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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3


Encouraging review participation from less experienced reviewers

Redirected here from Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators/September 2010#General comments, questions, etc.. To establish context, a selected portion of the discussion is duplicated below. EyeSerenetalk 09:13, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

The election process has reliably produced an excellent group of coordinators; there is a certain 'old boys club' feel to it, but good new candidates do come through. Regarding reviewing, the main disadvantage it has over article creation is that reviewers are required to cover all of the FA criteria in a tightly constrained timeframe. On the other hand, reviewers could explicitly address specific criteria to reduce the burden and this could be facilitated by splitting the review into (transcluded?) sections by criterion. This would make the criteria clearer for new reviewers and they could focus on areas of interest to them or where they have particular skills. Realistically, reviewers on 1a, 1d and 4 may have no clue about 1c, but we are supposed to be experts in all areas to deliver a valid vote. On another topic, recognition of contributions in reviewing are appreciated. Doug (talk) 14:09, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
What Doug said, on all counts. Of course, the main thing we do right is to have a rocking A-class review process, which effectively gives us more time than most other projects to work on FAC issues. - Dank (push to talk) 14:23, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
On the contrary Doug, at FAC SandyGeorgia has encouraged editors to review in whatever capacity they can. If that is just one criterion, it's a small matter to say "criterion 1a looks good" or "oppose on criterion 3". Some people do just image reviews, and others focus on sourcing; some examine an article to see if it complies with MOS. You don't have to measure an article against every criteria as long as you state which ones you have. It's a good route for inexperienced reviewers, or for people who specialise in a particular area. It would be a good approach to adopt in the "rocking" A-class reviews. Nev1 (talk) 22:05, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
Good idea. Nev, out of curiosity, why did you not consider running? You are a very dedicated worker here and I'm sure that you would do a good job at such a task.--White Shadows Your guess is as good as mine 00:49, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
I did consider it, but have some reservations about the position that are explained on my talk page. Nev1 (talk) 18:29, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
Sorry Nev, I was reading that quickly as "reviewers" (plural), but I see he talks about individual reviewers later. No, individual reviewers can do anything they want. I give a standard disclaimer when I support at FAC. - Dank (push to talk) 01:25, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Nev. On the other hand, quoting 1a at review is a perfect method to introduce jargon, steepen the learning curve and ensure the need for a mentoring process. Perhaps that is desirable, but it should be an explicit choice of the project. I don't see downsides of sectioning reviews with the criteria for that section made explicit. A 'General' section would permit experienced reviewers to continue with their preferred style. Doug (talk) 15:33, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I really don't see how encouraging people to do something they're comfortable with rather than dive in at the deep end would intimidate people. It doesn't need to be bureaucratic, you don't need to create sections in reviews for people to compartmentalise their opinions, or anything else that's been over thought. All that a reviewer would have to do is state which criterion they checked the article against. Nev1 (talk) 18:29, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
I think the main issue with reviewing only against selected criteria is that it complicates the promotion process. I don't see a problem with this when opposing, because a single unaddressed criteria-based oppose is enough to prevent promotion under the current system anyway, but when adjudicating supports the closing coord will need to distinguish support votes for the article as a whole from supports based on one criterion and weight them accordingly. EyeSerenetalk 08:13, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
If the choice is between a more approachable review system for the new and inexperienced and co-ordinators spending a little more time thinking about their decisions that's really no choice at all. Nev1 (talk) 14:32, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
I take your point, but I don't think we can dismiss this issue quite that easily. Currently promotion requires three supports and no unaddressed criteria-based opposes; under the system you suggest, it's possible an article could have its three supports but all could could be based on a single (perhaps even the same) criterion. Can we then legitimately promote the article? It's calling on the coords to make a subjective judgement call rather than - as now - a largely objective one. For me that's a big change in the coord role and I'm not sure we have the mandate or desire to do that. It would only take a few controversial decisions to call our entire A-Class review process into question. I think your suggestion is a good one, but to be fully integrated into the process it will require some hard thinking about the way we manage reviews. Perhaps the STT would be a good venue to explore this further? EyeSerenetalk 20:06, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
You still don't understand. This is aimed at inexperienced editors; the old hands who are currently involved wouldn't change their habits while newer edits might feel more comfortable commenting on only one aspect of the article. The purpose it to generate more interest in reviews rather than compartmentalise them, making life difficult for reviewers and co-ordinators. Obviously if there are only supports on certain criteria rather than the article as a whole, you wait for more reviewers. It's not rocket science. Nev1 (talk) 21:23, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
(od) I can't help but feel we ought to be having this discussion somewhere more central, but why not :-)
Speaking as someone pretty uninvolved with the A-class system at the moment (shame, shame, I know) - it seems "compartmentalising" works well for the B or GA reviews, with an easy breakdown of what is and isn't good to go, and it might well be worth trialling the model. I'd go for something like Doug suggests above - criteria headers, and encourage notes underneath each on the basis of "support / object / comment / query" - passing would then still require three approvals for each point, either explicit or inferred from general comments, but people would be able to clearly express "I am happy with the structure of this article and the text and the pictures, I definitely think the citations are screwy, but I don't have the slightest idea if it's actually correct, so please don't hold me to that bit" without having to leave unduly complicated remarks. In many ways this would be similar to what we have now, but it'd - hopefully - be a little bit clearer, a good bit easier to check off and close, and I can certainly see how being able to say "well, I only need comment on this little bit" would help draw people into reviewing. Perhaps we could run a review or two this way as a trial, and see if it's unwieldy or not? Shimgray | talk | 22:27, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
A trial sounds like an excellent idea. I am unsure if it will have positive effects, but we can at least try. Yoenit (talk) 09:42, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
One point that's just occurred to me is that some reviewers already review on single criteria, but they tend to mark their contributions as "Comment". I suppose formalising this practice would be another alternative; we could encourage new reviewers to wet their feet by contributing at a level they feel comfortable at, but reserve "Supports" for full-article reviews.
Re a trial, the current suggestion seems to be for trialling the compartmentalised review suggestion. Is that correct? EyeSerenetalk 10:00, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
That wasn't my thinking at all when this all started, but if that's the consensus then have at it. Nev1 (talk) 17:19, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
Would it be any use if I put together a demonstration of what a possible "compartmentalised" review might look like? I can knock one up tonight or tomorrow if so. Shimgray | talk | 16:38, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
I'm excited to see your idea of how this might work, Shimgray. With regards to introducing 'gray area' into promotion by (objective) vote count, closes currently require a judgement call to see if all the criteria have been covered adequately. I have immense respect for good closers - they are the reviewer of reviews. Around the MilHist campfire we know each other pretty well and know which aspects we each cover. Most reviewers check an aspect they are familiar with: the person who has the skill to do a really good 1a & 1d and 4 check is often not the person with the knowledge, time and patience, and/or access to the resources to do a really thorough 1b & 1c, while others can be relied upon to check image copyright. Hence, separation between specific and general supports will help coordinators in their unavoidable judgement call. Doug (talk) 23:31, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

First draft

How about this? I was going to refactor an existing review, but it seemed simplest to do a very "bare" one with made-up comments. Thoughts appreciated. Shimgray | talk | 00:36, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Overall, I like the new setup; it definitely looks more inviting for a first-time visitor. A few general thoughts on the layout:

  • The text of the five criteria might be more obvious set out in a box or quote template of some sort; as it is, it's not immediately obvious that those blurbs are explanations of the criteria rather than (possibly malformed) comments.
  • Using level 3 headings is going to cause problems from a TOC perspective; currently, the TOC on the review page displays them, to allow easy tracking of the per-user headings in PRs, but this will result in a long list of repeated ACR criteria. I'm not sure whether the best solution would be to change these headings to not use header formatting, or to simply wrap the TOC up to level 2 (and possibly get rid of the heading convention for PRs, since it would no longer be useful).
  • Assuming we go with this, it would probably be worthwhile to have ACR instructions appear in the editnotice for all ACR pages; we'll want an explanation of how to participate and what the various symbols and terms mean, at the very least.

Kirill [talk] [prof] 01:02, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks - please feel free to destroy any and all of the formatting! The reason most things are in "indented italic" is because I couldn't remember how to do pretty layout... a direct lift from the A-class section descriptions with links might be handy, then format it in an offset and it'll look quite tidy. The GA reviews have handy little "a) this b) that c) the other" reminders, which is why I went with the comments - perhaps we could try a staccato list rather than verbatim?
For headers, we could drop down to level 5? I believe that gets suppressed on the TOC.
I guess the next step is to tidy this and wrap all of the boilerplate into a preloading template - like {{GAList}} - then try it live on a couple of articles. Shimgray | talk | 01:11, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
I'll see what I can do in terms of cleaning up the formatting.
As far as preload templates are concerned, we can probably just modify Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Review/A-Class review preload boilerplate to output the new format for the duration of the trial. Kirill [talk] [prof] 01:29, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
Nice work on the draft, Shimgray. Thank you! Further to Kirill's comments, do we also need the symbols? I don't think they're particularly intuitive and see no reason why we can't just stick with "support", "oppose" and "comment" (though maybe something like {{tick}} and {{cross}} would be more meaningful if we have to use graphics). EyeSerenetalk 09:08, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
"Support" and "oppose" would work fine, certainly - I was working from the GA preload so these were just the ones I had to hand :-) Shimgray | talk | 09:41, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
I thought that might be the reason fwiw, I don't much like them at GA either! The criteria summaries at the start of each section is a good idea; that should be really helpful to new reviewers. EyeSerenetalk 12:59, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Thinking about it, the main benefit of the images is that at a quick eyeball you can in theory see what still needs done, and easily spot lacunae, but as "two pluses" is still needing work, it's visually a bit counterintuitive. I wonder if hovering a five-point summary box at the side would work... hrm. I'll mock something up. For the time being, though, would it be worth my putting an article up for review using the new model, and we can try it out? Shimgray | talk | 11:25, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

I suppose it's what one's used to seeing - when I run my eye down a page I tend to take in "support", "oppose" etc faster than graphical symbols, but I'm sure regular GA template users are just as fast with the graphics :) I also feel that graphic-, code- and template-rich pages are off-putting to less technically-accomplished editors - they take longer and are more complicated to edit, and since our whole purpose is to attract new reviewers this might be counterproductive. However, I have no objection to exploring all the options :)
Re your review, personally I'd like to be a little clearer about how we close these reviews before proceeding with one. Again I have no objection to the trial and strongly support any initiative to encourage reviewing, but without a sound closure system any review is meaningless. In particular I'd like to get consensus on what mixture of partial/full supports we will accept for promotion (partial=support for one criterion; full=support for entire article). I'm assuming a single unaddressed oppose anywhere is still enough to block promotion.
One suggestion was that we wait for three partial supports for each criterion (ie five partial supports for A1, A2, A3, A4 and A5=one full-article support). I think this may be unrealistic, but might be workable if we remove the full-article review section and insist that reviewers who are reviewing the entire article comment separately under each criterion. However, the last thing we should do is alienate our existing reviewers; there's no guarantee we'll attract anyone new and we can't afford to lose the reviewers we already have. I'm really not sure what the solution is so any ideas are welcome :) EyeSerenetalk 12:05, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
From the perspective of a frequent A class reviewer and nominator, I find the lay-out proposed at User:Shimgray/A-test to be a bit off-putting. Dividing different reviewers comments up by the different criteria is a bit odd, and would encourage 'tick and flick' type reviews and could encourage some nominators to try to do only the minimum needed to meet each criteria (which can be a problem at times for B class assessments). If we want to go down this path, I'd suggest formating things so that each reviewers' comments against the criteria remain grouped together along with an 'other comments' field (a 'suggestions for improvement' field might also be worthwhile; I always try to make these suggestions in the articles I review and appreciate it when reviewers make them for my nominations). Nick-D (talk) 12:25, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Shim. Nick, not sure how to address your preference for keeping all your comments together. That's a go/no-go for this style, but I hope you wouldn't feel alienated by a test of a different style. I find it hard to picture this in the abstract but personally I'd drop the {{GAList/check|y}} - I've seen them used effectively at WikiMedia for short vote lists, but in general I find them a bit gimmicky. Also, I'd suggest taking out the pixel eating TOC, then that frees up the layout to put the headings inside the about box along the lines of:

A1: Sourcing The article is consistently referenced with an appropriate citation style, and all claims are verifiable against reputable sources, accurately represent the relevant body of published knowledge, and are supported with specific evidence and external citations as appropriate.

The best part is:

This is an A-Class review. For this article to be promoted to A-Class, three reviewers must agree that it passes all five A-Class criteria (FAQ). Please leave comments and opinions below.

I'd strongly support keeping that, regardless of the consensus decision with respect to review by criterion. Doug (talk) 22:16, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

So, where should we go from here? I think we have two options:
  • Test out the criterion-specific review layout developed so far on a few reviews and see what feedback we get.
  • Retain the combined layout but improve the instructions for reviewers using the material from the new layout boilerplate.
Thoughts? Kirill [talk] [prof] 04:56, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
Whatever you decide, feel free to trial it on Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/ARA Rivadavia. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 05:12, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
Have we got a set of promotion/failure criteria yet? (sorry to keep banging on about that, but it's quite important!) In answer to Kirill's question, I think a test might be worthwhile if we can sort out the former. EyeSerenetalk 09:17, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
Isn't it linked on the first header? WikiCopter (radio • sorties • images • lost • defense • attack) 04:08, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

To make things simple, how about we go with a FAC-style model: an article is promoted if:

  • No significant objections are raised for any criterion; and
  • At least three reviewers examine each criterion.

with "overall" reviews being considered as having examined all five criteria. Kirill [talk] [prof] 17:35, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Moving forward?

So, are we in a position to test an entirely new format yet? Or should we table the idea for the time being and simply integrate some of the useful material from the current draft into the existing format?

Given the work that's being done with ACR from other angles—in particular, the new Academy course(s) being written—I would actually tend to lean towards the latter approach at this point. It may be best to develop our instruction/advice base further before proceeding; in the best scenario, it will make a new format unnecessary, and at worst, the new material can be used as background and FAQs for a new criterion-based format.

Thoughts? Kirill [talk] [prof] 04:41, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

It looks less intimidating... I would suggest changing it now, since it isn't a very major departure from current formats, it merely seperates the comments into topical fields. WikiCopter (♠ • ♣ • ♥ • ♦ • simple • commons • lost • cvu • onau) 17:16, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Backlog reduction drive

I thought I would take a shot in the dark here make a proposal that we hold a 'March Madness' drive with the aim of reducing the number of articles listed in the various categories covered by the umbrella category Military History articles needing attention. In the long term I am hopeful that this may become a yearly thing, but for now I would like to see if there is any interest in this idea. In simple terms, we would start the drive officially at 00:00 UTC March 1 and let it run through 23:59 UTC March 31, with the bronze, silver, and gold wiki awards to be handed out to the top three contestants participating in the drive. This would be beneficial to our project for a number of reasons, not the least of which is helping to address the outstanding issues in the articles listed there. While it would be unrealistic to expect that the entire backlog would disappear some categories are small enough that in a 31 day period they could be brought down to zero. On top of that its been neatly three years since we last held a drive, and a little community hoorah spirit in helping us get project affairs in order would help both project moral and our administrative/assessment processes at the same time. What do you guys think about this idea? Is it worth pursuing, or should we forgo a project wide drive in favor of something else to help reduce the backlog? TomStar81 (Talk) 01:07, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Tom, I'd support this. Of course, we'd have to have a bit of a think about how it would be scored, what tasks would be included, etc., but I think it would be a good way to generate some enthusiasm. AustralianRupert (talk) 01:24, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
I think this is quite a good idea. One thing that we ought to keep in mind, in my opinion, is that the "needing attention" sub-categories are almost entirely auto-generated based on the B-Class checklist; in other words, reducing the backlogs in those categories simultaneously brings us closer to our overall B-Class target. The drive would thus be killing two birds with one stone. Kirill [talk] [prof] 01:41, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
I like the idea as well. Perhaps we could base points off the various categories, with more points given for categories that are generally harder to take care of? Something like:
  • Military history articles needing attention to coverage and accuracy (2 C, 17916 P) - 15 points
  • Military history articles needing expert attention (2 C, 206 P) - 15 points
  • Military history articles needing attention to referencing and citation (2 C, 29101 P) - 15 points
  • Military history articles needing attention to grammar (2 C, 1772 P) - 10 points
  • Military history articles needing attention to structure (2 C, 7370 P) - 5 points
  • Military history articles needing attention to supporting materials (2 C, 7199 P) - 5 points
  • Military history articles needing attention to tagging (3 C, 36 P) - 2 points
  • Military history articles needing attention to task force coverage (289 P) - 2 points
  • Adding (and filling out) B-class checklist to MILHIST banner - 2 points
All of the articles under the needing attention by task force categories could be scored according to the template above. I'm mostly just tossing numbers out, and there might need to be some discussion on which categories are actually "harder", but these are just my thoughts from the (relatively small, TBH) amount of B-class checklist tagging I've done. I think that Kirill is right that this will also increase the number of B-class articles we have, and it will also most like reduce the number of articles we have that are tagged with cleanup banners. Many of the "needing referencing and citation" probably have fact tags or references needed banners, those needing attention to grammar might have copy edit banners, etc. So, really, three birds, one stone. Dana boomer (talk) 01:59, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
Four, actually: If we due this on a yearly basis as I suggested then we ensure that backlogs receive a proper sweep at least once every year, which should help ensure that the backlogs stay at constant rather than rocketing ever upward as they seem to do. TomStar81 (Talk) 02:34, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
One obvious question, since a lot of articles fall in multiple categories, is if these awards are cumulative.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:54, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
I see no reason why the points shouldn't be cumulative. It takes quite a bit more effort to improve an article that is missing four or five of the criteria (basically, stub class) to full B-status than it does to improve one small area. If someone is willing to go through the trouble of fixing structure, copyediting, adding references, improving coverage and accuracy and adding images/tables/maps/whatever, then IMO they should be rewarded more than someone who does nothing more than add a couple of pictures to an article. (And this is speaking as someone who, with limited military sources at their disposal, will be more like to be adding images and fixing tagging than anything else!) Dana boomer (talk) 22:06, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Agree with Dana boomer, IMO there is no reason they can not be cumulative. Since there does seem to be a consensus that this would be a good idea, should we develop it further (ie, suggest an awards layout, set up independent pages, etc), and if so should we start advertising for it in The Bugle? TomStar81 (Talk) 03:01, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

It's probably premature to advertise the drive at this point—we have nothing to point people at, for one, and we're also going to be causing some confusion with the Wikipedia-wide backlog drive that's currently going on—but I think we can go ahead and start setting up the needed infrastructure. Kirill [talk] [prof] 05:16, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
The infrastructure can probably be strongly based on something like the World War I contest, yes? Awards, the gold, silver and bronze awards, maybe with something superimposed over them, like the poppy for WWI? Can't think of something awesome at the moment though... Dana boomer (talk) 02:39, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
At this point, should we move this discussion over to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Strategy and solicit more general input from the project? Kirill [talk] [prof] 10:29, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
I think so. I'd be particularly interested in hearing back on the matter of making this a yearly event, since it could provide a check to the never ending backlog. For now though I would be content to seek additional input on the matter. TomStar81 (Talk) 05:24, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
Moved from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators#Floating a drive proposal. Kirill [talk] [prof] 03:23, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Comments requested

Based on the above discussion, we're looking to get feedback on several different points related to this drive idea:

  1. Is this drive a good idea overall? Is it likely to interest enough editors and produce sufficient article improvements to make the effort worthwhile?
  2. What articles should the drive cover? Is the above list of categories suitable, or should categories be added and/or removed?
  3. How should participant's contributions be scored? What awards should be available?

Any other comments not related to the above points are, of course, also welcome. Kirill [talk] [prof] 03:36, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to reply:
  1. I think this drive is an excellent idea.
  2. The drive should cover the stub backlogs, assessment backlogs and articles not yet tagged at least. Beyond that, mere article improvement is already covered by the contest.
  3. Scoring and awards should be determined after the first two points are determined. WikiCopter (♠ • ♣ • ♥ • ♦ • simple • commons • lost • cvu • onau) 17:14, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
Agree that this sounds like a nifty idea.
  1. As said, this sounds cool.
  2. I can handle tagging for the project, tagging for task force, adding assessments...
  3. The scoring proposed above looks good to me. - The Bushranger One ping only 19:11, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
Just a note, the GAN backlog is getting blown up (DYNAMITE, you! Get matches!) so it won't have to be included. WikiCopter (♠ • ♣ • ♥ • ♦ • simple • commons • lost • cvu • onau) 04:58, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
Not personally interested in contests but article improvement is something I get involved in. Just to note that my experience is that you can go to an article to attend to one problem on a B class checklist and find others apparently missed by a previous assessor. As a learning exercise last year, I did a batch of single issue B class improvements. Out of 9, I identified 7 as needing further work on other criteria. Of the two I put forward for assessment, one was rejected by an assessor as needing work on another B class criterion. OK, small sample but it does potentially cause a scoring issue - what if the assessor has to reclassify downwards? For the contestants, will there be rewards for correctly reassessing, not just improvement?Monstrelet (talk) 08:28, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Since it is now past the middle of February, should we start creating the infrastructure for this and advertising it? Dana boomer (talk) 16:14, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Kirill? Don't ask me, I have no idea how to do this... Wikicopter what i do s + c cup|former 23:52, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
I can create the basic page structure and such sometime in the next day or so, but I'm going to need help with pulling together all the needed content beyond that. Kirill [talk] [prof] 03:07, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Starting the drive

Were these pages ever completed? What still needs to be done? The first of March is day after tomorrow (tomorrow for some of us), so we should get cracking on this if it's going to happen. Should we do a general member talk page notification like we did with the World War I contest? Probably a good way to get contributors... Plus get any final comments on scoring, etc. Just let me know - I should have some time tomorrow (Feb 28) to work on this if it's needed. Dana boomer (talk) 01:03, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
I've posted the needed infrastructure at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/March 2011 backlog reduction drive (and subpages). Assuming that everyone is fine with the listed scoring and award structure, I think all we need is to set up the advertising; we should probably start by making announcements in all the usual forums, and can follow up with a general membership mailing once the drive officially starts.
I'm likely to be quite busy tomorrow, so please feel free to take the lead on this. Kirill [talk] [prof] 02:43, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
Looks good. I'll start posting notifications later today. Just one question - have we decided not to give points for the other three categories mentioned above (attention to tagging/attention to taskforces/adding B-class checklists)? Dana boomer (talk) 12:34, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
The first two are rather specialized maintenance issues; given their esoteric nature and the low numbers of articles, I don't think it's worthwhile including them in a drive intended for the general membership.
The third one is slightly problematic; keep in mind that the B-Class checklist generates the other categories, so it would be possible for someone to (a) assess a large number of articles as needing some improvement and then (b) submit those same articles as having been improved. (Granted, making work for oneself this way would still be possible even without assessment being separately scored, but at least it's not as obvious an approach.) Since we already have a large backlog available, I don't think we need to award points for expanding it at this point. Kirill [talk] [prof] 12:38, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
OK, works for me. Thanks for the quick reply. Dana boomer (talk) 15:34, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
I've posted a notice to the main MILHIST talk page. Not sure if there are any other "normal" spots to post? Dana boomer (talk) 17:41, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Once the drive opens, we'll want to add it to {{WPMILHIST Announcements}} and put up an appropriate banner at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators/Toolbox/Banner. We might also consider adding notices on the Community Portal and/or the Village Pump, as well as asking the Signpost to run a brief notice. Kirill [talk] [prof] 23:53, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I've adding a message on the banner page - feel free to tweak. I'm not sure how we normally go about putting drive messages on the announcements page; could someone who's a bit more experienced please do that? Dana boomer (talk) 00:28, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
Done, on both counts. Kirill [talk] [prof] 00:33, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
Notices left at the Signpost's suggestion page and the WP:Village pump (miscellaneous). Feel free to tweak. Dana boomer (talk) 22:49, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
I'm not sure how closely the suggestion page is followed; it might be easier to make a specific request at Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Newsroom/WikiProject_desk#Sidebar_news_requests. Kirill [talk] [prof] 12:29, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Activity on peer and A-Class reviews

Review problem fixing

I've forgotten the layout of WP:MILHIST during my brunout, so I'll post this right here. There have been many discussions, threads, etc. about how MilHist A and Peer Review are overflowing. Why not implement the same style that DYK uses, make it mandantory for a nominator for A class or peer review to review one (or two, the number is arbitrary based upon the amount of requests) requests. This should help lower the backlog, freeing time up for more in-depth reviews. Any thoughts? Buggie111 (talk) 04:35, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

I guess this would catch a few people who only make requests and don't actually review but most already seem to make a habit of reviewing others' when posting their own. The thing is of course that unlike DYK (and GAR), where it only takes one person to review one entry, at ACR (like FAC) it takes at least three reviewers for each entry and often more, so even implementing this we'll still be relying on the good grace of people like Dank and Rupert, who generally only review, and others who review a few for every one they post. Incidentally, I have no issue with the practice they've implemented in DYK, since I already made it a personal rule to review one for each I posted, but I note that for one reason or another it seems to take longer than ever to get one's DYK on the main page...! Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 05:06, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
I would certainly like to see a larger number of reviewers at peer review and ACR (or more accurately, a wider cross section of the project getting involved). This would help the project in a number of ways. I think working as a reviewer helps improve an editor's own article writing (to an extent), but also it helps keep the review system fresh. If the review process is reliant on only a few main contributors, the process is not as robust as it could be. Many of our peer reviews only get one or two reviewers when, ideally, they might need three or four to really iron out all the issues. The problem is less acute at ACR, although over the past year we have had a number of reviews closed where there were not enough reviewers (three or more). Having said all of this, I'm not sure that it should be made mandatory for a nominator to review (as some editors' skills are in content creation and not necessarily reviewing, and everyone is a volunteer, etc.). However, I certainly think it should be encouraged. In that regard, perhaps we could put something in the instructions (both peer review and ACR) suggesting that nominators get involved? Cheers, AustralianRupert (talk) 06:40, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
Making a review mandatory by a nominator may seem inappropriate, but (having neither nominated nor been...) it seems to me, if you haven't looked carefully enough at a page to review it (regardless whether the review is formal), you've no business nominating it in the first place. That being true, nomination would seem to imply a de facto requirement for review before nom. Not to say I'd encourage more bureaucracy, just a "regularizing" (is that a word?) of practise. TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 16:35, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
I don't like to review an article especially for A Class without a bit of knowledge on the subject. Of course thing like MOS and grammar can still be checked. Saying that there has been times when checking the Peer/A class review lists, that there has been nothing listed I would feel comfortable in reviewing. I have had a bit of a wikibreak but have not noticed a huge problem with reviews. Jim Sweeney (talk) 17:12, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
I generally agree that it's good-form to review some articles everytime you nominate an article you've worked on for any form of review. The number of A class reviewers seems OK at the moment, though more would always be a great thing. The peer review process seems to be struggling though - the number of articles which are being nominated for PRs seems to be down and not many people are commenting on the nominations. For PRs any comments are great - even if you only read one part of the article the nominator will doubtlessly appreciate your comments. Nick-D (talk) 11:30, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

I would like to propose adding a line (at Step 6 of Requesting a review) to the peer and A class review instructions. I suggest something along the following lines: "Once you have nominated an article for review, please peruse the list of articles that are also currently undergoing peer or A-class reviews and consider taking part. Although your involvement is not mandatory, it is encouraged." Are there any thoughts on this – does anyone agree or disagree with adding something like this? Should the wording be changed? Cheers, AustralianRupert (talk) 05:49, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Sure, that sounds good. - Dank (push to talk) 23:09, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
Moved from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history#Review problem fixing. Kirill [talk] [prof] 22:31, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
I think an important consideration to this point would be (if we decided to adopt it), how would we enforce this? Would we ask our reviewers to vett the nominator to see if he or she has done enough reviewing? Deny an article promotion based on this? Shun editors who frequently flaunt this requirement? I'm uneasy at the prospect of trying to legislate behavior.
It rather reminds me of the coffee mess at my last command. We had a large percolating pot, and a jar to drop in some change when a Marine took a cup. We had one real caffeine addict, and eventually (a period of months), he realized that he had become the only person contributing money for the coffee. He quietly bought a small personal machine, put it in his office, and we suddenly had no money to buy new coffee with. The colonel, of course, went bonkers and had us buy a lockbox, and anointed me as the coffee czar to set up a checklist, schedule, and log usage. Within a week, everyone was buying coffee at Dunkin' Donuts instead of at the coffee mess. We wound up getting rid of the pot. bahamut0013wordsdeeds 12:00, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
Hi, mate, thanks for commenting. I think you've slightly misunderstood my proposal, though. I am not suggesting making this mandatory. All I am proposing is that a suggestion to review other articles is placed in the instructions as a reminder, or gentle nudge. I am opposed to making "quid pro quo" mandatory. IMO, it doesn't work in a voluntary project. To reiterate, my proposal is to add a Step 6 instruction stating: "Once you have nominated an article for review, please peruse the list of articles that are also currently undergoing peer or A-class reviews and consider taking part. Although your involvement is not mandatory, it is encouraged." As such there would be no enforcement. AustralianRupert (talk) 23:51, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
That works for me, then. I know I highlighted a kind of worst-case; I know that most MILHIST editors are decent guys who would respect the coffee mess, but there is always one or two who don't. bahamut0013wordsdeeds 11:21, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
Ok, as no one seems violently opposed to this, I've added Step 6 to the instructions. Feel free to revert if anyone feels it is necessary. Cheers, AustralianRupert (talk) 13:15, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

This looks good to me so far. I assume we're eventually going to turn this into an Academy course? If so, it may be worthwhile to merge in the other ACR-related ones (How to prepare an A-Class Review, Using the A-class review toolbox, and Performing an A-Class review) to create a single ACR course that's structured into beginner/intermediate/advanced sections. Kirill [talk] [prof] 16:32, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. - Dank (push to talk) 22:28, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
I'd be hesitant to imply that this advice applies purely to ACRs, since it would hopefully be just as valid at PR or FAC, however ther's logic in consolidating all the advice into one page. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 00:43, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
We could aim for one of the processes, probably A-class, and then describe briefly how PR and FAC reviews differ. - Dank (push to talk) 02:03, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
That works. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 12:55, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
I like the name. :P I think it's a great start. We might also consider a project essay that strongly encourages it, and then use it as a POINTy stick to beat offenders over the head with to gently nudge editors who haven't been diligent in maintaining a good nom/review ratio (under the theory that individual attention always works better than mass appeals... a lesson that Jimbo's god-banners could have used). bahamut0013wordsdeeds 21:19, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

PR Partnership

Since it appears that no other page transcludes your reviews, would it be alright to wrap your PRs in <onlyinclude> tags to make it easier for WP:VG/P to include your reviews? Thanks, MrKIA11 (talk) 19:30, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

No objections to a collaboration with VG, but I've been concerned for a while that our peer review process might be a net negative. This isn't to take anything away from the reviewers, particularly Fifelfoo and Rupert, but the feedback comes and goes, and it doesn't begin to cover everything. There's a cost to asking people to wait for a month, especially if they're expecting comprehensive reviews that never come. WP:PR (in the "history" subject area) might be one option; encouraging people to go for our (outstanding) A-class review process might be another, and if the article really isn't ready for A-class review, we could always "vote" to remove it and give them some general pointers on what to do to prep for GAN or A-class. Of course, if we encourage more participation at WP:PR, then we should make an effort to review there as well, but that might work; doing partial reviews works better in an environment where a variety of people are doing different types of review. Thoughts? - Dank (push to talk) 20:11, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
I was just referring to the peer reviews, not the A-class reviews. Our projects have been partnered for a while, but your review page simply transcludes our PR page, while our PR page transcludes your individual reviews, which for ever reason, does not get kept up very well. So rather than trying to keep with making sure we are transcluding all of your reviews, it would be easier to be able to transclude the entire section, as you do with us. MrKIA11 (talk) 20:50, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
I went ahead and added the tags since I don't foresee a problem. If there is a problem, feel free to revert. MrKIA11 (talk) 21:00, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
Everything looks good here; I assume everything is working properly at the VG end? Kirill [talk] [prof] 22:27, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
Yeah, no problems on our end. Transcluded nicely. MrKIA11 (talk) 23:27, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
I don't think the internal peer review is a negative; while less active (and, arguably, less integral to our collective article improvement) than in past years, it still provides as much, or more, feedback as the main peer review process.
Having said that, I agree that we've seen declining activity in this area, and that it would behoove us to consider ways to increase it. One relatively easy option would be to cross-list reviews by creating (and redirecting) the appropriate subpages for both review types; that would enable a single review to collect input via both processes, but without necessarily forcing us to adopt the archiving schedule, etc. used by the main peer review process. Kirill [talk] [prof] 22:27, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
Yes, that sounds like a good idea. Perhaps, we should put something in the instructions to this effect? AustralianRupert (talk) 09:00, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
Moved from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history#PR Partnership. Kirill [talk] [prof] 22:31, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Assessment scheme changes

C-Class pilot?

IIRC we left C class at some sort of piloting stage, with a technical fix needed to create an automated assessment. Did this progress and, if so, what was the result? Monstrelet (talk) 09:40, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

The tracking categories for each of the B-Class criteria are being generated; see Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Open tasks#Articles that need specific improvements.
As far as converting this into an automatically-assessed C-Class rating, we're still uncertain of the correct combination of criteria, if I recall correctly. The results of particular combinations can be estimated by looking at the "... with no other problems" counts; for example, setting C-Class to require all criteria except B1 would produce ~50,000 articles.
If anyone would like to see other combinations implemented, I can add them fairly easily.
On a tangentially related note, we might also want to consider implementing FL-Class as a separate rating, to make tracking of our (growing) number of featured lists easier. Kirill [talk] [prof] 20:22, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
Hi, here is a link to the previous discussion: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Archive 98#C-Class adoption revisited. AustralianRupert (talk) 23:48, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
Having refreshed my memory, I think the most strongly favoured option was an automated approach to class as C any starts which met B3,B4, B5 and either B1 or B2. If we could also have a bot which placed a B class checklist on all starts (personally, I'm lazy at putting checklists into articles I assess and I think a lot of others are too), we could encourage all editors to go to their watchlists and ensure the B class list is filled out as part of a "new category" operation, those hopefully impacting on the incomplete B list backlog. Monstrelet (talk) 08:38, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
Do we want to generate a (B1 OR B2) AND (B3 AND B4 AND B5) combination category, so that we can see how many articles would be assessed as C-Class under this approach? Kirill [talk] [prof] 11:19, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
Using CatScan on the toolserver, I found ~9900 failing B1 and passing all the others, and ~1600 failing B2 and passing all the others. So that's about 11500 C-class out of the 33,000 with complete B-class checklists. Shimgray | talk | 13:21, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
If we apply the same proportion to those without complete checklists, we'd have about another 9000 - I think this is an upper estimate, as a lot of these will be stubs. Any B class reassessment would drop down some of the older Bs, which no longer meet modern criteria, but will be relatively few, I'd guess Monstrelet (talk) 13:58, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
15-20k total sounds plausible, yeah. Speaking of "older Bs", I wonder if this might be a good time - since we'll be updating a lot of ratings - to think about including, possibly via bot, a "last assessed at" date somewhere within the template metadata. We wouldn't have to act on it in the immediate future, but once it's there it means we've started building the framework for later "rating maintenance" in some way. Shimgray | talk | 14:19, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
I think the idea of identifying the most recent assessment should be standard for all classes... Something that was B-class even two or three years ago probably needs serious work to get there nowadays. Formal reviews are usually noted on the talk page, and while there is a proccess to review featured articles, I don't think that anything else is usually looked at often. I think the assumption is that once an editor "adopts" it and submits for GAR/ACR/PR, he or she will stick with it until it's FA... which is probably true most of the time, but that neglects anything B or lower. I think simply categorizing them by assessment date would be enough, and it's something a bot can do (I bet a clever bot can even look at article history to analyze the last time the template on the talk page was edited). A lot of editors in this project like to work in the GA/A/FA world because that gets them the glory, but the heart of WPMILHIST is in the scores of start and B-class articles.
I'm sorry, I think I meandered off the point. Yes, we should have the bot categorized "date last assessed", by quality and TF if possible. bahamut0013wordsdeeds 19:16, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
There's an "article history" template which records "events" like GA nominations, peer reviews, etc with dates, but usually once it's got to that stage there's an active user keeping tabs on it. We could try to add article assessment to that, but it would rapidly get overwhelmed by a page with incremental improvements and problems (start to B to C to B, etc) - in reality, I think we won't need any more complex metadata than "the most recent date someone looked at this and rated it was January 2010".
The simples approach here seems to be adding a datereviewed field in the template, updated by a bot (perhaps building off the changelog here, which already records all updates) or perhaps by something fancy involving substing (though I can't immediately see how!) with the option to manually enter a date for "has been assessed, approved, no change" for the cases where it's passed GAR/FAR or simply where someone's eyeballed it and agreed it retains the old level. That can then generate monthly categories in the same way as the backlog cats, broken down as needed, and a year or so from now we can start fretting about the oldest ones :-) Shimgray | talk | 20:34, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
This isn't a bad idea, necessarily; but it's highly dependent on getting someone to write a bot for it, as I don't believe anything currently in operation will perform this task.
Another issue that we need to consider is how deeply to break down the categories. Consider, for example, the following:
  • Tracking articles project-wide will result in 12 categories created per year
  • Tracking articles by class will result in 72 categories created per year
  • Tracking articles by task force will result in 600 categories created per year
  • Tracking articles by class and task force will result in 3,600 categories created per year
As should be obvious, more granular tracking will quickly result in a vast number of categories being created. Further, many of these categories are likely to persist for an extended period of time; I very much doubt we have the manpower to re-assess each of our 100,000+ articles every year. Kirill [talk] [prof] 23:37, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
Mmm. It's probably going to be easier to stick with granular by month and nothing else, leaving it solely as a tracking class - if someone wants to focus on a particular field, then catscan can produce reports of them relatively easily. I don't see lack of updating as a problem per se - to my mind, this is mainly so we can keep ourselves aware of the issue! I'll have a think about what we can do to make the date-tracking work. Shimgray | talk | 00:44, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
I really like this idea. Yoenit (talk) 08:11, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
I don't think bot support will be a problem, the BAG guys practically salivate over projects like this. We should have no problem finding someone to write code and pass it through the approval process; and I'm sure if we do this, other wikiprojects will follow suit and use the bot as well.
I've never seen catscan before... it seems useful. But that said, I don't have much of a problem with having 72 cats a year, over about six years of assessment, making about 432 cats (ten years if you count our predecessors, making 720). It's not like it would hurt anything, and we already have masses of assessment categories for each TF. bahamut0013wordsdeeds 12:07, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I would suggest that the next step would probably be to contact the bot operators and see who might be interested in helping us with this. The template and category changes are relatively minor, but we need to get a bot lined up before they'll be useful for anything. Kirill [talk] [prof] 18:21, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

The datereviewed field can be populated with the logging table data from the the enwp10 database on the toolserver. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 03:57, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Time for FL-Class?

Following on from what Kirill noted above, I think it is time that we adopted the use of {{FL-Class}} as a class of assessment within the project. Our FLs are currently classified in Category:FA-Class military history articles as opposed to a separate FL one. We currently have 89 featured lists and growing. It would help with tracking purposes if we could split it out and I don't see a reason not to. To implement it we would need to add the assessment to {{MILHIST}} and then go through and amend the category on the 89 talkpages involved. What do people think? Woody (talk) 18:35, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

We'd also need to create FL categories for the task forces, but that shouldn't take that long. Kirill [talk] [prof] 18:42, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
I agree with this proposal. AustralianRupert (talk) 08:16, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
I thought we already did. Looking at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment, I see that the only articles that get classed outside of the raw stub/start/B/GA/A/FA scale are task forces that overlap with other wikiprojects, like biographies. I believe that {{MILHIST}} already categorizes lists, categories, disambigs, files, portals, templates, and other non-article pages, and simply classes them as "NA" for assessment purposes (shouldn't the NA files be listed in the assessment scale boxes? I'm sure that while we have 112k articles, we have probably plenty in support pages, and that number might be interesting to see). We might as well add all of the featured content: lists, images, sounds, portals, etc. bahamut0013wordsdeeds 12:29, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
This isn't quite correct. Items outside of the article namespace (e.g. images, sounds, portals, user pages, etc.) are automatically assessed as "NA". Lists, on the other hand, can't be assessed automatically, since they're indistinguishable from articles on a namespace level. They're normally assessed using the corresponding article class; featured lists, for example, are assessed as "FA".
One thing that should be fixed is that disambig pages are reported as non-assessed. I've had to delete the project banner from a number of them to get them to stop showing up in our unassessed articles pages.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 22:32, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
You can set class=dab for those. Kirill [talk] [prof] 22:55, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
The idea here, I think, is simply to diverge "FL" from "FA", while leaving the lower classes identical for lists and "regular" articles. Kirill [talk] [prof] 14:07, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
That's the idea yes. A simple split of FAs and FLs. Woody (talk) 22:53, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
I'll support that, but I'll also support further differentiation. bahamut0013wordsdeeds 15:48, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
I would also support that but oppose further differentiation. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 06:49, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

I've put the C-Class and FL-Class proposals up at WT:MILHIST#Proposals to introduce C-Class and FL-Class assessment; let's see what the rest of the project thinks. Kirill [talk] [prof] 17:46, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Collaboration with and participation by the US military

Moonriddengirl recently posted this at the Village pump. Probably it's not something that should cause us huge concern, but it may be worth keeping half an eye out for unusual/promotional edits to US Army-related articles. EyeSerenetalk 11:39, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I look forward to seeing more editors coming from the U.S. Army. As long as they follow the guidelines and policies of our community, I think they will be a great asset to our community. --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 12:06, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
Indeed. We've had some quasi-official participation from the US military before, and I don't think we've ever had any problems with the editors involved; they tend to be quite respectful of our policies, and are primarily concerned with providing historical material (e.g. unit lineages and histories, archival photos, etc.) to where it can be of use to more readers, rather than with trying to advance any particular viewpoint on article topics. Kirill [talk] [prof] 12:28, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
I agree - I've seen some of the same activity (here for example) in the past, and have never been concerned about it. Parsecboy (talk) 13:09, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
Quite. To be honest someone from the outreach department should probably be contacting militaries around the world to ask them to do the same! The Land (talk) 13:16, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
This is a good thing. The US Army Archives is a valuable resource that can add a lot to Wikipedia.Bwmoll3 (talk) 13:18, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
In principle I agree - the more interested and knowledgeable editors the better. The tone of the general's comment though (assuming it was accurately reported) seems more about making sure coverage of the US Army's doings on the internet is 'on message' (the linked article relates to securing military funding). This could potentially result in spin on articles dealing with current operations such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's great that we attract serving military personnel who are, as Kirill says, respectful of policy and primarily concerned with adding historical material. The reported comments are calling for a different kind of editor though, and I think it's that we should be wary of. EyeSerenetalk 15:04, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
May I suggest that someone create a report to identify edits being made from US military IP's like the one that reports activity by members of congress? The Navy and Marines are on one big network for the most part so that should be easy enough to figure. The army and Aiforce may be a bit harder but it should be doable as well. --Kumioko (talk) 15:40, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
I like Kumioko's suggestion. It seems to me there's 2 ways to look at this statement: a subtle order (couched as a suggestion) to put out Army propaganda, or an equally subtle order not to release anything sensitive. Given the Wikileaks controversy, do you think the 2d is more likely? (Nevertheless, the first may end up being the worse problem here.) TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 18:24, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
Also for what its worth the Navy and USMC Ip is permanantly blocked due to widespread vandalism (theres about a million users). In my opinion there are several things driving this and I would be surprised if other services or departments don't make similar statements in the near future. Here are a couple of the obvious contributors to this:
  1. The wikileaks issue is certainly one. Since directives say no Government Employee can view Wikileaks info even though its released and since some of this info has been added to Wikipedia articles already this presents a bit of a quandry to the Generals statement.
  2. I also agree that there will be some who will take the "initiative" to cleanse the biographies of certain military or government individuals or articles relating to military topics. Assuming good faith I am hopeful that most changes will be for the positive but certainly there will be some POV pushing and whitewashing.
  3. There has been a huge amount of interest lately to move government information and services to "the cloud". This includes Wikipedia, Facebook, Amazon (for various products and services), Using GMAIL or similar vice outlook or other client based apps, using things like open office vice the expensive MS Office, etc. This presents us with an opportunity to capitalize on these new "users" but at the same time I am certain that not all will have benevolent intentions.
  4. In addition to the above there have been multiple policys from govt agencies on the use of Social media. It could be argued that Wikipedia is not social media but since it is mentioned specifically in several of these policies for the sakes of this it is. --Kumioko (talk) 18:43, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
IMHO, this will wind up being a net positive; we'll need to keep an eye out for vandalism and POV, but that's something we do anyway. - The Bushranger One ping only 22:27, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

This is probably bad rather than good news. If the US Army wants to take a WP:GLAM-type approach in which it helps Wikipedia editors to use the material it holds that would be great (though this isn't such a big deal given that the US Army is fairly open as far as armies go and everything it produces is automatically PD under US copyright laws). Calling for the use of Wikipedia to 'shape' a message alongside other social media reflects a total misunderstanding of what Wikipedia is about. The same kind of mindset from companies causes never-ending problems and I don't see why the US Army should be treated any differently. As some cases in point, I've seen a few AfDs in which people claiming to be soldiers have tried to delete articles on what they claim is their unit (in one case someone claimed they'd been ordered to successfully complete the AfD by an officer! - I hope that the poor guy was OK given that the discussion ended with a clear vote of keep) and some awful articles created by people claiming to be in the unit and editing to expand the unit's internet presence. To cut a long story short: if this is taken seriously it's going to generate POV editing and spammy articles. Nick-D (talk) 07:45, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

That's pretty much my feeling too. Per Kumioko there will always be individuals who'll seek to spin articles; what remains to be seen is if this will generate organised information operations and psychological operations efforts to use WP as a propaganda tool. Maybe we should develop something like WP:GLAM to point editors to where necessary? EyeSerenetalk 09:12, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
A GLAM type thing would go a long way to reducing your events that would substantiate concerns of those editors who see this call to edit wikipedia as a possible net negative. Creating such a GLAM would show new Army editors the rules of the road for our community, and being that they are use to a structured environment, will see what rules are in place and how their contributions will be judged, thus leading to a reduction of events that violates our guidelines and policies, and thus more positive than negative contributions. As far as POV, we all as editors attempt to edit with as much NPOV as possible, but there is a point of POV as to what article we edit (as we as individuals will trend to edit articles more often regarding subjects we're interested in) and how we edit them. To recognize that these Soldiers will come with a certain POV based on their individual experiences, as long as we remind them of the policies against not adhering to NPOV and keeping an article neutral, than we shouldn't have to much trouble (at least I hope). --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 12:40, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
Two thoughts folks: 1) Keep in mind is that perhaps it would have inconvenienced the General's speech to split the message into "Let's get out message out on face book and twitter, and also update out information on Wikipedia". Perhaps it was a matter of spinning a flowing speech rather than directing troops to use Wikipedia for propaganda and if that is the case there is nothing to worry about. 2) Why not capitalize on this? Right now we have a the Wikipedia:Ambassadors program to work with college campuses and help them contribute. Why not start a Wikipedia:Military Ambassadors or Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Military to educate the military on Wikipedia and help them improve articles? Why doesn't someone preempt propaganda edits by reaching out to the General and his troops first?--v/r - TP 14:10, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
Moved from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history#US General encourages use of Wikipedia to promote army's message. Kirill [talk] [prof] 21:55, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
♠I like the GLAM & Ambassador ideas. It may be this is all overblown, since we can't know what was actually in the general's mind. That we've seen at least 2 possibilities is part of what concerns me: what do his subordinates think he wanted?
♠The prospect of WP being targeted for disinformation is even more disturbing. That's one I think is less likely to succeed, since the worldwide breadth of attention & sourcing will tend to protect WP; spinning media in one country is harder than spinning media everywhere. (Just beware the circular confirmation: one source says it, another uses that as its source, & now there are 2...which is what bit CIA over the alleged WMDs in Iraq. :( :( ) TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 23:53, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't think we need to generate a false sense of panic here. This was just one more instance of an officer viewing Wikipedia as a tool, the way that some companies try to use Wikipedia as a means to make thier corporation look good. It's not the first time that a commander or public affairs section has tried to do this, and our current methods of monitoring NPOV, advertising, and referencing have been sufficient. This doesn't signify a new organized attempt to game the encyclopedia, it's just that this is the most senior officer to admit it.
I've seen this happen several times over my career as an editor, and generally, these folks tend to be poor editors. They usually don't understand referencing, they don't recognize NPOV, and they don't understand the collaborative process. I'd say that the vast majority of edits that are likely command-driven have been reverted; most of them end there, as the anon never checks back, while the continuous editors tend to get discouraged when they realize they can't just say anything they want.
So, in short, this isn't some kind of systematic POV-pushing, and there isn't really much to worry about. bahamut0013wordsdeeds 12:48, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Military ambassadors program

I think setting up a military counterpart to Wikipedia:Ambassadors would be a great idea, assuming we can get the logistics figured out. A couple things come to mind:

  1. The (Campus) Ambassadors program is being run under the auspices of the WMF; while we could potentially run a military ambassador program independently as a project, it would doubtless be beneficial to get the Foundation's buy-in and support for the idea, even if only in principle.
  2. The Campus Ambassadors are typically (though not always) drawn from the ranks of students/professors/etc. who have ready access to each university involved. If we're going to try and use a similar approach here, we would presumably need serving military personnel to take on the role, since random Wikipedia editors are unlikely to be able to visit military bases and such.
  3. In a university setting, each professor is essentially free to choose to participate in the program. It's not clear how far up the chain of command we might have to go to find someone who could officially authorize a collaborative undertaking of this sort. (We may still be able to have military personnel participate as individuals, but that would be little different than what we have now.)

Thoughts? Is this something worth pursuing? If so, how do we go about it? Kirill [talk] [prof] 21:59, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I would think a good place to start is with the Post and Unit History offices, to reach out to them. Here you have personnel that are used to writing in a professional manner and have access to much information which is both historically valuable and also I would presume, accurate and documented. This would be true for all branches of the military. Bwmoll3 (talk) 22:17, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
Kirill, in response to your post above, 1) I already sent an email to Sage Ross with the idea and a link to the MILHIST talk page. 2) I, myself, an am active duty airman and a wikipedia editor and I am aware of a couple more. I am sure we can find others. 3) We could start by contacting Gen Caldwell's public affairs office.--v/r - TP 01:05, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
Excellent; we'll see what Sage has to say about the WMF aspect of this. On the topic of contacting people, would you (or other military personnel) be in a position to do something like that, or is it something best done by a person outside the military? Kirill [talk] [prof] 02:03, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
I think there's a key difference between current ambassador programmes and this suggestion in that universities, museums etc are primarily concerned with knowledge and its dissemination whereas armed forces aren't; they may look askance at giving official encouragement to something as off-mission as editing Wikipedia other than as a leisure activity. That said, we don't know until we ask and Bwmoll3's suggestion seems to be the most likely one to bear constructive fruit of the kind we'd hope for. EyeSerenetalk 08:45, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
I've tried to collaborate with the United States Marine Corps History Division in the past, and while they are happy to help me with research on a specific topic, the response I've recieved from the working-level guys on extending a relationship with Wikipedia hasn't been warm. On occasion, I also interact with public affairs officers and unit personnel ordered to edit Wikipedia, and generally, they give up when they realize that editing entails referencing, NPOV, collaboration, and the like. Aside from small corrections (like changing the infobox to reflect a new commanding officer), they don't really embrace Wikipedia's need for commitment to make a substantial article. One officer in particular was in trouble over an AfD result, but he found my real name and rank on my userpage, emailed me, and I explained to his superior how the AfD process wasn't his fault and there was really no recourse over his unit's lack of notability.
That said, I would love to volunteer as a kind of liason between Wikipedia and the Marine Corps, whom I both love dearly. If I had the sanction of the Foundation to act as a kind of representative, then I think I could be taken more seriously. let me know, and I will contact both my local base's public affairs, and that of Headquarters Marine Corps. bahamut0013wordsdeeds 12:48, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Not sure how the Marines do it, but it probably would go better for the Air Force if a Wikimedia spokesperson contacted SAF/PA. I think history offices and public affairs offices might jump at the idea. There is also the air force historical research agency that might like the idea. Air Force Services and Air Force Entertainment might also be interested. Unfortunately, I doubt anyone will listen to a E-5, so it'd have to come from the foundation.--v/r - TP 16:51, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

In my memories being in the Air Force, and I presume in the other services, these types of requests will go into the bottom of the in-basket. Unless there is direction from someone up in the chain of command, that supporting Wikipedia is part of the official duties of the unit, the personnel will likely only support Wikipedia unofficially in their off-duty time (as I presume some do now). Bwmoll3 (talk) 17:30, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
I got this back from Mr. Sage Ross at Wikimedia
[My real name],
Thanks! After this term, the ambassador program will (I think) be pretty open and flexible in terms of doing things like this. I think it will be necessary to orient more around active WikiProjects in order to find enough Wikipedians to support classes, so Military History is obviously a group with a ton of potential there.
You should get involved with the ambassador program! Apply to become and ambassador, and help set the direction we take this in. Or barring that, just post these ideas on the talk page of WP:AMBASSADORS... it's a great idea, but what direction we take things in for the ambassador program is not for me alone to decide.
-Sage"
Thoughts?--v/r - TP 21:11, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
I suppose that begs the question of administering such an ambassador program... do we want to simply have individuals applying to Wikipedia:Ambassadors, or centralize it within MilHist because, let's face it, we are one of the best-governed projects on the English Wikipedia, and the benefits of such a collaboration would be almost entirely within our scope (maybe some crossover with WP:SHIPS and WP:AVIATION). I mean, I'm very interested, and would I be doing myself a disservice to sign up now, or should I wait until we figure out some kind of intermediate system?
Personally, I'm leaning towards the idea that I should simply sign up now, and act as a kind of MilHist representative with the ambassador program to pioneer this new direction, but I won't deign to do such if other editors have a problem with it (or with me). bahamut0013wordsdeeds 21:34, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
I would agree that having MilHist members participating within the existing Ambassador program would be a good first step, regardless of how exactly we proceed beyond that. While the WMF program is not necessarily directly within our scope—few, if any, of the courses partnering with the WMF have anything to do with military history—it would be worthwhile for us to be represented, both to ensure that we have the opportunity to work with the program if/when it expands, and to demonstrate the value of strong WikiProject participation to the WMF.
As far as organizing a program internally is concerned: while that may be the best eventual solution, I'm not sure that we, as a project, have the needed level of experience with off-wiki outreach to successfully undertake such an effort by ourselves. It may be useful to take on more limited outreach programs involving individual museums and so forth before attempting something of this magnitude. Kirill [talk] [prof] 22:58, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
I'm actually an online ambassador and a member of the online ambassador selection team if I can do anything to help... Also, I agree with Kirill's second paragraph. We're possibly the strongest project on Wikipedia, but offline is a very different world, one we have never ventured into outside of Wikimania (AFAIK). Still, it's an option worth exploring, if only so we get a little experience to decide if we actually want to make an attempt. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 04:57, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
Definitely a good idea. I agree about approaching individual institutions until we have more experience (though eventually it might cut out a layer of bureaucracy if we could centralise it in-project). I have no problem with Bahamut and/or Ed representing the project, and I think focusing on museums (like the Imperial War Museum) is likely to produce better results than contacting militaries themselves. EyeSerenetalk 10:16, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
Well, I agree that would be more beneficial for direct article improvement, but the ambassador program isn't necessarily meant to be a resource for current editors as much as it is a way to involve the community at large who doesn't edit regularly. I mean, it would be a great boon to get access to the kinds of materials and records that a museaum or research university has, but we have to consider the situation as it is. Right now, we have a wealth of potential editors in the US military (and I'm sure the armed forces of other nations as well) who regularly look to Wikipedia, and are occasionally moved to make an anon edit. Even though my contract will be up this summer, I'm in a position where I might be able to liason with public affairs offices and individual units who want to improve articles related to them (and other interests that include articles in our scope), but haven't often been very effective in penetrating our web of requirements (we toss out terms like RS, NPOV, citing, and so on).
I see this as a means of tapping into a resource that isn't a citable source: potential editors. The ambassador program at its core is about outreach, and the public policy is to get people involved rather than to improve researching for the current crop of editors; which I think will naturally come as we improve awareness and our reputation amongst the target audience at large. Once we start getting commanders on board with the concept of our policies and guidelines, and start getting some formal collaboration, the vast archives and networks will open up without us having to ask.
TLDR? Let me use an example. When I went to the History Division and asked them for resources, they tried to help, but they weren't interested in my end goal. If I go to them and offer to help them work with Wikipedia effectively, then the reception would surely be different. I'm going to sign up this weekend under those principles, if nobody raises an issue by then. bahamut0013wordsdeeds 13:39, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
I'd strongly suggest limiting approaches to militaries' historical bodies. These have mindset and data which would be of most benefit, and their entire goal is to promote understanding of their military and not necessarily promote whatever the messages of the day are. As they'd be more familiar with dealing with random requests from the public, they're also more likely to have appropriate processes to respond in a constructive manner. Nick-D (talk) 09:37, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

This seems to me like a wonderful idea. I'd love to see the ambassador program branch out in new directions like this. The best way forward I see is, first WP:MILHIST should figure out what it wants to do, and then put forward a proposal to the ambassador program. The best way in my opinion would be to have you folks who want to do in-person outreach participate as full, regular Campus Ambassadors (or whatever the relevant equivalent of "Campus" is for the institutions you want to work with), do the ambassador training, and help us improve how we do in-person outreach in general. But if you want to do something on your own, sort of parallel to the ambassador program or linked with it but independently managed, that could work too. But I think we'll all end up with a stronger program if we work more closely... especially since WP:MILHIST is a potential model for a lot of other WikiProjects, but most of the others won't have the resources and momentum to go it alone like you folks probably could.--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 14:13, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Start at schools not bases

Why not start by doing something with the regular Ambassador's program? Meaning at a university, not with active duty military. Most of the military is a lot more involved in day to day operarations and not into history except tangentially in a class or two of officer training and maybe a little in boot camp. Military history courses exist at schools all over the place: ROTC classes, academies and just regular schools. I would make the outreach to regular history departments. See if you can get some professors who want to try a different sort of term paper or the like. It would allow you to use all the infrastructure of the Ambassadors program and kinda learn what you want to do, before going after active duty (and again, not sure that is really such a target rich environment...I think armchair generals of the videogame playing mode are more into the minutia of T-72 battles than your average nowadays tanker).TCO (talk) 12:09, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

That's not a bad idea. A related avenue to explore might be various military academies (whether official or private); I suspect any university outreach there would be likely to involve military history topics to one degree or another. Kirill [talk] [prof] 18:42, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
I think the Wiki Ambassadors is mostly working with profs in "public policy" whatever that is (civics, government, poly sci?) But in any case, it's probably next door to the history departments! And they have all the infrastructure and such for contacting schools. If you look at the AP Biology project that User:JimmyButler runs, its a great example of a prof using Wikipedia for term papers. Reaching out toe history profs and finding a few and then using the ambassador program would pretty much have you set. I would assume that any prof teaching a military history (or perhaps more broadly history with wars and stuff) would work out. PRetty much as long as he's interested in what you have than the match is there. And this is the "best project on Wiki" blabla.TCO (talk) 19:24, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
For the Academies, there probably is some synergy with the general populace in non-historical stuff. Articles on ships and aircraft and the like, where it is Jane's based. Maybe you can get them to haze the plebes into writing Wiki-content.  ;-) TCO (talk) 19:28, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
Late to the party. Although I support whatever Baha's got in mind, I'm also in favor of targeting history departments, museums and libraries. - Dank (push to talk) 17:53, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Thoughts on my experience with the Army Center of Military History

Hey all, I was directed to this conversation by TParis, and would like to make some comments based on my experience as being a paid intern editing Wikipedia for the Army Center of Military History:

  1. About policies, when I told my boss that their are policies about me not editing in order to modify how the Center was represented on Wikipedia (COI), he said no problem: that wasn't our directive anyway, as a Military History Center, instead our directive was to communicate the Army's history fairly and accurately. I get the impression any of the academic or information dispersal groups are not interested in changing or hiding things, but rather in clarifying them, so that what is public remains accurate. His words were: We will scratch Wikipedia's back and it will scratch us back (referring to the high traffic rates that it directed to the CMH website, especially due to citations to the medel of honor recipients which are maintained by CMH, interestingly enough the German Language Wikipedia article on the Medal of Honor was the highest traffic director from *.wikipedia.org, however the rest of the links and PD content on Wikipedia was creating a steady flow of traffic that rose regularly).
  2. The Army is not ready, at least in the History end of things and also the in the Records system distribution, to completely and totally embraced digital means of presenting history or records to the public. As is the case with most government bureaucracy, they are very comfortable in letting things run as they always have. Only certain subgroups of that community see the value in expanding to web media, and it is mostly Army Librarians, University types and the people paid to manage web media. I would strongly suggest trying to engage the Army Librarians, they are always looking for ways to create greater impact then their small community of support (see http://www.libraries.army.mil/index.htm).
  3. There are other communities related to the United States Military which desperately need some means of documenting their history successfully in a public space. A good example of how this has been done succesfully on Wikipedia is the History_of_The_Arkansas_National_Guard series created by User:Damon.cluck who is part of the history commission in the Arkansas National Guard their. I had hoped his activities would show how the CMH could engange the broader Army History community in documenting army history digitally, however I don't think much of anything came from that set of contacts :P Like I said some things are really slow to catch on. I think engaging the National Guards in various states to develop their historical documentation on Wikipedia would be beneficial for both communities, and might be one of those related communities outside of official Army Programs that may be useful (the national guard's documentation is mostly state focused and based within a really small community in each state, so I think you would have to fight far less Bureaucracy in this respect). The Arkansas History commission was started by the Governor at the state level because of lack of documentation for the guard. Wikipedia outreach to these communities might be an opportunity to write petitions to State Governors and Lt. Governors to get them engaged in encouraging the public documentation of their state's guard history. If we get all of the Guard historians talking, I think the more central programs in the Army will become more engaged. Their are probably amateur historians we could engage as well.
  4. Most of the people I have encountered who are editing are unit PR or communications officers. If we wrote a briefing which could be a central page on Wikipedia for military members, I think they would know exactly what they could be doing, and would probably follow the advice.

Hope the thoughts help, Sadads (talk) 23:00, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

That's really helpful, and point 1 is encouraging; the CMH has a long history of placing its commitment to historical accuracy above promoting the Army. In regards to your last point, what are the duties of unit PR and communication officers? If they see their role as attracting people to their unit and bolstering its image then they might not be interested in developing well rounded articles. Nick-D (talk) 07:18, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
Well, the ones I've come into contact with thus far usually have been given instructions like "fix the wiki article" or "publish out unit's history". I think I'll take a stab at writing an essay. bahamut0013wordsdeeds 12:32, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
Wham, bam, here's a draft: User:Bahamut0013/Unit representatives. I'd like to get input and consensus on adopting this into the MILHIST space. bahamut0013wordsdeeds 17:14, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
I like it, and would sprinkle official project pixie dust on it if I could. Fifelfoo (talk) 01:39, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
I like it as well. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 07:55, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
Same here. I'd suggest we go ahead and move this into the Academy. Kirill [talk] [prof] 10:11, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
Just to be annoying and contrary, I think it's too long. Most of us have long-attention-span syndrome; most non-Wikipedians don't read instructions. It's good if it's aimed at giving Wikipedians pointers to help us give them feedback as we read the unit reps' articles, and it's useful if the real goal is to get them to stop bothering us. If we're going to tell them "read this page", I'd keep it to around two paragraphs, and tell them: it's complicated, don't worry about it, give us a link to what you're working on at WT:MIL and we'll talk about it. - Dank (push to talk) 11:17, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
I suspect (as one real life bureaucrat) that Military communicators and historians are likely to read long documents with ease. However, we can always, "This project guideline in a nutshell:it's complicated, don't worry about it, give us a link to what you're working on at WT:MIL and we'll talk about it." Fifelfoo (talk) 12:00, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
Concur with Fifelfoo. The military types are going to expect, and most likely want, a longer document that spells out what they can and can't do and expect here. Having worked for both the military and academic institutions, I think this will work well for them. It will also give the underling tasked with this something he or she can fall back on to explain things to the boss. That can be a real necessity at times, and having a good, defined policy will save them lots of hurt.Intothatdarkness (talk) 14:30, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
I've left some comments on the wording at User talk:Bahamut0013/Unit representatives. Speaking as someone with government experience, it's impossible to overstate the importance of a good executive summary for a document aimed at government employees, and the shorter the document is the better. Writing for a government audience is pretty much the opposite to writing for an academic audience: they assume that you know what you're talking about and just want some snappy and well-considered advice on what they should do. The military seems to be more long-winded than the civilian public service, but there isn't much in it - most military publications in Australia start with dot points summarising the document's key messages and aren't very long. When government organisations produce wordy documents (in Australia at least), they're generally for fairly complex programs/projects which aren't at all comparable to developing a Wikipedia article and are often not intended to be read as a whole. Nick-D (talk) 12:01, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Big difference between military and college students

I think that the essay Bahamut wrote is a good step in the right direction but expanding on some of the comments above there is one big thing that we need to consider here. College students edit for a variety of reasons but in the end they are volunteers and can stop whenever they want. The people in the military (voluntary contributars being the exception) can be ordered to make a change and in the military if someone is ordered to do something its a little different than a University encouraging participation. Of course they shouldn't and most will follow the rules but there is always going to be those few that want to try and "clean-up" negative information like removing wikileaks info for example which I have already seen being done.

With that said there are several military directives in place that explain to Government people and military members about what and what not to edit Wikipedia, twitter facebook, etc. so the interest is definately there.

An organized collaboration with the military will be very helpful and beneficial for both for many reasons and I think it will work but we need to get buy in at a fairly high level, not the local commander or PFC. In order for this to really work it needs to be at a Department or Cabinet level IMO. There is a huge push right now for the military to go to the cloud and as Sadads put it many of the historical agencies are simply not ready. That IMO is our ticket in. One example:

  • The commons is a great place to host the images that many of these organizations do not have the resources to present. There are hundreds of thousands of open source and freely distributable images, sounds and videos as well as other materials.

So eventhough there will no doubt be some troubles and fallout I think that this is a very good idea. --Kumioko (talk) 14:58, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

FAC

Let's be individually encouraging but officially neutral on all FAC questions. What that might mean is negotiable. Some possibilities:

  • When someone expresses frustration with FAC, we should be able to point them to a link somewhere (probably in the Academy) that gives our consensus view, something like: Our project benefits from what we learn from some of the great reviewers who hang out at FAC, whether our articles pass FAC or not, and many do. FAC has a positive influence on our A-class review, over time. But caveat scriptor (let the writer beware): FAC is not Milhist. It's on you to learn the rules and culture if you want to succeed there, which can take a while, so either lower your expectations or don't take articles to FAC. Sorry, that was overly negative.
  • I don't have a position, but I think we should at least consider changing goals of reaching a set number of FAs to a set number of A-class articles inside Milhist. I think numerical goals might contribute to the problem that people think they're "supposed" to be going to FAC, even if they're not comfortable with FAC. Also, FAC reviewers sometimes react badly when they perceive that FAC is being treated as a project goal or contest goal. more important for some subprojects than for Milhist as a whole, and this can be dealt with in the subprojects
  • Whenever anyone in or outside Milhist gets a conversation going on a Milhist page about what we ought to be doing at FAC, I propose that we either suggest that the conversation move, or move it, to this page (if the conversation seems "internal") or to WT:FAC (otherwise). We have a collegial approach to problem-solving that is unusual for Wikipedia and uncommon at FAC, and I've never seen an extended "Milhist vs. FAC" conversation at WT:MIL that didn't waste time and confuse people about things that aren't of central importance to Milhist - Dank (push to talk) 14:38, 14 July 2011 (UTC) I'm largely agreed with Kirill, and the problem here was I didn't say what I meant ... more below
This seems like good advice and I agree with most of it, but I'm curious to know what's prompted this? I thought milhist as a project was on generally good terms with FAC - have we fallen out? EyeSerenetalk 15:47, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
Not that I know of. - Dank (push to talk) 18:56, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
I'm not sure that I agree with the idea that the project should be "officially neutral" with regard to FAC. Whatever we might think about FAC individually—and, to be more explicit, I'm not particularly focusing on FAC as a process here, but rather on the FA "system" as a whole—it is clear that featured article status is widely perceived as the highest accolade that an article may receive; and, as a consequence, the degree to which we are considered a "successful" WikiProject depends in large part on our ability to produce respectable numbers of featured articles. Thus, while we may not be particularly concerned with whether any particular editor takes articles to FAC, or whether any particular article passes it, it behooves us to collectively support the idea of increasing the number of featured articles, regardless of the precise means by which this is accomplished.

As far as your specific suggestions are concerned:

  • I agree that we should clearly explain to editors the relationship (or lack thereof) between FAC and MILHIST, and encourage those interested in taking articles through the FAC process to learn its intricacies rather than simply assuming it to mirror our internal reviews in either substance or culture. I don't think, however, that this would necessarily prevent us from being collectively supportive of editors who follow the FAC route; the explanations would, in my view, best be placed as a preface to a more instructive collection of courses/advice/etc. for successfully bringing an article to featured status, rather than a stand-alone piece.
  • I have no particular objection to tracking A-Class articles as a target in addition to FAs; but, as I said above, we cannot simply ignore the fact that we are expected to produce the latter. The only practical concern with an A-Class target is the high proportion of A-Class articles that do in fact go on to become FAs, which results in much slower growth of that number relative to other assessment classes; but this may or may not be particularly significant, and may indeed be mitigated by a greater acceptance of an "only to A-Class" improvement path.
  • I don't think that we should be pushing discussions out to WT:FAC, both because doing so is likely to arouse resentment among the regulars on that page (who are likely to be none too pleased by us bringing what they will consider to be "project affairs" there), and because it will limit our opportunity to develop collective strategies for improving our relationship with FAC and our FA success rate. I have no particular opinion as to where such discussion should be held within the project.
Kirill [talk] [prof] 00:56, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
I think an Academy course on FA prep would be a great idea. We have a number of relevant individual courses that could be pulled together, and something on what nominators can expect (good and bad) would be useful. As a project my impression is that we have no relationship with FA other than a mutual respect for each other; individual editors work in both camps, and individuals in both camps will inevitably conflict, but I'm not sure that's something we should be looking to involve ourselves with in any collective capacity. Certainly the coords' role is largely ceremonial and I'd be very uncomfortable speaking on behalf of our members as a whole. However, I agree that we do perhaps need to make the distinction clearer when the need arises; if that means moving threads that seem to be developing into "FAC vs Milhist" out of project space, then so be it. Tbh I view such threads as "viewpoint X vs viewpoint Y" rather than "process vs project" anyway, and the best place for that is probably article or review talk pages anyway. EyeSerenetalk 17:08, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
I was trying to suggest ground rules that would suppress Milhist vs. FAC conflict, but when I was looking at 2nd quarter FAC reviews today (see WT:MHC#Quarterly_reviewing_tallies), I changed my mind ... I think I need more time in the trenches pushing articles through FAC before I'll know what to suggest. Btw, the reviewing tallies show that the number of FAC reviews by Milhist people is dropping. - Dank (push to talk) 02:55, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
Well ... maybe I can make a couple of suggestions. Sometimes it seems unlikely to me that certain articles will pass FAC because of the nature of the article or the sources, and sometimes I think nominators don't need to respond to some of the reviewer requests; when I notice this happening, I'll start saying something. (And I'm not going to make a big deal of it by saying "Your review is unactionable!", maybe more like "IMO this review asks for more detail than usually goes into our articles", or whatever the problem is. Hopefully the nominator will get the message that IMO they don't have to do everything this reviewer says to pass FAC. And hopefully I'll be right, although I certainly won't be 100%.)
Another problem: Milhist editors have for the most part abdicated control of the FAC process by not participating in reviews, even for our own articles (this past quarter, with the exception of ship articles, 2 or 3 other articles, and my work). OTOH, the reviews we are getting generally aren't burdensome, which suggests people usually like our articles and we're doing something right. I suggest we ask nominators at A-class review to tell us (when the review has progressed enough to know) whether they're interested in FAC or not. If they are, then nominators and reviewers should put some effort into getting the article FAC-ready while it's still at A-class, and the nominator should take the article to FAC soon after A-class. That will mean that someone who reads the article for an A-class review won't have to re-read the whole thing to review it at FAC ... and not only will that make it easier for A-class reviewers to say at least something at FAC, it will make it easier for frequent FAC reviewers to weigh in in some of our A-class reviews. - Dank (push to talk) 14:14, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
That's not a bad idea. Should we put something in the preload template about it? Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 21:15, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

I just added some strikeouts, let me start over. Our participation at and focus on FAC has been dropping, probably because our A-class review process is so good. Clearly, FAC is sometimes a lot of work for not a lot of gain, and there's an argument that FAC as a whole pushes in different directions than Milhist pushes, and we want what we want. But it's not necessary to jump through every hoop at FAC, you only have to get a "yes" from SandyGeorgia or Karanacs, and they have always been open to reasonable arguments from people who, in their view, know what they're talking about. See User:Dank/RecentFACs; there are many competent reviewers from outside our project helping us out at FAC. They will help us even more if we are a little more careful on a few points when polishing articles at A-class, and if we encourage nominators who are interested in FAC to go there quickly after A-class, so that reviewers can get a "two-fer", that is, they can review more or less the same article in two different places. Reviewers like getting more recognition and more discussion out of the same amount of work.

I know some think that FAC soaks up a lot of time and is best avoided by writers who have better alternatives, such as our A-class process. And I think if you're trying to impress a professor of military history, it would probably make more sense to point them to A-class as a whole than to FAC as a whole; many of the requirements at FAC won't sync up with what they're expecting. But looking at User:Dank/RecentFACs, it's really hard to make the case, certainly to WPians as a whole, that FAC is a net negative for Milhist articles. First off, apart from SHIPS people (including me), we're doing a tiny fraction of the reviewing work, so it's hard to claim that we're best positioned to make a call on how the process is or isn't working. (Our apparent absence is a little deceptive, since we do so much at A-class, and we link the A-class reviews at FAC. Still, that's not the same thing as interacting with the other FAC reviewers and learning the FAC process.) Second, around half the articles never went through our A-class process ... a lot of writers who don't have much interaction with Milhist write articles of relevance to military history and take them to FAC. There's nothing to be gained, and much to be lost, by treating these articles and these writers as if they're not our problem. Third, a large majority of the reviewers give good advice by anyone's standard, and they do us a big favor by dealing with a variety of issues that we either can't or don't like to deal with. (Frank Buckles comes to mind ... the writers did about the best they could with the sources they had so we passed it at A-class, but the FAC reviewers pointed out that when all the sources are recent and laudatory, you're stuck with an article that just doesn't feel right to a lot of Wikipedians ... I think both points of view are right, and one of the nominators agreed with me.)

Bottom line: If we had 5 editors who spent a lot of time at both FAC and A-class reviews, I think FAC people would understand Milhist better and vice versa. FAC isn't everything we want it to be, and no one should ever feel pressured to go to FAC. But FAC has always been molded by whoever shows up, and it wouldn't be that much extra work for A-class reviewers to at least show up and say something relevant ... it's always been okay at FAC to offer an opinion, as long as it's clear what your opinion does and doesn't cover. Yes, a few people who show up at FAC are mean and most don't know as much as we do about military history ... but most people who show up at FAC more than occasionally learn how to enjoy the process and make it work. - Dank (push to talk) 15:55, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

I admire editors like yourself, Dan, who review almost everything, regardless of whether they find the subject interesting or not. But I reviewing an article several thousand words long takes a lot of time (to do it thoroughly, it takes me most of an afternoon) and I can't devote that kind of time to a subject that isn't interesting to me. Everything is interesting to someone, though, so we should encourage people to review articles on subjects they find interesting—after all, many people won't have time to review significant numbers of articles in two venues. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:30, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
Is 5 out of reach, including FAC reviewers who might be persuaded to become active at ACR on some articles that are heading to FAC? - Dank (push to talk) 17:39, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
I don't know. It's not impossible, but the regulars at FAC (and to a lesser extent at our ACRs) are already overworked and unerpaid. If we could find a group of newer editors who were willing to take up some of the workload at ACR, that could free up the seasoned reviewers to spend more time looking at each article. We could also try to persuade more authors and nominators to offer comments on other ACRs/FACs. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:08, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
Okay, I changed the "After A-class" instructions to: "Feel free to ask reviewers to help prepare your article as a featured article candidate. We're hoping that more FAC prep will help draw some of the regular FAC reviewers to our A-class review page." Feel free to revert. The encouragement to review at GAN and FAC that used to be there was worth a shot, but it wasn't working. - Dank (push to talk) 23:20, 22 July 2011 (UTC)


GLAM jobs

Reading the GLAM mailing list archives and Milhist archives, I've come to the conclusion (warning: SYNTH and OR!) that we're missing out on some opportunities to help Milhisters get jobs and internships at military GLAMs and GLAMs with military exhibits. If you're interested, or if you're willing to help other Milhisters get these jobs by writing recommendations or offering advice in your areas of expertise, email me so I can add you to the discussion. (I can't post info from the GLAM archives on-wiki, and generally, I don't like talking about anything that involves money on-wiki.) - Dank (push to talk) 15:06, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Well I've long thought we should approach the Imperial War Museum. Considering Wikimedia UK already has very good relations with the British Library and the British Museum, they might be open to something like a Wikipedian in residence. I always worry that they'd just laugh at me if I approached them without any formal backing, though, and never got round to working out where I should propose such a thing. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:26, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
I've actually been hoping to/looking into getting some sort of Milhist internship for next summer... so an email's on its way. ;-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 21:16, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
HJ, have you contacted Wikimedia UK about this? - they'd probably be able to give you some support and advice (and possibly even a small grant!) and help with approaching the IWM. If I wasn't working full time I'd be knocking on the Australian War Memorial's doors to see if they're interested. They've got all kinds of amazing things in their archives and reference centre which are crying out to be used more frequently by editors (and the AWM hosted one of the first GLAM conferences). Nick-D (talk) 01:19, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
No, but a know a few of the "big hitters" in WMUK. I'll send an email out. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:50, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
I am probably the right person from Wikimedia UK - User:Fae is our lead GLAM person but I am also a board member, am a MILHIST contributor, and have also exchanged tweets with people at the IWM in the past... So please copy me in to any emails. :-) The Land (talk) 20:49, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
Will do. After we make a group decision what to share on-wiki, I'll post it here. (And of course, anyone can join the discussion any time.) - Dank (push to talk) 21:12, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Importance scale

Looking through the Task Force WP:MHA#Statistics tables, I notice that only the "Military biography task force" and "Australia, New Zealand and South Pacific military history task force" both have List-class detailed. I also noticed that only those two task forces give details regarding article Importance - any reason why no other task force, or WP:MILHIST in general, does not rate articles by the same importance scale? Perhaps another option that should be made accessible, along with List-class, to facilitate in giving members a sense of "priority" in terms of reviewing, developing and assessing articles. I think if people have a keener understanding of what makes an article more or less important, it might help in the creation of more notable articles, and lead to less heading for AfD. Although I would be interested in seeing the criteria by which Importance is rated, as it sounds very subjective. Rating something B or A seems straight forward because of the criteria guidelines, but saying one article only carries so much importance must surely be harder to assess? If it does not involve consensus, I imagine it can lead to disputes, also.. Anyone familiar with this who can comment further? Ma®©usBritish [talk] 22:37, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

As I understand it we don't use "importance" because, as you say, it's so subjective, although other projects find it useful. The statistics tables for our task forces are generated by a bot on behalf of the Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team (more details here). The bot amalgamates information from various project templates when it looks at an article, so where an article falls under more than one project the table may end up including items that aren't directly relevant to milhist. I'm not sure what the selection criteria are for building the tables or how the bot deals with contradictory project templates (ie different article ratings etc), but I'm sure if you were interested someone like Kirill would be able to explain :) EyeSerenetalk 07:59, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
From memory, the decision was made to stop using the importance scale a few years ago on the grounds that it was basically unhelpful. There was no consistency in how articles were being rated, and no-one was following up on the 'important' articles anyway. The Australian military history articles which are still being rated on WP:AUSTRALIA's importance scale are a good example of this: it's not at all uncommon to find articles on minor Australian military units with unimportant histories rated as being of high importance, despite this obviously not being the case. As this is a different topic I've taken the liberty of adding a sub-heading. Nick-D (talk) 08:18, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
That's certainly the impression I get when I see importance ratings on articles. I can appreciate that in theory it might be useful to the V1.0 team in deciding what articles to include in the limited space of a CD release and what to exclude, but in practice it doesn't seem to work that way and I don't think it's particularly helpful.
Developing the theme though, for each subject area it might be possible to come up with a strictly limited set of "core" articles that are fundamental to the understanding of that area. Probably best done on a per task force basis (which means some would and some wouldn't), but if it's felt we need some kind of importance indicator it might be an alternative option? EyeSerenetalk 08:36, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
I see. If the Importance scale is deprecated, then shouldn't it be removed, or the bot updated to not display old Importance stats - methinks it simply causes an air of confusion, rather than presents meaningful data, if it doesn't play an ongoing role. Ma®©usBritish [talk] 10:55, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
The importance statistics that are still present are actually being generated from other projects' templates. For example, a military biography article will be tagged with both {{WPMILHIST}} and {{WPBIO}}; the former does not generate any importance statistics or categories, but the latter does, because the biography project does use the importance scale. The task force statistics are thus an amalgamation of both project's assessment scales; there's no way of removing the importance information for a joint task force unless the partner project also does so. Kirill [talk] [prof] 11:11, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
Okay, thanks. And is, as far as you know, the Importance scale something Wiki is maintaining across Projects that utilise it, developing to make it more practical, or looking to abolish altogether? Given how just a few replies here are not satisfied with it, I imagine the consensus across all of Wiki can't be more more favourable? Ma®©usBritish [talk] 11:24, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
Agreed that some projects find the "importance" parameter useful, and that it's not useful for Milhist. - Dank (push to talk) 15:05, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
Importance is probably a parameter that seemed useful in theory but without sufficient thought as to how it might be consistently applied in the free-wheeling context of wikipedia. To use it properly would take up a lot of project time creating guidelines then yet more time policing assessments and settling disputed assessments. We don't really have the labour to go down this route, even if it was desireable, unless we prioritised it over something else we currently do. Monstrelet (talk) 18:26, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Ambassadorship

When looking for collaborations with professors and students, I'd suggest we aim for schools with solid credentials in military history, including two schools not far from me, Duke and UNC. I think it's important to start at the top (for wikiprojects that can make a good impression at that level, and we can). A few Milhist editors are headed to history grad school, but even folks who want to get paid or unpaid writing jobs for GLAMs or for the armed services could benefit from co-authorship credit on journal articles in military history.

A request recently showed up above my watchlist (probably broadcast to North Carolina Wikipedians) for someone to be a campus ambassador for a psych course at Davidson College, just over an hour away from me. Maybe some of you are seeing similar broadcasts for your area. Sage says he'll support my application for this position. I don't mind making some kind of effort to show the WMF that I'm a team player. (That is, at a minimum, I don't want professors to get the impression that someone else is an approved Wikipedian ambassador and I'm not.) Thoughts? If I were calling the shots, I'd limit my role to giving two talks at Davidson and answering questions for that psych professor during the fall, not for the students ... I'd rather spend time where it's more likely to do Milhist and Wikipedia some good. - Dank (push to talk) 16:07, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

I understand the motivation behind doing this (I'd rather say "I'm a campus ambassador with the WMF" than "I'm a Wikipedia editor!" to Duke/UNC), but speaking as an online ambassador, I hope you'll have some heart and soul going into the Davidson ambassadorship too. :-) I'd like to help where ever I can Milhist-wise, but I'm not exactly in a prime area for in-person work. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 09:09, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
That sounds worthwhile if you have the time to do it Dank - while getting buy in from a famous university would have the most results (just look at how the GLAM-Wiki project has gone since the British Museum gave it a go) all engagement is good - and it will look good on your CV as well. Nick-D (talk) 11:01, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
I agree - go for it. It's a foot in the door. EyeSerenetalk 16:24, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Project self-assessment

I've launched Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Strategy/Self-assessment. I greatly appreciate your willingness to be my first project to interview. The questions are generally designed, as I think must be clear, around helping the Wikimedia Foundation to understand the dynamics of WikiProjects (where they work, where they struggle, what they need, what they don't) as well as helping to generate ideas for addressing one of our shared crisis points: nurturing our editor pool. The results will be shared with WMF and compiled for availability to other Foundation projects (such as Wikipedias in other languages). I plan to take part in the conversation largely by asking questions where it seems I need to, and I'm going to be learning from you guys how better to conduct these kinds of assessments. :) Thanks! --19:14, 8 July 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mdennis (WMF) (talk • contribs)

Regions Task

I had proposed that Mexico needed to be included in a region task force on the project's talkpage. There was a little discusson on the subject and then it was moved to an archive page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_history/Archive_102#Regions_Task_force I was wondering if I missed the resolution to this issue? Thought i just ping the strategy department.Oldwildbill (talk) 17:27, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

There seems to be a consensus for expanding the scope of the South American TF to include Central America. Although the discussion was brief I'm not sure it's worth discussing further; the change seems uncontroversial so I think we should probably just go ahead and implement it. Any objections anyone? EyeSerenetalk 11:23, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
Agreed; I don't think there's any real need to have another discussion on this. We can just implement the name/scope change for the task force as we have previously. Kirill [talk] [prof] 15:17, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
I started on the changes when it occurred to me that we haven't decided between "Central and South American" and "South and Central American" yet. It's a minor point I know, but probably best settled before we make further changes like page moves and category renames and the like. EyeSerenetalk 16:03, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
I don't have a particularly strong preference between the two, and I can't think of any reason why one would be more "correct" than the other. Perhaps we could just go with alphabetical order (i.e. "Central and South") for simplicity? That seems to match what we've done for other compound task forces (albeit perhaps not intentionally). Kirill [talk] [prof] 17:01, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
I've done most of the necessary using "Central and South", but a check would be appreciated if you have the time. There are a few items outstanding:
  • alphabetise the odd list; Done, unless it's worth doing WPMILHIST itself? I've left the "South-American" etc aliases in place anyway so probably not? EyeSerenetalk 17:31, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
  • delete redundant categories;
  • select more appropriate image for ubx;
  • maybe a succinct alias would be useful as well in {{WPMILHIST}}?; and
  • C-Class category page needed? I believe there's now consensus to start using this class, though I missed that debate :P I'm assuming the syntax would be the same as for the other cats but I thought it worth confirming first.
I think that's everything (oh, and update the "How to" instructions for TF creation on the coords page as some of them are out of date) EyeSerenetalk 16:50, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
I've gone through and deleted the old categories (and fixed the South American WP's template, which was feeding them).
You're right about needing to update the how-to instructions. I've actually been meaning to turn them into a proper course on TF maintenance for the academy; hopefully I'll have some time to do that in the near future. Kirill [talk] [prof] 01:23, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
I've been trying my best to drum up some teamwork and collaboration to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Cuban war of independence, etc., but despite my best efforts have been unable to revive WikiProject Cuba. Why not go all-out and include the entirety of Latin America, which would simply add the Caribbean states. Please consider it; the need is definitely there. NickDupree (talk) 17:46, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
I have no objections to adding the Caribbean to the scope of the task force; there aren't so many articles as to dramatically change the scope, I think. I'm not sure whether this would better be done by actually changing the name, or simply by mentioning it in the scope statement; if I recall correctly, one of the earlier discussions on task force scope made some points about "Latin America" potentially excluding some parts of both South America and the Caribbean, depending on which definition was used. Kirill [talk] [prof] 01:23, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
I also think it would make sense simply to widen the scope in the project description. However, it's not so much work that I'd object to changing the name again if that's what project consensus decides. Maybe it would have been better if I'd posted to WT:MILHIST with notice of the change before I went ahead with it, but what's done is done :) EyeSerenetalk 07:30, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
I think using "Latin America" is an acceptable compromise on the name. We can always note in the first line that the task force covers the relatively minor "Commonwealth Caribbean" countries not included under that definition... Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 09:50, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

So basically we'd have the "Latin American military history task force", but the scope would explain that it also includes the countries that aren't technically part of "Latin America"? That works for me. Kirill [talk] [prof] 11:58, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Works for me, too. Thanks your efforts with this. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 14:15, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
Wonderful! Anyone interested in contribution to this effort for collaboration on Cuban military history? —NickDupree (talk) 18:18, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
Glad to be of help. There seems to be a new consensus for "Latin American", so I'll change everything round (again) in the near future... unless anyone else want to have a go :) EyeSerenetalk 19:51, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
Heh, Kirill, you make it sound worse than I thought it would. I threw out "Latin America" because it's a lot simpler than "Central American, South American, and Caribbean task force" or "Latin American and Commonwealth Caribbean task force". "Latin American" covers 95% of the area and gives us an unconvoluted name, that's all. I'd understand objections, though. :-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 19:55, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
So... are we okay to go ahead with the rename to "Latin American military history task force"? EyeSerenetalk 11:42, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. Kirill [talk] [prof] 11:43, 20 July 2011 (UTC)
I agree a Latin American task force could include the entire region and be short enough for a tag. One note - the link in the scope of the regions taskforce of Central American specifically states that Central America's northern border is the Southern border of Mexico (technically Mexico is North America). Maybe while adding verbage referencing the Carbibbean adding one to Mexico.Oldwildbill (talk) 06:23, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
The move is now complete, though please feel free to amend the wording in the description of the Latin American TF's scope if it doesn't fit what everyone had in mind. EyeSerenetalk 15:00, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
Almost forgot: I've left the "Central and South American" aliases in place in WPMILHIST, but I suspect there aren't many (if any) articles that use them. I'm not sure how to go about identifying which articles use that wording other than by sorting recent TF additions since July 14th, which was when we made the previous change... and I'm not entirely sure how to easily do that! It's probably not much of an issue in any case (just an obsessive desire for neatness :) EyeSerenetalk 15:12, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
Thanks EyeSerene, that looks good to me, and I hope you approve of this change! I changed the top picture to Minas Geraes because I couldn't find a map that didn't highlight only Latin America, but if someone can find a better image, please add it in. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 18:53, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
It's not up to me to approve anything :) The only issue I see is that unless the image is followed up it's relevance isn't immediately apparent, but it'll be very difficult to find something that represents the entire scope unless we put something together ourselves. EyeSerenetalk 07:58, 22 July 2011 (UTC)
Well it's probably better than blatantly featuring only one country's emblem in the picture, at least. ;-) I agree with your second point. Not many maps like to show Central & South America + the Caribbean islands. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 08:03, 22 July 2011 (UTC)
True. There's some additional discussion here. EyeSerenetalk 08:15, 22 July 2011 (UTC)
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