Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Strategy/Archive 1

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Question on scope

I originally understood we were looking to move policy-type discussion off the main talk page and to here instead. The way I read this page at the moment though, it looks like it'll just be an archive and summary of discussions that happen elsewhere. Is this correct? EyeSerene^talk 13:11, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

I think a good way of approaching it might be to move (some) policy and planning discussions to this core talk page; this would be a separate thing from the activities being done by the four sub-divisions of the STT.

Having said that, I'm not sure how much discussion would or should be moved. My initial inclination would be to hold high-level brainstorming and proposal development discussions within the STT, and then move the resulting ideas out to the main project talk page for final discussion and approval; I'm not sure that we can pull the policy discussion entirely into the STT, given that it's significantly lower-traffic than the main page. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 01:58, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Although I support the general idea of centralising strategic discussion and supported the STT proposal, what I'm wary of is trying to 'over-organise', if I can put it like that. We've added around half a dozen new talk pages to the project and (playing devil's advocate) they largely duplicate functions that happen elsewhere. If we're going to make full use of the STT I think we need to be clearer about what each division actually does and why it should take place here. I've set out some thoughts below:

• Discussion and debate division

  "The discussion and debate division works to maintain a repository of important discussions and debates which have relevance to the WikiProject as a whole that have occurred in the project and all of its constituent task forces and working groups. The division endeavors to present all sides of these discussions and debates in a fair and balanced manner."

Comment: I've long believed that a central location for project discussions is a sensible move, if only to facilitate tracking, but as you've pointed out before the flip side is possibly limited participation anywhere off the main talk page. The discussion & debate division is a good compromise; we can move discussions there once closed and we've got our one-stop archive and reference. Clearly there's more of a maintenance overhead, but I can live with that. However, perhaps "archive" would be more meaningful than "division".

• Essays and policy division

  "The essays and policy division endeavors to publish essays of a wide variety of topic matter ranging from project members' beliefs about the current state and practices of the WikiProject to how the project might be improved—and even to satirical pieces related to the project. In addition, the division also evaluates and recommends policy changes."

Comment: Wider policy discussion should probably still take place on WT:MILHIST with, as you suggest, the proposals formulated on this core talk page. This suggests a change of scope to essay development only for this division. As a secondary issue, obviously not all policy proposals will be developed here if editors unfamiliar with the STT post their proposals to WT:MILHIST (which is very likely to happen). I think we need to decide under what specific circumstances we'd then redirect discussion here.

• Academy articles and editorials division

  "The academy articles and editorials division produces articles for the project's Academy and editorial pieces for the project newsletter."

Comment: As we know, newsletter organisation is an ad-hoc affair on the coords talk page at the moment, and Academy development happens on the talk page there. There is sense in trying to organise this better, but again it might mean moving discussions that are started elsewhere.

• Statistics and observations division

  "The statistics and observations division compiles and maintains historical statistics regarding the project and its activities."

Comment: Other than our bot-maintained article stats I don't believe this duplicates anything we currently have in place.

I hope the above makes some sort of sense! My concern is that we may be trying to do too much with limited time and volunteer resources, and we'll end up sowing confusion and diluting effort instead of focusing it where it can make a difference. EyeSerene^talk 09:34, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Well, the newsletter/Academy work is probably the easiest thing to move here; it's essentially a coordinator task at the moment, and I think we can get ourselves on board with transitioning those activities here. The discussion and statistics divisions are basically places to collect analysis after the fact, so there's no real need to move things there in real time. the former might be better off named something like the "discussion summary" or "record keeping" division, to make it clearer that it doesn't actually hold debates; alternately, we could roll that function into the statistics division to create "statistics and records" as a combined group.

This leaves us with the essay/policy division. To simplify things, I'd suggest getting rid of it as a separate division and rolling the essay/proposal generation back into the STT core; that would eliminate an extra level of sub-paging and make it easier to move relevant discussions here. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 11:48, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

That seems sensible to me. The newsletter's already well underway for this month, but once it's gone out we could start moving things over. As for the rest, I think combining stats and records might cut down the overhead, although they are separate functions in a way and I can understand if others would prefer them separated (and a dedicated discussions-only records area would perhaps be more intuitive). On a related note, would it be useful having a dedicated ares/section/subsection where we can note pending issues (ie those that have been raised but we've yet to address, such as expanding the notability guidelines)? EyeSerene^talk 14:13, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

First of all, let me begin saying I am happy that the first item of discussion in the Strategy think tank talk page was not one started by me saying: "So guys here is the that talk page I suggested would help fix stuff around here....Anybody got stuff that needs fixing? Anybody?" That aside let me get into the meat of this issue.

My Responses to the Comments so far

Discussion and Debate Division

The term Archive might in fact be a more useful name for the division in question. Perhaps we could call it the Archives Division, I think that would stay in keeping with the names already used in the project.

Essays and Policy Division

I understand your concerns about where the major policy discussions should take place, but I do think this division can still have use if the policy discussions still take place elsewhere. When I set up this division I envisioned a substantial portion of this division's function to be a place to facillitate the publication of pieces written about MILHIST where member's contributions are shuffled ever farther back into a talk page archive. Furthermore I think members will not write some essays/articles/whathaveyou which may be of use which do not fit very well into a talk page or an editorial article if there is no separate forum for their publication. Take a look at this rough draft of an essay I am preparing for publication in that division. It is not complete by any means, but I have still but considerably more time and effort into it than I would have put into a comment on a talk page. I think that a forum for written articles and essays which took a considerably greater amount of effort to compose will help facilitate more thoughtful, constructive discussion regarding the Wiki Project in a way that utilizing only talk pages would not necessarily accomplish. However it is quite likely correct that if all policy discussion was conducted in the Essay and Policy division, that there would likely be very little actual discussion regarding policy. I do not think that this division should be used for any such actual discussion on policy,however I do think that this division should still have the ability to host a comprehensive proposal for policy changes. Perhaps it would be simplest for the time being to just to allow project members to publish any piece of writing which took an obviously greater deal of effort than a simple talk page posting in this division. The Strategy Think Tank working group is still quite new and I think it would be fair to let this division remain in place for some time until the working group gets more exposure within the wikiproject. that being said I think that we should clarifyon the essay and policy division main page that the page is not meant to facilitate or replace actual discussion on talk pages concerning policy.

Academy articles and editorials division

I would agree that this division will probably be the easiest to implement on a project wide scale as it seems quite obvious that in order for the newsletter to grow in scope there needs to be some form of centralized organization such as Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom and the Academy articles and editorial division seems as good a place as any right now. I think thatwe should be careful however not to prevent that division from focusing on the development of articles for the Academy. I initially included the development of articles for the Academy in the scope of that division because I felt it would be an good thing overall if there was a group of editors that was attempting to publish at least one new article in the Academy per quarter. Towards that end if we do end up establishing a dedicated subpage for the organization of a newsletter within this division I would suggest also establishing simultaneously a dedicated subpage for the development of the Academy articles.

Statistics and observations division

For the time being I would suggest leaving this division independent of any record-keeping functions.

Suggestions

• For the time being I think that all of the talk pages for the divisions of the strategy think tank should be turned into redirects to the strategy think tank's main talk page.
• Establish a subpages for a working group to organize the newsletter under the Academy articles and editorials division.
• We develop a banner which will be posted at the top of the the main talk page which instructs potential posters that if their post pertains to a change in policy, that they instead make their post on the strategy think tank talk page.

Those are my thoughts for now.LeonidasSpartan (talk) 17:16, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

"Archives division" is a good name for it, I think, given what it's essentially doing; the group could also eventually take over maintenance of the official project history, filling in gaps and perhaps even taking it beyond a simple chronology.

As far as essays and proposals go, I agree completely with your point that we need a place to host such work. My concern is purely logistical; in my experience, every level of sub-paging reduces one's audience by an order of magnitude, and I'm worried that burying the essay/proposal work too deeply will be counterproductive, given that it's really at the core of what the STT brings to the project. (This applies, incidentally, to your suggestion about splitting the newsletter and Academy work into separate subpages as well; unless there's a real need to do so, I would recommend keeping the two on one page for higher traffic.)

My suggestion, then, would be to proceed as follows:

• Merge the essay and policy division up to the main STT page; in other words, create sections on the STT page for posting links to new essays and proposals, and link the associated archives directly.
• Redirect the talk pages of the remaining divisions to the main STT talk page.
• As you recommend, add a message to the talk page edit notice for WT:MILHIST suggesting that people bring ideas and early-stage proposals here for initial brainstorming.

This would leave us with the following setup:

• Essays and proposals are linked on the main STT page.
• Archives, editorials, and statistics are listed on their own subpages.
• All STT discussions occur on the main STT talk page.

This setup would give the high-volume archive and statistics divisions room to operate while maintaining a compact structure for things that don't need the added space. (We could, potentially, pull the newsletter and Academy sections onto the main STT page too, if they're going to be essentially lists of links to things to be done and in progress; do you envision a significant amount of other material being listed in that division?)

Thoughts? Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 03:12, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

I have not had time to look over every line of the above conversation, but I do have an idea concerning your earlier comment to "move (some) policy and planning discussions to this core talk page". Building on your suggestion to "add a message to the talk page edit notice for WT:MILHIST suggesting that people bring ideas and early-stage proposals here for initial brainstorming", why don't we start these discussions here on separate pages within the STT and transclude them to the main talk page? In this manner those on the main talk page can follow whats happening here, and the transclusion process would allow us to keep track of the proposed ideas in an archive list so that when outsiders ask about how or why we do things a certain way we can locate relevant discussions within this group rather than have to go through miles of talk page archives. What do you think? TomStar81 (Talk) 03:37, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

A clever idea, but not really practical with the currently available technology, I think; the only way to get the transclusion to work correctly would be to have a separate subpage for each discussion, which would effectively hide it from everyone's watchlist. We'd pretty much kill off participation in the discussions, except for the small portion of editors who might happen to read through the talk page directly rather than by checking their watchlist. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 03:41, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

I think redirecting almost all (with one exception, see below) sub talk-pages to this one is a very good idea, and addresses my major concern about diluting participation to the point of ineffectiveness. Links to essays and proposals from the main page would be fine. A dedicated subpage for the entire newsletter would be useful (not limited to editorials), and I think this might warrant its own talk page - it'd be used regularly and it would be nice to have a dedicated forum for members to post to regarding the newsletter. I agree the archives and stats divisions should have their own pages (with talk redirected here). EyeSerene^talk 10:09, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

So perhaps we can merge the Academy article component to the main STT page -- in the early stages, said articles are basically essays, so the essay infrastructure should be able to handle them with minimal modification -- and turn the editorial division into a news and editorials one?

Another thing we can do to simplify the subpage structure is to create editorials as essays and then simply list links to them on the news division page. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 11:33, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

That would be effective as well. If any separate infrastructure is needed later, we can address the issue at that time. I say go for it. LeonidasSpartan (talk) 11:51, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good, then. I'll go through and merge those sections up to the main STT page this evening if nobody else has gotten to it before then.

Foe simplicity, should we have both essays and editorials placed under Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Essays/..., and just link them from the the appropriate sections as needed? Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 13:07, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

I've made some changes per the above discussion:

• Merged the essays/proposals/academy articles instructions and listings up the the main page. There's now an input box to help people create new essays; any testing and feedback on how well (or not) it works would be great.
• Renamed the discussion and debate division to the archives division.
• Renamed the academy articles and editorials division to the news and editorials division. THe newsletter preparation work currently being done on the coordinator talk page should be moved here once the current issue has gone out.
• Generally cleaned up the STT page and navigation template.

Comments on these changes, or on any of the other issues being discussed above, would be appreciated. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 04:38, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Looks great to me - thank you to both you and LeonidasSpartan :) I particularly like the fact that we've divorced items like the newsletter from the coords talk page; hopefully that will encourage a wider sense of ownership and member participation in this and other areas. EyeSerene^talk 07:15, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Possible addition to MILMOS

Hi all, I have put together a section that I feel would be a good addition to the Notability guideline. It relates to the notability of units and formations. Currently we have a notability section for people, but I envisage the addition of a couple more sections, namely: units or formations and battles. My draft poposal is below. I've started it in my Sandbox, but please feel free to tweak it below and we can discuss in the section below that. It will probably need tightening and is really just a rough draft. Cheers. AustralianRupert (talk) 10:41, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Units and formations

As for any subject on Wikipedia, presumption of notability for a military unit or formation depends wholly on the existence of significant coverage in multiple reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject. The consensus within the Military history WikiProject is that the following types of units and formations are likely, but not certain, to have such coverage and therefore likely, but not certain, to be suitable for inclusion:

1. National armed forces or branches thereof. Examples include Canadian Forces, People's Liberation Army Navy, Fleet Air Arm, Royal Marines, Special Republican Guard and United States Army;
2. Higher level land forces command formations, such as regiments, brigades, divisions, corps, and armies. Examples include 2nd Brigade (Australia), 1st Infantry Division (Germany), I ANZAC Corps and Eighth Army (United Kingdom);
3. Land forces units that are capable of undertaking significant, or independent, military operations (including combat, combat support and combat service support units). Examples include battalion-level or equivalent units such as 6th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment and 21st Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry;
4. Warships, including submarines, commissioned in recognised naval forces. Examples include HMAS Sydney, USS Enterprise and SMS Blücher;
5. Higher level naval command formations, such as flotillas, squadrons and fleets. Examples include Caspian Flotilla, West Africa Squadron and United States Seventh Fleet; and
6. Air force, naval, or marine aviation squadrons, wings, groups, and commands. Examples include No. 1 Squadron RAF, No. 1 Wing RAAF, No. 6 Group RCAF, 16th Air Army and Western Air Command, Indian Air Force.

As a general rule, sub-units that exist below the level of those formations listed above—such as sections, platoons, troops, batteries, companies, and flights—are not intrinsically notable. Such information as can be suitably sourced should normally be included, with appropriate focus, in an article about a notable parent formation. Rarely, some sub-units will meet Wikipedia's general notability requirements. These however will be exceptional cases, such as E Company, 506th Infantry Regiment (United States), which is notable because it was the subject of a best-selling and detailed book and TV miniseries.

Independent sources for units and formations

"Significant coverage in multiple reliable secondary sources independent of the subject" includes published books, journal articles, and/or reputable websites, by recognised subject experts that discuss in depth the units and their involvement in significant military operations. It does not include websites, newsletters and webcasts published by the unit itself or other non-independent agencies (such as a parent formation). Also, it does not include passing mentions in otherwise suitable sources. Data collation websites such as the United States Army Center of Military History should be used with care; while such sources can be valuable in corroborating information or in filling in gaps, articles that rely solely or heavily on them are unlikely to contain enough in-depth coverage to establish notability.

Discussion points

Please feel free to add commentary, comments, suggestions etc. here. Cheers. AustralianRupert (talk) 10:41, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

That looks pretty good to me, and thanks for taking the time to write this - I've been meaning to have a go at it for about a year, but I think that you've done a better job than I would have. I've got a few suggestions though:

• I think that a category for the isolated cases of notable non-independent sub-units would work better than including these in category 3. Suggested wording could be something like 7. 'Non-independent sub-units which have received extensive coverage in reliable sources independent of the unit. For example, E Company, 506th Infantry Regiment (United States) is notable as it was the subject of a best-selling and detailed book and a major TV series'
• In regards to 4, the convention is that all commissioned warships are presumed to be notable as they routinely receive detailed coverage in books such as Jane's Fighting Ships. AfDs of commissioned harbour tug boats which never left their home port have seen the article be kept due to the depth of coverage. As such, I'd suggest that the wording be tweaked to 'Warships commissioned in recognised naval forces'
• I'm not sure how to work it in, but it may be helpful to note that the availability of sources on different sized units (and hence the intrinsic notability of the unit) can differ from country to country. For instance, almost every infantry battalion in the Australian Army has been the subject of at least one detailed book and many also received a high degree of coverage in the official histories of World War I and/or World War II, but the same can't be said for British Army infantry battalions. Nick-D (talk) 11:06, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Nick, you've done a good job on this. The only things that occurred to me were the Band of Brothers example that Nick's already mentioned (ie those isolated cases where small units are notable), and if it's worth making an explicit mention of the types of sources that don't meet WP:RS? EyeSerene^talk 11:20, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

That's a good point; references such as websites, newsletters and webcasts published by the unit often turn up in articles on non-notable sub-units. Nick-D (talk) 11:25, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

That's what I had in mind, yes (basically WP:SPS). EyeSerene^talk 11:47, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

On the battalion sized units note, I think it may be a little too narrowing to have the phrase "capable of undertaking significant independent combat action" in the qualifications. Many units, at least in the US Army, which I have been working with , of this size have considerable importance as training facility operators/organizations, as independent units (such as transportation units, see Transportation Corps), and often will have unit histories available. Inherently relegating all non-combat battalions to a non-notable status when the availability of coverage and importance of the unit is there for some militaries seems to unnecessarily limit the land forces when you are allowing squadron size Air force units, which may not be combat related, see the population at Category:Squadrons of the United States Air Force, to continue to be relevant though they likely have smaller manpower and comparable equipment/mission impact on the battlefield.

Oh, and good job by the way, that makes many things much clearer instead of relying on deletion discussions that users may or may not have seen, Sadads (talk) 12:07, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

It's also worth noting that the USAF shifts squadron history and lineage around with bewildering rapidity. Today's 555th Fighter Squadron may not be tomorrow's unit at all, for one example. It also becomes complicated when, as others have mentioned, you shift focus to pre-Industrial armies or even those who conducted scattered combat operations (the U.S. Army on the Frontier to name one example). When dealing with land forces, it's important to understand that within supporting services the company or battalion is often THE main unit of action and is designed to conduct its support functions without significant external support, while an infantry company might not be able to do so. Difficult question, but one worth sorting out.Intothatdarkness (talk) 20:12, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

This is really useful, as it's come up recently in some of the pseudo-SF units. I have a couple of observations.

This identifies that a company isn't inherently notable, but a Squadron is? These are commanded at the same level so perhaps we need to reconcile why one is notable and the other not, although clearly there are likely to be more sources about a Squadron.

The two examples used to illustrate why non combat (whatever we mean by that) or logs are not notable don't really conclusively point to that conclusion. Again both examples are Company sized so the dearth of sources could be as much around their size not their role.

ALR (talk) 12:24, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I should probably clarify why I call into question the term non-combat. In contemporary operations where there is no clearly defined front-line pretty much anyone who goes outside the wire is likely to be involved in close combat.

Combat Logistic Patrols have RLC drivers, Artificers and Vehicle Mechanics from REME, Force Protection is frequently organic, so not always Inf, IED search teams made up of Royal Engineers, Royal Signals and potentially RLC, RAF or RN EOD ops.

Similarly patrols from FOBs will be made up of a teeth arm core supported by R.Sigs, Int Corps, Military Police, medics from the Army, RAF or RN.

Noting the AfD above about a combat camera team, I have friends who do that and bluntly in close combat I'd rather not be wielding a video camera instead of a rifle.

ALR (talk) 12:59, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Okay, thanks everyone for the feedback. I've made a few tweaks based on the above. Could you all please re-review? Regarding the AfD examples, I've looked through the archive for the AfD debates and am not sure that I can find any ones that better illustrate the points. If anyone has any suggestions, I will gladly change those. AustralianRupert (talk) 13:11, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Apologies if this is the wrong way to approach this, but taking thinktank and brainstorm a little more literally, why do we define the notability of military formations/ships by existence rather than achievement? The notability of individual combatants demands they need to have achieved at a certain level. As I drift around in WP, doing a bit of assessing, for example, I often see stuff where I think why is this here? As far as I can tell, all US army and airforce units are notable, even if they did nothing more than occupy a base in the US between two dates. I am a little surprised by the requirement to have a combat function above, because there do seem to be a lot of logistic units. While we are at it, what about the notability of civilian vessels? A lot of ships pass through assessment. Some have a military career which seems to be "was laid down in the second world war". I don't want to offend anyone but is there an issue that MILHIST adopts too many articles on flimsy notability? OK, I'll stop being provocative but trying to rise to the challenge of brainstorm Monstrelet (talk) 15:22, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

No dramas, always best to challenge things in this environment. Just to clarify, the notability guidelines don't exactly say that there is a requirement for the unit to be a combat unit, it is more saying that there is a presumption that combat units are more likely to be notable than logistics units, while leaving the door open for logistics units to be notable assuming they have specific coverage. Essentially I wanted the main gist of the guideline to be that a unit is notable if it has significant coverage in multiple, independent reliable sources. The rest is really secondary to that and, theoretically, units that are in the list for inclusion can be excluded as non-notable if they do not meet the RS requirements. I had hoped that this was clear by the paragraph discussing sourcing, but it seems that perhaps I've not made this as clear as I could have. AustralianRupert (talk) 15:59, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

That is clearer. Sadads (talk) 16:06, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

(od) AustralianRupert, you need to change the wording of the last sentence; it's independent company-sized units, not specifically CSS, that I was hitting when I nominiated those. I've added a note there. Buckshot06 (talk) 21:15, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I also agree with Monstrelet's points. I am appalled at the sheer number of U.S. associated milhist articles on insignificant ships and smaller units (esp CSS) that have done very little in terms of war service or anything else, but continue to be created here. We have articles on U.S. companies and sometimes PLATOONS where entire armies, corps, and divisions are missing from armies with much more history. That is, we're suffering from the heavy U.S. systematic bias. I would like some tightening up of the rules here. Buckshot06 (talk) 21:20, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I've tweaked it further to reflect that. The part I was looking at in the 4th Camera Squadron AfD was in the nom statement, where it said: "This non-combat (despite its name) PR ground support unit is not independently notable", which to me makes it sound like it was being nominated because of it was a non-notable CSS unit, rather than being generally too small, but I can see now that the words to look at were "independently notable". Apologies. Please check that you are happy with the change. Also, it means that there's no precedent for the last statement, although to be honest I feel it still needs to be said (after all, it is not actually saying CSS units are non-notable, just that care needs to be taken to make sure that they are notable when creating articles upon them). Happy to remove, however, if that's what everyone wants. Cheers,AustralianRupert (talk) 21:44, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I've removed the last part as it is probably redudant, given that it is already stressed that there is a need to carefully source the articles and it was probably a bit confusing given the point made in # 3. I've added another AfD link regarding the battalions that might not be notable. Please correct me if I have misinterpreted the reasons behind that AfD. Regarding ships (and possibly also air force squadrons, as this point was raised earlier, too), I don't know how to handle this. I believe that the general concensus has been that, as above, commissioned warships were all considered notable and that air force squadrons generally were. It would probably need more specific knowledge about these areas to tweak the guidelines in relation to those, however, I would like to point out that the guideline really should be seen to hold that the first and foremost test of notability is significant coverage in reliable sources. Every other point is secondary to that and should not override it, so arguably, if a squadron article or a ship article does not have significant coverage, it wouldn't be notable. I don't know what others feel about this, though. AustralianRupert (talk) 22:34, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks AustralianRupert. Your changes cover this reasonably well. I have nothing further to add on ships and air force active flying squadrons (non-flying support squadrons are covered by the 4 CCS AFD. I've been thinking further about how to address the concerns I raised about potential non-notability of a large number of U.S. units, and realised that a specific step might be in regard to use of Center for Military History lineage and honours data. CMH traces lineage and honours for units as small as organic (non-separate) infantry companies, artillery batteries, and cavalry troops, and these lineage/honours lists form a great deal of the vast mass of stubby U.S. articles all throughout Milhist. They do not necessarily prove notability, as indicated by the size of the units I've mentioned.

Thus I would like to propose a guideline that recognises the enormous preponderance of U.S. military information on the web in comparison with other countries. I would like to suggest that a unit entry including only its CMH lineage and honours needs additional coverage in other reliable sources to be considered notable. This is effectively an extension of EyeSerene's point on WP:SPS. For most units, this will be no difficulty at all; what it will prevent is the need to continually list AfDs for small units whose entries are created by somebody copying over CMH data ... and then it just being left there with no improvement, often for years. These pages do not get a lot of visits. Buckshot06 (talk) 01:40, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I've also made a minor tweak to the wording regarding notability of higher air force commands. Buckshot06 (talk) 01:44, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Finally, this raises the question of the Indian Platoon. Do milhisters and others believe it is notable? Buckshot06 (talk) 01:47, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

There are also a number of RAF flight see Category:Royal Air Force independent flights that would need looking at.--Jim Sweeney (talk) 02:18, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

The level of referencing for Indian Platoon appears adequate to establish notability, particularly given the unique nature of the unit. In my experience, it's generally not too hard to find references on independent aircraft-equipped flights in Commonwealth air forces as they normally turn up in the same publications which provide data on squadrons. Nick-D (talk) 08:21, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I think this now pretty much covers it, although as always the key issue is a range of independent, reliable, sources. The weaknesses of WP sourcing policy do allow for some real cruft to get in but this filter is useful.

ALR (talk) 07:29, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Regarding the point above about articles that only cite the CMH lineage and honours information, I think Buckshot raises a valid point here. There are quite a few articles that exist with just this information alone. I'm just not sure where it would be addressed or how we could go about doing so. The information of itself is useful in providing some relevant details, but I think to demonstrate that a unit is notable it needs to be used in conjunction with something else that discusses the unit's history in more depth. Thus, I think essentially what I'm saying is that articles that only cite CMH lineage and honours may not meet the requirements of significant coverage. Although, of course, in many cases they may well do, but the sources would need to be found and added to the article as part of the expansion process. AustralianRupert (talk) 13:12, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I propose examining the CMH thing at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/14th Transportation Battalion (United States), that deletion seems to be challenging two points, the CMH stuff and the battalion sized unit thing. I already added an extensive argument there for inclusion. Sadads (talk) 13:19, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

My apologies - I was in the process of trying to trim the guideline down (purely because I think the more succinct the better for guidelines!), and hadn't noticed that discussion had started up again. I've mentioned the CMH but wasn't sure what to call it, never having used the site. It seems almost like a database from what I can gather. Anyway, I've got down to the "If this coverage does not exist, the unit is not notable..." part, but I'll leave it there for now. EyeSerene^talk 13:53, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

PS: probably obvious, but I've tried to split out the sourcing guidance from the rest (again for brevity/focus reasons). Please anyone alter anything you don't like :) EyeSerene^talk 13:57, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

For the CMH stuff, we are talking about myself and previous editors creating stubs and starts mostly out of text from the official lineage and honors certificates at http://www.history.army.mil/html/forcestruc/lh.html . I just added my reasoning to the deletion discussion. Sadads (talk) 14:06, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

As a supplementary source I think the CMH is great, but my issue is with using it as a sole or main source for a stand alone article. It proves the unit existed and lists some facts about it, but little more than that. I've commented on the deletion discussion. EyeSerene^talk 14:28, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

CMH stuff can also be dangerous in terms of saturation because of how unit lineage was carved out during the ROAD transition in the early 1960s. In an attempt to preserve as much heritage as possible, battalions were given the lineage of companies in old regiments. 1st Battalion, 3rd Infantry would pick up the lineage from A Company, 3rd Infantry, for example. Leads to large amounts of duplication and confusion, especially when they started shifting battalions away from divisions they had been historically associated with. It's only getting worse with the creation of BCTs, which are pulling heritage from all over the place.Intothatdarkness (talk) 20:18, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Well done with those tweaks, EyeSerene. I think the way I had organised it before was becoming a bit unmanagable, but breaking it up like that works well, IMO. Cheers. AustralianRupert (talk) 22:34, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks AustralianRupert, though it's our fault for suggesting so many additions! On that note, do we need to explicitly specify that submarines come under the same criteria as warships (assuming we agree they do)? Also, is it worth mentioning special forces teams somewhere? I guess these come under the sub-units clause in a way. EyeSerene^talk 07:24, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I think special forces teams fall quite clearly under the subunits clause. I've added some proposed wording regarding submarines. Buckshot06 (talk) 09:49, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Oh if only :) Damned un-English Kiwi pirates... EyeSerene^talk 11:01, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Ha ha. :-) I just saw this. I'm not sure that it is clear enough, though, what it means. I'm struggling, while laughing. But anyway, what is the project's concensus on the notability of submarines. Are we presuming they are all notable? I remember someone voicing an opinion a little while ago that this wasn't the case. To be honest, I don't have the background knowledge of sourcing available to determine this and am happy to go with whatever more wise heads suggest. AustralianRupert (talk) 01:57, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

That should clarify things a little. Some midget submarines are not commissioned; however it should be possible to cover them in larger articles about rescue attempts etc (thinking AS-28 and the recent RN rescues.) Buckshot06 (talk) 02:30, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Good point. Still, I guess if things like some manned torpedo-type midget subs aren't notable in themselves, the operations they were engaged in often are. EyeSerene^talk 13:41, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Would anyone be adverse to me moving the text into the Notability guideline now (obviously after removing the struck text)? AustralianRupert (talk) 11:57, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

It should really go to WT:MILHIST for review before being added to the guideline; this is a brainstorming page, after all, so we probably shouldn't be using it as the only discussion venue for something. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 15:58, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. What would be the best way to format the discussion. Should it just be done the same way, and just start again? Or should the entire discussion, including all previous comments be copy-pasted to the WT:MILHIST page? AustralianRupert (talk) 23:17, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't think there's any real need to copy the entire discussion; it should be sufficient to provide a link to this page for reference. I would suggest copying only the final draft of the text itself and then asking for any comments on it from the project at large. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 17:05, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I've added a section to the main talk page. Please add any further comments there. Cheers. AustralianRupert (talk) 10:07, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Two idea concerning images within our articles

Would it be possible for us to set up a auto-rotating selection of images in more popular articles so that when they are loaded they cycle images in order to keep the visual content "fresh" such as it? I notice that sometimes the people that come through here switch out the images in the articles we have to pictures they feel better represent the subject matter, and I know that we have the capacity to do this in the portals we run, so why not articles? It could help us create the perception of new content if we could rotate images in an article automatically, although I grant that there will be some images that rightly need to remain in an article without rotating for various reasons (the article Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, for example, would need to have the namesake image in place at all times), and there are some images that we operate that are here under claims of fair use that will need to remain in the articles continuously since that is a requirement of the Non Free Fair Use criteria here.

Also, I want to take this opportunity to reintroduce an earlier idea of mine that we should tag fair use images within our project's scope with the milhist tag so we can track the images that we have here that are used under claim of fair use. I would like to eventually come up with a way to track the images in categories so we can monitor which fair use images are missing parts of there criteria and which images are replaceable so we can better manage such images. The questions here are 1) can we do this, and 2) if we can do this, is it going to be worth our time and effort to pursue? TomStar81 (Talk) 23:54, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

In regards to your first proposal I don't know if it's technically possible, but it would be a fantastic idea (perhaps raise it at WP:VPT?). In regards to the second proposal, what problem needs to be solved by doing this? There are bots which perform regular search and destroy missions on fair use images which lack the necessary fair use statement and background details, are too large and/or are unused so I don't see any need to worry about this, but you may have seen some cases which need to be followed up on? Nick-D (talk) 02:36, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

It is possible. It was set up on Talk:India due to endless arguing; everyone wanted pictures from their own relgion/ethnic group on there etc, while another bunch of trolls claimed that India was a superpower more developed than JPN etc and insisted on flooding the page with pictures of nukes and glitzy skyscrapers, and others with slums etc. It works but I'm not sure it is being used YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 03:06, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) It would be technically possible, certainly—the same code that works on portals could be applied to an article—but I'm not convinced that it would be of any real value for the vast majority articles. While a few topics might have enough similar images available that a rotation could be done without really affecting the usefulness of the images, that's not the case for the bulk of our articles; in most cases, a very limited selection of different images is available, and the choice and placement of them within the article is a matter requiring considerable forethought from its editors.

(More useful might be some sort of integrated "gallery browser"—an image with arrows that could rotate in other images at a reader's request—but I suspect that would require quite a bit of functionality to be added before it would work correctly.)

On the second point, I would tend to agree with Nick; this area seems adequately covered by the Wikipedia-wide fair use patrolling. I'm not really sure what we could add as a project that would justify spending a considerable amount of time adding and maintaining these tags. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 03:12, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

With regards to rotating images, I think if we implement the idea at all it should be for the conflict articles like WWI, WWII, and other articles we have relating to conflicts so that all parties can have regularly rotating images. We could also consider implementing a rotating images pattern for other highly visible pages within our scope. I'm up for formulating some guidelines if others agree this is something worth pursuing. @Nick: it would nice to track these images since some of those who uploaded them have departed and the bots don't tell the project about the problem, the nominator of the image. I recall that the idea was reject last time around, but I thought I would bring it up again just to see if the general opinion had changed any (it seems it hasn't :) TomStar81 (Talk) 03:38, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Next topic for brainstorming

Does anyone have a preference for which of the ideas on the list we discuss next? Or any other ideas to add to the list, for that matter? Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 13:18, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

I've no real preference, but I wonder if we could add one to the list concerning the issue of member participation in reviews (peer, GAN, ACR, etc.). I know it has been discussed a few times, but I'm not sure if we ever came up with a course of action. To be honest, I don't really have any ideas about this, I'm just trying to get some discussion going here, so if someone has any other ideas for a topic, that's fine. AustralianRupert (talk) 08:36, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Seconded and added :) I think that's an important issue and very worthwhile spending some time looking at. Alternatively, we could stick with notability; there is still a battles guideline to develop (assuming, of course, that people agree we need one). EyeSerene^talk 09:20, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I know I am not a coordinator, but since we recently got a question on notability concerning a raid and a question about what constitutes a war on Wikipedia, I am wondering if the question of battles, raids, etc. guidelines might be more appropriate, to help polish some definitions on our end (or a stand not to give firm definitions but broader principles).Sadads (talk) 11:43, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

There are very few coordinator-only functions in the project (one or two backroom areas such as A-Class review closure and certain award approvals). Coords certainly have no special weight here, and I have no objection to discussing battle notability - in fact, it might make sense to try to wrap up the outstanding notability guidelines while we've been on the topic anyway. EyeSerene^talk 15:58, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm fine with this and agree that it makes sense to do it now. The reason I was steering clear of it was I have no idea how to approach the subject at the moment. I had a fair idea of the situation with units and formations (although there was a lot I'd missed in my draft), but to be honest I'm not sure how to frame a guideline relating to battles/conflicts/skirmishes, etc. If someone has any ideas, feel free to knock something up and we can start from there. As per Eyeserene, I agree, the function of co-ords here is more just to keep things moving. Ultimately what we want is for all project members to be involved here. So in that regard, don't worry about putting your two cents worth in here, or anywhere else for that matter. Cheers. AustralianRupert (talk) 23:29, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Wars, battles and skirmishes

I think we have two basic tasks here definition and notability. The query on the main talk board was about do we have a definition of a war particularly in the context of law enforcement operations. Notability is another question. What makes a military action notable? Is it available coverage? Impact? Participation of notable military figures? I would therefore suggest two parallel discussions (or serial discussions if prefered).Monstrelet (talk) 07:30, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, notability as always has to come down to the WP:GNG (significant coverage in multiple reliable independent sources). I think what we'd be looking to develop is a list of the type of armed conflicts that we'd normally expect to meet that requirement, as with the people and units notability guidance we've already developed. I agree that the definition question is a different issue entirely and can't really be bundled into notability. My only reservation is, is this really a problem? As I understand it, the definition thing came up largely because of a single editor's interpretation on a limited set of articles and is possibly more of an original research/user conduct issue than something we need to address with a guideline. However, I have no objection to to working on this too if others feel we should. EyeSerene^talk 08:34, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree it would be easier to flesh out the notability, starting from what we have. Personally, I think the definitional thing is probably hopeless because people can keep raising exceptions. However, we may wish to say something in terms of naming of articles or lists (which was one of the problems with the original post, listing discrete military or police actions as Wars). If we say guidance rather than definition it might get us round the inability to make an absolutely watertight definition of anything. Monstrelet (talk) 18:46, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

In terms of article naming, we currently have WP:MILMOS#Events; I'm not quite sure what more we can (or would want to) say beyond that, unless we were to start going into specific examples. The list issue seems more like one of categorization than of naming per se; I don't think the names of the articles themselves are being questioned.

In any case, if we are going to discuss naming and/or categorization, I would suggest not doing that simultaneously with a discussion on notability; combining the two issues will probably just confuse the discussion. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 00:01, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

To pick up a number of threads from the somewhat ill-tempered discussion on the main page, issues identified include

• The distinction between military involvement in law enforcement and warfare
• Whether a war needs a minimal number of casualties to qualify (the number 1000 has been quoted)
• Whether a war needs to involve political entities (states, rebels intent on overthrowing the state or achieving some sort of political settlement "by other means")
• Whether a war needs to be defined by scale (time, number of participants etc.)

In terms of an illustration, well away from the specific articles that started the dispute, I'd point to Category:Battles and conflicts without fatalities, a category recently discussed on the main talk page. Other than the immediate counterpoint to idea that a war must have a certain number of casualties, the range here illustrates the definitional problems faced. Monstrelet (talk) 15:01, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I hadn't seen this before posting here. Copied from my post: "I'm not convinced we need to go as far as developing a guideline or definition about what constitutes a war. This dispute has been a one-off in my experience and consensus—call it common sense even—seems pretty clear both in this thread and on the articles concerned. I think we run a risk of OR if we start coming up with our own definitions... and even if we manage to come up with something scrupulously source-based we'd likely clash with WP:SYNTH by trying to apply that definition to article subjects where it's not explicitly mentioned in the sources." In essence I believe that it's not up to us, as editors, to decide whether or not something's a war - that has to come down to the sources in each particular case. I can see that there may be some inconsistencies though, so perhaps some guidance on handling these would be useful? EyeSerene^talk 17:43, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm also very wary about trying for a cast iron definition. As you say, perhaps definition is the wrong word. We do have guidance which "defines" how the project views certain subjects (e.g. notability of various sorts) and others where there is a consensus what fits under the project (I recall discussing computer games and wargames). Perhaps we should aim for a note stating the project takes a common sense view but cautions about over literalism when dealing with journalistic sources, or sets boundaries on the project's interest in law enforcement "conflicts", for example, and leave the rest for philosophers?Monstrelet (talk) 18:22, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Good suggestion, I think that approach might be the beneficial. Would you envisage this as, say, an additional note on the front page - we have a "What topics do we cover?" section, so possibly a "What topics don't we cover?" section to go with it as an expansion of the current footnote - or as a fully fledged (if brief!) guideline? EyeSerene^talk 19:53, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

As a first attempt at something brief for the front page, see below. On the subject of don't cover, I think it may be a good idea if we can keep it brief i.e. to things the project might be expected to cover by a visiting or new editor but have chosen not to.Monstrelet (talk) 08:22, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Possible text

"Other than the overall requirement for military or paramilitary involvement, the project does not operate definitions of terms such as war, battle or skirmish. If the term is used in reliable sources, and these sources are cited, this is generally enough. Editors should beware, however, of too literal interpretation of the terms within sources, in particular the popular media use of these terms to describe what are civil law enforcement matters such as gang wars or street battles."Monstrelet (talk) 08:22, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Copyediting a bit:

Other than a requirement for military or paramilitary involvement, we do not limit the events to which terms such as "war" or "battle" are applied; it is generally enough for the term to be used by reliable sources. Editors should beware, however, of interpreting such usage too literally; the popular media often uses them to describe civil law enforcement matters such as "gang wars" or "street battles", which are not typically within our scope.

I assume we're planning to put this as a note attached to the first scope item ("Military operations, battles, campaigns, and wars."), similarly to the other scope clarifications we have at the moment? Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 15:33, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Better. I think a note to the first scope item would be consistentMonstrelet (talk) 15:53, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and added the note. This subject has been up for a while and discussed in a few places already, so I didn't think it worth taking a formal proposal back to WT:MILHIST. However, if I've been over-bold please rv my edit and we'll put it up for a !vote instead. EyeSerene^talk 11:31, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Back to notability

So, stepping aside from the scope question for a moment, do we want to move forward with developing a notability guideline for conflicts? If so, does anyone have suggestions for what it might say? Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 17:05, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure how to approach this, but I think that some factors that we might consider would be as follows: numbers of casualties (I'm not an advocate of this approach as it would throw up all sorts of issues, I think); engagements that are listed as battle honours or similar/equivalents (we wouldn't want to limit ourselves to just these), battles that are considered strategically or tactically important (how would we determine this?), etc. Please note this is not an exhaustive list, I'm just trying to spark some discussion. AustralianRupert (talk) 05:33, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

I guess if we want to take the same approach that we did with our other notability guidelines—that the listed rules are "rule of thumb" indications only, and that the real determining factor is the presence of third-party sources—then we could use all of these different approaches; if there are other engagements that aren't covered by a specific criterion, then they will just default back to the primary rule. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 12:59, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

I thought perhaps something along the lines of:

As for any subject on Wikipedia, presumption of notability for an armed conflict depends wholly on the existence of significant coverage in multiple reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject. The consensus within the Military history WikiProject is that the following types of conflict are likely, but not certain, to have such coverage and therefore likely, but not certain, to be suitable for inclusion:

• Wars between sovereign states, such as the War of the First Coalition, the Mexican-American War and the First World War.
• Civil conflicts between armed factions within a state, such as the English Civil War, the French Revolution and the American Civil War.
• Counter insurgency warfare involving a significant military or paramilitary contribution, such as ...
• Peace keeping operations by military or paramilitary forces, such as ...
• Police and/or security operations where significant military aid has been provided to the civil authorities, such as ...

For all the above, individual armed engagements (battles, sieges, skirmishes and the like) are considered generally notable if:

• The engagement was pivotal in deciding the outcome of the conflict, such as ...
• The engagement involved forces of at least (regimental?) size on each side, such as ...
• The engagement resulted in significant military and/or civilian casualties, such as ...

In the first section above I've tried to cover the hierarchy between total war and police actions, and in the second the same sort of idea for individual battles within a wider conflict. Obviously this is tentative and incomplete, but as AR says it may help to stimulate discussion. For example, we might also consider battles that were career-making for notable individuals (such as Assaye for Wellington). Thoughts? EyeSerene^talk 13:43, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Looks like a good spread to me. I think we need to be careful about being too restrictive with the size of the forces involved though as there are a few notable battles that come to my mind that didn't have regimental/brigade size elements on both sides (e.g. Battle of Long Tan). But, of course, significant coverage makes those notable, so perhaps it is not really an issue anyway. AustralianRupert (talk) 10:09, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

The problem with specifying a size is that you may need a different one for different conflict sizes. A battle in one war might be called a skirmish in another, because of the scale of warfare in each. It's also true that certain very small actions would be notable because of their coverage and their wider significance e.g. Combat of the thirty or Iranian embassy siege. Is there a potential problem then of ending up in unnecssary arguments about what things are called?Monstrelet (talk) 10:23, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the size criterion is weak - I really only added it to stimulate debate, though it does seem to come up every now and then when considering how far to break down a large parent article into multiple smaller articles in line with WP:SS. To take a WWII example I'm currently working on: Operation Goodwood is clearly notable. Prior to the battle were some smaller operations (Greenline and Pomegranate), and within those was some very bitter fighting (particularly around Hill 112 and 113). I was trying to find a way of addressing how far we break a subject down... in essence, trying to answer the question "at what level of detail does a conflict no longer become notable enough for a stand-alone article?" EyeSerene^talk 12:02, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

The point you make is a valid one as many smaller battles are part of larger ones, I wonder if there is a way to mention it without being too specific... AustralianRupert (talk) 22:05, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

I ran out of inspiration at that point :) I do agree with you and Monstrelet that actually specifying a size will probably cause more problems than it solves and there will be loads of exceptions, but I'm not sure how to frame a guideline. EyeSerene^talk 09:28, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

So, is anyone interested in continuing to hammer this out, or should we table this discussion for the time being? Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 14:54, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

I'll mention it in the newsletter - if that provokes no more interest, I'd say we can mothball it for now. EyeSerene^talk 09:22, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

This is a very controversial and difficult topic. I don't think we should limit the number of articles on this subject primarily by the size of the conflict, although that would be a deciding factor. Most likely keep it down to recognized battles and a smattering of notable skirmishes. Controversial cases should be discussed one by one at AfD. WikiCopter (radio • sorties • images • lost • defense • attack) 23:01, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Regarding the idea of scale of engagement, the British Government's 1922 Battles Nomenclature Committee Report definitions may be a useful base line -

• 'battles' as prolonged operations of primary importance fought between forces not smaller than the corps
• 'actions' as engagements between divisions
• 'affairs' of less importance and scale

Problems have arisen mainly because the information they based their decisions on was not always as good as it might have been.

But these three levels of engagement may be a useful starting point to then incorporate degrees of fighting and length of engagement e.g. battle between corps of limited duration / a glancing blow may be defined as an action; or an affair between regiments which was fiercely fought over a period of time say half a day or a day, could be defined as a battle. --Rskp (talk) 00:18, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

But the nomenclature is modern, to describe the wars of industrial empires. Prior to this, significant battles could easily be fought between armies whose combined strength would be less than a corps. I'm not convinced that size should be the arbiter of notability in military actions, nor duration nor casualties. I'd be happier with something about impact or lasting legacy (in terms of result, or events that took place, or popular memory) but then it gets really subjective. I'm not sure I can see a simple resolution to this question.Monstrelet (talk) 15:03, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Ideas from WikiConference NYC 2010

I've been attending WikiConference NYC 2010, and have a couple of ideas based on some of what I've heard here:

1. One widespread concern was the difficulty of finding help, particularly for new users. A large part of our approach in this area is the project welcome template; however, the point was brought up that inexperienced users would find a dense cluster of links overwhelming. I would suggest that we work towards deprecating the current template in favor of creating a "Welcome to MilHist"-type Academy course that would serve as a concise but easily readable introduction to the project for new editors. This could then be linked in the joining instructions on the main project page, as well as in individual messages to users.
2. A reason cited for why more editors don't work on content is a lack of knowledge about how to take articles past B-Class. Our primary approach here has focused on writing Academy articles; however, I think we could get better results with a more interactive system. I'm wondering if it might be feasible to turn the logistics department from a raw listing of resources to a more assembly-line-like system, where an article would move from section to section, each handling one of the areas needed to move the article up the chain. For example, an article would start in the expansion bay, move to citation, peer review, image work, ACR, copyediting, and finally FAC (obviously,I'm missing some steps).
3. A general concern was expressed that we don't do enough to recognize and encourage editors doing basic content work (article expansion, sourcing, etc.) and focus too much on a small set of core writers producing FAs. I'm not entirely sure what we can do in this regard; we have the contest department, which recognizes this sort of thing, but it's a somewhat closed group at times. Perhaps we ought to consider some sort of high-prominence content improvement drive?

Thoughts on any of these topics would be very welcome. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 04:15, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Discussion

I'd strongly agree on point 3. We have a huge proportion of articles in "Stub" and "Start". Focusing on taking articles from "B" upwards seems misdirected effort. Unfortunately, in my experience, most starts fail to get to "B" by poor citation, which is the hardest thing for non-experts in a field to fix. A contest department will motivate some but depends strongly on individual interests. Others might be drawn in by actively organised collaborations in topic areas. Perhaps re-energised task forces might do this? As this is a think tank, how about reconsidering the "C" option for those "starts" lacking only one "B" class criterion to complete? A bot to assign this, and list articles under each of the missing criteria. Editors could then work in the areas deficient. I suspect some editors will see the potential for taking some of these higher up the tree (we probably have some good starts with technical difficulties). Monstrelet (talk) 09:36, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

We have sets of "attention needed" categories that track which B-Class criteria an article is missing, but I'm not sure how widely those are used. Perhaps we ought to make those more prominent somehow, especially for new users? Part of this will also involve finishing the relevant Academy courses so that people can get a good explanation of what each criterion means and how to meet it. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 11:44, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

I'd forgotten the "attention needed". It doesn't exactly draw the attention. Also, does it give a category where only one area is deficient? If it did, it might look less daunting and more likely to promise a result to a would be editor. Task forces could be asked to promote "attention needed", maybe even set themselves targets for no. of extra "B" class articles in their task force area? I also think whatever assessment criteria we encorage people to use, they must be as straightforward as possible and as easy to get to grips with as possible. Most people don't sign up to edit to do technical stuff, but to create interesting (and hopefully useful) articles. We need to get that group to think this stuff isn't geeky, it's about a quality product for the end user.Monstrelet (talk) 12:12, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

We have that for one of the criteria (Category:Military history articles needing attention only to referencing and citation), although it would be quite easy to generate it for the others as well.

Perhaps we should set a milestone for B-Class articles for the whole project as well, similar to our coronet FA and FC milestones? That might draw a bit more attention to that part of the process. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 12:30, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good. I wouldn't want task forces completely out of the loop, though. I am mindful of Buckshot's comment on the main page about their general effectiveness and anything that can be done to re-energise them would be welcome. Anyway, I ought to shut up for now, give others a chance :) Monstrelet (talk) 12:42, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

I've been absent for most of this year, but after filling in a rather prominent redlink this morning I noticed Kirill's comments and have decided to stick my nose in. I've previously expressed my displeasure at page improvement drives, not because I desire less page improvement, but because I feel the competitive nature of such "contests" is at odds with the cooperative nature of the projects (see Kirill's point #3). Reading this discussion inspired a new idea: perhaps the Academy should promote page improvement drives specific to the kind of improvement made. A sources drive, a citation drive, an infobox drive, an images drive, a maps drive, a categories drive, a portal drive. Much like Kirill's point #2, select B-class areas of focus where new users commonly feel technically inadequate and focus on inviting such users with lots of opportunities to practice specific skill sets while under supervision and coaching of more senior and knowledgeable project members or pagewatchers. Rotate the drives on a schedule to give essential page improvement skills training on a regular basis. This would be like sweeping the floors one morning, dusting the furniture another morning, sprucing the kitchen another morning. Everything gets attention regularly. Also, less competitive event by nature, like a tag and assess drive or GA sweeps. Perhaps a modified "welcome" displays steps of improvement and invites the new user to learn skill sets during drives. Comments? BusterD (talk) 23:37, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Commented below in #Collecting discussion threads. EyeSerene^talk 10:49, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

The phrasing of point three suggests that people doing good work on articles that aren't A-class or FAs are being generally ignored; addressing this can be as easy as telling someone they're doing good work. Suggesting to editors to tell each other when they're doing well, particularly when they work in an under-represented area, should work towards this. Getting a friendly message that what you're doing is appreciated should help encourage people; FAs make up a small proportion of MILHIST articles so only a minority are getting recognised for their work. It might be worth thinking about why there's a small group taking part in the writing contest. My guess is that some people think they don't stand a chance of winning so don't bother and would rather work in their own time. I really don't see how a content drive would help address point three, unless that random thought was tagged on the end of the point by mistake. Nev1 (talk) 19:14, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

My idea for a drive was to have something focusing specifically on improving articles further down the assessment scale, to avoid the impression that only FA writers can "win" (which I agree is a weakness in the current contest setup); but, to be fair, I'm not entirely convinced that the formal award structure of a drive would be the best way of recognizing such editors either. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 20:38, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

I noticed that a content drive was also suggested as a way to revitalise task forces. Are there any other tools in the repertoire, or does that solution work for everything? You don't need to organise a content drive to hand out awards. Do names not crop up on your watchlist, people regularly maintaining articles, adding sources here and there, trimming unsourced information and the like? I think you're trying to create an elaborate solution when something much simpler (ie: encouraging positive editor interaction) would work just fine. Nev1 (talk) 22:29, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

There are other solutions, certainly; but the solutions have different impacts, and, in many cases, are really solving subtly different problems in the first place.

Let's look at your idea of handing out awards to editors that crop up on our watchlists, for example. Ignoring, for the moment, any problems with the logistics involved (most of the articles on my watchlist see no edits for months at a time, and I suspect I'm not the only one in such circumstances), this will work well for encouraging editors who are already editing those articles to keep doing so; however, it will do little, if anything, to draw more editors into the effort (unless they happen to see an award being given). A large drive, on the other hand, is not as effective in encouraging the lone editor that quietly makes constructive edits—your approach targets such editors much more effectively—but has a much better impact in terms of bringing a broad focus of attention to the area and motivating previously uninvolved editors to participate.

(Drives also have other benefits—they can be an effective way to push towards some milestone at a more rapid pace than would be feasible through normal, day-to-day editing—but those are probably tangential to the issue here.)

More generally, I certainly don't think that drives—content or otherwise—are a solution to every problem, or the only solution we need; but I think that they have a valuable role to play when used in combination with other tactics. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 22:42, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps I misunderstood the message behind point three; when I read "we don't do enough to recognize and encourage editors doing basic content work" (emphasis added), I noticed the present tense. Making sure we don't lose people doing important work on articles below A-lcass and FA is a different issue to that of getting people to edit in the first place. Either point three is poorly explained, or a content drive isn't the solution to this problem. The way it's phrased now, the project needs to look at how its editors interact and encourage each other. I'd say that if an editor crops up making useful changes to articles that have been neglected for months it's more important to make an effort to reach out to them than someone who edits a high-profile article. Someone in that position could well feel isolated and overwhelmed by the amount of work there is and drift away, whereas someone editing a busy article will eventually bump into others (although they too should of course be approached); editor retention needs to be a concern. Nev1 (talk) 22:57, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

My explanation is probably at fault here; these points were really thoughts that occurred to me as I was attending the conference, not polished proposals.

Otherwise, I'm in agreement with your thoughts on the importance of reaching out to our more low-key editors; I'm just not sure how we can approach this in practice beyond simply encouraging everyone in the project to do something when they see an opportunity. Perhaps we could make this easier by having a nice "we saw your work and appreciate it, please visit us if you need any help"-type template available? Or would a boilerplate message, even with limited personalization, miss the point? Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 23:19, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

It think a template would slightly miss the point, even with a personalised message, although it's a personal thing whether people like receiving barnstars. As you say, in practice it wouldn't be a concerted effort as such, just people keeping an eye towards people doing unrecognised work. Perhaps put something could go in the newsletter about recognising the efforts of others? The structure of barnstars and awards for Milhist is very formalised with set conditions, so maybe people don't feel like they can pass them out without approval. Nev1 (talk) 00:09, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

That's not a bad idea, we could use the "Members" section of the newsletter to 'recognize editors who have been nominated by their peers to be congratulated for their hard work'. Or something like that. I suppose that the nominator could just leave a fully personalized message, but I think there's something to be said for being completely surprised (like the Oak Leaves). :-) Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 04:35, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Is the task force model still useful?

New task force

Originally posted at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history#New task force

I am asking here wether we should create a new task force to cover the period of military history after the Cold War. The name could be Post Cold War task force, but I welcome suggestions. —Preceding unsigned comment added by WikiCopter (talk • contribs) 21:22, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Sounds logical to me. Anotherclown (talk) 07:59, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 07:59, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Support as nom. WikiCopter^Radio_Checklist^{Formerly AirplanePro} 18:49, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

• Two questions for you concerning the proposed task force:
  • Would there be anything covered by this task force that could not in theory be covered by the Cold War Wikiproject, the Russian or US task forces, or any of the other Warsaw Pact/NATO forces who have task forces already?

We might be able to tag F-35 and the F-22 Raptor as this task force. WikiCopter^Radio_Checklist^{Formerly AirplanePro} 19:35, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Might isn't going to be good enough. You'll need to come up with about 100 articles that can - repeat can - be tagged as part of the task force, and most of the articles that would fall in that scope are either A) outside milhist's purview, B) adequately covered by prexisting taskforces, or C) holdovers from and most closely associated with the cold war. Sorry to seem anal, but task forces are a huge investment and I want to make sure that if this gets going we are gong to have a base to work with so the TF stays active.

• • Given that its only been about 20 years since the demise of the USSR what would be the difference between a post cold war task force and a current events task force? TomStar81 (Talk) 19:22, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Not much. WikiCopter^Radio_Checklist^{Formerly AirplanePro} 19:35, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

I've begun to create one here. It is largely based off the Cold War task force. WikiCopter^Radio_Checklist^{Formerly AirplanePro} 19:35, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

We need to decide the name of the task force before we go too much further with this process; at the very least, it should probably be the "Post-Cold War" TF (or perhaps "Post–Cold War"?), but there are obviously other options.

In any case, please don't create any infrastructure for the new task force unless you're really sure of what you're doing; it's a very complicated process to set everything up as it is, and it becomes even more difficult if mistakes have to be fixed midway through. The coordinators will be able to take care of the setup once a name is decided upon. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 21:38, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Second what Kirill said. Please, please wait until we establish consensus for the new name, find enough support for the potential task force, determine where exactly this tf will fit in with the rest, and then officially get it off the ground. I know you mean well in creating the pages and everything, but if there is no consensus for the task force or consensus favors a different name then what you have done so far will all have been in vain. Adopt a wait and see approach, but do be hands on when it comes to nurturing the idea since anything worth having is worth fighting for and since really great ideas we've implemented have come from those who had the endurance to see there ideas through to the conclusion, whatever it may have been. TomStar81 (Talk) 22:02, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Given that all of the task forces are basically inactive, I don't see any point in starting new ones (or, to be frank, maintaining the existing ones). Given the overheads involved with starting a task force and the fact that they normally go inactive after a few months, a much stronger rationale is needed than that it could be used to tag articles. Nick-D (talk) 00:13, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, I don't think being able to tag articles is a bad rationale, at this point, assuming that there are editors interested in this area. We don't really know what will come of this until we try it; and I think a few hours of coordinator time to set it up would be an acceptable cost for making the attempt.

Having said that, I am assuming that there are people interested in working on these topics, and not merely having a task force exist in principle. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 03:21, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

I have to say, I am not convinced that we should not wind all the task forces up. I do take Kirill's point that keeping them semi-active as they are consumes less effort, but they're not actually doing anything. Buckshot06 (talk) 04:32, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Just for clarity, are you just talking about all the task forces mentioned above, or all task forces in generalMonstrelet (talk) 10:10, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

All the task forces, not just the ones listed above. As Nick said, they're all basically inactive. Buckshot06 (talk) 12:17, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

I also support the creation of this new task force. I also believe that there are well over a hundred articles that would fall into the scope of this. All the articles related to the War on terrorism, Iraq war, Afghanistan war, 911 and the people that fall into it, potentially could be covered (although I think that a separate War on terrorism task force might be more appropriate for some of them). Equipment, vehicles and aircraft could also be covered as well. --Kumioko (talk) 23:39, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Additionally I do not completely agree that the task forces are inactive. Its true that in most cases there is no coordinated movement however many such as those in the Wikiprojects for Aviation, Maritime, biography and US task forces use the tags for the MILHIST task forces as a tool within their own wikiprojects. I would agree though that there are some task forces that could be eliminated or combined. --Kumioko (talk) 23:46, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

I said this before, but we can not get rid of all the task forces even if we wanted to becuase some serve as a fleet in being against potential rival wikiprojects - namely the WWI and WWII task forces, but there are a few others that fall in there as well. We are actually gearing up to discuss the matter at the strategy think tank, so feel free to weigh in on the matter there.

As far as this task force goes, if you are going to include the afgan and iraq wars in the matter then that goes back to my point about just calling this a current events task force. I could buy into a post cold war task force, but how long should post cold war be interpreted as? Until the next big war? Until the second war (assuming another cold war does come about)? And how precise a definition would the new task force have? If the two big wars are afgan and iraq then why not handle the matter through the middle eastern task force, and deal with vehicles through the national military tf and aviation through the aviation tf? I do not want to sound like I am against this proposed task force, but I would like to see some more mental R&D work in here so we can start filling in the blank spots, which in turn should give us a better idea about where this is going. TomStar81 (Talk) 03:11, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

I think that naming it the "Modern" or "Recent" Milhist task force may help with that, though the PCW name does more clearly define the scope. I suppose our defining period will still have to be up in the air, considering that we can't objectively define an era that we are still living in; if a significant event occurs that sets a firm dividing line, we can establish consensus then. But I do see merit in this task force, considering things like the Gulf War and War on Terror and the like. bahamut0013^words_deeds 21:30, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Radical Idea

Originally posted at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators#Radical Idea

I've actually been thinking about this point for a while and I was considering the idea that we may evolve the project - radically - by mothballing all our task forces and developing new sub area's based on special projects and working group schemes. Special Project areas seem to be working at the same pace of task forces, with the narrower focus they tend to attract and retain more people. The working groups can be used for lesser interest work sections which would in theory help revitalize the whole project by creating more narrowly focused areas for participation that may help us gain and retain more editors. There are a few areas in which I think we will need to have task forces if for nothing else than as a preemptive maneuver to keep World War I and World War II task forces to keep them from going out as independent projects. Its a radical Idea, and I was actually going to propose this after the elections, but since you raised the point now I think it may be of interest, all the more so if the Wikipedia:Wikiproject format bites the dust. TomStar81 (Talk) 00:27, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

The main problem, as you correctly point out, will be preventing people from creating independent projects in place of the task forces. Quite honestly, I would suggest retaining the current structure simply for its value as a fleet in being; the inactive task forces don't really consume any maintenance resources on an ongoing basis.

We should continue to encourage special projects and/or working groups where appropriate, of course; but I don't think we're ready to reorient the whole system around them. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 01:51, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Tom - the task forces are now all inactive and should be wound up. While it's true that they don't consume many resources, they have the potential to confuse potential new members of the project (who'll look at the moribund task force talk pages and conclude that the project is dead) and it's a waste of coordinators' time posting notifications to the task force pages. Nick-D (talk) 03:16, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

That begs the question of what you intend to do when someone starts creating entire new WikiProjects for our sub-topics instead. A dozen failed task forces, while something of a disappointment, pose no real danger to our collaborative environment; a single successful sub-project could be a grave risk if it decides to start pushing its own guidelines, template formats, and so forth (as has happened in the past). I don't think we can ignore the TFs' value in preventing such a course of events, even if they serve no other purpose.

I wouldn't be opposed to further consolidation, mind you; but we need something in place to prevent a balkanization of our topic area into competing projects. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 03:30, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

One idea that we might consider, of course, would be to eliminate the day-to-day maintenance overhead and the abandoned talk pages by turning task forces into organizational concepts rather than groups of editors. Under such a setup, a task force would retain its assessment, open task, and resource listing features, but would no longer have a distinct list of members or talk page; this would effectively allow the task force to be self-maintaining after the initial template/category setup. We could also roll the working groups into this concept as well; there aren't many of them, and we could eliminate the need for multiple group levels by simply creating the needed infrastructure for them. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 04:06, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

I would like to wind up the task forces in there entirety but that simply cannot be done since some of the task forces we have serve as a fleet in being to allow us uncontested control of military related matters. I sited World War I and World War II as examples since they are the most often suggested projects, and we need these two task forces in place to show that we have the capacity for handling the wars within our project so as to legitimately dissuade people from creating such a project on their own. That said, virtually all of the geography task forces and a number of the time period task forces are inactive, and would have been mothballed as independent projects a long time ago. Since the projects that allegedly run these task forces with us contribute little if anything to the mix it does seem to me that we could axe these fold them into the project proper to reduce overhead. At a minimum though, I would like the see the inactive task forces lose membership lists and have talk pages that redirect here so we can eliminate the need for the coordinators to cover TFs that are largely inactive. I know that many TFs that MBK leaves messages for concern ACR and PR and FAC related material have talk pages composed of nothing but said messages, and reducing the need for leaving so many messages on inactive TF talk pages would allow us to recycle time into more pressing matters like reviews. TomStar81 (Talk) 05:27, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

I was wondering whether people are prompted to review an article by seeing a review alert for it on a TF talk page: it would be very interesting to find that out before we conclude they serve no purpose. Afterall, the amount of time it takes to post review notifications is trivial in the grand scheme of things.

That said, I've always seen TFs as a much underused resource. One of the main reasons behind allocating coords to TFs was to try to kick-start the TFs into activity so the basis that, with a bit of leadership and perhaps some TF specific mini-projects, inactive editors would become active. (In fact, looking at the history of TFs, it only takes one energetic individual for the TF to start developing its own momentum.) This has not really happened and the bulk of coord activity has instead gone into one or two large drives.

Wholesale mothballing of the TFs would, as Kirill rightly says, be a terrible mistake.  Roger Davies ^talk 05:56, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

I would suggest we move this discussion to WT:MHSTT and pull in the related discussion from the main talk page to avoid having multiple related conversations. We're going to need to run any idea we come up with past the membership anyways, so we might as well open up the brainstorming to everyone from the start. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 17:48, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

I have to agree with Kirill. In the four years I've been with MilHist, I've always thought of the task forces as infrastructure and resource centers, rather than actual groups or collaborations of editors. Normally, I only ever check the main MilHist talk page about once a month, so yeah, the discussion pages are being underused where I am concerned; indeed, the fragmentation of this very topic should indicate that centralized discussion makes more sense anyway. We could indeed roll up the task forces from member groups to simply organizational funtions; this would maintain our editor's interest, keep the infrastructure, allow collaboration on specific projects, and protect our turf from competing interests. bahamut0013^words_deeds 21:30, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Collecting discussion threads

I've pulled together the different threads on this topic that we had going on the main talk page as well as the coordinators' talk page. I think, at this point, we should probably go back to a brainstorming session on two questions:

1. Does the current task force system "work" (in other words, does it provide useful results, and is the effort expended on running it reasonable based on those results)?
2. If it does not, what can we do to improve it?

Let's try to pull together some thoughts on these points and see if we can come up with a good direction for further discussion. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 04:29, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Does the task force system work?

Does the current task force system work? To be honest, I'm not sure if there's an answer to this beyond "sort of". As a central venue for coordinating article work, I agree that most are achieving nothing. Ironically, about the only posts I see on those TF talk pages I'm signed up for as coord (apart from review notices) are rare questions from project 'outsiders' who've managed to find the correct venue for their query. This has a value, but it's interesting that most project regulars post to WT:MILHIST rather than the TFs. Perhaps we should try to find out why.

I wholeheartedly agree with those who note that the TFs serve as a 'fleet in being'; the maintenance effort is virtually zero compared to the benefit of preventing schisms, so on this point alone I support keeping the task force structure. Further to a point Tom (I think) made above though, it might be worthwhile merging talk pages together so things are less diluted. I think a single TF talk page would be too inflexible, but maybe one talk page per section would be sufficient (ie one for Nations and regions, one for General topics and one for Periods and conflicts). EyeSerene^talk 10:45, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure that pulling everything to three "section" talk pages would really buy us anything. The pages wouldn't have more eyes on them—in fact, since they'd be newly created, they'd probably have fewer—and the task forces in each section aren't similar enough in scope that editors interested in matters related to one would necessarily be interested in anything related to the others. If we're going to consolidate the talk pages, I'd suggest going all the way to redirecting everything back to the main project talk page; this would ensure high visibility at the least—the biggest concern in the current system is that inquiries made on the task force pages often don't get answered—and shouldn't add too much in terms of traffic, given how inactive most task force talk pages generally are. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 20:37, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

I take your point about newly created pages initially having fewer eyes on them, but redirects and widespread advertising should address that (as it has for the STT, which has taken off well). To clarify my suggestion, what I'm proposing is that we reduce the TF structure to three overall areas - Nations and regions, General topics, and Periods and conflicts - and operate the individual TFs within each area in a similar way to our current working group structure. This means three talk pages instead of 47 but preserves something of the independent nature and identity of the TFs, which I think we'd lose if we simply redirected everything to WT:MILHIST. With a less diluted approach it would presumably be easier to organise specific topic drives and collaborations (again, something perhaps best kept off WT:MILHIST), and with perhaps five or six unique coords per area we can ensure that questions are responded to in a timely manner and individual TFs within that area are not overly favoured at the expense of neglecting the less active ones. I accept that not every TF in each area is related and that contributors to one are unlikely to be interested in many of the others, but I don't see this as a particular problem (and not one that will be solved by bringing all 47 TFs under one umbrella as is the alternative redirect proposal). In fact, we can propose drives, competitions and collaborations on a per area basis that don't need any particular interest in, or knowledge of, a subject to make article improvements - SPAG sweeps, infobox and tagging improvements etc. This would hopefully have the advantage of bringing attention to the less active TFs and might encourage participants to spread their interests wider. EyeSerene^talk 08:57, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, I guess the underlying question here is whether we want to retain the idea of task forces as independently operating units—in the scenario that you're suggesting, we'd effectively go to a structure of three super-TFs with child TF pages hanging off of them—or to remove that and have them function only as organizational pages for listing tasks and resources for a certain topic area. Personally, I would tend to favor the latter; I don't really see much evidence that clustering TFs into bigger groups is going to fundamentally change activity levels or talk page responsiveness, and it will come at the cost of introducing an extra layer of infrastructure that will need to be maintained. Simply turning the task forces into topical organization pages and centralizing discussion back to the main project page would make the question of their (in)activity moot, since they would essentially be self-maintaining lists of items.

I think the STT isn't the best parallel here, since it's tied up so closely with coordinator activities; as a general rule, anything that directly involves us will see a reasonable level of attention. In addition, it's only absorbing a very small number of high-profile discussions. Given past history, I don't think we're going to see an effective system of cross-posting and moving discussions to the TF cluster pages; people still tend to discuss even narrow topics on the main project page, due to the significantly higher participation there, and I'm not really convinced we should be expending so much effort to change that. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 12:53, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

It certainly seems that the thrust of consensus so far is to retain TFs as a purely organisational concept but to abandon them as a venue for enabling editors to get together for collaborative work. I'm not yet completely convinced that this is the only viable alternative - it seems to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater - but if this is way we decide to go then it has my full commitment.

If we do adopt the complete talk page redirect solution, how will working groups be affected? Do we redirect their talk pages as well, or pull them out of the TF structure (ie turn them into something akin to special projects), or can they continue as they are? EyeSerene^talk 10:00, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I think we can probably leave working groups as they are for the time being; they're fairly low-traffic, and are really just a way for small groups of editors to set up a central work page in project-space, not a full-blown component of our infrastructure.

What we probably should do, however, is to move the special projects out from under the task forces and into the main project tree; they've really gone beyond sub-task force components at this point. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 22:50, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Good idea, I see no reason not to. EyeSerene^talk 09:23, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Further thoughts: reading BusterD's post in #Ideas from WikiConference NYC 2010 and combining that with my previous re merged talk pages and AR's post below, running a content improvement drive might be a good way of advertising the new streamlined TFs. I think we lack enough TF participation in most areas to run drives on a per task force basis, but we could probably coordinate a drive from the three merged talk pages (maybe one a month in rotation or one per quarter). EyeSerene^talk 10:58, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Task Force definition : "Task forces are established, formal groups of editors gathered for collaborative work on a particular topic within the field of military history; all project members are encouraged to participate in any that interest them."

Collaborate : Is collaborative work simply competition organising? Or should it be about establishing ad hoc working groups for tasks? Or something else? Should this be led by the task force co-ordinator, or from "high Command", or from grass roots, or all of the above?

Participate : Is this about the collaboration or more? I don't ask questions at my task force because no-one answers. This could be because no-one follows it because no-one participates - a death spiral. There may be other reasons. If the task forces were more "live", would they spin off projects and collaborations organically?

Interest : When I started editing, I joined the task force closest to my period of interest (Medieval). I wasn't interested in the work of the task force per se but was willing to join in its work in as much as it interested me. I would guess most people join their task force not to participate in technical stuff but to engage with others of similar interests. How do we encourage that? Some like competitions and barnstars - good. Others may want to get their teeth into a topic and discuss how it may be approached or find people to work with. Most people I would guess don't want to be told what to work on - we need to engage their interest. Our strong points are that people are interested and, while doubtless some are on an ego kick, many others want to share knowledge. How do we use those to improve our stock of articles, be it coverage or quality? Monstrelet (talk) 11:05, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

The fact that questions get asked but not answered is a big concern; particularly when we're dealing with new users, being unresponsive often loses us potential contributors. I'm not sure that there's any good way of solving that problem in the short term without consolidating the task force talk pages to a venue that's watched by more people. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 20:37, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Regardless of what we do with the task forces, I think centralizing discussion is a good idea. At the very least, we could tag the less-active talk pages to suggest posting at WT:MILHIST instead. bahamut0013^words_deeds 21:30, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

No, the current task force system does not work. From my personal experience an inactive taskforce page is worse then no taskforce page, as an inactive page actively deters editors from joining. When I first visited MILHIST in January I ended up on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Dutch military history task force. I have an interest in that area and would have liked to start contributing some things back then, but the taskforce was utterly abandoned. I felt absolutely no inclination to sign up and start it back up all alone, so I just left. I stumbled on WP:OMT a few months later by accident, but if that had not happened I would not have become an active contributor. I am all in favor of getting rid of the talk pages and membership lists for the taskforces. Yoenit (talk) 09:31, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree, task forces are great for identifying articles in a topic area, but by in large they fail to elicit activity in a cooperative manner from the users. This makes it very hard to make users active in that subject area (The same happens with Wikiprojects, unless their are cooperations and activities, people join then never do anything.), Sadads (talk) 11:54, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Mini content drive

One possible idea that I have for reinvigorating the task forces would be mini content drives that are managed by the task forces themselves. The ANZSP task force has a lot of redlinks in the requested articles field (which don't seem likely to be created any time soon, thus giving the impression that the task force is dead), which we could focus a drive on and I think that a lot of the other task forces would be similar. If support was drummed up among members of the project, a mini content drive (focused upon those identified redlinks) might serve to bring some more focus upon the task forces and knock over a few redlinks at the same time. I'd be proposing to hand out a few awards for top contributors, probably the Barnstars of National Merit for between 3 and 5 articles, Wikichevrons for 5 to 10 articles and Writers Barnstars for 10 and above (just ballpark figures). Given that the elections are next month, the drive would probably need to wait until October. In terms of the ANZSP and the other task forces I'm involved in, unfortunately I will be extremely busy then (for about six weeks to the middle of November), so maybe it would have to wait until November or even December, unless someone else wanted to take the lead in running it. Anyway, I just wanted to float the idea as a possible way to reinvigorate the task forces. AustralianRupert (talk) 09:03, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

A content drive focusing on creating missing articles seems like a good idea, but I'm not sure that it makes sense to do it individually for every task force; given that the procedure would be essentially identical, wouldn't running it as a project-wide effort (pulling in missing article lists from all the task forces, as well as any miscellaneous ones elsewhere) have significantly less overhead? Plus, some of the smaller task forces would probably not produce much in a drive aimed specifically at them; articles from their lists might get created as part of a broader effort, however. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 20:41, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

This is a grand idea, and I think Kirill's point about centralization is worth considering. If it is indeed centralized, we should highlight which task forces might be applicible in the listing. bahamut0013^words_deeds 21:33, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

My thinking with making the drives task-force based was to try to draw focus on to the task forces rather than the project as a whole, but I can see how that might not work with some of the less active task forces and why centralisation might be the best option. AustralianRupert (talk) 21:39, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Naming question

On a slightly tangential note, I'm wondering if we should change the "task force" name to something like "topic area/group/team/etc." to be friendlier towards newer editors? Some of the comments I heard at WikiConference NYC 2010 suggest that people coming in to Wikipedia for the first time tend to be confused by some of the jargon; and, while the "task force" name does have a certain appeal from both military and historical perspectives, I suspect people will be more likely to look at them if it's more obvious what they are. Thoughts? Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 20:49, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Goodness... it was bound to happen sooner or later: I disagree with Kirill. I think that the term "task force" is firmly enough in the lexicon of the average English-speaker that they will understand civilian or not. Not only is it a bit of whimsical charm to have some of the military-oriented terminology, but I don't think it's at all unfriendly or intimidating to newbies. bahamut0013^words_deeds 21:41, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough; I suppose that—particularly given the interests of people likely to be interested in the project—we can expect the term to be familiar. ;-) Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 21:49, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

The other thing about task forces is that a new-comer might expect them to be task-orientated rather than subject-orientated. This may affect sign up, if people aren't looking to take part in some organised activity. Unfortunately, it's hard to check this out, given the people who join the task forces are the ones to whom that wasn't a barrier.Monstrelet (talk) 06:48, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

A concrete idea

Okay, looking over the various points brought up in the sections above, I'd like to propose a concrete idea for changing the current system that we can use as a starting point for further brainstorming. My suggestion would be as follows:

1. Elements relating to membership are removed from all task force pages, and the remaining material is rearranged into a simplified structure:
   • Assessment and statistics (standard boilerplate/template)
   • Open tasks (standard template)
   • Related projects/working groups/etc.
   • Resources
     • Internal (categories, templates, etc.)
     • External (sources, sites, etc.)
2. All task force talk pages are redirected to WT:MILHIST
3. Working groups remain unchanged
4. Special projects are moved from being under specific task forces to being under the core project itself, but remain otherwise unchanged

This would essentially remove the maintenance overhead of task forces as far as cross-posting and so forth is concerned, and eliminate the risk of messages posted to them getting lost; effectively, each task force would act as a central page for listing articles/tasks/resources related to a topic, but would not otherwise host any "activity" per se.

(Obviously, there are some logistical problems with this idea—chiefly that some of our task forces are actually located under other projects, who might look askance at having their talk pages redirected to ours. That's something we need to consider further if we want to go with an approach along these lines.)

Any comments on this idea, or suggestions for modifications to it (or even completely different approaches) would be very welcome! Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 00:18, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

That sounds very sensible to me Nick-D (talk) 00:24, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. TomStar81 (Talk) 02:30, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Clear as air. Buggie111 (talk) 03:33, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps the membership could be trimmed to active editors and renamed to "editors interested in the topic"? This way newcomers know who they can contact if they want help in a specific area. Otherwise, I your proposal is brilliant. Good work (and debating!), everyone. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 05:00, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

I think the idea will solve some of the problems, particularly asking questions that don't get answered. I'm not sure it covers all that we have discussed about the best way to engage editors in the work of the project. So, I'd say a good start but we need to keep working on aspects of the problem. In addition to engagement, perhaps we need to look at the task force pages themselves. Having looked at the Medieval task Force page for the first time in ages, it's very static. A lot of requests have been there a long time which suggests people (like me) aren't going there regularly. The resources list is really random and could be greatly improved if we re-purposed it e.g. to a basic introductory study list (I'd be up to help with that, if that was decided). These are just examples. I haven't visited other task forces and they may be really dynamic but I suggest another thing on our list needs to be ensuring our new-look task force pages are fit for purpose (whatever we decide that purpose to be)Monstrelet (talk) 07:38, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree, the lack of updates is a problem to some degree. As far as tasks and other to-do items are concerned, pushing everything into the standard TF open task template, rather than simply having people make random notes on the page, will help things somewhat, since the templates are easier to maintain; the other side of this would be an increased focus on automatically-generated task lists (e.g. the categories that generate from B-Class checklists) instead of manually compiled ones. Having said that, obviously some level of manual intervention will still be needed to remove completed items from even the templated list; the best we can hope for, I think, would be to reduce that overhead from the current levels.

As far as organizing resources is concerned, this isn't really something I've played around with too much, so I'm open to suggestions about how a "standard" resource listing for a TF might be best organized. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 12:55, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

I think it is an excellent idea. I am not really sure about the "editors interested in the topic" section Ed proposed, as I fear it will soon become the same thing as the memberlist: an outdated list full of people who have left. Yoenit (talk) 08:48, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, I expect that it would be the existing membership list in all but name. Now, even if we do want to retain some sort of membership tracking, I would still suggest getting rid of the hand-maintained list and using a category instead, since that's (a) self-maintaining and (b) can be tied to the TF userbox; but I'm not entirely sure whether even that level of "membership" is useful. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 12:55, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Can you get a category to show which people are active and not? If not then you're just moving the membership list into category space where it would be even less visible than on the task force page; at least the current lists provide a starting point for direct interactions if you're looking for help on a subject but the talk page is dead. On Ed's suggestion to reduce membership list to "active members", that would simply generate more work. How do you class active? Active on Wikipedia in general, or specifically in the topic area? The first would be easier to measure, but the list would require refreshing periodically, say every month or two, as people drift away and occasionally others begin editing again. Nev1 (talk) 13:59, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

I would like to endorse Kirill's idea, subject to further modifications like Monstrelet's and Yoenit's points. Buckshot06 (talk) 09:16, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Same here.--White Shadows ^{Your guess is as good as mine} 16:29, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

I endorece Kirill's ideas. To the note about membership lists: if someobody was looking to contact someone about the task force, the coordinator would be listed. He or she would really be the best choice to ask a question to anyway, rather than whomever's username was at the top of the list.

I think it may be worth discussing with the overlapping task forces if they would be willing to host the page under thier project space, if they object to the redirect at all. bahamut0013^words_deeds 13:54, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

The membership lists contain optional information on what subjects people are interested in, so rather than going to a co-ordinator who may know nothing on the subject someone looking for questions can choose someone relevant. Did I miss the bit where co-ordinators acquire extensive and in-depth knowledge of the task force they administer when they get given custody? Nev1 (talk) 13:58, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Is the role of the task force members as "expert" contacts sufficiently explicit? Back to my task force page again and it isn't on the page itself, so how is the user who arrives there supposed to know how to "use" the task force participants? Sorry if this is on most task force pages but it could be standardised (this is in no way a criticism of any individual - it's about fleshing out the purpose of the page and how redesign it to better fit that purpose) Monstrelet (talk) 16:13, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

I didn't say anything about experts, just that co-ordinators don't necessarily make good points of contact for individual projects. What is the point of task forces if they are not associations of people interested in a similar subject area willing to help each other? If you arrived at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Fortifications task force there's a good chance you want help of some sort, perhaps you're looking for advice about how to deal with a certain subject under the project's remit, or want comments on an article etc. You'll note that most participants list their interests. It doesn't take much imagination to pick out the people who might be able to help you. Same for the medieval and classical task forces; those are the ones I have an interest in anyway. Nev1 (talk) 18:45, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, that's a fair point; with the interests listed, the membership lists do serve as easy places to find editors who can be approached about certain topics. However, I would think that's only true if people list their interests. Or does a pure listing of names (e.g. this) still serve some real use in that regard?

Perhaps we could turn the member lists into something like an "editor interests" listing? This would avoid giving people the impression that they need to "sign up" just for the sake of doing so, and limit the list to editors that (a) have an interest they're willing to publish and (b) are willing to be contacted about it. We would still need to invest some level of effort in maintaining these as editors become inactive; but hopefully the smaller lists would mean a lower level of overhead than the current full membership listings. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 20:35, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

There are no overheards with the current member lists as inactive members are no pruned, so what you're suggesting will increase the amount of work. Whether they need to be maintained is a different issue and needs discussing, but be under no illusions that you are creating more work for people. Nev1 (talk) 22:39, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

That's not quite correct; the task force membership lists are occasionally trimmed of inactive users, although I don't recall how often or when the last iteration was. It's probably a rather minor level of effort either way, however. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 22:45, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

(Having said that, I do agree that any useful level of maintenance will mean additional work on the part of the coordinators. Whether or not that's an acceptable price to pay for the benefit of not having inactive users listed is, as you said, an issue that needs discussing.) Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 22:52, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

My experience of task forces is really limited to the fortifications group, although I'm interested in the classical and mediaeval periods, and those three task forces haven't had their membership list pruned since the start of the year [1] [2] [3]; just a small sample out of 41, but it suggests that there really isn't that much maintenance going on, even if there's supposed to be. Maintaining a list of active editors requires a lot more effort than is currently being put in; for a time I kept a list up to date for a project I'm a member of. It only had about 50 members, but it was a bit of a chore when you had to check the contributions of each person regularly. For such a list to be meaningful, it would have to be regularly update, say every one or two months. I stopped because it wasn't worth the time and effort. Do co-ordinators have nothing better to do? Let's look at it from the other direction, are the lists doing any harm? If not, it might not be such a bad idea to keep them. I can't really fault the other suggestions you've made at the start of this thread, but this I'm not sure about. They're hardly indispensable, but they are perhaps occasionally useful. Nev1 (talk) 23:07, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm not particularly opposed to retaining the lists, even without any changes to them; but, at the same time, I don't think they provide any real benefit unless they're well-maintained, and I have a slight concern that new editors might be approaching inactive people on the list and failing to get a response. At the very least, if we aren't going to limit them to active editors, then I would suggest having a note at the top of the list indicating that some of the individuals listed may be inactive, and that the project talk page(s) would be a better place to ask questions. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 23:14, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

That's easily fixed. Something along those lines of this] is implicitly encouraging direct interaction between editors (sometimes project talk doesn't work as it can go unnoticed) but gives advice so they don't waste their time. Nev1 (talk) 23:25, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Nice! Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 23:28, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

I think I'd add something along the lines of "Editors interested in contributing to the work of the project are encouraged to list their interests below". On the subject of inactive editors, can a bot flag up/remove inactive editors, saving co-ordinator time (I'd thought this was an automated process from the header to this section, but obviously not)? Final question - are all active editors linked to the main pages to be able to answer the redirected traffic? Most currently active posters there seem to be WWII and later specialists, which may be a problem if a wider range of topics fetch up there.Monstrelet (talk) 07:15, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't know if everyone visits that page, but it's certainly the most-watched one within the project (~700 editors watching). In any case, I expect more people will gravitate there as the traffic increases; in my experience, people tend to like bustling activity, for whatever reason. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 11:54, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

A bigger group than I realised. By the looks of it, it should be enough just to keep an encouragement to editors signing up on task group lists to sign up to the main list too.Monstrelet (talk) 17:16, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

A more concrete idea

Taking into account the discussion above, what do people think about using the following approach for task forces:

1. Task force pages are rearranged into a simplified structure:
   • Assessment and statistics (standard boilerplate/template)
   • Open tasks (standard template)
   • Contacts
     • Participants/interested editors/etc.
     • Related projects/working groups/etc.
   • Resources
     • Internal (categories, templates, etc.)
     • External (sources, sites, etc.)
2. Task force talk pages are redirected to WT:MILHIST

Would it be worthwhile putting together an example of a rearranged task force page so that everyone can play around with the structure? Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 02:48, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

I think such an example should be built and placed in the task force listings. Personally, I think everything is fine. Buggie111 (talk) 02:52, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Agree with both of the above :) EyeSerene^talk 08:11, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

How's this for starters. I doubt the showcase is a good idea for other projects as it will require a lot of maintenance, but since I'm looking after this task force, I'm including it, although I believe User:JL-Bot can be used to generate the list automatically. Nev1 (talk) 12:05, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

That looks good to me Nick-D (talk) 12:10, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Looks good, overall. A couple of points that might warrant further discussion, though:

• I'm not sure the full MILHIST logo bar is necessary; I'd suggest either having a separate logo for each task force (as with WP:OMT, although that would require a lot of graphics work) or creating a composite logo that integrates a task force-specific image (such as the one currently floating to the right of the logo) with some portion of the main MILHIST one.
• Using JL-Bot to generate a showcase seems like a good approach. Is there any reason why automating it would be a bad idea? If the list generation were automated, the entire "Article statistics" section could probably be turned into a standard-form template and transcluded across every task force.

Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 12:27, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

I see what you mean about the logo, and I had wanted something more specific to the task force, so I included the picture on the right; creating individual logos would be a lot of effort, but picking an appropriate picture to stick on the right might be an alternative. That last sentence of mine is sort of a mix of two thoughts: I thought it would be a bad idea before I half-remembered there was a way to automate it. I do think a showcase that was updated by a bot would be useful. As for the open tasks template, I'm a bit ambivalent about its inclusion as it's suggested those same articles for as long as I can remember (over a year I reckon) so I'm not convinced it's useful. People don't seem to be taking notice of it. Other task forces may find it useful. Nev1 (talk) 12:35, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

I've taken a stab at creating a "compound" logo using the image and the text portion of the main MILHIST one. It might not be quite as refined as a true purpose-built logo; but I'm not sure how well the castle image would render if reduced to a monotone silhouette anyways.

Should we try having the bot auto-generate a showcase list and see how we can neatly integrate that onto the page?

As far as the open task template is concerned, it's useful because it feeds the project-wide lists at WP:MHOT, if nothing else; but I agree with your point that we ought to keep it more updated. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 12:43, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

The compound logo works ok IMO; I like the colour version. I've tried setting up things for the bot, so I guess it's just a matter of waiting for it to run (assuming I set up the template correctly). I suspect updating the open tasks box would just mean a fresh set of articles are getting ignored rather than encouraging new input, but I suppose there's only one way to find out. Nev1 (talk) 12:53, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, I suppose there's no way to guarantee that anyone is paying attention to the thing. One point I'd make, though, is that the template supports a lot of options that aren't being used by this particular task force; perhaps adding more types of tasks would make it more inviting of participation. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 12:57, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

The bot listing seems to be working (although I've made some changes to the display options, and we'll have to see how well that works). I'm going to work on turning the introductory text in the "Article statistics" section into something template-based—it's going to be essentially identical on every task force, and there's no real reason we should need to individually configure it for each one—but are there any other ideas for changes that should be made to the new page layout? Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 15:59, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

I didn't realise the listing would create whitespace because of the table of stats, but otherwise it works fine. I tried a work around but it was unsuccessful. Mostly, I think the blurb in the article statistics section is fine, perhaps a little informal in places but I'm not keen on trimming it. I would think that one of the benefits of displaying the task force's best articles would be that they can provide templates for people who wish to write similar articles, or serve as guides for what to aim for. I think it's worth spelling it out so it's not just a bragging section. I can't think of anything else to do with the page; it's more compact than before, more useful (it actually includes some advice on finding information, even if it is brief), and better looking. Nev1 (talk) 19:35, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

I'll see what I can do about the whitespace; I think it's caused by some conflicting formatting between the assessment table and the article list, and it may be possible to fix it. As far as other things to do with the page are concerned, many of the other task forces have extensive lists of specific resources; I assume we'd just pile them all into lists or sub-sections under the "Resources" section? Would there be any benefit to having a standard or semi-standard list of sub-sections already in place, to make it easier for new editors to navigate and/or add resources? Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 23:23, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Including specific books may be useful for task forces which cover a smaller area, but fortifications is such a broad topic that I don't think it's worthwhile to include a list of essential books. That's why I recommended looking at the bibliographies of relevant parent articles and Osprey books as a starting point which are relatively cheap and although variable in quality at least provide a springboard for further information. I'm not really sure what you mean about sub-sections though, could you give an example? Nev1 (talk) 00:23, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

My thought was to prepare specific sub-sections/lists/etc. for books, external links, templates, and so forth; the idea would be both to organize the resources somewhat more than a single list could, and to encourage additions by providing "examples" of items that might be considered "resources. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 01:54, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

I think that would only be useful for very long lists of sources; as the fortifications task force now stands for example there'd be no point. Nev1 (talk) 21:29, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough; I suppose we can handle the organization of the resources on a case-by-case basis as task forces are converted to the new format. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 01:42, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

I've changed the layout to get rid of the excess whitespace. My idea for having the introductory text as a template turned out to be a poor one: some task forces may not have any GA/A/FA articles, and while it would be possible to determine this programmatically, it's really too complex a setup for the minimal benefit of slightly more standard wording.

I'd still like to see what the results of having the bot generate the no-heading list of content are. Other than that—and assuming that nobody else has any further changes to suggest—I think we're probably at a point where we can bring this draft to the main project talk page for discussion and a decision on whether to proceed with this restructuring plan across the board. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 02:20, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Since there haven't been any further suggestions, I've gone ahead and moved this proposal to the main project talk page (WT:MILHIST#Proposal for restructuring task forces); any further comments should be directed there. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 14:45, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Where are we up to with this? It's been two weeks since the proposal was moved to WT:MILHIST to measure support and nine since the last comment. So far there are ten people who've declared support (not including myself) and it seems unlikely that more people will comment. Nev1 (talk) 21:06, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, I just did add another support, but I think it is clear this can be implemented, unless we want to publish this in the bugle first. Yoenit (talk) 21:19, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

I've been waiting for this issue of the Bugle to go out, just to make sure we haven't missed anyone who would be drawn to the discussion after seeing it there. That should be published in the next few days, and I think—assuming we don't suddenly see objections—that we'll start rolling out this structure across the entire task force set shortly thereafter. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 22:59, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Tag and Assess

We did Tag and Assess I think two years ago. Why did we stop? I think it is a great incentive for people to go and assess articles. WikiCopter^Radio_Checklist^{Formerly AirplanePro} 22:54, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Why is it a great incentive? For most people Wikipedia is a hobby and tagging and assessing on a large scale is a mechanical and boring task. That's why some projects get bots to do the work of tagging for them. It seems like a not especially important task that diverts time from more important areas such as actually writing articles, which some people actually find enjoyable. Is it even necessary. Do you feel there are great swathes of articles that need to have a MILHIST project banner on their talk page? Nev1 (talk) 22:58, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

There were actually a series of several assessment drives (see Category:WikiProject Military history assessment drive archives) held over the course of about a year. What we found is that, while the first drive was quite successful (in part due to the fact that it was one of the first such drives among WikiProjects), the later ones showed sharply diminishing returns, due both to a decreasing number of articles that actually needed tagging, and a general decrease in interest among participants. After the third (or fourth?) drive, we decided to stop the activity, as it was no longer a net benefit.

As far as Nev1's comment about "swathes of articles" above, I think he's broadly correct in his implication. There are not, in my view, large numbers of articles that need to be tagged—at least not ones that can be readily collected without trawling our entire category tree by hand; our normal, day-to-day tagging and assessment work seems to be handling the influx of new articles adequately. The one major task that remains is the B-Class checklist verification; but this is even more boring work than even raw tagging, and should probably be done as part of some larger initiative focusing on B-Class articles, if at all. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 23:48, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Adding GAN reviewing to the contest

Couldn't we add GAN reviewing to the contest for a small number of points (say 1-5 each). It takes a good deal of work just to review the article. WikiCopter (radio • sorties • images • shot down) 04:40, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

I think that this could work and would be a good way to try to encourage further involvement in the GAN process beyond the current (very successful, IMO) backlog drive. We just have to have a bit of a think about how to do it and the amount of points it would attract. I think the Aviation Project has done something similar in the past (not sure), so maybe we could look at the way they did it. If I'm wrong, apologies for the dud information. AustralianRupert (talk) 10:23, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

A more specific estimate would be 4 per GAN reviewed (not counting holds). WikiCopter (radio • sorties • images • shot down) 19:12, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Ok, that would probably work, but I wouldn't want to lock this in just yet. The broader issues that I think need thought are: (1) how would they be listed? (2) do we just include GAN reviewing, or do we also include peer, ACR and FAC? (3) how do we ensure quality of reviews? Are there any other issues that need to be considered? AustralianRupert (talk) 01:20, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

New special project

Moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history § New special project

WikiCopter (radio • sorties • images • shot down) 23:45, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Implementing C-Class

The last one was I thing 1.5 years ago, and since then the C-class concept has evolved throughout wikipedia. I think it would be appropriate to see if people here are thinking it would be ok to implement it now. Nergaal (talk) 17:24, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

It might be a good discussion to have, but I wouldn't recommend going for a referendum until we've come up with a good idea for how we would actually implement and use C-Class (given that the B-Class/Start-Class grading is currently automated). This is probably something that should be brought up at WT:MHSTT for some brainstorming. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 02:48, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Just as a note, C is still pretty underused throughout Wikipedia - only 2.9% of assessed articles are rated C, versus 2.7% B and 25% start. It still seems to have a good way to go before it's fully used as a middle ground between Start and B. Shimgray | talk | 09:06, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

C-Class always seemed to be a solution in search of a problem to me, and perhaps those stats bear that view out to some extent. However, if there's a benefit to revisiting the idea I don't see why we shouldn't. WT:MHSTT is fairly crowded with ongoing discussions at the moment, so might it be better to add it to the pending list until the decks are a bit clearer? EyeSerene^talk 11:13, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

That's probably a good plan. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 12:29, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Of the 800k+ articles on wikipedia rated at least Start, you guys hold 60k. So if this project were to actually implement it, it would probably bump the 2.9% by at least 0.2%. Nergaal (talk) 19:48, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

But, the way our B-Class assessment regime works is that unless the checklist is filled in, the articles are assessed as Start. I'm willing to bet that once every B-Class checklist (we have a large backlog) is filled out properly there will be a noticeable decrease in that figure. -MBK₀₀₄ 05:39, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

I voted against C class in the last two referendums, but I have slightly changed my mind. It would be a huge task to regrade all the start class articles but if a bot could identify those articles only failing B class because of one problem and then dump them into C class it could be an easy fix.--Jim Sweeney (talk) 10:57, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

We could do that entirely automatically, in fact; take a look at the various category listings on WP:MHOT for an example of how the single-criterion failure articles currently break down. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 15:26, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Moved from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Assessment#Another referendum on implementing C-class? Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 15:56, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

I'd back the idea of an automated "C" system for things with only one thing on the "B" list missing - "start" is currently a sea of largely undifferentiated articles, which make it hard for users to assess quality and editors to target work.Monstrelet (talk) 17:49, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Just throwing my thoughts out there: a C would have to pass both B2 and B3, and one (or two, or none) of the other three? Nergaal (talk) 19:44, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

I think Monstrelet has a good point. WikiCopter^Radio_Checklist^{Formerly AirplanePro} 19:59, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Not to get ahead of the discussion, but, to modify Nergall's idea, we could say that it must pass B1 and B2, and one other. As for the actual question, I've always supported its implementation, as it could be done very easily with a minimum of work through some alterations to the template. It is true that it has been quite a while since the last referendum, and the question hasn't really been permanently settled. It's very possible that many people, like Jim Sweeney, have changed their minds since then. – Joe N 21:15, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Agree with Joe. Start could meen anything from an article that has a couple of cite needed tags to a 2 paragraph summary. Buggie111 (talk) 23:37, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

I'd support this idea. It doesn't seem like too much extra work to implement (says I with no technical knowledge), and I think that there can be a considerable variation in articles listed as Start class. For example, Royal Military College, Duntroon and 33rd Battalion (Australia), which are both listed as Start class articles (Duntroon has two cite needed tags, which prevent it from B class). In order to make the classification meaningful, though, it would probably require some sort of effort to complete the checklists on the 25,000 odd articles that haven't had the B class checklist filled out. I tried to make a dent in this about a year ago, but gave up after about 400 assessments. Not sure if this would be possible in the short term, but over time maybe. Nevertheless, I still think there is merit in the proposal. AustralianRupert (talk) 00:06, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Could we avoid using B1 as a criterion? The biggest block to articles getting B class is lack of inline citation (over 8000 fail on this alone, if you take a look). I'd support Nergal on coverage and structure being essential, probably grammar too. A bot could detect and change set criteria easier the potential variable criteria I think but don't know how significant an issue that one be for the techies?Monstrelet (talk) 07:58, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

My suggestion would be that a C class article could fail on B1 (refs) and B5 (supporting materials e.g images), but would need to satisfy B2 (coverage and accuracy), B3 (structure) and B4 (grammar). Just my opinion, though. AustralianRupert (talk) 04:54, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Agree. Though it is getting a bit ahead, I think the first assessment task would be to check on the articles that only fail "B" class by B2,B3 or B4. I had an initial look and found that, of the nine I looked at, even after correcting the problem, all but 1 actually failed on another criterion (seven on citation, one on coverage). So, a bit of work there to classify properly before moving onto the 25000+ with incomplete lists.Monstrelet (talk) 06:59, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I have gone through a few of the articles listed as only requiring attention to either B2, B3, or B4 and found that a number of them actually also should be tagged with needing attention to B1. AustralianRupert (talk) 12:06, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

A C class article should at least meet B2 and B3, otherwise a 1 line stub could classify as C class. B4 and B5 are generally trivial to fix, so I see no reason to include these in the requirements of C class. Including B1 would defeat the whole purpose, as we would end up with less than 600 C articles (graded start articles that meet B1, but not B2 or B3) and I sure a significant number of them don't actually meet B1. Yoenit (talk) 12:40, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Yoenit, although I'm ambivalent on B4 Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 18:22, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

C-class requirements should be B2 B3 B4 and perhaps B5. Based on above comments, I think B1 will to hard to attain for most articles. WikiCopter (radio • sorties • images • shot down) 18:28, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Are we in a position to make a proposal? We seem to have support for B2 & B3 being included. Probably not B1 or B5. Less certainty on B4.Monstrelet (talk) 08:37, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure it makes sense to propose a particular combination directly; I'd suggest splitting the matter into two distinct questions for the project:

1. Should a C-Class be introduces by automatically assigning it to articles that meet some subset of the B-Class criteria?
2. Which of the criteria should a C-Class article meet?

We can propose B2+B3 as an answer to the second question, but I think the first question should be posed separately, to avoid confusing the discussion of criteria with discussion of the concept in principle. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 02:20, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable, though I suspect there will be some overlap because people will ask "what might that mean?" in discussing 1. Monstrelet (talk) 07:28, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

I think Kirill's suggestion is the best way to approach this. In fact, I don't think we even need to ask the second question explicitly as consensus should emerge naturally from discussion of the first. EyeSerene^talk 08:34, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I think it would make sense to ask if the consensus in the project is that there is general acceptance for the use of C class, and then after (or even during) we might get a better idea about what criteria would need to be met. AustralianRupert (talk) 01:13, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

• FWIW, WP:WPTC uses an automatic B-class checklist test, and dumps articles that fail at least one of the checks into C-Class. It's also possible to manually assess C-Class, and it is usually done in lieu of a B-Class check if an article is concurrently sent to GAN (since GAN ideally checks all B criteria). Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 10:48, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

We already do that for start-class now, so the result would just be that all start articles are upgraded to C-class (with the exception of the unchecked backlog). Yoenit (talk) 12:46, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Which I think we'd agree wouldn't be helpful. If we are to have C class, it needs to serve some differentiating role between Starts which are just a bit beyond a stub and starts which are nearly at the level of a B. Choose the right combo of B class criteria and we may get something that encourages editors who can't deliver a B class article to go the extra mile to get beyond start. Anyway, do we agree to give Kirill's suggestion a go?Monstrelet (talk) 18:59, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

It should be noted that WP:AIR uses "auto C" as well. To me, a C-class article should meet B1, B3 and B4, but whatever selection is selected, I fully support adopting C-class. - The Bushranger _{Return fire}^{Flank speed} 23:20, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

So, does anyone have any further suggestions, or should we take this discussion over to WT:MILHIST and see what the rest of the project thinks? Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 05:22, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

There seems to be general agreement that we should at least ask the question. If no-one else minds I'll write something up based on Kirill's text. EyeSerene^talk 09:49, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Thread here. EyeSerene^talk 10:24, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm for B1, B2 and B3 or 4 Buggie111 (talk) 18:03, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Buggie, the discussion has shifted to the main project page. Follow EyeSerene's link above Monstrelet (talk) 14:36, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Unreferenced BLPs

You are may be aware that since the beginning of the year, following the deletion of some long-term unreferenced biographies of living people (UBLPs), there has been an effort across the entire project to reduce the backlog, which was over 50,000 and is now under 23,000. Back in May, I posted a message on the Military Biography task force talk page about unreferenced BLPs. I've also posted a similar message on the Milhist talk page twice since then. Back then there were 237 UBLPs assigned to the Military Bio task force. Today, six months on, there are 227. For a project that is the leader in so many areas, this is a pretty poor effort. There are also 177 on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Unreferenced BLPs list (some of which are probably duplicated on both lists). Do you have any ideas on how the military project can be motivated into clearing out this list?

As a comparison, working mainly by myself (little bit of help from some Rugby League guys) cleared out the 200 remaining WP:Australia UBLPs during October, so 227 should be a couple of weeks work for a big project like the Miltary one. We have another group at WP:URBLPR clearing them out month by month, rather than by topic, and doing between 30 and 50 per day. WP:Football have brought there list down from over 7000 last Sept to about 1300 now. Sweden, Spain, Opera, Metal, Cricket, Ice Hockey and some other are all in single figures. But how do you rally the troops into paying attention to the bottom end of the article tree, not just FAs, GAs and DYKs? The-Pope (talk) 15:37, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Given the success of last month's GAN backlog elimination contest, perhaps we could run a similar one to clear out the entire backlog in one swoop? Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 02:48, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Could be worth a try. I wonder though if the lack of response is because editors are unsure what to do with the articles. EyeSerene^talk 08:45, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

I think it would be worthwhile to try, but I think EyeSerene has hit on something. I've taken a number of looks at the list, but wasn't really sure about how to rectify the issues, so (lacking moral courage) gave up. Unless editors have some knowledge/expertise in an area/subject I think they are unlikely to want to work on an article. I, for one, found some refs for the couple I looked at but they didn't seem instantly reliable, nor did they cover all the information in the article, so I wasn't sure whether to hack it back to a stub and just cite what I had found, or leave it to someone with more knowledge/sources. As such, perhaps if there were some concrete instructions about how to approach this it might help improve participation? Just thinking out loud. Apologies if this argument doesn't make sense (operating on not much sleep today, and the body is flu-ridden). AustralianRupert (talk) 10:45, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

That's exactly what I was tilting at. I rarely do much bio article work so I'm not sure what the best way of handling the backlog is either. Some instructions would be very helpful. EyeSerene^talk 11:00, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

All articles, especially WP:BLPs must be verifiable by reliable sources. The history to the WP:URBLP and WP:URBLPR projects stem from the actions of three admins who effectively created their own WP:CSD category in January 2010 and started deletion BLP articles because they were unreferenced. In the uproar that followed, we've had three WP:BLPRFCs, an Arbcom case, Jimbo congratulated the three admins and WP:BLPPROD was invented. We've also dropped the backlog from over 50,000 to about 22,000 - a good deal of which (at least 6,000 have been added this year, by discovering previously untagged articles - ie they weren't in the original 50,000). It isn't that hard, you just need at least one reliable source to backup at least some major part of the article. Stripping the rest back to a stub, slapping {{cn}} tags on the other bits or just leaving it is up to you, based on how contentious the info is.

I have no idea what is a reliable source for military articles... I mainly do sports or Aussies, which generally leads to google news searches. Online, offline, government, commercial... it doesn't matter, as long as it's what you'd consider a reliable source.

If you can't find a reliable source, then ask yourself if you really think the article should still exist on wikipedia? Unless it's an autobio, whoever wrote the article got the info from somewhere. We have to find it and reference it. If you have to strip most of it back to a stub, then that is a solution. If you have to PROD or AfD an article, that is also a solution. Having hundreds and thousands of completely unreferenced BLPs sit here for years is no long acceptable. It may not be this year, or even next year, but I can almost guarantee that one day, someone will try to delete them, not because they aren't notable, but because they aren't referenced. There is only one way to stop that from happening. The-Pope (talk) 15:41, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, that's helpful. Perhaps we can put together some instructions (an Academy course even) and push a BLP referencing drive for the next issue of The Bugle? EyeSerene^talk 21:10, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Why don't you move this discussion to the main talk page? People would be more aware of it and might help out. Buckshot06 (talk) 06:52, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure we really have a good idea of how we might approach this. (The number of uBLPs is continuing to drop, incidentally, so this may not be a significant problem for much longer in any case.) Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 17:37, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

AD Vs CE

I believe that the date style in the article within the scope of the project should be changed from the Christian centered AD-BC system to the BCE ireligious system. Since both systems denote the same years it is just a matter of changing the acronyms in every article. A small change in practice but a very important one in that this way the article doesn't take a religious stance. I mean can you imagine if instead of the seemingly harmless "AD" we would actually write the true meaning of the acronym- "the battle was fought in the year of OUR LORD 1627"- I think not! and yet we seem satisfied to keep this religious note in copious amounts, littering even articles regarding wars fought hundreds of years before "the anointed one".Thx for hearing me out--Macarenses (talk) 14:27, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

WP:ERA states:

• AD and BC are the traditional ways of referring to these eras. CE and BCE are becoming more common in academic and some religious writing. No preference is given to either style.

• Do not use CE or AD unless the date would be ambiguous without it (e.g. "The Norman Conquest took place in 1066" not 1066 CE or AD 1066).
• BCE and CE or BC and AD are written in upper case, unspaced, without periods (full stops), and separated from the year number by a space or non-breaking space (5 BC, not 5BC).
• Use either the BC-AD or the BCE-CE notation, but not both in the same article. AD may appear before or after a year (AD 106, 106 AD); the other abbreviations appear after (106 CE, 3700 BCE, 3700 BC).
• Do not change from one style to another unless there is substantial reason for the change, and consensus for the change with other editors.

The reason it opts for whatever the status quo is for that article as opposed to choosing one system for the whole of Wikipedia is that there's no consensus on which to use. I don't think WP:MILHIST should be used to usurp that. Years ago there was an enormous debate on the issue which didn't lead really anywhere. As this project is one of Wikipedia's largest, I think we have a responsibility to tread carefully. If this project adopts one over the other it will be pointed to by whichever side is chosen as giving them legitimacy. Both AD/BC and CE/BCE are used in academic literature; usage should be decided on a case-by-case basis and I feel that an attempt to enforce one style over another universally would be a waste of time at best. Nev1 (talk) 14:38, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Heh, I was just about to post the same thing; Nev just beat me to finding the correct MOS page. I agree that MILHIST cannot (and should not) try to overturn the MOS ruling on the subject. Macarenses, I would suggest that if you truly feel like discussing this, you take it to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers), which is the talk page of the section that Nev linked above. Dana boomer (talk) 14:53, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree. I see no reason to impose a global change that lacks consensus for what frankly seems more like an ideological than a practical reason. EyeSerene^talk 15:06, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

thx, i've moved the discussion here--Macarenses (talk) 15:09, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Milhist articles and Portals

Moved from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators#Milhist_articles_and_Portals

Bahamut0013 left a few comments for me at the Iowa class battleship peer review, including one concerning the portals I had included mentioning in the article. For the hell of it I went looking for a guideline or policy or something to see if we had any advice about how to approach articles used in portals, and found none. This in turn leads me to raise the matter here: does anyone think it would be a good idea to pen a few words about portal use for our articles into our MoS somewhere? I think so, in particular due to the following three points:

• First, both milhist and non milhist protals make use of the articles within our scope. While that is awesome, it does beg the question of who gets to be mentioned in the article space. In the Iowa class article I got people from the Illinois, Missouri, and North American portal using the article while no mention is made of the cold war portal. Some uniformity in approaching issues of this nature would be nice.
• Second, on more than one occasion I have seen people add see also sections just to add a portal link. This drives me nuts since it seems to me to be an awful waste of space just to advertise one or two portals where an article is featured, and it would be nice to have some kind of guideline on what to do if the article is used in one or more portals but the article itself lacks a see also section. I think under the circumstances placing a portal link in the external links area would work, but that is me.
• Three, our MILHIST article actually supports the placement of up to five portals in which an article is used. This means that we could forgo placing portal links out in the article space and instead contain them in the template unless there is a good reason not to.

I would appreciate hearing back from you all on this, and if it looks like there is some consensus to add a guideline or two to the MoS then we can kick it over the R&D page.

On an unrelated note, Wikipedia:MILMOS#CONFLICTS has a red link for the Category:Canceled military operations, is this something we need to fix? TomStar81 (Talk) 21:37, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

The links within our banner are really for our own (tracking) purposes; I don't think they can (or should) replace the reader-targeted links within the articles themselves.

As far as what links should be used, that's probably a good topic for discussion; frankly, I'm not sure what the approach should be, and how much influence we really have over the linking of non-military-related portals. I'd suggest opening up a new discussion at the STT.

I've fixed the broken links in the MILMOS, by the way; apparently someone changed the spelling and didn't bother to fix the incoming links. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 19:05, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, at least we managed to solve the red link issue. It seemed odd that we would have a nonexistent category linked in a MoS page, so I am glad we got that solved.

As far as portal links are concerned, I'm all for starting the discussion here to get something official up and running. I've noted my three points that I feel need to be addressed in this, and I would welcome input from anyone else who would like to add a additional points. TomStar81 (Talk) 22:29, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Military tactic infobox

We seem to have gotten a new infobox ({{Infobox military tactic}}) created last month. Personally, I'm not entirely convinced that the topic really lends itself to an infobox approach—there aren't many "hard" data items about a particular tactic that can easily be included in one—but, assuming that we're going to keep it around, I suggest seeing what we can make of the template.

Does anyone have any thoughts on what fields should or shouldn't be included, or other ideas for improving the infobox?

A few things that come to mind:

• "Battlespace" is a modern term that has limited applicability to earlier eras of warfare. Perhaps speaking of "environment" would be more useful, although this could potentially lead us to arbitrarily specific designations.
• The "weapon" and "type" fields seem to overlap in many areas; perhaps it would be better to combine these in some way? Ideally, we might actually code the different available "types" into the template itself, and use them to automatically generate a category tree for the tactics articles; but that might be beyond the scope of what we can do.
• "Notable uses" is going to be difficult to define, at best. Certainly, there are canonical examples (e.g. the double envelopment at Cannae), but these won't necessarily exist for most tactics. Further, many "notable" examples are actually poor ones as far as the tactic itself is concerned; for example, many people would tend to associate a charge with something like the Charge of the Light Brigade or Pickett's Charge, and yet these are hardly particularly good examples of the tactic being used to its full effect.

Any comments would be appreciated! Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 04:29, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

A specific template is not needed at all in my opinion. PROD. GraemeLeggett (talk) 10:43, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, that was actually my first inclination too; but, given that this was recently created, I'm almost certain the PROD would be challenged and it would have to go to TFD. Given the collective time and effort likely to be spent there—and the fact that someone presumably thought this template was necessary—I figure it won't hurt anything to discuss whether it can be turned into something useful (even if we eventually settle on the idea that we're better off without it). Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 11:22, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

It certainly looks to have been designed by a modern warfare enthusiast and would be potentially problematic for some earlier eras.

• Agree that "Battlespace" is a bit pointless for most of human history.
• You would need to define what you meant by "notable uses". Kirill assumes it means successful examples but it may just mean battles where the tactic was famously used, like Charge of the Light Brigade.
• I don't like the concept of a strategic tactic - really needs to confine itself to battlefield tactics.
• It can be difficult to distinguish between "formation" and "tactics" in earlier eras - a "form and function" thing - so work would be needed there.

I can see potential for the idea but doesn't really add much as currently expressed and is much too modern warfare orientated - maybe rename it modern tactics infobox? Perhaps a bigger issue is the poor quality of our stock of tactics articles - quite a few are stubs and basic starts which would struggle to support an info box anyway. Monstrelet (talk) 11:38, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Am not sure the infobox is hugely helpful. Obviously doctrine and tactics are bery under-served areas on Wikipedia and we need more content in these areas. But there is a serious risk that the 'type' and 'strategy' fields of this template will drift into OR and it strikes me that the 'notable uses' would be difficult to populate properly for most subjects. I'm asking myself the question - would this template help me write the article Line of Battle or Barrage (artillery)? - and not really getting an answer in the positive. Which isn't the same as saying the template should be deleted. Has anyone asked User:Hutcher what he had in mind? The Land (talk) 19:58, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I've not worked on any articles on tactics, but I don't see this infobox being very useful. There's too much uncertainty surrounding pretty much each field and it reminds me of musician infoboxes where you have well-intentioned editors adding new "genres" or "associated acts" without discussing it on the talk page and the whole thing becomes a sprawling mess that needs to be pruned regularly. Even if it was renamed to specifically relate to modern warfare, I'm still not convinced. Sometimes infoboxes just aren't necessary and I think this is one of those occasions. Couldn't the lead explain the uses of a tactic adequately without an infobox? Monstrelet, you says you see some potential; how do you envisage the ideal infoobx for this topic looking? Nev1 (talk) 20:07, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I'd see the potential as being the same as any infobox - to present a summary of key article information in a common format as an aid to the reader. If we chose the information sensibly - arm of service, timespan, geography, related tactics (maybe), famous example(s)- and clearly limited ourselves to the tactical or operational, it may have some value. However, I'm neutral on whether we actually need it and, as I've said, it's value would be limited as written in the pre-modern era.Monstrelet (talk) 07:52, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm going the same way as the comments above. I think there may be a limited use for the infobox in some modern warfare articles, but for most of military history it's not applicable and even where it is many (if not most in my experience) sources simply don't write in those terms about the battles they describe. The risk of OR is high. Looking at the articles where it's been transcluded (Reconnaissance, Raid (military), Charge (warfare)), I think I can see what the creator had in mind, but even in these there are issues. For example, is reconnaissance really only applicable to the modern era and takes place only by air? Scouts were used in the Battle of Megiddo (15th century BC). This may be a limitation of the format rather than the idea, but I think the infobox as it currently stands causes more problems than it solves. EyeSerene^talk 12:33, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

I've looked at the examples and I'm now depressed. The raid one is an example of just how poor some of our tactics articles can be, the charge one an expanded list and the recon one thinks that no-one did this stuff before the 20th. century. The info box on the raid one contradicts the article. The image on the raid infobox seems atypical. Deep breaths. I am still neutral on this but some of these examples show we have a way to go if we are to get it right. On the plus side, I tagged the Recon article for the project and upped the assessment on the charge, so not all wasted. Monstrelet (talk) 19:24, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

I didn't think of doing that - nice job. You're right that the articles need a fair amount of work. I assume it's the specialised nature of the subjects/sources that's the reason they are the way they are - they're the sort of subject that few authors seem to address in detail in their own right, rather than as part of a bigger picture. However, there seem to be a few good books on Amazon so maybe I'll treat myself in the near future :) EyeSerene^talk 13:12, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm not a coord, but I'd liek to weigh in: I don't think this infobox is a good idea. It's really subjective and not flexible enough for broad use. I think it invites OR, and indeed, many of the fields practictly have to be POV to be filled. Talking about tactics and strategy is really not neat enough to fit into a specific category like that, and even if used right, I don't think they add much to the article. bahamut0013^words_deeds 15:33, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

After a short diversion to improve the Raid (military) article, I undertook a quick read through the Military tactics category to get an overview of the problem. I'll briefly report back here but any corrective action might require discussion elsewhere e.g. the main page

• The category tree is a bit of a mess and needs some work. A lot of this is routine - articles placed in the head category rather than the sub-category. There is a large category on suicide bombing, much of which is a list of incident-specific articles, and a high level category on Encirclements of 1941 which is a list of battles in 1941, so shouldn't really be there. It may be worth considering a History of tactics high level category to bring together some of the period specific overviews. I don't know whether there is a categorisation task force, but if there is, there attention could be directed to this.
• There is a struggle to differentiate between battlefield tactics and grand tactical/operational - both valid but perhaps this could be a high level category split. Some articles are actually IMO strategic (e.g. Scorched earth.
• Too many articles on broad topics purely deal with one military's doctrine (usually but not always the US military)
• Article structure can be quite random. Possibly, some sort of guidance about what should go into a tactical article should be attempted, even something as simple as an annotated bullet list.

Sorry if this hijacks this thread but it does connect. If needs be, edit it out into a thread of its own. Thanks Monstrelet (talk) 11:09, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

You're absolutely right - the need for one or more high-level articles is clear. These will be very difficult to write though, mainly due to finding sources that actually deal with the subjects. There are many contradictions and complications that need careful handling. To take one example, the British didn't recognise "operational" as distinct from "strategic" and "tactical" until relatively recently so many British sources didn't either. This means an older source may regard an event as strategic whereas a modern one might regard the same event as operational - all a bit of a nightmare to explain and one that runs serious risk of WP:OR. Strategy starts off well enough but then gets bogged down and off topic. Military operation doesn't seem to be discussing quite the same thing as the operational level, and Tactic (method) is uncited, limited and seems to confuse tactical with operational goals. My personal preference would be for a single article that examines the whole gamut and defines what they are, with examples. Again though, sourcing will be the key. EyeSerene^talk 09:01, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Getting back to the original question for a moment, how should we proceed with the infobox? Do we try to modify it to be (more) useful, or simply nominate it for deletion? Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 10:26, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Nominate it for deletion I think Nick-D (talk) 10:28, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Agree with Nick. EyeSerene^talk 11:00, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

New Special Project - World War II?

I hope this is the right place to put this down.

Having returned to Wikipedia last month, I have been and creating articles, many of which are related to World War II. Overall I think the coverage of World War II is far from what it should be. At the moment over 91% of the articles are stub or start articles. Some articles holding FA status no longer meet criteria, like 3rd Kharkov. The OMT special project has produced a few articles falling in the scope of the project, but clearly more is needed to cover the core topics of World War II. This concerns the campaigns, the weapons and the people.

So the idea is to set up a Special Project, in some ways analogous to the Great War project, which would to improve the core topics of World War II. More details to follow...D2306 (talk) 23:07, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Generally speaking, our new approach is going to be to use the incubator for such ideas first; once the incubator group has gathered enough interest and has steady participation, we can transform it into a full-blown special project in its own right. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 23:14, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Will start oneD2306 (talk) 00:42, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

WW2 AnniversaryD2306 (talk) 01:51, 5 January 2011 (UTC)