Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators/Archive 7

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Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, all. I hope that 2008 will be as succsessfull for us as 2007 was. It is my hope that this message finds you all in good spirits. On that note, I have question: to best meet the new year, do we have any old business that needs to be immediately adressed? Best to handle it now so we can focus on 2008. ^_^ TomStar81 (Talk) 07:48, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Happy New Year to everyone!

(As far as old business goes, I think we're all clear for the moment; there were a couple of long-delayed paperwork issues [project mergers and such], but I think I've dealt with everything.) Kirill 08:27, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Happy New Year all!
I've got the awards to dish out to ninety-odd people today (but I've got a kind of script up so that should go pretty quickly and smoothly). I thought I'd take the same opportunity to include a message inviting participants to join the debriefing Workshop I mentioned above. I can set this page up—and the same page can also be used for non-participant respondents to the Q&A in the newsletter (nice idea, Tom)—but I do need to know where to put it. I thought of editing the Tag & Assess Signup slot on the Milhist template to Tag & Assess Workshop and hanging the Workshop off Tag & Assess... If this is a problem, I'll create it in my user space. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 09:05, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
- I vote for the former, since this is official project business it should be within our scope pages. BTW, if you need some one to award you your awards I would be happy to do so again :) TomStar81 (Talk) 09:10, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Tom! 20:09, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

- Project-space seems perfectly appropriate to me. (Something like Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Drive/Workshop presumably?) We can probably put Tom's question form as a boilerplate there, and then have a (reasonably brief) note in the newsletter (which can then go out in the next few days). Kirill 09:39, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the link, and for the talk space redirect afterwards. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 20:09, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. TomStar81 (Talk) 10:12, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Happy new year and best wishes to all of you!! --Eurocopter tigre (talk) 13:46, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

And to you too! --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 20:09, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

The newsletter is basically done (minus the contest results) at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Outreach/Newsletter December 2007. Someone checking it over to see if I've missed anything would be appreciated. Kirill 19:53, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Done! One small tweak but otherwise fine. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 20:09, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I've handed it off to the bot, then. Kirill 03:38, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Workshop

Is there a set time for the work shop to remain open? I see no closure date, hence the question. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:18, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

We can probably keep it open for as long as active discussion continues; it's not as if there's any major urgency with starting the next drive. (Personally, I suspect the next coordinator elections will pull attentiion away from the workshop, if it stays open that long.) Kirill 23:31, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Incidentally, when do the noms for that start? It should be soon, right? TomStar81 (Talk) 02:31, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Assuming we stick to the normal schedule, the first two weeks of February would be the nomination period, and the last two weeks would be the election. Kirill 02:33, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

It's been quiet for some time so it could be archived now. Thoughts? --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 10:22, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Probably a good idea. Today's the last day the drive is officially open, anyways; I suspect we've gotten all the feedback we're going to, this time around. Kirill 13:19, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Talk page archiving

Would it be feasable to get one of the bots here to archove the task force talk pages? they seem to end up with a large number posts that in most cases are old news or adressed issues. TomStar81 (Talk) 00:20, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree as so of the task force talk pages are getting pretty big.Kyriakos (talk) 01:00, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Mmm, this would probably be possible from a technical standpoint—although I'm not sure, offhand, which bot handles Wikipedia-space archiving—but I'm not convinced that it would make sense from a social one. Most of the task force pages are very low-traffic; any bulk that's accrued has done so over a matter of months. I don't think we want to be at a point where all the talk pages are empty; that tends to intimidate newer users, in my experience. The alternative would be to set automatic archiving with some absurdly long delay (on the order of months rather than weeks); but if we're going to do that, it seems easier to just archive pages by hand if they grow too long. Kirill 02:12, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

In my opinion the best thing would be that coordinators would manually archive task force talk pages. I could easily take care of this.. --Eurocopter tigre (talk) 20:05, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, I suppose it would be easier.Anyway it isn't a hard task. Kyriakos (talk) 22:02, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I have just taken a look at all the task force talk pages and have found several candidiates for archive. These taskforces include WWII, WWI, Russian Soviet, German, French, Canadian, Australian, military aviation and possibly Polish and Chinese. If you guys want I can manually archive them over the course of the weekend as it is a fairly simple job. Kyriakos (talk) 22:21, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok, i'll have a look and do that. --Eurocopter tigre (talk) 14:51, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

WWI, Russian, German, French, Canadian, Australian, Milaviation, Polish and Chinese task forces are archived, but I didn't manage to do the WWII one. Can somebody with some experience in archiving have a look on it? --Eurocopter tigre (talk) 22:43, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok, done. Kirill 23:17, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Upcoming coordinator elections

Since the next election is going to take place at the end of the month, now might be a good time to make sure everyone is on the same page regarding any changes (or lack thereof) to the procedure.

The suggestion was made after the last election that we leave open the option to add additional coordinators in case of a tie or near-tie for the last position. Are there any objections to doing so?
Are we continuing with the Lead/Assistant scheme, or do we want to move to a single-level Coordinator scheme?

Comments would be appreciated! Kirill 16:37, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Respectively:

no objections here
I vote we keep the Lead/Assistant scheme, as I like having someone to defer to when in doubt. TomStar81 (Talk) 19:57, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I have no objections to the 1st point, and I would also preffer the current Lead/Assistant scheme. --Eurocopter tigre (talk) 21:25, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I have no problems with the first point and I think we should keep the Lead/Assistant scheme. Kyriakos (talk) 22:40, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

No problems with either suggestion. It might be an idea to explicitly have the two or three top-failing candidates as standby replacements if, as - for instance - in the case of Carom, any of the elected candidates are unable to serve. It might also be an idea, in the case of a tie for the last position, to take both candidates. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 22:58, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I'd support the idea of having 12 coordinators. We have enough competent members to fit for that job.
The Lead/Assistant scheme works well and see no reason to change that fact. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 16:41, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I've set up the next election page at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators/February 2008. Assuming no last-minute changes, the signup period will open on February 1; are we going to distribute a note to all active members at that point (as we did last time), or do we only want to send one out when the voting begins on February 15? Kirill 00:42, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I say we distibute the note with the signup period. TomStar81 (Talk) 00:56, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
- I think we should send one at the begginging of the enlisting and the beginning of the voting states. Kyriakos (talk) 04:03, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) How many coordinators this time round? I'd support Fayssal's proposal of twelve but can live with nine. What do others think? --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 10:20, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I think nine (with possible expansion due to ties) will work better; I don't think there's any great need to increase the number at this point. Kirill 13:10, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Since we're planning to distribute a note when the sign-up starts (this evening!), here's the text we used last time:

The Military history WikiProject coordinator selection process is starting. We are aiming to elect nine coordinators to serve for the next six months; if you are interested in running, please sign up here by February 14!

Assistance with sending this out when the time comes will be greatly appreciated, of course! :-) Kirill 13:33, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I can help you with this starting with February 11, if it isn't to late. --Eurocopter tigre (talk) 13:42, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

This set will (hopefully) be done before then, but you'll be right on time for the next one. ;-) Kirill 13:44, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

The sign-ups are now open, so if anyone has some time to help with sending the note out, that'd be great! :-) Kirill 00:02, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I've gotten started on the notification; adjusting for the five or so members I moved over to the inactive list, roughly 250 of our contributers have recieved the messages begining with the "A"s. I will do more when I get back, but right now its diner time at the house. TomStar81 (Talk) 03:24, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I've done to around #400 on the list (up to the end of the 'L's). Kirill 03:33, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Its now up to #435. Kyriakos (talk) 21:29, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Done up to #500. Kirill 19:30, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Done up to #530. Kyriakos (talk) 21:15, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Up to #600 now. Kirill 17:03, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

All done now with the exception of users already signed up. Woody (talk) 11:27, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

RFA and WikiProjects

I had a chance to comment on both MBK004's rfa and BQZip01's rfa; on the rfa talk page are several comments left following BQZip01's canvassing event. Since canvassing is frowned upon I wonder if we might set up some kind of in house methode of alerting our contributers to rfa candidates who edit for us. Admittedly this suggested is a little outside the responsibility coordinators here are charged with, but it may be worth at least getting some input for to help spread the word in a neutral manner. Thoughts? —Preceding unsigned comment added by TomStar81 (talk • contribs) 08:18, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

It's an interesting idea, and possibly something that would be helpful; but can we avoid giving the impression of canvassing on a project-wide level? It'll likely be claimed that we're listing them so that the project can support en masse, for our own nefarious purposes. Kirill 03:57, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

I think so, but we would have to establish a few base rules for such occurances. For example, only coordinators may place such messages here, and they must be limited to the parent page and the task force pages to which the contributer belongs (if any). In this manner we can broadcast an announement independently of a user's rfa. The issue with this particular set of suggest rules is the "only coordinotors" part; at present, our only expressed executive power concerns the awarding of the chevrons with oak leaves. The other issue is that coordinotrs are not nessicarily admins, so in the case of users like me who happen to be coordinators at or around the time an rfa offer is extended to them would have to deepend on someone else to alert the project and any associated task forces, and even then may be accused of canvassing based on the circumstances. TomStar81 (Talk) 04:36, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. In all honesty, I don't see how the "only coordinators" part would offset any negative perception here; in all likelihood, it'd just add in the appearance of some shadowy cabal aiming to control the RFAs. ;-)

I suspect that the most important aspect here is the message itself. The most legitimate argument for notifications of this sort is that other project members are likely to have interacted with the candidate, so I think we'd need to bring this aspect to the fore. Something like:

A member of the project, User:X, is currently a candidate to receive access to administrative tools. Other project members who have worked with him and have an opinion of the candidate's fitness to receive these tools are cordially invited to comment.

ought to be defensible from a canvassing standpoint.

As far as where the notifications go, I'm not sure that putting them on the task force pages is worthwhile in terms of getting results; and, as a practical matter, our national task forces may be more susceptible to canvassing concerns than the project as a whole. Kirill 05:09, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

All power to the cabal...I mean engines, all power to the engines :) I like the message composition, it looks good to me. And good point about the task force pages. TomStar81 (Talk) 05:24, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

A very good idea of Tom's, excellently made workable by Kirill. I suppose to make the thing more transparent we should invite RFA candidates to alert the coordinators or should we pick it up from various bots? --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 12:49, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

I think we should pick this up from the bots so as to seperate our actions from those of the candidate. In this manner we provide the candidate with plausiable deniability in the event the community doesn't take to the idea. TomStar81 (Talk) 20:40, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Sounds fine to me. I've created Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators/Toolbox/Administrator candidacy notice with the boilerplate above; it can be used in the same way as the article review notices. Kirill 21:47, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for that but I don't understand how to use templates like this. If i wish to mention that MBK004 is at RFA, which he is, how do I use the template and where does it appear? --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 22:18, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

You'd add a comment to the bottom of WT:MILHIST with {{Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators/Toolbox/Administrator candidacy notice|MBK004}} ~~~~ as the content. It's basically identical to the way the existing review notices are set up. Kirill 04:53, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks very much, Kirill :) I need my hand held for these things I'm afraid. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 05:12, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

So do I, apparently; I forgot to mention that the notice needs to be subst:ed to work properly. ;-) Kirill 05:13, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I like it when you forget things. It makes me feel less inadequate :)))))) --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 05:43, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Incidentally, should the template language be gender-neutral? --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 05:43, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Done. Changed to gender-neutral. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 12:31, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Peer reviews

The new improved peer review pages have transcluded lists from other WikiProjects. Can our active peer review list be included there too? Is there a central list anywhere? It's a great outreach thing.... --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 05:43, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

In theory, yes; but unless we want to have multiple templates that need to be kept in sync from our side, it'd need to use {{WPMILHIST Announcements}}—and there's no support for retrieving just the PR list from that at the moment. It's probably not too difficult to add that in, though; I'll experiment when I have a bit of free time. Kirill 10:15, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Kirill. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 10:26, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Sher Shah Suri • Rwandan genocide • Battle of Chunj • War of the Antiochene Succession ← There we go. :-) Kirill 12:04, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Brilliant! --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 12:11, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

But see Template talk:WPMILHIST Announcements. Some fundamental redesign is probably called for, at this point; I'm not quite sure what direction it should take, though. Kirill 01:57, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Now done; see WT:MILHIST#Updates to announcement template. Kirill 04:25, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Kirill. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 10:21, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Clarifying the descritpion of our role in dispute resolution

There's apparently a bit of confusion regarding what our role (or lack thereof) is with regards to article disputes (probably due to the last sentence in the "Responsibilities" section). I'd like to add some text to clarify this; the additions are in bold below.

In the "Current coordinators" section:

The project coordinators are generally responsible for maintaining all of the procedural and administrative aspects of the project, and serve as the designated points-of-contact for procedural issues. They are not, however, endowed with any special executive powers, or with any authority over article content or editor conduct.

In the "Responsibilities" section:

The coordinators also have several additional roles. They serve as the project's designated points of contact, and are explicitly listed as people to whom questions can be directed in a variety of places around the project. In addition, they have highly informal roles in leading the drafting of project guidelines, overseeing the implementation of project decisions on issues like category schemes and template use, and helping to informally resolve disputes and keep discussions from becoming heated and unproductive. The coordinators are not, however, a body for formal dispute resolution; serious disputes should be addressed through the normal dispute resolution process.

Any problems with the wording here? Kirill 02:42, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Looks good. Cla68 (talk) 02:45, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Agree. TomStar81 (Talk) 03:25, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Agree. Kyriakos (talk) 05:06, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Agree. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 08:18, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Agree. --Eurocopter tigre (talk) 13:00, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok, updated. Kirill 13:21, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Award nomination

Just a note for anyone that hasn't yet seen it yet that Bedford's nomination for the WikiChevrons with Oakleaves has been sitting here for five days with no additional comments. If some other coordinators could drop by, that would be great. Thanks! --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 08:17, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I have dropped by the page. Kyriakos (talk) 10:29, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

APB

Would it be at all possible for us to send out a notice to all project members with the next news letter asking them to check and see that their names are listed in the right sections? I had five or six people registered for the project but officially gone either by choice or by ruling of the arbitration committee, and it would be nice to know how many folks are still with us at the start of 2008. Other projects have done this by sending out a "roll call" template. Thoughts? TomStar81 (Talk) 10:12, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

You are aware that there's a script that updates those lists automatically (see here), yes? ;-)

(I hadn't planned on running it for another month or so, but I can go ahead and run it now if you think we need an update.) Kirill 13:17, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Respectively: no, i didn't know that (I do now though :), and yes, it can wait. TomStar81 (Talk) 21:00, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Elections

Do we still procede with the election if we only get nine candidates? --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 15:43, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I sign up. Wandalstouring (talk) 16:42, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

There's your answer. ;-)

(But Eurocoptre tigre hasn't submitted his statement but has expressed an intent to run, so I think we'll have enough candidates anyways. Plus, there's a few hundred people that still need to be notified.) Kirill 16:57, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

We would need to have the election anyway, even if it was just nine candidates; the reason being that although we would all be in we would need to settle on the issue of who among us earns the title of "Lead Coordinator" for the next six monthes. TomStar81 (Talk) 20:56, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Voting message

Now that voting in the coordinator election has begun, we'll presumably want to send out the second message to members:

The February 2008 Military history WikiProject coordinator election has begun. We will be selecting nine coordinators to serve for the next six months from a pool of fifteen candidates. Please vote here by February 28!

Assistance would be appreciated! Kirill 02:10, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Under the circumstances, could we also include a message about the leader coordinator referendum? It may encourage more particpation. TomStar81 (Talk) 08:08, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Next moves

Now that the assessment drive is winding down, I think we're ready to consider what, if anything, we want to focus attention on next. The assessment drive was, in my opinion, a massive success—much thanks to Roger for all the work he did running it!—and we should try to follow up on it.

(I've made a request for assistance with the infobox conversion list yesterday, but that's not really suitable for a major undertaking, I think [and, hopefully, will be finished in fairly short order].)

There are, I think, two broad paths we can pursue:

Development:

There are a number of outstanding guideline debates (military rank capitalization comes to mind) that have yet to be fully resolved.
We have several long-delayed category restructuring projects that need to be dealt with at some point; off the top of my head, there's the question of the top-level categories, plus the (really) old debate over how military personnel should be categorized.

Article work:

The question of the legacy FAs is still unresolved; we could have some sort of effort to improve them up to current standards. The drawback here is that selection is limited—the number of old FAs has dwindled even further—so it may be difficult to find things that will attract interest; and, moreover, there's no really visible reward for pulling up an article that's deficient but already featured.
Someone—FayssalF?—recently proposed that we do something to deal with "vital" articles (which, in our case, tend to be in pretty poor shape). We could presumably put together a decently-sized list of articles that are both high-profile and varied; perhaps a few dozen project-wide ones, as well as the core article of each task force? The question is what to do with them. Scheduled collaboration doesn't seem to have worked; perhaps some sort of team improvement contest, with prizes based on how far articles move up the assessment scale?
Other ideas? Something related to portals would be nice, as they're fairly simple to put together and can raise our profile considerably; but I'm not sure how practical this would be for a project-wide approach.

Of the two, I would suggest that we should probably emphasize the latter. Trying to accomplish something practical on guideline development or category restructuring is typically very time-consuming and pretty boring for anyone not into the minutiae of the topic of debate, and tends to require multiple abortive attempts before something coalesces. It may be a better approach to focus attention on practical article-writing matters—particularly as far as exposure outside the project is concerned—and leave the more abstruse issues as a sideshow. Article-writing tasks also lend themselves fairly well to contests and award schemes of the sort used during the assessment drive, and I think participation in them would be higher as a result.

Thoughts? Kirill 04:04, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

On the issue of our old FAs: There was some thought given to having a writing contest to bring those older FAs and those former FAs within our scope up to par by holding a writing contest, but I do not know how far we got with the idea. Also, what are "vitial" articles? And lastly, to follow up our assessment drive, I think we should consider working to clear out the attention needed categories by filling in B-class checklists and checking for relaible sources and such. I agree with you Kirill that the latter half of your list will likely get more results than attempting to deal with the former. TomStar81 (Talk) 04:21, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

"vital" = "core" or "very important". It's not something that we want to track, per se—ranking importance is a horribly subjective mess—but the basic idea here was that a lot of our most high-profile articles (e.g. war, battle, military, etc.) are not in very good shape, and improving them would reflect well on the project.

We could, incidentally, have multiple sets of articles in a contest at the same time if the behind-the-scenes structure can be made parallel; the old FAs and the vital articles could be part of an overall "improve these articles" contest, for example. Kirill 06:54, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the core article idea. I think that for each task force we should nominate a dozen or so articles of "core" importance and encourage editors to bring up these articles to top level classes like FA and A-class. Kyriakos (talk) 03:04, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

A dozen? With the current number of task forces, that would be around 500 articles; would that still be focused enough to be feasible? I was thinking along the lines of a single article from each task force, at least to start with; otherwise, I suspect any organized effort would become unmanageable and undermanned. Kirill 03:07, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I guess so seeing as some of th task forces lack artilces and active editors. I was also wondering how would the article be chosen? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kyriakos (talk • contribs) 03:16, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

My initial thought was that we could simply use the "title" article; e.g. the Fortifications task force would give us fortification, the French military history task force would give ups Military history of France, and so forth. I'm pretty sure every task force is associated with an article this way.

Does anyone have any better ideas? Kirill 03:20, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

I like the idea. Or maybe a "core article" in that task force could be chosen. Kyriakos (talk) 03:44, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Core article contest

Having done some more thinking about how to actually attract people to these core articles, how about this:

We create a list of ~60–70 "core" articles. I would suggest taking a single article from each task force, and pulling top-level topic articles (e.g. military history) for the rest.
Record the starting assessment class for each article.
Have a contest to raise the assessment class, with everyone working on that article (and signed up for the contest, to minimize searching?) receiving awards based on how far up the scale the article has moved after some set duration. The duration would probably need to be fairly long (a couple of months?) to allow for lengthy processes such as FAC.

The specifics of the contest (e.g. awards, eligibility thresholds, etc.) would obviously need to be worked out; but is the general idea something that seems feasible (and worth doing)? Kirill 04:53, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

It sounds good to me. TomStar81 (Talk) 04:55, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Couple of thoughts ...

I'm not sure a couple of months is long enough. FAC can take a month. Three months is probably better.
"Credit" for the article. Many articles are collaborations (and indeed longer articles are much the better for this). The credit needs to be attributed fairly across main contributors, rather than just going to the person who "claims" it in the drive. This could prove very complicated. Maybe a solution is to suggest editors, if they wish, operate in teams of nominated editors, say three or four people, with awards going equally to all team members. This might mean having separate individual achievement and team achievement awards, but that's no big deal to either set up or administer.
We'd need to be able to "release" an article back into the pool if the nominators just aren't getting on with it. With the best of intentions, editors squatted ranges in the T&A drive and then did nothing on them (as indeed I'm doing on a range myself).
Overall, it needs fine-tuning obviously but it's very worthwhile and very do-able.

--ROGER DAVIES ^talk 08:12, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I like the sound of it and I agree that it should take place over three months and if after a while work isn't done on a certain article that it should be "released"and a new one should be chosen to replace it. Kyriakos (talk) 09:44, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Regarding the "release" issue: do we want to allow people to "claim" articles to begin with? We could, as an alternative, allow people to sign up for the "team" working on that article, but place no limit on the number of participants. (We'd still have the issue of filtering out people that signed up but didn't actually edit, but I expect this wouldn't be as time-consuming.) Kirill 13:51, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Easiest is to keep team sizes limited. (By having three or four slots on a team signup form, for example.) That makes it much easier to keep track of what's happening.--ROGER DAVIES ^talk 14:08, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

True, but then the release becomes more critical; we wouldn't really want to get into a situation where the people who had signed up weren't doing anything, while the editors actually improving the article couldn't sign up. Kirill 14:11, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Overcoming this is what the "release" (or say, "substitute") option is about. This would enable the "slots" to be reclaimed by the editors doing the toiling. The actual implementation of this would need a bit of thinking about - and we'd need some rules - but it's probably do-able in practice, and would have a great deterrent effect. Something like this, I thought:

Article name	Start class	End class	Editor 1	Editor 2	Editor 3	Editor 4
Military	B-class
Castles	B-class

Obviously, it'd need a few more bells and whistles (for instance: sortable, proper spacing, and a jolly colour scheme) but it's simple and easy to use. Editors could sign up for more than one article, obviously.

--ROGER DAVIES ^talk 19:12, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Looks nice. The only issue I can see is that there's no real potential for, say, a team of five or six editors to work on a single article; I don't know whether that would be an issue in practice, though. Kirill 22:06, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Now, with bells and whistles:

Article	Start class	End class	Editor I	Editor II	Editor III	Editor IV	Waiting list
Military	B						1. 2.
Castles	B						1. 2.

Kirill 02:27, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I like personally like it. Should this contest have it's own page or should it be incorperated into the contest page? Kyriakos (talk) 22:00, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

The contest page isn't particularly high-traffic, so I think it would be feasible to run this directly on it. It'd have the side benefit of directing more eyes to the regular contest as well. Kirill 22:06, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

List of articles

A first attempt at putting together an article list:

General articles:

Task force articles:

The total of 60 articles ought to be enough for people to be able to find something they'd like to work on. Some of the task force ones don't exist at the moment, though; I'm not sure if it would be better to just allow the redlinks, or to pick secondary articles as replacements.

Comments? Kirill 03:02, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I noticed some of the MILHISTs of some regions like Scandanavia and the Balkans for example are redlinks, so I guess they could be replaced by the MILHIST article of a significant country in the area foe example MILHIST of Scandanavia can be replaced by Military history of Denmark or Military history of Sweden and as for MILHIST of the Balkans, maybe Military history of Serbia, Military history of Greece or Military history of Turkey. Which ever one gets the most interest from editors I guess. Kyriakos (talk) 03:33, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I think that'd be workable; we can probably get away with just selecting an arbitrary article. The intent of the task force breakdown, in my view, is simply to get some variety in the available topics; the fact that some task forces have a more exact match to an article than others shouldn't be a problem in this regard. Kirill 02:34, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. TomStar81 (Talk) 04:44, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Contest setup

So, assuming we want to pursue this idea, how should we arrange this contest? If we ignore the really low-level stuff, we basically have four progress levels: B-Class, GA, A-Class, and FA; can we set up a simple award scheme, with everyone participating getting awards based on the final class of the article (provided it's above the starting class)? In other words, an article starting as a stub would be eligible for four awards, and article starting at B-Class for three, a GA for two, and so forth.

Also, do we want to develop new images for this, or just use standard awards and/or the service stripes developed for the assessment drive?

(It would be beneficial, I think, to try and launch the contest sometime during the election period; a lot of people will be brought out of hiding by the notices they get and are likely to be browsing the project pages looking for things to do.) Kirill 03:09, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Anyone? ;-) Kirill 13:21, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I've been mulling over some ideas for this. They basically involve making it more exciting and combining it with an outreach exercise by trying to involve participants from other projects. I'd like a couple of days to develop my thoughts a bit more and then post something detailed. Would this be okay? --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 13:31, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Sure, no problem; there's no real rush here. :-) Kirill 13:39, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Some thoughts

I've been looking at the line-up of articles and I think they present a few problems. First, generic articles like this are not very exciting to write (and I think take a special kind of editor). Second, absent a specialist book on the subject, there's a major problem with sources, especially English-language ones. Third, the easiest ones (from a sourcing point of view) are already FA.

This prompted me to employ state-of-the-art Wiki-technology, (Henrik's's brand new en.wikipedia.org article traffic statistics program), on a pretty-randomly selection of articles. It produced some interesting results:

**Example article traffic - January 2008**
Article name	Traffic	Class
Military history of Australia	1,467	B
:Battle of Gallipoli	49,381	Start
Military history of Canada	8,257	FA
:Battle of Vimy Ridge	17,798	B
Military history of France	7,531	FA
:Battle of Verdun	26,427	B
:Napoleon I of France	199,376	ex-FA
Military history of the United Kingdom	2,729	Start
:Battle of the Somme	17,573	exFA
:Battle of Waterloo	74,023	GA
:Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson	25,979	exFA
:Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington	30,569	exFA
Military history of the United States	12,324	B
:George Washington	273,449	FAC
:Robert E. Lee	113,835	B

Perhaps the most interesting thing is that "Military history of Foo" articles are nothing like as visited (popular) as battles or biographies and suggests that we might be misusing resources by expanding great effort on them. Two other points occured to me.

Many highly popular articles are exFAs.
Many highly popular articles are only Start or B-class.

I think our efforts should go into restoring exFA to FA and working popular battles and biographies up to FA.

If we go down this route, we can group candidate articles by task force, getting input from the appropriate TFs to create the list. The idea would be that the candidate articles deal with iconic personalities and iconic events in the history of the TF. We can then seek invite appropriate Wikiprojects to cooperate with specific TFs for the content work. This has two advantages:

It will help motivate TFs and provide purpose.
It will act as an outreach project.

The next suggestion is rather radical. I think that developing the "Military history of Foo" articles should be the responsibility of the appropriate TF, perhaps with coordinators attached semi-formally to them to ease the process along.

Finally, whatever we do we should not call it Core Article Competition, because the acronym - which is bound to get used - is unfortunate :)

These are just initial ideas, thoughts anyone?

--ROGER DAVIES ^talk 16:52, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Hm. Very interesting statistics, overall; but I'm not sure what you're intending to do with them. Is the idea to select the most high-profile articles directly from the pageview statistics? Or is this only a demonstration, with the actual selection being done by hand (by the task forces?).

In the short term, at least, I think the former method would be more feasible than the latter. Many task forces are minimally active; I doubt they would be in a position to provide extensive input regarding the article list. It wouldn't be difficult to work in reverse, though; select the articles automatically, and then pull their respective task forces on board. Some will probably be excluded—the more obscure task forces likely don't have any articles that are highly visible—but there's no real way around that.

(Conversely, some task forces may be overly enthusiastic. There are many "iconic" topics for WWII, for example, but we don't necessarily want to have 50 articles from that TF in the contest—or to spend the time needed to select them fairly.)

The practical question is this: how exhaustive are these statistics, and how difficult would it be to generate a list of, say, the fifty most popular military history articles in Wikipedia? Kirill 17:35, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

It's only a demonstration. I wanted to see how the generic article compared with the icon event/person article. So directly under MH of Australia is Battle of Gallipoli, and under MH of Canada is Battle of Vimy Ridge, both iconic events for the countries concerned. That pattern is repeated right through.

I know what you mean about TF activity! I was thinking that a well-chosen film, say, Apocalypse Now, which was visited 73346 times in January, and which is B-class, could go a long way to attracting new members to our Film TF, which only has four members. Part of the idea is to turn inactive TFs into more active ones, through new recruits. I agree that it is probably better if we produce the candidate articles wherever possible ourselves and, um, volunteer (in the military sense) the TFs for them.

I agree about over enthusiasm over WWII etc. It might be best to limit to two or three candidates from each.

Your idea about 50-most visited is an excellent one. I left a message for Henrik asking him if and how it could be implemented. I'll report back.

--ROGER DAVIES ^talk 18:16, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

I suspect the easiest way to get our list would be to generate a list of the top X (1000?) articles and go through them by hand; I'm not sure if Henrik would be able to cross-reference the articles with their talk-page tags. Kirill 18:21, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Makes sense. Any ideas how we'd get our hands on such a list? --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 18:58, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Henrik must have something of the sort; I doubt he's computing the pageviews himself. If he could give us the raw data, we could go from there. Kirill 19:58, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Would you mind following this up with him on a boffin-to-boffin basis? --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 20:03, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Will do. ;-) Kirill 20:22, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Transcluding to WP:SHIPS

Is there any simple way of transcluding Milhist PR, A-Class, and FAC lists of relevance to WP:SHIPS automatically? that is, we add them here and in they have the WP:SHIPS template they appear there too? Is seems a bit more professional than waiting for people to spot them and I was wondering if this was easy to implement. This is mostly for Kirill, I suspect. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 11:28, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

No simple way, no. The most straightforward approach that I know of would be to have a bot trawl through our lists looking for the needed articles, but I'm not sure if there is one capable of doing that at the moment. Kirill 13:58, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the input, Kirill. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 14:10, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Lead coordinator

This has been raised several times in the last couple of months and has suddenly become pertinant again. With Kirill retiring, does the project actually need a lead coordinator? I'm thinking that much of what he did to hold the project together (templates, updates, advice, MOS etc) isn't actually part of the lead's job description. Having looked at the very high quality and extraordinary experience of the candidates, I think it's doing the project a disservice to have a leader and eight subordinates. I'd rather see nine coordinators, moving forward based on consensus, and prefer the idea for devolving power/influence rather than centralising it. I'll post this also on the Election talk page--ROGER DAVIES ^talk 07:35, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Like I said before, I like having a lead coordinator to defer to in the event that I am unsure of what to do. The lead coordinator scheme also has a benifit in that one guy is considered senior for project purposes and thus can throw his or her clout into a dispute should it come to that. Not that a bunch of people running at the assistant level couldn;t do the same thing, but I have always felt that having one guy at the top helps keep things neat and orginazied. TomStar81 (Talk) 08:27, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Like you, I see great advantages in having a titular head but I see far fewer in a presential-style one, which may be the outcome of the election. Kirill has written an interesting essay on this. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 08:32, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

I think I have a solution to the question: lets place the matter before our contributers, and see if the project as a whole wishes to retain the lead/assistant scheme or opt for an all equal scheme. Since the purpose of the project is to serve its members, not vice versa, it should be the members that decide which sheme they prefer. Do you agree? TomStar81 (Talk) 08:39, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely agree. My comments here and on the election talk page are merely intended to get discussion started.--ROGER DAVIES ^talk 08:43, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

If there are no objects to the following then I propose that we add a summury of this issue (lead/assistant scheme vs all equal scheme) to the coordinator election page before the start of the election on February 14 and invite all incoming contributers to comment on the issue. When the election concludes we can reel in the results of the discussion and go from there. How does that sound? TomStar81 (Talk) 08:54, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

A referendum, basically? That could work, I think. Kirill 13:59, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

My concerns have been specifically triggered by Kirill's retirement and the real prospect of damaging upheaval. So, it seems there are three options here, not two:

Presidential/chief executive style lead coordinator, with eight assistants to whom tasks are allocated. This is currently on offer.
Titular/chief of staff lead coordinator, developing and implementing consensus with eight coordinators. This reflects how it is at the moment.
Nine coordinators of equal standing, developing and implementing consensus together. This has been discussed plenty but never tried.

--ROGER DAVIES ^talk 09:37, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

moving forward

Unless there are any objections, I would like to add the following to the bottom of the coordinator election page ASAP:

== Lead Coordinator Referandum == Recently, much discussion has taken place within the Military History Project regarding our coordinator scheme, which presently uses a lead/assisstant setup. After much discussion between the coordinators and other members of the project over the continued use of lead/assistant scheme vs an equal scheme or a president/cabinent scheme, we have decided to place the issue before the community and determine what our contributers would like to see. Your input on the following proposals is therefore requested:

Presidential/chief executive style lead coordinator, with eight assistants to whom tasks are allocated. This would be a change from the current position.
Titular/chief of staff lead coordinator, developing and implementing consensus with eight coordinators. This is how it is at the moment. Kirill also combined this with a huge amount of routine project administration.
Nine coordinators of equal standing, developing and implementing consensus together. This has been discussed plenty but never tried.

Any objections? TomStar81 (Talk) 02:07, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Two Suggestions

I would like to make two suggestions:

We adopt a measure allowing for the nomination of standing coordinators for the chevron w/oak leaves award. We will not actually award the chevrons to any standing coordinator, but I see no reason why we can't establish consensus to do while we wait for a current coordinator's term to expire.
Depending on the final results of the lead coordinator referendum, which at this point seems to overwhelmingly favor the maintience of our current coordinator scheme, do we want to establish some sort of procedure for the removal of a lead coordinator in the unlike but none the less plasuable event that he or she proves to be unable to or incapable of living up to the standards we place on User with that title? For this I am thinking of something along the line of the measures used for emergancy desysoping of admins, although we could consider something less dramatic (like a vote of no confidence or something to that effect). Although I doubt that we would need to exercise such measures to remove a lead coordinator, we should at least put some thought into what should be done in the event that this reality comes to pass.

Comments on these suggestions? TomStar81 (Talk) 08:08, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I would propose that the lead coordinator would face a vote of confidence every two months, in which assistant coordinators should be the only persons allowed to vote (to make the votings easier and not such important events within the rest of the project). Thoughts? --Eurocopter tigre (talk) 11:58, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

My opinion as an ex-coordinator: Just give every coordinator the right to challenge the leading coordinator in a vote of confidence that implies the appointment of a new thrusted candidate(in case it fails, it will be the old one). I know this procedure can create bitter feelings, but we seem all mature enough to cope with such a situation and despite all feelings do our job. Wandalstouring (talk) 13:00, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I think less "paperwork" as it were, less administrative stuff, is better. I remember reading somewhere that article space is smaller than non-article space. In other words, Wikipedia has more discussions, votes, guidelines, etc than it has content. Let's see what we can do to help not exacerbate that situation. LordAmeth (talk) 22:27, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm with LordAmeth on this one. The less bureaucratic and governmental we can be, the better, I think. Also, the idea of the coordinator system is, if I remember correctly, that they hold no actual power - it is more a matter of delegated responsibility than the bestowing of authority or power (Kirill has said this more eloquently somewhere else, I believe). Let's not begin with votes of no confidence and challenges; it seems likely only to lead to unpleasantness. Carom (talk) 22:38, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't completely agree with this. Without a proper administration, we won't be able to handle such a big number of articles. --Eurocopter tigre (talk) 14:48, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Could you please clarify how you believe this proposal constitutes "proper administration?" Carom (talk) 15:23, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Which proposal actualy? --Eurocopter tigre (talk) 15:44, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

I was referring to the second proposal and assumed you were as well - sorry if that's not the case (I have no objections to the first proposal). Carom (talk) 22:32, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

I actually replied to Lord Ameth's comment - less administrative stuff, is better. --Eurocopter tigre (talk) 13:59, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

So, if I understand you correctly, you are saying that you support proposal number two? If that is the case, could you please explain how you believe it constitutes "proper administration?" Carom (talk) 15:45, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Nope, I support my above proposal - the lead coordinator would face a vote of confidence every two months, in which assistant coordinators should be the only persons allowed to vote (to make the votings easier and not such important events within the rest of the project). --Eurocopter tigre (talk) 16:01, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Which, I think, seems equally bureaucratic and unnecessary. The coordinators are elected every six months by a general vote of the project members - for what reason is it necessary to reaffirm the lead on a more regular basis? I still don't understand how you believe this constitutes "proper administration." Carom (talk) 16:57, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Look, after Kirill decided not to candidate anymore, i'm quite concerned that nobody will be able to 100% replace him. If the elected lead coordinator would be less active than the assistants, you should agree that it would be better for the project to change him after two months, not after six. So, that's why I suggested this. --Eurocopter tigre (talk) 19:50, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I guess I still don't follow how the implementation of such a proposal is better for the project. It seems to me that it creates not only a new level of bureaucracy, but also bestows some actual, tangible power on the coordinators (and creates the illusion that the lead coordinator position is one of power or authority). And consequently, it also creates the potential for divisive internal politics. This project is ultimately about writing better articles, and all the apparatus we have created over time are geared towards that end in one form or another. The primary responsibility of the coordinators is to manage that apparatus, and by extension, to help the members of the project write better articles. I fail to see how a regular vote of confidence in the lead coordinator actually furthers that goal. The work of the coordinators, while important, is not so crucial that the entire project will collapse if the lead is less active than the assistants, or so onerous that the assistants cannot fill in the gaps. Carom (talk) 00:43, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Your first idea, Tom, I think is great.
I have major doubts about your second. If we must have any such procedure, which I doubt, it strikes me as more appropriate to apply it right across the board, to all coordinators. My reasoning is simple. Coordinators who consistently don't pull their weight put an extra burden on others. However, whether this be a "disciplinary" matter is an entirely different question. Coordinators might simply find themselves unable to give the time for a huge variety of reasons related to real-life pressures, illness, family problems, and these must come first in any volunteer organisation. Conversely, I can imagine situations where coordinators use their influence inappropriately to the detriment of the project and I imagine we'd all be considerably less tolerant of that. But even in this case I don't think a drum-head court martial is the answer. The current system is based on assuming good faith and it works well. I see no point in introducing potentially divisive measures. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 15:56, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, thats why I titled the section "Suggestion" and not "proposal"; my two suggestions were merely meant to open discussion on two points of interest I felt to be important. Incidentally, if there is no objection to the first point we could go ahead and make that official. TomStar81 (Talk) 17:31, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I understood that and called them "ideas" in response :) --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 17:37, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Moving Forward with Suggestion One

It sounds like there are no objections in principle to the 1st suggestion regarding the nomination of standing coordinators for the Chevron w/Oak Leaves provided that we do not award the Oak Leaves version until after a standing coordinator either steps down/resigns or is removed from office. Am I correct in this assumption? TomStar81 (Talk) 00:45, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Support --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 16:20, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Support --Eurocopter (talk) 19:19, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Support Wandalstouring (talk) 12:42, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Any more support for this? Any objections? --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 13:13, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Well I see no objections, and I do not look for anymore supports unless we make a general announcement further down the page, so I say we implement it but thats just me. TomStar81 (Talk) 04:06, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

The Last Laugh?

Back in October this page was involved in an MfD debate because it was thought by one user to be unnessicary. The contributer responsible for the nom, Melsaran (talk · contribs), has since been blocked as a sock puppet. To me, thats funny :-) TomStar81 (Talk) 18:10, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Un-noticed suggestion

Just saw this: WT:WikiProject_Military_history/Review#Image:Symbol a class.svg and think it is a good idea, but is posted in a place that gets very little activity. Perhaps the new coordinators would like something easy to start with? -MBK₀₀₄ 00:26, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Seems like a good idea to me. TomStar81 (Talk) 01:09, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it is a good idea. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 08:00, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree. Let's implement it. Wandalstouring (talk) 12:41, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

The only places the current symbol (the old gold checkmark) appears are in the successful A-Class review line in {{WPMILHIST}} and on the project page in the showcase. It'd be easy enough just to replace the image there; but if you're looking to make it more prominent, you might want to consider having {{WPMILHIST}} display it (or the FA star) a secondary image on the right (as in, e.g., {{WPMILHIST Archive}}) when the article is FA-Class and A-Class. Kirill 13:34, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I was thinking just about currently implementing the image on the review line in the template and on the project page. But, the other part of Kirill's idea seems interesting, but I don't quite follow. -MBK₀₀₄ 21:06, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

What I meant was that, in the case of an FA or A-Class article, the template would show a large version of the icon in its top slot, opposite the map icon on the left. Kirill 17:33, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Understand now. Seems like a good idea, but only if it can be activated only by changing the assessment, i.e. no other extra effort. I don't know if that is even technically possible? -MBK₀₀₄ 17:45, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, yes; I wouldn't have suggested it if I didn't know how to make it work. ;-) Kirill 17:46, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Then, I say go for it. Since you know how to do it, and there seems to be a rough consensus to implement. -MBK₀₀₄ 17:50, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Ok, done; comments would be appreciated. Kirill 18:06, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Looks good! -MBK₀₀₄ 18:17, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Welcome

Welcome to all coordinators, new and returning. It will be a pleasure to serve with each of you for the next six monthes. As this election is now formally concluded we have settled on the nine users who will be coordinators, and we have also concluded the referendum on the format for the coridnators: the projects members who comments there overwhelmingly seem to favor the maintence of the lead/assistant scheme. Is there anything else that needs to be addressed immediately? Any objects, concerns, compliants suggestions, anything of that nature? TomStar81 (Talk) 01:09, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to add my greetings to Tom's. Welcome one and all! --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 08:01, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd also like to add my greeting and congratulations to all the coordinator; old and new. I hope this can be a very constructive six months and that the project will improve. Kyriakos (talk) 08:12, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm excited and honoured to have been elected and am looking forward with working with you. Contratulations to everyone else, and especially to Roger for being selected as the lead coordinator. --Nick Dowling (talk) 10:00, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm sure we'll do a great work together in the next six months! --Eurocopter (talk) 12:06, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi, most people already know me as a coordinator. Wandalstouring (talk) 12:44, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I should add my greetings too. We're entering a new era of the Project, and I think it's in excellent hands with all of you. I look forward to working with all of you. LordAmeth (talk) 00:46, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Electronic journal list

I briefly mentioned this in my answers to a Q during the elections. I was thinking of creating a list on the Project pages of a list of users who have access for Electronic journals (uni people) so that they can obtain copies of academic papers and email them to users who are not at a uni and can't access them. You can get quite a lot of more obscure and specialised stuff from journals that you can't get elsewhere, and some of my A-class articles (Yen Bai mutiny, Truong Dinh) were possible only because I trawled through the journals at my uni and downloaded anything on Vietnam that I could get my hands on. What do people think? Blnguyen (vote in the photo straw poll) 08:25, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I could even write down the names of all the journal articles related to MILHIST within the journal itself, since it might be hard to know that an article actually exists unless a book lists it in the bib. eg, the books in my uni library which had small bits on Truong Dinh and Yen Bai mutiny were pre 1990, and didn't link to the journal articles, which were after 1990. I only found the journal articles by trawling everything on Vietnam. Blnguyen (vote in the photo straw poll) 08:29, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

An excellent idea. it would fit very well in the proposed Logistics Dept page. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 08:56, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree, it might be a good idea. Wandalstouring (talk) 12:39, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Such a listing (which I would be a part of since I'm at university), might also be the place to link to a listing of the books in your own personal possession, for verification purposes. Some users have such a thing already in their userspace, and it is on my list of things to do since I have a rather extensive maritime warfare-related library. -MBK₀₀₄ 21:04, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Ah, an excellent idea. ~~I'm going to go compose a list of my current sources for my user page.~~ I'm going to go update and cleanup the list I already have... LordAmeth (talk) 00:48, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

This has the potential to be a huge list. Perhaps a "sources" section on each Task Force page might be the best place for listings? --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 14:03, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Possibly, but some users (myself) have such a variety of sources that they all won't fit into the scope of one task force. I'd imagine the same for most if not all of us, when we cataloged what we own. -MBK₀₀₄ 17:48, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Please excuse me for intruding. However it would be great if we could get a list of people who have JSTOR access, so that certain journal articles (which in many cases could improve WP articles immeasurably) could be obtained if necessary. I for one would find this very helpful. Congratulations to all the new coordinators and best wishes for your work. Buckshot06 (talk) 22:56, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

That's already on the list for the Logistics Dept. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 23:15, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

I see it's in your sandbox. Blnguyen (vote in the photo straw poll) 06:38, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Just wondering are journal catalogues usually browsable for people who do not have subscriptions. I don't know since I am subscribed through university if a person from the outside can see an article by article list of the journals. If an article by article list exists, people without access can just do a brute force sweep of the titles for random things from the country/general topic that they looking for without following a ref from another source. Else, we might have to type up our own list of all the articles.......Blnguyen (vote in the photo straw poll) 06:38, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Also, is it considered within the spirit or letter of copyright if we upload the articles directly to WP and then delete them? That way an admin can access it directly. I can see that it might be considered to be skating very close to copyright rorting..... Blnguyen (vote in the photo straw poll) 06:38, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

The JSTOR catalogue is searchable and browsable by non-subscribers though they (we?) can only see the JSTOR summary page and the first page of content. The best way forward is probably for editors to request specific articles, which editors with JSTOR access can email to them. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 07:25, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I have usually found interesting articles via google searches, and at that point would have asked JSTOR-capable editors to send them to me. Buckshot06 (talk) 08:32, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Can you just scroll through the whole list of articles, or do you have to have an idea of what to look for? Blnguyen (vote in the photo straw poll) 03:50, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

{Outdent} JSTOR added to the Logistics Dept 'here. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 12:55, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Logistics dept

I'll start fleshing out the page this weekend. Probably best if we keep it off the main template until it's populated a little. In the meantime, does anyone object if it takes the "Stress hotline" slot? the hotline gets so little traffic ... --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 09:52, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Thats fine by me. TomStar81 (Talk) 10:21, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

I would keep the stress hotline on a visible spot. It's a good sign that it doesn't get much traffic and we didn't have yet again a massive breakdown of editors. Wandalstouring (talk) 12:47, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

If the logistics department includes image/map stuff, you could merge the image resources section from the main project page to it, and then free up that slot in the template for use. Kirill 18:35, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

This is taking shape and editors are voluntering satisfactorily. We're a bit light on language skills so any contributions would be very welcome. Any ideas on other areas the logistics dept could tackle? Any comments or crirticims on it generally? --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 22:57, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

On highly informal dispute resolution, do we want to add this to logistics? It might be useful to deal with infobox punch-ups and contentious name changes (to mention but two). Woody has offered to help with this but I don't know he wants his name on the marquee :) --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 16:07, 8 March 2008 (UTC)