Kevin Myers has been awarded the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves in recognition of his outstanding work on early modern warfare in North America, and, in particular, the creation of four featured articles on the topic.
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The contest department has completed another month of competition. The leader for this month, with 16 points, is Kevin Myers; Carom and Cla68 tied for second place with 10 points each. Kevin is also the overall leader, with 36 points in total. All project members are encouraged to submit the articles they're working on as entries.
Noclador has been awarded the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves in recognition of his outstanding work on structural graphics for land-based forces worldwide, his contributions to the Alpini and other regiments, and all his other military graphics.
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The contest department has completed another month of competition. The leader for this month, with 23 points, is Blnguyen; JKBrooks85 is in second place, with 17 points, and Carom is in third place, with 13 points. Carom is also the overall leader, with 45 points in total. All project members are encouraged to submit the articles they're working on as entries.
Wandalstouring was awarded the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves in recognition of his long and dedicated service as a project coordinator and his many contributions to the structure and operations of the project.
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The contest department has completed its sixth month of competition. The leader for this month, with 57 points, is JKBrooks85; Kyriakos is in second place, with 16 points, and Blnguyen and Woodym555 are tied for third place, with 10 points each. The overall results for the past six months show JKBrooks85 in first place, with 92 points, followed by Carom, with 45 points, and Blnguyen, with 38 points. All project members are encouraged to submit the articles they're working on as entries.
A stress hotline is now available for project members' use.
The bulk of the project's guidelines have been moved to a separate subpage.
A proposal to formalize the project's style guide as part of Wikipedia's Manual of Style has been made and is being discussed; comments and suggestions would be very appreciated!
Awards and honors
SandyGeorgia was awarded the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves in recognition of the instrumental role she plays in the featured article process, both by checking the project's featured article candidates to ensure that citations are formatted correctly, and by helping clear out the backlog of featured articles that no longer meet the criteria. Sandy is the first non-member of the project to receive this award.
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The contest department has completed its seventh month of competition. The leader for this month, with 22 points, is JKBrooks85; Kyriakos is in second place, with 21 points, and Blnguyen is in third place, with 10 points. Overall, JKBrooks85 remains in first place, with 114 points. All project members are encouraged to submit the articles they're working on as entries.
The B-Class checklist in the {{WPMILHIST}} project banner now generates categories corresponding to the areas in which an article needs attention; similar sets of categories exist for each task force as well. The available categories are:
JKBrooks85 has been awarded the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves in recognition of his diligent efforts to improve our coverage of fortifications in the American Civil War, and, in particular, his creation of a substantial number of A-Class articles.
Tony the Marine has been awarded the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves in recognition of his considerable efforts in raising Puerto Rican- and Hispanic-related military history articles to featured status.
What isTag & Assess MMVII? We'd better explain. A month or so back, we ran a script to list all the articles in categories related to military history. This gave us about 165,000 articles. Some of these are already tagged and assessed as military history; some are military history but not yet tagged and assessed; some are not military history articles at all. This huge project — working thorough 165,000 articles — is called Tag & Assess 2007. To make it manageable, the list has been broken down into 330 ranges each of 500 articles. This is where you can help.
Just...adopt-a-range from the available worklists then keep track of your tally on participants' list. The tagging is easy, just follow the simple instructions. Afterwards, as our way of thanking you, you'll be presented with service awards and barnstars based on the number of articles you process. Remember... the ranges are broken down into sub-sections of ten articles, so you work through them at twenty or thirty articles a day if you wish. To make Tag & Assess 2007 a success, we need your help. Please sign up now. Thanks.
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The contest department has completed its eight month of competition. The leader for this month, with a massive 92 points, is Blnguyen; Woodym555 is in second place, with 32 points, and Cla68 and TomStar81 are tied for third place, with 15 points each. Overall, Blnguyen is now in first place, with 140 points, followed by JKBrooks85, with 120 points, and by Woodym555, with 63 points. All project members are encouraged to submit the articles they're working on as entries.
Tag & Assess 2007—the project's first major article tagging and assessment drive—is continuing; all project members—and anyone else who's interested—are invited to assist with this effort.
Mike Christie was awarded the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves in recognition of his outstanding work on Anglo-Saxon military history, including the production of numerous featured articles.
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The contest department has completed its ninth month of competition. The top scorer this month is Blnguyen, with 22 points, followed by Dreamafter, with 8 points, and Redmarkviolinist, with 6 points. Blnguyen also remains the overall leader, with 162 points in total. All project members are encouraged to submit the articles they're working on as entries.
Blnguyen has been awarded the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves in recognition of his efforts in improving the quality of articles related to Vietnamese military history, including the creation of numerous A-Class articles.
Woodym555 has been awarded the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves in recognition of his outstanding work on topics related to the Victoria Cross, notably including the creation of featured articles, featured lists, and a featured topic.
Although the drive is officially closed, existing participants can continue tagging until January 31 if they wish, with the extra tags counting towards their tally for barnstar purposes.
We'd like to see what lessons can be learned from this drive, so we've set up a feedback workshop. Comments and feedback from participants and non-particpants
alike are very welcome and appreciated.
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The project coordinator selection process is starting. We are aiming to elect nine coordinators to serve for the next six months; if you are interested in running, please sign up here by February 14!
The contest department has completed its tenth month of competition, which saw an unprecedented 44 entries. The top scorer this month is Dreamafter, with 95 points, followed by Cla68, with 42 points, and Ed! and Woody, with 21 points each. Blnguyen remains the overall leader, with 182 points in total. All project members are encouraged to submit the articles they're working on as entries.
A new auxiliary infobox, {{operational plan}}, is now available.
A new page for military history essays has been created; project members are encouraged to post their own advice and opinions on matters within the project's purview.
New guidelines concerning precision and ship pronouns have been added to the style guide.
A category restructuring workshop is now open; brainstorming regarding the arrangement of the top-level military history categories is currently ongoing.
Awards and honors
Bwmoll3 has been awarded the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves in recognition of his superior contributions to a variety of articles about the United States Air Force, including a great number of those dealing with wings and installations.
Bedford has been awarded the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves in recognition of the outstanding contribution he has made to the project's organization by going above and beyond the call of duty in tagging, assessing, and classifying a massive number of articles during the 2007 assessment drive.
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In the simultaneous referendum on project organization, you voted almost unanimously for a primus inter pares structure. As a tangible reflection of this, Assistant Coordinators are now known as Coordinators.
The contest department has completed its eleventh month of competition, which saw 10 entries. The top scorer this month is Dreamafter, with 28 points, followed by Smsarmad, with 13 points, with Blnguyen, Ed! and jwillbur also fielding entries. Blnguyen remains the overall leader, with 188 points in total. You are encouraged to submit articles you're working on as entries.
A new B-Class Assessment Drive ("BCAD") will go operational no later than 11 March. Of great interest to experienced wiki-gnomes, it is small in scope, about 4,500 articles, and will be supported by the usual awards, including a golden wiki. To keep up to date with developments, and to get off to a flying start when it opens, add WP:MHA-BCAD now to your watchlist.
Awards and honors
Kirill Lokshin has been awarded the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves in recognition of his outstanding organizational work, his painstaking maintenance work, and his unstinting advice, throughout his two years of project leadership.
MBK004 has been awarded the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves in recognition of his outstanding effort to improve our compliment of naval ships by updating infoboxes, replacing deprecated infoboxes, and locating sources for ships in the employment of their respective countries' navies.
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The main project talk page is now automatically archived; MiszaBot II will archive any sections that have had no comments for 21 days.
The contest department has completed its twelth month of competition, which saw 13 entries. The top scorer this month is Woody, with 22 points, followed by Dreamafter with 13 points, with Ed!, jwillbur, Redmarkviolinist and Borg Sphere also fielding entries. Blnguyen remains the overall leader, with 188 points in total. You are encouraged to submit articles you're working on as entries.
A Linguistics section has been added to the Logistics department, for help with non-English language sources and translation of snippets. It supports 19 languages so far.
Kirill Lokshin has been appointed coordinator emeritus to reflect his on-going involvement in the project. The appointment ends concurrently with the other coordinators' terms in September 2008.
Tag & Assess 2008 launched on 24 April and will run until 4 July. We have around 60,000 articles to check, so all assistance is very welcome. As usual, there are barnstars galore and service awards for contributing editors.
The project scope has been amended to include specific reference to historically accurate video games. Songs and music with long military associations are also now included.
The Contest department has completed its thirteenth month of competition, which saw 27 entries. The top scorer this month is Ed! with 37 points, followed by Cam with 22 points. Woody, Howard C. Berkowitz, Redmarkviolinist, Nousernamesleft and Outdawg also fielded entries. Blnguyen remains the overall leader, with 188 points in total. You are encouraged to submit articles you're working on as entries.
The coordinators have "adopted" task forces to act as prime point of contact. A list of which coordinators have adopted which task forces is here.
An interesting proposal to set up teams to deal with specific tasks, like taking the Top Ten most frequently read military history articles to featured articles status is here.
The coordinators are exploring ways of developing and improving our fifty or so task forces. More information is here.
All editors are invited to contribute to a discussion about the naming of military operations in an endeavor to reach consensus.
Awards and honors
Congratulations and kudos to the four top-performing editors in BCAD: CAM (1st); Legotech (2nd); Harland1 (3rd) and Smsarmad (4th). They helped assess 4303 B-class Milhist articles. Well done!
Editors needed for Tag & Assess 2008. To coincide with the summer holidays, it will be gearing up from 15 June. As usual, barnstars galore!
Partner peer reviews: for a thirty-day trial period, we'll be running joint peer reviews with Wikiproject Video Games. The idea is simple: we help with their reviews; they help with ours. This way both wikiprojects benefit from new reviewers and new ideas!
We're notable: A new book, Simon Fowler's 2007 Guide to Military History on the Internet (UK:Pen & Sword, ISBN9781844156061) rates Wikipedia as "the best general resource" for military research (p. 7). Of the military pages, he says: "The results are largely accurate and generally free of bias" (he also suggests people join the wikiproject). When rating WP as the No. 1 military site (p. 201) he says "Wikipedia is often criticised for its inaccuracy and bias, but in my experience the military history articles are spot on."
A-Class reviews: the usual four-day review period may now be extended by up to three days (ie seven days in total) in the following circumstances:
the article has no opposes but has insufficient support for promotion or
the article's nominator requests more time to resolve matters arising during the review.
The special projects department has opened. It will focus on specific ad-hoc high-priority tasks and implement them with informal, short-term groups of editors.
The Contest department has completed its fourteenth month of competition, which saw 16 entries. The top scorer this month is Cam with 21 points, followed by Redmarkviolinist with 11 points. Woody, Dreamafter, Kyriakos, Nousernamesleft and Outdawg also fielded entries. Blnguyen remains the overall leader, with 188 points in total. You are encouraged to submit articles you're working on as entries.
A discussion has been opened into the structuring of top level operational categories, starting with Category:World War II. All interested editors are invited to help establish a consensus.
With the holiday season upon us, we're very short of reviewers at A-Class Reviews and are likely to remain so for the next month or so. If just five new reviewers each reviewed one article a week, the problem would be solved! To keep track of Milhist articles for peer and A-Class reviews, simply paste the code – {{WPMILHIST Review alerts}} – onto your talk page.
Similarly, copy-editors are currently in short supply. If you can help out at the Copy-editing section of the Logistics Dept, it would be much appreciated. If you can help with A-Class Reviews and Featured Article Candidates so much the better! To keep up to date with Milhist articles needing copy input, just paste – {{WPMILHIST Copy-editing alerts}} onto your talk page.
The debate on whether Milhist should adopt the new C-Class has been closed, with a strong and clear consensus against adopting. The archived discussion is here.
The Milhist review structure is itself being reviewed. The idea is to see how it can be improved, or whether it needs changing or updating.
The month-long trial of partner peer reviews with Video games is being discussed. All feedback welcome!
Awards and honors
Congratulations to Buckshot06, who has been awarded the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves in recognition of his consistently excellent edits and his continued commitment and tireless efforts towards improving the quality of articles pertaining to military history.
Congratulations to Piotrus, who has been awarded the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves in recognition of his outstanding contributions to Polish military history, including the creation of numerous Featured Articles, A-Class articles, and Good Articles on the subject.
The Contest department has completed its fifteenth month of competition, which saw 15 entries. The top scorer this month is JonCatalan with 32 points, followed by Cam with 20 points. Ed!, David Underdown, CyclonicWhirlwind, and Blnguyen also fielded entries. Blnguyen remains the overall leader, with 193 points in total. The Chevrons go to JonCatalan and Cam gets the Writer's Barnstar. The May 2008 winners, Cam and Redmarkviolinist have been belatedly awarded the Chevrons and Writer's Barnstar for coming first and second respectively. You are encouraged to submit any articles you are working on as entries.
Tag & Assess '08 has now closed, with approximately 10,000 articles successfully tagged. Many thanks to all those who participated. The top three scorers were Jim Sweeney (Gold Wiki), Dashiellx (Silver Wiki) and Ejosse1 (Bronze Wiki).
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The criteria for Military history A-Class reviews have been overhauled. The new standard is deliberately set higher than before, and is much closer to featured article quality. The new criteria are:
A2. The article is comprehensive, factually accurate, neutral and focused on the main topic; it neglects no major facts or details, presents views fairly and without bias, and does not go into unnecessary detail.
A3. The article has an appropriate structure of hierarchical headings, including a concise lead section that summarizes the topic and prepares the reader for the detail in the subsequent sections, and a substantial but not overwhelming table of contents.
A4. The article is written in concise and articulate English; its prose is clear, is in line with style guidelines, and does not require substantial copy-editing to be fully MoS-compliant.
A5. The article contains supporting visual materials, such as images or diagrams with succinct captions, and other media, where appropriate.
The timescale for A-Class articles has also been changed to give more editors an opportunity to participate.
The six-monthly Coordinators' election has been moved back a month to avoid clashes with the holiday period. The sign-up period will run from 1–15 September and the elections themselves from 16–30 September.
The Contest department has completed its sixteenth month of competition, which saw 22 entries. The top scorer this month is new entrant Bellhalla with 41 points, followed by Blnguyen with 33 points. Cam, Ed!, David Underdown, and Ferbess also fielded entries. Blnguyen remains the overall leader, with 226 points in total. The Chevrons go to Bellhalla and Blnguyen gets the Writer's Barnstar. You are encouraged to submit any articles you are working on as entries.
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The Military history WikiProject coordinator selection process is underway, to elect nine coordinators to serve for the next six months. If you are interested in running, please sign up here by 23:59 (UTC) on 14 September! Voting starts at 00:01 (UTC) on 15 September and runs until 23:59 (UTC) on 30 September.
A new barnstar specifically encouraging and recognizing excellence in Milhist article creation and development has been introduced. Any editor who has made a significant contribution to three or more Milhist A-Class articles promoted since 1 August 2008 under the new A-Class criteria is eligible. Nominations for the medal should be made here; should list the three A-Class articles for which the medal is sought; and must be subsequently supported by three or more project coordinators, who will be responsible for making the award. Editors may nominate themselves or any other qualifying editor.
A new discussion about whether Milhist should adopt C-Class is underway. All comments are welcome.
The 2008 Tag & Assess Workshop is still open, seeking input on ways to improve the efficiency, user-friendliness and organization of future Milhist drives. All comment is welcome, especially from people who didn't participate in the drive!
Awards and honors
Durova has been awarded the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves in recognition of her exemplary work on military history featured pictures, sounds, and articles.
The W1.0 Editorial Team have selected 1133 Military history articles for inclusion in the W0.7 test release. For convenience, these are broken by task force and you'll find a list on each task force headed "Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for [task force name]" on the task force talk page. You may nominate extra articles for inclusion or existing ones for removal. If you can improve any of the articles on the list, by adding references, or copy-editing, or cleaning up generally, please do so.
A new discussion has started about naming articles on Soviet WWII operations. All contributions are welcome as we hope to resolve this longstanding issue once and for all.
The debate over whether Milhist should adopt C-Class is continuing. All comments and suggestions are welcome.
Following a lengthy discussion, three new coordinators – EyeSerene, Maralia and the_ed17 - have been coopted. The purpose of the appointments is partly to fill the place left by the retirement of TomStar81 and partly to provide increased/improved coordinator capacity to cover existing coordinator absences and to help with upcoming major projects. As a reminder, coordinators are merely editors who have committed to go the extra mile for the project and that there are very few processes that require coordinator input. Specifically these are closing A-Class reviews, and endorsing two project award nominations. Any editors who wish to help with the nitty-gritty of this busy project (cross-posting A-Class review, peer review and featured article candidate alerts; responding to member questions and queries, helping with drives) are positively encouraged to do so.
A workshop has been set up to redesign and improve the newsletter. In our recent competition, a new name was chosen – The Bugle. All editors are welcome to participate, especially those with graphic and design skills!
Administrator and Milhist coordinator, Nick Dowling, has changed his user name to Nick-D.
Adoption of C-class remains firmly on the Milhist agenda with discussions approaching their fourth month of debate. More views are sought on this.
Awards and honors
Kyriakos has been awarded the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves in recognition of his long and distingushed service as a Coordinator of the Military history WikiProject from February 2007 to September 2008.
LordAmeth has been awarded the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves in recognition of his long and distingushed service as a Coordinator of the Military history WikiProject from August 2006 to September 2008.
EyeSerene has been awarded the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves in recognition of his diligent and excellent copyediting of vast quantities of Military History articles—notably his work on multiple Featured Article Candidates.
TomStar81 has been awarded the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves in recognition of both his long and distinguished service as a coordinator of this project from August 2007 to October 2008, and of his exemplary contributions to articles on the vessels of the U.S. Navy.
Following a lengthy discussion, a new section - Personal libraries - has been added to the Logistics Department. The aim is to make sourcing and citation checking easier by sharing information about editors' personal book holdings. If you have half an hour to spare, why add a list of your Milhist reference books?
This month saw 14 military history-related articles promoted to featured status, the highest number for a single month since the project's establishment in October 2002. Congratulations all round!
Design competition Editors with design skills urgently needed to design an eyecatching logo for this newsletter. The logo needs to incorporate a bugle motif as well as the newsletter's title, "The Bugle". Fame and honour (a barnstar) guaranteed for the successful design. Submit entries here please.
Who will be the three "2008 Military historians of the Year"? There are 13 candidates so far and the number is rising rapidly. The winning editors will receive the Gold, Silver and Bronze Wikis; and all other nominees the WikiProject barnstar. To nominate editors you admire, or to cast your votes, please visit here!
A new drive has been started to identify the core topics of World War I with the aim of improving their quality before the centenary of the start of World War I in 2014.
Don't forget the six-monthly Coordinator elections will take place in March for the April-September term. If you want to become more involved in the project, now's the time to start thinking about it!
Following extensive discussion, the structure of the A-Class Medal System has been changed to include three new medals: The A-Class Medal with Oak Leaves, the A-Class Medal with Oakleaves and Swords, and the A-Class Medal with Oakleaves, Swords, and Diamonds, each of which is respectfully awarded after 5, 10, and 20 groups of three A-Class Articles.
The number of our A-Class articles grew by more than 25% during this month, compared to the total number of A-Class articles existent at the end of December.
A drive is underway to identify the core topics of World War I with the aim of improving their quality before the centenary of the start of World War I in 2014.
A Survey is currently underway to determine how MilHist's processes, logistics, and management can be improved.
Abraham, B.S. has been awarded the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves in recognition of his many valuable contributions to the project as an active reviewer, a thoughtful contributor to military history discussions, a fine content contributor, and a gentleman.
The Contest department has completed its twenty second month of competition, which saw 62 entries. The top scorer this month is Bellhalla with 93 points followed by Abraham, B.S. with 52 points. Cam, Georgejdorner and 11 other editors also fielded entries. Bellhalla remains the overall leader with 687 points in total. The Chevrons go to Bellhalla and Abraham, B.S. gets the Writer's Barnstar. You are encouraged to submit any articles you are working on as entries.
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This month has been interesting for MILHIST, as we reorganized a few departments. The Outreach Department has been replaced by the tabs at the top of our totally redesigned project page; thanks to Kirill for the design and Bellhalla for the logo. We also created the Academy, a hub for practical advice about creating, editing, and reviewing quality content. All project members are cordially invited to fill in some of the red links, and new ideas are always welcome.
As you can see on the right, our A-class and featured content is growing quite rapidly; these numbers have now gone up by 45 for the second straight month! Great work! In addition, thanks go out to those who recently helped in reducing the A-class nominations backlog. Reviewers are still needed; if you feel up to it, please stop by and leave comments on an article—every review helps!
Article alerts are now available both for the entire project (on the status page) and for each task force (on the task force page).
The Military history coordinator elections, to appoint coordinators for the period April–October 2009, take place this month. If you are thinking of standing as a candidate, the schedule is as follows:
Nomination period: 00:01 Sat 7 March - 23:59 Fri 13 March
Voting period: 00:01 Sat 14 March - 23:59 Sat 29 March
Awards and honors
Ian Rose has been awarded the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves in recognition of his outstanding contributions to Australian military history articles (including four Featured Articles, an A-Class article, and four Good Articles), his highly civil and collaborative editing, and his willingness to provide advice and assistance to other editors.
MisterBee1966 has been awarded the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves in recognition of his contributions to seven featured lists on German military awards during the Second World War, and for contributing to four good articles and being instrumental in promoting three of them to A-Class status.
Raul654 has been awarded the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves in recognition of his contributions to six current Military History Featured Articles, his flexibility in managing the "Today's featured article" list to accommodate relevant main-page appearances, and his generosity in providing many images for our visual library.
The Land has been awarded the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves in recognition of his significant contributions to the area of maritime warfare, as he has authored six of the seven articles in the "history of the battleship" series, with four of them now being featured.
The big news of course was the seventh project coordinator election covering the period ending 30 September. The quality of the candidates was extremely high, with some of the project's top content builders running alongside highly experienced backroom people. Of the eighteen candidates, sixteen were finally appointed, giving us probably the most rounded coordination team so far.
The C-class referendum, held at the same time, produced a slight majority of votes for introduction, but was insufficient to demonstrate a clear consensus. So, for the time being at least, therefore, the project will continue without C-class. Otherwise, focus is likely be on the Academy and the development of courses to develop reviewing, copy-editing and article-building skills. Some review of our task forces is also probable, perhaps consolidating some of the smaller, quieter, ones. As ever, input from everyone is not only welcomed but positively encouraged.
The coordinators' gratitude goes not only to those who participated in the election and referenda but also to everyone who works quietly and conscientiously away to make participation in this project rewarding, successful and productive. Milhist is very fortunate in its membership! Thank you all, Roger Daviestalk16:15, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
Once again, this month, we have a bumper crop of featured and A-class content, and our heartfelt thanks go to editors who have worked so hard to write these. But with our growth in quality content comes increased demand for reviewers. Which is where you can help.
Reviewing is easy and rewarding. You don't need any prior experience and you don't need to write a full review. Any input is helpful so you initially can just comment on what you're comfortable with. Most reviewers start off by focusing one or two things – say, the historical context, or the text, or the references, or the layout, or the images – and as they gain experience, they broaden the scope of the review. You can easily keep up to date with which articles need review, by copying this text – {{WPMILHIST Review alerts}} – to your userpage or talkpage. Thanks in anticipation, Roger Davies
JonCatalán has been awarded the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves in recognition of his distinguished service as a coordinator of this project, his thorough article reviews, and his exemplary contributions to 14 featured articles, one featured topic, and many A-Class and good articles.
With end of year exams beckoning for many members, this has been a quiet month on the talk pages for Milhist. (If you are facing exams yourself, we all wish you the very best of luck!) During this quieter period, some of our most active reviewers are busy revising so it would be really appreciated if you can help with peer reviews or A-Class reviews. You can easily track articles needing review, by copying {{WPMILHIST Review alerts}} to your userpage.
This month sees our first newsletter editorial. The idea is to provide regular tips and hints to help editors get up to speed with our large (and sometimes complicated) project. This month's piece, by EyeSerene, explains the workings of the project's main template, which is at the core of the project's tagging and assessing activities. Roger Daviestalk20:26, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
In a welcome addition to a long under-represented area, this month saw the creation of the Pakistani military history task force, which hits the ground running with 11 participants.
Welcome to a new occasional feature of The Bugle, where over coming issues we'll be exploring some of the roles, tasks, and technical functions that go into creating what archivist and researcher Simon Fowler has described as the best general resource for military history on the internet.† As a project we can rightly be proud of that accolade, and we gratefully acknowledge the debt we owe to those dedicated editors from across Wikipedia that have helped to make the Military history WikiProject what it is today.
Many editors' first inkling of milhist's existence is when they spot our project banner on an article talk page. The banner can be easily added to appropriate articles by any editor, by typing {{WPMILHIST}} at (or near) the top of the talk page on a new line, and saving the page with an appropriate edit summary. This short form of the template will add the article to our project, and also flag the article as needing assessment and assignment to a task force by automatically adding it to the unassessed articles and articles with no associated task force categories.
As with many templates in use on Wikipedia, additional parameters can be specified. Possibly the most useful to include is the class parameter, because this will help out any editors who come along later to assess the article. To add the class parameter, edit the template markup to look like {{WPMILHIST|class=}}... and if you wish, have a read through the assessment guidance on milhists's quality scale and assign a rating from Stub- to B-Class yourself. A banner template with, for example, a Stub-Class article rating will look like {{WPMILHIST|class=stub}}. Because B-Class is assessed against a checklist it has some additional parameters, so when adding the project banner to an article talk-page, even if you don't intend to assess the article yourself it can be a real help to subsequent editors to include these too. This version of the template can be entered as {{WPMILHIST|class=|B1=|B2=|B3=|B4=|B5=}}. For detailed guidance on exactly what the five B-Class criteria are, see the B-class checklist.
Finally, when adding the milhist banner it's useful to assign the article to one (or more) of our task forces. This will help to bring it to the attention of those editors most likely to be interested in, and knowledgeable about, the subject. As with assessment, task force assignment is accomplished by adding a parameter to the template—in this case, simply the name of the task force followed by =yes (or =y). For example, to assign a Start-Class article to the Second World War and Canadian task forces, the template should read {{WPMILHIST|class=start|B1=|B2=|B3=|B4=|B5=|WWII=yes|Canadian=yes}}.
For a full list of all the banner template parameters and more detailed usage instructions, see Template:WPMILHIST; if you are unsure as to whether or not an article belongs with milhist or what task force(s) might be appropriate, or if you have any other questions, you are welcome to ask at our main project talk page. Happy templating! EyeSerenetalk
†Simon Fowler, Guide to Military History on the Internet, UK:Pen & Sword 2007, ISBN9781844156061, p. 7
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The big news this month is the launch of the Academy content drive (see below if you want to help). But otherwise it has been a very busy month for both reviewing and contest department entries, surprisingly so considering the wind down of the academic year.
Introduced in February, The Academy is an online school for new members. This month, we're launching a drive to increase the breadth and depth of its content. If you can help, by writing four to six paragraph articles, please do so! Barnstars galore to be won!
Perhaps the most important—and, indeed, most respected—aspect of the Military History project is our rigorous A-Class Review (ACR) system, which puts articles through the most robust review outside of WP:FAC. Although reviewing might seem daunting to newcomers, this article will give you an outline of three popular reviewing methods so you can actually start contributing yourself.
General nit-pick - this is one of the easiest - and one of the most common - reviewing styles seen throughout Wikipedia. It is a similar approach to that you would see in proofreading and classroom marking. Basically, it is a general overview of the article, not getting too specific on aspects of the prose. The most common statements include This article could benefit from a light copyedit before going to FAC or You might want to check the endash and emdash placement in the article. It's a style that is incredibly easy to manage, and one that requires little-to-no experience in previous reviewing.
Specialization - it often is the case that those who have been reviewing articles for a long time will move away from the general review towards more specific areas of articles. As an example, Tony usually stays within the realm of prose and copyediting while reviewing Featured Article Candidates, Tom used to focus almost entirely on external links and disambiguations, while others specialize their focus exclusively on copyediting, reference formatting, dashes, punctuation and flow, image licensing, and a host of other areas. This is a review method that is not nearly as time-consuming as other methods, as it allows you to quickly scan an article, spot the things that you work on, and how they need to be fixed.
Sectional - My preferred style of reviewing, this is one of the most informative styles. Unfortunately, it is also one of the most time-consuming and exhaustive styles. Essentially, it involves going through the entire article, section by section, and pointing out every major (and often many of the minor) flaws present within each section. Everything from prose to reference formatting to content. It is a reviewing style that is exhausting, and often takes two or three goes through the article to get everything (sometimes even more), but it gives the article's main contributors two benefits. First, everything is well organized, mostly under section headers like this one, and it often makes finding individual sentences or refs much easier, as they are within that section. Secondly, it points out a lot of the problems from a lot of the areas.
Don't forget that the next Military history coordinator elections take place in September. You might like to start thinking about whether you are interested in standing. More information to follow in the next edition of The Bugle. In the meantime, enjoy the remainder of the holiday season and come back refreshed and raring to go! Roger Daviestalk02:00, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
We current have an astonishing fifty articles within our scope up for promotion to Good Article and it's a bit backlogged. Can you help with reviewing to speed up the process?
The Military history Academy content drive is underway with nearly twenty new essays so far. More contributions are welcome. Just click on the one of the redlinks here and start writing!
Are you missing out on an A-Class medal? These are for editors who have significantly contributed to three or more military history A-Class articles promoted since 1 August 2008. Alternatively, perhaps you can help with reviewing? For more information, see here.
More eyes would be welcome on the ten articles currently being peer reviewed. It doesn't take long to peer review an article and your perspective is appreciated!
Contest department
The Contest department has completed its twenty-eighth month of competition, with 77 articles entered by 9 editors. Sturmvogel 66 was placed first again this month with an amazing 94 points, closely followed by Ed! at 91 points. They receive the Chevrons and the Writer's Barnstar respectively. Parsecboy commendably came third with 76 points, with honorable mentions going to Woody (29), Wild Wolf (25), Ian Rose (21), and AustralianRupert (16). Thanks go to Starstriker7 and Piotrus, who also fielded entries.
Awards and honours
Congratulations go to Parsecboy, who has been awarded the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves for bringing almost all of the WWI-era German battleships up to GA, A, or FA class. His single-minded determination in this field has helped immeasurably with the project's WWI Centennial Drive.
The voting phase of the eighth coordinator elections, for the October–March term, started on 13 September and will run until 23:59 Sat 26 September.
Each candidate garnering twenty or more endorsements will be appointed, to a maximum of fifteen. This election has a strong field of sixteen candidates running, offering many skills and representing all aspects of the project.
The Contest Department is going from strength to strength and drew a massive number of entries in August (see the results below). If you haven't fielded any entries yet, please think about doing so. It's great fun! Roger Daviestalk14:02, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
People with an interest in clearly presenting battle information, and First World War buffs, will find the discussion about a new campaign box for the Battle of the Somme interesting.
With the recent increase in enthusiasm, Wikipedia-wide, for creating "outline" articles, there's an ongoing discussion here. The idea is to produce guidelines for overview articles for Milhist editors and reviewers.
Proposals have been made to introduce a new self-scoring "honour" system for Contest Department entries. Contributions, especially from regular nominees, are welcome.
Editorial: Getting to FAC via A-Class - some interesting new facts
Well, it’s official. Milhist articles have a much better than average chance of success as featured article candidates. MBK004 has done some useful number-crunching following the fortunes of the 97 Milhist featured article candidates submitted between January and July this year. The research shows that 70% of Milhist articles were promoted against an overall average of 51%.
Looking behind the figures, some other interesting facts emerge. First, 84% of our promoted articles had successfully passed a Milhist A-Class Review before going on to FAC. Second, of the 29 Milhist articles that failed, less than half (41%) had had an A-Class Review. Third, the 97 Milhist articles accounted for 16% of all FACs submitted between January and July of this year.
The clear lesson is that if you want a string of featured articles to your credit, you may find Milhist's A-class Review process to be of benefit to you! Roger Daviestalk
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Greetings to all members of the Military history WikiProject, and to those outside the project who receive this news letter as well! My name is TomStar81, and it with a great sense of pride that I assume the position of lead coordinator for the project. On behalf of all the coordinators, both new and returning, we wish to thank those of you who participated in the September elections, and we look forward to working to advance the goals of the project for the next six months.
With the elections concluded, there are two changes. First, Roger Davies has been appointed a coordinator emeritus, joining our first coordinator emeritus Kirill Lokshin. Secondly, for the first time ever, the lead coordinator for the Military history WikiProject will be taking a lengthy wikibreak. For those who were unaware of this, I am an undergraduate student, and will be taking a leave of absence, effective end September, to focus on graduating in December. However, with fourteen coordinators, and two coordinators emeritus, I am confident the needs of the project will be well taken care of. For the VIII coordinator tranche, TomStar81 (Talk)
This month witnessed an all new and improved scoring system and process established in the Contest Department, which has run both smoothly and successfully. A total of 54 articles were entered this month by 11 editors. Parsecboy placed first with an astonishing 143 points, followed by Sturmvogel 66 on 105 points. They receive the Chevrons and the Writer's Barnstar respectively. Honorable mentions go to the_ed17 (41), Auntieruth55 (38), AustralianRupert (17), Radeksz (12) and Ian Rose (11), with our thanks going to Piotrus, Abraham, B.S., Skinny87 and David Underdown, who also fielded entries. All interested editors are encouraged to submit entries for next month's contest; it can be a rather exciting experience!
Awards and honours
The WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves has been awarded to Roger Davies for his outstanding leadership of the Military history WikiProject, including his introduction of the logistics department, his dedication to the Tag and Assess 2008 & B-class Assessment Drive efforts, and his astute advice and never-ending support and encouragement as both a coordinator and lead coordinator.
The contest department has completed its thirty-first month of competition; its second month under the new and improved scoring system. A total of 53 articles were entered by nine editors. Sturmvogel 66 came in first with 96 points, followed by Auntieruth55 on 80 points. They are presented the Chevrons and Writer's Barnstar respectively. Honorable mentions go to Ian Rose (38), Abraham, B.S. (33) and Parsecboy (10). Our thanks go to Cuprum17, Ed!, The ed17 and Piotrus, who also fielded entries. All editors are encouraged to submit any articles that are working on for next month's contest.
The Academy Content Drive concluded on 31 October. The first place Golden Wiki went to TomStar81 for 13 entries; the Silver Wiki was awarded to YellowMonkey for 11 entries, and Patar knight was presented with the Bronze Wiki for 3 entries. All other entrants were awarded the WikiChevrons or a barnstar for their contributions. Thank you to everyone who fielded an entry! All editors are encouraged to check out the newly expanded Academy.
A discussion about the notability of military people has resulted in an update to our in-house style guide. Prompted by some recent "articles for deletion" discussions, members felt that we should provide clearer guidance on the types of person that are most likely to meet Wikipedia's biographical notability criteria. The resulting advice, which you can see here, should be very helpful in both future deletion discussions and in deciding where best to focus article-writing efforts.
Our Task Force housekeeping discussion is now coming to a close. In October a number of proposals were made for rationalising our extensive list of Task forces. Although a few areas remain to be decided, project members have approved the changes summarised here. These will be enacted shortly, so if you haven't yet had your say, now's the time!
The contest department has completed its thirty-second month of competition; its third month under the new scoring system. A total of 52 articles were entered by seven editors. Sturmvogel 66 came first with 168 points, followed by Ian Rose on 51 points. They are presented the Chevrons and Writer's Barnstar respectively. Honorable mentions go to Auntieruth55 (31), Ed! (26), Abraham, B.S. (26), The ed17 (17) and Piotrus (7). All editors are encouraged to submit any articles that are working on for next month's contest.
Happy New Year to all! I shall take this opportunity to reflect upon the past year. In 2009 our project grew impressively, adding nearly 100 new featured articles and doubling the total number of featured lists. Overall the total number of articles within our scope surpassed 95,000 in 2009, and if these numbers hold steady we will surpass 100,000 articles in 2010. Thank you all for your outstanding efforts.
We are currently working on several proposals to improve the project for 2010. These include bringing the Milhist Academy up to full operational status, as well as spicing up and streamlining the task force structure. Also, any help you can offer to clear the current backlog of Military History good article nominations would be appreciated.
Coordinator Emeritus Kirill Lokshin has been re-elected to the Arbitration Committee for a two-year term in the 2009 elections. Kirill is one of four present or former coordinators of the project to be appointed to the Arbitration Committee; he was originally elected to a three-year term in 2007. The others are YellowMonkey (2007–2008), FayssalF (2008–2010), and Roger Davies (2009–2011).
The Contest Department has completed its thirty-second month of competition; and its fourth month under the new scoring system. A total of 45 articles were entered by seven editors. Sturmvogel 66 came first with 82 points, followed by Auntieruth55 with 74 points. They receive the Chevrons and Writer's Barnstar respectively. Honorable mentions go to Ian Rose (51), Abraham, B.S. (21) and Parsecboy (16). Ed! and Binksternet also fielded entries. Please submit any articles you are working on for the January contest.
It's only a month into the New Year, and we've already made changes to the project's infrastructure, merging and improving several task forces (see below). Much content within the project's scope has also been improved: eleven new featured articles, two featured lists, two featured pictures, a featured sound, and seventeen A-class articles. Thanks and congratulations to all editors who contributed and/or nominated these items.
In other news, the elections for new project coordinators are coming up in March. Think about whether you would like to run or not, and self-nominations will be coming up at the beginning of next month.
Lastly, our project's A-class review process is desperately in need of new reviewers. Please consider looking at least one and leaving comments, no matter how small or trivial. It will be greatly appreciated by the article's nominator(s).
Our thanks go to all editors who participated in our recent task force housekeeping discussion and to EyeSerene who implemented the technical side of the approved changes. The new line up is as follows:
The Contest Department has completed its thirty-third month of competition; and its fifth month under the new scoring system. A total of 91 articles were entered by ten editors. Sturmvogel 66 came first with 152 points, followed by Kumioko with 98 points. They receive the Chevrons and Writer's Barnstar respectively. Honorable mentions go to Auntieruth55 (87), Abraham, B.S. (48), Parsecboy (41), and Ian Rose (41). Binksternet, Radeksz, Ed! and D2306 also fielded entries. Please submit any articles you are working on for the February contest.
March, as you know, is an election month for our project, when we pick the coordinators for the next six months. We are seeking motivated individuals willing to devote some of their time and energy to the project so it continues to grow and prosper.
Also, I am making a personal appeal to each of you, the members of this project, to come out and vote for the candidates that run. These users will be responsible for managing the assessment process, answering questions, and making sure that the project's other needs are met. We have approximately 1,000 users who identify as being a part of our project, yet on average only about one-tenth of that number participate in elections. Moreover, as we typically hold referendums on major issues affecting the project along with these election, those who do not vote miss the opportunity to give their opinion on matters affecting the project as a whole. Remember, one vote always makes a difference. For the coordinators, TomStar81 (Talk) 23:47, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
A discussion has begun concerning our military history manual of style's guideline recommending preemptive disambiguation on the naming of military units. As the outcome of the discussion will likely effect a number of pages within our scope we are seeking input from the community on whether the guideline should be changed.
Late last year, several largely inactive task forces were merged. However, the mergers of the Australia and New Zealand task forces did not take place as there was no consensus for a new name. To resolve this, a discussion has begun and all editors are encouraged to participate.
Contest department
The Contest Department has completed its thirty-fourth month of competition; and its sixth month under the new scoring system. A total of 82 articles were entered by eight editors. Kumioko came first with 110 points, followed by Sturmvogel 66 with 87 points. They receive the Chevrons and Writer's Barnstar respectively. Honorable mentions go to Auntieruth55 (59) and Ian Rose (36). Binksternet, Cirt, Radeksz and YellowMonkey also fielded entries. Please submit any articles you are working on for the March contest.
Awards and honours
Brad101 has been awarded the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves in recognition of his excellent reviewing and work on a sizable number of nautical articles that fall within our scope, producing a number of high-quality articles for the Military history and Ships WikiProjects.
Across Wikipedia, guidelines have been set up so that editors can vet sources for themselves. Links to some of these and a guide for checking if a source is reliable can be found in an excellent Signpost dispatch written by Ealdgyth (talk·contribs). However, for the majority of military history-related topics, we strive for more than just a basic reliable source. Specifically, we aim for peer-reviewed articles and books over, for example, most websites.[N 1] Contemporary news articles or accounts can and should be mixed in (if possible) to give a picture of the general view point of the time—were they calm, afraid, unsure of what was going on?
Another major tenet is neutrality. If an editor rewrote the article Dieppe Raid using only the official Canadian history,[N 2] we would have a problem; while it does contain a thorough and in-depth overview, a point-of-view can still be read. For one, it gives an undue amount of focus to Canada's input in the planning of the landing, and it would probably give an undue focus to their troops if a majority of the landing forces hadn't been Canadian. Granted, this is a book written to document that country's role in the Second World War, so you would hope it focuses on them, but this same reason makes it unusable as the primary basis for an article.
In this case, you would like to utilize a few recent, peer-reviewed books and journals, the official British, Canadian and German histories, possibly a few books written by historians from the aforementioned countries, and newspapers from that time period.[N 3] Obviously this is ideal, but you need to represent all three sides in this (the United States would be a fourth, but they played only a minor role in the planning and invading). This neutrality aspect applies especially for battles and to a lesser degree biographies, but it can be utilized in virtually every article in our scope. For example, it could be beneficial to obtain Japanese accounts of B-29 Superfortress bombing raids or non-Puerto Rican peer-reviewed sources for that insular area's role in the Second World War. —Ed(talk • majestic titan)
Notes
^It should be noted that certain sites like Combined Fleet or Navweaps, which are authored by recognized or published experts in the field, are not "most websites."
^For example, some of the Canadian newspaper articles written about the raid are listed on their War Museum's website here, while a London Gazette supplement written after the war can be seen on their website. Anyone with access to the archives of The New York Times can view the stories printed by that paper on the raid by searching their archives, and the Google News archive lists many newspapers, some of which were scanned by Google and are available at no charge; most of the non-free material requires a subscription to ProQuest.
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I am pleased to report that the March coordinator elections have concluded, and that 15 members have been selected to serve as coordinators from April to September. Special congratulations go to AustralianRupert, Dank, MisterBee1966, NativeForeigner, Patar knight, and Ranger Steve, all of whom are newly elected coordinators. As we start this new tranche we welcome all returning coordinators, and wish those who decided not to stand for reelection luck as they move on to new things.
In other election news, a motion made to extend the coordinator tranche from its current six-month term to one full year gained consensus from the election participants. This will take effect in September, during the next election cycle. For the IX Coordinator Tranche, TomStar81 (Talk) 05:02, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
In May 2008 a small group of editors, operating from a page in Cam's userspace, began work on improving Wikipedia's articles relating to the pivotal Second World War Battle of Normandy that took place in northern France between 6 June and the end of August 1944. Milhist has now adopted this collaboration as our third special project. The aim of Operation Normandy is to bring all core topics—official operations, battles, and the invasion beaches—to featured status by the 70th anniversary of D-Day on 6 June 2014. More information can be found on the project page; any interested editors are most welcome to sign up and help us meet this challenging goal!
Our Henry Allingham World War I Contest ended on 11 March with the following results: in first place was Sturmvogel 66; in second place was Ian Rose; in third place was Dana boomer; and the finalists were Abraham, B.S., Carcharoth, and XavierGreen. The contest produced an incredible 238 recognised article improvements, of which 6 were Featured articles, 13 were A-Class articles and 22 were Good articles. In addition 43 newly created or expanded articles were successfully submitted for the 'Did you know' section on Wikipedia's main page. Our warmest congratulations go to the medallists and finalists, and our grateful thanks go to all participants and particularly to Eurocopter for organizing the contest.
Would you like to get more involved in the project? There are many open tasks that could use your help. The project's review department is always in need of input at peer reviews, A-class reviews, FACs and FARs; these can be found here. Also, the project maintains a list of deletion debates for military-related articles that have been nominated for deletion; project members are encouraged to provide their opinions in this forum so that consensus can be established. Finally, if content creation is more what you are looking for, each of the project's 48 task forces maintains a list of requested articles.
Your comments are invited in the following ongoing project discussions:
Pre-emptive disambiguation. Since 2006 our in-house style guide has recommended disambiguating the titles of articles about military units whether another article of the same name exists or not. The continued need for this practice is under discussion.
Nick-D in recognition of his long and distinguished service as a coordinator of this project from February 2008 to March 2010; sterling efforts on "big picture" subjects, including ten featured articles; and his tireless participation in discussion and review.
Sturmvogel 66 in recognition of his distinguished service as a coordinator of this project, extraordinary performance within the Henry Allingham World War I Contest and other extremely valuable contributions to the project.
Editorial: Translating article writing to real life
I (Ed) am a college student in the United States, and as part of attaining my desired degree, I chose to take a course in Arab-Islamic history. We began in the early 600s and spent some time on the origins of the Islamic conquering of the Sassanid Empire and partial takeover of the Byzantine Empire (c. 634–750). From there, we have moved through the various ages of history, and the class recently began discussing the Ottoman Empire and other Islamic regions of more recent times.
As we began discussing the Ottoman Empire's role in the First World War, our professor mentioned that they were blockading the Bosphorus, using it as a chokepoint to cut off needed supplies traveling to Russia's only warm-water port, Sevastopol. An astute classmate, realizing this meant the use of warships, wondered what naval technology was like during this time. The professor turned and asked me to answer the question, as he knew I had been studying naval history and believed that I knew more about the subject.
The point of this anecdote is not to boast, but to provoke some thought. By virtue of the research Wikipedia writers must do to write complete, referenced articles, many of us are acquiring knowledge in specialized topics that can surpass even learned scholars. Wikipedia might even provoke some of us into becoming learned scholars through the subjects we find here. To profile one such case, take a look at Parsecboy.
Beginning in May 2007, he came across a few essentially empty stubs on German battleship classes. Nearly 3 years later, he's written or collaborated on more than forty articles rated as good or higher, including over a dozen featured articles and a featured list; the majority relate to German warships. The work Parsecboy has done for Wikipedia has had a tremendous impact on his academic career: to complete his undergraduate degree, Parsecboy is currently writing an Honors Thesis that will analyze the British and German battlecruiser squadrons during the First World War. Parsecboy plans to attend graduate school and continue his research in the area, culminating in a dissertation. He comments that "without a doubt, I would not have had nearly as much knowledge and interest in the topic, nor would I have known where to begin researching if I had not become so involved with the topic here on Wikipedia."
The knowledge you acquire through writing Wikipedia articles will remain with you for the rest of your life. Try to find a way to use it to your advantage.
It's been a month since the end of the coordinator elections, and I am proud to inform the project that the IX coordinator tranche is doing well. Our new coordinators are rapidly learning the ropes, and the last of the task forces under consideration for merging have been consolidated into a new task force which should increase productivity and improve quality article output.
At the moment the coordinators are discussing preliminary plans for an improved version of The Bugle, and are working with editors from the American Civil War task force who are in the process of organizing a new special project relating to that conflict. It is our hope to see these changes implemented in the upcoming month. Lastly, as many of our members are also in school, we extend our best wishes to all who will be taking final exams both this month and next. For the IX coordinator tranche, TomStar81 (Talk) 22:36, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
This month we're taking a look at the Military history WikiProject's special projects. At present we have three—Operation Great War Centennial, Operation Majestic Titan, and Operation Normandy—with, as Tom mentions in his introduction, a fourth coming on line as this newsletter goes out.
Officially the longest running of our special projects, this started in December 2008 with the ambitious goal of improving our core articles relating to the First World War by June 2014. As it states on the project's page, "the centenary of the start of World War I ... will doubtless be a mammoth commemoration of one of the most significant wars in history, attracting vast interest from schools, universities, veterans groups and the media. It offers us the chance to showcase what a brilliant resource Wikipedia is". With World War I receiving well over 20,000 page viewsper day on most days, the truth of these words is evident and the opportunity too good to miss. Operation Great War Centennial has compiled a list of over 300 articles covering topics such as battles, geographical areas, people, armaments, and technology; while some have achieved featured or good status, the majority are at B-Class or below, so there is plenty there for willing editors to get their teeth into.
The home of our much-respected and admired "Battleship Cabal", Operation Majestic Titan started in June 2009 with the aim of creating the "single largest featured topic on Wikipedia, centered around the battleships considered, planned, built, operated, canceled, or otherwise recorded." At time of writing the prolific Majestic Titan team has produced an impressive 33 featured articles, 19 A-Class, 60 good articles, three featured topics and six good topics. According to the project's working list, there are only 427 more articles to go...
Although it first appeared in Milhist's pages in March 2010, this project had been formerly operating out of Cam's userspace as the "Normandy Team" since May 2008, making it a contender for our longest-running unofficial special project. Operation Normandy is aiming to create a Featured Topic on the Second World WarBattle of Normandy by the 70th Anniversary of D-Day on 6 June 2014. With nine featured articles so far and 29 more to go, progress has been steady. More help, however, is always welcome.
Our fourth special project, American Civil War Sesquicentennial, is in the process of organising and at present lacks a name (see this discussion if you have any suggestions). The project will be looking to improve Wikipedia's coverage of the American Civil War by its sesquicentennial anniversary in 2011. The beginning of a drive is always an exciting time to get involved, so interested editors are strongly encouraged to drop by and sign up.
Special projects are a great way of organising a long-term collaboration with a specific end-point in mind, and tend to be more goal-oriented and focused than the general task forces or informal working groups. Joining a special project is also a fantastic way to work alongside like-minded editors with whom you'll undoubtedly develop close working relationships; by your third or fourth FA submission you'll hopefully be operating as part of a well-oiled team. Editor roles are many and varied: content writers, source material providers, image- and map-makers, copy editors, reviewers, MoS gurus, wikignomes, specialists and generalists... you're sure to find a job that suits you and benefits the team. If you have an idea for a special project or are already undertaking a collaboration that you think fits in with the ethos of those above, and you'd like to benefit from Milhist's support and infrastructure, consider dropping the coordinators a note. Personally I've found the synergy and teamwork of contributing to a special project (Operation Normandy in my case) to be one of the most rewarding and enjoyable aspects of my time here. I hope you will too. EyeSerenetalk14:16, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
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With Eurocopter's resignation (see editorial below), this month marks the end of his tenure as a project coordinator. Eurocopter has been with the team for almost three years now and will be sorely missed, but he has taken the tough decision that his real life commitments have unfortunately made it too hard for him to focus on his coordinator duties. We wish him good luck in the future, both in real life and on-wiki.
Efforts to redesign The Bugle are moving forward and it is our intention to roll out a new format, based on the Signpost, for next month's issue. We hope that this will allow us to provide better coverage of the project's news by allowing more room to expand on the stories we bring to you. If you have any comments or suggestions on what we can do to improve coverage, please let us know.
With consensus reached on a name the American Civil War task force has officially opened our newest special project. Codenamed Brothers at War, its goal will be "...to improve [US Civil War] related Wikipedia articles to featured status, and to see as many of these as possible appear on the main page on their respective 150th anniversaries."
The straw poll concerning preemptive disambiguation of military units as outlined by our Manual of Style has been closed, with near unanimous consensus that the current practice of preemptive disambiguation be retained. Thanks to everyone who participated in either the discussion or the straw poll.
Members of Operation Majestic Titan have adopted a three-tiered award system to show appreciation to those who have done work on battleship or battlecruiser articles. Formally known as the Titan's Cross, the award has been issued to Parsecboy, Climie.ca, The ed17, and MBK004.
The project's official IRC channel (#wikipedia-en-milhist) has been restarted. Project members and anyone interested in military history are encouraged to join us for substantive discussions, social discourse and a few laughs. Instructions on how to get on IRC are available here.
Editorial: Project coordination and constructive editing
For those of you who might not know me, I'm Eurocopter. I served as a coordinator of the Military history WikiProject from August 2007 until few days ago, when I decided to resign due to real life issues making it impossible for me to continue to perform project duties on a regular basis. Reflecting on my experience and activities within the project, I decided to write this editorial to set out a few thoughts and offer some advice to interested members.
First of all, what does project coordination mean and how does it help the Military history WikiProject? Although the coordinators do not have any real executive powers, they play an important role in project management. To make editing contributions easier for our members we establish guidelines, manage Peer and A-Class reviews, and consult and assist when needed. The primary goal of the coordination team has always been to stimulate the development of quality articles and, once they have been developed, to facilitate maintaining them at a high standard for as long as possible. This has been carried out through the organization of a considerable number of assessment drives, contests and special projects. However, there is still much to be done to make the project one of the best and most active wiki-communities. Coordinator involvement in trying to achieve this, as the central promoters of any activity undertaken within the project, is more than important; the coordination team should stand as an example of civilised and constructive cooperation. Perhaps the most annoying issue—unfortunately quite widespread through the pages of Wikipedia—is POV-dominated conflict. While such a phenomenon might seem inevitable in a community within which hundreds of members of different nationalities with different historical and political views interact, it doesn’t mean we should accept it. The ability to neutrally mediate such conflicts is an important and desirable coordinator function.
Secondly, but most importantly in my opinion, is the question of how the project enables editors to contribute effectively. Perhaps you already know how difficult it is to take an article to the highest quality levels such as A-Class or featured status. It is even harder to do this working alone. I believe the best thing the Military history WikiProject has done is to bring together groups of editors with similar interests. As there are very few editors skilled in all the diverse article development areas, you might feel the need for help from editors more experienced in, for example, advanced copy editing, image editing etc. To this end the project provides task forces and special projects where members should always feel encouraged to ask questions, discuss, debate and give advice. Such cooperation is the best way to create properly balanced articles and to establish a neutral point of view. Our Style guide and Academy are also useful in guiding you along the path of writing an article. A final, but vital, part of the collaborative article writing process is editor behaviour when interacting with other editors who are contributing to the same article. Even on those occasions where an editor upsets you or allows their personal opinions to influence their editing, always remain calm, civil and try to reach an agreement. Contributing to Wikipedia is something most of us do as a hobby; time spent in useless conflicts is precious editing time wasted.
All in all, the Military history WikiProject is a good meeting point for milhist-interested editors, both beginners and advanced, with someone always there to give help and advice when needed. I wish to thank all my fellow coordinators and project members who keep this beautiful community running. I will certainly miss it!
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The Military history WikiProject Newsletter : LV (September 2010)
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To stop receiving this newsletter, please list yourself in the appropriate section here. To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. BrownBot (talk) 04:45, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
To stop receiving this newsletter, please list yourself in the appropriate section here. To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. BrownBot (talk) 23:42, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
To begin or stop receiving this newsletter, please list yourself in the appropriate section here. To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. BrownBot (talk) 23:32, 4 June 2011 (UTC)
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