Template talk:Vermont

slimmed down template

with 250-ish towns, listing them all in the template was getting unwieldy and taking a lot of time to load. I added a link to the towns in Vermont page instead, added a few more thing to the template and left it alone. I hope that's okay with folks. Jessamyn 03:08, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

U.S. state templates

Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. states/state templates lists and displays all 50 U.S. state (and additional other) templates. It potentially can be used for ideas and standardization. //MrD9 07:25, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

new template suggestion

Hi. I saw that you have been working on new designs for the template. I think a smaller footer version would be great, but I think some of the design choices that you made make it very hard to read [blue links on green and smaller text] so I thought it might be a good idea to move sample designs in here while we worked on something more final. The template goes on the bottom of a lot of pages, and if you're trying out new ideas it might be a good idea to make sure the final version is usable and readable, at least somewhat. Here is the copy of the version you were working on. I really like how it's smaller, and has the state seal, but the collection of small boxes and similar colors makes it hard to read and the extra HTML makes the code hard to edit for future changes. Do you think we can find a middle ground? Jessamyn (talk) 13:33, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

This is the template you were working on

This is what the template currently looks like (copied in case it's modified in the future)

I don't like the formatting changes, but I am for changing the order to Capital, Regions, Counties, Cities, Towns. I also think the header links could be changed to Government, Geography, History, Culture, Economics. Or something along those lines. --Thetrick 00:46, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

I think those are both good suggestions. Do you want to try to work up a mock-up and put it here and peopel can offer suggestions, if they have any. Jessamyn (talk) 01:10, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Standardization of state templates

There is currently an ongoing discussion regarding standardization of state templates (primarily regarding layout and styling) at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. states/state templates. An effort was made earlier this year to standardize Canadian province templates (which mostly succeeded). Lovelac7 and I have already begun standardizing all state templates. If you have any concerns, they should be directed toward the discussion page for state template standardization. Thanks! — Webdinger ^{BLAH | SZ} 23:01, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

City names

I propose changing the city names as displayed from "Barre City", "Newport City", etc., to just "Barre", "Newport", and so on. The reason is that the places are actually called "Barre" and "Newport", not "Barre City", etc. I understand that there are surrounding towns of the same name, but since the template clearly says "Cities", I don't think that that should cause any confusion. Still, being an outsider (from New Hampshire), I want to check the feelings of the community before I make a change. Any comments? Ken Gallager 21:32, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I have seen at least one place where "City" is added (the City of Barre web page), but it's clearly in the context of having to distinguish the city from the surrounding town. "City" would still be unnecessary in the case of this template. Ken Gallager 16:44, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Barre City and Barre Town are separate entitiies with different police, town governments, etc. Same with several other towns/cities/villages in Vermont. The City of Waterbury and the Village of Waterbury, for example, have had ongoing and often contenious discussions about whether or not to merge. The should be separate in any list of the state's local municipalities.

Festivals

I would like to see festivals moved to their own template. The items here have been geographic to date. I would like to see geographic continue to be the focus of this template. If we convert to being WP:PR for festivals, there is no telling where it will end, but no point, in any case, of having every town in the state, an advertisement for some festival which is not in the area. That does not seem appropriate here. Student7 (talk) 19:23, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Cluttered template

Now the template has become overly cluttered IMO. "Projects" are poorly attended and they tend to arrive at stupid ideas sometimes. The only thing to do is to join them and try to get some sense there (sigh). The current template is designed to be placed indiscriminately at the bottom of everything Vermont, syrup, cows, people, and clutter up the bottom of articles generally. The problem is that no one will look at it when it is so crowded. I used to use these to navigate between geographical places. Can't hardly find them now. Student7 (talk) 12:16, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Comment from supposed "standards" project

I posted the following under the self-styled "standards" discussion project. Since the only person who will be reading this is probably the one who has made all the recent changes without warning but will scream "standards" when I complain, it will probably be futile to post it here. But anyway:

Called subtopic "A different approach"
Just discovered that Vermont template is being changed beyond all recognition. I used to be able to use this navigational template before someone tried to turn it into a pseudo-portal. It is less usable now and will be ignored as all tediously lengthy lists are.

One "standard" you ought to discuss (there are college texts out there that have already recorded this determination) is how long should a list be before users stop regarding it as "friendly?" There is a specific answer to that question. I do not have the text in my hand.

Vermont's template (I don't see it above, please hide, if it is) looks like this now:

The first item says "topic". Apparently a catch-all phrase. The first items seem to be "articles" not links to other articles as the name "topic" implies. The editor also assumes that people using this template want the potpourri items first not specifics. I rather doubt that.

In the good old days, Vermont was geography first and maybe only, before everyone tried to piggy-back on this successful template.

Now it is a junkpile that gets added to everything indiscrimately like maple syrup, cows, lord knows what else.

I wish you guys would stop. People looking at a geographic template want a navigational template to other geographical items. Doubtless the same with political articles, government articles, etc. Fine if you want to have an olio line at the bottom that will give access to a different type of navbox. So there could be a real topics line, and be able to navigate out of geography to politics, for example. The boxes would all be named differently, "Vermont-geography", "Vermont-politics" etc. The politics box would have a topics line to get to geography. That sort of thing.

Festivals are normally just c-of-c WP:PR. Since they have articles, fine, but with its own template, it doesn't clutter up a geographic template or a politics or government one. Just a simple topic on each template with "Festivals" on it to get out of the current topic.

In that way, we wouldn't have monster boxes all over every single state article indiscrimanately taking up gobs of white space, sometimes more than the tiny article! Student7 (talk) 12:36, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Green

Is there a particular reason why this template is green? I understand the idea is to try to match the color in the flag, but it doesn't exactly match. Wouldn't it be better to just go with the default used by {{navbox}} to avoid having a rainbow at the bottom of the page when this navbox is next to another one and per WP:ACCESSIBILITY? Please let me know if there is a strong reason to have it a particular color. I noticed this was attempted recently, but was reverted, so I thought I would be proactive and start a thread here to avoid an edit war. Thanks! Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 21:42, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

I guess we can be "standard" whatever that means. But if we don't have to, it might be nice to have a "signature" color for all Vermont nav templates. I doubt this has been discussed before. I can't say the current color green is that attractive though.

So what about having a "signature" color (somewhat changing the subject)? Student7 (talk) 01:45, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

I would say it is better to just go with the default color per WP:Deviations. If you check all the U.S. state templates, there are only a few which are not using the default (e.g., Template:California). For those that aren't using the default, a thread should be started to discuss it, if one hasn't been started already. My primary concern is WP:ACCESSIBILITY for the visually impaired. I had one editor email me to ask how he/she could override the color scheme being used in various navbox templates. If we stick with colors defined by MediaWiki:Common.css, this is possible by just creating a personal Special:MyPage/skin.css. If we override the "css classes" using "inline style statements" (which is in conflict with WP:Deviations), this becomes much more difficult. I will ask for further comment at one of the MOS pages. Thanks! Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 21:07, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Plastikspork is right, sticking to the default color is important. It the only thing that enables the visually impaired to apply the color scheme they need. Having a single color for navboxes is also important from a design and graphic guideline point of view. Cheers, Dodoïste (talk) 21:58, 1 May 2011 (UTC)