Template talk:Infobox Belgium Municipality

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Contents 1 Bug to repair 2 Infobox for municipalities? 3 Limitation wikipedia 4 Map bugs

[edit] Bug to repair

I got a problem with the images, headings and subheadings when I use this template. For example in Tournai, edit buttons of headings are misplaced, same for the pictures. Can anyone help? David Descamps 12:35, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Infobox for municipalities?

(the part until 3 February 2007 was copied from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Belgium)

I noticed there's not one standard infobox template for towns/municipalities in Belgium. Some towns have no infobox at all (Antwerp and many smaller places), some (non-standard) infoboxes for other towns (Leuven), and several very simple infoboxes (Mechelen, Liège (city), Namur (city)). There's also {{Infobox Belgium Municipality}}, which looks rather OK, but is not widely used (Ghent, Tournai and some smaller places), and needs some attention IMO (a map of the position within Belgium would be nice). For some inspiration see the infoboxes for towns in Germany (example: Cologne) and Greece (examples: Kalamata and the new {{Infobox Greek Dimos}}). I'd like to help improve here, thoughts? Markussep 16:42, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree that there should be a standard infobox template, and I think the Infobox Belgium Municipality is a very good one. It's essentially the same as the templates used on the Dutch and the French Wikipedia. But it does still need a tiny bit of work, for instance: how do we translate Deelgemeente into English? In the Infobox Belgium Municipality template "Commune's sections" is used, but I don't think that's an accurate translation. In a similar template I used once, I translated it as "constituent communes", but I'm not quite sure about that translation either.--Ganchelkas 16:58, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Infobox Belgium Municipality has some nice features I didn't notice at first, for instance the automatic lookup function for coordinates. Some things I would like to change about the infobox are the map (I think it's much more informative to show the location within Belgium, for instance with a dot-on-map such as {{Lageplan}} or {{Location map}}, maybe combined with the location-in-the-province-map), "coat of arms" instead of "blazon", show no seconds in the coordinates (that's way too precise for a town), improve the alignment of the population figures, hide the NIS number (the national statistics institute of Belgium is meant, isn't it?), and there are some commas instead of decimal points. About the constituent municipalities/communes, are they still administrative units, or only formerly independent municipalities? Maybe "districts" or "boroughs" would be OK, or simply "subdivisions". Markussep 18:15, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the location within Belgium is preferable. I mean, if the location within the province is shown, someone who is unfamiliar with the provinces of Belgium still doesn't have a clue as to where the municipality is located. The NIS is indeed the "Nationaal Instituut voor Statistiek" (National Institute for Statistics), but I think in English "Statistics Belgium" is more commonly used. And the "deelgemeenten" are formerly independent municipalities, but "districts" can't be used as, for instance, the municipality of Antwerp is divided into districts, but in almost all other municipalities the "deelgemeenten" are not an administrative subdivision. Perhaps it would be best to leave the part about the "deelgemeenten" out altogether, after all they can be mentioned in the text. And I think we can also leave out the telephone areas and the distribution of seats in the Municipal Council.--Ganchelkas 01:23, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Postal codes and area codes are given in several other infoboxes, I think they can stay in. About the deelgemeenten, you're probably right, and they clutter up the box if there are many, see for instance the Tournai infobox. I'll make some of the smaller changes I suggested, and I'll try to make a nice dot-on-map later. Markussep 14:30, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

About the 'Pop. pyramid' and 'City council' sections, is it OK if I change these to respectively 'Age structure' (because there isn't a graphical illustration and because it's the term used in the CIA World Factbook) and 'Governing parties' (because I think that section is meant to show which parties are in the governing coalition). Also, perhaps we should remove the 'Community' bit (as on the Dutch Wikipedia), I don't think the Communities are relevant, especially not in the Brussels-Capital Region where both the Flemish and the French Communities would have to be mentioned for each municipality. Only for the municipalities in the German-speaking Community that bit would be meaningful, but then we're talking about 9 municipalities out of 589. Plus, the fact that they're part of the German-speaking Community can be mentioned in the introductions to the articles about those municipalities. We could, perhaps, add the country instead (as on the French and Spanish Wikipedias).--Ganchelkas 15:44, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Governing parties OK, for Pop. pyramid I'd prefer Age distribution. Country should indeed be included, like it is for towns in Germany and Greece. I think the communities are relevant enough, for the Brussels region we should show two then. BTW, I've been trying to use the coordinates given in the geography subtemplate for a dot-on-map, but I can't get this subtemplate and its #switch: feature to communicate with either {{tl:Lageplan}} or {{tl:Location map Belgium}} without disrupting the whole infobox. There is a workaround (Lageplan or Location map with manually given coordinates), but that implies a lot of work. Any ideas how to fix this? Markussep 17:32, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I've removed the sections part, and inserted a "postal codes" line instead. I've added the infobox to Ixelles as an example for the Brussels municipalities. One thing I'm not happy about is the width of the columns. I can't get the right column to appear as I want it to (=wider), and therefore many lines are broken in two or more there. Markussep 12:06, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I made several minor edits to the template and some of the templates used in the template (for instance removing the "Prov. of" in the provincial templates). And unfortunately, I don't know how to fix the dot-on-map. --Ganchelkas 14:22, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I added an (optional) picture, meant for skylines or characteristic places/buildings. It's currently only active on Tournai. See if you like it, and if it needs some editing. Markussep 18:01, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

I like it, I only have one small suggestion. I think the bits saying "Coat of Arms" and "Flag" should be reinserted, but other than that everything seems fine to me. :-) --Ganchelkas 18:48, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

I've just noticed something. It seems that the coordinates of the municipality appear in the top right-hand corner of the article in some articles with the infobox (e.g. Ixelles) and that that isn't the case in some other articles (e.g. Leuven). Do you know whether this has got anything to do with the infobox?--Ganchelkas 16:22, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

If you move your mouse over the pictures, you see "Coat of arms" and "Flag", don't you think that's enough? One other suggestion: we could remove the flag altogether (I think the coat of arms is enough heraldry), and put the "location in the province" map in that position. To answer your question: Ixelles has the line {{coor title dm|50|49|N|4|22|E|}} in its code, not in the box. I guess it's a good idea to add an automatic coor title to the infobox, we need the coordinates for the map anyway. Markussep 16:28, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I've included the coor title template in the infobox. I've removed "solitary" coor title templates from articles with the infobox, since they show up on top of each other. Next, I'll remove the flag. Markussep 23:55, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I suppose that's enough, yes. I'm not sure about the flag though, there are sometimes differences between the arms and the flag. Perhaps it would be better to show both maps next to each other (sort of like in the Berlin article), and then show both the coat of arms and the flag?--Ganchelkas 10:57, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, two maps next to each other either makes the box too wide, or the maps are only intelligible with a magnifying glass, like in the Berlin infobox. There's open space in the south-west corner of the map of Belgium, maybe we can fit a flag in it. It's possible, see Composite images, but I've never worked with that. Markussep 14:00, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Neither have I. After thinking it over, I think there might be another, probably easier solution. What if we add the flags to the heading of the infobox, before the name of the municipality, where a Belgian flag used to be?--Ganchelkas 15:29, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Let's try that, with a mouse-over text "Municipal flag". It probably works for the simpler flags (Antwerp, Liège), I wonder what it looks like for the more detailed flags like Gistel or the city of Brussels. Markussep 15:39, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Works fine, the only (very minor) issue is that alternative names come under the flag (see City of Brussels). Shall we keep it like this? Markussep 16:20, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

The flags look neat. :-) And yes, I think we should keep it like this. After all, the Belgian flag also used to be above the alternative names, if I recall correctly.--Ganchelkas 16:26, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Limitation wikipedia

There is a limitation with wikipedia servers : the amount of template inclusion and on one page is limited (see Wikipedia:Template_limits). For the moment, we don't see the point now but if a page of a belgian municipality use more templates, we will have a problem. Perhaps we should make the template much simpler and manage more "noinclude" tags in it. David Descamps 14:09, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Is it possible to init some variables of a template by the use of another one? For example, "Infobox Belgium Municipality/Geography" init "lat_deg", "lat_min", "lon_deg", "lon_min", "area", ... of this template that calls it. David Descamps 14:57, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Map bugs

David Descamps and I discovered a bug in the {{Location map Belgium}} template: the dot is not in the same position for Int. Expl. and Firefox users. I replaced it with the {{Lageplan}} template, which has the right positions for both browsers. That's nice, but now there's (at least in my IE) a horizontal line above the map. It disappears when I choose class="infobox" instead of class="infobox geography", but that ruins the look of the infobox. Suggestions? Markussep 19:13, 22 March 2007 (UTC)