Editing Module:Iraqi insurgency detailed map/doc (section)

===Cities===
[[File:Largecitycontested.png|thumb|250px|right]]The larger the size of the town, the more evidence is needed to make it contested. This is even more so the case for cities. Large cities (such as province capitals) are almost never marked as contested. Instead we make image mini-maps for them or put small icons on them to represent neighborhoods that are contested or controlled by a specific party. In contrast, a simple clash report of a small unknown village can turn it contested.

'''For example''', we would not mark as contested a city where a party still controls 95% of the city. Instead we mark specific enemy positions on the outskirts of the city until fighting in the city becomes widespread. As nobody claims there is any fighting inside of the city, it should be marked as colored dot within a siege circle (see Figure 1). Then, advanced points in the city should be marked as small dots in the color of the enemy (or small contested icons). In this specific case, a "contested" icon was added to represent the "west side of the city" that is contested (see Figure 2). This is more informative to our viewers. Since the code puts icons on the map in the order of code lines (starting with first line of code and ending with last line of code), the small "contested" icon should come in the line ''after'' that of the (large) city icon. Otherwise, the small icon will be hidden by the large icon and will therefore be invisible.

After the fights become more widespread in the city (& enemy controls a larger part of the city), we can remove the "west side of the city" icon and turn the whole city contested (see Figure 3). After this, if we learn that the enemy has taken over the whole city except for a small pocket (in south east) that is still resisting, then we change the contested icon into the color of the enemy and put a small dot representing the small pocket that is still resisting (see Figure 4).