Template talk:Infobox officeholder

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Template:Infobox officeholder is permanently protected from editing because it is a heavily used or highly visible template. Substantial changes should first be proposed and discussed here on this page. If the proposal is uncontroversial or has been discussed and is supported by consensus, editors may use {{edit template-protected}} to notify an administrator or template editor to make the requested edit. Usually, any contributor may edit the template's documentation to add usage notes or categories. Any contributor may edit the template's sandbox. Functionality of the template can be checked using test cases.

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Description of suggested change:

The formatting of native names in this infobox is inconsistent with that of other biographical infoboxes (e.g. infobox person) -- as far as I can see, only officeholder bolds them; they are usually in regular type.

Demonstration provided (person on top, officeholder below). Could this template be changed for consistency? UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 11:34, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 Not done: please make your requested changes to the template's sandbox first; see WP:TESTCASES. This has been pending for more than a month and nobody has taken up the invitation to code this so it's clear nobody ever will. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 23:37, 11 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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Change'Union for the Congolese Nation' to 'Alliance des Forces Démocratiques du Congo' The personnality has changed his political affiliation since December 2024. GoTT2024 (talk) 12:04, 20 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 Not done: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the template {{Infobox officeholder}}. If possible, please make your request at the talk page for the article concerned. If you cannot edit the article's talk page, you can instead make your request at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection#Current requests for edits to a protected page. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. – welcome! – 17:51, 20 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

On Martin Van Buren, the valid presence in this template of the string "British America" as part of the value for |birth_place= causes a "Script warning: AMERICA ("America") is not a recognized country in ISO 3166-1 (Module:ISO 3166)." in preview. (Removing those two words and the preceeding comma causes a "Script warning: No parameter for the country given (Module:ISO 3166)." error instead.) Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:40, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Both errors come from {{Country2nationality}}, which is passed the output of {{find country}}. In the first case, {{find country}} decides the country is "America", which {{Country2nationality}} does not recognize, while in the second it finds no country. Not watching, please ping if further input is needed from me. Anomie⚔ 16:02, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Why is the infobox doing that anyway? Birthplace is not necessarily an indicator of nationality.

Where is this supposed nationality being used? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:22, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging @Anomie: as instructed in his signature. Bruce leverett (talk) 18:25, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This I have no idea about. 🤷 Anomie⚔ 19:22, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like the problem is in {{Country2nationality}} or {{find country}}. Is the output "America" problematic, or is not supporting "America" as an input an oversight? I'd bring this to those two templates to work out. VanIsaac, GHTV ^contr_about 19:26, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"British America" or "British Colonial America" isn't something I usually see outside of FamilySearch. I would think New York Province should be enough precision here.--Auric talk 17:19, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I guess that the calls to {{find country}} and {{Country2nationality}} are an attempt to catch errors in the country name, and nothing more, since evidently the nationality is not used, but is just discarded.

So this error check is coming up with what I might describe as a false positive: it decides that British America is not a suitable country to appear in a birth place parameter, when editors seem to think that it is suitable for that purpose.

Part of the handling of this error is to issue the Script warning described above. Earlier, I think I remember observing that the article was also being put in a hidden category, Category:Wikipedia articles with obscure country. But I am not seeing that now; perhaps I am not remembering this correctly.

It would be possible to pursue this as a bug in one or more templates, either for the false positive, or for the confusing and obscure error handling. But I am not planning to pursue it at present. Bruce leverett (talk) 23:53, 23 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's actually trying to catch cases where the birthplace and nationality are the same and then hide the nationality, per WP:INFONAT which states "Omit when this can be inferred from the birth country". I tweaked the template so that it won't perform the check if nationality or birth_place are blank. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 17:35, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Currently, if an article uses "term=" to list the span of a term, any information added using "alongside=" will not display.

"alongside=" data only is displayed if "term_start=" / "term_end=" are instead utilized.

If this could be remedied so that "alongside=" information is displayed in either instance that would be much appreciated! Please ping me if/when this is addressed. Thank you! SecretName101 (talk) 21:26, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 Done. See this test case. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:00, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]