Template talk:Infobox nrhp/Archive 1

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Suggestions, multiuse

The National Register is not a primary interest of mine, but I have dealt with many NR articles either from interest in historic architecture, or historic areas of the Nat'l Park System. However, I tried this template yesterday for "Tate House (Georgia)" and had some thoughts:

  • Why not make the template multiuse, opening it up for two related NPS programs: Nat'l Historic Landmarks (as subset of the NR, anyway) and National Natural Landmarks? This could be done the same way the Template:Infobox Protected area differentiates IUCN categories. You would then need additional optional fields for NHL or NNL designation date.
  • Change "Governing body" to "Owner"
  • Have "Location" correspond to the place name in the NR database, with state name
  • Drop "Nearest city" and add "County" -- again, another NR database column
  • I would also be tempted to eliminate the locator dot option altogether, and promote a picture-only rather than a map option.

— Eoghanacht talk 12:21, 8 November 2006 (UTC)


When I created the template, I basically copied the Protected area infobox and tweaked it a bit, just so we had something for the project. I expected/hoped that others would see ways to improve it.  :)
Now, regarding the suggestions:
  • I do like the idea of distinguishing the Historic Landmarks, as they're automatically added to the Register as part of the process. And to my mind, they have more FA-article potential, so it'd be nice to bring out that aspect. As far as the Natural Landmark part, most of them don't seem to be on the Register, strangely enough. For example, only two of the ones in Florida are NRHP sites. We could add a category for it to the template, but I'm not sure there's enough overlap. Could maybe other folks look at the List of National Natural Landmarks and see how many in their states are also NRHP sites?
  • Ah, the "Governing body"/"Owner" dichotomy. This one's tricky, b/c it's not always easy to tell who owns the properties. Governmental ones can usually be discovered (federal, state, county, city), but when it's privately owned, not so much. Could put an extra field for owner, though. Then maybe change "governing body" to "Administrated by" and have it automatically be NRHP.
  • Can't tell you how many entries have wrong locations on the Register. Misspelled town names, even "City unavailable". Not to mention moving (e.g., a midget submarine listed on the Register in Key West was relocated to Texas years ago!). The correct city, with the state, sounds fine, though.
  • If "location" becomes for city, a "county" field wouldn't be amiss. A number of archaeological sites down here in Florida aren't in any particular city, and often have their addresses restricted. But you can almost always tell what county they're in.
  • I'd go for removing the map option, but so many of the sites don't have readily available pictures. Or decent ones, anyway. And it's nice to have some image in the infobox, even if it's a map. I've even noticed some folks using state maps, with the site's location within the state, which to me is even nicer. Admittedly, I've seen plenty of actor infoboxes with no pictures, and they're OK, I guess.
Ultimately, though, all the fields are optional anyway. When not sure, I hope folks will leave them empty. Better no information than inaccurate would seem logical to me.
I'll probably add at least one or two more of the optional fields, and see what feedback is overall. Much thanks for the ideas!  :) -Ebyabe 13:53, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
How about a category for National Monuments? Look at the List of National Monuments of the United States to see what I mean. There's not many, but I think they're mostly NRHP sites too. -Ebyabe 14:01, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
Actually, now that I think about it, the National stuff is already pretty much covered in the Protected area infobox. Rather than add categories to this template, like the IUCN, I think it might be better to use the Protected area infobox. I figured the NRHP infobox more for "unprotected" areas (houses, commercial properties, etc.). Not wanting to reinvent the wheel, essentially, but paint it a new color. :) --Ebyabe 15:04, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
My thought for type/status (similar in coding used for the IUCN field on the Protected area infobox) would be to enter either "NR" "NHL" or "NNL" and it would automatically display a color coded banner under the property title indicating its designation. (Obviously, NHLs are automatically NRs also.) Adding an Nat'l Natural Landmark option made sense not because they are also NRs, but because it is a sister program of NHLs -- and therefore may benefit from a similar infobox. It was just a thought -- if you don't like it, ignor it.
As for National Monuments (NMs), they are an odd breed. You cannot categorize them as a group easily -- here's why: All Nat'l Historic Sites, Historical Parks, Memorials, Battlefields and the like are automatically listed on the register as historic units of the National Park Service (NPS), as per the 1966 law (and therefore they are sub categories of the Wikipedia NR category). However, not all NMs are administered by the NPS. Also, the president can proclaim NMs for two reasons: 1) cultural value (i.e. historic) and 2) scientific value (i.e. natural). Many NMs were automatically added to the NR in 1966 (or when established afterwards) because they were cultural sites given to the NPS. But there are natural NMs under the NPS that are not on the register -- likewise there are cultural NMs under other agencies that have never been listed on the NR. A minor project of mine has been to wiki-categorize all NMs on the register by their state listing. I still have not finished. — Eoghanacht talk 16:47, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
I added an option for National Historic Landmarks. Since protected areas only has an option for "Natural Monuments", which doesn't fit for buildings, I thought, "Why not?" See the article for the Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine for an example, until we add a "how-to" here. --Ebyabe 21:07, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

I'll take a look when I can (maybe not till early next week, though). — Eoghanacht talk 22:01, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

My infobox thoughts

  • Yes, an optional line for NHLs, as I suggested over at the project talk page!
  • How about setting it up a la the city and road infoboxes so it could include both an image and location map? That way you could use a map for a large historic district (there are many) if a picture won't do (Or use the pictures of individual buildings within it elsewhere in the article). Daniel Case 15:07, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Got a specific example? Any will do. Funny, my first major project for the Florida list was doing stubs for all the historic districts here (about 200), so I know what you mean. --Ebyabe 15:12, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
  • How does one link to a picture uploaded to the Commons? As of right now, it automatically enters image: in front of the syntax killing the link:
image:commons:image:StAnnesHillHDMap.svg

Thanks!--Kjmoran 17:53, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

    • I think there may have been a scaling problem in scaling that SVG file down to 288 pixels. When I tried it at 273 pixels (half the size of the old image), it worked fine, but 288 pixels just gave me a blank image. I took the liberty of editing your original SVG file from the Commons, scaling it to 288 pixels, and uploading it under a new name at the Commons. This appears to work properly in the infobox. Also, you don't need to specify attributes like the image width or thumbnails or anything else. I don't know if it'll break the infobox template, but it won't do what you want it to do. --Elkman - (Elkspeak) 18:29, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
      • Thank you! --Ebyabe 18:37, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
I hope this isn't a problem, but I changed the default with to 300px, since a lot of other infoboxes default to this. This change is particularly useful for those pages which use more than one infobox (such as San Francisco Armory), allowing the infoboxes to be stacked evenly. Peter G Werner 20:36, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

USA

  • Should it be clarified that this is the United States National Register of Historic Places in the infobox? --Dystopos 22:38, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
    • You've got a point. Changed it to U.S., but links to United States. Don't wanna cram too many words in the box headings, that's all. Also changed the National Historic Landmark and Registered Historic District headings. --Ebyabe 01:28, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

nrhp_type

What's the recommended way to deal with NHLs that are Historic Districts? What should be entered as nrhp_type? -Ipoellet 21:27, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

  • nrhp_type is "hd" in this case. That gets expanded to {{Infobox nrhp/NRHP hd}} when the main Infobox nrhp template is called. --Elkman (Elkspeak) 21:57, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
    • That bothers me, though, because it loses some information. The tag "hd" leaves open whether the district is a NHL or just a NR district. My thought is to add a template subpage for {{Infobox nrhp/NRHP nhld}}, which would display as "U.S. National Historic Landmark District". 'Course I don't know how to do that. Thoughts? -Ipoellet 03:26, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
      • You know, you're right. It's a small subset of the historic districts, but worth noting. In fact, when I was doing the stubs for List of Registered Historic Places in Florida, I started with the districts. And made the mistake of calling them all landmark districts in the articles before I understood the distinction. After I'd already finished them. So I'm still undoing that. Live and learn, I guess. Anyway, I'll cobble something together for the landmark districts, that's easy. Deciding what color, that's the hard part. :) --Ebyabe 13:37, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
        • Done! --Ebyabe 14:26, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
          • So cool. I even like the color selection. -Ipoellet 14:42, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

What about sites that are simply listed on the NRHP, but are not NHLs or HDs? Leave it blank? If so, how can a new editor know that info is not simply missing? I suggest putting "nrhp_type = nrhp" into this field in this case.--BillFlis 23:16, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

It defaults to that, essentially. One only needs to add a parameter if it's an HD or NHL or such. It's explained in the documentation above. -Ebyabe 00:11, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Category:Historic districts and this infobox

Hey folks...a couple of things:

Category:Historic districts was getting unmanageably large, and since the majority of the articles were from the US, I split those out into Category:Historic districts in the United States. However, the new subcategory still has way more than 200 articles. The obvious solution would be to create subcategories for the states with the most historic district articles, but it turns out that the majority of the articles are being placed in the category by this infobox. I don't know enough about template code to get around this, or even if it's possible, but it would be great if someone did.

Also, Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Historic districts/Infobox example and this talk page are being placed in the Historic districts in the United States category. This should not be happening, as Wikipedia pages are not historic districts. -Nogood 09:26, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Template:Location map vs Superimpose

The location map template seems to support lat / long, and since the template takes that as inputs, why not use this when they are present, and only use the superimpose when an x / y are present? pw 18:23, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I went ahead and made this change, it seems to work. If an image value is present it does the old behavior, if not, but lat and long are present, it uses the locator map. Let me know if any problems. pw 16:38, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
I added a locmapin parameter that will use a more specific location map, if one is available. See Template:Location map/doc for a listing of maps available for specific states. --Elkman (Elkspeak) 20:58, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

How do I use this with...

...another infobox? I just created Columbia Bridge (New Hampshire) and added the NRHP infobox after the Bridges infobox. In Cornish-Windsor Covered Bridge, I added the Bridges infobox to an existing article containing the NRHP infobox. They both look clumsy. How should I do this? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Denimadept (talk • contribs) 03:39, August 23, 2007 (UTC).

Forced image size

The forced image size is oversized and quite large on most screens, and there seems to be no way to add a parameter to size the image used in the infobox smaller. If there is one, please explain how that is done, but if there isn't, could someone please add a parameter for optional image sizing? Thanks! Ariel♥Gold 02:07, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

New sizing parameters

10-Oct-2007: I am adding new sizing parameters named "imagesize" and "mapwidth" to the current revision of "Template:Infobox nrhp" defaulting as:

imagesize=260px (current default, was 300px days ago)
mapwidth=220 (new default, was 300 yesterday; omit "px")

Those sizing parameters are similar to options found in other infoboxes, such as for cities/towns. However, I also believe that an optional map should be displayed at the bottom, along with the top image, if available, in the manner of other infoboxes which can display both a top-image and bottom-map. For that reason, the "mapwidth" parameter is separate from the "imagesize" parameter. Changes to display both image+map are in testing for a later revision. -Wikid77 12:35, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Bugs October 2007

10-Oct-2007: Coding of templates can be very tedious. As of 2007, the template MediaWiki language ("{{#if: ...}}") is still a beta technology, and so bugs have been difficult to detect. In particular, templates cannot (yet) detect commas in numbers or "px" added to a number, which is trivial in older computer languages.

Recent bugs have included:

  • Invalid "px" for Template:Location_map width=260. Do not add "px" for the width parameter in Location_map, or else the map may expand across the screen.
  • Showing "colspan=2" below "{{{name}}}" which was meant to span 2 columns, not appear as visible text. The text can be hidden by "<includeonly> colspan=2 </includeonly>". Wikitables tend to be very fragile for keyword placement, but those tables usually work quite well, if every detail is absolutely correct.
  • Misspelled parameter names: The template MediaWiki language does not yet generate a concordance listing of names used, so misspelled parameter names are difficult to spot: proof-reading involves character-by-character validation across 30,000 characters or more. Yes, it is every bit that friggin wretched. Beware invalid "lon_degrees" should be "long_degrees" even though prefix "lon_" is common for longitude in other templates. A trick is to search for misspellings ("lon_" or such) to see if they occur where they shouldn't, or load a template into a spell-checker and scan the list of words used.

Please be patient about the templates; the technology is slowly improving, and everyone is suffering about templates. In a world where college dropouts are computer billionaires, it is good to have a huge sense of humor about compu-trash, but yes, phenomenally better technology is easy, when focusing beyond today's dinky computers. -Wikid77 22:36, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Whatever has been tweaked in the template, doesn't take, it must be somewhere else, because no version of this template shows correctly, the current revision is the one from Sept 29. IvoShandor 17:01, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
See above but this appears, for example: "Kellogg's Grove

(U.S. National Register of Historic Places) Optional parameters: * barcolor - background hue (default: PaleTurquoise)" IvoShandor 17:03, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

  • That was actually a problem with {{Infobox nrhp/NRHP nrhp‎}}. There was a "noinclude" tag missing in that template. I fixed that, and I reintroduced a "mapwidth" parameter that will be sent to the {{Location map}} call. I experimented with this at Fort William and Mary, making the map 240 pixels instead of 300 pixels. The map gets forced to the right, instead of going to the center, but at least the dot shows up in the right place. (Right above my old school. (Ha ha.)) --Elkman (Elkspeak) 19:18, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

More sizing parameters

12-Oct-2007: I am adding sizing parameter "boxwidth" along with "imagesize" and "mapwidth" to the current revision of "Template:Infobox nrhp" defaulting as:

  • boxwidth=265px (use 300px to match prior Infobox width)
  • imagesize=260px (new default, was 300px days ago)
  • mapwidth=220 (current default, was 300 on 09Oct07; omit "px")

Those sizing parameters are similar to options found in other infoboxes, such as for cities/towns. However, I also believe that an optional map should be displayed at the bottom, along with the top image, if available, in the manner of other infoboxes which can display both a top-image and bottom-map. For that reason, the "mapwidth" parameter is separate from the "imagesize" parameter. Changes to display both image+map are in testing for a later revision (not in current template). -Wikid77 02:47, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Centering stuff

12-Oct-2007: I am centering the Location_map by using both the parameter "float=center" and the wikitable directive (style="text-align: center;"). Remember, in a wikitable, after putting a cell bar ("|") in column 1, the cell-directives can be specified, such as:

colspan=2 style="text-align: center;"

Many templates have problems because the required wikitable vertical-bars do not get properly generated into column 1. I am working to fix the column-alignment bug still in the recent revisions of Template:Infobox_nrhp. -Wikid77 02:47, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

  • I have also (just now) centered the top-image by adding wikitable directive "text-align:center;" to the cell containing the Superimpose template. The border around the top-image is still wide, but seems acceptable, for now. -Wikid77 14:26, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Fixed colspan bug

12-Oct-2007: The display of the empty template was showing the literal text wrapped within 1 column rather than across 2 columns:

colspan="2" {{Infobox nrhp/NRHP {{{nrhp_type}}} }}

The wikitable directive for "colspan" became visible due to a logic error in trying to show the literal template name "{{Infobox nrhp/NRHP..}}" in the midst of specifying the "colspan" directive without triggering the literal field by "|" (vertical-bar). Because the subtitle-template contains the 2nd half of the cell-directive, followed by the cell's literal field (designated by "|"), the mode setting is split between the Infobox-template and the subtitle-templates. The fix was to avoid calling the subtitle-template when displaying the blank-template, and simply force the cell's literal field to appear by generating "|" in the parent template, avoiding the "|" generated in the subtitle-template's literal field.

The problem is basically the issue of mode-confusion between 2 code modules: being in directive-mode and trying to show literal results, but literal-mode is triggered by the subtitle template which is never called, leaving the parent template in directive-mode and auto-forced into literal-mode showing all data, including the typically unseen directive ("colspan=2"), which is seen then but not processed. Again, the fix was to explicitly trigger the cell's literal-mode when needed, but only after the directives had been processed, not during. -Wikid77 04:23, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Why Johnny can't wikicode

12-Oct-2007: In the spirit of "Why Johnny can't read" let me emphasize again that the template's MediaWiki language is a beta technology, an infant coding language, that is extremely error prone. (It is a "miracle" that templates work at all.) I guess the Wiki software developers have limited time to make improvements, so we're stuck with this bizarre MediaWiki language ({{#ifeq:...}}") that makes templates hard to develop.

The MediaWiki language is, very much, a toy-language, which aborts on larger templates. In computer technology, the wiki-code is a forced collision of the wikitable language, that expects row-tokens & cell-tokens ("|-" or "|" tokens) only in column-1 (egad!), jumbled together with a rambling expression language (not a statement language) that is very fragile about line breaks & code indentation, leading to rampant coding of long one-liner code sections within typical templates. The MediaWiki language doesn't even have local variables (which are trivial to implement), while supporting many template parameters, which must be re-calculated on each reference, because calculations cannot be stored in the "non-existent" local variables. Kids, don't do this: don't ever design computer languages that way: always support local variables and follow a string grammar allowing line breaks. Enough about all that. -Wikid77 14:53, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Example locator map

The example locator map, rather than putting the dot in Florida, has the dot down in the corner. Some adjustment seems needed. (SEWilco 18:01, 18 October 2007 (UTC))

Image size

Good lord! 200px, stop changing the infobox, everyone, please, it is stable now, and works, images shouldn't be that small in the lead anyway. IvoShandor 21:24, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Whether it is in the lead depends upon how many infoboxes there are. It might be Teddy Roosevelt's favorite historic Civil War railroad bridge through a city in Virginia's acquisition from the District of Columbia and get an infobox from all those characteristics. (SEWilco 21:46, 22 October 2007 (UTC))
Ah yes, the "let's make Wikipedia look like a spread from USA Today syndrome. Multiple infoboxes are annoying as hell. I wish we could just integrate them into one, meh, I suspect the Geoboxes will make this all a problem of the past eventually. IvoShandor (talk) 12:52, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Error in locator map display

There is some kind of error when using the locator pushpin function. Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=174093769 for an example. The error appears to be inside the {{Superimpose}} call, specifically the line base_width = {{{imagesize|{{{image_size|260px}}}}}}. For some reason, when this nested format is used, if no size is absolutely specified in the template, Superimpose obtains blank data, which breaks functionality. It is because the two fields, imagesize and image_size, are nested in each other; when I tested sandboxed the template and tested it with just a size (260px) and without those fields, everything worked fine. This is really odd, because I've seen plenty of instances where this exact setup works fine. Any thoughts? It appears 260px should be forced as an image size, since using another size also causes minor display problems. -- Huntster T • @ • C 08:05, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

NHL options

For those working on National Historic Landmarks, I've added some new parameter options to the infobox:
Template:Infobox nrhp/NRHP nhl-ca, Template:Infobox nrhp/NRHP nhl-fl, Template:Infobox nrhp/NRHP nhld-fl
Feel free to create more for other states as needed. And if anyone can think of a more clever way to wikicode this, please do so. I just did this for a starting measure. -Ebyabe (talk) 21:44, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
I think it would be more useful to use the "locmapin" parameter to classify the National Historic Landmarks by state. If "locmapin" is specified, it could go to "National Historic Landmarks in {{{locmapin}}}". We wouldn't have to create a number of other templates, and it would be a cleaner solution. (Well, I think so, anyway.) Any thoughts? --Elkman (Elkspeak) 22:55, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
Looking at the code, I think I'd probably want to remove the Category:National Historic Landmarks of the United States from {{Infobox nrhp/NRHP nhl}} and do the categorization within this template itself ({{infobox nrhp}}). It avoids having to pass another parameter to {{Infobox nrhp/NRHP nhl}} (or everything else called from nrhp_type). --Elkman (Elkspeak) 23:02, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
I did some experimentation in {{X9}}, the template sandbox. See this revision to see what I did. If I don't hear any objections, I'll add this categorization mechanism to {{Infobox nrhp}} soon. --Elkman (Elkspeak) 23:25, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
No objections here. I'm going to go ahead and remove the category from {{Infobox nrhp/NRHP nhl}}. If need be, it can always be added back. -Ebyabe (talk) 18:44, 12 January 2008 (UTC)