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Thank you

The Original Barnstar
Awarded to Nick-D, as part of AustralianRupert's 2014 New Year Honours List, in recognition of his work as an administrator, reviewer and writer throughout 2013. Thank you and keep up the good work! AustralianRupert (talk) 21:24, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
Thank you very much. It was great working with you last year. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 06:57, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

admendment comment

"Which is a shame as I previously only issuing a strong warning or short duration block for the renewed edit warring" -- I think you're missing a word in there somewhere. NE Ent 12:35, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm doing that a lot at the moment... Thanks Nick-D (talk) 23:05, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

PL-01

Thanks for bringing those issues to my attention. I've made a few adjustments to the page, and replied on the article talk page; do you think the page is now satisfactory? --benlisquareT•C•E 00:40, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Those changes look good to me. Depending on what kind of sourcing is available, you might want to describe the Polish Army requirements this concept has been developed to meet in more detail and emphasise the early stage of this vehicle, but neither are big deals. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 01:14, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

British Empire

I became curious about when the British Empire formally became an empire. You won't find this in the British Empire article, but it is all there in an article entitled Statute in Restraint of Appeals. The short answer is 1533. Henry VIII was still on the throne. Well, I thought it was worth sharing. Cheers. Hawkeye7 (talk) 11:25, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Interesting: I would have guessed that it was some time in the late 1600s/early 1700s when the British started to get serious about having an Empire (as opposed to a bunch of colonies and overseas military bases). Nick-D (talk) 22:54, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
(talk page stalker) Very interesting, glad I saw this, thanks Hawkeye —Cliftonian (talk) 11:30, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Book Reviews

The holiday period allowed me to catch up on my reading, and I wrote some book reviews. Since you already have a couple of reviews for the January Bugle, I placed the reviews here, and you can use them when you want. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:22, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! I'll add one to the January issue and will run the other in February. Nick-D (talk) 06:55, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Oct–Dec 13 Milhist reviews

The Content Review Medal of Merit  
By order of the Military History WikiProject coordinators, for your devoted work on the WikiProject's Peer, Good Article, A-Class and Featured Article Candidate reviews for the period October–December 2013, I am delighted to award you this Content Review Medal. During this period you undertook nine reviews. Without reviewers it would be very difficult for our writers to achieve their goals of creating high quality content, so your efforts are greatly appreciated. AustralianRupert (talk) 04:14, 8 January 2014 (UTC)
Thanks very much Nick-D (talk) 06:55, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Douglas Wood

Gday Nick - purely out of interest. This episode is also covered in Rob Maylors book SAS Sniper (2010) which details SASR involvement. Haven't read it yet but its on the shelf at home and will do one day when I get the chance. All the best. Anotherclown (talk) 10:13, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I remember the government vigorously denying the story when it came out. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 10:14, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
Yeah... Anotherclown (talk) 10:26, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Congratulations!

2013 "Military historian of the Year"
Nick-D: As recognized by your peers, your contributions to the field of military history on Wikipedia over the last year have been significant and abundantly appreciated. By order of the members of the Military history WikiProject, I commend you for placing second in voting for the 2013 Military historian of the year. Keep up the stellar work. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 23:06, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
Congrats, Nick. Thanks for all you've done this year, I've really enjoyed working with you. Cheers, AustralianRupert (talk) 03:16, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
Thank you both very much, and thanks also to the people who kindly voted for me. Nick-D (talk) 06:44, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
This result has of course done nothing to allay fears of total Australian domination of the project but hey, that's life -- well done! Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 06:52, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ACR

Gday Nick. Have your cmts been resolved here? Cheers. Anotherclown (talk) 00:13, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi, No, I just left a note for Hawkeye. I wouldn't have major problems with the article being promoted in its current state though. Thanks for the reminder. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 01:04, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
Cheers. Anotherclown (talk) 01:23, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protection

Nick, would it be possible for you to semi-protect my archives? The archive bot should still be able to work that way. Thanks. - BilCat (talk) 04:13, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi Bill, I've protected User talk:BilCat/archive17 which seems to be the only one being targeted - is that OK? (I can protect others if you think it appropriate). Please let me know if you'd like your talk page semi-protected for a while as well. @Dave1185: I'd also be happy to semi-protect your talk page if you'd like. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 06:14, 12 January 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. If they strike again, then go ahead and semi my talk page and/or the archives. - BilCat (talk) 07:44, 12 January 2014 (UTC)
Will do. Nick-D (talk) 09:36, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

AN

Hi, The ANI thread was a report which ended up with the RFC so it made sense to close it off. The AN thread was a notification of the RFC with no request for any action to be taken so there was no need to close it - especially as other editors may wish to post in the discussions over whether such notifications should be left at AN. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 06:52, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Operation Mascot

The article Operation Mascot you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Operation Mascot for comments about the article. Well done! Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Sturmvogel 66 -- Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:02, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Request

Hi Nick,

As you were the admin to respond to the edit conflict on Stab-in-the-back myth, may I request that you look at the following pages as I would rather not be the one to breech the three revert rule of three more pages:

Regards EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 08:33, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi, Given that I've had a long, and entirely positive, history of interactions with yourself and I think that I've worked with Beyond My Ken I'm a not entirely uninvolved admin here so I'd rather restrict myself to acting as a third party and performing uncontroversial admin actions. I'd suggest opening talk page discussions here. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 09:05, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
Thank you for the advise, although could you confirm where "here" is? ;) EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 09:10, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
In disputes involving either of yourselves. If you think that firmer admin action is called for than what I can deliver, please request this at ANI or one of the other noticeboards. However, I'd suggest that some talk page discussions might be a better option at this point. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 09:16, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
Gotcha! EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 09:18, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
No worries. The issue in the Liverpool Blitz article appears to be to be the combination of a somewhat ambiguously written source and the complex geography of this region (in which what would be localities in most cities are regarded as separate towns). Nick-D (talk) 09:21, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

The suicide of James Stacy Adams and inquiries into the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse

In this comment I initiated Talk:302nd Military Intelligence Battalion (United States)#The suicide of James Stacy Adams and inquiries into the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse -- the final sentence of which is the question "Is there really any question that an article that comprehensively covers the battalion should neutrally cover this aspect of the battalion's history?"

If you have a concern that attempts to neutrally cover this aspect of the battalion's history is biased, could you please explain that concern there on the article's talk page?

Similarly, if you have a concern that an article about the battalion should not mention the Fay-Jones Report's inquiries into its role in the Abu Ghraib Torture and prisoner abuse scandal, could you please explain them on the article's talk page? Geo Swan (talk) 20:25, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

I'll reply on the article's talk page. Nick-D (talk) 07:12, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Books & Bytes New Years Double Issue

Books & Bytes

Volume 1 Issue 3, December/January 2013

(Sign up for monthly delivery)

Happy New Year, and welcome to a special double issue of Books & Bytes. We've included a retrospective on the changes and progress TWL has seen over the last year, the results of the survey TWL participants completed in December, some of our plans for the future, a second interview with a Wiki Love Libraries coordinator, and more. Here's to 2014 being a year of expansion and innovation for TWL!

The Wikipedia Library completed the first 6 months of its Individual Engagement grant last week. Here's where we are and what we've done:

Increased access to sources: 1500 editors signed up for 3700 free accounts, individually worth over $500,000, with usage increases of 400-600%
Deep networking: Built relationships with Credo, HighBeam, Questia, JSTOR, Cochrane, LexisNexis, EBSCO, New York Times, and OCLC
New pilot projects: Started the Wikipedia Visiting Scholar project to empower university-affiliated Wikipedia researchers
Developed community: Created portal connecting 250 newsletter recipients, 30 library members, 3 volunteer coordinators, and 2 part-time contractors
Tech scoped: Spec'd out a reference tool for linking to full-text sources and established a basis for OAuth integration
Broad outreach: Wrote a feature article for Library Journal's The Digital Shift; presenting at the American Library Association annual meeting
...Read Books & Bytes!

The Bugle: Issue XCIV, January 2014

Full front page of The Bugle
Your Military History Newsletter

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) 13:49, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Your thoughts?

I raised an issue regarding the boat arrival graph at Talk:Kevin Rudd and it got me looking for other graphs. What do you think of this and should it be updated? I can see how it's worth representing the GFC employment trend but i'm thinking it could be done in a fuller, time-larger graph with perhaps vertical lines indicating what major events took place when? Timeshift (talk) 03:26, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, a longer time series (for the Rudd/Gillard governments) would be preferable, and can be easily grabbed from the ABS data. I don't really like the idea of attributing shifts in unemployment to specific events: the impact of the GFC is obvious, but no single factor explains subsequent drop in unemployment or the slow but steady growth of unemployment over the last year or so. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 04:04, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
Agree. Timeshift (talk) 04:34, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

WW1 reparations

Hi Nick,

I noted your comment that you have read widely on this field. I am working on a rewrite of the article, and I am wondering - if you have the time and interest - if you can help on one specific issue that has me stumped.

All the sources I have consulted agree that the initial reparation figure was established at 132 billion marks divided into a series of three bonds (A, B, and C), with the C bonds basically being written off. The following source notes that the Dawes Plan essentially ignored the whole issue (link) and by the time all the sources get to the Young Plan, they have dropped the subject of the bonds and establish that the plan lowered reps to 112 billion.

I have a feeling that, when I eventually nominate the article for GA and eventually FA, that this will stand out like a sore thumb and be brought up. Thus far, I have not been able to find anything that explains how the A, B, and C Bonds relate to the Young Plan or if they were dropped and replaced by the plan (which, it would seem, in fact make it an increase over the original payment plan rather than a decrease). During your studies, have you come across anything that could shed light on this?

Regards EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 13:16, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi, I'm afraid that I'm not familiar with the details of the reparations arrangements: what I've read has mainly been around the negotiations at the end of the war and the results of the reparations in the 1920s and 30s. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 08:37, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
Okay, no probs. :) EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 00:52, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but IIRC Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, and also The Pity of War and War of the World both by Ferguson, has some interesting and groundbreaking stuff on reps, Tooze talks about the bond aspect as does Ferguson. Dont have them to hand as my library is in storage at mo. Recent move. Hope that helps, if you have not already sorted it. Cheers Irondome (talk) 22:11, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
Is Ferguson a reliable source? His recent writings have somewhat dented his credibility as an objective historian IMO (I read the Pity of War years ago and was mildly impressed by it though). Nick-D (talk) 08:40, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
I have been re reading his bio again, and he has gone a bit off the rails lately, but I still think he is considered reliable amongst his peers, though with a large tablespoon of "controversial". He reminds of a ring-wing AJP Taylor, bit of an iconoclast, likes to shock. His economic analysis on bonds looks very interesting though, and Tooze is seriously cool on the German economy. I found War of the World a big letdown. Not read his most recent stuff. Irondome (talk) 14:23, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
Yeah, that's probably a fair description. I was also really underwealmed by War of the World when I read it, and found out later when researching the Japanese prisoners of war in World War II article that a his material on Japanese POWs was a lightly paraphrased version of what another historian had written (he had fully attributed her in the notes so it wasn't plagerism, but it was a pretty lazy thing for such a high-profile historian to do). Nick-D (talk) 09:54, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Mentorship Question

I have noted two editors busily removing content I wrote in 2007, alleging a copy violation with a paper written in 2008. Eg [1] and [2] am I currently muzzled from pointing this out? It seems that part of that paper may have used material I originally wrote on Wikipedia not the other way round.Wee Curry Monster talk 00:44, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi, The material in question seems to be the second paragraph, which isn't in "your" November 2007 wording. Did you add this at a later stage? I agree that the first paragraph looks OK (@Diannaa: you might want to look in on this conversation). Regards, Nick-D (talk) 08:32, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
User:Wee Curry Monster: Sorry for not noticing this conversation earlier; I never received the expected notification. The copyright content that was removed was added in 2012 with this edit. A small amount of this material ("Jewett had earlier crossed the line between privateer and pirate after taking the Portuguese ship Carlota as a prize") was actually present in our article in 2007 like you say, and did not have to be removed. Sorry for the mistake. -- Diannaa (talk) 04:13, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Formal mediation has been requested

The Mediation Committee has received a request for formal mediation of the dispute relating to "HITLER's ROLE IN THE "FINAL SOLUTION"". As an editor concerned in this dispute, you are invited to participate in the mediation. Mediation is a voluntary process which resolves a dispute over article content by facilitation, consensus-building, and compromise among the involved editors. After reviewing the request page, the formal mediation policy, and the guide to formal mediation, please indicate in the "party agreement" section whether you agree to participate. Because requests must be responded to by the Mediation Committee within seven days, please respond to the request by 1 February 2014.

Discussion relating to the mediation request is welcome at the case talk page. Thank you.
Message delivered by MediationBot (talk) on behalf of the Mediation Committee. 08:05, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Move like this

I liked your move like this, - one link goes to "awesomely weird", --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:14, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Gerda. Nick-D (talk) 08:57, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
On the 28th: a blue duck attacks the German Main page, right now, - a homage, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:18, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

U.S. National Museum of Naval Aviation photos

Hi, I replied on my page. Cheers, Cobatfor (talk) 14:16, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Weird edit to World War II

Hi Nick-D,

I don't understand this, but it looks like some weird find-replace event happened when you made this edit to World War II, as you can see from the diff. I've fixed it, but thought I should let you know in case you've got some kind of virus or malicious script or whatever.

Cheers, Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 03:22, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi Adrian, Thanks a lot for catching and fixing that. It was the fault of this Google Chrome extension I installed yesterday which is meant to tone down click bait headlines on websites - clearly it's much too enthusiastic! I've just uninstalled it. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 05:01, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
Ha, lucky that got caught before it did any more damage! Would've been great if it changed "Scientific Reasons" in someone else's talk page comment to "Vaguely Science-y Reasons". Neat idea though. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 06:18, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
I had high hopes for the extension, but it's clearly not Wikipedia-compliant ;) Nick-D (talk) 06:23, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Hello Mentor

Can I ask you look over User:Wee Curry Monster/sandbox and comment. Wee Curry Monster talk 23:02, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

That looks generally good to me, and volunteering for a 1RR restriction is a good idea. However, I'd suggest that the statement should cover the editing you intend to do if the ban were lifted: I'd suggest that you start small and in uncontroversial areas. It would also be best to not use the word "appeal" as you're actually asking for the ban to be lifted rather than nullified, and to give some examples of your recent editing. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 01:08, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
Done, would you like to look over it again? BTW saw you'd edited the Warrior article, if you want to know anything let me know (I used to command one). Wee Curry Monster talk 10:11, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
BTW the link to the photo you removed was the WRAP2 UOR fit for Op Telic, the latest configuration for Op Herrick is very different. I think the WRAP2 fit has been removed from service. It certainly isn't the latest fit as claimed. Wee Curry Monster talk 10:15, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
That statement looks good: I've just replaced an instance of "appeal", but please feel free to change it back if you prefer. Re: Warrior, I had a look at that article via your editing history, and in my experience statements referenced to random photos are generally wrong. There seems to be rapid movement in how AFVs are configured at the moment, which is quite interesting. Nick-D (talk) 10:24, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
The main driving force has been what is known in the UK as Urgent Operational Requirements. The advantage of a UOR is that is can be rapidly introduced into service with the full qualification process being followed; typically less than a year. Warriors have seen a range of armoured fits based on the original system for mounting Chobham armour developed for Gulf War 1. Its a mixed blessing, the original fit was developed in 3 months and has its flaws but its soldiered on for nearly 15 years in various forms. The WCSP upgrade should fix some of those problems as its intended to have a modular armour fit built in. What a lot of people don't realise about UOR, is because they don't go through the qualification process they often don't get included in what is referred to as the core fit for the vehicle. When they get back the kit is stripped off and thrown away. In addition, because of the rush the kit often has flaws, for example it won't survive the full temperature range that the vehicle is intended to operate in or it uses commercial components that don't stand up well to the rigours of service life. The UOR air conditioning on Warrior for example is notorious for breaking down. Wee Curry Monster talk 10:37, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Launched it at WP:AN, wondered if as mentor you could make a neutral comment if you think appropriate? Wee Curry Monster talk 10:43, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Done. I received this surreal edit conflict for my trouble ;) Nick-D (talk) 10:58, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
Thank you, there is now a fairly surreal personal attack in the WP:AN thread against you. You may find this diff of relevance [3] from [4]. You might recognise one of the editors who is following. I take it, from previous experience, it is best to simply ignore this from my perspective? Regards, Wee Curry Monster talk 21:20, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Petrillo Music Shell and Chicago Skyline

Hi there! I found what I think is a good secondary usage for this image. See what you think? Adam Cuerden (talk) 18:30, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Hello, Nick-D. You have new messages at Jim Sweeney's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Thank you

Thank you for your comments at WP:AN. I will try and prove the community's confidence in me by editing in a productive manner and avoid entering into conflict with other editors as in the past. You may be interested to note I have just launched the article Esteban Mestivier as I promised and I would welcome your input if you have a moment. Wee Curry Monster talk 21:52, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

WW II

I'm not sure why you just reverted the changes I made. I removed the insignia images you had an issue with. Also, there were text changes ranging form grammar corrections, to adding a paragraph on NAZI war crimes in Poland, and a mention of the 1932 German Election. These changes are not radical. So, I ask that you revert to the compromise edit, I just posted.

Please explain why you object to the latest compromise edit? --Factor01 (talk) 09:35, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

I've just done so on the talk page. Given that the WW2 article is among Wikipedia's highest-profile, it's not sensible to make significant changes without agreement on the content through talk page discussions. Nick-D (talk) 09:38, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
Please notice that the new image captions are shorter, and more to the point on the previous edit. Also, grammar and wording was changed in some paragraphs to be more clear. Please do not blindly revert back, and take time to review the changes! I think the compromise version is legitimate and includes your earlier recommendations. --Factor01 (talk) 09:47, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
@Factor01: Please discuss your changes first! This is a ridiculously high profile article, and can't sensibly be maintained and improved through "hot" editing as you propose. Please make a case for your changes on the talk page so that other editors can consider them, per the norms of working on this article. There's lots of scope to improve the article, but back-and-fro editing isn't sensible in this context. Nick-D (talk) 09:50, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
Please review now; I removed the 1932 election note. But, I did keep the Poland atrocities paragraph, and kept the new shorter image descriptions, and grammar corrections. Please review not just revert. --Factor01 (talk) 09:56, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
Why don't you justify the material you want to add as requested on the talk page You haven't even bothered to provide citations! Nick-D (talk) 10:01, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
Just added an explanation on the WW II Talk page. --Factor01 (talk) 10:12, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
Please read Talk page comment. --Factor01 (talk) 10:19, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
Ok, so where can I submit the material for review once I have the references? --Factor01 (talk) 10:46, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
Please post it (including the references) on the article's talk page and ask for feedback. There are many examples of previous such discussions in the archives for the talk page which may be helpful. Nick-D (talk) 10:49, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Quality of the WWII Article; only 57% reader rating

I'd like to raise a significant issue regarding the WWII article. Please, I hope you get it… I hope you really get it.

The sad reality is that the much visited WWII article sucks, and you are the main administrator of it. It's not simply my opinion, look at the reader feed back that's only at 57% approval rating, for an article regarding one of the most important events in human history. Lets look at some of the comments:


*96.49.155.27 I 1 year ago | Details | This article doesn't tell the harrasing the Japenese have done to the Chinese! It is largely in the Japanese's favour! So Biased!

*71.31.122.130 | 1 year ago | Details | How, why, where, who started it; make it more clear for people to read easier.

*101.172.255.233 | 6 months ago | Details | it needs more pictures

*98.200.49.217 | 1 year ago | Details | this article needs a real timeline

*71.101.43.139 | 7 months ago | Details | more pictures :)

*67.252.155.76 | 8 months ago | Details | This page needs more about the soldier's who fought in the war.

*81.153.90.55 | 11 months ago | Details | things about women and children during the war

*174.75.126.227 | 1 year ago | Details | Who are the Big Four?

*68.119.136.115 | 1 year ago | Details | talk about how the children of the war were affected

*182.68.158.51 | 1 year ago | Details Role of India in WW2

*86.141.217.60 | 11 months ago | Details | More pictures/diagrams needed for occupation section.


So, when I added photos of various, military insignia, troops and wrote insightful photo captions to help and illustrate the events better; you show up and complain! Yet, clearly the readers feel that things are really lacking in this article. Well, it's on you MATE… wake up. You are the big boss in charge, that's screwing it up. --Factor01 (talk) 16:19, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

the old complaints are not very useful. I think Nick-D is doing a fine job here. However, I fear that Factor01 is so new here that he misunderstands the article and the proper role of editors. Please keep in mind that the article was largely written years ago and that since 2009 editors have been doing minor improvements. Rjensen (talk) 16:45, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
I may be new, but I have a valid point. All anyone has to do, is compare the WWI article with WWII; to notice that this text is stunted in depth (only crudely listing the order of military engagements), and failing to catch the readers attention by showing the reality and consequences of this conflict. The article is so dry and one dimensional (as one reader comment points out), you lose perspective on who were the aggressors. But, that's just what some people might want; to blur the perspective of what really happened and turn WWII victims and aggressors into an indistinguishable mess.By the way, those "old" reader comments still have not been addressed. --Factor01 (talk) 21:41, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
In fact the old complaints are poorly founded. there is no pro-Japanese bias. Women and children, and India, are all very well covered in companion articles. Likewise the issue of who started the war. Pictures do pose a problem because of copyright issues. Rjensen (talk) 23:28, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
I'm not the "big boss in charge of the article", and if you're so clueless about how Wikipedia works or the history of the WW2 article you really should stop trying to take the moral high ground. If you have concrete proposals to improve the article, please start discussions of them on the article's talk page rather than grandstand like you're doing here. Nick-D (talk) 09:22, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
(talk page stalker)As noted, nobody owns or "bosses" any page. Secondly, 'Reader Feedback' is...extremely unuseful because, as noted, most of those comments are from those who would prefer to have the article slanted to a particular point of view. - The Bushranger One ping only 11:09, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Revised photo submission; review

Hello Nick-D, please review the revised photo submissions on the talk page. They include an image of the Enigma machine for the Advances in technology and warfare (mentioned multiple times in the text), and an image of the civilians during the Battle of Leningrad, to replace the Soviet POWs photo in the Axis attack on the USSR (1941) section; in this case I think the image is a better choose highlighting the plight of the civilians during actual combat, without being too graphic. --Factor01 (talk) 16:28, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

This wiki kitten wants to commend you on getting Operation Kita to the front page. Salute!

Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 19:55, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks a lot Nick-D (talk) 11:28, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Congratulations!

 The Military History A-Class Medal with Swords 
On behalf of the coordinators of the Military History WikiProject, I'm pleased to award you the A-Class Medal with Swords for your work on No. 38 Squadron RAAF, Operation Tungsten, and Operation Mascot. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 21:10, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Thanks Ian Nick-D (talk) 07:07, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

mail

gday i am just composing now - sending soon satusuro 08:12, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Op. Tungsten

Hi Nick. I've just added a few bits to the Operation Tungsten article, regarding the Norwegian contribution to the operation. Manxruler (talk) 18:29, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks a lot - that's really interesting material. I had noticed that none of the sources identified any civilian casualties, and it's good to have confirmation that there were none. Nick-D (talk) 09:29, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
Yeah, the bombing was quite precise. Good job on the article, looking forward to seeing more in the future. I'll have a look at Mascot etc., and see if there is anything worthwhile I can add from the Norwegian perspective of things. Manxruler (talk) 09:45, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
That would be great. I should get round to doing an article on the Operation Goodwood attacks in August 1944 sometime soon. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 09:48, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Somali Civil War

Thanks for swapping out that TF Ranger pic - was on my lsit of things to do. Buckshot06 (talk) 03:43, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

No worries. The "new" photo isn't wonderful, but it's the best of the uninspiring bunch available through Commons Nick-D (talk) 03:44, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

Unit disbandments

Hi Nick, was wondering when you might be able to head back to the AWM for another look-see at that unpublished monograph on wartime RAAF units. In particular I was after the disbandment date for Care & Maintenance Unit (CMU) Benalla, the former No. 11 EFTS. Units states that it disposed of all its aircraft in October 1948 but doesn't give an actual dissolution date -- I figure that must've been very soon after but nice to confirm if possible... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 03:46, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Sure, but it probably won't be for a week or two. Nick-D (talk) 10:22, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Dattatreya Laxman Patwardhan

Hi:

This article was recently (speedily) deleted. I was wondering if I could get the original content of the page. Please note that I am not asking you to undelete it - yet.

Some background. I added this page for my dad (who is now 87) with the claim that DLP was the first Indian pilot. I explained the Wikipedia rules (as I understood them) to him, and he collected the references needed to push it from being a stub. It was originally proposed for deletion because supporters of the official Indian history claimed that there was no evidence that such a person ever existed. I was able to verify that there was evidence of DLP's existence, and that he was given an award for service in the RAF. I dont think DLP is family, although the last name is the same.

I note also that my original Wikipedia userid (niketkp) has gone into some kind of limbo status, and I am not able to log in to it, although a talk page for it still exists.

Niket Patwardhan wikipedia@niket.net

97.182.190.154 (talk) 17:46, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Dang! After I put this in, my userid came back alive.

Niketkp (talk) 17:55, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

No, you can't have the content of a blatant hoax you recreated after it was initially deleted in 2007 so that you can recreate it again. Nick-D (talk) 22:16, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Sanity Check Please

Could you please review Talk:Falkland Islands#Notes section, Talk:Falkland Islands sovereignty dispute#Things need to be sourced, content has to neutrally describe the conflict without dismissing one side over the other. and Talk:David Jewett#November 6th?

Couple of questions.

1. Am I being over sensitive as it appears to me my edits are being singled out for extra scrutiny and it seems to criticise by speculation?
2. Am I repeating any of the mistakes I made in the past? I'm trying to limit my replies and to ignore obvious baiting.

Just for info, I've started work on Juan Pinedo and was wondering if you were aware of anyone in Milhist familiar with the Argentine civil wars in the 19th Century and the Argentine-Brazil War. Regards, Wee Curry Monster talk 18:13, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

@Wee Curry Monster: The Jewett discussion looks fine, but I think that you're being overly defensive (and, as a result, a bit prickly) in the other discussions. I don't think that your posts and edits are being given greater scrutiny, though you should obviously expect some of this for the next little while given that you're coming off a topic ban. I hope that's helpful. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 00:12, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Require administer for discussion in talk page of Nanking Massacre

I see you are an administrator. Can you administer the discussion of Nanking Massacre in its talk page? This discussion is totally mess. I hope there is at least two administrator to administer it for fair.
It is really a mess and endless discussion if no administrator to manage it. I hope at least two administrator to manage this. There will be no result to make everyone satisfy. I hope there is a vote which is managed by administrator. Otherwise, this discussion will be endless. Everyone is wasting their time. This discussion started from section "I see a significant change of the figure about people killed in this Massacre". Miracle dream (talk) 23:42, 22 February 2014‎

Hello, As the talk page discussion appears to have descended into an exchange of abusive posts there doesn't seem much prospect for a vote (and no other editors appear to have agreed to your suggestion that this is a good way forward). I'd suggest making use of the dispute resolution process by asking for uninvolved editors to join the discussion through neutrally-worded posts on relevant discussion pages. Regards Nick-D (talk) 10:33, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
OK,I will strike some of my words which does not obey the rule of wiki. I apologize for my rude words.I am very sorry for that. By the way,I still worried about another thing. Kamakatsu claim he is not Banzaiblitz. Now Kamakatsu was proved as another ID (sock puppet) of Banzaiblitz and we know Banzaiblitz has multiple ID. It means someone can register a new ID to act another editor. I think it may be a problem to make discussion more complicated Miracle dream (talk)
If you're concerned that someone is using multiple accounts, please report this at WP:SPI. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 21:47, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue XCV, February 2014

Full front page of The Bugle
Your Military History Newsletter

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) 23:55, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Help with formatting please?

Hi, I noticed that you removed "headings" in the AfD where we're participating, and that's ok with me. What I tried to do is put 2 lines to visually divide the discussion from the rest of the text (e.g.: the notes). Do you know if it's possible to draw a "line" in the way I intended? If so an you please explain me how-to? Thanks, DPdH (talk) 07:21, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi, You can add lines by adding four or more dashes. For instance:
However, this kind of mark-up isn't really very useful in AfDs: simply posting Question (or similar) at the start of your post will have the desired effect. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 07:35, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
Thanks a lot for the tips. Regards, DPdH (talk) 08:44, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Latest Project

[5] Latest work. I translated the es.wikipedia article into English and expanded the Falklands Section with my own references, I've also had help from an old wiki-buddy User:DagosNavy. I've never translated an article before and am slightly concerned that though well sourced the es.wikipedia article lacks inline citations. I've managed to confirm some of the material but am concerned there are still gaps. Any ideas of where to ask for help on some of the Spanish language sources, in the UK they're not easy to find. Wee Curry Monster talk 22:59, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Not sure to be honest - I'm pretty much monolingual. The folks at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spain might be able to help. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 06:29, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Tanks in the Australian Army

Gday Nick - any plans to incorporate User:Nick-D/Drafts3 into Tanks in the Australian Army which has recently been created? Think what you have there looks like it would be an improvement. All the best. Anotherclown (talk) 13:42, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Yep, that's on my to-do list for the weekend :) Nick-D (talk) 21:58, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Books & Bytes, Issue 4

Books and Bytes

Volume 1, Issue 4, February 2014

News for February from your Wikipedia Library.

Donations drive: news on TWL's partnership efforts with publishers

Open Access: Feature from Ocaasi on the intersection of the library and the open access movement

American Library Association Midwinter Conference: TWL attended this year in Philadelphia

Royal Society Opens Access To Journals: The UK's venerable Royal Society will give the public (and Wikipedians) full access to two of their journal titles for two days on March 4th and 5th

Going Global: TWL starts work on pilot projects in other language Wikipedias

Read the full newsletter


MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:59, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

New Article

Still working on Pinedo but in the mean time turned out Antonina Roxa, got plans to do articles on Lt.Smith, Lt.Lowcay and Lt.Tyssen next. As usual any feedback is welcomed. Wee Curry Monster talk 19:41, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

That looks like nice work (and its good to see an article acknowledging the role women played in this frontier society). Nick-D (talk) 10:06, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
Thanks Nick, seems not to be appreciated by everyone, just been nominated for deletion. Wee Curry Monster talk 21:13, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Taejon Christian International School

I work at Taejon Christian International School (TCIS) in the Admissions Office. There used to be a Wikipedia article about TCIS, but it was deleted for being spam or having vicious content or something. I don't know what was on the page and who put it there, but we would very much like to have an appropriate Wikipedia page. How do I go about doing that? FYI: Our website is www.tcis.or.kr

Please advise. Thank you, Barb Smith Jang

Smithjang (talk) 00:53, 4 March 2014 (UTC)Smithjang

Hello, Various versions of that article seems to have been deleted a few times in 2007 and 2008 for being spamy and containing personal attacks. However, if you have a relationship with this school you shouldn't be writing encyclopaedia articles about it: please see WP:COI. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 10:34, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Timor Leste should come first

I do not believe we should be using the name East Timor. I have made a note on the Timor Leste talk page. The issue has not been discussed for more than a year, it looks like. ImproveByQuestioning (talk) 20:41, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

RE: Canberra Class Ships

I do acknowledge the fact that she is still called Nuship Canberra however she is due to be commissioned soon so I was writing that from a future perspective. Furthermore the ADF is a high technology force. It is true that some of its equipment it approaching obsolescence however it remains technologically advanced. Also the reference is out of date being from 2005. Since then new aircraft, ships, vehicles and radars have been acquired (I.E: C-Ram system for the Army, Super Hornets for the air force and new patrol boats and ASMD upgrades for the navy.). Also some of stuff you deleted namely the sentence stating that two of the minesweepers were acting as patrol boats were not written by me. I do admit that I said 57 ships, that is because I was including vessels such as ADV Ocean Shield. I have no issue with your edits regarding non-commissioned vessels and thank you for clarifying that however I do, with your permission intent to put back the edit regarding the Canberra and will leave a note saying it is undergoing sea trials. Finally I would like to point out that my edits were not dubious as you claimed them to be and were perhaps simply mis-understood.


Please Respond, Mft2000 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mft2000 (talk • contribs) 08:00, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

@Mft2000: I agree that the ADF article needs to be updated, but the ADF still has lots of ageing equipment (the F/A-18s and Adelaide class frigates for example), so labelling it as being simply a "high technology" force is not accurate. Please don't re-add Canberra: she's not in service and may not have even been formally accepted by the RAN yet. Nick-D (talk) 08:03, 11 March 2014 (UTC)


As I did say I would put a note regarding sea-trials next to it but I have no wish to get into what could be called an "editing war" despite the fact that the ship has been built and it is a mere technicality. However when she is commissioned and accepted into the navy I will add items regarding the Canberra. Also with regards to the capabilities of the collins despite the fact that it has a plethora of maintenance and crew problems it is very good in the hunter-killer role please see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collins_class#Operational_history .

Mft2000 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mft2000 (talk • contribs) 08:10, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Tungsten

Thank you for your thanks (now, if you thank me for thanking you for your thanks, we'll really be in trouble!) Xyl 54 (talk) 23:07, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Sorry about that

I am sorry to offend you. I said "I guess" and use word "may". Also I didn't say you are racist. I just said you may dislike "Chinese government". Maybe I don't know the definition of "racist" clearly. I am afraid I may offend you so that I didn't leave that message in public talk page. Whatever, I am sorry about that. Can you accept my apology？ Now I just want to find a neutral way to deal with the words. - Miracle dream.

You just got an admin to swear after implying he was racist, a low form of argument. I think a good suggestion would be to immediately disengage with Nick-D, and the article(s) concerned, for at least 24 hours. Timeshift (talk) 06:31, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
Sorry, I think my word is just about someone dislike something. I never wrote the word "racist". I didn't know my word may infer racist problem. I guess I misunderstand the word what I wrote.OK, I disengage you 24 hours and I am sorry about that but can we continue this discussion after this 24 hours. I know I offend you but I think it is necessary to deal with this discussion. Also, I am sorry and I hope you can accept my apology. Miracle dream
I loathe to re-add what Nick-D removed, but you said "I guess you may dislike Chinese, Chinese government or whatever". That implies Nick-D is a racist. And what? You think its necessary for this discussion to offend him?! Timeshift (talk) 06:45, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
You said that "I guess you may dislike Chinese, Chinese government or whatever". That's a direct accusation of me being racist, and your argument that you didn't mean this is totally unconvincing given how clear the wording is. In the unlikely event that your English language skills are really so bad that you accidentally post extreme abuse such as this you really shouldn't be editing the English language Wikipedia. Please don't post on my talk page again. Nick-D (talk) 06:48, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Book Reviews

Just a note that I still have book reviews at User:Hawkeye7/Book Reviews. Hawkeye7 (talk) 00:03, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Excellent! I'll add the first two reviews to the upcoming edition. I agree with your views on Britain's War Machine: it's a good book in parts and a useful corrective to the notion that Britain took a big risk in deciding to fight on in May 1940, but was rather underwhelming overall. Nick-D (talk) 01:44, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Copyedit review

User:Wee Curry Monster/José María Pinedo Would appreciate you casting an eye over it before I publish in mainspace. Regards, Wee Curry Monster talk 12:33, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

That looks pretty good, but are you confident that The Malvinas, the South Georgias, and the South Sandwich Islands, the conflict with Britain meets the criteria at WP:HISTRS? The publisher doesn't seem to have expertise in editing and publishing works of history. Nick-D (talk) 07:32, 18 March 2014 (UTC)
That particular work is one I use with some caution. Some 127,000 copies were printed and distributed free to Universities in 1982 and it is very much a propaganda exercise. That said Destefani is a well known historian, responsible for numerous works on the history of the Argentine navy and the work does have the hallmark of a serious historian; he does not give much truck to the Rivero myth for example. I believe it meets the criteria WP:HISTRS and I previously asked for it to be reviewed at WP:RSN. Wee Curry Monster talk 08:33, 18 March 2014 (UTC)
Is there a source that you can use for this which doesn't have those issues attached to it? Regards, Nick-D (talk) 10:03, 18 March 2014 (UTC)
Not really, all sources are likely to have a similar issue due to the influence of the Revisionista movement in Argentine history. See [6] for some examples. The Revisionista movement "re-examines" history and to some extent rewrites in line with Peronist ideology (and to be frank aren't above making stuff up on occasion or alternatively creatively interpreting facts and make leaps of assumption on that basis). Personally I'd tend to favour Destefani's account as he belongs to the more traditional approach to historical research. I also have access to the trial's records from the Argentine national archive and they corroborate Destefani's description. Wee Curry Monster talk 11:25, 18 March 2014 (UTC)
OK. I appreciate that the historiography on Argentina often isn't of the greatest quality. Nick-D (talk) 10:20, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Huh? Canberra class

Why do you think I blatantly copy-pasted. Could you please provide an example or two of some text you feel is unreasonably copied? I don't think I did anything wrong, but can be educated with an example or two. Quoting from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Plagiarism "Here it should be borne in mind that an occasional sentence in an article that bears a recognizable similarity to a sentence in a cited source is not generally a cause for concern.". Also, quoting again "If you find an example of plagiarism, where an editor has copied text, media, or figures, into Wikipedia without proper attribution, contact the editor responsible, point them to this guideline and ask them to add attribution. Given that attribution errors may be inadvertent, intentional plagiarism should not be presumed in the absence of strong evidence.... Remember to start with the assumption of good faith."

Kitplane01 (talk) 23:46, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) I was the first person to revert the edits as a copyright violation. I've replicated the primary offender here (If this is wrong, Nick-D, please delete my reply and WP:TROUT me). Below is a block of text from the original newspaper article (top), and your addition to the article. I've bolded the differences.
Newspaper:
Between the light vehicle and heavy vehicle decks are the accommodation, recreation and living spaces as well as the 40-bed hospital fitted with two operating theatres, intensive care unit and X-ray room as well as mess decks, galleys and office spaces. There are two internet cafes and two gyms and all recreation areas are equipped with satellite TV, internet and projectors and CCTV so they can double as briefing rooms. The state-of-the-art central galley is huge and includes a bakery section to bake bread for 1500 people a day. Up to 25 chefs will work around the clock to dish up a maximum of 6000 meals a day using equipment that can cook 400 chicken breasts at once as well as enough meat sauce to feed 300 people.
Article:
Each ship has accommodation, recreation and living spaces as well as the 40-bed hospital fitted with two operating theatres, intensive care unit and X-ray room as well as mess decks, galleys and office spaces. There are two internet cafes and two gyms and all recreation areas are equipped with satellite TV, internet and projectors and CCTV so they can double as briefing rooms. The state-of-the-art central galley is huge and includes a bakery section to bake bread for 1500 people a day. Up to 25 chefs will work around the clock to dish up a maximum of 6000 meals a day using equipment that can cook 400 chicken breasts at once as well as enough meat sauce to feed 300 people.
That's an entire paragraph (my guesstimate is about a 10th of the newspaper text) word-for-word identical. Another example (again, differences bolded).
Newspaper:
Vehicles can be moved between decks via a ramp on the port (left) side or a light vehicle elevator. There are also two aircraft elevators, two personnel elevators, an ammunition elevator and a hospital elevator running between the decks.
Article:
Vehicles can be moved between decks via a ramp on the port (left) side or a light vehicle elevator. There are also two aircraft elevators, two personnel elevators, an ammunition elevator and a hospital elevator running between the decks.
Aside from the direct copying of large chunks of a copyrighted source, some of the information you added is repeated elsewhere, such as the fact about the aircraft lifts, down in the aviation section, or the case of the line you added about four 24m landing craft fitting in the well deck, right in front of a line about the four LCM-1E craft which will typically fit in this area (funnily enough, just under 24m long). Other pieces are water-is-wet kind of statements (yes, ships have accommodation, which isn't really worth mentioning in an article unless you go into detail about it, ie layout, configuration, bodies-per-compartment, officers vs sailors vs soldiers), or incredibly trivial (at least until meat-sauce production becomes a standard measure of comparison for warships). -- saberwyn 09:36, 19 March 2014 (UTC)
Thanks saberwyn - those were also my concerns with the material here. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 10:04, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

OK. Thanks. Please consider me contrite and educated. Kitplane01 (talk) 01:22, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Operation Flavius/archive1

Hi Nick, courtesy pointer, since you mentioned you might want to pick up some of your commentary form the ACR at FAC. I'm looking at adding a map or two; if you have any other queries left over, I'd be more than happy to chat with you about them at the FAC. Best, HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:43, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the note Nick-D (talk) 07:06, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Main Page appearance: Operation Tungsten

This is a note to let the main editors of Operation Tungsten know that the article will be appearing as today's featured article on April 3, 2014. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page. If you prefer that the article appear as TFA on a different date, or not at present, please ask Bencherlite (talk · contribs). You can view the TFA blurb at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/April 3, 2014. If it needs tweaking, or if it needs rewording to match improvements to the article between now and its main page appearance, please edit it, following the instructions at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/instructions. The blurb as it stands now is below:

A Fleet Air Arm crewman chalks a message for Tirpitz on a bomb

Operation Tungsten was a World War II air raid by the Royal Navy against the German battleship Tirpitz. The operation sought to damage or destroy Tirpitz at her base in Kaafjord in the far north of Norway before she could become fully operational again following a period of repairs, as it was feared that she would then attack convoys carrying supplies to the Soviet Union. After four months of training and preparations, the British Home Fleet sailed on 30 March 1944 and aircraft launched from five aircraft carriers struck Kaafjord on 3 April (bomb preparations pictured). The raid achieved surprise, with the British aircraft meeting little opposition. Fifteen bombs hit the battleship, and strafing by fighter aircraft inflicted heavy casualties on her gun crews. Four British aircraft and nine airmen were lost during the operation. The damage inflicted during the attack was not sufficient to sink or disable Tirpitz, but 122 members of her crew were killed and 316 wounded. The British conducted further carrier raids against Tirpitz between April and August 1944, but none were successful. Tirpitz was eventually disabled and then sunk by Royal Air Force heavy bombers in late 1944. (Full article...)

UcuchaBot (talk) 23:01, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

precious again --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:50, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

I was wondering why I was seeing some vandalism on Tirpitz today, then I noticed today's main page ;) Great work on the article, Nick. Parsecboy (talk) 18:54, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue XCVI, March 2014

Full front page of The Bugle
Your Military History Newsletter

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) 12:37, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Operation Goodwood

I've started work on the Illustrious-class carrier articles and am having issues finding information on Goodwood, particularly relating to aircraft losses. McCart says only two Seafires were lost by Indomitable on the first attack and gives no other losses. The Osprey book on RN Fighter Aces doesn't mention those but lists the CO of 1840 Squadron shot down on 24 August when McCart says that no Hellcats even flew. Do you know of any sources that might help to resolve the contradiction? --Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 22:09, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

I'll check my sources and get back to you on this. The British loses in Goodwood were reasonably heavy, especially in comparison to the remarkably low loses during Operations Tungsten and Mascot. Nick-D (talk) 09:41, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Proposal for special forces inclusion

My proposal is simple. Include the units used in military ops/campaigns.Lugnuthemvar (talk) 10:32, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Do we need to discuss this over multiple talk pages? Wikipedia content needs to be supported by reliable sources, so please provide sources that support classifying the units in question as military special forces units. Nick-D (talk) 10:37, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

GA status

Hi there. Kierzek told me you could review articles for GA status. So, if you have the time, I would appreciate if you would review my article called 1940 Field Marshal Ceremony. It is the very first article I created, and it is very good, if I may say so myself. Jonas Vinther (talk) 13:42, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Actually, a loss in translation, I believe. I said you may be available to go through the article for Jonas Vinther, if you are interested and have the time, before he puts it up for GA review. Cheers, Kierzek (talk) 19:28, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
I'm sorry Kierzek. Jonas Vinther (talk) 20:56, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
No problem, good luck. Kierzek (talk) 01:25, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
I'm a bit short of time at the moment to be honest, but will leave some comments on the article's talk page later today. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 07:46, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
That would be great, thank you so much. Best regards. Jonas Vinther (talk) 16:26, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Lincoln, Canberra & F-111 in Australian Service

Hi mate, just noticed an edit or two there... ;-) Do you happen to have ready access to Wilson's book? Mitchell Library has managed to misplace its copy and I just wanted to get page refs for the three F-111 crashes suffered by No. 1 Squadron (1979, 1986 and 1993). N.B. I can source them from Trove if need be, just prefer the one source if possible -- let me know if you get a chance...! Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 10:12, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi Ian, I'm afraid that I don't have that book and would need to travel to the NLA or ADFA to access it. Mark Lax's book on the F-111 should also have this - aside from this now being online, I just-so-happen to have written this up recently at User:Nick-D/Drafts3 with the relevant page refs :) (I'm holding off on publishing this article as the dates Lax gives for the delivery of the F-111Gs into RAAF service predates the government's surprise decision to buy the aircraft by 1-2 years for some reason! - I suspect that there was a proofing error or something here). Regards, Nick-D (talk)
Yeah, Lax could've done better in a few areas... ;-) He was the first place I looked -- he notes all the crashes but doesn't say which squadron each plane was operating with when it crashed. It's okay, I'll cite to newspapers for now and when one of us gets to Wilson (assuming he mentions the squadrons involved) I can re-cite it to one source. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 11:44, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Our mutual friend

Good call. I was considering doing the same thing myself. I decided to wait and see what they did next, but I've no qualms about your block. Very odd... Best, HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 10:32, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I was taking the same approach after they posted an odd message on my page, and when they did the same thing to you decided to act. I agree that it's rather unusual behaviour: not a genuinely new editor I suspect. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 10:34, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
Almost certainly not. Or perhaps they haven't realised that April Fool's Day has been and gone! HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 10:40, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Happy holiday

Believe you're on holiday, not a work trip. Hope it goes well!! Buckshot06 (talk) 09:02, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

I hope it goes well too. Jonas Vinther (talk) 11:45, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I was travelling for work (and it turned out to be lots of work!), but it was a lot of fun. Nick-D (talk) 22:48, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

After-vacation message

Hi mate. I noticed you are on vacation, so I wanted to leave a message to you for when you get back. I changed a bunch of stuff on the article 1940 Field Marshal Ceremony, mostly according your request via talk-comments regarding GA status. I also left a long message for you on the talk page. Cheers! Jonas Vinther (talk) 09:29, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

OK, thanks for letting me know. I'll look in when my head is back on the right side of the world, which will take another day or two. Nick-D (talk) 22:49, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Books & Bytes - Issue 5

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 5, March 2014
by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs)

  • New Visiting Scholar positions
  • TWL Branch on Arabic Wikipedia, microgrants program
  • Australian articles get a link to librarians
  • Spotlight: "7 Reasons Librarians Should Edit Wikipedia"

Read the full newsletter

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:54, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Mediterranean and Middle East theatre of World War II

Hi Nick-D, Please try to understand that the bulk of the Axis forces in North Africa were Italian, not German. Most of the bombing of Malta was done by the Italian air-force, not the German. I urge you to read trained historians like Sadkovich. Understanding Defeat: Reappraising Italy's Role in World War II Author(s): James J. Sadkovich Source: Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Jan., 1989), pp. 27-61Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/260699.

For too long now, Italian involvement in the Mediterranean has been over-shadowed by biased reporting by pseudo-historians. I can only repeat what I have said: that the bulk of the Axis forces in the Mediterranean were Italian, and NOT German.

For example, Sadkovich writes:

"Although the Italians failed to break through the Greek lines in Albania, they helped to assure victory for the twenty-nine German divisions deployed against Greece and Yugoslavia in April 1941 by pinning down fourteen Greek divisions and diverting a number of Yugoslav divisions. The Greek refusal to shorten their lines by 'retreating' on the Italian front allowed the Germans to outflank the three garrison divisions in the Metaxas Line and then scatter the three Greek and two ANZAC divisions deployed along the Aliakhmon River. In effect, the Italians had served as the anvil for the German hammer.47 It is thus simplistic to consider the Greek campaign as an Italian debacle and a brilliant German success."

The Italian Army pinned down the bulk of the Greek Army, allowing the Germans an easy victory!!!

I am sorry Nick-D, but this Wiki article is not acceptable and is inherently misleading. The Italian contribution in the Mediterranean MUST be acknowledged and portrayed realistically.— Preceding unsigned comment added by AnnalesSchool (talk • contribs) 11:43, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

That dubious argument about Greece undermines the value of the source (Greek misjudgement does not mean that the Italians were successful here, and most historians give the German forces full credit for the victory while noting that the Italian campaign was a fiasco), and the claims you've inserted about Italian forces playing the main role in the invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941 and successfully invading France in 1940 are not accurate. Please discuss this at Talk:Mediterranean and Middle East theatre of World War II and please do not edit war further. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 11:48, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
(talk page stalker) Sadkovich is hardly a neutral authority on the subject. While I agree with him that many of the earlier books on the Med and North African Theatres are heavily biased against the Italians, he goes far beyond what the available evidence can support, IMO, in his accounts of the Italian participation in those campaigns. In short, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 12:52, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Why is Sadkovich not neutral? What do you know of him? The Italian Army pinned down 14 Greek divisions. Can you give the Italians some credit? Even a little? — Preceding unsigned comment added by AnnalesSchool (talk • contribs) 14:28, 20 April 2014 (UTC) AnnalesSchool (talk) 14:57, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

So where do we go from here? This article is unduly biased against the Italians and needs correcting. If you believe that the earlier books on the Med and North African Theatres are heavily biased against the Italians, what do we do to correct the imbalance?

AnnalesSchool (talk) 14:57, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue XCVII, April 2014

Full front page of The Bugle
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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) 14:58, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Message

You and I are not friends anymore. Jonas Vinther (talk) 20:22, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

? This isn't high school. Nick-D (talk) 08:17, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Email

Hello, Nick-D. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.
@Shuggyg: Happy to discuss that on-Wiki, but the short answer is no. Nick-D (talk) 08:17, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

WWII infobox

As you have edited that page, you are welcome to participate in a discussion that is taking place at Template_talk:WW2InfoBox#Allies. Thank you. walk victor falk talk 03:18, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for notifying me of that discussion. Nick-D (talk) 08:18, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Disagreement over handling of disagreements between administrators

The discussion at User talk:Buckshot06 has moved away from Buckshot06, and onto disagreement between you and me about the way I handled the situation, so perhaps it would be better to move away from User talk:Buckshot06. The fact that you are sop vehement in your opposition to what I did makes it clear that that the unblock I made was not as uncontroversial as I thought at the time, so no doubt it would have been better to have consulted Buckshot06 about it. However, I honestly cannot see how what I wrote comes across to you as "insulting", so perhaps you can help me by explaining what about my tone seems that way to you. Also, I find it difficult to understand your contention that when one administrator disagrees with another one, he or she has no right to do what you call "lecturing" the other. Surely, if you think I have made a mistake, it is right for you to explain to me why you think that, and tell me what you think was wrong with what I have done. Indeed, that is exactly what you have done: what do you see as the fundamental difference which makes my telling Buckshot06 what I think he/she did wrong unacceptable, and your telling me what you think I did wrong acceptable? This is a sincere, good faith, request for clarification: I honestly don't know what you see as the essential difference. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 10:58, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi James, What I just posted on Buckshot's talk page in response to your question there was that the phrasing of the entire post was unfortunate IMO: you declared Buckshot to be wrong and gave them lots of free advice. I generally try to take a "hey, I think that you may have goofed" or "what do you think about this development"-type approach when discussing possible mistakes with other admins, and appreciate it when other admins take the same approach with me when they think that I might have messed up. In my experience, it's generally best to assume that an admin who appears to have made an error will be keen to correct or explain their action, and to phrase comments about the issue in that light. I hope that's helpful (and I, of course, mess up pretty frequently). Cheers, Nick-D (talk) 11:02, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I see that while I was drafting that message, you posted an answer to me on Buckshot06's talk page. Unfortunately, I am none the wiser. Probably you and I come from very different cultural backgrounds, because I would see "I think that you may have goofed" as a deliberate attempt to be contemptuous. I also don't understand what is wrong with giving "free advice": surely giving advice when one thinks someone else has made a mistake is a good thing? And as for "you declared Buckshot to be wrong", that is exactly what you did to me. Unfortunately, there seems to be a serious failure to communicate between the two of us. I still don't have any idea what about my tone you saw as insulting. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk)
Postscript to the above, in light of the additional sentence that you added in the version of your message that you have posted on this page. Yes, I fully agree that " it's generally best to assume that an admin who appears to have made an error will be keen to correct or explain their action", and in 99% of cases where I suggest to another admin that I think he/she has made a mistake, I totally take that line. However, I thought when I wrote my original message to Buckshot06, and still think now, that in light of the history I saw, I was really taking assumption of good faith as far as I reasonably could. I assumed that the block had been a good faith mistake (and I still see that as the best possible interpretation), and what I wrote was based on that starting point. I had not investigated the relevant history as far as I now have, as you will see if you read my long post on this case on my talk page. However, what I had seen was enough to make me think that what I wrote was a good deal further in the direction that you advocate than it might have been. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 11:18, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
One point at least is clearer now. You wrote "I hope that's helpful", and yes, it was helpful: thank you. From the sentence you added when you posted here, I now do see what you found open to criticism about what I wrote, though I am still not sure that "insulting" is a good way of describing it The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 11:21, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
Please replace "I think you might have goofed" with something like "I think you might have made a mistake" if my meaning was unclear or that exact wording seemed impolite. Cheers, Nick-D (talk) 11:26, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

An interesting piece of history

Hi again, Nick. As our recent discussion was going on, I knew that you and I had in the past had contact with one another. I did not clearly remember any of the circumstances, but had a distinct feeling that we had always got on in a much more friendly way than in our recent unfortunate interaction. I had a look through some history, to try to find out if that was right. Yes, I believe that what I found confirmed that. However, the most interesting thing I found was Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive688#Sockpuppet unblock review. There, you were heavily criticised for unblocking an editor without consulting, or even informing, the blocking administrator. I agreed that you were mistaken to unblock without consultation, but I defended you against the heaviest criticism, as I thought that what you did, while something of a misjudgement, was by no means totally beyond the pale. In many ways there were different circumstances from the recent events, so it would not be reasonable to press the comparison too far, but there is enough connection to make it interesting, in my opinion. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 12:02, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, from memory that's the AN discussion in which I got a solid thump on the head for unblocking without consulting the blocking admin (if this is the discussion I'm thinking of, I was pretty new to reviewing unblock requests at the time - it might have taken me a couple of thumps to have learned this lesson fully). As the note at the top of this page says, I have no delusions of perfection ;) Cheers, Nick-D (talk) 12:09, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
I suppose that may well explain why you are now such a total purist for "always consult the blocking admin": after such a "a solid thump on the head" you would tend to be hyper-cautious on the issue. However, I see that in that discussion I wrote "I think that the blocking administrator should almost always be informed of an unblock, and in most cases consulted in advance, rather than just informed". (Emphasis added now.) I think that is still a fair description of my view on this question. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 12:18, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Flags in Operators section

Nick, it looks like the "powers that be" have decreed that flags and country links are no longer allowed in the Opeartors sections of military aircraft articles. See here, here, and here for examples. I'm not going to fight them on my own, as it's been my experience that once these script-wonks get a bee in their bonnet, there's no stopping the changes they have "decreed", regardless of what the MOS actually says on these issues. Do you see any recourse here? Thanks. - BilCat (talk) 13:30, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Mass reverts and/or starting a discussion on a central noticeboard (Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Aircraft perhaps?) seem the best response. I don't much like the flags personally, but large scale changes should always be discussed first. The community generally tends to take a dim view of out of control bot operators these days since the Betacommand saga. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 08:31, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

War on Terror edit

In the response the editing of the war on terror page I meant to say Nigerian Nigerian Sharia conflict instead of "operation serval", sorry for the confusion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Panzerpampfpony (talk • contribs) 19:33, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Can you provide any references which state that such a conflict is generally accepted to be part of the "War on Terror"? Nick-D (talk) 22:16, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Jan to Mar 14 Military History reviews

The Content Review Medal of Merit  
By order of the Military history WikiProject coordinators, for your devoted contributions to the WikiProject's Peer, Good Article, A-Class and Featured Article reviews for the period January–March 2014, I am delighted to award you the Content Review Medal of Merit. During this period you undertook 11 reviews. Your contributions are greatly appreciated. Without reviewers it would be very difficult for our writers to achieve their goals of creating high quality content. Cheers, AustralianRupert (talk) 22:42, 3 May 2014 (UTC)
Thank you very much Nick-D (talk) 06:58, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

POV editing

Hi Nick-D. Perhaps you can help. This refers to the contibutions by user Stumink, no stranger to you.

  • 1. I could have dropped the editor a note, but I see now that this is a concerted effort on quite a wide range of subjects where the editor is displaying a blatant POV. I don't know what the procedures are to take this to ANI, so I am fisrt bouncing it off people I believe will make a fair judgment of this situation.
  • 2. The editor in question has been changing information (in most cases calling it "adjusting wording" in the edit summaries) on Angola, South Afria, anywhere where there was a Cold War conflict, changing to sanitise the image of the West and denigrating the other side, sometimes blatantly as here. Elsewhere, the editor has sought to delegitimise the Angolan government on various pages, by replacing it with MPLA every time; removing references to US involvement here, here; removing huge chunks of information without explanation here; removing mentions of the term apartheid on a number of pages, here, in general sanitising the SA government side here; has changed valuable information on a NZ treaty to improve the image of the settlers here; In efforts to sanitise, when unsure ("pretty sure", editor says in edit summary), editor removes information notheless, as [here, and here;
  • 3. What the editor does in relation to the Cold War, he/ she does in relation to Israel/ Palestinians
  • 4. The same goes for West versus Arabs/ Muslims, see here
  • 5. Same goes for Western vs indigenous peoples as here, and here
  • 6. Sock? From the consistency of the edits, as here, here, here, and the wording in the edit summaries, I have reason to suspect that the editor is the same as this IP.

I look forward to hearing from you. Best regards, Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 23:11, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Hello, I have to say that I don't see any problem with #4 ([7]), and my understanding is that both examples in #5 are also uncontroversial. I'm not qualified to comment on the accuracy or otherwise of #2. As these are content issues, you should discuss them with Stumink in the first instance. I note that there's now a SPI investigation at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Stumink, which I suspect has merit - I'll comment there. Nick-D (talk) 09:53, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

A certain SPI

Hi Nick, thanks for your attention there. Since I'm new to this reporting process; is there a reason I cannot see the user-compare report? Did I make an error in syntax? Or is it just not visible to anybody yet? Cheers, Vanamonde93 (talk) 15:12, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Hello, That link isn't working for me either. I'm not sure how the user compare tool works to be honest (and its results are not terribly easy to interpret in my experience). Regards, Nick-D (talk) 07:59, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

New Moeldoko English page just created

Hi Nick, I just crreated the English page for General Moeldoko. You may want to update this page "Moeldoko" links to point to the English page instead of the Moeldoko Bahasa (Indonesian) page. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bouake123 (talk • contribs) 22:01, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi, It would be best if you did that given that you're now the expert on the topic :) (I can't remember having any involvement in articles on this topic to be honest). Regards, Nick-D (talk) 23:28, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

List of aircraft carriers by country

Hello Nick, I am currently trying to locate a source regarding Germany's ownership of an aircraft carrier. So far I can find nothing but resolutions that prohibit it. I do not think EnemyNL's edits are legitimate. I plan to revert if my search reveals nothing. Kevintampa5 (talk) 23:44, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi, That edit was actually made by an IP editor: [8]. I thought that I rejected it as it's obviously wrong, but the crappy pending changes interface accepted it when I accepted EnemyNL's improvements to the material on Dutch carriers. I've just reverted this, and thanks for alerting me to it. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 23:48, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
You are welcome. Also try not to curse in the comments. I know kids that use Wikipedia. Thanks! Kevintampa5 (talk) 00:02, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
Please don't give me homilies about not swearing like I'm a 12 year old. Most children swear much more than adults, so I suspect that they won't give a fuck in the unlikely event that they see my edit summary. Nick-D (talk) 00:05, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
I thought it was inappropriate too, and the 'most children' excuse is just that... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.106.66.152 (talk) 07:05, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
Sorry if I offended you: I was grumpy with the still-dodgy pending changes functionality. Nick-D (talk) 07:13, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Rollback rights request

Hi Nick. Just wondering if I can be given rollback rights. I have a fairly good record of countervandalism, and have been a registered ed for almost exactly 2 years. I have a good edit count with a high percentage in mainspace. I have always done my bit in watching articles and reverting any crap promptly. I am currently watching several hundred articles, in many areas, but with a strong MILHIST and technology focus. I was involved in the CVUA for a bit but real life stuff stymied my full participation. However I totally get most basic WP etiquette now, inc CV. I would use it only after thought, and judiciously. Cheers Irondome (talk) 22:13, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
Hi, I've just enabled rollback access on your account as you can be trusted to use it sensibly. I hope that it helps make editing easier. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 09:42, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
That is very much appreciated Nick, as is the community confidence that goes with it. I will be damn careful to use it wisely. Cheers mate! Irondome (talk) 15:03, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

United Kingdom vs Great Britain

Nick, I'm just curious about this edit by another user and whether or not it's correct per WP guidelines. I understand using GB for the pre-1801 entity, as the article had done, but using for the post-1801 entity seems too confusing in the same article, and against Common name. Any thoughts? I'd rather not stick my nose into a hornet's nest unless I have to! Thanks. - BilCat (talk) 14:05, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Great Britain is in all cases wrong if you talk about the state as it is just the Island England, Wales and Scotland are located on. If you do not want to talk of United Kingdom you should use England or Britain. --Bomzibar (talk) 17:17, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
Hi Bill, What Bomzibar has written above is also my understanding. From memory, there was a lengthy saga of arguments about this kind of terminology a few years ago which ended with agreement that it wasn't suitable for use in most contexts. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 08:40, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
Ok, thanks. Any chance of finding that discussion? Was it on Milhist? - BilCat (talk) 09:32, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
I think that it ended up at ArbCom, and sparked a taskforce! (WP:BRITISHISLES). The main term in question was 'British Isles', but from memory 'Great Britain' got a look in as well. I did everything I could to avoid reading about it all! Nick-D (talk) 09:52, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

review question

"The material on the historiography on this topic is interesting, but the article would benefit from additional material on the political ramifications of Article 231 in Germany: this is discussed at various points, but this material could be drawn together and expanded to make it clearer."

Hey Nick,

I keep re-reading this comment, and I continually draw a blank on what needs to be done. Any suggestions on what needs to be done to achieve this?

Regards, the sleep deprived and at the moment feeling stupid, EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 15:10, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi, The article notes at various points that this element of the treaty lead to an angry response in Germany. I think that I've also read that it contributed to the rise of the Nazis (through being part of the picture in discrediting the democratic government), but this is never really discussed in detail. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 07:53, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Lost boys of Anzac

Gday Nick - just had a read of this. Couldn't help but draw parallels with my maternal Grandfather here when you wrote: "I was interested to know whether this confusion was typical of the way in which the Army handled fatalities at the time, and if so why." He fought in the Second World War in North Africa and in New Guinea. Unfortunately I don't know very much about my family history, but apparently at one stage his mother and his sisters were informed that he was missing or killed in action (I'm not sure which) and it was only after some considerable period of time that the family knew the Army had got it wrong when he came walking down the track to their house! Living in the age we do of instant communications, and my understanding of the casualty notification system, it seems hard to imagine but perhaps it was a more common experience than we might realise. All the best. Anotherclown (talk) 07:58, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

That's a good point; the logistics of communicating between Australia and the war fronts are very difficult for modern people (myself included) to appreciate given how trivial this is today and the high profile accorded to casualties of military operations. According to the NAA files, my family was repeatedly told by the Army that Joe Flynn was lightly wounded and in Egypt. It didn't conclude that he was probably dead until my family wrote to say that one of his comrades had provided them with an account of his death, and he was eventually officially declared dead in early 1916. Stanley has some heart-breaking stories about families who never received any information of how or when their loved one died, and other families who rejected the news for years. I need to finish the review BTW: it's a good book, but a very sad one. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 08:06, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
I imagine it must be (and for that very reason could never bring myself to read it). Glad someone writes books like these though. Anotherclown (talk) 08:27, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
Aspects of this can be found in Clive James first volume of memoirs Unreliable memoirs. His father was posted as liberated, was subsequently killed in a repatriation flight, but there appeared to be a terrible time lag in informing Mrs. James. It nearly broke her as I recall Jame's very poignant recollection. The whole subject is barely mentioned really, but it seems a powerful aspect of the ANZAC nations' war experience at the citizen's level. Seems like a greatly valuable piece of work. Irondome (talk) 20:56, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Apology

Sorry for the ungentlemanly and childish comment on your talk page some time ago. It was regarding voting repeatedly in deletion discussions. I was not aware you wasn't allowed to vote repeatedly, so naturally I took offensive when you struck my "keep". I actually realized you wasn't allowed to vote repeatedly very quick after the discussion, but neglected to tell you. I apologize for that and the stupid remarks I made. Kind regards. Jonas Vinther (talk) 20:15, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue XCVIII, May 2014

Full front page of The Bugle
Your Military History Newsletter

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) 22:48, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

SS Atlantic Conveyor

Can I ask if you could add SS Atlantic Conveyor to your watch list. Looks like we have a newly registered WP:SPA editor who relies heavily on this website for his material. It seems judging by some of his comments that is his website and there seems to be an element of WP:GREATWRONGS in his editing, as he seems to accuse the RN of using Conveyor as a sacrificial shield for the carriers. WCMemail 12:10, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Watchlisted. That account certainly goes against what I've read about this incident. Nick-D (talk) 10:02, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

article for deletion. Would you support and how do I go about it

Adolf Hitler's Favorite Flower appears to serve no purpose whatsoever. It has not even any basic cites to give the reader some context. I believe the song title is a garbled account of an actual nauseating and Nazi-saccarine piece of nazi musical propaganda called "Adolf Hitler little flower" which I recall hearing in the definitive WW2 documentary The World At War I would like to see it removed. It does not even dignify as a stub. this is one of several articles that the author has produced which is problematic. Your thoughts would be welcome.Irondome (talk) 02:04, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

I'd suggest nominating it for deletion on the grounds that WP:N aren't met. The instructions are at WP:AFD if you're unfamiliar with the process. Nick-D (talk) 09:38, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
Cheers Nick Irondome (talk) 12:56, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Military history of Australia during the Vietnam War

There has been repeated vandalism of Military history of Australia during the Vietnam War over the past few days by one individual. Should the page be protected for a period of time? Regards Newm30 (talk) 03:11, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Request for comment

Hello there, a proposal regarding pre-adminship review has been raised at Village pump by Anna Frodesiak. Your comments here is very much appreciated. Many thanks. Jim Carter through MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:46, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Possible Sock

Remember Horhey420? It seems he may be back in the form of The Best There Is 'Snikt!', who has continued in his footsteps with the same lengthy Google Books searches, questionable use of sources, and extensive blockquotes in articles related to US foreign policy in Latin America. I have known this account was fishy since its very first edits, which were highly atypical for a new user, and have suspected Horhey ever since I dropped my initial suspicions that Iloveandrea was the sockmaster over a month ago. Suffice it to say, I was reluctant to file a formal SPI, but upon taking the action even a cursory examination of the evidence has made me more confident in Horhey's return than ever. I guarantee you that virtually any random edit by TBTIS will bear remarkable similarity to virtually any random edit by Horhey420. In fact, TBTIS has created a new article on United States Intervention in Guatemalan Civil War, and I would argue the entire article is a smoking gun continuing directly where Horhey left off on the main page. What do you think?TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 22:50, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

I agree: that's as painfully obvious as all of his or her other previous socks. Thanks for reporting this, and I've just blocked the account. Their edits can, and probably should, be mass reverted per WP:DENY (not to mention WP:NPOV). I've just deleted the United States Intervention in Guatemalan Civil War article. Nick-D (talk) 01:48, 31 May 2014 (UTC)
Yeah, I've decided to mass revert all of their edits (except in cases where the text has already been trimmed and vetted by others, as in Saudi Arabia), which is something I did not do when they were first blocked in 2012. BTW, while User:Public Intelligence Analyst and User:Boba Fett TBH were exposed as socks, it seems that Horhey also used this IP in 2012 and managed to evade detection.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 03:49, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Nick-D. You have new messages at Neelix's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Belated response to Treblinka FAC comment

I would like to apologize for taking so long to respond to your comment about the "Individuals responsible" table. I left it for Poeticbent to handle, seeing as he's the one who created it in the first place, but he dodged the issue. You wanted to know why the list is the way that it is, not remove it entirely.

Anyway, I was wondering what you would recommend between making the list shorter or making it longer. I'm in favor of the former, for two reasons:

1. It would be a lot easier for me.
2. The list arguably fails WP:INDISCRIMINATE in its present form; we really don't need to list every single guard and SS officer.

Tell me what you think and I'll start working on the table. What I'll probably do is remove every name that is neither mentioned in the article proper nor has its own article. I'm watchlisting this page, so you can reply here. AmericanLemming (talk) 01:28, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi, I'd suggest cutting the list altogether: the article should discuss the people responsible for this camp, and there's no need for a list which duplicates this (especially as it would have to have some kind of inclusion/exclusion criteria, resulting in lots of potential to inadvertently confuse readers). Regards, Nick-D (talk) 10:01, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Revert Review

[9] Necessary Evil seems to be editorialising to criticise one of the sources used in the article. Its of no relevance to the subject and is definitely WP:OR. Am I right to revert in this case or is it just down to editor preference? WCMemail 08:00, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Looks sensible to me - it's not particularly relevant to the topic of the article. If there's disagreement in the sources on the number of people killed in the General Belgrano sinking it probably best belongs in the article on the ship. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 08:47, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Books & Bytes, Issue 6

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 6, April-May 2014
by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs)

  • New donations from Oxford University Press and Royal Society (UK)
  • TWL does Vegas: American Library Association Annual plans
  • TWL welcomes a new coordinator, resources for library students and interns
  • New portal on Meta, resources for starting TWL branches, donor call blitzes, Wikipedia Visiting Scholar news, and more

Read the full newsletter

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:59, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Japanese Warships

Hi, The ship prefix JDS (Japanese Defense Ship) was used until 2008, at which time JMSDF ships started using the prefix JS (Japanese Ship) to reflect the upgrade of the Japanese Defense Agency to the Ministry of Defense. Keijhae (talk)

Man in the mud

Hi there. I have reviewed your DYK hook and left you comment at WP:TDYK. While everything is fine at first glance I think the article needs a few more secondary sources to be highlighted at DYK. De728631 (talk) 20:32, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

OK, fair point. I've added some more refs from another Canberra Times story, and will see if I can get my hands on a copy of the book. I remember some news stories from when the First World War galleries were closed in which the AWM's curators stressed that this work would remain on display, but I can't find them online Nick-D (talk) 00:27, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
The article looks good now so I've just approved it for DYK. De728631 (talk) 12:11, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
Thanks a lot Nick-D (talk) 08:38, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

File:Trooper Donaldson being awarded VC fair use claimed.jpg listed for deletion

A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Trooper Donaldson being awarded VC fair use claimed.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why it has been listed (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry). Feel free to add your opinion on the matter below the nomination. Thank you. Stefan2 (talk) 19:36, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

free french move

You might be interested in that discussion: Free_French_Forces#Requested_move Cheers, walk victor falk talk 20:43, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Camden Fort Meagher

Hi, I'm sorry. I found the discussion difficult to follow, and I also found ALT2 rather vague. But if that's what you want, fine. Yoninah (talk) 10:17, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

With respect, that was a pretty standard DYK nomination, and I explicitly approved one of the options and rejected the other two. Nick-D (talk) 10:22, 12 June 2014 (UTC)
I'm sorry, I got confused. Next time, please strike through the ones that aren't approved. Yoninah (talk) 18:59, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Offender9000 sockpuppets

Candelab (talk · contribs) looks likely.-gadfium 23:05, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Never mind, he made his identity very clear and has been blocked.-gadfium 05:10, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
Yeah, crystal clear. Thanks for handling this. Nick-D (talk) 07:58, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

DYK for Man in the mud

Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 16:02, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image File:Mark Donaldson VC 19-01-2009 fair use claimed.jpg

⚠
⚠

Thanks for uploading File:Mark Donaldson VC 19-01-2009 fair use claimed.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Stefan2 (talk) 16:26, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image File:Trooper Donaldson being awarded VC fair use claimed.jpg

⚠
⚠

Thanks for uploading File:Trooper Donaldson being awarded VC fair use claimed.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Stefan2 (talk) 16:28, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

I just speedy deleted this: thank you for the notification. Nick-D (talk) 22:56, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Looks reliable enough

http://www.scribd.com/doc/229645599/UK-Army-Combat-Capability-for-the-Future-an-overview-of-ARMY-2020-units

I know its not from a British Army Website but it looks Genuine enough--unless someone magically wrote that article with the Brigadier's name. It stays one Warrior will be reduced from 10 to 9 men--meaning six per section, unless it is 2 in the Warrior, seven dismount.

http://ukarmedforcescommentary.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/army-2020-unit-structures-and-equipment.html--blog

Phd8511 (talk) 11:14, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Hmm, for topics such as this it should be possible to stick to entirely-reliable sources, and not need to consult "reliable enough" sources. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 11:55, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
Nick, that Army 2020 paper was withdrawn as never sanctioned for official release. It is entirely WP:OR and WP:SYN to infer from the paper anything about the number of dismounts in a Warrior. The way Warriors are crewed, the vehicle crew and dismounts are separate. WCMemail 13:32, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
If you bother to shoe your real identity it will be nice. I can claim I work for the MOD or British Army myself.Phd8511 (talk) 16:53, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Charmaine

You may want to take a second look because of the charts and the CNN International interview in Espanola or Spanish.HotHat (talk) 09:38, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

WORLD WAR 2

I was curious to no the reason behind the Allies order on WW2 page. It clearly is not in Alphabetical order. Or in order of contributions as Soviet Union would not be first. IF IT WAS IN ORDER OF CONTRIBUTIONS, THE ORDER WOULD BE:

  • United Kingdom
  • France
  • Soviet Union
  • United States etc.

Please let me no any reason you are aware of. If there is none then WW2 page should be edited. WARNER one 9999

(talk page stalker) @WARNER one:, Nick-D is currently away on holiday. You would be better off asking at Talk:World War II, the talk page attached to the article. -- saberwyn 08:08, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Bari, Somalia

User:Middayexpress has just removed a carefully looked up note about a new administration in this province ([10]) without any clarification or explanation beyond the fact he says it does not exist. I argue strongly that even the announcement is worth adding to the political history of the region. Would you please take a look at the page and my msg on MDE's talkpage and advise? Cheers Buckshot06 (talk) 23:18, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Library: New Account Coordinators Needed

Hi Books & Bytes recipients: The Wikipedia Library has been expanding rapidly and we need some help! We currently have 10 signups for free account access open and several more in the works... In order to help with those signups, distribute access codes, and manage accounts we'll need 2-3 more Account Coordinators.

It takes about an hour to get up and running and then only takes a couple hours per week, flexible depending upon your schedule and routine. If you're interested in helping out, please drop a note in the next week at my talk page or shoot me an email at: jorlowitz@gmail.com. Thanks and cheers, Jake Ocaasi via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:41, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Welcome back; job opportunity...

Back to the mill after your little sojourn, mate! I think the Bugle is about ready to dispatch, have a look if you have time and let me know (unless someone has an op-ed in their back pocket, will of course remove that link from the front page and header before sending out)... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 08:26, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi Ian, I'm just off the plane and you're already putting me to work! I've just made a few minor tweaks (I'd forgotten to check for FPs, and happily there was one) and this looks good to go to me. Thanks for finishing it off while I was bludging in Melbourne ;) Regards Nick-D (talk) 09:41, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
Heh, glad I asked, I actually walked through the edit history of the MilHist active tasks template to make surer we hadn't missed anything and obviously missed that FP myself...! Anyway, tks for that, will aim to despatch later tonight. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 09:48, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
Listing of FPs is is pretty hit and miss at the moment - I usually manually run through the FP log to make sure that nothing is missed. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 09:54, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Book Review

I created another book review, which can be found at User:Hawkeye7/Book Reviews. Hawkeye7 (talk) 10:55, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Good timing! I've just added this to the upcoming edition - thanks a lot. Nick-D (talk) 10:57, 21 June 2014 (UTC)
Also, that's a good choice to review: it's one of my favourite recent books on World War II. Nick-D (talk) 11:04, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

odd on e

no lead sentence/context or background - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Wazzir - bad english and weird all around - any thoughts on this one? satusuro 11:59, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

That's on a highly notable topic (Australian soldiers rioting in Cairo's red light district during the First World War, a topic which has been the subject of a surprisingly large literature), but the article is certainly rather eccentric. Peter Stanley's book Bad Characters is probably the most recent work to cover this in depth (and earlier works tended to pretend that it was something other than a shameful riot). Regards, Nick-D (talk) 23:09, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue XCIX, June 2014

Full front page of The Bugle
Your Military History Newsletter

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) 15:39, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Japanese Warships

Hi, The ship prefix JDS (Japanese Defense Ship) was used until 2008, at which time JMSDF ships started using the prefix JS (Japanese Ship) to reflect the upgrade of the Japanese Defense Agency to the Ministry of Defense. Keijhae (talk)

Can you please provide a reference for that? Nick-D (talk) 11:43, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

"JS" Japanese Ship is now officially used since the upgrade of Japan Defense Agency to the Ministry of Defense. It is in MOD website but written in Japanese. [11] Keijhae (talk)

JS Hyuga

Why are you keep changing the original size lenght of Hyuga 197 meters to 179 meters? The correct lenght size of JS Hyuga is 197 meters NOT "179". Keijhae (talk)

Hi, Basically because you hadn't provided any reference or explanation for this change, and it looked odd to swap those numbers around. According to this source your change is correct - thank you for making it. Nick-D (talk) 11:43, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Ok, thank you for understanding. Keijhae (talk)

Apology

Hey, I'm sorry about that whole Delta picture thing. It just struck me as pushy and I reacted poorly. Niteshift36 (talk) 14:44, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

No worries at all. Thanks again for removing that unreferenced section. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 08:21, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Main Page appearance: Australian contribution to the Battle of Normandy

This is a note to let the main editors of Australian contribution to the Battle of Normandy know that the article will be appearing as today's featured article on July 27, 2014. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page. If you prefer that the article appear as TFA on a different date, or not at present, please ask Bencherlite (talk · contribs). You can view the TFA blurb at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/July 27, 2014. If it needs tweaking, or if it needs rewording to match improvements to the article between now and its main page appearance, please edit it, following the instructions at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/instructions. The blurb as it stands now is below:

Australian members of No. 196 Squadron

The Australian contribution to the Battle of Normandy involved approximately 3,000 military personnel serving under British command, the majority from the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) (Australian members of No. 196 Squadron pictured). Others served with the Royal Navy and British Army. After participating in the Allied landings on 6 June 1944, Australian army and air force personnel fought in the subsequent Battle of Normandy between June and August 1944, and an RAAF fighter squadron operated from airfields in Normandy. Throughout the campaign, Australian airmen provided direct support to the Allied ground forces by attacking German military units and their supply lines, as well as forming part of the force which defended the beachhead from air attack and manning transport aircraft. Australians also indirectly supported the campaign by attacking German submarines and ships which posed a threat to the invasion force. Australia's contribution to the fighting in Normandy is commemorated in memorials and cemeteries in London and Normandy. (Full article...)

You (and your talk-page stalkers) may also be interested to hear that there have been some changes at the TFA requests page recently. Nominators no longer need to calculate how many "points" an article has, the instructions have been simplified, and there's a new nomination system using templates based on those used for DYK suggestions. Please consider nominating another article, or commenting on an existing nomination, and leaving some feedback on your experience. Thank you. UcuchaBot (talk) 23:03, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Thank you again! (see above) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 05:37, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard#Talk:Somali_Armed_Forces.23SAF_Structure

I've just filed a dispute resolution request regarding Somali Armed Forces and Somali Civil War. Please take a look. In eight years, I've never been as close to quitting this site entirely in the face of POVpushing. Buckshot06 (talk) 08:49, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Will do. I sure that you don't quit! I've walked away from topic areas due to POV pushing, which sucks but at least helps preserve the hobby. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 08:55, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Operation Goodwood (naval)

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Operation Goodwood (naval) you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Ian Rose -- Ian Rose (talk) 12:42, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

April to June 2014 MILHIST reviews

The Content Review Medal of Merit  
By order of the Military History WikiProject coordinators, for your devoted work on the WikiProject's Peer, Good Article, A-Class and Featured Article Candidate reviews for the period April to June 2014 MILHIST reviews, I am delighted to award you this Content Review Medal. During this period you undertook 11 reviews. Without reviewers it would be very difficult for our writers to achieve their goals of creating high quality content, so your efforts are greatly appreciated. Peacemaker67 (send... over) 03:58, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
Thanks a lot Nick-D (talk) 08:43, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

Listing engagements in military service infoboxes

Nick, User:UnbiasedVictory has been adding minor engagements to infoboxes in the US and Canadian military services articles, such as United States Marine Corps. These lists are now so long that they take up at least half or more of the length of these infoboxes. I'm hesitant to tackle this issue directly, so I haven't talked to the user, who can be contentious, about it. I looked at the infobox documentation, but there's no guidance there. Thanks. - BilCat (talk) 17:57, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

Hi Bill, I don't think that there's any specific guidance other than to apply common sense: Template:Infobox military unit/doc's advice on this field is that it can include "any notable engagements in which the unit participated. The decision of what constitutes a notable engagement is left to the editors of the specific article.". I agree that whats in the United States Marine Corps and United States Navy articles is clearly not helpful to readers (or internally consistent) and also think that these lists should be trimmed back severely to list just the services' major engagements. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 11:11, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Question

Hi there. I have a question: if you wish to review or look at a specific subject that's military or World War II related, like you did for the Wikipedia's The Bugle, how do you do that then? Jonas Vinther (talk) 10:59, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Hi Jonas, If you'd like to submit a book review for the Bugle, it can be posted directly via the book review page at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators/Newsroom, or I can move a draft from your user space when it's complete. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 11:08, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
Okay, thanks for your answer. But actually, I was planning on reviewing Laurence Rees's newly created website, deticated to reliable and important historical information regarding World War II. I was thinking it would be a very useful link for future articles or improvements. Jonas Vinther (talk) 11:49, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
OK, such an article could be presented as an opinion article or a review essay (we have permanent sections on both, but receive sadly few review essays), and I don't think that anyone would complain if it was included in the book review section - I certainly wouldn't, and I edit the thing ;) The short version is I'm sure that Ian and I will find a home for a review if you'd like to submit it! Nick-D (talk) 11:53, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
That sounds really great. :) Kershaw himself saw the website and made a fine recomendation, so I'm sure it will worth the review and very useful. I'm currently on vacation with the family, so I'll be joyfully and carefully reviewing the website in the sun. I'll let you know when I'm done. Best regards. :) Jonas Vinther (talk) 11:58, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
I believe my review is finished. Currently, it's placed in my sandbox; having never written such a review before, would you take a glance at it, and add your thoughts on it's size, wording, and so forth? Jonas Vinther (talk) 12:44, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
I mean, do you believe it's OK, all in all? Jonas Vinther (talk) 15:37, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
Hi Jonas, I'll have a look over the weekend (probably tomorrow Australia-time). Regards, Nick-D (talk) 10:47, 11 July 2014 (UTC)
Okay, no rush, and thank you very much. :) Jonas Vinther (talk) 11:12, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

@Jonas Vinther: I've just made a few minor tweaks - are you happy with these changes? If so, I'll move it into the reviews section of the upcoming edition. Nick-D (talk) 10:08, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

Thank you very much; I'm totally fine with the tweaks, and also added a few last ones myself. You go ahead and move into the review section. Thanks again. :) Jonas Vinther (talk) 05:09, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
OK, it's now at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/July 2014/Book reviews Nick-D (talk) 10:24, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
Awesome. Cheers. Jonas Vinther (talk) 12:58, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Revert review

Nick, could you review my reverts here? I'm not all that familiar with the issues involved, but what the IP is adding seems very non-neutral to me. I'm not sure what " some gun slinging Texan, from outside Austin who will have Zero idea about the real wor" means either! Feel free to bump this up to MILHIST if you want. Thanks. - BilCat (talk) 14:22, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

Hi Bill, That looks like a very sensible revert to me. The stuff on Australia is basically ranting. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 09:53, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, it seemed like ranting to me too! - BilCat (talk) 11:34, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Operation Goodwood (naval)

The article Operation Goodwood (naval) you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Operation Goodwood (naval) for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Ian Rose -- Ian Rose (talk) 11:02, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Your help requested

Thank you for your suggestions on Military production during World War II. Bender235deleted over 3 months and 300 hours of my work, 40,000 characters of edits, and hundreds of constructive additions to the page. I am in the midst of uploading an enormous amount of PRIMARY SOURCE DATA and he deleted everything done so far as "wikipedia can not be a source for itself". I am enraged. There was not one comment, warning, question, request, or suggestion from this "editor". Can you please help me reverse all the deletions and keep this guy off the page. There are ongoing constructive edits from several other individuals watching this site. Please help resolve this. --Brukner (talk) 18:47, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

You lost me at this. Nick-D (talk) 23:05, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue C, July 2014

Full front page of The Bugle
Your Military History Newsletter

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) 03:47, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

DYK for Operation Goodwood (naval)

[[User:|Gatoclass]] (talk) 05:38, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Australian Labor Party

What wrong for my edit, Nick D? Labor Party of Australia is centre-left wrong? Minhle20002013 (talk) 13:29, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Previous discussions concerning that field of the infobox on the article's talk page have concluded with a consensus to leave it blank on the grounds that the ALP (like most major political parties) can't be pigeonholed in that way. Nick-D (talk) 06:43, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

WP:FOUR for Australian contribution to the Battle of Normandy

Four Award
Congratulations! You have been awarded the Four Award for your work from beginning to end on Australian contribution to the Battle of Normandy. TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 00:11, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 00:11, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks a lot Tony. Nick-D (talk) 00:19, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Books and Bytes - Issue 7

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 7, June-July 2014
by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs), Sadads (talk · contribs)

  • Seven new donations, two expanded partnerships
  • TWL's Final Report up, read the summary
  • Adventures in Las Vegas, WikiConference USA, and updates from TWL coordinators
  • Spotlight: Blog post on BNA's impact on one editor's research

Read the full newsletter

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:20, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

1940 Field Marshal Ceremony

G'day mate. Ever since you shared your thoughts on the 1940 Field Marshal Ceremony talk page, I have worked tirelessly in order to make it a qualified GA candidate. I know you did a formal review of it in April (I believe), but, as the article is vastly improved, would you be so kind to do it again, and tell me what's (if anything) is "wrong" with it. Cheers. Jonas Vinther (talk) 18:11, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi, As an overachieving comment, The article only briefly covers the ceremony which is its topic... It has not-clearly related material on Hitler's relationship with his top generals (which seems rather simplistic), some generic material on the status of the rank of field marshal, and the coverage of the promotions is buried in a section on the campaign in France. The material on Manstein seems questionable - surely it would have been unusual for an officer to have been advanced by so many ranks? I'd suggest reworking the article considerably so that it provides in-depth coverage of the promotions (which would be what's required for it to be assessed as GA). The section on the 20 July plot seems to serve no obvious purpose - if you're aiming for an 'aftermath' type section, develop this rather than have some factoids about a few of the FMs. I'd also suggest getting rid of the quotes in big boxes as well - they don't help readers. Hope that helps. Nick-D (talk) 04:17, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Invitation to an interview

Hello, Nick,

Today, 2 August, I just received an invitation to participate in an interview by July 17th. Unfortunately, my time machine is broken.

Georgejdorner (talk) 18:37, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Oops! I meant 17 August, and even that date seems later than what I actually intended. Nick-D (talk) 23:16, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
So where do I put the answers if I fill out the form? Or can I simply post you the completed Q & A?Georgejdorner (talk) 05:39, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
Hi George, To save double handling, it would be easiest if you posted your responses below the questions at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/August 2014/Interview. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 05:51, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Stroma

Hi Nick, you kindly complimented my article on Stroma, Scotland when it appeared on DYK back in January. I thought you might like to know that I've nominated it for GA, hopefully as the first step towards an eventual featured article nomination. Prioryman (talk) 22:14, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. If it's unclaimed by the weekend I'll look into it. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 08:20, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
It's passed GA now, so I've nominated it for FAC - please see Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Stroma, Scotland/archive1. Feel free to comment or offer any suggestions there! Prioryman (talk) 18:49, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

WP:OUP access

Hello, WP:The Wikipedia Library has record of you being approved for access to Oxford University Press's humanities materials through the TWL partnership described at WP:OUP . You should have recieved a Wikipedia email from User:Nikkimaria several weeks ago with instructions for access, including a link to a form collecting information relevant to that access. Please find that email, and follow those instructions. If you were not approved, did not recieve the email, or are having some other concern or question, please respond to this message at Wikipedia talk:OUP/Approved. Thanks much, Sadads (talk) 22:12, 5 August 2014 (UTC) Note: You are receiving this message from an semi-automatically generated list. If you think you were incorrectly contacted, make sure to note that at Wikipedia talk:OUP/Approved.

Talk page access removal

I think I found a situation where it actually warrants it, and considering that you were the one who blocked the user, maybe you should be the one to do it; https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:124.9.91.102&action=history Tutelary (talk) 21:01, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Ah thank you - I came here with the intention of suggesting the same. I already removed some ranting earlier, which I hope was ok? Shame they can't find a more productive use of their energies... CaptRik (talk) 21:56, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
I've just turned off their talk page access - thanks for letting me know. Nick-D (talk) 08:40, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Message on Sotomayor

@Nick-D; Your message on Sotomayor GA status was received. My own edits were limited to the Supreme Court section in that article which was not up to date and incomplete. That section is now up to date and I can defend that section. If you feel that the article is no longer at GA status as a whole (which I accepted on good faith given the GA banner which Wikipedia is displaying on that page) then perhaps you may want to submit it for review. There is a similar issue with the Stephen Breyer page and I thought you might want to know. LawrencePrincipe (talk) 19:13, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi, I don't have an opinion on the article's status. I was commenting on the error you made when you nominated it for a FA candidacy as a means of seeking feedback on its GA status. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 22:50, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
Hi Nick-D; Given your time invested in reading the first two sections of the article, could you make some comment on what your viewpoint tells you is needed to preserve the GA status. There have been four of us discussing the page and you present another pair of eyes that have looked at the article. LawrencePrincipe (talk) 14:40, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
Hi, The one thing which jumped out at me is that the article contains a fair bit of material which isn't supported by a citation. I don't know much about Justice Sotomayor, so can't comment on the article's content. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 09:05, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Deletion of my userpages...

Nick-D,

Could you delete the following userpages for me? Adamdaley (talk) 06:47, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

User:Adamdaley/Draft of Article 2
User:Adamdaley/American Civil War Regiments

(talk page stalker), @Adamdaley: you should be able to request the deletion of any userpage to which you are the only main contributor by tagging it for speedy deletion under criteria U1 (which you attempted to do with Draft 2... I have no idea why RHaworth refused to do so, as you were the only contributor) -- saberwyn 08:30, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks a lot saberwyn. RHaworth; I've always thought that deleting users' pages when they ask for this is a routine housekeeping admin task, and it's not our job to ever turn this down when WP:U1 applies. I delete my own user pages when I'm finished with them, and non-admins also have the right to have user pages they don't want deleted. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 10:56, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
I think if you had been on earlier you would have done what I asked and I would have been appreciated. I don't have any problems with you Nick-D. Your good in my books. Adamdaley (talk) 02:10, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
RHaworth – You "ignoring" my asking of deletions, that's fine with me. I was thinking that at the time of you blanking my page on draft 2. I didn't want to start anything by replying to you about blanking my draft 2. Please do not think this message is trying to start anything. Adamdaley (talk) 02:13, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Jihad on Welfare

Nick says, so what? Not telling Centrelink about a lengthy overseas trip (sic) hardly seems relevant (and you can legally claim DSP while on trips overseas anyway, though it gets cut off if you're away too long.

Australian Government says, New legislation will strip welfare payments from anyone assessed as a national security risk

BTW 'Cutting off' might not be the most appropriate descriptor in this context. Sam56mas (talk) 21:26, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Hello, I'm not sure what point you're making here. New legislation is legislation which wasn't in force at the time this occurred. Moreover, I'm not sure how it's relevant to the topic of the article, which is about the Australian Islamic community. Nick-D (talk) 22:41, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

E-mail

Did you get my e-mail? Cheers Buckshot06 (talk) 04:00, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes I did - I'll reply now. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 08:08, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CI, August 2014

Full front page of The Bugle
Your Military History Newsletter

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) 15:23, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Falklands War

Nick,

Just wanted to bring this revert to your attention [12]. I've reverted the addition of a false claim, supported by a falsified citation. I checked the Ponting book, he doesn't claim the carrier was already in port, quite the contrary that she was at sea and actively being sought by HMS Splendid. As I'm observing a 1RR at the moment and knowing that certain parties are watching me like a hawk, wanted to bring this to admin attention as my spidy sense is telling me that a revert war is about to break out. WCMemail 18:14, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. I'm pretty sure that Veinticinco de Mayo was at sea at the time of the General Belgrano sinking, and as you note the British were actively trying sink her. From memory, Lawrence Freedman's British official history of the war does an excellent job in discussing the issues around the "total exclusion zone" and how they related to British operations in this if you're looking for a source. Nick-D (talk) 10:41, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
Nick, virtually every source I know and the source used in the cite confirms she was at sea, the OP faked a cite to claim the exact opposite. I have access to both the Ponting book and Freedman. WCMemail 22:12, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
OK excellent. My books are at the opposite end of the house from my study, and I was too lazy to walk between them to check this fact, so I was going from memory ;) Regards, Nick-D (talk) 08:45, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

[13], [14] Couple of reverts, just wanted to get your perspective on the disambiguation page. Particularly in light of this one [15] by the same editor. I don't think the removal of several of the items in the disambiguation page are justified eg East Falkland and West Falkland. Would you agree? WCMemail 11:32, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi, I basically agree with this revert - most of the items removed seem unlikely to be what people are ever looking for when they search for 'Falkland'. Your revert here also seems sensible, subject to discussions, etc. I'd suggest discussing the first item with Rob if you haven't already done so (I can't see anything on the article talk page or your talk pages). Regards, Nick-D (talk) 11:39, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
I don't disagree with most of it, I just wanted another perspective before I raised it in talk. Thanks mate. WCMemail 11:48, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
No worries. Nick-D (talk) 11:49, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Private.Me

Nick,

I was wondering if you can help to create a new article, the privacy solution is amazing and timely. Since the launch earlier this week two articles were written:

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/08/19/new-search-engine-promises-to-keep-your-data-private

http://inside-bigdata.com/2014/08/19/new-search-engine-puts-check-big-data/

I tried with entering the URL, but it got rejected and asked for administrator overwrite.

I see you have your hands full, but if you can help me I would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Arash

Hello, I've got no interest in writing articles on that topic: I mainly work on military history topics, and unsure why you've approached me. You may wish to try the WP:AFC process if you would like to see an article on this topic and are prepared to write it. Please note WP:COI though if you have any personal or business connection with this topic first though. Nick-D (talk) 08:42, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Middayexpress

Would you please mind 'certifying' (seems that's the terminology) your previous attempts to reason with Middayexpress, at the above link? There's a 48-hour timelimit before the page is deleted, starting a few minutes ago. Buckshot06 (talk) 06:02, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi, I'm pleased to do so. Thank you for starting this RfC. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 08:51, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Operation Slipper

Gday Nick. Hopefully my revert didn't come across as rude. I've added a bit of material about the split into Slipper, Manitou and Accordion now to explain. Its pretty light on though. Overall, this article is badly in need of updating I agree. All the best. Anotherclown (talk) 10:31, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

No worries at all - I should have checked http://www.defence.gov.au/Operations/ before making that revert - for some reason I thought that Operation Slipper had ended with the withdrawal of most of the Australian forces last year, and the current effort had a new name. Thanks for fixing my mistake. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 09:59, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Nominate me for Administrator?

I was wondering would you be able to nominate me to be an Administrator? It would be appreciated if you would. You know I would be a good one. Adamdaley (talk) 05:18, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Stroma FAC needs reviews

I nominated Stroma, Scotland for FA status nearly two weeks ago - see Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Stroma, Scotland/archive1 - but unfortunately it's received only one substantive review in that time. I'm a bit concerned that the FAC is at risk of failing for lack of responses. In the light of your previous feedback on this article, do you think you might be able to offer some comments on the FAC? Prioryman (talk) 18:03, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Happy to do so, but it might take me a few days (or even a couple of weeks...) as due to other commitments my Wikipedia time is very limited at the moment. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 10:25, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

This is to inform you that Battle of Morotai, which you nominated at WP:FAC, will appear on the Wikipedia Main Page as Today's Featured Article on 15 September 2014. The proposed main page blurb is here; you may amend if necessary. Please check for dead links and other possible faults before the appearance date. Brianboulton (talk) 23:16, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Would you say this soldier is notable?

Paul Emile Diou. Would appreciate your opinion here. Thanks, Étienne Dolet (talk) 17:33, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

The article doesn't currently have any references to independent reliable sources, which is a pretty bad sign (most references are to his service records, a primary source). That said, given that he fought in a number of conficts and eventually attained brigadier general rank, he may well have received sufficient coverage in other sources. The article certainly provides an interesting insight into the careers of pre-World War I French Army officers. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 10:30, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Book review

I have another book review here. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:29, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks a lot Nick-D (talk) 10:26, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

You've got mail!

Hello, Nick-D. Please check your email; you've got mail!
Message added 23:55, 4 September 2014 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

Nikkimaria (talk) 23:55, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Request sanity check

Talk:David Jewett#Lede Comment Diff [16] Could do with a sanity check, as I do find Langus and his habit of edit warring over every minor edit irritating. Believe you've come across him before, he teamed up with Alex79818 whom I presume you remember for stalking my edits. WCMemail 09:18, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

It looks like WP:BRD is now playing out, which is a good thing. I do agree with the comment on the talk page that templates should be used more cautiously than has been the case here though I'm afraid: it would have been better to have started a discussion of this matter without having templated the article. I hope that's helpful. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 10:25, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Re: Please stop edit warring

Sorry for the confusion, please see the RfC. -- Kendrick7talk 08:12, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

That's no excuse for sustained edit warring. Nick-D (talk) 08:44, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
Categories have an entirely separate consensus process that is largely outside of standard article consensus/edit warring concerns. Were this not the case, it would not make sense for WP:Categories for Discussion to exist. Since the RfC failed, Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2011_February_9#Bias_categories is still in force. The category instructions are still there: "It must not include articles about individuals, groups or media that are allegedly anti-semitic."
That said, I'm half tempted to file an RfC as to whether I should file another RfC to try again to have the instructions removed. Alas, no one else is stepping up to the plate here. -- Kendrick7talk 05:05, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
(talk page stalker) Except that, except in cases of unambiguous vandalism, there is no exception for edit warring, even to enforce policy. - The Bushranger One ping only 05:44, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
Interesting. Which policy is this? I can't find such language at WP:EW, and I can guarantee you it's not enforced that way when it comes to WP:BLP concerns, for example. -- Kendrick7talk 04:13, 24 September 2014 (UTC)
The exemptions are explicit: WP:3RRNO lists them. It's a bit broader than The Bushranger's notion, but still doesn't include enforcing category definitions.—Kww(talk) 04:46, 24 September 2014 (UTC)
I concur with Bushranger and Kww Nick-D (talk) 07:38, 24 September 2014 (UTC)
I've certainly not committed WP:3RR on this issue; I mean, come on: the RfC closed in July, and here we are in September. Not too few 24 hour periods have elapsed in between. And I even have, per the spirit of WP:BRD, on multiple article talk pages and user talk pages, urged editors to take their concerns to Category:Antisemitism, which some have, if half-heartedly. After all, I am actually against the current consensus. Furthermore, that policy applies to "a potentially controversial change" which simply doesn't apply to something affirmed by both a WP:CfD and a WP:RfC conducted over multiple years. Having said I would respect the outcome of the RfC, my hands are tied. -- Kendrick7talk 01:16, 25 September 2014 (UTC)
Regardless of how many 24-hour periods there have been, edit-warring is edit-warring, even if both a CfD and a RfC have applied to it. If the other party is adding the categories in good faith, you cannot edit-war to remove them, you must start a discussion. Full stop. - The Bushranger One ping only 02:21, 25 September 2014 (UTC)
I'd also note that the Hitler article is the 39th most frequently viewed article, which makes edit warring there unusually problematic. Nick-D (talk) 07:55, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

I appreciate your opinions. But as far as I can tell, the edit war is currently over. -- Kendrick7talk 03:34, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Edit warring on Adolf Hitler

I have been told off for appearing to edit war on this article. As according to the history, I have only edited this article twice in the last month, for different issues, I do not think this is right. Please check to see whether this is so. Britmax (talk) 08:45, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Hi, You joined in the edit war without discussing things anywhere, which isn't good form on high profile articles. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 08:52, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CII, September 2014

Full front page of The Bugle
Your Military History Newsletter

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) 02:24, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject Military history coordinator election

Greetings from WikiProject Military history! As a member of the project, you are invited to take part in our annual project coordinator election, which will determine our coordinators for the next twelve months. If you wish to cast a vote, please do so on the election page by 23:59 (UTC) on 28 September! Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 22:07, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

The Bugle

I only just now realized that The Bugle is a military newsletter and a World War II newsletter, which was my impression when I/you wrote the review on Laurence Rees's new World War II website, you recall? My question is: should I continue to write reviews like the Rees one, or should it mainly be about notable books and not some website which virtually only serves to help World War II-related articles on Wikipedia? Jonas Vinther (speak to me!) 00:50, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

I can't speak for Nick, but I thought the Rees review was fascinating, and I'd love to read similar reviews. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 01:21, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
Thank you Ed. I'll keep on reviewing them then. :) Jonas Vinther (speak to me!) 02:02, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
I agree with Ed. The scope of the Bugle is military history in general, and not just World War II. Any similar reviews you'd like to contribute would be very welcome. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 07:19, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Middayexpress

FYI, I've closed the RfC/U you co-certified. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 21:38, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 22:23, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Pictures taken in a German museum

Thanks for commenting on the subject, however all of the pictures were deleted. To be honest, I have failed to understand the reasoning behind this decision and I am also unsure to what types of pictures this ruling applies to. I had the consent of the museum, although only verbally, I now wrote to them asking for written verification. If indeed all pictures taken at German museums breach the German copyright ruling we have to remove many pictures from Wikipedia. Some German museums (see Technik Museum Speyer) explicitly allow taking pictures and publishing them on the internet. Is this sufficient to stop deleting of images? Thanks again. MisterBee1966 (talk) 05:55, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Explicit permission from the museum would certainly do the trick, though note that they need to explicitly agree to release the images for pretty much any purposes under the Creative Commons licenses Wikipedia operates under - there's guidance on this somewhere at Commons. I agree that this deletion decision was silly. Nick-D (talk) 06:51, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Hi again, I received an answer from the museum today.

The email reads: "bezugnehmend auf Ihre Anfrage: Fotografieren im Luftfahrtmuseum, ja, soweit es ausschließlich dem privaten Gebrauch dient.
Bei Veröffentlichungen von Aufnahmen auf der privaten Website, sind diese mit dem Link: http://luftfahrtmuseum-hannover.de zu versehen.
Auf eine kommerzielle Vermarktung von Fotos erheben wir unser Copyright, bzw. bedarf es grundsätzlich unserer Genehmigung."

my translation:

Regarding your inquiry: photographing at the Aviation Museum, yes, if it is exclusively for private use. For publishing of images on the private website, the link to http://luftfahrtmuseum-hannover.de must be provided. For commercial marketing of photos we claim our copyright, and our explicit permission is required.

What are the consequences of this answer? Wikipedia is not commercial, but it is not private either. Can you comment? MisterBee1966 (talk) 08:51, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Hi, I'm afraid that's not compatible with Wikipedia's licensing - images have to be released for commercial use, though the source can require that they be acknowledged. There's material on this at Wikipedia:Copyrights (though it's presented in a rather over-complex way!). Regards, Nick-D (talk) 08:57, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

GA Cup 2014-15

Since the judges encourage me to, I am pleased to invite to participate in the GA Cup 2014-15. You can read everything about it on the project page. The whole goal of the cup is to have a friendly competition and loads of fun. Hope you participate. :) Jonas Vinther (speak to me!) 01:24, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

I replied

Hi Nick. I responded to your question to me on AN in regards to the User:Metropolitan thread. Caden cool 23:35, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I saw that, but after the thread had been (rightfully) closed. Nick-D (talk) 05:07, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

July to September 2014 MilHist reviews

 Military history reviewers' award 
By order of the Military History WikiProject coordinators, for your work on the WikiProject's Peer, Good Article, A-Class and Featured Article Candidate reviews for the period July to September 2014, I am delighted to award you these Wikistripes. During this period you undertook six reviews. Without reviewers like you it would be very difficult for our writers to achieve their goals of creating high quality content, so your efforts are greatly appreciated. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 14:23, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
Thanks Ian Nick-D (talk) 22:51, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Battle of Tarakan

Thank you for the note. It's as you thought — I misunderstood the situation. I thought it was comparable to the situation of Hiroo Onoda and his comrades, who were told in October 1945 of the war's end but didn't believe it. Nyttend (talk) 00:30, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

No worries. I hope that the tweaked wording makes things clearer. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 00:47, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
Indeed, it does. Nyttend (talk) 02:26, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

RfC on Ayers Rock (band)

Hi, this message is to let you know about an RFC on the article Ayers Rock (band). A previous RfC received little participation, so we're giving it a second run and contacting individual editors who might be interested. If you have a moment, we'd greatly appreciate your participation at Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/Ayers Rock (band)#RfC. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 08:31, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi Nick

[17]It would appear that no matter what edit I make Langus is simply going to revert. The lede is way out of date and represents a time before a great deal of additional content was added. I could do with some help and advice here. WCMemail 19:17, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

The edit war seems to be over and there's a discussion on the talk page, so there isn't much I can contribute (especially as I'm not at all familiar with this period of the Falkland Islands' history). Nick-D (talk) 22:50, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Falkland Islands sovereignty dispute

[18] Regarding this edit, the source cited was [19], I checked the source (p 418) and it doesn't support the claim made in the article. Its talking about the theoretical basis of inheritance but doesn't state it was actually claimed. Could do with a sanity check as he disputes and edit wars over every edit. WCMemail 19:55, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

As I expected he changed it to something not supported by the cite. WCMemail 22:32, 7 October 2014 (UTC)
For what it's worth, I agree that this edit doesn't appear to reflect the intention of that page of the reference. I read this as as being part of a discussion of legal positions rather than the author making a judgement. That said, it's all a bit over my head given it's written in legalese and is about a period of history I don't know much about and I haven't read the rest of the reference. Nick-D (talk) 11:09, 8 October 2014 (UTC)
It weaves a number of legal concepts together in one and if I'm honest, the cite doesn't 100% support my edit. One of the first things mentioned is succession of states by secession, which as a legal concept applies the principle of Utis Possidetis ie crudely whatever land is grabbed by the seceding state is what it gets to keep. It misses an important concept, which is normalisation, where the new state is recognised by other states and the parent state. Under that as a concept Argentine wouldn't necessarily inherit any territorial rights. He then goes on to jump to the idea, that Argentina could go on to claim by conquest those formerly Spanish territories effectively inheriting a claim to the territory that was in undisputed Spanish possession and specifically mentions East Falkland. But as Spain abandoned the islands in 1810 thats tenuous. The cite forms the theoretical basis by which Argentina could claim but not that it did so. WCMemail 16:55, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Seems to be slipping again

Nick, could do with some personal advice. I seem to be finding my editing diverted back into the drama boards again, something I have never been entirely happy with. I've ignored personal attacks per your advice and though I walked away from the Rosas article when the tag team of Langus and Gaba appeared again, I've since been dragged to WP:AE and WP:RSN. A while back I deleted every user page and wikipedia page from my watchlist and I've been a lot happier since. I'm seriously thinking of taking a wikibreak for a long while. Do you think thats a good idea, much as I enjoy article writing I could do without the hassle that accompanies it. WCMemail 12:32, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi WCM, If Wikipedia is starting to bug you then taking a break from it is a good idea (I find that I enjoy this place more after a few weeks away!). You could also take a break from Argentina-related topics. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 23:54, 10 October 2014 (UTC)
WP:ANI#Review of Wee Curry Monster's topic ban lifting Nick, though I've not risen to any of their attempts to get a rise, Langus has still decided to try and have me topic banned again. I'd appreciate if you could comment if you feel it appropriate. I take it you would recommend not rising to the bait and ignoring him? PS I am planning to take a break for a few weeks. WCMemail 22:14, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
Thanks Nick, I'm sorry about the abuse you got for commenting, I guess you can do without the hassle. I'm tidying up a few loose ends and taking a break. I just wanted you to know that I appreciate the advice. Regards, WCMemail 23:42, 14 October 2014 (UTC)
I commented there. I haven't looked at the full situation, but the criticism of Nick's comment is wildly off-base, and I still don't really get what the OP wants. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 08:42, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
They seem to being trying to throw as much mud as possible in the hope that some sticks. It's pretty poor conduct IMO. Nick-D (talk) 09:42, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Notice

Greetings. I have been nominated for a 1-year block due to my nomination of American-led intervention in Iraq for deletion, using incorrect capitalization of an editor's username, creating a disambiguation page, "getting" a page locked from IP editing, and 13 other reasons. You may have participated in a discussion in something related to that. As a courtesy, I am letting persons who participated in a discussion relating to one of those topics know in case they would like to support, oppose, or express indifference to the proposed ban. You can register your opinion here: ANI Incidents (This is a blanket, non-canvassing note.) DocumentError (talk) 02:11, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

2014 military intervention against ISIL

Thanks. I'd been meaning to do something about that bloody ship for a while. Anotherclown (talk) 05:44, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

No worries at all. These kinds of articles tend to attract low-quality edits. Nick-D (talk) 05:47, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Books and Bytes - Issue 8

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 8, August-September2014
by The Interior (talk · contribs), Ocaasi (talk · contribs), Sadads (talk · contribs)

  • TWL now a Wikimedia Foundation program, moves on from grant status
  • Four new donations, including large DeGruyter parntership, pilot with Elsevier
  • New TWL coordinators, Wikimania news, new library platform discussions, Wiki Loves Libraries update, and more
  • Spotlight: "Traveling Through History" - an editor talks about his experiences with a TWL newspaper archive, Newspapers.com

Read the full newsletter



MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:51, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

This site is something serrious

https://sites.google.com/site/usarmyforcecomposition/home/entire-force-composition

https://sites.google.com/site/usarmyforcecomposition/home

might be worth a look. found the editor, at least his name,John U'Ren. Lugnuthemvar (talk) 00:18, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

It's not a reliable source - it's some guy's Google pages. Please stick to published sources. Nick-D (talk) 00:20, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

Re:Timeline

Looks good, Nick. I'm been toying with the idea of adding links to the commons pages and other such sections to the page, but I've been busy here at the house (we've rounded 3rd base, now with almost all the mold gone - including the lethal areas) and we are trying to get the house reassembled for the next major thing, which starts in a week. Its gotten to the point I am now convinced Hydra built my house, because it seems that when we fix one problem two more take its place :) TomStar81 (Talk) 10:27, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Tom, and I'm pleased to hear that thinkgs are progressing with your house Nick-D (talk) 10:30, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

DYK for SAS Outeniqua

 — Crisco 1492 (talk) 12:04, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

Your advice

It's pretty clear niw that Rob984 has any interest in engaging with a reasonable debate around providing sources to support his assertions. Probably because there are none, as the units in question are part of their respective Brigade HQ functions. So what next?

GhostlyLegend (talk) 16:23, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

That's pretty bad edit warring. I've made a request for the page to be protected at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. Nick-D (talk) 06:56, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
So the effort to discuss the topic on the talk page was getting one line responses along the lines of "so what". So again Id appreciate the advice, if extensive attempts at discussion aren't getting any traction, what next?
you may not have noticed that this mornings edit was to remove a new addition by another user that related to the two Army Reserve units removed from DSF to 1ISTAR.
GhostlyLegend (talk) 10:06, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
I'm hopeful that the page protection will kill off the edit war, and spark a more useful discussion on the talk page (as often happens once the ability to revert goes away). Failing that, there's always WP:AN3 - all the preconditions for a report which will be actioned there are now in place given that there's a discussion on the talk page and everyone has been asked to stop reverting. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 10:09, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
Oh, I see that a report has already been made and completed there Nick-D (talk) 10:15, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
Things improved somewhat after that, I got a message on my talk page that was a bit more positive.
Having spent some time reading the various policies does feel like it's been a complete waste of time though, as application all seems a bit srbitrary.
GhostlyLegend (talk) 10:39, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
Yeah, I do agree that the application of WP:3RR is imperfect, and the interface for making reports is painful. Nick-D (talk) 10:44, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Is it bad because it is significant or for some other reason?

About this edit, do you have some objection other than that it is significant? Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 12:03, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Significant changes to this high profile article should be made only after agreement is reached on the talk page. More generally, my personally view is having a summary section which isn't the lead isn't great - the role of the lead is to summarise the article. There's certainly a good case for reducing the length of the lead of the article though, and I'd be interested in discussing that with you and other editors on the talk page if you'd like to raise the topic. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 06:48, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
I will move the discussion regarding the length of the lead to the WWII talk page when I have more time. For now, I will only comment that, while perhaps significant changes "should" be made only after discussion, that reason alone does not warrant a revert. "No edit, regardless of how large it is, requires any prior discussion; however, large edits and any edits that are potentially controversial are often the targets of reverts, so—in the spirit of collaborative editing—prior discussion is often wise." - Wikipedia:BOLD,_revert,_discuss_cycle#What_BRD_is.2C_and_is_not Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 12:02, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
The World War II is one of the most frequently viewed articles on Wikipedia, and there's a very long standing consensus from editors who work on it that all significant changes should be discussed first as a result. That particular article wouldn't be manageable if it was the subject of BRD type editing given its unusual prominence (not to mention the controversial aspects of the topic). Regards, Nick-D (talk) 22:06, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
Well, I'm having trouble following the logic. Either an edit is a good one or a not so good one. Substantial edits can be good, insubstantial edits can be bad. If it is a good one then why revert for the sole reason that it isn't vetted? If it is a not so good one then revert for that reason (and put that reason in the revert comment). Otherwise, it begins to look like "you have to ask me for permission before you do anything on this page." Or am I missing something? I'm thinking I should ask "the editors who work on it" to reconsider this consensus. But first, the lead (when I get the time). Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 00:36, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
It's simply to stop edit warring and sudden changes to a high profile article which lots of editors have contributed to. I'd suggest that you actually try engaging in conversation over changes to the article before throwing further accusations of misconduct around (I noticed the snarky comment you hid in the edit summary BTW). Nick-D (talk) 02:26, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
Edit warring grows out of reverts. I'm not sure how you stop it by reverting and giving no reason other than the change is "significant." Look, snarkiness (and profanity) aside, you had a legitimate reason for reverting my change: you thought the summary should not be put in a separate section. Fine. Why didn't you just say that? Giving "with no discussion" as your rationale comes across - whether you mean it to or not - as "you are changing my article without my permission." And doesn't tell the original editor the real reason for your revert. So I'm simply saying that you should consider not using "with no discussion" as a reason for future reverts. Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 03:05, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
The arrangement has been in place for several years, and I think that it's still working well. You are certainly very welcome to put forward different views, but as you ignored the large edit notice concerning the arrangement which appeared at the top of the editing pane your accusations of WP:OWN type conduct are entirely baseless. If you would like to discuss changes to the article please raise them on the article's talk page. Similarly, please feel free to discuss different arrangements for editing the article, but I'd respectfully suggest that they be informed by more than a single of your edits being reverted. Nick-D (talk) 03:14, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Let's try a reset. Here is my request: I ask that, when you revert in the future, you consider providing edit summaries that are substantive (example: "summary section which isn't the lead isn't great") instead of (or, at least, in addition to) procedural (example: "change which was made with no discussion at all"). See generally Wikipedia:Reverting#Explain_reverts and Wikipedia:Revert_only_when_necessary#Explain_reverts. Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 11:57, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

But that was the primary reason I reverted here... I personally don't think that the change was an improvement (as it wasn't in line with WP:LEAD IMO), but that was a secondary issue: my concern was that you'd significantly restructured the lead section without any prior discussion. I would have reverted if I had liked the change as well, and I imagine that the other editors who are active in the article would have done the same. I should have dropped a note on your talk page though. Nick-D (talk) 21:48, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
Well, I'm slow, but I finally have that through my head. Would you please point me to the WWII talk archives where the editors decided to implement the "no significant change without prior discussion" rule? Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 12:20, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
It was a few years ago... You can either believe me, or not - I'd kind-of hope that I don't have a reputation for bald faced lying! Nick-D (talk) 08:47, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
I believe you. I am looking for the reasoning that led to the decision. Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 09:54, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
From memory, it dates from when the article was re-written as a group effort and there was agreement to not make significant unilateral changes to the consensus text. I'm happy to say that the article has continued to change since then though (generally for the better IMO). Nick-D (talk) 09:41, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

Significant

My "to do" list still includes bringing up this issue on the WWII page, but these are busy times for me in the real world. Meanwhile, I wonder about this edit. How did you decide that it was not significant enough to require pre-discussion? Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 12:28, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Please check the article's history: the template I removed was added in the edits mediately before mine (with no prior discussion, or even edit summaries). Moreover, I think that the template was entirely unnecessary and has been badly designed and implemented. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 07:01, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
So why didn't you just say "revert fairly significant change which was made with no discussion at all" in your edit summary? Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 13:02, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. If you'd like to start a discussion about the content of the article, please do so at Talk:World War II. Nick-D (talk) 23:37, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
Before I try to make a point I'd like to try to understand whether I have one. You reverted my edit with the summary of "revert fairly significant change which was made with no discussion at all." It seems to me that you could have used the same summary in this case. But you didn't. So I must be missing something that makes the two reversions different. Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 01:26, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Single-issue user

Nick, there's a single-issue user editing United States Armed Forces against consensus. Could you look at Clear violation of the NPOV and see if yiu can offer any solutions? I don't like being insulted on the basis of my nationality, and I'm not sure I can hold my tongue much longer. Thanks. -BilCat (talk) 22:15, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi Bill, As that's an edit warring only account I've blocked it. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 22:23, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
Ok, thanks! I wasn't expecting a block, but I'm not complaining either. - BilCat (talk) 22:25, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

"Pacific War"

compared to some other users on WP, you have demonstrated a significant breadth of knowledge, significant NPOV characteristics, and significant non monomaniacal coverage. however, the term "Pacific War" was NOT, NEVER used by the soldiers, sailors, pilots, etc., of Japan, China, USA, British Empire, or Australia at the time. it is a POST-WAR historical term. thank you -Augustabreeze (talk) 07:32, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) So is World War I. And the vast majority of historical war names. Jenkins' Ear, the Wars of the Roses, Hundred Years' War, etc. Just saying. —  Cliftonian (talk)  08:11, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
Yes, I agree with Cliftonian. Wikipedia also calls things what their most common name is, and not the contemporary name - please see WP:COMMONNAME. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 08:19, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Nick

If you are on there is a complete chambles around Clive Palmer article - it needs some rather rapid cleanup... tricky as there are some absolutlely wrong directs and redirects and horrible confusion - some editors hsould know better.... satusuro 08:30, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

I've just moved the article back to Clive Palmer. Goodness knows what's been going on, but it seems that the restriction on non-admins deleting redirect pages was partly to blame. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 08:37, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
maybe - it was sitting there so long, and is a classic BLP issue that required haste - your response is much appreciated.... I do think some need to know a bit more about leaving things alone if they cannot fix it themselves and to get others to help! satusuro 08:40, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
Given that I've used my admin powers to mess up stuff on the main page (though not to the extent of violating WP:IDIOT, thankfully), I won't throw the first stone here ;) Regards, Nick-D (talk) 08:44, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
Anokther stone - shouldnt the weird https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Clive_Palmer%29&redirect=no be exterminated? the wikipedia at the front makes them stick out like the proverbial dogs - there was the obscene one (hopefully nuked) and the remainng two i fail to see why they should still exist as they are simply evidence of things being done wrong... and serve no purpose satusuro 08:47, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
Good point - I've just deleted that one. I'd deleted the obscene one a few minutes ago. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 08:49, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
thanks satusuro 08:54, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CIII, October 2014

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The Bugle: Issue CIII, October 2014, Redux

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Education in Iran 0003 Urmia.jpg

Hello.accordind to your comment [20].I do it[21].شاه بابل (talk) 02:13, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

One sentence not about the subject of the photo isn't sufficient in my view I'm afraid. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 08:29, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Favour

Hi Nick, I wonder if you might do me a favour: I made an edit notice for the page "Great Zimbabwe" to try to get people to stop changing the spelling of "artefact" to "artifact", but I accidentally put it at the wrong location and I cannot put it in the right place as I am not an administrator. Could you please move Great Zimbabwe/Editnotice to Template:Editnotices/Page/Great Zimbabwe for me? Cheers, have a great day. —  Cliftonian (talk)  08:20, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Done, as I'm here on other business... BencherliteTalk 08:47, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
Thank you Bencherlite. —  Cliftonian (talk)  09:30, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
Thanks also from me Nick-D (talk) 09:32, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Gough Whitlam at TFAR

Hi Nick, you (and your talk page stalkers) may be interested in a thread I've started about Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/requests#Gough_Whitlam, where possibilities for marking the death (aged 98) of this former prime minister of Australia include re-running a TFA. I'm interested in getting lots of views so I'll be leaving this note on various pages (and apologies, TPS-ers, if your talk page is not one of them!) Thanks, BencherliteTalk 08:47, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

This is to inform you that Bombing of Singapore (1944–45), which you nominated at WP:FAC, will appear on the Wikipedia Main Page as Today's Featured Article on 5 November 2014. The proposed main page blurb is here; you may amend if necessary. Please check for dead links and other possible faults before the appearance date. Brianboulton (talk) 22:40, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

...which happens to be the date of Whitlam's memorial service. I suppose it was inevitably going to clash with something at TFA. Any thoughts? BencherliteTalk 06:45, 24 October 2014 (UTC)
...@Bencherlite: Bombing of Singapore (1944–45) can easily run on a different day given that it covers a series of air raids. The next 70th anniversaries of raids are 11 January, 1 February and 6 February, or it could run on a spare non-specific date if you'd rather. Nick-D (talk) 07:01, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

Citing Air Force copies

Hi mate, spotted a funny date in 38Sqn and after investigating I found some of the Air Force links were going to the latest issue, or in one case to the correct issue but the front page. FYI, the only sure way I know of getting the right link for the issue/page is to go into "Archive" (or "Browse issues" depending on how you arrive at the latest copy) and then, when you have it open at the correct page spread, use the email function to send yourself the page link and paste that into your citation. I think I got 'em all in 38Sqn but it might worth you checking them all out... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 14:08, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Ian. I think that the newer issues have permalinks for page numbers? Nick-D (talk) 07:17, 24 October 2014 (UTC)
Possibly, I may not have noticed because I subscribe and often use the latest issue in articles, and I've found then that the only way to get the right link is to do the email trick. Of course if there's a simpler way I'd be happy to use it! Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 23:40, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

No. 90 Wing G/FT

Hi mate, sounds like you'd be happy to co-nom here? If so, the only remaining decision is to whether to go now, for GT, or give 1SQN a chance to attain Featured status and go straight for FT (90WG is also on my list for FAC but it wouldn't make any difference if 1 and 38SQNs are both FA). FTR, the main reason I wanted to get Nate's take on it is that 90WG is little more than a blip in the histories of 1 and 38SQNs, but I guess that doesn't matter too much as far as the FT criteria goes. The reason I like 90WG as a topic is that it's small but has enough components to meet the criteria, and it's effectively a closed book since the RAAF seems unlikely ever to revive its number, whereas all the active wings are potentially moving feasts. FWIW, I'm also looking at GT at least for 91WG at some stage, as I think there's sufficient sourcing out there to get articles on all its units to minimum B-Class or GA. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 23:36, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi Ian, I'd be happy to co-nominate. I have to confess to being clueless about the FT and GT processes, but if it takes time to action a GT request it might be better holding off until the 1SQN article passes its FAC given that this shouldn't be that far off by my reading of the review (tough luck with the squadron going to war for the first time since 1958 shortly after you started the FAC!). Nick-D (talk) 02:36, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) I'm not sure if you know but a topic automatically changes from GT to FT if the amount of featured content reaches 50% so no need for a second nomination. You must remember to update the good topic page (i.e. Change the GA icon to FA) - NickGibson3900 Talk 00:59, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Tks Nick, now you mention it I had heard about the automatic upgrade but wasn't sure of the process. In this case I think 1SQN is pretty close to promotion to FA (if I say so myself!) so we won't have long to wait anyway, but good to know for future reference. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 01:28, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Your block of User:Filipino American man

You recently blocked User:Filipino American man as a sock of User:Holy Child Student. I suggest that you look at User:Oggy 2 also. The account was created shortly after you blocked Filipino American man, edited User:Filipino American man here to add a self-made category that references Oggy 2 and seems to claim that Holy Child Student, Filipino American man, and the electric man (another blocked sock of Filipino American Man) are all socks of some other user. The page version displaying this category Is here but it is up for speedy already.

Oggy 2 has also made very similar edits to his talk page as the other users did, with various incorrect claims and templates displayed on his talk page (admin, roll back rights, registered trademark, having left Wikipedia, good article, protected article, etc.) Meters (talk) 03:11, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, that looks like the same person and I've just blocked the account. Nick-D (talk) 09:03, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Request for Comment

There is a Request for Comment about "Chronological Summaries of the Olympics" and you're invited! Becky Sayles (talk) 07:26, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the invite, but I don't have an opinion on this topic. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 06:46, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

1940 Field Marshal Ceremony

The discussed "20 July plot" section has been replaced with an "Aftermath" section written by me and Kierzek. I believe it covers the future of each field marshal promoted as you recommend we added. Jonas Vinther (speak to me!) 16:43, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

It provides a white wash: several of those men went on to commit very serious war crimes, yet you portray them as being simply soldiers. Nick-D (talk) 10:26, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
Will add some details about war crimes. Jonas Vinther (speak to me!) 15:12, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
Well, I did suggest that some further brief detail be added as to what happened to the ones promoted after the "event". The above certainly is something to add into that section. Since Jonas is carrying the ball, I will look it over when I have time and after he is done. Kierzek (talk) 16:08, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Request

Hi Nick-D, I have tried to nominate Ros Pesman for DYK (moved into mainspace on 8 November) but I strongly suspect I have made an error. Could you please have a look and let me now if/what I have done wrong? Thanks, Whiteghost.ink (talk) 05:29, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Hi, Under the current (and newish) system you need to create a specialised page for the DYK nomination. All you need to do to kick this off is to drop the name of the article into the box at Template talk:Did you know#Instructions for nominators and follow the instructions (especially linking to the nomination page) I hope that helps. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 09:36, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
I took it upon myself to fix this up directly. The issue was that the nomination information was added directly in to the DYK nominations page rather than transcluding the template in. See Diff. I also made some formatting fixes to the nomination template itself, but this was the main problem. Should be all fixed now! See "Template:Did you know nominations/Ros Pesman" which is now featured correctly on the November 8 DYK nominations list. Cheers; Wittylama 11:27, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for that Nick-D (talk) 09:40, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

DYK for Battle of Baguio (1945)

 — Crisco 1492 (talk) 12:03, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Operation Pamphlet

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Operation Pamphlet you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Jonas Vinther -- Jonas Vinther (talk) 01:02, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Operation Pamphlet

The article Operation Pamphlet you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Operation Pamphlet for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Jonas Vinther -- Jonas Vinther (talk) 00:23, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Hi Nick, couldn't help noticing your recent edit summary re. this article -- I had a similar thought re. my own No. 491 Squadron RAAF from around the same time. Be happy to take an informal squizz at Pamphlet later week if you'd like, and pls feel free to do the same with 491Sqn if you have a moment... ;-) Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 04:04, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
Hi Ian, that sounds great. I think that the Operation Pamphlet article might have the legs for A-class, so any thoughts in that direction would be appreciated. Nick-D (talk) 04:28, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

ACR

Hello Nick, I'd just like to inform you that there's an ACR for Dassault Rafale at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Dassault Rafale/archive2. Since you commented on its previous ACR, you are welcomed to contribute to the discussion there if you have the time and are interested. Regards, Sp33dyphil (talk) 12:45, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the notification Nick-D (talk) 07:00, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
Thank you for your contribution. I have addressed each of your concerns. Are there any other major issues that would need to be looked at? Cheers, Sp33dyphil (talk) 10:47, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CIV, November 2014

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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) 12:27, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

 The WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves 
On behalf of the coordinators of the Military History Wikiproject I am very pleased to present you with the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves. This award is made in recognition of your outstanding contributions to a great many areas of the project. This includes your long and distinguished service as a coordinator and special-project member, improvement of numerous articles to the featured, A-class and good article standards, dedication to producing one of the best Wikipedia newsletters over at the Bugle and all round hard work. I have to say we haven't bumped into each other much over the years but in my experience you have been a great bloke to deal with and always able to help with some friendly advice. Many thanks - Dumelow (talk) 16:58, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves

 The WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves 
On behalf of the coordinators of the Military History Wikiproject I am very pleased to present you with the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves. This award is made in recognition of your outstanding contributions to a great many areas of the project. This includes your long and distinguished service as a coordinator and special-project member, improvement of numerous articles to the featured, A-class and good article standards, dedication to producing one of the best Wikipedia newsletters over at the Bugle and all round hard work. I have to say we haven't bumped into each other much over the years but in my experience you have been a great bloke to deal with and always able to help with some friendly advice. Many thanks - Dumelow (talk) 16:58, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
Thank you very much! This is a huge honour. Nick-D (talk) 06:50, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

WWII Cobelligerents

I am not ignoring the RFC. The RFC specifically regarded merging members of the Allies and Axis in the infobox into those alliance names. Not all of the belligerents were members of the Axis, and thus those non-Axis co-belligerents are not covered by the RFC decision. Finland was not a member of the axis, any attempt to lump it in with that alliance is un-historical and creates an anti-Finnish bias.XavierGreen (talk) 19:15, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

We just had a lengthy RfC on that very topic, which you are ignoring the results of. It's good that you've started a discussion of this propsed change, but please stop edit warring. Nick-D (talk) 21:41, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Nick, when I saw the heading, I decided to look up Co-belligerence, as I was unsure what it meant. While that article does explain the term (it sounds logical), most of the article and the definition is unsourced. Further, over half of it is dedicated to Finland's status as a co-belligerent with Germany, most of it appearing to be original research. (The one source is in that section, citing a minor point.) Should the OR section be removed, or just tagged? Thanks. - BilCat (talk) 22:35, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Hi Bill, I imagine some well-sourced material on that topic is doable: Finland's status was certainly unusual. As I understand it, the material in the Co-belligerence article is basically factually correct, though it glosses over the extent to which Finland took part on the preparations for the invasion of the USSR and somewhat downplays the coordination between the Finnish and German military efforts during 1941-43. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 09:00, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Hello Nick, greetings I am from Indonesia, and i need to do some editing on Indonesian Army because it has some mistakes that i would be happy to edit. Thanks. Regards, Adityawarman Suryo (talk) 11:06, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

This is to inform you that Bombing of Singapore (1944–45), which you nominated at WP:FAC, will appear on the Wikipedia Main Page as Today's Featured Article on 13 December 2014. The proposed main page blurb is here; you may amend if necessary. Please check for dead links and other possible faults before the appearance date. Brianboulton (talk) 21:36, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Bataillon d'Infanterie legere d'Outre-Mer - new article thanks and question on citing different pages from same source

Hi Nick-D. I just wanted to thank you more obviously for your recent edit (retitling, to remove the acronym) to the new article I created yesterday, Bataillon d'Infanterie legere d'Outre-Mer. I also wanted to ask you if you might be able to explain to me how to format multiple references to the same book source, which cite different pages?

In the article, I cited three books, using the Cite-Templates-Book drop-down refToolbar, and while I gave each ref. a "name" to allow it to be used repeatedly w/ <ref name="smith">DETAILS OF REFERENCE</ref> then <ref name="smith" /> syntax, I didn't know how to do this such that I could also include the page number inline w/ the citation (since I hadn't include a page number in the first long format reference for particular book).

Am I explaining myself correctly here? I used refToolbar because of how clean and consistent it is, and while that gave me the ability to use <ref name="smith" /> shortcut for subsequent citing of same source, I realized I don't know how to do this properly to be able to cite different pages from the same source book. So for example, with Forbes's book on the French Volunteers in the Waffen-SS, there is BILOM material on several different pages (like 487, 488, 489, 491, 492 and 501 iirc) that I would like to cite (or incorporate and cite, in some cases) but don't know how to do that "cleanly" using the <ref name="Forbes" /> shortcut. Can you provide any guidance on this, at your convenience? Thanks. Azx2 19:43, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

YAY! I FIGURED OUT HOW TO DO IT!! Append {{rp|#}} to <ref name="Forbes" />, where # = the page number. Thanks again though!!! Azx2 20:27, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
Excellent - the referencing system is a bit trickier to use than it probably should be. Nick-D (talk) 22:01, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
Somehow I found this how-to guide WP:FOOTNOTES, and a specific section - Footnotes: page numbers - provided exactly the solution I was looking for! I should thank the creator ;) Cheers, Nick-D!! Azx2 02:33, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Hi - new question. I pinged you in the discussion on the talk page, on creating an "article" w/ the agreed-upon English language title of the unit, that would just redirect user automatically to the article w/ the French title, w/ a little redirect arrival notice at the top of the French article, under the title like I've seen before, "so and so article redirects here". What do you think of this, and if you support it, would you explain to me how to do it so I don't much things up but still get it done? thanks Azx2 05:05, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Please do whatever you think best :) Nick-D (talk) 02:17, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks

Nick, thanks for sticking up for at ANI. It was indeed a comedy of errors. The IP had originally reverted me here, restoring Sgt Stone Cold's vandalism, so I had assumed theb IP was SSC. Then when I checked his contributions and saw that he had edited the Osama page, I assumed it was SSC again, and misread the diff, twice. By the time I realized my mistake, the IP had already reverted again. Then Seahorse left a rather demanding, almost arrogant, note on my page, so I chose to ignore it and go to bed. I'll try to be more careful from now on. Thanks again for defending me. - BilCat (talk) 12:19, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

No worries at all Bill Nick-D (talk) 06:48, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
Nick, you might want to check out what Anna posted here. Curiouser and curiouser! - BilCat (talk) 07:33, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
That's really, really strange. It's probably going to turn out that I'm a sockpuppet of this guy next ;) Nick-D (talk) 09:26, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Barnstar of Diplomacy
Thanks Nick-D. I will alert after this. I hope we will together protect this page from unreferenced statement. Thank you. Magbantay (talk) 10:52, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Nominations for the Military history Wikiproject's Historian and Newcomer of the Year Awards are now open!

The Military history Wikiproject has opened nominations for the Military historian of the year and Military history newcomer of the year. Nominations will be accepted until 13 December at 23:59 GMT, with voting to begin at 0:00 GMT 14 December. The voting will conclude on 21 December. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:35, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

58.168.51.167

This user, whom you have blocked for, I appreciate, only 24 hours, is asking for unblock. I see his alleged vandalism, and it may be that here I am showing my ignorance of Australian politics (which I freely admit), but I cannot see why it is vandalism; and it appears, neither can he. Am I missing something? --Anthony Bradbury"talk" 11:11, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

@Anthony Bradbury: It wasn't, therefore my trout and whale above. Luxure Σ 11:21, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
I'm waiting for Nick-D to comment, but this does seem like a very poor block. Thryduulf (talk) 12:12, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
Not sure about you guys, but I don't approve of vandalising BLPs with a deliberately misleading edit summary... I've removed the moronic trouting above: I'm happy to be wacked with a fish when I stuff up, and am open to criticism, but it was obvious that the editor who posted it hadn't actually looked into this vandal's conduct. Nick-D (talk) 21:48, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
Fair comment; why this editor changed the spelling of "George" to its middle European equivalent is not clear to me. The edit summary, I submit, is consistent with the nature of the edit. Certainly this is the only misdemeanor, if misdemeanor it be, which I can see comimg from this IP, so labeling it persistent vandalism is a little harsh, although I would concede that the block is short. Do we know if Mr Brandis is of central European extraction?--Anthony Bradbury"talk" 22:16, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
He was born in Sydney [22]. This was vandalism of an article on a controversial Australian politican. Nick-D (talk) 22:28, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
It doesn't matter how controversial George is, the IP editor believed he was doing well (delusional he must be) and changing it to his native Greek name does not constitue vandalism, it is a good faith edit. All other edits were constructive so I reverted your changes on all of them except for Brandis' page. Luxure Σ 23:27, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
I'm not sure why some whose IP address geolocates to Sydney changing the name of a BLP from Australia who's universally called "George Brandis" to what's apparently the Greek version of their first name on the English language Wikipedia wouldn't be vandalism... - there's no sensible reason to have made such a change, and especially not under a false edit summary claiming that it was correcting the spelling. I note that this person has just stated again that the change was a correction. They're a vandal. Nick-D (talk) 23:41, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
That is not vandalism. It might be incorrect, and there might not be consensus for it, but the user believed (and still believes) that it was a correction - that is not vandalism. The edit was made in good faith, and all their other edits have been good faith enhancements to the encyclopaedia. We do not block contributors for a single bad edit absent evidence of bad faith or block/ban evasion - neither of which we have here. Thryduulf (talk) 09:21, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
Can you please explain why this could in good faith be considered a correction? As far as I'm aware Brandis has never been known by a Greek-language name, and I can't think of a sensible reason why someone living in Sydney would decide to name him as such. According to [23] Brandis was born in Sydney to parents who don't appear to have been Greek migrants, and has since lived in Sydney, Queensland and the UK. From your user page you appear to live in the UK, and you may not be familiar with Brandis' controversial (and often-lampooned) reputation. Are there sources in which Brandis identifies as using a Greek version of his first name you can highlight? I can't find any. Nick-D (talk) 10:01, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
There wasn't even any warning. You should, being an Admin, be able to distinguish between GF edits and Vandalism. Luxure Σ 09:58, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
See above, as well as WP:BLPREMOVE. Nick-D (talk) 10:01, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) I just reviewed IP 58's edit at George Brandis - he/she changed the name "George" to "Yiorgo" with the edit summary "fix spelling". Personally as an Australian editor if had seen this edit I would have instantly reverted it as vandalism because it clearly is this. There is no evidence provided he has ever spelt his name this way and seems fairly clearly to be a violation of BLP, while the edit summary is also disingenuous. FWIW it looks like disruptive editing to me. Anotherclown (talk) 10:20, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Even if this edit was disruptive, one edit is not a reason to block them, especially without warning, and doubly so when their other edits were all good ones. Thryduulf (talk) 10:26, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
Respectfully, I disagree with you. Someone who's first edit is to clearly violate WP:BLP, second edit involves a snarky edit summary and third edit is goofing around (at the expense of a living person) isn't here to edit constructively. The fact that they're continuing to maintain that their obvious vandalism was constructive tends to support my response in my (biased) opinion. Nick-D (talk) 10:41, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
Anotherclown- the edit was a vandal edit- any Aussie editor would have realised that- but blocking the user for that one edit when the others were good edits is wrong (the Kimera Kat edit is a -HUMOROUS- page, and is tagged as such). The edit summary the ip used on the ALP's wikipage used the term 'Murdoch party'. While wrong and if in article space is blatant vandalism, the user though it humorous to use to term considering Murdoch is one of the biggest supporters (and reviewing other edits to Brandis' page, master sockpuppeteer) of the Liberal Party. That 'snarky' edit summary is hardly a reason to block. Luxure Σ 11:20, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Fuji-class ACR

I've responded to your comments and would welcome your thoughts on them.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 04:13, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Bugle

Was travelling the last two weeks, so have to spend some time making sure the lists are accurate and complete before documenting, hence why I need the time, by the way. =) Adam Cuerden (talk) 06:03, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

No worries at all Adam. Ian and I are also a bit behind our usual schedule (due also to travel in part in my case) Nick-D (talk) 06:24, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Voting for the Military historian and Military newcomer of the year now open!

Nominations for the military historian of the year and military newcomer of the year have now closed, and voting for the candidates has officially opened. All project members are invited to cast there votes for the Military historian and Military newcomer of the year candidates before the elections close at 23:59 December 21st. For the coordinators, TomStar81

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:33, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

protection

imho, they have had their fun with outright false conjecture all day, it really needs some reigns satusuro 08:13, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, these kinds of articles are generally terrible. This one isn't too bad at the moment, but will likely deteriorate once the Australian editors go to bed... Nick-D (talk) 09:40, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Murder of Kylie Maybury

Hi Would you be interested in expanding the Wikipedia article on Kylie Maybury? Murder of Kylie Maybury

it just involves editing the article and adding/correcting information. I think Americans have gotten to Kylie's article as it talks about Kylie "going to the grocery store" - Isn't that an Americanism not used in Australia? Paul Austin (talk) 14:17, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Hi, That's not a topic I know anything about or, to be honest, a topic I wish to know anything about - I find all forms of child abuse to be pretty upsetting, and especially extreme instances such as this. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 06:56, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Re:Timeline

Yes! I am planning to add the timeline to the bugle, I've just been up to my ears in medical paperwork for veterans (how appropriate for a milhist coordinator, eh?) the last week or so and as a result haven't had a lot of time on here to clear my head and think about getting it together. You'd be surprised as to exactly how soul crushing it is to do administrative VA-related paperwork; on more than one occasion its put me to sleep. Anyway, I do intend to get to this - hopefully by the end of this week, unless you guys want the bugle out before the end of the week, in which I case I'll put a rush on it. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:23, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Hi Tom, can you provide this by Saturday your time? (@Ian Rose:). I know your pain (though I tend to be at the generating end of government paperwork I fear!). Nick-D (talk) 07:47, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
Certainly. I've been off the air for most of today cuz I needed a down day to get back in to the groove of things, but I'll be on this before Saturday for sure. TomStar81 (Talk) 07:37, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
Thanks Tom Nick-D (talk) 10:06, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
Got it up and running. All it needs now is an extra set of eyes to make sure everythings arranged the way it should be. TomStar81 (Talk) 00:45, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Gold Beach

Hi Nick-D. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find source material re: a couple of your suggestions, but I have pretty much finished with Gold Beach, and it's ready for you to check over. Thanks so much for reviewing. -- Diannaa (talk) 23:54, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the note, I'll follow up on the review later today Nick-D (talk) 07:46, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Merry Christmas

A very Merry Christmas to you and your loved ones, Nick, and a Wonderful New Year! Have a really great one. Peace on Earth and goodwill to all men. Love from all the Asher household. —  Cliftonian (talk)  21:34, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I also hope that you and your family have a great Christmas Nick-D (talk) 06:28, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
Season's Greetings and Good Wishes
Best wishes for the season and the new year. Hawkeye7 (talk) 02:57, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
Same to you - I hope that you have a great Christmas Nick-D (talk) 02:19, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Request for Admin services

G'day Nick, sorry to trouble you. Wondering if you could help delete a page I created accidentally: User:Ronald McNicoll. I wrote a stub on Ronald McNicoll in my sandbox and moved it accidentally to User:Ronald McNicoll instead of article space. Apologies for this. Please let me know if you can help. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 09:06, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Zapped. BencherliteTalk 09:19, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
Thanks Bencherlite Nick-D (talk) 09:34, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
Thanks from me too, cheers. AustralianRupert (talk) 10:02, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Merry Merry

To you and yours

FWiW Bzuk (talk) 14:34, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Thank you - I hope that you also have a great Christmas Nick-D (talk) 21:50, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Bugle

Working on it now. My aplogies. I was far more jetlagged than expected. Adam Cuerden (talk) 15:47, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Reckon that'll do. Adam Cuerden (talk) 16:46, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
Thanks a lot Adam - it looks great. Nick-D (talk) 21:49, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
Used a slightly different format this month; I'll probably go back to the old one next month, but there didn't seem much point having creator on its own line when so many were paintings where you'd mention the creator in the description. Adam Cuerden (talk) 22:21, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

wow

Try to be a bit more civil, please. I was civil with you, why can't you return the favour? I think that you erred in blocking the guy, as I think that he made a good faith edit. I thought that I was allowed to support people being unblocked without risking being punished for it. If that is wrong, then wow, just wow. KrampusC (talk) 02:35, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

You are entirely welcome to your opinions, including in regards to my actions as an admin. I'm not all that fussed about you thinking that I erred in blocking, and certainly would never threaten anyone for disagreeing with me. I stand by the block, and you might as well had you seen what I revision deleted. That warning was in response to your rather cavalier attitude towards the core policy WP:BLP - you plainly did not consider what the text you reverted back in was saying, or (more importantly) check that this strong language was supported by a strong reference. I hope that clarifies things. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 02:42, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Sorry if i jumped the gun a bit

I hope that you aren't too upset at my questioning you. It is just that, without seeing what was hidden, a pretty clear picture was being painted. But, having seen what the IP address quoted, it would seem that there is a BLP violation behind it, that being that her professional reputation could be damaged by the smear that it is "fabricated" as opposed to "editorialised". As I suggested on the BLP noticeboard, I propose a compromise, that that article link be re-inserted, but with the word "fabricated" changed to "editorialised". I don't think that that is in violation of BLP at all, as it is a quote. I also apologise for not noticing that they were not the same thing. Can you forgive me? And yes a 48 hour block would seem reasonable for someone maliciously trying to damage someone's professional reputation, as appears to be the case here. KrampusC (talk) 03:19, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

The lady's professional reputation wasn't the issue here: what was being added was an accusation that she was dishonest. It doesn't matter if she was employed in any form or not. Nick-D (talk) 03:28, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
Sorry if I butt in but according to our policies we as Wikipedians are allowed to use newsblogs as RS and BBC and The Australian are one of them.--Mishae (talk) 04:10, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
The issue is that seriously negative material about a living person was being added when it wasn't supported by the reference given, and was then being reverted back into an article. Nick-D (talk) 04:18, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
Well, accidents happen, but why block a user with more then 3 year experience for 48 hours? Like, maybe for 24 due to this but 48 is a bit harsh in my opinion. :(--Mishae (talk) 04:42, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
I blocked them primarily for defamatory talk page posts which I had to revision delete. Nick-D (talk) 04:43, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the support, Mishae! You are a saint! With people like you around, there is hope for this project yet! And yeah, while I see what he wrote with the now hidden (it is not deleted) Facebook page, and presumably there was something similar to that, may have warranted a short block, I don't think that 48 hours was really warranted, and certainly he didn't break the BLP policy with his post on the article page, which you reverted with the comment "reverting massive BLP problem". It wasn't a BLP problem at all. He just said "made it up" while he should have said "editorialised". That is minor, not massive. But I am not going to re-insert it, not after you threatened me twice in relation to reverting it once, and also a second admin who I never even talked to also threatened me - all because I disagreed with you! Not to mention Jeffro77 threatening me! Wow! Just wow! I am not going to threaten you or try to force you but I really think that it'd help the situation a lot if you'd just re-insert the newspaper article into the Wikipedia page, but just change it from "made it up" to "editorialised". It is factually accurate and the woman is a public figure so privacy issues are not issues. It was also in relation to a very publicly acknowledged hashtag that she used in her political campaigns. KrampusC (talk) 06:28, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
And yeah 48 hours is a hugely harsh punishment for a guy with 3 years of good editing behind him and no blocks before this one (other than an accidental 1 minute block). I think you got more than a little hasty with the old block button, when you could have instead just changed one word. The link was fine, just that he summarised it badly. And if the block was related to the talk page, well, seriously, its on his own talk page. That doesn't warrant a block, does it? KrampusC (talk) 06:33, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
How many times do I need to explain that the block wasn't (primarily) for anything currently visible to you? WP:BLP is enforced very strongly by admins, for very good reasons, and blocks are imposed in situations where there's a strong likelihood that the problematic behaviour will continue, as was the case here. The editor is very welcome to request to be unblocked, either apologizing for their conduct and promising to not do it again, or asking another admin to review my block (I posted the instructions for how to do this on their talk page, which they removed before abusing me). Regarding 'threats', you were being warned for violating core policies, for good reasons: it's not a coincidence that several unrelated editors have been warning you about this. Nick-D (talk) 06:36, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
@KrampusC: Yes, you can be blocked for posting something that is inappropriate on your own talkpage since its not technically [WP:OWN yours].--Mishae (talk) 16:38, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

To Nick-D: If he did it on a talkpage not the article why was this removed from the article? Like, look, I don't choose sides here, I am just trying to mediate the situation. Since however you explained it well what happened I wont intervene, but I am still c urious behind the removal of content from the article which according to our policies doesn't violate it.--Mishae (talk) 16:38, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

That also blatantly violated BLP, and there was consensus on this at Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard/Archive213#illridewithyou - is this really a violation of the policy? Please read the relevant discussions first if you see your role here as mediating things (which, to be frank, you actually have little ability to do given that a) a key issue here is the enforcement of admin actions made under WP:BLP; if The Almightey Drill wants the block reviewed, they are welcome to ask another admin to do so and b) this issue has already been talked over at length in various forums, with consensus always being that the material is not consistent with BLP). Nick-D (talk) 19:52, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
What other forums are we talking about? You gave me one link, I read it, then what? O.K. I have an idea, is it O.K. to insert this and this as an external link? I don't see consensus having an issue with being them as external links. Your thoughts? However, since the article would be deleted since a) its a sub-stub and b) WP:ONEEVENT.--Mishae (talk) 01:55, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
I would have thought that you'd have looked into this matter in depth before declaring yourself as a mediator, but from the above post it seems that you hadn't bothered to read a key discussion first. Other relevant discussions, which you should have also read, are at Talk:2014 Sydney hostage crisis, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Illridewithyou and the various warnings on KrampusC's talk page (as well as the various talk pages she or he posted on). That link looks like it would make a very useful EL for the illridewithyou article, but that article looks like it will be deleted or merged within days given the way the AfD is going. Nick-D (talk) 02:18, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
No, I read the top part before I came to your talkpage. I just skip through the reverts story because I thought the meat of the discussion is what happened after reverts. After reading this I am curious in how to describe it. So, you said that you blocked the editor for not what he did but what he said. I believe you, but when you posted the above at user KrampusC talkpage it made no sense. What he tried to do is to reinsert the newsblog which is fine according to our policies and there is no BLP violations that I can see, aside from a bit rewording. I also would like to suggest for the future, if you do see a BLP issue in an article, instead of reverting it, put it as an external link. That way, there will be less fuss about who-did-what. Sounds like a fair suggestion?--Mishae (talk) 02:37, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
KrampusC reinserted material into the article which obviously violated WP:BLP (as was the consensus of the BLP noticeboard discussion). I don't see how BLP problems can possibly be solved by converting material into external links: the solution is to remove the offending material outright and take appropriate steps to stop it re-appearing. I don't think that you appreciate how seriously WP:BLP is taken, and the obligations it places on editors, or that you have properly thought through the issues here. Nick-D (talk) 03:48, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
Well, I have writing BLP articles since 2012 and had no issues like this. Perhaps, it is because I don't use newsblogs and I don't write articles on quotes of individuals. I do think though that by rewriting the statement or by providing a quotation of it it wouldn't have been a BLP violation. Would it?--Mishae (talk) 03:55, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
Material supported by the contents of the story would not have violated WP:BLP (the story seems to have been written primarily to smear the lady given its tone, but we can presume that the facts it contains were accurate), but the serious negative claim which was added and re-added to articles was obviously not supported by the story. So it was removed per WP:BLPREMOVE. Nick-D (talk) 04:07, 24 December 2014 (UTC) Nick-D (talk) 04:07, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
O.K. That explains it, I think I should invite @KrampusC: so that he can read and get the sense of what actually happened. Believe me both, it took me a day to get the clue in this fiasco.
As far as converting to external links goes, the link is related to what she said, and it comes from third party source The Australian. Am I right?--Mishae (talk) 05:54, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
I do however would like to mention to you that some users do take warnings as threats and I think that instead of putting a warning template which calls his actions defamatory (although I believe it was an accident, not warrant even a warning) you should have explained to him the situation same way you did to me. The thing is is that psychologically a user who receives the first warning or block can behave hostile (that's why user The Almighty Drill started calling names). I still think though that 48 hour block was a bit unjust due to his experience. Plus, he also states there that you could have just reverted his edit or better yet deleted it, which I think you should have done instead of a block (I assure you he wouldn't have reinstated it even if he would have remained unblocked). Like, I don't see him edit warring with you? And, 48 hour blocks are given by admins to new users (If I am not mistaken?) How do I know? I seen plenty of new editors get same length blocks for personal attacks. But, either way, its just my opinion (at least its better then a month long ones). :) Pretty much what I am saying is that you could have just warned him rather then blocking him for it. Or was there a warning on his talkpage? If so, he either deleted it, or I am just that blind that I can't see it.--Mishae (talk) 06:12, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
The material added to the article was blatantly defamatory, and editors who don't like being called out for such irresponsible behaviour have no right to claim to be the victim - I suspect that they wouldn't like it one bit if people starting posting stuff like that about them. I blocked as The Almighty Drill had been repeatedly adding BLP violations, including one so serious I needed to revision delete it. This is standard practice for stopping serious misconduct. It's very easy to have a block lifted - all you need to do is apologise and promise not to do it again (thus providing the reviewing admin with assurance that the misconduct won't reoccur), but instead they abused me and declared themselves a victim. Merry Christmas. Nick-D (talk) 23:09, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
Gotcha. I hope your Christmas wont be as abusive. :)--Mishae (talk) 01:17, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CV, December 2014

Full front page of The Bugle
Your Military History Newsletter

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) 12:51, 23 December 2014 (UTC)


Nick, would it be alright if I did the book review for the January issue? The Illustrated War News Volumes I and II. Adam Cuerden (talk) 13:43, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Hi Adam, yes please go for it Nick-D (talk) 19:55, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/January 2015/Articles

The organization of the featured content seems a bit... strange. It's not alphabetical, as topics comes alphabetically after portals, but it doesn't seem quite bound by the other obvious issues: If we're organizing it on the basis that featured pictures take up a huge amount of space, and thus make a natural division between featured and A-class, shouldn't portals also go before pictures?

I think we could stand to rethink the template order slightly. I'd suggest article, list, portal, topic, pictures myself - alphabetical, except with the one that's a space hog. Adam Cuerden (talk) 01:44, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Hi Adam, I'm not attached to the current ordering (aside from a preference for placing FAs first given that they're generally the most labour-intensive form of featured content). I don't think that there have been any featured portals for around a year (the process now seems defunct), and the placing of FPs might have been influenced by their relative rarity until the last 12 months (hooray!). I'd suggest placing FTs ahead of FLs as they have a larger scope and are typically the culmination of a lot of work of one or two editors. @Ian Rose: what do you think? Nick-D (talk) 02:07, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
Let me just point out that the most recent MILHIST FL was List of cruisers of Germany, a monumentally good work. Before that it was List of unprotected cruisers of Germany. We're not a sports WikiProject, where one could possibly argue that all or most of the statistics are ready-compiled online, merely needing a good googling, simplifying the creation of list articles substantially (I'm presuming I don't need to point out that the opening sections of Sports lists still show substantial work, but my point is to compare relative difficulty of list topics, not to dismiss any of them). MILHIST lists require substantial work. Also, most MILHIST topics need one or more list articles to tie them together. Adam Cuerden (talk) 04:28, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Happy Christmas!

Wikipedia Night before Christmas
 Happy Christmas 2014
Thanks for your measured, consistent and thoughtful wiki-help, especially during work on a difficult article. Much appreciated.

Whiteghost.ink (talk) 06:54, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, same to you :) Nick-D (talk) 07:01, 24 December 2014 (UTC)


2014 Sydney hostage crisis

Hello, Nick-D. You have new messages at ZCodeNoob's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

I have noticed your response to my edit on 2014 Sydney hostage crisis.

My edit was not defamatory. My edit has reference (http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/how-illridewithyou-began-with-rachael-jacobs-experience-on-a-brisbane-train-20141216-128205.html ), written by the same author that posted the facebook status and was already referred to in the same wikipedia page. The author herself says (in my reference) "She might not even be Muslim or she could have just been warm! Besides, I was in the "quiet carriage" where even conversation is banned."

My biggest problem with the original wording was that it made the facebook status sounds factual, while it was not. I am fine, so long as we reword the original page to make it reflect that the facebook status is not entirely factual.

You obviously can't use Wikipedia to smear people. If you haven't read WP:BLP do so now, and please note the need to carefully word all material concerning living people and how seriously this responsibility is taken. Merry Christmas BTW. Nick-D (talk) 22:58, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
Like I said earlier, my edit was not "smearing." It had reference. She indeed did not talk to the woman. it's not unreferenced as you claimed on my own talk page. If you think my wording is improper, what do you think is a proper wording? This is my edit, which is completely objective and correct based on the reference I listed. : ".... though in fact she did not talk to the woman, did not know if the women was a Muslim and was not sure if the woman removed her "hijab" because of fear. " And Merry Christmas to you too.
Nick, any thoughts on my edit? Do you still think it's unreferenced and "smearing"?
Yes, the wording you added was blatantly non-neutral. From what's on your talk page, you may wish to reflect on what's more likely: a) lots of experienced editors are working together in a conspiracy to suppress THE TRUTH! with no other experienced editors daring to stand up to them or b) you goofed in relation to one of Wikipedia's most important policies by adding badly worded material concerning a living person, and were warned to not do so again. See also WP:TINC. Nick-D (talk) 22:07, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
Here is what I don't understand. If you disagree with my wording, you could have totally reworded my content to what you think is neutral, which I have stressed from the beginning ("I am fine, so long as we reword the original page to make it reflect that the facebook status is not entirely factual.") As I have said on my talk page. I have tried to avoid all words I think are non-neutral. I have seen people using words like "make-up" or "fabricate", I avoid them. But again, if you are still unsatisfied, you can reword my content or offer wording advice, instead of accusing me of adding unreferenced content of attacking anybody. And you have to admit what I added was the truth. It had reference right in the page!
I understand you as a senior editor are dealing with many emotional guys every day. Let me assure you I am not one of them. I am not fighting a war. I look very forward to working on this edit with you.
I am under no obligation to ensure that your editing is up to scratch or correct your errors as you imply - that's your responsibility. Per WP:BLPREMOVE the priority is to get material concerning living people such as what you added out of articles. Admins also have a responsibility to respond to people who violate WP:BLP, which is what I did. Nick-D (talk) 05:02, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
So let's agree on this: what she described in her facebook status that inspired the hashtag movement was not a factual story. What I edited, which you may deem "non-neutral", is at least correct, has reference (contrary to what you have accused me of), and merely has the wording issue. Do you agree?
As above, it isn't my job to fix your edit and I actually don't have an interest in that particular topic (which seems a rather nasty part of the public reactions following the crisis). Nor do I want to waste my time going around in circles with you on this any more, especially given a) you haven't paid attention to my earlier comments (nowhere did I say that you didn't provide a reference, despite you repeatedly claiming this - the issue is that the wording you added to the article was a blatantly non-neutral summary which constituted a smear) and b) you reckon that I and others are motivated here by a "hidden political agenda" and "simply don't want the world to know about this" so there's nil chance of having a good faith discussion with you anyway given you think that I'm part of a cabal working to cover things up for some reason. If you want to discuss whether and how this particular issue should be covered in the article Talk:2014 Sydney hostage crisis is the best place to raise the matter. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 22:11, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
Your very first message left on my talk page is accussing me of adding "unreferenced or poorly referenced biographical content. " It's still logged in the history. I removed it because that's blatantly smearing on me. Now you are saying you never said it. Sure.
Yes, what you added was poorly referenced in that the reference clearly didn't support the wording you added (a non-neutral summary, as noted above). Poorly referenced isn't the same as unreferenced. Nick-D (talk) 22:50, 29 December 2014 (UTC)


Let's look at my edit sentence by sentence here:
My edit: "did not talk to the woman" -- her own words: "I wanted to talk to her, but had no idea what to say. ... Besides, I was in the "quiet carriage" where even conversation is banned."
My edit: "She might not even be Muslim" -- her own words: "she might not even be Muslim"
My edit: "and was not sure if the woman removed her 'hijab' because of fear" -- her own words: "she could have just been warm".
Enlighten me, what exactly does not support my wording? If you are saying "this is simply irrelevant" as Jeffro77 said, it's at least debatable. Saying my source does not support my edit and my edit was poorly referenced is simply not true.
I'm not going to get into word games with you - you seem to want to portray yourself as the victim here rather than the woman you slurred by phrasing material in a highly negative way. You may wish to reflect upon other ways in which that material could have been phrased, and I'd suggest that you take responsibility for your actions. Nick-D (talk) 05:42, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2015!!!

Hello Nick-D, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you a heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2015.
Happy editing,
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:01, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages.

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Wikipedia:Cut-and-paste-move repair holding pen

I requested history merge on one of your sandboxes. Would you not mind my requesting it. --George Ho (talk) 06:17, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Hi, I don't see the purpose of this given that I attributed the history of the pages in their edit summaries when creating the article which, AFIK, is all that's necessary. I ended up in a weird situation last year regarding the history of a page which was moved from user space (though I don't think that's likely to occur again), so would rather not do this unless it's a requirement which, from memory, isn't the case. Given my preference, I've removed your request which I hope is OK. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 07:21, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Uh-oh

Uh-oh! War in Afghanistan (2001–present) is still at the same place. --AmaryllisGardener talk 03:16, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

It looks OK to me - War in Afghanistan (2001–President) redirects to War in Afghanistan (2001–present). Am I missing something? (always possible!) Regards, Nick-D (talk) 05:05, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
War in Afghanistan (2001–President) shouldn't exist period, correct me if I'm wrong but "President" doesn't refer to a year, nor is it a synonym for "present". I guess according to the article, now the war isn't over, it said it was yesterday. --AmaryllisGardener talk 15:44, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
Good point - deleted. Nick-D (talk) 01:15, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
Ok, thanks and Happy New Year! :) --AmaryllisGardener talk 01:28, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

An issue to resolve

I have been looking at City of Adelaide (1864), particularly that this article uses "it" as the pronoun for ships, rather than "she/her". I have put some discussion of this on the talk page (under "Gender Neutral Article"), including statistics on other similar articles (tea clippers) that show "she/her" as the overwhelmingly commonest usage. I also find that books on this subject, both old and recently published, use "she/her". I am aware of the style rule

Main page: Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Military_history § Pronouns

However, the usage in this article really sticks out as anomalous compared with virtually all of the writers in this subject - namely 19th century sailing ships.

The article City of Adelaide (1864), in its current form, has User:Cruickshanks as the major contributing editor. It is this editor who has asked that the neuter pronouns used therein are not changed to the feminine pronoun, citing the style rule mentioned above. I have now discovered that this editor changed the article on 12 July 2010 from having "she/her" to "it". This was a large edit, with no discussion and no mention of this change in the edit summary. You can compare the before[24] /after[25] if you wish. The article was started with the pronoun usage "she/her" on 21 Jan 2006.

The reasons that I am asking for help are:
(1) That I am hopping mad that someone who purports to be following the rules is actually flouting them deliberately. I have a real problem with dishonesty, so I thought it better to progress this matter elsewhere, rather than going steaming back in to the article's talk page.
(2) I know very little about Wikipedia protocols for sorting this out.
(3) I am convinced that this article would be much better if it used "she/her" to refer to ships - but don't want to mess up the presentation of my case through lack of knowledge.

The reasons that I am asking you for help are:
(1) You appear as an administrator on Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Participants
(2) You have an interest in Australian matters and might possibly have encountered User:Cruickshanks at some Wikipedia event (OK, I know that's like a school-friend of mine being asked "You're from Venezuela - I wonder if you know X, he's from Rio de Janeiro?" - Bizarrely, they did know each other).

Please let me know what you think.ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 13:27, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Hi, There have been lots of discussions (and a few very heated arguments!) over whether to use gender pronouns for ships, and my understanding of the general agreement is that both using them and not using them is OK, and the key thing is for usage to a) be consistent and b) not be changed one one of the options is settled upon (or selected by the article creator) without a good reason. Cruickshanks (who I'm not familiar with, I'm afraid) appears to have changed the usage in this article without discussion, which isn't a good idea. However, I'd suggest only changing it back if agreement to do so is reached on the article's talk page - I note that you've raised the issue there, and the only editor who's responded to date isn't supportive. If you'd like additional participation in that discussion, you might want to advertise it (in very neutral terms) at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships. Personally, I use female pronouns when writing about ships, but I'm not confident that I'm in a majority of editors by doing so! Regards, Nick-D (talk) 22:31, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

GA status.

Hi Nick. Hope you and yours are having a good Christmas and hopefully new year. A couple of us would like to work on the SPYDER article to get it up to G.A status. Now, what does that involve? I assume an experienced colleague to give periodic assessments and then a nomination process. I've just never done one before. I helped out on the Kursk related article though I seem to recall. Any steers? No rush mate. Cheers! Irondome (talk) 02:59, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Hi, articles are raised to GA status after passing a GA review via WP:GAN - typically a single editor reviews each nomination. The criteria articles need to meet to reach GA status are set out at Wikipedia:Good article criteria, and the instructions for nominating articles are at Wikipedia:Good article nominations/Instructions. You might also want to look for articles on comparable topics which are at GA status for some practical guidance - there's a comprehensive list at Wikipedia:Good articles/Warfare#Weapons, equipment and buildings. I'm not at all familiar with the SPYDER system (or air defence systems more generally to be honest), but from a quick skim of the article the main things which are missing are material on the development of the system and an independent assessment of its performance (the technical aspects of the article are mainly referenced to its manufacturer's website). A discussion of the roles it fills in each country would also be useful. The operational use and export sections are also duplicative (with it being unclear if Georgia did in fact operate this system), and I'd be interested to know why the Israeli Defense Force doesn't operate this apparently-successful Israeli system. I hope that this is helpful. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 04:24, 31 December 2014 (UTC)
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