Template to cover part of infobox
| Mount Baker | |
|---|---|
 Mount Baker from the Northeast | |
| Elevation: | 10,778 ft (3,285 m)
|
| Range: | Cascades |
| Type: | Composite volcano |
| Age of rock: | < 30000 yr |
| First ascent: | 1868 by Edmund T. Coleman and party |
| Easiest route: | rock/ice climb |
Here is a new proposal for a standard mountain infobox, for mountains in the US. It includes a template that creates the latitude, ongitude, and topo map fields. The template takes 7 arguments --- lat D/M/S, long D/M/S, and topo map name.
I decided against making a great big infobox for a few reasons. First, it was big and hairy to try and make optional rows in the table. Second, it was annoying to create and not that helpful for editors. Third, "What links here" to mountain pictures would be broken, which seems really bad.
I'm sticking with D/M/S because all of the web calculators that convert to decimal degrees (thanks, mav!) only keep 4 significant figures (=0.36″), and I like the higher precision that we get from NGS. Mav told me he likes decimal degrees better. Any tiebreakers out there?
But, I'm open for comments and suggestions before I go forth and change all of the US mountains. Notice that, in order to make one template call, I re-ordered the rows in the infobox. This would make it inconsistent with non-US mountains (which may have to eventually change, if we decide to link to topo maps outside the US).
Comments? Suggestions? --- hike395 00:06, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Actually http://www.deh.gov.au/erin/tools/dms2dd.html gives decimal degree to 12 decimal places. I prefer decimal degree to DMS due to the fact only two numbers are needed to denote any local. Thus the editor would only have to pass two values to the template instead of 6. --mav 00:29, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- My mistake --- I was typing in the Mount Baker lat/long to test the sites, but it looks like my test numbers were rounded to 0.0001;deg.
- Previously we had settled on D/M/S, but this is new, so we might change (at least for the US, at the cost of inconsistency with non-US mountains). What do non-hike, non-mav people think? --- hike395 05:51, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Personally, I prefer degrees, minutes and seconds. I doubt you will see many non-US mountains with even one decimal point. I can barely manage to get the seconds to the nearest 05 for most Canadian mountains. I have gotten so used to seeing lat. and long. after the elevation that I find the re-arranged order looks strange. I'm also wondering why it needs to be re-arranged exactly? None of the other rows not being used by the template occur within the first rows of the project's main infobox. As you have pointed out, the re-ordering makes it inconsistent with all the other non-US mountains. Also, why not also add elevation while you are at it? BTW, speaking of elevation, I changed the main infobox to link to topographical summit. RedWolf 04:44, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)
- I'm happy to stick with D/M/S. You're probably right that I shouldn't add inconsistency with the other mountains. I made it better in the template, above. My philosophy was to make the simplest possible template --- the lat, long, and topo map rows all depend on the same 7 arguments. If we add elevation, it doesn't save any typing. This template saves people from typing latitude & longitude twice (which is error prone). -- hike395 01:22, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Looking good. I notice you are using positional parameters and not named parameters for the template. Being a developer, it doesn't really matter too much to me although I've always used named parameters for any templates I've created just because they tend to be self-documenting so at least other people who come across it might make some sense of what the templat expects. You don't think it might cause confusion to other people used to named parameters? RedWolf 04:08, Dec 22, 2004 (UTC)
- It's a trade-off: it's self-documenting, but requires more typing. I don't know which is better. I tried to make the whole infobox self-documenting, by adding an HTML comment right above the template call. But, that could get dropped by random people. I could go either way. -- hike395 05:35, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
After looking at the Geolinks template, I became very excited about all of the external links that we could autogenerate in the Mountain infobox. I've updated the test template, above right, to use those links: topo map, aerial photos, surrounding area maps, location in the US. The downside is that almost all of these external sites need decimal degrees, not D/M/S. So, we have three choices:
- Keep the extra external links, drop D/M/S --- very easy to type, good information, inconsistent with non-US mountains.
- Only use topo map link, keep D/M/S, use named arguments --- a little more typing, sad to lose the information, good consistency.
- Keep the extra external links, keep D/M/S, require editors to provide both decimal degrees and D/M/S as named arguments --- the best of both worlds, but lots of annoying typing.
What do people think? I don't think (2) is a good idea, but I'm willing to do (1) or (3). -- hike395 16:22, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Eh, I don't see much in the external links. The topo map definitely must stay, but I don't see a problem in losing the other externals. They're sorta just eye candy for the most part. The only one I find mildly interesting is the location in US. The surrounding area map is ugly and is accomplished via topo. Aerial map is kinda interesting. Whatever is fine by me. I don't mind extra typing for both DMS and DD.
- I actually kind of like option 2 but adding the "Location in US" link. The surrounding area map doesn't seem very useful considering there are no labels to identify features. The aerial photo is somewhat interesting but would others actually find it useful? If there are only a few parameters for a template, positional parameters are okay but while named parameters mean more typing (although copy/paste alleviates that), it at least will not be totally confusing to other people who might edit the article and wonder what all the parameters are for. Decimal degrees are fine for generated digital maps but not as much for paper topos that humans typically use. Entering both D/M/S and decimal degrees might be overwhelming to others and will make it inconsistent with non-US mountains. RedWolf 19:44, Dec 30, 2004 (UTC)
- Another possibility is just
4. Don't change infobox, just add geolinks template to external links.
- Given RedWolf's concerns about this, perhaps we should just stick with the infobox as it is, and add the map links to the external links section. It's a little cleaner, anyway --- external links stay together and the infobox is consistent between US and non-US mountains. -- hike395 15:40, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
- Didn't want to rain on your proposal hike395, but consistency was one of my chief concerns in the infobox (I write some technical documents in my day job so it kind of rubs off here). I don't have a problem with option 4. RedWolf 03:50, Jan 28, 2005 (UTC)
- Given RedWolf's concerns about this, perhaps we should just stick with the infobox as it is, and add the map links to the external links section. It's a little cleaner, anyway --- external links stay together and the infobox is consistent between US and non-US mountains. -- hike395 15:40, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I've started to add geolinks to mountain articles, with a specialized template. I'll explain on the project page. hike395 04:49, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)