Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Latter Day Saint movement/Temples

Thanks to the following for helping find free-use and properly licensed pictures of Temples

• Remember the dot for scouring flickr and elsewhere
• others coming

Wikilinking names

Because the standard is to only link names one a page one time, the featured list candidacy brought up the issue of having the name of the person who dedicated the temple wikilinked everywhere. Since we are using templates it would be difficult to not wikilink it everywhere.

However, we could include a parameter in the call to the list format like {{Talk:Los Angeles California Temple/data |format = LDS Temple list | dedicated_link = No | groundbreaking_link = Yes}} or soemthing like that. Then we would wikilink automatically (rather than requiring the data page to have the wikilink. Any other thoughts? --Trödel 09:03, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Only issue is questions surrounding what happens when a editor not familiar with templates tries to update in one location, will it auto update in all? Say he updates the list page with hard edits, will it throw everything else off? other than that, love the proposal. -Visorstuff 17:08, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes - that is the main reason for doing this :) - so that one making a change will update it for all the articles that reference the data. As to what an unfamiliar pwerson will see - if they try to edit a page where he sees the data it will look like this (for a list)

{{Talk:Kirtland Temple/data | format=LDS Temple list}}
{{Talk:Nauvoo Temple/data | format=LDS Temple list}}
=== Operating Temples ===
{{Talk:Saint George Utah Temple/data | format=LDS Temple list}}
{{Talk:Logan Utah Temple/data | format=LDS Temple list}}
{{Talk:Manti Utah Temple/data | format=LDS Temple list}}
{{Talk:Salt Lake City Temple/data | format=LDS Temple list}}
...

Or for a temple page it will look like this:

{{Talk:Salt Lake City Temple/data | format=Infobox LDS Temple}}
begin text of article 

So the data will look like it auto-magically appears. However, my plan is to put small edit links in the row or infobox. Not sure where though - common way is to use v d e (for view, discuss, edit) in the infobox for instant access to the data. See Template:Canelections for an example. I was thinking of something like edit which would link to the Data template instead of the three links since that would be more obvious what the links does.

I don't love "VDE," but do like "edit" as an alternative. Love the idea. -Visorstuff 18:25, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

OK - I'll use edit - thx for the feedback - I'll implement the first 10 temples. --Trödel 19:22, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

The date format should be defined. I believe it was suggested that it be YYYY-MM-DD so it can be sortable on sortable lists. This is fine, but the template should have some logic to convert it to [[Month DD]], [[YYYY]]. Can we even do sortable tables with this format? Bytebear 04:38, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

The ISO standard names will format according to a persons preferences ("My Preferences" under the Date/Time tab) as long as they are wikilinked like this: [[YYYY-MM-DD]]. I.e. 2006-12-25 wikilinked will appear as 25 December 2006 for me because that is my preference and will appear as December 25, 2006 for most people since that is the default preference.

Unfortunately, they are sorted based on how the data appears on the page - so they have to be in the YYYY-MM-DD format on the comparison list page. See examples for first 10 temples on the list and temple article pages. --Trödel 06:29, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Clarification on the comparison page - if they are wikilinked they will sort April then August for people with the default date display preference. Or for me they will sort according to the day of the month rather than the year. --Trödel 14:02, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I added coordinates to the Talk:Ogden_Utah_Temple/data page - I used the {{coor d|41.226958|N|111.972036|W|}} template; I used the Goggle Maps API which gave me -111.972036,41.226958,0 which after some tinkering discovered was to be marked up as 41.226958|N|111.972036|W. It appears the temples template doesn't yet use this info; here is a sample of the output of the coor d template: 41.226958°N 111.972036°W / 41.226958; -111.972036

MeekMark 15:51, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Ahhh, the coordinates template appears in the heading of the article, sometimes, not in the infobox! :( I added the coor d template to the Talk:Los Angeles California Temple/data and now there is a coordinates link at the top of Los Angeles California Temple, but there is no coordinates link in the Ogden Utah Temple so I guess it is the template style? If the community doesn't like where it appears, feel free to revert. I brewed up a simple web page that accepts a "123 Street Name, City, State" and returns a coor d to cut/paste at http://meekmark.com/cgi-bin/google_api3.cgi MeekMark 16:16, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Nuku'alofa Tonga Temple

I'm going to help out with this project in my spare time. I've created the data page for the Nuku'alofa Tonga Temple - someone please let me know if I'm not doing this right. Jaksmata 14:57, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

More temples in new format

I’ve added a bunch of temples to the new format. I’ve tried to do as much as possible of it by copy/paste to avoid typos, but the large amount of data practically guarantees that errors will happen. If someone wants to “follow me around” correcting things, that would be helpful. Jaksmata 19:06, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Namespaces

Since I started looking at this project, I’ve been suspicious that the Talk namespace is the wrong place to put temple data. I knew that I’d read somewhere that encyclopedic content should only be in certain places, and I just found it: Wikipedia:Subpages. See in particular Disallowed uses #3. (Yes, I know this is a guideline and not a policy.) Also, for temples that don’t have pages yet, the data page will be speedy deleted per General criteria #8 of that policy.

Anyway, I think it would be better if we moved all the data pages from Talk to Template namespace. I propose that we use a naming convention like Template: St. George Utah Temple data. I don’t think we need administrator help to move these pages, but we might.

I have the text for several more temples’ data pages ready (offline), but I’m going to hold off uploading them until I’ve gotten some feedback on this. Jaksmata 15:39, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I decided not to use the Template namespace because I wanted to avoid having to defend the temple data templates from being deleted. Some templates are deleted based on arguments that I think could apply to the temple data so rather than take the chance that they could be deleted I elected to propose using the Talk namespace where those arguments would not apply. Additionally, it allows for an easy namespace delineation between the data and the templates. Data is at Talk:Temple name/data and the templates are at Template:Template name. --Trödel 03:39, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

As to the use of subpages. Dissallowed use #3 is that you can't use subpages in the articles space for encyclopedic content. And I agree that the data could be deleted under #8, so the key is to create at least a stub and put the Infobox in it to avoid the problem of having data but no temple page.

As far as I know this is the first use of a page to store data that could then be reused with different formats in different articles. The deletionists tend to monitor the template namespace much more frequently than the talk space, so I think the deletion risk is much higher in the Template area.

Finally, I think it just makes better sense to have the data "near" the temple - rather than grouped in the template namespace. I think the best approach would be to make some changes to the Subpages policy regarding the use of data pages such as these and see what reaches concensus, that way the method we use is memorialized in (and thus protected by) the guideline. --Trödel 03:45, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I guess that's alright - we can always move it later if needed (like if the subpage guideline becomes policy). Jaksmata 04:30, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree - sometimes trying to make a policy change like that can have unexpected negative consequences. BTW, I just got my copy of the Church Almanac 2007 - and am hoping that it will have height info on more temples. --Trödel 17:41, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Transcluding_article_content_from_talk_pages.--Patrick (talk) 16:50, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

{{LDS Temple geographic}}

I've created a template that could be used as {{LDS Temple geographic}} in my user area ({{User:Jaksmata/LDS Temple geographic}}). There's a sample page where I've tested it here: User:Jaksmata/List of temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by geographic region. This could be copied as a baseline for the "real" template. There is also a simple table header template {{User:Jaksmata/LDS Temple geographic top}}.

There are a few issues with the template that need to be worked out:

• I didn't include the country in the template, because I wanted to preserve the rowspan like it is in the article now. It leaves the article source looking a little messy. This could easily be changed.
• Temples with no article (data page) cause problems - you can see this in my sample page with the Cebu Philippines Temple - this is the reason I haven't already created the template.

Jaksmata 19:58, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I took a look at this today - My view is that we should try to eliminate as much as possible the table formatting from the list pages so that they are easier to read and edit for the uninitiated. However, I can't think of an easy way to do that with the countries having different numbers of temples. I agree that we need a useful way to deal with Temples that do not yet have articles. Maybe creating a stub article for any announced temple is the best plan :) --Trödel 02:11, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

This was finished earlier in 2009 --Trödel 02:17, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Temple nav boxes

What does everyone think about using a nav box in temple articles? Many wikiprojects use these to organize multiple articles that don't fit into the same category. I think they make the articles look nice too. I've made one that I think is pretty nifty by combining the nav box from Wikipedia:WikiProject The Beatles and Bytebear's temple maps. You can see it in my sandbox. Jaksmata 20:13, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I am generally against all these nav box stuff - but I like these collapsible ones and the design looks good. A while back there was a push to use color to identify different religion infoboxes. I'll try to find it as I thought the color used for LDS temples was attractive - and is used in the headings for the comparison list. --Trödel 02:13, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Temple coordinates

I would like to add geographical coordinate information to all the temple pages (I have a source to get the coordinates), but the data is not currently shown on any of the templates. I was thinking of adding coordinates to {{Infobox LDS Temple}} in a way that would let the coordinates appear at the top of the page near the title (e.g., like the Salt Lake Temple article currently looks).

I would add this near the bottom of {{Infobox LDS Temple}}:

{{#if:{{{coordinates}}}|{{{coordinates}}}|
{{#if:{{{coordinatesNSValue|}}}|{{coor title d
|{{{coordinatesNSValue|}}}
|{{{coordinatesNS|}}}
|{{{coordinatesEWValue|}}}
|{{{coordinatesEW|}}}
|Region:{{{coordinatesRegion|}}}_type:Landmark}}
}}
}}

I've tested it using {{X6}} as the "format" and {{X7}} as the "data" (then previewing a few temples substituting X6 and X7 as required), and it seems to work as intended. This would entail adding a few new parameters to each of the temple data pages.

The alternative would be to just add coordinates to each temple article, as has been done to the Salt Lake Temple. Of course, that doesn't give the flexibility that our data templates were intended for. By adding the new parameters, we can support showing the coordinates of multiple temples in grids using a differnet coordinate template like {{coor d}}. Any thoughts/objections/suggestions? – jaksmata 22:07, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Since there's no response, I'll assume no objections. I've already done a few temples, and I'll do the rest in the next day or two. I didn't use the same parameter names I originally said because of the preferred names shown at Wikipedia:WikiProject Geographical coordinates. Also, showing the coordinates in degrees/minutes/seconds at the top seems to be the preferred format for buildings. – jaksmata 03:18, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Taipei Taiwan Temple

I have added a pic to the Taipei Taiwan temple. However it is not showing on the actual Temple page. My coding is correct in the Template and I cannot figure out why it is not showing up. Can someone help me?Petercoyl (talk) 05:15, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

The page's cache just needed to be purged. Thanks for taking the picture! —Remember the dot ^(talk) 05:36, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Template for the geographic list

Using Jaksmata's suggestion above (with some modificaitons) I have implemented a method to use the data on the geographic list page. See an example in my sandbox Please comment yea/nea/etc. --Trödel 20:58, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Original and current square feet

There are several temples (e.g. Freiberg Germany Temple) that were originally built one size and then expanded. How would everyone feel about adding a new parameter to the templates called "original_floor_area_ft" that would hold that value? The value would only be shown in the infoboxes: When present, the infobox would say "Original floor area" and "Current floor area". When the value is missing, it would just say "Floor area" as currently implemented. (I might not respond to any comments for a few days due to a Thanksgiving wikibreak.) – jaksmata 18:30, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Unknown Parameters

It appears that most if not all of the temples now have an issue with their template. For example Bern Switzerland Temple, if edited and then previewed, it gives the following messages

• Warning: Page using Template:Infobox LDS Temple with unknown parameter "region" (this message is shown only in preview).
• Warning: Page using Template:Infobox LDS Temple with unknown parameter "continent" (this message is shown only in preview).
• Warning: Page using Template:Infobox LDS Temple with unknown parameter "rededication_link" (this message is shown only in preview).
• Warning: Page using Template:Infobox LDS Temple with unknown parameter "image_width" (this message is shown only in preview).
• Warning: Page using Template:Infobox LDS Temple with unknown parameter "country" (this message is shown only in preview).
• Warning: Page using Template:Infobox LDS Temple with unknown parameter "style" (this message is shown only in preview).

(without the dots, just using that to separate the lines) The information looks fine in Template:LDS Temple/Bern Switzerland Temple, but somehow the template or subtemplates that are using it, has a problem.Naraht (talk) 13:05, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Use of templates

Over the last few weeks, Broter initiated good faith efforts to begin including the information currently found in many LDS Church-related templates directly into articles. Primary reasons expressed for this significant change include that it's not only more typical of use across WP, but also from the view that all the extra space being taken for an additional template file is unnecessary. I have concerns about these changes due to the extensive use of templates in a number of articles and the impact it would have. As a couple of examples, the articles potentially impacted include the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles (LDS Church), or listings such as the church's presidents, apostles, or temples. These use templates extensively, to provide efficiency of updates, along with ease of the listings and related updates. Based on a recent update to the temple status page by Jgstokes regarding temples closed for renovation, I tried the following as a test example. With the recent closing of the Oakland California Temple for renovation, if the template is updated to show "Closed for Renovation" it does not show up on the main article page. It does however show that status on the temple listing page I referred to above. The flip side is that if the main article page is updated where the infobox is now embedded in the article, those changes are not reflected on the temple listing. I have no idea what this does to the portal-related issues that Broter has worked so hard on, which seems to be why the changes were initially started, but it creates inconsistency across a number of issues - and would require people to know/remember to update for the same issues in multiple ways. I don't know how much traffic this page will get, but since it seems to warrant some discussion or awareness, I thought I'd note it here for comment and some consensus-building discussion. ChristensenMJ (talk) 16:45, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

Look at the infobox for Bryan D. Brown. The standard in wikipedia is to have the infobox within the article space. The User:ARTEST4ECHO who created this infobox-system for the LDS movement did it all wrong.--Broter (talk) 16:54, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. Yes, that may be the case, as a standard or guideline, but that does not address the issues it creates that I tried to give an example of above. ChristensenMJ (talk) 17:00, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

The topic hasn't generated much discussion. At the same time, while it's been noted that including the infobox in the article may typically be a standard WP approach, there have been no explanations or solutions provided to address the number of other challenges that the recent changes create. In the absence of those solutions, I am inclined to change those articles where such changes have been made back, but felt it appropriate to note that again here before doing so, in order to provide further discussion, or arrival at consensus driven by outcomes, rather than preferences or typical guidelines. ChristensenMJ (talk) 19:41, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

McAllen Texas Temple page and template

Hello! I've decided to be bold and attempt to create the McAllen Texas Temple page and Template:LDS_Temple/McAllen_Texas please feel free to through and check those two articles. Have a nice day! Joshua 23:12, 17 October 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jmjosh90 (talk • contribs)

List is too big for Wikipedia

Recent additions to Comparison of temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have caused the page to have an "expanded template size" that is too large. See Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded for details.

The issue can be fixed by splitting the page or by changing how the templates behave. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 18:41, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Memory issues with geographic temple list page

List of temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by geographic region is nearing capacity when it comes to memory. With current rate of 35 temples announced each year, this will approach capacity in 2024. May need to consider splitting the page or changing/reducing content or functionality on the page. More information concerning the issue is in it's Talk page. Thoughts? - Dmm1169 (talk) 08:43, 16 October 2023 (UTC)