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Good articles (again!)

Since the previous discussion seems to have died an untimely death, I'm wondering if we've come to any sort of consensus regarding the use of {{GA-Class}} in our assessment scale.

My feeling is that, insofar as GA review is not particularly rigorous, and is often performed by people who may not have the best knowledge of the subject area, we shouldn't be relying on it for our own ratings. I would suggest that we remove the class=GA option from our scale and classify existing GA-Class articles as either A-Class or B-Class, depending on their real quality. (WP:GA would still continue to flag articles as "good" at its own discretion; but this wouldn't necessarily affect the project's assessment of them.)

What does everyone think? It would be especially valuable to have comments from anyone who didn't participate in the original discussion. Kirill Lokshin 19:56, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

What I've seen of the GA process hasn't led me to believe that the articles that pass conform to a particularly uniform standard of quality, so I suspect its usefulness as an article-rating tool is highly limited. I would support dropping it from the MILHIST classification scale. --RobthTalk 17:09, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
Our own review process appears to be more effective than the GA process, and therefore, I think a GA rating isn't really necessary at this time. I think we can self-assess the articles from stub to "B" level, but I propose that an article has to go through a peer review before it can receive an "A" rating. If the GA process ever gets some "teeth" into it in the future, which is possible, it perhaps might become to be a viable step to include in our article assessement processes. Cla68 16:02, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
Having it go through a peer review is an interesting idea (and would bring more eyes to the peer review process, as a bonus); I'm wondering, though, if doing that would get us too much into a bureaucratic "this article is A-Class, but we can't mark it with that until we go through steps X, Y, and Z" mindset. Kirill Lokshin 15:33, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Hmm, good point, how about another that marks it as an A-class candidate? plange 15:51, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
I think a process could work so long as we keep it simple. Maybe just a few key things like:
  • It follows the article template schemes
  • It is well sourced
  • It is "complete" (just means that it isn't under heavy construction and/or there are no stub sections)
So long as it has those requirements, then it could simply be a voting process for it to move to A-Class after someone nominates it. Since it's not a competition, we could take any number of nominations. Oberiko 15:44, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Would we need some minimum number of votes? That might be hard to get, at least initially. Or could we perhaps go with having the article listed in in a "Requests for A-Class status" section by a "nominator" and it would only take one (maybe two?) others to approve it? Kirill Lokshin 16:10, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Agreed. I would recommend having at least two supporters (excluding nominator) to start and at least a 2/3 vote majority for it to pass. An A-Class article really shouldn't give much leave for people to vote against it. Oberiko 17:20, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, I still stand by my prior suggestion to get rid of A-class articles and make a FA>GA>B>Start>Stub ranking. -- Миборовский 03:59, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
The problem seems to be that there is too much of a gap between a "GA"-level article and an "FA"-level article, which is where "A"-class comes in to fill that gap. If a peer review requirement for "A" class status is too structured, perhaps any 3rd party/neutral military project member (someone who hasn't done significant editing or composition on the article) can approve it for "A" class. Cla68 15:12, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
I think that's effectively what the GA system does, no? (Unless they've changed their promotion process recently.)
One way of approaching this might be to (a) remove the outside GA ranking from the assessment scale and simultaneously (b) adopt a basically equivalent system inside the project for marking articles as A-Class (in other words, potential A-Class articles would be listed somewhere, and an uninvolved member would check over them; this would ensure that at least two people considered the article A-Class). This would mean, essentially, that any article marked as A-Class would also have passed GA review (since the same person who made the A-Class promotion could have made the GA promotion), but removes the need to list things into an outside process in the course of our assessment. Any disputes could be handled on the talk page, just as any other assessment disputes would be. Would that work here? Kirill Lokshin 15:22, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Does the lack of response mean this was a good idea, or a really bad idea? ;-) Kirill Lokshin 15:49, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
The third option seems likeliest: apathy.Michael Dorosh 23:39, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Seems like a good idea. Cla68 15:19, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I think that the GA system is flawed, since anyone can promote or demote an article from a GA status, even a newbie. I think that a MILHIST peer review is preferable to make an article an A-class, and that GA class should either be kept for history purposes (letting them be promoted slowly, at least one hopes) or discarded entirely. Another possibility would be to tie a promotion to A-class to an approval of 2 or 3 WPMILHIST members. -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 00:26, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

I think having multiple members check off on a promotion to A-Class will be the more practical idea. Running things through the peer review would hinge on getting more people involved in our peer review process (as reviewers); the obvious way to increase its visibility would be to move it directly onto the assessment page (which is much more heavily linked-to), but you said you didn't think that was a good idea ;-) Unless you know of some other good way to increase the number of eyes on the peer review page, I think it would become a roadblock in the way of assessing articles at a reasonable rate (or just devolve to me making all the calls, since I'm often the only one to comment on a particular peer review request). Kirill Lokshin 03:14, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
After I gain some more experience, I may volunteer as a peer reviewer but I'm not sure when that will be. Cla68 12:44, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

So, should we try and implement a multi-reviewer system for A-Class? Assuming that we don't limit who the nominator can be (to allow people to list their own articles), which means that they may be a heavy contributor, how many other (ininvolved) editors would we like to sign off on it? One, like the GA system uses? Or perhaps more than one? And how would we want to deal with articles that aren't promoted? Just have anyone who finds it unsuitable remove it from the list? Kirill Lokshin 13:05, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, IMHO. As for the procedures, I think:
  • Anyone can nominate the article (including the author, obviously)
  • Anyone who does not have a heavy contribution history in the article can vote. One defines "heavy contribution" as massive text content addition into the article. Image addition, copyedit/format works and other edits that does not mean heavy involvement in actually writing the article does not count.
  • Three "support" votes with no "oppose" (obviously, the "oppose" vote must be heavily commented) qualify the article.
  • The nomination is reviewed and closed by the coordinator or one of the assistant coordinators.
Let me be plain about one thing: I'm sure the contributors are excellent, and the goal of this review is only to confirm that they're effectively top notch articles without meeting FA requirements. The goal is IMHO not to downgrade articles.
Comments? -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 13:16, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. By having at least three reviewers for each nominated article, that definitely raises the bar above that for a GA-level article. Do we have enough volunteers to provide three votes for nominated articles in a timely manner? If not, we might have to lower the requirement to two "support" votes. Cla68 13:56, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
There are "only" 43 of them, so IMHO it shouldn't take long. But we can still lower it to two support votes. Really, I don't have any preset opinion about this one. :) -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 13:59, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Three supports just means a total of four people (including the nominator) working on this process, which I think we should be able to manage. I can certainly be on hand for all of them. (One point to consider: does the "reviewed and closed by the coordinator" part mean that I should be only closing or supporting, not both? If that's the case, I probably won't be able to comment on any of them, since the assistant coordinators tend to be quite inactive at times, and may not be able to close anything. Maybe we'll need to get some more coordinators?) Kirill Lokshin 14:56, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, I really don't have a preset opinion about the point of closing and voting for a coordinator.
As for more coordinators, they would be indeed useful, as you can't do anything yourself and you have to sleepeat sometimes (sleeping is for girls :) Maybe we should run some elections... -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 15:03, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
We're coming up on a six-month span from the last elections, so now would be a somewhat natural time to have another round, particularly as it looks like we have more use for them now ;-)
This is, of course, dependent on there actually being willing candidates. (I'm also not sure if we would want to just elect more, or if we would actually want to have a full re-election that includes the current ones. I'm willing to go with whatever the rest of the project wants in this regard.) Kirill Lokshin 15:09, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, I think the (re)election issue should be discussed in a separate manner, perhaps even mentionned in the July newsletter (I'm gonna drop you a msg about it btw). In any case, it is up to you to launch the process :)))
To discuss the other issue, I think the best idea would be to introduce a coordinator quorum. For example, only one coordinator can vote in the nomination (and then can close it himself). Therefore, in the hypothetic case a coordinator would be interested in keeping the article for whatever purpose in A-class, he would have two "oppose" votes and would be forced to bend anyway. -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 15:15, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Good point. I'll start a separate thread to discuss whether and how to get new/more coordinators (I'd like to have some sort of plan before the newsletter, actually, so that we would be able to announce elections in it if they occur).
As far as the quorum idea (I'm not sure that's the best word here, incidentally, but I have no idea what a better one might be): it might work. The best case, obviously, would be to have enough reviewers participating that the coordinators wouldn't need to comment on nominations, and could just close them based on already available comments. Kirill Lokshin 15:21, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Kirill LokshinI think we need more assistant coordinators. How we get there I trust to Kirill, though I hope some of us who have worked hard on various projects will get a chance to be more involved as assistant coordinators. old windy bear 12:46, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Far East Task Force Proposal

I would like to propose the creation of a Far Eastern Task Force. I'm not sure exactly how such a thing is done, but I am hoping that as long as we can obtain at least, say, five people, I would happy to head up the thing. While much of our work could fit under the umbrellas of the World War II task force, Middle Ages task force, or even the British, French, or other national task forces when talking about the Opium Wars and other colonial/imperialist conflicts, I think that it seems only logical that we form our own little group. Who's with me!? LordAmeth 16:15, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

There's already a Chinese task force, so I'm not sure that creating essentially a superset of them would be particularly worthwhile. Perhaps separate Japanese and Southeast Asia task forces would be better, if enough interested editors can be found? Then the three could work together to cover (most of) the Far East. Kirill Lokshin 16:17, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
I just noticed that, and I have come back here to re-adjust my proposal. Well, I'll leave it more or less intact. Are there any editors out there who would be interested in forming a Japanese, Korean, Southeast Asian, or South Asian task force? I personally would love to see some joint effort between Japanese, Korean, Southeast Asian, and maybe even Polynesian, because I somehow doubt that any of those topics by themselves will garner enough support. But, of course, if we were to combine those, I have no idea what we'd call it. We could still call it "Far East task force," the title would just be a little misleading as it would not include China. LordAmeth 16:33, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
Er, what I think is, if one could find enough editors to work on Korea or Japan we can have separate task forces on them. Japan shouldn't be a problem since the ja wikipedia is big and there are lots of ja editors on en, but Korea might be difficult - I took a look at our member list and only 1 member said he was proficient in Korean milhist. But still, an East Asian, Far East Asian or even Asian milhist task force could not hurt, as long as we specify that it's a blanket task force dealing with (F)(E)-Asian countries that don't already have their own task forces. -- Миборовский 17:42, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for that, Miborovsky. Setting it up as an overarching Far Eastern task force that simply does not overlap with others (like the Chinese task force) sounds like the best way to do this. Assuming the coordinators think it alright; and assuming people join up. LordAmeth 13:12, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
I'd prefer separate task forces for countries/regions there, but if there aren't enough interested people, I suppose an overarching one will have to do. It remains to be seen whether anyone would be interested even in that, though. Can we get potentially interested people to comment here with the areas they'd like to work on? That way, we'll be in a better position to see what we can and can't do here. Kirill Lokshin 14:01, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

I support a Far East Task Force that includes Korea, Japan, and China. Also, I read that there are not enough Korean military historists. I consider myself as one since I know a lot about the Imjin War and early Korean history. I'm pretty sure there are other editors that have knowledge about Korean history, we just have to look for them.

To interest people, announce that we will make a task force in Korean, Japanese, or Chinese related talk pages.

I only agree with a separate Korean task force and Japanese task force if there are at least like 7-15 editors in each task force. Good friend100 16:49, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

China wouldn't be included in any new task force regardless of the name (since it already has its own).
More generally, I think that, aside from one of a number of possible configurations for a catch-all task force, we could have any of the following, depending on interest:
  • Japan
  • Korea
  • Southeast Asia
  • South Asia (India and so forth)
I'm not sure how many political issues are involved here, though; would trying to create a combined Japan & Korea task force (under whatever name) reopen too many old wounds? Kirill Lokshin 16:55, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
Outside of articles on WWII and the Imjin War, I cannot imagine that being too much of an issue. Granted, there has been an edit war going on for some time regarding the original Korean origin of the Japanese and the extent of Korean influence on the earliest parts of Imperial Japanese culture. But I hope that we can be civilized in our academic efforts here, particularly if we're formally working together on a task force. The real issue right now is obtaining support (members) for this potential task force; so far there've been just about no takers. I am debating whether it would be too obnoxious to post notes on the talk pages of every Asian-related notice board, WikiProject, and Portal. (I don't want to be pushy or obnoxious, I just really want to get a task force started. It's like a pet project. You understand.) LordAmeth 12:43, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
I think that, considering the state of many of these projects and notice boards, messages directly to some of the more prominent contributors on these articles might be more effective in actually producing a response. Kirill Lokshin 14:42, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Count me in; I'd be glad to help out. I'm not from the region, but have a great deal of interest in Far East Asian history, especially military history; as such I've committed a great deal of my life to this topic. LactoseTI 03:11, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Assessment statistics

After seeing it done by the Tropical cyclones WikiProject, I've started putting together some basic statistics on our assessment work. At the moment, it's just a monthly count of articles in each class; if anyone has any other ideas for things that would be valuable/interesting to keep track of, please let me know! Any other comments would also be very welcome! Kirill Lokshin 19:02, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Nice to have for "class" and "importance":
  • Overall statistics - number of total project articles, unassessed (total and percentage), Stubs (total and percentage), etc;
  • Percent changes in each category;
  • Statistics how many are promoted out of one class to the next. (Does the stub classification encourage editors to expand the article?)
— ERcheck (talk) @ 19:10, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Percentages should be doable. I don't know that there's any good way to keep track of promotions without having to parse through the entire log, though, since articles appearing in a higher class may have just had their first assessment, rather than being promoted out of a lower one. Kirill Lokshin 19:14, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I've added the importance ratings, percent-of-total for the article counts, and a table tracking monthly changes. I'll see what I can do about the other things. Kirill Lokshin 19:56, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
I think that that "attention" category should be noted — these articles need to be flagged prominently so that the community will easily find the articles in most need of improvement. — ERcheck (talk) @ 20:24, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Might be doable in the future, but it's not one of the categories tracked by the bot, so there are no readily available numbers for it. Kirill Lokshin 20:31, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Probably not so easy — it would be nice to know how many are new articles versus how many are newly tagged. — ERcheck (talk) @ 20:27, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
This is basically impossible without going through the entire list, since the list of new articles that we have is manually maintained (and hence quite incomplete). Kirill Lokshin 20:31, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Which names of battles do I use for the CW?

If I'm writing about a soldier from the South, do I use Southern names for the battle, i.e. Sharpsburg instead of Antietam, or do I use the Northern (more univerally familiar) names? plange 00:50, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I use the name selected for the Wikipedia article about the battle. About the only deviation from this is that some editors (not I) use Manassas instead of Bull Run, but they obviously end up pointing to an article called Bull Run, which might be confusing. IMHO, all of the other alternative names for battles (Sharpsburg, Murfreesboro, Pittsburg Landing, Boonsboro Gap, etc.) are too obscure for most readers. Hal Jespersen 01:50, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
If an event/battle is called by two names, then the introduction should mention both names in both - the example, the Battle of Antietam does. I would, however, probably use the more widely (internationally) used name of the battle to be consistent across articles. Megapixie 02:03, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, will do! plange 02:20, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Able Archer 83

Hey, would anyone like to personally adopt Able Archer 83 and guide it to Featured status? The author (User:Natebjones) seems to be gone, and I wouldn't know what I'm doing, but I estimate that it won't need much! Melchoir 04:27, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I’m all over it. TomStar81 08:28, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

T-34 nominated for FA

File:Soviet Tank T-34.jpg

T-34 is a candidate for featured article. Please comment at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/T-34/archive1. —Michael Z. 2006-07-04 23:06 Z

It's already listed in the announcement box; there's no real need for further notes on the topic ;-) Kirill Lokshin 23:26, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Oops. Sorry, I've been watching some of the project discussion pages, but never noticed changes to the box. —Michael Z. 2006-07-05 00:53 Z

It went FA today. Gongrats to the nominator and to all people who helped to promote it to featured status! -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 15:25, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Obsolete banners

Thanks to the efforts of Grafikm, the various old task force banners (listed here) have been removed from the remaining places where they were being used in favor of the integrated task force tags in {{WPMILHIST}}. Does anyone have objections to listing the lot of them for deletion, or is there some reason we need to keep them around? Kirill Lokshin 23:52, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

There are two options: we can either delete them as they are or subst them everywhere they are not and delete them. Either are fine by me. :) -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 23:56, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, since nobody else seems to care, I'm going to go ahead and list these all on WP:TFD. Kirill Lokshin 20:01, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Go for it :) -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 20:05, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I've nominated them all for deletion here, if anyone wants to comment. Kirill Lokshin 22:15, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

FAQ

In light of the fact that we're doing a lot of article tagging and hence seeing a number of recurring questions from people who've just had their first exposure to the project, I've started a FAQ of sorts and linked it from the {{WPMILHIST}} banner. I think I've gotten most of the questions that I've seen come up repeatedly, but I'd appreciate someone looking over it to see that I haven't missed anything obvious, as well as any other comments on the thing. Kirill Lokshin 19:23, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

That's a great idea. Good thinking. ;) -- Миборовский 03:48, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Project banner size

There have been some concerns raised recently about the size of the {{WPMILHIST}} talk page banner. I've shrunk a few of the more general images to reduce the vertical spacing, but I'd like some feedback on two other ideas for reducing it that had occurred to me:

  1. Removing the collaboration fields. They don't really link to anything useful, and anyone curious about what articles have been worked on by the collaboration can check the history section on the collaboration page anyways.
  2. Removing the images used in the task force lines (which tend to take up a disproportionate amount of vertical space) in favor of short written tags (like the ones for the assessment ratings). Optionally, if any images are still distinguishable at ~20px height, they could still be used without growing those lines beyond the size of the text; but I doubt that there are very many suitable ones.

Comments on these ideas—and other suggestions—would be very welcome! Kirill Lokshin 22:59, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

My comment will be: this is sad. Honestly, we should wait for a consensus at WP:AN to modify all this, don't you think? -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 23:08, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
In general, whether we modify the template or not is a quite separate issue from the WP:AN discussion. Hence my posing of the question here. Certainly I don't intend to make any substantial changes without the approval of the project.
(These points—at least the one about the collaboration fields—should be considered on their own merits in any case. It may be worthwhile to make certain aesthetic changes even if we're not forced to, but merely to make the template itself cleaner.) Kirill Lokshin 23:55, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
I just read the WP:AN on the project tags. I can't see any harm in having multiple project tags on an article. Interproject collaboration is not a bad thing. In fact, there are a few articles that have both WPMILHIST tags and Scouting tags. I've collaborated with the Scouting folks on these articles, which I think both projects would agree has resulted in improvement in the articles. As far as project talk page size problems... if there is an active discussion, it can be very long. A few inches of images should be not be an issue. In addition, if someone is going to the talk page to make a comment, the project tags could provide them with more information/a place to go to get info. — ERcheck (talk) 23:50, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
I second that. Honestly Kirill, you should undo your changes regarding pics for TF, they're so informative and useful... :) -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 23:57, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Mmm, I haven't made any changes to the task force pics... The only image I removed was the one for the peer review line; I can add it back if people want, but I don't think it's particularly meaningful. Kirill Lokshin 23:59, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Oh, I thought that "Removing the images used in the task force lines" was already done... Off to bed I'm too tired... :) -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 00:01, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Nope; I generally don't make changes of that scale without checking with other people.
As another idea, it might be worthwhile to pick horizontally-aligned images where good ones are available. That would retain the easy recognition of images while keeping the template more compact overall. Just another thing to consider. Kirill Lokshin 00:06, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't really see the problem either. It is not a problem that Regalskeppet Vasa is tagged with both Milhist and WP:Archaeology. This article belongs in both categories and one project might have information not available to the other. Valentinian (talk) 00:03, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Okay, looks like this wasn't the most popular of ideas ;-)

Since consensus at WP:AN seems to favor letting us carry on with the tagging regardless, it's probably not worth worrying about this any further. Kirill Lokshin 01:43, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Whew! One less thing to worry about in the quest to write an encyclopedia.. :-) — ERcheck (talk) 03:49, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Actually, reducing those taskforce images to text or flat images sounds like a good idea to me. -- Миборовский 04:02, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, if you can find some good flat images (flags would be an obvious idea, at least for the national task forces, but I suspect they may be controversial in some cases), we can try that. Nobody else seems to like the text-only idea, so that's probably not going to get very far. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 04:05, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
I like text. :) If we shrink all the shields down to 1 line tall, would they still be visible (and distinguishable)? -- Миборовский 04:09, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
For task forces, the images are nice. For the other tags, text, as for the importance and class work well. — ERcheck (talk) 04:12, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Not really distinguishable, no; the image size is going to be limited to about 20px in height in those cases. I would guess we need something closer to a 2x1 or 1.5x1 image aspect to be able to reduce it to one line. Kirill Lokshin 04:15, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Military history

This project needs to make clear up front what its about in respect of 'military'. Most north Americans use 'military' to mean a much wider term than some others use the word. This is confusing. One of the basic questions that needs to be addressed up front is whether people intend that this projects usage of the term 'military history' includes naval history, for example, or not. I assume not, and the projects focusses on military history only. I get this impression from the current intro which reads as though the project concerns, primarily, land warfare. This does need clarifying, because I can see others further down the page listing ships with respect to what were purely naval campaigns. I am confused ! As a student of French naval history, I wish to contribute to Wikipedia....I may start my own project with others interested in naval history, or at least French naval history (and British who have been our - French - main enemies over the years )...unless there is some guidance that it is intended that the military history project is intended to include naval matters as well. Can someone please provide input to start a discussion in this respect, or if there has been discussion, please show me where I can read the conclusions.

When this confusion of mine is cleared up, then my contributions to this great encyclopaedia can begin ! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Savefrance (talk • contribs)

Hmm, I had no idea there was an issue with English dialects here...
The usage of "military" here is meant in the American sense (and perhaps even wider than that). Certainly naval history is firmly included in the project; you might be interested in our Maritime warfare task force, which focuses more specifically on that topic. Hope that helps! Kirill Lokshin 03:33, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Thank you so much. I can now see this as the top wiki-category is Category:Warfare by type. Perhaps a rename of the project to 'History of warfare' would be clearer ! --Savefrance 03:39, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, I've added a clarification as to which meaning of "military" is used at the top of the project page; that should hold us over for the time being.
As far as renaming the project, I personally think it wouldn't be worth the minimal benefit, given the sheer scale of the task (hundreds of pages and categories to be moved, dozens of templates to be rewritten, and so forth). Kirill Lokshin 03:43, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
It would also cause another type of confusion, insofar as we deal with peacetime military history as well. Kirill Lokshin 03:47, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia's own Military history page is helpful here: "Military history is composed of the events in the history of humanity that fall within the category of conflict." That covers the usual definition very well. Conflict is a very broad term, and includes all aspects of military (American) activity in this case. Hmm. I think the British use 'military history' to mean the same thing we do. Does any one have enough exposure to the British school system to know if they use any other term when dealing with naval warfare, etc? (Learn something new everyday, I had no clue they wouldn't consider the RN 'military'.) --Rindis 20:06, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Rating

Would someone gop and rate this page USVA emblems for headstones and markers? --evrik 17:44, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Done. For future reference, any articles you want rated can be listed here, and somebody will get to them shortly. Kirill Lokshin 02:30, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Request for expansion of Operation Matador (Iraq)

Someone filed a request for expansion of Operation Matador (Iraq). Anyone care to help ? Megapixie 01:41, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Category:Military people and its subcats

These really do need some degree of standardization in the names, especially in the case of the subcats of Category:Military people by nation. There's about a 50/50 mix there of X military people and X military personnel with even one Military people of X. Now if there's already a consensus to use "people" instead of "personnel", point me to it so I can reference it, and I'll handle doing an umbrella nomination for renaming the cats over at CFD. If there isn't one already a consensus I'd really appreciate it if you came up with one before sending these to CFD. By the way, my motivation is that I'm with the stub sorting project, and we're thinking of renaming the X military biographical stubs categories to something better, but it's be nice if the permanent categories had some consitency for us to potentially follow. Caerwine Caerwhine 05:38, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, this was discussed fairly exhaustively last month. If I recall correctly, the general plan at the end was to do two sets of renamings:
  • All sub-categories into the form "Military personnel of Foo"
  • All sub-categories into the form "People of the Foo War"
Unfortunately, we seem to have gotten pulled off into other matters and never (a) finalized this as the new naming scheme or (b) taken it to CFD. Since there's an outside motivation now, this might be a good time to get that done. Kirill Lokshin 05:44, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

British anti-invasion preparations of World War II

I would like to bring project members attention to my new article British anti-invasion preparations of World War II in the hope that it will be integrated into the military history project. So far, I have contributed 99% of the content myself and it is time to encourage others to look it over. I am not finished with the article by any means, but I think it is coming along nicely. Contributions, feedback and advice will be appreciated. Gaius Cornelius 10:09, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Assessment & peer review

A thought: might it be a good idea to merge the two pages? We would then have two different sections for requests on the assessment page; one for simple assessments and one for more thorough reviews (which would contain the merged contents). This might make it easier to use the assessment page as a sort of one-stop location for all of our reviewing and rating. Comments? Kirill Lokshin 00:14, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

The volumetry is not the same. I think it would be best to keep them separated. -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 00:15, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Mmm, fair enough. I was thinking more in reference to some of the proposals above to have a multi-person review for moving articles to A-Class; I wonder if something like that would begin to blur the line between assessment and peer review. Kirill Lokshin 00:20, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

New system for creating Content Notes

Having observed the abundance of notes in many of the articles written by editors contributing to this project, it occurs to me that some of you might be interested in adding a separate section of "Content Notes" in some cases. If so, you may find the new system I have just developed for this purpose, which is based on the use of two very simple and straightforward templates called {{cref}} and {{cnote}}, to be helpful. Editing notes that contain more than one sentence of text using the cref/cnote system is significantly easier than attempting to do so with the <ref></ref> system because the "Content Notes" are stored in a separate section by that name and can be easily accessed and modified. The cref/cnote content notes system works in parallel with source notes that are maintained in the <ref></ref> system; the two systems are completely invisible to each other and cause no operational conflicts. An example of their concurrent usage can be seen in the article Che Guevara. -- Polaris999 04:13, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I rarely have discursive notes that don't also contain source references, so I prefer having a single combined "Notes" section with both pure citation notes and other types intermingled. Keeping a separate section might be an option for articles where a very strict separation between the two note types is maintained, but I suspect that these tend to be very rare (particularly as citation notes themselves become more pervasive).
(As a side issue, is it just me, or is this system rather unpleasant if the article is printed? There are no numbers to identify the notes, so you need to go through the entire list to find the right one.) Kirill Lokshin 04:21, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm glad you mentioned about printing because I hadn't tried that, but have now. The "marker labels" do print out in the text, but are longer than they need to be -- I think it will be simple enough to downsize them and I'll work on that next. As for finding the "marker tags", since the content notes should be listed in order of appearance in the text, if one is reading the "Content Notes" section and wants to locate a specific content note's marker, looking for its "marker tag" by name shouldn't be any more time consuming than looking for the number of a source note listed in the source notes section using the <ref></ref> method. At least that is the way it seems to me. I agree that there are probably only a few articles that would benefit from having a separate "Content Notes" section in addition to the source references one, but in case someone wishes to go that way for whatever reason I wanted to offer them the possibility of using the cref/cnote system rather than having to put in the time of developing and testing one of their own ... Polaris999 06:31, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
I avoid using the <ref> system because I find them mentally meddlesome to deal with. That said, I insist on footnote numbers. And, I expect all my notes, reference and discursive (and both), will be in one section. I know, I'm a curmudgeon, and demanding, but that's what I'm looking for in new system. When I have some free time (ha!), I'll still certainly have to play with your system, just to see what it does. --Rindis 23:01, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Explaining the importance ratings

There have been comments from a few people that the explanations given for the importance ratings in the project are unclear or confusing. I'd like to see if we can put something together that is a bit clearer on what they're related to.

The current text:

The criteria used for rating article importance are not meant to be an absolute or canonical view of how significant the topic is. Rather, they attempt to gauge the probability of the average reader of Wikipedia needing to look up the topic (and thus the immediate need to have a suitably well-written article on it). Thus, subjects with greater popular notability may be rated higher than topics which are arguably more "important" but which are of interest primarily to students of military history.

Note that general notability need not be from the perspective of editor demographics; generally notable topics should be rated similarly regardless of the country or region in which they hold said notability. Thus, topics which may seem obscure to a Western audience—but which are of high notability in other places—should still be highly rated.

Article importance grading scheme
Label Criteria Examples
Top Subject is a "core" topic for military history, or is generally known to people other than students of military history. It is often—but not always—a significant cultural icon. Siege
Napoleonic Wars
Robert E. Lee
High Subject is notable or significant within the field of military history (or to a historian), but not necessarily outside it. Battle of Oudenarde
Burgundian Wars
Nicolas Jean de Dieu Soult
Mid Subject is not particularly notable or significant even within the field of military history, and may have been included primarily to achieve comprehensive coverage of another topic. 19th Infantry Division
Siege of Genoa (1522)

What I would propose as a replacement:

[Same introduction/disclaimer]

Article importance grading scheme
Label Criteria Examples
Top Notable to the general public
The subject is a "core" topic, or is generally known to people who are not familiar with military history. It is often—but not always—a significant cultural icon. 		Siege
Military history of China
Hundred Years' War
Robert E. Lee
High Notable to historians
The subject is notable or significant to a (military) historian, but the average reader is probably not familiar with it. 		Battle of Oudenarde
Burgundian Wars
Nicolas Jean de Dieu Soult
Mid Everything else
The subject is not particularly notable or significant even within the field of military history, and may have been included primarily to achieve comprehensive coverage of another topic. 		19th Infantry Division
Siege of Genoa (1522)

My intent here was to avoid changing the meaning and limit myself to clarifying what (I think) the general intent is. Nevertheless, it's possible I've introduced some problem in my new version that wasn't present in the old one, so I'd like for people to look it over before I actually make any changes.

If anyone has other ideas on the importance scale (hopefully more-or-less uncontroversial ones), this might be a good time to put them forward as well; if we're going to make any changes, it might be better to make them all at the same time. Kirill Lokshin 14:55, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I like the clarification. I'm tempted to say we should also have a "low" importance class, for things like individual destroyers, fighter squadrons, particular types of rifle, what-have-you. Split "mid" into "mid-big" and "mid-small", if you will - things that aren't desperately notable but of historic significance, and things that aren't particularly notable or of historic significance. Anyone? Shimgray | talk | 15:29, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
It might be worthwhile. If I recall correctly, the reason people disliked the use of "Low" importance originally was because the central 1.0 scale uses terms like "trivial" when describing it, and a number of people thought it would create too much conflict within the project. Now that we're basically rewriting the meaning of the levels to our own standards, though, it may be less of a potential problem to use it, provided we don't carry over the same terminology. Kirill Lokshin 15:33, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
It can be argued that a topic of "low" importance shouldn't be in Wikipedia anyway (the "not noteworthy" rule) so I think Mid is appropriate as the "lowest" importance rating. Your suggested definitions look good to me. Cla68 12:50, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
True enough; and I'm sure that some people would probably interpret it as a suggestion to AFD the articles. (In retrospect, the choice of the term "importance" for this was probably somewhat ill-advised; had something like "priority" been used instead, it would have been much easier to avoid all the subtle connotations of the terminology.) Kirill Lokshin 12:56, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Hmm. How about... Mid: "Subject is of low significance to military history in general, or is reasonably significant in a specific field of military history"; Low: "Subject is not significant within military history as a whole in general, but is notable in a specific field of military history". Shimgray | talk | 17:58, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Mmm, if it's notable (even if only in a specific field of military history), shouldn't it be marked as High rather than Low? I don't think that any of these ratings make assumptions about what fields of military history they apply to.
I think a better way to look at it might be something like: Mid: "Subject is not particularly notable or significant"; Low: "Subject is not significant on its own, and was included only to supplement another topic". This might be a somewhat narrower definition for "Low" importance; it would apply, in my mind, to things like lists of variants of some obscure bayonet design. I have no idea if anyone else would find this either useful or acceptable, though. Kirill Lokshin 18:04, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Kirill asked if I could give some input, so here is mine. I think the importance rating should be almost simple enough to do on a gut level. What I mean is this. If the subject a) had or has drastic effects on world history or current events (i.e. WWII, Royal Navy, NATO, Warsaw Pact, etc.) or b) is in the popular conciousness (82nd Airborne, West Point, Abu Graib, M-16, etc) it's definately "Top." If it is historically important, but not necessarily well known or without as far reaching effects (Operation Just Cause, certain weapon systems, such as perhaps the M109 or M113, minor wars, etc.) or had drastic effects for a nation, but not the world or a large region (perhaps the war in Algeria), then "High." The rating "Mid" could probably cover most 4-star generals (minus famous ones like JCS/Service Chiefs/wartime commanders (Patton, Schwarzkopf, etc.), service schools, and smaller conflicts and battles (some of the battles in the American west, etc). I think "Low" should be reserved for some of the stuff barely worth keeping on here - mottos, slang, creeds, anecdotal items (i.e. some test units or expermental weapons that never were fielded). I figure most of the ratings will be generally agreed on - I think the group assembled here is pretty damn knowlegable about the subjects they write about. Those that aren't will inevitably be debated, and perhaps through those debates better guidelines will come about. I think right now a barebones guideline is best, and see how it plays out. Sorry if most of my examples were from the U.S. military; it's what I know best.--Nobunaga24 13:16, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
I broadly agree with having a scheme "simple enough to do on a gut level". The only point I would make is that I've intentionally avoided giving too much credence on the "drastic effects on world history" aspects in favor of focusing more on popular conciousness (or at least popular knowledge); given the vastly different contents of the various "100 most important battles" (and the like) lists that have been put together by various historians (many of them filled with quite obscure ones that only the historians themselves would recognize), I think trying to use such a principle to rank topics would be so subjective as to be meaningless. It's much easier, in my opinion, for people to determine how well-known a particular topic is than to be the judge of how significantly it affected the course of history (for all but the most obvious cases, anyways). (In any case, the majority of these will have popular notability, so there's no great loss of coverage.) Kirill Lokshin 14:50, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
I generally agree with the scheme you have suggested; the keywords "core topic" are sure to be debated though. Everyone will have a different opinion. I just tagged Clausewitz and ranked it high importance - the average person probably has never heard of him, but his theories have shaped modern warfare, so I would say core topic. J.F.C. Fuller would be another. I would rank the Battle of Sekigahara as "Top" - it determined the fate of Japan for almost 300 years, was the one of the largest land battles ever up until that time, etc etc. That would make it a core topic in some ways. I do think "low" should be included - there are topics that are worthy of inclusion in wikipedia, perhaps quite notabable topics, but their relevance to military history might be low. I don't think a low rating is saying its unimportant overall, just as it relates to military history. --Nobunaga24 00:50, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
I put the "core topic" clause in there mainly to cover things like military history or military unit; I didn't really think it would be interpreted to include specific battles. Maybe it could use an explanatory comment. Or am I overthinking this?
As far as Sekigahara: is it well-known among the general public in Japan? If so, it would qualify as Top regardless of any other arguments of significance and so forth. Kirill Lokshin 00:58, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
That's how I've been judging them: not on their impact to military history, but on how well known it is. There are some obscure topics in Confederate Navy history that were pretty "important" but only CSN buffs are aware of it, so I give it Mid, if regular historians would be aware of it too, I give it a High, but Battle between the Merrimac and Monitor is pretty well known outside of historians, so I think should be Top (but is currently at High right now). Am I understanding this right? plange 01:06, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
That's pretty much how I've viewed it. (Although there's no reason to be too conservative on the Mid versus High issue; even if it's only notable among historians of the ACW specifically, or of US naval history specifically, it can easily go to "High". Historians of the Confederate Navy I'm not too familiar with—the army being much better known generally—but you can use your best judgement.) As far as Hampton Roads, if you're pretty sure that it's well-known by the general public, feel free to bump it up. Kirill Lokshin 01:11, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Okay, question though, and this is meant in all seriousness - how do we define General Public? I would hazard a guess that the average college-educated American adult has heard of the monitor and merrimac but it's not something that's a household term in general, like Britney Spears is...I guess I was thinking along the lines of what might be brought up in an average high school American history class and assigned as a paper? Am I thinking too much about this? I wonder if the litmus test could be, if you would genuinely be surprised if someone hadn't heard of it? I guess if I go by that criteria, Merrimac and Monitor should probably stay at High and not Top... plange 02:37, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
I would interpret this fairly liberally, since the next group down is not "well-educated general public" but rather (military) historians (or just military buffs, I suppose). In other words, if the topic is notable to a wider audience than that, it's eligible for being rated "Top". Obviously, there will be (many) borderline cases; as Nobunaga24 mentioned above, gut instinct is probably an acceptable way to go there. At the same time, being assigned as a paper in class might include a lot of rather obscure topics; a more meaningful rule of thumb, in my opinion, might be what the students are likely to still remember five years afterwards. Kirill Lokshin 02:53, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
So, it sounds like this would be a good litmus then: if you would genuinely be surprised if someone hadn't heard of it, i.e. have they lived under a rock? (in the country the article is a part of)...plange 05:49, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Some people are more cynical than others ;-) But it's probably a decent (informal) test, or at least as usable as anythin else. (With so few articles assessed, it's a bit hard to guess at whether we're being too liberal or too strict in terms of how we approach these ratings, since we can't really look at a set of similar articles and compare how different editors have rated them. Hopefully as we get farther along, we'll be able to make more accurate estimates of where various types of articles usually sit.) Kirill Lokshin 12:42, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
I think for now I will use the general guidelines that Kirill has suggested. If someone changes my rating, I won't spaz out or edit war -- Kirill changed my rating on Pershing, and that's cool. If he had bumped it down to "Mid," I would have changed it back. Likewise, I'll probably respect other people's ratings as well. If I have a reason to change one, I will do it and add the reason on the talk page, not in the edit summary. Maybe for right now that would be the best policy - follow the above guidelines (they aren't bad or too fuzzy, I think) and if someone has an issue with a rating, make their case.--Nobunaga24 01:32, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
That's a good idea. I'll try to remember to add an explanation on the talk page if I change existing ratings.
Since the reaction seems generally positive, I'll probably go ahead and copy the new explanations over to the assessment page (unless somebody else has objections?). We can continue discussing the possibility of a "Low" rating at our leisure, if anyone is still interested in that; but I don't think there's any real support for introducing it at this point. Kirill Lokshin 01:44, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
I fear changing the core meaning of the ratings will be a huge task when we have to change all the rating done under the old criteria. I like Kirills suggested new table above as it does not change the rating system and criteria (which I believe are the best ones) in addition to making the explanations a bit clearer. When I started rating articles I wondered why there was no Low importance option, but now I'm glad there isn't. I don't think we should ever rate anybodys history as low importance. And the articles clearly so obscure that they would merit a low importance rating are probably not notable enough to stay on wikipedia. Inge 13:22, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, I've gone ahead and copied the new descriptions here; further comments are still very welcome, of course. One thing that might be useful in the long run is more advice/examples/rules of thumb, particularly for the Top versus High distinction (e.g. what is considered a "core" topic, what is considered a "cultural icon", and so forth). This might help us be a bit more systematic in how similar topics get assessed. On the other hand, this is probably something that would be better to think about a few months down the line, when more articles have been rated and we have a clearer picture of what ratings are stabilizing at once multiple people have had a chance to look at them. Kirill Lokshin 04:43, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Would it help if we (at Wikipedia 1.0, whom I am representing here) rewrote the description of "Low" to get away from words such as "trivial". That would allow you to include another level without people getting offended. I have assigned "Low-importance" to even A-Class articles I have worked hours on, such as rhodium(III) chloride - this is a chemical of interest to a PhD chemist but not many other people. These definitions have different meanings in different contexts - terms like trivial are more appropriate in more "fan-based" subject areas, whereas in your field no notable topic can really be regarded as trivial. So, do you want us to discuss a revamp of the term Low Importance? Walkerma 22:29, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
I think that even the term "Low Importance" itself is likely to elicit complaints. In retrospect, it would have been much better if we had used an alternate word (e.g. "Priority") instead of "Importance"; but I suspect it's too late to try and push such a change across at this point. Kirill Lokshin 22:32, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the earlier suggestion that if one of us wants to change the "importance" rating on a particular article, that we go ahead and do it and explain why with a comment on the "talk" page. Cla68 13:00, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Maybe I should add a note encouraging that to the FAQ, then? Kirill Lokshin 13:01, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

I know I'm coming to this discussion a little late, but I'd like to add my two cents: "Historian" may be too exclusionary of a word; in my experience, there's a big gap between "average reader" and "historian" -- where does the high school history teacher fall? The classics buff? Etc. As someone who came to this project as a classics student and stayed for the ride, I can honestly say that my "gut" is that something like Battle of Zama ought to be high rather than top or mid; however, I know quite a lot of people who are definitely not historians, and really have no intention of becoming one, but who know quite a lot about the Battle of Zama. As it stands, the descriptions really don't reflect the "use common sense and don't change things without a reason" that seems to be the consensus above . . . UnDeadGoat 23:14, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. Is there some alternate term or combinantion of terms that would work better. We had "student of military history" before, but that might be too open to misinterpretation as someone studying it formally. Maybe just "Notable to someone knowledgeable in military history"? Or would that be broadening it too much? Kirill Lokshin 23:28, 14 July 2006 (UTC)


I would definitely stick with three categories; four is just a bit more complicated, and has no middle.

But shouldn't the first level be considered equivalent to the baseline of encyclopedic notability? Don't call it "low", call it "basic". Anything that's non-notable is below that at level zero; it should have a different template applied and eventually deleted. I think this would still be compatible with the general view here of the second and third levels.

And the term notability implies something a bit more discretionary than just how well-known something is (popularity?). For example, every business hack these days has heard of Sun Tsu, but the less-well-known von Clausewitz is definitely more important and more valuable reading—yes that's subjective, but we semi-"experts" should be able to apply such an elementary evaluation. —Michael Z. 2006-07-14 23:45 Z

We can't rename the levels, unfortunately; they need to carry certain names for the bot to pick them up properly.
As far as "notability": I think we should try to exercise a great deal of restraint on personal discretion. If we allow people to determine that something is "more important and more valuable reading", we'll get half our articles rated "Top-Class"—most of them never to be read by more than a handful of readers, simply because the topics are quite obscure to anyone not studying military history. Kirill Lokshin 23:54, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

"Well-known"

In fact, I wonder if we could not substantially simplify things by replacing "notable" with "well-known" in the descriptions. That way, it would be a little more in keeping with the general philosophy (or what I thought was the general philosophy, anyways) of viewing these ratings as representing the likelihood of a reader looking up the article, rather than the real "importance" of the topic. Kirill Lokshin 01:02, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
I think that sounds like a great suggestion because I think people are still confusing notable and rating it in the light of how important it is to history instead of how well-known it is, which aren't necessarily the same.plange 02:41, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
Okay, here's what I came up with for actual descriptions:
Well-known to the general reader
The subject is well-known to people who are not familiar with military history. It is often—but not always—a significant cultural icon.
Well-known to a reader knowledgeable in military history
The subject is significant or well-known to someone with a good knowledge of military history or military affairs, but the average reader is probably not familiar with it.
Everything else
The subject is not particularly significant or well-known even to someone with a good knowledge of military history, and may have been included primarily to achieve comprehensive coverage of another topic.
I removed the (probably confusing) usage of "core topic", but left the "significant" in the two lower descriptions to allow a bit more leeway on the Mid versus High assessment, as I don't think that line will be particularly contentious in practice. Comments? Would this wording be an improvement over what we currently have? Kirill Lokshin 03:27, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
But "notable" is not the same as "renowned", "acclaimed", or "well known". It's clearly a different thing. "Importance rating" is also not a synonym of "fame". If the ratings are intended to represent how well known the subject is, then the names must change. Conversely, if the terms "importance" and "notability" continue to be used, then it's flatly misleading to enter a rating of how well known the subject is. —Michael Z. 2006-07-15 06:01 Z
Perhaps the best way to explain it is as follows: we do not, I think, want to employ "true" notability as a criterion for assessing articles, both because it is very difficult to approach without massive amounts of systemic bias, and because the relative importance of particular people and events is a hotly contested area of military historiography (and trying to have those same debates here will do nothing but produce ill-will within the project). Assessing how well-known a topic is has three benefits: (a) it's far less likely to be controversial, or to impugn on issues of national or cultural pride; (b) it's easier to assess for people who may not be historians; and (c) it more closely represents the likelihood of the article being read (and hence our need to get it up to par).
At the same time, we cannot avoid the use of the term "importance" entirely—not if we wish to make use of the bot. I do not think, personally, that this will be problematic in any substantial way, provided that we clearly explain what the rating means to the project and how it is assigned.
(If one were to be pedantic, one might argue that an entirely different meaning of "importance" is used here; the question being asked, really, is "How important is it to us that this article make it into a release of Wikipedia?" But this is merely semantics.) Kirill Lokshin 06:24, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
So, anyone have comments on my last proposal (above)? Do we want to go ahead and use it, or am I wrong in pushing "well-known" as a criterion? Kirill Lokshin 23:55, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
OK, I know I'm weighing in a little late here, but ... I agree with keeping the three categories, specifically, omitting the "Low" assessment, in particular because of the implication that the notability might be insufficient to pass AFD. As far as using the general public as a gauge of whether something is "Top" or "High", I look at this a bit differently. This is an encyclopedia, so the criteria should be not the general public, but rather the body of knowledge necessary to cover a particular topic. So, since the tag is from the Military history WikiProject, it should be a military history assessment of importance. And, even if the topic is not well-known to a project member, if upon reading the article one can recognize the impact to military history as being "High" or "Top", then those are the appropriate tags. — ERcheck (talk) 00:28, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, the two main questions that arise are:
  • How do we describe the three levels?
  • How do we prevent fights breaking out over whether certain topics are more important than others (particularly fights along national or ethnic lines)?
These are sort of avoided by going with "well-known", but using "true" importance really does require that we come up with satisfactory answers to them. Kirill Lokshin 00:33, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
You would ask the hard questions. ;-) I'm not sure on either question — I have been thinking about description and consistent assessment for a while. Perhaps one criteria would be what would be a part of the curriculum in a basic military history class (top); advanced (high); seminar/reports/extra reading (mid). (This gives rise to an alternate rating - basic, advanced, comprehensive.) As far avoiding fights breaking out, I don't foresee that ratings based on importance to military history would cause any more internal project conflicts than the current system does. (Have there been major issues to date?) I would think that the class assessments would be more of an issue. — ERcheck (talk) 01:32, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
The curriculum idea isn't a bad one, but would need to be given in some more detail; not everyone in the project has any background in military history, so simply labelling it basic/advanced/comprehensive wouldn't necessarily be meaningful to most people. Otherwise, we're left with a system where only a handful of people can provide sanity-checking of the ratings. Of course, we also need to deal with the fact that cirricula in different countries are likely to focus on different topics; I'm not sure how best to avoid putting too much systemic bias into these ratings
As far as fights go: I think it's too early to tell either way. The reason I'm concerned about this is because everyone has different ideas of what the "most important" people and events in military history are; we thus either have categories so broad that they include all of them—and by extension form a fairly top-heavy scale (but I suppose this might not be that big of a deal, depending on how the ratings are defined)—or provoke conflicts over how important a particular battle was (which may, in many cases, break down into the victorious side trying to push it up and the losing side trying to push it down). I honestly don't know how to set up the rating system in order to minimize the risk of such fights dragging in the project as a whole. Kirill Lokshin 01:41, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
I think your last descriptions make sense to me. Since the ratings are to help with what gets included in 1.0, it makes sense to me that importance rates how important it is to have it included, and what would generally be of interest, maybe not to the general public, but to the public that would use the encyclopedia and would help us prioritize what Top ones need work (especially if their class is stub). plange 01:56, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
I think we're starting to get into a chicken-and-egg problem here ;-) We can't really finalize the wording without settling on whether the basic principle to follow will be "well-known" or "important"; conversely, which of the two is more practical can't be determined without figuring out whether we have some natural way of splitting it among the three levels. And there's obviously support for both "well-known" and "important" as the primary criterion. So, anybody have a really brilliant solution? Should we just concentrate on deciding the principle first, regardless of how we'll need to massage the descriptions to make it work later? Kirill Lokshin 04:05, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, didn't mean to cause confusion-- I meant I agreed with your last description of the definitions (posted 03:27, 15 July 2006) not your last post :-) -plange 15:36, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
I think we need to look at the scope. Are we setting this up for the general public or narrowing it down to just the interest of historians. I believe that this encyclopedia is basically for general public. So I believe that if you subsitute (in the mind) the word interest (regionally and world-wide) for importance then Kirill proposed wording dated 3:27 15 July 2006 UTC would work. Then the project could start to get the backlogged articles (over 5,000) organized. Once the articles are organized to a starting point - then maybe we can see about including the importance to military historians by ensuring the accuracy of each article. But there can be no starting point until we really work on getting the articles organize - then maybe each task force can work on fine tuning the article. I think that yes we need a defination - but in the military you can do so much planning that really no action takes place. So to start a consenses I agree with Kirill proposals.--Oldwildbill 08:34, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
I concur with Kirill Lokshin's proposal from 03:27, 15 July 2006 for the descriptions. Those descriptions avoid trying to directly assess the impact of a particular event or person on history, which is endlessly debatable. Cla68 15:29, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
There is a current proposal at WP:1.0/I to change "importance" to "priority" across all projects, incidentally. I don't know if it will go forward yet, but if it does, it might simplify the semantics of our usage here somewhat. Kirill Lokshin 20:44, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
If the goal is to aid in deciding what goes into a general release of Wikipedia, then "priority" is a better description. If the goal (this is probably better suited to be a project goal) is to decide the "importance" to Military history or history in general, then it is a more ambitious goal. — ERcheck (talk) 12:12, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Moving forward

Mmm, this brings up an interesting point. There have been several proposals recently (one may even already be implemented by a third party group) about creating on-demand "printable" sets of particular Wikipedia articles. We might be able to make use of this for some of the ideas here. What I would propose as a practical way of moving forward:
  1. Go with the "well-known" criteria for the importance/priority ratings in the project banner, as they're easier to determine and seem to be scaling better to the number and range of articles we have. (There seems to be a number of people in agreement with my wording of the criteria; is there anyone that strongly objects to them?)
  2. If the opportunity presents itself, change "importance" to "priority" in that scale.
  3. Explore the possibility—as a separate project from the day-to-day ratings—of creating small collections of "important" articles for use as printable release material (the old term for these was "WikiReaders", but I don't believe it really took off). For example, we could compile a set of articles on the "100 most important battles", or the "100 top commanders of WWII", or any of a number of other ideas. (Working with a limited scope to begin with would allow us to actually discuss relative importance among sets of articles that are comparable, rather than trying to use a scale across every topic.)
Comments? Kirill Lokshin 15:41, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Incidentally, the (almost) practical implementation of on-demand printable versions can be found here. Kirill Lokshin 15:50, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Finally weighing here. Here's how I look at the scale (and please correct my impressions if they're wrong, and I'm using US subjects as examples):
Top--a subject that at least every high school graduate should have learned and know something about (the Civil War, Invasion of Iraq, Battle of Midway, Fat Man and Little Boy, etc.).
High--a subject that college graduates (or the equivalent) and those interested in basic military history should have learned or at least know something about (3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment, Navajo Codebreakers, Chesty Puller, etc.)
Mid--a subject few in the educated general public, or even some military history circles, would either know about or consider having made a significant impact on world events (BDUs, Gen. Schoomaker, US Navy's Office of Public Affairs, USS Colorado, etc.) There are some subjects that people generally know about, but don't necessarily think they're all that important in the grand scheme of things.
Is that close? I've found that the descriptions listed in the chart are still too vauge in some cases, as if I'm trying to read someone else's mind for them (Is this significant to someone else? How would I know? Should this be significant to someone else? Now that I know.) Perhaps a link to several examples (and I know this has been mentioned as being important) to articles and how they rate would give raters a better idea of how to view an article. Two or three examples don't necessarily help me because I don't feel I'm expert enough to judge others against those few examples, so I just don't rate them--I would like to help, but I don't want to flubb everything up in the process. Perhaps rather than just two or three quick examples, also state why those specific examples rated the way they did, as well as give us some hard-and-fast rules to fall back on in case we're on the line. "All military units (regiments, battalions) fall under 'this' category except for the following types of exceptions," or "unless they were heavily involved in this particular campaign." "All military awards/badges fall in 'this' category unless...etc." I realize that may be impractical in many ways and there may be too many exceptions to properly document them in such a way, but I think the present system of just two or three examples doesn't help--at least tell raters specifically, not generally, why they fall into that category and perhaps we can build off of that.
Also, the description for Mid is something I would adjust. "The subject is not particularly notable or significant even within the field of military history, and may have been included primarily to achieve comprehensive coverage of another topic." The way it's phrased makes me think, "Why on earth would I write an article about something NO one, not even in military circles, would ever consider notable or significant on any level? If it's part of another topic, stick it in with that topic." I get the gist of the meaning of Mid, but only after reading this discussion--something I don't think should be mandatory just to be able to use it properly. I've edited articles about subjects that I would probably rate a Mid, but certainly weren't written as just an aside to another topic. I realize the wording doesn't suggest ALL Mid articles are that way, but that's the initial impression. I would delete that last sentence entirely; either the reason for being included in Wikipedia should be fairly obvious, even if it's not hugely significant, or it shouldn't be in WP at all. If I had my druthers, I would phrase the explanation as such: "The subject is not particularly well-known to the general public or in professional/amateur military circles and is not necessarily significant to the outcome of major world historical events." Or something like that. Maybe it's because I'm the one writing it, but that makes it pretty clear to me what goes in the Mid category and what doesn't. By its very definition then, it is a low priority topic, but not necessarily unworthy of inclusion in WP (thus, the "Mid"). --ScreaminEagle 22:01, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
I think we can probably chop the "comprehensive coverage" clause off of the description for "Mid". It's a level designed to serve as a catch-all for anything that doesn't get pushed higher at this point, so I don't think it's a particularly meaningful criterion to use. Kirill Lokshin 22:13, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
So, any other comments on this? Are there any outstanding objections to the "well-known" definitions that anyone would like to see addressed? Or can we go ahead with that part and work on the other two? Kirill Lokshin 13:04, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
my vote's for going ahead...-plange 15:03, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I've gone ahead and changed the descriptions to the "well-known"-using version above. Further comments (as well as complaints or calls for my head on a platter) are, of course, quite welcome. Kirill Lokshin 20:13, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Just Checking In

I'm a new editor, and just found this great resource you folks are working on here. I recently created FSB Ripcord, (it still needs a lot of work) and Andre Lucas, and fanned out and wikilinked them to the appropriate existing articles. I'm somewhat of a student of the 101st in I Corps, Vietnam. I'll put this project on my watch list and try to help out when I can. Crockspot 00:21, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Welcome aboard! Kirill Lokshin 00:32, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Don't worry, chaps!

I'm not dead, still here - just snowed under with other work to do =) --Loopy e 02:21, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Heh, good to hear that. We await your return to full activity with bated breath :-)
(Snowed under? It's winter in New Zealand right now, isn't it? Do you guys see much actual snow?) ;-) Kirill Lokshin 02:27, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
In the South Island they've been getting plenty of snow, with unfortunate resulting power cuts (the snow taking lines down) following huge dumps in some areas. In the central North Island the mountains get snow, but here in low-lying, pollution churning Auckland we just get grey skies, wind and rain. And hail! --Loopy e 03:09, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Conflating Soviet/Russian in fighting vehicle categories

There's been a bit of discussion at talk:T-84#Category:Russian and Soviet tanks about whether Category:Russian and Soviet tanks should be used to group Soviet-legacy fighting vehicles (in this case, whether the Ukrainian T-84 should be placed in that category), or used strictly for tanks of the respective political entities. Maybe it should be split into two explicit categories? Please read and comment there. —Michael Z. 2006-07-11 19:34 Z

Category: Military leaders

Someone has proposed that Category:Military leaders be merged with Category:Military people. Any comments would be welcome. Kirill Lokshin 15:30, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

civil war

I keep hearing this term as applied to future events in Iraq. Can someone please tell me the meaning of "civil war" as it applies in this instance? --66.241.87.108 15:58, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

This question might be better asked at the reference desk. (It does, incidentally, point out that our civil war article is not exactly stellar!) Kirill Lokshin 16:01, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

pictures decorating articles

sure and article with a picture looks better than one without, but there should be guidelines what kind of pictures we use. they do not always depict neutraly nor historically correct. I am especially aware that modern depictions of ancient events should be considerd with great care (paintings should only be shown with dating). Contemporary sources may not be neutral, but least they show a certain view of this event from people directly affected. On the other hand there are ressources of reenactment photos where it is tried to show some historical reality. In most cases this is from a neutral point of view. But it is difficult to find good pictures in the web for all purposes and I would appreciate help.

For example there are every year reenactments of the "battle of Bannockburn", where the reglement bans any kilts or belted plaids from the battlefield for being ahistorical. http://www.gaddgedlar.com/bannockburn Pics.htm

some questionable images: In the article Teutonic Order:

But the horned helmet of the knight swinging a hammer in the full version is a reference to heathen Germanic tradition. These are very Christian war monks. It is also not reported that any knightly leader charged without his lance. This battle had a high symbolic character in Soviet Russia and also among right wing extremists.

In the article Battle of Kircholm

Hussars charging at Kircholm, painted by Wojciech Kossak, 1925.

The Hussars charge too thight, this gives a wrong idea about such a charge.

In the article about Phalanx formation:

File:Romansfacingphalanx.JPG
Roman legionaries facing a Greek phalanx formation, as portrayed in the Rome: Total War computer game, copyright 2004 Creative Assembly and Activision.

This picture out of a computergame is not accurate. No Roman uniforms, not in red and no Greek uniforms. It does not show the different blocks of which such a formation consists, nor the supporting light units. For Greek troops they were essential. the heavily armored were in front and the lightly armored "pushed" them. Support by skirmishers, for example slingers and archers, is totally missing. Usually they would be fighting each other and afterwards retreat through spaces in the formations and often continue to harass the enemy from behind the formation. Wandalstouring 17:24, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't really agree here. Regardless of its historical accuracy, the depiction of a battle in art is, in of itself, a valid topic for articles to cover (in some cases, it's more important than the battle per se); and all encyclopedias use historical paintings to illustrate such articles. In addition, the vast majority of historical paintings are inaccurate by any meaningful standard.

Pictures of reenactments, meanwhile, are generally useless for anything other than descriptions of equipment. Only a handful of battles get enough interested reenactors participating to give even a halfway-decent impression of scale, positions, or maneuvers; and there are almost no meaningful images of combat available even in those cases. Kirill Lokshin 17:03, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Incidentally, the top image (the Teutonic Knights) and the third one (computer game) can't be claimed as fair-use on articles about the subject being depicted (only about the artwork itself or the painter), and should be removed anyways, regardless of its (lack of) accuracy. Kirill Lokshin 17:13, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
historical paintings are not made 500 years afterwards. I don't mind contemporaries or up to 50 years close to the event, but I do mind modern fiction. Wandalstouring 17:15, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Almost anything post-1900 is probably inappropriate due to copyright issues anyways; but I think your 50-year line is far too narrow. David's painting of Leonidas at Thermopylae, for example, may be wildly inaccurate; but it is by far the best-known depiction of the battle, and we would be doing our readers a dissservice if we failed to include it in the article. Kirill Lokshin 17:19, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
I agree, that is why I suggested that it is essential to have a dating on all pictures.
Thatnk you for making the layout. You were faster than me. Wandalstouring 17:23, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
I think that's probably fine, then; between giving dates for paintings and removing the more modern ones (likely for copyright reasons), we should eliminate most of the obvious problems with illustration in such articles. Kirill Lokshin 17:27, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
For not stripping all naked. Bannockburn reenactment does show a big battle scene, Hastings either. Of course this is not possible for every time or battle. Wandalstouring 17:32, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't limit the dates of a painting: a famous painting or one reflecting a historical view of a previous period is an important indicator of the historiography of the subject. Of course, any significant divergence from realism should be noted in a caption, and perhaps described in more detail on the image's description page. A significant painting could even have its own article, (e.g. Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks). A good example is the popular image of the Middle Ages, which has been heavily filtered through Renaissance imagery.

Within copyright limitations, newer paintings, or images from re-enactments, documentary programs, or computer games could be used too, but carefully. And since we can be more selective, it would be better to use them to demonstrate accurate recreations rather than popular or anachronistic views. —Michael Z. 2006-07-12 17:50 Z

That are good ideas. Write a comment or link an article to each painting. Writing (and linking to it) an article has the advantage to provide information about the painter, the intention, the artstyle and that it only historiographies an event. I doubt most readers do know what this means. Furthermore differences to historic reality should be listed directly in a comment to the picture.
Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks is one of my favorites. :D Wandalstouring 20:28, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
The practical difficulty with this approach is that the sets of editors who work on military history articles and editors who work on painting articles tend to be somewhat disjoint. Someone who knows the historical details of a battle may be in no position to comment on painting style and so forth. (I suspect, additionally, that most paintings wouldn't really make good articles in their own right, and would be better off as part of a combined "Paintings of Someone-or-other" article; but, having little editing experience in this area, I might be wrong on this count.) Kirill Lokshin 20:37, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Computer games, IMHO, should not be used. Case in point: In some games you can customise (for example) your legionaries to wear kilts, use pikes and shout in English. Besides, they're likely to be copyrighted, and arguing fair use might be tough. -- Миборовский 20:39, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
You mean that using maps from Europa Universalis II to show the extend of Byzantine colonies in South Africa won't be a good idea? ;-) Kirill Lokshin 20:45, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
I doubt that any distributer of computergames minds us using pictures, as long as we list our source properly. Usually they pay money for this. But right, let's avoid such sources. Wandalstouring 20:51, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Ah, but our friendly copyright police might not care... *coughcough* -- Миборовский 20:57, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
I've done that once... :) -- Миборовский 20:57, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
I saw once that there was a link to a chapter within an article, so refering to an article about several paintings is maybe not the problem. Wandalstouring 20:44, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
I have been sleeping over this issue and your suggestions. The picture in the box about the basic facts of the battle should be strictly limited to contain only contemporary sources, historically accurate depictions (of single soldiers, formations, etc.), important objects the battle was concerning (Krak des Chevaliers and Jerusalem for the battle of Hattin, they were undermanned afterwards), the landscape (for Hasting it makes things easier to visualize) and battleplans.
Any other images can be part of the prelude or the aftermath and need an explanation why they are put. This way senseless pagefillers could soon be deleted. Wandalstouring 08:18, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Again, I think that's too much instruction creep for very little gain. If particular images are problematic, we can deal with them on a case-by-case basis; but there's no reason to have lots of arcane and counterintuitive rules here. Kirill Lokshin 12:29, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

New battle stubs proposed

Germany, WWI and WWII.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 18:08, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

A small word of caution from a old stub sorter; please note that WP:WSS operates with a size threshold meaning that new templates normally requires that we can list at least 60 already existing short articles "requiring" the proposed template. The German and WWII proposals are above this limit but the WWI material is way too small according to WP:WSS rules (we normally don't split off new "children" before the parent is has around 800 articles assigned to it and the WWI cat. only has 134 articles.) If anyone knows of very short articles about WWI not properly tagged with {{WWI-stub}} please do so, so we can properly assess the situation. Valentinian (talk) 19:27, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Alternate names

This ties in a bit with some of the issues raised about operational names above, but is a bit broader. I'd like to put up an explicit guideline that, for alternate names of conflicts (mostly those used by a particular party), straight redirects are generally preferred to definition stubs. This seems borne out by common practice:

To clarify why I think this would be useful, I've recently noticed some cases where perfectly good redirects have been replaced with stubs of the form "Operation X is the codename used by Foo for the Battle of Y." In my opinion, there's absolutely no reason to create a proliferation of stubs with no actual content just to have a distinct "article" at every possible name for a conflict; all of the actual content (including a discussion of the operational names used) is given in the "Battle of Y" article. Comments? This seems pretty commonsense to me, but maybe there's something I've missed. Kirill Lokshin 18:41, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Of course, I agree. ^_^ -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 19:22, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
This works well for the WWI and WWII examples above, but not so well for the "First Day of the Somme". The problem there is that the nomenclature used in the Official History bears little resemblence to "normal" peoples conception. If there is a specific need to distinguish one operation from another within a greater battle, I would agree - so one might want to make a distinction between the generally unsuccessful Battle of Albert and the generally successful Battle of Bazentin Ridge (July 14->). But to refer to either the Somme (all five months worth) or just the first day by this title is misleading. Battle of Albert extended beyond the 1 July 1916, and the operational name does not link well to the subject at hand. A straight referral (unless the article is subdivided by operation) is probably going to confuse. I note that the article on The Somme at present includes some subdivisions referring to the Official Nomenclature, and some that are more thematic. I don't think consistency here will help without consistency in the internal structre of the articles. Another example of where it would work well is to distinguish Operation Michael from Operation Mars in Mar/Apr 1918 - in general English sources do not distinguish as from that side of the line, it is all part of the Spring Offensive (which could do with expansion).FrankDynan
That may have been a poor example, then; looks like the titles used in that set of articles need to be looked at by someone with a good knowledge of the subtleties. If we ingore that example, though, I think the general principle still holds: if the alternate name is (basically) equivalent in usage/scope to the main title (which it seems it may not be, in the case of Albert) and is discussed in the target article, there's no benefit to having a separate stub for it, so it should be left as a redirect.
(For reference, a good example of why I brought this up would be Operation Overlord, which is discussed—in exhaustive detail, even in reference to the choice of name itself—in the full Battle of Normandy article. There's really no reason, in my opinion, to turn it into a stub that says, basically, that it's the Allied name for the battle.) Kirill Lokshin 05:30, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
"if the alternate name is (basically) equivalent in usage/scope to the main title and is discussed in the target article, there's no benefit to having a separate stub for it, so it should be left as a redirect." Absolutely, just so long as we are clear on what we are are saying are equivalent terms.FrankDynan
Might something like this be a good rule of thumb to give: "If the article begins with something of the form 'X is the codename used by Y for Z', it should probably be a redirect to Z instead." Kirill Lokshin 05:40, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
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