Template talk:Infobox law enforcement operation

Link list for work on infoboxes

Example pages for good info boxes

Operation Condor

eximo (talk) 18:00, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Types of law enforcement operation

This section is for suggestions for the Parameter TYPE. The suggested pattern is to add examples of suggested types of law enforcement operations to the bullet list, and then place an indented argument for/against the type in the section below.

Drug Enforcement
Child Pornography crackdown
Corruption
- Bribery
- Misuse of funds
racketeering
fraud
Animal abuse
anti-hacking
counterfeiting
Terrorism

eximo (talk) 00:13, 19 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Suggested Parameters

Operation Method
Misc results (to include for example, number of websites shutdown, number of drugs seized, or cash seized, number of victims/hostages released etc. eximo (talk) 16:26, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Countries (number that participated)
whether the operation was domestic or multinational/crossborder. Generally the classification will be based on the targets of the operation.eximo (talk) 19:38, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
timeline header

eximo (talk) 01:02, 19 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

may change the "planned_by" parameter to "initiated_by"eximo (talk) 17:41, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

this is a big deal, as in a number of operations, one country initiated the overall series of operations by "cracking the case" and the providing tips to all other the countries. This isn't the same as the first country "planning" the operation.

Examples of enforcement operations that are using a different template

The following articles have been categorized as a law enforcement or police operation. Whether they are truly law enforcement vs. military or counter insurgency has not been inspected. Importantly, the existing Infobox for law enforcement operations would not be suitable for these pages without losing information, thus they have not been switched out.

If these are truly law enforcement operations, these pages should be studied, to see if the usage of the templates can be incorporated into the the existing law enforcement infoboxeximo (talk) 18:47, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Checking for unknown parameters

@Bearcat Why did you remove the invoke that checks for bad parameters? This code only is activated if somebody drops a bad parameter into the infoboxeximo (talk) 21:26, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Because the category has to exist before you're allowed to apply it to anything. Somebody did drop a bad parameter into the infobox in an article that was using it — but because the category doesn't exist, that caused a redlink to show up at Special:WantedCategories. Templates are not allowed to generate redlinked categories, however, so I had to remove it from the template, because the redlinked category can't be on the article that was in it.

If you want the category to exist and be used, then you need to create the category, and the template is not allowed to generate redlinked categories that don't exist to be used. Bearcat (talk) 21:35, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Bearcat I understand the rule/goal to prevent redlinks, so that isn't an issue as I don't want to contribute to that redlinks. However, your example while I accept as true, was too cryptic for me to appreciate or understand how to recreate. The code that you removed is a common piece of code in other infoboxes (I'll kick myself if I didn't remember to cite the originator), so I'm left to assume that the red link you are troubleshooting isn't a result of bad code necessarily but the bad application of an infobox? My understanding of the purpose of the code you removed was to catch bad parameters. Is this a situation where you are "throwing the baby out with the bath water"? Can you help me to understand the "bug" better so I can recreate the conditions to test the issue? Do you have any ideas of what would need to be done to prevent the issue you saw while still allowing for the bad parameter check to remain?

I appreciate you taking the time to work on correcting this, and your dedication to the WP quality standards. Let's see if we can figure this out, I'll do the heavy lifting of troubleshooting it, but I need a bit more to understand how to create the issue you are describing. eximo (talk) 19:24, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

To the extent that it's "a common piece of code in other infoboxes", it's present in other infoboxes to apply categories that exist, and not to apply categories that don't exist. Templates are only allowed to contain or apply or generate categories that exist, and there is not a single Wikipedia template that's "allowed" to contain or apply or generate categories that don't exist. So if it's really important to you that the code has to be there, then what you have to do is make the category exist, i.e. by creating it, so that the code is applying a category that exists. Bearcat (talk) 19:31, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Bearcat Ah!, I understand, and that is simple enough, but the barrier becomes creating a category that may frequently be empty. The policies in place currently advocate for the speedy deletion of empty categories, or categories that contain only one or two items. Any experience with the resolution of this conundrum?eximo (talk) 19:20, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Maintenance categories that are needed for occasional but not consistent tracking, and thus might be empty sometimes and not others, have a "do not delete even if empty" option that you can turn on with a template. Bearcat (talk) 20:17, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]