Template talk:Infobox Russian district

Images

User:Underlying lk Can you explain to me how to turn the photos back on in the Russian District infoboxes? With this new wrapper set up, all of the infobox 'image_view' properties entered for Russian districts have been made invisible (including over 1,000 photos that I entered myself). In my opinion, a representative photo of a district is far more illuminating and useful than a coat of arms. Also the commons category at the bottom of the infobox is now masked. How do we turn that back on? If you aren't the person doing the wrapper conversion, can you point me to who is? (Also bringing in User:ymblanter, as this has affected a lot of his work; maybe he can help me.) Every-leaf-that-trembles (talk) 07:25, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

And once we are here, the second map (see e.g. Mezensky District) as it is now is not really helpful. It was supposed to show the location of the district on the map of Russia, and now it shows only a local map and sometimes even I have difficulties to figure out what it is (and I am pretty knowledgeable about Russian geography).--Ymblanter (talk) 07:30, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

About the skyline image, it seems to me that such images are generally not included in infoboxes about administrative subdivisions (including Russian federal subjects like Sverdlovsk Oblast), so now they're only displayed for articles about city districts (like Adlersky City District). They can be added back of course, but I think images should rather be moved into the article body.

Commons links have been phased out in all other infoboxes years ago, since a link to the Commons page is now included in the toolbox on the left-hand side of every article.

As for the OSM maps, I have adjusted the zoom level to the size of the federal subject (rather than the district as was the case before). Let me know if this is any better.--eh bien mon prince (talk) 08:09, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. If I look now again at Mezensky District, the two maps repeat each other (and the top, drawn map is better). --Ymblanter (talk) 17:11, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

The Morzhovets Island belonging to the district is completely missing from the supposedly better drawn map.--eh bien mon prince (talk) 04:46, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Ok, great. I suggest you guys do whatever you want. You wanted to have your way, you got your way. I have at this point zero motivation to add / modify infoboxes for Russian localities / districts. If an infobox has to have two maps which are supposed to be fully duplicating, with one being incorrect and one ugly - so be it. I will concentrate on other activities.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:02, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Actually, images in infoboxes are quite common. US Counties are the closest analogue to Russian Districts, and they have a compelling way of conveying a sense of place (see for example Asotin County, Washington). A picture is worth a thousand words, and for US Counties the English Wikipedia user is accustomed to picture-map-map. Most non-Russians have no idea what to expect of a Russian district - snow? mountains? peat bog? But one picture and they are instantly oriented and engaged. Why should Russian districts have a more sterile presentation than US counties? Every-leaf-that-trembles (talk) 19:02, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Also, erasure of the commons category link is a direct loss - particularly to phone users, who are significant portion of Wikipedia readers. They now have to (a) know that media exists for that district, (b) scroll all the way to the bottom of their (tiny) screen, (c) know to select 'Desktop', (d) resize their screen and scroll over to the toolbox, (e) know to click the Wikimedia Commons link under the mysterious heading "In Other Projects", which betrays no evidence that Mezensky District does or does not have anything to do with that link. Many infoboxes still have commonscat properties; maybe the design decision was made for other infoboxes but that doesn't mean valuable features have to be erased here where invitations to look at pictures are so important. Every-leaf-that-trembles (talk) 19:02, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

The problem with Russian districts is that often they are big enough to include all of those things - moutains, marshes and whatnot. Unlike a city or a town which may have a landmark location (or at least a main street), districts have no features which should be expected to be immediately distinctive to the reader, so the usefulness of using a single identifying image is debatable.

I haven't seen infoboxes with commonscat parameters lately, but if there are, that's a case for changing them, not this one; infoboxes are not intended for navigation. For the cases where a link to commons would be especially useful, one can be added with {{commonscat-inline}} in the External links section.--eh bien mon prince (talk) 04:27, 13 December 2018 (UTC)