Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Illinois/Templates

County Templates

Might as well get the ball rolling. As I stated on the Portal Page, I think that we need to have a uniform template for all the counties as other states have been doing. I would like to limit it to three, maybe four categories. The three primary ones would be "Cities, Towns, and Villages", "Townships", and "Airports" maybe general "Transportation". The fourth that we could consider are major universities. If we start lumping in "Points of Interest", you can go on and on and on, and honestly, it is just an infobox, not a Wiki Entry. So I would like to hear thoughts from others on this before we enact it.--Kranar drogin 15:13, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Another thing I would like to bring up with this is that by listing out the populations of the cities, we are actually making a bigger template than is needed. Looking at the Kane County one, there is like two in the larger cites. I am thinking that if we combine all the cities into one like all the other templates, then you are condensing the information.--Kranar drogin 11:39, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I think that health care institutions (hospitals) is just as important as educational institutions. If Kane County has a number of hospital systems with their own articles, I think that it makes more sense to break them out than to lump them into "points of interest."Racepacket 04:14, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Honestly, I don't even think "Points of Interest" is something that needs to be on there. I still feel that those three counties in by Chicago need to be brought into the standardization that we have set up with all the other counties already. Most of those "Points of Interest" are things that should be found in the County article.--Kranar drogin 04:26, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I have to agree with Kranar on that one. These should, in my opinion, remain geographical templates. That being said, any major bodies of water in the county might be a useful addition in place of points of interest. I like the templates overall, especially the townships section, which has little coverage. I think it will encourage users to create those needed articles. I propose fully removing points of interest from all of the templates and replacing it with something more geographical like bodies of water, unless you have something else in mind. I think some transportation hubs have geographical value, I guess. Airports are okay, but lets make the templates uniform, there are a couple that have transportation headers and a lot of bold. Can we fix that so they all look alike.

Also is the population thing something we want to include on only select templates. Shouldn't we have that for all them, or none of them? Just my thoughts. What does everyone say?A mcmurray 08:44, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't think the population is needed honestly. Well, lets go ahead and make those other three up to the standard that all the others are, and then we can discuss what to add (if anything) to all the other templates.--Kranar drogin 23:30, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not a big fan of the population lists either. I think the folks who made those northeast county templates need to be asked before someone removes the other items though. I won't feel bad if the group thinks we don't need the airport thing. Most of the counties I was doing at the time all seemed to have a county airport article, so it seemed like it might be worth adding. Maybe change it to transportation, but I don't really want to include every bridge and state highway in the county on the template. --Dual Freq 00:04, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I guess I better jump in here since I created the Kane and McHenry County templates. I built them off of the DuPage County example (which I didn't create). I'm not opposed to doing away with the population breakdowns. However, I think we should keep the "Points of Interest" section, so long as it doesn't get too large (for example, I've already omitted the houses listed on the Nat'l Register since there's so many of them). In fact, most of the county articles don't have the points of interest listed. The cities sometimes do. But I think it gives a nice overall picture of the county and what's in it. Whether you want to do it for the other counties depends on how much points of interest are there...the rural templates may not need the section if there's no articles on any points of interest there. For Kane and DuPage and other larger counties, the educational and hospital sections are nice, but they should remain only for the larger counties with a lot of articles in those areas. I've recently included the state highways in DuPage, McHenry, and Kane, but managed to keep them all at one line apiece by using "IL 72", "IL 83", etc.

I'm also wondering what the hell we're going to do with Cook County, since they are so many municipalities, townships, points of interest, you name it. My first thought was to break it down by section (Northwest, North Shore, Western, Southwestern, South). Thoughts, comments, ideas? But for now, I'll stick to the Collar Counties. Abog 02:25, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

To me, the transportation and points of interest is too much. I assume that most cities and towns probably have a link to the county's article in the first few lines. It seems to me that the place for all of that information isn't in a template, it's in an article. Honestly, if someone comes to Wikipedia to look up Woodstock, Illinois why are they going to want to know that IL 64 passes through McHenry County, or that George Stickney has a house in Bull Valley. It just seems like way too much information for a footer type template, not too mention who gets down that far anyway. I just think that kind of information is better suited for the article on the county or the city or whatever, if every Illinois article has a transportation section then fine, add it there, that's where it should go, othewise the template is just too crowded, my head was practically spinning looking at the transportation section on the McHenry County one.A mcmurray 05:42, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually, IL 64 passes through Kane and DuPage Counties, not McHenry.:) But that's beside the point. Yeah, I guess the transportation is a little excessive with including the routes, however I think the airports should stay and maybe go in the points of interest section. I still think the points of interest sections should stay, just as long as they don't become too large. I personally think they're fine right now and gives viewers a quick glimpe of what's there. Most of the points of interest listed (educational, hospitals, regional corridors, recreational areas/state parks) are important to the county overall and not just the city (or cities) its located in. Abog 08:32, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't mind the airports, they could even just be under airports. But who is to decide what is interesting and what isn't?A mcmurray 09:42, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Airports should stay, but I think that all the "points of interest" should be in the actual county article. Cause honestly, A mcmurray hit it right on the head, who is to say what is interesting and what is not for the template. I have been looking at most other state county templates, and they do not include that. All of those should be found in the actual county article, or in the city/town articles. The only reason I say that is that if you keep the section it will prolly be about 2-300 links in it. Cause I find all the historal areas of the counties I have worked in very interesting, and many other sites that are not historical interesting.--Kranar drogin 11:36, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

OK, I see the point with historical places of interest as well as with cultural and commerical attractions. But...what about state parks, hospitals, military installations, and places of higher education? I think those are just as important county-wide and even state-wide as an airport. Abog 20:02, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

This is definitely something worth the time we are taking to talk about it. Abog brings up a very good point. Those additions sound good to me, I think we need a more specific grouping than "Points of Interest," though.A mcmurray 21:14, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I already removed the civic, cultural, commercial, and historical points of interests as well as the state highways. I left the interstates/tollways up, along with airports and public transportation. Additionally, I left the hospitals, institutes of higher education, state parks, bodies of water, major bike trails, military installations, and business corridors up. I think higher education is defintely something worth keeping up there, along with military installations, and state parks. Someone brought up including bodies of water, and I think it's a good idea to have those stay. As far as hospitals, most of the hospital articles aren't created yet at this point. The bike trails and interstates are debatable, as are the business corridors ("Golden Corridor" and "Illinois Technology and Research Corridor" which span several counties). I think having too many sections though isn't necessarily the best option, as it will make it too long.

And what to do about Cook County is a whole 'nother issue that needs to be addressed as well. Currently, I've proposed sectioning the county off geographically into sub-county templates. Abog 22:11, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

One thing you need to do Abog, is you need to make sure that you list the cities with that bar "|" between each of them rather than a comma. It will make them more uniform with the others, I also think you need to center them rather than having them off to the left. To start with Cook County I would first list the cities and townships. You know, the more and more I think about it, the more I am starting to go against what I originally said about airports and other modes of transportation.

I checked out Florida, and their templates had Incorportated and Unincorporated seperate on their templates, but I think that just takes up too much room. They did not list important sites. Here is the example Pinellas Park, Florida. I kinda like the idea about the counties down there, the adjacent ones. I think though though that we shouldn't seperate the cities, because in all honestly, that is unneeded information. I like what we are doing with them.--Kranar drogin 22:40, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I was still working off of the DuPage County template, which is why it's left justified, with commas, etc. But I will try to reform the county templates in NE Illinois to be how the other Illinois county templates are. The transportation, higher education, state parks, military bases, etc. are still things worth debating in my opinion. Maybe some, maybe all, maybe none. I don't know. And no, we shouldn't separate the cities into incorporated/unincorporated, at least at this point in time. Abog 23:09, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I think that readers want to know what makes a county unique. So I would include in a county template points of interest that would appeal to a visitor or researcher. I don't think that we need to include all highway articles, but if a highway is mostly confined to one county, or serves as a unifying corridor to that community, it should be listed.Racepacket 05:15, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

If readers want to know what makes a county unique, they simply have to click the county and then go into the page and there should be all the information that makes a county or city unique. You do not need a giant list on a template. "Templates are used to duplicate the same content across more than one page. You can change a template in one place and it will immediately propagate to the pages that use it." Which brings up another good point. If you were reading in say the Rockford, Illinois article, would you even care that down in the template you would have a point of interest that isn't even in that city? No, I say you wouldn't. Any points of interest should be in the Rockford article, or the Winnebago County, Illinois article.--Kranar drogin 11:56, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Guys, I think I have found something to solve our problem with this Points of Interest stuff. I would like you to take a look at this New York template Template:New York. See up there at the top? Why don't we make a list like that, and change Major Cities to Metros instead. Then the counties wouldn't have to list all the historical sites, cause the state template would already lead you to a list of interesting things in the state. Not only that, but you could go to a county article to see the interesting points for that county. Transportation would be eliminated from the county and added to the state instead. Thoughts on this?--Kranar drogin 22:15, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I think that's a good idea to make more lists as mentioned and link to them on the template (i.e. Educational Institutions in Illinois, State Parks in Illinois, Registered Historic Places in Illinois, etc.). That too could get out of hand though, so we would need to be careful. However, I would be opposed to changing major cities to metros, since places like Aurora (Illinois' 2nd largest city) and Elgin are part of the larger Chicago metro area and wouldn't be listed. I also think it's good to have places like Galesburg and Quincy on there. We don't need the cities of Forgottonia forgotten in Wikipedia too, now do we? Abog 05:29, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Region Templates

We are going to have to create one for the Rock River Valley in the future which include the counties of Ogle County, Winnebago County, Boone County, Stephenson County, and Rock County. You can see a small map here [1].--Kranar drogin 15:34, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Is this something that we really need? I mean, I think too many templates starts to get ridiculous, it also decreases, greatly, the value of the What links here feature.A mcmurray 08:46, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure we need more region templates either. Most of the county articles will have a county template and the Illinois template which lists the regions in it adding more templates seems a bit excessive. Some of those region articles are pretty weak though, maybe a nice table could be built into those articles similar to the templates here, but only included on the region article instead of every county, or locality in the region. It's also problematic because some of the regional boundaries are disputed, like Metro-east (11, 10, 6 or 5 counties) and Little Egypt (northern edge of region is debatable and suffers monthly reverts adding or subtracting counties). Probably all the regions have areas on the borders that some consider part of the region and others would not. --Dual Freq 00:10, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

County template flag

I was wondering if people would be open to changing the flag symbol on the county templates to the county map as Pennsylvania, Delware, and parts of New York currently use. We have the state flag on the Illinois template, so it might be something to change up by adding in the map. Thoughts on this?--Kranar drogin 20:17, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

The first problem I see is that Illinois is taller than it is wide, unlike Pennsylvania. I've prepared two examples that are the same height and shows that the Illinois map becomes unreadable. --Dual Freq 20:31, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Template:US county navigation box

Guys, I think we are going to begin converting our templates over to the Template:US county navigation box now. I think the map will work, we might just have to use a smaller version of it. I see Sangamon County, Illinois has already been converted, along with another. Any templates that have "Other attractions" "transportation" or "airports", we will move those to the county page itself under "See also" or work it into the article. Thoughts?--Kranar drogin 21:00, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Haven't heard anything against this, so we are going to being the conversion to the US county standard.--Kranar drogin 11:14, 2 July 2007 (UTC)