Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Archive 33

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Archive 33


Contents

Military unit categories

Looking through Category:Individual military units, it seems to be a bit of a mess (characterized by the usual inconsistent naming, plus dozens of empty categories that never seem to have gotten filled). My suggestion for cleaning this up would be to follow the basic three-part structure for conflicts and people with an added branch for different-size units:

  • Category:Military units ← renamed from Category:Individual military units; I really can't fathom why the "Individual" is in the title
    • Category:Military units by country ← partially from Category:Military units by nationality, although that one is in total chaos; these can be broken down by branch as needed
    • Category:Military units by conflict ← perhaps a more general Category:Military units by period would also work?
    • Category:Military units by type ← special forces units, armored units, airborne units, etc.
    • Category:Military units by size ← divisions, regiments, corps, etc.

Ditto for the names of the categories:

  • "Military units of Foo" (e.g. "Military units of France" or "Military units of the United States Army")
  • "Military units of the Foo War" (e.g. "Military units of World War II")
  • "Fooish units" (e.g. "Airborne units")
  • "Foos" (e.g. "Regiments")

Various combinations of the four could then be done to create more specific sub-categories:

  • Country and conflict: "Military units of France in World War I" (it was pointed out to me in a recent TFD discussion that sub-categories need not use the same preposition that their parents do, so go with a more natural usage than a repeated "of")
  • Size and type: "Airborne regiments"
  • Size and conflict: "Regiments of World War II"
  • Type, size, country (with branch), and conflict: "Airborne regiments of the United States Army in World War II"

There will obviously be a need for some intermediate collection categories ("Regiments by country" and so forth); these can be nested under multiple parents as needed (we'll need to figure out a good sorting scheme, though). General articles on particular unit types can also be sorted as needed (and can be included directly under Category:Military units if all else fails.

Comments? Kirill Lokshin 18:58, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

    • I think that is a great idea this area definitly needs reorganisation, some of the categories are quite a mess. I like Military Units by Period rather than by conflict because some units overlap into other conflicts, it will give more flexibility. Tristan benedict 17:07, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
      • It would need to use the correct terminology though - a "unit" is generally considered a battalion/regiment sized grouping of 500 to 1000 men. "Sub-units" are components of units (platoons, squadrons, companies, batteries, troops, etc.), and units are grouped into "formations". For example, the 101st Airborne Division is NOT a unit, it is a formation. The 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment would be considered a formation in the Commonwealth (as it is equivalent to a Brigade). The 2nd Battalion, 506th would indeed be a unit. Easy Company of the 2nd Battalion, 506th is actually a sub-unit. However, "regiment by country" really as nothing to do with either units or formations, as it is an administrative structure - and administrative structures are just as important in the organization of any military. Canada, for example, has Commands, Land Force Areas, Reserve Brigades and Regular Brigade Groups, none of which are tactical formations in any sense as they are purely domestic organizations. I am sure it is the same in the US, Britain, or EU. If we're going to organize "units", "regiments", "divisions", etc., let's lay the groundwork with a commonly accepted set of nomenclature - beginning with "what is a unit."Michael Dorosh 17:24, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
          • Minor point here, in the Wehrmacht, and presumably the Reichswehr and the imperial German army before it, Divisions were units, referred to as 'large units' (Grosseinheiten). Andreas 08:57, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
        • Well, I'm not really that familitar with the subtleties of modern military terminology ;-) (I'll point out, though, that the common, if not technically correct, meaning of military units includes both true "units" and "formations"; c.f. military unit.)
        • How about we rename the general categories from "Military units" to "Military units and formations"? Since we're going to be splitting along more specific lines (e.g. "Divisions", "Regiments", "Batteries", etc.) further down the tree anyways, that should be sufficient to ensure that the terminology is correct for just about anything that gets thrown in there, no? Kirill Lokshin 17:40, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
        • Agreed, the general categories should be a little more vague allowing the country specific categories to cope with the particular definitions. Tristan benedict 08:24, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
        • Agreed, "Military Units and Formations" seems a good idea. Andreas 08:57, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
        • Not to belabor the point or start another POV thread, but the terminology "Units and formations" and "sub-units" are British Commonwealth in usage (in this case, Canadian). "Formation" has an entirely different usage in the US. The U.S. Army considers everything from Corps on down to be a "unit" (per their web-site), and everything above to be an "army"--formations are clumping large units into field armies, army groups, and theater armies. The generic term they use is "organization". That said [:-)] I agree that a consensus on nomenclature is essential. (Aviation organizations are another headache--the USAF considers groups and below to be units, wings and above to be "establishments'!).--Buckboard 11:13, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
          • Heh, this is more complicated than I thought. Hopefully we can agree on something that's both general enough that it can be applied to everything and short enough that it can be typed ;-) Kirill Lokshin 16:11, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
          • Just a little bit more complicated!! Even I had no idea. Its giving me a headache.How about Military Organisations? Wait it can still work as units and formations: if U.S. military use units to describe everything below corps then formations should cover armies and field armies. No? Therefore using units and formations as the general category discription to cover the whole area should not be a problem. Or am i wrong? Tristan benedict 19:49, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
            • We actually do have a Category:Military organization, but it's one level up to include things like Ministries of Defense and so forth. I'm not sure if using that for a sub-category name would be clear enough. (In any case, the use of "organization" versus "organisation" brings us back to the same issue of differences in terminology, so we wouldn't be winning all that much.) I think that "Units and formations" might be the most practical option, even if it's not universal; otherwise, we'll wind up with something like "Military units, establishments, formations, groups, and organizations" as a category name. Kirill Lokshin 20:05, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
              • Good point. I'll go with that, keep it simple. Tristan benedict 20:48, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
Looks like I missed this very interessting discussion. Considering the vastness and complication of national terminologies we should probobly keep a general term (like unit, a term every one can easily associate to soldiery) for the global category. The Category by sizes should then make the naming conventions less of a hasle. Just to make things interesting what about antique units, such as the Legions, the Tagmatas, the Compagnies d'Ordonnance etc... In case these elements do not have a page of there page, should we link it to the page in wich they are discussed or make a new article?Dryzen 15:05, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
We can probably link it on a broader page, at least as a temporary measure; but these sorts of things can probably get their own pages eventually (even if it's only in the form of List of Tagmatas of the Byzantine Empire or something of the sort). Kirill Lokshin 15:13, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I've also seen "minor unit" used as a synonym for sub-unit. I agree that we should try to keep the naming technically correct, if possible. Seeing the term unit applied to infantry sections or brigades makes me wince.

Another option, likely problematic but possibly worth considering, might be to use a generic set of categories by organization level. Commonwealth armoured regiments are actually battalion-level units, for example.

  • category:platoons
  • category:military companies
  • category:battalion-level units
  • category:regimental-level units
  • category:brigade-level units
  • category:division-level units
  • category:corps-level formations
  • category:armies and army groups
  • category:brigade-level units

There should also be a separate category (-ies) for administrative organizations, like the Canadian areas, or Soviet peace-time military districts, which would be turned over to fronts in wartime. —Michael Z. 2006-07-22 00:05 Z

Thats looks like a heavy category tree, but it does bring to mind a new article, one that would explain and group up the terms used for the military Units. Ex: A regement - level unit consists of ... [...] Variant terms: ... Without this some categorisations could be sticky, as Michael Z mentionned the with the Commonwealth armoured regiments. Dryzen 15:35, 24 July 2006 (UTC)#
So Krill are we going to implement these changes you've suggested? Or is there more to discuss? I only ask before this page gets archived! The general concensus seems to me to be keeping the categories generalised like you've suggested at the top. Tristan benedict 09:44, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
Well, here's what I think we have so far:
Comments? Would this scheme generally work? Kirill Lokshin 14:57, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
I reckon it would work. It should make this area more user friendly and less jumbled up, and that was the point? Looks good. Tristan benedict 09:26, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

New announcement/task listing idea

Somewhat clever (perhaps too clever!) idea that I had for reworking the {{WPMILHIST Announcements}} template here. Aside from the general changes in appearance (which can be altered to taste), the main functional difference would be the transclusion of task force listings in show/hide divs. I haven't quite worked out how best to fill those (possibly via a sub-template that would also be transcluded on the task force's page itself. Comments, though? Would something of this sort be worthwhile, or is it too complicated? Kirill Lokshin 01:08, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Looks pretty awesome to me. --Laserbeamcrossfire 07:24, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
Great work, as usual. I think having the task foces at the bottom as retractble is ingenius. Makes the overall page small for people not interested in the other groups, while letting those that want to know able to read up on their task forces. Dryzen 14:56, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, trouble is, this template will no longer be transcludable (is this English?) easily. I think that everything should be in a single column or at least be stuffed up in divs that can be either aligned on one or two columns depending on the width. Because well, I find it quite nice to have the template transcluded to my user page... :( -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 16:07, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
Mmm, there should be a way to have the task force portion included or not based on an external parameter when you transclude the template; I'll see what I can do. The rest of it isn't particularly width-bound, and should collapse as needed. Kirill Lokshin 16:10, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
I've added a "columns" parameter that will turn off the double-column layout if set to "no"; in other words, {{User:Kirill Lokshin/Sandbox/Template|columns=no}} will allow it to shrink to any desired width. There are still some extra spaces produced by that which will need to be removed, though. Kirill Lokshin 16:27, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I think I've figured out how to do the task force listings fairly neatly. Would any task force(s) like to volunteer to try working with this new format? Kirill Lokshin 16:14, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
Sure, what do you need us to do? plange 16:22, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
Also, have you see China's template? Has a pretty nifty hide/show of project to-dos on the project banner {{WPCHINA}} -plange 16:23, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
To start off, I need a list of task forces that will be able to fill out something rapidly, so that I know which boxes to create in the template.
(And yes, I have seen the China template. It doesn't work quite so well for people who have JavaScript issues, though, so I think it might be somewhat intrusive to place it on every talk page. Our banner tends to be large enough as it is.) Kirill Lokshin 16:26, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm going to a picnic now, but will be back this afternoon. I can do US. What would I be filling it it with? Announcements and tasks for US Task Force? -plange 16:36, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm back Kirill, let me know if you still need help plange 20:02, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
Mmm, probably more obvious tasks to start with. I'll have something ready for you by the time you get back, then ;-) Kirill Lokshin 16:42, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
Okay, when you get back, just fill out some meaningful articles in Template:WPMILHIST Announcements/United States military history. That should be enough to start us off. Kirill Lokshin 16:56, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
Never mind previous, helps if I read responses :-P I'll get on it plange 20:03, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
Picked some, hope these are okay - for cleanup I picked from the cleanup bot on the request articles page and for requests it was from those listed on our task list. I tried to pick some from across periods... I can put in more if you want, wasn't sure what your ideal article count was for each section plange 20:31, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
We can probably expand the listings once we get the hang of this, since they're contained in show/hide boxes. I've changed the main template over to the new format; let's see what comments come in. Kirill Lokshin 20:34, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
I've also transcluded the list onto the task force page itself; hopefully it'll get some more attention that way. Ideas for what types of tasks we should have (both on the task force lists and the project-wide list) are very welcome! Kirill Lokshin 20:54, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
I stole {{WPCHINA}} from the Japanese one. -- Миборовский 17:46, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
LOL! And I just stole the China one for Biography :-) plange 20:02, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I've created versions of these task force lists for three more task forces. Let's see what kind of feedback comes in. Kirill Lokshin 18:14, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
I rather like the new pull-down menus, and the transcluded to-do lists. Very sleek. However, I really must admit, I am not too clear on your ideas regarding these task force specific lists of important articles. Shall I simply produce a list (hopefully somewhat short) of the most important articles/subjects from the point of view of the Japanese task force? LordAmeth 00:45, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
Basically that, with a proviso that these articles should still require significant work. There wouldn't be much point in listing FAs on the task list, for example.
As far as how to put them into list form: the task force lists are currently templatized (for easy standardization) to accept three possible lists: "Requested articles", "Cleanup needed", and "Expansion needed". I'm not sure how well these labels would apply here, so it might be easier to create a separate label (e.g. "Important articles" or the like) to put them under. Kirill Lokshin 00:50, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, just wanted to say that the new version is very cool and actually transcludes perfectly :) Many thanks to Kirill :) -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 14:57, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Notability of Military Websites

Here is a question - so military websites rate their own Wikipedia articles? I am thinking of sites like Feldgrau.com which at present are giant resources of information, but fail to meet the standards of Wikipedia notability - which requires multiple, non-trivial references in other media, or else major awards to be presented. Are the notability requirements too stringent, or are article on military websites simply un-encyclopedic? Can a case be made for altering the notability requirements to focus on content rather than media-savvy?Michael Dorosh 13:31, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't quite follow you. As far as I know, there's no article for Feldgrau.com on Wikipedia. Andrés C. 14:26, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
He would like to write an article on it. I would tend to disagree. Reference websites of any subject tend not to reach notability even if they are important within their given field. --Mmx1 14:43, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't intend to write an article on feldgrau, but would like to explore the subject of notability. I use feldgrau as an example of an extremely useful reference website. I guess the question is whether or not wikipedia needs to have articles on sites like that. The consensus at present appears to be "no". I realize wikipedia is not an "indiscriminate list" nor is it intended to be mere weblinks - but wouldn't something like feldgrau be of historical significance in the same way a published book is? I'm not advocating one way or the other, just soliciting opinions.Michael Dorosh 16:35, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, most non-fiction books don't have their own articles either, so that's not necessarily a good comparison.
I'm wondering, however, if it might not be more practical to add discussion of such sites to more general articles (e.g. Historiography of World War II or something of the sort)? Kirill Lokshin 16:49, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
My thinking led there as well, or perhaps a history of military reference websites which would focus on the phenomenon of same rather than individual sites?Michael Dorosh 16:50, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
Not a bad idea; I'm not sure how easy it will be to dig up sources other than the sites themselves, though. Kirill Lokshin 16:51, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Warlord

Not sure if I went overboard, but I went ahead and created a bunch of categories relating to Category:Warlordism. I also added it to the scope of the project. I'm also thinking of moving warlord (occupation) to warlordism (conceptual) although if we ever get enough material they might even be separate articles, seeing as one is a system (ie. presidential republic) and the other an occupation (ie. president). There's also possible categorisation into Somali warlords, Afghan warlords, Chinese warlords (although race v. nationality is an issue), etc. There's also an issue as a form of government (I put it under military dictatorship though sometimes they just happen to have lots of power).

IMO, this area should have a larger scope in military history than its currently given at Wikipedia, so I appreciate some feedback. Elle vécut heureuse à jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 02:19, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure that having two articles would be useful, considering that (unlike the president/presidential republic example), there's basically a one-to-one relationship between warlords and warlordism. The only reason that occurs to me off the top of my head would be that while we might create warlordism as a serious historical article, we may also want a separate warlord article to soak up the never-ending fictional usages of the term. Kirill Lokshin 02:36, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Medal of Honor Citation

There's an inconsistent use of the citations through wiki. The best I've yet seen is Charles_G._Abrell. I think it would be of some use to put together a template that'll format it a bit more neatly. Thoughts?

By the way, I do think the citation should be included in each article; they are short and usually the best description of the actions. --Mmx1 02:47, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Interesting idea. Maybe work off a copy of the formatting from {{cquote}}? Kirill Lokshin 03:07, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Summary of service section

In my wikignoming thru the CJCS articles, I noticed a lack of consistency in the use of the Summary of service section. Personally, I liked Bradley's. Wanted to get some feedback from the project. Also, would a template help? Didn't know if an transclusion template would be useful, or maybe just have a shell one to subst and then fill in. — MrDolomite | Talk 04:58, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Mmm, that's a thorny issue. While a list-form summary may be easy to construct, it tends to get the article pummeled at WP:FAC and the like, since well-written articles aren't supposed to contain extensive lists. Thus, it's usually better to simply put the relevant dates and positions into the main body of the article in prose form, at least for articles nearing completion; I'm not sure if having a template to produce a list-form listing would be a good idea in that regard. Kirill Lokshin 05:04, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
Was thinking of at least the dates of rank list. After all, an encyclopedia would be the first place I would go for that. :) But that is a good comment, certainly seen many AfD's get riddled for having too many lists. — MrDolomite | Talk 05:12, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
A list of duty stations can be proseified without many problems; it is after all how official bio's often read. However, I see no benefit to turning a date of rank into prose, and it's less useful. Similarly for a list of decorations. If it's relegated to the back, in an appendix-type section (e.g. as with specifications for aircraft), it think it's acceptable. --Mmx1 22:21, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
Mmm, my point was more to the effect that the promotions—and hence their dates—are (or should be) mentioned in the main body of the article; thus, having a separate list of them is somewhat redundant. As far as decorations go, it's quite possible to turn the list into prose; see, for example, Aleksandr Vasilevsky, a recent FA taking that approach. Kirill Lokshin 22:29, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
I'll have to agree with Kirill on this one and say prose is the best way to go. If we wanted to we could list everything...Promotion dates, duty stations, units, awards, commands.... The prose version says the same thing and allows for expansion on topics as it is added. Not much you can do with a list.--Looper5920 23:30, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

WikiMania & a Boston meetup

Though I will most likely not be attending Wikimania this year, I do live and work in Boston. Thus, I am wondering if anyone from the project would be willing, interested, and free to meet up for dinner or the like this coming weekend. (Please, also feel free to ask me anything you need to know about Boston-area touristy stuff and the like; I can't guarantee I'll have an answer, but I'll certainly try.) LordAmeth 01:26, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I'll be at Wikimania on the weekend. The conference schedule is pretty full, so I don't know how much free time I'll have; but if anyone else will be up there and would be interested in doing something, we can certainly try and set something up. Kirill Lokshin 04:01, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Avoiding task force bloat

Case in point: World War II.

As of right now, WW2 is tagged by a grand total of 9 task forces, of which 8 are national task forces. We can also add MORE task forces for it to be tagged... let's see. Chinese. German, which deserves to tag WW2. Indian, for INC and CBI Theatre. Maritime, for naval vessels and battles. Memorials and cemeteries, since WW2 killed off A LOT of people. Military aviation, since it was instrumental to WW2. Weaponry, world war = lots of new weapons. So there's 7 more task forces we can add to WW2. And we're growing fast. Soon there might be Belgian, Finnish, Romania, Bulgaria, Soviet, Russian, Korean task forces. In fact, at some point we might have task forces for every nation involved in WW2. At a rough count we can have 50 national task forces tagging WW2. That'd take maybe 3 pages to fully display.

Clearly, tagging any article that has anything to do with a country/branch no matter how remotely related, is unworkable over the long run. A clear system of priorities is needed. Now this might hurt nationalistic feelings and stuff, but we need to trim some national task forces off WW2 (and potentially off some other pages like Korean War). The question, though, is how. -- Миборовский 01:15, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I doubt we'll have quite that many. ;-)
More generally, reducing the vertical spacing of the task force lines would, in my opinion, be preferable to trimming task forces, at least for the time being. Considering the overall size of the "block of banners" on many talk pages, I don't think that a few extra lines are going to draw heavy criticism; and, at this juncture, advertising the task forces would seem to take priority over shrinking the banner. (Not to mention that we should do everything we can to avoid stepping on national toes, in any case). If or when this starts becoming a serious issue, we can consider trimming task forces; but I think that would be premature at the moment. Kirill Lokshin 01:43, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Oh and revisiting task force icons

Another way to reduce bloat would be to reduce the size of the task force banner icons. I previously suggested using text to represent all of them, but nobody liked the idea... Right now, most of the icons are coats of arms which are taller than they are wide. So they waste quite some space. If we can go back to the old way of using flags, or if we use "landscape" images, we can cut some fat off the project banner and squeeze it in a bit tighter. Most task forces have one-line descriptions, anyway. -- Миборовский 01:22, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Actually, all of the task forces should have a one-line description on any reasonable resolution (this was actually something I spent some time working towards). As far as images: the best-case scenario would be to have images which would be recognizable at a size of 50x18px (which would fit within the vertical spacing of the text), but there aren't many of those except for flags, I think. Kirill Lokshin 01:40, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
Let's see what we've got at that size, actually:
  • Ancient Near East: (current)
  • Australian: (current)
  • Aviation: Image:B52.plan.clear.png (current)
  • British: (current) (flag)
  • Canadian: (current) (flag)
  • Chinese: (current) (original) (alternative)
  • Classical: (current)
  • Dutch: (current)
  • French: (current) (flag)
  • German: (current)
  • Indian: (current)
  • Japanese: (current)
  • Maritime: Image:HMS Dreadnought 1906 H63367.jpg (current)
  • Memorials: (current)
  • Middle Ages: (current)
  • Napoleonic: (current)
  • Polish: (current) (flag)
  • US: (current) (flag)
  • Weaponry: (current)
  • WWI: (current)
  • WWII: (current)
Obviously, some of these come out more recognizable than others. If anyone else has good ideas for the images, please feel free to list them above; then, we can see if we can do a mass shrinking without losing image use. Kirill Lokshin 02:05, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
The icons in the box are larger than shown above (50 pixels wide), but I think the above 36-px size is sufficient. It would be nice if we could standardize on either a shield or a flag for the national task forces. Although the symbols in some of the shields can improve recognition, most flags are wide and not tall, which would help keep the list compact (see #Avoiding task force bloat, above). And although the lighting effect on some of the icons is attractive, for maximum contrast at a tiny size, we should try out plain solid colours to see if it makes them more legible. Some of the more photographic-looking images would definitely be clearer as a simple, high-contrast silhouette (i.e. aviation, Classical, maritime, Middle Ages, weaponry, and the World Wars). —Michael Z. 2006-08-01 02:53 Z
Actually, the limiting dimension for all the icons is the height (which is currently 30px in the box, but which I've set to 18px here in an attempt to get it the same height as the line of text). As far as silhouettes: this is rather beyond my feeble image editing skills. Do we have anyone who would be able to experiment with that? Kirill Lokshin 03:01, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
(Added some other choices for the Chinese task force icon.) I think one of the reasons loads of national task forces became shields/CoAs was become someone wanted a uniform look... Which wasn't that great an idea IMHO. Chinese and Japanese, methinks, would look nicer with the "plain" characters. Ancient Near East is messed up because the pic is gif. Converting to png should do it. Classical, Middle Ages, and WWI are unrecognisable. Classical, Napoleonic, Weaponry and WWII are hard to see, but recognisable. Changing these to simpler versions (a drawn pistol instead of a photo of one, a tank and ship outline, etc) should do the trick for these. -- Миборовский 03:12, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
It might be nice if the icon type indicated the task force type. Some ideas:
  • National task forces: Australian, British, Canadian, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Indian, Japanese, Polish, US
    • Flags of the corresponding modern nations
    • Crests of the corresponding modern nations
    • National symbol: Kangaroo or stars, Union Jack or roundel, maple leaf, Chinese character,?, Fleur-de-lys, Iron Cross?, ?, Rising sun, Polish eagle, white star
    • Aircraft roundel: see Roundel#Examples of roundels, more
  • Themes: elongated icons: Aviation, Maritime, Weaponry, Memorials
    • Elongated icons representing things: plane, battleship, sword or rifle or tank, triumphal arch
  • Historic periods: Ancient Near East, Classical, Middle Ages, Napoleonic, WWI, WWII
    • Stylized or silhouetted soldier's head: Assyrian helmet, crested helmet, jousting helmet, grenadier's hat, British WWI helmet or gas mask, ?
    • A brief wordmark or symbol: Eye of Horus, Roman eagle or "ROMA", Medieval coat-of-arms, French fleur-de-lys or grenadier's grenade symbol, "WWI", "WWII"
    • A contemporary weapon: javelin, pilum, lance, musket, bolt-action rifle or machine gun, submachine gun
Lots of silhouttes are available in a number of free dingbat fonts. —Michael Z. 2006-08-01 03:19 Z
If someone can find some good ones, that might work. The ones I've seen tend to look rather cartoonish, ufortunately, which probably wouldn't be well-received. Kirill Lokshin 03:23, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
As far as types of task forces: one thing we might also play around with would be the background color of the cell containing the icon. Maybe have different colors for national/period/topical ones? Kirill Lokshin 03:24, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
That's a cool idea, but of limited use unless we simplify the task force icons to a few letters... For example: Red - Topical, Green - Period Blue - National. Then red "M" = Maritime, green "M" = Medieval and blue "M" = Mexico. -- Миборовский 03:50, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
There are good icons and silhouttes available in fonts or free clipart for most national symbols and for AFVs.
Perhaps the four themes can be simple black & white silhouettes, but the periods can each have a background colour. Some possible associations:
  • Ancient Near East: desert tan?
  • Classical: Greek blue (& white)
  • Middle Ages: ?
  • Napoleonic: tricolor?
  • WWI: khaki
  • WWII: olive drab or German grey
—Michael Z. 2006-08-01 04:00 Z
How about border colouring? As to the icons they should be something other than Flags since many of them are relatively recent constructs. Silouets shouldn't be all that hard to do if we want them in two colours. I have some software that rapidly turnes all colours to black and to white, from there it can ( like paint) swap whole fields to any colour desired. Theo nly problem will be to work with the backgrounds and shadings on images. --Dryzen 13:40, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
The main concern with silhouettes—particularly complicated ones—would be whether they are still recognizable at a small size. I suppose we won't know until somebody actually creates some to try, though. Kirill Lokshin 14:58, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
I must say, for the majority of these, they look fine at the smaller size, and I'd vote (if we were voting, which we're not) for simply shrinking them, and finding alternative images for those that don't seem to work. LordAmeth 12:46, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
But see the new idea! ;-)
This might become a rather moot point if that goes through. Kirill Lokshin 12:48, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Ah, I see. Very cute. LordAmeth 16:26, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Cruise missiles in the battlebox?

On the talk page of Kosovo War there is a discussion if cruise missiles should be included in the list of Nato losses (and perhaps equipment) during that War. Comments would be appreciated. Mieciu K 14:10, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Err, no? That would be as silly as including artillery shells and bombs: cruise missiles are armaments, not materiel, and are supposed to be destroyed during use. (In any case, there's no need to list every piece of materiel in the box either; indeed, unlike battles, wars generally only list true (human) casualty figures.) Kirill Lokshin 14:47, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
Completely agree with Kirill Lokshin, you can add the information in the acticle but its somewhat silly to inclued it as lost materiel in the battlebox.--Dryzen 19:37, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Kosovo war wasn’t classical war with few distinctive battles so we could list material losses for each battle.

All those cruise missiles were shot down before reaching their targets. That’s why I believe that they should be listed as losses. In the future wars, in which superior forces like US Army, Air force and Navy would use only drone tanks, airplanes, ships and other military vehicles (we are very close to that stage), what will be listed as loss?

And another question. Do the losses usually include number of tanks and airplanes even if they crew survived? Aren’t tanks and airplanes pieces of equipment? What is cruise missile, ammunition, material or equipment? --Marko M 07:29, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

In future conflicts, it might become more necessary to list war expenditures rather than war losses; but missiles—even those shot down before reaching their targets—are not considered casualties (for example, V-1 rockets aren't counted as German casualties for WWII). Tanks and airplanes are sometimes listed as "losses"—as are naval ships—in articles about individual engagements, or in complete materiel tables for a war; but I don't believe I've ever seen them appear in the infobox for an entire war. I think simply listing the actual people killed/wounded/captured for each side would probably be the best approach to take here. Kirill Lokshin 10:53, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
I can see listing vehicles as losses of equipement considering they where meant to survive their engagements. Missiles and shells on the other where design to be a one-use-only device over the course of the conflict. Its more of an expendature really than a loss. Drone on the other hand are not meant to be discarded after an engagement and therefor could be counted, like tanks and the such, as loss of equipement.--Dryzen 13:01, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
Dryzen, even though a half-a-million $ cruise missile isn`t fired to plow fields or be displayed at air-force museums after being shot-down either I still vote no on the subject, but the fact should be given a full credit in the "aftermath" (or so) section of any war article. Just as the US bragged about their cruise missile effectiveness in the Gulf Wars, the Serbs and Montenegrians can also brag about their AA effectiveness against cruise missiles.
Veljko Stevanovich 12. August 2006 19<45 UTC+1

Merge?

The Alpine Front (stub)article seem to handle the same subject as the Italian Campaign (World War I) so they may be in need of merging. By the way shouldn't it be called Italian Front? --81.182.92.192 15:47, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I've always seen it as Italian Front, but maybe someone who knows WWI more can see some subtleties I'm missing. It might be worthwhile asking at the World War I task force. Kirill Lokshin 16:10, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

problem with linking to other languages

In German and Polish a difference is made between the Greek de:Triere/pl:Triera and the Roman de:Trireme/pl:Trirema. According to French wiki fr:Trière and fr:Trirème are interchangeable in French. In Dutch nl:Trireem and English trireme no difference is made and all ships are called the same.

The German and Polish Triere/Triera describes mainly the Greek and Phoenician early light trireme according to the classification system of counting decks with oars.

But it overlaps with the early Roman trireme and the new classification system of men per vertical section. The heavy trireme was also the heavy Greek "triere" (considered less when refering to de:Trireme/pl:Trirema, but still part of the meaning), similar armored like a quinquireme but with less rowers.

Finally the one and only thing all languages agree upon is the light Roman trireme of the Imperial Roman Navy.

The problem is linking this properly. I don´t know how many other languages we will face with this problem. Man pl and I have been discussing the issue so far. Wandalstouring 20:45, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure to what extent this would be a practical problem on our part. We'll never be able to fully control how articles are organized across languages; often, all we can do is link to what appears to be a sensible interwiki and allow the editors working in the other language to figure out their own disambiguation policies. Kirill Lokshin 20:50, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
If this goes on we have a permanent reedit of the links in the English wiki. Wandalstouring 21:13, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Portal:History needs contributors

I don't think Portal:History currently has any active maintainers. (I'm busy with maintaining enough portals, that I can't give this portal the attention it needs.) For this reason, the same article has been featured on the portal since the beginning of June. Ideally, there are enough featured history articles to have articles featured on the portal on a weekly basis, rather than monthly. Anyone interested in helping out with the portal? or have ideas on how to find people? --Aude (talk contribs) 13:44, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, given the number of FAs, I could set up a system like the one on Portal:War there. It's somewhat unusual, though, so I won't bother if people don't want it.
If you think it's a good idea, I can probably do it sometime next week (as I'll be off at Wikimania through the weekend, and likely won't have time for any major portal work). Kirill Lokshin 14:13, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Albert Lebrun

Albert Lebrun is tagged as part of our project, but someone has questioned this on the talk page. I'm inclined personally to untag him, because his only link to military history is accepting German terms of surrender in WWII, which although a very significant event, doesn't make him a military figure as such. Have I missed or ignored something that should bring him under our remit? Cheers, --Loopy e 19:54, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I'd remove him, as he doesn't seem to have actually done anything military-related. I'm guessing that he was tagged because he's under Category:World War II political leaders, but I don't think that political leaders who didn't play a significant military role (as opposed to those that were actively involved in military affairs, like Abraham Lincoln) need to be included, as there's usually no military-related content in their articles. Kirill Lokshin 19:59, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

German task force

We're having a not-very-conclusive discussion at the German military history task force about the exact scope it's going to include (in particular, whether—or how—to include Austria). Given that there are so few people commenting, it's becoming somewhat of a back-and-forth argument; if anybody has any knowledge of the topic and could drop by to comment on the various ideas being put forward, it would be very appreciated. Kirill Lokshin 21:19, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

request for guidelines concerning articles on tactics

As it states above, I work on articles about tactics. Often they are unlinked to from any other articles and there is no proper guideline for them, leading to mixed results. Wandalstouring 22:35, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Help with converting weapon infoboxes

Just in case there's anyone who happens to be extremely bored and would like to rack up their edit count:

There are a bunch of obsolete weaponry infoboxes listed here, along with the corresponding parameter renamings that are needed to turn them into {{Infobox Weapon}}. Any assistance going through the backlog would be very appreciated. Kirill Lokshin 11:27, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I'll do it. -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 09:42, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Finished. :) -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 11:16, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Polish task force

Until recently, when switched on, the Polish task force stub generated the comment that the article was supported by the "Polish military history task force" or similar, which included all the Polish armed forces. At present it generates "This article is supported by the historical task force of the Polish Army." which for an English speaker would be taken as just Army, excluding Navy and Air Force. Is this correct, if so, I'll remove the tag from a number of articles that don't relate to the Polish Army. Folks at 137 18:59, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Actually, that's always been the wording, going back to the separate task force banner. I really don't see the point in it, though, as the task force does include everything, so I'll change it to the standard form momentarily. Kirill Lokshin 20:22, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
Actually, what I read was: This article is supported by an arm of the Polish Army known as the Polish military history task force. -- Миборовский 23:02, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
A bit too much pride in their armed forces. Perhaps they do not know we have standards etc. Wandalstouring 22:59, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
It was a remnant of the independent Polish WikiProject, actually. Before it was turned into a task force of WP:MILHIST, it was, as far as I can tell, a project dealing only with the modern Polish Army; but that was changed when it became a task force, so it now includes everything connected to Polish military history. Kirill Lokshin 23:02, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Cambodia article needs a look

Can I draw your attention to the article Fank that is listed in Pages in Need of Translation. The translation job (from French) is complete now, but there are concerns that the article overlaps with Cambodian Civil War. "Fank" was the acronym for the Cambodian armed forces during the Lon Nol period. I thought it was something that might interest someone from your project. Itsmejudith 21:56, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, there will be a certain amount of overlap, but the topics are different enough in nature that two separate articles should be justifiable. I'm not sure who would be the person to go to for help with this, though; do we have anyone working on that region? Kirill Lokshin 00:14, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Computergame images

Roman military tactics is an article based very much on inaccurate computergame images.

  • delete them all is my opinion. Wandalstouring 15:09, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
Argh, massive copyvio. Kill them all! Kirill Lokshin 15:12, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
  • keep them all. Rex 15:16, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

As the creator of that article, one of my first actually ... I had to to great lenghts to get those images on wikipedia, I actually had to ask permission from the creators so that the images were allowed to be used in that particular article. An article of such size needs (in my opinion) to have pictures, sadly there are no pictures of real Roman soldiers. I also would like to note that the article is not based on the pictures but mostly on other wikipedia articles. Rex 15:16, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

We can't (in legal terms) keep them unless the article specifically discusses the depiction of Roman tactics in the game in question. Otherwise, the images are a violation of our fair use policies, and will need to be removed. Kirill Lokshin 15:20, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
What about reenactment and drawings out of history books? Tends to be more accurate.Wandalstouring 15:18, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia has permission to use them in the article about the game and the roman military tactics article. Note also, that the images depict various combat units, not tactics. Rex 15:22, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

That's not sufficient, unfortunately. Images used by permission are not generally allowed on Wikipedia, because they don't protect anyone who reuses our content (mirrors, forks, other groups). Now, if you could actually get the company to release the images under a free license, that would change things. Kirill Lokshin 15:24, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete - unfortunately the free use rules say they can be used only to illustrate the game in question; use on, say, user pages or in articles not related to the game is not allowed. I think it is a dumb restriction, but that is the way it is.Michael Dorosh 15:39, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

You have got to be kidding me ... I uploaded those images like 2 or 3 times, each time they got removed for some reason then I finally get permission everything is supposable okay then after like 6 months you guys show up, I seriously thought "The Creative Assembly and SEGA do not endorse this page and can not be held responsible for the content held within it." covers it.

Sometimes wikipedia can be a real pain in the ass ;-)

ps, Michael Dorosh, if you'd read the licence you would have seen that use on that article has been allowed by SEGA and creative assembly. Rex 19:11, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

As I said, that doesn't cover anyone else (which is a bad thing). (It also introduces an entirely unencyclopedic disclaimer into the top of the article, but that's another point.) It's regrettable, perhaps, that we can't have these images in the article; but copyright policies generally aren't something we're free to ignore as we please. Kirill Lokshin 20:05, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
Sigh. Yet another case for WPISNOT:Fun. I'm sorry, Rex. You obviously put a lot of time and work into setting up those screenshots. I sincerely wish there was a way we could Ignore all rules and include them anyway. But I'm no copyright lawyer, plus the powers that be here have become very anal and unreasonable on such matters. My guess is even if we did get permission from SEGA and the CA on this (which is not unlikely, hey free advertising!:) Das Kommisars would still not allow it under WP:FU.--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 23:10, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
Delete The point is, Wikipedia is a free encycolpedia. That means the content, including the pictures, must be free to use for _any_ purpose. Everybody who's contributed has done so under these terms, to change the rules now would be to disrespect the wishes of all those who have built Wikipedia. Speaking for myself, I choose to contribute content to projects that, in turn, make their content available to me. I gain more than the ability to use Wikipedia content, I'm ensured that my contribution will last. It may be modifed out of existance but won't disappear in a bankruptcy sale. Those "powers that be" are all of us who have contributed under the existing terms. If you don't like the rules, well, nobody's forcing you to contribute. Didn't understand the rules? Sorry. Really. It's too bad, but now you know. --kop 03:58, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, it wasn't effort to make them. Keeping them on wikipedia proved to be much harder ... Rex 23:24, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

See for me making those shots would be. I tend to get rather OCD when working on such things: The troops must all be in perfect alignment, the camera angles must be just right. This is the legacy of spending too much time playing with minitures and dioramas.:)--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 23:15, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Military people categories

Someone has proposed a fairly massive renaming here; any comments would be extremely welcome! Kirill Lokshin 00:11, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

I was Very Much Surprised when I read your comments there, Kirill.
Many of us here at WP:MILHIST took part in the debate over this issue, reached a consensus (Military people of Foo) and then...nothing happened. Several days ago I tried to reactive this matter, in this same page, to no avail. Besides creating task forces ad infinitum (which I don't really see as urgent matters) I get the impression we're definitely not acting on the most important decisions.
As far as the German debate goes, I don't understand why you say you were not informed. I specifically posted an announcement about the proposed merging of German military personnel into German military people here. Andrés C. 13:59, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
My reading of the discussion in the archives (which I linked to) was in favor of "personnel" rather than "people"; but clearly the form is "Something of X" rather than "Xish something", in any case. (And I'll note that, even on the German task force, the issue was framed as a merger of redundant categories rather than as a naming decision!)
As far as why "the most important decisions" are not being acted on: I cannot do everything myself. I particularly cannot do major category renamings myself. I would, indeed, be extremely surprised if you could find any person who could do everything that needs to be done in this project entirely on his own. This is why we are looking for more coordinators this time around. Kirill Lokshin 00:12, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Huh? Nobody is asking you to do everything for yourself, nor are you being asked to do major category renamings all by yourself. In any case, note that a notice was posted regarding the German merger. Andrés C. 00:30, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Fair enough. I noted at the time that the main project talk page had no notice; I didn't realize one had been placed on a task force page.
And I don't really see many volunteers to actually go through the work of puttig together a full CFD nomination for these categories. Certainly the issue has been brought up multiple times over the past few months. Kirill Lokshin 00:37, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Incidentally, I'm still not sure where the consensus was for "people" over "personnel". For example, the archived discussion ended with comments like

Sounds fine. As an example, John Pershing will appear in all of the following to-be-created categories: (1) Military personnel of the U.S.A. (2) Military personnel of the U.S.A. in the Spanish-American War (3) Military personnel of the U.S.A. in World War One (4) Generals of the U.S. Army. Well, it's not going to be an easy task, with all those current existing and confusing categories :) Andrés C. 02:43, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

so we were obviously at least considering "personnel" very late into the game. Kirill Lokshin 00:40, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Whatever you say. Andrés C. 04:33, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Well, if you think "people" would be better, we can certainly discuss the issue further. I was quite honestly under the impression that people felt "personnel" was a more appropriate term; but I'm willing to go with whatever version people would prefer. Kirill Lokshin 04:39, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
I am suprised to so few people replying on this. I was under the impression that the discusion had taken a recess till Coordinators where elected, wherein work would begin anew. Then again I did leave on an extended trip mid way through the debate. What is the new discusion about, Military Personnel of Foo versus Military People of Foo? I am of the impression that the term Personnel connotes a ranks and/or status whereas People presents a general category open to all characters touching the military (as compared to involved with the military with personnel). --Dryzen 15:55, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
I think personnel makes more sense plange 16:01, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Why the irritated tone, Andres? I don't recall the discussion taking the "People is better" approach at all; on the contrary, I recall the opposite, specifically because we didn't want historians to be confused with actual warfighters--they just aren't the same group of folks. It's like making a category listing the 42 US Presidents, but also throwing in all the people who have ever portrayed presidents in film or on TV, all the commentators who argue about the president, and all the people who have ever tried to be president or wish they could be president, or wish we didn't have presidents and had a monarchy instead. How ludicrous is that? If you're going to make a category for something specific, keep it specific. "Military Personnel" is going to be massive enough without throwing in every Tom, Dick and Harry who talk about the military, too. --ScreaminEagle 16:09, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Well, I may have overreacted a bit over the German debate thing. Still, if I'm not mistaken, consensus was for Personnel as a subcategory of People? BTW, where can I find the Archives for past discussions? Andrés C. 17:53, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
There's an "Archives" box right below the announcement template at the top of this page; click on the "[show]" button to see the annotated list of archives. As far as the "people" versus "personnel" issue, I recall that we were (at least at one point) going to use "personnel" for the top-level categories by country and "people" for the top-level categories by war (since not all the people in there were actually members of the armed forces). In any case, as the current nomination doesn't seem likely to result in a practical change, it would probably be a good idea to rehash whatever our naming convention is going to be and to actually make the corresponding CFD noms at the earliest opportunity. Kirill Lokshin 18:22, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
Ooops...there it was. Thanks. Andrés C. 21:05, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Fog of war

Please have a look at the article on fog of war. I've just tried to improve the introduction, and wrote a couple of paragraphs replacing a huge section of game trivia (which may try to come back, I suspect). Needs more improvement and some references. —Michael Z. 2006-08-07 19:21 Z

Operation Names style question

I have a difference of opinion with User:Yorkshire Phoenix (194.203.110.127) over the style of reporting British operation names. He holds to the position that they should be reproduced as Operation NAME (eg "Operation TELIC") and I that to be wikipedia MoS compliant Operation Name (eg "Operation Granby") is the correct form. The MoS does not cover this point other than to say that use of all caps is deprecated. I do not wish to fly in the face of accepted practices and I would welcome any opinions. GraemeLeggett 10:11, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

According to the Service Writing Handbook (formerly JSP101), which is issued to all students at Staff College, command and leadership courses, Sandhurst, Dartmouth and Cranwell and is available within the Defence Intranet, Operational names are written all Caps, that is the form used on all operational documentation, for example TELIC, CORPORATE, PALLISER. Whilst this is technically correct within a defence environment it does appear to be the kind of thing which will result in endless 'corrections' to fit with the manual of style, being 'corrected' by those of us trained to write in the defence environment.
On a related note I've noticed that ship naming doesn't follow defence standards either, current ships should be capitalised whilst shore establishments aren't. Should we reach a consensus on this issue then that is a related point which should probably be addressed, in the interests of consistency.ALR 11:00, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
If I could make a comment, I would say that while it is defence policy to capitalize the names of operations the average person looking up an operation on this encyclopedia will not know that. I would offer that it might not be a bad idea to compromise on this one and just write them out normally. It doesn't change the name of the op just the spelling so no biggie. Hopefully this will not be as contentious as the argument involving the use of operational names at all. Cheers--Looper5920 11:04, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
The article names are not at issue here (I have created diverts at Operation TELIC, Operation CORPORATE, etc, not moved the articles). I'm sure everyone would recognise the current article naming convention is more useful to the reader than having to type the operation name in capitals. The point of contention is the style of the operation names within the text of their own articles and when referenced in others. I believe a suitable compromise would be that when the operation is named in bold at the beginning of its own article it should be shown correctly (i.e. Operation TELIC is the ...) but from then on in title case. Likewise it should be shown correctly when first referenced in other articles (when this is appropriate, as per the consensus at the top of this page) but then in title case, and redirects should exist to divert capitalised operation names to the appropriate article. Yorkshire Phoenix (talk • contribs) 11:28, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
It's somewhat of a funny issue (many historians use the uncapitalized version, for example); my own opinion is that we should stick to regular sentence case ("Operation Overlord" rather than "Operation OVERLORD") simply because the capitalization will seem utterly bizarre to the average reader. Kirill Lokshin 16:02, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
As a military history project we should consider ourselves part of the defence community (the terminology changed from Military Writing to Defence Writing to allow it to cover civilian 'defence writers', rather than strictly military personnel), as such we should follow the DW conventions wherever appropriate (such as articles on British operations, or on British units or equipment that reference operations by name. Not to do so would over civilianise the British military articles, leading to the appalling misrepresentations we regularly see in the press. What I'm saying is that either we accurately report the likes of Operation TELIC, or we start calling an SPG a "tank", a rifle a "gun", etc. All I'm pleading for is accuracy! Yorkshire Phoenix (talk • contribs) 19:47, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
I don't think anyone is pleading for inaccuracy. Rather, the question is whether we should follow the writing style used by official military sources, or whether we should instead adopt the conventions followed by military historians. Official sources might use the capitalized versions of the names; but many (if not most) historians (Ambrose, Hanson, and Phillips are the ones I just checked) go with regular capitalization. I don't think that this project is really more affiliated with the "defense community" than it is with the "historian community," in other words. Kirill Lokshin 20:21, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
This one is a bit of a tangent, but something I've been considering for a day or two. Where does the 'history' bit of 'Military history' start and how much current operations justify a place in the project. CORPORATE is clearly historical, HERRICK is ongoing but is referred to in a number of articles. Those who are serving, or have served (either uniformed or MOD civil service), will write according to their experience and training, those who haven't served have different training and will write accordingly. Those different stances in training reflect in just this type of debate. YP has a point, how much do we dumb down for a civilianised audience. Whilst capitalised Op names might appear odd, as long as it's consistent then it becomes clear what is going on to a moderatly intelligent reader.ALR 20:55, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Mmm, another interesting issue would be linguistic. Obviously UK and US usage is to capitalize these, but is that true for other nations? Is is meant to be Operation BARBAROSSA and Operation URANUS, for example? Kirill Lokshin 21:01, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
There's a discussion (on Ships project?) about the naming of naval ships, concurring that whilst "USS SHIPNAME" is a standard formal method of giving ship names in actual naval documents, we should go with the convention of "USS Shipname". I'd encourage we should do something similar for operational names - capitalised redirects are fine, but we are a general-purpose encyclopedia with discussion of specialised fields, and should avoid lapsing into uncommon jargon styles when there's a perfectly usable convention in common English writing. (It's very rare you see a history text writing with all-caps names, even in quotes...) Shimgray | talk | 21:55, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Request: categorization of defunct commands

Any thoughts about how best to categorize South Pacific Combat Air Transport Command? It's joint, so it doesn't fit the single service structures; and Category:Commands of the United States armed forces doesn't seem to include any historical articles. Am I missing something? --Mereda 18:25, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Maybe just create a Category:Defunct commands of the United States armed forces? Or are there some subtleties I'm missing here? Kirill Lokshin 18:49, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
My only question would be how far to take it? Should we keep it at the command level or do we take it down to the tactical level and create categories for defunct battalions and squadrons? It basically will split every military service in two (active units and inactive units). Maybe I am taking it a bit far but I thought I would throw it out there.--Looper5920 19:14, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
I know that we have articles for defunct units already; are they just lumped in with active units now? Maybe that would actually be a better approach here? What would be the problems with putting defunct commands into the same category as active ones? (This would be similar to putting dead people in the same category as living ones, which tends to be the rule in those categories.) Kirill Lokshin 19:27, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
For the articles that I have been working on I have just lumped them in with the active ones. I make the distinction known when creating lists but not with categories. Not sure how the other members have been approaching this. --Looper5920 19:40, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. I'm happy to use Category:Commands of the United States armed forces as the best answer.Mereda 06:52, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Changing A class

I've been working on GA noms and passing/failing some of these and I just failed one that had an A-class designation in our banner. Does that mean I should change it to B? plange 20:55, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Probably so, as the article (presumably) has some quality issues that would make it fail a GA nom. Kirill Lokshin 20:58, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

New eyes requested

Hello all,

I just finished writing a wholly new version of Battle of Moscow. If there are some editors that happen to be extremely bored, I could use all corrections and comments available... :) Thanks in advance, Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 09:55, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Last call for coordinator candidates

Just a brief reminder: as we'll be starting the formal voting phase on August 12, anyone that hasn't signed up yet but would like to be a candidate should probably do so over the next day or two. :-) Kirill Lokshin 15:54, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Not gonna run this time; have fun. -- Миборовский 18:56, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Battle of Tel al-Kebir

An anonymous user recently made changes to Battle of Tel al-Kebir that changed numerical information concerning the battle. I bring this up here because the same user (who has a rotating IP) changed sourced information on the Featured Article of the day, clearly inflating the values. In this case, many other changes were made by the same IP range that aren't necessarily vandalism, but may be POV pushing, but as the page is a part of this Wikiproject I decided to come here and see what you guys think should be done with it. The numerical information is also unsourced, so that also leads to trouble. Thanks. Cowman109Talk 19:48, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

The numbers are so precise that it's really hard to see how the changes can be justified without reference to very high-quality sources. Unless these are cited, of course, we can't verify the numbers given; for all we know, they could have been pulled out of thin air. Dropping a bunch of {{fact}} tags on that page is probably appropriate, regardless of which set of uncited numbers we choose to retain for the time being. Kirill Lokshin 01:36, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Number changing and other subtle forms are a new fashion among the vandals. Wandalstouring 10:11, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Project banner size reduction idea

Working off some of the ideas discussed at Wikimania, I've come up with code that will hide the lower portion of the banner inside a show/hide bar here; anyone wanting to test it out can try using {{User:Kirill Lokshin/Sandbox/Template}} instead of {{WPMILHIST}} (the parameters are all the same). This is somewhat rudimentary, obviously; but is the general idea of any interest, or is this something we don't want to pursue? As I see it, the main benefit would be that we no longer need to concern ourselves with the ever-growing number of task forces and other things in the banner; the only real drawback would be the extra click needed to see all the information listed. Any comments would be highly appreciated! Kirill Lokshin 01:11, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, I thought I had suggested this when we first started using the collapsible divs for the announcements list, but then you said some browsers are not compatible with it? It's a good idea, one that preferably all such banners will adopt. -- Миборовский 01:19, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Hmm, you may very well have suggested it originally; there have been so many of these ideas that I'm not quite sure who came up with each one now. I think I was concerned about incompatible browsers when we discussed including the task list because their users would see a much bigger box than normal. In this case, however, the worst-case scenario is no worse than what everyone is seeing now, and for most users, the result is much more compact. Kirill Lokshin 01:26, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Hmm, me like! Great idea! plange 01:36, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Hmm, everyone's saying hmm! -- Миборовский 15:56, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Objection, your Honor! The quality rating should by all means be above the navframe, so one can see how rated (and thus how precise and accurate) the article is. To me, it is absolutely fundamental. PR tag should be too (current one, not archived one of course), maybe. As for the rest, it can be dropped in the navframe, yes. A great start so far though, congrats Kirill! :) -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 09:13, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Would be easy enough to move the quality rating above the frame, if people think that's the better position. Kirill Lokshin 12:03, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
I've moved the assessment rating up above the frame; as a consequence, the show/hide bar will only appear if some other fields are actually enabled (argh, the messy code!). Does that work? Kirill Lokshin 12:41, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes, that works like a charm. Yay for our Lead Coordinator for Life! :) -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 13:29, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
I'd change the template design better; in fact I've modified Image:Nuvola apps kdmconfig.png (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) specifically for this project. --TheM62Manchester 11:31, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
This has been discussed to death, and there was a strong consensus that we're not going to use any cartoonish icons in place of Image:Waricon.svg (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs). Kirill Lokshin 12:03, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
So, any other comments? Do we want to go ahead and implement this? Kirill Lokshin 15:20, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
Shoot :) -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 19:39, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I've gone ahead and added the code. Hopefully, everything still works as expected; please holler if you find anything broken! Kirill Lokshin 21:01, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
W00t! :) -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 21:03, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
Looks awesome! --Laserbeamcrossfire 21:15, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Russian war articles

Does anyone know of any that need improvement?? (Note:I won't be here as much due to Wikipedia:WikiProject Automobiles) --TheM62Manchester 12:19, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

  • 1917 revolution, is it a Russian war article? Listen to the 12.45 minute and later of the interview. Some very serious criticism of Russia-related Wikipedia articles. Mieciu K 19:07, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
    • Just because a single guy criticized them does not mean they're wrong, though. The article is pretty short though, so it could of course use some improvement. -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 19:16, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Intelligence

What's the view on the civilian intelligence agencies which have their origins in the military? In the UK sense all three (SIS, BSS and GCHQ) are derived from military origins although now almost entirely civilian and under a civilian command chain (FCO in the case of SIS and GCHQ, Home Office in the case of BSS)ALR 16:06, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, if there's any military-related content that needs to be in those articles, then they're presumably within our scope. I assume that that was your question? Or did you mean something else? Kirill Lokshin 16:14, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes, that was really the question. Are they in scope. I tagged up the DIS and JARIC articles today and was thinking about the UK agencies.ALR 16:31, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Oversized WW2 stubs

The Cat:World War II stubs are somewhat oversized; I've suggested a possible Cat:German World War II stubs, looking back on which, opinion seems to be somewhat mixed. Further opinions and/or alternative suggestions welcome. Alai 03:27, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

{{WWII-battle-stub}} has recently been created as well. Valentinian (talk) 22:35, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Sources, primary and secondary

Should we set up a task force that can assess reliability of primary sources and secondary sources relating to this etc. or added links in articles and POV-check them?? This would certainly make it easier to find POV in articles etc.

I think we should try and discuss this problem; your response are appreciated. --TheM62Manchester 22:53, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

That seems like it might be a bit outside of our legitimate capabilities; we're not, I think, in a position to undertake proper historiographic analysis here (certainly not authoritative analysis, anyways). I'm also hesitant to suborn the evaluation of sources that has traditionally been done on an article-by-article basis by the editors of said articles
Perhaps something like an annotated bibliography of works—which would allow some indication of how reliable each source is, but would not claim to be a true arbiter in cases of disagreements—might be a more feasible approach. At the same time, constructing something like that would, while extremely useful, be a major task in its own right. Possibly the additional coordinators available after these elections would be enough to keep it more-or-less orderly. Any comments on this idea (even if only to suggest that I've taken leave of my senses) would be very welcome! Kirill Lokshin 23:05, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
I know a lot of books that suck. Anything I would have to say about them would be original research. Wouldn't we have to do what TheM62Manchester suggests solely through the lens of secondary sources? And in so doing, wouldn't it be circular in that we would have to assess secondary sources' reliability on their ability to assess secondary sources...?Michael Dorosh 23:09, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Strictly speaking, WP:NOR only applies to articles; we're permitted to make personal comments about sources in project space. Hence, I make a distinction between general annotation here (which is clearly permitted) and trying to arbitrate sourcing disputes in articles (where we're on somewhat shakier ground). (Which is not to say that my idea is any more feasible, though.) Kirill Lokshin 23:13, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
A list of books/sources that project members testify are credible and accurate might be of value to the project. Also, a list of books by project member that they are willing to mail to other editors to use for their articles? Like a project cooperative library? Cla68 03:35, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
Cla68 has my idea correct, partially.

Also, to quote WP:NOR:

“ However, research that consists of collecting and organizing information from existing primary and/or secondary sources is, of course, strongly encouraged. All articles on Wikipedia should be based on information collected from published primary and secondary sources. This is not "original research"; it is "source-based research", and it is fundamental to writing an encyclopedia. ”

That was basically what I was trying to say, i.e. the collecting information part. --TheM62Manchester 09:25, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Organisational granularity

I'm noticing that there are articles on individual UK units down to Company/ Squadron level. to my mind this will result in a lot of near duplicate articles and I'd question notability at that level of granularity. Has there been any discussion of this, I'd like to see some work on amalgamating them to at least Battalion/ Regiment. It may also raise an issue of privacy, the only distinctive thing about some units is the identity of OC, RSM etc. I'm conscious that at the 2* level upwards individuals are very much public figures and distinctive enough to note, however I'm not convinced that the identity of individuals from 1* down should be noted here, partly for notability and partly for PERSEC reasons. Again, has there been any discussion of this. TIA. ALR 14:32, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Can you cite an example of a company/squadron article, so we can take a look?Michael Dorosh 14:39, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
59 Independent Commando Squadron Royal Engineers, 131 Independent Commando Squadron Royal Engineers (Volunteers), 148 (Meiktila) Commando Forward Observation Battery for example.ALR 14:57, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
I'd support merge tags to merge those squadron articles into their parent regiment(s) articles. As far as PERSEC goes, if official Army websites give the names of OC, RSM, etc., there is no reason they can't be used on Wikipedia - and since all info on WP needs to be referenced anyway....I guess the danger comes from names being put up on "unofficial" sites in violation of PERSEC. I think you were wise to bring this issue up. I know in Canada, we are very loose with our PERSEC, which is odd. If you see any names that are in these articles, I would delete them under WP:VER unless they are footnoted with an official Army website.Michael Dorosh 15:04, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm guessing that there are fairly few units below the regiment level that have enough distinct information to need their own articles. In most cases, merging up, as Michael suggested, would probably be a good way of avoiding permanent stubs. Kirill Lokshin 15:15, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
Actually 148 (Meiktila) Commando Forward Observation Battery has a good case for its own article - though it does need some footnotes quite badly. Seems to be mentioned in at least one book, and there is good info on their role in the Falklands. 59 Independent Commando Squadron Royal Engineers is a good candidate for a merge though. Well spotted, ALR.Michael Dorosh 15:20, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Biography liason group

Just a note for anyone interested: the Biography WikiProject is starting up a Military workgroup that is intended to serve as a liason point with us on issues relating to biographies of military people. I am told it will be strictly non-competitive, and will consult with us before breaking things in any major way ;-) Kirill Lokshin 03:40, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Diplomacy, anyone?

There is apparently a sandbox game of Diplomacy that has been there for quite some while... anyone interested in reviving it? Milhist people seem the most likely players... :D -- Миборовский 05:18, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

BRAC is Back (sort of)

We need articles for the previous BRAC rounds (1989, 1991, 1993, 1995). Those should come under our (by which I mean this projects) juristidiction. Anyone willing to help with the work load? TomStar81 05:58, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Intelligence Services

Will the various intelligence services be considered part of the military, or will this only cover those issues specific to the four major services? Daemon8666 17:41, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Please see the "Intelligence" discussion six sections above this one ;-) Kirill Lokshin 17:44, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
Sorry Guys, didn't find on this page, only the main one - didn't see it was on here ^^;. I asked specifically because the intelligence medals - intelligence star, etc. - really need some additional info - almost all of the military medals for the US services are covered, but the CIA factbook is what was used to create the intelligence award articles, and it's worthless. I'm not sure what other sources one could cite for those. Not even sure if that specifically falls under this heading, but this seemed the closest project in scope. Daemon8666 01:08, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
The discussion above could possbly have been more specific. The UK Int services have a very clear military heritage, that's less clear for the US. Saying that, there are many military personnel in the NSA and NRO (or whatever its called this week) and they could be considered as within scope.ALR 06:59, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
FYI, the NRO has never changed its name since it was established in the 1960s. I believe you're thinking of NGA (National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency), which used to be NIMA (National Imagery and Mapping Agency), which used to be NPIC (National Photo Interpretation Center) + DMA (Defense Mapping Agency), which used to be a different NPIC (Naval Photo Interpretation Center). It's common for people to confuse the NRO with NGA as their missions are closely related, even though they have distinct responsibilites.
Seeing as a majority of the U.S. intelligence agencies are under the DoD and are considered joint commands in many cases--combining both civilian and military personnel--I would think we could probably adopt them, too. --ScreaminEagle 20:46, 17 August 2006 (UTC)