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Task force article alerts

I've gone through and added article alerts to each of our task forces. Everything seems to be working properly, so far as I can tell; but please let me know if you spot anything broken. Kirill [talk] [prof] 16:54, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Absence

Hey all. I'm sorry I haven't been around in the past week or two. We're in the process of buying a house so things have been pretty hectic. I don't expect the situation to improve until after the end of the month, by which time we'll have taken possession and made the move. Hopefully by June I'll be back in the swing of things. Parsecboy (talk) 21:39, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

We'll hold the fort. First house? - Dank (push to talk) 21:58, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
Yup, first house. It's pretty exciting. Parsecboy (talk) 22:41, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
Congrats Parsec! Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 05:36, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Half-supports

I think if I don't say anything, some of the regulars are going to wonder why I only supported half of their A-class article. It doesn't look like I'm going to be able to continue to copyedit everything at A-class and FAC. I'm going to try to continue to cover everything at FAC, and copyedit the first half of everything that shows up at A-class. (So for anyone who'd like me to copyedit the whole thing ... just take the article to FAC.) I'm trying to put enough information in my edit summaries and in the reviews so that anyone who wants to copyedit the second half will have some suggestions for things to look for. - Dank (push to talk) 20:30, 22 May 2011 (UTC) See below. - Dank (push to talk) 02:18, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Feel free to state that in the reviews, Dank. We're people too, and we'll understand. :-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 05:36, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
Okay, good idea, I'll add this information to my standard disclaimer. - Dank (push to talk) 14:33, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I think I need to tweak my approach based on the discussions just below. I'd appreciate some feedback. It looks like there's no opposition to and solid support from Kirill, Ed, Rupert and me for several changes, including discontinuing our internal peer review process and using the long-standing history peer review process instead. So, we've got a bigger theater of operations now (or maybe a bigger playground). It's also been suggested that we try to involve people outside Milhist in our A-class reviews. I think what's going on at FAC presents a bigger opportunity (because most people outside our project won't be excited about the opportunity to get Milhist's A-class rating, but FAC is a known quantity and an attractive goal across the project), and also a bigger need, because for a project as large and active as ours, we suck at FAC. Despite the recent editorial in the Bugle showing broad-range encouragement for more reviewing at FAC, there's been no improvement, or almost none. Reviewing at FAC is easier in some ways than other reviews, since it's widely accepted at FAC for reviewers to comment only on what they want to comment on, or what they know best. There's a self-interest here; it's much easier for me to find people to help with FAC-level copyediting at FAC than it is at our A-class reviews. I don't think, I've never thought, that this represents a failure of any one reviewer; it's not easy to learn how to copyedit for FAC, we're all volunteers, and there's no reviewer that I'd want to pull away from the outstanding job they're already doing so that they could pay more attention to my edit summaries. Nevertheless, the need exists, and if we could find a way to collaborate a bit more with other history-related projects, then my attempts to get others more involved in what I'm doing, which have been largely unsuccessful over the last year, might start to yield a bigger payoff.

So ... I'm not against soliciting outside reviews for Milhist's A-class process, but if we're going to do that, we should aim first at the history peer review (which it looks like we're going to start) and at FAC (because it's easier to get related projects interested in sharing the review work there). That means we need a steady stream of promotions at A-class, and we need to get more editors interested in moving on from A-class to FAC, and we especially need to encourage more reviews at FAC (which, remember, can be quite limited), for Milhist's articles and (I would suggest) the articles of other history-related wikiprojects that have a good track record at FAC. Apart from projects with obvious connections to Milhist, such as WP:SHIPS and WP:AVIATION, here are some history-related wikiprojects that could teach us a lot about reviewing in general and FAC in particular: WP:BIOGRAPHY, WP:COINS, WP:EQUINE, and WP:MA (Middle Ages).

I'm prepared to devote a bit more time than is comfortable for me, for example by copyediting everything at A-class, if there's general support for putting us on some kind of path that will increase collaboration, including at FAC, and hopefully pull in more FAC-savvy copy editors over time. - Dank (push to talk) 19:30, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Really sorry: it's not going to be possible to cover PR, A-class and FAC, and I really want the cross-project collaborations to work ... I'm going to have to stop doing A-class reviews. I know this comes at a bad time, since Rupert's just announced he's going to be taking a break too. - Dank (push to talk) 02:17, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

A-class expansion

I had a crazy thought while mowing the lawn today (funny how stepping away from work/a computer/electronics in general can stimulate your imagination). We've seen declining participation in our A-class system lately, and most of the discussion over at the STT focused on getting nominators reviewing. I'd like to take this a step further – what if we opened up our review system to any article as long as they offered one or two review(s) of other articles? WP doesn't have a formal A-class review system, so this has three benefits, as I see it: interested article writers get the benefit of our, if I may say, excellent A-class system; we get more reviewers, albeit for a larger amount of articles; and the last and possibly more important, our A-class system gains more respect and integrity from the rest of the encyclopedia.

What do you all think? We could always start off with a limited trial to see if the basic premise works. Any comments are welcome. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 05:45, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

It's an interesting idea, but I see a couple of major problems with it:
  • We have no real way of enforcing the requirement to review other articles in practice. While we could potentially deny promotion in a case where the nominator failed to do so, that would only affect review requests that had already been through the process and which had presumably consumed reviewer time; it's not really practical to keep a nomination in limbo (i.e. by preventing reviewers from commenting on it) until the nominator completes the other reviews.
  • If forced to provide reviews, nominators are likely to do the minimum amount of work necessary. When coupled with their natural lack of familiarity with military history and our writing standards, the likely result is a decline in the quality of reviewing for our own articles.
  • It's not clear what the practical result of a such a review could be. We do not, in principle, have the authority to impose a new rating on an article in another WikiProject's assessment system; individual WikiProjects' ratings have traditionally been sacrosanct, and I'm opposed to anything that would establish a precedent to the contrary.
Kirill [talk] [prof] 09:17, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
I've been thinking about something similar, Ed, but there's a lot about WP that doesn't work, as opposed to Milhist, so I'm not optimistic about an open-door policy. The way I would deal with Kirill's objections is to make the invitation to successful history-related wikiprojects rather than to individuals, with the understanding that we'll have regular conversations about what each side is getting from the arrangement, and if either wikiproject feels that the other one isn't holding up their side of the bargain, they can withdraw from the arrangement at any time. Even if other wikiprojects don't know military history, a general knowledge of history is quite helpful for some of our articles, and they can at least help with a variety of things that make the difference between passing FAC or not ... including simply reviewing: not enough Milhist people review at FAC to support all our nominations, and on top of that, Sandy is a lot more impressed by reviewers who learn a particular skill and apply that skill to a range of articles than reviewers who only review occasionally and only for one wikiproject. - Dank (push to talk) 14:55, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
I suppose the obvious question is whether there are any successful history-related projects we could approach. Most of the ones I've encountered are inactive or dysfunctional. Kirill [talk] [prof] 15:04, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
A few other aspects of this that come to mind:
  • We have, at the moment, a peer review partnership with the video games project—at least on paper. It's not really clear to me whether the current system is contributing anything to either project, or even if it works at all; it may be worth evaluating this to see if it's worth continuing.
  • From a broader perspective (and recalling the recent suggestion to use the central peer review as opposed to hosting a project-specific one), we could potentially move our peer reviews to the central one (or a joint history one), create a joint history ACR process, and thus remove the need for an internal review department altogether.
  • We should probably add a section to the assessment department that outlines the sequence of reviews an article should go through as it moves from Stub to FA, so that people have a flowchart of sorts to follow. At the moment, this information is scattered throughout a number of different project pages, which may be rather confusing to newer editors.
Kirill [talk] [prof] 15:19, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
I was thinking of a longer answer about what could go wrong, but I don't want to go negative and jinx it. Sure, I can support Ed's and Kirill's ideas. I can also put in extra work so that others will see collaborating with us as something they want to do. - Dank (push to talk) 15:41, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
Well Kirill, you bring up some great points I hadn't thought about. My starting thought that led to proposing it was we as a project are successful partly because we encompass such a wide area = we have more active editors, so widening the net for reviews could bring in more reviewers.
As for point 2, I'd say that any reviewing helps, even if every one isn't perfect, but that's me. Most of your second post is proposed below, and I agree with it. If we'd want to base a joint history ACR off our own project, I'd probably support. As it has to be project-based (A-class is not WP-wide assessment), and WP:HISTORY is dead, I'd rather keep it here. Dank, you wouldn't have to put in more work, and this proposal wasn't designed to ask you to do more. :/ Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 08:43, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
Not a problem. All this stuff is directly related to the section I started just above, and I'll reply there. - Dank (push to talk) 18:54, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Some proposals to simplify our project infrastructure

I'd like to suggest that we simplify our project infrastructure by getting rid of the logistics and review departments; this would involve moving some parts of those pages elsewhere, and deprecating other parts. The details of how this could be done are outlined in the sections below; comments on either proposal would be appreciated! Kirill [talk] [prof] 19:04, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Closing the logistics department

The logistics department has been essentially inactive for a number of years. While the lists of editors do see occasional updates (although even those are rare and irregular), the processes and request listings are at this point pretty much unmaintained and unused.

The department includes the following areas:

  • Administrators
  • Copy-editing
  • Graphics
  • Linguistics
  • Personal libraries
  • Photography
  • Sources

I propose that we make the following changes:

  1. Merge the administrator listing into the main membership list.

    It would not be difficult to flag administrators on the main membership list as part of automatic activity/inactivity updates (which we should be starting up again in any case). This would serve the same purpose as the current listing, and have the advantage of being automated and more complete.

  2. Merge the copy-editing and linguistics listing into the main membership list.

    Editor's ability and/or into interest in translation and/or copyediting can be marked using icons next to the editor's name on the membership list. This would be equally easy to access as the current listing, and potentially allow a wider range of interests and skills to be indicated.

  3. Deprecate the graphics and photography listings.

    Each task force already allows image requests to be specified on its open task listing; these could easily be transcluded into a central list on the main open task page.

  4. Merge the personal library and source listings into a project-wide reference library.

    A number of projects already maintain reference library listings of available sources and associated editors; there's no reason why we couldn't do the same.

Comments would be appreciated! Kirill [talk] [prof] 19:04, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree. I've only ever used MHL for the library section anyway. The administrator listing seems a bit redundant; it's pretty easy to find one among the coords or on the main talk page. With graphics, there's still a WP-wide graphics lab. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 08:43, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
I agree with this. Having been one of the people who occasionally runs through Logistics and clears out the lists, it is for all intents and purposes, dead. A project wide ref library would be easier to use and be more useful than the current form. Everything else can be merged into the members list pretty easily as Kirill says. Woody (talk) 09:37, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
I agree with the above. These proposals would make the project infrastructure easier to navigate, especially for newbies, which is always a good thing. Dana boomer (talk) 02:02, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
Support - simple is good.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:31, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
I can't remember the last time I looked at the logistics section -- probably just to check there was something there! All makes sense to me... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 12:55, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
Support agreed. WikiCopter 02:01, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Closing the review department

The review department currently includes four different categories of reviews:

  • Internal peer reviews
  • Internal A-Class reviews
  • Featured content reviews
  • Partner peer reviews

Of these, only the first two categories are actually hosted within the project itself; the latter two are merely transclusions of reviews that are conducted elsewhere.

I propose that we make the following changes:

  1. Deprecate the internal peer review process and use the history peer review process instead.

    The number of internal peer reviews has been dropping steadily over the past months; we have only three reviews open at the moment, for example. The central peer review system appears to be functioning adequately, and some military history articles are already being listed there instead of our project peer review. Peer reviews hosted at the central system can still be linked to and/or transcluded on our own pages, so moving the underlying process will not deprive us of any real capability, and may actually increase outside participation.

  2. Deprecate the partner peer review process.

    Our partnership with the Video games WikiProject was a good idea at the time, but it's become apparent that the anticipated cross-project reviewing doesn't actually happen in practice; we do not receive reviews from VG editors, and they do not receive them from MH editors. I think it's reasonable, at this point, to conclude that the program is not living up to its promise and close it down.

  3. Move A-Class reviews into the assessment department.

    ACRs are already located on subpages of the assessment department (".../Assessment/...") rather than the review department (".../Review/..."). It would be trivial to transclude the ACR subpages onto the assessment department subpage; this would allow the assessment department to serve as a hub for all internal rating and review activities within the project.

  4. Discontinue transclusion of outside reviews.

    Assuming that changes 1-3 are implemented, the only reviews that will actually be conducted within the project will be ACRs, which will be hosted on an assessment department page; the review department will simply be a collection of transclusions from other sources. We can reduce our maintenance overhead by discontinuing the transclusion; outside reviews will be listed (as links) in our task lists and announced on the talk page as before, but the monolithic review department page would no longer be updated to transclude the underlying subpages. I think that most, if not all, reviewers reach the reviews through links in the open task templates or talk page announcements, so the removal of a transcluded version should not significantly impact participation.

Comments would be appreciated! Kirill [talk] [prof] 19:04, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the four review points, these all make sense to me. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 04:37, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
I fully support closing the peer review process – I was actually going to propose it myself, but I didn't want to raise too many issues at once. Without this, we can't really have a PPR anyway. Moving A-class reviews under the /Assessment will create less confusion (a month or so ago, I think someone asked why we had /Review but all A-class stuff was under /Assessment). The only thing I'm a bit wary on is discontinuing the transclusions, but as long as the announcements are continually updated, I don't think we'll have much of a problem. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 08:43, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
I'm in favor. - Dank (push to talk) 19:31, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
Ditto. Makes things simpler in terms of naming conventions, page organization, and general project-ness. Cam (Chat)(Prof) 05:34, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
Agreed. Especially on the point of discontinuing the MILHIST PR process in favor of regular PRs. A concern of mine in the past was the lack on outside input on our PRs - this will hopefully help this situation, as well as possibly getting some MILHIST editors to review outside of the project (which would hopefully help to bring more editors to MILHIST articles as they see the editors here pulling their weight on other articles). Dana boomer (talk) 02:05, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
I concur. I rarely ever used PR because of the scarcity of reviewers, so maybe giving our stuff more exposure will lure people into reviewing as well.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:32, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
WP:PRH is now a shortcut for the history peer reviews. - Dank (push to talk) 03:24, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
I've always thought it looked odd to have a review page and an assessment page and that one subsuming the other made sense, just never got round to suggesting it -- so full agreement from me on that one. I haven't taken an article to PR for ages so that one won't affect me but, even if it did, I think I can see the merits of them joining a general history page. Re. transclusions, I just keep abreast of MilHist FACs via the open tasks page, so again no argument. As for the partner PRs, yes I'm afraid they seem a waste of time. Good suggestions all round Kirill! Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 12:53, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
I'd support this, so long as peer reviews (and potentially GA) are suitably listed here so they don't go unnoticed. I'm not sure task lists go far enough on that point, but we'll see. We can always cross that bridge when we come to it. This would also stop the unintentional problem that the "back" breadcrumb links (" Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history | Assessment") would actually go to where you'd been. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 14:08, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
  • I fully support this. We don't really need a review department and an assessment department and I always thought it a bit odd that we do our PRs internally. Hopefully sending our articles to PRH will get them more exposure and perhaps we can work on our reputation of being a rather selfish project when it comes to reviews by offering reviews of other articles there. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 01:21, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
  • Popping in because I saw this noted at WP:PR. In regards to the partner project; I still think it's a valuable attempt, even if it doesn't always work, and I see no reason why editors can't still transclude as just one more venue to possibly solicit comments (I think just moving to the main PR page will help with some of the issues the partner project was intended to address, as well.) Cheers, Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 14:53, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
  • I agree with most of this but I have reservations over point 4 regarding the review page. Personally, I do use the review page to have a look at the transcluded reviews regularly. That said, I'm sure I can get used to clicking through all of the links in the open tasks if we do stop transcluding them. Woody (talk) 14:19, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Fully support. WikiCopter 02:01, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

The way forward

So should we begin to implement these changes, or should we present them to the project on the talk page (rather than just a link here) or in The Bugle first? Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 20:34, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

I think they were already mentioned in the Bugle, no? Considering the (reasonably) wide exposure to date and the positive reception, I would suggest that can we start moving forward with implementing things.
One thing to note is that a lot of the proposed changes require some level of preliminary work (e.g. preparing a new member directory format, etc.) before anything is done to the current infrastructure; this preparatory stage can certainly be started now, as I suspect it will take at least a few weeks to create the new items and revise them to everyone's satisfaction. Kirill [talk] [prof] 21:22, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Closing the FL-Class and C-Class discussion

Well somebody's going to have to close it... HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 02:19, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I think the proposal discussion has basically run its course at this point. Could someone who hasn't been involved in the debate please close it and determine how we're moving forward? Thanks! Kirill [talk] [prof] 13:56, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Are any currently active coordinators uninvolved? ;) There seems to be a very clear consensus for FL class and a weaker, through still clear, consensus for C class so it would probably be OK (though not ideal) for an involved coordinator to close the discussion as an endorsement of both proposals. Nick-D (talk) 02:22, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Hi, I'm uninvolved. I'm trying to take a bit of a break from co-ord tasks (a bit burnt out from it, to be honest, and busy in RL), but if everyone here feels it should be closed, I will do this. I probably won't have time to follow it up, though - flying out to Adelaide tomorrow morning, though, to start my new posting. Please let me know if anyone objects to closing it. If not, I will probably get to it in about five hours or so. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 03:11, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. Kirill [talk] [prof] 06:44, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Hi, I've closed this now. I wasn't exactly sure what was the best way, so if I've mucked it up please just let me know. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 07:35, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Thanks Rupert, that looks perfect. Good luck in Adelaide! Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 08:17, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Cheers. AustralianRupert (talk) 08:26, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I've implemented the template and category changes needed for both classes; the categories should populate automatically over the next few days. If anyone spots anything broken, please let me know! Kirill [talk] [prof] 11:58, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Hey fellow coords, per WP:VPR#A new class for Featured media, there is a new featured class for images and sounds. Do we as a project want to start this as well? Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 19:45, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

I've never seen much point in having assessment classes for items that don't actually go through a progression of ratings as they improve, to be quite honest; other than merely generating a count—which we already have as part of the showcase—the ratings don't really serve any useful purpose.
In practical terms, tagging every media file that's relevant to our scope seems infeasible; there are probably more files than there are articles. We'd only be able to tag a very small subset, I think. Kirill [talk] [prof] 15:30, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
For what its worth there are only about 2500 featured pictures and about 300 Sounds and videos and many wouldn't apply to MILHIST. When I looked through the list I am only coming up with about 500 for WPUS. Not trying to sway your decision, just adding my 2 cents.--Kumioko (talk) 21:00, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
True, but I was referring not to the number of featured media files (which, as you say, is not very high), but rather to all media (which we'd need to tag if we want to have a distinction between featured media and non-featured media in our assessment scheme). Kirill [talk] [prof] 22:58, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
Well that's partly true I admit that the difference would be more meaningful if both were tagged but I don't think that's a big deal if the non featured content isn't tagged. Although some might say that vanity is the only reason to track them. The main reasons why we are tagging them in WPUS is to:
  1. (To manage the ones we have) Basically to allow them to show up and be watched easier with the use of Article alert bot. Other wise we have to be mindful of all the different for deletion, promotion, demotion, review, etc boards indipendantly watching for them to surface and know that they fall under our purview with the ambiguous titles that files tend to have.
  2. (To grow more) To know what the featured media is so that we can focus on the ones that are not yet featured. Once its tagged theres no need to worry so much about it unless or until it is submitted to one of the boards mentioned in 1 above. So then we can start to identify and select other works that meet the criteria.
  3. It also helps in identifying content to feature on the Portal's
  4. It allows the related content to be displayed by JL-Bot as recognized content.
The first 2 are the main ones, the other 2 are nice to have's and there are other reasons that could be argued as well but these are the main ones for WPUS. --Kumioko (talk) 23:50, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

A couple of jobs for coordinators

I don't mean to make work for you, but a couple of things need coordinator involvement:

Nominations for the Oak Leaves

Friendly reminder to the coordinators: I had left a nomination here a while ago. Thanks for your support. MisterBee1966 (talk) 15:50, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Apologies for inactivity

Just offering my apologies for my lack of activity since May March - I'm hopeful that I should be able to step up my contributions over the next few weeks now that my workplace audits and H&S policy reviews are over (well, almost, only two more audits to come...) Changes in job role can keep things fun and interesting, but by damn they're a lot of work! EyeSerenetalk 12:37, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Seems to be the time of year for it, glad to have you back. - Dank (push to talk) 23:24, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
Heh, getting back to thinking about Northern France in 1944 is like coming home :) EyeSerenetalk 13:03, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Copyediting disclaimer

Starting roughly now, I will continue to comment on but no longer support or oppose articles not written in American English (at A-class, FAC, etc.) I think learning about all varieties of English is important for anyone studying copyediting, and it's important not to reinforce the natural bias people have in favor of their own flavor of English. But I've done all that for 3.5 years on Wikipedia, and I only have time these days to focus on what I know best. Also, Milhist has plenty of competent British and Australian editors.

I notice that several of our non-AmEng FACs are floundering (and possibly foundering) over MOS and copyediting issues, and I don't have any position on what should happen there. Some reviewers are stricter than others, and there are advantages and disadvantages to trying to make an ever-expanding circle of people happy. I think that keeping (almost) everyone at FAC happy is not as hard as it's sometimes made out to be, but OTOH, passing A-class means a lot, and some of our supposedly deficient FACs seem fine to me. If we can identify what kinds of articles either aren't likely to pass FAC or will suck up too much time at FAC (a tough call), then we should be careful not to encourage people to take them to FAC. - Dank (push to talk) 18:03, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Editorial

Hey everyone, The Bugle still doesn't have an editorial this month. Does anyone have something they are itching to write about? :-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 07:47, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

While not an editorial, I've got book reviews to offer at: User:Nick-D/reviews Nick-D (talk) 08:40, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
Oh, I almost forgot about those. I was hoping to run them alongside the normal pages, but if we can't get an editorial, I'll just replace it. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 08:47, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
Unrelated to the editorial: that's a great idea Nick - I've watchlisted your page and will be lurking with interest :)
Related to the editorial: although I've been absent for a while I've been trying to catch up over the last few days and noticed some things that may be worth commenting on.
  • Wikilove (see link), also referenced in this ANI thread. Whatever opinions are on this idea, the general concept of how we encourage and reward contribution is a perennial issue.
  • The apparent lack of RfA candidacies (maybe with advice for Milhist members thinking of running for admin?)
  • The introduction of the Article Feedback Tool
Just throwing out some ideas... EyeSerenetalk 09:00, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
I asked WereSpielChequers if he'd like to write one on the second topic. As I'm involved with the PPI project, I might be able to get one of them to write something up on why they developed the AFT, but I'll leave that until next month because they're busying planning a meetup in Massachusetts. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 20:49, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikimania

Hey guys, I'm glad to see you're keeping the old good and hard work! I have a small question though, is anybody around going to Wikimania 2011? Cheers, --Eurocopter (talk) 12:06, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm not, though I will likely be going to Wikimania 2012 (DC is fairly easy to get to from Ottawa). Cam (Chat)(Prof) 21:04, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
I should be at WM2012 too... Israel was too far and too much for me. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 21:12, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
I will be attending Wikimania 2012 in Washington D.C.

- Dank (push to talk) 22:02, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

If there's enough interest, we could probably schedule some sort of MILHIST gathering during WM 2012 (or at least all go for dinner or something). Kirill [talk] [prof] 09:12, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Sure. - Dank (push to talk) 10:58, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
Definitely. It's time I met all you crazy people face-to-face. Cam (Chat)(Prof) 05:24, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
I'd certainly be in for that. We could get a real cabal going! ;-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 07:20, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
Remember, if you decide to go for robes and silly hats the rest of us want to see the photos :) EyeSerenetalk 12:35, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
I definitely thought your link was going to point to this. :P Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 15:27, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
Oo er... no, that wouldn't be good :) EyeSerenetalk 08:58, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
This would be an excellent idea. I might manage to get there! --Eurocopter (talk) 09:31, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

June contest

Hey all - I've closed the month's contest and checked all of the the entries (a couple of which are still waiting over at the review requests page). Can someone check mine and then tally up the points? Thanks. Parsecboy (talk) 02:15, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Target number of GAs

On the main Milhist page we have the target of getting 1500 GAs and we are now at 100.1% complete in trying to reach that particular target. Congratulations all round, particularly to editors with any involvement in the GA process, be that writing or reviewing. So I think we need to think about a new target, I was thinking 2,000? Regards, Woody (talk) 20:13, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Seems like a reasonable enough number. Kirill [talk] [prof] 21:52, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
Wow! Congrats to everyone! 2,000 sounds like a very reasonable number. Dana boomer (talk) 22:02, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
Excellent work everybody! 2,000 sounds like a good number to me as well. I look forward to the next time we need to increase the goal. Parsecboy (talk) 00:42, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
Nice! I'll note this in The Bugle as well. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 07:19, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
Congratulations indeed and thanks to the GA project and its assessors too. 2000 seems fine for the next target. EyeSerenetalk 12:33, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
2,000 works for me. Cam (Chat)(Prof) 06:00, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Updated to 2000. Woody (talk) 19:46, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Should we make some sort of congratulatory announcement on the main talk page? Kirill [talk] [prof] 21:33, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
Can do, I think Ed was going to do something in the Bugle? Should we do both? It's always nice to have a good-news story. Woody (talk) 21:37, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
I don't see any reason not to do both; as you say, good news is always, well, good. Kirill [talk] [prof] 21:39, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
I'm a bit late coming back to this, but I put this in the Article news section. :-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 10:45, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Request for our help

See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_history#Project_chatter. Woody (talk) 19:46, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Non-article featured item milestone

At the moment, the second milestone target we list on WP:MILHIST is "1000 featured items in all categories"; this count currently includes featured articles, lists, pictures, sounds, portals, and topics. Given that we track featured articles as their own milestone, would it make sense to remove them from the second one and have it be "X non-article featured items" or something of that sort ("X other featured items"? "X featured items in other categories"?), to showcase the other featured content a bit more prominently? Or, alternatively, narrow it to "X featured media" to explicitly track pictures and sounds, which are the main contributors to the count? Kirill [talk] [prof] 21:47, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

I agree with the need to change it, X non-article featured content appeals to me the most. I think we need to include portals/lists in there as part of the count. Woody (talk) 13:57, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
Couldn't we just call it "Other featured content" then or something similar? (I agree with Kirill's proposal btw) EyeSerenetalk 17:01, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
The only issue I see with that is that "content" is rather clunky with a number (e.g. "500 other featured content"). That might just be grammatical pedantry, however. Kirill [talk] [prof] 18:15, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
Good point. We could refactor slightly though: "Featured articles: 750"; "Other featured content: 1000" etc. EyeSerenetalk 18:46, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
Then we'd wind up with two colons ("Featured articles: 750: 71% complete"), which looks equally strange. Kirill [talk] [prof] 18:49, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
Being advocatus diaboli is all very well, but are you doing this on purpose? :D We could use brackets "Featured articles: 750 (71% complete)"; an emdash "Featured articles: 750—71% complete"; a semicolon... EyeSerenetalk 19:05, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

We could do that, I suppose. The second colon is produced by the template that creates the progress bar, so we'd need to make that configurable; but it's certainly doable, if that's what we want. Personally, I'd prefer to keep it in a format that will be immediately obvious to anyone reading; but what that might be is, of course, open to debate. Kirill [talk] [prof] 23:16, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Well, I'm not wedded to any particular format. I do dislike wordiness, but you're right that we don't want something that looks strange or would be awkward to parse. Of my suggestions the brackets/parentheses look best I think, but I'm only suggesting that because I lack the imagination to come up with a succinct way of saying "non-article featured items" that doesn't look odd in the current context. EyeSerenetalk 16:57, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
I've changed it to "500 items of featured content other than articles". This is admittedly not as succinct as might be desirable, but might be a bit clearer to the first-time visitor. Any comments would, of course, be appreciated. Kirill [talk] [prof] 01:19, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
That's unambiguous at least. No objections here :) EyeSerenetalk 07:23, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Twisting someone's toes

Maybe it is a good idea that one of the coordinators had a friendly word with Goldblooded (talk · contribs). I see him running the risk of putting his foot in his mouth repeatedly. MisterBee1966 (talk) 10:22, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks MrB, I'll take a look. EyeSerenetalk 11:34, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
Temporarily (for 24 hours anyway) resolved by MuZemike. After that, we'll see. EyeSerenetalk 16:59, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Formal award/thanks for the GA WikiProject GA/FA reviewers?

Since we've got our 2000 GAs I thought it might be appropriate to present some kind of formal recognition to the project that did all the work assessing and reviewing those articles (I realise that many of the reviewers are/were milhist members, but reviewing on behalf of GA). Our chevrons/oak leaves might be suitable although it would mean breaking with tradition in two ways: one, we've never awarded this to any entity other than a named editor; and two, we haven't already awarded the chevrons sans oak leaves. If this is an issue maybe we could come up with an alternative? Thoughts? EyeSerenetalk 17:10, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Some award would be great. - Dank (push to talk) 18:02, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
I'm not terribly concerned about breaking with tradition per se; I don't see anything wrong with awarding the chevrons w/ oak leaves to an entire set of editors (c.f. Hero City).
What does concern me, however, is that we didn't do anything along those lines for the 500 FA milestone; nor could we do so easily, since there isn't a defined "WikiProject FA" to which an award might be made. I'm not really comfortable with singling out GAs as the only recognized content where reviewers are issued an award of this sort—if for no other reason than that the perceived unfairness will needlessly strain our relationship with the other review processes—and I don't see a comparable recipient for any non-GA process.
(That isn't to say that individual members can't offer suitable tokens of their appreciation, of course; but a formal award by the project seems problematic.) Kirill [talk] [prof] 18:14, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
That did cross my mind, but if this had occurred to me when we passed the 500 FA milestone I would've proposed the same idea then :) I take your point that there isn't an FA project as such. However, there's still an FA community with appointed directors and regular reviewers that might appreciate the thought. Maybe a retrospective acknowledgement for FA? I'm sure there's mantelpiece space somewhere where they could stick the thing. I do think any token of appreciation would be more meaningful coming from the entire milhist project - the contribution made to the quality of our content, between the GA and FA review processes, is huge. However, if there are too many obstacles then never mind :) I was originally thinking about just leaving a message with WP:WPGA thanking them for their work in helping us reach this milestone but I can't speak on behalf of the project, hence this notion instead. EyeSerenetalk 18:43, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
Well, I have no objections to a formal award if we can find a suitable recipient for featured articles as well. Perhaps we could bypass the "project" aspect of it and simply make general awards to "the featured article reviewer community" and "the good article reviewer community", or something along those lines? Kirill [talk] [prof] 18:46, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
You've expressed my sentiment much better than I did - it's most definitely the people involved, rather than any surrounding infrastructure, that I was thinking of. EyeSerenetalk 18:56, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
When they've expressed an opinion, a number of FA reviewers have said that they don't like the effect that awards and rewards sometimes have on FAC, so I think we're quite safe in not handing out an award from Milhist to FAC as a whole. Nikkimaria deserves a big award from everyone, though, for her tireless work at FAC. - Dank (push to talk) 19:19, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
Nikkimaria nominated here. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 06:52, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
As does Sandy. And I'm sure many others. Don't we have a list somewhere of most prolific reviewers at ACR and FAC? HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 19:22, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
I agree that there are many individuals in both review processes that deserve recognition. The reason I didn't suggest it is basically the same as that behind Kirill's objection above; if A, why not B? I think it would be difficult to single people out, hence the suggestion for an award to the entire community. I can't really understand why the FA folks would object to this (though I understand fully why they might look askance at awards made to reviewers by article authors). However, if an award is problematic, would they object to a simple thank you on behalf of milhist on a suitable talk page? EyeSerenetalk 19:32, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
We'd be safe either way, giving or not giving some form of recognition to FAC reviewers as a group. - Dank (push to talk) 19:41, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
I think a heartfelt "thank you" on behalf of MilHist would be appreciated. There are a great many MilHist articles that contribute to the backlogs at GAN and FAC and we're not brilliant, collectively, at reciprocity in reviewing when it comes to articles outside our scope. So some sort of friendly gesture is definitely in order. I'll still say that I think Sandy deserves individual recognition. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 19:44, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

I quite agree that she does; that's why we gave her the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves in 2007. ;-) Kirill [talk] [prof] 23:12, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Heh, that's the only problem I've ever seen with our awards system – I don't think the Oak Leaves can be awarded twice, so what happens if they do more to deserve another awarding years down the line? Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 18:43, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
It's never been done, but I'm not aware of any formal rule against it. In principle, I think we could simply go through another nomination and grant another instance of the award. Kirill [talk] [prof] 23:42, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
Well then, here we go. :-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 06:52, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
Not that I want to complain in any way but how can the coordinators rule against a second nomination in 2010 on the grounds that the Oak Leaves had already been awarded and go on and approve a second nomination in 2011? MisterBee1966 (talk) 15:18, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
Um... Look behind you! A three-headed monkey! Seriously, you make a good point :( EyeSerenetalk 16:31, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
That's why I thought they couldn't be awarded twice! Hmm. Maybe we could set a time limit between Oak Leaves, like three/four/five years? Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 10:43, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
Nice compromise ... how about four years? Sandy would be eligible again in September. - Dank (push to talk) 11:25, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
Why don't you create a higher award like the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves and Swords and establish new criteria? MisterBee1966 (talk) 08:59, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
The problem with introducing a new, higher award is that it would greatly devalue the current WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves—far more so than an occasional multiple award of the latter, certainly—and likely lead to resentment among the existing recipients, who are the last people we should be trying to upset. Kirill [talk] [prof] 09:19, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
Agreed ... I don't think we should create a new higher-level award, or even keep track officially of how many times the award has been given, which would amount to the same thing as creating a higher-level award. - Dank (push to talk) 12:58, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

My editing activity

Hello all, as most of you might know, recently I returned to the Australian Army. Since then I have found very little time for Wikipedia. What time I have spent on here has largely not been very enjoyable and I am increasingly finding that there is little to keep me coming back. Please don't get me wrong, I enjoy working with many editors here on Milhist, but I have noticed a growing trend towards incivility on the encyclopedia as a whole, which leads me to feel that I might enjoy working elsewhere. Additionally, I will be extremely busy (even more so come tomorrow) until the end of October as I have a couple of courses to undertake before I begin another (groan) Masters degree in order to get promoted to captain. The co-ord elections will be in September/October and at this stage I'm fairly sure that I won't be tossing my hat into the ring (I will probably be out in the weeds when the noms occur anyway). I am keen to help out where I can until then (e.g. closing a few ACRs), but I am wondering if it wouldn't make sense for us all to start considering approaching editors who might be interested in doing the co-ord job now. Those that are interested could then post any questions they have about the job now; this might serve to make the election process smoother and set potential new co-ords up for success. Does anyone have any thoughts about this? Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 07:32, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Sorry to hear all this, in particular the incivility issues -- while I haven't been too much on the receivng end I'd agree that FAC in particular (and even ACR, as I know you've experienced) is becoming more of an assault course for both nominators and reviewers, and frayed tempers are evident in both those groups as well as among delegates. Your idea re. identifying/encouraging potential new coordinators sooner rather than later sounds fair. Best luck in the degree. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 09:10, 10 July 2011 (UTC)
Agreed, encouraging potential candidates early would be good, particularly with the longer term length; it's a more significant commitment, and people may need some time to decide whether they're willing to undertake it. Kirill [talk] [prof] 11:57, 10 July 2011 (UTC)
... starting with anyone who's been a net positive as a coordinator in the past. Report for duty, soldiers! - Dank (push to talk) 12:46, 10 July 2011 (UTC)
I hope you never doubt your work's value, for yourself and for Milhist. You've been the most active, most intelligent and most useful A-class reviewer for a long time, and if you'd like help educating any any potential employer or commanding officer about what you've done, let me know. If you have suggestions on how to deal with the civility problems, please let me know publicly or privately. If you feel like moving on, then you should definitely move on; there's no way to know what it is you're missing until you go get it. But always know that you're welcome back at any time in any capacity. - Dank (push to talk) 12:04, 10 July 2011 (UTC)
Aussie, I feel like we had a minor dispute in the past(?), but I just want you to know how much I personally value your work here. Your reviews are phenomenal in both number and quality, and your work with Milhist has kept the gears from grinding to a halt. Thanks very much, and I wish you the best in your masters. :-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 08:12, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
Good luck to you. I can relate with the incivility (one notices these things more when one steps away from the site and then comes back to it), and I am sorry to see that its manage to get you to some extent. All the best on the Master's attempt.
On an unrelated note, as a result of the loss of his job, I'm in Odessa to help my dad prep for a move. At the moment we've just about finished the major work, and since I've nothing to do here I'll be available on a limited basis to help out for the next two days or so. If you need me for anything - sharing news, asking questions, closing reviews, etc - drop me a line and I'll see to it that you get a reply. TomStar81 (Talk) 10:53, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
Thanks everyone for the encouragement, I'm sure that I will stay on in some capacity, but probably only as an occasional copy editor and reviewer. I hope to write a few more articles again soon, too, but it will be slow. Anyway, I'm going to leave some messages on a few talk pages, encouraging editors to think about becoming a co-ord and encouraging them to ask questions about the role. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 11:21, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Closing notability guideline discussion

Could someone not already involved in the discussion (assuming there is such a coordinator, of course) please close the discussion at WT:MILHIST#Essay to Guideline? Thanks! Kirill [talk] [prof] 15:23, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Done. I'm only peripherally involved in that I dropped a single comment in at one point. I didn't !vote though, largely because I was absent for most of the debate. However, if anyone wants to undo and redo my closure, please do so :) EyeSerenetalk 17:06, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
Looks fine to me. Parsecboy (talk) 19:05, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Quarterly reviewing tallies

I'm working on the FAC tallies now; can someone tally the ACR and PR reviews for the quarter? On a side note, I'm taking a break from copyediting to get some writing done. - Dank (push to talk) 20:05, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Dank, I'll do them. It will take a while, though, as there were a lot of reviews in the last quarter. I will hopefully be done in the next couple of hours. Cheers, AustralianRupert (talk) 15:08, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
Username PR
Apr–Jun 2011		 ACR
Apr–Jun 2011		 FAC
Apr–Jun 2011		 Total
Apr–Jun 2011
User:Adam Cuerden 1 0 0 1
User:Aldux 0 1 0 1
User:Ancient Apparition 0 1 0 1
User:Anotherclown 0 24 0 24
User:AustralianRupert 7 19 3 29
User:Bahamut0013 0 4 1 5
User:Brad101 0 1 3 4
User:Buckshot06 1 0 0 1
User:Buggie111 0 2 0 2
User:Cla68 0 1 0 1
User:Dana boomer 0 1 1 2
User:Dank 14 27 22 63!!!
User:Dapi89 0 1 0 1
User:Eisfbnore 0 1 1 2
User:Farawayman 1 0 0 2
User:Fifelfoo 13 8 0 21
User:Fnlayson 0 3 0 3
User:Grandiose 0 2 0 2
User:Hawkeye7 0 3 1 4
User:Hchc2009 1 6 2 9
User:HJ Mitchell 0 11 2 13
User:Hohum 1 0 0 1
User:Ian Rose 1 11 1 13
User:Intothatdarkness 5 1 0 6
User:Jim Sweeney 1 5 0 6
User:Kebeta 1 1 0 2
User:Kirk 0 3 6 9
User:Kyteto 1 0 0 1
User:Kumioko 0 1 1 2
User:Ling.Nut 0 1 0 1
User:Magicpiano 1 1 1 3
User:MisterBee1966 0 1 2 3
User:Monstrelet 0 1 0 1
User:Nev1 0 1 0 1
User:Nick-D 4 10 3 17
User:Nthep 1 1 0 2
User:Piotrus 0 2 0 2
User:P. S. Burton 2 0 0 2
User:Ranger Steve 2 0 0 2
User:Renata3 0 1 0 1
User:Saberwyn 0 1 0 1
User:Sp33dyphil 1 4 0 5
User:Sturmvogel 66 0 2 4 6
User:Termer 0 1 0 1
User:The ed17 0 3 0 3
User:Trfasulo 0 1 0 1
User:Woody 0 2 0 2


Done. AustralianRupert (talk) 16:47, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, whew, thought I was going to have to do these. I've just finished the list of reviewers for FACs closed during this quarter, I'll do the totals in a minute:

I reviewed all of these except Anna of East Anglia, and Nikkimaria reviewed all except that one and the second FAC for John Y. Brown (1835–1904) (but she reviewed the first one).

Hi, Dank, I've added the table above this, with just the scores for PRs and ACRs at the moment. My take is that only those that participated in a Milhist project review should have their scores recorded for FAC participation also. Essentially my reason for this is that I don't think we should be handing out review awards to everybody that happens to review a Milhist article at FAC as many there are probably not interested in the project and might, in fact, think that it is currying favour to receive an award from us out of the blue. Happy to discuss and hear other views, though, of course. Cheers, AustralianRupert (talk) 16:47, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
Totals (>2): Dank 22, Nikkimaria 21, Brianboulton 7, Cryptic_C62 7, Malleus_Fatuorum 6, Kirk 6, Lightmouse 5, Sturmvogel_66 4, Truthkeeper88 3, AustralianRupert 3, RJHall 3, Nick-D 3, Brad101 3, Carcharoth 3, Coemgenus 3. I don't have a preference which of these are listed in the table or how they're listed, but a problem is evident here that I'll discuss over at WT:WikiProject_Military_history/Strategy#FAC - Dank (push to talk) 16:53, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
No worries. I'll try to get back to take a look in about 18 hours, but I'm going to sleep now and then its work again on Saturday... Cheers, AustralianRupert (talk) 17:17, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
I'm done, anyone wanna do the totals? - Dank (push to talk) 17:33, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
Sure, gimme a minute. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 19:31, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
Done. Bloody hell, Dan, 63! That's three times more than any other reviewer! Great work. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 19:42, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
Thanks ... but now I've stopped copyediting, I'm really behind on my writing. - Dank (push to talk) 20:48, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Super human effort, Dank. By the way, the award templates are here. In the past the awards have been handed out as follows: WikiChevrons to those completing 10 or more reviews, Content Review Medal to those with 3-9, two stripes for 2 reviews, and one stripe for 1 review. I will start handing out the chevrons now. If someone wants to start from the bottom of the list and work up, we could meet somewhere in the middle. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 08:21, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Ok, I've done all the Chevrons and Content Review Medals (except my Chevrons - could someone else do this please?). I'm taking a break from these now; if someone else wants to award the one stripe and two stripe awards, I'd appreciate it. Cheers, AustralianRupert (talk) 09:12, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
Don't all jump at once! I've done 'em. I omitted Adam Cuerden since he unfortunately looks like he's not coming back, but if anyone disagrees, feel free to award his. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:48, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
Thanks Aussie and HJ! Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 21:11, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
No worries at all. Thanks for taking care of the rest, HJ. I appreciate it. Cheers, AustralianRupert (talk) 01:25, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

A-class at /Assessment now

Hi guys, I added ACRs to WP:MHA. A couple thoughts: the backlog section should be moved to the bottom, but the page tells me not to remove anything below a hidden comment, so I'm too scared too. I haven't killed the review page as PRs still need to be completed. Also, the Academy courses and shortcuts will need to be updated as soon as we're ready for a full transition. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 08:03, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

I've cleaned up the layout of the MHA page and split the backlog items from the actual request subpage. We still have a massive number of links, instructions, and so forth to update with the new ACR location. Kirill [talk] [prof] 10:21, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
Thanks Kirill, I was hoping you'd see this. Yes, that's why I left /Review intact. :-) Are we ready to go through with the full transition right now, or should we wait for the PRs to end first? Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 10:41, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
Could we move the PRs out to the central PR process rather than waiting for them to end? Kirill [talk] [prof] 10:59, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
That's not a bad idea. Should we move them into their namespace, or just link them there? Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 07:28, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
It's probably worth moving the pages themselves to match the normal PR naming convention; I don't think they want to deal with our subpages any more than we've traditionally wanted direct links to other PR schemes in our own list. Kirill [talk] [prof] 09:16, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
Makes sense to me to move the PRs. I've changed the A-class shortcut to WP:MHAA ... MHRA no longer makes sense since it's not on the review page. Page loading time is much better for the subpage WP:MHAA than for the whole page WP:MHA (and SO much better than before the move), but we still might think about removing some of the embedded stuff at MHAA to speed it up even more (if people need more detail, they can always pull up MHA).
Also, I made a suggestion over at the strategy page that Ed liked ... the summary is: I suggest we ask nominators at A-class review to tell us (when the review has progressed enough to know) whether they're interested in FAC or not. If they are, then nominators and reviewers should put some effort into getting the article FAC-ready while it's still at A-class, and the nominator should be encouraged to take the article to FAC soon after A-class. That will mean that someone who reads the article for an A-class review won't have to re-read the whole thing to review it at FAC ... and not only will that make it easier for A-class reviewers to say at least something at FAC, it will make it easier for frequent FAC reviewers to weigh in in some of our A-class reviews. If this is acceptable, I'll change the A-class instructions so that they don't talk about going to GAN after ACR any more. - Dank (push to talk) 13:19, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
As far as shortcuts are concerned, MHAA is "correct", but a bit cryptic; perhaps we should go with something like WP:MHACR instead?
I have no objections to changing the instructions as you suggest. One thing that we may want to do as we move forward is to move the bulk of the instructions out to the academy course and leave only a transcluded summary in place (similar to how the ACR closing instructions work). Kirill [talk] [prof] 13:25, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
Particularly if we're going to be asking people outside Milhist to look at A-class articles, shorter would be better ... would it work to use MHA for the A-class subpage and MHASS for the whole assessment page? (MHASS isn't a shortcut people are likely to forget :) And I'm fine with the transcluded summary, Kirill. (Or, just copy it instead of transcluding ... my understanding from other discussions about long pages is, the fewer function calls, the better.) - Dank (push to talk) 14:38, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
I'm not sure that changing MHA to point to the new page would be the best approach; that redirect has been in use for a long time, and I'd guess that people who remember it will be confused by the sudden change in target. Kirill [talk] [prof] 17:13, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

I suppose that depends on whether the intent is to simply have it in the tab bar (independent of where the page is actually located) or to actually separate it from the assessment department. I see three potential arrangements:

  1. ACR page is located under (and transcluded onto) MHA, and is not accessible from the tab header. This is the original proposal; it gives the least visibility and independence to ACR.
  2. ACR page is located under (but not transcluded onto) MHA, and is accessible from the tab header. This strikes a balance between independence and visibility; the page is more prominently placed in terms of navigation, but is still considered part of the assessment department in structural terms.
  3. ACR page is located directly under the main project page, and is accessible from the tab header. This gives ACR the most visibility and independence; however, it also introduces the complication that ACR would essentially become an "ACR department" ("review department"?) in its own right, with the attendant complexity.

Personally, I would prefer #2 over the other options, but I'm open to any of them. The only scenario I'm trying to avoid is where the page is both transcluded onto MHA and accessible independently through the tab header; that would, in my opinion, wind up confusing visitors by presenting the same content twice, as well as needlessly bloating the load times for MHA. Kirill [talk] [prof] 20:49, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Sure, option 2 works for me. - Dank (push to talk) 22:05, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
My preference would be for option 2. I'm not sure we need all this transclusion, it just slows down page load times. Personally, I'd like to see that ACR page in a format closer to WP:FACL, but one thing at a time, perhaps? ;) HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:14, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
Okay, I've taken a stab at producing something reasonably cross-linked:
  • The ACR subpage is directly linked from the tab header and the navigation box.
  • The main MHA page includes a link to the ACR subpage, as well as a list of open ACRs (generated from the main open task listing).
If we ignore the exact formatting for the moment—obviously, some clean-up is necessary throughout, as are more user-friendly instructions everywhere—does the general approach work for everyone? Kirill [talk] [prof] 23:24, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
Looks good to me. It seems to provide all the information in the most accessible format possible. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 00:09, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
Okay, now IMO we've got an ideal candidate for the redirect to A-class: WP:MHR. People have been using it to get to the A-class reviews in the past, and we're deprecating the page MHR used to point to, so the shortcut is up for grabs. As always, feel free to revert. ("MHAA" doesn't make sense now since A-class isn't a subpage of Assessment.) - Dank (push to talk) 02:01, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
I'm still trying to come up with a target for WP:MEH (ANI, perhaps?) Anyhow, the reorg looks great. EyeSerenetalk 11:35, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
So, our A-class page is still a subdirectory of the Assessment page ... Did we want to move it up a level? I'm afraid I'll break something if I move it. - Dank (push to talk) 22:26, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

As I said above, I think leaving it within the assessment department (at least in structural terms) will be neater and carry less overhead than essentially having it become the new review department in its own right. Kirill [talk] [prof] 02:05, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Okay, works for me. - Dank (push to talk) 02:28, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Images on US Govt websites

At Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/HMS_Hood_(51)/archive1, the issue has come up again that an image hosted by the U.S. Naval Historical Center includes a painting that may be under copyright protection. Image policy on Wikipedia confuses me, but my partner is a lawyer who can ask around and get answers on relevant US law if we need them. For one thing, if you have painted a picture and know or should know that a person or organization is displaying it without permission, your right to sue that person or organization generally expires after 3 years per Section 507 of the US copyright code. If an image that's hosted on a US government website and OK'd by that department's copyright staff is deemed not to meet WP's policies, and if the article nominator thinks the image is important and would like the readers to see it, would there be value in linking to the government website? (I don't mean to display a US bias here, I'm just aware that US PD and copyright law is a bit simpler than some others.) - Dank (push to talk) 12:47, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

As annoying and complicated as it is, when you have a photo of a painting, you need one license tag for the photo (in this case PD-USGov) and one for the painting, because the photo is a derivative work of the painting. If we can't verify the copyright status of the painting (which I believe wouldn't be PD unless the artist died more than 70 years ago), then the image will most likely have to be removed/deleted, and a link to the website probably wouldn't be good idea unless we knew the Naval Historical Center has appropriate permission to host the image. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 13:35, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
I know the US Government considers a great deal of German material from WWII to be public domain in the US as seized Nazi assets and therefore ineligible for US copyright. Whether this painting is included in that is another question. Parsecboy (talk) 14:04, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
Regarding "has appropriate permission": Wikipedians have developed an internal lingo that makes sense to Wikipedians, and I'm not faulting what you're saying, as long as you keep it on Wikipedia. But some Milhisters are employed by GLAMs, and the smaller GLAMs can be very sensitive to accusations that they don't have permission to host what they're hosting. (I'm guessing the U.S. Naval Historical Center would just laugh if a random non-lawyer tried to explain complex US copyright law to them, but let's avoid the possibility of embarrassing ourselves or our project-mates and ask them rather than tell them about copyright law.) - Dank (push to talk) 15:12, 25 July 2011 (UTC) Not directed at you, Harry, I just saw an opportunity here to remind everyone of a potentially sensitive issue. - Dank (push to talk) 15:18, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
My point was more that if we can't verify the permission for our purposes, we can't be sure they have permission to host it (which isn't a big problem for them, since I'm sure they have one of those "don't assume everything here is PD" disclaimers) because their site doesn't say where they got it. We could, of course, ask them where they got it (and then decide if it's "free", if we can keep it under fair use, or if we can't keep it) and once we know its copyright status, we can probably link to it. And I have no doubt that they'd find it very amusing if an English non-lawyer tried to tell them about American copyright law. ;) But the point is that WP policy requires that we know the copyright status of the painting before we can use the photo of it. What other websites and organisations do with it is their business. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:04, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
I've commented at the FAC. It's definitely PD for our purposes; the major question is where the image should be hosted (here or on Commons). Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 22:24, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

List GANs/GARs individually?

At the moment, our lists of open tasks (whether in full form or compact form) don't list each open GAN or GAR individually, instead providing a link to the list on the relevant GA page. This arrangement was due, in large part, to the fact that the GANs/GARs themselves were not easily transcludable into the main review department.

However, now that we're moving away from the idea of transcluding all the reviews into a single page, should we start listing the GANs/GARs individually, so as to be more consistent with the increased attention we're paying to the GA process? We could pull the necessary updates from the article alert listing with minimal effort; there are usually only a few new entries each day that would need to be copied.

On a further point, if we do start listing GANs/GARs individually, would it also be worthwhile announcing them on the project talk page, as we do for PRs and ACRs? Or does the single-reviewer focus of GAN mean that trying to encourage more input wouldn't necessarily be useful? Kirill [talk] [prof] 22:51, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

I think this is an excellent idea in principle, but may present difficulties due to the volume of GA nominations—there are 42 current nominations in WP:GAN#War and military, of which seven are under review and one on hold. That's a bigger list than all our FACs and ACRs put together. That might bloat the open tasks template a little. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 01:01, 26 July 2011 (UTC)
I don't think that the size of the list is going to have any particularly significant impact on the size of the template, since (a) there's quite a bit of empty space in the current lists, due to the imbalance between the ACR list and everything else, and (b) the template normally appears in collapsed form anyways. Kirill [talk] [prof] 21:15, 26 July 2011 (UTC)
I see some value in this. I'm ambivalent about encouraging GA reviews of milhist articles by milhist members because I think there's a benefit in getting outside views, but other than that if the list can be collapsed to address HJ Mitchell's concern I don't see why not. EyeSerenetalk 08:13, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

I've added a GAN listing to {{WPMILHIST Announcements}}; the code uses some meta-template calls to make updating the listing a bit simpler. Before I fiddle with trying to get the list to display neatly on WP:MHOT, does anyone have any comments on either the resulting layout of the template or the construction of the list itself? Kirill [talk] [prof] 02:43, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Seems fine to me. Actually it doesn't take up as much space as I thought it might (though of course the size will vary) EyeSerenetalk 08:27, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Bugle, School, and the World Wide Wikiprojects

Goes without saying, but pretty quick here a number of our members will be heading back to school, or collage as the case may be. It would be nice to include a shout out to those who come under this designation in the next edition of the bugle. Also, if I may be so bold as to suggest, I'd like to start a new section for the bugle with important stories from other wikiprojects with whom we share task forces. I think this would help widen our coverage of different events, and may help stir interest from our editors in other project's projects.

Also, I start back to school this semester as well, tentatively August 22nd. Around that time my library privileges should be restored, and since the Iowa article isn't FA class yet you can expect to see me on here somewhat more frequently as my time allows. I'm going to try and work on the class article and the ships New Jersey and Missouri with the books available in my university library. The situation with the house has momentarily stabilized, but if it goes south again I may be gone for much longer period of time. TomStar81 (Talk) 04:51, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

I'll throw something in The Bugle. I'm not sure what the new section would cover – define "important stories". Plus, who would write them? Anyway, we'll be glad to see you back. :-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 08:13, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
What I am thinking of here is more like what the local paper does: On page three or four of the main section they have a sampling of stories from across the nation. Its a selection of stories that relate to current events, and it has no real impact on the local community, but they make for a good read. In our case, we could (for example) call this new section "the barracks" and add a story from WP:SHIPS concerning their new ship info box, and a story from WP:BIO about the new guidelines for living people, and WP:FIREARMS that covers their newly created assault weapons task force, etc. These are stories that do not necessarily directly effect our project, but by virtue of the shared task forces we have with the given examples above could be construed as being of interest to our readers. More importantly, this kind of sharing could help inspiring some of our members to work with the other projects in pursuit of their goals. I grant that this is a little grand, but as I noted above I think this would help widen our coverage of different events, and may help stir interest from our editors in other project's projects. Thoughts? TomStar81 (Talk) 00:43, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Upcoming coordinator election

I haven't seen any info on the next upcoming September coordinator election yet. I am interested in running for this office but I may be unavailable most of August and September. I wanted to ask if it is legitimate if you folks could add my name to the list of candidates. This is just in case that I am not around at the time to file my application. So if you need another candidate please file my name on my behalf. MisterBee1966 (talk) 10:17, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Can someone please tell me where I need to go to file my application? Thanks. Sp33dyphil "Ad astra" 10:37, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
It's a bit early to create the page yet, but it will (I'm assuming) all be happening in due course at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators/September 2011 if you want to add it to your watchlist. EyeSerenetalk 14:21, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
It's good to see all the interest and activity ... we've still got it! - Dank (push to talk) 14:28, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Which projects do we share reviews with?

Further to some discussion that came up in a recent ACR closure, can we put together a reference list of projects we share reviews with? From that discussion it would include:

Are there others? EyeSerenetalk 08:23, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

FWIW, I don't recall other projects pointing to an A-class review process in their FACs ... not that they don't exist, but I think people would be linking to reviews if they thought it would help at FAC. - Dank (push to talk) 09:28, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
I'm not sure how many projects support an A-Class review process though I doubt it's very much more than half a dozen - likely because of the manpower and administrative requirements. Of the articles listed in Category:A-Class articles most seem to be picking up their category based on an A-Class review that's taken place at one of the projects listed above or somewhere like WP:WPMATH or WP:WPVG.
What I did notice while browsing through some of the projects that don't have an A-Class review process is that at WP:MED's quality scale (here) they explicitly state that they'll accept A-Class awarded by another project. They give milhist as an example. Perhaps this tends to support Nick's comment in the original discussion that filling in other project templates shouldn't be an issue. EyeSerenetalk 14:44, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
I'm not so sure about that interpretation. Note on the right that it says "Not currently used by this project." I think their template just uses the default wording at WP:1.0/A. Re other projects, I think it's really only us and SHIPS left. U.S. Roads is active-ish, but FILM axed theirs in 2010, BIOG dumped theirs ages ago (2008?), and WPTC's/Aviation's/etc. are all moribund. See Category:WikiProject A-Class Review. Note that VG has an informal "two reviewer" system, so they don't appear in that category. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 08:06, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for that correction Ed :) EyeSerenetalk 07:57, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
That'd be neat but it'd be like A-Class becoming a de facto WP-wide assessment/class, approaching GA/FA universality -- interesting thought... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 00:07, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

I just wanted to mention that the A Class is also recognized in the Projects that WPUS supports. Including:

  • WP FBI
  • WP West Virginia
  • WP South Carolina
  • WP District of Columbia
  • WP US Presidents
  • WP US State Legislators
  • WP US Government
  • WP US Governors

I also believe that its supported by US History, American Old West and most of the states. Most don't have an active process though creating new A class articles, but they do support them. --Kumioko (talk) 02:01, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

In response to EyeSerene's initial post, I can't remember any discussion at WP:AUSTRALIA about accepting military history A class reviews, but reclassifying the articles that pass such reviews as A class has been uncontroversial in practice (I've done it for various articles, and I think that other editors have as well). WP:AUSTRALIA is pretty loose/disorganised though, so it's perhaps not an example of best practice ;) Nick-D (talk) 10:08, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

A-Class backlog

I've just scanned the list of open ACRs and found a bunch that are over or right on the 28-day limit for closure. Purely to test the waters among fellow coords (or anyone else stopping by for that matter), do we feel this backlog, the largest I can recall, is a temporary situation or endemic? I know Rupert has had to largely curtail reviewing and closing, and I've had to severely cut back recently and am only just now starting to get back to something approaching my normal workload here. Of course we've been missing MBK and his clockwork closures for some time but seemed to be able to cover for him until recently. What I'm getting to is whether the majority feel the 28-day limit is still realistic. I'd hope it is but longer reviewing cycles seem to be the norm now, in FAC as well. Part of it in the latter is a greater emphasis on checks for copyvio and close paraphrasing, and if we want ACR to produce "near-FA quality" articles, we have to consider formalising that here also. It's also the age-old problem of not having enough reviewers at the right time. If we were to make the time limit greater as a rule (and not just by exception as now) then we can still close ACRs that have clearly reached some sort of consensus earlier, but we may be able to see more borderline noms promoted (for instance as I speak there are two ACRs over 28 days old needing one additional support each for promotion -- should they remain open by the grace of the coords, or people not having time to close them, or by rule of a longer upper limit?) Anyway, as I say, this is just to get some feedback -- as a reviewer, a regular closing coord, and a frequent nominator, I can live with the existing 28-day limit and it may be that with the coord elections coming up soon we'll get fresh blood in that will help reduce the backlog of A-Class reviewing and closing in any case. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 00:33, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Dammit, I meant to close some tonight but completely forgot, and now I'm off to bed. I might be able to close a couple tomorrow (especially the one I wanted to do before my mini-vacation...!), but I have to whip The Bugle together and work ten hours, so we'll see.
I'm neutral on extending the limit. If that's what it takes to get more reviewers for each article, fine, but I also don't want to suffer a massive backlog. Are there any other opinions that might push me to one side or the other? Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 08:11, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
If you'd like some help on The Bugle, I'd be happy to add some FA/A-Class article blurbs tonight -- let me know. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 08:26, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
Taken care of FA blurbs, will try and get to FLs and A-Classes tomorrow if I can. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 13:50, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
  • I think 28 days is realistic, though it might be a good idea to relax it a little, and give reviews that are still up in the air after a month, an extra week to ten days (I think any longer than that and it would just stagnate). Perhaps we should aim to close ACRs where there's a fairly clear consensus after they haven't received more comments in five days/a week?

    I'd be happy to help out with the closing (I'm uninvolved in most, because I tend to only review biographies) if the co-ords thought it appropriate/necessary. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:51, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Thank you HJ Mitchell for your kind offer, though as I understand it review closures are about the only coord-only job we have in the project so as things stand you'd be ineligible to help out at the moment. However, I should be available tomorrow (UK time) to close anything that still needs closing. I had intended to do it today but an incident at work meant I was busy for the entire day :(
Re the limit, I think 28 days is fine - we've always been pretty flexible about it anyway but it's useful to have a nominal figure to put on review periods. I also have to confess to my shame that I've never got into the habit of checking the review pages. I just wait until some far more conscientious person like Ian posts in the ACRs for closure section. I'll try to remedy this in future :P EyeSerenetalk 16:17, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
I was aware of that, I was offering in case the coords need extra help and wanted to recruit someone else without giving them 'proper' coord status. Of course, it may be that the existing coord pool can cope, 'twas just a thought. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 18:06, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
Running for coordship in September will fix the problem; in the meantime, reviewing is really what we need. Speaking of which ... I hope I didn't jump the gun, I extended a general invitation to people at WT:FAC#"Support" confusion to come review our FAC-bound articles while they're still at A-class. I think maybe occasional, informal encouragement to review works best. If anyone wants to second the encouragement, feel free. - Dank (push to talk) 18:16, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
This is fine, I think we're all of similar opinion, that the 28-day limit (with ad hoc exceptions) is still workable. Eye, just FYI, I tend to 'live' in the Open Tasks list (I keep a link on my user page) and was just scanning for an ACR to review when I noticed the oldest half dozen or so were around the limit. We're all volunteers and I freely admit that recently I haven't been able to do all the MilHist reviewing and admin tasks that I like to (but getting back to normal now). HJ, I was going to encourage you to run as coord in September but I think you've saved me the trouble judging by your welcome comment above... ;-) Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 23:38, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

I didn't get the time I hoped I would during the day, but I've managed to go through this evening and close all but two of those still outstanding. The two remaining open are those listed as one support short of promotion - it is worth giving these another day or so? EyeSerenetalk 19:25, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Tks Eye, I think we should give them a bit longer -- I may try and stop by myself later to review. I'm curious re. Wellington's Battle Record as to whether Jim and Parsecboy believed their opposition/comments were truly addressed. The reason I hadn't closed it is that I wasn't convinced of consensus to promote at this stage and it still had almost a week to go before bumping up against the 28-day limit. I was going to leave a note above to that effect last night but just had to hit the sack after the previous one I closed. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 23:55, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
Re. MisterBee's two listed above, I now see that they received third supports after being listed for closure so I'll try and close/promote today. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 00:15, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
Ah... I didn't actually check the date on the Wellington's Battle Record review, it just seemed like it had been there forever. I guess I was conflating it with the previous review; there seemed to be some thought that it was in fact a de facto extension of that. It also seemed to me to be a case where the opposition had been addressed, but as you say Jim and Parsec hadn't yet responded. Given events on the previous review and interaction elsewhere I wasn't actually sure if they would. However, if you feel my closure is unsound I'm happy for you to do whatever you think best. EyeSerenetalk 09:27, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
Heh, I don't think my judgement is necessarily surer than yours, mate, so I'm not out to try and reverse anything unilaterally. When I closed the first ACR it looked pretty straightforward because not only was there an outstanding oppose but there were only two supports anyway. In this case there were more than the requisite supports necessary but also an outstanding oppose that, despite the nominator's protestations, hardly appeared frivolous or vexatious. As closing coords we sit in judgement, but I felt in this case we might need clarification from a couple of the jurors... ;-) Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 12:42, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
In retrospect that would have been best. I recall now looking at it yesterday morning and thinking about asking for a second opinion (or whatever our equivalent of a WP:CRATCHAT is here in milhist), but by the evening when I performed the closure that had unfortunately gone from my mind. I was more concerned with giving the prose in the lead a quick copyedit to be honest. I'm reluctant to initiate a reappraisal for what I guess are obvious reasons, but I appreciate that I might potentially have caused us a headache... for which I can only apologise :( EyeSerenetalk 13:46, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
No worries. (Milhist: where Americans talk to Brits as if they were Aussies.) - Dank (push to talk) 14:45, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Would we get more reviewers at A-class if the designation got more recognition around the wiki? That's doable. We'd probably need a few people to look more closely at what does and doesn't get covered at A-class, so that we'd have a better understanding of what it means, and we'd probably need more participation from outside the project. The reason I'm suggesting this is that I just glanced at WP:WikiProject Military history/Popular pages, and it's painful to see that the most popular milhist page (Hitler) is C-class. I doubt that that article could ever be pushed through FAC, and maybe GA-class just doesn't seem like a prize worth fighting for any more ... but A-class is seen that way by some. - Dank (push to talk) 11:55, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Monthly Contest

Hi guys, unless there's some objection because it's a little bit after the start of the month, per an earlier discussion, I plan on adding C-Class to the contest scoreboard. I'll also announce the mod and encourage more participation in the contest on the main talk page. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 12:41, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Parsecboy (talk) 12:43, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
Same here. Kirill [talk] [prof] 14:54, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
Okay, done. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 00:16, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

TF coords

With the retooling of task forces, like redirecting all the talk pages, are specific coordinators for each TF needed? My suggestion is that after the next election we change this to "coordinators interested in this area include..." even if that's only one coordinator, as it's not like there's much work involved with them. I'm open to other ideas though, even if it's scrapping the whole idea. :-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 05:14, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Tks for bringing this up, Ed. I have to admit that since assisting in setting up the BatW special project for the ACW TF, I can't remember having done (or been requested to do) much at all re. task forces -- even archiving old review notices has gone by the wayside since we've (thankfully) merged those talk pages with the main project talk page. The ritual/saga of choosing/assigning TFs to each tranche of coords was one of the reasons I pushed for annual as opposed to half-yearly elections, so I've no issue with reducing that to something along the lines you suggest. Just to clarify, though, are you suggesting a "coordinators interested in this area" list that applies to TFs as a whole or to individual TFs? Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 05:55, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
Assuming Ed's idea is Ian's second suggestion (""coordinators interested in this area" applies to individual TFs) I think this would be fine. It may still be useful to have named points of contact for each TF, even if in practice there's little to no work involved. Besides, what else would we have our annual bunfight about? EyeSerenetalk 09:32, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
Since anyone posting on a task force's "talk page" is now actually posting at WT:MIL, we're not as likely to drop any balls by not responding, so it's not as important as it used to be to list 3 coordinator contacts for each task force. - Dank (push to talk) 13:24, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Review

What are we going to do with Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Review? Given the majority of it has now been fully deprecated in favour of the {{WPMILHIST Announcements}} shall we just fully deprecate the whole page? (As in empty all the current transclusions and add an archived tag at the top.) Or, should we turn it into a page pointing members to the differing review processes available ie, see Assessments/requests for a review of an article's status, see ACR, see PR, see Featured content etc. Woody (talk) 12:41, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

I was hoping to create a section on WP:MHA that would outline a flowchart-type "progression" for articles, together with the relevant review processes at each level, and then redirect the review page there; you're correct in that we ought to provide some guidance regarding available review processes, but I don't think it's worth retaining an entirely separate page just for that. Is this a good approach, or should we do something different? Kirill [talk] [prof] 12:48, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
That would be pretty cool. Would that be easy to implement? (we can always list the review processes at MHA... seems like simpler solution) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 19:27, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
This seems to have fallen to the wayside a bit but I agree with you Kirill with your way forward. A section on MHA would suffice, no need for the separate page. Woody (talk) 21:38, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Editnotice Proposal

I've been observing the rise of edit notices here on Wikipedia, and having created a few myself I have respect for the ability of these notices to convey important information to editors who otherwise would miss general announcements on pages that have certain restrictions for editing.

Given this latter fact, I would propose that we adopt a series of edit notices for our GA, A, and FA class pages. These templates would display simple notice that the article in question holds either a GA, A, or A-class rating and as such information added to the article is subject to review in order to remain in the article. In addition, when warranted, the edit notices on such pages could display other important information relevant to the article in question.

To illustrate this idea more clearly I've provided an examples below; this one is intended for the article USS Missouri (BB-63):

Obviously, the above example is in an field I have an interest in, but the basic message is applicable to any article that has an FA class rating, or A-class, or even GA-class, and could help advertise what editors would have to do if they wanted there information to remain in a higher rated article. Additionally, when applicable the edit notice could be modified to reflect article specific issues like pop culture/fiction appearances, arbitration sanctions, etc. Should we adopt the system here and it proves to be a success we could see about implementing it on a Wikipedia wide level, which in turn could be of use to other pages that hold higher article ratings. What you do think about this idea? Is it worth pursuing, or is this a bad idea wrapped in good intentions? TomStar81 (Talk) 03:10, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

This is a bad idea, in my opinion—at least insofar as a unilateral implementation by our project is concerned. The practical result of this will be to draw criticism from those who will regard it as evidence of an unwelcoming and exclusionary attitude—an allegation that is already made, and one that we hardly wish to encourage—while doing little or nothing to change the way these article are maintained; the people who tend to insert uncited material into featured articles aren't likely to be discouraged by a mere editnotice, and the reversion of such additions by article maintainers will take place regardless of its presence.
If this is something that the FA and GA communities want to pursue Wikipedia-wide, of course, then that's up to them; but I see no reason for us to take the heat for something that won't actually help us in practice. Kirill [talk] [prof] 03:39, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

We may have a problem here

For the second time in as many weeks I found an article concerning ships of the Russian navy thats been moved unconditionally without going through a the requested moves process. In good faith, the editors behind the attempt seem to be moving the articles to capture the batter Russian translations of the vessels. The problem is that in so doing they are running a foul of both WP:SHIPS guidelines for naming and WP:COMMONNAME. Last week, the issue was the abrupt move of the page Kirov class battlecruiser to Russian Kirov class heavy nuclear powered cruiser, this week its Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, which has been moved to Russian aircraft carrier Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Kuzentsov (or something to that effect). My concern here is that if two such pages have been moved (and these are just what we con confirm) other pages out there could have been uprooted without our knowing about it. Now I grant that these two pages here may be the exception at the moment and not the rule, but I would ask that we all keep an extra eye out of the ships of the Soviet/Russian fleet for the next week or two just to make sure no one else moves a page without requesting the move and that the pages if moved end up moved to a title compliant with both the WP:SHIPS naming conventions and WP:COMMONNAME. TomStar81 (Talk) 10:23, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

We do seem to have received a fresh infusion of Russian editors seeking to rename articles to whatever their Russian name is. I thought that Mrg3105 (talk · contribs) had returned in one of the instances I spotted, though fortunately this turned out to be a false alarm. Nick-D (talk) 11:00, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Apologies

Hi everyone. I just wanted to apologize for being an absolutely terrible and inactive co-ordinator this term. I knew I was going to be busy and wasn't planning to run, but then changed my mind. This was obviously a mistake. I kept thinking "Oh, as soon as I'm done with college applications I'll have time." "Oh, as soon as I've decided where to go to college I'll be fine." "Oh, as soon as AP exams are over..."

I was wrong, and I didn't have time. My apologies to all the other co-ordinators for doing hardly any work this term. I don't plan on running anymore. – Joe N 19:14, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Heh, I remember that time. I'm sure you are having/had bundles of fun, and I think we all can understand why you haven't been active. No hard feelings here. Good luck in college – it'll be the best time of your life. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 19:31, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Talk:World War II and Template talk:WW2InfoBox

There seems to be yet another incursion of aggressive editors into both these articles and their talk pages - could uninvolved coordinators (preferably admins) please look into this? What should be fairly calm discussions have become heated due to editors throwing accusations of bad faith around and generally behaving like angry mastodons. Thanks, Nick-D (talk) 10:58, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

I took that page off my watchlist. There are too many ridiculous arguments had there with copious amounts of OR (eg. 'Greece is ranked too low, we need to move them up' 'How far?' 'They contributed more to the war than ___, ___, and ___ ... so here?'). So back on topic, someone with more patience than me is needed here. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 04:05, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
Yes, I un-watchlisted it for that reason a while ago. Nick-D (talk) 11:09, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Alright, time to confess

Which one of you (or more) are actually working for SpecOps or the Joint Military Information Support Command? [1] ;-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 04:03, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

That's quite humerous. Its not me I can assure you! Anotherclown (talk) 08:59, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
Oh FFS. Apparently I'm a "nazi-mentality admin censor" and he still thinks that he acted appropriately concerning World War II-releated articles despite the results of the ArbCom case and subsequent developments: [2]. Judging from the hostile response he's received there and his abusive responses (my favourite: "Nobody's perfect. Not even crap-heads like you who can only manage to substitute thoughtful comment with childish personal attacks. Get a job."), I suspect that it won't be too long before he's blocked from Wikipedia Review as well. Nick-D (talk) 11:27, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
Oh dearie me, I've been found out! Yes, of course, I confess everything now...I'm just a puppet working for SpecOps to cleanse WP of anti-US military bias. </joke> Calling other contributors (even on WR) "crap-heads" doesn't seem like an efficient way to bring others around to your POV, but maybe that's just me. At least I got a laugh in this morning... Dana boomer (talk) 12:08, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
Yes, I got quite a good laugh from it too. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 06:46, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
Well until my cheque for July arrives I'm not working for them, no. EyeSerenetalk 18:54, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Military History Book Pages ?

Hi having worked on British WWII airborne articles over the last few months I eventually got around to doing Book:1st Airborne Division. Never having done this before it was interesting to see on the talk page that MILHIST has a book classification. Further there are 117 books in the Category:Military history book pages, the vast majority from WP:OMT. Is there a reason we do not record them at WP:MHA in the Statistics section or elsewhere? Jim Sweeney (talk) 09:57, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_history/Strategy#Tracking_non-article_assessment_classes. ;-) Kirill [talk] [prof] 11:03, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
Thanks I see. Jim Sweeney (talk) 11:50, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/USS Constellation vs La Vengeance/archive1‎

Could someone who knows something about image copyright have a look? - Dank (push to talk) 15:37, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

I've offered my thoughts there. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:56, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
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