Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators/Archive 1

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Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 → Archive 5

Request area

Bring the requests page back to a usable state, and field article/image/map/cleanup/translation requests there (in addition to having them occur through the task forces, of course).

How do we structure it. Suggestions? Wandalstouring 01:28, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

At the top level, we might split it by type of request (e.g. new article, cleanup, image, translation, etc.), sort of like what we have now. Within those, I'm not sure; it might depend on how many requests there are, and how quickly they move through the page. Kirill Lokshin 01:37, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
I've tried my hand at pulling some things into alphabetical lists, but this may not be the best approach. In any case, any help with clearing old entries off the page would be appreciated! Kirill Lokshin 03:29, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Newsletter

Our newsletter could do with a tips and tricks section to improve editing. Wandalstouring 15:16, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, we could even create a permanent page and just link it from the bottom of the newsletter each time, thus increasing exposure... -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 15:20, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
Good idea; not invassive and still making a showing.--Dryzen 13:24, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
The forthcoming FAC "checklist" could be used for this, maybe? Kirill Lokshin 14:10, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes and pick some questions from the talk page about editing problems, etc. what you encounter and tell how to solve it. Wandalstouring 19:48, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Request page

I want to split up the Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Requests into several smaller pages for easier navigation. Wandalstouring 11:06, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Mmm, more specifically? How would you propose splitting it? Kirill Lokshin 12:16, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
remains as the main page, while there are several subpages:
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Requests/Battles and operations articles
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Requests/Wars and general military/military history articles
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Requests/Military people articles
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Requests/Military equipment articles
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Requests/Images
Wandalstouring 12:32, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
That seems unnecessarily complicated (and splitting battles and wars is usually a bad idea). How about keeping the general requests directly on the request page and having:
Kirill Lokshin 12:47, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
One interesting idea, incidentally, would be to move Wikipedia:Requested pictures/Military to Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Requests/Images; that way, we don't get this bizarre nesting of hidden subpages we presently have. Kirill Lokshin 12:51, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Sure, that is another point, but I think it is already compromised in the page here. Still the article requests lack readability. Wandalstouring 12:57, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Quality control of A-class and featured articles

In the A class review it was suggested to check the existing articles. Actually we could make a check of high quality labeled articles like featured and A-class by running them for objections a few days from time to time, perhaps in an automized random process. Of course we should not overdo this. What are your suggestions? Wandalstouring 16:03, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I doubt that a random review would have any benefits. Better, in my opinion, to submit articles that are believed to be deficient for review at the appropriate place instead of wasting time "reviewing" articles that nobody actually has any problems with. Kirill Lokshin 16:13, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Image requests

the image request departement is almost unused and there seems to be no great interest into it. Seems like I am the only one making so much noise about it. Are there any suggestions to change this or should I reevaluate my request area project? Wandalstouring 20:15, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Cleaning up the overall requests page might be helpful in terms of making things more readable. In general, though, you should't assume that any particular portion of the project will have a consistently high level of activity; let it gather steam for a while, in any case. Kirill Lokshin 20:19, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
I already cleaned the image requests of responded demands. It seems some requesters have been a bit lazy, they could have easily requested these images from an internet source. Wandalstouring 20:36, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Most people don't know how to request images from a third party, though; that's hardly something to fault them for. Kirill Lokshin 20:44, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
I've added a listing of image requests to the main open task template; that might help bring some more attention to that area. It would be great if someone could keep track of those and rotate them as needed, though; unlike requested articles, there's no easy way to tell whether the request has been completed just by looking at the template. Kirill Lokshin 03:38, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

I have some ideas for our automation departement to simplify this task perhaps. We could tag all articles and have an image request formula in there (like the stub tag, calling for an image and describing what it should be). This also makes maintenance easier, because it is local and is more likely to be deleted if fulfilled. Furthermore it simplifies a central overview of image demands. Wandalstouring 09:39, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Open task rotation

I've added "Attention needed" and "Expansion needed" listings to {{WPMILHIST Announcements}}; help with keeping these regularly rotated would be very appreciated. Kirill Lokshin 16:56, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

A-Class review needs attention

Just a note that the nascent A-Class review process is very much in need of some attention; it won't work too well if we can't get three people to comment on the nominated articles ;-) Kirill Lokshin 21:40, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

If it does not work, we have to change the rules. Wandalstouring 16:34, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
Well, it seems to be working now. (My comment is more than a month old!) ;-) Kirill Lokshin 16:59, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
You requested more people on Ho Chi Min trail A-class review very recently. Wandalstouring 18:37, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
Well, yes. That's the solution to this issue, really: request more input explicitly if people don't drop by on their own. What I meant was that, given this approach, we seem to be in a position to guarantee the needed number of reviewers. Kirill Lokshin 19:10, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Did the A class review disappear? No more articles for review or what happened? Wandalstouring 23:54, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Yep, I closed the last open candidacy this afternoon. It's happened before, incidentally; now it just sits until somebody else nominates an article. Kirill Lokshin 23:57, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

regulations on wartime images

do we have any regulations on wartime images like not showing the faces of the fallen soldiers? Wandalstouring 16:53, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Mmm, not really. Too many images of fallen soldiers are iconic for such a restriction to be sensible, I think. Kirill Lokshin 16:58, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
The problem are actual photos. In Germany for example there is an agreement within the press not to show faces of fallen soldiers on such images for ethical reasons. In the last wars of the US, the dead enemies were also covered or at least their faces, when international press was present (I found neither on English, French or Arabian sites the faces of dead soldiers). I'm no expert on the subject and will try to inform myself. But in case there are widespread agreements, we should consider them as also applying to us. Wandalstouring 21:19, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
There's probably a distinction to be made between showing pictures of the bodies once they have been collected, and photos of a battlefield scene in situ (where some of the bodies will have faces shown). For example, the "Harvest of Death" photograph from 1863 is of major historical significance in its own right; not showing it because it includes the faces of the dead soldiers would be doing a disservice to our readers. Obviously, more recent photography will follow whatever standards are currently used, and we shouldn't go out of our way to pick gruesome images; but earlier photography would often follow different conventions, and I think it would be a mistake to try and apply the current standards of journalism retroactively to it. Kirill Lokshin 22:13, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
OK, let's abide to the generaly accepted ethical conventions of the times when an image was made. Wandalstouring 22:46, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
I'dd heard something about this convention on faces, yet cannot remember the specifics. I have the utmost fealing that it did indeed apply to rassembled desceased due to its likeness of trophy shots. But I shouldn't be quoted. Rational should come intoplay, like Kirill Lokshin indicated.--Dryzen 17:39, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

A possible new source for recruiting

Wikipedia:Reward board gives rewards for solving specific tasks. It should be a minor problem for us creating something shiny to present on ones userpage as the reward. My intention is to try finding some capable editors in areas we could not cover properly with our members. So it is more like a bait o make contact and recruit good editors. Any suggestions? Wandalstouring 15:21, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Might not be a bad idea in theory, but does the reward board actually get any attention? I was under the impression that it had been more-or-less abandoned. Kirill Lokshin 15:44, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
Don't know, but as long as someone uses such a board chances are not zero. Wandalstouring 16:03, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
A reward board heh? We should just have a help needed board not problem cases of people only helping for rewards or peopel already helping getting annoyed at not getting rewards. I think our Project "Medals" (to use the term loosely) was in mind to reward editors with Stars and claps for their aid and sustained efforts.--Dryzen 17:16, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
Come on. We can vote in public what we want rewarded and with what (For example Bantu military theory and tactics development and the reward is the picture of an Assegai on the userpage + a nice note from us).Wandalstouring 17:23, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
We don't even need to make it that complicated. As the (current) award is open to being given out by anybody, you could just list some requests on the board yourself, without any need for a bureaucratic procedure for "approving" them within the project. It might be an interesting thing to try, if only to see if anyone still reads the page. Kirill Lokshin 17:33, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Orientation Page?

I can contribute and want to contribute, but I'm hopelessly, hopelessly lost amid the tangle of project pages, taskforce pages, style pages, review pages, template pages, assessment pages, lists of members, request pages, and so on and so forth. The pages on the community portal are fine if you want to look up a procedure, but give no structure to the whole thing. Wikipedia says "on the box" that anyone can just dive in and contribute, but there seems to be a labyrinthine, nay Byzantine, complexity which I've spent more time failing to penetrate than I should need to. It's a measure of my perplexity that I'm forced to ask my question like this! Wildfire1961 16:12, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

This is one project, the military history. This project has several task forces of people interested in one topic. Each task force has an own page where you can ask them specific questions concerning their field of interest.
Style pages contain guidelines for wikifying articles.
Template pages is administration stuff, of little concern for the average editor.
Review and assessment pages give the editors feedback.
You simply put your name on the list of members to join. Wandalstouring 16:52, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Replied on user's talk page.
More generally, though, this might be an interesting thing to create. Our welcoming message is somewhat applicable, but it's designed to introduce someone who is presumably an editor with some experience to the features of the project, rather than being an orientation for new editors to editing Wikipedia in general. Given that we do seem to have many new editors signing up for the project, it might be worthwhile to have something like this available for their benefit. Kirill Lokshin 16:54, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

What do coordinators do?

May sound stupid, but someone elected us for some reason. I just wonder what we coordinators do what we wouldn't do if not elected? (Besides taking a look here) Wandalstouring 19:24, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Mmm. There's fairly little that couldn't be done by someone else, but experience suggests that people will generally assume that someone else is doing it. There are a few things for which coordinators have been "written into" the process (e.g. closing A-Class reviews), but it's largely a formal delegation of (housekeeping) responsibility, not power. In other words, most other project members won't bother with the administrative stuff on the assumption that the coordinators will take care of it.
The most practical point, though, is that the coordinators are explicitly listed as points of contact and people to whom questions can be directed in a variety of places around the project. Kirill Lokshin 19:30, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
So far you manage the closing of A class reviews quite well. I really start to wonder why you need so many assistants. User-multi error: "Grafikm" is not a valid project or language code (help). is quite useful, but the rest of us? Wandalstouring 19:47, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
To a certain extent, it's just a safety net to make up for the possibility of people going on vacations, and so forth; having additional coordinators ensures that somebody will be around to answer questions.
(Having said that, there's nothing particularly special about the number of assistant coordinators; six seemed like a good idea last July, but we were running with two before then. Certainly, if people think we shouldn't have as many, we can make adjustments the ne time we have elections [in February], and select a smaller number.) Kirill Lokshin 20:11, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
Let's wait for some more opinions, but few really active coordinators (as the job is mainly board maintaince) would be better than a bunch of guys who don't know what to do. Wandalstouring 20:20, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, we have several months before we need to decide things, so there's no rush. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 20:23, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
Active is the main word, a number of the Assitants have regretably found that their Wikitime has dropped. Such as myself who was once very active but have fallen behind on my Wikiprojects due to unexpected circumstances. :o(--Dryzen 15:50, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
I have been thinking about this issue and I read again what people expected of us when they voted us into this office and actually we don't do many of these things. I suggest to rename us into staff or crew for the next election, simply because the word coordinator is an euphemism for the job description (see above).
So my suggestionis: staff leader/staff assistant
Job description by Kirill Lokshin:
There's fairly little that couldn't be done by someone else, but experience suggests that people will generally assume that someone else is doing it. There are a few things for which coordinators have been "written into" the process (e.g. closing A-Class reviews), but it's largely a formal delegation of (housekeeping) responsibility, not power. In other words, most other project members won't bother with the administrative stuff on the assumption that the coordinators will take care of it.
The most practical point, though, is that the coordinators are explicitly listed as points of contact and people to whom questions can be directed in a variety of places around the project. Wandalstouring 17:07, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
If you dig back in the archives to the original discussion that led to this position, the term "coordinator" was chosen precisely because it doesn't imply that the position has any real power; I don't think that trying to change it to something like "staff leader" is going to be a good idea.
(As far as the job descriptions, those tend to get written about an hour before the elections; so having something ready beforehand would probably be a good idea. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 19:23, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
From what I can read, it seems like everyone's on the tuned on to the same wave length, just need to name the channel now. Am I correct in this assumption?--Dryzen 14:28, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Yup. Wandalstouring 10:47, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
For what it is worth, I think most of us have tried to help wherever we were needed. I have worked on a number of articles where asked, and spent a fair amount of time on peer reviews, and other nuts and bolts grunt work. I think 6 is a fair number, and the title was a good one simply because it did not imply power, but someone to contact - which people have, at least with me, and I know with Wandalstouring. 2 simply was not enough to do the peer reviews, help with problem articles, it was all being dumped on Kirill - hopefully this has worked better. But the guy with the answer is Kirill Lokshin -- have the six of us helped more with the grunt stuff? old windy bear 19:42, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Oh, definitely; six is much better than two. At this point, we may have been able to get away with having fewer than six, strictly speaking; but, in the future, I suspect that the amount of work to be done will keep increasing, so we may as well have six. :-) Kirill Lokshin 20:24, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Kirill Lokshin I can only say I have deeply enjoyed working for you, and hope I have been of some use. Speaking of same, is there anything in particular that needs attention right now, other than peer reviews, (I am getting ready to post some thing again there, lol!)? Thanks! old windy bear 21:21, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, there's a list of things in the #Open tasks for coordinators section above, but that's mostly just day-to-day maintenance work, not anything major. The big things now are probably peer reviews and the backlog of unassessed articles. Kirill Lokshin 22:56, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Kirill Lokshin I am going to concentrate on the backlog of unassessed articles, with hitting the peer reviews. Thanks! old windy bear 23:55, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Lesenswerte Artikel - a similar process to our A-class review and a possible source for inspiration

This is a review process in the German wikipedia similar to our A-class.

Wahlmodus Election mode

Die Wahl dauert sieben Tage. The election lasts seven days. Ausgewertet wird am siebten Tag nach der Einstellung ab 0:01 Uhr. Evaluation is done on the seventh days since nomination after 0:01. Damit ein Artikel als lesenswert ausgezeichnet werden kann, müssen für ihn bis zum Ende der Kandidatur mindestens drei Pro-Stimmen mehr als Contra-Stimmen abgegeben worden sein. For the article to be tagged as worth reading there have to be casted till the end of candidancy at least three more pro-votes than contra-votes.

Offensichtliche Unsinnskandidaten können mit Begründung sofort entfernt werden. Obvious nonsense candidates can be removed immediately if leaving a justification. Wenn ein Artikel schon nach 24 Stunden fünf Contra-Stimmen mehr als Pro-Stimmen erhalten hat, endet die Wahl vorzeitig. If an article after 24 hours has already received five more contra-votes than pro-votes the election gets terminated prematurely. Enthält ein Artikel einen gravierenden inhaltlichen Fehler, ist er unabhängig vom Abstimmungsergebnis nicht lesenswert. If the article contains a major error in content it doesn't qualify as worth reading despite the election. Wahlen mit geringer Beteiligung oder uneindeutigen Votum werden als „ergebnislos“ gewertet. Elections with little attendance or an ambiguous result are assessed "without result". Nach der Auswertung wird die Kandidatur auf der Diskussionsseite des jeweiligen Artikels archiviert. After the assessment the candidancy gets archived on the discussion page of the respective article.

Furthermore it is possible to nominate each article for reassessment after appeals for substantial changes due to criticism went unheard.

My idea is that we could lengthen the A-class review to seven days.
Furthermore I suggest to turn the B-class assessment into a similar process where we check the information presented in articles. Such an assessment needs a limited timeframe, perhaps four days like our current A-class review.
Last but not least we need to establish a modus operandi for articles where massive criticism appears after the assessment. I suggest a reassessment in case substantial criticism is presented that shouldn't be the case for an article of the respective level. Wandalstouring 21:37, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Hmm,
  • Lengthening the A-Class review may be feasible, but it would be somewhat problematic in that people will become more likely to skip it. At the moment, waiting four days isn't too bad; but if we substantially increase the time needed, editors will just move directly to FAC (for which seven days is a possibility). Kirill Lokshin 21:45, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
  • B-Class: not really practical, in my opinion. We're talking about thousands of articles here, covering a fairly wide range of quality; there's no real benefit to trying to sqeeze them all through a bureaucratic bottleneck. The bulk of the assessment system should remain open to single editors updating assessments without having to go throuh an overly formal process, I think. (In any case, actually checking the information would generally require far longer than four days; most articles will not have uninvolved editors with references readily available.)
  • Reassessment: there's already an understanding (mentioned explicitly in the instructions, if I recall correctly) that A-Class articles could be re-listed for review if someone felt that they were not up to par (similarly to how FAR works). Perhaps we can make this clearer; but I think we're more or less where we need to be on this point.
Kirill Lokshin 21:45, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
As you point out the problem is people running for FA. If someone can't wait to get nominated on FA he is very likely to fail it, so I don't think that these nominations should be of concern. For comparison, in the German version FA(exzellente Artikel) runs for 20 days. I can't neither follow the argument about reduced attendance. The A-class review with its limited timeframe is mainly done by the same editors all the time. Lengthening this timespan increases the chance that one who is not among "the usual suspicious ones" drops in.
  • B-class: I think very practical to establish some basic standards, otherwise this is a meaningless category and should be removed.
I will mark the day when the first A-class article assessed with the new process gets re-listed. Wandalstouring 22:02, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
The other disadvantage of a seven-day review (as far as running it is concerned) would be that it would permit more changes to the article, raising the issue of whether comments made at the beginning still apply at the end. But this isn't that big of a deal, admittedly; I'm willing to go along with seven days (or some other number) if the members of the project think it's a better idea.
As far as the B-Class issue: establishing standards would be a good thing, and we could certainly modify the descriptions given in the quality scale to be more specific or stringent with regards to things required; but this is somewhat different from actually having a formal multi-day process for assessing the articles, which I think would be needlessly bureaucratic. Kirill Lokshin 22:39, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Don't think about the B-class review as bureaucratic, see it as a way to draw some attention to the issue and to centralise all relevant reviews for establishing some standards. The idea is to clearly present some rules for the B-class (possibly listed ahead of each review) and give interested people a chance to assess whether an article qualifies according to this rules. To avoid that you get additional bureaucratic workload this review process could be maintained by a derivate of Essjaybot(User:Essjay). A possible necessary change would be to have all the B-class reviews on one talk page. Than we only have to keep it on our watchlist and check the recently archived results.Wandalstouring 10:16, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
But the question, then, is why we need a formal multi-day review. If the idea is merely to establish standards, why can't we simply declare some particular standards that B-Class articles need to meet, but then apply them through the regular single-person reviews (via WP:MHA#Requests for assessment, if needed)? For example, if we wanted a standard that all B-Class articles required inline citations, we could simply make that a requirement, and allow people to downgrade any B-Class article that lacked them at will; what would be the benefit of having things go through a formal process if people can already change the grades as appropriate?
(As a side note: the GA process does not require such a form of review—that being one of the main reasons we created our A-Class review process—so we'd wind up with the bizarre scenario that an article might jump to GA-Class at the whim of a single GA reviewer, but would need a more complex review for a lower level.) Kirill Lokshin 17:54, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Standards via WP:MHA#Requests for assessment can be proposed, but I don't count that they make any difference. This should be done by someone familiar with the topic, the possiblity to take away the B-class assessment of an article without a public review is the best possibility for bad blood between editors (and a nice tool in disputes, etc.). It would be adviseable to try to integrate the individual task forces stronger into the B-class review.
What if we skip the GA? Stub/Start, B-class, A-class, FA is all we need. The GA review process is quite good if handed properly, but the limited number of reviewers and its closeness to the A-class make it disposeable.
  • Stub/Start are review free categories
  • B-class review 4 days(needs factual accuracy and broad coverage of the topic, citation issue may be included) more than one editor (excluding the main editors of the article)
  • A-class review 7 days(a closer look on content, language and citation) at least three editors (excluding the main editors of the article)
  • FA review 30 days same procedure
A lot of our B-class material is quite in a bad shape and this makes it seemingly unclear what the category means to say the least. Or in other words, Stub, Start and B-class are worthless categories right now. A real review could help to improve B-class quality, meaning it is not yet an A-class, but already an informative article. Wandalstouring 18:31, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Hmm. I suppose this might be workable, to some degree. Some practical points:
  • We need, obviously, to decide what the criteria for B-Class are in more detail. The A-Class review is moving closer to FAC in terms of having extensive back-and-forth commentary; but the numbers involved with B-Class suggest that we want to make that review as straightforward as possible.
  • Similarly, it would probably be better to run the reviews directly on the assessment page, without the complicated subpage business done for the A-Class reviews.
  • If we're not going to require a high number of endorsements, could we get away with a system similar to how GA originally worked? In other words, people would list proposed B-Class articles on the page, and then any uninvolved reviewer could promote (or not) the article? I'm not sure that having a longer review will be beneficial here, particularly if the criteria are straightforward enough that they can be used as a simple checklist.
  • What about the 3,000+ article backlog?
Kirill Lokshin 18:58, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
The 3k+ backlog can be implemented to the process in let's say a year, utilizing a bot that autonominates 10 per day.
Sure, but we could think about a way to direct specific editors attention to certain subjects. While all is presented at one big review page we could possibly we create specific subpages of the B-class review(like with the image requests) that can be watched by groups of interest, pressumably task forces. Perhaps task forces can have directly nominations that are added to the main nomination page.
Sure, the criteria would be an issue to discuss on the main page after we hav solved these issues. Wandalstouring 19:52, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Wouldn't doint things via task forces require a lot more subpages and/or double-listing? Presumably people who are interested in assessing things can just watch the main assessment page; it's not that high-traffic, for the most part.
(In any case, as I noted below, it's probably worth sounding these ideas off the project's membership as a whole before investing too much time arguing over very specific implementation details, since (a) people may not want certain things as a matter of principle, and (b) other editors may have better ideas for how to implement things.) Kirill Lokshin 20:03, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Given that we have a number of semi-independent ideas here, I think it may be best to simply present the possibilities to the project as a whole, and let everyone decide what we actually want to do, rather than continuing to debate back-and-forth here. There are, as far as I can see, four proposals that can be adopted independently of one another:
  • Extending the A-Class review to seven days.
  • Getting rid of the GA-Class level.
  • Adopting more exact guidelines for B-Class articles.
  • A more formal B-Class review, in one of several forms:
  • A four-day review requiring more than one endorsement.
  • A GA-like review requiring a single outside endorsement.
  • Something else?
Any objections to presenting these options to the project as a whole? Kirill Lokshin 19:50, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
No objection. Wandalstouring 20:05, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Ok, I've opened up a discussion here. Kirill Lokshin 20:34, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Changes in the request departement

I was thinking about changing the request departement from lists to a categories for easier maintainance. Any suggestions, objections? Wandalstouring 10:35, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Mmm, I think that the adoption of the task force lists is going to get rid of the issue entirely; much of the material in the request department is gone now, and I don't see any reason why the remainder cannot be handed off to the appropriate task forces as well (with some general requests being listed directly in {{WPMILHIST Announcements}}.
(As a practical issue, it's worth noting that categories can't be used for requested articles, as there's nothing to put the category on. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 17:47, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Practically, where do you make image requests and translation request? The task forces have not yet been used for this purpose and it is absolutely not clear whether they are likely to do so in the future. Yes, I solved the bulk of issues here(But I'm not willing to search images for every stub of an artillery modification), but this is only due to a new tool helping us to use external images.
  • The problem with your task force idea is that we don't have a complete coverage with task forces.
  • The problem with directing the rest to the talk page is that it is not clear whether the issue will be solved anytime soon before getting archived.
Naturally the problem with this request area is the low maintainance. While this is still a central point for requests some people visit there is no reason against directing them also to the task forces or the main talk page and watch the results. The only problem is how do we organize things? Wandalstouring 18:02, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Actually, at least some task forces are doing image and translation requests (as I was asked to add parameters for those to {{WPMILHIST Announcements/Task force}}), so those can be farmed out. As for the rest: I didn't mean moving them onto the talk page, but onto the template itself (similiarly to how the requested articles are there); if anything, that would give them more prominence than being on the request page (which seems to be much lower-traffic). Kirill Lokshin 18:19, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
The template has been critized by several editors for being so big and annoying that they do not pay attention to it(low computer tech gets slowed down, etc.). That's possibly one of the reasons you have to write a reminder about A-class reviews every time while they are marked in big red letters on the template of the high traffic main talk page. Furthermore weren't the requests already on the template of the main talk page while waiting here in a low traffic region? If some task forces really do answer the image requests on the long run, OK. Sure this site doesn't receive high traffic, but on the other hand traffic does not equal helpful editors. I would favor a combined approach that features a centralized form that is easily maintain- and watchable for gnomes and requests directed at interested task forces(some task forces suck at answering any request). Wandalstouring 18:48, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, my point was that anyone who wanted to watch a forum specifically could just as easily watch the template page as they could the request page; if they're already interested, the exact page doesn't make a difference. (More generally, I think having a single place where all requests can be seen is better than having two different places, since it reduces the chance that people will be watching the "wrong" forum.) Kirill Lokshin 18:52, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Improved redirects

To keep our leader busy ;) Does anyone know where I can ask for an improvement of the article redirects? I would suggest that instead of redirecting to whole articles there should also be a way to redirect to chapters within articles. Wandalstouring 12:28, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

There is now! The developers finally added this a few weeks ago; it's now possibl to redirect to sections using the same syntax as linking to them. :-) Kirill Lokshin 14:22, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
We should give Grafikm a note. Wandalstouring 14:50, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Describing coordinator work

Building on some of the comments in the discussion above, I've come up with a (brief) draft description of what the coordinator positions generally entail; this can both be placed on the coordinator page as background material and used (as discussed above) for the coming elections. What I've come up with so far:

The primary responsibility of the project coordinators is the maintenance and housekeeping work involved in keeping the project and its internal processes running smoothly; this includes a variety of tasks, such as keeping the announcement and open task lists updated, overseeing the assessment and review processes, managing the proposal and creation of task forces, and so forth. There is fairly little here that couldn't be done by any other editor, of course—in only a few places, such as the A-Class review, have the coordinators been explicitly written into a process—but, since experience suggests that people tend to assume that someone else is doing whatever needs to be done, it has proven beneficial to formally delegate responsibility for this administrative work to a specified group.

The coordinators also have two additional roles. First, they serve as the project's designated points of contact, and are explicitly listed as people to whom questions can be directed in a variety of places around the project. Second, they have a (highly informal) role in leading the drafting of project guidelines and overseeing the implementation of project decisions on issues like category schemes and template use.

I'd appreciate it if anyone could look this over and make sure that it makes sense and covers the major points involved. Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 18:01, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

So, any objections? Kirill Lokshin 02:57, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
Okay, since there haven't been any objections, I've copied the above material to the coordinator page. :-) Kirill Lokshin 04:45, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Help to solve edit conflicts is an inofficial task derived from the respect for coordinators. We can suggest ways to solve ongoing disputes or help get discussions back to constructive criticism. Wandalstouring 22:25, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Good point; I'll add that. Kirill Lokshin 22:40, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Ok, done; does the text seem more-or-less what you had in mind? Kirill Lokshin 22:42, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes. (Besides I miss the other guys, you always have to call them explicitly. Perhaps we could make a weekly meetup or sth.) Wandalstouring 23:13, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Heh. A number of them are (expectedly or not) busy outside of Wikipedia, so that wouldn't really be very successful, I think. (But people do tend to show up when it's really needed, for what it's worth.) Kirill Lokshin 23:15, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Sorry. I lurk, and try to comment just to let ppl know that I'm paying attention and still here and all that (as I'm doing right now)... I try to do what I can in little ways to be more admin/coordinator-like, but I guess it's sort of stealthy. Sorry if you feel you have to call some of us out directly in order to get our attention, but I assure you that (a) I nearly always read or at least skim the relevant discussions even when I don't take part, and (b) I am more than happy to take part and help out in whatever ways I can when you do call me out individually. LordAmeth 00:05, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

My suggestion was just that we have a weekly online meetup where we mention some problems and say perhaps this or that could need some maintainance. Let's say during the 48h of the weekend we explicitly post things here and have the work coordinated. Otherwise it's Kirill will do. Wandalstouring 00:24, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Formalizing this too much might not work out in practice; people's schedules are going to vary, and there's not much we can do. I do agree that it would be useful to have a more active approach to things, though; something like weekly (monthly?) status updates/discussions on what work is needed would probably be a good thing. Kirill Lokshin 02:22, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Status report for February 2

Running with Wandalstouring's suggestion (somewhere above) that we ought to have a little more active coordination here, I thought we might start off by trying to have regular (weekly? bi-weekly? monthly?) reviews of the status of various things in the project that we need to work on. I have only a vague idea of where this might go, though; so please pardon the rather stream-of-consciousness form of this first report.

Without further ado:

Assessment and tagging

We are well on our way to eliminating the existing backlog of unassessed articles; we're down to ~500 recently. The major outstanding issue here is the obvious question: how many of the articles in our scope are still completely untagged, and aren't in the assessment system at all?

I think we should try to get a large-scale tagging effort going here, to cover all the articles that have been missed up to this point. This can be approached from two angles. First, we need to prod the automation department back to activity; there's a fairly large backlog there. Ideally, we can get some available AWB users to pitch in. Does anyone know of other bots that are available for project tagging, incidentally? Second, we can use PockBot to do small-scale scans for untagged articles within particular category trees. This is somewhat less efficient, since the tagging has to be done by hand; but can be carried out even without any bot/AWB assistance.

On a related note, a lot of lists were tagged into Category:Non-article military history pages before it was decided that lists were also to be assessed using the quality scale; assistance with putting them back into the regular assessment levels would be very appreciated.

Task lists

We've been moving towards eliminating the separate requests page by pushing requests into {{WPMILHIST Announcements}} (inluding the task force templates). The main backlog here at the moment is in the "Conflicts" subpage; we need to go through the list of redlinks in campaignboxes given there and move them to the appropriate task force lists where possible.

There was recently a very large list of requested topics added into the template, incidentally. A number of them already exist under other names, however; assistance with creating the needed redirects would be welcome.

Other upcoming issues

We should, I think, try to make some more headway on the military personnel category structure. The "veterans" cats will probably get deleted, and we ought to be able to figure out something practical with the "soldiers" cats as well. The next step would probably be to go back to the drawing board and start a project-wide discussion on how the top few levels of the category tree (down from Category:Military personnel) should be structured, so we can actually come up with a defined scheme (as we have for conflicts & units).

Comments, suggestions, criticisms, and assistance with these issues would be very welcome! Kirill Lokshin 03:47, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Automation is always a good idea.

These requests are always fun, heaps of monotony. Don't forget that it must be extremely obvious after restructuring where you can retrieve maps and other images.

Veterans must have been military personnel, so just integrate them into the normal tree and do not branch them out (but military veterinaries do ;D). Wandalstouring 10:52, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I've overhauled the automation department somewhat, mostly to simplify the structure; I think the complex table format was slightly overkill. I've also put in a bot request to do three initial sets of deep-tree tagging; hopefully somebody will go ahead and do those at some point in the near future.
The longer-term problem is that a lot of the top-level categories can't be fed to a bot directly, because there are non-military or non-historical topics that are sub-categories a few levels down. A lot of those cases are simply incorrect categorization, and need to be fixed; but, until they are, we can't simply have a bot tag everything. Kirill Lokshin 23:31, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Some updates on the requested articles stuff:
  • I've split the central "Requested articles" list into a sub-template (Template:WPMILHIST Announcements/Requested articles) to allow easier editing without needing to wade through the code of the main announcement template.
  • The two request subpages (or what's left of them, anyways) have been merged back into the main requests page; the material includes three short lists of personnel, and the "Red links in campaignboxes" list, which needs to be trimmed of now-existing articles.
Kirill Lokshin 01:34, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps a separate disambiguation page for maps and images might help to retrieve that info easier. Wandalstouring 01:43, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
I was under the impression that we were going to put the links for those directly on WP:MILHIST#Resources, removing the need for people to wander through a bunch of subpages looking for them; is that what you mean, or do you have something different in mind? Kirill Lokshin 01:53, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Resources would be OK, although it seems our most frequent FAQ and should have a prominent place. Wandalstouring 17:20, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
We can add a more direct link to it on the sidebar; that ought to help. Kirill Lokshin 17:38, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
I modified the link a bit because even to me it wasn't very obvious what this refered to. We might continue to modify it further because the featured pictures gallery is definetly part of our resources. Finished modification. Wandalstouring 01:14, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Meh. It's really part of the showcase, not a resource in its own right; the thirty images there aren't really going to be used as a general image database. I do see the point about the unclear link, though; but I think there are better ways to deal with it. How does the new link ("Image and media resources") look; is it clear enough? Kirill Lokshin 02:11, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

'Featured pictures are considered to be the best images available on Wikipedia;' Aren't they resources? What do we have to do with uploading and evaluating them? My interpretation is they are very fine examples of our resources, but I can see your point. Perhaps we discuss such issues when there are some new coordinators who tend to be quite active during the first weeks. Wandalstouring 02:16, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

My interpretation was that "Resources" was mostly intended as a place where article editors could find things to improve their articles. While the FPs are, indeed, good examples of media, they're not likely to be helpful in that regard, both because (a) they're already used in the articles to which they're relevant, and (b) the selection is so limited and so random. But it's no big deal either way. Kirill Lokshin 02:21, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
  • List of Foo articles. I did run a quick check on them. They don't clearly cite there sources or list any sources at all. So the reliability of the content can be considered quite low. Next problem is the layout. Some layouts are a pain to read, especially if you have hundreds of lines and in each line is one word. Some others use wikitables. I suggest to make this recommended standard for all lists and to add clear descriptions in the form of a header where it is explained what the list is about and what are eventual problems with this type of list(outdated? so the date of the listed status is very important) etc.
  • Quality of sources was a major issue in some recent FAC. We might suggest the task forces to expand their information on resources by creating lists with verifiable(!!!) assessments and personnel comments on different works and authors which are used within its scope or could be used within its scope. This might actually be helpful for many authors who don't have a scholarly background and are thus possibly ignorant to problems arising from the use of primary and tertiary works and the problems of differing POV in secondary works. Wandalstouring 01:51, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
We do need to work out some guidelines on lists, yes. Tables seem to work well, but they do impose some restraints on images, since it's difficult to float an image next to a table cleanly; we ought to come up with some recommendations on how to incorporate different types of media into the layout. The simplest thing to do may be to just throw some initial suggestions onto WT:MILHIST and let the editors who actually do heavy list-editing hash out the finer details.
OK. Wandalstouring
An annotated bibliography, basically? That seems like a good idea. (I vaguely recall that a project-wide one was proposed at some point, but doing it by task force, as you suggest, will probably scale better.) We can probably start this from the ground up just by initiating it with a few task forces, and letting it spread virally. Kirill Lokshin 02:11, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Let's start with the Classical warfare task force. (I know at least one candidate for the task.) i think that can work as a model for others. Wandalstouring 02:22, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm not going to be very helpful there, since I don't really know the historiography involved that well; I'll make a start on the Early Modern task force instead. Kirill Lokshin 02:28, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
I suggest to edit your annotated biography a little bit. Make a difference between reviews in scientific magazines (give a short descritption where the review can be found) and comments by wikieditors. This can be possibly achieved by using chapters for each book, similar to our current coordinator election ;). Plus we can have an option to provide the content description of the book itself. Wandalstouring 02:51, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
That's not a bad idea in the long run, but it really requires more than one editor and a dozen works to pull off; I suspect such things will appear incrementally in the more-written-about topic areas (which the Italian Wars really aren't). Kirill Lokshin 03:00, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
They have been fought so that Kirill Lokshin has his 'private wars' to create FAs. No, really we should think somehow about a way for standards. Now I'm playing with a template that creates a specific table. wait a moment. Wandalstouring 03:07, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Hehe. ;-)
I've made an attempt to set up a usable format by hand; does that seem anywhere near what you had in mind?
(I'd be a bit hesitant to use a template for this; using the same template many times on a single page will run into the transclusion limits fairly quickly.) Kirill Lokshin 03:17, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Not quite. i modified the first one to give you an example. Wandalstouring 03:29, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Okay. I've moved a few things around, but the general format seems usable. Kirill Lokshin 03:52, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

The task force list in the Milhist template could be modified to present the task forces listed upon topics (and alphabetically within) rather than an alphabetical mix. Wandalstouring 12:03, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Ok, done. Kirill Lokshin 18:05, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

flexible number of coordinators in case of deadlock

In case we have a deadlock like in the last election, I suggest to handle the number of assistants flexible (if the members of the project agree) and appoint more than six assistants. Any objections? Wandalstouring 17:12, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Meh. I'm not sure how beneficial that would be, all things considered; it would depend on just how many extra coordinators such a setup would result in. If there were, say, a si-way tie for the last spot, we'd almost double the number of assistants.
(But I do appreciate the fact that this may be more palatable to people than the expedient taken in the last election. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 17:38, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
I think the number of votes should be taken into acount, a six way tie with one vote each dosen't bode well for taken mesures to having 6 extra ssitants. The was a reson for there low numbers. We might have to ponder the possibility of having a minimum number of votes to get in. But currently I dont think our bottom-ties will be of such low numbers at 3 supports and under. Yet as always it is a possibility of the future and as such something to probobly merrit a word of two of discussion.--Dryzen 15:39, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
At least a decision that is not made by the dual coordinatorship. :)
I suggest that the elected lead coordinator can make a proposal for an inclusion of a limited number of candidates who did have substantial support if in their cases a strict seven in rest out rule would be less representative. For example in the last election Loopy could have been included with flexile number procedure. However, it is not intended to significantly expand the number of coordinators and being appointed coordinator due to flexible number procedure is a honorary position. Does this solve all issues? Wandalstouring 16:47, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, I have no particular problems with that. Kirill Lokshin 17:47, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
lol, things as thins make me think of the Roman Empire, all good while under great leaders. I have no problems with honorary assitant coordinators. I gather these things will be judged on a case by case basis?--Dryzen 18:52, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Yes, that's why it is flexible. I feel just a bit uncomfortable if throwing out people in close cases. Let's don't make too much fuzz about it. Wandalstouring 20:08, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Consolidated review page?

Based on some comments from PocklingtonDan, I'm beginning to wonder if it might not be a good idea to have a single consolidated review department for the project, including:

  1. Peer reviews
  2. A-Class reviews
  3. FACs
  4. FARs
  5. Other featured content reviews

An extremely rough mockup is here. The main advantage would be providing a single page that members could watch for new reviews (of all kinds), and allowing easy browsing of MILHIST-related FACs/FARs (which currently isn't available).

Thoughts? Kirill Lokshin 20:38, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Perfect. Wandalstouring 20:44, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Excellent mockup, it isntantly brough to mind my strongest point of contention: Size. Gatering all those themes together makes for a very large page. At times will be very manageble while at other it will horendously large, with wich some member's browser will have trouble coping. This gathering also make it easier for one to get lost between subjects. Blurring the lines between types of reviews. That it for the negative. Having everything together will undoubtably bleed over particiaption, where one whould usually only do A-class might dabble in Peer and the such, wich is a good thing considering the number of editors who take the time to review. The capacity to put it on Watchlist will as well enable to ease to follow devellopements within the reviews. As to having all this displayed in one place we already had this with the newsletter, but again with this later one must take the tiem to read day by day and some will perfer to simply have it in the watchlist with the rest fo the important contribution centers.--Dryzen 21:20, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
The size issue is actually one I had considered. I'm of the opinion that it's not going to be that big of a deal; the page is only a fraction of the size of one of the central reviews (e.g. WP:FAC itself), and those don't really get any complaints from people unable to load them. While it is larger than the current separate pages, I doubt it will ever get so large as to be an actual technical problem. Kirill Lokshin 21:24, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
I've created a more coherent mockup at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Review, and have asked for comments on it here; let's see what people think of this idea. Kirill Lokshin 04:43, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
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