Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Archive 42

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Archive 42


Contents

Guideline for references and citations?

In view of some of the more amusing debates going on over some of the main style guide pages regarding reference and citation standards (as well as the fact that some projects seem to be doing this already), I thought it might be useful to come up with a (suitably general and easy-to-understand) project guideline on what references are appropriate, and how and when they should be cited.

My first attempt at something coherent:

Sources
Policy requires that all sources must be reliable for the topic to which they are applied; however, this is a minimal condition for use, rather than a final goal. With the exception of certain recent topics that have not yet become the subject of extensive secondary analysis, and for which a lower standard may be temporarily permitted, articles on military history should be based primarily or exclusively on published secondary works by reputable historians and highly-regarded published primary sources. Editors are encouraged to extensively survey the available literature—and, in particular, any available historiographic commentary—regarding an article's topic in order to identify every source considered to be authoritative or significant; these sources should, if possible, be directly consulted when writing the article.

Citations
The nature of historical material requires that articles be thoroughly—even exhaustively—cited. At a minimum, the following all require direct citation:

  • Direct quotations of outside material.
  • Controversial or disputed statements.
  • Subjective or qualitative judgements.
  • Any statement for which a citation has been requested in good faith by another editor.
Beyond this, editors are encouraged to cite any statement that is obscure or difficult to find in the available sources, as well as any significant statement in general. There is no numerical requirement for a particular density of citations or for some predetermined number of citations in an article; editors are expected to use their best judgement as to how much citation is appropriate. When in doubt, cite; additional citations are harmless at worst, and may prove vital in the long term.
In general, an article may use either footnotes or Harvard-style references; while footnotes may prove more convenient when citation becomes extremely dense, or involves significant additional commentary, the choice of which style to follow is left to the discretion of an article's editors.

This is obviously quite rough, and probably misses some important points, but I think it shows what I'm trying to get at.

Thoughts? Comments? Is this something worth doing, and, if so, is the above a decent place to start? (Feel free to tell me that this is utterly insane, incidentally; it's rather late at night, and I'm not entirely certain how coherent this idea actually is. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 05:53, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

This is definatley something worth doing since a lot of subject material falls under our umbrella. I like the initial draft; here are my suggestions for improvement on it:
  • The statement "articles on military history should be based primarily or exclusively on published secondary works by reputable historians and highly-regarded published primary sources" needs to have examples; obviously things like books and newspaper reports are in, but a discussion as to the exact nature of their use should be looked at.
  • Citations that give a quantities or ranges, like bulets in a magazine, shots fired per minute, speeds for military equipment like tanks and ships, and so forth need to be included in the citation section.
  • It may also be worth adding a link to Wikipedia:Inline Citation, a how to guide for adding inline citations to articles.
Those are my initial thoughts. I will likely add more as I have time to think about them. TomStar81 (Talk) 06:33, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
Put it in the newsletter. Besides you could ask for A class review help with such a newsletter as it seems to happen quite frequent. Wandalstouring 11:22, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
The newsletter only goes out once a month (and the next one won't be until the end of November); it's not likely to be useful for this (and certainly not for the A-Class reviews, which only run for four days). But, in any case, this is all quite tangential to the proposal itself. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 16:06, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
I like the guideline - and I think Tomstar81 has a good point: the guideline should probably explicitly state that numerical quantities (like range or speed) require a citation. I also think links to the pages on reliable sources, etc. might not be a bad idea. Carom 18:21, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
I think this is worthwhile too. The only question I have is whether primary sources that are housed at a Special Collections of a reputable repository (National Archives, Duke University, etc) are considered "published"? --plange 01:57, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
Hmm, that's a hard question (particularly because it really relates to the question of whether these sources are permitted at all, rather than whether they are something we're looking for). They're not published in the sense that one can easily obtain copies, I suppose; the question is whether something that's only available at one particular location qualifies as something that another editor could reasonably go and verify. It's probably something that needs to be decided on a Wikipedia-wide basis (although I suspect the answer will be "It depends on the circumstances); allowing, as a project, the use of sources that other editors may consider entirely unacceptable might not be the best idea. Kirill Lokshin 02:13, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
FWIW, I did ask at WP:V and they said it was okay (I wanted to make sure for one of my articles). They said ease of verification shouldn't be a hold-up, just that it is verifiable ultimately. I can dig up the discussion if that helps? --plange 02:47, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
Ah, don't bother; as long as the general consensus was fine with it, they're okay. I wouldn't necessarily encourage using them too much—if they haven't been analyzed by secondary sources, it's difficult to know how accurate they are—but they can probably be used for uncontroversial things without too much trouble. Maybe we should move from "published primary sources" to "reputable primary sources"? Kirill Lokshin 02:53, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
I don't think unpublished items in an archive count. I've been an archivist--the goal is to acquire collections and store and sort them. The archivists do not evaluate the documents for their meaning. (They do discard fakes--but that is rare.) original research is needed to sift through documents make sense of the documents, and that is the job of the historian. Typically a historian looks at many, many documents before finding one that is useful. The historian then evaluates it in terms of other sources. Wiki editors are not allowed to do this original research. Rjensen 03:23, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
As far as I know, general practice has been to permit primary sources for uncontroversial descriptive claims, which wouldn't really be original research as there's no synthesis involved. In other words, we can write "Joe, in his manuscript, describes the apple pie he ate as 'warm and fluffy'" because that claim can be trivially verified from the document itself (as it makes no claim about anything except the document's contents per se). Kirill Lokshin 03:36, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
That's what I've been limiting myself to (though it's hard as I am a historian actively writing a historical biography on someone). The only times I've used it (and why I sought clarification), was for John W. Johnston, to support that he called their house "Castle Dusty" and then to give a quote of what food-stuffs they had for the winter. Both are just descriptive without any interpretation. --plange 03:57, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Okay, taking into account some of the comments so far, a slightly revised draft:

Sources
Policy requires that all sources must be reliable for the topic to which they are applied; however, this is a minimal condition for use, rather than a final goal. With the exception of certain recent topics that have not yet become the subject of extensive secondary analysis, and for which a lower standard may be temporarily permitted, articles on military history should aim to be based primarily on published secondary works by reputable historians. The use of high-quality primary sources is also appropriate, but care should be taken to use them correctly, without straying into original research. Editors are encouraged to extensively survey the available literature—and, in particular, any available historiographic commentary—regarding an article's topic in order to identify every source considered to be authoritative or significant; these sources should, if possible, be directly consulted when writing the article.

Citations
The nature of historical material requires that articles be thoroughly—even exhaustively—cited. At a minimum, the following all require direct citation:

  • Direct quotations of outside material.
  • Paraphase or other borrowing of ideas from an outside source.
  • Controversial or disputed statements.
  • Subjective or qualitative judgements.
  • Numerical quantities or statistics.
  • Any statement for which a citation has been requested in good faith by another editor.
Beyond this, editors are encouraged to cite any statement that is obscure or difficult to find in the available sources, as well as any significant statement in general. There is no numerical requirement for a particular density of citations or for some predetermined number of citations in an article; editors are expected to use their best judgement as to how much citation is appropriate. When in doubt, cite; additional citations are harmless at worst, and may prove vital in the long term.
In general, an article may use either footnotes or Harvard-style references; while footnotes may prove more convenient when citation becomes extremely dense, or involves significant additional commentary, the choice of which style to follow is left to the discretion of an article's editors.

More comments and suggestions would be appreciated! Kirill Lokshin 03:05, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Carom 05:10, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
Anyone else? Should we just put this up on the project page and see if anyone complains? ;-) Kirill Lokshin 04:09, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, since nobody seems to be complaining, I've been bold and put the tex above on the project page; if nothing else, that ought to catch the attention of anyone likely to object to it. ;-)
Any further comments or suggestions would be very welcome, of course! Kirill Lokshin 02:52, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Task force suggestions

Here are my suggestions for potential new task forces:

  • Greek Task force
  • Ottoman Task force
  • Balkan Task force
  • Spanish Task force
  • Portugese task force

What do you think? Kyriakos 02:27, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't see anything particularly problematic about them, off the top of my head, but I doubt we have enough interested editors for some (if not all) of them.
(Another one that was bounced around but not created, incidentally, would be a "South and Central American military history" task force.) Kirill Lokshin 03:15, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
I think that most of those will be underscubscribed, although a Greek task force looks promising. Carom 03:44, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Just looking throught the list of members I saw the names of around two dozen people intrested in Greece and quite a few in Spain. Kyriakos 03:49, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
A minor subtlety: if we follow the same principle we used for the Italian task force, though, ancient Greece won't be included in a "Greek military history" task force (but only in the Classical warfare one); I suspect that many people listing Greece as an interest are thinking about ancient Greece in particular. Kirill Lokshin 03:58, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
When I was looking at the member list and a great majority were intrsted in ancient greece but there are a few intrested in the Byzantine Empire and modern Greece. Kyriakos 04:04, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Ah, ok; that might be doable, then. Kirill Lokshin 04:07, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
There are around 12 members that I saw that were intrested in the Byzantines and modern Greece. Kyriakos 04:19, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Being heavily involved in the Byzantine articles, we could land at the very least 6 devoted participants, as to modern Greece, I could not say. Currently the Empire falls under the Classic and Medieval task forces (395*-1461). The first three TFs could in the event of a lack of participants be merged as they all share intimatly events and territory.(*based on the final division of Eastern and Western Roman empires--Dryzen 18:58, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Interesting point. I'm not entirely up on the political subtexts of the region, but, at least according to our Balkans article, Greece is considered part of the Balkans; is this something that's controversial in some way? Would a combined "Balkan military history" task force that included Greece be a bad approach, in other words? Kirill Lokshin 19:21, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
No, Greece is considered part of the Balkans. A Balkan military history task force is a good idea but thinking over I'm not sure we will be able to find enough editors for countries other than Greece. But if we can find some editor who are willing to contribute to the military history of other Balkan countries countries like Serbia and Bulgaria, I think it would work out fine. Kyriakos 21:11, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Greece is part of the Balkan region, sadly the area as gained a negative connotation, more so sould a country be classed a Balkan state. My own contributions in such a group would be towards Byzantine, Greece and Ottoman intentions in the Balkans. Of course researching these one always falls upon the rivals; Byzantiums wars against the Avars, Serbs, Bulgars, Croats, etc. --Dryzen 16:13, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
I've been thinking about if this task force is indeed made would Turkey be included. The Turkshad a strong influence in the area for around 600 years as the Ottoman Empire but now only 3% of modern Turkey is in Europe and the Balkans. Does anyone have any opiniona? Kyriakos 20:37, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
Mmm, while Turkish activities in the Balkans would be included anyways, lumping in the entirety of the Ottoman Empire would create a task force with a rather different focus, as it would suddenly include much of North Africa and the Middle East under its purview. I think that would be rather counterintuitive in terms of what editors would expect to find under a single group. Kirill Lokshin 20:46, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
What's the current ideal for the scope of the Balkan TF? Since we strike at three grousp in different periodes who's influence is signifigant outside the reagion of the Balkans, the Hellenes, Byzantine and Ottoman, Modern Turkey is iffy and holds little in common with the caliphate.--Dryzen 16:27, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
I think we might be able to follow the same formula as the African task force does: include the military histories of all Balkan groups and states, as well as military activity in the Balkans by non-Balkan powers (all after c. 476, leaving everything before that to the Classical warfare task force). The Byzantines and Ottomans will definitely be included as far as their actual activities in the Balkans are concerned; whether we want to include their activities outside the Balkans is something that can easily go either way. As a purely practical matter, if we consider those two empires to be "Balkan", we would significantly expand the task force with material that might not be of much interest to people focusing on the geographic region; but, on the other hand, there isn't any other obvious task force to take those states, so lumping them here may be a reasonable approach. (It's all up to what the editors working on those topics want to do, basically.) Kirill Lokshin 18:14, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
I've been thinking of a timeline suggestion. 476-1453 can be classified as Byzantine, 1453-1913 Ottoman and 1913-2006 post Balkan War era. Any comments? Kyriakos 08:07, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Didn't we put 500 as the end date for the Classical periode? That way it would fit with the Medieval Task force's scope of 500-1500?Kyriakos are you suggesting making 3 Tfs on the Balkans? I'm a bit lost as to the utility of the timeline, sorry. I do see your poitn Kirill Lokshin about the size of the empire playing agianst them. I guess they'll be clumped as guess stars in the Task force, a bit how France (exemple) jumps into multiple TFs.--Dryzen 19:02, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

The split point is "c. 500" everywhere now, I think; 476 is probably more precise (but not necessarily entirely accurate, and perhaps not as relevant a date to the Balkans as to Italy). There's no real need to be exact here, though, so the Balkan task force can just be scoped as "c. 500–present".
(As far as the timeline, I think that was just a comment on organizing article work within the task force, not a proposal for three separate groups.) Kirill Lokshin 19:08, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Okay, are there any significant objections to creating a "Balkan military history" task force that will include, as its scope, the military histories of all Balkan groups and states post c. 500, as well as military activity in the Balkans by non-Balkan powers post c. 500? I think there's definitely enough interest to get something of this sort going. Kirill Lokshin 02:07, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Keep an eye on the Balkan, this area has many users with internet access or sympathizers, some recent wars and enough potential for some more to come, at least in the form of some Balkan edit wars. Cheers Wandalstouring 14:30, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, since there don't seem to be any objections, I've created a task force page; anyone interested in the topic, please do sign up! :-) Kirill Lokshin 18:21, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

More unit category renamings

Some objections to an aspect of our naming convention have come up here (in particular, the use of "Divisions of ..." is questioned); any comments there would be very welcome! Kirill Lokshin 14:04, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I thought this had been resolved, discussion closed and consenseous reached, and that we were to start fixing &/or renaming these categories.--Oldwildbill 21:13, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
That was certainly my impression; it's quite unfortunate that objections are cropping up after the fact, despite the majority of the categories having been renamed unanimously only a few weeks back. In any case, the bulk of the listings via speedy renaming seem to be going through fine; it's only a handful of the more complicated cases that seem to be having trouble, and we ought to be able to manage putting those through CFD.
Having said that, the "Divisions of ..." issue is a fairly legitimate concern; all the other unit sizes (regiments, corps, etc.) use terms that are generally military, but "division" doesn't necessarily have that connotation. One option would be to drop directly to the branch categories (e.g. "Divisions of the United States Army" rather than "Divisions of the United States"), but that won't work too well for countries where the branch history is more complicated, or where multiple branches use divisions. Another option would be to adopt an explicit disambiguation term for divisions (e.g. "Military divisions of the United States" or something of the sort); this is somewhat crude, but would allow us to eliminate the confusion without breaking the naming scheme in any fundamental way. The third option would be to press on for "Divisions of ..." on the basis that any confusion will be easily caught; but I'm not sure if that's a viable approach. Kirill Lokshin 21:21, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
"Divisions of countryX in dateY" my suggestion. Wandalstouring 21:33, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
That's what our naming convention called for; but some people are making the point that, say, a category named "Divisions of the United States in the American Civil War" would be expected to contain regions or states, not military formations (because "division" is as much a political or geographic term as it is a military one)—hence the entire debate. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 21:32, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
"Divisions of countryX in dateY (military units)" better? Wandalstouring 21:35, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Better, assuming people don't have issues with parenthetical disambiguation. (Actually, if we want to use parentheticals, we can probably shorten the name by having "Divisions (military) of country in war". Otherwise, we might need to use "(military units and formations)" rather than "(military units)", to avoid that whole "unit or formation?" question between different countries.) Kirill Lokshin 21:42, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
OK. parentheticals are usus in wikipedia. look at bow for example. Wandalstouring 12:55, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Well gents the vote is split on the divisions at this - unless more project members way in on this on the request for speedy renaming page - I do not see this being passing.--Oldwildbill 18:57, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
In some sense, the proposal was dead in the water from the time serious objections were raised; it's generally difficult to actually come to a consensus on CFD. I suspect we're going to have to simply make a new nomination to whatever form we think will resolve the complaints here once this closes. Kirill Lokshin 19:11, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Some A-Class reviews need attention

Just a note that there are two requests for A-Class status that could really use some attention over the next day or so! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 19:53, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

And another one that's just been put up; input would be very appreciated! Kirill Lokshin 16:35, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Capitalization of rank titles

Over at Talk:Rear Admiral#Move_to_Rear_admiral they've started a requested move from "Rear Admiral" to "Rear admiral" a la Prime minister and the WP naming conventions. If this goes through, all articles will have to be de-capped. Personally, I really don't mind either way, but articles should be consistent as much as is practicable. Does anyone here have a reason it/they should NOT be moved? Otherwise, we might as well nominate them all and get all our ducks (Ducks?) in a row. -- SigPig \SEND - OVER 20:24, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

There's probably some subtlety involved with non-generic rank titles. Thus, "marshal" may be either capitalized or not, and could thus be moved; but, say, "Marshal of the Soviet Union" or "Marshal of France" might need to stay capitalized (as, for example, "Prime Minister of the United Kindgom"). Kirill Lokshin 20:32, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Unusual new templates

Just noticed a pair of new templates today:

  • {{European wars of the 17th century}}
  • {{European wars of the 18th century}}

Am I the only one who thinks grouping wars like this is pretty useless? Aside from the various errors in the templates themselves, these lists (unlike normal war-series campaignboxes) intersperse a bunch of conflicts with no common element except that they all took place somewhere that can be termed "Europe". This may be suitable for a stand-alone timeline, but not really as a navigation box, I think. Comments? Am I being too picky here? Kirill Lokshin 06:39, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't like navboxes. (Here's another {{Russo-Swedish War Series}}) I'd rather there was a list article and linking in "see also". The only place for navboxes IMO is if the link is notable enough to mention the "next" in the series in the "aftermath" or similar section (or in the alternate temporal direction). -- Medains 12:32, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Turn these boxes into articles and make a list of the wars with short comments (introduction). Wandalstouring 12:53, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
No Kirill your not being to picky, these NAV boxes serve very little if no purpose and they they don't look that good in articles eg. War of Devolution. Lists of this kind already exist in List of Wars and its subpages. Hossen27 12:58, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Ah, good catch; it looks like these templates are basically redundant with List of conflicts in Europe. Should we just list them on WP:TFD, then? Or does anyone have other ideas for what to do with them? Kirill Lokshin 13:28, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
If you have found "errors" (presumably in the names or dates of the conflicts) then you could correct them -- although probably if there are errors in the templates they reproduce errors elsewhere in Wikipedia. A comparison with List of conflicts in Europe would show that it is very incomplete (compared to the template) and furthermore not linked to many articles, which makes using it as a navigation aid impossible. Determining when a "bunch of conflicts" have a "common element" or not is close to impossible. Lists just of "Anglo-Dutch wars" or "Russo-Swedish wars" obscure that these conflicts are related to a wider series of conflicts occurring all across Europe. As for the navigation box structure itself, the whole point is that it can be updated and improved and the improvements will appear on every page that it appears on; there is no need to update a set of links on every single page. RandomCritic 14:16, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
It's not at all difficult: European military history is quite well studied, and if there's a significant series of wars (e.g. Italian Wars, Napoleonic Wars, Crusades, Punic Wars, etc.), it's likely to have extensive treatment as a series in historical works. Each of these series already has a campaignbox for navigation, incidentally.
More to the point, the chronological lists are (a) even broader than the national ones (which aren't very good to begin with), and (b) are quite large as far as navigation templates. Even if they're to be retained as templates, I would think that they ought to be formatted like normal campaignboxes, for consistency; but I don't think they're actually useful as navigation tools, because of how tenuous the relationship among many of their elements is. Kirill Lokshin 14:40, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
In my humble opinion the List of conflicts in Europe is an acceptable approach to make a list of conflicts in case you want to find something and know little about it. Such a large list could help, although I argue to apply some more info and more order to it than merely dates. The alphabetical system is nonsense. Wandalstouring 14:48, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, the alphabetical section isn't very useful (particularly as many of these conflicts have multiple names). I have no problems with keeping the main list. (I do think it's not all that meaningful, as limiting its scope to Europe necessarily obscures interesting logical interdependencies with conflicts occuring elsewhere; but if people want to maintain it, that's okay.) Kirill Lokshin 17:02, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
The utility is in showing the chronological relationship between the conflicts. The campaignbox format is far from ideal (providing no chronological information whatsoever). Ideally, the navigation template would show a timeline and be divided by various theatres (insofar as these can be separated from each other). RandomCritic 16:54, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
As far as navigational templates are concerned, I think they should present a set of topics that are all interrelated in some obvious way; if the relationship is very vague, categories or lists are a better approach. A chronological ordering of wars in Europe is not a real "series" of wars; there's no meaningful relationship between the Second Anglo-Dutch War and the Smolensk War, for example, other than the fact that both occurred somewhere in Europe, and hence no real reason why we would want to direct a reader from one article to the other. While actually related series of wars often have navigation templates (e.g. the various war-series campaignboxes I mentioned above), the chronology here seems to be too tenuous a connection to warrant one (particularly one of such size and complexity—I would guess that the template is halfway complete, at best). Kirill Lokshin 17:02, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
(Incidentally, a campaignbox is always in chronological order. It omits the dates, true; but the exact dates are rarely of interest in terms of navigating from one article to another.) Kirill Lokshin 17:03, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
I think that Kirill, et al. have the right of it on this one. There does not seem to be any obvious relationship between the items in the the template, and as we do have a list, it's not as if the information cannot be easily discovered. I would also say that, in general, overly large navigational templates are more of a hindrance than a help - when too much information is presented in a small space, it can become overwhelming for a casual reader. Carom 18:15, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
I concure with the current leaning in Kirill Lokshin, Carom, Wandalstouring and Hossen27's direction. A navbox shouldn't be used a a list, the rpresented lsit alread fills the purpose of providing links to wars in europe.--Dryzen 18:35, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
So, how should we proceed? Should these simply be sent to TFD, or does anyone have other suggestions? Kirill Lokshin 01:57, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
Yeah get rid off them. Hossen27 02:16, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I've listed them for deletion here; please drop by and make your opinions known. Kirill Lokshin 14:01, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Category:Wars in the Balkans

An interesting discussion going on here regarding a proposed rename of the category; any input would be very welcome! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 14:34, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

{{WPMILHIST}} formatting

I've added some new features to {{WPMILHIST}} that I'd like some feedback on:

  • A separate show/hide bar for the task forces, both to allow easier browsing and to remove the need for the redundant "This article is supported by..." text on each line.
  • Somewhat more interestingly, as part of a Wikipedia-wide effort to find solutions to the "forest of yellow templates" problem that plagues some talk pages, there's a new small=yes parameter available; setting it will cause the template to shrink down to userbox width and float on the right margin.

Any comments would be very appreciated! Kirill Lokshin 20:36, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

very good, the smaller things get and the less redundant, the better. Wandalstouring 20:47, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure if it's just me, but the small=yes parameter seems to cause overlap problems if there are other templates of the talk page. The separate drop downs are nice, though. Carom 21:14, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
It's meant to be applied to every template, so I'm not entirely sure if it works quite correctly when only one has it set. It's something that's being tested across the board anyways (see here), so any formatting issues like that will be cleaned up through the CSS class once we figure out what they are. Kirill Lokshin 21:37, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Ah, that makes sense, then. Carom 21:53, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Category:Wars of the NATO

I've begun a proposal to rename this category to "Wars of NATO". Please lend your input Here. LordAmeth 20:41, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Roswell UFO incident peer review

The article "Roswell UFO incident" has undergone a major rewrite and quite a bit of attention from us over at WP:PARA. Since the article is part of both project I felt it would be a good idea to invite you guys to the party! :) ---J.S (t|c) 20:28, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Attention needed on the Cretan War A-Class review

If possible, I'd like to have a few more people comment on the A-Class review for Cretan War; if anyone with a bit of time could stop by, that would be great! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 00:39, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

The formation of the Highlanders

I'm a bit confused. In my 1301 history class my proffessor brings up different groups of scottish highlanders. He refers to their contributions during the American War for Independence (on the Brittish side of courdse) yet i can't find any article on wikipedia that mentions a group of highlanders that existsed before the 1800s. Is there a reason for this? Am I missing an article? Eno-Etile 06:16, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Your professor is, of course, correct. Highlanders, i.e. people who lived in the Scottish Highlands, have existed for centuries and centuries. They fought the English in the 1300s, under William Wallace and others, and they continued to resist English domination for some time after that. I don't know anything one way or the other about them taking part in the American Revolution; but just because they weren't formally established as British Army regiments until later, that doesn't mean they didn't exist as a distinctive people. LordAmeth 09:48, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
I was sure we had an article on the highlanders following the Jacobites in the British service. Ahh there we go 78th Fraser Highlanders and your teacher may ahve spoken of the 71st Regiment of Foot.--Dryzen 16:08, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks alot that question has been bugging me for over a month. Anyway is there any reason neither of these regiments appear on the highlanders disambigution or "The Highlanders (Seaforth, Gordons and Camerons)" page?Eno-Etile 21:40, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
Possibly due to there being little link between the modern Scottish Regiment and these defunct regiments. You can find most if not all the regiments in Category:Highland regiments. As to the disambigution Highlander was not the Regiemtns actual name therefoe is not mentioned, I'll add the Cat.--Dryzen 18:38, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the info Eno-Etile 05:28, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Mothballing departments redux

In light of the fact that the combined requests page seems to actually have some (not much, admittedly) associated activity now, including in the image/map/translation sections, and the cartography and translation departments haven't had any over the two months since this was last discussed: are there any objections to archiving those two department pages at this point and running with just the combined request page? Kirill Lokshin 06:31, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I dont see any problems with that, it will probobly be a better place for exposure.--Dryzen 18:21, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
Full steam ahead, I say. Carom 21:04, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
No problems here. Hossen27 06:34, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
Just merge them into the request departement. Wandalstouring 13:53, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I've gone ahead and marked those pages as inactive, leaving pointers to the main request page. Kirill Lokshin 17:54, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Battle of Wigan Lane

Something I stumbled across a few moments ago: User:Copiedimage, merged and redirected Battle of Wigan Lane to Wigan without any discussion. I reverted (perhaps a bit hastily, I admit), thinking it was vandalism. The user objected to my reversion on my talk page, stating that the articles were better off merged. My question is: What, generally, is the consensus for merging stubs on specific events (like a battle) into articles on the general locations where those events took place? This one doesn't seem particularly intuitive (to me at least), although I concede that it's unlikely to ever grow beyond a stub. Carom 23:48, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Merging perma-stub battles is possible, but the target should be the relevant war or campaign article, rather than the location. A merger into the location seems utterly counterintuitive, as people interested in the battle tend to care about the historical context, rather than the modern geographical one.
(In general, though, it's better to leave such stubs for the time being. We're not working on any real deadline here, and it's always possible that somebody will come along with enough information to make a halfway-decent article; it's a rare battle that doesn't have anything of interest about it.) Kirill Lokshin 23:52, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
That's pretty much what I was thinking - thanks, Kirill. Carom 00:06, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
Make the redirect to the concerning chapter in the article about the location. Wandalstouring 19:03, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
Redirects to sections don't actually work, unfortunately; they'll always go to the top of the article. Kirill Lokshin 19:33, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
So we complain about it and ask someone to edit the wiki source code. OK, I thought I hade seen something yesterday on another wiki, but I was wrong (stupid me). Wandalstouring 19:37, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
I feel less badly about this now - the user in question has been blocked as a suspected sockpuppet of User:Generic Character, and I'm consequently less inclined to assume good faith on their part. Carom 17:30, 16 November 2006 (UTC)