Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Assessment

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Contents 1 Stub tags and you! 2 I think this rating is meaningless without description 3 GA assessment 4 Topic sizes, and task force supports 5 Cleanup 6 Campaignbox procedure 7 What articles need ratings? 8 Diverging assessment standards 9 Ratings for Western Desert Campaign 10 GA status 11 Guan Yu assessment noms 12 Moved from front page 13 Examples 14 AWB and stubs 15 Re-nominate 16 Quality or quantity? 17 Task force tags

[edit] Stub tags and you!

. . . Wow, this is intimidating, going first. Anyways: I've just finished going through Category:Ancient Roman battle stubs and making sure the new and improved banner was present on every article in that category as of, oh, about five minutes ago, though I may have missed some -- I've been doing this on and off when I need to feel useful but don't feel like exerting any effort. In the process, though, I've noticed a few articles that have been classified by people coming from other directions, and not all the articles that had been assessed had been assessed as stubs. I didn't disagree with most of the asessments, but the assessors hadn't bothered to remove the stub tag. So please, when assessing, watch out for stub tags -- delete them if you think it's better than stub, and add them if you assess things as stubs. Makes it all neater and less headache-y. UnDeadGoat 00:16, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I think this rating is meaningless without description

If people are going to rate article A, B and C they should include description of why it was rated that way and how it can be improved. I got this article Genghis Khan that was rated as B but no text no explanation no nothing. What is going on? How am I suppose to understand it lacking parts? 71.196.236.162 08:31, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

I would assume the large numbers of {{citation needed}} tags (as well as all of the other uncited statements) would be the obvious problem, no? Kirill Lokshin 10:27, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

It's not intuitive and an explanation would be far better alternative. 71.196.236.162 01:07, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

See question #3 in the new FAQ. Fundamentally, we just don't have the manpower to leave individual comments on every article by default; if you have specific questions, it's usually best just to ask the person who assessed it directly (or to request a full-blown peer review). Kirill Lokshin 01:16, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] GA assessment

Make sure that the GA assessed articles have been assessed by the WP:GA people or at least been included to the nomination page at one point or another. Plus, make sure that they appear on the good articles page. Lincher 17:29, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Topic sizes, and task force supports

This assessment thing could be a great way to pass time, and help out the Project. Better than sorting stubs any day. Just two questions:

1) On the project banner, is it fair to add Task Force supports to any article that ought to fall under its banner? For example, Operation Chronicle may not have been written by anyone on the WWII task force - I am not on that task force. Should I put a 'yes' next to WWII task force anyway, or should that be reserved only for articles that WWII Task Force people are actively watching and/or working on?

2) As I am sure we are all aware, some topics simply have more or less to be said about them than others. While I suppose the Importance tags take this into account to some extent, I wonder how this consideration affects the Class tags. If an article is no more than, say, 5-10 lines, with no pictures or charts, but that seems to be just about all that there is to say on the topic (without going into excessive detail), do we label that a Start or a Stub? Those classes seem to be meant to imply that "it's a good start, but more work needs doing," while the other classes, A, B, and C are obviously meant for larger, longer, more thorough articles. How do we rectify this?

I thank you for any guidance you might offer. LordAmeth 15:45, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

1. The convention has been to add task force tags to everything within the scope of a particular task force, regardless of who has actually edited the article, since those tags are more for bookkeeping and advertising purposes. (Much of the stuff tagged with {{WPMILHIST}} in general hasn't necessarily been written by anyone in the project either.)
2. The distinction among Stub-Class, Start-Class, and B-Class is somewhat hazy in this case. My own method has been to use Start-Class for articles that are very short if they look to have a significant portion of the relevant information, but I could see going up to B-Class given the presence of things like infoboxes, categories, references, footnotes, and so forth. (In general, I think any topic about which no more than 10 lines can be written should probably be looked at to see if it isn't better off being merged somewhere; but that's more of an editorial judgement that should really be made by people working in that area.) Kirill Lokshin 16:00, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks much for the quick and detailed reply, Kirill. One more question: to what extent are we encouraged or discouraged from assessing our own articles? LordAmeth 16:05, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't rate one of my own articles above B-Class; but until we get more people working on this, I think it's unrealistic to expect that we entirely avoid rating our own work to some extent. Kirill Lokshin 16:11, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

What happened to the "importance" ratings? There used to be definitions for those somewhere? Short articles which can't really be made much longer (because the topic is fairly brief) could perhaps be rated differently to short articles which cover only part of their topic. Otherwise there's no way of telling. Any encyclopaedia will have short and long articles, but that doesn't nec. bear any relevance to the quality or % coverage. Then again, a short article will probably not be describing anything terribly important, either, but still, the article may be essentially finished.SpookyMulder 11:14, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

They've been deprecated for about a month now (for a variety of reasons). It's certainly possible for (reasonably) short articles to move up to at least A-Class if they are, indeed, comprehensive (and not better off being merged somewhere); so I don't really see the problem here. Kirill Lokshin 11:27, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup

I have been going through unassessed articles that have our project tags on it. I am currently looking at various weapon/pistol calibres - some are defiantely military related but most of them are for civilian/sporting/hunting purpose. I believe that our project tag should be remove from the article and a firearms stub added to the article. But supposedly the issue could arise with the following comeback - all weapons and calibre could be used in a conflict. But I believe this would help in cleaning up this immense project of getting the military history organized, etc. Comments?Oldwildbill 13:33, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, I think the general rule I've seen followed is to keep the tag if the calibre/cartridge/whatever has been used in military weapons (this is usually indicated in the article) and to remove it if it's a purely civilian one. (This can sometimes be less-than-obvious because the details may not be very prominently mentioned; most of the article may talk about hunting applications and then briefly mention, near the end, that the cartridge is also used in paratrooper carbines, for example.) Unless it becomes a serious issue with an active hunting WikiProject objecting to our tagging—which I don't think will happen soon, since no such project exists at the moment—we probably shouldn't be too concerned about the exact place the boundary is to be drawn. Kirill Lokshin 14:51, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks.--Oldwildbill 07:23, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Campaignbox procedure

I have been editing campaignboxes that I have been attac hing to various revoluntionary articles. I have deleted out battles that the unit did not participate in, changed the the time period that accurately reflects the time that the unit was in that particular campaign. When I have do this I have changed the campaignbox to reflect such by the following annotation - Campaign X participation - I am just wondering if this is okay. During the revolutionary period units would be in one battle then shuffle off to another battle in a different campaign and then return.--Oldwildbill 07:23, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

It seems like a fairly clever idea, actually, so I can't see what would be wrong with it; but I would use "Participation in Campaign X", as that seems like a cleaner wording. Kirill Lokshin 07:29, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What articles need ratings?

I've run into older articles that do not have quality or importance ratings, such as the Scott Speicher article, and since I'm guessing I'm not the first person to have considered this, I'm wanting to know if all Military History articles are supposed to have ratings or if some aren't. Kamikaze Highlander 00:25, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, all of them should be rated. Since there are so many (10,000+), we haven't gotten to all of them yet, though. Kirill Lokshin 00:44, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I guess my real question was when to add to the requests for assessment list on the project page, but I see that is only for articles that have already been rated before a major change. Kamikaze Highlander 01:00, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

It's not particularly high-traffic at this point, so adding unrated articles (in small numbers) is fine, and will get them rated quickly. Other than that, it's just a matter of waiting for the backlog to clear. Kirill Lokshin 01:07, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Diverging assessment standards

I've noticed a considerable divergence of assessments in firearms-related article when it comes to the quality scale. For instance, M1 Garand (discussion) and AK-47 (discussion) are both rated as A-Class, while the M1 article is, at least in my opinion, considerably superior in both terms of content and overall quality/consistence. Additionally, I'm not sure whether this is up to you people or not, but the AK-47 article has also received a Good article rating, while the M1 article hasn't. (The same goes for M16 rifle, which contradicts the sentence "generally, because while they nominally meet FA standards they are very short." in the Wikipedia "good article" description. But then again, I don't know if that's up to you fellas.) These two aren't the only ones, however. Please take a moment to compare the following articles and their ratings:

• M4 Carbine (discussion) — Start-Class

I was incline to rate this article as a B-class. Instead I went with a start class due to the debate taking place on this article. I also tagged the article with an Expert is needed to verify the claims. I was also a combat-infantryman,carried this weapon and so believe there are incon/accurracies in the article,but am not an expert. I usually comment on the discussion page on B class article but stubs/start don't usually. Hope this explains.--Oldwildbill 07:36, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

• Springfield 1903 rifle (discussion) — B-Class

Pretty well written article,several sources,no debate,needs a final fine tuning just to kick it up the next level.--Oldwildbill 07:36, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

• Sniper rifle (discussion) — B-Class
• SA80 (discussion) — B-Class

These are just a few examples, but shouldn't the M4 article be rated B-Class as well? Shouldn't the Springfield M1903 article be rated lower (probably Start) rather? The same goes for Sniper rifle, and so on... It looks to me that some of the users taking care of the assessment are considering article size before quality. I just can't see the logic here. —Squalla 18:18, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

A few answers:

• The inclusion of GA markings in the scale has never really been gracefully handled in this assessment scale, but the general convention is that A-Class is the highest level an article will reach without going through FAC. This doesn't mean that all A-Class articles are of equal quality, only that they are, as a group, above the next level (which is really B-Class).
• As for the inconsistency in ratings: please note FAQ #8 and #9. Certain reviewers are more exacting than others; some spend more time on each article than others; and some have more knowledge of the topic, and are thus more likely to note factual errors. The article assessments can be freely changed, though; it's the intetion that they will gradually drift towards the correct level as multiple people review each article, rather than always being completely correct from the start.

Hope that helps! Kirill Lokshin 18:50, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

That helps, thanks. —Squalla 19:15, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

It would be useful if assessors indicated the basis of their judgements. I think this is done on one of the biography projects, possibly elsewhere. The documenting of a decision would point the less experienced of us in the right direction and would also ensure that assessor could recall and defend/ explain the decision. Doesn't need to be very long. Folks at 137 14:41, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

They're pretty obvious for a majority of what's assessed—there's no need to put "It's a stub" on the talk page of every article assessed as Stub-Class—so the convention has generally been to provide more detailed explanations only when the article's editors ask for clarification. Having said that, there are plans for a more formal review process for A-Class, which would mean that at least the top three levels (GA, A, FA) all get a somewhat clearer review before being assessed. Kirill Lokshin 15:21, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

I have started to add a todo list to High start classes and above. A stub is a stub and easily recognized. Check the discussion page on HMAS Cerberus, Victoria for an example and tagging article. (but it looks very cluttered on the front page). I can see where editors would like a little guidance on what is needed to improve an article but it is really up to the assessor if he wishes to provide any guidance. I did this with the editors of 2nd Battalion 9th Marines article and successfully got the it thru the Good Article process.--Oldwildbill 09:21, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ratings for Western Desert Campaign

As a heads up, I'm going to be rating several articles in the Category:Western Desert Campaign on the importance scale. I'll be using other, currently rated, battles/operations for precedence. Oberiko 14:55, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

You might want to check out the discussion here first ;-) Kirill Lokshin 14:56, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Kirill, I'll hold off until the discussion is resolved. Oberiko 14:58, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] GA status

Hey guys, happy to announce the Nagorno-Karabakh War has received GA status.--MarshallBagramyan 16:42, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Bravo job, sir. This isn't an FA why now? ;) --Laserbeamcrossfire 06:42, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Guan Yu assessment noms

Hello all. In my latest assessment wanderings, I came across a long, detailed, and overall very nice article about Guan Yu. I have nominated it for Good Article status, so if you'd like to help review it for that, please do. Meanwhile, I would like (if it's not an improper opportunity to do so) to nominate it within the project for A-class status. Once we get this high in the classifications, I'm not sure I fully understand the separation - what makes something "Good" but not "A-class", or "A-class" but not worthy of Featured Article Status? In any case, I think we'd agreed that three or so editors should consent upon granting an article A-class, so I invite you to go take a look. Thank you. LordAmeth 01:48, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Actually, the multi-editor A-Class thing is basically on hold until the end of the coordinator elections; for the time being, feel free to move articles up there yourself (as we'll likely review everything already there once the process gets running). For what it's worth, I don't think this particular article is quite up there yet, as it has no inline citations. Kirill Lokshin 02:22, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Moved from front page

I do not know where else to insert this, so one hopes it gets some notice here. I have been a student of warfare for more than sixty years and it seems to me that this effort--I quickly add a very, very impressive effort--is off base. Military history is an important, very important, component of MILITARY SCIENCE. Perhaps it is because there is no generally recognized academic discipline in Military Science in the United States as there is in virtually every other country in the world. I just read in Wikipedia the article on Soviet (and now CIS) military doctrine based on one of the all-time absurd books on the subject written by an American. As the Training and Doctrine Command threat analyst from 1975 through 1979 specializing in Soviet, Warsaw Pact, Chinese, et al military doctrine, I am shocked at the ignorance stated in the above cited article. The Soviets led the world in the study and development of military doctrine--as far as technology goes, they had the best armored vehicles in the world, their tactical and operational doctrine was derived from academic sources (by the way, they doctors and masters of military science from the many military universities within the Soviet Union) and then verified through multi-divisional field excercises.

Well, I'm off on a tangent and I must get back to you with a hefty list of books in English by Soviet writers on what they consider military doctrine. In a presentation to General De Puy in the late seventies I made the point which he (the commanding general of the US Training and DOCTRINE) command that the Soviets had originated the concept of doctrine (not the Prussians and certainly not the US) in the military world.

I regret I'm so late coming to this project. I am a huge fan of Wikipedia and would live very much to participate in this worthwhile project--whatever we call it. Armand G De Cesare, Major, Inf, retired. Armand 13:27, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Examples

The examples provided as part of the explanation of various classes such as Sikhism, Mathematics, etc are not part of this project. Wouldn't examples from the project be more apt? -- Lost^(talk) 04:12, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps, but then we could no longer simply transclude the standard assessment scale template (which is where the examples are coming from), which would mean we would no longer get any changes automatically. Whether that's a price we're willing to pay for more specific examples, I'm not sure. Kirill Lokshin 04:14, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AWB and stubs

Was going to see if you were cool with me going through Unassessed articles and auto-marking class=Stub for any that have a stub notice? I can add this template too {{Stubclass}} plange 01:58, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Please, go ahead! Kirill Lokshin 02:00, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re-nominate

Can someone please re-nominate the Cretan War for A-class review because it gave me trouble. Kyriakos 09:23, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Done; you needed to actually move the old page to the archive, rather than just copying the cotents. Please feel free to make any comments you want to make on the new nomination. Kirill Lokshin 12:33, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Can I please have the Cretan War renominated? Kyriakos 10:25, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Ok, done. Kirill Lokshin 13:17, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Can someone please renominated the Cretan War? Kyriakos 22:37, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Done. Kirill Lokshin 22:43, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Quality or quantity?

The definition of a stub reads:

..The article is either a very short article or a rough collection of information that will need much work to bring it to A-Class level. It is usually very short, but can be of any length if the material is irrelevant or incomprehensible..

If a message is short is does not need to be incomprehensible or irrelevant. On the contrary. If an article simply reads there is live on Mars this may be very relevant information (provided it is true..). In fact if a relevant massage is packaged in a verbose article that showers the reader with less relevant details, it may well become incomprehensible and the most relevant details may be lost in the shuffle.

Aren't we confusing quality with quantity here?

Besides: what is relevant? Relevant to whom? The average US citizen? Or the global village?

nl:Gebruiker:Sokpopje

All your points are perfectly valid. And that is why I (and presumably many of our fellow editors) will rate a short article as Start-class or above if it is short, but well-written and containing the majority of information necessary to coverage of the topic. The Stub class is reserved only for those articles that need a lot of work. LordAmeth 17:16, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, stubs are not short articles in general, but short articles that are lacking in important content. (In almost every case, a two- or three-sentence blurb simply can't do justice—or even reasonably describe—the topic. Conversely, if a topic is so minor that three sentences is enough, it may be better off merged into another article.) Kirill Lokshin 02:01, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

That is some pretty heavy stuff for something as simple as rating an article. I felt like I just read a question on a freshman year philosophy exam. The kind that easily leads to paralysis through over-analysis. It's very simple if someone rates an article and you do not agree. There is no wiki cabal controlling the ratings. If you do not agree, change it. If there is a conflict then speak with the person about it, compromise and come to a conclusion. No need to insinuate some type of conspiracy.--Looper5920 03:11, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't think this was conspiracy insinuation, but rather a (pretty obvious actually—I've seen it asked before) question from someone seeing the (admittedly absurdly complicated) rating class descriptions for the first time. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 03:29, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm actually having a similar conversation with another user about the Battle of El Mazuco. Quota was somewhat perturbed by the B-class rating I gave the article (it apparently made them think of B-movies) and I don't know if I've really been able to explain the rating system (and the separate A-, GA-, and FA-class review processes) but it would seem that confusion over the system is not all that uncommon. Carom 13:30, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Task force tags

These are no longer displayed on talk pages, although the article is entered in the tf category. Is this an intentional change, or a glitch? If it's intended: why so? was there a discussion? The result is a bit awkward. Folks at 137 21:44, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Hmm? They should be shown once you click on the [show] button on the "Related task forces" bar; is that not working in some way? Kirill Lokshin 21:53, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Might be my browser (Opera 9.1), but the "Related task forces" bar has no effect at all - doesn't even indicate that its a bar; where's the show button? Other features in the MilHist box seem to be ok. Opera also has problems with picture galleries. It also occurs to me that although the TFs may be a clutter, they also advertise their existance to interested parties. If the clutter is too much, then maybe pruning is the answer. Folks at 137 22:35, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Very curious; do you have JavaScript disabled, perhaps? (One way to check is by looking at {{Cold War}}; is there a [hide] button at the top right corner, and does clicking on it do anything?)

In any case, there was a recent change to the markup that might be responsible for things not showing up where they should; I've reverted it, so please take a look to see if that changed anything.

(As far as clutter generally is concerned: some articles have a lot of related task forces, and/or a lot of banners at the top. Consensus has been that enclosing things in a show/hide block is a better long-term solution that trimming useful links entirely.) Kirill Lokshin 22:41, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Don't see any hide button on Cold War. The options on Opera say Java and Java script enabled. I know Opera is a minority browser; I prefer it to IE for security reasons. Wonder if other Opera users have this problem. Thanks for your interest. Folks at 137 18:51, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, I'm not sure what the issue is, then; perhaps Opera doesn't support something about that particular code? It's clearly a broader issue than just {{WPMILHIST}}, though, so it's probably something related to that JavaScript trick in general. (My apologies for not being able to provide a more helpful answer here.) Kirill Lokshin 19:12, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not encountering this particular problem with either IE or Safari - it might just be a browser problem. Carom 22:37, 9 November 2006 (UTC)