Template talk:Infobox U.S. presidential document

Moving discussion

@Dennis Bratland and CatapultTalks: Since the talk page for Executive Order 13769 is so busy (especially until the archiving clears away inactive threads), would we be able to move the discussion over here? I'm also going to put notices on a few WikiProjects for input (e.g. WP:US). — Sasuke Sarutobi (talk) 12:18, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Firstly, I have tried to integrate some of the simpler suggestions first, so I have generalised it to "Presidential Documents" (as that appears to be what the Federal Register lists them as) and added a switch using the following types:

• Executive Order
• Presidential memorandum
• Presidential proclamation
• Presidential directive
• Presidential Determination
• Signing statement

With regards to the image - the size is currently unchanged from the Great Seal on {{Infobox U.S. legislation}}, but I can certainly make it smaller. To be honest, I'm actually looking at integrating a switch for the image so that the Presidential seal is only displayed if the image field is blank, and a specified image displayed otherwise (a similar function is detailed at the bottom of the documentation for {{Infobox legislation}}, so it looks straightforward to add). The Federal Register URL will likewise be switched to automatically link to the Federal Register's copy of the document (the function is currently hardcoded for EOs and doesn't display the number in the link text). I'll then be adding documentation when the list of fields is expanded and more stable.

I have also notified the following WikiProjects of this in order to invite further comment:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject United States
• Wikipedia:WikiProject United States Government
• Wikipedia:WikiProject United States Presidents

Is there anything else to immediately do, or any other projects that I should notify? — Sasuke Sarutobi (talk) 12:41, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Looks good. I don't see any reason not to move this into the regular namespace and switch it out from the legislation infobox on the Trump executive orders. It doesn't have any glaring flaws, and improvements can be incorporated in the usual way.

I don't think it should display "Type: unknown". Saying "unknown" implies that this is an unanswered question, left to future scientists to uncover perhaps with larger telescopes or supercolliders. Most of the time, it is known, just not to the Wikipedia editor who filled in these blanks. If we don't have a piece of data, the field normally defaults to not appearing on the page at all. An "Other" type might be needed, but if we're not sure it should just not be there.

I actually favor having a seal there in all cases, because it provides recognizable branding that puts it in context immediately, that it's part of the US executive branch. But that function can be served with a seal that is only 30-80 pixels wide. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 19:51, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Thank you. I'll work on polishing it ready for the move and I can easily change the "type: unknown" behaviour; to be honest, it is essentially a vestige of the code that I'd copied from {{Infobox legislation}} to enact the switch (the infamous "Status" field, as it happens).

So the tasks that I have to do ready for the move are:

1. Resize the seal Y
2. Finish the coding for the type field to be invisible if not specified (or perhaps even invisible if an unknown parameter is used) Y
3. Fix the code for the EO number to display in the link text (optional) Y

Once moved, I'll also put together the basic documentation. — Sasuke Sarutobi (talk) 23:39, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Now moved. I'll have a look at experimenting with how the image fields are added. I also think that I may need to move the long title to being placed immediately beneath the short title; because the short title is inherited from the page title if left blank, it means that it will only mention the Executive Order number when placed on those pages. — Sasuke Sarutobi (talk) 09:22, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Test with Executive Order 13769 information

I've tested it at this revision of the template sandbox. This transcludes the version currently in this template's sandbox, so not all the features are yet live (I need to set up certain image parameters that are currently hard- or part-coded). There's a couple of formatting things I haven't been able to duplicate from {{Infobox legislation}}, notably the size of the subheader or the centering of the summary. Please let me know what you think. — Sasuke Sarutobi (talk) 19:03, 8 February 2017 (UTC) Please let me know what you think. — Sasuke Sarutobi (talk) 19:03, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

You deserve a barnstar, an expert for the now obsolete {{!}} might say, but his alleged alter ego vetoed my anonymous SoFixIt idea. –193.96.224.20 (talk) 12:18, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Requests

• At the template sandbox the fullname appears in bold italic, but on the article it is in plain font. Not sure why.
• Can we fix the two images to use the |upright= parameter in Wikipedia:Extended image syntax. The WP:IMGSIZE explainst that it's usually best to scale images relative to the user's thumbnail size setting, which varies with their display or device. For landscape lead images, upright=1.35 is usually good, and for portrait, 1.0. Since we can't be sure which will be used in an article, we should add a field to set it to 1.35 or 1.2 or whatever works. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 02:49, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

For the fullanme field I had been using normal wiki markup in the test, but that can end up displaying the markup itself as plain text if it is reincluded in the article. I've switched to using a CSS style to override any markup put in the field, and consistently display in bold and 110% of the default font size.

It looks like you've already fixed that for me. Thank you. — Sasuke Sarutobi (talk) 01:36, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Alternate for federal register number

For earlier documents that don't have a Federal Register number, we need a conditional that suppresses the field if it is blank, or accepts an alternate URL such as https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation --Dennis Bratland (talk) 00:45, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

I've started by changing the hyperlinking field to that of the Federal Register document number, as this generalises the document linking to any type that is listed on the Federal Register (which is any type of Presidential Document, plus a few other types outside the scope of this template — this feels like a more elegant solution than putting in a switch for all the different document types, as the document number is used in the Federal Register's own short URL scheme). Quickly looking at some of the Federal Register's material about itself, I believe that should support anything from 1994 onwards. Both the Executive Order number and Federal Register document number fields are now conditional as well.

I plan on migrating Executive Order numbers from the 'federalregister' field name to 'executiveorder', and then rolling out the template to all the Trump EOs that are currently articles; while I'm doing that, I'll have a think about what might be the best way of supporting other URLs (as I'm slightly wary of the field being used for Federal Register URLs instead of using the document number field). — Sasuke Sarutobi (talk) 12:46, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

I've now added some further fields for Federal Register data, all of which are conditional along with the "Federal Register" header, and I've migrated all of the templates I could find to using 'executiveorder' where applicable. I've also added a number of Wikidata properties, especially for the Federal Register data items that are less likely to be added by editors; this way, it is more likely to autopopulate a more complete template. There is a larger question of getting a more complete dataset into Wikidata itself (a number of the Executive Orders are missing fields like that), but as part of the Inspire campaign, I've proposed a partnership between Wikimedia and the Federal Register to help improve content relating to the Federal Government: Partner with the U.S. Federal Register to help improve U.S. Government content. This would ideally help with linking Federal Register data into Wikidata.

I'm still not sure how to implement the URL without the templates getting cluttered up in the way I mentioned above, but am open to any suggestions. I don't know if it may just have to stay in external links. — Sasuke Sarutobi (talk) 01:56, 1 March 2017 (UTC)