Template talk:Infobox former country/Archive 7

Archive 1

←

Archive 5

Archive 6

Archive 7

Archive 8

Archive 9

Overlink

This template has the habit of linking common terms and expressions given certain common parameters, such as President, Prime Minister, Monarch and Governor contrary to WP:OVERLINK. — Blue-Haired Lawyer ^t 20:53, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

• Here's the diff. Changes demonstrated on testcases page. The changes only made a difference on the Tanganyika infobox. — Blue-Haired Lawyer ^t 15:57, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Multiple dates of start and end

Since there are former countries that existed multiple times, like Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (1923 – 1940; 1956 – 1991) or Chechen-Inguish ASSR (1936 – 1944; 1957 – 1990), the template doesn't work in those. Can anyone find a solution? --Pudeo' 04:46, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

I found a cheap solution just by adding the former date next to the earlier with <br/>1956–1991. But that won't fix the flag succession problem. --Pudeo' 04:51, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Status text box controversies: proposal for RfC on whether to keep or remove the status text

The status text box has become a subject of controversy at Talk:East Germany by a number of users, including me. The status text is typically used to say that a certain state or territory was a client state, protectorate, or vassal state of another - while including such material in the article is acceptable, the inclusion of this in the status text box has caused serious problems.

• Number (1): the status text box assumes that the categorization of such states and territories is simple, when it is very complex in international relations;
• Number (2): the status text box is too small to allow for explanation of the status, and implies that the status is a completely accepted fact, when it may not be - or as indicated in Number (1), it may be more complex than that.
• Number (3): in addition to it assuming simplicity of international relations and it being too small to allow for explanation, it is a potentially unnecessary repetition of a statement that could be made in the intro with additional statements as evidence for it.

I could probably identify more problems if I thought more about it, but these are the three major problems with the status text. I support the removal of the status text box from the infobox. However I support having an RfC on the matter, I would appreciate it if an administrator could be brought in to organize and draft an appropriate RfC that asks whether users "support" or "oppose" a proposition to remove the status text box for the reasons given above in my statement and other reasons that other users may provide.--R-41 (talk) 02:12, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

In some cases it is useful, which is why it is an optional field. Empires and confederations break apart, colonies gain independence, mandates end, etc. One would expect editors to have sufficient competance not to misuse the field. TFD (talk) 05:25, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm basically in agreement with R-41. I'm more pessimistic than TFD about the competence of editors. It's just too tempting for a single editor to use the field to state as bald fact an assertion which should be qualified with details (and can be in the body of the article). This can lead to complicated, ugly disputes as at Talk:East Germany. My belief is that the infobox should be used for clear, basic facts like the area, population or dates of a country. Dingo1729 (talk) 18:58, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

• On consideration I think the real problem here is that the parameter is called "status" even though it's only meant to be used for colonies. The parameter should be renamed "imperial-state-type". This would ensure against possible misuse. — Blue-Haired Lawyer ^t 16:41, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

  It looks like there's a variety of views about this, but there doesn't seem to be a clear consensus. I'll deactivate {{editprotected}} for now. Tra (Talk) 02:22, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Number of entries

Is this limited? I entered more than 9 leaders in Kingdom of Pontus but it is only recognising the first 9 --Michael Goodyear (talk) 21:05, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Edit request: Commonwealths as a form of Republic

The term Commonwealth is (as its article explains) often used to describe a kind of republic, but in contexts where the use of the word "Republic" in the government_type field would be inaccurate and controversial (such as The Protectorate).

As such, after line 182:

  |Republic|Federal Republic|Federal republic=[[Republic]]
 {{#if:{{{_noautocat|<noinclude>yes</noinclude>}}}|| [[Category:Former republics|{{{common_name}}}, {{{year_start}}}]]}}

, in the {{#if:{{{government_type|}}}|{{#switch:{{ucfirst:{{{government_type}}}}} section, please add a new line reading:

  |Commonwealth|[[Commonwealth]]=[[Commonwealth]]
 {{#if:{{{_noautocat|<noinclude>yes</noinclude>}}}|| [[Category:Former republics|{{{common_name}}}, {{{year_start}}}]]}}

(I've wrapped both instances of this text for legibility, there should be a single space, rather than a line break in the middle.) This will enable the text Commonwealth to be displayed in these instances, but for the article to be added to the category Category:Former republics and not to Category:Former country articles requiring maintenance. — OwenBlacker (Talk) 22:31, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm not so sure... looking at that article, a commonwealth isn't always a type of republic so I'm not getting why you would want to categorise them like that. What about having a separate category for commonwealths, or renaming the category to clarify that it covers both types? Tra (Talk) 07:47, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Apparent formatting problem with caption

See the results of this edit. It seems to me that the caption should be left justified, not centered. I'm not a CSS jock, though, and I'm on the road without my O'Reilly books and without the time to track down info on how to fix this online. Could someone please take a look at it? Thanks. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 04:11, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

This template is incorrectly translating English colonies = British colonies

I am a bit horrified to find that Wikipedia is claiming Roanoke Colony to have been a "British colony" (sic). This is complete pants, as any reliable est ref will tell you. I have just discovered that it is this template causing the cock-up. It is translating Empire=England into British colony instead of English colony. The actual article text correctly pipes to the correct article:

• English colonial empire

Please rectify this fault, as WP:VERIFY is an official policy here at Wikipedia. --Mais oui! (talk) 17:02, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

I also note that it is incorrectly adding Category:Former British colonies instead of the correct Category:Former English colonies.--Mais oui! (talk) 17:04, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

 Done I have, I believe, made the change the behavior when the "empire" parameter is "England". These changes seemed straightforward and appear to produce the correct results at Roanoke Colony, let's see if they cock anything else up.  ;-) If there are other problems, feel free to revert me (if you can), make another request, and/or ask me directly. --joe decker^{talk to me} 22:21, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Readability, why not <OL><LI>...</LI></OL>?

Using hyphens to bullet events ("- {{{") makes for poor readability because wrapped text extends all the way to the left of the respective column, obscuring and overpowering the bullet. Is there some reason that unordered (or ordered) lists aren't used for mark-up? Or at least a proper bullet character to stand out more? VєсrumЬа ►TALK 17:59, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Remove categorisation?

WP:TEMPLATECAT recommends against using templates to categorise articles. The current situation makes it difficult for editors to properly manually categorise articles. Shouldn't this feature be removed (after direct substitution of the categories in each article)? --Paul_012 (talk) 08:50, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes please remove. There are often categories generated by it (Former something) that are not correct. Imperium Romanum Sacrum (talk) 01:36, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

I am also troubled by the opaque manner in which categories are added using this infobox. __meco (talk) 09:31, 29 August 2012 (UTC)