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Handbook

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Please see the Academy course for coordinators for general information and advice.

Coordinator tasks

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These tasks should be done as often as needed—ideally, on a daily basis.
Assessment
  • Monitor the daily assessment log. The main things to look for:
    • Articles being removed. This is usually legitimate (due to merges or non-military articles getting untagged), but is sometimes due to vandalism or broken template code.
    • Articles being moved to "GA-Class" and higher quality. These ratings need to correspond to the article's status in the GA and FA lists or the A-Class project review.
  • Deal with any new assessment requests and the backlog of unassessed articles.
A-Class review
  • For each ongoing A-Class review:
    1. Determine whether the review needs to be closed and archived, per the criteria here.
    2. If a review has been open for a month without at least three editors commenting, leave a reminder note on the main project talk page, using the following boilerplate: {{subst:Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators/Toolbox/A-Class review alert|Name of article}} ~~~~
  • If an article has been put up for A-Class review in the past and you receive a request for assistance per WP:MHR for a fresh review, follow the procedure below for creating an A-Class review or reappraisal. This will make way for the normal A-Class review initiation process, so advise the nominator to initiate per the instructions.
Quarterly Reviewing Awards
Quarterly Reviewing Awards - manual process
  • At the end of each quarter, all editors that complete at least one A-Class review receive a Milhist reviewing award. Create a new thread on the Coordinators' talk page and paste the following boilerplate into the body, leaving the subject line empty:{{subst:MILHIST Quarterly Reviewing Table}}. Save the thread, reopen it and change the months and year in the subject line and table, add a comment under the table, sign and save the thread again. Then tally the qualifying reviews:
    1. Tally A-Class Reviews. As only those editors who complete at least one Milhist A-Class review receive an award, start by tallying them. Go to [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/201X]] (inserting the correct year) and click on the links to check all the A-Class articles that were promoted, failed, kept or demoted in the relevant quarter. Tally the number of articles reviewed by each editor. One suggested method is to use a simple pen-and-paper tally of usernames as you scroll through the relevant archive; another is to save the relevant reviews into a word processor and delete all content except the usernames of the reviewers, then tally from there. Regardless of which method is chosen, it can be time consuming so you may need to do it over several sessions. Once done, add each editor who completed an A-Class review to the User column of the Quarterly Reviewing Table, and add one point to the ACR column for each article that editor reviewed.
    2. Tally Good Article Reviews. Methods are to go to Wikipedia:Good articles/Warfare revision history for the quarter and tally the articles added by each editor listed in the Quarterly Reviewing Table or to use the Pages Created tool to isolate GA nomination pages created by a specific user. Add one point to the GA column for each MilHist article that those editors reviewed. Note that the accuracy of this method relies upon reviewers listing GAs per instructions.
    3. Tally Peer Reviews. Go to Wikipedia:Peer review/Archive and click on the links to open the archive pages for the relevant quarter. Check the talk page of each article to determine whether it falls under MilHist. For each article that does, check whether it was reviewed by an editor listed in the Quarterly Reviewing Table. If so, add one point to the PR column for each MilHist article that editor reviewed.
    4. Tally Featured Article Reviews. Go to Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Featured_log and Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Archived_nominations, and click on the links to open the archive of review pages for the relevant quarter. Check the talk page of each article to determine whether it falls under MilHist. For each article that does, check whether it was reviewed by an editor listed in the Quarterly Reviewing Table. If so, add one point to the FAC column for each MilHist article that editor reviewed.
  • Tally the total number of points for each editor and add them to the Total column of the Quarterly Reviewing Table.
  • Award all reviewers in accordance with the following schedule (the award templates are all available under "Military history awards" below):
    1. 15+ points – the WikiChevrons
    2. 8–14 points – the Content Review Medal of Merit (Military history)
    3. 4–7 points – the Milhist reviewing award (2 stripes)
    4. 1-3 points – the Milhist reviewing award (1 stripe)
  • Sign the Awarded column of the Quarterly Reviewing Table for each editor to signify that the award has been presented.

Quarterly reviewing awards are posted on the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Awards page by the MilHistBot. As with other awards, change the status from "nominated" to "approved" to approve the award.

Member affairs
Miscellaneous

How to...

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Boilerplate and templates

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Open tasks

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Topics for future discussion

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  • Collaboration with galleries, libraries, archives, museums, universities, and various other institutions (e.g. Wikipedia:GLAM/NMM)
  • Article improvement drives
  • Notability guideline for battles
  • Naming convention guideline for foreign military ranks
  • Using the "Results" field in infoboxes
  • How far milhist's scope should include 'military fiction' (possible solution, see scope of Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels/Military fiction task force)
  • Encouraging member participation in the various review processes (peer, GAN, ACR etc)
  • Recruiting new members (see User:The ed17/MILHIST, etc.)
  • Improving/maintaining popular pages
  • Motivating improvement from Stub to B-Class
  • Enabling editors to improve articles beyond B-Class (possibly utilising logistics dept, also see WP:FAT for related ideas)
  • Helping new members (possibly involving improving/deprecating welcome template; writing Academy course)
  • Recruiting copy-editors to help during ACR
  • Recruiting editors from external forums/groups/etc.
  • Simplifying ACR instructions (old discussion)

Missing academy articles

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Open award nominations

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Nominations for awards are made and voted on by coordinators at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_history/Awards. An A-Class Medal nomination needs at least two coordinators' votes to succeed, and the Chevrons with Oak Leaves a majority of coordinators' votes. All coordinators are requested to review the following:

ACRs for closure

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All A-Class reviews are eligible for closure 28 days after they were opened, or 5 days if there is a clear consensus for either promotion or non-promotion, by any uninvolved coordinator. The closing coordinator should check the review page carefully to ensure that there are three general supports and supports (or passes) for both the image and the source reviews, and that there are no outstanding points to be addressed. A guide to manually closing A-Class reviews is available, but normally the closing coordinator just needs to change A-Class=current in the {{WPMILHIST}} banner to A-Class=pass or A-Class=fail.

@Matarisvan:. I agree that this is unlikely to get the needed supports. Two other coordinators looked at it, commented and ultimately did not support. I think the problem is the one raised by Hog Farm, that the person who is the subject of the article is not notable for his military service, per note 3 to area of focus number 2: "Military service does not in and of itself place an individual within the scope of the project—particularly in the case of service in modern militaries. To qualify them, an individual's military service must have been somehow noteworthy or have contributed—directly or indirectly—to their notability." Donner60 (talk) 01:32, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Donner60, archiving this one since we have a quorum of 4 coords out of 7. Matarisvan (talk) 17:33, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Miyoshi Nagayoshi has no supports and has been open for 4 months now. Seeking consensus to fail this nom. Matarisvan (talk) 18:07, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I think this is unlikely to get reviewed because almost all of the sources are in Japanese. The only English source that can be viewed as an online excerpt has only a few pages of information about Nagayoshi. The other two English language sources are books that few people are likely to own. The books may not provide a comprehensive look at the subject even if some potential reviewers own them. One seems to be a general type of Japanese military history overview; the other seems to deal mostly with religion. It is also a long article which could discourage reviewers, especially if unfamiliar with the subject. I don't know if there is any guideline about how long a request should go unnoticed before it ought to be failed. Maybe others would have some knowledge or experience with this. Otherwise, if no one else responds, I suggest that you wait until the request is at least six months old. After that much time with no activity, I think there is less likelihood that a fail, even with good reason, would be questioned as premature. Donner60 (talk) 01:55, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    The article looks fine though. Put out a request for help at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Japan. (Oddly, the nom does not claim to be able to read Japanese.) Hawkeye7 (discuss) 02:38, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Hawkeye7 and @Donner60, I think we should wait a week for further reviews, that is till the 16th, and then archive this ACR. It has already been open for 5 months now and if any reviews were going to come, they would have. Matarisvan (talk) 18:08, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I think we mainly just need somebody who can read Japanese to check over the sourcing etc. to make sure there aren't non-starter issues and then it can proceed better. I haven't reviewed this one because I have no way of knowing if there are major issues hidden below the surface level or not, and I imagine others are in the same boat. Hog Farm Talk 18:19, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    A plea to Wikipedia:WikiProject Japan, perhaps? Pickersgill-Cunliffe (talk) 18:34, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Hawkeye7 has already posted a request for review there. No affirmative responses so far. Matarisvan (talk) 18:44, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Should this assessment be archived now? There have been no reviews forthcoming from our project and from WikiProject Japan too. Also, the article needs much work on grammar and sourcing, and I'm willing to work on a peer review with the nominator to improve it. Matarisvan (talk) 12:28, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

MILHIST CCI cases

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The following open CCI cases contain MILHIST articles (some usernames are omitted from the case titles because they are real names):

  1. Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/20130819
  2. Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Degen Earthfast
  3. Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/America789
  4. Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Buster40004
  5. Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/$1LENCE D00600D
  6. Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Kprtqrf06
  7. Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Mztourist
  8. Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/20190125
  9. Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/20210418
  10. Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Bluecountrymutt
  11. Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/DaWulf2013
  12. Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/DeltaSquad833
  13. Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/20230508

Discussion

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Suggestions

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@WP:MILHIST coordinators: Welcome to another year of coordinating! While I'm not looking to start anything immediately I want to raise the idea of some kind of drive or event during this term. Of our five major milestones only one remains; it might be nice to have a drive with the goal of furthering that? Pickersgill-Cunliffe (talk) 20:27, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I had been thinking along those lines. I am not sure how the 83.5% figure was arrived at. There are 227,416 articles in the project rated FA, A, GA, B, C, Start and Stub (ie excluding 5,708 lists and 90,811 templates, redirects, categories etc.) To get from 83.5 to 100.0 we need to lift the number of B class articles by about 20% ie 4,000 articles. Unlike the other goals, this one is a moving target.
So how would we go about doing that?
  • One reservoir is the 64,240 C class articles. Some of them may already qualify as B-class, due to the MilHistBot being uncertain about the referencing. For example: 1st Dorsetshire Artillery Volunteers. Others (more common), like 1st Gloucestershire Engineer Volunteer Corps only need a couple of extra references. Most though, need a lot of work. Some are completely unreferenced. We could go through selecting articles that only need a bit of work.
  • We could also look at the stubs with a view to deleting or merging some. For example, Talk:1st Military District (Australia) contains a 2016 discussion of merging the Australian military districts into one article which was never performed.
Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:20, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Good ideas. Many years ago the rogue and banned editor Wild Wolf rated articles start and perhaps occasionally C at random without ever looking at them. He did several in a minute so coordinators and administrators warned him more than once before he was banned. He was also using sockpuppets. I stopped asking for reviews at that time although I am quite sure some of my articles then and later were B class. If I could find a little extra time, I think it would take little work for me to bring them up to B from later deterioration. Those are just a small number of the many that could be improved. I would hope that many editors would respond because many of these articles are on obscure topics with hard to find references. I doubt that I, for one, have or can easily find references for them if the problem is citation deficiency. Donner60 (talk) 22:08, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly. Editors would have trouble finding references in subject areas in which they are unfamiliar, but more easily in subject areas within their field of expertise. So the approach I would suggest one of triage, where we work though the C class articles, discarding those requiring a lot of work, and categorising the rest according to topic area, so participating editors could take them on and correct them. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:03, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Create a pre-arranged list of not-too-terrible C-class articles, and put them up in a drive for improvement? Coords could then be in charge of re-rating/checking for B-class once an editor has signified that the article has been actioned. Barnstars and leader boards as appropriate? Pickersgill-Cunliffe (talk) 19:17, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This sounds like a good idea to me. Hog Farm Talk 19:22, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think the clearest way to organise the list would be with the task force topics. The question would be whether sections be created for all the task forces (there are a lot!) or only for one type of them? Pickersgill-Cunliffe (talk) 15:46, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
How many of the task forces are still functionally used? I imagine it's only a fraction of the total ones. Hog Farm Talk 19:49, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi coordinators, congrats to all elected in this tranche. I have not been that active recently (and am not currently a coord) but thought I'd chime in on this. I did do a bit of work monitoring our progress against this target in 2018-2019 (User:Dumelow/MILHIST B-class assessment stats); when we held a number of drives to try to clear the unassessed article backlog. This helped to slowly chip away at the target, improving it from 72.1% in February 2018 to 76.9% by October 2019. The November 2019 introduction of Milhistbot to automatically assess against the B-class criteria helped greatly (adding 1,500 new B-class articles) and led to a jump to 82.8% (we are currently at 83.4%). I agree that it would be absolutely great to achieve this target and help to demonstrate the project is committed to bringing a good chunk of articles to a basic decent standard as well as the perhaps more visible successes achieved at GA and FA. More than happy to help out assessing articles and chipping in with improvements if we can get a drive going. One area I was monitoring at the time of the last push was Category:Military history articles needing attention only to supporting materials which currently holds around 1,300 articles. A good portion of these, in theory, need only an image or infobox to achieve the B-class standard - Dumelow (talk) 15:59, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That would, in my opinion, be a fantastic place to start. Pickersgill-Cunliffe (talk) 16:20, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, chiming in late here. The ideas advanced above, namely the listing of C-class articles for improvement to B-class, and working on the articles requiring supporting materials, sound great to me. Also, working on articles which need work on article structure and grammar could be done concurrently; those requiring more citations or coverage could be done later if needed. Matarisvan (talk) 16:44, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I had the MilHistBot provide me a list of some of the low hanging fruit. It suggested articles like:
Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:42, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What kind of parameter are you using for that? Pickersgill-Cunliffe (talk) 19:59, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I asked it to locate C-class articles that are fully or nearly fully referenced. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 10:09, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I ran off another short list here. The number in parentheses is the number of references that the Bot thinks are lacking. Plenty more where these came from, but most could be uplifted to B-class with a little effort. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:36, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In addition to, if you are looking for specific focal areas, you could have a look at the various Task Forces and their respective WikiWork parameters: Cumulative WikiWork (ω) and Relative WikiWork (Ω). For example, the United States military history task force indicated values of ω=302,399 and Ω=4.541. This task force alone accounts for approx. 28% of all military history articles while only 11.2% are B-class or higher. It would require improving approx. 2,500 articles within the United States military history task force to push this task force north of the 15% threshold. Food for thought. Cheers MisterBee1966 (talk) 06:58, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

ACR to-do list for October 2024

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@WP:MILHIST coordinators: I am a newly elected coord for WPMH. I'm taking the initiative to add this topic since the ACR to-do list for July 2024 above has been exhausted, it has only one task remaining, which I will cover below. Would be great to hear from other coords. Please feel to delete this introductory text once all other coords have read it.

Matarisvan (talk) 16:59, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

 You are invited to join the discussion at WP:HD § Problems moving an article due to a redirect. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:38, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps a MILHIST coordinator could take a look at this question posted at the Help Desk and provide some advice to the OP. In addition to the naming issue, there might also be a CONTENTFORK issue since most of the content in User:Mr.Lovecraft/Construction site beta has the feel of stuff that might already be covered in existing Wikipedia articles about either the US Army itself or World War II. If that's the case, maybe it would be better to explain this to the OP sooner than later and spare them the surprise of having this moved to the mainspace only to see it subsequently merged, redirected, etc. by someone else. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:45, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I see that the author has moved this to the article title United States Army in World War II. I think the title is misleading. While much of the material is covered and I have other criticisms, a problem that I see initially is that this article is really only about the organization of the United States Army in World War II. It would be more accurate to add the words "Organization of the" to the title if it is to be retained in its current form and not distract readers from the comprehensive article on Military history of the United States during World War II. Ping other coordinators for specific notice if they wish to comment here or on discussion page. I will add my comment there. @WP:MILHIST coordinators: Donner60 (talk) 00:37, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Donner60: Thanks for taking a look at this. The HD discussion was archived and can now be found at Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2024 October 7#Problems moving an article due to a redirect. The OP responded to your post, but I'm not sure they understood what you were trying to say. The article they created can now be found at United States Army during World War II. Perhaps Talk:United States Army during World War II is now the best place for you or any other members of MILHIST to comment on it or assess it. -- Marchjuly (talk) 21:58, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The name is like those of other countries, eg Australian Army during World War II, British Army during the Second World War. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:26, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Marchjuly and Hawkeye7: I have added a see also section to this article with Military history of the United States during World War II, and included in the edit summary "other articles about nation's armies in World War II are more comprehensive, this see also should direct interested readers to additional information." I think that should satisfy my concern and not leave readers without a link and article providing information other than just the organization. Donner60 (talk) 01:55, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

November Bugle

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I'm going to be travelling without Wikipedia access for the next month or so. Could one or two people please volunteer to help Ian with the next edition of the Bugle? I usually handle the book reviews, ACR blurbs and featured pictures. Thanks, Nick-D (talk) 00:55, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Happy to help if given a nudge closer to publishing. Am I right in saying Adam Cuerden has assisted with the pictures before? Pickersgill-Cunliffe (talk) 10:38, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is the October issue we are talking about? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 02:11, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Quality content drive?

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Question: Would there be any interest here is running a project backlog drive with the expressed goal of working through our quality content? We've had that "prior to 2016 it needs to be looked" at disclaimer, but not a lot of action on it, and I get the sense other project are having the same issue(s). If we could find enough support in our project for a drive that'd be great, but I'm thinking with so many articles in need of work we'll need to do some outreach to cover our bases. At a minimum, WP:GOCE should be contacted, but if there's interest here then perhaps we can count on some interest across the spectrum. If it should really blow up, I'd be prepared to give it a proper code name and split up the work into task forces for more manageable bytes. What do you think? TomStar81 (Talk) 11:28, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

An initial question: Would this be along the lines suggested by Pickersgill-Cunliffe in the "Suggestions" topic above or a separate drive? If two different types of drives are contemplated, I think they would need to be spaced some months apart to generate enough enthusiasm to make some real progress. Donner60 (talk) 03:32, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, this'd be an independent drive with the objective of addressing articles listed at Wikipedia:Unreviewed featured articles/2020. This list has appeared for a few years in our news section with the byline "Editors are advised that Featured Articles promoted before 2016 are in need of review, if you had an article promoted to Featured status on or before 2016 please check and update your article before they are listed at FAR/C.". Ostensibly, the goal would be to coordinate efforts just within the existing batch there to clear our articles out of the list - although if the rest of the community (biography project, history project, women project, etc) were interested we could consider initiating a Wikipedia wide drive. Right now, I'm just trying to suss out if there is any interest in this particular avenue of work, or if the community wants to rally around a different group of articles to work on at the moment. TomStar81 (Talk) 06:58, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I do not see the byline under the News & Open Tasks tab or in the Bugle. I looked more closely and see it under the Discussion tab and in the template {{</nowiki>WPMILHIST Announcements<nowiki>}. Some members of the project know about this drive because I note contributions to/reviews by several current and former coordinators and experienced users in recent years but perhaps the byline about it could be inserted on the News & Open Tasks page or in the Bugle News section or both for greater exposure. Donner60 (talk) 07:06, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Military historian and newcomer of the year election voting

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@WP:MILHIST coordinators: When I documented the procedure for this last year, I said that voting was between 1 and 30 December but forgot to specify the nomination period. Would two weeks be sufficient? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:36, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, that's enough time. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 03:14, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. Donner60 (talk) 03:50, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Okay. I have updated the instructions accordingly. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 05:10, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]