Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Archive 53

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WPMILHIST Template

I would presume that we include submarines in the project, but it seems that a number of our sub articles are missing the {{WPMILHIST}} template and all pertinant add-ons. I went ahead and added the template on all US Ohio, Los Angeles, Seawolf, and Virginia -class sub articles that didn't already have the temple, so they have been taken care of. I could handle the remainder of the sub articles myself, but that would be a long and tedious task; is there a chance we could get some more members to help, or maybe get a bot to do it? TomStar81 (Talk) 04:16, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Our member bot-ops aren't particularly active at the moment, unfortunately; I've made some requests for outside bot help (we actually have a huge tagging backlog; see WP:MHAUTO), but no luck so far on actually getting anything to happen.

If anyone has seen any tagging bots running recently, it'd be really helpful to know which ones are actually active right now. :-) Kirill Lokshin 04:21, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I just tagged about 120 submarine article and will try to continue to work on the rest, However that really didn't put a dent in it.Cheers — WilsBadKarma ^(Talk) 04:39, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. As they say, "Every little bit counts." TomStar81 (Talk) 22:18, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Vote to solve deadlock

The discussion on who were the major allied powers of WWII has maintained its deadlock. However, the argumentation is rather France focused (assessing whether or not it was a major ally) instead of defining what were major participants in the conflict (Italy is as questionable as France). Like most deadlocks people have their opinions and are immune against arguments. To solve this issue, please read the discussion and express your opinion in the vote. Wandalstouring 15:46, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Lafayette, me voici! Albrecht 04:44, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

As mentioned above, a vote has been called, though I have initiated a second one after some irregularities in the first. Oberiko 17:56, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Imense! I voted on the new poll and will start from there.--Dryzen 20:24, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipe-tan

Commodore Wikipe-tan reporting for duty.

Très amusant, n'est ce pas? ;-) Kirill Lokshin 19:36, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Heh. I've always wondered why this project wasn't personified by a Japanese schoolgirl... ; ) Carom 19:59, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Be afraid, be very afraid... ;-) Kirill Lokshin 20:18, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Wow. Now I know you have too much time on your hands...Carom 20:22, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

She is one of the very few females in our group, treat her with respect. Wandalstouring 22:10, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

SWEET! When did this appear, and who made it? TomStar81 (Talk) 23:22, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Today, and the artist is the one and only User:Kasuga --Valentinian ^{T / C} 00:08, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Good night nurse, what is that? --ScreaminEagle 00:31, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

That is Wikipe-tan who is an Moe anthropomorphism, or a personification and in this case of us. I think we are dead fit. Excuse me thats very confusing, i think i'll have a cup of tea and go back to British military history. Hypnosadist 00:47, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I love this to pieces! Hypnosadist 00:47, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I've compiled the stuff at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Outreach#Wikipe-tan, incidentally. Kirill Lokshin 01:59, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I wonder if this qualifies as pin-up girl artwork? TomStar81 (Talk) 04:51, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Does that star on her shoulder make her Brigadier General Wikipe-tan

No, because it is a naval uniform. This would make her the quivalent of a Commodore in most of the world's Navy's, or a Rear Admiral (Lower Half) in the United States Navy. TomStar81 (Talk) 09:56, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually, those things on her shoulder flaps are puzzle pieces. ;-) --129.241.126.121 09:57, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Does she qualify as a member of the Japanese task force? LordAmeth 10:38, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I vote for her as Virtual Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Maritime Warfare Task Force!! Buckshot06 11:00, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Second. TomStar81 (Talk) 22:19, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Lol, amusing to say the least. Qualifies for a lot of things as a symbol. With Buckshot06 and LordAmeth's inquiries, I can simply imagine her as the template for slew of task forced themed incarnations. Good art work--Dryzen 20:33, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Beware of number of troops

I'm just puffing some steam out here... People, be very careful when you add number of troops participating in a certain battle or a war, as it has turned out that many sources use different methods for counting troop strengths, generally minimizing own troop strength and maximizing enemy's. A common method is using divisional strength for one and all military strength to another. At WWII timeframe this gives a difference of factor 2.

A similar, although not as common, feature is to use word "casualty" in relaxed way. Sometimes it means only KIA, but sometimes in consists all KIA, WIA and MIA together. --Whiskey 00:07, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree, and the same applies for casualty figures which can sometimes be rather odd. It's probably not a bad idea to cite this kind of information. --Nick Dowling 07:16, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Yep; WP:MILHIST#CITE includes numerical data as one of the things that needs to be cited. Kirill Lokshin 13:20, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Numbers are usually even less reliable for ancient and medieval warfare. I'd suggest people read Delbrück (for an intro to issues and mothods, but not to regard his figures as final either) and possibly Engels (Donald) or Roth on logistics. Jacob Haller 17:58, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Troop figures are the main reason why I keep away from military history and why I hated working on Siege of Vienna (if you read the notes there you will sense an editor going quietly mad). qp10qp 18:13, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Selected articles on portals

I don't quite recall who asked for this, but I've added functionality to {{WPMILHIST}} to indicate that a tagged article is selected for use on one or more portals; this allows the banner to absorb templates like {{USN Portal Selected}}.

The banner currently allows up to five portal selections to be indicated via a set of numbered parameters:

{{WPMILHIST
...
|portal1-name=Italian Wars
|portal1-link=Selected event/3
...
}}

(The link parameter may be left blank if there's no useful subpage to link to.)

Field testing, feedback, and (eventually) assistance with deprecating the existing templates would be appreciated. Kirill Lokshin 00:41, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Nice, but a couple of queries:

• • Can we change the color of the icon that shows up in the banner? Right now, it's showing up directly underneath the B-class checklist, and as they're both grey, it's a little difficult to see.
  • It doesn't seem to be showing up on Talk:Battle of the Somme - could this be something to do with the wikiproject banner template, or did I just input the code wrong?

Otherwise, looks good. Carom 02:07, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Re: color: sure, the backgrounds of the cells can be recolored; the grey is just something I went with in the absence of other ideas. Is there some particular color you'd like? We could potentially have different background colors for assessment/review, portal, collaboration, and attention-needed slots, to make them easier to distinguish.

Re: Somme: yep, there was a typo in one of the field names.

Kirill Lokshin 02:38, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I was pretty sure I must have made a mistake, but I'm going cross-eyed (staring at a coumputer screen all day can do that to you, apparently). As far as the color is concerned, blue, perhaps? I'm not picky, personally - just something to distinguish each component within that part of the banner. Carom 02:42, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Ok, coded the colors as follows:

Color	Field type
	Attention needed
	Assessment & review
	Portals
	Collaboration

Does that work? Kirill Lokshin 03:16, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Most excellent. Carom 03:45, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

That looks good. I hope it help clear up space on the battleship pages, since they are somewhat cluttered with banner templates. (PS: I was the one who inquired about it :) TomStar81 (Talk) 02:19, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Everything looks good. Since my template seems to be the example used for what needs to be changed I feel I should mention that I have removed the {{USN Portal Selected}} template from all articles that are featured on the US Navy Portal and switched everything over to to this.Cheers — WilsBadKarma ^(Talk) 06:33, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Heads Up

An article members might want to patrol for a while - Global Guardian. Someone keeps slapping a merge template onto it, wanting to merge it into an article about military exercises on 9/11/2001. However, as an annual major exercise, it deserves its own article. A 9/11 mention in the artcle - no problem. A mention in the propsed merge artcle about Global Guardian, no problem. But I think a seperate article needs to be maintained on the exercise itself.--Nobunaga24 05:25, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Need map for Hammurabi's conquests

If anyone has a suggestion for where to find a map of Babylonian conquests under Hammurabi, I'd very much appreciate a note on my talk page. This is, by the way, an excellent wikiproject. You all are doing great work. Mocko13 22:46, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Not sure that there's any good source for something like this; given the scarcity of information, most maps of the period tend to look something like blobs ("Sargon's Empire was somewhere around here..."). Van De Mieroop's History of the Ancient Near East has a map of the general situation early in the second millenium (but it's blob-like, and doesn't indicate anything specific to Hammurabi). Kirill Lokshin 03:43, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

(German)Putzger Historischer Weltatlas page 4 (ISBN 3-464-00176-8) has a map of Hammurabi's empire at it's biggest extent. You can find out the conquest if you know the size of the territory he started with ;) For more information on maps check our resources. Wandalstouring 09:09, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Compare Mesopotamia c. 1800 BC to Babylon c. 1750 BC to see the consolidation of Babylonia under Hammurabi. He added the territory of the Isin, Eshnunna, Larsa, and souther Amorite nations. Also note the ancient coastline was far further upriver; it has silted up dramatically in the past 4,000–5,000 years. Ur used to be far closer to the Persian Gulf. While these maps are basic starting points, you will likely find more information in a thorough examination of sources. --Petercorless 11:00, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Another map, showing Babylonian control going as far north as Harran and Nineveh. Your mileage may vary. As I said, read through the sources and compare. --Petercorless 11:16, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

The last one corresponds to the Putzger map I mentioned earlier. Wandalstouring 15:32, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Wow. Thanks for all the help. Will look into the suggestions. - Mocko13 12:30, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Nagorno-Karabakh War reaches FA

Congrats to those who helped create the article, and my thanks to those who helped review it. --Petercorless 06:35, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Move CF Commands

Unless strenuously anyone here objects, I'm requesting the following moves:

• Canadian Forces Land Force Command → Land Force Command (Canada)
• Canadian Forces Maritime Command → Maritime Command (Canada)
• Canadian Forces Air Command → Air Command (Canada)

In each case, the latter name redirects to the former. The former are not the official names of the commands; I have no idea why the "Canadian Forces" prefix was added (for example, Air Mobility Command is not at United States Air Force Air Mobility Command). Outside of Wikipedia or its mirror sites (or sites that seem to have gotten their info from same), I can't find reference to these full monikers -- and definitely not on the DND sites.

Just letting y'all know, as a courtesy. Cheers. --SigPig |^{SEND - OVER} 15:52, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Some (all?) of them might need a "(Canada)" stuck onto the end; I suspect that several countries have an "Air Command". Kirill Lokshin 16:28, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Is a disambig needed yet, given that there are no other articles under any of these titles? I tho't disambig generally was not needed until there was actually a second item to confuse. --SigPig |^{SEND - OVER} 17:46, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, it's normal to disambiguate in cases where another article is expected to be created, but hasn't been yet; and WP:MILHIST#UNITNAME recommends preemptive disambiguation for names that are likely to be used by multiple countries (due to militaries being quite uncreative with naming, mostly). That's really more oriented towards simple numerical designations (e.g. "12th Infantry Division"), but I think it applies equally to simple type designations.

On a more practical level, Singapore had a "Maritime Command", Fiji and Estonia? have a "Land Force Command"; "Air Command" is widespread as a unit designation (e.g. "12th Air Command"), but I haven't found any non-Canadian examples of the term appearing alone. Kirill Lokshin 17:54, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict):::Disregard my last. There appears to be an LFC in NZ and Fiji, a MARCOM in Oz (as well as being the former name of the Rep. Singapore Navy and a Danish Navy command in Greenland), and Air Command is also in Oz. I have amended my proposal above. --SigPig |^{SEND - OVER} 18:01, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I was ceding the point as you made your edit. Ironic tho' that Air Command which seems more ubiquitous, may actually be unique in Canada's case; Air Command in Aus is RAAF Air Command. I'm willing to disambig the above with (Canada). Semper gumby. --SigPig |^{SEND - OVER} 18:04, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Heh. That seems fine, then; I don't see any other reason not to move the articles. Kirill Lokshin 18:13, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Bugrit, millennium hand and shrimp. --SigPig |^{SEND - OVER} 23:45, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Campaign categories and so forth

Okay, trying to boil down the discussion about categorizing battles/campaigns/wars (above) into something practical, I've put together three more-or-less concrete proposals:

1. Change the top-level structure of the military operations categories for each country to be:

• Military operations involving Foo
  • Wars involving Foo
  • Military campaigns involving Foo
  • Battles involving Foo
  • Non-combat military operations involving Foo
  • Canceled military operations involving Foo

2. Add a two-branch category tree for military campaigns, copying the country & war branches from the category tree for battles:

• Category:Military campaigns
  • Category:Military campaigns by country
    • Military campaigns of Foo
  • Category:Military campaigns by war
    • Campaigns of the Foo War

3. Adopt the following recommendation on classifying conflicts:

Definitions:

• A war is a conflict bounded by periods (however brief) during which the combatants are formally at peace with one another; it generally consists of multiple distinct component operations such as battles or campaigns.
• A campaign is a coherent series of smaller operations with a defined overall goal; this goal may, however, change over the course of the campaign.
• A battle is a single, distinct military engagement generally limited to a narrow geographic scope and typically characterized by the opposing forces encountering one another, engaging in some form of combat, and then separating.

Names:

• In general, articles should be classified according to what the topic actually is, regardless of the name used. For example, a series of engagements generally regarded by historians as a campaign should be categorized as one even if it's referred to as the "Battle of X".

Multiple categorization:

• Some operations and conflicts may need to be categorized into more than one of the above levels; however, this should generally be done only when it substantially adds to a reader's understanding of the events. The possible double-categorizations are outlined below:
  • War and campaign: This can occur when a "sub-war" is fought as part of a larger war (for example, the French and Indian War, as part of the Seven Years' War). A subsidiary conflict is typically a "sub-war" when it includes some participants not involved in the larger conflict; the article can then be categorized as a war involving those participants, but as a campaign involving the participants of the larger conflict.
  • Campaign and battle: This can occur in modern warfare, where a long-term engagement has been treated by historians as either a single battle or a sequence of separate battles (for example, the Battle of Kursk).
  • War and battle: This should generally be avoided, except in the few cases where a war consisted of a single large battle and only a single article covers the conflict.
• No event that can be classified as all three has been found.

Thoughts? Kirill Lokshin 02:57, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Anyone? ;-) Kirill Lokshin 18:04, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Looks good. It seems to resolve the problems rather nicely (although I sometimes wonder if we make these problems more complex than they really are). Carom 06:15, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Approve - Hey this sounds familiar! --Petercorless 01:41, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Question: Peacekeeping operations involving Foo -- should these get a separate article, or would you put them in Non-combat operations? --Petercorless 01:47, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I'd put them in Non-combat by country for the most part (aside from the few "peacekeeping" ops that were actual battles and such). Given that there aren't very many of them, I don't think an entire separate branch would be very useful; a single Category:Peacekeeping operations (under Category:Military operations by type) that would collect the ops regardless of country may be a good idea, though. Kirill Lokshin 02:32, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Done. --Petercorless 22:39, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Anyone else? If nobody has any objections, we can probably implement this in a few days or so. Kirill Lokshin 16:27, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

• Looks good. Would Category:Military expeditions of the United States fit in at level 1, ie Category:Military operations involving the United States? Just trying to make sure we have a hole for every peg. — MrDolomite • Talk 17:19, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

• Yeah, that seems like a reasonable place to put it (although it might be moved down to Category:Military campaigns involving the United States, if all of the articles themselves would qualify as campaigns). Kirill Lokshin 17:22, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I've added the guidelines to the project page and created an initial set of categories. There's one practical task that needs to be done: going through the sub-categories of Category:Battles by country and un-nesting any that are nested under a "Wars involving X" category up to the next level; any help with this would be appreciated!

Aside from that, I think we can basically let this new category tree grow on an as-needed basis. Kirill Lokshin 03:02, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Template:Military needs some work

...but I'm not brave enough to risk messing up a lot of articles by doing it! The current Template:Military is too inflexible for general use as it has been hardcoded to only include males (whereas most western militaries allow women to serve in most roles) and the hard coding of the military ages is also too inflexible as these dates are neither consistent with the categories used in the CIA World Book or national military policies which now limit the recruitment of people aged under 18. Does someone who knows about templates want to remove this hard coding? --Nick Dowling 07:20, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Bleh, that thing needs to be completely redesigned to use modern infobox standards. I can whip up a replacement fairly quickly, but can some people take a look at the parameters for the current one and check what changes are needed? From what I can see:

• country - keep
• color - drop this; we've already figured out that funny colors don't mean anything to the average reader
• image - keep
• caption - keep
• age - maybe split this into start and end ages? or allow for separate male & female ages?
• availability - split to male & female?
• service - split to male & female?
• reaching age - split to male & female?
• active - keep?
• amount - keep
• percent GDP - keep

Kirill Lokshin 07:29, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Okay, as a rough draft: {{Infobox National Military}}. Comments would be appreciated! Kirill Lokshin 21:36, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

That looks pretty good to me. However, am I right in thinking that the ages for manpower availability are still hard-coded in? I think that these shouldn't be automatically populated as they differ from country to country (for instance, the Australian Defence Force doesn't recruit 15 year olds and the CIA World Factbook figures for Australia's military manpower cover 16 and 18 year olds) --Nick Dowling 23:19, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

It would be trivial to allow those to be overridden; but what would a good default be? Kirill Lokshin 23:41, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

I've added a manpower_age= parameter that can be used to indicate a different age range for the data; does that work? Kirill Lokshin 00:13, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm trialing that on Australian Defence Force and it looks OK. --Nick Dowling 00:33, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Manpower: It is possible to recruit 16 year olds in conflicts (see WWII, the Wehrmacht originally didn't recruit 16 year old, but when men became rare, the situation desperate and teens were still available in large numbers, they got a gun and were sent frontwards), so they are part of the potential manpower, whether or not they are sent into combat is another question. Next issue would be including women, at least for countries like Israel, Lybia, Russia and USA. Wandalstouring 00:42, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Women can be included now, obviously; that was one of the main points. As for the broader manpower issue, I suspect it'll be tied to whatever statistics are actually available; the people compiling them are going to make certain assumptions about the ages involved, and we don't have any real way of changing them. Kirill Lokshin 00:49, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Why stop there? If I remember correctly, Paraguay conscripted 10 year olds during the later stages of the War of the Triple Alliance and I think that the Nazis conscripted kids much younger than 16 as well in 1945. The point I'm trying to make is that it should be possible to tailor the manpower statistics to the manpower which is actually available in the country being described at the present time. As the socially/legally acceptable military age differs between countries the template shouldn't force compliance with what are artifical figures. --Nick Dowling 01:02, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Is there any guidance on what should be included in the automatically linked 'Military manpower of X' and 'Military expenditures of X' articles? --Nick Dowling 07:38, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Frankly, I'm not sure we need to be automatically linking them at all; for all but the largest militaries, there isn't going to be material for an entire article on expenditures; and I'm not convinced that the topic of military manpower alone can sustain a decent article for any military. Kirill Lokshin 17:04, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree - While an expenditure article on Australia would be possible (if not very interesting) a military manpower article would be excessive and would end up duplicating Demographics of Australia. At the end of the day, each of these topics can be adequetly covered by tables showing the military expenditure and available manpower in the country each year and there's not much more that could be added. --Nick Dowling 07:48, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

So, should we just remove the automatic links from the infobox? That seems like the easiest solution here. Kirill Lokshin 10:48, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

I just discovered that we have a parallel effort going on; someone has created {{Infobox military}}, which seems essentially to be a cross of the old template with a unit infobox. It's not a bad idea, although I don't really like the implementation; should we borrow the general concept and expand {{Infobox National Military}} to include the additional parameters? Kirill Lokshin 20:57, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

{{Infobox military}} includes a number of additional items, but almost all of them are optional, so that the data presented fits the military in question. It seems that so many articles basically transcribe the CIA numbers, which is fine for those data elements, but there are a lot of other basic elements about a military that I think more people would like to have readily accessable beyond those numbers. Branches of service, ranks, history, and commanders, along with some more options for writers to use in detailing the manpower and spending of militaries. The format of {{Infobox National Military}} is great--very presentable. I put it into {{Infobox military}} and it is a major improvement on that template. I agree that having unique colors per military is not necessary, and may not even really add anything. {{Infobox military Argentina}} is an example of a relatively well filled-out version. It is easily expandable if additional data options are needed, and since all you need for the tag is {{Infobox military Argentina}}, anyone editing main articles isn't greeting by a long list of code at the start of the article. Glad to see the input on something that needs some help. Josh 23:27, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Armed Forces of the Argentine Republic
Fuerzas Armadas de la Republica Argentina
Service branches	Argentine Army Argentine Air Force Argentine Navy Argentine National Gendarmerie Argentine Coast Guard
Leadership
Commander-in-Chief	President Néstor Kirchner
Minister of Defence	Nilda Garré
Chief of Defence	Brigadier General Jorge Alberto Chevalier
Personnel
Military age	18 years old
Available for military service	8,981,886 males, age 15–49, 8,883,756 females, age 15–49
Fit for military service	7,316,038 males, age 15–49, 7,442,589 females, age 15–49
Reaching military age annually	344,575 males, 334,649 females
Expenditure
Budget	$4,300,000,000 (FY 1999)
Percent of GDP	1.3% (FY 2000)
Industry
Domestic suppliers	Fabricaciones Militares Fabrica Militar de Aviones
Foreign suppliers	United States France Germany Israel
Related articles
History	Military history of Argentina
Ranks	Argentine Army officer rank insignia Argentine Army enlisted rank insignia

Ok, here's my take on a combined template, having both the added fields and the various clever technical tricks. Thoughts?

I like putting the branches above the leadership section. Unfortunately the table data field widths are a little unbalanced for the branches and additional article sections. See revised {{Infobox Military Argentina}} for the move. Josh 07:53, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

This is looking really good. My suggestions for further tweaks are:

• Allow the term 'commander in chief' to be customised
• replace 'troops' with 'personnel' as 'troops' is really an army-specific term
• I think that some pretty strict guidance on what goes in the domestic and foreign suppliers fields is needed to stop these turning into a shopping list of all the arms manufacturers which do business with the country. Perhaps this should be limited to the top two companies for each field? (and be referenced!).
• Likewise, I'm not sure what should go in the 'headquarters' field? --Nick Dowling 10:42, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Okay, various changes based on the above:

• I've relaxed the wrapping rules for the column labels; this should allow a slightly more natural flow of field widths. Personally, I don't like having just blocks of text with a header; they don't really mesh up well with the more normal two-column layout, and look quite unbalanced if the names happen to be short.
• Added a commander-in-chief_title field.
• Changed "troops" to "personnel"

I'm not sure what guidelines would be the best approach for the suppliers field, but it would be easy enough to add anything people want to the instructions. Kirill Lokshin 14:07, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Good work! Yes, supplier lists should be brief, showing top five at most, but its up to the authors to determine exactly what is best. I added the option for a second image to trail the box (author's discretion).Josh 04:48, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Yep, another image slot is a good idea. I've also trimmed the separate "chief_of_staff" field, and set the default label for "commander" to be "Chief of staff" instead; I can't think of any normal examples where an overall commander and some sort of other chief of staff would need to be indicated, and the occasional bizarre case can be handled by setting the label to something more general and putting both names in one field. Kirill Lokshin 04:54, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Exactly... I like that. The top three, CinC, MoD, and the military CofS, usually are sufficient to represent the top decision makers of the military as a whole. By making the exact title a customizable field for each, it eliminates the need for a list of various options to reflect national variations. Josh 20:43, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Current {{Infobox National Military}} installed for example for: Afghanistan, Angola, Argentina. Josh 22:39, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I've also updated the earlier version at Australian Defence Force --Nick Dowling 09:45, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

{{Infobox Military Conflict}}

I think you might like to know that this infobox of yours is being used to describe fictional battles, including outer space dogfights and superhero slapfights. This is an inappropriate usage of a template created to describe non-fiction events per WP:WAF, and I thought you should know. By the way, nice WikiProject; you have really set an example to follow here. --Chris Griswold (☎☓) 09:40, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

It seems like those infoboxes really help pages like Battle of Yavin. It's a good way to concisely summarize the battle. - Peregrine Fisher 09:48, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

That's a standard argumentum ad defactum (Just made that up, golly!): possessives, slapstick and remember never to end with "[..] thought you should know" thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 09:45, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

I have no idea what you were trying to get across. --Chris Griswold (☎☓) 10:19, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

All these articles make it clear that this is fictional material. If a number of editors feel confused by the use of the same infobox for fiction and real conflicts, we might be able to change the background color for fictional infoboxes(needing someone who carries out all the changes). Wandalstouring 15:26, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

This doesn't seem to be a real problem - it improves the articles in question, and I doubt that it's generating any kind of confusion about the fictonal nature of the battles. Carom 16:14, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't really see the issue here; the template is suited for describing any kind of battle. If your concern is that fictional events shouldn't be using infoboxes, that's not our problem; take it up with the projects that cover fiction! ;-) Kirill Lokshin 18:20, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Collapsible sections in navigation bar

I've added functionality to {{WPMILHIST Navigation}} to allow the sections of the template to collapse; none of them do so by default, but it would be possible to change that if anyone feels strongly about it. Comments would be welcome. Kirill Lokshin 23:57, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Could you add a button to collapse them all at once? Wandalstouring 00:35, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Don't think so; each sub-table is separate, and there's no real way to get them all to do the same thing. Kirill Lokshin 00:47, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Nice.--Dryzen 16:32, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Help for the Abreviatedly Challenged

I am working (albeit slowly) on overhauling the Iowa class battleship article, and have found this outstanding source gun measurements and history, but I have hit a roadblock and need help some help with an abreviation. The section below deals with the 16in guns from the class, and is quoted from navweapons.com:

When first introduced into service during World War II, the barrel life was 290 ESR, the lower of the two values given above. At that time, Nitrated-Cellulose (NC) was the standard propellant. HC rounds at 2,690 fps (820 mps) were 0.43 ESR and at 1,900 fps (579 mps) were 0.03 ESR. The Target rounds at 1,800 fps (549 mps) were 0.08 ESR. Following World War II, Smokeless Powder Diphenylamine (SPD), a cooler-burning propellant, was adopted in order to prolong barrel life to about the second value given above. In the 1967 and 1980s deployments, the use of "Swedish Additive" (titanium dioxide and wax) greatly reduced barrel wear. It has been estimated that four AP shells fired using this additive approximated the wear of a single AP shell fired without the additive (0.26 ESR) and that HC rounds fired with the additive caused even less wear (0.11 ESR). Later developments during the 1980s deployment led to putting a polyurethane jacket over the powder bags, which reduced the wear still further. This jacket is simply a sheet of foam with a fabric border around the ends that is tied to the powder bag. When the jacket burns during firing, a protective layer forms over the surface of the liner which greatly reduces gaseous erosion. This wear reduction program was so successful that liner life can no longer be rated in terms of ESR, as it is no longer the limiting factor. Instead, the liner life is now rated in terms of Fatigue Equivalent Rounds (FER), which is the mechanical fatigue life expressed in terms of the number of mechanical cycles. The 16"/50 (40.6 cm) Mark 7 is now rated at having a liner life of 1,500 FER.

In the paragraph the author deciphers FER into Fatigue Equivalent Rounds, but does not unabreviate ESR. Anyone have any ideas what that could mean? TomStar81 (Talk) 01:37, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

It stands for "Equivalent Service Rounds." Carom 01:52, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I apreciate it. TomStar81 (Talk) 02:28, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

No prob. Carom 02:38, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Task force modern conflicts

While assembling the African military history task force, I realized that we do have quite a lot of editors working on modern (recent and ongoing) conflicts. I would like to know who is interested in such a task force as a specific rallying point? Wandalstouring 17:47, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Would this be intended only for ongoing (and recently-ended) conflicts, or all "modern" (post-WWII, really) conflicts in general? Kirill Lokshin 18:04, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Don't know, post-WWII or post-Cold War might be workable approaches, but it's up to the participants. Wandalstouring 22:51, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

True, that. I see basically three easy-to-define scopes:

• "Modern warfare task force" (everything post-WWII)
• "Ongoing conflicts task force" (everything that's actually ongoing)
• "Recent conflicts task force"? (post-Cold War; I'm not aware of a really good name for the period as a whole)

Let's see what people want, then. :-) Kirill Lokshin 22:58, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

On the subject of task forces, I have to suggestions. How about Portugese and Spanish task forces. Seeing as this two states have a lot of Mil hist I think that if there is enough support they should be created. Kyriakos 05:15, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Either of those two would be a good idea, if there's enough interest. We actually have a few other ideas (South America, Southeast Asia) that have also been sitting on the back burner. Kirill Lokshin 10:15, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm up for it. What would the order of business be? --Petercorless 00:31, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Which one are you up for? ;-) Kirill Lokshin 01:03, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I believe the forst order of business should be S America, to fold in the inactive wikiprojects. Kirill, could you also take a look at the Red Army talk page? - would appreciate some guidance in a discussion there. Buckshot06 09:27, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Coordinator election results

The third project coordinator elections have now concluded. Seven coordinators have been selected to serve for the next six months:

Carom (talk · contribs)

FayssalF (talk · contribs)

Kirill Lokshin (talk · contribs)

Kyriakos (talk · contribs)

LordAmeth (talk · contribs)

Petercorless (talk · contribs)

Wandalstouring (talk · contribs)

Congratulations to the winners, and thanks to all the candidates who put themselves forward for this responsibility! Kirill Lokshin 00:01, 26 February 2007 (UTC) Felicitations to the Chosen!--Dryzen 16:35, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Category:Red Army Operations during World War II

I've proposed (here) that this category to be renamed to Category:Battles and operations of the Soviet-German War, to follow the normal naming conventions for such categories. (Basically everything on the Eastern Front involved the Red Army as one of the combatant sides, so I don't see the point in having a redundant category for it; and even if we did want it, it should be named something like "Battles and operations of World War II involving the Red Army".) There is, however, an alternative renaming possible to use "Eastern Front of World War II" instead of "Soviet-German War", and I'm not sure which would actually be better; some opinions would be very welcome there. Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 01:49, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't think "Eastern Front of World War II" quite makes it since it was the "Eastern Front" only to the Germans (and other Europeans). It certainly wasn't "eastern" to the Russians ... and there was, after all, a front in the "Far East". "Soviet-German" sounds fine to me. Askari Mark (Talk) 00:10, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, our article is at Eastern Front (World War II), for what it's worth. Kirill Lokshin 00:39, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

What about the non-German Axis-participants like Romania, Finland, (Spain), Italy, etc? Wandalstouring 00:18, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

((Moved my comment to the discussion. --Petercorless 00:37, 27 February 2007 (UTC)))

With the exception of Finland, they had "supporting roles" and the Finnish-Soviet campaigns were, for the most part, fought as a separate front. There's probably no neat, simple and NPOV naming solution, though. "East European Front of World War II" might come closest, but it's a mouthful and I cannot recall ever having come across it being used. Askari Mark (Talk) 00:42, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

True, that. To a certain extent, we're going to reflect English-language historiography in naming choices here, and that tends to use "Eastern Front" for fairly obvious reasons.

(Another alternative, incidentally, would be "Eastern Front of the European Theater of World War II", but that's an even bigger mouthful.) Kirill Lokshin 00:47, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

... or "European Theater - Eastern Front (World War II)"? Askari Mark (Talk) 18:41, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Good choice Askari Mark (Talk). Wandalstouring 18:57, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Crunching the Numbers

Can someone tell me what 1100 km translates to in miles? (Math never was my strong point) :/ TomStar81 (Talk) 09:23, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

According to Google, 1100 kilometers = 683.508311 mile --Kusunose 09:30, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Ah. Thank you for the help. TomStar81 (Talk) 03:41, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Always keep a site like Online Conversions in your bag of tricks. --Petercorless 04:52, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Nachshub

An article that you have been involved in editing, Nachshub, has been listed by me for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nachshub. Thank you.

In particular we got a new user over at WikiProject Germany complaining about the prevalence of German military terms which are mere translations of the term. I don't fully agree with him, but one of the items he did mentioned was particularly bad IMO. I see 2 possible outcomes - Transwiki to Wikitionary or someone beefs up the article, which would hopefully solve the complaints. Agathoclea 12:50, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Heh. That's not even a stub, really.

(But this goes back to the idea—bounced around a few times in the past—of creating a glossary of military terminology, preferably as an article, but perhaps as a project page if that doesn't work—as a merge target for the many such perma-stubs. It would be quite useful to have a military-specific reference for such things.) Kirill Lokshin 13:13, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

That is no genuine term in German and it simply translates to supplies, however it can be used as a slang form for the troops occupied with delievering supplies. Streitkräfte Basis (who are a 'branch' organising the Nachschub and other things) would be a genuine military term we could have an article about. Wandalstouring 19:49, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

The minimum if kept would be to correct the spelling (move to Nachschub. But I'm not sure it's needed (and yes, it's not even a stub right now).--Caranorn 21:41, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

For those not aware of it, there is an article on some German military terms: Glossary of WWII German military terms (although not all of the terms listed are military). Askari Mark (Talk) 00:13, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not part of the project but did notice the problem with the Glossary- a lot of the supposed terms are actual names of military operations. I've been working on highlighting errors in the particular lists that contain those operations. Would removing the operation names from the Glossary do much harm? Fluffy999 03:23, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Two articles, one war

I have found while reading about the Napoleonic wars that there are two articles that seem to be describing the same war. I have added a merge tag. The two articles are the following: Neapolitan War and Austro-Neapolitan War. They seem to be describing the short-lived conflict that took place between the Kingdom of Naples and Austria in 1815. In the Neapolitan War article it also states that there was another Neapolitan War in 1494-1495 when the French king Charles VIII captured Naples. If someone could have a look at these two articles, I think there is a bit of confusion. Thanks. --Francisco Valverde 19:27, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

The 1494 one is definitely the First Italian War. Kirill Lokshin 00:48, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

The merge proposal is an interesting one. My books have let me down I'm afraid, in none of them can I find any reference to the 1815 war between Austria and Naples. Neither of the articles give any references either, which doesn't help! The Austro-Neapolitan War article is apallingly written and very unclear. I can't make out whether it is referring to the 1821 Neapolitan Insurrection or the 1815 "war" which the Neapolitan War article discusses with much more clarity and eloquence. If we can work out which one the A-N War article is referring to and it is describing the same event as the Neapolitan War article, then they should be merged. As for the title of the merged article, that depends too! If they are the same, then I would suggest that Austro-Neapolitan War is best since it is less vague than Neapolitan War. Whether one side marching practically unopposed into a city-state can be called a war at all would be a consideration, but probably one outside the scope of our discussion here. Chrisfow 11:47, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Battle of Cannae --"An Alternative View" section

Since this is a featured article I think this needs attention. An annon IP has added a large section giving "An Alternative View" of the battle. I don't know enough as to whether there is any serious historical debated about the battle to justify this section, and in any case there are serious NOPV issues and a lack of sources cited in this section. Help! Tomgreeny 23:08, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

I have Gregory Daly Cannae (The experience of battle in the second Punic War) here and can find no mention of any alternative views. What is is discussed are such details like numbers of dead and POW (disputing the traditional view that so many Romans were really killed, more like 45k dead 'only'), discussing the equipment and tactics of the African troops (urging that they did not attack in a fashion similar to the Macedonian phalanx, but rather a mixture of Phoenician/Iberian/Roman influences made them swordfighters, probably charging like the Romans) and what role the javelins and slingshots played in the killing (citing different sources with differing views on the effectiveness and pointing out influences like dust and reduced sight that helped a massive bombardement of these missiles to cause casualties) Wandalstouring 23:20, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

I've read that theory (also citing Livy, though stating that information is inconclusive) before, though it was not in a history book but in the design/historical notes for a wargame (Richard Berg's SPQR (GMT Games)). The analysis was rather good (certainly better then the annon's addition) but I'm not sure how much weight such a non scientific source has. In any case Berg (assuming he wrote that analysis and not an editor or co-designer) comes to the conclusion that the traditional view is more probable.--Caranorn 23:47, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

The aforementioned book reflects the current research on the topic. Wandalstouring 00:17, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Campaignbox for deletion

Please help save a campaignbox from deletion. Please read my Strong Keep vote first. http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#Template:Campaignbox_Jemaah_Islamiyah --TheFEARgod (Ч) 13:40, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Bleh. Aside, even, from the issue that it's not a military-related campaignbox, really, which makes it sort of tangential to this project, please don't make appeals in such a form; if you want to invite comments, great, but asking for votes for a particular side is generally looked on rather dimly by the community. Kirill Lokshin 13:49, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Task Force Creation

I apologize if this is the wrong area to ask this question; if so, can someone kindly redirect my efforts? I'm interested in creating a task force for the military history of Spain. Is there any special process I would have to go through? Would I have to be an administrator? Would anybody be interested in helping me? Furthermore, can a task force work under two WikiProjects? This would be the Military History WikiProject and the Spain WikiProject.

Thanks! JonCatalan 17:51, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

See the related discussion just above. The main thing is finding a reasonable number of people (around five or so, at a minimum) who'd be willing to participate; once we have those, we can set up an uncontroversial group like this in short order.

(And yes, joint task forces with other projects are quite normal now.) Kirill Lokshin 17:54, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

There is no need for any rights beyond being a normal editor to found such a group. If you want to establish this same group in the Project Spain, we have neither objections nor any influence on the issue. Wandalstouring 17:57, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll be going on a recruitment drive. ;) JonCatalan 18:20, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Insofar, I have three people, including myself. Despite this, I think that once the group is created more people will join quickly. If I absolutely need more people before founding the group, that's fine and I will continue to look around. JonCatalan 19:49, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

No, that seems fine. I've created the Spanish military history task force; please sign up there! Kirill Lokshin 20:35, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

WP:ACID#Castle

The Castle article has been nominated for an Article Improvement Drive by Dweller. As the main article for the related Castles WikiProject, and a key article for this project, I would encourage people to get involved. --Grimhelm 14:31, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Just to revive this topic, the article will fail the nomination today if we don't get another three votes - please contribute! --Grimhelm 22:29, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I would like to thank User:Catalan for that last vote. I'll be logging off shortly, and there are only two more votes needed before midnight! --Grimhelm 22:58, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Africa in World War II

I recently updated the following articles. I'd welcome the participation of others:

• World War II: Sub-Saharan Africa (July 1940 – September 1943)
• West Africa Campaign (World War II)
• Battle of Dakar
• Battle of Gabon

Articles that needs more work:

• African campaigns of World War II
• East African Campaign (World War II)

--Petercorless 09:01, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

A-Class review for Japanese castle now open

The A-Class review for Japanese castle is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 13:13, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Richard O'Connor FAR

Richard O'Connor has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. LuciferMorgan 16:21, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

I was reading through the article and found that an entire section was basically lifted from an online source. It would be great if anyone from the project that has access to the print sources would be able to check the article against those. Gzkn 08:12, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Request Admission

hey there what can i do to become a member of this project? i have always been into wars and study about them quite a bit. my personal fav wars are WWII WWI and medevil warfare. im also keeping uptodate on recent war tactics and weapons. Maverick423 18:42, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

There aren't any requirements; just add yourself to the list of members at your discretion. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 18:45, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

alright im in =) i got addicted to war in high school in ROTC =) so what do we got on older warfare methods that need improving? really when ever you guys need me just talk to me i have massive knowlage on war formations. Maverick423 18:55, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Here's a good project to "cut your teeth" on. The term enfilade is defined in Wikipedia, but it is lacking citations from books or from web resources. Familiarize with the Wiki citation (WP:CITE) methods, and add a few citation to the article. From that, you will get an idea of what the work generally entails. --Petercorless 22:00, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry to come in, but now that I see that article, I realise I can provide some sources for that. Will I go ahead or hold off until Maverick423 starts on it (assuming he wants to)? --Grimhelm 22:07, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Feel free to dig in! No one "owns" Wikipedia articles, so you are free to edit what you like. It was just an example of an article that could use some work. There are zillions more. --Petercorless 11:48, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I know that, but I didn't want to intrude on a newcomer. ;-) --Grimhelm 17:51, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

by all means dont hold back on my account =). Ill look for some good stuff too though Maverick423 22:00, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Service record box

U-47's combat service
Operations	10 patrols under Günther Prien, as part of 7. Unterseebootsflottille
Victories	30 ships (162,769 GRT) sunk, 1 warship (29,150 tons) sunk, 8 ships (62,751 GRT) damaged

Wesley Clark's service record
Operations	Vietnam War, Kosovo War
Awards	Defense Distinguished Service Medal, Legion of Merit, Silver Star, Bronze Star Medal

As part of discussions with WP:SHIPS concerning infobox standardization, I've developed a draft auxiliary infobox, {{service record}}, that can be used with the primary infoboxes for people/ships/units/etc. to give a summary of the subject's military service history. At right are two examples, for a ship and a person. Comments would be appreciated! Kirill Lokshin 03:49, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Nice! However, this might be covered in other infoboxes for ships and military personnel. Or am I mistaken? --Petercorless 11:52, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

It's not in any of the ship infoboxes; that's the main reason for creating this, in fact. (Certain parts of it are present in the people/unit infoboxes already; if we adopt the auxiliary box for general use, we could concievably migrate those over to it and remove the fields from the primary infobox, in the long run.) Kirill Lokshin 13:46, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Nice one. However, i think it be cluttering the top right of the articles especially when using other templates. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up ®} 13:59, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Ooops. I've just read carefully your last comment. I agree about merging the content w/ the main infobox used in articles. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up ®} 14:00, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Hmm? I didn't say anything about merging; this would continue to use a primary/auxiliary box layout. (But that's nothing new, as that's how campaignboxes have worked for more than a year now; see, for example, the primary/auxiliary structure on Battle of Edson's Ridge.) Kirill Lokshin 14:09, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps we should merge all boxes into one box per article header only. Into this main box it is possible to integrate different subboxes. Wandalstouring 14:03, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Yup. This case makes me remember Einstein's case back on October 2006. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up ®} 14:07, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

That seems to be more of a question of trivia fields in infoboxes, not one of one box/two box approaches, if I'm not mistaken. Kirill Lokshin 14:11, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

That was the approach attempted with campaignboxes until December 2005. It's not really workable, in the long run; it makes the primary infoboxes themselves more complicated, is difficult to work with when multiple auxiliary boxes are used, and prevents editors from positioning the auxiliary boxes elsewhere in the article. Kirill Lokshin 14:09, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

World War II Template

A contributor has replaced the old Canadian ensign with the current Canadian flag, which was not used until the 1960s. He has argued his case at Template talk:World War II#Canadian Flag, and I request opinions on the talk page so we can have a consensus on the issue. Folks at 137 18:05, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Pockets of resistance

This is a military history article that is currently nominated for deletion. Much work has been done to it recently. Please help work on it to keep it from being deleted. Also it is rated as a Stub. Please change the rating. Shibumi2 01:02, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

We do have a somewhat more technical Salients, re-entrants and pockets article that would probably be a good merge target here. Kirill Lokshin 01:06, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Shibumi2, it's generally bad form to point out any vote along with a opinion of which way we should vote on it. Oberiko 13:44, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Definit merge, the Salients, re-entrants and pockets article could use a larger Pockets section.--Dryzen 14:56, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

A-Class review for Japanese castle needs attention

A few more editors are needed to complete the A-Class review for Japanese castle; please stop by and help review the article! Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 21:34, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Navigation box show/hide defaults

Given that the navigation template has become quite large, I'm wondering if it wouldn't be a useful to set some of the sections to default as collapsed rather than expanded. There are three obvious possibilities, I think:

1. Default the "Infoboxes" section to hidden, all others shown.
2. Default the "Infoboxes" and "Task forces" sections to hidden, all others shown. (It would also be possible to have each sub-section of task forces hidden individually, in this scenario.)
3. Default the "General information" section to shown, all others hidden.

Would any of these be a good idea (and, if so, which one do people prefer)? Kirill Lokshin 05:29, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Set all values at default = collapse Wandalstouring 12:19, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Like so? Do people like the result? Kirill Lokshin 21:58, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

That works; the task force links especially were getting pretty long. Carom 06:15, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

"Friendly fire" catagory and infobox

Recently, at least two articles on "friendly fire" incidents (Black Hawk Incident (April 1994) and 190th Fighter Squadron, Blues and Royals friendly fire incident - March 28, 2003) and perhaps more have been started and appear to present two unresolved issues: (1) there isn't an infobox type that can be used in that type of article, and (2) there aren't any existing catagories that these types of articles can be assigned to. Any suggestions on what category(s) friendly fire articles should be assigned to and what type of infobox they should use? Cla68 08:03, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, three obvious ideas:

• Use {{Infobox Military Conflict}} and trim all the parameters below "result"; it'll be a short infobox, but still enough to give the essentials, I think.
• Use the "Military operations involving X" categories to classify by country.
• Create a Category:Friendly fire incidents under Category:Military operations by type as a cross-country-line collector for all of these.

Does any of that seem sensible? Kirill Lokshin 17:48, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

All that seems sensible to me. Carom 18:10, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the suggestions, I've added those to the two articles. Cla68 10:54, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

U.S. Army Groups

So I'm trying to sort out US Army Groups at this point and I'm running into some problems as I know less about Army Groups than I do about Armies. I know that all Armies are spelled out, never numbered (First United States Army vs. 1st United States Army), much like Corps use roman numerals, never arabic, etc. I also know the pattern for naming U.S. Armies is number first, then "United States Army," not mixed up like "U.S. First Army" or whatever. Given that, I am only assuming the same pattern follows for US Army Groups as well since that would be the most logical thing to do and the Army is somewhat particular about conformity like that. I also know that FUSAG is a well known acronymn as it stands for First United States Army Group. Given that, I would assume the rest of the Army Groups would follow that pattern. However, I see more hits on Google for Twelfth Army Group or US Twelfth Army Group or 12th Army Group or US 12th Army Group, all of which go against the set pattern--I can find hardly any references for the assumed correct name of Twelfth U.S. (United States) Army Group. I've asked all the "experts" I know about this and they tend to agree with me that logic would dictate it be spelled out how I expected, but none know enough about the Army Groups to confirm it. Any thoughts? --ScreaminEagle 22:47, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

That's the form used in official dispatches (e.g this one from Montgomery), so I think it's the one we should use. Google hits are a bad thing to look at in cases where the name is commonly shortened in context, and don't really mean all that much in any case. Kirill Lokshin 01:13, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Also remember that FUSAG was a dummy deception formation and may not (in my view, doesn't) set the pattern for the others. Buckshot06 17:35, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

"Set the pattern," no. But if I were making a dummy army group I would certainly want it to be as believable as possible, right down to how it is named based upon US Army naming conventions. --ScreaminEagle 21:53, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Kingbotk Plugin

A quick overview for newcomers: The Kingbotk Plugin is a set of add-on tools for the wiki editor, AWB. In bot mode it offers robust templating for WikiProjects. In manual mode, it can also be used to help editors assess articles quickly and efficiently.

Per requests, myself and Reedy Boy (talk · contribs) have just released a new version of the Kingbotk Plugin which is compatible with the latest AWB. To make things even easier, the plugin now ships with AWB. You may also have noticed my bot running over the last few days, testing the new version.

Since your WikiProject is one of the few which are programatically supported it's important that you inform us of any important changes to your WikiProject's template which have occurred in the last few months.

• The most important change we should know about is new redirects to your template. If your template could possibly be used on talk pages with a different name unknown to the plugin, double templating could result. Please take the time to check for redirects to your project's template - somebody might have created one without you noticing.
• Deprecated or removed parameters. We don't want complaints that the plugin is using old syntax now do we? :)
• Not critical in terms of annoying the masses, but for your own convenience you might want to let us know of any new parameters that the plugin needs to support. Remember, it only needs to support parameters which will be added by bots or which are useful in the article assessment process.

I hope you still find the tool useful. Comments, questions and bug reports to User talk:Kingbotk/Plugin. Cheers. --kingboyk 17:49, 4 March 2007 (UTC) PS I hope to have a new revision (version 1 release candidate 2) ready later today, for shipping with the next AWB release.