Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Archive 19

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Collaboration of the week/fortnight/month

Looking at the Worklist, it occurs to me that a good way of improving the general standard of our more important articles might be through a project collaboration. Is there a demand for this? Obviously it would need a reasonable amount of active users for it to be useful. The Article Improvement Drive isn't exactly a roaring success but perhaps a more focussed group with more modest goals, like ours, could work. Leithp 11:54, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

There was a Wikipedia:Military Collaboration of the week. It could easily be moved to Wikipedia:Military History Collaboration of the week and reactivated. Always good to have a focus when editing Wikipedia, so good idea :-) SoLando (Talk) 12:04, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
I had a sneaky suspicion that it had already been done, but I couldn't anything about it. I take it that there was no demand for this kind of collaboration then? Leithp 12:11, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
I can imagine there was a demand for a collaboration effort such as that. There simply wasn't a project that had as much activity as this one now (thankfully) does. I say revive it, and to hell with the past.....so to speak ;-) SoLando (Talk) 12:22, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
Wikiproject:Military history says: "to hell with the past". Very good. Leithp 12:25, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
Fortunately for everyone, I've yet to be placed in a position where I truly represent this project ;-) SoLando (Talk) 12:32, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Okay, so assuming that we can get enough mugs willing volunteers to participate in this, should we use the worklist as a basis? I was thinking we could either set a general goal, i.e. get all stubs up to B standard, or target a specific article. I'm wary of trying to get everything up to FA standard because there's a big leap between writing a "good" article and writing an FA, and increasing standards at FAC mean it's not likely to get narrower. Leithp 12:52, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

The worklist would be preferable as a source for a collaboration effort, in my opinion. There's a vast amount of articles in dire need of good edits not on the worklist, but using it should provide coherency and organisation in which articles are chosen. I don't think there's a great urgency to get all articles on the worklist to FA standard just yet ;-) Perhaps an annual quota: <x> number of articles to FA status, <x> number of articles to A & B standard, etc. Where is Kirill when you need him? ;-) SoLando (Talk) 13:25, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
Kirill is on UTC-5, and is therefore asleep ;-)
Some comments:
  1. This is a great idea.
  2. I would concentrate on the worklist, and particularly on the core topics, since selecting anything terribly obscure will mean a long wait for people to find sources, etc. In addition, working on something like Medieval warfare would allow us to solicit participation from the Middle Ages WikiProject, and so forth. (There's really no limitation, at present, to what people can add to the worklist; so anyone wanting to push a particular article as a candidate can simply add it.)
  3. Maybe a week would be too short? I would go for a fortnight, to allow anyone interested to find sources; but I've underestimated the manpower of the project before, so a week might work.
  4. Do we want to create the collaboration as an entirely separate page, or on a subpage of the project? The second approach would allow us to leave the period off the name, rather than tying us down to a week/fortnight, but may seem less "official".
  5. Do we necessarily want to absorb the defunct military collaboration? It would clean up some loose ends, but also isn't really set up according to current best practices. Maybe we should create one from scratch and simply redirect the existing one after we're finished.
Incidentally, shouldn't it be Wikipedia:Military history Collaboration of the Week? (Note the (somewhat surprising) capitalization used in our project name.) —Kirill Lokshin 14:33, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
Fortnightly is probably best, at least until we can assess interest. Given that the previous collaboration seems to have gone the way of the Dodo I don't see a need to absorb it, although notifying the former participants might be a good idea. A sub-page is probably the thing, it would help keep it visible for all the project participants. Again, I don't think we should set goals of trying to get things up to FA standard. The time and effort required for that is disproportionate to the benefits for this kind of project. This should be a way to improve the general quality of our articles and, if someone wants to adopt an article and see it through FAC, it should be up to that individual. Leithp 14:43, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
Hopefully the main collaboration can improve articles enough that bringing them to FA is more realistic; but, as the FAC process alone can take several weeks, it shouldn't really be part of the collaboration itself. —Kirill Lokshin 15:34, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
I would suggest that we do at least fortnightly to start off with, as we have no idea what level of participation we'll get. I'd also suggest that instead of the Worklist, we allow folks to suggest and vote on which ones we do. A few questions though:
  1. Are we going to have limitations on what articles we do akin to WP:AID and WP:COTW? I would suggest that we don't and allow people to suggest articles ranging from sub-stubs to A-Grade.
  2. What role will the project co-ordinators take on the CotW? I've found that there's a lack of organization on other CotW's that I've seen so I wouldn't mind trying an approach where a task-list is made and assignments are given to volunteers. Oberiko 18:08, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
I think the worklist idea just means that candidates should be listed on the worklist prior to being nominated; they would still be suggested and chosen like in other collaborations. (It would be nice to clean up some of the major gaps on the worklist, though.)
I agree entirely on your first point; the quality of articles varies so much that trying to set limits will probably be counterproductive. At the same time, I think we should avoid focusing too much on A-Class articles, since those will probably have less that can be done by the general participant (most of them require either highly specialized input or just someone willing to copyedit them to FA standards).
As far as coordinators are concerned: aside from keeping the process running (updating templates and such), I'm not sure how much organization would be appropriate. The best-case scenario would be having nominators (briefly) outline what the article needs, and then transforming that into a to-do list for the collaboration; but, in the interests of getting this going, it may be worthwhile to phase such things in gradually. We certainly don't want to make nominating an article so time-consuming that nobody is willing to do it. —Kirill Lokshin 18:34, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm leery of comparisons with the AID and CotW, because they both seem to be quite unsuccessful in achieving their goals. The aim for a project of this kind should be to get our house in order for Wikipedia 1.0. As such the collaborations should be limited to the most important articles, i.e. the worklist. Incidentally, the worklist itself still needs a lot of work. We've got serious systematic bias issues at the moment. Leithp 19:34, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
I mentioned the idea of a CotW based on the worklist a while ago, and still think it's a great idea so I like the way this discussion is going. The ideas put forward so far look very good - I reckon creating this once we have a fairly completed worklist has great potential. If we need a coordinator to keep manage the processes and do the necessary work to run it, I'm happy to do so. --Loopy e 22:31, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

I've started a very rough draft here. Any comments would be extremely appreciated. —Kirill Lokshin 02:57, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

The MilHist navigation template crowds it very much - can we drop it below the collaborations template? --Loopy e 03:00, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
Easy enough. Hopefully the page won't look quite as silly once it gets longer. —Kirill Lokshin 03:20, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
I've made some more changes to the draft; any comments on the current version? I'm particularly interested in (a) what statistics we should maintain for completed collaborations and (b) whether we need a formal scheme for removing candidates that fail to garner support. —Kirill Lokshin 17:55, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Taking it live?

So, should we go ahead and try it out, or does anyone have any major objections to the present setup? —Kirill Lokshin 17:41, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

No problems here. We can iron out anything else once we've started. Leithp 18:04, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I've listed it on the main collaboration list. Some initial nominations would be very helpful ;-) —Kirill Lokshin 19:11, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Project template renaming

Since we seem to have acquired a number of different project templates (and are likely to acquire more, such as the ones needed for the collaboration discussed above), I've done some renaming to try and bring them to a consistent naming scheme:

  • Main navigation template (formerly {{WPMILHIST}}) moved to {{WPMILHIST Navigation}}. Note that this redirect will no longer work properly, for reasons described below.
  • Announcement box (formerly {{WikiProject Military history tasks}}) moved to {{WPMILHIST Announcements}}.
  • Main project notice (formerly at {{WikiProject Military history}}) moved to {{WPMILHIST}}.
  • Userpage project notice (formerly at {{WikiProject Military history user}}) moved to {{WPMILHIST User}}.

I believe that I've fixed any resultant double redirects; if anyone notices one I missed, feel free to let me know. The existing redirects will still work (except for the navigation template; I fixed all uses of that by hand), but, in the interests of keeping things as simple and consistent as possible, I would encourage everyone to use the new templates names directly from now on.

Comments are welcome, as always. —Kirill Lokshin 01:55, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

WPMILHIST? Must be a tribute to the famously inscrutable nature of military acronyms, IYKWIM!

Project consolidation

Looking at some of the other projects dealing with aspects of military history, many seem to be defunct or inactive. I think it may be worthwhile to consider merging some of them into ours (possibly creating distinct task forces where appropriate), both to centralize any further development and to consolidate the recruitment of new participants.

A (possibly incomplete) list of candidates:

This may be a completely daft idea, though ;-) Any comments or suggestions would be much appreciated. —Kirill Lokshin 03:48, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

The World Wars project and the military project could definitely be merged into ours. -- Миборовский U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai! 20:23, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
The projects focused on specific organisations should probably be incorporated into this project, as I'm sure task forces would be a viable replacement for them. SoLando (Talk) 12:15, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
I agree with both Миборовский and SoLando. Andreas 13:43, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
Don't "world wars" cover more than just military - ie economics, politics, science and technology, etc.? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Michael Dorosh (talk • contribs)
Don't all wars, to some degree? I would say that military history is not necessarily limited to straight narrative, but includes all the technology, politics (especially politics!) and economics that are part of the events studied. —Kirill Lokshin 16:08, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
In which case would you say that Cold War is appropriate for the worklist? I'm not certain about this, I would think that although it has many military aspects the political aspect is obviously far more important. Which reminds me of the Clausewitz cliche quote.... Leithp 16:37, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
I see no reason why not; while the political aspects may be more notable, there are certainly plenty of military aspects, to the extent that it can be termed a "conflict". —Kirill Lokshin 17:06, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
I think we should be able to get at least three new task forces: British military history (from WP British Army and WP RAF), US military history (from WP US Army), and WWII (from WP World Wars; is there enough interest in a WWI task force as well?). The Falklands War WP seems too limited to sustain a task force at this point, so it might be best merged into the main project directly. The Polish Army WP and Military WP still need some more work, I think; mainly to discuss the possibility of a merger with them.
On that note, anyone willing to help me sell the idea to these other projects? Many of them have overlapping memberships with ours; might it be a good idea to contact those members directly and get their input? (I'm hesitant, for obvious reasons, to merge other projects without getting consensus from their members.) —Kirill Lokshin 20:28, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
An update: three projects have been merged so far, and probably another two or three will be shortly. I'm still not quite sure how to best approach the larger and more active ones (World Wars and Military), though. —Kirill Lokshin 04:36, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
(Hi 5's Kirill) I say we assimilate as many of them as possible.--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 08:32, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
And now one of the USMIL members has apparently taken offense and reverted the merger. This might take a while ;-) —Kirill Lokshin 14:25, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
Three more likely to go in the near future, provided nobody else complains. —Kirill Lokshin 00:26, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
And two more are gone! —Kirill Lokshin 18:28, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
EXXXCELENT! They will soon, all learn that resistance is futile.--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 22:05, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

New task forces

To start this off, I've created skeletons for the British military history task force, the United States military history task force, and the World War II task force, which can serve as merge targets for the relevant projects. I'll try to migrate some resources and such to the new task force pages a bit later tonight; in the meantime, anyone interested should feel free to sign up :-) —Kirill Lokshin 23:01, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

And looks like Wikipedia:WikiProject Polish Army has migrated over to a task force as well. —Kirill Lokshin 03:12, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Operation Opera (suggestions?)

I just finished writing Operation Opera; I like it but I need input. Ha... Thanks. -- Killioughtta 10:12, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

  • Nice work on a timely topic. I like that you included a lot of pictures, and discussed the prelude, the negotiations, etc, and not just the attack. Sorry I have nothing to contribute to the article myself. LordAmeth 11:36, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Formatting is a little off, I'll sort that for you. --Loopy e 20:50, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks to everyone who has added to the article. It looks great. -- Killioughtta 00:59, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

  • I have seen some books written on this air raid, and I would suggest adding those in a reference section. TomStar81 02:17, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
It looks good...so much so, in fact, an FAC might be in order. It has my support:>--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 08:35, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

World War Two infobox

{{World War II infobox}} I found this infobox over on the World War II page. Is it useful? SSG Cornelius Seon (Retired) 00:40, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Back to the custom boxes we go, I see ;-) Could somebody convert the thing to a normal {{Infobox Military Conflict}}? —Kirill Lokshin 00:47, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Here is the code for the infobox:

{| class="toccolours" border="1" cellpadding="4" style="float: right; margin: 0 0 1em 1em; width: 22em; border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 95%; clear: right" |- !colspan="2" style="text-align: center; background:#ffff99"|<big>'''World War II''' Summary</big> |- |colspan="2" | [[Image:WW2 TitlePicture For Wikipedia Article.jpg|300px]] |- | colspan="2" |'''Counterclockwise from top''': [[Allies of World War II|Allied]] landing on [[Normandy]] beaches on [[Battle of Normandy|D-Day]], the 1936 [[Nuremberg Rally]], the [[Nagasaki]] [[Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki|atom bomb]], [[Red Army]] soldiers raising the [[Flag of the Soviet Union|Soviet flag]] over the [[Reichstag (building)|Reichstag]] in [[Berlin]], the gate of a [[Nazi concentration camps|Nazi concentration camp]] at [[Auschwitz concentration camp|Auschwitz]] |- |Date: |[[1939]]–[[1945]] |-valign="top" |Locations: |[[European Theatre of World War II|Europe]], [[Pacific War|Pacific]], [[South-East Asian Theatre of World War II|South-East Asia]], [[Middle East Theatre of World War II|Middle East]], [[Mediterranean Theatre of World War II|Mediterranean]] and [[African Theatres of World War II|Africa]] |- |Outcome: |Allied victory |- !colspan="2" style="text-align: center; background:#ffff99"|Deaths (approx.) |- |Military: |25 million |- |Civilian: |37 million |- |Total: |62 million |- |Details: |[[World War II casualties|WWII Casualties]] |- !colspan="2" style="text-align: center; background:#ffff99"|Main participants |- |width="300px" style="background:#B0C4DE"| <b>[[Allies of World War II|Allies]]</b> |width="150px" style="background:#B0C4DE"| <b>[[Axis Powers|Axis]]</b> |- |<li>[[Military history of the United Kingdom during World War II|UK]] & [[participation of the Commonwealth of Nations in World War II|Commonwealth]]<li>[[Military history of France during World War II|France]]/[[Free France]]<li>[[Military history of the United States#Second World War (1941–1945)|USA]]<li>[[Military history of the Soviet Union|Soviet Union]]<li>[[Military history of China during World War II|China]]<li>[[Military history of Poland during World War II|Poland]]<li>[[Allies of World War II|more ....]] |<li>[[Military history of Germany during World War II|Germany]]<li>[[Military history of Japan#Showa Period - World War II|Japan]]<li>[[Military history of Italy during World War II|Italy]]<li>[[Hungary]]<li>[[Romania]]<li>[[Bulgaria]]<li>[[Axis Powers|more ....]] |}

SSG Cornelius Seon (Retired) 02:10, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Global Security Dot Org

I see this site in the external resource area. Please remember that is is a Secondary Source site, and all of its information is available at primary source sites that often are linked on its pages.

SSG Cornelius Seon (Retired) 01:47, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Yep, it's a good reference but usually it's necessary to dig into the primary sources. Hmm... like Wikipedia, no? -- Миборовский U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai! 02:15, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Category:British Army generals & Category:English generals

Maybe these two could be merged? At least the British Generals should be renamed English generals? With the current naming one seems redundant to me. Yes, I am aware of the difference between England, Britain, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the special status of the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, just in case someone is wondering. Andreas 08:24, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

I'd prefer not to. Take Glubb Pasha or Peake Pasha, both of these are British generals who were not generals in the British Army. That's just off the top of my head, I'm sure there are quite a few other examples. Also, Category:English generals and Category:Scottish generals exist for pre Act of Union generals and I actually removed a heap of incorrect entries from them at the weekend, which is probably why they look de-populated at the moment. I'll make an attempt at adding legitimate entries when I get the time. Leithp 08:44, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
Point taken Andreas 09:17, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Collaboration of the Fortnight is now live

It's mentioned above, but I thought it was worth a new thread to get your attention: Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Collaboration is now up and running. Nominations and votes are being taken up until Sunday evening (server time). Leithp 09:08, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Another naming convention question

Since people here were helpful last time I was wondering what to name an article, I figured I'd bring this one hear. This battle (see description at [1] if you're wondering) is most often referred to as the "Tearless Battle," since this was the name used at the time; this doesn't say much about the location, though, so should I call it that or follow a more standard system and call it the Battle of Arcadia (368 BC)? Whichever one I go with, I'll probably create the other as a redirect, but I'd like to hear which people think should be the actual title. RobthTalk 16:23, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

I think the convention has been to use geographic naming except where a particular alternate is clearly favored by historians. Whether that's the case here is something you'd be in a better position to evaluate; but, given how inconsistent classical writers tended to be about such things, I suspect using the geographic name might be safer.
In any case, redirects are cheap, and can be freely created from any reasonable alternative name. —Kirill Lokshin 17:05, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Featured article candidacy

The Joan of Arc article is under consideration for featured article status. Since it's officially part of the military history project I'd like to invite the other participants to join the FAC discussion. Best wishes, Durova 19:10, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

It's also listed in the announcement/open task box, along with all the other FACs of interest ;-) —Kirill Lokshin 19:20, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
Thank you. Is that automatic or something I should add? My contribution to this project has been pretty narrowly focused and I don't participate in project talk much. Durova 01:30, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
You can add it yourself if you want; but I usually go through and update the lists at least once daily, so you don't have to. —Kirill Lokshin 02:19, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Accuracy and dates

Today I stumbled across something that other project editors should try: I reviewed the incoming links at Joan of Arc. More than half of the date and year event pages contained mistakes. They often specified the wrong date for battles and sometimes named commanders who were not involved in an engagement. So if you need a change of pace while editing a battle that happened on April 4, take a look at April 4, etc. and make sure the basic facts are correct. Durova 01:30, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I think there was once a project that was focused on maintaining the date pages, but I suspect it died at some point. —Kirill Lokshin 02:23, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
I found it a relaxing way to do something useful while my brain cells checked out for a break. Durova 01:58, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Catapult is on AID!!!!!!!!!!!

Hi, since no one's going to vote for it by themselves (or at least I don't think they will) , I've decided to put a notice here! Anyway, on this page Catapult voting section, is where you can vote for Catapult. I nominated it mainly because it was a kinda crappy article with only 1 picture & lacking masses of information, despite how important the subject is. Please vote, as who really wants something like food to get to the main page before an important article like Catapult does. Honestly, why is food sooo important? Its not like everyone uses it! And the other half eat it before heaving it up again anyway......... :) Spawn Man 04:34, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Units in a Millitary action?

Is it worth adding a "slot" in the military action info box for notable units? This would be useful when it is used for battles. For example: Legio XIII Gemina was at the Battle of Gergovia. This could be mentioned under Combatants, I suppose, but it might be helpful to seperate nations and specific units. - Vedexent 01:11, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

I think that would make the boxes far too long for many battles (consider, say, the Battle of Austerlitz, which included dozens of famous units). In any case, a proper order of battle usually requires some extensive description of unit strengths and so forth, and thus is probably more appropriate for a section of the article than for inclusion in the infobox (which is meant to be a short summary, rather than a complete description of the battle). —Kirill Lokshin 01:14, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
What's more, the practice of listing army names and other formations in battleboxes (a la 3rd Kharkov) needs a sharp rebuff. Nothing but unreadable clutterings result from it. A short statement on the project page here would work wonders, allowing us to tag edits in this sense with something like "Cleaning up Warbox (please see WikiProject Military history)." Without the Project's authority to back them I find such efforts only lead to ruthless reverts from people who don't know any better (Bigger battles are an absolute evil. I bloodied my head on the keyboard trying to get the Kursk infobox looking normal). Albrecht 03:16, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
Well, we do have "Convention is to use the names of countries, rather than those of specific units" and "It is generally not useful to provide unit names without giving an indication of numbers" in the warbox instructions already; I'm somewhat hesitant to push anything stronger than that, since there are probably special cases where it's a valid option. Is there some particular wording you think would be more helpful? —Kirill Lokshin 03:29, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
Wow, I sure look stupid: Hadn't actually checked the Project page to see if something had already been added to that effect. Present guideline is perfect. Albrecht 16:01, 5 March 2006 (UTC)