User talk:Donner60

I will be online only for brief periods most days, and probably not at all on others, until about November 15. Donner60 (talk) 06:27, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have added a prioritized to do list to my user page. That may move along more slowly because of coordinator tasks or unanticipated editing that need more immediate attention. Posted 1 October 2023, now updated to note no progress at all on the list since then. Donner60 (talk) 00:40, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Please put comments or questions on new subjects at the very bottom of the page, use a new section heading, refer to the exact title of an article and sign your message with four tildes. If you send me an e-mail please leave a talk page notice. I am not always prompt at looking for new e-mails at the listed address. Donner60 (talk) 09:12, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

New messages, questions, comments: Put at very bottom of page, see text of this section

Please put new messages at the very bottom of the page. Thanks. Donner60 (talk) 08:39, 13 December 2012 (UTC) To clarify, the new item should not be below this message and not below the repeated message after my introductory paragraphs but at the very bottom of the page after every other item on the page. It will help me to understand what you are talking about to add a section heading, identify the article you are concerned with (if your question or comment refers to a specific article), using a link, probably putting the article title in the heading, and sign your edit with four tildes (~~~~) so I know to whom to reply. Keep an eye on this page because I may just reply here if the answer is simple and does not seem to be time sensitive. When I notice an out of order question or comment, I will move it to the bottom of the page and provide a heading if there is none already. Donner60 (talk) 22:32, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

If you have come here for information, or to complain about something, read the information at the pertinent links in the next two sections first. It may save both of us time as well as providing an immediate definitive answer. Current talk page items follow these sections.

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From the section Editing comments, Other's comments in Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines:

Fixing format errors that render material difficult to read. In this case, restrict the edits to formatting changes only and preserve the content as much as possible. Examples include fixing indentation levels, removing bullets from discussions that are not consensus polls or requests for comment (RfC), fixing list markup, using <nowiki> and other technical markup to fix code samples, and providing wikilinks if it helps in better navigation.
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Note that it is proper to use <nowiki> and other technical markup to fix code samples. ...............................

Put messages at the bottom of this page, please. Please put messages, questions or comments at the very bottom of the page, i.e. after every other item on the page. If you put them here (immediately before or after this paragraph or section), I may either not see them or at least not see them very promptly. That will delay any reply from me to you. Please add a section heading, identify the article you are concerned with, and use a link, (if your question or comment refers to a specific article or edit), probably putting the article name in the heading, and sign your edit with four tildes (~~~~) so I know to whom to reply.

Where I may reply; and reasons why I might ignore or delete your message Often I will reply on your talk page and may note or summarize that reply on this page. If you do not get a reply on your talk page, check back here. I may put brief replies here, especially if they do not seem urgent. Keep an eye on this page because I may just reply here, especially if the answer seems simple and does not seem to be time sensitive. If you have a user name, I will try to remember to ping you if I just leave a return message here. As far as I know, IP addresses cannot be pinged. When I notice a question or comment that was not placed at the bottom of the page, I will move it to the bottom of the page and provide a heading if there is not already a heading.

If you put a question or comment on this page but not at the bottom of the page despite the above request, and you can not find it if you check back, I have moved it to the bottom of the page in a new section with an appropriate heading if there was none given to the message.

If your edit was disruptive, vandalism, uncivil, nonsensical or abusive, and you do not find the edit on this page, it is because I have deleted it. In most such cases, I will also put another warning on your talk page, but will not otherwise reply to it. (I will reply, however, if you then leave a civil and reasonable followup with a legitimate question or comment and some reference or reasonable explanation related to the question or comment. Note that I cannot reply to a message which is incomplete or otherwise cannot be understood or reviewed on another page.)

If I do not reply to your message, but do not delete it or have archived it, it is likely because I took it to be a statement rather than a question or message that called for a reply. If some time has passed since I have logged on, the message may have become stale, or appear to me to be stale or no longer in need of a reply for some reason. In those cases, I also may not reply and will likely simply archive the message at the next archiving on aging messages/replies.

Disambiguation link and bracket bot notifications

I occasionally get one of these notices. I fix the link or bracket, then delete the message, as the messages state is permissible, instead of further cluttering up these pages. Donner60 (talk) 05:13, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
......................

A barnstar for you!

		The American Civil War Barnstar
		For all your excellent help with Gettysburg, Hobart Ward, Stonewall's arm, and many other articles. Hog Farm _Talk 17:07, 4 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

In appreciation

		The Article Rescue Barnstar
		For your help in saving Battle of Gettysburg at GAR. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 11:25, 9 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I was glad to help. The Battle of Gettysburg is such an important milestone in U.S. history that it should be kept to a good standard. Donner60 (talk) 02:18, 10 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

A barnstar for you!

		The Original Barnstar
		For all the work you put in checking the military history writing contest entries. Hog Farm _Talk 23:02, 6 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. It's something I can do for the project which relieves the frequent contributors from the task and can be spread out over a month. Donner60 (talk) 00:45, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Congratulations

		The Coordinator stars
		On behalf of the members of WikiProject Military history, in recognition of your election to the position of Coordinator, I take great pleasure in presenting you with the Coordinator's stars, and wish you the best of luck for the coming year! Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:27, 2 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Donner60 (talk) 02:05, 3 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Congratulations from the Military History Project

		Military history reviewers' award
		On behalf of the Military History Project, I am proud to present the The Milhist reviewing award (1 stripe) for participating in 2 reviews between October and December 2023. Hawkeye7 (talk) via MilHistBot (talk) 00:32, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply] Keep track of upcoming reviews. Just copy and paste `{{WPMILHIST Review alerts}}` to your user space

A barnstar for you!

		The Reviewer Barnstar
		For your work reviewing the backlog of Italian Army articles at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Requests. Thank you! Pickersgill-Cunliffe (talk) 15:50, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! At least 40 more to come soon. The editor has done a good job of bringing these up to B class. He will be posting the remainder in the near future. Donner60 (talk) 00:43, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --13:36, 24 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A barnstar for you!

		The Premium Reviewer Barnstar
		I was curious, seeing as I remembered you reviewing another article I did some work on, William Henry Harrison Seeley, so I decided to check the history of the Military History assessment requests section; of the past 500 edits made there, you contributed 348 of them. That to me is an absolutely incredible figure, and I think you definitely deserve this. CommissarDoggo^Talk? 23:36, 3 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Most of the articles put up for manual assessments are easy enough to review due to the many outstanding contributors that we have to the project. Most are interesting as well. Donner60 (talk) 23:43, 3 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

February 2024 WikiProject Unreferenced articles backlog drive – award

		Citation Barnstar
		This award is given in recognition to Donner60 for collecting more than 5 points during the WikiProject Unreferenced articles's FEB24 backlog drive. Your contributions played a crucial role in sourcing 14,300 unsourced articles during the drive. Thank you so much for participating and helping to reduce the backlog! – – DreamRimmer (talk) 17:56, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Bugle: Issue 216, April 2024

Your Military History Newsletter

Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results
Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content
Book review: Hawkeye7, Nick-D and Pickersgill-Cunliffe discuss six (count 'em, six!) works comprising eight volumes
Op-ed: Hawkeye7 on a lecture by the Australian official historian

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 23:08, 8 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

RE: Republic of China Marine Corps

Thank you for the comment and for taking a look at this article (and also for the Galicia Division article that you assessed a while ago). For the organization table, I think it will be best for me to go through and add citations for every individual unit, because there is not a single source that lists out everything on there on one page (from what I could find), but there are sources for the individual units. I will start on that soon, and I will reply to your note on the assessment page when I finish with this task. I don't think this will take long. Romanov loyalist (talk) 16:49, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Congratulations from the Military History Project

		Military history reviewers' award
		On behalf of the Military History Project, I am proud to present the The Milhist reviewing award (2 stripes) for participating in 4 reviews between January and March 2024. Hawkeye7 (talk) via MilHistBot (talk) 04:28, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply] Keep track of upcoming reviews. Just copy and paste `{{WPMILHIST Review alerts}}` to your user space

Salutations!

Donner60... It has been too long, my friend. I hope you're doing well, and that life is treating you with happiness and joy. We haven't spoken in quite some time (it's really my fault; work and life has gotten very busy for me). I was going through some old pages, saw your responses to me in many discussions, and I wanted to thank you for your support and to let you know that I was thinking about you... :-) ~Oshwah~^{(talk) (contribs)} 05:01, 3 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good to hear from you. I have spent my time recently as a coordinator for the military history project. Before that Huggle had gone haywire on me and my activity fell off when I could not get it to work. I then moved on to less activity in covid times which started about the same time. I have had covid twice but fortunately seem to have gotten over it without much, if anything, in the way of after effects - maybe some periodic fatigue could be related, I suppose. I resumed editing but not working on anti-vandalism except for a few brief instances that I came across. I started working more on military history project reviews, GA reassessments and some editing about a year ago. In the absence of enough volunteers, I agreed to be a military history project coordinator starting last September. I have spent almost all my time reviewing and assessing articles, monitoring the article writing contest and occasionally answering some questions. It has taken almost all of my online time so my to-do list has remained about as it was when I got more involved in the project. I have missed working and communicating with you and a few others whom I have lost contact with for a few years now. Since I am still active, I hope to keep up with online friends here more than I have been doing. Donner60 (talk) 07:14, 6 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Bugle: Issue 217, May 2024

Your Military History Newsletter

Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results
Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content
Book review: Hawkeye7 and Nick-D look at a diverse range of works
Op-ed: Hawkeye7 on the "center of gravity"

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 20:19, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

TFA

Today's TFA, Felix M. Warburg House, was written by Vami_IV and Epicgenius, introduced: "This article is about another of the great houses that once lined Fifth Avenue in New York. Specifically, this is the mansion of Felix M. Warburg, a Jewish financier who ignored fears of anti-Semitic reprisal to his decided to build himself a big Gothic manor in the middle of New York City. Although the Warburgs no longer remain, their legacy does: the museum is now the home of the Jewish Museum (Manhattan) and the building largely survives as they left it. It's a beautiful building and I hope you will all enjoy it."! - in memory -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:35, 10 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Gerda. I was shocked and saddened by Vami_IV's death, especially when I saw that he was so young. He was an outstanding contributor to Wikipedia and will be missed. Donner60 (talk) 18:41, 10 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

yes, I remember the feeling of shock when I just saw the watch list entry -- today's story has a pic of a woman holding her cat, a DYK of 5 years ago - the recent pics of places show 2 orange tip butterflies --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:36, 14 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for improving articles in May! - Today's story mentions a concert I loved to hear and a piece I loved to sing in choir, 150 years old OTD. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:26, 22 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Today's story is about Samuel Kummer, one of five items on the Main page - more musing on my talk --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:53, 30 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Battle of Plum Point Bend

Could you have a look at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators#ACRs for closure for me? This one needs closing. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:50, 13 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Donner60 (talk) 23:22, 13 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Bravo Zulu!

		The Military Barnstar
		G'day Donner60. Just popped by to say what a brilliant effort you have been making on checking the B-Class auto assessments. Thanks for all your work for the project! Warm regards, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 08:36, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks sent. Donner60 (talk) 01:17, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Donner60

		The Military ranked Barnstar
		This award is for your heroic efforts over many months to review B-class military history articles. Djmaschek (talk) 03:24, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Bugle: Issue 218, June 2024

Your Military History Newsletter

Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results
Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content
Book review: Hawkeye7 looks at the Tokyo war crimes trials

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 09:42, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Italian Army June 2024

Thank you for looking at the articles. As for me: not the war, but work kept me from continuing the work in wikipedia. I have more time now and will be back to continue to create articles for all Italian Army units. I fixed the missing references for the Regiment "Savoia Cavalleria" (3rd) and I wrote a longer introduction for the article. I will write longer introduction for the other four cavalry regiments as well. I already fixed the issue with the personnel of the Regiment "Genova Cavalleria" (4th), which as you correctly noted should be "those personnel". And: Captain Vannetti Donnini was the only Genova officer killed at Porta San Paolo. I reused text from the Regiment "Lancieri di Montebello" (8th) article, which suffered two officers killed in the same battle and did not properly edit it. I will finish with the cavalry intros next and then move to the aviation units. Cheers, and thank you, noclador (talk) 18:33, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I found the time away from work to fix the issues:

Regiment "Genova Cavalleria" (4th) - fixed, longer intro, and now ready for review.
1st Army Aviation Regiment "Antares" - fixed missing citation, and now ready for review.
3rd Special Operations Helicopter Regiment "Aldebaran" - fixed missing citation, deleted the last two sections, as these were not by me and I do not think they add to the article, which is now ready for review.
4th Army Aviation Regiment "Altair" - fixed missing citation, and now ready for review.

(In case of all three aviation regiments the source for the naming was at the beginning of the paragraph and not repeated at the end of the paragraph. An oversight on my part. I fixed this now also in the remaining Italian Army Aviation articles.)

Thank you, and with best regards, noclador (talk) 23:53, 19 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Again, glad to see you back. I know you want to finish the other Italian Army unit articles. I have rated these B class, and pinged you on the assessment request page. Donner60 (talk) 03:17, 20 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A class reviews

Would you consider closing Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Battle of Saipan and Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Battle of Tinian? Both have three supports + source and image reviews Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:41, 30 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Assuming I did it right again this time. Donner60 (talk) 23:39, 30 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. All fine. Bot has run. Thanks for that. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:14, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Can we count these as June promotions? The bot time was 9 minutes after midnight UTC. Thanks. Donner60 (talk) 00:20, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sure. I have moved them from Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/August 2024/Articles to Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/July 2024/Articles. Nobody has started work on the JUly Bugle yet. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:20, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Congratulations from the Military History Project

		Military history reviewers' award
		On behalf of the Military History Project, I am proud to present the The Milhist reviewing award (2 stripes) for participating in 4 reviews between April and June 2024. Hawkeye7 (talk) via MilHistBot (talk) 05:06, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply] Keep track of upcoming reviews. Just copy and paste `{{WPMILHIST Review alerts}}` to your user space

The Bugle: Issue 219, July 2024

Your Military History Newsletter

Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results
Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content
Book review: Recent external reviews

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 12:08, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Assessment

Hi man. I see your an experienced editor and reviewer. I created Surface Fleet Review and was wanting to get it assessed so I have placed it at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_history/Assessment#Requests for assessment. I see its crossed out or something straight after I placed it there so im not quite sure what that means as I cant find a key for what to do. If you have any advice on the crossing-out thing or have any tips on the article I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks! DeadlyRampage26 (talk) 06:10, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, you prefaced your request with a strike sympbol </s>. If a close strike symbol had been included, it would have made the strike through up to the point of that symbol. The complete absence of a close symbol resulted in the entire remainder of the page being struck, not just on the assessment request page but on the paragraphs that follow on the main assessment page. I have nowiki symbols before and after the strike symbol here which is the reason you don't see a strike through from that point to the end of the message.

The next coordinator or experienced assessor who looked at the page likely would have been alert to the problem but I am glad you brought it up because it would not necessarily be obvious to everyone. The strike and end strike sympbols are placed on the page after an assessment is made and only the article name is within the symbols. Then a reply is posted and the user who posted the request is notified of the result. I will be removing the strike out on the assessment pages when I complete this message. Soon I or another assessor will review the article.

It happens. I did something similar not long ago.

Donner60 (talk) 20:35, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Happy First Edit Day!

GA Nomination

Hi, i had put up Battle of Thorgo article for reassessment now that its a B-class article and can you suggest whether its ready for Good article nomination since it's expansion has been completed with no further possible expansion and what it appears to me that it fulfills the criteria for GAN. Rahim231 (talk) 10:38, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Rahim: Here is my opinion and comments for what they are worth. When I see a good and complete B-class article for military history, I think it is probably ready for GA. Be aware that even though I think your article falls into this class, I don't do GA assessments. This is in large part because I have reviewed many of the articles that are put up for GA for B class and the military history standards are similar for B. Of course, the GA assessment is independent. So it should be done by a different assessor. If your article was not as complete as it is, it still might have been B but would need to be expanded for GA. I would have noted that much if you had asked about such an aritcle.

It is hard for me to predict what a GA assessor might want but I would be surprised if much was asked of you for it to be promoted to GA. (I have worked on a few GA reassessments if I have sources and usually if only some citations are needed or minimal expansion is needed. In a reassessment since the article had been assessed GA, in at least some cases, it can be kept GA. If one or a few editors who have some time and enough sources are confident they can improve the article, it stay as GA.) Donner60 (talk) 08:01, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your comment, I will be nominating this article for GA review. Rahim231 (talk) 20:01, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Bugle: Issue 220, August 2024

Your Military History Newsletter

Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results
Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content
Book review: Hawkeye7 looks at two works on logistics and one on the Battle of Arnhem

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 11:17, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

MILHIST coordination

I believe the annual coordinator election is coming up. I don't have near as much time as I use to, but I'd be able to be at least a part-time figure for that in the coming year I think. Do you think it would be useful for me to stand for election, even if I'm only going to be available for coordinator tasks sporadically? Hog Farm _Talk 01:09, 20 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. You would probably do at least as much as others have done, even if it is sporadic. Please don't stretch yourself too thin or become stressed over it. I may be a bit preachy, but I know you have much to do in real life and that must come first. Donner60 (talk) 01:52, 20 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ivan Turchin or John B. Turchin

Our article on Turchin/Turchaninov is currently at Ivan Turchin. The last couple books I've read have involved Turchin, who is invariably known as John B. Turchin in those works, with his Russian name only brought up as biographical background. Google books does show "Ivan Turchin" has some use, but I'm still inclined to think that John B. Turchin would be the better title, especially since the references in the article don't call him Ivan in the title. I wanted to see what you thought about this before opening a requested move, though. Hog Farm _Talk 04:14, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Eicher, p. 537, lists him as Turchin, John Basil (Ivan Vasilovitch Turchinov) and Warner, p. 511, lists him as John Basil Turchin (Ivan Vasilovitch Turchinoff). Based on these sources, I think John B. Turchin or John Basil Turchin would be a better choice for the article title. Donner60 (talk) 04:23, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Hog Farm:. One more: Sifakis, Stewart. Who Was Who in the Civil War. New York: Facts On File, 1988. ISBN 978-0-8160-1055-4, p. 663, lists him as Turchin, John Basil (1822-1901). Later on the page he adds: Tuchinoff, Ivan Vasilovitch, see Turchin, John Basil. Donner60 (talk) 04:28, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Voting for coordinators is now open!

Nominations for the upcoming project coordinator election have opened. A team of up to ten coordinators will be elected for the next coordination year. The project coordinators are the designated points of contact for issues concerning the project, and are responsible for maintaining our internal structure and processes. They do not, however, have any authority over article content or editor conduct, or any other special powers. More information on being a coordinator is available here. If you are interested in running, please sign up here by 23:59 UTC on 14 September! Voting will commence on 15 September. If you have any questions, you can contact any member of the current coord team. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:40, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Bastia

Thanks for taking the trouble on a Sunday. I'm not too fond of Holland's writing, which reminds me of books I read in the 60s. To me his books seem to be commercial publisher pot-boilers that lack academic depth; I'd like to find out that I was wrong. I had a long look at some Italian books in translation but they were too expensive for my purse. There's an article in Italian too but Jstor didn't have it. Regards Keith-264 (talk) 18:01, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Books & Bytes – Issue 64

The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 64, July – August 2024

The Hindu Group joins The Wikipedia Library
Wikimania presentation
New user script for easily searching The Wikipedia Library

Read the full newsletter

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --16:33, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Bugle: Issue 221, September 2024

Your Military History Newsletter

Project news: From the editors; awards and honours; contest results
Articles: Last month's new featured and A-class content
Book review: Hog Farm looks at the bayou battles for Vicksburg

The Bugle is published by the Military history WikiProject. To receive it on your talk page, please join the project or sign up here.
If you are a project member who does not want delivery, please remove your name from this page. Your editors, Ian Rose (talk) and Nick-D (talk) 21:56, 15 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Voting for WikiProject Military history coordinators is now open!

Voting for WikiProject Military history coordinators is now open! A team of up to ten coordinators will be elected for the next coordination year. Register your vote here by 23:59 UTC on 29 September! MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:34, 18 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Article

Hi, i hope I'm not annoying you by asking some questions related to Military history articles.

The article KHAD-KGB campaign in Pakistan which was first a small scale terror campaign later became large scale and was mainly conducted by the Khad-Kgb to undermine the continuous Pakistani support to the Mujahideen during the soviet-Afghan war. Now the result of the article on the Info box has been changed many times from "Operational inconclusivity" to victory or Pakistani Failure, by respective Afghan users.

Upon asking them for the source they present this source A peep into the world of Spies which i read did contain the statement "Pakistani ISI also failed to quell soviet terror campaign in 1987", However the source itself does not contain any notes within and is a self published Book and makes exceptional claims. Whereas i cited the source for the claim of Khad-Kgb failure (Although i think now it would be better worded to this (KhAD–KGB failure to halt Pakistani support to the mujahideen) with the Book

(We Won: America's Secret War in Afghanistan, 1979-89) Pg#36-39.

Another American source i found out stating this [1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1988/03/13/moscows-invisible-war-of-terror-inside-pakistan/6e96dd11-56a5-4d1e-bc64-c333f41af17e/%7C1]

"between Pakistan and the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul were about to occur, or whenever an important VIP would arrive in Pakistan, the air raids escalated. But limited to the Northwest Frontier, they didn't have much effect on the population at large and failed to undermine the strong popular support for the mujaheddin."

So what would be the result of the article retained in the info box ? since the sources presented by me were pretty reliable especially when this book was published by Brookings Institution Press compared to a self published book for citing an claim. Im not sure what do whether to change the result or leave it like this with both statments in the info box. See talk page of the article for what i explained to the user. Rahim231 (talk) 13:03, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Your question is an appropriate one to ask a coordinator. A careful analysis seems necessary for me to reach an answer, or possibly more than one adequate answer. I'll give it a try here but if this turns out to be unsatisfactory, I suggest other options below to carry this forward.

I will start with a comment about the infobox statement of the result as it stands with respect to its form. All the additional information in the infobox as to the result is not in line with infobox guidelines for military conflicts. It may be appropriate to include these items in a footnote, if they are reliably sourced and are needed for explanation and if the result parameter is kept at all. I will continue next with an analysis but include the template article guideline below because it could determine whether to keep the result item.

This article is not about a war, campaign or battle. It could be best described as a military operation, or an operation in support of one side in a military conflict, or even as a terrorist campaign. The methods used by the KHAD/KGB were not simply terrorism, however.

The article seems to me to be unusual in some respects. It is not the more usual type of operation which is limited and time and has a narrower objective. It is a continuing operation in a conflict where the side conducting the operation failed to achieve their ultimate objective and lost overall. On the other hand, the defending side seems not to have stopped the operation itself until they won the conflict.

Although your source seems to be a good one and the source for the other opinion does not appear to be a good one, I can't say that it shows a conclusive result of any kind because I cannot access the full three pages that you cite.

One possible solution is to eliminate the result item altogether. Template:Infobox military conflict states this about "result": "result – optional" – this parameter may use one of two standard terms: "X victory" or "Inconclusive". The term used is for the "immediate" outcome of the "subject" conflict and should reflect what the sources say. In cases where the standard terms do not accurately describe the outcome, a link or note should be made to the section of the article where the result is discussed in detail (such as "See the Aftermath section"). Such a note can also be used in conjunction with the standard terms but should not be used to conceal an ambiguity in the "immediate" result. Do not introduce non-standard terms like "decisive", "marginal" or "tactical", or contradictory statements like "decisive tactical victory but strategic defeat". Omit this parameter altogether rather than engage in speculation about which side won or by how much.

That is the easiest answer to the question: just eliminate the result (or outcome) item.

There is another template in the same template article about the the item to use for a military operation. That is to use "outcome" instead of "result." The explanation is "outcome – optional – the outcome of the operation from the perspective of the planners with a very brief summary of defence if appropriate." Here, this may not be adequate either. Questions could still arise about whether the planners thought it was a success (or claimed that it was) when in fact it was inconclusive or even a failure.

If there is no conclusive source or if the other editors won't concede, and if eliminating the item from the infobox altogether doesn't work for you or them, this could go to a request for comment on the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history in an effort to reach a consensus. This request for comment should also be put on the article talk page even though the question is already open there.

You could ask one or more other coordinators for an opinion but I think it would be better to put a request for comment on the article talk page and ping coordinators if you wish to be sure they see it.

Finally, a request for dispute resolution by uninvolved users as shown at Wikipedia:Dispute resolution#Dispute resolution noticeboard or one of the other noticeboards mentioned a few items above that. I am reasonably sure it would not be something to bring up to the administrators notice board unless some out of line conduct becomes apparent.

I should note that the existing article has other problems as noted in the template at the top of it. I might even wonder whether non-duplicate reliable information should be merged with KHAD#Psychological Warfare and State-Sponsored Terrorism and a redirect substituted under the title of this article. Donner60 (talk) 05:29, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The topic itself is quite notable in order to remain as a stand-alone article it just needs some work to be done.

According to the sources the Campaign and its main objective was to intimidate Pakistani High command to stop the support for Afghan mujahideen by means of Terrorist bombings through out cities, cross border raids, Aerial confrontations, Funding separatist's etc. The campaign was ramped up in the final years and did not achieve any of its aims.

Another source by the CIA on this Topic which explains the Campaign in detail.[2]https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP06T00412R000606330001-2.pdf

Actually you can access the book pages on History archive, First just insert the page number in the search bar on the top left in this case (Page-36) you want to access hit the search bar then on the results you will see the page number in results. Click on the page number like three to four times and the page can be previewed if it doesn't load after that zoom in and out the book and im pretty sure it will load, it applies for most of the book. Rahim231 (talk) 13:26, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I accessed the book. Thanks. I think your conclusion is correct based on the obvious outcome. The sources may not persuade others, however. For me, the most important point about the CIA report is that it is an interim report from 1986. There is potential argument to be made about the language. Although it does have a section which says the Soviet operation was not troubling the Pakistanis, it also uses the words "modest success" at the beginning. So it seems to contradict itself. But the fact that the campaign continued after this is the real sticking point.

While the book comes to the obvious conclusion as to the outcome of the war, I have to say that the pages cited do not deal with the entire campaign, only with parts of it. I don't see how this can possibly be used to support a KHAD/KGB victory of any sort (except for an operation or two). On the other hand, unfortunately, it does not clearly say that the campaign was a total failure.

This leaves me with the opinion that you will probably need some additional sourcing to prevent an edit war, which you rightly have been trying to do. Otherwise, you may be left with just the sort of ambiguous result which the guidelines reject. You certainly don't want to get into an edit war over this. At this point, I see deletion of the result parameter as the best option here to prevent that. You can still point out the obvious result overall by citing the Riedel book. If you wish to carry it forward and keep the result, I think you will need to take it to dispute resolution. You may also want to ask for further comments or opinions on the military history project talk page. It might bring some positive ideas but I would not be surprised if it also did not produce a conclusive resolution.

I appreciate that you are in a difficult position with this. You have an obvious conclusion but don't seem to have the definitive statements from the sources about the specific operations to convince the doubters or POV pushers. Unfortunately, I think this is the best I can do with this hard question. Maybe some other coordinator or experienced uninvolved military history editor can be of more help if you wish to continue to add the result parameter. You could also take it through dispute resolution, as I noted, but I am not sure you could get a definite resoultion without at least one more definitive source. Donner60 (talk) 15:45, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I understood what you meant by there needs to be additional sourcing, since Riedel book doesn't talk about the campaign only but also includes of the result of whole war and the Cia Document is a report before the war ended but credible one.

For the success thing everyone knows if the Campaign actually succeeded in its main aim we today might've had a Communist Afghan government instead.

I will try my best look further into this matter and consult other coordinators as well. Thanks for your Kind feedback! Rahim231 (talk) 06:29, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I want to emphasize that I agree with your conclusion. My concern is that this situation is somewhat unusual. I am looking at it in part as a problem that should be handled carefully withough provoking an edit war. If you can find some additional sources, that would certainly help. I do think that other results or outcomes can not be well supported so any conclusion other than the one you support should not be inserted into the article. Donner60 (talk) 06:49, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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Otolemur crassicaudatus was my previous username

Regarding this edit, It was my previous username. CometVolcano (talk) 13:10, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Can you remove OC from Missing Wikipedians? --CometVolcano (talk) 13:43, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have removed it to facilitate any redirect. However, you have a retired template on the old user name and no redirect there or on your user page. So I am not sure removing OC from the missing wikipedia list and the user talk page will serve any useful purpose unless you note this on your new user page and on the old page and talk page. Donner60 (talk) 18:08, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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Italian Army

FYI: I am updating / copy editing the 298 Italian Army articles I already wrote, before tackling the six oldest regiments. Therefore a bit of time will pass before the last six are ready to be assessed. Thank you for your help and work, and with best regards, noclador (talk) 00:22, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to nominate you for Military Historian of the Year when nominations open for that. I think that will be as soon as a few weeks from now. It would be helpful if you can give me a count or articles written or improved during this calendar year. Thanks for all your hard work. Donner60 (talk) 00:28, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, that is an unexpected honor. Thank you for this suggestion. I have a list of all the articles I created and worked on, but it was a work of 2 years. In 2024 I created 33 articles so far, and expanded 100+, which I have created earlier (i.e. like this). As the first articles I wrote aren't as in depth as the latter ones, I am revising/expanding all articles now. So far I have revised/expanded 92 articles and will do another 206, then I plan to create, respectively expand, the last 6 articles, before heading to work on the army's 31 brigades. Today I revising the last of the signal and engineer units. Best regards, noclador (talk) 09:30, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I think I will mention the two year total as well. I will let you know when we need the full count after the notice appears. Donner60 (talk) 03:15, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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