Template talk:Campaignbox Three Kingdoms

Adding battles

There is a battle listed as Quebei Campaign which focuses primarily on the battle between Cao Wei (Sima Yi) and Eastern Wu (Zhu Ran) at Fancheng. Although the two battles occurred within the same year and were part of the same offensive campaign initiated by Eastern Wu, the events of each part of the campaign played no role on the events of the other. As such, I felt it was inappropriate to label the campaign in such a way, especially since the battle of Quebei was barely mentioned in the aforementioned article. As such, I have edited the page for that conflict to actually include the events surrounding the battle at Quebei, and have created a new article to detail the events surrounding the battle of Fancheng, which is currently up for draft under the title Battle of Fancheng (241). I am also attempting to have the "Quebei Campaign" article retitled as the "Battle of Quebei".

-- xiahoumiaocai 10:37, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Missing battle

I guess the Battle of Shiting (228) is also a notable battle of the Three Kingdoms Period. Could someone please write an article about it? Here's what I know from San Guo Yan Yi: Eastern Wu general Zhou Fang claims to have found Seven Mistakes in the Kingdom of Wu and therefor defects to Cao Wei; he even cuts of his hair to be trusted. But his defection is only a trap made up by Lu Xun to surround the Wei general Cao Xiu in his camp. Sima Yi discovers Zhou Fangs treason and tries to kill him, but Lu Xun's forces have already congregated with Zhou Fang's and wiped out Cao Xiu. Sima Yi is forced to retreat.

Actually, Cao Xiu outlived the battle, but died soon after. That's a good idea, the article I mean, I'll see if I can do anything. Cao Wei 03:54, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Addition of several battles

The current edition adds the 5 campaigns from Zhuge Liang's Northern Expeditions, because the 5 campaigns had their distinguishable objectives on their own, the 5 battles were not building blocks for a showdown (as opposed to the battles preceding Battle of Guandu or Cao Pi's three-pronged attack on Sun Quan).

If we simply classify the 5 battles as sub-pages of Zhuge's Northern Expeditions, then all battles happened during the Three Kingdoms era will mainly fall under only 3 Main-pages under the names of Shu-Wei War, Shu-Wu War, and Wei-Wu War.

Normally, from a military perspective, we do classify military conflicts into War, campaign, battle, duel, etc, and that's why we may have different boxes (So, we indeed could have a Shu-Wei War info-box, etc). But I notice this particular info-box does mainly include battles, I deem the current edition as legitimate.

As a reference, we may look at Loire Campaign, part of the Hundred Years' War (1415–1453). Notice all the battles included in the template of "Loire Campaign info-box" are also included within the domain of "Hundred Years' War info-box". Also notice the battles of Loire Campaign (ALL of them happened within just a year!) were MUCH COHERENT than Zhuge's expeditions.--EkmanLi (talk) 15:37, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't quite get your point. Are you saying that the five battles should not be grouped together because they were somewhat independent of each other, unlike the Guandu battles and the Wei invasions? LDS _{contact me} 15:56, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

At present, the campaignbox we have is too cluttered, it containing battles, campaigns, and wars of its own – all in a range of a hundred years with little coherency. This issue with the Northern Expedition touches upon a bigger problem, so I believe now is as good a time as any other to discuss how we can split the campaignbox into more manageable chunks. Yes, we indeed could have a campaignbox for Shu vs Wei and etc, but I suggest we preliminarily split the box into 4: one for the end of Han (Yellow Turban until the end of Han), and one for each of Shu, Wei, and Wu. How does this sound? _dk (talk) 16:07, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

I do not object to your suggestion. But, will the groupings (e.g. Guandu, Red Cliffs, Cao Cao's northwest campaigns etc) still remain after the splittings? I guess we'll have to go on a case-by-case basis. LDS _{contact me} 16:14, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Then I thought about it again and realized that if we have one each for Shu Wei and Wu then Battle of Xiaoting would have two campaignboxes (one for Shu and one for Wu). Another option is to just split it to one for End of Han and one for the Three Kingdoms (220-280) for now. And yes, the current structure should still remain. For Northern Expeditions, I see where EkmanLi's getting at: for example the Guandu campaign all lead to the showdown at Guandu, so we can put the Battle of Guandu in the Three Kingdoms box; but there is no one battle representative for all 5 northern expeditions (although arguably the first one and last one are more representative than the others), so we could end up putting one battle onto the main Three Kingdoms box for each northern expedition. Considering the main campaignbox's size, this can seem a bit overkill, so a long-term solution would be to split. _dk (talk) 16:31, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Ok, we split into End of Han and Three Kingdoms. Just not too long ago, I changed the headings in the infoboxes of the battles to either "part of the wars at the end of the Han Dynasty" or "part of the wars of the Three Kingdoms period", except for those under groupings. Perhaps these changes can serve as guides? LDS _{contact me} 16:43, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Does anyone feel naming an article as "Battle of XXX" a wiki-convention? Many of the "Battles" here are actually referring to campaigns. I always prefer naming a page "Campaign of XXX", hope someone noticed that. Anyways, different people do name/ classify/ group different things differently, so my point is that we just establish some guidelines in the project page on naming/ classifying/ grouping. How to name/ classify/ group doesn't matter to me, as long as the way to do so is uniform.--EkmanLi (talk) 17:28, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

About naming conventions, we should follow WP:MILHIST and precedents set by reliable sources. _dk (talk) 01:13, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

...ok, let me elaborate my point. Take the Battle of Wuzhang Plains as an example, someone from West Point Academy may rename it as "Campaign on Wei River Valley", avoiding the term "Battle". That is to say, WP:MILHIST can't resolve the misnomer. The ancient Chinese used the words "戰" and "役" interchangeably, but modern and present-day western military assigned different meanings to the words "battle" and "campaign".--EkmanLi (talk) 10:32, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

By saying "precedents" I mean we follow what is common, that is, we avoid making our own judgements on what is proper in the interest of "no original research". As you've seen in the article Battle, even academics are not very strict on what composes a battle, and you get things like the Battle of Britain and the Battle of Waterloo, which contains battles within itself. Since there can be much confusion about terminologies even within academia, it is inadvisable that we make up our own guidelines about what constitutes a "battle" or a "campaign". That said, personally I use "Battle" for cases where the major action is limited to one area while "Campaign" is for a series of battles over a vast area and time initiated by one side. _dk (talk) 10:55, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

That's why I made my point. We don't have English ""precedents" on, for example, Battle of Wuzhang Plains (五丈原之戰), while my common sense tells me that was a "campaign". If I rename that article into "Campaign of Wuzhang Plains", am I making my own judgement on what is proper in the interest of "original research"?--EkmanLi (talk) 11:12, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

ok, I think I know why you couldn't get my point. Now lets try to separate the wiki-article Battle of Wuzhang Plains (from the content of the article, it is a campaign) from the particular one combat that happened on the Plain of Wuzhang. Dynasty Warriors series prone to use the term battle (the game doesn't need to consider logistics, politics, strategic goals, and geography covered), but I'm not sure if we should use that term when they mention military engagements over a wider area on a boarder scope. If we just locate a historian or military theorist using either term, that will be a lot better.--EkmanLi (talk) 11:23, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

(unindent) Taking the similar situation at Guandu, we have the siege of the Guandu fortress and the raid of Wuchao, which took place over a sizable area and a period of several months from beginning to end. Despite all that, it is still called the Battle of Guandu by de Crespigny and Leban. It is true that Wuzhang Plains may be part of a bigger campaign after all, but all of that campaign can be framed into one conflict and standoff centered in Wuzhang Plains. Thus we can frame the whole campaign as preparation to that one battle. This is what I think, anyways. I realize that we have a different interpretation of "battle" vs "campaign", so yeah, we should default to a historian. _dk (talk) 11:43, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Looking real close at what I said, you will understand why I raised my point earlier — de Crespigny uses the phrase "decisive battle (singular) of Guandu" in one place, while he uses "operations (plural) about Guandu" else where. That is why I pointed out we have to separate wiki-article from what really a researcher is referring. I am afraid de Crespigny uses "decisive battle (singular) of Guandu" to refer the betrayal of Zhang He or the collapse of Yuan Shao's forces right at Guandu.--EkmanLi (talk) 12:02, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Let's come back to the topic of what should we put in this template. Since this is a campaign-box, my judgement is that we include military conflicts that fits the definition of a campaign here. Battles that serve as subset can be grouped under a campaign. We only follow certain conventions because they have been so well-established, but we should understand it's common sense, rather than interpretation, to distinguish battles from campaigns.--EkmanLi (talk) 23:41, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Which entries do you intend to remove? LDS _{contact me} 01:29, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Campaignboxes were originally intended to include battles within a campaign, not campaigns themselves. _dk (talk) 01:31, 5 March 2013 (UTC)