User talk:Grayghost01

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Contents 1 Naming of Civil War battles 2 User Page 3 Second Winchester 4 Winchester in the CW 5 Romney Expedition 6 Romney, and extent of Wiki ACW coverage 7 DYK 8 Virginia Newsletter - May 2007 9 Virginia Newsletter October 2007 10 Vandalizing My Talk Page

[edit] Naming of Civil War battles

The Civil War Task Force (WP:ACW) and its predecessors agreed to use the official National Park Service designations for battles as the main titles for Civil War articles. Hence, while indeed the Third Battle of Winchester is the common usage in the town of Winchester, the Battle of Opequon is what the government calls the battle. Hence, Wikipedia follows suit. Manassas seems to be an exception to this rule of thumb, but in general, Wiki editors follow this convention. This is why I (and others later) reverted your changes from Opequon to Third Winchester so as to be consistent with Wiki convention. If you strongly disagree, please join the task force and air your views on its message board; you are most welcome to do so!

Scott Mingus 20:57, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Although I didn't have any ancestors at this specific battle, it holds less interest for me than places where my great-grandfathers actually fought (such as Antietam and Gettysburg). Hence, I will defer to whatever the general consensus of the editors is. Scott Mingus 04:10, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] User Page

Hey Grayghost01, if you have the time, please create a User Page telling us a little more about yourself. Thanks for joining the ACW Task Force. Feel free to add its logo to your User Page, and welcome aboard! Feel free to call on myself or other members of the task force for advice or ideas. Regards from snowy York County, PA! Scott Mingus 01:11, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing! Welcome aboard! Scott Mingus 12:02, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Second Winchester

I was away for the weekend while you added all of the comments to my user page regarding Second Winchester. I am running short of time to give you a detailed response today, but will do so ASAP. When I do, I will be copying your comments into the talk page for the battle article and responding there. I believe the discussion is of more general interest than simply a one-on-one communication. A short preview of my comments is that I will have no problem listing alternative views on the number of casualties. I did that in the Battle of the Wilderness article, as you have noted. I am not one, however, who believes the Official Records are always the most accurate source, so I generally prefer to get information from secondary sources, historians who have analyzed the Official Records as well as many of the other primary sources that are available and use their best judgment as to the correct answer. I have no personal ax to grind about how the numbers are eventually portrayed, so please do not assume that I am trying to deliberately promulgate incorrect information. Thanks. Hal Jespersen 02:15, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Since I wrote this last night, I have decided to change my approach to this. I often try to assist other editors with their formatting and presentation, but I do not like to do it while major work is in progress. It simply causes frustration on both sides. (Generally, however, there are very few major changes being implemented in articles. Usually, people only throw in a paragraph or two. So your case is an exception.) Go ahead and make the changes that you are planning to make and let me know when you are finished on both the battle article and Milroy. I can then take a pass through them and get the Wikipedia formatting and our own ACW style guidelines implemented. (In case you have not looked at it, I wrote a style guide that I use on all of my articles, and the ACW task force has informally adopted them.)

By the way, this battle has my only significant familial ties to the war. My great great great uncle was in the 18th Connecticut, captured at Winchester. (There are others I know about from Rhode Island, but they had no significant combat experiences.) Hal Jespersen 15:20, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the tour offer. I have no immediate plans to be in the Valley, unfortunately, but will file this away. (I'll be at the CWPT meeting in Portsmouth next month, however.) My last trip to the vicinity was to Lexington, which you can read about in my periodic CW travelogue: http://www.posix.com/CW05/index.html#CWPT

I enjoy doing email with CW folks. You can reach me via email from my User page's yellow stripe on top.

Regarding your comments on Federals, it is likely the original poster will not see your response unless you go to his Talk page. I actually like Federal as a noun because it balances Confederate exactly. Hal Jespersen 01:20, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Winchester in the CW

Thanks for pulling the material from the city article and making it as a separate entity. I will change my template to direct to this new article. Nice work, and feel free to expand the Civil War material in an encyclopedic fashion.

regards from Yankeedom! Scott Mingus 18:29, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Romney Expedition

Hal has been the primary author and watchkeeper over the Civil War articles. I joined Wikipedia long after he had created the bulk of the major articles. As a member of the WP:ACW, I try to help out by creating articles for lesser known, but still noteworthy generals and battles, and occasionally dabble in editing existing articles or fighting vandalism. I took the project to create and monitor state and city articles under my wing, as I thought this would be a useful addition. The Romney article someone else previously wrote, and, frankly, it was a disjointed mess. I heavily edited it for a little better flow, although I still question whether it should have been written in the first place.

Anyone is free to edit and create articles, so there is no primary person that you need permission from. Anything controversial or questionable can and should, of course, be brought to the task force for consideration. I would agree that the Romney Expedition deserves a short article; Jackson's raids as well. I have not had the time or background experience in these areas to adequately write them, so go ahead! They would be a useful addition.

I agree that for the early part of the war, Romney was a pro-South town, and I like the suggestion of Border / Disputed. Some authors have classified WV as a border state, but technically it was not. The actual state of VA (including Romney) was a part of the South as the war began, and the WV portion in the Northern camp by 1863. Disputed works for me. I will make the change.

Scott Mingus 11:48, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I think that Scott is overstating my role, although I have written a number of campaign and battle articles. (My niche has generally been to originate the theater and campaign articles, most of the major battle articles in the eastern and western theaters, and a number of the major biographies below the hyper visible Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant. I have also played a role in standardizing the style of formatting articles, naming units, using ranks, etc.)

My methodology for creating campaign articles is usually to start with the NPS CWSAC battle summaries and then flush them out with maps, high-level orders of battle, backgrounds, and aftermaths. Thus, the contents of these campaigns are strongly influenced by the National Park Service. I was not the one who made this original decision -- I can't remember the name of the guy who converted all of those NPS files into article stubs and campaign boxes -- but I have been pretty content in following that organization. There were almost 10,000 actions in the Civil War and it is a judgment call about which of them are notable enough for encyclopedia articles. We do not want every tiny skirmish that someone's Civil War ancestor happened upon to be elevated to an article called Battle of So-And-So. It is reassuring to me that the professional historians of NPS are providing the majority of the judgment in this space and not the random mob.

I cannot say that I am familiar at all with the Romney expedition or the other actions you mention. If you can cite some secondary sources that link these with the traditional Jackson Valley Campaign, that will be okay for me. Please do not come up with an argument similar to "It is in the ORs and there is a plaque in downtown Romney that says so." I'd like to see a reference to someone like Gary Gallagher, Bud Robertson, or Robert Krick citing these actions in a book or a chapter specifically tied to the Valley Campaign, not simply Jackson's early career. Hal Jespersen 18:38, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

The Romney Expedition was a fairly significant and well documented event. Perhaps the best modern coverage by a known author is a chapter in Robert G. Tanner's excellent 2002 book, Stonewall in the Valley: Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's Shenandoah Valley Campaign, Spring 1862. John Selby's 2000 biography of Jackson also dives into the expedition, as well as the train raid, and analyzes them in the context of Jackson's Valley Campaign. Gallagher's book on the Valley Campaign is also a useful source, and there was a great article on the train raid in North and South a while back. Scott Mingus 19:00, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, fine with me. Hal Jespersen 22:21, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Romney, and extent of Wiki ACW coverage

Scott & Hal, I think Scott's references demonstrate the sources which tie Romney to the Valley Campaign, and I will put these as references on the Romney Expedition page. You will notice that the RE page explains the reason why the Romney Expedition and the following Insurrection of Loring set up the whole chain of events that began the VC. If not for that episode, Jackson may have, instead, peformed a "BRAGG-KENTUCKY" type affair, with a larger force. Instead, Jackson was forced to abandon Winchester, and was put into the position of having to interact as he did with Banks.

What is the goal of Wikipedia? Is it to be an ever-growing and unabridged encyclopedia of the world? If so, in my own opinion, it is a great venue to summarize the entire ACW, by topics, by battles, by whatever threads are of interest. I see all the goofy biographies on living people, and also others who obviosly stick in their own self-articles to promote themselves. Surely history deserves a front seat to that. Therefore, I am of the opinion that the ACW in Wiki should cover, if possible, every noteworthy event in some summary form, and every skirmish. The level and taxonomy should determine relative coverage, then.

In that light, I propose that you consider a classification of "expeditionary operations" which is analgous but different from the "campaign operations". Expeditionary operations, by the book, have been around for a long time, and the USMC views the world heavily from this angle, and uses the Confederate actions as their textbook of sorts, along with the infamous "Small Wars Manual" they wrote, and still use. The Red-River, Romney and other such episodes are better viewed as expeditionary operations, and given the definition of expeditionary you will see why.

I also propose a lower-tier of "Skirmishes" and "Raids". This is a vital category deserving its own treatment. Often these are NOT tied in to the campaign they occur in the middle of, such as the Raid to assassinate President Davis in Richmond. Some, like the "raid" into Ohio does not fit the defintion of a raid (though called that from time to time) and is fittingly called an "expedition".

As a retired Marine, and former Instructor at the Marine Corps University, I want to point out that so many people write on the topic of the ACW, that they often mis-categorize events, or are the ones giving events "names" that were not originally used by the veterans of the war. E.g. our own current "Gettysburg Campaign" was certainly never called that at the time it occurred. In looking back, the taxonomy and naming convention becomes useful.

I see how the National Park Service was invoked, which seems that they simply had SOMETHING on the web which was convenient for some early wikipedians to pull in. Okay. But while I think that was a good start ... and much may not change from that ... the taxonomy of the Battles, Expeditions, Raids and Skirmishes of the ACW should be reflected from consideration of the Body of Literature as its main influence.

So to that end, I propose this taxonomy for consideration: Theaters Campaigns (& Campaign Battles) Expeditions (& Expedition Battles) Raids Skirmishes

Ponder this, and I will get back to you with definitions and terms to define these a bit. Grayghost01 20:08, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

First off, since we seem to be having a three-way conversation, it is suboptimal for you to post the same text in two user pages. I have put your user page into my watchlist and I suggest that Scott do the same. As long as you do not get an excessive amount of unrelated traffic on your page, this will be the simplest way to communicate.

Here is my personal opinion about Wikipedia. You can take it or leave it. There is an entire article about what Wikipedia is not. I think there is way too much trivial information that is being added in the hopes that Wikipedia will be a giant database of all known information. I look at it with a focus on its original intended purpose, which was to be the equivalent of an encyclopedia, which summarized information about notable topics in a reliable way. There is also an article on notability, which essentially says that we should be writing about events that are the subject of published works. I interpret this to mean the subject of secondary sources, the published work of professional historians. I do not include the Official Records in this category because they are essentially an enormous collection of primary sources -- after action reports, correspondence, etc. -- assembled without much critical historical scholarship. (In fact, by allowing some veterans to modify their reports many years after the fact, they can be a tainted source of information.)

So I would place the decision on whether a raid or skirmish should be included in Wikipedia firmly on the basis of whether the action was the nontrivial subject of a secondary source. Did a secondary source include more than a mere passing mention of the action, describing it in some detail and explaining its significance as part of a larger campaign? I would exclude the OR's and any of those sources that are merely chronological lists, providing a phrase or a sentence about an action.

As to your classification scheme, I don't see anything fundamentally wrong with it. We recently had an incident where someone wrote an article about a skirmish and named it Battle of So-And-So. I suggested that it be renamed Skirmish of So-And-So and I think it was Scott who did the renaming. We already have some articles about raids, so that is not a problem either. I do not know exactly what you mean by expedition battles, however.

I would give you one additional piece of advice. The easiest way to get started effectively in Wikipedia is to pick a few articles to write or improve. That way, you get up to speed on the formatting and editing conventions, and the methods of interpersonal communications and compromise, that you will need. About a year ago, I witnessed an extremely enthusiastic group of new editors who formed their own task force, created a portal, started working on a variety of grand classification schemes, and then essentially petered out. Scott has been actively assisting that process, but I would venture to say that 90% of all of the useful work was Scott's alone. So my suggestion would be for you to focus on establishing some top-notch articles in the 400 or so battles that we document (and those Valley campaign battles that you have just identified) before trying to push that closer to 10,000. Hal Jespersen 22:55, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, by the way. I just looked at Romney, West Virginia during the American Civil War for the first time and that is a very appropriate way of dealing with lots of minor actions -- collect them as part of a larger article about a campaign or geographic location, rather than attempting to place them into separate articles. However, you should be aware that the editing gods of Wikipedia do not favor articles that use bulleted lists. If you ever decided to get this article reviewed as a featured article, they would undoubtedly insist that you rewrite the article without the bullets. Hal Jespersen 23:05, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] DYK

On 29 March 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Romney Expedition, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

--Carabinieri 16:09, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Virginia Newsletter - May 2007

The May 2007 issue of the Virginia WikiProject newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.--Kubigula (talk) 03:15, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Virginia Newsletter October 2007

The October 2007 issue of the Virginia WikiProject newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.--Kubigula (talk) 02:25, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalizing My Talk Page

You should probably think twice about who you accuse of vandalism. Simple disagreement with the non-scholarly neo-confederate version of history is not vandalism. You cannot invade your own country -- to claim that the USA invaded Virginia reflects a particular point of view that assumes the legitimacy of secession. Lincoln certainly did not use the word "invasion" in his call for 75,000 volunteers, did he? Neutral language that implies neither the acceptance or rejection of the legality of secesion is available and should be used. Or would you prefer that we use Lincoln's actual language on the purpose of the call for troops? A far as Winchester being your home town, that gives you abolutely no ownership over the article. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 19:01, 13 December 2007 (UTC)