Template talk:Infobox disputed islands/Archive 1

RFC: Neutrality of template wording

 * The following discussion is archived. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Trinhbaongoc thinks the template wording should be changed from "Administered by" to "Occupied by", stating that it is a more neutral wording. Nihonjoe disagrees as the neutrality of the wording was established in this previous RFC. 09:20, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Discussion
Please post comments here.
 * I don't have any thing further to add to the above. You may also be interested in the discussion here and here. ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjoe 09:27, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The introduction should be: For the particular article Paracel Islands, Trinhbaongoc thinks the template wording should be changed from "Administered by" to "Occupied by", stating that it is a more neutral wording.--Trinhbaongoc (talk) 15:45, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * "Occupation" is a loaded term. Administered is more neutral. AndrewRT(Talk) 00:08, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
 * "Occupied" is a term of art in international law and would be misleading in this infobox. See military occupation; in some cases, even the issue of whether there is an occupation is contentious.  --R'n'B (call me Russ) 19:08, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Moreover disputed entities need not have any personnel present therefore they may, in common parlance, be "un-occupied". Rich Farmbrough, 13:51 23 May 2009 (UTC).
 * Prefer "administered". "Occupied" has negative connotations that aren't appropriate for a neutral template. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 09:03, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Population
Anyone know why the population data does not display? (even in the sample, where '2 + 43 support personnel' should show). --Red King (talk) 13:44, 7 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Fixed. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 14:00, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Map caption
could some one get the field (parameter) "| map caption = " to work the same way that it already works in template:infobox islands? Peter Horn User talk 23:02, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Country parameter
The docs say, "country = the country which administers or governs the island. ...". This seems to be contributing to an edit war on the Scarborough Shoal article regarding which country administers or governs it. How about modifying this template to allow something like "country = Disputed"? Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 13:31, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Unless the countries involved are engaged in full hostilities and the islands keep changing hands due to the battles, one of them has to be maintaining control over the shoal. ··· 日本穣 ? ·  投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 06:31, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
 * The world is neither that simple nor that tightly organized. It's a reef with a few rocks abovewater. It's uninhabited. Nobody has a steady presence on it. See, just for example, recent news articles here, here, here, here, and here. There's lots more on this, and these articles may not be a fair representation. It's not a big deal to me, though. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 12:00, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
 * If no one is maintaining close control over the rocks, that part of the template should be left blank. If people continue edit warring over it, we can protect the page to whatever degree is necessary. ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 05:42, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

"Claimed by" parameter
I notice that, in addition to the above question of when to use or not to use the "country=" ("administrated by") parameter, there is currently no documentation about how to use or not to use the "claimed by" parameters at all. One issue to discuss would be whether, if you are using "country=", the same country should also be represented independently with a "claimed by" entry. The currently used example of the Liancourt Rocks box seems to imply so, but to me this seems rather redundant (especially if you're going to repeat all the administrative division stuff too). Doesn't "administered by" already entail that that party is also among the claimants? (Or are there any examples of islands whose sovereignty is claimed by two states but that are administered by yet a third state that doesn't actually claim sovereignty?)

Also, the current doc page appears to list "country 1", "country 2" etc. parameters that aren't actually supported by the template.

So here's my proposal for fixing the documentation:


 * country = the country which administers or governs the island. Use this parameter only if one of the contenders is known to exert exclusive factual control on the ground, e.g. by maintaining permanent human presence or installations on the territory in question or by successfully maintaining sole military control. In this case, use country= for the country in control, country claim= for the first contender, and country 1 claim, country 2 claim etc. for any additional contenders. If no party unambiguously exerts exclusive factual control, omit country= and only use country claim=, country 1 claim= etc. It is recommended not to list the same party redundantly both under country= and as one of the claimants.

Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:23, 19 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Sounds good to me. ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 20:47, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Template in conflict with MOS guideline
This template contravenes MOS:INFOBOXFLAG by forcing the display of flag icons within the infobox.

The guideline mentions how flag icons can "...lead to unnecessary disputes when over-used" and then specifically addresses physical geographic subjects and disputed territories:


 * "Human geographic articles – for example settlements and administrative subdivisions – may have flags of the country and first-level administrative subdivision in infoboxes; however, physical geographic articles – for example, mountains, valleys, rivers, lakes, and swamps – should not. Where a single article covers both human and physical geographic subjects (e.g. Manhattan), or where the status of the territory is subject to a political dispute, the consensus of editors at that article will determine whether flag use in the infobox is preferred or not."

With this guideline in mind, the template should work like most other geography infoboxes and default to 'no flag' while allowing the option to add flag icons. Currently the template forces a displayed icon if the country parameter is used. The only ways to remove the icon is to remove the parameter value or the country parameter entirely, which of course would also remove the name of the country from the displayed infobox.

Anyone know why it is like this? Should it be changed? -- Racer X11 Talk to me Stalk me  20:20, 25 January 2015 (UTC)


 * ✅. Changed by user Rob984. Thanks. -- Racer X11 Talk to me Stalk me  04:44, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Colour
Hi Nihonjoe. Template:Infobox Islands uses grey. The green colour is rather odd and makes the template stand out from the rest of the page which looks unsightly. Wikipedia is blue and grey, so I'm not sure why the template should stand out in a different colour unless there is specific reason (only example I can think of is political parties). That said, if you don't like the change and don't care for consistency with Template:Infobox Islands, then feel free to revert. Rob984 (talk) 23:19, 10 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Luckily, I noticed this. If you want my attention, use or leave a message on my talk page. It's a different color because it's not the same as the regular islands infobox. It should stand out to clue-in people that it's not the same. It was made that color intentionally. Also, the color scheme of the site in general is irrelevant to the color of the infobox. There are many infoboxes which are different colors (or change colors) depending on various things. However, as a compromise, I have changed back only the top section. This leaves the majority of the sections grey, but still allows the template to draw attention to the difference between the two templates. ··· 日本穣  ·  投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 04:26, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

The administrating country should be allowed in the "Claimed by" section
The current instruction text in the "Country parameters" section says that country claim parameter should excluding the administrating country, if it has already been specified with "country&#61;".

However, I think that instruction text is misleading because administrating does not necessarily imply claiming. There are many cases in which the administrator does not claim territorial sovereignty. For example, lease, condominium, concession, mandate, and military occupation (in some cases).

Since the aforementioned instruction text incorrectly links administrating with claiming, I propose removing that text. --Matt Smith (talk) 14:52, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

P.S. Calling, who cited the aforementioned instruction text and removed the administrating country from the "Claimed by" section in an article, in case he has different opinions on this proposal. --Matt Smith (talk) 15:02, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
 * This text was added as a result of this discussion between User:Future Perfect at Sunrise and User:Nihonjoe.
 * The documentation for country says Use this parameter only if one of the contenders is known to exert exclusive factual control on the ground. In any case, putting all the details of the controlling claimant twice is both data redundancy and a waste of screen space.  Kanguole 15:48, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Their discussion did not take the examples I mentioned into account. But for some reason, I decide to cease this discussion for now. If one day I think this discussion needs to be re-opened, I would do that. --Matt Smith (talk) 16:22, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
 * You address a theoretically interesting case, but is it also a practical one? I notice we did briefly mention a similar issue in that discussion back then ("islands whose sovereignty is claimed by two states but that are administered by yet a third state that doesn't actually claim sovereignty"), but didn't have any pertinent examples. Do you know of cases to which this applies? Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:03, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Although it is theoretically possible, I haven't seen one actual case. --Matt Smith (talk) 01:49, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Can we merge this into Infobox Islands?
Just seems like a maintenance burden and cause of inconsistency. Crimea uses the standard islands infobox (which is also used for peninsulas) plainly because the header doesn't show "disputed island" (which it isn't). But it mostly it is able to do the same thing anyway. You could add the "claimed by" and "administered by" sections very easily. And also an option to show the "Disputed x" header. Rob984 (talk) 15:33, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
 * It would make to the Islands infobox too huge and unwieldy. Please see the discussion here for more details on that. ··· 日本穣 ·  投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 16:46, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Errors
The documentation implies that "country admin divisions 3" should work but it does not. See Show Preview of Walker Shoal

map_custom=yes is not working. See Banc du Geyser and Chagos Archipelago

Ahwiv (talk) 11:14, 14 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Hmmm...it's been seven years since I created this. Someone else may need to look at it to see if they can figure out the error. It's not jumping out at me. Have any ideas? ··· 日本穣  ·  投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 21:05, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Made a small change to the template. The maps seem to be working. I can't see "country admin divisions 3" in the documentation. -- WOSlinker (talk) 22:04, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks! ··· 日本穣 ·  投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 22:39, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
 * WOSlinker didn't mean to imply it was documented, but I'm just working on fixing infoboxes with unknown parms, and it wasn't clear if it was intended. Just a drive-by user.  Thanks for checking.   Ahwiv (talk) 23:44, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
 * If there was a need for it in a few infoboxes then it could be added. -- WOSlinker (talk) 08:07, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Reverted move to "Template:Infobox territorial disputed islands"
I reverted this move as it makes the template title much longer. We should keep it as short as possible. ··· 日本穣 ·  投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 22:22, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
 * No problem. I can understand! Wish you have a nice day! -- It's gonna be awesome! ✎ Talk♬ 22:28, 3 August 2018 (UTC)