Person talk:Edward III of England (1)

Succession [2 November 2009]

I was playing around with trying to steal some navigation from Wikipedia before I realized the full scope of detail that they use. And I thought we might want to focus a bit more on the relationships between different people. So I throw out this for discussion. I don't know where to get a full list from, but it strikes me as useful.

It looks like you have a typo here. You show Edward III's reign ending in 1357, and his successor's reign beginning in 1377.

My records show Edward III reigning 1327 to 1377.

Okay?--Osmond 23:11, 31 October 2009 (EDT)

You're right. But I'm really asking about the concept, not the content...--Amelia 23:55, 31 October 2009 (EDT)

I like the idea very much. I would add a couple of thoughts:

• These sorts of info boxes, for different lines of succession and families of royalty have proliferated around WP. They seem not to be consistent across the different lines (a template for kings of england, a different one for kings of Poland, etc. - and not because they're derived from a common underlying infobox). I hope we can do a better job on that here at WR.

• Different lines of succession can merge into a single person (lordships of multiple seats and so forth). It's important to consider how a stack of two or more of these will look on a page.

• I think the example you give anticipates a link to a page for the entire line of succession. That's good and important, but I think - instead of having both a title line AND a line that says "full list", you really want the title line to be an active hyperlink to a page with the full list.

• Some of the WP templates go a bit hog-wild - adding images of arms and such stuff. I'm not against adding color to the block, provided it really is specific to the line of succession at hand - not just pretty noise.

• Some of the early succession forms have things like co-kings and sub-kings. Not sure if that stuff can be represented in this context, but we ought to think about it a little.

--Jrm03063 08:41, 1 November 2009 (EST)

Well, I did pick Edward III because he was easy. A simple matter of different titles we can do a couple different ways, either handled by templates pretty easily.

I think the first is a lot easier if we don't mind combining. There are lots of titles that could be done this way, a lot of which are harder to care about, although more common (minor royalty and political offices). WP appears to use green for royalty and blue for political, which we could do fairly easily.

Because of the size (literally) and scope (both academically and in terms of work) of a template showing all the heads of state on each page (like we have for presidents and a number of other things like great migration ships), I'm thinking this would be a useful substitute, at least for now. WP has both (and the full list templates are the ones with pictures). Those types of templates are useful, but they lack the family information that I think might be of most interest here. And this type can be done on an individual page without committing anything to a larger project.

The multi-line stuff (as seen best perhaps here (under titles and succession)) is more complicated, and I think figuring out WP's template system would be more complicated than just doing it from scratch, but I can do a sample. --Amelia 11:22, 1 November 2009 (EST)

I like 'em, and generally defer to your sense of it. Though the all-up WP form may be more than we need, it still would probably pay to try to understand enough of it to know why they've done most of what they've done.

I agree, the first form (different successions lined up in equivalent columns) is better. The second confuses things. I would want the title bar for "Monarchs of Some_Darn_Place" to be a live link to an article that gives the overall list and history (even if it is just the appropriate WP link).

You're not going to have to build out the full table every time are you? Won't there just be a template that lets you indicate the seat of nobility along with predecessors and successors?

--Jrm03063 21:01, 1 November 2009 (EST)

Yes on the link to a list, there just isn't one at the moment (I have an experiment that I hope will work to copy the UK monarchs template over here; it's going to break a lot, but hopefully the links will come through).

I think these can be done with three or four templates -- table start, one for each row, table end, and I have to figure out if I can do different titles by some repeat of those or if I need another one.--Amelia 00:07, 2 November 2009 (EST)

Looks and sounds wicked cool!

--Jrm03063 11:55, 2 November 2009 (EST)

Complicated succession box format [1 November 2009]

This brings up a couple issues for the simpler format. The header should be gender neutral. Do we need to put the person's name in? It looked kind of awkward above Queen of the United Kingdom. I bolded the titles so they would stand out more. And I think with rowspan and colspan parameters, it would be possible to do this with the same template as a simple one.--Amelia 11:57, 1 November 2009 (EST)

Templates [4 November 2009]

{{tablestart}}
{{UKMonarchHeader}} <!---Header linked to list of monarchs. Use green for monarchs, blue for political offices--->
{{Succession box <!---row of box shows two preceding and two succeeding officeholders, numbered 1 through 5 left to right--->
|1Name=[[Person:Edward I of England (1)|Edward I]] <!---Name of first preceding officeholder, linked if possible--->
|1Years=1272-1307 <!---Years in office--->
|1Relationship=his grandfather <!---Relationship to person on whose page template is being placed--->
|2Name=[[Person:Edward II of England (1)|Edward II]] <!---Repeat for immediate predecessor--->
|2Years=1307-1328
|2Relationship=his father
|Title=King of England and Lord of Ireland <!---Title that is the subject of this row in table--->
|3Years=1328-1377 <!---Years this title was held by this subject--->
|4Name=[[Person:Richard II of England (1)|Richard II]] <!---Name of immediate successor, etc.--->
|4Years=1377-1399
|4Relationship=his grandson
|5Name=[[Person:Henry IV of England (1)|Henry IV]]
|5Years=1399-1413
|5Relationship=distant relation
}} <!--- Repeat {{Succession box}} and (if nec) headers after this line if more than one title --->
|}

Yields

I don't think we can do the Queen Elizabeth-type complication with this format though, because once you use rowspan, you're not using some of the cells in the next row, and the template wants to insert them anyway. It ends up with the unused cells tacked onto the row. I assume this is why WP breaks down the template so far. But you can use it for the first row, including any row- or colspans you need, and then add table syntax below that. The alternative, I think, might be a cell template, and I'll experiment with that later.--Amelia 00:17, 3 November 2009 (EST)

I take that back. A cell template would be only a few characters simpler than just raw wiki code, and would require learning yet another syntax. Until we get a version of the wiki code that supports conditions (i.e. "if rowspan, then ... "), I think this is it.--Amelia 23:05, 4 November 2009 (EST)

No sources? [8 December 2009]

All the infoboxes and other techie trappings aside, I have a question: How can an article on someone as seminal as Edward III have only one source? And Wikipedia at that? Nothing from Cokayne? Ian Mortimer? Gerald Harriss? Michael Prestwich? Not even Thomas Gray? --Mike 19:03, 8 December 2009 (EST)

I would assume it's *because* so much work has been done that no one has recreated the Wikipedia wheel. Not that someone shouldn't, but I'll leave it to people with access to some of those sources. --Amelia 22:58, 8 December 2009 (EST)