Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Image:American Civil War Battles by Theater, Year.png

Featured picture candidates/American Civil War Battles by Theater, Year.png
This map, created by User:Brian0918, is the most useful Civil War visual reference I have ever come across. I am not over-stating myself. You get a real sense of the evolution and the breadth of the battles. - Kingturtle 04:14, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC) 
 * Nominate and support. I nominate and support this - Kingturtle 04:14, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Are you actually using it in your class? :) brian0918  &#153;  04:29, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * I will next fall, for sure. Kingturtle 04:31, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Support. This was something I knew needed to be made. -- brian0918  &#153;  04:29, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Support TomStar81 04:58, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Regretful oppose. Too hard to differentiate between the various shades of color. Also, while the information content is high, it's visually not very appealing. Junes 13:46, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * I used different shades of the same color to try and show how the war evolved within each theater over the years. I would've liked to use more clearly different colors, but that wasn't possible.  -- brian0918  &#153;  14:59, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * visually, this map speaks volumes. the American Civil War is very difficult to get a handle on, geographically. this map really helps. Kingturtle 15:08, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Oppose. I agree with Junes. Jonas Olson 14:55, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Regretful oppose. I appreciate the effort and think it's nice to look at, but don't feel that it conveys the information well. Why use different colors for different theaters when we can tell that by simply looking at the map?  I would have simply used darker (or different) colors for years and mixed them for multi-year battles.  Not that it's bad, it could just have been better.  And I'm a Tufte-ite...  --SFoskett 14:44, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)
 * What do you mean by "by simply looking at the map"? -- brian0918 &#153;  14:56, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Since the theaters are geographic in nature, the map itself tells you which theater is which. I would innately know that a battle to the left is a Western one, while one to the right is Eastern.  Not that it's BAD, since the battles were categorized into theaters over time, just that it's unnecessary to "waste" precious chart information (color) on something that can be grasped without it.  Instead, as I said, I would use the color to denote a more interesting metric like the year of the battle, its length, casualties, victors, etc...  I'm trying to be helpful, not to be rude here.  --SFoskett 23:01, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)
 * Have you looked closely at the map? How would you be able to tell which theater a battle is in when they're mixed together at the boundaries?  What about the counties where multiple theaters too place, would you be able to know right away that multiple theaters took place there? It's not as simple as "left is west, right is east." -- brian0918  &#153;  04:07, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * My point was that there are many other metrics that could have been presented on the map with color rather than one which was chosen. Perhaps they would have added to the value of the map more than the abstract concept of theaters of battle.  As it is, I find it difficult to discern the information being presented.  I'd love to make some more suggestions but feel that perhaps this is the wrong place and want to make sure that they are welcome.  If you would like to hear my suggestions for improvement, please visit my talk page and we can continue this discussion on the map's discussion page.  Otherwise, thanks for your continued contribution to Wikipedia!  --SFoskett 05:33, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)
 * I chose to use theaters so that it would be easier for the user to navigate the Civil War battle categories. By using theaters, one can also get a sense of troop movements over the years, whereas some random metric like number of casualties wouldn't tell you that. I think a diagram displaying casualties might be nice to look at, but not very useful. Same with the diagram of victories. I may still create those sometime, though. -- brian0918  &#153;  10:03, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * The information is conveyed superbly. The eye gets a really quick notion of a very complicated story. Kingturtle 15:08, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)