Awegalloway

Welcome!

Hi, Awegalloway. Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Our intro page contains a lot of helpful material for new users—please check it out! If you need help, visit Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on this page, followed by your question, and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Hitro talk 21:02, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Hello, I am new to wiki editing. HitroMilanese sent me a message saying I could ask questions on my talk page using this approach. I would like to start a project where myself and others start adding a standard category of metadata to each lake wiki page that we can. The category I would like to add is "lake age" (myself and colleagues are working on a project related to lake ages, and the information may be of broad interest). I attempted to add this category, with an age, an an accompanying reference, to the Lake Bosumtwi page, as a starting example. I notice that the log shows that I made the change, but the change is not visible to the article. Is this because there are restrictions on editing the 'infoboxes'? Thank you for your help!Awegalloway (talk) 21:22, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Hello Awegalloway, infoboxes come with a fixed set of parameters, and if you add a parameter not supported by that infobox it will not be displayed. You can find the list of parameters for that specific infobox at Template:Infobox body of water ("Infobox lake" merely redirects to that infobox). If you want to propose an "age" parameter to be added to that infobox, the template's talk page, Template talk:Infobox body of water, would be a good place to do so. Editing templates can be rather tricky and will affect all pages the template is used on (here, the vast majority of lake articles on Wikipedia); thus editing them is restricted to prevent both accidents and deliberate vandalism. This template's talk page seems rather well-watched, though; someone able to edit the template will probably reply shortly. You can use the {{Edit template-protected}} template (simply copy-paste that code to your message, including the curly brackets) to raise awareness of your request. Huon (talk) 22:25, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

(e/c) Hi Awegalloway. Templates, like {{Infobox lake}}, only understand parameters that they have been programmed to understand.

That means that if "age" is not a parameter already included in the code (which it's not), adding age= to it will result in no display. Instead the template itself would need to be coded to understand that parameter. That can be done, but first we would need consensus that the parameter should be added. To do that, posting to the template's talk page (in this case it redirects to Template talk:Infobox body of water) would be a good place. Make your case there for why age should be included. However, some talk pages are not watched by a lot of people and judging from how long ago the last edit was made there, I suspect this one is not, so I suggest posting the argument there, but then also writing a note at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Lakes, linking to that post.

Note also that you can call a person to the template (which is protected from editing) to implement the request by posting above your comments this template: {{Edit template-protected}}.

Another issue, and it's an important one, is how you are going to be citing your edits regarding age of lakes to reliable sources. I saw that you attempted to place a citation with you edit to Lake Bosumtwi, but it was not done in a way that was useful. One issue is full attribution. <ref>"LakeNet"</ref> is quite far from a transparent citation that would allow readers to easily verify for themselves the source of the information. A fully-attributed citation, for a book for example, would provide, the author's name, the publisher, the year of publication, the title, the isbn, and often (but not necessarily) a url linking to where it can be viewed online. See Wikipedia:Citing sources#What information to include. (The url here, would not be the lakenet but to the specific item at LakeNet, such as, for example, this for Lake Victoria.)

A second issue is reliability, which I linked previously. Is LakeNet a reliable source in the way we mean it, i.e., one that exercises editorial control and has a reputation for fact checking and accuracy? It verl well may be but I'm not sure. More of a question for people interested in lake articles. Maybe the way to start is not with the template issue, but with engaging people who are interested in lakes regarding the project idea itself. The talk page of the Wikiproject I linked before seems like a good place to raise this. Best regards--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:30, 30 March 2015 (UTC)