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New unit naming convention

As there don't seem to be any objections being raised to the draft naming convention for military units and formations, shall we go ahead with adopting it and throwing the door open for page moves? Or does anyone have a problem with the proposal? Kirill Lokshin 22:51, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Nope says the usual troublemaker. Wandalstouring 23:45, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Rock'n'Roll. Carom 00:04, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Been supporting it since its ealiest conceptions.--Dryzen 16:15, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay, as there don't seem to be any objections, I suppose we can start implementing it (on a provisional basis, anyways); if there are any problems, I'm sure people will quickly provide feedback. ;-)

So: please feel free start moving articles; try to leave a link to WP:MILHIST#Military units and formations in the move summary, also, so that people can figure out what's going on. Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 03:15, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

This is the first I've heard of this. What's the point of this change? Where was it discussed?

—wwoods 07:30, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

All over the place, really; but the bulk of the discussion is here. Briefly: there have been issues with country names appearing in the wrong place in cases where the actual unit name includes them, as well as a general desire to make it clear that the country names are basically disambiguation terms rather than parts of the units' names in their own right; thus, the new convention. Kirill Lokshin 13:30, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

So, as I've been beginning to implement this (starting with the articles on my watchlist), I've come across some oddities that I'm not entirely sure what to do with. Two examples are British 13th (Western) Division and 5th Canadian (Armoured) Division. I'm tempted to move the second example to 5th Armoured Division (Canada), but I'm not entirely sure. I have no idea what to do with the other one. Any advice? Carom 22:40, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. I'm no expert on either of these units (and there do seem to be some subtleties here that someone with more knowledge may be able to better understand), but, as far as I can tell:

• The 5th seems to actually have been named the "5th Canadian Armoured Division" rather than the "5th Armored Division"; there may be some background here in terms of it adopting the names of the WWI Canadian divisions. It might be better to ask the Canadian editors here what the formal name of it was, though.
• The 13th could, I suppose, be placed at 13th (Western) Division (United Kingdom); but I'm wondering if "Western" is actually part of the formal name, or just a nickname that could be dropped to produce 13th Division (United Kingdom).

Kirill Lokshin 22:52, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

It appears the "Western" was a simple device indicating which of the five British Army commands (Irish, Scottish, Northern, Eastern and Western) raised the division. 13th (Western) was a "K1" division, there is also the 19th (Western), which was a "K2" division. I would lean towards keeping the (Western) disambiguator, and putting the division at 13th (Western) Division (United Kingdom), (as you suggested, Kirill). Thoughts? Carom 16:56, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

As an addendum, anyone interested in where I got that information can find it here. Carom 17:02, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

That seems reasonable to me; if that's the way the division was actually named, who are we to argue? ;-) Kirill Lokshin 17:34, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I'll go ahead and move it, then. (But I will, as usual, prepare myself for a firestorm of complaints) Carom 17:36, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

And another question. Are we using "USSR" or "Soviet Union" to disambiguate Soviet units? I'm guessing the latter, but just checking... Carom 02:35, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd go with "Soviet Union"; that seems to be the more common name of the country. (Similarly, "United Kingdom", not "United Kingdom of ...", etc.) Kirill Lokshin 02:39, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Works for me. Carom 02:42, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I'm still pretty new and don't fully understand all the subleties involved in doing the moving correctly. I'm willing to go through the Korean War Military Units and get them done, but to ensure I do it correctly, I have several questions below.

I'd take "U.S. 2nd Infantry Division" and do a page move to "2nd Infantry Division (United States)", then create a new page consisting of a redirect called the original name (U.S. 2nd Infantry Division) which will point to the new, moved page name? Next, I'd probably want to go through the list of pages that used the old link ("What links here"), and edit those to use the new direct link. Is this procedure correct, or am I missing (or misunderstanding) something?

At least as far as the U.S. Military is concerned, should I automatically expand the disambiguation to say "United States Army" or "United States Marine Corps" (or just "U.S. Army" or "U.S. Marine Corps") to avoid any possible future confusion and make the unit name more consistent, so we don't have a bunch of "999th Infantry Division (United States) interpersed with "998th Infantry Division (United States Army)" and "997th Infantry Division (United States Marine Corps)".

How do the aviation units get renamed? Would "336th Fighter Squadron" get moved/renamed as "336th Fighter Squadron (United States Air Force)"? And with the closeness of Marine and Navy units, is is desirable (or neccessary) to disambiguate those as "VMFA-212 (United States Marine Corps)" vs. "VFA-113 (United States Navy)" (I have no idea what all the VFA/VMFA etc. prefaces mean).

Even though Naval ships (usually?) begin with something USS or HMS or whatever, should I also 'standardize' on adding the disambiguation as well, like "USS Boxer (CV-21) (United States Navy)" or "HMCS Sioux (R64) (Canada)" or "HMAS Sydney (1944) (Australia)"?

Finally, and this is more unrelated, there are an awful lot of Chinese and North Korean units that I'm running across that don't have pages yet. I'm thinking about just creating stubs for them, so that as I run across information on which battles they fought in, I can add in that piece of information, and at least build up a more complete stub with the list of that unit's battles. They won't be complete by any means, with the infobox 'stuff' for motto, shoulder patch, etc., but it would at least be a start for (hopefully) other researchers to expand on. Ideas or suggestions? Thanks. wbfergus 13:17, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

1. When you move a page, the old name automatically becomes a redirect to the new name. For example, when I moved British I Corps to I Corps (United Kingdom), the former automatically became a redirect to the latter. However, you do have to manually check all the other redirects and edit them so that they will continue to work.
2. I would recommend only using as much disambiguation as neccessary. Service disambiguators should probably only be used if a numbered unit exists within more than one branch of the military of a particular country.
3. Again, I would only use service disambiguators as neccessary. I don't know about the second part of this question.
4. There shouldn't be any need to add paranthetial disambiguators to warships.
5. By all means create stubs. If you can flesh them out, so much the better. Carom 15:55, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I'll pretty much second everything that Carom said. ;-)

There's no need to preemptively disambiguate by service, as there are really only a handful of cases where the names will overlap within a single country's armed forces; we can handle those on a case-by-case basis without needing to change all the other articles. The same logic applies to ships; the disambiguation is already handled by the ship prefix (USS, HMS, etc.) and the year, so there shouldn't be any overlaps that need further disambiguation.

As far as the VFA/VMFA issue: are the acronym versions the actual names of these units? Or are their official names something else? In either case, there's no need to disambiguate if the actual unit's names are designed to be unique between the services (such as by including "Marine" in the USMC units' names).

As for stubs: please create them if you have some information to use! We definitely have a lot of systemic bias issues as far as our coverage of non-Western militaries is concerned, so getting the groundwork for additional articles would be great. Kirill Lokshin 17:38, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Regarding the VFA/VMFA etc. stuff, in the case of "VMFA-323", the article starts off with "Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 323 (VMFA-323)...". An example of the multitudes of these designations is Category:United States Marine Corps fixed wing squadrons and Category:United States Navy squadrons. To me, the "Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 323 (VMFA-323)" makes more sense, as then I can tell what type of unit it is. I "think" the VMFA-323 part is the unit designator and not the name itself, but not being familar with Marine or Navy units, I don't know. Either way, I'll hold off on those units until somebody with more knowledge of those units can participate, or just leave the renaming to them. wbfergus 17:57, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

That makes sense. I would think that placing the article at Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 323 and leaving the abbreviated form for the article body would be the cleanest solution; but I suppose that we should probably have some people who actually know what the unit's name is take a look at it. It may be worthwhile to copy this particular question to WT:USMIL. Kirill Lokshin 18:13, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Also, 2nd Division shows the problem with 'ground' units. So am I correct in that U.S. 2nd Infantry Division should be renamed to 2nd Infantry Division (United States) and U.S. 2nd Marine Division would become 2nd Marine Division (United States)? Thanks guys, I don't want to muck things up to bad. wbfergus 18:14, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

That looks right. Kirill Lokshin 18:19, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

That's the convention I've been using regarding infantry divisions, etc. In general, I would leave type disambiguators in place, so British 1st Armoured Division becomes 1st Armoured Division (United Kingdom) and British 1st Infantry Division becomes 1st Infantry Division (United Kingdom). Carom 18:22, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay, the 2nd Division is moved and I used AWB for checking the linked pages. Sorry for the overkill, I got carried away. :^) wbfergus 19:41, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Looks good; thanks for helping out with this! Kirill Lokshin 19:43, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay, another dumb question I can't seem to find the answer for. When creating/moving a unit for either North Korea or South Korea, what should I place in the parentheses? "Republic of Korea" or "South Korea" (either way, I'll know how to handle North Korean units). Also, with the Chinese units that fought in the Korean War, they weren't actually part of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), but rather the so-called "volunteers" of the People's Volunteer Army (CPV, or as they were first called, the CCF). Is it desirable to distinguish the apparent differences that would exist between the 4th Infantry Division (CPV) and the 4th Infantry Division (PLA), if such a mis-match actually does exist? Since the CPV forces were created specifically to add a "buffer-zone" between "volunteers" and China's regular military, I think there will be cases where the same unit designator exists in both "armies", but I don't know for sure. Should the PLA units be called something like "4th Infantry Division (China)" or "4th Infantry Division (People's Republic of China)" with any similarly named units from the CPV called "4th Infantry Division (Chinese People's Volunteers)" and conversely for Taiwan, "4th Infantry Division (Taiwan)" or "4th Infantry Division (People's Democratic Republic of China)". Sorry to be such a pest guys. wbfergus 20:09, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I would do something like 4th Infantry Division (Democratic People's Republic of Korea), 4th Infantry Division (Republic of Korea), 4th Infantry Division (People's Republic of China) and 4th Infantry Division (Chinese People's Volunteer Army). If there are better disambiguators, use those, but I would avoid using initialisms like PLA and CPV, as those may not be very informative to a lay reader. Carom 20:31, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Another possibility would be to follow the Wikipedia article names for the countries; our article is at South Korea rather than at Republic of Korea, for example, so it may be more consistent to have something like 4th Infantry Division (South Korea). Kirill Lokshin 22:00, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I just noticed that myself, after creating a couple categories for Republic of Korea, and trying to get them linked under Republic of Korea, and then finding nothing there. So, since it appears almost everything, even non-military, is under South Korea, I'll use that naming convention instead. wbfergus 13:47, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Looking through the renaming logs (much thanks to everyone helping out with this, by the way!), an interesting question comes up: do we need to add the "(Germany)" disambiguator to units that have German elements in the names already (particularly the various "SS" and "Panzer" formations)? I suppose that there might be other countries that would have "Panzer" units (Austria, maybe?); but at least for SS units, I would think the names are going to be very clearly unique even without a country specified. Am I way off here? Kirill Lokshin 19:34, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

No, you're probably right. I would imagine that "SS" units could have the national disambiguator dropped completely. Up to this point, I've been working under the (possibly misguided) assumption that there's a good reason for having the disambiguators in the first place, and just shifting them to the end (with a few exceptions). Carom 21:16, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I followed a link here for posting comments concerning the new, albeit provisional military naming convention adopted for Wikipedia after seeing the 1st Cavalry Division article renamed 1st Cavalry Division (United States). I can understand how this seems to be the best way to make articles more clear concerning their national origin, but I have an objection to doing this specifically for United States military units. Namely, many certain units have part of their name already in parentheses, for example, the 10st Airborne Division is literally 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) and there are others, namely reserve units, which have even longer names. I object to adding for confusion and making the article titles longer by adding {United States) to the end. We're talking about having articles called 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) (United States), 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry) (United States), and the best one, 77th Division (Reinforcement Training Unit) (USAR) (United States)]]. It just seems like it will only complicate matters more, especially for those readers who have no idea what all the other names in parentheses mean. I believe we should just stick with having U.S. ahead of the unit names, for the sake of clarity.--SOCL 16:50, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, the older usage was no less problematic (but in a different case—where "United States" was already elsewhere in the unit name). However, there seems to be a misconception here; the new convention does not require a country-name disambiguator to be attached to the name. There's a general recommendation that unit names which can reasonably be expected to overlap with other countries be preemptively disambiguated, but that's all; the guideline says that "the disambiguator is not necessary in cases where... the name is clearly unique". In other words: so long as someone familiar with the topic wants to make an argument that the 101st's name is clearly unique (which shouldn't be too difficult for a name that's in some complicated form, as it's quite unlikely that other militaries would adopt the same form), there's no problem with leaving off the country disambiguator (although I'd still suggest creating a redirect from it, just in case).

(More generally, the preemptive disambiguation is more intended for the myriad units with simple names like "XVI Corps" and "Second Army" and "12th Infantry Division".) Kirill Lokshin 17:57, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. Complex names probably don't need to be disambiguated, as they are likely unique. Carom 18:22, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Carom, I was going to say this on your talk page, but you directed anyone to make comments here, so I will. I noted that you changed First Army's name after I had already moved it to the new page per the new naming guidelines. The official name is not "First Army," it is "First United States Army," [1] and that's what I changed it to from the original "U.S. First Army," which is obviously not the official name. So I hope you don't take offense to my changing it back. As an aside, I'd already done the same to the rest of the numbered armies for the same reason. --ScreaminEagle 22:35, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Sorry about that - I realized after I moved it. No problem. Carom 22:37, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

No worries--I've already screwed up my fair share in the renaming and am having to go back and fix, so I suppose there's bound to be mistakes in the first days of a mass renaming project, no? --ScreaminEagle 22:46, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Yep - I expect there will be more mistakes by the time we're done (thanks for fixing my screw-up, btw). Carom 22:55, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Here's a question. I have been moving Australian divisions, and Hossen27 pointed out a potential problem: For virtually all of the Austrialian divisional articles, there are seperate articles for WWI and WWII units (for example, 1st Australian Division (World War I) and 1st Australian Division (World War II). What should we do with these? Personally, I think they should all be merged, leaving one article with subsections detailing the various creations of the unit, but I'm open to other suggestions. Carom 04:35, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

They shouldn't be merged they are completely different formations. The World War I units are part of what is known as the First Australian Imperial Force similar to the AEF, but it was a totally regular volunteer force. The First AIF was disbanded after WWI. The WWII units were created during the 1920's and are predominantly Militia units, quite often conscripts on national service. The units share no historic links and share no battle honours. Hossen27 04:37, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Good point. Maybe a different parenthetical should be used - something like 1st Division (Australian Imperial Force) as opposed to 1st Division (Australia)? Carom 04:41, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Yep, disambiguating by the service name, if possible, would probably be the best approach. If that's not possible, we may be able to get away with moving the war name to the end using the "in X" wording that gets applied for the by-country+by-war intersection category names. So you'd have, for example, 1st Division (Australia) in World War I and 1st Division (Australia) in World War II. Kirill Lokshin 04:46, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

No problem calling the WWI div 1st Division (Australian Imperial Force), but maybe 1st Division (First Australian Imperial Force) would be more accurate as there was a Second Australian Imperial Force in WWII, its units don't have any naming problems only one exists of divisions 6 through 9. What would the WWII div be called. Also the problem woth the 1st and 2nd division is that there both have a current formation named that and they two are completely separate from there historic name sakes. Hossen27 04:50, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm afraid that it's not correct to state that Australian WW1 and WW2-era divisions don't share battle honours and it's not at all the case that the two divisions which are currently active have no historical links to the divisions which were active in the World Wars. As an example, the official army history of the Australian 2nd Division at http://www.defence.gov.au/army/AHU/books_articles/Articles/Brief_History_2ndDiv.htm clearly states that the Division was "re-formed in Sydney in Mar 1921" after being disbanded at the end of WW1 and was again "re-raised" in 1951 after being disbanded in 1944 [emphasis added]. The 2nd Division is still an active division and is, in terms of linage, the same division which was first formed as part of the AIF in 1915. As another example, the 8th Brigade's website at: http://www.defence.gov.au/army/HQ8BDE/history.htm lists all the WW1 and WW2 battle honours won by the Brigade and its current battalions and clearly states that the Brigade was re-raised after being disbanded at the end of WW1 and on several subsequent occasions. There was a discussion of the difficulties of dealing with units which formed part of the 1st AIF and were later re-raised as a militia formation at Talk:39th (Militia) Battalion in which it was sort-of agreed that the best option was to combine the articles into a single article (though this is yet to be done). The upshot of all this is that the WW1 and WW2 articles should be merged as per the standard conventions. US Army divisions which started life as volunteer divisions and later became National Guard/reserve divisions don't have seperate pages, and neither should the Australian equivalents. --Nick Dowling 05:56, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh I always thought that the divisional level units had no relation, I was aware of he brigade and battalion sized units continuous histories. But I'm happy to be proven wrong no further problem with the merge. Hossen27 06:58, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Does anyone know whether or not country names are part of the official names for units from former British colonies during WWI and WWII (I'm thinking specifically of Canada and India) - or are they just disambiguators that can be dropped? For example, should it be 11th Indian Infantry Division or can I move it to 11th Infantry Division (India)? Carom 19:55, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

I suspect that the "country" names were probably part of the official naming (to disambiguate between units raised in different places, etc.); but I'm not entirely sure. In many cases, though, the problem will go away on its own, as the units have been re-raised by the now independent countries under simpler names. Kirill Lokshin 20:22, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

The formal names for the "overseas" units were invariably Nth Country Division, as I recall - so, yes, it probably should be 11th Indian Infantry Division (or 11th Indian Division) Shimgray | talk | 01:40, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

OK, per your recommendations, I'm going to move them all to "Nth Country Infantry Division." (or whatever) We'll see if anyone complains. Carom 02:59, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

None of the articles on Indian WWII divisions seem to discuss the divisional history beyond 1945, and I'm not sure if the modern Indian army consider these colonial units part of their lineage or not - I've moved most of them to "Nth Indian Infantry Division," but I can always move them somewhere else, if necessary. Carom 15:06, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure some of the post WWII, higher numbered divisions have/had (I expect not all exist today) a continuous history from WWII (armoured divisions using numbers of WWII armoured divisions etc.). In general I'd also recommend going for the standard system for Commonwealth units, that is to say number-type-size-(country). Though I know at least one (36th Infantry Division (Indian) transferred to the British army in 1944 (using Indian Establishment regiments, battalions etc.)) that could be problematic if its article is ever created. And yes, British divisions (and brigades where applicable) should retain their name in parenthisis, considering how not all divisions have such names I'd also recommend using the (United Kingdom) disambiguation even if that makes for two parenthisis. Some British divisions also lost their name between WWI and WWII (or received a new number), not sure how such should be handled (probably separate articles where no relation exists, single article under most common number and name with redirect under different number and name...).

I don't think I've created any unit articles yet (maybe one or two stubs), but I commonly add wikilinks for units in articles etc. So I've had to deal with these issues a lot lately. I also have my own little order of battle library rangeing from the Napoleonic Wars (can't count Alexander the Great, or medieval army info as orders of battle) to modern times, so I tend to jump in when needed.--Caranorn 22:03, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

To see how much work this would be I just moved the above mentionned 36th Infantry Division (United Kingdom). In this case I didn't have to move too many links as the unit is rather obscure, on the other hand this will cause some havoc the day someone wishes to add information about the post WWII 36th Infantry Division (India) as this is how the unit was raised again at a later time (there already is a wikilink from an Indian post war Corps to this article about a British WWII Division). Any idea how something like this should be handled? Essentially the unit history is continous from Indian service to British and back to Indian (I believe even the Brigade numbers were retained) and unrelated to the WWI British Division of the same number. This example also shows how Indian post WWII units retained traditional numbers and I'd assume maintained unit histories (I was previously aware of one or two Indian Armoured Divisions in that case).--Caranorn 22:44, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

It might be worth creating a simple stub for the other formation (e.g. "X was a division of the Y army, created in Z") at the correct name, which could then be linked to from lists of units and such; that would make it easier for future editors to realize that there are separate articles available for expansion. Kirill Lokshin 22:56, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I've gone through the remainder of the units at Category:Infantry divisions of the United States Army, and have moved all the pages to eliminate the leading "U.S." and instead added the "(United States)" disambiguator. However, as I was doing this, I noticed numerous other pages where the link wasn't changed, like Formations of the United States Army during World War II. So, I would like to offer a suggestion to others who may be (or have contemplated) renaming the military units as well. If at all possible, signup for the AutoWikiBrowser (AWB) at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser. This will allow you find all of the pages of that have a link to the one you just moved, and then go through all of the pages to change the link automatically. I found that it worked best for me if I first went through and did the "Search and Replace" for [[Page I Moved| with a replace of [[Page I Moved it To|, followed by another variation of [[Page I Moved]] with a replace of [[Page I Moved it To|Familar Name, Similar to Old Link]]. The first variation does the replace for all the links that already specify a link alias, and the second one does a replace while specifying a link alias. It's repetitous, but a lot faster and easier than doing it all manually. Care still needs to taken though that you type things in correctly for the replace string, and that you also verify what you are replacing on each page as it scrolls through. I'm afraid I missed a couple, and conversely was "carried away" on my first few passes. Hope this information may help others, so we can avoid the skipped pages with old links. wbfergus 15:39, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

You can also use "What links here" (not that anyone had to point that out to me...). This works best for articles that aren't on a lot of lists, etc. Usually I use it just to fix redirects, but it works for lists and disambig pages as well. Carom 16:06, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I first started out with that link, but I think the first one I tried was the 2nd Infantry Division, and it had over a hundred links, and it seemed like everytime i went back to page they were in a different order and I was getting all confused about where I was at, so I started looking for an easier way to do it. Anyway, I should alos mention that there are two Divisions I didn't do yet, the Americal Division and the U.S. Philippine Division. I'm seriously thinking about moving the Philippine Division to the 12 Infantry Division (United States), as that is what the "official" name is, but I figured I should wait a bit first. What do others think? wbfergus 16:19, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, it doesn't work real well for divisions with lots of links, but I think it might be more efficient for divisions that currently only have a few that need fixing.

You can probably move it to Philippine Division (United States) or just Philippine Division, depending on whether or not you think it likely that another country has (or had) a division with the same name. I wouldn't move it the number, as it appears the "Philippine Division" was a more common designator. Carom 16:30, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Yep, this could go either way. It could be argued that "Philippine Division" was just a nickname, and the numeric designation should be used as being the official one; alternately, it could be argued that the predominance of "Philippine Division" warrants making an exception to the standard use of formal names. I suppose it depends mostly on just how widely used the names are: are they more-or-less equally used, or is "Philippine Division" overwhelmingly the predominant one? Kirill Lokshin 16:58, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps it is time to de-conflict the older guidelines in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (military units) with MILHIST's draft naming convention for military units and formations. The major difference seems to be:

• Wikipedia:Naming conventions (military units) says For articles about a specific headquarters or unit, Prefix the article name with the nationality to avoid possible name clashes: British 6th Airborne Division
• draft naming convention for military units and formations says An article about a military unit or formation should be placed at "Name of unit (optional disambiguator)"

I am not an advocate for either approach, just want to highlight the conflict. Wendell 06:10, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I thought we'd agreed to adopt the new draft - has the page not been updated? Shimgray | talk | 13:14, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Yep, I think we never bothered to do anything with the old draft page. The simplest thing, in my view, would be to just add a {{historical}} tag to it with a note that there are newere guidelines available here; I don't really see much benefit to having the actual guideline duplicated in two places (which will then need to be kept in sync). Kirill Lokshin 17:40, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

13th (Western) Division (United Kingdom): the division was not a United Kingdom division it was a British Army division. The British Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force, paid for by taxes raised by Parliament but they are Monarch's armed forces as is HMG and the ministers in that government who order their deployment. So to use the country designation of United Kingdom is not correct. The name before the move (British 13th (Western) Division) was a much better name. --Philip Baird Shearer 10:24, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Would you consider 13th (Western) Division (Britain) better, or alternatively 13th (Western) Division (British). I don't recall ever seeing the term United Kingdom in relation to British units either, so I'd agree to a change unless that in turn violates other guidelines.--Caranorn 13:08, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

If we're going to do that, it should be 13th (Western) Division (British Army), for consistency; but the distinction seems to be unnecessarily subtle for the general reader. Unlike the English Civil War, there really isn't a practical distinction between the monarch and the state to be drawn here. Kirill Lokshin 14:31, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I think using "United Kingdom" is perfectly correct in this case (although, there is any argument that none of the "K" units need paranthetical disambguation - while there might be more than one 13th Division, it is unlikely that there are multiple 13th (Western) Divisions). I would also argue that we some to be using the "United Kingdom" designator elsewhere (for example, in the lists of participants), and it would make sense to have consistency not only within the article names, but across usages. Carom 14:48, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Regarding naming conventions for Russian and Soviet missiles, I generally agree, that manufacturer's designations should be used for article names instead of NATO reporting names (NATO names should necessarily be mentioned, but inside articles, as they are non-official ones). But as far as I know, design bureau generally does not precede model's name. The official name usually consists of the GRAU designation followed by name (if any) of the weapon, for example, 9K33 Osa. One of the sources where I've just seen such naming is the Great Russian Encyclopedia, published since 2004 by government's publisher (I can find the volume and the page, as well as other online sources, if needed). Cmapm 20:17, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Also I do not think that the provisional guideline Wikipedia:Naming conventions (military units) should be binned, instead the new proposals should be intgergrated into it. There is a lot of information in the Naming conventions (military units) which should be in any new guideline. Like for example that Army numercal designations be described using words and that Corps should use Roman numerals. Also for those who work on World War articles agreeing on the names to use for German units needs to be kept. --Philip Baird Shearer 10:33, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I would say that a better idea would be to pull any useful material from the old guideline here (either to the main guideline, or, for auxiliary material like the German unit names, to the appropriate task force); these pages—even the task force ones—tend to be rather higher-traffic than out-of-the-way guideline pages, which most editors don't even know about. Kirill Lokshin 14:31, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually, going through it in more detail, much of the material is redundant to the "use the official name" principle, and/or shouldn't be in a naming convention in the first place:

• "General conventions" - basically redundant, although the point about giving foreign-language names in the first sentence needs to be carried over. There's a whole bunch of stuff there about links that's already covered by the relevant MoS pages, and a little bit of material about abbreviated names that might work as a general guideline on short forms (but isn't a naming convention, as it doesn't apply to article titles).
• "Units that were redesignated, upgraded, reorganized, or reconstituted" - common sense, and not a naming convention.
• "Units and headquarters" - redundant to the main principle.
• "Type designations" - the German & Soviet materials are useful, and can be carried over to the relevant task forces. The British and US ones are basically redundant with the dialect-variations MoS.

So there's not all that much that's useful now. As the whole point of the new convention is that we let each country's armed forces figure out what the names should be, there's no need to maintain lists of how different unit sizes should be named, as it's basically no longer our job to decide what naming form to use. Kirill Lokshin 16:52, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Kirill most of the moves for things The Parachute Regiment->The Parachute Regiment (British Army)->The Parachute Regiment (United Kingdom), has been sparked by you and some others who had been working on US units not liking the previous standard. But if a unit in the British Army needs disambiguation them the usual way to do this is to place British before the unit name. I think that this is new proposed standard is creating as much of HA for name of British units as you though existed for American units before the proposed change. --Philip Baird Shearer 20:43, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

But what's the actual (practical) problem here? Is the issue the UK/British Crown distinction? It would be easy to create a blanket exception for British units in that case; we could just use "(British Army)" (or anything else you prefer) in place of "(United Kingdom)". But the usual way to disambiguate articles in Wikipedia is to add parenthesized disambiguators, not adjective prefixes; so I don't believe that it's very useful to insist on a different approach just for military units (of a particular country, no less) merely out of habit. Kirill Lokshin 20:51, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

FWIW, the reason I supported it was I couldn't stand seeing all the anachronistic "British 21st Brigades" and so on floating around, all of which had to be laboriously piped in running text, so chalk one for the other side ;-). "British XYZ" is not the name; "XYZ (British)" is not the name either, but it's clearer that the name is XYZ and "British" is an identifier, to distinguish it from things like the Canadian formations (where the national prefix is often part of the name). It makes a lot more sense to me to do it this way.

As to (United Kingdom) over (British Army)... well, it's simpler. Whilst it isn't precisely accurate with regards to the legal status of the units, it's not wrong - they are indeed of or pertaining to the United Kingdom - and it allows us consistency with other disambiguators (which usually use a country title) as well as meaning we don't have to have have three or four different disambiguating suffixes. Shimgray | talk | 20:58, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Krill it is not a practical problem it is an aesthetic one, they are "British Paras" not "Paras (UK)". Shimgray your argument is easily taken care of by redirects. I have when necessary set up pages like English Interregnum but at the same time created a redirect of Interregnum (England) so that I can use the pipe trick Interregnum. Besides the typical first use of a British Army unit would usually be written British 7th Armoured Brigade (as it is in the Burma Campaign article) of course if there is no other 7th Armoured Brigade in an article then from then on it would be 7th Armoured Brigade but would not be linked again. I can not see anyone writing 7th Armoured Brigade (United Kingdom) as an initial link although they might type British 7th Armoured Brigade, but it involves more typing (British and (United Kingdom)) and it breaks "WP:NC" which says:

Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature.

--Philip Baird Shearer 22:07, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, aesthetics are obviously a somewhat subjective issue; I don't know that we can come up with any convention that will satisfy everyone in that regard.

As far as the linking is concerned, though, I don't think that we're working at a loss here; while certain wordings may involve a longer link syntax (due to appending the disambiguator), others will allow a shorter one, because the piped-link disambiguation-hider syntax works as expected now. For example, suppose we want to write

Several units of the British XVII Corps—including the 7th Infantry Division, the 12th Infantry Division, the 2nd Armoured Brigade, and the 5th Armoured Brigade—crossed the river.

In the old form, this would be written as

Several units of the [[British XVII Corps]]—including the [[British 7th Infantry Division|7th Infantry Division]], the [[British 12th Infantry Division|12th Infantry Division]], the [[British 2nd Armoured Brigade|2nd Armoured Brigade]], and the [[British 5th Armoured Brigade|5th Armoured Brigade]]—crossed the river.

while in the new form, it would be

Several units of the [[XVII Corps (United Kingdom)|British XVII Corps]]—including the [[7th Infantry Division (United Kingdom)|]], the [[12th Infantry Division (United Kingdom)|]], the [[2nd Armoured Brigade (United Kingdom)|]], and the [[5th Armoured Brigade (United Kingdom)|]]—crossed the river.

Or, somewhat more trivially, note that

[[British 17th Armoured Regiment|17th Armoured Regiment]]

is actually longer than

[[17th Armoured Regiment (United Kingdom)|]]

(Obviously, the difference is more significant for other countries, since "United Kingdom" is one of the longer disambiguators. But, generally, situations where links need to be given without having the country display in the rendered text will involve less typing in the new syntax than in the old one.) Kirill Lokshin 23:00, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

There are some inconsistencies between writing 2d or 2nd and 3d or 3rd and so on with the numbered units. Did we ever reach a consensus on which format should be used, or should I just let it go? --ScreaminEagle 02:31, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, it should be whatever format is used by the armed forces in question (or by published historians, for translated numbers). My guess is that this will mostly be 1st/2nd/3rd. Kirill Lokshin 03:14, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Did we come to a consensus on whether or not German Panzer divisions, etc. need a country disambiguation? Carom 00:23, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I suspect they'll need disambiguation because of overlaps with Austrian and post-WWII German units. Germany, for example, still has armoured divisions; I'm not entirely sure if they're still called "Panzer" units, though. Kirill Lokshin 00:30, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I checked it out, and it appears that the Bundeswehr also user "Panzer" - should we use "Wehrmacht" and "Bundeswehr" to disambiguate? Or "Nazi Germany" and "Germany"? Or something else? Personally I'm in favor of using the services, but I'm not picky. And should other German units (whether they overlap or not) be moved for consistency? Carom 00:51, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

The service names are probably the better approach here. As far as everything else: I wouldn't complicate the disambiguation any more than necessary; the common ones should be disambiguated, but renaming the entire vast mass of WWII units to account for the handful of current ones doesn't seem particularly sensible. Kirill Lokshin 01:46, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I'll go through and compare a list of modern units to a list of WWII units and disambiguate the ones that overlap. Everything else that uses a parenthetical will just be "Germany". Carom 01:53, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Make it Wehrmacht. Nazi Germany isn't quite the right approach because in Nazi Germany there was also the old Reichswehr with for some time(They had kind of tank units out of cardboard and mounted on bikes). Wandalstouring 01:57, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Excellent. It looks like there are three Panzer divisions (which I've alread done) and three Panzergrenadier divisions that will need disambiguating (probably others as well, but that's for starters). Carom 02:08, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I guess this has already been said, but I'd like to add that I was quite happy with the "old" convention and the new one seems definitely less natural to me. How about some poll? //Halibutt 02:47, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

That's neither here nor there, I suppose. At its core, it's just an application of the normal Wikipedia disambigution policy to unit names; is there a substantial problem with it? I haven't seen any presented, so far: the links are not necessarily longer, and sometimes shorter; the pipe-link syntax works as expected; the issue of ambiguous adjective forms (e.g. "Chinese 14th Division") has been eliminated; the issue of country names appearing in the unit's actual name (e.g. "1st United States Infantry Regiment") has been resolved; and the role of a country name as a disambiguator versus a unit's actual name is clearer. Beyond inertia, is there any real reason why the old form would be preferred? Kirill Lokshin 02:56, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Arbitrary section break

So, what do we do with the old draft page? I've carried over some of the useful notes regarding the inclusion of original unit names in the first sentence, and moved the German translation material over to the German military history task force. I would argue that the remainder of the old material is either redundant or irrelevant now that the main convention is to use the official names, and that the best course of action would be to either mark the old draft as historical, with a note of where the new guideline is located, or to simply redirect the draft to the new guideline. What does everyone think? Kirill Lokshin 22:42, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I think the best course might be to mark the old guideline as historical - there's no need to delete it entirely. Carom 03:35, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Anyone else? Particularly anyone who would object to marking the old page as historical (which is what I'm likely to do if nobody else has any preferences)? ;-) Kirill Lokshin 17:38, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Anyone? Kirill Lokshin 19:23, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, I've marked it historical for the time being, with a pointer to the new convention. At the very least, that ought to make sure we don't have any confusion from back-and-forth moves on the issue. Kirill Lokshin 01:46, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Cluster bomb

This article has a severe anti-cluster munition bias... an anonymous editor continues to add uncited claims (Well, occasionally cited, usually followed by a POV statement) about the danger they pose to civilians, and move the "Threats to Civilians" section to the top of the article, above relevant info like the development and types of cluster munitions. Zaku^Talk 23:20, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Seems like the issue is solved now. In case this goes on tell him that you do care about the civilians, but in order to make it understandable how harmful it is you must first explain how it works. Some statistical data would help to improve the article. Wandalstouring 01:32, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I really wish it was solved. That same anonymous user keeps coming back and doing the same thing. Zaku^Talk 00:10, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Still having a problem here... protecting it for awhile would help... Zaku^Talk 23:22, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Project page length

Seeing as how the main project page has become rather long, I would like to propose that we de-transclude the infobox instructions, and simply link to them instead. By a rough estimate, this would reduce the page length by about one-third, and raw page size by as much as one-half. Obviously, however, it would mean that people would need to click through to the instructions to read them.

Thoughts? Is this an acceptable tradeoff, or would having the instructions no longer transcluded directly on the page be too much of an inconvenience? Kirill Lokshin 17:19, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't really make any difference to me personally, and I don't know that having them linked rather than transcluded will present that many problems for new editors. Carom 19:13, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

The problem is rather a flash of typitis. Wandalstouring 19:18, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I've tried my hand at changing the transcluded instructions for the infoboxes (and the project banner) to links; the rendered page size has dropped from ~330K to ~240K, and the pre-expand transclusion size from ~480K to ~300K. Comments would be very welcome! Kirill Lokshin 13:58, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Looks OK the less images and infoboxes the faster the download works. Perhaps the chevron could also be linked and not displayed. Wandalstouring 14:18, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

May I suggest considering the tabular arrangement employed by WP:Air? In recent tagging of orphan articles, I've found it's a nuisance to scroll down looking for what I want. It would be handier to go straight to a subpage that has it at hand. Askari Mark (Talk) 15:02, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, the navigation template sort of does that already. Given how many subpages we have, the top-tab layout WP:AIR uses wouldn't really work. Kirill Lokshin 16:18, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Sure, it's just another navigation tool, but I have found that it helps reduce "scroll fatigue." I have not always found that the TOC is all that helpful on this particular page. What WP:Air has done is break up the material into more digestable chunks. You don't have to give each section its own subpage, just group them together in logically related "chunks". Askari Mark (Talk) 17:02, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, are we talking about the same thing? I was referring to the navigation bar ({{WPMILHIST Navigation}}), not the actual TOC. The bar should contain fairly detailed links to everything useful in the project.

(I suppose that it would be possible to create a horizontally-oriented version of it; but it doesn't strike me as particularly useful; it would either have only a handful of links—which would mean that the same amount of scrolling would be needed to find anything specific—or would contain all the links and likely be completely unreadable.) Kirill Lokshin 17:14, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I was referring to the tabs as an organizational tool to reduce the vertical length of the whole project page. Askari Mark (Talk) 17:32, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh, ok; that would be functionally equivalent to breaking out parts of the page onto their own subpages, yes? (We wouldn't necessarily need—or want—to create tabs for them, unless we wanted to also have tabs for all the other subpages. There isn't any real difference, conceptually, between the material directly on the main project page and the material on our various subpages.)

It's been proposed a few times in the past, but there has been a feeling that having everything accessible on a single page is preferable. We could, of course, branch things out—some of the larger guideline sections could easily be moved to separate subpages—but it's not necessarily the better approach. Kirill Lokshin 17:39, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Popular culture section

I'm sorry to mention this, but our policy against popular history section is unfortunately unfair and biased. As a result we might need some adaptions that reestablish some of these sections in the articles. However, this does not reflect my personal attitude.

The problem is the inclusing of images, more specific paintings that are usually centuries apart from the depicted events. Many of these materials are seen as essential colorful extras for featured articles. In fact they are mere popular culture, even if it is popular culture of another age and nowadays hangs in museums. The problem is this is a biased policy that excludes non-painted material that could be used if we are legally allowed, such as references to books, plays, films (trailers, screenshots) and unfortunately computer games. Arguments such as the factual accuracy can not be used to exclude any of this material in favor of others(images from history books are the only candidates).

A possible solution could be to formalize the implementation of the popular culture section via specific infoboxes to keep them as short as possible and clearly seperated. Wandalstouring 00:13, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't really agree with some of your points here. We're not excluding popular culture because it's inaccurate; nor are we necessarily aiming to exclude popular culture in general. What we're excluding is non-notable popular culture; there's certainly nothing against an actual discussion of how a particular person or event is depicted in culture, if there's actually something to say about it. What we really want to avoid are mere trivia lists—e.g. "the battle was mentioned on page 317 of the novelization of the popular movie X"—not any mention of popular culture as a whole.

As a practical point, though, it's perfectly valid to say that different rules apply to article text versus supplementary material such as images. Our guideline covers text in the article dealing with popular culture; it says nothing about the presence or provenance of images illustrating it. The only reasons why (old) paintings are more common than, say, film screenshots are legal ones; most films are not public domain, and so using bits of them in an article would require a fair-use claim. Many paintings, meanwhile, are public domain (due to age) and can thus be used in a purely decorative fashion. Kirill Lokshin 00:33, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Are the images notable popular culture? In many cases the painter or the title is missing or has yet no article on wikipedia. The supplementary material is part of the content. Do we want to judge content based on the form? Furthermore I never argued for inclusion of these little trivial appearances. Wandalstouring 00:50, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Content, but not text. (In other words: the structure of a high-quality article is generally not disrupted by an image, or even a dozen images. It's quite likely to be disrupted by a trivia-list section being added.)

More to the point: the current guidelines only forbid trivia lists, nothing more; so if you have no problems with that point, there shouldn't be any issue here. Am I missing something obvious? Kirill Lokshin 00:56, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I'd favour a zero tolerance approach to 'In popular culture' sections and remove the lot. I'm yet to see one which adds anything of note to the article. If its genuinely notable then it should fit into the text of the article somewhere. --Nick Dowling 07:38, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

The ones that add to the article tend to be the ones where the cultural material does fit into the text (possibly without a section explicitly labeled "Popular culture", but that's just semantics). ;-)

Really, there are certain topics—e.g. Napoleon, Spartacus, Pearl Harbor, etc.—where a discussion of cultural importance is integral to covering the topic; these are the ones where you'd expect to find full-blown popular culture sections (or even separae aricles). In most others, there will be a rather small amount of non-trivia material to cover, so a separate section may not make sense from an organizational standpoint; the material may be better off being placed in an existing section. Kirill Lokshin 13:20, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

As I mentioned over at WP:AIR: my opinion is that while "this (xxx) appeared in (xxx) game/as a model on a desk/as a picture on the wall" (etc.) mentions should be terminated with extreme prejustice, notable, referencable "appearances" (as the WP:AIR debate was about, F-15s in Transformers - or, say, the F-14 Tomcat and Top Gun) should definitly be included. And I love the smell of napalm in the morning... :-) - Aerobird ^{Target locked - Fox One!}

The main topics at WP:AIR referred to by Aerobird can be found at "Transformers" and "Proper location of pop culture". Askari Mark (Talk) 15:57, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

There occasionally seems to be too much focus on always having a separate section for these when it's not necessarily warranted. If there's only a single notable reference, it's quite possible to work it into an existing section, eliminating that particular issue. Kirill Lokshin 17:23, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Which is, by a strange coincidence, what our guideline calls for: "'In popular culture' sections should be avoided unless the subject has had a well-cited and notable impact on popular culture". ;-) Kirill Lokshin 17:04, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Look at the Battle of Waterloo. This is a prime example why popular culture sections should be discouraged. This ever-expanding list of trivia now makes up 1/4 of the article. Raymond Palmer 21:33, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Ah, this is great stuff:

The final mission of Starcraft's Brood War expansion, "Omega" is a scenario similar to Waterloo, except the forces in the position similar to Napoleon emerge victorious.

Trivial and speculative (and wrong, but that's another point). ;-) Kirill Lokshin 21:42, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

And Alcibiades is a prime example how many senseless images (=popular culture) can be added to an article. The paintings in the Waterloo article are centuries apart from the events and the painters are nonames on wikipedia. Can I add my personal Waterloo paintings? Wandalstouring 22:28, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Are they exhibited in museums? (I'm quite serious here. That Wikipedia's coverage of the fine arts is quite atrocious is fairly well-known; a great many perfectly notable painters don't have articles. It's a safe bet, however, that nearly every image of an old painting on Wikipedia originates from museum catalogues; so somebody thought the paintings in question were important enough to exhibit.)

Beyond that, I'll reiterate my point about different principles applying to images versus text. If we replaced all those images with a section of text in the form of a trivia list:

• In 1873, John Smith painted a portrait of Alcibades visiting the Academy...
• In 1779, John Smith the Elder included Alcibades in his painting of the battle...
• ...

I suspect it would be gone from the article by the end of the day. Kirill Lokshin 22:37, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I have to concur with Kirill on this one - the arts is one area where I think Wikipedia is currently a massive failure, and I do not think the the lack of an article on this site is a particularly good indicator of an artists notability. Also, I'm not sure how the fact that the paintings were created some time after the events they depict is in any way relevant - after all, Leonardo did paint the Last Supper quite some time after it actually happened... ;-) Carom 22:48, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

That logic has an error. That the painting is in some kind of museum doesn't mean it is not as trivial as an appearance in the Simpsons. In fact we don't know if a painting is in a museum. Taking two different measures is discrimination of media material. That wikipedia has a bad art coverage and military history is a magnet for kitsch is also clear. Take hussar for example, you can get the impression they all came from Poland and wore wings, but really none outside that kingdom in central Europe copied the wings, but all the others used the Hungarian type of hussar without wings. Wandalstouring

Well, obviously images are as subject to issues of bias or imbalance as text is; but that's a problem with the specific choice of images for that article, not with images in general.

As for the rest, let's try to concentrate on the more practical point, rather than the various philosophical debates:

1. It is a good thing for articles to be illustrated. We are more permissive with regard to images/videos/audio files/any other kind of supplemental material than we are with text (which we generally have no shortage of), in order to have articles that are more interesting for the reader.
2. There may, admittedly, be little distinction between a little-known painting and a screenshot from the Simpsons as far as illustrating the topic is concerned (although it should be pointed out that illustration-via-painting is certainly more traditional in scholarly works). (I am specifically considering a screenshot here, not a line of text. See point 1.)
3. However, the Simpsons screenshot is not public domain. To use it in the article, we would need to make a fair-use claim based on providing "critical commentary". In other words, we would need to actually discuss the screenshot meaningfully within the article.
4. In most cases, meeting point 3 is impossible. There generally isn't anything to say beyond "X appeared in an episode of the Simpsons"; this is not enough to qualify as "critical commentary" from a legal standpoint.
5. If we use a public-domain painting, point 3 goes away. This is why we rarely have post-1920-ish paintings, incidentally.

Kirill Lokshin 23:21, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

1. It is a good thing for articles to be illustrated.

• Has anyone argued against this?

We are more permissive with regard to images/videos/audio files/any other kind of supplemental material than we are with text (which we generally have no shortage of),

• That's the result as the factual accuracy of images tends to be neglected and so it often happens that they provide misinformation. If you start deleting such material there is an outcry because you stripped an article of its colorful pixels.

in order to have articles that are more interesting for the reader.

• Questionable whether they actually do make the article more interesting and whether trivia does help, but as pointed out per above it is usage to illustrate articles, also done in books, scientific articles, etc. with the aim of making it easier to understand descriptions.

But that is absolutely not the point of the discussion. The problem is while we do keep strict regulations on the text, the images are a part of the article and do provide information to the reader. They don't play gooseberry. Now the problem is we can not establish any trivia bans for painted images as the phenomen is too widespread, OK. Central is the how to proceed with non-painted material that like our paintings is popular culture. From this perspective it is fairly insane to strictly limit one kind of material and allowing a flood of the other kind that is no more or less trivia. The scope of an article is to inform about a topic. Naturally any popular culture section attracts all kinds of unnotable content and so far the lack of images has prevented them from becoming an as great menace as the plain text part. Although here it is also evident that factually accurate images or official paintings of battles from painters who were on the battlefields(painter was a job in the military) are often lacking.

To get back to the topic of this discussion. How to proceed with the popular culture based on guidelines that can also be employed for image material such as paintings?

1. It has been suggested to merge it into the text if there is little material.
2. Form different articles if there is more to say.
3. My idea was a specific info box, although this might end up as a magnet for trivia.

So far from the suggestions the first two are probably the most practical. As I pointed out my concern was the dicrimination based on media type. We can have paintings as plain text only and we can scan book covers, so there isn't much trouble in turning the world upside down. Central point would be to use this rule as well for paintings, essentially to prohibit any overkill in an article like in hussar with the various paintings of Polish winged hussars for example.Wandalstouring 00:16, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Book cover scans would also have copyright issues, unless the books were quite old (and most of those didn't have illustrated covers). But I agree with your general point: it's certainly possible to go overboard with filling articles with paintings (accurate or otherwise). The practical point is that there are different levels here. Two-page list of every trivial appearance of some gun on TV: very bad. Dozen unnecessary paintings: also bad, but not as bad as the trivia list. Yes, we'd eventually like to have the article illustrated with a representative set of images, and shuffle everything else off to Commons; but doing this requires more work than deleting a trivia section, and thus tends to go on the back burner.

As an aside, a fourth place to put trivia in an article: footnotes; provided that there are enough of them, nobody will care if a few go off on slightly tangential points. (Granted, my preference here lies more towards unpleasantly detailed historiographic asides, but I can see working the occasional cultural reference that's interesting—but not significant enough to warrant discussion in the main text—into them as well.) Kirill Lokshin 00:40, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Slight tangent: let's keep in mind that Wikipedia is not paper. While I agree that the Waterlooivans went more than a tad overboard, let's not throw the baby out with the bath water by outlawing trivial pursuits, "because [as has been argued elsewhere] it would get cut from a printed encyclopedia". - Aerobird ^{Target locked - Fox One!} 01:28, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure the infobox approach would work very well. I think that if the image is germane to the article's subject (like a contemporary painting of the battle), then it should be incorporated into the main article. Images of pop culture items like games and such should be deprecated here in favor of placing them in their "home" article; we don't need them in both. A book cover or screenshot from a film (or scene) that significantly influenced the general public to appreciate the article's subject might be appropriate. Askari Mark (Talk) 02:51, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Just a couple of small discussion points...the last paragraph of the Operation Ten-Go article shows how pop culture references can be incorporated into the narrative thread of the article. Otherwise, trivia lists detract from the article's appearance and presentation. If one of us was writing a paper on a historical event for school and submitted it with a "pop culture trivia" list at the end, what do you think the instructor would say? Something like, "what the heck is this?" As for pop culture images (video game screenshot, POV painting from some time after the event, etc), I suggest using them only if nothing else is available and fully explain the background and source of the image. Cla68 03:51, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Peer review request for Sukhoi Su-30

I've nominated the Sukhoi Su-30 article for peer review. Comments please folks! - Aerobird ^{Target locked - Fox One!} 00:50, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Comments added at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/Sukhoi Su-30. — Askari Mark (Talk) 03:36, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse

This has a couple more days left on its GA Hold run and yours is on the only project tag on the talk page, so I though I'd bring it here, seeing as no-one appears to have seen it. Concerns can be found at Talk:Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse#GA on Hold, mostly just the massive amount of external links, converting links in text to references/fixing references and adding FUR's for two images. Thanks, RHB ^{Talk - Edits} 17:41, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

We rated it B-class. Wandalstouring 19:42, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, a while ago. I was just notifying WPMH to see if anyone wanted to improve it, seeing as its recieved little general attention and with little effort could attain GA status. RHB ^{Talk - Edits} 22:39, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

This project has no influence on the GA rating of articles, we only do Start, B-class, A-class and FA. A peer review might help. Wandalstouring 03:32, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

No, but I thought you did deal with and improve articles in your scope, such as the one above. I was just notifying WPMH that if they wanted to improve the article, it would probably attain GA status. I'm the GA reviewer so far for this specifici article. I know personally very little, and this was only to notify you. Sorry if I was ambiguous. RHB ^{Talk - Edits} 16:52, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Regiment = Division in US Army in WWII?

Hi, I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask, but I've found some redirects where US infantry divisions are redirected to US infantry regiments: US 22nd Infantry Division and the US 12th Infantry Division. (NB full stop inside square brackets.) I was doing some copyedits about the units which liberated Buchenwald concentration camp: my edit. Is this correct? (I've read Regiment and Division (military) without being much the wiser.) Cheers, Squiddy | (squirt ink?) 18:07, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

A US infantry division, in WWII, was three infantry regiments (generally with unrelated numbers) each of which would have three battalions. Unfortunately, some confusion arises because a source will simply refer to the "12th Infantry" doing something, which - depending on context - could be either. Shimgray | talk | 18:59, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Right. In US military usage, "Xth Infantry" always means the regiment, not the division. This is true both in the Army and Marine Corps, thus "1st Marines" refers to the 1st Marine regiment, not the 1st Marine Division. Other non-military sources may not follow that practice and it may be too ambiguous for use here. DMorpheus 19:05, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

In this case, it's also pretty moot. In WWII there were no infantry divisions with numbers between the 10th Mountain and the 24th Infantry - excepting the 11th, 13th and 17th, all airborne divisions - so it has to be the 12th or 22nd Infantry Regiment. Shimgray | talk | 19:09, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks very much, I've changed 'Division' to 'Regiment' in the article. I'm glad I didn't have to fall back on 'elements of ...'. Squiddy | (squirt ink?) 19:20, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

For future reference, [2] gives a list of all numbered divisions active around then, and if you delve a little deeper you get the assignments of regiments to divisions as well. Shimgray | talk | 19:27, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

"Commonwealth regiments and corps"

Since the various discussions here haven't come up with any real point to this, and the previous incarnation (Category:British Commonwealth Forces) was deleted, I've nominated Category:Commonwealth regiments and corps for deletion. Comments there would be welcome. Kirill Lokshin 05:17, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Article section ordering

Earlier today, in a couple articles covered by this project, I had moved up References and Notes above "See also", and this change was reverted, apparently according to guidelines I am unable to find. Anyway, this isn't terribly important to me, but it seems to me that References and Notes, since they apply directly to the article text, should go before "See also", which usually only applies tangentially. Any thoughts? Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 22:01, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

You have a valid point, although from an average user's perspective the 'References' and 'Notes' are of little to no interest while the 'See also' is of some interest for additional information. As soon as the formerly mentioned sections start most readers stop. On the contrary they do pay some attention to the 'See also' if it is prior to the 'References' and 'Notes'. Wandalstouring 22:08, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. I can see the alternative point-of-view. Thanks for your quick reply. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 22:19, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I believe the typical ordering comes from Wikipedia:Guide to layout, but I'm not quite certain of that. It's worth noting that "See also" sections are usually avoided where possible—at least in higher-quality articles—so the issue tends not to come up all that often in practice. Kirill Lokshin 22:39, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Changes to the meetup planning

Wikipedia:Meetup/Military history doesn't seem to work as there are hardly more than two editors mentioned for the same location. Possibly we could add a new feature to this list similar to the Wikipedia:Photo Matching Service that helps to find locals who take photos. The idea would be to provide links to people who can help with information on a local basis (town history for example). This may help to add some details to our articles and thus improve overall performance. Wandalstouring 22:01, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

A-class reform

I propose that a new criteria for A-class has to be added. Any A-class article also has to be a Good Article. --Ineffable3000 01:54, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

This has been strongly rejected in the past, and I continue to believe that decision was correct; the GA process is unstable and unpredictable. There's no reason to tie ourselves more closely to it; if anything, we ought to remove it from our own assessments entirely, and let it function as a completely external process. Kirill Lokshin 02:09, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Kirill. If an article nominated for A-class has to be a GA first we have to rely on the WP:GA to have articles made A class which is being looked down on especially as there have been move to remove GA from the assessment of the project. Kyriakos 02:17, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I think Kirill is quite correct in this regard. If anyone is interested in the background to the A-class/GA debate (at least, here at WPMILHIST), you can read some of the discussions here, here,here and here. Carom 02:22, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

To make it short: GA didn't have much support in previous discussions and the tendency is towards ignoring this review. It is not integrated into the projects reviews and ratings, unlike B-class, A-class, FAC/FAR and peer review. Wandalstouring 02:53, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

GA status seems to be pretty meaningless and our A-class assessment process is very robust and successful so I don't see a need for this change. --Nick Dowling 07:21, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Air Force infobox

Is there an infobox to use on air force articles? If not, could someone perhaps make one? Thanks. - Aerobird ^{Target locked - Fox One!} 15:02, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Discussion moved to Template talk:Infobox Military Unit#Air Force infobox. Kirill Lokshin 17:00, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Beware

This discussion contains material which is kept because it is considered humorous. It is not intended, nor should it be used, for any research or serious use (unless the research is about Wikipedia itself).

Beware. We might be getting a lot of unusual edits soon. [3]. Just kidding. --Ineffable3000 01:02, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Huh? <sound of jaw hitting floor> I'm not sure if that is a spoof, funny, or scary. Carcharoth 01:32, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Pretty sure it's a spoof. Kirill Lokshin 01:38, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Gulp! Kyriakos 01:46, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

"I AM THE WIKIPEDIA GHOST! BEWARE!"

(sorry, but it had to be done...)

- Aerobird ^{Target locked - Fox One!} 01:48, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

That site is a parody newspaper like The Onion. Cla68 02:37, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Sure reflects the popular cliché of milhist wikipedians. Wandalstouring 10:13, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes it does, :oP. This article leaves open a door to a number of poor jokes and puns. Would be an unusual if gratafying punishiment, wikiservices. As oposed to my current sneeking in. Hopefully I`ll be back in for good soon, nice to havea minute to read about again.--Dryzen 16:18, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Question about classification of battles etc

The answer is probably buried somewhere in the portal project, but I'm confused by the system of "battles involving", etc. There is a lot of overlap in the battles and operations of Vietnam, for instance. (Newbie lost in the forest, obviously). Richiar 05:19, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure what the question is (could you be more specific as to which categories you're talking about?), but is the section on categorizing battles what you're looking for? Kirill Lokshin 05:22, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Poking around a bit more, I think I figured out what you're asking. The system works like this:

• Categories for wars
  • Category:Wars by country
    • Category:Wars involving Vietnam
      • Category:Vietnam War
        • Category:Battles and operations of the Vietnam War
• Categories for battles
  • Category:Battles by country
    • Category:Battles involving Vietnam
  • Category:Battles by war
    • Category:Battles and operations of the Vietnam War

(The relevant section on the project page is the one covering conflict and operation categories, if you're interested in the full detail.) Kirill Lokshin 05:28, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Thankyou. :) I will follow up on this. Its been hard for me to follow the classification system in looking up articles. I'll let you know how things turn out ! Richiar 20:31, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Page move for 2d Battalion 20th Field Artillery?

Yesterday I found the article 2d Battalion 20th Field Artillery because it linked to an image I uploaded. I have substantialy improved (I think)Diff the article and added it to the project. I think the page should be moved to 2nd Battalion, 20th Field Artillery. Would like any input as well as any help referencing the page beyond what I've done. Dan D. Ric 13:14, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

You are a bit U.S. centric. How many "2d Battalion 20th Field Artillery" are on this planet? 2d and 3d seem to be military orthography. Wandalstouring 13:19, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Moved to: 2nd Battalion, 20th Field Artillery (United States). Dan D. Ric 13:50, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I added in a few links to the article, and arranged the infobox battles with bullet points. Look over the list of citations and decorations and see if there's a way to make the list look more organized. Otherwise, looks fine. --Petercorless 06:53, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

GAH!!! I just read the Global Security page, and this entry is a direct copy-and-paste plagarism of that site. We need to ensure we're not just lifting text and placing it on Wikipedia in violation of copyright. I'll edit the page now. --Petercorless 07:19, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

The article is looking much better over the last couple days but still needs additional references and yeah, rewriting to remove the copy paste. Dan D. Ric 07:46, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Um, yeah. Related, I just spent a fair bit of time rewriting the 4th Infantry Division Artillery (United States), and also added "(United States)" to disambiguate it. I also created a redirect from "Fires Brigade" as that is the formal name referred to at this point. I'm surprised there has been no article on Effects-Based Operations, which the commander of the Brigade authored the study of back in 2002. --Petercorless 08:45, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

At this point, someone with more historical perspective would need to rewrite the plagiarized sections better. --Petercorless 09:34, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Russian interference in Sino-Japanese War

Was there any Russian interference in the Sino-Japanese War? The page on the Battle of Idinahui says there was. --Ineffable3000 03:06, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

The Japanese did interfere in Russian affairs during the revolution and tried it once during WWII. At the end of WWII Russia intervened in Japanese affairs, taking away their half of Sachalin and some small islands(possession is still disputed, that is why there is only an armistice, no peace treaty between Russia and Japan). So far however I know of know direct Russian involvement in the Sino Japanese War(I suppose it means the war shortly before and during WWII). However, many nations were involved via volunteers and advisors. Wandalstouring 22:07, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Coordinator elections: signup open!

Just to let everyone know (via boilerplate, no less ;-)...

The Military history WikiProject coordinator selection process is starting. We are looking to elect seven coordinators to serve for the next six months; if you are interested in running, please sign up here by February 11!

Kirill Lokshin 00:06, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Infobox for air forces

There's a discussion going on at the military unit infobox talk page about adapting the infobox for national service branches (in particular, national air forces) that could use some additional input. Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 03:42, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

What should be covered in articles on national militaries?

I've been working on the Australian Defence Force entry for the last few months with an eye to bringing it up to one of the higher standards. Before I began work on expanding the article I reviewed all the other entries on western national militaries and was surprised to see that no two cover the same topics or present their information in the same order. My end result is a combination of what I liked best about the United States Military, British Armed Forces, Canadian Forces, United States Marine Corps and Russian Ground Forces articles, and I think that it works fairly well (though the history section still needs to be completed). I was wondering whether developing a standard format for entire militaries would fall within the scope of this project, and if so, what topics should be covered? --Nick Dowling 09:41, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I have been watching your improvements to the Australian Defence Force article an have been impressed. I believe that there should be certain standard for national military articles. Obviously they are all different but they also share many similarities. Some similar sections should be.

• History - both operational and structural (how has the organisation changed)
• current structure
• Personnel (who makes up the military)
• Culture
• Equipment (only current should be listed)
• bases
• budget
• Current operations

These should be things all militaries have in common. Hossen27 10:18, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

This seems like a good idea; we can certainly provide a suggested structure for such articles, as we already do for a few other topics (WP:MILHIST#Article structure). Actually enforcing a one-size-fits-all layout is probably a bad idea—in the end, it should be the article's editors who figure out what sections are actually appropriate—but a general "if you have no reason to do otherwise, do this" recommendation should be workable. Kirill Lokshin 10:28, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Are there any suggestions for historic militaries like the Roman military or the Federates? Wandalstouring 14:32, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Some of the same criteria would be applicable, with the notable exception of anything dealing with "current." Each case will be a little different, but I think that a similar structure could be applied to historical militaries. I think it might also be appropriate to include sections on archeology, historiography and the like - that is, the modern study of these organizations, but that's just me. Carom 05:51, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Uruguayan Civil War

What should I list Garibaldi's forces on the Uruguayan Civil War page? Please see talk page for more info. --Ineffable3000 21:50, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Replied on article's talk page. Kirill Lokshin 21:53, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Category cleanup proposal: veterans and soldiers

Okay, getting back to a topic that was previously discussed (albeit briefly), but not fully implemented: I'd like to propose a set of category renamings and merges that will eliminate the "Military veterans" and "Soldiers" trees:

Military veterans

Rationale: Wikipedia categorization of biographies is generally not dependent on whether someone is still involved in the topic of the category, or was involved with it in the past; thus, there's no Category:Retired scientists, Category:Former monarchs, or Category:Footballers who no longer play. Thus, military veterans should be categorized in the normal categories for military personnel:

• Category:Military veterans → Category:Military personnel
• Category:Fictional veterans → Category:Fictional military personnel
• Category:Lists of veterans → Category:Lists of military personnel
• Category:British World War I veterans → Category:British military personnel of World War I
• Category:British World War II veterans → Category:British military personnel of World War II
• Category:Korean War veterans → Category:Military personnel of the Korean War
• Category:United States military veterans → Category:American military personnel
• Category:American World War I veterans → Category:American military personnel of World War I
• Category:American World War II veterans → Category:American military personnel of World War II
• Category:Gulf War veterans → Category:Military personnel of the Gulf War
• Category:American Iraq War veterans → Category:American military personnel of the Iraq War
• Category:Native American veterans → Category:Native American military personnel
• Category:Vietnam War veterans → Category:Military personnel of the Vietnam War
• Category:British Korean War veterans → Category:British military personnel of the Korean War

Soldiers

Rationale: "soldier" is a very ambiguous term; it can refer either to all military figures, or only to figures serving in the land forces, or only to enlisted ranks; thus, using it in category names is unnecessarily confusing. The current categories fall into two broad groups: those that are used only for enlisted personnel, and those that are used for all military personnel. In the former case, the proposal is simply to rename the categories; in the latter, the proposal is to merge them into the military personnel categories, and allow enlisted personnel categories to be split out if/when they are needed (to avoid having large numbers of articles incorrectly categorized, as they would be if these categories were renamed to enlisted personnel). Thus:

• Category:Soldiers → Category:Enlisted personnel
• Category:Fictional soldiers → Category:Fictional military personnel
• Category:Soldiers by nationality → Category:Enlisted personnel by nationality

Categories that are already intended for enlisted personnel:

• Category:Australian Army soldiers → Category:Australian Army enlisted personnel
• Category:British Army soldiers → Category:British Army enlisted personnel
• Category:British Indian Army soldiers → Category:British Indian Army enlisted personnel
• Category:Canadian soldiers → Category:Canadian enlisted personnel
• Category:Chinese soldiers → Category:Chinese enlisted personnel
• Category:French Army soldiers → Category:French Army enlisted personnel
• Category:Japanese soldiers → Category:Japanese enlisted personnel
• Category:United States Army soldiers → Category:United States Army enlisted personnel

Categories that do not appear to already be intended for enlisted personnel:

• Category:Australian soldiers → Category:Australian military personnel
• Category:Austrian soldiers → Category:Austrian military personnel
• Category:Belgian soldiers → Category:Belgian military personnel
• Category:Soldiers from Bosnia and Herzegovina → Category:Bosnian and Herzgovinan military personnel
• Category:British soldiers → Category:British military personnel
• Category:Burmese soldiers → Category:Burmese military personnel
• Category:Croatian soldiers → Category:Croatian military personnel
• Category:Cuban soldiers → Category:Cuban military personnel
• Category:Czechoslovakian soldiers → Category:Czechoslovakian military personnel
• Category:Dutch soldiers → Category:Dutch military personnel
• Category:Egyptian soldiers → Category:Egyptian military personnel
• Category:English soldiers → Category:English military personnel
• Category:Eritrean soldiers → Category:Eritrean military personnel
• Category:Fijian soldiers → Category:Fijian military personnel
• Category:French soldiers → Category:French military personnel
• Category:Ghanaian soldiers → Category:Ghanaian military personnel
• Category:Greek soldiers → Category:Greek military personnel
• Category:Hong Kong soldiers → Category:Hong Kong military personnel
• Category:Hungarian soldiers → Category:Hungarian military personnel
• Category:Israeli soldiers → Category:Israeli military personnel
• Category:Italian soldiers → Category:Italian military personnel
• Category:Liberian soldiers → Category:Liberian military personnel
• Category:Luxembourgian soldiers → Category:Luxembourgian military personnel
• Category:Mexican soldiers → Category:Mexican military personnel
• Category:Montenegrin soldiers → Category:Montenegrin military personnel
• Category:Norwegian soldiers → Category:Norwegian military personnel
• Category:Paraguayan soldiers → Category:Paraguayan military personnel
• Category:Peruvian soldiers → Category:Peruvian military personnel
• Category:Polish soldiers → Category:Polish military personnel
• Category:Portuguese soldiers → Category:Polish military personnel
• Category:Puerto Rican soldiers → Category:Puerto Rican military personnel
• Category:Ancient Roman soldiers → Category:Ancient Roman military personnel
• Category:Rwandan soldiers → Category:Rwandan military personnel
• Category:Scottish soldiers → Category:Scottish military personnel
• Category:Serbian soldiers → Category:Serbian military personnel
• Category:Spanish soldiers → Category:Spanish military personnel
• Category:Sri Lankan soldiers → Category:Sri Lankan military personnel
• Category:Sudanese soldiers → Category:Sudanese military personnel
• Category:Swedish soldiers → Category:Swedish military personnel
• Category:Venezuelan soldiers → Category:Venezuelan military personnel
• Category:Welsh soldiers → Category:Welsh military personnel

Comments? (I'd also appreciate if someone could poke through these to make sure I didn't miss any "veterans" or "soldiers" categories.) Kirill Lokshin 04:19, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Works for me. Carom 05:47, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Good idea. It will make things more formal. --Ineffable3000 22:14, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

No problems here. Hossen27 00:47, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I've made the nominations here; comments there would be appreciated. Kirill Lokshin 01:26, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

And already people complain! ;-) Kirill Lokshin 02:42, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Effects-Based Operations

Effects-Based Operations (EBO) is now an article. Feel free to add to this, as it is an emerging part of modern operations doctrine. Examples of it being employed would be welcome, as would be additional organizational changes related to it (such as the Fires Brigade). --Petercorless 09:43, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

It seems to be a coined term by a professor someplace. Do some research to determine its notability. --Ineffable3000 16:36, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Seems notable (enough) for our purposes from the fact that the U.S. military is using it. Kirill Lokshin 16:37, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

It's more than just a "professor." The US is re-organizing its artillery brigades in light of the new doctrine, and the officer who wrote the thesis (a Lt. Col. at the time) is now the Colonel of the re-organized Fires Brigade. --Petercorless 20:54, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Does it somehow derive from the flexible response concept of the Cold War? Would be interesting to show if we know sth. about its origin. Wandalstouring 22:26, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I am new at Wikipedia

English is not my native language. I struggle with structure of sentences. Please help and review my work. I created new article called Japanese aircraft carrier Ryuho. This article was a feature on Wikipedia Main Page "Did you know?" I also expanded the Japanese cruiser Abukuma from a stub. I also worked on many other articles about Imperial Japanese Navy. I added information about aircraft carried by the aircraft carriers. Shibumi2 00:07, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Welcome, Shibumi2! Do not worry too much about the structure of sentences. Other editors will fix anything they see that is not correct. A more difficult challenge is knowing what statements need to be cited with the source. The formatting of such footnotes is not easy to learn, so don't hesitate to ask project members for help. Askari Mark (Talk) 00:28, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Battle of the Plains of Abraham review requested

Good day. I've just done a major rewrite of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, expanding the prose, adding inline citations, and generally attempting to improve the article substantially. I'd appreciate if there might be an opportunity for members of this WikiProject to take a look and give their opinion on the new version. My hope is to push this article up to Good Article at the least, with an ultimate goal of making it a Featured Article if possible

There are a few things that I don't have that would benefit the article, most notably a couple more images, however I haven't the slightest idea where to hunt for images of period soldiers that I feel would brighten up the middle section of the article somewhat. Also, I wonder if an Order of Battle section would be beneficial; for a battle with less than 10,000 men, though, that might be overdoing it.

At any rate, I'd love to know what editors who know their military history think of the new version; please drop a note on the talk page with any thoughts towards improvements. Thanks very much. Tony Fox (arf!) 05:48, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Please address requests for images directly to the Graphic Lab, the WikiProject Illustration, the Wikipedia:Photo Matching Service or the WikiProject Maps. It helps to answer your request if you can provide material such as external images, images from commons or clear text descriptions.

Another possibility is to use the template {{Externalimages}} and provide a direct link to freely available online material with a sourced description of what this image shows.

Please address requests for maps directly to the Maps WikiProject; maps are also available from the Wikimedia Commons Atlas.

Wandalstouring 13:53, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I looked at that article (the Plains of Abraham one) a few days ago. One thing that would help is to make clear that the watercolours of Montcalm were by an artist who was born over a century after the events shown took place. Indeed, the famous picture at the top of the article was painted some 10 years after the battle. I've never been clear exactly where the line is drawn between ye olde artists faithfully using eyewitness accounts, and ye olde artists using, well, artistic license to depict a suitably dramatic and heroic scene. At the very least, maybe put the date and artist in the caption for the picture, just so people are aware of what is going on there. Carcharoth 01:17, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh. That's already been done since I last looked. How strange! I wonder if the change was before or after my comments here (11:08 31/01/2007). Let's have a look... First change was here (13:46 31/01/2007); second change here. Phew! That proves I'm not going mad! :-) Carcharoth 01:25, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Frankly, to suggest that the Jeffreys images are somehow less realistic than West's, or more romanticised, is a far graver error than the omission of dates. Neither artist has the slightest claim to accuracy. West's composition is literally a textbook example of artistic distortion with a view to loading the image with drama. It's wrapped in extreme neoclassical heroism to the smallest detail; or did the "faithful eyewitnesses" report a Union Jack coiled in a shroud, mourning the loss of its fallen champion, the Christ? Albrecht 18:58, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

"Neither artist has the slightest claim to accuracy." - good. I agree. Can we make that clear in the article, or do we assume that our readers know that? As for the iconic painting, there is a whole article on the symbolism. Have a look at The Death of General Wolfe. Carcharoth 02:22, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I think it's a fair assumption. Battle illustrations, by nature, can't be completely faithful to the event, and I never see notes warning readers about that. Albrecht 03:49, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Yep. (But giving the dates of the paintings is a good idea, in any case; both to make it clear that they're after-the-fact depictions, and, more generally, just for thoroughness of annotation.) Kirill Lokshin 04:01, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Question on copyright of military insignias

This came up on media copyright questions Wikipedia:Media_copyright_questions#Source_of_claim_in_Template:Military-Insignia. Please add your comments there. Megapixie 01:06, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Need some eyes

Great power is a strange article without a coherent logical guideline. Austria and Hungaria are included among the great powers,the Polish-Lithuvian Commonwealth, Sveden, Spain or Italy not. Be that as it may, I have quoted the official government position of Germany on that issue and the media usage in Germany which all explicitly state that Germany is a medium power and not a great power. Now there are some professors and free lance writers not in Germany who think diffferent because it fits their concept. So far so fine as long as you say clearly who says what in my opinion. Now two editors have teamed up and make it a wash in my opinion by creating some say so and some say else, totally mixing up official German government positions, native media usage and output of foreign freelance writers. My point is I do not disagree if someone assesses Germany as a great power but as long as I can provide clear and recent official positions saying else they should be mentioned as such and not intermixed because political and media language is not scientific language. So I'm going to hit the three revert rule first. Nice way to solve such issues democratically. Wandalstouring 05:23, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

I had looked at that article several weeks ago. It's a strange brew indeed, and I'm not sure it's salvageable without a complete overhaul. Askari Mark (Talk) 05:29, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, that whole "X power" series has been a mess for a long time.

As a practical matter, it should be pointed out that the official government position is not necessarily to be preferred; consider, for example, the semantic difference between "Germany does not consider itself a great power, but outside commentators apply this label" and "Outside observers consider Germany to be a great power, but the German government denies this". Indeed, with questions of power projection, it's almost as common for states to under-state their own capability as it is for them to over-state it; if there's a consensus of outside parties, it may be worth reporting in preference to the government line. Kirill Lokshin 05:35, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

I just quit an edit war. It was simply too stupid. First thing would be to make a clear rule what gets included. Current great powers only or current and former great powers. Afterwards we have to make clear which defintions exist and who uses them. Wandalstouring 05:38, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

I just wanted to include the government line as such. Can that be so difficult? Wandalstouring 05:42, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Shouldn't be, I would think; but, as Askari Mark said, these articles are quite prone to POV-related disputes of various kinds. Kirill Lokshin 05:47, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Just remove the parts with bad or no sourcing and the POV is solved. Wandalstouring 05:53, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

One day I want to have as much immunity against arguments and common sense. Issue somehow solved but whoever wants to make a complete overhaul of this mess of an article has my support. Wandalstouring 18:33, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

If Great power passed its Wikipedia:Good article review, where ist that review? I couldn't find it in the archives and yet the article's talk page was marked on 8 January? Askari Mark (Talk) 21:12, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

This would seem to be the diff you are looking for - if I'm understanding correctly, it was promoted to GA on the 8th, rather than passing a GA review. Carom 04:01, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

That's not a review, that's a joke. Wandalstouring 11:29, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

French Civil War generals

This reminds me of Maximillian I of Mexico, where an Austrian prince ended up Emperor of Mexico. What were these French Civil War generals up to!? Camille Armand Jules Marie, Prince de Polignac is a great story. But what I came here to ask is whether anyone knows who these other French Civil War generals were? Bored European aristocrats seeking excitement in a war half a world away? Or what? Carcharoth 01:30, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/American Civil War task force#French Civil War generals. Kirill Lokshin 19:12, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Want to help clean up some spam and identify more project articles?

Once upon a time the WikiProject Victoria Cross Reference Migration moved a heap of content into wikipedia, the old domain is now being squatted and we are providing heaps of links to it. To clean up this spam I have been removing the This page has been migrated from the Victoria Cross Reference with permission from the article space and adding this template on the talk page {{Wikiproject VC migration}}. When I started there were more than 1300 articles, linksearch. I was hoping some people from this project might help out and take the opportunity to add more VCs to the military history project - I've seen a lot that aren't project tagged. Thanks. --Peta 02:54, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/British military history task force#Want to help clean up some spam and identify more project articles?. Kirill Lokshin 18:00, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Prussia

Although the nation no longer exists, I'm surprised there's no article for Prussian military history. -Emiellaiendiay 04:50, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Well that is a good point. Maybe a step towards the creation of the article is requesting that an article under the name of Military history of Prussia at the German task force at this project. If you place a request there you might be able to find a few editors who might be intrested in the subject. Kyriakos 05:04, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

There is a Prussia and Prussian Army article. What in particular are you looking for not covered therein? --Petercorless 03:33, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

FAC

The Roman-Spartan War has been up for FAC and has not recieved many comments. Could some editors read the article and leave their opinion at the article's FAC page. Thanks. Kyriakos 05:19, 2 February 2007 (UTC)