Template talk:Infobox cave

Red mark on relief (error?)

There is no red dot in example "Display a marker on any map image using the x% and y% parameters" in documentation. --Pinky sl (talk) 17:37, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Need more measurements

It seems pretty daft that this template has no parameters for the (max.) width and height (internal) of a cave, since this information is obviously of high interest and often readily available. I'm not sure many people care about a cave that's 2 miles long but too small to get into for most people. Most of the notable caves are notable for massive chambers.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  13:13, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Altitude vs. elevation

This template includes the parameter altitude but not the parameter elevation. The latter term is used as height with respect to sea level by the USGS (see, e.g. http://nationalmap.gov/elevation.html ) . The former is ambiguous, meaning either “the height of an object or point in relation to sea level or ground level”. As an educator and GIS professional, in practice I always use altitude to mean distance above the ground, whether talking about an aircraft or a cave entrance — in the latter case its height above a nearby relatively horizontal location.

In addition, the Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Infoboxes#Consistency_between_infoboxes specifies that “Parameter names should be consistent between info boxes”. There are several other templates here that use elevation but do not mention altitude, e.g.:

• Template:Infobox_body_of_water
• Template:Infobox_campground
• Template:Infobox_forest
• Template:Infobox_glacier
• Template:Infobox_park
• Template:Infobox spring
• Template:Infobox_valley
• Template:Infobox_waterfall

I therefore would like to change the template to use elevation instead of altitude, or add an elevation parameter and restrict the use of altitude to height above nearby flat ground or formal access points.

The one question is whether altitude is actually being used in the “above ground” sense in any of the 529 articles; that does not seem out of the question. But is it worth comparing these values with known references to determine this, or should we just change the parameter and sort out the value status later?

-- Andy Anderson 19:38, 21 August 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aanderson@amherst.edu (talk • contribs)

Comment: The |altitude= parameter appears to have been added in 2008. The word "elevation" appears to have been added to the documentation in 2012, as a description of the |altitude= parameter. It would probably be safe to add "elevation" as an alias of "altitude". – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:21, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

@Aanderson@amherst.edu and Jonesey95: adding elevation as alternative syntax seems uncontroversial, so now done. Frietjes (talk) 13:33, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

• Comment. As a former rocket scientist on surface-to-air missiles, in that context altitude is the height component of a Cartesian coordinate (conventionally Z, usually more positive is downwards) and elevation is the Polar coordinate (conventionally, phi (letter), usually more positive is nearer the zenith), as measured from the firing point. However this probably is not the sense you mean for geo articles. Si Trew (talk) 16:57, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Should add an attribute to have built in period?

Should add an attribute to have built in period? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pratyk321 (talk • contribs) 05:01, September 29, 2019 (UTC)

Mapbox

I've placed the code on Template:Infobox cave/sandbox to support the interactive Mapbox maps, which are already in use by many other infobox templates. If you have any questions, comments or concerns, please let me know. I would ideally like to merge this into the main Infobox cave template, but am waiting for consensus. If you'd like to see how this looks on a page, please see Hang Sơn Đoòng‎ (note that the zoom has been adjusted from 10 to 4). The coordinates are pulled from Wikidata. Daylen (talk) 19:22, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

I like maps. So I'm down. Leitmotiv (talk) 23:23, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

@Daylen: Three questions:

1. If you look at the testcases, you've broken the current maps. What's the plan for moving over to the new map?
2. Why did you comment out the UK_grid_ref and Irish_grid_ref? They link to geohack and provide value to readers.
3. What is the compelling reason for switching entirely over to the new map? Can we have both?

— hike395 (talk) 16:23, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Great questions, Hike395! The testcases don't work because they aren't linked to Wikidata items. This won't be an issue in the article namespace, as bots move the coordinate data between projects already. Articles will automatically update to the new map once the code is moved over to the main infobox template! Article editors will have an option to disable it with |mapframe=no, in addition to parameters for height, width, marker icon design, zoom level and customizes coordinates. Before moving the code over to the main infobox template, the documentation will be updated. I've double-checked that UK_grid_ref and Irish_grid_ref aren't commented out; however, these new interactive maps integrate most of the GeoHack functionality already, plus provide a link to it. As described above, it can be disabled with the old map used instead, but it adds interactive functionality that allows readers to adjust zoom. I hope those answers help clarify any concerns. Have a great day! Daylen (talk) 00:46, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

There are a number of implementation issues that I have attempted to fix in the sandbox:

• If an editor supplies {{coords}} to the infobox, then that should override the Wikidata coordinates. This is consistent with the last RfC to discuss Wikidata use in infoboxes, where there is plenty of skepticism about the quality of WD information.
• We need to be able to test the infobox that derives information from Wikidata. The standard way of doing this is with a |qid= parameter. I've added that, and added a testcase that draws the map from Wikidata.
• The current code allows editors to supply custom (image) maps via |image_map=. The original proposal deleted that code. I have restored it, in order not to break infoboxes that were carefully crafted.
• The |UK_grid_map= and |Irish_grid_map= go to geohack directly, so that people can view the Ordnance Survey maps. These Ordnance Survey grid references refer to Ordnance Survey maps, and readers will not want to go through another layer of indirection to see the Ordnance Survey maps. I think we should keep the use of the {{gbm4ibx}} and {{iem4ibx}}. This change is unrelated to using Kartographer.
• The default zoom in Kartographer is too small, IMO. The purpose of the infobox map is, I would claim, to show where the cave is relative to well-known landmarks. I thus set the default zoom to show 400km. The Kartographer maps do not show political boundaries, so people unfamiliar with the location may not understand the context even at 400km zoom. For example, would someone from Austria know where Milwaukee, Wisconsin is?
• I kept the |map_width= argument, because editors may have used that to set the width of the map. I used the same previous default.
• I tried to rename some the parameters to be easier to understand. I don't think most editors know what "mapframe" means.

@Daylen: what do you think?

While it's nice to have a zoomable map in the infobox, I'm concerned that Kartographer doesn't do a good job of showing a zoomed-out map. This may not be doing our readers a favor. I'm ambivalent about this change. — hike395 (talk) 18:11, 19 April 2020 (UTC)