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List of British generals

I have started a new page. Kittybrewster ☎ 00:31, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

That is quite ambitious. Did you know there were over 1000 general officers ranked brigadier-general and above in the British Army in World War I alone? I'm planning to work on a list of British Army generals in World War I, but will be limiting it to Corps commanders and above. Carcharoth (talk) 21:28, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
Yes I knew that. Worth having such a list(s). Nothing wrong with being ambitious. Any help welcomed. - Kittybrewster 05:48, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
Surely it should be List of British general officers? It would have been much better if you'd started it in proper table form, so as to put in dates of birth, death, dates of promotion to the various general officer ranks on the Active and Retired Lists, with their final rank and major conflicts served in. Citing the "Army List" isn't particularly helpful either. Which Army List? Which page? This list is just a long jumble of names, and while many are known to me, I doubt anyone else will be able to make much use of it other than spend an afternoon idly browsing through it. --Simon Harley (Talk | Library). 08:58, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
Having just added some ranks to the A list I tend to agree with above. I also have doubts over the eventual size of the completed list. List of British general officers A - B -C etc may be easier to manage. --Jim Sweeney (talk) 09:06, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
To put it mildly, the inclusion of Brigadiers is perplexing. Unless they were were eventually promoted to Major-General and beyond, they have no place in such a list. --Simon Harley (Talk | Library). 09:19, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
Prio to 1922? the rank was Brigadier-General and was a general officer rank in the First World War, it was then changed to Colonel Commandant and then the present Brigadier and became a senior field officer rank instead. David Underdown (talk) 10:00, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
What qualifies as British? Is it the unification of Scotland and England? The complete subjugation of Wales? The incorporation of Ireland into the Realm? 70.29.210.242 (talk) 09:25, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Pacific War article request for community consensus

Hi

A debate has been struck up on the above article’s talk page in regards to the order the Allied combatants should be in. At the moment the only guidelines to follow, as far as I know, is the Template:Infobox military conflict.

There doest appear to be much interest, with really only two editors currently voicing their opinion. In the hopes of establishing some sort of community consensus and moving past this i am asking for additional input from the community.

Regards --EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 13:31, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

This may have broader implications than the PW page alone, in settling WW2 start date (presuming a 1931/7 date there is accepted as valid to change the European phase...), so do wade weigh in. TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 14:52 & 14:53, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
But the Thirty Years War started in the late 1800's ... poilices that led to confrontation in 1914 followed by a 21 year ceasefire before finally concluding in 1945 ;p --EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 15:55, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
The issue is also to "establish" when the Pacific war started : is it in 1941, with Pearl Harbor and Asia's subsequent inclusion in the global conflict, or 1937 with the sino-japanese war, or 1931 with the invasion of Manchuria ? I'd say the Pacific war, as presented in the majority of sources, started in late 1941, with the sino-japanese war going on since 1937 (or 1931) then becoming part of it. Settling the WW2 start date in 1931 would come as as surprise to many, as I guess wikipedia consensus does not weight much when confronted to common knowledge and scholarly opinion. Jean-Jacques Georges (talk) 15:14, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
I am by no means an expert in the Pacific War but I would say that the order of combatants should either be based on the number of personnel or based on the role they played, probably the latter. If England had command of all forces in an area then they should get the lead but likewise of the US had the lead that they should get it. In regards to the start date. If conflict was continuous from teh 1931 date through world war II then I would say include that with an explanation that from date x to date x was one thing and it flowed into world war II which started on X. Since this article is on the Pacific War I don't see a problem with expanding it outside the parameters of the common World War II pac war context. Thats just my opinion. I also grazed through the article and although its rated as a Bclass I believe it still needs work for B. Most notibly it lacks inline citations in several areas and I even noticed a couple of Citation needed tags. --Kumioko (talk) 16:49, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
Actually, fighting was not continuous in China between 1931 and 1937. As for the start date, the date for world war II is 1939, so it is illogical to have one of is theatre start before. The Pacific War (or Asia-Pacific War, if one prefers) is a broad name referring to the whole WWII Asian theatre, which came to encompass the Chinese theatre. The Second Sino-Japanese War was a regional war which came to be included in a world war. Moreover, how can be say that something called the "Pacific war" started in 1937, while no action took place in the Pacific between 1937 and 1941 ? (well, me might count the German operations of 1940, but they are generally not included in what is called the Pacific war, i.e., the part of the war concerning Japan). Plus, the vast majority of sources refer to as Pacific War the action which took place after Pearl Harbour. Jean-Jacques Georges (talk) 20:13, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

As opinions have been requested I'll give you mine, but I emphasise they are opinions and thoughts, rather than an effort to convince you to "do it my way".

The Pacific has always struck me as a theatre of WWII, rather than a separately definable war. It covered the Island hopping campaign and battles up to and including New Guinea and the Phillipines. It was a theatre of the 39-45 Second World War (although operations and hostilities didn't start until 41) and was primarily American led, with British and Australian support. Similarly there was another campaign next door - the South-East Asian theatre of World War II. This campaign covered everything west of the Malaya peninsula. Again, part of the 39-45 war, British led. Finally you have the Asia campaign or Second Sino Japanese War, a separate theatre (distinguishable from the SE Asia one as the respective forces never really linked fronts with that theatre) and one that started earlier. Obviously there is overlap in all of these theatres, but they were predominately separate, in the same way that the Western Front, the Eastern Front and the Mediterranean campaign are viewed somewhat separately by historians.

The parent article for those three theatres is European Theatre of World War II (perhaps a slight misnomer, but a fair basis for a parent article nonetheless). It seems that Pacific War is the equivalent and that South-East Asian theatre of World War II, Pacific Ocean theater of World War II, South West Pacific theatre of World War II and Second Sino-Japanese War are the theatres. But Pacific War seems a slight misnomer to me, and I'm curious if its actually supported in reliable sources as an overall description for the theatres in this part of the world (I only mention this as there are no refs in the Etymology section). I'm sure as an encompassing topic the article deserves to exist (under a different name), but I think the large amount of detail in it needs splitting up a bit more into the separate theatre's articles. Also this parent article is not WWII exclusive, as one theatre began before the start of the Second World War. Thus a 1937 start date here doesn't reflect on a 1939 start date for WWII.

This is my general understanding of the area from the books I have read and the articles already here. To me it looks like any drive should be focussed on the separate theatres (which aren't hot right now) rather than this article, which is a parent one rather than a specific theatre in its own right. As such I don't think it needs an infobox either, which imposes some tough rigidity on a fairly convoluted set of circumstances. I hope this makes sense, please say if it doesn't. Ranger Steve (talk) 21:19, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

The Pacific War started with the Battle of Malaya, which begun shortly before the Attack on Pearl Harbor.  Cs32en Talk to me  00:05, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

It really doesn't matter what we as Wikieditors say. That would be OR. What do the historians say? Auntieruth55 (talk) 00:34, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Speaking from experience, the historians are even divided: some say it should be dated from the Imperial Japanese pushed for colonies, some say after Pearl Harbor.
As to the current situation, my suggest is that we find a way to list the combatants in a neutral manner, like alphabetical order for example. It would probably be a good idea to come up with a common way of listing combatants like this so we can crate some sort of standard operating procedure for cases like this. TomStar81 (Talk) 01:11, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
Yes, I realize that historians often don't agree on these things. If they don't, then that can be a section (or a theme) in the article. I had to deal with this in Unification of Germany because needless to say the historians didn't agree on that either. If the historians are divided, then that needs to be covered. How about separate articles on the wars of the Pacific War, and an overarching article to cover them in chronological order of start-date (start date = date of declaration, or date of first skirmish, or formal something). What I was trying to get across with my statement above, is that it doesn't matter what our individual opinions are, although Cs seems adamant about the "start date", but rather are there historians (reliable sources) that say the War in Malaya was the start of the Pacific War. I'm not sure what Pearl Harbor has to do with any of this; I don't remember reading anything that claimed the Pacific as a theater of war didn't start with Pearl Harbor (although this is well out of my field of expertise). Auntieruth55 (talk) 01:37, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
Historians are not divided on this, though there maybe a minority view that the 1941 date for the start of the Pacific War would put undue emphasis on the events of that year. Historians holding that view would most likely not write simply that the Pacific War started earlier, but would present their opinion in the context of the prevalent viewpoint. (Examples to the contrary would be welcome, of course). For a source, see Daniel Marston, The Pacific war companion: from Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima, p. 47.  Cs32en Talk to me  02:29, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
Gordon L. Rottman gives a more precise time: "The Pacific War (Taiheiyo Senso) began at 02.15, December 8, 2601 Tokyo Time ("X-Day") when the 2d Southern Expeditionary Fleet bombarded British Forces at Kota Bharu, Malaya followed by amphibious landings." See Gordon L. Rottman, Japanese army in World War II: conquest of the Pacific 1941-42, p. 4.  Cs32en Talk to me  02:39, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
EnigmaMcmxc makes a good point, if a bit (I think?) tongue in cheek. There is scholarly opinion WW1 & WW2 are actually one war plus interregnum. (IIRC, Milner, North Atlantic Run; if not, I've seen it raised seriously, anyhow.) It doesn't appear to be a widely-held view, but...
Ranger Steve also gets it right, IMO. The "theatre" approach is a good idea, & one I'd use: divide PTO/SWPA & CBI ops & avoid conflicts over whether 1931 started the PacWar. Left unaddressed is the bigger Q: who joined who to start WW2? The conventional view is also a Euro-centric one, IMO, since most of the English-language histories, understandably, are written by Brits or Americans (or Canadians or Aussies {Ozzies?}), by default; Western Front suffers the same bias, for the same reason. So, too, opinion on which is the "turning point" of ETO WW2, Stalingrad or 2d Alamein, depends in part on being able to read Russian. So what do Chinese & Japanese native-language sources say? (I read neither & haven't the foggiest.)
And proving it's never simple, Cs32en correctly points out the Malaya op went off first...even tho, yes, Auntieruth55 is also right most histories start with Pearl Harbor as the trigger, which again reflects some inherent writer bias. This, IMO, is more a matter of emphasis. Pearl was far & away more significant grand strategically, so deserves pride of place. Perhaps, however, Liǔtiáogōu Shìbiàn or 7-7 Lugouqiao should be pre-eminent...& the Luftwaffe attack on that Polish bridge 1 Sept '39 should be "brought Europe into WW2". TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 03:07, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
There is quite a bit on the idea of the two wars being a continuum. And on them being a continuum also of a series of European civil wars. It is, however, still a fairly eccentric view. It would be possible to write about it as a series of civil wars and nationalist uprisings against imperialism also, but if we're going to think of it in those terms, it's still going on!
I'd like to see it in a chronological, from the earliest to the latest, of the separate conflicts, to show how it built from a fairly contained conflict to the magnitude of atomic warfare. Move away from the "it started with Pearl Harbor" or it started with "x" toward, several conflicts merged into this global conflict. And I still think we have to treat each one separately as well as together, because they have varying roots, conduct, and outcomes, even if the actors are sometimes the same. Auntieruth55 (talk) 03:19, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
The Oxford Companion to World War II says in its 'Pacific War' article that the Pacific War started on 7 December 1941, so that's what I'd go with (the Companion usually reflects the common view of historians). As a side note, I'm amazed at the amount of time which has been spent on this article's infobox compared to the article itself. Nick-D (talk) 06:25, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
Now that's a good source, thanks. Jean-Jacques Georges (talk) 15:20, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
  • Common view, or common English-language view? AFAIK, Chinese & Japanese translations are thin on the ground.
  • Also, I think Auntieruth55's chrono approach has a lot to be said for it. It might mean breaking out a lot of the "background" in the SSJW & PW pages, & in the ETO, too, but it might be the best place, & best way, to address the "when it started" issue. Something on the lines of Origins of World War Two?
  • If done, this might also enable "breaking" Pacific War from other related pages & reduce hassles over where to add content. TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 17:03 & 17:37, 4 March 2010 (UTC) (UTC) (P.S. If you want to discuss "freedom fighting", it is ongoing, & the origins go way back... Of course, we could say it's all about "control of our own stuff" & trace back to the invention of agriculture, which is when organized warfare became really practical....)

WWII started in 1937, with the Sino-Japanese war, which expanded into WWII. Why? A theatre of battle cannot have started before the war. The start date of the Invasion of Poland is just British/French centrism. I'm sure Czechs and Slovaks would beg to differ. China was an ally in WWII, and Japan was an axis. The only other possible start is Pearl Harbor, since it is the start date of hostilities between the last of the major combatants, so, everything in Europe before Pearl Harbor predates the start of WWII. 70.29.210.242 (talk) 09:19, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Can occupation and annexation be concurrent?

Judging by the definitions of Occupation and Annexation, these terms seem to be mutually exclusive. Nevertheless a discussion on the Occupation of the Baltic states talk page demonstrates that some editors believe that annexation and occupation can be concurrent. IMO, opinion of uninvolved editors would be helpful to resolve this particular issue and the "occupation vs annexation" issue in general.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:26, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Countermeasure Infobox

I've started a countermeasure infobox but right now it's a complete mess. I would also like to make other infobox reforms once i get this out of the way. Are there any coordinators or experts out there i could collaborate with?Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (talk) 22:48, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

I've been maintaining most of our infoboxes for the last couple of years, so I can certainly help with the design and any technical issues. I'm by no means an expert on countermeasures themselves, however; if we need further input on the contents of the infobox, then we should probably try to collect input either here or on the infobox talk page. Kirill [talk] [prof] 15:55, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

A-Class review for Sovetsky Soyuz class battleship now open

The A-Class review for Sovetsky Soyuz class battleship is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 09:21, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Special Boat Service

I have a question on a unusual category in the SBS article. I have been tinkering trying to improve and have come across the cat [Category:Articles with unsourced statements from Mar 10] never having seen this before is it new ? and how do we delete it ? --Jim Sweeney (talk) 09:52, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

The category hasn't been created yet, so don't panic. My guess is that there's a {{citation needed}} or similar tag where the "|date=" parameter has been given as "Mar 10" instead of the correct "March 2010". -- saberwyn 09:55, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
In my best laconic mechanic impression: "Well, there's your problem". -- saberwyn 09:57, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
I learn something new every day THANKS --Jim Sweeney (talk) 11:06, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Move discussion which needs more eyes

Please come participate in the move discussion at Talk:List of films based on war books — peace#Requested move. Thanks! ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:45, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

A-Class review for Michael P. Murphy now open

The A-Class review for Michael P. Murphy is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! --Kumioko (talk) 21:13, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Featured article candidacy for Karl Aloys zu Fürstenberg now open

The featured article candidacy for Karl Aloys zu Fürstenberg is now open. Comments from reviewers are needed to help determine whether the article meets the criteria for featured articles; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 04:29, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

A-Class review for John Babcock needs attention

A few more editors are needed to complete the A-Class review for John Babcock; please stop by and help review the article! Thanks! -MBK004 05:49, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

WWI photographs to identify

I have posted some photos of WWI mortars, tanks and captured German aircraft at the reference desk for identification. If any experts on those would also have a look (follow link above), then I'd be grateful. Gwinva (talk) 05:33, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Planes - front an Albatross DIII Second A Pfalz DIII (I think, hard to tell from this angle). Tanks - Front is I think a Mk IV male, followed by a Mk. IV female (but both could be Mk V) with a Whippet at the back. Monstrelet (talk) 19:02, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for that! I've noted your comments at the ref desk as well, for others who have been following the discussion. Gwinva (talk) 07:58, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

A-Class review for Battle of the Cedars now open

The A-Class review for Battle of the Cedars is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 19:34, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Peer review for Military history of Australia during World War I now open

The peer review for Military history of Australia during World War I is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 19:36, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Featured article candidacy for Battle of Taejon now open

The featured article candidacy for Battle of Taejon is now open. Comments from reviewers are needed to help determine whether the article meets the criteria for featured articles; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 21:04, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Kevin Petit

Could someone please take a look at Kevin Petit? There are several references, but some editors may think they are not enough to demonstrate notability. Eastmain (talk • contribs) 07:09, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I tend to agree that there's no evidence that Mr Petit is notable. Some of the references don't even mention him (eg, the ref provided for the statement "Petit began a long relationship with General Petraeus, known as one of the "sons" from that era, that included warrior-scholar cultivation, featuring intellectual rigor coupled with brutal physical fitness competitions" is a book review which doesn't mention Petit) and most of the others appear to be about units and operations he participated in. Several are even about a movie he clearly had no involvement with! This appears to be a clear case of padding an article to make its subject appear notable. Nick-D (talk) 07:38, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
I third the assertion that Col. Petit isn't notable- Bronze Star (considering how many holders of the Distinguished Service Cross were just deleted last month) and O-5 aren't enough, and neither are his other activities. The sourcing seems to be masking the subject's non-notable status- almost hanging on his very loose connection to Gen. Petraeus. Bradjamesbrown (talk) 07:50, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
The referencing is certainly a bit weird. Let's run through it...:
  • Ref 1 - gives dates of Desert Storm to source a line saying he fought in it.
  • Ref 2 - "His platoon protected the right flank..." - sourced to a site confirming 3rd Arm Div fought, but nothing about his platoon.
  • Ref 3 - "...his platoon guarded the tent in Safwan" - story merely talks about the meeting, and indeed implies it was a different unit (1st Infantry) present.
  • Ref 4 - nothing but a captioned photo, which confirms Operation Provide Comfort existed... but nothing, again, to do with him.
  • Ref 5,6 - both confirm background history / unit participation but do not mention him
  • Ref 7 - involvement with Petraeus cited to a book review about Petraeus generally
  • Ref 8 - confirms who commanded the regiment, but doesn't mention him
  • Ref 9 - tells you what the institution does, but doesn't mention him
  • Ref 10 - press release about a single exercise, which doesn't mention him, used to cite his serving in Kosovo
  • Ref 11 - [can't access article]
  • Ref 12-14 - and he finally is mentioned in a source! Two news stories he's quoted in, one report in which he briefly attends a meeting.
  • Ref 15-17 - three articles discussing the film, doesn't mention him or give details of the unit's involvement
  • Ref 18,19 - [dead links]
  • Ref 20 - news story he's quoted in.
  • Ref 21 - news story about the program, doesn't mention him
  • Ref 22-24 - hurrah, an actual newspaper story which gives biographical details - albeit not many. "...reminding him of the dust- and blood-filled battles he had fought in the alleyways of Mogadishu" - this is the one firm fact we have about anything outside Iraq, and it's not mentioned in the article. No source for his injury.
  • Ref 25, 26 - news story about the new commander, doesn't mention him
  • Ref 26 - news story about the Afghanistan policy, doesn't mention him
  • Ref 27 - after a bit of digging, turns up this potted biography.
  • Ref 28 - doesn't seem relevant
  • Ref 29 - [dead link]
  • Ref 30 - an Amazon review of a book? He does seem to appear in it, though.
  • Ref 31 - [dead link]
So, after all that, we're left with just a handful - a book which mentions (to a degree which I can't identify) his involvement in promoting Army martial-arts training; a potted biography published by the organisation he runs; four news stories quoting him, one of which gives a slim fragment of - possibly inaccurate - biography, but are otherwise pretty light. I won't say it definitely doesn't prove him notable, not without having been able to read the book, but I'm certainly doubtful we can say "it has a lot of references" is at all meaningful. Shimgray | talk | 10:14, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for looking into the references Shimgray. I think that this should go to AfD. Nick-D (talk) 10:24, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
Agreed - AfD listed here. EyeSerenetalk 13:39, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
  • Thank you all for your comments. I suspected that he wasn't notable, but I wanted to ask other people before tagging the article. Eastmain (talk • contribs) 15:54, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Featured article candidacy for Dutch 1913 battleship proposal now open

The featured article candidacy for Dutch 1913 battleship proposal is now open. Comments from reviewers are needed to help determine whether the article meets the criteria for featured articles; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Nick-D (talk) 22:22, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Old merge proposal

There is a merge proposal concernging Pacific Ocean theatre of World War II and Pacific Theater of Operations. This has apparently been going on for several months but everybody seems to have forgotten about it. Is anyone interested to give his opinion about it ? (I would personally favor merging the articles). Jean-Jacques Georges (talk) 10:53, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

I've commented on the proposal on the article itself. The issues appear to be around the differences and overlap between the (US) PTO and the war in the Pacific. There's to my mind some parallel between the ETO and the War in Europe but a look over by some heads with a better grasp than mine of the Pacific war and how it was organized would be useful. GraemeLeggett (talk) 11:31, 12 March 2010 (UTC)


A-Class review for SMS Helgoland now open

The A-Class review for SMS Helgoland is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Parsecboy (talk) 12:35, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Newsletter not updating

It seems that the newsletter in the News section is still on the Jan newsletter. Any way to fix this? Buggie111 (talk) 16:44, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Fixed. Thanks for pointing that out. Parsecboy (talk) 16:51, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Peer review for Rod Serling now open

The peer review for Rod Serling is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 18:14, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Peer review for Emil Lang (fighter ace) now open

The peer review for Emil Lang (fighter ace) is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 18:18, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Assessment problems

Cromdog (talk · contribs) has been assessing article for WP:MILHIST. However, I feel that this editor's assessments need reviewing. He is marking articles as stub class when they are clearly well above that - such as Priwall (barque) and SS Beaverburn (1944).

I note that Cromdog has three Milhist Service Awards for assessment of articles, the third one noting over 1,000 articles assessed. It may be that Category:Stub-Class military history articles needs to be checked (all 42,000 + of them) to ensure that articles are correctly assessed and not marked as stubs when they are clearly of much better quality. I'd certainly suggest that Cromdog's assessments are all given a look at by another set of eyes. Mjroots (talk) 20:59, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

I would have assessed Priwall (barque) as a B, but I would have fixed the minor grammar and punctuation problems before doing so. The article is not free from grammatical errors, but it is free from major ones. A couple of comma faults should not have prevented a B assessment, IMHO. Auntieruth55 (talk) 21:13, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
HMS Adamant (1780) was assessed as a start, failing the criteria of having 'appropriate supporting materials, such as an infobox, images, or diagrams.' and being 'suitably referenced, and all major points have appropriate inline citations.' But on both points it seems to fulfil all these criteria (plenty of footnotes, half a dozen sources, an infobox and two pictures), to the point of exceeding Milhist's example B-class article, 58th/59th Battalion (Australia). Benea (talk) 21:19, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, Auntieruth. Generally I try to create articles of at least C class or better. Looks like there is evidence of this not being an isolated case. Mjroots (talk) 21:30, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
I've fixed the comma faults and the one or two grammatical problems, also added some links, but you should check to make sure I've not changed meanings. Auntieruth55 (talk) 21:46, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
The meanings were OK, but I fixed a couple of dablinks. Mjroots (talk) 21:52, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
Wiki assessment criteria seems to have tightened in the years I've been reading and editing, which is no doubt partly a result of a) the overall quality of the wiki improving from its humble beginnings and b)individual editor's interpretations of the rules. However I must admit some of those assessments seem especially tough. I can't imagine this is anything malicious though so I've told Cromdog this is being discussed and hopefully he can rationalise his assessments. Ranger Steve (talk) 21:59, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
I'll be interested to learn why he thought SS Beaverburn (1944) was only a stub. Mjroots (talk) 22:17, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
  • A vast proportion of existing "stub-class" articles aren't stubs - based on my checking over the past few months, at least 25% of them. In most cases, this is because they were tagged or rated as stubs, expanded, and never detagged - a lot of users either don't think to remove tags, or think they aren't allowed to. MILHIST is better than most, because we're more active over rating than most projects, but we still have a lot of these legacy cases. I wonder if this might just be a case of someone being misled by what we - unintentionally - already report as being stubs? Shimgray | talk | 23:06, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
Some of the unchanged assessment is from the likes of me, who don't feel confident enough to re-assess & so leave existing tags. With noobs, I'll wager that's even more common, so we may end up with a relatively small number of people trying to keep up with a big backlog. TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 00:33, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
perhaps we need to put the writing contest on hold for a month and dedicate our efforts to reassessing the stubs and starts. Auntieruth55 (talk) 00:43, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Rather than put it on hold why not simply allow assessments to be counted as part of the contest. Something modest, 2 points maybe. This should help to spur some interest and allow the contest to continue forward. --Kumioko (talk) 01:25, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Both the WWI and Aviation contests awarded 1/10 of a point for a general assessment and another for a filled-out B-class assessment. And considering we're over 20,000 unfilled B-class assessments I think that both are need to be done. However, tracking them would be a pain and probably isn't compatible with our contest's format. However, that doesn't mean that we can't do a separate assessment campaign with the appropriate gongs.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 01:50, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
I don't know about gongs, or even bells and whistles, but I just read something assessed as a stub that was clearly not. I'm sure there are a lot of articles that need reading, and I'd be willing to tackle reassessment/assessment of a few of the French Revolution or Napoleonic War ones. Or at least that general era. Auntieruth55 (talk) 02:13, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Most of us require a little bit of motivation to do stuff that isn't that much fun or requires more time. That's why the gongs or even a contest.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:16, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

yes. I understood that. I do as well. Chocolate usually works. ;) But seriously, I haven't a clue how that would be structured in terms of quality reviews. Auntieruth55 (talk) 02:22, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

IMO, we could stand another T&A drive; its been a few years since the last one and with the bulk of Wikipedia undergoing the shift from more to better quality it could be a chance to address this problem as well as helping to reduce our seemingly infinite backlogs. To be fair though, no one seems to be all that interested in that kind of large scale effort. I'm open to suggestions on what to do about this, if anyone else has any. TomStar81 (Talk) 03:29, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

thread divided here (specific issues) and and here (drive) I've probably not done this right to make the proper links, so someone can fix. Auntieruth55 (talk) 17:25, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Assessment issues re B class

From Cromdog:

I suppose I should start with a small explanation of how I handle assessing these articles (especially new articles that have just been created). Let me first state, without any hesitancy, that my assessments are in no way a reflection on any editors, their work, contributions, or value to Wikipedia or the MilHist Project. Nor do they reflect more than where I believe an article currently stands as based on my evaluation of criteria. Now, due to some irregularities in personal opinions and the issue of over-simplicity in the assessment systems, especially at lower levels, disagreements are bound to crop up and it has always been my policy to explain my reasons for an assessment upon request, discuss my opinions and the opinions of others who wish to, and to reassess whenever asked to do so.
Before mentioning the three articles specifically mentioned, I want to explain how I evaluate new and/or smaller articles, especially versus the B-class checklist. It has always been my policy to assess an article as B-class only when it has reached a level where if fully covers all five criteria. Anything that fails to meet at least one of the criteria is a Start-class article. Now, I have run into a few problems with evaluating articles versus the checklist. After all, I feel it is unfair to assess an article on Grammar and style or Referencing and citations the when it fails to meet the Coverage and accuracy criteria. Thus, I rarely directly assess these for an article I feel requires more information added, because fixing one will by necessity invalidate any assessment made on the other two. As for how I differentiate between Start- and Stub-class articles, is based mainly upon reasonably fulfilling one of the B-class criteria OR having an article defined well enough that it merely needs some make-up instead of facial reconstruction to move upwards into the B-class rank. Often, I lean in favor of start over stub.
As for the specific articles mentioned. HMS Adamant (1780): I stand by my original assessment as a Start-class. I did not assess for B1 for the reason I outlined above: I was not sure the article was fully written, as it was new (2 days at the time of my assessment) and I did not want to assess it if someone was going to add a bunch to the article the next day. I would likely have changed had I been asked, or if B5 had been met IMO. I did not feel the article was fully worthy of a B-class acceptance of the B5 criteria, as I have not acted as if the mere possession of an info-box was a total fulfillment of this requirement. Most notably, the lack of a picture of this vessel, or if such was unavailable, a drawing or painting, a diagram of its class or type of ship, or something of this nature to accompany the info-box was a slight drawback to me, enough so that I rated B5 as unfulfilled and thus the article as a Start-class. I do not object to its being a B-class, but the method I have used during my 2-3 years (with a hiatus in the middle of there) with this project implied to me that it was not quite there, as I would have explained if asked (and as I have done so here).
The SS Beaverburn (1944) I also stand by my initial assessment of this as a Stub-class. A stub rating does not, necessarily mean that the article is just a few lines. From the [WP:MHA]] page on Stub-class articles: OR a rough collection of information that will need much work to bring it to A-Class level. The Beaverburn article consists of an introduction, an infobox, and two subsections which appear to be little more than a list of important facts in the form of complete sentences. To me, the article was little more than a list, and as such, I rated it as a stub, for it lacked the basic form of even a Start-class article and was not clearly well above a Stub. As for the Priwall (barque) article...I'll admit even I am not sure why I rated this as a Stub. It seems I would have rated it as a Start-class, as the information is provided in an article format. For whatever reason, I will admit to having mis-assessed this article.
(As a side note, those assessment awards on my user page are from the MilHist Assessment Drive in 2007, when we used scripts to generate a list of tens of thousands of articles that may have been within the MilHist scope, and we had to manual assess which ones were within the scope, which weren't, and then tag the appropriate ones. Not really related to this per se). Fini, and I apologize for the wall of text, but felt it necessary to explain the situation from my POV. Cromdog (talk) 03:57, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Cromdog, thank for your explanation. Obviously I disagree with your statement that the SS Beaverburn article is little more than a list. Had you assessed it as start class for Milhist I'd not have had an issue as Milhist doesn't use C class. Sturmvogel's assessment of C (ships) and Start (milhils) is probably correct - with both failing on "coverage and accuracy". I agree with that, as while the bare facts of Beaverburn's merchant service are known and presented, that's all there is. The problem with merchant ships is that they are generally not as well documented as naval ships. Sometimes there is enough info to a really good article, sometimes there isn't. When researching the Empire ships, you never know what info is going to appear. Very rarely, you come across a situation where the entire wartime history of a merchant ship is available, such as SS Ragnhild. Mjroots (talk) 07:13, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
I do understand that, and I did not mean to criticize your gathering of information. I was merely stating that, upon my initial look over the article, it appeared that someone had taken a bulleted list and made each bullet into a sentence. If you had asked, I'd have been willing to discuss the issue with you. I'm a fairly laid-back person, and I'm not averse to giving ground or making exceptions or changes on good faith. Cromdog (talk) 05:44, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
I think people shouldn't take assessments too seriously, especially for B and lower as these articles generally still are in a basic state, whether they be tagged B/Start/C/Stub. Not this project, but some others just view assessments as a means to inflate stats, rise up the rankings (as people don't sit around checking articles to see the health of a given area) and feel better about themselves, seomtimes boasting about their project to an inattentive onlooker, especially one where the average size of a B-class article is only 13k, and the average start article is 3k. YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 04:27, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
YM, I disagree, assessment should be taken seriously, especially by those doing it. If an article is assessed as just one grade difference to what I think it should be, I generally let the assessment lie. A difference of two or more grades and I will raise the issue with the assessor. In this case, it seemed that there was a wider problem, which is why I raised it here. In doing so, I was not looking to get Cromdog sanctioned, apart from possibly being temporarily restricted from assessing articles while this is looked into. Personally, I don't assess articles that I have created or been heavily involved in. Other editors do, and the practice is not prohibited. It's not something I agree with, but it's not worth a fight over either. Mjroots (talk) 07:13, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
My personal rule of thumb is it should have either or both an infobox or a picture to meet b5. But that's just me.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 05:51, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

this discussion has evolved into two separate issues. One is the assessment of some specific articles and the other is the possibility of a reassessment drive generally. I'm going to divide it here, if that is allowed, because this particular thread is becoming difficult to follow.Auntieruth55 (talk) 17:25, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Cromdog, your comment that "... Most notably, the lack of a picture of this vessel, or if such was unavailable, a drawing or painting, a diagram of its class or type of ship, or something of this nature to accompany the info-box was a slight drawback to me, enough so that I rated B5 as unfulfilled and thus the article as a Start-class." is a bit off mark I think. An important consideration in GA reviews is that "The presence of images is not, in itself, a requirement." Applying criteria above the scope of GA on a B class review is a bit to harsh in my opinion. Ranger Steve (talk) 21:10, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

As we look at the criteria, B1 usually means that every paragraph has a cite, B2 means that the information is accurate and current and covers all applicable areas in the given time, B3 means that its got enough paragraphs to warrant headers and sub headers where needed, B4 - well that one should speak for its self - and B5 we take to mean a visual aid, either a picture or a graph or something of that nature or an infobox. As a practical matter, the idea B-class differs from person to person; it is in difference to this difference that we have the request for assessment system set up so that those who disagree with the assessment of any given article can ask for a second opinion.

As for the assessments themselves, it would do well for everyone to remember that the assessment system on Wikipedia exists so that the 1.0 assessment team can locate high quality articles for publication in off wikipedia medium. The assessment letters means little to the articles since the material contained in the articles does not usually shift in dramatic fashion between revision, and assessment standards should not be a source of conflict between members. The goal is the improve the quality of all of our articles, and as long as that gets done we should all walk away at the end of the day feeling like we accomplished something even if the assessment letters in the infobox do not reflect our hard work. TomStar81 (Talk) 22:26, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

@Ranger Steve's comment- It is not a requirement. However, in an article about a specific ship, it is usually considered a good thing to have. Just has having a picture is not a requirement, merely having an infobox is equally not an automatic fulfillment of a requirement. In my own personal opinion, the article should have had something added OR someone could have come forth and said 'we don't have any known access to a suitable picture.' Either would have solved the issue for me.Cromdog (talk) 05:44, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
Everyone has their own opinions on assessment at all levels, but ultimately I think the B class guide is fairly clear, and if not the FAQs are even better. I don't think this is an area we should let our own opinions sway an assessment when the criteria are so well defined and the article in question had an infobox and 2 images already, that's more than both the B class example articles. I certainly don't think editors should have to declare their efforts to find images, that just seems overkill. An article needs to be assessed as it stands, not on how much potential it has or hasn't got. Ultimately I'm afraid I agree that your assessments seem unduly strict and beyond what is required in the guidelines (sorry). Ranger Steve (talk) 20:11, 10 March 2010 (UTC).
My intention in raising this issue never was to permanently prevent Cromdog from assessing articles, although I did consider a temporary restriction and asked another admin who is a member of this WP about such a restriction. That admin did not reply, from which I assume he did not think such a restriction necessary. Cromdog has voluntarily refrained from assessing articles while this has been discussed. It's now time that he returned to assessing, and I've given him some guidance on his talk page. I've suggested that he assess a few articles and then post here which articles he has assessed so that other editors can check the assessments. If there is general consensus that his assessments are good, then I see no reason why Cromdog cannot continue to assess articles. I've also suggested that he reassess any articles he has previously assessed, and regrade if he decides that the original assessment was in error, or that the article has been improved in the meantime. Mjroots (talk) 08:11, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
Worth quickly noting that I never assumed there was any desire or need for restrictions at all. This isn't malicious editing (far from it, it's good that editors do these tasks), and I'm just offering opinions on the matter. Ranger Steve (talk) 19:36, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Possible Assessment drive

Tom Star mentioned above that we could use another project-wide assessment drive. I've thought that would be a good idea as well. What are the issues associated with this? Auntieruth55 (talk) 17:25, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I think this is a bit of a cross over but more on the general side, so here goes. I'm a relatively new editor but I thought I had a relatively good handle on the difference between stubs & starts. However, if far more experienced editors have problems, do we need to change/clarify the definitions? I would be almost tempted to have a stub/start class differentiation that could be bot-assessed e.g. lack of any in-line citations or categorisation would keep an article in stub class. We could then concentrate human resources (a precious commodity) to focus on the Start/B boundary i.e. a B-class push.
While I'm here, something that mildly worries me is that we tend to see assessment as an administrative convenience until we get up to A, FA & GA. A quick glance that the vast majority of this task force's catchment are stubs & starts. I don't think we flag up enough to punters the quality assessment in these lower categories. Should we consider a rating tag visible on the page itself with a few words of caution on the information (as opposed to maintenance tags, which may not mean much to kids doing their homework? Monstrelet (talk) 17:49, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
I don't think making ratings more visible to users is a good idea for the forseeable future - we'd really need a more meaningful rating system before we do that, and to be confident that the ratings we were presenting actually had anything to do with the current state of the article. It's something to aim for, but doing it now probably won't help much. Shimgray | talk | 18:28, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
you can get an assessment rating on the article page by clicking one of the gidgets/gadgets in your preferences, if that's what you want. I do think you're right about the stubs/start evaluation. The problem seems to be between start and B, and even between B rated articles there can be a vast difference. Auntieruth55 (talk) 19:57, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Oh, I use the rating gadget - it's pretty handy. It does, though, make it abundantly clear just how many articles have misleading ratings... Shimgray | talk | 21:22, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
maybe you could tell Monstrelet how to set that up. I don't remember how I did it.  :) Auntieruth55 (talk) 21:56, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Ratings on the visible page have been a Wikipedia wide topic for discussion on an on again/off again basis for years now. At the moment, the only class articles that have this honor are those rated at FA class, which display a star to represent this honor, and even that has caused problems because of FA director (last I heard) hates the stars and thinks they should not be displayed. In all honest, adding the assessment standard to the visible article would not really solve anything, as the vast majority of pages usually have 2 or more project tags on their talk page, and all projects do not grade all articles equally, how would you determine whose rating takes precedence? And even if you could solve that problem, how would you note the rating in the rating in the article? And if you could come up with a system for that, then how would ensure that the system maintains check a balances in the interest of fairness? The current system works the best because the talk pages can be used to discuss the ratings, and the rating table provided by each individual project explains to the readers why the the page holds X rating for Y project(s). As noted above, one way users have found to get around this is to use tools or preference settings, and I am certain someone would be happy to explain how to do that. TomStar81 (Talk) 22:34, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Well ratings on the article would lead to inflationary ratings I'd suspect YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 00:19, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
The "problem" of different grades from different WPs arises in some cases because the article was improved after one WP assessed the article and before another WP assessed it, hence the difference. IMO, it's a pity that Milhist doesn't use C class (basically if an article meets b3, b4 and b5 it is C class), but if an article has a defined structure it generally will meet Start class, rather than Stub class.
Re the Assessment drive, this could be proposed as a Wiki-wide activity at a centralised place. There are over 377,000 unassessed articles according to WP:ASSESS.
Making ratings viewable to everyone on the article page would lead to worse that simply inflationary ratings (a minor issue IMO). It could more easily (and more often) lead to horribly outdated tags on articles. I've seen stub or start class articles get an influx of work by an editor or a small crew, only to have no one reassess the work after completion. An article that could have, in all actuality, gone up for a GA review languished as a simple start-class because the editors either did not know about the assessment issue, did not feel comfortable, or didn't worry about it. Additionally, the reason we have FA Reviews is because article quality decays over time unless there is a steady stream of editors to maintain the standard of an article. Overall, I think making them publicly viewable causes more problems than it starts. That said, since I no longer have access to the vast amount of research material at my college, my ability to do a lot of direct work on articles is gone, and so I've moved even more into the habit of performing functions such as assessment and reviews as I've gotten back into Wikipedia. As someone who handles this aspect most often, I will say that assessing articles that haven't been assessed for some time is an issue (when we first developed the script for identifying incomplete B-class checklists, I helped complete thousands of them in the backlog, a task I've contemplating taking up again with our 24k+ articles in that category). Perhaps we could find a way to identify articles that haven't been assessed in a certain amount of time (ie, a year, 6 months, or something)?Cromdog (talk) 05:58, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
Now that's a good idea, Cromdog - articles needing reassessment. I'd say a year would be a good timescale for that. As you state that you are more into assessment than other work, what do you think of the idea of a WikiProject for wikipedians who are interested in assessments? Such a WP could be behind an assessment drive too. Mjroots (talk) 06:26, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
Thanks guys for the response to my suggestion. I realise now its far harder than I thought to get something meaningful (I hadn't even thought about the multiple task force stuff). Just to clarify, the visible tagging was not for editors - non-drive bys should know how to check the ratings - but for general users. I know the idea of a visible caveat on unsourced articles, for example, was discussed as part of the BLP review. Even a link/button on the page to check assessment/task force ownership on the talk page might help. BTW, I like the time related prioritisation - if I do work on an article, I try to update ratings (from stub to start at least - I think independent eyes are needed for B) and remove or adjust maintenance tags but not everyone does, so having a backstop which checks up-to-dateness of ratings sounds a good idea.Monstrelet (talk) 07:47, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
I've raised the issue of a possible WP covering assessments and re-assessments at WP:VPR#Assessment WP. Mjroots (talk) 09:21, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
I've been idly thinking about this myself for a while - integrating some kind of assessed-on date into the template would be pretty awesome, and allow us to - at the very least - know how elderly our system is. I wonder if we could, as a first step, write a bot to populate talkpage templates with these dates based on past editing? Shimgray | talk | 12:21, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Alternative drive idea

What might possibly be better immediate use of the project's time is to drive to improve unsourced/poorly referenced BLPs within our scope. Here's a list of biographies, which is a good starting place. Thoughts?  Roger Davies talk 08:52, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

That's a good idea. Is there a list of criteria, or an evaluation form? And what do we do if something's unsatisfactory? Auntieruth55 (talk) 20:17, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
13,400 BLPs in MilHist? <jaw drops open>. Oh, that is all MilHist biographies, the dead ones as well as the ones that twitch when you prod them (I'm pretty sure the 5th High Steward of Scotland has been long-dead). False alarm. :-) But yeah, getting a list of the BLPs for MilHist, and the unsourced ones on that list, would be a good idea for a drive. As for a checklist, I was reading through some old papers in a dusty drawer (my userspace) and found this which may duplicate stuff elsewhere, but could be adapted to this if someone wants to (and anyone is welcome to do so). Carcharoth (talk) 21:20, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
I don't have a problem with having a look at BLPs - we've got to start somewhere - but you lose the editors whose interest isn't in living military figures i.e. you reduce your potential workforce. The other suggestion (date based across the board) allows work on old BLPs but also other topics. Another approach would be unreferenced articles (the bane of BLPs elsewhere on Wikipedia), which again would allow a wider range of editors to participate.Monstrelet (talk) 11:55, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Assessment targets and the MILHIST article profile

Having been drawn into this, I've been trying to get a bit more of an overview and have noted a couple of things which possibly might help us with a rationale for an assessment review Firstly, we only have targets for number of high class articles. Secondly, a quick look at the article profile shows the vast majority are sub B class, with probably forty per cent being stubs. Given my already expressed view that I'm interested in improving our service to users more than seeking the glamour of top-of-the-draw articles, I would like to suggest we set targets at the bottom of the quality range too. We accept that our default article quality is start (we can't realistically set it any higher) and we set a limit to tolerable proportion of stubs - I would suggest a starter would be twenty five percent. We can then launch a drive to reassess stubs based on assessment dates, unreferenced articles, BLPs - wherever we choose to start. While not decrying the quest for excellence, as we have failed in our attempts to target improvement drives at "important" or "popular" topics, I do think this is tone way of improving the service this task force provides to the Wikipedia using public within our area of expertise.Monstrelet (talk) 11:55, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

So, effectively, a stub improvement drive? I think that would be a worthwhile idea—a great many stubs can either be immediately reassessed, or quickly improved to the next level, or merged into a larger article if there's no realistic hope of improving them—but I'm not sure of what the best way to organize a drive might be. Unlike pure assessment, a drive to actually improve article content might be helped by splitting the article lists into topic area (i.e. task force) sub-lists; but this would be a logistical nightmare in tracking terms, since many stubs would appear on multiple lists. I suppose the easiest way to run it would be to simply provide the stub categories as they stand, and ask participants to manually list the stubs they work on, rather than providing lists and having people strike articles off as they're dealt with; but this would be a significantly different procedure from past drives, and function more like one of our special contests (e.g. the WWI one) rather than like one of the assessment drives. Kirill [talk] [prof] 15:17, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Foreign Volunteers

Foreign Volunteers is a recent assessment candidate. There's a fair start on content but it needs a lot of work on structure, referencing and historical context. However, I think it is a significant area of military activity worthy of a better piece. Interested editors are invited to visit and improveMonstrelet (talk) 09:30, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Insurgency in Ogaden

Does anybody know if the insurgency in Ogaden ended? B-Machine (talk) 15:36, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

The article marks it as ongoing in the lede and infobox. A Google News search [1] also brings up recent hits, so it should be fairly accurate. --Patar knight - chat/contributions 18:09, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
TIMES article, from less than a week ago describes the insurgency as ongoing: [2] --Patar knight - chat/contributions 18:10, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Military history of France FAR initiated

I have nominated Military history of France for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Johnbod (talk) 17:20, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

A-Class review for Massachusetts in the American Civil War now open

The A-Class review for Massachusetts in the American Civil War is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 20:53, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

A-Class review for Battle of Dürenstein needs attention

A few more editors are needed to complete the A-Class review for Battle of Dürenstein; please stop by and help review the article! Thanks! -MBK004 21:28, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John C. Acton

Need some help here. Basically, people are saying that our MILHIST notability guidelines are not WP guidelines and therefore MILHIST articles should be deleted. Hawkeye7 (talk) 02:38, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

The debate has closed as "no consensus", so the article will not be deleted. However, I think there may be some confusion over the status of WP:MILPEOPLE. Although it forms part of the project's Manual of Style, it's not part of WP:BIO, which is the only notability guideline that really counts across Wikipedia as a whole (and the one that will be argued at XfD). What we're saying with MILPEOPLE is "these are the types of person that are likely to meet WP:BIO... but that's not a guarantee they definitely will." It all comes down to if a person has received "significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject" (WP:N) - the examples we list at MILPEOPLE probably will have that coverage in reliable secondary sources, becuase we developed the essay with WP:BIO in mind, but some won't. I hope this helps to clarify things. EyeSerenetalk 10:26, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
It's important to stress that WP:MILPEOPLE is marked an essay, not a guideline, and as such exists to provide general guidance but isn't binding. It reflects a consensus of the editors who commented on it while it was developed on this talk page, but hasn't been more widely adopted. Nick-D (talk) 10:32, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
Do you think it could be confusing that it's inserted into WP:MILMOS? I think this came up at the very end of the discussion but we didn't take it further; would it be worth breaking MILPEOPLE out into its own page? EyeSerenetalk 10:36, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
That would be a good idea. We still also need to develop guidance of the notability for assessing the notability of military units (something which has been on my 'to do' list for quite a while) and there's a case to be made for putting together something on determining the notability of battles. Nick-D (talk) 10:42, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
A notability guidance page would seem to be called for then. I like the idea of something about military units - they seem to come up fairly regularly. I haven't personally come across many problems with battles, but it certainly makes sense to look at everything in one hit. EyeSerenetalk 10:47, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
The main issue with battles is editors creating articles on small-scale recent battles which fall foul of WP:NOTNEWS - when these end up at AfD it's often hard to determine how to assess their notability (though, from what I've seen, there doesn't seem to be any systemic bias problems - articles about obscure skirmishes in the Balkans are no more likely to be deleted than articles about obscure skirmishes in Iraq). Nick-D (talk) 05:51, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
As usual, the Wikipedia is all about mastering the correct way to cite its complex laws in arguments with other editors. Who in this case are free to argue that MILHIST does not belong at all. Can't we just incorporate WP:MILPEOPLE into WP:BIO? Hawkeye7 (talk) 11:23, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
If I may, the article was submitted for AFD based on the determination that his rank in the UK wasn't a general officer. Although this may be true in the UK, he is very much a general officer in the US. --Kumioko (talk) 12:24, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
I don't think that's mentioned at all, someone comments on the fact normally he have held two star rank to be necesary for notability, due to brigadier in Commonwealth usage not being a general officer rank (which is relevant in this instance, though I always get confused with US sometimes using commodore and other times splitting rear admiral into upper and lower). David Underdown (talk) 13:21, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
To be honest I feel that this is just another case of whats notable to one may not be notable to all. For example, I personally think that a general officer is notable but I could care less about a world class soccer player so from my point of view if you were to remove all the soccer players from WP I wouldn't lose a moment of sleep, others obviously feel differently and thats fine. That is why I don't bother with AFD based on notability, IMO there's little point because somewhere, someone feels differently. If we are going to delete an article from WP we should look at it from a different angle than notability. If someone were to say that we should delete it because there are no references then that would be different. Also, since this is the english WP and not the British WP the argument of the difference between UK and US generals is irrelevent. Regardless of how the UK perceives their "Brigadiers" the US considers them to be general officers (thats why they call them brigadier generals), which is clearly acceptable in the MILHIST people criteria. If we now want to clarify that to be Major general or equivelant or higher then we should put it to a vote before making changes. --Kumioko (talk) 14:27, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
I didn't wish to go into this at AfD as it was tangential, but people may be interested here. The UK (and Australia) used to have brigadier generals until the 1920s. Their rank badge was a crossed sword and baton like other grades of generals wore. They also wore a general's collar tabs, cap peak, and cap badge. You called them "general". The rank was discontinued in favour of that of brigadier. A brigadier dresses like a colonel. Although the rank of brigadier general was always nominally temporary and never substantive, they did not wish to demote them and it cost money to promote them, so the two ranks co-existed throughout the 1930s and into the 1940s. Throughout this period, a brigadier general was always considered senior to a brigadier. The inclusion of brigadier generals and the exclusion of brigadiers seems simple and natural to me. Of course it doesn't mean you can't write an article on a brigadier. I wrote one myself on Brigadier Sir Neil Hamilton Fairley. Hawkeye7 (talk) 02:34, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
I don't think there's really any conflict here because notability and verifiability are intimately related. As long as a subject isn't on Wikipedia's blacklist and is well-covered by reliable independent secondary sources, we can write a verifiable article that meets the notability threshold. We at Milhist can give examples of the sort of subjects we think will have the sources needed to make the grade, as we have at WP:MILPEOPLE, but as you've mentioned in the end it always comes back to the sourcing. It doesn't matter if someone's a general officer or not, or even if one country says they are and another says they aren't; what matters is "Do we have the sources to produce an article?" Personally I think the word "notable" as it's used on Wikipedia is too easily mixed up with "famous", or "prominent", or even "important", when really it means none of those things. EyeSerenetalk 15:34, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Getting back to Hawkeye's above question, WP:MILPEOPLE could be incorporated into WP:BIO following Wikipedia-wide endorsement. I'm not sure what the process for this would be, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be successful - the criteria are actually much stricter than those for some of the other special categories in WP:BIO (academics and athletes, for example - the one for academics doesn't even require secondary sources!). Nick-D (talk) 00:36, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I think this would be very useful. Hawkeye7 (talk) 02:34, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
A project-wide effort to develop Notability guidelines for Bios, battles, units, etc, and then see about making the officially part of Wikipedia-wide Notability guidelines would be a great step, I think. It would certainly make our lives easier by providing more definitive rules for people.Cromdog (talk) 03:54, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
The first part sounds good. The only reservation I have about the second relates to past experience involving large changes to Wikipedia-wide guidelines - it's always seemed to me that any significant change will attract a certain amount of opposition simply because it's a significant change. It might be useful to take things slowly and test the water by proposing the addition of WP:MILPEOPLE to WP:BIO first. We can simultaneously develop our guidelines for units and battles in-house, and then see about wider acceptance of those depending on how WP:MILPEOPLE goes. EyeSerenetalk 09:58, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Midway bound

Can somebody have a look at this? User:Az81964444 has been making uncited changes to cited numbers, & adding material I'd consider a bit pointless (infantry casualties?). I don't want to get in an edit war, & I've already rv'd twice... TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 23:15, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand the rationale behind those changes. To take out "near" from the Midway Atol doesn't make sense. Obviously a naval battle was not fought on the island itself. The rest seem as pointless as that. Perhaps this editor has a reason? Maybe we should ask? Auntieruth55 (talk) 00:06, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
I've left him a warning on his talk page (non-template). Also it should be noted that he has just created Attack on Midway. -MBK004 02:37, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
As near as I can tell, it's a misunderstanding of the nature of the battle (or of the use of the term "battle of Midway"). This is plain silly. It was nothing but a passing couple of destroyers lobbing shells. As well to call the pre-Midway Operation K "Second Battle of Pearl Harbor". Delete it, somebody? TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 03:13, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
Hm, a test case for a "notability of battles" guideline as discussed above? I agree that it's probably not notable enough for a stand-alone article and a merge/redirect might be appropriate. EyeSerenetalk 09:42, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
Good point. In retrospect, there might be enough worth saving for a merge. Where, I won't even guess. The shelling was technically part of the attack on Pearl Harbor (en route back), but that's got enough weight on it now & I would avoid adding this incident as OT. TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 22:18, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Nimitz class aircraft carrier

I have been working on this page and it is currently a GA. However, I'd like advice from other people about how it should be improved if it were to become an FA. Jhbuk (talk) 21:39, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

It certainly sounds like the article is a prime candidate for an A-Class review. -MBK004 02:33, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
I would try PR first and ask Ealdgyth (talk · contribs) if she would be kind enough to check the reliability of the citations (if she won't, I will, but I'm not as good) —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 04:32, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
Just taking a brief skim over it, it would probably have a decent shot at passing an ACR, but it's your choice if you want to put it up for Peer Review to try to get some more detailed comments before you go to ACR. – Joe N 13:40, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
I've gone for another PR. Jhbuk (talk) 18:49, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
One question, why did you do another WP:SHIPS review instead of MILHIST? That would have alleviated the need to move the previous review. It just adds more work for us. -MBK004 19:17, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant to do a milhist one (I wasn't paying attention!). Jhbuk (talk) 19:20, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Peer review for Nimitz class aircraft carrier now open

The peer review for Nimitz class aircraft carrier is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 19:34, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

HMS Sparrowhawk (1856) created

(cross-posted to WP Ships): I created this because it was mentioned on Porcher Island, which was named for its Commander; copy in the article is directly copied from the Porcher Island article; no doubt there's more history to be added from the Far East etc....I didn't know the right categories/stubs etc so if someone would oblige, please add what's needed.....Skookum1 (talk) 15:03, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Peer review for China Marine (memoir) now open

The peer review for China Marine (memoir) is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 00:47, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

A-Class review for Battle of Pyongtaek now open

The A-Class review for Battle of Pyongtaek is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 04:51, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Peer review for Special Boat Service now open

The peer review for Special Boat Service is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 18:55, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

A-Class review for War of the Bavarian Succession now open

The A-Class review for War of the Bavarian Succession is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 22:14, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

A-Class review for Allan Walters now open

The A-Class review for Allan Walters is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Ian Rose (talk) 07:25, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Navbox Template for Weapons based on military user?

What do you think? Is it a bad idea?

226Trident 21:37, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Seems reasonable, but I wonder why {{ModernUSInfWeaponsNav}} has significantly more links. Does it list non-current weapons? Kirill [talk] [prof] 01:28, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

New Australian naval battle honours

To mark the 109th birthday of the Royal Australian Navy on 1st of March 2010 a number of new battle honours have been awarded, and this means that many of the relevant ship pages need to updated. The list of battle honours can be found here. Can any interested editors please help to update these articles? I good example is HMAS Anzac which has received four new battle honours (Malaya 1956, East Timor 1999, Persian Gulf 2001-2003 and Iraq 2003). Cheers all. ChoraPete (talk) 12:47, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm slowly picking my way thorugh articles as time permits. -- saberwyn 21:44, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

FAC for Karl Aloys zu Fürstenberg is in need of more reviewers

The featured article candidacy for Karl Aloys zu Fürstenberg is in need of more reviewers, if you have a moment to review please do so here. Thanks in advance, TomStar81 (Talk) 01:07, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Visually impaired

Can members of this project please be mindful of our visually impaired readers. After a short discussion I've replaced † with {{KIA}} on FARC [3] but I know I've seen the symbol rather than the template in other places .Gnevin (talk) 18:17, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Quack

DUKW has suffered a fair bit of vandalism. Can somebody roll it back? I'm not really sure I can fix this. Thx. TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 21:19, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Looks like you've got it. EyeSerenetalk 10:12, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
And fast service, too. ;D It appears our UK peanut gallerist is back at it, however. Perhaps stronger action is needed? TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 22:20, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
I've left a final warning - if it happens again, we'll break out the toolbox. EyeSerenetalk 09:19, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
By all appearances (this & this for the latest instances), it's not worked. (And not only because I put in the ref. :) ) TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 21:28, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Help with source identification?

Hi. :) I've come in the hopes that somebody can help identify the original source of some information with an unclear copyright history.

Information was placed here, in 2002. Prior to its placement on Wikipedia or the military website, some of this content was evidently published in The Rand McNally almanac of adventure: a panorama of danger and daring by Richard Whittingham, 1982. See [4] and [5]. In 2005, a good bit of it shows up at the US navy website. This suggests to me that perhaps there is an earlier PD source to which the 1982 source, our article and the Navy website are all indebted, but I wouldn't have a clue where to look. Might you? Any help clarifying the province of this material would be appreciated, as it must be attributed if PD. There is a contributor very interested in getting this to GA status. (ETA: I'm e-mailing the contributor who placed it, in case he can help, as he has not been active in some months.) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:01, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, it's not Guadalcanal's DANFS entry or Gallery's after-action report (at the bottom of that page). —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 15:11, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
Here is a link to a couple of refs on the Naval Historical Center website I didn't see used as refs in the article. I hope these help but if there is some specific detail you are trying to verify let me know and I may be able to help. NHC Website. --Kumioko (talk) 15:15, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
Thank you both. :) I'll pass along the links, Kumioko. Not surprisingly, the contributor doesn't remember (from 2002, I wouldn't either!) but suspects somewhere at [6]. Tracking this back isn't likely to be easy, but it may not be an issue because I think that the content is going to be rewritten. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:25, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

AFD for Todd Blackburn

I've listed Todd Blackburn for deletion here. Interested parties are welcome to contribute. Ranger Steve (talk) 17:54, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

I wondered if that might be coming, given your comment in your coord candidate statement :) EyeSerenetalk 20:18, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
It's a no-win situation. If I don't do it then I'm not adhering to my own principles (and someone else will do it), but if the article goes there'll be no example of my point on the noms page! Although perhaps a red link is a good example by itself.... Ranger Steve (talk) 20:45, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Actually, some opinions on some of the other Battle of Mogadishu characters would be welcomed, now that I've just noticed them. Ranger Steve (talk) 11:58, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

A-Class reviews need more editors

The following A-Class reviews have been open for at least a week and could use a few more editors to help out and review them:

Thanks, -MBK004 02:58, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up, I'll head on over to the Soyuz :) NativeForeigner Talk/Contribs/Vote! 14:51, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Wykham-Musgrave

Before I take this to Afd (and leaving aside the obvious title error and other formatting errors), I would appreciate views from the MilHist experts as to the notability of this individual. I am sure there are many other survivors of WWII naval encounters with similar stories who are not notable by Wikipedia criteria, and it does smack a little of a memorial. Thanks. – ukexpat (talk) 00:01, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree, I don't think the subject is notable beyond the single event. There's not really enough info to satisfy WP:BIO or sources to satisfy WP:GNG. — AustralianRupert (talk) 01:18, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
yes, but it's a great story. Certainly there is a place for it somewhere? Auntieruth55 (talk) 01:21, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
put it in here Otto Weddigen. Auntieruth55 (talk) 01:22, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
Instead of another person's article, would there be enough information available to write an article on the incident? -- saberwyn 01:57, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
Action of 22 September 1914. It might merit a line in passing in that article, but other than the oddity of having been through three ships in quick succession he doesn't seem to be easily distinguished from most of the other eight hundred survivors... Shimgray | talk | 09:57, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
Agree that only a passing mention is required. -- saberwyn 11:06, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
It's incorporated now. I've marked for deletion. Auntieruth55 (talk) 16:57, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
(outdent). The prod appears to have been contested. I've put a comment on the article talk page responding to the editor's concerns. — AustralianRupert (talk) 07:09, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
My thanks to AustralianRupert for letting me know about this discussion here. By way of update on the article: it's now titled right and has been cleaned up with better sourcing; on the whole, it looks pretty good for an article that's just a few days old. I don't think an AfD discussion would be unreasonable, but I would argue against deleting. You can find my basic argument on the discussion page of the article itself. I'm wondering from the discussion here whether the military history group has a higher standard for biographical articles than WP as a whole. While the most notable event in this person's life was the 22 September action, he had a long military career and comes from what appears to be a distinguished family. A mention could be made of him in the Action of 22 September 1914 page, with a redirect there from a page titled with his name, but then you'd lose the possibility of other biographical detail accumulating around him. By way of comparison with other well-established WP biographies, check out a random sampling of the articles linked to under Feral child, List of serial killers by country, or the biographies of Becky Godwin or Tony Cicoria (these are two I came across looking for biographies of people who had been struck by lightning). I'm not merely making a WP:OSE argument here, as I've already given other arguments for inclusion. And FWIW, I have no connection to Wykeham-Musgrave, nor did I originate the article. I came across it and think it's worth keeping. Jbening (talk) 16:02, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Bengal Famine and the WW2 template

Template:World War II

The above template is locked so unregistered users cannot edit it and looking at the talkpage it does not look like that any help will be forthcoming from there.

The template lists the Bengal famine as a "war crime" however it has never been dealt as such and even the article notes that there were allot of natural factors, Indian civillian factors, British Indian government factors that led to the famine and exacerbated the problem; not to mention there it is noted that the government attempted to stop the famine by distrubting free food etc

The case argued in the article does not seem to bring up the term war crime so the template appears to be POV pushing; can the template be edited to move the famine article to another section as no war crime took place.

Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.4.87.120 (talk) 05:51, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

The section originally seems to have been titled "Civilian impact", where it does make sense to include the Bengal famine; it got renamed as "War Crimes" without it being moved out. I've left a note on Template talk:World War II. Shimgray | talk | 10:56, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Featured article candidacy for USS Triton (SSRN-586) now open

The featured article candidacy for USS Triton (SSRN-586) is now open. Comments from reviewers are needed to help determine whether the article meets the criteria for featured articles; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 21:20, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

A-Class review for Operation Sandblast now open

The A-Class review for Operation Sandblast is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 21:23, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Good article reviews

The MILHIST-related good article nominations are stacking up. Currently there are over 40 articles that need reviewers, about one eighth of the total across all of Wikipedia. Please review one article and help reduce the backlog. Just go to WP:GAN#WAR and follow the instructions at the top of the page if you find an article of interest.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:26, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject:Wars of the Three Kingdoms and the Interregnum

I am setting up a new project called Wikipedia:WikiProject Wars of the Three Kingdoms and the Interregnum all welcome to join.

Right now I could do with some help from someone who has more experience with setting up military history projects that all the steps are carried through so that this new project is integrated into this project as a child of this project. -- PBS (talk) 10:25, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, we really don't have any means or precedent for integrating an independent project as a "child" of this one; nor would I recommend going down that path, for a variety of reasons. I would strongly suggest that this be set up as a task force instead (or even as a working group, if you don't anticipate gathering enough editors to make the added overhead useful). If you're willing to do that, then I (or one of the other coordinators) can set up the needed infrastructure; please let us know. Kirill [talk] [prof] 12:21, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
I'm not fussed what it is called, its just that there are a number of editors I see working in this area and some form of central meeting point would be convenient beneficial to the editing of articles in this area. -- PBS (talk) 20:29, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
Agree this is probably best under the umbrella of MILHIST as a taskforce or working group. Aside from that, I noticed the project page had been set up in main namespace (ie. as an article). I have moved it to wp namespace, the usual haunt of project pages. There's a redirect in place, but I'll change the links then speedy it. (If you'll forgive me altering your post with corrected links.) Gwinva (talk) 21:13, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
On second thoughts, I'll leave you to put it up for speedy delete when you're ready. Gwinva (talk) 21:25, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
Deleted and all remaining links fixed. Woody (talk) 21:58, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
Also, I would say that this is perfect for a working group of the British task force. It provides a central meeting place as well as benefiting from the existing infrastructure that we have. Woody (talk) 22:00, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
I think the question of which national task forces this should go under can be put to one side for the moment. We will keep that for the fist really good squabble on the talk page of the new task force ;-( As it covers the Interregnum this task force also needs to consider which civilian history articles it is also tied into -- note that the second person to put his name down in the list says "Interested in working on some the biographies involved, and the religious history." and religion in this period is both one of the causes of the wars and a subject in its own right. -- PBS (talk) 23:38, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for moving the page and for fixing the links. Does the page need to be moved again now that I have attempted to alter the wording to fit in with the other military task force pages? And as I said before "right now I could do with some help", and any help will be much appreciated. -- PBS (talk) 23:38, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

I or one of the other coordinators can take care of renaming the page (and setting up the other needed infrastructure—templates, categories, etc.) once we figure out where it should go within the project's overall structure. As far as the distinction between task force and working group is concerned, the basic question is whether you would like to have article assessment tracking in place for the group; if you have enough articles to make such automated tracking useful, then this would be best set up as a task force, and if not, then as a working group under one or more existing task forces. So, basically, how many articles do you think you'll ultimately be dealing with here: a hundred, five hundred, a thousand, several thousand? Kirill [talk] [prof] 03:45, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
AFAICT the main article is English Civil War and there are by my count between 3000 and 4000 articles linked to it. Even if only 1000 of those were directly relevant that would mean over a thousand articles and because there are other articles only connected to the other wars that go to make up the Wars of the Three Kingdoms it is going to be in the 1000s. In comparison the American Civil War has by my count about 15,000 articles linked to it. -- PBS (talk) 06:30, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
Sounds like there are enough articles involved to make the full task force infrastructure worthwhile; a thousand articles is rather more than a working group's manual lists can comfortably handle. Assuming there are no objections, I'll implement the task force setup this evening. Kirill [talk] [prof] 12:01, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
Sounds like the best solution, and thank you Philip for your initiative in this important area :) With the elections already underway there's probably no need to appoint coordinators to serve the TF; we can sort that out in the usual way in a week or so. The only (minor) point that comes to mind is "Three Kingdoms" - might this be confused? EyeSerenetalk 17:39, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
It is the best name given the sensitivity that surround the British Irish naming issue (See IONA), which spills over into Wikipedia for the names of any article that involves the two islands. The advantage of War of the Three Kingdoms is that it is a recognised name for these conflicts. -- PBS (talk) 21:09, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
Fair enough :) I'm not advocating anything else (most certainly not if it means keeping a can of worms firmly closed), just noting the possibility of misunderstandings. It's trivial though. EyeSerenetalk 21:54, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

← Okay, I've moved the group over to Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Wars of the Three Kingdoms task force (the name being slightly shortened to fit in templates and such without breaking things—the statement of scope should make it clear enough that this covers events both pre- and post-execution of Charles), and set up all the needed infrastructure.

At this point, the main thing that's needed is for people to add the task force tag to {{WPMILHIST}} on the relevant talk pages; everything else should update automatically once the tagging is in place. The to-do list box will need to be filled out as well, but that's lower priority. Kirill [talk] [prof] 04:27, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Dogs in warfare

This page should have this picture or something similar.  :)

A dog jumper. Thanks, Marasama (talk) 15:37, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Somalian Revolution (1986–1992)

I think this article should be merged into the Somali Civil War article. I don't know how to add the merge tag. What do you folks think? B-Machine (talk) 18:01, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Add {{mergeto|target page}} on the one you want to merge in, and {{mergefrom|first page}} on the one you want to merge to, then mention it on the talkpage of the "target" one.
As to the actual case in point, I'm not sure - they seem to deal with overlapping but not identical events. Shimgray | talk | 18:50, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
I don't know...this is a tricky one. The problem is that one directly led to the other, and it's difficult to pinpoint an exact end-date to the revolution, as well as a start-date to the civil war. What's the community's thoughts on this one? Cam (Chat) 03:47, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Portal:Tank

I want to either start an armored fighting vehicle portal (but this might be considered redundant to Portal:tank) or move the tank portal to armored fighting vehicle. I personally slightly favor the later. What does the peoples think? Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (talk) 20:19, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

This is a toughy. On one hand, an AFV portal would be massive in scope, but on the other, Portal Tank is rather specific in nature against the other Milhist portals. Could there perhaps be an agreement between two portals to make Tank a sub portal of a Military vehicle portal? That way Tank remains independent and the wider portal doesn't need to duplicate all of its content. Ranger Steve (talk) 21:58, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Popemobile

I happen to find this article through the use of the random article button, I notice the article states that the vehicle is armored to a certain extent. In theory therefore this could be considered an armored car, and thus obtusely within our scope, but before tagging as such I wanted a second opinion. What do you guys think? TomStar81 (Talk) 01:55, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

It was definitely reported as armored during the Pope's trip to Cologne a few years ago. There was some glass contraption also, that allowed him to sit "out" where people could see him but protected him from the folks who wanted to shoot him. But what would be the point of including the popemobile in Wikiproject military? Auntieruth55 (talk) 02:04, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
(ec) I'd be inclined not to: although an armoured vehicle, it is not a military vehicle and has little if any practical military use. There are several types of civilian vehicle fitted with armour... the most obvious examples I can think of are official state cars, like the US President's limousine, or armoured vans used to transfer money and valuables. -- saberwyn 02:06, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
@AuntieRuth: We occasionally have weird articles within our scope since they could be considered part of the project; for example, a reasonable arguement could be made for the inclusion of any of the US presidential vehicles on grounds that the president, as the commander and chief of the army and navy, is making use of a military vehicle. When in doubt, ask; and it seems that our members do not think this article quite meets that standard. TomStar81 (Talk) 02:27, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
I'm inclined to agree with AuntieRuth on this one. Just because it can possibly be deployed in a defensive-like function doesn't necessarily mean it's a military vehicle. Yay for quick consensus-building! Cam (Chat) 03:46, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
Although armoured it has little – if any – military value, so I think its probably safer to pass on this one. Tom I'm curious, had you ever heard of the Popemobile before? Only wonder because it was a common target for satire and spoof comedy in the late eighties/early nineties in the UK (if I remember correctly), so it's pretty well known over here. Ranger Steve (talk) 22:13, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
It's pretty well-known here in the states, last I knew. Also a target of spoofs and jokes even in this past decade. I'd be willing to tag it just for the fun of it, but it really doesn't fall in our scope per se. But who cares about that? :) Cromdog (talk) 02:32, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
I was aware of the presence of this vehicle, however I assumed that it would be mentioned in passing in either in the article on the pope or the article on the Vatican security. I was surprised to find a stand alone article here, that is why I brought it up here. TomStar81 (Talk) 04:18, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
Per Saberwyn. Durova412 23:00, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Featured article candidacy for Roderic Dallas now open

The featured article candidacy for Roderic Dallas is now open. Comments from reviewers are needed to help determine whether the article meets the criteria for featured articles; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Ian Rose (talk) 13:27, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Help a Museum Volunteer!

I volunteer at the Eastbourne Redoubt, and just this minute we have found a cap badge in our New Acquisitions locker that we can't identify. I can't get a picture of it, but here comes a description: Dark blue background, with the letters "D.R" at the top of the badge in gold or yellow thread. Then below this are a pair of wings, also in yellow, connected by a circle of yellow thread. In the middle of this circle is what appears to be a starburst of some kind. We'd really appreciate any help that could be given in identifying this, as our usual books and websites can't identify it. Cheers, Skinny87 (talk) 14:18, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Is there any chance of a pic, or can you not actually get one at all? I wonder what the DR refers to.... Ranger Steve (talk) 22:19, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
Sounds to me like it might be some sort of air force-related trade badge; possibly not RAF as they usually (but not always) have the crown insignia as well. A picture would be helpful :) EyeSerenetalk 09:53, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
I would put one up, but I don't want to get done for copyright or something like that. Or is that not an issue? Skinny87 (talk) 10:56, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
personally wouldn't have though copyright was a big issue for a low resultion image in the interest of research, if anyone has an inkling of the national origin they could have a look here at what seems a comprehensive site on the matterGraemeLeggett (talk) 10:59, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
Could it be like this one bottom right ? [7] The D R is normal abbreviation for Dispatch Rider. --Jim Sweeney (talk) 11:10, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
Hey, that's exactly it! Cheers Jim! Skinny87 (talk) 11:11, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
Nice find Jim! I was racking my brains to imagine what trade 'DR' might be :) EyeSerenetalk 11:32, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
Very nice find. I'd been thinking along the lines of Dave Regina! Ranger Steve (talk) 11:49, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
So presumably the "sunburst" is actually a stylised representation of a motorcycle wheel, since that's what WWI despatch riders rode, and the wings an allusion to Mercury/Hermes as the messenger of the gods. I wouldn't have thought copyright would be a major issue - expired Crown Copyright would seem to be the most likely status. A pic would be a ice addition to the despatch rider article. David Underdown (talk) 11:48, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
I'll see what I can do! Skinny87 (talk) 12:01, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Dispute resolution at John J. Pershing

A dispute resolution vote has begun at Talk:John_J._Pershing#Dispute_Resolution_on_addition_of_nicknames_section regarding the appropriateness of retaining a nickname with the word "nigger" in the biography infobox at the start of the article; the information is question is covered in the main article but certain users feel it must also be displayed in the info box. -OberRanks (talk) 13:33, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Featured article candidacy for Battle of Dürenstein now open

The featured article candidacy for Battle of Dürenstein is now open. Comments from reviewers are needed to help determine whether the article meets the criteria for featured articles; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 02:20, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Featured article candidacy for Cleomenean War now open

The featured article candidacy for Cleomenean War is now open. Comments from reviewers are needed to help determine whether the article meets the criteria for featured articles; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 02:22, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Putting work on Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries on the main page

Well the project has a lot of FAs/As/GAs etc, and many of these can be used on the main page on selected anniversaries. Total FA/GA/A of Wikipedia >> main page slots, but at the moment, SA is not well-known and has no selection process; unlike DYK and ITN, you can just turn up and serve yourself. This is leading to lots of unsourced, messed-up articles getting on the main page. One admin Ragib (talk · contribs) has been reverting an article he contributed to, Operation Searchlight, which has lots of references of officers involved in the war, citing WP:OTHERCRAP. Anyone with a GA with a relevant date, you can get yourself 5000 hits for the day (not just a 6 hours stay like DYK), and the article can go on there each year, unlike TFA and DYK, and raise the standard of material on the front page as well to make Wikipedia less of a joke YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 07:20, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Peer review for 3rd Battalion 3rd Marines now open

The peer review for 3rd Battalion 3rd Marines is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 21:53, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

A-Class review for Massachusetts in the American Civil War needs attention

A few more editors are needed to complete the A-Class review for Massachusetts in the American Civil War; please stop by and help review the article! Thanks! -MBK004 23:15, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Sourcing question

Since I'm not a regular MilHist contributor, I just had a question about sourcing; I started a thread at Talk:Jocko Thompson, which is definitely MilHist in addition to being a baseball article. Thanks. KV5 (Talk • Phils) 01:02, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

KIA dagger

Dagger_(typography) this claim needs to be referenced asap. As this has wide spread usage on wiki Gnevin (talk) 18:28, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Isn't it just an extension of the usage mentioned higher up in the article for noting death of a person or next to a date of death?GraemeLeggett (talk) 19:51, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
I also asked for assistance at Template talk:KIA#Clarify usage in general. Hopefully someone can clarify all this. :) -- Quiddity (talk) 20:30, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
I've checked and couldn't find any evidence of the usage . Also {{DOW}} and {{POW}} are confusing . DOW uses the same symbol as KIA and POW uses a symbol picked at random. Should we just use words here? Gnevin (talk) 23:32, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
Last time we discussed this, I suggested name[KIA] (etc) for these - it avoids the ambiguity of the symbols. But then, I'd prefer to remove them altogether! Shimgray | talk | 00:55, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
I'd prefer the wikilinked abbreviation to the symbol in all cases, with complete removal as a second option...its easier for those not familiar with these symbols to read the relevant info in the body of the article than to try and decipher the hidden meaning of these marks. -- saberwyn 01:00, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
I prefer the round brackets (KIA). I also question is there a need for thisGnevin (talk) 17:00, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't think its strictly necessary to label casualties in the infobox in every article, but there are times I do like to see it. This is a good example, and I must admit in such circumstances I prefer the dagger (always thought it was a cross myself!). KIA seems too modern for this sort of period. Ranger Steve (talk) 22:03, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Template_talk:KIA#Change_to_KIA, I've proposed we remove this symbol. Please indicate your views on the talk page Gnevin (talk) 15:17, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Long infobox for Daniel Inouye

I have an Infobox related question regarding this article and that is...is it really necessary to list every political affiliation in the infobox or can we choose say the most important ones. As it is the infobox scolls three quarters the length of the page and is, I believe unweildy. Before I begin slicing off chunks of infobox and locking horns with another editor I thought I would leave a message here and see what the generals feelings are towards infoboxes of this length. I am also going to leave this on the articles page just in case a frequent editor is watching. Thanks. --Kumioko (talk) 17:51, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

From what I have seen with the articles of other American political figures, this is standard procedure. I'm sure there is a wikiproject on politics which could weigh in on this. -MBK004 18:44, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
I agree that infoboxes can get ridiculously long. I've brought up the issue in the past, I think at Template talk:Infobox person, where there was some agreement but no action. You might try more discussion there. In practice, I usually don't use (and sometimes remove) the "Preceded by" and "Succeeded by" fields in long infoboxes, since this is often relatively trivial information that is duplicated in the succession boxes at the bottom of the article. —Kevin Myers 11:50, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

MILHIST tag removed

As per guidance, noting tag removed from Footman . Article is about a class of civilian servant and was probably tagged due to a coincidence with the term "footman" meaning infantryman.Monstrelet (talk) 19:26, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Featured article candidacy for Japanese battleship Yamato now open

The featured article candidacy for Japanese battleship Yamato is now open. Comments from reviewers are needed to help determine whether the article meets the criteria for featured articles; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 22:16, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

AFD

I've nominated Clifton Wolcott and several other casualties of the Battle of Mogadishu. It is at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Clifton "Elvis" Wolcott. Rin tin tin 1996 (talk) 02:17, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Question on naming conventions

Please clarify the naming conventions for Corps and Divisions and Regiments. In the Austrian military (19th century and earlier), as well as other European militaries, it was customary for a unit to take the name of its commander. Thus the 8th Hussar (Austrian) was called the Hussar 8 ° Wurmser (named for Dagobert Sigmund Wurmser. In the Grand Armee, the VIII. Corps, commanded Mortier, was called the Corps Mortier. In FA process, a reviewer has insisted I rename it to Corps Mortier (without italics), which feels wrong to me. The old MOS convention, which is now deprecated, agrees with this. I cannot find the appropriate section in the new one, which appears to be somewhere in this project. Auntieruth55 (talk) 01:29, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Its probably at WP:MILMOS, I'd check there. TomStar81 (Talk) 01:31, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
Well, I did look there. The closest thing I could come to was ships' names. Auntieruth55 (talk) 01:51, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
WP:MILMOS#UNITNAME addresses it indirectly; among other examples, we have the form "The 3rd Mountain Division (3. Gebirgs-Division) was..." as a recommendation. I'm not entirely clear, however, what the context of your question is; are we talking about the article about the unit itself, or references in other articles? Kirill [talk] [prof] 02:51, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
Names within the article. For example, 8th Dragoons Wurmser attacked at dawn. The divisions of the VIII. Corps Mortier were extended in a three day line of march along the Danube. It seems to me it's like a ship. USS Constitution sailed at dawn. No, it's the USS Constitution sailed at dawn. Auntieruth55 (talk) 04:31, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
Well, I'm somewhat split on this. On the one hand, I think your usage is the correct one (primarily because, as "non-English" terms, they would be italicized in any case); I've certainly never seen such terms presented in normal type. On the other hand, however, I'm not a fan of using the full titles when referring to the units in context; I would, for example, tend to replace "8th Dragoons Wurmser attacked at dawn... The divisions of the VIII. Corps Mortier were extended..." with "8th Dragoons attacked at dawn... The divisions of the VIII Corps were extended..." just to simplify the text. Is there any real benefit to the reader from using the full titles? Kirill [talk] [prof] 03:05, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

A few ACRs that need some attention

Hi all, there are currently a couple of ACRs that have not had any or much involvement and have been open for a while. Could any editors who are keen, please pop over to WP:MHPR and take a look at the following articles:

The Battle of Taejon FAC could also use some more input too. Cheers. — AustralianRupert (talk) 12:05, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Emiratus

Is there an written rule that Coordinator Emiratus must be a former head coord? Rin tin tin 1996 (talk) 12:16, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

No there is not, although I should note that to date both of the coordinators holding the title of emiratus were at one point lead coordinators for the project. TomStar81 (Talk) 00:46, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Peer review for John Perkins (Jack Punch) now open

The peer review for John Perkins (Jack Punch) is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 19:52, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

A-Class review for Order of Saint Hubert (Bavarian) now open

The A-Class review for Order of Saint Hubert (Bavarian) is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 19:54, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Peer review for Siege of Fort William Henry now open

The peer review for Siege of Fort William Henry is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 21:16, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Elections and all of that!

I've truly appreciated the help that many of the coordinators have given in the past year. Congratulations to the new coordinators on their election, and thanks very much to the outgoing coordinators who are taking a coordinator break. Auntieruth55 (talk) 22:27, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

American decorations

Does anyone know of a website which at least lists the recipients of US awards and decorations. I'm looking for something similar to the London Gazette. Does one exist? Gaia Octavia Agrippa Talk | Sign 20:22, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

The truth is there is no central repository but their are a few but it depends on the Award. The Medal of Honor is well documented and websites for that abound but as you get lower on the list of decoration seniority it becomes more and more difficul. Here a few though. The of Valor ite has the most. This site includes the MOh down to Navy achievelments. The |US Army has a site with the Medal of Honor citations. The Naval Historical site has a lot also and includes biographies of those that had ships named for them. The Marine Corps |Whos Who site also has a lot of good info for Marines. --Kumioko (talk) 21:04, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
Thank you. It is a pity the Americans don't publicly catalogue every decoration; but I suppose that is hard to do when they award many more decorations than us Brits. Gaia Octavia Agrippa Talk | Sign 10:24, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
I forgot to mention there is also a way to determine most of the unit awards, especially for the Navy and Marine Corps. The army and air force are the worst ones at it. There is a bill in congress that would require that all (or at least the ones received for valor) would be contained in a database. But it hasn't been approved yet and even if it does it wouldn't go back and add the ones from the past. In addition there was a fire in the personnel records center in St Louis that destroyed about 80 million records, mostly for the army so a lot of that was lost as well. Is there a certain award you are looking for, or individual? --Kumioko (talk) 14:35, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
I mostly write biographies for British personnel but occasionally I edit or create American military personnel articles. Presently I am working on Winifred Collins. I found that she was awarded the Bronze Star, but I don't know specifically why. And she was still a WAVES when she was warded it; she later joined the proper Navy. Anyway I could find out? Gaia Octavia Agrippa Talk | Sign 15:10, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
Doesn't USN keep a record? You might try contacting the historical div (Washington Navy Yard, I think). TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 19:38, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
Gaia Octavia Agrippa, nice article about an interesting person. :-) Your comment/question caught my attention because I'm running into the same type of problem finding the details about the awards/medals. Many of the awards/medals given to females were irregular because their service was with a non-traditional military organization that later was recognized for its service/or individuals in the organization were given awards based on their individual actions. Old editions of The American Red Cross publications and American Journal of Nursing will have some information about the service of nurses. The Daughters of the American Revolution publications will have information about nurses and other people. Many of these women were remarkable people that were successful in other venues so their main profile might be found in another occupation with mentions of previous military service as a side note. So it is worthwhile to run the person's name (most often various names) through databases that record information about women. Let me know if you find a database that has service records of women. I've not seen a comprehensive one. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 12:16, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
Follow up link to DAR web exhibit that discusses the DAR's relationship to the Military during the Spanish-American War. Under contract describes the role that the DAR played in placing trained nurses with the U.S. Military. The website had loads of information and pics about military nurses. In my reading, I've seen that DAR and the American Red Cross, from their origins to more recent times, often performed official administrative work for the military so their records and publication have pertinent information. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 14:59, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
The navy Does keep a record but most personnel records are housed at the National Personnel Records Center in St Louis, Missouri. Also, since she was in the army first its likely that document was lost in the Records center fire in '73. They lost about 80 million records, a lot of them being from the Army. I will ask the NHC if they have anything on here other than whats in the refs already and post something out here after while. --Kumioko (talk) 15:41, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
Much to my surprise the Naval Library on the Washington Navy yard does have a biography available on her. Its only 2 pages, written in 1969 by the Naval Historical Center (and stamped Naval Historical Division). As such it should be ok to use as a reference I would think. The title is "Biography of Captain Winifred Quick Collins, United States Navy. It doesn't have the entire bronze star citation but it does have a statement that she recieved it and it was: "For exceptionally meritorious service as District Personnel Officer for the womens reserve at Pearl Harbor from 30 October 1944 to 11 April 1946." It further states: "As one of the first WAVES to report for duty in the district, she assisted in the formulation of all preliminary plans and policies for the womens reserve, and also in setting up demobilization procedures after the cessation of hostilities." Thats it for the bronze star info but it also states that she recieved the American Campaign Medal, the Asia-Pacific Campaign medal, WWII Victory Medal, National Defense Service Medal and the Legion of Merit. Along with this bio they also had a prinout of the Arlingtion Cemetery bio. Please let me know if you need me to track anything else down. --Kumioko (talk) 16:32, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
Could you make a reference for this for me? I don't like to add things without the reference. Thanks, Gaia Octavia Agrippa Talk | Sign 19:52, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
I would think it would look something like citation |accessdate=March 30, 2010 |title=Biography of Captain Winifred Quick Collins, United States Navy, |publisher=Naval Historical Center |location=Naval Library, Washington Navy Yard, Washington DC |year=1969}} If you want me to try and get more info I can try, just let me know. --Kumioko (talk) 20:48, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Portal:Tank

FYI, Portal:Tank has been requested to be renamed, see Portal talk:Tank.

76.66.192.73 (talk) 04:43, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Odd question about military creatures

I recently stumbled upon Sergeant Stubby and thought I might try and get it up to at least B class and in the process something occurred to me. What shoudl I use for an infobox? I realize that I cannot use Infobox military person or Person data but it seems like we should have an infobox or something for military related animals. I looked at the list of animals that is on this article and there seems to be quite a few. Am I missing something? --Kumioko (talk) 23:59, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

For the ime being I would stick with infobox military person since we are talking about a solder (although this was a four legged soldier, not a two legged one :) On the matter of an animal infobox, I'm not sure if there are enough war animals of notable context to justify a military infobox. I'm open to further discussion on the point though. TomStar81 (Talk) 00:39, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
Category:Military animals about 50, and 38 in the Warhorses subcat. -- Quiddity (talk) 00:58, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
There were also some pigeons (32 pigeons who won the Dickin Medal) as well as elephants such as Abul-Abbas the war elephant of Charlemagne. Additionally there were some others as well such as dolphins, camels, monkeys etc. Not sure how many would be required for a Military animal infobox or the data we would want to collect but thats over 100. --Kumioko (talk) 02:40, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
That would be enough to warrant a discussion on the matter. I have no issue with the idea of creating an infobox for war animals, but we should agree on a few comments traits for all; at a minimum, I would recommend including fields for the type of animal, its service years, country affiliation, assigned unit, type of job (demolitions, S&R, drug interdiction, etc...) awards won, fate, place of rest, and notes. TomStar81 (Talk) 04:40, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
What stops us using Infobox military person? Pal the dog (played Lassie) uses Infobox actor. Are there any particularly human fields that look wrong when it is used? GraemeLeggett (talk) 10:48, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
It might be troublesome at some future date if the military person infobox is ever split into sub-infoboxes (especially if a bot is involved) but at the moment it seems the best place to put them.  Roger Davies talk 06:29, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Identifying image: VAMTAC or HMMWV?

URO VAMTAC or HMMWV?

Can somebody help me identify the vehicle in this image? It's under the VAMTAC category at Commons so it should be a URO VAMTAC, but how do you distinguish it from the American Humvee? The original image at flickr shows a Spanish flag on the vehicle, but Spanish forces use the Humvee too if I'm not mistaken. ≈ Chamal talk ¤ 11:32, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

According tot he HMMWV article, Spain has about 150 US HMMWVs, however they are used exclusively by the spanish marines. If we could determine which service branch members are depicted we could probably solve the mystery. TomStar81 (Talk) 19:43, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
That's definitely not a Hummer; if you look closely you can see how the doors bulge out just below the base of the windows and there are differences in the shape of the hood and front radiator grill.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 22:19, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
Ah, I see. Thanks guys :) I'll try to find out which branch is serving in Herat then, since that's apparently where the picture was taken. ≈ Chamal talk ¤ 01:51, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
I've had a look around, but neither International Security Assistance Force nor Afghanistan war order of battle nor Regional Command West appears to be up to date enough to help. Please if/when you figure out the unit (you could try the Spanish iw links), add the data to Regional Command West? Regards Buckshot06 (talk) 00:33, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Groundbreaking X templates

Template:Groundbreaking submarines and Template:Groundbreaking destroyers (the latter in particular) seem to me to be incredibly subjective. I assume the purpose of them is to try to demonstrate how the design of these vessels has progressed, but it just seems like a very bad way of going about it, because, to varying degrees, every new class of vessel is "groundbreaking", in that it is an inevitable improvement on the ones it followed on from. Certain new technologies may be used that had not previously been used, but surely it is those technologies that are "groundbreaking", and not the vessels as a whole. I was considering a TfD, but I didn't want to rush into one if I'm the only one who thinks this. Jhbuk (talk) 17:37, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Good lord... I'd support a delete. Aside from being (as you say) incredibly subjective, several vessels make little or no mention of how they were groundbreaking at all. Others were the first or fastest of their time or sosuch, but that doesn't equate to groundbreaking in my book. If these examples were hard referenced somehow then it might be ok (certainly a couple were groundbreaking), but even then I don't know. Currently it has a touch of synth about it. Ranger Steve (talk) 17:50, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
PS, I've mentioned this discussion on the template's talk pages. Ranger Steve (talk) 18:30, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
Dont forget Template:Groundbreaking French weapons of the 19th century - which might just need a rename. While some of the destroyers and submarines may have been "firsts",, that's not what the template is claiming in its title. If the destroyers was renamed and reformatted you might have something showing certain firsts - first turbine powered, first guided missile...but whether its worth it? GraemeLeggett (talk) 19:38, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
With that, though, there is still the problem of how important the 'firsts' are, as there must be many, many different 'firsts' that were either put on a few ships, but then forgotten about (although they may still have had some impact on later designs), or that were still fairly similar to what was there previously. That would also effectively exclude almost any vessels constructed in the last 10/20 years, as we don't know whether the technologies are significant/successful enough to have been passed on to the next class. Would the Queen Elizabeth carriers (even if they were in service) come under "Groundbreaking aircraft carriers" for being the first with two islands, for example? Jhbuk (talk) 20:52, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
The sub template appears inclined to add French & Spanish ships on a whim, & Narwhal for no reason I'm aware of, but manages to omit the Russian minelayer (name of which escapes me... :( :( ) which was the first of a kind, & leaves off U-9 which IIRC was the first diesel boat. Yeh, I'd wonder about the QEs, too, as also Akagi for her port-side island, or the Japanese "battlecarriers". TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 21:40, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
I agree - both templates should be nominated for deletion. The destroyers one is particularly bad (calling the British Type 45 destroyers 'Ground breaking' is a bit much given that many analysts argue that they're inferior to older US, Asian and European designs), but the topics of the templates themselves are unsuitable given that they're intrinsically subjective. Nick-D (talk) 07:09, 31 March 2010 (UTC)


I have nominated the submarine and destroyer templates here. I left out the French weaponry one by the way. Jhbuk (talk) 20:55, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

WP:MILMOS and references

I have written quite a few articles on Israeli military history lately, and noticed that in some of them, users changed the citation section titles from References and Bibliography to Notes and References, citing WP:MILMOS. I have reviewed much of WP:MILMOS and cannot find anything requiring this kind of formatting. Moreover, I have never seen a military history work that has a References section that is actually a bibliographical list. Today in most books, even non-book sources like websites and journals go under Bibliography. Did I miss something? If not, can someone make an appropriate edit to WP:MILMOS clarifying the issue? Thanks, Ynhockey (Talk) 11:27, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

MILMOS doesn't say anything about the section titles explicitly; WP:MILMOS#CITESTYLE merely points to the overall WP:CITE and WP:FOOT guidelines. The latter, however, do mention the section titles (e.g. WP:CITE#How to present citations), so you should probably take up the question at WT:CITE if you want a concrete answer on which style is preferred. Kirill [talk] [prof] 13:26, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
To add to what Kirill's said, it's been common practice to use "References" rather than "Bibliography" on Milhist articles I've worked on, but that doesn't mean it's the sole approved method. Contrast Operation Epsom with Mary Wollstonecraft; both articles are WP:MOS compliant and both have Featured status. EyeSerenetalk 13:36, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
Addendum: it just occurred to me that I may have misread your post. Because we tend to use "References" and "Bibliography" as synonyms, maybe that's why the articles have been changed. Possibly either "Notes and References" or "Notes and Bibliography" would be ok, but not "References and Bibliography". EyeSerenetalk 13:39, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Looking for some general knowledge expertise

I just posted a question (link to section) to the humanities reference desk, and I thought that people here would probably have the knowledge to answer it. Thanks. —Akrabbimtalk 18:05, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Featured Article Review for Harry S. Truman

I have nominated Harry S. Truman for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. -MBK004 22:01, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Peer review for Siege of Trsat now open

The peer review for Siege of Trsat is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 22:06, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Peer review for Irish Mercantile Marine during World War II now open

The peer review for Irish Mercantile Marine during World War II is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 05:16, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Light tank

FYI, a request has been made to overwrite the redirect light tank with the contents at User:Marcus Aurelius Antoninus/Light tank.

76.66.192.73 (talk) 04:43, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

The suggested content is woefully incomplete and the lede IMHO inaccurate so I've given my opinion.GraemeLeggett (talk) 14:40, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

The military goat

I would greatly appreciate any assistance in improving the articel about William Windsor (goat), which I am hoping to move towards GA status. Many thanks in anticipation.  Chzz  ►  14:57, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

20% off Osprey New Vanguard series of books

Without wanting to seem like a spammer, Osprey books are selling their New Vanguard series of books for 20% off the regular price all April. These books cover notable military equipment (mainly weapons and naval ships), and make great references for Wikipedia articles. Their quality can considerably vary, however, so its best to look into the books before buying them (fairly large portions of most are available through Google books). The full list of books in the series is available here. Nick-D (talk) 01:14, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Peer review for Organization of the Luftwaffe (1933-1945) now open

The peer review for Organization of the Luftwaffe (1933-1945) is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 05:39, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Peer review for 22nd Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry now open

The peer review for 22nd Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 05:41, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

A-Class review for Ordnance QF 25-pounder Short now open

The A-Class review for Ordnance QF 25-pounder Short is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Nick-D (talk) 05:43, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

military 24 hour clock

Oh, and I probably should have discussed this here first, but I became annoyed and jumped the gun. I've been told that the standard 0600 method that is frequently used here is incorrect according to WP:MOSTIME, which it is. So I raised the question at here to see if 0600 could be included as an accepted format for expressing time, instead of either 6 a.m. 06:00. If it isn't, does this mean we have to change our articles that don't comply? Auntieruth55 (talk) 02:03, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Not necessarily, thanks to MILMOS, which is the MoS used by our project to set forth the guidelines to be followed in articles. If we adopt a measure to amend our project MoS on this matter then military time could be considered an acceptable for of time for milhist related articles. TomStar81 (Talk) 02:20, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
To be fair, I'm not entirely sure that it would be a good idea to amend our manual of style to allow something after the idea had been rejected at another manual of style page—it seems too much like asking the other parent to me. In any case, we should see how that discussion turns out; if I recall correctly, the last time this was proposed, it was rejected because the format, while clear to anyone associated with the military, is nevertheless quite obscure to the general reader. Kirill [talk] [prof] 02:48, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
In my opinion its no different than a redirect. The big question is do people know what it means. My guess is yes and changing it from one to the other doesn't really "fix" anything, its just symantics. --Kumioko (talk) 02:49, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
Obscure? I mean...a 4-digit time code seems pretty standard to me, whatever punctuation you use. It's not like I'm saying the time is 16371.Cromdog (talk) 03:22, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
It seems to me that it should be okay in a military article, since that is how the sources usually present it as well. And now, with the 24 hour clock more in general use, it should be clear. Can we raise enough ruckus for this? Auntieruth55 (talk) 04:27, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
We might be able too, but at the moment it may be wise for you to firm up the idea some so we can get a clearer picture of where exactly you think such a clock would be of use. Also, keep in mind that we have a lot of proposals out on the talk page at the moment, that does tend to reduce the number of people who participate in a discussion somewhat. Also, Kirill, a MoS amendment would be the last step; it was just my suggestion. For now, I suggest we simply talk about the issue; usually that helps clear the air and can help establish consensus for the inclusion or exclusion of material in an article. TomStar81 (Talk) 05:51, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

I've used 0600, etc., in battle articles to establish a time frame. Generally, I do that because the articles/books I'm reading either use this convention (if they are modern), or, if they are "elderly" five o'clock in the early morning . Yeah. I understand the need for 06:10:12, but the Napoleonic military clock didn't work that precisely. If they all got going at 6 am, they were lucky. It seems to me by using 0600, rather than 6:00 am or 6 am it cuts out a lot of extraneous confusion about numbers etc. (should it actually be six am ???, since the # is lower than ten). I'm suggesting that 0600 be a permitted variation in the style, not required. It seems fairly widely used in this project. Auntieruth55 (talk) 17:53, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

IMO, the MOS is catering to a minority. AFAIK, most Europeans & Asians use the 24-hr clock as a default. I'd also expect most of the audience for Milhist articles to be passing familiar with it. That being so, I'd expect the confusion to be slight. If not, can the 24hr times be linked out (without getting deleted for ovelinking)? TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 19:32, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
Do we have any readers who do understand 0600 but don't understand 06:00? We have a lot of readers who won't understand 0600, and the problem is that we've got pretty strong resistance at FAC to linking more than just a few times to the same page. The mantra at MOS is: Wikipedia is intended to be read by everyone. I don't like "6 a.m." in MILHIST articles for the same reason, there are so many (non-U.S.) readers who won't get that. - Dank (push to talk) 14:03, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
It seems to me 0600 (or 06.00, or 06:00) is less an issue than 18.00. 06.00 is pretty intuitive even for those not already exposed to 24h time. In the vein above, would one link out at the first use of 18.00 do it, without raising too many complaints? Or is that insufficiently clear for the uninitiated? Absent that, all I can think of is a tag to say something like "This page uses 24 hour time", which seems a weak solution. TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 15:06, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
If I say 12 a.m. does the reader know whether I talking about midday or midnight? The am/pm stuff is not widely understood. The 24-hour military times are universal. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:33, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
Best with 12 o'clock to say "12 noon" or "12 midnight".GraemeLeggett (talk) 18:32, 2 April 2010 (UTC)
  • FWIW, I think the problem here may lie partly with the chosen notation, not with the 24-hour clock as such. Whilst I'm quite happy to read 24-hour clock times, but not as plain four-digit numbers like 0600 - they really do need a colon or something similar to indicate that they actually are times. There's sufficient potential ambiguity with a time like 6.27pm - "1827" could be a date or even a simple arithmetic number - that a reader skimming for a detail, or who isn't using English as a first language (and so is a bit hazy on fiddly issues like "they did X in year" versus "they did X at time") can easily be confused. Shimgray | talk | 18:18, 2 April 2010 (UTC)
The colon is a good idea. GraemeLeggett (talk) 18:32, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Featured list candidacy for Order of battle at the Battle of Camperdown now open

The featured list candidacy for Order of battle at the Battle of Camperdown is now open. Comments from reviewers are needed to help determine whether the article meets the criteria for featured lists; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Mm40 (talk) 15:20, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Disambiguation versus set indices

A little while ago, Xyl 54 and I wrestled together disambiguation pages for every British numbered infantry regiment - eg, 91st Regiment of Foot (disambiguation). (This is a task I started years ago - the aim was to stop the problem with different units with the same number being confused and treated as one lump - but we only just managed to complete it.)

The problem is that these include a number of redlinks to units on which we don't currently have an in-text reference, and so technically fall afoul of the requirements for a disambiguation page... in other words, they get fixed up to the MoS and end up looking like this rather than this, with the surviving links picked entirely on which ones we currently happen to link to.

Which led me to thinking. As these are all closely related - they're all military units, all of broadly the same type (infantry regiments) and even of the same nationality - would it be reasonable to treat them as set index articles, the way we do for ships - eg/ HMS Africa? This allows "unlinked redlinks" and a bit more descriptive text, which seems appropriate for the goal in hand.

Other than ships, milhist doesn't use set index articles at the moment, but I think it's a profitable avenue to pursue, especially in light of the (very long-standing) debate about "pre-emptive" disambiguation above. Thoughts, on this special case or in its use for numbered-unit disambiguation in general? Shimgray | talk | 18:45, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Makes sense, dismabiguation is always good. I typed in "Prince of Wales regiment" and got about 5 back. GraemeLeggett (talk) 20:05, 2 April 2010 (UTC)
Agreed, it does make sense and I've always wondered why set index was not used more extensively in MILHIST. -MBK004 22:29, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Peer review for Franco-Mongol alliance now open

The peer review for Franco-Mongol alliance is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 22:29, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

article request

The Third Geneva Convention mentions a “Central Prisoners of War Information Agency.” I suppose there should be an article about this agency? Bwrs (talk) 00:56, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

I think the organisation is within the Red Cross. Buckshot06 (talk) 02:52, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
The information is at International Committee of the Red Cross, in the First and Second World War sections. The organisation is still active at Geneva but does not have very much current active activity. Buckshot06 (talk) 02:57, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Pentagon April fools joke

On April 1, 2010 the United States Army, showed a rare moment of humor and posted an April Fools Joke on the United States Army website stating that the Pentagon was going to be moved en-masse to Kansas. In light of this and all the negative things that have occurred at the pentagon (the Sept 11 attacks, the recent shooting, etc) I thought it might be interesting to readers that the Pentagon was the punch line in an April fools joke (just like we refer to references in popular culture for certain things or people). So I drafted up a couple of sentences, referencing the army's April Fool news release and posted it. In this |edit BilCat reverted it because as he put it WP is not news. I do not agree that this is simple news. Rather than get into an edit war over this though I thoguht I would post it here and see what people think. Should we keep a small mention of the fact that the Army used the pentagon as a punchline of an April Fools prank or do we discard this as simple silliness and write it off as simple news. I eagerly await your responses. --Kumioko (talk) 02:24, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

That's probably worth a sentence somewhere in the article, but a full para seems too much. It's interesting to see that the US Army has more of a sense of humor than the occupants of the Pentagon, one of whom told me that I could have my camera confiscated when I took a photo too close to the building when I was in Washington last year... Nick-D (talk) 04:04, 2 April 2010 (UTC)
Your closeup photo probably made it look like a pentagon (gasp) A sentence or two would be good, but a section does seem a bit much. NativeForeigner Talk/Contribs/Vote! 04:13, 2 April 2010 (UTC)
It's a neat gag, but I'm not sure it belongs on the Pentagon page. April Fools' Day? Humour? (Where it might be added to refs to cut-ups, finaglers, & stooges.) TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 04:18, 2 April 2010 (UTC)
Sounds like a candidate for Reader's Digest's Humor in Uniform section. Probably worth a line or two in the article somewhere, but like the others have said not a full paragraph. TomStar81 (Talk) 04:59, 2 April 2010 (UTC)
I also said I did not think it was notable. The fact the joke was published by the Army doesn't establish notability, only veracity. We'd need to see other sources report it, and any ramafications of the joke, to include it in the Pentagon article, in my opinion. - BilCat (talk) 05:26, 2 April 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, this doesn't seem nearly notable enough for inclusion in the article. BilCat is right: coverage in other sources is needed to make an argument for notability. —Kevin Myers 13:51, 2 April 2010 (UTC)
It's worth it, but it's in the wrong place. Does anyone know about WikiNews rules? That's where it ought to be. Then it can be linked to the article via a template 'all news about the Pentagon in WikiNews.' BilCat, Kumioko, do you want to work with me to learn about WikiNews very quickly and get it in there? Buckshot06 (talk) 02:34, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

(od). OK under development at http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/April_Fools%27_Day_Hoax_Has_Pentagon_Move_to_Kansas. Please help.. Buckshot06 (talk) 02:42, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

WikiNews requires at least two sources. Thus this is dead. Regards to all. Buckshot06 (talk) 09:32, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
  • Just wanted to follow-up the comment from Kevin Myers above: "Yeah, this doesn't seem nearly notable enough for inclusion in the article. BilCat is right: coverage in other sources is needed to make an argument for notability." In my view (from reading the policies and guidelines concerned), this confuses notability and undue weight (an extension of NPOV). The concept of notability on Wikipedia should strictly be applied to articles as a whole, not to verifiable facts being suggested for inclusion within an article. Notability (and WP:NOT) helps to decide what information and topics should be given article-level coverage, while WP:NPOV and WP:UNDUE (as well as parts of WP:NOT and common sense about whether something is relevant to an article) help editors decide whether something that passes the verifiability and reliable sources tests, is suitable for inclusion in an article (i.e. coverage at the footnote, sentence, paragraph and article section levels). The argument here should be that including something on this April Fools joke unbalances the article on the Pentagon, not that the April Fools is "not notable" (unless, of course, you were using the more common, non-WP, general sense of something being notable). The suggestion for a wikinews article is also a good one, and it might also be good to have it included as a referenced sentence in one of Wikipedia's articles on the topic of April Fools jokes. I would do a diagram showing levels of coverage descending from coverage at the level of a topic with lots of articles, through specific articles, article sections, paragraphs and sentences, to footnotes (probably the smallest coverage a topic can get on Wikipedia other than just a redirect), but I hate doing diagrams. Carcharoth (talk) 12:23, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
    • Since it has become obvious to me that outside myself very few think that the American military participating in an April fools joke stating that the Pentagon was moving is not notible I am going to drop the issue. Although to me this is just another example of whats notable to one isn't notable to someone else. But just for the record there was mention of this in other news sources besides the DOD including USA today |here. --Kumioko (talk) 17:01, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Advice on resolving some name spelling inconsistencies

Would anyone be able to take a look at Memorial Gates (Constitution Hill) and help me resolve some inconsistencies in the spelling of some of the names listed there (I've learnt that Nepalese language name transliterations include double h's, and that 'Twelves' was used as a middle name)? The names are listed in this section of the article. The name spelling inconsistencies are:

The last two are several examples of "bahadur" Nepalese names, but our article naming is inconsistent.

Also, if anyone's interest is piqued by that list, the GC and VC recipients were identified and linked to article based purely on the initials inscribed on the memorial. For most, that will be OK, but I am slightly worried that there might be more than one VC or GC recipient with the same initials - how likely would that be? And what is the best way to resolve the spelling inconsistencies in cases like these? Carcharoth (talk) 13:04, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Remember that these have all been tranliterated into the Roman alphabet from non-Roman scripts, such transliterations are always somewhat variable over time. On the whole the VC and GC articles will have been named as the the recipient was originally named in the London Gazette for the announcement of that decoration - in many cases if they received other decorations, the spelling of the name is not consistent from one appearance to the next even in the Gazette. We certainly list all VC recipients in Wikipedia, so there can be no doubt on that front, as you note below, our coverage of GCs is less complete. David Underdown (talk) 16:40, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for the advice. I will try and look up the London Gazette spellings at some point and at least include those if not used already. What would be interesting to know is what sources were used by those compiling the list for inscribing on the memorial, but that is something that is likely to be difficult to find out, though in at least one case they seem to have used the spelling used by the CWGC. One other thing, if anyone still reading this knows where to look for pictures of those WWI and WWII people, I'd be grateful. I'd like to do a list at some point, separate from the memorial article, and filling in a few more pictures would be nice. Carcharoth (talk) 02:08, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

A-Class review for Battle of Naktong Bulge now open

The A-Class review for Battle of Naktong Bulge is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 05:03, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

A-Class review for HMAS Australia (1911) now open

The A-Class review for HMAS Australia (1911) is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 05:06, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Second Sino-Japanese War

Hi,

I'm asking myself a question about the combatant's infobox in the Second Sino-Japanese War article. I already talked about it some time ago with the other (mainly Chinese, I think) users who contribute to the article and they insisted that the other participants (United States, Soviet Union, Collaborationist Chinese governments...) be left out because the main conflict concerned China and Japan. While I'll certainly agree that China did 90% of the fight on its own land, I'm not sure the current infobox, which only mentions "foreign support" and "collaborator support" should be left that way. After 1941, the United States did more than "support" China, since their air force was present. The Soviet Union intervened several times, and sent more than one million men in 1945 when they invaded Manchuria. As for the collaborator support, one user argued that the Chinese collaborators should be left out because they were "insignificant". While Manchukuo arguably didn't do much except supporting the Japanese in a few occasions (still a participant, however), the Wang Jingwei regime had a military force of about 600 000; that's hardly insignificant, and whilst it did not pose much of a threat to Chinese nationalist troops, it did engage the Communist troops and guerrilla and posed a barrier to their expansion. I think they could arguably be counted as belligerents (and possibly Mengjiang, too). I don't want to fight over it, but I used to think that the Chinese communist party should be counted as a separate belligerent than the Republic of China, since the Second United Front was pretty much dead after 1941 and they acted on their own. That's a secondary issue, though. What do you think ? Jean-Jacques Georges (talk) 09:29, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I think where there have been significant contributions, the contributors can be listed in the infobox. How one decides what's significant is another matter, and may also depend on the flag those contributors were operating under. Does the Soviet offensive in Manchuria really come under the Sino-Japanese War? I thought Stalin's agreement to attack Japan once Germany had been dealt with was with Roosevelt and Churchill, not with China. I think there's a stronger case for mentioning the collaborators and the US, but TBH I'm more familiar with the Chinese operations in Burma (where they came under Joseph Stilwell's command when it suited Chiang Kai-shek, were kept in the field largely by US air and British ground supplies, and were directly supported at times by British troops, tanks and artillery). EyeSerenetalk 11:23, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Considering wether or not the 1945 Soviet intervention is part of the Sino-Japanese War might be debatable, however it definitely was part of the Chinese theater of World War II, which was one with the Sino-Japanese War (well, one might count out the 1941 invasion of Hong Kong, which was something entirely different). Moreover, the Soviet Union's air force came to China's help in the earlier stage of the war (albeit unofficially, as a "volunteer group") and the Red army clashed - officially this time - with the Japanese in 1939, when the Sino-Japanese war threatened Outer Mongolia's border. Hence, I think they can be considered a belligerent, although they did not participate between 1939 and 1945. As for the US, although they only sent air force and not ground troops, I think they did more than just "support". I don't think mentioning the other participants diminishes China's input in any way. As for the Chinese collaborationist government, some users may be offended by its inclusion, but it was nevertheless a participant, and not that "insignificant" after all. Jean-Jacques Georges (talk) 13:29, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Agreed, you're really talking about 2 separate issues (insofar as we accept the SJW wasn't actually the start of WW2, already being debated above...). SU offered considerable materiél support, too. TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 14:04, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Of course, it is also possible to consider the 1938-1939 border war and the 1945 invasion as entirely separate from the Sino-Japanese war, but we should check if there is an accepted academic consensus on that. Jean-Jacques Georges (talk) 14:39, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Yes, the sources are the only way to settle the Soviet participation (not that they'll agree with each other if experience is anything to go by!) I certainly think you have a case for including the Chinese collaborationist forces though. EyeSerenetalk 11:44, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
What do you think about the United States ? (about their presence in the infobox, that is) Jean-Jacques Georges (talk) 14:39, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
I don't know to be honest. Were they fighting under their own flag or as part of the Chinese forces? That has made a difference in other articles where similar discussions have arisen. EyeSerenetalk 11:19, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
After 1941, under their own flag, although the US air force were there as support of the Chinese ground forces. As for the USSR, in the 1937-1939 period, they were officially involded as "volunteers", which can be compared to China's involvement in the Korean war. In 1939 and 1945, the Red army intervened officially, but whether or not the Japanese-soviet conflicts must be included in the Sino-Japanese war is a matter of debate. (though fighting definitely took place on Chinese ground). Jean-Jacques Georges (talk) 14:45, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
Based on your last I think perhaps the case for a US mention is weaker, though please don't take my opinion as gospel! I tend to think with infoboxes that less is often better, if only because it avoids the "if X, why not Y" arguments that sometimes arise with smaller participants. However, they are there as a service to the reader so should be as complete as reasonably possible in the limited space provided. EyeSerenetalk 09:31, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
The U.S. Air Force played an important part. It certainly doesn't mean the Chinese didn't do most of the fight. We have Norway, Yugoslavia, and others in the WW2 infobox, despite that they didn't do as much as the Big Three. Rin tin tin 1996 (talk) 19:36, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
I'd support the US and USSR's inclusion. As soon as a participant has personnel actually involved in the fight, their involvement goes beyond "support". Likewise, I would support the collaborator's inclusion. They are all listed in the Chinese-language article's infobox, by the way. Jean-Jacques Georges (talk) 09:45, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Ok, DCCT and I are disagreeing over whether or not the USA, USSR and puppet chinese troops should be included in the infobox. The current one shows very clearly that US and USSR support, as well as the puppet troops' involvement, were subordinate to Chinese and Japanese involvement. This infobox is really correct by wikipedia standards, since infoboxes generally include all belligerents. This one is even more precise in that it clearly defines who had preeminence. As for Soviet involvement, the fact that they only sent their air force as "volunteers" (i.e. unofficial troops) is not different in essence from the People's Republic of China's involvement in the Korean war. Hence, all these belligerents should be included for information's sake. It does not diminish in any way the fact that China and Japan did most of the fighting (on the contrary, the infobox underlines that). Jean-Jacques Georges (talk) 11:11, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

AFAIK, U.S. aid to ROC before 1941 was pretty small, maybe a few dozen volunteer airmen & obsolescent or obsolete aircraft in the International Squadron. (Let's not conflate it with the AVG, as is all too often done...) I remain igorant of the amount of Sov involvement, but material aid was significant in weapons & aircraft AFAIK. Also, the Sov-Japanese border clashes in '38 & '39 tend to be treated separately in the sources I've seen; may reflect ignorance of covert Sov aid (much as it was kept quiet in Korea), so that may not be saying much. TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 14:34, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
My edits clearly stated the nature of USA and USSR support in the infobox: airforce and volunteers, which more percisely reflected the nature of their involvement since none of their ground troops were fighting in China. My edits did not eliminate the collaborator regimes, I just made their fonts smaller, and there are a dozen more puppet regimes and few dozen more "peace preservation troops" and "IJA assistant army" set up by the Japanese not listed in the infobox, should we include them as well? They had just as much legitimacy as Manchoukou and Mengjiang but we want an article length infobox in this article?DCTT (talk) 15:39, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
Here is a good analogy regarding the Chinese collaborators that Jean-Jacques Georges can appreciate: 33rd Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Charlemagne (1st French) played a pivotal role in the Battle of Berlin, should we list France as a belligerent on the axis side in the Battle of Berlin infobox?? DCTT (talk) 08:19, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
That might be a good point, except that the Charlemagne division was officially under German command (i.e. directly and de jure under German military command) and was never subordinate to any French government (no formal link whatsoever with Vichy France : Laval's government merely authorized its existence) whilst the armies of Wang Jingwei's regime, Manchukuo, etc were, at least officially, answering to their respective governments. To take another example, I might personally support the inclusion of the Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism in the Eastern Front's infobox, but again this organization was private and had no formal link with Vichy France, nor did it purport to have one (and it was also under German command, BTW, but its status was somewhat different than the Charlemagne's). So it might be included as the LVF, but not as "France" or "Vichy France", as it was formed by collaborationist French movements who were not under Vichy control : this is the main different with the Soviet Volunteer Group or the Korean War's People's Volunteer Army which were "volunteer" forces in name only.
Granted, the Chinese collaborationist governments were reprehensible puppet regimes (and the infobox clearly shows that they were subordinate) but they were still involved in the war no matter their latitude for action. Jean-Jacques Georges (talk) 08:57, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
The scale of Soviet involvement was more like their support for the Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War in terms of manpower, and not even remotely close to the PRC's massive support for North Korea in the Korean War. For your information, the puppet armies' top commanders were all Japanese due to IJA's distrust of Chinese collaborators, which make them de facto and de jure under Japanese military command as well! Just because the Japanese gave these troops their own uniform and code of arms does not automatically imply that they answer to their respective puppet governments. DCTT (talk) 17:42, 2 April 2010 (UTC)
They were officially in the service of their respective governments, whatever the ambiguity of their actual status. Anyway, given the presentation of the current infobox, I don't think there is any doubt about the fact that they were subordinate to Japan (nobody questioned that here). As for the scale of Soviet involvement, I never questioned the fact that it was far beneath China's in the Korean war : but from a legal point of view, it's the same thing.
BTW, DCCT is desagreeing over the inclusion of the United States as combatant, and would prefer a link to Fourteenth Air Force. I think myself that combatants' sections should point to the sovereign states, at least when it comes to global views of conflicts. If the "strength" section points to US Air force, I don't think there will be any risk of confusion about the nature of the US' involvement. Does anyone have an opinion on this ? Jean-Jacques Georges (talk) 12:07, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
Linking to either 14th AF or USAF is a bad idea, IMO. The International Squadron was AFAIK never an official USG outfit, nor even semi-official, per Legion Kondor, so implying it was is mistaken & misleading. TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 18:28, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Opinions welcome

I'd like to reach consensus on one point regarding the military conflict infoboxes. I recently edited Battle of Malaya (compare with the previous version) as I think the "combatants" section should, whenever possible, include links to the actual sovereign states (and, in that case, their respective protectorates and colonies). While I think it's great to have articles dedicated to as many military units as possible, IMHO it is more appropriate to list said units in the "strength" section, like I did for Malaya and Battle of Singapore. Would everyone agree on this ? Jean-Jacques Georges (talk) 12:11, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree with this. The belligerents section should link sovereign states. Including the major units in strength also looks good to me, as it is basically a condensed order of battle. Cheers. — AustralianRupert (talk) 13:59, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
I also agree. 'Belligerents' = 'sovereign states' (or NGOs, non-sovereign states, what-have-you). But not units. Units go in "strength". - The Bushranger (talk) 17:52, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
I can see the benefit of doing that, but do try and remember that some of the articles are going to be ridiculously long either because of the treaties that brought other nations in or due to the length of the combat itself. Adding flags and strengths like in the example article may not be a big deal, but I would question the practice in articles like World War I, World War II, Korean War, Hundred Years War, etc. Just something to keep in mind. TomStar81 (Talk) 19:34, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

OD While I think that Tom has a good point, I feel that his comment really serves as a reminder that there are NO perfect blueprints for articles. It's true we cannot list 'every' unit/belligerent in every infobox, so there's some discretion involved in each case. However, on the general note of what goes in the belligerent and what goes in the strength sections, I always thought it 'was' supposed to be nations/non-state actors in belligerents. I always understood that it was supposed to be that way. Is there really nothing on that listed somewhere, like the infobox informational section or some MOS page?Cromdog (talk) 23:00, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, the infobox instructions have this to say:

combatant1/combatant2/combatant3 – optional – the parties participating in the conflict. This is most commonly the countries whose forces took part in the conflict; however, larger groups (such as alliances or international organizations) or smaller ones (such as particular units, formations, or groups) may be indicated if doing so improves reader understanding. When there is a large number of participants, it may be better to list only the three or four major groups on each side of the conflict, and to describe the rest in the body of the article.

which uses sovereign states as a default, but leaves other options available at the discretion of an article's editors. As you said, there's really no perfect blueprint that applies to every article. Kirill [talk] [prof] 01:40, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
That's actually exactly what I wanted to know :) And it seems to be pretty good. If there's good reasons to use one or another, we should discuss, deliberate, and try to reach a consensus. On the particular articles mentioned, there's claims to be made either way, so I'm not really sure what to say at the moment. Have to think on it.Cromdog (talk) 12:31, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
Of course, in the case of particularly huge operations involving dozens of different units, it would be highly unpractical to add each and every unit in the "strength" section. Then again, using the sovereign states - when possible - in the "combatants" section seems to be the better solution. Like, for example, in Battle of Zaoyang-Yichang (I'm taking this example randomly) : the belligerents should be "Republic of China" and "Empire of Japan", while "National Revolutionary Army" and "Imperial Japanese Army" (or the specific units involved, if they have their articles) should go in "strength". Jean-Jacques Georges (talk) 10:43, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Advice and help request

I'm continuing my labours with Spear but I think am rapidly coming to the end of my abilities to improve it. It is still well short of B class. The problem is it is a very big topic and goes beyond military history into anthropology,mythology, martial arts and hunting. The first two I know a bit about, the last two nothing. My advice request is this : Should it be split to remove the Fighting Spear section, leaving a summary in a wider cultural article? This would enable the military aspects to be drawn out and have a better chance at reaching a more comprehensive referenced piece. Or is it better to leave it as one, knowing it won't get beyond start but will have a reasonable coverage on one of its topics? I'm having difficulty getting into the head of the average user of the page to know what they'd want (vandals excluded - this is the most vandalised page I watch). The help aspect is that I am in the process of turning the large list of spear names in the article into a list of wikilinks. Lots come up as redlinks and I know some of the actual links go to non-relevant pages (e.g. pelta). Some may be faked - I caught someone trying to insert wrestler's names the other day. Could anybody with some knowledge of spear types have a look to see if there are any redlinks that should be kept, either redirected or with a new stub? Thanks for your assistance Monstrelet (talk) 10:37, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Featured article candidacy for War of the Bavarian Succession now open

The featured article candidacy for War of the Bavarian Succession is now open. Comments from reviewers are needed to help determine whether the article meets the criteria for featured articles; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 21:06, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Miles Standish

The article on Miles Standish, edited by Historical Perspective is at FAC also. I don't know how it has missed automatic list. Auntieruth55 (talk) 22:40, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Fort Leonard Wood

It recently came to my attention that we appear to have 2 articles about the same thing that might need to be merged. The first is Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri and the second is Fort Leonard Wood (military base). One is written from the standpoint of a military base and one from the view of a census area but as I read through the article, they seem to be the same thing. My first question is could I get another opinion on this before I go plastering merge templates cross them and second were would I find the merge template? I have never done a merge before. --Kumioko (talk) 01:12, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

It's my understanding that military bases are considered CDP's by the census by default? Anyway, the merge information is here, have fun! :) - The Bushranger (talk) 01:16, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
Tagged both for merge. TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 01:33, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. good to know--Kumioko (talk) 02:21, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
Most US military bases include the CDP information. Merge away. Allez! Buckshot06 (talk) 06:17, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

A-Class review for Lester Brain now open

The A-Class review for Lester Brain is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 02:12, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

A-Class review for Battle of Pyongtaek needs attention

A few more editors are needed to complete the A-Class review for Battle of Pyongtaek; please stop by and help review the article! Thanks! AustralianRupert (talk) 13:39, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm on it, for one. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 13:56, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Title for article

I'm working up an article of Edward Young, the first RNVR Officer to command a submarine (see here if you want to see how far I've got) but when it's ready I don't know what to call it. There's already an article simply called Edward Young; I'm loathe to use his full name Edward Preston Young as the middle name isn't used anywhere except the London Gazette. I was thinking Edward Young (Naval officer) but there's a slight complication in that he's also notable as a graphic designer (he designed the original Penguin Books covers and logo). Any suggestions? PS anyone got a good free image of him? NtheP (talk) 15:30, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Royal Navy officer would be the more common form of disambiguation for a naval officer (we haven't gnerally worried about the distinction between RN, RNR and RNVR for this purpose), though that doesn't solve the quandary about the grpahic design side of things, though you could simply redirct from one to the other. I know in the case of John Lloyd Waddy we did end up using all the names as similarly he was equally notable as an RAAF officer, and an Australian politician. David Underdown (talk) 15:48, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
Is he better known to the world at large as the designer than the officer? In which case, although a Milhist subject, he would be better disabig'd as Edward Young (artist).GraemeLeggett (talk) 16:05, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
Good question. Until last year I'd have said as a submariner due to his autobiography. But then his Penguin design featured on a stamp, specifically naming him. NtheP (talk) 16:33, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
IMHO the stamp would definitly seem to trump the naval officering. - The Bushranger (talk) 18:13, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
  • Artist, designer, or publisher would all seem good disambig terms. Interesting article, by the way - I'd heard the story about sending the office junior off to sketch the birds at the zoo, but I hadn't realised it was him. Shimgray | talk | 20:16, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
I would think using his full name is better than making up a disambiguation. MilborneOne (talk) 21:20, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for all the suggestions. Despite my initial reservations I think I'll go for full name as suggested by Milborneone but there will be several redirects as well. NtheP (talk) 07:54, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Possibly missing George Cross recipient

From the Memorial Gates (Constitution Hill) Finally, there was one WWII George Cross recipient we don't seem to have an article on, a Pir Khan (listed here as having won the Empire Gallantry Medal - gazetted 28 June 1940, and the EGM was "Revoked by Royal Warrant on 24 September 1940" and replaced by the George Medal). Is it possible that we have an article on Pir Khan that I've missed (possibly under another spelling or title)? I couldn't find him on our List of George Cross recipients, so I'm wondering if an article should be written on him. Do George Cross recipients meet the notability guidelines? Also, does anyone agree with me that List of George Cross recipients is incomplete, though actually it does say "This list solely contains original George Cross recipients and not recipients of the Empire Gallantry Medal (which preceded the George Cross), the Albert Medal or the Edward Medal, living recipients of these medals were at various times instructed to exchange their original medal for the GC." What is the best thing to be done here? Should all the military recipients of the Empire Gallantry Medal, Albert Medal and Edward Medal be listed somewhere? Carcharoth (talk) 13:04, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

I'd imagine that we probably don't have an article on Pir Khan, although we should. I created the list of GC receipients several years back and only had sources listing the recipients of that award specifically, not the other awards that were converted to the GC at a later date. Therefore I stuck to what I could reliably source. We certainly should update this list to be a complete listing of all recipients if someone can get the requisite sources together.--Jackyd101 (talk) 16:54, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
http://www.gc-database.co.uk/ lists all recipients whether direct or by translation from another award - as I've commented before at the list, one advantage of keeping that as direct recipients only (perhaps with a rename) is to keep the list a manageable length, tehre are 406 recipients of all types, which is beginning to get on the long side. The problem with trying to create lists of Albert and Edward Medallists is the sourcing, I don't think we'll find a complete list anywhere else. There an interesting conundrum about notability fo the recipients too - they weren't recipients of the highest level award at the time they received taht award, adn generally I don't think recipients of the other awards, who weren't translated - usually becuase they had died years before, have anything like the level of sources available. Awards should generally be Gazetted, but that may be about the limit of coverage, maybe with a brief mention to be dug out of the Times archives. David Underdown (talk) 17:10, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
I was writing about Cyril Newall a while back - a Chief of the Air Staff who had recieved the Albert Medal - and wanted to throw in a note about him being the most senior holder of the award... but it's hard to do so confidently without a complete list, which doesn't seem to exist anywhere on the net. Do we have a total number of AM/EM recipients? If so, that might make assembling such a list practicable at least in the long run, and it would be interesting (and useful!) as a bare list even if the names on it are not always individually notable. Shimgray | talk | 20:44, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
I've not managed to find such a list yet. I've come across a few Albert Medallists in my time here, Mark Addy, Tom Crean (explorer) are the two that immediately spring to mind, the surgeon of HMS Sidon (P259) also got one posthumously, and I believe there were several dished out in WWI for grenade training accidents. We could start with a list of all those translated to the GC (from the site I mentioned above), mark it as an incomplete list, and try to expand it. I know form primary sources that one EGM who became a GC during WWII was then court-martialled and chucked out of the RAF during the war! David Underdown (talk) 21:58, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
This list gives WWI RN & Merchant Navy awards; this list gives WW2 RN & Merchant Navy. This list is a sizable proportion of the awards during WWI, though it definitely omits (most) RN and RFC awards. It quotes a total of 45 first-class (gold) and 290 second-class (bronze), which gives us something to work on... Shimgray | talk | 22:26, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
(outdent) ...and here's such a list. 19 first-class recipients, 103 second-class recipients, and maybe forty or fifty more (I haven't counted) who're unclear but probably second-class. I've compiled it from the three URLs above; I'll add translated GCs tomorrow. Shimgray | talk | 23:53, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
Don't know if you have them or not, but List of Australian George Cross recipients also lists a couple of Albert Medal holders who traded in. -- saberwyn 00:04, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
Wow, quite a response here! The list of Albert Medallists in Shimgray's userspace looks good. Maybe someone could do the same for the Edward Medal? I am going to try and list all those who received the Empire Gallantry Medal. Hmm. I've now found British Empire Medal and there are others as well... Why do I get the feeling I'm being sucked into a morass of different medals? :-) Carcharoth (talk) 02:19, 5 April 2010 (UTC) Oh, 112 EGMs at the George Cross database. Hopefully won't take too long...
The list is here. We have seven articles so far (out of 112) for people who received the EGM (which seems about right, it is difficult to write anything much about most of them). Those articles are: Walter Anderson (GC), Walter Arnold (GC), Henry Blogg (non-military and an interesting article), Alexander Mitchell Hodge, Alfred Lungley, Frederick Hamilton March, and Patrick Gordon Taylor. The interesting thing about the Lungley article is that he is one of no less than 10 EGMs all for "earthquake rescue" and all announced on the same day, presumably they were all awarded the medal for their actions in the 1935 Balochistan earthquake (the Quetta earthquake). Possibly some sort of record for the number of medals awarded related to one event, so there is plenty of room in the earthquake article to add details of the nine soldiers and one children's nurse who got medals for their part in the rescue operations. As for the 105 people who were awarded the EGM who don't have articles, I don't think many will have or can have articles, but there might be room to see if they were associated with any events that we have articles on, and to add details there. Carcharoth (talk) 23:59, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
No, I tell a lie. It seems that some of the red links can be turned into redirects like this (Joan Daphne Mary Pearson). There will be others as well, to uncover by various means (e.g. searches, following 'what links here' for George Medal and Empire Gallantry Medal). Which will be tedious but just about worth doing. Carcharoth (talk) 00:05, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
Found a few more. William Neil McKechnie the redlink was capitalised incorrectly. There is also Guy Branch who received the EGM in 1938, but is not listed at the George Cross database, but whose article says "After his death the next-of-kin were obliged to exchange his Empire Gallantry Medal for a George Cross which had been created in 1940", but the List of Old Etonians in the Military says "Eligible but did not convert Empire Gallantry Medal" - so what happened here and where should he be listed? The other one is Gordon Bastian, who received the Albert Medal in 1943 (and is listed in Shimgray's userspace list), and received his George Medal in 1973. Now, Bastian is listed at the George Cross database, but Branch isn't. So is there any way of knowing how many EGMs didn't convert to the George Cross? Carcharoth (talk) 01:52, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
I've emailed Marion Hebblethwaite about a couple of things in the past, and she's been pretty quick to respond. You could try asking her directly what happened to Branch. David Underdown (talk) 14:00, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
I may do that, David. Thanks for the suggestion. As far as this discussion goes, it may be better to continue at Talk:George Cross, as there doesn't seem to be a taskforce talk page available to discuss military awards (I suppose the talk page of the British military history task force would be a logical place to continue discussion?). Carcharoth (talk) 22:55, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
  • After some digging, I've now got a list of 199 of the ~570 AM recipients. (Exact figures vary by one or two, due I think to a couple of awards which were announced in error). There is a published register, but irritatingly it's not in any library I've currently got access to. One for the back-burner... Shimgray | talk | 13:18, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
It's on the (oversize) shelves of the library at The National Archives. Reference only except staff, and I'm a bit busy at the moment. David Underdown (talk) 13:28, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
Aha - they're not on COPAC, so I missed it. The other three copies I tracked down (BL, KCL, and somewhere else) are all London too; bit of a long walk to fill out an incidental interest ;-). Shimgray | talk | 13:41, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Royal British Navy

A single user has taken it upon himself to move Royal Navy to Royal British Navy, with the (incomplete) edit summary "It seems that all other navies that go by "Royal Navy" include a reference to where they are located (i.e. Royal Bahraini Navy or Royal Navy of Oman I don't see why the United Kingdom of G". Can this be undone (needs an admin)? Thanks. - BilCat (talk) 06:58, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Done. I'm beyond exhausted ATM, can you leave him a note about WP:RM? —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 07:02, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
I've put a note on his talk page. David Biddulph (talk) 07:11, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, David, I've seconded it. And thanks, Ed, for the quick revert. There is some evidence on the user's talk page of possible trolling behavior by him in the past, so a move protect on Royal Navy might be warranted here. - BilCat (talk) 07:15, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
Xqbot (talk · contribs) has retargeted at least one redirect that should go to the RN page to the disambiguation page. Can someone check that no others have been affected. Thanks --GW… 07:20, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
I've corrected the erroneous changes. David Biddulph (talk) 07:36, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
The user has now initiated a request to move the article, here. Benea (talk) 00:34, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Outlying Landing Field

Well, I clicked on Random Article this morning, and lo and behold, I came up with this. Right off the bat I spotted two issues, one, the artcle probably needs updating, and, two, "Outlying Landing Field" is a type of military airfield, not just the one proposed location in North Carolina, and therefore the artcle probably needs expansion/rewriting to reflect this...thoughts? - The Bushranger (talk) 13:26, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I think a similar term in British use is satellite airfield. For the moment I advocate rename that article to include the words "proposed" and "F-18" or "Super Hornet" somewhere (and "Naval") Should it get built then it would have a name like Naval Outlying Field Coupeville. A separate article on satellite airfield could then cover OLFs. And point to the category for them. GraemeLeggett (talk) 18:24, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps: "Outlying Landing Field (Proposed East Coast)", as the F-35 programme is an issue now as well for basing/usage, and this more or less refers to it as such? - The Bushranger (talk) 18:33, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
I moved the article in question to Proposed Outlying Landing Field and plan to create a stub article for Outlying Landing Field. - The Bushranger (talk) 20:40, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

2011 April Fools day DYK opportunity

Create the USCGC Chincoteague (WPB-1320) article and you can get a 2011 April Fools day DYK on the back of the MY Titanic hook. Mjroots (talk) 11:20, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

List of military aircraft of the United States

A bit of a discussion about reorganising the List of military aircraft of the United States list is going on here, if anybody wishes to make comments or suggestions, it'd be appreciated. - The Bushranger (talk) 16:11, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Featured article candidacy for Brougham Castle now open

The featured article candidacy for Brougham Castle is now open. Comments from reviewers are needed to help determine whether the article meets the criteria for featured articles; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Nev1 (talk) 22:07, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Hate to say this, but...

I don't think the veterans of Easy Company, 101st Airborne Division( of Band of Brothers fame) are notable enough to warrant seperate articles. Just wanted to see what others thought of it before I went for AFD. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rin tin tin (talk • contribs) 22:44, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

I've thought about this before. It is a difficult one. Some of them, I feel, are certainly notable given the level of coverage they have received in the media, in books, etc. due to the series. Richard Winters, IMO, is definately notable, although I have COI with that article as I worked very hard to get the article up to B class last year. However, many of the other articles are not as well referenced, some are based on the series rather than real life, etc., and I think that this is indicative of the fact that not all of the men are actually notable by our standards, even though they are portrayed in the series (many only very briefly). Perhaps a test case would make the most sense, before taking a large number to AFD. What makes this more difficult is that because the names of these soldiers are mentioned in the media with relative frequency, Wiki users will search for information on them, so while they probably don't pass WP:MILPEOPLE, they are (possibly) of interest to a reasonably large group of Wiki users so if they can't find an article, they will possibly create one without necessarily understanding the project requirements/standards. — AustralianRupert (talk) 23:27, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
On the note of people making articles, setting up the ones who are non-notable as redirects to an appropriate page of the Band of Brothers area should be able to cut that problem off before it starts.Cromdog (talk) 00:36, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
I agree that a lot aren't notable - all of the commanders of easy have a page, which seems overkill in the case of someone like Moose Heyliger. I think it needs to be a case by case basis, as it isn't quite as clear cut as all of the article from Black Hawk Down, but a lot of them should probably go. Ranger Steve (talk) 06:32, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Notification regarding Wikipedia-Books

Hadronic Matter
An overview
An example of a book cover, taken from Book:Hadronic Matter

As detailed in last week's Signpost, WildBot has been patrolling Wikipedia-Books and searched for various problems in them, such as books having duplicate articles or containing redirects. WikiProject Wikipedia-Books is in the process of cleaning them up, but help would be appreciated. For this project, the following books have problems:

The problem reports explain in details what exactly are the problems, why they are problems, and how to fix them. This way anyone can fix them even if they aren't familiar with books. If you don't see something that looks like this, then all problems have been fixed. (Please strike articles from this list as the problems get fixed.)

Also, the {{saved book}} template has been updated to allow editors to specify the default covers of books (title, subtitle, cover-image, cover-color), and gives are preview of the default cover on the book's page. An example of such a cover is found on the right. Ideally, all books in Category:Military history book pages should have covers.

If you need help with cleaning up a book, help with the {{saved book}} template, or have any questions about books in general, see Help:Books, Wikipedia:Books, and Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipedia-Books, or ask me on my talk page. Also feel free to join WikiProject Wikipedia-Books, as we need all the help we can get.

This message was delivered by User:EarwigBot, at 00:45, 8 April 2010 (UTC), on behalf of Headbomb. Headbomb probably isn't watching this page, so if you want him to reply here, just leave him a message on his talk page. EarwigBot (owner • talk) 00:45, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Peer review for Battle of Soltau now open

The peer review for Battle of Soltau is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 01:59, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Peer review for Special Air Service now open

The peer review for Special Air Service is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 02:04, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Stryker criticism

FYI, some people are trying to delete the criticism of the Stryker. The section in the main article was deleted in January (leaving nary a byte remaining), and someone just tried to delete the article on it, Stryker vehicle controversy.

Seems like an agenda to make the vehicle look flawless.

65.94.253.16 (talk) 05:04, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

A quick look at the article looks like it could have NPOV issues (or at least needs some wikifying), but deleting relevant criticism of the vehnicle is definitly POV. - The Bushranger (talk) 21:19, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Missing military topics

I've updated my list of missing articles about military - Skysmith (talk) 13:53, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Remarkable. Couldn't help noting Jean de Lueil (1410-1470). Could this be a typo for Jean V de Bueil, 1406-1470? On checking, I'm shocked that Jean de Bueil only has a short stub article - sad for such a major soldier, especially one so widely quoted. And if I may suggest one, I think Brigadier Peter Young deserves an article - commando leader, three times winner of the MC, Arab Legion officer, military historian and educator of note and founder of the Sealed Knot. Even by our strict standards, that ought to be notable.Monstrelet (talk) 18:41, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
Here is a link to all of the American Medal of Honor recipients who still need an article User:Kumioko/Articles to create

A-Class review for List of battleships of Germany now open

The A-Class review for List of battleships of Germany is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Parsecboy (talk) 18:36, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Calling all US Naval Aviation people: want a cool source?

You guys might want to check out this series of PDFs (click "next file" to get to the other chapters) —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 20:05, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

"Save", "Save", "Save"... That'll make for some nice bed-time reading sometime. Cheers, Ed! --Simon Harley (Talk | Library). 20:26, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
Definately a good ref, I already see some good articles eminating from that reference. --Kumioko (talk) 20:36, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
I'm getting the intro & glossary & nothing else. Am I doing something wrong? :/ TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 21:09, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
It's in the "Bookmarks" section, "next file" is at the bottom. Great stuff! - The Bushranger (talk) 21:22, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
History.navy.mil seems to have a few books digitized, but I can't find a central listing of all of them... —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 22:37, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
"It's in the "Bookmarks" section, "next file" is at the bottom." Maybe this is a system issue: on my Mac, I don't see any "bookmarks" section. I'm getting icons to display or download only. TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 22:52, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
If anyone is interested I added this as a link to My Library. --Kumioko (talk) 01:17, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Trek, go here and then keep going up by manually changing the part number —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 02:21, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

That's got it. Thanx. (BTW, I would've tried tinkering with the number on my own. Not a complete idiot, despite how I sometimes seem. ;p) TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 03:15, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Non-lethals

A discussion on whether to split non-lethals from the less-lethal article is here. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (talk) 20:47, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Experienced, objective, and informed input requested on a busy article

Hello all. I'm looking for input on the London Victory Parade of 1946. There has been a lot of editing on this recently, and I would like Milhist editors to come take a look at the article and especially at the diffs over the past 1 month. It would be great if we could get some guidance on editing and feedback on progress. If I've left this request in the wrong place, please let me know. Thanks, -Chumchum7 (talk) 21:57, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

A-Class review for Kongō class battlecruiser now open

The A-Class review for Kongō class battlecruiser is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 05:45, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Template:Commonwealth military ranks & Template:military ranks

FYI, {{Commonwealth military ranks}} has been nominated for deletion.

Also, using "military ranks" {{military ranks}} for Commonwealth military ranks seems highly POV.

65.94.253.16 (talk) 06:24, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Victory, decisive victory, tactical victory strategic victory or stalemate.

Hi, i dont know whether this is a right place to ask or not, when i applied for a 3rd opinion they gave me link to this page here [8]. me and User:UplinkAnsh had a dispute over the result of Battle of Chawinda. As it is a common practice in india vs pakistan article that each side tries to minimize its own loses and maximize other's in the battles/conflicts so the same thing happened there.

I will not go into details, but i will ask for a second opinion, in this issue. After reading that brief article, what you guys think that the result of the battle actually was ?

Was it a simple victory (no need to add decisive, tactical or strategic ...) or was it some thing much complex that it would need more terminologies (like, decisive, tactical or strategic victory etc...) to define its actual result.
to add just a note, i would remind that terminologies like strategic victory, tactical stalemate or vice verse are usually added by desperate (atleast i see them like tht) users (pakistanis and indians) to the india vs pakistan articles for above mentioned reasons.
If this is not the right place to have a 3rd opinion on military history related article then kindly specify where i can resolve this issue by having 3rd opinion of any expert/experts of this field.

Regards. الله أكبرMohammad Adil 07:27, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

My honest opinion on the matter is that the article needs some cleanup; I see some weasel words in there and a lot terms that could be linked but are not linked also seem to be present. As to the outcome of the battle: at present there is insufficient information in the article's result section to justify anything other than a result of "disputed". No information is given about tactics employed, nor the strategy used; thus we can eliminate the "strategic victory"/"tactical victory" tabs, which just leaves the "victory" tag, but under the circumstance neither side really achieved victory. I'd suggest just leaving this a disputed and accepting that until more information on the battle can be added. As a side note here, in more recent times we taken to asking for sources to provided in the event of the use of terms like strategic victory and tactical victory since they can be construed as POV-ish or weasel terminology. Just something to keep in mind. TomStar81 (Talk) 01:41, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
I too looked at the article, and agree with Tom (above) re clean up etc. Regarding whether or not a battle is a win or loss or tactical or strategic victory is also not up to the editor to decide. Rather, it should be in the sources. If the sources dispute the winner/loser, then that is what we enter. If the sources say "inconclusive" then that is what we enter. It is not up to editors to decide who won or lost, but to merely state and described the game, how it was played, and who played it. Personally, I want to stay out of the quagmire of assigning victory or defeat. Auntieruth55 (talk) 01:45, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
now here comes the main problem, there are almost no neutral source on this subject (written by foreign author) all the sources comes from indian and pakistani writers, who are obviously biased on this subject.

Pakistani writers remmember battle of chawinda as a magnificent victory over numerically superior indian forces while indians accept their defeat.

in such case wht should be there in the result section, Pakistan won and india lose thats some thing which writers from both countries agree, should there be simply a pakistani victory in result section ? a user came few days back and added strategic stalemate in the result section, can some one explain how that battle was an strategic stalemate when pakistanis repelled back indian assaults and indians ceased their offensives on that front due to heavy loses ?
This was the main point over which i and other user were disputing and we sought a 3rd opinion, plz would some one explain whether it was a clear pakistani victory or a stalemate ? correct me if i am wrong in getting the actual result of the battle.

Regards الله أكبرMohammad Adil 18:03, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

I'd go for the least controversial consensus opinion in the infobox, so if the sources support it perhaps just "Pakistani victory" with a link to the Results section saying "see Results for more information". Any disagreement in the sources can be described in detail there. EyeSerenetalk 07:32, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
I'd take a different approach and label the result as UN ceasefire, since that does appear to be how the battle ended. Thats just my take on the matter. TomStar81 (Talk) 06:47, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
Concurring with EyeSerene here. Best for a summary in an info box is the least controversial. There incidentally was a lengthy, but ultimately inconclusive, discussion about formalising the text entries for this last March, which may be of interest.  Roger Davies talk 06:35, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
I agree with EyeSerene and Roger Davies. Also, more sources and strict verifiability are needed —We lack them both here. Unless missed we would –obviously– then agree with TomStar81. -- FayssalF - Wiki me up® 05:14, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
Otherwise, this battle would be much decisive —for the encyclopaedia. Be bold, guys! -- FayssalF - Wiki me up® 05:32, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Renaming of Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation to Konfrontasi

Hello wikipedians: I would like to propose a suggestion that the title Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation can be renamed to Konfrontasi without any problem. First of all, if you refer to Konfrontasi in the wikipedia, you usually mean the conflict between Malaysia and Indonesia lasting from 1963 to 1966. The use of the local term also emphasizes the local character of that conflict. If I see other titles using local terms like the German Machtergreifung for respective local events (instead using the English translation seizure of power), I don't see any reason, why Malaysian terms can't be used here, too. (Konfrontasi is not the most difficult Malaysian/Indonesian word, either. ;)) And, the title wouldn't be also that bulky like Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation. No mixing up with other events, shorter title, regional character of that conflict and so on are my arguments to propose such a move. Sukarnobhumibol (talk) 21:48, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

This should be discussed at Talk:Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation in the first instance. The most recent discussion (way back in 2005) didn't support such a move. Nick-D (talk) 09:40, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Sources on MH articles

Okay, so a question has come up on the FAC review for War of the Bavarian Succession about the use of "old" sources, such as Gaston Bodart's book of losses (1916). My opinion on "old" sources is this: just because something is old doesn't mean it is wrong, but also doesn't mean it is right (correct or flawed). It is just old. There may be newer material, and that should be included as a source, however we could, or even should include older material for the sake of balance, if for nothing more. I've used some material from some 19th century sources because it had interesting details that gave a better picture of some of the peculiarities of this little war, but my use of these sources has actually generated two opposes(!). Not on the basis of reliability, but on the basis of age. This surprises me because the bulk of material available on this war is at least 100 years old. There are a couple of masters' theses, and what not, but not much else, and if there is something else, and it was available to me, I used it. Thoughts? Auntieruth55 (talk) 23:07, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

My reading of the FAC is that only one of the opposes is about the sourcing. On the matter Johnbod said "In general I felt the prose did not read well. The elderly sources may contribute to the problem." That's not saying the sourcing is insufficient or poor, just that old sources use old language, which may be affecting your writing style. The other oppose is "weak", so if you explain that there isn't much up to date material (pretty much as you have done above) you should be fine. On the overall issue, being old does not mean that a sources cannot give the best treatment of a subject, however you need to demonstrate that it has not become outdated by new research etc. Nev1 (talk) 23:18, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
I understood that, didn't express myself well (and am "denobbing" the article). But the larger question of the sources remains. Auntieruth55 (talk) 00:40, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
When using old sources, it's important to be able to demonstrate that they haven't been outdated. You say you've read everything that's available to you, but can you be certain that the new works that are unavailable might not shed new light on the subject? There'll be a problem there and I think it's quite valid, although I know it can be frustrating when all you can say is "I've used all the sources I have available" and there's no more you can do. I'm not sure whether master's theses are considered reliable sources or not though. Nev1 (talk) 00:50, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
I'm not sure what the official line is on masters' theses is. My personal view would be that it would depend on how contentious the point being supported by the thesis was: a master's will have had oversight and checking from a supervisor, but (usually) not as much grilling as a PhD thesis would have done. Hchc2009 (talk) 11:50, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
I think a bigger problem in general would be books by popular historians or memoirs by random soldiers that can be crufty, but as people tend to just look at the name of the publisher etc, this basically never gets picked up. I know a book by Edward Murphy on the 173rd Airborne (he's a veteran) which makes silly exaggerations that the average temperature in Vietnam was 95-100F (35-38) which is completely false and tall tales/sloppy figures of speech such as that they did "millions of things every day" or "100% success/reenlistment rate", jingoistic exaggeration. Another writer Keith W. Nolan claims to give a "comprehensive" account of battles in Vietnam yet 99% of his bookspace is filled with details about Americans and random soldiers and doesn't even bother to identify the Vietnamese units/commanders involved. A lot of them have crufty details giving personal details about random American soldiers talking about how they were good people who cared for their parents, religious, did volunteer community service work and other inane schmaltz, which takes up a lot of the space. And with these popular histories the author tends to only interview soldiers from their own country and doesn't bother to make any effort with studying the other side, and turns it into a nostalgic/comic-book style yarn. I would say that non-scholarly mush published by "reliable" but non-academic sources are far worse and more endemic than obscure PhDs that had no impact and were thus never checked much. Peter FitzSimons is another joke pop history writer although it isn't used on any Australian articles I checked, luckily YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 02:12, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

The ethnicity of John Hunyadi

I've opened a thread about John Hunyadi's ethnicity on Fringe theory noticeboard: [9]. John Hunyadi is one of the most important military leaders of the Middle Ages, so maybe some editors will be interested (Umumu (talk) 15:00, 9 April 2010 (UTC))

A-Class review for Battle of Valcour Island now open

The A-Class review for Battle of Valcour Island is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 03:18, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Featured article candidacy for Harry Chauvel now open

The featured article candidacy for Harry Chauvel is now open. Comments from reviewers are needed to help determine whether the article meets the criteria for featured articles; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Ian Rose (talk) 05:56, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

A-Class review for Red Tail Reborn needs attention

A few more editors are needed to complete the A-Class review for Red Tail Reborn; please stop by and help review the article! Thanks! -MBK004 06:41, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

'Attention needed to tagging' issue

So, one of the semi-gnomish things I do for the project is fix the issues that show up in Category:Military history articles needing attention to tagging ([10]) (can't wikilink it for some reason?) Lately I've noticed two things that seem like they could/should/might be possible to fix automatically. First, and not really unforeseen, is the issue of link deprecation due to moving articles to new names. A-class reviews, peer-reviews, and FAC/FARs all get screwed up in the MilHist tag on the talk page whenever the article is moved and no one moves/redirects to the old archives...or even ongoing ones. Secondly, and the most annoying and puzzling, I've noticed that articles get placed in this category if the 'a-class-review' and 'peer-review' parameters for the tag are placed AFTER the B-class checklist. A prefect example: I found Order of Saint Hubert (Bavarian) in the tagging category. To remove it, I changed [11] to [12]. No visual difference, I simply had to move the location of the a-class parameter forward to have the tag labeled as fixed automatically. What's the deal with this? Is there a reason or a way to fix this?Cromdog (talk) 23:15, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

The first issue isn't one that can be easily fixed automatically, since there's no way to move subpages that merely refer to a given article when the article itself is moved. It might be possible to create a bot to catch such instances and add the necessary moves/redirects without human intervention; but, given the small number of cases in question, I'm not sure if the effort would be justified.
The second issue is a bit more subtle, and has to do with how category listing caches are updated. If you actually check the revision that should have the error ([13]), you'll notice that the "attention needed to tagging" category is not present on the page, even before the change you made. What usually happens is this:
  1. An editor adds a parameter indicating a new A-Class or peer review to the template, and saves the talk page.
  2. As part of the page saving process, the template performs a check on whether the subpage required by the review exists, and adds the "attention needed to tagging" category because it hasn't been created yet.
  3. The talk page is added into the "attention needed to tagging" category listing.
  4. The editor creates the review subpage from the redlink in the template.
  5. Once the subpage is created, the template will no longer generate the "attention needed to tagging" category, and purging the talk page cache will cause the category to dissapear from it. However, the category listing itself is not updated by merely purging the talk page—an update is only triggered by a "save" action on a page in that category—and so will continue to include the talk page even though the category is no longer being generated there.
Generally speaking, it's possible to get such inconsistent listings to update simply by editing the talk page and hitting the save button without making any changes—the save action will still be triggered even if nothing changed on the page—but, again, this is basically a manual process. Kirill [talk] [prof] 14:53, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
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