Template talk:Infobox country

Clarify description of `conventional_long_name`

The description for |conventional_long_name= says the parameter is for the Formal or official full name of the country in English. I realize this is ambiguous: it can mean

1. The translation into English of an official name in another language, likely the one for |native_name=
2. The name used by the state itself when writing in English

I think the latter is the more intuitive reading, but excludes the use of this parameter in non-English-speaking states prior to its status as global lingua franca. The former is likely what is meant, and makes more visual sense? Remsense ‥ 论 14:42, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

2 is the expected use for current countries. A lot of the infobox breaks down in different ways when used for historical polities, it is hard to generate rules for them. CMD (talk) 08:17, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

Do you think it's sensible to reflect something like this in the documentation? It seems odd and OR-adjacent to display calques at the top of articles like Mongol Empire, though I appreciate that may be appropriate in other instances when more frequently attested in English-language scholarship. Remsense ‥ 论 08:33, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

I would be cautiously supportive of recommending infoboxes not prominently display a historiographical name, although I'm sure exceptions abound. CMD (talk) 08:42, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

By historiographical name do you mean anachronistic labels coined by later scholars—e.g. Byzantine Empire, Sasanian Empire as examples I don't expect you to feel the same way about but are presently treated oppositely? Remsense ‥ 论 18:53, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

I would include those actually, I like how Sasanian Empire doesn't repeat "Sasanian Empire" in the infobox. However, I'm not going to bat for reducing calling the Byzantine Empire the Byzantine Empire, that's a matter for scholars to figure out. CMD (talk) 03:48, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

@Remsense:; @Chipmunkdavis: what do you think: Talk:Golden_Horde#Conventional_long_name. (context: Golden Horde -> Great State / Mongol Empire -> Great Mongol Nation) Beshogur (talk) 13:05, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

We should still remove "Religion"

Hi, I would like to follow up on the proposal made by "194.22.49.234" to remove "Religion" from the infobox, we should proceed with removing it as most countries don't have reliable religious statistics in the their censuses and opinion polls today are nothing more than a confusing mess, but we should also remove it even if there are countries that still include religion in their census for consistency as it would look weird that some countries have it and others don't. Wouldn't you agree? 192.36.208.102 (talk) 13:50, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

I said before I agree but this might be a hard sale. Moxy🍁 13:56, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

I think religion should stay, but some way should be found to stop a list of percentages from censuses. A state's religion can be useful in showing its culture. Eg, islam is central to the culture of many middle east states, as is Judaism for israel. Most countries will not have an overriding religion so the parametre should not be filled in.Roger 8 Roger (talk) 22:19, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

If the desire is to display the state religion, then the field should probably be labelled "State religion". CMD (talk) 03:51, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

That would be better than the current hodgepodge. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:18, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

This would be similar to the system that Encyclopedia Britannica already uses (for example in Iran it just says "Official Religion: Islam", while in the Netherlands, which is a secular state, it says "Official Religion: none"). 192.36.208.102 (talk) 05:55, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

Support changing it to state religion instead 𐩣𐩫𐩧𐩨 Abo Yemen (𓃵) 16:38, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

I also like this idea.,... Support from me for the change. Moxy🍁 16:57, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

Yes, better than the current mix of censuses and surveys of varying quality and import. Also (for the avoidance of doubt) better to create a new parameter "state religion" and remove "religion" from the template, rather than merely document guidance that |religion= should only be used for the state religion in future. NebY (talk) 17:11, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

We should change the parameter so it's clear if we go forward |official religion= Moxy🍁 17:13, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

Yes, though I slightly prefer "state religion" to "official religion" (I'm maybe soured because I see so many "official" tourist buses and the like). NebY (talk) 17:19, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

You're suggestion sounds reasonable to me. This change would require quite some cleanup.... affecting a huge slew of articles. Moxy🍁 17:23, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

I think that we should keep the religion param but start a RfC to mark it as deprecated 𐩣𐩫𐩧𐩨 Abo Yemen (𓃵) 17:47, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

So "State religion" or "Official religion" (leave aside the question of 'religions')? I note we might want to distinguish this in the documentation for the category from 'recognized religions' which is itself a broad category ranging from states like Iceland which grant tax money to registered religions but puts almost no limits on which religions can be recognized nor requires citizens to belong to one or states like Indonesia which has 6 recognized religions but officially secular [though theistic] or Israel with 14 recognized religions but officially Jewish [in the latter two cases almost all citizens are slotted officially into one of the recognized religions and laws about marriage, inheritance, can differ depending on which religion one is in]). Then we have the United Kingdom which as a whole has no official religion though two parts of it do (England with an established church and Scotland with a national church). Erp (talk) 17:46, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

There is only 43 countries that have official state religions.. [1] Moxy🍁 17:54, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

Only the Church of England has official status as state church. 192.36.208.102 (talk) 07:08, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

This would also involve removing |religion_year=. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:08, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

Obviously, because the "religion_year" parameter would be redundant for a state religion that isn't expected to change, at least legally. 80.187.66.11 (talk) 17:21, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

Change "Calling code" to "Telephone country code"

This template has a parameter calling_code, which for unknown reasons disregards all standards that name this the "country code", per ITU nomenclature. But country code might be ambiguous, so change its label to telephone country code. kbrose (talk)

New proposal to replace "Religion"

Hi, I would like to follow up on my previous proposal about removing "Religion" from the infobox. I now want to propose replacing the current mess of a system ("Religion" showing a list with percentages of each religious group) with a new system, suggested by user CMD of instead showing "State religion" or "Official religion", in which is either the State Religion or "None", with the "None" redirecting to the page about Secular state. So I would look like this: Saudi Arabia, State Religion Islam. While a country like France would look like this: France, State Religion None. It would be similar to what Encyclopedia Britannica already uses. Wouldn't you agree? 192.36.208.102 (talk) 12:56, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

Adding dates for predecessors and successors for former countries

What are the guidelines for adding years to predecessors and successors of former countries? For a current example, see the Soviet Union’s info box. Personally, I think this should be the standard, as it’s informative and helps clear potential confusion. SavagePanda845 (talk) 21:31, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

There are not any guidelines on the matter. The most recent large-scale community discussion I'm aware of on predecessors and successors is Talk:Nazi Germany/Archive 12#RFC: Poland as predecessor/successor in Nazi Germany infobox, which would discourage some of the Soviet Union inclusions but perhaps complement the use of dates overall. CMD (talk) 02:23, 8 June 2025 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 17 June 2025

Add |module= to this infobox.

For rationale, see this thread: User talk:grapesurgeon#Many reverts. Tl;dr, I was trying to embed a module in this infobox using |footnotes=, but this was unknowingly causing linter errors due to the properties of |footnotes=. Specifically, that parameter opens a div tag in one table cell and closes it in a different table cell. The new |module= parameter would not involve div parameters that could cause this error.

Below the following line of code,

| data138 = {{#if:{{{footnotes|}}}|<div class="ib-country-fn">{{{footnotes}}}{{#if:{{{footnotes2|}}}|<br>{{{footnotes2}}}}}</div>}}

add the following line:

| data177 = {{{module|}}}

This code was already tested to verify it works. See User:Grapesurgeon/sandbox grapesurgeon (seefooddiet) (talk) 00:16, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

I implemented this code in the sandbox, and it seems to work fine. If there are no objections to this standard implementation here after a few days, I will copy the sandbox code to the live template. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:29, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

@Jonesey95 just in case you forgot about this — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:58, 23 June 2025 (UTC)

 Done, since there were no objections. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:46, 23 June 2025 (UTC)

Edit request - Governing body

Description of suggested change: A parameter to host article links about executive government, cabinet, governing council, or provisional government, so that editors don't abuse |legislature = or |governnment_type = parameters to host such article as seen in articles like Russian State or Syria where a link to article about central government is placed within those parameters.

Diff: perhaps similar to |legislature = except the section will only provide a link to main governing body of a polity and added |governing_body =, not always needed in every article, but articles about countries in transitional period or has different governing body like Yemen and Houthi-controlled Yemen, and many countries that now in the hands of a military junta, or polities in the past like colonial territories with a governing body can link its specific article to the infobox. Mhatopzz (talk) 12:04, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

If we were to include this, some term like "executive" might be better than "governing". It's often considered that government has multiple branches e.g. executive, legislative and judicial, no single one of which is uniquely the governing body or dominant over the others. NebY (talk) 12:29, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure how precisely defined executive government is in each country, but we have a category Category:Executive branches of government so there do some to be a few articles which would fit this bill. However, in cases mentioned such as provisional government or a military junta, are the branches generally split? (For example, did the Russian State government not have judicial or legislative powers?) CMD (talk) 01:54, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

@CMD: Historically, the separation of powers varied by country and age, the executive power probably being the only constant distinctive attribute of the governors. Hence, I agree with NebY. Est. 2021 (talk · contribs) 14:41, 9 July 2025 (UTC)