Template talk:Infobox UK place

would it be useful to add Elevation?

Could be useful for stuff like "prone to floods due to low elevation"? GeorgeWL 1990 (talk) 11:31, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

A weak 'no' from me – I don't have strong feelings either way, but our infoboxes generally getting increasingly long and complex, so we need good reasons for adding yet more to them, following MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE (including: "the less information that an infobox contains, the more effectively it serves its purpose, allowing readers to identify key facts at a glance").

If the only reason is something about flooding, it's a definite 'no' from me – as Hebden Bridge#Flooding demonstrates, elevation alone says little about flood risk, which is a topic that needs covering in prose with flood-specific citations, where it's relevant to the article. Joe D (t) 14:10, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

it's a no from me too. We don't have high altitude settlements (over 1000m), anything lower is ho-hum. = clutter.

Height above sea-level is almost entirely irrelevant, as anyone who lives in Cumbria will tell you. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 14:17, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

Didcot - where I live - has elevations ranging from 51 metres (167 ft) to 82 m (269 ft) above mean sea level. Some parts of town are prone to flooding; most is not. If you're wondering, my front door is approximately 84 m (276 ft). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:45, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

Location split between two tier and unitary area

Symonds Yat (more specifically, Symonds Yat East) straddles the boundary between Herefordshire and the Forest of Dean district in Gloucestershire. I've added it to the article's infobox, but it's not perfect for a few reasons.

• I used pushpin_map to avoid confronting people wth a map of the world. The map looks reasonable, but it's labelled as "##Location within".
• The layout of the section between Civil Parish and Region doesn't show (say) which county the Forest of Dean is in. Ideally, I'd like it to have the Herefordshire and Gloucestershire data one above the other in some way, and still have it look like a single infobox.
• I set hide_services because, without it, the template included West Midlands Ambulance Service and nothing else. I would have expected to see the services for Coleford and Ross-on-Wye combined.

Is there a way I can improve any of these things? Thanks. Aoeuidhtns (talk) 14:39, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

Fixed mostly. As to point #2, it is split within the fields only, maybe there should be an article for each? Then each can have it's uncluttered infobox? As to this article, wouldn't worry on Forest of Dean not being clarified, that detail should be placed into the article and west/east between the parishes, district, unitary and counties expanded upon there, the infobox is just a high level summary and the multiple districts/counties etc hint at a division so if a reader wants to know more, they should read the prose. However, it could be mentioned in the field in a following bracket if desired like I did with the parishes although it may look untidy. Regs, The Equalizer (talk) 04:10, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. It looks a lot clearer now. Aoeuidhtns (talk) 19:33, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

Formatting

The area_footnotes parameter causes a space to appear between the data being referenced and the ref number, in violation of MOS:REFSPACE. Zacwill (talk) 18:54, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

There is a non-breaking space in the template code, it can be removed but the footnotes are also used for textual referencing such as a year, in which case it is desirable to maintain the spacing as the parameters ignore leading spaces. The population_ref parameter below it has the same issue. The template ideally needs some extra logic to differentiate between the types of referencing and insert a space accordingly. Regs, The Equalizer (talk) 23:12, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

Wales links

Switch multiple links going to Local government in Wales, to their dedicated articles Principal areas of Wales and Community (Wales). As tested on the sandbox version here.

−

label23 = [[Local government in Wales#Communities|Community]]

+

label23 = [[Community (Wales)|Community]]

−

label25 = [[Local government in Wales|Principal area]]

+

label25 = [[Principal areas of Wales|Principal area]]

Would also be great if the endash in the link [[Dyfed–Powys Police|Dyfed-Powys]] at Template:Infobox UK place/local is replaced with the hyphen as the Dyfed-Powys Police article now uses, as well as adding the s here to "list" for now-titled Lists of places in Wales, matching that article too? Unless I'm being too pedantic over non-important stuff, redirects go green for me :/ Thanks DankJae 20:24, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

Please don't use {{Text diff}} for changes to templates, it's not at all useful. The sandbox should be sufficient. On that matter, why do you want to change the |templatestyles= parameter? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:58, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

@Redrose64, noted, the request edit button provided it, so assumed it was fine? I guess that would need tweaking?

What do you mean I want to change the templatestyles? Are you referring to Template:Infobox UK place/local? That merely provides links to the police forces, fire and rescue, and ambulance services? I am only asking for links to be amended? DankJae 17:56, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

I've made those changes as they all seemed fine to do. -- WOSlinker (talk) 18:50, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! DankJae 09:16, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

Mapframe

Is there a reason that Module:Infobox mapframe has not been added to this Infobox? There are a large number of pages that use this Infobox and are calling {{Infobox mapframe}}. Would be better to just build it into the Infobox like {{Infobox settlement}}. Happy to do it myself, but want to make sure this wasn't specifically decided against. Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 20:54, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

It's temperamental. See for instance Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Road maps seem broken and previous threads in the VPT archives. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:28, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

Ok.. So there is 1 user that says it doesn't work on a few road maps... It is in use on 1.2 MILLION pages and is part of {{infobox settlement}} so why can't it be part of this? Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 23:50, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

and previous threads in the VPT archives. Some people don't notice that a map is incorrectly displayed; some notice it but don't report it. By contrast, our established pushpin map feature is highly reliable. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 00:25, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

I don't know of any systemic reason that this would happen these days with the default settings (honoring article coordinates). What were the specific circumstances in those cases that you may remember? --Joy (talk) 07:48, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

It seems to happen on random pages, and usually a satisfactory mapframe had displayed previously. It's just that all of a sudden, with no obvious trigger, the proper coords are ignored and 0,0 are used instead. It is also usually reproducible: other people visiting the page observe the same problem. Checking the article's wikitext shows nothing unusual that might cause the coords to fall back to 0,0. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:23, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

We can proceed with extra caution and keep the placement near the bottom of the infobox similar to how it is now, so the impact of such bugs remains the same as it is now. --Joy (talk) 15:28, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

There's usually no particular reason, just inertia. This is going to be especially so in the case of UK places because someone went through the trouble of creating much better location maps.

We should add the standard option of mapframe to the template. Doing so will have the benefit of matching the element widths and possibly some other style parameters, while reducing the amount of intricate template code in the callers.

I haven't checked the numbers, does 464 constitute a substantial sample to make it more than optional for the other however many, but that's a discussion that can be had later. --Joy (talk) 07:46, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

The problem with the location maps is that they have to be hand-crafted from OpenStreetMap. For places that don't change much, no big deal. Otherwise it is. See for example Fairfields, a newish civil parish in the Milton Keynes expansion area. There are about 1,000 houses there now: the old location map shows only the planned area. And if you click on the map to zoom in, the pushpin disappears - and there are no zoom controls. Compare that to Bletchley railway station, where mapframe is used and clicking the map expands it and the pushpin persists - and there are zoom controls. So I strongly support discarding pushpin_map in favour of mapframe. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 18:00, 7 November 2025 (UTC)