONGO 15:28, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I will like that adding some of the World Heritage Site Parameters to the Protected Area Template would be great. Amartyabag ^TALK2ME 07:18, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi. Can some take a look at Bath, Somerset and try and sort out the conflict caused by the World Heritage Site box. Cheers. --TFoxton 23:53, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Native name

Why is there no place for native name? Thank you.--Eukesh 08:49, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Link

What's the point of the link as opposed to the ID? ^{El Greco (talk · contribs)} 16:48, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Is anybody checking this page

I changed the template to comply with the request way back to have optional image captions.

City of Luxembourg: its Old Quarters and Fortifications

UNESCO World Heritage Site
Luxembourg Castle — The reconstructed Fort Thüngen, formerly a key part of Luxembourg City's fortifications, now on the site of the Mudam, Luxembourg's museum of modern art.
Criteria	Cultural: iv
Reference	699
Inscription	1994 (18th Session)

• Looking at the above comments, and the coding in this template I have to concur, there is little need of it, and every time I run across it, it's oversized width (The image width more often than not governs that, contrary to normal infoboxes which constrain overlarge images (e.g. Template:Infobox book(edit talk links history)).

• Using {{!}}, {{!-}} is ONLY necessary as far as I can see because of the desire to display an empty parameter in an empty template. Standard parserfunctions can just enclose table sections, if it weren't for that, which would simplify seeing what's going on immensely.

• Further, template standards around wikipedia are normally coded with all lowercase. Suggest you recode with wired 'OR' logic such that {{{param}}}{{{Param}}} constructs are used, or run a bot and convert all pages to all lowercase.

Best regards // FrankB 23:37, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

• One also notices that the Bold Heading is larger and bolder than the article titles themselves. Gross template bloat. --Wetman 05:18, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

The asterisk

This is a great infobox, but I find having the asterisk used on every single one is visually annoying. Is there any other way to do this? --Padraic 15:05, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

IW trouble

Take a look at the iw's on this template ... something is clearly wrong, and it affects the articles which include this template! --EivindJohnsen (talk) 04:00, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

UNESCO website

Does the wiki software allow a way to parse external websites automatically? If so, the template can be changed to accept just three arguments (the WHS number, an image and a caption) and the rest of the details can be extracted from the UNESCO website each time the template is loaded. 130.195.5.7 (talk) 01:37, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

UNESCO Regions

Can someone add the link http://whc.unesco.org/pg.cfm?cid=31&l=en&&&mode=table&order=region to the first paragraph of the section "Notes"? Wiki-uk (talk) 14:36, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I found the /doc version of this page just now. Done! Wiki-uk (talk) 14:54, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Change of lay-out and contents?

I like the lay-out of nl:Sjabloon:Infobox werelderfgoed cultuur. Would it be an idea to change the English template to have the same color and size? Could the "Session"-field be removed as well? Any other ideas? Wiki-uk (talk) 14:57, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

They really look the same except for the color. _{El Greco}^(talk) 15:03, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Interwiki

I can't edit this page. Please add this link to article uk:Шаблон:Infobox World Heritage Site —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kyslyi (talk • contribs) 07:20, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Editing wording of footnotes within template

Could the wording of the footnotes be changed from "Name as inscribed on World Heritage List" to "As inscribed on World Heritage List," and "Region as classified by UNESCO" to "As classified by UNESCO"? The current wording strikes me as redundant and somewhat awkward. —Politizer^{( talk • contribs )} 19:00, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Session link broken

{{editprotected}}

Somebody factored out the session information from World Heritage Site into a separate page World Heritage Committee so now the "session" link from all instances of this template is broken. Could you change it to point to the right page -- I'd rather not revert the change, which I think was good, as such. Thanks.-- era (Talk | History) 22:16, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Done. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:04, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

hCard address improvement

{{editprotected}}

This template emits an hCard microformat. The "region " property in hCard is a sub-division of a country, such as an English county or US state. There is no specific property for a continent or larger region; therefore, the more generic "label" property should be used, by changing :

|- class="adr"
| '''Region'''**
|style="line-height:150%; white-space:nowrap;"| <span class="region">{{{Region}}}</span>

to:

|-
| '''Region'''**
|style="line-height:150%; white-space:nowrap;" class="label" | {{{Region}}}

Thank you. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 20:55, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Done. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 08:32, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

"state party" in examples?

In the two examples for Kathmandu valley, NEP is given as the "state party" but Nepal does not appear in the illustrated example. In the Luxemburg example on this talk page, the flag and country name appear. What's gone wrong? (And, where do I find a list of the codes for "state party"? As it's used in the template it would be useful for this to be mentioned in the documentation). PamD (talk) 23:18, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

What exactly does "State Party" mean, anyway? Why isn't it "country" or something along those lines? Hires an editor (talk) 23:16, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Style tweaks

{{editprotected}} Requesting sync with the new sandbox for parity with contemporary infoboxes. Minor presentation changes. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 19:38, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

I've tweaked the microformat classes; my changes should, please, be included with the above. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 20:28, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

I've replaced the template with this version of the sandbox incorporating both your contributions; I trust the pair of you know what you're doing. Cheers,  Skomorokh  21:31, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Map?

I think adding a map to the infobox would be very useful, giving some context for the site. What does everyone else think? Nev1 (talk) 19:39, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

An excellent idea. I was just about to come here & do that myself, but I see that this is a protected template. I'll add a request. SP-KP (talk) 16:45, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

 Done --Jza84 |  Talk  12:58, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Interlanguage link

{{editprotected}} Please add German interwiki de:Vorlage:Infobox Welterbe, thanks. --Elekhh (talk) 11:21, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

I think this edit should take care of it; I think it was the unprotected Template:Infobox World Heritage Site/doc that needed to be edited rather than this template directly. Nev1 (talk) 18:18, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks you were right. Sorry for not noticing that. --Elekhh (talk) 21:17, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Flags and links

(From User talk:Ranger Steve/Archive 2#WHS infoboxes)

Hi Steve. I noticed you undid my changes there. I made three changes; can you describe your rationale for undoing each one please?

• I removed the flag from the infobox per WP:FLAGCRUFT; the flag adds no information and is merely decorative. As an encyclopedia we don't do decoration.
• I unlinked United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (which is a redirect to United Kingdom) and also England per WP:OVERLINK; we don't link to countries except in special cases.
• I shortened 'United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland' to 'United Kingdom' per WP:COMMONNAME which says we use the common names for things.

Thanks, and sorry to bother you. --John (talk) 17:34, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Hi John, The main reason for the revert was to keep the infoboxes in line with all of the other WHS infoboxes in Britain. If you have a look through them you'll find they (mostly) conform to the same style I reverted to. Whether it's right or not is, I guess another matter. United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is, as I said in the edit summary, the official designation used by UNESCO (see here), and therefore the logical title to use in that field. I personally think linking to a country, especially in an infobox, is justified in this case. WHS exist all over the world, and although we may be familiar with this country, a great many English speakers won't be aware of the exact definition UNESCO is using. A link clarifies that for them. I would certainly hope to see a foreign countries name wikilinked in a WHS box (as indeed they all are, and in the examples at Template:Infobox World Heritage Site). As for Flagcruft, I didn't know about that (you didn't mention it in the edit summary), so fair enough. But given that 90% of British WHS infoboxes appear to use it, this might be something worth raising on a more general level first. Sorry if I caused offence by reverting you, t'was not my intent. Ranger Steve (talk) 17:50, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

No offense taken! I'll take it to template talk or project talk, or both. Thanks for your time. --John (talk) 18:34, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I just realized I had repeated this edit; I think the little UK flag looks cheap and it certainly doesn't add any information. However I realized that I hadn't discussed this centrally as I said I would back in November. Any strong opinions on this? Specifically, any good arguments for using the flag, for linking a well-known country, or for using an unusual long form of the country's name which is a redirect? --John (talk) 16:18, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Hey John, thanks for the heads up. I've copied the whole chat above to save splitting the discussion up if anyone looks through here. Personally I think we should definitely be using the long version of the name. UNESCO use State Parties in their designations (instead of countries), and refer to the UK in the same (long!) way throughout their website and management plans (well, the Stonehenge one at least). I think its best to use state party instead of country as well, consider Willemstad, Netherlands Antilles which is in the Caribbean but the listed UNESCO state party is the Netherlands. So, if we follow their criteria and use State parties in the infobox, we should use the correct state name as well (as we do with the WHS name and region). As such I don't think commonname applies, and it doesn't make any comment on an issue like this.

I also think it should be linked. I would expect a wikilink to any country in an infobox, and as WHSs show up all over the world, sometimes in some very distant corners, I would want to be able to link directly to that state so that I know where it is (for example places like Lopé National Park in Gabon). St. George's, Bermuda, is ascribed to the UK state party, so I think its a good idea to link to the UK for the benefit of people who think that the UK is just the British Isles. That is exactly what links are good for, and I think it's important in an example like this. Again I don't see anything about this in Overlink, in fact given that the link directly applies to the article (it's the location that the WHS is in), and its the infobox it seems ok per those rules.

The flag.... well, again I personally prefer it. It doesn't do any harm and makes it very easy to id a country (again, WHSs are everywhere). Flagicons get used in all manner of articles without issue (Military bio's, other interesting places, that kind of thing). Again I don't see any discussion of this in flagcruft, which is more concerned with overuse of icons, not solitary examples in infoboxes.

So I guess I'm happy with the current set up, and it is the format that most articles use. The infoboxes look good in the articles and make navigation quite easy. But I'd welcome some more opinions (although in the meantime I've reverted Avebury to maintain the status quo!) Cheers, Ranger Steve (talk) 20:34, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I am ok with using the longer version of the name of countries to align with the source, if you think it is important. I am not ok with linking common terms like well-known countries (specifically deprecated in WP:OVERLINK) and I am not ok with the little cracker-barrel flags. Not doing harm is not a criterion to include things, and we can all read so it is hard to see what the flag actually adds to the reader's understanding. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that a flag in a place like this is decorative, specifically what WP:FLAGCRUFT asks us to avoid. If you or anybody else can clearly state what the flag adds to the reader's understanding without resort to OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, I would be interested to hear it. --John (talk) 21:39, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Well.... sorry but I disagree. Infoboxes are meant to be a simple summary of the main facts, and a useful reference point. Linking in an infobox isn't like overlinking in the main text at all, and besides if obscure countries are to be linked, why not others? The reasons I've mentioned above are reason enough to link even well known countries like the UK (how many British people actually know what UK actually means?). By the logic you're using, there shouldn't be any links to UK in the entire wiki, just because it is a well known place. The country a geographical point resides within is relevant to that article and it is entirely logical to use a link in such a case (this isn't like linking US in an abstract article like the Supply and Demand example in WP:OVERLINK). The same is true of flag icons. If we can all read and they don't add anything, why do they exist? They work very well in infoboxes like these or these which, as per Flagcruft, use the name next to the flag, making the flag technically unnecessarily. WP:ICONDECORATION seems relevent here. World Heritage Sites are global in nature, what better place to be clarifying specific countries or places? I'll certainly continue to do both (I'm reckon its WP:COMMONSENSE). Cheers, Ranger Steve (talk) 22:34, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Your disagreement with the wide and long-standing consensuses embodied at the two policy pages I pointed you to is noted. I am not seeing a coherent encyclopedic reason for this practice you support, other than that you like it and that some other pages also diverge from the style consensuses. I am afraid you will have to do better than this if it is important to you that these links and decorative icons be maintained. Is it? --John (talk) 23:37, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Can you please show me specifically where these long standing consensus' are that relate to this? I'm not seeing anything in any more support of your viewpoint than mine I'm afraid. I've already provided some very encyclopaedic reasons for keeping the links at least. With respect I also think you might need to do better if you want to change it. This is a fairly far reaching issue in my opinion. Ranger Steve (talk) 23:47, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I've posted a comment on Wikipedia:WikiProject World Heritage Sites to get some opinions, but it's a fairly quiet project. Ranger Steve (talk) 23:56, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Long standing consensus not to link countries except with good reason: WP:OVERLINK (already mentioned above). Long-standing consensus not to use decorative flags in infoboxes (military campaigns and people form an exception to that) is at WP:FLAGCRUFT, already mentioned above. I'm sorry but I can't see where you gave good encyclopedic reasons for your nonMOS-compliant linking or decorative flag icon use on these articles. --John (talk) 00:21, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I’m very sorry, but I don’t see how I’m being “non-MOS compliant”, nor am I in “disagreement with the wide and long-standing consensuses embodied at the two policy pages”. Please, to clarify this can you show me where in Wikipedia:Linking this long-standing consensus is? I quite agree with the policies on the page, they’re all common sense and clear enough, but I don’t see anything that relates to this. It doesn’t say anything about only “linking to countries in special cases” or “with good reason”. What it does seek to do is control the overuse of the same link, or inappropriate links in articles (such as US in an abstract concept like trade). Besides this is an infobox, and the Linking page is mainly concerned with the prose (the word infobox appears only once in that text and is easily interpreted as supporting linking in infoboxes). The only relevant rule I see there is under ‘What Generally should not be linked’; “Unless they are particularly relevant to the topic of the article, avoid linking terms whose meaning can be understood by most readers of the English Wikipedia, including plain English words, the names of major geographic features and locations, religions, languages, common professions, common units of measurement”. As I’ve pointed out, World Heritage Sites are global geographical locations; therefore the county or state each one is in is relevant to the article. What exactly would be your special case for linking to a country if it isn’t dealing with geographic locations of a global group? It is also beneficial to the reader to link to states/ countries of an obscure nature, places like Gabon, Azerbaijan, Vanuatu or Cape Verde. Plus, in situations where the WHS is in a state different to the geographical area it is once again extremely convenient to link to the state party for clarity – consider Bermuda or Willemstad above. This helps readers clarify why a place that the vast majority of the world probably thinks is a small group of Islands (ie the British Isles) are actually the sovereign state of smaller islands in the Caribbean or Pacific. These two reasons are covered in point 4 of What generally should be linked.

The same is true of Wikipedia:Manual of Style (icons). I don’t see any “long standing consensus not to use decorative flags in infoboxes” there at all. The guideline is there to manage and standardise the use of icons in articles and control the overuse of flags that have no obvious use in an article. The very reason we have flag icons is so that a reader can quickly identify a region or nationality relevant to that article. The fact we can all read is irrelevant to this argument, the MoS is quite clear that use of a flag should be followed by the written name anyway – this is a style thing, but such a policy wouldn’t exist if we just took it for granted that people can read and don’t need icons. Why else would we have flag and name templates to produce United Kingdom or ESP on Wikipedia? Once again, as we are dealing with a global feature here, this is extremely helpful to the reader who may link here from any page without knowing which country a WHS is in. Within the blink of an eye, the location of this WHS is revealed (exactly the point of flag icons). If this infobox was “English Heritage Sites” then it wouldn’t be relevant, but these are worldwide locations.

I don’t think Otherstuffexists applies here either. Your logic is that links to well known countries don’t need to exist, and that flags (in any capacity) are not needed because the name is written and they are thus purely decorative. I’m afraid such issues are well beyond the scope of just these infoboxes - your problems seem to be more of an MoS issue than with any misuse of this template. If you don’t want any links to countries except in very special cases might I respectfully suggest you bring it up at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style or the talk pages for Icons or Linking. There is no clear MoS policy on this (or someone would have raised the issue by now at featured WHS articles like Surtsey or St Kilda), so if you feel one is needed, a policy can be established across the board and not just in one series of geographical articles. That way the overlinking in articles like this and this can be controlled to your satisfaction. Regards Ranger Steve (talk) 19:18, 27 January 2010 (UTC).

WP:MOSICON applies here and it says icon shouldn't be decorative or emphasize nationality. These notation that icon help people find information quick or scan has never been proven Gnevin (talk) 15:40, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

I also fully agree that our guideline should apply regarding flag-icons, and these should be removed from the infobox. There is really no reason to over-emphasise the nominating country, given that all natural sites and most cultural sites were not a creation or product of national states whose flag is displayed. Thus flag-icons in this context can be misleading. They also distract from the meaning of World Heritage. Regarding the argument that their use would help geolocation, I again disagree: there are many large countries where the flag would not even clarify on which continent a site is located, and there are many small countries whose flag not many readers would recognise. Geocodes and maps are far more useful for locating a site. I also have nothing against removing the links to countries from the infobox, given that these are generally already linked in the lead of the article, where the focus of the reader should be. --Elekhh (talk) 00:12, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

{{editprotected}} Please remove "State party" flagicon per above discussion. --Elekhh (talk) 08:12, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure the above discussion represents a consensus for this. Several of Steve's points have not been answered. I've disabled the request for now. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:46, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Sorry but I cant see that. In summary, his points were:

• "I personally prefer it" - this is not an argument
• "it doesn't do any harm" - this isn't an argument either, moreover it has been argued that it does do harm by

- over emphasizing nationality, which is explicitly against the guidelines

- misleading in that they distract from the the whole idea of United Nations "World Heritage"

- cruft, "the flag adds no information and is merely decorative"

• "makes it very easy to id a country" - this is the only meaningful argument, however it has been counter-argued that:

- they are rather decorative

- it is rarely the case, and is less useful than maps and geocodes. For example by large countries the flag would not even clarify on which continent a site is located, and by many small countries the flag would not be recognised by readers anyway

- any id benefit would be outweighed by the negative effect of over emphasizing nationality, which is misleading (as explained above countries are only nominating parties, "all natural sites and most cultural sites were not a creation or product of national states whose flag is displayed") and explicitly against the guidelines

• "flagicons get used in all manner of articles" - not an argument for their use here
• "they exist" - not a valid reason to include

So I don't see any arguments standing in favour of keeping them, but if I missed anything please point it out. --Elekhh (talk) 23:13, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

{{editprotect}} 100% agree Gnevin (talk) 12:17, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, this template doesn't actually produce the icons, it just displays what it is specified. For example on Lopé National Park you have the parameter |State Party={{flagicon|Gabon}} [[Gabon]]. So the only way to remove them would be take them out of each separate article. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:25, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Would be nice to have a bot doing this. --Elekhh (talk) 01:18, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Conversion to {{infobox}}

I've finally gotten round to moving this over to an {{infobox}} codebase. The result is in the sandbox, and a test case showing most features is on the test cases page. If there are no problems with this I'll sync it. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 08:10, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Looks good to me. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:37, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

The map

How does this work? For instance, let's say I wanted to add in Blenheim Palace, how would I do this? The coordinates are lat. 41.903 and long. 12.452. Any ideas? - Tbsdy (formerly Ta bu shi da yu) ^talk 10:10, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

I tried to work the map once before and had no luck I'm afraid. Haven't found any examples to copy from either. Sorry, Ranger Steve (talk) 22:07, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

As the function has only been active since January, very few instances use the map. Here's an example of how to implement it. It makes the infobox a bit long, but in a well developed article (as all WHS should be) I don't think it's a problem. Nev1 (talk) 13:38, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Updated the documentation, which hasn't been done when the template has been updated. --Elekhh (talk) 23:36, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Multiple locations

Btw, would it be possible to have multiple locations indicated on one map? There are several WHS which are composed of a set of items in different locations. --Elekhh (talk) 10:46, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Border

Also would be nice to get rid of the frame of the map, as is already in the infobox. --Elekhh (talk) 07:08, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Seems that nobody objects, so maybe somebody could do the changes, thanks. --Elekhh (talk) 01:40, 25 January 2011 (UTC) {{editprotected}}

 Done. Hope that's what you meant. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:37, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Oh yes, excellent, looks so much better. Any idea how to solve the multiple locations issue (see section above)? --Elekhh (talk) 11:29, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Relief parameter

{{editprotected}} Please also add "relief" parameter (see Template:Location map Spain) - is very useful for natural sites. This should be uncontroversial. --Elekhh (talk) 13:35, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, not sure what you mean. Please make the requested change to Template:Infobox World Heritage Site/sandbox and then reactivate the request. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:45, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

This. --Elekhh (talk) 22:57, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Okay, seems straightforward.  Done — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:18, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Gives altogether the wrong information

This infobox has now succeeded in crowding out other types of infobox in the lead of nearly all relevant articles, but gives completely the wrong type of information for the general reader, with neither the date of the site, its location within a country, nor any description of what the site consists of being compulsory. Instead the box gives a range of bureaucratic file references to the UNESCO process that are of no interest to anyone but bureaucrats. This information should not be displayed but hidden in a show/hide bar, and the template should only display the basic information that general readers would expect. Johnbod (talk) 19:05, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure that any of the problems you list above (or on other talk pages where you have raised this issue) can be considered the fault of this infobox. Rather, misplacing of the infobox is each individual article's problem. The Temple of Giza, which you describe as typical example, isn't exactly what could be described as a good article and lacks a lot of information in the prose as well. There are more appropriate infoboxes for the lead of many articles, but it isn't this infobox's fault that they haven't been used. Given that there are nearly 900 WHSs worldwide, an infobox for this important indicator of registered heritage seems entirely appropriate. See St Kilda, Scotland for an example of more restrained use in a featured article or Bath, Somerset where the important information that you mention is provided in other infoboxes, and the 'bureaucratic' stuff comes later.

I'd also point out that in many cases a WHS infobox can be considered entirely appropriate, given that it is one of the most commonly known things about a particular place and is its most defining feature. See the Jurassic Coast for example - it's hard to think of a more appropriate infobox for what is essentially a hundred miles or so of coast. The only reason this article (embodying several individual areas of coast) exists is because its a WHS. The location of a historic site within a country seems a moot point as well, given that World Heritage Sites by definition,are found worldwide. Perhaps there is room for expansion of this infobox or improvements to article layout, but hiding a well used infobox doesn't strike me as a solution. Ranger Steve (talk) 00:14, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

[Later] There is no "Temple of Giza". The Giza Necropolis, which I referred to in other versions of this post, is essentially the main Egyptian pyramids, plus the Great Sphinx and other extras. But you would never know this from the infobox - an excellent illustration of its failings! Johnbod (talk) 04:33, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Well everywhere I go, & I've being seeing a lot recently for an article I'm doing, this is the lead infobox. I'm pretty sure that in many cases other types, such as architecture infoboxes, used to be. Few articles, especially on subjects which are normally highly visuial and much photographed, have the space for two infoboxes. I don't mind it having the lead position IF the information it gives is the most relevant, but at the moment that is not the case. Who actually wants to know the "inscription date", or its "session", or the "Reference" number, or the dates of "extensions"? That can be in the text, or footnotes. All the examples you give are very long UK ones, but for the usually far shorter articles on (to be brutally frank, and as a Brit) much more significant 3rd-world sites this box is invariably used, and there is no space for any other. Even in Jurassic Coast the failure of the current contents is clear - it gives no hint of WHY the WHS status was awarded, just these crappy filing details. It just won't do. Johnbod (talk) 00:46, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

I came across similar issues at Ujung Kulon National Park, Lorentz National Park, Komodo National Park, etc. In all these cases the WHS infobox does not add much in terms of information, while duplicating most of the useful information and complicating the layout. I agree with Johnbond that much of the information in this infobox is not that useful, while it also cannot substitute other infoboxes. On the other hand there are clear cases in which the infobox is very useful, for instance Tropical Rainforest Heritage of Sumatra where no other infobox would fit. I find that ideally there should be just one infobox in an article, so either this one would need to be expanded to include more useful information and therfore be able to substiture other infoboxes, or the other way around, infoboxes like Infobox protected area should be expanded to be able to include relevant information about the World Heritage status. --Elekhh (talk) 08:56, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

I would favour putting all the UNESCO filing info into a show/hide feature within the box (Ranger Steve misunderstands me above on this point) and having the visible fields give useful information on the actual site, not the approval process, so that the box is suitable for use in the lead. There seems to be no other general type of box for archaeology & antiquities sites of world importance, like Terracotta Army, Royal Tombs of the Joseon Dynasty, Imperial Tombs of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Classical Gardens of Suzhou, Fatehpur Sikri, Elephanta Caves and hundreds of other articles. Conceivably there is a case for two versions of the box, one for the lead & one for long articles. This might at least be an interim solution, as adding useful info to hundreds of boxes will clearly take some time - fortunately there is a whole project on the subject. Johnbod (talk) 14:32, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

I might have misunderstood admittedly (that election race was just so riveting last night, couldn't take my eyes off it!). I still don't really see this as a problem with this infobox per se though. National parks definitely shouldn't use this infobox in the lead - there are far more appropriate ones available and I admit I'm genuinely surprised to see parks that must have a hundred designations already, summarised solely by this infobox. I agree that 1 infobox is enough for short articles, but I do believe that anywhere that is a WHS deserves expanding to something more significant (such as the examples above) and there will almost certainly be sources for it (if not interest in doing it unfortunately). There is an infobox for megaliths somewhere which would cover some WHS's, but I've resisted adding it to the articles I work on I'm afraid (it's a bit restrictive and simplistic). I do agree though that there is room to expand this infobox with some new fields. As a start I'd suggest area (as in size) as a good one, and perhaps some sort of link to the type of structure (beyond the 2 UNESCO designations, which are natural and cultural, I'm thinking more in terms of megalith, architecture, geology, wilderness etc...). I'm not sure about relegating the UNESCO stuff to a hidden feature though. This is an encyclopaedia after all, and that information is just as valid to its status as its reason for being a WHS. That said, if the space this information takes up could be condensed a little that might be good. I am wary about a field explaining why a WHS was designated as well - that isn't something I think can be adequately summarised for a lot (maybe most) of them... Might be better if that was perhaps reflected by the other fields we include. I've started a brainstorming list below for discussions sake, so anyone can add what they think might be a good field. Ranger Steve (talk) 18:36, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

We are obviously coming at this from different ends, as I have no interest (in encyclopedic terms) in national parks or really any natural WHS sites, & the cultural ones seem equally far from your interests. I am glad you are coming to accept my starting point, the current predominance of this box in the lead across both types - for the cultural ones there is often no obvious alternative in fact. The WHS is rightly considered a very prestigous status, and probably an effective way of suggesting the importance of sites to readers who may not have heard of them before. So perhaps it is not surprising it is the dominant lead box, & we should now address how to deal with that situation better than we do at present. Your suggestions below are really only helpful for natural sites - it might be best to divide the infobox into two types. I have added some. I don't agree at all that the current information "is just as valid to its status as its reason for being a WHS". Can you really believe this? I've no objection to it being somewhere, but a lead infobox needs to give the most important information. From Wikipedia:Manual of Style (infoboxes):

• "As you design an infobox template, consider the following questions:

Is the field of value?

How important is the field to the articles that will use the infobox? Is it summary information, or more extended detail that may be better placed within the body of an article?"

Johnbod (talk) 20:28, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Potential new fields

• Brief description (could be taken from Unesco info)
• Date (for cultural ones)
• Originating culture (for cultural ones)
• Size (as an area)
• Location (this might need to be a list of several different options, such as county, state, prefecture etc... with an option to chose the most appropriate)
• Co-ordinates (might be tricky with large ones or split locations)
• Type of heritage (architecture, geology, megalith)

Ranger Steve (talk) 18:36, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

How the template is currently abused and how to change this

The template draws attention to information that practically nobody is interested in and mixes this with a photo and a map. It tends to inflict itself into the leads of articles, where the information which it contains and other infoboxes don't contain is almost always completely out of place. I think there are only two acceptable uses for this infobox:

1. In a section that discusses specifically the World Heritage state of the article subject, possibly in connection with closely related topics. In this position the map is completely out of place. Also, the arbitrary decision of which image to put into the infobox at this point should not normally be taken at all. It makes no sense for the infobox to swallow a random photo. (An exception would be if the WHS status was awarded because of a particular view, and an image showing that view can be added to the infobox without causing redundancy e.g. with the lead image.)
2. In an article that is functionally equivalent to the kind of section described under 1. This happens in the rare case that the actual WHS is not regarded as a separate entity except as a WHS, and also in the rare case that there is so much encyclopedic information about the WHS status itself that it had to be moved to a subarticle per WP:SUMMARY.

I have gone through the transclusions of the template and stopped after finding the first one which was correct in all respects. It was number 16: Maeshowe#World Heritage status. There was also a small number of articles in which the template was placed in a WHS section, without a map, but inappropriately with an image. Example: St Kilda, Scotland#Nature conservation. Among the first 200 articles using the template, there was none which would have justified use as a lead image per 1.

To discourage improper use of this template I propose the following action:

• Move this template to Lead infobox World Heritage Site of Infobox World Heritage Site (lead) so that it can still be used in the small number of cases (< 1%) when it makes sense to put the information into the lead. The documentation of the infobox should have a clear warning that its use is rarely appropriate.
• Create an unobtrusive variant of this infobox which omits the parameters image, imagecaption, coordinates, map, map_caption, map_width, locmapin, relief, latitude, longitude, as they are almost never appropriate.

Hans Adler 07:35, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

That is sensible as far as it goes, but this infobox is very widely used indeed, and the majority of the articles are 3rd world places with very short articles, and only room for one infobox. There will be alternative infoboxes available, but working out which one is appropriate & filling it in is a huge task for these important but neglected articles. Realistically a (third?) version of this box, that just states it is a WHS, which is important info, but does not give (or maybe just doesn't show) all the UNESCO crap, and does give the crucial info that people might actually want, might be the easiest way to get a conversion to actually happen. Otherwise it may be best, because quickest, just to remove most of them, and allow a decent-sized lead pic. Johnbod (talk) 11:41, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes its a definite problem I'd noticed myself. I'#ll address this to User:Plastikspork and see what he has to say.♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:06, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Humayun's Tomb, Delhi

UNESCO World Heritage Site
Humayun's tomb in Delhi, built 1562-1571 CE.
Criteria	Cultural: ii, iv
Reference	232
Inscription	1993 (17th Session)

I agree it isn't a riveting infobox, but I wonder if this is major issue. In my view the photos are the only thing that liven up the otherwise dreary format. It is hard to imagine general readers think it is the view or image that is the site. What is the "crucial info" that would go in an infobox, other than the UNESCO stats? The "region" info is superfluous and could go for me. If it "tends to inflict itself into the leads of articles", why not just move it? The above problems read to me more like an argument for deleting the infobox completely rather than amending it in some way. Ben MacDui 18:14, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Well that certainly would be easier, & might be best. The infobox is often not used for developed world sites, but is for 3rd world ones. Until I changed it now the WHS project page megalomaniacally said that the infobox should be used for "each article on a WHS". Let's look at this example - Humayun's Tomb. Fortunately the English name tells you it is a tomb, and of someone called Humayun (no link, or indication of who he is). Now, don't you think a date of construction, originating culture, a name for the architectural style, and a very brief description might be more useful and "crucial" than the information it actually gives??? There is a lst of other stuff just above. Or look at the Kathmandu Valley examples on the template page itself - what do they tell you about the subject? Personally, I'd be happy to see them mostly just go, but I'm afraid somebody would just add them back,& I don't want to watch over the hundreds of articles with them on. If people really want the ID & "criteria", that should imo be in a hidden box at the bottom of the page. Or we want a little bar saying "UNESCO WHS", with all the UNESCO stuff collapsed. Given the near total mutual incomprehension evident in the section between "natural" and "cultural" editors, it would probably be best to split into 2 templates. If you leave "optional" fields, many infobox fillers will try to fill them all, no matter how inappropriate. Most of these 3rd world articles have very little text, but many decent pictures available, & using up valuable side-of-the-page space on this nonsense cannot be justified. Johnbod (talk) 21:01, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Rather than have separate infoboxes, you can combine them into one, and have a required parameter (if not filled in, then the output warns the editor that they have filled it in wrong) that switches between the variants described above (the ones I saw were cultural, natural, and lead infobox). But you would need someone with experience at coding that sort of thing in templates (or copy a similar template). Carcharoth (talk) 03:57, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

• I am glad there is so much interest in improving the usage of this infobox, but I do disagree with some of the proposals above, while I agree with others:
  • I don't see the the need for separate infoboxes for the same topic. This is unnecessary and would only complicate and confuse things. It is technically and intellectually possible to use an infobox in multiple ways.
  • I disagree that images would be confusing, as well put by Ben MacDui;
  • I strongly disagree that location maps would be useless; Instead the functionality of the location map needs to be upgraded in order to be able to display multiple locations.
  • Also disagree that per default the infobox has to be in a subsection, and that this would be the case for most articles. First of all there are numerous WHS notable as such, which often include multiple sites, specifically united by the WHS listing. In these cases the article will only have a WHS infobox. Second, I think it should be allowed for the editors of each specific article to choose which infobox suits better the article.
  • I do agree that there should be more informative fields added, such as "site area" and "date of construction", and that others are not useful and can be removed, such as the "region" field.--Elekhh (talk) 05:20, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

The UNESCO/WHS-specific information may well be interesting to some people and there is no reason why it shouldn't be summarized somewhere in the article, but like a lot of other comparatively trivial information that people tend to put in infoboxes, I can't see why it should be colourfully framed at the upper-right-hand side in such a way that it completely dominates the article. Couldn't it just be somewhere at the bottom of the page, perhaps even in a smaller font? It could still be in a template if people like that. Is there a template guru out there who could try making a bottom-of-the-page version of this to see what it could look like? --Hegvald (talk) 05:37, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Once again, there are many sites which are UNESCO created entities, where the WHS infobox on top is the best option, such as the Australian Convict Sites or Tropical Rainforest Heritage of Sumatra. --Elekhh (talk) 06:54, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Once again, there is not a single Wikipedia article where bizarre non-information of the type "ii, iv, Asia-Pacific, 232, Cultural, 17th Session" should appear right at the top and be drawn attention to. That's the kind of detail that should normally be 'dropped because it's the job of an encyclopedia to distill short, informative texts from all the available information. Including these trivia that are only of interest to a few bureaucrats (if that) can only be justified when they appear in small type in a discreet little box somewhere under the fold where most readers will simply ignore them.

It's conceivable that we might have an all-purpose template for cultural or natural sites that also happen to have WHS status. But this template is not it. It's a template that concentrates exclusively on useless technical parameters that nobody wants to see and adds two huge eye-catchers (image and map) to draw everybody's attention to them. No article is going to get featured status while such an abomination is at the top. Hans Adler 07:26, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Really?, well I will be back when your tone will be more WP:CIVIL and constructive. Thanks. --Elekhh (talk) 07:42, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

I stand corrected, although I think that example says more about the sometimes inappropriate focus of FAC on technicalities rather than about the infobox. Also, I somehow managed to miss your real point, which is that some articles only exist because of the WHS. I think that even for those articles (which do seem to be rare as I found none among the first 200 I looked at) the technical information doesn't make much sense, but at least it's more defensible, and my response would have been less heated if I had spent more time reading your comment to which it was supposed to be a response. Sorry. Hans Adler 09:04, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

No worries. I am on the pro-improvement side, and I am sure we can agree on major changes, as far the premise is not to abolish the infobox (which is useful either as the only option or as an alternative). When infoboxes such as the one for protected areas incorporate fields for WHS, certainly I agree there is no need to use both, and the editors should have the option which one to chose. Now focusing on the improvement of this infobox: removing the "region" I already indicated I agree with. The "session" parameter duplicates the year field, so can be removed IMO as well. However information explaining why a site is considered World Heritage, is essential (while I recognise that "represents a masterpiece of human creative genius" would be more telling than "criteria: i"). Also if the aim is to improve, than let's introduce fields such as "site area" (natural sites) and "date of construction" (cultural sites) and improve the functionality of the map. --Elekhh (talk) 21:36, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

What a "state party" is and why it should be called "country" in the template

I came to this talk page to find out what "state party" means in this infobox, and found no explanation; nor is there an explanation in the template documentation, and there ought to be one. I saw "state party" in an infobox for the Hạ Long Bay World Heritage site in Vietnam, and it was so very odd that I thought that some especially keen Communist had vandalised the infobox with this usage, overwriting the word "Country". I only found otherwise when I entered Edit Mode to fix it.

"Original research" led me to this information at the UNESCO website: "States Parties are countries which have adhered to the World Heritage Convention."

So a state party is a country—it says so. There is no need for Wikipedia to copy this peculiar and reader-baffling usage, since it only has evident meaning to those who are familiar with the UNESCO bureaucracy's internal jargon. The overwhelming majority of the encyclopaedia-reading public should not be subjected to this puzzling and unhelpful term, the use of which in Wikipedia adds nothing to the reader's experience, and merely interrupts it. I propose that the "state party" variable be replaced by "country" in the template. It is common sense. — O'Dea 22:38, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

I guess the idea with "World Heritage" is that the sites are "common heritage of humanity", hence their designation is of supra-national character. As you pointed out, countries are relevant here as members of UNESCO (i.e. UN) hence I can see why the the formula "state party" has been chosen by UNESCO as a descriptor. I got 1,000,000 google hits, so the term is not that obscure. --Elekhh (talk) 23:18, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Whatever the reason, we should use "country" here, as per normal. Johnbod (talk) 23:47, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Google results also include many other meanings than the one used by UNESCO, and most of them have nothing to do with World Heritage sites, so a million Google results is meaningless in this discussion. The point is that "state party" is so obscure to the man in the street that this one was completely nonplussed by it; it is just a bloody nuisance, a time-wasting and irritating distraction; and it ought to be changed to what it means: "country". There is no advantage in using "state party" and "country" is known to all. — O'Dea 11:09, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Yeh, new words can be "bloody nuisance". --Elekhh (talk) 11:26, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

1. They are not "new words". They are, in this context, an unnecessarily obscure rearrangement of very common words. 2. The talk page is for discussion, not for trading petty insults. If you have something meaningful to say, say it. — O'Dea 03:15, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

I did not mean to say anything offensive, just tried to hint that I would appreciate a friendly and calm tone in the discussion. Now I'll try to summarise it again differently: (1) my presumption is that the UN did choose the term "state party" instead of "country" for a good reason, (2) the term is broadly in use in relation to WHS as well as in other contexts, and (3) I don't think the encyclopaedic description has to be simplified to the expense of accuracy to meet the average level of knowledge of the "man in the street", even if this will require more effort from the readers. The term which many might not be familiar with is linked to an overview page which also provides an explanation. All this being said, I am really not fussy about it and if the consensus will be the other way I will acknowledge that. --Elekhh (talk) 04:22, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm with Elekhh here. These are sites designated by UNESCO, and despite the importance that people attach to them they're nothing more than entries on a list created by that international organization. The designation process is completely dictated by the processes and politics of that body. As such, the info boxes should reflect the sources they draw from. I also don't see the problem with using state party, as state and country are synonymous anyway. This proposal might be more appropriate for the Simple English Wikipedia. In addition it's a mistake to assume that any word is "normal." It might be a normal designation within your own context, but don't assume that it's normal for everybody. That's my opinion. Chouji Ochiai (talk) 20:20, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

You say "the info boxes should reflect the sources they draw from" but you don't justify the claim. There is no reason at all why a term which will puzzle and therefore delay the average reader should be used when the word "country" is immediately understood by all. If you asked 100 people at random in the street what a state party was, most would imagine it meant a controlling political party in a one-party dictatorship. Hardly anyone would guess it meant "country". That is why the designation is a problem. — O'Dea (talk) 20:35, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

You can't seriously believe that anyone with half a brain will see the words "state party", freak out because it's too technical, and stop reading the article, can you? Especially since there's always a country name right beside the words. An average reader would accept the term as a UNESCO-specific title and would think nothing more about it. Those that were a bit more curious could search Google for state party world heritage site and immediately be directed to this page, which not only explains what they are but lists every single state party in the world. UNESCO uses the term "state party" to distinguish from a regular country in that only state parties have agreed to the World Heritage Convention, whereas other countries have not. This infobox should do the same.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:09, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Do you have evidence for the assertion that "UNESCO uses the term "state party" to distinguish from a regular country in that only state parties have agreed to the World Heritage Convention, whereas other countries have not." It makes very little sense & I'm fairly certain that they actually use it to avoid questions such as whether the Palestinian Territories or Hong Kong are a "country" or not. But that is beside the point for us. The major issues with this infobox, still on the back-burner, are that it is much too concerned with UNESCO bureaucratric stuff and far too little with the site itself. Johnbod (talk) 23:46, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

What happens if the ownership of a WHS changes from country to another due to a war or revolution?

• Does the "state party" change immediately to the new owner?
• Does the new owner become the new "state party" after filing the necessary paperwork?
• Does the "state party" remain unchanged because it's only about the original application?

Hans Adler 07:02, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Not an answer, but interesting examples are Visoki Dečani and Patriarchate of Peć, where Serbia is listed as the "State Party". True, Kosovo is not a member of UNESCO [yet], but using "State Party" in the infobox sort of spares Wikipedia from the decision whether Kosovo is a "country". No such user (talk) 11:37, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

• With luck, the discussion 3 sections above ("How the template is currently abused and how to change this") is moving towards a total revamp of the box anyway. If, for example, all the UNESCO technical detail was normally hidden, with a show/hide thingy, I expect most objections to "state party" would go. We could then have a simple "Location" field, allowing a fuller and more useful location including the country. Johnbod (talk) 01:17, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Endangered

"Endangered" in the template should link to World Heritage in Danger or List of World Heritage in Danger, i.e. without "Sites", since this is the name UNESCO uses. bamse (talk) 09:30, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

The link in the infobox is a redirect to the second page you mentioned.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 16:00, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

I understand that, but since "World Heritage Site in Danger" is a non-existant term, why not link to it directly? bamse (talk) 19:24, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Gradual improvements

While there seems to be consensus that the infobox needs improvement, previous discussions stalled as there was disagreement regarding the different "packages" of change. Therefore it seems to me that the best way forward would be to implement step by step those changes which have general support. As the infobox and its usage will improve it will be than easyer to find consensus for further improvements. I am listing below previous proposals which based on former comments are likely to find support.

1. Specify in the infobox documentation, that "the use of this infobox is discouraged when more specific infoboxes are in use in the article", particularly when those also have WHS specific fields, such as Template:Infobox protected area
2. Add "site area" field (for natural sites)
3. Add "date of construction" field (for cultural sites)
4. Remove "regions" field - purely administrative categorization with limited relevance
5. Map should be able to display multiple locations for those WHS which are composed of multiple sites. See Tropical Rainforest Heritage of Sumatra for example.
6. A bot should remove all remaining flags per MOS:FLAG and previous consensus.

Please indicate support and/or concerns specific to each of these changes, so that we can proceed at least whith those we all agree on. --Elekhh (talk) 09:13, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

• Support all, and the approach. I think at some point we may need to split the template into cultural and natural variants. Johnbod (talk) 11:06, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
• Support We may also have the possibility to add the official website when relevant. --Alberto Fernandez Fernandez (talk) 13:13, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Extensions

Are all changes of World Heritage Site boundaries extensions? The universal use in the infobox of extensions for boundary changes is justifiable if there has never been a reduction of a WHS's area, but I am aware of at least one example where the change was a mere "minor modification", a neutral phrase in terms of area change. Perhaps the infobox ought to reflect this by providing an alternative to the word "extensions" for this kind of thing. Waltham, The Duke of 23:45, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from Bamse, 15 August 2011

The template currently links to the redirect page List of World Heritage Sites in danger. This phrase ("List of World Heritage Sites in danger") is non-encyclopedic because the correct name as used by UNESCO is List of World Heritage in Danger. The phrase with "sites" is a wikipedia invention and does not exist in reliable sources. Because of this, I request to link to the correct name: List of World Heritage in Danger. bamse (talk) 16:38, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Done. Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 00:49, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Wrong Post >Deleted<

Plain language

Can we add a switch to display the criteria in plain language, rather than as numbers which will mean nothing to our readers? We would obviously need to abbreviate the full terms. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:28, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

I would rather they were just hidden and more useful information included instead. Johnbod (talk) 11:18, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Andy: How do you want to fit the criteria in plain language (even using abbreviations) into the infobox, especially for sites that are listed under several criteria? What "more useful information" are you thinking about, Johnbod? Personally, I could get rid of the reference number and perhaps put the corresponding external link into the heading (Site's name). bamse (talk) 11:27, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

I have explained what "more useful information" would be above at length. Little things like the date, originating culture, and function of the site, currently absent. Johnbod (talk) 16:33, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

The answer would seem to be to embed {{Designation list}} in a parent infobox, as done for example, in Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:38, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

I think that's an imptovement, but it still takes up a lot of space giving readers information they are already know (repeats that it's in India) or that is too basic (India is in Asia-Pacific region) or is just uninteresting (session dates etc). There's just no way this box complies with Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Infoboxes: "When considering any aspect of infobox design, keep in mind the purpose of an infobox: to summarize key facts in the article in which it appears. The less information it contains, the more effectively it serves that purpose, allowing readers to identify key facts at a glance. Of necessity, some infoboxes contain more than just a few fields; however, wherever possible, present information in short form, and exclude any unnecessary content." and "As you design an infobox template, consider the following questions:

Is the field of value? How important is the field to the articles that will use the infobox? Is it summary information, or more extended detail that may be better placed within the body of an article?"

It's important to know a place is a WHS, & maybe the date it became one, with a link to the award documentation, but "key facts" stop right there; the rest is pure cruft. The criteria are not very helpful, & mostly obvious, & can easily be be picked up from the UNESCO site. If it's a building or city it's a ii, probably plus a iv or something else, if it's a national park it's a vii plus maybe something else. It's all "unnecessary content" as the MOS puts it. Usually articles that don't have the infobox just give the fact, the date & quote a couple of lines from Unesco's summary blurb. That's all you need. Johnbod (talk) 03:25, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Old City (Jerusalem)

A number of editors (including myself) are concerned that the designation "Arab states" as the region where the Old City in Jerusalem is located violates Wikipedia's policy of WP:NPOV. A proposal that is being considered is to modify the infobox such that the "Region" parameter be optional in order to accommodate NPOV, otherwise it may be necessary to forgo the infobox altogether at the article. It appears that currently it isn't possible to leave the "Region" field empty.—Biosketch (talk) 18:38, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

This infobox is stupid in any case and should be deleted. See comments by Johnbod in sections above for why it is problematic even in articles with no political controversy attached. Why fight over what should be in the box when the solution is to get rid of it altogether? --Hegvald (talk) 19:01, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Ok, if there's consensus to delete it so be it. But the discussion above is pretty stale by now and the reality is the infobox is still around and causing problems.—Biosketch (talk) 19:08, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

latitude/longitude in header?

In articles that have the latitude/longitude fields filled out, it appears they're used for placing a dot on the mini-map, but they don't appear as coordinates in the header, like the {{coord}} tag would do, so that readers can click through to an OSM or Google map, or use the WikiMiniAtlas. Instead it looks like a separate coord-tag has to be added for that. Is there a way to make the latitude/longitude tags automatically populate the coord data as well? Here is an example article with such a situation. --Delirium (talk) 12:11, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Redirect

Clicking the initial title in the infobox (UNESCO World Heritage Site) redirects to World Heritage Site. I can't quite work out how to fix this. Gareth E Kegg (talk) 16:15, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Location

This template really needs a location parameter right below the country. Right now, only the country specifies its location, and that is far to inadequate, especially for the articles where the WHS infobox is the only infobox. I suggest to add a Location parameter where a province, city, or other location can be specified as needed. It should be optional for WHS where a specific location doesn't apply. -- P 1 9 9  ✉ 15:34, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Please could you follow the following procedure:

• Put your proposed code on /sandbox.
• Use some examples to thoroughly test it on /testcases.
• Allow time for others to comment on your changes.
• Reactivate the edit request. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:01, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

I have added the proposed location parameter to the sandbox and test case for review, see: Template:Infobox World Heritage Site/testcases. Any comments, objections? -- P 1 9 9  ✉ 20:13, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

• Sounds worthwhile to me, although I'm not sure whether or not it is. 213.246.91.158 (talk) 03:16, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Reactivate edit request. No objections, one weak endorsement. But really, this is hardly controversial, because the location parameter will be optional. -- P 1 9 9  ✉ 20:09, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Done. Could you update the template documentation as well? Best — Mr. Stradivarius ^{(have a chat)} 03:22, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Interwiki

Please add interwikiki for sr: Wikipedia - Шаблон:УНЕСКО кутијица. --Pockey (talk) 22:23, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

You may add interwiki links to the documentation page of the template, Template:Infobox World Heritage Site/doc. Cheers. Zzyzx11 (talk) 22:32, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

• Re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic as far as I'm concerned. This template is so appalling (reasons set out at length on the talk page in the past) that these footling changes really make no difference. Instead of moving the information around you should ask yourself whether, when the template fails to give the most basic information about the actual sites, it really needs to take a line to explain that London is in Europe. Johnbod (talk) 10:33, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 11 November 2012

Template's footnotes as they currently stand are too small, at least as they are rendered here. The sandbox's current version (19 November, edit summary "typo") solves this by moving them into the template's body (rather than with an increased font-size). Seems to work well with the test case. Shall I activate an "edit request" template? 213.246.91.158 (talk) 03:21, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

• Sorry, I had to revert all your changes to the sandbox in order to resolve first the issue above. Once that has been adopted, I will just undo my edit and you'll have all your changes back. -- P 1 9 9  ✉ 20:09, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

  Understood – thanks for explaining. My suggestion's been here a while now, so, once it's back in place, I'll activate an edit request. 213.246.91.158 (talk) 04:19, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Request is at start of this section. 213.246.91.158 (talk) 02:28, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

There are a lot of changes to the sandbox. Can you confirm this code is ready to copy over? I don't want to undo the other recent change to this sandbox. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:55, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

The version "02:29, 19 November 2012‎ 213.246.91.158 (talk)‎ . . (3,886 bytes) (0)‎ . . (typo)" should be in shape – the testcase looks okay here. 213.246.91.158 (talk) 15:58, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

The new "location" parameter is not in the sandbox version... -- P 1 9 9  ✉ 02:12, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Sorry not to spot. I've inserted it now (edit summary "tweaked" on 20 Nov), so, if you you think all seems correct, the edit can take place. 213.246.91.158 (talk) 06:32, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Not done for now: I think we need to leave more time for discussion about these edits. They have quite a visible impact on the template, and as far as I can tell they haven't really been discussed anywhere. Could you drop a note at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject World Heritage Sites and wait for more comments so that we can have a clearer idea of whether there is a consensus? If no-one replies in a week or so we can take that as an indication that there isn't any opposition to the change. Best — Mr. Stradivarius ^{(have a chat)} 10:01, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Just left this and set up the area below. 213.246.91.158 (talk) 11:53, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Comments, discussion

• Reactivated the request as there seems to be no opposition to the amendments. 213.246.94.204 (talk) 04:31, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

  Ok, Done. The changes are now up live. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{(have a chat)} 10:59, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

  Thank you! 213.246.94.204 (talk) 13:21, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Excessive width of Infobox when printing

When the "Region" parameter is used and the article is printed, the Infobox is hugely wide, occupying about 80% of the width of the printable portion of the page. Wideangle (talk) 23:33, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Edit request: embedding

This infobox should be embeddable in other infoboxes. See equivalent code in e.g. {{Infobox mountain}}. The following line should be added as the second or third line of the source:

| child       = {{{child|}}}

to support embedding other infoboxes within this one, the following line is required at the end:

| data13   = {{{embedded|}}}

I'll amend the documentation accordingly. No such user (talk) 14:28, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

 Done; thanks. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 13:46, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

TfD

Attempts to make this template user-friendly have come to nothing. I have therefore nominated it for deletion or refactoring. Please comment at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2013 June 28#Template:Infobox World Heritage Site.

As the template is protected, an admin is required, please, to add the following to the template:

{{Template for discussion/dated|page=Infobox World Heritage Site|link=Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2013 June 28#Template:Infobox World Heritage Site|help=off}}

ASAP. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:17, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

State party is still a problem

Alas, there is a field called "State party", but it's shown to readers as "Country". In most cases this is just an irritating inconsistency, but there are corner cases where it causes genuine problems because reliable sources say the site is in a different "country" to what Unesco says is the "State party". Can we fix it, please? If we're going to call it a country, then change the name of the field to "Country". Or, second best, if we insist on keeping Unesco's "state party" term, then that's what the template should actually show to readers. bobrayner (talk) 03:46, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

We should change it to "location", allowing for a geographical description with country and a more local name following usual WP principles. The whole templace needs reformatting to give useful information for readers rather than UNESCO bureacratic nonsense people can get off their website if they really want it. Johnbod (talk) 12:27, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Location sounds good to me. bobrayner (talk) 15:13, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

But not for me. It is good that user Bob raised this question, i cane here with a same concern. Location, sure, but then we should add State party also, as some WHS are not quite in the country of designation, speaking about disputed territories, islands, etc. So, country should be switched to State party, and we should add location. --WhiteWriter^speaks 17:53, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Eej, we already have location here! Just someone should fix Country into State party then! Nice. --WhiteWriter^speaks 17:55, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Bobrayner and Johnbod, we need to fix it.--Sokac121 (talk) 19:57, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Hounding my edits wont help here, Sokac. Someone should fix Country into State party. --WhiteWriter^speaks 13:36, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

But we don't actually need "state party", which is not a sufficiently significant piece of information (like much of the present content) to meet MOS:INFOBOX: "When considering any aspect of infobox design, keep in mind the purpose of an infobox: to summarize key facts in the article in which it appears. The less information it contains, the more effectively it serves that purpose, allowing readers to identify key facts at a glance. Of necessity, some infoboxes contain more than just a few fields; however, wherever possible, present information in short form, and exclude any unnecessary content." Johnbod (talk) 14:17, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

But state party is THE information we need. Monument, and state party of that origin. It is two essentials, or key facts. Then we should exclude locations, as that is less important that state party. --WhiteWriter^speaks 15:49, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

• We still need to fix this; changing "state party" to "location" seems to be the simplest solution. bobrayner (talk) 12:19, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, just do it. Johnbod (talk) 12:39, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Oh! I didn't realise the full-protection had been downgraded to semiprotection since then. Done. Will make a couple more tweaks... bobrayner (talk) 12:55, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Reduction of protection level does not entitle anybody to impose their position without consensus.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 22:26, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Until just now we had (after 7 months) 3 for, 1 against, which is consensus. Johnbod (talk) 23:09, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

There's a clear consensus here. Thanks for your concern, Antidiskriminator. bobrayner (talk) 03:04, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Modularisation

Further to comments at the recent TfD, we should now work on making this template a module of applicable infoboxes, and deprecating its stand-alone use, as the main infobox on articles about notable structures, places or most other features. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:39, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

I missed that. I have no problem with the concept of a WHS infobox, sometimes to be used alone, especially for less well-known Global South sites. I agree we need to develop a range of better templates for more flexible use. Johnbod (talk) 15:11, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

It's nearly one year on. If this isn't modularised soon, I'll TfD it again. Perhaps @Plasticspork:, @Thumperward: or @Frietjes: can help? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:42, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

It has been clearly explained in the previous TfD which ended with unanimous "keep" why this infobox needs to remain available for stand-alone use. --ELEKHH^T 13:58, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

The closing summary was "The result of the discussion was keep. Please feel free to discuss the embedding requirement further on the talk page", and that's what I'm doing. Meanwhile the numerous problems with this infobox as it stands are detailed at length, above. You'll note that my comments above did not suggest that the infobox should not "remain available for stand-alone use". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:28, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Multi-site location maps

Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in Gwynedd

UNESCO World Heritage Site
Beaumaris Castle Harlech Castle Caernarfon Castle and walls Conwy Castle and walls class=notpageimage| Location of the four World Heritage castle sites in North Wales
Criteria	Cultural: i, iii, iv
Reference	374
Inscription	1986 (10th Session)

I noticed a recurring desire to include multiple sites within the infobox, for designations split over a number of sites. It occurred to me that using {{Location map+}} it might be possible to do this, by putting it where you would normally expect the image to be. (It means you can't have both a map and an image in the same infobox - but on a multi-site designation that could be considered an advantage). The example here shows the four North Welsh castles, but you can add as many Location map~ entries as you need, provided you have Lat and Long data for each. The link item assumes there is also an individual article for each separate site. The infobox could then be useful within a section on each of those sites, to show how it relates to the rest of the world heritage site, as well as on an article that might be specifically about the designation. RobinLeicester (talk) 00:17, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Wikidata version

Hi all. At the request of @John Cummings:, I've made a start with a Wikidata-driven version of this infobox. This means that all of the parameters use Wikidata as the default option, but they can be locally overriden if need be. The draft is at Template:Infobox World Heritage Site/Wikidata, and I'm testing it at Liverpool Maritime Mercantile City (I'll add a few more test articles soon). Once we know it's working right, then we can merge it into the template here. I hope that's all OK, please let me know if you have any questions! Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:03, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Mike Peel, as a little bit of background a few months ago I worked with some other people to import data on UNESCO inscription programmes including World Heritage sites into Wikdiata. All World Heritage sites are now on Wikidata and have at least the following fields: Name in English and French, date inscribed as a WH site, country, coordinates, WH criteria for inclusion, WH website URL. I've also done some work on adding images to WH site Wikidata items where none existed before. I will be adding Wikidata items for the nely inscribed places shortly. --John Cummings (talk) 20:22, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

I should probably point out that not every WHS that has an article here on en.Wikipedia uses this infobox template. It has been somewhat controversial in the past (see the 2010 discussion, and the 2013 deletion discussion, for example). Furthermore, many articles, including some of the new 2016 inscribed places, have infoboxes that instead utilize the Template:Designation system that helps display multiple heritage/historical designations other than WHS. For example, when the Archaeological Site of Nalanda was inscribed earlier this month, the parameters using this system were enabled on that article's infobox.[1] It has been my observation these past few years that Infobox World Heritage Site is generally only added if an article did not already have an existing infobox (like Zuojiang Huashan Rock Art Cultural Landscape[2]) So, I just want to make it clear that importing such data from Wikidata into here at en.Wikipedia will only be partially used or helpful, until there is a time when all infoboxes using the Template:Designation system are also modified. Cheers. Zzyzx11 (talk) 03:56, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out! It's not too big a problem, since the really nice thing with Wikidata-driven infoboxes is that the data all comes from the same place. So we can get things working here, then look at the other (much more complex) infobox templates that also incorporate WHS info.

Also: some pages seem to use both this infobox, and another infobox, e.g., see Toruń (one in the normal top-right place, another in the Economy section), which is a little odd. Any idea how that came about? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 06:06, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

I had to go to the page history for that one. Here's the short story: I would assume that the one in the Economy section was moved there because its third paragraph mentions the city's "architectural heritage". That was placed before the Template:Designation system was fully established, which is the one now used in the normal top-right place. The editor who added it there probably did not realize the other one in the Economy section. As for the other articles that use both, I would also have to see on a case-by-case basis. Zzyzx11 (talk) 06:22, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

Country

How come this template can't display the country anymore? Even though the country is still in the template syntax.--Balthazarduju (talk) 19:54, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

People couldn't agree on whether to call it "country" or "state party", so it was deleted. It looks like both parameters are still widely used. Alakzi (talk) 20:20, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Something ought to be done to redirect the old "Country" or "State Party" into the new "Location". Many templates no longer shows the country or any location at all.--Balthazarduju (talk) 23:24, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

fixed. Frietjes (talk) 16:58, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Error message and tracking category for unsupported parameters

I have added error tracking for unsupported parameters to this template. See Category:Pages using infobox World Heritage Site with unknown parameters. A red error message appears when you Preview the article, between the edit screen and the rendered preview. In the category, the articles are sorted by the name of the parameter that is unsupported.

I have added this error-checking to a number of heavily used infoboxes, and it usually goes smoothly, highlighting errors that improve the articles that end up in the category. Every once in a while, parameters are missed or something goes wrong. If that happens, don't panic, just post here and I will be happy to fix it. Revert the change if you feel that you must.

If I have made any mistakes in coding, or if template changes are desired, please let me know. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:31, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

It looks like the vast majority of articles with errors are using |state party=. I see that there was discussion about this parameter above. Articles in the error category are sorted by the first letter of the unsupported parameter that they are using. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:19, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

I re-enabled this parameter, but will check for any collisions with |Location=. Frietjes (talk) 16:59, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Revised version that incorporates Wikidata - feedback wanted

Hi all. I've been working on Template:Infobox World Heritage Site/Wikidata to create a modified version of this template that supports Wikidata. I think this is nearly completed, so I'd like to start the discussion about merging it with the main version. Things to note:

• Where possible, the template automatically fetches Wikidata values and displays those, along with links to relevant articles, automatic conversion of units (e.g. m -> ft), location maps, and references
• If you don't want to use Wikidata in an article, then you can - just set local values for parameters and they won't be fetched from Wikidata. You can also suppress individual fields that you never want to appear in a given article using suppressfields=<parameter name>
• The template is currently live in these articles. In most of the cases there, all of the template is created from Wikidata (i.e., you just use {{Infobox World Heritage Site/Wikidata}} in the article, and everything is pulled over from Wikidata
• Along the way I have done some restyling of the template to simplify it and make it look more similar to other infoboxes that I've worked on. That includes simpler styling, removal of external links like "Name as inscribed on the World Heritage List", and a few other bits and pieces. Please have a look at one of the Wikidata-powered templates and compare it to current uses to see all of the changes.
• I have removed two parameters: Type and Region. The first seems to be a derived parameter from the criteria, so I can add that back automatically if needed, but I'm not sure why it is needed? The region parameter seems to be used to point to list articles here, but not necessarily the correct one, so again I'm not sure it's needed?
• I'm happy to make changes to the template prior to merging it if needed, so if anything I've changed doesn't look right then please say and I'll try to alter it!

The two templates can exist in parallel for now, and both can be used independently, but that doesn't make sense in the long run, hence this request to merge it. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 23:11, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

@John Cummings and Zzyzx11: as people involved in the thread above about this. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 23:12, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

As an example, I've converted Kathmandu Valley (the main example used for this template) to use the Wikidata version. Before and after. Diff, and see the Wikidata entry. "Extension" is the one parameter that I think should be kept but I haven't figured out how to migrate to Wikidata yet, so it's still locally defined (I've proposed a new property that will hopefully be able to handle this). Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 23:24, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Hi Mike Peel this looks great :) I would really like the creation date to the built World Heritage sites to be displayed, but very few of them have have the information in Wikidata currently, is it possible to set up the infobox so it will automatically appear once the data has been added?

Thanks

--John Cummings (talk) 14:21, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

@John Cummings: That should be possible - can you point me to an example site where the creation date is known (and ideally that info is on Wikidata), please? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 14:46, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

• I do not see any problems so far. But again, I'm not a big fan of this template, per the arguments presented in the debates I linked to in the previous thread. Zzyzx11 (talk) 02:21, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and merged the Wikidata version with the main version. If there are any problems, please ping me and I'll investigate them. Thanks! Mike Peel (talk) 02:15, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Mike Peel, your edit appears to have removed valid parameters like the lower-case |coordinates= that is the standard for infoboxes, and it appears to have removed the unknown parameter check. Can you please explain how I am wrong or restore the parameters and other template elements that you have deleted? Thanks.

Also, Santiago de Compostela is displaying two sets of coordinates, because there are multiple infoboxes on the page, and the world heritage infobox did not display coordinates until today. It was not showing duplicate coordinates before the change.

The documentation has inconsistent capitalization for the parameter names.

Are you planning to clean up Category:Articles using Infobox World Heritage Site using locally defined parameters if you can get this template working properly? – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:28, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: Thanks for the bug reports. I've fixed the lower-case coordinates and unknown parameter checks. I need to do a bit of work to figure out how to handle the duplicate coordinates - ideally this template would just be used in child mode in that case, but I'm not sure that's supported by infobox settlement... I'll tidy the documentation later today, and wil be working through the locally defined parameters category over time. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 14:05, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, looks better. Perhaps |display=inline,title should be changed to |display=inline until you find a better way to fix the duplicated coordinates. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:46, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Good idea, I've done that for now. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:45, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

The change seems to have added a large number of articles to Category:Pages with script errors. Something similar happened with Template:Infobox telescope, which led to a couple of articles with problems I fixed, and it looks like the same problem – using country names from Wikidata that do not match the names of Location Map template/module data here. Straightforward enough, though tedious, to fix the articles, but if it’s going to keep happening then perhaps needs a solution in code.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 19:54, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

@JohnBlackburne: Yes, there do seem to be some matching issues between Wikidata countries and location map templates. I'm thinking a mix of redirects to location maps, and some if statements for particularly problematic countries (such as the USA, which includes Hawaii but doesn't show it on the map), to solve this. There's a bit of a discussion at Module_talk:Location_map#Selecting_maps_to_show_based_on_coordinates.3F. If you can let me know which countries you're spotting problems with, I can try to do a systematic fix for them. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:18, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

The ones I recall fixing were China and People’s Republic of China – the map data is at "China". I only looked at a couple of the latest errors, one also was China, another had two other countries separated by a comma. Looks from the list that quite a few are in China.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 21:32, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

After some experimenting in the sandbox (which I recommend, since this template is used in 1000+ articles), I think I have worked around this problem by testing for the existence of a Location map template that corresponds to the Wikidata "country" property. If it doesn't exist, the Location map is not shown. If I am reading this version and the former version of the template correctly, I think that this may remove the Location map from a few articles that use the custom |locmapin= parameter, but that will be resolved soon, when Mike Peel scrubs all 1,000 articles to remove locally defined parameters that cause us to need these workarounds. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:00, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

I was working on {{Wikidata location map}}, and was just about to implement it when @Jonesey95: applied his solution. For now, their solution does look better though, so I'll leave that in place and will test this template at Template:Infobox telescope instead. The problem is less about locally defined parameters than it is about Wikidata vs. enwp conventions for names, though. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 00:05, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: It seems that location map also stores map info at Module:Location map/data/Country, which confused me for a while. :-) I've added the check you created to {{Wikidata location map}}, along with an additional check of the module data, and am now using that here. It's not the nicest code (due to parser template limitations), but it seems to work. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 01:14, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Baptism (and this talk page) is in the script errors category due to its use of this infobox. Baptism is also in Category:Articles using Infobox World Heritage Site with missing Location map template which is shown in red at the bottom of the article (the category currently has 133 pages). The html source includes the following:

Lua error in Module:Location_map at line 364: No value was provided for longitude.

Johnuniq (talk) 09:58, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

What's an infobox doing half-way down the page on a random article? :-/ I've removed it from Baptism now. I'll start working through the others. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:48, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

New errors

Arbitrary break. I am seeing a strange error in Canelli. For me, it says "Location méxico", and there is a resulting script error, but when I click Edit on Wikidata, there is no "méxico" to be found. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:39, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

I am also seeing a script error in Camino Real de Tierra Adentro because of a dual location. I think that my previous code worked around this problem; the new Wikidata location map code may still need some adjustment. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:41, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: I think the first was due to this vandalism on Wikidata, which has already been reverted. With the latter, the problem I'm having is that #ifexist does not seem to work with modules - if I do {{#ifexist:[[Module:Location map/data/Some random string]]|yes|no}}, then I get 'no' - but also, if I do {{#ifexist:[[Module:Location map/data/Antarctica]]|yes|no}} I get "no"! I've now used #iferror to hide the error message if the previous if statements haven't caught it, which is the best I can do for now - I think this probably needs someone who knows Lua to do a better job. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 12:09, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Any idea why the session in wikicode is not displaying in reader view at Réunion National Park? Nikkimaria (talk) 03:14, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

Pinging Mike Peel: |Session= no longer exists in the template. I don't know if this is related to the problem immediately above, but can you please make the template's documentation match its functionality, either by fixing the template to work as it used to or by gaining consensus to remove the parameters that you have removed from the template? – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:07, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for pointing this out. I'd accidentally converted the year and session parameters to Wikidata-only, and in the cases I'd looked at that data was available on Wikidata and the template wasn't showing any errors. I've now fixed the code, and it should work properly again. BTW, you don't need to specify session if you specify year, as I understand that session can always be derived from the year through the case statement in the template code (unless there are any cases where this doesn't work?). Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 06:26, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick fix. – Jonesey95 (talk) 12:52, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

Change Location, alphabeti, and image captions

How do you change location? I have tried Location= but it seems the template only takes data from Wikidata. Belfries of Belgium and France says the location is France, Belgium, which should be changed to France and Belgium. How do you suppress the coordinate? I removed it from Wikidata, but thats probably not a soulution. This article lists all the coordinates. How to make the list alphabetic? (The "Includes" list). And the template shouldn't take the caption from Wikidata unless the image is from Wikidata. Christian75 (talk) 06:37, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Use |locamapin= to tell it the location used for the map.

Now my question: how do you disable the map altogether, so stop it trying to draw it and suppressing the error? I’m looking at Camino Real de Tierra Adentro which it would be easy to add a location map to but it has a good one already, and the WHS is so large that no one map for one country makes sense, so adding another map would make it worse.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 12:40, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Ah, I see someone has noticed this one already in the above section. Still, the obvious thing to do in this case is disable the map, and there should be an easy way to do this for editors.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 12:42, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

@JohnBlackburne: Thanks for the feedback. I've made some changes to the template, so that location= is now available as a local override (I meant to make this available from the start, this was an accidental omission, sorry). Coordinates can now be disabled by setting nocoord=True, and it's similar for the map with nomap=True. I've asked about alphabetical ordering at Module_talk:WikidataIB#Alphabetical_output.3F (it's not currently an available feature). Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 00:48, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Location vs location - The doc says it's "Location" but Module "Check for unknown parameters" is now checking for "location" based on a recent change. Which should it be? Ahwiv (talk) 14:04, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Mike Peel, please fix. You said above that you would be available to fix this template. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:08, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping - and apologies @Ahwiv: for not spotting this sooner. Either of "location" or "Location" now work, and both are allowed by the parameter check. BTW, note that locations no longer display when the template is used as a child, which I think is the desired behaviour (since location is normally shown in the infobox that the template is embedded into), but please let me know if that's not the case. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 06:30, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

Medici villas:

• is the new improved outsourced automated template supposed to emit a bare URL as a reference?
• is there an advantage in displaying opaque non-obvious jargonistic information such as "criteria" over intuitively understandable information such as "type"?
• the pseudo-precise coordinates and small pin in the location map suggest the World Heritage Site is at one particular place, but there are actually a dozen villas spread across a large region. (The coordinates are actually for *one* of the dozen villas included by UNESCO, and there are a dozen or more that are not included.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.205.198.206 (talk) 07:00, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
  • Sorry for not spotting this sooner. In reply: 1) the references should have titles, access dates, etc. - providing that these have been set on Wikidata. Unfortunately there are some cases where only the URL has been given as a reference on Wikidata. 2) This is worth discussing. As far as I am aware, the type can be derived from the criteria - should we do this? But in terms of storing the raw data, storing the criteria makes more sense than storing the type. 3) This needs development - ideally we would be showing a map of all of the coordinates, but I don't know how to do that at the moment. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:47, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Map size after May 2017 changes

A functionality previously available in the Location map template system was the ability to define a scaling factor for vertically-oriented maps which would otherwise be overly stretched when scaled to fill the default width specified by infoboxes. For an example where this is a problem, see Humberstone and Santa Laura Saltpeter Works. Can the new template be modified to incorporate these scaling factors? The old Location map templates drew the values from the defaultscale parameter in each individual {{Location map Name}} template, and multiplied them to the default widths specified by the infoboxes. --Paul_012 (talk) 11:40, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

@Paul 012: The scaling should have been on by default. It wasn't working here as the width was being set with a default of 300px, which overrode the scaling. I've now changed that, and the maps should be appearing at the correct size now. Please let me know if this isn't the case! Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:44, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

It's working now, thanks. --Paul_012 (talk) 14:00, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Changes are causing citation errors

Mike Peel, please look at what changes to this template appear to be doing to put pages in Category:CS1 errors: URL–wikilink conflict. It may be better to experiment in the template's sandbox and to create a set of testcases. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:34, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: Thanks for pointing out the errors. This is due to a recent change in the way that citations from Wikidata are handled. I'll raise this at Template:Cite Q. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 01:36, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

More errors

Something in this template is causing Roman Theatre of Orange and Triumphal Arch of Orange to report links to the disambiguation page, Orange. Please fix. bd2412 T 13:18, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

@BD2412: Is this a live error, or a cached one? I can't spot the links in the article or the infobox. Either way, I think this should be solved by the replacement for {{Wikidata location}} that's under development by @RexxS:, also see Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_158#Wikidata_problem. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 14:24, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

@BD2412: I've migrated those two infoboxes completely to Wikidata. Can you see if the problem is still continuing after the caches have refreshed, please? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 15:02, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

As of now, the what links here page for articles linked to "Orange" still shows these two as having links. bd2412 T 16:17, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

@BD2412: OK, I've isolated the problem. If you include {{#ifexist:Orange | 1 | 2}} in the page, then it will appear in Orange's WhatLinksHere. This appears to be a feature rather than a bug, as it's documented in paragraph 4 of mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions#.23ifexist. It's not so much of an issue with this template, as an issue with mediawiki itself. I think RexxS's new module will avoid this happening, so let's wait until that's ready. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 16:53, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

How long will we be waiting? bd2412 T 17:08, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

That's a question for @RexxS:, but I think most of the work has been done, it just needs some last tweaks before it's implemented. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:19, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

Citation problems

In the article Copán the citation returned by this template appears as a raw url. This is contrary to guidance in WP:CITE#Avoid embedded links.

If a fuller link is included this can cause problems of inconsistency in the citations, if for example this is formatted as a inline long citation on a page of inline short citations. I suggest that the citation is formatted as belonging to a group (eg lower-alpha) and that the citation appears in its own notes section at the bottom of the template. -- PBS (talk) 12:40, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

@PBS: The reference appears as a raw URL as that is the only piece of information about the reference in the current Wikidata entry - the easiest way to fix this is to expand the reference on Wikidata to include the title/publisher/accessdate/etc. Inconsistent referencing styles is an issue (since we don't have a standard referencing system here), and there's not much I can do about that right now (except for bugging the developers of Module:Wd and Module:Wikidata to expand support for different referencing systems). Note that references can be turned off in individual infoboxes if needed (set refs=no). References should be kept in a references section, and not in the infobox! Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:47, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Alarming increase in disambiguation link false positives.

Use of this template to import Wikidata content is beginning to cause an alarming number of false positives, which are highly disruptive to the work of disambiguators.

• Melbourne Observatory, Great Melbourne Telescope, and Carlton Gardens have false links to "Victoria"
• Church of San Francisco, Castro, Church of Nercón, Church of Chelín, and Church of Rilán have false links to "Castro"
• Place Stanislas has a false link to "Nancy"

Something needs to be done to prevent these false positives from cropping up, before they come to overwhelm the disambiguation project. bd2412 T 17:53, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

I think @RexxS's new module will fix these, although I'm not sure when that will be ready. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 23:51, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Can we desist in doing whatever is causing the problem until this module is ready? bd2412 T 23:54, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

@BD2412: OK, I've removed the ifexist statement that I think is causing these issues. Please let me know if you still see issues after the page caches have been refreshed (this needed a null edit at Place Stanislas to clear it). Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 00:08, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

Yes, thank you. This has resolved the issue for all of the above links, and likely scores more. bd2412 T 00:18, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

Great. :-) Thanks for your patience here! Mike Peel (talk) 00:24, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

Please allow local website

Hortobágy National Park has a few problems at the moment:

• The website is sourced to the Italian Wikivoyage, not a reliable source at all
• The website given is the generic Hungarian one, but they have an English page as well, here
• I have no (obvious) way to override the Wikidata value here with a local value
• The value at Wikidata should not be overwritten, as it is correct there (international) but not here (English Wikipedia)
• I don't see an option to get a non-Wikidata version of the template (instead of just the field) either

Please change this template to allow the addition of a website on enwiki if the Wikidata one is not the right one (please change this for all parameters which don't have this option yet). Fram (talk) 10:08, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

• "website=" should work. I'll check through the documentation later today. There should also be a way of marking the language of the website on wikidata and fetching the correct language version, but I'm not sure what it is - I'll investigate that too. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 10:56, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

• • Doesn't seem to work... Fram (talk) 11:08, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
    • All lower case. Mike Peel (talk) 13:13, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
    • I've applied a quick fix so that both 'website' and 'Website' now work. More this evening. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 13:48, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
      • Thank you. Fram (talk) 14:10, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
• I've expanded the documentation now (sorry for the delay). I think it's possible to store language-specific URLs in Wikidata like this, but I'm not sure how to fetch them (@RexxS: any ideas?). Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:47, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
  • I'd have to write a new call based on the code in getQualifierValue. Something like getValueByQualifier which would return the all the values of the property that had a particular value for a qualifier. In your case you could then fetch all the values of official website (P856) where the qualifier (P2439) was equal to English (Q1860). You'd have to decide how to deal with multiple values because there's nothing to stop an editor adding other official English websites. It is theoretically a "single-value" property, but there are 9645 violations (including yours). Unfortunately, the sandbox where we're working on capping the maximum number of values returned is now desynchronised by changes to the main module, and I'm disinclined to struggle with sorting out another new call under those circumstances. --RexxS (talk) 22:32, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

RfC: revert back to non-Wikidata version?

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

There is a consensus to Y support the reversion of the template to a local version.

In light of the issue of unintentional canvassing, the later set of oppose(s) (barrying Andy's) have been assigned very negligible weightage.

That being said, the concensus is both supported by a head-count and weighing of arguments.

Numerous examples of botched cases have been provided which very clearly point to the fact that as things currently stand, the Wikidata-based template is not suitable for use in en.wiki.Winged Blades of Godric^{On leave} 10:07, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Consider this an administrator endorsing the above non-admin closure, in case it's needed. GoldenRing (talk) 13:20, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

---

In May 2017, this infobox was converted to a Wikidata-based one. Should it remain as such or should we revert to the local version? Fram (talk) 13:56, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Survey

• Support reversal to non-Wikidata based version per reasoning and many examples below (more available on request!). Local version simply has much less issues and is much more stable. Fram (talk) 14:48, 2 October 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose There are nearly 1,000 instances of this that are using Wikidata information entirely. Another 500 or so need local checking/adding to Wikidata to make sure they are working correctly, but the answer is to fix those not to break the others. Mike Peel (talk) 21:20, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
• Support reversal to use infoboxes that do not draw information from wikidata as there are too much off site information, usually in a format that does not match wiki article in question. Keith D (talk) 23:35, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
• The apparent inability to add intermediate administrative districts is a big problem Taking a look at an arbitrary example in my area of expertise, Eastern Qing tombs (using the Wikidata-driven infobox) is described as being located in Zunhua, China. Which skips over two layers of administrative regions: Tangshan (which may not be particularly useful to most readers) and Hebei. This is a bit like describing something as being located in Carmangay, Canada (ignoring Vulcan County, Alberta), or Staffordshire, Earth. Editing the Location parameter in the infobox unintuitively does nothing directly. I made a couple edits to the relevant Wikidata entry, first adding "Hebei" to the "located in the administrative territorial entity" statement, then when that did nothing manually adding another "located in the administrative territorial entity" statement with the value "Hebei", which just merged the statements together. "Zunhua" is then selected to display instead of – rather than prior to – "Hebei". If we're going to draw data for this infobox from Wikidata, each field (possibly excepting coordinates and catalogue code) should have a local override to deal with cases like this. Snuge purveyor (talk) 02:16, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
  • I note that Eastern Qing tombs now displays "Zunhua, Hebei", PRC in the infobox like I suggested. I just added a provincial-level designation to Dujiangyan at Wikidata as well, but the template output seems to ignore it, which makes it unclear to me what behaviour has changed. I will also note here that the Location parameter is already locally overrideable provided one changes it to location. I missed this case sensitivity in the documentation previously. Snuge purveyor (talk) 14:00, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
    • Thanks @Snuge purveyor: - both the cases you give seem to be working now, so there seems to be a short delay between editing the info on wikidata and it appearing here. Maybe try purging the cache after you've made the edit (add ?action=purge onto the end of the URL). I've tweaked the code so that Location= is now supported (I keep forgetting that this template has used upper-case labels, as I've always used lower-case only, but it's easy enough to support both). Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:03, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
• support. The effort to migrate these infoboxes is causing far too many problems. I just noticed new reports on Mike Peel’s talk page, a page only on my watchlist due to previous problems, some of the many reported. Even if working reliably it presents editors with a far worse experience when they hit 'edit' to edit a page or section and see not the fact they want to correct but nothing that matches the article content. The last RfC on this was clear: infoboxes should only pull information from wikidata when there is no data on Wikipedia. Many of the editors then raised concerns about sourcing and [ease of] editing, and four years on these have not been addressed.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 04:26, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
• Support - I respect the effort that's gone in here, but drawing on data from outside the Wiki in this way makes it much harder for editors to edit and maintain articles. Hchc2009 (talk) 17:51, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
• Support per abundant reasons cited above. I furthermore caution Mike Peel that sanctions may be warranted if you continue making edits while discussion is underway which are solely and blatantly disruptive if consensus goes against you.[3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] I apologize if any bad-example diffs slipped in there. There are so many potentially disruptive edits that it's tedious to double check them all. I can see no credible justification for stripping information out of countless infoboxes when you know dang well that discussion is underway and your edits disruptively increase the work of converting back to a non-wikidata infobox. Alsee (talk) 00:31, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Note that those edits were before my comment below, after which I have not made any more such edits (although Fram has not done the same). Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 14:55, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose any reversions done simply because some editors don't like Wikidata. The decision to use wikidata in any particular article needs to be in the hands of the editors who curate that article, not the zealots who are determined to stop any progress in building sensible central repositories for all the Wikimedia projects. --RexxS (talk) 16:03, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
  • but it wasn’t put it the hands of the editors who curate these articles. That would be if e.g. the template were created and then publicised, with editors able to use it as they see fit. Instead it was mass-inserted into those articles by one editor with as far as I can see no prior discussion at any of them. The first other editors knew about it was when they noticed the problems it was creating.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 16:22, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
    • The editors who curate the articles now have a choice: to use local parameters; or to fetch information from Wikidata. You want a Wikipedia where the second choice is taken away from them. --RexxS (talk) 19:50, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
• Support per Hchc2009. For the record, I also support Johnbod's efforts in the past to reduce much of the clutter on this infobox. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:18, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
• Support. I have been dealing with Wikidata recently over infoboxes generating incorrect links (particularly links to disambiguation pages); the response that I have gotten is that these issues are not fixable there, and that our infoboxes need to be adjusted to not use the Wikidata information in those cases. In that case, that is exactly what we should do. bd2412 T 03:19, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
• Support. It is clearly preferable that the text of Wikipedia articles is held on Wikipedia, and not outsourced. (Is anyone actually checking each item of information that is imported automatically from Wikidata?) It is also preferable that editorial decisions about article content are made on Wikipedia, not buried in automated templates a way that that is difficult for regular editors to change. Keep experimenting, by all means; but the level of problems identified above and elsewhere clearly demonstrates that this implementation is not good enough to be the default at this time. (And {{Infobox artwork/wikidata}} is even more problematic than this one.) Theramin (talk) 23:48, 14 October 2017 (UTC)
• Support - (Summoned by bot) The change did not improve the template; it actually made it worse. That is an easy line to draw to determine whether it should stay or not. Nihlus 05:12, 25 October 2017 (UTC)
• NOTE: all !votes below here followed canvassing by Mike Peel at WikidataCon (thoug he didn't realise that what he did was canvassing), and a subsequent discussion of this at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#How to deal with this?. Fram (talk) 08:22, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose per Mike Peel and RexxS, it's working just fine in many articles. WP:IDONTLIKEIT is not a valid reason to roll back improvements. Gamaliel (talk) 16:03, 28 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Hi Gamaliel. It's working just fine in many articles is not a reason to support keeping a template which is definitely not working fine in many other articles, and where we have an alternative which works fine in all articles. This has nothing to do with "idontlikeit", but "ifontlikeyou" is not a valid reason to oppose things of course. Fram (talk) 11:07, 29 October 2017 (UTC)
    • @Fram: Since you apparaently object to others doing so, please fix your broken markup. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:59, 1 November 2017 (UTC)
      • Anything that makes you happy... Fram (talk) 05:48, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose as per reasons already given. Battleofalma (talk) 18:33, 28 October 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose Working on fixing the issues would have been more productive and long term effective than starting this vote.

I am happy to work on improvements with people and encourage others to oppose this backwards step. Leela0808 (talk) 19:37, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

• • Leela, many of those calling for reverting the template to its former version have noted that they do not wish to have to follow and engage on two Wiki systems (the English language Wikipedia, and Wikidata) to maintain articles on the English Wikipedia. It's a pain and takes more time. I can't really see this issue can be "fixed" without reverting to the former version - what were you proposing doing? Hchc2009 (talk) 13:00, 29 October 2017 (UTC)
    • Maintaining articles already involves using two wikis, except for articles where there are no associated images. Richard Nevell (talk) 14:49, 29 October 2017 (UTC)***Keeping an eye on images on the Commons is irritating, but at least we don’t need to worry about tracking vandalism and OR etc there... forcing editors to track a third site where vandalism etc is an issue feels simply unnecessary... Hchc2009 (talk) 14:56, 29 October 2017 (UTC)
      • For people working on the same set of content across N languages, iwatching 3 wikis beats having to watch N+1 wiki... Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 15:05, 29 October 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. The world heritage sites are worldwide and therefore the local information about them is mostly not in English. To use Wikidata as a language-independent database for information about them is IMO very good to have. It can help dramatically when creating a new wikipedia site and keeping the information on existing ones up-to-date with the help of more local persons. How the existing boxes should be transformed can be discussed. Moreover, it is still possible to overwrite the Wikidata values with local ones. --Zuphilip (talk) 09:32, 29 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Zuphilip - you can already cite non-English sources on the Wikipedia, provided they meet WP:VERIFIABILITY - I cite French ones all the time, for example. No-one is suggesting deleting Wikidata, so if anyone wishes to create a new Wikipedia site (e.g. in a new language etc.) they can draw on that data if they wish to. As above, though, many of us don't wish to have to work on several Wiki sites in order to maintain articles on the English Wikipedia. Hchc2009 (talk) 13:04, 29 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Can I just ask where this was mentioned to suddenly get 4 oppose votes in a row after weeks with little or no opposes? This is strange... Fram (talk) 11:00, 29 October 2017 (UTC)
    • It's certainly unusual, I'd agree. Some of the additional contributors are relatively "new" to the Wiki (Zuphilip has made only 72 edits over the last ten years, for example; Leela, 462 edits over the last five) and don't seem to have any previous connections to this topic. While you don't need to be a wiki-addict to make valuable contributions to a debate (!) - it's the quality of your contribution, not your "time served" that matters - I'd be inclined to agree that the pattern is odd unless the debate has been highlighted elsewhere. Hchc2009 (talk) 13:12, 29 October 2017 (UTC)
      • I included a mention of this template and the RfC in commons:File:Wikidatacon 2017. Wikidata-powered infoboxes.pdf (slide 20) as part of a review of Wikidata infoboxes on enwp at Wikidatacon2017. Note that I did not WP:CANVAS for votes. BTW, note that many people that have participated earlier in this discussion do not have previous connections to this topic that I'm aware of. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 13:33, 29 October 2017 (UTC)
        • Canvassing isn't just asking to support or oppose one position. Simply asking people with one specific interest (e.g. like here, people more likely to support the use of Wikidata in as much places as possible) is also canvassing, and not allowed. Thanks for being open about it though. Fram (talk) 16:25, 29 October 2017 (UTC)
          • NB: It looks as though an ANI debate has been started on the canvassing question by Fram - the link is WP:AN#How to deal with this?. Hchc2009 (talk) 20:40, 31 October 2017 (UTC)
            • I strongly suggest any closer should read the AdminNoticeboard discussion linked above. Alsee (talk) 23:47, 31 October 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose Given that fields can be overridden if necessary, I'm not seeing there would be much to gain by rolling out the changes. Mike has been responsive to suggestions and has actively been improving the infobox so perhaps this could be viewed as an opportunity to suggest further improvements. Richard Nevell (talk) 18:44, 31 October 2017 (UTC)
  • With Wikidata infoboxes, one only knows that a field needs to be overridden (long) after the fact, as they don't show up in page history and on most people's watchlists (and don't get me started on recent changes). One can hardly preactively override all fields where someone on Wikidata may make a change which is unwanted on enwiki (well, one can easily do that, by using a non-Wikidata infobox, but that's not what you want). If in reality way too many of these infoboxes contain errors (which Mike Peel introduced in many cases in the first place by replacing local override values with the central "everything from Wikidata" version), then the nice theories about what is possible should be abandoned, and this should be seen as an opportunity to use a local, working, improved version instead. Fram (talk) 08:22, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose per all of the above opposes. Also, while I was at WikidataCon, I only became aware of this discussion after seeing it mentioned on WP:ANI. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 07:41, 1 November 2017 (UTC)
• Support Having read through the arguments, one point that has not been, and probably cannot be, eliminated is that it is a vandalism vector that is not under the control of this project. The suggested changes are attempts to restrict that vector but cannot remove it. No matter how righteous the majority of Wikidata's user base may be, it is smaller and less active and provides longer correction times. To make an analogy: I live in a semi-rural area with a very low crime rate and yet I lock my doors at night. Leaving this template open to Wikidata leaves at least one door to this project unlocked. This is neither overly-cautious nor paranoid nor a refutation of the sister project. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 17:12, 1 November 2017 (UTC)
  • "it is smaller and less active" It has more items than en.Wikipedia has articles; and more edits per week than en.Wikipedia. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:58, 1 November 2017 (UTC)
    • An item on Wikidata is not comparable to an article on enwiki in nearly all cases, and the number of edits is mostly due to two factors, the massive number of bot edits and the need for humans to make many very small edits to get a result, where here one can do a lot more in one edit usually. Plus of course many so-called Wikidata edits are not edits on Wikidata at all, but things like page moves on some wiki which automatically get copied on Wikidata with a false attribution to the page mover. Fram (talk) 08:22, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
• Comment: Note that people are finding this infobox useful and are adding the Wikidata version, e.g. at [22] and Ancient City of Damascus where the Wikidata version of the infobox was added/converted from a child template in the last few days. I guess pinging those editors here would count as canvassing though... Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 09:16, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

Extended discussion.Winged Blades of GodricOn leave 10:07, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

In May 2017, this was converted to a Wikidata-based infobox. Nothing wrong with that, doing this is allowed. However, it seems to be that the end result is at best the same we had with the previous infobox, and at worst (and usual) we have a worse infobox now than before, which can't be the intention. Of course, many issues can be fixed, but the problem is that new issues arise constantly, while the local infobox was stable and had few if any problems. For example, Mike Peel (who did the hard work in this conversion) stated "As an example, I've converted Kathmandu Valley (the main example used for this template) to use the Wikidata version." Comparing the old version with the current one[23] shows We now have a local caption, but a Wikidata image which doesn't match it (the earlier caption and image went together, and the local image was superior to the Wikidata-driven one The criteria have changed from "iii, iv, vi" to "Cultural: (iii), (iv), (vi)": the addition of "cultural" is an improvement, the use of brackets not so much The "endangered: 2003-2007" now has a "citation needed" in the infobox; having this in the body only is sufficient (it can be sourced to this by the way Now, this is the actual testing example, so presumably the best. I have tried to improve the template at Hortobágy National Park, where I had to come here to get the possibility to add a website overriding the Wikidata one (which wasn't a problem in the old version), where I then had to override a few other Wikidata values as well, and where I can't find how to layout the name of the Heritage Site (with italics for "puszta"), which was again not a problem in the old version[24] On Mexico City, we have now an infobox claiming Location: Mexico, First Mexican Empire, Viceroyalty of New Spain, Mexico Area 1,485 km2 (1.598×1010 sq ft) No idea why square klometers gets converted to square feet, but anyway: the area is totally wrong, and the location is ... just weird. The area is wrong on all(?) instances where you get the infobox included in an article on a city where part is also a heritage site (e.g. Kyoto. Location is also often an issue, e.g. the mountain range the Dolomites is apparently located only in Cortina d'Ampezzo, even though the Unseco itself simply gives Italy[25] as the much more correct location. Basically, the template worked better as a local template than as a Wikidata-driven one, and less unexpected problems arose. Fram (talk) 14:21, 2 October 2017 (UTC) This template was and is absolutely appalling and a blot on Wikipedia. It is filled up with a load of bureaucratic nonsense from UNICEF that is of absolutely no use to the reader (who can if they really want to know what continent India is in consult the WHS site) and fails to give the reader any indication of what they do want to know - what the site includes, when it was made, and who by. It is a triumph of mindless nerdery and wholly unencyclopedic (for more detail see my rants back to 2010 in sections above). We should start introducing a proper infobox, with a little link somewhere to the WHS site. Having said that, there does seem to be some improvement in reducing the clutter, and at least at Humayun's Tomb it was Mike Peel's edit that did that. But in general I'm not in favour of driving WP from Wikidata. Johnbod (talk) 14:31, 2 October 2017 (UTC) True, but if we have it, then at least let's not have things like Semmering railway, which I'm certain you'll love. Fram (talk) 14:34, 2 October 2017 (UTC) @Johnbod: I've been trying to condense the bureaucratic lines overall, and also used the template in child mode wherever possible (so there aren't multiple infobox templates on the same page, and there isn't duplication of information presented by them). I've also expanded a bit the info given when the template is used in a stand-alone function, which hopefully makes it more useful there (and hopefully you'll agree that it's easier to convert to a child template if you want to add a new, more appropriate infobox in those cases). Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:26, 2 October 2017 (UTC) See e.g. also Quito, which has the location "Ecuador, Ecuador" (once is enough, thank you), and doesn't have an "Area" of "290 km2 (3.1×109 sq ft)", but of 320 ha. Semmering railway has as Wikidata-driven sources things like this, which is of course an unacceptable source. And it doesn't have this once, it has it seven times in a row: Location Gloggnitz, Prigglitz, Payerbach, Breitenstein, Semmering, Spital am Semmering, Mürzzuschlag[1][2][3][4][5][6][7], Austria[1] Edit this at Wikidata". Not only that, it also "Includes Q801311, Q32607493 Edit this on Wikidata". Wow, it includes two Q-numbers (without even a link), what encyclopedic information! Perhaps the official location of "Between Gloggnitz, State of Lower Austria and Simmering, State of Styria" would have been more useful, and with the official Unesco site as simple reference? Basically, a template on important monuments which creates this as the reference list is not really acceptable: "https://tools.wmflabs.org/heritage/api/api.php?action=search&format=json&srcountry=at&srlanguage=de&srid=24736; Monuments database; publication date: 18 August 2017. https://tools.wmflabs.org/heritage/api/api.php?action=search&format=json&srcountry=at&srlanguage=de&srid=24740; Monuments database; publication date: 18 August 2017. https://tools.wmflabs.org/heritage/api/api.php?action=search&format=json&srcountry=at&srlanguage=de&srid=24743; Monuments database; publication date: 18 August 2017. https://tools.wmflabs.org/heritage/api/api.php?action=search&format=json&srcountry=at&srlanguage=de&srid=24772; Monuments database; publication date: 18 August 2017. https://tools.wmflabs.org/heritage/api/api.php?action=search&format=json&srcountry=at&srlanguage=de&srid=24773; Monuments database; publication date: 18 August 2017. https://tools.wmflabs.org/heritage/api/api.php?action=search&format=json&srcountry=at&srlanguage=de&srid=24867; Monuments database; publication date: 18 August 2017. https://tools.wmflabs.org/heritage/api/api.php?action=search&format=json&srcountry=at&srlanguage=de&srid=9703; Monuments database; publication date: 18 August 2017." Now, all of this can probably be corrected at Wikidata and/or in the template, but it shouldn't be necessary, and we had much less of this shit with the local template instead. Fram (talk) 14:34, 2 October 2017 (UTC) I try to look at different types of World Heritage Sites. Something like Burgundy wine for example: it has "Coordinates 50°N 0°E". Which is weird, because the value is not given locally, the Wikidata item has "53°N, 0°E", and the Unesco site has "N47 3 29 E4 51 52". Then the location is "Location Yonne, Saône-et-Loire, Côte d'Or, France Edit this at Wikidata" but the official location is either "France" or "the slopes of the Côte de Nuits and the Côte de Beaune south of the city of Dijon"[26], which at first sight are all located in the Cote d'Or, not in the other two regions. Fram (talk) 14:47, 2 October 2017 (UTC) @Fram: You are looking at an old version of the template, you should no longer be seeing references. Please purge your cache. You are also talking about cases where the infobox is partially from Wikidata and partially local, and cases where the infobox has been previously misplaced. I'm slowly working through those to fix them. Please look at the articles I've already converted to use Wikidata only when giving examples. Mike Peel (talk) 20:21, 2 October 2017 (UTC) I've changed the Semmering railway infobox to use the child version of this infobox, and I hope you'll agree that it's much better now. This literally took me 10 seconds to do, as the WHS info was already present on Wikidata and just needed double-checking before saving the edit. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:29, 2 October 2017 (UTC) I've removed the infobox from Mexico City as it should never have been there in the first place. It belongs at Historic center of Mexico City, which now uses this infobox in child form. The same applies to a lot of the other cases where this infobox is used in cities, and I'm slowly working through these to fix them (these are more complicated to do as they need more checking, and often the WHS info needs adding to the Wikidata entry for the correct article). Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:37, 2 October 2017 (UTC) On Kathmandu Valley, I'm not sure why @Krish Dulal: changed the image but not the caption on Wikidata (I've tidied this on Wikidata but left the new image in place for now). The citation needed tag was added locally, not via Wikidata. I've added the reference you mentioned and tidied up location. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:50, 2 October 2017 (UTC) (ec)I was "looking at an old version of the template"? No, the article had the template "Infobox World Heritage Site", which is the one we are discussing here. If it shouldn't be used in that way, then again it shows how much problems the current version creates. Like I said, you may be able to solve them, but why? Why change a working, stable version with a version which has caused all kinds of problems the last few months, like the above section on "Alarming increase in disambiguation link false positives." You get a lot less of these issues with standard infoboxes, so why insist on using this one anyway? "You are also talking about cases where the infobox is partially from Wikidata and partially local": did any of the issues arise from the local values? If not, then why bring this up? Or does the template not work well if you add local values? Then that's yet another reason to switch back to a fully local version instead. While you are very helpful in fixing individual issues, the underlying problem remains. Fram (talk) 20:51, 2 October 2017 (UTC) You were looking at a cached version of the template before this edit if you were seeing references. Most of the work I've been doing with this template has been to tidy up inconsistent local usage here; it's been placed in the wrong articles, with e.g. various formatting of (i), i, (I), a lot of unnecessary links that shouldn't be in the infobox, and so on. Quite a few of the issues you are raising here are caused by those local usage issues. If you'd like, compare the set of articles using this infobox in Category:Articles using Infobox World Heritage Site using locally defined parameters with the set that aren't, and you can understand why I say this. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:56, 2 October 2017 (UTC) Cleaning up inconsistent use has nothing to do though with using a local version or a Wikidata version, no? And the "cached" version was the version in use all the time since your change to full Wikidata version, until a critic finally removed these dreadful references a few days ago. "Quite a few of the issues you are raising here are caused by those local usage issues." Please indicate which ones. The poor references? The ridiculous areas? The location problems? The coordinates problem? When I test Dolomites by removing the local parameters, exactly the same issues remain. When I do the same with Burgundy wines, it becomes even worse (you get "Inscription (Unknown Session)"). Please don't send me on a wild goose chase with the distinction between local values or not, as it seems to be mostly or totally irrelevant to the issues at hand. Fram (talk) 21:07, 2 October 2017 (UTC) "Cleaning up inconsistent use has nothing to do though with using a local version or a Wikidata version, no?" - well, you were the one that raised these issues, so I assumed they were relevant, and pointed out several of the local issues in my replies. I'm going to back away from this for the evening, I hope that when I come back we can have a constructive discussion here. Mike Peel (talk) 21:12, 2 October 2017 (UTC) "pointed out several of the local issues in my replies." No, you claimed that it somehow was caused by using local parameters, while the vast majority of issues I pointed out was not caused by local paramaters at all, and removing the local parameters from e.g. the examples I gave right above doesn't change anything. Your reply was not relevant, it was dodging the issue. I share your hope, but you haven't really started in the right vein. When you come back, please don't focus on the individual examples and how you fixed them, but focus on the underlying issues and the main question, i.e. how using this Wikidata-driven version is better (in general) than using the local version: "better" meaning more stable, less prone to problems, ... Fram (talk) 04:41, 3 October 2017 (UTC) Hi, I changed the picture because it is an article of entire valley but there was a picture of a palace in Kathmandu. Unfortunately I did not realise the caption. I have updated the caption now. Just let me know how can I help you guys in this situation. Thanks-Krish Dulal (talk) 15:59, 5 October 2017 (UTC) To be more precise, I have given X examples: Kathmandu Valley: picture changed on Wikidata causes mismatch here Hortobágy National Park: name from Wikidata doesn't allow italics in it, and Wikidata version had other issues solved by adding local values Mexico City: issues caused by Wikidata Kyoto Dolomites: issues caused by Wikidata Quito: Wikidata Semmering railway: Wikidata Only in Kathmandu Valley, which was the example given by you at the conversion of this template, were there are also issues caused by local parameters ("citation needed"). So can we now please put the "but it's local parameters that cause this" to rest and focus on the actual issue (not solving some examples), whether this Wikidata-driven template is more stable and less prone to cause errors than the purely local template? Fram (talk) 04:41, 3 October 2017 (UTC) Fram, please listen. There are currently 1,421 uses of this template. The majority of those use Wikidata entirely, and I would appreciate feedback on issues with those. However, there are 505 with local parameters, of which a number are used on entirely the wrong page and need to be moved to the correct page (such as Mexico City), or they need to be turned into child templates and only show a subset of the information (particularly in articles that cover more than just the WHS, or are otherwise more complex topics that the average), and others will have local errors in them (while going through the others I've found incorrect criteria, wrong years, and then there's the bad formatting, unnecessary rows, and other clutter). I've done a lot of the easier ones already, so those remaining are more difficult - and I am still working through those articles to improve them (which includes standardising the info using Wikidata). Unfortunately you are mostly highlighting those here rather than the ones that I've already passed through, which doesn't help - I know they need work, and if you can help with that it would be really useful, and pointing out / fixing issues that I've missed would also be useful. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:18, 3 October 2017 (UTC) Some example enwp issues that I would like to see discussion on: Is it appropriate to have a WHS infobox at Burgundy wine? Bonin Islands has Bonin Islands (Q243634), which is marked as being different from Ogasawara Archipelago (Q13383295), which is the WHS - is this correct, and does the enwp infobox need to be split? What to do with the infobox at Buenos_Aires#Art - is this even a WHS? (I'll add some more here as I spot them.) Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:53, 3 October 2017 (UTC) @Fram: I've spent some time this eve continuing to work through some of the locally-defined infoboxes. Please have a look at my edits and let me know if I got anything wrong. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 00:00, 4 October 2017 (UTC) I'm listening. I don't hear anything though. You haven't replied to any of the fundamental issues, you are still going on about the difference between "with local parameters" and "without local parameters" as if that is the cause of the problems (it isn't, as demonstrated by me and ignored byb you). You are scrambling to correct many examples, while ignoring the reasons for this RfC completely. Basically, you are only strenghtening my point, that you have replaced a stable, working, reliable local template with an unstable, harder, unpredictable one only because it is another Wikidata one. Fine, if that's how you want to play it, I'll just create a superior local version and manually move articls to that version. We can then see whether you want to best infobox in the articles, or the Wikidata version no matter what. Fram (talk) 04:32, 4 October 2017 (UTC) Thank you for making my point for me yet again, in your attempt to "improve" one page already corrected by me. I have reverted your edit here as you replaced correct data from the UNESCO with wrong data from Wikidata, even when I had explicitly added that information the day before. Your aim obviously is not "get the correct info" but "get as much of Wikidata as possible". Stop disrupting Wikipedia and start working constructively instead. Fram (talk) 04:45, 4 October 2017 (UTC) Seeing how this is the way this has to be played apparently, I have now created Template:Infobox UNESCO World Heritage Site (which will be improved and expanded upon in the near future), as a better, more stable, fully local alternative for the Wikidata version. No more sudden, unexpected and unwatched influxes of disambiguations, fields with a reference but no value, wmflabs queries as sources, images not matching the caption without anyone making an error (human error can never be excluded, but an infobox shouldn't have wrong information because people did the right thing on another site), and so on and so on. Please, wherever you insert it, make sure that it works correctly before saving, and leave all feedback on the template talk page. All improvements (except getting info from Wikidata, we already have a template for that bad idea) are welcome. Fram (talk) 08:08, 4 October 2017 (UTC) I have now converted 5 articles to the "new" (the improved "old") infobox: two articles which had been discussed here, and the first three I encountered when I did "what links here" from this template. Conclusions, apart from the fact that the new infobox provides some extra fields and the logical things (takes more place in the editing screen, can be corrected directly in the editing screen, removes the Wikidata link and pencil icons in view mode, ...): Hortobágy National Park now has the right location instead of the Wikidata one; and the "Includes Hortobágy Great Fishponds" has been removed, as I couldn't find this fact explicitly and prominently in the Unesco site Dolomites: no fundamental differences Park Güell: now has the correct date of inscription instead of the wrong date from Wikidata Acropolis of Athens: no fundamental difference Ajanta Caves: better location (more detailed than on Wikidata, and especially avoids the usless repetition of "India, India" Wikidata now produces): takes a more detailed map than the very wide whole of India map the Wikidata map produces Basically, the new template can do everything the Wikidata one does, and more (so far, the parameters "Area", "Buffer Zone" and "Part of" have been added). It provides direct control of the data the same way all other content of the article is provided, allows layouting, tagging and referencing, ... It won't be perfect yet (created today), but it works both in full and child modus. It avoids most unpleasant surprises (like the issues the current template had) and is fully integrated in the watchlist, recent changes, ... Editors need to do a bit more work than just add the lazy Wikidata link, but as can be seen above, this considerably increases the chance of a better end result (as seen above, where 3 of the 5 templates now are better wrt the same parameters). Any reason not to use Template:Infobox UNESCO World Heritage Site? Fram (talk) 13:44, 4 October 2017 (UTC) Unsurprisingly, I think this is an unnecessary fork and a backward step. Presumably the next version will only use images on Wikipedia (Like Wikidata, Commons content isn't *here*), followed by the coordinates (they go wmflabs). Perhaps the external link to UNESCO also needs to go (it points to content that isn't here). However, sarcasm aside, I have a suggestion: let's wait to see how the discussion goes here (if anyone else joins in!) before we make any more changes to WHS infoboxes - both wikidata version and this fork. Is that acceptable? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:36, 4 October 2017 (UTC) So, no substantial reply, and an inability make the distinction between showing data hosted on another wiki and showing data hosted here with a link to the reliable site this is all based on. The coordinates are also hosted here, the wmflabs is only a tool to visualise them in many ways (just like an ISBN is hosted here, but points to other sites who may have more information on them). If you try sarcasm, stick to examples which have some relation to the issue at hand (like, well, that would only be Commons) and don't overdo it with things that may look superficially the same but in the end only show that yes, we are talking past each other and no, you still don't get some of the actual issues. While I won't go mass-improving the WHS boxes yet, I'll change some more articles to see whether the template truly can handle all issues or needs further improvements (which is likely). If I correct some errors along the way, then that's even better. Fram (talk) 04:45, 5 October 2017 (UTC) I have now added the new template to Bauhaus to demonstrate the ability to have a map with multiple clickable locations (data is now up-to-date as well). Fram (talk) 11:12, 5 October 2017 (UTC) Comment I reopened the discussion, but here is the original close rationale for posterity: Preliminary: Since several months a Wikidata-based version of the WH Site infobox has been developed, primarily driven by Mike Peel. These good-faith efforts shouldn't go lost. Then, this variant, initially developed at {{Infobox World Heritage Site/Wikidata}}, was rolled out via the existing {{Infobox World Heritage Site}} template. Despite good-faith efforts to find acceptance for the new version of the template, as evidenced above at #Wikidata version and #Revised version that incorporates Wikidata - feedback wanted, a broad acceptance is failing, as evidenced by the thrust of the current RfC. There is no need to prolong the agony any further, absorbing sizeable portions of editor energy, which would probably be better spent in engineering workable solutions: for that reason I have chosen for a WP:SNOW close of this debate. A general principle that has been overridden by merging the Wikidata-version into a working template that appeared on many pages is that Infobox-related decisions need to be taken page-by-page, not as a general decision affecting hundreds of pages at once. Several infobox formats for WH Site pages can co-exist, leaving the decision of choosing the most suitable of these (or none) to the editors of the page on such a topic. Step 1 – revive separate Wikidata version {{Infobox World Heritage Site/Wikidata}} should be revived as a separate template, with the current Wikidata-based code of the {{Infobox World Heritage Site}} template. Apparently the Wikidata-based template code still often needs updates, and that is another reason to not prolong this RfC: currently these updates (and the issues these updates address) appear on hundreds of articles, and that is not the optimal MO for a template, the development of which appears still far from finished Step 2 – keep separate "UNESCO" version {{Infobox UNESCO World Heritage Site}}, developed by Fram, should be kept as a separate template, meaning that it seems not advisable at this point to merge the code of that alternative version into the general template, but for the time being better as a separate option that can be chosen by article editors if they wish to do so Step 3 – rollback & cleanup {{Infobox World Heritage Site}} should be rolled back to the January 2017 version, and similarly for the template documentation. The hardest part is the mainspace cleanup: edits such as this one which were, if I understand correctly, effected on hundreds of pages. Mike Peel is asked to revert all their edits which deleted local content of this infobox: afaics a permission to delete all this content was never obtained, thus it seems logical to ask them to undo their deletions. --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:29, 6 October 2017 (UTC) Primefac (talk) 17:54, 6 October 2017 (UTC) I still think this needs more discussion, but replying to the proposed steps that were raised here: I'm happy to move the template back to {{Infobox World Heritage Site/Wikidata}}, and I can write a bot that will migrate the articles currently using Wikidata information to that (i.e., all but the ones in Category:Articles using Infobox World Heritage Site using locally defined parameters) It doesn't make sense to me to have a separate template - we can merge Fram's version into this page after moving the current template to a Wikidata version. There is nothing there that can't be done here (even with the wikidata version). I don't see the need for going back through the articles that currently use Wikidata and putting the local version back. If someone wants to do that on a case-by-case basis (particularly if they are working on the content of that article) then they can do. If needed, though, this could be done using a bot (since it's standardised information). Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:15, 7 October 2017 (UTC) Mike Peel in regards to I can write a bot that will migrate the articles currently using Wikidata information, are you proposing a bot which can go into the article history and restore information that was deleted when migrating to a wikidata template? Or you proposing a bot to just overwrite wikipedia with a copy of wikidata? Alsee (talk) 22:23, 7 October 2017 (UTC) @Alsee: In theory either is possible. Just reverting my edits would not be good, though, as I've done quite a bit of cleanup work at the same time (as mentioned above), so I definitely wouldn't want to do that. Copying the info from Wikidata to here was what I was meaning, although again I don't want to do that. My strong preference is to split this into a Wikidata template and a non-Wikidata one, for which I now have the code written to do so - if people here then want to work on the articles in question, then they're welcome to do so. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:32, 7 October 2017 (UTC) Mike Peel, on one hand I am very skeptical that "overwrite wikipedia with wikidata" is the desired answer, on the other hand I know you have done beneficial improvement/cleanup along with the conversions. Having a bot try to dig through the article history is messy in itself, but a bot can't tell whether it would be overwriting an improvement. I fear that this needs a human to manually handle each page. That would mean digging through the article history to recover the deleted local information, scanning for discrepancies between the local version and wikidata, trying to figure out the reason for each discrepancy, and trying to figure out the proper resolution for that discrepancy. That's painstaking work, especially the arbitrary level of research needed to understand and resolve each discrepancy. This is why I reacted so strongly about pages continuing to be converted. I would be willing to volunteer to do that work for some pages, but my superficial check seems to suggest this is approaching a thousand pages?! I'm really hoping you can tell me that I botched my quick-check on task size. Alsee (talk) 13:19, 8 October 2017 (UTC) Well, that's basically what I've already done - the discrepancies between the old version on enwp and the new version on wikidata will be the cleanup work I did, and from my perspective the values on Wikidata will be the correct ones. So if someone else wants to repeat that ... OK, but I don't think it'll be a useful way to spend time. It would be better to double-check the Wikidata versions and fix those if needed, rather than going back to a worse data set. Or even better: continue looking through the remaining ~500 or so to sort those out, as there are definitely a lot of incorrect things there (with a much higher ratio that the ones I've already checked through!) Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 14:05, 8 October 2017 (UTC) On the numbers, there are currently 1409 transclusions and 487 with local parameters, so 922 entirely from Wikidata (plus others that will have mostly Wikidata values with a few local parameters). Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 14:09, 8 October 2017 (UTC) "from my perspective the values on Wikidata will be the correct ones." You really haven't learned anything from this RfC yet, have you? "if someone else wants to repeat that ... OK, but I don't think it'll be a useful way to spend time." Half the articles I converted back to a local template have errors in the infobox corrected. Relying on Wikidata is not the way to go here. "continue looking through the remaining ~500 or so to sort those out, as there are definitely a lot of incorrect things there (with a much higher ratio that the ones I've already checked through!)" Highly doubtful, this. They probably also contain errors, but a migh higher rate than 50%? Never mind things like this, where you converted an existing template to the full Wikidata one, never realising that the article subject is not a WHS at all! Yes, the error was there before your change, but yor checks (or Wikidata) can't be trusted either. Earlier you discussed merging the new template with this one, which is of course fine, as it was the intention from the start. "There is nothing there that can't be done here (even with the wikidata version)." With local parameters, you mean? Well, yes, but then you aren't really using the Wikidata version but a hybrid of course. That something my version does with local parameters can theoretically (not at the moment though) be done in the Wikidata version with local parameters seems rather obvious. Anyway, if this is merged, I'll go through the articles and move them all back to the local version, leaving the Wikidata version as an unused, deletable template in the end. Any help with this is of course welcome. Fram (talk) 06:50, 9 October 2017 (UTC) Well done for catching an error that was introduced back in 2011. Clearly, we can't trust locally defined values either. It looks like this is another case where the infobox was used in a wider topic, analogous to the city cases. Your 50% number is nonsense. But I'm glad to know that you're willing to fix it all - good luck with that. Please make sure you do so on the other language Wikipedias while you're at it. Mike Peel (talk) 11:09, 9 October 2017 (UTC) "Please make sure you do so on the other language Wikipedias while you're at it." Is this your idea of a constructive discussion? You can't often even get it right here when you "improve" the infoboxes. You are free to copy my improvements to whatever other language you care, either directly or through Wikidata for those languags stupid enough to trust it, but don't include ridiculous requirements in a discussion of what we want to do here. Oh, and for your info, I have just corrected an article where the image in the WHS infobox, provided by Wikidata, was of a church not included in the WHS listing. Yes, this one was included locally first as well, but when someone "improved" this here (and at all other language versions of course), this was not corrected. Your claims that wwe can't go back to the older version of the articles because your many improvements would get lost is not really impressive. Fram (talk) 11:34, 9 October 2017 (UTC) Reverting improvements is vandalism.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:37, 9 October 2017 (UTC) Wow, I bow to your impressive wisdom. Have you actually read the discusson or do you just knee-jerk react to the final sentence? I dispute, with enough examples, that the "improvements" by Mike Peel are actually improving articles in most cases, and this is your reply? Who do you consider the vandal here, Mike Peel or Fralambert? Adding false, unsourced information which may affect 200 wikilanguages at once (because that is the huge benefit of Wikidata) seems to me more serious than reverting his "improvements" here, no? Fram (talk) 11:43, 9 October 2017 (UTC) Hold on a sec, I thought you found that issue here, are you saying that this mistake was actually caught on Wikidata first? Mike Peel (talk) 11:48, 9 October 2017 (UTC) People may independently find the same error. I have now seen that someone had found your error on Wikidata a few hours before I found it here (note that correcting your errors on Wikidata doesn't make your Wikidata infobox miraculously disappear here). Fram (talk) 11:54, 9 October 2017 (UTC) That's great - Wikidata working as it should, then. The infobox changed to show 'unknown session', which we could catch and use to put the article into a category to be checked. We could also have it change to hide the UNESCO section. Both things are straightforward to do, although I'm not sure it makes sense to do them now with this debate going on. Mike Peel (talk) 12:08, 9 October 2017 (UTC) "Wikidata working as it should"? Well, at least one editor seems to realise that your edits need careful checking, so that's good. Fram (talk) 12:31, 9 October 2017 (UTC) In that case, you appear to have caught a mistake in the article that was introduced in 2007. Again, not Wikidata-specific, count it as another example of why you can't trust local data if you'd like. Why are you catching this error now, and not sometime over the last decade? Mike Peel (talk) 11:45, 9 October 2017 (UTC) "Why are you catching this error now, and not sometime over the last decade?" Are you for real? Fram (talk) 11:54, 9 October 2017 (UTC) Well, you clearly care a lot about this infobox, so I assume you've been working on its uses for quite some time now? Unless you just came along here to be anti-Wikidata. Mike Peel (talk) 12:08, 9 October 2017 (UTC) I came along here to be pro-enwiki. Protecting enwiki from some of the Wikidata-fanatics is one way to do this. I am anti-wikidata when that means opposing a stable, functioning infobox being replaced with a buggy, unstable Wikidata-populated one. Let's see, we have one editor replacing erors from here with the same error from Wikidata (the image which wssn't from a WHS site), and worse inserting errors from here not already present in Wikidata, into Wikidata; and we have an editor correcting errors and adding new functionality at the same time. If your last remaining defense is "but I have been working on these articles longer than you have", then you should reread WP:OWN. Fram (talk) 12:28, 9 October 2017 (UTC) Arbitrary break 1 Quedlinburg, location generated from Wikidata: "Harz, Quedlinburg, Kreis Quedlinburg, Quedlinburg, Germany". Before this template was converted, the article didn't show a location in the WHS template because it already had a location in the general template. At the conversion, this was automatically added (though not wanted), and filled rather dreadfully. Another clear example of where changing this template to the Wikidata template made the article worse (see also the incorrect area, and fields which aren't wrong but unnecessary like the website, already listed previously in another infobox). Fram (talk) 13:30, 9 October 2017 (UTC) This is one of the cases I've been talking about above, where the infobox should be used in child mode and the location not displayed, rather than having two infoboxes on one page. Apparently your new template has problems with being used in child mode, sufficient that you reverted my edit there. Mike Peel (talk) 13:48, 9 October 2017 (UTC) Whether it should be in child mode or not is an editorial decision. I think it is better to have an infobox for the full city, and another one for the specific buildings which are WHS sites. You are the one claiming "Use as child template. Not sure why this doesn't hide the extra picture." when in your edit[27] you let the "image" parameter remain in the child website. Surprising, no, that a parameter you explicitly include, actually works? No idea why you add "and the location not displayed", as the location isn't displayed when you use my version in child mode. What doesn't (yet) work is getting the official name (the WHS parameter) to show up in child mode, as I haven't decided yet what the best way to show this in child mode is, if ever. If the WHS title and the general infobox are the same, then using child modus works just fine. if they are different, then not using a child template but a separate one is IMO better. Fram (talk) 13:55, 9 October 2017 (UTC) Test to show that on that article, child mode with the new template works just fine. Anyway, if you believed that "Apparently your new template has problems with being used in child mode, sufficient that you reverted my edit there", then why did you save your edit anyway? After all, deliberately making articles worse is vandalism, no? Fram (talk) 14:00, 9 October 2017 (UTC) And I have now changed the template to include this as well. So if you have a different name for the WHS site than for the general infobox, and you want to include the template as a child template anyway, you can now include the official name in the child template as well. Which doesn't mean that the template has to be used as "child" template of course, it may be better to have it separately anyway. Anything else? Fram (talk) 14:17, 9 October 2017 (UTC) See also Wikipedia talk:Wikidata/2017 RfC draft#Systemic issue that has serious implications for increased use of Wikidata: thanks to the use of Wikidata in infoboxes and the display of the changes in watchlists and recent changes, according to a WMF database administrator, "we are close of running out of space on several main database servers, breaking all of Wikipedia". Wikidata in infoboxes has already had serious performance implications in Commons, rowiki, itwiki, and dawiki, where such uses are more common. While this single infobox specifically won't make a huge difference, it is good to remember that these things come at a cost which is sometimes surprisingly high and impacts many editors. Fram (talk) 07:50, 10 October 2017 (UTC) Note that I've submitted a preparatory Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Pi bot 2 (with functional code) to split this template into separate 'wikidata' and 'non-wikidata' versions. Running this code is subject to the outcome of this RfC. Mike Peel (talk) 23:50, 14 October 2017 (UTC) Yesterday, the Wikidata item for the country Romania (not really an obscure topic I would think, one that is used in thousands of other Wikidata items) was moved (english label changed) to Moldavia, with vandalism to the description and alias as well. This was only reverted nearly three hours later[28]. This is pretty quick by Wikidata standards, e.g. yesterday as well Fernando Alonso (another high profile article) was vandal-moved in English, Spanish and Catalan for more than two hours[29], while more obscure articles take about 8 hours to be reverted (labeling a living person a "fascist" seems like a quite obvious case of vandalism[30]), if they get spotted at all. Anyway, back to the issue at hand: the Romania vandalism was reflected in quite a few enwiki articles, including the UNESCO world heritage sites but basically every infobox that fetches information from Wikidata and includes the field "Romania" (biographies, location of artworks, observatories, ...). The end result was similar to what you can see in the images; in these cases, the country name was changed, but also the wrong map was shown, and the red dot location indicator was somewhere in the middle of the page instead of in the infobox. Basically, using Wikidata makes vandalism on many articles much easier, and is almost guaranteed to remain in the articles for a lot longer as well. Coupled with the recent changes delay (so even if you have Wikidata in recent changes enabled, chances are you wouldn't see this happening) and the problem that these don't appear in the page history, and you end up with a situation which is beneficial to vandals and negative for recent changes patrollers. Fram (talk) 07:52, 18 October 2017 (UTC) 21 May 2024 13:2313:23, 21 May 2024 diff hist +1,457‎ User talk:50.206.106.50 ‎ Warning 50.206.106.50 - #1 current 13:2313:23, 21 May 2024 diff hist −55‎ m Spanish transition to democracy ‎ Reverting possible vandalism by 50.206.106.50 to version by Peter Brew. Report False Positive? Thanks, ClueBot NG. (4325176) (Bot) current Tag: Rollback 13:2113:21, 21 May 2024 diff hist +1,409‎ N User talk:158.62.17.76 ‎ Warning 158.62.17.76 - #1 current 13:2113:21, 21 May 2024 diff hist +37,119‎ m Voltes V: Legacy ‎ Reverting possible vandalism by 158.62.17.76 to version by Hotwiki. Report False Positive? Thanks, ClueBot NG. (4325175) (Bot) current Tag: Rollback 13:1913:19, 21 May 2024 diff hist +1,610‎ N User talk:2001:D08:D1:C599:6CEF:9108:8832:1332 ‎ Warning 2001:D08:D1:C599:6CEF:9108:8832:1332 - #1 current 13:1913:19, 21 May 2024 diff hist −27‎ m 2024 FIVB Volleyball Women's Nations League ‎ Reverting possible vandalism by 2001:D08:D1:C599:6CEF:9108:8832:1332 to version by Dickson14020. Report False Positive? Thanks, ClueBot NG. (4325174) (Bot) current Tag: Rollback 13:1213:12, 21 May 2024 diff hist +1,435‎ User talk:Benjaminnn101 ‎ Warning Benjaminnn101 - #1 current 13:1213:12, 21 May 2024 diff hist −75‎ m Archbishop of Canterbury ‎ Reverting possible vandalism by Benjaminnn101 to version by Gaia Octavia Agrippa. Report False Positive? Thanks, ClueBot NG. (4325173) (Bot) current Tag: Rollback 13:1113:11, 21 May 2024 diff hist +1,438‎ N User talk:109.207.193.30 ‎ Warning 109.207.193.30 - #1 13:1113:11, 21 May 2024 diff hist −9‎ m World War II by country ‎ Reverting possible vandalism by 109.207.193.30 to version by Citation bot. Report False Positive? Thanks, ClueBot NG. (4325172) (Bot) Tag: Rollback 13:0913:09, 21 May 2024 diff hist +1,396‎ N User talk:185.251.11.95 ‎ Warning 185.251.11.95 - #1 current 13:0913:09, 21 May 2024 diff hist −6‎ m Bruce Parry ‎ Reverting possible vandalism by 185.251.11.95 to version by Berserker276. Report False Positive? Thanks, ClueBot NG. (4325171) (Bot) current Tag: Rollback 13:0813:08, 21 May 2024 diff hist −9‎ m Keith Haring ‎ Reverting possible vandalism by 50.235.185.142 to version by 71.220.4.135. Report False Positive? Thanks, ClueBot NG. (4325170) (Bot) current Tag: Rollback 12:5212:52, 21 May 2024 diff hist +1,417‎ N User talk:BIGGYTUB ‎ Warning BIGGYTUB - #1 12:5212:52, 21 May 2024 diff hist −30‎ m Crumlin Integrated College ‎ Reverting possible vandalism by BIGGYTUB to version by 85.31.142.37. Report False Positive? Thanks, ClueBot NG. (4325169) (Bot) Tag: Rollback 12:4812:48, 21 May 2024 diff hist +1,408‎ User talk:185.161.57.225 ‎ Warning 185.161.57.225 - #1 current 12:4812:48, 21 May 2024 diff hist −109‎ m Olof Thunberg ‎ Reverting possible vandalism by 185.161.57.225 to version by Saftgurka. Report False Positive? Thanks, ClueBot NG. (4325168) (Bot) Tag: Rollback 12:4512:45, 21 May 2024 diff hist +1,377‎ N User talk:49.229.124.238 ‎ Warning 49.229.124.238 - #1 current Tag: Disambiguation links added 12:4512:45, 21 May 2024 diff hist −12‎ m MSK ‎ Reverting possible vandalism by 49.229.124.238 to version by Jim Michael 2. Report False Positive? Thanks, ClueBot NG. (4325167) (Bot) current Tag: Rollback 12:4512:45, 21 May 2024 diff hist +1,470‎ N User talk:Al.faisal.college.auburn ‎ Warning Al.faisal.college.auburn - #1 12:4512:45, 21 May 2024 diff hist +655‎ m Al-Faisal College ‎ Reverting possible vandalism by Al.faisal.college.auburn to version by Explainer5832. Report False Positive? Thanks, ClueBot NG. (4325166) (Bot) current Tag: Rollback 12:4312:43, 21 May 2024 diff hist +1,531‎ N User talk:2001:4BB8:102:A67E:A50A:260B:7640:3D63 ‎ Warning 2001:4BB8:102:A67E:A50A:260B:7640:3D63 - #1 current 12:4312:43, 21 May 2024 diff hist −34‎ m Bob Cicherillo ‎ Reverting possible vandalism by 2001:4BB8:102:A67E:A50A:260B:7640:3D63 to version by 195.62.113.250. Report False Positive? Thanks, ClueBot NG. (4325165) (Bot) current Tag: Rollback 12:4012:40, 21 May 2024 diff hist +1,733‎ User talk:JamesonMcCuck ‎ Warning JamesonMcCuck - #2 12:4012:40, 21 May 2024 diff hist −32‎ m Kevin McCloud ‎ Reverting possible vandalism by JamesonMcCuck to version by Howardrandallsmith. Report False Positive? Thanks, ClueBot NG. (4325164) (Bot) current Tag: Rollback 12:3912:39, 21 May 2024 diff hist +1,422‎ N User talk:190.233.209.85 ‎ Warning 190.233.209.85 - #1 current 12:3912:39, 21 May 2024 diff hist −19‎ m Elena Iparraguirre ‎ Reverting possible vandalism by 190.233.209.85 to version by Clarityfiend. Report False Positive? Thanks, ClueBot NG. (4325163) (Bot) current Tag: Rollback 12:3812:38, 21 May 2024 diff hist +1,422‎ N User talk:112.201.128.140 ‎ Warning 112.201.128.140 - #1 current 12:3812:38, 21 May 2024 diff hist +4,840‎ m Amaziah of Judah ‎ Reverting possible vandalism by 112.201.128.140 to version by 2406:7400:81:94A4:7DD1:5AE4:890A:7726. Report False Positive? Thanks, ClueBot NG. (4325162) (Bot) current Tag: Rollback 12:3812:38, 21 May 2024 diff hist +1,391‎ N User talk:81.150.16.164 ‎ Warning 81.150.16.164 - #1 12:3812:38, 21 May 2024 diff hist +1‎ m Childline ‎ Reverting possible vandalism by 81.150.16.164 to version by Galagalen. Report False Positive? Thanks, ClueBot NG. (4325161) (Bot) Tag: Rollback 12:3512:35, 21 May 2024 diff hist +1,383‎ N User talk:Tabbypops ‎ Warning Tabbypops - #1 current 12:3512:35, 21 May 2024 diff hist −41‎ m Michael Sheen ‎ Reverting possible vandalism by Tabbypops to version by Lacon432. Report False Positive? Thanks, ClueBot NG. (4325160) (Bot) current Tag: Rollback 12:2812:28, 21 May 2024 diff hist +921‎ User talk:195.195.244.42 ‎ Warning 195.195.244.42 - #3 current 12:2812:28, 21 May 2024 diff hist −11‎ m Black British people ‎ Reverting possible vandalism by 195.195.244.42 to version by Prince of Erebor. Report False Positive? Thanks, ClueBot NG. (4325158) (Bot) current Tag: Rollback 12:2412:24, 21 May 2024 diff hist +1,512‎ N User talk:2409:40D2:A:548A:8000:0:0:0 ‎ Warning 2409:40D2:A:548A:8000:0:0:0 - #1 current 12:2412:24, 21 May 2024 diff hist −9‎ m Temperate deciduous forest ‎ Reverting possible vandalism by 2409:40D2:A:548A:8000:0:0:0 to version by Uness232. Report False Positive? Thanks, ClueBot NG. (4325156) (Bot) current Tag: Rollback 12:2012:20, 21 May 2024 diff hist +1,422‎ User talk:85.92.164.88 ‎ Warning 85.92.164.88 - #1 current 12:2012:20, 21 May 2024 diff hist −3‎ m Alfred Russel Wallace ‎ Reverting possible vandalism by 85.92.164.88 to version by DuncanHill. Report False Positive? Thanks, ClueBot NG. (4325154) (Bot) current Tag: Rollback 12:1812:18, 21 May 2024 diff hist +1,388‎ N User talk:24.103.54.234 ‎ Warning 24.103.54.234 - #1 current 12:1812:18, 21 May 2024 diff hist +812‎ m Jurassic ‎ Reverting possible vandalism by 24.103.54.234 to version by Citation bot. Report False Positive? Thanks, ClueBot NG. (4325153) (Bot) current Tag: Rollback 12:1712:17, 21 May 2024 diff hist +1,565‎ N User talk:2A00:23EE:15A0:3D91:CFB:43F5:E349:FA1F ‎ Warning 2A00:23EE:15A0:3D91:CFB:43F5:E349:FA1F - #1 current 12:1712:17, 21 May 2024 diff hist −15‎ m Ron Martin (businessman) ‎ Reverting possible vandalism by 2A00:23EE:15A0:3D91:CFB:43F5:E349:FA1F to version by Paul W. Report False Positive? Thanks, ClueBot NG. (4325152) (Bot) Tag: Rollback 12:0612:06, 21 May 2024 diff hist +1,444‎ N User talk:Honour osakpamwan ‎ Warning Honour osakpamwan - #1 current 12:0612:06, 21 May 2024 diff hist −2‎ m First-person shooter ‎ Reverting possible vandalism by Honour osakpamwan to version by Ferret. Report False Positive? Thanks, ClueBot NG. (4325151) (Bot) current Tag: Rollback 11:5811:58, 21 May 2024 diff hist +1,365‎ N User talk:5.125.6.2 ‎ Warning 5.125.6.2 - #1 11:5811:58, 21 May 2024 diff hist −12‎ m Warrior ‎ Reverting possible vandalism by 5.125.6.2 to version by 5.126.240.161. Report False Positive? Thanks, ClueBot NG. (4325148) (Bot) Tag: Rollback 11:5711:57, 21 May 2024 diff hist +1,425‎ User talk:95.128.91.83 ‎ Warning 95.128.91.83 - #1 current 11:5711:57, 21 May 2024 diff hist −121‎ m President of Indonesia ‎ Reverting possible vandalism by 95.128.91.83 to version by MaximAppliedScience. Report False Positive? Thanks, ClueBot NG. (4325147) (Bot) Tag: Rollback 11:5611:56, 21 May 2024 diff hist +1,385‎ N User talk:132.231.141.109 ‎ Warning 132.231.141.109 - #1 current Twenty-five examples of vandalism directly on English Wikipedia Yer, and the vandalism on Wikipedia at John Seigenthaler lasted four months. I'm surprised you don't blame Wikidata for that as well. The plural of anecdote is not data and I can recount ten incidents of vandalism directly on Wikipedia for every one you can find from Wikidata. Your assertion that "Wikidata makes vandalism on many articles much easier" is the usual groundless scare-mongering we've come to expect. Vandalism of any template affects multiple articles and there's nothing extraordinary about templates that collect some of their data from Wikidata. The same also applies to vandalism of images or other media on Commons. There is absolutely no evidence for your claim that "is almost guaranteed to remain in the articles for a lot longer". Vandalism at Wikidata will come to the attentions of experienced editors not only on English Wikipedia, but on all the other language Wikipedia as well, If anything, that should ensure that the vandalism is removed sooner because multiple time-zones are alerted. --RexxS (talk) 12:57, 18 October 2017 (UTC) So, your "refutation" is an example of many years ago whih actually lead to massive changes in policy here (you know, things like a BLP policy?), a mixup between a template and the actual data in the template (templates can and have been vandalised, and that's why many are protected on enwiki; protection of even the most visible properties doesn't seem to happen on Wikidata though?). Very few infobox templates in Wikipedia contain any actual data though, so vandalizing infobox data in many articles at once is harder with enwiki templates than with wikidata-populated ones. When you already have one or two ways vandal can affect articles, what's the point of providing them with a third, even easier and on average longer-lasting one? One where they can edit through enwiki protection as well? Yes, commons does the same, that song is getting old rather fast; Commons gets patrolled rather swiftly though. "Vandalism at Wikidata will come to the attentions of experienced editors not only on English Wikipedia, but on all the other language Wikipedia as well, If anything, that should ensure that the vandalism is removed sooner because multiple time-zones are alerted." is absolute bollocks; not only does it not come to the attention of experienced editors here (due to a variety of reasons, including the hideous lag between a change on Wikidata and its appearance in recent changes and watchlists, nd the rather terrible display of such edits making them all but incomprehensible in many cases), it apparently doesn't come to the attention of experienced editors anywhere, as such swift vandal reverts on even the most blatant examples often don't happen. The multiple time-zones argument is a non-starter, enwiki is the one Wikipedia version with plenty of editors during all time zones of course. Fram (talk) 08:30, 19 October 2017 (UTC) But thank you for providing a laugh with your extremely massive image though, showing how efficient Cluebot is. I don't think I have ever claimed that Wikidata (or enwiki or whatever) must be vandalfree (although it could be improved with things like pending changes, protection, ...). The problem is the impact some vandalism has (the immediate impact Wikidata changes can have on many pages and languages, which is pushed as a strength of Wikidata, is therefor also a weakness in cases of vandalism), and the fact that vandalism on Wikidata on average remains much, much longer than on enwiki. Plus that edits can be made through our article protection, and by editors blocked or banned at enwiki. Fram (talk) 08:38, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

I have posted a request at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Requests_for_closure#Template_talk:Infobox_World_Heritage_Site.23RfC:_revert_back_to_non-Wikidata_version.3F to ask that someone neutral have a look at this and potentially close it. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 08:56, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Improvement requests for current template

Template code

• Disable possibility to import unqualified Q numbers, mentioned above in #Bot substituting Wikidata claims to static en.Wikipedia parameter values and #Q numbers. --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:34, 14 November 2017 (UTC)
• There seems to be an issue with the "|fetchwikidata=none" parameter switch, see above #Bot substituting Wikidata claims to static en.Wikipedia parameter values – can someone attend to this? --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:38, 14 November 2017 (UTC)
  • Sure, this functionality can be improved. Can I do so at Template:Infobox World Heritage Site/Wikidata please? Mike Peel (talk) 22:31, 14 November 2017 (UTC)
    • Template:Infobox World Heritage Site/Wikidata/sandbox? We can decide what to do with the code once its been tested. Anyway, no WP:walled garden please.
    • Could you have all pages using a WHS infobox with a fully operational & correctly implemented "|fetchwikidata=none" instruction sort in a category different from Category:Articles using Infobox World Heritage Site using locally defined parameters and Category:Articles with WHS infoboxes completely from Wikidata, e.g. Category:Articles using Infobox World Heritage Site with exclusively local data or Category:Articles using Infobox World Heritage Site using local data exclusively?
    • Another improvement to the template code could be to avoid ha (hectares) to convert to square feet: it looks perfectly silly, e.g. here and here: conversion to square miles or to acres would work much better imho.
    • Don't forget to update the template documentation, please. --Francis Schonken (talk) 05:10, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Documentation

• Update parameter documentation at Template:Infobox World Heritage Site/doc: this was recently done for the "includes" parameter (see above #"includes" parameter), but others are reported as still undocumented at #Bot substituting Wikidata claims to static en.Wikipedia parameter values (don't know which ones would be most urgent to get documented: feel free to specify). --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:34, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

Conversion issues

List separate issues in separate subsections:

Archivo General de Simancas

Couldn't convert the infobox in Archivo General de Simancas to Wikidata-free while not part of UNESCO's World Heritage Site program: some documents kept in the Archivo General de Simancas are protected through UNESCO's Memory of the World program, but that doesn't make this archive a "Site" in WHS sense: using (any) WHS type infobox leads to multiple discrepancies.

Any suggestion for a more appropriate infobox, or another way to address this? --Francis Schonken (talk) 12:47, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

No immediate idea for another infobox, but this is not a WHS so it's logical that the WHS infoboxes don't work. Fram (talk) 13:19, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Unless I'm missing something, this one never used Wikidata in the first place. I've switched it to using {{Infobox museum}} (not using the wikidata version of that to avoid the flak). I think I mentioned somewhere above about the issues of this template being used in non-WHS entries? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:50, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

It used Wikidata (e.g. the Spanish external link in the WHS infobox implementation); Also, if it didn't use Wikidata, the "[edit on Wikidata]" external link should have been deactivated in the template: there's no use in showing that link if you can't go there to edit the values that will be shown in the template.

Regarding the current template: "museum" seems a bit OR-ish to me: nor the body of the article, nor its references say the archive is a museum. Maybe the Castle of Simancas, where the archive is housed, is (in part) a museum (?), but that is not the same as saying that the archive itself is a museum ("archive" usually refers to a collection of documents, not a building). If "castle" and "archive" are the same (which I doubt), both should be merged into one article. I'll remove the current infobox until someone can find a reference that says that the archive of Simancas is a museum. --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:58, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

We don't have {{Infobox archive}}, and {{Infobox museum}} is the closest we have. The template doesn't display anything that says this is a museum, so I don't see the OR issue - but it is a case of trying to hammer a screw into place. But as you want. Mike Peel (talk) 14:44, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

It took me less than 2 seconds to create {{Infobox archive}} as a redirect to {{Infobox museum}}; I used the redirect name when reverting ([31]); Hope someone takes the time someday to develop {{Infobox archive}} into an infobox in its own right. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:09, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

"includes" parameter

The infobox at Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in Gwynedd uses a "includes = ..." parameter:

• The parameter is undocumented at Template:Infobox World Heritage Site/doc#Syntax, at Template:Infobox World Heritage Site/doc#Wikidata (though it automatically draws in Wikidata claims), and at Template:Infobox World Heritage Site/doc#TemplateData: could someone address that situation? (it's not because Wikidata is on its way out for this template that its documentation should be incomplete: trying to do conversions to a Wikidata-free implementation of the template is of course more difficult when the documentation does not adequately cover the code of the template) --Francis Schonken (talk) 12:48, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

   Done Mike Peel (talk) 22:44, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

• Couldn't convert the template to the "...UNESCO..." variant, because that variant doesn't recognise this parameter: Fram, is it possible to add this parameter to the "...UNESCO..." variant, or do you have another suggestion?

--Francis Schonken (talk) 12:48, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

• Converted to the UNESCO variant. The UNESCO template uses mainly parameters which start with uppercase, so "Includes" instead of "includes". The parameter was already present. Any help in making the template accept both uppercase and lowercase is welcome, it isn't my first priority now though. Fram (talk) 13:19, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
  • Supporting both upper case and lower case parameter names was something that I was working on in this template. It's rare to use upper case parameter names here, so it's better to make sure that the lower case version are supported at least. Of course, this is completely irrelevant for the Wikidata version. And, of course, the new template is always going to be completely problem-free. Mike Peel (talk) 22:44, 9 November 2017 (UTC)
    • If all you can do is moan about your beloved template, perhaps it's time to simply move on? You still don't seem to understand that converting a template that is used on more than 1,000 pages, and then over the next months slowly going through them all to remove (some of) the problems you caused by the conversion in the first place, is not progress or an example we should follow? You always pretend here that the version with local parameters caused problems, and you were the great saviour fixing them all laboriously. In reality, the version with local parameters caused no problems (it may have had wrong values inserted in an article, but that's not caused by the template of course), until you converted it, and then had these problems for months and months (and many still do). In all this discussion, you fail to take any responsability for this, instead still pretending that causing so many problems is somehow progress which we reactionaries just can't accept or understand, and that the Wikidata version must be kept for the greater good of enwiki and mankind in general, and the UNESCO version deleted because ... well, because it isn't the Wikidata version, of course. I think we can handle this without you from now on, just userfy your precious Wikidata version and leave please. Fram (talk) 05:52, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

The UNESCO version now accepts initial uppercase and lowercase for all common parameters. If there are still issues with this, please let me know (or improve it of course, all help is welcome!). Fram (talk) 08:01, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Q numbers

Other issue involving the "includes" parameter: this Wikidata-only implementation of the template was apparently successful in calling unexplained an unlinked Q numbers for the "includes" parameter. Does that make any sense? I changed that to {{ill}} implementations linking to Spanish Wikipedia, but even there I'm not too sure whether it is meaningful to mention these sub-parts of the monument which don't exist as separate pages at en.Wikipedia. What do others think? Maybe just leave unmentioned next time? --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:49, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

They are not listed as "included" at the WHS site, so should not be listed as "included" here (in fact, the Aljaferia remains are only one of ten sites forming this WHS site in the first place, which you rightly indivated by changing "official name" to "part of". In any case, if there are cases where you do want to include such a thing, either do it as a simple redlink or as an interwiki like you did, but never as a meaningless Qnumber please. Fram (talk) 14:25, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Maybe it needs to be made clearer that these are "parts of the site described here" rather than "parts of the UNESCO site"... Mike Peel (talk) 22:29, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

Both should be possible imho:

• at (e.g.) Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in Gwynedd, Mudéjar Architecture of Aragon and Belfries of Belgium and France the sites mentioned as "includes" are separately defined and numbered by UNESCO
• at (e.g.) Ancient City of Aleppo and Ciudad Colonial (Santo Domingo) the "includes" lists some important buildings in the inscribed zone, without these buildings being numbered separately by UNESCO

--Francis Schonken (talk) 06:54, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

No, things not listed specifically by the UNESCO should not be included as "includes" in the template, so the "includes" from Aleppo should be removed. Every building or complex within the boundaries is included unless the UNESCO only specifies certain buildings specifically. Singling out a few for unspecified reasons gives a wrong impression, as if these are specifically designated by UNESCO. Fram (talk) 08:33, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

There's no doubt that UNESCO describes the Catedral de Santa María de la Encarnación as included in WHS No. 526, Colonial City of Santo Domingo (click the reference and see for yourself), etc. – so, if Wikipedia has separate articles of such buildings mentioned as included in the World Heritage Site I don't see why we shouldn't list them as "includes", with a link to the article, in the infobox. Which ones (if any) should be listed as "includes" in the infobox and/or elsewhere in the article can be sorted out at the article's talk page if there are approaches that need to be reconciled, but doesn't seem anything that needs to be decided at the template level. At the template level I don't think intuitive and correct uses should be pre-emptively excluded. I'd avoid massive lists of includes that are still incomplete (e.g. [32]), but that's as far as I would go regarding the "includes" parameter recommendations in the template documentation. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:51, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

No, there is a difference between the UNESCO giving sub-numbers to specific buildings which together form the WHS, or the UNESCO naming buildings as contributing factors to the general WHS site. Belfries of Belgium and France[33] includes 56 locations; you can check this on every WHS site by opening the tab "maps": if that starts with "multiple locations", you will get a list of the included locations (buildings, towns, ...). These are the ones we should include in the "includes" parameter. It makes no sense to list all buildings in the historic centre of some WHS site in our infobox. Luther Memorials in Eisleben and Wittenberg[34] is a good example of where we could have the "includes" parameter, with 6 locations. I haven't always followed this rule strictly: Piazza dei Miracoli[35] doesn't have included locations at the UNESCO page, but it specifically lists four and only four buildings as "a group of monuments known the world over. These four masterpieces of medieval architecture", so in this case it seemed warranted to list the same four buildings, as no other buildings contribute to the WHS listing.

Basically: follow the WHS when it has a "map" with multiple locations, or when it makes it clear that the listing is for a limited, specific list of buildings or places: otherwise (usually when a whole town centre is a WHS location) don't use the parameter. Fram (talk) 10:16, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

No, sort it out at the article talk page if there's discussion about which values to include in a parameter set of a WHS infobox implementation on the page. Note that some of the "maps" pages of the UNESCO website are incomplete (e.g. "maps" page of No. 1442 – I had to go through a bunch of official documents each with hundreds of pages, before I could find the correct site number of Bingling Temple, i.e. 1442-027) --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:35, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Of course in case of dispute things should be sorted out at the article talk page. That doesn't mean that some general guidance can't be given. In the Silk Road example, the "maps" page is indeed deficient, but the gneral description at the top has "The thirty-three components included in the routes network include capital cities and palace complexes of various empires and Khan kingdoms, trading settlements, Buddhist cave temples, ancient paths, posthouses, passes, beacon towers, sections of The Great Wall, fortifications, tombs and religious buildings." so we have a clear, limited list of components (which is in this case way too hard to find directly); 33 components is too many to list in the infobox though, and should simply be in the article instead. Not everything has to be in the infobox. Fram (talk) 11:07, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

I made that:

| includes = 33 locations in 3 countries ([36])

Improve that summary if you think it can be made better, or take it up on the article talk page if it would become a matter of contention.

Anyhow, no need to be too prescriptive in this matter. --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:43, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Spurious links to DAB pages

In Ming Tombs, this template is generating spurious links to two DAB pages. They are not linked in the article, but show up in "What links here" and User:DPL bot reports them as errors. The bot has no easy way of finding out how bad links are being generated, it just knows that they exist. (E.g., I see quite a few bad links which are generated by templates such as {{jct}}, {{stn}}, {{infobox river}}, {{sortname}}, and others. The fixes are in general different for each template.) The DAB pages in question are Changling and Tailing. Is there any way to fix this?

(Template:Infobox journal creates similar-looking spurious links, but it has an infobox parameter which can be used to disable the #ifexist test which creates them.) Narky Blert (talk) 17:03, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

m:2017 Community Wishlist Survey/Miscellaneous/Stop ifexist checks from appearing in Special:WhatLinksHere - but it didn't get enough support there to get it fixed. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 06:42, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

Narky Blert, they were wikidata-infoxbox issues. I converted to a non-wikidata infobox and it's all fixed. It had also auto-generated (and was showing in the infobox) a third, bogus, link to Yong Ling. Alsee (talk) 07:18, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

@Alsee: Thanks! It was very much the sort of problem I prefer to leave to someone who knows what they're doing. I think there was a fourth spurious link, also not linked in the article; I suspected that a fix would solve the two lesser issues which I didn't mention. Narky Blert (talk) 12:04, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

It is also sometimes possible, though overly complicated, to fix the bad parameter on Wikidata. If the problem is that there is a missing article on English Wikipedia that exists on other language Wikipedia's, make a stub and add that to whatever Wikidata Q# is used for that sense. bd2412 T 13:52, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

image_map parameters

I suggest adding the parameters:

 
| image_map               = 
| map_alt                 = 
| map_caption             =  

Using a location map on sites that are extremely large, such as Phoenix Islands Protected Area makes little sense, and using the image parameter for maps makes it so other images can't be used in the infobox. SpanishSnake (talk) 16:42, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Implementation of RfC

Any ideas on how to proceed with the implementation of the RfC result? I mean, several options on how to proceed after the closure of the RfC were proposed in its discussion area: I propose to work towards a consensus ASAP on which one to pick (or ASAP propose another one which may find consensus). --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:58, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Pi bot 2

(After edit conflict) OK, so we now have a result from the RfC, so now we need to implement it. My suggestion is as follows:

• I have written code and put together a bot request to separate out the uses that are currently entirely using Wikidata to {{Infobox World Heritage Site/Wikidata}} - unless there are any objections I will copy the current version of the template to that page and then run the bot. We can then manually check for cases that are only using a few local parameters and move them over as well.
• We can then merge {{Infobox UNESCO World Heritage Site}} into this template, and entries with locally defined values can then use that. Or it can remain as a separate template, but that doesn't make sense to me.
• That is, at least, a preliminary solution. It's up to others about whether that's then the status quo or whether the Wikidata info is then locally copied. I can put together some code that will substitute the Wikidata information here if desired. But you all need to figure out what you want to do here/how you want to do it.

I am happy to continue maintaining a separate Wikidata version of this template if desired, but otherwise I'll walk away from working on this template after the implementation of this is complete. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 11:00, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

• Queries @Mike Peel:
  • I think you should first revert all instances where you removed the local parameters back to the old situation. This will help in reverting to the old version (whether the actual old version or the new version I created is a separate issue). Cases like this or this. Fram (talk) 12:25, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
  • Added a ping to Mike Peel: seems a pertinent question – can you commit to (help) recover en.Wikipedia mainspace deletions of local parameters for this template? --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:59, 3 November 2017 (UTC)
    • I have described what I am willing to do above. I see no point in simply reverting the changes I made before, as that will re-introduce a lot of bad data that I've already cleaned up - and the RfC above does not require this as opposed to the solutions I've mentioned above. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 08:11, 3 November 2017 (UTC)
      • The RfC requires a revert to the previous version. What you propose is the opposite, you want to simply rename the template to /Wikidata and be done with it (oh, you also suggest that others can copy the Wikidata data locally, as if the Wikidata data is infallible. You seem to haven't grasped what this RfC was about). I guess simply moving all instances to the UNESCO version of the template manually will be the best solution then? Fram (talk) 08:25, 3 November 2017 (UTC)
        • You might want to read what I said again, and try to take it in this time. There was nothing above about not having a separate Wikidata version. I was suggesting we move things over to there *for now* so this version of the template can be changed to a non-Wikidata one, and then the current cases can be migrated back by whoever wants to do so (I suggested one way, you're welcome to suggest others). Again, *I checked through the Wikidata info for the ones I migrated*, and what is on Wikidata for those is at least as good as what was here before, at least for the core parameters (WHS ID, criteria, years), so I see no benefit to undoing those. We can remove things like area if you'd like, which weren't included in the template before anyway. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 08:42, 3 November 2017 (UTC)
          • "There was nothing above about not having a separate Wikidata version." apart from "as things currently stand, the Wikidata-based template is not suitable for use in en.wiki" you mean? You checked through the Wikidata info when you migrated them, and you didn't notice any of the problems that caused the RfC and its end results, or you didn't think them important? I think we can handle this without more help from you. Fram (talk) 10:41, 3 November 2017 (UTC)
      • (edit conflict) A few additional considerations:
        1. There is no deadline, meaning: it is better to do this conscientiously than in a rush. No time-table has been set on when to re-introduce the local-parameters-only code into this template yet. Doesn't mean we have to be lethargic, or that we couldn't set ourselves some goals on when the operation should be complete, but rather aim at good work than overhasty bot operations and the like.
        2. For clarity, I don't think a two-template or three-template solution to cover all World Heritage Sites would be agreeable to the editing community in the long run: co-existing templates for actually the same infobox can only be temporary/intermediate solutions, as aids to get things sorted into a more permanent solution, and the direction of that permanent solution (no Wikidata) has been decided by the RfC.
        3. Re. "... otherwise I'll walk away from working on this template <i.e., unless the Wikidata implementation gets precedence>" (emphasis added, and last part paraphrased from "after the implementation of this is complete"): I'd like to extend that, for example in view of what an arbitrator posted yesterday at WP:ARBREQ: "I think the policy is clear that we run our own project at enWP just as much as they do atWikidata" – I don't say that all conscientious reverts-with-appropriate-updates should be up to one person, but if the person responsible for over 900 deletes of local parameter sets does not help in repairing the damage they are responsible for, and which makes the implementation of the clear RfC outcome a very tangled issue, then I suggest it would be better that this editor would walk away from all templates that call Wikidata claims. Your allegiance should be to en.WP in the first place when editing here: creating a mess affecting hundreds of pages, and then walk away for being only interested in Wikidata seems out of the remit of this talk page discussion. So, I'd suggest a change of heart here, otherwise it seems only logical to add the editor as an involved party to WP:ARBREQ#Crosswiki issues, and let arbitrators decide.

      Pinging Mike Peel. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:35, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

      • @Francis Schonken: Please do not try to put words into my mouth. I think you understood my meaning, but just in case: my walking away is *after* the implementation of this RfC is complete (albeit with a new proviso that this discussion should remain civil and, as much as possible, logical). I do not agree that there is damage to be repaired, or that I have created a mess; it is a disagreement about the approach to take here. As for the concept of having allegiance to a project, that's just plain weird - I'm here to help improve the Wikimedia projects/free knowledge, not to swear loyalty. Mike Peel (talk) 21:02, 3 November 2017 (UTC)
        • OK, let's ask this simple question again: can you commit to (help) recover en.Wikipedia mainspace deletions of local parameters for this template? --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:15, 4 November 2017 (UTC)
          • The simple answer is 'yes'. For the more complex answer, see the last two sentences of my third bullet point... Mike Peel (talk) 08:07, 4 November 2017 (UTC)
            • Tx, and my apologies for apparently having completely misread the more complex answer, it was not my intention to upset anyone. I'd be happy to hear your thoughts on the direction of approach proposed below in #Substitution. --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:18, 4 November 2017 (UTC)
      • @Mike Peel: seems this isn't over yet, see [37]. Sorry, Mike, I do what is easiest to recover the static data, even if these static data are then wrapped in a different template and/or some other cleanup is happening at the same time. I didn't see much collaboration to undo your own deletions of these static data, so you're hardly in a place to comment on those who do, per the RfC outcome, imho. In the example you cite, you deleted "Historic Town of Zabid", and I recovered that by using the undo function, because, in that case, that was the easiest way to proceed. I'm sorry if that ruffles your feathers, but these operations to recover the data which should never have been deleted (by you, that is) are complex enough as it is not to add another layer of complexity because you don't like to see reverts popping up. You have been asked to do these reverts yourself, but you didn't: so don't now criticise other who do – it is only applying the outcome of the RfC. --Francis Schonken (talk) 05:37, 28 April 2018 (UTC)
• I nominated Infobox_World_Heritage_Site/Wikidata for deletion. Consensus was to convert this infobox back to non-wikidata. Not "keep & rename". Alsee (talk) 21:17, 4 November 2017 (UTC)
  • Did anyone actually *read* what I wrote at the start of this? Given that a lot of the concerns raised are with the infoboxes that I hadn't gotten around to converting to Wikidata, I thought splitting this for now into a non-Wikidata version (at the current location) and a non-Wikidata version (at /wikidata) would help resolve that issue immediately, while we discuss the rest. But by all means, let's have three separate discussions talking about how to file the template code... Mike Peel (talk) 20:45, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
    • There are currently 1368 transclusions of {{Infobox World Heritage Site}} ([38]):
      1. 470 of these use locally defined parameters (Category:Articles using Infobox World Heritage Site using locally defined parameters)
      2. 439 use no local parameters (Category:Articles with WHS infoboxes completely from Wikidata)
      3. leaves 459 using (I suppose) a mixture of one or more local parameters and one or more Wikidata parameters --Francis Schonken (talk) 22:35, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
         • I think these are the uses of the infobox as a child template while fetching the rest of the values from Wikidata. Mike Peel (talk) 23:10, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

    Afaik #2 and #3 are the problematic ones (I don't understand "Given that a lot of the concerns raised are with the infoboxes that I hadn't gotten around to converting to Wikidata..." – I don't see any concerns raised around the infoboxes that were not converted to Wikidata, which would be, as far as I understand, #1 in the list above) --Francis Schonken (talk) 22:35, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

    I might be missing something, but I thought this was where most of the concerns were - particularly inappropriate areas being dislayed. #2 and #3 were the ones I went through and cleaned up, and most of the errors are probably in #1. Mike Peel (talk) 23:10, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

    Re. "I have written code and put together a bot request to separate out the uses that are currently entirely using Wikidata to {{Infobox World Heritage Site/Wikidata}}" – I don't understand why that would be a good idea? Can't even grasp *why* you proposed it. --Francis Schonken (talk) 22:35, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

    Staying with "most of the errors are probably in #1", I though this would be the first set of examples that you'd want to remove the Wikidata values from, and by moving the rest off to another page meant that we can change the template here to a non-Wikidata version. Again, these are the ones I hadn't looked at yet, so are probably where most errors are. It also means that we then have a defined set of articles that are using the Wikidata version (through whatlinkshere). Mike Peel (talk) 23:10, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

    Re. "unless there are any objections I will copy the current version of the template to [the {{Infobox World Heritage Site/Wikidata}}] page" – OK, you have now secured a copy of the code, however, as it serves no apparent purpose on en.Wikipedia, I suppose that page can be userfied now. --Francis Schonken (talk) 22:35, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

    If need be, it could be userfied. However, I don't think that would be the best thing to do, see [39]. Mike Peel (talk) 23:10, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

    Re. "... and then run [Pi bot 2]" – Still don't see why that would be good idea. --Francis Schonken (talk) 22:35, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

    See above. Mike Peel (talk) 23:10, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

    Re. "We can then merge {{Infobox UNESCO World Heritage Site}} into this template, and entries with locally defined values can then use that" – Why would one do that *before* providing parameter values that correspond with that version of template code? --Francis Schonken (talk) 22:35, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

    Surely Fram's version of the template is perfect, and will immediately fix all of the issues here, so why wouldn't we want to merge it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mike Peel (talk • contribs)

    Re. "Or [{{Infobox UNESCO World Heritage Site}}] can remain as a separate template" – wouldn't agree with the editing community in the long run, see #2 of my 09:35, 3 November 2017 post above. --Francis Schonken (talk) 22:35, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

    Re. "but [{{Infobox UNESCO World Heritage Site}} remaining as a separate template] doesn't make sense to me" – it makes sense as an intermediate step until issues are settled, not as a permanent solution: see again #2 of my 09:35, 3 November 2017 post above. --Francis Schonken (talk) 22:35, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

    As I said, it doesn't make sense to me to have two versions of the non-Wikidata version. Better to merge now, and then Fram can have the fun of tackling the remainder of case #1 uses of this infobox (and the heckling that goes with the process of fixing the issues with them). Mike Peel (talk) 23:10, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

    Re. "[recreating {{Infobox World Heritage Site/Wikidata}}, then running Pi bot 2, then merging {{Infobox UNESCO World Heritage Site}} to {{Infobox World Heritage Site}}] is, at least, a preliminary solution" – we can agree it is not a permanent solution, but afaics neither is it a temporary situation that would be part of a solution, temporary or otherwise. So why go through these (afaics) unnecessary steps to come to a situation that neither in the short run, nor in the long run would be anything near a part of a solution? --Francis Schonken (talk) 22:35, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

    In case my above explanation wasn't sufficient, let me try it from a different approach. There are two situations here - there are the infoboxes that have locally-defined parameters (possibly with a few parameters from Wikidata), and there are infoboxes that are entirely from Wikidata. Those are currently mixed together. I'm proposing a way that we can split these two cases so that one set entirely uses local parameters (this template) and the other entirely uses Wikidata values (the subtemplate). Those can then be handled separately - e.g. the former still need to be checked through manually, but the latter can be substituted automatically if that would be useful. Mike Peel (talk) 23:10, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

    Re. "It's up to others about whether that's then the status quo or whether the Wikidata info is then locally copied." – I don't understand: why would that be something you'd not be involved in? --Francis Schonken (talk) 22:35, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

    Because my contributions and viewpoints here are clearly unwelcome. I still think that Wikidata is the way to go here, but others still think that the 20th century is the way to go. I'm still willing to help here, but if others want to maintain this template only using local parameters then they also need to take on the responsibility of maintaning it in the future. Mike Peel (talk) 23:10, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

    Re. "I can put together some code that will substitute the Wikidata information here if desired" – finally we understand one another (I think?): that's why I started #Substitution below. I still don't see why any of the preliminary afaics unnecessary steps would be needed to create an intermediary situation that is neither satisfactory in the short run nor in the long run, but this last proposal makes sense to me, so please, I left some questions for you in the #Substitution section below, would you *please* care to respond there? For me it's OK if you want to make a distinction between the ~470 boxes of case #1, the ~439 boxes of case #2 and the remaining ~459 boxes of case #3 in your replies, but I'd like a check whether I understood this part of your proposal correctly. But as said, I think it is best to make this the next step for a solution, rather than the last step after some intermediate steps I don't see to be very meaningful as an implementation (temporary or otherwise) of the RfC outcome. --Francis Schonken (talk) 22:35, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

    I'm still thinking through this option, and I'll respond below when I can. Mike Peel (talk) 23:10, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

    Re. "But you all need to figure out what you want to do here/how you want to do it." – "...you all..." includes yourself, I hope. You want to recreate {{Infobox World Heritage Site/Wikidata}}, then run Pi bot 2, and then merge {{Infobox UNESCO World Heritage Site}} to {{Infobox World Heritage Site}} as first steps: either make clear why these would be meaningful first steps, rather than "...put together some code that will substitute the Wikidata information here..." as first step? I propose to skip the intermediate steps and move to the "...substitute..." step, elaborated in the #Substitution proposal below, ASAP. --Francis Schonken (talk) 22:35, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

    @Mike Peel: please see WP:TPO, "Generally, you should not break up another editor's text by interleaving your own replies to individual points; this confuses who said what and obscures the original editor's intent." You even forgot to sign one of your replies, so creating wrong impressions (kind of putting words in my mouth). --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:31, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

    Sorry, there were so many points here I couldn't think of a better way of posting the replies. Thanks for catching the one that I forgot to sign; I wasn't intending to make it look like you had posted that line. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 14:39, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

• @Francis Schonken: Re [40], I guess that's OK temporarily providing you have no objections to it being restored once the code here is not the same as at /wikidata. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:25, 12 November 2017 (UTC)
  • Re. "providing you <whatever>" – please don't put words in my mouth. There's no consensus currently about what will happen with {{Infobox World Heritage Site/Wikidata}} once all implementations of WHS infoboxes will have been converted to local data: putting words in my mouth (see above for what I effectively said) is an unpromising approach for finding such consensus. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:21, 13 November 2017 (UTC)
    • That was a request, not an attempt to put words into your mouth. As the answer is 'no', I'll restore it, per the TfD non-consensus for what to do with it right now. Mike Peel (talk) 11:05, 13 November 2017 (UTC)
      • Re "request" combined with "providing you <whatever>" – please make up your mind: a request combined with one-sided conditions is not a request. As long as Wikidata code is in {{Infobox World Heritage Site}} there shouldn't be a separate template with Wikidata code for exactly the same purposes: that has nothing to do with TfD (wasn't even negotiated during the TfD) but is plain common sense. --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:16, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Discussion (Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Pi bot 2)

• I suppose Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Pi bot 2 would need a consensus *before* running it – what do others think? --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:11, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Usage of /Wikidata variant

Opening section per User talk:Nihlus#Template:Infobox World Heritage Site/Wikidata --Francis Schonken (talk) 14:49, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Copyright issue?

@Mike Peel: please could you look at the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Wikidata/2017 State of affairs#Proposal from Wikipedia, especially what I added to that discussion here – there may be a copyright problem with transferring short descriptions (such as image captions) from Wikipedia infoboxes to Wikidata. Mentioning this here while (if this pans out as problematic) this may necessitate to delete such copied short descriptions from Wikidata (while operating under a different license than Wikipedia), thus giving some momentum to the suggestion above to undo deletions of local parameters (at least those that could be qualified as "short descriptions" such as image captions that are more than a repeat of the name of the file). At least I'd recommend to stop transferring such short descriptions to Wikidata for the time being, i.e. until it is cleared out whether this may or may not be problematic (or, permanently if the former would be the case). --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:16, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

I have replied there. As far as I can see, there isn't a problem here. Mike Peel (talk) 10:24, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

Step by step

• (step 0) Sort through Category:Articles using Infobox World Heritage Site using locally defined parameters and identify whether this infobox should be used on those pages or not. Mike Peel (talk) 23:19, 9 November 2017 (UTC)
• (step 1) I'm about to create Category:Articles with WHS infoboxes completely from Wikidata as a subcategory of Category:Articles with infoboxes completely from Wikidata, and adapt the code of the template so that articles using this infobox would rather go to that subcategory instead of the general category. I figured this might help to sort issues. --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:31, 3 November 2017 (UTC)
  • That is a good step, thank you for making the category. Mike Peel (talk) 23:19, 9 November 2017 (UTC)
• (step 2) Meanwhile, I'm converting articles to the UNESCO version of this infobox template. Either it will be the definitive version after all this, or it will be merged back to here, but in either case it is closer to the end result and implements the RfC outcome. Too bad that thanks to some pointy behaviour of a Wikidata-enabler it shows the TfD template, but that's something I can't help. Fram (talk) 10:47, 3 November 2017 (UTC)
  • Or we could run Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Pi bot 2 to split out the articles using Wikidata, and you could then merge your version of the template to this page and use it without the TfD template... Mike Peel (talk) 23:19, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Progress report

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Operation complete: no more template transclusions in mainspace. --Francis Schonken (talk) 23:03, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

---

Transclusions by template

Template	Oct 3	Oct 8	Nov 6	Nov 12	Nov 24	Dec 17	Jan 24	Apr 9	May 23	Jun 12
Original ([41])	1421	1409	1368	1304	1226	1151	1094	1033	700	350
UNESCO variant ([42])	(ND)	(ND)	(ND)	116	199	275	342	424	733	1002

Transclusions of original template by type

Type		Oct 8	Nov 6	Nov 12	Nov 24	Dec 17	Jan 24	Apr 9	May 23	Jun 12
Stand- alone	with local params (link)	487	470	446	420	398	382	369	267	131
	Wikidata-only (link)	(ND)	439	420	397	385	365	348	245	124
Embedded		(ND)	459	438	409	368	347	316	188	95

Partially based on numbers already given higher up in this discussion. Don't know whether we might work towards setting ourselves a goal for when the conversion should be over? E.g. converting an average of hundred a day may mean this would be over in a fortnight; 10 a day would mean still 5 months ahead. Without time pressure would work as well for me. --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:59, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

• updated --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:38, 24 November 2017 (UTC)
• updated --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:27, 17 December 2017 (UTC)
• updated --Francis Schonken (talk) 19:54, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
• updated --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:46, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
• updated --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:38, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
• updated --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:29, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Substitution

Exploring another possible path of approach: can the Wikidata claims that are called with the current version of this infobox be imported as static data in en.Wikipedia? E.g. by either of these technical implementations:

1. develop a format of this infobox that operates substitutions for each of the parameters used by the template?
2. launch a bot request to substitute Wikidata claims to static en.Wikipedia parameter values on the 1000+ current implementations of the template?
3. Same as #1 but applied to the "...UNESCO..." variant of the template

This would bypass the (maybe less desirable?) operation of recovering deleted former parameter values: --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:25, 4 November 2017 (UTC) (updated 13:18, 4 November 2017 (UTC))

• @Fram:
  • Would you be OK with this (if technically possible)? The "...UNESCO..." variant of the infobox does not use completely the same parameters as the current (Wikidata) version of the infobox (e.g. the "...UNESCO..." variant does not seem to recognise the "State Party" parameter): in the eventuality of this substitution approach we could keep to the current structure of the infobox, and abandon the the "...UNESCO..." variant to come to an (ultimately) Wikidata-free version of this template. So this would come down to abandoning that variant. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:25, 4 November 2017 (UTC) (updated 13:18, 4 November 2017 (UTC))
    • I have deliberately removed the State Party, Region, ... parameters as not providing any useful information on our pages. Instead I have added new, much more useful parameters which were missing. I have no problem with substitution of the Wikidata version to a local version, nor to a merge of that version with the Unesco one; but simply abandoning it would be a step backwards. Fram (talk) 12:23, 4 November 2017 (UTC)
      • Ah, I see, but then asking to revert edits like this one (effectively re-introducing values for parameters we'd rather abandon now) would make less sense. So I'd be happy to close the above "Queries @Mike Peel:" paragraphs, because asking for such reverts would seem suboptimal at best?

      Also, I'd rather add a third option now (which I effectively did): call wikidata claims "once", on initial substitution of the infobox, when they would be introduced as local data in en.Wikipedia, after which they could be updated/finetuned in en.Wikipedia if necessary (...if all of that would make technical sense of course...). I'd stop proposing "hasty bot operations" anyhow: I dislike them myself, as I said above, and doesn't seem very well possible to develop something meaningful in that vein (or would there?). --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:18, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

      • Started to develop the 3rd option at User talk:Francis Schonken/Wikidata/P of Q#WHS, but need help (not too experienced on many of the intricacies). --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:52, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

• @Mike Peel:
  • Do you think this would be technically possible, and if so: which of the twothree approaches proposed above would work best (or is there still another more optimal method for implementing this idea)? --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:25, 4 November 2017 (UTC) (updated 13:18, 4 November 2017 (UTC))
  • Would you approve of the idea, and if so: collaborate to its execution? --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:25, 4 November 2017 (UTC)
    • Sorry for not replying more quickly, I've been thinking through how this can be done. This is a backward step from having a structured database that holds this information in a way that can be fetched in a systematic manner (as well as queried - e.g. see User:Mike Peel/World Heritage Sites) - it's sort of like being asked to do your accounts in Word rather than Excel. So thinking this through is rather counter-intuitive.
    • I don't think that (1) is feasible. It works for simple cases where we're just fetching values (with/without wikilinks), but it doesn't work for more complicated cases such as {{Wikidata location}} or {{UNESCO WHS type}}. (3) is the same as (1) - the only difference is that Fram is claiming responsibility for the removal of some parameters and the addition others that I'd already implemented. And this isn't compatible with the simple reverts of my edits, as you've said.
    • (2) could work. It means that we unnecessarily duplicate information that is now held in Wikidata, but that seems to be what is desired. I can write some code that does this - the code would have to fetch the displayed values; the HTML for the displayed values (which can then be translated to wikicode); or the raw wikitext, depending on the parameter specified. But any way this happens, the values currently displayed in the infoboxes would be saved locally - every change I have made can be stored locally instead.
    • Would I approve of the idea? Hell, no - it's a huge backward step. But we can do that if needed. Mike Peel (talk) 00:00, 10 November 2017 (UTC)
      • Re. "I don't think that (1) is feasible" – semi-automatically it is at least feasible, see Template:Infobox World Heritage Site/doc#Conversion to local data (especially its 2nd and 3rd step could be further automated).
      • Re. "(2) could work. ... I can write some code that does this" – please do, and have the bot approved via the usual procedures (when the bot submission is ready, mention it here, please, so that participants in this discussion can co-assess it). --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:47, 10 November 2017 (UTC)
        • To be honest, I'm inclined to take up Fram's request for me to just leave here. I don't want to spend time writing the code if it's just going to be opposed at the bot request stage (as has already happened with the first proposal). If it is something that everyone here wants, though, then I can do that. Mike Peel (talk) 14:42, 10 November 2017 (UTC)
      • Everyone in the discussion clearly knew that rolling back wikidata in the template would result in all World Heritage articles ending up with a non-wikidata template. Alsee (talk) 14:33, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Bot substituting Wikidata claims to static en.Wikipedia parameter values

Above Mike Peel suggested "[bot ... to substitute Wikidata claims to static en.Wikipedia parameter values on the 1000+ current implementations of the template] could work [...] I can write some code that does this - the code would have to fetch the displayed values"; "If it is something that everyone here wants, though [...]" – well let's give a show of hands, supposing that "everyone here" has become less than a handful after the RfC dust settled. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:33, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

• Support development of this bot. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:33, 10 November 2017 (UTC)
• Support. I'm not thrilled to blindly overwrite deleted wikipedia content with wikidata, but it seems to be the best realistic option. I tried reviewing a few pages by hand. It would be difficult to get through the required number of cases without running the bot. In fact if anyone does want to pull up deleted content to check against the wikidata-result, it would be easier to do so after running the bot. I didn't see any easy way to completely shut off wikidata in the current template, which makes it extremely difficult to see a clean rendering when I fill in the deleted values. Alsee (talk) 18:54, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

  Just to comment on the last sentence, "fetchwikidata=none" should turn most off, but not everything at the moment (e.g., coordinates don't use that code system) - although with some more development that would be possible. Splitting the Wikidata uses to /wikidata and returning this template to the non-wikidata version would have been the easiest way to have resolved this in the short term (both when editing and when viewing the history). Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:18, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

  Mike Peel I tried that, and just double-checked it. It says fetchwikidata is an unknown parameter. Alsee (talk) 09:10, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

  The erroneous error message is easy to fix, although that doesn't change anything I said above. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:21, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

  Mike Peel, number one: The infobox for Humberstone_and_Santa_Laura_Saltpeter_Works contains the following raw text "Includes Q42958985 Q42959015". I've lost track of the identified issues with the Wikidata infobox, but in case it hasn't been mentioned, I don't think a reader will find the text Q42958985 Q42959015 very helpful. Number two, there are several fields where |fetchwikidata=none doesn't work. Three, I tried |fetchwikidata=none AND copying every documented field in the template and filling them with junk values. Guess what? That still failed to stop Wikidata import. There are multiple undocumented fields fetching from wikidata, and they ignore fetchwikidata=none. Fun fun fun. On the bright side, none of these issues need to be fixed! They vanish once we've converted back to non-wikidata. Alsee (talk) 11:06, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

  Oh, I just saw the "Includes Q#####" discussion below. Chuckle. Alsee (talk) 11:11, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

• So, I think the conclusion here is "please go away" - @Fram was explicit about this, while @Alsee went with a more sarcastic approach. I would still like to continue improving these infoboxes, ideally by using data stored on Wikidata, which could have been bot-updated from the WHS site. But this clearly isn't welcome here. So I'm out - but please don't try to portray this as 'he wasn't willing to fix the problems he caused" when I suggested reasonable options that were declined. Mike Peel (talk) 01:10, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

  Mike Peel I have nothing against you personally, and I'd assume Fram doesn't either. The only thing we want to 'go away' is wikidata in the templates. Alsee (talk) 16:14, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

Write conversion manual

See Template:Infobox World Heritage Site/doc#Conversion to local data: some assistance in writing that manual would be welcome. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:08, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

RfC fully implemented

I redirected Template:Infobox World Heritage Site to this template, while there were no further mainspace implementations of that template, see Template talk:Infobox World Heritage Site#Progress report. Maybe I should have merged in the other direction, but this way seemed technically easiest. --Francis Schonken (talk) 23:12, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Embedding border

Hi,

I am a patroller on trwiki. There is a problem with our template in trwiki. Let me show you with examples. Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park vs. tr:Belovezhskaya Pushcha Ulusal Parkı. As you see in infobox templates, there is a yellow border in your template, but ours doesn't. To add that yellow border, what should I do, yo think? Template:Infobox UNESCO World Heritage Site vs. tr:Şablon:Dünya Mirasları bilgi kutusu?-Thecatcherintherye (talk) 10:31, 31 March 2020 (UTC)