This month's edition features the huge number of articles and images which were promoted to featured or A-class status in December. The range of topics covered was fairly broad, though articles on warships made up a large share of the total. Thanks to AustralianRupert for pulling this month's list together.
Somewhat unusually, the book review section is an almost world war-free zone this month. It includes a review by Nick-D of a biography focused on the President of the Confederate States of America's war leadership, as well as a review by Hawkeye7 of what turned out to be one of his favourite books on military history.
TomStar81 continues his prolific contributions covering World War I. His op-ed this month discusses the imposition of conscription in Britain in early 1916 following the Army's huge number of casualties. Tom has also provided his regular timeline of the war, covering a month in which most of the fighting took place well away from the Western Front.
Lastly, the MilHist FA, A-class, GA and Peer Reviews for October–December 2015 have been tallied. Dank and Nikkimaria headed the list. You can find the names of everyone who contributed reviews here, and we thank them all for their efforts.
The project's A-class review process had another hectic year. A total of 95 reviews were submitted and completed. Of these, 79 articles passed, 15 were unsuccessful and one A-class re-appraisal was successful in bringing the article back up to the required standard. By way of comparison with the previous year, there were 91 A-class reviews in 2014, of which 81 articles passed, nine were unsuccessful, one A-class re-appraisal was successful in keeping the article, and one A-class re-appraisal ended in the article being demoted. While this effort is fantastic, and we thank our content contributors and reviewers for their efforts, historically it can be seen that there has been a decline over the past few years in MilHist A-class Review's completion rate.
The year 2009 probably represented the zenith of the department's output with a whopping 223 reviews being completed, including 190 that were successful. After that, there has been a discernable downwards trend with 185 completed reviews in 2010, 158 in 2011, 130 in 2012, 145 in 2013 and 91 in 2014. Analysing this trend properly could probably keep a forensic accountant occupied for days; however, overall it seems likely that it is down to a couple of factors: increasing standards are certainly likely to have played a factor, but largely it seems the product of declining editor involvement in the reviewing process, which has resulted in an A-class review system that can now take up to two or three months to be finalized. This in turn has resulted in fewer articles being nominated. As such, we would like to take this opportunity to encourage all members of the project to consider getting involved in the ACR process, through reviewing and nominating.
The contest department completed its 102nd round of competition last month. A total of 29 articles were submitted by seven editors. First place went to Parsecboy, with 68 points from 10 entries to receive the Chevrons, followed by Peacemaker67, who earned the Writer's Barnstar with 42 points from seven entries. Lineagegeek, Auntieruth, AustralianRupert, Djmaschek, and Cuprum also fielded entries. Please submit any articles you are working on for this month's round of competition now.
With the conclusion of the December 2015 contest, the co-ordinators have decided to award consistent performance by instituting a new award, the Military History Writers' Contest Cup. This award will be bestowed upon the editor who has the highest accumulated total of points over the course of the entire year of contests (January to December inclusive). This years' recipient was Parsecboy with an incredible 592 points from 101 articles. Congratulations!
Parsecboy will no doubt take some beating for the 2016 Cup, so consider this a call to arms for more editors to get involved in the contest! Remember, you don't have to write GAs, or FAs, to get involved. You can claim points even for improving stubs to start or C-class, etc. It all adds up over the course of a year.
About The Bugle
First published in 2006, the Bugle is the monthly newsletter of the English Wikipedia's Military history WikiProject.
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