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Quoting from London Gazette versus Wehrmachtbericht

How does the verbatim quoting from the London Gazette in the article Brendan Finucane or Douglas Bader differ from Wehrmachtbericht quoting (now removed with the justification "Wehrmachtbericht references: Undue -- pls see Talk:Erich_von_dem_Bach-Zelewski#Wehrmachtbericht_report") in article Heinz-Wolfgang Schnaufer or Gordon Gollob? Examples:

  • Brendan Finucane: "Recently during two sorties on consecutive days, Flight Lieutenant Finucane destroyed five Messerschmitt 109's bringing his total victories to at least 20. He has flown with this squadron since June 1941, during which time the squadron has destroyed 42 enemy aircraft of which Flight Lieutenant Finucane had personally destroyed 15. The successes achieved are undoubtedly due to this officer's brilliant leadership and example— London Gazette"
  • Brendan Finucane: "This officer has led his flight with great dash, determination and courage in the face of the enemy. Since July 1941, he has destroyed three enemy aircraft and assisted in the destruction of a further two. Flight Lieutenant Finucane has been largely responsible for the fine fighting spirit of the unit.— London Gazette"
  • Douglas Bader: "This officer had displayed, gallantry and leadership of the highest order. During three recent engagements he has led his squadron with such skill and ability that thirty-three enemy aircraft have been destroyed. In the course of these engagements Squadron Leader Bader had added to his previous successes by destroying six enemy aircraft—London Gazette"
  • Heinz-Wolfgang Schnaufer: "During the night of the 9th to the 10th October Haupmann Schnaufer, Gruppenkommandeur (group commander) in a Nachtjagdgeschwader (night fighter wing), whom the Führer has decorated with the Oak Leaves with Swords to the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, scored his 100th night aerial victory.—Wehrmachtbericht"
  • Gordon Gollob: "Hauptmann Gollob, commander of a fighter wing, achieved his 101st aerial victory.—Wehrmachtbericht"

Acknowledging the fact that both references have a propaganda aspect as well as a legitimate meritorious aspect, how do they differ from a Wikipedia point of view? If they are not fundamentally different, should the British references be removed as well or should the German references be retained? Cheers MisterBee1966 (talk) 12:56, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Discussion

  • I don't see a problem in retaining the Gazette quotes in the articles mentioned. They are being used as citations for, and explanations of, various gallantry awards. If the Wehrmachtbericht entries did the same I would support their retention but in the examples quoted they appear to be news items of combat milestones rather than announcing the award of decorations. Nthep (talk) 13:19, 11 August 2016 (UTC)
  • Agree with Nthep. I think the difference is that whereas the Wehrmachtbericht was "the daily Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) mass-media communiqué and a key component of Nazi propaganda during World War II", the London Gazette was (long before the concepts of mass media or propaganda were thought of), and to some extent still is, an official report of acts of government. It has a legal function; it's not widely circulated except to those with a professional interest in the contents. It's used as a source by mass media, especially about medals and honours, and also by historians.
    In Wikipedia the London Gazette provides confirmation of facts. For example, if an article states that a British person had a certain honour (e.g. knighthood), then if challenged, the claim is substantiated by a London Gazette reference. For medal citations, such as those quoted above for Brendan Finucane and Douglas Bader, the London Gazette reports what the recipient's commanding officer wrote when recommending the award. Newspaper articles covering such an award use the London Gazette as a source but often re-word, and sometimes mangle, the original text; unfortunately this can be the case even in histories; which is why I maintain that the official London Gazette text should be quoted in preference to some reporter's version.
    — Stanning (talk) 13:40, 11 August 2016 (UTC)
  • Comment : On 27 April 1940, Walther von Brauchitsch, as Commander-in-Chief of the Army, ordered that the named-mentioning in the Wehrmachtbericht was a special distinction for those soldiers who have distinguished themselves in combat with a deed worth communicating to the public. In this context, to be personally named in the Wehrmachtbericht was an award and the wording a citation not just Nazi propaganda. Cheers MisterBee1966 (talk) 13:52, 11 August 2016 (UTC)
  • Comment: I don't quite see the point of quoting the daily communiqué verbatim, as its information content is virtually nil. More so, the claims often don't have any foundation in fact and would necessitate profound cross-referencing and double-checking. E.g. Albrecht Brandi is credited with sinking two warships and a transport in the Mediterranean in April 1943, however, there are no records of any ships hit by his U-boat in that time frame. This has to be discussed in more detail, rather than merely stating what the OKW said about an event. Especially as the articles themselves often contain information to the contrary in the form of lists of ships attacked or planes downed. It's tedious work and not really worthwhile, I would say. ÄDA - DÄP VA (talk) 06:55, 12 August 2016 (UTC)
I wouldn't assume that the British one is inherently honest and the German one isn't but wouldn't Wiki prefer a source closer to 2016? (Says the man who has used 100-year-old sources).Keith-264 (talk) 12:55, 12 August 2016 (UTC)
Check Erich Murawski (Writing of the German National Archive), page 68 bullet item 5 (commendations of generals, admirals and recipients of high decorations killed in action) and 6 (commendations of soldiers who have performed exceptional military deeds). Cheers MisterBee1966 (talk) 17:27, 12 August 2016 (UTC)
For Murawski is an honourable man ... ÄDA - DÄP VA (talk) 17:42, 12 August 2016 (UTC)
  • Comment What do reliable sources say? I haven't seen anything which argues that medal citations, etc, published in the London Gazette can't be considered reliable - though obviously they would contain errors or misrepresentations from time to time. The Victoria Cross citations published there were certainly extensively researched and fact checked as part of the approval process. I have seen references which note that the Wehrmachtbericht is unreliable as it was a Nazi propaganda broadcast. More generallly I don't think that you can really compare the two works: the Gazette was, and remains, a way for bureaucracies of a country with a system of generally honest and open government to publish official notifications. In contrast, the Wehrmachtbericht was part of the propaganda machine for a totally dishonest government. Nick-D (talk) 23:29, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

Treatment of "questionable" entries in Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross lists

I have created this thread so that the community can have a centralised discussion and reach a consensus regarding the way "questionable" entries are treated in the various lists of recipients of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross (KC).

Case for the status quo

As I understand it (and this is pretty much copy and pasted from a comment by MisterBee1966 elsewhere), the source considered to be the most superior reference on the recipients of the KC is Scherzer. Scherzer analysed the German National Archives and found 193 out of 7,321 instances where the available data in the archives did not fully verify the legal aspect of the presentation. Scherzer uses the word "questionable" (fragwürdig). He goes on to explain why this is the case and refrains from delisting any of those 193 "questionable" entries. On page 8 of his book he says "Hierzu möchte der Autor nur anmerken, daß er niemandem etwas aberkannt hat. Vielmehr legte er dar, welche Archivalien zu den einzelnen Fällen überliefert sind und in welchem Stadium des Verleihungsprozesses diese Dokumente in den Archiven vorgefunden wurden. [The author just wants to say that he has not denied anyone anything. Rather, he explained, which files to the individual cases have prevailed and at what stage of the award process, these documents were found in the archives.]"(this isn't a brilliant translation, help from some fluent De-5/En-5 editors would help us here, I believe).

Scherzer gives several reasons why this is the case. Firstly, the German National Archives are incomplete (records were lost, destroyed or not returned by the Allies). Secondly, the approval chain after 20 April 1945 until the end of the war became extremely confused. In this "confused phase" a number KC presentations where made which are considered "questionable", nevertheless there is some evidence they were made and they are listed by Scherzer and other sources, with an explanation of why they need to be considered "questionable". Currently, the various KC lists reflect Scherzer's analysis by highlighting these "questionable" recipients with both a colour coding and a ? (question mark) and a comment reflecting what the sources have to say about the award in that case. The approach currently taken with the lists is consistent with Scherzer's approach and presentation style. I think this is a good summary of the case for the status quo. I invite K.e.coffman, who has expressed a different view, to state his case in the subsection below, after which I invite members of the community to chip in using the Discussion subsection. It would be useful to get a better translation of what Scherzer says above, so if you can do a better job, feel free to have a crack. Regards, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 09:34, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Case for a different treatment of "questionable" entries

There are several considerations I’d like to put forward:

  1. Association of Knight’s Cross (ACKR) is a source not independent from the topic, the awarding of the KC. Further, it’s an entity that can be described as not being an organisation in “good standing”. For example, in 1999 Bunderswehr explicitly prohibited its member contact with the association. For these two reasons, I believe including AKCR’s opinions in related articles is giving them undue weight.
  2. The current articles use the book by Fellgiebel as the primary source, thus listing those the AKCR accepted as having received the award. If the encyclopedia accepts this view, the related list articles should be called “Recipients according to AKCR”.
  3. Including the names of the subjects in the articles titled “Recipients” could be potentially non-neutral, as the title conveys a presumption that the included subjects belong on the list, while some “doubts” have been expressed about the validity of the listing. This places the burden on anyone wanting to refute the validity of the inclusion, and it’s impossible to prove a negative.
  4. Many of the Scherzer comments include wording such as “nomination remained unprocessed”; “award unlawfully presented by the commanding officer”; “award lacks legal basis as it was presented under the Doenitz decree” etc. I came across a few instances where Scherzer concludes that indeed a proper presentation is “possible”, but these are far and few between. In the balance of evidence, the vast majority of these are dubious.
  5. The “listing” by the ACKR is not official (the author stated that). The fact that Scherzer has not ‘’delisted’’ anyone in his book is not meaningful, as AKCR is a private entity not authorized to adjudicate the award in the first place.

At best, these entries could be considered to be about “nominees” for the Knight’s Cross in the last weeks of the war, which confers no individual notability. A topic on these incomplete/unprocessed nominations and unlawful awards is indeed interesting and possibly encyclopedic, but not the subjects of these nominations individually. The topic can be dealt with in a separate article or as part of the Recipients article, as a general discussion on why the the nominations could not be confirmed as awards by archival evidence (I.e. general collapse, unlawful presentations, incomplete records, views of AKCR as discussed by Scherzer, etc).

So in conclusion, I believe we are dealing with the issues of (1) non-independent sourcing, (2) POV and (3) undue weight. K.e.coffman (talk) 20:31, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Discussion

Comment: With regard to the lists, I agree with Peacemaker67. The decisions of the AKCR had some relevance as to who was allowed to wear the decoration after 1957. These semi-official decisions are not always based in fact, but represent the opinion of the leaders of the AKCR. Scherzer attempted to verify these decisions, but was denied access to AKCR documents, if I am not mistaken. So, both opinions are relevant, but neither is true or false per se. Thus, with regard to individual biographies of "questionable awards", I would suggest to merge them into a separate list or lists, unless the individuals concerned are notable in their own right, as the late-war presentations can hardly be considered "highest awards for valour" as per WP:SOLDIER. ÄDA - DÄP VA (talk) 13:44, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Translation update: Combined input of two German speaking colleagues. I assume something (award?) has possibly been granted in the past, and the author has not decided to take away (any award), but only shows what archive material is extant and in which stage of the awarding process the documents were found in the archives. (This is worded a bit strangely in German in my opinion; I assume it is supposed to mean "which stage of the awarding process can be documented in the archives"). —Kusma (t·c) 14:47, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

More context is needed for "Verleihungsprozess"; without context, I find it impossible to translate. My attempt: "In this matter, the author would only like to remark that he did not deprive anybody of anything. Rather, he laid out which archives have been handed down for individual cases and in what state of lending process these documents have been found in the archives." -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 14:35, 9 August 2016 (UTC). I originally put out a call on a German speaking colleagues' T/P. The above were responses from helpful t/p/s. Simon. Irondome (talk) 15:11, 9 August 2016 (UTC)
Thanks to those that have helped out with the translation. I think it is a bit clearer now, despite what may be clunky wording, even in the original German. Regards, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 06:38, 10 August 2016 (UTC)
I believe "Stadium" can mean "stage" or "phase", and whilst I cannot find a direct translation for "Verleihungsprozess", the word "Verleihungsfeier" translates to "award-giving ceremony", so the section "..in welchem Stadium des Verleihungsprozesses..." might translate to "...in which phase of the award process...". HTH. FactotEm (talk) 07:02, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

Comment : It is not the AKCR's views that are being used as a source for the lists, it is Scherzer's summation of the position of the AKCR, which he provides along with other information about them. Scherzer is independent of the topic, and he takes a nuanced position, one that takes into account all the information he was able to glean about each award. If we accept Scherzer as reliable, as the principal or leading source on the awards, then we should accept what he says, and his comments, at face value. To do otherwise is OR. If it is necessary to expand on what each list says about the "questionable" awards in order to clearly enlarge the scope to include the "questionable" awards, that is a far better approach IMO, than deleting them. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 06:57, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

Comment : Among the 193 questionable recipients (2.6% of all recipients listed) are also those men who were associated with the 20 July plot, the failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler. These men were later sentenced to death, deprived of all honors, ranks and orders and dishonorably discharged from the Wehrmacht, among them Erwin von Witzleben, Friedrich Olbricht and Friedrich Fromm. In addition, men like Hermann Fegelein and Edgar Feuchtinger, on account of desertion, were also executed and deprived of rank and honors. Without distinction, Scherzer treats these recipients just like all the other questionable recipients, referring to them as de facto but maybe not de jure recipients. For sake of completeness, Scherzer also identified 27 (including Fegelein) instances of questionable presentation of the Oak Leaves to the Knight’s Cross and 13 (including Fegelein) cases of Swords presentation in doubt. Aligned with Scherzer’s approach to the issue, these listings are flagged accordingly. Cheers MisterBee1966 (talk) 08:58, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

  • Comment: The 20 July plot reference feels a bit like a red herring, since we know that these individuals were indeed recipients, at least until they were expelled from the military. However, it's unknowable whether those with unconfirmed nominations after 20 April 1945 have received the award. In some cases, as Scherzer point out, some of those awards were unlawfully presented. So I don't see nuance here, as "unlawful presentation" and "nomination not processed" seems clear cut to me.
Re: that the current List articles reflect "not the AKCR's views that are being used as a source, but Scherzer's summation of the position of the AKCR". It's not how I see it, going by the articles lead sections. They state:
"A total of 7,321 awards were made between its first presentation on 30 September 1939 and its last bestowal on 17 June 1945. This number is based on the analysis and acceptance of the order commission of the Association of Knight's Cross Recipients (AKCR)." [Emphasis added. Note the somewhat POV piping to the Blue-ribbon panel article; it's unclear who described AKCR's "order commission" in this manner: "A blue-ribbon panel is often appointed by a government body or executive to report on a matter of controversy. It might be composed of independent scientific experts or academics..."] (...)
The leads go on to describe the sources:
"These recipients are listed in the 1986 edition of Walther-Peer Fellgiebel's book, [Die Träger des Ritterkreuzes des Eisernen Kreuzes 1939–1945] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) — The Bearers of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross 1939–1945. Fellgiebel was the former chairman and head of the order commission of the AKCR. In 1996 a second edition of this book was published with an addendum delisting 11 of these original recipients. Author and historian Veit Scherzer has cast doubt on a further 193 of these listings."
The articles rather clearly present Fellgiebel as the main source, while Scherzer "has cast doubts" about some of these listings. This comes across as potentially non-neutral, as I pointed out in the comment above. K.e.coffman (talk) 05:34, 11 August 2016 (UTC)
You make a valid point. Objectively this topic would be much easier if there was such a thing as an "official" list. However, nothing official exists and we are stuck with the three authors who have published lists of KC "recipients" since the end of World War II. Focusing on Fellgiebel and Scherzer (neglecting Von Seemen in this context), both authors, with the exception of one additional find by Scherzer, talk about the same body of people to consider, in total 7,321 listings. I suggest we change the lead to change the emphasis. How about referring to them as listings not recipients per se, emphasizing on Scherzer's analysis of the German National Archives in comparison and contrast to the acceptance of the Association of Knight's Cross Recipients? This is the approach Scherzer took, it allows the reader to form his own opinion on a listing, and it would not violate WP:OR and is WP:VER. Thoughts? MisterBee1966 (talk) 08:04, 11 August 2016 (UTC)
I am wondering, why the convictions of 20 July plotters are considered doubtful regarding the veracity and formal correctness of the listing by Scherzer. With the 1998, or at the latest, the 2009 law on Nazi convictions, this should be crystal clear. ÄDA - DÄP VA (talk) 18:24, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

Proposals

In view of the above discussion, I would like to propose the following:

Item 1: Adjust the lead of the List articles to read:

"The Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross and its variants were the highest awards in the military of Germany during World War II. The Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross was awarded for a wide range of reasons and across all ranks, from a senior commander for skilled leadership of his troops in battle to a low-ranking soldier for a single act of extreme gallantry.[1] Over 7,000 awards were made since its first presentation on 30 September 1939. Presentations were made to members of the three military branches of the Wehrmacht—the Heer (Army), Kriegsmarine (Navy) and Luftwaffe (Air Force)—as well as the Waffen-SS, the Reichsarbeitsdienst (RAD—Reich Labour Service) and the Volkssturm (German national militia)."
"The list below is largely based on the work of author and historian Veit Scherzer, which he wrote in cooperation with the German Federal Archives. The book was chosen by Franz W. Seidler for the library of the Bundeswehr University Munich and Deutsche Dienststelle (WASt) and is considered an accepted reference there.[2] The recipients are listed alphabetically by last name; the rank listed is the recipient's rank at the time the Knight's Cross was awarded."

Item 2: Adjust the Recipients subsection to include (relocated with some adjustments from the current lead sections):

"The first semi-official listing of Knight's Cross recipients was published in the 1986 edition of Walther-Peer Fellgiebel's book, [Die Träger des Ritterkreuzes des Eisernen Kreuzes 1939–1945 — Die Inhaber der höchsten Auszeichnung des Zweiten Weltkrieges aller Wehrmachtteile] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) — The Bearers of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross 1939–1945 — The Owners of the Highest Award of the Second World War of all Wehrmacht Branches. Fellgiebel was the former chairman and head of the order commission of the AKCR. In 1996 a second edition of this book was published with an addendum delisting 11 of these original recipients. Scherzer has cast doubt on a further 193 of these listings. The majority of the disputed recipients had received the award in 1945, when Germany's deteriorating situation during the final days of World War II left a number of nominations incomplete and pending in various stages of the approval process.[3]"
"According to Fellgiebel, of the 446 awards made to servicemen..." (I'm not sure if the numbers of recipients are needed in the list articles, but if they are kept, including "According to Fellgiebel" will keep the articles internally consistent).

Item 3: Adjust the listings themselves by taking into account the notability of the subjects where the KC is not confirmed by archival records. My proposal is to (1) keep entries on notable subjects (with either proven or presumed notability per WP:Soldier, such as "commanded a division or higher", or "was a general officer", etc, and/or those notable for other reasons, i.e. the 20 July plot); (2) exclude entries where a single KC is the only claim to notability. This would keep the entries of those subject whose notability does not rely solely on the KC award. Since RS coverage exists or is presumed to exists on them, readers could have learned about these subjects elsewhere, so it would be useful to include Scherzer's info on their status. Those presumed non-notable will not be included in the lists.

Item 4: Adjust individual articles of notable "disputed" recipients to reflect Scherzer's position, such as by incorporating Scherzer's commentary into either the main body of the article, or as material within the Awards subsections. Do not list the KC in the infobox or the lead, unless accompanied by statements such as "may have received" or "was nominated" etc.

Item 5: Apply a similar method to the overall topic of disputed recipients. My suggestion is to create the Disputed recipients of the Knight's Cross article to cover in general terms how these "questionable" awards came to be (loss of records; general collapse; unlawful presentations, etc). Within this article, include a list section with blue-linked articles only, i.e. only those disputed recipients who are otherwise notable (per discussion above), and not include a full list of all disputed recipients. I think this will be both useful to readers, while not including subjects that are otherwise non notable.

References

  1. ^ Williamson and Bujeiro 2004, pp. 3–4.
  2. ^ "Stimmen zum Buch "Ritterkreuzträger 1939–1945" von Veit Scherzer" (PDF). Scherzers Miltaer-Verlag (in German). Retrieved 10 December 2012.
  3. ^ Scherzer 2007, pp. 117–186.

I believe these adjustments would address some of the POV issues I brought up and will give due weight to the two sources (Fellgiebel and Scherzer), while maintaining the encyclopedic value of these lists. Any feedback on these proposals? K.e.coffman (talk) 06:38, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

Without making any comment on these proposals overall, I think the lists should use the term "questionable" rather than "disputed" if that is the correct translation of the term Scherzer uses. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 09:06, 12 August 2016 (UTC)
Your proposal, in parts, suggests that Wikipedia presents to its readers a subset of those people listed by both Scherzer and Fellgiebel. This Wikipedia editorial selection is based on your personal interpretation and judgement of the data presented by Scherzer and Scherzer's analysis of the German National Archives. These resulting listings (fully acknowledged and questionable recipients) would then be further constraint and limited by the guidelines of the Wikipedia notability criteria. The result of this proposal, an editorial judgement by a Wikipedia editor and not by a referenceable historian or author, is a deviation from the sources used. I can't tell if this approach violates WP:OR or WP:VER but it would surely require more verbiage to explain to the general audience whom you included and whom you ruled out. A cross-check of these WP-lists with the books from Von Seemen, Fellgiebel and/or Scherzer will reveal missing names on the WP-lists. Before I can endorse this proposal, I would first like to see progress on the suggested "Questionable recipients of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross" article. Cheers MisterBee1966 (talk) 12:44, 12 August 2016 (UTC)
G'day, I would support a separate list if it resolves the situation, but I wonder if "Unconfirmed recipients" or "Unverified recipients" might be a more accurate list name. Thoughts? AustralianRupert (talk) 22:18, 12 August 2016 (UTC)
I would certainly support the term Questionable. Irondome (talk) 22:40, 12 August 2016 (UTC)
Comment: Several of these proposals make assumptions about the "lack of notability" of most Knight's Cross recipients that doesn't take into account actual and potential sources in German. For example, Franz Thomas, Güther Wegmann and Manfred Dörr have produced multi-volume collections under the overall title Die Ritterkreuzträger der Deutschen Wehrmacht 1939-1945 covering Knight's Cross recipients by type (U-boat crew, Luftwaffe personnel, mountain troops, infantry, assault guns, panzer troops etc) which include details of their careers, photographs etc. Then there are other similar volumes on recipients of the Oak Leaves and the German Cross in Gold (an award that many Knight's Cross recipients had already received before they were awarded the Knight's Cross), which again contain biographical information. I would support breaking all of Scherzer's "questionable" listings out onto a separate list, but I would not support any proposal which involved removing listings based on presumed lack of individual notability. Significant coverage appears to exist in multiple reliable sources for these listings, it is just that they are in German and not available even in snippet view in Google Books searches. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:29, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
This deletion of Johannes Barge from the WP-list may be indicative of the proposal put forward. Barge is listed by Von Seemen, Fellgiebel and Scherzer (with Scherzer pointing out that this presentation may have been illegal and categorized his listing as questionable, as such it was flagged on the WP-list). Additionally, his military career (based on the records in the German National Archives) is covered in the book by Franz Thomas, Güther Wegmann, Die Ritterkreuzträger der Deutschen Wehrmacht 1939-1945, Part III: Infantry A-Be. There on page 212 you will find a message by Karl Dönitz which informs Barge that he had been awarded the KC. In 1988, 43 years after the presentation was made, the Deutsche Dienststelle (WASt) stated that presentations after 8 May 1945 were likely unlawful. This is a perfect example of what Scherzer calls a de facto but maybe not a de jure presentation. Although Scherzer acknowledges the potential illegality of the presentation, Barge is still listed in his book. I would like to understand on what grounds, on what editorial judgement, should Wikipedia delist Barge? Cheers MisterBee1966 (talk) 05:53, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

Single combat

Please take a look at this article. It appears to conflate two rather different concepts: a specific tradition of pre-battle combat of two chosen warriors and an ordinary "vis-a-vis" combat of e.g., two knights or two aces. I have two questions with this:

  • Is there a special English term for the pre-battle combat, such as Polish pl:Harce?
  • Should the article Single combat
    • split in two
    • or at least some of it moved to "duel"
    • or turned into a disambiguation page?

I believe in this case the principle of wikipedia "one subject per article" is a bit violated. Staszek Lem (talk) 17:47, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

I thought the article stuck quite well to its opening definition of a combat between two high status individuals in the context of battle - there was very little overlap with duelling as defined as a dispute-resolution process not on a battlefield. The trouble in everyday English is a single combat can cover both situations and it wouldn't be unusual to describe the battlefield behaviour as a duel either. A bigger problem is its "collection of anecdotes" approach which fails really to provide a structure or theoretical underpinning. Dividing its two themes; pre-battle and during battle, into sections, rather than a chronological approach might allow this to be better developed. Other unrelated concerns would be almost total lack of sources and citations and the model of medieval combat is very dated. Monstrelet (talk) 09:03, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

"Transpolitania"?

I was reading through Rommel myth and found reference to a place called "Transpolitania", apparently a city among Italian-held north Africa during World War II. There are only three mentions of the place on Wikipedia, all in identical language about the Italian government stymieing Nazi efforts to ethnically cleanse Jews who were Italian citizens. On Google, I could only find two uses of the name that aren't from Wikipedia mirrors (or at least using our exact language). Google asks if I mean Tripolitania. Anyone know what's going on here? --BDD (talk) 15:52, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

I am seriously thinking typo here. I would suggest Tripolitania is indeed what is meant. Irondome (talk) 15:55, 9 August 2016 (UTC)
There is no typo here. Transpolitania does indeed exist. DinoBambinoNFS (talk) 16:30, 9 August 2016 (UTC)
Do you have a link to a map or anything tangible? Irondome (talk) 16:40, 9 August 2016 (UTC)
No map though there is a book. The book "The Biblical Archaeologist" states that archaeologist Max Mallowan served in Transpolitania in the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration (not the one by the same name in Asia during World War 1) in 1943. Doesn't say anything else about it however. I found a snippet preview of it on Google Books, here. DinoBambinoNFS (talk) 16:57, 9 August 2016 (UTC)
Yeah that is exactly what I came up with. Nothing else. Odd. Irondome (talk) 17:01, 9 August 2016 (UTC)
Mallowan served for part of 1943 at Sabratha, which is in Tripolitania. Buckshot06 (talk) 11:28, 10 August 2016 (UTC)
Any chance it's a typo for Tripolitania? Kirill Lokshin (talk) 17:03, 9 August 2016 (UTC)
I doubt it, the book/magazine was a long-running research journal about Oriental studies. DinoBambinoNFS (talk) 17:16, 9 August 2016 (UTC)
Well it is the only published usage of the term. google, google books, and google scholar all come up with nothing. Irondome (talk) 17:23, 9 August 2016 (UTC)
The only published usage available online it seems. The article Rommel myth uses a source "Rommel's Desert War: Waging World War II in North Africa, 1941–1943". It isn't available online though but I doubt it would have been used if Transpolitania wasn't mentioned in it. The only way will to be 100% sure is by buying and reading it. DinoBambinoNFS (talk) 17:36, 9 August 2016 (UTC)
Sounds to me like it was a typo of Tripolitania (probably from somebody thinking of Transylvania), and that the typo was copied several times. If there's no source that gives a tangible, distinct location, I suggest treating it as such. StuRat (talk) 18:51, 10 August 2016 (UTC)
Searching for "Transpolitania" on the Italian Wikipedia returned no hits. Freedom of Religion: The Parable of the Bell Tower is interesting--but improbable--only because it makes no mention of Rommel.--Jim in Georgia Contribs Talk 01:23, 11 August 2016 (UTC)
There's also Chapter Libya-Tripolitania (in Italian), which is not searchable or machine-translatable It's cited on Italian Tripolitania which has the feel itself of being a translated text.--Jim in Georgia Contribs Talk 01:51, 11 August 2016 (UTC)
  • Thanks for input everyone. As I said at the top of the thread, it is an obvious typo. The trouble with typos is that they can take on a life of their own. Shades of Prester John here, except that wasn't a typo, just garbled news compounded and exploited by satirical hoaxers! Irondome (talk) 01:57, 11 August 2016 (UTC)
I took the liberty of setting this question before the collective brains of the Wikipedia Reference Desk at Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Humanities#Transpolitania.3F. One editor contends that the typo first appeared in Liddel Hart's 1953 book - I have asked him if he can provide any concrete backup that we can use to correct the WP articles. Alansplodge (talk) 17:01, 11 August 2016 (UTC)
Using Google. The very short list of books where "Transpolitania" can be located in all are about Rommel, except one, but which refers to the same period and place. The oldest in that list is the 1953 "Rommel Papers". Cross-checking, the Rommel tripolitania search does not find "The Rommel Papers", which is not normal if Transpolinia was not a typo. Other searches, including selected keywords such as "Cyrenaica" or "Tunisia" etc., taken from the resulting set of notices will bring the same sets than the previous, but including "the Papers" this time and in good rank. There is no reason to imagine the Rommel biographies with Transpolinia are not about exactly the same subject than the other biographies. Consequently it's originally a typo. Is the 1953 the first ever occurence of the "name" ? Some 33k+ results come for Tripolitania+meaning against 6 of varying quality if asking about Transpolitania+meaning. ngram viewer gives the same results, whereas Tripolitania is well known, Transpolitania matches 0 result. I suppose that can be used. --Askedonty (talk) 21:07, 11 August 2016 (UTC)
  • Thanks all. Looks like we can reasonably be certain that this is an error, though not original to us. I'm updating the existing uses to say Tripolitania. --BDD (talk) 15:46, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

Taskforce header for redirection pages

When I create a new redirection page for an article within our project scope I of course place our template with RED-class on the respective talk page. But what about taskforces in that case; should they be included, too, or is it preferred to keep recirects out of them? ... GELongstreet (talk) 17:56, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

GA nomination of Ronald Poulton

Hello, I recently picked up the GA review of Ronald Poulton, unfortunately it looks like the user who submitted it (Funky Canute) has retired from Wikipedia and has not participated in the initial portion of the review. I was wondering if anyone from this project would be interested in stepping up and working on the article? It's been open for a while and I'll leave the GA review open for a couple of days more. If you are interested please respond on the Talk:Ronald Poulton/GA1 page. Thank you.  MPJ-DK  19:48, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

Talk:Zeebrugge Raid

Talk:Zeebrugge Raid needs a visit from the Admins.Keith-264 (talk) 06:58, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Keith-264 (talk) 15:40, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

Scope of Belligerents in Infobox

Is there any policy, guideline, previous discussion, or consensus on what nations can/should be included as belligerents in the infobox? As well as the United States, Omaha Beach currently lists United Kingdom, Canada, and Free France as belligerents, on the basis that these nations provided some naval support. Doesn't seem right to me. FactotEm (talk) 07:49, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

Please see Template:Infobox military conflict - the relevant guidance is that this field should include "the parties participating in the conflict. This is most commonly the countries whose forces took part in the conflict; however, larger groups (such as alliances or international organizations) or smaller ones (such as particular units, formations, or groups) may be indicated if doing so improves reader understanding. When there is a large number of participants, it may be better to list only the three or four major groups on each side of the conflict, and to describe the rest in the body of the article". It would be best to handle discussions of a particular article's infobox on its talk page, though I note that the List of ships in Omaha Bombardment Group article indicates that a multinational force "shot the landing in": none of the D-Day landings involved only one country. Nick-D (talk) 07:59, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
I did read the template guidance, but it does not seem to help in this situation. Omaha Beach was massively a US operation, and the contributions by allied nations very small indeed by comparison. Including other nations on the basis of such relatively minor roles seems to give undue weight, which surely would not be allowed if this was attempted in the article itself? FactotEm (talk) 08:39, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
I agree with Nick-D. Air support is also a factor to be taken into account. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 09:58, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
(edit conflict) The Omaha Beach landing was a multinational operation, and pretending otherwise doesn't seem like a good idea. I note that you'd tagged a statement in the lead that other countries were involved as needing a reference, despite this being referenced in the body of the article, so reading the article more closely might be a good start. I'd also suggest that you consult the order of battle for Task Force 124, the Omaha Beach landing force, on pages 335-336 of Samuel E. Morrison's semi-official history of the USN in World War II The Invasion of France and Germany - a high proportion of the ships involved in all aspects of the landing were from other countries. A key feature of the Normandy Landings was the close integration across the Allied forces. Nick-D (talk) 10:01, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
Well that spiralled out of control pretty quick. The specifics of the Omaha Beach article is not my point here. This is an infobox question. I am simply querying the apparent undue weight that listing all participants in the infobox tends to give, however small, relatively speaking, their contributions were, and trying to find out if this subject has come up before. I'll take the Omaha Beach specifics to that article's talk page. FactotEm (talk) 10:49, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
That was not your question (especially in your 08:39 post) Nick-D (talk) 10:59, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

Spirals look rather controlled to me, especially when they're easing the cork out of a Cotes du Rhone bottle. ;o)) Regards Keith-264 (talk) 11:42, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

The prime directive is to inform the readers, rather than let them stay ignorant. In the case of Omaha Beach, it is pretty clear cut, as the British, French and Canadian contribution was sizeable. But in some cases the contingents involved were very small. For example, in Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the British flag appears. On the one hand, the are only two Brits in the 50 or so men who flew the actual missions. On the other, they were there specifically to fly the (Union) flag and signify that it was a multinational effort. Hawkeye7 (talk) 23:10, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
Thank you to all who have responded, and apologies - I can see how my clumsy opening posts have given the wrong impression. My concern is not to deny other contributions but to present them with an appropriate balance which, after all, we are required to do according to Neutral_point_of_view#Balancing_aspects and the guideline on relative emphasis in the lead.
In your Atomic bombings example these strictures are, it seems to me, accommodated by qualifying the British contribution with the statement "Support from:" before the flag; it's made clear to the reader that the Americans are the primary actors, and that the British made a supporting contribution.
Taking Omaha Beach again as an example, the Free French provided 2 cruisers, the Canadians 9 minesweepers, in an invasion fleet that numbered between near 400 or 1028 vessels, depending on source and count. Further, by my reading (admittedly limited, I'm open to correction on this), these contingents do not appear all that often in the sources. Unlike the Atomic bombings example, no distinction is made in the infobox as to the relative contributions, leading to what I believe is an imbalance being introduced in the lead. FactotEm (talk) 07:28, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
Can't that be handled through the "united involved" field and the article's text? Infoboxes aren't good at subtlety. Nick-D (talk) 08:09, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
The units involved field is an excellent suggestion. Thank you. FactotEm (talk) 15:19, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

CopyPatrol

Hey All We have a new bot that detects potential copyright concerns. You can sort them by WikiProject. Here is the link to the list for MilHis. Of course follow up requires some common sense as it could be the source copying from us. Ping me if you are interested in more details. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:54, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Article that needs attention

Hello there! I just stumbled upon Rolia_Whitinger on Huggle and reversed a minor edit which introduced weird markup to the article's awards section. The user then contacted me on my talk page with a bizarre rant about bone transplants. Upon closer inspection, honestly the article is a bloody mess and I'd much appreciate opinions as to whether this person is in fact notable and whether this article is beyond repair and needs TNT. Thanks, FoCuS contribs; talk to me! 14:10, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Nothing I see indicates he meets the GNG or SOLDIER - TNT time, I'd say. Parsecboy (talk) 15:05, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
Agree. No notability. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:06, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
Not quite bone transplants; editor was the subject's son, and Rolia Whitinger's body, after death, had organs harvested illegally seemingly to sell to medical training establishments!! Editor is out to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS, and is indeed personally involved. Does not have notability for military service, at the very least. Buckshot06 (talk) 20:35, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

1st Air Commando Group

If we are talking about Burma and World War II, then why don't we write an article about the 1st Air Commando Group? It would be a great addition to the page, and I have quite a few books about the subject, and my dad is a former Air Force Special Operations Command MC-130P Combat Shadow pilot. I'm only twelve, but I know a lot about the subject.
Jak474 (talk) 19:18, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
@Jak474: there is already an article - 1st Special Operations Wing. Nthep (talk) 19:39, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
Oy, you @Nthep:, there's a military leadership saying, "never step on enthusiasm." Our chunk-of-an-article inside 1 SOW about the 1st Air Commando Group is about five, relatively meaty, paragraphs. We could *easily* expand that, and the genesis of U.S. Air Force special operations on wiki could easily benefit from it. If it gets too big, we can separate it out into a new article. More importantly, we should encourage young 'uns who have lots of books on the subject and personal motivations for writing, not discourage them.
@Jak474:, please feel free to expand 1st Special Operations Wing#1st Air Commando Group. Sing out if you want advice/help, and if we need to spin it off into a separate article, we can do so. Do you have No Room for Error by Col. John T. Carney? What does your dad think of it? Kind regards (NSDQ) Buckshot06 (talk) 16:16, 18 August 2016 (UTC)
I wasn't stepping on anyone's enthusiasm just pointing out that an article on/including the topic already exists. Nthep (talk) 19:19, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Um, no, I do not have that book. However, I do have a book called "Air Commando" detailing 1st SOW ops from 1944-1994. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jak474 (talk • contribs) 14:35, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Questions about article neutrality at Talk:Nanking Massacre

Hi all, if this is of interest to anyone, an editor has opened a discussion at Talk:Nanking Massacre that could use some feedback from people interested in the subject. Thanks. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 20:57, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Category:Military units and formations in Burma in World War II

This new category looks like an attempt to compile an Allied order of battle in Burma during World War II by unit size by adding, for example, all regiments using [[Category:Military units and formations in Burma in World War II|r]] That concern aside what is the general policy, if there is one, of adding units to categories by campaign. For many articles this could lead to very long lists of categories to little benefit as units of long life will have served in hundreds of different campaigns and theatres. I notice that units are not included in current categories like Category:Operation Market Garden. Nthep (talk) 22:51, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Agreed; this is a misuse of the category system. Indeed, a useful presentation - as an article. Feel free to take it to MfD with my support. Buckshot06 (talk) 16:23, 18 August 2016 (UTC)
I did raise this series of cats like Category:Military units and formations in Aden in World War II by the same user a few weeks ago but nobody seemed to be interested :( MilborneOne (talk) 18:52, 18 August 2016 (UTC)
Then the answer is relatively simple, I would say. Invite this user to come to this discussion and continue to lay out our concerns, and they can fire back and we can address the root of the problem. Buckshot06 (talk) 19:13, 18 August 2016 (UTC)
Note left for Robert Brukner who created these categories. I wouldn't want to see these cats deleted before they could be converted in skeleton list articles. Nthep (talk) 19:31, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Hello, A few weeks ago I noted the exceptional lack of category integration and the inconsistent use of existent categories across the variously linked articles concerning the British Empire and Commonwealth during the Second World War. If you look into the various related articles generally titled XXX in World War II, and Military history of XXX in World War II you will find a host of categories: such as Category:XXX country in World War II, Category:Military history of XXX in World War II, Category:XXX people in World War II, Category:XXX military personnel of World War II, Category:Military units and formations of XXX in World War II, Category: Military units and formations in XXX in World War II, and so on. Across these currently linked articles and categories are some dozen of so categories and subcategories. In Category:United States in World War II there are over 300 categories and subcategories nested within that category, specific to the conduct of the US in the war. My effort is an attempt to rationalize, integrate and bring consistent use to the categories, that already exist, related to the conduct of the war within the Empire, Commonwealth, Dominions and all internal entires. Please start with the article British Empire during World War II and Category:British Empire in World War II. All related articles and all related categories drop down from those two points. Within the entities from Aden to Burma you can now read almost any WWII article and find your way to other related civil and military matters related to that entity.

Orders of Battle generally pertain to one discrete event or campaign, under one or more beliigerant command structures. In the case of each British Empire and Commonwealth entity so far addressed, I have linked all the military formations that passed through that entity during the war. In Category:Military units and formations of XXX in World War II you will find domestic military formations, while in Category: Military units and formations in XXX in World War II you will find all empire, and other belligerent forces included. As to the "ordering" of the categorized articles. That is an artefact of the process of including each military formation into the category. Without some ordering it is difficult to see which formations I have missed. After any particular nation is finished I have generally tried to return the articles appearing in that category back into alphabetical order.

The category Category:Military units and formations of XXX in World War II has existed for years, if not decades. Whatever rationale you discuss in relation to my use of it or removing it, needs to consider why the category even exists, why others use it, what advantages it provides and what benefit accrues from removing it. Robert Brukner (talk) 23:32, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Robert, have you read WP:NONDEF? Whether the 7th Armoured Brigade was in Egypt, or Burma, or the Federal Republic of Germany, does not define its essential characteristics. It was an armoured brigade, formed at a certain time, disbanded at a certain time, but military units are not essentially defined by either changing command structures (which is the reason why Category:10th Mountain Division (United States) breaks the rule, because it includes units that have been both in and out of 10MD/ID/MDLI over the years, or the various old Carrier Strike Group categories, now deleted) or the locations in which they fought. Consider the article for the British Army having 300 categories below it listing every engagement in which it has ever taken part in. You'll see, as with the other inappropriate-category listings at WP:Overcategorization, that this overburdens the list of categories at the bottom of the page, rendering them less useful. Buckshot06 (talk) 02:16, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
Addendum: WP:CATDEF states that 'A central concept used in categorising articles is that of the defining characteristics of a subject of the article. A defining characteristic is one that reliable sources commonly and consistently define[1] the subject as having—such as nationality or notable profession (in the case of people), type of location or region (in the case of places), etc. For example, here: "Caravaggio, an Italian artist of the Baroque movement ...", Italian, artist, and Baroque may all be considered to be defining characteristics of the subject Caravaggio.}}' (stolen from CATDEF) 02:19, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
These categories would, if added to all articles across all countries, create an incredible amount of category clutter at the bottom of the page. These categories can be covered better in list articles. Kges1901 (talk) 10:46, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Categorization impacts knowledge integration in a variety of directions. From the military unit perspective there might be an abundance of categories if the unit served in many countries. But in most country military articles there is currently little to no information pertaining to military units from, or that served in, those countries. They are essentially invisible. Articles concerning 90% or more of Empire and Commonwealth colonies and countries during the war are sparse at best. Categories allows rapid linkage to knowledge contained in other articles. Category links, provide a window through which one can quickly obtain intersectional information about military activity during the war, and also without ad naseum repetition of the same facts. It is true that building better articles is a more appropriate way to contain and explain events and knowledge. But where such articles do not exist rapid cross linkages by categories provides an immediate solution access new knowledge.

What I am reading from all of this is a concern about the actual use of extant categories. Again, I ask, why not use the categories created for us to use? In their use, we do not find the reason for not using them. While there are better solutions then the use of categories, those solutions are not being implemented. In the meantime categories allow broader integration of complex topics in a simple and easily accessible way. I would not, for example, attempt to conduct such a broad and deep category integration for the UK, as the scale would simple be to large. As to the concern that there would be an "incredible amount of clutter" at the bottom of the page, I point to World War II which has 120 categories, and World War I which has 50 categories at the bottom of their pages. If they are the sort of "clutter" about which there is concern, please address those concerns to those page editors, and the editors of the many others like them. Personally, I see no problem with the number of categories on those two pages. Not one of the articles I have worked on has anything close to that many categories on its page.

On the question of "defining characteristics of a subject." Country articles specific to the Second World War are a subject that cannot be separated from the nation's soldiers fighting those war, or the soldiers from foreign nations fighting on their soil. Their units and formations, leaders and actions, battles and operations, and the social impacts of all of that, are the defining reality of the war. Robert Brukner (talk) 19:44, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

I think you had better review WP:Category carefully and then potentially speak up at that talkpage. CATDEF specifically says that 'A defining characteristic is one that reliable sources commonly and consistently define[1] the subject as having—such as nationality or notable profession (in the case of people). The majority of this project's editors do not agree with you. I think we will have to take this to WP:MFD. Please bear in mind that as far as my limited experience with you, you're a great new editor, but this approach does not appear to meet our rules. That's what deletion debates are for - they create the community WP:CONSENSUS to decide on whether things fit within the rules or not. Buckshot06 (talk) 21:49, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

WP:SOLDIER

Brought up at this AfD. Does a subject being "mentioned in dispatches" pass WP:SOLDIER, or not? Chris Troutman (talk) 09:29, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

Not by itself -- if awards alone are being used to determine notability of a Commonwealth soldier, it'd have to be the VC or GC from memory. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 09:49, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
Agree with Ian. VC/GC or multiple awards of next level down. Certainly not MiD. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 09:59, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
Not by itself, no, but for the article in question the person actually had several higher awards (DSO and DSC for example). Ultimately it comes down to the level of sourcing, though. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 10:19, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
Then why is WP:SOLDIER written as it is? It intones being mentioned is enough to pass muster, unless I'm reading it wrong. Chris Troutman (talk) 10:33, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
SOLDIER is about a presumption of notability based on awards received, rank, command etc. We assume that someone that meets SOLDIER will meet the GNG if we look for reliable sources. The example of Sheehan is to show that meeting GNG due to significant coverage in multiple reliable sources (which he does) trumps any presumption (or lack thereof) based on SOLDIER. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 10:42, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
Yes, that was certainly the intention when I drafted the sentence on Sheehan. The meaning seems clear to me (when read as a whole with the rest of the essay), but I recognize that it is difficult to pick up infelicities in one's own writing. Is there a better way of saying this? Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 12:09, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
@AustralianRupert: I wouldn't mention dispatches, at all. Explain Sheehan meets GNG, beyond qualifying on the basis of awards. Chris Troutman (talk) 12:49, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
Done. AustralianRupert (talk) 13:11, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

Pipe major

Does anyone know anything about Pipe majors, in particular the military aspect? I'm looking to expand that article. Thanks, Ostrichyearning (talk) 23:08, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

RFC

I have started an RFC to get input on a proposal to rename List of senior officers of the Argentine Navy. Feel free to weigh in at Talk:List of senior officers of the Argentine Navy Gbawden (talk) 14:16, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

Insertion of "Supported by" in Infobox

Hi. There is an open RfC at Talk:Battle_of_Ia_Drang#RfC:_Insertion_of_South_Vietnam concerning the insertion of a "Supported by <party>" in the infobox. It would be good if interested participants can have a look. --Lemongirl942 (talk) 02:51, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

RfC has expired, but I think it needs the attention of an uninvolved who can determine consensus now. FactotEm (talk) 21:11, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
I've asked AustralianRupert. Seriously, that article has literally experienced "battle ground" editing. ;) --Lemongirl942 (talk) 14:58, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
You're not kidding! Thanks. FactotEm (talk) 08:05, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

Talk:Elyesa Bazna/GA1

Greetings, folks. I carried out a GA review for Elyesa Bazna, a page which is within the scope of this project. I have placed the review on hold, because there were some relatively minor issues (see the review page) which are nonetheless large enough that I would not feel comfortable fixing them and then passing the article myself. Additionally, I don't have access to some of the sources. The reason I am posting here is that the nominator has not been active for many months now. If anybody with interest in World War II or Intelligence history could help out here, it would be much appreciated. Vanamonde (talk) 03:49, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Aircraft gun turret as separate article

A discussion has been started about creation of a separate article (possibly named aircraft gun turret - currently a redirect) to handle the content of gun turret#aircraft, the discussion is at Talk:Gun_turret#Aircraft_gun_turret. GraemeLeggett (talk) 12:53, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Krulak Mendenhall mission, nominator long gone, eyes would be appreciated. - Dank (push to talk) 14:17, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Anglo-Saxon Army

User:Owain Knight has moved Anglo-Saxon military organization to Anglo-Saxon Army. After looking at this, I suggested to User:Mike Christie at User talk:Mike Christie#Move of Anglo-Saxon military organisation that the article should be deleted. He agreed that AfD would be appropriate, but suggested consulting consulting MilHist first. Any comments gratefully received. Dudley Miles (talk) 11:01, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

I'd say AFD with extreme prejudice, since for obvious reasons there was never such a thing as the "Anglo-Saxon Army", other than arguably for a brief period between 937 and 1066, and even then the fyrd weren't really an "army" in the modern sense. Treating the Heptarchy states as a single entity on the grounds that they had similar equipment makes no more sense than treating the militaries of 20th-century Europe as a single entity. Everything that needs to be said about the militaries of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms has already been said at fyrd and housecarl. ‑ Iridescent 11:23, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
937 - 1066 is quite a long period really. We have, for example, an article on the German Army (Wehrmacht) which lasted according to the article from 1935 to 1946. Likewise, we don't explain all about that army at Panzergrenadier. Questions ought to be is Anglo-Saxon military organisation a notable topic? What is the hierarchy of articles in this field - should we spring an explanation of the whole from a branch of service or even a socio-military group? That said, I don't think we need separate articles on Anglo-Saxon organisation, Anglo-Saxon warfare and Anglo-Saxon weaponry. Recommend review to reorganise/merge. Monstrelet (talk) 17:45, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
I don't know much about Anglo-Saxon miltiary organisations, but "army" is definitely not the right term for them. There weren't a any "armies" (eg, permanently raised land forces with a fixed allegiance) in western Europe at this time. Nick-D (talk) 22:49, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
Anglo-Saxon military organization seems a better title to me. The subject is notable, and there are books on it, although the article, while correct, doesn't list any sources. (I hate that.) While much of it is covered by fyrd and housecarl, I think that someone turning to Wikipedia for information on the subject is highly unlikely to go there in the first instance, so a top-level article seems to be reasonable. Anglo-Saxon weaponry is a fairly good article, and I wouldn't like to see it ruined by being merged. There is a big difference between 937 to 1066 and 1935 to 1946! Technological change was much slower in the 10th century than the 20th. (And I'm not sure whether "permanently raised land forces with a fixed allegiance" is a good definition of an army.) I suggest letting the experts develop the articles for now. Hawkeye7 (talk) 01:11, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
The article did list sources until a couple of days ago, but only as a reading list, not citations. The editor who changed the title has drastically shortened it and deleted the sources. See [1]. Anglo-Saxon military organisation does not seem to me notable as a separate article from Anglo-Saxon warfare, and I think a merger is probably the best solution if anyone is willing to take it on. It is outside my field, but I see User:Midnightblueowl and User:Biblioworm have worked on the good article on Anglo-Saxon weaponry. Another alternative is to change the artice to a redirect to Anglo-Saxon warfare. PS I see that the editor who changed the article title has also deleted the infobox in Godwin, Earl of Wessex. I have reverted his changes. Dudley Miles (talk) 09:23, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
I would strongly urge people not to remove sources like that! A reading list, while nowhere near as good as inline citations, gives the next editor somewhere to go to research the subject, and sources to check for close paraphrasing. Without it, you have to rewrite all the text. So it makes the job of improving the article much harder. Hawkeye7 (talk) 06:41, 26 August 2016 (UTC)
Given what's left might as well move Anglo-Saxon Army back to Anglo-Saxon military organization then redirect it to Anglo-Saxon warfare. That will retain the history. Then delete Anglo-Saxon Army and Anglo-Saxon Military as misconceived capitalizations of phrases. GraemeLeggett (talk) 12:03, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
i was fine with the previous title but the current title wrongly implies that there was one "Army" for the entire period that had a continuous organizational life. A redirect would also work. Ealdgyth - Talk 12:18, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
I'd agree military organisation is better than army - there was a new army each time there was a war but the nature of equipment, methods of raising etc. were more stable. That was how pre-modern warfare was and to suggest that an army has to be a permanently raised land force is flying in the face of most of military history. As to technological change rates, true but not relevant if the argument about notability is it should be based on period of existence. Surely, it should be if its notable and has the sources to create a viable article, which this topic does. I'd support anyone working on merger but I'm not very good at the merger technicalities, so it wouldn't be good for me to lead on it Monstrelet (talk) 17:51, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

GA Reassessment of Gladiator (2000 film)

Gladiator (2000 film), an article that you or your project may be interested in, has been nominated for an individual good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. BlueMoonset (talk) 01:02, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Category:Recipients of the Albanian Commemorative Medal has been nominated for discussion

Category:Recipients of the Albanian Commemorative Medal, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has been nominated for deletion. A discussion is taking place to see if it abides with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. RevelationDirect (talk) 02:39, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Picture question

Combat block 1 at the fortress Limeiln (ouvrage Four-à-Chaux, Alsace), showing signs of German testing of explosives inside some fortresses between 1942 and 1944

Why will the picture show on preview but not in the [2] article? Regards Keith-264 (talk) 12:55, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Curious. I just copied the whole section to my user page, where it displayed fine, then re-copied that back to the article, and still a problem. FactotEm (talk) 13:19, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
I wondered if it was to do with it being Wiki Fr but it shows all right on another wiki Eng page. Keith-264 (talk) 14:01, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
Somebody missed to close the brackets on the image before. Fixed now. ÄDA - DÄP VA (talk) 14:12, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
Thanks babe. Keith-264 (talk) 14:26, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

COIN Ops

Hello. If anybody has any information regarding COIN ops, I would like to see it. I'm trying to write an article on the subject.Jak474 (talk) 19:28, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Given that there's a vast literature on this topic, it might be helpful if you identified the gaps you're looking to close. Also, are you working on the Counter-insurgency article? Nick-D (talk) 23:09, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
Two reasonably good, up to date starting points are John Mackinlay, ¨The Insurgent Archipelago¨, and David Kilcullens recent ¨Counterinsurgency¨. But go to Small Wars Council would be a great online start. Buckshot06 (talk) 16:04, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:The 10,000 Challenge

Hi there. I've started a new initiative, the Wikipedia:The 10,000 Challenge. It's a long term goal to bring about 10,000 article improvements to the UK and Ireland. Through two contests involving just six or seven weeks of editing so far we've produced over 1500 improvements. Long term if we have more people chipping it and adding articles they've edited independently as well from all areas of the UK then reaching that target is all possible. I think it would be an amazing achievement to see 10,000 article improvements by editors chipping in with whatever area of the British Isles or subject that they work on. If you support this and think you might want to contribute towards this long term please sign up in the Contributors section. No obligations, just post work on anything you feel like whenever you want, though try to avoid basic stubs if possible as we're trying to reduce the overall stub count and improve general comprehension and quality. If you're working on British military history articles anyway, please consider taking a second to post your article on the list to join the main effort! Thanks.♦ Dr. Blofeld 14:03, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Castles Challenge

Hello. Let me announce a new writing contest in September. It's a contest about castles of Armenia and Spain. You have the complete information here on meta. Thanks! --Millars (talk) 16:53, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Rank templates bias

Just seen some rank badge templates being created for example Template:Ranks and Insignia of Non NATO Air Forces/OF/Bangladesh, not sure if it is just me but is not the naming convention a bit non-neutral as far as I know this is not natopedia. It also lists them by NATO rank codes which seems to be a bit of a theme in rank articles, any reason why we cant compare with russian forces equivalants (or any other non-nato force) as well? All seems a bit bias. MilborneOne (talk) 16:11, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Outside NATO, it should just be ranks related to themselves. As I understand it, NATO 'ranks' are more for consistency of treatment between nations armed forces within the organization and therefore have no bearing in activities with non-NATO forces.GraemeLeggett (talk) 11:49, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

"Missile turret"

Missile turret is this really a thing? Does anyone actually use this phrase for real. The example seem to be launchers and all the incoming links appear to be from sci-fi entities yet there is no sci-fi examples in the article. Thoughts? GraemeLeggett (talk) 12:07, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

I cant remember ever seeing the term in serious publications on military topics, which typically refer to "missile launchers" and the like. The term is used in computer games, which might have led to some confusion. Nick-D (talk) 23:07, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
The term seems to have some currency amongst makers in the '60s and '70s to describe self-contained turrets (launcher and sight) for smaller ATGW which could be mounted on AFVs, some on smaller patrol boats. Look at old Janes' and the like. Andy Dingley (talk) 13:21, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

MilHist Articles With Incomplete B-Class Checklists

I am curious by what process articles checked against but not accepted as B-class are added to the list at the top of this page. A C-Class article within the purview of this group that was checked against B-class but not accepted (lacking only in referencing, apparently) does not appear among the 27 articles currently listed. The article in question is Cecil E. Harris. Is this just a matter of missing code in the Talk page? Thanks for your help, folks! Finktron (talk) 12:59, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Finktron, the category is actually used for articles where one or more of the checklist criteria aren't filled out with a valid (yes/no) response, not for articles that fail the criteria. Those are categorized in Category:Military history articles needing attention only to referencing and citation and its sibling categories. Kirill Lokshin (talk) 14:12, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

2016 Military history WikiProject Coordinator Nominations Now Open!

Nominations for the 2016 Military history Coordinator tranche are now open. We are looking nine editors interested in serving in a coordinator capacity from the end of this September until September 2017. All interested editors may self nominate here. The nominations period will end at 23:59 UTC 15 September 2016, at which point voting will officially begin. Any editors interested in running are encouraged to sign up at nominations page. If you have any questions about the position or its responsibilities you are welcome to ask any of the individual coordinators, while general information and answers to frequently asked questions about the position may be found here. For the Coordinators of the Military history Project, TomStar81 (Talk) 01:41, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

Sorting within category - New York Civil War regiments

Hello all - Based on the discussion copied in below, I changed the pipesorting on most of the articles in Category:New York Civil War regiments so that the Infantry articles all sort together numerically, all the Artillery articles sort together numerically etc. Any opinions on that approach? I will listen for comments before taking similar steps with other categories.

Copy + Paste of earlier discussion

Standardization of Civil War Regiment article names?

Hello all - Do we have a preferred set of naming conventions for individual regiments' articles, and also for defaultsorting them in categories? For instance, I am looking at Category:New York Civil War regiments and there are different naming conventions for like articles - In other words, should "75th New York Volunteer Infantry" be "75th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment"? Or, should "74th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment" be "74th New York Volunteer Infantry"? Also, things like the 7th whatever being sorted below the 70th whatever can cause confusion to users. 

   70th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment
   71st New York Infantry
   72nd New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment
   73rd New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment
   74th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment
   75th New York Volunteer Infantry
   76th New York Volunteer Infantry
   77th New York Volunteer Infantry
   78th New York Volunteer Infantry
   79th New York Volunteer Infantry
   7th New York Heavy Artillery Regiment
   7th New York Militia
   7th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment
   7th Regiment New York Volunteer Cavalry

If no specific thoughts on this, then I might try experimenting with the naming and sorting of the New York regiments to start with, and see if any solutions strike me. Any thoughts on this, please let me know. Thanks KConWiki (talk) 16:07, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

I know WP:COMMONNAME applies, but I'm a big fan of consistency. The sorting problem can be solved by using {{DEFAULTSORT:07}} or {{DEFAULTSORT:007}} (if there are "century" numbered unites involved) on the unit page for the 7th.--Jim in Georgia Contribs Talk 22:11, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
Thanks - I am good on how to make the Defaultsorting happen, but I wasn't sure if there had been discussions elsewhere already on the specifics. Let me leave this out here for others to comment on if they like. KConWiki (talk) 23:18, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
Note that the need for custom sorting to get numbers in the right order will soon no longer be necessary—touch wood—once the necessary changes have been made in the guts of the MediaWiki software: see WT:Categorization#OK to switch English Wikipedia's category collation to uca-default?—Odysseus1479 23:47, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
That's good to know.Jim in Georgia Contribs Talk 00:37, 19 July 2016 (UTC)
Can I ask why we want the article names standardized? Certainly we might want some standardization, especially for sorting, but the regiment names were not, I think, perfectly standardized historically. For instance, searching newspapers.com, it seems the 74th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment was much more commonly known as the "Fifth Excelsior". On fold3 records, I also see "74th New York infantry" and "74th New York State Volunteer Infantry". A New York Adjutant General volume calls it the "74th New York State Volunteer Infantry" and the "5th Regiment (Excelsior Brigade)" [3]. The Dyer compendium uses "74th Regiment Infantry" and "5th Excelsior" [4]. Also, by the way, the 74th New York State Militia is a different organization which contributed men to other NY Volunteer Infantry units, mostly the 21st. Historians today, as evidenced by google books and google scholar, don't seem to feel the need to standardize either. Smmurphy(Talk) 06:50, 19 July 2016 (UTC)
I believe there are minor differences in the official designations of Civil War units that really shouldn't matter. Taking your first exemplar, I think you will find that the most common reference to the unit will be to the "74th New York". Mostly because of lower numbered units, I believe that the branch needs to be added, and because of the existence of numbered battalions as well, my preferred usage would be "74th New York Infantry Regiment", with the addition of "Volunteer" only when needed as a discriminator.
I am also a big unfan of the use of default sorting. My experience is that when an article has multiple categories, the default sort only works well for one of them. I much prefer using something like [[74th New York Infanry Regiment|074 New York Infantry]]. The 5th Regiment issue with this unit can be easily solved by a redirect. --Lineagegeek (talk) 22:49, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks KConWiki (talk) 03:45, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

Reverting vandalism

Erm, have I broken the 3rr rule by reverting five recent edits Gallipoli Campaign here by Brophy99 as Reverting vandalism or test edit? Regards Keith-264 (talk) 13:45, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

The 3RR rule does not apply to reverting clear vandalism per policy. Revert to a clean version in one edit, not multiple ones. The edits to the Gallipoli article look questionable and not helpful to me. -Fnlayson (talk) 20:58, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
Thanks Keith-264 (talk) 21:00, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
Keith-264, you may want to request WP:ROLLBACK permissions, which would allow you do undo successive vandalizing edits in a single click. It's the same effect, but saves time. TimothyJosephWood 01:52, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
Yes I agree those edits did look disruptive and the reverts by Keith are appropriate (at least I'd have done the same). Also my reading of 3 RR is that a series of consecutive reverts (each reverting a separate, previous, individual edit by another editor) only counts as one instance so in this case Keith I don't think you actually have breached WP:3RR regardless so no need to fall on your sword (although others might disagree with me). Anotherclown (talk) 06:36, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

I realised that there were five edits half-way through so I decided against trying to do a blanket revert, in case I buggered it up like last time. ;o)) The last time I broke the 3rr rule, I did it without noticing so I thought it would be prudent to ask. Regards Keith-264 (talk) 07:31, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Think about it this way: if you had copied and pasted the version of the article prior to the edits, you could have undone them in a single edit, so it counts as a single revert. This is essentially what rollback does. Alteratively, you can use WP:TWINKLE. Unfortunately, having both the permission and using Twinkle can get a little messy. TimothyJosephWood 11:28, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Notability of military medals and awards

In the context of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Medal of National Defense Service, I was surprised to see no mention of them in Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Notability guide. Given we also have no Wikipedia:Notability (awards), I think it is time we added a note on what makes military awards or medals notable. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 09:58, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Piotrus: The reference on the AfD to the Army Service Ribbon is a good one. Receiving this (lowest possible level) award obviously doesn't confer notability, but the award itself seems obviously notable on the face of it. To me, it seems self evident that an award endorsed and routinely awarded by a national military or multi-national military alliance should be notable in its own right. TimothyJosephWood 14:21, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
Yes, all official awards are notable in their own right, although only the most distinctive confer any notability on the recipient. In Australia, there have been a number of non-official medals, known as "private commemoratives" or "tinnies". There is a list of them here As far as I can tell, none have articles. Does Wikipedia:WikiProject Orders, decorations, and medals have a notability guide? Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:49, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
Seems a lot like we would need to define "official". TimothyJosephWood 01:17, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
Issued by the government on the basis of an entitlement due to service etc, not purchased from a retailer. I would say all official awards are notable in their own right (but as mentioned, few actually attract notability for the recipient). Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 06:43, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
I would certainly agree that all government-issued awards should be considered notable. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:52, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Ok, so...I guess my question to everyone is this: The perennial argument against specific notability standards is that they may lower the bar from WP:GNG to something lesser. Barring the Chinese award in question, a situation where, as I said at the AfD, the WP:NEXIST is difficult to judge, is there a situation where such a policy may actually allow an award to have an article where it clearly wouldn't meet GNG? TimothyJosephWood 12:01, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Follow up question: if a guideline is developed, should it include civilian awards like Department of the Army Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service and Achievement Medal for Civilian Service?
Yes, it should. Hawkeye7 (talk) 12:08, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
Well, the point is exactly that the current GNG policy sets the bar above certain awards, up to and including Army Service Ribbon (at least based on the sources present in the article). It stands to reason that many minor awards from the government, civilian and military, do not have in-depth coverage about them: people get them, but nobody cares to write so much as an article about the award. Yet we seem to think that government awards and honors deserve an independent article because they are important, just like we make exceptions for let's say professors with high citation count, even if nobody has written about them. Ditto for sportspeople who won some medals or simply played at important games. So yes, I think we need a special SNG that would clearly state that the bar for awards is lower. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 07:55, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
Hawkeye7, Piotrus, Necrothesp, Peacemaker67: One thing seems certain, five editors on this thread is probably not sufficient to establish a consensus that may affect several hundred articles. We should probably try to put together a proposal and take it to village pump, or find some other way to open this up to broader discussion. TimothyJosephWood 11:14, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
I agree. I suggest starting a new page for a SNG. Given that Wikipedia:Notability (awards) is taken by an old historical failed proposal, I'd suggest Wikipedia:Notability (awards and medals). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 10:59, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
It seems that a policy on awards per se may be a bit lacking in nuance. Using the example of the Army Service Ribbon, the issue seems to be that there is a class of awards that are sufficiently not-prestigious so that they don't have substantial secondary in depth coverage, but are sufficiently widely awarded and understood by military personnel that an understanding for the reader becomes important.
It is their lack of prestige but concomitant ubiquity that warrants an article. This came up a few times on 2016 shooting of Dallas police officers, where poor sources wanted to say that he got medals like the ASR for his service in Afghanistan, which I'm sure most of us know wasn't the case. But the reader should be able to link from an article on a service member and tell whether an award was for valor, service, or...latrine utilization, as it's often put.
However, I can surely see a case where a brand new award created by a government which is neither 1) seldom awarded due to prestige, nor 2) often awarded so as to confer a sense of ubiquity, would in fact not be notable at the time (WP:TOOSOON). So I think the heart of the issue is that at some point with a mundane award, the sheer weight of trivial coverage (hundreds or thousands of sources), plus the official government endorsement, overcomes the requirement for depth in coverage when establishing notability. Of course we can't cite thousands of trivial mentions, but per WP:NEXIST, we wouldn't have to, so long a the ubiquity was easily verifiable. TimothyJosephWood 11:45, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
I would add that, specifically in the case of the ASR, there are literally tens of millions of primary sources, namely, every DD214 that's ever been made for any soldier who's received the award, but of course most of those are not public since they contain PII. TimothyJosephWood 13:35, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

GA reassessment of Macrinus

Macrinus, an article that you or your project may be interested in, has been nominated for an individual good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. BlueMoonset (talk) 15:54, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Roman and Byzantine Military History task force

As an incubator tier task force, we reached 4 active members and 1 sporadic, with one that is retired but may return, I followed the instructions of Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators and made all of the necessary categories, an infobox and the templates, I was wondering who I should ask to include us in the talk page template, I have already added the baseline of |Roman= to the template, but have not touched the underlying code to make it work. Thanks. Iazyges (talk) 23:27, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for posting here; I wasn't sure how to help you set this up. - Dank (push to talk) 08:16, 26 August 2016 (UTC)
An urgent task for you would be to take a look at some of the Roman fort categories. User:Rjdeadly has taken it upon themselves to redo a whole bunch of categories relating to Roman forts and the like, apparently without consensus. It's not my area at all, but since categories like Category:Roman legionary fortresses have existed for 10 years but are now threatened with deletion as they are now empty, someone needs to take a look and see what damage limitation is appropriate. Le Deluge (talk) 18:23, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
Le Deluge (talk · contribs), The category you mentioned was due to him making a different category called Roman Legionary Fortresses, and rather than moving it he decided to CSD it, and remake it, I will check his other contribs. Iazyges (talk) 03:07, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
Le Deluge (talk · contribs) After checking, he is blocked, and the category I previously mentioned he created has been tagged for speedy merging with the old one. Category:Roman legionary fortresses. Iazyges (talk) 03:13, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
Although this is not quite my area of expertise, these categories appear to be unclearly defined and their content jumbled together: what exactly is a "legionary fortress"? Is it a reference to the castrum, in which case it is redundant and inaccurate, since castra were used also by auxiliaries, or is it supposed to mean 'legionary base", which would include several cities and larger fortresses that do not fit within the castrum typology? Right now there is a mix of both. I suggest that until someone with good knowledge of Roman fortification typology makes a thorough categorization accordingly, "Ancient Roman forts in XXX" is perfectly sufficient. Constantine ✍ 19:08, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
Cplakidas (talk · contribs) I did some perusing, according to Roman military engineering, a legionary fort was a permanent base of one or more legions, a castra was a temporary thing, how would this be resolved best do you think? I am making a passage in the talk page of the Roman and Byzantine military history task force to discuss it. Perhaps an RFC to decide if Legionary fort should be its own article for permanent forts, and Castra should be only for temporary one? Iazyges (talk) 03:24, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
Again there's fuzziness in that many "castra" gave their names to long-lived settlements like Chester. Going back to Rjdeadly's edits, he seems to have eg decided that Category:Roman legionary fortresses in England should move to Category:Roman legionary fortresses in Britannia (UK) despite no consensus for such a move. As I say, he's been busy and some of his edits have been subtle. I've also mentioned this on WP:CGR, albeit without much response. Le Deluge (talk) 22:53, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Pat Southern in 'The Roman Army - A Social and Institutional History distinguishes between:

  • temporary fortified camps of the early empire
  • forts (usually under a centurion, p.81), rarely also referring to "auxilliary forts"
  • fortresses (often calling them "legionary fortresses")

It seems that the above terms could be used for detailed categorization here, however I am afraid that, for many forts, it would be difficult to support this categorization due to lack of sources. I suspect that this difficulty is even more pronounced with the forts of the later Empire, when legions became smaller. As for the permanence of Roman fortifications, "the earlier fortified camps of the early Empire ...were not generally designed as permanent bases for troops...In the second century AD from the reign of Trajan onward, when the majority of forts had become permanent bases rather than semipermanent ones..." (Southern p.180). Southern does not use the term castrum at all but I am sure that the latter can be used for denoting both temporary and permanent fortifications. If you need more details, I could consult The Complete Roman Army by Adrian Goldsworthy, I guess he has additional details on the matter.--Dipa1965 (talk) 08:43, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Dipa1965 (talk · contribs), Hm perhaps it could be split into the three you mentioned, or else a mix of the current system with that? Iazyges (talk) 02:07, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Imo the existing category tree is confusing. For instance, "Roman fortifications" consists of only one subcategory, "Ancient Roman forts". Thus the latter seems redundant. Due to the general confusion, articles are listed in more than one categories, i.e. Argentoratum is listed in both "Roman legionary fortresses" and "Ancient Roman forts" (additionally, it seems to me that both are wrong since Argentoratum "fort" looks nothing more than a fortified camp). I am proposing the following scheme (names are purely suggestive):

  • Roman military fortifications
    • Roman forts
    • Roman legionary fortresses
    • Roman fortified camps
  • Roman fortified settlements (fortifications that were never exclusively military in purpose, i.e. those fortifications with civilians living in intramural dwellings instead of cannabae)).

Wherever a military fortification type is uncertain (e.g. due to lack of secondary sources), I suggest to leave it in "Roman fortifications", awaiting for future categorization. What do you think?--Dipa1965 (talk) 13:29, 31 August 2016 (UTC)```

@Dipa1965:, Sorry for the late response, I will propose renaming as you have suggested. Iazyges (talk) 00:33, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Can I use maps from the COH on Wiki (specifically Stacey, C. P. (1956) [1955]. Six Year of War: The Army in Canada, Britain and the Pacific (PDF). Official History of the Canadian Army in the Second World War. I (2nd rev. online ed.). Ottawa: By Authority of the Minister of National Defence. OCLC 917731527)? I've been looking at Canadian copyright and am none the wiser. Thanks Keith-264 (talk) 13:00, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

From [5] "Crown copyright lasts from the date of publication of a work plus 50 years thereafter". Nthep (talk) 15:24, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
Ah, thanks, I saw that but thought the copyright inflation might have superseded it. I'll have a punt. Keith-264 (talk) 23:33, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CXXV, September 2016

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) 13:27, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Template:Highest Military Ranks

Somebody had been working on Template:Highest Military Ranks and to my opinion the result is not up to standard. Please look at the template and the discussion at Template talk:Highest Military Ranks#Introduced mistakes. The Banner talk 15:20, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Question about IB military award

There is a discussion regarding parameters in the "military award" infobox, which is in your purview. Please join in the discussion here. Thank you. Primefac (talk) 01:13, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

RfC about listing all the soldiers of E Company versus listing the notable soldiers

See Talk:E_Company,_506th_Infantry_Regiment_(United_States)#Names_of_all_soldiers. Binksternet (talk) 02:10, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

RM notification 11 November 2024

Greetings! I have recently relisted a requested move discussion at Talk:Vietnam Air Force#Requested move 3 September 2016, regarding a page relating to this WikiProject. Discussion and opinions are invited. Thanks, — Sam Sailor 00:00, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

No. 1 Radio School RAF

Hello,

Can I please have some help regarding No. 1 Radio School RAF User Gbinfi is adding loads of links to official RAF Recruitment pages for the trades involved and various courses from civilian establishments.

The user is clearly current military and only works on this article and is getting difficult to correct.

Gavbadger (talk) 19:24, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

http/https

There's a move to change http to https but I wonder if anyone else has noticed that some links don't work after the change? Keith-264 (talk) 14:59, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

There are a couple of bots that are doing that with links to google and to archive.org. In both of those cases, https is the preferred URI scheme. User:‎GreenC bot is making that change for archive.org and User:Bender the Bot is doing the change for Google. User:Cyberpower678 has one or more bots that attend to archive.org links so it may also be making http → https conversions but I'm not sure about that.
If the changes that you are seeing were made by any of these bots, you should be communicating with the bot operators about that. For other cases, again, communicate with the cognizant editor.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:25, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
There are approximately 1 million wayback links in the system and WaybackMedic is checking every one - downloading page headers to verify it works. I've never seen a case where https breaks a link. If there are examples I would like to see as maybe it's getting by the bot's detection. -- GreenC 15:36, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
I've been manually changing all sorts of links from HTTP→HTTPS, but whenever I do so I make sure it does not break the link (and my bot only does it for *.archive.org and *.google.com which definitely work either way). Do you have an example where that happened? --bender235 (talk) 17:49, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
Yes, I've been putting the s in too, when I remember. I did it to * {{cite book |ref={{harvid|DNC|1952}} |author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.--> |title=H. M. Ships Damaged or Sunk by Enemy Action, 1939–1945 |publisher=Admiralty: Director of Naval Construction |location=London |year=1952 |url=http://www.navy.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/Ships%20Damaged%20or%20Sunk%20by%20Enemy%20Action_opt_0.pdf |accessdate=12 September 2016 |others=No ISBN}} I'm not sure if it was the s, the site seems to dislike downloading to my laptop.Keith-264 (talk) 19:11, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
251st Tunnelling Company it's just happened again with the 2nd Division reference. Keith-264 (talk) 14:10, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Nguyen Chanh Thi, same nominator, long gone, eyes appreciated. - Dank (push to talk) 15:43, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Module:WPMILHIST Infobox style

Please see an ongoing discussion about a request to change the width of the infobox from 315px to 270px at Template talk:WPMILHIST Infobox style. — Andy W. (talk · ctb) 15:53, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Moving Communist Insurgency War

Howzit, all. Thought I'd ping this here for discussion or pointers: I've recently proposed moving Communist Insurgency War to Communist Insurgency War (Malaysia) as it is a much clearer and more concise title, given how many countries underwent communist insurgencies from the 1950s onwards. Personally, I've come across the term "communist insurgency" being used in the proper form for five different conflicts in South America and Africa and while there's no denying that the locals in each region refer to the communist insurgency when discussing their own history, this is somewhat problematic from an encyclopedic point of view.

Being Malaysian myself, having grown up there with many relatives who can remember the insurgency in question, I'm also quite comfortable with stating that the conflict has no broadly accepted title among most Malaysians (unlike say, the "Confrontation" period), and a menagerie of terms are used to describe both the first and second waves of guerrilla activity by the Malayan Communist Party by the Malaysian government, civil society, Bahasa-language media, English-language media, and the people from various ethnic groups. From that perspective, I cannot see how the argument can be made that "Communist Insurgency War" is the final, uncontested name for this particular era of hostilities in Malaysia.

As the article has held the name of Communist Insurgency War for quite a while, I'd appreciate any explanation or comments as to what the rationale was for keeping that title, either here or at Talk:Communist Insurgency War.

Thanks, --Katangais (talk) 04:47, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

I'm rather surprised to see that this article isn't called some variant of "Malayan Emergency", which I believe is the WP:COMMONNAME in English-speaking countries (it's the title used by the Imperial War Museum, British National Army Museum, Australian War Memorial and New Zealand government, for instance). This Straits Times story also suggests that the term is in use in Singapore. Nick-D (talk) 07:08, 11 September 2016 (UTC)
Ditto re: Nick-D. Malayan Emergency is surely the common name in English per WP:UCN. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 08:05, 11 September 2016 (UTC)
We already have an article at Malayan Emergency, which covers the period of hostilities between 1948 and 1960, when the Malayan Communist Party was fighting the British colonial administration and security forces; as far as I can tell Communist Insurgency War concerns all the clashes that happened after Malaysian independence.
The situation is basically two separate articles for what is loosely considered the same conflict. The only difference was the MCP went from fighting the British to fighting the Malaysian government, and the war likewise went from being perceived as an anti-colonial struggle to a primarily ethnic, national one. --Katangais (talk) 10:37, 11 September 2016 (UTC)
OK, that makes sense - my mistake. Nick-D (talk) 11:32, 11 September 2016 (UTC)
Why not Second Malayan Emergency, as alternatively noted in the article lead? --Paul_012 (talk) 21:09, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
Gbooks hits certainly seems to return more results concerning Malaysia with regards to "Second Malayan Emergency" than "Communist Insurgency War", so I'd support that too. Like I said, in Malaysia itself few people outside academia differentiate between the first and second emergencies to begin with, since it was basically the same conflict; ergo, if we're going to keep the distinction it's probably better if the two article titles are as similar as possible. --Katangais (talk) 21:59, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
Communist Insurgency War seems a bit of a loaded term, it's not as if they started it. Keith-264 (talk) 23:27, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Input on Full Evaluation of WP:Research Help Pilot

The Wikipedia Library has now posted a report on its spring pilot test of a Research Help portal. As the report outlines, our target audience of readers and new editors generally reacted more positively to the pilot than experienced editors, who raised important critiques for discussion. The report provides more details on the results and some proposed next steps for the project. Your input is welcome on the report talk page. Astinson (WMF) (talk) 14:34, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Discussion on the 1948 Arab–Israel war in WikiProject Israel

Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Israel#1948_war_articles--Bolter21 (talk to me) 17:58, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Battle of Changsha (1941) - casualty figures commentary

Hello, I would like input on whether additions like these, on the subject of casualty figures, improve the article or not. Thank you. MPS1992 (talk) 19:47, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Air Operations in the Korean War

Hello. I am creating an article about the link mention above. I was wondering if you guys could help me with this.

Thanks, Jak474 (talk) 16:15, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

Posting a draft of the article in your user space (eg, at something like User:Jak474\Air operations in the Korean War) would be a good way of enabling other editors to help. Alternately, if you have any specific queries people might be able to answer them if you post them here. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 08:46, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
Coalition Air Warfare in the Korean War 1950–1953 might be a useful source if you haven't seen it already. Alansplodge (talk) 23:02, 8 September 2016 (UTC)
Having largely written a suite of articles on Royal Australian Air Force units in the war, I can help out there, but I have no special knowledge of the contributions of US, British, South African, and other units. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 23:22, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Wow. I have not seen those titles, but I do have some that you might find helpful. One is the "Encyclopedia of 20th Century Air Warfare. I think you might enjoy it. Thanks again for the pdf.Jak474 (talk) 23:16, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Some other sources available online are:
Endicott, Judy G., ed. (2001). The USAF in Korea, Campaigns, Units and Stations 1950-1953 (PDF). Maxwell AFB, AL: Air Force Historical Research Agency. ISBN 0-16-050901-7.
Futrell, Robert F. (1983). The United States Air Forces in Korea 1950-1953. Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History. ISBN 0-912799-71-4. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4
* Marion, Forrest L. (2004). That Others May Live: USAF Air Rescue in Korea (PDF). Washington DC: Air Force History and Museums Program. ISBN 978-1477549926. Retrieved January 7, 2016. --Lineagegeek (talk) 22:16, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Military History

I've noticed that in the past few years, almost everything in this project has been done by a small handful of people. I'd like to try to join this small group and help out in this great project, but I really don't know what pages to create and edit and such. Adotchar (talk) 09:41, 16 September 2016 (UTC) - I'm working on the backlog now Adotchar (talk) 09:42, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Battle of France and terminological inexactitude

There has been a revival of the dispute over the contents of the infobox, partly procedural and partly about content, which I fear I started, under the impression that the dispute had died a death. While bearing in mind my conflict of interest, I would be grateful if editors would venture an opinion on the validity of the requirements of the Template:Infobox military conflict for the result and territory criteria and whether entries should be determined by a survey of RS, rather than the opinions of editors. Thanks Keith-264 (talk) 13:56, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Please, someone finally explain the scope of wikipedia articles to this guy. Thank you. KevinNinja (talk) 00:56, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
See what I mean?Keith-264 (talk) 11:43, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Civil Unrest and MilHist

I've been editing quite a bit on sub articles of Great Railroad Strike of 1877 (don't judge the parent article, it's last on the list). But I'm note entirely sure that these fall under the purview of MilHist. They almost all involve "policing" action by the "National Guard", in scare quotes because, at this point, it was basically a militia. Anyone opposed to adding these to the project? TimothyJosephWood 12:18, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

The use of military forces to suppress strikes (and to perform other police-like tasks) is widely considered an aspect of military history, so go for it. Nick-D (talk) 01:41, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
What about situations such as firemans strikes in the UK? The army regularly provided fire cover in those situations, the last instance being in 2002. Would they count? See Green Goddess for background and context. Simon. Irondome (talk) 01:48, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
I'd say so - this all forms part of Military aid to the civil power, which is a core (though generally unloved) part of what military forces are expected to do. Nick-D (talk) 01:53, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
Makes sense Nick. Cheers for the clarification. Si. Irondome (talk) 01:58, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Merger notice - Al-Baqi cemetery

I have tagged Demolition of al-Baqi, which is in the interest of this WikiProject, for merger into Al-Baqi'. The discussion takes place at Talk:Al-Baqi'#Merger of Demolition. --HyperGaruda (talk) 07:29, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Input requested on Draft page

Hello, there is a draft which I feel could use input from this project, particularly from anyone who has helped out with the AFC process. The discussion can be found here. Thanks! Primefac (talk) 15:37, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Template:KoreanWarCorr question

Template:KoreanWarCorr I tried allow wrap to get the heading centred but if wouldn't work. Would someone mind taking a look to see why? Thanks Keith-264 (talk) 12:58, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

G'day, Keith, <center></center> should probably do the trick. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 22:02, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
Sadly not, unless it's my laptop, what does it look like to other people? Regards Keith-264 (talk) 23:22, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
I tried widening the template and that seems okay on my screen. Does that resolve the issue on your computer? Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 23:45, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
Sort of, it's widescreen now. Keith-264 (talk) 23:57, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Confederate States Army

For editors interested in adding additional photos to Confederate States Army articles, I came across an excellent collection of army leaders here. Magnolia677 (talk) 01:12, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

Chinese Army

There is a currently a discussion about the Chinese Army and Chinese army redirects at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2016 September 18#Chinese Army, your comments there would be very welcome. Thryduulf (talk) 01:55, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

I Have Returned...and need some help!

I have returned from the badlands of RL, and hope to wade back in Wiki, and I'm looking for some basic guidance on writing an article, since my wiki-fu is less rusty and more oxidised, and I can't remember a darn thing. Can someone let me know the best way to add citations these days, and also the best template for adding a bibliography? *Shakes cane* Skinny87 (talk) 19:31, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Experts use some WP:SFN thing that I do not understand. Personally I use the WP:Visual Editor -- this is sometimes reached by clicking "Edit" instead of "Edit Source" -- and just click the "Cite" button and then choose a source type and then fill in such fields as I have or like. But I now never use its "Auto-generate" function for websites, because it produces what I consider to be an unuseful mess. Lots of older citation styles are probably all good too. I am not an expert on creating new articles. MPS1992 (talk) 19:43, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
@Skinny87: {{Sfn}} is the best to use assuming books are your major sources. I used it heavily on National archives. With the preponderance of mixed sourcing I just pile up citations by using the various cite templates without compiling a bibliography. Welcome back to editing! Chris Troutman (talk) 19:59, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
Welcome back, Skinny87! I agree that {{sfn}} is best, even for non-books, where you can use {{harvid}} in the ref field of any cite template. If you want to see how to do it, take a look at the Websites subsection of the References section of Pavle Đurišić. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 01:00, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

Loss of USAF images

An editor, User:Jcb (an admin on Commons), is in the process of deleting many images (apparently they are mostly images of US military insignia of various kinds, but heavily USAF unit emblems). The reason given is that they are not sourced, even though many have sources. There is a discussion (including some acrimony) at Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/User problems (User:Jcb unproductively tagging up official United States military emblem image files). Some of these images have already been deleted. In recent days, Jcb has been using the {{No source since|month=|day=|year=}} template to mark pages (e.g. File:301bw.jpg. This emblem is sourced, although the source is contained in the description, not in the expected template location, because the image was moved to Commons from en:Wikipedia by a bot. Posting this template does not include the image on the list of images for deletion and, because the bot that moved the image is listed as the user who uploaded the image to Commons, not the human being who actually made the original upload, only the bot is being notified of the pending deletions. --Lineagegeek (talk) 18:20, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

@WP:MILHIST coordinators: - does anyone know what the appropriate channels are for this type of thing on Commons? Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 23:30, 18 September 2016 (UTC)
No idea. As a practical matter, it should be a null and void point since US law explicitly states that US works are PD-USGov, so this is at best a misguided attempt to draw attention to an issues that someone could easily fix, and at worse a deliberate attempt to disrupt the wiki to prove a point and/or force other to take defensive action to keep public domain images on a public domain image repository. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:45, 18 September 2016 (UTC)
G'day, regarding the deleted files, you can appeal the decision here: Undeletion requests. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 09:15, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

Frogman article

Would the article Frogman come within the scope of this project? • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 06:33, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

G'day, yes, I believe it does. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 09:17, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
Pbsouthwood IMO I believe it would, as the frogman is "someone who is trained in scuba diving or swimming underwater in a tactical capacity that includes combat." Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 11:47, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
OK, I will tag it for the Military history project in the hope that some of your members will help with references, content and suggestions for improvement. I am fairly knowledgeable in the technology of diving equipment and will do what I can to help get the article into shape, but have very little background in military matters, so I am a bit out of my depth on that aspect. Cheers, • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 16:41, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

The Air Force Historical Research Agency web site has been "upgraded" in the past week or so. The upgrade has involved moving all the Unit lineage and honors pages, so all references to these in Wikipedia articles that weren't done in the last week now lead to 404 error pages. Worse, (although this may be temporary) the links inside the web site for wing, group and squadron pages are also broken. A 404 error results from clicking on the "squadrons" tab, for instance, then clicking on a specific unit. Links for Major Commands work, although some images had problems using Chrome. Numbered Research Paper links also work. Using the search function on the site requires proper capitalization and not using the ordinal abbreviations to bring up the revised pages. Alternatively, the Wayback Machine seems to have the old pages archived (unlike the last time the site was revised). This affects thousands of reference links on en:Wikipedia —— anyone know of a bot to help fix this? --Lineagegeek (talk) 17:55, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

It's always annoying when sites reorganise without redirects. I don't know of a bot to work around this but it'd sure be useful... Hawkeye, do you think such a thing is feasible? Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 00:24, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
Yes, that can be done. There is a Bot already that goes around adding Wayback machine links though. Hawkeye7 (talk) 17:27, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
At least the loss of links in the site appears to be temporary. Internal links are being restored and some of the dead links have been deleted as links since my last visit. Doesn't help the dead link problem, though. --Lineagegeek (talk) 20:18, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
i was wondering about that because the USAF has done this to me before, and eventually restored the links. I even got a polite apology from the under secretary. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:32, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

NATO OF rank codes

Someone has thrown the NATO comparative officer ranks tables (Ranks and insignia of NATO armies officers and Ranks and insignia of NATO navies officers, though not — as yet — Ranks and insignia of NATO air forces officers) and about half the templates used in them into disarray by adding an OF-11 code, apparently in the mistaken belief that one exists and that OF codes should align with US O pay grades (which they do not). All of this “to maintain consistency throughout Wikipedia” though in an inconsistent way, so that those tables are now hopelessly out of alignment! And no doubt this meddling will have deleterious consequences in other contexts where these templates are used. Could someone (preferably a few someones) have a look at what has been done and undo the damage and/or stop this individual from wreaking further havoc? I’m not a regular enough contributor nor well enough into the sources on this to weigh in. — Mithrennaith (talk) 02:09, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

I looked but couldn't find any reference to an OF11 so undid what they had done. GraemeLeggett (talk) 06:04, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
Thanks very much! On Ranks and insignia of NATO navies officers someone else done the reversion and added a lot of extra tinkering with the Officer Designate and Student officer ranks, which was no improvement so I’ve put everything back to how it was before the addition of the OF11. Mithrennaith (talk) 01:32, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
In addition to this; why are the Air Force ranks not capitalised (indeed why are the UK armed forces a mix of caps and non-caps)? EG - the air force rank of Flight Sergeant is as written by the Royal Air Force in all types of media and communication. The abbreviation in written form is FSgt (same as CSgt for Colour Sergeant and SSgt for Staff Sergeant in the Army and Royal Marines). The office Cadre get to have their ranks written with caps (EG - Squadron Leader and not Squadron leader).
Is this deliberate, an oversight or is there some weird Wiki-rule of which I am unaware?BTW, I didn't mess the templates up and I will not do anything without consensus. However the rank titles are proper nouns. Regards.The joy of all things (talk) 05:50, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
Well, there is quite a bit of inconsistent capitalization (and inconsistent font styling, etc.) going on across the fairly large amount of comparative military rank pages. I’m not going to start a comprehensive review of that, but if you want to, be bold. As to the UK other ranks capitalization, that was changed here and is stated there to be based on WP:MILTERMS. If I read that correctly, it should also be “Squadron leader”. I agree that does not seem to accord with (UK) military usage, but I do not particularly want to spend my time having a long discussion about the soundness or otherwise of MOS policy on this point. That’s beyond my personal level of involvement, I’m afraid. — Mithrennaith (talk) 08:04, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
That's fair enough - and a good point. It does go against military convention - but you are right; I wouldn't want to start up against WP:MOS either, no matter how wrong it is (someone will always tell me that I am wrong about it anyway). Thanks for the quick answer. Regards. The joy of all things (talk) 12:37, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Master Category class?

I was wondering if a "Master category" should be created, meaning that their should be no articles in the category, it only contains subcategories? Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 02:20, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Wrong term. These are called "container categories". Simply add: Template:Container category to change the purpose of a category. Dimadick (talk) 14:15, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Trigger finger

I just noticed Trigger finger (medical condition); would the medical use be the primary topic, or the firearms use? (we don't seem to have something listed for firearms at triggerfinger (disambiguation) ) -- 65.94.171.217 (talk) 08:39, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

The firearms definition is certainly the primary topic, even if we don't have an article on it. I think Triggerfinger (disambiguation) should be moved to Trigger finger, the firearms definition added as the primary term, and the medical condition moved to something else. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:16, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

AIM-97 Seekbat - Article overhaul

This is an unreferenced article created in 2005. It makes a number of assertations about the program without providing supporting citations. Neither the editor who created the article nor the two editors who added speculative accounts of why the progran was discontinued are active Wikipedia editors any more.

In fact the one who added the statements that the tests failed due to the characteristics of the drones used in testing has only made two edits, one in 2008 and the other in 2010.

I am attempting to search up viable references, but am not sure where to start. Google searching is bringing up a lot of Wikipedia mirrors based on the article as it stands.

Anyone willing to join me in offline book searching?

Graham1973 (talk) 01:18, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

I've made a preliminary step in editing this article. I've removed the most contentious statement to the articles talk page until a proper source can be found for it. I've also used Andreas Parsch's webpage as a source for some statements. The article has now been moved from Unreferenced to Single Source, but a lot more needs to be done.
Some good references are needed to cover testing if they can be found. Janes Weapons Systems and similar publications in the period 1972 - 1977 sound like a good place to start. Graham1973 (talk) 03:30, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
Continuing with the overhaul of this article. Running out of material to add. Can someone please assist me with the research? Graham1973 (talk) 10:29, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Air Operations in the Korean War

I was looking at the News and Open Tasks page and noticed the Air Operations in the Korean War page highlighted in red. I was told that asking for help here would get me some help and guidance on the article. Thanks, Jak474 (talk) 20:16, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Can you be specific about the help and guidance you're looking for? Is there a draft article other editors can comment on or contribute to? Regards, Nick-D (talk) 04:17, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

Good article review for Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II

G'day all, the Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II article is currently listed for a community Good Article Review to determine if it still meets the GA criteria. The review page can be found here: Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II/1. A few more opinions are needed to determine consensus. If anyone is keen to participate, I'm sure it would be greatly appreciated. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 00:06, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Branch and service articles

So there is an editor who has tried to change around the subject matter on the military branch article and has created a completly new article called Branch of service‎ which seems to be about almost the same thing. I completly belive this is in good faith but I'm not sure the editor has the right way to go about it. They seems to only include information which is in line with what the NATO defenition is. Opinion on what to do with these articles?*Treker (talk) 15:04, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Sounds like WP:CFORK. Guideline says "If the content fork was unjustified, the more recent article should be merged back into the main article". Looking at it, dump the new article into the existing one but attribute the definition to NATO. GraemeLeggett (talk) 13:11, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
The terms for these two concepts vary drastically from country to country, with some using the same term for both concepts, and in other cases even being inconsist with their own usage (ie switching Branch/Division/Arm for Corps/Arm on some of them).
ie in the US (as its the one I'm most familiar with), the United States Armed Forces has 5 branches including the Army & Marine Corps, but the Army has several Branch's within it (ie Infantry), not quite half of which are called "Corps" (ie the Corps of Engineers as Administrative or Functional Corps), but the Marine Corps is not a Branch of the Navy (though it is under the Department of the Navy). Meanwhile none have any connection to a Corps (ie consisting of 2 or more divisions). It then gets even more confusing when you consider things like the Salvation Army corps which uses both "Army" & "corps" in the name.
Most of us here understand what is meant based on the usage, but It can all be very confusing to a lay reader and if we could develop a good clear definition I belive it would be of great help to a non-expert. However, I'm at a loss as to how to succinctly differentiate the two. Gecko G (talk) 21:47, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Battle of France discussion, additional opinions needed I believe

Hi all,

The war rages on, or at least on the Battle of France talkpage. From my take on what has happened so far: two editors have actually engaged with what sources actually say in an attempt to improve the article, while three others are essentially trolling the page stating sources don't matter. There is a lot of incivility, and the appearance that regardless of what sources say an edit war will resume. I think we need some experienced editors, or admin, to create a bit of a DMZ and help filter the good work from the spam, and funnel that material into a good conclusion.EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 00:28, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

One solution is a new article on the Historiography of the Battle of France. There already is enough material on the Battle of France talk page cover the topic, and much more can be added. Basically, we have complex long-standing debates among scholars that comprise the topic all its own. Rjensen (talk) 00:53, 26 September 2016 (UTC)
Excellent suggestion. History is viewed differently by different historians through different periods afterwards. Not all the secondary material can be true simultaneously, sometimes. In the meantime I've asked the participants to calm down as it has gotten a little testy. Chris Troutman (talk) 01:08, 26 September 2016 (UTC)
I've started the historiography article -- it's mostly copied from "Battle of France" and its talk page with some new citations. suggestions are welcome! Rjensen (talk) 06:31, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for devising a constructive alternative to writing in the talk page. I've put my views there again and asked the watchers to venture opinions on the result criterion in the infobox, although in my view the case for German victory and the removal of bullet points is unarguable. Regards Keith-264 (talk) 08:00, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Campaignbox Thirty Years' War

The Template:Campaignbox Thirty Years' War is currently a chaotic amalgamation of various battles. Instead I propose breaking it into separate campaigns such as:

Any input would be welcome.--Catlemur (talk) 11:07, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

It looks like a good start. Is it one of your fields? Keith-264 (talk) 11:26, 24 September 2016 (UTC)
Not really. I am in the middle of reading "The Thirty Years War" by Peter H. Wilson, which gives a pretty good general overview of the war without being too detailed. I will also try to add some battles that have no separate articles for them. I forgot to take into account the following conflicts: Polish–Swedish War (1626–29), Peasants' War in Upper Austria, Bündner Wirren, Polish–Ottoman War (1620–21),Torstenson War. Which make the task all the more complex.--Catlemur (talk) 12:04, 24 September 2016 (UTC)
It's been on my shelves for a few years now. Keith-264 (talk) 13:58, 24 September 2016 (UTC)
How will it look if you * the campaigns and ** the battles? Keith-264 (talk) 08:02, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Project coordinator election ending soon!

Hi everyone! As a friendly reminder, voting in our annual project coordinator election is scheduled to conclude at 23:59 (UTC) on 29 September. Anyone who hasn't voted yet is encouraged to do so on the election page. Kirill Lokshin (talk) 15:49, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

India's alleged support to Baloch rebels

There is an ongoing discussion about alleged Indian support to Baloch rebels and the verifability and notability of such claim at Talk:Insurgency in Balochistan/Archive 2#India.GreyShark (dibra) 16:15, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Good Article Review for Cecil E. Harris

Hey all. I put Cecil E. Harris up for GA review recently but only now finished a complete overhaul of the references/citations. It now conforms to a much higher standard. If anybody wants to begin the review process I'd greatly appreciate it; or if you have some suggestions for improvements feel free to chime in accordingly. Best Regards, Finktron (talk) 15:11, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

I have gone through and added numerous xrefs. I believe the whole Cecil E. Harris#VF-18 in detail section needs to be rewritten as it has too much jargon and POV (e.g. what does SNASP mean?). I also question if the level of detail of every kill is really necessary. regards Mztourist (talk) 04:34, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-09-29/Technology report

A pointer to a discussion about failed pings. You can now check a couple of boxes in your preferences to get notified when pings do or don't work. - Dank (push to talk) 14:35, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

GAR: Joachim Helbig

The article Joachim Helbig, which is within the scope of this project, has been nominated for community GA reassessment as per WP:GAR.

The discussion will take place at GAR:Joachim Helbig, with the goal to reach a consensus whether the article satisfies the good article criteria. Any input would be welcome. K.e.coffman (talk) 01:09, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

More about Air Force Historical Research Agency revamp of web site

Some good news and bad news:

  1. Their IT guys are in the process of linking unit articles
  2. A Wiki bot has been busy restoring links when it can

But,

  1. The bot seems to have a problem with searches of the Air Force Personnel Center lists of unit awards, marking them as permanently dead, when the database is still searchable (Possibly because one has to agree to terms of use before searching?)
  2. The IT guys are restoring links to old, outdated pages. For example, The current link for the 47th Fighter Squadron takes you to 47 Fighter Squadron (AFRC), which was written on 18 December 2007. However, the dead link 47 Fighter Squadron (AFRC) was written on 2 February 2015. (it's available on the Wayback Machine at 47 Fighter Squadron (AFRC) Archive). --Lineagegeek (talk) 15:11, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Please help review a draft at AFC

Draft:Supply Support Activity is a modern American "thing" related to military logistics. Is the draft acceptable in its current state? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 09:45, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

G'day, many "warfighters" (combat corps personnel) say "logistics just happens"...and while this ignores the (obvious) importance of expertise and operational art in the area, I think it highlights something fundamental, i.e. that the topic is largely considered a "dark art" and that most people probably do not wish to educate themselves about it. This is potentially out of ignorance, but in itself it is probably illustrative of the fact that potentially the topic isn't actually notable to people outside the area. With regards to this article, it seems... well, somewhat esoteric and largely impenetrable to the lay person. To me, it is simply referring to the way in which items are ordered, tracked, delivered, stored and disposed of in support of a military event or organisation. In short, it is really just supply chain management in "cams/ACUs" or in a military setting (and a narrow subset of that setting at that i.e just the US military). All other militaries no doubt use similar but slightly different terms of art. Individually I would argue that they are not notable, but together they would be. Hence, a parent article seems fair enough (such as those that already exist on military logistics and combat service support etc), but one that focuses on a narrow subset (like this current article), does not seem likely to meet the notability guidelines. Anyway, that is just my opinion and of course others may feel differently. Apologies if it sounds overly disparaging. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 11:34, 28 September 2016 (UTC)
Upmerge to a section on modern American logistics in military logistics. 41.191.107.147 (talk) 11:11, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Naming convention for Italian Ships

I have noticed that Italian naval ships tend to have their articles called Italian aircraft carrier Giuseppe Garibaldi or Italian destroyer Andrea Doria. Is there a reason that they are named as such and not ITS Andrea Doria (D553) as it might be done for other navies? Thanks in advance Gbawden (talk) 10:21, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

See Italy at Ship prefix#National or military prefixes. See also Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships)#Ships from navies without ship prefixes.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:31, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
Thanks Gbawden (talk) 10:53, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Locator map question

Attack on Convoy AN 14 I added the locator map to the infobox then got ambitious and tried to move the label from left to right of the red dot. I managed it but does anyone know why I added another and how I get rid please? RegardsKeith-264 (talk) 11:20, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

There are a couple of coordinates in the infobox; you're getting dots for both. Which is the location of the attack? --Tagishsimon (talk) 11:47, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
The Kaso Strait. Keith-264 (talk) 11:50, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
It's always a great pleasure dealing with you, Keith. Which of the two dots on the map is the Kaso Strait? --Tagishsimon (talk) 11:57, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Fnar! The one on the right. Regards Keith-264 (talk) 12:31, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Sadly, I too have failed. It doesn't look as though location map~ plays nicely with the infobox; and the infobox lacks a parameter to switch the position of the label. Right now, we should probably revent back to the version in which the label is to the left, and perhaps take up the missing parameter and the squabbling to Module talk:Infobox military conflict, which I'll do in my next edit. --Tagishsimon (talk) 12:04, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for trying, I've given up and restored the original form. Regards Keith-264 (talk) 17:21, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

United States Marine Corps Women's Reserve

[copied from my talk page]

Hi Dank: I m interested in trying to upgrade an article titled United States Marine Corps Women’s Reserve, but I hesitate to go forward because the title does not square well with the contents. The article actually describes two distinct subjects, women who served in the women’s active reserve in WW II (by an act of Congress) and women who served in World War I (by edict of the Secretary of the Navy in 1917). The women’s reserve was not authorized by Congress until1942; no such reserve seems to have existed prior to this.

Question: should both periods be woven into one story, or should the story be about the US Marine Corps Women’s Reserve to the exclusion of the women who served in WW I. I appreciate any help you can provide. Thanks! Pendright (talk) 00:57, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Ideally, they should be forked as they are separate subjects, although I don't know how well the materials that you have to hand would support that. But even a stub on the WWI service would be useful as a base for further expansion.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:12, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
Agreed, the page doesn't look too bad, but splitting it may help. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 02:20, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
Splitting it would seem to be the most appropriate considering they are separate subjects.*Treker (talk) 05:33, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
How about calling it "Women in the United States Marine Corps Reserve", or something like that. Semper Fi! FieldMarine (talk) 01:46, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Fighter Squadron Lineage URL is toast

The primary reference in all the various stub articles concerning US Navy air squadrons was changed by Naval History and Heritage at some point recently, so now almost the sole citation in all these articles is 404'd. Is there a bot that can somehow enter the new URL or is this going to have to be fixed manually? Because looking at the List of squadrons in the Dictionary of American Naval Aviation Squadrons, that's going to be quite the clean-up. The new URL is https://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/naval-aviation-history/insignias/naval-aviation-squadron-lineage/fighter-squadron-lineage.html Thanks, Finktron (talk) 11:57, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Why do they do this? Some new squeaker ensign with a need to show his chain of command that his division is doing something? Yeah that's a rhetorical question.
At the prompting of another editor, I once created {{cite DANAS}} that could link to the various sections of the various DANAS chapters. That editor never used the template so there it sits abandoned. We could resurrect that template to at the least link to the silly new html page names at NHHS or change it to link directly to the pdf version of the DANAS chapter. Instead of linking to:
https://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/naval-aviation-history/dictionary-of-american-naval-aviation-squadrons-volume-1/chapter-2-attack-squadron-histories-for-va-1e-to-va-23.html
link to:
https://www.history.navy.mil/content/dam/nhhc/research/histories/naval-aviation/dictionary-of-american-naval-aviation-squadrons-volume-1/pdfs/va-1-23.pdf
If {{cite DANAS}} is reworked and instances of direct urls are replaced with a call to the template (presumably AWB will suffice for that), NEXT TIME, a squeaker ensign needs to show that his division is doing something, it will be less painful for us to recover from his follies.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:16, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
Whatever they did to DANAS broke all the links I see in the test page for your cite template. If the current .pdf versions were subbed for the previously existing links and the template was made to work, I'd be willing to put in time fixing up the existing squadron articles and otherwise fixing the various ace pages this has impacted. I'm not savvy enough to do the template work myself, though, so I can really only do this if you or another editor can make the cite template for DANAS work. Thanks for your reply! Finktron (talk) 00:42, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
I didn't know about the {{cite DANAS}} template before I created all of the VP and VPB pages. Unfortunately changing that template won't do anything to help with the fighter squadron lineage as that's a separate document not contained in DANAS. regards Mztourist (talk) 03:21, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
I (and User:Kges1901) have gone through all the VF squadrons and manually changed the link. regards Mztourist (talk) 04:56, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

{{cite DANAS}} is working again. There is a gotcha: our squeaker ensign felt it necessary to be inconsistent in his use of chapter-section capitalization. If referencing the chapter 1 or chapter 4 sections of volume 1, be sure that these are not capitalized in |section=; chapters 3, 5, and 6 are to be capitalized.

It might be beneficial to create a template for the lineage document so that we only have to fix one thing when the next squeaker ensign decides that changes to NHHC urls are a good thing for her division to do. There are about 65 pages linking to the lineage document.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:11, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

{{cite vf lineage}}
—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:40, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
Thanks so much for all of this. I work a lot the next two days but I'll do what I can to start standardizing the naval aviation pages referencing these sources using the cite templates you've created. I tested cite vf lineage in my user sandbox and it looks like it works fine. I'll do the same for cite DANAS before I implement any changes, but I have a feeling it'll display alright. Cheers, Finktron (talk) 11:14, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Invite to the African Destubathon

Hi. Members here may be interested in participating in the African Destubathon which starts on October 15. Africa currently has over 37,000 stubs and badly needs a quality improvement editathon/contest to flesh out basic stubs. There are proposed substantial prizes to give to editors who do the most geography, wildlife and women articles, and planned smaller prizes for doing to most destubs for each of the 53 African countries, so potentially work done in any field would be recognized. Even if contests aren't your thing we would be grateful if you could consider destubbing a few African military history articles during the drive to help the cause and help reduce the massive 37,000 + stub count, of which many are rated high importance. If you're interested in competing or just loosely contributing a few expanded articles and might feel like a change working on some African historical battles and figures, please add your name to the Contestants/participants section. Diversity of work from a lot of people will make this that bit more special. Thanks.♦ Dr. Blofeld 14:14, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

It's not important; I'll still try but I'm just going to ask: What are some of the prizes? All I could think of are barnstars. UNSC Luke 1021 (talk) 14:42, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
The linked page mentions that a request has been put in to fund cash prizes ranging from twenty dollars (of which there would be many recipients) to two hundred dollars (of which there would be few recipients). MPS1992 (talk) 18:26, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
Interested editors might be able to find inspiration for articles to destub here: [6]. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 12:12, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

TfD: Pilot/Observer Badge with Diamonds

Template:Combined Pilots-Observation Badge with Diamonds has been nominated for deletion. The discussion is at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. K.e.coffman (talk) 07:25, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

Battle of Raseiniai

I was thinking about beefing up the Battle of Raseiniai article by making a massive increase in information about the 'lone wolf' KV-2. I was thinking I could add a new subsection, and write two or three paragraphs instead of the two sentences that currently apply to the skirmish. I think that the topic deserves more than a few sentences, given how badass it was. I just wanted to know if it would be ok, or would it be unnecessary? I don't really like to make big changes to articles without some sort of approval, because without an approval it runs a higher risk of being removed or reverted. UNSC Luke 1021 (talk) 14:00, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Gday, I have no knowledge of this topic so couldn't state definitively if this would be appropriate and as such will have to defer to someone else for their opinion on this. That said we generally try not to focus articles about battles on the actions of a single individual or unit, but instead try to provide a broad summary of the topic from all angles to avoid providing undue weight to just one aspect. Anotherclown (talk) 22:29, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
I do agree with that statement. I just think that the battle was really badass and it deserves more recognition than just one or two sentences. UNSC Luke 1021 (talk) 11:47, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
Go for it, if you want me to check in on it and give advice, just say the word. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 22:43, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
Thanks! I have at least one source, but that probably won't be enough for 2-3 paragraphs so i'll try to find at least one other. UNSC Luke 1021 (talk) 11:47, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
Reach out to Kges1901 and Wreck Smurfy who are our gurus in this area, should you wish. Please always be WP:BOLD - we've got a pretty good level headed group of editors working the Eastern Front, so reverts of usefully expanded sections are unlikely. Thanks for your idea!! Buckshot06 (talk) 12:44, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Does anyone mind checking out the section I wrote on the Battle of Raseiniai? I added a new section (The 'Lone Wolf' KV-2) and wrote about 4.5 paragraphs. You can't really miss it. UNSC Luke 1021 (talk) 13:35, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

I'll just direct mention the people recommended. Kges1901 Wreck Smurfy UNSC Luke 1021 (talk) 13:37, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
The section on the KV-2 needs reliable sources. Kges1901 (talk) 13:48, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
I'll try to find some more. Anything else need fixing? UNSC Luke 1021 (talk) 13:49, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
Kges1901 I have a fourth source for the subsection that I wrote, but I can't apply it until around 4:00PM EDT because of the website restrictions that my school puts on the wifi UNSC Luke 1021 (talk) 14:32, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
If anyone wants to just add the 4th source in at the end of the "'Lone Wolf' KV-2" section along with the others, just put it in. Please reply with 'got it' so that way it isn't put in multiple times by different people. (Here is it -----> http://worldoftanks.ru/community/history/battles/rasejnyaj_battle <-----) It's from a gaming website so it might not be reliable, but there are already two reliable sources so one more somewhat unreliable source won't make a difference. UNSC Luke 1021 (talk) 19:47, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
That isn't how sourcing is done here. If a source is not reliable, then it should not be used. The WoT article was duplicated by tankarchive, one of the refs already there. The second ref, to War History Online, appears more reliable, but I could not find more information about the author, Colin Fraser. Ref #3 from WW2Live is actually from RBTH here. RBTH is financed by RG which is Russian official, so there may be potential bias issues. Kges1901 (talk) 20:34, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
The fourth source isn't really necessary, so it doesn't really matter. We already have three, two of which are reliable. UNSC Luke 1021 (talk) 21:06, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

I did a quick ce then put the dupe wikilink detector on. Does everyone here know that wikilinks are only used on the first mention of a linkable item? I didn't when I started either. Regards Keith-264 (talk) 19:37, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Wreck Smurfy here. As an Advanced Squad Leader player I'm familiar with this action. I have a copy of a very detailed scenario published around 1990 by one of the more respected authors in the community for historical accuracy. If this would be considered a published source (as I believe it should) I could work from this directly. Otherwise I could reach out to the author and ask for his source materials. I have read one other reasonably detailed account and several other works which mention the action more or less in passing, but can't remember exactly where just offhand.Wreck Smurfy (talk) 01:03, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
Pardon my refactoring Wreck Smurfy. Thought this might get lost. Can you upload the detailed scenario to WikiSource, or, at the very least, generate a sort of 'citation'? Buckshot06 (talk) 08:27, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

The Bugle: Issue CXXVI, October 2016

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) 14:18, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

Malta Convoys

Tidied and added citations and sources; perhaps interested readers would like to cast an eye with suggestions for improvements? Regards Keith-264 (talk) 19:14, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

PS, why does the campaignbox open automatically? Regards Keith-264 (talk) 19:16, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

ENS as Egyptian Navy ship name prefix

There is a discussion at Talk:Egyptian ship Gamal Abdel Nasser#Requested move 7 October 2016 regarding the validity of using ENS as the prefix in Egyptian Navy ship article titles. Comments there are welcome. - BilCat (talk) 21:08, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

Malta Convoys #2

I've attempted a chart for MW 10 which is sort of OK but would be grateful for some scrutiny and suggestions. Regards Keith-264 (talk) 10:46, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Template for Deletion: Knight's Cross recipients in the Bundeswehr

FYI, Template:Knight's Cross recipients in the Bundeswehr and Bundesgrenzschutz has been nominated for deletion. The related discussion is here: Entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. K.e.coffman (talk) 03:36, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

Malta Convoys #3

Article #1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malta_Convoys

Article #2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pedestal

Are these two articles related? I was looking up research to improve the article and after the main article (Malta Convoys), this was the second result. I just wanted clarification. UNSC Luke 1021 (talk) 11:51, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

Yes. One is the overall topic, while Operation Pedestal is one convoy. Llammakey (talk) 11:54, 11 October 2016 (UTC)
I had a go at Convoys the other day as it was in the mood and had some new books to use for citations but I'd like a discussion with interested parties about basics, like is it worth routinely naming ships when there's usually an article with all the details. Keith-264 (talk) 12:12, 11 October 2016 (UTC)
I don't think it's necessary in the Malta Convoys article if there is a separate article unless something happened of significance (sinking, capture, etc.) There should be numbers, like X escorts, X cargo vessels, just to give an overview of the battle. Llammakey (talk) 12:18, 11 October 2016 (UTC)
Thanks, I agree; I saw the things to do and tried a chart which looks quite nice I think. Regards Keith-264 (talk) 13:12, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

Help needed with A-10 GAR

The Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II article has been a Good Article since 2010 and is undergoing a Good article reassessment now mainly due to a lot of added text earlier this year. There several review comments at WP:Good article reassessment/Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II/1 that need to be addressed. I've started on them, but it looks like too much there for me. Thanks for any help. -Fnlayson (talk) 15:14, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

Clearing the Channel Coast

The article shows a B class rating but the talk page has a start rating, missing B1 and B2....Keith-264 (talk) 00:02, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

The trick is that it said "Class=B". So our template displayed it as a Start, but the article was rated B. I have re-rated it Start. Hawkeye7 (talk) 00:28, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
Ha! I didn't even notice.... Regards Keith-264 (talk) 00:47, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

34th Infantry Division

Some administrator needs to revert this move: [7]. US army division do not have a name. They are numbered. Adding a nickname to a division's article lemma is factually wrong. noclador (talk) 21:48, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

I've moved it back. I'm a Page Mover, not an admin, but it looked like any autoconfirmed user could have moved it. - BilCat (talk) 22:13, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

Franz Halder war diary

Original headline: "Possibly the greatest source about the Eastern Front ever??"

Website in mention: http://militera.lib.ru/db/0/pdf/halder_eng6.pdf

So I found this while researching the Battle of Raseiniai for sources (we still need help, by the way) and I found this. A personal account of the Russian Invasion in WWII by a high ranking Nazi official himself. Could this be one of the most useful sources pertaining to the Eastern Front of WWII ever? It is a long book so it may take a minute to load. Download the PDF to read. Thanks! UNSC Luke 1021 (talk) 23:31, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

"Could this be one of the most useful sources pertaining to the Eastern Front of WWII ever?" No. How can one person's personal account of his role in that war be the most useful source on the war? How can that person have any insight into the myriad things going on that he was not aware of nor associated with. I'm sure it'll be an interesting read but really: enough with the hyperbole. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:43, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
It's a joke. I'm pretending to be like a clickbaity website. 'Could the secret Nazi war diary being uncovered rock the world of the Eastern Front forever? What you read will shock you!' But it might actually be useful. Not the 'greatest source in history', but somewhat useful. I don't know, so I posted it here to see what everyone thought. UNSC Luke 1021 (talk) 12:37, 13 October 2016 (UTC)
When it comes to MILHIST topics, primary sources are rarely useful for anything except direct quotes. They're inherently biased by nature, and in the military context they're almost always less useful than more general works given that individual officers are understandably only concerned with their own part in a campaign. If secondary sources exist, they should always take precedence; if secondary sources don't exist, the topic almost certainly shouldn't be on Wikipedia in the first place. ‑ Iridescent 15:58, 13 October 2016 (UTC)
Note: I edited the post's headline to make it more descriptive. K.e.coffman (talk) 23:56, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
He was there but it's not always easy to separate fact from fiction, he had no insight into the Red Army's operations and limited knowledge of the economics determining Hitler's decisions so I'd call it helpful in certain respects, mainly to illustrate points in later work like DRZW, Glantz, Stahel et al. Regards Keith-264 (talk) 08:11, 13 October 2016 (UTC)
There's a fairly large literature on the limitations, frequent unreliability and typically self-serving nature of the autobiographies and personal papers of Nazi generals (ditto the works of Soviet generals). More generally, this is a long-standing primary source which has been used by historians, so there's unlikely to be any need to directly draw on it when writing articles. There's some discussion of this at Franz Halder#Publications. I'd note that there's a vast number of similar records, including the papers written by German officers for the US Army in the years after the war. Nick-D (talk) 07:42, 14 October 2016 (UTC)
Agree with Nick. Primary source too close to the subject. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 07:45, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

Discussion at RfD about Combat Service Support.

Good morning. I'd like to let you know, at Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2016_October_15#Combat_Service_Support we're having a discusssion about what this might mean, if it means anything. We haven't combat support unit, for example. I am sure people at MILHIST would be able to contribute something to what we do with this one. Please excuse me if I have not followed dor pinging MILHIST, but I wanted to let you know of this discussion, I am not sure if there is a more regimented whay I should do it, but thanks in advance (or perhaps retreat!) Si Trew (talk) (Not "The" Simon Trew, the military historian, just another Simon Trew). 07:41, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

Cloud cover query

Is there a conversion for 8/10ths cloud or is it still in use? I've looked in Template:Convert et al. but no luck. Regards Keith-264 (talk) 12:05, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

Cloud cover has been measured in oktas since the late 1940s, but tenths are still used too. There's an imprecise conversion table in this book but since cloud cover would have been measured by eye in WWII, precise conversion may not be meaningful, and perhaps not necessary? — Stanning (talk) 13:59, 16 October 2016 (UTC)
Thanks, I assumed there'd be a decimal or %age measure. Tenths it is. Regards Keith-264 (talk) 16:59, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

Unsourced US military images tagged for deletion

G'day all, I have just been wading through Category:All Wikipedia files with unknown source and have found that there are a few images of US military personnel (including a couple of Medal of Honor recipients) and other subjects that may be deleted if not sourced in the next few days. Is anyone able to help find sources for these? I suspect that a few of these would be PD-US due to being military photos, so it should be possible to keep at least few of them if we can find the sources. Here is a list of the files that I found have been tagged:

Thanks for your time. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 06:26, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

|USMC Historical Division ought to have some of them. lovkal (talk) 10:32, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Invasion of Poland#Misconceptions

The whole section reads like an apologetic piece from some former member of the Polish Army.

  1. The list of misconception itself: The first two are valid entries, popular stories making the rounds about his war specifically, the others are just tidbits about the war that should be addressed in the proper sections of the article. Or not at all in the case of the supposed quick surrender: The same is said after any surprisingly quick victory.
  2. The horse bit reads a bit apologetic, but is fine. It's a bit mixed up and could be restructured a bit. (cavalry in Poland - cavalry elsewhere - instances during the war)
  3. "Lost to all operational causes" sounds fishy. Was there a hurricane swapping planes out of the sky? Was the Luftwaffe (mostly unexperienced) losing a lot of planes to mechanic failures? Only shot down/damages planes matter here.
  4. The section on the quick surrender sound especially apologetic. Why does the Romanian Bridgehead matter? I'm sure the Germans had a number of fine plans in the drawer that, when executed, would have won them the war. Only they weren't. It's history, not speculative fiction. The bit that Poland never surrended is a joke: Neither did Germany after the war. Polond stopped existing, there was nobody around in a position to sign any surrender notice, or to continue the war. The part that resistence continued is also misleading, that's apples and oranges. Accepting this definition of "war", most wars of the 20th century are still going on.
  5. The section about Blitzkrieg belongs in Blitzkrieg, not here.

I think a section like this might be useful, if it's brought to WP standards.-62.156.151.10 (talk) 10:32, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

Except that Germany in 1945, unlike Poland, did not maintain an army in the field. Poland's army, the defeated state of the nation notwithstanding, remained in the field until the end of the war, with contingents ultimately fighting on every major front in the European war. That is why the Romanian Bridgehead is significant. As to the section itself, it should probably be in the article although parts could be rewritten if required. Public perception of the Polish Campaign is rife with misconceptions. Reading the section, I encountered every one of those false assertions in my earlier years, and it was only the removal of the stifling grasp of communism that allowed less distorted accounts of the campaign to finally emerge. 83.23.236.86 (talk) 06:23, 17 October 2016 (UTC)
Much better alternative to the horse section.-62.156.151.10 (talk) 10:43, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
Another better description.-62.156.151.10 (talk) 10:48, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
I commented on this in the article's featured article review back in 2009, and agree that presenting this material in this way isn't really satisfactory. Nick-D (talk) 10:50, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

@62.156.151.10: I'll tag it for POV, and see about fixing it later today. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 12:03, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

  • @Nick-D: I wouldn't take this post too seriously considering the low-brow and highly partisan language of the IP: 62.156.151.10 from Deutsche Telekom AG, Germany, especially in Talk:Invasion of Poland. We don't know who the IP 62.156.151.1 is. The article needs work, but so does everything in Wikipedia. Perhaps the "invasion of Poland" is not the best place to promote the greatness of the Wehrmacht. I have no idea what kind of 'neutrality' you're looking for? The Invasion of Poland#Misconceptions is actually very well referenced (as oppose to sections mentioned by you at the Featured article review). The article needs to be improved for English grammar and clarity; however, the citations there originate from reputable English sources confirming the facts quoted. Historian R. J. Overy in his book The air war says: "Luftwaffe had lost 285 aircraft with 279 damaged against a loss of 333 Polish aircraft" (end of quote). Overy does not say that the Luftwaffe had lost those planes "to all operational causes..." Google search reveals that Overy never used this phrase in his book even once. Template WP:NPOV dispute is inappropriate. There's nothing "apologetic" about explaining the complex workings of a major historical event. Poeticbent talk 15:20, 8 October 2016 (UTC)
Source cited: The air war, 1939-1945 by R. J. Overy, Stein & Day, 1980
Had a little tidy-up, the misconception section seems misconceived (ahem!) giving undue weight to matters better integrated into an Analysis section. A couple of books seem to have fallen off the bibliography, which had some authors out of order. Regards Keith-264 (talk) 16:20, 8 October 2016 (UTC)
@Poeticbent: I don't know who you are either, and alluding to where the IP geo-locates without engaging with their substantive criticisms is awful. I agree with Keith that to the extent that this material needs to be covered, it could easily be integrated into other sections rather than presenting a rather self-pitying and POV pushing agenda. Nick-D (talk) 21:52, 8 October 2016 (UTC)
If there is any POV it's the German one, both the horses vs. tanks and destroyed planes stories were spread during and after the war and both were false. German propaganda was and is powerful and accepted - as we can see here - by many people in the West, who despise everything Polish.
If the text will be moved to separate page German propaganda about the invasion many readers will not read it and they will still believe German propaganda. The German propaganda is based in Germany, in German books, German museum and universities, so yes, many German editors repeat their German stereotypes. We don't discuss the facts of 1939 war only but the propaganda description of the war, spread by Western historians who don't read Polish to understand Polish documents.
The Polish Army did relatively well comparing every other army till December 1941.
The problem of Blitzkrieg isn't anti or pro-Polish, it should be moved or removed.
The bit that Poland never surrended is a joke - that such opinion isn't rejected by allegedly neutral editors is a joke.
I believe that the text said that an equvalent of an armoured division had been destroyed, not a specific division. But yes, the quoted source Bekker, Cajus should be replaced by an academic one.

Xx236 (talk) 10:24, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Claiming that German museums and universities are currently spreading anti-Polish propaganda is Germanophobic if anything. I guess there must be some grand, anti-Polish conspiracy in the Western academia.--Catlemur (talk) 17:31, 10 October 2016 (UTC)
My memory of the discussions which preceded the FAR was that the editors involved in the article preferred to see the article delisted from FA class than to remove or fix what multiple other editors were pointing out was not FA-standard material excusing away the Polish defeat. From the above conspiracy theory it looks like that the same attitude survives. I suggest removing this section outright. Nick-D (talk) 07:12, 11 October 2016 (UTC)
Disagree. The misinformation about cavalry and planes on the ground are somewhat resilient and specific to this war, they should be mentioned. Since mentioning non-information in the article text might be awkward and misleading, an section seems to be the better choice.-192.166.53.201 (talk) 09:48, 11 October 2016 (UTC)
Interesting: The German article contained a bit describing the superiority of the Luftwaffe, sourcing it to a dissertation from a German university. I've asked for better sources, let's see how this turns out...-192.166.53.201 (talk) 10:10, 11 October 2016 (UTC)
Single source within the dissertation is a "unpublished study" of Göring's adjudant. Yeah, right.-192.166.53.201 (talk) 10:17, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

@Poeticbent, @Xx236: Thank you for your help! Your statements are evidence that the section as it currently stands is indeed much more than just information, it is propaganda and has no place in an encyclopedia.

  • I've seen some low blows on Wikipedia, but the partial dox is the quickest and lowest deterioration of a discussion I've seen. Completely unwarranted, even if I had nothing useful to say at all. You should be ashamed of yourself. (@Nick-D, thanks for your support. No thanks to anyone else who let this slip by.)
  • The statement that I wanted to "promote the greatness of the Wehrmacht", as if all Germans want to do this, is either another sign of racial or national bigotry, or meant to be an insult. Which is it?
  • I mentioned that the cavalry and the planes bits are "popular stories making the rounds about his war specifically". How is this turned around to the statement that Nazi propaganda is still "powerful and accepted", using my statement as evidence ("as we can see here")?
  • The claim that modern German books and museums still spread Nazi propaganda is wrong and libelous.
  • If there was still any doubt, my aborted quote about the surrender makes it clear that Xx236 has no interest in the truth. My remark was clarified in the very next sentences, which he left out.

AGF has limits, and I think we are past those limits. Both editors have not only shown their bigotry throughout their statements, but also their willingness to distort the truth to get their story in a WP article.-192.166.53.201 (talk) 09:48, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

Note that there is a tradition of anti-polish bigotry in British state propaganda, similar to its anti-Soviet propaganda, which frames people inconvenient to the state's interest as far away and of strange habits not applicable to Britain (like democracy). Portrayals of Poles as brave but backward warrior types, sometimes unsporting with it, can be found in the film Colditz, where the British collude with the Germans to prevent the murder of a Polish informer and in The Battle of Britain where they can't speak English but can shoot down Heinkels.... The legend of charging tanks with cavalry is analogous to stories of "fuzzy wuzzies" (sic) charging machine-guns with swords and spears and has an echo in Corporal Jones wanting to fix bayonets ("They don't like it up 'em Captain Mainwaring! They don't like the cold steel!"). A contemporary version has Middle Eastern types being bloodthirsty savages, who are cruel, superstitious perverts, planting booby traps and suicide-bombing civilians. I suggest that this could be borne in mind, when trying to communicate with people who want to explode myths and seem to get carried away when questioned. Keith-264 (talk) 10:21, 11 October 2016 (UTC)
  • Comments & observations -- I think a middle ground is possible here. On the one hand, the writings of the German generals in the post-war period were highly influential in how the Western perceptions were shaped about the "war in the East". For example, here's the passage from an earlier version of the article on Lost Victories by Manstein (since redacted):
Manstein alleged lack of a clear military doctrine: "The Polish General Staff did not possess its own tradition of generalship shaped by long experience. On the one hand the Polish temperament was more disposed towards attack than defence. It is fair to assume that the mind of the Polish soldier was still coloured, at least subconsciously, by romantic notions from bygone days. I am reminded here of a portrait I once saw of Marshal Rydz–Śmigły painted against a background of charging Polish cavalry squadrons. On the other hand the newly founded Polish Army was French-taught."[1]

References

  1. ^ Lost Victories..., p. 41
Manstein's memoirs were translated into English and widely read both in the U.K. and the U.S. I wonder if the legend of the "charging cavalry" can be traced back to these types of writing.
In popular culture, some apologist / revisionist tendencies can be observed to this day. See, for example, a recent spate over the German miniseries Generation War, which appeared to put forth (among other ahistorical things) the notion that Poles were bigger anti-semites than the Germans. Some of this post-war mythology is indeed present in Wikipedia, as the reflection of today's popular English-speaking culture: for example, the propensity to refer to the Invasion of Poland as the "Polish Campaign" or the photo captions that described German troops "entering Poland" on the day of the invasion, both of which I find to be POV.
On the other hand, the works published by Germans historians of the present time are highly reliable and exhibit the highest standards of professional integrity and insight.
In summary, I think better sources are needed to either dispense with this section, or keep it, based on reliable historiography. K.e.coffman (talk) 07:34, 17 October 2016 (UTC)
I proposed in my initial post that the section should be kept, but slimmed down. Is that the sort of middle ground you have in mind?-62.156.151.11 (talk) 09:14, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry, the article in the German Wikipedia still contains Nazi propaganda. Nothing I could so about it. Maybe someone else will give it a try?-62.156.151.11 (talk) 10:11, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

The so called "Nazi propaganda" is a German PhD from 2005 which cites an unpublished study by Bernd von Brauchitsch of July 1945 and a book by Martin van Crefeld et al. .--Assayer (talk) 18:56, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Is "diesel" capitalized?

I've never seen us capitalize "diesel" as in "diesel engine." But is it wrong to do so? Kendall-K1 (talk) 01:20, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

Not wrong, but not usual. "English writers do not usually capitalize the eponyms “shrapnel” (Henry Shrapnel, 1761-1842), “diesel” (Rudolf Diesel, 1858-1913), “saxophone” (Adolphe Sax, 1814-1894), “baud” (Emile Baudot, 1845-1903), “ampere” (Andre Ampere, 1775-1836), “chauvinist” (Nicolas Chauvin, 1790-?), “nicotine” (Jean Nicot, 1530-1600) or “teddy bear” (Theodore Roosevelt, 1858-1916)." [8] - (not an RS). But then, Bunsen burner. --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:28, 18 October 2016 (UTC)
"Capitalize words named after geographic locations, the names of major historical or geological time frames, and most words derived from proper names. Note: The only way to be sure if a word derived from a person’s name should be capitalized is to look it up in the dictionary. For example, "Bunsen burner" (after Robert Bunsen) is capitalized, while "diesel engine" (after Rudolph Diesel) is not. Also, referring to specific geologic time frames, the Chicago Manual of Style says not to capitalize the words "era," "period," and "epoch," but the American Association of Petroleum Geologists says that these words should be capitalized. I choose to capitalize them, as those who write in the geological sciences should by convention."[1]. So I would say no, but I suppose its up for debate. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 02:48, 18 October 2016 (UTC)
Not to mention the Van de Graaff generator, Faraday cage, Clarke orbit, Peter principle or the long list of things named after Leonhard Euler. But László Bíró gets no respect. I thought it had something to do with the word becoming a generic, but I could be wrong. Hawkeye7 (talk) 04:57, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ https://www.e-education.psu.edu/styleforstudents/c2_p11.html

Islamist Terrorist attacks RfC

There is a discussion ongoing at List of Islamist terrorist attacks on whether to add the July 2016 Nice attack to the list. Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:12, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

Would it not? ISIS said that it was connected to the attacks, which is a group that supports (albeit highly skewed) Islamic beliefs. I would say yes in this case. UNSC Luke 1021 (talk) 12:01, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

Infobox military conflict bullet points

I have put together a proposal regarding use of bullet points on Module:Infobox military conflict, at Module talk:Infobox military conflict/Archive 4#Proposal re: Result parameter - bullet points. Should this be of interest, please chip in. --Tagishsimon (talk) 19:32, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

Neal Dow

Hello! I hate to beg for a review, but would someone here mind checking out Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Neal Dow/archive1? Dow was an American Civil War general, among other things, which is why I thought members of this Wikiproject might be interested. I normally don't solicit reviews, but it's been languishing for months and I'd hate to see it fail for lack of attention. Thanks very much! --15:17, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

New WWII List

{{Knight's Cross recipients in the Bundeswehr and Bundesgrenzschutz}} is in the process of being deleted, but the information has been turned into a list (currently found in my userspace). I am looking for opinions on whether it should be moved to the Article space or deleted. Please voice your opinions at the talk page. Thank you. Primefac (talk) 03:30, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Date ranges

Note: A change from a preference for two digits, to a preference for four digits, on the right side of year–year ranges was implemented in July 2016 per this RFC.

Since we use them a lot, you might be interested [9] regards Keith-264 (talk) 07:57, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Yes, but note from the RFC closing statement: "when space is at a premium, such as in tables or infoboxes, two year date styles may be used". So "1939–45" is just as acceptable as "1939–1945" in those areas. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 08:17, 21 October 2016 (UTC)
I don't know any infoboxes that are so cramped (apart from the ones full of fatuous bullet points, that is) but for me it's always been an aesthetic matter. Regards Keith-264 (talk) 09:11, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Page ranges

The date ranges thingie reminds me... I keep running into a couple of editors who persist in changing page ranges like pp. 567–568 to pp. 567–68. Does anyone know if there is a guideline or policy somewhere on this? Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 09:14, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

I understand that both are acceptable provided it's consistent within the article, so people shouldn't be arbitrarily changing from one (consistent) style to the other in a given article. The most recent discussion, which put arguments for both styles, is here. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 11:20, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

North Carolina Militia records

I recently ran across a notice that Troop Returns are now available for the North Carolina Militia. Should be a handy tool for editors interested in the American Civil War to Spanish American War periods. --Lineagegeek (talk) 18:36, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

Type 95 Ke-Nu rail tank?

Our List of Japanese armoured fighting vehicles of World War II includes a redlink to "Type 95 Ke-Nu Rail tank". A Google search (as far as I can see) only brings up Wikipedia and forum pages that could well have a WP origin. Did such a tank exist? Alansplodge (talk) 15:18, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Zaloga, Armored Trains p 24 describes a Type 95 rail tank but calls it a So-Mo, or So-Ki for the convertible version. [10] Kendall-K1 (talk) 17:06, 21 October 2016 (UTC)
The Type 4 Ke-Nu is a variant of the Type 95 Ha-Go. I find no evidence of a Type 95 Ke-Nu existing. Samf4u (talk) 17:19, 21 October 2016 (UTC)
Okay, I may remove it from the list and add Type 95 So-Ki to the "Variants" section of the Type 95 Ha-Go using User:Kendall-K1's reference when I have a moment. Thank you both for your efforts. Alansplodge (talk) 09:48, 22 October 2016 (UTC)
Now done. Alansplodge (talk) 17:29, 23 October 2016 (UTC)
D'oh! I've just found a stub article called Type 95 So-Ki. I have linked this with the Type 95 Ha-Go article and added the Zaloga ref above. Alansplodge (talk) 17:57, 23 October 2016 (UTC)
Yes, the Type 95 So-Ki is correct. Good work. I also have found several entries lately on the "List of Japanese armoured fighting vehicles of World War II", which were not correct but fixed them accordingly. Kierzek (talk) 21:22, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

Temporary job at ANZAC memorial Sydney

I just saw this job opening on Twitter and thought it would be of interest to some people here from the Australia Task Force - Temporary Exhibitions Research Officer at the ANZAC memorial, Sydney. Note: applications close 9 November, 4-day a week, position until December 2018. Key role description:

As the Exhibitions Research Officer you will conduct supervised research of external collections for potential exhibition and interpretive content, including primary resources of National, State and Regional institutions and participate in associated projects and programs. You will document exhibitions and collection donations, loans and acquisitions, including cataloguing, image capture and data entry, as well as upload content on the Memorial’s web site and develop content for exhibition interactives.

The description states a requires knowledge of: museum exhibition research; the development of content for information communication technologies; and thorough knowledge of military and Australian history and its interpretation.
I thought it'd be pretty cool to have a Wikimedian in the mix :-) All the best, Wittylama 22:33, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

USNS Cossatot

I'm having difficulty finding a reliable source for USNS Cossatot being involved in a collision in 1968. Can anyone assist please? Mjroots (talk) 16:36, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

This mentions the collision briefly, and this provides more details. This newspaper has more details as well (you can see the plain text below, but it appears to be all jumbled up with other articles on the page). Parsecboy (talk) 17:03, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
Many thanks, have referenced the accident and added the relevant shipwreck navbox. Mjroots (talk) 06:33, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

86th (Machine Gun) Battalion, CEF and 86th Battalion (Machine Gun), CEF

These articles appear to be about the same battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, with much of the same information. Can someone more knowledgeable than me on these matters merge them together? Thanks. Sussexpeople (talk) 09:16, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Both of the articles are pretty low quality. A merge would probably be best because whatever one of the articles is missing is found in the other one. UNSC Luke 1021 (talk) 11:46, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
G'day, I had a go at this. There is a bit of contradictory information and some of the information on the pages was copyvio text. If anyone can improve it further, please feel free. I merged the article into the one that had existed the longest: 86th (Machine Gun) Battalion, CEF. Regards AustralianRupert (talk) 12:04, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, guys. Sussexpeople (talk) 12:24, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

WP:TANKS

@WP:MILHIST coordinators:

Hey soldiers. Just notifying all troops about the existence of WikiProject Tanks. I just created it, be sure to come over to rifle it out. Much of it is based on WP:MILHIST, but hey, it could be classified as a child project? Send some tankers over to help too.

Best regards on the field of warfare, ∞😃 Target360YT 😃∞ (talk · contribs) 09:44, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

I think I just burned my retinas on your colour scheme. GraemeLeggett (talk) 12:10, 13 October 2016 (UTC)
Make the main color green instead of yellow. It's the most common tank color and it won't make me feel like this: https://m.popkey.co/43096f/XR9J5.gif. UNSC Luke 1021 (talk) 13:14, 13 October 2016 (UTC)
@GraemeLeggett: @UNSC Luke 1021: Owch, ok! ∞😃 Target360YT 😃∞ (talk · contribs) 13:50, 13 October 2016 (UTC)
Just a note that we have a military land vehicles task force which covers this topic. Kirill Lokshin (talk) 13:53, 13 October 2016 (UTC)
Yes we do. We also have an Incubator for projects such as this one, and as it so happens we have a tank group in there already. TomStar81 (Talk) 22:28, 13 October 2016 (UTC)
Though it didn't seem to take off Nick-D (talk) 07:38, 14 October 2016 (UTC)
Tanks seldom do GraemeLeggett (talk) 11:29, 14 October 2016 (UTC)
Imagine, a flying tank! How awesome! Target360YT (talk · contribs) 03:09, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
@Target360YT:.... actually I have seen flying tanks, but only simluated. When I worked for British Aerospace, we had various simulation systems that mostly were set up for mid-range missile defence, and the simulators (not the real kit) tended to assume certain parameters such that gravity = 0 because it makes it easier to simulate the planes snd missiles etc flying around without having to worry about gravity in every equation.
But unnfortunately, for land vehicles this tended to mean that rather than stick on the ground they would fly up in the air because exactly nothing was sticking them to the ground any more. And because of various other parameters, such that a tank doesn't really have much ability to bank, roll or pitch, it would not only fly up in the air but spin around its centre of inertia while doing so, as the guidance equations desperately tried to get it back onto the ground again. It was quite amusing to watch. We stuck them back on the ground with a bit of... welll... we stopped them flying up in the air, but it was quite amusing to see them do it on the simulator, this was one of those well you know those 3D things you get at amusement parks? A dome that was 360 degrees in the azimuth and 180 in the elevation, so if we hadn't stopped them they would have probably ended all up at the North Pole or something. We had about twenty projection cameras doing the rest of the world simulation and these tanks would start spinning up into the air. Tanks shouldn't do that. I did propose that proper British tanks should stay glued to terra firma but naughty foreign tanks should be allowed to spin up to infinity, but I didn't get far with that proposal. Si Trew (talk) 07:49, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
@SimonTrew: Mother of Goodness... ∞😃 Target360YT 😃∞ (talk · contribs) 02:12, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

Simon Trew, thanks for the laugh!! Seriously, Brig Richard Simpkin in the 1980s and Ralph Peters in the 1990s (The War in 2020) have both seriously proposed flying tanks/lo-hover armoured helicopters - imagine a Wing In Ground-effect vehicle armoured version of the Mi-24 and you'll get an idea of how formidable such a vehicle could be. Could have er, taken off, pardon the pun, if the Central Front confrontation had continued for a longer period. There's a passing reference to a 'Challengers-must-fly' believing officer also in Beevor's Inside the British Army. Buckshot06 (talk) 10:13, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

Peters was actually referring to the Osprey (MV-22) in that book. Intothatdarkness 17:40, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
It goes back further than that; during WW2 the British used a winged version of the Tetrarch during the Normandy landings, dropped from bombers and gliding in behind German lines. (It didn't work; because they had to be light enough not to drop like bricks, they were hopelessly outgunned.) Russia still operates a version of the BMD-1 equipped with retro-rockets, allowing it to be dropped from a bomber, land and go straight into action, although I don't believe this variant has ever seen combat since during the invasion of Afghanistan—the only Soviet or Russian war in which they might have proved useful—special forces seized Afghanistan's airports on the first day allowing equipment to be flown in normally. ‑ Iridescent 10:41, 16 October 2016 (UTC)
The Tetrarch used in Normandy were delivered in Hamilcar gliders. However, according to Wikipedia, the British, along with many others, had played with a winged tank design Monstrelet (talk) 10:50, 16 October 2016 (UTC)
Since we have the military land vehicles task force already, do we really need a separate project for tanks? Kierzek (talk) 19:42, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

The discussion is located at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2016 October 25#Template:Related recipients of the Knight.27s Cross. K.e.coffman (talk) 22:54, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Banned Users

Can I remove banned users from the 'active users' section of the Members list and move them to the 'inactive users'? They don't seem to be very active at all. UNSC Luke 1021 (talk) 12:02, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Hm, I would say move them to a new section, as some of them made good contributions but were compromised, or else requested a ban because they spent too much time on here, perhaps called "Banned members". Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 12:11, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
Moving them to the inactive list should be fine. There's no reason to highlight banned users in particular. Kirill Lokshin (talk) 13:47, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
I agree with Kirill. "Lists of shame" have historically been strongly frowned upon on Wikipedia, for obvious reasons. Nick-D (talk) 10:25, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
Agreed - we don't need to do anything that resembles grave dancing, even if it's not intended as such. Parsecboy (talk) 11:48, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

I'm going to go ahead and schedule George S. Patton on his birthday (also Armistice/Veterans Day). We ran George S. Patton slapping incidents this summer, which cast him in a negative light, and I think it's only fair to show a more rounded picture. The Zaloga (2010) link in the refs is dead, and I'm not sure about this edit by an IP; otherwise, it passes the sniff test, and a lot of people looked at the article in August. Still, it gets a fair amount of vandalism, so people may want to keep an eye on it. - Dank (push to talk) 18:25, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Good idea, Dan. I've had it on my watchlist since ACR/FAC, so I think we've avoided gross misinformation, but I wouldn't mind other eyes on it before maindate -- it'll need round-the-clock watching that day anyway. That IP edit you note above I looked at, sniffed, and let it go because it was at least referring to a bio I have on my bookshelf but I'll double-check it and at the very least improve the ref formatting. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 20:24, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
Thanks kindly. - Dank (push to talk) 20:25, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
Actually the reference to the book I have was already in there, the additional detail and source don't seem necessary to me so I removed; also the article as a whole seems messier and more bloated since its FAC than I remembered so I've cut some stuff out and recommended discussion before anything else is added. Taking a break now but will try and revisit soon. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 23:52, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

T&F

The Strategic, Defence & Security Studies collection newly added to WP:Taylor & Francis might be of interest to some here. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:27, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

Two articles, one general

Help requested, please, with the right way to proceed on a thorny article naming and referencing problem. There are two new articles, created by the same editor, on a WWII General who commanded the 113th Airborne: Eldridge Chapman and Elbridge Chapman. The editor created them in that order and in good faith, evidently seeing the second spelling in references and thinking that "Eldridge" was a spelling error on his part. I had originally speeded Elbridge Chapman db-a10, but the article creator makes the valid point at Talk:Elbridge_Chapman that some reasonably WP:RS spell his name "Elbridge", but I can also see WP:RS including book references from mainstream publishing houses like Simon & Schuster where it's spelled "Eldridge". The spellings "Eldridge Chapman" and "General Eldridge Chapman" both return more Google hits, but that's hardly proof of Eldrige being correct. So I've currently tagged them as merge, rather than a speedy, and the two articles are now more or less identical. Can a military history expert please point us at a canonical source verifying his first name? Thanks, Wikishovel (talk) 03:28, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

  • They buried him with a "b" [11]
So merge and redirect "Eldridge" to "Elbridge" and tag the redirect with {{R from misspelling}}.
Or delete the pair as unsourced, because any modern Major General ought to be able to rustle up better sourcing than these two have. Is a biog source that can't even get the subject's name right a WP:RS? Andy Dingley (talk) 09:54, 29 October 2016 (UTC)
I provided two book sources that spell it "Eldridge", so it's not unsourced. But for my money, the photo on Findagrave beats the books. Caveat lector. Wikishovel (talk) 11:40, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Infobox military conflict - "result" or "outcome" parameter?

FYI
 – Pointer to discussion elsewhere.

Please see the not-quite-RfC at Module talk:Infobox military conflict/Archive 3#Change "result" parameter to "outcome", on a proposition intended to help avoid misinterpretation of a "just the facts" infobox parameter as being a place for extensive, freeform, subjective cause–effect assertions that may be better handled in well-cited, contextual article prose.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:32, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

WP:CANVASS fail. --Tagishsimon (talk) 12:12, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

RFCs on citations templates and the flagging free-to-read sources

See

Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:24, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

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