Talk:Ranks and insignia of NATO armies officers/Archive 1

Template or no template?

In wake of concerns of User:Davenbelle of me "abusing templates [1]" (although I was never informed of this), I present my cases on why I want a template. --Cool Cat ^{My Talk} 05:34, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Templates?

YES!

• gives me the ability to use same material on seperate articles, such as entries of each millitary unit. See: British Army as an example
• allows me to create other comparative pages. I havent done any but plan to do comparative ranks of europe, asia, africa, etc. Will perhaps do other alliances...
• Saves wiki hard drive space
• Saves me time
• Easier to follow as each entry is individualy examined.
• If interwiki templates are added as a functionality by Devs, this will allow me to translate this article to virtualy any language of the 26 NATO countries. If all 198 countries are done (which I plan) to any language human knowlege accpets. This is a relatively large initiative.
• modular
• Has been very helpful to Jpbrenna in assembling Hellenic Army officer rank insignia and other pages. Any godless communist Red Army punk who tries to VfD this should face the full wrath of a NATO counterattack under the aegis of Supreme Allied Commander CoolCat. Excellent work, keep it up! If you have time, do something for Argentine Army ranks as well (see link at Talk:Argentine Army. --Jpbrenna 4 July 2005 07:10 (UTC)

NO!

• Bothers User:Davenbelle
• May give newbies a harder time, however ranks arent really subject to change.

Merged Discussion

(this text merged from User talk:Xiong 15:27, 2005 May 7 (UTC))

You seem to be having a little trouble with this page. Templates may not be the best route by which to build a table. Some users may be irate. I don't have a strong opinion, but I have technical skills and I can preserve the content before the use of templates falls under attack. Would you like me to help? — Xiong熊talk* 01:32, 2005 May 5 (UTC)

I considered Substing those. I am not sure how to deal with this many table items, its a large page, I really do not want to break it apart into more articles. Templaes are usefull to DUMP same information to other pages. like British Army. I also plan to use the templates on inter wiki projects in near future. I appriciate all the help but there is a reason for the template structure. Page is having issues with the number of table entries more than templates currently. I am interested in suggestions dont get me wrong. --Cool Cat ^{My Talk} 01:42, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Let me think about the job. I need to see the full extent of the application. I am not sure I support so many small articles. Rank insignia are bulky and numerous, and -- frankly -- of rather specialized interest. I can imagine many visitors to British Army who could do without a blow-by-blow detail of each rank -- though they should be able to get to such easily. Meanwhile, what about other branches of service? Can you rustle up Navy, Air Force, and Marine insignia for every nation on Earth? I see no reason to restrict the project to NATO -- especially since the organization has lost its mission.

It will take me a little time to come to some conclusion about this. Meanwhile, if anyone pesters you about it, please let them know I'm working on it, and invite them to comment on Talk. — Xiong熊talk* 02:47, 2005 May 5 (UTC)

Input

• I started with NATO. I see NATO as a reputible and an important organisation. I intend to do 198 nations (all recognised by the UN), starting with nato gives me ideas on how to do it, such as general design.
• It's very hard to manage a non template version I think. The most important thing in a rank sceme is of course how all the ranks look like, names of the ranks, nato clasifications (as necesary to compare and is the standard comparasion method), and if applicable abriviation. The template design alows me to create various lists, I could have a template made out of 198 tmplates to compare world ranks, or could compare asian ranks. If I screw up on something major atm I have to only wory about 26 entries. I have no intention on limiting this project to NATO. This is one of the largest wikiprojects as each rank is printed in the correct language it will be very easy to "translate" it to other wiki languages. However thats a long term project. Once we are done with All3+ branches of Nato we can start doing other nations. If we can get Devs to allow us to use templates interwiki, that would save us a lot of time.
• I have the images for most world nations, I do process these images so they are right size/quality/and named properly. I probably can aquire other images.
• Of-10 rank of italy is like gold, If you can find it I'll be very happy. This one of the few ranks I couldnt find, I dont know italian so that doesnt help :)
• Most officer ranks are in En. only, I wish to move them to commons. If you can help me with that Ill be very happy. Some images may need to be renamed to meet the nameing sceeme I came up with.

XX-Army-##.png where XX is the countries abriviation and ## is the rank level (1, 2, 3 , 4a, 4b, etc..)

• The reason I broke it into Army/Air Force/Navy is that to eliminate complexity.
• History of insignias may be interesting. Insignias should be on any "military" page like British Army. A military isnt much aside from the equipment and the people (who carry the ranks) so i think its important to provide 1/5th of a page worth of ranks.

Thanks. --Cool Cat ^{My Talk} 05:06, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Check article talk btw. --Cool Cat ^{My Talk} 05:23, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Processing

I need more time to see what is reasonable. One principle of graphic design is that the graphics should not outweigh the text. Another is that each graphic must pull its own weight. I fear this application does not meet these tests.

I think you will go further immediately by scaling all the images about 50% or even 35% when displayed on any page not directly related to the matter of insignia. Insignia is a part of military life, but not its most important. History, traditions, battles, politics, famous figures all play a part.

A great trouble with insignia, as currency within the political economy of Wikipedia, is that putting them together is a kind of rote-work. Rambot left a bad taste in some mouths because it did too much without human intervention. This insignia project resembles fancruft, in which a distinct page is created for every token in some obscure fantasy universe. While fancruft has been generally upheld, and it could be argued that real military life is of greater importance, it is the character of the work itself that tells.

• I would urge you to consider that there are large numbers of people who have no interest in collecting sets of anything. I collect many things, notably bears; and it is sometimes hard for me to realize that most visitors to my home -- even the ones who take polite interest in one or two bears -- simply will not sit still while I present each bear in turn, with corresponding anecdote. I do not know how anyone breathing could fail to hang on my every word; each bear is significant and not to be passed over lightly. Some are absolutely amazing unique one-of-a-kind finds, and my guests are privileged to attend for the 15 minutes it takes me to explain each one's provenance and significance. Especially when one considers the deep roots that bears have struck in our culture, the history of the teddy alone -- well. Cretins. I may as well not even bring out my collection of video-arcade tokens.

I do not say insignia work is bad; only that it must be sold, and may be a hard sell. We might do better to sell it in smaller quantities. You can get away with almost anything if you restrict it to a single page, be it ever so absurdly bulky -- but once you start touching large numbers of other pages, I fear you may arouse ire. In this case, some tact must be applied to the matter, and it will take me some time to concoct it. — Xiong熊talk* 05:34, 2005 May 5 (UTC)

Input

While I am not trying to destroy your thinking process, I beleieve you dont mind any input :)

• A though is suff such as, ranks and insignia fo the world A-C etc...
• Images are scaled down. We can scale more but would not make tables any smaller. Bear in mind that countries like germany needs relatively large images. The colors around ranks are not random ;)
• Insignia is more about the image than text. Text is whats its called (rank) while insignia is the image.
• You are right relevant info only, insignias history is seperate articles if at all. I know only US and UK has insignia histories. Norway also has an insignia page.

--Cool Cat ^{My Talk} 16:17, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Goals?

This problem breaks down into two distinct parts. The first is to determine goals. Only when this is done can the technical issues be addressed. Obviously there are many techniques for handling content, but until goals are clearly defined, there is no point in applying any of them.

I do not immediately see that any goal of mine or of this Project is addressed by this page or by the templates which compose it. That is not to say that it does not -- merely that I do not yet see it.

Possible goals:

(1) Create a complete collection of every possible military rank insignia.

(2) Offer to the reader an image of any insignia he is able to name.

(3) Offer to the reader an identification of any insignia he may posess or see elsewhere.

(4) Illustrate individual articles on military units ("color").

Goal (1) is unencyclopedic -- that is, such a collection is not within the bounds of a general reference work. I tried in the discussion above to indicate this. Collectors -- such as you and I -- tend to overestimate the level of general interest in our collections. It is of particular interest to collectors to form complete sets. This is of almost no interest whatsoever to the non-collector. Such collections tend to be very large and burdensome. Dedicated collectors construct additions to their homes for the sole purpose of housing their collections. We do not find this exceptional. Others find it incomprehensible.

To the collector, collecting is an end in itself. Acquiring new items, organizing subsets, viewing the collection entire, and documenting each piece are all valuable activities. If a piece belongs to a set, it becomes valuable for that reason, even if -- were it to exist alone -- it would have no value at all. None of these motives are shared by non-collectors, and this Project cannot serve this goal.

There is a small encyclopedic value in being able to (2) present the reader with an image on demand of a given named insignia. The appropriate format for this is a page containing properly-organized hierarchial index text, with links to individual images. For this purpose, there is no value in presenting multiple images at one time.

I believe only other collectors are likely to desire (3) to determine what they have by examination of a series of images. In any case, this job is formidable. Even if it were technically feasible to present every rank from every branch of service from every nation, for every period of time, all on one page, we could not expect even the avid collector to scan it to find a match. The only way to serve this goal would be to categorize insignia not by nation, branch, or era; but by color and form. The querent would have to be able to understand the categorization system and answer numerous questions in order to arrive at a subcollection of similar insignia small enough to scan by eye. Our technique does not permit us, say, to accept a scan from a user and internally match it to an image database. Perhaps in 20 years.

The remaining goal (4) is easily achievable, and with the same tool as (2) -- a hierarchial index of insignia names. For convenience, each entry should be presented both as a working link to the image itself and as markup that may be copied into article pages. Please note that, for reasons of balance, I suggest no more than 1 or 2 representative or unusual insignia be presented on any given article page.

I shall build a template or two to permit the rapid construction of a hierarchial index page. Existing templates serve no encyclopedic goal and should be orphaned -- removed from use -- then deleted. I am willing to provide you with a start toward building the index page, but from then on, you are on your own. — Xiong熊talk* 16:10, 2005 May 7 (UTC)

I really have no idea what you are trying to do, an example may help. --Cool Cat ^{My Talk} 17:37, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

I think that may be a problem. I've tried in several ways to bring you around, but it's not working. I don't know how much more direct I can be, without being rude.

This page has no value to this encyclopedia. You should forget it, and move this talk to another page -- say, Talk:Military rank insignia. Call for deletion of the old pages. Orphan, then call for deletion of all related templates -- they have no value.

Then, you should populate the new page -- Military rank insignia -- with text links to the insignia images. Go around to various military-related pages and insert perhaps 2 carefully-chosen, representative insignia per such page.

I am willing to help you with the new tools you will need to produce these per-article insertions and the index page(s). — Xiong熊talk* 08:54, 2005 May 9 (UTC)