Template talk:Infobox crew

This template is for crews. To use, first copy and paste the following into your crew's page.

Next, fill in each parameter with your crew's information, placing it between the equals sign and vertical bar/pipe ("|"). If your crew doesn't have an organized political system, put "no" for "organized" and leave "organization" blank. If your crew has an organized political system, put "yes" under "organized" and briefly describe its organization under "organization". For the update fields, use the numeric day, month, and year without any leading zeros. For the 7th of January, 2006, for example, the fields would be: updateday=7| updatemonth=1| updateyear=2006|

After the double bracket&mdash; }} &mdash;that closes the template, you can write anything you like about your crew. Don't worry about fancy formatting or linkage; there are plenty of people willing and quick to edit.

Most importantly, we want each crew to have a brief history about it. If your crew has taken part in an exciting blockade, or has suffered losses in a vicious war, write about it.

Defunct, dormant, or disbanded crews
To mark a crew as defunct, switch {{ Infobox crew| on the first line of the infobox to {{ Infobox crew(defunct)|

Troubleshooting the template
If it doesn't seem to be displaying correctly, first check the following things:
 * Make sure all of your linked captain or senior officer names have an opening and closing set of tags (  and   )
 * Make sure you have the required fields filled in: organized (yes, no) and oceanname (Azure, Cobalt, Midnight, Sage, Viridian, Hunter)
 * If you are on more than one ocean, use two separate infoboxes using the table info below
 * Make sure you have not accidentally deleted the | that separates each variable
 * Make sure there is an opening and closing tag for the template ( )
 * Make sure you used the number of the month instead of its name in the update field, and make sure you have no leading zeros (May is month 5, not 05), and that you used the 4-digit year (2006, not 06)

If you still can't get it to work after checking those things, leave a note on the crew's talk page asking for help (don't forget to put something like "infobox help" in the edit summary) and someone will be happy to give you a hand with it.

Using more than one Infobox crew on a page
If you're using more than one infobox crew template on a page, put it into a table using the following table code:

This will stop the edit links for sections from being all over the place.

'Outdating' Crew Information
An idea: Going through these cleanup categories, I'm finding a decent number of flags and crews that need to be marked defunct, or whose information is really out of date. What if we make that "Last Update" field really mean something? We could break the field into 2-3 parts - the month, year, and optionally day, as separate fields. The year/month combination could be used to select a template. Mostly, that template would be blank, but after some time (six months?) we could change the template text to. Going to the category page would give us a easy list to go down. Same goes for flags. --AtteSmythe 12:30, 6 January 2006 (PST)


 * Good idea. We would need to make it very clear in the template instructions that months should be listed by the number & not spelled out.  Other than that, I see no downsides to this.  There are less than 200 articles that use the crew template, so fixing them all won't be especiall painful.--Fiddler 13:32, 6 January 2006 (PST)


 * While doing this work, I've become concerned about caching. I don't know how often Mediawiki purges its caches, if ever. If the template is marked as out of date, will pages that have obviously not been updated in the last three months even get the changes? Or will just the category page matter? Regardless, the infrastructure is done for crews. Proposed change at User:AtteSmythe/Infobox crew. Test page at User:AtteSmythe/Infobox_crew/test.


 * I believe changes to the template will create near-instant changes to the articles. When I made some changes to the avatar and fanart templates I found that I didn't have to go back to each image and bump-edit to see the changes.  However, you could always make a few mockup crew pages and test it yourself.--Fiddler 14:29, 6 January 2006 (PST)

Extra Linefeeds
I removed the text from Template:Infobox crew/no (was "&amp;nbsp;"). The nonbreaking space created whitespace that was especially noticeable when using multiple Infobox_crews. Please let me know (or revert my edit) if you come across a page whose formatting has been broken by removing the nbsp. --AtteSmythe 11:49, 9 January 2006 (PST)

Template is a requirement for crew pages?
I ask this for consistencies sake. I had tagged the Bovine Intervention page with a clean up tag since it wasn't using the crew info box template and I didn't have time to add it myself at that moment and was trying to be helpful in identifying pages that needed well..cleaning up. Logging on to the wiki tonight I noticed that my clean up tag had been removed. So, it is a general policy that all crew page use the template as a matter of consistent formatting or not? --Jezabella 04:19, 23 February 2006 (PST)
 * We'd prefer that they all use the infobox, yes. I think in the case you mention, the editing person didn't know about the crew infobox and did other cleaning up.  Probably what would be best is a version of the cleanup template where you can add a little list of exactly what is needed. I'll make one later if nobody beats me to it. --Guppymomma 05:40, 23 February 2006 (PST)
 * For nonobvious use of the cleanup tag, I try to leave comments on the (usually nonexistant) discussion page. --AtteSmythe 09:00, 23 February 2006 (PST)
 * Thanks for the responses mates. A template where you can list what should be added/cleaned up would be fantastic. And aye Atte - I was going to do just that but wanted to check what protocol was for the info box first :) --Jezabella 12:56, 23 February 2006 (PST)

There ya go. --Guppymomma 15:06, 23 February 2006 (PST)

Only Senior Officers?
Only Senior Officers? Why not Fleet Officers and Regular Officers?


 * Mainly because fleet and regular officers generally change frequently - unlike senior officers who tend to have more of a stable rank. Also makes it alot easier to manage accurate crew infoboxes by only listing Senior Officers - who essentially hold the highest rank in a crew bar the captain. --Sagacious (talk) 09:23, 12 May 2006 (PDT)
 * Good point... Why do they individually bold all those cells. Couldn't they just use ! for their header cells? Then they can change the template this thing uses to have headers left aligned...or rather yet make a new template for infoboxes as to not mess up the stylesheet toccolours for tables of contents.--DruidJoshua (aka DruidJP585) 09:39, 12 May 2006 (PDT)
 * Or we can stick with a system that everyone knows and that's worked well so far instead of adopting a new one for purely backend reasons. --Ponytailguy 09:41, 12 May 2006 (PDT)
 * In larger crews, having more than the SOs could be a nightmare. Featherfin 10:39, 12 May 2006 (PDT)

Need for categorizing the crewpage
Shouldn't the use of the template make it unnessesary to ad [Category:(ocean name) Ocean crews|(crew name)] to the page?(single brackets are on purpose)--Kinocha 18:19, 4 June 2006 (PDT)
 * Yes, but not in special cases. We use separate category tags for crew names which have article names starting with "The" and "A" so that they can be sorted by the first real word.  It's also used for things in all caps (or varying caps) because the wiki alphabetizing order routine considers lowercase letters completely different than uppercase letters. --Guppymomma 18:22, 4 June 2006 (PDT)

Organized?
Can I ask what these two lines are for: |organized=
 * organization= ? I don't remember crews having organizations other than flags and politics.:S --Angelbeaver (talk) 17:45, 18 July 2006 (PDT)
 * They're for unofficial types of organisations. Some crews have two captains, on a rotating schedule. Others have regular elections for captain. The 'organized' field is meant to be used for that purpose. Its use is perhaps more common in flags, which are styled as democracies, republics, etc. --AtteSmythe 19:19, 18 July 2006 (PDT)
 * Ahh, my first inclination was that but I dismissed it as not the sort of thing the wiki would have. Thank you. --Angelbeaver (talk) 04:32, 19 July 2006 (PDT)

Crew Founded Date Addition to the Crew Info Box Template?
I've been updating all the out of date crew information pages and have come up with a possible enhancement to the Crew Info template. In the course of my updating pages I have discovered that 75% of the pages have a line as follows:

Kicking Example Crew is a crew on the True Blue/Green Ocean, founded on September 11, 2006.

It seems to me that a field in the crew info box for Founded or a series of fields for Founded Day, Founded Month, Founded year would be helpful in making crew pages consistent.

My reasoning for offering this suggestion to update this template are as follows.


 * It is a piece of information that never chages.
 * The majority of crew information pages tracks this information in some form already.
 * Further standardized the crew pages by making it easier for mates to provide this information when they set up their crew's page.

Should this be adopted the field could be set to default to a blank.

At any rate what are other's thoughts on this? --Kgarrett1969 06:40, 11 September 2006 (PDT)


 * I think that the new software allows default paramaters so I support. --Angelbeaver (talk) 08:26, 11 September 2006 (PDT)
 * Yes, it does. I could support founding dates, as they're easily-retrieved information (i.e. widely available) --AtteSmythe 09:54, 11 September 2006 (PDT)
 * Should be done. --AtteSmythe 10:19, 25 September 2006 (PDT)

Infobox Toaster link broken
Just to report that the link to PTG's infobox toaster at the bottom of the page is broken. --Arminius 09:12, 3 January 2007 (PST)

The toaster has been taken to the trash can. Thanks! --Piplicus 09:29, 3 January 2007 (PST)

Adding link to crew's yoweb page
I would suggest adding a link inside the template to the crew's yoweb page. I cannot think of a faster way of gaining access to that info, and makes it easier for some of us to do some fact checking without having to navigate our way through them from a related pirate page, etc. --Arminius 09:15, 3 January 2007 (PST)
 * Oh, and the same goes for Template:Infobox flag. --Arminius 09:19, 3 January 2007 (PST)

The trouble with yoweb crew information is that their crew and flag systematic naming scheme is in numbers. Given that crew 100000001 is Cryptic's Pirates or vice versa, you couldn't tell precisely where to find Vilya, or what crew 1000036459 was. It could definitely be done, but having to input yoweb code numbers for a bunch of flags? It would be useful - can you think of a better way to do it? --Piplicus 09:29, 3 January 2007 (PST)
 * We could add this to the infoboxes as part of an ifdef statement (see how islandid is integrated into Template:Infobox island.) While it would still require manually adding the id number to each infobox it would not be necessary to do so, so it would be possible to only add this during the course of normal updates and editing.--Fiddler 12:26, 3 January 2007 (PST)
 * I strongly support Fiddler's suggestion. --Barrister 12:30, 3 January 2007 (PST)

Is there any way of having the Ringers making that information available to YYPedia administrators on an SQL database? That's how I would pull out the crew/flag number. --Arminius 13:26, 3 January 2007 (PST)
 * Automating this has actually been on my burner for a while - unfortunately Bluetoes is swamped at work currently, but he's still interested in creating a bot to automate both the creation and updating of YPPedia flag and crew pages.--Fiddler 13:30, 3 January 2007 (PST)

All done. Add |crewid=some number into the infobox code to make a nice little link appear. Check out Dread Ringers for a current example. And for flags use |flagid=some number. I'm not entirely pleased with the placement of the link but that can be tweaked later.--Fiddler 22:02, 11 January 2007 (PST)
 * Placement of the link does not bother me as much as the name of it {Current Statistics}. I would be happy though, if crewid and flagid are disabled or unallowed in defunct crew/flag infoboxes. Do they work in defunct infoboxes? --Arminius 23:13, 11 January 2007 (PST)
 * Not yet, I forgot about that earlier. I think they should be added to the defunct infoboxes simple because not all defunct crews have disappeared from the game.  Some are just dormant and so the yoweb link will continue to work.  When a crew has actually disbanded the crewid number can be removed from the infobox.--Fiddler 23:28, 11 January 2007 (PST)
 * Since it's not publicly editable, when one of the admins has a chance can the Yoweb link be added to the usage notes on the main article. Same for the flagid on the flag infobox template. Also, could "Current Statistics" be changed to say "Crew Info" like it does in-game? --Muffynz 22:09, 23 January 2007 (PST)
 * Done and done and done.--Fiddler 07:06, 24 January 2007 (PST)
 * Grazi, looks great. --Muffynz 07:35, 24 January 2007 (PST)

CrewId-how to find?
How do you find a crewid? I was trying to make a crew page for mine, i just cant find the crewid. Interguy
 * In order to find the crew id you must first lookup a pirate within the crew using the http://OCEAN.puzzlepirates.com/yoweb/pirate.wm?target=PIRATE format; Replacing OCEAN with the Ocean the player/crew is on and PIRATE with the actual pirate name(Duh). You can then link from that pirates webpage to the crew and even flag pages he is in.  The ID will be the last 7 or 8 digits in the address bar of the crew/flag page you linked to.-- Haywoodx(t/c) 14:57, 26 June 2007 (PDT)
 * Or, follow Zava's directions on her talk page here for a detailed way to do a bunch at a time easily. --Muffynz 14:59, 26 June 2007 (PDT)

User and Sandbox entries showing up on Crew Listings
Ok I have a question about the policy around Non-crew articles showing up on official Crew lists: User:Captain N/Sandbox, User:Interguy1, User:Lmgnns1 are all showing up in the list for Viridian Ocean crews. What is the official stance on these entries? Do they need to have the crew infobox deleted? Is there some slick wiki way of making the pages not show up on the category list but still include the infobox for mates that are setting up something or just playing around? I would just like some direction on how best to handle these articles and get them off of the official lists since they are not really articles about crews and in some case are pretty much just rubbish. --Kgarrett1969 10:43, 3 July 2007 (PDT)

Crew Website?
This is probably a stab in the dark but how about added a crew website link beneath the Yoweb link? Probably quicker than looking for it in the Yellow Pages. --Tharjoe 22:43, 23 September 2007 (PDT)
 * A lot of crew pages have the website listed at the bottom under the section for external links. 06:51, 24 September 2007 (PDT)
 * Hmmm good point. But then you could have for the Yoweb Page, for the sake of argument. --Tharjoe 07:31, 24 September 2007 (PDT)
 * I would prefer to keep the quick easy infobox type facts to more direct game-type information that are internal type links. You never know what you'll get when you click on a crew/flag's website link, especially those whose domain names have expired and whatnot.    The crew website link should remain in the external links type section.  --Guppymomma 12:31, 24 September 2007 (PDT)

Inconsistent paramater usage
The editor of Love_Eternal just got bitten by the fact, that he can specify the crewname with 'crew=Love Eternal' too for the header part:

at a Glance'''

But this stops to work for the image part:

|colspan="2"|

So perhaps this should read

|colspan="2"|

for consistency reasons.

An alternative would be trying to find and change all uses of this infobox that don't define crewname by adding something like and looking at the links 'somename' gets. After that the alternatives for 'crewname' could be removed altogether, but I'm not sure how caching interacts with this. --Alfwyn 05:30, 10 March 2008 (PDT)


 * Your first suggestion is the better solution. I'll add it in and see what happens. --Fiddler 09:24, 10 March 2008 (PDT)

Infobox Instruction Wording
I find the wording "placing it between the equals sign and vertical bar/pipe ("|")" in the instructions for the use of this template to be a little unclear for those among us who don't already know how to use Wiki infobox templates - specifically, it's a bit confusing on where the text you add actually needs to go. I suggest changing it to "placing it after the equals sign, but before the pipe symbol on the following line" or something like that. --Belthazar451 20:25, 16 April 2008 (PDT)

Yes/No Parameters
Having used Ifdef in the creation of another template, I propose we use it to help reduce parameters we don't need. One example is the founded= parameter. Ifdef can be set so that if foundedday= exists, it will include the founded section. Another application could be used to nuke the organized yes/no - even though I don't fully understand the point of the "organization" field as I don't see many crew pages who use it. Reducing the number of parameters will at least help shorten the template, if only by a little. --Sagacious (talk) 16:47, 28 June 2008 (PDT)
 * To start with, the organized parameter is optional. If it's parameters are not entered in the infobox, it will not appear, as stated in the optional parameters section of the usage notes.  Similarly the founded= parameter is also optional so I don't see why it would be necessary to add the Ifdef.  -- Cedarwings (talk) 17:18, 28 June 2008 (PDT)
 * It's optional because of the way the yes/no sub-templates are set up. Sagacious is proposing to use the ifdef template to perform exactly the same function, but without the need for the sub-templates.


 * That said, I'm not really sure retrofitting of old templates is required. The sub-templates are there already, so the grunt work has already been done. New templates should probably be done with ifdef, but I don't think there's a need to go back and add it to old templates that already work. --Belthazar451 17:22, 28 June 2008 (PDT)
 * As I'm updating crew pages, some lack the founded date. I'm having to add 4 parameters for that. I have to tell it that I'm about to give it a founded date. With ifdef - it'll know if I'm providing a date or not without me having to go founded=yes. --Sagacious (talk) 17:34, 28 June 2008 (PDT)
 * Honestly, it would be a lot less work to just deal with the extra 12 characters when adding the founded dates to a crew or flag page then to rework the template with ifdefs in replacement of the subtemplates. If you wish to mock up a new infobox crew and flag template with the ifdefs in place of the subtemplates there is nothing stopping you, but I do not guarantee that it will be implemented.  Why fix what isn't really broke?  -- Cedarwings (talk) 17:46, 28 June 2008 (PDT)
 * It might be worth noting that the crew and flag infoboxes already use the ifdef template, but only for the crewid/flagid parameter. I've been noticing the same lack of founded dates when updating flag pages, but I just copy-paste the parameter names from the sample code in the template's usage boxes, so the use or non-use of the ifdef for the founded date fields only makes a difference of three characters for me. That said, Sagacious' suggested change won't make any effective differences for the infoboxes currently in use, and would simplify any newly created or modified infoboxes. Which side am I trying to argue, anyway?


 * I think what I'm trying to say is that it probably wouldn't require that much effort to implement an ifdef for the founded date, but that even then it's possibly not really worth it. If I've got my ifdef syntax right, it's simply a matter of changing the line
 * to
 * I think. --Belthazar451 22:29, 28 June 2008 (PDT)
 * I think. --Belthazar451 22:29, 28 June 2008 (PDT)
 * I think. --Belthazar451 22:29, 28 June 2008 (PDT)


 * The reason you don't find many founded dates on flag pages is because it was only added to the Infobox flag template in April 2008. -- Cedarwings (talk) 22:42, 28 June 2008 (PDT)
 * Aye, I thought it might be something like that, but whew, that's a LOT more recent than I expected. --Belthazar451 22:50, 28 June 2008 (PDT)

(undent) Yes this is the change I was hoping for. It's only a minor tweak really. Each parameter of the template gets newlined, and this particular template is pretty long. --Sagacious (talk) 08:32, 29 June 2008 (PDT)

Making the categories disappear for User pages
I've noticed there is at least one User page that is using this template (probably more). As per the change I made to the Oceans template, I'd like to surround a couple parts with a ifndef template that checks to make sure there is no namespace before adding any categories. This way userpages sandboxing the template for various reasons won't appear in crew categories. Thoughts? --Thunderbird 04:34, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Sounds good to me. Would certainly help as there has been more then one case where someone has created a crew page article in Userspace before moving or copying it to the mainspace.  -- Cedarwings (talk) 05:45, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Troubleshooting the template
Just a little pointer, you're missing Malachite on the spot with the oceans. It's very minor, but some people might get confused looking at it =-) --Addison 21:37, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Outdated crew information change
A change was made to the template so that the outdated crew information category is applied automatically without the need for new templates that were needed to be created each month. This change was also made to Infobox flag.

update the "usage" page
Noticed this usage page is out of date, but since it's protected I can not update it myself.

Specifically, even though the "founded=" parameter says it's optional, it causes an error when it's included and left empty and/or its associated sub-parameters ("foundedyear=", etc.) are included. Here's an example of what I'm talking about.

Thanks. -- Franklincain (t/c) 13:39, 1 April 2014 (PDT)


 * "Optional" means you can leave it out completely if you like, but if it's there, it still needs to have a valid value (i.e. either "yes" or "no"). Having it present, but blank, suppresses the default value. It's not so much "out of date" as "not 100% idiot-proof". --Belthazar451 00:15, 2 April 2014 (PDT)


 * Fair enough; I'll rephrase my request, then -- let's make that page more idiot-proof, please. -- Franklincain (t/c) 09:22, 2 April 2014 (PDT)