Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/World War II

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Well, this has been fruitful so far. --NEMT 14:10, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

I find your lack of faith disturbing.

I have taken this case. The issues as presented are here. Because the mediation is on multiple articles, we will discuss things here and transclude this page into the relevant articles. -Ste vertigo 02:54, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

What does itbm mean? Xaxafrad 00:07, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Issues to be mediated

ITBM

Should the individual countries making up the Axis Powers and Allies of World War II be listed in the Combatants section of the infobox, or should only links to the relevant articles be provided?
If countries are to be listed, which countries are appropriate to list for each side?
If countries are to be listed, should commanders for those countries also be listed?
If commanders are to be listed, which commanders are appropriate for each country?

1 Should the individual countries making up the Axis Powers and Allies of World War II be listed in the Combatants section of the infobox, or should only links to the relevant articles be provided?
2 List order

[edit] Should the individual countries making up the Axis Powers and Allies of World War II be listed in the Combatants section of the infobox, or should only links to the relevant articles be provided?

The easiest compromise is just to list links to the relevant Axis and Allies articles. Some may argue that other war articles don't do it that way, but WWII is unique in the number of countries that were involved. One issue is that not all countries were directly involved in the all the theaters of WWII. For example, Japan didn't have much of a presence in the western Europe theater of the war. To avoid the hassle of trying to decide which countries should be listed in the infoboxes for the major theaters (for example, should Brazil be listed in the infobox for the Battle of the Atlantic?), the same Axis and Allies links should be used. Cla68 03:21, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

It may be the easiest compromise, but it is the worst. World War 1 involved a similar number of countries too. We are listing the MAJOR countries. By the way, are you getting Brazil confused with Uruguay. The Graf Spee went there, not to Rio. As far a theaters are concerned, this artcile encompasses all theaters.

If I remember right, a Brazilian cargo ship carrying the crews and equipment to constitute a Brazilian fighter aircraft squadron in Europe was sunk by a U-boat off the coast of South America as it began its journey with heavy loss of life. This illustrates my point, that numerous countries have some degree of participation in various theaters of the war. Brazilians would probably argue that their sacrifice in this instance is not minor and their country should be listed in the infobox. How to resolve this other than listing every country in the infobox? By linking to the Axis and Allies articles instead. Cla68 08:03, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

If that's all Brazil did during the war (as I recall reading, the then-Brazilian president was an excellent fence sitter who stayed neutral until he could side with what he perceived to be the eventual victor, but whose government most closely matched that of fascist Italy, putting him in the orbit of the Axis), that sounds like a "minor" contribution. Xaxafrad 00:07, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

No, World War 1 did not involve a similar number of countries. --NEMT 07:11, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Most people here know exactly who the major participants were. It is only a few nit-pickers who want their own little country included, who are causing the problem. I have no doubt that common sense will eventually prevail. It always does. Wallie 07:08, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I completely agree. --NEMT 07:11, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I disagree, if it were that simple, we'd be done. The problem is what is a minor country. Take the following: China, France (3R), Canada, Finland and Italy. Which of them are major or minor? I could potentially say that I think China is minor because it had no real air force, navy or armored presence, and no contributions outside of its theatre; I could also say it's major due to the sheer size of their forces, the amount of Japanese troops they kept tied down and the length of time China was in combat. We can make similar arguments for and against the others I mentioned as well. France (3R) was one of the two principle Allies at the start of the European Theatre, with a modern and sizable military roughly comparable (on paper) to Germany's; it was however, knocked out of the war quite quickly.

For this reason, I think it'd be best to keep it as Allies and Axis for the main article, and then list major nations for each campaign and battle. At this time, I can't think of any where we'll have more then four nations involved, especially considering that we are encouraged to use the actual forces involved (ie. "U.S. Third Army") instead of the nations where feasible. Oberiko 14:29, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Which four nations? Maybe we could call those 4 nations the major ones. But for a twist, instead of labeling every other nation minor (and it has become apparent that nobody wants that label), let's call them non-major and avoid nit-picking? Xaxafrad 00:07, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I think you miss my point. If we include those four, then why not Poland (major player at the start, first Allied combatant) as well? Why not Norway? Why not Romania and Hungary? It becomes a slippery slope as there is always someone who has done more then at least one of our listed nations (depending on which metrics we use) and therefore requires entry. Each entry then opens the door for two others until we have all 50+ nations listed, making the infobox worthless. Oberiko 13:16, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I'll try to be brief. I am in favor of the infobox with individual countries because:

The encyclopedia is more useful if a reader walks away knowing the major players.
The distinction between major and minor is possible to make using objective criteria.
Historians prioritize this information all the time.
Previous versions of this article mentioned the major countries in both the lead and the infobox.
Links to subpages will rarely be followed.
Avoidance of edit warring and disruption is no excuse for a poor article.

I'm sure I will think of more reasons but I hope this will get the ball rolling. Haber 21:25, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I think I can honestly say I wholeheartedly agree with Haber. Has anyone scanned through the article's history to see if there were any significant periods of time when the list of combatants remained stable? I think I'll do that next, while I ask if I should butt out of this discussion since I'm not on the list of mediation adherents (not that that's hard to fix). Xaxafrad 00:07, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I have just added you and Wallie. If anyone objects they'll say so. Haber 00:59, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I tried to grab at least 4-5 samples from every month; this list far from exhaustive. For instance, the addition and removal of Poland was many times not noted in the sampling, but noticed in scanned-over edit summaries. I also did not look into the actual articles linked to from any given list of combatants, so some ambiguity probably exists regarding specific names of polities (UK/GB/CW, USSR/SU, China/ROC, France/FFF/F3R, etc).

As I compiled it, I couldn't help but wonder why the wordy "and others" was chosen over "et al". Also, some edit summaries made reference to using the UN Security Council as a standard for defining "major", which sounds kinda lame, to me (it's a solution in the same vein as not listing any powers, but in the direction of including individual nations, rather than away from). It would be a better objective standard to use the number of troops sent to battle, or died, to determine majority contribution.

Further, I noticed a change in the labeling of the combatant list that occurred at the end of January, when heated discussions on the talk page became referenced to in edit summaries. Specifically, it seems that when the list of combatants was first replaced with links to the main Allies/Axis articles, the label "Major .... powers" was taken off. More arguments against this label include the article to which they were linking was not an article about the major players, but ALL the players, thus requiring copyediting. Add to that the fact that the Allies/Axis articles were linked by the "Major powers" text, as well as the "and others" text at the bottom of the list. That said, I think passing judgement on major/minor is unneccessary, but a link to "and others" is sufficient to appease the nationalists from the smaller nations. (note: "major" was not in the list label as of 1 Dec)

At one point, the "and others" links were included in the list of powers, but neglected in the list of commanders (the disparity looks funny when you notice it).

More random comments: while the list of Allied combatants seemed especially unstable, the list of Axis powers changed very rarely. If it is decided to include an expanded combatants list, Austria, Bulgaria, and Hungary will likely be added as signatories to the Pact of the Axis, or whichever treaties they were.

Date	Allies	Axis
21 March	Allies	Axis
14 March	Allies	Axis
7 March	Allies	Axis
28 Feb	UK, SU, US, China, and others	Germany, Italy, Japan, and others
23 Feb	UK, SU, US, China, and others	Germany, Italy, Japan, and others
15 Feb	Allies	Axis
7 Feb	UK, Free French Forces, SU, US, ROC, and others	Germany, Italy, Japan, and others
1 Feb	Allies	Axis
29 Jan	UK, SU, US, ROC, and others	Germany, Italy, Japan, and others
22 Jan	UK, SU, US, ROC, and others	Germany, Italy, Japan, and others
15 Jan	UK, Free French Forces, SU, US, ROC, and others	Germany, Italy, Japan, and others
6 Jan	UK, SU, US, France, ROC, and others	Germany, Italy, Japan, and others
29 Dec	UK, Free French Forces, USSR, US, ROC, and others	Germany, Italy, Japan, and others
22 Dec	UK, Free French Forces, USSR, US, ROC, and others	Germany, Italy, Japan, and others
15 Dec	UK, USSR, US, China, and others	Germany, Italy, Japan, and others
8 Dec	UK, USSR, US, China, and others	Germany, Italy, Japan, and others
1 Dec	SU, UK, US, and others	Germany, Italy, Japan, and others
23 Nov	SU, UK, US, and others	Germany, Italy, Japan, and others
15 Nov	UK, SU, US, ROC	Germany, Italy, Japan, and others

It took me a while to scan through 17 previous revisions spanning about 4 months, and I'm not sure how to add in the changes to the list of commanders. The first revision where I noticed a significant difference was on 23 Nov, when it seems supreme field commanders were included with political leaders (6 total powers, with 14 commanders). Xaxafrad 02:18, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I just had the thought: I'll bet Hitler thought France was major. Probably a more major opponent than Poland. And even after conquest, France was probably a major territory, in his mind. The occupied French were probably a major source of intelligence regarding German positions, resources, etc. China, Thailand, India, Poland, Finland, and Libya should be included as major players for similar reasons. I believe the UK/Commonwealth distinction is sufficient for the sake of some brevity, but just for fun, let's see what the list looks like with Canada/Australia/India/etc. (after some clicking around, I found Dominion#Foreign_relations which seems to describe the evolution of the status of the Dominions in the first half of the 20th century; from what I read, I would urge the inclusion of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa in the list of combatants, then ask if the troops from said nations mostly served together, and if so, then recommend the Commonwealth of Nations be listed as something like: "UK and CN") Xaxafrad 03:16, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Mediator comments

I dont find the argument to include all countries compelling. WWII involved too many countries to include in such a small box. A much better idea would be to list the major ones, and indicate others with an others link, that leads to a section or footnote in which all countries are listed. -Ste vertigo 05:36, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Have you read the debate on Talk:World War II? Badgerpatrol 10:28, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I have come to the view that the major participants in World War II were decided both during, and shortly after, World War II. Have we gained some additional hindsight in the intervening 60 years to overturn the decisions of Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin? Contrast the commonly seen picture of those three leaders of the Allies with an image of Hitler (vs Churchill), Mussolini (vs Roosevelt), and Hirohito (or Tojo?) (vs Stalin). I can give some easy reasoning for those particular associations. I could argue that, although the US didn't officially enter the war until 2 years after Canada, the lend-lease agreements at least equal Canada's status as a sub-major country under the leadership of Churchill (I'm not implying Canada was under the direct leadership of Churchill, but only in the sense that Canada, Australia, etc can be considered "sub-units" of the disintegrating British Empire (was the term British Empire still in use in 1945?)). Xaxafrad 20:32, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Parts of it. And just because 3-5 people might be frustrated enough to wipe out all the coutries from a list because they can't agree with 3-5 other people, doesn't mean I'm frustrated enough. I don't find the argument that the infobox is small to be very compelling. How about this: we start with an list of combatants that is incredibly long, and when random, new people (like I used to be) complain about how long it is, or when random people boldly delete countries from the list, then the list can be pruned. With such a long list, alphabetical or date entering war strikes me as the best ordering.

I've heard a few people say the infobox is too small for such a long list, but I've never seen an example of an overloaded infobox. How can including some/most countries be POV? ...Especially if there's a big discussion on a talk page over the efforts some people went through to avoid POVness. Xaxafrad 15:19, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, to clarify, I meant that question for Stevertigo- apologies for any confusion. It is not a question of 3-5 people not agreeing on who goes in the infobox- I personally have never (to the best of my recollection) suggested who should go in the infobox at all. The question is- is it actually possible to come up with a stable, NPOV list of "major" combatants? I suggest not- implicit to the very word "major" is an entirely subjective inference. The only lists that are actually acceptable in the infobox are- a) everyone (that's what, 60-80 combatants for the Allies and a smaller but still large number for the Axis) or b) Nobody. The other day, someone wanted to exclude the USSR as a major combatant from the infobox. Some others have wanted to exclude France and China, or include Canada, or Australia, or exclude Italy. On other language Wikis, countries like Brazil are listed or not listed as major combatants, or Romania, Or Hungary, or Poland. There does not seem to me to be a way to arrive at a stable list and by assigning countries as major or non-major we are inescapably imposing our own, subjective point of view. You ask "How can including some/most countries be POV?"- that's why. I don't see any discussion on the talk page about anybody coming up with objective criteria. Saying "let's only include countries who contributed more than 2 million troops" or whatever is obviously not defining an objective criterion. If you can point towards the big discussion where people figure out a way to avoid POV then I'd be grateful. Badgerpatrol 15:47, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the succinct response. Respectfully, how is some arbitrary number of troops subjective? I would pick an arbitrary number that created a cutoff point of 5-15 countries (you wouldn't say 15 is too many, would you?). That sounds objective to me. It doesn't really favor any country over another, except perhaps the populous ones. Israel wasn't populous, and I'm sure there're plently of Israel supports editing this wiki, so Israel's troop contribution will probably be a good arbitrary number to pick (that's not a serious suggestion, just as my suggestion of leave the Soviet Union off the list of combatants, while accompanied by some reasoning, wasn't serious; call it playing the devil's advocate).

^^ vv -->> The discussion all around here. Actually, I had the idea to cut-and-paste the bulk of the infobox discussion to the template talk page, and leave a note (and a link) on the WW2 talk page about the move.

Finally, I fully agree that any kind of major/minor division is contentious. Therefore, I would like to assert that by placing 1, or 5, or 10 countries above 70-80 other countries, we are not passing judgement as to who contributed a major or a minor part to the war effort (for goodness's sake, an infobox isn't serious like that). By including a handful of countries in the infobox, we are saying that many countries were involved in the conflict, but the list is too long to be complete, as testified by the final link to the other combatants. Xaxafrad 16:06, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

OK. "How is some arbitrary number of troops subjective?". That says everything I think needs to be said at this point, really. Sorry if I offended you by mentioning the USSR- I honestly didn't register that it was you who originally made this suggestion when I mentioned it (egg on my face...) Your edit at the time appeared serious [1] and I didn't realise you were only joking (egg on my face II....). Apologies. ;-) Badgerpatrol 16:56, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

First, I should clarify: I was half serious. It was one of those desperate suggestions to save some small bit of information from getting erased, or a reaction against the extreme of omitting everything (I knew it would be extreme to omit the USSR, but I was unsure of how people would react to it, thus the (harmless?) suggestion), or something like that, y'know what I mean? I'm not offended at all, but I would like to apologize for the ambiguous statements.

Second, I think you need to educate me on subjectivity. I always thought of something as subjective when it comes down to a personal opinion, taste, point of view, etc. Something would be objective if it depended on some external, impersonal thing. All of us can apply a number-of-troops-filter to the 90 countries involved in the war, and, provided we use the same filter, we would get the same list, an objective list, no? Xaxafrad 18:48, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

So you don't think that arbitrarily deciding an abstract number (e.g. of troops) as a cut-off is subjective? Why is that reliant on some "external, impersonal thing"? I might think that 1 million people is a large number- you might think that 5 million is a suitably large number. Bob Smith might think that 100,000 is a large number. Which of us is "right"? And why is that system "objective"? Badgerpatrol 10:03, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

The main problem with that Vertigo is deciding which countries are major and what metrics (and metric weighting) we are to use to determine them. Sounds simple, but there's dozens of ways to measure a nations significance. Oberiko 13:16, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I just looked at the Invasion of Poland (1939). It's a featured article, and has an infobox that looks worse than the one under discussion, due to it's wordiness in commanders, and strength lists. Below the infobox, in the place of WW2's {{Campaignbox}} listing the 7 theaters of the global conflict, is a box for the whole invasion of Poland, listing every city that was taken over by Germans or Soviets, including 10 redlinks. Redlinks in a featured article? Why didn't any editors before, and along the FA process, pick on that nit? On second thought, I should use that as a reason to start the former-FA process, but I like to try to think on the positive side of things. Xaxafrad 16:06, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I have now seen the infobox for the Battle of Britain, very parallel to this case, IMO. If you don't want to view it yourself, I'll describe it: UK vs. Germany, followed by "Including combatants from:<:ref>This list is in descending order of number of people from that nation. For a detailed breakdown of the various countries contribution see Battle of Britain Foreign Contribution.</ref>".

For ideas of suggestions, please keep this footnote reference in mind, as well as the slightly different footnote in the Eastern Front (World War II) infobox.

I've noticed breakdowns of the strength of each side in these two battles, and wonder if a summary of Allied and Axis strengths would be possible, while I already see the difficultly in compiling such a summary. Maybe I should go over all the articles in Category:Military operations of World War II.... Xaxafrad 16:39, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I edited the list of combatants against the warnings posted all about. I'll revert it, if it really pisses somebody off, but I don't think the list is too long (21 vs. 10), unless we try to add commanders for every power, and I don't see why that would be necessary. But I'll still revert it anyway. In case you missed it, it looked like this. Xaxafrad 17:42, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I didn't note it on this page, but I grabbed those 31 combantants (not truly 31 as some countries are listed twice, Thailand and Free Thailand, for example) from the {{World War II}} infobox at the bottom of WW2 (and a lot of other articles). Their list of combatants is equally contentious, but isn't in as visible a location as "our" list, and so hasn't gotten the kind of traffic that lob POV accusations when somebody disagrees with them. See Template_talk:World_War_II#Belligerents.3F, Template_talk:World_War_II#List of Participants, and Template_talk:World_War_II#Compression for discussions of a different kind regarding who gets listed and who gets slighted ("Compression" is a longish discussion about which events to call major or minor; this list won't get the same kind of nationalistic objections from descendants unless somebody's ancestors died in a supposedly "minor" event).

On the topic of POV, I decided to look at WP:NPOV. In a nutshell, it says "articles and other encyclopedic content" must be written from a NPOV. Are infoboxes "other content"? Or are infoboxes a part of "other content" that is not encyclopedic, and therefore exempt from NPOV? Xaxafrad 18:34, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Mediator comment

Oberiko said: "The main problem with that Vertigo is deciding which countries are major and what metrics (and metric weighting) we are to use to determine them. Sounds simple, but there's dozens of ways to measure a nations significance." - I find this argument to be utterly lacking. The 'either or' argument is not found in NPOV at all. We represent "significance" by a simple method: largest involved nations are in, the smallest are out (in this case, out of the template, but in a separate section).

Here is what I want: Make a list here, and take two votes: First vote will be on the order of countries from largest (or most significant) to the least. The second vote will be on where the cutoff should be. Those below the cutoff will be included in a separate section, but not in the topicbox. End of story.

Somewhere in the middle is a compromise - I don't care if its five or fifteen, as long as its not excessively short or large. Note, that by "largest" there may be some disagreement about large nations versus large numbers of participants. It doesn't matter though, as these criteria are for the most part related. This compromise is called "consensus." Consensus is a social guideline which handles what little NPOV does not cover. It assumes that reasonable people can be reasonable and not just quibble about little details which are subjective in any case. Just because there is some subjectivity involved, doesnt make it POV, and likewise it doesnt validate the 'either or' argument.

The other argument about NPOV appears to be fraught with misconception. NPOV is not about representing views equally, in the sense that they can cancel each other out, but rather in order of acceptance. For example the most accepted view on Intelligent Design is that its a religious-political argument, not a "scientific theory," as its proponents claim.

Please note that my blunt tone here is due to two factors: 1) I dont have time to read all the back and forth discussion on what for all intents and purposes is a trivial matter, requiring simply that people compromise. 2) That there are a number of people who are unfamiliar with our policies and conventions, such that they completely misstate and misrepresent them. By stating a simple ruling, I hope that those unfamiliar with our conventions might better learn their value, saving their energies for work, as well as for discussions of more importance. -Ste vertigo 00:18, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that interesting perspective, Steve. Can I just ask- why is this "vote" any more valid than the well-formed and appropriately carried out one that we have already recently had on the WWII talk page which resulted in a 69% majority for excluding judgements about "major" nations. I would say that it appears that we will be continuously voting until we reach a conclusion favourable to the (forgive the term) "inclusionists", but since you appear to have rejected one side of the argument a priori one can't even say that. You also admit that you haven't actually read the arguments on the talk page, which I admit are long and at times tortuous but are surely an essential prerequisite to any mediation exercise. Your solution is not a "compromise" in any way shape or form. What you have in fact done is ignore one side of the argument completely. Is this how mediation works? I'm a bit confused by this: Mediators are not Advocates. Mediators will not take sides or promote one person's point of view or request over those of another person. It's fairly obvious that you have immediately sided with the "inclusionists" and ignored from the outset the (super?) majority view that individual countries should be excluded from the infobox. Badgerpatrol 10:21, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I assume it is I and Haber who are the inclusionists. Let me try to make a reasoned appeal to you: I don't think you're truly opposed to the idea of including individual countries in the list of combatants. I think you're opposed to an overly long list, and I think that you think that if we put a few "major" countries (you know, they called them major and minor in Axis powers of World War II, so what's the big stink about the Allies? Wait, I've got: it's because nobody wants to pipe up and say "My country was a major member of the Axis during WW2!") it will become inevitable that extra countries will creep in over time. After two RFCs and a mediation case, I think that if anybody tries to add to the list, they can be told a resounding "NO" and to read all the pages of discussion. In fact, I recall a notice near the list of combatants about "do not edit this section while mediation is in progress", which can be easily changed to "do not add to this section without consensus on the talk page". With that comment in place, one can simply revert an addition, leaving the one who added it the option of starting a talk page section titled "Add <my country> to list of Allies". Think about what the situation would be like if such a comment had been in the infobox since 8/06 (the starting date of the first archive of combatant discussions). Xaxafrad 02:01, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't want to label anyone as "inclusionists" or "exclusionists", it sounds adversarial- I use both as a form of shorthand for easy reference. You're not correct- I am truly opposed to the idea of including any list of combatants in the infobox that is not complete- i.e. any that doesn't include either every combatant, or none at all. I am opposed to any partial list, and I am opposed to using the terms "major" and "minor". (I think I've made my position pretty clear on this in the past - it's becoming increasingly clear that many people have not read, or not paid attention to, the previous discussion, which is in fairness fairly dull, very long, and frustratingly torturous at times). If it is possible to include all 60 or so Allies for example, and all the Axis nations (and perhaps it is) then this may be a suitable compromise to end this mess. Then we can get started on discussing the order they should be placed in (mama mia....). Reaching consensus on the talk page does not solve the issue because that consensus would be based on the subjective point of view of the editors concerned, as described and exemplified ad nauseum. Badgerpatrol 02:26, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

That's fair, and in turn I should state that I find a list ended with the statement "and others" to be quite acceptable, but that's what I might be mistakingly be referring to as my subjective preference. What does subjective really mean, anyway (Subjective, Subjectivity, Objectivity (philosophy))?

However, I agree with you in opposition to the terms "major" and "minor", but I don't feel a major/minor distinction must be made in order to truncate a list. Granted, the truncation creates a distinction, but this distinction should not, in anyway, be viewed as creating or conferring major or minor status.

In spite of that, I managed to skip over the following exerpt in all my scanning for lists of countries and descriptions of those countries' war efforts (from the lead section of Allies of World War II, emphasis mine). Xaxafrad 02:47, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Within the ranks of the Allied powers, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom 
and the United States were known as "The Big Three." U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt referred 
to the Big Three and China as the "Four Policemen".[1] France, in 1939-40 and after its liberation 
in 1944, was also once again considered a major Allied power. At the Potsdam Conference of 
July-August 1945, Roosevelt's successor, Harry S. Truman proposed that the foreign ministers of 
China, France, Soviet Union, United Kingdom and United States "should draft the peace treaties and 
boundary settlements of Europe," which led to the creation of the Council of Foreign 
Ministers.[2]

I agree with Badgerpatrol. Have we already decide that there SHOULD be a country listing with major countries ? It looks that the decision is only which country should be in the Infobox. However, if we agreed to go to mediation, it is precisely because the question was much more difficult than that and precisely because, in long term, there will always be someone who'll want to include HIS country in the Infobox. I suggest we get one step back. --Flying tiger 12:51, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. I will be catching up on reading them. One thing does strike me as odd in the earlier voting is that several of the nation-based votes were falsified. It would be a simple matter to run a checkuser on these to see if they have the same IP, and whom it matches. In any case, such abuse of good will is good enough for me to go with supporting just the Axis/Allies version. Those opposed to this can try to convice me otherwise. Discrete concrete proposals would be nice. -Ste vertigo 06:06, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Does "earlier voting" refer to events prior to this mediation case? Xaxafrad 22:34, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I dont seem to have noticed mention here (apologies if i missed it) of what to me is the most difficult aspects of establishing what is a major/minor power. And that is the interaction of chronology and size. Certain states are by nature capable of fielding disproportionate power in the field of war. So there is a tendency to give them "major power" status. Yet when one looks at the chronology of the war it is notable that several of these states either switched sides during the course of the war (France and the USSR) or did not join the conflict until it was several years under way (USA). Other states however, say Australia or Canada, who contributed for the full duration of the war and contributed heavily (when analysed in a contextual fashion) are by their nature unable to field comparable armies. In such a situation raw numerical judgements seem to me to be misleading.

Australia and Canada were probably considered subordinate to the United Kingdom, or Great Britain, or whatever, by the international community of the mid 1940's. Xaxafrad 22:34, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me that using such a simple metric as number of men-at-arms it is easy to construct a scenario where the results would be clearly absurd. For instance two small nations fight for years, then a large nation gets involved, rattles its sabres, sends some troops to the field and soon after the war is finished. Who is a major power in such a scenario? The nations that fought for years or the nation whose very presence on the field brings the conflict to an end? Anyway, its because of this kind of reasoning that I object to the 5v3 breakdown, and why I think that if we must have a bunch of flags in the infobox why I think that the list should be biased towards including as many participants as possible, especially if they were involved in the conflict from the beginning and why I think that the flags should be ordered by date of entry and not size of army.

I think the solution has to be nuanced to take into account the capability of the country to wage war, when it entered the conflict and its impact on the course of the war. For instance if Canada joined a war on Monday and the USA joined on Tuesday then I have no problem in considering the USA to be a major power and Canada not, but when Canada joins the war on day 2 and USA joins on day 500 then i have a serious problem with the USA bumping Canada off the list. In regard to WWII specifically, I think its quite reasonable to argue that had the former colonies decided to abstain from entering the war (like the USA did) that the UK would have been unable to continue to fight the war and there very likely wouldnt have been a war for the USA to join.

Canada is on the list in the spirit of the British Empire. Did the former colonies significantly contribute to staving off a land invasion of the British Isles? Had they not gone to war (even though the fact is, they did), maybe Germany would've had a slightly freer hand in conquering Europe, but the failed Russian invasion still would've occurred, and the Pacific War still would've been waged, no? Xaxafrad 22:34, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Id also like to make a last point: earlier in this section Haber posts a list of what he considers important for the infobox and wikipedia as a whole. A list that I have to say I dont entirely agree with. Especially the entry "The encyclopedia is more useful if a reader walks away knowing the major players." I think it is potentially counterproductive to reduce a conflict of such impact and such a global nature down to what is to me a mere caricature of the actual history involved. If people view the article, see the infobox and decide thats all they need to know then we are actually doing people a disservice. They wont know for instance that some of the "major powers" actually didn't join until part way through, or changed sides during the conflict, they might even be persuaded to think that a country which made major contributions was not even involved! And to me that isnt a desirable outcome at all. If reductionism results in notable omission then the reduction isnt appropriate in my book. Anyway, thanks for listening. Demerphq 12:19, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

If people are viewing the article, they would read the sentences that say Canada and everybody else joined the war on such and such a date. The fact is, the whole article doesn't hang on this infobox. If random readers don't feel like educating themselves enough to notice which nations changed sides (detailed in the long chronology section of WW2), that's their problem, it's not up to the infobox to correct that. Xaxafrad 22:34, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually, in the vein of shortening WW2 from 160+ KB, the chronology section could be compressed to quickly and simply describe all the countries involved in the various theaters and the dates and reasons for joining whichever side, with lots of links to the plethora of {{main}} articles. (I'll cross post this comment on the appropriate talk page.) Xaxafrad 23:30, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] List order

List A1

Allies of World War II

List A2

Allies (largest to smallest): (thanks Cla68) (38 countries)

Soviet Union: 1941, 22 June
United States of America: 1941, 8 December (including American Samoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and other unincorporated territories)
United Kingdom: 1939, 3 September (included Indian Empire & Crown Colonies)
Republic of China: 1941, 9 December (in war with Empire of Japan since 1937)
France: 1939, 3 September
Poland: 1939, 1 September
Australia: 1939, 3 September
New Zealand: 1939, 3 September
Canada: 1939, 10 September
Norway: 1940, 9 April
Belgium: 1940, 10 May
Luxembourg: 1940, 10 May
Netherlands: 1940, 10 May
Greece: 1940, 28 October
Kingdom of Yugoslavia: 1941, 6 April (formerly a member of the Axis)
Tannu Tuva: 1941, 25 June (annexed by Soviet Union in 1944)
Panama: 1941, 7 December
Costa Rica: 1941, 8 December
Dominican Republic: 1941, 8 December
El Salvador: 1941, 8 December
Haiti: 1941, 8 December
Honduras: 1941, 8 December
Nicaragua: 1941, 8 December
Guatemala: 1941, 9 December
Cuba: 1941, 9 December
Czechoslovakia (Government-in-Exile) : 1941, 16 December
Peru: 1942, 12 February
Mexico: 1942, 22 May
Brazil: 1942, 22 August
Ethiopia: 1942, 14 December
Iraq: 1943, 17 January (occupied by Allies in 1941)
Bolivia: 1943, 7 April
Iran: 1943, 9 September (occupied by Allies in 1941)
Italy: 1943, 13 October (formerly a member of the Axis)
Colombia: 1943, 26 November
Liberia: 1944, 27 January
Nepal: 1939, 4 September
South Africa: 1939, 6 September

List A3

(from the original signatories of the Declaration by United Nations on 1 Jan 1942) (26 countries)

United States of America (including American Samoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and other unincorporated territories)
United Kingdom (included Indian Empire & Crown Colonies)
Soviet Union
Republic of China
Australia
Belgium
Canada
Costa Rica
Cuba
Czechoslovakia (Government-in-Exile)
Dominican Republic
El Salvador
Greece
Guatemala
Haiti
Honduras
India
Luxembourg
Netherlands
New Zealand
Nicaragua
Norway
Panama
Poland
South Africa
Kingdom of Yugoslavia

List A4

(from Allies of World War II#United Nations, "leading nations" statement)

Republic of China
France
Soviet Union
United Kingdom (included Indian Empire & Crown Colonies)
United States of America (including American Samoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and other unincorporated territories)

List A5

(Country names in alphabetical order, short form GB from Churchill's 2nd World War)

China
France
Great Britain
Soviet Union
United States

List B1

Axis powers of World War II

List B2

(from Axis powers of World War II) (28 countries)

Major powers:

Minor powers:

Co-belligerents:

Japanese puppet states:

Italian puppet states:

German puppet states:

Axis collaborator states:

French State

Controversial relations with the Axis:

List B3

(alternate)

List B4

Germany
Italy
Japan

[edit] Comments

Mediator note: We can agree on a list in general, or if necessary take a vote on each country, deciding whether it belongs in the top or bottom piles. One important way to define relevance is to adhere to the particular spheres of conflict. There are understandably caveats. Was France an allied combatant? Or was it for the most part taken over by Germany? We can sort all of this out methodically I think. Another way to define a cutoff point would be to let the smaller list, in this case the Axis list, define the number of Allied parties represented. Can we have an Axis list added, someone? Regards, -Ste vertigo 02:39, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Axis list added, as well as two extras for the Allies. Xaxafrad 04:30, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Excellent.

-Ste vertigo 07:44, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Vote

For

A5 and B4. Note that I don't really see this vote as binding, nor do I like Wikipedia votes very much in principle, but I do think we should cooperate with the mediator and see where it takes us. Haber 02:22, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
A5, B4 - 5vs3. I wouldn't look at it like a vote; I think it's more like a poll to determine consensus, but it's easier to just say "vote". Xaxafrad 02:55, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
- Comment For the list of commanders, I would vote for 6v3 (2 US presidents) off the top of my head, since I haven't familiarized myself with the specific players. Xaxafrad 02:55, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

More comments These are probably my final statements on this matter, as I'm not sure I can say anything that I haven't said before. I have just read about the creation of the Allies in chronology section covering the war in the Pacific (1941-1943):

The Allies were officially formed in the Declaration by United Nations on 1 January 1942. Soon 
afterwards, the American-British-Dutch-Australian Command (ABDACOM) was formed to unite Allied 
forces in South East Asia. It was the first Allied supreme command of the war.

In looking at the Declaration by United Nations, I followed the link to the online text of the original document. In the original document, the nations are listed in a curious order: the USA, the UK of GB and NI, the USSR, and China, followed by an alphabetical listing of the remaining countries. This signifies to me the delineation, in the mind of the writer of the declaration of 1941, between who was major and who wasn't. Notably, France is not on the list, as France was a conquered nation and a collaborator state in 1941. In 1939, at the war's beginning, I believe they considered France a major member of the British-Franco-Polish defense alliance. After the war, with a reinstated French government, the Council of Foreign Ministers probably thought they were the big boys in the winners' circle (sorry Canada, Australia, and all the rest, it's nothing personal). Xaxafrad 01:22, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
Even more... Sorry, I thought of something else to say. If one wanted to accuse the writer of the UN declaration to have a biased POV, I'd like to point out the fact that representatives from each country agreed to the ordering by their signatures. They had a chance to disagree with the "ladder of importance" when the declaration was being drafted. Xaxafrad 04:20, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

A5 vs B4 Blueshirts 18:06, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Against

I do not support any combatant or commander listings in the infobox beyond Axis and Allies. --NEMT 17:49, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

How did we come to Cla68's list? Number of troops fielded I assume? Why that metric and not, say, length of time officially at war or citizens killed? Also, could I see the figures used for Cla68's list? Oberiko 21:13, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I assumed the "largest to smallest" was referring to land area, but I can't say from which period of time (1945ish?). Xaxafrad 02:13, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I only meant "largest to smallest" for the top part of the list. I didn't try to actually put the entire list in descending order by land size or population or anything like that. Cla68 09:22, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I also do not support any combatant or commander listings in the infobox beyond "Axis" and "Allies", and since that option does not appear to be available (thus mischaracterising and obfuscating the whole debate), it's difficult to see this vote as valid- especially since a less malformed iteration of this idea was recently tried and resulted in a clear result (which might be taken as a consensus by some anyway). However, I'd like to hear further comments from the mediator (and anyone else, of course). One avenue we might explore as a compromise is including all combatants in a redesigned infobox. I think we had all perhaps thought this as impractical on space grounds, but examples such as Invasion of Poland (1939) (I'm thinking of the city listing in the lower box, below the main infobox) offer a possibilty that even large lists can be included. Badgerpatrol 02:38, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I took the {{Campaign}} infobox from Invasion of Poland (1939) and copied a bunch of stuff to a subpage just to see how it would look (55vs28 countries). I used the list of participants from the respective Allies and Axis powers articles. More formatting is probably desirable (here's a link to the template in case anyone's interested: User:Xaxafrad/WW2combatants). Xaxafrad 04:23, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Note, Ive moved your boxes to a different format at the bottom of this page. My thinking is that the make fine full lists for the bottom of the WWII article, but the war box at the top should only include a short number, linking of course to the section you've composed. -Ste vertigo 09:07, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Xaxafrad fr doing this. Buuuut.....Ooh...in fairness, it looks fairly horrendous. I'm not sure if it's possible to clean that up to a decent listing. I'm certainly inclined to stick with just "Allies" and "Axis". Badgerpatrol 10:20, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I also do not support listing combatants and commanders in the infobox. Listing only some countries and not others is inherently POV. Parsecboy 13:25, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

With all due respect....Is it really? What part of listing the top 3 or 5 major countries (as decided by Churchill and other political leaders in 1945, for the Allies, and Wikipedia editors, for the Axis) is biased? How can a point of view be biased when there's a link to the remainder of the list at the bottom of the list? When the remainder of the article (briefly) describes the roles the US, Canada, Hungary, and others played? Is the problem here that some people are assuming readers are going to only read the infobox to learn everything they want? I don't know what information everybody is looking for when they come to WW2, but they probably read more than the infobox, or are at least aware that more than 8 countries were involved. If a reader doesn't care to follow the links, what are we really supposed to do about it? Xaxafrad 23:29, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it's "inherently pov" to include some and exclude others. There are definitely some political and military criteria that one can use to rank the countries and some historical consensus on who the major players were. Blueshirts 18:16, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cutoff point

Mediator note: Vote here on the cutoff point, after agreeing on the nation order above. The cutoff point could be represented by a simple number, representing the first entry which does not belong in the topicbox. -SV

Allied powers during World War II
1939
Poland Australia New Zealand
United Kingdom (included Indian Empire & Crown Colonies) France Nepal South Africa
Canada
1940
Norway Belgium Luxembourg
Netherlands Greece
1941
Kingdom of Yugoslavia (former Axis power)
Soviet Union Tannu Tuva Panama
Costa Rica Dominican Republic El Salvador Haiti Honduras Nicaragua
United States of America (including American Samoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and other unincorporated territories) Republic of China (in war with Empire of Japan since 1937) Guatemala Cuba Czechoslovakia (Government-in-Exile)
1942
Peru Mexico Brazil Ethiopia
1943
' Iraq (occupied by Allies in 1941) Bolivia
Iran (occupied by Allies in 1941) Italy (former Axis power) Colombia
1944
Liberia Romania (former Axis power)
Bulgaria (former Axis power) San Marino
Albania (formerly occupied by Fascist Italy)
1945
Hungary (former Axis power) Bahawalpur
Ecuador Paraguay Uruguay
Venezuela Turkey Lebanon Saudi Arabia Finland (formerly an Axis co-belligerent, de facto co-belligerent of UN in Lapland War)
Argentina Chile People's Republic of Mongolia