Template talk:Infobox U.S. federal court

Line breaks in parameter labels

@JocularJellyfish: I noticed you had removed &nbsp, which prevents line breaking, from several parameter labels. I had those in there so as to prevent unnecessary vertical spillover in the template. If you don't mind, could you explain your rationale? Ergo Sum 02:26, 30 June 2018 (UTC)

@Ergo Sum: I apologize. I did not know the necessity of them being present to begin with. I'll undue my error. – JocularJellyfish ^Talk_Contribs 02:27, 30 June 2018 (UTC)

@JocularJellyfish: No worries. Just wanted to know if they were causing an error I had missed. Ergo Sum 03:02, 30 June 2018 (UTC)

Widespread, un-discussed removal of parameters

@Fccarep: You have recently removed the us_attorney and us_marshal parameters from the documentation page of this template, believing that doing so would remove it from the template itself. You have also inserted a new parameter, us_district_clerk into the TemplateData. None of these changes were discussed, as is required. Moreover, you have manually removed the aforementioned parameters manually from the articles of many district courts. Please cease the further removal of these parameters from infoboxes before discussing and establishing a consensus here first. I am requesting that an administrator assist in rollbacking your edits across many pages. Ergo Sum 02:57, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

@Ergo Sum: It appears someone had done all the pages - Special:Contributions/Fccarep Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 16:25, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

@Ronhjones: Yes, it looks like Snickers2686 reverted the edits. Thank you both for you assistance. Ergo Sum 17:11, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Major simplification of template

As a result of merging four different templates that all served slightly different purposes, this template retains a number of parameters that can be condensed. Currently, they only complicate the template without any justifiable basis. I propose simplifying the following features:

• Name: |district_name=, |custom_name= |circuit_name=, |tribunal_name= are all used to input the name of the court. It is true that |district_name= and |circuit_name= pre-format the name in different ways. However, this benefit is negligible and can be confusing to editors who are not already familiar with this template. All these parameters can be combined into a single |court_name= parameter. Though the parameter will be required in the TemplateData, it will default to the page name base if nothing is entered.

• Parameter-label synchrony: the parameter |instrument= generates the label "Created by". This label is more descriptive, while "instrument" is ambiguous to an editor. The parameter should be changed to |created_by=.

• Judges: district courts and tribunals use the parameter |judges_assigned= while circuit courts use |active_judges= and |senior_judges=, even though all three types of courts make various active and senior distinctions. However, the relevant figure here is the number of judges that are to be appointed according to statute, i.e. the number of active judges when court is full. Therefore, the |active_judges= and |senior_judges= parameters should condensed into |judges_assigned= whose label is changed to "Judges".

• Head of court: currently, |chief_judge= is used to input the name of the chief judge, while |head_title= is used to input a title other than chief judge and |head= is used for the occupant of that position. All these can be simplified by creating a |chief= parameter that would be used unconditionally and a |chief_title= that would change the default "Chief Judge" label to something different.

• Alt text: Per MOS:ALT, templates should provide a means of including alt text for images included in it. Therefore, |seal_alt= and |map_alt= parameters should be created that allow an editor to enter alternative text for the seal and map if they are included.

• 'Defunct' link for circuit courts: If |abolished= is used when |court_type=circuit, "Defunct" is displayed on template. If the same is done when |court_type=district, "Defunct links to List of former United States district courts. With circuit courts, it should link to United States circuit court, since that is the only type of extinct circuit court in the United States.

With these changes, additional cleanup will have to be done, such as removing no-longer relevant preview warnings and tracking categories. I have implemented all this in the template sandbox. If this edit is implemented on the live template, I will then have to go through and manually correct the parameters on all of the articles affected (which will be every article using this template). Ergo Sum 04:33, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

You may want to temporarily disable "ignoreblank = y" in the unknown parameter checking so that you can get rid of all invalid parameter names, even if they are unused. Unused parameters are sometimes filled in by well-meaning editors. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:37, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: Good idea. I'll put that in the sandbox version for now and transfer it to the live template along with everything else if this proposal goes through. In the meantime, are you familiar with supporting alt text in templates? I'm not all that familiar and want to be sure I'm doing it right. In the testcases, hovering over an image (for which no alt text is entered) calls up the name of the empty parameter. This is relatively minor, but seems like something that is not supposed to happen. Ergo Sum 04:23, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

I added |seal_alt= to a couple of the template examples at Template:Infobox U.S. federal court/testcases. The one with alt text works fine when I hover over it. The ones where |seal_alt= is missing or empty do nothing when I hover. They look like they are working as designed. What do you see? – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:31, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

I'm seeing the same thing as you now. I don't know why I was getting that strange output before. Thanks for taking a look. Ergo Sum 14:02, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

@Ergo Sum: At this point I feel like a major revision to the template is unnecessary. All district courts and circuit courts already have the infobox on their pages, and no new courts are going to be created any time soon. Thus, no significant edits using this template are going to be made in the foreseeable future, so these changes really aren't needed. – JocularJellyfish ^Talk_Contribs 15:09, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

@JocularJellyfish: It's true that there won't be a huge amount of new uses for this template, however, there are a fair number of defunct courts for which articles can (and should) still be made as well as Article I quasi-judicial bodies. Also, I'm willing to manually make the adjustments on the court articles, so the cost to make the transition will be minimal. Anyway, as a matter of principle, it's desirable to not have sloppy infoboxes when possible. Ergo Sum 17:26, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

@JocularJellyfish: Just to be clear, would you be opposed to me making this change? Ergo Sum 19:01, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

@Ergo Sum: Apologies for the late reply. I'm fine with these changes, as they would probably be the last changes for a while. Drop me a ping if you need help implementing the changes on the court pages. – JocularJellyfish ^Talk_Contribs 01:36, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

I've implemented the edits. I'm now working on updating the parameters across all the articles that use the template. @JocularJellyfish: Any help you can offer in this would be appreciated. Ergo Sum 03:06, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

Re: history merge request

@Bsherr: I see you've requested a history merge on the basis that this template was the subject of a cut-and-paste move. This is not the case. The template was created by merging four distinct templates into this newly created one. Therefore, this template has a considerable amount of code that Template:Infobox U.S. district court did not; likewise, there is code there that is not included here. Ergo Sum 02:59, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

@Anthony Appleyard: Since you went ahead and completed the move, would you please weigh in here? Ergo Sum 18:28, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

Hi Ergo Sum. Thanks for your contributions. Take a look at this Difference between revisions. On the left is Template:Infobox U.S. district court prior to the addition of the TfD templates. On the right is the first revision of Template:Infobox U.S. federal court. They're identical, so that indicated to me it was a cut-and-paste move. I understand that there were other templates merged in at the same time, and that's fine, of course. There will be different means of preserving attribution in each of those cases too. But the history merge was the necessary method for this case. --Bsherr (talk) 20:22, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

Preview warning and hatnotes moving to templatestyles

Page watchers may be interested in MediaWiki talk:Common.css § Preview warning and hatnotes moving to TemplateStyles Izno (talk) 00:22, 29 April 2021 (UTC)