Mount Rushmore | |
![]() | |
Designation | National Memorial |
Location | Black Hills of South Dakota, United States |
Nearest City | Keystone, South Dakota |
Coordinates | 43°52′44″N 103°27′33″W / 43.87889°N 103.45917°W |
Area | 1,278.45 acres (1,238.45 federal) 517.37 hectares |
Date of Establishment | March 3, 1925 |
Visitation | 2,037,820 (2004) |
Governing Body | National Park Service |
IUCN category | V (Protected Landscape/Seascape) |
Website | http://www.nps.gov/moru/ |
After using the U.S. protected area table on a couple of sites, others made some modifications worth looking at:
This example of Mount Rushmore shows all three of these, just hit "edit" to see the code.
Any comments? — Eoghanacht talk 12:41, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
I can't say I am overly fond of the image there either. Another user inserted it in the table, claiming that my effort to place it a paragraph down and to the left caused problems on displaying the article on low-res monitors. I can definitly understand the desire, though, to have an image of the resource near the top of the article. I did a similar move for
Ford's Theatre without complaint. Maybe adding the table to another high profile article (such as
Statue of Liberty), and moving the image "down and to the left" (as demonstrated) will either generate more complaint - or no complaint at all - and help decide if there is any use for the picture in the table vs. elsewhere. —
Eoghanacht
talk 16:11, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
I removed the image in the table above, as no one supported it (which is just fine with me -- if you want to see what it looked like, either look up the "history" here, or see the infobox in
Mount Rushmore). But one new thought is to have a row for the area's website. —
Eoghanacht
talk 15:23, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
I updated a few of "my" articles which had pictures in the upper right...after adding the infobox, I simply moved the picture down and to the left and it looks fine I think. example: Great Falls Park-- MONGO 16:21, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
I also think it's important to have a spac between the infobox and the text as I just did here in the last edit to this page...I went around and put my old modified infobox in a lot of wilderness area articles and and User:BlueCanoe made the spacing correction which I think looks better. I see no problem with a website row but hope we don't get to adding to many rows/columns and detract from the text too much. I used "my" old infobox template in about 50 articles so now I guess I'll switch them all over...whew...good way to up the ole edit count I guess. -- MONGO 16:31, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
I've been working on National Forest articles so does everyone think they should be classified as VI since they harvest lumber and allow hunting and mining and livestock grazing, but still are "protected", or do you think they should not have a protected template at all?-- MONGO 16:31, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
three coordinates due to their size but use the IV color scheme since the focus is almost entirely species protection of animals and their habitat.-- MONGO 05:25, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
FYI, I just noticed that about a week ago, there has been an implementation of new infoboxes for Australian sites away frow the example here. See Organ Pipes National Park. — Eoghanacht talk 17:00, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
I say use square kilometers for large areas and hectacres for smaller areas...but what is the cutoff point? Additionally, I recommend the use of acres before the metric equivalent in articles about U.S. protected areas, and vice versa everywhere else. And, the use of American English in U.S. articles and British English outside the U.S. Just a few musings, but lets develop a concensus of what metric dimension we need to follow to standardize articles. What is more readily understood in the metric world, hectacres or square kilometers?-- MONGO 05:32, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
My "little red NPS book" listing all national park areas has everything in acres, regardless of the size. The IUCN database has everything in hectares. I do not have a publication by the Forest Service or BLM, though, so I do not know their standard for measuring land. Agree with the "acres first" and American spelling for U.S. locations. — Eoghanacht talk 13:11, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Rather than get all confusing about colors and what not, why not have all National Partk Areas (all those managed by the NPS) be one color...all wildernesses be one color, all national forests be one color, etc. I recognize that this may not jive with the IUCN specs, but I remeber reading somewhere in these talk pages that the only exception to this would be if a protected area has more than 50 percent wilderness, it should be labelled with that color tab...the only people that are going to know why there are different colors are those that edit these types of articles, so long as we approximate the IUCN specs, we should be good to go.-- MONGO 05:43, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
But it's not a template right now (except at El Morro National Monument), they are all tables. One issue with tables versus templates is that tables are much easier for editors of individual pages to alter. Also, if there is a desire for a global change (such as width of the infobox, or coloring) it can be done globally with a change to the template, versus altering dozens of articles.
My question about the map is about redundancy and visual appeal. The map tells you two things very quickly: 1) it is in the United States, and 2) roughly where with the the country. But there are also three other rows related to location, one of which will link to map resources -- so is there a redundancy? As for visual appeal, the space could be used for other things: a picture of the resource (say, Old Faithful for Yellowstone) or a detailed map of the park. I am not saying I think the map should go, just that I am not opposed to discussing it.
As for how detailed to get with the coordinates, I have done some very small sites (such as Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site) where the minutes are essential. I admit it may seem silly for Yellowstone. But (to play devil's advocate) would it hurt to link to 44°27′38″N 110°49′42″W / 44.46056°N 110.82833°W?
I agree the IUCN database needs to be taken with a grain of salt. — Eoghanacht talk 21:19, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
Based on the archived proposals/discussions in October of 2005 I have put the new template on the infobox page. I plan to add some more usage examples later. — Eoghanacht talk 13:32, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
Hi. I was wondering what others think about my idea to change Template:Infobox protected area to looking something like this:
{{Infobox_protected_area2 | name = Crater Lake National Park | iucn_category = II | image = US_Locator_Blank.svg | caption = | locator_x = 18 | locator_y = 40 | location = [[Oregon]], [[United States|USA]] | nearest_city = [[Eugene, Oregon]] | lat_degrees = 42 | lat_minutes = 56 | lat_seconds = 0 | lat_direction = N | long_degrees = 122 | long_minutes = 07 | long_seconds = 0 | long_direction = W | area = 183,224 acres (741 km², 74,148 hectares) | established = [[May 22]], [[1902]] | visitation_num = 451,322 | visitation_year = 2003 | governing_body = [[National Park Service]] }}
I think this sort of makes a compromise between the templates that are used on all the national parks pages (such as Yosemite) and I think it looks better than what we have right now:
Crater Lake National Park | |
---|---|
IUCN category II (
national park) | |
Location | Oregon, USA |
Nearest city | Eugene, Oregon |
Coordinates | 42°56′0″N 122°07′0″W / 42.93333°N 122.11667°W |
Area | 183,224 acres (741 km², 74,148 hectares) |
Established | May 22, 1902 |
Visitors | 451,322 (in 2003) |
Governing body | National Park Service |
Just wondering what others think. -- Hottentot
I wonder if someone knows how to find visitation for U.S. Wilderness areas? Are these tabulated somewhere? Google comes up short on Mount Baker Wilderness and Glacier Peak Wilderness. Also, Template talk:Infobox protected area says "Each group of items above is optional". When I leave the visitation fields blank, the result is "Visitation: (in [[]])", i.e., not very attractive. See the links above and also the prototype Bob Marshall Wilderness for the actual formatting. Thank you. - Walter Siegmund (talk) 06:36, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
MS Explorer 5.2 for Mac (OS10.3) Visitation: (in [[]]) Safari 1.3.1 (OS10.3) Visitation: (in [[]]) MS Explorer 6.0 (MS Windows xp 5.1) Visitation: (in [[]])
The source reads as follows:
<tr class="hiddenStructure" style="vertical-align: top"> <td><b>Visitation:</b></td> <td>(in [[]])</td> </tr>
The undesired display of the "visitation" field when the associated fields are left blank seems not to be related to the browser or operating system. Instead, it depends on the selected skin (under preferences). Only with MonoBook (default) and Chick skins does the desired behavour occur. I am using Cologne Blue.
Classic Visitation: (in [[]]) Amethyst Visitation: (in [[]]) MySkin Visitation: (in [[]]) Chick blank MonoBook blank Cologne Blue Visitation: (in [[]]) Simple Visitation: (in [[]]) Nostalgia Visitation: (in [[]])
MONGO, thank you for your comments on visitation of U.S. wildernesses. Eoghanacht, thank you for bringing the blank line problem to my attention. I have deleted the blank lines after the final comment, <!-- End Infobox template table -->, in the templates I added earlier. Blank lines between the initial and final comments appear to have no effect on formatting. -- Walter Siegmund (talk) 23:09, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
Discussion copied/moved here from Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Protected_areas
In looking at some historical site articles (e.g. Statue of Liberty and Ford's Theatre — doesn't even use the infobox), I think these are instances where an image of the place belongs in the top right corner of the page, rather than the locator map. When I came across the Statue of Liberty article, the image was on the top left and interferred with the text and headings. I've moved it, but it's now below the infobox and map. I think the image is emblematic of the place and belongs above the map.
I propose an alternative infobox be available for cases where a good image is available and appropriate. A draft of this idea is at Template:Infobox_protected_area/Draft1, and implemented as an example at Wikipedia:WikiProject Protected Areas/Statue of Liberty.
Any thoughts? --- Aude 16:34, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
I am not necessarily opposed to having an emblematic image instead of the map -- it is just that the map was the established standard long before I became involved in the wikiproject. Do any "old timers" out there have any comments? — Eoghanacht talk 15:52, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
This has been an ongoing debate, mostly because there is no perfect solution. The basic options are:
Now I joined this project after the map became the standard, but I was involved in keeping it during the upgrade of the infobox. After putting this infobox in lots of articles, I have some thoughts.
Let's start with infobox theory. You want it to be consist and informative. As MONGO stated, not all protected areas have an iconic image (Grand Canyon Nat'l Park and Mount Rushmore Nat'l Memorial are among a class of exceptions), and many do not have a particularly identifiable image (Congaree Nat'l Park comes to mind, as do dozens of Nat'l Forests and Wildlife Refuges). Let's be honest, Fort McHenry is a textbook design (such as from John Muller's Treatise Containing the Elementary Part of Fortification 1746) and without the big flag only flown when the wind is low, pictures of it are generally not instantly identifiable. (I consider the Orpheus statue to be iconic of Fort McHenry, but probably no one else would.) So images may work for biography infoboxes (portraits), or movie infoboxes (poster), or the taxobox (the animal/plant) -- but I don't think it works as a standard for protected areas -- many would be pictures of relatively nondescript trees, mountains, and lakes.
Protected areas all have two things in common: They are places and they are protected by a legal entity (usually a government). The selection of map usually tells you very quickly who is protecting something (a map of Australia for their national parks, a map of Maryland for its state parks). The map also tells you that it is a place, and roughly where it is. As a former Baltimoron myself, I may not need the map to know where Fort McHenry is -- but many Wikipedia readers are elementary school children, or people in other countries, or maybe just people without a good knowledge of geography. Because the map with the locator dot very quick conveys the "place" and "protected by" components, I concede that it is a good thing -- probably the best.
As for the "swap out" option of eliminating the map, and replacing it with a picture, I have two problems with this. It lacks consistency. Also, it removes something from the article that is useful (at least in my opinion, from the paragraph above). I never like to remove contributing NPOV material from an article.
Having stated my defense of the map, I also declare that I really like pictures in articles, and think they should be high up. There are problems with the "above the second paragraph to the left" picture placement. Particularly where you need a large image, or there are conflicts with the Table of Contents, et cetera. I often have to experiment some. I can live with a particularly iconic image directly above the infobox, even though standard infobox placement Wikipedia wide is top right. The case of the Washington Monument does gives me a little heartburn, however, mostly because it is so vertical, but I have not seen fit to change it back to where I first put it when I added the infobox.
Does this help? Happy St. Patrick's Day — Eoghanacht talk 13:42, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
I had a hard time figuring out which category the national forest articles I wrote were in. I figured it should be easier to figure it out so I updated these articles to have which IUCN category they should be in.
Did I do it right?
- Ravedave 22:52, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
For each protected area, you should first look in the World Database on Protected Areas ( http://sea.unep-wcmc.org/wdbpa/), click on "Search for Sites" to the left. If it is not there, I then guess based the definitions (also on that website) and similar areas that have designations. However, the designation (such as State Park, National Monument, etc.), is never a guarantee of the IUCN designation. There are many examples of areas with the same national designation being in different IUCN categories.
When all else fails, my default mode is:
I also put a non-displaying note in the text of the article, just after the infobox, explaining my guess (see the code for Fort Raleigh National Historic Site). — Eoghanacht talk 15:14, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
I would like to propose that we modify the infobox to automatically assign a category based on the IUCN Category type. Based on the category number in the infobox, the page would automatically be sorted into one of the following categories:
I will admit that better naming would be more effective, even just Category:IUCN Category Ia. For an idea of how it would work, check out the Tree of life taxobox. If a species such as the Alabama cavefish is properly tagged as critically endangered, it is automatically placed in Category:Critically endangered species. Pros and cons? ClarkBHM 19:27, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
No big objection here, but a couple things.
— Eoghanacht talk 13:50, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
As to the question of unassigned protected areas, let's start a separate thread below. — Eoghanacht talk 19:05, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
(This is a segway from the above discussion.)
Some articles use the infobox, but do not have any IUCN category identified in the infobox.
Some questions for group consideration:
— Eoghanacht talk 19:05, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
What's up with the locator dot on the US protected area infoboxes? Nationalparks 03:43, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Could someone please teach me how to calculate the x and y coordinates to place a locator dot on a map? I've been looking through all sorts of talk and help pages and just can't seem to find any directions. -- McGhiever ( talk) 01:08, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
Could this infobox be modified so that when long & lat data is added, then the coords also go in the upper-right hand corner of the article, where many articles have geodata? -- Padraic 17:04, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
Big template. Edward Tufte would not be amused.-- Knulclunk 03:13, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
I have recently checked through hundreds of pages of counties, cities, villages, towns, hamlets, and templates for New York state.
Mount Rushmore | |
![]() | |
Designation | National Memorial |
Location | Black Hills of South Dakota, United States |
Nearest City | Keystone, South Dakota |
Coordinates | 43°52′44″N 103°27′33″W / 43.87889°N 103.45917°W |
Area | 1,278.45 acres (1,238.45 federal) 517.37 hectares |
Date of Establishment | March 3, 1925 |
Visitation | 2,037,820 (2004) |
Governing Body | National Park Service |
IUCN category | V (Protected Landscape/Seascape) |
Website | http://www.nps.gov/moru/ |
After using the U.S. protected area table on a couple of sites, others made some modifications worth looking at:
This example of Mount Rushmore shows all three of these, just hit "edit" to see the code.
Any comments? — Eoghanacht talk 12:41, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
I can't say I am overly fond of the image there either. Another user inserted it in the table, claiming that my effort to place it a paragraph down and to the left caused problems on displaying the article on low-res monitors. I can definitly understand the desire, though, to have an image of the resource near the top of the article. I did a similar move for
Ford's Theatre without complaint. Maybe adding the table to another high profile article (such as
Statue of Liberty), and moving the image "down and to the left" (as demonstrated) will either generate more complaint - or no complaint at all - and help decide if there is any use for the picture in the table vs. elsewhere. —
Eoghanacht
talk 16:11, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
I removed the image in the table above, as no one supported it (which is just fine with me -- if you want to see what it looked like, either look up the "history" here, or see the infobox in
Mount Rushmore). But one new thought is to have a row for the area's website. —
Eoghanacht
talk 15:23, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
I updated a few of "my" articles which had pictures in the upper right...after adding the infobox, I simply moved the picture down and to the left and it looks fine I think. example: Great Falls Park-- MONGO 16:21, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
I also think it's important to have a spac between the infobox and the text as I just did here in the last edit to this page...I went around and put my old modified infobox in a lot of wilderness area articles and and User:BlueCanoe made the spacing correction which I think looks better. I see no problem with a website row but hope we don't get to adding to many rows/columns and detract from the text too much. I used "my" old infobox template in about 50 articles so now I guess I'll switch them all over...whew...good way to up the ole edit count I guess. -- MONGO 16:31, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
I've been working on National Forest articles so does everyone think they should be classified as VI since they harvest lumber and allow hunting and mining and livestock grazing, but still are "protected", or do you think they should not have a protected template at all?-- MONGO 16:31, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
three coordinates due to their size but use the IV color scheme since the focus is almost entirely species protection of animals and their habitat.-- MONGO 05:25, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
FYI, I just noticed that about a week ago, there has been an implementation of new infoboxes for Australian sites away frow the example here. See Organ Pipes National Park. — Eoghanacht talk 17:00, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
I say use square kilometers for large areas and hectacres for smaller areas...but what is the cutoff point? Additionally, I recommend the use of acres before the metric equivalent in articles about U.S. protected areas, and vice versa everywhere else. And, the use of American English in U.S. articles and British English outside the U.S. Just a few musings, but lets develop a concensus of what metric dimension we need to follow to standardize articles. What is more readily understood in the metric world, hectacres or square kilometers?-- MONGO 05:32, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
My "little red NPS book" listing all national park areas has everything in acres, regardless of the size. The IUCN database has everything in hectares. I do not have a publication by the Forest Service or BLM, though, so I do not know their standard for measuring land. Agree with the "acres first" and American spelling for U.S. locations. — Eoghanacht talk 13:11, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Rather than get all confusing about colors and what not, why not have all National Partk Areas (all those managed by the NPS) be one color...all wildernesses be one color, all national forests be one color, etc. I recognize that this may not jive with the IUCN specs, but I remeber reading somewhere in these talk pages that the only exception to this would be if a protected area has more than 50 percent wilderness, it should be labelled with that color tab...the only people that are going to know why there are different colors are those that edit these types of articles, so long as we approximate the IUCN specs, we should be good to go.-- MONGO 05:43, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
But it's not a template right now (except at El Morro National Monument), they are all tables. One issue with tables versus templates is that tables are much easier for editors of individual pages to alter. Also, if there is a desire for a global change (such as width of the infobox, or coloring) it can be done globally with a change to the template, versus altering dozens of articles.
My question about the map is about redundancy and visual appeal. The map tells you two things very quickly: 1) it is in the United States, and 2) roughly where with the the country. But there are also three other rows related to location, one of which will link to map resources -- so is there a redundancy? As for visual appeal, the space could be used for other things: a picture of the resource (say, Old Faithful for Yellowstone) or a detailed map of the park. I am not saying I think the map should go, just that I am not opposed to discussing it.
As for how detailed to get with the coordinates, I have done some very small sites (such as Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site) where the minutes are essential. I admit it may seem silly for Yellowstone. But (to play devil's advocate) would it hurt to link to 44°27′38″N 110°49′42″W / 44.46056°N 110.82833°W?
I agree the IUCN database needs to be taken with a grain of salt. — Eoghanacht talk 21:19, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
Based on the archived proposals/discussions in October of 2005 I have put the new template on the infobox page. I plan to add some more usage examples later. — Eoghanacht talk 13:32, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
Hi. I was wondering what others think about my idea to change Template:Infobox protected area to looking something like this:
{{Infobox_protected_area2 | name = Crater Lake National Park | iucn_category = II | image = US_Locator_Blank.svg | caption = | locator_x = 18 | locator_y = 40 | location = [[Oregon]], [[United States|USA]] | nearest_city = [[Eugene, Oregon]] | lat_degrees = 42 | lat_minutes = 56 | lat_seconds = 0 | lat_direction = N | long_degrees = 122 | long_minutes = 07 | long_seconds = 0 | long_direction = W | area = 183,224 acres (741 km², 74,148 hectares) | established = [[May 22]], [[1902]] | visitation_num = 451,322 | visitation_year = 2003 | governing_body = [[National Park Service]] }}
I think this sort of makes a compromise between the templates that are used on all the national parks pages (such as Yosemite) and I think it looks better than what we have right now:
Crater Lake National Park | |
---|---|
IUCN category II (
national park) | |
Location | Oregon, USA |
Nearest city | Eugene, Oregon |
Coordinates | 42°56′0″N 122°07′0″W / 42.93333°N 122.11667°W |
Area | 183,224 acres (741 km², 74,148 hectares) |
Established | May 22, 1902 |
Visitors | 451,322 (in 2003) |
Governing body | National Park Service |
Just wondering what others think. -- Hottentot
I wonder if someone knows how to find visitation for U.S. Wilderness areas? Are these tabulated somewhere? Google comes up short on Mount Baker Wilderness and Glacier Peak Wilderness. Also, Template talk:Infobox protected area says "Each group of items above is optional". When I leave the visitation fields blank, the result is "Visitation: (in [[]])", i.e., not very attractive. See the links above and also the prototype Bob Marshall Wilderness for the actual formatting. Thank you. - Walter Siegmund (talk) 06:36, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
MS Explorer 5.2 for Mac (OS10.3) Visitation: (in [[]]) Safari 1.3.1 (OS10.3) Visitation: (in [[]]) MS Explorer 6.0 (MS Windows xp 5.1) Visitation: (in [[]])
The source reads as follows:
<tr class="hiddenStructure" style="vertical-align: top"> <td><b>Visitation:</b></td> <td>(in [[]])</td> </tr>
The undesired display of the "visitation" field when the associated fields are left blank seems not to be related to the browser or operating system. Instead, it depends on the selected skin (under preferences). Only with MonoBook (default) and Chick skins does the desired behavour occur. I am using Cologne Blue.
Classic Visitation: (in [[]]) Amethyst Visitation: (in [[]]) MySkin Visitation: (in [[]]) Chick blank MonoBook blank Cologne Blue Visitation: (in [[]]) Simple Visitation: (in [[]]) Nostalgia Visitation: (in [[]])
MONGO, thank you for your comments on visitation of U.S. wildernesses. Eoghanacht, thank you for bringing the blank line problem to my attention. I have deleted the blank lines after the final comment, <!-- End Infobox template table -->, in the templates I added earlier. Blank lines between the initial and final comments appear to have no effect on formatting. -- Walter Siegmund (talk) 23:09, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
Discussion copied/moved here from Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Protected_areas
In looking at some historical site articles (e.g. Statue of Liberty and Ford's Theatre — doesn't even use the infobox), I think these are instances where an image of the place belongs in the top right corner of the page, rather than the locator map. When I came across the Statue of Liberty article, the image was on the top left and interferred with the text and headings. I've moved it, but it's now below the infobox and map. I think the image is emblematic of the place and belongs above the map.
I propose an alternative infobox be available for cases where a good image is available and appropriate. A draft of this idea is at Template:Infobox_protected_area/Draft1, and implemented as an example at Wikipedia:WikiProject Protected Areas/Statue of Liberty.
Any thoughts? --- Aude 16:34, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
I am not necessarily opposed to having an emblematic image instead of the map -- it is just that the map was the established standard long before I became involved in the wikiproject. Do any "old timers" out there have any comments? — Eoghanacht talk 15:52, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
This has been an ongoing debate, mostly because there is no perfect solution. The basic options are:
Now I joined this project after the map became the standard, but I was involved in keeping it during the upgrade of the infobox. After putting this infobox in lots of articles, I have some thoughts.
Let's start with infobox theory. You want it to be consist and informative. As MONGO stated, not all protected areas have an iconic image (Grand Canyon Nat'l Park and Mount Rushmore Nat'l Memorial are among a class of exceptions), and many do not have a particularly identifiable image (Congaree Nat'l Park comes to mind, as do dozens of Nat'l Forests and Wildlife Refuges). Let's be honest, Fort McHenry is a textbook design (such as from John Muller's Treatise Containing the Elementary Part of Fortification 1746) and without the big flag only flown when the wind is low, pictures of it are generally not instantly identifiable. (I consider the Orpheus statue to be iconic of Fort McHenry, but probably no one else would.) So images may work for biography infoboxes (portraits), or movie infoboxes (poster), or the taxobox (the animal/plant) -- but I don't think it works as a standard for protected areas -- many would be pictures of relatively nondescript trees, mountains, and lakes.
Protected areas all have two things in common: They are places and they are protected by a legal entity (usually a government). The selection of map usually tells you very quickly who is protecting something (a map of Australia for their national parks, a map of Maryland for its state parks). The map also tells you that it is a place, and roughly where it is. As a former Baltimoron myself, I may not need the map to know where Fort McHenry is -- but many Wikipedia readers are elementary school children, or people in other countries, or maybe just people without a good knowledge of geography. Because the map with the locator dot very quick conveys the "place" and "protected by" components, I concede that it is a good thing -- probably the best.
As for the "swap out" option of eliminating the map, and replacing it with a picture, I have two problems with this. It lacks consistency. Also, it removes something from the article that is useful (at least in my opinion, from the paragraph above). I never like to remove contributing NPOV material from an article.
Having stated my defense of the map, I also declare that I really like pictures in articles, and think they should be high up. There are problems with the "above the second paragraph to the left" picture placement. Particularly where you need a large image, or there are conflicts with the Table of Contents, et cetera. I often have to experiment some. I can live with a particularly iconic image directly above the infobox, even though standard infobox placement Wikipedia wide is top right. The case of the Washington Monument does gives me a little heartburn, however, mostly because it is so vertical, but I have not seen fit to change it back to where I first put it when I added the infobox.
Does this help? Happy St. Patrick's Day — Eoghanacht talk 13:42, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
I had a hard time figuring out which category the national forest articles I wrote were in. I figured it should be easier to figure it out so I updated these articles to have which IUCN category they should be in.
Did I do it right?
- Ravedave 22:52, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
For each protected area, you should first look in the World Database on Protected Areas ( http://sea.unep-wcmc.org/wdbpa/), click on "Search for Sites" to the left. If it is not there, I then guess based the definitions (also on that website) and similar areas that have designations. However, the designation (such as State Park, National Monument, etc.), is never a guarantee of the IUCN designation. There are many examples of areas with the same national designation being in different IUCN categories.
When all else fails, my default mode is:
I also put a non-displaying note in the text of the article, just after the infobox, explaining my guess (see the code for Fort Raleigh National Historic Site). — Eoghanacht talk 15:14, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
I would like to propose that we modify the infobox to automatically assign a category based on the IUCN Category type. Based on the category number in the infobox, the page would automatically be sorted into one of the following categories:
I will admit that better naming would be more effective, even just Category:IUCN Category Ia. For an idea of how it would work, check out the Tree of life taxobox. If a species such as the Alabama cavefish is properly tagged as critically endangered, it is automatically placed in Category:Critically endangered species. Pros and cons? ClarkBHM 19:27, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
No big objection here, but a couple things.
— Eoghanacht talk 13:50, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
As to the question of unassigned protected areas, let's start a separate thread below. — Eoghanacht talk 19:05, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
(This is a segway from the above discussion.)
Some articles use the infobox, but do not have any IUCN category identified in the infobox.
Some questions for group consideration:
— Eoghanacht talk 19:05, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
What's up with the locator dot on the US protected area infoboxes? Nationalparks 03:43, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Could someone please teach me how to calculate the x and y coordinates to place a locator dot on a map? I've been looking through all sorts of talk and help pages and just can't seem to find any directions. -- McGhiever ( talk) 01:08, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
Could this infobox be modified so that when long & lat data is added, then the coords also go in the upper-right hand corner of the article, where many articles have geodata? -- Padraic 17:04, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
Big template. Edward Tufte would not be amused.-- Knulclunk 03:13, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
I have recently checked through hundreds of pages of counties, cities, villages, towns, hamlets, and templates for New York state.