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To do list on template

In another shameless move to promote my To do-template, I have included it in Template:WikiProject Germany. Please help to keep the contents of the Todo template (which is located at Portal:Germany/Things you can do) up to date and suggest improvements to the Project template here. Kusma (討論) 12:57, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Overview of Germany project pages

Can anybody write a better blurb describing this project there? Kusma (討論) 14:09, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Former German states

Hi all. At the moment, I have not yet joined this project since I have probably joined too many already and the Former Countries and Prussia projects are taking up a lot of my time (always keen for new members of course...). Thanks to those who have been tagging the appropriate entries with the {{WPFC}} banner when placing the {{WikiProject Germany}} banner - I have started to recpirocate where possible. I have a request for anyone working on historical entries: please try to avoid merging historical articles. A major goal of the Former countries project is to link different entities over time (primarily through our infobox). Many entries at the moment discuss multiple entities that may have had the same name. While this is rather intuitive to do, this setup can cause confusion or make it difficult for writers to expand articles.

For example Baden currently discusses the Margraviate, Grand Duchy and Republic of Baden: this could easily be broken up into 3 articles, and should be broken up into at least two (a non-sovereign republic is a very different type of state comapared to the monarchies of Margraviate and Duchy). The broken-up articles are of course smaller, but it is then a lot easier to explain each period in more detail. A more extreme example is that of Prussia, whose entry is now so big that there is no room for expansion within the current framework. A number of pages have been written covering the different forms that Prussia had over time (all in various levels of completeness) and now we're working on breaking down the Prussia page and cleaning up the interaction and content of all Prussian pages to accomodate this high level of content.

So in order to make our work a bit easier, avoid merging wherever possible. If anyone has any comments or suggestions about the organisation of entries on former German states, please let me know, either directly or through the Former countries talk page. Thanks. - 52 Pickup 15:19, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Unreferenced Germany articles

How many Germany-related articles are unsourced? I was just on someone's user page and there are 36332 unsourced articles in Wikipedia. And those are just the ones that have been tagged. I think it might be good to have an article referencing drive on WP Germany. Kingjeff 01:17, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I maintain an unreferenced section in the {{to do}} template. What do article reference drives usually do and how do they work at other WikiProjects and what kind of experiences do they have with them? Kusma (討論) 20:27, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
I personally wouldn't know the answer. It's just that if a referencing drive happens a few people could easily take care of any Germany-related articles. Kingjeff 21:26, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
For a drive of any sort we need more bodies that can bring the time and expertise to do so. As we continue tagging we will bring those extra people in. People will need motivation. If our goals are outside their core-motivation (i.e. their current specific field of interest) we need a particular good reason to get them involved. Getting top-importance articles beyond stub for example would be a project where a need can be demonstrated and is widly accepted and it is an overseeable project. Agathoclea 08:24, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I still think it would be great to have a parameter on our project banner, which alllows us to record wether or not most statements in the article or referenced. That would make such a drive a whole lot easier.--Carabinieri 11:35, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

There is an unref=yes switch already, which adds articles to Category:Unreferenced Germany articles (and puts an unreferenced warning in the banner). Kusma (討論) 11:43, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Ooops, I didn't know that, cool. Is that parameter supposed to be used when there are no references in the article or only when there are few?--Carabinieri 11:52, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

One source for an irrelevant part of the article should not make the "unsourced" go away. I'd say we use it if key statements are not sufficiently referenced (that's how I read the formulation in the category page and on the template), but I'm not the boss around here ;-) Kusma (討論) 12:14, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Peer reviews, Collaboration & Portal upkeep subpages

I have just rougely deleted these subpages, so now they are red links again so everybody sees that we do not have a peer review section, a collaboration section or a portal upkeep section. Portal upkeep is currently done by me with some help from others, I might write up how I think it works some day but I don't think anybody else should create that page. A collaboration thingy is probably a good idea, but maybe we should get more members and get serious about that assessment tagging (I think we still have to tag several thousand articles, perhaps several ten thousands). What is the peer review section supposed to be like? As nobody from here even contributed to the peer review of our top 1 priority article at Wikipedia:Peer review/Germany/archive1 although I advertised it here and on the Todo template, I don't think we should be running our own peer review system at the moment. Maybe we should just transclude the usual Wikipedia peer reviews on a page of our own, similar to the Deletion sorting page. The Category:Requests for Germany peer review, populated by the peer-review=yes switch of {{WikiProject Germany}} (currently undocumented), is empty, and I don't see a compelling reason yet why we even need it. Does anybody else have better ideas? (I hope yes :-)) Kusma (討論) 20:25, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Germany article

I am not certain what the process for this is, but is there any way the Germany article could be re-evaluated. I believe the recent improvements to its text warrant a higher grade than "B". TSO1D 00:28, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Usually "B" is the highest grade we give out for articles that have not gone through the Good articles process. Kusma (討論) 07:35, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Oh, ok, thank you for explaining the process. TSO1D 14:48, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Correcting myself, apparently we can give out "A"-class for non-GAs if there is sufficient reason. I'll A-class Germany now, it is at FAC now and most major objections seem to have been resolved. Kusma (討論) 08:45, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Germany article is up for FA status

I suppose most here will be aware of this but just in case: the article Germany has been nominated for featured article status. TSO1D is doing a big job of fixing lots of small things that reviewers are pointing out. Help from other competent editors would be most welcome. Pascal.Tesson 18:12, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. Please comment at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Germany or just fix what needs fixing in the article! Kusma (討論) 15:08, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
More things need to be fixed. Please read the FAC and help condensing the history section! Kusma (討論) 15:49, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

German to English translation needed

A new user tried to contact Jimbo Wales on [1]. Could someone who can speak German please translate the message left on that page? That would be a great help!--Ed ¿Cómo estás? 01:27, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

It is apparently Jimbo's German lesson, part 1. I don't think we should spoil his fun of figuring out the translation by himself. Kusma (討論) 11:05, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

German technology in WWII

Would anybody be interested if I made an article on German technology during WWII? Like German technology during WII or German military technology during WWII variations. I'm really interested and also knowledgeable about german military technology so I'm planning to make one about it. Just wondering if anybody would be interested, thanks. Good friend100 00:10, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't know anything about that topic. But the Germany task force of the WikiProject Military History might be interested.--Carabinieri 02:59, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
Ok, I'll refer to the task force, thanks. Good friend100 15:19, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Freiburg/Freiburg im Breisgau

There is a discussion at Talk:Freiburg about moving the article to Freiburg im Breisgau. I think it's a bad idea, what about you?--Carabinieri 03:01, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

My view is that places should be called by their real names unless there is a clearly established English form (Munich for Munchen etc), which is not the case here. I don't see what purpose is served by creating an unnecessary confusion between Freiburg im Breisgau and Freiburg in Switzerland. Freiburg should be a disambiguation page leading to these two articles (among others). Adam 03:09, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

I think it would be better to keep this discussion at Talk:Freiburg, so that everyone will be able to read all comments related to it at one place. My comment here was only supposed to get people to take a look at the talk page.--Carabinieri 03:21, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

OK. Adam 03:23, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Category:Samtgemeinden in Lower Saxony

All articles in this category are named without the prefix Samtgemeinde, but why? Some of these titles are names of cities (Grasleben) or regions (Oberharz/Harz) too. I'd like to correct this discrepancy. Any comments? -- Netnet @ 22:59, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Not using the prefix Samtgemeinde is correct by our naming conventions (the name of the Samtgemeinde is "Grasleben", not "Samtgemeinde Grasleben", just like we say "Bonn", not "Bundesstadt Bonn" and "Rheinland-Pfalz", not "Land Rheinland-Pfalz". If there is both a village and a Samtgemeinde with the same name, we should choose either Grasleben and Grasleben (village) or Grasleben (Samtgemeinde) and Grasleben per the disambiguation guidelines. Kusma (討論) 06:25, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
All right, I'll change it like Grasleben (including {{Template:Otheruses4}}) and Grasleben (Samtgemeinde) because the village is quite often more important. -- Netnet @ 08:13, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
There are actually quite a few where village and Samtgemeinde are in the same article. Add to the problem, that there have been recently quite a few changes in boundaries, especially in merging some of these Samtgemeinden. Agathoclea 00:09, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Disambiguation work

Some links to Germany-related disambiguation pages need to be fixed. Unfortunately I can't put the request on the Todo template as Special:Whatlinkshere doesn't have a namespace filter and would be unusable for the disambigation. Pages that need help are CDU, Bremen, German, Bavarian. Kusma (討論) 07:52, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Germans in the colonies

Hi, folks. I asked this question at the Africa-related regional notice board, but so far I've gotten no response. So, maybe you can give me some ideas. I was trying to clean up Category:Cameroonian people a few days ago, and I came across some problem individuals. How should people like Hans Dominik (a German military leader who served in colonial Cameroon) and Jesko von Puttkamer (nine-time governor of German Cameroon) be categorized? They obviously qualify for various Germany-related categories, but where should they go on the Cameroon section of the category tree? Right now, they're just hanging out at Category:Cameroonian people. Have any of you encountered similar situations with regard to former German colonies? However these individuals end up being categorized, I'd like it to be consistent with what had been done before (as long as they somehow remain on the Cameroon side of the categorization tree). Thanks, — BrianSmithson 22:44, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Would a Category:German colonial people similar to Category:American colonial people help solve your problem? Kusma (討論) 23:38, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Interesting. The overarching category would be Category:Cameroonian colonial people, correct? Would this include Africans like Charles Atangana or just the Germans, French, and British who lived in colonial Cameroon? Thanks for the suggestion. -- BrianSmithson 00:24, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, on second reading, I was a bit confused. The Category:American colonial people seems to be for British citizens who lived in the American colonies, so Category:German colonial people wouldn't quite be analogous. That's why I proposed Category:Cameroonian colonial people as the parellel. The category could be further broken down into Category:Cameroonian colonial people from Germany, from Great Britain, and from France (to cover the three colonial powers from the country's past). I'd suggest it be reserved only for colonials born outside Africa, so Charles Atangana would remain on the main Category:Cameroonian people categorization scheme. Does this sound workable to the people of this project? -- BrianSmithson 01:39, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
When is someone no longer a colonial? Are the children of European's born in Africa colonial or not? It probably depends on your perspective. The second or third generation may or may not feel more affinity to the country of their birth than their ethnic heritage. The indigenous people would probably always see the children of colonials as foreign, even after decades. People from the home country might no longer see the children of colonials as full blooded citizens of their own country. BrianSmithson's suggestion does sound workable, but we need to keep in mind that the decision is probably somewhat arbitrary and other people might use another yardstick.imars 06:00, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
It's a good point, but I can't think of any notable children born to colonist parents in Cameroon to test it against. I've been thinking about this further, and I think the names Category:German colonial people in Cameroon, Category:French colonial people in Cameroon, and Category:British colonial people in Cameroon make more sense than Category:Cameroonian colonial people from Foo, despite the American precedent. Any other thoughts from folks before I run this by the French noticeboard and African noticeboard people? — BrianSmithson 09:05, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

What is worthy of an entry?

I know that every little village and glen in the U.S. or Britain should rate an entry in the Wik/En, but what about German villages? Is there some (subjective oOR objective cut -off line? Or do we include any village, or any village that gets into Wik/de?) Kdammers 00:41, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

We include every village in the world that can be verified. Excluding small villages just because they are not in the U.S. would be systemic bias. Several thousands of independent municipalities in Germany still lack even stubs; we should probably start a concerted effort (a towns and municipalities task force?) to extend our coverage. To get a feeling for the amount of missing articles, see e.g. User:Kusma/Bavaria (a list copied from dewiki's complete list of municipalities; some of the redlinks are a product of different naming conventions, though).—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Kusma (talk • contribs).
Would it be worth moving that list (after updating it to new boundaries) into article space? Agathoclea 00:12, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
We'd have to check whether the redlinks exist under different names and translate everything first. We shouldn't start with my current list, but from a fresh copy of the corresponding dewiki lists (I have played around with the list a bit an deleted a couple of bluelinks, as I was only using it to see if I can get any interesting article requests from it). Kusma (討論) 07:07, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
I wouldn't trust Wik/de for completeness: They completely delete lots of things if articles are shorter than some editors like (contrary to Wik/de's stated standards). But now we know what we want, assuming Kusma is representative. Kdammers 09:19, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
The German Wikipedia claims to be complete (or at least have been complete) regarding the independent municipalities, see e.g. here. The Wikipedia:WikiProjekt Kommunen und Landkreise in Deutschland is apparently busy expanding all of these articles beyond stub size. Kusma (討論) 09:53, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Don't believe them. For example, try looking for Bremke. Kdammers 01:00, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
That doesn't seem to be an independent municipality. I think they (and we) should also have articles on formerly independent villages. Kusma (討論) 11:11, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't know what "independent municipality" means. But for a normal person, Bremke is a separate village, physically well separated from Rnhsn and Bischhausen, which are a few clicks away and not visible. 00:33, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
A village is a part of a muicipality even though there may be a few k's inbetween the village and the main town of the municipality. Agathoclea 08:01, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Some thoughts on assessment

As some of you may have noticed, I've been wading through lots and lots of unassessed Germany articles recently and brought the count down a little (and will try to get it to nil before I'm on leave from the 28th to the 04th). As I've been doing the importance ratings together with the article category rating (why do the same work twice anyways?) some users have approached me with questions about the importance ratings I've been assigning to articles.

I've participated in Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains for quite a while, and there's a nice assessment table there that could be some food for thought for the people of this project.

Sorry for not replying sooner, but as you'll surely know, Christmas eve sucks up one's free time.

Here's how WP:TRAINS does it

Label Criteria Reader's experience Editor's experience Example
Top The article is one of the core topics of rail transport. Generally, this is limited to those articles that are listed on {{Train topics}} A reader who is not involved in rail transport will have high familiarity with the subject matter and should be able to relate to the topic easily. Articles in this importance range are written in mostly generic terms, leaving technical terms and descriptions for more specialized pages. Train
High The article covers a topic that is vital to understanding the history or technology of rail transport. Most readers will at least be familiar with the topic being discussed. These articles describe the basics beyond the core topics about how trains work and the more significant historical events in rail transport history worldwide. Articles about the most basic topics in rail transport like rolling stock types, the largest railroad companies and the most historically and culturally significant topics are included in this level. Some technical terms can be used within articles in this range, but where they are used, they should be explained or at least link to articles that discuss the terms in more detail. First Transcontinental Railroad
Mid The article covers a topic that has a strong but not vital role in the history or technology of rail transport. Many readers will be familiar with the topic being discussed, but a larger majority of readers may have only cursory knowledge of the overall subject. Articles at this level will cover subjects that are well known but not necessarily vital to understand rail transport, such as main stations in secondary travel markets, former Class I railroads and more specialized types of equipment. Due to the topics covered at this level, Mid-importance articles will generally have more technical terms used in the article text. Most railroad company executives will be rated in this level. Southern Pacific 4449
Low The article is not required knowledge for a broad understanding of rail transport technology or history. Few readers outside the rail transport industry or that are not within the local area of the article's topic may be familiar with the subject matter. It is likely that the reader does not know anything at all about the subject before reading the article. Articles at this range of importance will often delve into the minutiae of rail transport, using technical terms (and defining them) as needed. Topics included at this level include most subway and local railway stations, short line railroad companies and limited or one-off productions of equipment or facilities that otherwise had no significant impact on the rail industry. Jordanhill railway station

..and here's my thoughts about how WikiProject Germany can benefit from that

Obviously, the table scales rather nicely to other projects if you replace "rail transport" with whatever the focus of the project may be, in this case German cities, towns and villages, Germany-related people and German infrastructure. I think it's a good way to get started with, and I must say the priority assessment works quite well within the Trains WikiProject.

One of the questions I was asked on my talk page was "Why do you assess Low-Priority to smaller towns?". Well, if you have just read the table above, try replacing "rail transport" with "Germany" and you'll get The article is not required knowledge for a broad understanding of Germany history.. I honestly don't think that a 3,000-inhabitant hamlet somewhere in the woods of say, Mecklenburg Western Pomerania, is playing a role that vital for Germany _as a whole_ that it deserves a Mid-rating. Same with a football player who's been a Bundesliga player in the 1974/1975 season or a side street somewhere in Berlin. Of course, that's not a fixed rating... if you're talking Obersalzberg, Mario Basler and Alexanderplatz, these obviously deserve a Mid- or even a High- rating. Personally, my threshold is that any city over 500,000 gets a Top rating (as somebody not familiar with Germany is likely to have at least some knowledge about, say, Berlin or Hamburg), the 100,000s and the important smaller cities get a Mid, and anything below 30,000, unless it is notable in some other form, gets a Low. As always, though, editor's ratings are just that and should be taken with a grain of salt, and they're absolutely non-binding to others. Or as WP:T puts it: These are only suggestions, and nobody'll rip your head off for over- or underrating.

Another point is that due to the focus of the project, which is obviously a bit broader than the Trains project, we'll end up with a lot of articles in the High and the Top section than other, more shallowly focused projects, but that isn't neccessarily that bad. I think there's 175 articles in Top now, with a few out in the yet-uncovered article space that could end up there, but I think as long as they're kept to two category pages at most (i.e. 400 articles) it should work out right. Given the scope of the project, Mid and Low will end up huge anyways, and I expect High to end up somewhere between 800 to 1000 topics, depending on how many uncategorised Germany-related articles can be unearthed.

Anyhow, that's my thoughts on the subject for now. Comments, ideas anyone? --doco (☏) 18:50, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Well it was me that asked came to your talkpage. My reasoning was that "cities" deserve a mid not just any hamlet, I am currently still tagging the rest of the cities. Some time ago we agreed here to have the cutoff between Mid and High at 100k plus outstanding cities. We have to remember that there will be plenty of sub-town articles (streets/stations/churches ect) to have a few 1000 lows just on that. Agathoclea 13:14, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
I am happy with the present arrangement which I would understand as follows:
  • Top: large and internationally famous cities such as Berlin, Frankfurt and Hamburg.
  • High: other towns with a population of over 100,000
  • Mid: most other towns of any real significance (default)
  • Low: most suburbs, dormitory towns, villages and other settlements of purely local significance.
I would understand the above as defaults that would be changed if a place is particularly notable. For instance Oberammergau, with a population of about 5000 might be more like a village but I have rated it as "Mid" because of its international fame due to the Oberammergau Passion Play; on the other hand, I would be happy to see Meckelfeld (with a population of about 9,600) rated as "Low". I can also imagine rating "Bayreuth" as "High" because of its musical significance. I would also tend to upgrade resorts that non-Germans might be interested in. Heiligendamm, as part of Bad Doberan, which itself only has a population of about 11,000 would probably only rate a "Low", but I would upgrade it to "Mid" because it is the venue of the 2007 G8 summit, meaning that a lot of English speakers might want to look it up. If I've never heard of a place and German Wikipedia only has a stub and Googling doesn't turn up anything of note, I would also tend toward "Low" rather than "Mid".
--Boson 15:55, 27 December 2006 (UTC)::

Train Table Translated into German Table

I think this is a very UNDERSTANDABLE table that is easily applicable, mutatis mutandis, to many areas. It might seem pedantic, but here I have replaced the rail words. I am also happy with the community rating system as given by Boson and have incorporated it. If any-one sees errors here, please incorporate the corrections. I'd also like to see a few more examples in each category. In addition, the scope (breadth, not depth) should be expanded, contracted or corrected. That way, we'll have an easy reference sheet that reflects our policy.

Label Criteria Reader's experience Editor's experience Example
Top The article is one of the core topics concerning Germany. Generally, this is limited to those articles that are listed on {{German topics}} A reader who does not have a personal or professional connection with Germany will none-the-less have high familiarity with the subject matter and should be able to relate to the topic easily. Communities: large and internationally famous cities such as Berlin, Frankfurt and Hamburg as well as smaller communities of international fame such as Heidelberg. Articles in this importance range are written in mostly generic terms, leaving technical terms and descriptions for more specialized pages. Germany
High The article covers a topic that is vital to understanding the history, social, cultural, religious, or economic aspects of Germany. Most readers will at least be familiar with the topic being discussed. These articles describe the basics beyond the core topics about Germany and the more significant historical events in and concerning Germany. Articles about the most basic topics concerning Germany, its history and geography, like mountain ranges, rivers, states, and the most historically and culturally significant topics are included in this level. Some technical terms can be used within articles in this range, but where they are used, they should be explained or at least link to articles that discuss the terms in more detail. Communities: Towns with a population of over 100,000 not qualifying for a higher rating. Goethe (or should this be top?), the Nuremburg Trials
Mid The article covers a topic that has a strong but not vital role in the history, social, cultural, religious, or economic aspects of Germany. Many readers will be familiar with the topic being discussed, but a larger majority of readers may have only cursory knowledge of the overall subject. Articles at this level will cover subjects that are well known but not necessarily vital to understand Germany, such as the Oberammergau Passion Play. Due to the topics covered at this level, Mid-importance articles will generally have more technical terms used in the article text. ... Communities: most towns of any real significance that do not qualify at a higher level (default). [[ ]], Oberammergau, Heiligendamm, Oberammergau Passion Play
Low The article is not required knowledge for a broad understanding of Germany or German history. Few readers not specifically concerned with Germany or German affairs or who are not within the local area of the article's topic may be familiar with the subject matter. It is likely that the reader does not know anything at all about the subject before reading the article. Articles at this range of importance will often delve into the minutiae of Germany, using technical or local terms (and defining or explaining them) as needed. Topics included at this level include most subway and local railway stations, short line railroad companies, small rivers, almost all individual mountains and other items that otherwise have no significant impact on Germany as a whole or its reputation. Communities: most suburbs, dormitory towns, villages and other settlements of purely local significance. Leine Canal, Bremke

I don't think Germany should be the example for top importance. This leaves a lot of ambiguity on where exactly to draw the border between top and high. john k 23:53, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Maybe Germany should be listed as core-importance? The Germany article is a special case. - 52 Pickup 08:38, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Germany location infobox

In a project-related affair, recent tagging resulted in lots of articles with the mapneeded= parameter. Instead of messing with literally thousands of map images, there now is a very nifty template over at de:Vorlage:Infobox Ort in Deutschland that just shows a red dot on a Germany map using the lat/long parameters instead of using individual images for each place. I've copied the code to User:Doco/sandbox/Infobox_Ort_in_Deutschland and meddled with it a bit, but before doing the whole work and porting it _all_ to the English Wikipedia so that a simple infobox cut-and-paste action could be done (as the Dutch have done recently), I'd just like to ask whether someone has done that before. There was no interwiki link on the German template page, but then again interwiki linkage on templates usually is _really_ sloppy on both en: and de:. --doco (☏) 18:58, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

I have looked at the issue a few days ago as I run into suchlike articles. The interwiki situation is a little more complex as the User who basically runs the project on the de-wiki side is totally opposed to interwikilinks on templates and has persistantly reverted them as "troll-edits". Apart from that lapse in behaviour is very knowledgable though and might be asked to help but preferably by someone not myself. The template on our side is Template:Infobox Town DE. Agathoclea 00:14, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
That is the old infobox setup though, which requires individual map images to be put in place for each individual town, i.e. town XY uses Position Town XY.png, Z uses Position Town Z.png et cetera. The new one simply places a red dot image as an overlay over Image:Karte Deutschland.png, thus elimiating the need for thousands of individual map images to be kept and maintained. If the new Germany infobox hasn't been ported over from de: yet, I might just as well finish the translation tonight and put it into the main template space so that articles can be _slowly_ migrated to the new box. (No need to rush!) --doco (☏) 14:10, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
Let us know when it is ready. And please remember to delete the left over images on en-wiki that become redundant. Agathoclea 14:36, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
Hurray. I have been working on towns recently and I used to be able to use the maps from the German site. Some of them were set up on WikiCommons. But having the code to place the dot is much nicer!
Why isn't the info box template listed on the project page. I was looking for one earlier and could not find an "official" template. So I just copied what I had.
The template {{Infobox Australian Place}} also uses this "red dot on a blank map" routine, and it works rather well. If you are planning to revamp Infobox Town DE, I would like to propose a number of new features for inclusion. - 52 Pickup 12:45, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
Bring them on. Agathoclea 13:15, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure where is the right place to discuss this, so I'll just start here. Feel free to move this to a more appropriate place if you like. Some of the things I had in mind are already in place in de:Vorlage:Infobox Ort in Deutschland:
  • The automatic calculation of population density if population and area are entered without commas or extra text. Unfortunately, this will take time to put things in place for all locations, because if any exrta items are included with the numbers, an error message appears. But well worth it
  • The assignment of the entry to the category "Ort in (state)"
But there are a few other things that could be added:
  • Following WP:STYLE, imperial units should probably also be displayed for area and pop. density. If the metric area values are added without commas or extra text, the imperial measurements can be automatically calculated, so no extra fields are needed. The same can be said for elevation, but since that is normally given as a range, automatic calculations is not possible.
  • Infobox Town DE had the option to include a photo of the city, but this option never appeared to be used anywhere. This is a shame, since a photo can be very helpful here. This new infobox doesn't have this option at all. I think the option should still be there. For instance, {{Infobox City}} has the option to include a photo and it can work rather well (eg. New York City)
  • A new field to supply the year in which the town was founded. This can also be used to automatically assign the article to "xxxx etsablishments".
  • Some minor modifications to layout, font size, etc. There's no reason why the English version should look identical to the German one.
That's all I can think of at the moment. A while ago, I was experimenting with the modification of this infobox, seeing how its appearance could be improved. This page applies all the different infoboxes to Cologne (with categories disabled) for comparison. - 52 Pickup 21:46, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
I would like the fourth if it had the header of the third. Agathoclea 22:28, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
I find the bottom left one easiest to scan. The founding date seems controversial to me. What do you choose as the founding date? First documented mention of the town? I also wonder at the range of elevations. I assume that most cities choose a particular point to measure the elevation of their cities. What does the reader gain by being given a range?imars 22:38, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
The fourth one is still in a very early phase, and is still heavilly based on Infobox City, which was my starting point. It is true that in its current form it might not be as easy to read as the third one since I have not had the time to properly rearrange the fields into a sensible order. But there is one important advantage that I see in the 4th one over the 3rd: the 4th one is more compact. I'm now working on redoing my test template as well as translating Infobox Ort in Deutschland and incorporating its features.
By using the heading from the 3rd, do you mean you prefer a coloured heading, to not say "NRW, Germany", or both? For founding date, I would only suggest that a date be given if it is actually known (i.e. not just the first documented mention). If no value is given, the field would remain hidden. A single value for elevation would make a lot more sense but, for some reason, almost all the German entries use a range. - 52 Pickup 09:50, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
Alright, my new version is up at User:52 Pickup/Drafts/Infobox German Location and a Cologne example is also up. - 52 Pickup 12:52, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
Looks nice so far, but as a feature request to facilitate copying info from de:, can we leave the variable names unchanged? I've put up both the original incomplete translation and your recent fork on User:Doco/sandbox/test2 and as you can see the lower box doesn't show that much info when copying verbatim from the German article... and franky, variable _names_ are an internal thing anyways and need not be translated, especially if you're talking thousands of article templates that would need to be adapted. :)

Anyhow, good work so far. I'm off for the New Year's vacation and will be back by the 4th.--doco (☏) 13:40, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

No problem, the variable names have been switched back to German. The next things that I will work on are the better ordering of fields (subheadings may be useful here) and autocategorisation. - 52 Pickup 17:48, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
Some more translation has been done, so now most information should be automatically translated if copied over from the German Wiki. Some more examples are at User:52 Pickup/Drafts/Test locations, which I'm using to find any sticking points: and there's still a few. - 52 Pickup 13:48, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I have decided to be bold and let the new infobox go live - it is at Template:Infobox German Location. It contains all of the fields used by de:Vorlage:Infobox Ort in Deutschland (using the German field names, as requested) plus a number of extra fields (the ones with English names). It is also possible to enter German values for some fields and the English translation will be displayed - making it easier to transfer infobox data from the German wiki. Please give it a try and report any problems on the template's talk page. - 52 Pickup 22:26, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Good work! I did a 1to1 conversion of Geroldsgrün just now and it only needed only one change in the actual text. Only worry is if non-German speaking editors want to edit they will have a slight problem. I suggest (if you have not done so already) to double up the switches. Then later a bot can go over and translate all the ones in the articles at some regular intervals. Agathoclea 23:21, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
That's a good idea. I haven't done that yet. At the moment, there are still a few teething problems to take care of, but once they are sorted out, that can be done. - 52 Pickup 13:42, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
I just discovered the new infobox, and I see some nice new features compared to "Infobox Town DE", which I initiated. The automatic dot on map is very good, I saw it on de:, but didn't know how to copy it to en:. Population density calculation is nice, and the new grouping (Administration, Statistics etc) looks good. Is that also an automatic conversion from meters to feet? Nice! Some points of criticism:
My compliments. Markussep 19:56, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Glad to hear that you approve! I hope you don't think that I was just trying to usurp your work. I have tried to incorporate the features of "Infobox Town DE" that did not exist in de:Vorlage:Infobox Ort in Deutschland, plus a couple from {{Infobox City}}, and a few other things. Addressing your points:
  • Chaning the colour is no problem. I just picked that rather arbitrarily. Feel free to experiment with the colour scheme to something better.
  • Yes, the metric/imperial conversion is automatic. In order for it to work, the numbers must be without any commas, spacing, links, or otherwise. This is why the population date and source URL need to be separate fields (pop. references are not used in the german version, a nice feature from Infobox Town DE).
  • Perhaps the foundation date can go if it will not be possible to clearly use it for enough entries. This came from my work on {{Infobox Australian Place}}, where the dates for all places are pretty easy (i.e. 1788 at the earliest). No problem.
  • The UN/LOCODE info should probably be hidden. The German wiki template contains this information (and some other codes) but does not display them, considering them to be Metadata. I guess we can do the same.
  • The number of borroughs info is there because it is a field of the German one - even though it is rather unspectacular information.
I would appreciate any more thoughts that you have on this template, and invite you to take part in its further development. - 52 Pickup 21:50, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Am I remembering right, that Markus had the dual-language switches in his template? Agathoclea 22:15, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
If by Markus you mean me, no I didn't use dual-language switches. I'm afraid the template code has become a lot more "esoteric" since I started it, so I don't really know how to edit it without destroying it. But I'll try, and if I don't succeed I'll ask you to do it, at Template talk:Infobox German Location. Markussep 09:15, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
There are a number of ways to have dual-language fields, but I'm not sure what is the best way is. For that, I'll have to ask some others. But this should probably wait until the whole thing is set up and the bugs are ironed out - 52 Pickup 19:34, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 21:34, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

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