Difference between revisions of "Template talk:Infobox military unit"

Revision as of 05:08, 13 December 2014

Some questions/thoughts as a starter for ten: --Mia (talk) 11:23, 19 November 2014 (PST)

• We'll need a list of country names to ensure consistency e.g. United Kingdom, Britain, Great Britain? --Mia (talk) 11:23, 19 November 2014 (PST)

"British Army" is always the name of the branch/service, but "United Kingdom" is the best name for the country because it included the whole of Ireland at that time. Data for locations/theatres may need to divide "home" service into Great Britain and Ireland to cater for the Easter Rising.--GavinRobinson (talk) 12:44, 19 November 2014 (PST)

We probably don't actually need the country as the army is really the important differentiator (and the country someone fought with doesn't necessarily match where they are 'from'). If there are no objections I'll take out 'country' --Mia (talk) 10:21, 8 December 2014 (PST)

• What's the best label for the 'regular/territorial' field? --Mia (talk) 11:23, 19 November 2014 (PST)

Not sure. Wikipedia sometimes uses "branch" for this but more often for the same thing as you're using branch for. What you're calling branch is called "service" at IWM Lives.--GavinRobinson (talk) 12:44, 19 November 2014 (PST)

Service probably works, which would free 'branch' for regular/territorial. Another option would be 'category'. These overloaded terms are going to make the documentation more important but hopefully I can include labels in the infoboxes to make it easier. --Mia (talk) 14:35, 19 November 2014 (PST)

I've tweaked the template to include 'service' vs 'branch', and added 'unit' to record brigade, division, regiment, battalion etc while I was at it. The regular/territorial thing might be a bit messy, especially as it seems to have changed over time (and only applied in the UK anyway) but we'll see how it goes. When it's settled I'll update all the documentation to match --Mia (talk) 14:57, 19 November 2014 (PST)

The distinction between Regular Army, Territorial Force and Special Reserve was stable from 1908 to 1919, although very rarely a unit could change from one to another (the only example I know is from 1913). The US National Guard is more or less analogous to the Territorials.--GavinRobinson (talk) 05:16, 21 November 2014 (PST)

I'm mostly offline for the next few days but I'll try to find out if the same applies to Canada etc, unless you know offhand? --Mia (talk) 08:09, 21 November 2014 (PST)

I'm not sure if Canada had anything like that, but I'm fairly sure that if it did, it would be a separate service from the CEF and not a subordinate branch. Similarly, Australia may have had some part-time home units that were separate from the AIF.--GavinRobinson (talk) 12:31, 21 November 2014 (PST)

Canada had 'Reserve' and 'Permanent' Force regiments. --Mia (talk) 08:55, 5 December 2014 (PST)

Types, levels and unusual units

I see we now have No 3 Australian General Hospital‎. It should be quite easy to adapt the infobox to deal with this and all sorts of obscure units. A hospital is effectively a unit, it has war diaries and is part of the tactical hierarchy (in this case, its parent would be Lines of Communication, Western Front). The current way of dividing a unit name into type and level is perfectly logical for infantry but doesn't work for hospitals. It also risks confusion where the same level has different names (eg infantry battalion vs cavalry regiment) or the same name can mean different levels (eg infantry regiment vs cavalry regiment).

I suggest keeping the general type (infantry, cavalry, medical, engineering etc) but maybe changing the field name from "type" to something like "role" or "general type". The second field would be more useful and flexible if it was a specific type, eg:

• Infantry Battalion
• General Hospital
• Field Ambulance
• Field Company
• Field Survey Company
• Tunnelling Company
• etc

These can link to pages explaining exactly what each type of unit is/does. --GavinRobinson (talk) 07:16, 25 November 2014 (PST)

'Type' was always a problematic name (going back to Notes towards modelling information about World War One Battalions so 'role' seems a much better fit to me.

Are you suggesting a different name for 'level' - 'specific type' or something - to cope with that wider range of cases? Terms like 'regiment' and 'battalion' already seem so variable (e.g. between different countries, and within countries) that they always require further context to make sense of them. This would also be a perfect time for linking out to established vocabularies to provide exactly the right interpretation of 'regiment'. --Mia (talk) 16:40, 3 December 2014 (PST)

I'm proposing getting rid of "level" and replacing it with something like "specific type". I think this would be less work to begin with and would be much more flexible and expandable. "Infantry Regiment" would be one specific type, "Cavalry Regiment" would be a different specific type, each linking to a page that explains what it is. The "Infantry Regiment" page would also have to explain that a British infantry regiment is a different thing from a French/German/American infantry regiment.--GavinRobinson (talk) 02:29, 4 December 2014 (PST)

Ok, let's try it. I've got some Australian engineering units I want to try so this would be a good test. I've changed it on http://collaborativecollections.org/WorldWarOne/Template:Infobox_military_unit and http://collaborativecollections.org/WorldWarOne/Template:Battalion --Mia (talk) 08:10, 4 December 2014 (PST)

Service Names

For the values of the "service" field, I recommend using the actual name of the service rather than general terms like Army, Navy etc. Strictly speaking, the AIF isn't the Australian Army, and the CEF isn't the Canadian Army. Also it might be necessary to treat some or all of the following as services in their own right: Red Cross, Volunteer Training Corps, military nursing services, other women's services, various voluntary ambulance units.--GavinRobinson (talk) 07:16, 25 November 2014 (PST)

Does that mean deviating from how it's used on Wikipedia? (Which isn't necessarily a biggie). --Mia (talk) 16:40, 3 December 2014 (PST)

Yes, it would deviate from Wikipedia. There are likely to be lots of cases where the needs of a general encyclopedia are different from a more specialised project like this. Wikipedia dodges a lot of the issues I've raised because its coverage isn't very detailed.--GavinRobinson (talk) 02:23, 4 December 2014 (PST)

Is there any way to add a controlled vocabulary? Freetext could get messy. --Mia (talk) 08:17, 4 December 2014 (PST)

I suspect enumerated values would need some sort of extension that lets users enter template data through a form. It would be good to control names of countries, services, branches, general roles, theatres of war, realationship types. But specific_type is probably best left open because it needs to be flexible, and populating the enumerated list would be hard.--GavinRobinson (talk) 10:34, 6 December 2014 (PST)

Agreed.--Mia (talk) 10:21, 8 December 2014 (PST)

Alternate and variant names

Making a note that this is discussed on Talk:British battalions and regiments in World War I where GavinRobinson (talk) suggested:

• full name: the longest form of the name, including full regiment name and any optional words
• short name: the full name shortened according to the same rules as the page title
• any other alternative names

Names are also discussed on Template talk:Infobox command structure in 'Canonical names for battalions that change regiments?' and 'Unit name changes and restructures'.

My feeling is that stable names (alternate forms, short and long versions) should be in this core infobox, but name changes related to organisational changes (mergers, restructures etc) should be in separate, repeatable infoboxes. --Mia (talk) 17:27, 3 December 2014 (PST)

I think the main infobox will only be able to accommodate names that didn't change. If there were any changes, whether related to organisational changes or not, it will have to refer readers to separate infoboxes. As always, the British are awkward because some unit names didn't change during the war, some changed without any organisational changes, and some changed as a result of organisational changes.--GavinRobinson (talk) 02:16, 4 December 2014 (PST)

Did nicknames change? ie do they belong in the 'relatively stable names that can go in the main infobox' camp or in the 'temporally-specific repeatable infoboxes' camp? --Mia (talk) 08:17, 4 December 2014 (PST)

I reckon the maximum number of official names a British unit would have in this period is 3 (but I could be wrong: my expectations have been confounded a lot recently). Some Wikipedia infoboxes allow multiple values for the same sort of thing by numbering the parameter names, so you could have:

• name1 =
• name1_start_date =
• name1_end_date =
• name2 =
• name2_start_date =
• name2_end_date =
• name3 =
• name3_start_date =
• name3_end_date =

Maybe start with 4 or 5 to be safe, or just expand it in future if necessary. This would make it possible to keep all the changes of official name in the main infobox and get rid of the need for a separate repeatable infobox for name changes. Are there any drawbacks to doing it that way?

I've gone off the idea of showing standardised short names because they're an awkward halfway house between full names and page names. They might cause more confusion than they help.

As for nicknames, maybe have another parameter in the main infobox called something like alternative_names which could contain free text giving a comma separated list of other names. These could also include alternative official identifiers such as the old numbers of British line infantry regiments or letter codes of record offices. I would avoid calling it "nickname" because that's too narrow and might invite all sorts of obscure and derogatory slang.--GavinRobinson (talk) 09:25, 6 December 2014 (PST)

So it's an 'Other names' infobox? I'd add in a free text line for 'reason for change' for each pair but otherwise that looks good. As long as alternate names (including nicknames) are searchable I can't see a need to include them in separate fields. --Mia (talk) 10:21, 8 December 2014 (PST)

I meant it as a possible way of including all names in the main infobox (military_unit). If there's any separate infobox for names it would be better to have a repeatable one for each name. I think people will expect to see at least one name in the main infobox, so keeping them all there would be good if it can be done.

Often there isn't a particular reason for name changes: they just decided to change the system of naming certain units without changing anything else.--GavinRobinson (talk) 08:36, 9 December 2014 (PST)

Ok, I've updated Template:Infobox military unit (diff) to include alternate names and allow for up to five official name changes. I suspect we'll run into a few quirks in how this works so the infobox structure or documentation might need tweaking once there's a body of examples of it in use. --Mia (talk) 11:18, 11 December 2014 (PST)

That looks good. I've just thought that provided all the names are together in this infobox, is there a need to duplicate dates? Could you just have unit_name1, unit_namechange_date1, unit_name2 etc? And start of first name and end of last name should coincide with years active. Or is it better to keep it explicit?--GavinRobinson (talk) 02:43, 13 December 2014 (PST)

Thinking ahead to future queries, it's probably better to keep it explicit to make searches for date ranges easier; we also can't assume that anyone editing the records is interested in the names either side so they might not add entries for every name change which would make dependencies tricky.

I haven't actually finished the infobox template changes but the infoboxes can be used anyway now the overall structure is set. --Mia (talk) 05:08, 13 December 2014 (PST)

Reviewing previously created pages to update data structures

For now, this is mostly a note to make that it will have to be done at some point. --Mia (talk) 08:17, 4 December 2014 (PST)

Dates Active

Will there be cutoff dates for the start and end of the First World War era, or will this reflect the whole existence of a unit? If there are cutoff dates, how to indicate that a unit started before or ended after?--GavinRobinson (talk) 05:44, 6 December 2014 (PST)

My notes on the original 'modelling' doc say 'If no start or end dates, assume it was applicable throughout the war'. It would be best to state it explicitly in the infobox, especially for automated imports. Would 'predates the war' and 'postdates the war' work in those circumstances? --Mia (talk) 06:53, 6 December 2014 (PST)

How are dates formatted? Would it cause problems if a parameter value contained text that isn't part of a date? If not then "before 4/8/1914" and "after 31/12/1919" might be good to start with. These dates might be refined in future.--GavinRobinson (talk) 10:17, 6 December 2014 (PST)

The original Wikipedia templates seem to cope with text strings or dates (and the underlying code is PHP which should be able to tell the difference). --Mia (talk) 10:21, 8 December 2014 (PST)

Size at full strength

How precise does this need to be?--GavinRobinson (talk) 05:44, 6 December 2014 (PST)

Indicative/approximate only - it's mostly for people new to WWI research or to the organisation of units by a particular country --Mia (talk) 06:12, 6 December 2014 (PST)

Disbanded

Does this duplicate end_date?--GavinRobinson (talk) 05:44, 6 December 2014 (PST)

I think it needs to go into 'unit changes', but I haven't sorted out whether one infobox format should deal with organisational changes as well as name changes as they are often, but not always linked. In the interests of not over-thinking things it might be best to have one infobox for 'unit changes' that can record name changes, disbanding, forming, etc --Mia (talk) 06:51, 6 December 2014 (PST)

Automatic wikilinks

It might be useful if the template automatically turns the values of these parameters into wikilinks:

• country
• service
• type
• specific_type

--GavinRobinson (talk) 05:44, 6 December 2014 (PST)

I'll do it with the others (assuming I have time before the end of the week/my fellowship here) --Mia (talk) 10:22, 8 December 2014 (PST)

Doesn't matter when, as long as I know not to put link markup in myself. (That goes for anywhere else I've suggested this too.)--GavinRobinson (talk) 08:29, 9 December 2014 (PST)