Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Archive 14

Template conversion

I'm starting the template conversion process discussed above. A recap of what's going to take place (both for anyone who has forgotten the previous outline and for anyone directed here from the edit summaries):

1. {{Warbox}} and {{Campaign}} will be modified to so that campaignboxes can be included directly after the infobox in an article. Note that the old way of using the campaign as a parameter will no longer work.
2. All articles currently using the new-style warbox will be fixed to properly include the correct campaignbox.
3. All articles using {{Battlebox}} and {{Battlebox no campaign}} will be converted to use the new infobox+campaignbox scheme.
4. {{Campaign}} will be subst'ed into each different campaignbox template.

I will try to post regular progress updates here. Any help will be appreciated; the most work will be during stage 3, as there are almost 1500 articles to be converted.

Feel free to add comments or questions either here, or, if you need a faster response, directly on my talk page. The fact that this message is here, incidentally, means that stage 1 is complete ;-) —Kirill Lokshin 00:17, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

I've converted all {{Warbox}}es to the new {{Infobox Military Conflict}} style, and added their appropriate {{Campaignbox}}es if present. That's step 2 I believe. -- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|E|Chugoku Banzai!} 01:09, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Amazing! I'll run through and check—there's a few {{Infobox Military Conflict}} articles that were using the old campaign parameter, so you may have missed those. In any case, great work! Thanks for the help! —Kirill Lokshin 01:11, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, it's Firefox and tabbed browsing, heheheh... Anyway, I took a look at (almost) every {{Warbox}} I converted and I didn't notice anything out of place. Well a few parameters in some articles were out of order, but I don't think that affects it much (if any)? In any case the ones I touched are in my contrib history. Tell me if you need more help (such as converting the 1500 old boxes, ouch). -- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|E|Chugoku Banzai!} 01:15, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, looks like you got most of them; there's a few that are still unconverted, but I should have those done shortly. The battleboxes will probably take a few days. Feel free to join in if you're bored at some point ;-) —Kirill Lokshin 01:21, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Oh I missed some? Well I didn't convert the non-mainspace ones. Yeah, just tell me if you need help. It's Christmas break anyway. I've got more time than usual even after studying... heh. -- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|E|Chugoku Banzai!} 01:35, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Okay, after a lot more work that I initially expected (looks like we Special:WhatLinksHere works in a really unpleasant way for template redirects), I've finished up with the remainder of step 2. As far as step 3 goes, we're still looking at approximately 1300 articles to be converted (~1250 for {{Battlebox}} and ~100 for {{Battlebox no campaign}}). I'll get back to this tomorrow ;-) —Kirill Lokshin 07:28, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

What do you mean that Whatlinkshere doesn't work for template redirects? I've not noticed anything wrong? -- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|E|Chugoku Banzai!}

An example of what happens: if template A (which is used in article Foo), is redirected to template B, Foo will appear in Whatlinkshere for template A only until Foo is next edited. After Foo is edited, it will appear in the Whatlinkshere for template B, but not in the one for template A, even though the Wiki-code in Foo still uses template A. —Kirill Lokshin 08:30, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

OK, nothing too major then. They'll still show up somewhere. :) -- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|E|Chugoku Banzai!} 11:39, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

I've got nothing much to do - I'll help out with the stage 3 stuff. --Loopy 02:07, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Great! As a general update, {{Battlebox no campaign}} is completed; {{Battlebox}} has about 1100 articles left to go. —Kirill Lokshin 02:24, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Should Template:Attack on population center also be converted to the military conflict infobox? Only two articles use it ([1] [2]) and as you can see, it looks quite horrendous. --Loopy 04:03, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Ugh. It seems to be a really old version of the battlebox that somebody hacked up. Should definitely be converted; let me know if you have any trouble with it. —Kirill Lokshin 04:05, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorted! I'll put the old template up for deletion. --Loopy 04:13, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Infobox#Battles could do with fixing and maybe an explanatory note. --Loopy 00:53, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

I've added the standard usage notes; I'm pretty sure nobody uses that page anymore, given how outdated it is. —Kirill Lokshin 01:00, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

And we're down to ~600 articles, as of last count. —Kirill Lokshin 05:39, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

We're making good progress, then! --Loopy 21:38, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

I think that's all of them (from whatlinkshere at least). --Loopy ^e 03:11, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Whatlinkshere seems to be a little broken today; we've lost several hundred articles overnight ;-) —Kirill Lokshin 03:18, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I see. I was wondering who on earth cleared 500 articles since I last looked! =D --Loopy ^e 03:30, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

I think we got the last of them in {{Battlebox}}! Those in the mainspace, anyway. -- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai!}

Nope, Whatlinkshere is still broken as far as I know; it only seems to refresh when the article is edited. Come back tomorrow for another dozen ;-) —Kirill Lokshin 03:09, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Anyone know if there's official word on the Whatlinkshere issue and when it will be fixed? --Loopy ^e 01:27, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Last I heard, it's still an open bug. It does seem to be generating a few new entries each day, so we'll get there eventually even if it's not fixed ;-) —Kirill Lokshin 01:52, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_history/Wanted_articles#Old_style_infobox has a number of articles still using old boxes, I just remembered. --Loopy ^e 03:58, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

As Brion Vibber has just stated that meta-templates are not necessarily forbidden for reasons of server load per se, I'm taking step 4 off the list for now. We should still finish up converting the remaining battleboxes, but we can leave {{campaign}} in use until we get an explicit request to remove it.

My apologies to everyone if it turns out (as seems to be the case) that this conversion wasn't as urgent as I had thought; I can only say that I based my comments on what appeared, at the time, to be valid instructions from the developers. —Kirill Lokshin 03:36, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Military

Oberiko made a suggestion a while back that the Military project should be merged into this one. It (seems to) be concerned primarily with military units at the moment—something which we have been working with here (e.g. the new infobox).

I've posed largely the same question on that project as I will here: would such a merger be acceptable to everyone here? Is it a good or a bad idea? —Kirill Lokshin 04:12, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

I say why not. It's not as if we're merging Wikiproject Association Football and Wikiproject American Football. Military and Military History is mutually inclusive. (Though we're significantly larger and more organised.) -- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|E|Chugoku Banzai!} 04:56, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

And as the obviously larger project, we take over. :D -- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|E|Chugoku Banzai!} 04:58, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

• NO do not merge. WikiProject Military should be for contempory military issues while this concentrates on military history. Besides although this project has the numbers, they have the more modern tactics and hardware and it would probably be be a poisoned pill takeover --Philip Baird Shearer 21:42, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Canadian Military History Taskforce

A good sleep and good coffee seem to make me a bit exta contemplative today... I was thinking about the possibility of trying to consolidate and expand articles relating to Military history. Right now the canadian entry in Category:Wars by country is Category:Conflicts in Canada which seems to be limited to conflicts which happened within Canada's borders. with so much of Canada's Military history taking place around the world, I think that maybe a "Wars of Canada" catagory is called for. But I'd like to go beyond that to expand the Category:Military history of Canada category to include catagories for canadian partisipation in other conflicts that aren't listed, expand canadain regiment and unit related articles, perhaps create campaign boxes specific to canadian participation within diffrent wars and theaters of operations, and if needed, create articles detailing Canadian partisipation in wars, theaters and major battles. how much intrest would ther be in a sort of sub-project within WikiProject Military history? does this seem even a little viable? or should i switch to decaf? Thanks for your input!Mike McGregor (Can) 18:03, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Some comments, in no particular order:

• If you'd like to start a separate project, you could follow the basic layout of some of the other country-specific projects listed (British Army, Polish Army, etc.). Having said that, I don't think it's very useful to split off; as you can see, those projects aren't very active. There's a surprisingly large amount of behind-the-scenes procedural work needed to keep a project running and active; unless you're willing to do this, starting a project won't have many benefits. Note also point 3 on the list of objectives at the top of our project page for another take on this.
• As far as having a sub-project, I'm not sure what the result would be; it may just be more productive to use the main project for discussions, since that's where most people will be looking. I'm open to other ideas on this, though. If all we need is a list of things to do, we can create a separate Canadian section on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Wanted articles page, and I would try to keep some links from that on the task list.
• I don't know how many members we have here that are interested in Canadian topics; it may be that you're simply the only person working on them at the moment, so no amount of procedural handwaving will get anyone else ;-)
• We don't have Category:Wars of Canada? Probably just an oversight; feel free to create and populate it as appropriate.
• Separating campaignboxes by participant is a bad idea, since you'd need multiple campaignboxes on every article.
• Decaf is evil!

Hope (at least some of) that helps! —Kirill Lokshin 18:19, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Thats kind of what I thought, maybe a sort of 'Canadian Content Drive' is the way to go... I think I'll wait a bit to see how much intrest there is. I've created a Category:Wars of Canada, but its listed under 'W' for Wars... how do I move it to 'C'?Mike McGregor (Can). I guess now I would add the catagory tag to other appropriate catagories? 10:57, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Looks good. Keep in mind that we also have a Category:Battles of Canada for individual battle articles. —Kirill Lokshin 12:41, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Suggestion: Instead of a separate or sub-project, why not form a "Canadian Military History Task Force", made up of knowlegable and interested members, one or more of whom would be the TF's coordinator(s). Just an idea eh;>--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 10:40, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Now that is an interesting idea; how many interested members do we have here?

As an aside, there's recently been some discussion on the mailing list about encouraging WikiProjects to select "coordinators" or "lead editors" for themselves; if we do go with having coordinators for specific work, would we want some project-wide as well, or only for specific task forces and whatnot? —Kirill Lokshin 14:03, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

I like the Task Force Idea. I've been collecting categories and articles under the Category:Military history of Canada for the time being.Mike McGregor (Can) 17:08, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it does look like a good idea. Not only for Canada, in fact—there are a couple of other areas (e.g. military leaders) that have come up recently that could be handled quite well by putting together a task force.

Do we want to go with this idea, then, or does anyone have objections or other suggestions? And what, if anything, do we want to do about the director/coordinator issue? Kirill Lokshin 17:32, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

I also like this idea; my initiation of a WikiProject for the British Army didn't exactly turn out like planned ;-), and I also believe a centralised project (i.e. military history) is preferable to splintering off into sub-projects. On the director/coodinator issue, I always considered you, Kirill, to be the de facto Project director/lead editor, so perhaps a hierarchy should be created, in much the same way as Wikipedia:Esperanza? SoLando (Talk) 17:54, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Thank you!

I'm not sure how deep of a hierarchy we would need; possibly a single-level directorship, or maybe a two-level scheme project and task force directors? Having people designated to keep things running is good, but we wouldn't want to get so mired in the bureaucracy that it overtakes the more important work here ;-)

If there's support for something like this, it may be worthwhile to write up a brief proposal under a new heading; I suspect some people aren't reading the Canadian one. —Kirill Lokshin 18:46, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

I've been doing some brainstorming here, I'm just starting to put together an overview of what's already here and what i'd like to see ina a form that's easier for me to wrap my head around, and man, there's a lot! Mike McGregor (Can) 18:38, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Quite a lot, I see. Once you get something you'd like to run with, we should probably put it on a subpage (Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Canadian military history task force) and link to it from the main project page. There are still a few procedural point being discussed above, though, so it might be a few days before we can really set things up properly. —Kirill Lokshin 18:46, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Let's Keep it simple for now until we see how or if it works, and have no more levels than needed. A Task force's founder (In this case Mr. McGregor) should be its default coordinator and may appoint or promote one or more assistant coords as they see fit. The rest would be the members. Task forces, if they and their tasks are big enough, could further "break down" into Task Groups, to work on individual articles, aspects or subtopics, which would have their own coordinators. Obviously, recruiting and retaining dedicated, knowledgable and interested members is the first and most daunting task confronting any TF Coord. In this case, I recommend scouring article histories to find good, regular contributors to Canadian military topics. Then leaving a nice "I want YOU eh?" message on their talk pages. And of course, advertising here on the main project itself couldnt hurt either.

I came up with this idea after reading Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/World War II. I thought there had to be a way to do better justice to the subject without putting the main burden on one or two main contributors or churning out something which reads like it was written by a committee. Then it occured to me, the best way to approach it was as a military campaign. It had to be an organized, but flexibly so, group with some central guidance and coordination but not too much. Being a Navy brat, the first model to come to my mind was the US Pacific Fleet, with its Task forces and Task groups. So i thought, if I'm ever bold enough or fool enough to take on such a daunting task, I'll try and form a Task force first. Suppose if I'd been an Army brat I would have decided on Fireteam instead...but the concept would be the same. Really Gentlemen, you must stop encouraging me and my screwy ideas...it will only make me come up with more;>. Oh and Kirill, needless to say you have my vote and endorsement for Project Coordinator.--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 16:24, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Ah, don't worry about it—I think the task forces are the best idea we've had in a long time. We're now up to nearly 80 members, with no sign that the growth will stop anytime soon, so being able to organize into smaller (and more informal) groups for working on specific topics will do wonders for our ability to scale.

The founder idea is a good one for now; but in general I'd prefer that task forces be started after two or three people have expressed interest in it, to avoid having hundreds of inactive ones. It would then be up to the initial members to decide on a coordinator (and even whether a coordinator is needed at all).

I think we can start up an initial task force whenever Mike feels ready; but what do we want to do, at this point, about the coordinator business? I'm somewhat hesitant to introduce a hierarchy without wider consensus (your support nonwithstanding ;-). —Kirill Lokshin 17:47, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, I've written up a brief proposal; let's see where this goes. —Kirill Lokshin 03:18, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

well, lets giv'er

I guess next step is to see who's intrested... you can add yourself at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Canadian military history task force and we can go from there.

I've added a link to the main project page; hopefully that'll draw some people in. —Kirill Lokshin 21:07, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not seeing much interest with this... wait and see I guess...Mike McGregor (Can) 23:21, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Things rarely happen quickly here ;-) For what it's worth, you can use the task force page to organize your own work, and hopefully others will join in. —Kirill Lokshin 23:33, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

WWII German Category Question

There are 3 different categories where German WWII militaty units have been placed. I want to improve this organization, to aid future editors. But I would like some feedback.

The 3 most used categories for German WWII units are:

• Category:Military history of Germany during World War II <<-- clearly wrong for unit's
• Category:World War II German forces <<-- containts ~12 sub-catogries
• Category:Wehrmacht <<-- no consistent use

Tracing these categories back to their parents, two of them are under Category:World War II (makes sense):

• Category:World War II
  • Category:World War II national military histories
    • Category:Military history of Germany during World War II <<-- follows standard naming for other countries
  • Category:World War II forces and units
    • Category:World War II German forces <<-- follows standard naming for other countries

• Category:Wehrmacht has two parents; neither related to WWII Category:Military of Germany & Category: Military history of Germany

• Note that Category:World War II naval ships of Germany, trace thru several levels of categories to Category:World War II military equipment without being included in a Kriegsmarine category. Luftwaffe categories are a little better organized then Kriegsmarine, but still not good enough to serve as a standard.

Recommendations:

• Add Category:Wehrmacht to Category:World War II forces and units since The terms World War II German forces and Wehrmacht are basically the same
• Remove Category:Military of Germany from being a parent of Category:Wehrmacht
• Make a new category called Category:World War II German Army units. Add it to Category:Wehrmacht
  • Making categories out of Heer or OKH seems pointless to readers; and perhaps not reflective of real chains of command.
• Move the elements of Category:World War II German forces to Category:World War II German Army units. Preserve existing sub-structure.
• Eventually delete Category:World War II German forces
  • A category move might be a better implementation.
• Later someone can make/add Category:World War II German Navy units or Category:World War II German Air units

Comments ? Wendell 01:41, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

What about the Waffen-SS? —Kirill Lokshin 01:52, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Waffen-SS units were German military units, just like Heer, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine. What to do with them depends on how categorisation is done. The most straightforward might be three categories for units, German WW2 Ground, German WW2 Ground Air, German WW2 Ground Naval, as proposed above. Plus one category for commands maybe, since strictly speaking these were not units. I agree that a 'Heer' and/or 'OKH' category is pointless. Chain of command was:

• OKW

* OKH (Army High Command)

* OKL (Air Force High Command)

* OKM (Navy High Command)

Below these the various field commands (Army Groups, Marine Group Commands (or whatever the next level there was), Air Fleet commands). The Waffen-SS had a representative at OKW, and was operationally under the OKH or OKW (depending on theatre) when in the field. It had its own recruitment function and its own quartermaster for part of the war. Andreas 15:45, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

IMO, the entire WWII categorization needs to be reworked. Right now it's basically the de facto standard for other military era's and large scale conflicts, so any mistakes/complications there tend to get passed on. Oberiko 14:45, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Fully agree Andreas 15:45, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

• Thanks for the feedback. I will start with the German units above.

Need to finalize category names. Obviously there is a primary three way split of military forces in WWII (army, navy, air force). However, those exact terms seem wrong, as discussed above, and really are Branches of the Military Given that scheme: US Army Air Core or Luftwaffe Field Divisions would seem mis-placed.

Ground Units or Land Units or Army Units? Army Units sound like a Branch of the Military

Sea Units or Naval Units or Navy Units? Navy or Naval again sounds like a Military Branch.

Air Units or Air Formations or Air Squadrons? Formations or Sqaudrons sound more natural, but that is deceptive.

Land, Air and Sea seems like a natural grouping, based upon common English usage.

Ground and Naval do not seem like natural pairs.

I recommend German World War II Land Units, German World War II Air Units, German World War II Sea Units Wendell 06:19, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Seconded. IF Category:Wehrmacht isn't universally used, perhaps there should just be a note in one of the overview articles that the Germans referred to the army as Wehrmacht. No need for an extra, confusing category, methinks. Guapovia 07:06, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Project coordinator position

As part of the discussion about setting up "task forces" for collaboration on specific topics (see "Canadian Military History Taskforce" above), the idea of having a project coordinator (or "lead editor") position was raised.

The coordinator(s) would be generally responsible for the procedural aspects of keeping the project running. In particular, the coordinator could manage the proposal and creation of new task forces.

A similar proposal was made on the WikiEn-l mailing list recently. That focused primarily on the need for a "lead editor" to make decisions where project members were divided over some issue.

Revision after feedback: this position would not entail any executive power. The coordinator would merely be the designated point-of-contact for procedural issues (and would, by extension, be responsible for ensuring that the project as a whole was properly informed of them). —Kirill Lokshin 00:12, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

The question then: would the creation of such a position (under any name) be acceptable to the members of this project?

(By way of full disclosure: the discussion referred to above touches on my own suitability for such a position. I am proposing it here in general; this does not mean, necessarily, that I would be the one to hold it.)

—Kirill Lokshin 03:18, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, I am generally opposed to the centralisation of power. ;) If the lead editor to "make decisions where project members were divided over some issue" means the ability to unilaterally decide what's best a la Kelly Martin, I'd have to say no. -- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai!} 23:42, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

True enough (but what an example!). How about a purely procedural coordinator position, to centralize task force creation and so forth? —Kirill Lokshin 23:45, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I can agree with a bureaucracy that is not there simply for the sake of having a bureaucracy. If there can be no abuse of power, and if it can improve efficiency, then I'm all for it. -- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai!} 00:07, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

I've revised my proposal above to (hopefully) eliminate the question of "power", or abuses thereof, entirely. —Kirill Lokshin 00:12, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

I certainly can agree with that... But a question first: Is our project large enough to warrant such pyramidal structure? (I'm assuming the structure will be more or less pyramidal.) -- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai!} 00:19, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, we are one of the larger WikiProjects now (although I haven't checked how many members are still active recently), and we seem to be growing at a fairly healthy rate. As we become even larger, we'll probably see more need to establish some (small) bureaucracy, just to keep things running smoothly.

This proposal mainly grew out of the "task force" idea, though; assuming that takes off (which seems to be the case based on feedback so far), I think we need somebody to run around keeping track of all the task forces, helping new users set them up, etc. —Kirill Lokshin 00:29, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Hm, okay. I don't really know about our relative size compared to other WikiProjects. Alright, I'm all for it. :) I could volunteer to take some jobs, I suppose. -- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai!} 00:31, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

I rather like the idea, if we keep growing, it's going to become difficult to manage otherwise. Right now, informally, IMO Krill is basically the coordinator for the entire WikiProject thing and is really helping to keep everything together. A few people willing to assist him, or do the same thing on a smaller scale can only be a good thing. Oberiko 02:52, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Well said, Oberiko. Kirill has for a long time been this project's de facto coordinator, babysitter, heart, soul, and auteur. From what I've seen, his workload is immense. I think the overriding need is for a few of us to assist him in whatever way we can. Albrecht 05:11, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for the kind words! I'll add that there's no emergency at the moment; I can still handle everything comfortably right now. Given, however, that the workload is only going to increase (and possibly increase sharply if we get a few task forces going) I thought now would be an appropriate time to bring this issue up. I think it's better if we're ready ahead of time rather than scrambling after things fall apart, obviously.

On another note, of course, I was looking to make the position a semi-official one so that there would be some sense of its holders enjoying the confidence of the project as a whole. It's much easier to give advice, particularly to newer members, if that advice is seen as having community approval behind it; otherwise, it's likely to be ignored ;-) —Kirill Lokshin 14:21, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

OK... Now to elect/pick people? How many (if more than one) do we need? -- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai!} 01:11, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm in favour of this idea - we're one of the biggest and faster-growing projects and while Kirill has been keeping things running smoothly, it would be wise to set up some sort of proper system for the management of the project. Maybe one Project Leader/Manager and a couple of assistant-managers (though with a cooler name) focussing on particular areas? Elections could be done the standard Wiki-consensus way. --Loopy ^e 01:25, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, absolutely. As long as unnecessary bureaucracy is avoided, and an informal environment is retained (as Kirill says above), then I would wholeheartedly support the implementation of a small hierarchy. By the way, perhaps one such position could focus on "discovering" articles meriting FA status, and to provide greater recognition as a whole to articles that are on the path to FA status. SoLando (Talk) 01:59, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

I'd guess that two or three people would probably work for the time being; if we need more, we can always elect them later. As far as what the name of the position should be, we have lots of possibilities: 2/3 coordinators/directors/etc., 1 lead whatever and 1 or 2 assistant or deputy whatevers, and so forth. I'd prefer that the title not be entirely silly, but other than that I'm open to using whatever people think is best. —Kirill Lokshin 02:16, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

I think co-ordinator sounds best, as that is essentially the role. --Loopy ^e 02:35, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I prefer coordinator too. SoLando (Talk) 02:43, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't care what the position is called. :p Time to reset the indent! -- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai!} 03:09, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

←(resetting indent as requested) Coordinator will work well, I suspect; it gives the impression of being official without sounding too dictatorial ;-) Do we want multiple coordinators, or a lead and assistants. or what? Also, when would we want to set up the elections/confirmations? We probably want to keep the general discussion open for another few days, at least, but I'm entirely open to ideas on this as well. —Kirill Lokshin 03:15, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

My vote goes to Lead and then assistants. The Lead could oversee the general direction of the project, while the assistants are focussed on specfic areas or roles of it. That way it wouldn't get tied up in too much beauracracy (or at least I don't think it would) as everyone has their own niche to fill in the position. --Loopy ^e 03:26, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

That might work well; there are certainly several areas that need lots of extra attention at the moment. The question is whether anyone would want to deal with them ;-) —Kirill Lokshin 03:43, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm sure elected coordinators would have to work hard to ensure their constituencies would vote for them again... :) We can also divide such tasks by categories so that interested individuals can take their areas of interest. -- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai!} 04:07, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

So, anyone else have any ideas on this? Should we let the discussion sit longer, or do we want to go ahead with setting things up? —Kirill Lokshin 22:45, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Set it up! -- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai!} 00:50, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Do we want to have an election, then? I'm not sure how many people are interested in the position; if it's small, we should be able to do a simple RFA-style approval; if it's large, we may need something better thought-out. —Kirill Lokshin 02:31, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, just go for RfA style - there are only around 80 of us (a guess), shouldn't get too large. --Loopy ^e 02:39, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I've created a rough draft for the election/approval process here. Any suggestions would be very appreciated; we still need to figure out (a) how long to run this for, (b) how to organize votes: support and oppose (RFA) or support only (Esperanza), and (c) how to deal with ties if we get any. Help with editing the overview of the position into a readable form would also be quite welcome ;-) —Kirill Lokshin 03:23, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

I think Esperanza style voting is better, as witholding your vote would equate opposing or neutrality, so it's a whole lot less hassle and easier to tally up. If someone has a concern about a nominee they could raise it in "Comments/Questions". --Loopy ^e 03:48, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Also, a) should it be self-noms only? b) voting will be restricted to members of the project? --Loopy ^e 04:08, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Given that the position will require actual work, I suspect self-noms would be the way to go. As far as outside votes, they probably shouldn't count. If anyone from outside the project cares enough about this to comment, they're free to do so in the comment section; but this is a purely internal matter, so I see no reason for anyone not part of the project to participate. (Having said that, there are some people who have participated here but have never added their names to the list. Unless it becomes a serious issue, I think we shouldn't remove any good-faith votes). —Kirill Lokshin 04:14, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good. For the length, I think it should be 2 weeks - everyone who has signed up on the project can be told of the elections and the word can be spread - there aren't a huge number (compared to RfA, Arbcom) to get the word out to, so it can all be done quickly with reasonable turnout. If it transpires that only 3 people show up and little pieces of tumbleweed are rolling around, it could be jacked up to 3 or 4. --Loopy ^e 04:43, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

K just a quick question: How many positions are available? I think as of right now 1 or 2 is enough. -- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai!} 06:17, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Still undecided ;-) I think a good goal would be three coordinators—one lead and two assistants—but this depends on having three people willing to take the job. Obviously a large number isn't really needed at this point. —Kirill Lokshin 06:31, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

I've done some more work on the overview and procedure sections (here). Some points we have so far (unless anyone would like a different procedure):

• Pure approval: only support votes. The person with the highest number of votes gets the position.
• 1 Lead, 2 Assistants.
• 2 weeks duration; I think this will be enough to let anyone interested participate

If anyone has any other ideas, please don't hesitate to bring them up :-) —Kirill Lokshin 20:45, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

How's this for posting on members' talk pages?

The Military history WikiProject is currently holding elections for project coordinators. Any member of the project may nominate themselves and all are encouraged to vote here. The elections will run until (date).

--Loopy ^e 01:33, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Nice! The alignment on the last line seems somehow wrong, though; how about this?

The Military history WikiProject is currently holding elections for project coordinators. Any member of the project may nominate themselves and all are encouraged to vote here. The elections will run until (date).

—Kirill Lokshin 01:55, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Perfect! --Loopy ^e 02:03, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm guessing we should put a copy of that at the top of the project page as well. More importantly, though, do we want to go ahead with two weeks? And when should we start? —Kirill Lokshin 02:19, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Now? :p -- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai!} 03:59, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Works for me. Anyone up for helping add

The Military history WikiProject is currently holding elections for project coordinators. Any member of the project may nominate themselves and all are encouraged to vote here. The elections will run until February 5.

to all the members' talk pages? —Kirill Lokshin 04:20, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

I'll help - I'll work from the bottom of the list up. --Loopy ^e 04:27, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Anittas contacted me (as I posted the election message on their page) and suggests that there isn't much detail on the duties entailed in the roles. Do you think you could flesh it out, Kirill, or anyone else? If not, I'll try tomorrow. --Loopy ^e 07:19, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

I've tried my hand at providing some examples; feel free to clean up the list. The general idea, though, is organizing whatever needs to be done to keep the project running smoothly. —Kirill Lokshin 10:04, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Battle maps

Where can I find more information on creating maps for battle articles? Is there any vector format that can be used? This would give more consistent maps and also the possibility of view preferences. tpower 17:32, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I have created a number of maps for American Civil War articles. Recent examples are in the Battle of Stones River article. If you look at my User page, you'll see a pointer to my personal web site where I keep the source forms of these maps, in case anyone decides they would like to modify them. Hal Jespersen 18:06, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, I made a (and only a) map for the Battle of South Shanxi but it isn't done yet. It follows the APP-6a NATO designation and I used Adobe Illustrator CS2 to make it. I asked for critiques and here's what I got: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Archive 12#Map needs critique. Note that I haven't actually followed through any of the suggestions... been somewhat busy these days. I don't think there is a set policies for map making, though there are certain stylistic and informational conventions, maybe? -- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai!} 23:37, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Where does this project need help?

Fairly new Wikipedian with a strong base of knowledge in military history, looking to help out generally. I'm searching through the tasks and seeing a lot of stuff that needs to be done; is there anything big in particular that needs working on? KrazyCaley 06:05, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

There's nothing particularly big at the moment; the things listed in the task list (and the adjunct list of wanted articles) are pretty much it. We're grateful for any help you could provide, obviously. —Kirill Lokshin 14:12, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Current collaboration

"Invasion" is the current collaboration of the week, which may be of interest to many here. Don't know if that goes in the "announcements" box. If so, feel free to add it & delete this. --Kevin Myers | (complaint dept.) 19:41, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Request to Join

Hey There,

I've worked on several unit histories for Second World War Axis Forces, also I have completed several campaign/battle pages for the War in the East. I've just completed creating the Battle of Teugen-Hausen article, and I am currently working on the Battle of Eckmühl. Once i've completed this, I will expand on the War of the Fifth Coalition page, and perhaps look at expanding several of the stubs to do with that war. --ansbachdragoner 03:28, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

No need to ask mate, you're more than welcome to join. Just add your name to the list on the project page and you're done. I'm sure you'll be a valuable addition to the project, thanks for coming aboard! --Loopy ^e 03:34, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Needless to say, don't forget to send in your membership fees. Cash is preferred. --Kevin Myers | (complaint dept.) 07:33, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

But women are better. ;)--Kross^Talk 08:00, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Uh-hum! There actually "happen" to be a few female members at this project, gentlemen - so please behave, or you'll have to wash the dishes tonight... are we understanding each other? >:( Phædriel ♥ ^{tell me} - 00:02, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

YES SIRrr errrr Ma'am! ;>--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 00:56, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

I've added an explanatory note to the "Participants" section. If anyone can think of a better way to word it, feel free :-) —Kirill Lokshin 17:18, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Ansbach! About time you got here, my friend! Judging by your many contributions, including your most recent ones, I'd say you are more than qualified and more than welcome :> BTW, I've done some work on the 6th Coalition (at least the 1813-14 parts of it). Please have a look at them if you get the time and are so inclined. Cheers M8,--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 21:53, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Canvassing comments for FAC

Dear all,

BlueShirts and I have worked for some time on the article Sino-German cooperation. We have submitted it for FAC review, but fellow editors have not been forthcoming with comments. As I quote BlueShirts, "I'm not surprised to see that so far we're the only two votes, while some inane article on bulbasaur has like thirty votes." So if you guys would be kind enough to hop over there and give us some comments on the article (hopefully to support, but please critique as well), we'd be doing something against systematic bias! Thank you. -- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai!} 01:47, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Decorative images

Jamesday, our lead database administrator, has requested that we avoid the use of "decorative" or "icon" images due to the server load they create. I have therefore removed the images used in our stub templates and userbox.

If anyone has any ideas for (non-image) things to put at the front of the stub templates, feel free to play around; they look somewhat bland at the moment ;-) —Kirill Lokshin 20:11, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Western Theater of the American Civil War

I have written a new overview article, Western Theater of the American Civil War. Before I start linking it into other articles, I'd appreciate review of this community. And see my comments in its Talk page. Thanks. Hal Jespersen 02:16, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Commented on the article talk page. —Kirill Lokshin 02:28, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Stub Pictures Removed !!

I notice someone has removed all of pictures related to the stub articles. Can we not use these anymore ? SirIsaacBrock 02:56, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

See the section on "Decorative images" above for my initial explanation. I'll note, though, that Brion Vibber has made some comments on the Village Pump today on this issue; he seems to feel that the problem isn't a serious one, so I may have made a mistake in doing this.

My suggestion would be to let this play out over the next few days and then decide whether the images should go back or not. —Kirill Lokshin 03:02, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

You should not be deleting images without first discussing the issue, to get a consensus. As you have noted your overly zealous action might have been a mistake SirIsaacBrock 03:11, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

To be fair, it's not like Kirill just decided on a whim to delete all the images because he felt like it - it was based on a serious comment by a database admin. I hardly think this deserves the label 'overly zealous action', even it was a mistake. If it does indeed turn out that the situation does not require these images to be removed the templates can be easily reverted, so it's not a big problem. --Loopy ^e 03:39, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Indeed; having said that, I do apologize for being so rash in removing them. It seemed like a good idea at the time ;-) —Kirill Lokshin 03:43, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Template:History of war

I think it's about time we upgraded the main template to bring it in line with other major projects. Some examples are Template:Islam, Template:Judaism, and Template:Israelis. Discussion should be on Template talk:History of war. Palm_Dogg 17:14, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Hope you all like it! Palm_Dogg 02:20, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Thas purdy. LordAmeth 12:20, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Additional WikiProject Military history tags?

The templete WikiProject Military history only appears on about ~120 articles, using the "what links here option". That number seems low and I figured it was related to the known templete problems with "what links here" link. Then I noted that some key articles do not have the templete, like Battle of the Netherlands and Operation Market Garden. So I fixed those, but I guess the task is huge. Template:Campaign has roughly 600 articles that link there. I did a random sampling of 10 articles that link to Template:Campaign and 8 of 10 had the WikiProject Military history.

I do not know what any of this means, but is it time to get someone with a bot to start adding project templetes? Wendell 20:39, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Bot_requests/Archive_3#WikiProject_notices_on_talk_pages for a similar request. No idea if they got it to work. Wendell 21:17, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

The more correct numbers, before Whatlinkshere was broken, would be about 1500–2000 articles tagged (and a few hundred categories and so forth). While there are certainly more articles that need tagging (mainly newer ones—we haven't been keeping up with article creation recently), this isn't really a good task for a bot, since it will have trouble figuring out whether an article should be tagged or not. —Kirill Lokshin 21:23, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

A further note: a disproportionate number of American Civil War battles are untagged, due to the way the category system was set up at the time I did the initial tagging (when we were still WikiProject Battles), which may explain the high number of missing tags in your sample ;-) —Kirill Lokshin 21:43, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

I surveyed many of the "non-Western" military articles that are linked from a campaign on Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_history/Campaignboxes and found lots which I manually tagged. Also, a Robot could do that level of work. Manually generate a list of Campaignboxes (all real wars, not Star Trek Fictional), and have the robot test each page linked from that campaignbox to see if it has the project notice on the talk page. I do agree, a general purpose Robot could not work and would be risky.