Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history

Skip to Table of Contents

Summary of Military history WikiProject open tasks watch · edit · full list
News and announcements The June newsletter is now available. Editors are advised that Featured Articles promoted before 2016 are in need of review, if you had an article promoted to Featured status on or before 2016 please check and update your article before they are listed at FAR/C.	Current discussions No major discussions are open at the moment
Featured article candidates Turabay dynasty • John Savage (soldier) • Tetricus I • Battle of Plum Point Bend • Jozo Tomasevich • Genghis Khan Featured article review Byzantine Empire • Battle of Red Cliffs • Edward I of England • Northrop YF-23 Featured picture candidates Thorsten Nordenfelt A-Class review Henry Biard • Battle of Saipan • Fort Corcoran • Sihanouk Trail • Battle of La Haye-du-Puits • Battle of Tinian • Henry Macandrew • Boot Monument • HMS Sardonyx (1919) • CSS General Earl Van Dorn • Miyoshi Nagayoshi • Ernest J. King Peer reviews Muckrach Castle • Regency of Algiers • Wolfgang Larrazábal	Good article nominees Nazran uprising • Abu'l-Fath Khan Javanshir • Ava–Hanthawaddy War (1401–1403) • Aérospatiale SA 330 Puma • Khalji Revolution • 1864 Washington Arsenal explosion • Antoine Hamilton • George II of Greece • Roswell incident • Podgorica Assembly • Masopha • Sam Bahadur (film) • Maximiliano Hernández Martínez • Mohammad Shah Qajar • Battle of Meligalas • Gubir shootdown • The Defence of Duffer's Drift • Chestertown Armory • Mariano R. Vázquez • Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk • Gotha WD.7 • Cultybraggan Camp • Constantine II (emperor) • First Hunnic War • HMS Menace (1915) • Japanese destroyer Natsuzuki • CSS General Polk • Battle of Lewisburg • Bill Crawford-Compton • HMS Glenmore (1796) • British nuclear weapons and the Falklands War • Sentient (intelligence analysis system) • Charlemagne • World War I Good article reassessments Galatian War
Articles that need... work on referencing and citation (147,511) • only work on referencing and citation (43,146) • work on coverage and accuracy (122,637) • only work on coverage and accuracy (19,665) • work on structure (31,796) • only work on structure (357) • work on grammar (8,186) • only work on grammar (45) • work on supporting materials (32,778) • only work on supporting materials (1,336) • assessment (8) • assessment as lists (116) • project tags fixed (5) • assessment checklists added (12) • assessment checklists completed (30) • task forces added (284) • attention to task force coverage (658)

New Category thought

(Copied from the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Korea/Military history page) Does anybody else see a need or reason (besides me) for a new category called something like "Korean War Military Units"? It would provide an easy way to quickly identify all of the military units that participated in the Korean War, regardless of country. With all of the countries that had units participate in the Korean War, trying to track them down is a bit of a chore. Any body have any ideas or opinions on the subject? wbfergus 15:43, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Please direct replies here. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 16:57, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

New unit naming convention

As there don't seem to be any objections being raised to the draft naming convention for military units and formations, shall we go ahead with adopting it and throwing the door open for page moves? Or does anyone have a problem with the proposal? Kirill Lokshin 22:51, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Nope says the usual troublemaker. Wandalstouring 23:45, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Rock'n'Roll. Carom 00:04, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Been supporting it since its ealiest conceptions.--Dryzen 16:15, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay, as there don't seem to be any objections, I suppose we can start implementing it (on a provisional basis, anyways); if there are any problems, I'm sure people will quickly provide feedback. ;-)

So: please feel free start moving articles; try to leave a link to WP:MILHIST#Military units and formations in the move summary, also, so that people can figure out what's going on. Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 03:15, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

This is the first I've heard of this. What's the point of this change? Where was it discussed?

—wwoods 07:30, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

All over the place, really; but the bulk of the discussion is here. Briefly: there have been issues with country names appearing in the wrong place in cases where the actual unit name includes them, as well as a general desire to make it clear that the country names are basically disambiguation terms rather than parts of the units' names in their own right; thus, the new convention. Kirill Lokshin 13:30, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

So, as I've been beginning to implement this (starting with the articles on my watchlist), I've come across some oddities that I'm not entirely sure what to do with. Two examples are British 13th (Western) Division and 5th Canadian (Armoured) Division. I'm tempted to move the second example to 5th Armoured Division (Canada), but I'm not entirely sure. I have no idea what to do with the other one. Any advice? Carom 22:40, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. I'm no expert on either of these units (and there do seem to be some subtleties here that someone with more knowledge may be able to better understand), but, as far as I can tell:

• The 5th seems to actually have been named the "5th Canadian Armoured Division" rather than the "5th Armored Division"; there may be some background here in terms of it adopting the names of the WWI Canadian divisions. It might be better to ask the Canadian editors here what the formal name of it was, though.
• The 13th could, I suppose, be placed at 13th (Western) Division (United Kingdom); but I'm wondering if "Western" is actually part of the formal name, or just a nickname that could be dropped to produce 13th Division (United Kingdom).

Kirill Lokshin 22:52, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

It appears the "Western" was a simple device indicating which of the five British Army commands (Irish, Scottish, Northern, Eastern and Western) raised the division. 13th (Western) was a "K1" division, there is also the 19th (Western), which was a "K2" division. I would lean towards keeping the (Western) disambiguator, and putting the division at 13th (Western) Division (United Kingdom), (as you suggested, Kirill). Thoughts? Carom 16:56, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

As an addendum, anyone interested in where I got that information can find it here. Carom 17:02, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

That seems reasonable to me; if that's the way the division was actually named, who are we to argue? ;-) Kirill Lokshin 17:34, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I'll go ahead and move it, then. (But I will, as usual, prepare myself for a firestorm of complaints) Carom 17:36, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

And another question. Are we using "USSR" or "Soviet Union" to disambiguate Soviet units? I'm guessing the latter, but just checking... Carom 02:35, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd go with "Soviet Union"; that seems to be the more common name of the country. (Similarly, "United Kingdom", not "United Kingdom of ...", etc.) Kirill Lokshin 02:39, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Works for me. Carom 02:42, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I'm still pretty new and don't fully understand all the subleties involved in doing the moving correctly. I'm willing to go through the Korean War Military Units and get them done, but to ensure I do it correctly, I have several questions below.

I'd take "U.S. 2nd Infantry Division" and do a page move to "2nd Infantry Division (United States)", then create a new page consisting of a redirect called the original name (U.S. 2nd Infantry Division) which will point to the new, moved page name? Next, I'd probably want to go through the list of pages that used the old link ("What links here"), and edit those to use the new direct link. Is this procedure correct, or am I missing (or misunderstanding) something?

At least as far as the U.S. Military is concerned, should I automatically expand the disambiguation to say "United States Army" or "United States Marine Corps" (or just "U.S. Army" or "U.S. Marine Corps") to avoid any possible future confusion and make the unit name more consistent, so we don't have a bunch of "999th Infantry Division (United States) interpersed with "998th Infantry Division (United States Army)" and "997th Infantry Division (United States Marine Corps)".

How do the aviation units get renamed? Would "336th Fighter Squadron" get moved/renamed as "336th Fighter Squadron (United States Air Force)"? And with the closeness of Marine and Navy units, is is desirable (or neccessary) to disambiguate those as "VMFA-212 (United States Marine Corps)" vs. "VFA-113 (United States Navy)" (I have no idea what all the VFA/VMFA etc. prefaces mean).

Even though Naval ships (usually?) begin with something USS or HMS or whatever, should I also 'standardize' on adding the disambiguation as well, like "USS Boxer (CV-21) (United States Navy)" or "HMCS Sioux (R64) (Canada)" or "HMAS Sydney (1944) (Australia)"?

Finally, and this is more unrelated, there are an awful lot of Chinese and North Korean units that I'm running across that don't have pages yet. I'm thinking about just creating stubs for them, so that as I run across information on which battles they fought in, I can add in that piece of information, and at least build up a more complete stub with the list of that unit's battles. They won't be complete by any means, with the infobox 'stuff' for motto, shoulder patch, etc., but it would at least be a start for (hopefully) other researchers to expand on. Ideas or suggestions? Thanks. wbfergus 13:17, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

1. When you move a page, the old name automatically becomes a redirect to the new name. For example, when I moved British I Corps to I Corps (United Kingdom), the former automatically became a redirect to the latter. However, you do have to manually check all the other redirects and edit them so that they will continue to work.
2. I would recommend only using as much disambiguation as neccessary. Service disambiguators should probably only be used if a numbered unit exists within more than one branch of the military of a particular country.
3. Again, I would only use service disambiguators as neccessary. I don't know about the second part of this question.
4. There shouldn't be any need to add paranthetial disambiguators to warships.
5. By all means create stubs. If you can flesh them out, so much the better. Carom 15:55, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I'll pretty much second everything that Carom said. ;-)

There's no need to preemptively disambiguate by service, as there are really only a handful of cases where the names will overlap within a single country's armed forces; we can handle those on a case-by-case basis without needing to change all the other articles. The same logic applies to ships; the disambiguation is already handled by the ship prefix (USS, HMS, etc.) and the year, so there shouldn't be any overlaps that need further disambiguation.

As far as the VFA/VMFA issue: are the acronym versions the actual names of these units? Or are their official names something else? In either case, there's no need to disambiguate if the actual unit's names are designed to be unique between the services (such as by including "Marine" in the USMC units' names).

As for stubs: please create them if you have some information to use! We definitely have a lot of systemic bias issues as far as our coverage of non-Western militaries is concerned, so getting the groundwork for additional articles would be great. Kirill Lokshin 17:38, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Regarding the VFA/VMFA etc. stuff, in the case of "VMFA-323", the article starts off with "Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 323 (VMFA-323)...". An example of the multitudes of these designations is Category:United States Marine Corps fixed wing squadrons and Category:United States Navy squadrons. To me, the "Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 323 (VMFA-323)" makes more sense, as then I can tell what type of unit it is. I "think" the VMFA-323 part is the unit designator and not the name itself, but not being familar with Marine or Navy units, I don't know. Either way, I'll hold off on those units until somebody with more knowledge of those units can participate, or just leave the renaming to them. wbfergus 17:57, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

That makes sense. I would think that placing the article at Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 323 and leaving the abbreviated form for the article body would be the cleanest solution; but I suppose that we should probably have some people who actually know what the unit's name is take a look at it. It may be worthwhile to copy this particular question to WT:USMIL. Kirill Lokshin 18:13, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Also, 2nd Division shows the problem with 'ground' units. So am I correct in that U.S. 2nd Infantry Division should be renamed to 2nd Infantry Division (United States) and U.S. 2nd Marine Division would become 2nd Marine Division (United States)? Thanks guys, I don't want to muck things up to bad. wbfergus 18:14, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

That looks right. Kirill Lokshin 18:19, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

That's the convention I've been using regarding infantry divisions, etc. In general, I would leave type disambiguators in place, so British 1st Armoured Division becomes 1st Armoured Division (United Kingdom) and British 1st Infantry Division becomes 1st Infantry Division (United Kingdom). Carom 18:22, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay, the 2nd Division is moved and I used AWB for checking the linked pages. Sorry for the overkill, I got carried away. :^) wbfergus 19:41, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Looks good; thanks for helping out with this! Kirill Lokshin 19:43, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay, another dumb question I can't seem to find the answer for. When creating/moving a unit for either North Korea or South Korea, what should I place in the parentheses? "Republic of Korea" or "South Korea" (either way, I'll know how to handle North Korean units). Also, with the Chinese units that fought in the Korean War, they weren't actually part of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), but rather the so-called "volunteers" of the People's Volunteer Army (CPV, or as they were first called, the CCF). Is it desirable to distinguish the apparent differences that would exist between the 4th Infantry Division (CPV) and the 4th Infantry Division (PLA), if such a mis-match actually does exist? Since the CPV forces were created specifically to add a "buffer-zone" between "volunteers" and China's regular military, I think there will be cases where the same unit designator exists in both "armies", but I don't know for sure. Should the PLA units be called something like "4th Infantry Division (China)" or "4th Infantry Division (People's Republic of China)" with any similarly named units from the CPV called "4th Infantry Division (Chinese People's Volunteers)" and conversely for Taiwan, "4th Infantry Division (Taiwan)" or "4th Infantry Division (People's Democratic Republic of China)". Sorry to be such a pest guys. wbfergus 20:09, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I would do something like 4th Infantry Division (Democratic People's Republic of Korea), 4th Infantry Division (Republic of Korea), 4th Infantry Division (People's Republic of China) and 4th Infantry Division (Chinese People's Volunteer Army). If there are better disambiguators, use those, but I would avoid using initialisms like PLA and CPV, as those may not be very informative to a lay reader. Carom 20:31, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Another possibility would be to follow the Wikipedia article names for the countries; our article is at South Korea rather than at Republic of Korea, for example, so it may be more consistent to have something like 4th Infantry Division (South Korea). Kirill Lokshin 22:00, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I just noticed that myself, after creating a couple categories for Republic of Korea, and trying to get them linked under Republic of Korea, and then finding nothing there. So, since it appears almost everything, even non-military, is under South Korea, I'll use that naming convention instead. wbfergus 13:47, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Looking through the renaming logs (much thanks to everyone helping out with this, by the way!), an interesting question comes up: do we need to add the "(Germany)" disambiguator to units that have German elements in the names already (particularly the various "SS" and "Panzer" formations)? I suppose that there might be other countries that would have "Panzer" units (Austria, maybe?); but at least for SS units, I would think the names are going to be very clearly unique even without a country specified. Am I way off here? Kirill Lokshin 19:34, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

No, you're probably right. I would imagine that "SS" units could have the national disambiguator dropped completely. Up to this point, I've been working under the (possibly misguided) assumption that there's a good reason for having the disambiguators in the first place, and just shifting them to the end (with a few exceptions). Carom 21:16, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I followed a link here for posting comments concerning the new, albeit provisional military naming convention adopted for Wikipedia after seeing the 1st Cavalry Division article renamed 1st Cavalry Division (United States). I can understand how this seems to be the best way to make articles more clear concerning their national origin, but I have an objection to doing this specifically for United States military units. Namely, many certain units have part of their name already in parentheses, for example, the 10st Airborne Division is literally 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) and there are others, namely reserve units, which have even longer names. I object to adding for confusion and making the article titles longer by adding {United States) to the end. We're talking about having articles called 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) (United States), 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry) (United States), and the best one, 77th Division (Reinforcement Training Unit) (USAR) (United States)]]. It just seems like it will only complicate matters more, especially for those readers who have no idea what all the other names in parentheses mean. I believe we should just stick with having U.S. ahead of the unit names, for the sake of clarity.--SOCL 16:50, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, the older usage was no less problematic (but in a different case—where "United States" was already elsewhere in the unit name). However, there seems to be a misconception here; the new convention does not require a country-name disambiguator to be attached to the name. There's a general recommendation that unit names which can reasonably be expected to overlap with other countries be preemptively disambiguated, but that's all; the guideline says that "the disambiguator is not necessary in cases where... the name is clearly unique". In other words: so long as someone familiar with the topic wants to make an argument that the 101st's name is clearly unique (which shouldn't be too difficult for a name that's in some complicated form, as it's quite unlikely that other militaries would adopt the same form), there's no problem with leaving off the country disambiguator (although I'd still suggest creating a redirect from it, just in case).

(More generally, the preemptive disambiguation is more intended for the myriad units with simple names like "XVI Corps" and "Second Army" and "12th Infantry Division".) Kirill Lokshin 17:57, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. Complex names probably don't need to be disambiguated, as they are likely unique. Carom 18:22, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Carom, I was going to say this on your talk page, but you directed anyone to make comments here, so I will. I noted that you changed First Army's name after I had already moved it to the new page per the new naming guidelines. The official name is not "First Army," it is "First United States Army," [1] and that's what I changed it to from the original "U.S. First Army," which is obviously not the official name. So I hope you don't take offense to my changing it back. As an aside, I'd already done the same to the rest of the numbered armies for the same reason. --ScreaminEagle 22:35, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Sorry about that - I realized after I moved it. No problem. Carom 22:37, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

No worries--I've already screwed up my fair share in the renaming and am having to go back and fix, so I suppose there's bound to be mistakes in the first days of a mass renaming project, no? --ScreaminEagle 22:46, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Yep - I expect there will be more mistakes by the time we're done (thanks for fixing my screw-up, btw). Carom 22:55, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Here's a question. I have been moving Australian divisions, and Hossen27 pointed out a potential problem: For virtually all of the Austrialian divisional articles, there are seperate articles for WWI and WWII units (for example, 1st Australian Division (World War I) and 1st Australian Division (World War II). What should we do with these? Personally, I think they should all be merged, leaving one article with subsections detailing the various creations of the unit, but I'm open to other suggestions. Carom 04:35, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

They shouldn't be merged they are completely different formations. The World War I units are part of what is known as the First Australian Imperial Force similar to the AEF, but it was a totally regular volunteer force. The First AIF was disbanded after WWI. The WWII units were created during the 1920's and are predominantly Militia units, quite often conscripts on national service. The units share no historic links and share no battle honours. Hossen27 04:37, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Good point. Maybe a different parenthetical should be used - something like 1st Division (Australian Imperial Force) as opposed to 1st Division (Australia)? Carom 04:41, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Yep, disambiguating by the service name, if possible, would probably be the best approach. If that's not possible, we may be able to get away with moving the war name to the end using the "in X" wording that gets applied for the by-country+by-war intersection category names. So you'd have, for example, 1st Division (Australia) in World War I and 1st Division (Australia) in World War II. Kirill Lokshin 04:46, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

No problem calling the WWI div 1st Division (Australian Imperial Force), but maybe 1st Division (First Australian Imperial Force) would be more accurate as there was a Second Australian Imperial Force in WWII, its units don't have any naming problems only one exists of divisions 6 through 9. What would the WWII div be called. Also the problem woth the 1st and 2nd division is that there both have a current formation named that and they two are completely separate from there historic name sakes. Hossen27 04:50, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm afraid that it's not correct to state that Australian WW1 and WW2-era divisions don't share battle honours and it's not at all the case that the two divisions which are currently active have no historical links to the divisions which were active in the World Wars. As an example, the official army history of the Australian 2nd Division at http://www.defence.gov.au/army/AHU/books_articles/Articles/Brief_History_2ndDiv.htm clearly states that the Division was "re-formed in Sydney in Mar 1921" after being disbanded at the end of WW1 and was again "re-raised" in 1951 after being disbanded in 1944 [emphasis added]. The 2nd Division is still an active division and is, in terms of linage, the same division which was first formed as part of the AIF in 1915. As another example, the 8th Brigade's website at: http://www.defence.gov.au/army/HQ8BDE/history.htm lists all the WW1 and WW2 battle honours won by the Brigade and its current battalions and clearly states that the Brigade was re-raised after being disbanded at the end of WW1 and on several subsequent occasions. There was a discussion of the difficulties of dealing with units which formed part of the 1st AIF and were later re-raised as a militia formation at Talk:39th (Militia) Battalion in which it was sort-of agreed that the best option was to combine the articles into a single article (though this is yet to be done). The upshot of all this is that the WW1 and WW2 articles should be merged as per the standard conventions. US Army divisions which started life as volunteer divisions and later became National Guard/reserve divisions don't have seperate pages, and neither should the Australian equivalents. --Nick Dowling 05:56, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh I always thought that the divisional level units had no relation, I was aware of he brigade and battalion sized units continuous histories. But I'm happy to be proven wrong no further problem with the merge. Hossen27 06:58, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Does anyone know whether or not country names are part of the official names for units from former British colonies during WWI and WWII (I'm thinking specifically of Canada and India) - or are they just disambiguators that can be dropped? For example, should it be 11th Indian Infantry Division or can I move it to 11th Infantry Division (India)? Carom 19:55, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

I suspect that the "country" names were probably part of the official naming (to disambiguate between units raised in different places, etc.); but I'm not entirely sure. In many cases, though, the problem will go away on its own, as the units have been re-raised by the now independent countries under simpler names. Kirill Lokshin 20:22, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

The formal names for the "overseas" units were invariably Nth Country Division, as I recall - so, yes, it probably should be 11th Indian Infantry Division (or 11th Indian Division) Shimgray | talk | 01:40, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

OK, per your recommendations, I'm going to move them all to "Nth Country Infantry Division." (or whatever) We'll see if anyone complains. Carom 02:59, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

None of the articles on Indian WWII divisions seem to discuss the divisional history beyond 1945, and I'm not sure if the modern Indian army consider these colonial units part of their lineage or not - I've moved most of them to "Nth Indian Infantry Division," but I can always move them somewhere else, if necessary. Carom 15:06, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure some of the post WWII, higher numbered divisions have/had (I expect not all exist today) a continuous history from WWII (armoured divisions using numbers of WWII armoured divisions etc.). In general I'd also recommend going for the standard system for Commonwealth units, that is to say number-type-size-(country). Though I know at least one (36th Infantry Division (Indian) transferred to the British army in 1944 (using Indian Establishment regiments, battalions etc.)) that could be problematic if its article is ever created. And yes, British divisions (and brigades where applicable) should retain their name in parenthisis, considering how not all divisions have such names I'd also recommend using the (United Kingdom) disambiguation even if that makes for two parenthisis. Some British divisions also lost their name between WWI and WWII (or received a new number), not sure how such should be handled (probably separate articles where no relation exists, single article under most common number and name with redirect under different number and name...).

I don't think I've created any unit articles yet (maybe one or two stubs), but I commonly add wikilinks for units in articles etc. So I've had to deal with these issues a lot lately. I also have my own little order of battle library rangeing from the Napoleonic Wars (can't count Alexander the Great, or medieval army info as orders of battle) to modern times, so I tend to jump in when needed.--Caranorn 22:03, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

To see how much work this would be I just moved the above mentionned 36th Infantry Division (United Kingdom). In this case I didn't have to move too many links as the unit is rather obscure, on the other hand this will cause some havoc the day someone wishes to add information about the post WWII 36th Infantry Division (India) as this is how the unit was raised again at a later time (there already is a wikilink from an Indian post war Corps to this article about a British WWII Division). Any idea how something like this should be handled? Essentially the unit history is continous from Indian service to British and back to Indian (I believe even the Brigade numbers were retained) and unrelated to the WWI British Division of the same number. This example also shows how Indian post WWII units retained traditional numbers and I'd assume maintained unit histories (I was previously aware of one or two Indian Armoured Divisions in that case).--Caranorn 22:44, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

It might be worth creating a simple stub for the other formation (e.g. "X was a division of the Y army, created in Z") at the correct name, which could then be linked to from lists of units and such; that would make it easier for future editors to realize that there are separate articles available for expansion. Kirill Lokshin 22:56, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I've gone through the remainder of the units at Category:Infantry divisions of the United States Army, and have moved all the pages to eliminate the leading "U.S." and instead added the "(United States)" disambiguator. However, as I was doing this, I noticed numerous other pages where the link wasn't changed, like Formations of the United States Army during World War II. So, I would like to offer a suggestion to others who may be (or have contemplated) renaming the military units as well. If at all possible, signup for the AutoWikiBrowser (AWB) at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser. This will allow you find all of the pages of that have a link to the one you just moved, and then go through all of the pages to change the link automatically. I found that it worked best for me if I first went through and did the "Search and Replace" for [[Page I Moved| with a replace of [[Page I Moved it To|, followed by another variation of [[Page I Moved]] with a replace of [[Page I Moved it To|Familar Name, Similar to Old Link]]. The first variation does the replace for all the links that already specify a link alias, and the second one does a replace while specifying a link alias. It's repetitous, but a lot faster and easier than doing it all manually. Care still needs to taken though that you type things in correctly for the replace string, and that you also verify what you are replacing on each page as it scrolls through. I'm afraid I missed a couple, and conversely was "carried away" on my first few passes. Hope this information may help others, so we can avoid the skipped pages with old links. wbfergus 15:39, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

You can also use "What links here" (not that anyone had to point that out to me...). This works best for articles that aren't on a lot of lists, etc. Usually I use it just to fix redirects, but it works for lists and disambig pages as well. Carom 16:06, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I first started out with that link, but I think the first one I tried was the 2nd Infantry Division, and it had over a hundred links, and it seemed like everytime i went back to page they were in a different order and I was getting all confused about where I was at, so I started looking for an easier way to do it. Anyway, I should alos mention that there are two Divisions I didn't do yet, the Americal Division and the U.S. Philippine Division. I'm seriously thinking about moving the Philippine Division to the 12 Infantry Division (United States), as that is what the "official" name is, but I figured I should wait a bit first. What do others think? wbfergus 16:19, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, it doesn't work real well for divisions with lots of links, but I think it might be more efficient for divisions that currently only have a few that need fixing.

You can probably move it to Philippine Division (United States) or just Philippine Division, depending on whether or not you think it likely that another country has (or had) a division with the same name. I wouldn't move it the number, as it appears the "Philippine Division" was a more common designator. Carom 16:30, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Yep, this could go either way. It could be argued that "Philippine Division" was just a nickname, and the numeric designation should be used as being the official one; alternately, it could be argued that the predominance of "Philippine Division" warrants making an exception to the standard use of formal names. I suppose it depends mostly on just how widely used the names are: are they more-or-less equally used, or is "Philippine Division" overwhelmingly the predominant one? Kirill Lokshin 16:58, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps it is time to de-conflict the older guidelines in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (military units) with MILHIST's draft naming convention for military units and formations. The major difference seems to be:

• Wikipedia:Naming conventions (military units) says For articles about a specific headquarters or unit, Prefix the article name with the nationality to avoid possible name clashes: British 6th Airborne Division
• draft naming convention for military units and formations says An article about a military unit or formation should be placed at "Name of unit (optional disambiguator)"

I am not an advocate for either approach, just want to highlight the conflict. Wendell 06:10, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I thought we'd agreed to adopt the new draft - has the page not been updated? Shimgray | talk | 13:14, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Yep, I think we never bothered to do anything with the old draft page. The simplest thing, in my view, would be to just add a {{historical}} tag to it with a note that there are newere guidelines available here; I don't really see much benefit to having the actual guideline duplicated in two places (which will then need to be kept in sync). Kirill Lokshin 17:40, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

13th (Western) Division (United Kingdom): the division was not a United Kingdom division it was a British Army division. The British Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force, paid for by taxes raised by Parliament but they are Monarch's armed forces as is HMG and the ministers in that government who order their deployment. So to use the country designation of United Kingdom is not correct. The name before the move (British 13th (Western) Division) was a much better name. --Philip Baird Shearer 10:24, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Would you consider 13th (Western) Division (Britain) better, or alternatively 13th (Western) Division (British). I don't recall ever seeing the term United Kingdom in relation to British units either, so I'd agree to a change unless that in turn violates other guidelines.--Caranorn 13:08, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

If we're going to do that, it should be 13th (Western) Division (British Army), for consistency; but the distinction seems to be unnecessarily subtle for the general reader. Unlike the English Civil War, there really isn't a practical distinction between the monarch and the state to be drawn here. Kirill Lokshin 14:31, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I think using "United Kingdom" is perfectly correct in this case (although, there is any argument that none of the "K" units need paranthetical disambguation - while there might be more than one 13th Division, it is unlikely that there are multiple 13th (Western) Divisions). I would also argue that we some to be using the "United Kingdom" designator elsewhere (for example, in the lists of participants), and it would make sense to have consistency not only within the article names, but across usages. Carom 14:48, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Regarding naming conventions for Russian and Soviet missiles, I generally agree, that manufacturer's designations should be used for article names instead of NATO reporting names (NATO names should necessarily be mentioned, but inside articles, as they are non-official ones). But as far as I know, design bureau generally does not precede model's name. The official name usually consists of the GRAU designation followed by name (if any) of the weapon, for example, 9K33 Osa. One of the sources where I've just seen such naming is the Great Russian Encyclopedia, published since 2004 by government's publisher (I can find the volume and the page, as well as other online sources, if needed). Cmapm 20:17, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Also I do not think that the provisional guideline Wikipedia:Naming conventions (military units) should be binned, instead the new proposals should be intgergrated into it. There is a lot of information in the Naming conventions (military units) which should be in any new guideline. Like for example that Army numercal designations be described using words and that Corps should use Roman numerals. Also for those who work on World War articles agreeing on the names to use for German units needs to be kept. --Philip Baird Shearer 10:33, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I would say that a better idea would be to pull any useful material from the old guideline here (either to the main guideline, or, for auxiliary material like the German unit names, to the appropriate task force); these pages—even the task force ones—tend to be rather higher-traffic than out-of-the-way guideline pages, which most editors don't even know about. Kirill Lokshin 14:31, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually, going through it in more detail, much of the material is redundant to the "use the official name" principle, and/or shouldn't be in a naming convention in the first place:

• "General conventions" - basically redundant, although the point about giving foreign-language names in the first sentence needs to be carried over. There's a whole bunch of stuff there about links that's already covered by the relevant MoS pages, and a little bit of material about abbreviated names that might work as a general guideline on short forms (but isn't a naming convention, as it doesn't apply to article titles).
• "Units that were redesignated, upgraded, reorganized, or reconstituted" - common sense, and not a naming convention.
• "Units and headquarters" - redundant to the main principle.
• "Type designations" - the German & Soviet materials are useful, and can be carried over to the relevant task forces. The British and US ones are basically redundant with the dialect-variations MoS.

So there's not all that much that's useful now. As the whole point of the new convention is that we let each country's armed forces figure out what the names should be, there's no need to maintain lists of how different unit sizes should be named, as it's basically no longer our job to decide what naming form to use. Kirill Lokshin 16:52, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Kirill most of the moves for things The Parachute Regiment->The Parachute Regiment (British Army)->The Parachute Regiment (United Kingdom), has been sparked by you and some others who had been working on US units not liking the previous standard. But if a unit in the British Army needs disambiguation them the usual way to do this is to place British before the unit name. I think that this is new proposed standard is creating as much of HA for name of British units as you though existed for American units before the proposed change. --Philip Baird Shearer 20:43, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

But what's the actual (practical) problem here? Is the issue the UK/British Crown distinction? It would be easy to create a blanket exception for British units in that case; we could just use "(British Army)" (or anything else you prefer) in place of "(United Kingdom)". But the usual way to disambiguate articles in Wikipedia is to add parenthesized disambiguators, not adjective prefixes; so I don't believe that it's very useful to insist on a different approach just for military units (of a particular country, no less) merely out of habit. Kirill Lokshin 20:51, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

FWIW, the reason I supported it was I couldn't stand seeing all the anachronistic "British 21st Brigades" and so on floating around, all of which had to be laboriously piped in running text, so chalk one for the other side ;-). "British XYZ" is not the name; "XYZ (British)" is not the name either, but it's clearer that the name is XYZ and "British" is an identifier, to distinguish it from things like the Canadian formations (where the national prefix is often part of the name). It makes a lot more sense to me to do it this way.

As to (United Kingdom) over (British Army)... well, it's simpler. Whilst it isn't precisely accurate with regards to the legal status of the units, it's not wrong - they are indeed of or pertaining to the United Kingdom - and it allows us consistency with other disambiguators (which usually use a country title) as well as meaning we don't have to have have three or four different disambiguating suffixes. Shimgray | talk | 20:58, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Krill it is not a practical problem it is an aesthetic one, they are "British Paras" not "Paras (UK)". Shimgray your argument is easily taken care of by redirects. I have when necessary set up pages like English Interregnum but at the same time created a redirect of Interregnum (England) so that I can use the pipe trick Interregnum. Besides the typical first use of a British Army unit would usually be written British 7th Armoured Brigade (as it is in the Burma Campaign article) of course if there is no other 7th Armoured Brigade in an article then from then on it would be 7th Armoured Brigade but would not be linked again. I can not see anyone writing 7th Armoured Brigade (United Kingdom) as an initial link although they might type British 7th Armoured Brigade, but it involves more typing (British and (United Kingdom)) and it breaks "WP:NC" which says:

Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature.

--Philip Baird Shearer 22:07, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, aesthetics are obviously a somewhat subjective issue; I don't know that we can come up with any convention that will satisfy everyone in that regard.

As far as the linking is concerned, though, I don't think that we're working at a loss here; while certain wordings may involve a longer link syntax (due to appending the disambiguator), others will allow a shorter one, because the piped-link disambiguation-hider syntax works as expected now. For example, suppose we want to write

Several units of the British XVII Corps—including the 7th Infantry Division, the 12th Infantry Division, the 2nd Armoured Brigade, and the 5th Armoured Brigade—crossed the river.

In the old form, this would be written as

Several units of the [[British XVII Corps]]—including the [[British 7th Infantry Division|7th Infantry Division]], the [[British 12th Infantry Division|12th Infantry Division]], the [[British 2nd Armoured Brigade|2nd Armoured Brigade]], and the [[British 5th Armoured Brigade|5th Armoured Brigade]]—crossed the river.

while in the new form, it would be

Several units of the [[XVII Corps (United Kingdom)|British XVII Corps]]—including the [[7th Infantry Division (United Kingdom)|]], the [[12th Infantry Division (United Kingdom)|]], the [[2nd Armoured Brigade (United Kingdom)|]], and the [[5th Armoured Brigade (United Kingdom)|]]—crossed the river.

Or, somewhat more trivially, note that

[[British 17th Armoured Regiment|17th Armoured Regiment]]

is actually longer than

[[17th Armoured Regiment (United Kingdom)|]]

(Obviously, the difference is more significant for other countries, since "United Kingdom" is one of the longer disambiguators. But, generally, situations where links need to be given without having the country display in the rendered text will involve less typing in the new syntax than in the old one.) Kirill Lokshin 23:00, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

There are some inconsistencies between writing 2d or 2nd and 3d or 3rd and so on with the numbered units. Did we ever reach a consensus on which format should be used, or should I just let it go? --ScreaminEagle 02:31, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, it should be whatever format is used by the armed forces in question (or by published historians, for translated numbers). My guess is that this will mostly be 1st/2nd/3rd. Kirill Lokshin 03:14, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Did we come to a consensus on whether or not German Panzer divisions, etc. need a country disambiguation? Carom 00:23, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I suspect they'll need disambiguation because of overlaps with Austrian and post-WWII German units. Germany, for example, still has armoured divisions; I'm not entirely sure if they're still called "Panzer" units, though. Kirill Lokshin 00:30, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I checked it out, and it appears that the Bundeswehr also user "Panzer" - should we use "Wehrmacht" and "Bundeswehr" to disambiguate? Or "Nazi Germany" and "Germany"? Or something else? Personally I'm in favor of using the services, but I'm not picky. And should other German units (whether they overlap or not) be moved for consistency? Carom 00:51, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

The service names are probably the better approach here. As far as everything else: I wouldn't complicate the disambiguation any more than necessary; the common ones should be disambiguated, but renaming the entire vast mass of WWII units to account for the handful of current ones doesn't seem particularly sensible. Kirill Lokshin 01:46, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I'll go through and compare a list of modern units to a list of WWII units and disambiguate the ones that overlap. Everything else that uses a parenthetical will just be "Germany". Carom 01:53, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Make it Wehrmacht. Nazi Germany isn't quite the right approach because in Nazi Germany there was also the old Reichswehr with for some time(They had kind of tank units out of cardboard and mounted on bikes). Wandalstouring 01:57, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Excellent. It looks like there are three Panzer divisions (which I've alread done) and three Panzergrenadier divisions that will need disambiguating (probably others as well, but that's for starters). Carom 02:08, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Ukrainian military task force

A new military task force is being organized. We are interested at this point in Ukrainian Cossacks. There is only one article done so far (Battle of Konotop), but more are planned. If interested in participating, please drop me a line. --Hillock65 18:03, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I have talked with one other individual and we would probably do an article on Cossack Polish wars of 1648 - 1654, the ones that haven't been covered yet, maybe this one (pl:Bitwa pod Żółtymi Wodami, uk:Битва під Жовтими Водами). There is no English version as far as I know, and even those two need serious improvement.--Hillock65 20:40, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

The scope and the title don't match. Could you correct this? Interested editors should sign up below. Wandalstouring 19:57, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

It would probably be easiest to just consider the scope to be "everything that's reasonably part of Ukranian military history" (as we've done with similar task forces). Obviously, the Cossacks are a major part of this; but I suspect that Hillock was only expressing his own interests, not meaning to limit the scope of the task force to that topic specifically. :-) Kirill Lokshin 20:28, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

If I am correct (please tell me if I am wrong), would the military history of Ukraine all ready be included in the Russian and Soviet task force as well as the Polish taskforce as Ukraine was under Polish, Russian and Soviet domination for many centuries and only got it's independence 17 years ago. Kyriakos 09:51, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

It would certainly overlap quite a bit with the surrounding task forces; but there are a lot of things which are either uniquely Ukranian (e.g. the Cossacks) or considered part of Ukraine's military heritage (e.g. Kievan Rus') that could be worked on. Provided that there are enough editors who have an interest specifically in focusing on "Ukranian" military history, I see no reason for the overlap to be a major concern. Kirill Lokshin 17:32, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

We can simply redefine the R&S task force's boundaries to not include Ukraine any more. Buckshot06 04:36, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

That would be unpleasantly messy, I think; even if we manage to dance around the Kievan Rus' issue (which is a major debate in its own right), the Ukranian SSR is clearly part of Soviet military history. In general, I would suggest that having overlaps between task forces—particularly national task forces—is much more doable in practice than opening ourselves up to continual debates over which task force some disputed historical topic "belongs to". Kirill Lokshin 04:41, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

The USSR task force works. --Ineffable3000 04:43, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Useful?

• US Army Command and General Staff College's Combat Studies Institute More PDF's primarily about the US Military and it's development in addition to studies on foreign battles. It's in English and it's free.

• US Army's Army Heritage Collection Online Check out the digital resources online. There are many field manuals and technical manuals for American equipment, a British-American "dictionary" dating from WWII, a similar German-American dictionary, and other resources broken down (generally) by era. Most resources are in PDF format and some are rather large.

Certainly useful, thanks a lot. Bukvoed 09:15, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Comments on Talk:Pontic Greek Genocide

Please could people leave their comments at Talk:Pontic Greek Genocide in order to achieve and improve consensus. It is tangentially related to Military history. - Francis Tyers · 12:20, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I answered your question. Please take a look at what wikipedia is and what not. Furthermore stop all attacks on basis of political POV. Wandalstouring 13:58, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

A different reference style

Take a look at British African-Caribbean community. "Cref" is used there, reducing the amount of text inserted into the article. This is very useful for complex citations. Example

Note ^ my finger: is typing this see also [2] and
Wandalstouring 15:42, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

It might be useful (in moderation!) in particular cases; but, as it produces a significantly longer note marking in the text, it tends to be overwhelming on an article with a high density of citations. Compare, for example:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.¹² Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.¹³ Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.¹⁴ Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.¹⁵

with

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.^green Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.^blue Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.^orange Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.^purple

(This aside from the fact that it's not actually a citation style that's found anywhere outside Wikipedia; it'll be somewhat baffling to people seeing it for the first time.) Kirill Lokshin 16:17, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I think it might have some usefulness, but I would echo Kirill's concerns about putting it into general use, particularly the last point. Carom 17:03, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

War in Somalia

Could members of Milhist join the discussion at Talk:War in Somalia (2006 - present)? Please make a decision on the name of this war. --TheFEARgod (Ч) 11:43, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Mass renaming of by-country battle/war/siege/operation categories

As the previous nomination (for Category:Sieges by country) has now been closed, I've put up a new mass nomination at CFD (as discussed above) to rename everything to "X involving Y". Comments there would be very appreciated (as would assistance with putting {{cfr}} tags on all of the categories)! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 05:26, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

All the categories are now tagged; comments on the nomination are still welcome, of course! Kirill Lokshin 08:10, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

And more comments might still be helpful, if anyone hasn't dropped by yet! :-) Kirill Lokshin 17:18, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Another reminder, for anyone that hasn't stopped by. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 22:01, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Nomination guidelines

I feel like imposing some nomination guidelines would help avoid lots of strange requests for article evaluation that came to my attention within the last days. I suggest that every article must have a peer review first. In this peer review it can be suggested to make a GA, A-class or FA request. If none is suggested the article can only rise through our normal process. Stub, start, B-class, than GA, or taking two steps at once, A-class and from A-class only to FA (except it was agreed in a previous review to recommend this). At the time an article is nominated for a classifying review it should at least be stable without major changes for three(GA,A-class) to seven(FA) days. Wandalstouring 13:06, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Aside from the practical issue of how we can enforce hard rules like this, I don't really think that requiring a set path is going to be helpful in all cases. There are certainly some experienced editors who could manage to take an article straight to FAC, skipping peer review, and attain FA status without major problems; while peer reviews are generally helpful, I think it would be inappropriate for us to try and penalize our best writers for skipping them! ;-)

(Not that encouraging people to submit peer reviews is a bad idea, of course; but merely that our stance on this should, indeed, be gentle encouragement, rather than attemts to twist people's arms.)

As an aside: I don't think there's any real benefit to having an A-Class review explicitly recommend FAC. It's sort of assumed that, once any problems mentioned there are fixed, the article stands a pretty decent chance at an FA nomination. Kirill Lokshin 15:44, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

On the other hand everybody who thinks he is one of our best writers... What about an article being actually stable when entering such a review? Wandalstouring 17:01, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

I think genuine instability (by which I mean disputes or edit wars over the content) is obviously a bad thing. Having said that, we need to be careful to not discourage improvements (particularly copyediting) during the nomination process; if wording and style changes are being made to an article, that's usually not a bad thing, and quite common in such circumstances. Kirill Lokshin 17:08, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

If an article gets completly reconstructed by some editors it is likely the worst approach of a third party to nominate it for FA or any other review. That's my point about stability. "At the time an article is nominated for a classifying review it should at least be stable without major changes for three(GA,A-class) to seven(FA) days." If this is not the case the editors themselves don't seem to be satisfied with the work and consider some parts to miss information or that it could else be improved. Just wait until a degree of satisfaction has been achieved with an article before running wild with nominations. Naturally there is no reason to object editing while an article is in review and suggestions are made or edits shortly after review nomination when someone discovered errors, stylistic issues, etc. Wandalstouring 18:49, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Meh. I suppose it's a valid sentiment; but, again, I would be wary of trying to be unnecessarily legalistic about this. The "instability" of an article may reflect deeper problems with it, or it may just be a consequence of perfectionist copyediting; the two cases should, I think, be regarded somewhat differently. Kirill Lokshin 18:59, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

How many perfectionists do we have who make major changes to an article every three to seven days? Wandalstouring 19:15, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

That depends on how you define "major", I suppose. It's not uncommon for editors to go through and copyedit an article immediately before a FAC nomination (or, more precisely, nominate an article on FAC once they're satisfied with the copyedit), though, and I think we need to distinguish that case from genuine "major changes" that affect the content of the article. Kirill Lokshin 19:18, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Goguryeo-Sui Wars or Goguryeo-China Wars

Full discussion in Talk:Goguryeo-China wars.

Yug has renamed Goguryeo-Sui Wars to Goguryeo-China Wars, because he wants to include later Tang-Silla invasions of Baekje-Goguryeo, which I think is really a separate war. It doesn't make sense, because if you call it Goguryeo-China Wars, the article should include all wars between Goguryeo and China, including the wars against the Four Han Colonies, all the way through Goguryeo's fall. The article as-is, is not about that, it's really about the war between Goguryeo and the Sui Dynasty, which itself is a major, specific topic that should have its own article. If he wants to create another article on the Tang-Silla invasions of Baekje-Goguryeo, that's fine, but don't hijack an existing article on a different topic. Please see and say what you think about it. Thank you. OpieNn 19:45, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

I seen It. I suspect Pro-korean position but that also may be an user with more knowledge than me. Please go to the main talk page. Every opinion are welcome. Yug (talk) 20:02, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Commented on article's talk page. Kirill Lokshin 20:20, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Advice on naming conventions

Would those working on military history have any advice for naming conventions for earthquakes? I've attempted to find guidance at WP:NAME, but haven't found anything yet. My specific question is whether an event should be identified by: (a) common name; (b) minimal name unless disambiguation required; (c) standard convention such as date and year? Earthquakes can generally be located specifically and unambigously by location and year (though very famous earthquakes may have a well-known popular name). The case in question is 1356 Basel earthquake, which recently got moved to Basel earthquake. My instinct is that the former is more usual, as the year is what people are often referring to, just as much as the location. What do people here think? Carcharoth 00:46, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

It's not entirely relevant to the project, but our convention or battles, etc. has generally been not to add unnecessary disambiguators. That is, if there was only one earthquake at Basel, it should probably be Basel earthquake. If there were more than one earthquake, we tend to use paranthetical disambiguators, and the article in question would become Basel earthquake (1356). Carom 01:24, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually, for historical articles, parenthetical disambiguation is less common than putting the date at the front of the article. See Category:Earthquakes in the United States for modern examples. Considering hurricanes, see 1893_Sea_Islands_Hurricane, 1893 Chenier Caminanda Hurricane, 1898 Windward Islands Hurricane, 1899 Hurricane San Ciriaco. These tend to be events that occurred before modern naming systems evolved, and the most consistent historical naming convention has been to use <YEAR> <LOCATION> <HURRICANE>. More and more, I see that Military History naming conventions probably don't apply, but thanks again for the advice. Carcharoth 04:03, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I think there's a major difference here in that hurricanes, disasters, etc. are commonly referred to by year (as the well-known ones tend to be isolated events), whereas battles and wars almost never are (because a lot of them tend to happen around the same time). Something like "the 1356 earthquake" is probably meaningful; "the 1356 battle" is probably not. Kirill Lokshin 04:07, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Funnily enough I asked this at the Hurricanes WikiProject, see here, and got the opposite answer. My view is that 1356 earthquake and Basel earthquake are equally appropriate names (it is notable for being the major earthquake from 1356 that is known and studied today, and it is notable for being the major earthquake in the history of Basel), but in fact it is referred to in the literature as the 1356 Basel earthquake. You might start talking to someone about the Basel earthquake, and they might look blank for a moment, wondering if there has been some big disaster in Basel, and then they would go, "Oh, you mean the 1356 Basel earthquake!". Do you see the point I am trying to make here? Even if the convention is generally "not to add unnecessary disambiguators", that convention sometimes misses the point about how things are named. Anyway, thanks for the advice. Carcharoth 03:57, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Just to (really) end the thread, in case anyone here is interested in naming conventions of this sort, I requested a move and started discussion at Talk:Basel earthquake. Carcharoth 01:05, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

A-Class review for Battle of Edson's Ridge now open

The A-Class review for Battle of Edson's Ridge is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 02:46, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

A-Class review for F-105 Thunderchief now open

The A-Class review for F-105 Thunderchief is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 02:46, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

A-Class review for F-84 Thunderjet now open

The A-Class review for F-84 Thunderjet is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 02:46, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Cleaning up the military personnel categories - part 1

Okay, getting back to the (repeatedly buried) question of bringing some order to Category:Military personnel and the entire tree under it, I'd like to propose that we start off with two more-or-less obvious sets of mergers:

1. Category:Military veterans and its children. There's no reason why military service should be treated any differently from any other status (we don't have anything like Category:Former politicians or Category:Retired scientists); these should all be merged back into the proper "military personnel" categories. Assuming that the Category:People by war renaming is followed all the way down, these would be renamed as Category:Korean War veterans to Category:Military personnel of the Korean War, and so forth.
2. Category:Soldiers and its children. There's potential for a set of "enlisted personnel" categories, but these are currently being used as generic synonyms for "military personnel" (e.g. Catgory:Field Marshals being a sub-category of Category:Soldiers. I suggest that we simply merge all of these to the associated "military personnel" category, except for the ones where the distinction is already present, which could be renamed to simply use "enlisted personnel" in place of "soldiers".

Comments? Kirill Lokshin 22:03, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Both of those work for me. Carom 23:15, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Such a veteran categories may be useful in dealing with later symptoms of a military experience while military personnel is more limited to active duty. The idea behind such a veteran category would be to provide info on people affected by their military experience in later life. This phenomen is less eminent with other professions. Naturally everybody who was in the military can be listed in the category military personnel. The veteran category is used for people where we have anything of encyclopedic importance to say about military experience influencing their post-military life. Take Erich Maria Remarque who was a simple soldier (like most males of his age) but wrote influential books(All Quiet on the Western Front,Arch of Triumph or Three Comrades (novel)). Wandalstouring 13:55, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Mmm, even if something like that is useful, is "veterans" the best name for it? Based on past experience, I suspect we're going to see it used interchangeably with the regular "military personnel" categories, which will just create a redundant category scheme. Kirill Lokshin 19:22, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Firearm cartridge infobox

Looking over the large list of cartridge articles, I think it might be prudent to create an infobox for them. Any ideas as to what sort of information they should contain? --Eyrian 23:27, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Weaponry task force#Firearm cartridge infobox. Kirill Lokshin 23:38, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Two task force ideas

Throwing these out for discussion, as I've noticed that we don't have any good place to coordinate work in these areas:

1. Scandinavian (or Nordic) military history. This would presumably cover Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland(?), and Iceland(?).
2. South American (or Latin American) military history. This could cover either region; South America would be somewhat more limited, but also somewhat easier to work with as it would be a purely geographic definition.

Any interest in either of these? Or any other comments? Kirill Lokshin 04:53, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I've been thinking about the Scandanavian task force lately and I intrested in it and I think there are enough members intrestyed in the subject. Kyriakos 05:07, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

There is a need for a Scandinavian task force this area has a long military history and theres a few editors from there floating around. Those are the countries i count as Scandinavia. On the South America/Latin America task force they should be separate the main problem is the number of editors not sure how many but it isn't a lot. Hossen27 05:10, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Start to check some topics within the scope of these taskforces whether you find a very active editor and invite him. Wandalstouring 20:41, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

A Nordic task force might be a good idea, and I'm surely not the only one noticing that it was "missing" from the list. Regarding the name, I would personally prefer "Scandinavia" myself, but since there has been a minor dispute regarding the proper definition of this region, simply sticking to "Nordic" might be better. This will also mean that Finland, Iceland, the Faroes will be included. The latter two hardly have any military history, but anyway. The term Nordic will effectively also include Greenland, although some might see this a stretching the definition a bit. The Nordic dimension could naturally also be included by calling the parameter "Scandinavian-task-force" and use "Scandinavian/Nordic military history task force" as the actual text, but this term is a bit cumbersome. But the Scandinavian / Nordic material is seriously underdeveloped so it will be wonderful if anybody will help out there. Alas, I haven't got the time myself. Valentinian ^{(talk) / (contribs)} 22:24, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

And the remark about the "long military history" is definitely true. Both Denmark-Norway and Sweden were strongly militarised and fought numerous wars - most importantly with each other. One of my old professors went so far as to say that "If you draw up a list of Europe's four most militarised countries in the 17th century, you will end up with Russia, Prussia, Sweden and Denmark." That remark might have been half in jest, but there is a lot of potential material here, and the already existing is rather badly covered. Valentinian ^{(talk) / (contribs)} 22:49, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

If the task force is going to be made I think that it should include Iceland, Greenland and the Faroes because the Vikings and or Nordic peoples where the first people to colonize these places apart from the natives. As for the Latin American task force I think that it would be possible if a number of people whose intrest are that area are found. I try and find some later tonight. Kyriakos 10:44, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Support for a Danish, Faroese, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish task force with comments:

• The wars prior to the formation of the Kalmar Union can be characterized as Scandanavian civil wars, or as viking.
• Any conflicts after the breakup of the Kalmar Union had a more international flavor. They tended to center around the Baltic and included Russia, Poland, and various German principalities.
• Finland should be included since between 1249–1809 it was subsumed by Sweden, only to become a Grand Duchy of Russia from 1809–1917. So the term Nordic may be a better choice since Finland's inclusion in Scandanavia has sometimes been controversial.
• The Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland were long Norwegian, even when Norway fell under the Danish-Norwegian union. Although the Treaty of Kiel in 1814 terminated the Danish-Norwegian union, when Norway came under the rule of the King of Sweden, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland remained as possessions of Denmark. Their history in most of the historic military period is arguably Scandanavian and certainly Nordic.
• Although there is a long dicussion what is Scandanavian, areas like Scandinavian literature have already accepted this set of countries as the correct one. So whether you call it Scandanavia or Nordic, there is some merit to the task force.
• There is still significant work to be done in Nordic wars...
• Skål - Williamborg (Bill) 15:52, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

I would be interrested to at least check by on the talk page and discuss a thing or two of such a task force. I do regularly write articles on stuff related to Swedish/Nordic military history so I guess I would benefit from having a task force where I can find other users with the same interrest. Regarding the name; even though Scandinavia arguably is a more commonly used term, Nordic would be more correct. – Elisson • T • C • 21:19, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

That seems decent enough. I've gone ahead and created a page for the Nordic military history task force; interested editors are invited to sign up! :-) Kirill Lokshin 21:54, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

I left some messages at WikiProjects Peru, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay asking if anyone was intrested in helping support this task forces creation. We'll have to wait and see if we get a response. Kyriakos 11:08, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I hope this is the correct place to request for the new taskforce. I would like start a task force for Military History of Myanmar/Burma. Any suggestion? Okkar 19:11, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd certainly be up for joining a Southeast Asian task force, as I've done a bit with Thailand and Vietnam, and my current work on Ryukyu could, arguably, count as well. But just Burma/Myanmar? Well, let's see how much support it gets. Surprise me ^_^ LordAmeth 19:26, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I would have thought that a somewhat broader Southeast Asia group—covering, presumably, Burma/Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia?, etc.—would be more workable (both because of the low numbers of editors involved and because the military histories of the countries there are very heavily intertwined). Kirill Lokshin 19:55, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd be happy to contribute for the broader Southeast Asia Group, especially in the historical parts and battles of Thailand, India, Cambodia 'etc. even though my main area of knowledge is Burma/Myanmar. So Southeast Asia Group it is then :-) Okkar 23:41, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

A-Class review for F-105 Thunderchief needs attention

A few more editors are needed to complete the A-Class review for F-105 Thunderchief; please stop by and help review the article! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 01:23, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

A-Class review for F-84 Thunderjet needs attention

A few more editors are needed to complete the A-Class review for F-84 Thunderjet; please stop by and help review the article! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 01:23, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Symbol for captured commanders in infoboxes

There's a discussion starting at Template talk:POW about finding a good symbol to use for captured commanders in {{Infobox Military Conflict}}; apparently the symbol currently there has font rendering issues for some editors. Comments and ideas would be very welcome! Kirill Lokshin 07:03, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 23:05, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Maintaining FA-status

Does anyone know how many votes on FARC it takes for a current Featured Article to remain Featured? So far I am the only one to have cast a vote on the USS Wisconsin FARC page, but I have a feeling we need more than just one. TomStar81 (Talk) 03:17, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure, but I suspect that it remains featured in the absence of an explicit consensus to de-feature it. Kirill Lokshin 03:42, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Well now we have a tie at 1:1, with one threatened remove vote looming for "lack of adequate citations". Needless to say, now I am panicy... TomStar81 (Talk) 21:05, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Very curious. I wonder if it might not be worthwhile to add some discussion of canonical sources to our reference guidelines, for the benefit of people who don't seem to understand what they are. Kirill Lokshin 21:18, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

That seems like it might be a good idea. Carom 21:58, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm down with it. TomStar81 (Talk) 00:28, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

• I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who commented/suggested on the FAR page for Wisconsin; it cleared FAR yesterday, thus remaining a featured article. TomStar81 (Talk) 21:22, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Battle of Diu

I moved Battle of Diu to Battle of Diu (1509). Links now need to be changed. --Ineffable3000 06:04, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Great Britain

Can we please use the term Great Britain as opposed to Britain. The word 'Great' is NOT a term of aggrandizement but one of geography. Thankyou. An increasingly cross Raymond Palmer 16:52, 30 December 2006 (UTC) 16:49, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

What usages are you referring to? Carom 17:32, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I was specifically talking about infoboxes. Raymond Palmer 20:47, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I suspect this is caused by simple carelessness in using a somewhat informal term, rather than some purposeful attempt at making a distinction between the two. :-) Kirill Lokshin 20:54, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I would agree with Kirill - I suspect that most editors don't see much of a distinction between "Great Britain" and "Britain," and that use of the latter is not due to any widespread belief that "Great" is an unnecessary term of aggrandizement. Carom 21:18, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

A-Class review for Operation Linebacker II now open

The A-Class review for Operation Linebacker II is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 18:26, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

A-Class review for B-17 Flying Fortress now open

The A-Class review for B-17 Flying Fortress is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 20:02, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Notability standards

Apparently someone has started another discussion about notability standards for military personnel. I have no idea if it'll go anywhere productive; for the time being, I've left a pointer to our existing guideline there, so anyone interested might want to keep an eye on how the discussion proceeds. Kirill Lokshin 20:06, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Tagging for citations

Just a general comment: if you are taking the time to read through an article, please take the time to paste in {{fact}} tags where you feel they are necessary. These are immensely helpful to the primary contributors to the article (facts and statements can seem obvious and not needing a citation to someone very familiar with the subject matter, an outside look is very beneficial) and can accelerate growth towards A/FA status. Happy New Year everybody! - Emt147 ^Burninate! 22:58, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Yet another CFD

And no sooner did "Wars of Africa" get renamed than it winds up listed for renaming again! It's a rather complicated case, and I'm not at all sure what the best solution is; any comments or suggestions would be very welcome! Kirill Lokshin 03:24, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

A-Class review for Operation Linebacker II needs attention

A few more editors are needed to complete the A-Class review for Operation Linebacker II; please stop by and help review the article! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 17:35, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

The Rat and the Monster

The articles for the Landkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte and the Landkreuzer P. 1500 Monster have been recreated despite previous AFD consensus that there is no sufficient data to prove their existence. I am still not seeing a shred of credible scholarly evidence, and would like to request assistance from experts on the topic to rid the encyclopedia of their presence once and for all, or failing that, providing a credible military historian's view on the rumored project. --Agamemnon2 20:48, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Do you have a link to the previous AfD discussion? Carom 21:34, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Do we have any credible source for the technical data? There is lots of crap in the internet about technical feats of the Nazis. Wandalstouring 23:12, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I took a look through some of the books in my personal library and I couldn't locate any concrete mention of either vehicle, and I certainly can't find any techinical specs. None of the weblinks provided in the article seem to meet the definition of a reliable source, and I'd be interested to see what sources were used to defend the article at the previous AfD. Carom 23:30, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/P-1000 and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/P-1500 for earlier discussions. Shimgray | talk | 01:35, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Shimgray. After looking over the previous debates, I tend to agree that both articles are, at this point in time, unverifiable. While it's fairly obvious that the German military entertained all sorts of incredible projects, I can;t find any reference to these specifically. The best I can do is oblique references to tanks larger than the Tigers, but these are probably the Panzer VII and VIII, both of which are verifiable. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that, at some point, the Germans had looked at something similar to the P 1000 or P 1500, but I think that, at this point, they should probably be deleted as unverifiable, with no prejudice against recreation if someone can produce a reliable source. Carom 02:00, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

There is, however, a mention of an upcoming book in the P-1000 talkpage, that apparently features the tank. However, the Amazon page for said book left me unimpressed on the scholarly value of said work. Logically, the easiest way to prove the existence of the P-1000 would be to find this mythical turret they supposedly installed as a gun battery in Norway. Another way would be to crunch the numbers for mass, size and ground pressure, which I suspect would prove the absolute impossibility of the design. --Agamemnon2 09:41, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I did some hasty number crunching, and came up with ground pressure in the range of 2200 to 2800 PSI. --Agamemnon2 10:05, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

There were huge German tank design for clearing minefields(Minenräumwagen B I, Minenräumwagen B II, Schwimm Minenräumwagen Ente, Minenräumpanzer Räumer) using their incredible mass. Naturally you could mount a gun on it. Such big designs would only make sense if you wanted ground vehicles with an increased capability to withstand aerial attacks and infantry missiles. They would be very unlikely to be driving around(remember how low on fuel the Wehrmacht was), more like a moveable fortress. Perhaps someone made up a story from some fancy ideas. Wandalstouring 22:22, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

A story, yes, but that's all it is until someone can dig up one shred of evidence. The fact that there are technical specs being quoted in the articles indicates there should be some primary source from whence such specs would be derived, yet none has been produced. --Agamemnon2 23:51, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I Smell a Ratte!

The Ratte is an entirely fictional creation of one Zack_Parsons for Something Awful. The very fact it is mentioned in a book entitled My Tank is Fight! should have been the first clue. Which, if you (Click me) and scroll down, is described as;

...a humorous pulp-history look at more than 20 unusual or insane inventions of the Second World War. Each chapter features a detailed examination of the real history and technology behind each invention and all 19 chapters are linked by fictional narratives. The book is also lavishly illustrated, with 18 full-color illustrations by Josh Hass, and more than two dozen detailed black and white illustrations by Mike Doscher. My Tank is Fight! is not a dry analysis of the forgotten weapons of war, it brings those weapons to life.

Scroll down a bit more and you'll find out that;

My Tank is Fight" is an upcoming book from Something Awful and Kensington Publishing. Zack Parsons is adapting and expanding his series of articles that look at the most bizarre inventions of the Second World War with a generous portion of humor. Detailed black and white illustrations by artist Mike Doscher and lush color artwork from Josh Hass will bring these ridiculous inventions to life. Many of these strange inventions have never been professionally illustrated before!

* The P. 1000 "Ratte" - A German super tank so large that it used a cruiser turret with two huge naval cannons.

When the Ratte article was first posted on SA, I sent Parsons a note asking- why only two 280 mm guns? Why not a full turret with 3?! To which he replied, That would have just been ridiculous. I got pretty much the same reaction when I suggested that the Ratte be added to the Blitkrieg2 mod for Command & Conquer: Generals. C'est la guerre:(--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 10:13, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Um. The SA articles date to (I think) 2004. The Achtung Panzer page dates to 1999 (May 4 1999 archive copy; other dates). I don't think we can reasonably attribute invention to Parsons here. Shimgray | talk | 17:14, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

As the Achtung Panzer page seems to be the root source, I've emailed its author to see if he can remember anything about the source. Will let you know. Shimgray | talk | 17:23, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

On Murphy's laws of combat needing cleanup help

This article was recently put up on AFD and reached no concensus, but is in need of TLC. IMHO, should be moved to List of Murphy's laws of combat, and still needs plenty TLC. (hint, hint) <G>

I'm pretty sure some of the attributions cited will actually be quotes some of the readers here will know the source for, etc. At least the list is amusing. I'm partial to #34 and #36 in particular.

There is also an 'unwise' (borne out of frustration perhaps for all the HUGE amounts of TLC needed, perhaps) to merge it with Murphy's Law which would certainly be mixing in bad oranges with some decent apples, so to speak. The discussion on that is here. A quick vote and/or comment on that would be appreciated, these in-your-face tags tend to hang around too darned long. Happy New Year All! // FrankB 05:50, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

That survived AfD? Wow. —Kevin 13:47, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

It is one of the many offsprings of Murphy's law and it should be mentioned in this article. I don't think it necessary to list it in full detail here, the external link is enough. Wandalstouring 22:09, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Canadian Seaforth Highlanders

Hi. Dropped by here because I'd just been at the Seaforth Highlanders page to see if they had anything on the Vancouver Seaforths; this branched off expecting there to be an article on their impressive chateau-style armoury on Burrard Street at 1st in Kitsilano. There was no mention of them on the Scottish Seaforths page so, although I left a remark there, fielding this here in the hopes someone might take up the sword, or whatever, and write up at least some stubs on the various regiments in BC; or is there a Canadian branch of this Wikiproject? The Beatty Street Armoury (...the Princess Pats or the British Columbia Rifles, or is that the same thing) and the armoury in New West, others in North Van and so on, and their regiments; none have articles that I can find (adding templates to the Vancouver WikiProject, y'see, and catting any articles I find that need same.)Skookum1 09:55, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

We do have a Canadian military history task force that would probably be a good place to ask for such things. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 13:51, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you; I just happened to find The Seaforth Highlanders of Canada a few minutes ago and stopped by to say so. I'll also add a "see also" to the main Seaforth Highlanders page.Skookum1 03:30, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

List of aircraft carrier deployments

I came across this article while browsing. Is there anything that can be done to salvage it? One Night In Hackney 10:11, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Good pick-up. I would say a good candidate for AFD.. The title alone would suggest a list detailing every time any country's carrier left port. hardly realistic. A bad title and the article reflects it. I would the empty bin is a good spot for it.--Looper5920 10:55, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

My first thought was AFD, but I thought I'd at least bring it here to see if it could be improved somehow. I'll list it later, unless someone raises an objection. One Night In Hackney 11:07, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

POV?

Some person edited Battle of Bornholm (1676) with some controversial edits? Can you please take a look at it? --Ineffable3000 16:36, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

The edits may contain some correct information. Ask the Dutch military history task force for support and check whether it is possible to verify anything from the new edits. Delete anything that can't be verified. Wandalstouring 22:06, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Non-article content in the showcase

I've tried my hand at listing some of our non-article (and not-quite-article) featured content in the "Showcase" section on the project page; there are two issues I'd like opinions on:

• Is this listing worthwhile? Or should we only list articles?
• If it is worthwhile, should the images be given as simple links, or would it be more useful to use a <gallery> tag and display them as thumbnails?

Comments would be very appreciated! Kirill Lokshin 05:19, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I think the listing is worth while. If I may suggest, I think that the images would do better in a gallery so people can see them, but I think that we ought to create a seperate page to display them in gallery form since our primary page is already suffering from growing pains. TomStar81 (Talk) 06:12, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) and I approve the above idea! (I'm rather fond of galleries:)

I think it's good to list all the featured content. A gallery for the images might be useful, but a subpage might be worthwhile, as the main page is getting rather large (and I dread to think what a gallery with a bunch of images in it will do to people with slow connections or hardware concerns). Carom 18:18, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay, sounds good. I've created a gallery page with the images I've found so far; I'm not entirely up-to-date on FPs, so assistance with locating others in our scope would be appreciated! Kirill Lokshin 02:24, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

By-era category names

Looking through Category:Warfare by era and its sub-categories, I'm beginning to think that our naming convention isn't a very good one, as it produces ambiguous names like Category:Industrial battles. I would propose changing it from "Foo X" to "X of the Foo era" (which matches up nicely with the existing by-war convention:

• Category:Ancient warfare → Category:Warfare of the Ancient era
• Category:Ancient battles → Category:Battles of the Ancient era
• Category:Ancient naval battles → Category:Naval battles of the Ancient era
• Category:Ancient military units and formations → Category:Military units and formations of the Ancient era
• Category:Medieval warfare → Category:Warfare of the Medieval era
• Category:Medieval battles → Category:Battles of the Medieval era
• Category:Medieval naval battles → Category:Naval battles of the Medieval era
• Category:Medieval military units and formations → Category:Military units and formations of the Medieval era
• Category:Early Modern warfare → Category:Warfare of the Early Modern era
• Category:Early Modern battles → Category:Battles of the Early Modern era
• Category:Early Modern naval battles → Category:Naval battles of the Early Modern era
• Category:Early Modern military units and formations → Category:Military units and formations of the Early Modern era
• Category:Industrial warfare → Category:Warfare of the Industrial era
• Category:Industrial battles → Category:Battles of the Industrial era
• Category:Industrial naval battles → Category:Naval battles of the Industrial era
• Category:Industrial military units and formations → Category:Military units and formations of the Industrial era
• Category:Modern warfare → Category:Warfare of the Modern era
• Category:Modern battles → Category:Battles of the Modern era
• Category:Modern naval battles → Category:Naval battles of the Modern era
• Category:Modern military units and formations → Category:Military units and formations of the Modern era

Comments? Kirill Lokshin 17:39, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I like the suggestion very much, as I think the older (current) category names imply the allowance of a much wider meaning of the terms, while the new terms are much more implicitly specific. Even outside of the awkwardness of "Industrial battles", there is the issue of readers & editors arguing the meaning of "Ancient battles" or "Modern battles." I think that while the term "Modern battles" invites debate on what does and does not constitute "modernity", the phrasing "of the Modern era" might imply a bit more strongly that "this isn't simply the word 'modern' in all its potential meanings; this is a specific application of the term; please see Modern era of warfare for more on how Wikipedia defines the periodization of military history." LordAmeth 18:13, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Standardizing category names is probably a good enough reason to move these (although I shudder at the though of another CfD). the argument for greater specificity is good as well. Carom 18:16, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, hopefully this particular CFD won't be among the more unpleasant ones. (I'm not looking forward to the point when we start to put the military personnel category tree through CFD, myself.) Kirill Lokshin 18:51, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Yep. But it will have to be done at some point, I suppose. Carom 18:57, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

IIRC, military equipment is currently done in the "by era" scheme; standardization is a good thing. Oberiko 19:06, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I've made the nomination on CFD; comments there would be appreciated. Kirill Lokshin 22:47, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Assessment statistics for task forces

Another idea that's been bounced around a few times, but never quite followed up on: would it be useful for each task force to have its own assessment statistics/log/worklist available? Kirill Lokshin 18:50, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Probably. I suspect it will be most useful for the larger task forces. Those with a small number of articles (or without a lot of tagged articles) probably won't benefit as much. Carom 18:56, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay. I've created the (variety of) needed templates; for the time being, I've done the coding and category creation only for the French military history task force, as a test. By tomorrow, we should have some preliminary results up on the task force page. :-) Kirill Lokshin 03:16, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay, the results are up, and can be seen at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/French military history task force#Tagging articles. Thoughts? Kirill Lokshin 14:28, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

That looks like it could be useful, but I'm not wild about what it's doing to the layout of the page - I don't know about anybody else, but it makes the page really "cramped" in my browser. Carom 14:33, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

That should be something easily fixable by shuffling the sections a bit. I've moved things around so that the two floating boxes don't overlap; does it look any cleaner now? Kirill Lokshin 14:46, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes indeed. Nice work! Carom 15:02, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

The infrastructure is now complete, and I've added the assessment statistics boxes to all the task force pages. They should get filled once tonight's bot run completes. Kirill Lokshin 06:27, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

This is a good addition it looks ok and should be useful. Hossen27 07:44, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Kirill! I was playing around with it yesterday on the Korean task force page, to see if it was something I could help with, but I quickly ran into a quagmire. That was a lot of work on your part, and many kudo's for implementing this for us. wbfergus 14:32, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I like the idea and seeing it now it looks good. Kyriakos 04:33, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Arbitration Committee?

I know at one time there was talk of creating an in-house arbitration committee for just the MilHistWP, but the only mention I've found of such a thing is possibly in the Outreach section, and even that is only mentioned in passing. There's a minor situation developing over at the United States Army page between two WPMH members (this outlines the discussion taking place) in which one party appears willing to have outside help with the dispute, while another seems fairly uninterested, with the 3-revert rule coming upon the latter very quickly. To whom would we direct this issue before it gets out of control and is eventually forced to the parent WP arb committee? --ScreaminEagle 16:27, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

That looks like a run-of-the-mill dispute about what sources are needed to add a statement to an article; we just need some outside editors to drop by the page and inject some calm into the situation (ideally before both people wind up on WP:AN/3RR). It's pretty normal for things like that to happen; so long as people don't start attacking each other, it's not likely to wind up before ArbCom unless things become really bad. Kirill Lokshin 16:55, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

A-Class review for Operation Igloo White now open

The A-Class review for Operation Igloo White is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 17:04, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

A-class suggestion

Since we denote FA-class articles with an FA star I was wondering if we could denote our A-class articles with a special on page symbol so people could tell which pages are A-class without actually checking the talk page. I was thinking about articles within the scope of our project only, so my thought was to place a black letter "A" over top of the Triple Chevrons image. We could place that at the top of our A-class articles to show that they meet our project’s standards for A-class. Since some memebers of the project (myself included) already use this layout to place the chevrons on thier userpages to denote membership in the Military History Wikiproject, I think that the design would look good and stand out. TomStar81 (Talk) 06:39, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Not feasible, I think. The whole placing-icons-in-the-corner trick is highly controversial, both from a technical standpoint (it's a CSS hack that breaks on any number of browsers, and violates a whole bunch of web standards) as well as a self-reference one. The only reason the FA star has remained is because of the extemely high reputation of the FA process, and its extraordinary visibility within the community; all the other attempts at placing symbols there (such as the repeated ones by WP:GA, among other groups) have been deleted in short order. Kirill Lokshin 06:50, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

As far as I know it is only established in the German wiki to have different symbols for the article level in the barnstar corner. see barnstar de:Römische Legion(Roman army) and A-class de:Römische Marine(Roman navy. There used to be more such categories several months ago, like a big G for good article. Wandalstouring 10:43, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Article needs vetting by someone familiar with the subject

See List of Nazi Party leaders and officials. I have been watching the page since I noticed a vandal adding someone to the list who obviously didn't belong, but I'm worried that there are entries there, or linked from there, that look good at first but are actually bogus. Can someone look into this? And perhaps place the page on their watchlist? Thanks! Mangojuice^talk 18:42, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

First of all the list is ill constructed. There was only one leader at a time of the Nazi party. I suggest to find out whether a common format exists for high ranking members of a party no matter whatever political faction they belong/ed to. In case it doesn't, a format that could be easily maintained would be a good approach. Personally I would prefer categories. Wandalstouring 21:00, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Odd Category

I can across Category:Army units and formations of World War 2 just now. Do we need this category? As far as I can tell, the current category tree doesn't seem to discriminate by branch within a particular conflict (at least, not as far as WWII is concerned). It doesn't seem to be used for anything other than a handful of Canadian brigades, and they are already catted elsewhere. Am I right in thinking this is a delete? Carom 20:38, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Yup, delete it. One of the disadvantages that anyone can create anything is that someone does create something that doesn't fit in the system some others want to establish. So behold of power of the delete button. Wandalstouring 20:55, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Mmm, it's a valid (but not-yet-properly-populated) intersection category between Category:Military units and formations of World War II and Category:Army units and formations; it just needs to be renamed from "World War 2" to "World War II". The absence of other comparable categories isn't that good of an indicator; since this standardized category system was only introduced about a month ago, there are major gaps in which sets of categories have been created. Kirill Lokshin 20:56, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough - am I right in thinking that this would then be the parent of things like Category:Units and formations of the German army in World War II? Carom 20:59, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Pretty much. (Although, going by the standard conventions, that category should pobably either be Category:Military units and formations of the Wehrmacht in World War II, or, even simpler, Category:Military units and formations of the Wehrmacht.) Kirill Lokshin 21:08, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

OK. I'll put it up for renaming to Category:Army units and formations of World War II. Carom 21:10, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

It can probably go through WP:CFD#Speedy renaming. Kirill Lokshin 21:11, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, done. Carom 21:22, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 21:23, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Question

Would it possible to modify the {{WPMILHIST}} project banner template to allow for an article used in an FA pool for any given portal to displayed? I ask because of the apperence of the {{USN_Portal_Selected}} template and the fact that other Portals like WWII and NATO could (and probably do) draw on our featured articles for their portal FA pool. It seems to me that space could be saved on the page by figuring a way to add them all to the main banner template. TomStar81 (Talk) 10:11, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Let me think about that. Off the top of my head, I don't see any obvious easy way of doing it; but maybe I can come up with something that's not too convoluted. Kirill Lokshin 17:41, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

What about something similar to the babal boxes? Something like {{portal#|A|B}}, where the # equals the number of portals the article is featured in, and A, B, C and so forth are shot hand for the Portal Names (like War for the War Portal, NATO for thh NATO portal, etc). Would that work? TomStar81 (Talk) 19:55, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Convention for repeated single names

This is a problem we have to face repeatedly with the ancient Greeks and the Punics for example because they only had one name, no family name and these names tended to be repeatedly used or were taken from some kind of deity. I suggest some clear rules for disambiguation.

• nicknames in case they exist. for example Hannibal the Bald, Hasdrubal the Fair - OK
• profession in case this made him relevant and there is no chance of someone else with the same name and profession. for example Polybius the historian - OK, Hannibal the general - not OK, there more than three of them
• Dynastic names (can be disputed and is not clear because this habit was not in use in ancient times- leading to our problem). See Hamilcar Barca, Hannibal Barca, Hasdrubal Barca, Mago Barca they all were family members and there side is commonly called the Barcids. On the other hand Hasdrubal the Fair's son and Hannibal, Hasdrubal and Mago's nephew Hanno was equally treated by them, although he is not refered to as a "Barca", but he is a member of Hamilcar's family and a Barcid.
• Place of origin or ethnic group is a common disambiguation used by ancient sources. for example Lysimachus the Celt
• dates, preferably the lifespan, but the time someone held an important office could be used alternatively.

The aim is to avoid wrong links to deities and other people. Wandalstouring 11:28, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I recall that there were some interesting naming conventions adopted for the ancient Romans that might be useful here; but I can't remember where they are. :-\ Kirill Lokshin 17:43, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Ah, found them: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ancient Romans). Kirill Lokshin 18:03, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

OK, now I would appreciate some input. For example we have two Punic Hannibal of equal rank, one in the First the other in the Second Punic War and both of them played a very important role. The one from the Second Punic War is more widely known, but can we establish fame as a criteria? Wandalstouring 20:19, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I have been thinking about some rules for all these Greeks, Punics and the like.

• If we they have any additional names [Soter], a universally accepted ranking [I, II, III, ...] or epithets [Barca, the Bald, the Fair, from Naxos, the Celt, the Samnite, of Sparta, from Alexandria] that make them unique these are to be used. [For exmaple Ptolemy and Ptolemy I Soter and Ptolemy II Philadelphus or Hamilcar and Hamilcar Barca]
• If such a disambiguation is not possible the next step can be to use in parentheses behind the name the modern name for the dynasty[Mago (Magonid)] this also applies to non-royal families like the Barcids ord Gisco [Sophonosbe (Gisco) or Hamilcar (Gisco) or Hasdrubal (Gisco)] and may be extended to relatives of such a house if they were closely involved in the dynastic policy [Hanno (Barcid) or Bomilcar (Barcid)]. In the very rare case there are more bearers of the same name within a dynasty, but they are not contemporaries and there is no established ranking, it is possible to disambiguate them [as Mago (I Magonid) the later as Mago (II Magonid)].
• The next step is looking at the biography. The lifespan can be used [Bostar (200 BC - 140 BC)] or in case the lifespan is not known, what is often the case for Punic nobles, the known office and the time it was held can be used [Hanno (Rab 210 BC - 190 BC) or Hanno (strategus 200 BC) or Hanno (Punic naval commander ~200/201 BC)].
• In case these rules can not be applied, the profession, the homecountry [Hanno (trader from Carthage)], the husband [Sophonosbe (wife of the Numidian king Syphax)] or an important close realtive [Julius (illegal son of Hannibal (Barcid))] can be listed. Naturally the disambiguation has to be used in case the name itself wouldn't be clear. Wandalstouring 23:26, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Ninjaken and Ninjato

Trouble is afoot on these two pages! To make a long story short, these are two articles about the same thing. Consensus is not reached on either of the articles whether this "ninja katana" ever even existed, but as it is, one of the articles is decisively pro, and the other decisively contra. Can somebody with enough expertise (I don't have it, obviously, although I am inclined to believe that this is a fictitous sword) look at these two articles, merge them and state both sides of the story in one article? I'm asking this here, because medieval weapons seem to be included in this project. I've also asked the same on the Project:Japan talk page. TomorrowTime 13:07, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Stephen K. Hayes wrote in one of his books on Ninjas about this type of weapon (straight blade, shorter than a katana and longer than a wakizashi), but I can't recall the title. Wandalstouring 15:11, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

A-Class review for Operation Igloo White needs attention

A few more editors are needed to complete the A-Class review for Operation Igloo White; please stop by and help review the article! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 17:45, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Some potential changes to the assessment system

The coordinators (well, Wandalstouring and myself, mostly ;-) have been bouncing around a few possible improvements to our current assessment department that might address a few long-standing issues. Without further ado, the ideas (which can be implemented pretty much independently of each other):

1. Extending the A-Class review to seven days.
2. Getting rid of the GA-Class level (and thus our dependency on the GA process).
3. Adopting more exact guidelines for B-Class articles, giving us some more practical differentiation between B-Class and Start-Class.
4. A more formal review before assigning B-Class status, in one of several forms:
   • A four-day review requiring more than one endorsement (similar to the current A-Class review).
   • A listing for review requiring a single outside endorsement (similar to the original GA setup).
   • Something else?

Any comments and further ideas on these points are very welcome! Kirill Lokshin 20:33, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

• I think that extended the A-class review is an excellent idea as sometimes articles are failed as they have a lack of editors voting in time.
• If we got rid of GA class would we replace it with something for example our own GA review or something similar to the proper GA review.
• I think that adopting more exact guidelines for B-class articles are nessacary as they are so much in common with Start-class articles that some times it is difficult to decided which to grade the article to.
• As for the B-class review I also argee with the idea. I am predicting that there will be a lot of requests but I think that it will work and that it is nessacary to help tell apart Start-class articles from B-class articles. Kyriakos 20:46, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

• I agree that the time needs to be extended, 7 days seems like the next logical point.
• I think we can probably remove the GA-class from the MILHIST assessment process. We probably don't need to replace it with anything else. Obviously, articles could still be given a GA assessment outside of the project, but we could delete the rating from our own guidelines, and from the banner.
• I think that more exacting standards for B-class is a good idea, but I think a formal review (like A-class) will be to time consuming. It should probably just require a single endorsement. Carom 20:55, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

• I think that that whatever the grade, we should ensure that the standard of English is maintained in every article - even if the article is only a few sentences long.

Replace GA with a new grade – ‘Failed Classification’. There are too many articles (including B-Class articles) with appalling standards of English and are classified mainly due to the article’s size – not its quality.

Printed Encyclopaedias wouldn’t tolerate it, why should Wikipedia? : ) Raymond Palmer 21:09, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Heh. While some basic attention to readability is needed, of course, the finer points of style and language are quite subtle, and are probably better suited for the peer review/A-Class review level than anything below that. We don't want to create a system that's too heavily dependent on a limited number of available copyeditors, I think. Kirill Lokshin 21:42, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Anything that clarifies the difference between ratings and their application is useful. I find that unmoderated ratings seem to vary greatly in classification, but that may just be my own lack of discernment. Which is why I suggested that raters could/should give a brief explanation of their reasons. Kirill disagreed, and I bowed to his experience, but one editor has done this, and it does help. I think it's also recommended in the biographies project. Folks at 137 21:28, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

A more precise standard (particularly with, say, numbered criteria) might be quite helpful in this respect; one could say, for example, that an article wasn't B-Class yet because it didn't meet criteria 2, 4, and 5, and editors would have a pretty decent idea of what to work on. Kirill Lokshin 21:42, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

My idea is to establish three major points in the B-class review

• verifiability of content(citations)
• broad coverage of the topic(no stub)
• acceptable English grammar(no grammatical errors)

In my opinion style is an issue for the A-class review. It can be improved by any native speaker, even if he is not familiar with the subject, if the content is OK. Wandalstouring 22:54, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

My input: Yes, get rid of the "Good Article" level, which fits uncomfortably into the FA-A-B-start-stub hierarchy. More precise criteria for B-class is fine, but adding another assessment process is spreading an important resource—peer input—too thin. I would recommend simply having one place for assessment where project members rate the article as A or B (or even start or stub, if really underdeveloped articles are submitted, which should generally be avoided). I think articles can be rated as "B" without peer input, however, because the distinction between B-class and start-class does not seem important enough to expend much project manpower on. If a few articles listed as "B-class" should really be listed as "start" class, so what? Both labels simply mean that the article is still a work in progress. If you find an article listed as a "B" which you feel is improperly listed, simply submit it for assessment. —Kevin 08:10, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Kevin, that only means skipping the GA and nothing else changes in effect.

To explain a bit better why a simple B-class review helps to speed up the review process:

• The idea of the B-class review is to keep at bay all candidates with serious problems. If an article in the A-class review has major citation problems(verifiability=telling the truth?), the stylistic and NPOV problems also get analyzed. This is time consuming. On the other hand there is a huge amount of possible B-class candidates on various topics. So a fast B-class review must be kept very simple. Once reading the article has to be enough, however, we have to make this review profitable, that's the reason for finding necessary and simple to verify criteria.

The problem with free deassessment and assessment of classes is in my opinion that hardly anyone cares. Furthermore it's a possible open door for bad blood between editors what seriously hampers our progress(POV issues). A public process involves different people and thus helps to avoid a clash of the usual main editors of an article or self-assessments.

• One of my further ideas is a common sense rule to avoid so many hopeless candidates consuming the time of high level reviews. If an article is nominated at an obviously too high level review and for this reason is unlikely to pass the coordinator(currently = maintainance crew) can justify why he moved the nomination to a lower level review. Naturally if the article passed at a lower levelreview it can move up step by step.

Only objection to the next nomination at a higher level review can be if there was a specific criticsm. Than the nomination can be kept at a hold until the explicitly mentioned(word for word citation) issues of the last review have been worked over.

In case an editor feels this measures are unjustified he can consult another coordinator of his choice to take a look and possibly let the nomination go on as intended by the editor.Wandalstouring 11:39, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I think that, if we want a fast and simple B-Class review, the point to focus on is developing straightforward criteria. The question of whether we need one editor, two editors, etc., to apply these criteria is somewhat secondary; personally, I think that, with very clear criteria, it will be possible to use the existing system of having any (outside?) editor make the B-Class/Start-Class decision, since it will be obvious whether the article meets them or not. Kirill Lokshin 14:36, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm in favor of a simplified, but more carefully "documented" classification system. Kirill's suggestion above, with numbered criteria and Wandalstouring's suggestions for three major points for the B-class seem perfectly logical and easy to understand. There should also be a simplified way of flagging articles that didn't meet a specified grade due to lack of editors within the time frame. wbfergus 12:00, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Presumably we can just downgrade them? Kirill Lokshin 14:36, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Numbered criteria sounds like a good idea... I always come up with my own criteria on the fly, often quite different for different types of articles, and admittedly quite dynamic. The same article might strike me differently based on what other articles look like, or by my mood, or any number of things. I've never worried about this much, as it is meant to be only a rough guideline, not a hard-and-fast rating system. One of the main difficulties I have come across is assessing the depth or length of an article relative to the importance of its subject; I would not expect any of us to have such an encyclopedic knowledge of history as to be able to look at an article and know whether or not there's a lot left out. Some battles take up thousands of words, others only a hundred or so. In any case, if we do end up tightening up the criteria, I would very much like to contribute to that effort; let me know if I can help out in some way. LordAmeth 12:18, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Just my own opinion, as one who has assessed an article or two...No big deal if the GA assessment goes by the wayside. I like it as an interim assessment but am not really invested enough to be truly concerned whether it stays or goes. As for a formal process for "B-class" articles... I believe this is a mistake. It is merely adding a level of bureacracy to the project that does not belong. Sometimes the difference between "Start-class" and "B-class" articles is very small. Is it subjective at times? Absolutely. Is there enough animosity to create more bureacracy just to get a "B-Class" rating? Absolutely not.--Looper5920 18:13, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

What about a more detailed set of criteria for B-Class that would be applied by the existing system, without a new formal process? Kirill Lokshin 17:26, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

A possible organization of the classification:

There is a limited number of strict criteria for B-class that can be verified by any viewer. In case an article fulfills all criteria it can be rated B-class.

"Stub" is content that is too short to be an article, "Start" is anything that has not been rated B-class or higher. A reason may be that it has not yet been rated or does not fulfill the criteria.

Rating can be done by any viewer who was not heavily involved as editor in the respective article.

In case some viewers disagree about the classification the next step is to nominate it for a public review.

I hope this is unbureaucratic enough. What criteria should be established? (Keep it short and simple) Wandalstouring 17:57, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

This is unbureaucratic enough for me. Let me think about the criteria, though. Carom 19:24, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good. I like Kirill's suggestion of clear criteria which can be cited. A big advantage for someone like me who has not had to produce this type of documentation (never went to uni), is the guidance on standards it could offer. I have found myself puzzled and discouraged by some of the current ratings and I don't have the time to pursue every rater for an explanation. The criteria will surely evolve as "work in progress", so let's get a first-cut proposal for comment. Folks at 137 18:28, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, off the top of my head, a couple of things that might be suitable as a check for B-Class:

1. The article has suitable references (and perhaps some rudimentary citation?). We don't necessarily want to require exhaustive citaion at this point, but a minimal standard of referencing should be workable.
2. The article reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain major omissions or inaccuracies.
3. The article has a defined structure, including a lead section and one or more sections of content.
4. The article has (some) categories.

Kirill Lokshin 04:14, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that. First (picky) reactions: "minimal standard of referencing" - does this mean "in-line" or just some refs to books, sites, etc in a separate section?; "does not contain major omissions or inaccuracies" - does this imply that rating should only be done by knowledgeable editors (I would agree if it does) and such inaccuracies need to be noted or corrected; should the importance of a topic be considered? ie, should we be more lenient if a minor issue is dealt with briefly but adequately? Also, IMO, the article should be in a readable style (not just grammatical) with appropriate (define!) links to other articles. Might be worth running the criteria, as they develope, against some start and B articles. Folks at 137 19:13, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Regarding my comment above about "a simplified way of flagging articles that didn't meet a specified grade due to lack of editors within the time frame." I was thinking of something slightly different than just a downgrade procedure, where they would presumably get lost in the lower class, but something that would flag it as not making the review due to not enough editors reviewing or something. Still not sure if I'm explaining this properly or not, but say an article gets submitted for an B-class review. With a 7 day period to be reviewed by xx number of reviewers, what if the arcticle itself is good, but not enough people reviewed it? It just gets denied and lost in the multitude of Start-class articles with no further indication that it is still a good article? Maybe something like B-class (expired) or something to highlight articles that somehow may have slipped through the cracks? Still not fanilar enough around here to know all the ins and outs, so I'm probably overlooking obvious. wbfergus 19:09, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

We always had enough feedback to avoid such cases (in the A-class review) even if we had to invite/carry some people to the review. It is not clear whether such requirements will be established for the B-class review as a majority seems to oppose a formalized approach that would impose such a regulation.Wandalstouring 19:15, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually, if I recall correctly, there was one A-class review that was closed with two support votes and no oppose votes - I think the article was Pontiac's Rebellion, but I could be wrong. However, I think this was the only case, so it's not really a major problem. At any rate, the banner on the talk page links to A-class discussions, so you can always check to see why an article failed its nomination. Carom 19:24, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, Pontiac's Rebellion was the article that "failed" A-class review with 100% support votes (two of them). As the author of that article, I found that result amusing. I value peer input, but I don't consider any rating below "Featured" to be worth making a fuss about. I won't bother submitting it for B-class review either, so go ahead and mark it as "start"! ;-) —Kevin 04:07, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Yep, that was a slightly embarassing episode (although, to be fair, it took place right when we first started the A-Class review, so we were flailing about a bit trying to figure out how to run it). :-) Kirill Lokshin 04:14, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Pontiac is running for A-class again.

A slightly different checklist for B-Class:

1. The article has complete citation. (We do require exhaustive citation at this point to keep things cited from the beginning because it is much harder and a lot more work to reference an established article. Such a task usually equals a complete rewrite.)
2. The article reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain major omissions or inaccuracies.
3. The article has a defined structure, including a lead section and one or more sections of content.
4. The article has no grammatical errors.

So far my suggestions. Wandalstouring 02:17, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean by "complete" citation? It should be pointed out that truly exhaustive citation (by which I mean that every statement is directly cited) isn't required even at the FA level; imposing such a requirement here would be draconian, in my view.

The grammatical error issue doesn't seem like a good place to focus on either, unless the errors are so gross that the article is substantially unreadeable. Fine-grain copyediting is something done when preparing for a FAC; are we going to bump articles down to Start-Class because somebody finds a misplaced comma?

More generally, I was under the impression that we were looking to have B-Class be a "pretty good, but still needs improvement" category. What would be the difference between B-Class and A-Class under such criteria; just comprehensiveness of coverage? That doesn't seem like something that we can readily evaluate, in most cases. Kirill Lokshin 03:15, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Complete citation isn't meant to be quite the same as exhaustive and perhaps this wasn't the best choice of words. It is about citing the basic structure of statements and thus giving the article a completely verifiable matrix. Your rule wasn't specific enough so things would have been likely to end up in a wash again.

An alternative formulation would be: all major claims have citations for verifiability

Quite a lot of editors have raised the language issue as a criteria for the B-class review. Naturally style is very controversial to assess while if I understand their intent correctly it is about English grammar. An article without is often prone to misunderstanding. Your issue was to focus on style in the A-class review and none raised an objection against that.

The central problem is whether to make them strict or more open for personal interpretation(what I strongly disfavor). In my opinion if we have an assessment without much comments it must have strict and simple to verify criteria however drakonic this may sound. The alternative would be a broad degree of interpretations(+quarrels) and thus quality. In effect this leads pretty much to the status quo - the whole criteria discussion would have been pointless. Wandalstouring 13:55, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay, that seems a bit more reasonably worded; how about this, then:

1. The article is suitably referenced, and major points are appropriately cited. (Slightly different wording from what you meant, maybe? My intent here was to show that we don't need the FA-level hundreds-of-footnotes approach here yet.)
2. The article reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain major omissions or inaccuracies.
3. The article has a defined structure, including a lead section and one or more sections of content.
4. The article is free from major grammatical errors.

Is that anywhere near what you had in mind, or am I wandering off again? ;-) Kirill Lokshin 14:12, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Make it "all major points are appropriately cited" and I agree. Wandalstouring 14:33, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

The wording we can obviously play with somewhat, but here's my two cents as to an additional point:

1. The article contains appropriate support materials (e.g. infoboxes, maps & images when available, specifications for a weaponry/vehicle article, Medal of Honor citation for a Medal of Honor recipient).

I, personally, have always preferred good writing, form, style, detail, and accuracy over nitpicky attention to citations, and in any case, I think there should be a way for articles that fulfill those criteria (long, detailed, thorough, well-written, with supporting information) to be able to be classified as B-class or perhaps better even without extensive citations. Accuracy is more important than verifiability, I think. LordAmeth 14:50, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Maybe we could work that point into the structure clause (e.g. "including a lead section and one or more sections of content, as well as appropriate supporting materials, such as an infobox, images, etc.)" or something of the sort)?

As far as citations, I think the reference to "major points" would probably be enough to keep this from being truly nitpicky. Encouraging more citations is generally a good thing; the ideal article is both accurate and well-cited. The question is how much to stress each aspect at different levels; while I agree that we needn't be excessive here, Wandalstouring is right in that articles that don't make any headway on citations early on usually need to be rewritten afterwards. Kirill Lokshin 16:31, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't believe that eliminating the GA level would be a good idea, as a Good Article should have something to distinguish it over a mere B-class tome. If a category is to be eliminated, I'd probably support the removal of the A-class instead, as I'm not sure I understand the need for something between GA and FA. - Aerobird 15:53, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

The problem with GA is that it's not something the project can really control, being subject to the whims of arbitrary GA reviewers. This doesn't mean we need to remove it, of course; but it's becoming an issue in that we can't set our own standards for that level. Kirill Lokshin 16:31, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

In my opinion we are losing touch with the ground right now by introducing this "structure clause (e.g. "including a lead section and one or more sections of content, as well as appropriate supporting materials, such as an infobox, images, etc.)" or something of the sort)?" Finding such material can be very difficult if done right. Unfortunately the tendency isn't towards improvement in many cases because if this is a strict clause anything that happens to be on commons or can be externally linked to is going to find its way into the article indiscriminate of factual accuracy, usefulness or concern to the topic.

Let's make a clear defintion of what function the B-class article should have before we complete our wishlist what an article should be. My concept aims at making the B-class a green body for the A-class. Central to this idea is that the B-class can be modified by an editor without too deep knowledge of the topic to get somewhere near A-class/achieve A-class.Wandalstouring 18:49, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Just as a note...the guidelines that have been laid down are about exactly what I have been using to assess articles. Usually the difference between Start and B class is an onfobox or number of references. I don't think it is a bad thing if some general guidelines are laid down for everyone in the community to know what a certain assessment takes. As always there will be individual cases that differ from the norm but for 98% of the articles I think these guidelines will suffice. Should they be codified into some sort of formal assessment or Wikiproject rule? I would lean against that. I do still like the GA article class. While not used that much right now, from what I have seen the difference between B and A class can sometimes be massive so having a step in between might be a good thing to keep for the future. Cheers--Looper5920 20:19, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

New task force proposal

I suggest a task force related to "War crimes" or "Atrocities". The obvious problems are the scope of the subject and the scope for edit wars, but topics such as the Nazi death camps need to be covered, in my opinion. Views? Folks at 137 21:16, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Maybe something more general, like "Military law" or "Laws of war"? Having things included in a "war crimes" group would be needlessly provocative in cases where they're merely allegations, I think. Kirill Lokshin 21:38, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, good idea. That would also give a firm, codified basis for the scope. There's no hurry to establish this, better to get it right than spend life arbitrating. However, I'd like some leeway - I don't agree that allied WWII bombing, for example, was a war crime, but others have an arguable point that bears debate. Would an atrocity during an undeclared war, eg the Rwanda massacres or events in Bosnia, be included under a strict interpretation? Perhaps "Crimes against humanity". Folks at 137 21:49, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

"Crimes against humanity" are technically a somewhat different thing—and one not necessarily tied to this project, as they needn't involve either warfare or the military—so that might not be an equivalent thing. In any case, I think that "Laws of war" could more easily cover such issues regardless of whether they're actually considered crimes, and regardless of whether the war was declared or not; it's much easier to go for a liberal interpretation of the scope if it's "laws" than if it's "crimes". Kirill Lokshin 22:02, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Avoid any charges of crime if this task force should work on the behaviour of Japanese troops towards POW during WWII for example. Japan had not signed any legislation on how to proceed with POW. Atrocity is neither a NPOV term as enslavement and rape were common practice in classical warfare and not recorded among the atrocities.Wandalstouring 23:02, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

"Laws of war" is probably the most correct title (I think the task force is a good idea, by the way). Carom 05:43, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Are there any legal/law-related projects on Wikipedia? This would also fall under that category also, I think. Cla68 08:31, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Visit WikiProject Law. Wandalstouring 19:29, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I left a note on the WikiProject Law page in case any of them would like to join-in this discussion. Cla68 23:53, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

A-Class review for Battle of Marathon now open

The A-Class review for Battle of Marathon is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 17:28, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Battle of Montevideo

I am a bit confused on the Battle of Montevideo (1807). Is it officially considered to be part of the War of the Fourth Coalition or is it unrelated? If it is unrelated, what war is it part of? I have already refered it to peer groups but I am wondering whether the Wikiproject leadership knows anything about it. --Ineffable3000 04:00, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I think it was part of the Anglo-Spanish War of that period (on which we don't seem to have an article, incidentally); lumping it into one of the Coalitions may not be quite correct, in that sense. Kirill Lokshin 04:16, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

The British project in Southern America was to establish their own rule, compareable to the British takeover of the Dutch Cape Colony in South Africa. Summary of the prelude and interest, flag[3] of the Patricios regiment (1807) that fought against the British invasion while Spain was not able to provide enough support. Wandalstouring 04:34, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

We need to update the Campaignboxes. Also, is the Anglo-Spanish war considered to be part of the Napoleonic wars. --Ineffable3000 04:52, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I suppose it could be; but it ran from 1796 to 1807?, if I recall correctly, so it fits into both the French Revolutionary and the Napoleonic phases. Kirill Lokshin 04:56, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

It might an independent war though. --Ineffable3000 05:40, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Related note

I created the Battle of Montevideo (1863) and found out that we don't have any articles about the Uruguayan Civil War. --Ineffable3000 05:40, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Isn't that urging you to write or at least start these articles? Wandalstouring 13:50, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Siege vs. Battle

All sieges are battles but not all battles are sieges. Is that correct? --Ineffable3000 05:43, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

If I am uncertain whether the battle is historically considered to be a siege or not, should I just leave it titled as a battle? --Ineffable3000 05:50, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

In general, you should title articles in accordance with the conventions used in the literature. If most historians refer to a particular event as a battle, call it a battle. If most historians refer to it as a siege, call it a siege. If you don't know, do your best to find out - if there is a particular article you have in mind, it's useful to provide a link, so that other editors can provide their opinion. Carom 05:59, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

For example all the battles in WWI trench warfare could be technically considered assaults in a big siege operation(and to some extend historians do call it a "siege"), but the German western front of WWI is never revered to as the Western siege of the German Empire. Wandalstouring 13:55, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Not all sieges are battles. They might be bloodless affairs where an army camps outside a fortified area or city, followed by a long period of waiting, followed by a bloodless capitulation or negotiated settlement. It would therefore be incorrect to say that "all sieges are battles." They are all military events, but not "battles," in the sense that combat is joined between two opposing forces. The original word "siege" is a form of "seat" -- it literally means to sit around your target, i.e., to invest it. Many sieges were simply sitting and waiting, while terms of surrender or settlement of issues was conducted. There were many cases where armies simply threatened hostilities, and separated without an assault. If a siege did lead to a bombardment (remote attacks, without a direct assault), or a sally (defenders issuing forth), or a relief (external forces coming to rescue the besieged locale), or to an assault (besiegers trying to take target by force), those would be the "battle" phase(s) of the siege. But do not presume all sieges progress through those stages. Eg: the recent "siege" of Mogadishu led to the capitulation of the city without bombardment or assault. The defenders simply capitulated and left the city. --Petercorless 18:23, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

And that would be why the article is titled "Fall of Mogadishu" rather than "Siege of Mogadishu", incidentally. ;-)

More generally: while it is, in theory, possible to have something that is described as a "siege" by historians but doesn't involve actual fighting, such events are so extremely rare as to be more of a statistical anomaly than a significant type of siege. The overwhelming majority of sieges involves some form of fighting; so, while it is, indeed, possible to draw exact semantic distinctions here, doing so in an encyclopedia for the general reader is somewhat counterproductive. It is more useful, I think, to merely say that sieges are types of battles and handle the occasional exception on a case-by-case basis. Kirill Lokshin 18:32, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Nay, perhaps say sieges were their own kind of military engagement and battles were battles in the open field. In modern times the usage of the word changed, so that battles can include sieges and elements of sieges such as assaults leading to house-to-house fighting, but also the doctrine of battles of encirclement and annihilation is nothing else but isolating and besieging the enemy. So things got mixed up a bit as the traditional siege became rare with the increase of territory each soldier is able to defend. Wandalstouring 19:21, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I suppose that's another way of looking at it; certainly, modern warfare has jumbled the naming considerably (e.g. Battle of Berlin, etc.). In any case, it seems like this would be an interesting matter to discuss in the siege and battle articles, but not necessarily something to worry about too much outside of them. Kirill Lokshin 19:39, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

It was actually not uncommon in olden days to simply march forth with your laddies, threaten your enemies, see if they'd toss you any gold or treasures, or ask if they had any likely marriageable women, all to ensure you'd go away in peace. Sometimes you might even hold a contest of champions to determine the outcome, or, in more chivalric times, tournament between the besiegers and the besieged. In that case, most of the army was there as your personal rooting section. Starvation -- simply surrounding a place and waiting for the defenders to weary -- was also common. This might be done if the castle or manor wanted to be captured intact. For instance, in a conflict over succession. Why would you assault your ancestral manor if you could starve the defenders into submission? Consider that history tends to record the massive, spectacular siege-assaults far more often than the run-of-the-mill sieges. A more common social historical analysis would show local conflicts often resolved without a battle. It's also not very glorious to record the times when you went up to a big fort, shook your fist, and then left empty-handed, or if you had to surrender because you wanted something to eat. But it happened a lot. --Petercorless 19:56, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

That may be true; but it's fairly common to see such events referred to as something other than "sieges" (e.g. "raids", "expeditions", etc.) in works of military history (those that cover them, anyways). As a practical point, just about everything that's been the subject of enough material to make it into Wikipedia will be one of the violent sort of siege, so the issue doesn't really come up that much. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 20:25, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

A "raid" or an "expedition" is not a "siege." A raid is generally an attack with a planned withdrawal thereafter, or to make a hurried or light attack to take a place or claim some goal or objective generally before defenses can be mounted. That's sort of the opposite of a siege. As I said, siege comes from "seat" or "sitting." It's where you decide "this is going to take a while." A siege generally required an investment -- the purposeful, planned surrounding (or partial surrounding) of a place, before, after or instead of a direct assault upon it. If there is no investment, if you just assault it, then there is no siege. You are proceeding directly to an assault. On a more modern, campaign-wide contrast, one could compare "siege" and "sitzkrieg" (sitting war) and contrast them with mobile battles and "blitzkrieg" (lightning war). "Expedition" is a more general term not necessarily aimed at investing a fortified strongpoint or population center, and in fact, many not even be a military event at all. --Petercorless 20:57, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

There's an issue of scale here. If I march up to your castle, sit outside the walls for a few days, then get paid off and go away, that might be referred to in a historical work as a "siege". If I move through a region exacting tribute from a dozen castles in such a manner, the entire sequence may be termed a "raid" or "expedition". The expedition might involve sieges, in other words; but, if the sieges are sufficiently uninteresting that they're never discussed in isolation, the entire event can be referred to by the broader name (e.g. "in the course of his raid on Flanders, he camped outside Bruges for two days" rather than "in the course of his siege of Bruges, he camped outside the city for two days").

This is mostly an issue of semantics, of course; as I said, it's not really a practical matter for most of the actual historical activity that's written about. Kirill Lokshin 21:12, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Seems like we have too much spare time. Is the question sufficiently answered whether a siege is a battle or not? Wandalstouring 01:35, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Erich von Manstein

The article for Erich von Manstein has a rant in the introduction about "the dual myth of German military genius and moral correctness" which basically is some strange Slavic or Soviet supremacist attack on the skill of general Erich von Manstein, and Third Reich generals as a whole.

I'm concerned, because there's no serious basis behind the argument - the central theme appears to be that Erich von Manstein was defeated by Nikolai Vatutin several times, giving no regard to circumstances, such as relative strengths of the armies involved. I tried removing it, but there are at least two people reverting to the version with the rant.

It seems to me that there's no valid basis for the claims contained in the rant, but if there were, it should not be a badly written chunk of text in the introduction anyway, but a whole edit of the article. I don't think there's any point prolonging an edit war, so I thought this seemed the best place to turn for mediation? 139.168.40.202 20:37, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

The reason the change was reverted probably has very little to do with the validity of the information; deletions of large chunks of text by an anonymous user (without an edit summary) tend to be reverted as vandalism, without any real consideration for the merits of the changes themselves.

Whether or not the text belongs in the article, I can't really say. However, it should definitely be moved from the lead, and also needs to be cited. Carom 21:01, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Admittedly other user with a login had just done the same delets as you. Well, we are very open and there are some people in the world who think they have a useful contribution. This contribution they keep reinserting at all cost. Such ideas often violate the NPOV. One approach to this problem is to ban user with no or a new login from editing while editors with an older login doing such edits can be handled by the administration. The other possibility is to wait some time before deleting this stuff. The people maintaining it are often very anxious and keep daily watch. If their edits aren't attacked for some time they think them safe and pay no more attention to the article. I moved this whole section into an own chapter and put a big question for references on it. Good work of yours to pay attention that unsourced claims got inserted into an important WWII biography. Unfortunately we can't award people like you without a login. Wandalstouring 01:08, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I have a login from back when I expanded a handful of Stargate articles (history articles tend to be very well done, and have no need for further contributions, whereas Stargate, being far less important to an encyclopedia, had a lot of articles requiring a lot of work) and contributed to a few WWII military articles, but I haven't logged in for a while because I don't have time to contribute whole Stargate episode articles anymore, the only contributions I was ever really doing were the occasional correction of typos and such. I'm happy without getting an award, I didn't do anything more than the average wikipedia user would.

I deleted the section when I visited the article because I assumed - incorrectly it seems - it was vandalism that sensible users would delete, I did provide an edit summary the first time, though after that I didn't bother. I ended up drawn into a debate and an edit war, so I thought logging in was closing the gate after the horse had bolted, as well as providing a user page to be vandalised. There seemed to be two or three people backing the section, I checked the history briefly but didn't notice anyone else removing the section, so I thought I should find a method of mediation. It's fair to say that Western historians have been unfair to the Red Army, but that doesn't necessarily mean Erich von Manstein was a poor commander, nor does that assertion stand up to scrutiny, and, more than that, if it were true, throwing a section into the introduction that criticises the rest of the article, without any serious sources, isn't the right way to do things. 143.238.54.249 22:26, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

1st Squadron, 10th United States Cavalry

This unit is scheduled to be deactivated on 12 January 2007. I'm actually in the unit, so I'm providing good information. I changed the "active" date, but it's been reverted, and I just wanted to make a note explaining why I added it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Botter (talk • contribs) 01:19, 11 January 2007 (UTC).

There is a discussion page to the article. When you make an edit and someone reverts it, write this editor a comment and discuss matters with him on your discussion page or on the discussion page of the article. Furthermore use ~~~~ to sign your comments. Wandalstouring 01:28, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Having taken a look, I notice the infobox reads as if the entire regiment is to be disbanded in 2007.

I assume D-10, 7-10, and 8-10 CAV will remain in existance?? Cheers Buckshot06 03:27, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

A-Class review for Pontiac's Rebellion now open

The A-Class review for Pontiac's Rebellion is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 01:56, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Uruguayan Civil War‎

I have started an article about the Uruguayan Civil War‎. Please check if there is no article like this at the moment. I want to make this a very good article. --Ineffable3000 03:00, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Also, the Battle of Montevideo (1863) is related but it's not considered to be in either Uruguayan Civil War or War of the Triple Alliance. Where does it belong? --Ineffable3000 05:36, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

As far as I know the Blancos and Colorados were shooting each other so check the respective articles for consistency. A very important issue is that you source your article. Take some of the featured articles on the project page as an example how a good article might look like. Wandalstouring 13:15, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

How does that help me determine which war the battle was in? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ineffable3000 (talk • contribs) 16:34, 11 January 2007 (UTC).

Are you sure that there was only one Uruguayan Civil War, and that the dates on that article are correct? (It is possible, incidentally, for a battle to not be part of any broader war. In other words, the single battle could be the entirety of the conflict, so there's no separate name used for the war.) Kirill Lokshin 16:37, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

There were several wars in this region until the border conflicts between Paraguay, Uruguay, Brasil and Argentina and their inner conflicts were halfway settled. It possibly helps you to get an overview about this era first rather than focus on one participant.Wandalstouring 18:21, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I did and found out that there was the War of the triple alliance and Uruguayan Civil War‎ in which Uruguay participated. Can that battle be just a skirmish not part of any major war? --Ineffable3000 21:39, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

According to the History of Uruguay page, In 1855, new conflict broke out between the parties. There was some conflict but it does not seem to have a name and the previous conflict "Guerra Grande" is usually called the Uruguayan Civil War. What should I do? Should I just continue calling the "Guerra Grande" the Uruguayan Civil War. --Ineffable3000 21:47, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Possibly, but on the other hand it isn't clear when there was war and when there was peace because the bands of "soldiers" continued to do what they usually did. Just go on read more material on it. You will at least need it to write a well sourced article. If you have read to write a good article you will also know enough to tell in which war it happened while here you ask people who hardly know the basics of what happened in this region. Wandalstouring 22:09, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

According to the legitimate sources I have read, I found out that the main war was in the fact during the time period I thought it was. It was a big war and is called "Guerra Grande" on the Spanish Wikipedia. However, there continued small 'wars' afterwards. --Ineffable3000 22:57, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Either way, I'll just work on the article. If someone creates an article about another Uruguayan civil war, we'll just move and disamb. --Ineffable3000 05:32, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

A-Class review for Ioannis Makrygiannis now open

The A-Class review for Ioannis Makrygiannis is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 13:58, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Commonwealth military units again

Looks like the deleted Category:British Commonwealth Forces wasn't the only category trying to lump together all the Commonwealth's various militaries; we also have the bizarrely named Category:Commonwealth regiments and corps (which includes a number of things that are neither regiments nor corps; but the curious combination of two formation sizes is baffling regardless). Does anyone see a use (and alternate name) for this, or should it go to CFD like the last one? Kirill Lokshin 03:37, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

'Regiments' and 'Corps' are both names for British historical regiments, thus Army Catering Corps and the Black Watch can both be seen as 'regiments' though service organisations usually get called 'corps'. I hope I'm not teaching people to suck eggs here - they're administrative, not operational, organisations. I think it has merit possibly under a title something like 'Indigenous (local?) forces of the British Empire and Commonwealth' ?? Thoughts?

Cheers Buckshot06 03:46, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't really see a use for it - as was discussed in the previous case, there is no real military connection amongst the armed forces of the various countries that are members of the Commonwealth. Carom 03:53, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

If this category is retained it should at least be limited to actual regiments and corps. Many of the units sub-categories such as 'Military units and formations of New Zealand' are neither and these aren't valid sub-categories. --Nick Dowling 10:44, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

To forestall the creation of such categories and possibly articles. The respective names should be linked to a chapter in the Commonwealth article that explains how "their military" worked. Wandalstouring 11:33, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

It seems like the Army Catering Corps would fall into the same kind of 'classification' as the Category:United States Army Corps of Engineers, which itself could probably be better defined. How about something along the lines of (using the Corps of Engineers as an example), making a new category called (bad example) Category:Adminstrative/Service Corps of XYZ Army, so that they have a distinct category separate from the operational Corps which people usually relate to term Corps? Just an idea. wbfergus 11:59, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

We do have a (mis-named) Category:British administrative corps. Kirill Lokshin 14:03, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

How about renaming that to Category:Administrative corps of the United Kingdom? And adding categories into the other national trees where neccessary? Carom 14:12, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Seems sensible (and speedyable); the question is whether we would want to explicitly rename the other "Corps" categories to "Operational corps" or some other term, to discourage people from trying to nest them in unusual ways? Kirill Lokshin 14:25, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Or maybe "Field corps" (c.f. Category:British field corps, Category:Field armies, etc.); or is that only valid in British terminology? Kirill Lokshin 14:27, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I think Category:Field corps of the United Kingdom is better, but I don't know how many other countries use that nomenclature. Carom 14:30, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Michael Sinclair (soldier)

Hi! I am not affiliated with this project, but I noticed the project template on the talk page and was wondering if anybody could assist or comment on my work on the article Michael Sinclair (soldier) (also redirected from Mike Sinclair).

In particlular:

• I am using a rather "different" referencing style - do you think it is O.K?
• I am (so far) using a single book as reference. Is this acceptable?
• What are your thoughts on using web pages as sources for this kind of material? This kind of information generally tends to be third or fourth generation and, in my opinion, unreliable.

The web page point is interesting. I have used Pat Reid's Colditz book as a reference for most of the article, but I am having trouble with the "Sixty Second Escape", since Reid states the attempt was launched from the British Quarters, which is impossible! A web page states it started from the sick-ward, which makes more sense, but the web page is unsourced, so how do I know where they got their information from?

If anybody has any Colditz books, please leave a note at my talk page. I would like to reference this a fully as possible since I would like to try and elevate it to Featured Article status. Michael Sinclair was a hero, and I think he deserves to be featured!

-- Qarnos 10:36, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

• Your reference style is OK as long as you make it clear that these comments are all quotes from the source. Use ("...quoted text...") for them.
• You can use as many books as you want. Naturally if you use only one book one may question the noteability of this person.
• There are quite a lot of different types of webpages just like there are quite a lot of different types of books. The article shouldn't be based entirely on content of dubious books or webpages. For example you can quote with little doubt the websites of official groups like a Coldlitz Castle veteran group or the British Ministry of Defence.

Take a look at the sources for the Colditz Castle article to find sources you yet didn't use. Possibly some of the involved editors can help you.

There are quite a lot of heroes without a featured biography on wikipedia. Wandalstouring 11:29, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

You can always ask the maintainers of the website where they got their information (they may not respond, or their response may not be useful, but you can always ask). Carom 14:32, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

A-Class review for Operation Linebacker now open

The A-Class review for Operation Linebacker is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 14:01, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Stub collectors

A possible application of the ability to redirect to chapters within articles would be to collect stubs as chapters of "articles" with a fitting categorization(not category) that describes one of their common traits. The idea is to better keep an eye on stubs and find a form for topics that are unlikely to ever make a whole article. These stub collectors can later be turned into summary articles with many redirects to their respective chapters or some chapters can become seperate articles if they have enough information. Wandalstouring 22:48, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

It's not a bad idea, particularly for topics that gather large amounts of permanent stubs due to a lack of available information (e.g. ancient & medieval military figures, etc.). Having said that, we need to make sure that what we're collecting actually make sense as combined articles (due to having some common theme) and are not merely extended disambiguation pages. Kirill Lokshin 23:01, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Even as disambiguation pages they would be by far easier to maintain and have more use. Wandalstouring 23:30, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

But the theme-based organization is more meaningful, when both are possible. For example, I would argue that combining a bunch of stubs into Punic figures of the First Punic War, Punic figures of the Second Punic War, etc. would be better than combining them into disambiguation pages by name. Kirill Lokshin 23:38, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Suggested new parameter for military unit infobox

Quick suggestion here - for the military unit infobox, I think a subordinate unit parameter would be a good idea. Obviously, we wouldn't include lettered companies (A Company, B Company, etc) or sequentially numbered battalions (1/501st, 2/501st, etc), but I think it would be quite helpful for showing which units fall under which units, instead of having to search through the text.--Nobunaga24 01:01, 13 January 2007 (UTC)