Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Archive 46

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Sieges by country on CFD

I've just put up a group nomination to rename the (newly created) sub-categories of Category:Sieges by country to match our existing naming convention; comments there would be very welcome! Kirill Lokshin 00:10, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

  • *sigh* And this appears to be going over like a lead balloon. :-( Kirill Lokshin 10:36, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
    • It's a submarine. The critics have some points perhaps we should slightly change the category into: Sieges conducted by Foo. Wandalstouring 11:15, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
      • Or simply "Sieges by X"? But that would only apply to the besieger, not to the besieged. To do the second, we'd need something like "Sieges conducted against X", which is a pretty messy category name.
      • The alternative, perhaps, would be to avoid the besieger/besieged distinction, but move to a different term that couldn't be confused with particular events. "Sieges involving X", possibly, or "Sieges participated in by X" (although the second one is unpleasantly long). If we wanted to, we could then mirror the syntax up the category tree (e.g. "Battles involving X", "Wars involving X", etc.); this wouldn't be possible if we had different category names for the attacking and defending sides of a siege. Kirill Lokshin 12:24, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
        • CfD seem to have been a rather contentious place lately. If we aren't going to be able to implement "Sieges of" in accordance with the naming convention, I would vote for "Sieges involving," as it seems like a reasonable alternative. Carom 14:44, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
          • Yep. It's bizarre how things that have been uncontroversially used for years suddenly become impossible to push through because of either bureaucratic red tape ("but it's not on the official naming convention list!") or general resistance on CFD (in arbitrary cases, no less—I've seen a nomination fail when an identical one had passed a few days before). I'm somewhat surprised that nobody has complained that the "Battles of France" category should contain Battle of France and nothing else. ;-)
          • More seriously: I suspect, given how things are going, that a mass conversion of everything to "X involving Y" will wind up being the most pleasant option available to us (that will both standardize the names and avoid the whole participant/location mess to some extent). Kirill Lokshin 18:26, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
  • So, if this nomination fails, would renaming everything to "X involving Y" (e.g. "Battles involving France", "Sieges involving the United Kingdom", "Wars involving Italy", etc.) be workable? Or is there some better terminology that we could adopt? Kirill Lokshin 02:27, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Some possible alternatives (all longer and probably no better):
    • "X participated in by Y" (e.g "Battles participated in by France", "Sieges participated in by the United Kingdom", "Wars participated in by Italy")
    • "X fought by Y" (e.g "Battles fought by France", "Sieges fought by the United Kingdom", "Wars fought by Italy")
  • Any others? Kirill Lokshin 02:58, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
I would support "X involving Y." It might, ultimately, be a better convention than the current one, as it makes clear the preference for categorization by participant rather than location. Carom 20:09, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
True, that. It'll be a somewhat unusual name, though; hopefully the CFD passerby won't balk on it for that reason. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 03:27, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Well, it wouldn't be CfD if someone didn't object... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Carom (talk • contribs)

List of Norwegian battles

List of Norwegian battles has a lot of red links to battles needing creation, ranging from the year 900 to 1814. If anyone needs some inspiration. :) Inge 10:17, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

We have a requested articles departement or you can try to set up a task force. Furthermore there is the possibility to translate from the Norwegian wiki (+ you can directly search for others capable of Norwegian and possibly interested in history). Wandalstouring 10:34, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
Going on the task force idea, I don't think that a Norwegian task force would work but how about a Scandanavian one? Kyriakos 02:56, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
Would be easily doable if there's enough editor interest for it, I think. Kirill Lokshin 09:57, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Looking through the member list, there seems to be a fair amount of users intrested in Scandanavia. Kyriakos 21:48, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Dagger Icon †

Every now and then someone will ask me on a talk page, "What does that dagger icon in the infobox mean?" Some of you have probably handled similar inquiries. There should really be a way for people to find out without having to ask or having to go on a long search. Perhaps some of you computer whizzes could come up with something like how the star in the upper corner of Featured Articles works: you click it and it takes you to Featured Articles, you hover and it tells you what it means. Perhaps clicking on the dagger icon could take you to killed in action (sure, it's a crappy article right now). Similarly, the white flag icon () might take you to surrender (military) or prisoner of war. Alternately, a key could be included in the infobox, as I've experimented with here, but that adds clutter and is therefore less desirable. —Kevin 20:52, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

I've created {{KIA}} and {{POW}}; they can be used in place of the raw icons (and should be given with no space before them, as they already include a non-breaking space. Kirill Lokshin 21:18, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
Fiddling with it some more: looks like using the actual flag image in the template breaks apart the surrounding text in certain circumstances. I've replaced it with a character that looks sort of like a white flag, and I think it's still legible; but any comments would be very welcome! Kirill Lokshin 21:41, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
Linking the dagger to kia is no good idea because it is used no matter what the reason of death was. creating a page with redirect and linking appropriately is no problem. So does anyone object linking the dagger icon to death or are there other suggestions? Wandalstouring 02:27, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
Hmm, I was under the impression that the infoboxes only indicated KIA (or essentially KIA) deaths; is that not the case? (Or do you mean to make a distinction between KIA and people who died of their wounds, and so forth?) We could concievably link to an appropriate section on Casualty (person) in the long term; but that article doesn't go into any detail at the moment. Kirill Lokshin 02:30, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
Many wounded in action died shortly afterwards from infections and are also counted as casualties of the battle in ancient source, but they are not KIA (Sometimes they were killed by comrades after the fight to avoid a slow and painful death.). Wandalstouring 16:34, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
Ah, ok. Feel free to change the link of the icon to whatever seems to be the most appropriate article, in that case. Kirill Lokshin 18:10, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for creating those templates, Kirill. Good work, as always.
There's an easy fix to address Wandalstouring's point: on those (presumably uncommon) occassions when "killed in action" does not accurately describe the death of a commander listed in the infobox, use the dagger but "pipe trick" it to point to a more appropriate article, such as Casualty (person). Like this: General Bob †. —Kevin 20:33, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
It would actually be easier to just work the pipe trick into the template, then; e.g. [[General Bob]]{{KIA|Casualty (person)}}, which generates General Bob †. This allows us to centralize everything through the templates. Kirill Lokshin 20:40, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
Well hells bells, they don't pay me enough around here to know anything about pipe tricking a template. Cool. —Kevin 20:43, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Battle of Yawata

After creating the article on the Battle of Yawata, I learned that there is very little information on the battles of the Muromachi period. Please take a look at it. --Ineffable3000 21:23, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

What about asking the Japanese military history task force and not lots of people who don't know what you're talking about? Thanks. Wandalstouring 02:23, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Flags

What is wrong with flags in battleboxes?No explanation is give,I might have to change that if i do not get one.

Threats will get you nowhere.--chris.lawson 15:58, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Well will you please explain it to me?Something it seems you just won't do83.71.39.97 16:05, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

The tradition of putting small flags next to the combatants is an old one but has been inconsistently applied and was for some reason frowned upon in the Project guide. My thoughts on this have varied over time. I'm now quite in favour small (22px) flags next to the combatants, which often give a little contrast, especially with unusual combatants (i.e. Second Spanish Republic, Nationalist Spain). However, people have a habit of going a little crazy with this, slamming 40px or even 70px flags and countless smaller ones next to every commander. Albrecht 16:13, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
As far as I'm concerned, I don't really care one way or another. I think it does look a little cleaner without them, but my main point in sticking steadfastly to the recommendation is to inspire some discussion here about whether or not the recommendation truly reflects consensus of people involved in this Wikiproject. As I'm not particularly involved here (nor do I have much desire to be), I'll abstain from further discussion. I do, however, expect that people will respect consensus once a clear consensus has been established.--chris.lawson 16:20, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
The existing guidelines represent a consensus. Wandalstouring 16:34, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
I don't quite see how you imagine there's a community consensus given the insane number of flags that appear in the Infoboxes these days. And considering that this issue was never subject to discussion or vote, I think you're being a little disingenuous. Albrecht 16:47, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
Mmm, the obvious answer is that flags are problematic, for several reasons:
  1. There is a long history of people making mistakes and adding ahistorical flags, which are entirely incorrect for the actual battle in question.
  2. As Albrecht mentioned, some flags are added at a very large size, which creates an unpleasantly large infobox.
  3. Sometimes, flags are only available for some of the combatants; this causes an inconsistent appearance.
  4. More generally, any insertion of images into that field causes layout problems if the lines get wrapped. In addition, the images usually don't align properly with the text.
  5. Many flag images, particularly historical ones, are not available under a free license; their use as icons in infoboxes is considered "decorative" and forbidden by the fair use criteria.
Hence, the note that "the use of flag icons is not recommended". Note that this doesn't mean that they're forbidden; we've generally been extremely liberal when editors (who know how to use them properly) have used flag icons in their own articles. But, if you (a) aren't sure of how to use them or (b) don't really care one way or the other, it's suggested that you avoid them and save yourself—and us—the trouble of trying to apply them in a situation where they don't really work too well. Kirill Lokshin 18:07, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
I think Kirill has the right idea here, as is his custom. Points #1 and #3 resonate especially. I wasn't aware the images caused display problems; I've checked with many broswers and settings and, providing they were of the right size, the layout always looked fine. But obviously I can't favour something that would distract the reader from the article, which of course is immensely more important than the Infobox. In fact, as my edits show ([1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8]), I've been pretty stringent in managing flags and dealing with out-of-control cases. I just think they've got potential for delivering a powerful syntactic punch on the cheap. Consider, Thirteen States v. Loyalists. Albrecht 19:40, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
It's hard to see the details in these flags. In case you feel this helps someone and you use it properly, OK. Personally I doubt 22px is a good idea if you have anything but a tricolore or other simple designs. Bigger icons would totally disturb the layout and draw too much attention to the infoboxes. Wandalstouring 21:53, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Another unexpected CFD nom

Somebody has apparently nominated much of the Category:Military units and formations by type tree for deletion; comment would be very welcome! Kirill Lokshin 20:50, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

And one more expected one (already linked from the announcement template) that could use more comments as well. Kirill Lokshin 21:19, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
Some more comments on the latter nomination would be helpful, if anyone has some free time. Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 01:55, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
As a sidenote, the whole CfD process is becoming rather tiresome. Carom 02:03, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Roman-Spartan War

I am not a member of this WikiProject, but have received angry comments as to failing Roman-Spartan War for Good Article status; which I wholly stand by.

A user has claimed that the Military History A-class standard is higher than that of GA status and thus it should have passed.

I strongly disagree per my comments at Talk:Roman-Spartan War and User talk:Yannismarou#Roman-Sparta_War.

This article has many problems and has a grand-total of four references, several POV statements and alot of poor English grammar. Given this, I would urge members of this project to raise their standards for granting articles an A-class as other projects also have much higher standards.

In short can we please reconsider the marking system here and for this article as some users are evidently taking this grading system very seriously. Thanks, Jhamez84 21:13, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Let's see, point by point:
  • Well written: well, that's a somewhat subjective matter; but, in any case, we've specifically chosen to exempt the A-Class review from consideration of mild stylistic issues. Copyediting may, indeed, be appropriate.
  • Factually accurate: the number of sources is in no way an indication of an article's accuracy or lack thereof. If you wish to take issue with an article's referencing, it's expected that you, at the very least, name other significant sources which ought to be consulted. If you are unable do so, then the article may already use the full range of available historical material, but, in any case, you are probably not in the best position to judge its accuracy.
  • Broad in coverage: again a somewhat subjective stylistic issue; the overview material should generally be in broader articles on the period, with articles on specific conflicts being somewhat more restricted in scope. But this can, admittedly, be debated.
  • Neutral point of view: historical articles aim to present the opinions of published historians; this is not entirely incompatible with being judgemental, if historians themselves are so. In any case, I fail to see a significant NPOV violation in the statement you cite, as it seems to be how the episode is treated in the sources.
  • Images: even FA does not require images (and will certainly settle for a limited number of them); that the GA reviewers should presume to do so is frankly galling.
In short, I think the A-Class review process is working precisely as intended here; we have successfuly identified a high-quality military history article without having to satisfy the arbitrary demands of a GA process that seems to (a) lack an understanding of how military history articles are written and sourced and (b) have an over-inflated opinion of GA status itself.
(It should be pointed out, incidentally, that the only other WikiProject to even have a formal review for A-Class status is WP:TROP; all the others, as far as I know, allow the tag to be applied by random reviewers.) Kirill Lokshin 21:43, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm quite surprised by this. Perhaps I am being too strict in my reviews - though do not think this is a bad thing. I believe Roman-Spartan War has been granted A-class with rather liberal understanding of the various grading systems, but respect this. However thanks for pointing out that there are some outstanding issues, particularly with regards to copyediting which was may strongest objection. I look forward to the article being improved. Jhamez84 22:19, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

{{WPMILHIST Announcements}}

For anyone curious, I've made some changes to the layout of the template, including a more useful "simple" version that links explicitly to the full one. I've also replaced the instance on the main project page with the simple version, as it reduces the page size by about a third. I'm not sure whether we still need the "Skip to TOC" bar at the top now that the template has been shrunk, though.

Comments would be very welcome! Kirill Lokshin 04:16, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I like it, this is kinder on my internet connection and does not take as long to load. TomStar81 (Talk) 04:53, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Muslim military history?

Probably a stupid question, but does any task force deal with Islamic military history? 207.160.66.129 15:37, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Not "Muslim" military history per se, although a variety of other task forces cover aspects of it. I don't necessarily think that would be a good idea for one either; while the military history of the Islamic conquests would be a good topic for a task force, "Muslim military history"—which would include, presumably, anything done by Muslims, rather than the Islamic state (Caliphate, etc.) in particular—would be as unworkable as "Christian military history" would be as a scope. Kirill Lokshin 16:14, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
No, but actually we have no military task force for any religious group. The African military history task force deals with a large number of Islamic countries (+ the Islamic conquest in Africa). Likely the Indian military history task force also deals with the military history of Muslims on the Indian subcontinent. The Medieval warfare task force is about all from 500BC (~100BH) to 1500BC(~900AH) and isn't bound to any regional borders. There is no task force explicitly covering Central Asia or the Gulf for example. Perhaps the Muslim conquest could be covered by one task force. Furthermore the recent global conflict of diverse groups of Islamic faith with many Western nations and others could really benefit from a task force. If you go through our list of editors you will find several editors writing on different aspects of Islamic military history. We can create any task force if you provide a clear definition for the scope and enough interested participants sign up. Wandalstouring 16:26, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Mass renaming of by-country categories

In light of the fact that the current nomination for Category:Sieges by country seems to have gone down the drain as far as maintaining the "X of Y" convention is concerned, and the discussion above hasn't come up with any better term than "involving", I'd like to propose a mass renaming of battle, operation, and war categories to use it. The main benefits would be:

  1. Create a consistent naming scheme across all such categories.
  2. Make more explicit the fact that the categories are set up by participants, not by location (this has gotten to the point where I've written up a FAQ about it).
  3. Resolve the concern raised in the current nomination that the "X of Y" terminology could overlap with the normal naming of particular events.

The (very) big list:

Category:Sieges by country
Category:Naval battles by country
Category:Wars by country
Category:Battles by country
Category:Military operations by country et al.

Comments? Are there any objections to this scheme, or ideas for a better one? Kirill Lokshin 17:10, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't have any problems with it - and, as I mentioned above, it may be a better convention in the long run. Carom 17:18, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
OK, go on. Wandalstouring 18:07, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Me neither, except I pity the poor bot that will have to do the moving.--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 22:34, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Chainmail bikinis and LARP armour

I did some image research today. I was confronted with LARP armor and bikini chainmail girls while searching for Medieval armour. We currently have no clear difference between all that stuff and our serious history stuff. Somehow I feel a clear guideline for a disambiguation would help because in many people's opinion the difference between LARP and history is marginal :(. Any suggestions? (Like chainmail in popular culture/chainmail in erotic outfits)Wandalstouring 00:09, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

"Ahistorical chainmail", perhaps? (But does the stuff really need an article in its own right?) Kirill Lokshin 01:29, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Wandalstouring - were you talking aout disambiguating the images themselves? Or are you more concerned with making sure that Wikipedia articles use appropriate images? Carom 01:40, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Or even distinguishing between the two on the article level, maybe? Kirill Lokshin 01:42, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
I was thinking about different possibilities and had not yet made up my mind. Actually we have no reason for not mentioning 6-ring chainmail in our articles on chainmail (100% ahistoric, but featured in many "historic films"). That was one of the first things I was aware of. The next is, even if we do make such a difference on a technical basis, how do we disambiguate from "freestyle" reenactment (LARP) using 4-ring cahinmail (but in odd styles) and serious reenactment which is our main source for accurate material (museum images are often not available).
This leaves several possibilities:
a)disambiguation within articles (historic chainmail, chainmail in LARP, chainmail in erotic underwear, etc.) and seperate selections of images for each topic
b)seperate articles for each topic and a clear rule on how to disambiguate (especially LARP stuff and historic stuff), but this is likely to get fooled by a load of pseudo-historic film productions. + it needs some watchdogs Wandalstouring 02:19, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
I don't suppose Chicks In Chainmail would sound very encyclopedic. However, Chainmail fetish does ;)--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 22:32, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
"Chicks in Chainmail," huh? Thats got a nice ring to it, even if it is not encyclopedic ;) TomStar81 (Talk) 22:34, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Heheheh indeed[9]. Fetish?! Moi?!;)--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 22:48, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Nice. Thats going into my favorites folder; I will be laughing about this for the rest of the year :) TomStar81 (Talk) 23:00, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Images would be great to illustrate articles about LARP, fandom and such, and I am sure 'fanmade armor' or something like this deserves an article. I'd expect there is a proper term for it - maybe ask at Talk:Live action role-playing game? Renaissance faire also comes to mind. Oh, and as for the art - check Bad girl art :) -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  23:00, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Bad girl art is now on my watchlist. Thanks ProKonsul;)--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 23:16, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
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