Talk:Warrant Officer (United States)

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[edit] This article

This article as it was written as a subsection of the Warrant Officer article was a mess, full of redundancies and inaccurate statements obviously made by people who had just enough information about the Warrant Officer rank system in the services to make quirky statements of exceptions as if they were the rule about warrant officers. Most of that has been removed to make place for legitimate statements about background and history of the warrant officer utilization and rank structure within the United States military.

I personally had edited the subsection as a part of the other article before recommending the split and accomplishing the split. Nobody had a problem with it there, where it was also alphabetical; by military service and then by paramilitary service (see diff). So, to come here and suggest it was better written before the move is to ignore that it was already being edited, to what it is now, even before the split in a 4-5 month process, including a major rewrite of the Army section. The lead-in was difficult in and of itself because it had so much redundancy and approach from a Navy-only position as if they were the only service to utilize the rank or as if each service addressed the issue the same. I had to balance all the positions while removing the redundancy and inaccuracy.

It is tiring to find that the article is simply rearranged each day without any additional information or references being added. If editors want to reorganize the page as it has been moved here, it needs to be about where the article is going, and not where the article has been. Where it has been was a discredit to the Corps of quiet professionals, where they've come from, what they've done. I say this, not from my position of serving as a member of that Corps, but as one who has learned the history. So, if you have nothing to bring to the table other than you liked how it was as a subsection of the Warrant Officer article, then I will be here to counter it, because it was going nowhere, getting no attention, and not being treated properly according to the material that is available to make it a better article than it is. --Born2flie 15:54, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Action will be taken against continued disruption of the article, if necessary. - BillCJ 16:29, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
I disagree, if the article was changed right before its indoctrination into a separate article I did not see. Alphabetical order of the services is in my opinion inappropriate; in the article the Army is written in as the most prominent, with the Navy in second. The Air Force should than be third in cooperation with the Armed Services precedence of "Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard".
"Background" as it has been implemented is also inappropriate, as it does not distinguish where it ends and leaves information tied to it that is irrelevant to the "Background" or history behind the services usage. Furthermore, the editor, neglected to have this put in the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps sections behind the same type of information.
You also are removing information that would further educate the reader on technical aspects of attaining a warrant or commission in this way. This information is neither redundant or "unvalued". Nicht Nein! 12:43, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
I apologize for that, but given that all your edits were done in one session, there was no way to distinguish between the changes you made. Thanks for putting back your information without changing the outline. We can discuss outline changes here to see if we can come to an agreement. - BillCJ 15:02, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

When I split out the article, as I previously stated, I removed a lot of redundancy. If it appeared disjointed, and much of the recruiting station kinds of information contained in the article did not contribute to the article as a whole, I took it out. "How to" achieve this type of position should be found on Wikibooks or else an external link to each of the services recruiting page for this type of position. The Background subsection is because there is currently a dearth of history available to make a cohesive history section, although there are clearly adequate resources to produce one. I see many editors who feel that any fact, no matter how disjointed from the presentation, is a noteworthy contribution. However, articles have to have a flow. Now, I don't claim to be perfect at it, but I do know how to make it happen.

As for precedence, it isn't as clearly defined as you seem to allude to.[1] The order you espouse is based on the size of the "armed forces" and excludes the other uniformed services. If the order were to follow with size of WO population, Air Force would be last. How about oldest use of WO? that would begin with the Navy. Alphabetical by DoD and then by the other uniformed forces was how it was established previously in the other article and that was how I maintained it in the transition. Ultimately, when there is a History section, the Air Force section will go away, because their use of WO is history. --Born2flie 15:56, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I think oldest use of the grades and/or size of force are more appropriate then alpha. Nicht Nein! 12:16, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I could agree with oldest use of the grades. --Born2flie 14:44, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

The "Background" is still misleading... It doesn't correctly represent the changes in system from the old "warrants" to the current warrant officer grades of W1 - W5...
I don't believe that the "historical background" should coincide with the rest of the information under "Background". There needs to be a separation. And it should be explained that the original system of warrants is not the way it is used today or has been since the middle of the 20th Century. The early ranks of each service should be talked about in grades W1 and W2. Nicht Nein! 10:47, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

I totally agree with you that the historical pieces are not where they need to be, but Background isn't just about history, but also referring to more information, and since the stuff that follows the historical references in both the Navy and the Army Background sections doesn't really fit into the general discussion about the Warrant Officer description and utilization in each of those services that precedes the subsection, they really are more background pieces of information than something that needs to be highlighted as extremely important to the service. When the history pieces are removed to a History section, those pieces will naturally fall in as trailing paragraphs to the primary paragraphs about description and utilization, even though they will still be just more additional background information. But, since they didn't fit a History description, and because there wasn't a substantive enough of history to justify a History subsection for each of the services or at least the two services that have historical information in their sections, making a Background section seemed to be logical enough to keep the primary information as the primary information and discourage editors from placing information haphazardly throughout the article, as seems to be the case if one reviews the history of the other article.

Perhaps this is just my perception. However, I should have enough time in the next week or two to edit a decent enough History section that will allow the removal of the Background subsections. --Born2flie 13:53, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Summary correction

In a recent revert summary, I wrote: "adding "valued, encyclopedic information"; making wholesale, nonconsensual changes is quite another". I accidently hit the return key before I was finished. I meant to write: "adding "valued, encyclopedic information" is one thing; making wholesale, nonconsensual changes is quite another". Thanks. - BillCJ 04:04, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Its own article?

Why is it that the United States Warrant Officer rank has its own page but the United Kingdom, Australia and a few others share a page? --Climax-Void Chat or My Contributions

Because a Warrant Officer in the United States is an Officer, not a senior enlisted as it is in the UK, Australia, and the few others mentioned. --Born2flie 01:07, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Marine WO1

Seems IP editors keep deleting the USMC WO1 rank, but every reference I've found so far, including the Marine .mil websites have nothing about the Marine Corps discontinuing this rank, even though the United States Navy has. In fact, the WO1 image is from a USMC website. Anyone seen something more "current"? --Born2flie 21:26, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Seems the last three recent IP edits all originate from a relatively similar geographical position and seem to be focused on editing the Marine Corps Warrant Officer insignia, originally deleting the W-5 insignia and then deleting the W-1 insignia followed by an edit indicating that the W-1 grade will soon be discontinued despite sharing no reference or source to substantiate any of these edits. --Born2flie 03:39, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Coast Guard

I'm not sure that the following is germaine to an article discussing utilization of the Warrant Officer rank within the Uniformed Services of the United States:

Except during periods when so directed by the President (such as declared war), the Coast Guard does not fall under the Department of Defense, but rather the Department of Homeland Security since March 1, 2003 due to the September 11, 2001 attacks, and under the Department of Transportation prior to that date.

I have clarified the lead-in so that, hopefully, we will not continue to be compelled to explain in any detail that the Uniformed Services and their ranks do not strictly apply solely to the Armed Services, or the relationship of the Uniformed Services to each other. September 11, 2001 and the subsequent move of the USCG from under the DOT to the newly formed DHS in 2003 have nothing to do with how the USCG selects and utilizes its warrants, and neither does the fact of whether they fall under the DoD during times of war. I recommend removal of the statements. --Born2flie 00:46, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Commissioning WO1s

http://www.usawoa.org/LegislativeNews.htm
Commissioning of WO1s - The change to Title X of the U. S. Code (the law) to commission WO1s is in the Army's legislative submission for National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009. The requested change is currently under review at the Office of the Secretary of Defense and if all is correct, should be in the submission to the White House and Congress for next year. --81.145.241.234 17:56, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

This proposal has not been included in NDAA FY09 so won't happen until at least 2010 172.189.213.185 (talk) 19:45, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Command Chief Warrant Officer

I notice there is no mention of State Command Chief Warrant Officers in the article. I think it is a relatively "new" position (created in maybe the last 5-10 yrs) in the U.S. I know the officer who holds the rank must be a CW5. Might be worth a mention in this article. I've got no sources for ya right now, though... ZueJay (talk) 02:02, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

  • Not notable and only applies to the Army National Guard. If anything, it might belong in that article. But, again, only if it is truly notable and I can't find any reason why it would be. --Born2flie (talk) 15:26, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Public Health Service

The following unsigned comment regarding the establishment of Warrant Officers in the USPHS was moved from the mainspace article. --Born2flie (talk)

This has not been authorized by the Public Health Service. Nurse are still requiered to have a BSN at a minimum. For more information call 800–279–1605 and speak directly to their recruiters. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.90.105.145 (talk • contribs) 00:05, 28 February 2008 (UTC)