Template talk:Infobox Country/Archive 1

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This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Talk archives for Template:Infobox Country (current talk page)
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Useful modification

Where needed, use separate parameters for link targets and link labels, with external link style, see m:Help:Template#Piped link. -- Patrick

This wont work for optional fields (head of state etc. ) though. -- User:Docu

Two empty parameters seem to work, {{pl||}} gives nothing: "[[[:Template:Fullurl:]] ]".--Patrick 15:59, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Well, not quite, it is an invisible link to the Main Page.--Patrick 16:03, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Indeed, I just tried:

|-
| [[{{{headofstate}}}|{{{headofstate name}}}]]<br>[[{{{headofcountry}}}|{{{headofcountry name}}}]]
| {{{currentheadofstate}}}<br>{{{currentheadofcountry}}}
|-
| [[{{{headofgovernment}}}|{{{headofgovernment name}}}]] || [[{{{currentheadofgovernment}}}]]
|-

and it works with:

headofcountry   =|headofcountry name=|currentheadofcountry=|
headofstate     =King of the Belgians|headofstate name=King|currentheadofstate=[[Albert II of Belgium]]|
headofgovernment=|headofgovernment name=|currentheadofgovernment=|

Cool! Minor problem is that links in the form [[{{{var}}}]] are edit links.-- User:Docu

I've seen this problem too. This is kind of frustrating, since I want that nifty edit link down in the bottom of an infobox, but I can't put it in. --Bash 01:58, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The template is also available on Meta (Meta:Template:Infobox Countries-newsyntax with data on Meta:Belgium) and Test (Countries Template:Infobox Countries and Belgium, Netherlands).

~~There is currently a problem with the way images are included in the template (pssee Meta:MediaWiki 1.3 comments and bug reports#Broken images in templates ), but it used to work on test.~~ The version on Test suffers from an additional problem of the MediaWiki version in use there. -- User:Docu

Image seems to work on Belgium. -- User:Docu

It's now on Netherlands as well.

There is currently another problem with redirects inside InfoBox: when writing for instance headofstate =[[King of foo|King]]|, it does not work properly. See what happens: [1] (only "[[King of foo" appears) -- Edcolins

It's not a problem with redirects, but with the pipe character. It's a known problem Meta:MediaWiki roadmap#To be done and may be fixed.

The link to go in the "head of state" field just happens to be a redirect in most cases as only a few of the offices have yet articles written about them, most are just Redirects with possibilities to the list of office-holders.

A possible work-around for other Infoboxes would be to make the link two separate fields, but here we couldn't leave one or two of the three (headofstate, headofcountry, headofgovernment) empty, as we need to for some countries. --User:Docu

See Meta:MediaWiki 1.3 comments and bug reports#Links from template variables are broken.2Fbecome edit links for another problem. -- User:Docu

Problems with the Flag and Coat of Arms links

There seems to be a problem with the flag and the coat of arms links under the images at the top of the table. The links seem to direct to [[Flag of XX]] and [[Coat of Arms of XX]] and the problem seems to be the double underscore. I'm not really sure how to correct that properly or the role of the "{{{the}}}". -- Mic 21:39, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I think the bug is the same as the one with the "as of 2002" links, both used to work in Test.

The "the" param is for country names like "The Netherlands", "The United Kingdom" etc. -- User:Docu

In the new design, you'll specify {{{commonname}}}, which will either be the normal name "commonname = Canada" or like "commonname = the Netherlands" (lowercase the). -- Netoholic @ 23:03, 2005 Jan 10 (UTC)

head of state, government, etc

In countries like Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and United States, they have a president which is both head of state and head of government. When using this template, it leaves a row with two empty cells. Also look at United States and Argentina, the layout has changed it's aesthetics, should I modify this template?

Redundant with new design. Will now allow as many leaders as needed. -- Netoholic @ 22:57, 2005 Jan 10 (UTC)

Revert war over infobox template

It would be very helpful if the parties would settle the differences first, instead of engaging in the stupid revert war. --Gene s 10:44, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Agree, I think their ought to be a infobox standard that need s to be setteled on, by those not infoled in the edit war. --Boothy443 11:22, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Current Revision

Netoholic current revision which sees the leaders as one giant field in my opionion is ugly. It means that the field stands out and nothing lines up. Evil Monkey → Talk 10:03, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)

Okay now it looks much better. Some slight alignment issues if either the leader title or the leader names have any superscripts (ie User:Evil Monkey/North Korea infobox, which has other issues due the huge title on person has). Evil Monkey → Talk 00:46, Jan 13, 2005 (UTC)

Size of box title

Two html-directives "big" will make it too big to many names. One would be enough, and in line with fontsize+1 as earlier.

--Ruhrjung 22:32, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)

Time zones

How do we deal with countries that don't operate daylight time like North Korea [2]? Evil Monkey → Talk 00:55, Jan 13, 2005 (UTC)

set "timezone DST= not observed" and then set "utc offset DST= " to match "utc offset=". -- Netoholic @ 02:53, 2005 Jan 13 (UTC)

Alignment

We should align all subtitle elements either to the left or to the right, but not have both coexist is a chaotic unprofessional way. I'm referring to the right aligned subentries under Political leadership, contrasted with the several left-aligned subentries under GDP, Independence, etc. So what's it gonna be? —Cantus…☎ 18:52, Jan 16, 2005 (UTC)

I think for the titles, it is better to "join" them with the leader names. It may be inconsistent with the GDP and other "raw number" subtitles, but it just looks better. -- Netoholic @ 19:27, 2005 Jan 16 (UTC)

'It looks better' is a really poor excuse, to tell you the truth. You have to have a consistent format and style. As a visitor I found this inconsistency highly distracting. I suggest we solve this now. —Cantus…☎ 10:55, Jan 17, 2005 (UTC)

Massive change

be bold -- I made a massive change. I put underscores in variable names so they're more readable. I removed the political leadership for head of state and head of government, I added religions, added latest census population so you can compare with the estimated pop. and reworked the pop. and area categories, changed the order of items into, general, area, government, population, others. I updated all the affected countries using the template. —Cantus…☎ 22:10, Jan 17, 2005 (UTC)

Please hold off adding this to any more articles. Some of your changes are inconsistent with Wikipedia:WikiProject Countries guidelines for the infobox. I also see some other problems which radically reduce the application of this across all countries. -- Netoholic @ 23:14, 2005 Jan 17 (UTC)

Such as? What country does not have a head of state and head of government? —Cantus…☎ 23:28, Jan 17, 2005 (UTC)

Here are the problems I see:

population density rank - List of countries by population density does not have position information, making this hard to use.
- It does now. —Cantus…☎ 03:19, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)
population census year, population census - Where is this data supposed to be pulled from? Sourcing this will be near-impossible.
- Near impossible? Try http://statbel.fgov.be/census/links_en.asp. —Cantus…☎ 00:49, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)
religions - Superfluous, contentious. Religion is not a quality of a nation, it is a consequence of the people living there.
head of state, head of government - the previous, more open-ended method was better. Together with the title and name, this will almost always force the right-hand column to wrap lines. Putting the titles in the left column worked very well.

In the future, it is critical that major changes be proposed before changing the template, since it affects so many articles. Make the change on Template:Infobox Country test and try it on an article or two. -- Netoholic @ 23:44, 2005 Jan 17 (UTC)

The head of state/government seperation causes issues for countries like New Zealand, Australia, Canada which now don't have Governor-Generals (or the equivalent) listed in the infobox. Evil Monkey → Talk 00:44, Jan 18, 2005 (UTC)

I object to adding head of state and head of government entries for reasons stated at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries/Archive4#Unilateral additions. Please read the lengthy discussion there so I wont need to repeat myself and respond here if necessary. I fail to see a reason for changing the order. Can you explain why? --Ji ang 06:41, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Constant changes

These constant changes – massive or not – are very confusing to editors who try to modify infoboxes in country articles, ending up with something completely unpredictable. In addition, it is difficult to follow the history of an article given that the current template is so different from what it was when introduced to the article. Sheer frustration may lead the template to be abandoned from many articles – I foresee massive flight from solution (C) to solutions (A) and (B). --Eddi 21:52, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

That is my worry as well. When this was first re-introduced, I tried to base it very closely on the existing Infobox standard at Wikipedia:WikiProject Countries. Unfortunately, some changes were made yesterday which radically changed that. I fully support that no changes be made to this template which would result in edits to the articles unless the change has been proposed here first and tested using Template:Infobox Country test. I've largely reverted those last changes today, to bring this closer to the standard infobox for countries. -- Netoholic @ 22:03, 2005 Jan 19 (UTC)

Netoholic, I beg you I just BEG YOU, don't start a revert war. The leaders aligned to the right look bad. You probably don't know how how bad it looks because you haven't seen how every sub-header information aligned to the right (GDP/pop/area) look. It is a disaster. I AM BEGGING YOU. —Cantus…☎ 22:30, Jan 19, 2005 (UTC)

Finally, welcome back to the Talk page. The leader name alignment solves more problems right now than it causes. I think it looks very nice to the eye, as well, and you're the only one I've heard complain about it. It greatly simplifies what is required in the articles - almost all countries have more than one leader, meaning they'd have to code it like "[[King]] &^nbsp;-&^nbsp; [[Prime Minister]]" using your method, as opposed to "[[King]] [[Prime Minister]]" using the current one. Neither is ideal, but it is flexible and easier the current way. Plus I think it looks nice with the title next to the name, and you're the only one to complain so far. -- Netoholic @ 22:45, 2005 Jan 19 (UTC)

(post-Valium) Hello, Netoholic. I would advice you to change it back. It may look nice at first sight, but when you see further down the table, and you see the other sub-header information is aligned differently, it is a little disruptive in my opinion. I would like to see the leaders aligned to the left, just as the rest of the information in the table. Also, the Political leadership header seems highly ambiguous. Many heads of state don't have executive powers, so they are hardly political leaders. Also the title itself could imply the president of any political party. A line must be drawn. The previous format, head of government and head of state was the least ambiguous. What is exactly wrong using that? I welcome your comments. —Cantus…☎ 22:59, Jan 19, 2005 (UTC)

I understand they are not aligned the same as other subheadings, I accept that and don't see a problem. Please see below for discussion on the section heading itself. -- Netoholic @ 00:25, 2005 Jan 20 (UTC)

I think the overall infobox layout should conform to Wikipedia:WikiProject Countries, and changes should be discussed there first. That would slow down changes here and in the country articles. Alignment is not pivotal, but of course it shouldn't look ugly. --Eddi 00:44, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

By the way, would it be possible to combine some of the above threads with this and the next one? The same subjects seem to repeat themselves. --Eddi 00:48, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

"Political leadership"

The lable "Political leadership" is not good for such republics and constitutional monarchies with parliamentarism where a political role of the head of state is prohibited by written law or by convention. I wonder if it wouldn't be enough to just let "President" and "Primeminister" stand without any particular heading? /Tuomas 23:59, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yes, although there would be no cell separation between them, which is why, IMHO has not been used. But I welcome your comments in that said header is inappropriate. —Cantus…☎ 00:35, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)

I had a short exchange on my talk page about this, and commented that if Kings are not political leaders, then why are they mention on the Politics of XXX sub-articles. To be honest, I think Political leaders is very apt in all situation, even if there is an occasional slight problem with the connotation. If we can think of a more universal header, that's fine, but so far no one has made any suggestions. Other options might be... No header, "Leaders", "National leaders", "Government leaders", "Heads of State/Government", ...throw out some more ideas. Let's all keep in mind that this Infobox will never, and should not try to, contain a complete representation of the country. We need it only to be used to summarize and compare/contrast countries. -- Netoholic @ 00:25, 2005 Jan 20 (UTC)

The only way you can truly compare a country with another is if you use the exact same parameters. You are doing the opposite. —Cantus…☎ 00:41, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)

My suggestion would be Head(s) of state and government or something in that direction. If it is one person, the header would be OK, and if it is separate persons, it would be OK, too, even if one of them has no political power. --Eddi 00:44, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

If the countrybox doesn't fit with the country, then it won't be used. I've just made a change to Template Infobox test. Plese see. To me it looks OK. I would accept that for Finland. :-) /Tuomas 00:51, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

If we agree that the "political leadership" needs no title, we could combine the "Form of government" and the leader information into the same table row. ~~See sample Template talk:Infobox Country test.~~ Cantus is messing with the test template, but Country test&oldid=9497290 here is the version I was talking about. -- Netoholic @ 04:42, 2005 Jan 20 (UTC) (edited)

Official language?

The part of the infobox on all countries which says "Official language" has bugged me for some times. Countries like Sweden and the United States don't have official languages, but it's pretty obvious which language you would want to learn if you were going there. Instead the infobox now reads the unhelpful "Official language: none" with a small footer about which language dominates. The profiles/ BBC country profiles, for instance, instead lists Major languages instead. I propose we should too. We might also think about including Major religion, but I assume that would lead to some controversies and discussions (should atheism be counted, is Christianity one or several religions, etc.) —Gabbe 02:25, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)

Is there any indication of how many countries have an official language and how many don't? For the US and Sweden, a footnote or other note could be use to indicate there is no official one. I dislike using "Major languages", because that is a matter for census-takers, and could lead to people putting in percentages or numbers of speakers (a direction which is bad and part of the reason "Religions" isn't part of the infobox). The infobox should ideally show what language the state/nation government works in. -- Netoholic @ 03:19, 2005 Jan 20 (UTC)

Wikipedia to the rescue: List of official languages by country. Official language states that about half the countries have official languages. Personally I don't like the idea of having religion listed on the infobox. Evil Monkey → Talk 03:28, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)

Religion was added at some point, but it has since been deleted. I agree the languages section should be renamed, but to Languages, noting those that are official, i.e. English (official). —Cantus…☎ 03:48, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. As long as the "Official languages" bit goes, since it only applies to some countries, and can in addition be very misleading. —Gabbe 04:57, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)

To be honest, I prefer neither option.... but this is a subject for Wikipedia:WikiProject Countries standardization, not here. This template just implements the standard. Suggest this conversation be moved to that talk page. -- Netoholic @ 05:28, 2005 Jan 20 (UTC)

Adverse effects of "no break at white space"

For many infobox rows, the "no break at white space" layout is brilliant. However, in some articles there are a couple of long rows that cause the table to expand inadvertently. See for example Norway. Inserting manual  's doesn't help much. Of course one could try to shorten the information, but I look for other solutions first. Any ideas? --Eddi 13:44, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, shorten the information, or move the extra bits to a footnote. This is to describe the primary system of government, as found in List of countries by system of government. -- Netoholic @ 15:01, 2005 Jan 20 (UTC)

OK – done. (Sorry, hadn't checked the list. The list itself is a bit informal, but the section titles seem all right.) --Eddi 18:55, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Support for editing this page

I'm trying to make a really small change, yet Netoholic keeps reverting me saying I don't have the support to make this change. Funny thing is nothing Netoholic changes seems to have any support. Administrators can make any changes they desire, but us regular users, need Talk support.

The point of the matter now is the width of the table. By Wikipedia: WikiProject Countries the maximum width of a table should be 300 pixels.

Netoholic's style="white-space: nowrap;" makes some tables excessively large, breaking the 300 pixel rule. Netoholic is using this code so that the leaders' titles and name are aligned, but at the expense of having the form of government make the table as long as is necessary to accomplish this.

My solution is to use ''style="vertical-align: bottom;" so that all the text is kept at the bottom. This way the leaders' titles and names are always aligned. The only problem with this is that the Government header is not at the top. I have attempted to fix this on a test page, without success. I still think this is a much better solution, which keeps the table at 300px.

What do you think? Can I make this edit?

Cantus can edit

name

Cantus cannot edit

name

Thanks. —Cantus…☎ 02:15, Jan 21, 2005 (UTC)

Your poll is a tactic you've used before. I am not saying you can't edit, I am saying edit the test template, and then state your intended changes here. The table is in a very good state right now, and discussion is progressing well among everyone else on this page, but you. -- Netoholic @ 02:48, 2005 Jan 21 (UTC)

I don't really see a lot of discussion going on here, only personal attacks from you towards me. The table is in an unstable state right now, creating great havoc to many articles. As you see nobody but you has commented on this topic yet, so changes will be very slow if you wait for community support. It's just you and me Neto. —Cantus…☎ 05:17, Jan 21, 2005 (UTC)

PS: You tell me to edit the test page, yet you revert my edits even there! —Cantus…☎ 05:20, Jan 21, 2005 (UTC)

If you count me in, there have been others commenting, too, although I try to be as neutral as possible. (Even posted identical comments on both talk pages.) Would it be an alternative to let other editors test and implement you two's suggestions, and let others evaluate conflicting suggestions, instead of you two doing it yourselves? I guess none of the changes are so urgent that it would be impossible to wait some hours to have them tested. One would of course need to gather a couple of volunteers, preferably a balanced panel, which may prove difficult but not impossible. I don't know if this mode of operation is acceptable on wikipedia, or even doable. What do you think? (BTW if my meddling is upsetting please let me know and I'll try to find alternative channels for my neutrality...) --Eddi (Talk) 09:21, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Changes to what information is presented, or the row order, should be decided at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries. This template is meant only as an implementation of those guidelines. I reverted the format of the test template when your changes would conflict with that. And no, I am not attacking you personally, or at all, and no, the articles using this current version of the template are in fact quite stable and look very nice. Use of this template is increasing by a few per day - evidence that editors think so too. Let's not fight about whether we are or were fighting, just get on proposing changes, testing them, and implementing. I will help you at every step, if you'll trust that process. -- Netoholic @ 05:31, 2005 Jan 21 (UTC)

Defunct countries

How are defunct countries handled in this infobox? Should a parallel infobox be created? This is in particular reference to Confederate States of America, but there are obviously numerous former nations (Yugoslavia, etc.). -Willmcw 23:32, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Cantus latest change

Oy veh. FFS, stop buggering about. Cantus's changes were not major, though they do require a number of minor changes that he has said he will accomplish (and would not be the end of the world if they took a day or two to be done, no less). This is ridiculous. James F. (talk) 16:02, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

And I had already accomplished that in five minutes, but it took Netoholic 5 seconds to unmade all the work I had done by reverting the 30+ pages I had updated. This project must touch him on a personal level. He is so possessive about it. —Cantus…☎ 16:28, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

Encouraging you to work better with your other editors is also a motivation of mine. You've gotten in trouble before for edit warring, and should try to take my advice. I really think you have some good ideas usually, but your tactics are terrible. I don't want to see your editing rights restricted further than they have been in the past. Netoholic @ 17:10, 2005 Feb 10 (UTC)

I'm not following any advice from you (and never have). I posted that as a testament in case you revert me again tomorrow. —Cantus…☎ 17:18, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

"I don't want to see your editing rights restricted further than they have been in the past." You have the nerve to say this and then go to the Admin's board to denounce I have violated my revert parole on UK and demand I get blocked for a week. How hypocritical. —Cantus…☎ 12:16, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

I don't want to see you further restricted, but that doesn't mean that I disagree about your current status. If you revert an article more than once in a day, you may be blocked for up to a week. I think that is fair considering your habit of getting into silly edit wars over minutae. -- Netoholic @ 18:53, 2005 Feb 11 (UTC)

Cantus' proposed change to the cctld field

Tomorrow at around this time I will be correcting a bug in the template which affects some pages (ie. Norway, UK). There is no way around this other than to change the master template. It deals with cctld and the fact that it is a wikilink in the template right now. I will be removing this link and updating all of the country templates (more than 30) is one sweep. I will proceed at the said time if nobody objects. I had already done this, but wikicop Netoholic reverted me arguing that I needed his authorization (??!) to make this change. I will be proceeding again tomorrow, so I'm letting you all know in advanced (to the three of you). —Cantus…☎ 16:15, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

I've implemented a kludgy solution on Norway & UK for the time being. This is not about me being a "wikicop", or that your change is particularly a bad one. The point is that someone else may discover a problem with it, or have an even better solution. The idea behind proposing changes on this page (especially those that require hitting all the articles) is to reduce the rework and prevent conflict. Except for the sarcasm, the above note would have been good to see ahead of time.

All this being said, I think the change is a good one, though we may lose a little consistency without the somewhat restrictive nature of the present one. After your change, any old text will be able to go into that field, possibly leading to drift between articles. With so few "exceptions" like UK/Norway, is it worth it? In any case, this is so minor that, if accepted, we should perform this in the future along with other changes, so that articles only need to be touched once. -- Netoholic @ 16:49, 2005 Feb 10 (UTC)

Warning from Cantus

Nobody has complained to my proposed change, so I will proceed with my change. This is a testament so that Netoholic doesn't revert me on grounds of not proposing this change in advance or not waiting sufficiently to make it. —Cantus…☎ 12:44, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

Why are you in such a hurry? Let's pair this minor change with the potential other major changes being proposed on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries. So yes, I am complaining because we have other changes to implement, and this one is dramatically less critical. Also, this template talk page is very likely on only a small number of talk pages. Why not make a short post on the WikiProject talk page pointing to the discussion here? -- Netoholic @ 15:03, 2005 Feb 11 (UTC)

There's no reason why I should delay this change any longer. As you say it is a minor change. Minor but important, because the template is currently broken, and that has to be fixed as soon as possible. So I will proceed. Jdforrester and me agree. You do not. 2 to 1. I have support. I shall proceed. —Cantus…☎ 16:58, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

Although it's not ideal, nothing is broken, so will you please calm down and wait a bit? -- Netoholic @ 18:50, 2005 Feb 11 (UTC)

Capitals_coordinates

I've made a template for handling graphical coordinates in a uniform manner (also providing a link), see Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)#Suggestion:_Template_for_geographic_coordinates. Regretfully, templates currently cannot be used in template arguments (reported as a bug), so probably practical implementation of this must wait untill this bug is fixed. Infobox_Country does not need to be changed. -- Egil 06:40, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I regret to say, but I think this is really unecessary for such a small piece of text which can be added manually on all occasions. —Cantus…☎ 11:43, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

Ease of entry is not an issue. The two main points are:

A. Ensure a coordinated appearance of coordinates, like it is for dates.

B. Making coordinates usable as data, not just text. This opens up possibilities for one-click linking to various map resources, just like ISBN references now click-through to library and bookshop resources. In the first version, the only external ref available is to Mapquest, as a proof of concept. But it also opens to links to any map/photo/geology/geography resource. Having coordinates as data would also open up possibilities for reverse mapping, i.e. maps with icons that bind to Wikipedia articles.

See Lima for an example. -- Egil 12:29, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'm not against your proposal, which is a good idea, but the fact that you seem to have created multiple templates for multiple types of coordinates. Why not just use one which everybody can remember? I also suggest making the entire coordinates an external link. —Cantus…☎ 12:40, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, but it was the best I could manage, given the very simple macro (or template) mechanism of current Wikipedia. Hopefully it is not too bad:

   {{coor xxx yy|aa|bb|cc|dd|ee|ff|}}

Where:

xxx is "dms", "dm" or "d", depending on if you specify degrees/minutes/seconds, degrees/minutes or just degrees.
yy is either SE,SW,NW,NE depending on which hemisphere
aa, bb, cc, dd, ee, ff is the degrees, minutes, seconds listed one by one (4 items for "dm", and 2 for "d"

I agree that the link really should be for the entire coordinate, but I'm a bit hesitant to do so for an external link, planning to wait untill the Wiki special page mechanism was in place. But perhaps it is worth a try. -- Egil 21:47, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

US Flag

Hi Cantus,

Sorry I wasn't clearer on the US Flag page in the first place when I made a vector flag, rasterized it to png format, and put it online a few weeks ago. I used the "old glory red" and "old glory blue" colors already (though i think i messed up the blue perhaps), but thought they looked somehow off. Anyway, the proportions of the flag were in fact, researched. info (including proportions -- see the bottom of the page). I could make a version with nice antialiased stars like the version you made. I decided however, that the benefit of having 3 colors in my color palette outweighed any benefit from having antialiased stars (your version is 5 times the filesize). If you want, i can try to make a version with nice antialiased stars, and even antialiased stripes, so that the proportions are more correct, down to subpixel accuracy. I think though that what's there now should do the ticket. Anyway, thanks for the research. I hope the flag i put up has okay proportions. If you or someone else wants to change the colors, I'd be fine with that. --Jacobolus (unsigned)

Hello. I was seriously looking for a 10:19 EPS file of the US flag, but all I found was a 7:12 from the US Army. If you could make a reaaaaally large US flag (say, 5,000 px in width), I could resize it in Photoshop to anti-aliasing it and save it as PNG and reupload it, no problem. I mean, neither ratio is official. —Cantus…☎ 07:04, Feb 13, 2005 (UTC)

Some anomalies - India, Singapore

India has a lot of fields such as National Song and Republic Day which need to be taken into account here. Also in some places like Singapore fields such as capital and largest city are redundant. I need these fields to be removed in the Singapore page. (Would prefer if the talk was moved to the Talk:India page) Nichalp 19:30, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)

If you switch to the Template:Infobox Country, you basically get the properties of this template. Some properties that are important for some countries, are not "broad" enough for the general template. However, you may insert several properties in one, especially if they are thematically related. For example, if you would like both an independence day and a republic day, you could write it as follows:

 sovereignty_type = [[Independence]] <br> [[Republic]] |
 established_dates = [[15 August]] [[1947]] <br> [[26 January]] [[1950]] |

I think this approach would work for India. With respect to Singapore, I'm not sure if one can omit fields as long as this template is used. If some fields are utterly inappropriate there is the option to create a country-specific template (like Template:India infobox), but then the convenience of using a general template would be lost. --Eddi (Talk) 00:19, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I would prefer it the infobox was more flexible to include portions which are specifically informative on a country. Also I have strong reservations on the timezone part. Many countries don't use DST (almost all in the tropics), so I feel some modifications should be made so that the term DST does not appear in such infoboxes so the Time zone is displayed in a single line.

I would prefer it if there is no data in a field, the field should not be displayed. ie. If Largest city is left blank for Singapore, that line would not be rendered. Nichalp 19:46, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

The thing is that this is an issue with all templates. With the current software it is impossible to not include fields if there is no data for them. Evil Monkey∴Hello 21:33, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

User:Cantus was right; the template is limiting. — Davenbelle 00:48, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC)

I would suggest that the timezone field be handled like the established dates / leaders fied, as the current format isn't particularly suited for the majority of countires. Of the countries currently using the template (34), 22 of them have either "Not Used" or "Varies" for the DST. Also this would give the countries which span more that one time zone to list the time zones used (eg, USA could use EST,CST,MST,PST,etc instead of just giving a range). I didn't take an exact count but I think the "Census" field is also not used that much. srs 23:39, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Font Sizing

Hi Cantus, I see that you’re obviously adamant that “National Motto” and “National Anthem” be in a larger font size, and I understand that this may well be for the sake of consistency. I, however, prefer that they be in small font for reasons of aesthetics and relevancy. Given that “National Motto” and “National Anthem” are of less importance than the other facts listed, they, consequently, should be in small font. Also, since many nations do not have national mottos, it seems silly to announce in large font “None”. Additionally, many countries have long mottos and anthems, that, in your larger font size, extend several lines, enlarging the table overall – which should be kept ‘lean’.

Anyways, since I do not like to become embroiled in ‘revert wars’, I put up for vote/discussion this matter, so that there is not one sole determiner. --Cyberjunkie 03:18, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

But they ARE in a smaller size than the rest of the text in the table. (????) —Cantus…☎ 03:34, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, all fonts, aside from the headings, are in size 95%. And if there is a difference, it is certainly indistinguishable and not small. I know this is probably a petty issue, but I do believe the table benefits from this sizing.--Cyberjunkie 03:45, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If it's true as you say that all text is in 95%, it means that Cantus's were in 0.95*0.95. Font-size 95% is smaller than the regular font size but larger than small text. Personally I think that 95% is too large. I prefer small. - Jeltz talk 09:35, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

National motto and anthem are 95% * 95%, not 95% as the rest of the text. This makes it smaller than the table text, yet not so small as using . It is not that hard to comprehend. This is how I see it:

—Cantus…☎ 20:02, May 2, 2005 (UTC)

Using is better, both in the look and function. -- Netoholic @ 20:11, 2005 May 2 (UTC)

It depends on what font, browser, OS you are using. For me, using , the anthem and motto look the same size the "flag" and "coat of arms" look in the screenshot to the right. And that is awfully small for important information. —Cantus…☎ 22:49, May 2, 2005 (UTC)

Since the opinions of those in the above discussion don't seem to persuade Cantus, perhaps a formal consensus will.--Cyberjunkie 07:48, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Cantus, please stop reverting the change of font-size. What we need is a discussion and not a revert war. We should isntead try to reach a consensus. I personally prefer small like Cyberjunkie but Wikipedia is not an experiment in democracy and 2 against 1 isn't much of a majority. What browsers do you use? I use Firefox on Windows XP. Jeltz talk 11:20, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Actually, it is three against one. Voting on changes is something that Cantus has himself used before, so the result should be acceptable. Discussion has not assuaged Cantus as yet.--Cyberjunkie 12:16, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Vote

Should the font for "National Motto" and "National Anthem" be sized (this size)?

Yes

--Cyberjunkie 07:48, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
Jeltz talk 13:31, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Human Development Index

Do people think that this should be a field on the template?--nixie 00:51, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Generally speaking, results of specific international studies shouldn't be included here. It is fine to include them at the end of the article under International rankings. —Cantus…☎ 07:04, May 6, 2005 (UTC)

That's what I was trying to avoid :) --nixie 07:06, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Categories: Template talk archives