This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 30 | ← | Archive 35 | Archive 36 | Archive 37 | Archive 38 | Archive 39 | Archive 40 |
Category:Military operations is, quite frankly, a mess. Some of the things found within include:
I think we ought to clean this up. Hence, the following idea:
The resulting tree would be:
A few categories would need to be dealt with:
This is all subject to change, of course, and any comments or suggestions would be extremely welcome. Kirill Lokshin 02:19, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Just to make sure it doesn't get lost in the churn of discussions here:
The A-Class review process has been started, and currently has four articles that need evaluation. The success of such a process obviously requires a certain level of wider input; hence, stopping by the assessment department and commenting on the articles undergoing review would be very appreciated! Kirill Lokshin 06:04, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
(unindent) What do we do about current A-class articles? I noticed LordAmeth removing this from here but the way it's worded it makes it sound like the person who added the A did something wrong, when it was simply added prior to the new process. My thinking is, instead of removing, we renominate. (I did that with the one article I edit that had a prior A rating) -- plange 02:39, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm currently expanding The Royal Scots (where "currently" means "I've got to 1919 and then been sidetracked for two months, but I'll get back to it soon"), and I've run across an interesting problem.
British infantry regiments, unlike most others, never operated as single units in the modern period - they were "administrative families" for a large number of battalions. When writing histories, what this means is that you usually have a couple of battalions in different places to keep track of, which isn't much of a problem. Then you hit WWI (and to a lesser extent WWII). A vast number of battalions are raised, and go off to fight all over the place, in entirely unrelated formations; you need to find some way of discussing them all. There are two solutions:
The Royal Scots currently uses the first; The King's Regiment (Liverpool) (an excellent article) uses the second. The first is a lot simpler if you're wanting to find out what happened to a particular subunit ("what happened to the 16th?"); the second makes it a lot easier to discuss overall history ("In 1916, nine battalions of the regiment saw action at the Somme...")
Which do people think is more useful for our readers, or more in keeping with standard practice? Thoughts appreciated. Shimgray | talk | 16:49, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
The war elephant article has just been listed for featured article review with a number of complaints about accuracy and referencing. Anyone with knowledge of the topic—and I believe there are a number of people here with some experience in the area?—is encouraged to drop by! Kirill Lokshin 16:53, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
I recall there being an earlier debate about establishing a 'War on terrorism' task-force os something similar. If there are still editors looking for a way to collaborate on the topic, check out Wikipedia:WikiProject Terrorism and counter-terrorism. enjoy! Mike McGregor (Can) 19:35, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Which do we use if someone conceivably fits several infobox categories? Take Fitzhugh Lee? Does he get a {{ Infobox Military Person}} or {{ Infobox Governor}}? Or do we use the generic {{ Infobox Biography}} for cases like this? -- plange 03:29, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
From my talk page:
I think mikkalai has justification for his suspicion (see Revision as of 06:25, 8 August 2006 to Revision as of 05:50, 29 August 2006 by 70.123.197.91). I don't recognise the text (but then it is not an area of WWII I have read about in detail) and if it is original work them we should encourage 70.123.197.91 to acquire a user ID -- Philip Baird Shearer 09:09, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
It's been six months since the last time I brought this up, which I think is a long enough delay...
I think the time has come to finally lay the long-catatonic WikiProject Military to rest, and propose redirecting that page to this one. It has been a rump project from the very beginning, and has had absolutely no activity since last March; I see no reason to keep it around merely as a relic, nor to attempt to revive it as a separate group from this one.
The objection—brought up the previous time I suggested this—that modern military affairs do not fall under the label of "history" is one that I believe to be entirely irrelevant in practice. While there may be a point of semantics to be argued here, there is little sense in making such a distinction on the WikiProject level, as the same community of editors tends to work on both newer and older topics; indeed, editors working on modern warfare have been doing so here since the beginning. Trying to artificially fracture the project along such lines would, in my opinion, be entirely unproductive and quite harmful to actual progress in article work. Beyond this, our more recent wording of the scope as "historical or modern-day warfare or military affairs" has made "military history" more of a convenient label for the broad topic area than a rigorously exact definition of what is and isn't included.
I cannot, therefore, see any real potential for a "Military" project covering topics that we do not already include here. The only major area—fictional militaries—already tends to be subsumed by the relevant fiction WikiProjects. If it does not have any future as a different project, though, is there any practical reason to retain a "separate" project that has become entirely redundant to this one?
(Incidentally, before anyone suggests this: I do not believe that trying to rename this project to "Military" would be either feasible—the scale of our project is rather too large for that—or beneficial, as we would lose the considerable name recognition and goodwill in the wider community that we have built up under the label of "Military history.")
Thoughts? Kirill Lokshin 02:39, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
I wonder if anybody knows that this article DOESN'T EVEN HAVE A TALK PAGE!
It's not even listed in your project at all!
Mind telling me why, and is it possible to get anyone on over there? (I would do it myself, but I am not an expert. I tend to refrain from editing information I'm not familiar with).
Colonel Marksman 16:54, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
If a web site displays no copyright status, does this mean we are free to use certain images from that site eg: [1], specifically these images: [2]. If I am allowed to download an image from a site like this, what licensing tag should I use? Thanks for your help. Raymond Palmer 18:08, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Someone just created Category:Battles of Belarus. What's in there now appears to be misfiled—Belarus didn't exist as an independent entity during the Middle Ages—but I'm curious: does anyone know of any actual battles in which an independent Belarus was a participant? Does this category have some potential, in other words, or is it going to be entirely empty? Comments at Category talk:Battles of Belarus would be highly appreciated! Kirill Lokshin 11:16, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
An idea that occurred to me: would it be worthwhile to have a list of high-quality articles (primarily FAs, and perhaps A-Class once we get them all reviewed) directly on the project page? While they can be found through the assessment categories, it's not, perhaps, immediately obvious that one can do so; and I think having such a list easily available might be helpful in terms of giving editors a place to look for ideas they may wish to emulate in their own articles. Here is a mockup of the list as it might appear.
Thoughts? Would this be a good idea? Kirill Lokshin 12:25, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
(unindent) - Abe Lincoln was already on my hit list for Bio and I just had my previous nom finally move to FARC so I'm able to nom another so just did Abe so we can kill 2 birds with one stone... -- plange 16:37, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
I have noticed that several Featured Articles have recently been sporting "in house" FA templates for there respective wikiprojects, such as the one below.
Perhaps we should consider a similar template for articles within the scope of our project. Thoughts? TomStar81 ( Talk) 05:05, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
I have tried to put some photos that I have taken on some articles but it doesn't seem to work. How can I place those photos onto Wikipedia? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kyriakos ( talk • contribs)
Thanks. Kyriakos 00:49, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
As both the permanent parents have been renamed at CFD, and the root of the hierarchy renamed from Category:military biographical stubs to Category:military personnel stubs at SFD, I'm going to do likewise for the rest without bothering to tag them for a separate discussion, unless there any objections here. (BTW, the {{ mil-stub}} is also oversized, should anyone feel a fit of organisation coming on.) Alai 17:20, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
BTW, I tripped across Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Military people, which references these en bloc. Should the Wikiproject field refer back to (some task force subpage of) here? Alai 05:08, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
I was interested in starting some articles on British naval guns, so took a quick inventory of what is already out there. So far we have;
Obviously, there seems to be no systematic method for naming articles. The official designation of these guns is;
I would like to propose some agreed method to name the articles. There is already a fairly systematic naming system for (British) Army guns, e.g Ordnance QF 2 pounder and Ordnance QF 6 pounder, this simply follows the official designation (but drops the gun weight in hundredweights). The Royal Navy designation system is unique as far as I know, I therefore do not think that titles need disambiguated with the word "British". I also think including the mark is over-specific, as apart from the 15 inch and 16 inch guns, most guns went through a large number of marks. For this reason, and the fact that the Royal Navy does not include it in the official designation, I also do not think the calibre should be included; there are, for instance, L/55 and L/45 guns on the page 4.5 inch (114 mm) gun, which should we use? I personally amn't keen either on including millimetres in the title. These guns were never reported with a metric equivalent, or known by such (the sole exception being the foreign Oerlikon 20 mm (QF 20 mm) and Bofors 40 mm (QF 40 mm)). We do not have a page [[Oerlikon 20 mm (0.79 inch) cannon]], likewise we do not include millimetre and inches in the title of the 2 pounder gun article. It also just makes the title that bit more complicated than it really needs to be.
My preferred choice for a titling system would therefore be [[designation, calibre in inches / shell weight in pounds, naval gun]], e.g. <nowiki BL 15 inch naval gun</nowiki>. The only shortcoming I can see with this system is where we have a case where a modern, unrelated weapon, is added into a page for historic guns due to a shared calibre - this is the case with the 4.5 inch (114 mm) gun page. However it would be my intention to move this to a page of it's own anyway.
Your thoughts would be appreciated, please do pick holes in my case as there is probably a lot I have missed. I know this is probably an obscure subject for many project members, but I think it is best just to have as many fine wikipedians that are part of this project as possible add their 2 cents. Emoscopes Talk 12:49, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
Can anyone recommend any good online resources for researching articles? I am interested in contributing, but I find that most of my knowledge is just floating around in my head but I don't have any actual citations. I have access to some online library resources like LexisNexis but those are mostly just news and journal articles. -- Undead1 17:32, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Not quite sure where to put the following anecdote, but I believe it's worth use somewhere in the creation of an encyclopedia.
In reading Anthony Mockler's Haile Selassie's War, which details the military maneuvers in East Africa between the Allies & the Italians between 1935-1942, I encountered a description of what Mockler described as what "must have been the last great European-led cavalry charge in Africa." During an engagement Mockler entitles "The Battle of the Lowlands", which happened as British forces invaded what is modern Eritrea from the west on or shortly after 19 January 1941, the advancing British were attacked by a detachment of men on horses, part of a larger group of African cavalry, firing from their saddles & throwing grenades, who nearly overran the British units as they set up their artillery pieces. As might be expected, the entire group of cavalry suffered horrendous losses: out of a unit of 500 men, Mockler states 179 horsemen were killed & 260 wounded, & 89 horses killed & 68 wounded. (Mockler, p.321)
Frankly, I think Mockler is understating the significance of this event. Although I have heard of Turkish cavalry being used successfully to repulse a Chinese infantry attack in the Korean War (sorry, although I trust my source, this is clearly a case of information coming from "a friend of a friend", so I can't add it to any article), I think this is the last time cavalry -- in the strict definition of men fighting on horseback -- were used in a major combat engagement. Can anyone confirm or deny my supposition? (Or even better, can someone use this in an article?) -- llywrch 04:21, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
Given that we seem to have a lot of 2-to-1 and 3-to-1 splits in the A-Class reviews, I'm wondering if it would be acceptable to tighten the passing criteria a bit, from the current:
Articles will generally be promoted to A-Class if (a) they have garnered at least three endorsements from uninvolved editors, and (b) there is at most one substantive objection. Please note that, in particularly egregious cases, even a single objection may cause a nomination to fail if it points out a critical flaw in the article.
to
An article will generally be promoted to A-Class if (a) it has garnered at least three endorsements from uninvolved editors, and (b) there are no substantive objections. Please note, however, that a nomination with a single isolated objection may pass if the objection does not point out a major flaw in the article.
This would avoid basing the pass-or-fail decision on the third reviewer, and perhaps make the process a bit more rigorous (which might prove of value, as there are some discussions about giving A-Class status greater prominence within Wikipedia as a whole). Thoughs? Does anyone have problems with making such a change? Kirill Lokshin 14:30, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
I've nearly finished going through the existing stock of featured articles for the showcase section. The result I've arrived at is that, out of 115 FAs, only 45 generally meet current criteria, while ~70 do not (primarily because of inadequate or non-existent citations).
There are three articles that still need to be tossed in one pile or the other; I'd really appreciate it if someone could take a look at them and uncomment them in the list or note what the major issue is if they no longer meet the criteria:
We may also be able to add in a section for A-Class articles now that we have some that have gone through the new review process. Kirill Lokshin 17:00, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
I had to do a bit of scrolling today, so I thought I might as well ask (particularly for the benefit of anyone with a slower connection): is the overall length of the main project page (which has been steadily growing) a problem for anyone? If it's getting too long, there are several (very large) transcluded subpages that could be turned into links, substantially reducing the overall size; but I'd like to know if anyone is actually bothered by it before I go off and start proposing useless changes. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 01:11, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
What exactly is the convention for naming a category of wars of a nonstate? I would appreciate if someone could let me know. Cheers, Tewfik Talk 07:15, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
I thought about asking this at the reference desk, but figured this would be a better place to pose this question: I have been working on a rewrite of Fort Bliss that I recently transfered into my sandbox from its previously offline page. I am still working on some of the history details, but I have hit a road block with regards to Fort Bliss and the 1988 BRAC round. According to this website (scroll about 3/4ths of the way down the page; Fort Bliss is listed under the section "United States - South Central Region") Fort Bliss was realigned, or slated to be relaingned in 1988. Subsequent checks of the Government Accountability Office website turn up references to Fort Bliss in the 1988 BRAC round, but I can not find any information on what left or what came in (I am assuming that the base was unable to get around the realignment). Any ideas on where I should go from here? TomStar81 ( Talk) 05:18, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 30 | ← | Archive 35 | Archive 36 | Archive 37 | Archive 38 | Archive 39 | Archive 40 |
Category:Military operations is, quite frankly, a mess. Some of the things found within include:
I think we ought to clean this up. Hence, the following idea:
The resulting tree would be:
A few categories would need to be dealt with:
This is all subject to change, of course, and any comments or suggestions would be extremely welcome. Kirill Lokshin 02:19, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Just to make sure it doesn't get lost in the churn of discussions here:
The A-Class review process has been started, and currently has four articles that need evaluation. The success of such a process obviously requires a certain level of wider input; hence, stopping by the assessment department and commenting on the articles undergoing review would be very appreciated! Kirill Lokshin 06:04, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
(unindent) What do we do about current A-class articles? I noticed LordAmeth removing this from here but the way it's worded it makes it sound like the person who added the A did something wrong, when it was simply added prior to the new process. My thinking is, instead of removing, we renominate. (I did that with the one article I edit that had a prior A rating) -- plange 02:39, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm currently expanding The Royal Scots (where "currently" means "I've got to 1919 and then been sidetracked for two months, but I'll get back to it soon"), and I've run across an interesting problem.
British infantry regiments, unlike most others, never operated as single units in the modern period - they were "administrative families" for a large number of battalions. When writing histories, what this means is that you usually have a couple of battalions in different places to keep track of, which isn't much of a problem. Then you hit WWI (and to a lesser extent WWII). A vast number of battalions are raised, and go off to fight all over the place, in entirely unrelated formations; you need to find some way of discussing them all. There are two solutions:
The Royal Scots currently uses the first; The King's Regiment (Liverpool) (an excellent article) uses the second. The first is a lot simpler if you're wanting to find out what happened to a particular subunit ("what happened to the 16th?"); the second makes it a lot easier to discuss overall history ("In 1916, nine battalions of the regiment saw action at the Somme...")
Which do people think is more useful for our readers, or more in keeping with standard practice? Thoughts appreciated. Shimgray | talk | 16:49, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
The war elephant article has just been listed for featured article review with a number of complaints about accuracy and referencing. Anyone with knowledge of the topic—and I believe there are a number of people here with some experience in the area?—is encouraged to drop by! Kirill Lokshin 16:53, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
I recall there being an earlier debate about establishing a 'War on terrorism' task-force os something similar. If there are still editors looking for a way to collaborate on the topic, check out Wikipedia:WikiProject Terrorism and counter-terrorism. enjoy! Mike McGregor (Can) 19:35, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Which do we use if someone conceivably fits several infobox categories? Take Fitzhugh Lee? Does he get a {{ Infobox Military Person}} or {{ Infobox Governor}}? Or do we use the generic {{ Infobox Biography}} for cases like this? -- plange 03:29, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
From my talk page:
I think mikkalai has justification for his suspicion (see Revision as of 06:25, 8 August 2006 to Revision as of 05:50, 29 August 2006 by 70.123.197.91). I don't recognise the text (but then it is not an area of WWII I have read about in detail) and if it is original work them we should encourage 70.123.197.91 to acquire a user ID -- Philip Baird Shearer 09:09, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
It's been six months since the last time I brought this up, which I think is a long enough delay...
I think the time has come to finally lay the long-catatonic WikiProject Military to rest, and propose redirecting that page to this one. It has been a rump project from the very beginning, and has had absolutely no activity since last March; I see no reason to keep it around merely as a relic, nor to attempt to revive it as a separate group from this one.
The objection—brought up the previous time I suggested this—that modern military affairs do not fall under the label of "history" is one that I believe to be entirely irrelevant in practice. While there may be a point of semantics to be argued here, there is little sense in making such a distinction on the WikiProject level, as the same community of editors tends to work on both newer and older topics; indeed, editors working on modern warfare have been doing so here since the beginning. Trying to artificially fracture the project along such lines would, in my opinion, be entirely unproductive and quite harmful to actual progress in article work. Beyond this, our more recent wording of the scope as "historical or modern-day warfare or military affairs" has made "military history" more of a convenient label for the broad topic area than a rigorously exact definition of what is and isn't included.
I cannot, therefore, see any real potential for a "Military" project covering topics that we do not already include here. The only major area—fictional militaries—already tends to be subsumed by the relevant fiction WikiProjects. If it does not have any future as a different project, though, is there any practical reason to retain a "separate" project that has become entirely redundant to this one?
(Incidentally, before anyone suggests this: I do not believe that trying to rename this project to "Military" would be either feasible—the scale of our project is rather too large for that—or beneficial, as we would lose the considerable name recognition and goodwill in the wider community that we have built up under the label of "Military history.")
Thoughts? Kirill Lokshin 02:39, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
I wonder if anybody knows that this article DOESN'T EVEN HAVE A TALK PAGE!
It's not even listed in your project at all!
Mind telling me why, and is it possible to get anyone on over there? (I would do it myself, but I am not an expert. I tend to refrain from editing information I'm not familiar with).
Colonel Marksman 16:54, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
If a web site displays no copyright status, does this mean we are free to use certain images from that site eg: [1], specifically these images: [2]. If I am allowed to download an image from a site like this, what licensing tag should I use? Thanks for your help. Raymond Palmer 18:08, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Someone just created Category:Battles of Belarus. What's in there now appears to be misfiled—Belarus didn't exist as an independent entity during the Middle Ages—but I'm curious: does anyone know of any actual battles in which an independent Belarus was a participant? Does this category have some potential, in other words, or is it going to be entirely empty? Comments at Category talk:Battles of Belarus would be highly appreciated! Kirill Lokshin 11:16, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
An idea that occurred to me: would it be worthwhile to have a list of high-quality articles (primarily FAs, and perhaps A-Class once we get them all reviewed) directly on the project page? While they can be found through the assessment categories, it's not, perhaps, immediately obvious that one can do so; and I think having such a list easily available might be helpful in terms of giving editors a place to look for ideas they may wish to emulate in their own articles. Here is a mockup of the list as it might appear.
Thoughts? Would this be a good idea? Kirill Lokshin 12:25, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
(unindent) - Abe Lincoln was already on my hit list for Bio and I just had my previous nom finally move to FARC so I'm able to nom another so just did Abe so we can kill 2 birds with one stone... -- plange 16:37, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
I have noticed that several Featured Articles have recently been sporting "in house" FA templates for there respective wikiprojects, such as the one below.
Perhaps we should consider a similar template for articles within the scope of our project. Thoughts? TomStar81 ( Talk) 05:05, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
I have tried to put some photos that I have taken on some articles but it doesn't seem to work. How can I place those photos onto Wikipedia? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kyriakos ( talk • contribs)
Thanks. Kyriakos 00:49, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
As both the permanent parents have been renamed at CFD, and the root of the hierarchy renamed from Category:military biographical stubs to Category:military personnel stubs at SFD, I'm going to do likewise for the rest without bothering to tag them for a separate discussion, unless there any objections here. (BTW, the {{ mil-stub}} is also oversized, should anyone feel a fit of organisation coming on.) Alai 17:20, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
BTW, I tripped across Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Military people, which references these en bloc. Should the Wikiproject field refer back to (some task force subpage of) here? Alai 05:08, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
I was interested in starting some articles on British naval guns, so took a quick inventory of what is already out there. So far we have;
Obviously, there seems to be no systematic method for naming articles. The official designation of these guns is;
I would like to propose some agreed method to name the articles. There is already a fairly systematic naming system for (British) Army guns, e.g Ordnance QF 2 pounder and Ordnance QF 6 pounder, this simply follows the official designation (but drops the gun weight in hundredweights). The Royal Navy designation system is unique as far as I know, I therefore do not think that titles need disambiguated with the word "British". I also think including the mark is over-specific, as apart from the 15 inch and 16 inch guns, most guns went through a large number of marks. For this reason, and the fact that the Royal Navy does not include it in the official designation, I also do not think the calibre should be included; there are, for instance, L/55 and L/45 guns on the page 4.5 inch (114 mm) gun, which should we use? I personally amn't keen either on including millimetres in the title. These guns were never reported with a metric equivalent, or known by such (the sole exception being the foreign Oerlikon 20 mm (QF 20 mm) and Bofors 40 mm (QF 40 mm)). We do not have a page [[Oerlikon 20 mm (0.79 inch) cannon]], likewise we do not include millimetre and inches in the title of the 2 pounder gun article. It also just makes the title that bit more complicated than it really needs to be.
My preferred choice for a titling system would therefore be [[designation, calibre in inches / shell weight in pounds, naval gun]], e.g. <nowiki BL 15 inch naval gun</nowiki>. The only shortcoming I can see with this system is where we have a case where a modern, unrelated weapon, is added into a page for historic guns due to a shared calibre - this is the case with the 4.5 inch (114 mm) gun page. However it would be my intention to move this to a page of it's own anyway.
Your thoughts would be appreciated, please do pick holes in my case as there is probably a lot I have missed. I know this is probably an obscure subject for many project members, but I think it is best just to have as many fine wikipedians that are part of this project as possible add their 2 cents. Emoscopes Talk 12:49, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
Can anyone recommend any good online resources for researching articles? I am interested in contributing, but I find that most of my knowledge is just floating around in my head but I don't have any actual citations. I have access to some online library resources like LexisNexis but those are mostly just news and journal articles. -- Undead1 17:32, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Not quite sure where to put the following anecdote, but I believe it's worth use somewhere in the creation of an encyclopedia.
In reading Anthony Mockler's Haile Selassie's War, which details the military maneuvers in East Africa between the Allies & the Italians between 1935-1942, I encountered a description of what Mockler described as what "must have been the last great European-led cavalry charge in Africa." During an engagement Mockler entitles "The Battle of the Lowlands", which happened as British forces invaded what is modern Eritrea from the west on or shortly after 19 January 1941, the advancing British were attacked by a detachment of men on horses, part of a larger group of African cavalry, firing from their saddles & throwing grenades, who nearly overran the British units as they set up their artillery pieces. As might be expected, the entire group of cavalry suffered horrendous losses: out of a unit of 500 men, Mockler states 179 horsemen were killed & 260 wounded, & 89 horses killed & 68 wounded. (Mockler, p.321)
Frankly, I think Mockler is understating the significance of this event. Although I have heard of Turkish cavalry being used successfully to repulse a Chinese infantry attack in the Korean War (sorry, although I trust my source, this is clearly a case of information coming from "a friend of a friend", so I can't add it to any article), I think this is the last time cavalry -- in the strict definition of men fighting on horseback -- were used in a major combat engagement. Can anyone confirm or deny my supposition? (Or even better, can someone use this in an article?) -- llywrch 04:21, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
Given that we seem to have a lot of 2-to-1 and 3-to-1 splits in the A-Class reviews, I'm wondering if it would be acceptable to tighten the passing criteria a bit, from the current:
Articles will generally be promoted to A-Class if (a) they have garnered at least three endorsements from uninvolved editors, and (b) there is at most one substantive objection. Please note that, in particularly egregious cases, even a single objection may cause a nomination to fail if it points out a critical flaw in the article.
to
An article will generally be promoted to A-Class if (a) it has garnered at least three endorsements from uninvolved editors, and (b) there are no substantive objections. Please note, however, that a nomination with a single isolated objection may pass if the objection does not point out a major flaw in the article.
This would avoid basing the pass-or-fail decision on the third reviewer, and perhaps make the process a bit more rigorous (which might prove of value, as there are some discussions about giving A-Class status greater prominence within Wikipedia as a whole). Thoughs? Does anyone have problems with making such a change? Kirill Lokshin 14:30, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
I've nearly finished going through the existing stock of featured articles for the showcase section. The result I've arrived at is that, out of 115 FAs, only 45 generally meet current criteria, while ~70 do not (primarily because of inadequate or non-existent citations).
There are three articles that still need to be tossed in one pile or the other; I'd really appreciate it if someone could take a look at them and uncomment them in the list or note what the major issue is if they no longer meet the criteria:
We may also be able to add in a section for A-Class articles now that we have some that have gone through the new review process. Kirill Lokshin 17:00, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
I had to do a bit of scrolling today, so I thought I might as well ask (particularly for the benefit of anyone with a slower connection): is the overall length of the main project page (which has been steadily growing) a problem for anyone? If it's getting too long, there are several (very large) transcluded subpages that could be turned into links, substantially reducing the overall size; but I'd like to know if anyone is actually bothered by it before I go off and start proposing useless changes. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 01:11, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
What exactly is the convention for naming a category of wars of a nonstate? I would appreciate if someone could let me know. Cheers, Tewfik Talk 07:15, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
I thought about asking this at the reference desk, but figured this would be a better place to pose this question: I have been working on a rewrite of Fort Bliss that I recently transfered into my sandbox from its previously offline page. I am still working on some of the history details, but I have hit a road block with regards to Fort Bliss and the 1988 BRAC round. According to this website (scroll about 3/4ths of the way down the page; Fort Bliss is listed under the section "United States - South Central Region") Fort Bliss was realigned, or slated to be relaingned in 1988. Subsequent checks of the Government Accountability Office website turn up references to Fort Bliss in the 1988 BRAC round, but I can not find any information on what left or what came in (I am assuming that the base was unable to get around the realignment). Any ideas on where I should go from here? TomStar81 ( Talk) 05:18, 16 September 2006 (UTC)