This Military history WikiProject page is an archive, log collection, or currently inactive page; it is kept primarily for historical interest. |
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 35 | ← | Archive 38 | Archive 39 | Archive 40 | Archive 41 | Archive 42 | → | Archive 45 |
No promotions, no new FACs this week. One name change, to President Truman's relief of General Douglas MacArthur. User:Raul654 appears to be on the road to reconfirmation as the FA Director at Wikipedia:Featured articles/2012 RfC on FA leadership. - Dank ( push to talk) 00:42, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
"you folks at MilHist could significantly speed up your FAC turnaround time if you'd train someone over there to do image reviews and to spotcheck sources for close paraphrasing (hint :). Sandy gives a couple of helpful links. Also see Nikki's and Ian's replies. - Dank ( push to talk) 04:49, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
I'm not on a wikibreak, but I'm unwatching a bunch of pages. This will be my last FAC update for a while, and I won't be copyediting or reviewing for a while. I've been studying the copyediting and prose reviewing at FAC, and this stuff is really hard ... and what makes it worse is, surprisingly, no one's written a suitable usage guide that covers collaborative writing as it's done in Wikipedia in 2012. I'm not sure if I can write or co-author that book, but I'm going to give it a shot, and I need some time and some mental distance from Wikipedia to do it. Still, if there's something I can help with, don't hesitate to ask on my talk page. I hope these FAC updates have been helpful. I'll provide an outline of what I want to cover in the book soon, in case anyone wants to collaborate. - Dank ( push to talk) 13:30, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
-- Sp33dyphil © hat ontributions 03:49, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
I don't want to sound like I am complaining here. I feel as if other articles in the same section of "Vilyam Genrikhovich Fisher" (which is the article I overhauled and nominated for GAN), has been overlooked by other articles in the same section of GAN. Two of those articles are around a third of the size ... compared to what my article is. Could someone please when they have time GAN review it please?
Adamdaley (
talk)
02:31, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
I started this academy article from the Open Task list up top, but then fell a bit flat on things to say. I decided to save what I wrote so far, however, If anyone cares to pick up where I left off, feel free. Otherwise, I may return to add more over time. It isn't my best writing to date, I admit, but it's a start. My experience with OOBs is limited to early-modern/Napoleonic army structures, so it is lacking somewhat with regards more modern units. Anyone with knowledge of modern OOB structures is welcome to throw in extra details. Cheers, Ma®©usBritish [ chat 05:59, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
Another done. May need correcting in any spots where I've got the details inaccurate. Cheers, Ma®©usBritish [ chat 05:29, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
This one already existed but was a little tricky to follow, and seemed incomplete, so I have rewritten it with an example that anyone anywhere should understand; it is less related to an aspect of military history, but the US Navy example was a bit too specific to follow, as we wouldn't all know the hierarchy of the US fleet to make sense of the categorisation example given. The purpose of the Academy is to give a general idea, rather than confuse further, so I went for a broader topic. Cheers, Ma®©usBritish [ chat 14:50, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
Several of the wikilinks on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment page are non-existent. They are all anchors so don't show as redlinks. They are: all three links in Q6, "peer review" link in Q9, "assessment scale" link in Q10, "coordinators" link in Q14. I may have missed one or two. Thought it best to point these out, rather than just remove them myself, so that someone can update the page if necessary. Redundant anchors seems a bit pointless to me, but I know Kirill usually updates the project pages, mostly, so he, or someone else, may simply have forgotten about these FAQs when tweaking the layout over time, rather than them being left there intentionally. Cheers, Ma®©usBritish [ chat 04:57, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
I was wondering if anything is to become of the new project Members' list that Kirill was developing last year which looked promising? I have just gone through the current Active members list, where there were about 1,200 names. I checked them all down to the last of the "B" names, moving those who have not contributed for ~6 months to the Inactive list. Of the 177 I checked, 64 were definitely inactive, only about 3 indef blocks, and many not having contributed since 2009/2010, with a few inactive since early 2011. It would take a looong time to check all 1,200, but if we assume about one-third of the list are inactive, we will lose 400 names.
It might be worth removing those names from the Bugle, to free up bot resources – one member I saw as inactive actually never contributed to wiki after adding their name to the members' list, but has dozens of the Bugle posts on their talk page. Seems wasteful. If Kirill is able to revisit the format he was developing, and if we had a bot that could routinely check everyone's activity, say once a week, to render those who have not contributed for 6 months "inactive" and also pause their Bugle subscription until they possibly return to editing, I think it would be worthwhile and a big step forward for the administration of the project. MilHist is very in touch with its articles, sharing knowledge, and "inner members" but I feel it is a little out of touch with its less involved members, and they soon tend to drift away into other things either out of boredom of due to feeling there is a lack of interest in editors. The list Kirill was developing has the potential to allow various things to be gained from it, whereas at the moment we have separate clumsy member active/inactive member lists, separate Bugle lists, etc.
By knowing who is active, there may be long-term benefits, in terms of knowing who is active, the areas they work on, etc. If we could see some new progress towards getting the member list up to standards with improved functionality that the wiki-technology allows for, rather than a plain ol' list, we might learn what benefits it offers, and possibly be able to improve or boost project interest.
Ma®©usBritish [ chat 18:32, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
Overall, this looks excellent; thank you very much for putting it together!
If it's possible, there are a couple of minor changes I'd like to see made before we finalize the table. First, it would be nice to pre-add blank no_notices= and no_news= parameters to every entry; this will allow us to use the master table to generate the distribution lists for the project newsletter and other mass-distribution notices rather than maintaining a separate subscription list.
Second, the raw wiki-syntax currently places each entry on a single line; while this is a more efficient use of space, it will make it somewhat more difficult for people to update their entries. I think it might be better to format each parameter on a separate line, to match normal template documentation syntax:
{{WPMILHIST User | user= 489thCorsica | location= | languages= | help_adm= | help_cpe= | help_map= | help_img= | help_pho= | help_src= | no_news= | no_notices= | interests= WWII Aviation History }}
As far as the unicode sorting is concerned, the Cyrillic name is the equivalent of the English "Tovarisch", but I have no idea how the Hebrew one is transliterated. In the interests of simplicity, I'd suggest simply leaving both at the bottom and letting the users move the entries manually if they're so inclined.
On a different note, do you think the overall size of the page is still reasonable? It would probably be worthwhile to create alphabetical sections to make editing easier, at the very least; but I'm wondering if we'd also need to split up the page itself. Kirill [talk] [prof] 04:21, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
Kirill: To reduce the table size, why don't we just remove names that have been inactive for a hellish long time. Many of these editors have not edited on Wiki since 2009, a lot since 2010.. I don't see why we need to "hoard" names that old. I think we should drop anyone who hasn't edited since 1 Jan 2011. Not sure if keeping them on the list serves any practical purposes. If they return to the project, it should be up to them to readd their names. Don't want to be negative here.. but for all we know some of those people from 3 years ago could be deceased, and we've never been informed. Some may have just quit editing altogether. Either way, I think a year is a long time for someone to not return to their account, and a members list of ~30% defunc accounts is a lot to sift through if you're looking for someone for a specific purpose. It would also flush out anyone who has been indef blocked/banned since pre-2011 and shown no interest in returning. Administratively, it would be a good move to reorganise and only import those who have been "Wiki active" since 1/1/11 and routinely mark anyone who has not edited for 3+ months of what remains as "inactive". A bot should be configured to update inactives and purge anyone after a year of zero-edits, to help maintain efficiency and reduce the appearance of artificial members. Ma®©usBritish[ chat 06:09, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
I've modified Mojoworker's sandbox version to include alphanumeric headings and a TOC. How does the new format look, in particular with regard to the ease of adding a new entry? Kirill [talk] [prof] 03:19, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
|- {{WPMILHIST User | user= | location= | languages= | help_adm= | help_cpe= | help_map= | help_img= | help_pho= | help_src= | news_out_out= | notices_out_out= | interests= }}
thus creating:
|- {{WPMILHIST User ...}} |- {{WPMILHIST User }} |- {{WPMILHIST User ...}} |- {{WPMILHIST User ...}}
strongly warning members not to add a subject/headline. That would then save into a page, which may not render properly when viewed per se, but if transcluded to a page between the {| and |}, i.e.:
{| ! header !! header !! header !! header... {{MilHist memberslist}} |}
may create a table, and save editors having to load 1,200+ rows to add themselves, and would make "full" sorting available, rather than split tables, which negates the point of the sorting facility. To be honest, I don't know if that would work.. but if Wiki can render the {|--data--|} into one table, flawlessly, it should, in theory, work. The preloaded page could also be permanently semi-protected so only registered members can use it, to reduce chances of IP vandalism, and fewer opportunities for mistakes to happen. I doubt coords would ever have to remove more than 1 or 2 accidental subject lines, every so often, thus very low overhead. Ma®©usBritish[ chat 12:43, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
Any update on this? I've been manually keeping the version in my sandbox synchronized with the live version, but there have been 6 changes in the last couple of days. Looking through recent history, that seems a little higher volume than usual. It's not a whole lot of effort, and I'm sure you have a lot of things on your plate, so I'm happy to continue keeping them in synch, but if it's going to be a while, it may be easier to just run through the recreation process again. Mojoworker ( talk) 17:55, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
Quick question: what do people think about switching the list format in the project showcase from the current vertical one to a horizontal one (as in WP:FA)? This would get rid of some of the currently wasted space and eliminate the need to worry about column alignment. Thoughts? Kirill [talk] [prof] 01:31, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
I was thinking of something along the following lines:
I don't know whether that's sufficiently organized for our use, or whether it looks more like an "unreadable wall of text", as Nick mentions below. Kirill [talk] [prof] 13:25, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
Two more questions regarding the showcase format:
Comments would be appreciated! Kirill [talk] [prof] 13:39, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
Over the next few weeks/months I'm planning to make an effort get to grips with organising our Academy. I envisage this involving an initial stocktaking of the existing content, followed by collation and rationalisation to group related information together and remove repetition. Finally the content will need to be organised and some sort of overall structure put in place.
The end point I'd like to achieve is a hierarchical set of courses/lessons on each topic, linked in some way (possibly by template), any of which can be dipped into at will or all of which can be completed as a coherent course, with a mixture of technical 'how to' stuff (like our closing an ACR page) and advice from experienced editors, and all following a common style. I'd also like to include some means of obtaining feedback from users and possibly a directory of 'tutors' (ie editors willing to assist Academy users with personal advice etc on each topic).
Obviously this isn't going to be a trivial task and it will involve substantial editing of the content others have already contributed. With this in mind...
Thoughts welcome :) EyeSerene talk 09:11, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
I'm not sure that reactivating a separate talk page is going to be particularly useful—if the idea is to get more people participating in the discussion, it would probably be easier to hold it on a higher-traffic page (such as here or on WT:MILHIST) rather than on a new one—but it's not a big deal either way. Kirill [talk] [prof] 13:33, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
This might be a stupid question, but do all of these topics need to be Milhist-specific/targeted? Obviously some are by their very nature, but there are non-Milhist guides on working with free images, for example, or reviewing at FAC. Nikkimaria ( talk) 02:31, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
To address some of the points above:
EyeSerene talk 10:24, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
I'm proposing that we attempt to develop a project consensus on the above issue. This is the sort of thing that would formerly have been discussed at the STT but I feel here might be a good venue to chew over how we should frame what we put to our members.
To refresh memories, we get regular posts at WT:MILHIST about articles (usually biographical) that include a 'salad bar' of medal ribbons and/or icons or images of medals. Examples are here, here, here and here. There has also been a recent discussion at WikiProject Australia about the issue. We've had debates on WT:MILHIST a few times but I feel that the number of queries we get indicates that this remains an ongoing concern for our members. Developing some clear guidance backed by project consensus would, I think, be a useful exercise.
My questions then:
Your thoughts? EyeSerene talk 15:48, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
I suspected the answer would be "medals only", but I've noticed unit insignia being mentioned on occasion so thought it might be as well to ask! Since Nick's advised getting as wide an input as possible, might it be worth (as Shimgray has suggested here) configuring the discussion as an RfC? As noted we need to identify positions before we can formulate a guideline, so can I suggest the following?:
Proposed RfC wording |
---|
The presence of medal ribbon pictograms in articles has been frequently discussed here and elsewhere on Wikipedia. Because of the re-occurrence of this topic, and the inconclusive nature of the discussions, the coordinators are requesting your assistance in developing a guideline that can be added to our project's manual of style.
Examples of medal pictograms in articles can be found here, here, here and here. Previous discussions have taken place in varying degrees of detail here, here, here, here, here and most recently here. As the first stage of this process there are two questions we would like to put to editors:
At this early stage these questions are intended to prompt discussion rather than support/oppose type comments. However, please feel free to respond in whatever way and with as much detail as you wish. The responses will be used to formulate a guideline to be put before the project for consensus at a later date. |
Obviously there are some links and background information needed (eg links to examples like those above), but would this be along the right lines? Please feel free to amend etc! EyeSerene talk 10:08, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
I think that WT:MILHIST is in danger of becoming a victim of its own success. While it's excellent that the project's main talk page is busy, there have been over 30 new threads started in the last week (including review notifications) and I'm finding it hard to follow what's going on, and I'm sure that others are in the same boat. The most obvious way to better manage the discussions seems to be to reactivate the most-relevant task force talk pages (eg, those for the German, Australian and New Zealand and British TFs) and encourage non-general discussions to take place there. Alternately, and I'm not sure if this is technically possible, I've always liked the idea of setting up some thematic talk pages (eg, one for general business, one for discussions of MOS-type issues, one for discussions of notability and so on). Do other coordinators think that this is something which is worth addressing though? Nick-D ( talk) 07:44, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
I tend to agree with Sp33dyphil that trying to create "thematic" talk pages will be confusing for most participants; to take the example of the Village Pump, the scope of the technical subpage is fairly well-defined, but the scopes of the other four are not, and any particular discussion may wind up taking place on any of them, almost at random. Beyond that, I'm generally wary of pushing discussions off to subpages as a matter of principle. In my experience, every additional level of subpaging reduces readership and participation by an order of magnitude; recall, for example, the failure of the strategy talk page (which was, in some ways, an attempt to split off a particular "type" of discussion).
If we're going to end regular review notices, I would suggest replacing {{ WPMILHIST Announcements}} (at the top of the talk page) with {{ WPMILHIST Review alerts}}; the former is quite dense (and quite large), and its presence in a fully expanded state would likely turn people off reading the page. As MisterBee1966 says, the dedicated open task page is always available for anyone that wants to see more detail or items not listed in the smaller templates.
One other option we might consider would be to start more regular use of the various templates like {{ resolved}} or {{ discussion top}}/{{ discussion bottom}}, although I'm not entirely sure how much that will improve readability. Kirill [talk] [prof] 13:53, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
I've taken a stab at rearranging the header on WT:MILHIST. The new layout eliminates the standalone news/announcements box (in favor of the corresponding fields in {{ WPMILHIST Announcements}}) and shows the open task summary box in a fully expanded form. Comments would be appreciated; in particular, should we perhaps have the open task box omit the category listings at the bottom to save space? Kirill [talk] [prof] 01:00, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
Hi can this discussion Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history#What should be in Campaign Box templates be added to the Template:WPMILHIST Announcements to generate more input. Jim Sweeney ( talk) 20:13, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
It is with great regret that I am compelled to resign as a MilHist coordinator as a result of a recent ArbCom case. Hawkeye7 ( talk) 21:18, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
As Bugle co-editor, I just want to thank everyone who's been adding complete blurbs for promoted articles in the upcoming issue, rather than simply placeholders -- that saves Ed and me a fair bit of work. One thing though, on a few occasions fair-use images have been incorporated, presumably because they were in the article's infobox and no-one checked that the licence for that particular image was free. Not singling anyone out at all, I've done it myself when I wrongly assumed a WWII-era shot just had to have been PD, but in fact it wasn't. I realise checking the licence adds a bit more time to the process but we need to be on the safe side -- it's the same rule as for TFA on the front page. Remember that while the infobox image might be the most representative of the subject, it may not be the only picture in the article, and if the infobox shot is copyrighted, others aren't necessarily. Thanks/cheers, Ian Rose ( talk) 23:16, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
I just noticed that five articles listed for ACRs at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/A-Class review hadn't been added to Template:WPMILHIST Announcements. Not surprisingly, these articles had received very few reviews. Could I suggest that everyone watchlist Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/A-Class review? Cheers, Nick-D ( talk) 04:29, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
I'm not bringing this up at WT:FAC yet because Raul and others have asked us to put off general discussions there for a bit, but I want to offer my opinion here (and maybe this will turn into a discussion that can jump-start the impending discussion at WT:FAC) that our articles aren't going to get sufficient FAC-level copyediting unless and until we find a way to pull in more people to do it. What I've done for the last couple of years isn't sustainable if I'm going to get some serious writing done. There are two problems: articles need copyediting to pass FAC, but they also need a consistent minimal level of copyediting just to survive a week at FAC ... the new delegates haven't been too brutal yet about this, but I think that's the direction we're headed. The WP:Checklist has always been conceived as a list of uncontroversial style points that anyone can follow and apply ... if we need to lengthen or shrink or tweak that list, please comment here or at WT:Checklist. I think there's a chance that the upcoming discussion at FAC will result in "FAC clerks" who may be able to handle some of the workload, which would be a good thing ... but whether we have clerks or not, we need black-and-white criteria to follow, and WP:Checklist is the closest thing we've got. - Dank ( push to talk) 15:45, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
Hello. Per this discussion, I've split the Warfare GAs into a separate page of their own, Wikipedia:Good articles/Warfare. I've prodded for an update on Template:GA/Topic and informed User:GimmeBot and User:GA bot about the change. I don't know all of the places our good articles are linked to on this project, but the links should be updated to reflect this. I'll be continuing to update the page to optimize its display, and any suggestions/assistance are appreciated. Thanks! — Ed! (talk) 17:42, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
I've tallied the points, updated the table and awarded the barnstars to Sp33dyphil (1st place) and Djmaschek (2nd place).-- Sturmvogel 66 ( talk) 05:21, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
I ordered a book from Amazon which came from England. Inside this book between pages 32–33, was a newspaper clipping about "Sensational British Invention! STOPS GARDEN DAMAGE FOR GOOD" from The Sunday times April 29, 1973. Is the owner of this clipping looking for this for almost 39 years? Adamdaley ( talk) 08:26, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
Could someone point me to an article in any printed English encyclopedia on any subject that has as high a proportion of German as this article? Also see WT:FAC#Copyediting_question. - Dank ( push to talk) 13:11, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
No, I'm not frustrated with you and you certainly aren't slow-witted (as you know!), I'm just saying that I've put in some time on this issue already. A couple of points:
There has been an article in the Sydney Morning Herald (possibly March 12th, 2012?) and in the Newcastle Herald newspaper which I've typed out on so I can refer to it when I am out of hospital located at Gunner Albert Cleary - Newcastle Herald Article. Thought it might be of interest for his wikipedia article? Adamdaley ( talk) 02:47, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
Exactly a month ago Tom penned a letter of good-bye. Now I'm here. As some of you might know, I am still in the mangled remnant of what some people call an "Education System". Due to two bad grades (Science and Pre-Calc), I'm moving schools, which will take a long time and will leave me off-wiki for at least half a year as I re-adapt. It's been nice as a coord, but I won't be able to keep up my duties any longer. Thank you, everybody, and I hope I can put my name forth here once more when everything returns to normal. Buggie111 ( talk) 22:42, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
I'm on a copyediting break. At
Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Battle of Radzymin (1920)/archive2, I haven't checked the edits so far or copyedited the second half. I'm going to do a little more on
Werner Hartenstein. I haven't looked at
Iraq War in Anbar Province and I only got the first 40% of
Thomas Blamey. Other than that, the current crop of FACs looks good. - Dank (
push to talk)
23:28, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
I'm a big believer in just doing (or not doing) things on Wikipedia rather than making a big announcement about it, but this one needs a heads-up: from now on, instead of copyediting and supporting most of the Milhist FACs myself, I will oppose the few Milhist FACs that are in bad shape, and offer copyediting comments on the FAC page that cover two-thirds of the text for most of the rest, and leave it for someone else to cover the rest of the text and decide whether to support after evaluating the FAC comments. In the short run, this might be bad news for Milhist's FAC output, unless people get busy copyediting. (The bit about not supporting is going to be the hardest to swallow ... feel free to email me if you want my reasoning for why it won't work for me to support some and not others.) This is the only approach that seems to me to have a chance of long-run success that I haven't already tried over the last two years. It wouldn't work for me to make notes on the entire text and not support; FAC reviewers wouldn't like it, and those of you who remember the bad old days at FAC know that none of us would be happy arguing the copyediting issues with people who were only relying on other people's notes and not actually doing any copyediting. And it's best if copyeditors feel some kind of personal stake in the work if they're going to be judging it; otherwise, "no" is just too easy.
I have no regrets about my work and Milhist's work at FAC so far; I think we've done what the project needed, and I've learned a lot and had a hand in supporting some truly great writers. And of course, it's the high rankings in search results for most of Milhist's pages, not our comparatively few FACs, that make the biggest impression on our readers. Still, FAC has had and will have a role to play in raising our visibility, especially among Wikipedians, and I hope this new plan will draw in new copyeditors who will learn the ropes and share the load. - Dank ( push to talk) 18:00, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
I suspect this has gone mostly unnoticed, given the low traffic on that page, but pbl1998 has listed himself as the "re-founder" of the Napoleonic era task force, complete with his own section on the task force page and so forth.
Given that we've traditionally avoided displays of this sort—aside from the practical difficulties in identifying a distinct "founder" when a task forces idea emerges from a project-wide discussion, the idea of giving such a degree of prominence to a single arbitrary individual seems a bit counter to the overall collaborative ethos of the project—I would assume that this is undesirable?
(Even if we did desire to identify task force founders, incidentally, the idea that anyone at all can simply come along to an inactive task force and declare themselves the "re-founder" strikes me as quite odd.)
My attempt to move pbl1998's name back to the participant list was reverted, so perhaps someone might have a quiet word with him and explain why what he's trying to do isn't a good idea? Kirill [talk] [prof] 03:59, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
I suspect but do not know that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chikuhei_Nakajima contains a mistranslation from Japanese "He was also promoted to captain at the end of 1911". If we look at other men in the same class, Furuichi Tatsuo, Kawahara Hiroshi or Ujiie Nagaaki at Nishida's site http://homepage2.nifty.com/nishidah/e/pe15.htm#v003, we find that they were all promoted to Navy Lieutenant (海軍大尉 Kaigun Daii) at the end of 1911. This rank is equivalent to army captain. Thus I am willing to bet that Nakajima Chikuhei was also promoted to navy lieutenant rather than to navy captain. Mostlyharmless1 ( talk) 21:11, 24 March 2012 (UTC)
I'm trying to improve an article about the American Civil War titled: Battery A, 3rd Rhode Island Heavy Artillery. One of the Commanders was a Col. Robert Williams (April 1862 – July 1862). I seem to not find Wikipedia pages of this person. It is in the Frederick H. Dyer Compendiums (1908 and 1959 versions, p. 363). Can anyone help? If there is no page that's fine. It would be appreciated. Adamdaley ( talk) 06:19, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
The final step of Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Academy/Closing an A-Class review#Successful nominations states that "Optionally you may wish to leave a personal note on the article nominator's talk page congratulating them on their successful nomination, although this is not necessary as the nominator will be aware via their watchlist of the review's closure and their article's new status". Similarly, the last step for closing unsuccessful nominations states "Optionally you may wish to leave a personal note on the article nominator's talk page thanking them for their nomination and encouraging them to renominate the article when the issues identified during the review have been addressed."
I'd like to change this to "You should leave a personal note on the article nominator(s) talk page congratulating them on their successful nomination." and "You should leave a personal note on the article nominator's talk page thanking them for their nomination and encouraging them to renominate the article when the issues identified during the review have been addressed". Given the amount of work which goes into A class articles (including most of those which do not pass), I think that nominators should always receive a personal congraulation or commiseration from the closing coordinator. Thoughts? Nick-D ( talk) 00:34, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
Congratulations | ||
On the promotion of your article on World War II to A-Class. On behalf of the Military history WikiProject coordinators, Hawkeye7 ( talk) 05:52, 8 April 2012 (UTC) |
OK, thanks for your views everyone. I've just had a go at working them into the guidance in these edits. Feel free to edit them further, of course. I didn't attempt to specify a suggested messages to nominators as, based on the above, it seems that there are different approaches to this - which I think is a good thing given that these should be personal notes. Nick-D ( talk) 11:20, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
The A class medal nomination for Cplakidas/Constantine received the thumbs up from five coordinators (including myself) over two weeks ago, but is yet to be awarded: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Awards#Cplakidas/Constantine (3). Could an uninvolved coordinator please do the honours? Nick-D ( talk) 12:17, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
A few notes on this. Traditionally, we have omitted those who commented on FACs but not ACRs or PRs; I have made one exception to this tradition above. As Ian is now an FAC delegate, I have included only FACs where he has commented as a reviewer. Given what we learned last quarter about my inability to do basic math, I would appreciate it if someone double-checked the totals. Finally, we need some sucker noble coord to distribute the awards.
Nikkimaria (
talk)
17:28, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
Thanks to the Bushranger who validated the entries in the monthly contest. I've updated the scoreboard and awarded the Wikichevrons to Djmaschek, but I thought it a bit awkward to award myself the 1st place prize.-- Sturmvogel 66 ( talk) 01:34, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
I've recently tried doing some spotchecks at FAC. Please let me know if I've got this wrong ... I'm supposed to be making a note of it if the text between one ref and the next ref(s) is not covered by the following ref(s), right? There are judgment calls to be made, of course, but my understanding of "spotchecking" is that I'm not making judgment calls, just reporting on what I (don't) see. - Dank ( push to talk) 14:16, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
Come on Hawkeye, that comment was a bit unnecessary... Kirill's method is the one I used for South American dreadnought race. I like it even though it makes ref names a bit tricky – so some refs may be repeated, but that's better than four citations after every other sentence (IMHO). Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 07:20, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
This Military history WikiProject page is an archive, log collection, or currently inactive page; it is kept primarily for historical interest. |
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 35 | ← | Archive 38 | Archive 39 | Archive 40 | Archive 41 | Archive 42 | → | Archive 45 |
No promotions, no new FACs this week. One name change, to President Truman's relief of General Douglas MacArthur. User:Raul654 appears to be on the road to reconfirmation as the FA Director at Wikipedia:Featured articles/2012 RfC on FA leadership. - Dank ( push to talk) 00:42, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
"you folks at MilHist could significantly speed up your FAC turnaround time if you'd train someone over there to do image reviews and to spotcheck sources for close paraphrasing (hint :). Sandy gives a couple of helpful links. Also see Nikki's and Ian's replies. - Dank ( push to talk) 04:49, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
I'm not on a wikibreak, but I'm unwatching a bunch of pages. This will be my last FAC update for a while, and I won't be copyediting or reviewing for a while. I've been studying the copyediting and prose reviewing at FAC, and this stuff is really hard ... and what makes it worse is, surprisingly, no one's written a suitable usage guide that covers collaborative writing as it's done in Wikipedia in 2012. I'm not sure if I can write or co-author that book, but I'm going to give it a shot, and I need some time and some mental distance from Wikipedia to do it. Still, if there's something I can help with, don't hesitate to ask on my talk page. I hope these FAC updates have been helpful. I'll provide an outline of what I want to cover in the book soon, in case anyone wants to collaborate. - Dank ( push to talk) 13:30, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
-- Sp33dyphil © hat ontributions 03:49, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
I don't want to sound like I am complaining here. I feel as if other articles in the same section of "Vilyam Genrikhovich Fisher" (which is the article I overhauled and nominated for GAN), has been overlooked by other articles in the same section of GAN. Two of those articles are around a third of the size ... compared to what my article is. Could someone please when they have time GAN review it please?
Adamdaley (
talk)
02:31, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
I started this academy article from the Open Task list up top, but then fell a bit flat on things to say. I decided to save what I wrote so far, however, If anyone cares to pick up where I left off, feel free. Otherwise, I may return to add more over time. It isn't my best writing to date, I admit, but it's a start. My experience with OOBs is limited to early-modern/Napoleonic army structures, so it is lacking somewhat with regards more modern units. Anyone with knowledge of modern OOB structures is welcome to throw in extra details. Cheers, Ma®©usBritish [ chat 05:59, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
Another done. May need correcting in any spots where I've got the details inaccurate. Cheers, Ma®©usBritish [ chat 05:29, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
This one already existed but was a little tricky to follow, and seemed incomplete, so I have rewritten it with an example that anyone anywhere should understand; it is less related to an aspect of military history, but the US Navy example was a bit too specific to follow, as we wouldn't all know the hierarchy of the US fleet to make sense of the categorisation example given. The purpose of the Academy is to give a general idea, rather than confuse further, so I went for a broader topic. Cheers, Ma®©usBritish [ chat 14:50, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
Several of the wikilinks on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment page are non-existent. They are all anchors so don't show as redlinks. They are: all three links in Q6, "peer review" link in Q9, "assessment scale" link in Q10, "coordinators" link in Q14. I may have missed one or two. Thought it best to point these out, rather than just remove them myself, so that someone can update the page if necessary. Redundant anchors seems a bit pointless to me, but I know Kirill usually updates the project pages, mostly, so he, or someone else, may simply have forgotten about these FAQs when tweaking the layout over time, rather than them being left there intentionally. Cheers, Ma®©usBritish [ chat 04:57, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
I was wondering if anything is to become of the new project Members' list that Kirill was developing last year which looked promising? I have just gone through the current Active members list, where there were about 1,200 names. I checked them all down to the last of the "B" names, moving those who have not contributed for ~6 months to the Inactive list. Of the 177 I checked, 64 were definitely inactive, only about 3 indef blocks, and many not having contributed since 2009/2010, with a few inactive since early 2011. It would take a looong time to check all 1,200, but if we assume about one-third of the list are inactive, we will lose 400 names.
It might be worth removing those names from the Bugle, to free up bot resources – one member I saw as inactive actually never contributed to wiki after adding their name to the members' list, but has dozens of the Bugle posts on their talk page. Seems wasteful. If Kirill is able to revisit the format he was developing, and if we had a bot that could routinely check everyone's activity, say once a week, to render those who have not contributed for 6 months "inactive" and also pause their Bugle subscription until they possibly return to editing, I think it would be worthwhile and a big step forward for the administration of the project. MilHist is very in touch with its articles, sharing knowledge, and "inner members" but I feel it is a little out of touch with its less involved members, and they soon tend to drift away into other things either out of boredom of due to feeling there is a lack of interest in editors. The list Kirill was developing has the potential to allow various things to be gained from it, whereas at the moment we have separate clumsy member active/inactive member lists, separate Bugle lists, etc.
By knowing who is active, there may be long-term benefits, in terms of knowing who is active, the areas they work on, etc. If we could see some new progress towards getting the member list up to standards with improved functionality that the wiki-technology allows for, rather than a plain ol' list, we might learn what benefits it offers, and possibly be able to improve or boost project interest.
Ma®©usBritish [ chat 18:32, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
Overall, this looks excellent; thank you very much for putting it together!
If it's possible, there are a couple of minor changes I'd like to see made before we finalize the table. First, it would be nice to pre-add blank no_notices= and no_news= parameters to every entry; this will allow us to use the master table to generate the distribution lists for the project newsletter and other mass-distribution notices rather than maintaining a separate subscription list.
Second, the raw wiki-syntax currently places each entry on a single line; while this is a more efficient use of space, it will make it somewhat more difficult for people to update their entries. I think it might be better to format each parameter on a separate line, to match normal template documentation syntax:
{{WPMILHIST User | user= 489thCorsica | location= | languages= | help_adm= | help_cpe= | help_map= | help_img= | help_pho= | help_src= | no_news= | no_notices= | interests= WWII Aviation History }}
As far as the unicode sorting is concerned, the Cyrillic name is the equivalent of the English "Tovarisch", but I have no idea how the Hebrew one is transliterated. In the interests of simplicity, I'd suggest simply leaving both at the bottom and letting the users move the entries manually if they're so inclined.
On a different note, do you think the overall size of the page is still reasonable? It would probably be worthwhile to create alphabetical sections to make editing easier, at the very least; but I'm wondering if we'd also need to split up the page itself. Kirill [talk] [prof] 04:21, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
Kirill: To reduce the table size, why don't we just remove names that have been inactive for a hellish long time. Many of these editors have not edited on Wiki since 2009, a lot since 2010.. I don't see why we need to "hoard" names that old. I think we should drop anyone who hasn't edited since 1 Jan 2011. Not sure if keeping them on the list serves any practical purposes. If they return to the project, it should be up to them to readd their names. Don't want to be negative here.. but for all we know some of those people from 3 years ago could be deceased, and we've never been informed. Some may have just quit editing altogether. Either way, I think a year is a long time for someone to not return to their account, and a members list of ~30% defunc accounts is a lot to sift through if you're looking for someone for a specific purpose. It would also flush out anyone who has been indef blocked/banned since pre-2011 and shown no interest in returning. Administratively, it would be a good move to reorganise and only import those who have been "Wiki active" since 1/1/11 and routinely mark anyone who has not edited for 3+ months of what remains as "inactive". A bot should be configured to update inactives and purge anyone after a year of zero-edits, to help maintain efficiency and reduce the appearance of artificial members. Ma®©usBritish[ chat 06:09, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
I've modified Mojoworker's sandbox version to include alphanumeric headings and a TOC. How does the new format look, in particular with regard to the ease of adding a new entry? Kirill [talk] [prof] 03:19, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
|- {{WPMILHIST User | user= | location= | languages= | help_adm= | help_cpe= | help_map= | help_img= | help_pho= | help_src= | news_out_out= | notices_out_out= | interests= }}
thus creating:
|- {{WPMILHIST User ...}} |- {{WPMILHIST User }} |- {{WPMILHIST User ...}} |- {{WPMILHIST User ...}}
strongly warning members not to add a subject/headline. That would then save into a page, which may not render properly when viewed per se, but if transcluded to a page between the {| and |}, i.e.:
{| ! header !! header !! header !! header... {{MilHist memberslist}} |}
may create a table, and save editors having to load 1,200+ rows to add themselves, and would make "full" sorting available, rather than split tables, which negates the point of the sorting facility. To be honest, I don't know if that would work.. but if Wiki can render the {|--data--|} into one table, flawlessly, it should, in theory, work. The preloaded page could also be permanently semi-protected so only registered members can use it, to reduce chances of IP vandalism, and fewer opportunities for mistakes to happen. I doubt coords would ever have to remove more than 1 or 2 accidental subject lines, every so often, thus very low overhead. Ma®©usBritish[ chat 12:43, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
Any update on this? I've been manually keeping the version in my sandbox synchronized with the live version, but there have been 6 changes in the last couple of days. Looking through recent history, that seems a little higher volume than usual. It's not a whole lot of effort, and I'm sure you have a lot of things on your plate, so I'm happy to continue keeping them in synch, but if it's going to be a while, it may be easier to just run through the recreation process again. Mojoworker ( talk) 17:55, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
Quick question: what do people think about switching the list format in the project showcase from the current vertical one to a horizontal one (as in WP:FA)? This would get rid of some of the currently wasted space and eliminate the need to worry about column alignment. Thoughts? Kirill [talk] [prof] 01:31, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
I was thinking of something along the following lines:
I don't know whether that's sufficiently organized for our use, or whether it looks more like an "unreadable wall of text", as Nick mentions below. Kirill [talk] [prof] 13:25, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
Two more questions regarding the showcase format:
Comments would be appreciated! Kirill [talk] [prof] 13:39, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
Over the next few weeks/months I'm planning to make an effort get to grips with organising our Academy. I envisage this involving an initial stocktaking of the existing content, followed by collation and rationalisation to group related information together and remove repetition. Finally the content will need to be organised and some sort of overall structure put in place.
The end point I'd like to achieve is a hierarchical set of courses/lessons on each topic, linked in some way (possibly by template), any of which can be dipped into at will or all of which can be completed as a coherent course, with a mixture of technical 'how to' stuff (like our closing an ACR page) and advice from experienced editors, and all following a common style. I'd also like to include some means of obtaining feedback from users and possibly a directory of 'tutors' (ie editors willing to assist Academy users with personal advice etc on each topic).
Obviously this isn't going to be a trivial task and it will involve substantial editing of the content others have already contributed. With this in mind...
Thoughts welcome :) EyeSerene talk 09:11, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
I'm not sure that reactivating a separate talk page is going to be particularly useful—if the idea is to get more people participating in the discussion, it would probably be easier to hold it on a higher-traffic page (such as here or on WT:MILHIST) rather than on a new one—but it's not a big deal either way. Kirill [talk] [prof] 13:33, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
This might be a stupid question, but do all of these topics need to be Milhist-specific/targeted? Obviously some are by their very nature, but there are non-Milhist guides on working with free images, for example, or reviewing at FAC. Nikkimaria ( talk) 02:31, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
To address some of the points above:
EyeSerene talk 10:24, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
I'm proposing that we attempt to develop a project consensus on the above issue. This is the sort of thing that would formerly have been discussed at the STT but I feel here might be a good venue to chew over how we should frame what we put to our members.
To refresh memories, we get regular posts at WT:MILHIST about articles (usually biographical) that include a 'salad bar' of medal ribbons and/or icons or images of medals. Examples are here, here, here and here. There has also been a recent discussion at WikiProject Australia about the issue. We've had debates on WT:MILHIST a few times but I feel that the number of queries we get indicates that this remains an ongoing concern for our members. Developing some clear guidance backed by project consensus would, I think, be a useful exercise.
My questions then:
Your thoughts? EyeSerene talk 15:48, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
I suspected the answer would be "medals only", but I've noticed unit insignia being mentioned on occasion so thought it might be as well to ask! Since Nick's advised getting as wide an input as possible, might it be worth (as Shimgray has suggested here) configuring the discussion as an RfC? As noted we need to identify positions before we can formulate a guideline, so can I suggest the following?:
Proposed RfC wording |
---|
The presence of medal ribbon pictograms in articles has been frequently discussed here and elsewhere on Wikipedia. Because of the re-occurrence of this topic, and the inconclusive nature of the discussions, the coordinators are requesting your assistance in developing a guideline that can be added to our project's manual of style.
Examples of medal pictograms in articles can be found here, here, here and here. Previous discussions have taken place in varying degrees of detail here, here, here, here, here and most recently here. As the first stage of this process there are two questions we would like to put to editors:
At this early stage these questions are intended to prompt discussion rather than support/oppose type comments. However, please feel free to respond in whatever way and with as much detail as you wish. The responses will be used to formulate a guideline to be put before the project for consensus at a later date. |
Obviously there are some links and background information needed (eg links to examples like those above), but would this be along the right lines? Please feel free to amend etc! EyeSerene talk 10:08, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
I think that WT:MILHIST is in danger of becoming a victim of its own success. While it's excellent that the project's main talk page is busy, there have been over 30 new threads started in the last week (including review notifications) and I'm finding it hard to follow what's going on, and I'm sure that others are in the same boat. The most obvious way to better manage the discussions seems to be to reactivate the most-relevant task force talk pages (eg, those for the German, Australian and New Zealand and British TFs) and encourage non-general discussions to take place there. Alternately, and I'm not sure if this is technically possible, I've always liked the idea of setting up some thematic talk pages (eg, one for general business, one for discussions of MOS-type issues, one for discussions of notability and so on). Do other coordinators think that this is something which is worth addressing though? Nick-D ( talk) 07:44, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
I tend to agree with Sp33dyphil that trying to create "thematic" talk pages will be confusing for most participants; to take the example of the Village Pump, the scope of the technical subpage is fairly well-defined, but the scopes of the other four are not, and any particular discussion may wind up taking place on any of them, almost at random. Beyond that, I'm generally wary of pushing discussions off to subpages as a matter of principle. In my experience, every additional level of subpaging reduces readership and participation by an order of magnitude; recall, for example, the failure of the strategy talk page (which was, in some ways, an attempt to split off a particular "type" of discussion).
If we're going to end regular review notices, I would suggest replacing {{ WPMILHIST Announcements}} (at the top of the talk page) with {{ WPMILHIST Review alerts}}; the former is quite dense (and quite large), and its presence in a fully expanded state would likely turn people off reading the page. As MisterBee1966 says, the dedicated open task page is always available for anyone that wants to see more detail or items not listed in the smaller templates.
One other option we might consider would be to start more regular use of the various templates like {{ resolved}} or {{ discussion top}}/{{ discussion bottom}}, although I'm not entirely sure how much that will improve readability. Kirill [talk] [prof] 13:53, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
I've taken a stab at rearranging the header on WT:MILHIST. The new layout eliminates the standalone news/announcements box (in favor of the corresponding fields in {{ WPMILHIST Announcements}}) and shows the open task summary box in a fully expanded form. Comments would be appreciated; in particular, should we perhaps have the open task box omit the category listings at the bottom to save space? Kirill [talk] [prof] 01:00, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
Hi can this discussion Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history#What should be in Campaign Box templates be added to the Template:WPMILHIST Announcements to generate more input. Jim Sweeney ( talk) 20:13, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
It is with great regret that I am compelled to resign as a MilHist coordinator as a result of a recent ArbCom case. Hawkeye7 ( talk) 21:18, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
As Bugle co-editor, I just want to thank everyone who's been adding complete blurbs for promoted articles in the upcoming issue, rather than simply placeholders -- that saves Ed and me a fair bit of work. One thing though, on a few occasions fair-use images have been incorporated, presumably because they were in the article's infobox and no-one checked that the licence for that particular image was free. Not singling anyone out at all, I've done it myself when I wrongly assumed a WWII-era shot just had to have been PD, but in fact it wasn't. I realise checking the licence adds a bit more time to the process but we need to be on the safe side -- it's the same rule as for TFA on the front page. Remember that while the infobox image might be the most representative of the subject, it may not be the only picture in the article, and if the infobox shot is copyrighted, others aren't necessarily. Thanks/cheers, Ian Rose ( talk) 23:16, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
I just noticed that five articles listed for ACRs at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/A-Class review hadn't been added to Template:WPMILHIST Announcements. Not surprisingly, these articles had received very few reviews. Could I suggest that everyone watchlist Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/A-Class review? Cheers, Nick-D ( talk) 04:29, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
I'm not bringing this up at WT:FAC yet because Raul and others have asked us to put off general discussions there for a bit, but I want to offer my opinion here (and maybe this will turn into a discussion that can jump-start the impending discussion at WT:FAC) that our articles aren't going to get sufficient FAC-level copyediting unless and until we find a way to pull in more people to do it. What I've done for the last couple of years isn't sustainable if I'm going to get some serious writing done. There are two problems: articles need copyediting to pass FAC, but they also need a consistent minimal level of copyediting just to survive a week at FAC ... the new delegates haven't been too brutal yet about this, but I think that's the direction we're headed. The WP:Checklist has always been conceived as a list of uncontroversial style points that anyone can follow and apply ... if we need to lengthen or shrink or tweak that list, please comment here or at WT:Checklist. I think there's a chance that the upcoming discussion at FAC will result in "FAC clerks" who may be able to handle some of the workload, which would be a good thing ... but whether we have clerks or not, we need black-and-white criteria to follow, and WP:Checklist is the closest thing we've got. - Dank ( push to talk) 15:45, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
Hello. Per this discussion, I've split the Warfare GAs into a separate page of their own, Wikipedia:Good articles/Warfare. I've prodded for an update on Template:GA/Topic and informed User:GimmeBot and User:GA bot about the change. I don't know all of the places our good articles are linked to on this project, but the links should be updated to reflect this. I'll be continuing to update the page to optimize its display, and any suggestions/assistance are appreciated. Thanks! — Ed! (talk) 17:42, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
I've tallied the points, updated the table and awarded the barnstars to Sp33dyphil (1st place) and Djmaschek (2nd place).-- Sturmvogel 66 ( talk) 05:21, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
I ordered a book from Amazon which came from England. Inside this book between pages 32–33, was a newspaper clipping about "Sensational British Invention! STOPS GARDEN DAMAGE FOR GOOD" from The Sunday times April 29, 1973. Is the owner of this clipping looking for this for almost 39 years? Adamdaley ( talk) 08:26, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
Could someone point me to an article in any printed English encyclopedia on any subject that has as high a proportion of German as this article? Also see WT:FAC#Copyediting_question. - Dank ( push to talk) 13:11, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
No, I'm not frustrated with you and you certainly aren't slow-witted (as you know!), I'm just saying that I've put in some time on this issue already. A couple of points:
There has been an article in the Sydney Morning Herald (possibly March 12th, 2012?) and in the Newcastle Herald newspaper which I've typed out on so I can refer to it when I am out of hospital located at Gunner Albert Cleary - Newcastle Herald Article. Thought it might be of interest for his wikipedia article? Adamdaley ( talk) 02:47, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
Exactly a month ago Tom penned a letter of good-bye. Now I'm here. As some of you might know, I am still in the mangled remnant of what some people call an "Education System". Due to two bad grades (Science and Pre-Calc), I'm moving schools, which will take a long time and will leave me off-wiki for at least half a year as I re-adapt. It's been nice as a coord, but I won't be able to keep up my duties any longer. Thank you, everybody, and I hope I can put my name forth here once more when everything returns to normal. Buggie111 ( talk) 22:42, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
I'm on a copyediting break. At
Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Battle of Radzymin (1920)/archive2, I haven't checked the edits so far or copyedited the second half. I'm going to do a little more on
Werner Hartenstein. I haven't looked at
Iraq War in Anbar Province and I only got the first 40% of
Thomas Blamey. Other than that, the current crop of FACs looks good. - Dank (
push to talk)
23:28, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
I'm a big believer in just doing (or not doing) things on Wikipedia rather than making a big announcement about it, but this one needs a heads-up: from now on, instead of copyediting and supporting most of the Milhist FACs myself, I will oppose the few Milhist FACs that are in bad shape, and offer copyediting comments on the FAC page that cover two-thirds of the text for most of the rest, and leave it for someone else to cover the rest of the text and decide whether to support after evaluating the FAC comments. In the short run, this might be bad news for Milhist's FAC output, unless people get busy copyediting. (The bit about not supporting is going to be the hardest to swallow ... feel free to email me if you want my reasoning for why it won't work for me to support some and not others.) This is the only approach that seems to me to have a chance of long-run success that I haven't already tried over the last two years. It wouldn't work for me to make notes on the entire text and not support; FAC reviewers wouldn't like it, and those of you who remember the bad old days at FAC know that none of us would be happy arguing the copyediting issues with people who were only relying on other people's notes and not actually doing any copyediting. And it's best if copyeditors feel some kind of personal stake in the work if they're going to be judging it; otherwise, "no" is just too easy.
I have no regrets about my work and Milhist's work at FAC so far; I think we've done what the project needed, and I've learned a lot and had a hand in supporting some truly great writers. And of course, it's the high rankings in search results for most of Milhist's pages, not our comparatively few FACs, that make the biggest impression on our readers. Still, FAC has had and will have a role to play in raising our visibility, especially among Wikipedians, and I hope this new plan will draw in new copyeditors who will learn the ropes and share the load. - Dank ( push to talk) 18:00, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
I suspect this has gone mostly unnoticed, given the low traffic on that page, but pbl1998 has listed himself as the "re-founder" of the Napoleonic era task force, complete with his own section on the task force page and so forth.
Given that we've traditionally avoided displays of this sort—aside from the practical difficulties in identifying a distinct "founder" when a task forces idea emerges from a project-wide discussion, the idea of giving such a degree of prominence to a single arbitrary individual seems a bit counter to the overall collaborative ethos of the project—I would assume that this is undesirable?
(Even if we did desire to identify task force founders, incidentally, the idea that anyone at all can simply come along to an inactive task force and declare themselves the "re-founder" strikes me as quite odd.)
My attempt to move pbl1998's name back to the participant list was reverted, so perhaps someone might have a quiet word with him and explain why what he's trying to do isn't a good idea? Kirill [talk] [prof] 03:59, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
I suspect but do not know that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chikuhei_Nakajima contains a mistranslation from Japanese "He was also promoted to captain at the end of 1911". If we look at other men in the same class, Furuichi Tatsuo, Kawahara Hiroshi or Ujiie Nagaaki at Nishida's site http://homepage2.nifty.com/nishidah/e/pe15.htm#v003, we find that they were all promoted to Navy Lieutenant (海軍大尉 Kaigun Daii) at the end of 1911. This rank is equivalent to army captain. Thus I am willing to bet that Nakajima Chikuhei was also promoted to navy lieutenant rather than to navy captain. Mostlyharmless1 ( talk) 21:11, 24 March 2012 (UTC)
I'm trying to improve an article about the American Civil War titled: Battery A, 3rd Rhode Island Heavy Artillery. One of the Commanders was a Col. Robert Williams (April 1862 – July 1862). I seem to not find Wikipedia pages of this person. It is in the Frederick H. Dyer Compendiums (1908 and 1959 versions, p. 363). Can anyone help? If there is no page that's fine. It would be appreciated. Adamdaley ( talk) 06:19, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
The final step of Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Academy/Closing an A-Class review#Successful nominations states that "Optionally you may wish to leave a personal note on the article nominator's talk page congratulating them on their successful nomination, although this is not necessary as the nominator will be aware via their watchlist of the review's closure and their article's new status". Similarly, the last step for closing unsuccessful nominations states "Optionally you may wish to leave a personal note on the article nominator's talk page thanking them for their nomination and encouraging them to renominate the article when the issues identified during the review have been addressed."
I'd like to change this to "You should leave a personal note on the article nominator(s) talk page congratulating them on their successful nomination." and "You should leave a personal note on the article nominator's talk page thanking them for their nomination and encouraging them to renominate the article when the issues identified during the review have been addressed". Given the amount of work which goes into A class articles (including most of those which do not pass), I think that nominators should always receive a personal congraulation or commiseration from the closing coordinator. Thoughts? Nick-D ( talk) 00:34, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
Congratulations | ||
On the promotion of your article on World War II to A-Class. On behalf of the Military history WikiProject coordinators, Hawkeye7 ( talk) 05:52, 8 April 2012 (UTC) |
OK, thanks for your views everyone. I've just had a go at working them into the guidance in these edits. Feel free to edit them further, of course. I didn't attempt to specify a suggested messages to nominators as, based on the above, it seems that there are different approaches to this - which I think is a good thing given that these should be personal notes. Nick-D ( talk) 11:20, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
The A class medal nomination for Cplakidas/Constantine received the thumbs up from five coordinators (including myself) over two weeks ago, but is yet to be awarded: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Awards#Cplakidas/Constantine (3). Could an uninvolved coordinator please do the honours? Nick-D ( talk) 12:17, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
A few notes on this. Traditionally, we have omitted those who commented on FACs but not ACRs or PRs; I have made one exception to this tradition above. As Ian is now an FAC delegate, I have included only FACs where he has commented as a reviewer. Given what we learned last quarter about my inability to do basic math, I would appreciate it if someone double-checked the totals. Finally, we need some sucker noble coord to distribute the awards.
Nikkimaria (
talk)
17:28, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
Thanks to the Bushranger who validated the entries in the monthly contest. I've updated the scoreboard and awarded the Wikichevrons to Djmaschek, but I thought it a bit awkward to award myself the 1st place prize.-- Sturmvogel 66 ( talk) 01:34, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
I've recently tried doing some spotchecks at FAC. Please let me know if I've got this wrong ... I'm supposed to be making a note of it if the text between one ref and the next ref(s) is not covered by the following ref(s), right? There are judgment calls to be made, of course, but my understanding of "spotchecking" is that I'm not making judgment calls, just reporting on what I (don't) see. - Dank ( push to talk) 14:16, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
Come on Hawkeye, that comment was a bit unnecessary... Kirill's method is the one I used for South American dreadnought race. I like it even though it makes ref names a bit tricky – so some refs may be repeated, but that's better than four citations after every other sentence (IMHO). Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 07:20, 22 April 2012 (UTC)