Template talk:Infobox mountain range/Archive 1

Archive 1

Initial infobox design

Displayed coordinates

To answer RedWolf: the displayed coordinates should be the highest point of the mountain range, just like in the standard mountain infobox. Do you think it needs further explication? —hike395 (talk) 02:59, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

• The issue here really is what are the sources using? I think many of the sites we are using are probably using the highest point, but this should be confirmed. I'm pretty sure that if you look up mountain ranges in Antarctica in GNIS, the coordinates there aren't for the highest point. So I have no problem with it being the highest point in the infobox, just that it could be incorrect for certain sources. RedWolf (talk) 06:27, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

I see what the problem is: the Geobox parameters are "highest_lat_d", etc., but in this version of the infobox, it displays as "Coordinates". The display is what you want: the coordinates are general. But, the parameter names are wrong. Well, that's easy to change: I'll remove "highest_" from the lat and long parameters, and the coordinates become general. —hike395 (talk) 14:14, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Image vs. Photo parameters

I am happy with using "photo" to be compatible with {{Infobox mountain}}. AWB can handle that change. Shall I go ahead and implement the change in the infobox? —hike395 (talk) 02:59, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

 Done —hike395 (talk)

Separate sections with horizontal lines

I think that most infoboxes based on {{Infobox}} do not use horizontal lines to separate groups, but colored boxes instead. I could add a "dimensions" section if you think that the default section is getting too long. —hike395 (talk) 02:59, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Not sure I implemented a dimensions section, but it seems a bit bulky to me. —hike395 (talk) 01:19, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

• I never had a chance to see it but I'm fine with the Dimensions section header. RedWolf (talk) 06:27, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

I think the horizontal lines thing is holdover from the old days when tables generally used borders. Very Web 1.0. –droll [chat] 04:28, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

State_type parameter

I think there should be a state_type parameter when listing the "states" as some countries use provinces. Alternatively, if we really don't want to show any bias, we would have separate parameters for provinces. RedWolf (talk) 06:27, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

I was following Geobox --- editors have used "region_type" to specify "Province", and then region1 through region23 to specify which provinces. It's in the documentation for the infobox. —hike395 (talk) 14:16, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

• Yes, so what I'm saying is that countries with states have preferential treatment in that they get their own parameters. RedWolf (talk) 01:37, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Ok, I am happy to add a state_type parameter. But, perfoming the conversion of the existing Geoboxes to use that is beyond my skill at AWB: we will have to leave existing articles as they are, waiting for someone to manually convert them. —hike395 (talk)

Population parameter

I question the usefulness of this parameter. I don't think I've ever seen a source provide the human population within a mountain range. RedWolf (talk) 06:27, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

I went through the 15 most visited mountain range articles, and none of them had population. So, I dropped the field. —hike395 (talk) 20:24, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

General Comments

I've been watching this thread for awhile. I have to admit that I have a strong dislike for Geobox and so any change has got to be good. I think that the biggest fault with that template is that it tries to include everything (as a general use template I guess that's understandable). I would like to see this template avoid an overwhelming choice of parameters and options. So far the only bit I'm having a problem with is the Countries, States/Provinces thing. If a range is in multiple countries and many States/Provinces I think it would be enough to specify the countries. I like the simplify of the location parameter idea in Infobox mountain. An editor can format the information as they wish. Geobox forces styles on editors. I realize the migration from Geobox needs to be simple and that needs to be a priority. Maybe including a location parameter, as well as parameters that would facilitate migration, would be good.

I agree that having a plethora of region/district/states is not a good thing. I feel forced into it because those parameters are used extensively in popular range articles, and I didn't want those infoboxes to lose information. There is a general location field that is already available. One nice thing is that the long lists are now collapsed, so our readers do not need to see them unless they want to. —hike395 (talk)

I've read somewhere that the numbers of contributors to the Wiki is dropping. I think one of the reasons is that getting started is to difficult. It's my opinion that we should keep things simple. If a newbie creates an infobox with poor formatting, someone will come along and fix it eventually.

P.S. I don't like the border-bottom thing. It's used in Infobox Lake. When I first started I thought it was a markup error. Oh well. –droll [chat] 04:28, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

I replaced it with some extra padding --- it looks better now. —hike395 (talk) 03:21, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

I saw your last edit to the template changing from highest_lat_d to lat_d and I made me think. I did some research and GNIS lists the highest point first in their list of coordinates for a range. See Sierra Nevada and Cascade Range. That follows the projects guild lines. Maybe you were aware of that already. –droll [chat] 07:35, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

I like the way Geobox keeps the elevation and coordinates of the highest point together since they are related. See Davis Lake volcanic field. –droll [chat] 18:31, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Both you and RedWolf expressed a desire for this. I added a "Highest Point" section, which now gathers together the peak name, its elevation, and its coordinates. It looks good to me. I didn't want to use indentation and smaller fonts, because that is not very {{Infobox}}-like. I'm trying to stick with the overall style of other infoboxes, rather than emulate Geobox (because, after all, we can always not perform the conversion). —hike395 (talk) 20:13, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

region parameter

This is going to trip up a few people familiar with using infobox mountain. For that template, region specifies the ISO country/region code and is passed to {{infobox coord}}. It has an entirely different meaning for this template. For this template, one uses region_code to specify the ISO code. I see it's not currently documented so I will add it. RedWolf (talk) 01:11, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

The state parameter is redundant with the region parameter (as you have pointed out). Perhaps we should simply drop the region parameters, and add state_type as you suggest. The AWB run will just get a little more complex. —hike395 (talk) 05:19, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Can't drop the region parameters, because some infoboxes (e.g., the Catskill Mountains) use both region and state). Will think about this some more. —hike395 (talk) 20:15, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

listing parameter

This is a useful parameter that should be added for consistency with infobox mountain. RedWolf (talk) 01:36, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

What sort of listings are there for entire ranges (as opposed to individual peaks?) —hike395 (talk) 01:59, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Display of highest point

I like how Geobox displays information about the highest point. I think it's cleaner than displaying name, elevation and coordinates with all the labels starting with "Highest". I would like to see only the name line have this label prefix and the other two lines without it with some indentation and one lower font size than used for the name. RedWolf (talk) 01:36, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

See my comment to Droll, above. I agree that having a single group of data about the highest point is good --- the Geobox formatting is not very {{Infobox}}-like. I implemented your idea in the standard Infobox way: I hope you find it acceptable. —hike395 (talk) 02:02, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Remarks field?

Is it possible to add a "Remarks" field for additional important information e.g. "nature reserve"? It only needs to be displayed if used and where there is notable information that isn't covered elsewhere. Thanks. --Bermicourt (talk) 10:41, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

In general, I'm opposed to "free" or "remarks" fields in infoboxes. Infoboxes are supposed to present structured information in a clean way. Remarks in an infobox are often misused. Editors have the rest of the article to present less-structured or uncommon information. —hike395 (talk) 18:53, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

coordinates_no_title parameter

The coordinates_no_title parameter doesn't seem to be working. I used it in Himalayas to prevent the coords of Mt. Everest being put into the title as there is a separate coords being used for the title. I can't see why it doesn't work when I looked at the template code. For now, I commented out the separate {{coords}}. RedWolf (talk) 16:13, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

I will try and debug. —hike395 (talk) 18:53, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

 Fixed It was a silly bug in the template (one extra brace). Thanks for finding this. —hike395 (talk) 23:09, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Multiple peak image

I was thinking it would probably be better if we used some sort of multiple peak image when showing the range's location on the map. I was going to mention this yesterday but forgot about it. I see that hike395 has already added so I guess it proves that great minds think alike! :) RedWolf (talk) 04:37, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Map issues

I've temporarily stopped running AWB to convert to this template: I've run into issues with the mapping parameters o Geobox. Apparently the interaction between map, map_locator, and map_background is quite complex. Its implementation is not well documnted. I'm trying to add support for backgound and overlay maps to {{Infobox map}}, but I have not yet figured it out. —hike395 (talk) 06:08, 7 May 2012 (UTC)