Template talk:Topic in country

Populates category redirects

When ckecking entries with "1 found, 0 moved" at User:RussBot/category redirect log I frequently find this template being used in a subcategory of a category redirect. It would be good if this could be fixed somehow. w:Template:Resolve_category_redirect might not work here. Enhancing999 (talk) 11:18, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Categories that are in at least one redirected category: https://petscan.wmflabs.org/?psid=28478688 (currently 71) Enhancing999 (talk) 22:35, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Documentation doesn't say what it does

@Joshbaumgartner: I applaud the template work that you do, though the documentation has clear space for improvement. A template like this needs more than explanation of parameters, it needs clear instruction on its purpose and usage. At this time, this template is used and miscategorising to "category redirect" pages, and as a maintainer and fixer of messes, having to open up the guts of templates, their layouts, their data components to sort through what the heck needs to be done is highly problematic in trying to depopulate Non-empty category redirects. The interplay of the prepositions of/in/from/... is clearly becoming problematic and messy. Without the ability to easy fix, the problem is going become worse, so we need to make it easier for people to fix and that starts on good and clear instruction. The implicit expectation is that other people are to find and fix the problems, though that runs the risk of breaking something else. There are no testcases, there are no sandboxes.

Enhancing999 has done a barrel of work with template:Resolve category redirect though having to throw in fixes upon fixes is not fixing the underlying issues. Again it is people having to go through and work out what in the heck is happening. And I am not expecting you to fix it all, I am hoping that you can get some of the higher status information and hierarchy addressed, so we can have some long term resolution and direction in place. Thanks.  — billinghurst sDrewth 23:51, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

@Sbb1413: I think that you need to be involved in this discussion too. Your recent changes to the data pages through there is also causing some of the grief. Now it may be that we have had discrepancies through naming protocols, however, when you are making these sort of holistic changes, then you need to involve the broader community. Get some conversations going on a central talk page about the changes being made, and for the sorts of errors that users could observe and how they can fix them. While automatic categorisation is very useful, it is also highly problematic when it needs fixing, and we now have so many places that the categorisation can be applied, templates like this where the data is deep buried and not readily findable through a search or through "wikidata infobox". Ideally you should create a space where issues can be addressed, and that you are watching, AND announce that to the community at Com:VP so we are giving users a pathway to an easier resolution of identified problems. Thanks.  — billinghurst sDrewth 00:02, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for pinging me. Yes, I have added more items in the {{Topic by country/data}} since Josh for automatic categorization. Since I'm aware of potential issues, I try not to deploy the {{Topic by country}} series of templates everywhere. One problem is the Skylines category, where we have a consensus to use "in" for country and region categories, and "of" for city categories. It is difficult to implement such thing in {{Topic by country/layout}} unless I have template editing rights, or Josh comes back. There are two other problems related to organi(s/z)ations. The first one is the spelling preference, where we use the American spelling for most categories, and British spelling for countries officially using/mandating such spellings. I have fixed that by creating a separate {{Topic by country-gb}} series of templates, which should be used for countries whose category names (or the potential parent of the categories) are using the British spelling, for example Category:Organisations of West Bengal. Another problem is the preference of "of/based in" after "Organi(s/z)ations". While all countries are using "of" and all cities are using "based in", the regions between them are using both without any consistency. It should be discussed in an appropriate venue before mass deploying them in non-country categories. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 03:21, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

@Sbb1413 Skylines is an interesting case. I think that adjustments can be made to accommodate it, but I'm not sure exactly what those would look like yet though. I am happy that you are not blanket-applying the template where it does not work, and you've covered a number of cases where the template just is not yet developed to cover:

1. While Commons category policies tell us that we should have consistent category structures, that is not the case in many trees, and {{Topic by country}} is not necessarily going to work well in trees that do not comply with such consistency. Trees with inconsistent or problematic structures may need a discussion and cleanup prior to adding the template, or in cases where the inconsistency is agreed on, a special template version may make sense.
2. Per policy, we should be using the same spelling for a given topic across all categories, whether it be US, GB, or otherwise. Which spelling is chosen is outside the scope of this discussion, but it should be consistent, and the template is agnostic as to US or GB spelling. I took a glimpse at {{Topic by country-gb}} but I'm not sure that maintaining a parallel path like that is the best way forward vs. just having an additional flag in the main set to deal with misspelled category topics, but I welcome the experimentation. Normally, I would say that these categories should be renamed in accordance with the Universality Principle, but I suppose there will be cases where we decide an exception is warranted, and the template should have a way to handle that exception.
3. There is no {{Topic based in country}} yet developed, so categories using 'based in' would not be a good target for use of the template yet.
4. Note that while I tried to keep in mind the expansion to all levels of territories, the original development was focused on countries, so use for cities and other levels hasn't had nearly the amount of testing and implementation done yet.

Remember that the template is just a tool, and as such it has a certain use case it is designed for. Trying to apply it universally is going to be problematic as we have many categories and trees that just are a mess and it won't play well with. Note that you can always set the 'nocat' parameter if you want the nav but it is in a non-standard category tree structure not supported by the template. Josh (talk) 16:26, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Thank you Josh for your comment. I'm looking forward to build consensus on many year-long issues in CFD. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 17:05, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

I didn't try to add {{Resolve category redirect}} as here as it appears too complex already, see Template_talk:Topic_by_country/data#Military_of,_military_in for some of the current issues leading to categories in Category:Non-empty category redirects. (The other complex one is the more general one, see Template talk:Double MetaCat). {{Resolve category redirect}} has the advantage that one doesn't need to bother with differences in spellings, prepositions and names. However, if default names were used before to normalize category names, one needs to switch to another approach. OTH, to have that, we don't need to wait for the Czech mess to be solved.

.

Some of the issues I see with {{Topic in country}} beyond categorization:

• It collides with the Wikidata Infobox (if present, less likely if there are no similar Wikipedia categories).
• It duplicates navigation templates like Template:Countries of Europe (not really sure if either are particularly helpful, at least if there is a full set and users aren't on mobile)
• The fairly large box doesn't provide any guidance about the content of the category (same problem as "countries of Europe")
• The fairly large box doesn't provide any navigation to related categories of the same geographical entity
• "country" sometimes seems to mean "location"
• The template isn't really easy to use, one needs to specify information already in the category name.

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For merely adding parent categories in a uniform way, I made Template:Category topic for country yesterday when creating subcategories of Category:Ecoregions by country.

In general. I think users should be able to customize parent categories, category description, and navigation fairly easily.

I just started Template:Topic by country/doc to provide some basic information. Enhancing999 (talk) 08:07, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Seems I confused Template:Topic by country (another template) and the similar Template:Topic in country (here). Some of issues apply to both. Enhancing999 (talk) 08:16, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Just noticed that "country" is optional in both templates. Updated the documentation accordingly. Enhancing999 (talk) 09:32, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Seems "topic by country" is the helper template for "topic in country". Enhancing999 (talk) 10:33, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it is the helper template for {{Topic in country}}, {{Topic of country}}, and {{Topic from country}}. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 11:04, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

My 2¢ on these issues:

• I don't know how it collides with the Wikidata Infobox. In many cases, the {{Topic by country}} template (by = of, in, from) is above or below the infobox. If the template is above the infobox, click the "collapse" options in the template for the infobox. If the template is below the infobox, click the "collapse" option in the infobox for the template.
• Yes, it duplicates many established navigation templates. However, it also shows the name and the flag of the current country/region/city. If you have few countries for a given topic, you will be given the list of all of them, and if you have a lot of countries for the topic, you will be given the list of countries by continent. Also, if you have admin/template editor rights, you can add a location map of the current country/region/city. I have already done so in {{Country category}}, which is for individual countries/regions/cities.
• As the name already suggests, the {{Topic by country}} series of templates were originally built for countries in mind, possibly as a modern replacement of the established country navigation templates. However, the creator later added subnational and supranational regions other than countries, with provisions to add cities also. I have added the cities to fulfil his wish.
• I find the template easier to use than the established country navigation templates, as you have to write only {{topic [preposition] country|[topic]}} instead of {{countries of [continent]|prefix=:Category:[topic] [preposition]}}[some categories]. The template will supply you the country/region/city navigation and the desired categories (with adherance to the universality principle).

Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 08:48, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

By the way, I'm not an admin or template editor. The {{Country category/layout}} template was not protected, and so I have added a location map there. Anyway, we have to sort the "skylines of/in" and "organizations of/based in" issues before moving forward. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 08:58, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

There are different approaches possible and I think some flexibility is needed. If admins are needed to maintain it, then this is probably not so flexible. Maybe the general template could attempt to call a specific template first and, if absent, try to fill a light default.

I noticed the map being added in Template:countries of Europe or similar as well. Personally, I would rather have that in the by country categories (e.g. add the map of tourism by country as navigation to Category:Tourism by country not to each country category). Enhancing999 (talk) 09:38, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

@Enhancing999 Thank you for raising a concise list of issues you have observed while using this template. I see that @Sbb1413 has already made a good response on some of the items, but perhaps I can also shed some light on or reinforce some of that:

1. Use with {{Wikidata Infobox}}: The {{Topic by country}} templates were specifically designed to integrate with {{Wikidata Infobox}} cleanly, resolving the issues of previous country navigation boxes which often did clobber the infobox or created huge whitespaces if the templates weren't ordered correctly. Thus the TbC templates are designed to appear in the sidebar with the same sizing, font, colors, etc. as WIb. The primary use case was for them to follow the infobox, but not create an ugly problem if they happened to be above it. If you are witnessing some kind of ugly collision of the two, an example would be very handy to track this issue down.
2. Use with {{Countries of Europe}}, etc.: As Sbb1413 alluded to, this template was definitely designed to replace, not coexist with, those previous navigation boxes. Those did indeed clobber other content and had other issues, so TbC was intended as an option to provide better integration with the infobox and other additional features. Unfortunately, the older templates have some formatting issues that preclude peaceful coexistence on the same page, and besides, as you noted, it is redundant to do so.
3. Guidance about the topic: By this I presume you mean that there is not really a blurb about the topic, so that on "Military of Belgium", it doesn't have anything explaining what 'military' is or much about Belgium besides the flag and country name? I did not include that as this was intended to live along with either a Wikidata infobox, or other manually added descriptions and hatnotes, so that seemed an unnecessary duplication. If there is a specific example where you would like to see something, let me know and we can look at it.
4. Navigation to parallel topics: The primary thrust was to provide horizontal navigation by geographic region, but there is some functionality to provide parallel topic navigation for main topics (see Science in Germany). This is very limited, and the reason is that determining that list is so dependent of the specific topic that it is a lot more detailed than geographic region lists. This is the main thrust of developing the {{Category navigation}} series of templates, and ultimately the TbC templates may be rolled into that, but that is way downstream at this point.
5. Scope of 'country': You and Sbb1413 are correct that it is a lot more than just "countries" covered by this template. However, renaming the whole template series seemed unnecessary really.
6. Required parameters: Early in the templates' development, there were a lot of parameters that were required for normal use, but over time, I've added routines to better automate that to the point now that for standard use cases, it should be able to be used without any parameters entered at all. Obviously for any special cases, you will need to enter additional info, but I don't think there is any getting away from that. My apologies for not being great with keeping up documentation (special thanks for Sbb1413 for their work on that) though development.

If you have any questions or want to know how to accommodate special cases, let me know. Josh (talk) 17:07, 10 June 2024 (UTC)