I have now edited the code so the information no longer shows up in the infobox as per the above RfC consensus [2]. The articles with |speakers=? can be tracked in Category:Language articles with speakers set to 'unknown' (a maintenance category that apparently existed all along). I have added a note about that in the template documentation [3].

The articles with |speakers=? that have a link to a source in |ref= can now be looked up in the new maintenance category[4] Category:Language articles with speakers set to 'unknown' despite a reference. I have looked up whether any of them pointed to a source that affirmed the lack of data. None did, so I removed the |ref= parameter. I have left the |speakers=?, so these articles are now listed with the others in Category:Language articles with speakers set to 'unknown', and I added a hidden comment as to which source had been consulted already. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 04:30, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

@kwami: I have two issues with your recent edit [5]:

1. You are saying that it “messes up tracking cats; all articles now tagged as lacking refs”. That is not true. Only those articles are tagged as lacking refs that have |speakers=? and at the same time |ref=⟨some ref⟩ – you probably have overlooked that I have reordered the code [6] so the tracking cats are not messed up and not all articles with |ref=⟨some ref⟩ are tagged. I have merely introduced a new tracking category – Category:Language articles with speakers set to 'unknown' despite a reference – for keeping track of exactly these articles. With your edit, keeping track of these articles is extremely difficult. Is there any reason why you want us not to keep track of these articles?
2. Your reintroducing the “(no data)” wording in hidden comments makes no sense and is contrary to the consensus of this RfC.

I have reverted it in the spirit of WP:BRD. Now is the time for discussion. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 06:01, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

I am sorry – I had my mind all set to Category:Language articles with speakers set to 'unknown' despite a reference while you were referring to Category:Language articles without reference field. I have now fixed the latter category [7].

The current code does not only introduce the new tracking category Category:Language articles with speakers set to 'unknown' despite a reference. It also keeps better track of articles that have |speakers=none in Category:Language articles with speakers set to 'none'. Previously, these articles were only tracked if they had no |ref=. Now, they are all tracked (incuding articles such as Modern Standard Arabic that were not tracked previously). --mach 🙈🙉🙊 07:40, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

On December 1, 2015 Ethnologue announced a new paywall. Users will be allowed to access 7 pages per month free of charge. To access more than this will require a subscription of $9.95/month or $60/year. The Infobox currently links directly to Ethnologue in several places by way of ISO3 codes. Given that Ethnologue no longer allows free access, linking to this source would seem to violate the spirit of Wikipedia. What do people think about changing the Infobox to link to an alternate but open source, such as Glottlog? Gholton (talk) 22:46, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

The codes link to ISO639-3 pages that are on sil.org (which is the registration authority), but presumably will remain freely available. However, these pages are very sparse, and rely on a link to the corresponding Ethnologue page for the denotation of the code. So ISO639-3 codes have become less useful.

Ethnologue is used in many instances of this infobox as a source for speaker population figures, but that use (like the similar use of Nationalencyklopedin) seems compliant with WP:PAYWALL. Kanguole 23:20, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

The Ethnologue or Glottolog are tertiary sources. Instead of pointing to them, we can always point to the individual secondary source they are based upon. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 23:38, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Actually, Ethnologue often refers to primary sources, and for many languages is a primary source itself. Verifying the sources it does use is always a good idea, but that's more work than we're likely to be able to handle for more than a small fraction of the world's languages. — kwami (talk) 00:17, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

I think Ethnologue is a valuable resource (or, as Kwami alludes to, a collection of valuable resources). Our current usage seems compliant with WP:PAYWALL to me. And, for the casual WP reader, seven pages per month is probably adequate, although, for an editor without a subscription, it can be frustrating (even if there are easy ways around it).--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 02:39, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

(ec) As long as our links are to the ISO, then they remain free. And linking to a pay site is not unheard of in Wikipedia, e.g., all those links to Britannica or to media sites that are behind firewalls. The user must decide if verifying the Wikipedia information is important enough to pay for it. And the information on Ethnologue and Glottolog are not equivalent. For example, Glottolog doesn't include speaker numbers and the maps are not really useful other than locating the center of mass of a speech community. It's great strength is bibliographical. --Taivo (talk) 02:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

I agree with what Taivo said. Peter238 (talk) 14:45, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

• Remove it from the template And especially do not display it, if the paramter is not set (like it is currently)! -- ZH8000 (talk) 14:45, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

There is no link to Ethnologue in the infobox, User:ZH8000. The link is to the ISO 639-3 standard, which is not behind the paywall. And since the ISO 639-3 code is used far beyond Ethnologue, it is important to include. So your comment is irrelevant. --Taivo (talk) 16:06, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

What about providing a separate link in the Infobox to the Endangered Languages Catalog (ELCat)? Gholton (talk) 20:12, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

• I hadn't seen this discussion and inadvertently started a parallel one at WP:LANGUAGES. I think that we should deprecate the use of Ethnologue data, both because they will probably eventually grow tired that we provide a substantial part of their product for free, and also because when it is not free, it actually makes more sense to use high quality paper sources in all the cases where it is available. I don't think we should remove all links to Ethnologue at one, but that we should aim to gradually replace them with higher quality specialist sources. This could be done by simply making a policy saying that other sources are prefered when available.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 00:48, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Should there be a mention of the basic typology (SVO, VSO, etc) in the infobox? Jimw338 (talk) 17:55, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Nope. That particular aspect of typology is not more basic than many other aspects - and often a question of interpretation.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 01:24, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

I have started a discussion about this template at [[8]]. I started it on the WP:LANG talk page because more people read that page. I am proposing that we add a mechanism for indicating the ISO code that should be used for a dialect of a language, where the dialect does not have its own code. See discussion there. AlbertBickford (talk) 19:06, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Urdu currently has a comment embedded in its infobox's lingua field. Unfortunately this gets formatted in typewriter face (I hacked around it by manually adding <code>...</code> tags). I note that there are "comment" fields for all the language-code entries, except Linguasphere. Could one please be added to Linguasphere so this comment doesn't look ugly? Hairy Dude (talk) 01:11, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Hairy Dude, yes, fixed here. Frietjes (talk) 14:45, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. Hairy Dude (talk) 15:11, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

I wanted raise the possibility of adding a link to ELCat, akin to the way the infobox now links to Ethnologue and Glottolog. ELCat makes use of ISO codes, so it would be easy to pass code tcb to http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/lang/tcb. The only catch is that ELCat does not include all languages, only those considered endangered, so we'd need to create behavior to not pass codes which are not in ELCat (or else ask ELCat to more robustly handle nonexistent codes -- right now they give 404's). I think a link in the Infobox could generate lots of useful cross-fertilization between ELCat and Wikipedia. ELCat users are often Native speakers uploading content, and they could contribute productively to Wikipedia as well. Gholton (talk) 23:28, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

It's been six years since I mentioned this would happen, but the fact that the familycolor attribute for a number of mainly Asian languages is "Altaic", a very heavily dismissed and refuted language family in modern linguistics with almost no proponents, is causing large edit wars on Japanese-related and Korean-related articles even if it's just supposed to be "areal". Please consider renaming this colour to anything else. Even a literal value of "arealaltaic" would be much better than "altaic" alone. But given that you have "American", "Australian", "Caucasian" and "Papuan" as values, then "Asian" or "Eurasian" would be good, geographically equivalent descriptors. — Io Katai ᵀᵃˡᵏ 06:13, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

It would be maybe good to create a unique Koreanic-Japonic-Ainu family colour/areal-family. Because Korean and Japanese may be no related, but in term of areal location and historicall connections it would make sense. This would also end the dispute/edit-war.

So the areal-Altaic family would be Turkic-Mongolian-Tungusic. And the new Koreo-Japonic(suggested name) family would be Koreanic-Japonic-Ainu. Ovilava (talk) 07:58, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Except that Ainu has nothing to do with Altaic, which would mean that we'd be coding Korean as Japanese, which given the colonial history would be a disaster.

Whether or not the Altaic languages are actually related, they are typologically very similar. What we call the color is irrelevant to he reader, because they don't see it, but the term in the lit is "Altaic". If we call it Asian or Eurasian, then we'll get edit wars over people adding e.g. English because it's a Eurasian language because they don't understand that we're censoring ourselves to placate idiots.

I'd say leave it as is, or break it up and create three or four new family colors. The problem with the latter is that we've gotten to the point where it's difficult to distinguish the family colors that we have.

No matter what we do, we're going to get occasional IP edit wars. That's the nature of Wikipedia. My advise is to do what we always do in such situations: revert them, block them, or protect the articles. — kwami (talk) 02:55, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Actually the altaic theory is obsolete. Typologicall similarities are no proove for a relationship. And mostly all modern linguists agree that macro-altaic is debunked and core-altaic is only a areal family. A koreanic-japonic-ainu areal family do not support imperial agendas. Koreanic would not be under japonic. They would be two independent members. Wikipedia should be actuall.

If you say typologicall similar, korean must also be a dravidian language. 213.162.68.217 (talk) 07:34, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

I have asked a question at Talk:Moldovan language#In the infobox, how to say it's retired?, please leave your opinions there. Thank you. --Gikü (talk) 11:14, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

The template appears to be ambiguous on speech areas in countries with autonomous enclaves. Consequently, there is no consistency/double standards on the language pages for the nation and state parameters (e.g. only Israel is linked on Hebrew language and not Palestine as well whereas Cantonese juxtaposes China and Hong Kong). I therefore propose the following amendment to the parameters: states - UN-recognized countries in which it is mainly spoken // nation - list of UN-recognized countries in which it is an official language // minority - list of UN-recognized countries in which it is a recognised/protected minority language. Soupforone (talk) 04:55, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Hi,

It looks like there are shortcuts for the ref parameter, such as "e18" or "ne", but there are several issues with that:

• It's not clearly documented at the main template page, Template:Infobox_language. E.g., e18 is a valid parameter, but it doesn't appear there, although e17 does.
• It's not mentioned in TemplateData at all, even though it's quite important.
• It's outdated, because the 20th Ethnologue edition is already out, but the template doesn't quite seem to support it.

Diving into this template's code is a bit intimidating for me... can anybody help? Thank you! --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 13:44, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

Please note Talk:Latino_sine_flexione#Family:_Linguistic_and_Utilitaristic --217.224.132.211 (talk) 12:54, 21 July 2017 C1MM (talk) 06:07, 14 November 2017 (UTC)(UTC)

Many of the articles on Wikipedia refer to the Ainu language not as one language with multiple dialects, but as a language family with multiple languages. Linguists have tried (and failed) to find connections to other language families, but have so far been unsuccessful. Should we add a color to mark the Ainu languages as a different language family?C1MM (talk) 03:48, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

No. Ainu is included in the areal color of Altaic. We don't have separate colors for every separate language family in the world. That would make the colors meaningless as a general identifier. --Taivo (talk) 07:07, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

What about editing the language quilt so that all the possible colors for language families are shown? This one omits Andamanese, Algic, and Uto-Aztecan, as well as Hmong-Mien. C1MM (talk) 06:07, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

We need the ability to do something like |iso3=none|iso3comment=Encompassed within [http://www-01.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=nan nan] ([[Southern Min]]), such that the comment will display, without the template trying to generate a link to something at SIL.org. Right now, if you leave |iso3= (or |iso2=, whatever) empty, it will not display the corresponding |iso3comment=. If you put anything, even a Unicode zero-width space, in for |iso3=, it results in the generation of <code>...</code> markup something there, shifting the comment to the right, as can be seen at Hokkien in this revision.

We need this for the ability to indicate suitable ISO codes that are supersets of dialects that do not have their own separate codes.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  20:50, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

This seems redundant, as the box already has |isoexception=dialect, and the parent is in |fam5=Southern Min. Kanguole 21:22, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Except that markup does nothing at all useful for the reader, as seen here. The ISO 639-3 entry just shows up as "-", and there is no indication that any ISO code of any kind applies to this language/dialect. The average reader has no reason to auto-intuit that Southern Min, somewhere in the language family tree, does have an ISO code, what it is, or that it can be used for Hokkien.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  21:32, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

I came here to see if others thought that UNESCO status should be added to the template. I see two people supporting the idea with no opposition in the archive. Would someone please make that change? I'm not familiar with adding things to templates. Here's a link to the UNESCO website[9], FWIW. Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 16:35, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

There was also a discussion last year about categorising languages based on status (There is to be found also some useful discussion about the choice of vitality scale). Although that proposal didn't get much traction, the alternative suggested here of adding an infobox field is likely to draw more support. – Uanfala (talk) 18:16, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

What do people think about adding the capability of displaying pushpin maps, the way that infoboxes for places do (see a random example)? Granted, these maps are only for points (or collections of points) and will obviously not work for languages spread over a decent territory. But still, there are hundreds (if not thousands) of languages that are confined to an individual village (or a cluster of villages) and for many of them such a pin-point location is probably the best we could ever offer. – Uanfala (talk) 20:35, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

How should this template be used in a dialect Wiki page, like Jeseri?
Anish Viswa 08:58, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

• In the same way as it would be used for any language. The only difference I can think of is with respect to the |iso3= parameter. Assuming that the dialect in question doesn't have an ISO 639 code (Jeseri at least doesn't), then you should leave |iso3= blank and add |isoexception=dialect. – Uanfala (talk) 23:19, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Hello, I think this template need new parameters.

Maybe we add the “Basic words” section which displays common words in that language if known?

The parameters should be for example: thank_you_lang-trans (translation of “Thank you” into the language). Repeat please with the words

• Thank you
• Hello
• Goodbye

and *Please?

Thx Glorium (talk) 10:43, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

• It's arguable whether lists of common words or phrases should be included in an article at all, but even if they are included, they aren't encyclopedic enough to warrant being placed in the infobox. – Uanfala (talk) 11:00, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

This template is causing one or more Lint errors: Miscellaneous Tidy replacement issues: div-span-flip errors every time it is used, which is on 8,573 pages. The problem is four occurrences of {{allow wrap|{{longitem|...}}}}. {{allow wrap}} is basically <span class="wrap">{{{1}}}</span>; {{longitem}} is basically <div style="padding:0.1em 0;line-height:1.2em;{{{style|}}}">{{{1}}}</div>, and <span>...</span> isn't supposed to wrap <div....</div>. It would be good to fix this. —Anomalocaris (talk) 07:40, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

Anomalocaris,  Fixed by swapping around {{longitem}} and {{allow wrap}}, though considering {{longitem}} says it is a "inline formatting template" maybe it should use spans.. Galobtter (pingó mió) 08:26, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

How was the colour scheme for the family colour chosen?

I am not asking how the colours were adapted, to have more contrast and be more aestheticly pleasing and fit better into Infobox, no I am asking how were they chosen?

• Who said (Africa) Afro-Asiatic, Nilo-Saharan, Niger–Congo, Khoisan should all be various shades of brown to yellow?
• Who said (Eurasia) Indo-European, Caucasian, Uralic, Dravidian, Altaic, Paleosiberian should be various shades of green?
• Who said Sino-Tibetan, Hmong–Mien, Kra–Dai, Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Papuan, Australian should be a shade of orange to purple?
• Who said Eskimo–Aleut, Na-Dené, American should be shades of blue?

and why?? Why colour code Afro-Asiatic with Niger–Congo in brown/yellow and not together with Indo-European which is linguistically closer to Afro-Asiatic? Why is Dravidian coloured a shade of green like Indo-European instead of the closer to the Afro-Asiatic shade of yellow or Isolate grey?

What is the systematic behind the shade grouping? Did someone want to imply that all those green shades are more closer related to each other? Was the intention to show Eurasia, Fareast, Africa, Americas as different language groups on a map? The general colour scheme I assume was taken from a map that showed the different language families, this map shows an early version of the family colour which was used in the debate about the colours in 2005.

But which colour fits best for which language was not discussed. What the general idea behind the colour scheme was, was not discussed. Having a colour scheme that puts Mongolic, Altai, Indo-European, Caucasian, and Paleosiberian in various shades of green and then drawing them on to a map of central Eurasia is frustrating and is not a good colour set for a map. A cartographer would like a qualitative colour set, with clear distinctions between neighbouring families so that one can easily see where one language is present and where another is present. A linguist will disagree with the groupings the diverging colour set seems to imply. If the intention of the family colours scheme was to create a corporate identity for each language family, then why not put the effort into choosing a colour already associated with a language family?

What is the purpose of the colours?

• To provide a colour pallet for linguistic maps or charts?
• To create a corporate identity for a language family?
• To group language families into theoretical super groups?

--Alternative Transport (talk) 21:57, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

• The colour scheme does seem like one of those things everyone has learned to take for granted without paying much attention to. There most likely are ways to make it better, but it doesn't seem like anyone of the people watching this page would be interested enough in that. You could try posting to a larger venue, like WT:LANGUAGES? – Uanfala (talk) 21:03, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

I've been thinking of adding support for pushpin maps, you know, the ones commonly found in the infoboxes of settlements (random example). Though obviously not appropriate for major languages that are spread across large(ish) territories, they could certainly be helpful in giving the location of languages that are spoken in small areas. Anyone's got any objections? Any alternative ideas? Any suggestions? – Uanfala (talk) 21:01, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

Well, I've now added basic support for pushpin maps (I've mostly taken them from Template:Infobox body of water as it was simple and readable). You can see an example at Abun language. Now is the perfect time to come up with suggestions. Any parameters need adding? Any display behaviour needs changing?

I've also changed the bahaviour of coordinates: before that, coordinates would get displayed right below the name of the region very near the top of the infobox. I've moved them almost at the end, right after any maps. The reasons for this are: 1) bare coordinates aren't particularly meaningful on their own so there's no need to display them so prominently; 2) now that the template supports pushpin maps, the coordinates will be displayed right after the map, as happens at geographic infoboxes. I'll update the template's documentation in a few days, in case anything breaks in the meantime.

Also, now that it's become so easy to add pushpin maps, I'm tempted by the idea of adding them to a large number of articles using the coordinates from glottolog. Could this be a bad idea? – Uanfala (talk) 04:17, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

What do people think about adding an EGIDS parameter? Julia ☺ 22:23, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

This Infobox only displays the leftmost 60% or so when viewed on an ipad. I have no idea how to make this sort of correction, so I was hoping someone else would. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:643:C100:657E:29A8:41E3:2826:550C (talk) 16:39, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

I have reverted the addition of a Wikipedia entry, pointing at the Wikipedia in the particular language. The function of the infobox is to provide overview information about the language itself, whereas such a link is a Wikipedia self-reference. Kanguole 10:34, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

The infobox has a parameter |name= for the English name of the language, as well as |nativename= for the name in the language in question. What do we do if they're the same? Do we duplicate them as here, or do we omit the native name as here? – Uanfala (talk) 12:52, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

It is very odd to have

Native speakers: x million

L2: y million

because the y million are not native speakers – and by the way, "L2" is not at all reader friendly. So this 'as a second language' figure should have its own title. Ideally we would have "speakers2"/"speakers-title2", "speakers3"/"speakers-title3" so that, where they data is available, we could have "fluent second language" and "intermediate second language". (I'm not suggesting the full language ladder as in Common European Framework of Reference for Languages as there can't be any reliable data).

Can this be done? --Red King (talk) 18:10, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

I was updating Azerbaijani language Glottolog codes and names to the latest Glottolog version 4.1 since there have been some large changes in their classification. However, the reference it generates is still for the old version 3, from 2017. I ended up adding "glottofoot = no" and manual citations, e.g.:

glottoname = Modern Azeric<ref name="Glottolog">{{cite web|editor-last1=Hammarström |editor-first1=Harald |editor-last2=Forkel |editor-first2=Robert |editor-last3=Haspelmath |editor-first3=Martin |accessdate=2020-02-05|title=Modern Azeric|url=https://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/mode1262|date=2019 ||doi=10.5281/zenodo.3554959 |website=[[Glottolog 4.1]]}}</ref>}}

Maybe there's a way to improve the template? It's tricky because they have changed the meaning of some codes. For example, in Glottolog 3.0, azer1255 was "Subfamily: Azerbaijani" which included North Azerbaijani and Salchuq, but not South Azerbaijani [10]. But now azer1255 is "Family: Central Oghuz", which includes a new mode1262: "Family: Modern Azeric" (with languages North Azerbaijani and South Azerbaijani), plus Salchuq.

So maybe it's not a good idea to just update the generated citation to show the latest version, if an article is actually referencing the information in the older one. On the other hand, the generated link goes to the newer version on the Glottolog website. It should maybe go to an archived older one, e.g. https://glottolog.org/files/glottolog-3.0/azer1255.html? But then we'd probably need a new parameter to be able to link to the new version, like "glotto4.1= ", "glottoname4.1=" etc., or somthing like that... --IamNotU (talk) 21:23, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

i've noticed the Andamanese languages of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India have their own color which isn't shown in the color template, could anyone fix this? edit: Algic and Uto-Aztecan also have their own colors, pls fix — Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.36.45.18 (talk) 14:13, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

This template is invoked several times in the Varieties of American Sign Language article. It ends up causing duplicate reference definition errors because the reference names the template generates aren't configurable. The "glottorefname" parameter implies they are, but this parameter really sets the title of the referenced language, not the reference anchor name generated by this template. Is it possible to solve the duplicate reference name error on the "Varieties" page? -- Mikeblas (talk) 16:40, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Some change is definitely necessary here. To begin with, is there any need for the glottolog reference to be automatic rather than optional? My own pet peeve is how on articles with a consistent use of short {{sfn}} citations, the glottolog reference generated by the infobox is the only one that breaks the style. – Uanfala (talk) 20:18, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

You can turn off the glottolog reference with |glottofoot=no. However, the reference is quite unnecessary, as the glottolog identifier already links to the Glottolog page, and, as noted above, it interferes with the citation style of the rest of the article. Kanguole 21:21, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Sorry Kanguole, I'm kind of confused by your note. Is your suggestion that the Varieties article should just use glottofoot=no and forego the references? -- Mikeblas (talk) 14:55, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

As Uanfala said, some change is needed. My preference would be for the infobox not to generate Glottolog citations (for redundancy and CITEVAR reasons). The ad-hoc way of doing that is |glottofoot=no. Kanguole 15:55, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Papuan languages have all their classifications messed up. What the hell? Fix this. It's urgent. 37.47.194.199 (talk) 11:35, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

A bit more specific, maybe? –Austronesier (talk) 11:43, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Just look at any Papuan language. The classifications have been missing for a few days now. Huh? 37.47.194.199 (talk) 16:08, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

It always helps to provide links to specific articles where you have observed a problem. Also, describe what is wrong, and what it should look like instead. Otherwise, we have to guess. I just went to Amto language, and it looks fine to me, but I don't know what I'm supposed to be looking for. We are not dumb; we just don't have the specialized knowledge that you have.

Based on the text at Papuan languages, it looks like there are multiple classification systems for those languages. If that is what you are concerned about, Talk:Papuan languages might be a better forum for your comments. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:29, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

I think I may understand now. I made a change to this template to fix another problem a couple of days ago, and it appears to have fixed one problem and introduced another, despite my testing. See this test case, where the "sandbox" template contains the previous version of the template and renders a couple of additional lines. I'll try to fix it. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:35, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

It only seems to go wrong for areal groups, for which |fam1= is set. Kanguole 16:48, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, that's the problem. Sorry, I assumed it was obvious. I'm surprised that nobody else has raised this issue before, but then I guess there's little readership for Papuan languages. 83.21.4.209 (talk) 16:50, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Also "Altaic", American, Australian, and several more. Kanguole 16:53, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes, the glitch also shows with Tzeltal in the sandbox. And I've opened Sahaptin language yesterday, but haven't noticed it... –Austronesier (talk) 17:15, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

I have reverted my changes from June 9 and will continue to experiment in the sandbox. Sorry for breaking the template; there is not nearly enough variety on the testcases page to ensure that changes like mine will not break anything. If there are additional test cases that will demonstrate the variety of parameter combinations that exist in articles, please add them to the testcases page. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:26, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

The parameters era and extinct seem to be mutually exclusive, but this is not stated in the documentation. --Pfold (talk) 09:42, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

• Not every nation has sovereign state or country to represent it.
• Many sovereign states represent many nations.

Hectormgerardo (talk) 05:02, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

I have added "official" as an alternative parameter for "nation". --Soumya-8974 ^talk _contribs ^subpages 09:11, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

I have only become aware of this parameter because of User:Soumya-8974's recent tweaks. My question: Do we really want lead our readers from the Infobox (which otherwise is supposed to present hard facts based on best sources) to user-generated content? –Austronesier (talk) 09:00, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

When I was about to add the "development_body" parameter in the infobox to include Bord na Gaidhlig in the Scottish Gaelic article, I found the "wikibook" parameter in the infobox. I don't know who added it, but I thought that someone added this parameter in order to encourage WP readers to be polyglots, and personally I like polyglots. I tweaked the parameter to better fit with the infobox. You can remove the parameter if you want. --Soumya-8974 ^talk _contribs ^subpages 09:05, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

We have the nice {{Wikibooks}} template for that purpose, so yes, I suggest to deprecate |wikibook= here. –Austronesier (talk) 09:29, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

I also hadn't noticed this parameter, though it was added in 2018 with this edit. I agree that it does not belong in the infobox, which should summarize key facts (MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE). Links to sister projects, like wikibooks, wikiVoyage phrasebooks, materials on wikisource or commons, or the wiki in that language, all belong in the "External links" section (WP:MOSSIS).

I have reverted the "Learning materials" header as giving undue prominence to this non-infobox purpose, and believe that we should also eliminate |wikibook=. Kanguole 09:52, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

I agree with removal. --Izno (talk) 13:11, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

There are only 9 non-empty uses, so moving this to the external links section could be hand-done. --Izno (talk) 13:14, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

I count only 8, all added today. Kanguole 13:29, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

I was having trouble with regex this morning I think. Either way, the number is small, even if you count all the ones we didn't (user sandboxes, drafts, template doc, etc.). --Izno (talk) 16:14, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Of these 8 articles, six already had a sister link to Wikibooks in External links, one did not (but now has), and one was in the wrong article. So I've gone ahead and removed |wikibook= and those uses. Kanguole 09:52, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Great, thanks! –Austronesier (talk) 10:26, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Hello, I'd like to request the following small edits, to improve the appearance of image captions:

• Text should be centered
• A few pixels of padding should be added to either the caption top or the image bottom. Right now, "26^th cemtury BC" connects with the image, visually.

ΟΥΤΙΣ (talk) 20:40, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Captions that run over multiple lines would be more difficult to read if centred. MOS:CENTURY says not to use superscripts in century names. Kanguole 08:02, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

We live and learn. Thanks for your feedback. ΟΥΤΙΣ (talk) 14:04, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

But still, I think it might be possible to script something like:IF multiple lines THEN align text left ELSE center text ΟΥΤΙΣ (talk) 14:07, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

It's difficult to count lines when we don't know what device the caption will be displayed on, or with which font. Kanguole 15:42, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

In the infobox at the Japanese language article (version), I spotted a novel idea that I think would look nice if implemented here. In the "official status" section, an editor inserted ∟ (U+221F: RIGHT ANGLE) to denote that Angaur is a subset of Palau. Maybe something similar could be implemented for the display of the "Language family" and "Early forms" parameters of this infobox? I think the case is stronger for the "Early forms" symbol's meaning of "descendant item" instead of the family's use of "subset item" like above, however.

For example on the version I linked, "Old Japanese" through "Early Modern Japanese" could be linked with ∟ instead of bullet points, as it is currently done. Just wanted to throw this idea out there. — Goszei (talk) 05:40, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

I wanted to reference Ethnologue 20 at Dutch language but this template only accepts references up to Etnologue 19. Please update it accordingly. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 19:33, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Please update to the most recent edition. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 03:19, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami: Any reason you removed linglist as an option? It seems to break this page, for example. Getsnoopy (talk) 02:21, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, I tried something that didn't work and didn't fully revert myself. BTW, the LingList link doesn't work, but that's the site, not AFAICT our template. (The ISO links to MultiTree don't work any more either.) — kwami (talk) 02:39, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

The infobox does not make a distinction between the two even though they are not exactly the same when refering to languages. In common usage though they are generally used interchangeably. Some definitions elsewhere [11] can add to the confusion. The term 'native' language is also open to interpretation. An example is Cornish, that can be described in several ways. Should we amend the infobox parameters? Roger 8 Roger (talk) 20:12, 29 January 2021 (UTC)