Template talk:Infobox England county

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[edit] Purpose

I have designed this infobox to replace the hard-coded infoboxes currently cluttering-up the English county articles. In its present state, this infobox should be ready for inclusion on most county articles. However, there are some articles that use fields which have not yet been implemented in this template. If you change this infobox so that it 'fits' into a certain county's article, I would strongly recommend that you check to make sure that no other article has been adversely affected by your changes. The wikicode used is quite complex; I'd suggest you study it carefully before making any big changes.

Please feel free to leave any comments/suggestions/complaints below. --Marknew 10:44, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Terms

How about an explanation of the terms and examples of the sort of information to go in.GraemeLeggett 11:09, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] formatting

I've made some changes to the formatting of the template, generally for standardisation but a couple for style, in terms of font-size, alignment and including the title heading within the actual box. When I have time (next week), I will begin a wide-scale implementation of the template across the country. DJR (T) 00:54, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

I've implemented the {{English county control}} template so that the "executive" field can be disregarded. All the pages use the automatic function anyway, so this just simplifies matters. When I get back from holiday, I'm gonna see if I can find some other ways to rationalise the amount of input code required - some switches and the like might come in useful. DJR (T) 02:32, 13 September 2006

[edit] titling

It has increasingly become a problem that having the title as a caption causes wrapping/overlap with the infobox. For this reason, an increasing number of templates have switched to having the title within the infobox - {{Infobox United Kingdom}}, {{Infobox Band}}, {{Infobox London}} and many others. Obviously the vast majority of infoboxes still have the title as a caption as this was the prevailing norm for years. Nonetheless, I would strongly recommend moving the title to within the box - mainly for practical purposes but also stylistically. DJR (T) 09:18, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Worse than that, it looks wrong having a title outside the boxed area. GraemeLeggett 11:02, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Added automatic unit conversion

I added automatic unit conversion to the template and changed the corresponding parameter fields to be more concise by adding _km2. Information needs to be added in a raw formatted fashion, i.e. no commas or spaces. Otherwise, an expression error will result. The entered values (in square kilometres) will be converted to square miles and both are displayed. —MJCdetroit 01:48, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Are you sure that that didn't break any existing implementations? Andy Mabbett 09:58, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
There was only 26 articles using this template and everything looked good to me. I also formated the Template:English cerem counties, which is used by this template to place the population densities. If I missed something or something doesn't look right, let me know. —MJCdetroit 15:20, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the explanation; that sounds OK. Andy Mabbett 18:48, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The infobox is overwhelming

I know that infoboxes are extremely useful in terms of summing information about a certain subject a make it easily accessible. But putting too much information makes it encumbering. I noticed this on Kent (which is nominated for FAC), and I found that the politics and districts section takes too much place, and could easily be incorporated into a "Politics and Government" and "Districts" sections in the article. That's why I'm suggesting it be removed from the infobox. Your opinion is appreciated. CG 11:54, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

You could try using a {{collapsible list}} like what was done for the Canadian cities of Halifax, Calgary, and Saskatoon. —MJCdetroit 13:02, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] units & motto in Somerset

The article for Somerset is currently up for GA & a couple of comments have been made relating to the infobox - can anyone help? The units for area, density etc are given as square kilometers (square miles) - when the rest of the article uses Imperial eg feet, miles etc (Metric eg metres, km etc) is there any way to change the order. Also the motto is of the county council rather than the historic county. This appears at the top of the infobox & it has been suggested this should be next to the coat of arms of the council - is there any way to change this layout?— Rod talk 10:37, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Flags

I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the inclusion of flags in this template. Sure, some counties have flags established by custom and tradition, but I'm not convinced these have any official status. My message here was prompted by the addition of "a" flag at Lancashire; when did this flag gain it's status? Who designed it? From when can it be dated? Does the College of Arms or Flag institute recognised this banner? I would like to note that metropolitan counties also have flags, but these are the banners of the county councils. I suspect these are the same for the non-metropolitan counties. Can we have some input on this here please? -- Jza84 · (talk) 17:06, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] largest settlements?

How about adding a~ largest settlements field under 'admin hq'?Blackwave...... (talk) 18:33, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Surface area

Thanks to this template, a large number of articles have a concealed link to the article "Surface area" which has nothing to with area in the geographical sense. I am replacing it with "Area". Arcfrk (talk) 21:45, 14 March 2008 (UTC)