Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Archive 47

This is an archive of past discussions about Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 40

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Archive 45

New Category thought

(Copied from the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Korea/Military history page) Does anybody else see a need or reason (besides me) for a new category called something like "Korean War Military Units"? It would provide an easy way to quickly identify all of the military units that participated in the Korean War, regardless of country. With all of the countries that had units participate in the Korean War, trying to track them down is a bit of a chore. Any body have any ideas or opinions on the subject? wbfergus 15:43, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Please direct replies here. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 16:57, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Ukrainian military task force

A new military task force is being organized. We are interested at this point in Ukrainian Cossacks. There is only one article done so far (Battle of Konotop), but more are planned. If interested in participating, please drop me a line. --Hillock65 18:03, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I have talked with one other individual and we would probably do an article on Cossack Polish wars of 1648 - 1654, the ones that haven't been covered yet, maybe this one (pl:Bitwa pod Żółtymi Wodami, uk:Битва під Жовтими Водами). There is no English version as far as I know, and even those two need serious improvement.--Hillock65 20:40, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

The scope and the title don't match. Could you correct this? Interested editors should sign up below. Wandalstouring 19:57, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

It would probably be easiest to just consider the scope to be "everything that's reasonably part of Ukranian military history" (as we've done with similar task forces). Obviously, the Cossacks are a major part of this; but I suspect that Hillock was only expressing his own interests, not meaning to limit the scope of the task force to that topic specifically. :-) Kirill Lokshin 20:28, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

If I am correct (please tell me if I am wrong), would the military history of Ukraine all ready be included in the Russian and Soviet task force as well as the Polish taskforce as Ukraine was under Polish, Russian and Soviet domination for many centuries and only got it's independence 17 years ago. Kyriakos 09:51, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

It would certainly overlap quite a bit with the surrounding task forces; but there are a lot of things which are either uniquely Ukranian (e.g. the Cossacks) or considered part of Ukraine's military heritage (e.g. Kievan Rus') that could be worked on. Provided that there are enough editors who have an interest specifically in focusing on "Ukranian" military history, I see no reason for the overlap to be a major concern. Kirill Lokshin 17:32, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

We can simply redefine the R&S task force's boundaries to not include Ukraine any more. Buckshot06 04:36, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

That would be unpleasantly messy, I think; even if we manage to dance around the Kievan Rus' issue (which is a major debate in its own right), the Ukranian SSR is clearly part of Soviet military history. In general, I would suggest that having overlaps between task forces—particularly national task forces—is much more doable in practice than opening ourselves up to continual debates over which task force some disputed historical topic "belongs to". Kirill Lokshin 04:41, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

The USSR task force works. --Ineffable3000 04:43, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Useful?

US Army Command and General Staff College's Combat Studies Institute More PDF's primarily about the US Military and it's development in addition to studies on foreign battles. It's in English and it's free.

US Army's Army Heritage Collection Online Check out the digital resources online. There are many field manuals and technical manuals for American equipment, a British-American "dictionary" dating from WWII, a similar German-American dictionary, and other resources broken down (generally) by era. Most resources are in PDF format and some are rather large.

Certainly useful, thanks a lot. Bukvoed 09:15, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Comments on Talk:Pontic Greek Genocide

Please could people leave their comments at Talk:Pontic Greek Genocide in order to achieve and improve consensus. It is tangentially related to Military history. - Francis Tyers · 12:20, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I answered your question. Please take a look at what wikipedia is and what not. Furthermore stop all attacks on basis of political POV. Wandalstouring 13:58, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

A different reference style

Take a look at British African-Caribbean community. "Cref" is used there, reducing the amount of text inserted into the article. This is very useful for complex citations. Example^{[my finger]}

Note ^ my finger: is typing this see also [1] and ^[1]
Wandalstouring 15:42, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

It might be useful (in moderation!) in particular cases; but, as it produces a significantly longer note marking in the text, it tends to be overwhelming on an article with a high density of citations. Compare, for example:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.¹² Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.¹³ Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.¹⁴ Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.¹⁵

with

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.^green Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.^blue Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.^orange Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.^purple

(This aside from the fact that it's not actually a citation style that's found anywhere outside Wikipedia; it'll be somewhat baffling to people seeing it for the first time.) Kirill Lokshin 16:17, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I think it might have some usefulness, but I would echo Kirill's concerns about putting it into general use, particularly the last point. Carom 17:03, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

War in Somalia

Could members of Milhist join the discussion at Talk:War in Somalia (2006 - present)? Please make a decision on the name of this war. --TheFEARgod (Ч) 11:43, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Mass renaming of by-country battle/war/siege/operation categories

As the previous nomination (for Category:Sieges by country) has now been closed, I've put up a new mass nomination at CFD (as discussed above) to rename everything to "X involving Y". Comments there would be very appreciated (as would assistance with putting {{cfr}} tags on all of the categories)! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 05:26, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

All the categories are now tagged; comments on the nomination are still welcome, of course! Kirill Lokshin 08:10, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

And more comments might still be helpful, if anyone hasn't dropped by yet! :-) Kirill Lokshin 17:18, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Another reminder, for anyone that hasn't stopped by. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 22:01, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Nomination guidelines

I feel like imposing some nomination guidelines would help avoid lots of strange requests for article evaluation that came to my attention within the last days. I suggest that every article must have a peer review first. In this peer review it can be suggested to make a GA, A-class or FA request. If none is suggested the article can only rise through our normal process. Stub, start, B-class, than GA, or taking two steps at once, A-class and from A-class only to FA (except it was agreed in a previous review to recommend this). At the time an article is nominated for a classifying review it should at least be stable without major changes for three(GA,A-class) to seven(FA) days. Wandalstouring 13:06, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Aside from the practical issue of how we can enforce hard rules like this, I don't really think that requiring a set path is going to be helpful in all cases. There are certainly some experienced editors who could manage to take an article straight to FAC, skipping peer review, and attain FA status without major problems; while peer reviews are generally helpful, I think it would be inappropriate for us to try and penalize our best writers for skipping them! ;-)

(Not that encouraging people to submit peer reviews is a bad idea, of course; but merely that our stance on this should, indeed, be gentle encouragement, rather than attemts to twist people's arms.)

As an aside: I don't think there's any real benefit to having an A-Class review explicitly recommend FAC. It's sort of assumed that, once any problems mentioned there are fixed, the article stands a pretty decent chance at an FA nomination. Kirill Lokshin 15:44, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

On the other hand everybody who thinks he is one of our best writers... What about an article being actually stable when entering such a review? Wandalstouring 17:01, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

I think genuine instability (by which I mean disputes or edit wars over the content) is obviously a bad thing. Having said that, we need to be careful to not discourage improvements (particularly copyediting) during the nomination process; if wording and style changes are being made to an article, that's usually not a bad thing, and quite common in such circumstances. Kirill Lokshin 17:08, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

If an article gets completly reconstructed by some editors it is likely the worst approach of a third party to nominate it for FA or any other review. That's my point about stability. "At the time an article is nominated for a classifying review it should at least be stable without major changes for three(GA,A-class) to seven(FA) days." If this is not the case the editors themselves don't seem to be satisfied with the work and consider some parts to miss information or that it could else be improved. Just wait until a degree of satisfaction has been achieved with an article before running wild with nominations. Naturally there is no reason to object editing while an article is in review and suggestions are made or edits shortly after review nomination when someone discovered errors, stylistic issues, etc. Wandalstouring 18:49, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Meh. I suppose it's a valid sentiment; but, again, I would be wary of trying to be unnecessarily legalistic about this. The "instability" of an article may reflect deeper problems with it, or it may just be a consequence of perfectionist copyediting; the two cases should, I think, be regarded somewhat differently. Kirill Lokshin 18:59, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

How many perfectionists do we have who make major changes to an article every three to seven days? Wandalstouring 19:15, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

That depends on how you define "major", I suppose. It's not uncommon for editors to go through and copyedit an article immediately before a FAC nomination (or, more precisely, nominate an article on FAC once they're satisfied with the copyedit), though, and I think we need to distinguish that case from genuine "major changes" that affect the content of the article. Kirill Lokshin 19:18, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Goguryeo-Sui Wars or Goguryeo-China Wars

Full discussion in Talk:Goguryeo-China wars.

Yug has renamed Goguryeo-Sui Wars to Goguryeo-China Wars, because he wants to include later Tang-Silla invasions of Baekje-Goguryeo, which I think is really a separate war. It doesn't make sense, because if you call it Goguryeo-China Wars, the article should include all wars between Goguryeo and China, including the wars against the Four Han Colonies, all the way through Goguryeo's fall. The article as-is, is not about that, it's really about the war between Goguryeo and the Sui Dynasty, which itself is a major, specific topic that should have its own article. If he wants to create another article on the Tang-Silla invasions of Baekje-Goguryeo, that's fine, but don't hijack an existing article on a different topic. Please see and say what you think about it. Thank you. OpieNn 19:45, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

I seen It. I suspect Pro-korean position but that also may be an user with more knowledge than me. Please go to the main talk page. Every opinion are welcome. Yug (talk) 20:02, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Commented on article's talk page. Kirill Lokshin 20:20, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Advice on naming conventions

Would those working on military history have any advice for naming conventions for earthquakes? I've attempted to find guidance at WP:NAME, but haven't found anything yet. My specific question is whether an event should be identified by: (a) common name; (b) minimal name unless disambiguation required; (c) standard convention such as date and year? Earthquakes can generally be located specifically and unambigously by location and year (though very famous earthquakes may have a well-known popular name). The case in question is 1356 Basel earthquake, which recently got moved to Basel earthquake. My instinct is that the former is more usual, as the year is what people are often referring to, just as much as the location. What do people here think? Carcharoth 00:46, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

It's not entirely relevant to the project, but our convention or battles, etc. has generally been not to add unnecessary disambiguators. That is, if there was only one earthquake at Basel, it should probably be Basel earthquake. If there were more than one earthquake, we tend to use paranthetical disambiguators, and the article in question would become Basel earthquake (1356). Carom 01:24, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually, for historical articles, parenthetical disambiguation is less common than putting the date at the front of the article. See Category:Earthquakes in the United States for modern examples. Considering hurricanes, see 1893_Sea_Islands_Hurricane, 1893 Chenier Caminanda Hurricane, 1898 Windward Islands Hurricane, 1899 Hurricane San Ciriaco. These tend to be events that occurred before modern naming systems evolved, and the most consistent historical naming convention has been to use <YEAR> <LOCATION> <HURRICANE>. More and more, I see that Military History naming conventions probably don't apply, but thanks again for the advice. Carcharoth 04:03, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I think there's a major difference here in that hurricanes, disasters, etc. are commonly referred to by year (as the well-known ones tend to be isolated events), whereas battles and wars almost never are (because a lot of them tend to happen around the same time). Something like "the 1356 earthquake" is probably meaningful; "the 1356 battle" is probably not. Kirill Lokshin 04:07, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Funnily enough I asked this at the Hurricanes WikiProject, see here, and got the opposite answer. My view is that 1356 earthquake and Basel earthquake are equally appropriate names (it is notable for being the major earthquake from 1356 that is known and studied today, and it is notable for being the major earthquake in the history of Basel), but in fact it is referred to in the literature as the 1356 Basel earthquake. You might start talking to someone about the Basel earthquake, and they might look blank for a moment, wondering if there has been some big disaster in Basel, and then they would go, "Oh, you mean the 1356 Basel earthquake!". Do you see the point I am trying to make here? Even if the convention is generally "not to add unnecessary disambiguators", that convention sometimes misses the point about how things are named. Anyway, thanks for the advice. Carcharoth 03:57, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Just to (really) end the thread, in case anyone here is interested in naming conventions of this sort, I requested a move and started discussion at Talk:Basel earthquake. Carcharoth 01:05, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Cleaning up the military personnel categories - part 1

Okay, getting back to the (repeatedly buried) question of bringing some order to Category:Military personnel and the entire tree under it, I'd like to propose that we start off with two more-or-less obvious sets of mergers:

Category:Military veterans and its children. There's no reason why military service should be treated any differently from any other status (we don't have anything like Category:Former politicians or Category:Retired scientists); these should all be merged back into the proper "military personnel" categories. Assuming that the Category:People by war renaming is followed all the way down, these would be renamed as Category:Korean War veterans to Category:Military personnel of the Korean War, and so forth.
Category:Soldiers and its children. There's potential for a set of "enlisted personnel" categories, but these are currently being used as generic synonyms for "military personnel" (e.g. Catgory:Field Marshals being a sub-category of Category:Soldiers. I suggest that we simply merge all of these to the associated "military personnel" category, except for the ones where the distinction is already present, which could be renamed to simply use "enlisted personnel" in place of "soldiers".

Comments? Kirill Lokshin 22:03, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Both of those work for me. Carom 23:15, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Such a veteran categories may be useful in dealing with later symptoms of a military experience while military personnel is more limited to active duty. The idea behind such a veteran category would be to provide info on people affected by their military experience in later life. This phenomen is less eminent with other professions. Naturally everybody who was in the military can be listed in the category military personnel. The veteran category is used for people where we have anything of encyclopedic importance to say about military experience influencing their post-military life. Take Erich Maria Remarque who was a simple soldier (like most males of his age) but wrote influential books(All Quiet on the Western Front,Arch of Triumph or Three Comrades (novel)). Wandalstouring 13:55, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Mmm, even if something like that is useful, is "veterans" the best name for it? Based on past experience, I suspect we're going to see it used interchangeably with the regular "military personnel" categories, which will just create a redundant category scheme. Kirill Lokshin 19:22, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Firearm cartridge infobox

Looking over the large list of cartridge articles, I think it might be prudent to create an infobox for them. Any ideas as to what sort of information they should contain? --Eyrian 23:27, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Weaponry task force#Firearm cartridge infobox. Kirill Lokshin 23:38, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Symbol for captured commanders in infoboxes

There's a discussion starting at Template talk:POW about finding a good symbol to use for captured commanders in {{Infobox Military Conflict}}; apparently the symbol currently there has font rendering issues for some editors. Comments and ideas would be very welcome! Kirill Lokshin 07:03, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 23:05, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Maintaining FA-status

Does anyone know how many votes on FARC it takes for a current Featured Article to remain Featured? So far I am the only one to have cast a vote on the USS Wisconsin FARC page, but I have a feeling we need more than just one. TomStar81 (Talk) 03:17, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure, but I suspect that it remains featured in the absence of an explicit consensus to de-feature it. Kirill Lokshin 03:42, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Well now we have a tie at 1:1, with one threatened remove vote looming for "lack of adequate citations". Needless to say, now I am panicy... TomStar81 (Talk) 21:05, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Very curious. I wonder if it might not be worthwhile to add some discussion of canonical sources to our reference guidelines, for the benefit of people who don't seem to understand what they are. Kirill Lokshin 21:18, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

That seems like it might be a good idea. Carom 21:58, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm down with it. TomStar81 (Talk) 00:28, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who commented/suggested on the FAR page for Wisconsin; it cleared FAR yesterday, thus remaining a featured article. TomStar81 (Talk) 21:22, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Battle of Diu

I moved Battle of Diu to Battle of Diu (1509). Links now need to be changed. --Ineffable3000 06:04, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Great Britain

Can we please use the term Great Britain as opposed to Britain. The word 'Great' is NOT a term of aggrandizement but one of geography. Thankyou. An increasingly cross Raymond Palmer 16:52, 30 December 2006 (UTC) 16:49, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

What usages are you referring to? Carom 17:32, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I was specifically talking about infoboxes. Raymond Palmer 20:47, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I suspect this is caused by simple carelessness in using a somewhat informal term, rather than some purposeful attempt at making a distinction between the two. :-) Kirill Lokshin 20:54, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I would agree with Kirill - I suspect that most editors don't see much of a distinction between "Great Britain" and "Britain," and that use of the latter is not due to any widespread belief that "Great" is an unnecessary term of aggrandizement. Carom 21:18, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Notability standards

Apparently someone has started another discussion about notability standards for military personnel. I have no idea if it'll go anywhere productive; for the time being, I've left a pointer to our existing guideline there, so anyone interested might want to keep an eye on how the discussion proceeds. Kirill Lokshin 20:06, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Tagging for citations

Just a general comment: if you are taking the time to read through an article, please take the time to paste in {{fact}} tags where you feel they are necessary. These are immensely helpful to the primary contributors to the article (facts and statements can seem obvious and not needing a citation to someone very familiar with the subject matter, an outside look is very beneficial) and can accelerate growth towards A/FA status. Happy New Year everybody! - Emt147 ^Burninate! 22:58, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Yet another CFD

And no sooner did "Wars of Africa" get renamed than it winds up listed for renaming again! It's a rather complicated case, and I'm not at all sure what the best solution is; any comments or suggestions would be very welcome! Kirill Lokshin 03:24, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

The Rat and the Monster

The articles for the Landkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte and the Landkreuzer P. 1500 Monster have been recreated despite previous AFD consensus that there is no sufficient data to prove their existence. I am still not seeing a shred of credible scholarly evidence, and would like to request assistance from experts on the topic to rid the encyclopedia of their presence once and for all, or failing that, providing a credible military historian's view on the rumored project. --Agamemnon2 20:48, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Do you have a link to the previous AfD discussion? Carom 21:34, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Do we have any credible source for the technical data? There is lots of crap in the internet about technical feats of the Nazis. Wandalstouring 23:12, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I took a look through some of the books in my personal library and I couldn't locate any concrete mention of either vehicle, and I certainly can't find any techinical specs. None of the weblinks provided in the article seem to meet the definition of a reliable source, and I'd be interested to see what sources were used to defend the article at the previous AfD. Carom 23:30, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/P-1000 and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/P-1500 for earlier discussions. Shimgray | talk | 01:35, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Shimgray. After looking over the previous debates, I tend to agree that both articles are, at this point in time, unverifiable. While it's fairly obvious that the German military entertained all sorts of incredible projects, I can;t find any reference to these specifically. The best I can do is oblique references to tanks larger than the Tigers, but these are probably the Panzer VII and VIII, both of which are verifiable. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that, at some point, the Germans had looked at something similar to the P 1000 or P 1500, but I think that, at this point, they should probably be deleted as unverifiable, with no prejudice against recreation if someone can produce a reliable source. Carom 02:00, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

There is, however, a mention of an upcoming book in the P-1000 talkpage, that apparently features the tank. However, the Amazon page for said book left me unimpressed on the scholarly value of said work. Logically, the easiest way to prove the existence of the P-1000 would be to find this mythical turret they supposedly installed as a gun battery in Norway. Another way would be to crunch the numbers for mass, size and ground pressure, which I suspect would prove the absolute impossibility of the design. --Agamemnon2 09:41, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I did some hasty number crunching, and came up with ground pressure in the range of 2200 to 2800 PSI. --Agamemnon2 10:05, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

There were huge German tank design for clearing minefields(Minenräumwagen B I, Minenräumwagen B II, Schwimm Minenräumwagen Ente, Minenräumpanzer Räumer) using their incredible mass. Naturally you could mount a gun on it. Such big designs would only make sense if you wanted ground vehicles with an increased capability to withstand aerial attacks and infantry missiles. They would be very unlikely to be driving around(remember how low on fuel the Wehrmacht was), more like a moveable fortress. Perhaps someone made up a story from some fancy ideas. Wandalstouring 22:22, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

A story, yes, but that's all it is until someone can dig up one shred of evidence. The fact that there are technical specs being quoted in the articles indicates there should be some primary source from whence such specs would be derived, yet none has been produced. --Agamemnon2 23:51, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I Smell a Ratte!

The Ratte is an entirely fictional creation of one Zack_Parsons for Something Awful. The very fact it is mentioned in a book entitled My Tank is Fight! should have been the first clue. Which, if you (Click me) and scroll down, is described as;

...a humorous pulp-history look at more than 20 unusual or insane inventions of the Second World War. Each chapter features a detailed examination of the real history and technology behind each invention and all 19 chapters are linked by fictional narratives. The book is also lavishly illustrated, with 18 full-color illustrations by Josh Hass, and more than two dozen detailed black and white illustrations by Mike Doscher. My Tank is Fight! is not a dry analysis of the forgotten weapons of war, it brings those weapons to life.

Scroll down a bit more and you'll find out that;

My Tank is Fight" is an upcoming book from Something Awful and Kensington Publishing. Zack Parsons is adapting and expanding his series of articles that look at the most bizarre inventions of the Second World War with a generous portion of humor. Detailed black and white illustrations by artist Mike Doscher and lush color artwork from Josh Hass will bring these ridiculous inventions to life. Many of these strange inventions have never been professionally illustrated before!

* The P. 1000 "Ratte" - A German super tank so large that it used a cruiser turret with two huge naval cannons.

When the Ratte article was first posted on SA, I sent Parsons a note asking- why only two 280 mm guns? Why not a full turret with 3?! To which he replied, That would have just been ridiculous. I got pretty much the same reaction when I suggested that the Ratte be added to the Blitkrieg2 mod for Command & Conquer: Generals. C'est la guerre:(--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 10:13, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Um. The SA articles date to (I think) 2004. The Achtung Panzer page dates to 1999 (May 4 1999 archive copy; other dates). I don't think we can reasonably attribute invention to Parsons here. Shimgray | talk | 17:14, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

As the Achtung Panzer page seems to be the root source, I've emailed its author to see if he can remember anything about the source. Will let you know. Shimgray | talk | 17:23, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

On Murphy's laws of combat needing cleanup help

This article was recently put up on AFD and reached no concensus, but is in need of TLC. IMHO, should be moved to List of Murphy's laws of combat, and still needs plenty TLC. (hint, hint) <G>
I'm pretty sure some of the attributions cited will actually be quotes some of the readers here will know the source for, etc. At least the list is amusing. I'm partial to #34 and #36 in particular.
There is also an 'unwise' (borne out of frustration perhaps for all the HUGE amounts of TLC needed, perhaps) to merge it with Murphy's Law which would certainly be mixing in bad oranges with some decent apples, so to speak. The discussion on that is here. A quick vote and/or comment on that would be appreciated, these in-your-face tags tend to hang around too darned long. Happy New Year All! // FrankB 05:50, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

That survived AfD? Wow. —Kevin 13:47, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

It is one of the many offsprings of Murphy's law and it should be mentioned in this article. I don't think it necessary to list it in full detail here, the external link is enough. Wandalstouring 22:09, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Canadian Seaforth Highlanders

Hi. Dropped by here because I'd just been at the Seaforth Highlanders page to see if they had anything on the Vancouver Seaforths; this branched off expecting there to be an article on their impressive chateau-style armoury on Burrard Street at 1st in Kitsilano. There was no mention of them on the Scottish Seaforths page so, although I left a remark there, fielding this here in the hopes someone might take up the sword, or whatever, and write up at least some stubs on the various regiments in BC; or is there a Canadian branch of this Wikiproject? The Beatty Street Armoury (...the Princess Pats or the British Columbia Rifles, or is that the same thing) and the armoury in New West, others in North Van and so on, and their regiments; none have articles that I can find (adding templates to the Vancouver WikiProject, y'see, and catting any articles I find that need same.)Skookum1 09:55, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

We do have a Canadian military history task force that would probably be a good place to ask for such things. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 13:51, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you; I just happened to find The Seaforth Highlanders of Canada a few minutes ago and stopped by to say so. I'll also add a "see also" to the main Seaforth Highlanders page.Skookum1 03:30, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

List of aircraft carrier deployments

I came across this article while browsing. Is there anything that can be done to salvage it? One Night In Hackney 10:11, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Good pick-up. I would say a good candidate for AFD.. The title alone would suggest a list detailing every time any country's carrier left port. hardly realistic. A bad title and the article reflects it. I would the empty bin is a good spot for it.--Looper5920 10:55, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

My first thought was AFD, but I thought I'd at least bring it here to see if it could be improved somehow. I'll list it later, unless someone raises an objection. One Night In Hackney 11:07, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

POV?

Some person edited Battle of Bornholm (1676) with some controversial edits? Can you please take a look at it? --Ineffable3000 16:36, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

The edits may contain some correct information. Ask the Dutch military history task force for support and check whether it is possible to verify anything from the new edits. Delete anything that can't be verified. Wandalstouring 22:06, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Non-article content in the showcase

I've tried my hand at listing some of our non-article (and not-quite-article) featured content in the "Showcase" section on the project page; there are two issues I'd like opinions on:

Is this listing worthwhile? Or should we only list articles?
If it is worthwhile, should the images be given as simple links, or would it be more useful to use a <gallery> tag and display them as thumbnails?

Comments would be very appreciated! Kirill Lokshin 05:19, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I think the listing is worth while. If I may suggest, I think that the images would do better in a gallery so people can see them, but I think that we ought to create a seperate page to display them in gallery form since our primary page is already suffering from growing pains. TomStar81 (Talk) 06:12, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) and I approve the above idea! (I'm rather fond of galleries:)

I think it's good to list all the featured content. A gallery for the images might be useful, but a subpage might be worthwhile, as the main page is getting rather large (and I dread to think what a gallery with a bunch of images in it will do to people with slow connections or hardware concerns). Carom 18:18, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay, sounds good. I've created a gallery page with the images I've found so far; I'm not entirely up-to-date on FPs, so assistance with locating others in our scope would be appreciated! Kirill Lokshin 02:24, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

By-era category names

Looking through Category:Warfare by era and its sub-categories, I'm beginning to think that our naming convention isn't a very good one, as it produces ambiguous names like Category:Industrial battles. I would propose changing it from "Foo X" to "X of the Foo era" (which matches up nicely with the existing by-war convention:

Comments? Kirill Lokshin 17:39, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I like the suggestion very much, as I think the older (current) category names imply the allowance of a much wider meaning of the terms, while the new terms are much more implicitly specific. Even outside of the awkwardness of "Industrial battles", there is the issue of readers & editors arguing the meaning of "Ancient battles" or "Modern battles." I think that while the term "Modern battles" invites debate on what does and does not constitute "modernity", the phrasing "of the Modern era" might imply a bit more strongly that "this isn't simply the word 'modern' in all its potential meanings; this is a specific application of the term; please see Modern era of warfare for more on how Wikipedia defines the periodization of military history." LordAmeth 18:13, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Standardizing category names is probably a good enough reason to move these (although I shudder at the though of another CfD). the argument for greater specificity is good as well. Carom 18:16, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, hopefully this particular CFD won't be among the more unpleasant ones. (I'm not looking forward to the point when we start to put the military personnel category tree through CFD, myself.) Kirill Lokshin 18:51, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Yep. But it will have to be done at some point, I suppose. Carom 18:57, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

IIRC, military equipment is currently done in the "by era" scheme; standardization is a good thing. Oberiko 19:06, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I've made the nomination on CFD; comments there would be appreciated. Kirill Lokshin 22:47, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Assessment statistics for task forces

Another idea that's been bounced around a few times, but never quite followed up on: would it be useful for each task force to have its own assessment statistics/log/worklist available? Kirill Lokshin 18:50, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Probably. I suspect it will be most useful for the larger task forces. Those with a small number of articles (or without a lot of tagged articles) probably won't benefit as much. Carom 18:56, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay. I've created the (variety of) needed templates; for the time being, I've done the coding and category creation only for the French military history task force, as a test. By tomorrow, we should have some preliminary results up on the task force page. :-) Kirill Lokshin 03:16, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay, the results are up, and can be seen at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/French military history task force#Tagging articles. Thoughts? Kirill Lokshin 14:28, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

That looks like it could be useful, but I'm not wild about what it's doing to the layout of the page - I don't know about anybody else, but it makes the page really "cramped" in my browser. Carom 14:33, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

That should be something easily fixable by shuffling the sections a bit. I've moved things around so that the two floating boxes don't overlap; does it look any cleaner now? Kirill Lokshin 14:46, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes indeed. Nice work! Carom 15:02, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

The infrastructure is now complete, and I've added the assessment statistics boxes to all the task force pages. They should get filled once tonight's bot run completes. Kirill Lokshin 06:27, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

This is a good addition it looks ok and should be useful. Hossen27 07:44, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Kirill! I was playing around with it yesterday on the Korean task force page, to see if it was something I could help with, but I quickly ran into a quagmire. That was a lot of work on your part, and many kudo's for implementing this for us. wbfergus 14:32, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I like the idea and seeing it now it looks good. Kyriakos 04:33, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Arbitration Committee?

I know at one time there was talk of creating an in-house arbitration committee for just the MilHistWP, but the only mention I've found of such a thing is possibly in the Outreach section, and even that is only mentioned in passing. There's a minor situation developing over at the United States Army page between two WPMH members (this outlines the discussion taking place) in which one party appears willing to have outside help with the dispute, while another seems fairly uninterested, with the 3-revert rule coming upon the latter very quickly. To whom would we direct this issue before it gets out of control and is eventually forced to the parent WP arb committee? --ScreaminEagle 16:27, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

That looks like a run-of-the-mill dispute about what sources are needed to add a statement to an article; we just need some outside editors to drop by the page and inject some calm into the situation (ideally before both people wind up on WP:AN/3RR). It's pretty normal for things like that to happen; so long as people don't start attacking each other, it's not likely to wind up before ArbCom unless things become really bad. Kirill Lokshin 16:55, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

A-class suggestion

Since we denote FA-class articles with an FA star I was wondering if we could denote our A-class articles with a special on page symbol so people could tell which pages are A-class without actually checking the talk page. I was thinking about articles within the scope of our project only, so my thought was to place a black letter "A" over top of the Triple Chevrons image. We could place that at the top of our A-class articles to show that they meet our project’s standards for A-class. Since some memebers of the project (myself included) already use this layout to place the chevrons on thier userpages to denote membership in the Military History Wikiproject, I think that the design would look good and stand out. TomStar81 (Talk) 06:39, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Not feasible, I think. The whole placing-icons-in-the-corner trick is highly controversial, both from a technical standpoint (it's a CSS hack that breaks on any number of browsers, and violates a whole bunch of web standards) as well as a self-reference one. The only reason the FA star has remained is because of the extemely high reputation of the FA process, and its extraordinary visibility within the community; all the other attempts at placing symbols there (such as the repeated ones by WP:GA, among other groups) have been deleted in short order. Kirill Lokshin 06:50, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

As far as I know it is only established in the German wiki to have different symbols for the article level in the barnstar corner. see barnstar de:Römische Legion(Roman army) and A-class de:Römische Marine(Roman navy. There used to be more such categories several months ago, like a big G for good article. Wandalstouring 10:43, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Article needs vetting by someone familiar with the subject

See List of Nazi Party leaders and officials. I have been watching the page since I noticed a vandal adding someone to the list who obviously didn't belong, but I'm worried that there are entries there, or linked from there, that look good at first but are actually bogus. Can someone look into this? And perhaps place the page on their watchlist? Thanks! Mango juice^talk 18:42, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

First of all the list is ill constructed. There was only one leader at a time of the Nazi party. I suggest to find out whether a common format exists for high ranking members of a party no matter whatever political faction they belong/ed to. In case it doesn't, a format that could be easily maintained would be a good approach. Personally I would prefer categories. Wandalstouring 21:00, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Odd Category

I can across Category:Army units and formations of World War 2 just now. Do we need this category? As far as I can tell, the current category tree doesn't seem to discriminate by branch within a particular conflict (at least, not as far as WWII is concerned). It doesn't seem to be used for anything other than a handful of Canadian brigades, and they are already catted elsewhere. Am I right in thinking this is a delete? Carom 20:38, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Yup, delete it. One of the disadvantages that anyone can create anything is that someone does create something that doesn't fit in the system some others want to establish. So behold of power of the delete button. Wandalstouring 20:55, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Mmm, it's a valid (but not-yet-properly-populated) intersection category between Category:Military units and formations of World War II and Category:Army units and formations; it just needs to be renamed from "World War 2" to "World War II". The absence of other comparable categories isn't that good of an indicator; since this standardized category system was only introduced about a month ago, there are major gaps in which sets of categories have been created. Kirill Lokshin 20:56, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough - am I right in thinking that this would then be the parent of things like Category:Units and formations of the German army in World War II? Carom 20:59, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Pretty much. (Although, going by the standard conventions, that category should pobably either be Category:Military units and formations of the Wehrmacht in World War II, or, even simpler, Category:Military units and formations of the Wehrmacht.) Kirill Lokshin 21:08, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

OK. I'll put it up for renaming to Category:Army units and formations of World War II. Carom 21:10, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

It can probably go through WP:CFD#Speedy renaming. Kirill Lokshin 21:11, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, done. Carom 21:22, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 21:23, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Ninjaken and Ninjato

Trouble is afoot on these two pages! To make a long story short, these are two articles about the same thing. Consensus is not reached on either of the articles whether this "ninja katana" ever even existed, but as it is, one of the articles is decisively pro, and the other decisively contra. Can somebody with enough expertise (I don't have it, obviously, although I am inclined to believe that this is a fictitous sword) look at these two articles, merge them and state both sides of the story in one article? I'm asking this here, because medieval weapons seem to be included in this project. I've also asked the same on the Project:Japan talk page. TomorrowTime 13:07, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Stephen K. Hayes wrote in one of his books on Ninjas about this type of weapon (straight blade, shorter than a katana and longer than a wakizashi), but I can't recall the title. Wandalstouring 15:11, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

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