Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Archive 40

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Archive 40


Contents

Proposal IV: Categories for military units

Okay, a (brief) summary of what seems to have been the last idea being worked on in the previous discussion, together with some other points that have been brought up since:

The (extremely) high-level view:

  • Category:Military organization ← the top-level category for this entire tree
    • Category:Military units and formations ← renamed from Category:Individual military units
    • Category:Military ranks
    • Category:Military branches ← the five categories (Army, Navy, Air force, Marines, Coast Guard) for the top-level system that seems to be prevalent in many countries. More could be added here if there are other branches or services used world-wide; I'm not sure what these would be, though.
    • Category:Types of forces ← not the best name, perhaps; intended to collect a few top-level categories (Artillery, Cavalry, Armour, etc.) that represent the various broad types of troops that have existed.
    • A few other miscellaneous categories that will need to be looked at later

Going down a level, military units are split by five different characteristics:

These would follow some naming conventions:

  • "Military units of Foo" for "by country" (e.g. "Military units and formations of France" or "Military units and formations of the United States Army")
  • "Military units of the Foo War" for "by war" (e.g. "Military units and formations of World War II")
  • "Fooish units" for "by era" (e.g. "Ancient units and formations") and "by type" (e.g. "Airborne units and formations")
  • "Foos" for "by size" (e.g. "Regiments")

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

  • Country and war: "Military units and formations of France in World War I" (note that the second "of" changes to "in", to allow a more natural wording; this could alternately be left as "of")
  • Size and type: "Airborne regiments"
  • Size and war: "Regiments of World War II"
  • Type, size, country (with branch), and war: "Airborne regiments of the United States Army in World War II"
  • Era and country: "Medieval units and formations of France"

The approach used for wars and battles could be followed in regard to general articles; for example, Regiment would be placed under Category:Regiments, while specific unit types that don't have their own categories would be directly under Category:Military units and formations by type.

All of this is completely open to further discussion, of course; but I think this could serve as a suitable starting point. Any comments and suggestions would be extremely welcome! Kirill Lokshin 14:26, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

This all looks great to me. I would just like to poke my nose in here... One of my personal pet peeves, as one might have noticed, is the categorization of pre-modern warriors (knights, samurai, Vikings, what-have-you) under the same categories as proper military units and personnel. I'm very happy you've proposed including Era as one of the distinguishing characteristics for categories; I hope that whatever organization and structure we work on enforces these distinctions. LordAmeth 01:30, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm guessing that might be more of an issue when we move over to personnel, actually. In any case, my take on that is that we'll see some intersection in the country categories—groups of samurai and IJN fleets would both be somewhere under Category:Military units and formations of Japan, for example—but the categories will be kept mostly distinct by the other four types. Hence, we could have Category:Medieval units and formations of Japan and Category:Fleets of the Imperial Japanese Navy; aside from both being derived from the same "of Japan" tree, the low-level categories wouldn't really intersect, giving you the distinction you're looking for. Does that work? Kirill Lokshin 01:36, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Absolutely, that works exactly as I'd like. Thanks once again for a quick and thorough response. Craziness. Yeah. I just remember running into the problem of having, say, Minamoto no Yoritomo (12th century), Oda Nobunaga (16th century), and Hideki Tojo or Isoroku Yamamoto all under "Category:Military leaders of Japan". Not cool. But with these nicely separated and delineated categories, I'm quite happy. LordAmeth 02:51, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Although it makes for a expansive arborescence, wich could trouble users, its extensive demeanor does enable use to better catalogue the veriaty of information to be placed herein. Like LordAmeth I find that will be the better methode to follow.--Dryzen 14:56, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Instead of Category:Military units and formations by type, I propose Category:Military units and formations by branch with the sub-categories
  • Category:Army units and formations by type (infantry units, armoured units, airborne units, etc.; will be children of this)
  • Category:Air units and formations by type
  • Category:Navy units and formations by type
  • Category:Special Forces units and formations
I recognize that this may cause some confusion due to modern & historic inconstancies in following traditional branches, but as long as this matches the sub-structure given to Category:Military branches, the confusion will sort itself out.--MCG 29 August 2006
Aside from introducing the sort of anachronistic usage LordAmeth was concerned about, this would also cause issues with cross-branch types. Special Forces, for example, aren't a separate branch in most militaries; you also have air units (often present in all branches), artillery units (present in multiple branches if the marines get their own "branch"; if not, their presence in the navy causes many overlaps as well), engineer units, mercenary units (often not even part of a branch), irregular units (ditto), and so forth. I think the better approach to branches would be something like this:
This keeps the "type" category much more flexible, which is necessary for the vast variety of more unusual historical situations. Kirill Lokshin 02:33, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Then could the cat be expanded to Category:Military units and formations by type and branch? It adds a layer of complexity ("Infantry" can be found in the parent category & the subcategory of "Army") but it makes the logic convenient for both those with a deeper historical perspective & those working off a rudimentary understanding of contemporary force organizations.--MCG 29 August 2006
Well, wouldn't simply creating a separate Category:Military units and formations by branch be the better solution, in that case? Not all infantry units are part of (an/the) army, for example; we need to have a system for categorizing by branch that will allow us to collect the lower-level branch categories, rather than merely trying to clump the "type" categories into what seems to be the closest branch. Kirill Lokshin 09:33, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
I dont quite see the need to indicate branch since it seems to be creating more problems than solving them. Type responds to our needs and acts admirably in the face of ambiguous forces.--Dryzen 13:58, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Well, we're going to split by branches at a low level (inside the country categories; e.g. Category:Regiments of the United States Army versus Category:Regiments of the United States Marine Corps); the question is more one of whether we need to group branches across countries using some auxiliary categories. I don't really think it's a big deal either way; but I'm not really sure what problems we'd have one way or the other. Kirill Lokshin 14:02, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Sorry to disrupt you, but it seems we Germans are still a creative nation in military aspects. Besides the traditional branches Luftwaffe (airforce), Marine (navy), Heer (army) the Sanitätsdienst (ambulance) und the Streitkräftebasis were created as independent branches, but overlapping with the existing traditional division of branches in the German army. Russia could also pose some fun with lots of units in between military and police forces. Wandalstouring 16:01, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
The most practical way around that might be to create some sort of "non-standard branches" (the name being open to ideas) sub-category of Category:Military branches in which all of the more unusual separate branches could be collected. This would allow us to be flexible with regards to more unique national circumstances while at the same time having all the specific national services (e.g. Streitkräftebasis, United States Army, Royal Navy, etc.) at the same level of nesting relative the root category. Kirill Lokshin 16:16, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
That would be desireble, keeping the branches as another delimitator while keeping the type as a main body, considering the broad ranges of troops that have existed.--Dryzen 15:20, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
So then we could add it and have six, rather than five, possible category types:
Does that work? (And is my notation comprehensible?) Kirill Lokshin 15:45, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
  • I like it. .--MCG 30 August 2006
  • Looks good, anyone else?--Dryzen 17:21, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
So, any other thoughts on this? Should we start putting together a list of category deletions and renamings that need to be done? Kirill Lokshin 12:19, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
I guess I'll pipe in as categorization has been a pet peeve of mine since the day I created an account. I'm looking through this thread, and I'm still not quite clear where this is going. Is this to make a more inclusive categorization scheme, and if so, I worry that it might be, in some cases, pounding the square peg in the round whole (i.e. Lord Ameth's concern about ancient warriors), although I think it will definately improve upon what exists presently. My big concern is US military units, as this is what I know best, esp. US Army. Are we abandoning the current scheme (x branch units, with various unit sizes as subcategories), or maybe I should ask how far down the category tree are we going with this. I'm almost content with the US Army unit scheme (not quite yet though), and I don't want to mess with them too much until I'm sure there is a better way to do it. The categorization by war also might be troublesome - units as a whole don't always participate in a war - my battalion (2/22nd Infantry) didn't deploy to Desert Storm, but one company did as rear area defense. In a case like that, would it be listed as a unit in War X? Units can also stretch across eras, or even several eras. Do we put it in multiple categories?--Nobunaga24 12:41, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Broadly speaking:
  • The current scheme is not being abandoned, but some changes in naming may occur. (I'm not sure what the current naming of US Army categories is, but there will be a lot of renaming of things like Category:Soviet divisions → Category:Divisions of the Soviet Union, and so forth.) The scheme is more intended as a way to standardize the naming of potential sub-categories than to massively change the entire structure, and such structural changes as do occur will be mostly at a very high level (the immediate sub-categories of Category:Military units and formations).
  • Almost all the possible categorizations via this scheme are optional. We wouldn't require, for example, that you categorize every US Army unit by war, type, era, etc.; all we'll be doing is providing a guideline about how such categories should be named & nested if they are used. Which parts of the category tree are appropriate for particular countries, services, periods, and so forth would still be up to the editors working in that particular area.
  • There would be a lot of "filler" categories that will be possible under the scheme (e.g. Category:Regiments in World War II by country) which would be intended only to group related article-containing categories (e.g. Category:Regiments of the United Kingdom in World War II). I'm assuming that the potential for some of these to actually be created wouldn't be a major problem?
Kirill Lokshin 12:53, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
If it's more a naming convention thing, then I'm all for it - loooong overdue. I have successfully changed most of the army unit names, and an expanded tree can be found in my sandbox User:Nobunaga24/Sandbox (although due for an update). Is this fairly in line with what we are aiming at?--Nobunaga24 13:02, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Looks fine, assuming a bunch of name order flips (e.g. Category:United States Army units → Category:Units of the United States Army); we may want to create a few intermediate categories (e.g. Category:Units of the United States Army by size and Category:Units of the United States Army by type), but that'll probably be a gradual process that takes place after we get some standard naming conventions in place. The full scheme will allow for many more categories, obviously, but there's no requirement to create any of them unless they're actually useful for the units in question.
(On a side note: would we want to rename it to Category:Units and formations of the United States Army, or is everything considered a "unit"?) Kirill Lokshin 13:09, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
The proposed way seems fine to me. Units and formations would be fine as far as I can tell. My concern, to be honest, was more with the structure than anything else. As it stands for the US military categories, I think equipment/weapon categories should be the next major hurdle to jump.--Nobunaga24 13:18, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
That's a possibility. There's also the long-standing personnel category conventions to sort out; but the US ones are probably a bit cleaner in this regard than some of the European trees. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 13:22, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Moving forward with the new structure

Okay, I've written up a draft guideline that basically follows along with the last version above; comments would be very appreciated. If this structure is satisfactory, we can start putting together a list of categories that will need to be renamed. Kirill Lokshin 04:51, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

"By type: units with special roles (such as airborne, artillery, or armored units) can be placed under the appropriate sub-category of Category:Military units and formations by type;"
How many layers down do you see this going, or will it be controlled to a top level? For example, an infantry unit could be placed under Category:Infantry units and formations, but maybe it would fit into Category:Parachute infantry units and formations, Category:Mechanized infantry units and formations, Category:Naval infantry units and formations, or Category:Light infantry units and formations.
Multiple levels of functions add to possibilities. Does parachute artillery go into Category:Artillery units and formations, Category:Airborne units and formations, or Category:Airborne artillery units and formations?
MCG 15:42, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Well, we'd still follow the general principle of using only the most specific categories (e.g. a unit in Category:Mechanized infantry units and formations need not be added to Category:Infantry units and formations, as that would already be a parent of the first category). Other than that, though, I see no issue with having multiple "by type" labels on a unit, or with creating intersection categories within the "by type" tree (e.g. Category:Horse artillery units and formations would be the intersection of Category:Cavalry units and formations and Category:Artillery units and formations). Kirill Lokshin 16:19, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Then Category:Mechanized units and formations would not be outside the scope of top level categories? I wonder if this is not grouping units & formations more by mobility than by type. Same thoughts for Category:Airborne units and formations or Category:Foot units and formations. -- MCG 17:32, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
I think we should interpret "type" quite broadly to avoid having dozens of very specialized top-level categories. I see no problems with having the "by type" tree combine types based on equipment ("Artillery units and formations"), mobility ("Airborne units and formations"), finances ("Mercenary units and formations"), or tasks ("Medical units and formations"). Kirill Lokshin 17:35, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Sounds good. I just wanted to confirm a common understanding of intent. -- MCG 17:40, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Looks very good, the exemples helped work over all the questions I had wen reading the first section. Normalisation of categorisation will greatly aid in cleaning up the myriade of categories out there will keping things simple, just what we want. As usual a great job Kirill Lokshin.--Dryzen 17:39, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
I've rearranged the proposed category guidelines a bit, since I think the description of how intersection categories work will apply to more than just military units; I'd appreciate if someone could look it over and tell me if the result is too confusing. Kirill Lokshin 22:27, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
Good idea, as with the other sections' growth intersections will and do occure. The only improvement I can see for the moment would be some exemples for the other large categories:Personnel, Operations, etc. --Dryzen 14:19, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Draft renaming list

Since people seem content with the proposed guidelines (or at least aren't actively complaining!), we may be ready to actually get to the practical part of this: renaming categories. The following is a (tentative and extremely incomplete) list of changes that would need to be made to conform with the new naming guidelines; additions would be extremely welcome, as would any other comments or suggestions! Kirill Lokshin 22:11, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Top-level
Subsidiary
Complicated sorting

So, does this seem suitable for starting off on CFD? (And, if so, would anybody be available to add the necessary tags to the categories in question?) Kirill Lokshin 19:46, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Anyone wishing to comment? ;-) Kirill Lokshin 19:34, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
I think we could probably move forward with this - I'll start adding tags tomorrow, provided no-one has any objections. Carom 20:19, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
Sounds good. Presumably we'll want to do an umbrella nomination on CFD, to avoid having a few dozen separate discussions? Kirill Lokshin 20:47, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, that's probably the best idea. Carom 21:27, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Nomination made

The above renaming has been formally listed on CFD here (although much of the tagging still needs to be done); comments from all project members would be appreciated! Kirill Lokshin 19:07, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, the stub category should be tagged and listed at WP:SFD, the process page, rather than WP:WSS/P, which is (just) a wikiproject subpage. But any any rate you should should certainly tag it with something, whether with {{cfru}} as part of the mass-nom, or with {{sfr-c}}, to list at SFD. (Given the theoretical possibility of someone noticing it there, but not being aware of the discussion either here or at WSS. But at any rate, this makes sense to me: when I was shoving some members from the permcats into the stub category, it did strike me some of the candidates were a little hefty to be described as "units". It might be worthwhile creating an additional {{formation-stub}} template feeding into the same category, for the sake of clarity in such cases. In theory we might even consider splitting the 'units' and the 'formations' up, though I'd imagine that by country or by era would be more useful, or even by more specific levels of hierarchy. Alai 20:20, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Wrapping up

Update: the nomination was successful, so the categories are being renamed now. There's still a great deal of work remaining both in terms of renaming categories (both the ones that were listed, as well as any we missed, which can now use {{cfr-speedy}}) and in arranging the proper nesting and creating the various intermediate categories that are needed to flesh out the tree in some places. There are also a few manual sorting jobs remaining; Category:Military units by type and Category:Military unit types need to be split among Category:Military units and formations by type and Category:Military units and formations by size, as appropriate. Assistance with any of these things would be very appreciated! Kirill Lokshin 03:05, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

  • Category:Military units by type is sorted & empty (except for one empty sub-category) -- MCG 20:30, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Popular Culture

I have recently AfD'd many "Military hardware in Popular Culture" lists as crufty, unmaintainable lists of prop appearances in movies and games:

Riddley brings up a good point that these articles were often created as an escape valve for often-inserted pop-culture references that get inserted. Not a perfect solution, but one that keeps the main article clean.

We had a similar problem on aircraft articles where video game fans were prone to insertion of their favorite game (Ace Combat was an especially popular one). In response, the Wikiproject Aircraft discussed an inclusion guideline [1], and settled on a consensus that is now part of the Project guide to content: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Aircraft/page_content. It has been fairly effective at staving off the more persistent editors.

I'd like to tackle this issue head-on and establish a similar policy for Pop culture references for all military hardware. I am leaving aside institutions, units, and events for the moment (e.g. US Coast Guard in popular culture. It is impossible to leave out such a section globally, Top Gun and F-14 is a canonical counterexample where its pop culture appearance is notable to the aircraft. Moreover, if there are reliable secondary sources that discuss the impact of a piece of hardware in popular culture, that would be an ideal prose addition. My intent is to exclude "The M16 was featured in the movie Bad Boys, where in the third act, Martin Lawrence picks it up off the floor to shoot the villian" entries. The current aircraft guide reads:

A "Popular Culture" section should be avoided per Wikipedia:Avoid trivia sections in articles unless the appearances are especially notable. This section should not be a compendium of every trivial appearance, but significant ones of relevance to the airframe. The canonical example would be Top Gun for the F-14 Tomcat. Due to the large number of survey and arcade simulations, an effort should be made to avoid tallying every sim appearance unless there are very few of them. Fictional versions and speculation about fictional likenesses should not be included, as they constitute original research.

I propose for Wikiproject Military History:

Military Hardware A "Popular Culture" section should be avoided per Wikipedia:Avoid trivia sections in articles unless subject has a well-cited impact on popular culture, not simply a lengthy list of appearances. Any WWII film, for example, will use Mauser K98's and M1 Garand's as props; that is not especially noteworthy. The canonical example of a significant appearance would be Top Gun for the F-14 Tomcat. This section should be a prose discussion of the cultural significance of the subject, not a compendium of every trivial appearance. Claims of cultural relevance should be verifiable and cited from reliable sources. Fictional versions and speculation about fictional likenesses should not be included, as they constitute original research.

Discuss and edit as necessary --Mmx1 03:56, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

If we're going to put something like this in place, we should probably point out the need to have any popular culture sections take the form of actual prose (e.g. Webley Revolver or T-34), rather than bulleted lists of trivia. Having said that, I think the general idea is probably a good one. Kirill Lokshin 04:35, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
I would also support such a guideline, provided Kirill's comments are incorporated. I think we might consider extending this idea to all articles that fall under this project, but one step at a time, perhaps? Carom 04:47, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm inclined to agree- there's a tendency to list every single trivial appearance of a piece of military hardware in popular culture, and it borders on irrelevancy at times- for example, if a movie is set during WWII, it's a given that the soldiers will be carrying Mauser K98s, Lee-Enfields, M1 Garands, etc, and so it's not really necessary to document every single appearance of a Mauser K98 in film, unless it's particularly notable. Where a piece of equipment's popular culture usage is noteworthy (such as the F-14s in Top Gun or the Martini-Henry rifles and Webley Revolvers in Zulu, then my vote is for prose rather than bullet-point or list format. --Commander Zulu 05:18, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
After reading the prose from the webley revolver, I've grown to enjoy its simplicity and effectiveness at decribing the portrayal of the weapon in popular culture. Like Carom, I'm incluned to support this as pan project in reponce to cases of numerous and overlapping trivia.--Dryzen 17:48, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
I like the webley prose, but even that is given to sweeping generalizations which need to be sourced. Since the webley is a historical piece, I have no doubt it can be and I have seen these claims made in print. However, similar claims are made about many contemporary firearms "X is iconoic" in gross violation of WP:OR:
  • "The M1911 Pistol has been featured in films, television shows, and popular culture so many times, that it has become a ubiquitous icon and the quintessential representation of a semiautomatic pistol."
  • "The M203 is known to the common man as "the shorter, larger gun under the M16 and M4" and has been used to defeat "bigger or tougher foes" in most films, TV series and video games."
  • "(The FAMAS is) appreciated for their short length, sturdy construction and very high rate of fire, as well as futuristic design."
  • "As the M82 is considered one of the heaviest sniper rifles, it has become an iconic sniper weapon." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mmx1 (talk • contribs)
Hmm, how about this wording:

"In popular culture" In articles on military hardware (i.e. weapons, vehicles, etc.), "In popular culture" sections should be avoided unless the subject has a well-cited and notable impact on popular culture. Any World War II film, for example, will use the Mauser K98 and the M1 Garand as props, but their appearance there is not especially noteworthy; a good example of a significant appearance would be the F-14 Tomcat in Top Gun. If present, the section should be a prose discussion of the cultural significance of the subject, which should be cited from reliable sources, rather than a mere compendium of every trivial appearance. Speculation about fictional likenesses should not be included, as it constitutes original research.

Kirill Lokshin 18:26, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
This wording is a little better, methinks, although it might be possible to address Mmx1's concern (which I think is important) a little more explicitly. Something like "Unsupported speculation about cultural significance alse constitutes original research and is discouraged." Carom 19:44, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
Change the last sentence to "Unsupported speculation about cultural significance or fictional likenesses should not be included, as it constitutes original research," maybe? Kirill Lokshin 19:53, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
That works.Carom 20:34, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
Agreed on Kirill's version with Carom's modification.--Mmx1 01:25, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
Oncwe again we acheive concesus! I concure, excellent production Kirill Lokshin.--Dryzen 13:24, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

So what's the proper procedure to seek Project approval? A straw poll? I see this has been added to the Announcements; I am curious to hear other opinions. The wording as it stands now:

“ "In popular culture" In articles on military hardware (i.e. weapons, vehicles, etc.), "In popular culture" sections should be avoided unless the subject has a well-cited and notable impact on popular culture. Any World War II film, for example, will use the Mauser K98 and the M1 Garand as props, but their appearance there is not especially noteworthy; a good example of a significant appearance would be the F-14 Tomcat in Top Gun. If present, the section should be a prose discussion of the cultural significance of the subject, which should be cited from reliable sources, rather than a mere compendium of every trivial appearance. Unsupported speculation about cultural significance or fictional likenesses should not be included, as it constitutes original research. ”

--Mmx1 16:16, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

We seem to have a rough consensus for that version, but it may be worthwhile to leave the issue open for another day or to so that anyone else who wishes to comment can do so. If nobody has any objections, we'll simply stick the thing on the project page and proceed from there. :-) Kirill Lokshin 16:37, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

This version has the same content, but a bit more concisely and highlights the salient points. Can we think of a better example than Top Gun? There must a more iconic association, along the lines of 007's PPK.

I removed the restriction to hardware articles: there are other examples, like the Colonel Bogey March in Bridge on the River Kwai, perhaps the Iron Cross, the German officer's monocle and duelling scar, etc. —Michael Z. 2006-09-29 17:21 Z

"In popular culture" sections should be avoided, unless the subject has a well-cited and notable impact on popular culture. If present, the section should be a prose discussion of the subject's cultural significance, cited from reliable sources. In particular, avoid:

  • Compendiums of every trivial appearance of the subject in pop culture (trivia).
  • Unsupported speculation about cultural significance or fictional likenesses (original research).
This tends to be a problem in articles on military hardware (i.e. weapons, vehicles, etc.), for example: the Mauser K98 and the M1 Garand may appear in any World War II film, and their many appearances don't warrant an exhaustive list. On the other hand, the F-14 Tomcat's prominent appearance in Top Gun may be considered significant.
Nice! I think removing the restriction to hardware is fine, given that this isn't something that should be blindly applied anyways; obviously, some topics will have a greater tendency towards trivia lists than others, but there's no need to try and enumerate all the possibilities here.
As far as better examples, I'm not entirely sure of what good ones might be. Obviously very iconic topics (e.g. Battle of Normandy) can have highly developed treatments of popular culture, but those might not be the best examples for the average article to compare to. One example that I'd like to give is the potential "In popular culture" section of MP-40, which would wind up being a discussion of how the gun is misconstrued in popular culture; but what's currently in the article is in a pretty sad state. Kirill Lokshin 17:30, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
Maybe it would be good to link to one or more non-weapon examples. These are good models to follow, and aren't prone to trivia-itis. Some possibilities below (please add more). —Michael Z. 2006-09-29 18:22 Z
I don't think we should go overboard with the examples - one or two should suffice.Carom 18:33, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
I would link to a specific version of the page, e.g. like this(click on the history); so the links remain relevant. --Mmx1 18:44, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
I agree: just trying to find one or two of the best. But maybe we should have a concerted Pop-Culture Work Bee, and clean them all out. —Michael Z. 2006-09-29 18:47 Z

Updated the examples: —Michael Z. 2006-09-29 21:23 Z

"In popular culture" sections should be avoided, unless the subject has a well-cited and notable impact on popular culture. If present, the section should be a prose discussion of the subject's cultural significance, cited from reliable sources. In particular, avoid:

  • Compendiums of every trivial appearance of the subject in pop culture (trivia).
  • Unsupported speculation about cultural significance or fictional likenesses (original research).
This tends to be a problem in articles on military hardware (i.e. weapons, vehicles, etc.), for example: the Mauser K98 and the M1 Garand may appear in any World War II film, and their many appearances don't warrant an exhaustive list. On the other hand, a discussion of the Webley representing a stereotypical British revolver, or a conceptual artist's public response to the symbolism of the East European tank monument certainly are notable.
This looks fine, and can probably be put up as a guideline in the near future. Are there any objections to this version? Kirill Lokshin 08:06, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
No objections here . . . UnDeadGoat 01:19, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
Looks good to me. Carom 23:12, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I've added it to the project page. Hopefully this won't be contentious, at least among more experienced editors. :-) Kirill Lokshin 02:34, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Bzzt. I should have been paying more attention here, but this is a disaster. This has been the subject of numerous wider arguments within Wikipedia. There is a general consensus that such sections are a net positive to the project. Every time they are deleted, we end up with random sprinklings of popular culture references elsewhere, which are far much more of a mess. Deleting the sections and deleting the articles are an issue with impact far beyond this project, and should not have been proposed just here by this group. I have tagged the policy on the project page as disputed and am posting this here. If you all feel that you want to move forwards with this, it has to go out for much wider discussion than on the project alone. Georgewilliamherbert 18:10, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Err, what exactly does it conflict with? Is there actually anything that says such trivia lists are good? As far as I know, the consensus is actually that, while the trivia is bad, getting rid of it would be too difficult; here, within the limited scope of military hardware, we actually have the capability to dispose of these triva lists in a systematic fashion. What's the problem with doing that?
(This quite aside from the point that a WikiProject can come up with whatever guidelines it wants. Whether they'll be followed by anyone outside the project is another issue; but, if that is a concern, normal consensus processes take over. We're certainly not prevented from coming to a local consensus on issues, as we're only talking about articles in a specific subject area anyways. This is no different, for example, from a WikiProject specifying appropriate structure, infoboxes, or other style guidelines for the articles it works with.) Kirill Lokshin 18:23, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
The firearms page popular culture sections have gone through several widely discussed gyrations of "take them out" "put them back in again", with it having settled six months ago on "leave them in to minimize collateral damage". I was all for deleting all but the most notable a while ago, but all the articles suffered popular culture creep and I now agree with the external consensus to keep 'em walled off in a designated section. The "limited scope of militay hardware" is specifically the problem area. Guns are often extremely well known in popular culture, and this results in more of a problem with PC reference additions in a random manor (a la WP:TRIVIA) than in other areas. Georgewilliamherbert 18:46, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
So what exactly is the objection here? I don't really see where the collateral damage could occur now; the new guideline allows us to remove any trivia creep at will, particularly if it isn't properly cited. Are you arguing that having a trivia-list "In popular culture" section is better than having no "In popular culture" secion at all, or just concerned about our ability to actually impose this across the board? ;-) Kirill Lokshin 19:23, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, what's the problem? The guideline suggests including well-written, encyclopedic popular culture sections in articles, and discourages crappy lists of occurrences in non-notable video games. It's not at all clear what is meant by "random sprinklings of popular culture references elsewhere". Please explain the objection clearly, or lets remove the "disputed" tag. —Michael Z. 2006-10-08 06:37 Z
FWIW, I support the idea of firearm-related trivia sections, provided it's not just a list of every time the gun has appeared in a Straight-To-Video/Made-For-TV Action Movie or obscure Anime-based computer game. I think we can take it as read that pretty much any '80s Action Movie will feature at least one guy with an Uzi, for example, and any movie about WWII will invariably feature an M1 Garand or a Mauser K98 somewhere, and a movie about Vietnam will feature M16 rifles and Ak-47s. The hard part is working out what constitutes a "notable" appearance- Peter O'Toole and Michael Caine brandishing Webley revolvers in Lawrence of Arabia and Zulu, respectively, are notable. Jude Law using an M91/30 in Enemy at the Gates is similarly notable, and the StG-44's appearance in Downfall is sufficiently unusual to be worth mentioning. As fond as I am of trivia, I think it's important to try and avoid "Trivia Creep" in weapons articles wherever we can, but not at the expense of completely eliminating all references to particular weapons in popular culture. --Commander Zulu 07:08, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
As a young user, I don't have any solutions to offer to this problem. I do definitely think that steps need to be taken to curb the introduction of so many rather unpopular or relatively unknown "popular culture" references and to coordinate and organize the references that really do belong. I would also like to point out that this problem does not limit itself at all to the WWI/II and later era - many weaponry articles pre-1900's had or do have rather extensive lists of popular culture (some actually use popular culture as examples of the period weapons in pictures [see Claymore]!). I am in full support of this motion. -- Xiliquiern 19:17, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
I suggest to use these rules on persons, organizations, etc. (Hannibal Barca, the Teutonic Order, the Templars, Napoleon Bonaparte, etc.) would profit from such restrictions on trivia. Wandalstouring 14:53, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
So, is there actually a dispute here, and, if so, what precisely do people object to? It seems to me that everyone pretty much agrees that getting away from trivia-list popular culture sections is a good thing in principle, and the only question is whether we'll be able to do it in practice. Kirill Lokshin 11:29, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
I don't see what the problem is either. The guideline as written above doesn't ban pop culture sections, it just asks them to be comprised of written prose which says something about the subject in popular culture, rather than just empty lists of mentions. "Every time they are deleted, we end up with random sprinklings of popular culture references elsewhere": what does that mean? Georgewilliamherbert, can you describe an actual example?
Perhaps it can be improved, but I don't understand what harm it is causing. I say, let it stand and see what happens—if it is challenged based on actual article disputes, then let's review it immediately. —Michael Z. 2006-10-13 04:04 Z
So, does anyone still have a problem with this, or are people willing to go along with the new guideline (at least for the time being)? Kirill Lokshin 20:24, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
May I suggest adding something to the effect of "inclusion of a pop culture section or items in such a section may be taken on a case by case basis"? This would allow a small amount of wiggle room for people to justify adding to or subtracting from pop culture sections. 129.108.96.219 21:09, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
Hmm, I would have thought that it was already implicit in the general comments for the entire guideline section ("The guidelines presented in this section are intended to be guidelines only..."); do we need a separate statement to that effect here? Kirill Lokshin 21:22, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
There are a few pages I frequent (Valkyrie, for one) that has an editor's note requiring any additions to be discussed on the talk page first. Seems like a good idea, and provides a reason to remove crufty/creepy material. I kind of felt that something like this would be built in: "This section on popular culture is governed by the WPMH Guidlines. Please review these or post on the talk page before adding or removing a reference here." --Xiliquiern 21:28, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
  1. The average anon user fanboy is gifted with the skill of typing but not reading. Editor comments are usually ignored, and items explicitly named in the comments are inserted anyway.
  2. A lithmus test I found useful for sorting out cruft is the question of substitution, e.g. would the scene/book/movie be different if another equipotent item was used. For example, in most action movies it doesn't matter if the character is using a 1911, an HK USP, or a Glock, an M16 or an M4 or FAMAS, etc. Notable exceptions are something like the .44 Magnum in Dirty Harry and the minigun in Terminator 2 (items central to forming an image of the character). If people really care to say what gun a character was using, the more appropriate place would be the page about that character. - Emt147 Burninate! 23:19, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

So, do things seem to have settled? Are there any changes to the text of the guideline that people are looking for, or should we just stick with the current version for the time being? Kirill Lokshin 19:13, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that we need to make any changes - if problems actually arise, we can look at this again. Carom 19:18, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
Ok, I've removed the dispute tag, as it doesn't seem that the guideline is actually disputed. Kirill Lokshin 17:23, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

I just noticed this section, & although I'm coming to this conversation late, I want to add my support to this guideline & hope that it is adopted scross Wikipedia in general. A lot of "X in popular culture" sections are little more than an inventory of what appeared in a recent Simpson's episode or yet another video game (e.g., "In episode 6 of season 9, Bart shown shown firing a Kalishnikov assault rifle in school"). The more of this cruft (to use a non-PC word) we can prune, the better Wikipedia will become. -- llywrch 22:25, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Renaming survey

Please come participate on Hideyoshi's invasions of Korea, where a survey is being conducted on moving the article to Japanese invasions of Korea (1592-1598). It would be very good to get some opinions from people not normally involved in the article, but with some military history background. Thanks! ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:21, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

The Imjin War? Why is it so important to have exactly one of the many names used for this war? If you really can't agree, simply write identical articles for each of the possible names. Afterwards search a solution to save wikipedia some memory. Wandalstouring 21:09, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
Hehe! ;-) Kirill Lokshin 21:21, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
I should note that I don't really care where it's at as long as all the proper redirects are in place for any other common names. There are, however, several editors there who want it one way or another, and are very adamant about it. That's why I requested more people to come give an opinion either way. (^_^) ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 21:24, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
I gave my opinion on the discussion page, but isn't this issue reappearing more frequent than Nessie? Wandalstouring 22:07, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
Yes, much to the annoyance of many. I think this particular article has changed names 3-4 times this year alone. ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 23:33, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
The Hideyoshi invasion article appears to me to be under heavy watch by a group of POV-pushers that I've encountered in other articles on Wikipedia. In my experience, that particular group can be very intransigent, stubborn, and difficult to deal with. How about "Hideyoshi's Imjin invasion war?" But, of course, then that group would probably argue that word Imjin should come before Hideyoshi in the title. Cla68 07:24, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
There's a small group each on both the Japanese and Korean side that refuse to compromise (or at least take a whole lot of wheedling and cajoling to admit that they might not always be correct). This is the first place I've been accused of being Korean and Japanese by the opposite side. It's really bizarre how some of them can not seem to figure out how to play nicely together and learn how to come to a compromise that's acceptable and fair (or at least balanced). ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 08:42, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
I am German and have no Japanese or Korean ancestry I know of. I have a Sony and a Samsung monitor of the same size. Maybe I'm neutral. Just keep it at Hideyoshi and link to it from the other names. Wandalstouring 16:25, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

PC event titles - "conflict" instead of "War"

In assessing articles, I have come across a number which refer to the "Vietnam conflict" and the "Korean conflict". Is this an attempt to be more PC? If so, how is "conflict" more PC than "War", the far more common, well-known, and practically official (if not actually official) term for these events? Is there currently a movement, discussion, or policy somewhere that I missed?

Just curious - not looking to start anything. Thanks. LordAmeth 09:27, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Mmm, not sure. I've seen "conflict" used a lot for more recent events, but I didn't realize it was being applied to things like the Korean War as well. It may just be people trying to introduce some more variety into the wording, though. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 11:34, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
As a synonym it works, but as the official term, War give the impression of a Faction versus Faction (or states if you will) spending ressources to reduce one another. While conflict is, in my view, descriptive of a not so clearly defined hostility. --Dryzen 18:32, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
I think there is a legal distinction, inasmuch as war is between two state actors whereas a conflict does not require both the actors to be states. that carries the implication that there is also a declared state of war. Of course one would consider the ongoing and perpetual The War Against Terror to be an exception to that, but shrubs grasp of international law does seem a bit shaky at the best of times. Bear in ind that it's a long time since I did Military Law at Staff College, but I think civil wars get round this technicality by being intra-state actors. In that sense Vietnam constituted a civil war in which other states intervened, complicated by the consensus that it was more of a proxy war in any case. Iraq is an interesting one, Tony and Georges big adventure in the sandpit was a war, because that was declared, now it's not really a war as such because the hostiles are non-state actors, however neither great leader actually declared war over after the incumbent government had been removed from power. Technically we're still at war although there is no state actor to be at war with. OK, my head hurts after that.
Essentially, and for practical purposes, I'd go for war where actors are straightforward to identify, conflict where it's less clear, down to well nigh impossible.ALR 19:23, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
A more presise set of definitions, than my own, there, ALR. We seem to agree on the direction of the term.--Dryzen 17:13, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

In the good old days, before the Kellogg-Briand Pact a war was a declared war with a start middle and end. Then States could no longer lawfully have a war, so while the Falklands War was being fought it was never described as a war. That only happend after the Brits had won it. The Brits like different names for conflicts/wars eg Indian Mutiny, The Troubles, the Suez Crisis, Malayan Emergency and Mau Mau Uprising to name but six (sic) and of course in the days of Empire rebellion was a popular adjective to use instead of war.

There is also another difference, <1000 dead is often an arbitary number used by political scientists to define conflicts and 1000> wars [2] [3] (don't ask about exactly 1000!). --Philip Baird Shearer 21:22, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Wow! When is a war a war? As far as the United States is concerned, it is a war only when Congress declares it to be so. Therefore, the US has not been at war since 1945. Korea was a police action (or conflict) carried out under the aegis of the United Nations (how it feels about its title I have not a clue). Vietnam was fought under the sanction granted to Lyndon Johnson by the Southeast Asia Resolution of 1964, and therefore, was not a war either. US military operations carried out without the benefit of a declaration are best refferred to by their operational titles (Operation Desert Storm, Operation Cobra, etc.) RM Gillespie 23:10, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

And operational titles are generally avoided, where possible, because of the potential neutrality concerns; so that's not necessarily a clean solution either. ;-)
(The general convention calls for the "most common" name to be used, even if it's not correct from a technical standpoint; or, if one doesn't exist, to use some geographically-based name. In either case, though, determining what that name is can be messy.) Kirill Lokshin 23:14, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

A Cunning Plan

I've been kicking around a few ideas of late, and one of them that I think has some potential involves setting up a medium-term goal of getting the articles on the major service rifles and pistols of each nation involved in WWII up to FA level. I'm going to try and start adding cites to the Lee-Enfield article, but it's going to be a long process... Anyway, I was thinking a concerted effort to try and lift the level of the major WWII firearm articles might be an interesting project, if anyone's interested. --Commander Zulu 13:51, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Category:Military defeats

A spurious exercise, to say the least. Delete? Albrecht 19:47, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Delete - a military defeat is by default also a military victory; this category inately defies the NPOV policy. Grimhelm 20:49, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
I don't think it's necessary. Nominate it at CfD. Carom 20:57, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
Seconded, get rid of it; if it's allowed to stay, it'll soon have a few thousand battles lumped into it, making it useless in any case. Kirill Lokshin 23:43, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
I nominated it over at CfD - feel free to make comments over there. Carom 16:25, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

I think we'll be able to put this category in itself as a notable defeat, 1 out of 10 support. Delete--Dryzen 18:20, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

It still exists. Ðiện Biên Phủ for example was an outstanding victory of the Việt Minh under the command of general Giap (and with the friendly support of military advisors from China, showing them how to operate modern weapons with low tech communication methods, etc.). Delete this, it is very centered on the western nations perspective. We could make a list of significant battles or outstanding battles etc. Wandalstouring 20:55, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Comme and give your thoughts on the subject.--Dryzen 19:35, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Byzantine-Arab Wars & First Arab Siege of Constantinople

Hello, I'm new to the project (since 9 October 2006). I saw the Byzantine-Arab Wars article under "Expansion Needed" in the Project Page, so I recently expanded it so that its no longer a stub; however, in the process I realised we also needed a First Arab Siege of Constantinople, so I gave a good start to that but I feel it needs more expansion. Thanks for the help! Grimhelm 20:48, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Good work. Wandalstouring 21:03, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
Nice start, a very nice start - go ahead and expand it, it does need expansion. old windy bear 14:58, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Proposal for firearm caliber notation/naming convention

A proposal has been made at the Weaponry task force to change the recommended notation for firearm calibers from "7.62 x 54 mm" to "7.62x54mm"; comments from all project members would be very welcome (and should be made on the task force page). Kirill Lokshin 03:43, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Stub types for deletion/Log/2006/October/13

Know I've majorly boo-booed on this, but could I have some advice, help or even support on this issue? See also my talk page. User|Neddyseagoon 21:34, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I see you've discovered our pedantic friends at WP:WSS! ;-) Some of their rules seem utterly bizarre to me (why no grouping of buildings by historical states?), but I'm not certain that trying to press the issue would be any more productive, in the long term, than simply gritting your teeth and going along with whatever they want. Kirill Lokshin 04:23, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
Gee, thanks for that loud round of collegiality, KL. Makes me feel truly appreciated for the sorting I've done on the mil-stubs, and ever-so-motivated to continue with same. (Heaven forfend that stub-sorting should ever be discussed with the stub-sorting project, right?) I'm aware of no such "rule"; I believe the concern is rather, that many of them will end up with multiple tags, or else with rampant tagging inconsistency. If you split a stub category on <n> different axes, the logic of that is that you'll end up with (at least) <n> different tags, and the "structures" are already split on two, location, and type. The "Roman" category would cut across both, so I can see why some people might be concerned. But what does the stub-sorting of Romano-Spanish aqueducts and the like have to do with MILHIST, anyway? Alai 20:00, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
Mmm, fair enough; I apologize for my unnecessarily harsh remarks. You have certainly done a great deal of commendable work keeping the various stub tags and categories in order.
(Having said that, a slightly gentler approach to new—particularly unproposed—stub ideas than the usual "deleted, quickly and thoroughly" via SFD might be somewhat helpful in allaying complaints.)
And no, aqueducts don't really have much to do with MILHIST; but just about any request for assistance posted here tends to get a response of some sort, even if it's not the best place for it. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 20:32, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
Fair enough; thanks. One thing we're rarely accused of is doing anything "quickly", mind you, being more commonly regarded as a bunch of process-fiends, 'gnomes, and gradualists, who'll be first against the wall when... (Which is probably about right.) 'SOP' is to list new unproposed stub types at WP:WSS/D, unless there's some other outstanding issues with them (self-evidently too narrow, badly named, etc.), though equally, there's no death penalty or wikijail for not doing that first, either. If (stub) people get a tad cranky with (other) people serially doing the same thing, or creating unproposed categories with "please don't create unproposed categories" notices actually on them (don't laugh, this happens semi-regularly), that's only human. Alai 20:58, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
Well, there's a certain lack of communication between WSS and other groups in general that's probably a contributing factor to people not being aware of how and where to propose stub types. (WPMILHIST, for example, tends to hear about new stub types after they're created—or not at all; so the entire stub creation process is basically invisible from this end.) Kirill Lokshin 21:09, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure how much more prominent we can make the "please propose at WSS/P" stuff, without causing (yet more of) a backlash. In principal I'd agree that notification of proposals to associated wikiprojects is a good idea, but it's yet another chore, especially one is making large number of same based on 'crunching the numbers' (speaking for myself, at any rate). Some wikiprojects don't even bother mentioning their existence on "their" stub category page, and conversely, some wikiprojects, like WPJ BIO, have scopes that are so vast that doing so for every stub type for people articles (that we're trying to put into smaller categories, and they're putting into ever-larger ones...) would be a little absurd. If my experiences in the cases I did do were on the average more positive, I'd probably be more zealous, or at least scrupulous in doing so: in most cases there's no response at all (which is unsurprising; if they were interested in sorting stubs, they'd probably already be doing so), and a small number of times it's sufficiently negative (or just non-sequituresque) as to make me wish I hadn't bothered. (Not mentioning the US-mil-bios here is more in the category of 'didn't think of it at the time', though.) On a more speculative note, I have in the past considered suggesting reorganising the stub proposals into sub-pages, based on, and linked from, the substrate category, where it's a split of an existing category. But that'd be effort to set up, and on-going effort to maintain, so I don't know that that's a magic bullet, either. Alai 22:41, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
Think about a simple way for a bot to do the work, then present your idea it to our automation departement. On the long run we should try to have as much maintainance as possible based on their bots. Wandalstouring 15:50, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
I have no idea how the above suggestion relates to the previous discussion. I am not proposing, nor would I propose, a bot to do any of the above. (Like notify wikiprojects?) Alai 16:36, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Refering to your last sentence: "But that'd be effort to set up, and on-going effort to maintain, so I don't know that that's a magic bullet, either." Wandalstouring 16:41, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
That does not mean it's automatable, short of a bot that passes a wiki version of the Turing test. Anyhoo, this is off-topic for this page, and getting moreso... Alai 16:48, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

WWII Era Soviet images now under copyright?

Apparently there's been a change of the rules regarding copyrights for Soviet-era pics, and that they may now all be under copyright! Needless to say, this is A Very Bad Thing for Wikipedia if it's true. Apparently Template:PD-Russia applies to WWII era works (ie, they're still public domain), but even so, we're at risk of losing a huge number of photos unless they all get tagged appropriately. --Commander Zulu 13:39, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, they have to be retagged within the week. I will not develop on the speed and thetotal lack of consensus to mark them as no sources, but the rules is roughly the following: For works published before 1954, apply {{PD-Russia}}, else they're fair use. And everything that is under article 8 of Russian copyright law (orders, medals, coats of arms and so on) are exempted from copyright and should be tagged with {{PD-RU-exempt}} -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 08:02, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Pathfinder Platoon

Can someone take a look at Pathfinder Platoon, despite attempts at discussion and notification of issues it's turned into a vanity article by a (probably) former member turning it into a we are great and so leet even the leet think we are leet type thing. He's also now removed a couple of the tags.ALR 22:03, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

OK, I've hit it with a host of fact tags, there appears to be a reliance on anonymous verbal reporting in the recent history section hwich is clearly unacceptable from the verifiability perspective. I'd appreciate some support in trying to keep that sort of thing down so would be grateful if a couple of people could watchlist the article.ALR 11:34, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Some rewording could reduce these issues. Wandalstouring 21:15, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
To be fair there have been huge changes since I posted this request, there is a lot less interpersonal stuff, and the language has been tightened up a lotALR 21:20, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Copy-edit

If any one has any free time can someone please copy-edit the Cretan War. Thanks. Kyriakos 22:08, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

What is wrong with the Cretan war? Wandalstouring 22:32, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, someone needs to take the time to name the <ref> tags to cut a list with 5 references from having 50 entries :) Emoscopes Talk 23:02, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
Roger. I didn't see it at first glance. Wandalstouring 23:25, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
I haven't ready it since the last time it was presented at the assessment, yet there had been a signifigant portion of the opposition dedicated towards the tone of the text.--Dryzen 15:56, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Russian and Soviet military history task force

I'm putting forward the proposal to establish the Russian and Soviet military history task force. Naming of the task force has been discussed at length at #Three task force ideas, above. —Michael Z. 2006-10-19 18:55 Z

Interested participants: please add your name to the Russian and Soviet military history task force. —Michael Z. 2006-10-21 05:39 Z

I've linked to this discussion at the following relevant pages. Please post anywhere I missed. —Michael Z. 2006-10-19 19:09 Z

I've created a task force page here; additional signups should probably be placed there directly, to save time. :-) Kirill Lokshin 16:16, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

I re-linked the above-mentioned announcements directly to the project page —Michael Z. 2006-10-21 05:39 Z

Invitation to new WikiProject

A new WikiProject has been started, and may be of interest to members here. It is WikiProject National Register of Historic Places. It covers all listings on the Register, in all states and territories. Since there are a number of military sites, structures, vessels and such on the Register, there is already potential overlap, so both projects could benefit. An example would be the List of Registered Historic Places in Florida. Should you be so inclined, please feel free to join. And spread the word to any other interested parties. Thank you all for your time. -Ebyabe 20:04, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

You are American? Is there a wikiproject about historic places worldwide? Wandalstouring 21:27, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
I don't know if there is a world-wide org-- the National Register is a an American federally funded program that determines historic places in the US and protects them with regulations. I know England has a similar one, I think it's called the National Trust? Can't remember, been awhile since I was involved in all that (oddly it's what I got my Master's in) --plange 16:01, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
Just make it clear what you are talking about. There are people from many nations here. So you want a "Register of Historic Places of the US". Wandalstouring 16:54, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
Well, it's a project that deals with the specific topic of the National Register of Historic Places; the name is a function of that term, not a stand-in for historic places in general. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 17:10, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
Which one? The US National Register of Historic Places or the Outer Mongolian National Register of Historic Places? ;-) Jakew 17:15, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
Going by the lack of a disambiguation page for it, I'd assume that the US list is the only one to use that particular name. (It could very well be that there are others for which we don't have articles yet, though; this isn't really a topic in which I have any expertise.) Kirill Lokshin 17:17, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

what for

I think these categories are of very limited use and should disappear or be turned into something useful.

Ancient Roman enemies

Enemies of Rome who committed suicide Wandalstouring 15:47, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Just a quick helpful note, if you link a category linke this [[:Category:Ancient Roman enemies]], then it appears like this Category:Ancient Roman enemies. That's my good deed done for the day :) Emoscopes Talk 16:03, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
Thank you. Wandalstouring 16:51, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Category:Enemies of Rome who committed suicide is useless. Category:Ancient Roman enemies copuld be put to better use, perhaps indicating the states and tribes Rome battled at one time or another? But, if it is to keep its current for, gone with it also is my cast.--Dryzen 18:09, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Possible category renames

On the basis of some comments at the stub-type proposal page, I'm minded to CFR Cat:United States Army people and Cat:United States Army soldiers, to "personnel", and "enlisted personnel" respectively. (In the first case, on the same basis as similar renamings of per-county "military people" type, and in the second, to clarify the scope, as that usage of soldier is not universal.) Thoughts? Alai 02:24, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

The first one makes sense just as an application of the existing name pattern. The second one is somewhat more complex, as we haven't really figured out how to deal with the various "soldier" categories in general; I expect that we'll return to a general cleanup of all military personnel categories (which has been in the works for quite some time now) once the unit category renames are wrapped up. Kirill Lokshin 02:34, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
Given that there's a proposal for a stub category with the same scope, and that you objected to the use of "soldier" in that case, a resolution sooner rather than later would be desirable, one way or the other. Personnally I'm pretty easy as to which... Alai 02:58, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
Well, I don't particularly care what the category is named at this point; I'm just pointing out that any new name may wind up being quite temporary, depending on what the final structure is. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 03:06, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
Noted. Anyone else able to generate an opinion about what they care about at present, or imagine they'll care about in the foreseeable future? The stub type is the easier to correct, so if the apathy is all-pervading, I'll go with following the current permcat for that (which is where we came in). Alai 03:17, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Both put up for CFR. Alai 18:29, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

I see no distinction to be made within the personnel (both sodlier and military people in this category). That was my position on the earlier draft if I remember correctly.--Dryzen 18:05, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

A-Class review for Ho Chi Minh trail

Some more eyes at the review would be quite helpful. Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 23:43, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson

Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Hbdragon88 03:52, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Caspian expeditions of the Rus

Talk:Caspian expeditions of the Rus needs some attention. We have a nice edit war there and in this case more eyes and minds would be helpful. Wandalstouring 18:34, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

It's not really an edit war per se—the editing itself seems to be pretty cooperative—but more eyes there would probably be helpful in any case. Kirill Lokshin 19:14, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Navy definitions

blue water navy, green water navy and brown water navy all lack a credible definition of the article title, hence the rest of the article content is just conjecture and personal opinion. The list of blue water capable services is subject to discussion on the related talk page using definitions made up by editors. I've requested citations on the articles but am floating the issue here in case anyone has access to anything credible before I afd all three on the basis of being personal opinion.ALR 21:00, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

some major naval powers are missing in all of these articles: Russia, Germany and Brazil
Furthermore the aircraftcarrier based doctrine of naval power in the blue water navy article is not undisputed. The Soviet Navy had its own opinion on this with a strong emphasis on the ability of stealth in naval warfare and the use of submarines worldwide, while aircraft carriers were regarded as a waste of money. (Potter/Nimitz "Sea Power") It doesn't mean I agree, but in a presentation of navy classifications we have to take care of different ideas on the same topic.
Nimitz and Potter explain the capability of operating with a fleet beyond one's bases on the ability to maintain and repair ships under these conditions. Perhaps this could be an approach to make a distinction between these navies. Most green water navies have shown that they can send ships around the world. Wandalstouring 22:04, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
http://www.navy.mil/navydata/cno/mullen/speeches/mullen051013.txt
"Question: I notice that you've added a color code to the Navy's mission area. You've added green to the traditional blue and brown. A definition of a couple of the terms you use in this thing -- expeditionary combat command; and globally networked force Maritime Component Commanders. These are terms that you have in your Guidance. Are they just different names for existing capabilities, or are they something new?
Admiral Mullen: We have the global network, the Joint Force Maritime Component Commanders is a concept that we have recently put in place to essentially link the component commanders from the United States Navy around the world. So they currently, in their old hats, their Navy hats, they're the fleet commanders. But really this takes them by designation, not that they weren't doing this, but this really designates them in the joint sense, and we will use them that way."
Unfortunately Admiral Mullen does not define green water navy. But it points out the term is an invention of the US Navy and may be not used by other navies. Traditionally a disrtinction is made between the coastal and river guarding brown navy and the seafaring blue navy. Wandalstouring 22:56, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Furthermore the US Navy defines that it needs brown, green and blue water abilities. - This way it is a definition of how far away from the shore a fleet is able to fight an enemy, not whether they are able to fight on foreign shores.

http://www.navy.mil/navydata/leadership/quotes.asp?q=11&c=6 "We are moving out in the green and brown water areas and because many operations are looking as an extension of what we talked about in the last few years in terms of the littoral, many operations are focused in the shallows. " (Remarks at the NDIA Expeditionary Warfare Conference, Panama City, Fla., 26 Oct. 2005)

http://www.navy.mil/navydata/cno/mullen/speeches/mullen060519-kqv.txt “CNO: We are looking at, in addition to the blue water ships which I would characterize and describe as our aircraft carriers and other ships that support that kind of capability, we're also looking to develop capability in what I call the green water and the brown water, and the brown water is really the rivers. I've engaged with heads of navies from around the world, upwards of 72 different countries, in the concept that I call a 1,000 ship navy. It's a thousand ships of like-minded nations working together to get at the emerging challenges of weapons of mass destruction, terrorists, drugs, weapons, pirates, human trafficking and immigration. These are challenges we all have, and we need to work together to ensure that the sea lanes are secure.”

I think we have now a kind of definition what a blue water navy is, but where does blue water start? The same for green water and brown water (the rivers are brown water after this definition). Wandalstouring 00:38, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

The former operational zone of the Bundesmarine and its restrictions in the additional protocolls were meant to limit its ability of naval power projection too far beyond the coast. (information from de:Bundesmarine)

The area of operations vor the Bundesmarine contained at first only the North and Baltic Sea, while the line Dover-Calais in the West and the 60th latitude in the north were the borders of operational planning. -This way it was no blue water navy in accordance with the new defintion of blue, green and brown water navy, but a green water navy.

The restrictions for the German navy were established in the Western European Union additional protocolls. They have been changed several times and ended finally in 1984. The upper limit for warships it was 3,000 ts and for submarines 350 ts. - So all ships beyond the imposed restrictions give the ability of power projection beyond an area as defined above, blue water naval abilities. The assesment which navy in fact is a blue water navy and which not is POV per se, what an encyclopedy can do is presenting how many ships a navy has that support blue water capabilities. While there are different doctrines on naval power projection in the discussion and in the article blue water navy and naval intervention ability have been totally mixed up. Wandalstouring 08:15, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

We need some more editors. There is major trouble with unsourced claims.Wandalstouring 16:03, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

These articles leave much to be desired... I only know about submarines and enlightement periode european vessels. Thus I am not much help on the subject beyound an avarage editor.--Dryzen 18:25, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
Actually the impact of SMs is potentially significant in both Blue Water and Brown Water environments, since I have yet to see anything credible regarding Green water I can't comment. What's the impact of a deterrent force, with the associated force protection requirements? Whats the impact of SSK in the littoral? How does the existence or otherwise of a strategic SM policy impact on status as blue water or otherwise.
At the moment all the focus is on aircraft carriers, SMs are strategic assets but there is no consideration, beyond what I've added myself about the French, US and UK deterrents.ALR 18:32, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
Congrats. That is why I mentioned Russia and their doctrine. But I have these ORs deleting it all the time "because the Russians have no money to operate their fleet". Wandalstouring 18:40, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
I can see his point. I disagree, but there is nothing open source that I can use for disagreeing. I don't think that the lists are useful though.ALR 19:32, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
Russia still fleets a large SSN, SSGN and SSBN force by any country's standards. It surface force is rather small but proportionate to its usable coastal perimiter. It is true thoguh that most of its SS fleet is either in dock or rusting awya somewhere but this has more to do with the Soviet Union's reluctence to decomission aging boats than Russia being incapable of fielding its fleet. (As per Tom Clancy's Submarine (1993)) Our articles definitly need some work, as mentioned above I think we can all agree that it lack an understanding of SS influence in naval matters and presents most of its basis on carriers alone.--Dryzen 12:46, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Russia is next to a large piece of ice, the Arctis. It is not possible to cross this piece of ice with surface ships and it is not possible to fight ships underneath it with aircrafts, but it qualifies as blue water, for it is far away from the coast. Wandalstouring 13:43, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Exactly. It is even more taxing to supply and maintain in those conditions.--Dryzen 14:00, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I have rewritten and massively sourced blue water navy. We make no classification of all navies, but just give examples. It would be nice if they could be expanded, so the reader understands them better. Wandalstouring 19:50, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Great work on Blue Navy (Only one I reread). Excellent idea of including the CASD. --Dryzen 17:31, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Military technology task force?

Maybe this discussion has been had, and maybe this belongs under technology, but I wonder if we shouldn't embrace a Military technology task force which would encompass the development of the art of warfare. The reason I bring this up is that when one visits the technology portal and clicks on their military category link, it links to the War article. The subject box at the bottom links to "Weapon" namespace. Seems like we might want to devote some treatment to "History of warfare" like WP:Science does "History of science". This seems like a hole in our coverage. Not warfare, meta-warfare. The issue comes up all the time when I'm tagging ACW links; seems like there might be a Mil-tech-task-force=yes. BusterD 03:02, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I hadn't thought it out before I wrote, but this is sort of similar to the Historiography task force in the earlier post. BusterD 03:12, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
I see three somewhat distinct areas here:
  • Military technology (technology being used in the hardware sense) - this is mostly covered by Weaponry in practice, and my initial inclination would be to avoid having another task force here.
  • Military science (in the traditional "art of war" sense, covering doctrines, development of warfare, etc.) - I'm guessing this is what you're looking for?
  • Military historiography (covering historians, their works, and after-the-fact treatments of military history) - somewhat distinct from either of the above, and probably something we don't have the needed level of interest for yet.
I think the second would be a good idea, if we have the editors for it; the articles under Category:Military science are generally a mess, and we don't really have much collaboration going on such broad topics.
(I'm not certain that "science" is the best term, but it's used in the category name, and is perhaps slightly less ambiguous than "technology". The most obvious would be something like "strategy and tactics" or "doctrine" task force, but that might not include everything we want to cover.) Kirill Lokshin 03:18, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
We're definitely thinking along the same lines, and Military science seems a very good way of explaining the scope of the project. I'll give some superior examples of what I was seeing: Union Army Balloon Corps, United States Army Signal Corps, Coal torpedo. I can go on for half a page, and that's just the ACW. None of them are weapons per se, yet all of them are significant developments of military science. BusterD 03:30, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
We tend to get very good coverage for hightly specific topics, such as individual units, people, or events, but the central core of military science needs all the help it can get. Much of Category:Military strategy and Category:Military tactics, for example, is composed of unreadable stubs. Kirill Lokshin 04:04, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
As to historiography, I know a history editor who's been teaching post-grad historiography for some 40-odd years... He'd rule the Historiography task force like a trireme, but it wouldn't be weak. BusterD 03:38, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Well, if we can pique his interest, that might be something to try. It's definitely an area that needs significant work, and not necessarily one where non-historian editors tend to do a lot of writing. Kirill Lokshin 04:04, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
OK, we are discussing here several task forces with totally different scopes. Historiography sounds nice if we get the people, no objection. Military science and technology are not quite clear to me. I would label all military technology about manufacturing weapons, developing&experimenting with weapons. military science is not clear to me for it is military weapons, tactics and doctrines development. Wandalstouring 11:14, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Looks like its the Military Science that needs the most semantic work. Since the term Art of War was already used, we could follow it up with naming the task force along that line? Military Doctrine does have the right sound to it though, while military Science is rather ambiguous.--Dryzen 12:33, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
"Art of war task force"? That could work, as it's certainly a widely used term for this. Kirill Lokshin 12:37, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
As a project newbie, I've found 'weaponry' very confusing, because the scope is somewhat broader. Military technology doesn't just involve weaponry. It also involves monitoring equipment (radar, etc) and communications equipment (field VHF sets, encryption devices, etc). While you can, I suppose, hit someone over the head with an Enigma machine, it's not what I would really think of as a weapon. ;-) Military technology is a much better title. Jakew 12:41, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
I suppose there's a valid question as to whether we want a single task force for everything or separate weaponry and non-weaponry task forces. (But that's not necessarily the key point of this particular discussion, though. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 13:20, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Please, not "Art of war task force"! The title of that Chinese helpful hints book is better known as the mantra of the 1980s would-be-captains-of-industry crowd, than as a military topic. The "military arts" would be fine, but I think that's just a fluffier synonym for "military science". —Michael Z. 2006-10-24 18:29 Z
I strongly argue to keep the weaponry task-force (mostly guns, tanks, etc.) just the way it is, while technology and military can be the scope of a different task force with a different type of wikipedia editors. Wandalstouring 13:38, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
I concure with Wandalstouring, Weaponry it already a vaste task force without the addition of Technology. As for editor participation it is probobly true that most are dedicated to weapons knowledge specificly. Loooking into it, A Non-weapon technology Task Force could be valid, certainly when one takes into accound the deveices that have found there way out of military monopoly.--Dryzen 13:57, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Ok. I guess we need to gauge the level of interest. I'd certainly be interested in a non-weaponry technology task force. Anyone else? Jakew 14:24, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Could you define the scope of this task force please. Wandalstouring 14:26, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Ok. As a first draft:
  • Concerned with developing and maintaining Wikipedia's articles relating to technology (excluding weapons) that were historically developed for, or had a notable and/or specialised use by, the military. Examples include surveillance and intelligence equipment (including satellite imaging, radar, sonar, etc), communications (from smoke signals to digital satellite comms) and encryption technologies. Jakew 14:40, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
That seems reasonable enough; not exactly my cup of tea, but I'm sure that there are a good number of editors working in that area. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 15:27, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
That is a good definition for a taskforce, but "non-weaponry technology task force" is perhaps not the best choice to name a taskforce with that scope. What about "military reconnaisance and communication technology"? Wandalstouring 15:41, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
That's something of a mouthful (and probably omits some possible areas, too). Maybe we could just call it "Military technology" and have a note at the top that weapons are more properly handled by the Weaponry task force (similarly to how other task forces clarify the scope in more detail)? That seems like an easier approach, perhaps, than trying to fit everything into the name. Kirill Lokshin 15:46, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
I agree that it's a poor name, but I fear that your proposal is too tightly defined. It would exclude, for example, aspects of the Cheyenne Mountain complex. As an alternative, how about "Military technology"? It should be obvious from the context that weaponry has its own t.f., and we could add an explicit and prominent note to the t.f.'s page noting that. (edit conflict) Jakew 15:49, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Hmmm, the first name is rather ackward while the second too specific, as it neglects latrines, Water systems, cantonment techniques, etc. Perhaps Military Developements? --Dryzen 16:01, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Military technology and engineering, perhaps? Kirill Lokshin 16:03, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. Jakew 16:06, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
I defined the name as tight as the scope presented. First of all, we need a clear scope definition and afterwards a clear name. If you want military technology it is also about architecture, shipbuilding, siege engines, etc. Wandalstouring 15:58, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Sorry to be pedantic (it's my nature), but the name reflected the examples, not the scope. But yes, I see no reason not to include architecture and the other examples you gave. To my mind, it is best to have a relatively small number of broadly-defined task forces, which can always be subdivided in future. Jakew 16:05, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
OK, I just wanted to make sure what this is about. to avoid disambiguation: military history weaponry task force could be a specialized subgroup of the military technology task force that deals with all aspects of technology used or developed for military purposes. Wandalstouring 16:44, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
I think that's basically it (sort of how the ACW task force is essentially a subset of the US task force, in terms of scope). There's probably some fringe cases—neolithic spears probably won't attract much attention from the technology enthusiasts, for example—but we can presumably handle those as exceptions without needing to work around them scope-wise. Kirill Lokshin 16:56, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Excellent proposition with the Engineering, are we building this Task force as a mother Task force or in parallel? Or head towards a family of Technology Task forces: Military Engineering could take in architecture, siege and the such, Weapons, Communication, etc?--Dryzen 17:27, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Given that task forces are meant to be pretty informal groups, I don't think we need to get terribly convoluted about "parent" versus "parallel" task forces. Their role as work areas sorts itself out pretty naturally, since editors working on weapons will congregate at the Weaponry task force, while those working on non-weapons will do so at the main Tech task force. While the scope of Weaponry will technically be a subset of the scope of Tech, I don't think this will really make any difference in practice (as the only things that are generally determined on the basis of scope—guidelines—tend to either be set by the project as a whole, or are put in place for very narrow groups of topics that don't even make up an entire task force). Kirill Lokshin 17:33, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
I strongly argue for a parent approach, even if it is totally informal. The scope of this taskforce is likely to provide significant improvement to the weaponry taskforce simply by adding info about engineering of defensive structures for example. Of course they work independently, but with such a parent approach we make it more evident to have some cooperation, otherwise articles are likely to present only a limited perception of a specialized group, who is mainly interested in a subject. ACW could also be made an independent daughter category. Wandalstouring 17:48, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
As for Neolithic spears, the technology is really interesting, did you ever try to shape a stone so that always small parts break off and you get pointed blade? fastening this object on a stick requires knots that won't get loose etc. Wandalstouring 17:52, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
The logic of a parent-child t.f. relationship strongly appeals to me. It would be particularly nice if including a child automagically included the parent - this would help to get attention from people interested in broader subjects interested in narrowly-defined topics. However, I think that it's important to remember that many articles have several applicable task forces anyway. Um, I'm not quite sure what my point is. :) Jakew 17:57, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Can I constitute that 3 editors are more in favour of a parent directory approach and 1 against? Wandalstouring 18:02, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Let's take a step back for a moment. What would be the practical, technical consequences of a decision to move to a hierarchical structure of task forces? Anyone? Jakew 18:13, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
I'm still not quite sure what Wandalstouring means by "parent directory approach"; beyond putting a note in the scope statement (as in WP:ACW) and double-tagging things, what practical things are being proposed? Kirill Lokshin 18:35, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
We all know that weapons are a subset of military technology, but I still don't see the point of defining a more complex organizational relationship between the task forces. Each is just a working group with a common interest, and apart from the topic of interest they have no real subordinate relationship. There's not much point in adding complicated technology to the template, just so we don't have to add "= yes" two times. Also no point in defining members of Weaponry as being inherited by Technology. I suggest we "keep it simple, son".
Although it is a large group, I have no problem with expanding the scope or renaming the Weaponry Task Force to "Military Technology", "Military Equipment", or some such thing. —Michael Z. 2006-10-24 18:20 Z
Fair point. I guess this is what happens when you get a bunch of folks into (complex) technology and ask us to discuss task force scope and structure: complexity. ;-) Jakew 18:22, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
It could be done, I suppose; whether we choose to do it that way depends more on how editors want to cluster than anything else. As I mentioned above, the task forces don't really have a formal meaning beyond acting as collaborative work and discussion areas for editors with some common interest. Kirill Lokshin 18:35, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
I didn't suggest any complicated technology. Ok, let's explain it more simple. The longer this project exists the more taskforces we get. Each taskforce tags all articles within its scope. The more tags we have, the less clearly arranged things get. On the other hand too broad defined taskforces didn't receive much interest yet, as interests are usually limited to specific topics. My suggetion did nowhere imply that we have to add a second template with a yes and I said nowhere that the independance of the weaponry taskforce was at question. Just like in the whole of wikipedia we have interest groups like the military history project or the history project (of wich the former is an offspring), we could start handling some taskforces the same way. Wandalstouring 18:42, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
And the practical aspect of this would be...? Or do you just mean that the Weaponry task force would be conceptually considered a subgroup of the Military technology one, without any practical changes to how things are done/organized/labeled/whatnot? Kirill Lokshin 18:45, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
You got it. Wandalstouring 18:55, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Ah, ok; that seems fine, then. Indeed, the conceptual relationship is probably pretty obvious to everyone involved; as Michael wrote, "we all know that weapons are a subset of military technology". :-) Kirill Lokshin 19:01, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Call for participants

Ok, so there are a couple of distinct ideas here:

  1. A "Military technology and engineering task force" that will cover technology used or developed for military purposes (and which will conceptually be a "parent" to the Weaponry task force).
  2. A "Military science task force" that will cover strategy/tactics/doctrines/military theory in general.
  3. A "Military historiography task force" that will cover military historians and their theories and works.

So, the usual question: who'd be interested in participating in either of these? (Other comments are welcome too, of course!) Kirill Lokshin 20:42, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

  • 1 and, to a limited extent, 2. Jakew 20:46, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
  • 3 only. Carom 20:51, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
  • I may be contributing to all three, but not extensively, and likely only within the context of pre-modern Japan.... LordAmeth 21:42, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
  • 2, but my knowledge is more or less limited to the basics of the German and Italian schools of combat circa 1300-1700. --Xiliquiern 22:41, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
doesn't matter, we can not expect that anybody knows all about this subject. Wandalstouring 14:52, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
  • 2, mostly for WWII era tactics and some later nineteenth century. -KingPenguin 23:04, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
  • All three, but mostly 1 and 2. After the ACW portal is better situated (end of Nov latest), I may take point on 2 if no one else objects. My original concern was that our link to the science/technology part of eng.wp wasn't as strong as it likely deserved, but personally I'm much more attracted to the "art of warfare". I have von Clauswitz, Liddell Hart, Musashi, and Sun Tzu all within easy reach. Also a former HMGS junkie (reformed). Weakness is that I'm not a veteran. BusterD 03:28, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Historiography is my thing--albeit the battles are bloodier and the fight is usually to the death. :) Rjensen 04:03, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
  • 1 and 2 (with priority on Byzantine and French (pre-Industrial) works) I'm retinicent on the Military Science Task Force's title, the common reader may well mistake this for a Stereotype Science, i.e. Militayr advances in Chemistry, Biology, physiques and the such, rather than as a methode or a state of knowing and the operations related to knowing (as per Webster amalgamated definition), as Doctrine, Tactics and Strategy relate to.--Dryzen 14:48, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
Military technology is for advances in chemistry, biology, physics and the such, while military science defines its scope. Of course the application of technology is often credited as military science, but strictly speaking only the military changes due to technical/social applications are the result of military science. Wandalstouring 14:52, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
I am at a loss as to the mean of your sentence Wandalstouring, something in the first line dosen't build a logical syntax... Typing error?--Dryzen 17:21, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
I think he meant that we would have a more explicit description of the scope at the top of the task force page (so presumably the confusion, if any, would be only momentary). Kirill Lokshin 17:36, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
I knew that Wandalstouring, I'm playing devil's advocate for the masses, always trying to improve our relations with them. Hopefully they will look at the scope before asking questions. ;o)--Dryzen 13:54, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
  • A "Military historiography task force" that will cover military historians and their theories and works - I am definitely interested in this one. old windy bear 22:45, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
Ok, looks like we have more than enough interest to get all of these started. Here are the new pages:
I'm mostly done with the back-end work for setting these up; the remainder should be finished shortly. Kirill Lokshin 02:10, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
So many great task forces so little time... Great work Kirill Lokshin, as usual. --Dryzen 13:54, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Renaming task forces?

A thought: it's become somewhat more common for people to link directly to task forces without any comment related to military history; in most cases, this isn't an issue, but for a few of the older ones, the names give no indication that there's anything military about them. I'm thus wondering if it might not be a good idea to change their names to the forms used by the more recent ones:

  • "Ancient Near East" → "Ancient Near Eastern warfare"
  • "Memorials and cemeteries" → "Military memorials and cemeteries"
  • "Middle Ages" → "Medieval warfare"

Comments? Is this something worth doing, or am I just being overly pedantic? Kirill Lokshin 04:46, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I think it is a good idea. It would show that the task forces are under our particular umbrella, rather than having anons and newbies guess at whose running the show. TomStar81 (Talk) 05:34, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
OK Wandalstouring 09:30, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Normalisation is generally always good, so I se no problem with this.--Dryzen 12:21, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps a standard naming scheme ("MILHIST Ancient Near East", etc) would help indicate the relationship to the wider project? Jakew 12:29, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
That would probably be unnecessarily complicated, since most of the names already include either "military history" or "warfare". Kirill Lokshin 12:36, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
We seem to have set general guideline in wich [Faction] Military History and [Perdiode/area] Warfare are the precedent. I think it good as it is, rather than MILHIST + [guide line] or MILHIST [Faction, Periode or Area]. --Dryzen 13:52, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Ok, I've renamed the pages. I think I've caught all the places where the names needed to be changed, but please let me know if I've missed anything! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 13:10, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 21:29, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Interesting to know, even more interesting to note that there are several Projects that fall within the Mil-Hist scope out there, such as: Hellenic Army, Vikings, War of the Pacific, Victoria Cross Reference Migration, Falklands War, Arab-Isreali Conflict, Australian Defence Force.--Dryzen 13:46, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Yeah i wasnt aware of all of them, just ADF and VC. I think there is a chance to merge some into our project especially the VC which could be merged with the Military memorials and cemeteries taskforce, and Australian Defence Force into Australian task force. Merging the ADF project and the Aussie taskforce was brought up when the Aussie taskforce was first created and was not well taken. The main opposition has lef the project out of protest and most of the ADF members are part of the taskforce. thoughts Hossen27 14:13, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Yes, those are probably good merger possibilities (although the VC one might make more sense in the British task force, perhaps?). The War of the Pacific and Falklands War ones could presumably be merged into some manner of Latin America task force, if/when we get that off the ground. Kirill Lokshin 16:46, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Many of these are innactive or single participant groups (VC), merging shouldn't be a problem. I'd put the VC in Military memorials and cemeteries taskforce, as it is foremost a registry of medal holders and medal certification.--Dryzen 17:26, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
I think we should leave alone some of these groups in case they are not cooperative. Wandalstouring 17:32, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Only the ADF and A-IC are not innactive or marked as such. These are the groups we can cooperate with and extend our thoughts on merger, but the innactive ones are probobly not going to cooperate due to innactivity.--Dryzen 17:44, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Even inactive ones will often have somebody watching them, so it's always polite to ask (even if we get no response). Kirill Lokshin 18:04, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
I don't think there's any harm in asking if a merge would be acceptable. As Kirill points out, it would be polite, and if they say "no thank you," we haven't really lost anything. Carom 19:25, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
As much as we work with War, we are rather polite and diplomatic people. That is the best way. Yet, I do beleive that most will not be saying anything at all.--Dryzen 17:23, 27 October 2006 (UTC)