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Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Category restructuring

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Moved from main page by Kirill 17:01, 25 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Most of these renamings are (or should be) listed as being planned in the second (renaming) phase. I think we'll need to figure out the top-level structure before we go on mass renaming sprees, though, as some categories may become obsolete depending on which structure is adopted. Kirill 17:01, 25 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Military vs Armed Forces

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What is the rationale for abandoning Military? There are several advantages in that firstly its one word vs two, and secondly its a more general term appropriate to a root then Armed Forces.-- mrg3105mrg3105 01:43, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

From military:

As an adjective, military originally applied only to soldiers and soldiering, but it soon broadened to apply to land forces, in general, and anything to do with their business. The names of both the Royal Military Academy (1741) and United States Military Academy (1802) reflect this. However, about this time, it started to be applied to armed forces as a whole and nowadays expressions like "military service", "military intelligence" and "military history" reflect this broader meaning.

There has been significant concern, in the past, that the reliance on the broad meaning being understood is confusing readers more familiar with the narrow meaning; if we can avoid this without too much difficulty, I see no particular reason not to.
(The alternative would be to use, e.g. "Category:Military forces" or "Category:Military organization" in place of "Category:Armed forces", and to retain the "military" in sub-category names.) Kirill 01:48, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that military has two overlapping meanings: the primary one is "of the army" and the secondary one - to varying extents and in varying contexts - is "of armed forces". Because of this semantic overlap, we cannot be sure which context people will associate will it. For instance, people think of the Battle of Midway as a naval battle but militarily significant. Note also, that the US, US, France etc maintain separate military and naval academies. So, to summarise, military is not catch all, in the way thar armed forces is. --ROGER DAVIES talk 08:39, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I did some Google searches, with the results below:
240,000,000 for Army
30,400,000 for Armed Forces

10,600,000 for Army Military.
1,140,000 for "Armed Forces" Military.

However I note that Military is a root category. Naval operations or battles would say just that. The association with the "Army" is only because the ground troops usually constitute the largest size of forces, and most visible also. It seems to me that given the figures above there is a 9:1 chance that the association will be with the Army, so I would say that using Armed Forces is vague enough for the user to just dumped the article in that category. Besides that, there is already a prolific use of 'Military' in categories, so this is more consistent with existing practice.-- mrg3105mrg3105 12:02, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Military (noun) as a root category is the key to the problem. The term is simply not specific or widely enough accepted to cover all eventualities. For instance, the US military structure is overseen by the House Armed Services Committee and headed by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the UK uses Armed Forces as a catchall, Australia and Israeli uses Defence Force; China has the People's Liberation Army, divided into PLA Ground Force, PLA Air Force and PLA Navy; India uses Armed Forces; France uses Army (of the land, sea and air).
The prevailing practice here is also part of the problem; that's why we're considering moving away from it. (PS: Would you mind doing something about your signature? It's overwhelming and upsetting page display in my laptop. I'm sure others must have similar problems with it.) --ROGER DAVIES talk 12:13, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Roger. You are the first to complain about my signature.
In any case, the examples you give are just a good point that you will never find an English word to fit all these names, and a generic one is needed. Also, all your examples are names of Military institutions, and translated into English to boot.
The prevailing practice is not the problem. The project admin can not blame the users (like myself) for the confusion over categorisation. As I point out elsewhere, the nature of the Military root is that it in many ways mirrors the entire structure of non-military Wiki content because military organisations tend to parallel civilian organisations in most respects. This means there is a huge range of categories to choose from unlike any other in terms of portals. Given that the objective is to reduce the root category to one, it seems to me that the change to Armed Forces will do nothing to reduce ambiguity in the (AF)+(XX)= vs (M)+(XX) = equation.--mrg3105mrg3105 13:43, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I always thought of Military as "of the armed forces" rather than "of the army" and I always assumed others thought that too, though I suppose using "Armed forces" in place of "Military" would avoid confusion.--Phoenix-wiki 14:35, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
According to MW and OED "military" (noun) and "armed forces" are synonyms but "armed forces" is completely unambiguous - and therefore more specific - because it only has one meaning. For example, the army, navy and air force will always be logical sub-sets of "armed forces" whereas many people will not see navy or air force as a logical sub-set of "military" (which has the primary meaning in many contexts of "army"). --ROGER DAVIES talk 14:42, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, we should use "Armed forces" instead of "Military" to avoid confusion IMO; it sounds more professional and is unambiguous.--Phoenix-wiki 14:55, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

On keeping things simple

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I wanted to air some thoughts on this off Wiki, so apologize if I'm eating into your other activities.

It seems to me that this issue has been approached from the start in a less then logical way, and is overly complex.

Militaries throughout history have really been a part of their societies, and very much reflect this in their structures (aside from weapon use). So why are we reinventing the wheel in Wiki?

Consider this for existing Military (root) subcategories:
[+] Military art
[+] Military by country
[+] Military decorations
[+] Military diplomacy
[+] Military equipment
[+] Military history
[+] Military images
[+] Military in fiction
[+] Military industry
[+] Military law
[+] Military life
[+] Military lists
[+] Military locations
[+] Military operations
[+] Military organization
[+] Military organizations
[+] Military personnel
[+] Military science
[+] Military stubs
[+] Military veterans' affairs
[+] Politics about the military

Now consider this as Wiki major root (portal) categories:
Culture and the arts
Geography and places
Health and fitness
History and events
Mathematics and logic
Natural and physical sciences
People and self
Philosophy and thinking
Reference
Religion and belief systems
Social sciences and society
Technology and applied sciences

Now consider this restructuring:
Military Culture and the arts
Military Geography and places
Military Health and fitness
Military History and events
Military Mathematics and logic
Military Natural and physical sciences
Military People and self
Military Philosophy and thinking
Military Reference
Military Religion and belief systems
Military Social sciences and society
Military Technology and applied sciences

Essentially all one needed was to replicate most of the existing Wiki portals with addition of the 'Military' and the exclusion of Military, Military Science and War roots!

In fact War and Military science can be eliminated as a root altogether!
Consider War sub-categories below:
[+] Warfare by era - Historical events = Military Historical events
[+] Warfare by type - This is actually a mix of Military doctrines and and Military technologies (already there)
[+] Aftermath of war - is actually a part of Society = Military society
[+] Anti-war - is Politics = Politics about the Military (already there)
[+] Causes of war - is International relations = Military Strategy (which is a part of IR)
[+] War deities - Religion = Military theory (the theory being that if the gods are good to us we will win ;O)
[+] Depictions of war - Media = Military art, Military in fiction, and Military images
[+] Laws of war - Law = Military Law
[+] Military and war museums - Culture and the arts (most larger museums have significant art collections) = Military Culture, and Military History!
[+] Military operations - Military = this becomes the root category primary special 'branch'
[+] People associated with war - Biographies = Military History/Military biographies/Military writers (deceased service personnel), Military veterans' affairs (retired service personnel), Military personnel (current service personnel), Military decorations (usually attached to a chest)

This would not only make the management of categories easier, but provide a more consistent and standardised guide within the overall Wiki categorisation environment for non-military authors/editors to follow.

The objective would be to make the categories more focused and descriptive, as well as more Wiki-standard. It would half the work of administrators since currently they are managing three roots that describe same concept from three POVs, what happened? (War), who did it? (Military), and how was it done? (Military Science). Is it necessary to ask three questions where one suffices? The scheme as it currently stands is a task better equated to "shoveling sand into the sea" since there will always be more authors and editors then administrators.

Please forgive me is this has/is already been proposed elsewhere and is under consideration or has been discarded. -- mrg3105mrg3105 03:53, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Military politics?!

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I can understand politics in the military, or politics and the military, but military politics? Is that where the troops get to elect their officers like in the revolutionary Russian/Red Army? I think in Prussia during 1813 they were also electing officers. Do I understand it correctly?--mrg3105mrg3105 04:40, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Kirill. I'll be away from this afternoon (Sydney time) until Thursday night...so will have time to think. Last night I spent a lot of time in the categores and felt lost, and I alctuallly know what most mean (or could/should mean).
It seems to me that in terms of the project, we need to set some milestones and not create more categories.
  • Priority no.1 as I see it is to move everything from War to Military to consolidate a lot of duplication. Once that is done, we would have a better view of what's there, adn also stop new articles going to the War cats. (Tree surgery).
  • Priority no.2 should be actual reallocation of articles to their appropriate categories (Tree pruning)
  • Priority no.3 will then become self evident because any article that can not be easily and intuitively placed into a category will either need a new category set up, or need to be moved to a new article name. (Fruit picking :o)

Ok, I agree that Armed Forces may be a better name then Military, but the amount of renaming is daunting :o\ And keep in mind that only administrators can do that, so who is going to do it? In any case, this can be left till last I think so there will be time to "recruit".

Just so you don't think I've been slacking, I have started another article. It was prompted by the inconsistency with which the article boxes are annotated, such as results or forces. Can that template have additions made? In any case, when I return on Friday I will e-mail you a document off-Wiki so you can have a read and comment.Cheers--mrg3105mrg3105 05:19, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hm. Interesting stuff.
In any case, I've added a checklist so that it's easier to keep track of what's going to happen to the current top-level categories under all of these proposals. I'm hesitant to actually make massive changes (e.g. getting rid of the double-root system) until we have at least a vague picture of where we're going with this, since any large changes to the actual categories will call out a lot of people wondering what's going on; I'd much prefer it if we had an answer to give them. ;-) Kirill 16:35, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Restructuring phase

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Category:Military history - root category for topics dealing with events

Category:Military history by branch
Category:Military history by country
Category:Military history by era
Category:Military history by topic
Category:Military diplomacy
Category:Military operations -> Military history by events
Category:Causes of war
Category:Aftermath of war

Category:Military history by events

Category:Military events by scale
Category:Wars
Category:Military Theatres
Category:Military campaigns
Category:Military operations
Category:Battles
Category:Operations involving special forces -> Unconventional forces operations

--mrg3105mrg3105 03:14, 30 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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