User:RadicalBender/World leaders

Proposal:

For each year, the following table would be listed in a "World Leaders" section with the appropriate data.

For example, on the page for the year 1215, the following is currently displayed:


 * England - John, King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, and Count of Anjou (ruled England 1167 - 1216)
 * France - Philippe II, Auguste, King of France (1180 - 1223)
 * Germany:
 * Otto IV, (King of Germany 1208 - 1215)
 * Frederick II, King of Germany (1212 - 1250), King of Sicily
 * Holy Roman Empire:
 * Otto IV, King of Germany (1208 - 1215) and Holy Roman Emperor (1209-1215).
 * Frederick II (elected Emperor 1211, crowned 1220, died 1250), King of Germany, King of Sicily
 * Holy See - Pope Innocent III (1198 - 1216)
 * Mongol Empire - Genghis Khan, Mongol Khan (1206 - 1227)
 * Venice - Pietro Ziani Doge of Venice (ruled 1205 - 1229)

Under this proposal, that information would be replaced with the following:

The table here covers a total of 20 years - 10 years in either direction starting at the first of the year in question: January 1, 1205 - December 31, 1225 (basically). Anyways, 20 was chosen because it was a nice round number that allowed me to make round computations in table cell widths. Ten may be even more workable.

Let me address the big problem first: this was a big pain in the neck to create. Partly because I had to look up all this information; partly because I had to mathematically figure out every cell width and compute all that together on my own. It took me a couple of hours to get this nailed down the way I wanted it (more or less).

Secondly, it's not something that a bot could recreate easily (I don't think). And if it can, each year will need to be inspected by hand to make sure everything looks right.

Thirdly, it's not lining up the way it should. This seems to be a function of the HTML itself (or it could be my browser - Safari). So, the distance in the one-year space before Genghis Khan is twice as big as the one-year space between the 1215 line and King Henry III.

Fourthly, it assumes neat, clean lines between transfers of power. King John's reign ended during 1216 and was immediately taken over by King Henry III, but this line is demarcated at the year 1216, not during it. This is simplifying things.

Enough cons, though, here are the pros: it's very pretty to look at, much, much, much more so than the existing inconsistent bulleted lists. Secondly, and more importantly, it establishes context through time and across nation-states. The context through time is useful for getting an idea of what happened around this year and the context across nation-states is useful to see what was happening in different places at the same time (this would be useful around the time of the Hundred Years War, for example, to see leadership changes in England and France.

So, does that trump the cons of getting this all set up? I don't know. Using a bot would be helpful. I might be able to write something in ColdFusion that can generate the appropriate code, perhaps. However, all of the leadership information would need to be entered into some sort of database and spat back out. I dunno.

If there are any thoughts, please use the talk page.


 * Oh, and I know the flags are wrong. We'd need to find like the French Fleur de Lis flag and what not as replacements.  The existing flags are there for illustrative purposes.

Sorry, this is not the table for current leaders.