Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Archive 24

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Project newsletter?

Having just gotten one from Esperanza, I wonder if it would be worth doing a (monthly?) newsletter that would go out to all of the project members. This might be helpful in terms of letting people who may not watch the discussion page about new developments and so forth.

So, two questions:

1. Would a newsletter be worth doing?
2. If so, is there anyone who uses AWB (or is just fast with Firefox tabs) who would volunteer to help distribute it?

Any suggestions are welcome! Kirill Lokshin 12:50, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

I for one beleive the project newletter has some merit. I dont have all the pages in my watchlist, nor do I have the time to constantly overlook the changes and addition to the ones I do try to keep tabs on. As to the programming, I'll leave that to the experts.Dryzen 18:51, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

I'll second the above. I think more people would be actively involved if they knew all that was going on. It is very difficult to monitor every page in your area of interest and something like this could really get people pointed in the right direction.--Looper5920 19:21, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

I like the sound of it - and I'm pretty quick with Firefox to distribute it. --Loopy ^e 19:28, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

All right, here's a draft. If nobody has any particular objections, I'd like to get this one out by the end of the month. Kirill Lokshin 03:01, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Frankly, I don't see the point. People who participate actively don't need this newsletter. People who don't don't need this newsletter. Those who prefer to sign their name here and then work independently, probably don't need this newsletter either. Esperanza is different because it's of an entirely different nature than this project. -- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai!} 04:34, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

On the other hand, people who may be interested in participating in certain areas more actively—but don't necessarily keep up with day-to-day project business—might not hear of new developments for some time. Things like the collaboration, peer review, and so forth tend to get discussed and implemented quite quickly (often under a week of active discussion). Anyone who doesn't check the project talk page during that period won't know about these things until they happen to spot a link to them somewhere.

And, of course, any means to increase participation—particularly in areas like the peer review program, which are amenable to participation by people who don't do a lot of the project-centric meta-work—is hardly a bad thing.

In other words: while this may not be as useful as I might expect, I don't really see the harm in trying. Kirill Lokshin 04:47, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, no, it wouldn't hurt. Go ahead and do whatever you feel is best. We have confidence in you... :p -- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai!} 05:05, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Hehe, will do ;-) Kirill Lokshin 05:08, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

If people really don't want to get the newsletter, they could 'unsubscribe' by posting on the newsletter page's talk page and they would be avoided in distribution. --Loopy ^e 04:31, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I gave the draft a look and I think its a rather good start, its suscinct and to the point. I even learnt some of the new going ons: I wasn't sure if the Peer review had been inaugerated and now I do. I'll also take a look in the translatiosn since I'm part of the French homologue of this group. Keep up the good work! Dryzen 14:28, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment. Barring anything unusual coming up, the first issue should be getting distributed today or tomorrow. Kirill Lokshin 14:30, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Issue I delivered! =D --Loopy ^e 05:57, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Excellent! Kirill Lokshin 05:59, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Just received the newsletter. POSITIVE feedback. I think that could be useful. gala.martin (what?) 16:29, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Hate to rain on your parade, but I didn't like the fact such a large block of text was pasted onto my Talk page; doing this is practically spam. I'd be far more happy if Loopy had simply left a message & a link to the newsletter. -- llywrch 00:17, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

We'll make a note of that. But the intent is, in some sense, to leave people with no choice but to read it; I'm not convinced that, were we to spam members with a link, anyone would follow it ;-) Kirill Lokshin 01:40, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Okay, that response has made me angry. I do not have to read anything! And forcing me or anyone to do so won't help you! At best it will result by my ignoring you; at worst I will want to act against you!

You may mean well, but the idea that anyone must read what you write is offensive. If you respect me & your readers, you will give them the choice whether to read what you write or not. Otherwise, people will remove themselves from this project, & be far more critical not only about its works but about the individuals who are involved with it. Forcing people to read something is spam, pure & simple, & saying that this is your intention makes me want to report this to the ArbCom. However, if I started a fight like that, no matter who won the fight I would end up disgusted with Wikipedia & inclined to leave the project. Please take a moment & think about why I found the original act offensive, & let's see if we can't find a consensus here. -- 02:45, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Apparently I underestimated the extent to which this has offended you; I apologize for not being sufficiently considerate. It was certainly not my intent to anger anyone by introducing this. If you don't want to receive the newsletter, we won't put it on your talk page; simple as that.

Having said that, I'm not quite sure how wanting the newsletter to be read is a bad thing. As I mentioned above, I got the idea from the Esperanza one, and that seems to have garnered little complaint (as an aside, receiving a certain amount of spam from WikiProjects is fairly common here). Kirill Lokshin 02:56, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Wow, I didn't expect an angry response like that, it was a talk page after all. Anyway, I've been pretty busy with work and didn't get a chance to check up here in a while. Actually was coming to say kudos on the newsletter, I personally love the idea. Oberiko 03:13, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Llywrch, you are overreacting. No one is forcing you to subscribe to this project's newsletter. And we do seem to have a concensus here, that it is a good thing. It's not only useful for keeping the members informed, it also helps to foster a sense of community. But you do raise a good point about having a simple Link option instead. Though it might create more bother for Kirill and Loopy, it might still be better than facing the wrath of angry volunteers:>--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 07:24, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't really like it either. I have the project page on my watchlist so it is easy to see whenever someone updates something. You could create a separate subpage for the newsletter and then people can read it there if they want. Adam Bishop 07:58, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

I suspect you're in the minority both in terms of having the pages watchlisted and in terms of checking them on a regular basis. As far as the subpage is concerned, though: would we then send everybody messages that a new issue was ready? If we don't have any personal notification step, it's equivalent to simply making the announcements here (and we already know some people miss them when this occurs). Kirill Lokshin 10:57, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

First, I want to apolgize for my tone above. I was angry, & I should have responded in a better way to Kirill's well-meaning response. However, his response touched a nerve with me -- which was compounded by the fact that I have a respect for Kirill, enough to be surprised by what happened.

I have no issue with a notice on my Talk page saying that there is a newsletter out; in fact, I welcome such a message & found the newsletter itself interesting & potentially useful. My issue is how this newsletter was announced. When someone -- anyone -- edits my Talk page to add a large, formatted slab of text that fills my browser window, my first response is of shock: why would anyone need to cut-n-paste so much material onto so many people's Talk pages? The only people who do this are kooks, cranks & spammers -- people who don't care about how their message is received, only that it is read. Even when this is not the case (like it was here), to repeat a message this across a lot of pages is a lot of unneeded work (a link to one page is far quicker & more efficient), & if someone doesn't understand just how wastful this is then should I trust their judgement over the content? I was strongly tempted to simply remove the change without reading it -- just as I do with almost all of my spam.

Then, when I brought up my concern about this matter here, I felt that the response ignored just how invasive this act was. Would any of you like it if I were to insert material that occupied that much space into your Talk pages? Maybe I'm showing my age here, but I believe a bit of discretion is always appreciated when initiating contact with people; I don't need someone to blare their message at me. Not only that, but IMHO how the newsletter was announced violates the spirit, if not the letter, of WP:POINT.

Does any of this make sense to you? Or am I vainly writing this extended response & only succeeding in making everyone think that I am just a crank? -- llywrch 18:58, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

As I mentioned, both the idea and the method were taken from the distribution of the Esperanza newsletter. My idea was that pasting the newsletter directly would save readers time and effort—as they wouldn't need to follow a link elsewhere—which would consequently encourage more people to bother with reading the thing.

I really don't know what the best approach is here. Your objections are quite legitimate, and must be respected; but only a few people (of those who have commented so far) seem to care about how the newsletter is delivered. Maybe we should follow along with what R.D.H. suggested and offer to only distribute links to—or even avoid contacting entirely—those members who don't want to receive the full text? Kirill Lokshin 19:27, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Overall I'm glade to have received the Newsletter, like I mentionned above about the test:"its suscinct and to the point". As to the methode of its propogation I'm leaning on getting a link posted in my userpage. It clears up clutter like llywrch indicated. But I'm keeping in mind that this is still in its infancy and the first few edditions will vary greatly as we work out the methode that works best for our partisipants. The suggestion of making a distribution list has alot of merit though and I beleive should be discussed. Great work Kirill Lokshin and Loopy Dryzen 20:30, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Apology gladly accepted, Llywrch. I fully understand being protective of one's talkpage. I've become much moreso of mine of late as well, which has led some to brand me a "crank", incivil and (horrors) an assumer of BAD FAITH (BURN HERETIC!:). So, yes, what you are saying makes sense to me. While we might be, like Esperanza, trying to build a community here, unlike them we are also trying to build an effective group to go into the trenches and help build this damned 'pedia:>. Therefore, respect for the wishes and suggestions of our members is a high priority. I hope mine will help sort this out...if not I can come up with more:>--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 05:46, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, I guess we should have included a "Click here to unsubscribe" button. -- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai!} 02:40, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

I've started a list here of people not to deliver copies of the newsletter to; I think we can just add a note to future issues asking people to add their name there if they don't wish to receive it. Kirill Lokshin 03:16, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I have some sympathy with llywrch's position. I have huge respect for the work you are all doing, but I see these pages as the place to come to find out about it. I'd happily have a link to the newsletter pasted to my talk page, but I don't really want to have the whole thing pasted there. It would be great if you can set up that option -- perhaps a link should be the default? The 'consensus' on this page will tend to be formed by the most active project members. JimmyTheOne 18:50, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Category:Islamic battles

(title and first entry modified to repair section editing) Carcharoth 16:50, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Any reason why we still need Category:Islamic battles? Now that all the relevant by-country ones have been created, this has essentially become a collection of battles by religion, which doesn't really make sense as a categorization scheme. Kirill Lokshin 09:41, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Islamic battles seems like a useful category to me. It is a useful link from Islamic history to the war part of the category "tree". Such cross-subject categories are very useful, IMO. Rather than trying to reduce the number of categories, I think the aim should be to get the cross-categorisation links correct. If you get the right structure in place, then if anything, you can have more categories than you have at the moment. Carcharoth 16:52, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Aside from being plain wrong in some cases (e.g. not everything in Category:Battles of the Crusades has anything to do with Islamic history), creating "non-standard" categories like this tends to cause problems when everyone else follows suit. How will we deal with "Christian battles"? Will Japanese history use "Buddhist battles", "Shinto battles", "Christian battles", or all three? What will happen to battles during the French Wars of Religion? And so forth. Better to just avoid this mess entirely, in my opinion. Kirill Lokshin 16:58, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree the categorisation is currently not perfect, but the solution is not to just get rid of the category. There are battles that you can clearly identify as battles of conquest to expand the Islamic sphere of influence or Islamic empires. Maybe a more general term "religious battles" is best to encompass this? This would fall more under types of war. Wars waged not just to expand control of resources, but wars to conquer and subjugate and convert an area. I know what you mean though, about this having lots of grey areas. But rather than just delete the category, tightly define it and tidy it up. Maybe someone else can do something with it later? For starters, try to contact the people who made the edits to the category page, and those who have discussed it on the category talk page. Carcharoth 17:11, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, maybe renaming it to "Islamic warfare" would work? Then we could avoid having to limit it to battles, and could probably run it as more of an ad-hoc categorization. Kirill Lokshin 17:15, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

That sounds good. The distinction between battles and wars is also important, though some battles are only covered by a "war" article, and some battles have articles with no article about the overall war. Also, some battles are part of specific types of wars, such as an invasion. An example of an invasion involving battles would be the battles in Mongol invasion of Europe, though there there do seem to be several campaigns that could be seen as groups of battles within the overall war. Another example is the battles of Alexander the Great, which already has its own category.

Anyway, for now I put Islamic battles in the Battles category. Having taken a closer look, I now see that most of the subcategories of Islamic battles are in "Battles by country", which is similar to the "War by countries" section. I think one source of confusion is that the categories named "by country" also include "by empire" and "by alliance" wars and battles. Well, I think they should include wars by alliances. I couldn't find any Wars of NATO or Wars of the Warsaw Pact categories. At the very least, someone who knows the history of the Islamic battles and wars should try and find general articles covering the wars of that period and put them in in a "Wars of Islam" category. Carcharoth 09:55, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Part of the issue there is that the categories chosen for an article are generally as specific as we can get them; so we have "Battles of the Soviet Union" but no "Battles of the Warsaw Pact". I'll see what we can do about the Islamic categories; having something similiar to Category:Medieval warfare in setup might work well here. Kirill Lokshin 10:13, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

We could expand the Category:Medieval warfare to incorporate the Islamic battles that fall in that era within the group. Much Like Kirill Loksh I dont think we should get caugh in a by religion warfare, no religion has yet acted from a long enough peridoe to be considered one homogenous entity. As a bundle of battles involving Islamic factions, I think it should remain, but a name change is definitly in order. Perhaps, something on the lines of geography "Middle Eastern&North African Warfare" or culture like "Arabic&Persian(Iranian)&Turkish Warefare", or the fabulous like the "Middle World(Based on Temüjin's debatable (Genghis Khan (1965)) reflection that there where three worlds, The West the Middle and the East. Both West and East yin and Yang of powers Rome/China and the middle a wasteland of roads) Warefare"... Its very open to sujestion.Dryzen 13:22, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I think limiting it to recognised political entities, like countries and empires, is good enough. All the subcategories of those Islamic battles/wars categories grouped them by some sort of entity, like an empire or caliphate. In some cases, what is a political entity could also be considered a religious entity, but the religious classification should be a few levels further up. So you would have "Empires", then (if you can identify them clearly) "Islamic empires", then "History of Islamic empires", then "Military history of Islamic Empires", then "Wars of Islamic Empires". Possibly. The idea is to read the articles themselves, and if the prominent bits mentioned are "empire", "islamic", and "war", then that suggests the category structure. I agree though, that ultimately the label Islamic might be debatable in some cases, and so just "Wars of X" is best, with X being the political entity waging the war. Carcharoth 09:40, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Reading back we could get something like the Category:Battles of the Crusades Exept with Jiad, but it s a very touchy subject. Anyways I throwing in some ideas in the melting pot.Dryzen 13:25, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

List of wars

(title and first entry modified to repair section editing) Carcharoth 16:50, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

List of wars seems to have been split up into a bunch of quite short lists by date and continent, even though the total length isn't that great. I think it would be more useful to create a combined list of wars ordered by date (and color-coded by continent), listing them as follows:

Dates - Name - Major combatants

Would anyone object to such an arrangement? Kirill Lokshin 13:46, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good. When looking at that list, I did spot Category:Wars by combatant and Category:Wars by country, which are similar categories that probably need merging. Carcharoth 17:02, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

From the comment at the top, I think that Category:Wars by combatant was intended only for lists; given how small it is, maybe just merging it up to Category:Lists of wars would be the best thing, at this point. Kirill Lokshin 17:03, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Then it has the wrong name. Something like "Lists of wars by combatants" is the more proper naming convention, I believe. Then it fits perfectly in the Lists of wars section. Carcharoth 17:13, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Categories clean-up needed?

Hi there. I'm just passing through (very impressed with the organisation of this WikiProject), and wanted to point out an area of confusion currently existing in the category structure, and I also want to point out a couple of categories I created, but would welcome advice on this, or for people to finish what I started.

(1) Area of confusion in categories: there are conflicting instructions at the top of Category:War and Category:Wars. I would agree with the use of the category War for general topic articles, and the category Wars for list-like collections of wars. Wars could then be a subcategory of War, among other things.

(2) New categories: I recently created, or will soon create, Category:War treaties and Category:Armistices and Category:Surrenders. Category:Peace treaties already existed, and this and the other two are now children of the War treaties category (among other things). Hopefully these categories are useful and can be populated. Please change the category structure in this area or send them for deletion/renaming if that is thought best.

Hope this is all OK. Thanks. Carcharoth 15:28, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Actually, see the discussion on #Top-level categories just above, where we're talking about some of these very issues ;-) Kirill Lokshin 15:41, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Why not just one category called "Agreements" or something? I don't even know what a "war treaty" is, frankly. Where would the Non-Aggression Pact of 1939 fit in? The discussion above has noted there are too many categories as is, I don't see the utility in creating even more. What exactly would go into "surrenders" for example? Michael Dorosh 15:55, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, I only found two examples (click on the link above to see). I also found it difficult to distinguish precisely when something was a surrender. I agree that merging them all back into a larger category might be best. I just wanted somewhere to gather all the articles about the actual acts of signing something to formally end a war. The sequence seems to go truce/ceasefire, then an armistice, and then, over a longer period, the negotiation of a peace treaty. That's if both sides agree to end the war. The extreme is total capitulation and an unconditional surrender. Well, actually, I suppose the extreme is conquering a country, or destroying, say, a city entirely (I'm thinking of historical wars here, rather than modern ones that tend to end in some sort of diplomatic solution, forced or otherwise). Carcharoth 16:28, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I've created Category:Military diplomacy (open to a better name here) to serve as the root category for things like peace treaties, disarmament agreements, alliances, and so forth. Once we finish cleaning the top-level categories of articles misplaced there, we should have a better idea of how many sub-categories this will need. Kirill Lokshin 15:58, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

American Civil War in Other Languages

Has anyone else read Sezessionskrieg on the German wiki? My erman is not good enough to rewrite it, but it is generally not NPOV and leans towards the South. Here is google's translation. evrik 22:34, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Casus belli in military conflict infobox

There's a discussion here that could really use a few more opinions. Kirill Lokshin 01:47, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Campaignbox Axis-Soviet War

Template:Campaignbox Axis-Soviet War is (once again) the subject of an edit war in regards to which engagements should be listed. Any additional input on the talk page that could help us come to a consensus on how to deal with it would be extremely appreciated! Kirill Lokshin 15:42, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I am getting sick and tired of this, so I have created some campaignboxes to illustrate what they should look like, and added them as a test at the bottom of the Toropets-Kholm Operation article I started yesterday. Andreas 07:39, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Two articles from the project on the main page

Good day for the project. Today featured in DYK: article I started on the Toropets-Kholm Operation and an article on the French light cruiser Marseillaise. Andreas 14:30, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Excellent! Kirill Lokshin 16:37, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Nice. -- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai!} 17:26, 11 April 2006 (UTC)