Template talk:Infobox school/Archive School2

Overview

This template in intended to create an infobox suitable for all non-collegiate schools. It is similar in style to Template:Infobox University2 and Template:Infobox Company on purpose. I believe that previous infoboxes were either too cluttered with too much information or were not aesthetically pleasing. I also believe that WP will benefit from having minimal structural and stylistic uniformity across articles of the same subject and across all articles in general.

Gurulegend 22:32, September 10, 2005 (UTC)

Added Motto. However suggest (like the Infobox_Company some of these fields be made optional) My view on optional tags -- Motto, Enrollment, Faculty, Mascot (I think to be verifiable a school needs a website which should contain the other details at a minimum) 61.88.2.177 07:13, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

My Revert

Here is a screencapture of the infobox being used. Left is before my revert. Right is after my revert. LuckyPanda 23:01, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Hmm

Interesting. I'll see what I did wrong. —Larry V. 23:09, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

It seems that the image and motto aren't spanning over two columns and that the labels are centered instead of right-aligned. Thanks for the effort, the template does need some cleaning up. LuckyPanda 23:15, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

What's the name of the article that you made the screenshots from? I can't seem to find it =) —Larry V. 20:06, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Ursuline Academy of Dallas. LuckyPanda 20:24, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Working on it

I'm currently working on the infobox, so if you notice that it is broken at all, please DO NOT revert it; I will repair it later, since extraneous circumstances are not allowing me to finish it now. —Larry V. 22:00, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

President

would it be at all possible to add a president field similar to the headmaster field? pres_name & pres Paul^C/_T+ 17:44, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Added another "head" field so that you could list both a president and a headmaster using the two "head" fields. LuckyPanda 21:06, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! Works great. Paul^C/_T+ 22:49, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

British English version

Was working on the site for my old school and found this template very useful, but found some of the field names inappropriate for a UK institution (faculty, colors vs. colours, etc). I created a version of the template at Template:Infobox_School_UK with a few changes (very few). I realise it's desirable to have the least number of templates possible. Hope this doesn't seem excessive? If there's already a suitable template I'd be interested in using that instead but I couldn't seem to find one. --Casper Gutman 09:43, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

It is probably somewhat excessive, especially if the only differences are over such minor things as American vs. English spelling. It should not be too difficult to recode this infobox to adjust. For instance, if someone used "colors = blue and red" it would show up as "Colors," while "colours = blue and red" would result in "Colours." I'll do this shortly. — Larry V (talk) 01:36, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I've added coding for either "colors" or "colours." What other changes would you like me to make? — Larry V (talk) 02:39, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Great! Thanks Larry. Now I come back to thinking about this the differences I would have wanted seem pretty trivial! I can't think of much, but a couple of things strike me. The term "faculty" isn't one we'd be likely to use in the UK; it means something else - a division of a university, rather than the teaching staff at a school (and of course a school will only be an institution for educating people up to the age of 18 at most, never a university or college of Further Education!). Also, in a couple of cases I thought it would be useful to include a second free category. I faked this up at Harrow School but is there a better way? Maybe it's best to avoid having dozens of free categories available to play with though! --Casper Gutman 00:24, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, if the extra information is something that only a couple of schools would have, then it would probably be better to add the free field than create a new parameter; on the other hand, if it is something that can be added for most schools, then the new parameter would be best. And yes, I had to deal with that "faculty" business in my Italian classes; eventually I learned that facoltà meant something closer to "department" (as in the Fine Arts Department) than "teaching faculty" ... the Americanism was something of an obstacle there. What is the usual British term for the staff? — Larry V (talk) 02:43, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Hmm... the British term for the teaching staff at a school might be tricky. Can't think of a nice one-word term. "Teachers" would be commonly used at a typical school but doesn't quite sound formal enough for this situation, and might not work for some of the institutions that would want to use the template. Some FE colleges etc. might use something like "lecturers" for many of their staff, while a traditional public school might still refer to "masters" or something like that.

On balance maybe simply "teaching staff" would be the most generally applicable term, clumsy though it is.

--Casper Gutman 11:13, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Any chance that the students field name could display "Students" instead of "Enrollment", and that a new enrollment field could be added?

Thanks 192.85.50.2 11:10, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

What would you want that for? --Larry V (talk | contribs) 12:51, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

In the UK I think the term "Students" would be more meaningful. It would also be more logical for the field name to match the displayed text. 192.85.50.2 10:03, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Done; the field reads "Students" now. I didn't bother adding another field for "Enrollment," because I think that "Students" can apply equally well for American schools. --Larry V (talk | contribs) 14:35, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Conversion to ParserFunctions

In accordance with Wikipedia:HiddenStructure, I have replaced all CSS hiddenStructure constructions from this template with ParserFunctions, the preferred method for conditionally showing/hiding information in templates. Let me know if any bugs show up. --Larry V (talk | contribs) 20:41, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Non-US schools

Is it possible to make the "state" field optional: that is really only appropriate for the US, Germany and 1 or 2 other countries? --Mais oui! 09:57, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Done. --Larry V (talk | contribs) 02:16, 3 July 2006 (UTC)