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Revision as of 17:07, 27 October 2016

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Former countries Redirect‑class

This redirect is within the scope of WikiProject Former countries, a collaborative effort to improve Misplaced Pages's coverage of defunct states and territories (and their subdivisions). If you would like to participate, please join the project.Former countriesWikipedia:WikiProject Former countriesTemplate:WikiProject Former countriesformer country Redirect This redirect does not require a rating on Misplaced Pages's content assessment scale.

Use of continent for world-spanning empires

Spanish Empire uses this template, and currently has a warning about lack of the continent parameter. The documentation says to list them all in alphabetical order (I can only assume this means separating with commas, in this case "Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, Oceania, South America"), but this gives another warning that the value "does not comply". Looking at the source it seems that only single names are supported, meaning the documentation is incorrect. No single continent name would be enough for the Spanish Empire, which touched every continent. I'm not convinced "Category:Former countries in Oceania" for example would be appropriate, but neither would "Category:Former countries in Europe" since European Spain was really only a small part of the empire. Could the parameter just be omitted and warnings explicitly suppressed? Hairy Dude (talk) 00:01, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

To be quite honest, I don't think this template should be generating content categories like that in any case, because a subcategory may well be more appropriate. For example Seljuk Empire is in Category:Seljuk Empire, a subcategory of Category:Former countries in the Middle East. Hairy Dude (talk) 12:33, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

native_name

Can native_name be substituted to add a Contemporary historical name. This has to do with an argument I had at the Qarakhanid page, a Qarluq Turkic people living in Central Asia, their language is long gone and obscure so we will never know what the native name, but can we use a Contemporary historical name that historians living at that time use, this mainly being Persian and Arabic name, both having the same meaning which is "The Khans", this name is more likely used with their diplomatic ties with various Islamic Empire near them. I have noticed that in the Tang Empire article, they use modern Chinese name with modern script instead of the Middle Chinese. Any advice here is welcome Alexis Ivanov (talk) 02:20, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Talk:Czechoslovak government-in-exile

There is a discussion on whether this infobox should be used for governments, rather than countries, at talk:Czechoslovak government-in-exile#Role of infobox. Comments welcome! —Brigade Piron (talk) 20:01, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Predecessor/successor treatment: a concrete proposal

It's been repeatedly discussed here that the current treatment of "predecessor" and "successor" states, by image-only flag icons near the top of the infobox, is unsatisfactory (most recently here and here). To briefly restate the reasons:

• Many (or most) pre-modern states had no clearly defined visual symbol such as a flag or coat of arms.
• Even if they did, most of them are not widely known and recognizable to the reader.
• Substitute symbols (such as coins) chosen by editors as a makeshift solution are too small to be discernible.
• In the absence of an icon file, the template currently forces the display of a completely enigmatic white rectangle
• Even where suitable icons do exist, image-only "easter egg links" without textual support are a poor design choice as a matter of principle, especially for accessibility reasons.

Since a rough consensus for a change seemed to be apparent the last time round but nobody has come forward with a solution, I'm going to be bold and implement the following (cf. sandbox edit ):

• By default, all predecessor/successor lists will be shown as textual lists at the bottom of the box (as it is currently done only for lists longer than 5)
• If editors wish to retain the old flag-only format on a particular article, they can revert to it by setting a new parameter "successorflags=yes".

Personally, I'd advise against the latter solution in all but a few cases, as there are very few country flags (even of modern states) that an average reader can be relied upon to recognize without a written caption. I'd also recommend that once this change has been achieved, editors should weed out most of the non-flag substitute icons they have been using on various articles, such as coin or map images, as they will no longer be needed (otherwise they will continue to be displayed, next to the textual list).

Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:52, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

I don't think this is an improvement at all. I found this discussion because I saw that the template on multiple articles was changed. Please revert your bold edit - I can't do it since I'm not an admin. StAnselm (talk) 01:24, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

I do. A number of editors supported this proposal in past discussions, so the change largely reflects the consensus. Rob984 (talk) 10:01, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Do you have an alternative solutions to the issue? We had been using workarounds including text and other symbols when a flag or coat of arms wasn't available. Now this change had been implemented, many of those workarounds have already been removed. So reverting will result in a lot of blank flag icons as well. You can still re-add the icons at the top on a case-by-case basis. Rob984 (talk) 10:05, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

No, it doesn't reflect the consensus at all - there had barely been any discussion. There are still hundreds, if not thousands, or articles that need to be "fixed". Why has the default been changed, when it was working perfectly well in the majority of articles? Why not have the option to move the predecessors/successors to the bottom if blank flag icons are a problem? StAnselm (talk) 00:26, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

Well, but did they really "work perfectly" in the majority of cases? As I argued above, they never did, because the blank icons were by far not the only serious problem. Every flag icon is a problem if it's not accompanied by descriptive text. It's for very good reasons that the MOS strongly warns not to use them. Bare flag icons are inaccessible to visually impaired users with screenreaders; they are mostly useless in printout on paper (especially in monochrome print), and of course even for the average reader on normal displays they will be unfamiliar and thus useless in a very large number of cases. I'm afraid each of these three issues is serious enough that a return to the old state is simply not an option at this point. What exactly did you mean by "fixing" above? Reverting to the old format? I'm afraid that wouldn't be fixing them; it would be breaking them again. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:07, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

• Redirect-Class former country pages
• WikiProject Former countries articles