Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Essays/FA Battle Process

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This is an essay which contains the advice or opinions of one or more members of the Military history WikiProject. While it is not a part of the formal military history style guide, it provides some recommendations and ideas for members to consider.

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It is a commonly-accepted fact (primarily by consensus) that writing an FA-Class Article concerning a military conflict is not easy.^[1] In many cases, they take substantial amounts of time, work, & research. However, I have been able to establish several common-patterns that should be taken when preparing to write A-Class/FA-Class articles.

For our purposes, this essay shall be limited to the process involved in writing an excellent article on a specific Battle, Offensive, or Military Operation.

In order to successfully write a high-rated article, several tools are first required:

1: References & Research. — If you do not have access to references & published sources when moving through the FA-Process, it is unlikely that the article will make it past B-Class. Typically, you should have access to both web-resources & published works. Although websites do add their own sense of quality to the refs of an article, a lot of the information found on websites is either 1)Biased, or 2)inaccurate. This rule does not apply if the website is a PDF or web-version of an already print-published resource (such as journal articles, excerpts from books, online databases, JSOTR, etc). In addition, try to diversify your sources. Don't rely entirely on sources from one side of the battle, or that only examine the POV of a single conflict member.

A question that will almost certainly come up is "How many different sources should I have?" The Answer: There is no definite answer. As long as you have a diverse range of sources, you should be fine.^[2]

2: Excellent Copyediting Skills (and access to someone else who has them) — I apologize in advance to those who will be disappointed by the next remark: You will never write a GA-Article, much less a Featured-Article, in one sitting.^[3] The article will require revisions to the prose & elegance of the article. Some of this you will be able to do yourself. However, your eyes will eventually become far too accustomed to the page to do any further copyediting (I guarantee it. It happens to all of us). At this point, the second part of the resource comes into play: Someone else's copyediting skills. Personally, I suggest the people down at the Logistics Department (they know what they're doing).

3: Excellent WP: MoS Knowledge. — On the road to FA, elegance & ingenious prose will only get you so far. Before FA can be achieved, there are a variety of technical guidelines concerning citation format, image copyright, dashes,^[4], dates & times, Page Layout, quote-boxes, article-titles, and all manner of other nit-picky little things that seem to be so ridiculously important to the FA-Process.^[5]. Familiarize yourself with most, if not all, of these guidelines.

[edit] The Ten-Step Program

Although totally useless when recovering from alcohol or drug-addition (an additional two-steps being required for this to be successful), I find that the ten-step program is an excellent method of getting a Battle article from none/stub to A/FA within a relatively short amount of time (a month at the most). These steps are:

1: The Lead & Background

2: Strategy/Forces

3: The Battle

4: Aftermath/Casualties

5: Historiography

6: GA-Review

7: Peer-Review

8: A-Class Review

9: Level 4 & 5 Copyedit

10: FA-Nomination

Now, to expand upon each of these:

1: The Lead & Background — At the beginning of every article concerning a military conflict, you will require a lead & infobox. The infobox is fairly self explanatory. The lead, however, has been the subject of much debate & scrutiny over the last while. Essentially, the lead should give a general overview of the battle. I tend to give a brief analysis of why the battle went the way it did ("Although substantial attempts were made by this side, this side's offensive/defensive doctrine of <insert-doctrine-here> enabled them to repulse/take the objective").

The background is another source of scrutiny & debate. In my experience, a background should cover at least one of two things: 1) The political background surrounding wars and/or major offensives (the best example of this being located here), and/or 2) The strategic background surrounding the offensive/battle, documenting previous attempts to take the objective and their result. The background is essentially setting the preface for the rest of the article, while the lead summarizes the contents of the actual article. Refs are a must, but not nearly as important as in some of the later sections.

2: Strategy/Forces — At this juncture, there are two options for the section after "Background". 1) Summarize the offensive strategy that the one or both sides would use in the battle. This is particularly useful if the forces involved in a battle keep changing (as they did in most of the battles along the WWI Western Front, this format is particularly helpful in those articles). The second option this juncture is to describe the forces on both sides. This is helpful when the strategies employed by both sides keep changing (as they did here). In some cases, you are capable of outlining both. Both should, however, be fairly extensive & detailed in their coverage. Refs are a must.

3: The Battle — While all of this preface stuff is nice, it gets you absolutely nowhere if you don't cover the actual battle. It is the coverage of the actual battle that is truly important. Typically, I'll divide coverage of the battle into 2-day sections (or, if you're Hal Jesperson with the Battle of Gettysburg, you make three Separate articles on each of the phases) Each section, as with previous ones, should be fairly detailed. This section in particular needs to be "cited to death", with upwards of 2-3 refs per paragraph.^[6]

4: Aftermath/Casualties — This is a section that can vary significantly, depending entirely upon the article. In my personal experience, the aftermath is an excellent place to describe several things: 1) What happened to each of the forces after the battle. 2) If it was part of a larger campaign/offensive, what effect did it have? 3) The events that occurred as a direct result of the battle within the next several days (counterattacks, troop movements, promotions, etc).

Another section that is somewhat critical to many battle-articles (and yet is often overlooked) is Casualties. Often, accurate figures are very difficult to find (or, if you're the ill-fated Kerensky Offensive, impossible to find), and as a result, most often be discussed. My personal approach is to approximate a range of casualty statistics ("conservative estimates for casualties for X-Battle are approximately Y. However, some sources put the casualties as high as Z"), discussing how these casualties were dispersed (killed, wounded, captured), if certain units took a major beating (yes, I'm talking to you, Confederate units at Sharpsburg), if possible, outline what the cause of these casualties was (if they're really high, explain why. If they're really low, explain why). Again, cite to death.

5: Historiography — In recent years, a number of historical battles & engagements have become the subject of significant academic scrutiny, and as a result, opinions vary significantly on the subject. Therefore, it is often a good idea to analyze both the praise & criticism of a battle. this criticism can attack the strategies, the performance of commanders, the performance of soldiers, anything that will draw praise or criticism to the battle. Again, try to draw on criticism from the battle's time-period, as well as modern-day analysis of the battle. If there is praise & criticism of aspects of the battle, detail both. If there's a modern controversy, detail it (although avoid becoming POV. You have to play the balance as well as possible). It is critical that you cite the hell out of this section. Many of the opinions that are debated within the course of this section require a lot of backing up, and need to be really broad in coverage.

6: GA-Review — At this point, you should be ready to take it for GA-Nomination. Be sure to do several things first: 1)Combine footnotes. 2) Do some copyediting to ensure that the prose is at least "good". In addition, you will need to apply a lot of the MoS guidelines to the copyediting. Not only will the GA-Review reveal the problems with the article, it will also reveal the issues that need to be further addressed before going for A-Class review.

7: Peer-Review — By this point, you've probably got the opinions of a few people: You, the other major contributors, & the GA-Reviewer. Because A-Class reviews are a highly collaborative process (which require the approval of multiple editors). At this point, it is probably a good idea to peer-review your new GA-Article. This will achieve two goals: 1) You will likely get information concerning what needs to be improved on the article. 2) You will get the opinions of some other editors before going for A-Class. If you're lucky, there are several extremely-helpful MilHist editors who have a habit of "copyedit & peer-review combo", reviewing & making some changes on their own simultaneously.

8: A-Class Review. During the peer-review process, you will hopefully have gotten a significant amount of feedback concerning both content & the prose of the article. Once all of the changes/improvements suggested have been implemented, it is time for an A-Class nomination.