Template talk:Infobox settlement/Archive 3

Established Title/Date

How are the "established_title2", "established_date2" etc fields supposed to be used? Could someone give an example? -- SatyrTN 16:57, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

They could be used for places where there is a "Founded" date as well as an "Incorporated" date (like at Albany, New York). This could already be done using "<br>" tags, however, so I'm not sure if this makes the template any better. --MattWright (talk) 17:14, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

It makes it better by fixing the way in which a screen reader (something a blind person would use) interpets the rows. My understanding is that a screen reader will not correctly read the order of the rows when using the "<br>" tags. Doing the separate fields method would correct this and not affect the way in which you or I see the infobox. See Accessibility issues above. --MJCdetroit 17:34, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me -- it also ensures that the fields line up properly in some situations. --MattWright (talk) 17:44, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Gotcha - Thanks! SatyrTN

Yes, I added these for when I redid the Westfield, MA infobox. I found that the date that it was incorporated a town and the date it was settled was just as important as the city's incorporation. And its extra syntax that doesn't hurt to be there. I think it could be helpful to other articles as well, which is why I didn't use the <br> tags. → JARED ^(t)  02:44, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Postal code?

There should be a postal code section on these things. Most international cities have postal codes, like the US has zip codes, right? --Goatrider 08:53, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah I was thinking the same thing. The MA town box has an option for zip code(s) and area code(s). I think they should be included on this page. Maybe someone could copy the code. Or I will eventually. → JARED ^(t)  14:25, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Someone copied it. But the section doesn't show up on the saved page. VolatileChemical 14:20, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I did it, but I don't know how to fix it. → JARED ^(t)  14:44, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Oppose this. Large cities in the US have way too many postal codes to list easily in an infobox. howcheng {chat} 17:49, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

How about telephone exchange and area code(s) as well? Daniel Case 16:51, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

I tend to agree with Howcheng —although, not strongly. This could work for small towns, but it could be a mess for larger cities. For large cities, the only way this could work (and be bearable) is if there was a link to a list of postal codes (or area codes) in the field entry. I did something similar to this for MPs and MLAs in the infobox for Toronto —it really uncluttered the infobox. Which leads us to the questions: Will this clutter up infoboxes? Should we put it in as optional and let the page editors decide? Is this really needed? —MJCdetroit 18:34, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

It's up to anyone. I just did it because it wasn't there. It's a good addition for small cities like the one I originally tried it for, but it doesn't work for some reason and I'm not good with ParserFunctions. → JARED ^(t)  19:05, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

I have to oppose this as well. Look at how many postal codes there are or Phoenix, Arizona or New York City. I don't think I want those in the infobox,... It probably really doesn't need to be in an encyclopedia, either (though there's already a wiki page for zip codes in NYC). But the info is more for something like an almanac or city guide than an encyclopedia. Area codes would fit in the infobox better, but again, just because we can, does that mean we should ... area codes probably don't go in an encyclopedia either. Dr. Cash 22:04, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

I would agree that postal code is unnecessary on city pages. --23:58, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

I seen that someone did add postal codes to the template. I entered them in when I edited Waterloo, Ontario. They showed up under "Motto" and above the map image. It looked very out of place. So I switch the postal fields location to near the bottom of template; where it looks better. However, I am still not crazy about this field, but we'll see how it goes. MJCdetroit 12:24, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't see the problem. Smaller cities have only one code, and for larger (let's take your example of Phoenix, Arizona) it's enough to write "85001-85099". There isn't even a problem when there are some of these numbers aren't used. Look at Dresden (the city with the lowest postal codes in Germany), the range is 01001-01326, but that doesn't mean that all 326 codes are or have to be in use. People aren't that dumb to write down every single code (at least I hope so). --32X 16:16, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Why are the postal codes in bold? I don't think we have any other value fields in bold, only the labels. Kaldari 18:57, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Weird bug

There a weird bug with this template on the Nashville, Tennessee article. Somehow the population and coordinate values are interfering with each other. As long as there is a reference cited for the population, it adds "[1])" to the beginning of the coordinates. Any idea what's going on here? Kaldari 02:02, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Per Wikipedia:WikiProject Geographical coordinates#Parameters, the "type:" parameter for the coor* templates should be, for example, type:city(population). This template passes the value of the population_total parameter to one of the coor templates, and if a reference is included it apparently confuses the coor template. I can't think of a reasonable way to strip a reference from the population_total parameter in "template language". Assuming no one else can either, then we either need to make the coor* templates do it or add yet another parameter for the reference so we can make the coor template happy. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:26, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Can't the population be cited within the article instead of infobox? Normally it is mentioned in both places. --MattWright (talk) 18:15, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I'll just remove the extra citations for now, although I suspect others may run into this problem at some point. Kaldari 07:21, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

It looks like Louisville, Kentucky is also experiencing this bug. Kaldari 22:28, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to go ahead and remove the population parameter from what gets passed to the coordinate template. The population parameter is completely optional for the coordinate template and isn't actually used for anything currently (as far as I can tell). Ostensibly, the logic behind passing the population to the coor template is that at some point in the future Wikipedia may support some type of automated mapping system and the population would help determine the appropriate scale for the map. When and if such a feature is actually implemented in the future, we can certainly re-examine the issue. (Perhaps we could figure out a way to get the coor template to strip out citations from the population). Right now, however, I don't see any good reason why we need to pass the population, especially if it is going to cause rendering bugs in our template. Kaldari 22:47, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

To recap what Kaldari did (from a non-programmer POV). Basically the information for population is still there but you have broken any "link" between the population total and the coordinates. The problem being when there is a footnote superscript at the end of the population total (like in the two examples above), it gets carried over to the coordinates and would look something like this: [1]36°10′00″N, 86°47′00″W. Breaking that "link" would remove the [1] from the front of the coordinates. This fixes the bug and makes the infobox visually better in those cases. Visually better —I'll agree to that. —MJCdetroit 12:46, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

The fix I would prefer is: 1) Remove citations from infobox and place them in the article where the population figures are mentioned or 2) Create a new field in infobox called population_ref (or something) that can be used for the reference and placed properly. That would allow the coordinate population link to still work. --MattWright (talk) 22:16, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Side note / Just in case: If you folks here would want to go with 2), I think I could help converting the calls with my bot power. (This is not a voice for any particular solution – I'm not an expert on this template here). --Ligulem 22:29, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Option 1 requires that every editor of city articles be educated about not using citations in the Infobox, and it adds another layer of instruction to an already complex template. Option 2 seems like extra work for no (or virtually no benefit). What's wrong with the current solution (i.e. not passing the population)? We already pass "city" as the coordinate type. Passing the population is just an extra nicety. I don't know of any mapping system that actually uses the population figure, much less one that is hooked up to the coor template. Is there any reason it would benefit anyone to pass the population? Kaldari 22:41, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I won't argue this too much, because it isn't that important to me, but the information can be useful to external services, such as geonames.org. If you go to [1] and click on the Wikipedia link on that page, you can see it will popup city names, along with their population, which I think it is gathering from the coor template, although I am not 100% sure on that. I was the one that initially added the population to the city() type on this template, and prior to that, many cities on geonames did not have populations noted. --MattWright (talk) 23:54, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Geonames doesn't seem to be using Wikipedia's populations. Even if they were, it would be just as easy for them to scrape the populations from the population field as it would be to scrape it from the coordinate URL. Scrapers don't factor into this problem. The only case in which it would actually make a difference is if both the Map Sources Wiki and one of the mapping systems linked from the Map Sources Wiki utilized the population (since the parameter could theoretically be passed to them from the Wikipedia article). That would work like so: Click on the coordinates in the Wikipedia article to go to the Map Sources Wiki; the population gets passed in the query string and then dynamically tacked on to the URLs for the various mapping systems; click on a mapping system in the Map Sources Wiki; the population gets passed again in the query string and parsed by the mapping service. Right now, though, it doesn't even look like the Map Sources Wiki parses out the population (only the type). So it really doesn't matter to anything currently whether we include the population or not. Kaldari 01:52, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

New look, again

Per the thread slightly above, #New look, more similar to template:Infobox Country, I've created a new version much more similar to template:Infobox Country and template:Infobox U.S. state, please see user:Rick Block/Template:Infobox City. Enough time has passed that the new style in MediaWiki:Common.css should be available to all users. Are there any serious objections to changing to this new style? Note that once all three of these templates use class="infobox geography", their style can be changed in unison by updating this css class. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:58, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Agree that look should be sync'd with state and country infoboxes. --MattWright (talk) 03:45, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good. I still like the grey bars on the current version (Location, etc), but I'll live without 'em :) -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 06:53, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Ranally city ratings

Would there be interest in adding the Ranally city ratings (a measure of the economic importance of the city) to the infobox, perhaps under a new heading "Economic characteristics"? Bellczar 01:13, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Since the template is used by cities all over the world, that might not be usefull... SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 01:38, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

I also don't really see it as being useful information. It's an arbitrary ranking system by one company. --MattWright (talk) 02:01, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

I must disagree that it's arbitrary. It's based on hard data such as retail sales, newspaper circulation, etc. What other single measure is there that can inform one whether Santa Paula, California, for example, is more important in the national economy than Jamestown, New York? Population alone can't do it. Using population as the only guide, someone would conclude that Jacksonville, Florida and Mesa, Arizona are more important than Miami and Minneapolis. And that wouldn't be correct.Bellczar 19:00, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

By arbitrary, I mean that they have set the "formula" for what they think is important. All of the hard data you mention is good information to include in an encyclopedia article on each city. But what makes Rand McNally's classification more important than other classifications or more useful than the raw data? --MattWright (talk) 20:16, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

What other classification is there that conveys as much information about the economic importance of a place (in both its local and the national economy) in a single measure? Obviously, the Ranally rating would not supplant any raw data in Wikipedia. Ranally data are frequently cited by the Federal Reserve banks in evaluating community economies. The Ranally city rating system (RCRS) is designed to reflect an inherent hierarchy in the national economy, not to impose one of its own. The data that RM consider are judged (for example) to make Cleveland more important nationally than Cincinnati, so that Cleveland is 1-AA and Cinti is 1-A. And so forth.

It is really a very elegant system. The country consists of 487 markets (basic trading areas) and each of them is centered on an A-rated city. The numeric rating and the number of letters (1-A, 3-AA, etc.) indicates its importance in the national economy. Other large cities in each market area are rated B or C, and important suburbs are rated S. I have seen many market areas as defined by large companies for their geographic hierarchy, and they often closely correspond to the market areas of the RCRS. I think it would be useful to have pages with lists of 1-AA, 2-AA, etc., cities and links to those pages from the individual city pages. I have noticed that the business and economics area is not as developed in Wikipedia as some others (e.g., pop culture). The RCRS might be a tool in getting Wikipedians to think of cities as not onlyt venues for culture but also their place in their local and the national economy. Just my 2c. Obviously I don't have the time to implement my idea (i.e., an edit to 1492 separate city entries) even if there were a consensus for it. Bellczar 04:50, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

If there was just a little more information on it or it was more notable, I might agree with you. I tried googling for it and there just doesn't seem to be any information anywhere, and the article on Wikipedia is fairly recent, having been created by you. Are these ratings public information or is it something that is normally paid for? Where do you get the complete listing, etc.? There are no external links in the article either. --MattWright (talk) 06:14, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

They are available in the Rand McNally Commercial Atlas and Marketing Guide, published and updated annually, which is available at larger libraries. Bellczar 02:06, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Elevation

Wouldn't it make more sense to have the highest and lowest point in the infobox instead? A single elevation value seems ambiguous -- is it the mean value (and how is the mean calculated) or is it the elevation at the centroid of the city or some other thing? A city doesn't typically have a single elevation. --Polaron | Talk 16:51, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

There is often an official elevation, recognized by the city (such as Denver). Otherwise, the Infobox can already accomodate a range (as seen at Los Angeles). --MattWright (talk) 17:23, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I think a range might be a good option, especially for cities that have large extremes. --Polaron | Talk 17:25, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

If there is data to support a range that would be great. However, for American cities, I found my elevation infomation from the USGS which only gives one value in feet and metres. For San Jose, the elevation was reported by the USGS as "Elevation(ft/m):85/26". This data is referenced in the San Jose reference section. MJCdetroit 18:28, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

FallingRain.com shows elevations for almost any location in the world.--enano ^(Talk) 20:21, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

New look

I've changed the template to use class="infobox geography" per the discussion slightly above. I'm adding a new section here if anyone wants to complain about this. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:49, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Looks good except that the city picture is off-center and all of the labels are in bold except for "Summer" (time zone). Kaldari 05:13, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Fixed. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:56, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Reversion of m

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)
bobblewik 21:11, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Another Leader?

Wasn't the decision above to not add more leader names and titles? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 05:37, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

I think we've agreed to not add city council members. I've started going through the cities using this template, elinimating "virtual rows" (entries within one row of the table that look like multiple rows by including <br>s). The point of doing this is so these tables can be more easily understood by (usually blind) people using screen readers. This generally means using the additional subdivision_type/subdivision_name parameters and I ran into Berkeley, California that lists both a mayor and a city manager. Two (or three, or four) pairs of leader title/name parameters seem not too outrageous to me. I should have brought it up here first. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:35, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

I've created a subpage to help coordinate this activity, see Template talk:Infobox City/links. I think it would be good to do with a bot, but there are enough irregularities that I'm not sure it's entirely possible. I did something similar for the 200 (or so) references to template:infobox country a while ago which took a few days. There are slightly more than 2000 references to this template, so it will take a good bit longer to finish this if I'm the only one working on it (and a bot is not used). If anyone would like to help or has suggestions for a bot-based approach, please speak up. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:14, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

I have added 2 more pairs of leader title/name parameters. The addition of these to pairs will greatly help get rid of the <br>s in Canadian cities which all include the city's MPs and MLA's. For an example see Toronto. MJCdetroit 17:43, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

More leader params

Moved here from: Template talk:Infobox City/Template parameter changes bot

I think the leader_title3/leader_name3, etc should be revisted because of the way that some of the Canadian cities are currently set up. I know the city council members did not go over well but if we limit to 4 fields that should cover it pretty well. If there are large numbers of leaders (such as MPs) then leader name3 can be a link to a list of names. That way we would not have to use the <br> to break up fields for things such as MPs and MLAs. Check out Toronto to see an example. —MJCdetroit 14:16, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Any thoughts on my proposal above of adding 2 more leader fields above to tie up any lose strings, especially for Canadian cities. I think that this would really help and unlike the city council additions there would only be 2 additional fields not 12. I think that the city council additions were like dropping a Mac truck into the infobox; this is not so blunt. Thoughts? —MJCdetroit 12:53, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree. In the "great BR purging" that's going on, there are at least a dozen or so cities where more leader params would be useful. In some cases, city council members are listed but as long as it's a single HTML row (labeled, for example, "city council") with multiple lines of "value" (yes, with embedded BRs) it's OK from an accessibility viewpoint. As MJC says, there are a bunch of Canadian cities that list mayor, MP, MLA, etc. as well. And there's one "city" (fictional, no less) that lists mayor, vice-mayor, and sheriff. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:52, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Compare these versions of Toronto to see how much of an improvement these changes and this infobox makes.

• Revision as of 23:27, 15 June 2006
• Revision as of 09:58, 7 September 2006
• Revision as of 13:10, 7 September 2006

—MJCdetroit 18:20, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Template parameter changes bot

→ moved to Template talk:Infobox City/Template parameter changes bot --Ligulem 10:12, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Handling city names in other languages

Now that Infobox City is sufficiently generic, I'm seeing it used for many cities outside of the English-speaking world. One difficulty that arises from this is deciding what to enter as the official_name. Most of these cities seem to be opting for a dual name approach, but there is little consistancy. Here are a few examples:

official_name = آمل <br /> Amol
official_name = Zaysan (Зайсан)
official_name = Beijing - 北京
official_name = Tokyo <br> (東京都)

It looks like we need to add an optional parameter for native_name or something similar so that there will be some consistancy in how these are handled. Kaldari 23:07, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

I propose adding a native_name field. Any opinions on the best way to format it in the template? Kaldari 19:20, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

How this is handled in template:Japanese prefecture is with two params, one in Japanese (with a transliteration), formatted as follows:

'''{{{Name}}} Prefecture <span style="white-space: nowrap;">({{{JapaneseName}}})</span>'''

What this does is put the English name and parenthesized Japanese name on the same line (if they both fit), but if the English name is too long for this, it splits the two and puts the Japanese name underneath (with both centered). See, for example, Aichi Prefecture vs. Yamaguchi Prefecture. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:58, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I have added a native_name parameter on an experimental basis. It follows the formatting suggested by Rick Block and is an optional parameter. For examples of it in use, see Amol or Zaysan (town). If anyone notices any problems with it, let me know. Kaldari 23:23, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Question: What if the 'official name' has more than one word? For example most of the Canadian cities follow the format: city of Toronto, Ontario or (if in Quebec) Ville de Montréal, Québec. If I switch over the Montreal infobox to this template will all of the English name and all of the French name be on separate 'lines'? I haven't try it yet but is a concern that I thought might be worth mentioning. MJCdetroit 17:02, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I tried and it doesn't work well. It breaks the box to the right and everything is on one line. —MJCdetroit 17:44, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

This may be because the table width is specified in ems not pixels. The Japanese prefecture template does not have this problem, and I think the only difference that's relevant is that it specifies a width in pixels. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:45, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Can you show me an example that you tried so that I can take a look at what happens? Send a link to the test revision if possible. Kaldari 19:11, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

OK, I've figured out what the problem is: I was using a non-breaking space to keep the space character at the beginning of the optional native_name from being striped as whitespace within the if statement. Problem is, the line won't break on a non-breaking space! Duh. So is there a character besides a non-breaking space that will act as a space character but not be stripped out as whitespace? Kaldari 00:00, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Maybe something at Space character, such as &ensp; or &emsp; --MattWright (talk) 00:52, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

In my sandbox, the only way that I was able to get both long names above and below each other was to use &nbsp; between the words and at the end of the English name I placed a regular space followed by a &thinsp;. This "forced" them to be above and below each other. Visually it looks ok, but I am wondering if my rigging would have accessibility issues. See my example:

|official_name = City&nbsp;of&nbsp;Montreal,&nbsp;Quebec &thinsp;

|native_name = Ville&nbsp;de&nbsp;Montréal,&nbsp;Québec

—MJCdetroit 01:25, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I've changed it to &#x0020; (ASCII code for a normal space), which seems to work. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:19, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok, Rick's placement of the 'normal space' fixed it. No need to force/rig anything. I think Montreal will be getting a new infobox soon. —MJCdetroit 01:33, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Indenting

I liked the indenting for subdivision_type1 and subdivision_type2! Anyone else? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 01:42, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

A quick shot: I don't care. But during my recent serial edits I noticed some rare problems with wrapped lines. I saw several cases where an entry was wrapped to a second line (without a BR) and that second line was not indented, but the first one was (although I'm not sure why this happended, but I assume these problems went away with Kaldari's edit). If you guys want it intented, I would propose that you look for ways to make not only the first line indented, because longer entries can wrap around to multiple lines. I digged into my contribs looking for an example but gave up seraching after 20 minutes. But I'm pretty sure I saw some yesterday during my botting. Apologies if I might have overlooked something. Maybe some sandbox testing would be helpful (I'm too lazy right now ;-). --Ligulem 09:07, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I think I found an example: Klawock, Alaska. --Ligulem 09:12, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I could reproduce the aforementionend problem in my sandbox. See User talk:Ligulem/work/sandbox2. See the string "Prince of Wales-Outer Ketchikan", which is wrapped to a second line (not caused by a BR). --Ligulem 09:20, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I tried fixing this using margin-left rather than text-indent and it didn't seem to work (not sure why). And, in case anyone is confused, this example wraps in monobook but not classic skin. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:52, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

• I strongly prefer "no indent" for the value (rightmost column). Having some of these indented and some not is fairly classic "bad visual design". Most of the other indented labels (on the left) are dashed as well. I don't care as much about the label indenting, but if they're going to be indented they should probably be dashed. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:52, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
  • I really don't think the indenting is necessary and it looks cleaner without it. The thing I hated the most about the old design was that there was crazy indenting all over the place and it made the table look really messy. If most people prefer the indenting, however, I would agree that it should at least be consistant and use the dash. Kaldari 18:16, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

• • • I didn't realize the value column was indented - that certainly shouldn't be. Especially since I don't think any other values are indented. But I'm in favor of indenting the label column - with dashes, since that's the way the others are. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 21:57, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Titling

In order to stop the city name becoming hidden/overlapped by the box when the text wraps (i.e. for longer city names), I have moved the city name to within the border of the box. We had a similar problem with the United Kingdom infobox and this seemed to be the simplest solution (as per Template:Infobox Country). IMHO, it looks better this way too, but that is not really the issue! DJR (T) 16:03, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Font in motto

This was moved here from the Detroit talk page. 13:13, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

—Font on Detroit InfoBox—

Who changed the font of Detroit's city motto in the Detroit infobox? It's very distracting. Can someone change it to something smaller and less assumming like it used to be? It doesn't fit the page one bit. --Criticalthinker 07:47, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

It looks like forcing the entire motto to be in italics and quotes is problematic on that article (aside from the font issue). They include a note in their motto field, which shouldn't be in italics and quotes. Isn't using both italics and quotes redundant anyway? Kaldari 19:16, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Seal and flag, how about city arms?

I'm currently working on a swedish city and will soon start with some other swedish cities. Now the problem is that swedish cities doesn't have seals or flags, most have city arms (stadsvapen in swedish), for example; Stockholm and Gothenburg. Now since these "shields" have a long history and is being used today in many culural things for the their citys, I feel that it's important that they can be used in the infobox but not under seal or flag. --Krm500 10:04, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Please, could someone help me? I don't want too mess up the template and that's why I'm asking here. I want too write an article on these sheilds and that's why it's important too get it right in the template.

I tried the other night but couldn't get it to work correctly. I have asked for help on this. —MJCdetroit 01:32, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand exactly what is requested. Are you looking for an optional "shield" parameter (with image) that takes the place in the infobox of, say, the seal? It would be possible to set it up so that at most two of flag, seal, or shield would fit (and if anyone provided all three the infobox would be half again wider). I've added an "image_shield" parameter to Template:Infobox City/Test that works this way. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:01, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Well the thing is that I don't know of any Swedish or Scandinavian city that have an official seal. Most of them have city arms, a sort of coats of arms. And it would be nice if I could be able to have the text city arms under the image instead of "Seal".--Krm500 00:55, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Please look at Template:Infobox City/Test and let me know what you think (the one on the right is the "test" version). The text currently says "Coat of arms". We could make this "City arms", and even make it flexible (with yet another parameter) if this might be called something else somewhere else. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:52, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

I've looked at it and I have looked at the Coat of arms article here on Wikipedia. It looks good, the term "City arms" is probably a translation from swedish so the text should probably say coat of arms. --Krm500 15:44, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

When will I be able to insert the coat of arms in the infobox? --Krm500 19:15, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I just updated the template. The coat of arms parameter is called "image_shield". -- Rick Block (talk) 01:14, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for all the help! --Krm500 08:14, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Form of government

Is there an easy way to indicate the type of municipal government? I think this is useful to include for the New England and New Jersey municipalities. --Polaron | Talk 19:35, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

You could put in under one of the leader_title & leader_name fields, e.g. |leader_title = gov type AND |leader_name= Your town City Council

Do yo have a city that you were thinking of doing this to? MJCdetroit 20:12, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Nothing in particular at the moment. But, for example, New Jersey municipalities have several forms of government. This is also true for Connecticut and Massachusetts where you could say that there is a full spectrum of government forms ranging from an open town meeting to a strong mayor-council. I think this was one of the reasons why {{Infobox Town MA}} exists. --Polaron | Talk 20:20, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Look here: North Brunswick Township, New Jersey. Is this what you were thinking? MJCdetroit 20:37, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

That looks great - thanks. I'll probably start putting infoboxes for the cities/towns of Connecticut over the next couple of weeks. --Polaron | Talk 21:49, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I think we should add a new (optional) parameter for this rather than overloading one of the leader ones, just so it's more obvious what's going on. -- Rick Block (talk) 23:34, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I inserted a new optional parameter called government_type (for lack of a better term) at Template:Infobox City/Test, what do you think about? If it is likable we can insert it here or we can tweak it a little. —MJCdetroit 00:20, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Looks good. I tweaked it so the government type is completely independent of the leader fields. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:09, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

I've included this in the template and updated the empty syntax. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:15, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

For example, in Canada, MPs and MPPs

Would it be possible to add to the template a link to the MPs and MPPs instead of having to find a list somewhere else on the page like in Toronto? Also, for smaller cities, could we make an option to have the MPs/MPPs on the template? Wikada - ^{Talk Contributions} 23:48, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

The Link to the MP and MPPs was removed from the infobox for some reason. It was there October 5th? The infobox for Toronto look like this:

|leader_title3= Legislature
|leader_name3= MPs, MPPs, and Senators.

I'll put it back in today. —MJCdetroit 14:56, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

In response to MJCdetroit, I have outlined my reasoning for removal on my talk page. In short, after a little searching I found no other city with this template that includes such a link. I removed that link to maintain consistency with the other articles, and also because I honestly don't see the usefulness of such information in the infobox. MPs and MPPs are not "leaders" or governmental bodies of the city, so the "leader" attribute seems inappropriate. I will appologize if there was a prior consensus on this issue that I am not aware of. KeL 04:33, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

St. John's, Ottawa , Windsor, Ontario, North Bay, Ontario —just to name a few have them listed. All Canadian cities that used the old template had them listed. Like Thunder Bay, Ontario which still uses the old template. It's more or less a compromise/hold over from that template. MJCdetroit 04:58, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing this out as I was not aware of those examples before. I agree the links should be left there for the time being as a compromise. Personally I think the links should never have been there in the first place, so I want to respectfully say it here: MPs, MPPs and Senators are not part of the city government and it makes no sense to include them in the city infobox. I think Canadian cities should have their infoboxes like the American ones. As more and more cities have their infoboxes converted, I hope there will be a consensus to remove those links, for the sake of relevence and consistency. KeL 05:28, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Some issues

• First off, the field "shield" should be called "coat of arms" or "coa", as a shield is only part of the coat of arms
• Secondly, the link (for coat of arms or seal) needs to link to Coat of arms of ARTICLE NAME or Seal of ARTICLE NAME not Coat of arms of OFFICIAL NAME or Seal of OFFICIAL NAME, as articles of that type are generally not named with the official name (for instance, it's Coat of arms of Toronto, not Coat of arms of City of Toronto (and a redirect is not an acceptable solution)
• Thirdly, there needs to be an option for LOGO, as several city articles do not have their flags, but instead their official city logos instead (which are not seals or coats of arms)
• Finally, how are we coming on the area code field?

--_└ ^OzLawyer / _talk ^┐ 14:29, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

P.S. - Could someone unbold the postal code section (the actual codes, not the description), since they're out of place bolded

Postal code is unbolded and added an area code field. See Montreal for an example. —MJCdetroit 04:11, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

City Logo

Example City 高雄市
Flag Seal Coat of arms
Nickname:  The Harbor City (港都)

Per Oz's third point above, I added the city Logo field. While unlikely to actually happen, it is now possible to have a city infobox that shows a Flag, Seal, Coat of Arms (Shield), and City logo. To do this and not have it look like—well crap—was the hard part and thanks to some help from 52 Pickup and Rick Block it doesn't look like crap. This is supposed to be used when a city does not have a flag but has a logo. However, we had to plan for the event that someone somewhere would add all 4. In any case it's the best you're gonna get...see example to the right. —MJCdetroit 16:50, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I found the need to place optional size fields in the template. The first page that I edited with only a city logo had the logo very small. Adjusting the size made the infobox look better. The article was Brantford, Ontario. —MJCdetroit 01:09, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Another issue

I don't like how when you have just one population figure, it shows up as City: xxx,xxx. No kidding it's the population of the city? I'd assume that most articles will only have one population (no "metro" or "urban" populations), so perhaps something can be done about this. _└ ^OzLawyer / _talk ^┐ 17:45, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I have another issue; Why isn't there a density for urban area? Cities in Sweden are municipalities, so the city area is the whole municipalitie area. The thing is that the city (municipality) that I'm working on right now is 450 km², but the urban area is of the "acctual city" (not political area so to speak) is only 199 km² and with a larger population since the urban are stretches over three diffrent municipalities. The dencity for the urban area reflects better of how people live them the dencity for the municipality.

Since there's both dencity for city and metro area, why not for urban area? --Krm500 13:35, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I added the following two fields:

|population_density_urban_km2 =

|population_density_urban_mi2 =

Happy editing. —MJCdetroit 01:50, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Great, thanks! --Krm500 01:59, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Motto field

I have removed the quotation marks and italics from this field, as it messes up any attempt to display a Latin (or other foreign language) motto and its translation. It shouldn't have been in italics anyway if it was in English—the foreign language goes in italics, not the English. Now the motto can be given its own formatting by the user. For a more complicated fix for this, one would require three fields, all optional:

1. The foreign motto field, which would be formatted in italics
2. The translation field, which would be formatted in roman, but with brackets around it
3. The English motto field which replaces the above two and is neither in italics nor brackets

_└ ^OzLawyer / _talk ^┐ 15:08, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

That issue has come up before, thanks for taking care of that. We should probably identify what language the motto is in and being translated from; latin, french, etc. —MJCdetroit 15:30, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Adding a "subdivision" field

I was wondering whether we could add a "subdivision" field, for cities that consist of a group of well-defined entities, such as the boroughs in New York City. Something like:

Subdivision type    Subdivision entities

E.g. for NY city (just an example):

Boroughs        The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island

Obviously, cities who do not have significant internal subdivision just wouldn't use the field. --Nehwyn 17:50, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I added two more subdivision fields. MJCdetroit 19:11, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, that should do it even for the more complex city subdivisions. --Nehwyn 19:18, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Gentilic

Can we add a field for the city's gentilic? This wouldn't be too hard and would be useful. I noticed several other more specific infoboxes for cities and towns have this.

--Alekjds 01:50, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I think that's what the "nickname" field is for. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 16:09, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

It's a little different. Gentilic, or demonym, is what the residents of the city are called, not a nickname for the city itself. Like "New Yorker" for New York City. --MattWright (talk) 22:43, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Oops - you're right. I misunderstood a Template_talk:Infobox_City/Archive_2#Misunderstanding_of_.22nickname.22_field previous post on this very topic. My bad :) -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 02:40, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

A couple of few things: Location of Subdivision names, Coordinates, Auto-categorisation, Auto-Calculation

The template {{Infobox Australian Place}} has been designed to cover not just Australian cities, but towns, suburbs and local government areas, and so is more suitable for Australian locations than this template. See talk page for some examples. But the Infobox City template has a number of cool features that could be implemented at IAP, and I have a few questions/comments about this template:

• Location: Instead of listing the country, state, etc. that the city is located in, wouldn't it look better to display them directly under the name of the city?
• Coordinates: Inside the infobox or at the top of the article? New York City does both and looks a bit silly.
• Auto-categorisation: It is possible to take the entry for "established_date" and auto-assign the entry to "xxxx establishments" (so long as only a year is given). Some further categorisation is also possible using the "subdivision" fields - this works really well for the Australian infobox but this is perhaps not such a good idea for such a generic infobox as this.
• Calculation of area/population: With {{Infobox Former Country}}, it is possible to automatically calculate area in sq.mi. if the area is given in km2. Population density can be calculated directly from population and area (km2) and can then be also converted to density per sq.mi. - this reduces the number of fields that you need to fill in. The drawback is that the entered data must contain just the numbers (no commas, no other text) otherwise the fields will display error messages. So if you have already implemented this template for a lot of entries, changing to this auto-calculation might not be worth the trouble.

I didn't go through the entire chat log for this template, so maybe some of what I've said has already been covered. - 52 Pickup 13:32, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

• Location: We could compare them in a sandbox? It's worth looking at.
• Coordinates: The NYC example had an additional template at the bottom of the page that places the coordinates at the top of the page. This is independant of the infobox template. I removed that template so now there is just one set of coordinates.
• Calculation of area/pop. Great idea! I don't know if the prep" could be done with AWB or even fast enough with AWB. If not, you would need to have a bot programmed to "prep" all the present infoboxs that have the commas (and spaces) in the area and density fields be removed before placing the auto-calc/auto-format on those fields. Bot request?? —MJCdetroit 15:52, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

• Location:I've put up a rough version of the NY infobox here. I have only added the fields to the top, but they are still displayed in the normal area below. I thought that perhaps only the first two levels of subdivision are enough for the top section. For the Australian infobox, one or two levels are displayed, depending on the location type.
• Co-ords: Actually, I preferred the co-ordinates at the very top instead of in the infobox. Perhaps the extra co-ord template could be automatically used by the city template?
• Calculations:So far I've found no way to automatically remove commas. There are some string functions in the works over on Metawiki that would do just this, but they are not yet implemented on Wikipedia. This is why this calculation feature has not yet been used by the Australian infobox. The same auto-calculations can also be done for "elevation", so long as a single value is given instead of a range.
• Establishment date: I have just added the auto-categorisation of establishment date to the infobox, using the content of established_date. It appears to work (see New York City). For the benefit of people using this infobox for testing, you can turn off the category-assignment by entering the parameter "_noautocat=yes" - 52 Pickup 16:41, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Your example looks good but I am torn because I like the first two subdivison names (in this example:State, Country) on the top but I still like having them under the map to "tie" together the state, county/parish, ward/district/borough, et cetera. Maybe we could have subdivision_name (i.e. country) only on the top and keep the other subdivision types and names in their current location.

As for the auto-categorization, it is nice to have the option and since it can be turned off, I wouldn't have a problem with it.

I do prefer the coordinates under the map, but I'm flexible. —MJCdetroit 21:25, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I think what levels of subdivision are appropriate to display at the top might be kind of variable. It might be best to simply avoid this issue and keep the subdivisions under the map. I prefer the coords under the map as well (the template that shows them at the top only works in monobook skin). -- Rick Block (talk) 01:22, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Ah. I wasn't aware that the coords template only works for one skin. As for the what things to display at the top, I was thinking that a maximum of two is right. But which ones to use is pretty flexible. For Australian locations, this works rather well. For example, Sydney has the state listed at the top (perhaps it should say "Australia" too), but the Sydney suburb of Parramatta says "Sydney, NSW" instead of "Sydney, NSW, Australia". The Aussie template has different display settings for city, town, suburb and LGA (is this infobox intended to cover city, town and suburb althogether?). But it's true that Australian locations do not have counties (LGAs are the closest we have - they don't count really as counties: the Sydney area contains 38 of them) so it is not as complicated as some places. Perhaps some more testing is needed. - 52 Pickup 08:41, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I have done a bit more experimenting: Cologne and Sydney. The Sydney one is to test the application of some features of this template to the Australian one, while the Cologne one is to compare this infobox with the German infobox {{Infobox Town DE}}. While I am not saying that we should go ahead and replace the German one with this, it does look pretty nice with Infobox City - except for the map. Given the north-south elongation of Germany, comapred to the USA or Australia, the map is far too big if nothing is given for mapsize. In this respect, the German infobox is better. But even if the mapsize is reduced, the infobox layout looks a little funny. There will be other locations that will have this problem, so it deserves some consideration. One quick and nasty way around this problem is to place the map image in one of the smaller image fields (eg. flag, seal), but unfortunately that would require extra fields for captions so the wrong text is not displayed. - 52 Pickup 17:51, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

One more thing. Apparently having the co-ordinates at top has some benefits - the deletion of the NYC coordinates was reverted with a referral to User:Dschwen/WikiMiniAtlas. - 52 Pickup 18:09, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I played with the mapsize and Cologne looked ok to me. The Sydney draft seemed to work well too. — MJCdetroit 19:00, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

auto-categorisation for established_date

So what does that do? How does it work? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 19:13, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

When you enter a year in the field "established_date", the template will automatically place the article in the category "xxxx establishments" if that category already exists. For example, according to the New York City article, the New Amsterdam settlment was founded in 1613. So I entered ";established_date = 1613" and now the article is automatically listed under "1613 establishments". At the moment, it is listed under the value given for "official_name" (City of New York) instead of the page name (New York City). Which is better? It is necessary to have the "if that category already exists" condition in case something other than a year (or a wikiliked year) is given - otherwise you get funny results. - 52 Pickup 08:56, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Good - so it won't break if I've already entered XXXX establishments as a category on the page, or if I've wikilinked the year already. Kewl - nice job! -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 15:29, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

No, it shouldn't break - I hope we ironed out most of the problems when implementing it in Infobox Australian Place. If the wrong thing is added (ie. a full date including day and month), it should simply do nothing. If the category has been explicitly entered, it should also do nothing. There are a heap of other auto-categorisation things that can be done - for example, we have the Aussie infobox to assign cities to "Cities in {{{state}}}" - but this probably shouldn't for such a global template as this. - 52 Pickup 15:54, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Does this only work with "established_date"? Or does it also work with "established_date2" and "established_date3"? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 23:06, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

At the moment, only with the first one. Changing it to work for the others is possible, but I'm not sure if it should be done for all of them. - 52 Pickup 10:31, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

It is really screwed up

I do not know exactly what to do or say about it but with the recent edits, This template has been screwed up. The edits of this template effect wikipedia drastically and should not be taken lightly. The edits may work on some articles but not on others. If a coat of arms or logo section works better for some areas, great, but it should simply be set as optional to either have one of the three (coat of arms, logo, or seal) or somthing similar. The current format streches out the template really badly and without other images that some cities don't have, It looks shotty.

Simply, all I am saying is that it needs to be fixed. --MJHankel 00:38, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

I think I've fixed it. I've got all posibilities of flag,logo,seal,and shield tested. See User:Salix alba/sandbox. --Salix alba (talk) 01:09, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Almost... The original thing I was trying to fix (and I'm totally sorry for messing it up!) is an extra space that's showing up after the seal/logo/flag/shield section. On the Salix alba test page, take a look at numbers 6, 8, 11, 12, and 15. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 01:31, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes I see. Feel free to mess on the test page, it uses a copy of the template to changes there won't have a big hit on the server. --Salix alba (talk) 01:36, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. I believe there is a syntax error, which I tried to fix with this edit, but it got even worser and I reverted. This is indeed a real mess. --Ligulem 12:43, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

ok. Got it "{{!}}}" expands to "|}" which closes a "Manske" wiki-table. Still, if you copy the call from Charlestown, New Hampshire into Special:ExpandTemplates and let it expand, you will notice that you get a truckload of empty lines inside the wiki table syntax. This produces vertical space as can be seen on Charlestown, New Hampshire. I strongly suggest to convert this mess here to html syntax (example: Template:Infobox Politician). This here is way over the complexity level to manage the wiki-table syntax quirks on top of everything. One of which are that line feeds are syntax elements. --Ligulem 13:25, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Infobox City question...Extra spaces

The following discussion was copied from MJCdetroit's talk page archive. It led to the solution that was saved at about 03:09, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi, MJCdetroit. Got a question for you: Do you see a difference between Charlestown, New Hampshire and Wikipedia:Sandbox/Infobox City2? I see an extra space under the Town Seal on the first one, but not on the second one. The really weird thing is I can't see a difference between the two templates - (respectively) Template:Infobox City and Wikipedia:Sandbox/Infobox City. If you have a moment, would you take a look and see if you can figure out where that extra space is coming from? Thanks!!! -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 23:56, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I took a look at it, but I don't have much time. I'll play with it some more later. —MJCdetroit 19:25, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok the problem seems to occur when either |image_flag = or |image_seal= or both are entered without the other two images. It does not occur when either of the other two images are entered; not when they are by themselves or entered with the flag and seal (all 4 together). It looks like when the |image_flag = is enter by itself the problem gets even worse. The solution that you came up with (Wikipedia:Sandbox/Infobox City) will not work. Look what happens when there are more than one image: Wikipedia:Sandbox/Infobox City2. I tried messing with it a little in my Sandbox but without any luck. I am just not sure as to why it does that. I'll see if someone else can look at it. —MJCdetroit 01:26, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

My Template Sandbox and how it displays ——MJCdetroit 01:38, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

The issue seems to be blank lines generated in the table from the #if's for the parameters that aren't provided. I've tried a couple of workarounds which don't seem to work. I'll get more help. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:36, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Rick, MJC - you guys are awesome :) -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 05:13, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Seeing what progress we are making, I also asked 52 Pickup to take a look at it.—MJCdetroit 13:20, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

One possible cause of the problem is the use of {{border}}. You get a lot of funny alignment problems when using that. Since only image_flag currently makes use of this border, this is perhaps why there are extra problems when image_flag is involved. For example, {{border|[[Image:Flag of France.svg|30px]]}} [[Image:Flag of France.svg|30px]] → . Until border is improved, it shouldn't really be used. There might be something else causing problems, I'll keep looking. - 52 Pickup 13:51, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm certain border has nothing to do with it. I asked user:Ligulem to take a look, his response is at Template_talk:Infobox_City#It_is_really_screwed_up. It won't talk long to make a version of the inner table using HTML table syntax which will fix the immediate problem. Mixing HTML table syntax with wkitable syntax is not generally recommended, so we might want to consider converting the entire thing to HTML syntax. -- Rick Block (talk) 19:57, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

The version in MJC's template sandbox now uses HTML for the inner table. I think the extra vertical space issue is fixed, but if there's only one of flag or seal it's left aligned in the top row (this is fixable as well). I need to get back to work at the moment, but will take a look later to see how things are going. -- Rick Block (talk) 20:10, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Hmm - maybe not fixed. Take a look at Wikipedia:Sandbox/Infobox_City2. That's the exact information from Charlestown, New Hampshire, but using the template from MJCdetroit. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 21:46, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

So, what's the current state of this? I tried some changes today that didn't seem to help. Is this simply still pending a fix? -- Rick Block (talk) 04:22, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, I made a stab at table-fying the template and think I've got it somewhat down. The "somewhat" is because I didn't do the fancy bit that would always put two on a row. In any case, take a look at Sandbox/Alpha2, where I have an example of each possible combination of Seal, Flag, Coat of arms, and Logo. Let me know what you think, and if someone with more experience with #expr wants to do the fancy bit, that would be great! -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 14:48, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I've been a little M.I.A. lately with Christmas and all and I'll continue to be for about another week. However...

I took a look at the Sandbox/Alpha2 and I am sure that someone will complain about the single images "stacked" on top of one another when for example an instance of Seal and Coat of arms ocurres. I think that the single images and the 3 and 4 images look great. It seems that this is the best so far. I would be in favor of going live with this.—MJCdetroit 21:34, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Are Rick or 52 Pickup reading these? Maybe they could clean up that last issue? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 22:27, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm reading, but haven't looked at fixing it yet (I'm still puzzled by the "extra space" issue). The code to fix it has to decide whether a new row is needed after the 2nd image (if both the first two images are there) and after the 3rd image (if two of the first three images are there). This shouldn't be terribly difficult. I'll take a look sometime soon. -- Rick Block (talk) 23:52, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Rick! I knew the logic that should be used, but am too inexperienced in wiki coding to have done it. The extra space seems to have come from some combination of the wiki tables and the code. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 00:28, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, been caught up on other things lately...
Going from SatyrTN's work, I've put up a modified version at User:52 Pickup/Template Sandbox2 which might solve the problem. Since the only problem now was what to do when there are only 2 images given, the template first checks if there are any images at all, then checks if there are exactly 2. If there are 2, then it creates a single row of 2 elements and fills the first one by checking for the presence of flag-seal-shield-logo (in that order). To fill in the second element, it checks these elements in the reverse order (logo-shield-seal-flag) - this way, nothing is duplicated. After this, the only options left are if 1, 3 or 4 images are given, which are already nicely handled by SatyrTN's version. All possible combinations are shown at User:52 Pickup/Alpha1.
To help get more people involved in helping with such infobox issues, do you think it would be worth forming something like WikiProject Infoboxes as a place for infobox developers to come together and help each other? Just a thought.- 52 Pickup 08:23, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Wow - very nice! I wouldn't even have thought of doing it that way! Which is a good argument for having a WP:PI... :) Thanks very much! -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 15:41, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Looks perfect! —MJCdetroit 15:42, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

January 8th upgrade

I've saved the changes 52 Pickup created to the template today (around 03:09, 8 January 2007 (UTC)). It looked ok to me but if not we can always revert it. It seems to have fixed the extra spaces at Charlestown, New Hampshire. —MJCdetroit 03:09, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Some suggestions for this template

Do you really have to indicate the area of a city? I mean, many cities in the world don't have official city limits, and even more cities have an "unknown" area. And shouldn't there be a possibility to write the denonym of the citizens??? --Escondites 19:07, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Tiny font

Why the tiny font? Think of the sight impaired. I believe we should use normal fonts everywhere on Wikipedia without exceptions. /81.170.235.234 13:14, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

It's not a fixed size so users can increase the physical size of the characters using their browsers settings. --MattWright (talk) 15:28, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

And you believe that everyone knows how to do that? Escpecially the elderly who have just got their first computer with an internet connection? I don't get why it's so important with a smaller font size. /81.170.235.234 22:43, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Because the average Wikipedian is in the twenties and thinks a webpage should look like coming out of a printer? :-). I completely agree with your complaint, but I have given up nagging about small fonts on this wiki. The majority here wants those (bad) small fonts, I was told. --Ligulem 23:16, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, and how about replacing ² (superscript 2) with ² everywhere it occurs in the template? On many screens the font superscript 2 or superscript 3 looks like a flyspeck and the two are indistiguishable. Sometimes it is possible to infer that the funny-looking blob on the screen is a superscript 2 from the context. Here's how the three available versions look:

• ²
• &sup2; = ²
• ² = ²

See the difference? And, no, don't tell me to adjust the font size setting in my browser when 99.9% of what I see on the Web looks fine, just not those ridiculous tiny superscripts on Wikipedia. —Quicksilver^{T @} 00:12, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Can you give an example of where that is showing up? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 00:31, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

There are several instances of the UTF-8 superscript 2 in this template. You have to view the template code in edit mode to see the occurrences. It probably got in there because it is one of the special insertable symbols that shows up in the box below the editing window in Wikipedia. —Quicksilver^{T @} 01:16, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

The reason(s) I asked for an example are that a) I just went through the whole template re-writing some of the tables and I don't remember seeing the superscript for anything, and b) doing a quick search on the code doesn't reveal any instance. If you show me a page where it shows up, I can find it in the code much easier. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 06:39, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Fix coordinate clashing with donation box

Would adding a <br /> to be transcluded before the entire template or adding the br before

{{#if:{{{latNS|}}}| ! colspan="2" style="text-align: center; font-size: smaller; {{#if:{{{image_map|}}}|padding-bottom: 0.7em;|border-top: solid 1px #ccd2d9;}}" {{!}} Coordinates: {{#if:{{{lats|}}} | {{coor dms|{{{latd}}}|{{{latm}}}|{{{lats|0}}}|{{{latNS}}}|{{{longd}}}|{{{longm}}}|{{{longs|0}}}|{{{longEW}}}|type:city}} | {{coor dm|{{{latd}}}|{{{latm}}}|{{{latNS}}}|{{{longd}}}|{{{longm}}}|{{{longEW}}}|type:city}}

fix the clashing issues? Ddcc 05:10, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Appearance

Why did it change its appearance? It looked so organized and nice before, now it looks akward and disorganized? El Greco 20:21, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Did something happen to the CSS? -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 22:29, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

It appears so as all templates (infoboxes) which use the CSS classes "infobox" and "geography" seem to be affected. Caroig 22:41, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

User:Ed g2s edited MediaWiki:Common.css: [2], [3]. I've reverted his last edit [4] as I couldn't find discussion/consensus for removing CSS classes that are in use on prominent templates like this here. You might want to comment on MediaWiki talk:Common.css#Removal of geography related classes. --Ligulem 23:32, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Ligulem --El Greco 00:09, 25 December 2006 (UTC)