Template talk:Country

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Main article: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Flag_Template

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[edit] Botched Formatting

I believe there should not be a line break before the tag. This extra line break seems to be messing up a lot of pages that are using the template, such as Deal or No Deal#International versions. Could an admin please try to remedy this? --Poochy 03:06, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] country_infobox added

I added {{country_infobox}} by request from the {{Infobox_Country}} (t/l) talk page. They'll be testing it to see if we want to document or delete it. (SEWilco 03:22, 19 December 2005 (UTC))

[edit] Wikipedia:Avoid using meta-templates

The entire scheme around this template is in violation of the WP:AUM policy. The developers have confrimed that templates calling or within other templates cause extra processing. This policy has been reaffirmed by the Arbitrators as valid. The template namespace is not a general data repository. -- Netoholic @ 08:44, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Violation of a newly defined policy. I'll ask at AUM about plans for transitions. (SEWilco 09:58, 10 January 2006 (UTC))
it is not violation. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 23:17, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
In as much as WP:AUM is a proposed and not adopted polocy with enough opposition that is it unlikley to ever reach consensus (either way), I think the net result is that the use of meta templates should be carfuly considered before being implemented and avoided when doing so is easy, but not proscribed. Dalf | Talk 22:47, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Just pointing out that WP:AUM was rejected and inactive. Cburnett 22:58, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Brazil which variable

Template:BRA-I - link should be Brazilian Empire, but text could stay Empire of Brazil. is this possible? Tobias Conradi (Talk) 23:17, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] interwiki

Any admin, please add zh:Template:Country to this template.--Jusjih 15:28, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Poland template

This ain't working on Template:POL... Can anyone please help? Maartenvdbent 16:57, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Opera

This infobox (for any country) does not look good on Opera browser. It should be fixed. --Haham hanuka 10:46, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

??? --Haham hanuka 13:03, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Categories

The sources is protected, but is uncategorized, so I am tagging the talk page with a cat instead. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 20:46, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Country/doc

I have created a documentation subpage for this template at Template:Country/doc. Please follow the instructions there to add categories and interwikis to the template. I have also moved the instructions to the subpage so they are now transcluded to the template. I think that I've fulfilled the all of the requested edits on this page and have removed {{editprotected}}. Cheers, BanyanTree 03:57, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of flag icon

Considering this template has over 10,000 links to it, removing the flag icon functionality without consensus, as done here, seems a bit extreme, especially on a protected template. I'm aware of WP:FLAGCRUFT, and see the incomplete discussion at Template_talk:Flagicon#What_is_the_point.3F. I see no consensus on removal however. --*Spark* 02:44, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

There is consensus there and in numerous other places for the appropriate use of these flags. For what reason is the flag not redundant if the name of the country is already there? —Centrx→talk • 02:54, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
There is consensus in a little dark corner over in another room to make changes over here? In what way is that stub of a discussion relevant to anything? (SEWilco 17:48, 11 December 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Restoration

The recent edits by Centrx should be reverted. There was no discussion for this major change. (SEWilco 17:52, 11 December 2006 (UTC))

Absolutely! I agree with some of the sentiments of flag overuse, but one broad instance in which they are appropriate and expected by editors and readers alike is in sports results tables. Original source material (e.g. international tournaments) often use flag icons in front of competitor or team names; it is not unreasonable for Wikipedia to also conform to this convention. Centrx's actions were far too harsh in this case. It is not appropriate to disable such a high-use template's behaviour based on extremely limited discussion and/or personal opinion. The appropriate course of action would have been to tag or edit specific articles in which flag usage is inappropriate. Andrwsc 18:08, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Andrwsc speaks sense here. (I can edit the page, but I would like some more users to back it up first.) Sam Vimes | Address me 18:45, 11 December 2006 (UTC)


What users will notice this page and discuss? This is the discussion page for a utility template. The restoration request was placed here because that's what the protection message states as the usage for "editprotected". (SEWilco 18:53, 11 December 2006 (UTC))
Yeah, no kidding. The only reason I found the "discussion" that Centrx referred to was because I was browsing his/her edit history to figure out what had changed. I'm a fairly savvy user - would most people do the same thing? I have evidence to the contrary. I first got wind of Centrx's actions because I saw some anon IP edits to try to "fix" what had been broken by the edits to this template! That totally undermines the original intent of these templates, ensuring consistent visual appearance and providing easier editing for new article content. Andrwsc 19:06, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Point. *reverts* Sam Vimes | Address me 19:14, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Edit done, so {{editprotected}} removed from this section. (SEWilco 01:58, 12 December 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Changes

So, are you going to fix this template by removing the 4 layers of template transclusion and removing its use where it is inappropriate, which is the vast majority of transclusions of this template? Also, what is an efficient way to remove these inappropriate uses? The template is what makes the flags simple to use and makes them appear to be "official" and encouraged; why should the template not be used to stop it when it is only the small minority of uses of the template are appropriate? —Centrx→talk • 02:41, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Someone offered a new version of the template, in the proper place for discussion. Appropriateness has not been defined. (SEWilco 02:43, 12 December 2006 (UTC))
One of the most egregious uses is in navigation templates. The proper place for the discussion of the use of this template is the template talk page. —Centrx→talk • 02:45, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
It might be useful to provide a link to this "proper place" you mention. --*Spark* 12:06, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Top of this page is a link to the main article for these tools. (SEWilco 06:48, 13 December 2006 (UTC))
That page seems absurdly complex for a bunch of tiny images. Where is the "new version" of the template and why has it not been implemented? —Centrx→talk • 07:25, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal to replace {{country|..|USA|...}} calls

Notice: There is currently a proposal to change calls {{country|..|USA|...}} to {{USA|..}} at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Flag_Template#Changing_USA_flag_calls. Please consider posting there to keep the discussion in one place. --Ligulem 11:17, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Deprecated

I've added a deprecation notice, requesting to use template:country2 instead of this template. --Ligulem 16:26, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Is that the right way to handle this? I would have expected the new template code to replace the existing ones in place, thereby instantly updating all instances. The alternative, editing thousands and thousands of articles to use the "2" versions, seems like a very inelegant and time consuming solution. Also, the "2" in the template name is not very intuitive and not a good choice for these template names in the long term. If you are really ready to "go live" with your new versions, I strongly recommend replacing the existing templates. If you are worried that you may have missed some parameter combinations, you can run an initial experiment using the #ifexist parser function and populate a temporary category with pages that may not work without some attention. Andrwsc 17:33, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
I've taken your concerns on board and started populating the full hard core data list User:Ligulem/work/country data list1 using User:Ligulem/work/flagconv. The migration from country to country2 is mostly already done (look at the what link here lists of country and country2). For flagicon, I admit migrating to flagicon2 seems impossible given the 37,000+ or so transclusions. For country, it was manageable (under 1000 edits, some obnoxious cases still left). At least I had the chance to check each article before saving. It's not easy to switch the current system. And I don't know what you mean with running an initial experiment. The experiments have been done. --Ligulem 19:51, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
BTW, I've generated User:Ligulem/work/country data list1 from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3APrefixindex&from=Country+flag+alias&namespace=10. Once the list is populated, we can switch over country and flagicon (flagcountry and flag) to use the new code. --Ligulem 20:09, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
What I meant about the "experiment" was to find out if all the new instances will work. "What links here" and "Special pages" tools are useful, but they only tell you what articles need examining, but tell you nothing about the parameter usage for the templates. Therefore, a trick I have used in the past is to populate a temporary category to create a list of "problem pages". For example, if you want to make sure that "Country_data_xxx" exists for every xxx passed as the first parameter to {{flagcountry}}, some code like this might work:
{{#ifexist: Template:Country_data_{{{1}}} | <!-- ok --> | [[Category:Articles that use flagcountry with missing country data]]}}
After waiting a few minutes for the servers to catch up, you can take a look at the articles in that category to see what is missing. This approach might be useful for seeing if anything fell through the cracks for the 37000 instances that you will be updating...
Hope this helps, Andrwsc 20:59, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Ok. Nice trick, thanks. I think I'll create the full set of data templates per my list and then exchange the code of flagicon with the code of flagicon2. So I won't change the 37,000 calls to flagicon. Just the code of flagicon. --Ligulem 22:44, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Glad to help! One other question: wasn't the intent to "fold" all of the flag variants for one nation into a single "country data" template? For example, instead of {{Country data Canada Red Ensign}}, wouldn't the old flag be part of {{Country data Canada}} as an extra "flag alias Red Ensign" line? Has that idea been dropped, or is that a later project? Andrwsc 23:56, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Let's postpone this to a later step. Migrating the existing calls to use country data XXX without changing the name of the called template to ...2 is already hard enough. --Ligulem 08:33, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
I've now done the code switch for template:flagicon. See also template talk:flagicon#Switched to use new template code from template:flagicon2. --Ligulem 12:58, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
I've switched the code of this template here to use the same code as template:country2 and removed the deprecation notice. --Ligulem 14:43, 26 January 2007 (UTC)