Template talk:Infobox Australian place

See also: Blank infobox page | Documentation page | Discussion page | Examples page

Core policies for this box

KISS

Keep this box as simple as possible.

Scope

Make sure you remember that this box is used on more than 12,900 pages, of 7 different types.[1] Whatever you do needs to be applicable to a good number of those pages.

Discussion/Community

Its very important to discuss everything that's going to change. And before you suggest something, look in the archives, it may have been suggested before.

Why is there no addition for flags or shields?

Almost all major cities in Australia have both a flag and a shield, most of which are available in the Wikimedia commons for use. Why does this infobox omit these when the infoboxes for places in many other western countries have it? Could these parameters be added? Qwexcxewq (talk) 00:17, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

In brief, because there is almost zero use for it in Australia. The issue has been discussed before (in 2007 and in 2014), and the places where it might be used are pretty much limited to the capital cities - which generally have a separate article on their Coat of Arms anyway. In local government articles, use |logo=. Innesw (talk) 02:17, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

Module (Lua) version of the template

There is now a Lua version of the template. The Module (lua) code is at Module:Sandbox/Innesw/Infobox Australian place, the template to call to test the module is {{Sandbox/Innesw/Infobox Australian place|<infobox parameters>}}.

Such a significant proposed change to a protected template obviously needs not only thorough testing of the output, but a careful independent review of the code. Therefore I don't think the template sandbox is the right place to put this yet.

Please test it for all possibilities, and put comments and (especially negative) test results either here or on the module talk page.

There are some changes in the lua version's output:

Old Behaviour	New Behaviour
for a non-numeric value for |pop= a population density calculation was attempted, and produced an error	a non-numeric |pop= value means a population density is not calculated (and therefore not shown)
some tracking categories were output in all namespaces, ie: where |pop= is given but no |pop_year= or |pop_footnotes= |pop2= is given but no |pop2_year= or |pop2_footnotes= |pop is non-numeric (which causes density errors)	except in article namespace, output of all categories is suppressed (all the 'automatic' categories, and all the tracking categories)
there is a colon at the end of the heading for the 'Places Near' sub-table	colon not output

I have tested the output of each of the individual cases on the testcases page (a process which fixed some issues) and I believe the module now produces the same visual results in all these cases (except for the above changes).

There are a considerable number of calls to expand other templates (lframe:expandTemplate{...}), a number I would like to reduce if module equivalents exist. Suggestions welcome.

I would hope that transferring the template code to lua will make changes to the template easier - just by getting away from the obtuse syntax of templates. Innesw (talk) 09:40, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

You should bring this to the attention of readers at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Australian places, Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board, Wikipedia talk:Australian Wikipedians' notice board. BTW, the template to test the LUA code is {{Sandbox/Innesw/Infobox Australian place}} (that didn't come across in your message). Template:Sandbox/Innesw/Infobox Australian place/testcases seems to be missing so far. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 11:21, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

I was intending to work my way up the hierarchy with announcements, seeing what responses there were as I went. I can copy Template:Infobox Australian place/testcases if you think that's the best way to go, but I have checked all the cases that are there. I'm not sure what the method would be for wider testing, if that's reckoned necessary. Innesw (talk) 22:05, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

You asked for thorough testing, and that needs testcases. The current Template:Infobox Australian place/testcases is already very extensive, so a new one seems to be called for. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 02:23, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Michael has asked for more testcases to add to what he says is the 'already very extensive' set in Template:Infobox Australian place/testcases. I admit I was remiss in asking vaguely for 'more testing' without an obvious pathway to achieving that. Somebody help me with some technical details please: if I just change Template:Infobox Australian place/sandbox to contain
{{#invoke:Sandbox/Innesw/Infobox Australian place|main}}<noinclude>{{Documentation}}</noinclude>,
will that enable anybody to check the existing testcases? If so (but some further testing is reckoned necessary), or if not, what do I need to do as well / instead? Innesw (talk) 22:52, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

There is now a testcases page for the module. It is based on the testcases for the original template, though expanded to include all parameters dealt with by the template (except some deprecated ones).

I will soon elevate notices about the existence of the module and its testcases to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Australian places, Wikipedia talk:Australian Wikipedians' notice board and Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board. Innesw (talk) 11:42, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Accepted value: "township"

The present accepted values – city, town, lga – don't cover Australia's many smaller places with higher population than a locality. I recommend including "township" in the accepted values.

Two random examples are William Creek -- permanent population <20 but a significant settlement nevertheless -- and Wanbi, South Australia, with a similar population, described as "a town and locality" when it is neither, really. They are both townships. Comments? SCHolar44 (talk) 13:13, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure about the township as, at least in WA, it doesn't seem to be an official description for a bounded location. I do however agree that another description below town is needed. Currently, "| type = town" will automatically place the article in the relevant town category, e.g. William Creek in Category:Towns in South Australia, which seems wrong for a lot of really small places as they just don't qualify as towns. Locality doesn't even exist as an option right now. Something below town would be useful! Calistemon (talk) 12:10, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Town means a population centre, they can be small or large in terms of population, or even be ghost towns so we don't really need a distinction between a city, a town, a township, villages, hamlets etc. Certainly QLD has dropped all of those distinctions. We have the population field to show the size of a town in that regard. A locality has a boundary while a town has a centre point, or it's not an either-or. Indeed it is very common for a placename to be both a small rural town that sits within a locality of the same name. Suburbs are localities (being bounded) but the term suburb tends to used when they are in an urban area, but are otherwise interchangeable. What is wrong with the "type" is the inability to reflect that the topic of the article is both a population centre (town) and locality/suburb. One of the things to be aware of that if that if we change the "type" values, any tools that use that field need to rewritten, so it's not something to do lightly. Kerry (talk) 12:22, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Indeed, some parts of wikipedia have 'human settlements' and 'populated places'... In WA (and Tasmania), the establishment of places occurred after townsites were surveyed and gazetted, but they never really became towns as such, and in effect over time have been localities. I just throw this in, as I think that many 'towns' in Australia may have been surveyed, and gazetted, but never really became 'towns' - they are more suitably known as localities. JarrahTree 08:05, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

For all purposes, the gazetted towns in WA are still there, parallel/inside the localities. If you go to Slipmap, select Localities (LGATE-234) and Townsites (LGATE-248) under Borders, you will see that the latter often exists within the former. Just take Kirup as an example, you will see that there is actually two marked out entities, the larger locality and the smaller townsite. Calistemon (talk) 08:24, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Indeed, many of these abandoned towns are still officially gazetted. and for Queensland at least, the digitised newspapers on Trove will reveal the first sale of town lots, etc, which is nice to add to the article's history section and if you look at your state's geospatial information system, those grids of streets and land parcels still exist but the imagery shows nothing there except farmland etc. When a place is both a town and locality, you generally have two sets of coords as the town coords are generally of a point that is perceived to be the town centre (in a human sense) while the centre of a locality is usually a mathematically computed centroid based on the boundaries (and has no human meaning). Similarly they may have two census figures, one reflecting the town and one reflecting the locality. This is why it would be be useful if the infobox had a way to indicate that the article deals with both a town and a locality (since for the vast majority of them, there is no benefit to having 2 articles, except where the locality/suburb is but one of many suburbs (usually the historic centre suburb) of the town of the same name. Kerry (talk) 01:59, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Lacking terminology to convey the size of a [here insert name of a very small type of human settlement] obfuscates the understanding of readers who don't know that Queensland has dropped all such distinctions, i.e. the vast majority. Their understanding is more likely to be closer to, as per SOED:

• a built-up area with a name, defined boundaries, and local government, that is larger than a village and generally smaller than a city
• the central part of a neighbourhood, with its business or shopping area
• densely populated areas, especially as contrasted with the country or suburbs.

The scale is nowhere near the scale we're talking about. At least one term below "town" is needed. On reflection, "populated place" that JarrahTree mentions seems to provide the maximum flexibility. It's descriptive and avoids being entangled in the nomenclature of any particular jurisdiction. SCHolar44 (talk) 23:30, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

It is lack of emoji symbols use, where an facetious, irony or cynical flag against the terms mentioned should have been made. Strongly disagree with the suggested usage of the term.JarrahTree 01:02, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

If the place was or is gazetted as something called "township", "village" or whayever, then I don't see any issue with calling it that in the lede and citing it accordingly. But we are discussing the type field of the infobox, which reading the documentation doesn't seem to make any great difference to anything (apart from the colour of the infobox). The documentation suggests the type might be used to recommend or control the selection of parameters used in the infobox, but my experience of writing thousands of place articles is that you can have any params you want no matter what the type is. If anyone knows of anything beyond the colour that is affected by the type, say so. The reason I would like to be able to specify that a place is both a town and locality in the type of the infobox, would be to allow two sets of coords (one for each, appropriately labelled) and two sets of census population (one for each, appropriately labelled). The type in the infobox can be different to the type in the lede. Kerry (talk) 04:40, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

In view of what Kerry and Calistemon have said about the specifics of a locality and town being separate entities on wikidata, the dual entities and the capacity of the infobox to carry such a multiplicty, is far more pressing than bothering about terminology. I strongly support any investigation into the possibility of an infobox parameter that can be designed for the two items of info to be included. JarrahTree 06:47, 24 July 2024 (UTC)