Template talk:Infobox German Location

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[edit] Municipality

I tried out this infobox on Angelbachtal. I see a couple minor problems.

  • The town type gets reused in a couple places. For example, I used municipality for Gemeinde. I switched it to lower case, because the info box reuses this word in
    • Address of the municipality administration.
    • And in the regional image title, Location of the municipality Angelbachtal within Rhein-Neckar district.
But because I wrote it lower case the Administration entry, municipality subdivisions is now lowercase, too.
  • The town type also causes problems in that I would prefer to say municipal subdivisions and municipal administration.
  • We should not hyphenate towntype-subdivisions.
  • In the template itself, it often uses to instead of from.imars 13:14, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
For example: Only when different to the article name —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Imars (talkcontribs) 13:15, 2 January 2007 (UTC).
Thanks. The application of this template to municipalities is something that I have not given much thought to yet, since the editors of the German version refused to apply their template to Gemeinde entries. I don't see why we should not apply the English one to municipalities, I just haven't gotten around to that yet. Addressing your points:
  • The capitalisation issue should now be fixed. The correct capitalisation should now be used in the right place and so the input should no longer be case sensitive (so you should be able to say "Municipality" or "municipality" without any trouble).
  • The hyphenation has been removed.
  • I don't understand what you mean about municipal subdivisions and municipal administration - could you please tell me more? (sorry, i understand now)
  • I've changed the text to "different from". "Different to" is perfectly acceptable in non-US English, though. - 52 Pickup 13:34, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
Different to is only bad in US English? I never realized that. Learn something new every day. - imars 07:41, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Categories: Cities/Towns/Villages in (state)

The German version of this template assigns all articles to "Kategorie: Ort in {Bundesland}", while the English wiki has three different categories to cover this: "Category: Cities/Towns/Villages in (state)" even though there is no clear delination between such locations in Germany. It is reasonably easy to automatically assign entires to these categories, but what should be the rationale for assignment?

Apart from teething problems regarding the new template, this issue is perhaps the most important thing that needs to be addressed before widespread use of this template can commence. - 52 Pickup 13:42, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I have to wonder at the category Category: Villages in (State). I searched for this category in Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Lower Saxony, and Hessia and found no result. It seems to me that we do not need a village category. What would qualify as a village, anyway?
As I understand the structure of German local governments, you either have a Gemeinde or a Stadt. See here, from DE Wikipedia Gemeindearten in Deutschland. The categories as they exist place an arbitrary population limit of 100,000 persons. What we should use is the whatever the German criteria is for the distinction between Stadt and Gemeinde. So towns would be everything that is amtsfreie and amtsangehörigen Gemeinden, while cities would be Kreisfreie Städte and Stadtstaaten.
This then begs the question, if we use the term municipality for Gemeinde as defined in Wikipedia:German-English translation requests/Translation guide, then perhaps the categories should be cities and municipalities. Whew! Why do I feel that I have opened a can of worms.imars 08:02, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
It's definitely a tricky matter. But if we take care of it now, we can implement everything within the infobox. I believe that the whole categorisation that is currently in place should be scrapped, then re-established from here. For example Wiesbaden-Biebrich is classified as a town, when it is a suburb of Wiesbaden.
The intro text for Category:Cities in Germany says

"There is no legal distinction between towns and cities in Germany. This category contains articles about settlements with more than 100,000 inhabitants. Smaller German settlements are in the Towns in Germany category."

This, according to the German wiki, qualifies a town to be known as a de:Großstadt, which is considered to be the closest German word that describes "city" in English (in terms of differentiating it from a town). Meanwhile, List of cities in Germany follows its German equivalent (de:Liste der Städte in Deutschland) and has a different list (separate to those categorised) and says:

EN:"Only municipalities with independent administration and that have the Stadtrecht (city rights) are included."
DE:"Die Liste der Städte in Deutschland enthält eine vollständige Auflistung aller 2075 Städte in Deutschland in alphabetischer Reihenfolge (Stand: 27. November 2006). Es sind nur die (verwaltungsrechtlich selbständigen) Gemeinden aufgeführt, die das Stadtrecht besitzen. Auf die einzelnen Bundesländer entfallen folgende Anzahlen:"

This, I imagine, includes all locations with more than 100,000 inhabitants plus many others (see also Town#Germany).
Given this, perhaps we could say:
  • City: more than 100,000 people
  • Town: anything listed in List of cities in Germany with less than 100,000 people
  • Municipality (Gemeinde): anything else (excepting villages, suburbs, etc)
The criteria given under de:Großstadt stems from the first conference of the International Statistical Institue back in 1887. I know the Germans are crazy for standards, but do you see anywhere else where this standard of 100,000 people is applied? It seems very arbitrary to me. To me, anything that is a Stadt should be a city. Then we use either a new category: municipalities for all Gemeinde. This will nicely reflect the distinction between Gemeinde and Stadtrecht. Or we can subvert the category town. In this case there will be some towns with larger population than some cities, but I could live with that.imars 08:08, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Regarding "what is a village?", I think that a village may be defined as a subdivision of a town or municipality, while a suburb/ward/borough is a subdivision of a city (eg. WI-Biebrich above). For example, Steinheim, Westphalia features on the List of cities in Germany, but has a population way below 100,000 - so we might define this as a town. It consists of the main town of Steinheim plus 8 outlying villages. If you were to enter Bergheim, the road sign would say "Bergheim, Stadt Steinheim, Kreis Höxter". Maybe this doesn't hold up for all cases (following the many different types listed at de:Gemeindearten in Deutschland), but it's a start. All of this requires wider discussion, but I think we can come to a reasonable solution that can be easily put in place via this infobox.
Village as a subdivision of a municipality sounds OK. Woud a criteria of being non-contiguous make sense?imars 08:08, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
On the subject of further subidivisions, the editors of de:Vorlage:Infobox Ort in Deutschland have strictly said that their infobox is not to be used for Ortsteile (villages, suburbs, wards, borroughs, etc.) but I don't see why we shouldn't do it here. I have been testing with including these locations (see my test infobox for WI-Biebrich here) - this uses my test version of the infobox, not this one. - 52 Pickup 11:44, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
I do not think this will come up very often. Most articles will not include enough information to create separate entries with info boxes. But I see no real harm in it. The only potential harm I see would be us ending up with an info box for everything. Does every article warrant an info box? But we can leave that discussion to others.imars 08:08, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I guess the categories are not perfect. See for instance Category:Cities by country, Category:Towns by country, Category:Municipalities by country, and the not so densely populated Category:Villages in Germany. I think it's better to disable automatic categorisation for now. Technically, if we use "town" as translation for "Stadt", and "city" for "Großstadt", the List of cities in Germany should be renamed List of towns in Germany. And is there a good translation for "Ortsteil" and "Stadtteil"? I see all kinds of translations, including the wonderful "city-part". Markussep 09:32, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

From speaking with some German native-speakers, it seems the norm to translate "Großstadt" to "city" and "Stadt" to "town", so I think it is valid for us to still use Cities and Towns categories, and List of cities in Germany should probably be renamed. For "Ortsteil" and "Stadtteil" there appears to be no clear translation (dict.leo.org says "district" for both). To make some sort of standard for all of these names will need some widespread consensus. But if the Ortsteile are not contiguous, then that would be a good criteria for calling it a "village". Once the naming has been settled, then the auto-categorisation can go ahead.
The municipalities category should definitely be better used. The villages category is so empty because not many villages have pages of their own yet, similar to the lack of pages for suburbs. Whether or not each one should have a page is not a question that we can answer here, but we should make it possible for people to use this infobox for such pages if they decide to create them (i have modified my test template to place "City" and "Town" fields under "Amt", "Samtgemeinde", etc. - what do you think?) - 52 Pickup 20:43, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

The trouble with "district" is that it's used for Kreise. Maybe "borough" is better. Or "village", if it's a separate, rural settlement. I wouldn't call Rheydt a village. So we get the following system then:

  • city, if it's bigger than 100,000
  • town, if it's smaller than 100,000, and it has town/city rights
  • municipality, for municipalities that don't have town rights
  • village, for dependent rural settlements
  • borough, for dependent urban settlements

Maybe we should merge some of these categories, but we can discuss that on the project page later. Markussep 10:44, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

For further confusion see de:Braunschweig-Hondelage. Here it differentiates between "Stadtteil" (which appears here more as "suburb") and "Stadtbezirk" (which matches "burrough"). Rheydt is a tricky case since it was previously a kreisfreie Stadt and comprises 3 of the Stadtbezirke that make up Mönchengladbach (according to the German entry). But since it is part of a city (instead of a town) it should not be called a village.
I have made a first attempt at auto-categorisation. It is not used on the template just yet, but on my test one. It worked so far with the articles currently listed here (no articles use this test version, i only looked at them as an edit-preview). The auto-categorisation only works on articles in the Article space. At the moment it (hopefully) covers all cases, except for subdivisions of cities/towns (so no villages, borroughs or suburbs). Give it a try (in article preview only) and see if there are any other bugs (and i'm sure that they're there) - 52 Pickup 14:13, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh my God! Now you know how a German feels when he is trying to understand the britsh system(s) of local government! I will try to explain the German system: There are three "Gebietskörperschaften" (maybe to translate best with: area muncipalities, if that makes any sense to you) plus the EU. So the hierachy is like this:

"1. EU " 2. The Federal Republik of Germany 3.The (16) Federal States (including Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen) 4. municipalities (including all districts, cities (without Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen(without Bremerhaven with is a city of its own in the Federal State Bremen.), towns and municipalities.

In NRW the political subdivisions are: 1. The Federal State (Bundesland) with its elected Parliament and a Primeminister and several Ministers. 2. The Regierungsbezirke (supervising authorities) (no elected council) with a "Regierungspräsident" as its chiefexecutive. Supervising all districts, cities, towns and municipalities in its area. They are named after the town or city in which they are based, like Arnsberg (supervising the eastern Ruhr Area and the Sauerland with Dortmund, Hamm, Hagen, District Unna ...etc.)or Münster. 3.

  • Districts (Kreise) have a District council (Kreistag) with a direct elected "Landrat".

They are formed by several independant towns and/or municipalities.

  • Cities (Großstädte or Kreisfreie Städte or Stadtkreise( in NRW all the same, for this status you need 100.000 inhabitants)). They have elected councils (Räte) with a direct elected first mayor "the Oberbürgermeister" (often translated as Lord Mayor, he is not only a representive, he is also the chiefexecutive of the Citygovernment) and several other mayors elected by the councils (in case of Hamm a second mayor, a third mayor and a fourth mayor). Cities are seldom part of districts, Göttingen (Lower saxony) for example is.

Both cities and districts have their own registration plates. Ex.: HAM for Hamm (HAM-M 333) and UN for Unna (UN-X 111)towns and municipalities in the district Unna are using the UN opn the reg-plates.

4. Towns and municipalities: They have elected councils with a mayor as its head. In NRW and most of the other Federal States they are part of a district like Unna (the district council is based in the town Unna and so the ditrict (Kreis) is named after it.) because the are to small to attend to all their duties alone, like waste management or Schools etc.. 5. The cities and some towns and municipalities have Bezirke with their own elected councils (Bezirksvertretungen).The councils have a Bezirksvorsteher (some kind of nearly a mayor, haven't found a Translation) In case of the city Hamm there are seven of them, Hamm, Bockum-Hövel, Heessen (former towns), Rhynern, Uentrop, Herringen and Pelkum (former municipalities). These smaller local councils are for advising the town- or citycouncils and the Oberbürgermeister.


The townrights (Stadtrechte) means in the old style the right to build citywalls and having their own jugdement and jugdes, sometimes even to mint and so on. In the modern political system of Germany, they lost their function. This means you can get the title by asking for it, in case your municipality has a bit of an urban charakter. With the title town (Stadt) comes nothing it is just the title.

The status "Großstadt" City is changing the duties of the former town. A city has to attend to all duties of a district by itself.


"Ortsteil/Stadtteil" both are not political subdivisions they're only parts of a town or city (Stadtteil) or a municipality. Like Hövel a part of the Bezirk (maybe quarter?)Bockum-Hövel in the city Hamm.

"Ort" means place or site or town or village, even city etc. The german category (Ort in Bundesland) just gives a hint in which Federal State the town or what ever is located it doesn't categorize the political sub division!

Village means 10 or more houses (Bavarian Law). Kleinstadt ("small sized" town) means more than 5000 and less than 20.000 inhabitants. Mittelstadt ("medium sized" town) means more than 20.000 and less than 100.000 inhabitants. Großstadt ("City") more than 100.000 inhabitants. (81 in Germany by 2005) Millionenstadt ("City") with more than 1.000.000 inhabitants. (Berlin, Hamburg, München, sometimes Köln)sometimes also called Metropole.

amtsfreie Gemeinden = kreisfreise Städte (word by word: district free towns) and in some states even smaller towns are free of beeing part of a district.

amtsangehörige Gemeinden/Städte = municipalities or towns which are part of a district.

I hope that will help you, with this problem so far. You can find me here--Gabriel-Royce 21:58, 24 January 2007 (UTC) German native!

Thank you for this incredibly detailed explanation of a very complicated matter! So do you think that we should try to auto-categorise localities a bit better than just "Ort in Bundesland" (using some of the (sub)categories shown within Category:Municipalities of Germany), or do you think that this is not a good idea?
A new thing: I just noticed on entries for Polish cities that they have a field for stating when that town received Stadtrechte - would it make sense to include it here? With that field, it would make it automatically clear which entries are municipalities/samtgemeinde/etc. and which are towns/cities - the population limit of 100,000 would then separate the cities from the towns.
The more I look at this, the more it seems that a separate infobox design may be necessary for municipality/town/city subdivisions (eg. {{Infobox Frankfurt Stadtteil}}) - 52 Pickup 17:32, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Don't forget the field Art. The infobox still knows if the article is a Samtgemeinde, Stadt or Gemeinde. -- Netnet @ 17:50, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
That is true, but sometimes this field is not filled in. Perhaps a warning should be displayed it if is forgotten. - 52 Pickup 17:55, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Hello, I've just seen it. Which categories do we need here? I think it would be okay just to use the following system:

Orte (maybe Settlement or Places as translation? Any other ideas?) in Germany

Subs: Orte in NRW and so on. => Sub:Orte in NRW

SubSubs: Cities in NRW, Towns in NRW, Municipalities in NRW, Ortsteile in NRW

Berlin Hamburg and Bremen should be combined with neighbouring States like Brandenburg and Berlin => Subcat: Orte in Brandenburg and Berlin.

Municipalties could include Sub Sub Subcategories for Amt, Samtgemeiden and so on.

Districts should stay for themselves as Category Districts in Ger. Subs for the Fed. States.

If there are Question, please ask on my talk page, because I'm a bit busy with my Exams in Forestry, and only briefly passing by until 13. February. --Gabriel-Royce 23:20, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What information should not be shown?

Template talk:Infobox Town DE#Information deliberately left out of this template shows a list of things that Infobox Town DE does not include, some of these things are currently displayed by this template. Some of these fields are not shown in the German one either, but contain the information as metadata (that is, you can fill in the fields but that data is not displayed). At the moment, all fields are visible because the template is still in its early days, but which ones are not worth displaying here? - 52 Pickup 21:02, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

My "hatelist":
  • local subdivisions ("Ortsteile" and "Stadtteile")
  • the party the mayor belongs to
  • foundation date
  • former postal codes ← now hidden
  • Gemeindeschlüssel ← now hidden
  • NUTS region ← now hidden
  • UN/LOCODE ← now hidden
  • address of the city administration (internet site is enough IMO) ← now hidden
  • time zone, that's CET for the whole of Germany. Markussep 21:10, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
  • It has become as good as standard to give the mayor's party (eg. Barcelona), just as many infoboxes for higher-level regions to give the political party for premiers, prime ministers or presidents.
  • The foundation date and time zone are standard features of {{Infobox City}} (eg. Brussels), even if the time zone does not vary within the country. But since this is a German-specific infobox, the timezone can probably either go or be differently displayed. If the foundation date is unknown for so many locations (and this appears to be so) then that should probably go.
  • Former postal codes, Address: agreed, they don't really tell anything of use for readers of the English wiki. Since these are features of the German version of this infobox, they will be copied over anyway, but they can be simply hidden.
  • CIN, NUTS, UN/LOCODE: Should be hidden as metadata. The German version hides all of these except CIN
  • Subdivisions: It is not normal for a city infobox to list its subdivisions, but not totally unusual (eg. London). But it is probably something that belongs in the body text. - 52 Pickup 21:43, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure if mayors are supposed to be neutral in Germany. Well, let's show the party, it will fit on the same line probably. Markussep 23:14, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
It usually fits on the one line without any trouble. Many of the above variables will now not be displayed. If directly copied over from the German wiki, the page will still contain this hidden information, which is reasonable enough. - 52 Pickup 10:16, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

It is: Bürgermeister oder Oberbürgermeister oder Landrat (male version) or Bürgermeisterin, Oberbürgermeisterin oder Landrätin (female). You can write it in German as : Bürgermeister/in and so on as male and female Version written in one or use the generic masculinum (generisches Maskulinum) with is just the male version of the word. (sometimes considered to be discourteous)--Gabriel-Royce 22:07, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Were I live we got a few female mayors about (Neyland and Pembroke Dock to my knowledge) and they seem never to refered to as mayoress, so I think we can stick to neutral. Agathoclea 15:26, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
@Agathoclea Was just the answer to the question above: " I'm not sure if mayors are supposed to be neutral in Germany."! There is no neutral Version of that title in Germany! Okay so far? --Gabriel-Royce 15:35, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Schaut so aus, als ob wir beide auf dem Schlauch stehen, IMO meinte Markussep die Parteizugehörigkeit. Agathoclea 16:10, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Ups, wie peinlich! Naja, kommt vor!--Gabriel-Royce 16:30, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the original discussion was about political neutrality, not gender, but it is still a valid issue. In the English language, the word "mayor" is widely considered to be gender-neutral, so "mayoress" is not used - even when discussing those in non-English-speaking countries. - 52 Pickup 17:34, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dossenheim

I have also tried this info box on Dossenheim, which is nearly complete.imars 07:35, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Very good. It's a pity that the location (Lageplan) images are not all yet on the Commons. - 52 Pickup 16:16, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Numbers

The template does not work if you add numbers with the format X,XXX. Why? Bye and good work. --Attilios 13:15, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

see above problem here. Agathoclea 13:31, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Coordinates

Why aren't the coordinates in the article header any more? It doesn't make sense to include them a second time only to solve that problem. In case you don't see the problem, see this change and the one before and after. --32X 17:52, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

The co-ordinates must be visible within the body of the article - the co-ordinates in the article header are not seen when using certain Wikipedia skins. So if the co-ordinates are in the article header, they still need to be added to the body text to make sure that everyone can see them. With this new infobox, the co-ordinates are only placed in the infobox, but the functionality that is used by co-ordinates in the article header is maintained. - 52 Pickup 18:07, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Edingen-Neckarhausen

Adding template to Edingen-Neckarhausen. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Imars (talkcontribs) 12:05, 24 January 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Language and other notes

I find it ridiculous that one should work here with all these German words. How users can tackle them? :Others

Missing the population density value
Unable to show population numbers according to the format specified in WP:Style (say, 4,916 is correct, 4916 no).

--Attilios 12:26, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Having the German variable names was one of the main reasons for developing this template: to facilitate transfer of towninfo data from the German wiki. The variable names here are identical to the variables used by the template on the German wiki (the variables with English names are extra features not present on the German version). This allows users to simply copy and paste the infobox data from the German wiki (with a few small modifications). Addition of English names to all variables is planned, but I'm too busy to do that right now.
Population density is not missing, it is automatically calculated once area and population are given.
Values for area and population must be entered without any commas or spacing, in order for calculations to work (conversion of area from km² to sq.mi., and calculation of pop.density, both in people per km² and per sq.mi.). Unfortunately, there does not exist at this time (to my knowledge) any function that can remove commas and spacing prior to any calculations, hence the restrictions on data entry. Displaying the numbers in the infobox with commas is caused by the formatnum template. Displaying large numbers like area and population with commas is recommended by WP:Style-Numbers - 52 Pickup 11:11, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Added Eppelheim

I added the template to Eppelheim and Epfenbach. Is it useful for me to announce where I have used this template since it is still under construction?imars 07:38, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I think that the template is now more or less complete (just a few tweaks might be needed here and there - and i'm not sure if we should go ahead with auto-categorisation and usage for city subdivisions), so from now on, it might be necessary to announce usage whenever a problem or something unusual comes up. - 52 Pickup 08:12, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Gaiberg Wappen Graphic

I am having trouble with the graphic for the Wappen for Gaiberg. It works in the German info box. I can click on the placeholder for the image. But the image will not display. Could this be an error with the infobox? imars 11:20, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

No idea why that happens. I have seen this happen in various places before, but only temporarily. This is very strange. - 52 Pickup 13:07, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Inhabitants

I repeat, we should find a way to show inhabitants (say, more than 1,000) in the correct way specified at WP:Manual of Style. Solution would be to add a new field for density, taking the value from the de.wikipedia. Also, headers shouldn't be in capitals. Bye, and good work. --Attilios 11:04, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

referred. Agathoclea 11:15, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
Actually it is already implemented, but some of the if statements must be wrong. It will work above 10000 though. Agathoclea 11:29, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
There is no density value in the German version - it is calculated in exactly the same way as it is done here. The difference here is that formatnum is used in this version on top of density (the DE version does not use that here). It is the formatnum function which converts 12345 to 12,345. According to WP:Style-Numbers, large numbers should be separated by commas in this way. The "10000" limit was part of the template function that I have just changed to 1000 to see how it goes - but that should probably be changed back to 10000. - 52 Pickup 13:05, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
I just tested formatnum, and there would be no need to if-clause the value. Numbers of less than 1000 are unaffected. That way the template could be a little leaner. Agathoclea 13:21, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
Yes, if the limit is kept at 1000, the if-clause would not be needed. This is something that was taken from the German version of this template. - 52 Pickup 14:38, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Category:(district), as first step?

The extensive discussion above on auto-categorising this template doesn't seems to have settled the vexed question of what to do with the "stadt"s, but would there by any objection to having it feed into a single kreis-level category for each such? (We already have some of these, e.g. Cat:Marburg-Biedenkopf. Alai 01:35, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

An interesting idea, especially considering that the German wiki categorises locations in this way (albeit not automatically). Although, maybe this sort of categorisation should be done via the navbars that most articles have - for example {{Towns and municipalities in the district of Marburg-Biedenkopf}}. Not sure. - 52 Pickup 15:10, 25 March 2007 (UTC)