Template talk:Infobox airport/Archive 1

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Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 → Archive 5

Leave your comments below: Thanks, Burgundavia 08:43, Jun 17, 2004 (UTC)

Commentary

I suggest putting these settings in the table:

cellpadding=2 cellspacing=0 style="margin: 0 0 0.5em 0.5em"

-- Yath 09:00, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The following might also be of interest for the infobox:
  • distance from nearest town (or the town it's supposed to serve)
  • some indication of size - number of flights per day? number of passengers?
Also, the colours are a bit garish! I suggest a single, light colour for all headings.
--Auximines 13:02, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
  • Swap Lat and Long so that they are title over data, not beside
  • Change Takeoffs to Takeoffs/Landings

Burgundavia 10:09, Jun 17, 2004 (UTC)

Looks good, mostly nits:

  • IATA/ICOA links should go to as close to the actual codes as possible (without redirection)
  • Has "metres" and "kilometers"--should be consistent spelling, whether BE or AE is used
  • Change format of directional notation so it doesn't look like a date/is more understandable to laypeople (maybe define up in the "Direction" cell?) Niteowlneils 19:26, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

For airport like JFK which are actually inside the borders of a city, the field "closest town" should be replaced with "city". WhisperToMe 20:57, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

  • Use the Template syntax, not a hand-edited table
  • Is it the international airport for the country?
  • What type? does it have buses that freight passangers from/to the plain and the terminal, do people walk (smaller ones), or does it have that arm-to-airplane system larger airports have
  • Perhaps list other services avalible at the airport, transportation to/fro, copenhagen airport for example has a train which goes under it, you walk out from an international flight and take a train, list modes of transportation to/fro. Also things like security deposits.
  • First flights, is it a 24/7 airport or does it start/stop at a specific time?
  • What airlines frequently fly from this airport ( this should have a last-updated thing ).
  • Include number of passengers, flights, etc.
  • Indicate size, numer of gates, etc.
  • List airlines serving it; airlines using as a hub/repair center
Xyzzyva 21:49, Jul 7, 2004 (UTC)
  • What security one must go through ( with further info on that in the article itself of course ) --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 21:56, 2004 Jul 7 (UTC)

I suggest that in the Quick Info section, the 'Opened' slot be changed as 1 July was the date when operations in the airport commenced, and it is not the official opening date, which is 29 December 1981. (Info from the Changi Airport homepage)

Rewriting the page in the template syntax

I'm rewriting this infobox in the template syntax, see Template:tmp and User:Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason/temp --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 22:20, 2004 Jul 8 (UTC)

Dethumbnail

I hope you don't mind but I made the image on Narita International Airport non-thumbnail. -- EmperorBMA|話す 13:06, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Nits

My comments are based on the test infobox posted at Los Angeles International Airport Copy edits:

  • Type of Airport >> Airport type
  • Run by >> Operator
  • commercial >> Commercial
  • Latitude and longitude font should be same as others (10px, right?)
  • "Statistics" and "2003" can be on the same line, saving space: Statistics (2003)

General notes:

  • Any chance the Latitude: 33° 56.4' north and Longtitude: 118° 24.0' west can sit on top of each other rather than next to each other, so they match the format of Airport type, Operator, Opened, City, etc.?
  • My only other suggestion is having more space between the text and the lines of the table. It seems a tiny bit cramped at the moment. Otherwise, great job!

Suggestions

I would suggest putting the airport codes closer to the top of the infobox for quick reference — they are, after all, unique identifiers just like the airport's name. The general public has enough exposure to IATA codes (compared to, let's say, runway information) that they shouldn't wonder too much about what they are (and those who don't know can follow the links anyway, and learn something rather useful!)

Also, many airports in Canada, including all the major ones, are owned and operated by separate entities. I 'm really not sure if it would be a good idea to include an "owned by" line in the infobox, but it's worth thinking about. --Patrick Bernier 11:04, 2004 Nov 12 (UTC)

geographical etc. data changes

The infobox as it currently stays doesn't address data aging, most notably the magnetic variation and the associated runway re-numbering. Also, rwy lengths can change, rwys added/removed etc. Probably, a traditional (in aviation) "not for navigation" label is appropriate, although in general there seem to be enough disclaimers around the WP anyhow. Perhaps smth like a reference to the source (e.g. DAFIF or FAA database revision).

For the US airports I would also add a relevant airnav link (I don't know if it's OK to give such a wide endorsement to a commercial country-based site, but it is widely recognized by the aviators as a valuable resource. BACbKA 20:31, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Latitude/longitude

I would suggest using a template for the latitude/longitude specification, so that one automagically gets a link to a map service. In the current form latitude and longitude are split between two table boxes - I would suggest having them both in the same box, because there is some trickery involved otherwise. -- Egil 19:29, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Note that using a template as an argument for another template does not currently work, see bug report. -- Egil 07:09, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I've taken the liberty to rewritte Template:tmp so that coordinates go in one box. It really is needed for the future. -- Egil 17:13, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Still in test phase?

It seems that the test is still running, when it was meant to end months ago. It has also has been implemented on a few other airports, such as Charles de Gaulle International Airport so is the test over or not? :P I like the infobox, by the way. - Joolz 16:49, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I just spotted the box at Manchester International Airport. If I may still nitpick... it claims the closest town is Manchester, 16 km away. Err, what about Wilmslow, which is a reasonably sizeable place itself, and is practically at the end of the runway? -- Arwel 16:04, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • Yes, this is still in test phase I have still not implemented it wiki-wide. If you wish to merge in all the changes listed here and do that, be my guest. Burgundavia 16:25, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)

Sentence case and units

I suggest:

  • the term 'Summary' rather than 'Quick Info'
  • the term 'Operator' rather than 'Run by'
  • sentence case
  • unit symbols rather than unit names
  • using parentheses () rather than oblique / where units are adjacent
  • no link for units

Thus the table would be:

Victoria International Airport
Picture of airport[[Image:Airportpicture.jpg|Picture of airport]]
Summary
Type of airport Commercial
Operator Victoria Airport Authority
Opened Date
Closest town Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Distance from town 96 km (35 miles)
Coordinates 48°38′49″N 123°25′33″W / 48.64694°N 123.42583°W / 48.64694; -123.42583
IATA YYJ ICAO CYYJ
Runways
Direction Length Surface
(ft) (m)
09/27 7000 2000 Paved
02/20 7000 2000 Paved
13/31 7000 2000 Paved
Statistics
For 1998
Number of passengers 5,000,000
Number of takeoffs 5,000,000

Obfuscation

I like the look of the infobox; however, I wonder whether we should be using this kind of thing too much in a collaborative project like the Wikipedia. The markup for the table is both brittle (it's bound to break during editing and cut-and-paste) and obfuscatory (the markup overwhelms and obscures the content) -- it will certainly scare away any but the most experienced Wikipedia users from trying to edit a page. The idea of Wiki markup (either traditional or MediaWiki) is to stay out of the way of the content; when you edit an article like London Heathrow Airport, you start off seeing more markup than content, and I think that is counterproductive.

I acknowledge that a bulleted list of airport data is much uglier than a nicely-done infobox, but the bulleted list is easier to edit, and that should probably win out here. On balance, I'd recommend against the infobox -- it's better to be ugly and accessible than beautiful and inaccessible. David 11:09, 2005 Apr 15 (UTC)

    • I am going to make a template out of it, and then include that. The infobox is a good idea, we just need to be selective about what we include. Burgundavia 01:46, Apr 16, 2005 (UTC)
I just took at look at Help:Template -- I haven't worked with Wikipedia templates before, but it looks like a much better idea than cutting and pasting all of the table markup. It would probably be best to use named parameters rather than positional ones, to make it more robust. Will we be able to use repeatable elements, like runways, though? David 01:54, 2005 Apr 16 (UTC)
The current plan is to have 3 templates. 1 - main template with name etc. 2- a runway template for a single runway. Can be used multiple times 3 - a stats template (I am actually wavering to have this a seperate template for the infobox, inline rather than the side) Does this help? Burgundavia 01:59, Apr 16, 2005 (UTC)

Ideas

Renaming

Moved from Template talk:Airport infobox

  • Should we rename "distance from town" and "nearest town" to "distance from community" and "nearest community"? David 11:24, 2005 Apr 18 (UTC)
    • I like this idea Burgundavia 11:34, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)
    • We might thus also want to add a "primarily serves" or something similar. Burgundavia 11:38, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)
"The only thing that I am disagreeing with you on, is the "Distance from" section. Town is erroneous terminology. CBD is universally understood, though admittedly in more common usage in the Commonwealth countries. As for it being too technical, I think that is negligible, especially within an infobox citing ICAO/IATA. CBD is the correct term, and one that is applicable to all airports. Anyone who requires clarification can follow the link (the point of a wiki) and see its near-equivalent 'downtown'."--Cyberjunkie 15:02, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Agreed. Ironically, plenty of airports are located within city boundaries, and hence, that field would have indicated 0km!
I think that the distance is usually to the city centre -- LaGuardia, for instance, is listed in the AFD as "4 E" (i.e. 4 nautical miles east) of New York City, which is more-or-less the distance to Manhattan. In cases where the airport is in the centre, you can use "ADJ" (adjacent) or "0 km" or even just leave the field out. I think that this is a pretty useful field -- every airport is officially associated with some community, somewhere (even if it's only a few cabins), and the Canada Flight Supplement and US Airport/Facility Directory, at least, provide this information for every single airport listed.David 17:36, 2005 Apr 18 (UTC)
However, the current infobox is serves, which may not be the closest community. This information is useful, just probably not in the infobox Burgundavia 18:31, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)
D--Huaiwei 15:17, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
What about just dropping the distance from the infobox altogether. It can be mentioned in the article and it is probably better explained in a sentence anyway. Burgundavia 16:25, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)
I'm not opposed to doing that. I removed it from the infobox I put on the Australian airports. For some airports, the distance from the CBD is a notable feature, for others, it's insignificant.--Cyberjunkie 16:38, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Ok, I am going to gut it. Burgundavia 16:42, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)
Removed, but the following pages need to have the data merged back into the article. Please strike as they are done: Ottawa/Macdonald-Cartier International Airport, Kabul International Airport, Ruzyne International Airport], Hong Kong International Airport, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, O'Hare International Airport, Frankfurt International Airport, John F. Kennedy International Airport, Baltimore-Washington International Airport. Burgundavia 16:48, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)
Er hold on....why gut it? It was actually quite a useful info as far as basic airport info is concerned. Btw, you sure there are only so few airports with that field?--Huaiwei 17:17, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Thus are the only airports that have got the infobox so far. I am removing it from the infobox, not from the article. Burgundavia 18:31, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)
Before we remove them...why not discuss this further first? I do not think it is a wise idea to remove them. Distance from the city centre is quite a basic and commonly found info, and it does speak volumes on the accesibility of an airport to its catchment area.--Huaiwei 18:45, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The major is, distance to what town? That must be made very clear, and that is why a sentence is better. For instance Montreal/Mirabel International Airport serves Montreal, but is not located anywhere near it. It is located in Mirabel. Should the distance be to Mirabel or to Montreal? Burgundavia 18:49, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)
But that isnt uncommon. Many airports are located outside a major city, and often takes the name of the town it is located in or is nearby to, yet was built to serve that major city primarily (Narita: Tokyo, Gatwick: London, Tacoma: Seattle are just a few egs), and it does not really present a major case for concern. But for clarity's sake, how about in the format "Distance to CBD: XXX km/miles (City name)", which can then also allow us to add multiple city distances since some (thankfully not many) airports do serve several large cities at once?--Huaiwei 19:48, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The point of a infobox is fast information. There are no infoboxes, that I have seen anyway, that have so much wordage in them. Burgundavia 20:06, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)
That's a good point about possible confusion. The Canada Flight Supplement, unfortunately, is inconsistent about this. For example, for Ottawa/Carp Airport, it gives the distance to Carp rather than the distance to Ottawa; for Monteal/Mirabel International Airport, on the other hand, it gives the distance to Montreal rather than Mirabel. I looked at a few more examples, and they're all over the place like that. Still, I think that this is information that the average (non-pilot) reader will care about, much more than runway lengths and headings. Perhaps there's some way to make it work, even if we have to measure some distances ourselves. David 21:30, 2005 Apr 18 (UTC)
I had an idea regarding this. We could say "Distance from $town", and then fill it in as part of the template, to make it clear where we were referring to. Burgundavia 23:36, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)
Generally, I would think that "distance from CBD" would refer to the city airport serves, regardless of where it's located. But if the aiport is large enough and serves two cities, I like Huaiwei's idea of "Distance to CBD:" and then "XXX km/miles (City name)" for both cities. Such cases are rare in any case, and this seems an understandable clarification.--Cyberjunkie 01:05, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Airport type

  • We need need a standard set of types. I propose the following: Commerical vs. General Aviation / Public vs Private / Domestic vs. International, where each airport would have one of all three of those types. Burgundavia 11:34, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)
Proposal from User:Dpm64 -> 3 types: Public|Private|Military, Aiport of Entry:Yes|No and Scheduled Commercial Yes|No
2 issues.One is with space, fitting all the words. Second is with AoE. I happen to understand that as my brother is a pilot, but not many others will, IMHO. Burgundavia 12:07, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)
hmm...I am not sure if "Commercial vs. General Aviation" is a good choice of words, especially with the later? There are too many grey areas. "Public|Private|Military" sounds better and more precise?--Huaiwei 12:21, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
As long as "Airport of Entry" links to a Wikipedia article, it shouldn't cause any confusion (alternatively, we could use something like "Customs?"). I don't think that "Scheduled Commercial" is a good idea, because, again, commercial aviation is much bigger than just passenger service (and you can also have scheduled cargo flights); "Scheduled passenger service" is really what we're trying to get at here -- in other words, can you buy an airline ticket to this airport? David 13:32, 2005 Apr 18 (UTC)
I prefer "Commercial"|"Private"|"Military".--Cyberjunkie 15:09, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
What do you mean by a "commercial" airport, though? Do you mean that it has any kind of commercial aviation (say, crop dusters or banner tow), or only that it has scheduled passenger service? If it's the latter, how would you classify the tens of thousands of civilian, public airports in North America alone that do not have scheduled passenger service? We're best sticking with the standard terminology, I think: "public", "private", and "military". That's the way they're described in official publications and charts that we'll have to use as sources. David 17:30, 2005 Apr 18 (UTC)

Statistic Infobox

  • As stats has been moved out of the main infobox, a stats infobox needs to be created. I propose an inline, rather than on the side, one. Burgundavia 11:37, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)

Suggested changes

  1. remove year opened (the information is not easy to find for smaller airports, and probably belongs as part of a history section anyway).
  2. add elevation above sea level.

It might also be interesting to flag whether the airport is towered, if there's room. David 12:26, 2005 Apr 23 (UTC)

Year opened is pretty easy one, as most airports have an official opening and an actual one. Elevation might be good. Burgundavia 15:38, Apr 23, 2005 (UTC)

Proposed Changes

I have looked at all the suggestions here and I have come up with a set of proposed changes:

  1. Creation of stats infobox, to be inline with the article
  2. Removing the date opened from the infobox, to be put inline of the article, as it is not a simple fact (sometimes there are 2 dates, official opening and actual opening)
  3. Adding ASL
  4. Maintain removal of distance, as this is not a cut and dry fact either (distance to where?)
  5. Addition of the customs. This would be a simple yes/no.
  • Note, I am still uncertain as to the airport type naming, so I am leaving that alone for now.

Burgundavia 16:24, Apr 23, 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea to me, although the information of distance to a town it is named after (if an airport is named after or known to belong to a town) would be a good idea. Then again, town centre or town border? What's common there? -- AlexR 17:25, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I've added elevation MSL and made changes in all articles that use the template. I also removed operator from the template, since it isn't very important information and created a lot of red links (do we really need a Wikipedia article for every local airport authority?), and removed the year opened; I've left the parameters in the articles themselves, though, so the information is easy to put back if people want to. I like the other changes suggested above, but haven't made them yet; in addition, we might want to consider a field indicating whether the airport has scheduled airline passenger service, since that's something Wikipedia readers are likely to care about. David 13:14, 2005 May 3 (UTC)
I have the following comments on the infobox:
  • The headings should be sentence case just like article headings. Thus 'Type of Airport' would become 'Type of airport', 'Number of Passengers' would become 'Number of passengers', and 'Quick Info' would become 'Quick info'.
  • The phrase 'Quick info' seems weird. Information presented on a screen does not have speed. I am sure that there is a better phrase like 'Summary', 'Overview' or something else.
  • I would use symbolic format for the units. Thus 'feet' would become 'ft' and 'Meters' would become 'm'.
Trying to be constructive. Bobblewik  (talk) 19:07, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
I have no objection to these changes. David 20:10, 2005 May 3 (UTC)
I think the 'Elevation MSL' should be changed to 'Elevation ASL. MSL and ASL have very different meanings and ASL is the most correct. MSL is used only at an airport to refer to the reduction to sea level of the station pressure and then really only by weather forcasters. ASL would be used to refer to the elevation of objects (runway, aircraft, etc). CambridgeBayWeather 08:09, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
The IATA link goes to a list, it probably should go to the article like the link for ICAO. Vegaswikian 03:45, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Airport frame

Moved from Template talk:Airport frame

Please end infoboxes started using this with Template:Airport end frame, as this makes it much easier for people checking syntax to ensure that number of number of {{ equals number of }}, and that number of {| equals the number of |}. -- All the best, Nickj (t) 01:55, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

I set the {{Airport end frame}} to redirect to {{End frame}}, a more generic name for the same thing (just a |} ). In the future, use that template. Dbinder 14:18, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Runway

I'm guessing the letters and numbers in the first 'runway' column, referrring to direction, are latitude or something relatively simple, but could they be explained?

A.K.A.47 17:18, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
Runway surfaces are named by their two headings (usually magnetic, but sometimes true) in tens of degrees. So a runway surface that extends directly east (90°) to west (270°) would be named "09/27", a runway that extends south (180°) to north (360°) would be named "18/36", and so on. I'm not sure how you can explain all of that in an infobox, but the key point is that it's just the runway surface's name, regardless of how it's derived.
Note another possible point of confusion: the runway surface 09/27 is actually two runways, runway 09 if you're landing or taking off eastbound, and runway 27 if you're landing or taking off westbound. They can even be different lengths if one of them has a displaced threshold.
Should we rename "Direction" to "Name" or "Designation"? Is there a useful article to link to? David 23:23, 2005 May 17 (UTC)
Runway should mention it, if it doesn't it should be added. Either of those names work. Burgundavia (✈ take a flight?) 23:45, May 17, 2005 (UTC)
A question on how you want the runway designation/bearing listed. The headings are derived from rounding the bearing so do you want just the designation, just the bearing or both? As an example the bearings for the runway in Cambridge Bay Airport are 127T/307T, so the heading is 13T/31T and the listing in the CFS is 13T(127T)/31T(307T) CambridgeBayWeather 08:07, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Trivia

I'm not playing the devil's advocate, frankly, but I really don't like the colour scheme. The blue colour is grotesque. :-) -- Jerry Crimson Mann 4 July 2005 15:51 (UTC)

Linking coordinates to map sources page

It is useful standard practice to link coordinates to a map sources page with links to maps, see Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)#Geographical_coordinates. I suggest to do that also in Template:Airport infobox.--Patrick 20:56, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

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