Template talk:Infobox theatre of war/doc

Possible fields to start with

• ToW_name – the most common name for the theatre of war --Mia (talk) 08:28, 18 December 2014 (PST)

• date_entered_ToW – the date when the unit moved there, not when overall activity started
• date_left_ToW – the date when the unit left there, not when overall activity ended

This should probably be more specific to avoid confusion between e.g. when the Western Front became a theatre of war and when a particular unit moved there.

Also, how 'engaged' is engaged, or are the source records pretty clear on this? --Mia (talk) 17:14, 3 December 2014 (PST)

• location – ideally, a link to a geonames address? Failing that... ? --Mia (talk) 17:14, 3 December 2014 (PST)

• ToW_code was suggested by GavinRobinson to record the theatre code number from UK National Archives' WO 95 series --Mia (talk) 08:29, 18 December 2014 (PST)

Officially recorded dates of entry to theatres are usually when a unit disembarked from a ship, not when they were actually in action. A soldier's entitlement for most campaign medals started as soon as he set foot on land. For once, this makes things simpler.

For the purposes of recording a unit's location, I wouldn't worry too much about whether or when an area was officially classed as a theatre of war for campaign medal purposes. Service in Britain and Ireland will need to be recorded even though these were not theatres, even during the Easter Rising. The "campaigns" section in soldiers' service records usually includes home service as well as theatres, so there is a precedent. Also some units went to a country before it was officially a theatre of war. eg 42nd Division landed in Egypt in September 1914 but that wasn't a theatre until November.

Theatres sometimes coincide with countries, but only roughly at best, and sometimes not at all. eg Western Front effectively includes all of France and Belgium, but Gallipoli is a very specific part of Turkey.--GavinRobinson (talk) 02:11, 4 December 2014 (PST)

Ok, so we don't need to overthink this one. I've changed start/end date to 'date_entered_ToW' which hopefully makes it clear that it's about a unit entering a location.

Are there any official lists of coordinates for those theatres of war? Something describing polygons would be ideal. I know the Muninn Project had some location stuff but I'm not sure of its geographic coverage, I'll ask them on twitter. --Mia (talk) 02:37, 4 December 2014 (PST)

In the meantime, does the current structure look stable enough to update the infobox template so you can get on with the import? --Mia (talk) 08:21, 4 December 2014 (PST)

It would be useful to have a human readable name for the theatre. This might be a good place for enumerated values. I'm currently storing theatres as number codes shown at Theatres_of_War#War_Diaries (this is more useful than the medal card codes because it already includes a value for home service in Britain). I could expand them before importing, or the template could take a number as a parameter and expand it, which would keep names consistent. Eventually there might need to a free text parameter for more specific areas of a theatre, but not yet.--GavinRobinson (talk) 03:29, 13 December 2014 (PST)