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Military people categorization

Now that the top-level categorization scheme seems to have achieved a certain minimal level of sanity, I think it's time to re-start the earlier (abortive) discussion on categorizing military people. Since trying to lay out a full scheme last time resulted in nothing actually getting decided, I suggest taking things in small chunks and trying to make only a few decisions at a time.

To start off, I think there are two natural root categories to work from:

These provide a breakdown by country and by conflict, similar to how we categorize battles. So, to start off, three questions:

  1. Should the naming convention for sub-categories of Category:Military people by nation be "Military people of Foo" or "Fooish military people" (or even "Fooish military personnel", as some are titled now)? The second option seems to match most of the other biographical categories, but will present some problems with those historical states that have unusually obscure adjective forms.
  2. Should the naming convention for sub-categories of Category:People by war be "Fooish War people" or "People of the Fooish War"? I think the second option matches the other by-war categories better, and might allow a more natural sub-categorization (e.g. "Fooish people of the Bar War"), but I'm open to other suggestions.
  3. Do we need to retain Category:Military leaders by nationality, or can we merge it directly into Category:Military people by nation and have a separate scheme for sorting people by ranks?

Any comments or suggestions would be very welcome! Kirill Lokshin 16:01, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd go for Fooish Military people and people of the fooish war. A separate scheme for sorting people by ranks would be a very useful tool for sorting. Are we categorizing Fooish military people by there birth or alligience? Some military leaders have jumped sides while other where borth in one country while served there entire carriers in one or more others.Dryzen 20:02, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
And I'd go for "Military people of Foo". "Military people of Foo" would pertain more to geography, "Fooish military people" more to nationality. For example, refer to Tadeusz Kościuszko. On his talk page it says "In the United States Library of Congress, a letter from Kosciusko states specifically that he is from Poland, but of Lithuanian nationality." So while it would be inarguable that he would be in "Military people of Poland", there might be argument from some quarters as to whether he should be one of the "Polish military people" or "Lithuanian military people". There might be better examples of this, of a person who may be identified with a state, but not its nationality. I prefer the "Military people of Foo", myself, since it would indicate the country the military person served, not necessarily his/her nationality/ethnicity. SigPig 20:25, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
I favor the syntax of "military personnel" over "military people". (How many current/former military "people" here use "military people" in real conversation? ;-) The current parent category is Category:Military people by nation, with the subcategories all being Fooish military personnel/people, with the exception of Argentina. As SigPig notes, there can be confusion about categorization by nationality/ethnicity versus nation served. I prefer nation served, as it is more straightforward and easier to determine. So, I'm in favor of Category:Military personnel by nation, with subcategories Category:Military personnel of Foo. —ERcheck @ 21:24, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
I'd say that critical to this categorizations of people by nation is the matter of editors choosing retrospectively the nation that any given military person served. See for example how G. K. Zhukov has been categorized. Another example: Clausewitz. A German General? Then again, how do you categorize Attila or Alexander? Keeping things in the adequate historical context would be very important, and not too easy. In fact, most military people will belong to categories of political entities or "nations" no longer existing. Categorizing Alexander under "military people from Greece" and/or "military people from Macedonia" will be both right and wrong at the same time. Any thoughts? Andrés C. 06:10, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
We could follow the model we've used (pretty successfully, I think) for battles and create categories for historical states. In other words, "Military people of the Soviet Union" rather than "Military people of Russia", "Prussian generals" rather than "German generals", and "Military people of Macedon" rather than "Military people from Greece". The proviso here is that a lot of these may not have good adjective forms, which would make a "Fooish military people" scheme more difficult to implement. Kirill Lokshin 12:13, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

"Military personnel" or "Military people"?

"Personnel" may be a more official-sounding/real-world-applicable/etc term, but I'm not sure it's an altogether approprate term for the category tree we're working with. For example, Women in the American Civil War currently leads up into the military people category tree, as well it should. However, there are many individuals in that category (e.g. Clara Barton) who could not appropriately be categorized under "military personnel". UnDeadGoat 02:38, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
Interesting. I'm not sure if we want it to lead up the military people tree, though; we could simply leave it under both Category:Women in war and Category:American Civil War people, for example. Kirill Lokshin 02:49, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
Well, it may not necessarily be under the scope of the project, but Category:American Civil War people does lead up to one of the categories with a proposed rename, namely Military people. UnDeadGoat 02:54, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
I would say that that's a problem with the current scheme; wouldn't the more appropriate nesting be Category:People associated with war → Category:People by war → Category:American Civil War people? If we put the "by war" categories directly under Category:Military people, we'll always run into the issue of non-military—but still involved in the war—individuals. Or am I overthinking this? Kirill Lokshin 03:03, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
There is a problem with the scheme if Clara Barton would be classified under Military people. Though she was associated with the military during the American Civil War, I don't think she should be categorized as military. Taking an example from WWII, we currently have Category:American World War II people with Category:American World War II veterans as a subcategory. "People" could be a parent category that would also hold non-military. Subcategories could include "personnel" and "veterans". —ERcheck @ 04:48, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
What would the difference between "personnel" and "veterans" be? Both seem to refer to people actually in the military; is there some distinction as to place of service being used here? Kirill Lokshin 04:54, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
The American WWII people category page indicates that the use of "veteran" should apply to those who actually fought in the war. Whether or not both personnel and veterans are need for a "war" category is another issue althogether. —ERcheck @ 05:43, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
We could use the "veterans" label for by-war categories (e.g. "Veterans of WWII") and the "personnel" label for by-country categories (e.g. "French military peronnel"), but that would create the question of whether a second-level category should be named "French WWII veterans" or "French WWII military personnel". The simpler option would be to dispense with "veterans" entirely and standardize all of the names on some variation of "personnel"; are there some other reasons why the use of "veterans" would be needed? Kirill Lokshin 22:32, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
(Aside: Have we settled on Fooish WWII <people/veterans/peronnel>? Or is it Military people/veterans/personnel of Foo?) I support your suggestion to omit veterans in favor of personnel. —ERcheck @ 03:18, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
I don't think we've settled on a particular variation yet. I'll start another section below to finish that off. Kirill Lokshin 03:30, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
IMO, "veterans" seems to exclude casualties and "personnel" sounds awkward more than a couple hundred years ago. I think we need to look at whether we want to completely overhaul the war categories so that personnel/veterans are seperate from people, because the categories as they currently exist could not be renamed; Anne Frank, for example, is part of Category:Dutch World War II people. If we do have a name change, we're not talking about a huge renaming effort, we're talking about creating a (basically) completely new category tree. UnDeadGoat 02:21, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
I think we'll need to revamp major portions of the category tree no matter what we do, since it's basically ad-hoc categories right now; so we might as well try and come up with a good naming convention from the start.
As far as people/personnel: we could have the by-country categories (all sub-categories of Category:Military people) use "personnel" (e.g. "Military personnel of France") while the by-war categories (all sub-categories of Category:People by war, which may include non-military people) use "people" (e.g. "People of/in World War II"). The question of which term the second-level categories (which could include both a nation and a war) would use depends in large part on how we arrange the two parts of the category name. (And this is simplified, to an extent, by the introduction of rank/type categories; "Generals of Russia" or "Military engineers of Germany" both avoid this question completely). Kirill Lokshin 02:58, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Adjective form versus noun form

As an aside from the question of "personnel" versus "people", we still need to decide if we should (1) use "Fooish personnel" or "Personnel of Foo" for country categories and (2) use "Foo War personnel" or "Personnel of the Foo War" for war categories. The adjective form has the advantage of seeming more "natural", at least for the commonly encountered countries; but it tends to become more complicated for either countries that have very obscure adjectives or for wars whose names don't lend themselves to being used that way.

Conversely, if we decide to use "of Foo", it's not clear what we'll do about second-level categories; "Military personnel of France of World War I" is rather convoluted. Maybe we should explore other terms (e.g. "Military personnel of Foo during the Bar War" or something like that)? Kirill Lokshin 03:30, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

So, any ideas? Kirill Lokshin 03:59, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
For starters, I went on with Category:Military people from France. I guess in the end it will always depend on the case. I'd say that, when possible, we should stick with nouns. Andrés C. 04:24, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
Do we want to tie the term to where the person was born or where they served, though? "from Foo" works for the first, but it might be confusing for the second; conversely, if it is the first option, how do we deal with expatriates? "Military personnel of France from Italy" is rather a mouthful, and adding a war in there (e.g. "Military personnel of France from Italy during the Napoleonic Wars") would make it even worse. (On the other hand, it does have a certain logical structure, even though it is long; if all else fails, we could go with something like this.) Kirill Lokshin 04:44, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
The answer would be "both" :) We have to consider three separate things here:
  • Fooish people serving Foo
  • Fooish people at the service of a foreign nation
  • Foreigners serving in Foo's military
How do we come up with a category title that encompasses these three different situations? In the end, whatever name we choose, at least one of these groups is going to be left out. I favor of Foo or from Foo, with the latter perhaps sounding a little better. As for the personnel/people thing, I'd go with "people", even admitting it sounds a little bit awkward. For one, we already have the parent cat Category:Military people in place, and it seems to be working fine. Andrés C. 05:12, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
Meh. If we're going for deliberate ambiguity, "of Foo" is probably more applicable than "from Foo", since, in general, military people tend to be associated with the country they served more than their birthplace. We could then allow for an article to have "of Foo" categories for both countries if the editors thought it appropriate.
The other question, if we go with the noun form for the nation, is how to deal with wars? "People of Foo of the Bar War" is possible, but seems a little strained. Kirill Lokshin 12:45, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
Yes, on second thought, I was perhaps too bold. I am asking for a speedy rename to Military people of France. No need to complicate matters more. On the matter of subcategories, we may need to reword things a bit. What about Military people of France/World War I? Andrés C. 14:31, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
Are slashes even allowed in category names? I'm not sure if that'll trigger some sort of funny subpage creation. Kirill Lokshin 14:33, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
I would dodge the "of Foo of the Bar War" by simply having "Joe Foo" be in both the categories Military people of Foo and Military people of the Bar War, rather than a concatenated category. I suspect that for older wars, with fewer people known to internet users, this won't be a problem. Also, some WWII veterans would have to be in many groups in we concatenated, like Miltary people of the United States of World War II, Miltary people of the United States of the Korean War, and Miltary people of the United States of the Viet Nam War. That sounds like mouthful, but William Westmoreland would need all of those. --Habap 14:48, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
That would work quite well from a categorization standpoint. I don't know if people will complain that the resulting categories are too large, though; Category:Military people of World War II would likely contain hundreds of entries, for example. Kirill Lokshin 14:56, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
Just thinking about what prepositions should go where, I suggest "of" for country served, "from" for origin/place of birth (should probably be used sparingly) and "in" for wars, for ease of figuring out what you're looking at. The problem with "from", though, is that I can see lots of weird categories being created with just one or two people -- off the top of my head, I know "[Noun we use for people] of France from Corsica in the Napoleonic Wars", though . . . The big problem with Fooish people is that some people may have multiple adjectives (British? English? Both?), and some contries don't have adjectives (Mozabiquen?). UnDeadGoat 02:30, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
My usual example of something with a bad adjective form is the Holy Roman Empire, but I suppose African countries can work just as well. ;-)
Maybe we should just have a single "of Foo" set and assume that expatriates will be picked up by non-military categories? Napoleon, for example, could be under "Military people of France in the Napoleonic Wars" and "Corsican natives" (or whatever the general category name for Corsicans is); the second category wouldn't be under the military people categorization, but rather directly under the main category tree for people. Kirill Lokshin 03:01, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Let us go for common sense. For this particular project, the gentleman from Corsica will end up under the general category of France, just as the one from Braunau will be listed as of Germany, and the Georgian will end up in the of the Soviet Union' category. The guys doing biography can take care of the categories by place of birth. More and more I am convinced that of Foo is the best compromise solution. Andrés C. 03:27, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Fair enough; although the Georgian would likely find a category for Georgia already existing, filled with medieval military leaders ;-) Kirill Lokshin 03:39, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Redundant categories

Can we merge Category:Warriors, Category:Military leaders, and Category:Soldiers (and the similarly-named sub-categories) back into the main military people/personnel tree? They're pretty much unused; and while I can see the point of categorizing by rank or branch of service, I think it ought to be done with names that are somewhat more obvious than these general terms. Kirill Lokshin 04:44, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Don't see why not . . . UnDeadGoat 02:22, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
I agree. Still, while Marshals of Foo and Generals of Foo are viable, "military leaders" will come in handy when categorizing lieutenants, captains, majors or colonels. Andrés C. 03:34, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Presumably "Officers of Foo" would be a better name in that case? Kirill Lokshin 03:38, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
True. Still, we will need some kind of leaders category for quite a few individuals, and for different reasons. That is true, especially for political-military leaders. Consider the following cases, picked at random: Attila, Timur, Alexander the Great, Hitler (which otherwise would have to go to cat corporals of Germany), Churchill, Charlemagne, that gentleman from Georgia (again)...Any suggestions for categorizing all those military leaders that never went to their local Sandhurst? Andrés C. 14:53, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Good point. Maybe we should retain the "military leaders" categories and make all the specific rank ones sub-categories of them? So each "Military people" category could (optionally) have a "Military leaders" sub-category with the same name (e.g. "Military people of France" → "Military leaders of France" → "Admirals of France" and "Military people of WWII" → "Military leaders of WWII"). Kirill Lokshin 15:14, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
If I understood you right, this is how it'll work: Parent category: "Military people of France", with subcategories "Military leaders of France" (here would go Vercingetorix, Charlemagne, William I of Normandy, Godfrey de Bouillon, Philip IV, Joan d'Arc, Emperor Bonaparte, de Gaulle, others...never mind if Vercingetorix never heard of the word "France"), and then "Marshals of France", "Admirals of France", "Generals of France", "Officers of France", and "Soldiers of France". Am I correct? If so, let's get to work and see how it turns out. Andrés C. 03:48, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
I think that's what I meant ;-) Presumably everything except for soldiers could be a sub-category of "Military leaders"; do we even need an explicit "Soldiers" category, then, or can we just assume that anyone not explicitly categorized as being a leader of some sort is a regular soldier? Kirill Lokshin 03:53, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Comprehensive proposal

Okay, based on my (probably somewhat subjective) reading of the discussion above, here's something that may be a viable compromise:

  1. Categories for military people by nation will have names of the form "Military personnel of Foo", and will include both modern and significant historical states.
  2. Categories for (not necessarily military) people associated with particular wars will have names of the form "People in the Foo War" (or maybe the longer, but more gramatically correct, "People involved in the Foo War"?).
  3. Second-level intersection categories will take the form "Military personnel of Foo in the Bar War".
  4. Categories by rank and type (which will probably need some more specific discussion later) will be created by replacing "Military personnel" or "People" with the appropriate noun. For example, "Generals of Foo", "Admirals of the Foo War", "Military leaders of Foo in the Bar War", and so forth.

Comments on this would be very appreciated! Is this an acceptable way to move forward, or do people have objections to what's being proposed? (And which of the two forms should be used for the by-war category names?) Kirill Lokshin 17:55, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

  • Under this proposal, what would replace the current Category:<Particular branch of service><rank>, e.g. Category:United States Navy admirals or Category:United States Navy sailors, or would it stay the same? —ERcheck @ 18:08, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
    Good question. My initial reaction would be to treat the branch of service as replacing the country (e.g. "Admirals of the United States" → "Admirals of the United States Navy"). Would this be an acceptable solution? Kirill Lokshin 18:12, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
    This seems reasonable. So "Sailors of the United States Navy", "Officers of the United States Navy", "Marines of the United States Marine Corps", "Commandants of the United States Marine Corps", etc.? Do we keep Category:Naval aviators? Is this a broad category, with subcategory - "Aviators of the United States Navy", "Aviators of the United States Marine Corps"? —ERcheck @ 03:01, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
    That looks right. As far as "Naval aviators" are concerned, I think we can keep such broad categories around; we're eventually going to get some sort of "Military people by type"-like category tree with things like "Sailors", "Naval aviators", "Military engineers", and so forth, which would then serve as parent categories for things like "Military engineers of Germany" or "Aviators of the United States Navy". Kirill Lokshin 03:15, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
    So was any decision reached on the issue of personnel vs. people? Andrés C. 15:29, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
    Well, this proposal uses "personnel" for by-country categories and "people" for by-war ones (since those aren't necessarily part of a formal military), but I'm open to other ideas. Kirill Lokshin 15:36, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
    I think that military ("personnel") vs. non-military ("people") is an important distinction that should be comprehended by the category structure. The subcategory "Military personnel of Foo in the Bar War" handles that. The parent category, "People in the Foo War"/"People involved in the Foo War" would hold the non-military. —ERcheck @ 19:31, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
    Is that a general comment or an issue with this proposal? The way I read it, this is exactly what will happen; but I could be missing something obvious. Kirill Lokshin 00:21, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
    A general comment (not taking issue) ... noting that this proposal handles the distinction. —ERcheck @ 00:24, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
    Sounds fine. As an example, John Pershing will appear in all of the following to-be-created categories: (1) Military personnel of the U.S.A. (2) Military personnel of the U.S.A. in the Spanish-American War (3) Military personnel of the U.S.A. in World War One (4) Generals of the U.S. Army. Well, it's not going to be an easy task, with all those current existing and confusing categories :) Andrés C. 02:43, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
    Actually, we could probably trim the generic "Military personnel of the U.S.A.", since he'll already be in two sub-categories of it; that brings us down to three categories, which is more reasonable. Kirill Lokshin 02:49, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Anybody else have comments? Should we go ahead and put together a WP:CFD nomination for renaming to get the first two points implemented? (And do we want "in the Foo War" or "involved in the Foo War" for the by-war category names?) Kirill Lokshin 04:12, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
Only (non-helpful) comment I'm going to make is that I'm sure glad I don't live in Foo. - Vedexent (talk · contribs) 10:58, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
Looks fine to me . . . UnDeadGoat 20:13, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
After reading all of the above I am still not sure what is being proposed. I am a big fan of uniformity but I am not for it if they sound like many of the proposals listed above. It seems that we are forgetting many of the nuances that arise when talking about titles and terms especially in different services across different countries. In this case it may be wise to consider holding off until all of the ramifications can be thought through. From my own little corner of the world Marines of the United States Marine Corps is redundant and just a bad name for a category. --Looper5920 20:44, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
Strictly speaking, it should be "Military personnel of the United States Marine Corps" for the general category; "Marines of the United States Marine Corps" would only be needed if some of the USMC personnel were called "Marines" and some weren't. We can certainly pick a title that's not redundant; are there other concerns you have with this? Kirill Lokshin 23:44, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
If there are no other comments, I'm going to propose two sets of category renamings in a few days or so. Keep in mind that these are only for the very top level of categories, so we'll be able to work on subtleties deeper in the tree at a later point:
So, any more comments? Or can I just go ahead with putting this on CFD? Kirill Lokshin 13:15, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

External nomination

Curiously enough, someone else started a discussion on one of the by-war categories here that seems to be favoring "of the Foo War"—rather than "in the Foo War" or "involved in the Foo War"—for the naming convention. Thoughts? Should we go along with this, or try to push the other variant? Kirill Lokshin 21:27, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Conflicts by year

I apologize if this has been covered already, but the current project requests that battles should always be placed in a category by year, but these categories are becoming unmanageable. I would like to propose that battle article should always be placed in a conflict category by year, such as Category:Conflicts in 1876 or Category:1876 conflicts. I prefer the latter, but someone started off with the former, so I continued the convention. I don't think it's realistic to continue placing military conflicts in the category of the year itself. I'm not particularly attached to that name, so if anyone has a better name in mind, I'm open to suggestion. The category appears to have been created by User:Mikkalai in July, 2005, and I've asked him to comment here. —Viriditas | Talk 22:55, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Do we want to go by years or by centuries (or perhaps both)? Years are good for battles, but not particularly useful for wars, unless we want a dozen date categories on each article. Kirill Lokshin 00:21, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
One example: the world war cats are categorized by century, as are the lists of battles and wars articles. The ww cats are members of multiple year and decade cats. It makes sense to do it this way, since the main articles don't require date cats (already members by subject cat). I know that doesn't exactly answer your question, but it's interesting to look at the current scheme. —Viriditas | Talk 00:47, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Interesting. As a side note, would we want to rename these to "Military conflicts in 1876" rather than "Conflicts in 1876"? I don't think we want other types of conflicts being tossed into the same categories as battles and wars. Kirill Lokshin 01:03, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
I don't have an answer for you, but I can say that the Conflicts by year category is just that. Battles and wars will still be categorized as such. —Viriditas | Talk 01:19, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Well, yes. My question was more to whether the category had been intended for military conflicts, or for anything that might be termed a conflict (strikes? crimes? high-profile arguments between politicians?). Kirill Lokshin 01:22, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
I don't know, which is why I asked the creator of the category, User:Mikkalai to comment here. As it stands, the category appears to contain battles, wars, massacres, rebellions, uprisings, etc. —Viriditas | Talk 01:27, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Which makes sense, I suppose; but we can wait for Mikkalai to comment before deciding on the exact names to use. (The reason for the question is the persistent appearance of things like Category:War on something and its ilk within various parts of the warfare category tree that were really intended for military topics.) Kirill Lokshin 01:30, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
I understand, which is why I hope this project will come to a decision not only on the naming conventions, but on category maintenance as well. The category in question is not that large, so if Mikkalai does not respond, and this project can come to a decision, I would be happy to help re-categorize articles. —Viriditas | Talk 01:38, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I see that Mikkalai has been online, but he hasn't responded, so I'm guessing he has no real interest in the outcome of the category. The subcategories were created by multiple editors, so I think this project should come to a decision, either through the use of a poll that chooses between multiple naming convention options, or reach a decision through discussion. I can make a suggestion as well. —Viriditas | Talk 00:49, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I see no problem with adopting this scheme in general (could we get a bot to create the categories for us, though?), probably with a two level-scheme (e.g. "Conflicts in the 16th century" → "Conflicts in 1512"). I still think that calling the categories "Military conflicts in ..." is better, since it reduces ambiguity about the purpose and matches the existing Category:Military conflicts. Kirill Lokshin 13:25, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Categories

Conflicts by year: 

Parent categories: Categories by year, Chronology, Years
[–]  Events by year
   [–] Conflicts by year

Category:World War II example: 

Parent categories: 1939, 1940, 1940s, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1944, 1945, 20th century, 
Contemporary French history, Contemporary German history, Contemporary Italian history, 
Wars, Wars of Canada, Wars of Denmark, Wars of France, Wars of Germany, Wars of Italy, 
Wars of Poland, Wars of the Soviet Union, Wars of the United Kingdom, Wars of the United States
[–] World War II

"Coat of Arms" emblems for task forces

Halibutt and I have been discussing using coat-of-arms-like emblems for the various task forces in {{WPMILHIST}} (see here and here). For many of the task forces—particularly those dealing with countries (see this example)—the CoA to use is obvious. In other cases (e.g. aviation) we may just take an obvious image and superimpose it on a shield-shaped background.

The main questions, then:

  • Does anyone have strong objections to this style of image?
  • Does anyone have ideas for images to use on the CoA for the WWI & WWII task forces (really no ideas at this point) or the Memorials task force (some ideas, but possibly not very workable ones)?

Comments on the designs themselves are, of course, also welcome! Kirill Lokshin 17:27, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

It is quite OK for me when applied to national task forces. However, using it for other task forces is hairy. Indeed, there is no common symbol for those, so we always run the risk of having some idiotic nationalistic POV-pushers waging edit wars on those.
For the Weaponry task force, I think the peacekeeper is OK, since it is small and can be considered as a shell or a missile...
For the Memorial TF, which currently has a weird logo from project remembrance, the best symbol would actually be the cross with a superimposed sword, as seen at the entrance of many war cemetaries. -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 18:08, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Wouldn't that imply a Christian POV, eh? -- Миборовский U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai! 18:09, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
As mentioned CoAs might not be applicable for certain task forces, such as WW1&2, Chinese, aviation, etc. Also there might be problems with using CoAs that are anachronistic such as the Image:Armoiries Grande-Bretagne 1800.png CoA for items before the Act of Union. Similarly Using either PRC or ROC emblems would reflect roughly 1% and 2% lengthwise of the entire military history of China, same thing with the Manchu dragon flag which was in use for less than 50 years (and therefore some 1%). It probably would not hurt to switch some task force icons to CoAs, but switching all of them would be overboard and not necessarily beneficial. -- Миборовский U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai! 18:09, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Fair enough. Kirill Lokshin 18:11, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Out of curiosity, would the same objections remain to merely taking the current icons and trimming/superimposing them onto a shield-shaped background? That way, we could have uniformly-shaped images on the template without actually needing to use real coats of arms. Kirill Lokshin 18:15, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Because having a Panzer or a Peacekeeper on a shield would be about as funny as drawing a Roman centurion with a Kalashnikov. Most modern shields (US army for instance) are not actual shields. :))))) This being said, I'm not opposed to it. -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 18:18, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
I recall there was some alternate history book that prominently featured centurions with Kalashnikovs ;-) (And no, it wouldn't be very meaningful as an actual CoA, I suppose.) Kirill Lokshin 18:21, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
I don't think anachronism is a huge problem here as we're not designing logos for the project, but merely icons for them. Thus a shield design clearly suggests that we're dealing with history, while it's content is merely a pointer to the content of each particular task force. Thus recognizability is IMO more important here than historical accuracy - after all the icons are but a tool for us, at the talk pages, and not images to be put on article pages. Besides, it would be hard to find a specific symbol that would be representative to the entire military history of certain nation. For instance, the Polish flag is a symbol of Poland since 19th century - and before that was almost unknown. At the same time the French royal fleur de lys were dropped after the revolution. And still, these two are fairly recognizable - which should be the main purpose of the icons we use.
Anyway, I'll create some national arms and then we'll see what to do next. //Halibutt 18:30, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Fair enough for me too. -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 18:35, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Ok, looks like the national task forces (plus Napoleon) are done; they use some variation on the actual CoA, except for China, which uses the previous logo superimposed on a shield. Comments would be very welcome! Kirill Lokshin 22:00, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Ain't no kite shields in China, and really, I don't think it's absolutely essential to have a shield for every task force. -- Миборовский U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai! 23:29, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Were there shields (of any shape) used in China? Or something similar to a CoA with a different shape? We could go back to the raw character, of course, but putting it in some sort of shape might be more distinctive visually. Kirill Lokshin 00:22, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
It would be rather... unorthodox. I'll look around for a suitable image. -- Миборовский U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai! 01:55, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
  • In reviewing the various task force icons, the Weaponry icons is one that, in the small scale used for the project banner, is easy to misidentify. It looks like a crayon. The national task force icons are relatively easy to identify. —ERcheck @ 03:13, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
I thought it looked like a Light Saber... one thats turned off. Mike McGregor (Can) 23:19, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
So we are going for the Star Wars theme? ;-) —ERcheck @ 02:08, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

John II Comnenus

I have added the WikiProject Military history template to the discussion page on Emperor John II Komnenos. His son Manuel I Komnenos is now a featured article, so it would be great if the article on John II could reach the same level too. Anyone interested in helping to make improvements to this article on an important Byzantine emperor, your suggestions would be very welcome. Thanks! Bigdaddy1204 11:54, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject ADF

Okay, so they didn't feel like cooperating, apparently, which is fine. But now they're creating their own versions of the standard infoboxes (as well as creating dozens of stubs that consist of nothing but an infobox, but that's a minor issue in comparison). Anyone want to try their luck talking some sense into them? Kirill Lokshin 14:57, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I've just been informed—probably quite correctly—that my comments here are unnecessarily harsh. How about we kindly and lovingly explain to them why forking infoboxes may not be the best idea, then? ;-) Kirill Lokshin 03:10, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
How many stub notices does any article need? They had three attached to Military history of Australia during World War II - Good grief.Michael Dorosh 03:23, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
And now they've forked an infobox for bases too. This is going to be rather problematic to clean up. Kirill Lokshin 09:12, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
While I, as a member of the project, am a bit sceptical about the overall value of the ADF project (in particular using it to tag articles relating to non-current Australian military topics) I really don't see why this warrants a heavy-handed response. For what it's worth, there has been an extremly valuable expansion in Australian-military related articles in the last few days. Crushing this at birth because the formats used aren't in accordance with the standards seems rather pointless given that the formats are perfectly workable and totally inoffensive. IMO, the application of stub tags would be most appropriate. --Nick Dowling 09:26, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
Oh, the expansion of articles is great; and the use of different formats isn't a problem in itself. The issue is the fact that there's a strong consensus that the creation of a different infobox template for every country (and for every branch, apparently, in your case!) is deprecated in favor of using a modular standard template. If there are changes to the templates that are required for Australian units, we can certainly make them (we've done so before for other countries), but creating separate versions of all the infoboxes without even discussing the issue really isn't a good way of doing things. Kirill Lokshin 09:38, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
Kirill, I certainly agree with you in principle and do favour the use of consistent infoboxes. However, as the information being placed in the boxes does represent a significant expansion of the coverage of the Royal Australian Air Force and the ease with which this information can be navigated it seems rather churlish at this point to worry about it. The key point, IMO, is that what is currently being added is are expansions of articles which were not using any infoboxes rather than unilateral edits to existing material. Incidently, all the Australian Army articles I've seen use the standard military unit infoboxes and the Royal Australian Navy ships seem to have had a long-standing infobox-esque thing which I agree is in need of reform so I'm not sure why you're complaining that different infobox templates are being used for each branch of the Australian Defence Force - this isn't anything new, and the articles on one of the services are in full compliance with the general standard while the others are at least internally consistant. --Nick Dowling 09:49, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
Well, my concern is that the rapid proliferation of these new RAAF infoboxes will make it increasingly difficult to convert them to the standard format later. The real questions, I suppose, are these:
  1. Is there some reason why the same (new or expanded) information can't be added using the standard infoboxes?
  2. If it can't because of some missing fields in the standard boxes, what are they, and can we resolve the issue by adding them?
(The issue with ships has more to do with the fact that ships function as both a unit and a vehicle, incidentally, which doesn't come up for units in other branches—or non-single-ship naval units, for that matter.) Kirill Lokshin 10:19, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I guess it's time for me to make a comment, being the creater of the new RAAF infoboxes (*ducks for cover*). Looking at the infoboxes (forgeting about the articles they are attatched to) I'm very happy with how they turned out. They are now a principle method of navigating through the unit pages, and also give a lot of general info at first glance. Also, the overall image, especially when a unit crest is available, looks very good on a page.

As for a standard format - I don't believe every country should have the same format. However, my templates are very easy to redesign without editing any of the unit pages. But there is no reason to do this at this point, they fill the purpose and look good, ProjectADF may nominate to change or add to the infoboxes which will be done in due time.

Overall there should be a provision for local control - that is how global marketing works. What works well in Europe may fail in the US. What works well in the US may fail here in Australia. Most people researaching RAAF pages will be Australians and therefore we should retain an element of control. Justinbrett 12:26, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I just looked at a RAF unit page and a USAF unit page. I have no desire for ours to look like either of them. We're probably much closer to the RAF model, but I don't see what's wrong with what we've got now.

Frankly, I was hoping you'd offer a slightly more substantial reason for forking templates than "I have no desire for ours to look like either of them", since, in fact, the entire point of templates is to have a consistent look among articles. Kirill Lokshin 09:17, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm very strongly against this. Moving away from standards is, IMO, never a good thing. Asides from the obvious maintanence issues, we are almost certainly going to have problems where multiple templates are applicable to a given topic. Wouldn't this be much more applicable as a task force rather then a Wikiproject? Oberiko 20:43, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I would have to agree. It appears from the above arguments that the rationale may be one of two things.

  1. The general solution may not meet the particular needs of the ADF .
  2. The ADF project feels a need to distinguish themselves as "special" or "different" (an appeal to personal, organizational, or national vanity), or they just don't agree with the aesthetic choices of the standard military history infoboxes.

Forking the infobox develop creates two separate, competing, sets of infoboxes - which makes little sense from the perspective of consistency and maintainability, and thus should be avoided.

In the case of the first reason, working with the current infobox maintainers would solve the problem. Not only would it meet the needs of the ADF, but would improve the general solution. All national forces might benefit from a more flexible and inclusive set of infoboxes. If the ideas behind the infoboxes used in the ADF articles are so much better, why not incorporate the improvements into the general solution and use that? This seems to me a win/win/win scenario - the needs of the ADF articles are met, the centrality of the "code" is maintained and thus the ease of maintenance is preserved, and there may be secondary benefits to other articles which are not yet apparent.

In the case of the second scenario - the issue won't be resolved, as it is ego driven ("we are different", or, "we'll be using my design ideas instead").

Now, I'm not accusing the ADF project of egoism without further evidence; I'm giving what I see as the possible reasons for maintaining separate infoboxes. However, I don't see a "non-ego-driven" rationale in which improving the general solution is not a better solution for everyone involved. - Vedexent (talk · contribs) 03:50, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

As an additional point, since the ADF Project and the Military History project overlap (actually ADF's mandate is a subset of Military History) they are going to come into comflict over articles in which Australian forces were involved. Are we going to get into a "banner tagging" tug of war with the ADF project? If the ADF project won't agree to a merger, is is worth while adding a "this article is also maintained by the ADF Project..." field in the general banner much like the current task force fields? Is this opening the door to the fragmentation of the Military History project into multiple competing "national projects" each with a "custom field" in the general banner? - Vedexent (talk · contribs) 04:07, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
I don't think there's any real danger here at this point. The multiple national projects were the norm up until we had the round of mergers (a few months ago?) that brought in some of the initial task forces. The ADF project seems to be, so far, the only one that has resisted consolidation with any vehemence; in fact, the largest and most active of the old projects—the Polish Army one—joined this project entirely of its own volition.
More to the particuar point: if the ADF project wishes to be uncooperative, they can maintain their own tagging. I certainly see no reason for us to include a link to their project in our own tag, given the circumstances; it would only serve to advertise them at our expense. Kirill Lokshin 04:43, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

I was thinking of those exact mergers - along with the "viability" of small wikiprojects. Were there not a few of those projects which this project "absorbed" simply because they had lapsed into inactivity? the AFD project has only 6 members at this time. It is very possible that the project is not viable over the long term, and may eventually be absorbed into this project after it "dies out". - Vedexent (talk · contribs) 05:40, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

It's possible, I suppose; but it would only take a single editor actively resisting us for this problem to continue indefinitely. Kirill Lokshin 06:00, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
I've arrived late to this particular party, but I'll throw my lot in anyway. With regard to the infoboxes, I am in full agreement with Kirill and Vedexent. Simply put, the point of templates is to create a standardised look and format across a range of related Wikipedia topics, not to cater to individual aesthetic desire. Creating a new RAAF unit infobox may seem handy now, but it just causes unneeded work later - anyone involved in converting any of the infoboxes this project has standardised can verify that. Unless the new RAAF unit infobox actually features something lacking in the existing unit infobox, it's not really that necessary, and as Vedexent pointed out, any area that the current one is lacking in can be simply fixed - benefiting hundreds and hundreds of other articles at the same time. As for "global marketing", that's rather irrelevant - an Australian researcher looking up a RAAF unit for whatever purpose isn't going to know that the infobox is maintained by a project about the ADF, and if they were to go out of their way to find that out, I don't think it would effect the way they use the article either.
As for the existence of WikiProject ADF - it's all good. Anyone on Wikipedia has every right to start their own WikiProject, and we shouldn't get too worked up over it. Sure, it makes more sense for an Australian MH task force to be created instead, for ease of use and efficiency, but if the idea's been rejected, that's the way it is. We just have to be ready for more mutual toe stepping like this in future...
What do the rest of the ADF project think of this matter? Only one other member and the creator of the infobox seem to be involved in the discussion - are others aware it is happening? It would be good to have wide input from the group the infobox has been created for. Chill, --Loopy e 05:51, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
I think that pretty much is the ADF project at the moment ;-) (There's another editor who does a lot, but he's on wikibreak at the moment.)
As I mentioned at the very beginning, the existence of a separate project doesn't concern me in the least; I happen to think that the task force idea makes things easier, since it allows the main project to do a lot of the maintenance and administrative work, but if the contributors in question think they can do things more efficiently separately, that's entirely their choice. The problems start to appear when the "mutual toe stepping" turns into actively working at cross purposes with each other; and this is particularly troublesome in an area such as template development, where standardization is paramount. Kirill Lokshin 06:00, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
Just to clarify, the articles which Justin is adding infoboxes to seem to only refer to currently active Australian military units. I haven't noticed him add these boxes to units which do not currently form part of the Australian Defence Force (which was established in the 1970s). To aid this discussion, could you please post links to the infoboxes which you think should be used? From what I've seen, there are ample grounds for either compromise or coexistance. --Nick Dowling 10:30, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
On the top right of this page and on the top right of the main project page, in the navigation box, you will find links to all of the infobox templates under the heading "Template instructions". —ERcheck @ 11:27, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
Yep. In particular, the military unit and military structure infoboxes are the ones that are of interest.
On a side note, "currently active" isn't really the question that needs to be asked. Even if this project were to exclude current military issues (we've never really come to a firm decision on this point), it would only apply to units that had been recently created. Piles of the RAAF units have been around since WWII, and therefore be a perfectly valid military history topic, regardless of whether they're still active. Kirill Lokshin 13:39, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
June 2, 2006 is history, now that it is June 3. If you see my point, eh.Michael Dorosh 13:46, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Just some quick thoughts on this topic as I went through this same thing about 6 months ago with the US Marine Corps units. I had spent much of my first 3,000 edits on Wikipedia creating USMC units with an infobox that was very different than the one the project had created. At the time there was so little info on the Marine Corps that the articles I was creating went under everyone's radar. Then one day someone converted one of my infoboxes over and I was pissed. I thought the new infoboxes were very UK specific and could not & should not be used by US units. After some discussion and back and forth with other members of the project I was persuaded and have since converted over (with the help of others) all of our pages. The reason I mention this is that I understand the whole notion of wanting to distinguish and also the notion of "why should our units be looking the same as US and UK units". That being said, if there are specific things you want added to the boxes the members of the project are more than accomodating and there is also the issue of uniformity which should appeal to all military people. Anyway, just my humble opinion. I hope you guys convert over or at least reach some sort of equitable solution.--Looper5920 09:39, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, as Looper5920 said (and just in case this wasn't clear before): if there are things that need to be added to the infoboxes to make them work for you, we can certainly do that. Kirill Lokshin 14:37, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

We will take the issue of the infoboxes to the project for further debate. If your infoboxes can be updated to meet our needs, then we will consider changing them. I don't see the need to be different for the sake of being different. At the moment they don't serve our needs. But sure, if that can be rectified, I'm certainly not going to recommend maintaining seperate infoboxes because we don't want to work with you.

Our infoboxes also serve as a way of navigating through the RAAF structure - I haven't seen other nations work this way. I would be very reluctant to lose this feature.

As for the project, that I'm not so willing to move on. 'Military History' is a fairly specific topic, IMO, and unless the project changes its focus to all military related articles, and not just history (and changes its name), then I see no reason to merge. My input is only on current information, although there are others in the project that work on historical information. Even the term 'ADF' is a current name for our defence force that didn't exist in either of the world wars.

Our Project is working well for us. It's small, but by joining your project I can't see how it's going to help us all that much. As others have said, we probably won't get any help with the subject matter so it's still going to be the same number of people working on the articles. Justinbrett 07:52, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Just wanted to clarify something - we have not forked infoboxes for the bases. These are the airport infoboxes - are only used for RAAF bases and Army/Navy bases with an airfield. Many RAAF bases are also used for civilian ops and therefore are also classified as airports. Take this up with the airport project if you disagree.

"If your infoboxes can be updated to meet our needs, then we will consider changing them." - do actually what needs to be updated, then =) --Loopy e 21:49, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Category:Ship classes

Hey guys, I've been working on Category:Ship classes, trying to sort the various ships into the sub-categories. I've been making really good progress, but I've run into something that I wanted to get a second opinion on. The term destroyer escort was used by the US to describe ships smaller and slower than destroyers that were used to escort merchant vessels. The Royal Navy built similar vessels and called them frigates. When American destroyer escorts were given to the British through Lend-Lease, the British called them frigates. Since World War II, the US has stopped using "destroyer escort" and now uses "frigate."

My question is this: Should I categorize American destroyer escorts under Category:Frigate classes or create a category just for them? If I put them in a separate category I could include a "see also" on the cat pages, but since they are the same thing I'm tempted to stick them in one. What do you guys think? TomTheHand 15:36, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

From the way you describe it, it sounds like they should be put under "Category:Frigates." If they're essentially the same in size, style, armament, etc, then it is really just a matter of semantics. But then, this is not my field of interest or expertise. Someone more in tune with 20th century naval history might feel differently. LordAmeth 16:22, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Requested articles

I notice that we are missing articles on a number of wars, including:

(Perhaps in a few cases we do have articles but I couldn't find them; in which case more redirects and links would be appropriate.) Gdr 10:26, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Hi. The Ecuadorian-Colombian war of 1863 was such a relatively small affair (a declaration of war, a battle, and a pretty much inconsequential treaty) that it hardly would give us enough material to make an article dedicated solely to it. IMHO, I would suggest widening the scope of the proposed article to include also the war of 1862 (another brief war in which Ecuador found itself in war against one of the combatants in the Colombian civil war). More critical, I'd guess, is the lack of an article on the Ecuadorian civil war of 1859-60, in the midst of which a Peruvian expeditionary force landed in Guayaquil. Best Regards. Andrés C. 14:40, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

If an article isn't appropriate, then at least there should be a paragraph in History of Colombia and History of Ecuador.

Note that the list above is based on this table of inter-state wars from the Correlates of War project. That project also maintains tables of wars between states and non-states and intra-state conflicts. Gdr 15:37, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Point of View

Can we please use a neutral or allied POV for East Front articles? At least one of these [Battle of Kiev (1941)] looked like Nazi probaganda for a while. William Jockusch 09:23, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

List of countries by date of last war

I came across List of countries by date of last war while looking at Category:Lists of countries. I'm not sure if you people are aware of it or not. So, I thought I would bring it to your attention. It seems fairly inaccurate and poorly done to me. --Midnighttonight 01:00, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Seems a rather silly list to me, since it doesn't include any historical countries. Even if it could be fixed, I'm not sure how useful it could be, since it's essentially a collection of random dates. Kirill Lokshin 01:03, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
And it doesn't have America. -- Миборовский U|T|C|M|E|Remember 6/4! 02:14, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
The United States is in the section titled "Countries currently at War". TomStar81 02:26, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
An inaccurate mess... --Loopy e 03:05, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

A-Class versus GA-Class

Something that might be worth considering: some project (e.g. WP:TROP) require a distinction between A-Class and GA-Class articles because they have a separate process within the project for promoting articles to A-Class. We, however, don't have anything like this, which means that there's some confusion as to which articles get A-Class tags and which get GA-class.

A couple things I think we could do:

  1. Follow the cyclone project's lead and have a more formal process for assigning A-Class than just a single reviewer. Maybe a listing where some number of people would have to look over the article and support A-Class status? This would then be more distinct from the GA tag; but do we have enough interest to maintain such a process?
  2. Abandon GA-Class entirely and list all GAs as A-Class automatically.
  3. Keep the current system with the understanding that those two classes may be interchangeable (which could work, I suppose, but isn't a particularly clean way of doing things).

Comments or suggestions would be very appreciated! Kirill Lokshin 14:52, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't really be in favour of adding another additional layer of reviewing, I think the GA system is redundant as it is. I had been listing as A-class those articles that I thought would have a reasonable chance at RFA given a little spit and polish, the GA system I viewed as something seperate and ignored entirely. Your second suggestion comes closest to my line of thinking, but I would use the existing project peer review system to evaluate A class articles. Leithp 14:58, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
I think the GA system, while simple, is quite flawed as everyone can promote/demote the article.
I don't have a clear idea on what we should do, but maybe we could make peer review a condition for A-class? I mean, it is not too difficult to do... But maybe I'm wrong... -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 14:59, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
We're getting bunches of articles that aren't actually on the GA list rated as GA-Class too, which only adds to the confusion. I suspect that Leithp is right and we should just ignore the GA level in our scheme; articles tagged as GA would be assigned to either B-Class or A-Class, depending on their quality. (This would mean that real FAs are the only articles that get an automatic grade, incidentally.)
So, any objections to just removing the GA option from the project tag and reclassifying all of those articles? Kirill Lokshin 02:48, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
I think confusion can be eliminated if we get rid of the A-class for our project instead. That way GA will be directly below FA. It's counterintuitive to have 2 "classes" which articles have to pass rigorous examinations to achieve, and an arbitrarily assigned, unspecific (in terms of requirements) rank in the middle of the above 2. -- Миборовский U|T|C|M|E|666 03:26, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Would that mean that all articles would need to actually pass a GA nom (not hard, I know, but it's some extra red tape) before going above B-Class? Or would we just assign GA-Class arbitrarily, even to articles without a GA tag (this is what seems to be occurring now, to a certain extent)? Kirill Lokshin 03:29, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Make FA and GA the top 2 levels. That's what I'm suggesting, yes. So the ranking system would look like FA>GA>B>Start>Stub. Or, if you think that non FA, non GA articles should get more levels than B and start, make A below GA but above B, FA>GA>A>B>Start>Stub. But I'm not sure if that could screw up the whole ranking system for other projects also using it. -- Миборовский U|T|C|M|E|666 03:39, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
No, I understood that. My question was whether the requirements for an article being rated "GA-Class" would include actually being listed on WP:GA or not.  :-) Kirill Lokshin 03:42, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Oh, well, yes, of course. -- Миборовский U|T|C|M|E|666 03:45, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Ah, ok. That might work too, if we just eliminate the "A-Class" rating. (Certainly it'll make the GA people happy that we're sending them so many articles ;-) Kirill Lokshin 03:51, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Personally I think the GA system is pretty pointless, particularly so given our own project grading system, so wouldn't be too keen on continuing to use it. Leithp 06:54, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
I guess the only real practical difference between keeping A-Class versus keeping GA-Class would be that GA-Class would (as outlined above, at least) require us to wait on a GA nomination before changing the rating, which could hamper our own rating efforts. I'm not sure if that's a convincing argument against it, though. Kirill Lokshin 07:03, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Well, looks like the practical problem (which is continuing to occur) is that we're continuing to get non-GA articles tagged as "GA-Class" because we can't synchronize the article ratings with the GA process; articles that fit the "GA-Class" description are missing GA status, primarily because nobody is actually bothering to nominate them there. I'm beginning to think that staying with "A-Class" for our sub-FA assessment level will be the more feasible option here, since it will allow us to rate purely based on quality, without needing to cross-check with the GA list. Kirill Lokshin 03:23, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
So, anybody else have an opinion on which one we should retain? Kirill Lokshin 23:57, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
As one of those who had a hand in promoting the GA system, let me explain a few things about how I understood its purpose. My goal in labeling each article as a "Good Article" was to identify those articles which, while not masterpieces or examples of fine writing & insightful discussion, still did the important job of providing the answers users were looking for. (Remember, not all articles in an encyclopedia are written by experts with a string of initials after their names, & these form the backbone of any encyclopedia.)
Another goal of the GA system is to simply get more eyeballs looking at articles. Back when I made my first edits on Wikipedia, there were less than 100,000 articles, so new contributions -- both edits & articles -- received a lot more attention then than they do now. By nominating articles as GA, this helps Wikipedia's built-in peer review system to scale: people are far less aggressive about accepting an article as "Good" than they are as a "Featured Article", & because getting an article past the GA hurdle is easier than the FA one people are encouraged to distribute their attention a little wider than they might otherwise.
And I'll admit that the GA system actually overlaps a number of other -- perhaps redundant -- projects, like Wikipedia Wersion 0.5, grading articles as A-class, & the Wikipedia CD group. So are all of these overlapping projects wasting Wikipedia volunteer resources? I believe that they don't -- they all help improve Wikipedia, acting as carrots or sticks to motivate editors to work on the existing articles. But all of this is largely irrelevant to this discussion.
I feel that the label of "Good article" should not be applied to an article unless the WP:GA project has said that it is one; otherwise the article should simply be rated either as class A or class B. Rating articles is a different process than either the GA or even FA systems. I suggest that the people in this WikiProject decide whether a "Good article" is equivalent to a class A article, & then submit all of those articles to that project for their consideration. -- llywrch 03:51, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Nah, if we're rating 10,000 or so articles and even 5% of them look like possible A-Class/GA articles then we'll flood the GA system beyond breaking point. I still say that we treat the GA system as a seperate entity outwith our project rating system, though that has more to do with my opinion of it as stated above. Leithp 10:59, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Five percent of 10,000 is only 500. A few of us think that 4% of all Wikipedia articles qualify for GA status -- which would mean there are a possible 44,000 articles for the GA system to handle. If submitting 500 articles breaks the GA process, then that will only prove that it is not a workable project -- but without violating WP:POINT. -- llywrch 19:35, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
So, any other opinions here? Should we keep both, or only one (and, in that case, which one)? Kirill Lokshin 20:41, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Distributed importance ratings

Top Subject is a must-have for a print encyclopaedia
High Subject contributes a depth of knowledge
Mid Subject fills in more minor details
Low Subject is peripheral knowledge, possibly trivial

The Mathbot developers are now in a position to start implementing a system to grab importance ratings for assessed articles directly from talk-page categories for inclusion in the tables and so forth. The plan is to go with a four-level importance rating (more details on the WP1.0 view of importance here), as shown at right.

In light of this, two points:

  • I'm going to create, provisionally, Category:Military history articles by importance and rate a few obvious (think World War II obvious) articles, just so the developers have something to test against.
  • We need to come up with some (rough) guidelines on how to assign these ratings. Obviously, it'll be a somewhat subjective judgement, but we want to come up with something that both (a) avoids introducing lots of systemic bias and (b) produces a useful breakdown of what needs to be worked on.

Ideas and comments (of any sort) are very welcome! Kirill Lokshin 04:18, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm afraid you won't be able to avoid Systemic Bias at all the moment you start implementing a rating scale that asks editors to judge what is and what is not peripheral knowledge. I mean...peripheral knowledge according to whom? Pity. Andrés C. 05:27, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Mmm, according to the project? And yes, there will be a certain amount of systemic bias, as there would in any such system; but I hope we can minimize that by both having the editors working in certain areas rate the articles they're intimately familiar with and by being quite liberal with these ratings. I think that most people here have a rough idea of what articles are more—or less—important (or, more properly, what articles should receive priority; the great advantage of Wikipedia is that there's no inherent limitation to the amount of material we can cover). Kirill Lokshin 06:09, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Which makes a Wikipedia CD, IMHO, A Bad Idea(tm). -- Миборовский U|T|C|M|E|666 08:01, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
I don't think anyone is suggesting that it replace the online version; but certainly having a CD would make that whole Wikimedia Foundation distributing Wikipedia across the world thing easier ;-)
In any case, the existence of Wikipedia on CD and other such projects is somewhat outside our control. The real question is this: do we want to participate in them by doing an importance rating—using whatever rules of thumb we choose—internally? Or is the idea sufficiently repugnant to the members of the project that we'd rather play no part in it (and let whoever puts the CD together do their own picking, presumably)? Kirill Lokshin 08:07, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Whether or not the importance ratings are used for compiling the CD version the importance ratings certainly are useful for our purposes, as discussed previously. Leithp 10:01, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Well, yes. We never did figure out how to assign these ratings in a more-or-less coherent manner during that discussion, though. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 11:36, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
How about if we just let editors assign importance as they see fit and provide a forum for debate on disputed cases? That seems easiest and would satisfy the need to quickly evaluate articles and helps perform Wikipedia's two primary functions i.e. an encylopedia and a forum for pointless arguments. Leithp 15:45, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
That's how it would work in any case; with nearly 8000 articles (and growing), we have to rely on individual editors to determine ratings anyways. I was hoping to get at least a more-or-less uncontroversial set of examples for each of the importance levels, just so people have something to work from, though. Kirill Lokshin 15:55, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
If we add importance ratings, I think it essential that some basic guidance be provided (which would most likely involve discussion here). This could take the form of example of various type under each rating classification; for example, a range of wars/battles/conflict, a range of military organizations/units, a range of biographies, etc. —ERcheck (talk) @ 23:04, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
For American Civil War articles, one algorithm to consider is the {{American Civil War Menu}}, which appears in various places, such as Eastern Theater (in the See also section). I'd consider the main article, American Civil War, to be Top, the items in the menu to be roughly High, and the other 1,000 or so articles to be Mid or Low. There are probably comparable Menus or Portals for other eras that would provide the same kind of filter. Hal Jespersen 23:20, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
There actually aren't, for most periods ;-)
In any case, once we have some examples, we can probably go from there. (There's no real hurry, incidentally, since the bot support won't be ready until the end of the week at the earliest.) Kirill Lokshin 23:55, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
To minimise the ol' bias kicking in, there should probably be a regional dimension to judging the importance of an article, if it isn't already part of the process. The CD has to reflect this world-wide project and be relevant to wherever and whomever it is distributed to. For example, the Northwest rebellion is important to the history of Canada, the Algerian War of Independence to Algeria and France, the Maori Wars to New Zealand. But they're probably not to Mr. and Mrs Smith of <random small town>. Though this would likely fill the CD with fairly obscure articles, I believe it's essential to ensure its diverse comprehensiveness. That's my regurgitated and probably needless tuppence. Meh :-) SoLando (Talk) 03:11, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
My feeling is that we should be quite liberal in assigning notable topics a high importance rating, even if their notability is (primarily) regional. The lower importance ratings should be for things like random majors commanding a company in some obscure battle that only got a stub because their name was red-linked in the order-of-battle. (And the growth of things like comprehensive OOBs is going to give us increasing numbers of articles on people whose only significance was that they were present at some important event.) Kirill Lokshin 03:27, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
My feeling is that this is a nightmare of bad blood and hurt feelings waiting to happen. I just got told off by an article creator for rating some of his articles as stubs. I don't even want to imagine what happens if you rate them as 'Low Class'. I would not touch this with a 10-foot pole. Andreas 14:30, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
Considering who you were told off by, I'd say that it's more of the fact that he has some issues working constructively with other people.
But the basic question is the same "lesser of two evils" issue: do the drawbacks of having to do this rating ourselves outweigh the drawbacks of having it done by an outside group without any input from us? Kirill Lokshin 14:43, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
But stubs are hardly the problem. We're talking about someone tagging somebody else's articles as peripheral knowledge, if not trivial (no matter how well written and researched it may be). Wikipedia is project based entirely on the contribution of anonymous volunteers from around the world, and that is how it survives. I can't imagine a better way to discourage editors to continue working on the project than tagging their articles as "trivial" (which in practice will in most cases be the result of the bias of the person who rated the article). While tagging an article as "Start" or "B-Class" is a perfectly acceptable way of calling to the attention of its editor(s) that there is room for improvement, tagging it as "trivial" is an Entirely Different Thing. My two cents: While this classification may be acceptable in other areas of the project, I do suggest we discourage members of WPMILHIST to avoid tagging any article on WP Military history as Peripheral Knowledge. Andrés C. 14:50, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
As a halfway-serious idea: see one section above. We could quite easily eliminate the lowest of the importance ratings from our own project template and only tag articles into the first three. Kirill Lokshin 14:53, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
I do believe that is the best solution - I particularly dislike the 'trivial' in the last category. Andreas 16:08, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
Okay, that would work. We could then have fairly loose criteria for the other three types, which would hopefully reduce bias issues somewhat:
  • Top: core topics (e.g. War, Siege, etc.) as well as topics notable to people outside of military history (major conflicts, units, people, etc.). Primarily the things the average person (not particularly interested in military history) might look up.
  • High: topics notable within military history, but not necessarily outside it. Most of the remaining conflicts would fit in here, as would units and people that actually did something interesting.
  • Mid: other stuff; not particularly notable even from a military history perspective, but still included for completeness of other topics (e.g. units never active, obscure battallion commanders, etc.).
Would that work? Kirill Lokshin 16:34, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
Okay, so it looks like the bot is basically working. Can we go ahead and start using, at least provisionally, a three-level system (as above), or are there still some concerns that haven't been addressed? Kirill Lokshin 13:13, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Besides still being somewhat scared of pissing people off by giving their articles too low an importance rating, no. -- Миборовский 19:42, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I've added some instructions on the importance rating to the assessment page; please feel free to revise the guidelines I've put up. At this point, the best thing to do would probably be to start adding importance ratings to articles and try to see how well this will work in practice. Other suggestions and comments are, of course, very welcome! Kirill Lokshin 14:28, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
I'd be particularly intersted in opinions on the examples I've listed. Are the ones chosen rated correctly? Are there other good examples to use? Kirill Lokshin 14:46, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
I've also added a note about "popular" notability and issues of systemic bias, and a general assessment FAQ. Any comments on these would be extremely appreciated! Kirill Lokshin 00:48, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
I suggest that editors who are not familiar with certain areas refrain from assigning importance ratings to those areas. For example I would avoid Roman Republic battles and generals like a plague because I don't know much about them. Of course, this might have the unintended consequence of neglecting areas which are already deficient, so I think it might be worth considering as a suggestion (not necessarily a guideline and definitely not a policy). -- Миборовский 01:08, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
True. On the other hand, at least for the "Top"-level rating, we're explicitly interested in whether non-experts in the topic would be likely to look up the article, so you might actually be in a better position to pick those out than someone intimately familiar with every battle fought by the Republic. Kirill Lokshin 01:19, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Haha, let's see: Marian reforms, Roman auxilliaries (maybe high-level), those wars against Carthage, Hannibal Barca, Tarquinius last king of Rome, wars with Greek city states, that's all I can think of. And that's only because I played Rome Total War! :D -- Миборовский 01:32, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Military conflict infobox on Trojan War

There is currently a dispute at Talk:Trojan War about whether the Trojan War should have a Military conflict infobox. The primary argument against having the infobox is that the Trojan War is mythology and therefore not part of military history; the argument for the infobox is that all wars, be they historical or fictional, get an infobox. Would anyone care to comment here or at Talk:Trojan War? Thanks. --Akhilleus (talk) 23:49, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Replied on the article talk page. Kirill Lokshin 00:05, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

WP:AA topic

You folks might be interested in the next topic for Article assessment: War. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 02:06, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Footnotes

I've just found out how easy it is now to add footnotes to an article. You can just use the <ref>note</ref> tags directly in the article, and it lists them all down below.

I've embarked on my own project of major rewrites of some articles that are hero worshipping in tone and very conversational. Others have no footnotes whatsoever and I have been slipping them in where possible. Some of them are:

I wonder if perhaps we don't need a task force just to go out and put footnotes from respectable sources into articles. The Il-2 article is particularly bad for "gossip". Check this thread out at Battlefront.com Sturmovik Debunking there are no footnotes in JasonC's comments either, but he identifies a huge disparity in published sources and what is currently in some of the hero worship articles on wikipedia. Maybe instead of working on new articles, we can identify some of the laughably bad ones and cram some verifiable sources down some throats. ;-) Michael Dorosh 04:52, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Anyone who's nominated an article for FA status recently will have found out that footnotes—and large numbers of them—are basically required. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 09:52, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
Unfortunately, yes... <_< -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 14:45, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Maps

More flyshit and pepper stuff - what is the opinion regarding the thumbnailing of maps? Obviously a necessity for large maps, but I wonder if we shouldn't strive for a window sized map (assuming 600x800 main frame resolution which can be used as a reference while reading the article? I've uploaded an example at Battle of the Scheldt. I suspect it will offend the sensibilities of editors quite quickly and it will be shrunk down to a 300px image off to the side, but do other members of the Project feel there would be some utility in keeping one map per article unthumbnailed as a general reference without the need to click- or does it matter?Michael Dorosh 16:50, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't really like it, myself, both because it tends to cause unwanted horizontal scrolling (recall that, on an 800x600 screen, you can actually have significantly less width for the article itself, depending on the browser and skin used) and because the map can no longer be properly captioned. My suspicion is that relatively few readers make frequent reference to maps while reading an article, and that those that do can be reasonably expected to open the map in another window should they desire to do so. Kirill Lokshin 17:01, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
Fair enough. I don't like the look of the larger maps either, can be distracting, but thought I'd see what the consensus is. Michael Dorosh 17:08, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

And it was one of ours. Wisconsin's a great article, and the fact that breaking up WWII's history was my contribution makes it no less sweet. Way to go, MH!

(Sorry i've been out of touch, finals tore me a new one and i've been picking up the pieces.)

Cheers, Guapo

Huh? I thought Iranian peoples was actually the 1000th, and the Wisconsin was just the one that happened to be on the Main Page at the time? Kirill Lokshin 09:57, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Whoops, my bad. Still cool, though, isn't it? Guapovia 10:33, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Military operations

Category:Military operations has been filling up recently with things that are properly battles (or wars) but, for lack of a better name, have "Operation" in the article title; this is creating a (rather unnecessary, in my opinion) split of the categories by article name rather than by topic.

One potential idea would be to standardize on using the various battle categories for all combat operations and to split what remains in the category into Category:Non-combat military operations (which would include the various incidental transport operations, and such) and Category:Espionage operations; I think that, between those three, everything should be fairly neatly categorized. Comments? Kirill Lokshin 19:40, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Makes sense to me . . . UnDeadGoat 16:36, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Wargames

The commercial/hobby ones that is....

I was poking through things, and saw that there is Category:Depictions of war with 'War art', 'War comics', 'War films', and 'War novels' as subcats. Any reason why Category:Wargames would not be a suitable subcat also? --Rindis 19:54, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

None. Hit it!Michael Dorosh 19:55, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Seems like a good idea, provided the military exercise-type "wargames" are kept out of the category. Kirill Lokshin 19:57, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Done. The last is a little tricky thanks to the natural cross polination from subject matter and name. It would help if there was actually better coverage that particular subject. Right now, Military exercise is the repository of what had found it's way to the Wargaming page. I'm not exactly happy with it, but I don't really feel comfortable enough with the subject to do much more. (Especially with the amount of 'hobby' cleanup that's still needed!) Is there anything already in WPMH on the subject? --Rindis 20:23, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Military wargames are actually "training", so perhaps a category on military training would be the best repository for that article. let's rename Category: Military exercises and wargames as Military Training instead, then you can put stuff like Boot Camp, Military Exercise, etc. in it. Michael Dorosh 20:33, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
We have a Category:Military education and training as well. I'm not sure how many sub-categories it needs to be split into (there aren't that many articles to deal with) or what the best names for them would be. Kirill Lokshin 20:36, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Just noticed that. I put all the former wargames and exercises articles into a new category Military training, and put Military training as a subcat of Category:Military education and training. I guess a vote on what to do next might be in order - you could have two cats; Military Training and Military Education or just leave it as one. You could move all the Military training ones to Military education and training and delete the subcat Military training also. I'm not sure Military education and training is all that related to be honest. Other opinions? Sorry to act unilaterally but I thought it best to remove the confusing wargames category. There were only a handful of articles anyway.Michael Dorosh 20:43, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
'Hey' I just noticed that you removed all the wargames from the Category:Military exercises and wargames. I think it's a really bad idea. So I'm going to put them back. Wargames and exercises are a specific category of military training and education - see Category:Military education and training. You are re-inventing the wheel. Also please use edit summaries - I had to track back through your contributions to work out what you were doing. Please discuss here before re-instating. Megapixie 21:53, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
I strongly object to "wargames" being included in the same category as military exercises and training. It's a colloquial term we should reserve for board games, computer games, and entertainment. I thought that had already been agreed to. Besides which, none of the articles you are moving back describes them as "wargames" but as exercises. The correct military term in English is Exercise, so why don't we keep it at that and avoid the inevitable confusion with entertainment products.Michael Dorosh 21:56, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Wargame is a commonly used term used to describe a miltary training exercise. Checkout the dictionary definition at Merriam-Websters - also look at this recent ArmyTimes article and a Guardian newspaper article, google "a series of wargames". Can you provide a link to an article/reference to saying that they aren't called wargames ?
Additionally, the article titles not including the phrase wargames has nothing to do with it - how many articles in Category:Living people have (living person) in the title of the article ? I agree that there is confusion between computer/board/LARP wargames and military wargames, and perhaps the category could be better named, but lumping all the wargames into a category with Carpaea and potentially Firing range, Assault course, etc. seems wrong. Megapixie 23:46, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Mmm, I suspect Michael has some personal expertise in the terminology here; but that's somewhat beside the point. Why not just call the category "Military execises" (perhaps with a note at the top to the effect of it not being meant for calisthenics, for the really pedantic) and avoid the entire issue? Kirill Lokshin 23:50, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Indeed. If someone can point to a military glossary that uses the term "wargames" in a contemporary sense, I could see it. Military Exercises as a category is a good idea, as they are different from Military Operations.Michael Dorosh 00:32, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
What about The DOD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms ? Megapixie 00:46, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
That still doesn't explain why we'd want to choose the long and ambiguous name over the short and unambiguous one ;-) Kirill Lokshin 00:51, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
Nor does it mean the term is in current use. I bet you can find a dictionary definition of "panzerfaust" too; doesn't mean anyone uses them. I said glossary, not dictionary. :-) Michael Dorosh 01:56, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
As far as I see it - there are actually two kinds of military training exercises.
  • Military exercises - that have fixed timetables and agendas, and there is only every a single outcome. The idea is to practice doing something on a large scale to test operating procedures.
  • Military wargames - that have an active OPFOR, that do not run to a timetable. The idea is to test military thinking.
Most training exercises consist of both these elements - but some lean more one way than the other. The name of the category reflects that. I'm not opposed to changing the category name, but I actually think it's less ambiguous with the longer title, because - as I have pointed out - a large number of people (military included) regard "wargame" as a synonym for "military training exercise". Megapixie 01:07, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
Fair point; I don't really care which name is used, personally, so long as the categories for military "wargames" and actual games are kept separate. (Incidentally, these issues with defining category scope are related to the same general nomenclature problem with "operations" that I noted a section above.) Kirill Lokshin 01:32, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
I've been in the Canadian military for 18 years and have yet to hear the term "wargames" used by anyone; that includes research for two books as well as my BA in military history. Kirill is right; there is no need to use the ambiguous term when the shorter, more precise one will do.Michael Dorosh 01:55, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
That's either a Canadian vs. US thing, or military vs. civilian talking about the military thing. I have seen military field exercises, studies, ect. called 'war games' in the press. The crossover in terminology is bad enough that I've wondered if we might end up with the main articles about each being 'Wargaming (hobby)' and 'Wargaming (military)' or some such variation with a disambiguation page. (This is a slightly different thing than the category nomenclature discussion that's going on here, but it's really the same issue in the long run.)
The Dictionary of Modern War (1991, Edward Luttwak and Stuart Koehl, Grammercy Books): "War games: Also described as "conflict simulations," [also used by the hobby; or at least by SPI] war games attempt to synthesize the phenomena of war in peacetime as a training aid...." No entries for 'exercise', 'field exercise', 'military exercise' (or -planning). Also, my roommate has a book (that I haven't read) entitled War Games: Rehersal for Battle. I would prefer to see Wikipedia seperate the terminology, and account for the confusion on the disambig pages (see War Games), but... the biggest difference I know of is that the hobby routinely turns it into one word, whereas it's still 'war game' when talking about the military. --Rindis 02:21, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
Could be a little of both (ie US v Canadian AND military v civilian). SPI coined "conflict simulation" IIRC (I contributed heavily to the Wikipedia article on Fire & Movement magazine, incidentally ;-) )Michael Dorosh 04:02, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Naming conventions

Do we have a link somewhere in the project pages to Wikipedia: Naming conventions (military units)? Just noticed it while editing.Michael Dorosh 20:21, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

It's linked to under WP:MILHIST#Article names. I'm not convinced of the utility of that link, though, considering that page seems to have gotten stuck in perpetual draft form a year ago. Kirill Lokshin 20:43, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Consolidated infobox for weapons

The Weaponry task force is somewhat small at the moment, so I'd be very grateful if anyone else with a bit of time to spare could wander over to the task force talk page and comment on the proposed {{Infobox Weapon}} :-) Kirill Lokshin 00:51, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

World War I template

Why does the World War I template show the flag of Newfoundland as the tricolour? The Newfoundland regiment fought under the Union Jack and the tricolour has never been an official flag of the province. See [1] for one example. I would also think that Newfoundland would be included under the British Empire. BoojiBoy 14:31, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

You mean the monstrous sea of semi-relevant see-also links that is {{World War I}}? I've never quite seen the benefit of having that template myself; the relationship between any particular article it's placed on and the other ones it links to tends to be tenuous at best (and the ones that are directly connected are already linked through campaignboxes or other templates). Kirill Lokshin 14:40, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
I wondered the same thing about that flag myself a while ago, but ended up just leaving it with the assumption that someone knew more about it than I did. --Loopy e 21:42, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
I've been bold and removed it. BoojiBoy 20:53, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Paramilitary units

Should paramilitary units and division be included in the project such as the CIA's Special Activities Division?--James Bond 01:21, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

I would say that if they carry out any "military" activities—including things like SpecOps work—they're probably close enough to include. It should't be more than a handful of articles anyways, so I don't think this will be a major issue. Kirill Lokshin 01:23, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
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