Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2025 October 4

• Template:Infobox Australian place (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)
• Template:Infobox settlement (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)

Propose merging Propose converting Template:Infobox Australian place to use Template:Infobox settlement.
It is time for this template to be converted to be a wrapper for Template:Infobox settlement. I have created a mockup at the sandbox which is visible in the testcases. This implementation will standardize the infobox to look like every other settlement infobox on Wikipedia. Note that NO other country has a custom infobox that does not use {{Infobox settlement}} as a base. A much more detailed breakdown of what was changed, what was kept and why is avaliable on the template talk page. I encourage commenters to read this breakdown first and to examine the testcases linked to above. Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 18:46, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge - looks great to me. Thank you for your efforts. -Dgp4004 (talk) 18:54, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• @Zackmann08 Can you reimplement those custom location and other fields using blank*_name_sec*? Or embed/module? --Joy (talk) 19:49, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @Joy: Probably, I'm not clear on what you mean though... Can you be more specific or point me towards an example in the testcases? Are you referring to the location relative to other places? For example in the first testcase where it says 207 km (129 mi) NNE of Sydney...? Is that what you mean? Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 19:54, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  What you mentioned on talk, can we implement location, adjacent communities and weather box and not drop them? I appreciate the technical aspect of your change a lot, but I don't think it's a good idea to conflate those practical issues with those content issues in this one migration. It would probably be much easier to get this passed if we kept as much useful content as possible, and then had separate migration processes to figure out what to do with that. --Joy (talk) 19:59, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @Joy: that, my friend, is an EXCELLENT point. Give me a half hour. I'll do it now. Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 20:15, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @Joy:  Partly done The temperature, rainfall and list of location data (# km from some_location) have been restored. I will not be restoring the large box at the very bottom of the current incarnation of {{Infobox Australian place}} however. I stand by my previous comment that that section by convention does not go in the infobox but in a navbox (see {{Adjacent communities}} and its 28,000+ transclusions.).

  Obviously everyone is free to edit. So if you or someone else want to overrule me and implement it in the template you are, of course, free to do so. Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 20:43, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  What happens if one actually puts in {{adjacent communities|border=none}} or something like that inside infobox |embed=, could that work? --Joy (talk) 21:21, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Joy tagged you in a test I did in my sandbox. Technically it works, but it really looks horrible. {{adjacent communities}} is not designed to be that small and nested in an infobox. It is really designed to be a navbox at the bottom of an article or floated in the article body. How about this, let's see if there are any other objections to this content's removal? If it appears this is going to be a sticking point, I will investigate further implementing it. Sound reasonable? Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 23:48, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Certainly no objections to its removal from me. Dgp4004 (talk) 23:54, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Yeah, it looks like we'd need an implementation without those arrows for that to work. Maybe it's possible to just extract the Australian place's compact implementation to a separate template. This would also make it easily countable. --Joy (talk) 06:23, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @Joy:  Done. I caved... I abstracted it out to {{Infobox Australian place/table}} to keep the code a little neater. But check the Template:Infobox Australian place/testcases now. Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 07:16, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Thanks. I also made a note about local_map/mapframe mapping in the Talk page, I'm sure it's fixable relatively easily. At the same time, now that the main template logic is used, we do get automatic mapframe on other test cases, nicely demonstrating a general benefit of this change - the Australian place infoboxes get to benefit from improvements done in the settlement infoboxes in general.

  Looking at the test cases, I see no other significant issue remaining. The removal of about 8 kilobytes of extra code seems worthwhile. (Merge) --Joy (talk) 10:50, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Thank you for the time and effort you are putting in to this proposal. I'm sure it is not a trivial exercise. I think it is not ready yet. I've made more detailed comments on the talk page. Show stoppers for me at the moment are:
  1. Population drawn from Wikidata
  2. Local_map using OSM

Disappointment but not showstoppers are

1. The prominence of County if it's populated
2. The replacement of the state name with "town" or "suburb" in the second line.

--Scott Davis ^Talk 11:08, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@ScottDavis: follow up on the comments on the talk page. Your showstoppers are not intended consequences and are in fact bugs in the code I have written. If you can provide me with links to pages where you saw the issue I will fix it. Unfortunately the nature of Wikidata is that it is very hard to test in a testcase. It really needs to be tested on an actual article so any assistance you can provide via linking me to pages would be greatly appreciated! Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 17:43, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Did the issues you raised get resolved ScottDavis? Would you now be of a mind to merge? Dgp4004 (talk) 21:24, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Zackmann08: @Dgp4004: - sorry for my delay, I currently don't spend as much time on Wikipedia as I used to. Both bugs look like they have been addressed, thank you. County prominence is also improved and acceptable. The prominent link to suburb is still odd in an Australian context on some pages, maybe some of the pages that use it are wrong anyway and should use town. I think the available choices for place type were only town or suburb. Ideally, we'd have LOCB and LOCU for bounded and unbounded localities. The entire country is partitioned into non-overlapping LOCB and SUB areas. I found a page Suburbs and localities (Australia) which may be a better link target. An example I noticed it on is Allendale North, South Australia. Thank you again for your efforts. --Scott Davis ^Talk 08:23, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@ScottDavis the sandbox now links the remaining three type headings to Australian-specific articles. --Joy (talk) 11:48, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge when it is fully debugged, for WP-wide consistency. — hike395 (talk) 18:07, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

   Question: It looks like {{Infobox Australian place}} is also used for protected areas such as Grampians National Park. In those cases, it should not wrap {{Infobox settlement}}, but {{Infobox protected area}}. This should be possible by changing |_template= to depend on |type=. The parameters might be inconsistent between the two wrapped templates, but on the other hand, perhaps any such inconsistency is a bug and should be flagged in Category:Pages using infobox Australian place with unknown parameters? — hike395 (talk) 18:17, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @Hike395: that is totally valid. Per the param report there are about 1300 of these pages. I would argue this is a case of one thing at a time... But I will make that my next project, assuming this merge happens. Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 18:45, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: I'm confused by the implementation of the proposal to merge via rewriting the template as a wrapper template. That is not a merge because the template will continue to exist, won't it? There may be benefits regarding code maintenance, but there may also be drawbacks regarding undesired flow-ons. By and large, this seems like a mainly cosmetic exercise. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 02:07, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @Michael Bednarek: so I went back and forth, and discussed with a few admins about the best approach for this. Technically it isn't a merge, but I decided this was the most appropriate avenue forward. You are correct that the template will absolutely continue to exists afterwards. We are doing a lot of testing and some issues have already been flushed out. The good news is that since no changes are being made to transclusions (I.E. removing of any parameters) any undesired flow-ons that are discovered down the road can easily be fixed. I encourage you to look at the testcases and feel free to {{ping|zackmann08}} me if you find any issues or have additional questions/concerns! - Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 03:35, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

>*:Strong Oppose Per the arguments I made last time: Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2025 October 3#Template:Infobox Australian place. Servite et contribuere (talk) 20:04, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My basic arguments are unlike other countries, Australian places have crucial information such as federal electorate, state electorate and local government area ETC. Note that Australia is a Federation and not a Unity state. I would actually support creating more seperate templates rather than a merge. Servite et contribuere (talk) 20:07, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Already voted strong oppose but this does not include information on state electorate @Zackmann08 Servite et contribuere (talk) 20:09, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Servite et contribuere:, before voting did you you actually look at the proposed change as demonstrated at Template:Infobox Australian place/testcases? None of the information you mentioned will be removed... In fact there will be NO information lost so you argument makes no sense... Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 21:24, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Zackmann08 Actually... Uh no. My bad. I am likely going to change my vote, but first, I want to raise a concern. About the top, I do honestly think having state at the top and not having to look down to find it is better, but I do also like the suburb/town/city thing. Is it possible to have both maybe? With like state below? I know some might argue it it is just which state boundaries they are in (Like which is the capital city of their state, examples, the capital of the state Cairns is in is Brisbane, using for no reason as that is one of them I saw not the side by side one) but in my perspective, politics is truly everything. Also, your argument is right. One thing I don't agree with is not having federal and state divisions on cities, same for local government areas. I know links on the article Sydney are outdated and might be inaccurate, but for smaller cities such as Cairns or Hobart, this can be useful. Servite et contribuere (talk) 18:14, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Servite et contribuere: MAJOR kudos for admitting your mistake. Not many people on here are willing to do that. I appreciate that you are willing to consider this merger on the merits of the actual changes being made. The nice thing about the conversion is that since NO parameter names are changing or being removed, changing how/where things are displayed down the line is easy. IMHO, this infobox should follow the conventions of {{Infobox settlement}} regarding where to display the state. BUT that is absolutely something that can be looked at. Can I make a suggestion? Let us see if we can get this merger to happen at all... Then discuss improvements (I have many ideas)? As I said, since no information is lost in the process, it can very easily be moved to the top later. I just don't want to make that change based on a single editor's request. I think it warrants a larger discussion and consensus. Make sense? Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 18:19, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Servite et contribuere can you please click through to {{Infobox Australian place/testcases}} and check if you see all the local government area and electorate lines both at the right and at the left hand side? --Joy (talk) 10:52, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Note to closing admin I hope you will note that the arguments against this change boil down to WP:OWN and the fact that there is a desire that no one other than people from Australia edit this infobox. Zero information has been removed so the arguments that this doesn't take into account Australia's unique features are also invalid. Finally there have been a number of comments that have pointed out minor issues or typos that have since been corrected. Despite being pinged to let them know their issue has been addressed those users have chosen not to return to comment and potentially change their opposition vote. --Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 22:27, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Few days late, but changing vote to Merge after realising no content or history will be lost. One thing that is confusing is that one example of cities shows cities federal and state divisions, and LGA'S and one does not. Servite et contribuere (talk) 18:21, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Servite et contribuere:, please feel free to add more testcases! I am not Australian and some of the intricacies of divisions are lost on me. A number of errors have already been flushed out by Australian users who corrected my naivete. Any help is greatly appreciated. Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 18:27, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge having read the discussion, I see no reason why Australia should have a separate infobox style, and doing so seems to be an attempt at a mixture of WP:OWN and WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. Joseph2302 (talk) 15:46, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose Nothing fundamental has changed since the previous time this proposal failed. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 20:23, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @Pppery: Did you look at the testcases? EVERYTHING has changed.. This is a wrapper and all functionality is kept. No previous attempt has actually created a wrapper. Rather than simply stating that nothing fundamental has changed could you possibly provide actual objections to the change? There are a number of issues that have been addressed. Would be helpful to know what your issues are. - Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 20:26, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Replying to this comment and expanding on what I meant on my talk page. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 17:27, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I had another look at the 2020 TfD to see to what extent the idea of a wrapper was discussed. The most fundamental difference from then and now is that people were rightfully suspicious whether it can be done - yet we now actually have a reasonable working prototype. I think this makes this discussion significantly different on the merits.

  There was a complaint from @AussieLegend saying you have to edit two infoboxes to make changes to the code. This is technically true, but it misses the point of sharing code - if Australian-related features are mainlined into the main template, while their testing infrastructure is kept, it's fairly safe to estimate that they will be maintained because a larger base of template editors are interested and can take care of any issues that may arise.

  There was a complaint from @Ymblanter saying there was an example of a Russian template wrapper where nobody was interested in correcting errors. I would appreciate more information about those errors, and an assessment of whether the current engagement of template editors matches this sort of disinterest in correcting errors or not.

  Finally there was a call from @Jonesey95 to demonstrate a wrapper. Has the nuance and customization so far been addressed in a satisfactory manner here? --Joy (talk) 07:33, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Thanks for the ping. The objections in 2020 seemed valid to me, and nobody was willing to put forth the effort to create a wrapper, so I thought it was unwise to recommend an untested merge of this nuanced template. I have seen people say "sure, merge, it will be easy" and then watched either (a) nothing happen or (b) the merge fail because it was not easy, so I was wary at that time. If a wrapper has been created this time, and stakeholders in this template pretty much agree that it works well enough to replace the existing custom template, then a merge is probably a good way to go. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:10, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. The documentation in the sandbox says The infobox has been extensively customised for Australia. When even the template acknowledges that it contains extensive customisation, we shouldn't merge it with another template. Nyttend (talk) 19:20, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @Nyttend: once again, have you actually examined the testcases or read the discussion about this? You clearly haven't because you saw we shouldn't merge it with another template which is NOT what is happening. This is a conversion to a Module:Template wrapper. None of the custom code written for Australia has been removed.

  I would point you to WP:READBEFORE, specifically The issue might be different than it seems. Please take the time to look at the testcases and read the discussion. Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 20:30, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If the proposal doesn't involve merging, why does the nominator begin with a big bold Propose merging? Let's rephrase this another way: this template is heavily customised for the Australian context, so leave it alone. Nyttend (talk) 05:07, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Nyttend: as you know that is what happens when you use twinkle. Once again, did you actually LOOK at the change or the testcases? The customization for Australian places has not gone away... Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 05:26, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The template is heavily customised for Australia because Australian editors at that template have decided to do so due to their WP:OWN and WP:LOCALCONSENSUS issues. And the suggested merge actually incorporates most of the reasonable Australia-specific changes anyway. Joseph2302 (talk) 16:30, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose From the very minor example provided on your sandbox I dislike the way the structure of the infobox is changed. I would also like to point out that Template:Infobox Australian Place is used for ALL Australian places, not just towns and this will not map well onto everything. I have issue with what I would call the overly complicated and arguably American-centric structure that Template:Infobox settlement uses and I don't think maps onto Australian places very well.

I especially Strongly oppose this change in relation to local government areas as I think the formatting does not map at all well onto Australian LGAs (or frankly local governments generally but that's another discussion).

While no information is technically lost, the changed structure I think does lose usefulness and ease of information in the current infobox structure. I'm absolutely open to tweaking and playing around with the infobox because it definitely has its issues but I don't like this sweeping conformist way of doing it and I feel a much better middle ground can be found. – Lord Beesus (talk) 04:27, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Lord Beesus: can you provide some examples? For example, {{Infobox Australian place}} is no longer used for ANY projected areas in Australia. Those have all been converted to use {{Infobox protected area}}. This is a work in progress and many changes have been made during the TFD and ensuing discussion. Can you point me to a page or pages where your concerns are represented? Or perhaps one of the test cases? --Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 05:28, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe we can use this as an opportunity to make Infobox settlement less American-centric, for the benefit of everyone? Could you please clarify which parts of the structure should be more flexible, so we could perhaps draft changes to address that in Infobox settlement? --Joy (talk) 07:37, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Lord Beesus I've tried to re-read and understand this comment better again. Is this about using |leader_*= for LGAs (which shows up under the subheading "Government") instead of |subdivision_*= (which shows up above, with no subheading)?

So if we moved the LGA display into |subdivision_(type|name)5=, so it appears together with Parish/County/City/Region, would that fix it? --Joy (talk) 11:56, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge Looking at the objective changes here, the testcases show that no information is being lost, and there are very significant benefits in terms of consistency across the encyclopedia and maintainability. (I also added a cadastral testcase and tweaked the sandbox very slightly so this is well-represented for completeness). Subjectively, I think the layout is nicer, but this is WP:ILIKEIT against a number of WP:IDONTLIKEIT complaints above. Thanks Zackmann08 for your efforts. Triptothecottage (talk) 01:06, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Explicit, can you please review this close? The underlying template has been edited to remove the non-free flag, leaving the standard blank flag that is used for countries where there is no flag on Wikipedia yet. It seems reasonable that someone could create a self-made SVG image of this flag that was freely licensed. Deleting the template entirely would remove valid information from the articles in which it is used, and no replacement was proposed above. See {{Country data Cocos (Keeling) Islands}} and its talk page for some history. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:00, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]