Module talk:Infobox military conflict

Commander field?

I will again protest that the commander field makes little sense for wars. The combatants field is often complicated, too. Who is to decide which countries are important enough to be included? And what of countries that switch sides? john k 02:02, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well for now this is just simple copy and paste from battlebox. As I told User:Piotrus yesterday this template now needs changing to be less battle-like and more war-like. I suggest changing commanders, to notable commanders or removing this section. Regarding countries that switch sides: such cases should be entered in both sides of the box (with appropriate dates inserted in parenthesis). Przepla 11:20, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Fair enough. I think number of soldiers on each side should be avoided - obviously, the number of soldiers changes throughout a war, and there's no good way to determine at what point we're talking about. john k 14:55, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Something similar was discussed at Talk:Military history of the United States a while back and the format is used on American Civil War. Geoff/Gsl 21:47, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Questionable infobox

I strongly oppose the systematic application of this kind of infobox to articles about any kind of war. Historical events are not suitable for systemtic classification of this kind since the events surrounding wars, like with all history, are inherently non-specific and hard to classify as is done with species of animals, languages or geographical locations. Particularly civil wars and low-level guerilla conflicts are very inappropriate subject to apply this to, since they often feature shifting alliances and very complex sequences of events. In Algerian Civil War the warbox completely obscures the far more relevant Algerian history template.

And, frankly, this infobox really doesn't look good. It's very bulky and disruptive when places next to any section that isn't a mile long.

Peter ^Isotalo 10:20, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Size matters

One of the objections above, I believe, is that the "warbox" is too large. For those who use the warbox, do you like a wide or a narrow box? Some other infoboxes on Wikipedia are set at 20ems, with a 200px image, or something like that. I like that narrower look, although it does tend to crowd the information in the warbox. (95% font size would help.) If we want the narrower look, we'd need to change the campaignbox so that it doesn't widen the warbox, and change the image width instructions to 200px or thereabouts. What say you? (If any of this makes sense, that is.) --Kevin Myers | (complaint dept.) 15:18, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I think 200px might be too small, particularly if the commander or country names are long. It's definitely something to consider, though.

Since very few people watch the template page, you might want to pose the same question on the project talk page, where it will probably generate more discussion. —Kirill Lokshin 15:24, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Required vs. optional fields

In its present form, it appears that every single field in this box is optional. This seems odd considering that certain fields seem quite important. Here is my take on this, please comment.

• Required: conflict, date, place, combatant1, combatant2, casualties1, casualties2, result
• Optional: the rest

I've been "challenged" to re-make this template without using the {{qif}} evil meta-template. I can do this, but wanted to get input on the above question first. -- Netoholic @ 15:26, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

• Ah, you're taking me up on that, then? It's a bit more complex than what you have, since not all uses have two distinct sides. Thus, we have

• Required: conflict, date, place, result
• Optional: everything else

See War of the League of Cambrai for an example of what we'd like to be able to do; if you can make that work, we'll get rid of the evil meta-templates (as a bonus, the same probably applies to all the other infoboxes, leaving you only with the book reference thing to deal with). —Kirill Lokshin 15:47, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Amen to making the "casualties" field optional. In the conflicts I do most of my work in, casualty figures are variable at best, fictional at worst. In those cases I could put "unknown" or "see text" in the warbox, but an optional field is even better IMO. --Kevin Myers | (complaint dept.) 15:56, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Not to rain on anybody's parade, but the rewrite only works in monobook and derived skins. See, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=War_of_the_League_of_Cambrai&useskin=standard or http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=War_of_the_League_of_Cambrai&useskin=cologneblue. —Cryptic (talk) 04:45, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Bleh! Is there any easy way to add the hiddenStructure class for those skins? I'm somewhat wary of going back to logic templates unless we get a clear answer on the whole WP:AUM discussion. —Kirill Lokshin 04:54, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Ok, I tried adding

.hiddenStructure {
   display: none;
}

to my own standard.css, and it fixes the problem. I assume that adding the same code to MediaWiki:Common.css will resolve it across all skins, but is there any reason why doing so would cause some problems I'm not aware of? —Kirill Lokshin 18:09, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

I've decided to be bold and add hiddenStructure to Common.css. The examples above seem to work fine now. —Kirill Lokshin 00:24, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

New fields

casus belli, territory changes: It is almost never possible to describe these items briefly, especially territory changes. Also, formal casus belli is almost never "true" one. And the "de-facto" one is a hornet's nest of POVs. IMO they are redundant here. The infobox is already huge. mikka (t) 21:39, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Those fields are completely optional (but see the discussion just above for some technical issues). They're useful on a lot of 18th-century wars and such, but you should be able to omit them entirely in places where they're not appropriate. —Kirill Lokshin 21:47, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Location field

For historical battles, do we use the name of the place used at the time of the battle or do we use the name of the place as it is known today? deadkid_dk 05:36, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

The general convention is to use the modern name, or at least to give some indication of modern location (e.g. "Place X, near modern Town Y, Country Z"). —Kirill Lokshin 05:51, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Section headers

Something's wrong with the infobox and section headers running aside it; it can be clearly seen on the Battle of Milvian Bridge article: the edit links for the sections accumulate in the text of the last section running aside, immediately below the end of the box.

I've tried a dozen variations on the sandbox page using float and clear but couldn't get it right. Someone please take a look. --Filipvr 11:00, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

It's a known issue with the way MediaWiki handles stacked floats, so it's not limited to this template. Not much we can really do to avoid it, in my opinion. —Kirill Lokshin 14:09, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

So it is actually due to the Infobox and Campaignbox combination; I've been mucking around the sandbox again and if I add campaign info at the bottom of the infobox, section runins work fine. I wonder if it'd be better to add another section at the bottom of the template (with another qif test) to include campaign info. And perhaps move the "part of" bit there too, or remove it altogether since it is sort of becoming duplicate information. --Filipvr 12:31, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

We used to do that with the old battlebox model. It's not really a good idea now, since many battles have multiple campaignboxes, and some articles have campaignboxes positioned elsewhere in the text. —Kirill Lokshin 14:12, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

On another note, if it's really bothering you for a specific article, you can fix it by moving the campaignbox below the affected header. —Kirill Lokshin 14:28, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Remove casus belli?

Since nobody actually seems to be using the "Casus belli" field, would there be any objections to removing it from the template? Kirill Lokshin 14:03, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Since nobody seems to care, I've gone ahead and removed it; please let me know if that broke anything major. Kirill Lokshin 12:45, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

It seems that your change made some editors quite unhappy. Could you please restore it if there's not too much trouble. ←Humus sapiens ^ну? 02:50, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

The fact that people are trying to cram a paragraph of text in there is part of the motivation for removing it, though. Couldn't that just as easily be discussed in the article itself? We can add it back if it's really needed, but I would think leaving it out might be better in the long term. Kirill Lokshin 09:44, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I disagree, I think that a lot of captions are about the same length. I think the casus belli is a good addition, and a lot of times it could be just be a sentence of something that helps sum up the conflict.- Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg | Talk 00:56, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Most casus belli are "disputed" and require a lengthy discourse to fully explain. Which would make it unsuitable for infoboxes. -- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai!} 07:52, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

I suspect that's quite true, and a valid concern. Kirill Lokshin 14:25, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

For what I am interested in (primarily World War II), it is quite unnecessary. I suspect that in many cases though it will not be easy to nail down the Casus Belli into a short enough statement. My €0.02 Andreas 16:24, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree, in fact probably in most cases it will not be particularly appropriate. However, in cases where it is (I can think of a lot of European war of the 17-19 centuries) it will add signifigantly to the article without damaging any articles where it is not present.- Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg | Talk 06:50, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

I guess the question is whether the cases where this is beneficial outnumber the cases where editors who don't understand what a casus belli is will put inappropriate material into that parameter. There's a certain tendency for unused fields to become used, even when they were originally omitted because there's nothing useful to put there. Kirill Lokshin 02:54, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Why don't we include a message properly explaining it, also I think enough people understand it to revert any improperly used instances.- Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg | Talk 02:56, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

We did have an explanation, as I recall; maybe some more direct wording would be appropriate? Something like "Do not use this field for the underlying causes of a war, or where the casus belli is disputed and requires a lengthy explanation" could work? Kirill Lokshin 03:24, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

That would probably be sufficient, but maybe we could also direct the person to the Casus belli article to allow them to get a grasp of the meaning.- Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg | Talk 04:25, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Very well, I've added back the field and put a note about proper usage in the instructions; we can always remove it if it becomes a serious problem again. Please do try to use it sparingly, though, and only for those wars where it makes sense ;-) Kirill Lokshin 04:40, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Thank you, I will choose well where I actually use it.- Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg | Talk 04:52, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

partof

I added:

or for large wars, the theatre and war eg "Eastern Front, World War II", or "Peninsular War, Napoleonic Wars".

Because there was an edit to the article Prague Offensive today replacing "Soviet-German War, World War II" with "World War II". I think in such a large war partof should be by campaign/theatre as well as War, and "Soviet-German War" is an acceptable alternative for Eastern Front, or Great Patriotic War to describe the largest theatre of the Second World War. --Philip Baird Shearer 22:29, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough, although I think "Eastern Front (World War II)" would be better than "Eastern Front, World War II". Kirill Lokshin 23:41, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I prefer that we agree on a standard, maybe a vote?

Casualties

Is there a way to optionally merge the two cells "casualties1" and "casualties2"? In some military conflict articles, the number of casualties of each side is unknown, and an estimate is given about the total number, especially with civil war articles where civilian deaths is the greatest (see Algerian Civil War). If it's not possible, could you create a variant of the infobox? CG 15:34, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Easy enough; I've added a "casualties3" field that will allow the field to stretch across both columns. Be sure to clear the two other casualty fields if you use it, though; otherwise, it won't display. Kirill Lokshin 15:52, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I tried to make the text in this field centered (to be clear that this number is for the two sides), but it didn't work. Could you do it? Thank you. CG 16:31, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Done. Does that help? Kirill Lokshin 16:46, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, thank you for your fast response. CG 17:02, 17 May 2006 (UTC)