Template talk:Infobox French commune

Regional maps

Hi, I made a sandbox version that creates a regional map under the map of France. It uses the "region" field, and map templates like {{Location map France Corse}}. Maps are available for Alsace, Basse-Normandie, Bretagne, Corse and Poitou-Charentes now. See the Corte example at Template:Infobox French commune/testcases. Markussep ^Talk 13:50, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I've made the version with regional maps "live" now, let me know if you see errors. Markussep ^Talk 10:49, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

This regional map will only work if the coordinates (latitude and longitude) are specified in the infobox. There are many communes for which a different location map is used (4236 articles as of now), for example Trédion, which doesn't use coordinates. Hence the regional map doesn't work. In for example the article Bignan coordinates are available, and the regional map works. Coordinates are available for all communes at French wikipedia. All we have to do is copy the fields "longitude" and "latitude" from the corresponding French article, and remove the fields "image map", "x", "y" and "lat long", see this diff for Bignan. It's an easy task, but a big one, and I could do with some help. Does anyone know whether a bot can do this? These are the relevant articles: [1]. As far as I know, the articles are all about communes in the departments Côtes-d'Armor, Ille-et-Vilaine, Finistère, Morbihan, Seine-et-Marne, Essonne, Haute-Saône, Doubs, Jura, Territoire de Belfort, Somme. The four Breton departments would have my first priority, since that regional map is already avaliable. We can monitor progress at Wikipedia:WikiProject French communes/Status. Markussep ^Talk 15:20, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

We should be able to do this using AWB. I will have a look if Rich (or someone) doesn't have time. Thanks! Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 16:21, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

I didn't know you can use AWB to copy info from other wikipedias, that would speed up things a lot! Your help is very welcome. Markussep ^Talk 20:44, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I don't know if AWB can copy from other WPs. However, I have a MediWiki perl script that can. I used this for adding infoboxes to about 3000 Spanish city articles a few months ago. 21:41, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good! Markussep ^Talk 12:02, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Could you post a link to your MediaWiki script? I'm interested in developing my own scripts for other purposes. Regards, Kiwipete (talk) 23:40, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Sure, I can post one. Most of my scripts aren't very well commented, and are specific to a particular job, but I can post an example. By the way, I created a tracking category here for all the transclusions missing latitude and longitude. This will us a list of which still need to be fixed. Is it better to copy the coordinates from the French Wiki, or convert the existing {{coord}}? Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 16:22, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I suppose it's easiest to copy the coordinates from French wikipedia, but I have seen one or two errors in them. There's no guarantee that the data used in the coord template is correct/unvandalized anyway. I found and introduced regional maps for Champagne-Ardenne, Bourgogne and Île-de-France as well, albeit in different designs, but good enough for until the new maps are available. Many communes in Île-de-France have locator maps (for instance Évry and Aulnay-sous-Bois), do you think we should replace them with maps of France and the Île-de-France region? Maybe reuse them somewhere in the article. Markussep ^Talk 16:46, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

BTW don't remove maps for communes outside "metropolitan" France, i.e. everything outside Europe (Reunion, Guadeloupe, Nouvelle Caledonie etc.). Markussep ^Talk 16:54, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Okay, the script is now up and running. It changes 'lat long' to 'latitude' and 'longitude', by copying the coordinates from the corresponding page on French Wikipedia. It only removes the map if it is File:France_jms.png. For example, the typical edit is like this, and if the map is not France_jms.png, then a typical edit is like this. If this looks good, I will have it run through the rest. Thanks! Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 20:48, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and as requested, here is the Perl script: User:Plastikspork/frenchcommune.pl. This is a somewhat complicated example. I will post some more simplistic examples as well, and link to them on User:Plasticspork. Note that I am not running these in "bot mode" as I make the script display the changes, and ask for confirmation to commit. In theory, these could be used to make bots, but that would require obtaining approval to run a bot, and I like to double check each edit myself. Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 21:31, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

And, I added some logic to the main Location Map to position the label to the left for locations near the Eastern border. Do we need this in the other location maps? Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 21:55, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

This is now complete. As far as I can tell they all have latitude and longitude coordinates. In cases that the French and English WP didn't agree within a hundredth of a degree, I checked them by hand and corrected the one in error. Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 21:54, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Any word on when the rest of the regions will be available? I was looking up (for some reason) Giez, Haute-Savoie and was straining to see exactly where in Rhone-Alpes it was, and thought to myself how nice it'd be to have the larger scale map available. > Minnecologies^Talk 05:18, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

I guess we have to wait until Sting, the creator of the regional maps, finds time to make the Rhône-Alps map. Markussep ^Talk 20:04, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Regions and departments functionality

Hi, I made a modification to the infobox sandbox version, see the test cases page. The regions and departments are automatically retrieved using the INSEE code. I checked whether there were articles without INSEE code, and repaired those. It also works for the overseas regions and collectivities. The regional map also uses the INSEE code now. The real test is of course when it goes live, I can check for errors using AWB list comparer. This allows for uniform links to regions and departments (if they're moved, we only have to fix the link in one place), and the fields "region" and "department" become obsolete. Comments? Markussep ^Talk 17:31, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Great. Are there any objections to moving some of the more complicated case statements to a subtemplate? Thanks! Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 21:57, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

I guess it's no problem to move the regional maps and the region+department switch to subtemplates, I'll give it a try. Markussep ^Talk 12:43, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Y Done Markussep ^Talk 19:20, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

The regions and departments functionality went live without major problems, I only made a mistake with the number for Aude (11 instead of 09), and fixed it. Markussep ^Talk 07:30, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, this looks much better. Thanks! Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 14:43, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Coat of arms without flag

We are now able to specify only the coat of arms without the flag. We should clean up the usage of hardcoded [[File:mycoa.jpg]] links in the articles. For example, like this. Thanks! Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 21:57, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Nice! It's going to be quite a job to clean up all the images ;-) I tweaked the default image sizes for upright images. Markussep ^Talk 12:29, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that works even better. I will start cleaning these up. It could take a month or two given the 35,000 transclusions. Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 14:45, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Commune in the top line

A user asked at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_France#Commune why there's "commune of" in the top line of the infobox. I couldn't really answer that, except that the infobox is meant for the administrative subdivision type "commune". IMO we can remove it, thoughts? Markussep ^Talk 07:30, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

I see no reason not to remove it. Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 14:44, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Removed it. I see several larger towns have "Ville de Bordeaux" etc. in the "native name" field. I think that's equally useless, I'm removing it. Which deprecated parameters are still used in articles (I see 76 articles in that category)? I think we can clean up the infobox code significantly. Markussep ^Talk 09:49, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Great! I am plowing through the image link clean-up. As soon as I finish the first pass we can add a maintenance sub-category/section for that as well. Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 15:31, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Region or department map?

copied from User talk:Markussep

Hi. I know you said you preferred the regional maps. But what would you say to using a department maps which also shows arrondisement divisions like the one on the right? Wouldn't it be better to feature a department map if it exists? Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 22:20, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

The regional maps also show the arrondissements, see Alsace for instance. We could use department maps, that's easier to do now using the INSEE codes. I like both, I have no preference for either. Do you prefer the administrative or the physical map? Markussep ^Talk 14:20, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

I think both look good and I am glad we are getting hold of them. I do think though that the physical maps do look a lot more professional looking and realistic. Perhaps we could use the physical maps instead? Its just they look more like maps so to speak. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 15:41, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Map missing

Ehi! Why map is missing here, despite coordinates are given? Let me know... --'''Attilios''' (talk) 07:02, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

I guess you fixed the problem yourself? I see two maps now, one of France, one of Île-de-France. Markussep ^Talk 09:17, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Demonym ex-parameter revisited

Hi. I was looking at new parameters and demonym in this page's archive. I'm still quite confused by this. The demonym parameter does still exist in many instances of the infobox, but it does not display. So I have two questions: (1) how come it doesn't display? (I know it doesn't matter; I'm just curious) ... and (2) presumably it is OK, nay, right, to remove this parameter and content when we see it? Yes?? Thanks and sorry if these are naive questions - I'm way outside my very small area of knowledge! Best wishesDBaK (talk) 14:54, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

If I recall, after the parameter was removed from the infobox, there was no pressing need to go through and remove it from the infoboxes, since it was essentially harmless to leave it there. I will search the archives for any other discussions (if there are any). Thanks! Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 00:21, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

size of info box

Hello,

Is there anyway we can reduce the width of this map so that the info box is not so huge? I've been working on Vassieux-en-Vercors as I'm wanting to expand the article and also include all the World War II info, but the info box crowds out the text and would prevent other images from being added. Thanks.Malke 2010 (talk) 18:11, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

In my browser the infobox is not so big, about one third of the article window width. The infobox width is 280px (independent of the map size), which is not unusual. Do you have the same problem with for instance Vlorë? Markussep ^Talk 08:38, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Edit request

Currently "List of postal codes in France" is listed, which is a redirect, and so it would be nice to have it link directly to Postal codes in France. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 21:34, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

excessive precision in latitude and longitude

What's with the use of sub-millimetre precision? For example, the infobox in Écrammeville specifies the latitude to 0.0000000001-degree of arc (0.011-millimetre (0.00043 in)) precision and the longitude to 0.000000000001-degree of arc (0.0073-millimetre (0.00029 in)) precision. After studying multiple examples, I'm convinced that the source data is only accurate to at most 1-second of arc (31-metre (102 ft)) precision.

While it's true that, for most users, the template displays only second-of-arc precision, this looks like a blatant example of excess precision. There are literally thousands of examples just as bad as Écrammeville, many of which were generated by a single AWB user back in 2009.

If there's no objection, I'd like to task a bot with rounding the |latitude= and |longitude= parameters to four decimal places: 0.0001-degree of arc (11-metre (36 ft)) precision. I will of course go through Wikipedia:Bot requests. —Stepheng3 (talk) 18:56, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

WP:OPCOORD says "A general rule is to give precisions approximately one tenth the size of the object", also that degrees to four places of decimals is (as you state) approximately 11 m, which is therefore suitable for a place approximately 110 metres across. Are communes really that small?

Consider a partially urban, partially rural, partially mountainous department: Isère has an area of 7,431 km², and Category:Communes of Isère has 533 member pages, which works out at 13.9 km² as the average area for a commune in that department. If of roughly circular/square shape, such a commune would be 3.5–4.5 km across. I would suggest three or even two places of decimals for the degrees. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:10, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree that 0.001-degree precision would be ample for most communes. However, if the bot is going to apply a one-size-fits-all solution, then its solution must work for all communes, not just average-size ones. And because there are 3600 seconds of arc in a degree, round to 0.0001-degree precision has the desirable property of not altering the dms-formatted coordinates seen by most users. Let's not make perfection the enemy of improvement. Do you agree that reducing precision from 12 decimal places to 4 would constitute an improvement? —Stepheng3 (talk) 20:23, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh, yes - 4 is better than 12. But since entering the above, I've examined the lat/long on your example Écrammeville - and it appears to me that the apparent "precision" of |longitude=-0.943055555556|latitude=49.3238888889 is not due to measuring to that accuracy, but the result of dividing one number into another and then entering all the decimal places that the pocket calculator has displayed. I've seen school pupils do this since about 1978. Calculating back, I find that -0.943055555556 is near as dammit 0°56'35" W ({{decdeg|0|56|35|W}} → -0.9430556), and 49.3238888889 similarly works out at 49°19'26" N ({{decdeg|49|19|26|N}} → 49.3238889), so as things stand we're really talking about an accuracy of 1 second, which is to say 30 metres. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:49, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

That's more or less the analysis which convinced me that the source data is only accurate to 1 second of arc. Short of altering the template to accept dms format, I think rounding to four decimal places is the best solution for now. I'll take this to BOTREQ. —Stepheng3 (talk) 23:35, 5 January 2012 (UTC)