Template talk:WikiProject Military history/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

change image size for small size?

I noticed at Talk:Rwandan Genocide that the images on this template don't appear to change to 25 px when the small=yes parameter is used. See Template:Africa noticeboard for an example. The template markup used here is pretty... esoteric... so I was hoping someone else could implement the modification. Thanks, BanyanTree 20:51, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Why would we want to shrink the images, though? There's not going to be any practical gain in size—when the box is that small, the line-wrapping of the text controls the box size far more than a few extra pixels on the image; and 45px is (or was, the last time I checked) the standard size for images in "userbox"-sized templates, in any case. The reduced recognizability of images at 25px versus 45px isn't worth it, in my opinion. Kirill Lokshin 20:56, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure why the project templates I looked at appeared to have adopted 25px as a standard for small versions. The only clear benefit would be standardization across templates on an article. The class letter, e.g. "B", would stay the same size, if I'm reading the markup correctly, while the map image is, frankly, pretty much indecipherable even at 45px, unless you already know what you're looking at, so I don't really see an issue of recognizability. It's not a big deal and I'm happy to let things settle while people get used to the the small parameter. - BanyanTree 21:17, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, I suppose standardization is a decent enough reason (although the standard size should be 30px, not 25px, at least according to Wikipedia:Talk page templates). In any case, I've changed the template to shrink the images in small mode; as far as I can tell, it makes absolutely no difference in terms of how large the size of the box is (and photographs at that size look like grayscale blobs, for the most part). Kirill Lokshin 21:20, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

I tend to agree. The class letters look good, along with the simpler emblems, but I previewed the task forces at World War II and you're completely right about the tank looking like a smudge. My personal opinion is that the images are secondary to the the text and wikilinks, so I'm not that fussed about how they look, but I imagine that some editors would disagree. Thanks for testing this out. - BanyanTree 21:33, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

GIF too small, not clear?

As a retired NCO, I found this tiny GIF to be too small and undistinctive to clarify the basic idea of military history. It appears to represent only one half of a usual military map, and not clearly. The opponent should be clearly represented by red arrows, along the axis of advance; the defender by blue lines, similar to battlefield maps at Gettysburgh, perhaps one of the most studied battles in military history. Even that represents a counter-attack, but then, the symbol right now is tough even for imagery specialists to make heads or tails of. If it were made bigger and clearer, the basic graphic might suffice, with appropriate changes. I had to look at it several times to even figure out what the artist was trying to convey. Hate to be critical, but this graphic loses more in clarity than it brings in decorative value.Joe 00:37, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

It's not, broadly speaking, intended to actually mean anything, though; its role is merely that of a more-or-less recognizable icon (by which I mean, again, an icon that can be associated with the project, rather than an icon that actually represents some real concept), and in that it's been quite successful. Changing it, at this point, would be quite inadvisable; while it may be possible to construct a more "accurate" or "realistic" map, we'd gain nothing in terms of symbolism—to the uninitiated, it'd still be nothing more than a small bunch of arrows, since we can't increase the size—and lose the recognition value of the existing icon, which has been in use for more than a year. Kirill Lokshin 00:43, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

B-class progress

The template says "this article meets all the following criteria for b-class status". When I first saw this, I thought that meant that all the criteria below that statement were met by the article. This should be reworded to "these are the criteria for b-class status", probably with a key explaining the completion tags. Karl Dickman ^talk 06:27, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Good point. I've changed it to read "This article has been checked against the following criteria..." and added some explanatory text to each label that should clarify what exactly is being indicated. Kirill Lokshin 06:45, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Just a minor point: when a criterion isn't met the checklist shows something like this: Reference and citation:criterion not met. Maybe we should drop the emphasis on not, this sounds a bit like we're admonishing the editors of the article and being generally critical of their work. Otherwise, I anticipate some unpleasant reactions. --Raoulduke47 17:40, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, done. Kirill Lokshin 17:42, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Infobox parameter

I think that, in order to provide the greatest utility, the "needs_infobox" parameter should show up by default on the template (i.e. no detail expansion required). Further, I think that there should be an optional parameter allowing an editor to specify the name of the infobox they believe should be used, to avoid asking users who may be unfamiliar with Wikipedia to choose the correct one. --Eyrian 13:00, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

In my experience, it's used mostly through the associated category; the display doesn't really matter. Given that (a) there's a strong push to have project banners be as small as possible and (b) there are plenty of hidden fields more important than the infobox one, I see no reason to make an exception for it.

As far as specifying the infobox, that's not a bad idea; I'll see if I can come up with something. Keep in mind that the displayed text already links to a fairly short list of possibilities, so it's not all that bad. Kirill Lokshin 17:33, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

New map in SVG

Please replace Image:American Civil War map.png with Image:US Secession map 1865.svg -- an SVG equivalent with better color contrast. Please notify me when it's done. Thank you! – Tintazul ^msg 09:49, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Done. Kirill Lokshin 18:22, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Question marks in SVG

Please change all the gif question marks to the available svg — Jack · talk · 01:37, Monday, 19 March 2007

Ok, done. Kirill Lokshin 01:59, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Cheers :) now if you could just change "Image:Samurai-shodo.png" to the svg format... — Jack · talk · 06:25, Wednesday, 21 March 2007

Y Done - Harryboyles 07:41, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

replaced Crystal 128 kdmconfig.png with Crystal 128 kuser.png

as the former is about to be deleted as a duplicate of the latter. I found it in 3 places and I believe I did it right. This was at the request of Commons admin Yonatan ++Lar: t/c 13:08, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Help needed at Talk:Frankish Empire

Could someone who knows this template look at the version at Talk:Frankish Empire; The Military History Project template doesn't seem to work well within a Multiple WikiProjects box. Thanks --SteveMcCluskey 13:30, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Hmm? I don't see what the problem is; could you be a bit more specific? Kirill Lokshin 17:26, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Kirill, the problem I had was that when I opened the box of templates, the WPMILHIST template always opened with a lot of commented text at the bottom of the display. Now I see that that commented text is part of this template (even though it normally displays as hidden). Apparently putting the template iside a box of templates changes that default. It's a less serious problem than it first appeared. SteveMcCluskey 18:07, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Orange check PNG to SVG version

Could someone please update all instances of Image:Orange check.png within the template to use the new SVG version, Image:Orange check.svg? Many thanks! Kyra_~(talk) 01:12, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

{{editprotected}} done. I think I got them all. CMummert · talk 01:41, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Request

Hey i been really busy with all my projects that im part of =) so im here to request some help. is it possable for anyone here to hook me up with a editable template that includes a rating scale? i dont need it done for me because if its done for me then i will never learn, i just need to know how to program it and ill work with it from there =) thanks for any help u guys/girls can offer User:Maverick423 If It Looks Good Nuke It 13:37, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

o yes and place it on my talk page please

WP:PROJGUIDE should have a good example to start from. Kirill Lokshin 14:35, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

=) thanks much for the link! now i can get started =) User:Maverick423 If It Looks Good Nuke It 14:48, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Image replacement request

Please replace the image Image:Nuvola apps kcontrol.png with Image:Icon tools.png as it was marked as a duplicate on Wikimedia Commons. The image is protected there. Thanks. Siebrand 19:38, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Done. Kirill Lokshin 10:34, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Please remove the duplicate line

{{editprotected}} The line "class – a rating of the article's quality; see the assessment department for more details." appears twice under the "General parameters" heading. Would someone please delete the extra line? Thanks, Black Falcon ^(Talk) 09:16, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

The docs are in Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Project banner which isn't protected, so that admin assistance isn't needed to change the documentation. CMummert · talk 12:13, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

It's done now, in any case. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 16:44, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Whoops! I missed the small, italicised sentence at the top stating: Template documentation transcluded from Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Project banner. Thank you for fixing it, Black Falcon ^(Talk) 17:57, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Formatting problem?

Could you please click on "show" at the banner placed at Talk:Berber Revolt? The large blue area is bothering and this is not the first case i've encountered. Do you have any idea about that problem? -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 10:26, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Which large blue area? I don't see anything broken on that page, but maybe I'm not looking where I should be. Kirill 15:36, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

(Note for future reference; more discussion on this at WT:MILHIST#Formatting problem?.) Kirill 15:43, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

B-Class additional information

I've just noticed that this section is displayed even when an article is rated above B-Class. While it makes sense to show whether it's filled out or not, and how, when it's below B, having it there for higher rated articles seems a bit silly, hidden or otherwise. Every other part of the template relies on various switches to determine output, is there any chance one could be added for that section as well, such that it only shows up for Stub, Start, and perhaps still B class articles? -Bbik^★ 17:02, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

The code is here. Just replace the code that is currently in the template with this code. --Tim4christ17 ^talk 20:53, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Except there's no problem to fix; the section is already hidden for A-Class and FA-Class articles. The reason it's shown for GA-Class is because the project has had poor experiences with the GA process before, and thus tends to make its own checks even for GAs. Kirill 20:57, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

In that case, it should be clarified that it's as much a confirmation of GA as a B-Class rating guideline, so that people know to add the parameters to GA articles, too. Because leaving it there to stretch the template when it specifically says it's for B and under makes it contradictory. Besides, if that's left to imply the article should only be B or less, not GA, shouldn't the demoting go through WP:GA/R, rather than simply be removed? As far as I can see, that would make the section redundant anyhow. -Bbik^★ 21:09, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

There's a subtlety you're missing here: although GA and B are both scale levels, the former is controlled by the GA process while the latter is controlled by the project. In other words, an article could conceivably pass the GA criteria while failing the (project's) B-Class criteria; thus, having a "criteria for B-Class" field on a GA doesn't seem (to me) to be at all contradictory. Kirill 22:02, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Except that the project's quality scale doesn't agree with that. The only minor point that could possibly be argued to make B "higher" than GA is the very last one, the inclusion of images and infoboxes, which B definitely wants, and GA would only like.

Besides which, the differentiation between levels is already unclear enough, especially between projects, does it really need to be made even worse? And, while I realize that the rating given by one project doesn't necessarily apply to all projects, I thought GA and FA did, since they have the Wikipedia-wide assessment scale and process, and thus the need to go through GA review if a person/project decides it doesn't actually meet the criteria. -Bbik^★ 07:29, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

There's actually a pretty convoluted backstory as far as GA is concerned. The GA level was originally not in the scale at all; it was inserted—over the objections of a number of projects—because some people wanted to keep track of them. Many of the more developed projects have very little respect for the GA process; attempting to make them accept it over their own judgment will simply lead to GAs being entirely removed from the assessment scale used by those projects.

(As far as specific differences: the main one is the first B-Class criterion rather than the last one. GA's citation requirements tend towards the lowest common denominator, and are, for the most part, weaker than the ones used by the project.) Kirill 16:30, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Didn't realize that. Though I still think it adds unneeded confusion.

The citation parts, though, I had read as being the same thing; perhaps that's because of my (admittedly minimal) experience with GA and/or because that's how I work anyhow. Filling in a few blanks in a template and then just typing a few characters for future references is so easy, why not do it by default? -Bbik^★ 18:16, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Taskforce Logos

Is very hard to make out the Middle East taskforce logo. I suggest replacing it with Image:Middle East geographic.jpg. Also I've made a replacement SVG logo for the Napoleonic task force that also adds the French eagle. Could someone replace Image:PB Napoleon.png with Image:Shield Napoleon.svg. Finally the Italian flag can be replace if you so wish by Image:Shield Italy.svgCenty – – 15:18, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Ok, done. Kirill 17:27, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Consolidated WikiProject banners - expanding B-class assessment

(Sorry if this has already been discussed.) I noticed that when the consolidated banner {{WikiProject banner shell}}) is used, when "show"ing the WPMILHIST information, the B-class assessment comments show up. Is there a way to have only the task forces show-up, with a "more" for assessment information/checklist? — ERcheck (talk) 22:22, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Nested show/hide sections are an utter pain to work with, tend to be highly fragile depending on the browser used, and, in many cases, will all open at the same time anyways due to how the JavaScript is set up. It might be theoretically possible, in other words, but I don't really think it's a good idea. Kirill 22:47, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. I agree. Not worth making a minor change that might break on different browsers. I guess I'm just used to the standalone look of the WPMILHIST banner. — ERcheck (talk) 22:56, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Image changes

{{editprotected}} Please change all instances of Image:Armoiries France Ancien.png to the SVG version Image:France Ancient.svg. -- I. Pankonin (t/c) 22:26, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Done. Kirill 03:00, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

{{editprotected}} Please change Image:Armoiries Grande-Bretagne 1800.png to Image:UK Arms 1837.svg. Sorry I had to ask twice. Thanks! -- I. Pankonin (t/c) 02:59, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Done. Kirill 03:01, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

{{editprotected}} Another one - Please change Image:PB USA CoA.png to Image:United States Arms.svg. -- I. Pankonin (t/c) 07:02, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Done. Kirill 00:18, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Are we assessing lists?

Are we assessnig lists or just tag them as such? I.e. do we use class=list? -- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 01:35, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Lists should be assessed using the normal classes. I'm fairly sure there's a note to that effect somewhere on WP:MHA (and if there isn't, there should be). Kirill 03:46, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks; I did notice some projects just tag lists as "list quality/class".-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:49, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Cold war

We could use a cold war task force for period classification.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 13:20, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

It's been (briefly) discussed before, but likely nothing will happen until the fate of Wikipedia:WikiProject Cold War becomes clearer. Kirill 14:58, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Hah. I saw that and honestly thought it was about some fighting between WikiProjects :) --kingboyk (talk) 20:30, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

auto=yes

What happened to it? No longer considered useful maybe and if so why not? --kingboyk (talk) 20:11, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

With the introduction of the B-Class checklist, the auto-assessed category was essentially subsumed into Category:Military history articles with incomplete B-Class checklists; there's no real benefit from having two separate categories of articles that need their assessments checked. Kirill 20:22, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Ooh. Neat. Thanks for the reply! --kingboyk (talk) 20:29, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Please update a taskforce logo

{{Edit protected}} Could an admin please change Image:Vikingshipshortened.jpg to Image:Vikingshipshortened.png. The new version has a transparent background and so works better with the other logos. /Lokal_Profil 00:26, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Done. Kirill 02:09, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Update Image:Red x.png

{{editprotected}} Image:Red x.png, which the template uses when a criterion is failed, has been superceded by Image:Red x.svg and the image used should be updated. It Is Me Here (talk) 17:34, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Done. Kirill 03:52, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Task-forces

The template contains code for Ancient-Near-Eastern-task-force and USAF-task-force, which do not appear in the template documentation and don't seem consistent with the template. You may want to remove the Ancient-Near-Eastern-task-force and USAF-task-force code from the template. GregManninLB (talk) 01:22, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

No, these are actually alternate forms that have been used at one time or another but have been replaced with the documented forms. They're not meant to be removed, as that would break instances of the template. Kirill 02:07, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

A better picture

{{editprotected}} The current picture on the project banner which is a map is good. But I suggest that a picture of tank, let's say File:Centurion cfb borden 1.JPG, would perhaps make a more emphatic one. Megastar7 (talk) 09:23, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

That would need to be discussed on the main Military history project talkpage. It is a very big change to do without consensus and discussion. Personally, I think the map encompasses more of what the Military history project is about, then a tank would. Woody (talk) 10:08, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Indeed. On a more practical level, a normal image of a tank would be virtually unrecognizable when shrunk to the size of the icon. Kirill ^(prof) 13:15, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Also don't forget branding. The map for me at least synonymous with the WikiProject when I see it. If it isn't broken, don't fix it. Centy – reply• contribs – 14:37, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

A map denotes a number of things other than what this project is about. It can pertain to navigation, travel, or some global political affairs.

A tank, however, strongly symbolises military power and prestiege because of its usage and history. Megastar7 (talk) 23:50, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, usage and history since 1916. A tank really strongly symbolises the wrong military power and prestige say when it's tagged to the Battle of Cannae. Centy – reply• contribs – 01:27, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Start scrambles banner?

Just been trying to put class=start on the banner on Talk:Sanfedismo and it goes haywire spewing all the options onto the page and talking about {{Node-count limit exceeded}}-. I'll leave it to someone else to sort out, who understands this stuff - I was only courtesy-tagging on behalf of the Italy Project. FlagSteward (talk) 21:20, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

The same thing is happening on Talk:Robert Ballard Long, and by testing I found it was fine if I used class=stub instead of class=start. The other templates on the page work fine if {{WPMILHIST}} is removed, so it's some glitch in {{WPMILHIST}} or its sub-templates. Can anyone fix this? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:57, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Not (necessarily) a problem on our side: somebody decided to drop the permitted node count down by a factor of 20, breaking all the sub-template transclusions. It's been fixed now, apparently. Kirill ^(prof) 00:11, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

C-Class

An administrator has to add this section to the template because of the fact that there is now a class for this. Otherwise it will be impossible to grade the pages in this class properly. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 20:17, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Milhist has decided not to adopt the C-Class criteria after a discussion on the Milhist talk page. I have deleted the categories associated with it and reverted your addition to the assessment page. Regards. Woody (talk) 20:21, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Template problem?

This template appears to be reporting the B-class article Lithuanian Civil War (1381-1384) as a Start-class article. Any idea what's causing that? Bart133 ^{t c @ How's my driving?} 23:37, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

It is a feature of the Milhist template. To be assessed as B class, the article must be assessed against the B-Class Checklist. I have assessed it now as B-Class. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/B-class FAQ for more information. Regards. Woody (talk) 23:52, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

A question to ponder…

Not that it really matters terribly much, but when the "A-Class" parameter is set to current, why does the link go to "Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/[ArticleName]" rather than "Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Review/[ArticleName]"? — Bellhalla (talk) 02:03, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

It's a holdover from the old structure, before we had the unified review department; A-Class reviews were done directly within the assessment department at that point, and their subpages were named accordingly. As a practical matter, it's served well enough in keeping the A-Class and peer reviews in separate locations; if we actually put both as subpages of the current review page, there would be archive collisions. Kirill ^(prof) 02:18, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I figured as much. Thanks for the explanation. — Bellhalla (talk) 02:36, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Checklist doesn't display

Why doesn't the B-class checklist display at Talk:Ole Otto Paus? __meco (talk) 08:31, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

The checklist does not show for those articles assessed as stub. This is because the criteria are not relevant for stubs as it is assumed that they do not meet the criteria given their nature; small and unfinished. Regards. Woody (talk) 11:47, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

I see. __meco (talk) 12:09, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

|auto= option?

Noticed that |auto=yes option is not working. Since I've recently been tagging articles with AWB it would reduce the number of articles needing assessment if this was functioning. --Brad (talk) 21:42, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

That option hasn't been active for at least a year now, if I recall correctly; and it just displayed an additional category even when it was in the code—the "class" parameter had to be set independently. Are you expecting it to do something different? Kirill ^(prof) 01:21, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

It was my understanding that using |auto=yes would give an article a |class=stub rating if there was a stub template on the article. At least that was how I last saw the option being used. So putting down something like {{WikiProject Military history|class=|Maritime=yes|US=yes|WWII=yes|auto=yes}} is the idea. --Brad (talk) 02:19, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Nope, that's not possible; there's no way for the template to determine whether another template is present. All the "auto=yes" parameter was intended for was to generate an additional notice that the article had been automatically assessed; the bot (or AWB) would still need to set "class=stub" for the rating to actually show up. Kirill ^(prof) 02:33, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. --Brad (talk) 01:17, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Exhausted

Tried everything I could think of to raise rating on Talk:Bazooka to at least B class... finally gave up in disgust and exhaustion.

• The "class=" field really needs some case expansions in the switch# or something. Ignored A-class=, B-class5=yes and so forth as well, so pant, pant, pant... %*^&)*(%#W_)*(!#$%$@%#^$&!!!! Needs some logical aliases, and better documentation. (i.e. Fix it!)
• Exhausted, I gave up and nom'd it for GA status... that process at least is documented!

Best regards... // FrankB 20:09, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

There's a link to the full instructions right there on the banner. But to be more helpful: there are five B-Class criteria that must be assessed as "yes" before the template will display a B-Class rating. In addition to "B-Class-5", you need to evaluate "B-Class-1" through "-4" to yes. (You can also abbreviate to the form "B1=y", etc. to save typing.) — Bellhalla (talk) 20:28, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, all of the criteria must be checked off for the assessment to change to B-Class. I've tried to make this a bit explicit in the instructions. Kirill ^(prof) 02:01, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Ah process intrudes on 'unambiguous displays'... kind of like a military's all marching in step, I guess!

The key phrase would be "Logical AND or Boolean AND condition", and the symptom ("display") also should change when stimulus changes... I'd in fact attempted filling in several "yeses-Guesses" with B-Class-#=yes. The result was to stay an ambiguous and misleading "start class"... and I really don't appreciate the time such misleading results wasted!

Submit, thence "Start" class being displayed is in fact a bug as is deceptive... someone has both put immense time into writing the thing as well as someone else taking much spare time to evaluate jumping through your hoops and checkoffs...

SO suggest a series of {{isequal}} be used to detect multiple "yes" ztates to display "C-1"... "C-4" of said permutations (assuming your five checkoffs for "B class"...

 {{#ifeq:MAKES-B-Class-now|{{
 #if:
 {{isequal
 |yes|B-Class-5
 |yes|B-Class-4
 |yes|B-Class-3
 |yes|B-Class-2
 |tes|B-Class-1
 }}
 |MAKES-B-Class-now|}}

... similar code by four, by three, by two's returning C-1 through C-4 strings for displayed class= parameter. The C-1 states a terminating switch and C-2 case-C-4 cases are simply if's modeled on the above.

I swore off template coding as too time costly, but nesting a few if statements like that should be straight-forward. Cheers // FrankB 16:16, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Please take into account

what I say in the end of this about "C-Class", and "Class=override"

... working the same in all such templates. Writing an checkoff-list version as implemented makes sense, but such parameters should work the same across Wikiprojects' ownerships boundaries and spheres of influence. In this case (i.e. specifically for "class= defined cases), I'd append or prepend "Tentatively" to whatever is not check-off defined also by B-Class-1,...,B-Class-nn, etc., pending a match verification or an automatic match check. Giving an value should evidence in some manner... if not that, then a generic message giving help for to find the proper syntax (or match condition). // FrankB 17:20, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure what you're looking for here; is it (a) feedback to a change to the "B-Class-N" parameters (which is already available in the form of the displayed checklist) or (b) feedback (i.e. a descriptive error message) for a user trying to change the class without setting the checklist parameters correctly or (c) something else? Kirill ^(prof) 03:30, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Template does not collapse

Someone want to look into making this template actually collapse? It doesn't seem to do that, even with the option technically included. Gary King (talk) 19:42, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Can you provide an example of where it's not working? — Bellhalla (talk) 19:46, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Ah, after playing around I realized that these templates now auto-collapse. Works great! Gary King (talk) 19:49, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

File namespace → Image namespace?

As an FYI, it looks like the Image namespace has been replaced by the File namespace, which breaks the auto-assessment performed by this template. — Bellhalla (talk) 11:41, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Have you got an example please? I thought it was meant to be backwards-compatible? Regards. Woody (talk) 12:43, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

It is, but only in one direction (i.e. using "Image:" still works, but a query for the namespace name returns "File" rather than "Image" now). The auto-assessment should be fixed, in any case. Kirill ^(prof) 13:07, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Since Kirill has fixed it, an example is probably not all that instructove, but at File talk:SM U-3 (Austria-Hungary).jpg you can see that the WP:SHIPS banner is doing the same thing. (Or it will be until the {{editprotected}} request in for Template:WikiProject Ships/Class is performed.) — Bellhalla (talk) 13:20, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Kirill for fixing the issues as ever, I have done the ships one now. Regards. Woody (talk) 14:52, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Woody! — Bellhalla (talk) 15:09, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Nesting?

I'm amazed this template doesn't have nesting. If someone could please add the code necessary for nesting, it would be great. The code is:

{| class="{{#ifeq:{{{nested|}}}|yes|collapsible collapsed messagebox nested-talk|{{#ifeq:{{{small|}}}|yes|messagebox small-talk|messagebox standard-talk}}}}"
|-
{{#ifeq:{{{nested|}}}|yes|
! colspan="2" style="text-align: center" {{!}} [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Israel|WikiProject Israel]] {{#if:{{{class|}}}|     (Rated {{{class}}}-Class)}}
}}
|-

Thank you, obentomusubi 05:06, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

The code is no longer necessary; the "innercollapse" and "wpb" classes handle this automatically when the template is used inside {{WikiProjectBannerShell}}. More details are here. Kirill 05:20, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Preloaded A-Class review page

With the current trend of using Wikipedia:Featured article tools in A-Class reviews, I thought it might be prudent to come up with a pre-loaded ACR form that already includes those tools. Accordingly (and based on Wikipedia:Featured article preload), I've created Template:WPMILHIST/ACR for that use. If anyone other than me thinks this is a good idea, the banner template can be changed to implement this. By changing this line:

• |current= {{!}} style="background: lightsteelblue;" {{!}} [[Image:Purple question mark.svg|18x18px|center]] {{!}} This article is [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/{{SUBJECTPAGENAME}}|currently undergoing]] an [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Review#A-Class review|A-Class review]].<includeonly>{{#ifexist:Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/{{SUBJECTPAGENAME}}|[[Category:Requests for military history A-Class review|{{PAGENAME}}]]|[[Category:Military history articles needing attention to tagging|{{PAGENAME}}]]}}</includeonly>

to this:

• |current= {{!}} style="background: lightsteelblue;" {{!}} [[Image:Purple question mark.svg|18x18px|center]] {{!}} This article is {{#ifexist:Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/{{{1|{{PAGENAME}}}}}|[[Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/{{SUBJECTPAGENAME}}{{!}}currently undergoing]]|'''''[{{fullurl:Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/{{{1|{{PAGENAME}}}}}|action=edit&preload=Template:WPMILHIST/ACR}} {{color|red|currently undergoing}}]'''''}} an [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Review#A-Class review|A-Class review]].<includeonly>{{#ifexist:Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/{{SUBJECTPAGENAME}}|[[Category:Requests for military history A-Class review|{{PAGENAME}}]]|[[Category:Military history articles needing attention to tagging|{{PAGENAME}}]]}}</includeonly>

it should work just fine. I tested it on a temporary page in the article namespace (since the project banner won't show an ACR link for a non article space page), and it appears to work just fine. If this is implemented the only other thing that would need to be changed are the ACR instruction (saving a couple of steps). — Bellhalla (talk) 19:39, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I've implemented this. I've also moved the preload template to Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Review/A-Class review preload boilerplate, to keep it in the same space as all the other bits of ACR infrastructure. Kirill 01:13, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I suspected that a page move might be in order. :) — Bellhalla (talk) 01:21, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

FYI: I just nominated an article for A-Class and the links and everything worked fine. — Bellhalla (talk) 01:30, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Should Category:Balkan military history task force articles be hidden?

My apologies if his has been discussed previously, but I was looking at Talk:SM UB-45 and noticed that Category:Balkan military history task force articles is not a hidden category, unlike other task force categories for this article (WWI, German, Maritime). Are some task force categories supposed to be hidden and others not? No particular importance to me one way or the other; just my curiosity at an inconsistency(?)… — Bellhalla (talk) 17:14, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

The hiding of those categories is actually controlled by {{WPMILHIST Task force category}}, not by the banner itself. The inconsistency might be caused by caching issues; I've seen cases where category contents wouldn't refresh properly for extended periods of time if the category tags were generated by a template. Kirill ^[pf] 01:21, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

War films task force icon

• 
  Used in {{Film}}
• 
  Used in {{WPMILHIST}}

Any thoughts on switching the war films task force icon in this banner to the one we use in the {{Film}} banner (or vice versa)? Either way it would make sense for both to use the same icon as they both represent the same task force, and it would prevent the need for having a seperate userbox on our end. I have no real preferance either way, though I think the icon on the left looks a little cleaner and neater. Regards. PC78 (talk) 17:52, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

I have no problem with switching over to whatever FILMS is using; our icon wasn't really the product of any great plan, but merely the first non-fair use image I could think of. Kirill ^[pf] 01:36, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

{{editprotected}}

Per above, can the icon for the war films task force be changed from

• File:War-film-stub.svg

to

• File:Warfilm.svg

Cheers! PC78 (talk) 16:46, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Ok, done. Kirill ^[pf] 19:36, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Invalid CSS

{{editprotected}}

Could someone please change seven instances of;

• background: whitesmoke;

to

• background-color: #F5F5F5;

and seven instances of;

• background: lightsteelblue;

to

• background-color: #B0C4DE;

The '-color' is the correct property name and the named colors are invalid; numeric values are almost always required.

• Web colors and the CSS spec

Cheers, Jack Merridew 15:51, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

They are valid in CSS3 and even implemented in IE, so I don't see the point. —Ms2ger (talk) 19:13, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, this is perfectly valid CSS3, and is supported by every common browser I've tried. Kirill ^[pf] 19:36, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

I still think this change is pretty pointless, but since it's being made on other related templates, I've gone ahead and made it here too. (There were eight instances of the latter case rather than seven, incidentally.) Kirill ^[pf] 01:07, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

I know they're in the pipeline, and I don't much like the hassle of the numbers. But this is an accessibility issue; not all user agents will support them. I run a lot of browsers; current versions. But many people do not. I live in Indonesia and IE 5.5 on Windows 98 is still about; the most common platform is a pirate XP w/IE6. I guess my point is that much of the world has less than current equipment. Thanks for making this change. Given the extent of the issue, it's a job for a bot, as will be the process of someday switching back. Cheers, Jack Merridew 03:13, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Image:Thirtywar.gif

Since GIF thumbnailing has been turned off File:Thirtywar.gif should no longer be used on this template. AnonMoos (talk) 09:09, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

weaponry task force and technology taskforce overlap in template

So far as I can tell, adding the weaponry taskforce check to the template has the same effect as adding the technology taskforce. This puts any weaponry articles into both the mil-technology-and-engineering-article-category and the weaponry category with the results that the articles only under the mil tech and eng are generalyy swamped in their own category by those weaponry articles. The same function happens with land-vehicles - also added to mil-tech. The question I am asking is - is this by design and if so can it be modified? eg so that the cats only take the articles according to the specific inclusion of the relevant taskforce or that the additions appear as sub cats of the miltech article category GraemeLeggett (talk) 14:44, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the automatic conversion of the tags is by design; and, yes, it could very easily be turned off. Whether it should be turned off is really a question about what the scope of the task force should be; I'll comment more on that at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Military technology and engineering task force#Inclusion of weaponry task force articles automatically in this task force, as I think that's probably a better place to discuss that. Kirill ^[talk] [pf] 04:59, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Cold War task force icon

{{editprotected}} I noticed that File:Cold War Map 1959.png has a vector version available: File:Cold War Map 1959.svg; and using a SVG on a template that is transcluded to many pages would use less resources and look better. Since there doesn't seem to be any discussion about the task force icon at the Cold War Task Force talk page, I thought I'd just be bold and change it, but alas, I do not have the suffiecient mojo level required. Can an admin make the minor image change? bahamut0013^words_deeds 08:23, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Done thanks. Regards, Woody (talk) 08:31, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Template:WPMILHIST/YesNo

I was browsing thru Wikipedia:Database_reports/Templates with the most transclusions and noticed that Template:WPMILHIST/YesNo may serve the same function as Template:Yesno, just not as well. Would there be any benefit to updating the banner to use Template:Yesno? - Trevor MacInnis ^contribs 18:34, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Looking at the code, it seems that the two behave somewhat differently; {{WPMILHIST/YesNo}} produces the outputs {"yes", "no", ""}, while the default behavior of {{Yesno}} produces {"yes", ""}, and makes no distinction between negative and unrecognized values. It's possible, if I'm not mistaken, to produce equivalent behavior from {{Yesno}} ({{yesno|{{{1}}}}|yes=yes|no=no|blank=|def=}}); but using this syntax on every invocation would make the {{WPMILHIST}} code considerably more difficult to read. The best way to get rid of the dual templates would be to change {{WPMILHIST/YesNo}} to invoke {{Yesno}} with the needed parameter set; but I'm not sure that the extra level of meta-transclusion is worth the effort. Kirill ^[talk] [pf] 18:59, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the code would be {{yesno|{{{1|}}}|no=no|blank=|def=}}. Some examples are on Template:WPMILHIST/YesNo/testcases. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:08, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough; I've changed the sub-template to transclude {{yesno}}. Kirill ^[talk] [pf] 02:58, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

task forces on template talk pages

why can't i assign "intel" task force on a template talk page? see Template talk:Domestic national intelligence agencies. --Ysangkok (talk) 10:30, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Templates (and other non-article pages) are not tracked on a task force level. Kirill ^[talk] [pf] 16:09, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Biography icon

{{editprotected}} Can the icon for the biography task force please be changed from Image:Crystal personal.png to the available vector image, Image:Crystal personal.svg? Thanks in advance. PC78 (talk) 00:49, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

 Done Thanks. Skier Dude (talk) 02:31, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Archived peer reviews

This template doesn't currently facilitate for archived peer reviews, e.g. Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/List of Knight's Cross recipients of the Waffen-SS/Archive 1. It needs a parameter, archive say, and the additional code {{#if:|/Archive {{{archive}}} after the peer review page name. Is there any opposition to this? Also should the archived reviews be at /archive1 instead of /Archive 1 to be consistent with the normal peer review and featured content archives? Rambo's Revenge (talk) 11:18, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

The project convention is to backlink to older reviews through the review subpages themselves. I can see no benefit to creating additional links to each iteration of the review directly on the template, particularly since we would have to complicate the code considerably to allow for an arbitrary number of iterations (so a single archive number parameter wouldn't work). Kirill ^[talk] [pf] 11:58, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

I stumbled across this when fixing ArticleHistory and my example, Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/List of Knight's Cross recipients of the Waffen-SS, doesn't link to Archive 1, so there is no indication of a previous archived version there. Also on the same example if you expand this banner at Talk:List of Knight's Cross recipients of the Waffen-SS, there is a line at the bottom saying "This article has had a peer review which is now archived." but "archived" links to the current peer review not the old one. That is my problem with this. Looking through the subpages there is only one instance of 2 archived peer reviews, all the others have less than that. Rambo's Revenge (talk) 12:07, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, the lack of a backlink was due to the requester not following the instructions (WP:MHR#PEER) correctly; I've fixed that now. The problematic archive link is also easily fixed without adding any extra parameters.

As far as a full set of archive links, we need to keep in mind that (a) the number of repeated reviews will grow over time, and (b) there are also archived A-Class reviews that would need to be tracked under the same model if we were to switch. Given that all this would be doing is replicating the links already present in {{ArticleHistory}}, I really don't see a reason to make both the template code and the procedure for archiving a review more complex than it already is. Kirill ^[talk] [pf] 12:14, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Another complication, incidentally, is that we often cross-list reviews from other projects through redirects from the internal review subpages in which cases any archived reviews may be located somewhere completely different than our internal ones would be, and may not even have been relevant to us in any case. Kirill ^[talk] [pf] 12:17, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Workforce Napoleonic Fiction

Could we make a workforce blurb and a category for pages that fall within the scope of Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Napoleonic era task force/Napoleonic fiction. I have never done this type of template work before, and I don't want to go bungling around in the code, especially when so many articles have this template. It probably should be an either/or feature with the Napoleonic era task force category. SADADS (talk) 19:46, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Project convention is that only full task forces are directly supported by this template, not sub-task force working groups, which should use simple on-page worklists instead. This is because working groups are meant to be a low-overhead form of collaboration that anyone can start at will, and which therefore do not require a significant level of infrastructure. Kirill ^[talk] [pf] 02:12, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

That is annoying....It's part of the Napoleonic War taskforce, can it be just a subheading or alternate wording or something, that makes people aware of it's existence?SADADS (talk) 02:35, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Not in any particularly neat way, I think; but if what you're looking for is a way to advertise the working group, then may I suggest using {{maintained}} (as on, say, Talk:Battle of Ceresole)? It doesn't require any special setup, and is probably more prominent than a hidden sub-heading in a project banner would be in any case. Kirill ^[talk] [pf] 03:45, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Check out Template:Napoleonic fiction. What do you think? SADADS (talk) 04:08, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Looks fine, although I'd suggest renaming it to {{WPMILHIST Napoleonic fiction}} to avoid any potential naming conflicts (with, say, a navigation template for Napoleonic fiction articles). Kirill ^[talk] [pf] 04:11, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I am going to leave it how it is for now, if it comes up as a conflict, we can change. Their are only three related templates with Nepoleonic and fiction in their page at all. Plus this is less confusing syntax. SADADS (talk) 04:25, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Okay, that's fine. I've cleaned up the wording a bit as well. Kirill ^[talk] [pf] 04:26, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Book-class

BTW, you seem to be using a custom "class=BK"/"BK-class" for books. You should probably use "class=book"/"Book-class" since it's the standard one ({{Book-Class}}) and has been implemented in templates such as {{Cat class}} and so on. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 02:35, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

The template is perfectly happy with "Book" as the class input; the displayed letter code is simply shortened because the full four-letter one is wider than the image, causing alignment problems. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 02:51, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Really? As opposed to "Stub" or "Start"... ? PC78 (talk) 11:32, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Also, the book-class should display in the usual book-green (see {{classcol}}) and not the NA-grey. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 17:53, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Okay, fixed. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 13:42, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm, not sure why it should be necessary to change the colour when this banner doesn't use the standard colours for Category/Disambig/Image/Portal/Template/User-Class pages... Book-Class is ultimately no different to these. I also don't see why it should be necessary to abbreviate "Book" or "User". There are no alignment issues with "Start"... PC78 (talk) 17:32, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough; I've updated the template to use the full class names for those two, as well as using the usual colors for non-article pages throughout. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 03:02, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Wording: "Template call"

If you just put {{WPMILHIST}}, it asks you, on show, to "add x to the template call". The word "call" is wrong here.

I understand it as a software engineer, but the template is transcluded WP:Transclusion. There is no clear name for what some would call the parameters or arguments.

Best wishes, you at MILHIST have helped me out proud with our little battles to help classifying and rating them. I know how you like things with military precision, so just a little help back.

Best wishes Si Trew (talk) 01:31, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Mentioned in dispatches is User:AustralianRupert. Thanks. Si Trew (talk) 01:36, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

aviation icon

{{editprotected}} I would like to replace File:FA-22 Raptor cropped.jpg () with the vector image File:F16 drawing.svg (). Other potential candidates include File:EA-18G.svg (), File:Eurofighter Typhoon.svg (), and File:Sikorsky SH-60B Seahawk graphic.svg (); however, I prefer the F-16 because the missiles are clearly visible even at small resolution, making it obvious at a glance that this is a military aircraft. bahamut0013^words_deeds 00:50, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Please discuss and replace the {{editprotected}} when you have a consensus. Regards, — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:00, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Three Kingdom Wars

Several task force parameters, if activated, will automatically include some other task forces (like the Weaponry TF to the Science and technology TF). I was thinking, shouldn't Wars of the Three Kingsdoms TF add British military TF? It seems like the former is a child of the latter. bahamut0013^words_deeds 21:28, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Done. Thanks for catching that. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 03:05, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Template too large?

I have noticed that talkpages which have this template, take way, way longer to save than other talk pages. Generally, this template increases the save time from 1 or 2 seconds to at least 20 seconds (on my system, using AWB). This is a complex, huge template, and perhaps care should be taken not to make it any larger anymore, or to find some technical means to make it save faster. The loading of pages with this template is not so much a problem, although even there, it will create some problems for people with a dialup connection or other slow connection. Fram (talk) 10:33, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Interesting. The preprocessor load from it doesn't seem too bad:

Preprocessor node count: 86536/1000000

Post-expand include size: 15770/2048000 bytes

Template argument size: 2069/2048000 bytes

Expensive parser function count: 3/500

I'm not really sure why you'd see such an impact to save times, particularly relative to pages with other complex templates; but if we figure out what the specific problem is, we can certainly try to fix it. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 03:14, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm not sure why it is causing a problem, AWB saving seems to be slower in general than regular saving, but even then, the difference with or without this template is really impressive. As long as there aren't more complaints, it's not something you should rush to improve of course, but it may be useful to keep it in mind when further expansions of this template are discussed. Fram (talk) 06:56, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Tagging redirects

I came across several discussion pages of redirects. E.g. Polish Auxiliary Police redirects to the article Blue Police which is already assessed for MILHIST. But there is also a tag on talk:Polish Auxiliary Police, with an incomplete assessment. I am not quite sure how to deal with pages like this one. Obviously it should be tagged as a redirect somehow. I just don't know how. Regards --Dodo19 (talk) 05:03, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Not all WikiProjects have enabled the Redirect-class. WPMILHIST hasn't. __meco (talk) 10:02, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Indeed; our normal practice has been to simply remove tags from redirects, as there's no real value to having them tagged. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 03:15, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

OK, I will do that then. Thanks! --Dodo19 (talk) 04:13, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Alignment in nested form

Does anyone know why the nested form of this template is out of alignment with all of the others. Check out Talk:Treaty_of_Nanking for example and see how this template is a bit to the right of all of the others. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 20:12, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Auto Assessing

Recently I added your project banner to a Category and it auto-assessed it as belonging to Cat-class. How do you implement this in the code? Sadads (talk) 13:55, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

See {{WPMILHIST/Class}}; the value of the manually-set class parameter is ignored in certain namespaces. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 00:23, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Could you help me implement it at Template:WPASK, I tried but it didn't quite work out right. Sadads (talk) 11:58, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Never mind, it is already in place... don't remember doing that. Sadads (talk) 11:42, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Portal Images

{{editprotected}} Can the five occurences of the portal image be updated from Portal.svg to Portal-puzzle.svg to match that used by the {{portal}} template. Thanks -- WOSlinker (talk) 18:27, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Ok, done. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 22:34, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Discussion on US vs us parameter

There is a relevant discussion at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_history#Task_force_parameters_for_the_Milhist_banner, please weigh in, Sadads (talk) 14:50, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

No consensus to move. Vegaswikian (talk) 02:00, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Template:WPMILHIST → Template:WikiProject Military history — Per WP:Banner standardisation, WikiProjects should be of the form "Template:WikiProject Foo". Dismas|^(talk) 10:00, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose; Wikipedia:Banner standardisation is merely an essay, and attempts to promote it to guideline status were explicitly rejected by the community. The current naming of the template is in line with the other internal templates used by the project (cf. Category:WikiProject Military history templates), and I see no reason to change it; the existing redirects already allow editors to use the other forms of the name anyways. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 13:43, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose per Kirill. No need to "standardize" this based on a mere essay, especially when the full form can be used if an editor really wants to type it all out. Dana boomer (talk) 17:31, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose - renaming {WPMILHIST} means we need to rename all of our related templates? No thanks. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 19:10, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose If it ain't broke, don't fix it. This works, and in the end is that not what is most important here? TomStar81 (Talk) 19:56, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
• Support. Whether guideline or not, this is nevertheless the de facto naming convention used by almost all WikiProject banners. PC78 (talk) 20:58, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose - if it's not required, doesn't harm and takes time and effort to do, then there's no point in doing it.GraemeLeggett (talk) 22:20, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose per all above in opposition. -MBK₀₀₄ 00:09, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose per above. JJ98 (Talk) 00:53, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose, unconvincing rationale, would cause all sorts of issues due to the visibility of the template. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 01:00, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
  • What kind of "issues"? PC78 (talk) 13:30, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose - strongly suggest the nom withdraw this, as it clearly isn't going to happen. Parsecboy (talk) 12:11, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose WPMILHIST is the standard for most articles tagged for MILHIST. WikiCopter (radio • sorties • images • lost • defense • attack) 21:10, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

What about renames?

If an article is moved (i.e. my Arado Ar E.381), if you copy the template over from the old article, the review links are going to be broken. (see the talk page) WikiCopter (radio • sorties • images • lost • defense • attack) 23:08, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

The typical approach is to either move the review subpages to match the new title, or create redirects from the "new" review locations to the old ones. The template will actually generate an error category when it detects missing review pages; the coordinators generally go through and fix any outstanding problems of this nature every couple of weeks. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 01:08, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Suggested policy change to the tagging of non article items

I have submitted a proposal at the Village pump regarding tagging non article items in Wikipedia. Please take a moment and let me know what you think. --Kumioko (talk) 01:58, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Another child TF

Along the smae lines as my previous suggestion, shouldn't use of the OMT parameter automatically include the Maritime TF? I can't think of any OMT articles that aren't related to naval warfare (even the Phase V ones). bahamut0013^words_deeds 13:48, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

In principle, you're right; an article being within OMT should be sufficient to place it within the maritime TF as well. In practice, though, this will require some work; OMT uses a multi-value parameter rather than a simple yes/no switch, so its value cannot be directly passed into the existing TF check code. I'll think on this a bit and see what I can come up with. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 22:11, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

If you want I cna write some regex code that could be used to populate it. I don't think it would be too difficult but admittedly it wouldn't be as efficient as writing the template to do it automatically. --Kumioko (talk) 16:29, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

I'll keep that in mind as a backup plan; but, as you point out, having it done automatically would be a better use of everyone's time. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 14:47, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Unused/empty parameters

Kumioko started cleaning WPMILHIST banners by removing the tenths of empty parameters per instaructions in manual "To avoid needlessly cluttering up talk pages, it is usually appropriate to remove any unused parameters from the template" using AWB. I find it great. Are there any concerns that this may not be an appropriate task? -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:29, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Not that I'm aware of; the template should work perfectly fine without them. The only proviso I would make is that the five B-Class checklist parameters probably shouldn't be removed even if empty, since that will (presumably) also get rid of the boilerplate comments that explains how to fill them out. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 12:26, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Nice. B-class checklist parameters aren't removed. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:55, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

B Class checklist question

Speaking on the B class checklist for a moment. I would like to recommend a couple things relating to the checklist if that's ok. 1 and 2 would only be done as other more significant edits were made though.

1. I recommend adding the comments when there is none. There are a lot of articles that have something that looks like |B1=y|...
2. I recommend shortening the comments from the very long drawn out descriptions previously used to the shorter ones now in use such as:

<!-- Referencing and citations --> vice <!-- B-Class-1. It is suitably referenced, and all major points have appropriate inline citations. -->

1. I recommend removing the B class checklist from Stub's. Especially the empty checklists. The B class status of a stub is pretty self explanatory and most stubs have no's on the checklist across the board anyway which clutters the categories. This would reduce the category counts allowing us to concentrate on the meaningful ones.
2. I recommend removing the B class checklist from Articles GA class or higher. If the article is GA or higher the B class checklist parameters are really not needed. One example is the A Class article Talk:Battle of Marathon. --Kumioko (talk) 18:45, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

With regards to stubs, the template doesn't show the B-Class checklist if it is graded a stub, I don't see a pressing need to remove it though, it saves someone else having to add it when the stub is expanded. I remove the B-Class checklist from any article with GA or over if I'm editing the page at the time but again, it doesn't show in the template and it is a lot of effort for no return in going round and removing them all. Woody (talk) 23:28, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I tend to agree that it should only be removed if a more significant edit was being performed at the same time. --Kumioko (talk) 23:44, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Category:Military history articles needing attention to tagging issues (?)

The last two days, I've been attempting to clear out the minor backlog of tagging issues, and noticed two semi-related issues.
First, comes an issue concerning moving articles to new names. Due to the parameters of the MilHist template, whenever articles are moved, if said article had any peer reviews or A-class reviews, the template gets messed up. This is simply because the template automatically generates the links to these reviews based on the article name. The articles move, but the associated reviews are still listed under the old name, causing the template to generate links to non-existent pages and flagging them for such. In the past, I've solved this issue by simply manually tracking down the reviews and creating redirects. However, there are two issues with this. First off, in the past this was fine, but I'm unsure what (if anything) changed, but they don't seem to be un-flagged when this issue is fixed (see Talk:11th New York Infantry for an example). Related to this is that, some articles currently undergoing peer-reviews or A-class reviews are also being flagged with no apparent problems with the template I can see (such as Talk:Clarence Jeffries). Seeing as this was not an issue in the past, I have no idea what might be responsible for these pages being flagged.
Secondly, it has come to my attention that redirects to solve the issue of name changes for reviews isn't necessarily the correct option. Is there a procedure in place to handle these issues already? If not, is this the best choice or are there other better ones, such as moving the review pages as well? The reason I see this being an issue is in the case of multiple reviews, over time, this just creates extra-redirects to fix/change/edit in order to line all the links up properly.

The reason I ask is that, currently, there are 41 pages in this category suffering from the issue(s) of reviews from what I can tell. Thanks. Cromdog (talk) 18:47, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

For performance reasons, category listings which are automatically generated by templates are not updated in real time. In other words, if you "fix" the problem—for example, by creating a redirect—the categories on the talk page will reflect that, but the actual category listing won't (at least not immediately). An easy way to bypass this is to apply a null edit (i.e. open the edit window and click "Save page" without making any changes) to the talk page in question; this will force the category listing to update.

As far as the approach is concerned, we've usually just created redirects. (A few people have moved the actual review subpages instead, but this can get messy if the page is moved several times.) Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 19:08, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Ah, I had forgotten about that. On the point of redirects, I figured as much, but wanted to ask to be sure. The thing that brought it to my attention was an article that had already had two peer reviews, and I wasn't sure how that would be handled by the template. Thanks. Cromdog (talk) 19:14, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from Orionist, 11 April 2011

We now have an svg version of an image used in the template:

The image is File:APP-6a_Example1.png

The svg version is File:APP-6a_Example1.svg

The new image is of much higher quality, so I suggest using it as a replacement. Regards -- Orionist ★ talk 15:48, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

No B Class given notice upgrade

When someone rates an article as STUB or START and either does not add the B class criteria the current auto-text put in is useful but after looking around I think we could easily upgrade it. For example the WikiProject Aviation template shows a very nice code snippet and comment when this situation occurs. Would it possible to have a similar snippet replace the current layout? Talk:Adolf_Glunz currently shows what I mean.Sabre ball (talk) 18:32, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Seems reasonable enough. I'm planning on making some layout tweaks to the template in the near future, so I'll see if I can work this change in at the same time. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 15:00, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

I realize this is a petty request so don't exactly put it on top of your list, but something to consider nonetheless.Sabre ball (talk) 15:31, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Something is wrong with this template

If I add this template with the parameter 'class=Start', 'class=B', 'class=C', or 'class=A' it causes page saves to take at least 35 seconds (or occasionally timeout) and it displays the class as 'Start' in all of those cases. If I add this template without a class parameter or with 'class=Stub', 'class=GA', or 'class=FA' it works fine and page saves take the normal ~10 seconds. Kaldari (talk) 00:16, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Some preliminary findings:

• The performance impact appears to be proportional to the preprocessor visited node count (reported in the page HTML source).
• The main contributor to the preprocessor node count is the class evaluation statement in the template:

{{WikiProject Military history/Class|class={{{class|}}} |list={{{list|}}} |A-Class={{{A-Class|}}} |B-Class-1={{WikiProject Military history/Any|{{{B-Class-1|}}}|{{{B-1|}}}|{{{B1|}}}|{{{b-1|}}}|{{{b1|}}}}} |B-Class-2={{WikiProject Military history/Any|{{{B-Class-2|}}}|{{{B-2|}}}|{{{B2|}}}|{{{b-2|}}}|{{{b2|}}}}} |B-Class-3={{WikiProject Military history/Any|{{{B-Class-3|}}}|{{{B-3|}}}|{{{B3|}}}|{{{b-3|}}}|{{{b3|}}}}} |B-Class-4={{WikiProject Military history/Any|{{{B-Class-4|}}}|{{{B-4|}}}|{{{B4|}}}|{{{b-4|}}}|{{{b4|}}}}} |B-Class-5={{WikiProject Military history/Any|{{{B-Class-5|}}}|{{{B-5|}}}|{{{B5|}}}|{{{b-5|}}}|{{{b5|}}}}}}}

• The node count of the statement in question varies dramatically according to the value of the parameter; passing in "Start" produces a node count of approximately 4K, while passing in "FA" produces a node count of approximately 50.

Kirill ^[talk] 02:41, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

The culprit appears to have been {{WikiProject Military history/Any}}. I've reduced the number of checked parameters in it from 16 to 5, and eliminated some unnecessary invocations in {{WikiProject Military history}} for mutually exclusive parameter names; the net effect has been a reduction in visited preprocessor nodes from 120K to 15K for a fully loaded template. Hopefully this resolves the save time issue people were seeing; if the problem is still there, please let me know. Kirill ^[talk] 03:06, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

I was just looking at the talk page for HMS Shannon for the contest and it shows the article as assessed as start even though it's classified as B and all of the criteria =y. I tried capitalizing the criteria and didn't make any difference. No problem though with loading time.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 03:45, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Load time has definitely improved though. Kaldari (talk) 03:57, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Taking out the redundant /Any checks caused a problem with recognizing shortened parameter values (e.g. "y" instead of "yes") in some of the calls; I've fixed that now. Kirill ^[talk] 07:44, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Technical issues with template (project tag needs fixing)

Hi all, could someone have a look at my queries here Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_history#Project_tag_problems? Thanks, Peacemaker67 (send... over) 01:23, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

Unassessed

The template code is confusing me. There's a switch that defaults to put articles into Category:Unassessed military history articles. There isn't an "importance" switch like there are in other WikiProject templates that would normally control this behavior. What am I missing? Chris Troutman (talk) 00:37, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

The error occurs if the article is a class of "stub" or less, but not if "start" or better. Chris Troutman (talk) 01:05, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

The Military history WikiProject doesn't use importance ratings, so that's why there's no code for them in the banner. Was this the only issue you were seeing, or is there some other issue you've encountered with the template? Kirill ^[talk] 09:27, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

That's the only issue. I've been trying to sort through the unassessed history articles and I don't want to leave the stub WPMILHIST articles in that category unnecessarily. Chris Troutman (talk) 16:56, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Feature brainstorm for Module:WikiProjectBanner

I'm in the early stages of developing a Lua-based replacement for {{WPBannerMeta}}, and I would appreciate peoples ideas for features. If there is anything that you have wanted to do with your WikiProject template, but haven't been able to due to limitations in the meta-template, I would be very interested to hear it. The discussion is over at Template talk:WPBannerMeta. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 12:24, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Post-Cold War

The template needs a "Post-Cold War" era parameter. A lot of history has happened since the Wall came down. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 12:04, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Quick and dirty insertions

Hi all. Could you give some example insertions reviewers can use without signing up for a three year course in it? Something that signals a decent start, that kind of thing. Thanks. Jennie Matthews 97 (talk) 03:11, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

If you really do not want to take the time to figure out the details simply use the banner without any parameters, someone will add them later. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 12:08, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Military science task force icon change

The current image used for the Military Science and Technology Task Force is unrecognisable at the size used in this template. How about changing it from from to  ? (Hohum ^@) 17:23, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

G'day, yes that seems like a good idea. @WP:MILHIST coordinators: Any other opinions? Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 23:10, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

That image looks like an improvement to me Nick-D (talk) 23:14, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

I concur with the use of the new image. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:23, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Big improvement. Peacemaker67 (send... over) 00:02, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

See first post in the thread. (Hohum ^@) 00:23, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

 Done — xaosflux ^Talk 00:34, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Only just saw the coord notification (I admit I don't have this page watchlisted) but you can add me to the bunch in favour of the change... :-) Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 00:43, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Definitely an improvement.--Tomobe03 (talk) 12:15, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Main icon too?

In my opinion, the main icon is a little confusing too: I can't find anything instantly suitable, but I could make something like a rifle crossed with a sword or spear, or perhaps the silhouettes of a spearman and rifleman (by combining with or )?

(Or find a map fragment that is obvious as a map at a small size) Any thoughts? (Hohum ^@) 01:34, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure that a more "obvious" icon is necessarily going to be all that useful in this instance; we've used the current icon for close to ten years now, and I think people recognize it as the MILHIST "brand" even if they don't necessarily know what it actually is. Changing to another icon would remove that sense of familiarity, so I suspect that it would be less recognizable as something representing our project as a result, even if the icon itself is easier to understand. Kirill ^[talk] 02:45, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Surely the point of a project related image is for *new* users to recognise it intuitively? (Hohum ^@) 12:44, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure. Wouldn't most new users read the text of the banner rather than just looking at the icon? I don't have any real evidence one way or the other, but I would suspect that identifying project by glancing at the banner icons isn't something that new users would try to do regardless of what those icons are. Kirill ^[talk] 13:12, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

So what is it for? (and why wouldn't something intuitively related to the subject be better than what looks like a detail from a Jackson Pollock painting?) (Hohum ^@) 14:23, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Personally I don't find those silhouettes much more 'recognisable' than the icon we have now. I'm not saying what we have is perfect but I'd want to see something that really grabbed me before considering a change. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 14:30, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

No worries. Not much support for this. I'll ponder what might grab people. (Hohum ^@) 22:17, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 21 August 2015

Image:Ottoman Flag.svg → Image:Flag of the Ottoman Empire.svg

Superseded flag 172.56.23.99 (talk) 21:34, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

@179.56.23.99: I'm not sure why the current image was superseded. There didn't appear to be any discussion on the file pages at the time, and one doesn't appear technically superior to the other. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 22:22, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

I've had a look now. Image:Ottoman Flag.svg is a darker shade of red (I have no idea which shade is "correct") and uses a straightforward way of drawing the crescent - it's two circles, one filled in white; the other (overlaid on the white one) filled in the same red as the field. Image:Flag of the Ottoman Empire.svg is in a bright red; the crescent is drawn as eight cubic Bézier curves, and has most of the coordinates specified with six decimal places, somewhat overprecise on an image that is nominally 1200px wide. In both cases, the star is drawn as ten straight lines. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:42, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

I don't know about the shades either. All photos from the period are black and white. (There is this and this, but I don't know how helpful they would be in determining the shade.) Probably our best guess about the shade is the current Turkish flag. There is no reason to assume that it changed during the standardization in 1936. In any case, they were probably using whatever red dye they could get in the Ottoman times.

In terms of shape the second file definitely seems to be better though, looking at the photos from the time. Especially the star.--172.56.23.99 (talk) 22:59, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Looking at the photos in the source for the second one, there doesn't appear to be much standardization at all. Some have the star much larger and further away than either file ([1][2]) and more closely match File:Flag_of_Turkey.svg, some have it closer and smaller than either file ([3][4]). This image (excluding the color, which was added later and, like most colorized pictures, lacks any non-primary colors) seems to most match File:Ottoman flag.svg in terms of star placement. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 22:54, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it is hard to say that one flag is right and the other is wrong. There is a length discussion at Talk:Flags of the Ottoman Empire#Need THIRD OPINION, it seems that File:Flag of the Ottoman Empire.svg was prepared as a compromise between the proposals, i.e. File:Ottoman flag.svg and File:Ottoman flag alternative 2.svg; one has a chubby star and the other has a thinner one like the current Turkish flag, and File:Flag of the Ottoman Empire.svg is in between. I find myself closer to the argument that the current Turkish flag is a better basis: Before 1936 there wasn't really a standard so we can go with any flag that is red with white crescent and star, but since we have to pick a version for use in Wikipedia, I suppose it would be reasonable to assume that in standardizing the flag, the committee picked the version that was most commonly in use, rather than creating a new version.

But regardless of my thoughts, this compromise version seems to be the standard elsewhere in Wikipedia (for example it is used at Template:Country data Ottoman Empire and hence all related articles), so for consistency I suggested changing the one here as well. I think it would be better to use the same file everywhere, and if one were to suggest a change, the discussion and further change could be made on that file.--172.56.23.179 (talk) 01:41, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Requested some input from the folks at WT:TURKEY#Flag discussion. Bazj (talk) 15:00, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Done In the absence of any reply to the request for comment. Bazj (talk) 15:25, 1 September 2015 (UTC)