Talk:Bangani

Map

Uanfala - thanks for creating this, it's much better than what was there before and is far preferable to a redirect. Just a question on the map - the article says that this is a language spoken in the Uttarkashi district, but the map is showing Bangani as a place with its pushpin. If Bangani is also a place where the language is spoken, the text ought to say so; otherwise, the map should probably show Uttarkashi rather than Bangani? Cheers GirthSummit _(blether) 13:53, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

The map isn't showing a settlement or a natural feature, but the location of the language itself (the zoom level is such that its area can reasonably be represented by a point). That's how pushpin maps work for languages (examples: Korlai Portuguese creole, Dalabon language, Kómnzo language); the label comes from the |name= parameter in the infobox. This is a relatively new feature of the infobox and I haven't seen any discussion of it so far. Do you think the pushpin should be labelled in a different way? – Uanfala (talk) 14:28, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Uanfala, hmm. Language articles aren't something I'd super-familiar with, and I appreciate the point that a very small area can be represented by a pushpin, but for me if we're trying to show an area rather than a point I'd be expecting to see a little coloured zone on the map rather than a pushpin. Perhaps it would be better if there were to be a caption explaining what we're looking at. I also note that if you hover the cursor over the map, you get the alt text "Bangani is located in India", which is a bit weird - it ought to say something like "Bangani is spoken in India", but I'm not sure how to change that. GirthSummit _(blether) 15:37, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Oh, I hadn't noticed the default alt text. I've just tweaked the infobox template [1] so that it's now "Approximate location where <name> is spoken". That's not ideal either, but a more meaningful text can always be specified using |pushpin_map_alt=. As for a default caption, I'm not sure of the best way to do that, but I'll try to set |pushpin_caption= in this article. Now, showing the extent of the language area as a coloured zone would imply specifying the boundaries of this area, and that would require quite a bit more work (including digging in the literature for information that may not even be there) than simply passing a single set of coordinates for the rough location. Or did you mean that for this rough location we could use a different symbol from the little circle that comes with the current pushpin maps? – Uanfala (talk) 16:40, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Uanfala, you make a good point about specifying the boundaries, I hadn't entirely thought that through. While there's always room for further improvement, I think that your changes are a big step forward and address my immediate concern, thank you. GirthSummit _(blether) 21:01, 13 September 2020 (UTC)