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Outstanding discussions

I've just unarchived the Preemptive disambiguation and Merging the Australian and New Zealand task forces discussions; they're mentioned in the current newsletter so I think the archiving was premature (blame the bots). However, the fact that they were archived indicates they may have run their course. I've left notes on each to the effect that they're coming to a close:

  • I'm happy to wrap up the Aus/NZ TF one, with the proviso that I've expressed a preference so my neutrality could be questioned.
  • Getting a neutral admin to adjudicate the Preemptive disambig one was mooted - is this worth doing?

EyeSerenetalk 12:24, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Milhist image Dept

Hi Ed, I was thinking along the lines of the request for copyedit department, but for maps & images. I pick up quite a few poor / lacking images in FACs and it would be good to be able to send authors to somewhere more personal and useful than the graphics lab. Graphics lab frequently just does touch-up / crop / convert to SVG, rather than real image generation. I'd love to see requests for copyedit and images on the "Military history WikiProject announcements and open tasks". I think people would be more inclined to contribute real content. Cheers Doug (talk) 12:54, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Moved from my talk —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 21:06, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

(Background) - back in the September 2009 election, Doug supported me and left a thought about adding a MILHIST image department. I, of course, completely forgot about it until the last elections, so I left him a message. He's semi-active, so he just replied a couple days ago.
Does anyone think this would be a good idea, perhaps as part of WP:MHL or perhaps as a sub-group of that? —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 21:06, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

I could see that happening, I think it would be healthy for the logistics department. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:34, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
I'd certainly be willing to work on /coordinate it, assuming we want to establish it. NativeForeigner Talk/Contribs/Vote! 23:50, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
To clarify my position above, I think this is a good idea too. NF, I forgot that you are one of those image crazies. ;) You'd be a perfect editor to coordinate it. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 06:57, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
Yep, good idea. I'd also be willing to sign up to help out. EyeSerenetalk 09:01, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps I'm missing something, but MHL already includes two sections dealing with images (graphics and photography). How would a new image section differ from those? Kirill [talk] [prof] 13:04, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps this task could be tasked on to the Graphics Lab? Doug wants to have a place for the mapmakers and artists (eg File:Alsace.svg) in MILHIST, I think. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 05:10, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
Copyediting and citation standards have come up so far in the last few years that it appears to me that the quality and quantity of top class image content is lagging behind. I only know of WP:WikiProject_Military_history/Logistics#Graphics, which is sorely underutilised. The WP:Graphic_Lab/Illustration_workshop is a worthwhile new addition, but I was thinking of somewhere more familiar and welcoming for MilHist contributors. In addition, the Graphic Lab spaces tend to fill up with 'spammy' requests while requests for significant creative content tend to be overlooked. MilHist promotes and organises article generation and review better than WP, why not images? Not wanting to get ahead of things, but perhaps we could put image requests on {{WPMILHIST Announcements}}? Doug (talk) 23:57, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
They're currently listed on the task force announcement templates, but I'm not sure that we'd necessarily want them on the main one; aren't we likely to get so many requests that the list would overwhelm the other items? Kirill [talk] [prof] 19:17, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
Good point, perhaps it could be organised as a task-force, but perhaps it simply isn't (and isn't meant to be) within our scope. Doug (talk) 19:01, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Invitation for comments to be made

Hello all, can I please get a few more opinions in the discussion: here? The issue is mainly about the command structure field in the infobox on Australian Army units (i.e. whether it should be operational groupings such as brigade, or ceremonial such as Royal Australian Armoured Corps), with the flag icon useage secondary. I won't say more than that here, as I don't want to curry favour in any way, so please review the discussion and articles mentioned and provide your opinion. I'm happy to follow concensus however it pans out. Cheers. — AustralianRupert (talk) 21:19, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Merging the Australian and New Zealand task forces: and the winner is...

I've closed this discussion wince we have not past 23:59 UTC Friday, the consensus is that the best place to merge to would be Australia, New Zealand and South Pacific task force. Are we agreed to move forward with that name? TomStar81 (Talk) 05:22, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Aye. NativeForeigner Talk/Contribs/Vote! 06:18, 17 April 2010 (UTC)
Yes, I agree. — AustralianRupert (talk) 10:33, 17 April 2010 (UTC)
Looks good to me, but keep in mind the full name needs to be the "Australian, New Zealand and South Pacific military history task force", since the name would otherwise be ambiguous when seen outside the project. Kirill [talk] [prof] 15:58, 17 April 2010 (UTC)
Good point. TomStar81 (Talk) 18:55, 17 April 2010 (UTC)
Has the merger taken place? I'm happy to do this in the next day or so if no-one else jumps in first. EyeSerenetalk 08:49, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
I don't believe that the merge has been done yet. I'm still "co-ordinating" the NZ task force, which apparently only really consists of one bloke at the moment... — AustralianRupert (talk) 23:03, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

No one has merged the task forces yet, I gathered that it was complicated to do, and that we needed Kirill's guidance to get through it. I was therefore waiting for the confirmation before asking how we go about merging. To be honest, I have no idea how to do that, which is why I have not do this myself. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:15, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't think my guidance is really needed in this case—EyeSerene has plenty of experience merging task forces from the last round of consolidation—but I'll be happy to look over the results. The only complication from how we did the process last time is that the Australian WikiProject has a tag in their banner which feeds the Australian TF assessment categories; once the categories for the new task force are created, we'll need to work with that project to make sure their banner gets changed to point to the new names. Kirill [talk] [prof] 03:02, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
My apologies, but I probably won't get time to do the merger before the weekend (my job role is expanding and in addition to taking on extra work I've got study for an unbelievably tedious qualification). Sorry for the delay. EyeSerenetalk 11:13, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

User:Blablaaa

There is currently a discussion of the indefinite block I have placed on Blablaaa (talk · contribs) at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Blablaaa which other admins and editors in this project may wish to comment on. Nick-D (talk) 00:21, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

hoax Hubert Biedermann

Commanderu (talk · contribs) tried adding a person called Hubert Biedermann to the list of KC recipients. I am 100% sure that such a person never existed. I added the {{db-hoax}} to the page. Can someone here please check if I followed the process correctly. Thanks MisterBee1966 (talk) 08:33, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure if user pages can be deleted as hoaxes, but it does seem to fail the first criteria at WP:UP#NOT. Nick-D (talk) 10:01, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Less active

I've been fairly busy the last couple of weeks, and I don't anticipate this changing anytime soon. From now until early June, I have two state championship, a national championship, and an all-star quiz bowl tournament to attend. I also have AP exams coming up in early May and exams for school shortly after, so I really ought to study for those. I will also be spending a week in early June visiting some colleges I've been looking at. Basically, my activity will range from low to zero for the next six to eight weeks. I'm sorry for not posting this sooner, but I've been too busy. – Joe N 23:45, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Out of curiosity, what AP tests? NativeForeigner Talk/Contribs 00:01, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
Good luck, and do not worry too much about your absence, we will make do. We always do :) TomStar81 (Talk) 04:38, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, Physics B, and Calculus BC. I tried to get into European History, US Government, and Comparative Government, but my school's counselors are incompetent and scheduled them to all be at the same time, and at the same time as Physics. A lot of people couldn't get into classes they cared about at all. – Joe N 21:44, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
Both economics? *Puke*. I'm taking macro next semester here; it's required for my major (unfortunately). Good luck! —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 07:08, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

I too must apologise for my lack of activity at the moment. I keep meaning to post something here, but usually end up trying to review an article when I'm online instead (and then run out of time for that as well). I won't bore you with all the details, but I'm busy sorting out funding for a.... military history project! It does mean I'm horrifically busy at the moment, but I'm hoping it will settle down soon and I will be more active eventually. Ranger Steve (talk) 09:55, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Seeing as this seems to be the thread for it, I'll be absent on-and-off until mid-June while I study for a qualification. I'll try to call in when I can though. EyeSerenetalk 17:06, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Page notice idea

Given that we now have the capability to add page notices to articles, I wanted to test the water for an idea to create a template for pages that are problematic either by virtue of their subject matter or by virtue of the number of different groups that have an interest in such articles. What I am thinking of is adding something in the page notice section like this:

What do you guys think about this? Is it something worth pursuing? TomStar81 (Talk) 04:35, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

No. This could frighten a newbie from implementing positive changes to an article, and I would really not like to push potential contributors away. To compound this problem, it will certainly further an attitude of a 'discuss any possibly controversial edit to death before [possibly] implementing it or one of the participants gives up and quits' philosophy. On the other hand, I would support notices like Template:Editnotices/Page/RMS Titanic, which hopefully deter some of the common childish vandalism. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 05:08, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
It's probably not a good idea to have special templates like this. While I'd added a commented note at the top of the World War II article (with the agreement of the other regular editors there at the time I added it), I've found that reverting any controversial edits and leaving a polite note on the talk page of the editor who made them generally works really well for these articles - most editors are happy to engage in discussion about these edits, and those who are motivated by something other than a desire to develop accurate and neutral articles are easily identified and not successful. Nick-D (talk) 07:42, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
I think this is worth looking into, especially when we already have two editors fighting over the subject. I have seen editors slug it out on the Blitzkrieg article before, with 3RR being violated, people becoming impolite. Here I think this might help. MisterBee1966 (talk) 17:02, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
I think it is ok to consider putting page notices on problematic articles, that is what they are there for. I don't think it would be very helpful to mandate the use of them though, it would add another layer of bureaucracy that wouldn't be welcomed by the vast majority of editors.
The page notice should be tailor-made to each individual article and not instituted on a blanket basis. This should increase the likelihood that they will be effective. Woody (talk) 17:25, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
Interesting idea, but I think it's something for the wider wiki to consider and not just Milhist. As Woody says its another layer of bureaucracy that we'd be imposing on ourselves, when far more complex subjects wouldn't bother. It might have its merits, but I don't think we should be using it alone. Ranger Steve (talk) 17:36, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Should we take this to the village pump(?) then? If it could benefit Wikipedia as a whole, we could get some praise for the idea assuming it hasn't already been though up. TomStar81 (Talk) 19:51, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Frankly, I think they would say no. Editnotices and page notices have been around for quite a while now and they have been used on an ad-hoc basis as and when they are needed. Most problematic articles are already under some form of restriction and forcing an edit notice would not be beneficial. I recently instituted one for an article I am watching (Darlington F.C.) which had a small, tailor-made notice that has worked well. It has only worked well though because it is tailor-made for the article and the editors involved. I don't think this should be pushed out across all articles. The articles that need them can have them added as and when the need arises. It would be beneficial to have something of a standard template to use though. Woody (talk) 20:05, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Australia, New Zealand and South Pacific military history task force

This has now been set up through merging the Australian and NZ task forces as agreed. If someone cough...Kirill... could look over what I've done that would be great :) I've deleted the /Popular pages for each defunct TF but I'm not sure what to do (if anything) about creating a new one for the ANZSP TF. No coordinators are materially affected by the merger.

The issue of a suitable image for the new TF will need to be hashed out - I've mentioned it on the talk page there. I've also contacted the Australian WikiProject as they'll need to update parameters in their {{WP Australia}} template to send their articles into the new categories. I think that's everything, but apologies if I've missed anything! EyeSerenetalk 13:59, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

I've looked over the changes, and everything seems to be where it should; great work, as usual!
Incidentally, has anyone talked to the Australian WP to make sure that their banner gets changed to point to the new categories in place of the old Australian TF ones? Kirill [talk] [prof] 01:20, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
Thanks very much Kirill. I think you missed my last sentence above though (thread here) :) EyeSerenetalk 07:20, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
Oops... so much for my reading abilities! Kirill [talk] [prof] 11:42, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

ACW 150 special project naming

Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/American Civil War task force/American Civil War Sesquicentennial#Drive logistics and naming; it looks like we're about to have a fourth special project up and running, and it would be good to come up with a clever name for it. Kirill [talk] [prof] 01:27, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Busy for next week or so

Guys, just a quick note that I won't be able to contribute much for the next week due RL commitments; in the short term, that means I won't be able to take my usual active role in tallying up Monthly Contest points, handing out awards, etc -- so job opportunity there for a newbie coord, perhaps in concert with an old hand... ;-) Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 23:39, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I've verified all the entries and points. I've updated the historical tally. I've archived March to the log. I've moved April down on the page and created May's list. I think that all that is left to do is hand out the awards. I've got the mark up for this written offline, but just want to have someone check that I haven't broken anything before handing out the awards. Also, can I please confirm that there are only two awards: 1st place gets the Chevrons and 2nd place gets the Writer's Barnstar? Apologies in advance if I've broken anything. (This was a big job, I have a new appreciation for all the hard work Ian has down on the contest in the past now). Also, when should the new newsletter be updated? Cheers. — AustralianRupert (talk) 15:06, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

April Newsletter

Aside from the editorial, is there anything else we need to add to this before we send it off to the waiting masses? TomStar81 (Talk) 18:19, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi, Tom. I've added the contest results. As per my above comment, I've not handed out the awards yet as I need someone to quickly check I've not broken anything. Once that is done, the awards are all ready to go (I've written them up offline). Just let me know and I'll give them out. Cheers. — AustralianRupert (talk) 23:26, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
Just quickly scanning, I think you've done everything right, Rupert -- tks and well done! The only thing I was thinking is that perhaps Historical Perspective could receive a discretionary Writers Barnstar as well, since there was only one point (a Start-Class article) between him and equal second place... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 00:47, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
Cheers, Ian. I'm fine with that. So long as no one is opposed to it. — AustralianRupert (talk) 01:01, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
We did discuss way back, when I suggested we institute an official Third Place position/award. That wasn't agreed, but an occasional discretionary 'encouragement' award seemed to have consensus -- so the blurb on the Newsletter doesn't necessarily change, just an extra award goes out for good work that month. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 01:18, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
As a practical matter, if its really close the project usually extends an award to the odd man out such as it were. Recall that we did this a term or two ago when the last place in the coordinator elections happened to be a tie between two users, and we accepted both in for the position. Point being that we can and do make these 'encouraging' awards if the situations warrant. As for the editorial, how about we write something for the Normandy special project? TomStar81 (Talk) 02:05, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
The Normandy Special Project wouldn't be a bad choice for an editorial, IMO. I've not had much to do with it, though, so I probably wouldn't be able to help out very much, I'm afraid. It would be a good way of increasing awareness of it, though, and getting more editors involved. — AustralianRupert (talk) 07:08, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
Ok, I have gone ahead and made the awards, including a Writer's Barnstar for Historical Perspective. Cheers. — AustralianRupert (talk) 06:58, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
I should get the chance to write up something tomorrow re the Normandy project. EyeSerenetalk 20:16, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
Done, hope it's not too long (feel free to trim). I couldn't think of enough to say about just Operation Normandy, so I expanded the editorial to talk about special projects generally. EyeSerenetalk 14:20, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
It looks good. I am sending it out now, so everyone look for this to arrive in you mailboxes in the next 24-48 hours. TomStar81 (Talk) 16:19, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

NYC bomb plot

Depending on what turns up in the next 24-hours, I would ask that you all keep an eye out on article that ends up created here on the matter. At the moment, I think that the incident will remain out of our hands, but my hunch here is that this is going to turn up an overseas terror link, and when that happens it will come under the greater heading of the war on terror, which would make it an article within our scope. This is going to be big, really big, when all is said and done, so lets make sure we do our very best to make sure everything stays in good order.

In short, "England expects that every man will do his duty." TomStar81 (Talk) 08:12, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Update: Found the article, its located at May 1, 2010 Times Square bomb scare. TomStar81 (Talk) 08:15, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
Watchlisted. NativeForeigner Talk/Contribs 18:41, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

It appears at this point that the police are reporting that the suspect in this case may have received terror training in Pakistan. This has yet to be independently confirmed, but I would propose that if and when this is independently confirmed we add our project tag to the article. On a related note, the suspect himself now has an article here on Wikipedia; while I am inclined to believe that the page will end up deleted on one event grounds its presence here and now prompts me to input on whether both the person and the incident articles should be tagged for us if the pakistan terror training turns out to be correct. Thoughts? TomStar81 (Talk) 03:03, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Considering terrorist organizations fall within our scope, if it's proved that the suspect is connected to one of them we should tag both the articles. However, if he was not part of a terorist organization but only a psychopath, I don't think this has anything to do with our project. --Eurocopter (talk) 20:06, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

As a consequence of the task force merge with the Australian and NZ task forces, there are now redlinked categories appearing at the bottom of Australian and New Zealand milhist articles. See for instance: [1]. Is there any way to fix this, so that the categories are blue linked, or don't appear? — AustralianRupert (talk) 12:34, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Seems ok now - I think these were probably from the Australia WikiProject (whose banner template linked into our categories), but I believe it's been sorted at their end. EyeSerenetalk 10:28, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
Yep, I helped amend their template along with User:Funandtrvl cleaning up after me. Everything should all be working now. Woody (talk) 16:48, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
Looks good now, thanks for your help. Cheers. — AustralianRupert (talk) 08:04, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Newsletter

I've been thinking about the proposed reformatting for the Bugle; and I am curious to know if there would be any interest in turning our letter into something more closely resembling the Signpost? We could make a case for four independent sections: a page with major news of the month, a page for task force reports, a page dedicate to special project reports, and a page dedicated a monthly tally for the departments run. This would also allow our members to leave comments on the news items so we can feel them out for where they stand on such issues, and would solve the delivery problem by allowing "headlines" to go out such as they would exist. What do you guys think about this idea? TomStar81 (Talk) 09:12, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm trying to get back into the MILHIST loop... could you link to the relevant discussion on redesigning the Bugle? –Juliancolton | Talk 03:05, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators/Archive 29#Newsletter proposal
How about divisions more similar to the ones we have? We have a "From the coordinators" for an editorial (note: not the same thing as the current editorial), an "op-ed" page for what is currently the editorial, "Project news" for news from the project—including special projects, etc.—and a last page for the awards and contest/article/FP tallies. We could also add a page where we intervsiew a random member of the project... —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 05:29, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
That would work too. For right now I'm just trying to feel out where we stand on the matter of implementing the change, we can worry about the specifics as we go along. TomStar81 (Talk) 21:48, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
As a semi-random note, I'm planning on writing an article on how to find topics for new articles when I've got a bit more spare time. While I'm not a coordinator, what Tom is proposing here seems to be a really good idea, though of course it would be dependent on there being enough people willing to write articles - which is a problem for the Signpost at times. Nick-D (talk) 08:33, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
Indeed, the Signpost often omits certain articles because nobody has written them for a particular week. I suppose we could mitigate that to some extent by relying on the coordinators to produce articles, but it will still be an extra task we're committing ourselves to. Kirill [talk] [prof] 17:01, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

By and large its the coordinators that do the writing for the newsletter anyway; if not all the writing, then certainly the lion's share of it. As it currently stands, aside from the editorial and the from the coordinators sections, the the rest of the information added comes about largely as a result of due process from the assessment and contest results for any given month. That leaves project news as the wild card so to speak; we usually write that up based on whatever interesting discussions or events are happening here, but if we are to move to a knew format we could encourage more participation here by introducing an academy piece to be delivered at the time the new newsletter is rolled out so that our project members can see that they too are welcome to write for the newsletter. TomStar81 (Talk) 21:42, 9 May 2010 (UTC)]

Sounds good. With our numbers, even if it was just the coords (including emeritii) who did the writing, in rotation we'd only do one major feature once each per term. That's not too bothersome :) EyeSerenetalk 16:59, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
OK, for a preliminary test drive we could split our current newsletter into section by adopting the format Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/variable, with variable being the different subsections. We could place the project news in one section and expand it to include news of note from the task forces and the special projects we run. The coordinators bit and the editorial could go on this page as well, although I personally think that they would do better on their page. Another page could be created for articles of note, contest, and awards and honors. We could expand this page to include pictures of note and to the articles and images within our scope that appeared on the main page over the last month, although I am not sure if there would be an interest in it. This would give us three separate pages, with an option to create a fourth page for special reports or other items of interest (like drives, personal contests, etc). Again, this is in its infancy, but how does a layout like this one sound? TomStar81 (Talk) 20:59, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
I think a signpost layout would be beneficial and make it a bit more readable. The Bugle has increased in size to such an extent that it really needs splitting in some form in my opinion. I think revamping the newsletter would benefit from a bit of trial and error. From what I gather from your text you are suggesting the following?:
  • Bugle
  • Project news: task forces/special projects; coordinators, editorial
  • Article news: Articles of note; contest; awards and honors.
Expanding on your version:
  • Bugle
  • Project news: from the coordinators; task forces/special projects updates
  • Article news: Promotions; main page content
  • Member news: Contest; awards and honors
  • Editorial: as it says on the tin
This splits it into logical sub-sections and would leave room for any expansion/is sufficiently flexible to allow any additions as and when required for special projects etc. What do you think? Woody (talk) 01:49, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

I like it; in particular, I like the idea of having an editorial page as its own independent feature. This format would allow us to distribute more news across the project as a whole, and could help gain and retain readership. TomStar81 (Talk) 05:03, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Just a quick thought, as the "from the coordinators" occasionally veers outside of just a listing of project news, I think that it should become the "coordinator's editorial"; what is currently the editorial would become the "op-ed" section. I think this would more clearly describe the sections (seeing as the "from the coordinators" correlates with a newspaper's editorial, and the current editorial correlates with a newspaper's op-ed section).
Just my two cents. Otherwise I like Woody's proposal. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 05:34, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Just spotted this, seems like a decent format we could base ours off of —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 09:21, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Poke

Hey all, let's restart this now so we have a chance at modifying the upcoming newsletter. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 06:12, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

  • Ok then, if there are no objections I would propose that we start our formal retooling of The Bugle with June addition. This would allow us the whole month to tweak the parts and headers to find a style that works for us. I think the Signpost format will work well, especial in light of the fact that our newsletter only goes out once a month, which should allow us plenty of time to get stories and other parts of the bugle up and running. To ensure that this works, I propose we settle on the title for the newsletter aspect section now so that when June 1 rolls around we can move out the new format without having to deal with any 'fog of war' such as it were. What do you guys think about this? TomStar81 (Talk) 06:29, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Backlogs

Hi all, can one or two (or more would be great) co-ords take a look at the unassessed and no task force articles listed on WP:MHA? There's a pretty big backlog at the moment (400 and 200). I spent most of yesterday going through them and got through about 50, but it doesn't feel like I made much of a dent really. Any help would be appreciated. Cheers. — AustralianRupert (talk) 20:02, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

On a related note (for the dumb among us), I know we share A class assessments with the Aviation and ship projects, do we share B class as well? Ranger Steve (talk) 17:51, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
I'm not sure if there is anything formal, but I'd say it is probably fair enough to courtesy assess for these projects as well. — AustralianRupert (talk) 10:32, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
Thats what I figured, but I'm having trouble getting the b class assesment to show up for other projects and wondered if there was a specific reason within the coding for the boxes. I'm guessing its just me! Ranger Steve (talk) 10:38, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
Some of them require specific mark up. Usually it will tell you the coding to use in the talk page banner. In the Aviation project banner it says something along the lines of "This article has not yet been checked against the criteria for B-Class status:" (Click "Show"). Beside show it will have: "To fill out this checklist, please add the following code to the template call". And then it will have the mark up to add. — AustralianRupert (talk) 10:52, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, tried all of that, no joy with any combination of efforts in preview. No bother, I'll ask on their talk pages tonight. Cheers AR, Ranger Steve (talk) 11:07, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
Ok, sorry I couldn't be of more assistance. — AustralianRupert (talk) 12:03, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

MILMOS status/location

WP:MILMOS was recently untagged as a MoS page, presumably due to its location within the project's namespace rather than the main MoS one. I've left a note for Gnevin, who changed the tag, here, so we'll see what the response is; but I think that we'll probably wind up having to, at a minimum, move it to something like Wikipedia:Manual of Style (military).

Beyond that, I suspect the question of having the MILMOS talk page redirect to the MILHIST one will be brought up, as it's an unusual arrangement. Generally speaking, would it be beneficial to have a separate MILMOS talk page, regardless of whether we're pushed to create one? MoS discussions tend to be lengthy and slow, and having a dedicated page for them might make things easier, at least in terms of not having to un-archive them all the time.

Thoughts? Kirill [talk] [prof] 23:35, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

There's apparently a related discussion starting up at WT:MOS#Very specific MoS's; it may be useful to have some of us participate there. Kirill [talk] [prof] 23:46, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
I'd be open to the idea of a dedicated milmos talk page as it would help keep the main talk page size down, but that does create a situation in which those not watching the milmos page may be slow to get involved with a discussion. I suppose that can be rectified with a message here or in the main talk page template, though. As to the issue of whether or not milmos is a part of the mos the answer is a rock solid yes: we went through the trouble of getting the project's guidelines official mos recognition in 2007, and I for one am none-to-keen to see that designation stripped. TomStar81 (Talk) 08:44, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
For anyone not following the discussions elsewhere, the leading idea at the moment appears to be moving all of the subject-specific MoS pages into a supplemental style guide that would have the same level of authority as the MoS proper. I'm going to try and stay on top of these proposals as they move forward, but it would be helpful if some of the other coordinators took part in the discussions as well, to make sure our project's interests are represented. Kirill [talk] [prof] 11:46, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
This would happen as my RL workload skyrockets :P I'll drop by when I can, though it's not going to be often in the next month or so. For the record, I also support the idea of a dedicated page (not least because all relevant dicussions would be in one place rather than, as now, somewhere in the main talk archives). We can always notify project members of discussions using WT:MILHIST and via the newsletter if there's a concern about participation. EyeSerenetalk 17:03, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

An update on where things stand with this:

  • Discussion at Wikipedia:Subject style guide is ongoing, and doesn't seem likely to reach a strong consensus anytime soon. We should still keep an eye on it, though.
  • MILMOS has meanwhile been moved to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (military history), apparently as a result of an unrelated name standardization discussion; as far as I can tell, however, no other changes to it have been made. We should, at this point:
    • Go through the project pages and change the major links to it to point to the new location.
    • Consider whether we want to move forward with splitting off the MILMOS discussion page; given the naming changes, now would be a good time to proceed with any structural changes as well.

Any comments on these or any other issues with MILMOS would be appreciated. Kirill [talk] [prof] 02:39, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

There appears to also be some question about non-stylistic guidelines on the page (WT:MILHIST#Issues with Wikipedia:Manual of Style (military history)); I'm not sure whether that's really a widely-held concern, and what the precise delineation between style and content might be even if it is, but we may also want to consider whether there might be any benefit to splitting MILMOS into a style guide and a content guide (but potentially retaining a common talk page for both?). Kirill [talk] [prof] 02:59, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
And now we appear to be move-warring over the page title. I think we may have been outpaced by events here, so I would suggest moving further discussion to the section on the main project talk page and trying to inject some calm before somebody starts a MILHIST/MoS war. Kirill [talk] [prof] 13:13, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
I've left a note on the main talk page and added a link on the project news box, so we should see some feedback on the matter as our members get involved in the discussion. In the mean time, would it be a good idea to move protect our MILMOS until we get consensus? I'm not keen on watching a move-war on a page that important to the whole project. TomStar81 (Talk) 17:16, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi all, on the ANZSP task force talk page there is a query about the popular pages link. I'm not sure how to answer this question, so I'm posting here to see if any of the other co-ords know how to fix this. The thread is here. Any help answering this question would be greatly appreciated. Cheers. — AustralianRupert (talk) 23:27, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

I have asked the person who updates the lists. It should be easily sorted. Regards, Woody (talk) 00:17, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Couple of things

Just a few things I wanted to bring up here briefly and cover:

  • I closed the straw poll, it appears that our members are overwhelmingly in favor in retaining the status quo, so for now we will leave the MoS disambig guidelines as they are.
  • Since so many OMT articles keep popping up I want to determine if there would be any objections to OMT members closing these for the project. As a matter of checks and balance I would prefer to see someone outside OMT do this, but if that be not the case I would at least like to know that OMT members at the coordinator level can close these without any objections from the rest of us.
  • More input on the newsletter reformatting would be appreciated in the above section titled "newsletter", I would like to see any proposed change roll out either for the May or June issue of the Bugle.
  • On the matter of the NYC bombing attempt two weeks back: does anyone think that enough evidence exists at this point to allow for the tagging of the article as being within our scope? If not, then I am incline to forgo adding our template to either the bombing article or the bomber article and let the other WikiProjects run with the material.

These are my few points, if anyone else has something they would like to add please feel free to, otherwise feedback would be appreciated for the above points. TomStar81 (Talk) 00:34, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

OMT: In my opinion, members of OMT should not be involved in the closing of ACRs relating to OMT as a simple matter of checks and balances. I have the strongest belief in the coordinators that they could close any review impartially but as a simple matter of process, someone with such a vested interest should not be closing that review. A judge would recuse himself from a trial involving a family member for example and I see this in a similar vein. The only downside I can see is that an article may have to wait one more day before closing, not always a bad thing.
NYC: I think we should just abandon it, it is not a pressing matter. If more links become apparent in the coming months then it can be revisited but it really isn't a pressing matter in my opinion. Woody (talk) 01:39, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
Given that at one stage some editors were concerned that OMT was producing 'cookie cutter' articles, I think that an uninvolved coordinator should close the articles - this will be good for the OMT articles as well. Nick-D (talk) 01:54, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
I am in agreement with my colleagues on the closure of OMT articles, which is why I have not closed one and have been posting them in the above section. They may wait an extra 24-72 hours to get closed but in the interest of the integrity of the process, I'd rather have the delay than an involved closing (especially since I close the bulk of the project's ACRs). -MBK004 03:32, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Alright then, we will leave the current practice of having non-OMT members close ACRs in place. I have to be honest and say that works best for both OMT and MILHIST, however it can be problematic at times when OMT noms stay open longer since some coordinators are a part of the project. As you the NYC bombing, I agree that we should pass on tagging it for now; I highly doubt that the event will result in a military response, and since the attack failed I see no pressing reason to tag the article as being within our scope. TomStar81 (Talk) 03:50, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry for the late addition, but I thought I'd chime in. I'm uncertain about the OMT policy we're enforcing upon ourselves. Essentially I'm worried about preventing editors who might have had no prior involvement in an article or its ACR from carrying out established co-ordinators duties, just because they're on the same taskforce. I really do appreciate what everyone says above about checks and process, but I would like to assume that everyone elected here is capable of being that judgemental - that is part of why the co-ordinators are elected after all. I would have no problem with co-ordinators voluntarily choosing not to close OMT ACRs, but I think establishing a rule would be a poor precedent. I appreciate there isn't a rule per se being discussed here, but wanted to comment nonetheless – I don't believe we should object to OMT members carrying out the process... Ranger Steve (talk) 13:26, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Article assessment proposal

There is a proposal to indicate the article class on the front of articles much like the current FA start. The discussion is here. The proposal says nothing about our use of A-Class and I am assuming that the proposal will either demote our A-class articles to B or GA depending on their assessments in other classes. If this is indeed the case then this turn of events is rather worrisome and warrants our immediate attention. -MBK004 02:42, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I would assume that they don't care about our use of A-class becuase it isn't standardized, so I would think that they mean for it to be like {{articlehistory}}, where the article's quality is GA but the WikiProject's quality is A. Also note how quick this was shot down (and the reasons for it). —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 03:59, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, I've weighed in there. My guess is it's dead in the water, but you never know. - Dank (push to talk) 13:03, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Some good ideas in principle, I think, but I also believe there are too many issues to go anywhere with it now. Interesting long-term proposal though if we could somehow rationalise our various assessment systems. EyeSerenetalk 14:06, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
It seems noble, but a lack of consistency stops me from supporting it. NativeForeigner Talk/Contribs 05:07, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, I can't follow here. The class rating from lowest to highest is stub, start, (C-class for some projects), B-class, GA, A-class and FA, with GA and FA having a global context while the other levels pertain to project related ratings. Already a number of other language Wikipedia pages acknowledge the fact that the English article has a rating of GA or FA by highlighting this with a star or checkmark on their respective other languages list of the article. Already this concept omits the intermittent A-class rating, does it not? MisterBee1966 (talk) 10:47, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
If you turn on assessments in your preferences, you get everything: Stub, Start, C-Class, B-Class, Good, A-Class, and Featured. If both A-Class in one or two projects, and Good for the rest, it tells you both. For that reason I don't see any great need for the above proposal and, if it did go ahead, I can't see an excuse for not displaying A-Class where applicable. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 11:31, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
(ec) That's true and I hope I don't upset anyone by saying that it's probably the right way to do things at the moment. So few projects use A-Class that, if it was made part of the concept, for most articles its absence might be taken to mean they lack quality, when all it really means is that the article has never been through A-Class review because the parent WikiProjects don't have one. However, I think there is an even more fundamental issue that needs sorting out first. That is, how do we indicate GA and FA are 'outside' the Stub/Start/C/B/A scale? They are supposed to be, but WP:ASSESS implies they're not and many editors don't think of them that way. However, an article can be both A-Class/B-Class (or theoretically even lower) and also be a GA; only FA supersedes all other ratings. To reflect reality the scale should be something more like:
Stub - Start - C - B - A
 GA - FA
I'm coming to the view that we should revisit our entire assessment system - both project and community processes - to try to come up with something unified and logical even if it means staring from scratch. Maybe we could even let readers have their say too with some way of flagging what readers thought of an article. I can't see that happening though :) EyeSerenetalk 11:36, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
I can't see your last suggestion happening either, it'd just be a magnet for freeper idiots and the like (no offense to anyone who's a member of the forum, I just think doing things like vote-bombing AOL polls is monumentally stupid). Parsecboy (talk) 11:43, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
Turns out, there actually is a test bed Wiki in operation. You can read about it here. Parsecboy (talk) 14:33, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
I personally would not go as far as to say that the entire quality scale is absurd. However I do feel somewhat uncomfortable with the current start to C-Class range of the scale. You can write a small article and have verifiable citations for every bit of information you can find on the topic, but due to lack of more published information the article stays at start (not broad in coverage). At the same time another article can be written without any or few citations and it also is rated at start. Which of the two have more quality? MisterBee1966 (talk) 18:06, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, it's not absurd, but it is confusing to people not used to it. I know that it took me awhile to wrap my mind around the idea that Stub–A is [theoretically, at least] a separate scale from GA–FA. 09:24, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Understood! But doesn't this mean that "true" quality starts above GA? Anything below GA is random. I'm pushing the envelope here. So why even market anything below GA? MisterBee1966 (talk) 09:33, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
Looking very generally at Wikipedia as a whole, your comment probably makes sense. My personal way of rationalising the various assessment and review processes would be to repurpose Stub-A Class so that they only look at article content (a sort of scale of "expert" review from subject specialists, which is after all what we'd expect WikiProjects to be able to provide). GA and FA would be the house style and policy compliance review processes, with GA looking (much as it does now) at just the most important aspects of MoS, prose, and copyright, and FA going much deeper and also optionally reviewing content as a final quality check (in which case it would still supersede A-Class). We could then have a twin-scale rating system that made sense, for example
  • Start-Class GA = article is mostly style and policy compliant, but significantly lacking in content
  • B-Class GA = article is mostly style and policy compliant, and contains a useful amount of relevant and fact-checked content
  • A-Class GA = article is mostly style and policy compliant, and content is fully fact-checked, comprehensive, and relevant
  • A-Class FA (or perhaps just FA) = article is fully style and policy compliant, and content is fully fact-checked, comprehensive and relevant
It would mean the different review and assessment processes losing some functions and gaining others, but I do believe we have too much overlap in the current system. EyeSerenetalk 11:38, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
By that token I would think that a two to three tier quality scale would make more sense.
  • Tier 1 is content oriented and is under strong supervision by the projects. Assuming they can assess the content of the article best.
  • Tier 2 is MoS and prose. Here the linguists can scrutinize the article
  • Tier 3 is copyright, images, etc. focussed
The overall quality rating should be oriented by the weakest pillar. Only if all three items are strong an article should advance in the quality scale. The downside is that this may cause more overhead in the review cycle. But quality would be more transparent. Just a thought MisterBee1966 (talk) 14:28, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
Interesting suggestion :) I think perhaps the various processes are too entrenched to attempt some of these widespread changes, but perhaps we could think about for milhist... maybe even alongside a visual indicator on the article page of its quality rating. I'd personally like to explore this further but it might mean setting up our own quality scale outside FA/GA/etc. I don't know if anyone would go for that :P EyeSerenetalk 13:31, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

(Not) converting units in the name of a gun

Please see WT:MOS#Erratum and proposal about unit conversions. - Dank (push to talk) 04:23, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Stress hotline

Given that our stress hotline hasn't seen any activity in almost a year (and saw fairly little before that), I wonder if it might be worthwhile to mothball it entirely and/or find a different way of running it (perhaps even as a section on this page?). Thoughts? Kirill [talk] [prof] 03:02, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Mothballing it without replacement sounds like the best idea to me. I don't think that it was a successful experiment. Nick-D (talk) 07:57, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
Concur with Nick. TomStar81 (Talk) 08:05, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
Agree, no pressing reason to replace it. Editors seem to post here or to the main talkpage if they have concerns. EyeSerenetalk 17:56, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
Concur. Archiving it seems reasonable. NativeForeigner Talk/Contribs 00:14, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
If it was more active, I'd say that we may as well leave it—but it is not, so I say that its time for mothballing. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 02:06, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
Okay, done. I've removed the obvious links from the project navigation templates, but WhatLinksHere is cluttered at the moment, so please keep an eye out for any that I've missed. Kirill [talk] [prof] 01:07, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
Agree with archiving it, for what it's worth. As noted above, the various talkpages are fine for voicing any relevant concerns. Juliancolton (talk) 18:38, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

A common problem is that almost nobody knows about such projects, as they are buried deeply in the system. I find it interesting - maybe I would have used it in the past, IF I knew about it. And no, I don't have a good solution on how to make it better known (mention it in a newsletter?). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 22:27, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Article history

I need some help please. I tried implementing the article history for Jagdgeschwader 11. However I am too stupid to figure out how to retrieve the first oldid value for the review which failed on 23 February 2010. Can someone please help and let me know how to retrieve this value. Thanks MisterBee1966 (talk) 06:50, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Go into the article history and find the date closest to the one you are looking for. In this case there was an edit on the 23 February so click on this date and this will bring you to the version of the page as of that date so: this version. Then take the oldid from the url and you are sorted. Woody (talk) 07:01, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
And there was light! Thanks Woody MisterBee1966 (talk) 07:35, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Time to leave the team

Hello guys! As you may have noticed, I was quite inactive during the last period and did not manage to take care of any coordinator tasks and responsabilities within my area of interest. Unfortunately work and other real life issues are starting to prevent me to make anymore significant contributions to Wikipedia and our project. Being part of the coordinating team of the Military history WikiProject was perhaps for me the most interesting interaction between people with same hobbies and cultural interests I had in my life. Moreover, during more than five terms as a coordinator, the project became like a family for me, everyday we coordinators decently discussing and struggling to improve this project and make it the best on wiki. Without such a wonderful team, I don't think I could have been able to make any achievements or share my knowledge on this encyclopedia. Although I'm deeply sorry to say this, it is impossible for me to continue around here on a regular basis and I'm forced to leave the team. I wish to thank my fellow coordinators for all we've achieved together and many thanks as well to the people who had confidence and supported me again and again during the coordinator elections!

With those being said, please accept my resignation as a Coordinator of the Military history WikiProject.

Thanks and... keep up the good work! --Eurocopter (talk) 09:02, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Gee, I'm sorry to hear this but I know it's a decision you wouldn't have made lightly. Your knowledge and enthusiasm have always been plain to see. Good luck to you and take care! Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 09:05, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
I echo Ian. I hope that you will still pop in here every once in awhile, if only to say hello! Good luck friend, —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 09:08, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for your efforts Eurocopter. I have updated the main coord page to reflect your resignation, although in the end the only thing different is that you won't be able to close ACRs. I hope we will see you around in the future. Regards, Woody (talk) 11:45, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
Thanks also from this ex-coordinator. Nick-D (talk) 11:54, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
Thank you for everything you've done Eurocopter, the co-ordinators work is something I've appreciated since long before I became one. Best of luck with your offline workload (I sympathise!). Ranger Steve (talk) 13:36, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
Good luck with whatever endeavors you are participating in. Your work here was exceptional, and I understand your decision was not made lightly. NativeForeigner Talk/Contribs 19:04, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
Godspeed Eurocopter, and remember we are always here if you need something. Please stay safe, and good luck with your real life. TomStar81 (Talk) 20:50, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
From me too, Eurocopter. Working with you has been an absolute pleasure and I wish you well in wherever life takes you. If you get the chance to drop in from time to time you'll always be welcome :) EyeSerenetalk 09:04, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
While I have not been as active editing as I might have liked, the Military History project is, I believe, the best-organized and best-communicated project on WP, bringing together a truly diverse community of editors. Many thanks, indeed!  PЄTЄRS VЄСRUМВА ►talk  20:10, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Thank you all for your kind words - they represent the best recognition I could get! --Eurocopter (talk) 20:53, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

RL has been intrusive recently, and I just caught up with this news. Sorry, but not surprised, to hear that you can't do everything. I realize this means resignation as coordinator, but I hope not resignation from Wikiwackiworld! You've done a great job. auntieruth (talk) 15:39, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

May newsletter

Considering that my resignation is now in effect, does anybody mind if I write an editorial for the May newsletter? It would represent a summary of coordinators' activity and examples of constructive behaviour when dealing with POV and other similar things. If nobody has anything against it, I could post it sometime during the next 3-4 days. Cheers, --Eurocopter (talk) 12:20, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

I for one think it would be great way for you to farewell your long-standing role as coordinator on the project. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 12:19, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
I agree with Ian. Go for it, Eurocopter. TomStar81 (Talk) 21:11, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
...Incidentally, while we are one the subject of the May Newsletter, is there anything else we need to add to it before it get sent out? And remember, next month we move to the new format as outlined above; so I expect that we will experience some issues relating to the new format and some questions among ourselves as to what goes where. For the sake of a uniform discussion for this sort of thing I suggest we ask any related questions to the new format here so we all have a chance to see he question and contribute to the answer. TomStar81 (Talk) 21:42, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
  • I'm out of town at the moment, so I intended to send this out on Friday just before leaving for the drive back to El Paso. I hope to complete this months newsletter by then, so make sure that you all get you info in before then :) TomStar81 (Talk) 05:26, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
I'll add my editorial this evening GMT time. Cheers, --Eurocopter (talk) 12:27, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
Need to finalise Monthly Contest results. I'll complete checking assessments for all but myself shortly and can total things up and do the newsletter blurb -- if someone can check my stuff and perhaps do the scoreboard update after that, it'd be great. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 12:58, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
Completed all checks except mine, have to leave it there for tonight without getting to totals/blurb just yet. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 13:50, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
Contest update completed, despatch the newsletter when ready as far as that's concerned... ;-) Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 01:16, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

I've made the inquires to Cbrown, so look for this to go out within the next 24-48 hours. Also, I could use some feedback in the June newsletter section below, if anyone gets a moment. TomStar81 (Talk) 13:47, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Official IRC channel

Hi all. Coords who were here about 11/2 years ago may remember this, but sometime in early 2009 (I forget exactly when) Catalan (talk · contribs) created the IRC channel #wikipedia-en-milhist. It was very underutilized and quickly died after Catalan retired. However, Griffinofwales (talk · contribs), Ktr101 (talk · contribs) and I have resurrected it, and the freenode staff granted me the founder right so that I can make ops (Catalan's account had expired, so it was a simple matter to transfer it). I'd like to get more coords in there. Anyone want to join? :) Chatzilla, a good way to access freenode, is a basic add-on for Firefox, making it easy to get online. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 02:26, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Forgive me for being technologically challenged, but how does this work again? TomStar81 (Talk) 02:34, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
I'm going off to work literally right this second, but go to google, search how to install chatzilla (if you use Firefox), then join the channel #wikipedia-en-milhist and #wikipedia-en . If you get that far, people in one of the two channels can answer anything else. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 02:49, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
Sure, I"ll get on in a few minutes. NativeForeigner Talk/Contribs 23:19, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
Worth a mention in the newsletter? EyeSerenetalk 09:07, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, probably under project news. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 18:29, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
I'm no longer a coordinator, but I'm pretty well-versed in IRC, so I'd be happy to help in any way I can. Juliancolton (talk) 18:33, 1 June 2010 (UTC)


June Newsletter

Before we go creating a bunch of unneeded pages I would like to here from you all what sub pages we should create to link to Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/June 2010. I think the main page can remain since the new newsletter format should mirror the signpost, which would make this our new mainpage, but the subpages still need to be worked out. I think the most obvious one would be Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/June 2010/project news, which we can use to cover project news, editorials, and from the coordinators, but I am interested in here what other subsections we should adopt for this. TomStar81 (Talk) 03:30, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Why would we move to a new title? Use of the current naming policy should be continued for continuity, Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/Newsletter June 2010, which at this point still has the old format and should be used as a placeholder for the article promotions until the new design is up and running fully. -MBK004 04:06, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
He probably just screwed up, no big deal. The subpages can just be named after what they are featuring. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 04:11, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
Thats the idea, ed, but from where I sit if we are going to do this then we need to deprecate the format of the one page newsletter we have. If we retool the page delivered to look like the page used at WP:POST then we can add the main links to that page, then from those links add the stories. That is the idea anyway, but as noted above before we go creating a bunch of uneeded pages I wanted to get feedback on what pages we would need to make this work. TomStar81 (Talk) 21:22, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
If I understand you correctly Tom, you're suggesting that Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/Newsletter June 2010 will still be the new format's front page, with sub pages (/Project news, /Contest etc) linked from that? The page delivered would then still be Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/Newsletter June 2010. If I've got that right, then yep, I support this format. EyeSerenetalk 15:10, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
Yep, what I'm getting from this is:
Is that what you had in mind Tom? Woody (talk) 15:35, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

I like that, although a lot of the major changes are normally covered in the coordinator's editorial. Are we going to cover them in both? —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 22:52, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

  • YES!! Thats exactly what I had in mind, so since the subtabs have been provided are there any objections to creating these links and formally starting the work on them to covert our newsletter? TomStar81 (Talk) 04:47, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
Although I didn't read the discussion, I meant to tag that for g7, as I had just remembered that the newsletter was gonna change. My bad. Buggie111 (talk) 09:52, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
You did, and it was deleted. I then restored it because it is still useful, as you can see as a holding area for the content until we get this redesign all sorted out. Next time, before tagging a project page for deletion, ask us first. -MBK004 05:17, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
I thought that, having created it, there wouldn't be that much of a fuss. Sounds fine with me. Buggie111 (talk) 07:48, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

I think this format (as I understand it) looks good and quite a convenient layout, so no problems for me. Ranger Steve (talk) 20:49, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Then lets start turning these red links to blue links. We can figure out the rest as we go along. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:35, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
Flying visit (supposed to be revising!) I've experimented a little with tweaking the header to suit the new format (see Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/June 2010/Project news). Personally I think it looks cluttered, but what do people think about the general idea? If we can decide on something suitable, I think it would be worth converting the header to a template that maybe takes the issue month and the page name as paramemters (eg {{newsheader|July 2010|Articles}}) and then points to the correct links automatically. I hope that makes sense :P EyeSerenetalk 12:10, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
Well it needs work, but then like I said this new format is going to need to be tweaked as we go along. Given the absence on space to the right of the image in general perhaps we could stack these links one on top of the other and list them on the right to occupy the empty space. That could solve the problem of a cluttered look, but would leave a lot of empty space in the middle. TomStar81 (Talk) 22:16, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
Tweaked per your suggestions. Better? EyeSerenetalk 17:13, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Design update

I've created a template, Template:WPMILHIST Newsletter header, for the newsletter page headers. It's a little crude at the moment but hopefully functional enough to test the concept. There are various things that could be added as we develop the idea (eg the editorial link could be made conditional as we may not always have this page).

At the moment the template parameters are in the form {{WPMILHIST Newsletter header|issue no|month & year|page title}}. I've also juggled content around to the various subpages, though I expect this needs considerable improvement. EyeSerenetalk 10:50, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Interesting, I completely missed this (sorry). I like what you've done. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 07:46, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Input requested

Can I get few more people to weigh in on this discussion? I feel at this point that we could get a lot out this proposal, but I want some additional input before green lighting it. TomStar81 (Talk) 03:59, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Ian on vacation

Guys, just a note/reminder that I will be travelling (to Europe if anyone's interested) for approx. 6 weeks starting 10 June, so my participation will be limited in time and frequency over that period. Feel free to leave messages or email me but just be prepared for delays (and brevity!) in reply... ;-) Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 07:31, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Russia, by any chance? Buggie111 (talk) 07:40, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
Not that far east I'm afraid -- Italy and Croatia (and Bosnia if we can fit it in)... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 07:46, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
Grumble grumble... Buggie111 (talk) 07:47, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
Sounds like fun. If you're going to Venice make sure that you check out the rather good naval museum (the Museo Storico Navale) near the Venetian Arsenal. Nick-D (talk) 10:58, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
Tks Nick, but we'll be in Tuscany, Rome and the Amalfi Coast. Military history won't be high on the agenda -- certainly not if my wife has anything to do with it... ;-) Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 14:27, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Shortage of reviewers

Hi guys, There seem to be an unusually large number of ACRs and PRs languishing with low numbers of comments - the situation seems particularly bad for PRs. While I know that it's a busy time for the students among the project's membership (whom I would estimate at about 40-50% of regulars), could I suggest that it might be time for a push to encourage reviews? Nick-D (talk) 11:22, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Gaza flotilla raid

I meant to note this the other day, but forgot to: the article Gaza flotilla raid was weened off its full protection the the other day and now is now semi-protected, but since the Israeli operation has ruffled a lot of feathers and since the Jewish nation is not all that popular with the Muslim nation in the region I would ask that you all keep an eye on the article for the next few weeks to make sure the article stay policy and guideline compliant. TomStar81 (Talk) 20:13, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Reviewer rights

See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_history#IMPORTANT_NOTICE_-_Editor_reviewing_rights. I've set the reviewer/autoreviewer flag for a number of trusted editors within our project, but obviously I'm going to miss many more. Admin coords, if you know of any suitable editors who meet the criteria at Wikipedia:Reviewing#Becoming_a_reviewer, please update their user rights :) Thanks, EyeSerenetalk 11:49, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Why don't we compose a message to this effect and ask Cbrown to run this out as a special edition message for the project? In this manner we can gather anyone from our project who wants the rights and have them request such rights in an organized fashion. Just a thought. On that note its nice to be back; I'm still working on the GRE but at this point if I read another GRE study guide I swear I'm going to scream. TomStar81 (Talk) 21:22, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
No, it's not quite that important to run a message to everyone... also, better a GRE study guide than a McDonald's manager one. ;) —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 02:54, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
I think Ed's probably right at the moment - really all I'm trying to do with the notice is raise awareness during the trial for any editors that might wonder why they suddenly can't edit their favourite article as normal. We don't need to go into management mode yet, but we should definitely keep tabs on the trial. If this is adopted Wikipedia-wide, we will need to advertise it more widely for the reasons Tom's given. In the meantime, whenever I run across an editor I know is in good standing I've been setting the flags for them anyway. EyeSerenetalk 09:05, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
Just to jump in, could I suggest that when this comes into effect you advertise the list of project members who are also admins? (and hence well placed to evaluate requests for the new permissions). Nick-D (talk) 10:17, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
Makes sense. EyeSerenetalk 11:01, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/American Civil War task force/Operation Brothers at War/Project Guidelines

I was about to add a {{style-guideline}} tag to the top of the article, but after a moment's thought I decided to bring this up here first. I think it would be wise to decide how much autonomy the special projects should have vis-a-vis the project as a whole. I have no problem with a special project getting creative with aesthetics and awards and such, but this move seems to border on independence from the project as a whole. I think this needs to be addressed before this turns into something like a revolt for us since our MoS is supposed to cover all aspect of the milhist operation. The question I pose then is should we allow the special projects to create guidelines of this nature, and if so, should we insist that these guidelines be subordinate to the main Mos and/or out MoS? TomStar81 (Talk) 06:05, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

They look like operational rather than style guidelines at the moment and nothing to worry about, though how they'll develop I don't know. Maybe a link to WP:MILMOS at the top of the page would be helpful?
I'm speculating now, but if the special project does move to develop its own style guidelines that should probably be tactfully but firmly discouraged by pointing out the many disadvantages. Firstly, operating under the milhist umbrella implies acceptance of project standards. Secondly, the MILMOS has 'official' status as a collaboratively-developed subsection of the MoS, so changes would need to be widely discussed and not contradictory to the MoS or MILMOS. Thirdly (arising from the previous point), articles put up for formal assessments procedures - A-Class and FA - will be assessed against MILMOS and the MoS and unlikely to pass if they don't comply. EyeSerenetalk 09:44, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
As EyeSerene said, this doesn't seem like a problem at the moment, but the easiest way to avoid any future issues would be to add a hat note to the effect that "this is a page for internal operating guidelines, style/content guidelines should be added to MILMOS and/or the ACW TF" (FWIW, several task forces maintain subject-specific guidelines already, so this probably isn't a big deal). It would also be helpful to leave the page creator a (nice) note pointing out the issue and our reason for making the change. Kirill [talk] [prof] 12:42, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

How's this:

Would that work? TomStar81 (Talk) 19:04, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

That seems fine to me. Kirill [talk] [prof] 05:03, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

I've taken a stab at adding a project-specific search tool to {{WPMILHIST Navigation}}. Any feedback on (a) whether the tool is something useful to have there and (b) whether the current configuration seems to produce useful results would be very appreciated. Kirill [talk] [prof] 05:18, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Wonderful idea. - Dank (push to talk) 22:58, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
Another stroke of genius, Kirill. Also, why didn't I think of that? :) TomStar81 (Talk) 23:07, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
It's applicable, and it works :D NativeForeigner Talk/Contribs 23:13, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
"Is it something useful" well duh, of course it is. :) Kirill strikes us once again with a stroke of genius. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 03:23, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
Noticed it yesterday and thought I'd missed the relevant discussion :P An excellent idea EyeSerenetalk 08:14, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Nagging Concerns

Hi guys, I’ve been meaning to write this for some time, but (for the reasons outlined below) I just haven’t been able to get round to writing it, at least not in the idealish way I’d have liked to.

This year, after living in a foreign country for 3 and a half years, full time volunteering for 18 months and then taking any underpaid/temp job I could get in order to get the experience and skills to do the sort of work I wanted, I seem to have finally got somewhere. Perhaps it was a bit unwise of me to stand as a co-ordinator when I did, just at the time this all came around (I didn’t actually know it would until after I’d stood), but I really do enjoy Wikipedia, and saw this role as an interesting and positive expansion of my online activities.

I always imagined that increased responsibility should result in some increased activity, but in my online case it seems to have been the reverse. I always start the day with the best of intentions; read a bit of TFA, check the watchlist and address major issues, then struggle to review an ACR or so on and run out of time to comment or work on it (or anything else). You see, I’ve gone and got a pleasant job where I get to do a whole heap of military history research (as well as ancient history, my other interest), and to be fair, I think I probably owe wiki’s editors for teaching me a few of the odds and sods I’d forgotten about good writing and research. Downside of course, is that I have a bit less time to dedicate to my voluntary interests nowadays (and that includes offline too), because someone is paying me to produce. For the last 2 weeks I've barely even had time to log on and have been working (usually away from computers) every day of the week.

I don’t want to give up being a co-ordinator, but I’m very aware that I’m only just treading water here, and not really pulling my weight. I keep hoping that the workload will ease off a bit, but it really isn’t that much (I freely admit that this is more my fault than work’s; I sink my teeth into my projects and tend to ‘live’ them a bit) and I don’t have a massive amount of time online, even on my days off. It’s giving me a genuine sense of unease and guilt that I’m not really doing as much as I should here, and to be honest I’m probably starting to wind myself up about it a bit. Wikipedia is perhaps ‘just’ a voluntary project, but I’m proud to be part of it, enjoy it, and definitely don’t want to let anyone down.

I’m pretty sure all of this will change and that new Britain will enact some sort of law preventing people from enjoying their jobs too much, but that might not be for a few months yet and in the meantime, I’d like to ask for some opinions. I can’t currently commit to as many pages as I intended to when I applied for this role (I can easily continue to monitor all the task forces I cover for example, but whince when I see an ACR for closure and don't have time to do it) and, if everyone feels it best, would welcome some advice on where it might be easiest to phase out some attention where I won’t be missed (in the hope that this will reduce my attentions in one place and allow me to concentrate and actually get something done in another). Equally, if the consensus of opinion is that I should hand over the reigns to another, I’ll go with the vote (I’m not requesting that, but will understand).

So, to summarise; a) I’m deeply sorry about this, and b) any thoughts would be welcomed. Thanks in advance, Ranger Steve (talk) 17:40, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Don't worry too much about it Ranger Steve, we have had coordinators that ran and then didn't hardly edit for the duration of their 6-month terms before and they turned out just fine. Reviewing work is out of the question under the circumstances, but TF monitoring is in, which leads me to believe that you may do best assigned to areas where the work load can be easily processed. If you'd like to help buyt are pressed for time perhaps you can lend a hand with the Category:Military history articles needing attention; some of the categories (like Category:Military history articles needing attention to task force coverage and Category:Military history articles with incomplete B-Class checklists) need a contributor to mil out bits and pieces of the {{WPMILHIST}} code that was omitted when the articles were tagged. This kind of work doesn't take that long (Ive tag two or three articles of this nature in 5-8 minute stretches) and your help here would reduce the number of articles in the categories. You may also consider getting active in the request for assessment section, which usually only requires that editors check articles for requisite assessment letter the editor thinks the article should be at. These are just thoughts, but your situations seems to suggest that this kind of work would suite well with your current RL workload. TomStar81 (Talk) 21:15, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
I'd echo Tom's advice and stress that you've got nothing to feel guilty about or apologise for! The whole point of a large coordinator team is that there's always someone around to pick up the slack. I generally don't have the time to commit to 'proper' (ie A-Class) reviewing either but as another suggestion for a quick job, article assessments in the Stub to B range via Category:Unassessed military history articles don't take long (generally less than five minutes each). It takes seconds to check the Awards page and scan the two talk pages, and as you've found the task forces don't take much looking after. It's perfectly possible to be a valuable member of the team on only a few minutes per day.
I think part of the reason we see threads like this fairly frequently is that the coord role is believed to be more than it really is. It is important and there are areas that require a fairly heavy commitment, but there are also plenty that don't. The way I look at it is every task completed - however small - is a task someone else doesn't need to do, and doing the small things leaves those with more time available to concentrate on the big ones. I can understand why you feel the way you do, but to be honest I think that's more down to your expectations of the role than ours. I felt the same in my first term too :) EyeSerenetalk 08:22, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
I agree with Tom and EyeSerene here. No need to worry too much about this. Real life always takes priority. Great to hear that you are enjoying your work offline, as not everyone can say this. When I have trouble finding time for online work I tend to focus on adding in the task force parameters to the Milhist banner, some quick assessments and reviewing DYKs. Take care and hope to see you around when you get a chance. Cheers. AustralianRupert (talk) 08:55, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
Hey, just look at me. Ever since this term started, I've been unusually busy in real life with school and stuff, and have had much less time than normal to either work on articles or A-Class reviews, which is where I've traditionally helped out. The advice about assessing is sound: my next project, as I start to have more time to spend on Wikipedia, is reducing the backlog of Unassessed Military History articles. This can easily be done in 5-minute bursts, and I'd appreciate the help, as at my current rate of progress I'll be lucky to finish by the time the next elections come around. – Joe N 14:30, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks folks, you've made me feel a fair bit better 'bout this. I'll try and have a go at all of these suggestions over the next week and see what I mess up the least! Cheers, Ranger Steve (talk) 19:15, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Today's featured article

I'm rather surprised to see Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress is the TFA. While the article is in OK shape, it has large slabs of unreferenced text (most notably in the 'U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard' section (which also seems grossly over-long) and some awkward prose. Yesterday's TFA Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back had similar problems. Does anyone know if TFA standards have changed? Nick-D (talk) 04:48, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, quite a few articles have been FARed immediately after being TFAed, and people usually only nom the worst articles for FAR. The specific FAs that are requested at WP:TFA/R (5 at a time) are checked by people, and sometimes opposed for lacking good refs, or any refs, but the majority are just plonked on there by Raul. I went through the Nov 2009 TFAs last year and 20-30% would have copped a few pile-on opposes if they were at FAC, and a few others would probably be stopped if someone looked at them for 15 or more minutes and did a non trivial review. I then asked him if he only lets articles on if they meet modern FAC standards, rather than any nominal FA that passed in 2007 or before that might be only B-class nowadays. He said yes, but he has more old school expectations, judging by his own recent FACs (Traumatic insemination, twice in 2009, fail one, fail two, Surrender of Japan original nom and after he restarted his own FAC) he maybe didn't expect people to bring up certain things that the reviewers considered to bw obvious). Often Raul just puts the TFA up less than a day in advance. One of mine on a currently-active sportsperson was put on there less than half a day before it was to run, and I hadn't updated the last 6 months of the guy's career. No I don't think standards have changed, as a lot of articles are put up despite clearly being below par just by spending 2 minutes looking at the lack of refs (or lots of refs to amateur websites) YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 06:01, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
Off the top of my head, at least three TFAs have been FARed recently (Darjeeling, later fixed, A British geography article that was fixed, and Talk:Shahbag, which Raul said he wanted to schedule but was thwarted by an uncontroversial delisting) YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 06:03, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
Although I don't frequent FAC or FAR (definitely not TFA), I have noticed some rather poorly referenced articles on the main page. Although it should be fixed, I don't think this is terribly abnormal, unfortunately. NativeForeigner Talk/Contribs 06:07, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for those responses. I guess it isn't easy to find a new FA each day. Nick-D (talk) 07:05, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
Well, there are about 50 new FAs per month, but even taking into consideration the fact that some topics have multiple FAs each month, there should still be enough to go round for topic variety. In any case, there certainly isn't a shortage of attack planes/boats or computer games/TV shows etc that could have been used in the last two days. YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 07:53, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

This goes back to FA maintenance and its a point I've brought up before (if I recall correctly): We really need to find and track the articles within our scope that have gone longer than a year at GA, A, or FA class and make sure they all still meet the current standards for excellence. I admit that I remain upset about the loss of the Iowa class battleship article and the that I am bothered by the constant nagging about the ship articles themselves, but to my credit I do make a point to cycle the articles through PR or FAR and a semi-regular basis just to get feedback from the community. Some articles haven't even been through a PR since they were last promoted, and that results in articles of currently iffy quality but FA-class none-the-less due to a lack of maintenance ending up on the main page or other spots of interest. If anyone has any ideas about how we should deal with the issue then I would be happy to inaugurate the newly-created Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators/Strategy think tank with our brainstorming. TomStar81 (Talk) 10:14, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

That sounds like a very suitable topic to inaugurate that page. Nick-D (talk) 10:24, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

An idea...

For a while now, we've had quite a backlog at GAN (with the exception of during the drive WP:WGA recently conducted). There has also been a chronic shortage of reviewers at Milhist (especially with peer reviews), and FACs could always use more eyes. I'm wondering if we could create a review contest similar to the article writing one we currently have to drum up participation. People do like shiny awards they can display on their userpage, afterall. Say, filling out B-class checklists are worth 5 points, in-scope GA reviews are 10, PRs and ACRs worth 15, and FACs are 20—just an example, I'm not wedded to anything at this point. Much like the article contest, this could be self-reporting, so it shouldn't be too time-intensive to maintain. We could announce it on the various talk pages within the project and/or put a blurb in this month's newsletter to ensure wide visibility. Parsecboy (talk) 15:05, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

It has been a while since our last major drive. --Patar knight - chat/contributions 23:25, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
I would support this idea. AustralianRupert (talk) 23:48, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
@Patar - I wasn't thinking of a drive, but a permanent contest like the article writing one. Drives are great—while the drive is going on. But reviews are always needed, and as one can see about the state of WP:GAN#WAR just a few weeks after the last drive ended, once the drive is over reviewers generally stop reviewing. We don't necessarily need a lot more participants (though that would of course be excellent), but if we can motivate a few more people to take part in these reviews, we can ensure a higher level of quality in our articles, and at a faster pace. Parsecboy (talk) 00:19, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
While more reviewers are definitely needed, a contest would be difficult to administer and open to abuse. A class and FA reviews only need to be one word long (eg, 'support' or 'oppose' [though one word oppose votes are likely to be ignored]) so they shouldn't receive particular emphasis. There may also be sensitivities if the project is seen to be encouraging large numbers of 'drive by' reviews of FACs. One option would be to restart the barnstars presented to frequent reviewers, though it's labour-intensive to calculate who these editors are. Nick-D (talk) 02:14, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
Though a large-scale drive would get more initial contributors, and we could dish out lavish prizes for them to come and review, and after the official drive winds down, we could offer (slightly less lavish) prizes to entice those who came and helped to stay. I mean many editors will be scared to leap into this world of assessment and review, but a big, friendly drive that gets them used to it will make them more confident and more likely to review. Also, what Nick-D said is true. EDIT: Let me try and be more coherent, a drive with nice, easily achievable awards, would get more editors introduced and familiar with reviewing. This drive would be, of course, overseen by the coordinators. And afterwards, my thought was that WP:MILHIST needs some prizes that aren't completely out of reach of the newest contributors (e.g. some small, standardized prizes for reviewing, assessing, etc.) --Patar knight - chat/contributions 02:24, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
Nick, I had thought of that as well. It shouldn't be hard to set up criteria for the reviews, one of which could be that PR/ACR/FAC reviews need at least one substantive comment beyond "no external links" etc. As long as we set it up right, it shouldn't be all that hard to administer. We could set up the table such that entrants need to link to review pages/diffs of comments made so it would be easy for the graders to evaluate.
That's a good point, Patar. The thing I was concerned with avoiding was a temporary project. These are of course valuable (if anyone put GANs up during the drive, you know what I mean—I submitted articles and had them reviewed within a couple of days) but once they're over most reviewers stop reviewing. But perhaps a drive would be a good way to get a large number of initial participants. Parsecboy (talk) 02:55, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
That makes sense and should be workable. Nick-D (talk) 03:28, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
I mocked up a contest page here, feel free to play around with it. We could probably adapt the same the structure for a short-term initial drive. Parsecboy (talk) 13:33, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
Either the value for B-class reviews needs to go down, or the points awarded for the others needs to go up. It's not particularly difficult to do a B-class review. --Patar knight - chat/contributions 15:59, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
That's fine with me, I just put the numbers up as an example. Parsecboy (talk) 16:21, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Anyone else have any comments/suggestions/ideas on this? I think that if this has a chance of increasing the number of reviewers, then it's worth at least a trial run. Parsecboy (talk) 13:00, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

I definitely think something on these lines is worth doing. I wonder though if we could just run it informally - editors sign up and as they review, list the article they've reviewed and a link to the review under their name. We can then go through at the end of each month and dish out awards as appropriate. Maybe we could award in various categories: most B-Class assessments, most thorough FA review, most GA reviews etc so everyone gets a fair crack at an award? What do you think? EyeSerenetalk 13:54, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
I think that would work fine as well; that's kind of what I was thinking as far as setting it up like the article contest. I particularly like the different award categories. Parsecboy (talk) 16:25, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
What categories do you think would be suitable? It might be nice to try to encourage quality over quantity (not so much for B-Class but for GA and upwards), but obviously that means whoever adjudicates the awards will have to make a value judgement so it's perhaps more work than just tallying up points each month. Maybe we could even do both? EyeSerenetalk 07:03, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Round 2

Yahoo! news is reporting that, among other things, "June 16, 2010: WikiLeaks announces that it will soon release leaked military video of a U.S. gunship attack near Garani, Afghanistan, that killed nearly 150 civilians, including women and children, in May 2009." This on top of General Stanley A. McChrystal's comments leads me to believe that soon these articles may become the targets of high strung editing. Stanley A. McChrystal's article is already semi-protected (and has that annoying edit protection thing they just recently dumped on us which I still have no idea how to use), but the former info from WikiLeaks has yet to be released and when it is will likely see an article here within a few hours on the info going public. Just to let everyone know, its going to get interesting again. TomStar81 (Talk) 10:40, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Fun fun fun :S It'll be interesting to see how the pending changes system on McChrystal's article works out in practice. If you spot the inevitable new article on the gunship attack, a link would be helpful for my watchlist. Thanks for the heads up. EyeSerenetalk 13:45, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Quarterly report to the project on the Black Project articles

Submitted by TomStar81 (Talk) 19:35, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

In accordance with the 90-day timeline for lag between checks, I have inspected the articles listed at both Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Military technology and engineering task force/Black project working group and Category:Black projects. I make the following findings related to this inspection:

  • The page Aurora (aircraft) has a few issues needing independent observation:
    • Currently the article uses File:Aurora x-plane 3.jpg, but the image's copyright status is being questioned. The image is over 1000px and listed both on en.wiki and the commons, meaning that we need to determine the copyright status of the image to determine where it should be, and if it is copyrighted, to request that the image be re-sized in accordance with WP:NFCC.
      • I've taken care of this: it was mistakenly deleted from en.wiki under the erroneous assumption that it was a game screenshot and therefore copyrighted. It is a game screenshot, but of an aircraft model created by the uploader, who does hold copyright over his work, and therefore can license it anyway s/he chooses. I've removed the dispute tag on the Commons image, which is a perfectly fine location for it. Parsecboy (talk) 20:33, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
    • There are parts of the article that have been rather liberally sprinkled with cn tags, those need to be addressed either by us or by WP:AVIATION/WP:AIRCRAFT; in the event that they can not be addressed I propose the material be removed from the article on MILMOS blackops grounds.
    • File:May2006 UK MoD Report BBCNEWS page3.jpg appears to lack a non-free fair use tag, and I question the need for the
    • This article's pop culture section needs trimming; its gotten way too large in relation to the article's size.
  • On the matter of the B-2 Bomber, a new article relating to the crash of the Spirit of Kansas has appeared; its located at Andersen Air Force Base B-2 accident. While I confess that I see no need to do this, on grounds that the B-2 was a black project for the first several years of its life, I put forth the question of whether we should include the article in our black project lineup for additional monitoring, if anyone would like to offer an opinion on the matter.
  • Blackstar (spaceplane) currently makes use of the File:Aviation Week 03-06-2006 cover.jpg, which is listed as being a fair use image; can we make do without it, and if not, should we add a non free fair use content template to the page?
  • I think that it may be time for an mfd for the page User:Dogue/DCEETA (draft2), the draft has not been edited since 2009, and the page User:Dogue/DCEETA (draft) (essentially a copy of the former link) appears to be Dogue's current project. Obviously, I'm not going to simply move to nominate it without his input, but I am concerned about draft 2 since its composed nearly entirely of quotes and snippets of other information that read more like mixed bag of glued together sources. If the page is in violation of copyright policies then we need to do something about it, but we need to get input on the matter here first before deciding on a course of action to be taken.
  • The articles KH-11 KENNAN, KH-5 ARGON, KH-6 LANYARD, KH-7 GAMBIT, KH-9 HEXAGON, and KH-8 GAMBIT all have names in all caps, it may be worth looking into moving these articles to names that doesn't use caps.
  • The article KH-13 includes a link to the USA-193 satellite that was destroyed by USS Lake Erie last year. Would it be worth including this in the black project working group as well?
  • Lacrosse (satellite) has a number of cn tags that need to be addressed or the material will be deleted. Additionally, the links cited as references could do with some polishing.
  • Manned Orbital Laboratory has a huge selection of images, they appear to be free use and therefore I think they should be moved to the commons for better availability to the other language wikipedias.
  • Misty (classified project) still has no inline citations, but does include references, and it would be nice if we could get these sources into the article in inline citation format to remove the tag.
  • Nazi UFOs has been removed from the black project category, would it be a good idea to re-add the article to the black project category or should we simply let it go as a black project page.
  • RQ-3 DarkStar could do with some additional sourcing and more inline citations, if anyone feels up to it.

Additionally, I would like input on the following websites as they relate to the guidelines and policies on Wikipedia:

Follow-up

If you don't mind me joining this discussion as I did with the previous report, I have analysed some of the space-related links in the same way that I did before.

Link Analysis Rationale/Remarks
http://www.archive.org/details/point_in_time Reliable Documentary produced by the CIA, Archive.org are just making it available (they also run the Internet Archive)
http://www.fas.org ... Reliable This is the Federation of American Scientists
http://thespacereview.com/article/576/1 Reliable Well-published author
http://samadhi.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/Programs/corona.html Reliable NASA (US Government) source
http://www.sworld.com.au/ Handle with care Unchanged from previous report
http://www.satobs.org/ Handle with care Unchanged from previous report
http://www.n2yo.com Reliable Major satellite tracking websites, known for accuracy and most of their data can be experimentally verified.
http://www.heavens-above.com
http://space.skyrocket.de Can't remember Unchanged from previous report
Also, with regards to the Keyhole article titles, I had already moved the KH-5 one to KH-5 Argon prior to the submission of this report, and I would fully support moving the rest per WP:MOSTM. Although the names are not actually trademarks, I feel that the spirit of the guideline should outweigh its letter. My only question would be the KH-11 one, as I feel the name "Crystal" is more common than "Kennan". KH-12 and 13 are entirely conjectural, and I would suggest merging KH-12 into KH-11, since it appears to be applied to upgraded KH-11 satellites, and getting rid of KH-13 altogether.
Could I also suggest that in future these reports be made on their own subpages, and transcluded both here and on the BPWG talk page, to maximise audience. --GW… 20:28, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
Good idea. I'd actually go so far as to suggest that they be made directly on the BPWG talk page—since that's pretty low-traffic—and a link to the discussion provided here. While these reviews are of some interest to the coordinators, I don't think there's any need for us to play the central role in them if the WG would prefer to do so. Kirill [talk] [prof] 00:28, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
Duly noted. Then should we move the discussion to the page now, or just remember to do so next time? TomStar81 (Talk) 00:40, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
I have sent KH-13 to AFD for the reasons stated above. Discussion is at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/KH-13. --GW… 14:55, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Assessment Department Main Page Reorganization

I made a pass at improving the layout of part of the Assessment department. Specifically it pertained to the part with the taskforce statistics counters. Please take a look at it and tell me if you think that this would be an improvement over that section's current state and if there is some manner of agreement to that regard, I'll post the change. Or one of the coordinators may if they feel it would be more appropriate to have solely coordinators editing department-level main pages.

Proposed Reorganization
Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment#Statistics

Thanks, LeonidasSpartan (talk) 06:55, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Not bad, but it is too wide for my 15 inch monitor. I wouldn't oppose it based on this, though, as my machine is a bit of a clunker (its almost as old as an ENIAC, joking of course). Just wonder what its like on others. AustralianRupert (talk) 12:02, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
It is a bit too wide with five tables per row, I think; it would be better to stick with the current three tables per row. Other than that, I like the idea of splitting the list based on task force category. Kirill [talk] [prof] 12:45, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Wikibreak notification

Just to let all of you know, I will not be on the computer at all for a few days due to an impromptu vacation. I'll be back early (UTC) on 28 June. -MBK004 07:46, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Enjoy the break :) EyeSerenetalk 08:00, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, and now I'm back. -MBK004 07:49, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
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