Template talk:place

Possible improvements
It's a bit annoying that you have to specify the  parameter all the time for non-English languages. For non-English, the English name should always be the definition, and in the vast majority of cases, that name is identical to the non-English name. For example, I have to specify on the Dutch entry, but it should take   as the default so that I can just type:.

Also, it seems that for the code above, the page doesn't appear in Category:nl:Cities in the Netherlands, where it clearly should. —CodeCat 21:51, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Another annoyance is having to type a language code in order to get the template to link to something. It should just link by default, I can't think of many situations where a link would be undesirable.

I also have a question. I noticed that doesn't create a category for North Brabant. I think this may be fine for a small country, but what about a large one like Canada, such as ? How would the template know not to categorise in provinces of the Netherlands, while still categorising in provinces of Canada? —CodeCat 22:09, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Currently, Canada has this category: Category:en:Ontario -- format: just "(division)"
 * And Brazil has this one: Category:Municipalities in São Paulo, Brazil -- format: "(type)s of (division), (country)"
 * I've been using the Brazilian categories that use that format, which IMHO is what I'd choose for other countries too. (as in: Category:Municipalities in Ontario, Canada or whatever.) Template:place is current able to categorize using a category like this, but if people prefer the shorter format, I wonder if the template could be tweaked in some way. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 23:12, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
 * My concern was more for, if we create Category:Cities in Ontario, Canada at some point, whether the template could distinguish between needing to categorize entries in that category, while not categorizing entries in Category:Cities in North Brabant, Netherlands (which we probably don't want to crate). —CodeCat 23:30, 17 October 2015 (UTC)


 * About t1 being necessary: come on CodeCat, you said that in the BP and no one supported it.
 * Having to type the language code: I guess we could change that, but there would need to be a way to suppress links. What do you think of i.e. ? And perhaps limiting the default linking to a set of placetypes (important ones country and province).
 * Amsterdam isn’t added to cities in the Netherlands: this was an issue during development; Daniel let me know that not all capital cities are actually cities. Some are towns and villages. I think this will be solved with your proposal.
 * Doesn’t create a category for cities in North Brabant: The main reason why I wanted to have a template like this is to control which categories should exist and which shouldn’t. This way we can create entries cities in North Brabant with all the information without worrying about categorisation. If, in the future, we decide that Dutch cities should be categorised by province, it will take a tiny edit to the data module to fill up all of the categories. See Template:place/documentation for details.
 * — Ungoliant (falai) 18:39, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I still don't understand why  can't default to the current pagename. It would be a very easy fix. —CodeCat 18:44, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Apparently,  can't default to the current pagename because the existence of absence of   governs how the definition is formatted, i.e., as a standalone definition or as a translation definition.
 * But I agree that in the case of translation definitions, there should be some way to default t1= to the current pagename because I predict 99% of the translation definitions are going to point to the current pagename anyway, except cases like /. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 19:26, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Only the names of important places in major languages written in the Latin script will likely be the same. That’s far fewer than 99% of our content. — Ungoliant (falai) 19:30, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Multiple place types
Yet another problem I ran into. I'd like the definition at Amsterdam to mention both the province it is in, and the fact that it's the capital city of the Netherlands. So something like: "a city in North Holland, the Netherlands; capital city of the Netherlands". How would this be done? Also consider the possibility that a city may be the capital city of a country and of a province. Also note that currently the definition line just says "Netherlands", although it categorises properly. —CodeCat 22:18, 17 October 2015 (UTC)


 * I propose editing the module to make this code work:
 * A city, the province capital and national capital in North Holland, Brazil.
 * I believe this is the easiest way to fix the module right now without changing much the text that it uses, but ideally, perhaps the text could be tweaked this way eventually:
 * A city, the capital in the province of North Holland and national capital in the Netherlands.
 * Only "province capital" and "national capital" have not been added to the module yet. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 23:12, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Amsterdam isn't actually the provincial capital though, that's Haarlem, but I asked the question because there are surely plenty of national capitals that are also capitals of a subdivision. I think that parameter-wise, it should be realised that a capital city is not a thing separate from a city. A capital city is also a city in general. So perhaps a format like this would be better, if it could be made to work: placetype1|holonym1-1|holonym1-2|placetype2|holonym2-1|holonym2-2. That way, you can simply say that Amsterdam is a city (placetype1) in North Holland (holonym1-1), Netherlands (holonym1-2), and also the capital city (placetype2) of the Netherlands (holonym2-1). Of course, for this to work, the module would need some way of knowing when a parameter specifies a new placetype rather than yet another holonym of the previous placetype. Perhaps  could act as a separator. The output would probably separate the two parts with a semocolon anyway (like in my example above), so it seems fitting. An advantage of this approach is that you don't need separate national/provincial tags, since the thing it is the capital of is the first holonym that follows it. —CodeCat 23:30, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Here's an idea for the parameters that would specify a hypothetical capital of both the Netherlands and North Holland province: . Note the use of "and" here, which indicates that it's a capital of both holonyms, rather than the Netherlands being a part of North Holland. There'd be a lot of repetition of stuff here though ("capital of the Netherlands and North Holland, Netherlands"). —CodeCat 23:35, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Excellent idea. I’m keeping a list of things to be improved as I use the template. This will be at the top of the list. — Ungoliant (falai) 18:43, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Excellent idea. I’m keeping a list of things to be improved as I use the template. This will be at the top of the list. — Ungoliant (falai) 18:43, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

To do list
— Ungoliant (falai) 21:16, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Adding a ; parameter to separate multiple defs (see above).
 * Move aliases and place_article to the data module.
 * Make it so items in the data module can have special categorisation instructions for placetypes other than countries.
 * Make it so certain entries can be added to more than one category for a single placetype.
 * Automatic linking for some placetypes.
 * Aliases for placenames.
 * A system for inferring information (i.e. "contregion/Scandinavia" implies "continent/Europe")


 * : the above features have been deployed again. I regret getting involved in this project and I hope this motherfucker works properly this time! — Ungoliant (falai) 00:01, 21 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Thank you! Though I didn't test the new functionality yet; hopefully I'll take a closer look at it later. Your work is much appreciated! :) --Daniel Carrero (talk) 02:51, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Capital cities
If the place type is "capital city", the page won't be categorized in the city/country category (Estocolmo, should be in both cities of Sweden and capital cities). DTLHS (talk) 00:31, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I’m working on it. It will take some time because the way the data module stores information needs to be rethought. — Ungoliant (falai) 00:39, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

RFDO discussion: September–October 2015
This was something User:Daniel Carrero was tinkering with back in 2010, in the days before Lua. A couple of months ago, he deleted it, but then decided to redo it, instead. He's only put it in two entries, but that created 4 useless redlinked categories: Category:English place names, Category:en:Municipalities of São Paulo, Brazil, Category:Portuguese place names, and Category:pt:Municipalities of São Paulo, Brazi. I'd like to kill it before it does any further damage.

The main problem with this template (aside from the hideous rat's-nest of unreadable code inside it), is that it makes it easy to create categories we don't want, and can't use catboiler templates on: if you say "Al's Eat and Get Gas" is a "minimart" in "Bedbug's Elbow" "Kentucky", this combination of parameters will add the category Category:Minimarts of Bedbug's Elbow, Kentucky. Of course, this is an exaggerated example, but this approach basically takes every member of topical categories and makes them into topical categories of their own. This has the potential to create a virtually exponential increase in topical categories, all of which would have to be entered in the same data module as continents, countries, states and provinces. Not only that, but most of these will have very few members, with more complexity but no corresponding increase in usefulness.

I'm not sure if it's a good idea to create categories like Category:English place names, but at least it will take only one addition to a data module to allow poscatboiler to be used when creating them. Chuck Entz (talk) 06:23, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Are going to/should we subdivide placenames by the location of the place as well as the language? DCDuring TALK 14:40, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
 * "I'd like to kill it before it does any further damage." It's true that I used that template on Osasco and Guarulhos. I removed it after seeing this conversation. If possible, I would like to keep the template, though. It's largely experimental and after removing it from these entries, I didn't use it anywhere. Using a new template in a couple of entries is just an easily reversible test. Though I admit I left the unfinished template in these two entries for a few months without improving the unfinished template itself. Sorry about that.
 * (replying to 's "Are going to/should we subdivide placenames by the location of the place as well as the language?") For that test, I tried the name Category:en:Municipalities of São Paulo, Brazil. It is a long name. Personally, I kind of like this long name for consistency and clarity purposes. I chose it among a number of possible options, unilaterally, without further discussions, because I had to have something to test. But, by all means, please let's discuss this and see what is actually the best name to use, if any. Points to be considered:
 * We have categories for states of US, like Category:en:Kentucky.
 * Kentucky is a state of US, while São Paulo is a state of Brazil.
 * I didn't count, but apparently there are categories for all states of US, while there are no categories for states of Brazil.
 * Apparently our coverage of entries for cities and towns in each state of the US is comprehensive enough, while maybe entries for cities or municipalities in each state of Brazil are not up to that level of coverage yet. Perhaps that would explain why there are no categories for individual states of Brazil today.
 * I think it is important, for consistency, having either categories for all states of all countries, (if that's feasible) or conversely, having no categories for states of any country.
 * If we have categories for states of both US and Brazil, (and other countries) I think it is important adding the country to the name, so I'd prefer Category:en:Kentucky, USA and Category:en:São Paulo, Brazil, not just Category:en:Kentucky and Category:en:São Paulo.
 * I've been thinking of maybe adding "Municipalities" or "Cities" like Wikipedia does (w:Category:Cities_in_Kentucky). I've also thought of the possibility "Category:en:Cities and towns of Kentucky, USA" but I understand if that's too much. Maybe just "Category:en:Kentucky, USA" is the best of all, at least in my view.
 * I really am very interested in the idea of making a template for place names for consistency in entries and categories, so I have spent a lot of time thinking and keeping notes to myself (I only had time to do it in my physical notebook in my spare time, also I'm still bad at Lua and I've been trying to learn it first, that's why I didn't share much of this project until today) about what could possibly be a good system for that, so feel free to ask anything and give any suggestions or criticism. Which leads me to the next point:
 * "all of which would have to be entered in the same data module as continents, countries, states and provinces." No. I planned using a separate template for categories (possibly named, which I did not create as of today), so it could recognize the standard format of "Category:xx:Place, Place" or "Category:xx:Places of Place, Place" with minimal code, without the need to have a big module list of every specific category name. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 22:26, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I think that the creation of subcategories should be determined by the extent to which categories get overpopulated with heterogeneous members. To take examples from what I know, The states (and territories etc) of the US seem to constitute a category of acceptable, if somewhat small, size. Counties of New York State would be about the same size, but should not be created IMO until someone actually creates most of the entries the entries, the future members of that category remaining in some category such as Places in New York State. We already suffer from having a large number of categories that have little content, but do contribute to the clutter in Special:WantedPages and, to a much lesser extent Special:WantedTemplates.
 * That said, the naming conventions for such categories should be established and made to reflect the terms actually used in the countries in which the places are located. That these terms may change from time to time (eg, from shire to county in the UK, or parts thereof) and may not be consistent even contemporaneously (eg, Commonwealth of Virginia, State of New York, District of Columbia, the several territories of the US, including the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico) is tough luck for our category naming, though Category:en:States and Territories of the United States is probably good enough. It would obviously be nice to find some transnational standard system for structuring placenames, but I don't think there is one, as even postal addresses differ significantly by nation (and yet the mail often gets through).
 * A similar problem exists in "higher" taxonomic names, but there has recently been published a standard hierarchy of names down to the order level, which is a great relief to me, though it does not eliminate the need to define taxonomic names in use, but not in the hierarchy. DCDuring TALK 23:36, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I've been thinking: I know that with topic categories like Category:en:Communication and and all categories that use, new subcategories are created case-by-case. This includes the many geographical categories that are already listed in Module:category tree/topic cat/data/Earth and Module:category tree/topic cat/data/Place names. I don't like the fact that these modules are very messy about country subdivisions; for that reason, I think this system can be improved:
 * It may come off as a bit of nitpicking, but one detail I'd also like to fix is the inconsistency of prepositions of "cities IN Burma" versus "counties OF Norway" in one of the modules. I'd suggest using "OF" in all category names. I'm also calling attention to the fact that a system of place names already exists and is in an untidy situation. I would like to clean it up, if it's possible, that's all. Maybe it's my fault for not explaining it before when I had the chance, but I feel a little hurt by Chuck Entz's statement "I'd like to kill it before it does any further damage." as if I were trying to intentionally break something with a pointless template.
 * "It would obviously be nice to find some transnational standard system for structuring placenames, but I don't think there is one, as even postal addresses differ significantly by nation (and yet the mail often gets through)." Wikipedia uses the following system. I don't think of using this exactly, but using it as a guideline. What do you think? (see w:Category:First-level administrative country subdivisions)
 * Category:First-level administrative country subdivisions
 * Category:Provinces of Argentina
 * Category:States of Austria
 * Category:States of Brazil
 * Category:Provinces and territories of Canada
 * Category:Regions of Italy
 * Category:States of Mexico
 * Category:States of the United States
 * etc.
 * Category:Second-level administrative country subdivisions
 * Category:Municipalities of Brazil (since there are hundreds of those, I would rather have "Category:Municipalities of São Paulo, Brazil" and others)
 * Category:Counties of the United States
 * Category:Municipalities of Uruguay‎
 * etc.
 * "I think that the creation of subcategories should be determined by the extent to which categories get overpopulated with heterogeneous members." About that, I would like to make that call based on groups of categories sharing the same relationship. That is, I support the existence of the whole group of individual categories for individual states of the US in order to make the whole system navigable by separating hundreds of entries for cities and towns, etc. into their proper places. I would not even call into question the possibility of deleting Category:en:Kentucky individually just because it has 98 entries, it does not matter if 98 is a large or small number so long as it is part of the system. For comparison, we have "Category:X nouns" for any language, even in the many cases where the category has only 1 entry. I take your point that we have "a large number of categories that have little content, but do contribute to the clutter in Special:WantedPages and, to a much lesser extent Special:WantedTemplates". I just think that if some categories can be planned to follow a useful and consistent system as a whole, they are useful categories nonetheless, even if there are many cases when the system makes a lot of categories have few entries — particularly in those unavoidable cases where we just have to have many of the same categories for different FLs.
 * --Daniel Carrero (talk) 01:43, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I strongly disagree with creating categories in advance of need: the existence of a significant population of items that would populate them. First let us categorize what we have at a high, natural level, such as countries. Then the initial subcategories should be created by someone who has an intuitive feel for which categories would add value in accordance with some naming convention, preferably one that has been agree to after a BP (not RFDO) discussion. Folks can categorize into non-existent categories and we can add the categories as needed, based on Special:WantedCategories. If items are categorized into misnamed categories, then that same list will help us find them. We obviously now have created many categories in advance of significant demand, given that only ten categories are wanted by more than ten members and several of those are under discussion aimed at their renaming. Contrast this with Special:WantedPages for which the 5,000th page is wanted by 12 other pages (probably mostly user pages, though often category pages). DCDuring TALK 02:07, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * : I'm not accusing you of malevolence- you obviously believe in what you're doing, and want to improve things. The problem is that you come up with "solutions" without having a real feel for the actual needs that the solutions are supposed to address. Having a template that's designed to go in every place-name entry which automatically adds categories based on information specific to the entry basically skews everything toward the largest number of categories with the smallest number of members. The result is a whole lot of wasted clicks as people are forced to traverse up the tree to the level that has a meaningful number of branches, and then down again to get from umbrella categories to actual entries again. This is the exact opposite of what categories should be: categories in Wikimedia-based sites are a navigational device, not a classification scheme. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:19, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * You are interpreting the template in your own way. I never said: "Hey guys! You know what we needed right now? A template that generates categories like Category:Minimarts of Bedbug's Elbow, Kentucky!" (which is an example of category name you gave) Sorry, but that's ridiculous. And even worse that you are making assumptions about my capacity as a creator of templates and categories based on this. The template is largely unfinished and undocumented, as I said, but if you try to use "type=minimart" even today, it won't generate a category. There are geographical categories that we want (if Module:category tree/topic cat/data/Earth and Module:category tree/topic cat/data/Place names are any indication) and categories that we don't want. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 04:13, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * We are interpreting it in the light of our prior and continuing bad experience with top-down categorization and the suppression of hard categories and bottom-up approaches which are (were in the case of bottom-up categorization) flexible in their wiki-like ability to crowd-source categories. DCDuring TALK 11:35, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I moved Template:place to User:Daniel Carrero/place. There's no need to RFDO an unused experimental template. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 19:37, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * For the record, we do have Category:en:Place names rather than Category:English place names. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:04, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Deleted. I am closing this discussion as "deleted"/"failed" for the following reason:

I was creating Template:place, it was unfinished and experimental, and now I've moved the stub to User:Daniel Carrero/place. Also, this RFDO started with erroneous assumptions, i. e., that this template would deliberately be able to create pointless categories like Category:Minimarts of Bedbug's Elbow, Kentucky.

Separately, there's been an effort to create a place name module (Module talk:User:Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV) which seems to be fully working and does not seem able to create unwanted categories like Category:Minimarts of Bedbug's Elbow, Kentucky.

I'd like to consider the name Template:place up for grabs. If the module uses the name Template:place, I'd like to make it clear the current RFDO discussion is about the old template and not the new template. But the template name for that module has not been decided yet, could be another name.

That said, I am aware that the new module uses the category name system Category:pt:Municipalities of São Paulo, Brazil, a category which I created and populated, so the new template is similar in funcionality to the old template, only revised and finished. Again, if people want the module deleted for some reason, nothing stops you from creating a separate RFD discussion for it. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 19:10, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Places in multiple countries
I just created, the name of a river. But this river flows not just through the Netherlands but through Limburg province in Belgium as well. How would I go about denoting that with this template? —CodeCat 20:21, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Currently, does not populate categories like "Rivers in Belgium" and "Rivers in the Netherlands", in only categorizes into "Rivers". So, apparently, we only have to edit the definition and not worry about the categories. This works:
 * , let me know if you have a better idea in mind. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 20:41, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Categorising the entry by country would certainly be welcome, so I'd prefer not using the single opaque description-style parameter. —CodeCat 20:48, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
 * I support categorizing rivers (and mountains, forests...) by country. Ungoliant knows the module better than me, but I believe this feature does not exist in the module yet.
 * Something like this could be added in the future:
 * --Daniel Carrero (talk) 20:58, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
 * I suppose the numbers won't be needed if the module can infer that North Brabant belongs to the country Netherlands, while Limburg belongs to country Belgium? —CodeCat 21:01, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Good point. I suppose the order of parameters would be enough:
 * --Daniel Carrero (talk) 21:07, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Good point. I suppose the order of parameters would be enough:
 * --Daniel Carrero (talk) 21:07, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
 * --Daniel Carrero (talk) 21:07, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Spurious redlinks
The operation of this template leads to the creation of spurious redlinks in the case of English proper nouns that require the to make an English sentence. One example is the Atlantic Ocean, but I'm sure there are many more. It should be fixed. DCDuring (talk) 04:21, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
 * This is yet another example of how to clog Special:WantedPages with crap. DCDuring (talk) 04:23, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
 * It looks like en will correctly include the definite article without creating a spurious redlink. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 13:43, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Glad it's been fixed. DCDuring (talk) 22:46, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

Wikidata possibilities
Using Wikidata in this template was suggested before, so now that we have Wikidata enabled, I'd like to look at how feasible it all is.

At the very least, it's very easy to figure out what something is. Wikidata includes the "instance of" property on most things, which tells us what kind of thing we're dealing with. So parameter 2 is very easily substituted by something Wikidata-fied. Finding out what larger entity something is in, is a bit more involved. Wikidata includes various properties for being located in a certain country, being the capital of a certain country or province, etc. Figuring out which subdivision (province, etc) a place is located in seems a bit trickier, that will need more looking at. For example, has no information that places it in the province of North Holland, instead it's placed in the municipality of Amsterdam, which itself is placed in the province of North Holland.

The most difficult part, and possibly a deal-breaker, is names. While we can easily find out that is in the country, at some point we'll have to convert the latter into a category name like Category:en:Cities in the Netherlands. There's nothing in Wikidata to tell us that this particular thing needs a "the" in front of it. But more pressingly, we're going to have to use the label of the entity as part of our category name, and the label has to be used to generate a definition as well, like "a city in the Netherlands". What would be done if Wikidata calls something one way and we call it another way? Compare with our own Category:Osaka (Prefecture). The module could certainly detect a mismatch between the names, because our category names are predetermined and can be figured out from our modules. But how would we actually work around the problem? —Rua (mew) 20:09, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

There may be a better way out of the category problem, at least. has as one of its properties "topic's main category", which points to. This entity is for categories about the Netherlands, and our own Category:Netherlands is among them. So it's possible to retrieve a Wiktionary category for terms related to the country, at least. With a bit of string manipulation we can turn that into Category:Cities in the Netherlands, although the matter of "the" still remains. Our own Category:Cities in the United States of America has a Wikidata item too, I found. But it's a mystery to me so far how I might get from, say, the item to  only by following Wikidata properties. —Rua (mew) 20:51, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Requests for improvements/fixes
On The Hague, it says "administrative capital in", this should be "of". Also, it says "a city and capital of", but the preposition of "city" should be "in". Moreover, "capital" should always have "the" before it. So it should say "a city in and the capital of". —Rua (mew) 20:25, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

a town in x, x, x, x, x
Would it be possible to display the other administrative divisions that are given to the template? For example, at 五里鋪 the code includes, but only the names are displayed. If we are putting all this information in the entry, we ought to do something with it... —suzukaze (t・c) 22:34, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

. —suzukaze (t・c) 22:38, 5 April 2018 (UTC)


 * , does do what you want? — Ungoliant (falai) 12:10, 6 April 2018 (UTC)


 * I guess it does, but it feels mildly redundant that way. —Suzukaze-c◆◆ 00:17, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Can somebody tell me why does not sort as ar:Towns in Palestine, just as ar:Towns, even though the country is given? We have many entries in Category:Towns that do not even specify the country. Fay Freak (talk) 10:01, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Capital city
Could "capital city" label also add a plain "city" category? Like:  adds both: Category:en:Capital cities and Category:en:Cities in Ohio, USA. The current way to get both categories (like the Rio de Janeiro example) could be more concise imo. Julia ☺ ☆ 07:32, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

directly categorising into Category:en:Australia, Category:en:New South Wales, etc. the corresponding words
(edited) It would be nice if —Suzukaze-c◇◇ 16:42, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
 * en adds Category:en:Australia;
 * en adds Category:en:New South Wales;
 * en adds Category:en:New York City.
 * en adds Category:en:Belarus.


 * Is this possible? I tried looking at the code myself but found it to be complex and confusing. —Fish bowl (talk) 01:44, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
 * It is on my short list of things to do to make this happen; I will see about getting it done in the next couple of days. Benwing2 (talk) 02:00, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
 * @Fish bowl @Suzukaze-c @Koavf This is (finally) implemented. It looks at the pagename, the values in t=/t1=/t2= etc. and the values in modern=. It also makes sure that the placetypes are compatible, so that e.g. ends up in Category:ru:Georgia but not Category:ru:Georgia, USA, and vice-versa for . Benwing2 (talk) 07:51, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Nice. Beautiful. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:56, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Brilliant; thank you! —Fish bowl (talk) 07:18, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Grease pit discussion Dec 2019
(moved from Grease pit/2019/December)

I don't use this template, but other editors seem to like it. The problem I have with it is that it adds a full stop (dot); but when adding extra info after the template I would like to remove the full stop, but use of nodot=1 or dot= isn't recognised and creates an error message. So either the dot needs to be removed, or the template should accept nodot=1 etc. DonnanZ (talk) 11:56, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Yeah. I'd prefer to remove the final period from being auto-generated, and add it back in by bot, than add a nodot=1 param. It's only one character to add a period, but 1 takes 8 chars. Benwing2 (talk) 04:07, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
 * I assume you mean add the period/full stop/dot manually rather than by bot, anyway I agree with your assessment, and would like auto-generated dots to be removed from all templates that have them, especially those with multiple parameters like this one. You will find use of place at ; I added the OS grid refs (which I prefer to cumbersome coordinates). DonnanZ (talk) 10:43, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
 * The question we need to ask though is what to do about templates that wrap their text in or similar. If we type the dot after the template, then we have the entire text wrapped except for that dot, which is slightly weird. —Rua (mew) 18:58, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
 * I found a workaround which got rid of a red link (City of Edinburgh) here, diff. DonnanZ (talk) 13:43, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
 * This works but it might be better in this case to create the red link, i.e. create City of Edinburgh as an entry indicating that it's a council area containing Edinburgh. Benwing2 (talk) 21:10, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
 * BTW, you probably noticed by now that I removed the auto-generated final period from this template and added it back by bot after the occurrences of that used to include the period (i.e. when a translation param is not present). Benwing2 (talk) 21:11, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, but I'm in no rush to create "City of" entries for every UK city. Admittedly and  exist, as well as, but that's all, so I think we can avoid that. If it was able to read Edinburgh council area that would be better I think (in fact I have changed it); the council area extends to the west of the city itself -  is near the Forth Bridges.  is untouched, it could look like that (well, it does now). There are only 32 council areas in Scotland, and some of them are pretty large.
 * Yes, I noticed the disappearance of the period/full stop. which I mentioned above still needs to be done, one of us will have to tackle it - I haven't tried using the revised template yet. DonnanZ (talk) 23:07, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I have now added top-level subdivisions of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. This means that e.g. cities, towns and villages now get categorized according to the top-level subdivision rather than the constituent country. Whether this is correct I'm not sure; it makes sense for the 990 villages (formerly) listed in Category:Villages in England but may make less sense for the 55 cities in Category:Cities in England. The theory is that in time we will add more cities, and categorizing them more finely then makes more sense. (Alternatively, we could categorize both in Hampshire/Dorset/Gloucestershire/etc. and in England.) BTW I am still not sure how to name the categories; for these subdivisions, I appended the constituent country name, but I'm planning on not doing this for top-level subdivisions of Germany, Italy and Austria. Given the disagreement with User:Rua about this, we may need a vote. Benwing2 (talk) 23:15, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
 * BTW What still needs to be done for Clifton? Looks like everything is already templatized. Benwing2 (talk) 23:17, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
 * You're right about Clifton, some full stops had to be removed from the English places, that's all.
 * I'm not sure about the splitting of villages into counties, I'm not keen and I will have to think about that, bearing in mind the counties are generally smaller than US states. Some counties have already been created: Category:Cornwall, Category:London (used for Greater London), Category:Greater Manchester, Category:Merseyside, Category:Tyne and Wear, Category:West Midlands, Category:South Yorkshire and Category:West Yorkshire. The last five were created recently, and still need populating, not containing everything. I would rather have a full range of county categories and keep villages as it was, I think They would complement each other. It gets complex in Wales when there are counties and county boroughs (unitary authorities which operate as counties), so you have to go by ceremonial counties. Mind you, this applies in England too with unitary authorities. It's all the fault of our confounded government removing one tier of local government. DonnanZ (talk) 00:08, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I think what I might do is set it up so that cities/towns/villages/etc. that get categorized into categories like 'en:Cities in FOO' and 'de:Villages in BAR' (where FOO and BAR are country subdivisions) also get categorized into 'en:Cities in COUNTRY' and 'de:Villages in COUNTRY'. I recently noted to User:Ultimateria that I'm planning on changing the module so it can categorize at two different levels; that will allow this to happen as well. Benwing2 (talk) 05:29, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I implemented this. Benwing2 (talk) 07:48, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Cities in the UK are granted the status by a monarch, which is why there are not many by US standards. I forgot to mention the "city and county" status in Cardiff and Swansea, this also applies in Bristol as a unitary authority, historically it was a city and county before becoming part of the county of Avon from 1974 to 1996. I revised Avonmouth as it was showing a false district category as a red link, it's part of Bristol. DonnanZ (talk) 11:19, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
 * A two-tier system (Villages in Country, Villages in County) I think I could accept. I fell out with User:Koavf over US counties when he created "Counties in State" categories and scrapped "Counties in US". As he is an admin he won of course, so I created a master index on my user page listing every county in the USA (feel free to browse it). DonnanZ (talk) 11:58, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I was not an admin at the time that we started disputing this and there was a broad consensus about this as it was discussed on more than one occasion. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 12:00, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
 * It would be more convenient for other users if they didn't have to refer to my user page. DonnanZ (talk) 12:31, 13 January 2020 (UTC)


 * : Cumberland as an English county was abolished in 1974, being merged with Westmorland and parts of Lancashire to form Cumbria. Unfortunately entries for and  showed Cumberland and found their way into Category:en:Villages in Cumberland, England, Milton also showed Westmorland but fortunately no category was created. Anyway I transferred them to Villages in Cumbria, so the category can now be deleted. The other categories seem to be OK. DonnanZ (talk) 22:25, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I deleted the category and removed Cumberland from the list of English counties in Module:place/shared-data. Benwing2 (talk) 01:33, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Great. The County of London hasn't been set aside in that module, that was abolished in 1965 along with Middlesex when Greater London was formed (we still refer to my area as Middlesex). DonnanZ (talk) 12:40, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I think the wording "council area" should appear in Scottish places. When I revised I unwittingly added Category:en:Villages in the United Kingdom, which should be empty, I think. The same happened with  in Falkirk council area (Falkirk is also a town) generating Category:en:Towns in the United Kingdom, I reverted that edit. DonnanZ (talk) 13:37, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I have fixed these two so that "council area" displays next to council areas, and either 'council area/Edinburgh' or 'council area/City of Edinburgh' is acceptable, and both will categorize into e.g. Category:en:Villages in the City of Edinburgh, Scotland (similarly for Glasgow/Aberdeen/Dundee); this is based on the fact that Wikipedia lists the council area for Edinburgh as "City of Edinburgh". Let me know if you want some other scheme used. Benwing2 (talk) 16:54, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
 * BTW I think I will fix things so categories like Category:en:Villages in the United Kingdom don't get generated. Benwing2 (talk) 17:03, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that's better, I noticed the change when finishing off, Highland council area looks much better there. Admittedly there aren't going to be many towns/villages in Scottish city council areas, those being mainly urban with suburbs/inner city areas, but as long as categories for them can be created as required, being able to use council area/Edinburgh etc. should be fine, if the category is auto-generated it probably doesn't matter about the length of the title. I'm still on a learning curve. Thanks. DonnanZ (talk) 17:44, 15 January 2020 (UTC)


 * : I would like to keep county categories such as Category:Merseyside and maybe expand them; I notice you are emptying them, but I think they can link things together in the same way as Category:en:Villages in England etc.
 * I had already placed local government areas in England in Category:en:Boroughs in England; the logic being that they are the same as boroughs, in fact many have borough status.
 * Neighbourhoods: not a description used in the UK much, besides the "neighborhood" spelling is wrong in the UK. Maybe put them in suburbs?
 * Added 20-or-so Irish places, and created some red links in the process. DonnanZ (talk) 00:17, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
 * (1) The thing is that neighborhoods and suburbs are distinct. Neighborhoods are districts of a city, suburbs are outside of a city. Maybe "urban districts" in place of "neighborhoods"? Just "districts" is ambiguous as there are many kinds of districts. Possibly "urban district" is general enough to encompass suburbs; not sure. (2) As for categories like Category:Merseyside, there is now also Category:Merseyside, England; that's why I've been emptying Category:Merseyside, Category:West Midlands, and the like. I'd like to avoid having manually specified categories in place pages; that's what is supposed to do. In general I've been making sure that before removing a county category like Category:Merseyside, the page is in some more specific category mentioning the county, e.g. Category:Villages in Merseyside, England or Category:Towns in Merseyside, England or Category:Suburbs in Merseyside, England. These category pages in turn belong to Category:Merseyside, England. Potentially, places could be categorized both in e.g. Category:Villages in Merseyside, England and in Category:Merseyside, England, although I'd worry that the latter would become full of lots of miscellaneous places of various sorts. (3) As for local government districts, Wikipedia (under ) says that "local government district" is the general category and that not all such districts have borough status. So I was concerned that something described as e.g. a "unitary authority" or "non-metropolitan district" might or might not also be a borough, and as a result it would be incorrect to automatically put them in Category:Boroughs of Foo. Apologies if I've gotten this wrong, the UK system of government is very confusing to me and seems to be in constant flux. Benwing2 (talk) 01:13, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I created an entry for last year, they're not that easy to define. These don't cover the whole of England (council areas in Scotland are unitary authorities), and counties like Surrey (next door to me) still have a county council. The counties of Avon and Cleveland created in 1974 were abolished in 1996 and broken up into unitary authorities; others like Cornwall and Northumberland became UEs without any subdivision (except civil parishes, some of which don't have parish councils, so I'm in no rush to include or even mention those). Counties like Rutland and Isle of Wight were abolished in 1974, only to re-emerge as UEs. Central government obviously likes the unitary authority idea, but it creates a headache for us when categorising them.
 * Despite your desires with place I am not averse to creating categories manually, I remember suggesting a label for languages, but the idea was vetoed. I think adding places in a county to Category:en:Merseyside, England etc. is useful as it unifies several potentially small categories so I'm going to do it (I didn't envisage this happening when I created Category:en:Merseyside etc.). Category:en:Greater London, England poses problems - what do you leave in Category:en:London? BTW, I didn't create that one, or Category:en:Cornwall.
 * Neighbourhoods, hmm. I have an aversion to the spelling used, having used British spellings all my life. Unfortunately American spellings are used for other categories too. Maybe it's OK for inner-city areas but I'm not enthusiastic. I would class and  as suburbs of, a town in the London Borough of . But places like ? I wouldn't call any place in the UK a neighbourhood in the American fashion. DonnanZ (talk) 14:01, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
 * You've only made me more confused about UK government :( ... what would you recommend as the term that unifies what Wikipedia calls "local government districts" or "local authority districts"? As for "neighbo(u)rhood" I understand your concern, what about my suggestion of "urban district"? And I will go ahead and make categorize into county categories like Category:en:Merseyside, England so you won't have to do it manually. Benwing2 (talk) 14:48, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
 * For my abbreviation UEs above, read UAs, my mistake. I understand your confusion over UK governmment.
 * You have boroughs like, two miles down the road from here, now in Surrey and formerly a part of Middlesex, which are local government districts in effect, but use the borough title. This is why I lumped all lg districts and boroughs together, including Metropolitan Boroughs and London Boroughs, you need to read up on each one to determine whether they call themselves boroughs or not, this also applies to UAs. is a UA with borough status separate from , yet another UA, even though it's still regarded as being in Wiltshire.
 * I would prefer "urban area" to "urban district" which could cover inner-city areas. Incidentally there were urban districts and rural districts officially once, they were abolished by 1974 I think.
 * And your last sentence, thanks for agreeing to that. I had already started doing a few. DonnanZ (talk) 16:03, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I started to change "neighborhood" to "urban area" but on Wikipedia, urban area refers to something else entirely, approximately what I'd call the urbanized or metro area of a city. Meanwhile, neighbourhood (note spelling) refers to exactly what I think of as a "neighborhood". Benwing2 (talk) 04:26, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Hmm-yeah, maybe I'm losing the argument there, I will use suburb wherever possible.
 * I wondered why Category:en:England was being added to county entries until it dawned on me you had created many more (BTW, thanks for creating all these). Maybe it could be Category:en:Places in England etc.?
 * When I created I had to add carea/Edinburgh as well as city/Edinburgh to avoid generating Category:en:United Kingdom. I notice this also occurs with places in Bristol, like  and ; maybe Bristol should also be treated as a county, which it was anyway apart from being in Avon for two decades - it doesn't belong in the neighbouring counties of Gloucestershire and Somerset, and never has. It's a bit like Washington DC wedged between Maryland and Virginia. DonnanZ (talk) 15:14, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
 * If you don't like "neighborhood", what about my previous suggestion of "urban district"? At least when I used to live in San Francisco, that term was often used for neighborhoods, cf., , etc. (although the infobox on the right calls them "neighborhoods"). Or if your main objection is to the spelling, I can arrange it so that the spelling "neighbourhood" is used for places in the UK, Canada and Australia (and maybe other places known to use British English, like India), and "neighborhood" for the US and maybe non-English-speaking places.
 * I have no problem with Category:en:Places in England etc.
 * I'm confused what you're requesting w.r.t. Category:en:United Kingdom; do you simply want this not added to any place that doesn't explicitly mention the UK? I can implement that. Note also that I'm about to add a list of cities to Module:place/shared-data, so it will know that 'city/Edinburgh' is in Scotland. (So far the list only has major cities, which I define as those whose metro area is >= 1,000,000 people, although I also added Edinburgh to the list. For the UK this includes the following cities: London, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Glasgow, Leeds, Newcastle-upon-Tyne [also just "Newcastle" will work], Bristol, Cardiff, Portsmouth and Edinburgh.) Benwing2 (talk) 16:09, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
 * BTW I'm a bit confused about the distinction between "Greater London" and "London". Are they coterminous? If so, maybe I will arrange things so that there's no category Category:en:Greater London, England, and instead Category:London is used. Benwing2 (talk) 16:12, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah, The USA seems to be the odd one out with "neighborhood", so "neighbourhood" for anything non-US should be OK, in preference to urban whatever. I bet you're fed up with me.
 * Category:en:United Kingdom derivatives were eliminated from town/village categories so I thought that would apply with suburbs and counties/council areas/county boroughs and cities like Bristol etc. With the political noises coming out of Scotland over Brexit there may no longer be a United Kingdom.
 * Re London/Greater London, as I said I didn't create Category:en:London, I merely started using it for Greater London too. The centre of London is a long way from the boundary of Greater London, but it's probably difficult to define a boundary between the two - central London is not just the City of London (Square Mile) so maybe Category:en:London can be done away with and the contents transferred to Category:Greater London, England. Reading your question again, it should be one way or the other, just one category. DonnanZ (talk) 17:40, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I implemented the following: (1) Category:en:Places in Foo instead of just Category:en:Foo; (2) no Category:en:United Kingdom unless the UK is explicitly mentioned in the holonyms; (3) neighborhood vs. neighbourhood spelling. For the latter, I made the following countries and dependencies use the spelling "neighbourhood": (1) all natively English-speaking countries except the US; (2) all dependencies of the preceding countries; (3) all members of the Commonwealth of Nations (+Zimbabwe +Maldives +Sudan +South Sudan -Mozambique -Cameroon); (4) all other countries in Europe. These changes result in a bunch of red-linked categories; they will be created in a couple of days when Special:WantedCategories is updated. Benwing2 (talk) 04:15, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I will see how things look with the categories when they are created.
 * Further thoughts on London / Greater London: Category:en:London can stay, but any entry using place for Greater London can come out of there. This seems to have happened already, leaving 87 entries at present. DonnanZ (talk) 10:34, 23 January 2020 (UTC)


 * : It's all looking good, just some "stray sheep" that escaped need rounding up.
 * One tiny issue that cropped up when I inserted a comma when adapting what was written before to place, see . A gap before the comma is created, I could use "which is" instead, but I'll see what you have to say first. DonnanZ (talk) 13:05, 24 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Fixed. Benwing2 (talk) 03:30, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

'Places in CITY' -> 'Places in or near CITY'?
Hi. I have set things up to auto-populate categories like Category:Places in Chicago. But many of the places in this category are suburbs, which aren't exactly "in" Chicago, so I wonder if it wouldn't be better to name these city categories like Category:Places in or near Chicago. What do you think? Benwing2 (talk) 14:12, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, I'm afraid I don't know much about Chicago. There is a which overspills into Wisconsin and Indiana; I would say anything in those two states should be excluded. The city of Chicago is within, 1635 square miles, which has no less than 24 cities, including  itself with an area of 227.63 sq. miles. I think you can squeeze quite a few suburbs into that area, compare that with 607 sq. miles for Greater London and the 302 sq. mile land area of New York City. A lot of places in Cook County are probably not described as suburbs of Chicago, I would be tempted to only include places and suburbs that actually fall inside the Chicago city limits; in that case Category:Places in Chicago may suffice.
 * Wikipedia can describe places as suburbs when they're not; I came across this with as a suburb of ; it used to be a borough until incorporated into Hastings District, but it is clear from the Topo Map I added (which can be zoomed out) there is a "green belt" about a mile wide between them.
 * Off that topic, there doesn't seem to be a places category for the Australian Capital Territory, which is an enclave inside New South Wales. I could have added to it the other day. DonnanZ (talk) 17:25, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Let me see about adding Australian Capital Territory. As for "Places in or near ...", maybe Chicago isn't a good example. The city of Boston has about 695,000 people but has about 5 million people. There are plenty of places that might be listed as suburbs of Boston (e.g. Cambridge, Massachusetts, just across the river) which aren't in Boston but will trigger the Category:en:Places in Boston category if 'city/Boston' is given as a holonym. Currently the code that adds categories like Category:en:Places in Boston isn't smart enough to distinguish between suburbs of somewhere and neighborhoods of somewhere; it just looks for the presence of the city as a holonym. Hence, for example, McCook, Illinois gets listed under Category:en:Places in Chicago even though it doesn't appear to be in Chicago itself, but is clearly a suburb. That's why I suggest "Places in or near"; in general it's hard for the code to tell from the arguments whether a place is in or near a mentioned city. Benwing2 (talk) 06:02, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * With it looks as though the fault was mine when I created the entry. According to Wikipedia, it has village status, and is further described as an industrial suburb of Chicago, although as you point out it's not actually in the city of Chicago. I have reworked the entry to show the village status; it is still showing under Places in Chicago, but city/Chicago could be deactivated. I will let you decide whether Category:Places in or near X is a good idea, I will reserve judgment at the moment; for metropolitan counties in the UK I have maps to cover them like the Master Atlas of Greater London (I am an avid collector of maps). I come across suburbs of Sydney which are in separate cities, but the metropolitan area stretches as far as the Blue Mountains to the west; I lived in Sydney in 1970-71. Being on an isthmus, Auckland sprawls all over the place too, but there is now one massive metropolitan council, all city and borough councils in the area being abolished. But I'm content to keep Category:en:Places in New South Wales and Category:en:Places in New Zealand as they are, without Places in Sydney/Auckland etc., at the moment. DonnanZ (talk) 13:39, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Districts (區) in China
These are currently designated as neighbourhoods, but they seem to be bigger than neighbourhoods in the Chinese context. They are usually at the county level, the third level down from the provincial level. I'm not sure how this should be fixed. — justin(r)leung { (t...) 00:37, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Name collisions
The province of Limburg (Limburg (disambiguation)), is a historical province of the historical United Netherlands (Province of Limburg (1815–39)), but also modern provinces in the Netherlands (Limburg (Netherlands)) and Belgium (Limburg (Belgium)).

currently treats  as a province of the Netherlands, even when specifying  ; and Module:place/shared-data is missing Belgian provinces.

This is a name collision, and the Belgian province is missing from the data store.

Will generate categories for "Limburg, Netherlands" incorrectly, so I expect this may occur with other places in other regions with the multiple jurisdictions having same name. The module should, I think, check the higher level jurisdictions to see if such a thing occurred or not.

-- 67.70.32.97 21:49, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

County towns
At Longfort, if I write ga, it categorizes the entry into CAT:ga:Towns in County Longford, Ireland, but if I write ga, it doesn't. Can the module please be edited so that county towns are also categorized as towns? (Another option would be to have a separate category for county towns the way there is for capital cities, but that doesn't seem so important to me.) Thanks! —Mahāgaja · talk 08:25, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi. There's actually a comment I added awhile ago that says this:
 * -- NOTE: 'coal town', 'county town', 'ghost town', 'resort town', 'ski resort town',
 * -- 'spa town', etc. aren't mapped to 'town' because they aren't necessarily towns.
 * I think this is because some county towns are actually cities, e.g. Galway, Inverness. One option is to write ga, which produces "a town, the county town of Longford, Ireland" or similar and categorizes properly. If you have other ideas, let me know and I can implement them. Benwing2 (talk) 15:15, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * OK, I'll follow that suggestion. Thanks! —Mahāgaja · talk 15:19, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

"an" → "a"

 * the template currently generates "an unitary authority", "an unitary district", and "an united township municipality". Could those be changed to "a", please? —Mahāgaja · talk 13:27, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Should be fixed. Benwing2 (talk) 19:47, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

nocap
Any chance this might be updated to support a  argument, as in many other templates? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 00:08, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
 * If you want to write "a city" (or whatever) instead of "A city", you can use a, can't you? —Mahāgaja · talk 07:54, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Categorizing socken / sogn
In Scandinavian/Nordic countries you have an administrative division called socken (Sweden), sokn/sogn (Norway), sogn (Denmark) and pitäjä/socken (Finland). I am wondering how these divisions fit into place names? For example in Denmark you have a town called Abild, which lies in Abild sogn, which again lies in Tønder municipality and so on. I haven't found a way to add this sogn, but maybe we don't specify them at all? Supevan (talk) 07:39, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
 * The standard way of handling this is to translate socken/sokn/sogn/etc. into some English equivalent. Any idea what that is? We don't normally use untranslated foreign terms in place descriptions or categories. Benwing2 (talk) 01:28, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

counties in the USA
In my experience, counties in the USA are called "Foo County", rarely "Foo" alone. I think should read "A city in Oneida County, New York, United States", rather than (as it does now) "A city in Oneida, New York, United States". &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 06:57, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Pinging Benwing2. &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 06:58, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I'll look into this. Benwing2 (talk) 05:52, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Any update, Benwing2? &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 11:45, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
 * It is easy to make this change for all counties everywhere in all countries, and I think the code to do this already checks to see whether the word "County" is in the place name itself so wouldn't result in duplicated "County County". However, I'm not sure if this makes sense for counties in other countries. Someone would have to investigate counties in other countries and see how they are normally formatted. An alternative is to do this only for counties in the US, but that would require more code hacking. Benwing2 (talk) 01:26, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Format for obsolete placenames (those that had their official name changed)
What is the format for former official names of a place? I suppose it should tell that it's no longer in official use and what is the new name, but is there a standardized way to do it? Bogdan (talk) 10:05, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Leningrad and Siam simply use the label en and then define the term as its modern name. Peking uses dated form of. —Mahāgaja · talk 11:33, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks, dated form of is what I was looking for. Bogdan (talk) 12:02, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

mountain range categorizing as 'xx:Mountains'
(moved from Module talk:place/data on Aug 10 2021) Shouldn't "mountain range" categorize to xx:Mountains? Ultimateria (talk) 16:16, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

taluk vs. tehsil
You pinged me about adding taluk/taluka as a place type. We already have tehsin, which is a synonym; do we really need taluk(a) as well? Benwing2 (talk) 01:41, 11 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the reply. The name for subdistricts in India may vary by state (or union territory) as it shows at:
 * So, within there are:
 * Although tehsil could be used instead of state-specific (or territory-specific) names, wouldn't it be more helpful to use these names instead of using tehsil in every case?
 * Also, according to :
 * text
 * So, there is a
 * (notifying ) Kutchkutch (talk) 13:24, 11 August 2021 (UTC)
 * yea, better are region-specific names like at wikipedia instead of ‘tehsil’ in every case. from a conservative perspective tho, tehsil for all o' them isnt that errorous. im Symbol_abstain_vote.svg okay with both — Svā rt ava  • 15:49, 11 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I see. Yes, we already have something similar for states of the US, where most states have counties, but Louisiana has parishes and Alaska has boroughs. Let me see if I can adapt this code for India. Benwing2 (talk) 01:19, 12 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Also, according to :
 * text
 * So, there is a
 * (notifying ) Kutchkutch (talk) 13:24, 11 August 2021 (UTC)
 * yea, better are region-specific names like at wikipedia instead of ‘tehsil’ in every case. from a conservative perspective tho, tehsil for all o' them isnt that errorous. im Symbol_abstain_vote.svg okay with both — Svā rt ava  • 15:49, 11 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I see. Yes, we already have something similar for states of the US, where most states have counties, but Louisiana has parishes and Alaska has boroughs. Let me see if I can adapt this code for India. Benwing2 (talk) 01:19, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Princely State
Could be added to this perhaps as a  ? Examples of entries that could use it include:
 * अवध रियासत, Cambay, Chitral, Veja, Jammu and Kashmir, Janjira

Kutchkutch (talk) 22:09, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Autonomous cities
I think these were previously automatically categorized in Category:es:Autonomous cities of Spain etc., but the category is now empty, could you check? – Jberkel 11:04, 26 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I see. Yes, I changed it to categorize the same as cities, and didn't realize there is a separate category for autonomous cities. Should it categorize autonomous cities like regular cities and also put them in a category like Category:es:Autonomous cities of Spain? Benwing2 (talk) 19:29, 26 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, sounds good. – Jberkel 19:31, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

loadData
Could this be refactored so that Module:place/data and/or Module:place/shared-data can be loaded using mw.loadData instead of require? Currently the submodules include various functions as well as data tables, and have to be loaded for each invocation on a page. 98.170.164.88 10:00, 2 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Not sure if IP's can be pinged, but I tried that at one point; you can see the remnants in Module:place/shared-data/tables. The upshot is that it actually increased rather than decreased memory in most cases, maybe due to the number of tables and subtables involved, each of which requires an extra metatable when loaded using mw.loadData (or something; maybe User:Erutuon can comment more). I tested it on a page with 60 or so invocations of place (maybe User:Benwing2/test-place), and the memory increased from 29M to 33M. Benwing2 (talk) 03:32, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

Svalbard
@Benwing2 Could Svalbard be added? I don’t know what’s the best way to do it. It’s not a dependent territory, but not a county either. Though, I think adding it as a county would be the closest and most appropriate, if there’s no other option. Eiliv / ᛅᛁᛚᛁᚠᛦ (talk) 03:14, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

Template produces bad output if fed with HTML tags
"en" renders as "". This is a bug because only double are reserved by this template. &mdash; Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 13:31, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
 * This is actually because of the slashes in ; this makes the module think it's dealing with a holonym e.g.  . Let me see if I can fix this. Benwing2 (talk) 22:55, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
 * @Fytcha You may have gone inactive but I have fixed this bug. Benwing2 (talk) 12:30, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Departments
Hi, last year you holonym_article = "the" to departments. I've noticed that it adds an article even if "department" comes before the geographical name (as seen in Pointe-à-Pitre). I've found a way to override this by adding |in the| before the department parameter. Should I use this method or is this something that needs to be refined in the module? Thanks, Einstein2 (talk) 12:31, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Apologies, either I didn't get your ping or I missed it. This should probably be fixed in the module; I'll add it to my todo list. I have a bunch of things that need to be done to this module. Benwing2 (talk) 07:05, 21 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I remove "the" by inserting |in| . DonnanZ (talk) 13:22, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

preposition=

 * The documentation says to use preposition to specify a preposition different from the default, but when I tried to do that at Sanibel I got an error message saying the template doesn't use that parameter. —Mahāgaja · talk 06:56, 21 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Oops, that part of the documentation is way out of date, from before I started working on the module. I'll remove the cruft. Benwing2 (talk) 07:00, 21 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Actually, the docs are fine; the section you found this in is labeled "Guide to adding new items to the data module", and doesn't concern params to place. Those are documented near the top. Benwing2 (talk) 07:02, 21 July 2023 (UTC)
 * OK. I just searched for "preposition" on the page and that was what I found. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:06, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

more updates
I added the ability to specify additional invisible holonyms to help with categorization. Precede the holonym with an ! point and it won't be displayed but will still count for categorization. I also added an augmenting feature so if you specify e.g. en it augments the holonyms just as if you had specified en, i.e. the containing polity won't display but is present for categorization purposes, so you automatically get the term placed into Category:en:Local government areas of Australia, which formerly didn't happen. This is disabled for certain subpolities with ambiguous names, e.g. "Central Region" in Malta, and in any case it doesn't happen if there's a conflicting holonym of the same placetype, e.g. if somehow you were to say en it wouldn't augment with Australia because it sees a different country already. Also, specifying something like will no longer place the term in Category:Places in Malta; the same flag that disables the augmentation for "Central Region" also disables the "Places in ..." category for the containing polity. (I think this is something you requested awhile ago.) I haven't yet done the equivalent augmentation for cities because it needs some care; a lot of city names refer to multiple cities in different locations. Benwing2 (talk) 12:38, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I will have to try it out next time I use |lgarea|. It will be especially useful for South Australia and Western Australia. It could possibly be extended to Category:en:Civil parishes of England and Category:en:Communities of Wales.
 * If I remember correctly, you noticed the problem with "Central Region" etc. first, and drew my attention to it.
 * As an aside, I am mildly irritated about |village/and/cpar| generating "of" - if they are reversed |cpar/and/hamlet| (for example) generates "in", which is better in such combinations.
 * Keep up the good work. Cheers! DonnanZ (talk) 14:04, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I forgot to add that I find "carea" useful for Australian lgareas which call themselves councils, not cities, shires, or regions; that was, of course, created for Scottish council areas. DonnanZ (talk) 14:21, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Problem with categorisation of former local government districts

 * There has been a rash of abolitions of local government districts in England in recent years, in favour of unitary authorities. I think the rot set in about 2009. This year alone Cumbria, North Yorkshire and Somerset have lost theirs; the escaped, being a uauth already. I haven't bothered with updating them yet. The problem I have is that "former local government district" does not place them in Category:en:Historical political subdivisions, but if I change it to "former district" it is allocated there, for example . This is hardly satisfactory, I think: can "former district" be altered to accommodate "former local government district"? DonnanZ (talk) 15:49, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
 * : I inadvertently removed the notification, but the change you made works. Thanks. DonnanZ (talk) 23:11, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Provincial park and other things

 * I added a provincial park in Canada (and created an entry too). They're common in Canada and other countries, the equivalent of a state park in the US. I wonder whether it can be included in place where state park and national park are already included as parks. Maybe country park too, which seems to be a British thing.

Other things: historic district (entry created today, see there), which I often come across, is automatically converted to "historical district", which it isn't. It's an existing area, and not a historical political subdivision. Creeks don't get a mention, they can go with rivers. In the US they are streams, but in the UK they are tidal rivers or inlets. Watercourses (included) are generally rivers (sometimes artificial) or streams. A canal (not included) is an artificial waterway which doesn't flow, though there will be some flow to a lower level when a boat goes through a lock. I'm not sure if they crop up in "place" entries. Cheers. DonnanZ (talk) 18:54, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Suppressing links
See, inter alia, Mexico where the previous editor had a choice between leaving out categorization or leaving in eyesore Self Links for places in Mexico named Mexico. They opted for random Mexicos sprinkled around, but they shouldn't've had to.

There should be a way (ideally intuitively expressed) to do something like.

If there is already a way to do this, it needs to be included in the instructions.

If it's already hidden in the instruction text wall somewhere, it needs to be much more clearly and possibly repeatedly stated and mentioned in the examples. — LlywelynII  00:57, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Showed up at Aydin as well and doubtless other places. — LlywelynII  12:13, 12 February 2024 (UTC)


 * @LlywelynII Should be fixed pending a needed bug fix in Module:links. You won't need to specify explicitly that you want a self-link to be a real link; it will be the default. Benwing2 (talk) 05:30, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Well, I thanked you for this but, rereading, did you misphrase something? There shouldn't be a "real" link or a botched link. Self-links should just not be a link at all. — LlywelynII  17:20, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
 * @LlywelynII The plan is for links to be links; if you specify a city Mexico in a country Mexico, the country Mexico will be a link to the top of the English section of the word Mexico, as we normally do with any other toponym. Would you prefer special treatment in this case so that it's a bare unliked toponym, not boldfaced? That sort of thing isn't standard anywhere AFAIK and I'm not sure why it would be preferable to just having a clickable link. BTW the bug fix we're waiting on is from User:Theknightwho; maybe they can comment a bit more on self-links. Benwing2 (talk) 19:52, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
 * a) We're just naming the province within the template. We aren't trying to create a link. The link is being automatically generated. That's the entire issue.


 * b) It's useful to have a link automatically generated if the province name is at a different entry.


 * c) Unless the template automatically generates a #ToProvinceSense link that moves to the correct sense of the word, how is it useful for the reader to be moved from one sense of the word (that will have the other sense right above or below it) back up to the top of the entry?


 * That said, thanks for your attention, I've said my piece, and I'll just leave it to you and TKW to decide between yourselves what best fits general policy and user helpfulness. Certainly it isn't the current distracting, unhelpful, and needless bolding. — LlywelynII  07:27, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

A/an is not determined if word is linked

 * See : “a ancient kingdom”. J3133 (talk) 08:55, 5 March 2024 (UTC)


 * @J3133 Fixed. Benwing2 (talk) 05:30, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Districts of Germany
Could we add categorization for districts of Germany? I've added de to Ansbach, but it would be good to categorize it in CAT:Districts of Bavaria (in addition to CAT:Places in Bavaria and CAT:Places in Germany) and to have all the "Districts of [German state]" categories in the category tree so they're recognized by autocat. (No need for "Districts of" categories for the city-states of Berlin, Bremen and Hamburg, since they don't have Kreise.) Thanks! —Mahāgaja · talk 18:35, 8 March 2024 (UTC)


 * @Mahagaja Fixed. Benwing2 (talk) 05:30, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

"in Lich star system"
I noticed on Phobetor that displays "A planet in Lich star system, Milky Way Galaxy, Virgo constellation". Checking for other uses of "in ... star system", and finding Lionrock, Draugr, Bocaprins, Hoth, Poltergeist, and Methuselah, it seems to me like the template should default to including "the" before the name of the star system (so "in the Lich star system", not "in Lich star system"). The only situation that comes to mind where this would be inappropriate is if someone specified the name as "our" ("in our star system"), but I don't know if the module does or should allow that, and I can't find any entries which do it. - -sche (discuss) 14:36, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Common placename
Hello, is there a general label for 'placename'? e.g. I have a Greek placename, very common, that is anything: village, town, river, stream, mountain, peak of mountain, fountatin etc. I wrote as definition like

or, a Greek toponym or, a Greek placename ? Thank you &#8209;&#8209;Sarri.greek &#9835; I 04:45, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

'basin' should not add term to Category:Lakes
There are plenty of basins that do not have standing water, for instance, Mare Tranquillitatis is ending up in. Garagel-Acari (talk) 03:35, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Adding sense IDs
Would it be possible to add sense IDs to placenames mentioned in the template? For example, in sense 1.2, I could add <tt>|seat=Odessa<id:city in Ukraine></tt>, but <tt>|obl/Odessa<id:oblast of Ukraine></tt> does not work. I imagine it is not simple to implement, especially in cases where the alternative format is used. Einstein2 (talk) 13:27, 5 July 2024 (UTC)