Can we please replace the new War of 1812 sticker with the old one on Canadian profiles.

Question

While I appreciate the enormous effort that has gone into military categorization and stickers over the past months, the new War of 1812 sticker is problematic for those of us working on Canadian profiles. The four Canadian members of the War of 1812 Project have researched, sourced and placed stickers on the profiles of more than 400 Upper Canadian veterans. They are listed at the end of the Upper Canada in War of 1812 page.

All these profiles are now in the maintenance category. The information that is required (unit, dates, etc.) to remove them from maintenance is already in the biography sections of the profiles and in my view doesn’t need to be repeated on the sticker.  “Profile Stickers support and decorate the biography. They are not intended to serve a unique functional purpose.” From a design point of view, the new sticker is also quite clunky.

Dave, Fred, Jason and I don’t have the time to fix these stickers. Can we please return to the old one.

Answer 1

I agree with you Laurie. I've been trying to figure out when I would have the time to do all that "fixing", especially when it is all duplication of effort. I don't really see where this information needs to be repeated.

I notice that the stickers for the French & Indian War have the same problem. In that case, it only affects a couple of profiles in my watchlist.  But when I went to fix them, it took me several attempts before the computer would clear the maintenance category, and it even required creating a new category for the two profiles. This all seems like an awful lot of effort for what is essentially an exercise in duplication.

I do appreciate all the work that people put into creating the stickers, but perhaps there should have been better communication and consultation with the active members of the sub-projects before these stickers were introduced.

Surely in this case, simpler is better.

Comments

Thanks, Dave and Col. Moore.

Answer 2

Standards and uniformity sometimes seem like more trouble than they are worth....  yes, unit, dates, etc. are already in the biography, but so is the country of service, unit name, etc

trying to add all of the service members to a free space pages seems like extra work since they should already listed in the categories, but if that is the way you want to do things..... 

Looking at one of the profiles,  Aikman-2​ it has

{{War of 1812
| startdate = October 15, 1812
| enddate = unknown
| branch = 5th Regiment of Lincoln Militia
| unit = Canada
| rank = Private
}}

which places the profile in category: Canada, War of 1812 ​and in the maintenance category because it is missing the |units= parameter

it should be

{{War of 1812
| startdate = October 15, 1812
| enddate = unknown
| branch = Canadian Militia

| units=5th Regiment of Lincoln Militia
| unit = 5th Regiment of Lincoln Militia, Canada
| rank = Private
}}

which places the profile in category: 5th Regiment of Lincoln Militia, Canada, War of 1812​ and passes the edit check so it is not added to the maintenance category

as explained on the sticker page,

|units= is for display on the sticker for all units served in

|unit= is for the 1st unit category, additional units are added using [[Category:xxx]] for each of them

Comments

Thanks, Keith. I guess the answer's no. Two things. First, our Honour List was put together by a War of 1812 project leader in 2015 before we had bots and stickers. As I recall, we would add a name to the list and Dave would manually add the category to the profile. Later we added the project template to the profiles, then that got changed to a sticker, now this. I figure we've all done our bit at this point in time, so if someone else wants to take on the updating of the stickers, great!

Second, the four of us aren't profile managers on a majority of these profiles. When a profile manager deletes the sticker we've added, for all the reasons given above, will the militia category be lost?

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The sticker adds to the category so there is no need for a second statement of explicit [[Category:xxx]]

if the template is removed because the PM does not like the display format, feels it does nothing, etc. the implicit category assignment goes away, so they would have to add the explicit category statement to retain that assignment.

Part of the reason we chose to put profiles into the maintenance category when information is missing is to make it visible on the profile to PMs and group them in a category that project members can review and assist in correcting.  We have lots of people both in the sub project and the overall military and war project who can work on this type of thing, since we all know being a project member is more than just having a badge added to your own profile....

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Hi Keith,

I know that many people find the stickers to have too much going on. Stickers are optional, in fact. Could we work the stickers so you have the option of either using all the parameters or just using it without them (and it doesn't show all the regiment information), save for a manual category put in? There is no reason to make people use it to show all the service details if all they really want is the image and brief notation about them being part of the war.

Answer 3

Stickers aren't required to categorize a profile like Project Boxes are. Could the parameters for all of information, beyond showing someone was part of the war, be worked so it is optional. If the person doesn't use it, the sticker shows just fine, not in a maintenance category? And manual categories used? Or just the category used within the sticker, but all the regimental and date information optional, so you don't see that those lines are blank? Stickers are far more flexible than project boxes, so I think some sort of compromise should be able to be worked out here.

Comments

Abby, thanks for clarifying that it isn't normally necessary for a sticker to contain so much information. I would like to see similar simplifications made to the "1776" stickers on some of my ancestors' profiles. Apparently the sticker format was revised since the last time I visited my 4G grandfather's profile, so today I was surprised to discover that the 1776 sticker has 6 lines of mostly useless text:

Asa Clark served in the

Connecticut Line during

the American Revolution
Service started:
Unit(s):
Service ended:

This man had two different episodes of military service, one in Militia and one in the "line" (i.e., Continental Army). Rather than attempting to cram his service history into a sticker, I'd much prefer for the details to be in the text, supported by categories and a simple sticker that indicates that he had military service.

I hope the sticker formats could be revised to make the service details optional.

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I completely agree with Ellen.

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I find it needlessly complex, and agree that it is going to be off putting that someone has to figure out all these parameters and put them in exactly just so - I hope in the future all that can be made optional