Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Archive 5

"Battles in" categories
The last remnant of the "Battles in Foo" categorization, Category:Military operations in Saudi Arabia, has been listed for deletion here. Comments are very welcome! Kirill Lokshin 11:53, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I seem to be winding up with egg on my face there, since (so far) opinions are quite strongly in favor of "Battles in ...". Did I misjudge the existing consensus that badly, or is this just a difference between the audience on CFD and the one here? Kirill Lokshin 02:58, 28 September 2005 (UTC)


 * The problem isn't that the category exists, but that it is mis-categorised in "Battles by country". Perhaps instead of "Battles by country" there should be "Battles by participant" for "Battles of XXX" and "Battles by location" for "Battles in XXX". Geoff/Gsl 03:18, 28 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I suppose that's one possible solution; would both of them be under Category:Categories by country though? In any case, if we were to implement "Battles by location", we'd need to decide whether to use modern or historical countries (and how to select countries in cases where claims to territory conflict) before actually categorizing everything. Kirill Lokshin 03:24, 28 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I don't think a top-level "Battles by location" category would come under "Battles by country" because it is possible that someone would want to do a "Battles in the Mediterranean" or some such geographical, non-country category. Likewise, I don't know that, say, "Battles of the Goths" would go under "Battles by country" if there was a "Battles by participant".


 * The immediate problem is to provide a suitable parent category for "Military operations in Saudi Arabia" (ie., Battles in XXX) without breaking the scheme used in "Battles by country" (whether that category is correctly named or not). That doesn't necessarily mean that every battle needs to be recategorised according to the new scheme.  Geoff/Gsl 03:57, 28 September 2005 (UTC)


 * If the CFD result is (as I suspect it may be) to keep the category, we could create Category:Battles by location for it quite easily, placing it under Category:Battles directly; Category:Battles by country could then be renamed to Category:Battles by participant to avoid confusion.


 * I certainly wasn't suggesting that every battle be immediately categorized into the new category. Once Category:Battles by location exists, however, sub-categories will (gradually) be created for it, and it would be best to decide what scheme they will follow in advance to avoid massive recategorizations afterwards. Kirill Lokshin 04:16, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

New warbox attempt
I have made an attempt at a new warbox. I found that most warboxes contain military information which is hard to gauge (fe troop figures vary widely in one war), which i have replaced with some relevant political reasons & consequences (y'all know your Clausewitz, no doubt :-) ). Furthermore, because some wars are related, i've attempted something of a parent/child structure within the box. It links to any possible "parent" war, and uses the campaign box to link to any "child" wars. These can then in turn be subdivided, and link to the above. The idea is to have a concise POLITICAL overview of the war, linking it to relevant items, but leaving the reader to browse elsewhere for more information (to avoid this level of complexity).

The input and output: 

As yet, its only up on the Scanian War, and the subdivisions are incomplete, but i hope the general strain of thought is clear. Obviously the aim is to make a warbox which can be used for more situations; would this make sense for other wars as well? --The Minister of War 08:41, 28 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Overall, looks great; having a dedicated warbox is a much better idea than trying to use battlebox for wars. One (very minor) issue is that the colors used don't match the ones on battlebox; I think it would be nice to have a single color to avoid confusion.


 * More significantly, this type of template is limited to wars with two "well-defined" sides; it doesn't really work for wars with three sides (e.g. War of Three Henrys) or for wars where extensive "alliance-jumping" occurs (e.g. War of the League of Cambrai). I suspect the answer to this may be simply to accept that some wars won't have a warbox, but maybe someone has an idea for dealing with these situations. Kirill Lokshin 12:49, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

I concur, it does look great. Perhaps the solution to more than 2 combatants, would be to create a similar but larger warbox template for those scenarios. Coupled with some sort of icon to indicate alliance jumpers. Perhaps the &dagger; from the Battbox (indicating they "stabbed" their original allies in the back :) Kirill's icon could also be used, to show combatants who dropped out of their alliance or concluded a separate peace but did not join the other side. --R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 13:04, 28 September 2005 (UTC)


 * The larger warbox might work, particularly if we make the columns a bit thinner on the 3-side one. It would only be used for a handful of wars anyways.
 * The icons will work for isolated alliance jumpers; but there are certain cases where the alliance jumping is so extensive that just using them won't be enough; for example, during the War of the League of Cambrai, the major players went through (practically) every possible combination of alliances. Kirill Lokshin 13:15, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm. The War of the League of Cambrai certainly seems to be an exception to several rules in one! :-) Still, the idea with the parent/child thing was to make it customizable as you see fit. In the case of Cambrai, it might be used (mind you, i know next to nothing of the war itself!) to subdivide the War into segments covering the different alliances. The effect of this would be several short (specialised) articles rather than one long (general and perhaps fragmented) one, which can be useful to distinguish distinct periods or theatres of a war. I am still experimenting on articles pertaining to the Scanian War, but i can see a reasonably clear hierarchy emerging there:

Franco-Dutch War |               ,-+-.                |                     |                     |  Third Anglo-Dutch War         Scanian War       Swedish-Brandenburg War |                           ,-+--'                            |                    |                Gyldenløve War      Invasion of Scania |                   |                  seperate battles        seperate battles

Now, i'm not too keen on a large battle box, i think theyre way too clumsy (maybe in highly exceptional cases). But my idea was to link only to the ABOVE and BELOW levels, and leave the reader to do the browsing. I was thinking that this kind of work needs one template:TopWarbox, which doesnt link to above, a few normal Warboxes, and a few Subwarboxes which also include strength and casualty numbers for campaigns and such. You can use the campaignbox to link to below, and the Warbox to link to above. I did some attempts to test that mold on the Scanian War. Still, despite the parent/child logic (and related problems), i think it is mighty important that we start listing Casi Belli (grammar?), Allies and Territory changes; these are far more important in examining the war, and much clearer to assess than troop numbers, which come and go. Having said that, i agree allies come and go as well. However, either the change of alliance DOESNT matter that much, and you can list it on the warbox ((until 1917) or something), or it DOES change the war, in which case you can use the subdivision to indicate that. I am hoping this customizability and this focus on political aspects of a war make sense for different war - perhaps even (gasp!) Cambrai! What do you guys think? --The Minister of War 14:21, 28 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree completely about listing political aspects; troop and casualty numbers are quite unreliable for most of recorded history anyways.
 * As far as parent-child issues and subdividing wars, we can presumably work that out as we go along. I suspect that, with some careful tweaking of the template, we can get to a point where a single warbox will work for all levels (with some parameters obviously being optional.  One thing I think is important to keep in mind is that these templates are an enhancement to articles, rather than articles in themselves &mdash; they should be flexible enough that using them does not require breaking a single war article into dozens of stubs.  One possibility, for instance, would be to create a warbox-phase that could be used to keep track of shifting alliances but would omit some of the fields from the main warbox for brevity (this would allow us, for instance, to add templates for the phases of the Thirty Years' War without forcing it to be divided). Kirill Lokshin 14:45, 28 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Haha! i agree about it not being the focus of the articles, but must admit i am (ab)using the Scanian War a bit to test the mold :-) (currently working to fill the gaps!)
 * A phase could be nice, though must admit i'm a sucker for standardization. Thats why im quite... well... AWED by your suggestion to do a single warbox! Wow, would that be possible? I started out trying this, but i couldnt work out how to add an 'optional' component (one which lists if you enter something in the field, but is ommited when you dont). Is such a thing possible? Kewl. How? --The Minister of War 15:13, 28 September 2005 (UTC)


 * We could probably do it by systematicaly violating Avoid using meta-templates; on the other hand, we already do it with campaignboxes, and nobody has complained yet (one of the advantages of working with low-traffic articles). The key would be to tie the headings to the arguments; I'll take a look and see what I can work out.
 * Some other points:
 * Do we really need the distinction between "Combatants" and "Allies"? If a country is formally allied to one of the combatants but plays no part in the war, is it necessary to list it in the warbox?  For instance, battle articles may discuss allies not present at the battle within the text, but don't include them in the battlebox (which helps keep them to a manageable size).
 * Leaders and notable commanders could probably use the same heading.
 * I think this effort needs to be combined with a thorough look at how campaignboxes are structured; for instance, the dozens of separate campaignboxes for the American Civil War would force us to create a separate article for each campaign (often consisting of a single battle) in order to use these templates. Kirill Lokshin 15:27, 28 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Hmmm... I've been looking at meta:Help:Template, and there seem to be quite a few options to standardize a box without breaking the rule. But boy, does it look complicated! The template:Chess diagram uses interesting tricks to use...
 * As for both your points, IF we go for one uber-warbox (which i would very much like), i agree completely: they should be grouped together. However, it seems to me that dividing some wars into theatres/campaigns and whatnot is unavoidable. Political leaders should be listed on War level, but not on Battle level (and vice versa with generals). Besides, i tried calling it "Leaders and Notable Commanders, but it looked horrible! Maybe we should just call it notable leaders :-)
 * But as an example, if you look at the Scanian War, it was clearly a conflict between between Denmark and Sweden; though the Dutch helped (on Danish side). Also, there was also a seperate theatre between Sweden and Brandenburg which played a large role in the division of Swedish forces. The eventual peace was forced upon both by France. I am not sure how these would combine.
 * Conluding: it is definitely important to develop a vision on how to structure levels within a war, down to campaigns - without losing flexibility!--The Minister of War 16:35, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

I've managed to produce a prototype multi-phase warbox (shown here). It's quite simplified from what you have above (mainly because I was too lazy to trace through the full table nestings, and also quite incomplete (the full version would have four phases).

Thus, we may conclude that (1) it is possible to do this, but (2) the markup is somewhat unintuitive, so we should decide what fields each phase will have before creating a full-blown warbox. Incidentally, it would be possible to change this to be like babel if we got flak from the developers about the meta-template issue (e.g. warbox, warbox-2, warbox-3, etc.); I don't think any war would have more than five phases without being split into multiple articles, so this would be manageable. Kirill Lokshin 16:33, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Wow, pretty nice! Indeed, i agree with you we could tweak it endlessly. We could segment other stuff, like the image, troop figures, etc as optional as well, inserting boxes if they are applicable. It's an interesting idea. But there is a danger that by customizing it to larger extent, we are slowly drifting away from standardization. We have to walk a thin line between them... Lets see if we can agree on different stuff which should be there:


 * Main Box
 * Name of conflict
 * ->Optional Box: Part of Other War
 * ->Optional Box: Image
 * Date
 * Political Box
 * Casus Belli
 * Outcome
 * Territorial Changes
 * Fight Box
 * Combatants
 * Notable Leaders
 * Troop Box
 * Troop Strengths
 * Casualties
 * Campaign Box

Is it possible to list multiple boxes after each other, but make them appear like one? If so, we dont need one uber-box, and like this, we call five templates from a single page (even if its empty we call them), and only two nested templates. Not too shabby. Perhaps we can combine this with one simple custombox, to be able to name the section and specify, as in you Warphase. Interesting stuff. --The Minister of War 09:46, 29 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I don't mean to be a downer, but I like the old battle boxes better... Spawn Man 10:16, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

You like them better in terms of visuals? I do too i guess, this is still work in progress. But these are not in any way meant to replace the battleboxes, its more of an upgrade to the warboxes. Now i've tried to make something work in terms of boxable flexibility; take a look see what you think.

The input and the output:

The idea is that you can turn any and all of the boxes on(1) or off(0), and so only relevant data can be supplied. In fact, only conflict name and date are absolutely necessary. I havent implemented the flexible make-up Kirill provided just yet, but once those are in, most situations can be accounted for. Its still a bit buggy; if you turn everything off there are still line breaks i cant seem to track down, which is annoying but harmless. Technically, it does violate the Avoid using meta-templates multiple times though... any way to bypass this? How does this look? Would this be a good way to attempt some sort of flexible standardization? --The Minister of War 13:02, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Looking at how taxoboxes are implemented (see, for example, the code used in Aardvark) suggests another idea:

The obvious advantages of such a scheme: (1) avoids (major) violations of Avoid using meta-templates, and (2) since the elements can be repeated arbitrarily, we can use the same scheme for battles, wars, wars with multiple phases, wars with multiple campaigns (by including several campaignboxes), etc. I don't really see any problems with it, other than the somewhat more complicated instructions that would come with properly making one of these for the non-obvious cases. Kirill Lokshin 13:26, 29 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Wow, Aardvarks are related to giraffes? Cute.
 * But this does indeed seem much more handy. Especially the replication of sections is nice, and it still allow the ommission of irrelevant sections! I think this we should go with this (which means i've wasted my morning coding pie fights! :-) ). One Q though, doesnt this 'also' overstress the servers? Sure, it doesnt metatemplate, but surely calling on a large number of templates gives the same trouble, or not? --The Minister of War 13:46, 29 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I think (but I could be quite wrong) that any number of non-nested templates can be fetched in a single server call, as opposed to multiple server calls for true meta-templates. In any case, if this were a major problem, I think WikiProject Tree of Life, which uses this model on thousands of articles, would have attracted comments to that effect.
 * Incidentally, since this involves several independent templates, it would probably be best to decide on a color for the entire "warbox" before writing them. I have no objection to plain gray, but I believe others have commented that it's too dull before.  Kirill Lokshin 14:24, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

If it's not replacing the old battle boxes, I'm fine with that. Speaking of boxes, one improvement you could do to your war box is that where it has the out come, casus etc to put these into boxes, like the battle box. This is mainly because, 1, easier to follow, 2, more appealing to the eye, 3, research shows that people gather & remember more info from catergorised info than other info. So if you just put like a line underneath each subject it would be better, E.G. Date, (line), outcome, (line), casus, (line)...etc etc. Spawn Man 04:09, 30 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Yeah, the lines should definitely be there; I'm not sure why they're not present now, but keep in mind that what's shown above are very rough drafts. In any case, I'm probably going to have little time to work with these until Sunday; if nobody has done it by that point, I'll write the markup for the multi-template version then. Kirill Lokshin 04:27, 30 September 2005 (UTC)


 * In terms of colors, i'm all for a bit more colorful, though i've seen wars done in pink (eugh). BEcause we're also implementing phases, it might be a good idea to use two colors; one for the Conflict Title, and the Phases titles, and another for the other boxes within those categories to highlite the hierarchy.
 * I might have some time, though im not sure just yet. I'll post something here if I have something. --The Minister of War 11:10, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

I couldnt resist and worked up something. It's still very rough, and for some reasons i cant get the borders between cells to show. With the risk of overfilling this page with test-templates (maybe we should get a room? ;-) ), here's the input and the output:

Ive already noticed several things to address: --The Minister of War 13:21, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
 * 1) We have to argue what to include obligatory, and what should be optional.
 * 2) *Images: Mandatory or optional?
 * 3) *Personally, i think place is a tricky one; The one on the Franco-Prussian war lists: France and Germany. I think this applies to a lot of conflicts; i am not sure as to the added value.
 * 4) *I think allies are relevant, albeit optional; even if they dont actively fight, such as France in the Scanian War, they are part of the geopolitical choices of a country and thus of the make-up of the war.
 * 5) *The obvious additions are Casus belli (which we should be careful to point out does not mean the first shot fired), and Territory changes.
 * 6) Purple and grey dont combine very well imho; any ideas?
 * 7) Most importantly, i think we should rewrite the code to make input more intuitive. This means renaming the templates (these names dont work for me), and perhaps recoding the templates themselves. I am thinking along the lines of doing  for the example above, instead of naming every variable. It will still be easy to grasp, and requires much less typing!


 * Not quite what I had in mind; I was envisioning the phase actually creating a nested box, rather than merely separating the warbox vertically.
 * We can certainly create warbox-allies to list uninvolved but allied countries. Images should definitely be optional; most battles don't have them (yet).  As far as place, we certainly need it if we use this for battles in addition to wars; maybe we can make it optional. Kirill Lokshin 13:30, 30 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Possibly some combination of blue and gray will work. I'd stay away from the more unusual colors; pink just looks silly in this context.
 * As far as I can tell, the templates we'll need are:
 * warbox-begin (contains name)
 * warbox-end
 * warbox-begin-phase (contains name)
 * warbox-end-phase
 * warbox-partof (contains link up to main war)
 * warbox-image (contains image and caption)
 * warbox-general (contains date, place, and outcome)
 * warbox-cause (contains casus belli)
 * warbox-combatants (contains pairs of combatants and leaders)
 * warbox-numbers (contains pairs of strength and casualties)
 * warbox-campaign (meta-template in order to hold nest campaignbox within a surronding table; this will allow a campaignbox to be nested inside either the entire warbox or a particular phase)
 * Incidentally, this will allow us to simulate the existing battlebox; the only difference will be that the link to the conflict will appear above the image, rather than below it. Kirill Lokshin 13:13, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Second Aisne:
Hi everyone,

Just so you know, cause I like to get everyone involved, I've got the Second Battle of the Aisne up & running, as well as its nephew article, the Nivelle Offensive. So I've created 2 Aisnes, one more to go... Just so you know... Spawn Man 10:19, 29 September 2005 (UTC) P.S. Feel free to contribute to them if you want.


 * The NivOff got DYK status (but you knew that already :) and I had a good visit with your 2nd BoA. Would make one more minor suggestion, though...a campaignbox to link 2nd BoA with Battle of Arras (1917), which I have on good intelligence is a "World War I stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it" Good work and cheers M8:)--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 10:47, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks R.D.H... But I don't understand what you're saying about the link between Arras & 2nd Boa?? Spawn Man 21:52, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Compound warboxes
For your viewing pleasure, my (very rough) draft of the compound warbox scheme:

Simulating the existing battlebox:



For a simple war:



For a multi-phase war:

(The alignment of the phase table inside the main one is obviously somewhat funny; I'll take a look at it later to see what's causing it, but it probably isn't a killer problem.)

There are still obvious changes to be made, but I think this scheme is workable. As far as the names of the templates are concerned, I think we can create redirects from shorter names without breaking anything.

I'll do some more work on this Sunday; feel free to play around with the sandboxed templates in the meantime. Kirill Lokshin 15:06, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

I see where you're getting at. Tried to center the thing, but apparently didnt work... Think that coloring of the titles (War title & Phase title) would look more informative. Should we hardcode color? I think we should, to avoid everybody coloring their own. I suggest we designate some specific place (maybe you're sandbox/warbox-full?) to test the box, and then tweak your files till we're there. Incidentally, did you use my code to start off or did you write it yourself? Good work either way! I dont have time today, maybe tomorrow... Greets, --The Minister of War 16:48, 30 September 2005 (UTC)



I've fixed the centering problem with the nested phase boxes; we can, incidentally, nest campaigns into phases, as shown here:

I've added back border="1" in order to enable borders between the white-background boxes, without which the warbox is quite confusing; I'm not sure how to selectively remove it (in order to make the "Part of" field flow together with the title.

I think we're at the point where pretty certain this will work; we now need to decide on colors/names/arrangements, and I'd like some input on these issues from other people before we start adding this to articles. In the meantime, I have no objections if anyone wants to keep working on this design in my sandbox subpages; if anyone wants to try a completely different (in terms of code rather than appearace) design, it might be best to create another sandbox for it, however, to allow side-by-side development. Kirill Lokshin 18:36, 2 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Looking good; howd you get it to center?


 * I'd say we want the titles dark blue or something (like the battleboxes, but different to show its a WAR we're talking about), and the rest something bland, cccccc grey works nice imho. I think i know a way past the border thing, which is recouloring the border in the title part. I've implemented part of it, but dont have time to do it in full now. I think the border inside the box should be something other than white thought - i can hardly see it!
 * i think the items are pretty accurate, wouldnt know what to add/remove.
 * One thing though, i'm a bit unsure as to the addition of phases. Now that i see them in action, i'm kind of afraid they make things less clear rather than more. But i'd also love to hear some other opinions on this, before we conclude anything. --The Minister of War 09:28, 3 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I centered it by setting the margins in warbox-phase-begin to "0em" instead of "1em".


 * The blue looks quite nice. I suppose one question is whether we'd want to use these new templates just for wars, or also to replace the battleboxes (for consistency).  I think the box up at the top of the section is a pretty good simulation of battlebox, but maybe others want to keep two entirely separate sets of templates.  In any case if (1) we replace battlebox with these and (2) we want different colors in the title for wars and battles, we may need to add a color parameter to warbox-begin.


 * The phases are going to be the exception rather than the rule in any case, since most wars can be written without them. They're really just a way to allow us to add warboxes to the (few) really unusual cases where we can't show the changing alliances in any other way, and we certainly don't have to use them in other cases.


 * In conclusion, I'd like to hear some other responses on basically three questions:
 * Are these warbox templates a good idea?
 * Can we use them to replace battlebox?
 * What style/formatting/content changes need to be made to them?
 * We're at the point where we could probably move these to Template:... and begin using them in articles, but we still don't know if anybody else likes the idea at all. Kirill Lokshin 10:14, 3 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Just wanted to add, great work Kirill and MOW! It seems the two of you have made us new and improved warboxes. May I suggest the first place to try the compound WB would be the Thirty Years' War . Cheers, --R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 13:07, 5 October 2005 (UTC)