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Oldwindybear to return?

While I took strong exception to that which I took strong exception, I believe Oldwindybear was, on the balance, an asset to this project. Having been in touch with him quite a bit over the past few weeks, I have on several occasions urged him to return as an editor. He cannot seem to quit watching wikipedia, which to me indicates a desire to return. However, he's expressed concern that previous incidents will follow him wherever he goes. I would hope this should not be the case, but feel it wise to run this by his colleagues here to gauge your sentiments. Obviously, we can keep an eye out for socks; I am for my part convinced that this is behind us and will not recur. Please comment here, and be frank, as it does him no service to say he is welcome if he is not.Proabivouac 01:33, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I would welcome him back with open arms, and I suspect that others would as well. On the issue of his previous incidents following him wherever he goes: that may be true; and there will certainly be a sect on Wikipedia that will make sure this incident stays wielded to his ass for as long as he chooses to edit here; but we have all made mistakes, and some of us have even gotten into similar situtations over other issues. This is as much a community as it is an encyclopedia; and OWB's depature has been felt across the board. I am confident that should he choose to return the project the project would welcome him back. TomStar81 (Talk) 04:37, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
To say it with Deng Xiaoping's words: "I don't care whether the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice." I don't mind if he has multiple personalities as long as they work on different tasks and don't help each other into any offices. So don't run for office if the one suggesting you to run is accused of being a sock. Wandalstouring 16:16, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
Disproving sockpuppetry is quite simple. Make a date with your "sock" when you login at the same time and send each other messages, but don't do it from the same institution. Wandalstouring 06:36, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure if this will be taken correctly, but if OWB wishes to return to Wikipedia without having prior events follow him, why not do it from a new account? So long as there's no sock-puppetry involved, I doubt anyone will find out and he can start afresh. Oberiko 14:29, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Possibly interesting graph

FA-, A-, & GA-Class article counts from May 2006 to July 2007

I've put together a graph of our FA-, A-, and GA-Class article counts over the past year that might be of interest to anyone who cares about such things. One interesting point is that the A-Class count is the smallest and shows the slowest growth rate; I suspect this is because it's largely feeding directly into FAs, but there might be other factors involved as well. Kirill 03:10, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

There are formalized criteria and processes for FA and GA, but none for A. Maybe some editors just don't think A-class is worth the effort of achieving (beyond GA-quality), and others simply aim for FA without going for A. -- Миборовский 03:46, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
Also, A is pretty transitory... most A-class articles are put through the GA or FA wringer pretty quickly, and once they achieve one or both of these distinctions the articles are finally (relatively) static in their status. -- saberwyn 07:46, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
I think it is rather encouragin to see the steady growth of high quality article in the project. We nearly have 200 FA which is great and GA article are also increasing at a steady rate. But I think that it is intresting looking at the number of A-class articles. I had a steady drop which was at the begin of the review and the removal of many of the article and since then it has began to grow. But another factor that keeps it down is that A-class is a mainly a steping stone for user before they take the article to FA. But overall it is great to see the number of high quality articles in the Project and we should endeavour to double this in the next twelve months. Kyriakos 08:31, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
A-class might be a victim of its own success: the reviews are pretty rigorous and anything which passes them has an excellent chance of also passing a FA review. --Nick Dowling 08:40, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Nick. A solution would be to lower the criteria and I question whether we really want that. What really bothers me is that GA criteria seem quite easy to pass compared to A-class. So GA is quite close to our B-class criteria. A possible solution could be an autonomination of all GA-class articles for an A-class review. Wandalstouring 09:28, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
That might be doable, if we have enough reviewers to go through them all. Kirill 09:45, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
I think that this is a good idea and should be put to use. Kyriakos 12:23, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
I would help out with reviews if needed. I think many articles that are currently GA could easily make it to A class. A common theme of the assessment drive is citations and references. In many instances this is the only think preventing A class status, let alone B class. Woodym555 15:49, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
When the B-GA-A-FA discussion first came up I recommended abolition of A-class. I still do now. GA and FA have separate, Wikipedia-wide processes for promotion and carry with them prestige and authority (for the article). A-class has AFAIK only a localized, project-specific review and promotion process. -- Миборовский 18:33, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
I think that A-class has its uses. It is not derogatory to call it a stepping stone to FA. As commented earlier many FAs become stuck that would not do if they had undergone an A-Class review. The GA-class is very subjective and only done by 1 person with varying degrees of aptiude. The growing backlog at WP:GA/R suggests that the process is far from perfect. I think A-Class provides a good vetting process for articles, i know it has helped the articles that i have taken to FA. Woodym555 18:39, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
I don't see anything wrong with A class acting as a stepping stone to FA - I've found it to be a good process to get expert comments on articles before they're exposed to a more general audience. Anyway, as FA is better than A it's a good thing that there are more FAs than As! GA seems pointless to me - as Woody notes its only a single person's opinion, and I've seen a lot of fairly low quality articles be awarded GA status. --Nick Dowling 10:28, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
I actually found GA to be useful in developing Battle of the Plains of Abraham; it affirmed that what I'd done was worthwhile, and helped push me forward. The A-class review was a way of getting people with familiarity on the topic to confirm that the article was solid. It's a worthwhile process, I find, as a way to get added eyes onto articles. Tony Fox (arf!) 22:32, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
As well, it should be noted that if an article achieved A-class status before going FA and then lost its FA status it could still potentially be an A-class article for project purposes. TomStar81 (Talk) 21:59, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

A-Class review for Jean de Carrouges now open

The A-Class review for Jean de Carrouges is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Kirill 12:30, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

A-Class review for Horses in warfare now open

The A-Class review for Horses in warfare is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Kirill 12:50, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Question regarding banners

I've noticed that some of the U.S. Roads subprojects have separate banners indicating that those projects are joint subprojects of the U.S. Roads project and the appropriate state project. If such banners could be created for task forces which are expected to stand for some time, perhaps automatically placing the assessed article in the appropriate military history category and the existing national project category, I think it could help reduce the number of banners on some articles. In the event more than one task force is involved, which seems likely in a lot of cases, maybe the WPMILHIST banner could be adjusted to place the articles automatically in the national projects of all the relevant task forces. I think this could, at least potentially, help reduce the number of banners on some pages, if one banner assesses for more than one project. I've made a similar proposal at the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council page, but am not really sure whether such a banner can even technically be created. Does anyone here know, and/or think that some banners could be adjusted for this purpose? John Carter 14:04, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

It's certainly possible, but it's a rather poor idea from a practical standpoint. A "core" project's banner will typically include many features aside from the task force tagging. Consider, for example, an article with a hypothetical "French military history" banner. Suppose we want to nominate this article for an A-Class review in MILHIST. We must now either (a) ensure that the entirety of the needed code is in the task force banner (which will obviously become unmaintainable, as any code change will need to be propagated across dozens of templates) or (b) place the main MILHIST banner on the page, leading to more banners than before.
A more feasible approach would be to have the cross-categorization happen implicitly; in other words, the task force tags in the main banner would generate both projects' categories. But even this runs into problems if the projects' assessments don't match up, since one will override the other.
In practice, the most suitable approach seems to be the current one of placing multiple core project banners, and letting the task forces get picked up as a side effect of those. Kirill 14:28, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

A-Class review for Sino-Indian War now open

The A-Class review for Sino-Indian War is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Kirill 14:00, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Milhist talk page tag

Everyone, please remember that when you are rating articles for B-class, that you put the criterion checks on the template. Dreamy \*/!$! 17:41, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

One point that may not be obvious at first glance: the criterion checks were introduced long after the assessment first began, so most of the older B-Class assessments are going to be missing them. Kirill 17:51, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Notability of military units

I have been rating a fair number of articles recently and I am stunned by the massive amount of military units that have their own articles. While I, of course, have nothing against articles on military units should n't there be some criteria for notability? Articles like 101st Airborne Division (United States) will easily pass, but does Wikipedia need an article like 840th Air Division which only existed between 1964 and 1969 which operations (according to the article) consisted of the following The 840th commanded assigned forces and provided staff and advisory services to assigned Air Reserve forces to ensure operational capability, October 1964 through December 1969. Between 1966 and 1969, subordinate units participated in worldwide tactical airlift operations, humanitarian missions, tactical exercises, and maneuvers including joint airborne training. From 1965 to 1969, the division provided C-130 aircraft replacement training support for Pacific Air Forces.. That does not seem very notable to me. The only source, the US Air Force Historical Research Agency IMHO fails the independency clause in WP:NOTE; as it is an Air Force agency writing about the air force.
This is of course only an example. But basically we have two choices. Either we allow each and any article on a military unit, however unnotable that unit is (or has been), or we draw the line somewhere and start asking for the truly unnotable articles to be deleted.
If we choose for the second option, we may help this process by making specific guidelines for mil. unit notability.
Let me know what you guys think. Arnoutf 18:37, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

I think the traditional view has been that division-level and larger units are automatically worthy of coverage; admittedly, the question of whether they necessarily need to have separate articles, or should be rolled into lists where information is lacking, is not one that's gotten much attention before.
But, yes, I think that coming up with some (basic) guidelines on this, in the style of the comparable ones for people, would probably help clarify things somewhat. Kirill 19:49, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
I think the "traditional view" pretty well has the gist of it. Units smaller than a division or perhaps a regiment should be included only if very notable (e.g., the "Lost Battalion"). For air forces, consensus would seem to deem squadrons as the lowest noteworthy formation. Askari Mark (Talk) 20:59, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
Ah, that why I noticed all these, they tended to be air force units. To be honest a squadron (12-24 aircraft even with support) are IMHO much, much smaller compared to a division which is typically larger than 10,000 soldiers. The US Army for example consists of 10 divisions (commanded by a rank comp to Major General)-and it seems reasonable to have an article on each of those. On the other hand there are more than 160! wings each consisting out of several squadrons. Wings are generally commanded by a rank comparable to Colonel. So perhaps the consensus standard unit size is set too small for airforce units Arnoutf 21:21, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
Part of the problem there is that wings (and higher) have tended to become more "administrative" in nature than "operational" (and a lot of both is classified), so there's less to write about. Instead, you'll find much more written about squadrons since that's where the "notable" action is and where most of the available, reliable documentation exists. In fact, one could argue that for armies, brigades/regiments have been growing in notability at the expense of divisions, corps, and even armies. Askari Mark (Talk) 22:02, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
Three points:
  • This seems to have been a very large-nation centric discussion so far. Smaller countries, such as Australia (where I live), generally aren't able to raise large militaries so relatively small units are notable. For instance, each of the nine battalions of the Royal Australian Regiment is individually notable as they have distinct histories. Likewise, the Royal Australian Air Force can generally only deploy a squadron at a time, so individual squadrons and independent aircraft flights are notable.
  • The 'counting heads' approach suggested above seems to contradict the fact that towns with small populations are automatically notable. If a town with a population of 1000 people is notable independent infantry battalions with 1000 soldiers should also be considered notable. Likewise, commissioned warships are considered automatically notable, even if they have a tiny crew.
  • Given that Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia I don't see why we should adopt arbitrary limits on the size a unit needs to be for it to be considered notable - we're not about to run out of server space (I assume!) and we don't need to send the thing off to the printers. I'd suggest that any independent unit of company size for armies and flight size for air forces is probably notable. By this I mean that units such as a regimental weapons company aren't notable as they were never seperate from their regiment but independent companies such as the 2/4th Cavalry Commando Squadron (Australia) are notable (the 2/4th was nominally part of larger units from 1943 but always operated independently of its battalion headquarters). As another example, the 'Madslashers' aren't notable as they're part of a larger unit but the Pathfinder Platoon is as it's an important independent unit in an important and high profile brigade. --Nick Dowling 00:24, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
Keep in mind that we're talking about guaranteed notability. In other words, the argument wouldn't be that sub-division-level units are not notable, but rather that division-level units are always notable. Certainly a smaller unit with a substantial history would be notable regardless.
As for your point about independent units, that's really oriented towards smaller armies, and particularly towards those that follow the Commonwealth tradition of unit heritage. For armies such as the Wehrmacht, the Red Army, or the Chinese WWII-era armies, which saw myriad small units being organized essentially on paper, and often ceasing to exist within days of being formed, the concept breaks down pretty quickly, since there's so little to say about each unit.
So I think following the model of our guideline on biographies would be a better approach here: units of a certain size or prominence are guaranteed inclusion, and smaller units are included if there's enough information available to write articles about them, but not if they're simply numbers on an OOB somewhere. Kirill 01:13, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the response Kirill. I hadn't considered short-lived provisional units, and I'd definetly agree that these are unlikely to be individually notable. On the issue of where to set the benchmark for automatic notability, I'd argue that it be set rather low to avoid short articles on notable small independent units being deleted before they can be expanded. --Nick Dowling 01:31, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Putting a pic of the Medal of Honor in the recipients' infobox?

I've started a discussion on the MOH talk page here about this, but am wondering if there are existing guidelines to include or exclude a pic of the MOH or for that matter, the VC, or any of a country's highest military awards in recipients' infoboxes. I have so far only seen pics of either being added to some of the respective recipients' pages if not their infoboxes, and started to remove the MOH ones I've found, but have stopped for now. BrokenSphereMsg me 02:10, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

There are no existing guidelines. Personally though i think they are worthwhile additions to those pages especially where no picture is available of the recipient themselves. I am involved with the upkeep of the Victoria Cross pages and most of them don't have infoboxes at the moment. The image is a distinguishing feature. Most of them were added as part of the migration project. As long as the image is free-use, which the VC is, i don't see the problem. I certainly don't think you should go round deleting them. You might want to alert WP:ODM as well. Although they are not involved with the upkeep of the biographies, you might find interested parties over there. Woodym555 09:09, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
Sorry I wasn't clear. The examples that I deleted either had the MOH in the infobox alongside a pic of the recipient (example), or in the body of the article where there was also an existing pic of the recipient in the infobox. I disagree with including the pic of the MOH in order to distinguish that individual for several reasons I outlined in the MOH talk page as their status as a recipient is already highlighted in several ways, particularly if there is already a pic of them. If this sort of thing is going to be done for decorations like the MOH or the VC, there should be some consistency across the board for the other highest decorations, and so far I have only seen pages relating to these 2 decorations doing it, e.g. I haven't seen it applied to Knight's Cross holders yet.
Now as to what you said when no pic of the recipient is there, in many cases one can't be found or is hard to find, so in that case, I think that a pic of the MOH can be kept as a placeholder of sorts in the infobox at editors' discretion, but only as a placeholder until the recipient's pic can be found, then it can be taken out. BrokenSphereMsg me 16:15, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
I agree that they should not be alongside an existing picture of a recipient. Yet i don't see the argument against having them in the article even if there is an existing picture of the recipient in the infobox. I think it is a good illustration as long as it free-use. Frankly it all depends on the length of the article. If you have a stub with an infobox, the medal would disrupt the text and the page as a whole. Yet a start or B class article, i.e. one that has several sections and paragraphs will benefit from a picture. I don't think you could create a concrete rule stating You must have a picture of the medal. It is down to editor discretion. If an editor thinks it would benefit the article, then they should be allowed to add it. Woodym555 16:40, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
I also agree that a picture of the MOH and the recipient do not belong in the infobox. One or the other, but not both. What I did for the Korean War MOH winners, was to include a picture of the MOH in the infobox if I didn't have a free to use picture of the recipient. See Emory L. Bennett for an example. I may have messed up on a few though, as I did a bunch. Feel free to correct as you wish. wbfergus 16:48, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
I rather like the idea of a MOH/VC/etc. placeholder where no picture has yet become available; however, both a pic and a medal in the infobox seem a bit much. Perhaps an entry in the infobox for such a high honor, but not a pic. Askari Mark (Talk) 17:33, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
I think having the MOH or the like as a temporary placeholder in lieu of a photo of the recipient is acceptable, but plugging it in for any other reason seems to me to go along with the discussion on the country flags in personnel infoboxes: they're redundant. If the infoboxes are being created per the guidelines of the project, the fact that they were awarded the MOH should already be included under awards and decorations; including a picture of said awards and decorations is over the top and entirely unnecessary. Pretty, yes. But not necessary in the least. Let's stick with consistent guidelines and only include what we need to include to make the person's biography complete. --ScreaminEagle 19:26, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes the infobox should contain the information. Yet i do think an image should be included in the article where appropriate. MOS guidelines and the FA criteria ask for appropriate images to be used. I think an image of the VC is very appropriate in a section about the actions leading to a VC or the specific citation. Most of the migration project articles have the citations in the article. For those who are not aware what the award looks like it is a good resource to have on the page. (I accept the opposing argument that they could just click on the Victoria Cross wikilink but IMO they are mutually beneficial) Unless you have an article such as David Vivian Currie where an image of the actual action is available: Image:Major david currie vc.jpg, then i think a picture of the VC is appropriate. I certainly don't think that there should be a guideline restricting their use. Woodym555 20:44, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

What about cases where the individual went on to do other things and there are other pics of them in those capacities, or they have other pics already in the article space? Edward O'Hare is one that I recently came across which is IMO, overillustrated and even if some were pulled out, would be just fine without a pic of the MOH. BrokenSphereMsg me 05:02, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, that does look a bit cluttered. (It'd probably be improved if the images were staggered along both margins, rather than being primarily stacked on one side, though.) But that's not really a MoH-specific issue so much as a general one of having too many images in too little space; the same problem would come up if we inserted any other images as well. Obviously the intent here is not to say that every article on a MoH recipient must have a picture of the award; but, in the majority of cases, there are too few available images for the over-illustration issue to come up. Kirill 05:27, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

I have started going through the VC recipients and have added the image in the infobox in lieu of anything else. I have added the text <!-- This image is used as a placeholder image. If available please replace with an image of the recipient. -->. Good/bad idea? Woodym555 15:45, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Good! Heck, they earned it, didn't they?! Askari Mark (Talk) 15:52, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
Good solution. --ScreaminEagle 15:55, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
Reflects that the medal pic is meant to serve as a temporary expedient, very workable. BrokenSphereMsg me 16:46, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Taiwanese military history

Apparently someone has created a skeleton Taiwanese military history task force. It's my impression that this particular topic is already being handled by the Chinese military history task force (and the Japanese one, at points), so we don't need a separate group here; is this sensible, or am I missing something obvious here? Kirill 02:27, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

I believe that it'll be more neutral to have the aboriginal conflicts and Taiwanese-Dutch conflicts and others part of the Taiwanese task force.--Jerry 02:33, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
It's an interesting point, certainly, but the two obvious questions:
  • Are there enough such articles to warrant a separate task force?
  • Are there enough editors that would want to work specifically on such topics?
My concern is that the bulk of the material is post-Ming stuff that's really more the province of "Chinese" military history than of a separate "Taiwanese" one; I don't think we have any significant number of articles on anything earlier. I could be wrong, though. Kirill 02:37, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
How many articles do we need to have a separate TF?--Jerry 02:42, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
There's no set number, but I would guess at least a few hundred articles (or potential articles—you can make a guess at how big the topic can get even if there's few articles now), and, more importantly, at least five to ten editors willing to join up. If it's only a few dozen articles and a couple of editors, the overhead of running a separate task force really isn't worth it. Kirill 02:44, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
(Just to clarify: the count of articles would include those that would overlap with the Chinese/Japanese/etc. task forces.) Kirill 02:46, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
So, does anyone else have an opinion on this? Should we retain the separate task force here? Kirill 14:25, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
I've notified some other editors, hopefully they'll give an opinion on this soon.--Jerry 14:34, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
It's an interesting idea, but I have little knowledge of the Taiwanese military historically. However I think if jerry can get a couple of people interested it should be worth keeping. John Smith's 16:21, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm with Kirill. I discussed this briefly with several editors some time ago (User_talk:LordAmeth/Archive4#Taiwanese military history). I do think we need to be careful though with nationalistic tendencies to extend current political identities backwards in time. Most of Taiwan's history is quite well covered within the Japanese and Chinese task forces, but for those topics which do fall outside of the scopes of those two taskforces, if you can find enough interested editors, and enough topics worth covering, then more power to you. LordAmeth 22:10, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
Having done some searching, I think we may have enough distinct topics to justify a task force (albeit one of the smaller ones); things like the Republic of Formosa seem to have potential for a fair number of articles. The main question, I think, will be finding interested editors; but, other than that, I'm willing to give the task force a chance. Kirill 22:28, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
FWIW, unless someone has strong objections to the idea of a task force here, I'm going to go ahead and finish up all the background template infrastructure and such things. The task force may not work out in the long run, but I'd prefer not to have it sitting in limbo with part of the infrastructure created and part not for any longer than absolutely necessary. Kirill 22:58, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
Okay, I've gone ahead and completed the setup for the task force. We can mothball it later if it doesn't work, but, for the time being, I think we can move forward with the assumption that it'll go somewhere useful. Kirill 16:24, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

A-Class review for Byzantine-Arab Wars now open

The A-Class review for Byzantine-Arab Wars is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Kirill 14:25, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Rifle articles needing photographs

In my two trips to the United States Army Ordnance Museum, I've gotten pictures of (literally) all the big things there - the tanks and guns. However, they have thousands (or tens of thousands) of rifles from basically every country on earth. So, the question is - are there any rifle articles that need pictures? The rifles are normally behind glass and basically impossible to photograph well. But, their tips for researchers page suggests contacting them ahead of time. What I might do is send them a list of rifles we lack pictures of, and if they happen to have any of them, I'll go in and get us some photos. I'm not promising anything, but I think it might be worth a shot. So, I need a list :) Raul654 07:16, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

You could help yourself to a list and ask specifically the weaponry task force. Wandalstouring 14:34, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

I have created a wishlist for musuem rifle picture candidates at User:Raul654/Wishlist Raul654 16:17, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

I just wanted to say that some guns from Aberdeen are still missing in the collection :). Such as 8.8 cm PaK 43 (not PaK 43/41) ( http://svsm.org/gallery/88mm_pak43_Nuentoter ), Canon de 194 GPF ( http://svsm.org/gallery/194mm_GPF ), 24 cm K 3 ( like this: http://www.lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de/Bilder/schwere%20Geschutze/24-cmK3-1.jpg , remember seeing somewhere a photo from Aberdeen ), 105mm Gun T8 ( actually already photographed - http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mpellegr/Unknown/Gun1_2.jpg ). Also, it would be nice if you could take better photos of some indoor exhibits ( such as the 18 pounder, the "Finnish" Boehler and the Czechoslovakian 47 mm AT gun ) and more photos of the unidentified pieces ( photos from other angles, especially rear views, if there are some markings than closeups of those etc ). Bukvoed 16:59, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
I didn't upload the 105mm Gun T8 because I didn't think we had an article on it. Should I go ahead and do it? If so, what is the proper name for the article?
As far as the exhibits inside the museum go, those things are *HEAVY* and I doubt they'd move them for me into better lighting. Other than that, my only choice is to bring lighting equipment with me to the museum and set up spotlights prior to taking pictures, and that's not something I'm anxious to do. As for the ones outside, on my second trip, I photographed literally every artillery piece on display. Now, there some empty cement foundations (where they park the guns) so it's entirely likely that I missed some tanks and guns, but it couldn't be helped. What I can do is, along with my rifle request, send them a specific request to see those pieces you just named and maybe I'll get lucky. Raul654 18:56, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
PS - Also, at the risk of stating the obvious - 8.8 cm PaK 43 already has lots of pictures. What's the point of taking more? Raul654 18:58, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
PPS - I've added the Canon de 194 GPF and 24 cm K 3 to my wishlist. Can you please link them to their respective articles? (Or, if they don't exist, can you red link them to the names where those articles should be located) Raul654 19:04, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
Uhm... I'm sorry if I have offended you somehow...
I know that taking photos of some indoor exhibits without special equipment is... well... not easy.
8.8 cm PaK 43 already has pictures, but all these are of the variant on a two-wheel carriage, called PaK 43/41. The PaK 43 "proper" has completely different, flak-style mount. See example here [1]. According to the caption, the photo comes from Aberdeen Proving Ground, so it must be in the collection. Of cource, it is possible that it is not currently on display for some reason. BTW, on the same photo, just behind the PaK, you can see an anti-tank variant of the US 90 mm gun - another missing item.
The Canon de 194 GPF and 24 cm K 3 both are supposed to be in the collection, as far as I know (as are some other items that we miss - I'll add them to the wishlist - and some that we don't miss). Of cource I have no idea if they are currently on display.
You are right, we didn't have an article on the T8. I've added a stub article (105mm Gun T8), along with a number of stub articles for some items from your second trip (I'll probably add a few more stubs soon). Perhaps I should have done that earlier, but the realm of artillery is too large for me to cover, and I'm pretty busy offline now... so I typically create new articles when I have a "reason" to do it... such as a nice picture of a potential subject on commons... :)
Thanks for your contribution.. and... again... please forgive me if there was something offensive in my messages. Bukvoed 08:52, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
No, I'm not offended :) - I didn't mean to give you that impression
I can tell from the picture that at least one of the requests (155mm GMC M40) is not in the musuem, but is in fact in "tank row" (a row of tanks about half-a-mile down the road from the musuem, lining the side Maryland ave next to th golf course - Google maps). I haven't actually taken any pictures of tank row because its location makes parking in the vicinity difficult. I'll see if I can figure something out. That might be where most of the missing tanks are. Raul654 18:03, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Discussion regarding main WWII article

Hello. Over at the discussion page for the WWII infobox, we are having a debate as to what images we should include in the main picture. Any input would be appreciated. Oberiko 14:37, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

A-Class review for Battle for Henderson Field now open

The A-Class review for Battle for Henderson Field is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Kirill 15:25, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

A-Class review for Fort Bayard (Washington, D.C.) now open

The A-Class review for Fort Bayard (Washington, D.C.) is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Kirill 22:42, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Delisting of ECHELON

Just to give you folks a heads up, I've delisted ECHELON as a good article. It looks like the article has decayed in the last year or so, with editors adding guesses as to what the system might do is and where it might be located and how it might be used. Honestly, most of the information belongs on the some SIGINT page if anywhere. As I commented on the talk page, it might be worth considering rolling back the article to the last "Good" point and trying again... Burzmali 20:29, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Good call. Articles on these topics seem to be hard to maintain as they attract conspiracy theorists, grumpy POV-pushing protesters and jargon-addicted military types. --Nick Dowling 23:32, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
military types. Because they've got no place editing anything related to Military History......
8)
ALR 13:14, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
I've got nothing against military types except for when they produce jargon-heavy articles written in the passive tense ;-) --Nick Dowling 06:56, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
Agree w/ for the reasons given above. -- FayssalF - Wiki me up® 16:26, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
I'd agree with that. It's been on my watchlist a while to try to do something about, the problem is the first thing I'd want to do is tear out about 70% of the content because it's garbage, and that's bound to end up with some of the tinfoil helmet liner brigade objecting.
There is a dearth of reliable, open source, material about Echelon and Carnivore, even the famed EU study is mainly speculative.
ALR 13:14, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
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