Template talk:Place

Place Template
The template is fine but for some reason if it is used out of England, the template listing pick up all England's categories only. I looked at the code and I don't see how it can be directed to pick up other than England's. Would like to add this to Pennsylvania and Maryland but Poor Law Unions and Nobility are two topics that do not belong in either place. Is there a way to tweak Place template further so it will pick up specific USA's states as well as other countries? dsammy 17:11, 24 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes another parameter could be added and used with if statements to turn on/off different topics depending on the jurisdiction. Is there a definitive list of topics for all places and then optional ones which are specific to certain places, for example you've said that Poor Union Laws and Nobility should only be used for places in England? --Steve 22:46, 24 July 2009 (UTC)


 * OK I came up with another solution. The template will now check to see if the article exists before display a link for it in the navbox. Please let me know if this meets your needs. --Steve 23:53, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * It worked the way it should be. Now to figure out the "Infobox" stuff. dsammy 00:51, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Topics that use a different naming style
I noticed the Community Meeting Agenda 28 July 2009 mentioned this template and a discussion about the style to be used when naming article about Native American Indians. Once the working group has made their decision, I suggest it is noted in the Style Guide and this template can be amended to pick up articles that adhere to the approved style. --Steve 18:31, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Order of the topics
In general it makes sense to have most of the topics listed in alphabetical order in this template. It is easy to understand and follow that way. It makes relatively little difference whether Directories are used before or after Obituraries. And the bulk of our Wiki pages come from research outlines that had most topics in alphabetical order.

However, two topics are special cases. Search Strategies and Record Selection Table are not like the other topics. It makes little sense to present these topics near the end of the alphabet when their topic needs attention early in the research process. These two topics were presented at the front of all others in the old paper research outlines. Their value is diminished when they are not referenced at the start of the research process.

The Search Strategies topic teaches how to approach research in general and begins to lay out the use of the other alphabetical topics. Therefore, it logically belongs at the front of the other topics.

The Record Selection Table serves as a sort of combined Table of Content and Index guiding readers who are not yet familiar with which topics will produce what information about their ancestors. Again, it greatly diminished the value of this topic to bury it near the end of the alphabet.

Readers need to see these topics right up front. Please allow them to appear in the order where they fit logically, and as teaching tools about the uses of the other topics, at the front of the other alphabetical topics.

Diltsgd 20:52, 1 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree with David and have put these two topics back to the beginning of the list. I have also coded them to be in bold text to highlight their importance and infer that they are positioned correctly out of place in a predominately alphabetical list. --Steve 21:17, 1 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I have been thinking about this some more and I've mocked up an alternative layout that could be used (see my sandbox). This uses the group function to separate the Search Strategies and Record Selection Table articles into their own group. In my example I've given this group a linked label to Getting Started. Any thoughts? --Steve 16:54, 2 August 2009 (UTC)


 * 1. The group approach has a nicer look, but in some cases may take up an extra line if the getting started list combined with the last line of the main list happens to take up less than a full line. Both ways work well for me. 2. There are a few follow-up sections that might be worth listing, such as Other Records, For Further Reading, or Glossary which would traditionally fit at the end of the regular list. Of the three, For Further Reading is by far the most significant. See the Jewish Genealogy Research example. -- Diltsgd 14:25, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. I understand your comment about the extra line, but I do not think that is big issue if the links produced are useful and worthwhile. I like your suggestion about 3 groups. I will revise my alternate layout to take this idea into account.
 * 1) Beginners/Getting Started
 * 2) Main topics
 * 3) Further in depth

However another issue is coming into focus. Their is a limit on how many ifexist statements can be used on any one page. From viewing the html code of the pages produced, I can see that it is currently 100. I'm not sure how many possible topics are listed at the moment, but if many more topics are added this limit will be exceeded. One way of getting around this would be that the major topics that all Place article should have as minimum are left to display as redlinks if the topic hasn't been written yet, or regional variations of the template could be created like there has been already for TIO and Jewish. --Steve 22:52, 5 August 2009 (UTC)