Template talk:Infobox Secondary school

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[edit] Suggested additional fields

This info box should really have an "Operated by" field, especially given in its international nature. The word "District" has a double meaning (at least). For many it means a physical location. But schools in the bounds of one district may be operated by one of multiple districts, be independent, or be operated by some other private organization (such as a foundation, or religious order).

As an example West Seattle Christian School is in West Seattle school district, but is not operated by the district (though it apparently has some dealing/relationship with them).

Also, its very important to have a place to say "Information current as of" (or equivilent) wording, to say the date applies to (not necessarily the date updated, but when the attendance/principal/etc were last known current according to source). --Rob 06:20, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

You're absolutely right re: "district". As I'd begun branching out into Canada I'd been seeing the limits, what with most of the Canadian "school district" equivalents being called "boards" or the like. I've been trying to come up with something generic to call it, but "operated by" makes it sound like a business venture.  :P Maybe "oversight body"? But that seems too formal. It's easily updated once we come up with something better, though.
I'm less sure about the "current as of" part. Most infoboxes don't have that, and individual pieces of information may get updated at different times. I know I've had a lot of entries where I've added some data found on the webpage, but I didn't (and in some cases couldn't) verify each piece. People shouldn't necessarily be using WP for precise info anyway, and if they really want to check when something was last changed, they can poke through the history. /blahedo (t) 02:34, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
I agree, people shouldn't be using us for precise info on attendance (etc), but that's the very reason for giving the date. By putting in the date, it becomes ok if the article isn't updated for years. Somebody in 2010 will see the attendance is "as of 2006" and will know to look to the school for current info. We have many old schools, who've changed attendance drastically, so knowing when the data was current is important. This is the same as census data we include in place articles, which is normally 5-10 years old. Also, exact date/quantity numbers are easier for fact checkers to verify use of sources. We say there are "30,007,094" people in Canada as of 2001; so that anybody can go to StatCan check the number, see it matches perfectly, and know with certainty where the number originated from, and is correct. The reader doesn't care about the last "094" people, but the fact checker does. Let's suppose I, as a fact-checker, see a school article and it says the attendance is about 1500. An external site with attendance informations (usually the schools) says its 1623. Now say there are 111 preschool students. Now, is the reason for the descrpetancy we weren't counting the preschoolers and rounded of the result? Or, is it a 100 new kids enrolled since the last edit was made? Maybe the original editor was looking at an entirely different source of the information (which I should be using). With a precise figure/date, we can quickly determine the answer. --Rob 03:22, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Also, this should allow for address information, through a "address" paramater. Currenlty, I'm just putting this in the "City" field.. --Rob 06:31, 3 February 2006 (UTC)


A few schools did have that in their infobox, and I've been removing it, thinking it was more specific than necessary for infoboxen, and if people wanted it they could look at the article body. (I see they're not actually in the bodies of the two you just updated, oops.) I still think they're a little more website and a little less encyclopaedia, but that said, I like the look and people obviously want the information in. I'll figure out how to integrate it better into the template. /blahedo (t) 02:34, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Suggested field: Primary language of instruction

We may wish to also add a field for "Primary language of instruction" (I'm open to other ideas for terminology). Currently, a few schools I can't yet add the template to are:

For the moment, I think just adding the field "Primary language of instruction" for the template will be sufficient. Any details can be given as part of the data, and not built into the template itself, I think. Details on what secondary languages are taught, can probably be mentioned in the body of the article (not the info box). Also, I'm a little hesitant to mess with the template personally, in fear of breaking something. --Rob 07:02, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Added: I would assume this would be an optional field, that would only apply when teaching a non-majority langauge (e.g. French outside Quebec in Canada). --Rob 07:04, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

For schools in this situation, I've been appending e.g. "(French language)" to the "type" field, see e.g. Collège Jeanne-Sauvé. I think that's plenty for the schools entirely run in the non-majority language. For the schools that have an immersion program that doesn't encompass all the students, I don't think that should be noted the same way in the infobox—there are lots of different special programs that different high schools have, and language immersion is just one of them. That's good fodder for the main body of the article, I think. Or, if it's really an integral part of the school's identity, you could always use a free_label, e.g.
| free_label_1 = Special programs
| free_1 = French language immersion (200 students); Special education magnet program (130 students)
and so on.
For template editing, use a sandbox: edit Template:Infobox Secondary school, select all, and copy; then edit a page named User:Thivierr/Foo and paste it in. Any editing you do there won't affect existing articles. To see the effect on an article, edit that article and substitute "{{User:Thivierr/Foo" for the first line of the infobox, and then preview it. Once you're satisfied, you can then copy-and-paste your wikicode back into the main infobox template. /blahedo (t) 23:09, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Suggested field: Nickname

IMHO, this template should have an optional "Nickname" field, as in athletic nickname. The name of a school's mascot is not necessarily related to its athletic nickname, and even if it is, one may not always be able to guess the nickname from the mascot name. Matter of fact, I'll be semi-bold and add in the "nickname" field, but put it in comments so that it won't be activated until there's a consensus for including it. — Dale Arnett 04:34, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

  • Update: Decided against adding it right now. I'll let everyone decide. — Dale Arnett 04:36, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
Since you're talking about the name of the athletic team(s), why not call it exactly that? It's often incorrect to apply that name to the entire school population, and lots of schools have nicknames for the school or the students that aren't the names of their teams. RossPatterson 04:41, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Good point. I'll wait a few days to see if there are any other comments, and then follow up with your suggestion. — Dale Arnett 06:03, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
    • I agree that athletic teams should be added. --Howard the Duck 04:53, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] International Section

Many of the pages using the Template:Infobox School2 could easily be ported to this template. However, many of the pages require a 'Teaching Staff' field. Based on discussions on other templates, these should not be put under 'faculty'. Could someone add a 'Teaching Staff' field? --W. Flake ( talk | contribs ) 19:54, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

I think I've managed to add it. Scribble Monkey 12:54, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Error

Currently this template is not displaying the Students parameter correctlly. I tried to fix this, but it didn't work. Can someone who knows more about these templates of templates please fix this --T-rex 19:06, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Could you give an example of a page where it isn't working? I just looked at a few and it seems fine. /blahedo (t) 23:16, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
It doesn't work on Mount Miguel High School or Lancaster High School (Lancaster, New York) --T-rex 23:36, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

The problem is with pages that specify more than one of the parameters students=, enrollment=, and enrolment=, like Mount Miguel High School or Lancaster High School (Lancaster, New York). In both cases, "enrollment = empty" overrode "enrolment = empty" which overrode "students = something", leading to an empty student display. I fixed both pages by deleting the empty enrollment= and enrolment=. The template probably should be fixed to tolerate this case, I'll look into it. RossPatterson 01:48, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks --T-rex 01:55, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Template is fixed. You still shouldn't code more than one of those with a non-empty value, but the template will ignore the empty ones like the doc says it should. RossPatterson 02:17, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Location formatting

Location doesn't appear to be separating the different elements correctly with spaces or line breaks. If you set City, State & Country, City is followed by a comma and a new line, but State and Country are joined into a single text string. It would be good if each element was on its own line. Scribble Monkey 13:17, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Use of term 'grades'

Would it be possible to either amend or replace the term 'grades' in this infobox, as we do not use the word in the UK. For us, the term 'Year' is used, and would be more appropriate. Tafkam 18:40, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Assistant, vice principal

I had a failed attempt to add "assistant principal" and "vice principal" as fields below "principal." Using the "free label" option is not very effective, because then the label falls too far from "principal." Anyway, would anyone please explain how editing the code works, or edit it for me? I would have thought that a copy/paste/replace job would do it, but unfortunately it didn't. I reverted my failed attempt. Thanks, — Emiellaiendiay 02:57, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Care to explain how it didn't work? A quick check of the code you added looks like it should have. RossPatterson 04:20, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
Dare I ask: do we really need to include the vice principal here? Is this information ever going to be of encyclopaedic interest? /blahedo (t) 04:37, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
I agree with blahedo. Vice-principals seem to be a bit too narrow for encyclopedic purposes. In my opinion, the assistant principals seem to be the middle-managers of the school. Surely middle management would not be included in a business's infobox. Any other thoughts? —W. Flake (talk) 21:17, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
Certainly if you carried equivalent usage across in the UK, we'd have Headteachers, Deputy headteachers and Assistant Headteachers - that could be 10 members of staff in some larger schools. One 'chief exec' is enough in my opinion. Tafkam 21:51, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge with Template:Infobox School?

Is there any reason why this template couldn't be merged into Template:Infobox School, simplifying the world and avoiding duplicate and divergent development?

Jordan Brown 07:44, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

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