Template talk:Infobox Swiss town

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Coordinates: 47°24′N 8°03′E

Aarau
Coat of Arms of Aarau
Canton Aargau
District Aarau
Coordinates  47°24′N 8°03′E
Population 15649   (June 2005)
Area 8.94 km²
Elevation 381 m
Postal code 5000
Mayor Marcel Guignard (2004 FDP)
Website www.aarau.ch
Surrounded by Rohr, Buchs, Suhr, Unterentfelden, Eppenberg-Wöschnau, Erlinsbach
Twin towns Neuchâtel (Switzerland), Delft (Netherlands), Reutlingen (Germany)
Location on map of Switzerland
Aarau

Contents

[edit] Sample use

[edit] Source

{{Infobox_Swiss_town
 |subject_name= Aarau
 |imagepath_coa= Aarau blason.png
 |canton= Aargau
 |district= [[Aarau (district)|Aarau]]
 |nd=47|nm=24|ed=8|em=03
 |postal_code= 5000
 |population=15649|populationof=June 2005|popofyear=2005
 |area= 8.94
 |altitude= 381
 |mayor= Marcel Guignard <small>(2004  [[Free Democratic Party of Switzerland|FDP]])</small>
 |website= www.aarau.ch
 |neighboring_municipalities= [[Rohr (Aargau)|Rohr]], [[Buchs (Aargau)|Buchs]], [[Suhr (Aargau)|Suhr]], [[Unterentfelden]], [[Eppenberg-Wöschnau]], [[Erlinsbach]]
 |twintowns= [[Neuchâtel]] (Switzerland), [[Delft]] (Netherlands), [[Reutlingen]] (Germany)
}}

[edit] Current uses of fields

Some of the current uses of the fields:

  • subject_name: if available the coat of arms, otherwise the name of the municipality
  • district: name in format [[Place (district)|]]
  • imagepath_coa = coa_missing.jpg (for image:coa_missing.jpg) or path to image (see
  • map: map image link or text "map missing". As many are currently missing, currently commented out.
  • sample image sizes: 89px for coat of arms, 120px for map
  • area_magnitude: e.g. 6 to link the area 1.2 km² to 1 E6 m²
  • Geographic coordinates:
    • nd and nm =latitude (degrees and minutes North)
    • ed and em =longitude (degrees and minutes East)

[edit] Similar templates

[edit] Fields

Field en: Field de: Field fr: (1) or fr: (2) ..
subject_name= NAME_ORT= or BILDPFAD_WAPPEN= nomcommune= or drapeaucommune=
(municipality_name=) NAME_ORT= nomcommune=
(imagepath_coa=) BILDPFAD_WAPPEN= drapeaucommune=
(municipality_type=) GEMEINDEART=
canton= KANTON= canton= or (lien_canton=|affichage_canton=)
district= (with [[]]) BEZIRK = (with [[]]) district= or (lien_district=|affichage_district=)
nd=|nm=|ed=|em= BREITENGRAD =|LÄNGENGRAD= longitude=|latitude=
postal_code= PLZ = cp=
municipal_code= BFS = no_OFS=
population= EINWOHNER = habitants=
populationof= STAND_EINWOHNER =
(populationdensity=) densité=
area= FLÄCHE = superficie=
(area_magnitude=)
altitude= HÖHE = altitude=
mayor= (with [[]]) syndic/maire=
website= WEBSITE= siteweb=
(map= (with [[]])) BILDPFAD_KARTE= carte=
places= localité=
neighboring_municipalities= communeslimitrophes=
(language=) langue=
demonym= nom/gentilé=

Fields with names listed in parentheses are not currently displayed in this template and might never be, but they are assigned a name to facilitate conversion from fr: and de:.

[edit] Conversions

FROM TO
l. field content field content
de BILDPFAD_WAPPEN= Wappen_fehlt.jpg imagepath_coa= coa_missing.jpg
de STAND_EINWOHNER= 31. Dezember populationof= December


[edit] Coordinates

Regexes for translator.py:

(German)

u"BREITENGRAD( |  )?=( |  )?(?P<nd>[0-9]+)°( |  )?(?P<nm>[.0-9]+)\'":     {"en":"nd=\g<nd>|nm=\g<nm>", },
u"LÄNGENGRAD( |  )?=( |  )?(?P<ed>[0-9]+)°( |  )?(?P<em>[.0-9]+)\'":      {"en":"ed=\g<ed>|em=\g<em>", },

(French)

u"longitude=(?P<ed>[0-9]+)°( |  )?(?P<em>[.0-9]+)\'([^\|])*\|":    {"en":"ed=\g<ed>|em=\g<em>|", },
u"latitude=(?P<nd>[0-9]+)°( |  )?(?P<nm>[.0-9]+)\'([^\|])*\|":     {"en":"nd=\g<nd>|nm=\g<nm>|", },

[edit] Notes / Discussion

[edit] Change March 28, 2005

In order to make the link to Template:Coor dm possible, I split the coordinate field in four (nd/nm/ed/em) and placed the year of the population data in a separate field. I updated the different articles where the template was used. -- User:Docu


[edit] Change January 7, 2005

With class="hiddenStructure", it's now easy to add optional fields. Thus I included some of the fields available in other languages and already added to the articles, but not displayed due to the fact the fields weren't always available. -- User:Docu

[edit] Question?

Okay, I see what you mean, if you look at a large city, you've this problem, but for a small municipality, (e.g. Seigneux) we can't see the coat of arms. I think we should have a specific place for the name and a specific place for the coat of arms. And I also think that a more wikipedian-looking would be better. Could you do this, so that you're sure that everything's gonna work. And sorry if I've disturbed ;-p

[edit] Size

Why the small type? Other info boxes are normal size. Nelson Ricardo 05:20, July 28, 2005 (UTC)

To get some information into the pages, I added the infobox to the many stubs we keep getting, but I feel a large infobox might be too much (compare, e.g. with most French versions (e.g. fr:Rüti bei Bern has at least an image). -- User:Docu
It would be good to go to the normal font size. As it is the labels and information in the info box is near impossible to read for people like myself, who are over 40, and not userfriendly. Would be great if we can benefit and contribute to these articles as well. For instance, I work with the de-en translations and would love to get some of the now still missing articles into the system, but with a font that small I simply cannot do this to my eyes. If there is a concern about the size of the boxes, it works for most towns in other countries. And contributors can pear down the size of the box by either providing or not providing information for some of the fields. Any thoughts? --Mmounties 18:14, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
I concur, larger font size makes it readable and doesn't really hurt, does it? —Nightstallion (?) 18:26, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
I concur too. I'm getting 41 by the end of this month :-). Honestly, I don't like these small fonts. I also find the small references on pages like AIDS a real pain mostly suboptimal. --Adrian Buehlmann 18:42, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
I concur as well. I have never had a problem with the larger font of the Infobox Town DE, and I have seen it used with some rather short stubs. The large font looks just as good as the small, and is indeed easier to read. Wikipedia is used by people of all ages and abilities, so making it more accessible by enlarging the font is only increasing the potential number who can benefit from the information. --Inge-Lyubov 19:00, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
We really need not do everything as fr.wikipedia (the beauty of wiki is that they are different), but if one takes aarau as an example, french, italian, and german, and even spanish, all have tables with larger font. user-friendliness is more important than pure aesthetics (or they must at least be balanced), and making it large also has a way of suggesting that more information belongs there. there's no real reason to connect font-size with population size or article length, see these both can change incrementally! Adam Mathias 19:12, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Yep, I agree too. Whilst I can read it at this size, it's most definitely an unnecessary strain on my eyes. Trebor27trebor 19:31, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Yes, bigger is better. My eyes don't like small fonts either. Saint|swithin 19:42, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
I agree. Let's put it to a bigger size like most other boxes. JHMM13 (T | C) 20:50, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Which percentage would you like to use? Infobox Countries uses 95%? I suppose 90% should do. -- User:Docu
90% would be wonderful (I believe that's what the Infobox Town DE is at as well). Thanks so much! --Mmounties 21:48, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
not that I think it is overly important but a compacter look has its advantages. For those with smaller screens it gets everything on one page. I found working with the german infobox quite easy on the eyes so I have to agree with Mmounties Agathoclea 00:59, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Agree with Mmounties as well. Olessi 21:07, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
I guess it depends on screen resolution and font size in browser as for which size looks better; but probably making the fontof a similar size to that inmost other infoboxes would be good. Kaiser 747 09:50, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

I see that the font size was updated as a result of the above. However, the population figure itself is now 100% whilst everything else is 90%. This looks inconsistent to my eyes. Was this deliberate or just missed at the time? MarkS 21:02, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sub category for Municipalities of Switzerland

Category:Municipalities of Switzerland has several sub-categories, such as Category:Municipalities of the Canton of Geneva. Should pages containing the infobox and belonging to the sub-category really be automatically added to the main category as well ? Schutz 21:25, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

It's quite handy to have them all in the category. The category Municipalities of Switzerland shouldn't be added manually to articles though. Possibly we could do without a specific municipality subcategory per canton. Categories such as Category:Vaud may be sufficient. -- User:Docu
I agree it is handy, even though the category will have about 2900 entries. On the other hand, looking at Category:Vaud and Category:Municipalities of the canton of Vaud shows that anything that is not a municipality will be completely lost among the municipalities in the former category, maybe justifying the sub categories too. Anyone else has an opinion ? Schutz 15:34, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
Maybe Category:Places in the canton of Vaud would avoid loosing out on the localities that are not municipalities. -- User:Docu

[edit] Version by 83.76.32.102

It's at Template talk:Infobox Swiss town/Test. -- User:Docu

[edit] Simpler source

Hi. I would like to propose a simplification of the template source. There should be no visible changes. My proposal is at User:Adrian Buehlmann/work/Infobox Swiss town/1, test inclusions are at User talk:Adrian Buehlmann/work/Infobox Swiss town/1. I moved the small text size style onto the top level (diff). Have I overlooked something? --Adrian Buehlmann 17:02, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Edited into the template here (diff). --Adrian Buehlmann 22:21, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
For some reason it doesn't work in Cologne Blue skin. Is there a way to fix it ? -- User:Docu
Oops. Sorry. Hmm, what's wrong with it? I switched to Cologne Blue but it looks good to me (Firefox). But it's not such an important edit, so it would be possibly best to revert. Please do so if you think it is safer for now. I can try to track down the problem in my sandbox. I will have a look at it tomorrow morning. Thanks. --Adrian Buehlmann 23:26, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
It looks ok. It's just the font-size that isn't smaller in Cologne Blue. -- User:Docu
You're right. I've seen it now. Have just reverted. Sorry. Strange. --Adrian Buehlmann 23:45, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] As Of Rules

According to the As of page, the As of (month) (year) is depratected and should not be used. I propose that you keep the month, but the As Of link using only the year to be compliant with this..

I've added another paramer popofyear, which if defined should solve this problem. Rich Farmbrough, 18:57 7 September 2006 (GMT).

We could use existing redirects instead. There isn't much of the a problem with using them. The additional parameter is a bit an overkill (imaging all the noise created by updating the pages). Possibly we could include/fix it when revising other (displayed) fields. --- User:Docu

One of my projects is to remove the deprecated As of (month) (year) usages. I cannot find a way to do this in Swiss Town infoboxes without deleting the month. I appreciate efforts to link just to as of (year) but will respect any suggestions made here. MKoltnow 21:56, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Burp. I just read the example infobox at the top of this page. I'll use Rich's new parameter for popofyear. I will get back to reverting the boxes that I've modified to show months but link only to as of years. Sorry! MKoltnow 21:58, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Automated categorisation

I see there's some resistance to my change to this template, so it's time for some discussion. All Swiss cantons have their own municipality categories, so all Swiss municipalities are in one or other of those. Articles should not be in both a category and a subcategory of that category (Wikipedia:Categorization#Some general guidelines, number 3). Using a template to automatically add articles to categories prevents one from applying the proper alphabetical order to the category, since the MediaWiki software puts accented letters (umlauts, acutes, circumflexes, etc.) after the usual alphabet, whereas they would normally sort together with the unaccented forms. In a previous discussion (above), no convincing reason could be found for keeping the double categorisation, and in fact a list would be better suited to that purpose. Anyone care to disagree? --Stemonitis 08:17, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Some things are easier to do if there are in just one category. Just ignore the category, if you don't want to use it. Please avoid doing reverts on it. As long as the categorization is consistent, nothing prevents us from applying both.
If you care, you may want to define a specific optional sortkey to allow sorting by unaccented forms. It should be easy to add. I wouldn't mind. -- User:Docu
The policy is there for a reason. Please read it. And there is no consensus, just laziness. No-one wanted to make the change, although no-one could find a good reason not to. Please provide a convincing reason for this double categorisation. I've already sorted the accented forms once before finding the real cause of the problem. It's a large amount of work, when it could all be solved by one edit which you won't allow me to make. I've found a simple, easy, policy-consistent, sensible way of solving it; your solution is worse. Let me make it. --Stemonitis 07:52, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
You might want to read on the next page to get the full policy. A simple reason is that Special:Recentchangeslinked/Category:Municipalities_of_Switzerland wouldn't work. This way you can easy check changes to the articles you created about municipalities in several cantons. Besides, if you are not sure which canton it was in, you can easily located it. Anyways, please add an optional field for sortkeys, if you feel it's needed. -- User:Docu
I would recommend a list for that functionality. --Stemonitis 06:22, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
I personaly don't care strongly one way or the other, but if someone thinks the listing of all municipalities in one category may be handy, then I'd choose to go with the status quo. I can take care of the optional sorting field if needed. Schutz 21:50, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
I really can't understand why you wouldn't want to go for the easy option. --Stemonitis 06:22, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
What do you call the "easy option" ? Modifying a template (plus taking care of a few particular cases when there are accents involved) seems much easier to me than building a list from scratch and making sure that all the links are correct. Schutz 08:47, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
See User:Stemonitis/Swiss municipalities, created from the existing list articles, or list sections of the canton articles. No two links point to the same place except for cases where no disambiguation page exists yet. It took much less time to build than it would to re-sort all the accented ones (I know from experience). --Stemonitis 09:57, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
Personally, I don't mind about the sorting. If you want to go for a static list, how often do you plan to update it? Daily, monthly or annually? Articles get created or moved once in a while. -- User:Docu
Using the list, I am able to see that the following articles have been created today: Märstetten, Bussnang, Bürglen, Thurgau, Birwinken, etc., etc. Any page moves would also show up under "recent changes". Page creations would not show up in a category if the new article is not put into the category, which is often the case, which is therefore an advantage of the list. Incidentally, the list is only a sub-page of my user page at the moment because I wasn't sure what title to give it. Feel free to move it to a title of your choosing. Can anyone give me any reason now that we've got the list, why I shouldn't empty out the Category:Municipalities of Switzerland? I feel I've answered all your queries. --Stemonitis 11:33, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
Looks good to me. Schutz 12:26, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
It just misses the articles that are created at locations to or from other than the ones on your list. Besides, you haven't responded to the question about the update frequency. -- User:Docu
And the category method misses those that are not categorised when created. One would hope that new articles would be created according to the titles given on the list; in most cases this is certainly going to be the case (where there is no need for disambiguation). The other alternative is that someone will create a disambiguation page at a title given on the list, at which point he or she should go through the incoming links and fix them to point to the disambiguated pages. Manual updates should thus never be necessary. Since a category structure exists already, it can be used to find the mis-titled articles anyway. This is the way it works at every other large category. Any further problems? --Stemonitis 06:30, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
The list is a good thing to have, I even moved it into article namespace. Thanks for making it.
It may not lead to the correct article as apparently it still needs updating. Now the question is, are you going to do the regular updates or not? I'd prefer we'd continue to use the category on the infobox and the project page to track the changes and keep things consistent with the same category in other languages.
BTW are there any articles you created you got trouble finding if we include the category? -- User:Docu
Like I say, it should only need updating when someone creates a disambiguation page, and when someone creates a disambiguation page, he or she should make sure that all pages that had linked to it are changed to point to the correct (disambiguated) pages. This is what I did yesterday when I found that the disambiguation page Rickenbach had been created. Other kinds of updates should not be necessary. Therefore, I only need to update it when I make a new disambiguation page. I have no plans to make one at the moment, but if I should, then I'll update the list; otherwise, I won't.
I don't think I understand your question about the category. There is nothing that can be found with the big category method that can't be found in a sub-category or (alternatively) on the list, unless articles are created at entirely inappropriate titles (mis-spelled, wrongly capitalised or similar).
It may also be desirable to split the list into sections so that it loads more quickly; I did very little formatting, since that didn't seem important at the time. I'll leave it up to you how the list will look.
I don't buy the argument about interwiki consistency. Different Wikipedias have different policies, and we should not apply the policies and practices of one Wikipedia to another. In any case, the French and Swedish Wikipedias do it the way I suggest, so there's no greater consistency either way. --Stemonitis 09:07, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Ok then you wont be updating it. Thank you for answering the question. -- User:Docu
I won't need to! Does it really make so much difference whether I personally agree to regularly update something that won't need updating? Maybe I will from time to time, but I'm hardly going to guarantee that here and now. If that's the only reason for your reversion to the double-category system, then I must say I'm disappointed. I've put some effort into improving the state of things, and you're resisting the improvements for no apparent reason. --Stemonitis 10:53, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
The category on the template automates updating. It's a simple as that. It faciliates extraction of the articles as well.
You don't need to get angry and call things "a disaster" just because you don't agree with it or you don't use a category you just discovered. If you like to improve or to contribute to WikiProject Municipalities of Switzerland, please help creating stubs for the municipalities that are still missing them. I will contribute the infobox. -- User:Docu
I don't wish to put words in Schutz' mouth, but his/her comment above ("Looks good to me") seems like support for my method, which also follows policy on categories. The only support I can see for yours comes from you yourself, and the only reasons you give are effectively nullified by the existence of the list. Consensus, such as it is, is on my side.
Often, when new users create articles, they are (understandably) not aware of the existing hierarchy of categories, and so the articles are not added to the categories correctly. If you rely on the category to discover new articles, you will miss those ones. With the list you will not. The alternative problem, that an article will be created, but at the wrong title, can be picked up through the cantonal categories whether or not the infobox fills a megacategory. If the new article is ill-titled and uncategorised, then neither method will pick up on it, anyway. You could always use the "What links here" on {{Infobox Swiss town}} to find out about (ill-titled, uncategorised) articles that use that template. This would be better than filling a category with what amounts to "Articles that use Template:Infobox Swiss town".
What do you mean by "facilitates extraction of the articles"? --Stemonitis 11:33, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Schutz that the list is nice to have. This doesn't mean it duplicates the current category solution. Categories and lists generally complete each other.
To discover new articles, the solution of the WikiProject is much more comprehensive 1. Once created, one just needs to add the infobox to add it to the category.
"facilitates extraction of the articles", i.e. you can get all articles on Swiss municipalities from one category. -- User:Docu
Well, if you've got that list, you don't need the category at all, and you never did. Curious. --Stemonitis 12:26, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I basically agree with your method... and I also notice that there seem to be a push at the moment to create stubs for all the Swiss municipalities; once this will be done, there should be no need to update the list anymore. Schutz 21:57, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

List of municipalities of Switzerland still seems to link to disambiguation pages, would you fix it or should we use the category? -- User:Docu

[edit] Why no maps?

Since user Tschubby [1] has uploaded almost every community map of Switzerland he made to Wiki Commons [2] and many articles already include the image code I don't see a reason why the maps should remain turned off. Makes no sense to me. --Cooper.ch 19:14, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

We just need to decide on which format to use and implement it consistently. Initial inclusion just used the image path, later additions the entire image name. Personally, I would use the first format, but I wouldn't use the maps with labels in German for places where it's not the local language. -- User:Docu
I agree with Docu; even though a map in German is better than no map at all, having a map that says "Frankreich" instead of "France" is likely to confuse English speakers rather than help them. It is a pity, because the maps are excellent otherwise. It would be nice if these maps were available in SVG format, and that we could just have a list of translations for all places, and a simple search/replace in the XML source could be used to translate them (although names of different lengths could ruin the layout). Schutz 21:55, 13 August 2006 (UTC).

[edit] How to rename

Supposedly, Tobias Conradi is trying to standardize names (by renaming to Template:Infobox Town CH). As it's only for municipalities, we might as well change its name to "Template:Infobox Municipality CH". There don't appear to be any others named that way though (see Special:Allpages/Infobox). Until naming is fixed, I'm moving it back to the old title (Template:Infobox Swiss town). -- User:Docu

[edit] How to color

The current yellow might not be optimal for cases where "subject_name" still includes the coat of arms. (sample). Personally, I'd favor the previous "color", but obviously, this is something that may be debated at length. -- User:Docu

Recent changes meant that the coat of arms can now be successfully displayed along with a title (sample1), or just the title if no arms exist (sample2). I agree that it looked unattractive with the coat of arms buried within a coloured box, but a much better solution would be to edit all municipality boxes that display a coat of arms to make use of the imagepath_coa field. And then we can give the title some colour, which looked a lot better than does plain white. The task is to to find all remaining municipalities that display a coat within the subject_name box. I've captured quite a few of them, but we need a method of chasing up the remainder. I can do it some time in the next week. --BillC 00:45, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
I've reverted to the colour version, promising to deal with the articles in which (don't know for what reason) the coat is not in the proper field. Bye. --Attilios 16:29, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How to add maps

The maps available at commons mainly map the borders of the municipality as compared to the neighboring municipalities. Possibly we could include a link like "(map)" where the list of neighboring municipalities are displayed (currently in an optional table row starting with "Surrounded by"). -- User:Docu

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