Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators/Archive 26

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Academy content drive

We appear to have reached the end of the Academy content drive; if someone has a bit of free time, could they please hand out the requisite awards?

Going forward, we'll need to go through the articles and consolidate them into something coherent; there's a lot of overlapping or partially overlapping ones at the moment.

(By way of observation, I would say that this has not been one of our more popular drives; we had only a dozen participants, and many of them submitted only a single entry. I suspect that this is due in large part to the specialized nature of the effort; most editors are not really interested in writing instructional guides. This is probably something we should keep in mind when planning future drives.) Kirill [talk] [pf] 03:51, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

I've received an email (and I'm guessing that most of us did from its wording) from our esteemed leader asking that we expedite the awarding of the awards so they can be placed in the newsletter before it is distributed. -MBK004 01:12, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
So did this ever get taken care of? Kirill [talk] [pf] 14:43, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
Not that I'm aware of... -MBK004 00:13, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
So lets get them handed out. Surely someone can budget fifteen minutes to get these out before we get to Thanksgiving or (god-forbid) December. TomStar81 (Talk) 10:28, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Anyone? Anyone at all? ;-) Kirill [talk] [pf] 22:13, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
I'll do this later tonight if no one beats me to it. Maralia (talk) 22:19, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
Okay, thanks! Kirill [talk] [pf] 22:29, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
Got tied up with real life stuff till late tonight; will crank these out tomorrow. Maralia (talk) 05:40, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Awards handed out, content drive page updated, and (kinda weak) blurb inserted in the November newsletter. Maralia (talk) 05:06, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Discussion on sourcing reqirements for History articles ongoing

We should probably keep a keen eye to this discussion if not participate in it ourselves. There may be a new guideline written on this point just for History articles. Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates#1c and the clarification and proposal subsections. -MBK004 02:37, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the note MBK. There's an example of this attention to detail in sources at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/John Lloyd Waddy/archive1 which is interesting. I think that the quality of sources is a bit of a time bomb for Wikipedia; not all 'reliable sources' are actually reliable (eg, they're outdated, obscure and impossible for other editors to independently verify or just wrong) and some just suck (eg, low-quality popular histories) and there isn't a satisfactory mechanism to deal with this. Nick-D (talk) 05:19, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Request

Is someone familiar with AWB kind to spread this invitation to all project members? I attempted to do it several times but it seems it doesn't work on my computer and keeps disconnecting. Cheers, --Eurocopter (talk) 13:00, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't have AWB, so I'm affraid I can't help much in that regards, but why don't you see if User:BrownBot, who delivers the Bugle, would be able to do so? Cheers, Abraham, B.S. (talk) 05:30, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
P.S. I slightly tweaked the invitation; hope you don't mind! Cheers, Abraham, B.S. (talk) 05:33, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
Thanks I've made a request on Chrisb's talk page, but if there is anyone able to do this more quickly it would be great. The contest is starting in 8 days. --Eurocopter (talk) 19:24, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
Well, if we don't resolve this issue and send the invitations until November 6th, I'll be forced to postpone the contest as we won't have sufficient participants... --Eurocopter (talk) 19:12, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

ACRs eligible for closure

We've got two that are past the 28 day mark and I'd rather not be the one to close these since I'm conflicted in one.

Thanks -MBK004 03:52, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Are you sure that the Arrow article is ready? While all the comments which have been made appear to have now been addressed, no one has explicitly supported the article's promotion... Nick-D (talk) 03:56, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
I think that he means to close it as fail because it has been up for too long? —Ed (talk • contribs) 04:03, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
That's how I read it, close but not necessarily promote. I'll do the Collins as I see you're both involved there, Nick and Ed, but perhaps one of you could do the Arrow? Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 04:10, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
I don't want to close that because (a) it's the second ACR for that article and (b) the article, on a quick look-over, looks pretty darn good. How about we leave it open for a few more days and ping the commenters to see if they will support? —Ed (talk • contribs) 04:12, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
No issue from me if you can do the pinging while I promote Collins (bit pressed for time)... ;-) Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 04:17, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
I agree with Ed - since it's so close to promotion and pretty clearly meets the criteria, rather than close Arrow I've added my support, so hopefully if one of the other reviewers does the same we can promote. EyeSerenetalk 09:52, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
I've supported the article as well, so it should be good to go. Parsecboy (talk) 12:17, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

←Is anyone else available to close the Arrow ACR? I'm conflicted because I closed the first ACR for the article and my personal policy is not to close multiple ACRs for the same article. I'll close it in 4 hours if nobody has beat me to it. -MBK004 04:38, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

 Doing... –Juliancolton | Talk 04:42, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
Done, though it's my first A-Class promotion. Could a more experienced coordinator check to ensure I've completed all the steps thoroughly? Cheers. –Juliancolton | Talk 04:54, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
Excellent for a first time... There are two issues, first there was an error in the ArticleHistory [1] (the current status was left out and the article is also a GA) and the articles are listed by alphabetical order in the newsletter not by order of promotion. -MBK004 04:59, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
Alright, thanks. :) –Juliancolton | Talk 05:05, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
I think Kirill just saw another thing, you forgot to update the count of A-Class articles in the showcase listing. I don't know if that is in the instructions or not. -MBK004 01:31, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
It is... because I did exactly the same thing on my first ACR closure, and added it to the instructions as a result :) EyeSerenetalk 09:27, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

←And here is another: Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Armed Forces of Liberia. This one is tricky, it's been open for one month and has two supports, one oppose and three comments, some of which are extremely recent. The 28 day threshold clearly states that the status quo should be upheld with an unsuccessful closure, thoughts? -MBK004 22:00, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I gave this one 2.5 extra days, but now went ahead and closed it as unsuccessful. Such a shame since this was the second ACR for the article within two months. -MBK004 07:14, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Tupolev TB-3 A-class retention review

I've started a review on the Tupolev TB-3 article because none of its citations have page numbers. I was following the instructions, but am baffled by the reference to an article history on the talk page. This article is old enough that perhaps that perhaps it predates that bit of code. At any rate, can somebody who knows more about what he's doing with this sort of stuff follow up and finish doing what needs to be done? And maybe explain it to me, because all I know is a a bit of code appears on my GA and A-class articles of which I know nothing.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 23:53, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

 Working -MBK004 23:58, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
Wow, color me impressed; that was quick. Thanks.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 00:06, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
I've been familiar with the template for about a year and can do it in my sleep. I've been meaning to go through the very-old ACRs and add in {{ArticleHistory}}. The template has quite an extensive documentation section but it does take a bit of time to learn and if you do something wrong SandyGeorgia will let you know about it. The template was created to consolidate about ten talk page banners for FA/GA/DYK and has been extended over time to include almost everything related to an article's development including ITN, OTD, TFA, AFD, PR, WAR, WPR, FT/GT. Imagine an article with a template for each of these instead of one. -MBK004 00:09, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
There will not be any more confusion about missing article histories for our A-class articles. I am currently going through the archives of the ACR system and adding them in where appropriate. -MBK004 01:33, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Copyvios

FYI: This is not good, an article that passed through our A-class review system has been found to have multiple instances of copyvios: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_history#Please_check_for_copyvio_in_A-class_reviews -MBK004 01:57, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

While it's a worry, I'm not sure what can be done about it. It's taken in good faith that all text in articles nominated for peer review or assessment is OK and there isn't much more we can do than keep the possibility of copyvios in mind during reviews (I'm reasonably familar with the literature on Australian military history, for instance, and spot and fix the occasional copyvio in new articles). It was also embarrassing that the Winter War article went to FAC containing some references to unreliable websites (though the nominator was able to replace these with reliable sources quite quickly). Nick-D (talk) 09:39, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
As Nick says, although it's disappointing I don't believe it's an indication that our quality process is in trouble. If we followed up every source in every article under A-Class review, we'd slow progress to a crawl, and looking at it from a cost/benefit perspective we need to achieve a balance between rigour and efficiency. Unfortunately these things will happen; hopefully most will be caught by our reviewers, but occasionally the odd one will get through (as they sometimes will through FAC too). Personally I look for prose that seems out of synch with the rest, sample such sources as I have to hand, and trust that the article writer is honest. EyeSerenetalk 11:37, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
Damn. I thought about checking the references on Winter War, but decided to be lazy. That's my bad. —Ed (talk • contribs) 21:04, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
It's mine as well - I normally do a quick skim of the references looking for unreliable websites. Nick-D (talk) 06:58, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Unexpected green light for project and a request to any interested

I genuinely was not expecting this, but my Anthropology professor, one Dr. Nunez, has given her blessing for me to write a roughly 20-page paper related to Wikiepdia and its operations and such so long as I can tie that in with the anthropology concepts we have been studying this semester. In the interest of disclosure, I felt it necessary to log in to ask if it would be OK for me to name user names from our project when the time comes for a mention in the paper. Since part of the semester has been spent discussing consent forms I feel it necessary to ask before I add anyones name to the project. TomStar81 (Talk) 10:28, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I can't imagine my name'll come up, but if it does, then you have my permission. Skinny87 (talk) 10:34, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
What is your topic Tom? It's hard to make an informed decision on this if I don't know what you'll be writing about. Nick-D (talk) 10:39, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
If, for whatever reason, you wanted to include me in your writings, I doubt that I'd have a problem with it. – Joe N 21:13, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
No problem regarding me as well. --Eurocopter (talk) 21:15, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
No problems from me either. I know exactly what types of hurdles you are going through with the consent forms (I loathe research methods). I've also corrected the typos.-MBK004 21:39, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
@nick: The topic is the study of Wikipedia in a tribal sense, taking into account issues like the fact that the English speaking world is a minimum three continents big and the fact that everyone seems to have a different idea about how to solve the problems we have or in what direction the encyclopedia should be moving. The goal is to show that some anthropological applications to the process may help Wikipedia overcome some of these problems, or at the very least, help both sides understand each other a little more. 75.41.166.69 (talk) 22:24, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Feel free to use my name as well. Good luck! —Ed (talk • contribs) 22:36, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Same here, and good luck (again)! Kirill [talk] [pf] 04:04, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the info Tom; feel free to use my name. It would be interesting to see what your findings and conclusions are. Nick-D (talk) 07:50, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
Per Skinny. –Juliancolton | Talk 05:30, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
Ditto Julian. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 09:14, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
Ditto Ian EyeSerenetalk 12:23, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
Sure thing Tom. Feel free. I'm on an extended wikibreak while working on my IB papers, but I'm checking back in periodically. Incidentally, would anyone happen to have access to the second volume of The Mitrokhin Archive (The KGB and the world)? If anyone does, it'd be a huge help to me. Cam (Chat) 00:04, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
I have The sword and the shield : the Mitrokhin archive and the secret history of the KGB in my university library; is that what you need? —Ed (talk • contribs) 03:38, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
You can use my name if you need to. Parsecboy (talk) 11:23, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
Ditto Skinny, Julian, Ian and EyeSerene. ;-) Cheers, Abraham, B.S. (talk) 12:26, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
Oh, and Tom, would you be able to let me see a final copy of said paper? Cam (Chat) 03:54, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
I think I'm solid for saying that we would all be interested in that. -MBK004 04:01, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

(od) I can do that. One thing to keep in mind here though is that the paper will focus on the entirety of Wikipedia, not just our project, although as one of the largest projects I expect that I will have a place or two bring in specific examples from our project to demonstrate/prove my points. As such, I may not use everyone's name, though I do appreciate the fact that so many of you are willing to allow me use names if I need to. 76.211.107.188 (talk) 08:00, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Happy to let you use my name if you need to. Regards, Woody (talk) 17:11, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

ACRs lasting longer than 28 days

Could an uninvolved coordinator please close these reviews, they have been open for one month which is past the cut-off prescribed by the ACR instructions. By dragging these out we would be depriving the newer reviews of reviewers and there are quite a few that need more reviewers.

Thanks, -MBK004 21:40, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Heads up

...re an IP-hopping POV-pushing editor that, after a quiet period, is now active again on various articles. The changing IP makes tracking their disruption awkward, but their talk-page posts are easily recognisable once you've seen a few. Recent targets have been Brusilov Offensive, disputing low Russian casualties; Einsatzgruppen, disputing Wehrmacht/SS participation; Battle of the Somme, disputing high German casualties; and Battle of Verrières Ridge, disputing high German casualties. There's a pattern there somewhere :) EyeSerenetalk 13:07, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the note; it's clearly the same guy. IP-hopping vandals and POV pushers are rapidly becoming a big problem for Wikipedia in my view. Nick-D (talk) 21:21, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
I've noticed the same. It's pushing me towards the view, which I've long been against, that registration should be required to contribute. However, I'd still rather we don't have to go down that route - I suppose widespread semiprotection is the only other alternative. EyeSerenetalk 10:48, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
We dealt with him a while back over several different IPs. I suppose the only solution would be to continue to block the other IPs for clear sockpuppetry. I'd get more involved, but I've got several deadlines coming up in the next few weeks. I'm very sorry that I can't get more involved at this point; I wish I could. Cam (Chat) 05:48, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
No worries Cam, you've got more important stuff to think about. Besides, we actually seem to be making some progress at Talk:Battle of Verrières Ridge#misplaced and wrong statement about 12 SS casualties; despite their initial attitude the anon did have a point, and with a combination of warnings, explanations and cajoling, and EnigmaMcmxc unearthing some good material, the anon seems to have calmed down and the casualties section of the article is more accurate. Hopefully by demonstrating that a non-confrontational, collaborative approach can get results we'll see a wider improvement. For purely pragmatic reasons I'd much rather have them working with us than chase them around playing whack-a-mole :) EyeSerenetalk 10:37, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

ACRs ready for closure #2

Hi guys. The following ACRs appear to have a consensus for closure, or are verging on the 28 day limit. I would do these myself, but am involved in all three:

Cheers, Abraham, B.S. (talk) 02:23, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Design A-150 battleship is also ready for closure by an uninvolved coordinator. Nick-D (talk) 23:34, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Done. :) Cheers, Abraham, B.S. (talk) 01:06, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

←Yet another, past the 28 day limit. This one is a bit unique in that it has had quite sufficient participation but the reviewers have not returned to support, and the culprits are all coordinators or former coordinators (you should know better).

  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-3 -MBK004 06:18, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
    • I assume you're not including me in that admonishment, mate, as only one of my comments has had even an initial response... ;-) Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 06:33, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
      • No I am not, because your comments were the latest and were made only four days ago as opposed to some which were made about one month ago. -MBK004 07:41, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
        • I have gone ahead and closed this as successful, but I am sure this one would not have an easy go at FAC. -MBK004 23:57, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

←There are several ACRs that are getting extremely close to the 28 day mark and could use another review or two. If a coordinator that has not gotten involved would not mind taking a bit of time to perform a couple of reviews, I am certain that the editors would appreciate it instead of having the ACRs closed for lack of consensus for promotion. -MBK004 23:57, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I reviewed Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Dutch 1913 battleship proposal, which now has 3 supports and seemingly no major outstanding issues, should be ready for promotion. I should have time to review Dennis Gorski tomorrow. Parsecboy (talk) 00:41, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Reminder

Auntieruth55 is currently up for the Chevrons + Oak Leaves (Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Awards#Auntieruth55); all coordinators who haven't yet voted are welcome to participate. Thanks! EyeSerenetalk 17:34, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Working group infrastructure question

Some eyes at Template talk:WPMILHIST#Workforce Napoleonic Fiction would be appreciated, in case I'm off my mark there. Kirill [talk] [pf] 02:14, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Seems fine to me, though I think your suggestion for renaming the template probably ought to go ahead, to bring it into line with our other templates. EyeSerenetalk 08:31, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Task Force merger discussion on WT:MILHIST

I've just moved this out of the archives for a second time; discussion has clearly died out for the moment, so it may be worth wrapping up those sections that have consensus. To give a final chance for comments I've announced in the thread that I'm intending to do this over the next 48 hours or so, unless anyone has any objections? EyeSerenetalk 08:54, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Your summary and conclusions seem accurate to me, no objections. – Joe N 01:00, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

November issue of "The Bugle"

Link: Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/Newsletter November 2009

This is looking decidedly thin on the ground. Could someone tally up the contest department entries please for inclusion? Is any featured content missing or are there any snippets that need adding? I'm happy to do the final knocking into shape and arrange despatch but I'm a bit short of time just now to do the rest.  Roger Davies talk 08:42, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Might it be worth mentioning the updated WP:MILMOS#NOTE criteria and the imminent (partial) closure of the TF reorganisation discussion (I can hold off on that for a few days)? EyeSerenetalk 10:12, 5 December 2009 (UTC) I've gone ahead and written it up; please amend as necessary! EyeSerenetalk 10:43, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
Stormbird and I have checked all contest entries and I've tallied the points for the scoreboard and awarded the Chevrons so perhaps a less involved party can add the blurb to The Bugle... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 11:14, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, everyone, all done.  Roger Davies talk 13:15, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Oomph and awe

We seem to be a bit light on oomph and awe at the moment. Any thoughts?

  • The contest dept seems quiet and probably needs invigorating. Is the Henry Allingham contest proving a distraction? If so, could the improvements made count for both? Perhaps someone could write to all who have contributed in the past and ask them to start again?
  • Is the end of the year a good time to dish out a few more content review medals? If so, we need to start getting lists together.
  • The Military Historian of the Year awards will be up again in at year end. Shall we start inviting nominations from 15 December onwards?

 Roger Davies talk 13:21, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Just a quick note regarding the main contest issue, as time does not allow me to expand at the moment. I believe the current form of our contest is quite dull and innatractive for new competitors. In my opinion we should find ways of reforming it, by changing its run and accessibility, establishing goals and giving awards. --Eurocopter (talk) 13:44, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
  • We have reformed the scoring system for the monthly contest already to take non-Milhist-specific (i.e. GA and FA) upgrades into account, which broadens things a bit. I recall suggesting a third place award which would put it in line with most other comps but we decided that would be discretionary. Re. counting for both monthly and Henry Allingham contests, as I've said elsewhere, if you want 'bang for your buck' in article writing with the competitions open at the moment you can always do WWI flying articles and hit the monthly contest, the aviation contest, and the Henry Allingham all at once (ask me!). My other observation is that every competition has its own scoring ranges and idiosyncracies (the forthcoming Wikicup another set again) which I would like to see standardised to a greater degree if at all feasible, and posting entries everywhere makes its own dent in editing time (but that's kind of the 'entry fee'). Re. more competitors, a reminder to old hands couldn't hurt.
  • We're indeed behind in the content review awards for Jul-Sep and I admit to raising it without acting on it but hope to in the next week.
  • Military Historian of the Year noms from 15 Dec sounds like a good idea. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 15:39, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

School update

Hi all. I finally firmed up my finals schedule, and it looks at this point like I should be back on here in full force Wednesday. My finals all occur on Monday, but I will be pursuing extra credit for a music class which needs to be in no later that the middle of the week, and I have budgeted Tuesday for the task of writing the essay. Thought you all might like to know. TomStar81 (Talk) 21:43, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

An early welcome back! At about the time you return I will be drastically reducing my level of activity for about a week for my finals which are apparently a week after yours. -MBK004 23:29, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Couple of Points

I have taken a few hours to read through whats been going on. A few points:

  • Thanks for getting the awards out for the academy project. Now we need to go through and sort out what we have. Some of the content can be merged, most of it could use reformatting, and all of it needs a good spelling/grammar/ease of use check to make sure what written is accurate and understandable.
  • The black project pages could use another pass through when someone gets a moment, if no one get to it by Wednesday I will handle this my self.
  • I am for the merging of the task forces, in fact I have some ideas for task force reform I'll share once I get back on here in force.
  • Book class looks promising, what I have seen of it any way.
  • Our November newsletter ought to be going out soon, has anyone seen to this?
  • And most important of all, thanks (albeit early thanks) to all of you for running the project while I was away. I appreciate it more than I caoul d ever hope to express in words. TomStar81 (Talk) 02:48, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Task Force Afghanistan

Is it possible to get a task force for Afghan military history? Specifically Modern Afghanistan has one of the most interesting military histories, and the state of wikipedia articles on the subject are absolustely shameful, particularly for the period from 1989-2001. Most commanders are stubs or non-existence and major battles are usually lacking their own page. Given the relevance today, it would definitely be useful to have a task force on this subject so at the very least we can identify and provide information for some of the major players. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Grant bud (talk • contribs) 11:46, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

There is a discussion about Task Force housekeeping on WT:MILHIST that might address part of your question. A suggestion, which has been well-supported, was made to merge the India/Pakistan TFs and expand their scope to cover Afghanistan (amongst other areas). If you want to comment, the discussion is still in its final stages. EyeSerenetalk 13:16, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Black Project Report

Good news: since our last pass the black article info has remained more or less stable. I did locate two new article in the category, one of which was subsequently removed after I was unable to locate any alleged blackops material in it. The other article is Nazi UFOs, and I think this one might be a hoax. Before sending it to afd though I would like a second opinion. TomStar81 (Talk) 16:51, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

That article is pretty clearly nonsense. Nick-D (talk) 06:39, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

The Full Report: Ideas, Loose Ends, Ongoing Projects, and Next Years Goals

Its just as the title indicates. Feel free to add to the discussion if you have a point that we need to address.

Task Forces

I've been thinking alot about our task forces lately, and I have identified three big problems with them:

  • They do not offer coverage of all aspects of warfare,
  • Many tend to have few if any active members,
  • Although most are run jointly, our project members do most of the work.

In thinking of way to address these problems I have come up with a few ideas, one of which was proposed earlier but not adopted.

  • On the matter of geography: I think we may benefit from a task force scheme in which we create a cluster of broad geographical task forces and work our way down from these to more regional and local groups. For example, if we start with continents and similar sized land masses like North America, South America, Central America, etc we can avoid situations like the Taiwan TF where only one man is listed as a member, and we can allow for consolidation of inactive task forces back up to the next highest cluster (in the case of Taiwan, for example, we could merge it back into an Asia-Pacific Task force). Similar moves could perhaps be initiated in the periods and conflicts TFs, which would allow not only for larger, more robust TFs but more coverage by coordinators to ensure that the material complies with our guidelines and policies
  • Few task forces at a broader level would also help beef up task forces, which could help us keep the ones we have energized. Energized task forces are task forces that we can more easily mobilize because they are likely to have more members that will be interested in a given area. This helps avoid the problem of having few if any TF members interested in our projects, drives, and other low level editing competitions.
  • Lastly, a sizable number of our TFs are claimed to be run jointly between two projects, ours and a second party. Despite this though its our members that seem to do a disproportionately large amount of the work in such projects. I would propose then that if another project wants to create a task force with us that they find a least three people from there end willing to participate in the workload, and allow us to post our PR, ACR, and FAC messages on their project's talk pages. In this way we could help make sure that the work is more evenly distributed between the two projects running the TF and ensure that all parties can track the article as it moves up the assessment chart.

Thoughts? TomStar81 (Talk) 19:07, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree with much of that. The current changes summarised here will go a little way to addressing the issues, though I suspect not far enough given the thrust of your suggestions. Certainly I think your last point is something that warrants serious consideration. However, I hope you don't mind me suggesting that, re points one and two, we don't throw away three months+ of discussion and dishearten our members by proposing more modifications to the TF structure just yet. Maybe I'm reading too much into your post, but I wonder if the first two suggestions might be something to return to in six months or so, once we've seen how the changes work out in practice and members are ready for another round of consensus-building. Nothing to stop us discussing them here of course... :) Good to have you back, btw! EyeSerenetalk 19:51, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, its good to be back! You have no idea how much I missed hardcore editing under my name here, and I do intend to make up for it in the coming days. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:58, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
I very much agree with your first point, and have had some ideas floating around in my head for a while now about possible reorganizations and hierarchy in the TFs, with large regional or continental TFs subdivided into ones for countries or small regions that are subordinate. I do, however, agree with EyeSerene that we should implement the changes that have already been agreed upon and resolve the remaining debates first. Once those are in effect and we have had some time to gauge how much things have improved, we can come up with more specific proposals for further changes. – Joe N 00:37, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
A couple of comments:
In general, clustered geographic task forces are a good idea (so long as their existence doesn't necessarily prevent more focused "sub-task forces" from existing within them, of course). I'm not sure whether a North American task force would really make sense, though, given that we already have active U.S. and Canadian ones; if we merely want to stretch the coverage, fitting Mexico somewhere would probably make more sense than creating a new over-arching task force that would basically duplicate the existing ones.
I think our coverage of historical periods is pretty decent; we have some gaps in the later 19th and early 20th centuries, but everything before Waterloo should already fall under a period task force. If we get something like an "Industrial warfare" task force covering Napoleon to WWII, that should cover pretty much everything that's not already picked up somewhere.
As far as joint task forces go, I have two main concerns:
  • A lot of the "joint" task forces were actually created entirely by us, for our own reasons, and later merely cross-linked into the "other" parent project out of courtesy. It would be unreasonable, I think, for us to expect the other parent to have significant interest in such a scenario, although we could certainly ask. In any case, it does us little good to push, say, national projects to set up their own military task forces without working with us, simply because they don't want to commit to some arbitrary criterion we set. When we look at the need to keep things centralized, even an inactive task force under our umbrella is still significantly better than an inactive task force (or even independent project) outside our umbrella.
  • Regardless of how we want to proceed conceptually, we need to be very careful not to be seen as trying to throw our weight around and push smaller projects into accepting conditions for collaborating with us; doing so will cause no end of harm to our reputation within the community. If we're to employ cross-listing schemes and things of that sort, we need to make sure they're seen as mutually beneficial (such as the one we have with WP:VG).
And, Tom, welcome back! No trouble with your exams, I hope? Kirill [talk] [prof] 06:32, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
I agree entirely with Kirill here. One of the main advantages about our task forces is to deter the creation of independent offshoots, which could easily cause chaos. It's a good strategy and we should stick with it.  Roger Davies talk 07:14, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
I prefer a more radical option of doing away with task forces all together. In my view, they no longer add any value to this project; their talk pages are almost always inactive other than review notifications (which go on the main project talk page) and I can't recall the last time one of them was used to develop articles or ideas. They're simply a maintenance chore for coordinators and have the danger of becoming something of an embarrassment for the project. In regards to Tom's proposal, creating or reorganising task forces for the sake of 'completeness' doesn't make much sense to me as we've always taken the view that TFs should be demand-driven. Nick-D (talk) 06:37, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
That would be a very bad idea, in my opinion. Doing away with task forces will simply cause the people who currently try to start task forces to start independent WikiProjects instead, taking us back to the organizational chaos that prevailed before MilHist absorbed all of the other projects in our topic area. Suffice it to say that actually trying to maintain any sort of standards for articles will be a nightmare if we have a few dozen independent projects, all coming up with contradictory guidelines, developing unique template formats, and so forth. Even if they're totally inactive, task forces can't really cause any harm; independent projects, on the other hand, can be actively harmful. Kirill [talk] [prof] 06:53, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm not hot for doing away with task forces, but something does need to be done about them because as it stands at present little if anything seems to occur on them. Attempts to restart our task forces through group participation seem to have failed, and it appears increasingly that our members drift from point to point without any established need for a TF. From where I sit the issue seems to have two possible solutions: jettison a large number of task forces deemed to be either incapacitated or dead, or merge a bunch of the faltering ones into larger task force covering a more generalized region of the sum of their parts. I prefer the latter option. TomStar81 (Talk) 07:39, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Is having inactive task forces really a problem in and of itself, though? The maintenance overhead of keeping a task force in existence is minimal, if I'm not mistaken; does it actually harm us to keep them around as a fleet in being, even if they don't do much? Kirill [talk] [prof] 14:11, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
As a practical matter, no. As you observe, these are low maintenance subgroups once created, and while they are largely unnoticed to the members inactive tasks forces do not really cause any harm to the project. As for your other point, the reason I have proposed no reorganization of the periods and conflicts or task forces is exactly as you stated above: they serve as a fleet in being. These we need to have even if they are inactive so as to make the case that our project is covering the times and conflicts; by way of example, without WWII and WWI task forces those wishing to split these major wars out could have grounds to do so. I suggested starting with the geography task forces first since those have predefined lines and because we needs some measure by which to determine if a reorganization would improve our task forces any. If a reorganization along geography lines works then we can open discussion on whether to try a reorganization with the other TFs; if the idea fails to achieve any noticeable change we leave the other two TF clusters as they are. Note as well that any attempt to reorganize our TFs would require the approval of the project as a whole since so many members ID themselves as part of a TF rather than as part of the project as a whole. TomStar81 (Talk) 14:36, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
That's fair enough. My concern is mainly that we need to be careful when dealing with national task forces, since many of them have a (presumably active) national WikiProject on the other side that needs to be kept in the loop during any reorganization—or else they may simply create a military task force on their own, bringing us back to the existing situation with the added drawback of the new group being explicitly opposed to what we're doing. Kirill [talk] [prof] 14:43, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
That ties in with the above jointly run point I outlined. Its time the other project invested a little time and energy in their military related articles. Now I grant that among the project city states that we are friendly to there are none who can compete with us on matters of the military, for this project is the digital equivalent of Sparta, yet for us to do all the work against the Persians seems unfair. Unfair to our members who do the lions share of the work, and unfair to the other project whose members may wish a chance to offer their opinions for an article or help improve the article. We need to come together and work on getting greater input from our partners in the TFs. Some things to consider would be allowing us to add our PR, ACR, and FAC notices to the parent project, adding our assessment table to other project's talk pages, allowing other projects to place their project banners on the task force talk pages, and cracking open our A-class assessment procedures for those who have jointly run TFs with us on articles of their merit. At this point all of this is very theoretical, but I do realize that if we are going to emphasis a greater joint effort that it must be a two way street. If we attempt to force the other projects into accepting this without any input from their members on whether they even see this as a problem then its going to backfire pretty spectacularly. TomStar81 (Talk) 15:17, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
Absolutely agree with that last point! I believe the respect afforded to this project across Wikipedia is down to the fact that our coords (especially the lead coords) have been on the whole excellent diplomats and ambassadors and taken a consensus-driven, hands-off approach. The moment we start acting as though we're somehow special, we undo all that good work.
I like the idea of allowing other projects to use our A-Class review process (as many smaller projects don't have their own simply due to lack of manpower) though I assume that might mean some re-writing of the criteria. Whether or not it would ultimately be workable I don't know, but it could be domething worth discussing through the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council. EyeSerenetalk 17:52, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Initial Proposal

Ok, I've firmed up my idea a little and now I would like some input on the geography plan.

According to the list of sovereign states that are internationally recognized there are 193 counties; that number jumps to 203 when those states that are traditionally sovereign but are not necessarily sovereign are added to the list. By contrast, of the 27 task forces we have only 19 are specifically concerned with nations, meaning that 174 countries are unaccounted for by means of our task force clusters as they currently stand. This does not take into account our regions task forces, which cover more than one country, nor does this number take into account the fact that some nations are pacifist, retain a military force only for ceremonial purposes, or classify their military arm as an extension of the national police force or as a self defense force/national guard.

As noted above, we currently have 27 task forces dedicated to nations and geographical regions. Of these, eight task forces deal specifically with regions: African, Baltic States, Balkans, Middle East, Nordic Countries, Ottoman Empire, South American, and Southeast Asia. Of these, three task forces have more than 20 people participating and all but one have a membership in the double digits.

Building off this information, my proposal would be to create task forces for the remaining regions not already covered by the above eight. At this point, the proposed region task forces for creation are North America, Central America, Europe/European, Asia/Asian, and Oceanic, with the potential for three additional task forces: Polar, Pacific Ocean, and Atlantic Ocean (more on these three below). With the exception of the latter three, each of these region task forces has a geographic Wikiproject backing the region in question, and these larger projects with their more numerous members could be valuable assets for jointly run regional task forces since they bring multiple editors with an interest in the general regions to the table, which could help our peer review process and our A-class review process.

Regional task force are by their definition not limited to one particular nation, since they cover man nations they stand a better chance of gaining and maintaining members because the nature of the task force is such that if a user tires of working on one nation there are others in the region he or she can turn to without leaving a regional task force, which helps the task force remain active and move toward a self sustaining position. This could also allow for better joint project coverage since members from the other projects may take a greater interest in broader, regional task force then a small, national task force.

Another benefit of creating these regional task force is that we can create a 'fleet in being' such as it were for national task forces: rather than be compelled to create task forces for every nation with an armed force we can take the position that our regional task forces were created to cover obtuse or obscured regions such as Iraq and Mexico, which saves on overhead since we will not have to find a small number of people willing to contribute to one particular nation (though inevitably, there will be some created that will have the capacity to hold to the contributors needed to stand alone). A full spread on regional task forces also provides us with a solution in the event that a nation task force fails: we can merge said task force back into its regional parent, with not loss in coverage of the specific country. This could be of use to us now as we continue to debate the fate of some of our least active task forces; as you can see by reading the proposal, the merge into regional idea came about there before I suggested it here.

In the case of the last three, polar regions and a Pacific and Atlantic task force could be used to better manage fleets and as a means of tracking major battles and graveyards of both oceans that came about as a result of war, in particular World War II. At this point, I am not pushing these three regions because I want more input on the proposed land based regions before extended regional task forces to the polar regions, which are largely unoccupied by military forces, or to the seas, whose combat operations are for the most part already covered by periods and conflicts-related task forces. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:52, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

A couple of initial comments on the specific regions:
  • As I noted above, I'm not sure that a North American task force would be useful, since we already have active U.S. and Canadian ones; if we're going to create a Central American one anyways, we could just add Mexico to that and get comprehensive coverage of the continent without adding yet another group.
  • I think Asia may be too broad a grouping, particularly since we already have Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian ones, and will soon have a South Asian one as well. The only part of the continent that we don't really have covered at the moment is Central Asia; it may be easier to just create a task force for that and not bother with an even broader one.
Generally speaking, in other words, I don't think we should exclusively focus on continents as the natural "region" for these; a somewhat more flexible breakdown will help avoid the creation of "wrapper" task forces whose only role would be to act as an (unnecessary) umbrella for existing ones. Kirill [talk] [prof] 04:18, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
I mostly agree with Kirill's proposals: we already have Canada, US, and South America, so we could make a Central America (or, possibly, Latin America if we want to include the Caribbean islands) to finish our coverage of the Western Hemisphere. Africa is covered, and I don't think that there are enough editors to split it up. Australia/NZ/South Pacific Islands will hopefully be covered once the currently proposed reorganizations are complete. Asia is covered by Russia in the north, Middle Eastern/Ottoman in the west, South Asian (soon) in the south, SE Asian in the southeast, and China, Japan, and Korea in the East, which leaves only Central Asia (the -stan countries, with the exception of Pakistan, which looks like it'll end up in South Asian) in need of coverage. Creating this TF seems better than trying to join all these various not particularly closely related countries/regions together into one big one.
As for Europe, Western Europe is mostly covered with the exception of Switzerland, Belgium, and Luxembourg (the latter two may be mergeable with the Dutch one to create a "Low Countries Task Force" or something), if my memory is correct. In Eastern Europe, we have the Balkans, Baltic countries, Poland and Romania, but that's about it between Germany and Russia. The former Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Belarus, Ukraine, and Austria are uncovered (some of them could be considered part of others, but it's shaky). Of these currently existing TFs, however, the Balkans has 24 members, and none of the others have more than 10, with Poland down to 5. I'd suggest merging all of these into an Eastern Europe Task Force, which would cover more geographic area and have more members. Also, this could possibly reduce ethnic quarrels if we had a task force covering all the regions instead of fragmenting it. – Joe N 16:27, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
So refining this we should move on the regions we do not already have and for those that we cover adequately perhaps create a few TFs to cover the rest of the continent. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:48, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
Anyone else wish to add to this? I think the time for putting this out as a proposal is about right, seeing as how the task force merger was completed just recently, and its enough ahead of the next bugle run that we could get feedback from the project as a whole. TomStar81 (Talk) 07:21, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
Well, what precisely are we going to propose? Kirill [talk] [prof] 12:47, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
Ideally, that we think it might be beneficial for the project in the long run to create a handful of regional task forces to cover areas that we seem to be weak in or that we seem to lack coverage for. These include, to some extent, all or parts of Central America, Europe, and Asia. I'd like to test the waters for such a move before going forward with idea so as to get a feel for whether the community would open to such an idea, then see what sort of discussions arise from the suggestion. TomStar81 (Talk) 08:49, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

The academy

Now that we actually have content we need to go through, sort it out, polish it, and get this linked from the welcome template. Points to consider here include:

  • We still need content. We have red links in the academy, and while that number has gone down it hasn't vanished. Some of the red links could be merged with current content, but others have no reprive.
  • We have overlapping content on some of the material, these need to be located and merged.
  • Spelling and grammar issues are likely still to be issues, everything in their needs to be copyeditted

Thoughts?

Special Projects

We now have two special projects, mine which used a codename and the other which also used a codename. Do we need to codify the codename principles for a special project so as to create some uniformity here? Also, the following need to be considered:

  • For OMT, We need to start compiling a list of guns, power plants, crew breakdowns, ammunition loadouts, etc. While this is a long way off the material should at least be up so we can watch it.
  • For GWC, we need to better drum up support for this. We have the WWI contest underway, which is a huge help for this project, but have me made any attempt to get this into the signpost, or better yet work with the other projects who share with ours a stake in getting the material to FA before 2014? If not then we need to work on this.
  • For both projects: we need more backbone for this. I would like to see a special section in the bugle devoted to special projects to keep tabs on how well these are doing, and I would like to standardize the format of both special projects so as to avoid a judgement based on appearences. A basic format would be introduction, purpose, where we stand (chart), list of articles covered/to be covered, honors (FTs, GT), arranged top to bottom. I would also like to some type of award structure put together for participants.
Regarding special contests, I have another two in my mind. One will be a WWII contest, which I expect will be a great success and would start soon after the end of the Henry Allingham contest (15 March perhaps?). The other one, which needs a good strategy and personally did not have the time to think enough about it yet would be a contest focusing on an area with low level of activity. There are several variant of good combinations such as Weaponry + Military Land vehicles or South-Eastern European + Russian/Soviet TFs. However, such a contest has to be carefully organized as there are considerable chances to turn into a disaster - we all know how hard it's to get reliable sources for that part of the world). Meanwhile, I consider Henry Allingham a success (and I must say I had quite a few doubts before its start), even if there is a relatively small participation - those who are actively participating are heavily contributing and a spirit of competition was created. Glad that you came back Tom, seems like you are decided to recover all the inactivity period! --Eurocopter (talk) 10:24, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
For Special Projects, would it be worth creating a link in the milhist template like what we do for the portals? For some special projects (like OMT) that will run as long as they are allowed to this may make retain the articles within the scope of the FT easier. TomStar81 (Talk) 07:37, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
It'd be easy enough to create another set of portal-link-like parameters, but I'm not sure how useful they'd actually be. For the formal special projects (OMT & OGWC), at least, I'd be tempted to do a task force-like tag instead, which could generate assessment & tracking categories; the portal links don't actually do anything other than providing a link on the talk page itself. Kirill [talk] [prof] 00:01, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
That could work. As long as the essence of the tracking remains unhindered I am up for whatever works. TomStar81 (Talk) 00:48, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm for what Kirill suggests with the task force-like tag, remember on OMT we already keep this, which is partially based upon what the 1.0 bot produces here. -MBK004

Working Groups

I've conducted a run through the black project working group, but I would like to see all current coordinators add their names to this group as well. Black Project articles are among the most interesting articles we have, but they are also the most prone to be hoax articles, inadequate referenced, poorly cited (if they are cited at all) and generally in need of watching. Aside from myself, only MBK has added his name to the list of people in the group. I know that MBK, GW, Binksternet, and I have done well to monitor these pages, but given their potential for OR and CRYSTAL I'd feel better if we coordinators took a more active role in the area.

On the matter of the working groups, I think it may be interesting to have these groups highlighted in the Bugle every so often to keep them fresh in people's minds.

I wouldn't necessarily bother highlighting individual groups at this point—most of what we currently have are one-editor efforts, and there's not much that can be said about them—but a simple listing of newly-formed working groups might be a valuable item to include in the Bugle. Kirill [talk] [prof] 13:58, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Emeritus

We got some iffy responses last election on the matter of our coordinator emeritus position. I think we ought to look into establishing some sort of procedure for the position. A look at Kirill's election suggestions that we might start with a 1-term waiting period before a motion to elect a new emeritus is made. I think that it may be a good idea to "two-step" the process: If a user indicates that s/he would like to be elevated to the position after a six month wait then the current lead introduces a motion among the coordinators for granting of such status; if the coordinators agree then put it before the community as a whole. This idea is very much in its infancy, and may not need any attention per se, but I elected to bring it up since most seemed to be under the impression that it was a one time only gift, and some were unhappy about the move to elevate RD to emeritus.

Tom, I'm genuinely suprised that you've raised this again given that you proposed this during the election period and it went nowhere. I think that you're overreacting to a handful of 'oppose' votes, several of which came from editors with a chip on their shoulder (which is par for the course for members of ArbCom and most admins). If there was the option to vote against coordinator nominees I'm sure that we all would have gotten similar numbers of 'oppose' votes. Nick-D (talk) 21:25, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
Do bear in mind that this list was originally generated back September, and that I was preparing for my break at the time. Some of this therefore has been on the back burner long enough that it may no longer be an issue. Its all listed here now just to clear the air, but if something is not an issue then it is not issue, and I respect that. TomStar81 (Talk) 22:06, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
Indeed. That said, I have to agree with Nick that this might be a case of making a mountain out of a molehill. In a project as big as ours, there's always going to be some disagreement on the bestowing of Emeritus status. Compared to some of the stuff I watched unfold in last year's ArbCom elections, the stuff we saw during Roger's Emeritus vote is basically fluff you'd talk about over tea and possibly biscuits. That said, I think there was a general concern that we not be too liberal about bestowing the Emeritus rank to former coords. I do like the idea of having a two-tiered review process. That way, it doesn't just come down to a populist love-in, but it also isn't solely the decision of the elites. There should be a bit of both. Kind of like the Electoral College system, except which works. Cam (Chat) 06:25, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
So, by "which works" you mean not like the Electoral College? That actually does sound like a good idea though, although I would say that the referendum process is a better analogy in the real world. The sitting coordinators can propose past coordinators to receive the status, and if they agree the nomination will be sent to the public at the next opportunity. – Joe N 21:13, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
I believe as well that this should be clarified somehow. For example, I'm 90% decided not to candidate for another coordinator term (hell, it's been five terms, I'm throwing the hat to fresh forces), but I still might need some coordinator assets to put in practice my future plans for this project. Personally, I wouldn't want the coordinator emeritus position, but if anybody considers that I must wear a coordinator hat in order to participate in discussions on this talk page or organize contests/other activities, I'll be forced to ask for it. Perhaps we should try to establish a formal status for ex-coordinators? --Eurocopter (talk) 10:50, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps something along the lines of that all former coordinators are permitted to fully take part in discussions on the page, but only current coordinators can actually do the coordinator stuff (close ACRs) and actually vote on the proposals. That sort of seems to have been the unspoken method up 'till now. Yellowmonkey has commented here from time to time, and we've never really objected to it. It'll probably be worth a bit more discussion come election time. Cam (Chat) 23:31, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
We've never limited this page to just current and former coordinators, we have historically welcomed input by all, and even as this page currently exists there are comments by editors who are not coordinators (most notably Durova from a quick glance-over). I also quite vividly remember participating in discussions here before I was elected as a coordinator (but it may have been after my first unsuccessful run for the position). -MBK004 01:58, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
@Cam, I'm 100% in agreement. It's (sort of) similar to ex-arbcom members' access to the mailing list, I think. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 02:25, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
On the matter who gets to comment here: its always been anyone who wanted to, it just so happens that coordinator traffic occupied the largest slice of the pie. Durova, SandyGeorgia, and others held to high esteem have participated in here in greater of lesser capacities. This also goes for members, though perhaps by unspoken consent few do leave messages here.
On the matter of former coordinator participation here: There are three possible solutions I could see to help address this. First, we could create a coordinator alumni group and offer our former coordinators a chance to participate in the group. In this scheme, those who were once part of the coordinator group would retain some level of status within the coordinator tranche, including the ability to weigh in on coordinator matters if they like. The other alternative I could offer would be to establish a "tenured coordinators" area in between the current coordinators and the coordinator emeritus position. As with the first suggestion, this would allow those coordinators wishing to remain active in a lesser capacity to do so with project dispensation. For the former option we could modify our silver five-star coordinator insignia for the alumni/tenured crowd by developing a gold version to indicate those who now hold said positions. In the case of third, we could bypass the other two suggestions and simply note that anyone who has been a coordinator is welcome to participate here, and refer current members to the list of previous tranches so they can see who has held the position of coordinator/lead coordinator. All of this is of course brainstorming, but I thought I would through it out there and see what everyone thinks. TomStar81 (Talk) 03:31, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
Per Tom: this would allow those coordinators wishing to remain active in a lesser capacity to do so with project dispensation. This is exactly where I would personally fit in. I'd agree with Tom's second and third proposals, which both seem to be decent methods for defining an official status for ex-coords. Let's see some other opinions... --Eurocopter (talk) 11:43, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
The third method seems simpler than the second (and is essentially what we've already been doing, if I'm not mistaken). I'm not sure that it would be beneficial to add another layer of formal positions for retired coordinators, although a set of insignia for them might be a nice touch.
(As a practical matter, putting together an explicit list of coordinator alumni may cause some difficulty as one of our former coordinators is now banned; we'd have to start introducing concepts like "retired coordinator in good standing" and such, which would almost certainly be far more trouble than they're worth.) Kirill [talk] [prof] 03:05, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
Three I suggested for simplicity since that would spare us a lot of overhead in creating new pages and whatnot. That last part about an alumni list is true, but also consider that there will be some who are not necessarily interested staying current with this page once they leave. That would already help to reduce such a list. As I recall, the now blocked coordinator you refer to left of his own accord before being blocked, so that wouldn't necessarily be a problem per say, but would be worth considering in the long run.
As for the idea of tenure and emeritus: we could restructure the current system so that anyone who has served in the position of coordinator may claim tenure and anyone who has served in the position of the lead emeritus if they wish, which would solve the issue of elections and such by letting our coordinators decide for themselves where they want to fit in and then move to that area without elections. Alternatively, tenured coordinators may help more evenly moderate the field so that emeritus looks harder to obtain. As a practical matter, both tenure and emeritus simply mean the person in retirement holds some say in official matters, so in simple terms we are not really adding anything to the current system; the silver crowd would still be current and the gold crowd would still be retired. Adding a gold five star insignia could allow us to forgo the emeritus altogether and simply allow those wanting to remain active in retirement to pick the gold equivalent of the insignia they had while active and keep on contributing. TomStar81 (Talk) 00:49, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
With all due respect, I don't believe that trying to effectively grant the position of coordinator emeritus to every former coordinator by fiat would be a good idea. Keep in mind that, regardless of who does or does not contribute to discussions on this page—that has always been a matter of loose convention, if anything at all—the formal positions of the project coordinators are elected ones, and it is not at all appropriate to simply grant everyone ever elected an indefinite term. In any case, the only thing you'd really achieve with such a move would be to devalue the title to the point of it having no meaning whatsoever. Kirill [talk] [prof] 01:02, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
LOL, I suppose your right :) Well, whatever works for the members works for me as well, so if option 3 is the best for us then I support it. All we need now is more input from the others to see if three really is our best bet. TomStar81 (Talk) 06:15, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Frankly, I remain unconvinced that we really need to change up how things work with regards to this. The reluctance to the elevation of Roger to emeritus was primarily because we didn't wait an election cycle in his case like we did with Kirill (admittedly though we did co-opt him). Former coordinators are generally held to high esteem within the project and I see no reason why we should not note that they are welcome to fully participate here except for voting on awards and closing ACRs. I do not see the need to institute a tenured/emeritus split, though the notion of a gold five-star insignia for the former coordinators would be a nice gesture, but I am torn on the idea because that would clash with the current insignia of the emeritus coordinators who received them after their elevation by election, whereas all the former coordinators would just receive the new insignia. -MBK004 07:04, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree - there seems to be nothing wrong with the current arrangements. It's worth nothing that the only things which separate a coordinator from other editors is that coordinators can close ACRs and vote on awards, so there's no need to give ex-coordinators honorifics. I have no problem whatsoever with non-coordinators posting on this board; I'd actually like to see more of it. Nick-D (talk) 09:52, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
I completely agree with MBK and Nick. The notion of automatically appointing a former coordinator to such a post just devalues the coordinator position, and there would be little point in holding any further elections for coords at all. In effect this would develop into a somewhat autocratic composition, as opposed to democratic. It should only be in a very rare case that one who has completely distinguished themselves in their involvement for the project—just as Roger and Kirill—that we decide to hold a vote for that person to be appointed to the emeritus role. Cheers, Abraham, B.S. (talk) 12:41, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
Based on the above then it appears that our best course of action would be to endorse option #3 and simply note that former coordinator may act with project dispensation as they see fit. I see insufficient evidence at the moment on whether former coordinators should be award a gold 5-star insignia, though as a practical matter that really is not important per say. Should we pursue this option then, or should we wait for more input on the matter? TomStar81 (Talk) 23:59, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
Traditionally the awarding of "emeritus" status confirms both a lifelong tie and level of trust between the institution and the individual, that is, by awarding such status the institution offers up trust the individual will continue to support the institution's ideals and aspirations even after the individual holds no daily responsibilities. For this reason, I hope the project reserves this compliment for a narrow few over the long haul. That said, neither Kirill and Roger are ordinary wikipedians, administrators, lead coordinators, or arbitrators. I believe both of these individuals have done such extraordinary credit to the project, their influence would be long felt even if and after they stopped participating. I see few other current coordinators so beloved or accomplished yet, all due respect. BusterD (talk) 02:16, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
That is why I am bring this up again; I perceive that we need some sort of something to provide a check here. What that something is I do not know, but I am in agreement that awarding emeritus to a coordinator should be something that occurs rarely. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:46, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Looking Back, Looking Forward

Finally, as the year draws to a close, I'd like some input on what we did well and what we could stand to do better. I know this has been a banner year for the outreach department with the newly introduced academy, and that congrats are do to our ship editors for the first Ships specific Featured Topic. Congrats are also do to Roger Davies for his election to the position of emeritus and to our new coordinators for this tranche. We established our project's A-class system to be valuable to the FA process, and we are closing in on our goals for quality content.

A few things for next year though that I would suggest we look into:

  • We really ought to put forth a greater effort to connect with the community. As Durova notes below, we could easily have had our project noted for its outreach programs. We should try to move our goals out and establish contacts with museums and other areas to see if they will host MilHist related collections.
  • We need to see about reinvigorating certain aspects of the proejct, in addition to the TFs above the contest depratment has lagged a little and the ACR process has drooped a little (although to be fair only a handful of people offer to review the material at A-class). We also need to see about getting together with projects that run things jointly with us and see if we can not establish better ties. As noted above, its seems our group does the lion's share of the work in the jointly-run TFs we operate, and thats really not fair to our members.
  • I have two ideas for the bugle: 1), create a classified section run by the logistics department to advertise those who are listed there and the skills they have to see if would help increase the use of the department. We could also leave links to other newsletters from TFs with joint projects here as a show of good faith. Secondly, I thought it might be fun every now and again to put like a crossword puzzle or word hunt or something of that nature into the Bugle so our members could enjoy some humor. If that proves to be a hit we may even want to try creating a comic strip ("humor in uniform" or something of that calibure).
  • I would like to see work start on portals for each of our task forces, if they do not have one already. As a proposal, we could turn the portal pages into the main task force page to see if that wouldn't generate interest in joining a TF.

Anyone else have any thoughts for the coming year?

Am still looking for a coauthor to seek publication offsite regarding a restoration from more than half a year ago. Preferably someone who's been published in reliable sources before regarding US Civil War era history. Would be quite a feather in the project's cap if that panned out. Durova375 22:25, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
Try talking to Scott Mingus. I think he meets your requirements :)  Roger Davies talk 22:57, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, will do. Durova375 01:15, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Also, as Durova points out, we could be benefiting from outreach programs. Lets see about getting some letters out to museums and military bases and such and see if we can not get some momentum going for a joint effort - milhist and X - so we can get ourselves offline and into the real world. It would be a boost not only for project moral but for the Wikipedia project as a whole if you could establish some offline credentials; that would go a long way to helping us become a primary source instead of a secondary source.

Nudge

This editorial could have been about MILHIST rather than anthropology. Other doors get easier to open now that WMF has had an exhibit in the physical space of a museum in a European capital with a head of state visit. The thing is, most of the volunteers who are knocking persistently are outside the MILHIST project. Currently there is no barrier to getting a partnered show underway between cultural institutions and MILHIST; one of the coordinators already has a copy of my slide show presentation for a proposal. Will send to other project coordinators upon request. Durova375 18:15, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Newsletter

Does anything else need to be added to the November Newsletter before we send it out? Its getting late and I would rather not wait too much longer before getting this out. TomStar81 (Talk) 01:10, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Can't think of anything missing or see any typos, so I'd say go for it. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 14:06, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
Looks good to me as well. Kirill [talk] [prof] 14:10, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, guys. The main hold up has been physical despatch. Cbrown1023 was on a wiki-break until 12 Dec and is only just back. If past performance is anything to go by, it'll go out in the next day or two.  Roger Davies talk 14:21, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

I've pinged Cbrown1023 as I haven't yet heard anything. Could someone gently follow this up while I'm away if it doesn't go out soonish. If Cbrown1023 is unable to handle this one, MZMcBride might be able to do it for us though he'll need very specific instructions as he's not done it before. Perhaps Woody could liaise, if necessary?  Roger Davies talk 07:41, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

I left a message concerning delivery within the next 24 hours; if it doesn't happen I see about locating someone else to handle this for the month. TomStar81 (Talk) 02:08, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

I'll be back

Hey everyone. I've been on wikibreak since October due to a lot of IB stuff that's popped up. By the end of the next ten days, I'll be completed three of my four major projects that I have to finish for IB. With any luck, I'll be back in action in the new year once I get back from Spain. Cam (Chat) 18:21, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Good luck with the remainder. Where in Spain? The south in winter, I hope.  Roger Davies talk 19:16, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
PS: I'm off to Venice on Thursday for a few days. Back next Monday.
Definitely the south. I'm centering around Malaga and Cordoba for two weeks (though the flying is a bitch. You couldn't take a less direct route to Spain from Western Canada unless you flew through Singapore or Cape Town!). Enjoy Venice. I was last there on World Cup Final day in 2006, so I didn't get to see nearly as much of the city as I wanted to. Cam (Chat) 22:30, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
When you visit the Mesquita in Cordoba, as you must because it's breathtaking, take a look at the irrigation system in the main courtyard (patio de los naranjos): it's full of orange trees, probably in fruit about now. The stone-lined canals and sluices were put in by the Moors over a thousand years ago, and it's still working. Cordoba must have been amazing in its heyday: it had public street lighting when London was a collection of wattle and daub huts.  Roger Davies talk 22:54, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
I shall do that. I'm actually staying in the hotel right beside the Mezquita complex. Cam (Chat) 04:23, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
Have fun. See you in a few days. TomStar81 (Talk) 06:49, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
I am beyond jealous. Have fun over there! :) —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 05:46, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
You rotten, lucky people! Lol. Hope you have a great time! Cheers, Abraham, B.S. (talk) 11:07, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Milihistorian of the year award

I've gone ahead and opened this up on the main page. Its a day late, but that should not conspire to leave us a dollar short :) TomStar81 (Talk) 00:50, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for sorting that, Tom; my internet connection has been down :)  Roger Davies talk 06:26, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
Any deadlines in mind for close of noms/voting? Last year's seemed to go quite quick, starting a few days into New Year and completing a week or so later. I'd have thought that with holidays and the fact that it's supposed to be the 2009 calendar year in review that voting might continue until say a week into NY (with maybe noms closing 31 December or is that getting too formal?)... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 01:41, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
I say have the nom run 30 days, ending the second week of January, then two weeks of voting, wit the award to be (tentatively) handed out 1 February. I want to make sure that people have the chance to nominate and vote, and I am aware that this is occurring around the holiday season when many of us make plans to leave. How do that sound? TomStar81 (Talk) 02:28, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
Sounds like a good schedule, Ian. I doubt if we'll get the interest to sustain it for much longer and just having it as a bit of fun over the holiday period seems like a good call.  Roger Davies talk 06:26, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
I third Ian's suggestion. Nick-D (talk) 07:28, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
Very well, then. Ian's timetable is hereby adopted :) TomStar81 (Talk) 08:37, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Outstanding award

Unless I've missed it on his talkpage, there seems to be an A-Class award waiting to be handed out to MisterBee. Apologies for not doing this myself, but this is a flying visit and I don't have the time. I'll sort it later if no-one else has done so though :) EyeSerenetalk 11:23, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Done - tks for picking it up. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 14:37, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
Thanks everyone. Shouldn't the project page be updated too? MisterBee1966 (talk) 19:35, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
Heh, you should've been a Coordinator... ;-) Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 20:45, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
You never know, I may try some day MisterBee1966 (talk) 21:33, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
...Or you may be co-opted for service. Don't discount that possibility either :) TomStar81 (Talk) 23:53, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
Thanks Ian (and MisterBee!) Apologies for passing the parcel, but I was running late for a class :P EyeSerenetalk 09:31, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Our academy and our welcome template

Before the end of the year I would like to see our project welcome template updated with a link to the academy. I am therefore interested in knowing if what we have at this point is sufficient enough to warrant a link, and if not, what we can do about it. I am also looking for a few good coordinators to help me spit and polish the content, merging, splitting out, and generally fixing it where needed. I'll throw in the editors barnstar for those who help, but I really want this up by January at the latest. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:42, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

It needs a great deal of work, I'm afraid, and this kind of undertaking really needs someone to focus closely on it and jolly everyone along. I suppose the question is whether you - or someone else - have the time over the next two or three months to coordinate it and ensure it all gets worked up to an acceptable standard, with any gaps filled.  Roger Davies talk 05:46, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
Crud. I guess that means me then, since I seem to be the one pushing this the hardest. I'll make the time to help get everything up to standard, although given my poor spelling history I am probably going to need at least one other person to help out with sp&g work. TomStar81 (Talk) 06:22, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
This is something I've been wanting very much to spend more time on too; I've just cleared my copyedit backlog and was intending to prioritise the Academy for the rest of this coordination term. I agree that it need lots of work :) In my spare time I've been looking at the current content and putting together some thoughts about organisation (including developing further the navigation system I was discussing with Kirill on the Academy talk page). As noted, it will mean a fair amount of article trimming/consolidating/copyediting. Over the next few days I hope to be posting a to-do list on the Academy talk-page, but I can drop this if you've got other ideas Tom. EyeSerenetalk 09:28, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm eager to hear what you have in mind, so please do share when you get a moment. I'm making this a high priority item because I feel that it would go a long way toward welcoming new members. My chief complaint at the moment is that we still have so much to do, and since I'm a poor spelling and grammar person I feel uneasy about tackling this on my own. My only plan so far has been to try and standardize the format for the intro so we can get some uniformity there. TomStar81 (Talk) 10:04, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
I agree, and ideally we can make it a showcase for the project. I'm aware of the arguments about the effort invested versus its actual usage, but as volunteers we can choose how we spend our time :) I also hope that, because much of the content is not milhist-exclusive, it will become more generally useful. Perhaps we could eventually look at touting it round our partner projects?
Re standardising the intro (and course structure), I've been browsing around Wikiversity - there are some ideas there we might want to steal :) EyeSerenetalk 10:30, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
That was my thought as well: If this works as well as I hope it will then perhaps we can offer this as another triumph of the Military history Project to adopted for use here. And its always fun to steal, just make sure you don;t get caught ;) TomStar81 (Talk) 03:34, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
OK, I've posted some structural suggestions on the Academy talkpage, for anyone that's interested. EyeSerenetalk 12:41, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

ACR acceptance from other projects

Should we cross-list and accept the ACR results from the Aviation project? We already do for the WP:SHIPS project and that was debated a while back when two of three articles for an ACM were ships reviews that were cross-listed. Reason I ask is that Aviation has recently began accepting our reviews and negating the need to have a separate review for their project. Reason I ask is that the aviation project reviews have a few current which are also under our scope, but only one is not already an A from us or currently our review cross-listed. The article and review in question is: CFM International CFM56 and Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation/Assessment/CFM International CFM56. Since I'm about to go to bed and won't be around for most of the day tomorrow, my view is that we should accept this just like we do on the SHIPS reviews. -MBK004 04:54, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Since recently suggesting cross-listing in discussion at the Aviation talk page, I've already transcluded the MilHist ACR for Henry Wrigley on the Aviation ACR page, with expectations of a MilHist pass leading to one at Aviation as well, so naturally I support this. MilHist/Ships is the precedent. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 05:11, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
I just started a MiG-3 ACR on Aviation since I don't think we ever got a solid answer on cross-listing, although I'll be damned if I can find the discussion. But I think that we should accept their ACRs if they accept ours. Only minor concerns relate to differences in MOS, etc, but those can be worked around, I think. Main thing is to cross-list ACRs so that they're visible to both projects. But, as somebody who plays in all three sandboxes, I have a vested interest in making things like this easier for me ;-) --Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 07:13, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
Provided there keeping roughly similar standards for ACRs at the aviation project there should be no problem accepting them here; most of us make use of the acr system as a test drive FAC to help spot and address things that will be an issue over there. As for the crosslisting: I'm all for that. As noted above, if we are going to invest in a jointly run task force then we ought to make sure that its working both ways, and that our guys are not the only ones doing the lions share of the work. Cross listing is a good place to start since it invites all members here to particiapte there. TomStar81 (Talk) 08:30, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
Pretty much agree with Tom's sentiments. So long as the stardards and requirements are basically the same, then I have no issues with this. Cheers, Abraham, B.S. (talk) 11:05, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Alright, now we need a definite ruling for this, the review in question: Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation/Assessment/CFM International CFM56 has been closed as successful by the aviation project, but it was not cross-listed with us for the duration of its review, unlike the new review for Petlyakov Pe-8 opened by Sturmvogel which has been properly cross-listed from the beginning. -MBK004 23:07, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Boy, that's a pretty comprehensive review. I say that we should accept their A-class review system for our project's rating, though I also think that they ought to be cross-posted at WP:MHR#A-CLASS. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 00:25, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Yes, I think that's a good way forward. For this review, we'll need to create the cross-listing redirects anyways, incidentally; {{WPMILHIST}} will complain about missing review pages otherwise. Kirill [talk] [prof] 01:25, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Aw, the poor template might complain. Maybe it would want some cheese with the whine? :) Redirect is done. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 01:56, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Based on this, should I upgrade the assessment to A for MILHIST, list the article in the showcase and list the article as an eligible promotion for an ACM? -MBK004 02:01, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Yes, that would be appropriate. Nick-D (talk) 07:24, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
I'm comfortable with this now (upgrading to A now, I'll go do those things), we have had enough coordinators opine for me to consider that we have sufficient consensus for this. -MBK004 08:00, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Resolved that we shall accept Aviation A-class standards within the Military history Project. TomStar81 (Talk) 08:31, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Temporary leave of absence

I headed out of town for three days, effective today, for my younger brother's graduation in San Antonio (little bugger finished collage in 3.5 years, go figure) and although I am taking my laptop I am insure if I'll be getting a net signal anywhere in San An while gone. I'll be back on Monday at the latest, so keep things civil until I return. TomStar81 (Talk) 17:07, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Make sure you congratulate your brother from behalf of your fellow coordinators! --Eurocopter (talk) 17:20, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

MILHIST GANs

There are currently thirty-seven MILHIST articles awaiting a Good Article review here. I've passed four, have four more waiting for changes to be made, and have two more ready to go, but I'd appreciate some help in driving the numbers down. There are some articles (aircraft, Spanish battles, German nobility) that I'm not too hot on and so can't really review fairly. An announcement by Coordinators on the project's talkpage, maybe with barnstars as an award, might be an idea. I think an excelent target would be to half the current backlog, aiming at those from October (!) and November. Skinny87 (talk) 18:07, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree with offering an award to reduce the backlogs at the moment, though I don't think we should just limit it to Good article nominees as, due to this being the holiday period, reviews are done on all fronts at the moment. I think last year I personally offered a barnstar to anyone who reviewed a certain amount of articles by a certain date, but only one editor came to collect it ... Cheers, Abraham, B.S. (talk) 23:28, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
Would it be worthwhile to consider creating a system similar to the ACR reward system we have to help motivate people to assist with the reviews? TomStar81 (Talk) 10:36, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
I think that would be more trouble than it is worth, as it would be extremely difficult to track and would be somewhat bias as, I assume, we would be limiting it to Milhist GANs while there are significant numbers of other GANs with substantial backlogs themselves. Also, there is a Good article reviewer award already in existance, and there isn't always such a backlog of Milhist articles. Cheers, Abraham, B.S. (talk) 10:52, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
I can think of two minimalist ways to integrate GA reviews into our reward system: one is to credit GA reviews (and, for completeness, FA reviews) in our Content Review Award system along with PRs and ACRs; the second is to treat the Monthly Contest similarly to the current WWI contest where you score a few points for reviewing any in-scope article at all levels, i.e. PR, GAN, ACR, FAC. FWIW, the latter idea would also go some way towards minimising the assessment and scoring differences between the many contests that are available for us to enter. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 11:00, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
Your first suggestion has been raised before, Ian, but I think that is too difficult to track. It is relatively easy to track the PR and ACR reviews as we archive them ourselves, but the GA and FA reviews are independant of us and while it would not be as bad to wade through the FA archives, it would be extremely difficult to keep tags of all of the GA reviews done, etc. However, I completely agree withyour second suggestion, and would like to see that integrated into the Contest. Cheers, Abraham, B.S. (talk) 11:13, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
Heh, it was probably me who proposed the first one before, and you who raised the concern... ;-) However, tracking the GA and FA reviews for the first suggestion isn't any tougher than tracking them for the second suggestion, if the same method of self-tracking on a scoreboard was to be followed, as it is for the contests. I agree though that it may complicate the Content Review scoring system since we don't really need to self-score it at the moment due to the PR/ACR archiving system. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 11:20, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
(od) We do track deletions on a separate page dedicated to the task, perhaps we could cross list GAC noms in a separate area of the assessment department for ease of tracking those who actually do the reviewing. Its just a thought, but it may be one worth revisiting this idea if something changes for the GAC process. TomStar81 (Talk) 22:29, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Technical glitch

Can someone tell me why the little image piece is not displaying for the USAF portal when the portal notice is added to the bottom of an article? As an example, see Captain (United States); all that appears is a redlinked .svg image, and the deletion logs show no deletion here or on the commons. This really ought to be fixed.

This is because the image name was misspelled. I've fixed the example you've given. If you see this again, fix the image link to: Seal of the US Air Force.svg BusterD (talk) 11:20, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
Ah. Thanks for that, I appreciate it. TomStar81 (Talk) 22:24, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Numbers

I think that for the December Newsletter we should crunch some numbers to see how much the project grew in terms of articles and overall praise. I think that it would be a nice way to end to end the current year to help our members focus on the upcoming year.

Also, with the arbcom election results officially announced, should we post something in the December newsletter to the extent of 'congrats to our project members who were elected', or should we leave that out? TomStar81 (Talk) 05:40, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Looks like we did congratulate Roger on his ArbCom appointment last December. A quick and dirty comparison of yearend 2008 statistics on vetted content versus YTD 2009:
Content 2007 2008 2009*
FA 205 318 416
FL 9 31 61
FT 1 4 9
FP 65 121 177
FS 1 6 9
FPo 7 9 10
A-class 68 118 206
All tagged 60,503 81,256 96,642
*2009 numbers not final.
I can think of a few more metrics I'd like to look at, but won't have the time until after Christmas. Maralia (talk) 06:12, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
It might be interesting to compare the growth in 2009 against 2008, to see if we're improving in that. – Joe N 15:06, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
2007 figures added, as well as figures for total articles tagged for the project by year. Maralia (talk) 16:25, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, Maralia. The numbers are impressive, especially the number of articles tagged: we have almost hit 100,000! That's going to be a moment for the project history, though I am not quite sure when we will hit that mark. If the data is right it should be next year. We should be congratulated for such exemplary stats, though we do need to work on the FPs and the Fpo's. TomStar81 (Talk) 20:24, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

I have gone ahead and mentioned the results of the Arbitration Committee elections in-line with what we did last year, although I deliberately left out my unsuccessful candidacy. I have also gone ahead and put in the formatting for an editorial for Maralia to be write the year-end wrap-up, hint hint. -MBK004 08:36, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Gone again, I'm afraid

I just learned today that my dad wants me and my brother to go back to Pennsylvania with him for new years to see if he can woo my mother into coming back to Texas with us. I'm unhappy with the idea, but for his sake I'm going to comply with his request. From what I gather, we will be gone from about December 28 to about January 4. I know that my grandmother's trailer has internet service (albeit dialup), but if my mother refuse to let us stay in the trailer I am unsure where we may get a net signal. In addition, with all the wicked weather forecast to be occurring around the time we will back east I do not even know if the utilities will be up and working for net service.

To be fair, I had not anticipated so many trips at the end of the year. I know I was voted lead coordinator, but frankly I feel like I have been doing a far less satisfactory job this term then I have in my previous terms. I'm sorry for any and all inconvenience this has caused, and I pledge to do better when I get back in January. I promise that I will get my act back together for 2010, come hell or high water. TomStar81 (Talk) 10:47, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm off then; I expect to be back on or around New Years Eve (3 January at latest). With a little luck I may be able to siphon a net signal either at grandma's or at the hotel; if so, I will try to check in. TomStar81 (Talk) 12:21, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
You're likely back by now. Hope you had more luck with affordable internet rates than I did. 7€ for 1 hour of internet in Córdoba! Honestly! Cam (Chat) 02:38, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
You didn't take up the offer did you? Easier to go without or get a free ride by going to a community or university library YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 03:01, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Actually, in my case, I was quite lucky: Pittsburgh International Airport was offering free wi-fi hook-ups until the 15th, and the hotel had an internet signal that my laptop was able to hone in on, although the quality of the hotel signal was poor. I wish this trip had gone better, my mother (whom we went to see) pretty much told us she's going through with the divorce regardless of what changes we make. I had hoped - for my dad sake - that she would reconsider, but that was optimistic. TomStar81 (Talk) 07:00, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
That's a bummer; I'm sorry to hear that :( Cam (Chat) 01:26, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
Its alright; I've weathered hard times before and I am perfectly capable of riding this one out as well. I would have preferred that she not leave, but I think that she's losing her mind - and I mean that literally, not figuratively. The next punch is going to come later this year when the rest of my family leaves and I will be left alone in the city. Thats I believe is going to suck far worse. TomStar81 (Talk) 20:48, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject Death and the Military memorials and cemeteries task force

A message popped up over at the Military memorials and cemeteries TF concerning the newly formed WikiProject Death, which apparently has begun a tag and assess for their articles. Inferring from the message there does seem to be an overlap between there project and our project on the matter. I think that extending an offer to the death project to see if there is any interest in turning the memorials and cemeteries TF into a jointly run TF with them may have merit, but before doing that I wanted some input here. What do you guys think? Could we benefit from a jointly run TF with WP:DEATH, or would it be best to take a wait and see approach right now? TomStar81 (Talk) 06:06, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Certainly seems like a good match, but not sure if it's worth pursuing a joint TF yet—that project is only two months old, and has only 5 participants. Maralia (talk) 06:16, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
Yes, let's wait on this; I have significant doubts that the project will be able to sustain itself, given that the topic area is not a very natural one for editors to identify with. Kirill [talk] [prof] 03:34, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

ACRs for closure

  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Bombardment of Papeete
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Battle of Maryang San
    • Normally I would close these myself, but I would appreciate a second opinion on both. -MBK004 08:00, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
      • Unless I'm missing something, they both look like passes to me. Did you have specific concerns?  Roger Davies talk 08:10, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
        • While both have 3+ supports, there are several reviewers who have not supported yet, which is a slight concern. -MBK004 08:16, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
          • Sure, but against that the reviewers' comments don't come with conditions attached ("if you don't fix these, I'll oppose") and the editors seem to have made good faith attempts to accommodate the comments. Perhaps leave open for another 48 hours to see what bubbles up?  Roger Davies talk 08:40, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
            • I was thinking 12-24 since Eurocopter may jump on closing one or both later today. That being said, I am going to go back through each with a fine-tooth comb and may end up closing them shortly. -MBK004 08:45, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

On further inspection there are still some unresolved prose issues with Papeete from Nick's comments so per the closing directions since that is a criteria-based reason I will leave that review open. On second review, Maryang San is sufficiently ready to be closed which I will take care of post haste. -MBK004 09:55, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

My comments are now addressed, so I've added a support vote. I think that the nomination is now ready to be closed. Nick-D (talk) 11:13, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks Nick, I'll go ahead and close this now. The whole discussion can either be manually archived or removed in 24 hours from this timestamp. -MBK004 11:33, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
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