Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Academy/How to use the Milhist template

This essay first appeared in the May 2009 issue of The Bugle, authored by EyeSerene^talk. It has since been adapted for use as part of the Milhist Academy.

Many editors' first inkling of Milhist's existence is when they spot our project banner on an article talk page. The banner can be easily added to appropriate articles by any editor, by adding {{WPMILHIST}} to the talk page on a new line, and saving the page with an appropriate edit summary. This short form of the template will add the article to our project, and also flag the article as needing assessment and assignment to a task force by automatically adding it to the unassessed articles and articles with no associated task force categories.

As with many templates in use on Wikipedia, additional parameters can be specified. Possibly the most useful to include is the class parameter, because this will help other editors who come along later to assess the article. To add the class parameter, edit the template markup to look like {{WPMILHIST|class=}} and if you wish, have a read through the assessment guidance on the project's quality scale and assign an appropriate rating from Stub- to B-Class yourself. (In this regard, it is important to note that by custom, if you are the article's main contributor, you would only assign assessment ratings up to and including C class yourself. For B-class, an independent assessment should be sought by posting at WP:MHA).

A banner template with, for example, a Stub-Class article rating will look like {{WPMILHIST|class=stub}}. Because Start-Class, C-Class and B-Class articles are assessed against a checklist there are some additional parameters, so when adding the project banner to an article talk-page, even if you do not intend to assess the article yourself it can be a real help to subsequent editors to include these too. This version of the template can be entered as {{WPMILHIST|class=|B1=|B2=|B3=|B4=|B5=}}. For detailed guidance on exactly what the five B-Class criteria are, see the B-class checklist. For an article to be assessed as B-class it would need to meet all of these criteria; for Start-Class and C-Class, various aspects of the checklist can be missing from the article.

Finally, when adding the Milhist banner it is useful to assign the article to one (or more) of our task forces. This will help to bring it to the attention of those editors most likely to be interested in, and knowledgeable about the subject. As with assessment, task force assignment is accomplished by adding a parameter to the template—in this case, simply the name of the task force followed by =yes (or =y). For example, to assign a Start-Class article to the Second World War and Canadian task forces, the template should read {{WPMILHIST|class=start|B1=|B2=|B3=|B4=|B5=|WWII=yes|Canadian=yes}}.

For a full list of all the banner template parameters and more detailed usage instructions, see Template:WPMILHIST; if you are unsure as to whether or not an article belongs with Milhist or what task force(s) might be appropriate, or if you have any other questions, you are welcome to ask at our main project talk page. Happy templating!