eRepublik Official Wiki talk:WikiProject Military

This article is within the scope of the Military WikiProject, a collaborative effort to improve the eRepublik Wiki's coverage of wars and military-related articles. If you would like to participate, you can visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.

Getting Started

Alright, so the project is activated. Here are a few administration things that need to be sorted:

1. Project Banner: All Wikipedia WikiProjects have a banner on their talk page to show it is within the scope of the project. For Example: WikiProject New Zealand. We don't need something so complicated, however the issue is that a lot of articles on this wiki don't have active talk pages. Therefore, my suggestion was the small shield template in the top right-hand corner. However, I would see if there is any consensus on this.

2. Style guide: I would like to get this written to form the backbone of the project; however it should be done with other people’s views. A few points:

• We need to sort the naming problem once and for all (WW1, WW2, WW3 ect...)
• I personally hate this sort of page. Just scroll down to the bottom. Lists of useless figures. However, some people have clearly spent some time on this, so perhaps it should be moved, not necessarily deleted.
• This, if I do say so myself, should be a much better format for a war page (I know it isn't finished). We need to standardise the layout of such a page (Background, Belligerents, Chronology, Course of the war, Aftermath etc…) and apply it to all war pages.

3. Old wars: Pages like Romania-Russia War or Russia-Romania War need some serious updating. The one thing I hope is when the New World map comes out it should show the history much clearer, and be a great asset to the Wiki.

4. Maps: As part of the scope of this project, I suggested a cartographic section. I would be very willing to make most of these, when I have the time, however we might need to have some guidelines for them as well.

5. Anything else...

Style Issues

Eep, sorry about PEACE invasion of North America (I'm responsible for about 1/3 of it)! :( I feel that battle location, sides, outcome, url, and date are all generally relevant data, but simplification might be in order. We could list the participants once at the top of each separate conflict, and then just say who attacked in each battle. Battle links can be deleted in favor of a single war link at the top. Heroes can be deleted, since they're mostly symbolic. And then the compressed data can be shipped to a page like "Battles of the (insert war here)." Give the word and I'll start on the biggest offender. --Mjb Silent 22:19, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

I've located the war links for Russia-Romania War, Romania-Russia War, Turkey-Israel War, and China-Romania War (see the disccussion section of each page). I can track down more. Also, how about my idea above? --Mjb Silent 01:47, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

OK, how about this? User:Martin23230/Sandbox/Battle If we have one of these on the page, obviously filled in for every battle. It gives a nice visual representation of how the war progressed. I will work on getting it more user friendly of course.--Martin23230 13:10, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

The second table looks good in its present form.. Do you need to change something, or can I start applying it? Also, I estimate that it will reduce the amount of space needed for listing battles by about 75%, but should we make a separate page for it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mjb Silent (talk • contribs) 03:44, August 2, 2009

Just a suggestion. Make it collapsible collapsed ("cc") because for pages like PEACE invasion of North America, it will be still lengthy. Also, making it "cc" will not need a separate page. --Belea2008 00:48, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Good idea.--Martin23230 11:06, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

I've applied it on PioNA (58 battles listed so far). For the RWs, should I list the region as the attacker? Also, what should I do when a battle ends because the region was conquered by another country?--Mjb Silent 20:33, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

For RWs, use {{BattleRwin}} or {{BattleRlose}}. For battles that ended inconclusivly, use {{Battlenon}}. --Martin23230 12:58, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Okay, those are working (I so wish I'd found the Battle template instructions before figuring out how to apply all of it). So far, I've got all battles through July 25 transferred (101). The template is excellent; it needs to be applied to all possible war pages, and you should get that WikiProject badge for making it.--Mjb Silent 20:46, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

1. I only wrote the instructions yesterday ;)

2. I could never accept one of my own badges. I haven’t even finished uploading them yet!

The work you have been doing is excellent, I will see about applying these across the wiki. Oh, and you don't need the User:Martin23230/Sandbox/ bit anymore on the templates. i.e. instead of {{User:Martin23230/Sandbox/Battlewin|Alberta|United Kingdom... just {{Battlewin|Alberta|United Kingdom... will be fine. Well done so far! --Martin23230 13:41, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, that simplified it. I updated several sub-wars all the way through the present... but when I tried to save or preview the edit, I got this wiki error: Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 20971520 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 1122413 bytes) in /var/www/web12/web/includes/parser/Parser.php on line 404. I tried copying the wiki code, but ctrl+c betrayed me, so I'll have to do it all again. Right now, I've got the current page+1 sub-war update written down safely, but the wiki won't let me put even that into the system. Do what?

Odd, I don't think I have gotten that error before. Try creating a page in your sandbox and saving it there. See if the same error occurs. I don't know really what else to do.--Martin23230 15:03, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

I, on the other hand, just got it for the second time. Could it be that there's too much data for the page? The current form is about 10 kb smaller than it was at the peak level. Maybe the overall wiki is having memory trouble... Is there someone familiar with the parser who we should ask? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mjb Silent (talk • contribs) 21:09, August 6, 2009

Server limitations: [1] - I will talk tomorrow to an eRepublik engineer in order to make some tweaks! It's strange... because I know that the PHP memory was raised twice to a lot more than it was needed. --Belea2008 19:44, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Portal:Military

Will this project also take on the work that has already been started in Portal:Military? --QJ Lincoln Talk To Me 17:42, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Yep, the Project does cover the Portal as well. I will have a go at updating it soon.--Martin23230 18:19, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject organization

I see some great ideas here. I'm glad someone's finally made a WikiProject for the military related pages. What we need to do is standardize what we have on the articles. Before we even begin to start an assessment campaign, we need to figure out what is and is not acceptable on different military topics and how the layouts should look like. From what I think of, we have military articles in the following categories (feel free to add more):

• Military Forces
• Military Units
• Military Leaders
• Military History
• Military Alliances
• Military Decorations/Ranks
• General Wars
• Specific Battles

For each of these categories, standard layouts should be set, then massive collaboration projects begin, once that's done then mass assessment drive. Does anyone have anything to add? - Lieutenant General Jameson L. Tai ^{talk / US Army} 00:39, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree, we need a standardised layout for these pages. I will have a go at this when I have time, but one example would be what is above for Wars:

1. Background
2. Belligerents
3. Chronology
4. Course of the war
5. Aftermath

A set layout for armies, alliances and rank pages would be good. By Leaders I assume you mean like Secretary-General of the PEACE Global Community as opposed to actual people, there seems to be few of these. History is usually part of the Wars pages, and other than a few notable battles (WSR, Nova Scotia; ones mentioned in the Insider) I don't think every battle should have a page. Certainly fronts and parts of Wars should have separate pages (ATLANTIS invasion of France was part of World War II). Anyway, defiantly a good idea. --Martin23230 19:17, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

What program are we using for images?

I've noticed that I in particular have imported quite a bit from Wikipedia, SVG, GIF, JPG, PNGs - and I was wondering which program we used for this WikiProject's banner... - Lieutenant General Jameson L. Tai ^{talk / US Army} 06:14, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Most of the images I upload I made using Inkscape, i.e. in .svg format. I then export them as .png format and upload them. That is why the "flagballs" (by me) are .pngs but the flags (not by me) are .jpgs. The wiki does have some .svg support, see here. For example, the Czech ball looks the same, but there is no transparency. Therefore I would suggest .pngs or .jpgs for the wiki as they are the best compromise. --Martin23230 16:18, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

I've noticed the lack of transparency support on some of the transparent gif and png files... it was pretty awkward. Thanks. We probably should focus on making these standard layouts first then focus on media at this point. - Lieutenant General Jameson L. Tai ^{talk / US Army} 00:33, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

In regards to establishing clear formats, I think this wikipedia:Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_history/Style_guide makes things a bit easier to help us establish our standards. - Lieutenant General Jameson L. Tai ^{talk / US Army} 11:28, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

World War VI

Alright, we have fighting in China, India, France, Bulgaria, Turkey, South Africa, Croatia and Belgium with the promise of more in Germany, Poland, Australia and Korea. I think this counts as a World War....

Therefore I have decided to remobilise the Project. I am expecting a new influx of people following this action and we need to chronicle it. Therefore I suggest creating the World War IV page and start making notes!

On a related issue, I think it is time to clarify our stance on the World War moniker. What is happening now is a world war. World War II was a world war. World War I wasn't really, but everyone including the Admins calls it that. We recently decided to rename the World War III page to Great War of 2009. Whilst a nice neutral title, it is obviously now inaccurate as, with only 3 weeks left, there is a new great war of 2009. Therefore I suggest we enshrine into the project our new War classifications:

War	Extent
	Start	End
World War I	Romanian Invasion of Hungary (start of PEACE-ATLANTIS war)	Beta ended
World War II	V1 released (ATLANTIS invasion of France)	ATLANTIS collapses
World War III	PEACE invasion of North America (Start of PEACE-Fortis/EDEN war)	PEACE collapses
World War IV	EDEN invasion of Asia (Start of EDEN-Phoenix war)	Phoenix slow dissolution
World War V	USA-Poland War (Start of EDEN/NWO-Terra war)	???

Who's with me?--Martin23230 18:12, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I would want to say a thing about this..., really, I think that it is just a Great War, that began in the last days of Beta when Romania invaded Hungary (WW1), and just hasn't ended..., the sides are still the same, just changed a bit their names: it's the Big Alliance War, or another name more suitable..., maybe it would be for a whole page that links to the 4 mayor conflicts, but also describes about other minor ones, including TOs and the sort. What do you think about? -- Purohueso (talk if you want) 20:02, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Oh I quite agree, I even wrote this to attempt to merge the first two wars (this was just after the collapse of ATLANTIS; i.e. the end of WWII). However, I think we have to strike a balance here. The wiki is meant to record the New World, and if everyone is calling this World War IV then that is really what we should call it. You are right that the ATLANTIS who allied with Romania attacking Hungary to start WW1 is almost exactly the same as the EDEN backing the US invasion of Asia in WWIV. However, the war on eRepublik is never ending. We need to split it up somewhere and those are the best definitions I could think of, the ones everyone is using. Still, if we do go down this path, I would create a page called World War which would say what I just said; technically this is one big conflict but this is how we split it up.--Martin23230 20:38, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I think the World War III page (or Great War of 2009) should be updated with the conflict in Europe and Asia. PEACE's dissolution wasn't the result of their attack on North America. The article should be expanded to mention the attacks in Europe. Slovakia, Malaysia and Austria are really the three events that tore the alliance apart in my mind. Auk Rest 23:04, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

So, really it never was such a great division between WWIII and WWIV..., it's more like an attack, some minor battles between and the counter-attack, which also only has sense if we see at the income of WWII, as well as many other conflicts, even coming from Beta, but mostly asociated, in this particular case, with the downfall of the Pakistani empire.
Also, the downfall of Atlantis is more a result of the same sort of events of these, between WWII and WWIII, as the german issue has nothing to do with any of these two, besides got fastly liberated due to WWII, but not inside it...
I have some problems explaining it, but I think that the current World Wars are more like episodes, which just compile some stock of battles, but the real war is just one..., and really, there is just an error by adding numbers to "WW"..., damn, I think I didn't explained it well-- Purohueso (talk if you want) 00:28, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Two references

• http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/-history-the-romanian-atlantis-campaign-in-asia-i-upd--878762/1/20
• http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/-history-the-romanian-atlantis-campaign-in-asia-ii--879804/1/20

Do what you wish with them. --Belea2008 17:10, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Cough

Could we get this running again - or at least, is there anything to do? :P - John F Baker ^talk/_{British Army librarian} 14:18, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Cough, cough ... <crickets> ... cough, sniff. -- Citizen 6   _Talk   07:50, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Sorry it's a bit desolate. Mind the dust and the tumbleweed and hear this tale.

Now, the wiki (or Firefox) ate my original reply, so I won't be too long. A couple of things I think are important:

• War reporting is a long and important role in eRepublik, if we can get some of the greats involved this would help immensely. If not, use their articles.
• The biggest thing we can do is draw order from the chaos of eRepublik. That means sorting out the three years of Wars and grouping them so they make sense. My table above is a start.
• Wars at the moment are hugely different to what they once were:

• No tactics or strategy (retreat, free NE wars), so we won't ever get anything as great as WW3 again.
• Alliances define wars in this game. The major wars up to WW3 could be defined in terms of alliances, quite nicely too. The current alliance system is confused and frankly rubbish compared to PEACE GC (not that I was on their side, but they had style). What is the NWO? It has no newspaper, no staff, no general, no logo. How can we archive that? It's just a group of nations with similar interests.

• The Admin looked kindly on us exactly once in the history of this game, that was the introduction of the new map. it had the history feature, meaning from the start of the invasion of America we could see exactly who held what. Ironically, and I noted it at the time, it was around then we stopped archiving it as well as we once did. Now of cource the Admins can't ever get anything right, so they introduced new countries and ****ed up the map history. If we could re access it this job might be possible, as it is it is almost impossible. God knows I've sent tickets about it, but it's not high on their priorities.

History is the most important part of the new World, in my opinion, and it is the only reason I'm hanging on the life here. Basically we need the map history (so send a ticket), but until then categorisation is the key, the top level stuff. What war are we in? Who fought who? When? Reasons and details can be fixed later, we need an outline. Wars is a good start for pre-modern era stuff. The War of the Three Pillars (WWIV) needs much better documentation, that would be a nice place to work.--Martin23230 22:57, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Won't we have some problems with documenting historical wars because of older articles? Some of those links are broke, and won't losing the orgs make it even more difficult? I'm not familiar with the "map history" but it sounds like it would be nice to have it back. I'm having a hard time in the USA finding a solid war journalist nowadays. "Stars and Stripes" was awesome for it and "The Fieldist" was good too. But alas, now are both defunct. Maybe we should work at identifying solid/somewhat-reliable war reporters in each country and comprise a list we can draw from. Just a suggestion. -- Citizen 6   _Talk   09:48, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Standardising war pages

Take for example the following:

• Third Spain-France War
• South Africa-Brazil War
• Moldavia-Romania War
• Fourth Balkan War

They all have different page structures and battle listing formats. In my opinion, we should have a template page structure and battle layout policy. Some standardisation would be good! - John F Baker ^Talk/_{Royal Navy} 09:52, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

+1 Agreed. Template needed. What do you have in mind? Personally, I like Khebits layout in Third Spain-France War, though I think the region map should be more uniformly placed, perhaps in its own column. -- Citizen 6   _Talk   10:20, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, Khebit's layout is good, but what do we do for pre-v3 battles without minibattles, or when we do not know the minibattle results? —Preceding unsigned comment added by John F Baker (talk • contribs) 14:13, April 10, 2011

USA-Spain War - I think this article may probably be the best one to base war pages on? I understand that alot of the page sections in different wars may differ, but the sections in that article are a minimum, imo - John F Baker ^Talk/_{Royal Navy}

Looks p cool. Is there a way we can add the template: day to it so we don't have to look up each day AND date? Just kind of semi-automate it by double-pasting the date in both the date and day parameter, or does it get sticky? -- Citizen 6   _Talk   23:21, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Good shout, changed it so you only have to enter the erep date now :) - John F Baker ^Talk/_{Royal Navy} 23:39, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Might need to constrain the region map to a lower size, it may be jacking-up the victory flags. Try 32px, but you might have to tool with it. -- Citizen 6   _Talk   18:08, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Problem with regions map, is not all the regions have their maps :/ ||||||Khebit ^T_C| 18:11, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

yup, work in progress. maybe set the default to the world map? -- Citizen 6   _Talk   18:17, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

I'd go for not setting a default (if there is no map, simply no image). Should we divide work to upload regions' maps? ||||||Khebit ^T_C| 18:23, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

a'right then. I'm slowly getting around to finally doing the USA (see: Maryland, so that's gonna keep me a bit busy. Canada is cool, and so is UK iirc. I'll do USA, let me know what you are working on so we don't double up once I'm done. I'm using wikipedia's under CC share-alike, but I guess whatever map works is good enough. Do we want uniformity? Personally I kinda want some flavor in the maps (color etc.), but I'm flexible. Also, I was planning on cleaning up each of the states in the process, so thats gonna slow me down too. But needs to be done, been wanting to for awhile. -- Citizen 6   _Talk   18:31, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Oh, ya know what, its not the image that is messing up the victor flag, it's the date (after I suggested the change), isn't it? -- Citizen 6   _Talk   18:41, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Map problem now resolved. Template checks if File:Region-{{{Region Name}}}.png/.jpg exists. If so, it displays like this, else it shows nothing like this- John F Baker ^Talk/_{Royal Navy} 18:52, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Alliance dropdown vastly improved thanks to sampo! Just need him to fix the mis-aligned arrow and text :) - John F Baker ^Talk/_{Royal Navy} 20:04, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

War Photographers needed

Just thinking it might be a cool project for any image hounds out there who feel so inclined to take some World Map screen captures at various times throughout the many conflicts and upload them for broad use. Maybe we should set up an image gallery as a resource pool? Only thing is that all the images should be 100% dated in the upload description to help maintain accuracy. Just tossing out an idea. Images are getting uploaded all the time, so if you come across one you can directed it to War Photo category as well. Anything like this in place already? -- Citizen 6   _Talk   18:53, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Don't believe there is anything remotely like this, but it's a great idea!- John F Baker ^Talk/_{Royal Navy} 19:02, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

I believe the game map has a by date function too, so that might make it easier. -- Citizen 6   _Talk   19:11, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Oh awesome, they fixed it. It was broken for a while, IIRC :P - John F Baker ^Talk/_{Royal Navy} 19:13, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Some pics anyway :P

• 

  Day 1238-Time 12.06

• 

  Day_1238-Time_12.08

• 

  Day_1238-Time_12.10

The history is still broken. It only goes back to March 17th. It used to go back all the way to WW3 (the dates go back to August 2009), imagine how useful that would be! Unfortunately it can't be accessed, anything before March 17th 2011 only displays the current map. I have sent many requests for this to be fixed, but to no avail.--Martin23230 22:57, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

That's a tragedy :( Perhaps Belea can help us? - John F Baker ^Talk/_{Royal Navy} 23:50, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Well I guess the good news is that we can go back to the start of WWV if we start grabbing in the next couple of days. I've set up Category:War Photos, so feel free to tag pictures you come across and put them there for community use. Maybe this will be a useful single stop shop in the future. -- Citizen 6   _Talk   07:21, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

I just realized that I set it up with a capital P in photos, maybe that was a mistake. Should it be moved, or does it matter? Oh well, that's what I get for playing when I should be sleeping ... -- Citizen 6   _Talk   07:21, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Awesome timeline thing

User:Mr_Dalibor/Timeline - Kudos to him, that looks pretty great :) - John F Baker ^Talk/_{Royal Navy} 11:11, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

WWV War List

I think we might could use a list of all the wars and related articles about World War V. Mostly so that we have place to let others know the names of the various articles they are working on so we don't double up and can do some internal linking. Also think that ultimately we could even set up a World War V Series, similar to the Maltese Mission series or maybe a Portal: World War V (whichever is appropriate) so that future readers can get a comprehensive look at the war and we can link them all together. Here is what I got, but I'm sure I'm missing some. Feel free to add to the list as you create or stumble across relevant articles. -- Citizen 6 _Talk   05:41, 21 April 2011 (PDT)

List of WWV Articles:

World War V (root article)

Second Poland-Germany War‎

Adriatic War‎

Fourth Balkan War

Brazil-Spain War‎

USA-Poland War‎

USA-Spain War

Mexico-USA War‎

China-Iran War‎

Serbia-Russia War‎

Poland-Brazil War‎

Third Spain-France War

ONE invasion of France

ONE invasion of Bulgaria

Bulgarian Independence War‎

Third Indonesia-Australia War

Indonesia-USA War (only historically connected, not a part of)

Second USA-Mexico War (only historically connected, not a part of)

Croatia-Montenegro War

EDEN invasion of Serbia

Second Baltic War

First Baltic War

Second Anglo-Irish War

Operation Leaven Elimination

Portugal-Spain War

I have a cool idea about how to layout these links in the WWV article, that I'll do later :D - John F Baker ^Talk/_{Royal Navy} 07:32, 21 April 2011 (PDT)

Interesting ... -- Citizen 6 _Talk   03:57, 22 April 2011 (PDT)

User:John F Baker/sandbox - thoughts? (got go go :P) • John F Baker Talk   Royal Navy 06:18, 8 May 2011 (PDT)

Hey that's pretty cool! What about switching to a different battle image like (but that image needs to be cleaned up, but it will work as an example), or maybe something similar like . Or we could find or make something else ourselves. Maybe we can experiment with showing the flags of the belligerents; like ... ... or ... . But I dunno, that might be too busy. -- Citizen 6 _Talk   08:22, 8 May 2011 (PDT)

Looking at User:John F Baker/sandbox with just *some* of the icons there, I think it's already a tiny bit cluttered to be considering adding more :P Feel free to add the other battles though, or I will later :) • John F Baker Talk   Royal Navy 12:54, 8 May 2011 (PDT)

Yeah, too much clutter and it will get worse in Europe as we add more. Can you adjust it to remove the caption and replace it with a mouse-over link for the battle icon instead. That might be better. -- Citizen 6 _Talk   03:25, 9 May 2011 (PDT)

can't you just add link=nameofwar to make the mouse-over work instead of actualy coding out the mouse-over, it might fix the problem of layering, where the name will show up behind other icons, as in 1&2 Baltic currently. example: (<--mouse-over to see). Might even remove the required caption field, and directly link it when someone clicks it, if you get my meaning. -- Citizen 6 _Talk   02:18, 10 May 2011 (PDT)

Oh... yeah :] - I'll add the option lol. • John F Baker Talk   Royal Navy 08:24, 10 May 2011 (PDT)

/me facepalms - Silly me, tired from college. Yeah, it looks good xD • John F Baker Talk   Royal Navy 09:33, 10 May 2011 (PDT)

Ok, will update the map as time is available. We'll get em all up there, hopefully easy to see. FYI, for some reason I've been manually updating this list, but you know, using Category:World War V is sooo much easier! duh, what was I thinking? Anyway, from now on lets just use that as the source for WWV wars. -- Citizen 6 _Talk   14:21, 11 May 2011 (PDT)