Template talk:Infobox Military Conflict

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Contents 1 Commander field? 2 Questionable infobox 3 Size matters 4 Required vs. optional fields 5 New fields 6 Location field 7 Section headers 8 Remove casus belli? 9 partof 10 Casualties 11 Explanation of dagger/cross symbol 12 Meaning of Combatants 1 and 2? 13 Third casualty figure 14 Alignment 15 The use of flag icons is not recommended? 16 Casualties box only for figures? 17 Title 18 Casus belli and WWII 19 Refugees 20 infobox vs opening paragraph 21 Casualties field 22 Casus belli 23 Why is the template not forming? 24 commas not needed in list format? 25 "Partof" question 26 Date field

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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?

[edit] 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)

[edit] Explanation of dagger/cross symbol

Although I guessed what the † symbol meant when I saw it in one of these infoboxes in an article, I think an explanation should be given in the infobox itself for readers who may be confused by it. - dcljr (talk) 20:28, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

A valid point, but I'm not sure where we could insert an explanation without breaking the aesthetics in horrible ways. And would we want it to always be shown, even if the symbol isn't used, or just turned on (possibly by an extra parameter)? Kirill Lokshin 22:55, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Meaning of Combatants 1 and 2?

I've never had the occasion to use one of these templates, but I'm curious: is there some guideline on which combatant is #1 and which is #2? Melchoir 00:08, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Nope, it's completely arbitrary. Personally, I can't see why it would ever really matter which one was listed on which side; and trying something simple like "attacker listed first" would just lead to endless edit-warring in cases where the historical circumstances were unusual or unclear. Kirill Lokshin 00:17, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

This is true. Melchoir 00:46, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Obviously, the good guys should be listed first, and the bad guys second. That shouldn't be a problem, right? --Kevin Myers | (complaint dept.) 03:49, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Would it shock you terribly to know that your idea is basically how these are used for fictional battles? ;-) Kirill Lokshin 03:53, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, well, I guess I'm onto something then! --K

[edit] Third casualty figure

Have run into a sit in Iraq War where the civ casualties don't really clearly belong in either column - one proposal was to have them in a cell which ran across the width of both cols (like the notes cell) in order to not attribute these civs as 'belonging' to one side or the other, or automatically assume that all were killed by the coalition. I tried using the notes field, but typeface is tiny & I am totally inept at editing this stuff. Any help/guidance would be appreciated.Bridesmill 15:47, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

There's a casualties3 field that was introduced just recently for that purpose, but it's currently disabled if the other casualty fields are filled in. If you want, I can turn that off and allow it to be included in all cases. Kirill Lokshin 16:04, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I think that would be useful, esp in cases where there is a third group of cas/victim (like currently in Iraq) which cannot be put in either column without raising some POV hackles, or which is victims of both sides. Thanks muchly.Bridesmill 16:15, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Done. We may still need to play with the formatting a bit; I'm not sure how neat it'll look with all three fields set. Kirill Lokshin 16:19, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Works for me - trying it at Iraq War. 'perhaps' a line across the top but maybe I'm getting pedantic

. Thanks again.Bridesmill 16:35, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I thought of doing that, but that would be the same formatting as the notes field, which might make it more confusing. Maybe different styles of lines (single/double, normal/bold) would be worth trying? Kirill Lokshin 16:39, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Good point - only thing I could think of would be to have 'notes' on a blue background, or have all of the lines thicker so that the lines internal to a subject (Cas, combattants, etc) could be thin. (If I'm making any sense ;-))Bridesmill 16:45, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I've made the internal lines dotted and added one above the joint casualties field; does that seem to work? Kirill Lokshin 17:27, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Looks good - I'm sure somebody won't like it, but works fine for me; not sure how else this prob could be solved. Well done!Bridesmill 17:42, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Alignment

The alignment in some of these table cells is inconsistent. See e.g. Swiss peasant war of 1653: there is a clear offset between the baselines of "Location:" and the text to the right. Could someone fix this, please? Lupo 11:32, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Very strange. I can't see any offset, and, looking at the markup, can't imagine any reason for one to appear. A screenshot might help with this. Kirill Lokshin 12:06, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Indeed you're right. When I log out and load the page, the baseline offset disappears. Must be a problem with my own CSS, then. Sorry for the bother. Lupo 14:33, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Ah, ok, that explains it. Maybe you're overriding some of the .infobox classes? Kirill Lokshin 14:46, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

No, but I had a typo in the line height specification for <th>. It's old stuff from the early days of monobook, probably not even needed anymore, but I'm too lazy to take it out. Fixed the typo, and now it looks fine. Lupo 14:49, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The use of flag icons is not recommended?

I'm curious as to why this is so. The use of images to spruce up articles when possible seems to be otherwise universally encouraged on the wikipedia. Militia or batallion coats-of-arms and national flags are among the most accessible fair-use images for most military conflicts. What is the origin of the recommendation? -- Kendrick7 18:44, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

A number of reasons, actually, that have come up over the lifetime of the template:

• The extra images will usually increase the size of an already-long infobox (often significantly so), driving it further into the text of the article. This becomes especially obvious when the infobox is followed by one or more campaignboxes. If the flags are made smaller so as to avoid this problem, they become unrecognizable.
• The images usually don't align properly with the text, leading to a cluttered and uneven appearance.
• The box appears incomplete if some listed parties have flags but others don't; but this is often the case, as many participants may not have usable flags.
• The flags are often ahistorical (which is, admittedly, more a concern with how some people select them than with their use in general).
• Many flag images, particularly historical ones, are not available under a free license; their use as icons in infoboxes is considered "decorative" and forbidden by the fair use criteria.

(Which is not to say that the flags are forbidden, of course, but merely "not recommended". Past experience suggests that it's generally a good idea to avoid them unless you really need them and know what you're doing in regard to their layout within the box.) Kirill Lokshin 18:54, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Personally I like the flag icons--I agree with Kendrick they do spruce up the info-box. But I guess they do tend to make an info-box even longer. I actually thought the style was to include them, guess I should stop adding them to all the info-boxes I edit. Although if the conflict just involves 2 states/2 flags it might be nice to allow flags on those infobxes. Just a thought. Publicus 19:55, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

If they are included, it's best to keep them to a fairly small size, so the box length issue doesn't become too problematic. Kirill Lokshin 20:01, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Casualties box only for figures?

I have a doubt on the casualty section. Is it only for concrete figures - no matter how diverse the different estimates - or can it include vague statements about casualties that doesn't specify a particular figure?

I think we should just stick to numbers to avoid bloating up the infobox any further and include relevant statements in a casualty or relevant section in the article. --Idleguy 08:50, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

It can be either, as appropriate in the particular article. While concrete figures are given most of the time, there are other ways to describe casualties, particularly for battles where limited information is available (e.g. "Almost all killed" and so forth). The infobox is supposed to be a summary of the article, so there's no real reason to omit things from it merely because a neat number isn't available. Kirill Lokshin 12:28, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Title

I would like to propose one small change: replace the current title with |+ Infobox Military Conflict. This is by far the more common way of creating titles for infoboxes, and it cleans up the code a little bit. Ingoolemo ^talk 03:55, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Meh. I don't really like the floating-outside-the-box formatting, and I don't think it's popular among other project members either (note that all the other military infoboxes use the same markup. Given that this template tends to have one or more campaignboxes following it, I think a fully bordered layout provides a much cleaner design, since the stacked boxes actually look like a continous block. Kirill Lokshin 11:43, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Casus belli and WWII

This field is giving us headaches over at World War II. Casus belli is almost by definition POV, because it can be something untrue, like the Gleiwitz incident. I'd like a way to put "Invasion of Poland" in the infobox, but to be fair we can't really say that the Invasion of Poland was a casus belli for Germany, the US, or the USSR. See where I'm heading? My hope is that this discussion area will be a less heated, more academic place where we can talk about it without the pressure of coming to a solution. Perhaps a field labelled "Cause" should be added? Haber 03:22, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

For all but the most trivial conflicts, the actual "cause" of the war needs a section (or even an article in its own right), not a two-line infobox field; so that's not going to work. As far as the WWII issue, though: have you considered simply not using the casus field? It's unused on most wars, and was really added more for the benefit of the more formalized diplomacy surrounding 18th century warfare than for general use in all cases. Kirill Lokshin 03:32, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice. It looks like it might stay off WWII. Haber 22:56, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Refugees

I encountered recent news articles on the millions of Iraqis displaced by the current war[1] and thought these should be used to update the Iraq War article. I thought these figures should be added to the concise information box on the right - your template - since the number of refugees is one of the objective measurements that can be made of the scope of a conflict. Unfortunately, the templating system does not readily allow this information from being added there. This needs to be remedied. Mike Serfas 22:04, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Meh. If the editors of an article want to put the number in the infobox (I suspect they won't—it's not a particularly useful statistic when compared to the numbers of dead or wounded), they can just use one of the (many) existing casualty field configurations for it. As a standalone field, it would be fairly useless, though, as it's only the handful of most recent wars for which meaningful statistics on this topic are available; older conflicts are considered well-documented if there's a ballpark estimate of the fatalities! Kirill Lokshin 23:48, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] infobox vs opening paragraph

It seems to me that with the spread of infoboxes, we should probably rethink the guidelines for the opening paragraph. for example, the suggested opening paragraph for War pages is:

The opening paragraph (or lead section) should concisely convey:

1. The name of the war (including alternate names).
2. When did it happen?
3. Who fought in it?
4. Why did it happen?
5. What was the outcome?
6. What was its significance, if any?

As right beside it is and infobox with most of the same information.

Infobox Military Conflict |conflict= |partof= |image= |caption= |date= |place= |casus= |territory= |result= |combatant1= |combatant2= |combatant3= |commander1= |commander2= |commander3= |strength1= |strength2= |strength3= |casualties1= |casualties2= |casualties3= |notes=

Perhaps with the spread of infoboxes, which are very good at names and dates and numbers, we can start focussing the opening paragraphs on the things that are not well summarized in the infobox, such as

• Why it is important
• Why it happened
• What were the consequences
• Interesting facts

Frequently, some of the numbers, names, and dates in the infobox will be in these explanations, but there may not be any need to use the opening paragraphs to state numbers, names, and dates that are already better summarized in the infobox. The Gomm 03:09, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

The lead and the infobox are supposed to be redundant, in some sense—both are meant to be summaries of the full content of the article. The infobox form is more suited to presenting raw numbers, for example—and hence well-developed lead sections tend to omit the numerical data—but a great deal of the information (particularly names and dates) should appear in both. (In other words: a user who does not, or cannot, view the infobox should still be able to get a good summary of the article from the text of the lead section.)

Beyond that, the structure guidelines are explicitly intended as starting points for developing the article, not exact strictures for what it must include. Balancing the content of the lead and the infobox is a somewhat subtle issue, and one best considered when the article is nearly complete. As a general rule, the editors working on an article at that level will have a good understanding of the extent to which the guidelines are applicable to the specific article in question, and will proceed accordingly. You can take a look at the (more recent) FAs written by project members to see just how varied the lead sections become at that point. Kirill Lokshin 03:35, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Casualties field

As i understand it the word casualties only applies to people: it means KIA, WIA or POW. So it's not applicable to hardware destroyed during a battle. Yet for want of a better field its being used for ships sunk, tanks destroyed, aircraft shot down etc... Shouldn't it be changed to Losses, that has a broader meaning and would also cover material losses? Or maybe an extra field should be added?

Regards.Raoulduke47 00:40, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

The convention is to use the field for (certain) hardware losses—mainly for ships sunk—regardless of the technicality; drawing a distinction may be possible, but is probably too subtle for the general reader. In any case: for land battles, losses of hardware are typically not given in the infobox anyways; it's not that useful of a statistic for most historical stuff (being meaningful only for WWII and later conflicts), and most editors prefer not to give extra lists of numbers in the template. Kirill Lokshin 01:09, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Casus belli

Can't we all speak English here? I'd love to hear any reason why we should have some Latin phrase instead of just "Cause:" ... it would make things far simpler for the millions of readers who don't know what "casus belli" means. Why should they have to click on a link to find the definition? Matt Yeager ♫ (Talk?) 05:48, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Because it's not the "cause" of the war that the field is intended for, obviously! ;-)

(No, really. There's even an explicit note in the instructions: "This field should not be used... for the underlying causes of a war". It's intended exclusively for use with the legal concept of casus belli; I suppose it could be rewritten as "justification for acts of war given by the party declaring it" or something, but that's not really suitable as a field label. The fact that the term doesn't have a good English equivalent is why it's so commonly used in literature on the topic, incidentally.) Kirill Lokshin 05:54, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

What about "War justifications"? Or people can add that in parentheses after "Casus belli". --Timeshifter 17:15, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Eh, dunno. It seems like a rather clunky translation; using the formal terminology seems like a neater option in this case. Anyone that doesn't know what it means can just click through to the article describing it (as with any other technical term in an artice), so I'm not convinced that we necessarily need to translate it. Kirill Lokshin 17:21, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I guess Casus belli is good so that when people do decide to fill in that option there is less confusion as to what to fill in there. That may help editors, but it still confuses most readers. So I guess editors can add "(war justifications)" after casus belli. That way, readers get some kind of translation immediately, and can get more info from clicking the link.

However, those 2 added words, (war justifications), matter spacewise in an infobox. So I have another request. For "casus belli" could you put a break between those 2 words?: <br>. Or something similar, in order to put casus and belli on 2 lines. This way there will be a wider space for text on the right side of that section of the infobox. Compare infoboxes with and without casus belli. The ones without it have more space on the right side of that section of the infobox. So breaking that phrase to 2 lines should help.

That break would be like the one for "territorial changes" in the Six-Day War infobox.

See this example and discussion of an infobox:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Iraq_War#Shorter_.22results.22_section_in_infobox

I am trying to shorten the infobox. Publicus there also likes to find ways to shorten the infobox. --Timeshifter 18:18, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, I suppose the question of whether it's worthwhile to present the translation is a philosophical one moreso than a technical one.

In any case, the second request is quite sensible. I've added a linebreak there; it the effect close to what you had in mind? Kirill Lokshin 18:23, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! It is way cool to be working on another page, and see a recently-requested change occur while editing on that page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Iraq_War#Shorter_.22results.22_section_in_infobox --Timeshifter 18:35, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Why is the template not forming?

See Siege of Lathom House and let me know if you see what I'm doing wrong. Thanks in advance. --Leifern 16:41, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Fixed; there were some mismatched brackets in the text. Kirill Lokshin 16:47, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] commas not needed in list format?

I notice that this infobox example, and many uses of it use commas when presenting comments in list format, such as:

Strength
12,800 infantry,
6,200 cavalry,
60 guns

While commas certainly are necessary when presenting items in text (e.g. Strength was 12,800 infantry, 6,200 cavalry, and 60 guns.) once we start inserting breaks and making it into a list format, I think the commas are no longer needed.

Strength
12,800 infantry
6,200 cavalry
60 guns

List items are not commonly followed by a comma. Is there some reason I am not seeing for including commas in content that is in list format, please let me know. -Gomm 17:37, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

There are actually two reasons why there's a guideline that commas should be added:

1. They're needed for non-graphical browsers (or, more broadly, browsers that don't format HTML linebreaks as one would expect); this includes text-only browsers, browsers on portable devices, and screen-reader software, all of which have been known to run the content of table cells together.
2. They're needed in cases where individual items might scroll over onto multiple lines. This isn't (usually) a big deal with strength and casualties, since those typically intersperse words and numbers; but for the lists of commanders, it's not uncommon to have a single commander's name scroll onto multiple lines, making it very difficult to distinguish among several entries if no punctuation is present.

(The alternative, of course, would be to have a true bulleted list; but they're fairly difficult to format here—normal MediaWiki bulleting doesn't work properly when passed in as a template argument—so commas are the simpler solution.) Kirill Lokshin 17:43, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Gosh!! And in all this time nobody told me I was removing perfectly good commas. -Gomm 21:37, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Heh. It's no big deal, in any case. :-) Kirill Lokshin 21:49, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay, but should we really put a comma after every commander and every country in the Napoleonic Wars infobox? -Gomm 04:33, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I'd just go ahead and put in the commas. It's a few minutes worth of work, harmless at worst, and, at least for the commanders, actually somewhat necessary; if the images aren't displayed, for example, the names (which wrap onto multiple lines) become ambiguous. Kirill Lokshin 04:38, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I was thinking in terms of aesthetics. Editors have made them so darn pretty, that adding commas would seem like painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa. -Gomm 05:03, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Heh. I tend to favor function over form in articles, particularly for little things like that; and, given how many articles do just fine with commas, I'm not convinced that readers looking at the properly displayed infobox really care that they're there. It's not really a big deal either way, though.

Try loading up an article in Lynx sometimes, though; that'll cure any misconceptions about it being pretty! ;-) Kirill Lokshin 05:11, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Lynx! Somebody still remembers Lynx! Cool! -Gomm 05:25, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Partof" question

Is there any way to get the "part of" field to appear without the preceding "Part of"? In Iraq War, we are currently leaning towards something like "Identified by the Bush administration as part of the "War on Terrorism" for the "Partof" field, but using "Partof" or adding it to the Title field with a <br> are both a little unaesthetic. (See here for example). Thanks, TheronJ 20:19, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, anything is possible, the question is whether it's a good idea to actually do it. I would say it's not, for two reasons:

• Technical: past experience with overrideable field labels in infoboxes shows that, given a free-form field, editors will often use it for things completely unrelated to the original purpose. This greatly impairs the modifiability of the infobox; if we have no idea what a particular field is being used for, we often can't make any changes to it without running the risk breaking existing templates (which, to make things worse, we can't identify).
• Philosophical: infoboxes are not, generally speaking, intended for points that require significant explanatory material; the format simply isn't well-adapted for them. In general, if something requires massive weasel-wording in order to be made to "fit" under some particular field, it's probably better off not being forced into it.

It may be feasible to add some sort of simple flag (e.g. changing "Part of" to "Allegedly part of") for cases such as this; but I don't think allowing it to be used with no label at all is advisable. Kirill Lokshin 20:46, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

• Kirill, do you think we're better off forgetting about the campaign box in Iraq War? I think an outside opinion or two from MILHIST would be very helpful. (Let me know if you need a guide to the debate). Thanks, TheronJ 20:51, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
  • The campaignbox? I wasn't aware that there were any disputes about that, since it's only for the war itself; do you mean the "partof" field in the infobox? (That's not related to campaigns, though; so I'm not sure where the confusion would come from.) Kirill Lokshin 20:54, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

    I can see the editors should have come here sooner. As I understand the dispute, it is whether Iraq War should include the War on Terror in the "partof" field. The page has a campaign box discussing the individual elements in the Iraq War. As I understand the arguments, the "include" argument is roughly that Bush, as Commander in Chief, has identified the Iraq War as "part of" the larger War on Terror campaign, and that there is no neutral term available. The "exclude" argument is that the issue is discussed in the article text, that there is dispute about whether the Iraq War is actually properly classified as part of the War on Terror, and that the term is propogandistic. See generally Talk: Iraq War. I suspect that some input from you and the other MilHist coordinators would be very helpful. Thanks, TheronJ 21:26, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, there are a few related issues here.

The term "campaign" has two slightly different meanings, which seem to be the source of some confusion here. The first (and older) one refers merely to a series of engagements that form part of a war; the origin here is from the idea of a "campaigning season". This sort of campaign is not really named by the parties involved, but tends to acquire a historiographic name just as battles and wars do; see, for example, Ulm Campaign or Gettysburg Campaign. It is this sort of campaign that a battle can be said to be "part of".

The second meaning of "campaign" is limited to more modern warfare, and refers to a designation used by a particular armed force for a series of operations; it crops up in things like campaign streamers or medals. This type of campaign is named by the party in question, but is quite obviously based on that party's perspective, and is generally only used in historical works that present that perspective. (It's usually the case, incidentally, that the "official" campaign names used by different parties to a conflict won't match up; historians that aren't working from a particular party's perspective tend to avoid them in favor of the first type of campaign—or theater designations—for that reason. This is common even among allied parties; for example, the U.S. and the U.K. define the "Normandy campaign" differently.)

Beyond that, of course, is the historiographical question itself. The Iraq War is still ongoing; it's still too early for a historiographical consensus to have formed about what, exactly, its relationship to other events is. It may be that, with a few decades of hindsight, it'll be considered "Part of the War on Terror", or "Part of the Pan-Islamic Jihad", or "Part of World War III", or something entirely different—or that it will be regarded as an entirely separate conflict, unconnected to anything else—but it's simply too soon to be able to make a definitive statement in that regard.

From a utilitarian standpoint, I would suggest not using the "partof" field here and instead, as someone suggested, working the needed links into the "casus" field. Infoboxes are not well-suited to describing aspects of a conflict whose very existence is a matter of dispute; we can deal neatly with differing numbers, or disagreements about the results, but not really something so basic as whether the conflict is part of a larger one. The issue can be better covered in the body of the article, where there aren't such dramatic space limitations; and giving it such prominent play in the infobox somewhat overshadows the fact that it's supposed to be a summary table for the actual war, not the associated politcal debate. Kirill Lokshin 22:02, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

What do you think of using an alternative, custom made one with a field set up specifically for the campaign? It would not use the partof field, so it would avoid that problem. Given that the Iraq Resolution authorized the use of force to "prosecute the War on Terrorism" and service in Iraq was included, along with other parts of the WOT, as eligible places for receiving the GWOT Expeditionary Medal. Given these things, its clear that there is a campaign which encompasses these larger operation. I can respect your point about the changing views of history, if this is viewed as a part of a larger war sometime in the future this campaign will probably become irrelevant and merely melded into the larger war. But given that we aren't at this point, I think its important to note that these operations are connected in that they are part of the same campaign being carried out by the USA. ~Rangeley (talk) 00:10, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Meh. It's essentially the same thing, but with the wording changed slightly; I don't really think that the fundamental issue under dispute is whether the exact "part of" terminology is used. Rather, it's the conflation of the two different meanings of "campaign" that I mentioned above.

In other words: it is the U.S. operations in Iraq which are designated—by the U.S.—as part of something called the WoT. That doesn't mean that either (a) other involved parties have made that same designation or that (b) the historical judgement (which we don't have, at this point) acknowledges it as a term for the overall conflict. The war as a whole goes beyond U.S. operations, so applying only the U.S. designation to it is incorrect; because the "campaign" here is an officially designated one, rather than a historically accepted one, it's not really appropriate to use it as a label for both sides of the fighting.

(Not that I particularly intend to try and push the point here; frankly, I don't care all that much what you guys do with the infobox. But I do think that equating the official designation used by one party with the entire conflict is overly simplistic.) Kirill Lokshin 01:55, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

A possibly helpful example of what I'm talking about: we don't generally say that, e.g. the Attack on Pearl Harbor was part of the Greater East Asia War, despite the fact that the term was the official designation used by the party that launched it. (Admittedly, the situation is somewhat different—with WWII, we have the benefit of seeing the entire narrative—but the principle that parties don't necessarily get to name conflicts still carries over, I think.) Kirill Lokshin 02:00, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Well the thing is, I am not trying to conflate meanings of campaigns. I recognize the difference between the "designation" sort of thing, which is more or less a government program when you think about it, and a neutral sort of name of a series of battles or wars. I dont think that the USA gets to decide the name of the war, or whether this is part of a wider war, ie whether it fits into a series of battles as determined by history. This is, ofcourse, determined by history. But in the lack of historical consensus, what we do have is the "campaign" or program under which many things are being carried out. I think that if there was some sort of lack of clarity at the time of Pearl Harbor as to whether there was a larger war, we probably would have noted it as carried out under Japan's expansion campaign (whether we would have used their name or a different name would have been a matter for common name to decide) because this would have aided in our understanding - to know that its all part of a calculated effort on Japan's part and not isolated events, atleast as far as Japan was concerned. The same applies here, these things are being carried out under the same program. It may or may not be regarded as a wider war someday, but in the absense of a consensus on a wider war, we should state what we do have, and thats that it is part of a campaign. ~Rangeley (talk) 02:17, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree with that, broadly speaking. My point, though, isn't that we shouldn't acknowledge how this is being carried out from the U.S. perspective; rather, I'm saying that, because of the special circumstances here (no settled historical verdict available, official designation being widely controversial, etc.), it's not really a good idea to put that designation into the infobox in that way. It makes for a better article, in my opinion, to simply have the issue fully discussed in the text, without resorting to trying to find some weasel-worded manner of shoving it into an artificially short template slot. (This is largely the same reason why we don't have a real "cause" field in the infobox; explaining the issue in an accurate manner simply requires more space than we have available.) Kirill Lokshin 02:30, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Alright, I think I can agree to that aspect. However, "broader" issues do exist here, such as whether we can recognize it to be a part of the campaign within the article itself. Some have argued that we cannot because many do not regard it as a part of the wider war, but this is something that I see as false as we are talking about a seperate issue - its inclusion in a campaign. Further, the War on Terrorism article itself is about the campaign, not the concept of a "war against terrorists," so the Iraq War is discussed as being authorized under the campaign there. Do you agree that these should remain as is, given that we have reliable sources backing up the idea that they are a part of the campaign? ~Rangeley (talk) 02:37, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't see any real problem with that, so long as it's made clear what the provenance of the term is. So something like "the coalition operations in Iraq were designated as being part of the WoT" would be acceptable, while "the war in Iraq was an aspect of the broader WoT" may not be. Within the article, though, there's much less of a space limitation, so you can go into the full details of when and how the designation was made, the various authorizations, etc., without needing to trim everything down to soundbite length. Kirill Lokshin 02:53, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

If you could add a section to the Iraq War talk page detailing this it might be helpful in settling this issue. Timeshifter quoted the above portion where you suggested it be placed in the casus belli, but clarification on the campaign issue could be helpful as some people continue to, as I said, confuse the campaign and the idea of a wider war. ~Rangeley (talk) 03:02, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

It'd probably save time if you just copied over any of my comments that you think would be useful; I'm not exactly sure what people are looking for. Kirill Lokshin 03:06, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I summarized what you said here, if anything is wrong feel free to correct. ~Rangeley (talk) 03:27, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Date field

For some reason this template is protected, somebody please add an if conditional to the date, not all battles have known dates (for example fiction) thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 22:43, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Done. Kirill Lokshin 23:08, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Aye. Cheers! thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 01:17, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Articles about fiction should not be using this infobox. --Chris Griswold (☎☓) 09:36, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Says what? Can you provide unequivocal evidence this is intended only for real-world? thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 09:46, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

There isn't any, at least not specific to this template; if there's something general about infoboxes that WP:WAF is trying to do, that's an issue on that end.

(In reality, this infobox significantly predates WAF, and most certainly was designed to handle fictional events.) Kirill Lokshin 18:53, 24 February 2007 (UTC)