Talk:List of armoured fighting vehicles by country

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Contents 1 Russia and The Soviet Union 2 Manufaturers or users? 3 Over-annotation 4 Suggested merges 5 Table format 5.1 Period

[edit] Russia and The Soviet Union

Why was Soviet Union/Russia split up,Russian armour stocks are mostly soviet. I am going to merge them back together for now. Dudtz 4/24/06 8:21 PM EST

Current stock may be USSR era but the situation will change. Ideally the list should be AFV by country of origin. GraemeLeggett 08:52, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

You should spilt up Germany into East germany,and Federal Republic of Germany if you feel that way. Many Soviet designs are still being built in Russia,I don't see what is wrong with having The USSR and its successor state(Russian Federation) together. Dudtz 5/8/06 6:00 PM EST

[edit] Manufaturers or users?

There seems to be some confusion regarding the meaning of "by country": although in the introduction it is specified that the grouping is "by country of origin", there seems to be grouping by country of use as well. Possibly some corrections should be made. Skartsis 16:51, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Neither.

Since this is a list of all AFVs, we should not arbitrarily expand its stated scope.

It would make the list less usable, for example, to list the T-34 tank 40+ times under all of the countries which used it. Nor should it be listed 4 or 5 times under the countries which manufactured it. Its origin was the Soviet Union, and it should appear only there. —Michael Z. 2007-07-27 17:08 Z

Just a quick question, then... What about things like the ASLAV? It was developed and built in Canada to the specifications of the Australian Army. Right now it's only listed under Australia as they're the only users of this particular variant - but should it be moved to Canada? - Jonathon A H (talk) 16:56, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

If it was built specifically to the specs of its only user, then IMHO the ASLAV should remain under "Australia" as it is in fact who originated the requirement. Cheers, DPdH (talk) 15:53, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Over-annotation

The intro states this is simply a list, with "the number of AFVs produced and the period of use". And remember, it is a potentially huge list of all AFVs.

Recently, there have been several additions with short descriptions, which may be helpful to identify a vehicle, and mini-articles listing characteristics and histories. This level of annotation is starting to make this list difficult to use, inconsistent, and potentially unsynchronized with the respective articles. It also hampers the functionality of the list's related changes link.

Editors should put the energy into the respective articles instead of cluttering this potentially huge list.

Let's pare this list down to what it is intended to be.

See also Wikipedia:Lists (stand-alone lists), and Wikipedia:Overlistification. —Michael Z. 2007-07-27 16:59 Z

[edit] Suggested merges

List of prototype armoured fighting vehicles ought to be merged into this article, to prevent duplication. All of the information can be preserved by ensuring that each entry in that list retains the word "prototype" in its description. —Michael Z. 2007-08-16 05:36 Z

Agree. Bukvoed (talk) 18:44, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

List of military armoured cars too, for the same reason. Each country should have a subheading "armoured cars". —Michael Z. 2007-08-16 05:41 Z

Agree. Bukvoed (talk) 18:44, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree with both proposals, providing that the format of this list is enhanced to include relevant information (eg: prototype or production). My feeling is that a table format would be much useful than a plain list as it is now, as an example the format used in List of artillery could be used. Please note that List of artillery by country has the same format as this one, so maybe for consistency it's decided to keep the current format (and create a unified "List of armoured fighting vehicles" in table format, perhaps?). Regards, DPdH (talk) 08:24, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Note that the former lists artillery by class and calibre, and includes country of origin. That format would be great here, because this is supposed to be a list by origin, and it would discourage dumping countries' entire inventories here.

The latter artillery list is an inventory for each country, so individual models may appear numerous times. An AFV list like this would be too huge, and too incomplete. I think this information belongs in articles about individual armies, or as stand-alone lists by country. —Michael Z. 2008-05-29 20:21 z

List of Estonian armoured fighting vehicles really should be merged, too. —Michael Z. 2008-05-29 20:09 z

Hi, I was revisiting the various "lists" relatred to AFVs, and found the "Merge proposal" tag in List of prototype armoured fighting vehicles, so seems that is did not proceed. As I cannot find evidence of opposition to the proposal, I assume it's outstanding due to lack of time? Same for the other merge proposals? Please comment.
Thanks & regards, DPdH (talk) 06:25, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I've completed the merge, and did a bit of cleanup. Still have the list of armoured cars to go. —Michael Z. 2008-08-25 21:27 z

[edit] Table format

How would we adopt the table format from List of artillery for this list? This may be a good opportunity to reduce redundancy by merging some of the many lists, and eliminating overlap of self-propelled artillery. This would differ from what we have now, and no longer be "by country", so maybe we should start a new stand-alone list.

The artillery list is subdivided into tables by class. Each table is sorted by calibre, and includes name, country of origin, and period (should be year of introduction). It's a bit garish, but the flags might actually be useful in the mixed lists.

AFVs could be similarly divided into tables by class. I see the following subheadings already in use here:

• Airborne fighting vehicles
• Amphibious vehicles
• Armoured cars
• Armoured personnel carriers
  • Carriers
  • Infantry fighting vehicles
• ARVs
• Combat engineering vehicles
• Tanks
  • Tankettes
  • Light tanks
  • Medium tanks
  • Heavy tanks
  • Main battle tanks
  • Assault tanks
• Reconnaissance
• Self-propelled anti-aircraft weapons
• Self-propelled guns

How would we sort each table? In many cases it may make sense to go by weight, which may help obviate arguments about what constitutes a light or medium tank. Alternatively, they could be listed by year of introduction. —Michael Z. 2008-05-29 20:51 z

Support Good proposal, Michael. Just a couple of comments:

1. How would the "article length" issue be handled? Maybe by having a list for each country with a grteat number of AFVs?
2. "Heavy" tanks should be included as a class, as it is a category already described in the relevant WikiArticle (in short, the categories on this list should be consistent with those in the article related to "Tank Clasification".
3. Rather than SP "guns" I'd use "Artillery", as the term is more inclusive (eg: would include rocket artillery as for instance the MLRS and the WW2 "Maultier" R/L).
4. Sorting by year seems less controversial, IMHO.
5. I'd keep a separate list "by country" (like it happens with other military lists: Artillery, Battleshisps, etc) as a frequent "search/index" field seems to be the "nationality" of the vehicle (and having just 2 lists should be manageable). Maybe the base list should be "List of AFVs" with comprehensive details, and "List of AFVs by country" should only enumerate the vehicles without additional information (other than links to existing wiki-articles).

For the time being, no other comments. Regards, DPdH (talk) 02:30, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

1. Maybe the article can be split up somehow for convenience, but it wouldn't be urgent. The List of Artillery is very long with no complaints.
2. Added heavy tanks. I think the three or four examples of “assault tanks” probably belong with self-propelled guns.
3. Perhaps armoured self-propelled guns should be separate from all truck-mounted artillery. Anyway, we have to resolve the overlap with the list of artillery.
4. By year is good, but there will always remain many examples without a year (same problem goes for weight anway).
   • It may be possible to resolve this by using hte “year” column as the main sort key and “period” as the secondary key—must experiment with this.
5. I think separate tables by class would be better. In list of artillery, you can click on the sort icon in the “country of origin” field to group by country. This is a great feature.

Sorry for keeping so many questions open. I'd like to try out some formats or experiment with improving the tables in the List of artillery before committing to anything. —Michael Z. 2008-08-27 06:41 z

No need to apologize, you're doing a great job. I still need to learn "advanced editing" to be able to help! (time & research constraints forces me to be a "stubber/starter", still).Regards, DPdH (talk) 07:01, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

A table would definitely be easier to read. Perhaps a format like this would work? - Jonathon A H (talk) 16:45, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Class	Type	Name	Year	Notes
Example country #1
Tanks	Light Tanks	Light Tank Alpha	1986	Blahblahblah
		Light Tank Beta	1989	Blahblahyadda
	Main Battle Tanks	MBT Gamma	1976	Yaddayaddayadda
APCs	IFVs	IFV Delta	1999	Hohumhohum
	APCs	APC Epsilon	1968	Blahhohum
		APC Zeta	1975	Hohumblahyadda
Example country #2

[edit] Period

The list of artillery has a “period” column, with the following values. I'd like to assign a starting year to each period, so that the column can be sorted sensibly, and to use as a secondary key for rows which have a period assigned but no precise year. (Actually, the starting year should probably be the year before the nominal start of the period, so that vehicles without specific years would get sorted before those which have years assigned.)

Taking values from the list of artillery:

1. Second Boer War (1899)
2. Russo-Japanese War (1904)
3. World War I (1914)
4. Interwar (1918)
5. Second Sino-Japanese War (1937)
6. World War II (1939)
7. post-World War II & Cold War (1945)
8. Vietnam (1959, 1965 for U.S.)
9. Lebanon War (1982)
10. Modern* (1991)
11. Under development & Future combat systems (2009)

* “Modern” has a very different meaning in a historical context. I think that should specifically say “post-Cold War”.

I'll try to do up an example table in the next day or two. —Michael Z. 2008-08-27 07:04 z