Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Archive 111

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Request for univolved editors comments

Hello there are currently discussion goes in the Talk:Controversies relating to the Six-Day War.The current version have all the arguements for/against preemptive attack is in the notes.One of editors want take some of the arguments out.Could any one help how to do it in the best WP:NPOV manner.Thank you.--Shrike (talk) 11:22, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't think anyone wants to remove any arguments. Rather, it's a question of whether some arguments can be mentioned in the article, or should they be placed only in endnotes. Cheers, --Dailycare (talk) 15:13, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Request to review Brunei Civil War article

Hello there! To the members of the project, I would like to request for a review on this article. I have found only 3 or 4 citations for the article, and since the civil war occured during 17th century there were no official records about the war (Bruneians were used to be less educated at that time). It was a very funny conflict, since the war was triggered by a cockfight. Thank you. Regards. Muhammad Mukhriz (talk) 15:31, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Hello. Let me point you to two places where the article will get a good review: Good Article nominations sounds like the best option for this one, but if you want a more in-depth review from the Military History editors, you might try our A-class reviews, but I should warn you that they'll probably ask for a more thorough article at ACR. Thanks, and good work! —Ed!(talk) 15:54, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
G'day, another option might also be WP:Peer review. A couple of quick suggestions: ensure that all paragraphs are cited (I marked the two places you probably need to add citations) and expand the lead if possible. Obviously more detail in the body would be great, but if it is not available then there is not a lot that you can do about it. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 01:20, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Reviewers needed at WP:GAN

G'day all, the Wikipedia:GAN#War and military category for Good Article nominees is quite large now. I'd like to encourage editors here to help out there if they have time. If none of those articles interest you, there are 356 articles in total (in all categories) at the moment that have been nominated but are waiting for a review. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 02:12, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Template:Surviving ocean going ships

I believe that there are several ships which are missing from the {{Surviving ocean going ships}}. Would editors please add any missing ships that they are aware of, and add the template to the relevant article. Mjroots (talk) 20:39, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Added Russian cruiser Aurora. Parsecboy (talk) 17:07, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
Have you seen the template

Hamish59 (talk) 23:59, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Created it . Not all ships there are ocean going ships. Mjroots (talk) 20:51, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Help needed: 2 articles when ship sold to another country?

Help is needed at an RfC on whether 1 or 2 articles should be used in WP when a ship/boat is sold to another country. See Talk:PNS_Ghazi#Merge_USS_Diablo_.28SS-479.29_here. --15:01, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Personally, I think this should be a case-by-case matter, with most cases trending towards a single article; if the vessel in question had a fairly long and/or notable history with one country and not the other (as is probably the case most frequently) or wasn't particularly notable in the service of either country, then I see no real need for two articles. If, however, the ship had notable service to both countries, then perhaps a second article is merited. In the case of the article in question, I think a merger is warranted. IcarusPhoenix (talk) 16:59, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
SMS Ostfriesland is an example of a battleship Good Article that incorporates significant service for one country (Germany) followed by a lesser but still notable service for another country (USA). In this case the secondary service is as a target ship made famous because of the controversy stirred up by Billy Mitchell's bombing experiment. Binksternet (talk) 19:22, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Battleship

I think the Battleship article has several problems that need to be fixed if it is to retain FA. See my discussion here. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 00:39, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

A-Class Review update

The following ACRs need some attention if anyone is interested in doing some reviews (listed oldest to newest):

Request for other opinions

A very good IP editor 188.255.41.104 and I have been making small improvements to the article on the Russian S-400 (SAM). Whereas I only know about the subject from published sources, he/she probably has to work hard to find published sources to provide citations for information he/she already knows.

There is a problem with military nomenclature, and I would be grateful if other people advise us how to answer it.

We both agree that there is a military unit дивизиона equipped with 8-12 launchers and a command post with search radar. Some of the launchers are Transporter Erector Launcher and Radar (TELAR) vehicles, and others are Transporter Erector Loader Launchers (TEL) vehicles.

There is a level above this that has at least two of unit type дивизиона, together with command and control and more search radars, etc. We are both of the opinion that this higher level in English should be called a regiment.

However we cannot agree on what the lower level unit [дивизиона] should be described as in the English language.

  • The IP editor says that the lower level unit should be called a "division".
  • My belief is that is should either be called a battalion, or a battery. (Jane's Land Based Air Defence for example calls it a battery.)

--Toddy1 (talk) 19:37, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

This is a long-standing Russian air defence translation problem. дивизиона is usually translated as battery, and sometimes to make the distinction clear from the division-which-has-multiple-brigades in English, it is rendered as 'divizion.' Short answer is that the standard translation is 'battery.' Buckshot06 (talk) 21:38, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
A quick Babelfish of дивизиона gives back "batallion", & that seems to fit what I've seen of Sov usagae: i.e., not using "battery", which would be usual in the West. TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 03:38, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
дивизиона = division - they are using an English word! I would definitely use "battalion", which would be the usual designation for a unit with 8-12 launchers of that size (like the Patriot) in the US Army. Hawkeye7 (talk) 23:46, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
Стой! <g>. "дивизия" = division as in "infantry division"; "дивизиона" = battalion for artillery-type units. Cheers, W. B. Wilson (talk) 17:56, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Need to hammer out standards for US Army units

Hello. I know we discussed this briefly in a previous thread (sorry to those who already commented there) but as I get ready to do some more extensive editing on US military units, I'm looking for a clearer guideline on how to organize articles on US Army units. Let me know your thoughts.

Current guidelines for military units:

  1. All divisions, brigades and regiments are automatically notable.
  2. Battalions and Companies are not, unless they are independent (ie 70th Tank Battalion, but not 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry)
  3. A minimum of repetition among unit histories where subordinate unit information can be covered in the parent unit page.
  4. Only the most notable provisional units have articles, while other units do not (ie Task Force Faith yes, Task Force Smith no.)

Challenges I've been facing:

  1. Up until Iraq and Afghanistan, US Army brigade histories were marginally different from their parent units. But with modern deployment schemes each brigade is taking on a radically different history within the past 10 years as brigades operate independently of their division headquarters (see for example 10th Mountain Division vs. 1st Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division.)
  2. The US Army has eliminated 99 percent of its regimental headquarters, but still has the regimental battalions assigned to many units. This makes it near impossible to contain battalion histories on the regimental page, such as with 73rd Cavalry Regiment which has four battalions attached to four brigades (see challenge 1.)
  3. Most units in Iraq/Afghanistan are being attached to Task Force units (see Afghan War order of battle)

My questions:

  1. In light of the radically different histories for non-independent battalions in recent years, should it now be the standard to include articles for every battalion, as we already for for USMC units, including the FA 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines which seems to have established independent notability?
  2. What degree should we cover histories of brigades before the past 10 years, when 90 percent of the information will be identical to the division history? Do we limit it to a Template:Seealso section with a brief bio and link back to the division, or do we include more detail (such as battalion and company level actions, which are rarely covered in the division article)?
  3. Do we have any established notability for Task Forces and ad-hoc units, considering nowadays there are probably a few hundred which have been formed in Iraq and Afghanistan and which probably have RS coverage?

Let me know your thoughts, and thanks again for your time. —Ed!(talk) 16:49, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Specifically on brigades where the overlap with division is extensive- give overall history of division and short sections on brigades to cover component units? But perhaps split history of division into child articles first.
Re modern taskforces. there may be RS coverage but just because there is material to write articles on each doesn't mean you necessarily you have to include it per "undue detail". GraemeLeggett (talk) 19:26, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
We've covered this before. For battalions of regiments, such as 1-27 INF, place the appropriate info on the regimental page until WP:SIZERULE dictates a split. It simply does not matter until we hit the 100kB mark about whether the regimental headquarters have been eliminated or not - the regimental page is the place where our precedent and custom places everything. Don't worry about splitting until you have over 100kB of real text (not counting images, references, see alsos, etc, see WP:SIZERULE). The history of brigades is not identical to the history of divisions : while division articles should talk about brigade actions and especially notable battalion actions, brigade articles talk one further down, about battalion actions and notable company actions. I haven't seen a division article yet that really reaches into a well-covered level of detail: I would want to know what each subordinate brigade was doing, at a minimum, week to week. Finally all the Task Forces are notable; they're formations after all. We've got an entire specific category at Category:Ad-hoc units and formations. See Task Force Viking or Task Force Mustang. Each, as a provisional formation, gets a separate page, as they're composite creations from many formations. Buckshot06 (talk) 23:03, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
To be honest I cannot see what you're worried about in regard to non-separate battalions of infantry, cavalry, armor, or aviation regiments etc. Most have very little data on the page at all, apart from heraldic data that shouldn't be there because it duplicates the images of badges and can be read on the official site. 73rd Cavalry for example is under 10kB. When those articles are 90kB + of referenced history of battalions/squadrons throughout the regiment's history, then one has a reason to worry - certainly not at the moment. Buckshot06 (talk) 23:10, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
My suggestions: 1) if there's enough content to justify a split, then yes (the same should apply to British Army battalions now the regimental system is somewhat less relevant) 2) Keep it in the section on the division in the first instance. I'm pretty sure that the links between US Army Brigades and their parent divisions have been weakening since the 1990s, so this isn't a new development 3) Task forces/battle groups are now the normal way combat units are organised in western militaries, so independent task forces and battle groups that were deployed to a combat zone can probably be assumed to be notable. Nick-D (talk) 23:24, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
Ironically, the U.S. shift to brigades vice regiments has now evolved into a situation where divisions are no longer the war-fighting echelon-de-jour and the brigades are slowly assuming the role that the regiments previously had, although with battalion numbering systems that have been made overly complicated by a desire to retain some institutional memory of previous regimental affiliation. My take: continue documenting by regiments until the article size becomes too large and then break out suitable candidates for their own articles. The U.S. military is in one respect a perpetual-change machine when it comes to organization and how unit traditions are derived. However Wikipedia orients its article space to account for U.S. unit organization, the orientation will more or less swiftly become out of sync with a continually-changing army structure. So let us not wrap ourselves around the proverbial axle trying to match a current U.S. Army setup that is bound to change sooner rather than later. Cheers, W. B. Wilson (talk) 17:44, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Rescue of Dustoff 65

FYI, Rescue of Dustoff 65 was listed for cleanup at WP:AVIATION. 70.24.244.198 (talk) 03:57, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

New cache of military equipment images FYI

Category:Photos by Vitaly Kuzmin - Probably mainly Russian? --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:35, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Help neutralize anti-British and anti-American POV, please!

Hi, I hope those with an interest in WW2 or military history consider looking at the Western Betrayal article which as it stands now is largely aimed at blaming America and Britain for everything that went wrong in Europe from 1939 on. Can anyone write an alternative POV or neutralize the whole article such that British and American perspectives are given some currency? Pultusk (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 04:37, 2 April 2012 (UTC).

Talk:Western betrayal shows some of the discussion already generated by this article. My take is that the article should note that apparently some historians in eastern Europe advance the "betrayal" viewpoint, but that the article itself should avoid taking sides. Document the viewpoint and who advances it as well as note other, differing viewpoints. Anything more is IMO not NPOV. W. B. Wilson (talk) 17:50, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
I agree with W. B. Wilson: the article should present this a historiographical concept and discuss the different views around this viewpoint. At the moment the article is basically a POV fork. Nick-D (talk) 10:55, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Pietro Badoglio

Hello. I recently skimmed over this article out of a slight personal interest, and was put off by the opening paragraph. It mentions supposed war crimes that he committed, and later says that due to "expediencies," he was never "brought to justice." I understand that he advocated the use of chemical warfare against the Ethiopian army, which I personally find a despicable act, but am certain that this is an inappropriate tone for the article. My question is this – how does one reword this paragraph? The chemical warfare issue is evidently a notable thing, but it is overshadowed by his later accomplishments, which in this paragraph are summed up in the vague opening statement. I think the chemical warfare stuff should be scaled down a tad, but also don't know if others think this is too important to change. I'm far from an expert on this topic, so I'm curious as to others' opinions. What should the lead look like? dci | TALK 21:35, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

My suggestion is that the lead should specify who thinks that he's a war criminal and any differing views. Nick-D (talk) 11:38, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Applications for free, full access, 1-year accounts from HighBeam Research officially open

Just a reminder that 1000 free accounts are available from the internet research database HighBeam Research. HighBeam has full versions of tens of millions of newspaper articles and journals and should be a big help in adding reliable sources--especially older and paywalled ones--into the encyclopedia. Sign-ups require a 1-year old account with 1000 edits. Here's the link to the project page: WP:HighBeam (account sign-ups are linked in the box on the right). Sign-up! And, please tell your Wikipedia-friends about the opportunity! Cheers, Ocaasi t | c 20:41, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Bounty on the Special forces article

I have just placed the following bounty on the special forces article:

$A50 for good article status, $A75 for Military History Wikiproject A-class status, and A$100 for FA status

While this is a high profile article on an important topic, it is currently in an amazingly bad state. As such, it's a real opportunity for editors to work on a high profile article essentially from scratch as very little of the current content seems to be worth keeping. Please note that this bounty offer expires on 1 January 2013. Nick-D (talk) 11:52, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

NYT: New Estimate Raises Civil War Death Toll

RfC: The use of medal ribbon pictograms in articles

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 different types of medal pictograms can be found 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:

  1. Should medal ribbon pictograms be used in articles?
  2. If so, where and under what circumstances?

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.

On behalf of the coordinators, EyeSerenetalk 13:01, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Discussion

I've been involved in this debate for a long time, and remain firmly in support of including said decorations and images in articles. I come from a US perspective, but I'm sure 90 percent of this debate lies with US articles. Here are my chief reasons.

  1. I see this chiefly as a culture divide between American and other military attitudes about imagery of decorations in general. Almost any modern US military biography on a person contains a thorough list of decorations and medals. A quick look at WWII/Korean War casualty lists on abmc.gov and you'll see the time and effort put into accurately researching and maintaining them. Compare US Army unit symbols with those from other nations; US Army units have shoulder sleeve insignia, coats of arms, distinctive unit insignia and combat service identification badges...versus the Commonwealth unit formation patch. The US military has very strong cultural ties with symbolism and images. If we are to accurately cover US military culture, our articles should reflect that weight.
  2. Moreover, US military members seem to place great emphasis on these symbols. The effort which has gone into existing "salad bars" -- even on otherwise low-quality articles -- have developed extensive systems meticulous of tables and charts. If we ban these from pages, we will never stop arguing with passing US military anons and IPs about how relevant these are, and they likely make up the majority readership on many of military biography articles. We'll have a nightmare of it, guaranteed.
  3. Even an image-free list isn't a very informative in this case; the names of many medals and ribbons just don't lend themselves to that. Can you tell the difference between the Korean Service Medal, the United Nations Korea Medal, the Korean War Service Medal, the Korean Presidential Unit Citation, the Korea Medal or the Korea Defense Service Medal by their names or even a brief description? Five years into writing about the Korean War, I still can't. The images of these ribbons are far more visible in real life, and hence far more useful to the layman who sees them a lot, but rarely hears their complete, extended title.
  4. Particularly when a major part of WP:SOLDIER is based on the decorations a person has won, it's clear the decorations add a great deal of encyclopedic value. In this profession they're just as important to career soldiers as the Grammys or Golden Globes for entertainers, and we have many a page dedicated to the awards won by performers, establishing a lot of weight on awards in general on Wikipedia. I would say it is fair weight to include awards, even if they are limited to a single section on the Milbio page.

I've seen a lot of complaints that "Wikipedia is not a picture book" when addressing this issue. To that end, I've tried to limit the images to the most space efficient means possible, this way for individuals and this way for units. I would oppose mandating an image list of awards in any article, particularly for soldiers of nations where less weight is placed on the images of decorations. I would also oppose extensive use of the images in the infobox, biography prose, or anywhere else save a compact section dedicated to them. This will minimalize the disruption, and ensure the images remain of secondary importance in the overall scheme of the articles. —Ed!(talk) 14:13, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

I support Ed!'s excellent summary of the issues. I think there's a little room for compromise on the size of the images, but we can't shrink them so much that you can't make out the details, since the details are necessary to disambiguate the images. - Dank (push to talk) 14:33, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
The sections do seem unduly prominent, to my eye - it's the fact that they're isolated from running text, with a seperate header, and have a lot of whitespace on either side. Would it be possible to form them into a standard-ish infobox, which is maybe 300px wide and can be floated to one side of the article text as though it were an image? This might help counteract the "appearance of undue weight" issue, which is at the root of a lot of the discomfort some editors have. If it needs to be wide, perhaps we could experiment with a default-collapse wrapper - a lot of articles which have wide genealogical templates near the foot do this. Shimgray | talk | 22:30, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
For my part I wouldn't be opposed to experimenting with something like that. —Ed!(talk) 04:44, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
Most spaceflight articles have a rather clunky template showing the crew on them. This is what it normally looks like, with whitespace; this is a floated version embedded in text which I worked up as an attempt to make it less prominent. Does something like this look workable? Shimgray | talk | 22:47, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
Once more unto the breach, dear friends...! I tend to agree with Ed on one point (nothing else, much as I admire his work!) and that is that there is a cultural divide here -- I lightheartedly referred to it myself in the discussion immediately above, preceding this RFC. Of course the divide isn't black and white -- some Commonwealth (or at least Aussie) editors like ribbon pictures, and not all American editors seem to want them. Broadly speaking, however, there's something there. Although I'd prefer one rule for all, because there are differences in the award distribution practices (as well as between WP editors' attitudes) I could probably live with US-themed articles displaying the awards and Commonwealth ones not. I also tend to have more respect for someone like Ed who puts in the hard work to create or improve an article in every way -- content, references, style, etc -- and wants to include the award/ribbon sections. I don't have time for the 'drive-by' ribbon-adders, whose only contribution to an article is pretty pictures. Incidentally, I'm quite aware that Ed probably had me in mind when he referred to those who say that "Wikipedia is not a picture book", and I don't back away from it (in fact my own terminology was more along the lines of "not a childrens' picture book"). Regardless of the point of using such images, they do overpower an article -- really, the ones I usually see look almost life-size, which is way over the top, and the articles that include two sets of the ribbons, one in a table giving their name and details, and another in the supposed manner the subject wore them (as has been pointed out elsewhere, prone to OR if nothing else) look even more garish. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 06:36, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

I see two issues here, not necessarily my exact opinion but elements of what I think and what I think others have expressed.

  1. What seems to some to be a disproportionate amount of the article spent on stating the medals and awards. All important awards should already have been covered in the main text. So a separate section seems to be redundant. (I'll contrast this with battle honours for British units. Though the history of the article may cover the battles and wars a unit has been in these are not necessarily the same as th ename sof the battle honours.) The addition of the images for the medals and awards also adds to the space.
  2. The creation of medal bars in the style as worn is possibly synth bordering on OR. Assuing they are recreated from what is known has been awarded and how it is usualy displayed.

GraemeLeggett (talk) 16:31, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

The way I see it, the amount of attention on the awards is almost moot. It's unhelpful and unproductive to tell someone to read through the entire prose for the awards, when it can be done simply with a list. And, as you said, sometimes, awards and honors aren't the same as the campaigns a person may have been a part of. As for the "as worn" rule -- there are strict orders of precedence in the US military demanding where each ribbon be displayed in relation to others, and for other countries it shouldn't be a problem; if campaign ribbons are worn in order they are won, the prose already establishes the order of campaign participation for the individual. —Ed!(talk) 16:56, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
If the awards are significant, though, won't they be mentioned in the infobox as well, rather than just the prose? We're repeating the same information three times (in some cases, four, if it's very important and thus in the lede.) Shimgray | talk | 22:30, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
The infobox has never really lent itself to that, either. It's more of a "major highlights and basic info" piece. In general, just like how we don't include every engagement the person has seen, or every single unit a career officer has been through, It's been practice as far as I know to only list a few major awards. The infobox quickly becomes bulky and distracting otherwise. —Ed!(talk) 04:44, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Before this strays too far, it's possibly worth pointing out that the RFC is about the medal pictograms, not whether or not all awards should be listed. NtheP (talk) 17:49, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. The point I'm trying to make is that the lists of awards are necessary, but an image-free list is unhelpful because the names of awards are very obscure. Hope I've been getting that across well. —Ed!(talk) 18:54, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
If the medals are obscure then isn't the likelihood is that for the average reader, the picture means nothing either. Pictures normally serve to illustrate concepts, and captions to explain a picture. I'm not understanding what adding the medal ribbon intends to achieve. GraemeLeggett (talk) 20:20, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
Not necessarily. As I said in my above example, there are half a dozen medals with similar names, and while people see the ribbons all the time on military uniforms IRL, they don't really read the titles of them very often, at least in the American military. We don't have titles for people who have won certain awards. —Ed!(talk) 21:34, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

This is just my opinion, but that's where discussions start. I have no problem with pictorial representation of medals received by a subject of the article as long as it isn't intrusive to the body of the article text. Sometimes it's noteworthy to include in the body when a subject received medal X (usually high end 1st or 2nd rate medals of valor) and for what actions, but for lesser medals it usually is not. As it stands, most image displays of the medals received by a subject and citations attached to higher level medals of valor are usually left near the end of the article thus reducing the weight of the content. I am fine with how that is at this time. --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 18:28, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

I just noticed this discussion and as a former member of the US military I agree with Ed and Dank. These medals and ribbons are an important part of military culture and should be be allowed on the articles. ShmuckatellieJoe (talk) 18:48, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
  • I write British military biographies, predominantly Chiefs of the General Staff (the professional head of the British Army), and these medal ribbon sections do my head in. These officers all have knighthoods and other huge honours and things like DSOs (also a great honour an highly coveted and not to be undervalued), but at least the first row or two of their ribbons will be honours they have received by virtue of the positions they hold (I think there's some statute or other that dictates that the top few officers in each service are always knighted), and these are mentioned in the prose. Indeed, most of them entitle the officer to post-nominal letters or honorific titles (like "sir") which are included at the very beginning of the article. The rest are usually so common that they're barely worth mentioning. I've never seen honours that are routinely awarded to thousands of people mentioned in print biographies of British officers (or anywhere else except the occasional hobby website), and those that are worth mentioning will be in the prose, in the infobox, and those with post-nominals will be mentioned immediately after the name. I appreciate that American military culture is very different to British or Commonwealth military culture, and that postnoms in particular are largely alien to some nations (especially those that have never had a monarchy), and so I would have no problem with separate systems by country but I oppose the use of these sections on British biographies.

    Aside from the relative insignificance (from an encyclopaedic point of view) of many of the medals and the duplication of the infobox/lead/prose, I have never seen one of these sections in a print biography of a British officer or even a list of anything but the most significant medals, and since Wikipedia is based on reliable sources, I don't see the wisdom in departing from every reliable source I've ever read to research an article. Furthermore, these sections (at least on British biographies—from the handful of American military biographies on my watchlist, there seem to be more sources for American officers' medals) are more often than not based on synthesis, original research, or just plain guesswork (example), though some are at least based on photographs (like this one). In addition, they attract constant drive-by edits, mostly from IPs who do little else, to add an unsourced medal, remove one they don't think the officer has, tweak the image or the name of the medal or something else (and it's difficult to justify reverting the addition of OR to OR), which makes it near impossible to keep it under control (and impossible to get an article through FAC with that sort of section in it). Finally, I think they're an eyesore, and even the ones with proper sourcing add little to no encyclopaedic value.

    Tl;dr? version: I oppose these sections for British officers because they're almost always original research or based on crappy sources, they're redundant, they don't appear in print biographies, they attract drive-by IP edits to add (even more) original research, and they're an eyesore. I have no opinion on the use of these sections for officers of other nationalities. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:25, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

    • Fully agree with Harry's points above. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 06:36, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
I apologize, but it looks as if I stirred up a hornets' nest with my question. All I originally wanted to know was how to place my ribbons on my page effectively. I've been in the United States Navy for almost 10 years. It hasn't always been easy, but I am proud of my accomplishments (portrayed by my ribbons/medals). The ribbons/medals/devices should stay, but they should be more intuitive and attractively displayed (not to mention exactly as on a person's uniform). I would appreciate any and all help that the community can provide. On a side note, how is the 4th award of the Navy Sea Service Deployment Ribbon displayed? Is it 4 bronze stars or 1 silver star? Also, what kind of star(s)? Service or award? Thank you, everyone, for your help. And, God bless America! Allen (talk) 21:03, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
Don't worry about it, we were waiting to have this discussion for awhile. A lot of military types do include their own ribbons on their pages, and a lot of them vary in how they do it. It's really up to you, but we do have templates for ribbon display in our bio articles. I would look to a recent bio such as Jonathan W. Greenert, for help placing them. Consequently, we also put them in tables, such as here. —Ed!(talk) 21:34, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
As Ed says, don't worry. We've been having this discussion as long as I can remember (and just finished the last big discussion a month ago...) Shimgray | talk | 22:27, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
I basically agree with HJ Mitchell's post above. The inclusion of medal ribbons are not helpful for almost all readers and are not in line with how biographies of military personnel are normally written. Nick-D (talk) 22:40, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
  • I do agree with Ed and HJ that this seems to be a local-difference thing (is it UK vs. everywhere else, though, or US vs. everywhere else?), so hopefully any resulting guideline will reflect that.
  • Regarding OR, I was thinking about the matter this afternoon, and came to much the same conclusion. In many cases, there's no comprehensive sourcing available for many people as to what they are entitled to wear - see, for example, the #Nancy Kulp section above. So, especially regarding minor awards, campaign medals and the like, we often have to fall back on original research, such as deciphering and "transcribing" photographs, logically deducing what would have been awarded knowing their circumstances, etc. Because the medal bar images require completeness - omitting something implies it was not awarded, rather than simply not mentioned - editors are likely to feel compelled to include loosely-sourced or assumed information rather than leave a gap. In most cases this is probably harmless, but it does seem like something that might come back and bite us! Shimgray | talk | 22:48, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
Could be very bitey, if not material to start editwars over. Being imperfectly sourced, an editor could remove one or more elements of a medal bar display as "unreferenced". GraemeLeggett (talk) 23:01, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
Actually, we've already had some degree of precedence for that. Tens of millions of US servicemembers lost records of their decorations in the National Personnel Records Center fire, so in cases where it's been confirmed the person's record was lost, we have generally tended to include only the awards we have a verifiable source to include, such as Michael J. Daly or Dolphin D. Overton. In general, this means only major awards are displayed with some explanation that we only add those which have a direct reference for them. So, some decoration lists rely on a compilation of sources and it's just fine if they're incomplete if we have an explanation that the references to complete it don't exist. —Ed!(talk) 02:39, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
  • Although I am not yet involved in editing military articles, but looking at how the medal ribbon pictogram is being used in some of these articles, I think its usage should be restricted to info-boxes; dedicating a whole section or sub-section to just displaying medal ribbon pictogram, only makes the article bulky, such sections or subsections should only highlight the important aspects of the medal or the reason(s) for the award of the medal. The argument that it is an inherent part of US culture of writing military history or biography do not arise, because here is English Wikipedia and not US Wikipedia. Thank you. —JOHNMOORofMOORLAND (talk) 10:12, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

I am in two minds about this issue. Basically, I agree with Ed.

  1. In some cases, the photographs show medal ribbons and the reader will likely be curious about them.
  2. Many biographies do give complete lists of them.
  3. The recipient may not necessarily be most proud of (or most notable for) the highest decoration awarded
  4. In the case of someone who has earned a lot of medals, it seems wrong to omit decorations that would be included in the infobox if they had less.

Hawkeye7 (talk) 02:07, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

I think we'll get less push-back from Wikipedians if for instance in Jesse L. Brown the display is reduced to roughly 50% or 60% of its current size and put in an infobox inside another section, probably the last section of normal text. I'd vote for a sentence listing the names of the awards rather than a list or table to allow the infobox to be smaller ... if readers can't easily match the list to the awards, they could just hover over any award to get its name. - Dank (push to talk) 17:17, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
I actually quite like that format. If it were smaller, I would have no problem with it being there (but I till wouldn't include it on a British officer's biography—pehaps they do have more cultural significance in the States?). HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:25, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
  • This is not an "US vs. everyone else" issue, it's a decoration vs. non-decoration issue. The articles on the awards have images of the awards. The images are just visually distracting clutter on bio articles. Even aside from other concerns raised. Just from a MOS:ICONS perspective this "cute pictures for their own sake" stuff has to go. Show me any newspaper article about someone that shows a bunch of image of medals next to the prose mentioning they were the recipient of various commendations. It's not typical usage in writing about military people. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 19:41, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
    • As a newspaper journalist, this brings up a good point to me. When I try to write featured articles, I aim to make them as self-contained as possible. It's a common enough criticism of Wikipedia by casual users that it's already too easy to get distracted clicking on links, without deliberately making them click on a bunch of links to figure out which award they're looking for. People really don't care enough to become avid Wikipedians, they just want to get the information they're looking for in the easiest way possible. I consider this a rare case where images really are more efficient at getting the information past more efficiently than descriptions. As for the newspaper quip, I would contend that an attitude of "images should be beneath us unless they're really important" is very old-fashioned, and the exact opposite direction the industry is taking. People prefer illustration where possible, as evidenced by declining use of newspapers as opposed to broadcast and multimedia journalism. To say we should avoid images "for their own sake" is denying one of the great advantages an online encyclopedia has over a print resource with limited space. —Ed!(talk) 22:30, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
People prefer illustration when the illustration aids comprehension. The meaning of award ribbons is hardly obvious to the average person (hell, even I only recognise the VC, plus those my father gained in his war service) so they need their names next to them, which will of course be linked, which takes you to an entire article on the award that not only displays the ribbon but the medal itself. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 06:36, 12 March 2012 (UTC)y
Reply to SMcCandlish - I see the point you are trying to makre, but I don't agree with it and here's why. We are not a book or a magazine, we are something else completely so its comparing apples and oranges. Magazines don't have links, categories, infoboxes or a number of other things that are common on Wikipedia articles. I can say though that some magazines do show the whole ribbon display on occassion such as when discussing a Medal of Honor recipient. This is most often done in military magazines such as Leatherneck, the Navy/Army/Marine Corps times or the like but it does happen. We also need to realize that many of these newspapers and magazines would probably "like" to show them but cant do to limitations in space or color. ShmuckatellieJoe (talk) 02:38, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
The argument that we have different rules to print medaia because they have less space, we're online, and so on, doesn't really hold water. I've read many full-length biographies on Commonwealth military figures in order to write articles on them and even with that space to play with I'm yet to see one that illustrated the subject's medals -- most don't even mention the campaign/service medals, only the high honours and decorations for gallantry. As to online resources, the Australian Dictionary of Biography and the Oxford Companion to Australian Military History both have online editions (not simply scans, but dedicated online versions with internal links) and nether has been in any hurry to illustrate entries with medal ribbons either -- I'm afraid they'd start to lose credibility if they did. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk)

Responding from RfC bot... I've never thought about this one whit, but considering the general problem, inclusion seems unwarranted. People get awards all the time, but generally only the most renowned couple of awards even merit a mention in an article. Which trophies/ribbons/medals/awards should we display for Carl Lewis? What about Shawn White? What about Audie Murphy? What about Al Gore (see List of awards received by Al Gore)? If the award is worth covering, it can be covered in the text just fine. If it's not, then we probably don't need a picture of it. There is a sort of content creep that goes on with infobox-type (and navigation template) material, where tons of randomness gets stuffed in because it's easy to slip by sourcing when there is no significant text, and no expectation of footnotes. aprock (talk) 07:06, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

  • I don't support the use of pictograms for basically the same reasons that other opposers have given above. In my view they bring little of encyclopedic value to articles. Although WP:MILPEOPLE has been mentioned, according to that essay only the very highest awards contribute towards a person's notability and where a medal is the main reason for notability it ought to be covered in great detail in the article anyway. I appreciate that to the article subjects their accumulation of awards may be very significant, but ultimately there's a big difference between a biographical article that tells us about the notable events of a person's life, and a curriculum vitae. If awards aren't significant (for example, service awards, campaign medals, good conduct awards etc), we don't really need to know about them. Of particular concern is the issue of WP:OR/WP:SYNTH based on photographs etc—and the reason this is an issue is that, as others have pointed out, reputable sources don't in my experience include that sort of information. EyeSerenetalk 09:41, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

I do support the inclusion of medal ribbons, because of their importance within the military - I would say they are second only to the rank structure. I do not see any reasons for distinguishing between the US and other nations - despite comments above, decorations are as highly regarded in the UK as anywhere else (ribbon colours are generally more subdued than some, but held in no less regard). My preference is for ribbons to be displayed at the end of an article, in rows with a table underneath to act as a key - this appears to be the cleanest and will take up the least space, so as not to dominate the text. Incidentally, if a ribbon display is taking up more of the article than the text, I would suggest that there is either insufficient text or the subject is not notable. Ribbons add information on the subject's career, as worn on their uniform, also add visual impact to an article, will educate readers as to the meaning of the ribbons, and may encourage them to seek more information, either within the article, or about the awards depicted. The fact that other media do not include these sections should not be a reason for us not to - we do not have space restrictions for instance - indeed their inclusion could provide a unique reason for people to come here. On the subject of notability, people seem to be suggesting that, if an award does not confer notability, then it should not be included, but this would result in many things having to be removed from articles - many subjects will be notable for just one thing in their careers, but we then include the remainder of their career in their article. It would also be appropriate to add to the description of campaign medals as being awarded for "being in a certain place at a certain time" the qualifier "where some people would like to kill you". Sources certainly need to be supplied for the ribbons displayed - no-one is suggesting otherwise. Antrim Kate (talk) 13:14, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Mmm, I don't normally like to pick apart other editors' comments but a few things here need clarification. Enough people, myself included, have said what they think of the "visual impact" of the ribbon images, so I won't spend more time on that. Regarding the suggestion that they "add information on the subject's career", well, in themselves, no they don't -- one needs an explanation in text to understand what the subject did in their careers, rendering the ribbons superfluous. As for "educating readers as to the meaning of the ribbons" and "description of campaign medals" -- those really belong in the medal articles themselves, along with the relevant imagery, not in individuals' histories. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 14:19, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
I think that touches on one of my main objections, though I forgot to mention the visual impact which I find to be jarring and out of place in a serious encyclopedia article. If an award is notable, the circumstances of its award should be detailed in the sources and explained in the text anyway. If it's not, why are we suddenly presenting our readers with an obscure pictographic symbol of that award? A picture of the medal itself might be more meaningful, but that's not what's being argued for and tbh I wouldn't support that either. We don't record every book a writer has ever written, or every song a musician has ever composed, or every event a sports person has ever won. Why do we need such emphasis in military bios on out of context, often irrelevant, and mostly trivial information? EyeSerenetalk 15:47, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
Don't worry about picking holes in my arguments - this is supposed to be a discussion after all! And I obviously haven't put things across as well as I might: To someone who knows the meanings of the ribbons they will add information without them having to resort to the text of the article (and I'm certainly not suggesting that anything should be removed from the text). Technically, yes they are superfluous, but then so is the infobox, the table of appointments, and the introduction, all of which duplicate information that is in the article, but in a form that is designed to be helpful to the reader - the question is whether ribbons fall into a similar category. As for the meaning of the ribbons, yes that information certainly belongs only in the article for the medal concerned - the point I was making (again, badly) was that linking those articles from a table at the end of a biography could draw people to the articles on the medals. Lastly my comment on "description of campaign medals" was aimed at someone earlier in the discussion who described them as for "only being in a certain place at a certain time" - again I wasn't suggesting that be added to each and every biography. To EyeSerene's Point about non-notability, I thought I did cover that above - simply because an award is not notable in itself doesn't mean it shouldn't be included in the biography of someone who is notable for other reasons. And I don't frequent biographies of musicians and authors very much, but I certainly get the impression that some do cover everything they've ever done! Antrim Kate (talk) 16:36, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
I agree that we routinely record in biographies events that, in themselves, wouldn't merit an article on notability grounds. What I meant by my comments was more that we wouldn't normally think it worth mentioning in the article text that Private Jones was awarded a good conduct medal, or that Sergeant Smith received a campaign medal for serving in the Burma theatre during WWII. These are not distinctive, significant awards. To record them in the form of a pictogram, then, strikes me as both decoration for the sake of the completeness and at odds with WP:TRIVIA. Actually perhaps that best sums up my view: I see medal ribbon pictograms as the visual equivalent of a Trivia section. At the risk of bringing the word "cruft" to the argument, I think we perhaps ought to beware the temptation of imposing our own brand of 'milcruft' on Wikipedia :) And yes, I also agree that some musician/actor/sportsperson bios are crufty too, but I don't think that sets a precedent we should be eager to follow! EyeSerenetalk 17:10, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
I remain opposed to including anything other than valor awards in articles and/or pictorial representations. That's simply because, in many cases, there are a number of U.S. awards that could be considered "been there, done that, got the t-shirt" items. No offense is intended to those who have those ribbons, but it's simply what they are. Bill Mauldin had a great cartoon about ribbons (which I can't find online at the moment) that sums some of that up pretty well.Intothatdarkness (talk) 16:44, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
I just don't see it that way. I look at the issue pragmatically, and watching so many milbios over a long period of time, It frustrates me to engage in what feel like long, protracted edit wars with the whole internet fighting contributions like this which constantly pop up. Illustrations like these are what people care about seeing because, in terms of the variety of users contributing them, there's a neverending flood of newbies putting great effort into the picture graphs. Yes, I get that "reputable" sources don't do that, but Wikipedia is a source that gets direct input from people who care about the topics, such as people who've lived a lifetime in the achievement-driven military culture, instead of highly-educated historians in ivory towers telling everyone else what is significant. I know that's probably not a popular opinion since we're all trying to be taken seriously, but to lose sight of what the reader wants to see is to turn our noses up at the very purpose of what we're doing. It's just a road we don't want to take. —Ed!(talk) 09:13, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
You have some idea how I feel then, Ed. ;) Except on British biographies, it's people randomly adding and removing medals, or changing the picture, or doing something else without sources, and the whole lot is unsourced (and unsourceable) anyway, so it's difficult to revert on the basis that it's original research. I'm also aware that such things seem to be easier to source for American biographies—I have a few on my watchlist. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 09:56, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
I definitely can Hah hah. Something I'm trying to make clear is that pictogram should not be an excuse for poor sourcing -- we need to deal with unsourced medals with just as much prejudice as any other unsourced information in a Bio. I get that different nations have different levels of information avaliable, which is why I'm saying we don't need to conduct OR or allow uncited ribbons in the articles at all; it's just fine if the list isn't complete, as long as we have what's cited. —Ed!(talk) 10:11, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
I agree with EyeSerene's points above. To me it's about three things. Firstly how notable are some of these ribbons? As an example the US Navy & Coast Guard award a Marksmanship Medal which isn't a service medal but an achievement. In the other US services and in the UK (to name but two) if any indication of this skill is worn at all then it's a badge. So should we be including all the badges as well, for equality? (that's a rhetorical question - I'm not widening the scope of this discussion any further) Unless the circumstances of achieving the standard were unusual I don't see this as notable. Secondly how do the pictures assist in encyclopaedic knowledge? There are 2,234 articles in Category:British Army personnel of World War I of which 99.9% will have been awarded both the British War Medal and the Victory Medal (United Kingdom), (putting them into "been there, done that, got the t-shirt" category) the how much does it add to an encyclopedia to have the ribbons of these medals appear 2,234 times on various pages? Not a jot that I can see. In fact I would go as far as to detract because we have failed to separate the wheat from the chaff. This is not a denigration of what anybody has been through to earn any of the medals but readability of articles is about making them interesting and understandable, not deluging the reader with every known fact about a subject. Thirdly there are much appears to be made of "we should because we can", correct there are things that technically WP allows us to do; and precisely because we have those technical advantages e.g. links, categories, navboxes etc they are good reasons why we shouldn't push everything into one place and encourage click through to other articles. Finally, a plea, whatever the outcome of this discussion is can it agree that abominations like the layout of Frederick Charles Bothwell, Jr. are not the way to go. NtheP (talk) 17:24, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
To respond, I'll point you to this Cracked cartoon which is one of my favorite summaries of the problem. It's hard enough to get info from Wikipedia efficiently as-is, because it's just so easy to click on a link and get lost somewhere in a different topic, without us intentionally making it harder. The layman comes here to get the information as quickly as possible and leave, not to click on links for an hour to find what they're looking for (though I admit it's hard to avoid :D) and if we can use images like these to help people figure out which ribbon is which without them clicking around for 10 minutes, then we've done them a service. We shouldn't use links as a crutch to write articles that couldn't stand on their own. —Ed!(talk) 09:20, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
That's Luddism. To extend the same argument to it's absurd length you could argue that we shouldn't use footnotes because it distracts the reader from the flow of the text. We shouldn't be aiming to satisfy the lowest common denominator but encouraging and stimulating interest and education. It's not elitism but about developing a rewarding experience for a majority. How many times have you looked at article here and by clicking on a link learned something new? Put all the information on one page an you lose one of the richest experiences WP has to offer. NtheP (talk) 09:38, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
Well, there's a definite distinction between interesting and useful. Our readership encompass a large variety of people from different backgrounds. It's not pandering to the lowest common denominator to write with utility in mind, in fact I would think that is insulting to say. Professional writing strives to be as compact as possible because people don't care. They're here to get what they want and go, and unless they have an hour of time to spare, they really don't like being forced to sort through a bunch of links to find it. —Ed!(talk) 09:46, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
Ed, what possible encyclopedic value does this bring to the article? It's horrible! EyeSerenetalk 13:33, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
It's about the outside-looking-in perspective. People don't look at a photo like this and say to themselves, "ah, I see he has won four Navy Sea Service Deployment Ribbons." When I was in ROTC, military surrounded by non-military, people were always curious about ribbons. They would point and ask, "what is that one for? what about that one?" The fact is that people are interested in the awards and what they mean, and a non-illustrated list is of no value. It's too jargon-loaded. This is a rare case were images (albeit in far more efficient layouts, like these which I prefer) really are better at conveying the information. Nobody knows ribbons by their names, and it's insane to act like they do for the convenience of this argument. —Ed!(talk) 14:56, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
Well, I'm not arguing for a non-illustrated list either :) My point is that the information in that section seems to me to be textbook WP:TRIVIA. I accept your point that it's not particularly efficiently laid out, and I also accept that some people might find it interesting, but we could argue that last for other trivia too (and in fact such arguments have been made and rejected, hence Wikipedia's great clearouts of Star Wars/Star Trek/Game/etc cruft). To take one example, the Korea Defense Service Medal is awarded for spending at least 30 consecutive or 60 non-consecutive days in Korea. So what? It's not an achievement, it's a posting, and his time in Korea isn't mentioned in the article so presumably wasn't important in terms of his career. I agree with you that images are better than text at conveying medal ribbon information, but more importantly I believe that the information contained in those sections isn't something we should be conveying at all. EyeSerenetalk 17:31, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
Sorry, but I don't see where you're getting Luddism from - all I think Ed! is suggesting is that a ribbon table will provide convenient links to articles on the awards, rather than have people search for them and maybe get distracted in the process. And you're agreeing with Ed! that what we should be providing is an educational experience, adding links to other relevant articles. And I agree that the examples that you and EyeSerene have linked to are horrible, but if we can agree on a simple, clean alternative then all of us here can head out and clear up things like that. Antrim Kate (talk) 14:16, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
Luddism was slightly tongue in cheek, but the point is that if we are careful then it becomes a one stop solution rather than using what is available to us by way off assisting navigation and thus promoting education by exploration. I'm totally in favour of links but not the images, I've yet to hear answers to points raised about trivia, and encyclopaedic knowledge when like the Korea Defense Service Medal or the US Navy Marksmanship Medal they are not awarded for achievement but location and training. NtheP (talk) 14:37, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
Apologies - Humour is always difficult to inject into an online discussion with people you don't know; and even harder to spot sometimes!Antrim Kate (talk) 16:58, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

NtheP raises a good point above, about, for instance, UK medals for WWI, which were pretty much identical, and I think it's fair to look at whether ribbons add anything to particular categories of biographies. For WWI I'd agree - they're not adding a lot; for WWII, however, medals were awarded for different theatres, and I'd be much more interested in someone with an Air Crew Europe Star or an Atlantic Star for instance than a more "ordinary" set. (Incidentally I did read the obituary recently of someone awarded both an Atlantic Star and a 1982 South Atlantic Medal.) For contemporary personnel I'd say there's even more reason, since people's careers will have taken many different turns. There was also a question earlier about people not known for military service, for instance Al Gore and Carl Lewis - Gore is a 'Maybe' for me, since his service was relevant to his career (or his father's) though if it was only an "ordinary" set then maybe not - it's well-covered in the article text. I can't see anything about Lewis' military service in his article, so my initial reaction is 'Probably not'.Antrim Kate (talk) 16:58, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

I have two principal counterpoints to NtheP and EyeSerene. If I understand correctly, you're both arguing that medals shouldn't have sections at all, instead they should be reduced to a nuisance and a mention in the prose. My first main problem with this is that comparing medals to the trivia sections is just apples to oranges -- even in a highly decorated soldier bio like Audie Murphy or Douglas MacArthur we're talking at most ten or so campaign medals that fall under the category of "been there" awards. It's pretty clear we're not just lumping any old complement in there, it's all official government decorations, and so we're taking a group of maybe 20 ribbons for a career officer and trying to split hairs by saying a few of them aren't notable when others clearly are. The ever-devolving trivia sections got to be miles long, and we still eventually ended up merging a lot of the relevant stuff into the prose when we got rid of those. It's really not that much of an inconvenience to include easily sourced decorations like these, and it will create an endless grey area where we're stuck wasting time trimming mentions of these campaign ribbons out of articles with extreme prejudice.
Second, this argument really fails to grasp the subjectivity with which we'd have to categorize the medals. With the current culture around the awards, the higher valor awards are becoming more and more rare, and so more and more coverage is focusing on lower ones. Medals of Honor are being awarded at a tenth of the rate in Iraq/Afghanistan as they were in World War II/Korea/Vietnam, and as a consequence I can say with decent certainty that every US Army recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross of the past 10 years would easily pass GNG with the coverage they received, outside of the WP:SOLDIER guidelines. The awards are changing as a result of this, too. The Bronze Star Medal used to be a low-level valor award, now it's got two versions which can be won by A) an officer who completes a deployment without messing up, or B) as a mid-level valor award. The Army Achievement Medal used to be a "been there and didn't screw anything up" award, and now it can be a low level valor award. The sources probably won't be able to distinguish the difference in the reason. Do we consider the Antarctica Service Medal a non-notable campaign medal? It's exceptionally rare. The Legion of Merit can be a valor award, or a good leadership award. The Distinguished Service Medal is exceptionally rare, but it's pretty easy to get if you happen to be a four-star General. Summary: Sources include a list of awards, and aren't always clear how the person got them. A medal can be given for very different reasons which we will rarely have a direct "they did the medal for this action specifically" statement. By the time we hammer out which awards are rare and/or exceptional enough to be "notable" we will have wasted ten times the effort of just including them. —Ed!(talk) 18:44, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Arbitrary break 2

♠ Proposal for collapsible side box - Coming in very late...& haven't read every word of the discussion, so apologies if this is covered already. :( My big problem with the display isn't its inclusion as much as the size of the display. I'd rather, if it's going to be in, have an infobox line with a quite/very small "medals bar": clickable to expand, with links for each decoration, or a mouseover to name them, or something, to identify visually the decorations named in the text. A separate section seems overkill to me.
♠The "decoration creep" isn't helping this any, & it's probably indicative of bigger issues around promotion & military culture which could carry a page on their own IMO. Whole other can of worms... TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 20:59, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
  • I'm also coming in a bit late. I have read most of the above, but my comment is general rather than specific to anyone else's comments. It occurs to me that it's going to be hard achieve consensus on this issue, but Trekphiler might well be onto something. Couldn't there be a collapsible box for this sort of content - either in the infobox or toward the end of the article? That way the list and images don't take up a massive amount of page space as some do now, but they're available for those who want to see it. There would need to be an agreed format to display the list, but given that it won't always be visible that should be a lot easier to agree on.
Personally I'd err toward putting a collapsible box in the article rather than the infobox (infoboxes are getting big enough as it is...), but either way I agree something should be done - if only to sort out messy examples like those linked to above and the unnecessary duplication at Donald Malarkey. Ranger Steve Talk 12:45, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
    • I'd be supportive of the idea, as mentioned above. I just can't find a good existing collapsible wikitable to try and demonstrate it right now. —Ed!(talk) 17:09, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose images (unless small or collapsible) - [From uninvolved editor, invited by RfC bot] Yes, a list of the honors are important to document in text; but the layout shown in the examples is very large and obtrusive ... not very encyclopedic. Using imagery to that degree conveys an emphasis (to readers) that may not be warranted. Many of the medals gained by an individual are of virtually no significance. I'd suggest a policy against largish displays as shown in the examples above. As a compromise, I'd suggest (1) always at the bottom of the article; (2) limit the graphic size to maximum 30 x 12 pixels approx; (3) or leave the size large, but have the section collapsible by default (similar to a navbox). --Noleander (talk) 13:19, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Several people seem to be suggesting something like this:

I don't know whether this is the best way to do it, but in terms of "look and feel" this is certainly the sort of thing I'd like to see. Antrim Kate (talk) 00:38, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

I do like the above infobox. If this is still too prominent for people, here's an alternative. I can't find a way to make it collapsible, but that's the idea. We could probably incorperate this into the prose as a sidebar. It also means we don't have to have a complete thing of awards -- just the ones we have citations for. —Ed!(talk) 01:18, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
Ed, even I can live with your version, sorry Kate I still find the full width one too obtrusive but thank you for the persistence in seeking a compromise. Now what's the suggestion about location? Inside {{Infobox Military Person}} under |Award=? Later in the article? Hopefully not both :-) And are you suggesting that the awards are referenced in the template or should all be referenced to appear in the reflist? And we are only talking about awards and decorations not qualifications like pilots wings, marksmanship etc? NtheP (talk) 09:01, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
These look like good progress. I don't believe they should go in the infobox though - it's only meant to be a summary of the person's career, so having their entire award history, collapsible or not, seems a bit overkill. I'd suggest that the award section of the infobox should only be used for the highest award of note (eg. VC, DSO) for which there is content in the article. Ranger Steve Talk 09:43, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
Of the suggestions above I prefer Ed's design for the same reasons as Nthep. As long as the box is confined to meaningful awards and is collapsed by default it largely addresses my concerns about trivia, undue weight and pictures for the sake of decoration. Steve makes a good point about the infobox, though I'd not object to it being placed below the infobox rather than as part of it. Awards sections often seem to exist solely as a vehicle for getting these pictures into an article; presumably confining ourselves to notable/sourced awards will mean they're already covered in the text and we won't need a separate section for that.
If consensus supports this compromise, I'd also like to see the default position being one of "no awards box unless a case can be made for one". What I'd like to try to avoid is the spamming of these across every bio article with the reason "because Milhist guidelines say we can". I suspect, as mentioned in the discussion above, they will largely appeal to writers working on US bios but be resisted for those of other nations, and something in the spirit of WP:ENGVAR might help to address that. EyeSerenetalk 10:25, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
I only floated the idea of the infobox so as to try and ensure that the discussion considers use not just the existence of the box. I agree with Steve's suggestion and also Eyeserene about possibly having it immediately below the infobox - do the widths align? A pet hate of mine is seeing a succession of infoboxes with differing widths. NtheP (talk) 10:48, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
I would say the best place to put the box would either be at the beginning or the end of the military career section, similar to an image, assuming it is best suited there. —Ed!(talk) 13:10, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
I would say that mention's of the most notable award/medal (especially if the award/medal directly contributes to the subject's notability) should be included in the main infobox, with description of the award and events leading to it in the main body. All other less notable awards can be all included in the collapsed infobox underneath the other infoboxes with appropriate references to meet WP:BURDEN/WP:VER of course. If other less notable awards are to be mentioned, if it can be supported by an RS, it is my opinion they should all be included. For instance, I just meet with a docent, a retired Commander, with the Bonita Museum who mentioned that his father received two Citation Star on his WWI Victory Medal. These meant nothing to him, and probably wouldn't mean anything to casual readers unless they knew the significants of the stars, until he did some research and learned that they were equivalent to a 1st to 3rd degree valor medal (MoH, DSC, or SS). The Victory medal, and other similar campaign or event medals, have been described by others in the discussion as been there, done that, got the t-shirt awards, and thus are not significant enough mention in an article. However, it is my opinion that due to cases such as the one I mentioned above that such mentions should be included in the infobox being described above or as it presently stands in a section lower in the article that lists all the medals, awards, and badges.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 21:17, 24 March 2012 (UTC)
The example you've given is perhaps one where a case could be argued for including the information. However I don't think we should assume that automatically extends to all less significant medals, most of which really are been there, done that-type awards. EyeSerenetalk 07:42, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
Precisely, Eye. I appreciate the effort Kate and Ed have made to suggest hidden template designs for the ribbons to render them more palatable for those of us who are dead against them, and both are definitely improvements over the styles we've seem previously. However I think we're hitting the same brick wall at least as far as Commonwealth articles are concerned. I still don't accept the need to display the "been there, done that" service/campaign medals (with or without ribbons), even if they can all be verified by reliable sources, which is rare in my experience. Take them away, and you're pretty well left with the high honours and decorations for gallantry that we already list in the infobox -- rendering further boxes redundant. In the example box Ed proposes, for instance, only the Gulf Medal would not (quite rightly, because it's simply a campaign medal) be displayed in the infobox -- so the argument may as well be, "should we display little ribbon pictures next to the honours and decorations listed in the infobox?" Well maybe we should, since we take as read those silly little country and armed service flags, and some people even like to add emblems for the rank as well. Okay, I'm joking about adding the ribbons there -- if I had my way, we wouldn't even have the flag icons, since they're so small as to be practically useless, and aren't always correct anyway as some service flags have changed over the years (e.g. the RAAF ensign). Plus I'm sure that Ed's design will still leave unsatisfied the die-hards who love to see all the ribbons displayed as worn on the chest (a display that, as we've noted, is always open to assumptions and OR). So at the end of all that I continue to find the simplest and most logical response is to leave all ribbons out. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 11:46, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Having browsed through the discussion (phew!), and alternately cooed and snarled at the points, one thing is clear: there isn't a consensus for the removal of separate odm summaries and graphics. For me, they add to articles, but, then, I'm not in favour of obliging readers to plough through blocks of grey text because "it's more encyclopaedic" (personally I think it's the reverse). I really like the collapsible boxes as they allow readers to select the information that they wish to view. If there's no objection, I'll try them out. Folks at 137 (talk) 13:07, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

There may or may not be consensus for removing such lists and graphics where the medals displayed are fully cited to reliable sources and there's no evidence of original research. However there's certainly no consensus for adding separate lists of medals and graphics either, so I presume that when you suggest "trying out" the collapsible boxes, you mean to do it where non-collapsible displays already exist. Well, I for one have no objection to you making such existing displays less garish than they are (for the moment at least) but I see no consensus to add any where they don't exist at all. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 13:35, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
Too late! To be honest, I don't think there's a consensus against the addition of separate lists, either, although I accept that some editors - not all - are dead against. Anyway, I've added a collapsible box to Philip Vian and slimmed the list in the infobox. I think the presentation is reasonable, although it mitigates against additional info such as dates and citations. Thoughts? Folks at 137 (talk) 13:57, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
It does look like 137's test has substantially reduced the appearance of the decorations. I'd support trying it out and seeing what our readers do. To be honest, my expectation is that we'll keep getting people who don't care about "encyclopedic" value and fix things up pragmatically and against any established policy. Again and again. —Ed!(talk) 22:10, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
Um, I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve with this example, Folks. Looks to me like you've copied the awards that were already (and quite rightly) in the infobox into a new Honours and Awards section with a display box, and added ribbons to the award wikilinks. In the same edit you appear to have arbitrarily removed some of the awards from the infobox (e.g. KBE, MiD) even though, according to current standards that no-one I'm aware of has argued against, they all belonged there. The result is that we have an infobox that includes less than it should and a new section and display box later in the article that, if the infobox content followed current standards, would be completely superfluous except for the ribbon images. I think it proves the point I was making earlier -- you may as well have left the infobox as it was and argued about whether to include ribbons in it... ;-)
Anyway, I fully agree with Ed that we're unlikely to achieve genuine consensus on this matter, however it might be time to try and get into point form what few things most of us agree on, so we can try and come out of this with some sort of guideline such that, when a new editor asks "what's the policy on medal ribbons", we don't all have to look at the ground glumly and respond, "don't ask..." It's bedtime in this part of the world but if I have time tomorrow I might start framing a few things that seem (to me anyway) to have majority support and perhaps we can then finetune things a little so that at least we make sure that in this area we comply with core WP policy re. RS and OR and, beyond that, where it starts to get into personal preference, we find a way to keep most people reasonably happy for most of the time (ah, dreams)... ;-) Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 13:36, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
I'm not sure I'd support the idea that all of the awards should have been in the infobox in the first place. As I said above, infoboxes are a summary of article content, they're not a place to dump all information available under each heading within the infobox. Being mentioned in despatches (even 5 times), whilst certainly interesting and notable, is not as significant as receiving the DSO three times, or the Légion d'honneur. I'd have major awards in the infobox - nothing else (admittedly that will probably lead to a debate about which ones are classed as sufficiently important to go in the infobox...). Likewise, I'd probably reduce the number of battles in this particular infobox. This separate awards box seems to fill a gap, by having somewhere to put the complete awards without overloading the summary box at the start of the article (I'd figured that was the idea we were working towards in Arbitary Break 2). Ranger Steve Talk 13:59, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
Agreed on that point, I think we need to be looking for ways to keep the infobox economical, not expand it with something like this. (For me, I've just included awards in the box that were notable enough to have their own recipients category. And yes, let's start hammering out some kind of guideline. —Ed!(talk) 14:49, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
Ranger Steve's views mirror a criticism of infoboxes; that they often contain too much info - where is the standard that they should be comprehensive, I must have missed that. That's why I "arbitrarily" slimmed it down. To be more correct, transferred lesser ones to the box. I retained major awards from the various countries and the most senior in the orders of knighthood. A weakness is that preceding awards of Bath/BE and their award dates are lost; on the other hand, an interested reader can access the box. I don't pretend to perfection, it's just one step on the way - that's the objective. Full infon that doesn't smack you in the face if you're not interested. Folks at 137 (talk) 17:41, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

If people like Ed!'s suggestion then hopefully this is an improvement. I think the end of the Military Career section would be the best place for it - since there will be some overlap with the infobox, and towards the end of the article seems more appropriate - and with references in the article text, as per the infobox and lead.

As for when to include this, the guiding principle should be whether anything is being added: as has been stated a standard WWI set isn't notable, conversely modern-day personnel will often have had varying careers. As to which awards go into the infobox, I'd give a similar answer: compared to the subjects peers, are the awards notable? And that will depend on the period of history being considered.

As for other badges, I'm not proposing that we show them, but I'm looking at this from a UK point of view, where, again, they aren't adding much that won't have been covered in the article. However, I do note that we appear not to have had any input from anyone that's created the displays on many US subjects. Antrim Kate (talk) 13:47, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Arbitrary Break Three

Since this RFC isn't closed yet, I have to add, that I think the WP protocol for listing decorations and awards should follow the protocol of each national military, for example, Australia has its order of distinguishing these in a table here [1], Canada has its here [2], and so on. Complicated? Yes, but since this is an encyclopedia, if editors are going to include the information, they should "stick to protocol" and get it correct. The medals and decorations do have a significance in their level of sequence as they are listed in a biography, or as they are worn on the uniform. They can't all be listed in a jumble. It's just incorrect. And, I'll also just add that I like the drop-down navigation box in Antrim Kate's post above, it won't take up a huge amount of space in the article, and the information is still there for any reader who wants to view it. OttawaAC (talk) 02:06, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

  • i agree with Ed above, and with ottawa. i think the pictogram is important for US military. Soosim (talk) 07:55, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Gazetting of 'mentioned in despatches'

Would anyone be able to help with a small issue of a mentioned in despatches citation that I've been unable to locate in the London Gazette? Our article on being mentioned in despatches states that the mentions are gazetted, but for one individual (Victor Negus, not a MILHIST article, but coming here to ask for advice on a small bit of military history) I've been unable to locate any original citation. The only source that mentions it is his entry in Who Was Who, which states: "Served European War, RAMC, 1914–19 (Mons Star, despatches)". I've covered all that in the article except the despatches bit. Other sources give some details of his wartime service, but don't say anything about being mentioned in despatches. If I'm unable to locate this in the London Gazette, are there other places I could look, or is something amiss here? Carcharoth (talk) 03:50, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

MIDs from the First World War can be difficult to find because the dispatch wasn't necessarily printed in full in the Gazette unlike for example Boer War dispatches. Looking at his ODNB entry the best bet might be the archives of the Royal College of Surgeons. NtheP (talk) 08:30, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
His medal index card is available, but doesn't mention MiD (some do, some don't). It may well be supported by his unpublished memoirs, which were used in compiling the ODNB article; on the other hand, there is a slim but not impossible chance that this is a case of discreet passing in Who's Who! Shimgray | talk | 20:51, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
Thanks to all for the replies here. I might look at the archives for personal interest, but as they are not published, it wouldn't really help as far as the article goes. What has made the mystery deepen somewhat is a passing mention of his wartime service at the end of a tribute read out about him when he was being made an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in 1958. That appeared in The Irish Journal of Medical Science, and what was said there was:

"You will gather, therefore, that in the intervals of playing billiards and possibly drinking 'negus' Sir Victor has found time to serve his country as a Captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps, in which he was awarded the Military Cross for bravery and devotion to duty, and to promote and advance the Science and Art of Otolaryngology, for the execution of which he has devised many original instruments."

Given the flamboyant tone and distance in time since the war, I'm not too inclined to try and chase up a possibly non-existent MC citation (no other sources mention it) in addition to this MID citation. FWIW, his brother (Raymond Ewings Negus) was awarded the DSO, and other people named Negus were also gazetted in that war. Given this extra reference to the MC, does anyone have any further advice? Carcharoth (talk) 22:38, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Just to reassure myself that I wasn't imagining it all, I did manage to find the citation for the DSO for Raymond Ewings Negus, but in the Edinburgh Gazette. Page 1880 of the supplement to the Edinburgh Gazette Issue 13001 (23 October 1916), for the record. Is there an easy way to tell when something would be published in the Edinburgh or Belfast Gazettes, rather than the London one? Carcharoth (talk) 23:04, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
    • I don't know about that but I suppose you could just go to the websites and search for him under his full name (and also "V.E. Negus"). I just did that at the London Gazette site and spotted his commissioning as a lieutenant in 1906; his promotion to temporary captain and, soon after, relinquishing of commission, in 1921; and the knighthood in 1956. As far as the MC goes, I think the fact that it doesn't appear as a post-nominal with his name in the knighthood gazetting is your best indication that the mention you found above is a furphy. Can't help with the MiD -- that's not a post-nominal so the fact that it doesn't appear re. the knighthood is no guarantee he didn't receive it; unfortunately the quality of reproduction of some pages and other oddities in the Gazette means you can't always find what you're after in the searches without an exact date, page number, etc -- name/initials is not always enough. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 23:24, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
      • Thanks. I noticed those commissions as well. I may have further questions about that later, but need to check some things first. Carcharoth (talk) 00:24, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
        • I did the same as Ian, but I have found in the past that the OCR used by the London Gazette is poor, and I have had problems with other officers where I have had to search high and low for citations that I knew were there. In the case of his brother, for example, we know that the DSO was always accompanied by an MiD, but this did not appear in the search. I have also found from reading personnel files that the official notifications of MiDs were often missing. Career officers, perhaps more aware of possible benefits, would often spend time chasing up lost citations, but I suspect others might just let it slide. Hawkeye7 (talk) 00:43, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Shell sizes - do we convert?

I've currently got the Saint-Inglevert Airfield article at GAN. The reviewer has raised a question about shell sizes. Do we convert these, or leave them as the stated imperial / metric size? Mjroots (talk) 06:36, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Generally, yes. The exception is where the size is in the odd occasion where the size/weight of the projectile its its name and not its literal size. Nick-D (talk) 11:32, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
Nominal and actual calibres are not the same. Only convert if you have the actual calibre. Don't use the template.--Toddy1 (talk) 11:37, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
In most miltary articles, I'd say give the conversion with the proviso that the conversion is useful. Eg a 20th Century QF 32-pounder shell converts to 90 mm while a 18th C 32 pounder converts to 15 kg. That said in some articles, such as the airfield, the shell size is relatively unimportant to the narrative (in this article the size of the munitions has no bearing to the event described) and the lack of conversion is not an issue. GraemeLeggett (talk) 12:04, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
For articles on the shell or the weapon, I'd convert; for articles on units or battles which simply refer to, eg, "a battery of six-inch guns", I would link but not convert unless it's particularly unusual or confusing in context. Shimgray | talk |

Canadian Forces: Commons categories clean-up

There is a big clean-up to do in the categories for the Canadian Forces on Commons. For example, why do we need Category:Royal Canadian Navy and Category:Canadian Naval forces and why both of them are outside Category:Canadian Forces ? I'm volunteer to make the plan for the categories and submit it to somebody who has the bot. I just wanted to let you know, if anyone is interested in participating. I will create a sub-page under my username right on Commons. Thanks you, Amqui (talk) 02:25, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

there should a separate tree for RCN and RCN-part-of-CF. They are two different organiziations, one a branch of the Canadian Forces, the other a separate pre-CF independant organization. This confusion came about when the Monarchist Stephen Harper renamed the navy back to RCN, and started putting royal symbols everywhere. 70.24.244.198 (talk) 04:27, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
Understood, but categories are still a mess. Amqui (talk) 20:53, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Article rating

Following dozens and dozens of new or upgraded articles on Medals and Orders (Russian and Soviet) and seeing C ratings, some START ratings (and a few very rare Bs) from this WikiProject, like for this recent one Medal "For Valiant Labour in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945", I ask you in all honesty, is it really worth including this WikiProject on Orders and Medals related articles? It nows seems quite clear to me that such articles cannot and will never meet your stringent criteria that were established for a totally different type of article. If all these articles will do is clutter your board with low rated articles, do you suggest I stop including you in the talk pages of my articles? I assure you this question is free of any ego on my part, it simply seems ludicrous to have your members waste their time on articles that will never rate better than low average simply due to their subject. Fdutil (talk) 15:37, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't think it's really a waste of time, in the grand scheme of things; our assessment process covers tens of thousands of articles, so a few more or less is not going to make a big difference in terms of time spent. On the other hand, there's nothing fundamentally "wrong" with the articles you're working on; while there might not be enough information (easily) available to push them past B-Class at the moment, there's no reason to assume that this cannot change, given an editor with the right interests and access to the right sources. Personally, I see no problem with having the articles remain assessed at their current level until an opportunity to improve them further arises, even if that takes years; Wikipedia is, after all, here for the long run. Kirill [talk] [prof] 01:06, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Deletion of UK rank insignia

There's a deletion request at [3] that may delete most, if not all, of the UK rank insignia on grounds of copyright violation (this would resolve the argument about the display of medal ribbons on UK articles!). Conceivably this could affect all UK Government artwork, so has anyone anything to add? Folks at 137 (talk) 19:16, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Isn't there a fair-use rationale for this sort of thing? I'd be surprised if the MoD objected to the use of derivative images of its rank insignia for an encyclopedia which documents a lot of its history - and to do so would kind of fly in the face of the whole 'open government' thing which Ministers are so keen on. Wiki-Ed (talk) 19:59, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
That may well be true, but Tarlneustaedter has pointed us to this official statement about crown copyright which may be applicable: Open Government License. However, the UK Government "open licence" referred to by Tarlneustaedter specifically excludes military insignia. So, where does that leave the 50 year rule? The "open licence" also excludes personal information; does that prevent our use of the National Archives for biographies? Maybe we need specialised advice, unless anyone here is a lawyer. Folks at 137 (talk) 07:05, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
I think it's probably 70 years for this sort of work, but I guess one could argue that military insignia are continually being reinvented to fit new uniforms, so the rule is continually reset. Or at least something complicated like that might explain why they are specifically highlighted alongside the Royal Arms as being exempt from the Open Government License. However, I'm not sure it was written with educational websites like this in mind. Maybe if someone tried to persuade the National Archives to review the wording they might relax it a bit. No harm in asking. I'd be happy to try this unless someone else has good contacts. Wiki-Ed (talk) 20:46, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
I've asked Moonriddengirl for her advice on this. EyeSerenetalk 08:44, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
Oi. I'd have to put some research into this one, as international copyright law is something I started looking into really only after I began volunteering here. What I would do, if I were you, is trot over to Commons:Commons:Village pump/Copyright and ask them to take a look at the debate, since the deletion request turns on copyright law and has broad implications. Some of our Commons users are really sharp on these kinds of things; I'd put them up against an attorney any time. (That said, some of them could be attorneys. Who knows? :)) And speaking of, I've asked User:Ironholds to stop by in case he can advise, as he is a British jurist. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:06, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Scroll down and see my similar inquiry concerning USAF emblems. The statutes involved differ, but the issue is the same. Lineagegeek (talk) 00:01, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

User:Kamek98 and the Chinese Three Kingdoms era wars/battles

Kamek98 (talk · contribs) has requested dispute resolution for three article names, you may be interested. Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard#Wang_Ling_Rebellion.2C_Guanqiu_Jian_and_Wen_Qin_Rebellion.2C_Zhuge_Dan_Rebellion This is related to the requested move that Kamek98 proposed at Talk:Zhuge_Dan_Rebellion#Requested_move.

70.24.244.198 (talk) 05:14, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

This user may require more attention, given many page moves and using data from the game Dynasty Warriors 7 for article changes. 70.24.248.211 (talk) 03:47, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Should Fyrd be forked from Leidang?

Right now Fyrd redirects to Leidang. I think this is problematic because:

1. This is the English-language Wikipedia. The Fyrd is an [Old] English institution. The Leidang is a Scandinavian institution.

2. The article admits that the Fyrd was not the same as the Leidang. It describes the Leidang as primarily a way of mobilizing a fleet, and the Fyrd as primarily a way of mobilizing an army.

3. Both articles should probably be added to the Warfare section of the Germanic Peoples infobox. 71.191.228.6 (talk) 18:51, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Agree. We are talking about different organisations whose similarity would be shared by other militia forces of the time so it is hard to see the special case for them being in the same article. It would be justifiable to have a separate article on the Fyrd or for it to be combined into Anglo-Saxon Military. However,it really needs a thorough review - the operation and membership of the fyrd is a subject of some academic debate and this should be brought out. Monstrelet (talk) 07:59, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Use of Emblems in United States Air Force Articles based on Public Domain

When available, most articles on United States Air Force (USAF) units include an image of the unit's emblem. I gather from looking at WikiCommons that the use of these images is based on the assumption that they are in the public domain. The reason given (through links) is that artwork created by a federal government employee in the ordinary course of the employee's duties is in the public domain.

Currently, USAF unit emblems are created by The Institute of Heraldry, an agency of the Department of the Army. When these images are created, they are forwarded to the Air Force Historical Research Agency, who gives them final approval.

However, the USAF (Air Force Instruction 84-105) asserts that "Non-Air Force Individuals and organizations may use the [emblem] only with the commander's permission." As a former USAF unit commander, I am aware that earlier versions of this directive expressly stated that the unit commander had a copyright in the unit emblem.

I doubt that Wikipedians have obtained the permission required by AFI 84-105 for all or nearly all of the emblems appearing in Wikipedia articles.

My question, then, is: Does USAF have a right to assert a copyright or other interest that requires express permission for Wikipedia to use its emblems? Has Wiki ever attempted to obtain a blanket permission to use these emblems if USAF's assertion stands up under US Copyright law? Lineagegeek (talk) 23:41, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

As far as I know (and keep in mind that I'm not a copyright lawyer, etc.), such regulations are typically intended primarily to prevent "use" in the sense of someone using the emblem to represent themselves or their organization, rather than to prohibit anyone from displaying the emblem when discussing the corresponding unit itself.
It's possible, of course, that the USAF does wish to prevent all uses of its emblems; however, I suspect that the applicable statutes would not support such a restriction. Compare, for example, the better-known case of the FBI seeking to prevent any non-approved use of its seal; the Wikimedia Foundation's position was that the FBI was not within its rights to do so, and—as far as I know—that position has prevailed to date. Kirill [talk] [prof] 01:12, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
I am not a copyright lawyer either, but the USAF doesn't appear to have any ability to enforce this directive. Unless the USAF has an exception to the general rules around works of the US government, the emblems are in the public domain upon creation and anyone can use them as they see fit. In my experience, a few US government agencies claim copyright over material which is actually public domain. Wikipedia editors have ignored these claims, and I'm not aware of any take down notices other than that which was sent by the FBI (which received a scathing response from Wikimedia's legal counsel). I have seen some cases of people claiming to be in the US military removing content from articles on the grounds of copyright or security violations, but these have been rapidly reverted to no ill-effect. I think that if we were making the USAF unhappy by widely using these images, they would have sent a grumpy letter by now! Nick-D (talk) 01:19, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
"I am not a copyright lawyer either" Nor I. My sense is, this is to prevent, or inhibit, misrepresentation. I also suspect there's the issue of profit: if WP was putting up the emblems & selling "USAF-approved" stuff, USG lawyers would be breathing down necks as we speak. TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 01:32, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
JAG's scarier than the Air Farce. ;) - The Bushranger One ping only 01:33, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
Better looking, too. ;p TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 01:43, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

{{PD-USGov-Military-Army-USAIOH}}

Although the work is indeed in the public domain, its use in the United States is still restricted by law. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:24, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Vimy Ridge Main page tomorrow

For tomorrow the Battle of Vimy Ridge article has been chosen to be featured on the main page. I recommend giving the article a look over before it runs. --Harizotoh9 (talk) 14:02, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Edmund Hill

I recently created Edmund Hill, which could probably do with a look-over from someone with better knowledge of US Air force history and military decorations. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:25, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Battle honour Ancona

Is the British (and Commonwealth) battle honour "Ancona" related to the Battle of Ancona article? It seems that the 3rd Hussars have the battle honour and were at one point seconded to the Polish corps that took the city in mid 1944 but the link is not clear cut. GraemeLeggett (talk) 12:31, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

"Ancona" was awarded to only one British or Commonwealth regiment - 7th Queens Own Hussars - for operations during the period 2–18 July 1944. As this end date ties up with the end date of the battle of Ancona and the regiment was seconded to work alongside 2nd Polish Corps at this time, I think the link is there. See http://www.qohmuseum.org.uk/maid.htm about the secondment and why the regiment, as a result, wears the "Maid of Warsaw". NtheP (talk) 14:51, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
Thamks, good enough for me. GraemeLeggett (talk) 15:29, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Military Medicine

I am a medical student with an interest in military history and a particular interest in military medicine. I have seen very few articles on military medicine in specific conflicts, a fact which became apparent when I recently did an extended research essay. I have only just joined Wikipedia and I am not entirely sure how best to approach this. I would like to start a page on military medicine in WWII, but this would only be the tip of the iceberg in the topic of military medicine as a whole. I'd really appreciate some advise on what I should do! I'm perfectly happy to do plenty of work on this - I have almost finished my first year and I'm going to have a very long and potentially boring summer. This seems like a good way to keep my mind occupied! — Preceding unsigned comment added by PGSGimson (talk • contribs) 12:38, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

List of sunken aircraft carriers

The current article for sunken carriers here is quite poor so I've begun a redesign here. The original creater of the article and I have been discussing how the article should be set up. Should it be one giant table with the navies they served in a sortable element or should they be separated by country so a small paragraph about the navies aircraft carrier history be inserted above each section. I can see the benefits of both and any suggestions about the list are welcome. --MOLEY (talk) 02:01, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Either option would work, though I favour the second one; readers are likely to be more interested in losses by country than losses by name of the ship. As a question, is USS Oriskany (CV-34) in scope? The draft of the article is looking good. Nick-D (talk) 12:22, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
I put USS Oriskany (CV-34) in the scope. It hasn't been sunk in the same manner as the rest of the ships (target or combat) but I think it still fits.--MOLEY (talk) 20:36, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
The list states that Avenger was sunk by U-151 while the Avenger article states U-155!? MisterBee1966 (talk) 11:45, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
Nice catch! The I haven't done much fact checking yet, I just copied the main article--MOLEY (talk) 02:03, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Dead link in template

The {{WPMILHIST}} template which has just been added to Talk:Nicholson War Memorial includes a link, "quality scale", to Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment#Quality scale. The #Quality_scale section does not exist. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:34, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Fixed; thanks for catching that! Kirill [talk] [prof] 12:21, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

World War I Editathon in London

Wikimedia UK has just announced a World War I Editathon on Saturday 16 June. We're running this event in partnership with JISC, the UK Government's expert body on digital technologies for education and research. It will be a great opportunity to work closely with experts on military history from academia to improve Wikipedia articles on this really important topic, and I hope it will be a really successful start to Wikimedia UK's World War I Centenary outreach work. I'd encourage anyone with an interest in World War I and military history in general to sign up! Regards, The Land (talk) 18:45, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Also worth pointing out that we can pay travel expenses for UK Wikimedians to come along (though, sadly, not international fares!). The Land (talk) 19:45, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
What an excellent initiative. I hope that this goes well. Nick-D (talk) 08:28, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Merge input needed - Platine War

Should Platine War merge to Battle of Caseros? Please comment at Talk:Platine War#Merge proposal. Thanks, D O N D E groovily Talk to me 02:52, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

New articles

Hi folks. Where do I flag up new articles? I've just translated this one: Invasion of Rügen (1678) which could do with a friendly review. --Bermicourt (talk) 06:28, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

First du have to request the page importation. (Wikipedia:Requests for page importation) Sieht aus als würd das wie die Importwünsche in de:wiki funktionieren. --Bomzibar (talk) 08:19, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment you've forgotten the talk page attribution notice for translations from other wikipedias. (and the interwiki link) I suppose you could tag it with {{new unreviewed article}} on the article page... 70.24.248.211 (talk) 08:34, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
@Bomzibar. I don't need to request translation - I do that. @70.24.248.211. Thanks - done.
I'm really looking for a project page where new articles are listed, so people know they've recently been created. Of course, that leads to folk reviewing and correcting/improving them sooner which is all good. --Bermicourt (talk) 11:16, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
Please list the article at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Requests if you'd like an assessment of it against the B class criteria. Please feel free to include a request for comments when you list the article, and the reviewer will do so. We don't have a manually-updated list of new articles as there's an automated list at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/New articles. I hope that this is helpful. Nick-D (talk) 12:19, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Wehrmachtbericht 19 April 1940

I have a question! The Wehrmachtbericht on 19 April 1940 announced the potential destruction of a "Glasgow"-class cruiser north of the Shetland Islands. The U-boat commander credited with the attack is Korvettenkapitän Werner Hartmann. In theory, the attack must have occurred between 30 March 1940 and 18 April 1940, if indeed Hartmann was to be credited. My questions: First, is the Wehrmachtbericht confusing Glasgow class with Town-class? Second, Hartmann is not credited with any warship damaged nor destroyed in the timeframe in question, what ship could this have been? Does anyone know? Thanks MisterBee1966 (talk) 17:03, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Blair in Hitler's U-Boat War: The Hunters 1939–1942 mentions Hartmann missing a British Heavy cruiser in about that time frame. He does not name the ship missed.Nigel Ish (talk) 20:42, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
Rohwer's Chronology of the War at Sea states that Hartmann launched an attack on Glasgow or Sheffield on 13 April 1940(see page 19). Parsecboy (talk) 21:54, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Germanic Wars

The Germanic Wars article has gone through some recent expansion to include material which appears to be outside the scope previously denoted, in terms of the time period and in terms that some of the conflicts now listed have no Roman involvement. It is not a subject I know much about but to my eye at the very least there seems to be some internal contradiction. Mutt Lunker (talk) 10:37, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

It appears to be the work of a new and enthusiastic editor with views on the subject of Germanic history. Someone with access to appropriate sources would be useful. GraemeLeggett (talk) 11:59, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
Indeed and they seem to open that they are effectively adding WP:OR to the articles they are editing, referring to "my opinion after research", justifying edits on the basis that matters are "unclear but possble" and have been unreceptive (on my talk page and re. the Battle of Raith article) that they should provide sources and not add OR. If others could help guiding their enthusiasm and watching out for dubious edits, that would be helpful. Mutt Lunker (talk) 12:45, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
Incidentally, the same editor is also ludicrously adding various conflicts to the Military History of Germany category on the grounds they involve Germanic peoples, e.g. the aforementioned Battle of Raith in modern-day Scotland, because it involved Angles. Mutt Lunker (talk) 11:18, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Proposal of collaboration

Hello, I'm the User:Pigr8, active on en.wiki, but mainly on it.wiki where I'm member of it:Progetto:Guerra, the counterpart of this Project. Recently I've started, with another italian contributor, to improve Italian Civil War, that in it.wiki weighs some 126+k and 191 notes. I've already seen some of your colleagues working on the article, so I hope to be able to start a collaboration between you and us, not limited to this article but extended to any other, here and on it.wiki, judged viable of common efforts. Pigr8 Melius esse quam videri 21:37, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks much for the offer. If you have a list of articles on this Wikipedia that you guys are interested in, I'll keep an eye out. - Dank (push to talk) 14:40, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
Great. It will follow soon. The same could be done on it.wiki for a list that you would submit. --Pigr8 Melius esse quam videri 22:17, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Image licensing

I went through a few A class reviews this morning and there's a couple of recurring themes. Simply put, image licencing has been really rather poor. Out of sight, out of mind, it would seem: given the consistently high standards we apply to prose, referencing, etc. it would be great if MILSHISTers could check for three things, at least:

  • template:PD-old must be accompanied by a US copyright tag: You must also include a United States public domain tag to indicate why this work is in the public domain in the United States.; in many cases this will be {{PD-US}}.
  • If the image in question is a photograph of a old manuscript, mural, etc. - a two-dimensional work, then:
  • be clear about why the original file is in the public domain;
  • supply a {{PD-Art}} or {{PD-scan}} tag, as appropriate
  • If using a life+70 or similar tag for the files country of origin, and the file was created later than 1850, provide evidence of the author's date of death. I realise it seems odd to think that a Victorian work is still in copyright, but the oldest people around are about 120; thus ~160 years ago is possible and needs escaping.

Thanks, Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 10:36, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

FAC stuff to do

From oldest to newest (so, most urgent first):

  • Werner Hartenstein: U-boat captain in WWII. I've offered to do the spotchecks, but if anyone who reads German wants to beat me to it, please do.
  • Iraq War in Anbar Province: Neither the article nor the nominator has visited our A-class page yet. Looks promising, and we could use some FAs that cover the century we're living in. Needs reviews.
  • Battle of Radzymin (1920): Shows up on many "most important battles" lists. If we can't find someone who reads Polish who's willing to do a spotcheck, then I can't be optimistic about this one's chances at FAC, or the chances of future similar articles.
  • John Sherman Cooper: There's something for everyone: "... he served under George Patton in World War II, earning the Bronze Star Medal for reorganizing the Bavarian judicial system. He served two partial terms in the Senate before being appointed Ambassador to India by President Dwight D. Eisenhower." Needs reviews.
  • SMS Ostfriesland: A German battleship sunk off the Virginia Capes in 1921. Needs reviews.
  • May Revolution: Needs help.
  • John Francis Jackson: Apparently, there are a couple of notable RAAF officers who don't yet have FA bios, and this is one of them. Needs reviews.
  • Mary, Queen of Scots: the mother of all this. B-class article. New at FAC.
  • Singapore strategy: "the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history", per Churchill. New at FAC. - Dank (push to talk) 14:34, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Ranavalona III: She was the last sovereign of the Kingdom of Madagascar. Arrived today at FAC.
One more thing. I'm seeing a "kinder and gentler" trend at FAC ... don't worry that someone's going to take your head off if you say something wrong, just read the article and say what you think. Even if you aren't interested in reading some of our best articles on important subjects or in learning something from talented reviewers (don't look at me, I only do prose at FAC), it's still true that people who review get their own articles (at PR, GAN A-class and FAC) reviewed faster. - Dank (push to talk) 14:52, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Guerra Grande

Guerra Grande is currently a redirect to Uruguayan Civil War. Should this be changed to a disambiguation page? Please comment at Talk:Guerra Grande. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 14:37, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

More neutral commentators are also needed at the related discussion going on at Talk:Platine War. Regards.--MarshalN20 | Talk 14:54, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
That's another example of a cross-cultural naming conflict that makes me a little pessimistic about the reception Wikidata will get on this (English) Wikipedia. Every language AFAIK carries its own cultures and even its own realities. The problem is hard enough to deal with when everyone speaks the same language. - Dank (push to talk) 19:09, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
It's not what we're best at as a community... I've left a brief comment on the page. Hchc2009 (talk) 19:46, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
I would imagine that Wikipedia should give preference to the name historians more commonly use to denote the war in question ("Guerra Grande"). The term "Platine War" has a weak foundation, with 50 book hits on Google Books (when specified for English-only results). My view is that both the Uruguayan Civil War and Platine War articles should be merged and renamed to the "Guerra Grande", thereby aligning the English Wikipedia with what English historiography denotes. I figured it would be simpler to first rename one article, and then merge it with the other (in a separate discussion). Regards.--MarshalN20 | Talk 23:15, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

The word "station" within infoboxes

Hello

When using the infobox for airports should the name of the article such as RAF Leconfield be stylized as either

1: Royal Air Force Station Leconfield 2: Royal Air Force station Leconfield 3: Royal Air Force Leconfield or 4: RAF Leconfield

as the infobox name?

Gavbadger (talk) 18:22, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

I usually see RAF Alconbury, for example, used in modern references.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 18:42, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
Do you know if there is anything concrete about the use of the word such as a policy. Gavbadger (talk) 19:02, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
I can't speak to that but agree with Storm that "RAF name" seems the accepted standard for RAF bases. This differs from say the RAAF terminology, which has generally used the term "station" (up until c. 1952) or "base" (since c. 1952), e.g. "RAAF Station Richmond", later RAAF Base Richmond. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 00:05, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
Thank you for information Gavbadger (talk) 00:24, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
A belated two cents. In US Air Force practice going back almost 60 years, it is always RAF Stationname. USAF carries this practice to ridiculous extremes, with all RAF stations being listed alphabetically under "R". Looking through Fletcher, Air Force Bases Vol. II, USAF dates this practice from 1955. As an example, it lists RAF Mildenhall as being established as RAF Station Mildenhall in 1934 and changing its name to Mildenhall RAF in 1950 (on the other hand [sighs] Lakenheath is listed before 1950 as Lakenheath RAF Station). I do not know if this reflects RAF practice. Numerous bases were established expressly for the US AAF during WW II and contemporary AAF practice was to eliminate descriptives and just call them (e.g.) Greenham Common. Lineagegeek (talk) 22:05, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Assessment of redirect pages

The assessment backlog currently contains a number of redirect pages. These presumably should be classed as non-article pages for assessment to clear them. However, there doesn't seem to be a code for redirect listed. If the correct code is identified, would it be possible for redirect pages to be auto-assessed, as happens with some other non-article categories, this removing the need to manually code? Thanks for any help possible on this one. Monstrelet (talk) 15:53, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

There's no need to assess or tag redirects: they're not articles. Their talk pages should be either redirected to the talk page of the target article or be nominated for speedy deletion. Nick-D (talk) 07:47, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
I had got the non-article bit - just want to clear them from the backlog list. I think the problem may lie in the fact that someone has merged the articles and not merged the talk pages - see e.g. Talk:Ram bow. I can't see how that can be deleted as it's part of the article history or redirected as it contains content. However, it may work for some of the others, so thanks. Monstrelet (talk) 08:12, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
On further investigation, several of the articles have been recoded in all their project banners as redirect. This has the effect in other project banners of flagging them as either Redirect or NA. The MILHIST project banner doesn't seem to be recognising this. See, for example Talk: Compass navigation system. Monstrelet (talk) 08:26, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
Sorry to make a fuss about this but can I request a technical fix to this problem? Other wikipedia projects scripting recognise the term class=redirect or class=red. This creates in most cases a grey box containing the word redirect on the project banner (sometimes NA). I presume it also classifies these pages as NA and removes them from the assessment lists. It should be possible to obtain the code from one of our sister projects to allow this to happen to our lists too. I prefer this solution because it is simple (the person making the redirect simply codes all project banners the same), is consistent with sister projects like Ships and Aviation and hopefully is a straightforward code-tweak.Monstrelet (talk) 19:00, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Personally, I don't really see the point of tagging redirect pages—they have no substantive content, so there's really no reason for us to monitor them—but you make a good point about being consistent with other projects who are tagging significant numbers of redirects, for whatever reason. I've modified {{WPMILHIST}} to accept class=redirect (or class=rdr) and produce an appropriate "assessment" category. Please let me know if you run into any problems using the new syntax. Kirill [talk] [prof] 01:40, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Kirill. While it is generally pointless to log them, as others do, I think consistency in wikipedia does help in the bigger scheme of things. It had mopped up a couple and I got rid of the other 3 I knew about - others note needs to be not capitalised. They had been hanging round like a bad smell so good to be shot of them. Monstrelet (talk) 09:44, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Old deletion templates

I've been going through the ACW stubs and found the following articles:

Any suggestions on the proper course of action here? Wild Wolf (talk) 04:27, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Neither appears to meet WP:SOLDIER; I've boldy redirected them to the company and the 14th New Jersey Volunteer Infantry (his command) respectively. Interesting question: is Colonel Truex related to a few other Truexes who are somewhat more notable? - The Bushranger One ping only 05:44, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
I've just found Edward Wallace (notability template since October 2008). Wild Wolf (talk) 12:36, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
I've also found the articles Jasper Wilson and Alfred M. Wood, which seem to fail to meet the notability guidelines of military biography. Should these be put up for deletion as well? Wild Wolf (talk) 00:27, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
Sarah Taylor (soldier) notability template since March 2010. Wild Wolf (talk) 18:12, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Notability and naming of "battles"

I couldn't see anything on this in the project pages, so thought I'd ask for some directions, or even broader thoughts. What's the standard for creating and naming battle articles? Looking around some of the material that's being added here in respect of the current Syrian fighting, I noted several stubby standalone pages such as this one on the "Battle of Taftanaz" (others can be found among these listed articles). However, it's not clear this is what this incident is known as, nor that it deserves a whole page to itself anyway. Obviously the article has sources, but they are simply news reports that merely mention in passing that there was an exchange of fire at Taftanaz that day. I know that not every battle these days is a huge setpiece like Waterloo, but it strikes me as very problematic for WP to be in effect creating terminology like this - ie claiming that there was a "battle" at all, as commonly understood, let alone that it is commonly known under this exact name. N-HH talk/edits 12:46, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Regarding the article itself, you could be bold and redirect to the general article on the Syrian fighting citing a lack of comprehensive sources and the lack of a credible name. You could move the article to 2011-2012 Syrian uprising in Taftanaz which might be a more agreeable title while allowing for future expansion. Or try Prodding the article or taking it to AfD. GraemeLeggett (talk) 16:06, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
Please see WP:MILMOS#NAME for MILHIST MOS naming conventions, and other project related styles. Ma®©usBritish[chat] 16:28, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for this x2. The naming guide (which I had missed) would appear, in principle, to be OK with "Battle of XX" if there's no other name for the thing in question - although the alternative "2012 clashes in XX" or, as suggested, ".. uprising in XX" might still be more accurate. However, that still leaves the question of whether we need the page at all. I had though of AFD-ing, but there are a lot of these pages, and didn't want to go to all that effort only to come up against a deluge of the usual "Keep, well sourced" AFD responses and therefore risk a "no consensus" close; or indeed more pertinent "this is quite normal for military history stuff"-type objections, hence, again, why I thought I'd check here. I'll have a think. It seems there are a quite a few committed people involved in some of the Syria stuff and I'm not sure I really want to get tangled up in it. N-HH talk/edits 18:01, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
You can't create an article name on your own but have to take the most common one in english language sources. Everything else would be a violation of Wikipedia:No original research. --Bomzibar (talk) 07:05, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
That was my instinctive reaction when I saw the page - who else calls it that? Does it even exist under any name? Yet now, via the efforts of 3-4 enthusiastic WP editors, it's on the record at the top of a Google search (were anyone to be searching for that term or something similar). Unfortunately, my experience is that the OR argument is often rolled over and ignored, both in AFDs and elsewhere, when people count footnotes without reading the actual sources. N-HH talk/edits 12:12, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
To search for the correct name you better try it with Google Books which isn't so much influenced by Wikipedia. --Bomzibar (talk) 12:37, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Help populating Category:Indigenous counter-insurgency forces  ?

A bit back I created Category:Indigenous counter-insurgency forces , but thus far only have Sarandoy (Afghanistan, 1980s) and Kit Carson Scouts (Vietnam War) in the cat. Can anyone suggest any other places to look, or lend a quick hand adding this cat to appropriate articles? MatthewVanitas (talk) 19:45, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Category:Military history articles with incomplete B-Class checklists

There are still over 24,000 articles in this category. I'll try to knock out some while I have the time, but clearing out this category might go faster with some help. 76.7.224.171 (talk) 04:05, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

I did a couple dozen US related ones. I noticed also that some are redirects so since this project does not care to track redirects I removed the banner. Additionally since a lot do pertain to US related projects I will leave a note on the WPUS page in case some want to help. 138.162.8.58 (talk) 18:19, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
Click on [show] for progress bar

Backlog: Military history articles with incomplete B-Class checklists
Goal: 0 articles
Current: 32 articles
Initial: 24,689 articles
(Refresh)

I can concentrate mostly on the ACW articles, since this is my area of interest; also I can do some on the ARW articles. Wild Wolf (talk) 19:14, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
Every little helps. And to encourage others, you don't have to be an expert on the subject to decide if an article has an infobox or pictures. GraemeLeggett (talk) 20:32, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for your help; considering the size of this category, perhaps some kind of contest might help getting through all of these articles. 76.7.224.171 (talk) 20:40, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
I think this drive is going for quantity over quality and would like to just put a friendly reminder to try to stay consistent with your checklists as a bunch of hodgepodge guessing will render the checklist useless overall.--MOLEY (talk) 18:07, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Possible FAC

Opinions please, how close is the SS Empire Endurance article to FA status? Would it be worth pushing it forward or are there any major deficiencies in the article? Mjroots (talk) 19:45, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Just a passer-by comment, are there any photographs of the ship that could go in the infobox? Gavbadger (talk) 19:49, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
This was brought up in the GAR. The only available image would have to be used of a FUR. I'm reluctant to flood Wikipedia with fair-use ship images. There is a link in the External links section to an image of the ship. I don't feel that the lack of an image significantly detracts from the article. Mjroots (talk) 19:56, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
Needs a bit of work. The lead is short for an article of this length, formatting needs to be improved on references (don't put refs in all-caps, even if the source does), have we determined HQRS-ness for Convoyweb and Brian Watson (#48)? Do we know if anyone ever tried to dive/raise the ship? I think that you're going to have a hard time getting through FAC with no image, and this is an easy-to-write FUR, as it's obviously a bit difficult to get free-use pictures of a ship that's been sunk for 70 years. Based on the age of the ship, there's even a good possibility that images are in the public domain due to age. Overall, I think that with some polishing it could have a good chance at FAC. Drop me a note on my talk page if you'd like a more detailed review. Dana boomer (talk) 22:06, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
HQRS-ness - Convoyweb draws extensively on the research of Arnold Hague. AFAIK, he was an acknowledged expert on the subject of Allied convoys in WWII. Brian Watson's website covers the Tower Hill Memorial and has photographs of the panels covering each ship. Thus any info referenced to his website is in effect referenced to the memorial itself. Mjroots (talk) 05:22, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
I think that Convoyweb is considered a RS (though I've found errors in it, so it should be used with a bit of caution). If you haven't done so already, I'd suggest pinging The Land (talk · contribs) to see if there's some way to approach the National Maritime Museum about a photo of the ship (assuming that they have one, of course). Nick-D (talk) 08:23, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

New collection of scholarly books online

The recently-launced Directory of open access books website may be of interest to members of this project. It's posting the full text of new(ish) scholarly books online, under what appears to be a Wikipedia-friendly creative commons license. Its current list of history titles is available here and includes several military history books. Nick-D (talk) 08:40, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Nick, lots of books on interesting subjects there. - Dank (push to talk) 11:26, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
Excellent! Hchc2009 (talk) 16:32, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
Gah, I saw all those ssss's in the edit summary and thought somebody was saying thatsss a very nice Wikipedia you have there......! - The Bushranger One ping only 16:42, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
Sorry - my wireless keyboard sometimes repeats characters; I usually catch them! Hchc2009 (talk) 16:44, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
That'ssss a very niccce everything you've got there, would be a sssshame if SOPA were to happen to it... :P Jesse V. (talk) 14:58, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
SSSS... - The Bushranger One ping only 18:22, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
Hchc2009 (talk) 19:13, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Split discussion at Knight

A split discussion has been started here. This is an extensive article and the possibility of splitting it into the historical/military and the honorific is being mooted. This would be quite a high importance article to the Medieval task force if we went in for such subjective judgements, so I hope those interested in the subject will participate to ensure we get the best military history outcome. Monstrelet (talk) 17:55, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

4705 Defense Wing Article

I suggested on the talk page for the 4705th Defense Wing a month ago that the unit was not notable enough for a stand-alone article and should be made a redirect to either Norton Air Force Base, where it was stationed or 27th Air Division, its headquarters (retaining the wing categories on the redirect page). There has been no response on that page, so I thought I'd present to a wider audience before changing the page. Lineagegeek (talk) 21:33, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

I agree, but since it's a unit, it's probably better to redirect it to a unit page, thus the 27th Air Division. Buckshot06 (talk) 05:12, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
Agree with Buckshot. It sounds like the designation was just a placeholder for the 27th Division. —Ed!(talk) 14:22, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Nomenclature on friendly fire article

Hello. I'm currently building the Death of Dave Sharrett II and wondering how to name it. Sharrett himself fails WP:SOLDIER and is notable only in his death, but I'm not sure how to title the page; he died in a friendly fire incident in Iraq; calling it a "shooting" wouldn't be quite accurate since it was in the middle of a battle at the time of the shooting; calling it a "murder" isn't accurate because the intent of the shooter isn't clear; just calling it a "death" seems too vague. Any better ideas? —Ed!(talk) 18:34, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Friendly fire is a common term, as is Amicide. Amicide of Dave Sharrett sounds odd, though, and Friendly Fire Death seems too long. You might have to stick with death and then further define it in the article itself.Intothatdarkness (talk) 19:37, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
Is even his death notable? Referencing is two articles from the same newspaper issue and a military newspaper which possibly doesn't count as independent of the subject. The section in his early life might be considered "background" for a newspaper article but has no bearing on his death so far as I can see. GraemeLeggett (talk) 20:01, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
Just getting started with sourcing. It'll be there soon. In the meantime, I'll stick with "death." —Ed!(talk) 20:49, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Article name (Battles of Medieval Poland)

I wonder if this article shouldn't be moved. It is far more than a list of battles, see Talk:Battles of Medieval Poland. Comments appreciated (this is not a RM yet because I am not sure what name to propose). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 19:59, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Greetings from GLAM-Wiki US

Invitation to join GLAM-Wiki US
tight
tight

Hello! This WikiProject aligns closely with the work of the GLAM-Wiki initiative (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums), a global community of volunteers who assist cultural institutions with sharing resources with Wikimedia. GLAM-Wiki US is a new community initiative focused on organizing cultural collaborations within the United States. GLAM organizations are diverse and span numerous topics, from libraries and art museums to science centers and historic sites. We currently have a backlog of interested institutions- and we need your help!

Are you interested in helping with current or future GLAM projects? Join→ Online Volunteers

We hope you'll join the growing GLAM-Wiki community in the US. Thank you!
-Lori Phillips (Talk), US Cultural Partnerships Coordinator
For more information visit→ The GLAM:US portal or GLAM-Wiki on Outreach

Financial Warfare

Sorry about my drop off of activity, times are tough and I am looking for a new more prosperous line of employment, but in the mean time, I came upon this article regarding Financial warfare that was in the Legion Magazine. Interesting read if I do say so myself. Possibly worthy of its own article? 3K books mention the topic, as do a litle less than 300 scholarly papers.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 16:40, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

"Financial warfare" per se doesn't sound like a good match for Milhist to me, but we could really use some scholarly articles on the causes of war. Pinker's latest book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, is great btw. - Dank (push to talk) 17:35, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
Wow, that article in the Legion magazine is seriously paranoid and ill-informed. Nick-D (talk) 02:24, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
Agreed. - Dank (push to talk) 02:28, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Royalty Within the Scope of MILHIST?

Do all royalty who are theoretically in command of their military within the scope of WPMILHIST? I understand that Richard the Lionheart and Charlemagne fit into the project from their extensive conquests but recently many less notable monarchs have been added to the project that are of questionable association. Examples Being: Sancho I of Portugal, Henry the Young King, and Ramiro II of Aragon. Any clarification welcomed. --MOLEY (talk) 23:55, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, the most important question is: does anyone mind? Has the Milhist tag resulted in any unfortunate edits? So far, I haven't noticed it, but I tag, and keep an eye on, only those head-of-state-during-a-time-of-conflict articles that hit FAC. There are generally two reasons cited: military historians these days spend quite a lot of time writing about these figures (increasingly over the last 50 years), and it doesn't make sense to tag the generals but not to tag their commanders-in-chief, that would give an incomplete picture of the military history. - Dank (push to talk) 00:21, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Hussite Wars Suggestion

Thank you for your efforts in Wikipedia.

i just read of a remarkable battle in a book - the battle of Vitkov hill. wikipedia has a basic page on the topic - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_V%C3%ADtkov_Hill

however, it is not linked properly to this section under which it belongs - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussite_Wars

what a piece of history! 3,000 righteous peasants defeat 80,000 knights of the holy roman empire sent to persecute them.

wow. regards, Andrew — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.169.3.167 (talk) 04:53, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

By all means expand the article but be very cautious about POV issues. Describing one side as "righteous" and the other as "persecuting" them is not NPOV. Also I would check the numbers in other sources - the numbers of the HRE side in particular appear exaggerated.Monstrelet (talk) 06:49, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

User:Kamek98 images

FYI, Kamek98 (talk · contribs) has been adding images to military biography articles that are being nominated for deletion off Commons, and adding videogame images to some of those articles as well. I don't think the videogame images qualifies under NFCC rules we have on Wikipedia, and the deletion discussion for the non-videogame images is at commons:Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by Kamek98 . 70.49.124.225 (talk) 05:03, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

I have nominated the two videogame images for deletion under NFCC#8 at Wikipedia:Files for deletion/2012 April 26. 70.49.124.225 (talk) 04:18, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

ACW campaign categories

I'm not sure if anyone is aware of this but User:Cydebot has been renaming several of the "Category:Battles of the X Campaign of the American Civil War" to "Category:X Campaign", apparently due to the speedy renaming nomination page. Is there some kind of naming convention for these categories? 76.7.224.171 (talk) 16:41, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

The relevant category naming conventions are found at WP:MILMOS#CATNAME. In broad terms, I would say that the existing names would be correct for a category containing only battles, with other articles related to the campaign being in a higher-level category. If all the articles related to the campaign are to be combined in a single category, then naming that category to match the campaign article itself is a reasonable interpretation of the guidelines. Kirill [talk] 21:58, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

GAN listings

G'day. I wondered what the protocols are for GAN listings. It appears that editors can add articles at any place in the list. Some articles seem to remain at about the same place in the list, and never move up the list despite reviews of others above them on the list. What is the rule? Are they ordered chronologically based on date of listing or some other criteria? Peacemaker67 (talk) 14:02, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

I think they're ordered chronologically. Since people can review articles at any place on the list, newer articles can get reviewed before older ones, and vice versa; that probably causes the unpredictable movement you're seeing. Kirill [talk] 14:34, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
The listing at WP:GAN are made in chronological order by a bot - editors don't need to manually add entries. As Kirill notes, the order they're reviewed in is dependent on the interests of the prospective reviewers. Nick-D (talk) 23:09, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. Peacemaker67 (talk) 02:45, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

A new year

I have recently wrote and began working with Second Banda Oriental campaign, an article about a specific military campaign of the Argentine War of Independence. The first military conflict of this campaign was the Battle of Cerrito, which took place on December 31, 1812 (yes, the last day of the year). In the campaign article, should I mention as dates "1812-1814" or 1813-1814"? Cambalachero (talk) 13:52, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

I would think you'd be ok with using 1812, since there would have been preparatory action (maneuvers, troop shifts, political stuff, etc.) prior to the 31 Dec battle. Intothatdarkness (talk) 20:59, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
Let me be fussy. Did the shooting proper begin after midnight 30/31 Dec & end before midnight 31 Dec/1 Jan? If so, you're fine with 1812 IMO. If the main action was over by midnight 31 Dec/1 Jan, I'd still say you're fine, even if there was some mopping up after that. My $0.02. TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 09:19, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Kniveton, G. Manx Aviation in War and Peace. Douglas, Isle of Man, The Manx Experience, 1985.

Hello

Does anyone own this book "Kniveton, G. Manx Aviation in War and Peace. Douglas, Isle of Man, The Manx Experience, 1985."

If yes do you know what the ISBN is?

Gavbadger (talk) 22:51, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

The only entry in COPAC has no ISBN; ditto WorldCat. I strongly suspect it was published without one; it's rare for a catalogue entry to omit them if present. Shimgray | talk | 22:56, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
The Manx National Heritage Library asserts it has no ISBN. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:00, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
Thanks, i did search using a online search engine but every entry i found had the ISBN section empty, I thought it was a bit weird, thank you for help. Gavbadger (talk) 23:02, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Book:Three Kingdoms: Military Conflicts

Can someone check this? Book:Three Kingdoms: Military Conflicts

It has redlinks, I thought books were not supposed to contain redlinks? And are you supposed to credit yourself? since Wikipedia is a site anyone can edit, so if there are any changes it will no longer be a compilation by the original author... 70.49.124.225 (talk) 04:44, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

"most severely neglected" list?

Is there a list somewhere of the "most severely neglected" Military history articles on Wikipedia, based on the importance of the event itself? If so, I nominate Huaihai Campaign to the top of the list, with honorable mention to Battle of Lepanto. later Ling.Nut3 (talk) 13:47, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, there's Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Popular pages, which gives the top 500 MILHIST articles by page view - many of them are in dismal shape. I don't think I've ever seen a "most severely neglected" list that encompasses the whole project. Dana boomer (talk) 14:18, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
I suppose you could go for a WP:BOUNTY on those pages if you want to see them improved. —Ed!(talk) 14:23, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
Popular is, of course, things popular on wikipedia which also happen to have a MILHIST tag. There is no reason why they should have any military importance. We of course don't do importance scale, so couldn't produce an importance-based list. While this saves us a lot of spurious ranking, it does mean we cannot target article improvement this way. Monstrelet (talk) 16:18, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

"We of course don't do importance scale." Actually, several task forces have an importance scale, like the American Civil War, the American Revolutionary War, and the military biography task forces all divide their articles accoring to importance. 76.7.224.171 (talk) 14:06, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

We don't. What you see is a side effect of the dual-wikiproject nature of those task forces. Milhist (and the {{MILHIST}} talk page project tag) isn't assessing the articles for importance, but the other partner in the wikiproject (Wikipedia:WikiProject United States for the first two examples, Biography for the third) do in their project tags. The software behind the assessment summary tables picks up that the article has a "Class" assessment and an "Importance" assessment and displays that in the results, not particularly fussing over which project's tag it these came from. -- saberwyn 15:38, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
Well, the solution would seem to correct the software so the "side effect" doesn't show up. 64.6.124.31 (talk) 18:40, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

military biographies and videogame links

Should the military biographies of Three Kingdoms era generals contain links to List of Dynasty Warriors characters ? Bear in mind these are real historical personages, who happen to be used in the videogames as playable fighters. 70.49.124.225 (talk) 03:57, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

I would suggest not including them unless there's something substantive to be said about the individual's depiction in popular culture (per WP:MILPOP). Otherwise, we're likely to develop a long list of otherwise non-notable video game appearances; while Dynasty Warriors is perhaps the best-known game set in the Three Kingdoms period, there are dozens of others that also use these individuals as characters.
Do we have, incidentally, any examples of articles where a military leader's depiction in a video game is given substantial treatment? Kirill [talk] 04:13, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Wikimania meetup

The last day of Wikimania in Washington D.C., Sunday July 15, is an "unconference", meaning most of the time isn't scheduled beforehand, you can create whatever sessions you want ... would anyone like to do a Milhist meetup for one of the sessions? - Dank (push to talk) 15:02, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

I won't know until mid-summer if I can go (no scholarship!), but I'd love to if I go and if there is interest. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 11:48, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
I'll be in DC over the summer doing archival research, so I could come then. Parsecboy (talk) 13:03, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
Doing a military history session/meetup on the unconference day sounds like a great idea; alternately, if people would prefer, we could get together for dinner sometime during the conference itself. In either case, I would encourage everyone to come to Wikimania if they're able—we're going to have a great program this year—and I look forward to welcoming all of you to DC! Kirill [talk] 04:09, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Battle of Coutras

Came across Battle of Coutras while doing something else? This is embarrassingly unencyclopedic and seems to have some POV issues. I'm not sure it is salvageable in its current form. Could someone with an interest have a look? - not really my area of expertise. Thanks in anticipation. Monstrelet (talk) 17:42, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

It seems to be mostly a copyvio from here sadly. Hchc2009 (talk) 18:08, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
I've re-expanded the article with a translation from French Wikipedia, but would be grateful if someone could check it over. --Bermicourt (talk) 07:12, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Discussion about Taliban/Insurgent casualties in the War in Afghanistan (2001–present) infobox

There's currently a discussion (which I started) about whether it's appropriate to use a casualty figure derived from the List of Taliban fatality reports in Afghanistan article in the infobox of the War in Afghanistan (2001–present) in the absence of a specific reference for this, and where there is a reliable source saying that there are no reliable estimates for Taliban casualties. All comments at Talk:War in Afghanistan (2001–present)#Taliban and insurgents casualty figure removed from the infobox would be great. Nick-D (talk) 08:21, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Members Library

Hello everyone, I took a look on the Project Main Page and was wondering if there is any register where the members of the project can write down links to their user pages where they list the books of their private military history library. Otherwise there could also be a register with the books and which members own them. This could be a great advantage for article work as not every user has access to all the books he needs for an article but maybe another user has and can be asked to searched a certain fact in the book. If this already exists and I missed it, sorry guys! --Bomzibar (talk) 20:25, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Bomzibar, there's a list of editors' personal libraries (including mine) at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Logistics#Personal libraries. Nick-D (talk) 08:49, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
Ok, then I missed it, thank you Nick. --Bomzibar (talk) 10:26, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
On a related note, I've added a link to a LibraryThing list rather than manually copying it into WP (and then worrying about keeping it up-to-date) - I don't think this is likely to be objectionable, but as it's the only external link there I thought it worth checking opinions... Shimgray | talk | 21:34, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
I think that's fine. :-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 19:34, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Aviation combat losses

Military aviation accidents are covered by a number of lists. Would there be any mileage in lists for aircraft lost in warfare. These could be by year or by war as appropriate. I realise that this would be a huge task, but on the other hand there should be plenty of sources to document individual combat losses. Mjroots (talk) 18:10, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I'd say to be fair we'd have to do casualty lists for ground forces too, broken up by nation and divided by conflicts. Would be a huge task considering we don't have any lists to that end that I know of. —Ed!(talk) 20:43, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
There's also the question of what constitutes a combat loss. The U.S. Army in Vietnam has been accused of not considering a helicopter "lost" unless it was damaged beyond all salvage or recovery, and I'm sure that same sentiment could extend to other forces and nations. Technically a helicopter could be considered "shot down" if it was damaged and forced to land, but that didn't prevent it from being recovered, repaired, and put back into service. There are also a fair number of competing claims lists from various conflicts that haven't been fully reconciled. Just seems it might be more work, and end up requiring original research, if we wanted to do it properly.Intothatdarkness (talk) 20:48, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
One approach might be to define a combat loss as an incident in which the aircraft in question was lost to the operator as a result of military action. Thus an aircraft damaged and force to land in an enemy/neutral country would be such a combat loss, even if the recipient returned it to service. Similarly, an aircraft declared as damaged beyond repair but subsequently returned to service anyway could be considered a combat loss. Severe damaged that was repaired wouldn't constitute a loss. Mjroots (talk) 05:06, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
We do have at least two examples of such articles: List of aviation shootdowns and accidents during the Iraq War and List of aviation accidents and incidents in the War in Afghanistan. Nick-D (talk) 08:26, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
Hmmm, so there is precedent then. I'd suggest that lists for WWI, the Spanish Civil War, WWII, Korean War and Vietnam War (subdivided by year?) would be viable. Other wars are available of course, such as the Six Day War. Mjroots (talk) 19:23, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Belzec Trial

I've just translated this article on a Nazi war crimes trial - please feel free to check it over. Some of the translation involved legal terms that I'm not totally familiar with. I also didn't expand on current plans for a retrial as that could be sensitive. --Bermicourt (talk) 13:22, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Requesting references/fact-check for new article

Found Paul Ooghe whilst doing New Page Patrol. It's an article about a Belgian World War I veteran who passed away in 2001. It's currently unreferenced but well-written, and I suspect that any references will be Belgian or at least from that part of Europe, and I don't know where to start looking. If anyone is interested in helping, I'd appreciate it. Will be crossposting this at WikiProject Belgium. - Jorgath (talk) (contribs) 19:07, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

For "Belgian" read French or Dutch. Mjroots (talk) 19:25, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
I actually can speak and read French, but I don't know where to look for French-language Belgian newspapers or scholarly articles. A WikiProject Belgium contributor helped though. - Jorgath (talk) (contribs) 19:50, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Soldiers by war category discussion

This at CfD may be of interest to the project. - The Bushranger One ping only 03:45, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Category:Military history articles with incomplete B-Class checklists

Click on [show] for progress bar

Backlog: Military history articles with incomplete B-Class checklists
Goal: 0 articles
Current: 32 articles
Initial: 24,689 articles
(Refresh)

The "needs grammar help" checks are really helpful, I'm going to see if I can get GOCE help with those. Great work! - Dank (push to talk) 11:49, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
I'll try and help out with these assessments when I can (not the copy editing though). If we all set ourselves a goal of doing 5 a day we could probably crack it in about a year. Thoughts? Anotherclown (talk) 12:38, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
There are as of May 3rd 242 days left in the year. With a 23,500 backlog, around 97 article per day would need to be finished for the backlog to be completed by the end of the year. Not counting any influx of added articles.--MOLEY (talk) 00:28, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
Thats seems like a lot... Mathamatactics never was my strong suit. Anotherclown (talk) 06:55, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

German formations

After consulting the archive Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_history/Archive_106#German_formations I have begun to move the Wehrmacht divisions from (Germany) to Wehrmacht; while moving the Bundeswehr units from (Germany) to Bundeswehr. Going through the discussion one thing struck me - that there is some misconception about the amount of Armys Germany actually had- in total there where 8 for the whole of Germany (listed below) and not less then 38! for smaller entities of the Reich.

and what must be understood the current one (Heer) does NOT see itself as a successor to any of the above and for units of the German military there is a need to establish more disambiguation then German Empire, Wehrmacht, Bundeswehr... thoughts? noclador (talk) 11:35, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Noclador, is my summary of the Heer in the intro to German Army adequate, in your view? I had a crack at untangling this since 1945. Also, are you saying that the current Heer does not see itself as the successor of the 1955-90 West German Army? - seems a bit of a stretch.. Buckshot06 (talk) 22:02, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
the current Army doesn't see itself as successor to the 1955-1990 one as it is still the same. Maybe I presented it in a confusing way - as the current Heer and the 1955-1990 Heer are the same and I thought it is clear that it is not a successor to any of the above. If we would go with the image current German Army has of itself, then we have to write its article, with only fleeting mentions of th other Armies above. I.e. the German wiki article about the current Army doesn't mention the Wehrmacht Heer; the German wiki treats the Wehrmacht Heer and the current Heer as two entirely different entities. For the German Army of today - the various Armies before them (or besides them in East Germany) are like the Armies of completely different nations; and should be kept separate like i.e. British Army is kept separate from the French Army and the Italian Army... I now read the intro to German Army article and fixed some factual errors and reworded it. I also went through German Navy (fixed errors in the intro) and had a look at Luftwaffe... which is a disaster! the following three paragraphs need to be removed entirely: World War I, Interwar period and World War II - that is way to much of another nations Luftwaffe! If you look at German Navy, that is how it should be. Also Heer needs a rework to reduce the erroneous connection with former military formations the Heer is not connected with. noclador (talk) 17:20, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
Regarding German Army, it is my view that the current state of the article is reasonably OK. The thing is the article is at German Army, and thus needs to cover the various German armies - making as you allude to clear about their separate status in regard to each other. The German army is very much connected to itself, as you see from histories of the German Army linked in the further reading or references (Stone, for example). We need to be careful of removing perfectly valid historical continuities simply because official lineages created in Bonn in the 1950s do not agree with them. Both need to be presented in a valid way, because WP:Wikipedia is not censored, and it would also create a WP:NPOV issue. Buckshot06 (talk) 00:12, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
well, indeed - there at German Army can be an article covering the various Armies in detail, but it should not cover one alone - therefore split out the Heer of the Bundeswehr; a compromise solution? noclador (talk) 01:04, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
That would produce a very complicated set of articles from the English-language naming point of view, and an argument could be made that 'why shouldn't it cover the actual army today alone.' Also, just because de:wiki does it that way does not necessarily mean that en:wiki has to do it that way. I'm not myself worried very much either way, but I would strongly suggest we wait for further opinions. Buckshot06 (talk) 01:31, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Is this guy notable?

I'm not sure if Steve Smith (general) meets WP:SOLDIER. Major General of (as far as I can tell) an Army Reserve division. Not sure if he's had any WP:GNG-satisfying coverage, his common name makes google searches difficult. I'll leave it to you guys to decide. The-Pope (talk) 13:39, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

WP:SOLDIER states division commanders are notable automatically if they commanded the division in combat, I believe. —Ed!(talk) 13:41, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
I think it says all officers who have held generals rank. I also note it says that just achiving this is not notable, its still requires RS to establish notabilty. It says that if they have achioved generals rank they should have recived sufficant coverage. So without sufficant coverage no he is not notable.Slatersteven (talk) 14:53, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
As it stands, the article doesn't indicate how or why he's notable. Hchc2009 (talk) 16:34, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
I have tagged the article with a notability template and notified the article creator of this discussion. The-Pope (talk) 16:48, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
Must be notable he has to have his medal ribbons repeated! makes you wonder if we should gain consensus to ditch medal displays like this. MilborneOne (talk) 16:53, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
"We" have had that discussion many times in many places. There are strong supporters of ribbon displays. To date, consensus has not been reached. Although tempted, I'm not going to start yet another discussion. (And yes, the ribbons in the table were too big. I've made them smaller.) Pdfpdf (talk) 01:24, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
I'm sure General Smith has done some notable activities. Perhaps an inquiry to his unit will provide a biography of him. Bwmoll3 (talk) 18:08, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
He was awarded AM For exceptional service as the Commander Joint Headquarters Transition Team Iraq, Assistant Commander of the 1st Division and Commander 9th Brigade. Similarly, people are not awarded CSC and US Legion of Merit for no reason. Have a look at his official bio. Yes, I think he satisfies notability guidelines. However, at the moment, the article does not make that at all obvious! Pdfpdf (talk) 01:24, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
What are the AM and CSC? You need to be aware that the US has sort of a sliding scale for medals awarded to General Officers compared to th ose given to lesser grades. I've seen Legion of Merits awarded to Command Sergeants-Major upon their retirement, but the same award for a general is an unexceptional end-of-tour award. So I wouldn't say that those automatically confer notability. And I don't even know what the medal inflation is like now. As a two-star though, he should be notable just as a general officer. Or did we deprecate that guideline?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 01:41, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
AM is 'Member of the Order of Australia' (equivalent to a British MBE), see [[4]] for more info, only 1,024 awarded in the Military Division. CSC is the Conspicuous Service Cross, a fairly significant award of which only 731 have been made. It recognises outstanding commitment to duty or outstanding application of exceptional skills, judgment or dedication, in non-war-like situations, see [[5]]. I would say he meets notability guidelines in combination with other matters, such as rank etc Peacemaker67 (talk) 02:03, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

to my way of thinking without the references showing independent coverage of the subject, he fails the notability. WP Soldier gives guidance as to whether its worth starting an article but any article needs that GNG base to stand on. GraemeLeggett (talk) 05:26, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

I created the page because I thought as he is the Commander of the 2nd Division (all elements of the Army Reserve are members), as well as commanding a variety of other military units (9th Brigade, Royal Tasmania Regiment and the 4th/3rd Battalion, Royal New South Wales Regiment) and because he is 1 of a small group still serving with the RFD and the fore mentioned AM and CSC and the Officer of the Order of St John. The US Legion of Merit is only awarded to Australins for joint service with an american unit in some way who distinguished themselves. MAJGEN Smith is also the Deputy Chairman of the Board of St John Ambulance Tasmania. If it is decided to delete his page then so be it, but I think he is sufficiently notable. Nford24 (Talk) 11:07, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
It might be worth checking for references in the Hobart Mercury. With a CV like that, it seems reasonable to assume that he would have received some coverage in that newspaper. Nick-D (talk) 11:31, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
For heaven's sake! The guy is notable, and anybody who gets off their bum (translation: butt) and looks can confirm that in 30 seconds (or less). Notability is NOT the issue.
The issue is that, currently, the article doesn't sufficiently state his notability. Hence, I've removed the "Notability" template, and replaced it with the "Under Construction" template. Pdfpdf (talk) 11:52, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

RAF Jurby

While browsing RAF Jurby it appears some of information may be copied from this "Kniveton, G. Manx Aviation in War and Peace. Douglas, Isle of Man, The Manx Experience, 1985" (it does not have a ISBN) other editors have also noticed (there is information on the talk page). Does anyone own this book?

Gavbadger (talk) 18:22, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

A-Class review for Boeing 757

The A-class review for Boeing 757, an aircraft used by military operators including the Mexican Air Force, Royal New Zealand Air Force, and United States Air Force, is now open at: Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation/Assessment/Boeing 757. Thanks in advance for any input! Regards, SynergyStar (talk) 22:30, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

move/split request at Luftwaffe

At Talk:Luftwaffe#needs to be broken up a discussion is underway on a proposal to split the current article Luftwaffe. If you wish to participate in the discussion, please go there and read the proposals and arguments given so far. noclador (talk) 22:42, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Escort Group (naval)

I'd like to request that any willing editors interested in Royal navy operations in WWII take a look at Escort Group (naval). In respect to the RN in WWII I think this an important topic to which (at the moment) this article does not do justice. I'm afraid my knowledge means I do not have overview of general RN operations to fix this article (or the books to reference)(I'm pretty tightly focused on Captain class frigates), at the moment the article covers how the Escort Group concept was developed but does not have that much on how it was actually used operationally. --Thefrood (talk) 14:02, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Best expert though he focuses on up to and including WW I is User:Simon Harley. Approach him for guidance, but beyond that it will probably have to be a matter of WP:SOFIXIT now or in the future. Remember that while specific elements of the English-speaking navies are a little sparsely covered, we've got great, gaping gulfs on, for example, the Portuguese or Dutch navies in the C18 or C19. Buckshot06 (talk) 02:25, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
Hmm, as this is WWII and User:Simon Harley focus is "up to and including WW I" perhaps not the best person to contact? As to doing it myself as I indicated I do not have the reference material, I could supply some detail with references related to the participation of Captain class frigate‎s in Escort Groups but this would only represent a very small part of a much bigger picture hence why I was hoping someone with a more extensive library would take up the challenge. --Thefrood (talk) 12:38, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Battle of Boykin's Mill

I noticed that this article had an extensive "First Hand Accounts" section, which seems out of place for this article. Should it be removed? Wild Wolf (talk) 03:55, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes, definitely. Nick-D (talk) 08:38, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
Removed. 76.7.224.171 (talk) 13:37, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Japanese "knee mortar"

Hi all! The current knee mortar is redirected to Type 89 grenade discharger. But Type 10 grenade discharger also claims to be called "knee mortar". Isn't "knee mortar" just generic (and incorrect) name for both weapons? In that case the "knee mortar" should be disambiguation page instead of redirect. --Sceadugenga (talk) 09:39, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

In this case, since there are only two possible targets for "knee mortar", a hatnote should be sufficient. Parsecboy (talk) 11:43, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Someone suggested the Listen to Britain film page should be brought into the MilHist project

As it's about a WW2 propaganda film, and discusses the British distaste for overt propaganda, the myth of national unity and war socialism in the UK, and its comparison with Triumph_of_the_Will.

Do people agree, and if so, how would I do this? It's currently in the film project, it was rated as start class before I added the stuff about propaganda and the refernces, but I think film buffs have different concerns to MilHist types. Many thanks. Ganpati23 (talk) 22:00, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Not sure if that falls under WP:MilitaryHistory. The scope on the main page mentions historical depictions in various media forms, including film. That article could be added to this project by adding a MilHistory project banner on its talk page. -Fnlayson (talk) 22:14, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
I would say it's probably within our scope, given that it was actually produced during the war (and arguably as part of the war effort) and depicts events during the Battle of Britain; its relevance would thus be even more direct than something like Triumph of the Will, which was a peacetime film (albeit a heavily militaristic one). Kirill [talk] 03:33, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
I'd agree. Incidentally, in copyright terms, I think the PD version of the film at http://archive.org/details/gov.archives.arc.38651 would probably be suitable for uploading to Commons if someone knew the right format. Hchc2009 (talk) 05:05, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia

G'day, I'm looking for some advice/assistance regarding this article Serbia (Territory of the German Military Commander). I know that most experienced MILHIST editors will probably shake their heads and wouldn't touch a WW2 Balkans article with a barge pole, but please bear with me for a moment. The status of this territory is the subject of some controversy between a small number of editors, and I would like to enlist the help of a disinterested experienced MILHIST editor to help out on a few key issues. The 'Territory of the Military Commander, Serbia' or 'Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia' (slight variations between sources on the translation of the official German name) was established on 22 April 1941 after the invasion of Yugoslavia, and remained occupied by the Germans until October 1944. Essentially, the occupied territory consisted of a part of Yugoslavia as it existed before the war (there was no state or subdivision called Serbia between 1922 and 1941, and the occupied territory included parts of several banovina of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia). From late May 1941 until they withdrew, the Germans were assisted by puppet governments they appointed to assist them to administer the territory, but the territory never achieved any level of independence or recognition, even within the Axis.

There are some pretty strongly held views on this article, and without wishing to oversimplify, there are those that see it as part of the historiographical continuum of current-day Serbia, and others that wish to see it made consistent with articles relating to similar territories. The two approaches seem mutually exclusive at present. Partly as a result, we have a real hodgepodge of an article, with a freeform infobox, non-standard structure and lack of clarity on what the article is about, plus a 1R restriction at the moment. What I'm after is not so much a 3O (there are several editors involved), but a go-to disinterested experienced MILHIST editor with some knowledge of German occupied territories who is willing to look at a few key issues in some detail and make some suggestions about a way forward. I know. I don't want much! I understand it is a big ask and it is a specialised area... Peacemaker67 (talk) 11:36, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

First question Peacemaker67, is this a territory or a military formation? Second, completely not a Balkan specialist as I am, why can't both Serbian historiography and the similar-territories view be satisfied? Is there some specific reason why some compromise can't be reached as to a structure? Why don't you elaborate a little more? Good luck with this.. looking forward to hearing more. Cheers Buckshot06 (talk) 07:32, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
It is a territory not a military formation. The function of the Military Commander in Serbia was to be, in effect, the supreme authority in an occupied area of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia that roughly corresponds with modern Serbia. An occupied territory controlled by the 'Military Commander in Serbia', hence the official name. It is really part of the historiography of Yugoslavia (there was a Yugoslavia both before and after this period unlike Serbia which hadn't existed between 1929 and 1941). The issues revolve around the status of the territory. We are getting hung up on some key issues like the article title, type of infobox and what flags should be used to represent the territory. There were two puppet governments appointed by the Germans to help them administer the territory, but only one had more than a few months longevity, and it was completely subservient to the German military administration. I may not be giving some alternate views sufficient prominence here, but that is the gist of it as I see it. Peacemaker67 (talk) 10:05, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
Buckshot06, the problem is that Peacemaker67 and DIREKTOR are trying to present this territory as some "colony of Germany". While it was occupied by German army ("Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia" was only a name of German military district that covered the area), the area was also commonly known as Serbia and was seen as de jure separate country in Axis Europe (it is presented as separate political entity in all history maps: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:PANONIAN/Sources02#Maps_from_external_links ). Besides German military administrators, territory had civil Serbian government, its own armed units known as Serbian State Guard, its own flag, coat of arms, currency etc. Peacemaker67 and DIREKTOR are simply trying to exclude from the article these sources that referring to elements of statehood of this area and they aiming to present this area only as "occupied area" (for example they want to include in the infobox of this territory flag of Nazi Germany, which was not flag of the territory, while they do not want that actual flag of the territory is used in the infobox). PANONIAN 22:26, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
Ok, so there you have, in a nutshell, the problem here. There were numerous German occupied territories where the Nazis appointed puppet governments, but unlike the articles for those other territories, which have Nazi flags in their infoboxes. User:PANONIAN clearly wants this one to look like a country, hence the custom infobox etc. Everything done in the territory was done with the permission of the Military Commander. The Germans selected the leaders of both puppet governments, authorised the use of the flag etc by the puppet government, authorised the raising of the Serbian State Guard which served under the command of the Higher SS and Police Leader, and completely ignored numerous threats by the leader of the puppet government to resign because he wasn't being given any freedom of action. There was no proclamation of the establishment of a state (as happened in the puppet state the Independent State of Croatia, engineered by the same German that appointed Nedic) or any semblance of independence whatsoever. The maps thing is a furphy which has been thoroughly deconstructed on the talk page, as has the idea that there was any WP:COMMONNAME for the territory. Unfortunately, User:PANONIAN continues to use these arguments but has not engaged with the sources. It is pretty frustrating. Peacemaker67 (talk) 23:07, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
But it is fully unclear why flag of Germany was added to other articles. It was added there by few Wiki users without any valid reason and that flag should be removed from these other articles as well, since there is no single evidence that flag of Germany was used as flag of any of these territories - all of them were separate political entities or countries, since country is defined as "a distinct entity in political geography". Peacemaker67 wants to present that these were some provinces of Germany, which is not correct. And it is not true that my claims are not supported by sources. I collected numerous sources here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:PANONIAN/Sources02 It is Peacemaker67 who does not have a single source that would support these things: 1. that Serbia was part or subdivision of Germany, 2. that flag of Germany was used as official flag of the area, 3. that area did not had elements of statehood (civil Serbian government, armed units, flag, coat of arms, currency, etc). PANONIAN 06:46, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
I'm sorry, all. This has degenerated as I feared it would. I've never said this territory was a province of Germany or part of the Greater Reich, or implied it. I have never advanced an argument that this 'Serbia' was a part of or a subdivision of Germany. I have produced masses of inline sources (in the article) for the complete lack of independent action and power of the 'Serbian' puppet regimes whose leaders were selected by the Germans, and that any raising of armed units, use of flags etc was all with the express permission of the Germans, to help them exploit the resources of the territory and get the locals to fight those that were interfering with that exploitation. They were not elements of statehood, they were limited concessions the Germans allowed them to get them onside so they could get the locals to collaborate with them. The German Military Commander remained the supreme authority in the occupied territory. Sorry for the distraction everyone, I'll take this back to the backwaters of Balkan history. Peacemaker67 (talk) 12:17, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
In reviewing the Manual of Style on flag icons in infoboxes, this article is a perfect case in point of why they are sometimes unnecessary and distracting. Cheers. EricSerge (talk) 12:49, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
Hang on Peacemaker67, you deserve some help. Everything has to be a matter of WP:Reliable Sources, yes and I sometimes wonder whether we need infoboxes - they distort the messiness of real human history sometimes. The problem as I understand is title (but that's minor), flag, and infobox. Well, there are two variations for the title, right, but they're not significant, yes? For the rest, I would advise not showing a flag in the infobox; applicable flags can be shown in the article. That leaves the infobox. Would you mind explaining please further what the different arguments for the infobox are? Buckshot06 (talk) 02:16, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
Panonian, looking at your sources page, none of your materials contradict anything Peacemaker67 is trying to prove. Would you like to explain exactly why if you dispute the current article title, what your prefered form of the infobox is, and why? Buckshot06 (talk) 02:20, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
Buckshot06, article title is acceptable for me, as well as usage of name "Territory of the German Military Commander", which is supported by the source. However, much larger number of sources is using terms "Serbia" or "Nedić's Serbia" and my point is that these two names should be also used on the top of the infobox below the "Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia". Second thing, title of new infobox is "Infobox former subdivision" and Serbia was not subdivision of any other entity, so I think that this infobox is misleading and that "Infobox former country" should be used instead. Third, It is the fact that symbols of Nazi Germany were not symbols of this territory and therefore these symbols should not be used in the infobox since they wrongly imply that Serbia was part of Nazi Germany. PANONIAN 08:37, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
@Buckshot06, I'm afraid I must disagree with PANONIAN on 'Serbia/Nedic's Serbia' and the infobox. This territory was a subdivision of Yugoslavia created by the Germans when they invaded and occupied the country (of Yugoslavia). We know its official name, and neither 'Serbia/Nedic's Serbia' is the WP:COMMONNAME (see talkpage discussion of the application of WP:TITLE). Using the official name and not various others in the infobox is consistent with WP:IBX and just keeping it reasonably tidy. We have recently moved to the infobox former subdivision for the above reason, not because anyone has ever suggested that it was a subdivision of Germany, although we don't seem to be able to get past that idea. I'm ambivalent about even putting a flag in the infobox, but I'm not the only editor involved here. My view is that the Militarbefehlshaber (Military Commander) flag is probably the most accurate, rather than the straight Nazi one. Peacemaker67 (talk) 08:51, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
I do not agree that "Serbia was a subdivision of Yugoslavia" - Germans officially destroyed Yugoslavia and created 3 new independent entities in its territory: Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro. Germans did not regarded these entities as "subdivisions of Yugoslavia", but as new separate countries and Yugoslav government in exile also did not recognized existence of these entities. Furthermore, articles about two other entities are using "Infobox former country", see: Independent State of Croatia and Kingdom of Montenegro (1941–1944). Why double criteria are used here: one for Serbia and another one for other two entities? Regarding the official name, puppet Serbian government used name "Serbia" in its official documents, so there is no clear evidence that name "Serbia" was not official as well. As I pointed out on other talk page, two names ("Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia" and "Serbia") are not excluding each other since "Serbia" was a name of the country and "Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia" was a name of German military district located in that country (therefore name of the district says that it is located "in Serbia"). PANONIAN 09:14, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
This is WP:OR. You have no evidence that the Germans 'created' 'Serbia'. At all. @Buckshot06, can I ask for a a couple of minutes of your time to read this [[6]]. Kroener et al is an incredibly detailed, long and authoritative text on Germany in WW2. This part of this volume (specifically pages 121 onwards for about eight pages) comprehensively debunks the OR on this issue that is being used here and elsewhere. Peacemaker67 (talk) 09:36, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
But this author mention "Serbia" on various pages: [7]. Since Serbia did not existed from 1918 to 1941, it is obvious that Germans created it. Also check map on page 86 in this book - "Serbia" written with big letters and "Territory of the Commander Serbia" with smaller letters below the name "Serbia". PANONIAN 11:41, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

'it is obvious the Germans created it.' is WP:OR. WP doesn't take 'judicial notice' of things you consider 'obvious'. You need a source for the 'creation' of Serbia, you can't just assume it, especially when it is so controversial and flies in the face of WP:RS on this issue like Kroener, Lemkin etc. There is no decree creating 'Serbia', no German order creating 'Serbia'. If there is, you need to produce it. I really think this discussion has deteriorated beyond what is reasonable on a project talkpage, and we are going to have to find some other way through this. I am disappointed by this, but it's just becoming embarrassing for everyone involved. I am not participating in any further discussion here except with disinterested editors such as Buckshot06 (assuming he still wants to help). Peacemaker67 (talk) 11:54, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Now, I collected sources that saying that state/country of Serbia was indeed established by the Germans in 1941:

PANONIAN 19:04, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Thankyou both for your comments. Peacemaker67, do not worry about what is appropriate or inappropriate on a project talkpage; you obviously weren't here when Mrg was around. This is exactly what we're here for, and it is much better that this issue is sorted out with many monitoring it than on some obscure talkpage.
The article title issue does not appear to be a problem. 'Nedic's Serbia / Serbia' is not appropriate; the word 'Serbia' is already included in the title of the article, and 'Nedic's Serbia' is not encyclopedic language for the infobox - in formal English terms, it's too slangy. The reference to 'Serbia' in 'Territory of the Military Commander, Serbia' is enough to allude to the region. Panonian, I would advise you draft some sentences on the talk page so that 'Nedic's Serbia' can be incorporated into the first two or three lines of the article.
On the infobox, this territory of Serbia was not a subdivision of anything, while as for infobox former country, the Independent State of Croatia and Kingdom of Montengro were both recognised at least by the Germans themselves, while this territory seems to have existed just about in legal limbo (or German right of brute force). It was not a country/state, though in making this judgment, there's no prejudice to the existence of the Serbian people etc. In my view, thus neither of the infoboxes in question is appropriate - time to call out the infobox experts, or make one up ourselves (which may have been done already). Peacemaker67, Kroener specifically uses the term 'Serbia' to designate this area under military administration, so unless you can offer further contravening evidence, I tend to agree with Panonian that de facto, Serbia was 'created' in 1941 *by the creation of this administration*.
Flag: having further investigated, I believe the flag of the Militarbefehlshaber is best, if we have it. In the interim, I have removed the flag and crest from the infobox while this is under discussion.
Further thoughts welcome, especially from those who have not already participated. Buckshot06 (talk) 03:03, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
It is good to have your perspective, and I certainly appreciate having these discussions in front of at least some of the wider MILHIST community rather than on the article talkpage with only two or three other editors. The current article title issue is that whilst I am relatively happy with the current title, we have editors interested in moves to both 'Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia' and 'Serbia (1941-1944)'. I certainly don't think the second one is appropriate, and I'm pretty ambivalent about the first one. We have already got a 'Names' section which doesn't contain any explanation but does have a number of different names used by a variety of WP:RS to describe this territory. I for one am comfortable with including 'Nedic's Serbia' in the first two or three lines of the lead. I agree with the legal limbo observation, and I believe the sources make it clear that is exactly why it was in limbo. Thanks for your time and effort. Given the outstanding issue of the article title, would you mind having a look at Talk:Serbia_(Territory_of_the_German_Military_Commander)#Official_name_for_the_Territory_referred_to_as_.27Serbia_under_German_occupation.27 and Talk:Serbia_(Territory_of_the_German_Military_Commander)#WP:COMMONNAME as regards the title? Peacemaker67 (talk) 03:07, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
I think the proper article title is clear - as close an English translation as one can get of the official German military title, Gebiet des Militärbefehlshabers in Serbien, which appears to be Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia, though we may have to call out the German speakers for expert views. Buckshot06 (talk) 03:13, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
Hi Buckshot, um, was this an accident? :) -- Director (talk) 03:19, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
Yes, sorry Director, that was an accident. I had a couple of edit conflict warnings but they only showed me that I'd reloaded my own text. Please go ahead.. Buckshot06 (talk) 03:24, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
Well basically what I'm saying is I feel strange advocating the use of the Nazi flag, but since its common practice to use a German flag on a German occupation zone [8][9][10][11][12][13] [14] (go figure..), I think it ought to go back up until there's a real reason not to use it. PANONIAN is perfectly capable of "debating" in perpetuitas to keep it out, no question, so there's really no point in awaiting some sort of agreement from him. To quote his own words, he's apparently a "patriot" defending "Serbian statehood". -- Director (talk) 03:35, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
Shall I personally go around and substitute the Militarbefehlshaber on all of them? Buckshot06 (talk) 03:38, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
I don't follow? Substitute the Militarbefehlshaber? If you're suggesting deleting the flags off all of them, and having infobox entries empty for the sake of PANONIAN, I couldn't disagree more. I think a German flag on a German occupation zone makes sense, these people answered directly to ministries in Berlin, and with all the confusion on that article, uniformity and clarity are definitely a good thing. -- Director (talk) 03:43, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
No, I mean placing the Military Commander's flag, a military flag, on all the occupation zones: Belgium/N France, France, Norway, Netherlands, Ukraine, etc. See Peacemaker67's comments above. Seems more correct that way, as they were not formally made part of the Greater German Reich. And no this is not for the sake of Panonian - just seems more accurate. Buckshot06 (talk) 03:51, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
I'd vastly prefer the Military Commander's flag on this article. I can't speak for the other articles, because as Kroener et al point out, the German's had a pretty confusing set of structures in their sphere of power, and I'm not familiar with them all. BTW, I've asked a de-3 editor, User:Xuxalliope (who helped us with the infobox) for a translation. Peacemaker67 (talk) 03:59, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
I don't agree, and I'm fully prepared to disagree for at least several weeks' worth of discussion :). Seriously, though, while I would prefer it to nothing, I never saw anything like that. That's a personal flag, a flag of a military officer, like a general's flag. I don't see it representing a territory. Besides, we know from Tomasevich that the Military Commander had little to no real power over the territory. -- Director (talk) 04:18, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

(od) That's the problem - this wasn't a country/state, so arguably it shouldn't have a country/state style flag. This is the nearest formal flag to match the article title and the titular leadership of the territory. Buckshot06 (talk) 04:22, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

In my experience, subdivisions and territories and such can and do use a flag of a country that they're administered by. It doesn't imply they're countries on their own. In addition to the other German occupation zones, here's an example of an Italian one in Yugoslavia [15]. I mean, its common practice. It could be changed, of course, but that doesn't mean it should be changed. I submit the diffs as indicating that this is usually done and that users and readers generally do not judge it implies the status of a country. I also don't see it, and Peacemaker can vouch that I am the last person to try and represent the territory as something other than what it was. In fact, quite the opposite. I think it emphasizes the subordinate status of the territory and its direct administration by Germany. -- Director (talk) 04:31, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
That's a completely annexed and incorporated province, Director. And therefore is not a good example. Peacemaker67 (talk) 04:38, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
My point was that its not a country, and yet it uses a flag of a country without implying any such status. In that respect its perhaps an even better example than the other half-dozen articles. I've never seen a single article to use a personal flag in an infobox. Btw, when I introduced the flag I was under the impression it wasn't unilateral [16]. -- Director (talk) 04:46, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
I understand you having that impression, and my apologies if I have moved the goalposts, but having looked again at Kroener and discussing with Buckshot06 I feel the point is that the Germans had a lot of different structural arrangements across their sphere, and we should be focused on getting this one right, not necessarily drawing on examples from other articles that may or may not be right themselves. We know we are right about this one, and I'd like to stick to that. My view is that the Military Commander's flag is appropriate (he was the supreme authority, regardless of how convoluted the German chains of command and control might have been). Peacemaker67 (talk) 04:57, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
Buckshot06, I accept your proposals. Note that I already proposed creation of new infobox here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Serbia_(Territory_of_the_German_Military_Commander)#Proposing_compromise Perhaps you know who can create new "Occupied territory infobox" that can cover this subject? I also would not object to usage of flag of Militarbefehlshaber. Also, Buckshot06, there is similar problem in this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_of_National_Salvation_(occupied_Yugoslavia) DIREKTOR added new infobox there too and I do not agree with following things related to this infobox: 1. that infobox is named "Infobox former country" and this article speaks about puppet government, not about country - note that I also proposed creation of new infobox that would cover the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Government_of_National_Salvation_(occupied_Yugoslavia)#Proposing_compromise 2. infobox states that this was "Puppet government of Germany" (in English, this would mean that this government governed Germany, which is simply ridiculous). 3. flag and coat of arms used there were symbols of Serbia, not symbols of the government, so I think that usage of these symbols there is not a best option. 4. I do not see why infobox about government should have a map of the territory that it governed - map could be moved to other part of the article showing territory under government jurisdiction, 5. description below the map ("Administrative subdivisions of the Government of National Salvation") is wrong - these were administrative subdivisions of the territory that was administered by the government, not subdivisions "of the government". 6. Belgrade was not "capital of the government", but capital of Serbia - it was a location of headquarters or seat of the government. 7. currency was currency of Serbia, not of the government. PANONIAN 04:57, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
Panonian, let's focus on finishing this article's issues first, and then work on other articles. The issues were (a) flag, which we seem to be coming to a consensus on, (b) article title, where we seem to have a consensus on Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia, and (c) the infobox. If I understand your position Panonian correctly the problem is not the use of the actual infobox but the title the infobox template has. In all other respects, the 'former country' infobox fits the requirements we have here. It is my belief that we should not get hung up about what titles templates have, and we should definitely not worry about using this infobox just as long as it has all the parameters (that is =name, =formal name, =capital, =population etc) that we need to illustrate the entity's characteristics. All we're doing is not having to create another template - we're being more efficient.
Once we've come to a definite consensus on this article, we can examine Government of National Salvation. Buckshot06 (talk) 06:45, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

PANONIAN, there is just no way we will be duplicating infoboxes because you do not like their name. The exact wording in the name of the infobox template are irrelevant. This was explained to you. By three people. At least twice. There was no country called "Serbia" during WWII, and do not confuse the issue by using the term in an undefined manner, etc. etc. I mean I've said all this about twenty times... -- Director (talk) 06:41, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Ok, I have to say this. This entire thread has been turned into just another way for PANONIAN to restart the same discussions for the twenty-fifth time, now that he cannot effectively do so on the article talkpage. There are real issues to discuss here, like the flag etc, but with PANONIAN here WP:DISRUPTING the discourse by hitting the 'reset' every time, this is pointless. Until the issue of this user's behavior is addressed, I really think there can be no discussion or resolution. -- Director (talk) 06:31, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
Hold your horses Director. This thread was started by User:Peacemaker67. It appears to be reaching consensus. If necessary, other administrators and I will no doubt be willing to enforce that consensus. It is also unfolding under the view of all the WP:MILHIST coordinators, who will no doubt be willing to take action if necessary themselves. People have to be willing to approach administrators if a reasonably reached consensus is breached. Buckshot06 (talk) 06:45, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
I've said I'm not engaging with sort of thing here, so I'll just say that I agree with the move to the official name for the article as per response from Buckshot06. I have asked two WP:Translators to look at the relevant section of the talkpage and provide their views on the accuracy of the translation. For the record, I would prefer to see the Militarbefehlshaber flag in the infobox because I consider it the most appropriate one for this article. I also understand from the above that Buckshot06 is suggesting the infobox former subdivision IS the most appropriate infobox here. It is the one we are using currently (although I note PANONIAN doesn't agree with it, and wants a custom one). Am I representing your responses correctly, Buckshot06? Peacemaker67 (talk) 06:55, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
I support the move as well. In fact we agree on practically everything except the infobox flags. Can we put that off until everything else is settled?
P.s. I cannot believe PANONIAN has actually gone out and deleted the flags in five articles for the sake of having his way in a dispute [17][18][19][20][21]. As a side note, he also appears to be currently engaged in a WP:MOVE WAR on the History of Ottoman Serbia article, where he is pushing the title "Ottoman period in history of Serbia" against opposition, without even posting an RM. -- Director (talk) 07:37, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
Buckshot06, I would only need an additional clarification: do you propose that article use "Infobox former country" or "Infobox former subdivision"? PANONIAN 07:59, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
Also, Buckshot06, I do not think that it is in the spirit of Wikipedia that DIREKTOR using much of his comments for personal campaign against me, not to mention that he is engaged in Wiki stalking where he track and revert my edits in articles that he never edited before, such is this one: [22] or this one. This kind of personal harassment is really not nice. PANONIAN 08:07, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
Oops. I have just reread what you wrote, and I have misrepresented you on the infobox issue, Buckshot06. Sorry about that. I believe Buckshot06 is of the view that the infobox should be custom. Peacemaker67 (talk) 08:23, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
In my view, at the moment 'Infobox former country' is most appropriate, for the reasons I gave above. Why rename an infobox simply because it can be used to cover a situation that was not anticipated by its creators? Panonian, from the information available to me, you do appear to have a distinct point of view on many issues. It is entirely expectable that other editors may disagree, and use the WP:BRD cycle to initiate article discussions and improvement. All editors should be very careful to follow the spirit of WP:NPOV. Director, you also appear to have a multiple block log, including for page move warring.
Finally, the issues were (a) title - seemingly settled (b) flag - seemingly settled on Militarbefehlshaber (c) infobox type - I just clarified my viewpoint above. Were there other issues with this article? Buckshot06 (talk) 08:37, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
For my part, not for now at any rate. Thank you again for your help. Peacemaker67 (talk) 08:42, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
Buckshot06, thank you for clarification. I fully accept everything that you proposed. Regarding article about Ottoman Serbia, I think that this issue is unrelated - I had there one revert and another move to title what looked as compromise to me and discussion about article name is still going on at the article talk page. I did not had intentions of further reverts there, so you did not had need to protect that article. If majority of users think that this article should have other title, I will not object. So, since I said that I accept your proposal about Serbia (Territory of the German Military Commander)‎ and name that most users would support for History of Ottoman Serbia, can we move to the problems with Government of National Salvation (occupied Yugoslavia)? PANONIAN 08:51, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
PANONIAN, can I suggest you start another thread for that? This one is pretty long and appears to have been settled. Peacemaker67 (talk) 08:53, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
If I believe that protecting or move-protecting a page will induce all editors involved to calm down slightly, consider their positions more thoughtfully, and have a WP:Cup of tea, I will not hesitate to do so. That's part of the reason people are given the mop. As regards the three issues with the Serbia article, I will wait 18-24 hours for further comments and then implement the associated changes, if there are no more further thoughts. Regarding the Government of National Salvation, as Peacemaker67 says, best to start another thread. Buckshot06 (talk) 20:14, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
Buckshot06, as per [[23]], a translator has come back to me on the German-English. On that basis, I suggest the article be moved to the 'prosaic' form of the official name Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia, as it is the administrative version, rather than the military version (a bit like, 'hat, camouflage, wide brimmed'...), and using a comma appears contrary to WP:TITLE. Peacemaker67 (talk) 04:30, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
I'll perform a good faith move. -- Director (talk) 07:40, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

WT:FAC#Subject matter experts and reviews

Thoughts? - Dank (push to talk) 03:38, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Recruiting subject-matter experts to help with content reviews sounds like an excellent idea!
If/when we can get a solid pool of experts on call, perhaps we should consider asking them to comment on the A-Class review for an article as well as (or instead of) the FAC? There's no particular reason, in my opinion, why the review necessarily needs to take place during the FAC process; an expert review remains an expert review even if it happens internally, and building up a more rigorous ACR process will have the benefit of providing such reviews for articles that don't get taken to FAC (for whatever reason). Kirill [talk] 04:04, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
The support at FAC is so strong that something's likely to happen. I think I know where Raul is coming from in suggesting that one or a few people should be in charge: some of this is new, and there are potential downsides. Of course, success has a thousand fathers (per JFK et al.), so if this turns out to be cool, we'll get mixed results. So I completely agree, Kirill, that we need to be looking at A-class too, because we'll do it right, and hopefully set an example for FAC and other wikiprojects. - Dank (push to talk) 13:18, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
I haven't gone through every comment at WT:FAC but my feeling generally (and I'm speaking with my MilHist coordinator's hat on, not as a FAC delegate) has always been that new FAC practices need to 'trickle down' to ACR -- after all we pride ourselves on it being a fairly short distance to travel...! We've done this to a fair extent with source spotchecks, it makes even more sense to look at SMEs for ACR since content -- rather than niggling stylistic issues -- is one of the main points of our A-Class. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 22:39, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
I rather think that subject matter experts should be called upon earlier in the process, say for peer reviews. By the time an article gets to FAC it should be just about perfect. Binksternet (talk) 22:44, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
Indeed, per my comment at WT:FAC. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 00:00, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
I think that depends on whether we're looking for the experts to contribute to the content of an article, or only to validate it. In the former case, bringing them in early (during a peer review, for example) is a good approach, since we'd want them to get involved before all the copyediting and other polishing took place. In the latter case, on the other hand, bringing them in early may not gain us much, since most articles undergo numerous changes between a peer review and a successful FAC; the text the expert would have validated wouldn't necessarily be the same as the text submitted at FAC, forcing us to find some other means of re-validating it. Kirill [talk] 03:27, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
So far, it seems people haven't decided whether they want to keep the experts (whatever that means) at arm's length ... but that's not very Wikipedian, and people will realize that soon enough. I don't think we're in the business of building walls here; anyone invited to the process is invited as a full-fledged member, with the right and even the obligation to tell us what does and doesn't work for them, how their activity here fits into their vision of the world and of Wikipedia. - Dank (push to talk) 11:55, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Army history

Was nosing around when I came across this article. No intro, no sources, just a couple of footnotes which don't indicate the full title of the source being used. Maybe this should be put up for deletion or redirect to Military history page? 76.7.224.171 (talk) 13:39, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

It's a spinoff of Army. Should be merged there. Buckshot06 (talk) 20:56, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
Done. 76.7.224.171 (talk) 14:17, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

AfD for No Gun Ri Massacre

After extended discussion, it was decided by consensus years ago that the article on this Korean War incident should be at the plain title No Gun Ri. However, the article was later moved back to No Gun Ri Massacre without discussion. This AfD seeks to restore the earlier consensus. Kauffner (talk) 08:57, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Review request for Nuclear triad

The edits happening in the India section of Nuclear triad where cited material is removed or reverted for uncited OR and POV appears to be a continuation of the edit war and subsequent full protection which happened in INS Arihant a review by mods would be appreciated.79.182.192.156 (talk) 10:37, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Wiesel AWC

In the List of currently active United States military land vehicles, the Wiesel AWC is listed as an APC. In the Wiesel article, it says they were ordered by the army for robotic testing. This would not make them APCs and it does not say anything happened with the trials. Where should it really go? — Preceding unsigned comment added by America789 (talk • contribs) 15:46, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

The 'Miscellaneous' or 'Experimental Vehicles' sections perhaps? My car isn't much smaller than a Wiesel, so they'd make a pretty bad APC! (my car doesn't have a 20mm cannon though, so it would make a rubbish tank). Nick-D (talk) 08:34, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

japenese ironclads

I was wondering if japenese ironclads can be part of this project. They are well withen the scope of this project so could someone pleaes make a article about them. Nhog 5/4/2012 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nhog (talk • contribs) 18:26, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

They are—we have articles on Kōtetsu, Fusō, and Ryūjō, which are, to my knowledge, the only Japanese ironclads apart from a couple of ships seized from China in 1895. Parsecboy (talk) 19:08, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
It might be useful to have a redirect from Japanese ironclad/s and/or List of Japanese ironclads to the Japanese naval shiplist article (List of battleships of Japan), to address Nhog's concern. 70.49.124.225 (talk) 04:57, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks although and plese correct me if im wrong the Americans, British, and French all had interest in japan and at least one of them had at least one fleet with an ironclad in the waters around japan. Nhog — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nhog (talk • contribs) 18:24, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

The Jewish Rifles

I need some advice on an article I would like to start. I am positive there was a regiment in the Volunteer Corps called the Jewish Rifles (perhaps unofficially). Before doing so though I'd like to sound out others because I can find no reference to the nomenclature anywhere on the Wiki and finding it on the web is just as difficult. I have found this article however: http://www.jewishgen.org/jcr-uk/susser/twrhamlets.htm which confirms there were Jewish Volunteer Units in the rifle corps and my reasoning is that Tower Hamlets had such a comprehensive Jewish volunteer structure already in place that they could well have had a Pals Battalion with an unofficial name. Precedent exists with the London Fusilier Jewish Battalions.

Can anyone provide more information or opinion? SonofSetanta (talk) 13:14, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Never heard of the Jewish Rifles. In WWI, there was the Jewish Legion, which was part of the Royal Fusiliers. Various battalions of the Middlesex Regiment had large numbers of Jewish soldiers, because of their recruiting area (East End and North London). In WWII, I vaguely remember two battalions of the Middlesex (40/41 Bn?) being designated Jewish for service in Palestine but I may be getting this mixed up with the Jewish Brigade. Anyhow, the best thing is probably to contact the very helpful people at Ajex. Good luck,  Roger Davies talk 15:31, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
11th Tower Hamlets Rifles doesn't seem to have been a very long lived unit. According to this website it had gone by 1864 so if The Times report is correct - only 4 years. Is it a notable unit? NtheP (talk) 18:12, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
That's what I'm thinking: is it viable? The Poplar & Stepney Rifles looks like a good candidate but one would have to bear in mind that this was just a battalion nickname. I've e-mailed AJAX and hope to see what they come up with. Then if I think it's viable I'll discuss it here first before starting any article. SonofSetanta (talk) 13:28, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
Per the ever-useful (and usually accurate) regiments.org, 11th TH RVC formed 1861, transferred to 1st Administrative Battalion TH Volunteers later in that year, disbanded 1864. The 10th was raised in the same place and remained in existence; it moved to Finsbury in 1870, then became three companies of the 2nd Tower Hamlets Rifle Volunteer Corps in 1880. After a bit of moving around, in 1908 this became 17th London Regiment ... or the Poplar and Stepney Rifles. Does that help make the link? Andrew Gray (talk) 13:54, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
I'd come across the Poplar and Stepney Rifles and was considering them too as a possible candidate. Becuase of the lack of info I'm becoming more inclined to think this is a battalion nickname, likely to be WW1. I've e-mail AJAX however and am awaiting an answer.SonofSetanta (talk) 14:58, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
AJAX are unable to find anything. I have to accept that I've eaither dreamt this up or it's a very obscure reference. I'm going to file it in the Mk 1 Brain until I can find anything conclusive. If we can consider this as just a snippet until confirmation is found. Thanks for the input. SonofSetanta (talk) 15:46, 9 May 2012 (UTC)
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