New sticker request: War Veteran

Question

The Military and War Project has stickers for most of the major wars.  But for wars that don't quite merit a sub-project status, the only option is to use the Veterans Sticker:

A default sticker {{Veteran Recognition}} can be used for wars that do not have a specific sticker. You should not use both this and the specific war sticker on a profile since they cover the same war.

I believe that the Veterans Sticker is just fine for peace-time veterans or any veteran that wants to use it.  But for those who are war veterans I believe that there should be a separate sticker.  More specifically, a War Veteran Sticker.

The veteran sticker reads like this:

{{Veteran Recognition
| badge-image = Turk-449.jpg
| nationality = Brittish Colony of Virginia,
| branch = Captain Zachquil Morgan's Company, Virginia Militia
| start-year = 1744
| end-year = 1744
| text = George Tucker fought in Lord Dunmore's War.
}}

For me, the veterns sticker is a bit disjointed to register war service; the three points: is veteran, who served with, name of war in a narrative line.  

I would prefer the generic war sticker to match all the other wars.

The rest of the war stickers follow the same format:

[Person's name] fought for [Country Name] during the Vietnam War.  

It is the same for each war with just the name of the war changed.  

I suggest we make a War Veteran Sticker that matches the other wars just leaving the war name as a variable:

[Person's name] fought for [Country Name] during the [Name of War] War.  

If you are in support of this sticker idea, please register your approval with a comment or answer.  Those opposed, please do the same.

Thank you for your consideration.

Comments

I'd be for this.

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I like this idea.

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I like the idea. Adding the role or position the soldier served would help recognize their military accomplishments.  It may not be that simple as many soldiers served in many positions, earned many medals, and held many ranks. The bio might be the best places for all those details.  The sticker could be used for the rank and position held when discharged.

Answer 1

To clarify. Do you intend this sticker to be used exclusively to those military members that participated in military action during the war, posted to another country, or were serving stateside during the time of the war? I ask this because every Military person that served is by definition a Veteran when no longer Active. This is why we stopped using Military Veteran Category structure.  Because it is redundant to the Military & War categories and sticker structure already in place.

Comments

I agree Terri, all war veterans are veterans but not all veterans are war veterans.

We have a veteran sticker that can be used for anyone that served, peacetime or wartime.  I suppose that a Revolutionary War Patriot soldier could also have a veteran sticker but as there is a project-specific sticker, there is no need.  For Joe smith who served in the US Navy in 1923 during peacetime, we can honor his service to the USA and the Navy with a Veteran sticker - the same as we can honor War vets of WWII, Vietnam, WWI, Civil War, etc.

But if you fought in one of the lesser wars there is no specific sticker.  For example, the Finnish War (between Sweden and Russia) or the Falklands War in the 1980's between England and Argentinia.

A generic war sticker would enable one to say that their Uncle Bob was a War Veteran of the Falkands War or whichever other war that he fought in or performed service during.

Answer 2

Unfortunately, I would be opposed to this. There are a number of underlying reasons but the most important one for me is the usability and maintenance aspect of the templates themselves.

Most of the original M&W Stickers are very heavy, contain duplicated code, and cause massive issues in the Category: namespace due to how the |unit= parameters are used. By creating a new War Veteran sticker, we will be introducing the same issues, duplicating the same heavy code, etc.

I honestly think a revamp of all of the Military and War Stickers is more in order, rather than adding to the current problems.

As an interim measure, it would probably be easier to reformat the Veteran Recognition Sticker to accommodate the information you are looking for (although I have not yet looked into that).

Comments

I don't think we should ever ground a sticker because other stickers are too complex.  Why not just make the sticker with simple code like what we see in the Occupation Sticker?

Right now we have two military and war stickers for veterans and wars:

Project stickers for specific wars (war veterans) and,

A military veteran sticker that can be applied to any military veteran.

What is missing is a sticker that covers all the other wars.  This means that only some war veterans have war sticker if their war has a project.

If a "revamp of all of the Military and War Stickers" is appropriate, so be it.  But I don't see why issues with other stickers would block this one.

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Unless I was mistaken, the original proposal was to reuse the code (and parameters) to make the display of the new sticker. That would bring over the existing issues from M&W stickers to yet another new sticker.

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Unless there is some requirement to use old code, I don't know why it would be needed.  Name, rank, side fought for, years (term) of service, name of war.

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I'd rather see all of the War Stickers be generic things to provide parameters for an image, War served in, service dates, and unit without category creation. One sticker for wartime service, one for veterans for non-wartime service (or a long span of service for retired personnel).

These stickers pre-date the category picker tool and the category request form. But (and this is a big ask) M&W will need a devoted categorist to figure out category names and placement in the structure.

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We could definitely minimize the code (which I am 100% for), but I apparently misunderstood the post to follow the same format as the other stickers.