Difference between revisions of "Template talk:Battalion"

Revision as of 17:23, 23 November 2014

Further context and discussion for this template is in a commentable doc at towards modelling information about World War One Battalions --Mia (talk) 11:27, 4 November 2014 (PST)

Are Date mobilised, Date demobilisation started, Date demobilisation ended too much detail for these infoboxes, even as very, very optional fields? It's not already in Wikipedia so it's not duplicating anything, but the gist of 'where someone's unit' was may be conveyed by 'theatres' over time, but does that assume too much knowledge about what not being in a theatre meant? --Mia (talk) 11:22, 4 November 2014 (PST)

I now think date mobilised isn't worth recording at all at unit level. Units that were only raised during the war won't have one. If a unit existed before the war, it's usually safe to assume it was mobilised immediately after declaration of war. It is worth paying attention to start and end of demobilisation, as in the sending home of soldiers who enlisted for the duration of the war, as this is a significant part of lived experience, and the end date doesn't necessarily match the end of the unit as an organization. Dates can often be found in war diaries or published histories, and might be included in Operation War Diary.--GavinRobinson (talk) 11:15, 5 November 2014 (PST)

I agree! --Mia (talk) 15:26, 5 November 2014 (PST)

I've got infoboxes imported from Wikipedia but Lua (used for the extension that serves them) is throwing errors. Once that's sorted I need to tweak the format of the infoboxes e.g. http://collaborativecollections.org/WorldWarOne/index.php?title=Template:Infobox_military_unit --Mia (talk) 02:36, 5 November 2014 (PST)

Similarly, does adding a 'Source' or 'evidence' field for e.g. theatre, hierarchy changes just clutter up the infobox? Or is there an advantage to having that as structured data? --Mia (talk) 11:27, 4 November 2014 (PST)

I think it's very important for users to be easily able to trace every fact back to a reliable source (IWM Lives is right to insist on this). Would it be feasible to give users the option to show or hide sources? That would be the best of both worlds. The main sources for these things will be standard sources such as war diaries and Becke's orders of battle. These might benefit from being entered in a standard form.--GavinRobinson (talk) 11:15, 5 November 2014 (PST)

Standard wikipedia referencing isn't very intrusive, and some people might already be used to it. The editor provides decent support for most forms of evidence, but I haven't tried it for unpublished sources that can't be used on Wikipedia. Would you have a sample citation for the Orders of Battle handy to test the citation pop-up?

I think there'd be more debate around evidence linking specific people to units in cases where disambiguating people with similar names is tricky, but hopefully the diaries or letters themselves, as well as the information on the hosting site, would provide enough context to make that process easier. --Mia (talk) 15:26, 5 November 2014 (PST)

I could also look at adding the mediawiki extension that makes citing sources easier. --Mia (talk) 10:19, 12 November 2014 (PST)

Yes, Wikipedia style footnotes would be good as they allow multiple sources, and free text to explain things or point out that another source has got it wrong. Would ref tags inside infobox data fields cause any problems? Becke's Orders of Battle are published works with volume and page numbers, so in print a subsequent abbreviated reference might just be "Becke, Order of Battle, 2a, 53." or if an abbreviation was defined in the list of abbreviations at the start, maybe just "OB, 2a, 53." It's likely to be cited so often on this site that a standard abbreviated form would be useful. Maybe a wiki template specifically for citing it.--GavinRobinson (talk) 02:53, 19 November 2014 (PST)

I've added a source on 1/4th Battalion, Royal Berkshire Regiment, British infantry - it doesn't look too obtrusive. (It's also made me realise that I need to change the styling of Template:Infobox command structure as the date is included in the header) I'm updating Infobox Command structure/doc to test repeated boxes for parents and grandparent units (e.g. brigade, division), also adding start and end date rather than a single date. --Mia (talk) 16:23, 23 November 2014 (PST)