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Task Force categories

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I hate to ask it at this point, but could we add a "Medical" task force--general topics to our lists? We are getting a lot of hospitals, doctors, nurses, etc., (especially since a large group of early nurses have just been dumped in) and the doctors/nurses in particular are just going into that nebulous group as "Biography" but it would be better to put them under Medical. auntieruth (talk) 18:05, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

G'day, Ruth, not sure about this one, to be honest. I think it might be too narrow, to be honest, and probably duplicates other lines of operation. The people can becovered by national and biographies task forces, while the hospitals can also be covered by national and maybe specific conflict task forces. That said, the topic of task forces might need some consideration and if there is a broad consensus, perhaps we could consider that one. Coincidentally, I was wondering about another one yesterday...I wonder about expanding "Films" to "Films, video games and fictional works", or something similar. Not that the topic interests me much, as I'm not much of a fan of any of these things, but I have noticed a gap while adding task forces. Thoughts? AustralianRupert (talk) 23:01, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
Equally, I wonder about potentially expanding the British task force (which just covers England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) to include the Republic of Ireland...maybe it could be called the "British and Irish task force" or some other all encompassing name (if there is one). There are other possibilities for merging too, for instance Portuguese topics potentially could be dealt with maybe under a "Spanish and Portuguese task force", while a home could potentially be found for Belgian topics by grouping it with one of the other European task forces...perhaps the Dutch task force...? Thoughts? AustralianRupert (talk) 23:45, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
A couple of thoughts:
  • Films is a joint task force with WikiProject Films, with a hybrid assessment tracking system (i.e. the task force's assessment categories are identically generated based on an assessment in either the MILHIST project tag or the Films project tag). Because of this, I don't think it would be practical to change the scope to include material that's not covered by WikiProject Films. Having said that, my impression is that most fictional works will be covered by other topical or national task forces in any case; do we have a significant number of fictional topics with no task force coverage at all?
  • Belgium could indeed be rolled in with the Dutch task force (perhaps renamed to "Low Countries military history"?), given how much shared history exists in this case.
  • Spain and Portugal could potentially be combined (into "Iberian military history"?), but I would be a little hesitant to do so, given how distinct the two countries' respective military histories were much of the time. Other than the two countries being next to each other, I'm not sure that there is much shared between someone working on Spanish military activities and Portuguese military activities.
  • Adding Ireland to the British task force seems like a faux pas, politically speaking. Having said that, are there a significant number of Irish military history topics that aren't already covered by the British task force (either because they involved conflicts with the British, or because they cover the period when Ireland was part of the UK)?
Kirill Lokshin (talk) 00:04, 16 October 2015 (UTC)
  • G'day Kirill, thanks for the comments. Yes, I've mainly been using national task forces or conflict specific ones for fiction etc. I like the idea of the "Low Countries military history task force" and was thinking the same. Re Spain and Portugal, agreed...I guess I'm really just thinking geographically/regionally rather than shared histories. Same re Britain and Ireland. I guess my concern with just covering Irish topics in a British task force, is that it could be seen to support a point of view. I'd argue that by putting Ireland in the task force's name, it gives it equal weight. See for instance the mark up used here, where maybe someone was trying to make a point: Talk:Irish Army. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 03:10, 16 October 2015 (UTC)
  • That would be why I have repeatedly suggested organizing continental based task forces to help cover the gaps such as they were. Having task forces for Africa, Asia, North America, South America, Europe, Oceania, and Antarctica ensures that all nations and regions are theoretically covered by the project. If we followed up with regional task forces (ie Asia Minor, Middle East, Central American, etc) then we could disband a number of our nation-specific task forces and reactive them as components in the larger continent/region scheme, which would in theory allow us to reorganize the project's task forces into larger bites that would arguably increase editor participation while lowering the number of task forces that through editorial hemorrhaging now serve as a little more than task forces in being such as it were. Reorganizing in this fashion would also help the coordinators somewhat in that fewer task forces would lend the perception that the project's coordinators are making efforts to keep the project alive by combining or disbanding sections that no longer serve the project's best interests. If we could reorganize the national task forces in this way we would be in a position to gauge how open the community as a whole is to further reorganizations of this nature, which could allow us to fiddle with the other two tiers of task forces to see if we could reorganize them to better cover the military history fields as a whole. Any discussion of this nature, however, depends on both coordinator support and community support, and as you may have guessed from the above post I've made this suggestion before only to have it turned down as a whole, so the coordinators as a body haven't thought the idea useful enough to move forward with previously, so I don't know if anyone else would like to seriously discuss the matter with me and/or the other coordinators again. TomStar81 (Talk) 03:10, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
  • I actually like what Tom is saying, for a lot of reasons. The "task forces" have long ago become a way of "organising" our project rather than an actual area of effort with dedicated members etc. I think it is time to accept this, and instead make our "task forces" about universal coverage rather than a grouping of interested editors. Continental "taskforces" (we'd have to come up with something other than "taskforces" to cover this, as the term implies a group of people working on it) is a great idea IMHO, with regional "taskforces" (again, with another name) beneath them. It helps to divide our work up in a sensible geographical way, so that people that are motivated in a particular geographical respect can focus in, yet doesn't detract from temporal approaches (ie WWI, WWII, etc), or specialisation approaches (AFVs, fortifications, etc). Cheers, Peacemaker67 (crack... thump) 09:25, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
  • I'd retain "task force" as that is what the greater whole of Wikipedia calls such sub-sections in an established WikiProject, although for the sake of creativity I'd favor using "Joint Task Force" for the description so we could better play-up the jointly run pages with Wikiprojects that also have a claim to existing military articles - for example, the theoretical "North American Joint Task Force" could be see an a collective effort to run Military history pages with the assistance of WP:USA, WP:CANADA, WP:MEXICO, and WP:GREENLAND, and since those groups could now coordinate off one specific JTF page, which would make efforts to notify and involve said projects in collaborative efforts that much easier. Note that if this is a success, we can look at the other two task force categories and see about reorganizing them as well (if need be). TomStar81 (Talk) 10:21, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
  • So, I have a question: what is it that we actually want task forces to do (or be)? If the main value of one (to the project, and to participating editors) is for categorization of articles, then I'm not sure that broader categories are going to be more useful than narrower ones. Consider, for example, our hypothetical North American task force:
    • Individual editors are, I suspect, unlikely to think of themselves as "North American military historians"; if they have a geographic interest at all, it's probably more likely to be based on national boundaries (e.g. "I want to write about the Canadian military", "I have a book about US aircraft", etc.), simply because that's the way both actual militaries and typical military historiography is structured. If we roll these topics into one bundle, then someone looking for articles to edit about the Canadian military will need to wade through categories full of US military articles to find what they're interested in, which seems like it would make the task force less useful to them.
    • Partner projects will, as a matter of principle, only care about articles that are in their scopes. WikiProject Canada, for example, might be very interested to get statistics/worklists/etc. for articles about Canadian military topics; they won't, however, care about the same for articles about Mexican military topics. If we can only provide this information on a continental level, then I'm not sure any of the national WikiProjects would have any reason to participate in this arrangement.
    • As a practical matter, in cases where dual-tagging arrangements with national WikiProjects already exist (e.g. either the MILHIST tag or US tag will categorize articles into the US task force), we don't have any effective way to stop the other project from continuing tagging; even if we try to roll the task force up into a combined North American task force on our side, the other project will still be generating the substantive pieces of the national task force.
  • If our main goal is to ensure that we have 100% article coverage by "geographic" task forces, while at the same time providing a categorization that will be useful to individual editors and attractive to potential partner projects, I would argue that we'll get more value by adding more narrowly scoped task forces that line up with the scopes used by these partner projects and their associated militaries (e.g. having an Argentinian military history task force that can be run in partnership with WikiProject Argentina and can work with Argentinian military historians and institutions, versus having a South American military history task force that doesn't have a one-to-one relationship with an external project or military). Now, obviously, this would mean that we'd need to figure out some way to have a large number of narrow task forces without unduly increasing overhead; my impression is that the current per-task force level of effort on our part is quite minimal, and that this consequently shouldn't be a show-stopper, but perhaps others have a different view on this.
  • On a slightly different note, I would suggest that we should consider how we can make task forces more useful to individual editors, regardless of how they're structured. At the moment, aside from the assessment statistics and the "needing attention" categories generated from the assessment checklists, I don't think there's much that the typical task force offers; the other portions are either unmaintained (in the case of, e.g. the open task lists) or not really used (in the case of, e.g. the participant lists). Are there things that we can do (via structural changes, more automation, better templates, etc.) that would actually make these task forces more "usable"? Kirill Lokshin (talk) 13:44, 17 October 2015 (UTC)
  • Perhaps then the best way forward would be to continue to discuss this here and add a special report tab to the upcoming Bugle edition soliciting input from the community on the task forces. Ultimately, any attempt to reorganize the task forces has to be done with community consent, so we're gonna need to include them in any reorganization attempt. As for the narrow scoped task forces: to adequately cover all those bases we'd need task forces for every country that operates some sort of military, and that could get exhaustive for us since the world has something like 200 nations, from superpowers all the way down to micro-nations. Admittedly we wouldn't need to have task forces for every nation since some nations are military-less, but there are a decent number out there that have some sort of military presence. From this point of view then a continental and region based set up allows us to cover all the nations on earth with a vastly reduced number of task forces for overhead. We can still keep nation specific task forces if the community thinks that the national task force in question is warranted, and we would still be in a position to create new nation specific task forces if the community wants. Otherwise, the continental/regional based task forces could be used as a sign of good faith that we do work to cover the military forces of every nation, even if the nation in question isn't specifically named. TomStar81 (Talk) 07:59, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
  • G'day, Tom, yes, I agree totally regarding community engagement. I wonder if the task forces could be made more robust by having sortable sub categories. I don't know if this is possible, but for instance taking the example mentioned above about Argentina, could we have say a "Latin America task force" (as we currently do), but have sub-categories within that which allows articles to be sorted by countries within that task force. That would allow someone who is only interested in the one country to get a list of articles in their field of interest that they can work on. Perhaps that solution would also work for Ruth's question about a medical task force. For instance, it could be a sub category/task force within say "Science and technology" (for example, or something else if that isn't appropriate). @Auntieruth55: Thoughts? AustralianRupert (talk) 01:38, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
  • This would actually be quite easy to implement by using the task force inheritance capability within the banner template (i.e. having the flag for one task force automatically sort the article into another task force, similar to how, for example, all ACW task force articles are automatically flagged for the US task force as well). In the case of countries versus continents/regions, we could have the larger task force inherit tags from its constituent smaller ones; thus, for example, all articles tagged as "Italian", "French", "German", etc. would automatically get a "European" tag. This also has the advantage of allowing continental/regional task forces to be quickly populated without the need for extensive manual re-tagging, since we'd be able to leverage the existing national tags. Kirill Lokshin (talk) 01:45, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
  • That's wonderful news. If it wouldn't take long to repopulate the categories with the new task force parameters then we could be in a position to quickly reorganize the task forces with minimal down time so as to avoid mass disruption for project participants if they agree to move forward with this. @Kirill Lokshin: For the sake of example, if we moved forward with idea and used the continental and regional areas laid out in the Regions of the World template as a base to estimate, how much would we already have in place to convert over to and how much would need to be created or reorganized to bring this idea to fruition? I know at a minimum using the template would mean we'd need a whole new oceans and seas task force, but that aside everything else seems to be present in the project hierarchy to some greater or lesser extent. @AustralianRupert: @Auntieruth55: Sort-able categories seem to be doable, and honestly that would likely be the best way to keep the majority of the editors we have with the project through the reorganization if it moves forward, and right now that is still an "if" since we still need to hammer out some details and obtain community approval for a massive reorganization. Moving forward with this does open up an interesting door though: As a possible unforeseen added bonus here, the abrupt absence of nation-specific task forces could allow editors with a particular interest in national or sub-national topics to re-organize themselves by either creating categories to allow them to be sub-sorted within a continental or regional task force, or alternatively by creating special projects with a national or sub-national goal much as the existing special projects have done (admittedly, with mixed results). That would give our task forces undisputed broad coverage while allowing editors with individual interests leeway to edit within a sub-category or to create special projects to pursue specific interests, potentially resulting in an increase in quality content. This also somewhat addresses Kirill's concern above about editors retaining their "national" contributor mindset as opposed to the theoretically reorganized system which would make them "continental" contributors. Do you think that the special project angle here would be worth looking at too, or should we just stick with the continents and regions at the moment? TomStar81 (Talk) 10:42, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
    • @TomStar81: Just to be clear, I'm not suggesting that we get rid of the national task forces and create continental/regional ones in their place by inheriting the tags. Rather, I'm suggesting that we retain the existing national task forces (as a baseline stance, which can potentially change on a case-by-case basis with regard to specific task forces) and also create continental/regional task forces by inheriting the tags. I think doing it the other way around (actively getting rid of the national task forces, but then inviting people to re-create them) would simply add complexity to the process and waste everyone's time. Kirill Lokshin (talk) 11:03, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
      • @Kirill Lokshin: So a moratorium of sorts on additional nation and region task forces, and what we have get folded into a theoretical continental/regional task force set up. I am getting that right? Have to be sure I'm singing the same tune here :) TomStar81 (Talk) 11:05, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
        • I think that's essentially right. We'd create the missing continental/regional task forces (automatically populating them from the national ones to the extent possible). The existing national task forces would be kept as they currently are for the time being (i.e. no en masse disbanding/restructuring/etc.), with the idea that we can come back and decide how to approach them at a later date, once we see whether/how the continental/regional task forces are working. Kirill Lokshin (talk) 11:12, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
          • G'day, yes I think this would be the best approach. Cheers, AustralianRupert (talk) 21:20, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
            • So, if I can just clarify with a specific example, under this system there would be a new "European" task force, which would inherit all the articles/lists currently in the existing national and regional (British, French, Italian, Balkan, Nordic etc) task forces (but those national and regional task forces would still be retained separately within the banner), and all the central European and Iberian articles/lists would then be able to be placed in the European task force instead of having no geographical task force coverage. If, down the track, we decided we should have an regional "Iberian" task force to cover Spain and Portugal, we could do that, as we could if we wanted a Portuguese one. Is that what is being proposed? Cheers, Peacemaker67 (crack... thump) 23:04, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
              • Correct. The idea here is to cover with continents those regions that are not currently covered by task forces or would be too small to justify a task force. This would also allow us to gauge how much support any new task force would have without creating new task forces that go under shortly after creation. In a perfect world (by which I mean the world according to Tom [lol]) the continental and regional task forces would stop the creation of and assume control over the existing national task forces so that we could eventually at some point down the line merge the national task forces into the regional/continental task forces, although I grant that there are merits to keeping the existing national task forces for the project. Going with continental and regional task forces would, as you have surmised, allow us the flexibility to cover the stuff we don't already have without prejudice to creating new regional task force. And as an added bonus, it would allow us to cover regions that currently slip through the geographical cracks without having to create new national task forces for every nation that has either a military or some sort of military-related history. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:22, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Outline and Draft of the proposal

@WP:MILHIST coordinators: Alright, after working on this for a while I've built a proposal and visual aids for the proposed Continental Task Force concept so that everyone can see it. I have it sitting in a sandbox of mine here. Keep in mind that this is still just a proposal, and as such we are free to discuss and revise the proposal, although for obvious reasons I'd prefer we discuss here so as to keep the discussion all in one place :) TomStar81 (Talk) 12:55, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

This looks good to me at first glance, although I haven't gone through the mock-up task force pages in detail (I assume they're all basically the same?). A couple of thoughts:
  • Tagging an article for the ARW and ACW task forces already automatically generates a US task force tag as well, so all of those articles will wind up in the North American task force by default.
  • If we're going by continents, then presumably the final task force should be "Australian" rather than "Oceanic"? However, that would be a step back from the inclusiveness of the current name, so we may want to think about a different hybrid name for it (e.g. "Australia, New Zealand, and Oceania" or something along those lines) to minimize the potential stepping-on-toes portion of this.
  • Are the Central American/Caribbean nations going to fold in to the North American task force? I've seen different definitions of the term that either include or exclude those areas.
Kirill Lokshin (talk) 15:59, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
I'm conscious that I haven't been involved in this discussion to date so up-front I'll state my in-principle support for the proposal to implement continental TFs and that the current proposal looks very good to me. I'm more than happy to support this reform (its been a while coming). That said I agree with Kirill's points above. IRT the "Oceania" name - that was the subject of considerable debate a while back when the Australian, New Zealand and South Pacific TFs were merged (essentially because out of these the Australian TF was only one that was still in regular use). As I recall "Oceania" was not chosen for a number of reasons, not least of which was because the majority of people that live here do not use that term. I hate to get down into the weeds by raising such a specific issue at this point about a proposal that is still being broadly formed but it is bound to come up at some point (especially as it seems ANZSP is the only national TF on the chopping block, unless I've misread the proposal). Am I right in my assumption that the current plan is to appropriate ANZSP and turn into the "Oceania" TF? I agree this probably makes sense given ANZSP already covers the bulk of the region, my only misgiving is about the name (realistically the only editors active in this area at the moment are a handful of Aussies and Kiwis). Anotherclown (talk) 21:53, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
G'day, Tom, overall it looks good to me. I'd suggest a couple of tweaks: the Central American and Caribbean nations could form their own t/f potentially? Same same with Middle East...I'd say. It covers a broad group of topics/countries anyway, so probably meets the intent if not the exact form of the continental system. Ottoman...well I think of that largely as a period task force rather than a regional one (its description says it only covers upto 1922, so we could recategorise it as a period task force and then cover successor states by either Europe, the Middle East or Asia...which one is more appropriate...probably lots of debate, but we might just have to make a D on this one). Also, I'd suggest just leaving the ANZSP task force as it is...nothing really to be achieved in changing its name IMO. It is already a super-continental task force anyway and covers a broad area already. Also, to echo AC's point...the term Oceania did not receive broad support when we discussed merging the Australia and New Zealand task forces way back when. Final question/confirmation RFI, we are intending to keep the constituent categories inside the larger parent so that say if an editor wants to locate Spanish articles within the European task force (or any other combination), they can? Anyway, thanks for your work. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 22:48, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
@AustralianRupert: I'm actually all for leaving the ANZSP task force as it, I reorganized it as "Oceania" only because recently that term has displaced Australia proper as the preferred term for the area in the US geography books. The bonus there is that it means 50% of our task forces already operate on the Continental task force scheme. @Anotherclown: Your assumption about this being the current plan is wrong, its actually the current proposal. The finalized version of this (when we get to that) will be the "Plan", and that will go out for the community to weigh in on. Also, you both have to concede some hilarity here that Anotherclown is worried about the Australian, New Zealand, and South Pacific task force, while AustralianRupert brings up the Caribbean region :) @Kirill Lokshin: As far as the mock ups go, they are essentially all clones of each other save but for the finer details (members, article statistics, etc). Those would need to imported to fill out the pages, although that should not be too hard to do. The tricky part here such as it were is going to be getting the new categories and template parameters established, which I suspect will be time consuming but not too tedious.
As far the regions are concerned, there are a handful that will automatically lend themselves to creation (in particular, the Middle East), but I think the best way forward here would be to gauge the community's feedback for the proposal and then move on the issue of Regions. My rational for that opinion is that when the community looks at the new continental scheme they will inevitably bring up regions as part of the discussion on whether or not they should be included, so we can get a feel for what the editorial base thinks its going to need. For some regions, like the Caribbean, I suspect the editorial base will push to have a regional task force created to cover the area, while other regions like the Arctic will be judged unneeded by the community. In a sense, you can already see that happening here as we discuss which regions are to be included/excluded from the new format, if it is adopted (and dare I say for the first time that it looks like it may be formally adopted this time :) TomStar81 (Talk) 00:50, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
Given ANZSP covers the same area as the proposed Oceania, I see the logic in making it a continental taskforce. I suggest we just use ANZSP as the name of the continental task force, rather than use a term that doesn't have wide acceptance. My understanding is that there will be some special cases: Turkey contains the traditional boundary between Asia and Europe (the Bosphorus) so is both European and Asian, Russia is also both European and Asian, and the Caribbean, Central American states and Greenland should all considered part of North America. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (crack... thump) 03:08, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
The topic of Greenland brings up an interesting question: how would we handle overseas possessions? In other words, would an article about military activity in Greenland be categorized under North America (because that's where it's located), under Europe (because it's technically part of Denmark), or both? Kirill Lokshin (talk) 03:34, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
I think they have to be handled geographically rather than politically, ie New Caledonia should be under ANZSP, not Europe. But it does raise a good question regarding the interaction between regional/national taskforces and continental ones, ie would Greenland be in the North American continental task force, but also in the Nordic (or a future Danish) taskforce? Would New Caledonia be in the ANZSP continental taskforce, but also in the French national one? Peacemaker67 (crack... thump) 03:53, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
@AustralianRupert: My understanding of the current proposal—and @TomStar81: can correct me if I'm misinterpreting—is that the existing national task forces (and their respective categories) would continue to exist once the continental task forces are created; indeed, a large portion of the categorization by continent would be accomplished by re-using the existing national task force tags in the banner, and having them automatically generate the corresponding continental task force tag as well. If this is the case, then there should be no problem with an editor navigating between continental and national categories; someone looking at the European category would be able to either go through all the articles in one pool, or go to the specific category for each national task force.
It may be worth, incidentally, clarifying the language in the proposal in this regard, since there are some sections that talk about "merging" national task forces (implying that they would no longer exist) and other sections that talk about retaining them and discussing them again in the future. Kirill Lokshin (talk) 03:29, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
Good point. Let me state unequivocally that the current plan for the national task forces is to operate jointly with the continental/regional scheme now under discussion. If this passes and is implemented then at some point in the distant future (12-24 months perhaps) we can look at the national task forces and see if there is any interest in disbanding the group in question. Right now, though, we are not going to do anything with our national task forces other than considering the possibility that they should be under a continental umbrella such as it were. Categories for the national would continue to exist for the vary reasons Kirill mentioned above. I'll update the proposal to reflect this. As for overseas possessions, I have an idea about that which piggybacks on the original point raised by auntieruth55 about adding task forces to cover other gaps. I just figured to start with the nations and regions first, since that found unexpected support. To a certain extent regional task forces can be created to cover the gaps here, but we would need to work out the finer details. TomStar81 (Talk) 04:21, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
I'm all for creating TF that are broad, and non-national, but rather descriptive. There are a lot of sensitive souls using Wikipedia, and even some relatively leathered souls might object to a TF that is labeled for the (currently) dominant political power in the region. I'd somewhat object to ANZSP over Oceania simply because I'd never get the order of initials right in assigning task forces. Australia, New Zealand, South Pacific? But that's just an old girl's confusion and I can teach my fingers. The plethora of states that might or might not it into the South Asian ( as opposed to South east Asian) would be interesting. And I suspect categorizing Greenland with North America or Europe would depend on the article. If the issue is about Greenland relations with Canada, or ? auntieruth (talk) 16:39, 9 November 2015 (UTC)
We can always put certain areas into two task forces in the event that the two areas overlap or are judged to overlap. There is a lot of that on site anyway, so a little more couldn't hurt. In the case of Greenland, I've always thought of it as part of Europe, though I suspect that other peopls in other areas think differently on the matter. And ANZSP can remember by virtue of Alphabetical Order: Australia, New Zealand, South Pacific (at least that is how I remember it, if you find something that works better for you then by all means use it :) TomStar81 (Talk) 17:42, 9 November 2015 (UTC)
Support I'm happy with the proposed continental scheme, with the proviso that we retain the current ANZSP nomenclature. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (crack... thump) 00:03, 10 November 2015 (UTC)
I concur with PM - this is a war stopper for me actually. I will not support a proposal that results in what has been one of our more successful TFs being renamed to something that is probably going to be unrecognizable to those that might actually want to contribute to it in the future. That said I do not wish to stand in the way of reform and this seems a logical one with some modifications, so I again offer my support (albeit qualified as stated). (Also permission granted for someone to hit me with a trout if I ever call it "the plan" again. BTW trout for you too Tom as you did same in your response to Kirill right after correcting me). Anotherclown (talk) 10:25, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

@WP:MILHIST coordinators: Impromptu straw poll here: do we go with Oceania or ANZSP? Sound off here so I can get a feel for which of the two options has the larger support base. Then I can update the proposal so we can move forward with the plan :) TomStar81 (Talk) 15:27, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

  • S:6 O:0 N:1 (with 12 coordinators total, majority and/or consensus will be a minimum 7 S/O in the poll)
  • With respect, I don't think so, Tom. The existing consensus for this taskforce name is ANZSP, so your proposal to change its name to Oceania would need a minimum 7 coords, and by my count we already have 6 in support of ANZSP and one neutral. So far as I am concerned, the existing consensus has just been confirmed. Peacemaker67 (crack... thump) 19:58, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

@WP:MILHIST coordinators: So, moving forward then, we have consensus to keep ANZSP as a task force. That leaves us with the other five proposed continental task forces. Are we in then in favor of adopting the proposal as it is currently, or does it need additional work? TomStar81 (Talk) 05:11, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Moving forward with the proposal

I'm off another back east trip for a funeral no one saw coming, so I'm taking a down day. Given that the rest of this week sees some pretty big holidays state side I'll put this up on Monday or Tuesday to solicit project feed back. We are a little short on the overall support here (7 would be majority consensus) but in the absence of any serious oppose commenters I will assume at this point that the rest are on board for the overhaul. TomStar81 (Talk) 02:57, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

  • @WP:MILHIST coordinators: I've moved the disccusion to the primary project talk page its here if anyone's interested. I have also added the discussion to the template. I am of the mind that we should send out a mass media message for this, but I can't remember how to do that and we still have no academy article to walk us through the process, so that will have to wait until someone else with a batter grasp of the tool steps up. Is there anything else we need to do with the given proposal? Any editing, trimming, add, etc that I forgot to include/exclude? TomStar81 (Talk) 03:08, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
Sounds fine to me as well. Off the top of my head, there are a number of different things that will need to happen to make this work:
  1. The Asian, European, North American, and South American task force pages need to be created.
  2. The {{WPMILHIST}} template needs to be updated to (a) include the new task forces and (b) pass through the national task force tags to them, as appropriate.
  3. The assessment categories for the new task forces need to be created.
  4. The announcement/task templates for the new task forces need to be (a) created and (b) configured to pull in the associated tasks from the national task force templates.
  5. The lists of task forces (on the main project page, in the navigational template, on the assessment page, etc.) need to be updated to include the new task forces.
Have I missed anything major?

TomStar81, I'm assuming you'll be creating the task force pages, and I can help with the template updates. Will anyone be around to help out with the category creation? Kirill Lokshin (talk) 02:39, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

I can get the pages, I'll set something up in various sandboxes first to make sure everything checks out, then we can move them out into the mainspace. Also, since it was my idea, I feel obliged to help out with the category creation. What do you need me/us to do? TomStar81 (Talk) 06:43, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
There are about 150 or so categories that will need to be created. I've put a full list (as well as instructions for how to create the actual category pages) at User:Kirill Lokshin/sandbox#MILHIST continental task forces. Kirill Lokshin (talk) 18:15, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
...So, funny story: I forgot that I work this week :) I'm gonna need to take this in smaller bites in order to get through it this week. For now I can archive the primary discussion, but I'll need to handle the sandbox and category creation a little a day for the rest of the week. Sorry about that. TomStar81 (Talk) 10:44, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
@WP:MILHIST coordinators: Sorry for the delay, I usually need a day to get over the soul crushing paperwork the Va has us filling in. Anyway, I've got a series of task force pages up in the sandbox for each proposed rebuild, they can be viewed at the following links: I think all the red links and the hypothetical categories in the sandbox pages are correct, although an extra set of eyes would be appreciated. If all this is correct then all thats left are the categories, which I can start on tomorrow. TomStar81 (Talk) 06:53, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
Looks nice MisterBee1966 (talk) 10:54, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
I made a minor tweak, but otherwise it looks fine to me. Thanks for doing this. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 11:31, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
I made a few tweaks. I'll be away on holidays from tomorrow, so can't help out with the rest of the framework, sorry. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (crack... thump) 11:33, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
@WP:MILHIST coordinators: If there are no additional comments, questions, concerns, or suggestions for the above continental task force designs then at some point today or tomorrow I'll move forward with the category creation and then move the sandbox continental pages out into the Milhist mainspace. Assuming this is a success, it should help us better reorganize to meet the demands of the project. TomStar81 (Talk) 11:37, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
@WP:MILHIST coordinators: Alright, I got the categories created and moved the userspace project pages tot he main space - with the exception of the South American task force (I forgot that we had one that was renamed and moved to the Latin American military history task force, and I don't want to mess anything up unnecessarily). If anyone would like to double check to make sure that everything got set up and/or moved correctly I would appreciate it :) TomStar81 (Talk) 09:55, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
Good job, Tom! There may be a glitch, as Category:Military history articles with no associated task force just jumped to 17,500 articles! From a quick look, many of those on the first page should have a taskforce already... What the &^%$ is up with that? Any ideas? Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 11:34, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
No idea, but I figured I would end up dividing by zero somewhere, so there has to be a cause and effect between the two. Now at least I know what it is. TomStar81 (Talk) 12:04, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
This is actually unrelated to the new task forces; the bulk of the articles in that category are redirects and disambiguation pages, for which we recently enabled the missing task force check in the template. Kirill Lokshin (talk) 17:38, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
Is there any way to run a script or bot (I really have no idea on these things) to categorise all the "category talk" pages as "Cat"? Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 20:53, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
The template already automatically sets the assessment class for anything outside of article space. Do you mean something to automatically assign task forces? I'm not sure there's any clean way to do that, since the appropriate task force(s) aren't necessarily going to be obvious from any existing tags (whether on the category itself or on the articles inside it). Kirill Lokshin (talk) 21:45, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
Yes, you're right of course. We need a backlog drive to clean it up... Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 05:27, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
Do I need to do anything special to make sure that all the subpages and everything else current at the Latin American task force get moved to the South American task force? Its been 24 hours almost, and I would like to get that page in line with the other task forces sooner rather than later. TomStar81 (Talk) 05:34, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
I've created a bunch of subpages for the European, North American and Asian task forces, for instance the userbox, popular pages, and article alerts. I hope that was what I was meant to do. Will the statistics tables and popular pages lists etc update automatically (as currently they are blank)? Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 09:41, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
Also, will articles that are in the children categories automatically appear in the parent categories, e.g. if tagged for the British task force, will it automatically appear in the European task force? Or do we have to manually start adding these? Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 09:43, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
TomStar81 and Kirill Lokshin, I just added the European task force to Talk:15th (Scottish) Parachute Battalion (a redirect) and it doesn't show up in the banner or in the categories at the bottom of the page. All the new TFs should also have a shortened version of the full syntax for example, |European=y should work for |European-task-force=yes, to save people time. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 06:00, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
Well we were bound to have teething issues with this, so I can not say that I am terribly surprised to hear this. On a related note, I decided to be BOLD and moved our existing Latin American task force back to its original location at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/South American military history task force, however when I went to move the associated pages I got a lot of notices that they already existed and could not be moved. Is this something I/we need to be worried about? TomStar81 (Talk) 23:15, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
@Peacemaker67: The problem you're seeing is caused by the {{WPMILHIST}} template not actually having been updated to include the new task forces. I'll work on that tonight.
@TomStar81: I was under the impression that we were going to (re-)create the South American task force, not rename the Latin American one. Is that not what you had in mind? I'm concerned about the Mexican military history articles, in particular; they belong in the latter but not the former, and I don't see any good way to filter them out except by hand. Kirill Lokshin (talk) 23:54, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
@Kirill Lokshin: Actually, I was trying to feel that out up above...but no one replied, and I was unsure if it was advisable to leave one odd task force out. I moved the task force only after 2.5 days of no apparent community input on the matter, and even then it was done only after two debates with myself over the advisability of moving forward with a move. Frankly, I would have welcomed some feedback on this point, since I had forgot that we had a South American task force once before and that came back to me only when Wikipedia notified me that the sandbox page couldn't be moved because the target was already in existence. As for the current situation with the task forces: I think it preferable to have separate task forces for South America and Latin America, so the question then becomes should we move the renamed Aouth American task force back to Latin america and recreate a SA task force from scrath, or keep the current SA task force and rebuild the Latin America task force from scratch.
I'm not sure that I'd recommend splitting them out; especially under those titles as Central America is usually included in Latin America. Honestly, I don't see any particular virtue to splitting them at all.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 01:19, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
I suppose it really boils down to whether Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean would be covered under the North American task force or the South (Latin) American one? To keep things clear, perhaps we could rename the Latin American task force to "South and Central American" (cf. United Nations geoscheme for the Americas)? Kirill Lokshin (talk) 03:56, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
That would work for me.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 05:34, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
I'm relaxed about that, but thought we were putting Central America with North America? Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 11:00, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
I'm also cool with that. Alternatively, we could just create a specific regional "Central American task force" and put the nations most identified with Central America in it. That was something I had brought up during the initial phase of the continental task force pitch - any regional-specific nations that didn't fit well into a continental scheme could be covered in a regional task force. No one from the community replied on the point while this was under community consideration, although as you can see from the project's own Middle Eastern task force the concept of a regional-specific task force is something that we have used with success in the past. TomStar81 (Talk) 05:53, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
I'd say we'd be best off sticking to a continental structure, and put Central America with North America (or South America, if that is thought more useful). Any regional/national task forces should be below the continental level IMO. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 11:00, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
Given the UN geoscheme has Central America and the Caribbean as subregions of North America, I suggest we adopt that scheme as well. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 11:03, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
@WP:MILHIST coordinators: if there are no further objections or suggestions, it looks like the North America for Caribbean region option has the support of the group. Is there anything else that we need to work on or with, or set up, to get this officially up and running, or has it all been addressed? TomStar81 (Talk) 09:50, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
Yes, I'm happy with that. I still don't think that the categories are populating, though. I added this a while ago (as a test) and the categories still seem empty. [1] [2] Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 09:57, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
Although I'm not sure it would be the cause of the issue AR identifies above, I assume we will need to update the template documentation at Template:WikiProject Military history at some point. Is this something anyone can do? Anotherclown (talk) 12:14, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
I added this today (as a further test), but it doesn't seem to recognise the code (i.e. the article wasn't placed into any categories as a result): [3] Not sure if the template has been updated...or how to do this. Can anyone help with this? Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 08:27, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Rollout Hiccup

@Kirill Lokshin: Based on the above comments it seems that this isn't working correctly, did we miss something or is it something out of our hand? TomStar81 (Talk) 10:51, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

I made an administrative mistake for which I will be taking a voluntary 24-hour time out from Wikipedia to atone for, however I wanted to ask before I leave if anyone has figured this out yet so we can start populating the categories. TomStar81 (Talk) 01:42, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
@TomStar81: I'll take a look at it tonight. Kirill Lokshin (talk) 01:58, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
@WP:MILHIST coordinators: Okay, I think I've fixed it; I ran a few manual tests, and the template seems to render as expected. I'll leave it overnight and see if the categories populate correctly before calling the all-clear, however.

For everyone's reference, here is how the cascading tags should work:

  • African → No automatic tagging
  • Asian→ Automatically tagged if any of the following are present: Chinese; Japanese; Korean; South Asian, Southeast Asian
  • Australia, New Zealand and South Pacific → No automatic tagging
  • European→ Automatically tagged if any of the following are present: Balkan; Baltic states; British; Dutch; French; German; Italian; Nordic; Polish; Spanish
  • North American→ Automatically tagged if any of the following are present: Canadian; United States
  • South American → No automatic tagging

A few additional notes:

  • The following national/regional task forces do not automatically generate any of the continental tags: Middle Eastern; Ottoman; Russian, Soviet and CIS.
  • With the new tags, all Latin American articles will now show up as South American. Depending on how we want to resolve the discussion above, we may need to manually de-tag the Central American and Caribbean articles and re-tag them as North American instead.

Kirill Lokshin (talk) 03:15, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Milhist Academy Audit

@WP:MILHIST coordinators: I've taken a lap through the milhist Academy, tweaking and trimming the material for updating and standardization/uniformity. A few things to look at though:

  • @Anotherclown: No, I didn't check any of the dates for when the articles were created, just the general content of the page, hence the question. Some of our pages go back almost 6 years, others were created much more recently, and in any event since things change all the time I thought the easiest solution would be to just ask if the page was still up to date. Since it is, I don't think we need to worry about it. TomStar81 (Talk) 00:43, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Additionally, should we redirect the talk pages for the academy articles to the primary milhist talk page? There not a widely watched bunch, so if someone edits to add a question there it may go unanswered if it isn't in a highly visible place. TomStar81 (Talk) 13:28, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Request

Is anyone with a decent understanding of the Eastern Front (World War II) able to please have a look at the discussion on the talk page? There has been a concern raised by a newish editor about it being biased but I'm not really in a position to assess these claims. I reverted one of their recent changes due to it changing the meaning of referenced text (whilst the username also concerns me as being a possible POV editor). Perhaps my concerns are completely unfounded though as some of their edits look useful to me. Thanks. Anotherclown (talk) 23:27, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

November contest

G'day all, I've verified most of the entries for the November contest, but I need someone to verify my own (single entry). Once that is done, we can hand out the awards and finalise the blurb in the Bugle. Cheers, AustralianRupert (talk) 06:26, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Done. Peacemaker67 (crack... thump) 09:59, 18 December 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, I've tallied the points, handed out the awards and written up the Bugle entry. Regards AustralianRupert (talk) 10:30, 18 December 2015 (UTC)
Thanks Rupert. Nice to have a break. Regards, Peacemaker67 (crack... thump) 11:14, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Oct-Dec 15 review tallies

Username GAN PR ACR FAC Total Awarded
Anotherclown 6 1 12 0 19 AustralianRupert (talk) 03:01, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
AustralianRupert 6 4 15 1 26 Nikkimaria (talk) 03:21, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Cinderella157 0 0 1 0 1 AustralianRupert (talk) 03:01, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Cuprum17 0 0 1 0 1 AustralianRupert (talk) 03:01, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Dank 0 8 14 16 38 AustralianRupert (talk) 03:01, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Harrias 2 0 2 0 4 AustralianRupert (talk) 03:01, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Hawkeye7 2 0 2 0 4 AustralianRupert (talk) 03:01, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Hchc2009 2 2 4 1 9 AustralianRupert (talk) 03:01, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Ian Rose 0 0 1 0 1 AustralianRupert (talk) 03:01, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Keith-264 0 1 1 0 2 AustralianRupert (talk) 03:01, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Lineagegeek 0 0 1 0 1 AustralianRupert (talk) 03:01, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Maury Markowitz 0 0 3 1 4 AustralianRupert (talk) 03:01, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
MONGO 0 0 1 0 1 AustralianRupert (talk) 03:01, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Nick-D 0 1 2 1 4 AustralianRupert (talk) 03:01, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Nikkimaria 0 6 8 17 31 AustralianRupert (talk) 03:01, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Nortonius 0 0 1 1 2 AustralianRupert (talk) 03:01, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Parsecboy 4 0 1 2 7 AustralianRupert (talk) 03:01, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Peacemaker67 11 1 6 3 21 AustralianRupert (talk) 03:01, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Sturmvogel 66 11 0 2 5 18 AustralianRupert (talk) 03:01, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Tim Riley 0 1 1 3 5 AustralianRupert (talk) 03:01, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

G'day all, I've tallied the A-class reviews for Oct-Dec 15. Can someone else take a run through the GANs, PRs, and FACs? Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 13:10, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Did PRs and FACs. Nikkimaria (talk) 17:46, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
Added GANs. Are there any repechages? If not, I will look to hand out the awards tomorrow. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 07:16, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
Awarded all except mine. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 03:01, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for taking care of this, Rupert.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 03:19, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Ping failures

I'm guessing this isn't happening to just me (unless I pissed off the devs without knowing it), but I haven't been notified 3 times in the last month when people pinged me, even though it looks like they did everything right: one paragraph, done in one edit, signed, containing my username. Just tonite I saw AR tried to ping me at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Nike-X. So: if someone pings me and I don't answer, please come knocking on my userpage. - Dank (push to talk) 03:33, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Oh, I take that back ... AR did everything right, except his edit has multiple paragraphs. The paragraph that tried to ping me was the last one, and it was signed, so you'd think that would work ... but it often doesn't. Still, the other two non-pings, I have no explanation for. - Dank (push to talk) 03:36, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
I've had the same thing happen recently. Nick-D (talk) 10:46, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

WWII Navy VC-33

My father, LT. Max Plunkett was a Navy Pilot, in aircraft squadron VC-33 in WWII and he flew off a carrier in the Pacific. He flew a Wild Cat, Grumman F4F. I can supply a picture of their insignia / patch, which is different from the ones shown and a picture of him flying a Wild Cat over Leyte Gulf during the war. PattJP (talk) 18:58, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Please do. I suspect the patch is the modern one and it would be good to get the proper one uploaded onto Commons.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:21, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

January 2016 contest

G'day, I've tallied the January 2016 contest results, started the new scoreboard for the 2016 Writers' Contest Cup, and handed out the first placed award. Can someone else please verify the totals, and award the second place award? Cheers, AustralianRupert (talk) 11:12, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Done. BTW, congrats.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 14:03, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Feedback for an idea I suddenly had

@WP:MILHIST coordinators: Over the last few months we've had a string of what could be rightly classified as iffy page moves within our project, beginning with certain military ranks and then on to the German army units. Given that we have consensus on where these pages should be kept I've been wondering how we could prevent consensus-established pages from being moved or renamed without first establishing new consensus for the move. I admit that I hadn't really come up with any kind of solution to the problem until I happened to notice a recent change line that lit up a light bulb: would it be possible for us to create an edit filter to prevent consensus-named pages form being moved until new consensus was established? I am largely unfamiliar with the edit filters, but I do know from my limited experience that they are supposed to track and report edits that could be problematic - such as adding youtube links to articles - and in some cases they do appear to prevent actions from being taken. Would this be worth looking into as a possible solution to the problem of page moves made without community consensus? TomStar81 (Talk) 22:20, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

This happens to be something that I've (briefly) looked into, albeit in the context of enforcing arbitration restrictions rather than preventing page moves. The main limitation of edit filters is that, generally speaking, they operate based on fairly literal examination of the contents of the page being edited and/or the edit being made. In other words, the filter would be able to check whether the title of an article matches a specific string and disallow moves based on the result; but it has no way of making more general inferences about the article.
The upshot for this particular idea is that one could, in principle, have an edit filter that prevents a specific set of articles from being moved—but the set would need to be explicitly defined by putting the article titles in the edit filter; there is no way for the filter to identify "consensus-named" pages in general. Note, also, that complex filters have non-trivial impact on the performance of the site (i.e. how long pages take to load, edits take to save, etc.); it might be feasible to do this for ten articles, but it's not really a viable solution for large categories of articles. Kirill Lokshin (talk) 22:30, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
Of course, move protection in this situation isn't explicitly endorsed by WP:MOVP, but we could still do it under IAR. If a new consensus was established either informally or via a RM, any admin could move them. Were there specific pages you had in mind, Tom? Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 23:55, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
Off the top of my head the highest ranking general/admiral pages (for example, General of the Armies) because these end up moved all the time. Below that certain problematic articles where consensus has been established to name as x as opposed to y (ie Ottoman Army as opposed to Turkish Army) would be good candidates for such a filter. The main problem would be consensus as to where the page goes - and we only discuss those matters at length on problematic pages where the naming conventions could be any number of things due to the history of the nation or group in question - so that would mean that only pages where community consensus had to be explicitly worked out (like General of the Armies) would be eligible for the filter based protection specifically due to the long history of move and move back noted in the given article's log. Done in this manner we can preserve the open for everyone to edit creed while protecting articles known to be frequent thorns in our side (ideally, anyway). TomStar81 (Talk) 05:16, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Revisiting a previous idea

I floated this idea a little while back, while some action was taken on moving forward with it nothing really came of it, so I'm resurrecting it again. I'm looking at the idea of creating a GA, A, and FA edit notice - except that this time I've fiddled with it some more, and I would like to try something really bold: creating a collapsble section that includes the nominator(s), the ref tool bar we have for A and FA class articles for easy access to external references checkers, and a box for editors to make notes on any issues they find in the article. Its bold I know, but I would like to try again - we do have a reputation for leading by example, so hopefully if this gets going in our project it'll jump to the rest of Wikipedia and we can see what they think about adopting it. The retooled prototype is sitting here. TomStar81 (Talk) 09:38, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for working on this. Some thoughts:
  1. I'm not sure it makes sense to use this on GAs - because they only have a single reviewer, they tend to be far more variable in quality.
  2. While <ref> tags are the most common, they aren't required - are we sure all affected articles use them? Similarly, some of them will certainly be using LDR, and not all reference types will include all of the details you suggest.
  3. I would tend to be concerned about image copyright as well as (or more than) the effect of images on layout
  4. IPC guidance should reflect the results of this RFC
  5. Why include nominator in the edit notice? Nikkimaria (talk) 12:09, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it. In answer to your points above:

  1. GA-Class articles wouldn't need all the information in the notice, however there are a few things that all the articles at or above GA share, including higher referencing standards. If nothing else an edit notice for those page ought to make the general public aware of the fact that adding information to the article without a reference is likely going to get the added information removed or refactored. It a judgement call, but I think AGF applies here - we have a duty to inform those people editing that articles at or above GA class need references - even if they are improperly added, a reference lets us check the information. Editors can adjust the information as needed if there is a link to the reference in the article.
  2. You are right about the ref tags. That is an oversight on this particular draft version, however I had to start somewhere right? :) I think it may be better to either create a custom template to adopt for a given citation style in the article in question, or to generally have a link to an WP:X article explaining the citation styles. In another light bulb moment, I suppose we could build a custom academy course addressing this issues vis-a-vis an article's citation style.
  3. Image copyright is a major issues, your right, however I should think that the copyright image checking protocols would catch most of this. I would be supportive of adding this as an optional tab if it becomes apparent that the article is going to attract copyright problems. Again, the solution may be to create independent templates for the fields so we can address each field that to be a variable quickly.
  4. Your right about IPC guidance, however our own pop culture template lays out specific marks that need to be hit in order for a military history article to have a popular culture section. In most cases the mentions are trivial at best, so we usually trim out all the fat such as it were to keep the article in question from being bogged down. As an example, the article USS Missouri (BB-63) has seen mentions of both Metal Gear Solid 4 and World in Conflict in the pop culture section, both of which have been removed before because the battleship was featured only briefly. By comparison, Missouri was essentially a main character in the movie under siege (although it was technically USS Alabama since Missouri was unavailable) so the pop culture section reflects the latter but neither of the former two.
  5. The nominator part shows in the example because its beyond my ability to build a collapsible box to the section. The idea there was to a have a collapsed box that would note the nominator, have the utility box that the ACR and FAC process have, and a note section so that experienced editors could quickly check the article's important stats (like the status of the external links in an article) and place something in the edit notice drop down section to draw the nominator's attention to a potentially downgrading issues like dead links. In fairness that does seem a little ostentatious, but since its all in the planning stages at the moment I figured what the heck and went for it. Along those same lines, since I am reply and thinking about it now, we would need a line concerning editing restrictions for community sanctions and arbcom related issues. to make sure that editors are aware of the matter.
I hoping with more feedback on the idea we may be able to build a prototype and get it out in the article space before the end of the year. I can speak for anyone else, but I would like to know if the presence of the template helps or hurts our FA, A< and possibly GA articles. TomStar81 (Talk) 01:09, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Jan to Mar 16 review tallies

Username GAN PR ACR FAC Total Awarded
Anotherclown 4 0 13 0 17 Nikkimaria (talk) 11:35, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
AustralianRupert 4 1 16 2 23 Anotherclown (talk) 10:53, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
Dank 0 0 15 12 27 Anotherclown (talk) 10:53, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
Hawkeye7 2 0 3 1 6 Anotherclown (talk) 10:53, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
Ian Rose 7 0 5 1 13 Anotherclown (talk) 10:53, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
Maury Markowitz 0 0 2 1 3 Anotherclown (talk) 10:53, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
Nick-D 3 0 5 3 9 Anotherclown (talk) 10:53, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
Nikkimaria 0 0 5 10 15 Anotherclown (talk) 10:53, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
Parsecboy 7 0 1 2 10 Anotherclown (talk) 10:53, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
Peacemaker67 2 0 4 0 6 Anotherclown (talk) 10:53, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
Sturmvogel 66 14 0 3 3 20 Anotherclown (talk) 10:53, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
Zawed 9 0 7 0 16 Anotherclown (talk) 10:53, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
Ed 0 0 2 0 2 Anotherclown (talk) 10:53, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
Constantine 0 0 1 0 1 Anotherclown (talk) 10:53, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
MisterBee1966 5 1 1 0 7 Anotherclown (talk) 10:53, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
Errant 3 0 1 0 4 Anotherclown (talk) 10:53, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
Buckshot06 0 0 1 0 1 Anotherclown (talk) 10:53, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
Srnec 0 0 1 0 1 Anotherclown (talk) 10:53, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

G'day all, I have tallied the Jan to Mar 16 ACR reviews. Is anyone free to do the PR, GAN or FAC tallies? Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 05:01, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Well, I've done PR and FAC, but I only found 1 Milhist PR with anyone from this list (2 total) - can that be right? Nikkimaria (talk) 12:44, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
First thought is ... probably not, let me check. - Dank (push to talk) 13:07, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
I see my name in the first 4 PRs that are up currently at Template:WPMILHIST Announcements, and I've generally been covering them all. (I just started a break from covering PR and A-class though.) - Dank (push to talk) 13:11, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
Wait ... I see what you mean, Nikki. I just covered snapshots of that page in 3-week intervals, and all but one that have gone up this quarter haven't disappeared from the annoucements page yet, so there's an argument that they don't count for this quarter. I have no problem with that. - Dank (push to talk) 13:17, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
Right - to avoid double-counting, we've usually done only the ones that closed in the quarter in question. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:20, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
Is anyone free to do the GANs? Nikkimaria (talk) 14:43, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
Done now. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 14:06, 15 April 2016 (UTC)
I've awarded these now (except for my own of cse). Thank you to the others who tallied these up. Anotherclown (talk) 10:53, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Task Force Reorganization Phase II

@WP:MILHIST coordinators: Since I ended up shanghi-ing auntiruth55's original task force proposal I feel like I have an ethical responsibility to bring it up here again, but she did have a point when she said we needed another task force to help cover the gaps in our coverage - although in truth, its not one, but three. From where I sit, we are short a designated task force for the following 3 general topics:

  • Military Culture - this includes general military topics such as ceremonial functions (such as Honours of war, traditional military songs, military families, etc). Presently these have no specific task force to call their own, they instead huddle with certain task forces that are not necessarily suited to cover the topic at hand in all respects. Honors of war, for example, is covered by the national miltiaries task force, but that wouldn't include the ancient Roman legions for whom a triumph or ovation may have been awarded for military service. These are presently covered by the classical military task force, but while this is appropriate for the time period there really isn't a general place for such a article within the project, one where ceremonies and other facets of military culture throughout the ages could be properly categorized and handled.
  • Military Medicine - this includes non-combatant and forces in the field and those installations on friendly territory that work within the realm of military medicine to treat active, reserve, and retired members of the military (that includes the U.S. Veteran's Affair medical services as well). This is a specific discipline in the armed forces of most nations and it has a unique corps that really does require an independent task force to cover all aspects of battle field medicine, rest and recovery, life after injury on the battlefield (as certain cases may qualify for coverage), and those advents of medicine brought about on the battlefield due to the demands of combat.
  • Military Logistics - this should have been a task force unto itself right from the get go, however it got past us somehow (I suppose due to the apparent ability to cover this through designated national militaries task forces) but in all honesty logistics is a such a broad discipline that it should have its own task force. Logistical situations throughout history have been major factors for combat operations, and I think a specific task force to cover all aspects of logistics would benefit the project as a whole.

As always I am open to feedback here, if anyone thinks this to be a bad idea or thinks that may may need one or greater (or possibly fewer) such task forces then feel free to bring it up here. As before, if any change of this nature is to move forward then we need to establish consensus among ourselves first, then get community feedback on the matter. I'm open to hearing what everyone thinks about the idea(s) presented above. TomStar81 (Talk) 03:23, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

G'day. A couple of cmt's/suggestions/random thoughts that I'm not strongly attached to:
  1. Do we need separate TFs for all of these (the above) or would it be more efficient to group a few themes together? For instance I see Logistics and Medicine as being related and therefore potentially being able to be covered in a single entity.
  2. There are potentially some other gaps too, both thematic and by period. For instance Military Theory and Strategy or Post-Cold War? Or some such variation of these to cover the topics that would naturally fall in to such areas. No doubt there are others too. Does anyone see any value in also adding TFs for these?
  3. Regardless, I wonder how necessary any of them are though. Ultimately what purpose do TFs serve other than to categorise our articles as part of our back-room administrative processes that few readers may even notice?
  4. Although, given that we obviously have this system in place (i.e. TFs) I can see the attraction of trying to ensure that it is as logical as it can be (without reaching the tipping point where any administrative overheads become more burdensome than any advantage that it might otherwise provide). Anotherclown (talk) 04:46, 16 April 2016 (UTC)
G'day, interesting suggestions. In principle I'm supportive. I have a couple of thoughts also. Like Anotherclown, though, I would go with Military logistics and medicine. I believe theory and strategy are currently covered by the Science and technology task force, but perhaps we could tweak its name: Science, technology and military thought? Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 06:13, 16 April 2016 (UTC)
I've always put anything related to military art, including strategy and tactics, into the SciTech TF, as they are all about the same thing, the ideas part of the military. Seems to me that could be better explained in that TF though. I agree with lumping military medicine with logistics, they are usually grouped together as combat support services these days, and to some extent always have been. I can see a Customs and Traditions TF as being useful, and have often wondered where to put articles of that ilk. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 07:21, 16 April 2016 (UTC)
G'day, what about "Military logistics and medicine", "Customs, traditions, culture, and heraldry" and "Military science, technology and art"? AustralianRupert (talk) 09:38, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
Maybe, although people might be confused about the distinction between "art" and "culture". Nikkimaria (talk) 12:26, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
Fair point, "Military logistics and medicine", "Military customs, traditions, culture, and heraldry" (would include decorations, music, slang, iconography etc) and "Military science, technology and thought" (as above)? AustralianRupert (talk) 13:17, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
Perhaps "Military science, technology, and theory"? The second name could probably also be shortened by omitting either "customs" or "traditions"; e.g. "Military culture, traditions, and heraldry". Kirill Lokshin (talk) 14:47, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
I'd support those. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 09:48, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
Same. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 06:57, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
Me too. When should we move forward with this? TomStar81 (Talk) 06:11, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

I'd say there is enough of a consensus to get on with it now. Certainly there could be no substantive argument against the expansion/rewording of SciTech into Military science, technology, and theory to make the inclusion explicit. There is a clear need for Military culture, traditions, and heraldry as it covers quite a few articles that have no TF "home" at present, and to a lesser degree that also applies to Military logistics and medicine. We're going to need a backlog drive to clean up/sort the TF=no parameter, as quite a lot of those articles will now fit into one of these. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 06:32, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Just for the sake of clarity I'm happy to support this. Anotherclown (talk) 00:18, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
G'day all, I have created Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Military logistics and medicine task force. It was harder than I thought, and I'm bound to have got something wrong, so please take a look. @Kirill Lokshin: I gather that there is some back room programing you have to do the Milhist template to get this to work. Would you mind doing this? Does anyone else want to create, or adjust, the other two T/Fs? Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 12:13, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
Yes, there are some template changes, as well as a bunch of categories that will need to be created. I can get started on that, but it would be more efficient if we did all three new task forces at one time rather than adding them piecemeal. Kirill Lokshin (talk) 17:36, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
G'day, I've created the two new ones and moved/renamed the third. I was able to work out how to edit the Milhist template to fix the renamed task force (I think), but haven't been able to get the Logistics and medicine, or the Culture, traditions and heraldry task forces to display in it, or fill their categories. Anyway, that took me about over four hours, so it's bed time. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 15:05, 21 June 2016 (UTC)
@AustralianRupert: Adding a new task force requires a few extra bits of code to the banner that might not be apparent from looking at the existing task force markup. I'll go through and add the two new ones this evening. Kirill Lokshin (talk) 15:08, 21 June 2016 (UTC)
@Kirill Lokshin: Cheers, Kirill, I hope I didn't break anything too badly. Can I please ask that other co-ords add these new task force codes to relevant articles as they come across them, please? Cheers, AustralianRupert (talk) 09:59, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
Okay, I've added the new task forces to the banner and created the missing assessment categories for each; everything should now be working for all three task forces as far as the assessment system is concerned. Kirill Lokshin (talk) 16:22, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
Thanks, Kirill. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 11:33, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
@Kirill Lokshin: G'day Kirill, sorry to bother you with this one again. JL Bot just removed all of the recognized content from the Science, technology and theory task force with this edit: [4]. I assume this is because I did something wrong with the change. Would you mind taking a look? Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 00:24, 26 June 2016 (UTC)
@AustralianRupert: I think it was the missing "task force" in the category name. We'll see if that fixed it the next time the bot runs. Kirill Lokshin (talk) 20:20, 26 June 2016 (UTC)
Thanks, Kirill. I seem to have muffed this up quite a bit. Sorry. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 12:19, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Automated Archiving?

@WP:MILHIST coordinators: I am curious to know if there is tool that either exists on Wikipedia or could be created on Wikipedia that would look at the external links used in an article and save the version found at web archive so that when an external link dies we can recall it and replace it automatically with the correct version in use at the time. Is that something we can do, or would it be impractical? TomStar81 (Talk) 03:36, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

CyberBot II does something like this. It looks at broken links in the pages, and attempts to resolve them from the Internet Archive (Wayback machine). It has limitations; the Wayback machine does not (and cannot) always archive every link we use at the time we use it. Hawkeye7 (talk) 05:17, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
Apparently GreenC bot (talk · contribs) does something like this too. I found this one when it edited the article we have on the carrier Bush, which is on my watch-list. Funny how that works, huh? :) TomStar81 (Talk) 07:56, 3 June 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, the GreenC bot's job is cleaning up after the CyberBot. That's always a bad sign. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:29, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

Retiring

I am out of this place. Enjoy and thanks for the support in the past. Cheers and good luck to all MisterBee1966 (talk) 22:00, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Until we meet again, goodbye, farewell, and amen. TomStar81 (Talk) 22:33, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
Lots of good memories, MrB, I hope to see you again soon. - Dank (push to talk) 23:53, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
Best wishes. Hawkeye7 (talk) 00:33, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
I wish I knew why you were retiring as I'd regret not having you here.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:37, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
Similarly - you'll be missed. Hchc2009 (talk) 06:25, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
G'day, MB, I hope you will reconsider as you are most certainly an asset to Milhist and Wikipedia in general. I have certainly enjoyed working with you over the years and if you do choose not to come back, I wish you all the best. Take care. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 11:33, 3 June 2016 (UTC)
Very sorry to see you go, MB. I wish some editors would take a more balanced and nuanced view of what really constitutes propaganda (on all sides) in respect of WWII. The sort of blinkered, simplistic view you have been dealing with in the recent past is not a net positive for the project. Good luck out there, it is clear from the above that you'll always be among friends here should you choose to return. Warm regards, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:34, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
@MisterBee1966: Did not like coming across this today. :-( Best wishes for the future, friend. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 13:43, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

A few things to go over

@WP:MILHIST coordinators: Hi all, hope your summer (or winter as the case may be) is going well. A few points I wanted to go over here, just to get us up focused as we round third for the trip home for this tranche:

  • We have a hand full of remaining academy pages that need a look see in order to ensure that they are up to snuff, I am willing to help, but extra eyes to clear that out would be helpful.
  • Our task force realignment phase II is cleared for lift off, I think that we are agreed on that point. Is there any reason why it hasn't moved forward yet? If so, we should get on that.
  • Our bugle edition was set to go out this coming week, as I understand it. Is there anything we have to add to it to help get it in a position for publication?
  • With Mr. B's departure I have recommended him for a Chevron with Oakleaves award, the nomination is here, if anyone would like to support it. TomStar81 (Talk) 07:37, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Other than these points does anyone have anything we need to look at, consider, or act on at the moment? TomStar81 (Talk) 07:37, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

G'day, I've looked over a few of these remaining red linked Academy pages and for the main I think many of the topics are already covered largely in other articles. I've been bold and removed those that I think don't need a rehash. I've also reworked a few etc. Happy to discuss if others disagree. I'd also suggest that maybe the two requested articles for writing B-class and GA-class articles could just be covered off by Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Academy/Improving articles. I also cobbled this together, if anyone wants to tweak a few things: Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Academy/Battles: understanding the terrain. Thoughts? PS: re Phase II of the Task Force Reorg, I think we are good to go. I was just hoping someone else would do the donkey work... ;-) Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 01:58, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
Yes I think many of these were double ups so that all makes sense to me (including using "Improving articles" to cover off on writing B-class and GA-class articles). Also I had a look at "Battles: understanding the terrain" and couldn't see any obvious errors. Looks good to me. Anotherclown (talk) 05:13, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

Establishing context regarding awards

G'day all, I think it might be worth expanding our Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Content guide with a bit of information on establishing context in the lead where notability is partly or wholly dependent on receipt of an award. For example, where someone has received the Victoria Cross, we don't expect readers to follow the link to find out about the award, we make a general observation about the award itself such as, "the highest decoration for gallantry "in the face of the enemy" that can be awarded to members of the British and Commonwealth armed forces" (which I have lifted from Edgar Towner which is Featured). There has been a recent spate of removing the equivalent phrase from articles on recipients of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross and its higher grades, and I think it would be worthwhile expanding our guideline to incorporate the Milhist community consensus on this issue. Thoughts? Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 01:39, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

G'day, PM, this seems like a good idea to me. I think it would potentially also be a good idea to clarify the German system of awards somewhere also. From what I can tell the grades of the Knights Cross of the Iron Cross are culmulative, which is different to the Anglo-American systems, and in some regards doing this may help clarify the notability. (My interpretation here, might of course be incorrect, though, so I really encourage those with a better working knowledge of this topic to get involved). Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 22:16, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
G'day Rupert, I agree regarding the cumulative nature of the Knight's Cross and how it applies to SOLDIER and ANYBIO. FWIW, the Knight's Cross itself was handed out in a similar way to the MC, DCM and DFC, the higher grades were more like the DSO, and the Diamonds was more like the VC. That certainly isn't an exact correlation, but it is similar in some ways. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 00:51, 9 July 2016 (UTC)
Actually, I've thought about this a bit more, and think some clarification regarding the Knight's Cross is necessary, at least so far as SOLDIER is concerned. The Knight's Cross was awarded for valour as well as military leadership, and in some cases for reaching particular milestones such as fighter pilot and submarine captain kills. In the latter respects, it was a bit like the DFC/DFMs awarded to Bomber Command pilots/crew that did 25 missions, or DSOs or CBEs awarded for leadership. However, SOLDIER is about awards for valour, nothing else, and maps across to the VC or MoH well. However, at the time any person was awarded the Knight's Cross for valour, it was the highest award they could receive for valour at that time. No-one could receive the higher levels without first being awarded all of the lower levels for separate actions. It was not possible to be awarded the Knight's Cross with Diamonds without first being awarded all the lower levels in turn. Therefore, it seems to me that the award of the Knight's Cross for valour (not other things) is automatically the highest award for valour available to that person at the time, and therefore meets SOLDIER. Further awards (for valour), would be roughly equivalent to a bar to the VC or similar. Despite the numbers of Knight's Crosses awarded, not anywhere near as many were awarded for valour only, and even fewer awarded for multiple acts of valour. Food for thought, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 09:35, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
G'day, PM, yes, agreed, that's my take, too. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 12:08, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
G'day, all, I have had a look over the Notability guide today, and made a few changes. Overall, I don't believe them to be controversial, but if anyone disagrees, please let me know. I'd be happy to revert and discuss. These are my edits: [5] Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 06:46, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
I've made some copyedits, but the added material looks good to me overall. Kirill Lokshin (talk) 15:41, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

Apr to Jun 16 review tallies

Username GAN PR ACR FAC Total Awarded
Anotherclown 7 0 12 0 19 Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:15, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
AustralianRupert 2 5 16 5 28 Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:15, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
Dank 0 4 4 9 17 Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:15, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
Hawkeye7 0 0 3 0 3 Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:27, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
Ian Rose 3 0 9 3 15 Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:15, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
Maury Markowitz 0 0 9 0 9 Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:18, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
Nick-D 0 1 5 2 8 Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:18, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
Nikkimaria 0 4 13 11 28 Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:15, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
Peacemaker67 0 0 2 0 2 Nikkimaria (talk) 03:08, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
Zawed 3 0 4 0 7 Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:22, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
MisterBee1966 0 0 1 0 1 Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:32, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
Dudley Miles 0 1 1 0 2 Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:29, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
Hchc2009 2 0 2 0 4 Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:22, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
Keith-264 0 0 3 0 3 Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:27, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
Tomandjerry211 (alt) 1 0 1 0 2 Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:29, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
Auntieruth 0 0 1 0 1 Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:32, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
EnigmaMcMxc 0 0 4 0 4 Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:22, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
LavaBaron 0 0 3 0 3 Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:27, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
23 editor 0 0 1 2 3 Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:27, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
TomStar81 0 0 2 0 2 Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:29, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
K.e.coffman 0 0 1 0 1 Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:32, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
Mr rnddude 0 0 1 0 1 Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:32, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
Maile66 0 0 1 0 1 Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:32, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
G'day ladies and gentlemen, it is that time again. I've tallied up the Milhist ACR reviews. Hoping that others will help with tallying the PRs, GANs and FACs. Cheers, AustralianRupert (talk) 03:43, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
PRs and FACs done. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:16, 15 July 2016 (UTC)
Thanks, Nikki. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 08:47, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
GANs done, and totalled. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 03:03, 22 July 2016 (UTC)
All awarded (albeit with a typo), if someone could award mine, we're done. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:32, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
<clears throat>Umm, I'm fairly certain that I did a bunch of GA reviews this last quarter.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:37, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
You did plenty, Sturm. But no ACRs were listed, and that is the bright line for awards. Did you do any ACRs that weren't picked up? Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:51, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
No, just GANs.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 03:19, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
I'm swinging the lead as usual. Hopefully, next time will be better. Hawkeye7 (talk) 03:04, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Coordinator Elections

@WP:MILHIST coordinators: As unbelievable as it may be, we are nearing the end of the current coordinator tranche. With August bearing down on us I thought I'd put this up now so you can all opine about the number of coordinators we currently have and the tentative dates for the forthcoming election in September. This tranche we reduced the overall number to ten coordinators (9 regular and 1 lead) and kept our two coordinators emerti. Does the 10 still work for everyone, or could we stand to lose/gain a few? Also, is everyone still ok with the 10 day nomination and 10 voting scheme? TomStar81 (Talk) 08:08, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

I haven't been carrying my weight, but my observation has been that we don't need more coords. So far as the rest is concerned, I think that's also fine. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 09:01, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
G'day, I think the current number is workable and am happy with the number of days proposed. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 09:43, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
I've no issue with this as proposed; however, given the low voter turnout last year (which I'd assume will continue) I wonder if we might need more than 10 days? Also a longer nomination period might encourage more prospective new co-ords to nominate. Just a thought anyway. Anotherclown (talk) 06:11, 22 July 2016 (UTC)
I might return to the fray (if people will have me!) this election -- I'm already listing ACRs ready for closure above so I think that's telling me something... ;-) I have no prob with the total number remaining at 10, but there might indeed be something in keeping the process open a bit longer, perhaps two weeks nom and two weeks vote? Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 06:19, 22 July 2016 (UTC)
That'll work for me, as I'm definitely having a break this time. But on reflection, a bit longer for noms and the election might help to get wider engagement. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 07:37, 22 July 2016 (UTC)
G'day, I'm fine with two weeks for each phase. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 15:47, 22 July 2016 (UTC)
Agree, two weeks each seems reasonable. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:01, 22 July 2016 (UTC)
I'm happy with two weeks for each too (seems a nice round number to be a month in total and hopefully the longer period will yield more participation). Anotherclown (talk) 00:44, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Pages Established

@WP:MILHIST coordinators: I've established the 2016 Coordinator election pages, they can be viewed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators/September 2016. Would someone double check to see if I got everything right? TomStar81 (Talk) 08:30, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

G'day, Tom, nothing leapt out at me as being wrong. Thanks for setting this up. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 12:30, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
The setup looks good to me. Kirill Lokshin (talk) 14:32, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
@WP:MILHIST coordinators: Alright then, it would seem I've got everything up correctly. On that note the day selected in accordance with our timeline for nominations is 2 September, meaning that at 00:00 UTC we open the nominations. I have no objections to updating the relevant notifications, however I do need to ask if there are any objections to sending out a mass message notification to our project to alert everyone to this development; if we agree to do so then just to confirm the relevant delivery list is Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Members/Active, correct? TomStar81 (Talk) 23:01, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
I think that is the normal procedure. Thanks for setting this up, Tom. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 23:42, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
Did we send out a mass message for the nomination period last time, or only for the voting period? Kirill Lokshin (talk) 01:14, 2 September 2016 (UTC)
@Kirill Lokshin: According to my talk page archive, we only sent the notice for the actual election. That being said, there is nothing that says we can't try a mass message for this and gauge the reaction. If nothing else, we can get some feedback on whether it was worth the time or effort. In a moment of brutal honest I do not think its going to matter one way or the other, with overall participation on Wikipedia on the decline (and in some cases alarmingly so) I'd be surprised if we still had enough participation to warrant running a coordinator department sometime in the next few years, but that's a concern for another time. (On an interesting side note though, I wonder where that will leave your and Roger; since emeritus coordinators can't be forcibly retired, you two may someday be the only remaining coordinators for the project in any capacity :) TomStar81 (Talk) 01:52, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

@WP:MILHIST coordinators: Since the election is officially underway, and since we traditionally send out a mass message notification, I penned a rough draft. If there are no objects or obvious sp&g issues I propose we get this sent out in the 24 hours. TomStar81 (Talk) 01:22, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Alright, its been sent out. Now, we play the waiting game... TomStar81 (Talk) 06:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Delisting A-class articles?

What's the usual process for this? A listing on WP:MHR? See User talk:The ed17#Wolfgang Lüth. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 04:13, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

I thought it was to use the "A-class=current" field on the banner as if you were nominating it for ACR, but note the reasons for the reappraisal in the nomination statement? After appraisal, if the consensus is to demote, that is what gets added to the field, then I assume the bot does the rest? Hawkeye7? Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 04:24, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
That's my understanding as well. Nick-D (talk) 08:22, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
Change "current" to "kept" or "demoted" and the MilHistBot does the rest. Hawkeye7 (talk) 23:53, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

removal of information which is explicitly supported by the source

May I ask the coordinators to have a look at Talk:List of Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross recipients (Ba–Bm). The removal to this list is against the recommendations in the main source by Veit Scherzer. I would think that the removal would have to he supported by an independent third source. Thoughts?MisterBee1966 (talk) 07:04, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

I want to restate my question to coordinators of this project. Is this significant change in content inline with our A-Class procedures (the list was reviewed against A-Class criteria Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/List of Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross recipients (W))? The removal of the information is not supported by the two primary sources Fellgiebel and Scherzer. This change, in my understanding of the sources, is a violation of WP:no original research. Scherzer explicitly acknowledges these listings. In addition the lead, background and all images were removed. I would at least expect that such a major overhaul would require some kind of discussion and community consensus as the article was A-Class. Simlar removal was applied to List of Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross recipients (X–Z). Cheers MisterBee1966 (talk) 07:27, 8 August 2016 (UTC)
@WP:MILHIST coordinators: I believe that MB deserves a response from us (as a coordinator tranche) on this issue. Wholesale changes are being made to lists that we have decided meet our AL-Class standards. At the very least they need to be restored to pre-wholesale change condition and the editor concerned (K.e.coffman) required to argue the toss through ACR on the changes proposed. As it is, this is a death of a thousand cuts for a considerable body of work. Regards, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 07:49, 8 August 2016 (UTC)
It might be best to discuss this at WT:MILHIST, per usual conventions for dealing with contested material where talk page discussions aren't resolving the situation. Nick-D (talk) 11:16, 8 August 2016 (UTC)
Here's the discussion topic I started on 2 August: Sourcing on Knight’s Cross (KC) holder articles. Perhaps any concerns can be addressed there. K.e.coffman (talk) 11:30, 8 August 2016 (UTC)
That is about articles, not the lists themselves. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 11:44, 8 August 2016 (UTC)
It appears that the OP intended this discussion to be about the lists, as this was linked in the 1st post: Talk:List of Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross recipients (Ba–Bm). K.e.coffman (talk) 11:48, 8 August 2016 (UTC)
G'day, to respond to the original question, overall, I'd say that regardless of an article's status as A-class (or indeed GA or FA) it is still subject to being edited under normal editing policies. K.e.coffman has been bold in his or her edits, which is allowable per policy, and an article's status does not negate this. Equally, though, bold edits are subject to reversion and discussion, which is also within policy (so long as it doesn't devolve into an edit war). If changes are so significant that they potentially alter an article's status, then the article probably should be reassessed. Nevertheless, I'm not sure that taking these articles to A-class re-appraisal will resolve the situation, as ultimately we have very few editors engaging in the A-class process as it is and I feel that we risk creating the perception of a "closed shop" if we go down this path. Milhist needs to be careful to avoid the perception of WP:OWN issues, so I would suggest a broader forum to ensure that we remain in touch with the wider community norms. Reversion, followed by either peer review, or WP:GAR is probably the best solution in my opinion. Or, failing that, WP:RFC or WP:DRN. The original approach will either be validated or a new consensus established. Not necessarily an enjoyable process, but anyway, that's my two cents worth. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 11:54, 8 August 2016 (UTC)
I agree with AustralianRupert, with the addition that a wider discussion of the issue (whether at WT:MILHIST or elsewhere) seems like a good first step before proceeding to any more formal reassessment or dispute resolution methods. The core dispute here seems to be a question about which sources should be used for the lists (and how they should be used), which seems like something that we could come to a consensus on without the need for any particularly elaborate process.
MisterBee1966, K.e.coffman, just to throw this idea out there for your consideration: since the dispute seems to be about the "legality" or "validity" of certain awards rather than whether the individual in question was included on a list of recipients at some point, might it make sense to have a List of Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross recipients (disputed) in the same way that we have a distinct list for the foreign recipients? The history of the disputed awards seems like a viable encyclopedic topic in its own right, regardless of the experts' ultimate decision about their validity. Kirill Lokshin (talk) 12:06, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

As I commented on the main MilHist Talk page, the current "parent" article, List of KC recipients, contains a section on Non-existent recipients. It may be appropriate to add a section on "Disputed recipients" and discuss these there.

A stand-alone article is possible, although it appears that Scherzer would be the only RS for it, so I'm not sure it's enough to sustain a stand-alone article. If such an article were to be created, I would not make it a "list" article. The list implies that the individuals included are notable (which they most likely would not be). In fact, one of the "bold" edits I implemented on the W article was to start unlinking the red-linked entries, so that not encourage creation of new articles. This was discussed at the KC holder topic at Notability:People. K.e.coffman (talk) 12:14, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

You have completely misunderstood the purpose of a list, please have a look at a few FLs to educate yourself. Not all "entries" on a list are going to be notable in themselves, some will, some may, some won't. A list does not in any way imply what you suggest. Removal of redlinks is a separate issue. Where the "entry" on a list isn't likely to be notable, removal of a redlink is fair enough, but as we've discussed elsewhere, no general officers or divisional commanders (and above) on KC lists should have redlinks removed. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 06:46, 9 August 2016 (UTC)
I'm not following; WP:LISTPEOPLE states:
A person is typically included in a list of people only if all the following requirements are met:
  • The person meets the Wikipedia notability requirement.
  • The person's membership in the list's group is established by reliable sources.
(With the unconfirmed award, these subjects would fail WP:Soldier, in the absence of any other notability factors).
Could this be elaborated on? K.e.coffman (talk) 15:55, 9 August 2016 (UTC)
I think WP:CSC may be applicable here, particularly the remarks in the the "every entry in the list fails the notability criteria" and "short, complete lists of every item that is verifiably a member of the group" sections. Whether or not any of the "questionable"/"disputed"/etc. recipients are notable in their own right, I think it would be reasonable to have a listing of their names somewhere so that the overall listing of Knight's Cross recipients (and putative recipients) is a complete one. Where that listing is placed is obviously an editorial decision, but I'm inclined to think that including the disputed names in the main article on the Knight's Cross would actually be giving them undue weight, and consequently that having them in a break-out list of some sort would be more appropriate. Kirill Lokshin (talk) 18:15, 9 August 2016 (UTC)
The 3rd criterion is "Short, complete lists of every item that is verifiably a member of the group. These should only be created if a complete list is reasonably short (less than 32K) and could be useful (e.g., for navigation) or interesting to readers. The inclusion of items must be supported by reliable sources. For example, if reliable sources indicate that a complete list would include the names of ten notable businesses and two non-notable businesses, then you are not required to omit the two non-notable businesses. However, if a complete list would include hundreds or thousands of entries, then you should use the notability standard to provide focus to the list." -- The vast majority would likely be non-notable subjects, and perhaps a few potentially notable ones, i.e. general officers. I believe that "hundreds" would apply, as there are about 180 subjects whose nominations were not properly processed. K.e.coffman (talk) 18:27, 9 August 2016 (UTC)
I was looking more at the preceding sentence ("For example, if reliable sources indicate that a complete list would include the names of ten notable businesses and two non-notable businesses, then you are not required to omit the two non-notable businesses."); my interpretation of that wording is that it suggests some form of proportionality test rather than a pure evaluation of list size. If we have, as you say, ~180 disputed entries out of 7,321 total Knight's Cross recipients (which is only ~2.5% of the total list), then I would be inclined to view the inclusion of those entries (for the purpose of having a complete listing) as falling within the scope of that criterion. Kirill Lokshin (talk) 18:51, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

I'll admit to not having followed the issue closely so my thoughts on it are not fully developed; however, I don't see why we should not include disputed recipients in these lists as well as the legally verifiable ones if they are included in a number of the commonly used references on the topic and are therefore part of a comprehensive coverage of the topic which reflects the literature available. Ultimately if sources disagree, or are not considered reliable by scholars post their publication, why not just state that in the list (supported by refs of cse) and let the readers ultimately decide? I'm not really a fan of redacting these if that is what is proposed / happening. It would seem to me that both the notable and non-notable recipients and any other legal technicalities of these awards could be included, and indeed should be for the sack of being complete (if they are not already). Wouldn't this ultimately increase the value of these articles as resources to other researches / readers interested in this topic? Merely removing the entries would leave the issue unaddressed and many readers might simply assume the lists were incomplete, whereas if the issue is covered their understanding of what seems to be a nuanced topic would be increased and they can come to their own conclusions etc on the basis of the totality of the information available rather than just what we have chosen to present to them. Anotherclown (talk) 22:36, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Can I ask that all editors who have contributed here also do so at WT:WikiProject Military history#Treatment of "questionable" entries in Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross lists where the case for the status quo and an alternative approach are being discussed (per Kirill's suggestion)? Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 00:48, 10 August 2016 (UTC)
@Anotherclown: There’s currently no explicit agreement that an individual award of a KC (without meeting other notability criteria) satisfies WP:SOLDIER, due to high frequency of awards and because not all were awarded for valour (good discussion here: Notability in Knight's Cross Holder Articles). So striving for “complete” coverage of a potentially non-notable topic seems indiscriminate. I don't believe the already extensive lists (7000+ total listings) are improved by including those who may or may have not received the award. K.e.coffman (talk) 02:34, 10 August 2016 (UTC)
Not all Medals of Honor were awarded for valour either. The Knight's Cross is explicitly listed as satisfying WP:SOLDIER. The issue was about people whose claim to have been awarded the decoration was dubious. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:05, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Graduating from the Incubator

How many members would be required for the Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Incubator/Roman and Byzantine Military History group to graduate from the incubator? Is there a standard number or is it up to the coordinators if they think a group is ready or not? Iazyges (talk) 01:06, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

Closure of an A-class review

I put up List of destroyers of India for A-class review on 28 July 2016 (about more than a month ago), which has gained support from four editors, including a coordinator. So now I request one of the coordinators to close the review. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 00:40, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

G'day Krishna, there is a permanent section near the top of this page for listing A-Class reviews for closure. Anyone (including the nominator) can list a review for closure if it has three supports and an image review. I've done it in this case, see this for how it's done. After it has been listed for 24-48 hours, one of the coords will have a look and close the review. Regards, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 00:55, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Outstanding monthly contest awards

Hi guys, I notice that the chevrons and barnstar for winner and runner-up of the monthly article-writing contest haven't been awarded for a while. The last appear to be from June (for the May contest). I was about to take care of this myself but I recall that the awards are "on behalf of the coordinators" and since I'm not one at the moment I didn't want to usurp responsibility... ;-) OTOH "on behalf of" could also refer to a non-coord acting with the coords' blessing so happy to proceed if nobody minds, or else perhaps one of the current tranche could do the honours (N.B. I can't in any case award the writer's barnstar for August, i.e. the July contest, as I'd be the recipient). Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 03:07, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

I'll do it Ian. As a last hurrah... Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 04:04, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
Done. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 05:13, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
On a side note, perhaps we need to add to our outstanding awards nominations section to include this? It does seem like a rather long time to go without action of some sort on the matter. TomStar81 (Talk) 06:40, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
It really should be done by the coord)s) that check and tally each month. And the results entered into the next Bugle too. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 06:47, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
This was my fault. I've been very busy at work the past few months (14 - 15 hour days) and assumed that they had been awarded as The Bugle was updated. Apologies, I should have checked. Will self administer an upper cut. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 06:54, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
No, not at all, I finalise the contest section of the Bugle each month and should check it then and highlight if gongs haven't been awarded. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 07:26, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Possible Terror Attack article

@WP:MILHIST coordinators: 2016 Manhattan explosion is a developing article, however given that there was an attempt to bomb a United States Marine Corps event earlier in the day this may end up coming under our umbrella. Its late here, but I suspect others across the globe will be following this page, so I'll ask if extra international eyes can keep an eye on this and if it does turn out to be the case that this is an attack consider adding the MILHIST template and relevent task forces to the talk page. TomStar81 (Talk) 05:23, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

I'll keep an eye on it. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 05:43, 18 September 2016 (UTC)
@WP:MILHIST coordinators: This article had been moved around, its now at 2016 New York and New Jersey bombings, but the event itself has officially graduated to a what looks like an orchestrated attempt to wreak havoc across the US Eastern Seaboard. While there have been no particular mentions of terrorism at the moment I think its reached a point where we could reasonably assume this to be part of the Global War on Terror, and therefore by proxy a milhist affiliated article. Anyone else want to offer an opinion on whether we should tag it for our group, or do you all think it better to adopt a wait and see for a few more days while this gets fleshed out further? TomStar81 (Talk) 16:30, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
Should we wait for confirmation that it's related to international terrorism, rather than something principally domestic? I don't think we're generally tagging articles on the latter (e.g. 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, Centennial Olympic Park bombing, etc.). Kirill Lokshin (talk) 17:53, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
I'd be incline to wait until the ISIS angle is firmly confirmed; they claimed credit, but that could be a 15-minutes of fame thing rather than an actual we did it thing. If ISIS is behind this then it should settle the issue decisively, but since this isn't a crystal ball we'd have to wait until proof to that effect was produced. TomStar81 (Talk) 18:11, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

XVI Tranche

 

@WP:MILHIST coordinators: Welcome everyone to the XVI coordinator tranche of the Military history Wikiproject! I'd like to extend my congratulations to everyone who volunteered to run for this tranche, and to extend a special welcome to our three new coordinators since Lord knows it was about time we got some new blood up in here :) I'm pinging everyone on this fine evening (well, evening where I am anyway) for two reasons:

  • First, I want to test to see if the ping for the military history coordinators is getting to everyone at the moment. Its been 24 hours since the election ended, and I am fairly certain by now this should have been updated, but we need a live fire test to be 100% sure everyone who should be getting it is getting it.
  • Second, to lay out two long term proposals for the coming year, assuming of course that there are no objections. These two proposals are centered around our quality articles, which for the purpose of the post will be defined as those articles holding a GA, A, or FA rank.
    • Given the need to maintain these articles at a certain quality level I would like to propose a 2017 March Madness drive with the goal of organizing our project (and perhaps certain cross projects like WP:SHIPS) to check on the articles rated GA, A, and FA class to ensure that links, citations, and other issues related to sourcing, referencing, free images, etc be addressed for articles to remain at their currently assigned quality level. I know my own Iowa class battleship articles have got 404-reported external links, which do need to be addressed if the battleships are going to hold on to their FA stars, so it stands to reason that other articles with a GA/A/FA class rating have the same issue, particularly if they haven't had a good looking at in the last 24 months.
    • In line with this I would also like to revisit the idea of using the page notification template to display a generic notice for editors to pages that hold a GA, A, or FA class rating advising them that the article in question needs to adhere to certain standards. At a minimum such a template would need to note that the information in the article needs to be cited to a reliable source, though we can discuss this at length if and when we decide to implement the idea. I'll note here that certain pages like our World War II article have certain particular provisions that are already addressed in such templates - in the case of WWII its to note that the article is an overview article and is written in British English. Another example is our article on the Death of Osama bin Laden, which notes that the article covers a controversial figure and as such debates should be worked out on the talk page whenever possible before going into the article.

Aside from the two points above, we still need to clear out the rest of the academy articles listed on the coordinator's talk page. I'm willing to help out that backlog since I was the one who brought it up in the first place. Does anyone else have anything that needs to be brought up from the last tranche, or laid out as goal for the present tranche? TomStar81 (Talk) 02:21, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

I have received the ping, another potential goal would be to make a bot for FA, GA and A class nominations, much like Legobot if you have RFC's, you can sign up, for either broad MILHIST, or else by task force, to receive notifications and request your input. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 02:25, 1 October 2016 (UTC)
Loud and clear, Zero Alpha. Yes, I think those are good ideas, Tom. I've been thinking that we might need to take a run through our A-class articles for some time to make sure that they are still up to scratch. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 04:27, 1 October 2016 (UTC)
Sounds good, ill see about getting into that. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 06:11, 1 October 2016 (UTC)
Got the ping - is there a record of A-class articles by date? Obviously oldest first would be the best way to go. I suppose if nothing else, we could go through the oldest editions of the Bugle, but I don't know if that goes as far back as A-class does. Parsecboy (talk) 09:46, 1 October 2016 (UTC)
Could work through the A-Class Showcase history -- of course many of the entries would have made their way to FA after A, and before the MilHist Bot not all edits had summaries with the article name... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 10:53, 1 October 2016 (UTC)
As a newbie, just confirming the ping. --Lineagegeek (talk) 12:06, 1 October 2016 (UTC)
@WP:MILHIST coordinators: how shall we assess them, shall we make a "A-class reassessment" on the A class review page, or else a different page, and then have it work much like the normal A class, finding all the flaws and broken things, and we go through and assess them from top to bottom, and have articled kept or demoted based on a majority vote? Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 17:11, 1 October 2016 (UTC)
It might depend on whether the article writers are still active. Assuming the editor is around, we could leave comments on the talk page for them to address. For articles without active authors (or if the active editor is unable or unwilling to make the necessary repairs), I'd imagine we could triage them - those needing minor work could be set aside for a separate improvement drive, and those that need major repairs could go for an A-class reassessment. Parsecboy (talk) 18:01, 1 October 2016 (UTC)
Gday yes I got the pings too, thanks. In broad outline both proposals sound good to me and I would of cse be willing to assist with the March Madness effort. A couple of things I think we probably also need to look at is:
  1. Some sort of backlog drive to tackle our various backlogs (boring I agree but probably necessary maintenance to keep the wheels from falling off); and
  2. We might need to establish some sort of process whereby the co-ordinators maintain a regular patrol of Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/New articles IOT tag new articles for the project and keep an eye out for possible hoaxs, POV forks, duplicate articles etc. Unfortunately I can't readily think of a solution to this, but perceive that there is a blindspot here at the moment at least. Anotherclown (talk) 20:34, 1 October 2016 (UTC)
Actually, I wonder if it would be possible to modify the milhistbot to do a once a month pass through all quality content and check the links and everything else, then notify the relevant contributor of any issues in the quality article(s) in question. In the event the editor hasn't been active in the last 30 days the bot could then leave a list of articles on a designated page and ping the coordinators to address the relevant issues. That would help us keep the quality content current, but as I have almost no knowledge of bots whatsoever I'd be at a loss to say if such a programming feet was possible. TomStar81 (Talk) 01:36, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
There is an existing bot that already go through articles and validates links, but I think it's fairly slow in doing so as it covers everything. I see its changes every so often in my watchlist, which makes me think that the issue is more that the editors are probably inactive than anything else. Regardless, we should go through our oldest FAs and A-class articles and see what needs to be done with them to bring them up to modern standards. I'm not too worried about the GAs as there was a massive effort to validate them back around '09 or so so the worst have probably already been dealt with.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:09, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
What you are describing is fairly simple to do. The bot you are thinking of is the User:InternetArchiveBot, which goes round checking links are substituting Internet Archive (Wayback Machine) links. There are less than 1,000 MilHist Featured articles, so it would take a Bot about an hour to check them all. There are two tricky bits. The first is to determine whether a link is in fact broken. Now, for a status of 0 or 200, we can generally assume a link is good, although sometimes the web site in question gets taken over by a spammer. Statuses in the 300 range (redirects) are often okay, although they may indicate that the material has moved. Statuses in the 400 or 500 range are considered bad, but the site in question may only be temporarily down. The second problem is what to about it. The InternetArchiveBot is pretty canny about how it goes about adding archive links, which means it has to find valid Wayback archives and insert them correctly, respecting the article's date formats. If all you want is a report, that shouldn't be too hard to run off. Hawkeye7 (talk) 04:42, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
@Anotherclown: maybe for 1. we could have it be a competition, although I dont know how we would organize the number people did. 2. Has it been a big problem, i occasionally go through and look at the new articles, but has stuff slipping through been a problem? If so maybe delegate a task force or else group of people to go through it. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 22:23, 1 October 2016 (UTC)
Gday. Yes, we recently had a couple of probable hoaxes (which got deleted in the end) - Battle of Đồng Dương and Battle of Hà Vy. I used to go through the new articles list fairly regularly but stopped doing so a while back due to other commitments / laziness. I am going to try to start doing this again. Anotherclown (talk) 22:36, 1 October 2016 (UTC)
The Ha Vy one made me laugh pretty hard at just how stupid the stats were. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Iazyges (talk • contribs) 23:39, 1 October 2016 (UTC)
  • Sort of a subset of checking B1 for all levels, I'd like to perform the "human" check for the reference updates recently performed by InternetArchiveBot because of the recent migration of Air Force Historical Research Agency's entries to a new server, but I'm at a loss for how to locate changes for articles not on my watchlist and I'd rather not do this piecemeal. Anyone know of a simple way to do this? --Lineagegeek (talk) 22:05, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Pronoun "he" no longer appropriate in this instance....

I'm really NOT into a lot of "political correctness," I'm just a guy who saw a woman in this video who is a Master Chief and I went to Wikipedia to find out what a Master Chief is.

If you're curious, it was this YouTub video I watched, and I refer to the part starting at 3:46: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXlHv1-YPxM&google_comment_id=z13zypf4vsy4xtglo230gll4lmeihvvss

The entire Wikipedia article that defines "Master Chief" uses the pronoun "he."

I know "he" traditionally included male or female, but in 2016 wouldn't it be appropriate to avoid that whenever it's easily possible? You could say "THE Master Chief is one who is...." blah, blah, blah, for example. I think this would be appropriately respectful **without costing a lot of undue effort.**

Hope I've written this note to the right people. It was daunting to find out to whom or how. Couldn't figure out how to put it on the Talk page of that article.

Larry Hallock

ChicagoLarry (talk) 17:08, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi ChicagoLarry, which article are you talking about? Master chief petty officer doesn't use gendered terms... Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 17:25, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

{{US officer ranks}}

Am I the only one that sees these navboxes as a mess? I don't understand the alphabet soup, nor do I see why every rank needs its accompanying insignia... Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 17:29, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

The insignia are important. A reader is likely to see them in a film or tv show, and come here to find what they mean. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:05, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
That's great and exactly why we have a table at the bottom of warrant officer (United States). ;-) They clutter the navbox, where "each link should clearly be identifiable as such to our readers." Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 20:30, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
I agree that the insignia are important, but I also dislike the template's use of abbreviations, particularly the unexplained use of different abbreviations for the same grade in different services. --Lineagegeek (talk) 22:20, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
@Lineagegeek: How would you like that fixed? Shall we add notes at the bottom or just expand the grades? Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 22:29, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
@Iazyges: That may be a reason to lose the template all by itself. It may be hard to fit a long title like Lieutenant General into the boxes in the table. Perhaps the various branches could ge grouped for this purpose into those that use "Army type" ranks and those that use "Navy type" ranks. Most of the complications with this division are at the enlisted level. --Lineagegeek (talk) 22:57, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Jul to Sep 16 review tallies

Username GAN PR ACR FAC Total Awarded
Anotherclown 4 0 11 0 15 AustralianRupert (talk) 12:44, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
AustralianRupert 2 1 16 3 22 Done by Ian Rose
Dank 0 2 9 16 27 AustralianRupert (talk) 12:44, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
Hawkeye7 7 0 4 0 11 AustralianRupert (talk) 12:44, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
Ian Rose 7 0 9 2 18 AustralianRupert (talk) 12:44, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
Maury Markowitz 0 0 7 0 7 AustralianRupert (talk) 12:44, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
Nick-D 4 0 4 3 11 AustralianRupert (talk) 12:44, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
Nikkimaria 0 2 11 16 29 AustralianRupert (talk) 12:44, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
Peacemaker67 3 0 6 1 10 AustralianRupert (talk) 12:44, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
Zawed 4 0 3 0 7 AustralianRupert (talk) 12:44, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
Tomandjerry211 (alt) 0 1 1 0 2 AustralianRupert (talk) 12:44, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
EnigmaMcMxc 0 0 1 0 1 AustralianRupert (talk) 12:44, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
LavaBaron 0 0 4 0 4 AustralianRupert (talk) 12:44, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
Mr rnddude 4 0 1 0 5 AustralianRupert (talk) 12:44, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
Manxruler 0 0 1 0 1 AustralianRupert (talk) 12:44, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
Krishna Chaitanya Velaga 10 0 2 0 12 AustralianRupert (talk) 12:44, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
Parsecboy 8 0 1 0 9 AustralianRupert (talk) 12:44, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
Kges1901 1 0 3 0 4 AustralianRupert (talk) 12:44, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
G'day all, it is time to tally up the quarterly reviews and hand out the reviewers' awards. I've made a start by tallying up the Milhist ACR reviews. Can someone else have a look at the PRs, GANs and FACs for the editors listed? Cheers, AustralianRupert (talk) 04:01, 8 October 2016 (UTC)
I've added the GA tallies. It is my understanding that we get these numbers by reviewing the GA articles and adding up the editors who update the Warfare section. If that is incorrect, please let me know the correct way to do it. Cheers. Zawed (talk) 05:17, 8 October 2016 (UTC)
That method can't catch reviewers who forget to update the GA/Warfare list, but I think it's the best way we have at the moment. BTW I can check the FAs some time this w/e. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 05:47, 8 October 2016 (UTC)
Cheers, I also check Template:WPMILHIST Announcements and then go to the review pages from the articles that are added/removed from that template. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 10:03, 8 October 2016 (UTC)
I've come across this after Rupert pinged me. I don't whether I am comment here as it a coordinators noticeboard. But I have an issue regarding the GA reviews. I was unaware of the instruction to list the passed nominations under the Warfare section. I sincerely apologize for this, and assure that this won't be repeated again. But for now, the following are my GAN reviews from Jul to Sep 16—1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10—you can verify the same. I shall update the list now, but I don't whether these will considered for this tally (as the reviews were completed prior to 30 September 2016) or the next quarter's tally (as added now, after 1 October 2016). I once again sincerely apologize for my mistake. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 15:03, 8 October 2016 (UTC)
That's fine, Krishna, I've added your GA reviews to the table because they were completed within the Jul–Sep timeframe -- I can see you've added them to the GA/Warfare list now (and I'm sure you'll do so for all future reviews)! Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 21:24, 8 October 2016 (UTC)
Thank you, Ian, for the tally. But I don't feel that this is the right way to tally GAN reviews. Because the nominations that only pass the review are list at WP:GA/W, but what about the failed reviews? They are not listed. But a review is a review, whatever the result may be, pass or fail. Better we employ some other way something like Rupert said to tally the GAN reviews. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 01:49, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
Well, it's not ideal, but it is better than not acknowledging GAN reviews at all, which was the case previously. I think we're all open to any other ideas on how to tally them. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 03:39, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
Looks good for now. We'll discuss a better alternative before the next quarter's tally. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 13:49, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
Thanks, all, the awards have been handed out now. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 12:44, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

Coordinator Topicon

@WP:MILHIST coordinators: , I've created a topicon for coordinators, as I've been switching over to topicons from userboxes, to reduce whitespace and unnecessary length of my userpage. Its {{MILHIST Coordinator topicon}} if you want to use it. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 19:17, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, lazyges. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 10:45, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

Invitation from Wikipedia Asian Month

Hi, I'm Addis Wang, one of the organizer of Wikipedia Asian Month, which will happen this November. I would like to invite WikiProject Military history to collaborate with us in hosting Asian Military History Month in November, to encourage editors to help build Wikipedia's coverage of Asian-related Military history articles. This collaboration may also lead to more editors knowing and joining WikiProject Military history as well. On your end, there is not much to do besides encouraging the participants of WikiProject Military history to take part in the Wikipedia Asian Month. The Asian Military History Month will just observe the rules of Wikipedia Asian Month, and have a guide page on the WAM event page. As an example, we currently have an "Asian Women's Month", which is a similar collaboration with Wiki Women in Red. Please let me know if you have any thoughts or questions regarding the proposal.--AddisWang (talk) 02:47, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

@WP:MILHIST coordinators: I suppose it wouldn't kill us to make mention of this in The Bugle. Anyone have any questions/comments/suggestions regarding this? TomStar81 (Talk) 06:13, 21 October 2016 (UTC)
Sounds appropriate. --Lineagegeek (talk) 11:15, 21 October 2016 (UTC)
Agreed - unfortunately, the Open Tasks section of the Asian Military History Task Force is of no help at the moment for those who might want to participate. Might we want to try to put together more of a list of missing articles to give a bit of guidance? I'm sure there's a lot of opportunities even in relatively heavily-covered topics like the Vietnam and Korean wars, let alone earlier conflicts. Parsecboy (talk) 12:10, 21 October 2016 (UTC)
Cool! I just created the guile page here, please feel free to improve it or add anything from the WikiPorject.--AddisWang (talk) 17:47, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

Close request

Would somebody close Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/William L. Uanna/1? It was withdrawn by the initiator in June, but needs to be formally closed per Wikipedia:Good article reassessment. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:41, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

I'd do it but I commented on the review. Is anybody else free to do this please? Anotherclown (talk) 23:39, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
I'll take a look... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 23:48, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
Mmm, the nominator certainly seems happier but I couldn't see an outright withdrawal on the GAR page, and not sure how much that would count for anyway when some other reviewers have also recommended delisting. Not having closed a GAR before, I'll have to familiarise myself with things before proceeding, so no objections if another uninvolved editor wants to jump in. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 00:57, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

MilHistBot and Devon County War Memorial

I was idly browsing when I noticed that MilHistBot seems to have missed a few steps in closing the ACR for Devon County War Memorial. It made eight edits closing the ACR before, but only six for that one. Courtesy ping for @Hawkeye7: so he can look into the technical stuff. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 09:58, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

The Bot was having troubling figuring out who the nominator was. Normally, the nominator card looks like this:
:<small>''Nominator(s): [[User:Kges1901|Kges1901]] ([[User talk:Kges1901|talk]])''</small>
but this one looked like this:
<small>''Nominator(s):'' [[User:HJ Mitchell|<font color="Teal" face="Tahoma">'''HJ&nbsp;Mitchell'''</font>]] &#124; [[User talk:HJ Mitchell|<font color="Navy" face= "Times New Roman">Penny for your thoughts? </font>]]</small>
The misplaced pair of quotes was all it took for the Bot to throw its hands up in the air. I have enhanced the bot's error reporting, made its parsing of the nominator card more permissive, and run the script to complete closing the nomination. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:42, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Contact Ian Rose, Military Co-ordinator

I'm trying to get a message to Ian Rose, one of the Military Co-ordinators. His Wikipedia entry says 'contact me if you have a question' but I am unable to find anywhere on the site where I can contact him. The Military Co-ordinators page says 'to contact us, leave us a note' and directs to this page. Is this the right place? It seems like I'm editing a talk page, not contacting someone. When I visit the 'User Talk: Ian Rose' page, I get the same problem - it says at the top 'to contact me, please add a new comment' but there's nowhere on the page to add a new comment'. I apologise to Wikipedia for my stupidity. Can anyone help. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.69.76.40 (talk) 08:49, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks

Tony Goodman — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.69.76.40 (talk) 08:35, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

G'day, Tony, to contact Ian, click on his talk page and then click on the "edit this page" tab on the top of the page. That will allow you to type a message onto Ian's talk page. When you are done, click on the save button at the bottom. Ian's talk page can be found here: User talk:Ian Rose. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 09:39, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Graduation of Indian military history group from incubator

As the founder of the Indian military history group in incubator, I request the project coordinators to have look at the group, graduate it from the incubator with necessary amendments and technical stuff to be done. The group was initiated in June this year, from then to till date the participants count to 14. There are considerable number of good and featured works from the group. I think the group is now ready to sustain as an independent task force. I specifically ping Kirill Lokshin and Hawkeye7 for help into the technical work. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 12:51, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

G'day, I can see you've put in a great deal of effort, but is it really necessary? A number of years ago we had an Indian military task force, but had to merge it into the larger South Asian military history task force. I'm not really sure splitting it out again makes much sense. Thoughts? AustralianRupert (talk) 07:37, 8 November 2016 (UTC)
Comment It seems to me there is some ambiguity that needs to be dealt with, inherent in the statements about the group: (1) It is about the military of the Republic of India (2) The Indian military has a 200 year history. Looking at the limited membership of the South Asian military history task force, most members seem come from or specialize in countries that formed the British Raj, including Sri Lanka and Pakistan. The size of membership of the SEA TF indicates to me that it need'nt be split at this point. Limitation to the current republic's military would seem to exclude military history articles associated with the East India Company (and weren't many of its units Bengali, which would be split between Bangla Desh and India?) or the Mughal Empire, (not to mention British military who spent substantial time in India). --Lineagegeek (talk) 15:47, 8 November 2016 (UTC)
@Lineagegeek and AustralianRupert: Thanks for your opinion. So what would you finally suggest? Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 03:42, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
I think that limitation to the Republic of India is too narrow. I see that in the incubator project already includes an article about British/Nepalese VC recipients. --Lineagegeek (talk) 22:55, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
Ex-coordinator comment. I think that this should be retained within the South Asia TF for now. These things wax and wane, if it still has legs in twelve months, I'd re-consider. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 08:46, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
Agreed. TomStar81 (Talk) 08:49, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Category and Redirect tagging drive

@WP:MILHIST coordinators: other coordinators, how would you feel if we were to make a drive about tagging categories and redirects? Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 13:11, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

G'day, the last few years we haven't had many drives, and the limited number we have undertaken have mainly focused on content creation. Is there a particularly pressing concern that would be addressed by focusing our efforts in this regard? Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 13:21, 8 November 2016 (UTC)
I had proposed a 2017 "march madness" drive with the goal of reducing some our backlogs, redirects, templates with missing B-class info, etc. If you want we can roll that in with this if we decide to move forward with the March Madness drive. TomStar81 (Talk) 21:14, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

@AustralianRupert: perhaps this is just because I mainly focus on roman articles, but I come across a lot of untagged categories and redirects, the main problem with this being Cfds or Rfds. I generally think its good to have redirects be tagged, but I'm not sure if others agree with me. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 21:31, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

Its useful, but by nature boring, maintenance work that doesn't often get much attention. I'd certainly have no issues with including it in "march madness" per Tom's cmt above. Anotherclown (talk) 21:46, 8 November 2016 (UTC)
No dramas, then, I'm sure we can find a way to include it in the March 2017 drive (maybe in a similar way to how points have been awarded for task force allocation?). Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 03:45, 11 November 2016 (UTC)
@AustralianRupert: Sounds good. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 05:18, 11 November 2016 (UTC)
@AustralianRupert:, I'm good with it too. We had a massive drive last year some time to bring some of the assessment backlogs/task force backlogs up to date. I'm stymied at the task force backlog right now because of the inclusion of the talk pages (mentioned elsewhere), or I'd be on top of it better. auntieruth (talk) 15:58, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

MILHIST's guideline for notability

@WP:MILHIST coordinators: , ive made a post on the policy page of the village pump about wether MILHISTS guideline should be made official, given that the notability for people page links to it in lieu of its own words. do you think we should seek to establish it as a guideline? Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 17:29, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

If you are referring to the MILMOS we have ratified that so its part of the official MOS on Wikipedia. If not then I am unsure what you are talking about, could you leave a link to the post in question? TomStar81 (Talk) 23:29, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
@TomStar81: G'day, Tom, I believe Iazyges is referring to Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Notability guide. @Iazyges: Is that correct? Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 23:39, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
In that cause its been an official Wikipedia level stylguide for years, per the template you can see [[6]]. I'm not sure when or who decided that this was only an "essay", but we had a big RFC on the matter and it was cleared by the community to be considered part of the style guidelines here. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:43, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
TomStar81, the style guide and the notability guide are two separate pages; if I recall correctly, the RFC concerned the status of the former, not the latter. Kirill Lokshin (talk) 00:00, 11 November 2016 (UTC)
G'day all, just so you are aware the style guide is actually currently being discussed elsewhere, which I only stumbled on now. Please see the discussion here: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#An MoS talk page has been redirected to a wikiproject. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 01:17, 11 November 2016 (UTC)
@AustralianRupert: yes that's what I'm referring to. As our style MOS is a guideline, the notability guide (arguably) should be easier to get it established right? Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 02:56, 11 November 2016 (UTC)
I've tried to get the notability guide accepted before, without success. Hawkeye7 (talk) 06:19, 11 November 2016 (UTC)
@Hawkeye7: did you do a full RFC and or Village pump policy proposal? Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 06:36, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

New Special project?

@WP:MILHIST coordinators: Perhaps "Operation Riverine" for the improvement of ships that mostly fought/served in rivers, or else littoral zones. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 22:59, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

Since most of the recent US Navy operations in this area have been in boats (which are unlikely to be notable in themselves), shouldn't this include boat units as well? (Full disclosure, my son commanded riverine squadrons and a deployed riverine Joint Task Element). Perhaps, "Operation Brown Water"? --Lineagegeek (talk) 23:13, 12 November 2016 (UTC)
@Lineagegeek: that sound awesome, and much more like an actual operation name. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 23:17, 12 November 2016 (UTC)
It's US Navy slang. Brown Water=riverine, Green Water=harbor and coastal, Blue Water=Traditional Seapower. --Lineagegeek (talk) 00:34, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
Are there are group of editors currently working on this topic, or seriously intending to do so? It's generally best for new projects to respond to editing activity, rather than the other way around. Nick-D (talk) 00:38, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
@Nick-D: Well I am, I don't know how many others are. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 00:51, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

@WP:MILHIST coordinators: I have the following phases planned

  • I: Ships
The ships and their classes
  • II: Equipment
Any weapon or piece of equipment on it.
  • III: Campaigns (Name suggestions welcome)
Any battle, war, or any event in which two enemies, with at least one being brown water ship, fired on each other.
  • IV:Major Events
Development of them.
  • V:Biographies
Important engineers and admirals/commanding officers
  • VI:Miscellaneous
Anything obviously brown water related that doesn't fit in anything else.

That all looks good, but do we have the people for it? I'm unsure if anyone has done anything meaningful with a brown water fleet on Wikipedia, and therefore I'd be a little gun shy about moving forward with this unless I knew for a fact that there would be people working on it. TomStar81 (Talk) 22:26, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

@TomStar81: I'll make a post about it on the main talkpage asking if anyones willing to join. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 22:34, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
There's the work I've done on Austro-Hungarian/Yugoslav river monitors, but my interest really isn't any wider than that. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 03:42, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
I hate to be a dampener on such an initiative, but such things have often burnt out very quickly without half-a-dozen or more editors working on them. Without such a support, I wouldn't back it. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 09:42, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

A-class review boilerplate and MilHistBot

Recently cases of MilHistBot have been observed cases of skipping some steps in closing an A-Class review. This is due to the variance in different signatures by the users. Fortunately, these cases have been detected. But the problem, even in future there may be a sort of this. Because we cannot feed all the types of signatures into the bot'script. So I request the coordinators to change the A-class review boilerplate to a uniform format. I mean, I suggest to change the Nominator(s): field with a standard code that will produce the same for all the users. For example, presently ~~<includeonly></includeonly>~ is used, instead of that {{subst:REVISIONUSER}} may be used, which produces the same format for every nomination and this can loaded to the bot's script. Please share your opinion regarding this. I specially ping the bot operator Hawkeye7 in this context. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 04:03, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

That's actually a very good idea. It will be a simple change. Hawkeye7 (talk) 05:55, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
@Hawkeye7: So can I make the change? Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 09:28, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
Sure, go ahead. I was hoping a coordinator would jump in. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:07, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
Yes, this seems like a good idea to me, too. I'd make the change myself, but I have the tech skills of a caveman. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 23:06, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
@Hawkeye7 and AustralianRupert: Done, changed the boilerplate. Before the change, the Nominator(s): field consisted of ~~<includeonly></includeonly>~. I changed this to {{User0|{{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>REVISIONUSER}}}}, that produces the output before the nomination page for the first time as this: {{User0|{{subst:REVISIONUSER}}}}, so that produces an output Example (talk) when saved for the first time i.e. while creating the nomination page. I've checked the new code, and it is working successfully. Hawkeye, I also request you to have look at the boilerplate and make changes to the bot accordingly. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 05:49, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
I changed the Bot to recognise this form. It appears to be working okay. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:32, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
For what it's worth, this seems like a sensible idea to me. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:53, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
Didn't have a clue what this meant, so I didn't chime in. The ignorant should stay silent and learn, I believe. auntieruth (talk) 20:36, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

5.40.172.66

I'll be keeping an eye on his contribs and rollbacking them. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 23:51, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

I've blocked them for a week as those posts are disruptive in my opinion. There are better ways to resolve disputes than hounding people and pasting the same comment everywhere. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 00:01, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Irish Territorials in Peru in early 1950s

I have a friend who was in the Irish territorials who apparently volunteered to go to Peru, he thinks in 1952) to assist the government in the fight against the drug cartels. Does anyone know anythink about this? Cheers ejmcf2407:7000:8505:FB40:98CD:BC26:A864:C1B (talk) 23:14, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Changing the image of current A-class

@WP:MILHIST coordinators: Right now the image for the "Article currently undergoing A-class review" is [in my opinion] ugly. Henceforth I propose it be changed from to . It makes more sense, as the "separate slice" part fits in quite nicely with the seperate slice GA and FA symbol (I believe all were made by same person but I may be mistaken.) What do you guys think? 23:09, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

G'day, this change seems sensible to me. I'd be happy to support so long as there is a consensus. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 00:24, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
An altogether "a"propitiate idea, I think :) I'm on board. TomStar81 (Talk) 01:08, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
Good idea. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 01:30, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
Support The question mark seems entirely off the mark. --Lineagegeek (talk) 01:44, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
Ditto here. Zawed (talk) 02:16, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
In line with the style of symbol used for a current FAC nom, so support. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 03:22, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
And done! Kirill Lokshin (talk) 16:15, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

Military historian and newcomer of the year awards

@WP:MILHIST coordinators: I apologize for the abruptness of this message, however November was a tough month for me on several fronts. As a result, I forgot to alert the coordinators that our end of the year military historian and newcomer of the year awards need to be run this month. Fortuitously, The Bugle hasn't shipped yet, so we can get a mention in there as well as the project talk page and announcements templates, but the urgent matter now is the timeline for nominations and voting. Given that the nomination came somewhat out of left field, I'd propose that we start the nominations on the 4th and let them run until the 17th, then hold the voting from the 18 to the 31st with the award presentations to be made January 1. Any objections, alternative proposals, or questions? TomStar81 (Talk) 01:26, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

Sounds good. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 01:33, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. --Lineagegeek (talk) 01:42, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
No issues here. Zawed (talk) 02:15, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
Yes, that sounds good to me. Thanks for reminding us, Tom. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 03:19, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
Yeh, we try to get the Bugle out on day 7 each month... Proposal sounds fine Tom. Tks/cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 03:27, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
Works for me. Parsecboy (talk) 11:36, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
No objections here. Kirill Lokshin (talk) 16:15, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
Alright then, we are live. I've hidden the voting sections with the hide code, if need be we can simply trim out the hidden text if people add to the sections before voting officially starts. Otherwise, its in the community's hands now. TomStar81 (Talk) 20:37, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
I went through some FACs and ACRs for candidates. If anyone has any other method of surfacing candidates, please jump in! Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 07:20, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
It's certainly well hidden.  :) auntieruth (talk) 20:37, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Help with Manchukuo military ranks and insignia

I have created the page for Manchukuo military ranks and insignia, using the images at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Manchukuo_Imperial_Army_rank_insignia, I used some interpretation to create it, and would like someone to check for mistakes I may have made. Thanks. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 06:07, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

We've been complimented

Check out the last paragraph here. Guess it pays to work on your FA's, huh :) TomStar81 (Talk) 09:12, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Also, check out the by line 'how effective the guns were'; thats a pretty good assessment of what the 16"/50 could do to the IJN if they had thrown down on the high seas. (I'm tempted to load that here, but I've no idea about the copyright at present.) TomStar81 (Talk) 09:14, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Military historian voting

I may be wrong but shouldn't the voting be open? (Unless I totally missed the thread it mentioned), in either case perhaps the link in announcement should link to this thread. Is it already open or are we late? Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 06:57, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

I've set it up now, thanks for pointing this out. Please let me know if I got anything wrong. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 08:20, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

I think that the voting is getting lost a bit on the talk page: you may want to post some notifications. Nick-D (talk) 21:52, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

@Nick-D: perhaps a mass message to everyone who's on the bugle subscription list? Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 22:50, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
We can do that, but I'd hold off until Monday or Tuesday on account of the holiday. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:08, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
@WP:MILHIST coordinators: Is this going to be done? The number of votes are rather low at the moment. Nick-D (talk) 22:11, 28 December 2016 (UTC)
I'd support this. Tom's suggestion of waiting until after the holiday seems sensible. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:15, 28 December 2016 (UTC)
Agreed, but based on the time stamp, I think Tom meant we should have run it this past Monday - the next one will be after the voting period ends. Parsecboy (talk) 23:36, 28 December 2016 (UTC)
I'd always intended to send a mass message, I just wanted to burn off enough time to make sure that we weren't rapid firing them (we had a grumble or two over that last year). Since we are down to about 72 hours, and with 24 of those hours occurring over the weekend, I figured we were close enough to the end to officially justify sending a mass message. TomStar81 (Talk) 05:07, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

TRANSLATIONS

I'd like to make my contribution by translate pages, primarily english-italian, but also italian-english. Lucacosta61 (talk) 00:14, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

@Lucacosta61: thanks for offering your services. You may be able to find some pages you can work on here: Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 03:03, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Strachwitz

I wanted to ask if the recent deletion of the article Ernst Graf Strachwitz was justified as reasoned on the articles talk page. I acknowledge that the community has ruled that the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross does not establish notability under WP:SOLDIER. However, besides being a Knight's Cross recipient, he also was an Austrian politician in post war Austria with significant media and press coverage. A check of the German Wikipedia article de:Ernst Strachwitz gives a good indication.

There is even a dedicated biography

  • Andreas Fraydenegg-Monzello: Die vielen Fronten des Ernst Graf Strachwitz. Eine politische Biografie. Aresverlag, Graz, 2013 ISBN 978-3-902732-18-7.

Thoughts? MisterBee1966 (talk) 14:40, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

  • Without really having much of a clue about this guy or the topic area I'd say on the surface of it if there is a recent book on the him (not self published, and independent of the subject) then that would go a long way towards establishing notability per WP:GNG (WP:SOLDIER is irrelevant in my book as it is NOT policy). Certainly it would be enough to suggest that a bold redirect is probably not the best way to handle this, and that a consensus should be achieved on the talkpage at least before doing so. Anyway that is my two cents. Anotherclown (talk) 03:16, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
  • I think the implication would be that a book published by Ares Verlag wouldn't be a RS because Ares Verlag (according to de WP) is considered by some to be a right-wing publisher. However, given the man's apparent political career and existence of a book on him, some sort of coverage in RS can be expected, and a bold redirect was definitely not the way to go in this case. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 06:01, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
  • The de WP article also links a Der Spiegel article from 1950 which covers his right-wing political activities, and the Austrian parliament website has an entry for him. I'd encourage K.e.coffman to self-revert the redirect in this case. There clearly is enough to justify the article going through the proper AfD channel at the very least. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 06:12, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
  • I agree, even if the source may be biased, a source is enough (in my book) to warrant discussion unless it goes against policy or guidelines. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 06:04, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
    • G'day, if the subject was elected to a national level parliament then he most likely satisfies WP:POLITICIAN. I believe he was elected to the National Council (Austria), at least that is what was in the article (albeit unsourced) before being redirected. As such, it seems that there would be a prima facie case of notability, IMO, which probably warrants further discussion (including an analysis of the references available to back up further claims of notability). As an aside, the whole point of the bold redirect strategy was to avoid needless AfDs. I believe that it is acceptable to boldly redirect in many cases, although in others it is probably best to discuss first. Which situation applies to a given article will not always be obvious. In this regard, I would argue that WP:BRD applies here. The article was boldly redirected in good faith. Now that the redirect is being questioned it can either be reverted and discussed, or kept in place while further discussion occurs on the talk page. The outcome can either be to keep the redirect by consensus, revert the redirect (with article improvements) by consensus, or send it to AfD if no consensus can be established on the talk page. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 06:14, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
      • I disagree Rupert. I think, given the redirect arrangement is a shortcut of project-wide procedures intended to address situations where the basis for an article was on shaky ground due to a Knight's Cross being the only basis for notability, this is an example of not doing due diligence (there were mentions of his political career in the article before it was redirected, and K.e.coffman should have properly look into that), and the appropriate action at this point is to self-revert and use AfD (if K.e.coffman still thinks deletion or redirect is appropriate). Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 06:32, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
I don't see a problem with a revert in this case; I restored the article and added Cn tag for the uncited material. K.e.coffman (talk) 06:52, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 07:04, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Changing of A-class symbols

@WP:MILHIST coordinators: I ran across and and though they might be a better symbol than the current due to it looking more like a GA symbol. Whether or not that's something we are looking for is the question. Thoughts? Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 00:23, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm not sure that there would be any benefit to associating A-Class more closely with GA—we've generally tried to do the opposite and represent it as a very distinct, MILHIST-specific process. Kirill Lokshin (talk) 01:17, 26 December 2016 (UTC)
@Kirill Lokshin: However, the current A-class symbol is widespread and used by many projects, even if it isn't organized with a review system. Perhaps could work to show the MILHIST A-class as unique? Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 01:28, 26 December 2016 (UTC)
That would just exchange one "letter A in a circle" image for another, no? What would be the benefit of making the change? Kirill Lokshin (talk) 02:22, 26 December 2016 (UTC)
Being the only wikiproject that does it would set us apart from the others, just as our review process sets us apart from others in terms of A-class. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 02:28, 26 December 2016 (UTC)
I don't think using a similar-yet-slightly-different image would be effective in conveying that point; I suspect viewers would be more likely to assume that the inconsistency was accidental. More generally, I'm not convinced it's a point we really need or want to make at this juncture, in any case; note that there are indeed formal A-Class reviews run by other projects (e.g. WP:HWY/ACR), and there's no reason for us to start a debate about whether our process is "unique" vis-à-vis theirs. Kirill Lokshin (talk) 02:38, 26 December 2016 (UTC)
I can see the logic in that. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 02:41, 26 December 2016 (UTC)
I agree that we don't want to associate A-Class with GA, we very definitely see it as a significant step-up from GA. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:27, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Category: Talk etc....

These pages are all showing up in the backlog of unassigned task forces.....Thousands.... WEll,hundreds at least. Are we actually assigning talk pages of categories to task forces? What's going on here? Cheers, auntieruth (talk) 21:07, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

We enabled the no-assigned-task-force tag for non-article pages last year. It would be easy enough to turn it off for categories, if we don't care about those not having associated task forces; do we want to do that? Kirill Lokshin (talk) 19:54, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
I think it should be turned off for the talk pages. We can reach those easily enough by searching on the article space. Right now it's impossible (at least for me) to find articles that need task forces, because they are hidden among the talk pages. auntieruth (talk) 15:22, 30 December 2016 (UTC)
Okay, I've disabled the tracking category generation for category pages; Category:Military history articles with no associated task force should clear out in a few days. Kirill Lokshin (talk) 20:05, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Wiki academy

I'm working on an article about writing a B level article. Hmmm. It's been on the to-do list above for a while. auntieruth (talk) 21:36, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

I'll "B" waiting to see that ;) TomStar81 (Talk) 04:41, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Greco-Italian War

@WP:MILHIST coordinators: Looking at the logs for the Greco-Italian War, I notice that each time the protection disappears we end up dealing with ghosts emanating from AnnalesSchool's grave. At this point, given that this has been ongoing for a year, would there be any objection to formally introducing a permanent protection level for the article, like semi-protection of pending changes? This is getting old, and I for one am sick of it. TomStar81 (Talk) 11:22, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

I think the disruption justifies it. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 12:15, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
Materialscientist beat you to it. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 12:21, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
True, but that's not indef protection. Personally, I'd have put perment semi-protection in the article, but I wanted some feedback first since pending changes (which I do not use) could be a viable substitute here. TomStar81 (Talk) 12:33, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
Protection as proposed looks justified to me. The editors working there in good faith (and the Admins that have to help them) have far better things to do than dealing with this almost constant disruption. Anotherclown (talk) 22:38, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
Pending changes wouldn't be optimum here as it would potentially lead AnnalesSchool to believe that they can get something into the article. Long-term semi protection is more in line with WP:DENY. Nick-D (talk) 22:46, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
I'm okay with it. never understood the mania about it. auntieruth (talk) 15:04, 30 December 2016 (UTC)
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