Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Archive 57

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Casus belli in warbox

I noticed some inconsistency in casus belli (CB) listed across WP articles. Is CB: a) the initial act of war committed in the ensuing conflict, or b) the justification (as insolent as can be) for the initial act of war? In some warboxes CB field is empty: Invasion of Poland (1939), Operation Barbarossa (shouldn't they say Lebensraum?), Anglo-Iraqi War, Iran-Iraq War, etc. Some articles interpret CB as (a), e.g. the Falklands War lists "Argentine occupation of the Falkland Islands and South Georgia" rather than Argentinian claims, while others as (b), e.g. Yom Kippur War's CB line was recently changed to "Israel's retention of territory taken from Egypt and Syria in Six-Day War". What do reliable sources say? TIA. ←Humus sapiens ^ну? 11:53, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

casus belli is defined as "the justification for acts of war". It is not the "a) the initial act of war committed in the ensuing conflict" but it is "b) the justification (as insolent as can be) for the initial act of war". For example the the Gleiwitz incident was Germany's casus belli when starting the Invasion of Poland, but the unprovoked German attack on Poland's sovereignty was the reason for the war from the Polish perspective. Both are correct statements, but as you pointed out, only the justification for the initial act should be listed. In this case it is quite clear who attacked and who was forced to react, so casus belli is only the Gleiwitz incident. If it is not clear, list all relevant casi belli and do mention accordingly the respective parties of the conflict. For example: Germany: Gleiwitz incident / Poland: German attack Wandalstouring 12:32, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Yep. (And each of the other countries entering the war typically has its own casus belli; e.g. the invasion of Poland for the UK and France; the attack on Pearl Harbor for the US; and so forth.)

(Of course, the field is optional; if the casus belli is too complex to be properly documented in the infobox, or is not of particular interest with regards to that war, it may be better off being omitted.) Kirill Lokshin 17:47, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks much for clarification. ←Humus sapiens ^ну? 10:50, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

IMHO, having a casus belli in a warbox, which should be reserved for only the most indisputable things amenable to brief description, is a terrible idea, and hardly ever appropriate. It should be removed practically everywhere. It is intrinsically POV. Serious, reputable sources do not usually simplify matters this way, because few wars are amenable to such simplification. Listing each country's casi belli would be better than the implicit and incoherent taking of one side's viewpoint that is done now, but this would make the line far too long and is what should be in the article on the causes of the particular war. In practice, this, the only NPOV solution, is never done, and is in fact contrary to the instructions for how to use the line!: "This field should not be used . . . in cases where the casus belli is disputed and requires a lengthy explanation. " The Six day war is an example. The article and line sort of takes the Israeli POV for the very complicated and still disputed causation of this war. But Israel claimed that Nasser's blockade was illegal, an act of war. If so the Israeli air attack was not the initial act of war and according to the Wiki definition we should put Nasser's justification. On the other hand, Jordan claimed that the attack on Samu, which killed people, unlike the blockade, was an act of war justifying a response. The Syrians could and did claim the Damascus airbattle and what they claimed were illegal Israeli actions in the DMZs were a cause. There is no reason to put such a line in, and any article with a casus belli line has an amateurish feel because of it. It makes about as much sense as having a good guy / bad guy line. It is asking for POVpushing, and that is how it is used. States always claim that their actions are just responses to the other guy's dirty rotten acts of war. If we were seriously NPOV, we would get into infinite regresses. Looking at earlier discussion, it appears that some of the objection to Kirill Lokshin's earlier removal of this field, which should have stayed removed, was due to the case of this 6 day war which is exactly the kind of war which should not have a casus belli line. 4.231.212.223 20:29, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

It is, admittedly, a somewhat peculiar field. I vaguely recall that when it was originally added (around October 2005, when we were redesigning the old battlebox), the idea was primarily to use it for Early Modern warfare, which took the concept rather more seriously (e.g. the various wars of Louis XIV, etc.). In some sense, it's not a field that works particularly well past that point; after Napoleonic times, the casus belli became less of a practical issue and more of a legal fiction, in many cases.

But the practical question has always been whether the fact that the field is a bad fit for some set X of articles warrants not making it available for the set Y of articles where it is useful. It is, in general, more difficult to remove features from templates than it is to add them; and we've never really had any consensus that it should be removed, in any case. Kirill Lokshin 21:19, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

IMO, casus belli is an excellent example of what shouldn't be in an infobox. I suspect that the number of cases where a single, pithy, NPOV statement of a casus belli to which all of the participants would have agreed to is in the extreme minority. A summary of each's "official" position certainly should be summarized in the introduction, but it probably shouldn't be further "reduced". Askari Mark (Talk) 23:20, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm afraid I must disagree. Wars, like any other event in history, are not fought in a vacuum, and must be understood within the relevant context. Yes, it can be complicated, and it can create POV problems if people are feeling sensitive about the issue, but that's no reason to avoid it entirely. Lengthy complex discussions of the causes (within the article text) are wonderful, and important, but can often be too lengthy and complex for the casual reader. The causes of any given conflict are too important an element to omit completely from the infobox, the one place the casual reader will look to quickly learn all the crucial facts about a war or conflict. Again, there are situations where the causes are simply far too numerous and complex, such as WWII, and there are others which are too sensitive an issue to say boldly the true causes, such as many more recent regional struggles, particularly the Arab-Israeli conflict. But there are countless other examples of wars where the causes can be summarized, are widely agreed upon, and are largely uncontroversial. Quite often, the two words "succession dispute" covers it completely. The causes of a number of the articles on pre-modern wars within Japan can be easily summarized as "clan disputes over control of X province" or as "X party seeks to topple Y regime". Even in far more modern wars, more often than not there are widely accepted, or at least acknowledged, reasons cited for given military actions. One of the important things to keep in mind, I think, in order to help avoid POV issues, is to focus on the direct causes or justifications of the aggression, and to not accuse countries or other parties of deeper agendas. The Vietnam War is likely among the most controversial wars of the 20th century, yet the infobox on its article states, succinctly, accurately, and neutrally, "Cold War nation-building and escalation, civil conflicts of nationalism." Writing succinct, non-biased (NPOV) casus belli can be done, if we are professional about it and act like adults, drawing from professional scholarly analysis and not from our own personal beliefs. LordAmeth 23:52, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree with most of what you have said, LordAmeth, except I disagree that what you are talking about is "casus belli". Wandalstouring provides the correct definition of it above, to wit, that it is what the participants each separately maintain their "justification" to have been. Furthermore, while your example is accurate and neutral, I'd argue that it's too wordy for an infobox and too vague and pedantic for the average reader without a scholarly background. Moreover, when you get to the many conflicts (from ancient to modern) where scholars disagree over the most proximate cause(s), it gets worse. IMO, what would be better than "casus belli" would be a brief statement of the general nature or type of war (which is more in line with what your example is about), which would be more intelligible to the general reader ... assuming we can come up with a generally acceptable NPOV categorization schema. Askari Mark (Talk) 00:17, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. Yeah, I guess my examples don't really fit the proper definition of "the justification for the initial act of war." They are, as you say, more like summaries of the type of conflict, described by short summaries of the causes. Still, I think that no matter what we do, however we make it work, the casus belli should stay in the infobox. If it requires footnotes, or expanded explanation in the text, fine. And for those cases where it's too complex or too controversial, we could leave it out. LordAmeth 08:23, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

We could introduce a simple rule: Name the official justification of the first site that starts the fighting(Don't bother with concentrations of armed men on the border, but who is the first to send them out to kill someone or whose side has the first one who feels the urge to kill someone for whatever other reasons within this context.). If there is a problem determining the starting side, then name the two initially clashing sides and their official justifications. Anything more complex can be discussed in the article. This way we provide the legal reasons why murder became obligatory within specified parameters(Adapted from "Nothing New in the West"). Wandalstouring 15:00, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

A-Class review for Russian-Circassian War now open

The A-Class review for Russian-Circassian War is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 17:43, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Concerning Holocaust & Genocide

I was hoping that wikipedia may be able to make a section for Holocaust & Genocide as either a project or portal. I thought that it might be part of the Military project of the History section. Looking for assistance with this. Thanks. I would appreciate comments & assistance to be left on my talk page [[1]]. I hope to hear from you soon. Eric Rodrigues.

Well, while there are certainly some military aspects involved, I don't think the broader topic of genocides is really a military one as a whole. This may be better off as a completely separate project. Kirill Lokshin 09:03, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

We currently have a Jewish history wikiproject that seems to include the Holocaust; you may want to bring up a task force proposal over there before firing up an independent project. TomStar81 (Talk) 09:33, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Try to set up your project as part of the larger Wikiproject History. We will certainly support you as far as possible, but quite a lot of killing during genocides is commited by "armed" civilians against unarmed, lesser armed or outnumbered civilians. A really big problem is that the project(under whatever umbrella) as such is in danger to boldly enter into some ongoing POV disputes (Pontic Greek Genocide, Armenian Genocide). Some guidelines might be helpful. Wandalstouring 09:46, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

British anti-invasion preparations of World War II

Article: British anti-invasion preparations of World War II, has been put forward as a featured article candidate. If you would like to comment on this article's nomination, please see here. All opinions will be most welcome. Gaius Cornelius 17:34, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Already noted on {{WPMILHIST Announcements}} and at WP:MHR#FAC. :-) Kirill Lokshin 17:51, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

A-Class review for Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry now open

The A-Class review for Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 17:51, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

A-Class review for Tupolev TB-3 now open

The A-Class review for Tupolev TB-3 is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 03:35, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Para Commandos

Para Commandos currently goes to an article on India’s Para Commandos. As Belgium also has Para Commandos, should Para Commandos be a disambiguation page, with...

Para Commandos (Belgium)

Para Commandos (India)

If people agree, I'm happy to do this. Regards Chwyatt 08:50, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Yep, that seems like the easiest thing to do. Kirill Lokshin 11:27, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Done. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up ®} 12:13, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Cheers Fayssal Chwyatt 14:48, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

A-Class review for Russian-Circassian War needs attention

A few more editors are needed to complete the A-Class review for Russian-Circassian War; please stop by and help review the article! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 18:21, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Battle of Red Cliffs...

Hi,

I'm not a member of this wikiproject. Recently, due to the popularity of the movie 300, the Battle of Thermopylae rec'd a high number of visits...

John Woo is making or gonna make a movie about the Battle of Red Cliffs. I'm expecting a similar surge in popularity. I'm thinking it might be proactive if y'all started a collaboration to improve that article, and perhaps a few closely related ones.... just a thought. :-)

Later! --Ling.Nut 02:31, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the info Ling.Nut. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up ®} 13:36, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

1st Infantry Division (United States)

I expanded the nickname part of the infobox and added redirects and also dealed with the nagging "half the intro is the motto" problem a short while ago. --Pupster21 Talk To Me 19:16, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Nice of you to edit the page. Do you have any questions or is there a need to specifically discuss something here? Wandalstouring 14:45, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, I was going to request that User:RM Gillespie expand the Vietnam War section, but other than that nothing really.--Pupster21 Talk To Me 17:23, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

A-Class review for Tupolev TB-3 needs attention

A few more editors are needed to complete the A-Class review for Tupolev TB-3; please stop by and help review the article! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 21:29, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

A-Class review for Benjamin Franklin Tilley now open

The A-Class review for Benjamin Franklin Tilley is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 17:10, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

List of invasions

Does anyone here have this page on their watchlist? Would appreciate help in looking out for bad edits --- there is some anon in Stockton, California with a variety of IPs who repeatedly reinserts Vietnam-related items to this page about immigrants or refugees, rather than instances of military incursions (e.g. Koreans in Vietnam). Made a request for semi-protection of the page but it was refused. Thanks, cab 07:53, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Firstly, you have to define on the page what an invasion is (to exclude for example: "Invasion of techno in New Orleans").

Secondly, you need a more elaborate structure. Grouping as WWx on the one hand and with dates on the other is no consequent system (Many ancient wars do have quite a lot of invasions compared to WWI/II). Furthermore you should split it according to regions/continents and this way point out that it is ot intended as an US/Eurocentric list.

Visit campaign history of the Roman military to see an example how things could be done in a more vandalproof manner. Wandalstouring 10:19, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I think you are giving too much credit to the anons by assuming that this is a good faith dispute over what the definition of "invasion" should be, rather than recognising it as some Vietnamese guy with an ethnic grudge --- I'm not the guy who wrote the page, and had never even seen it until three days ago, but it's quite clear to me that it refers to military invasions, given the entries that were already on the page before these anons started adding to it, the Military History template on it, the fact that it belongs to Category:Military lists, and the definition at invasion which states "An invasion is a military action consisting of armed forces of one geopolitical entity entering territory controlled by another such entity". Anyway, I also lack the necessary historical expertise to clean it up, I'm just trying to prevent it from declining in quality any further until you all here have some time to improve it (it is, after all, tagged as belonging to your WikiProject). Thanks, cab 12:45, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Find the one guilty of tagging this list. If s/he or someone else doesn't care about it, delete it. Our project is rather critical of any such lists. Wandalstouring 14:00, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Didn't we nominate it for deletion at some point? Or am I confusing it with another of these lists?

(Of the ones we have, this one probably among the more unmaintainable. Unlike, say, wars, "invasions" are typically not very rigorously defined, since a war going back-and-forth across a border can include many actions that meet the definition. What we really have at the moment is, in parts, more a "list of wars involving invasions" rather than a "list of invasions" per se.) Kirill Lokshin 15:36, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

It certainly deserves to be deleted: I just removed claims that Japan invaded Australia, New Zealand, New Caledonia and Ceylon during WW2 and an article which labels an incident in March 2007 in which 100 Swiss soldiers accidently crossed into Lichenstein for about an hour as being an 'invasion'. This article seems to be unmaintainable and not particularly informative. --Nick Dowling 10:06, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Yesterday I removed a link to Pearl Harbor as an invasion of the U.S. by Japan! I'd vote for deletion. I can't imagine any purpose for which this list would be of any use. Kim dent brown 10:42, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I found the one guilty of tagging this list:

Revision as of 05:02, 12 February 2006

User:Kirill Lokshin

({{WikiProject Military history}})

Kirill, yoa wanna maintain this article, thou included within thy scope, or shalt we throw it into the electronic purgatory? Wandalstouring 17:02, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

{{WikiProject Military history}}? Wow, that brings back memories; that version hasn't been in use since February 2006. ;-)

More seriously: as I said above, I don't really see the list as either maintainable or particularly useful, so I would have nothing against deleting it. (We do have a Category:Invasions if it's really needed, anyways.) The practical question is whether we can make a coherent-enough argument for deletion that the thing would actually go away. Kirill Lokshin 17:13, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

It is a redundant list within our project that was created because someone didn't know the issue was far better solved via categorization. Is this sufficient for termination? Wandalstouring 17:24, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, the last time we tried a nomination like that (the various war lists), it didn't go over too well. I think we'll need, at a minimum, a fairly thorough explanation of why this particular list is unmaintainable/not useful/etc. Kirill Lokshin 17:47, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

OK. Let's make it a redirect to the category. I think that's the easiest solution. Wandalstouring 20:21, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

If I'm not mistaken, redirects from the main namespace to the category namespace aren't permitted. We could redirect it to the invasion article itself, I suppose; but the redirect is likely to be reverted, and then we'd be back where we started. (On the other hand, if it's not reverted, we'll have saved ourselves a fair amount of time.) Kirill Lokshin 20:47, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Reviewing the edit history makes it pretty clear just how unmaintainable this article is. It's also notable that there are no actual articles for many of the 'invasions', but just links to the 'history of x' article where x is whichever country may, or may not, have been invaded. --Nick Dowling 10:21, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

A-Class review for Benjamin Franklin Tilley needs attention

A few more editors are needed to complete the A-Class review for Benjamin Franklin Tilley; please stop by and help review the article! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 17:14, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Request for Comments: Mexican-American War vs. Mexican War

The current title for the page on the conflict between the United States and Mexico, 1846-1848, is the Mexican-American War. However, it is argued ("Talk Page: Misnomer" and "Talk Page: Name of War = Title of Article") that the "Mexican War" is actually the most common name used to refer to that event. Kraken7 19:55, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Sure, because commonly US-Americans do write about that war in English. Likewise the Spanish-American War is the Spanish War. Wandalstouring 20:24, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Oddly, that's not the case: "Spanish-American War" is standard in the U.S. —Kevin Myers 06:43, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Treaty of Craiova

The article Treaty of Craiova apparently is within the scope of this WikiProject, so I will bring this up here: according to the article (Treaty of Craiova), the Treaty was imposed on Romania by Nazi Germany. Why was this? What did Nazi Germany stand to gain with this Treaty? Were they interested in maintaining some sort of peace in the area, or was this in the interest of relations with Bulgaria? Is any information about this available? And if so, could someone with access to that information add it to the article? A ecis^Brievenbus 23:10, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Bay of Pigs Invasion

Help is needed to monitor Bay of Pigs Invasion, which at present is in very poor shape, and seems to be in freefall due to numerous spurious anon edits over a long period. I have just restored the lead and infobox after they were absent for days due to anon removals.-- Zleitzen^(talk) 00:08, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Open Peer Review

Hi there. I've got a peer review request open at Wikipedia:Peer review/Battle of the Plains of Abraham/archive1 for an article that I feel has a pretty good shot at FA in the near future, but it's gotten no traffic from WP:PR. Might I ask that any folks here who might be interested drop by and offer some suggestions? Much appreciated. Cheers! Tony Fox (arf!) 04:58, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Macedonian Front of WWI - needs a review?]

The article is pretty bad, overall. It seems to be biased (example: hated Austro-Hungarians , hated Bulgarians ) and presents the entire front only through the Entante POV, without giving any detailed information on the Central Power's armies (unit number and strenght, morale, disposition, casualties) and their overall strategic situation and problems (etc. lack of resources, homefront anti-war opposition). The article stresses the importance of Greece entering the war, but doesn't give much info on its army's strenght and disposition, apart from being able to gather 9 divions. The fighting in Albania is also lacking in detail. The Battles of Doiran and Dobro pole seem to be mixed up, both being fought around the 18th of September. Dobro pole was major Allied victory, which led to the breaktrough of the Bulgarian front (and consequently to the Solder Rebellion, which should also be covered), while Doiran was decisive victory for the Bulgarians and was used in the diplomatic negotiations to protect the country from occupation. Hope the article will be revised with more datailed accounts from both sides. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.238.215.65 (talk) 07:57, 26 April 2007 (UTC).

A-Class review for Battle of Arras (1917) now open

The A-Class review for Battle of Arras (1917) is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 21:20, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Request for your views

I've created Israel-United States military relations partly as a merge of an earlier article, partly as a content fork of Israel-United States relations (which it's intended to parallel) and partly as a chunk of new content sourced largely from Jane's. The format is intended to be usable as a standard framework for multiple articles of this type - see the explanation on Talk:Israel-United States military relations. I see it as a possible prototype for a series of articles on bilateral military relations. I'd be grateful if people could take a look and let me know what you think. -- ChrisO 23:40, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Looks good so far. A fine start. It represents a pretty objective view, not focusing too much on an Israeli view of relations with the US nor on an American view of relations with Israel (I fixed a bit in the intro which had that issue, but the rest of the text is fine). It's pleasantly surprisingly clear of POV bias stuff, as inevitably comes up in Israel-related articles. The big deal now is just to make sure that as it expands, one keeps an eye on those considerations. As for the more general theme of creating bilateral military relation articles, go for it - as foreign relations articles (e.g. Israel-United States relations) tend to be far more political, economic, and even ideological, I think it might not be a bad idea to have a separate set of articles than can include these kinds of technical specs about exactly how much was spent on which types of technology. LordAmeth 00:42, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that was my thought too. It's a bit too specialised for the general foreign relations articles, in any case. -- ChrisO 07:41, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Military-Insignia

Template:Military-Insignia has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — Megapixie 02:41, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Merger proposal for Washington's crossing of the Delaware

Folks, there's currently a proposal to merge Washington's crossing of the Delaware with Battle of Trenton at Talk:Washington's crossing of the Delaware#Merge with Battle of Trenton. I personally oppose merger, but I'm soliciting more views from the Military History WikiProject. Wl219 21:12, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Heh, interesting stuff. The crossing is really part of the prelude to Trenton moreso than an entirely distinct action, but its iconic cultural impact may warrant a separate discussion. Do we have an article on the immediate surrounding campaign, incidentally? Merging it to something like New Jersey campaign of 1776-1777, together with summaries of the battle articles, may be another approach worth considering. Kirill Lokshin 22:33, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, the overall campaign article is New York and New Jersey campaign. —Kevin Myers 00:41, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Scope and TV

I notice that you have added the following guideline since I was last here: "Depictions of military history in cultural art forms, such as painting, sculpture, music, film, poetry, and prose." I was wondering if this would extended to TV shows like Moder Marvels which cover the topic of the show from its orgins to the present, but do not nessicarily focus exclusively on Military Hardware. Would shows of this nature come under this projects umbrella? 129.108.204.3 22:24, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Insofar as they were involved with depicting actual military history, yes; the list of items is intended to provide examples, not set forth an exhaustive listing. (I should point out that truly historical—in the academic sense—shows have always been covered, as they are properly the area of historiography rather than cultural depiction.) Kirill Lokshin 22:29, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

A-Class review for Pontiac's Rebellion now open

The A-Class review for Pontiac's Rebellion is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 22:36, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Problem Contributors

We have a young Wikipedia contributer named User:Shark kid, who has been adding a lot of material to many military articles. He means well, but he seems to have no idea what is appropriate and what is not. I have already deleted too much of his material, and I don't want to stalk him. If editors in this project see fit, please edit or delete his additions, and leave a note in his user page. He may grow up to be a good historian someday. —Aetheling 18:32, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Quite a lot of editors have expressed their concerns over his edits. Doing so many questionable edits(often rather obvious) on such a broad field within such a short time seems rather strange to me and is quite an unusual behaviour for a new editor. I suspect, it is a new style of vandalism.

The idea behind the vandalism is to add a personal expression that can easily be identified as different from the background text(wikipedia article). The great thing in vandalism is how long does my expression survive on a highly frequented spot. The problem was that RCpatrol, article watchers and other IP editors do a rather effective cleanup, especially concerning IP vandals and creating a login that soon gets blocked is almost too much work. The question for a vandal was now: How can I keep my expression much longer online? Well, one solution would be writing stuff that almost makes sense in an encyclopedia that, after an often repeated opinion, already does contain quite a lot of nonsense. Let's hope I'm totally wrong because otherwise this is the beginning of a new level of attacks which are substantially dangerous for this encyclopedia, unlike the good old vandalism that nowadays often gets removed by other IP editors. Wandalstouring 21:17, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Have you raised the issue at WP:AN? Askari Mark (Talk) 23:10, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Not yet, I'm not entirely convinced and will check this user more thoroughly in a few days. Wandalstouring 07:53, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

If it is unreferenced, remove it. If it is referenced, then check the references. If the references are false, report the editor and they should be blocked if they can't explain using false references (that is the really dangerous vandalism). Carcharoth 13:49, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

We had that issue in the crossbow article where one of our best editors summarized Needham's rather vague statement into a strong onesided opinion. Before the same source had been quoted as saying the opposite. All in all, if an issue is important the references get checked and everybody makes mistakes. Wandalstouring 22:08, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I read Shark kid's stuff carefully today. I think he does have a good education, but no manners. The admins are on his heels because of vandalism and he is likely to be blocked. I offered my help to him because, after careful consideration, I'm not entirely convinced that he had bad intentions. Wandalstouring 17:39, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

A-Class review for Zveno project now open

The A-Class review for Zveno project is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 08:29, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Warsaw Uprising FAR

Warsaw Uprising has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. LuciferMorgan 15:22, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Flag icons issue again

I would like to ask two questions about current policy about flag icons posted in articles and templates:

1. Are we using flag icons at all?: Infobox templates guideline is simple: In general, the use of flag icons is not recommended. In reality flag icons are quite popular and it seems that this guideline is not working at all.

2. If flags are allowed, what kind of flags are we using? Civil flags only or maybe civil flags and war flags when available?: Template:World War I have war flags standard and there is no edit wars but use of war flags in Template:World War II is subject of dispute.; For those who don't see issue - sometimes difference can be minor, like for Italy ( civil and war flag), but sometimes difference can be much more visible, like for Austria-Hungary ( vs. ) or Japan ( vs. ). IMHO this should be explained and common policy should be set for all editors.

I've looked on talk history but there was no detailed guidelines and it was last discussion about flag icons found by me. Regards, Piotr Mikołajski 10:49, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Mmm, that they're "quite popular" doesn't mean they can't, simultaneously, be "not recommended". My impression of previous discussions, at least, has been that a substantial portion of project members dislike them, a substantial portion use them, and the majority doesn't really care either way; so the practical result is that the project takes a very vague stance on the issue, basically leaving it up to the editors of each individual article to decide what they want to do. (This dovetails into your second question rather neatly: trying to impose a one-size-fits-all rule on what flag to use is going to be as unproductive as trying to impose one on whether to use flags at all, given the extremely wide range of different scenarios we're covering.) Kirill Lokshin 10:55, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

That's main reason why I'm asking - we shouldn use any flag icons but we are using it for almost any article. I can't agree with leaving it up to the editors of each individual article to decide what they want to do. With such approach and without more or less official guidelines we'll see never ending edit wars. Someone can remove all flags from WWI and WWII templates, another one will add flag icons again, third will change them to civil or war flags. That's why I'm asking for some kind of agreement and guideline explaining that part. Personally I don't want to waste my time to explain that this or that flag is good and to revert someones edits, there is a lot of different things to do.

BTW - for one size we can use flag templates instead of fixed width images. Flag templates have 22px width and are quite uniform.

Regards, Piotr Mikołajski 12:10, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that we can do any better than that, unfortunately. There are certainly obvious cases where flag icons don't work (e.g. ancient & medieval warfare and such), so we can't require them across the board. Conversely, there are cases where the flag icons are quite legitimately used, so we can't very well forbid them. (And this doesn't even get into subtler issues, such as the consideration of whether other listed countries have available flag icons, and hence whether consistency is a problem.)

I suppose we could come up with some sort of recommendation on cases where they may or may not be a good fit, but I'm not sure that would really help matters in cases where there's a dispute over them. Kirill Lokshin 13:04, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Flags availability is quite good today and sometimes only template is needed. This is quick fix and I've made several templates myself and added older variants of national flags to several existing templates. IMHO set of recommendations can be good step to finish most edit wars. I guess that we can do such recomendations for articles since 19th century - at this time flags were in common use. Regards, Piotr Mikołajski 13:34, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

The crucial points are how the flag icons are being used. (1) Are they accurate or are they misleading? (2) Do they help readers visually distinguish items? (3) Do they distract from the text? (4) Does the accompanying text make it obvious to the reader what the flag is for? If they would learn more from clicking on the text link than the flag, then get rid of the flag and put the flag in the article about (say) the Regia Marina or the Imperial Japanese Navy. I suppose it all depends on whether you want to represent the participant in a conflict as the navy or the country. Carcharoth 13:47, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

In fact I thought about flags of countries in templates and operators of military equipment mainly. There are flags in Template:World War I and Template:World War II which IMHO can help readers. Aircraft articles has flags in their "Operators" section too and in both cases flags are with links to countries or their history during WWII. Regards, Piotr Mikołajski 14:18, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

It is indeed difficult to set hard-and-fast rules; just look at the debates in Wikipedia talk:Don't overuse flags. My personal approach is to ask two questions:

Are flags directly relevant to the article?
If not, do they help the reader – as opposed to serving only to decorate?

As for the use of civil vs. war flags, I think wherever identifying nationality is the point of the flag, then the civil flag should be used. In an article addressing a particular battle where they are being used to identify participants in that event, then the war flag might be substituted (as long as that particular banner was actually used during the incident). Does this help? Askari Mark (Talk) 17:24, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

For example, if (for some reason) you had an extensive article or list discussing different navies of different countries, then you could use the naval ensigns as an aid to helping the reader distinguish different navies in lists or infoboxes, but linking to the most informative article is still the most important thing. Carcharoth 17:42, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't think flags are necessary and can even detract from the article. If someone places them in an article that I'm working on, however, I usually don't remove them, because it's obviously a good faith effort on someone's part to try to make the article more attractive to look at. If someone places flags in an article that you're working on, my advice to let them stay for awhile, and then quietly remove them a month or so later or before you nominate the article for FA. Cla68 23:05, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I can see where it might get more complicated for articles where the participants are not nations, but larger alliances or smaller units. For example, if we have a battle listing the Eighth United States Army as one of the combatants, am I to use the flag of the United States, or could I use the insignia of the unit? Would it also be possible to use the insignia of the United States Army?

Personally though, I think this is something that should probably be handled on a task force by task force basis. As mentioned above flags are likely not be useful for battles in antiquity, but could be helpful for some of the more modern conflicts. Oberiko

I think that Templates should stick to one type of flags. You either use war flags for all coutnries who have them or you do not use them at all on that template. Problem is, that not all war flags are very well known(like , or ) so I think that WW II template should stick to state flags.--Staberinde 14:57, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm clearly in favour of using the icons, and would be in favour of the more correct war flags. —Nightst a llion (?) 17:01, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

If we use a flag, than let it be the correct ones. I do support war flags, but I still oppose flags under any circumstances. Wandalstouring 21:12, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry Staberinde, but I disagree with you. This is an encyclopedia. The purpose of an encyclopedia is to teach, inform, and make available ALL relevant information on any given scholarly topic. Therefore, the argument that we should not use war flags because people would not be able to atrribute them to the proper country is nonsensical. Keep them there, and perhaps readers would look those flags up; the readers might even be able to figure out who the flags belong to by using deductive reasoning, or just by reading the article. That's my opinion.--MKnight9989 13:03, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

A-Class review for B-52 aircraft crash at Fairchild Air Force Base now open

The A-Class review for B-52 aircraft crash at Fairchild Air Force Base is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 10:55, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Project banner help

WikiProject Japan is working on incorporating several smaller related wikiprojects as task forces, and since you guys are so very good at this, I'm wondering if one of you might be willing to help me incorporate that into our project banner. I've done a little bit, but I'm not that good at the coding in the banners, so I don't know how well I've done it. Any help would be appreciated. The banner is here: {{WikiProject Japan}}. Thanks! ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 02:01, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, unless you're trying to do something quite complex, the easiest thing to do would probably be to copy the sample code here, creating new parameters for each task force in the same manner as the peer review parameter is implemented in the example. Kirill Lokshin 02:10, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! That's an excellent resource. (^_^) ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 03:55, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

btw I like your site. The lists of articles with their status are nice. Wandalstouring 17:07, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I (and others) have been trying to make it easier for people to see what needs doing so they can jump right in and help where they wish to help. Hopefully the page isn't too overwhelming what with all the piles of information crammed into it I sometimes worry it may be getting too busy and full of things. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 03:55, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

A-Class review for Zveno project needs attention

A few more editors are needed to complete the A-Class review for Zveno project; please stop by and help review the article! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 12:03, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Cold War History project proposal

The editor who first created the proposal for the Cold War History project has not edited since early January. It has had roughly 8 members since March. I figured this project, given the amount of overlap, would probably be the best one to contact about possibly setting the project up. Thank you for your time. John Carter 18:33, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I recall that someone proposed a Cold War task force in the fairly recent past; that might be a viable option here, if anyone is interested. Kirill Lokshin 04:20, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

American Civil War: Battle of Lawrence to Lawrence Massacre

There's a survey over whether we should move Battle of Lawrence to Lawrence Massacre (or another name). Talk:Battle of Lawrence#Requested move. -Will Beback · † · 20:03, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Please Expand...

Hello,

I just joined the American Civil War task force.

Before I joined this task force, I already made some articles about Civil War soldiers and the wives.

Here they are:

Soldiers

Thomas Chamberlain

TJ Goree

Leonard A. Abercrombie

Henry M. Elmore

Wives

Elizabeth Goree

Lavinia Chilton

Unfortunately, many of these articles are only stubs. Any additional information in these articles would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Psdubow 22:36, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

P.S. - Please leave replies on my talkpage.

A category for deletion

I nominated Category:Sixty Years' War for deletion. I could be wrong. Please visit the nomination page to determine if I have any idea what I'm talking about. Thanks! —Kevin Myers 18:34, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Naming a military disaster

Preliminary research for my overhaul of USS Iowa has turned up enough information to spin the 1989 turret 2 explosion into its own article, but I am not sure what to call it. I thought about 1989 Gun Turret Explosion aboard USS Iowa or 1989 Explosion in Turret #2, but figured I would ask here before doing anything definitive with this. Any other suggestions for a name? TomStar81 (Talk) 02:25, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Simply Turret explosion aboard the USS Iowa, perhaps? I don't really see a need to disambiguate here—no other explosion would have an article of its own—and I'm not a fan of starting the title with a year in any case. Kirill Lokshin 04:24, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Per Kirill. Sometimes using a year in an article title is helpful, sometimes not. I think this is a case where it is not needed. Make sure you add the article to Category:Non-combat accidents involving military and Category:Explosions. Carcharoth 14:06, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

As per those above. Since there are only a handful of USS Iowas (maybe only one, can't be bothered checking), I don't think a year is nescescary to disambiguate. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 17:41, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

There have been a total of four USS Iowas, only two have been comissioned as such though. More imporatantly, I write to you concerning another wikiproject that has ties to the turret explosion and there naming convention for such incidents. According to Wikipedia:WikiProject Disaster management, all articles concerning individual disasters should be <<year>> <<place>> <<event>>, and it would seem to me that an article dedicated exclusively to the incident within the turret would be more under the disater managment wikiproject then the Military history wikiproject. Does this change the nature of the discussion any, or should TomStar81 stick with the naming conventions here? --Jesus —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 129.108.205.3 (talk) 00:13, 7 May 2007 (UTC).

Well, the DM project doesn't really have "more" of a claim to deciding the title than this one does; but, if there is already an established naming convention for these, I have no objections to simply following it. It's not really a big deal either way, I think, given the low number of articles affected. Kirill Lokshin 00:27, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm from the above project and generally support the year, but don't view it as nescescary this time per above. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 16:53, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Then how about Gun Turret explosion aboard USS Iowa? Would that work, or should I include the hull number too? TomStar81 (Talk) 20:28, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Though I must ask you, as the miltary experts round here - any reason for capitalising "Gun Turret" in these suggested names? I assume there is a very good reason, just checking. As for the hull number, if there's only four of them, no need IMO. Go for it. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 06:38, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Coincidentally, I was about to start this article myself (I've recently started editing military accident and friendly fire articles) and was going to use USS Iowa turret explosion but the other suggested titles seem fine to me. Cla68 00:24, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

I would support Cla68's suggestion. "Turret explosion" is not immediately obvious to a general reader who does't know what a turret is. USS Iowa is more recognisable as a ship name, and it would also explicitly class this article as a descendant article from USS Iowa. Carcharoth 00:40, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

By the way, DefenseLINK has a lot of good photos related to the incident, including several photos of the explosion itself: [2], then type "Iowa turret explosion" into the search box. Cla68 01:01, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. When my fever breaks I will see about getting started on the article, and I will add some of those images. Right now though, I need more Tylenol (my head is killing me...) TomStar81 (Talk) 01:50, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I just started the article: USS Iowa turret explosion. Hope you feel better soon. Cla68 02:01, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Alexander George Arbuthnot

A Seminole War related article that you may have been involved in editing, Alexander George Arbuthnot, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alexander George Arbuthnot. Thank you. Kittybrewster (talk) 13:23, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

New task force?

I noticed that we've made a Middle Eastern Military History Task Force [I'm in it] and I think that's great. However, there's one other task force I'm wondering why we don't have.

We have military history task forces for all the big countries [Canadian Military History, British Military History, etc.]. Should we have an Israeli Military History Task force, because even though their military has only really been around for sixty some odd years, they've had an extremely lively history in that time period.

Just a thought..

If this would fall under the juristiction of the Middle Eastern Military History Task force, then I'll be fine, but I'm just thinking that it might be good to have a task force entirely devoted to the IDF history [an extremely busy one, mind you].

Just a thought....

Cam 03:28, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, since it is basically a subset of the ME one, I'm not particularly impatient to start a separate one unless there's a lot of interest in working on Israeli military history specifically. Given the turnout so far, I doubt if there's enough editors involved to need—or want—yet another group. (I could be wrong about this, of course.) Kirill Lokshin 03:34, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

It is part of ME for now. As per Kirill, once editors start to be interested on it than we can create it. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 15:38, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

That's a fair point Kirill. I'm really dissapointed in the turnout for the Middle Eastern Military History Task Force myself. I agree with FaysallF. Once we can get a lot of people on ME task force, then maybe we can start one. It's a fair point. Thanks.

Cam 02:25, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

A-Class review for First Command Financial Planning, Inc. now open

The A-Class review for First Command Financial Planning, Inc. is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 18:35, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Articles I've Started that I need help finishing

The following articles are those that I have started, but cannot finish alone do to a lack of expertise:

PLEASE HELP --MKnight9989 12:56, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

I've reformatted your question to make it easier for people to check out your work. —Kevin Myers 13:30, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks alot. I was trying to make it a column before, but I couldn't figure out how. I put it in column form when I edited it, but when I saved it was not in column form. Would you mind telling me how to list things in column form? (like you did) --MKnight9989 13:45, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

To make a numbered list, just put a # before each item. (You can see how I did it by editing this section and see how your question is now formatted.) To make a list without numbers, use * or : for different types. Eventually you'll figure it all out by playing around with it. Good luck! —Kevin Myers 13:52, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Thank you!--MKnight9989 14:08, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

You created several stubs and want someone else to turn them urgently into articles. A better solution is merging Cavalry saber into sabre and to leave a redirect. If there is enough information for an article on its own, create it. Same for King Armored Car, make it a subpage of Armored car and the problem is solved. The French gun can be grouped with other guns of the same calibre. If there isn't much to say about it, it doesn't matter. Wandalstouring 17:13, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Section, not subpage... :-) Carcharoth 00:32, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

I've added merge suggestion tags to Cavalry saber and sabre. Emoscopes ^Talk 06:46, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't need to be done urgently, I just thought I'd put those articles out there because I'm sure there are wikiusers with far more knowledge on those topics than I. The only reason I created the cavalry sabre article was because it was on a list of articles needing attention; there was no article for it, so I had to create one.--MKnight9989 12:22, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

introduction of a new service

We do have quite a lot of active editors who create a bulk of information without being member of a specific task force. My idea is to collect information about recognized editors and keep them in a maintained (by the coordinators) list on display.

The nomination process would be the same as with our awards, but we may cut it to a support by two coordinators plus the nominee has to accept and clarify for what subjects he wants to be "contact" for. The title of the so awarded is "contact". S/He receives a nice userbox and some obligations: answer direct questions and peer reviews on his subject. In return he has the great honor to be listed as one of our contacts underneath our taskforces(this list is likely a mixture between our categories and our task forces). The coordinators do maintain the contactship and can denominate or send on vacation if there are problems with a contact or s/he can't be sufficiently active any more.Wandalstouring 17:44, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

[Sneeking in a word or two while I can, cut and copied form the Coordinators page.] I think you'll be able to find some interesstees, probobly not for every conceivable subject but at the very least for every Taskforce. Contact does describe the best. Having a Contact list or subpage with the areas of expertise. Working this out will probobly be the greatest source of misconception. As in a guideline of how someone becomes a Contact and how they relate to a Topic. Will it be vote that Y is a great editor and wealth of knowledge he's be a contact then asking M. Y what Topics woud he like to be Contact in? Or its it from the start that Y could be a Contact for such and such a Topic? Leaving this editor then the choice of Accept or not?

Moving away from the first questions that came to mind, I beleive the idea of contacts to be a useful one and one thats been de facto for as long as editors have known each other. People constantly writing on certain articles become known to those others reading and editing in those same articles. This presented idea will build a nexus from wich to learn the who's who in what with time to spare and I defintily support its implementation. Dryzen 14:59, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

The trick is that I did not specificy some things. The reality will usually be that the coordinators do suggest what someone can be contact for and the nominee makes his suggestions until a bargain is reached. All in all, the most flexible approach I could think of. Wandalstouring 17:04, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

So is there any interest in doing this? Would project members (a) find a listing of people to contact for particular topics useful and (b) be willing to be added to such a listing (with the whole answering questions bit that comes with it)? Or do people not think this would be a useful approach? Kirill Lokshin 16:47, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind being added to such a list, and it might prove a useful way to get answers on specific topics. Carom 16:51, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

For those that are interested, this has been put in to action here. Carom 14:27, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

A-Class review for Sino-Indian War now open

The A-Class review for Sino-Indian War is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 07:32, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Category abuse

I have noticed what I think is a missuse of the battle categories. For example the Category:Battles of the Western Front (World War I) contains not only battles but also Iron harvest, Hartmannswillerkopf, National War Memorial, Islandbridge, Polygon Wood, Zonnebeke etc. I have nothing against this articles but there aren't battles and shouldn't be in that category. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Carl Logan (talk • contribs) 18:24, 9 May 2007 (UTC).

Fixed. Created Category:World War I memorials for the puropse and removed the them from the Battles cat. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 12:45, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Help at "Multinational Force in Iraq"

In the past couple of months a motivated individual has transformed this article from one focusing on the military force in Iraq to an essay on topics only tangentially related to the subject. Could someone who has worked on more military focused articles please step in and help refocus it on the forces, rather than the casualities and the politics? Thanks! Kyaa the Catlord 15:54, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't share your concern. The article looks quite good, is informative and I would suggest to rate it after the discussion about merging it is over. Certainly people are not only interested in military materials only, but want to know more about the political background. Our differing opinions have perhaps a cultural reason since I'm German and this is the most natural way for us to see military issues. Wandalstouring 16:46, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

I rather agree with Wandalstouring in that conflict is an inherently political activity and articles should reflect military discussions in that context. The article is pretty comprehensive but I'd say that some of the political considerations are a bit fragmented, although that's probably a stylistic thing rather than anything else.

fwiw I'm a Brit and I've attended the Joint Services Command and Staff College, which influences my outlook.

ALR 17:20, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

I think that the other article (Multinational Force Iraq) which is tagged to be merged has some interesting and important information; while I don't normally care for lists of brigades - they add nothing to my understanding of the subject - the infobox, logo of the Multinational Force, and maps and text discussing the actual military situation on the ground (areas of responsibility etc.) are quite useful and important. I think that the section on "Coalition of the Willing" - origin of the term and all that - should probably be spun off into its own separate article, but otherwise, as long as we're happy with it being an article on the Coalition, and not explicitly on the Coalition Forces, I don't see much of a problem with any of the other content here. (politically moderate non-Repubmocrat American) LordAmeth 17:36, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Harlech Castle

User:The Rambling Man and I are pushing this toward FA. Please help. Thanks. --Dweller 18:30, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Charles George Arbuthnot

An article about a General who was Commander in chief of the Madras Army, namely Charles George Arbuthnot, has been listed by ElimintorJR for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Charles George Arbuthnot. Thank you. - Kittybrewster (talk) 02:42, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Charles George James Arbuthnot

An article about a General namely Charles George James Arbuthnot, has been listed by ElimintorJR for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Charles George James Arbuthnot. Thank you. - Kittybrewster (talk) 02:42, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

War World I: sub-category thoughts

Having done a fair amount of categorising over the last couple of days, I've been struck by how complicated the WWI sub-categories are. Firstly, they're a real mouthful of type; secondly, they're not easy to remember; so all in all it's an unnecessary inconvenience. How do people feel about very broad sub-categories directly under Cat:World War I (sub-cat: France and World War I, sub-cat: United States and World War I etc) with the more specific stuff (sub-sub-cat:Military history of the United Kingdom during World War I, sub-sub-cat:Military personnel of the USA, etc) under them? There's a lot of good material and it's getting lost by over-specific categorisation and there are also way too many categories with very little stuff in them. This simplification would also give editors really obvious but relevant sub-categories for initial categorisation of their articles. The articles can always be moved/copied to better sub-categories later. Thoughts? Roger 07:57, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/World War I task force#War World I: sub-category thoughts Kirill Lokshin 15:42, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Question about my article

I've written an article about Zhou Tong, the archery teacher of Song Dynasty General Yue Fei. For some reason, it is listed as being within the scope of you project. Why is that? I guess it could be since he taught archery to a future general, but he never fought in any wars are anything like that. (Ghostexorcist 11:23, 11 May 2007 (UTC))

I think it is related to this project because he is believed to have trained soldiers. This is what i could get from the Monk or soldier? section. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 12:40, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

He didn't train soldiers. He Just trained Yue Fei. (Ghostexorcist 16:31, 11 May 2007 (UTC))

It's perfectly possible that it was tagged by mistake, of course; if you don't believe it's within the project's scope, please feel free to remove the tag. :-) Kirill Lokshin 16:39, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Could you please clarify that delisting this article from the military history project's scope has nothing to do with a personal POV on the disputes about his being a monk or soldier. Else, I have no objection against removing the tag. Wandalstouring 17:35, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

POV? The tag was on the page long before I added the Monk or Soldier section. I removed it because the oldest record that mentions Zhou's name does only that, mention his name. There is not enough historical info to support the claim he was a soldier or monk. I'm about to update the page anyway.(Ghostexorcist 18:25, 11 May 2007 (UTC))

POV is wikispeak for Point Of View. Wandalstouring 13:03, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I know. I just didn't understand where the POV issue came from. I'm the one who wrote the page, so I'm more familiar with the material. It's not a matter of me liking one possibility over another. It's a matter of historical evidence. (Ghostexorcist 18:55, 12 May 2007 (UTC))

Ok it was removed by you so no big deals. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 11:33, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

A-Class review for Sino-Indian War needs attention

A few more editors are needed to complete the A-Class review for Sino-Indian War; please stop by and help review the article! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 15:54, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Naming senior officers

Guys, what's the current thinking on disambiguation article titles for senior military and naval personnel? There's just been a change from Benjamin Bathurst, former First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff, to the rather half baked Benjamin Bathurst (naval commander). Personally I'd go for Admiral Sir Benjamin Bathurst, but if there's a precedent than it should follow.

ALR 09:13, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

George Bush is an example how a disambiguation can be done via dates or most famous/main occupation. Wandalstouring 13:00, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually, almost all the George Bushes are differentiated by middle names and initials, so that doesn't apply to the many times when there are not different middle names. The question is, which one of these article titles is standard: Admiral Sir Benjamin Bathurst or Benjamin Bathurst (naval commander)? The parenthetical approach is standard, but at the moment I can't find a guideline specifically about military rank in article titles. —Kevin Myers 15:12, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't believe there is a guideline for what type of paranthetical disambiguator(s) to use for military personnel - although it might not be a bad idea to put something together...

In this case, I would go for Benjamin Bathurst (admiral) or (if neccessary) Benjamin Bahurst (British admiral). Carom 16:05, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

He was not a British admiral as he was in the Royal Navy not the British Navy and he could have been another nationality than British. --see Robert Blake (admiral) for what could arguably be called an admiral in a British Navy after the Tender of Union. "naval commander" is a confusing disambiguation name because there is a naval rank of commander. "naval officer" is a better disambiguation name, (and it is in use) because it acknowledges that in their career the subject of disambiguation held more than one rank in a navy--Philip Baird Shearer 16:55, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Benjamin Bathurst (naval officer) seems a reasonable choice, although in cases where there were more than one naval officer by the same name, further disambiguation would be neccessary. Carom 17:00, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

It might also be doable to add a secondary level of disambiguation by date if two people lived in different centuries; thus, John Doe (18th century naval officer) versus John Doe (20th century naval officer). (But I'm not entirely sure whether that's an improvement over some other form of more specific disambiguation.) Kirill Lokshin 17:59, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

In this case it is not needed because his name is David Benjamin Bathurst (I have moved the article). In recent centuries in Britain it is notable if a notable person only has two names. There are usually three and more than that are not that uncommon. But it is common for not all them to be used. I had a similar problem with Robert Grainger Ker Thompson it was a long time before I found his full name as he is often called Sir Robert Thompson in references to him about his counter insurgency expertise. --Philip Baird Shearer 17:41, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Okay, that seems like the easiest way of avoiding the problem here.

More generally, I would suggest using the simplest possible disambiguator that does the job; so, John Doe (admiral) rather than John Doe (British admiral), etc. Kirill Lokshin 17:59, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks all, and specifically Phillip. Seems like the best solution at present.

ALR 15:21, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

A-Class review for Battle of the Plains of Abraham now open

The A-Class review for Battle of the Plains of Abraham is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 10:53, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Translation Request

As the Rus & Sov TF talk page is not very active, I thought I'd make the request here for the Russian language references at Divisions of the Soviet Union 1917-1945 to be translated into English. My Russian is just enough to recognise refs to units, but not more. Thanks ! Buckshot06 13:14, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Image copyright template {{Military-Insignia}} is now depricated

After a very long discussion the image copyright template has been depricated. New uploads to the template will be speedily deleted after 48 hours - older images will be given a long grace period to be migrated to free templates for example {{PD-RU-exempt}}, {{PD-USGov-Military-Badge}}. Please take any discussion to Template talk:Military-Insignia. Thanks. Megapixie 14:43, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Special Forces and self aggrandisment

The article List of special forces units is a predominantly unreferenced bag of the proverbial. It seems to attract all kinds of contributions, indeed some countries seem to have more SF than anything else!

I've already tried to can it once, but the majority opinion was to keep it, with only one of those offering an opinon actually doing anything about it, and his edits were decimated in pretty short order afterwards.

With only a couple of people watching it and the majority of additions being fly-by it seems pretty unmaintainable. I do have an inclination to cite request every entry then delete the majority in a week or so, but I don't believe it'll sort the maintainability problem.

I'd welcome views on the best approach to deal with it, leave it as is or migrate to category.

Cheers

ALR 15:27, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

My suggestion is a clear definition and the lists of special forces get moved to the specific article's about each country's military, we only link there with this article. Wandalstouring 19:15, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Uniforms, rank, and awards task force

I'd like to create a task force based on military uniforms, ranks, and awards. This would cover the superficial, yet interesting, procedure related to appearance in today's armed forces. Please talk this over with me, including ideas for improvement or encouragement. C0N6R355^talk_contribs 00:29, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Seems like a random clustering of three separate topics; is there some particular reason why these would all be combined into a singe task force? I can't really see the common element here. Kirill Lokshin 00:34, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Maybe a Uniforms task force (which would probably hit into the ranks and awards articles on the basis of how different ranks have different uniforms, and the ribbons of the awards), maybe see how many editors are interested in joining just a task force - not much point if not many people would want to focus that way. -- Medains 08:43, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

The idea for this was, as Medains was hinting at, to cover uniforms, as well as the ranks and awards therein. The task force would cover the dress and procedure of the militaries of the world. If you would be interested, please comment. C0N6R355^talk_contribs 11:08, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Ah, ok; so it'd be essentially a task force on uniforms that would touch on other topics as necessary (i.e. a "military uniforms and insignia task force"), rather than a task force covering ranks per se? That sound more reasonable; I have no idea whether there's enough interest for it, though. Kirill Lokshin 16:11, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I would be willing to say I Support the idea of a task for like this, because I am generally knowledgeable on the subject. Dreamy 02:03, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for not replying, but yes, that's my idea, Kirill. If anyone else supports this, please come forward. I think if I can get four other people I'll start the task force.

Manual of Style

Any opinions about creating a MoS for the military topics instead of having the Guidelines section at the project main page? I think the section covers all essential things but it would be helpful if non-members can find out about a military MoS at the Wikipedia style guidelines category. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 11:49, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, we do have the (rather kludgy) work-around of having the project page in the category itself. ;-)

More generally, I have no really strong objections to moving that entire section into a MoS page, but I'm somewhat concerned that this will fracture discussions between the project page and the new one (particularly as many project members will not have the new page watchlisted). I'm not sure whether the (not very substantial) benefits of moving things to a dedicated MoS page outweigh that problem. Kirill Lokshin 16:09, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

There seems to be a dispute among editors about capitalization of a military title when used as a noun. For example today an editor today made capitalization changes to Eric Shinseki, among them removing the capital letters in this phrase: "he served as the Regimental Adjutant and as the Executive Officer of its 1st Squadron". Does this project want the caps in that phrase or not? If so perhaps you need a page like Manual of Style (capital letters).--Chrisbak 17:44, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

The example you cite is easy: as a title it takes caps; as a job description it doesn't. It's the deciding which is which that's sometimes difficult. Roger 20:51, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

The capitalization rule from the Chicago Manual of Style is that if a military title contains words that can mean something else, then the title must be be capitalized - it's called the ambiguity rule. For example when we write about the "Joint Chiefs of Staff", it's always capitalized because the words joint chiefs of staff are common words which could mean something else. It's the same with the "Chief of Staff of the Army" - always capitalized because "chief of staff" has other meanings, and probably "army" is capitalized since it can be used in a term like field army.

However if we are writing about "the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff", or the "deputy Chief of Staff of the Army" the terms "chairman" and "deputy" are not ambiguous and so not capitalized. However if we are describing a person's military title by itself - not in a sentence - then it's always capitalized. In the military box, the title listed for "Rank" is always capitalized - as in "Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff". The Chicago Manual of Style is available online here with a free 30-day trial subscription - chapter 8 covers titles.--Chrisbak 00:26, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

What about duplicating it? Keeping it at the project main while creating the MoS. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 16:29, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

That would be pretty pointless, I think; the duplication will still mean two areas for discussion, and create a maintenance nightmare with trying to keep things in sync, to boot. Kirill Lokshin 16:40, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Honor Guard

I noticed that the Honor Guard page is very bare. Since it is marked as one of your project pages I thought I would let you know about it. I can help you after July 25th on it, but untill then I am afraid that it is up to you--Cadet hastings 14:56, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Possibly because you're mis-speeling it, that cannae help. :)

ALR 21:03, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Please explain to me where I have mispelled it? The only reason you get the redirect thing is because the page has a lower case g so it is Honor guard and not Honor Guard, but they bothe go the same place

Honour. :)

ALR 13:53, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

A-Class review for AHS Centaur now open

The A-Class review for AHS Centaur is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 15:38, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Some problems at Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam

Could you please have a look at some issues going on at that article? Some third party comments are badly needed at the talk page. Please refer to wikipedia gets gamed. I've already gave my 2¢ but i think if there are some other views it would be better. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 17:26, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I can also give 2¢, but I think finding someone familiar with this stuff is more helpful. Will report in a few days. Wandalstouring 08:15, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Silver Star recipients

Hey, do we have some sort of consensus that winning a Silver Star is not a noteworthy act, or does it warrant its own Wikipedia entry? Either way, please comment on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Stephen Boada. Palm_Dogg 16:07, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I think the existing practice has been that only the top military award (e.g. the MoH) confers automatic "notability", FWIW. Kirill Lokshin 21:33, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Userbox

I just created a userbox for the Military History Wikiproject and I was wondering if you would like me to put it on the page that shows you what you have to type for the Military History Wikiproject banner. I made it because some people don't like banners and prefer userboxes!
Here is a preview of it:User:Dreamafter/MILHIST
Dreamy 02:29, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I believe we already have a few of those...here. Carom 02:47, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Okay! Just thought I'd put it out there because I didn't know we had that page. Dreamy 19:17, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

A-Class review for Operation Lam Son 719 now open

The A-Class review for Operation Lam Son 719 is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 16:40, 18 May 2007 (UTC)