Template talk:Infobox Military Conflict

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[edit] "Result" should be "Status" for ongoing conflicts

{{editprotected}} It has been pointed out on Talk:Iraq War#Iraq War: Results that it is inapprorpriate to have a "Result" for an ongoing conflict. So please change the following portion of this template:

! style="padding-right: 1em;" | Result
| {{{result|}}}

to:

! style="padding-right: 1em;" | {{#if:{{{status|}}}|Status|Result}}
| {{{status|}}}{{#if:{{{status}}}|{{#if:{{{result|}}}|<br />'''Result:'''}}}} {{{result|}}}

I have tested this; please see User:Boowah59/Sandbox and User:Boowah59/SandboxTemplate source. Thank you. Boowah59 (talk) 01:10, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Not a bad idea, but your code will significantly complicate the layout of that field; there's no reason, in my view, why an article would need both a status and a result. In light of that, I've added the "status=" field as a simple alternative to the "result=" field. Kirill 01:20, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks much! Boowah59 (talk) 01:25, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

I updated the infoboxes in all of the ongoing conflicts that had them. Boowah59 (talk) 01:46, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ampersand

Can we make the ampersand in "Conflict & losses" the full word "and"? It looks neater that way. Srnec (talk) 17:30, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm assuming you mean "Casulaties and losses". I agree with you, so I made the change. Superm401 - Talk 19:28, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. I didn't know how. Srnec (talk) 20:34, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Military Conflict Infobox terminology & POV-pushing

Please see the discussion at WT:MILHIST. Askari Mark (Talk) 18:56, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

So now we have the section titled Beligerents, but the applicable parameter in the documentation is still called Combatants. In any case, I'd like to see some clearer guidance on who gets listed in this section and in Commanders. Some articles like Napoleonic Wars and World War I are out of hand, with long lists of Emperors, Presidents, Prime Ministers, and (oh, yes) military leaders. It seems clear to me that if the state is belligerent, the head of state and the head of government are automatically engaged, so this entry should be left for the chief of staff etc.LeadSongDog (talk) 22:40, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
Changing the parameter name would require changing the templates in thousands of articles. That's doable with a bot, but not something anyone has stepped up to do. As for the others, I agree, although WT:MILHIST would be the best place for discussing the issues you raise more generally. Askari Mark (Talk) 03:26, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
(Side comment: I'd suggest, for matters this specific, leaving a pointer on the main talk page but holding the discussion here, rather than vice versa; WT:MILHIST is very high-traffic, so we've been trying to reduce the load a bit by branching discussions to appropriate subpages where feasible. Kirill 03:34, 5 February 2008 (UTC))
(Noted. Askari Mark (Talk) 23:14, 8 February 2008 (UTC))
In general, we've tried to avoid being too strict on the usage rules for each field; every conflict is different, and the project's general philosophy has been to allow editors the discretion to use most fields as appropriate for their particular topic.
As far as commanders are concerned, the instructions currently specify that the field should include "the commanders of the military forces involved" and that "for wars, only prominent or notable leaders should be listed"; but defining "commander" and "prominent" more precisely has intentionally been left to the subject experts for each particular topic. The end result needs to be helpful to the reader; beyond that, trying to develop a one-size-fits-all rule to things like this doesn't strike me as a particularly useful thing to do. Kirill 03:31, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
Agreed, though, for practical reasons, it might not be a bad idea to give a recommended "upper-limit" to the amount of commanders. Beyond about seven it, IMO, tends to lend itself more to a "List of X commanders in the Y conflict". Oberiko (talk) 14:21, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
Really, about 5-6 per side at most would seem reasonable to me, unless perhaps it was a very long war with many changes of leading commanders. Askari Mark (Talk) 23:14, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] creating new infobox

Can anyone create a new type of infobox?--mrg3105mrg3105 If you're not taking any flack, you're not over the target. 07:24, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

In theory, yes. In practice, new infoboxes are generally created only for topics which have no possibly usable existing infobox; otherwise, the preferred method is to use optional fields to minimize maintenance overhead. Overlapping infoboxes and infoboxes with vague usage scopes are generally discouraged.
A more specific question would probably get a more specific answer. ;-) Kirill 13:29, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] remove extra space

{{editprotected}} This template has an extra newline on the top (after <includeonly>). Look at Battle of Tripoli Harbor, for example. So, please remove it. --219.165.188.51 (talk) 14:54, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Nope, that's just how that particular article was set up, I think. Kirill 14:58, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] 4th combatant

Surprisingly possibility for the forth combatant is needed. There the forth column is needed for the Ottoman desant, wich was not an ally of other sides.--Üñţïf̣ļëŗ (see also:ә? Ә!) 18:11, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

There's no really practical way to do this using the normal layout; and there are a few conflicts with even more sides, in any case. The better way to do this would be to use the single combatant1 field (as in, e.g. Italian Wars) and format things inside that as needed. Kirill 18:19, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] More usage guidelines

In the interests of standardization, I think it'd be beneficial if we had a few more guidelines and suggested practices for using the infobox. I would propose the following:

Combatant ordering
Combatants should be listed in order of importance to the conflict, be it in terms of military contribution, political clout, or a recognized chain of command. If there is no clear means of ordering using the prior criteria, then the decision is left to the editors of the particular article.
Commanders
This should be restricted to the lowest single-point-of-authority(s) who had active strategic / operational command (either de facto or de jure) for the planning, coordination and execution of their forces in a given conflict. For example, a general commanding a theatre of war is usually not warranted for a minor battle when a local commander oversaw the activities involved. This generally should not exceed seven individuals or contain sub-ordinate commanders, though exceptions to the latter can be made in cases such as participation of multiple branches of service.

Thoughts? Oberiko (talk) 20:19, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Meh. My philosophy was to avoid adding rules merely for their own sake; article editors generally know what the best approach for their particular case is. Are either of these actually issues where lack of a guideline causes significant problems in practice?
Aside from that, the matter of subordinate commanders is not one that's easy to deal with on articles about ancient & medieval wars, since any monarch personally leading armies in battle would technically be senior to any other commanders from the same country. Personally, I'd avoid mentioning the issue moreso than it already is in the instructions. Kirill 02:13, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
I'd say it is definitely an issue. While we might not have this problems in medieval times, we do with modern articles such as Eastern Front (World War II) which lists 34 commanders on the Soviet side and nearly as many on the Axis. Basically, we're seeing the most prominent commanders, their subordinates, and their subordinates subordinates. With so many names listed, it defeats the purpose of the info-box, becoming more of an order-of-battle.
Naturally, the monarch-on-the-field is not something I'm trying to prevent, it's the issue of tracking the chain of command all the way up. For example Brécourt Manor Assault involved two companies, and thus the commanders of both are listed; what I don't need to see is the regimental commander, the divisional commander, the corps commander, the army commander, the army group commander, the theatre commander and then the heads-of-state involved. Perhaps I should rephrase it to being the most relevant commanders for any given conflict?
In terms of the rules, it's because we are all over the place. Some articles list belligerents based on alphabetical ordering, some are based on entry time, and some are based on similar criteria that I've listed. I'm pretty sure that the casual reader, when they look at the box, usually expect the most prominent belligerents to be at the top of the list and generally work its way down. Right now we can (and in several cases have) end up with situations similar to Poland being listed before the Soviet Union in the Battle of Berlin. I should clarify that this is not applicable to iffy-situations or those where sources / general consensus can't be reached; it's for those where it's not in contention who the most prominent is. Oberiko (talk) 03:40, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
I think you misunderstood my objection about the subordinate commanders. I certainly have nothing against excluding the higher chain of command, as you suggest. My concern is for cases like the War of the Third Coalition; since, say, Kutuzov is technically a subordinate of Alexander, your comment that the field should not "contain sub-ordinate commanders" would mean his exclusion—even though he was the more prominent military figure. Basically, I don't want to be forced to pick only the top commander for each country in cases where they were not of equal rank. Kirill 03:46, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Wot3C looks fine to me. I should also clarify that I'm not against listing especially prominent commanders instead of / along with their superiors. For example in the various battles on the North African Campaign I list Rommel (de facto commander) instead of which ever Italian officer he was usually technically subordinate to (the de jure commander). I'm not an expert on the Napoleonic Wars, but from a quick glance it looks more or less like those were the most prominent, influential commanders during the war, so, no objection.
But, I think this could easily spiral. We could list the commanders of all various armies, the heads-of-state for each state involved, folks like Joachim Murat, Kellermann and other local commanders of some influence.
So, to keep it simple, what about simply recommending an upper-limit as we do with belligerents? Try to restrict the commander list to the most prominent or influential in the conflict. An upper limit of about seven is recommended.. Oberiko (talk) 12:51, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
That seems fine as a rule of thumb, I think. Kirill 13:48, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Great. Any opinion on the combatant ordering? Oberiko (talk) 14:56, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Just to add to the rules of thumb, a fairly good one for command and control systems is to have detailed information on your subordinate units and track one level below that. In practice, especially in fluid operations, you want to track your peer organizations and boundaries, the organization that commands you and key components such as alternate and rear command posts, and perhaps special opeations forces and other units in your area of operations, but controlled at a significantly higher level.
That suggests no more than 3-5 levels are usually appropriate. As I think about it, perhaps it is inappropriate for the infobox, but peer organizations -- significant both for gaps and fratricide -- are important. SOF are less likely to be mixed in with a general organization, and, while there might be key facilities such as intelligence sensors in your AO, they are again probably inappropriate for the infobox.
I am a great believer in simplifying command displays, especially since I had to deal with a general who, for unknown reasons, wanted a single display with every electronic emitter in a division, with red-yellow-green operational status. At any reasonable level of magnification, it was a pulsing brown blob. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 17:06, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, I'm not quite following. Is that in relation to the number of commanders to display? Oberiko (talk) 18:42, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
I appreciate the concerns which led to this subject being broached, but I quickly see two problems with it. Firstly, there are cases where the ordering of combatants is highly contested, and neither a policy of "most important" nor simply leaving it up to the editors of that article is going to work. I don't personally care much what order things are listed in, but some people - particularly, for example, some of those with a pro-China, pro-Korea, or pro-Japan attitude - get into massive arguments over this kind of stuff. ... I suppose for those cases, we can just go by a rule/guideline of alphabetical order, though that still doesn't address the nonsense arguments behind whether the PRC should be listed before Japan and Korea for "C for China", or after that for "P for People's Republic".
Anyway, such contentious things aside, I'd also like to say that as for the commanders guideline, there are cases where a commander is particularly famous for his contributions to that battle, even though he was not the top-ranking officer present. The 4th battle of Kawanakajima (1561) comes to mind - though Takeda Shingen, the top-most warlord of the entire force, was present, his subordinates Kōsaka Masanobu and Yamamoto Kansuke are particularly famous for their tactical/strategic efforts in this battle. Again, there is always the possibility of having a guideline and simply allowing there to be exceptions for those cases where appropriate, but...
All in all, I'm afraid it seems like more often than not, guidelines/policies conceived with 20th century conflicts in mind don't really apply to pre-modern cases very well, and vice versa. LordAmeth (talk) 00:16, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't think either of those two go against the grain of my proposals. For the first, it's only a guideline where there is no dispute as to prominence. If one party has clear predominance over another (more forces, higher on the chain-of-command, more political clout etc.), then they should be listed higher; if there are means or metrics where one could plausibly argue that another belligerent is potentially more prominent, then the guideline doesn't apply and the editors have to sort it out themselves.
For the second, your example is still listing well under seven commanders and there are valid reasons for the subordinates to be there since they have clearly demonstrated prominence in determining the outcome of the battle. Oberiko (talk) 01:54, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Ah. Well, in that case, sounds good to me. LordAmeth (talk) 23:47, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

One possibility to reduce overcrowding in the "Commanders" field is to create a "Political leaders" field, to be used especially for kings, heads of state, etc., in wars. The guidelines should perhaps discourage the use of this for battles, where only the relevant field commanders should be listed. —Kevin Myers 15:18, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, I think those waters are a bit to muddy, regardless of era. Plenty of policital leaders played active roles in the military strategies and campaigns of their states. It'd be tough to distinguish them. Oberiko (talk) 18:04, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
A Political Leaders field might be nice for wars, but not battles. Though, even then I wonder if it wouldn't be too messy, as many wars stretched out over multiple reigns/presidencies/etc. LordAmeth (talk) 23:47, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

So, before I go ahead, any objection to the following:

Commanders
Commanders should be restricted to the most prominent or influential in the conflict. An upper limit of about seven per belligerent(s) column is recommended.
Combatant ordering
Combatants should be listed in order of importance to the conflict, be it in terms of military contribution, political clout, or a recognized chain of command. If differing metrics can support alternative lists, then ordering is left to the editors of the particular article.

Oberiko (talk) 14:59, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. LordAmeth (talk) 00:41, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] At peak vs. total committed

For our longer campaigns / wars, should strength represent "total committed" or "at-peak" forces? They can be pretty widely different, for example, in WWII Soviet military manpower was 26.4 million mobilized in total, but only 11 million at peak due to significant losses.

I'm thinking that we might want to either add an additional field for the maximum number of forces commanded at any one point or just recommend that it be placed in brackets as shown below:

Strength
26.4 million men (11 million peak)

Thoughts? Oberiko (talk) 19:57, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I think the parenthesized version is a more viable approach in the long term; there are a number of different data points that may be of interest in terms of representing strength, and having a separate field for each of them will quickly become unmaintainable. Better, I think, to simply allow the main fields to be free-form. Kirill 01:47, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Request to change "Belligerant" back to "Combatant"

Hi everyone, Kirill as much as I respect you for all the work you do for MiliHist, I feel (in hindsight) the change to "belligerant" was a bad idea. It was done in attempt appease warring sides on the Iran-Iraq War article, unsuprisingly they're still warring lol. On a more serious note, it is wrong to change a template that is shown on loads of articles, because of an edit war occuring on just one article. The problem is with the Iran-Iraq war crowd, not the template.

Why does this matter? Well this "POV push" idea of adding countries who supported other countries to infoboxes is starting to spread. The sources for these are often opinions in themselves and the criteria for "support" is so extensive that pretty much every country could appear on the list on both sides! These infoboxes were made to summarise data for quick reading, not to argue over the finer points of conflcit, that's what the article is for (you can't sum up a complex situation as "support" with just a flag symbol). Ryan4314 (talk) 18:16, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Please take the question up at WT:MILHIST if you'd like the terminology changed again; the previous discussion on the matter came up with reasons for the switch beyond the particular I-I War situation, so it's not really limited to that. Kirill 04:19, 5 April 2008 (UTC)