Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2026 April 25

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April 25

Template:Infobox UK place

Propose merging Template:Infobox UK place with Template:Infobox settlement.

To be clear, this is a nomination to convert {{Infobox UK place}} to be a wrapper for {{Infobox settlement}}. A lengthy discussion has previously taken place on {{Infobox UK place}}'s talk page (here) that led nowhere. Time for a more involved discussion. The UK is the ONLY place on the planet that has its own custom Infobox for places. Everywhere else uses the standardized format of {{Infobox settlement}}. Even {{Infobox English county}} & {{Infobox Australian place}} were converted. There is simply nothing that makes the UK so special that it cannot use the same code as everywhere else on the planet.

Additionally, to be clear, I am proposing removing all parameters that are not/cannot be supported by {{Infobox settlement}} and violate MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE. These include, but are not limited to, the distances to different locations in the UK and links to who provide Fire/Police/Ambulance services. --Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 16:47, 26 April 2026 (UTC)

Green tickY Strong Support I just don't know how to describe it. ~2026-25253-56 (talk) 00:52, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
 Support British places aren't that special that it needs a standalone container RAPTOR7762Whats up? 01:30, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
 Conditional support or ☒N Conditional strong oppose: I initially supported this assuming that new parameters would be added in where necessary (surely it'd only take a bit of time?), however if information will be removed because nOwHeRe ElSe UsEs ThESe PaRAmETeRS, then I will be a roadblock. The arguments that the UK-specific parameters are not relevant or otherwise violate MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE are misleading at best. Fire/police/ambulance information in particular are necessary to keep. <edit>As long as the parameters are weighed on their own individual merit, rather than blanket-removing them, I will support.</edit> Different countries have different legal systems and therefore we should expect them to sometimes have unique infobox parameters. ~JGHFunRun (t ⋅ c) 05:01, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
Surely everywhere in the world has police/fire/ambulance services. It's not a field unique to the UK. You may wish to make the argument over at the settlement infobox talk to add those fields there (as we can't resolve that here), but there's no particular reason why the UK needs it and nowhere else.
I would also argue that the information is unnecessary. Such services usually (with some exceptions) align with the county or region: the ambulance service aligns with the region/nation (e.g. North West Ambulance Service for North West England) and the fire and police usually aligns with the county/nation (e.g. Merseyside Police/Fire Service in Merseyside). And both the region and the county is given in the infobox. Every place in Scotland has three rows taken up to tell a reader that it is covered by the Scottish Ambulance Service, the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and Police Scotland. It's complete overkill. Dgp4004 (talk) 19:32, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
That's somewhat fair, but I think that they are necessary for England and Wales since they do have sub-national divisions. I think that each parameter should at least be weighed whether it's included on a case-by-case basis. As long as the parameters are weighed case-by-case rather than blanket-removing them, I think I don't care the exact result. ~JGHFunRun (t ⋅ c) 00:28, 27 April 2026 (UTC)
I agree. If there is something that the UK infobox has that the settlement infoboxes doesn't, it should be retained. Or those parameters should be added to the template infobox. --ISometimesEatBananas (talk) 01:20, 28 April 2026 (UTC)
  • support per above --Lenticel (talk) 07:05, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
Support per nom. Places in the UK at present use a mix of styles which is unhelpful to the reader. Regions, local authority districts and counties use an infobox based on the settlement infobox, whereas other UK places use the custom made UK place infobox where everything is in a different order. Using the settlement infobox as a wrapper will be enormously helpful in standardising the way we present information. Dgp4004 (talk) 08:59, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
  • Per previous discussion, I support this optimization provided that we keep the support for a handful of fields that the UK template allowed editors to do a bit differently. People have complained in various discussions that the generic Infobox settlement is too US-centric, and we shouldn't make things any more so than necessary (and it's not). The related discussion on how to implement it was in Template talk:Infobox settlement/Archive 35#wrapping of Infobox UK place. --Joy (talk) 09:51, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
Comment There is simply nothing that makes the UK so special that it cannot use the same code as everywhere else on the planet. Zackmann08, I think you need to explain why it needs to be assimilated; as in what is there to gain by changing it? I have no problem with this in principle provided that the unique sections for the UK can be accommodated in the existing template, by making use of the free parameters to state certain things. But for me, what's more important, given that this will affect 27,000 articles, is that I hope those agreeing to this conversion will assist in implementing the changes that they so heartily desire, and not just click away when it is pushed through because that will be a lot of editing. The joy of all things (talk) 12:42, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
Support I agree with the idea of merging. Wikitalovin1 (talk) 13:33, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
Support - I agree with the idea. GeographicAccountant (talk) 14:20, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
 Support British places are not special enough to have their own infobox. PPriyix (talk) 16:27, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
Support The uk isnt that special Junosang (talk) 16:37, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
Clarifying comment: @RAPTOR7762, JGHFunRun, Lenticel, Dgp4004, Wikitalovin1, GeographicAccountant, PPriyix, and Junosang: as you have already !voted to support this, I want to make sure you saw my clarification comment above:
Additionally, to be clear, I am proposing removing all parameters that are not/cannot be supported by {{Infobox settlement}} and violate MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE. These include, but are not limited to, the distances to different locations in the UK and links to who provide Fire/Police/Ambulance services.
If you have reservations or concerns based on this updated comment, please be sure to also update your !vote. Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 16:51, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
Don't worry, i understand your propose. Wikitalovin1 (talk) 17:09, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
I understand and still support. Dgp4004 (talk) 17:25, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
The idea that just because no other settlement infobox has this information is a) wrong because of Australia b) not a rationale - it's not obvious why the resolution to the inconsistency wouldn't be to simply allow other country infoboxes to also list significant distances, just like the UK and the Australian place infoboxes allow for them.
I still don't understand why are the distances in text fields in particular such an apparent lightning rod, when we already include much more intricate distances with maps? Why would we be rallying people against these fields?
With regard to the incongruity of which geographic information may or may not be included as a key fact, I tried to get the infobox manual of style clarification going in Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Infoboxes#styles of showing geographical location in infoboxes, but there was apparently no interest.
I don't think this matter is straightforward enough to be resolved in this sort of a witchhunt style. --Joy (talk) 17:46, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
In that case, even though I support merging into {{Infobox settlement}}, I believe that the other parameters all can and should be added to the main infobox. I do not believe that the listed items violate MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE.
  • The fact that these are country-specific is invalid as reason for excluding them. Most countries have fire and police each under their own single national entity. The UK is four countries in a country plus some crown dependencies. Different countries have different legal systems and therefore we should expect them to sometimes have unique infobox parameters.
  • Ambulance/fire/police must be included, otherwise I strongly opposed. This information is not complicated to understand, it is needless to shoehorn it into the body text, and it is notable. This is a perfect use-case for an infobox parameter.
  • All other parameters should be added to {{Infobox settlement}} where possible as well. The fact they don't exist yet is not a valid argument.
  • I believe it is extremely misleading that you present all non-{{Infobox settlement}} parameters as violating MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE.
~JGHFunRun (t ⋅ c) 18:54, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
I won't duplicate my response to your earlier comment making this same point. I'll just add that Joy put the proposal to add these fields to the settlement infobox and there was no consensus to add them there. Joy then said in a different discussion that they would add the fields to the settlement infobox in spite of objections by calling it a technical edit, but never did (quite rightly in my view).
That said, I completely respect that the loss of some of these fields may be a red line to yourself and Joy, and I have said my piece above on why I do not think those fields are important myself. Let's see what others think. Dgp4004 (talk) 19:51, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
Oh, don't confuse my unwillingness to dedicate time to the technical workaround around a social problem with a complete unwillingness to do it :) There's just so many more less annoying things to do. --Joy (talk) 07:06, 27 April 2026 (UTC)
I still support, and understand your propose. PPriyix (talk) 13:32, 1 May 2026 (UTC)
  • Support. There is no valid justification for the United Kingdom settlements to have a separate template, so merge it to {{Infobox settlement}}. -- Pofka (talk) 17:00, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
  • ☒N Strongly oppose-– I know I’ll probably be criticized for this, but I strongly disagree with this merger. Personally, I believe that having a dedicated infobox for UK settlements, with parameters specific to the British context, is beneficial because it helps collect information on all aspects of a place in one spot. As a non-native English speaker who frequently uses this edition of Wikipedia, I have always valued the fact that thanks to {Infobox UK place}, one can easily find details such as the specific police or fire service covering an area, or a list of its names in local languages. The argument that this is "clutter" or that the "UK is not special" feels like a race to the bottom. We should treat this template as a gold standard for localized data rather than forcing it into a generic mold. Technical convenience or a "one-size-fits-all" approach should never take precedence over the utility for the reader. I consider this obsession with unifying everything to be "standardization for the sake of standardization," which ultimately leads to a poorer encyclopedia. This is my statement on this cause, which very matters also for such Kashubian and Polish Wikipedia's users, like my humble person. May God and The Most Holy Virgin Mary bless you all. Have a blessed Sunday! Our Remus RemusWej (talk) 17:48, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
    — RemusWej (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 17:58, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
  • Merge. Not much value to having decentralized consensuses for different regions, given that main template is flexible enough to cover the geographic and political variations. The emergency services issue is a distraction, and ought to be resolved at the talk page if it is the last sticking point. (Converting them to use the blank_name parameters seems like the correct interim solution to effectuate the merge, then discuss separately whether listing emergency services ought to be in scope for the infobox.) TheFeds 19:45, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
  • Conditional support - as long as previous points on the UK infobox talk page called out by myself and @Joy are reconciled. The automation features should be considered much like how they were done with {{Infobox Australian place}}.
Was this proposal ever called out on Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography? Makes sense to.
Regs, The Equalizer (talk) 21:06, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
Also, @Zackmann08 - please review that lead as quoted:

Additionally, to be clear, I am proposing removing all parameters that are not/cannot be supported by infobox settlement and violate MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE. These include, but are not limited to, the distances to different locations in the UK and links to who provide Fire/Police/Ambulance services. No other settlement infobox has this information.
— User:Zackmann08 5:47 pm, Today (UTC+1)

This is not true, Australian place contains distance parameters.
Regs, The Equalizer (talk) 21:21, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
@The Equalizer: You are in fact correct. I genuinely forgot that and I appologize. I will edit my comments. For the record though it was over fierce objection that {{Infobox Australian place}} includes distances to random locations (which frankly baffles me as to how I forgot it but alas)... Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 21:24, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
Support as there's no reason the UK should have an unique infobox if all other countries use the same. Miiversal (talk) 21:34, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
Nominator comment: I am not going to respond to every comment here nor do I wish to WP:BLUDGEON the process. I will make a few relevant points that I hope can address some of the concerns raised above.
  1. I strongly disagree with the notion that {{Infobox settlement}} is biased towards the US. It is used on well over half a million pages including {{Infobox Russian settlement}}, {{Infobox German place}} & {{Infobox French commune}} (to name just a few) without any issues. I have yet to ever hear an argument as to what makes the UK such a unique structure that its settlements cannot play nice with every other settlement on Wikipedia.
  2. I maintain my stance that listing the distance a certain place is from an arbitrary list of a few famous cities in the UK makes no sense for multiple reasons.
    1. Who decides what cities we are measuring to? This is purely WP:OPINION on what cities are famous enough.
    2. What encyclopedic value does this serve? If your question is "Where is the city of Some Town" we have multiple different ways to display that within {{Infobox settlement}} including specifying the various subdivisions that it is within, pushpin maps, mapframe and a custom image map.
    3. If your question is "How far from this particular city is Some Town" then I maintain that is the purpose of a very simply Google search. NOT the purpose of the Infobox on an article.
  3. The inclusions of the fire/police/ambulance service has never been needed on any other settlement page including some places that have VERY famous first responder departments (New York City & FDNY come to mind). To be clear, I have zero problem with talking in an article about who provides these services for a settlement, but have not heard a single argument as to why that information is noteworthy of inclusion in the infobox.
-- Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 21:40, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
Zackmann08 and I wholeheartedly agree with points 2 and 3. Currently, Infobox Settlement is used in over 576,000 articles, of which, 130,000+ have issues with incorrectly filled parameters, such as over 3,000 without a country, and 65,000+ without coordinates. The UK Place Infobox has a total of 63 issues across 27,000 articles. So I ask again, what benefit is this? How does it make it better to fold it into something else? What is the issue with having different forms of infobox? Genuine question, which I did ask earlier. The joy of all things (talk) 21:56, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
  • Standardises the appearance of this infobox to match the appearance of infoboxes used on UK local authority district articles (which use Infobox settlement), English county articles (which use {{Infobox English county}} with Infobox settlement as a wrapper), and every other place article wherever in the world, all 576,000 of which use Infobox settlement directly or as a wrapper. Whilst several other countries have their own custom infobox, UK place is the only one that does not use {{Infobox settlement}} as a base.
  • Takes advantage of ongoing code improvements at Infobox settlement and allows technical editors to concentrate their efforts there
  • Standardises the microformats and HTML classes that are applied to information
Dgp4004 (talk) 22:05, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
Dgp4004 Thank you; no-one has explained this before and that has clarified things. Appreciate it. The joy of all things (talk) 05:20, 27 April 2026 (UTC)
As an example, at present the infoboxes on South East England, Buckinghamshire and City of Milton Keynes all share the same order of fields: location fields from largest to smallest, government, area, population, codes. These infoboxes all use infobox settlement, either as a wrapper or directly.
Then, inexplicably and unhelpfully for the reader, we jumble it all up when they drill down to Central Milton Keynes (which uses infobox UK place). Then it becomes area, population, location fields in the reverse order and so on. It's difficult to justify. The whole purpose of an infobox is for a reader to see key facts at a glance. For that purpose and for the ease of the reader, information should be presented in a consistent manner, whether you are looking at a place in Bengal or Buckinghamshire. Dgp4004 (talk) 22:16, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
As long as the key facts are kept simple and short, the reversal of order has not been an impediment to my own reading of any of these articles - in fact, I had not noticed it until you had pointed it out. The rest of your points above and below seem to relate to standardising the appearance of the infobox towards others on other articles. Until we have evidence that the differing template is causing issues (perhaps reports from users of finding the information unhelpful or the order in which they're displayed confusing?) this does seem to be standardisation for the sake of it, when, as above and in other comments, it seems the information is useful (the fire/police/ambulance services, e.g.) and the template has been so far used without significant issue (the point made about the many issues and errors in the implementation of the generic standard template above). Converting would therefore seem to create the need to edit 67,000 articles for little to no proven benefit on any of them. Such effort, given the limited time and resources of regular editors who would be doing this, might be better spent on improving the actual information of the articles, such as the one that took me here, Boveridge, whose quality and use of the English language are poor at best and has now been added to my list of tasks to look at this evening. Asmmont (talk) 11:21, 28 April 2026 (UTC)
Editors won't be making the required changes. Should any changes be required to the articles themselves then they will be programmed into a script or bot, so that's moot. I also highlighted some technical advantages to a common format and to using a single underlying code. Finally, if the order of the fields doesn't bother you then you won't mind if they're standardised. That's not a very strong objection. Dgp4004 (talk) 15:54, 28 April 2026 (UTC)
@Zackmann08: Re your comments about an arbitrary list of a few famous cities in the UK. Please see the documentation, which lists seven places: London (for places outside but nearer to Greater London than any of the other settlements below); Belfast (for places in Northern Ireland); Cardiff (for places in Wales); Dublin (in addition to Belfast data for places in Northern Ireland if they are also relatively near Dublin); Edinburgh (for places in Scotland); Douglas (for places on the Isle of Man); and Charing Cross (for places within Greater London). It should be obvious that they are not selected arbitrarily; if you don't understand, then see this post. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:01, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
To the question of who decides - I don't know why we would presume to decide here and restrict later choices of editors who actually edit UK place articles. Why does any particular complex map thumbnail / image / modal window satisfy MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE, but a much simpler text version of that does not? This decision-making process for what one may put in an infobox for key geographic facts seems entirely arbitrary. --Joy (talk) 07:17, 27 April 2026 (UTC)
  • Support per nom as wrapper with no merging of UK-only parameters. —Joeyconnick (talk) 05:09, 27 April 2026 (UTC)
  • Comment what are the benefits of the change? Your proposal seems to be based on the principle that settlement infoboxes should be entirely standardised, but you haven't explained why this is an improvement. A.D.Hope (talk) 06:44, 27 April 2026 (UTC)
    Please see my responses to 'The joy of all things' above. Dgp4004 (talk) 07:07, 27 April 2026 (UTC)
  • Support per above. Achmad Rachmani (talk) 12:09, 27 April 2026 (UTC)
  • Support, Reducing redundancy is good. Aren't there blank_info params as a way to provide extra information not otherwise in the template, anyway? SamuelNelsonGISP (talk) 14:50, 27 April 2026 (UTC)
    The problem with the params like |blank_info_sec1= etc. is that they are unvalidated free-form, and people are liable to drop any random stuff into them, such as the number of burger takeaways and even their names. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:23, 27 April 2026 (UTC)
  • Support. If a parameter isn't supported in the standard template, it seems more appropriate to seek consensus on adding it there, rather than maintaining a kind of parallel fork of the template. Layzner (Talk) 02:17, 28 April 2026 (UTC)
    The UK place template has existed since 2007, so this is already a decades old consensus. Maybe it would be also appropriate to seek consensus about missing features in the standard template that have impeded a merge so far. --Joy (talk) 07:15, 28 April 2026 (UTC)
    You already proposed the inclusion of these fields at the settlement infobox talk page in a discussion that ended only four months ago and it failed to reach consensus. You then successfully delayed any progress with the UK place infobox conversion for several more months. That is why this is now at TfD. Dgp4004 (talk) 09:11, 28 April 2026 (UTC)
Oppose. The arguments in favour given by those above appear to be, in short:
  1. The template is redundant;
  2. There shouldn't be separate templates for any country;
  3. All other countries use the standard template, therefore the UK should too;
  4. The changing of the order of information between the different levels of the UK administration is confusing for users;
  5. The change allows for further updates and consolidation of technical support efforts.
  6. The specific features of the UK template, being distance to major city, emergency services, and the different ordering of the information, are not useful and do not serve the purpose of an infobox.
These seem to be, with the exception of the fifth point, unhelpful or unsupported arguments. The argument that having separate templates for infoboxes or separate ways to lay out information, or even different information put down as relevant to the article is somehow against the purpose of an infobox is incorrect - the infobox purpose page simply says that users expect "a degree of similarity when viewing the article for Japan vs Canada." This seems to be fulfilled with the current system - it provides a good degree of similarity to the generic template, including almost all the same information in short, summarised format, and there does not seem to be evidence presented that the format is actually confusing for users. The information about Police, Fire, Ambulance, and distance to cities appear to be topics that have become heated in the discussion, but it is helpful to have such information in a devolved system with multiple countries and complex council and local level arrangements varying between region. They are not necessarily included for notability as may be suggested above, but simply as a summary of key information. The other counterargument raised to the inclusion of these data points is that consensus on adding them to the generic template has previously failed to be reached. This seems patently irrelevant to the argument that they should therefore not be included here - if anything, it demonstrates that there are at least some who support the idea that they should be included here as well. If the conclusion had been reached as a consensus that they should not be added, then this may be an indication of generic support for the idea that they should be removed here. However, no such consensus has been cited, so the idea that there is general favour of removing these seems unsupported. Given the general practice of leaving things as they are unless consensus can be reached, pushing through the removal of these features and not allowing the addition to the general template The removal of the additional information seems to be unwarranted, and the criticism that the UK cities are somehow selected entirely on opinion is untrue, as pointed out by Redrose above. From the argument so far, this seems to be a personal crusade of sorts for the proposers, who have previously failed to gain traction with the idea in other forums and still wish to push the change through. I would therefore oppose the change until sufficient adaption is made or is possible to the standard template to allow for the provision of the information in the UK template. The only argument in support that has been sensibly made is for the ease of the technical team to only work on one set of code, but this does not seem sufficient alone to justify removing relevant and useful information from 27,000 articles. (apologies for the typographical error in my earlier comment referring to it as 67,000 articles).
Asmmont (talk) 16:07, 28 April 2026 (UTC)
I'm afraid you have completely misunderstood the proposal.
Of the six points you have made, points one, two and three are all wrong and I don't even know how you got there. The proposal is to use the settlement infobox as a wrapper, not to replace the UK place infobox with the settlement infobox. This is a completely normal state of affairs and is used by every other place infobox, including {{Infobox French commune}} and {{Infobox Australian place}}. And {{Infobox English county}}...
Points four and five are spot on. Dgp4004 (talk) 16:37, 28 April 2026 (UTC)
Dgp4004 I came to the same conclusions as the above points made by Asmmont because I am not au fait with the whole template/wrapper situation. The wording at the start seemed to suggest that everyone else had fallen in line and had their infoboxes assimilated completely. Whilst not wishing to point fingers, I think this has not been the clearest of explanations. You explained it quite well to me above (at some point) so that I could understand it, but to be honest, anything template(y) or wrapper(y) is beyond me, so I think for thickos like me, it needed to be dumbed down. Cheers. The joy of all things (talk) 19:49, 28 April 2026 (UTC)
Fair enough, it could perhaps be worded differently. Dgp4004 (talk) 19:58, 28 April 2026 (UTC)
Dgp4004 To quote Red Dwarf; "Think of my intelligence as being the equivalent of a domestic science teacher." (or something like that!) The joy of all things (talk) 20:05, 28 April 2026 (UTC)
Thank you for clarifying.
The opening post on the topic states that the nominee wishes to remove various pieces of information from the template in the transition, and is at points in replies framed as an attack on including them at all - I don't think in light of that that my concerns about changing the template were necessarily unwarranted.
Points 1-3 were not necessarily made by yourself - points 2 & 3 were made by Miiversal, Kepler1229b, Popfka, and Zackmann008 - "there is nothing so special about the UK that it cannot use the same code as literally everywhere else on the planet" is exactly points 2 & 3, so I don't know how you can't see how I got there.
However, reading through the whole of the above with more time now I'm not at work (and with more time to read up on templates and wrappers in particular) it makes sense, as long as the unique points of the current template are able to be conserved in the move. I do agree with Joy that the initial wording could have been less aggressive, but equally, I could have reacted more temperately - I would like to apologise for my tone and approach in the earlier comments. Asmmont (talk) 20:53, 28 April 2026 (UTC)
I don't think you were intemperate at all. Perhaps I was!
You've hit the nail on the head that the division really comes down to what to do about the bespoke fields. There are essentially three options:
  • Support unconditionally, removing the bespoke fields as may be necessary for the conversion.
  • Support conditionally, so long as one/some/all of the bespoke fields are retained.
  • Oppose. To be honest, I can't think of any good reasons to oppose altogether and I don't think this will get much traction but we'll see.
The first option is straight forward enough and my personal preference. I don't see the benefit of stating that a village in Cheshire is covered by Cheshire Fire Service or the distance as the crow flies from Pontypridd to Cardiff, any more than we should state what BBC region somewhere is in, which water company they pay their bills to or how far they are from the sea. But I won't rehash that.
The second option is fair enough but does create a headache in that the settlement infobox has no field for ambulance service, for example. So the settlement infobox would need to be adjusted to add those fields. The difficulty is, an earlier discussion on adding those fields to the settlement infobox could not reach a consensus to do so. There was a feeling amongst some, myself included, that the settlement infobox is already much too long and that we should not be making it any longer. Others believe that they can square the circle of adding those fields to the settlement infobox without ignoring the lack of consensus to add them, although I don't believe that is possible. I will leave that to them to make the case.
Essentially, will Muhammad go to the mountain (the first option) or will the mountain come to Muhammad (the second option). Dgp4004 (talk) 21:56, 28 April 2026 (UTC)
The difficulty to achieve consensus there was because a handful of people watching were conceptually opposed. At the same time, that concept is incoherent - the idea that we can have a shitton of existing fields in Infobox settlement, but that we can't ever add a few more because editors could use them inappropriately. Either we have a consistent standard of how any field of Infobox settlement is used appropriately, or we do not - there is no meaningful middle ground. Subjecting only a handful of UK and AU fields to a new strict standard while not addressing inappropriate use of other fields makes zero sense. --Joy (talk) 07:37, 29 April 2026 (UTC)
Wanting to reduce the number of fields in the settlement infobox and being opposed to the addition of more is a perfectly coherent and consistent argument. What makes no sense is "I really think we need a discussion to reduce the inappropriate use of this shitton of infobox fields... but just let me add a few more, just three or four more, you won't even notice them, I'll hide them from the documentation, I've done it before, go on!" Dgp4004 (talk) 09:47, 29 April 2026 (UTC)
Sorry, I call BS on that. Nobody is actually working on reducing the amount of MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE abuse of Infobox settlement. The amount of meaningless field values in various settlement articles is easily estimated to several hundred thousand - all the various trivial statistics and factoids that masquerade as key facts. The various area codes and whatnot don't even come close to key facts - it's just random Wikidata in infobox form.
But now suddenly a couple thousand British distances and fire department names are supposed to be a problem we really need to get rid of. These at least plausibly qualify as key facts based on some level of common sense - the statistics ones don't even try, but they're magically grandfathered in.
It doesn't make sense to ignore that elephant in the room and effectively punish this minority en masse. --Joy (talk) 12:33, 29 April 2026 (UTC)
Support. I think either every place should have its own label, or none should. ~2026-26035-88 (talk) 16:29, 28 April 2026 (UTC)
support since its easier to navigate unlike the UK info box also why is the UK one the only one who has one, just keep this one since its used by most Wikipedia articles. American Angel1 (talk) 20:34, 28 April 2026 (UTC)
strongly support the removed parameters don't seem that relevant per MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE.-UCO2009bluejay (talk) 23:59, 28 April 2026 (UTC)
Support. Templates of the same type should almost always use the same template. When (rarely) needed, we can create a wrapper template (as is proposed). What we shouldn't have is unique templates. This old design requires unnecessary maintenance or creates a design fork in functionality and look. Gonnym (talk) 10:13, 29 April 2026 (UTC)
Merge Long overdue. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:56, 29 April 2026 (UTC)
Oppose unless/until those additional parameters can be included. There's no huge benefit in consolidation and this is a net loss for our readers. They don't care which underlying template is being used but they would be deprived of information we are currently presenting them with, and that doesn't sit well with me. WaggersTALK 12:09, 29 April 2026 (UTC)
I agree, so much UK specific info would be lost, and i feel this is only happening because it is a UK exclusive, if there were also seperate templates for the likes of China, Russia, USA, France, Germany, etc., then there wouldn't be this whole debacle, now I am not implying this is happening bc it is the UK, no, what I am trying to get across is because it seemingly is the only one that gets a different template, people view it as a waste when other countries have to use the base, without truly understanding the overall complexity of the UK, assuming it is just as simple as England, Scotland, Wales & NI then the counties, when it is WAAAYYYYY more complex than just counties, due to the few different types F1fan00 (talk) 19:36, 29 April 2026 (UTC)
The overall complexity of the UK ? Because India or the US are not complex ? Does the UK have unincorporated areas? Varoon2542 (talk) 14:09, 30 April 2026 (UTC)
☒N oppose
I have looked through here, and not one person at all acknowledges the fact that the UK has a unique type of Postcode, unlike the ZIP Codes of elsewhere, in the UK template, if i was to use Market Drayton as an example, it would show in this order:
OS Gride Reference - SJ673321
Unitary Autority - Shropshire
Ceremonial County - Shropshire
Region - West Midlands
Country - England
Sovereign State - United Kingdom
Post Town - MARKET DRAYTON
Postcode District - TF9
Dialing Code - 01630
Police - West Mercia
Fire - Shropshire
Ambulance - West Midlands
UK Parliament - North Shropshire
Sorry if i bored anybody, but because of how complex the UK is goegraphically with the different types of Counties, Unitary Authorities and whatnot, and all of that would be lost with the merge, so unless this gets added as paramenters, i can't see myself supporting this, since without that, it would be a bit more difficult to deduce the placement and everything for places like the aforementioned Market Drayton, if anyone could see what i mean, greatly appreciated F1fan00 (talk) 19:32, 29 April 2026 (UTC)
Sorry, you've lost me. There is no suggestion of removing the postcode field. Dgp4004 (talk) 19:37, 29 April 2026 (UTC)
To be fair, I could've chosen something other than postcode to lead with, but other than that, the UK is so complex with the Unitary Authorities, Ceremonial Counties, Historical Counties, even as a Brit, I get confused about everything going on in Yorkshire on the County and UA scale, but do you get what I mean in the 2nd part after the example I listed? F1fan00 (talk) 19:52, 29 April 2026 (UTC)
Sorry, no, I don't follow. No geographical information will be lost. So county, unitary authority etc. will all remain. Dgp4004 (talk) 20:00, 29 April 2026 (UTC)
so those UK specific parameters would be added to the standard template?
but if they don't i would oppose it, only if the UK parameters carry over F1fan00 (talk) 09:13, 30 April 2026 (UTC)
Oh come on! Where they get police and ambulance services is not the point of MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE especially if that information isn't usually included in the article. Those parameters should be eliminated period.- UCO2009bluejay (talk) 12:44, 30 April 2026 (UTC)
Yes, the geographic fields will remain. For some idea as to the fields that the settlement infobox can take in a British context, see the Borough of Halton article. As a unitary authority, that uses the settlement infobox rather than UK place. Dgp4004 (talk) 17:17, 30 April 2026 (UTC)
Conditional support on the proviso that the additional parameters are retained. I don't think there is any serious reason to oppose converting the template to a wrapper for {{Infobox settlement}}, and I think that the standardisation of the order of the fields in the infobox is beneficial. I don't think the removal of the police, fire, and ambulance service areas is beneficial---they are effectively administrative subdivisions of the UK by a public agency, which is plausibly worth noting. I don't find an earlier comparison to BBC regions applicable as emergency services are closer to government services a the way the public broadcaster isn't. But regardless I don't think this is the right venue for this discussion; I think combining that decision with one to merge the template is unhelpfully complicating the matter. It is not ludicrous to imagine that many unqualified support !votes are either ambivalent on the matter or unaware of the secondary issue. I think the merge into Infobox settlement ought to go ahead and then potential parameter removal should only occur with a later consensus at Template talk:Infobox UK place. Bonafideaquemini (talk) 22:33, 29 April 2026 (UTC)
Conditional oppose I will oppose changes that disrupt many templates. As I understand it, the country specific templates have parameters not available on the main ones, and if these parameters are not ported verbatim, it will break formatting on whatever pages they are used. If these parameters are only used on a few specific pages, that could be taken care of manually, but if it disrupts a large number of pages, than this would be far from desirable. Mitchsavl (talk) 03:33, 30 April 2026 (UTC)
checkY Support merge. Merging the templates will make it easier for people to add it to articles about the UK and other settlements. Floating Orb Talk! my edits 05:49, 30 April 2026 (UTC)
Green tickY Support: I don't think that places in the UK needs a standalone infobox. TheGreatEditor024 (talk) 10:52, 30 April 2026 (UTC)
Support: this would make it easier for editors to work with templates, as every template would have the same style. 123957a (talk) 12:34, 30 April 2026 (UTC)
Strong Support ????? yes????? idk what's going on??? Annoying Anonymous8999 (talk) 14:29, 30 April 2026 (UTC)
checkY Support. I think this should be merged, but some of the parameters that aren't supported by Infobox settlement but are by Infobox UK place could potentially be added to wikivoyage or something. Preinstallable (t/c) 16:35, 30 April 2026 (UTC)
checkY Support per non. Versions111 (talk • contribs) 06:42, 1 May 2026 (UTC)
  • ☒N oppose The United Kingdom and Ireland have specific local data (relevant nowhere else) that can only be done in {{Infobox settlement}} by defining labels in each and every article (for example OS grid ref, lieutenancy, historic county, postcode). That would restrict editing to experienced users who know how to do that. The template {{Infobox UK place}} has all this set up already.
    A UK and Ireland template would work.
    The general template, {{Infobox settlement}} tries to be all things to all men, making it hard to use for specific British and Irish expectations. In those UK articles which use ‘settlement’, it is a mess.
    It could work if we can rewrite ‘settlement’, with a switch code for the UK / Ireland (and perhaps other countries) that provides the locally-specific labels as options, and ideally fills selected data from Wikidata.
    (I work with geodata and ONS data fields, so I am familiar with the data sets that would be needed.) Hogweard (talk) 18:48, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

Strong support – There's no reason why these should be kept separate, per nom. FaviFake (talk) 09:10, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

Support: the UK infobox is practically duplicated by the generic one, I don't see a reason to keep it. TheAuroraBorealis (u/t/c) 15:08, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

Template:Madeline Sharafian

This only lists two films - MOS:FILM#Navigation. DoubleCross (‡) 18:06, 25 April 2026 (UTC)

checkY Support delete. Yes, there are only two films. Floating Orb Talk! my edits 05:51, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

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