Wikipedia talk:WikiProject European history

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EU History

Hi, I'm currently working on a new EU History page. The current one is just a history of enlargement and although I am expanding its content, there are two problems still facing it. Firstly, it is all very political, mentions of things like terrorist attacks or other major events outside of the development of the EU's organisation are missing. Secondly there is no Europe-wide history page to organise that which happened outside the EU during this time.

I hope that the members of this project can help to rectify this, by ensuring that the developing new page has sufficient mentions or links to other major events. All comments and contributions are much appreciated. See: User:JLogan/DraftEUHistory - J Logan ^t/_c: 11:29, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Proposal: WikiProject Europe

I was noting down the related projects for Wikipedia:WikiProject European Union and number of small European projects as I was going round. How do you guys feel about a parent "WIkiProject Europe" to link together as many European projects at the top (not merge, unless some fell the need to)? It could help discussion and cooperation between projects and possibly reduce overheads for the smaller ones. In addition for areas with no project of their own. Where a project has few members or is inactive, a common peer-assessment could help them move forward.

Ideas? For central discussion, see WIkiproject EU talk page 193.11.208.247 12:48, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject History

WikiProject History now has a European task force. I am considering merging this project with that task force if no one objects--Phoenix 15 (Talk) 13:50, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

I object to anything hasty, let's talk about the best way to do this first before deprecating this project.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 17:54, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, a complete merge is a bit much but this project is a little...remote and inactive. Turning this into WikiProject History task force might attract more members--Phoenix 15 (Talk) 18:00, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

All you have to do is treat it like a task force, just make the task force page a redirect to the project, in the same way that Military History does things, with joint task forces with the geographic projects. Alternatively, you just treat it as a sub project. There's no real difference, except the project already exists, has an established page, and has active members. The project certainly does not seem "remote" by which I think you mean it deals with a very specific topic. European history is a very broad topic. And I don't see it as being particularly inactive.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 21:01, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

I have removed the deprecation tags, there is no consensus.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 21:27, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm okay with the merger — doesn't affect me much either way, I just think it's important to have a group for doing that sort of thing. —Ryan McDaniel 20:48, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Merger

Clearly there should be a relationship between the Wikipedia:WikiProject_History and this Project. This project should probably merge with Project_History/European_task_force. But the information on this Project page should be largely preserved in the result rather than deprecating this project. The larger question is whether this should ultimately be a project or a task force. Understanding the analogy to WP:MILHIST, that had a somewhat different evolution. This is a bit more forced. There is a current proposal for a WikiProject US History and an existing and active Wikipedia:WikiProject_Australian_history, as well as several regional and country specific history projects with less to no activity. The Project History page seems to indicate an intent to do this same thing to every region. If so, a much broader discussion is in order. One alternative would be to have the Task force page redirect to here. Another would be to simply list this as a subproject of the Project History and treat this more like the Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of life where there are many levels of sub projects which take some of their guidelines from higher level projects and do other, more topic specific things, independently. Whether a task force or a project, this project's parentage is really shared between the embryonic History project and Wikipedia:WikiProject Europe. --Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 20:55, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

• • Based on discussion at the Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject History, geographic task forces appear to have been abandoned for the time being and this proposal seems to no longer have relevance. That project seems to be pursuing a formal parent/child relationship with other history projects rather than trying to incorporate them into the overall parent as task forces. Therefore, I'm removing the merge tags.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 15:11, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

collaboration of the history projects

Hi, I'm newly appointed coordinator of the Wikipedia: WikiProject History. I was coordinator of the Wikipedia: WikiProject Military History before. My scope is to improve the cooperation among the different history projects andf use the synergy of a common infrastructure to improve article quality. One idea would be to merge small project into a larger wikiproject history with a common infrastructure and the small projects continuing independently as task forces of this project. What are your suggestions? Greetings Wandalstouring 15:13, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Generally agreed, though discussion in each instance is most necessary.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 20:59, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I think the scope of WP:HIST is so broad as to make it a mite unwieldy ... I think EuroHist is at the right level that, if we breathe some life into it, we'd be more effective unconsolidated. Of course, some coordination and cooperation between the projects would be wonderful, but I don't think there's a great benefit to being absorbed. - Revolving Bugbear (formerly Che Nuevara) 23:32, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Afterthought -- or were you talking about merging smaller projects into this one, as with the suggestion below re: Polish history? If so, I wholeheartedly agree and think that's exactly what this project needs. - Revolving Bugbear Revolving Bugbear (formerly Che Nuevara) 23:33, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

I think it was just a general question. Merging this one into History was sort of canned, at least for a while, after an aborted attempt to simply deprecate it and create a task force prior to Wandalstouring becoming involved. I think the question here is more "What are our thoughts on how we might all cooperate". Though not being the one asking I'm not sure. As the one who jumped up and down and yelled when the deprecation was attempted, and I wasn't even a member yet, I definitely agree with you.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 17:22, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I looked around and the same message appears to have been posted on other more active projects.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 23:25, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Proposed merger with WikiProject History of Poland

The above Project is currently inactive. I believe it would make sense to merge that project into this one. If that would mean that there might be established a "History of Poland" task force of this project, I think that might be reasonable and acceptable. John Carter 14:58, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Subject to hearing something from a participant in Wikipedia:WikiProject History of Poland that it is not actually inactive, I would concur. I take it the actual procedure you propose would be to move the project page to Wikipedia:WikiProject European history/Task Force Poland or something of that nature, yes? In the next couple of days I'll try to get to notifying some of the members of that project, if you haven't already, and also commenting at Wikipedia:WikiProject Poland as it should probably be a joint task force.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 15:58, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

On further review, there is no Wikipedia:WikiProject Poland, it's just a redirect to Portal:Poland.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 16:13, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

The page of the portal it links to is the Portal:Poland/Poland-related Wikipedia notice board. I'm told by those who've been around longer that such notice boards were the precursors to the existing WikiProjects. I also see that that page has it's own assessment statistics page, which probably means that they decided to not create a separate WikiProject per se and just keep everything on the existing notice board page. It can probably be seen as being a project for these purposes though. It'd help if they had a sidebar to permit easier linking, though. Oh well. John Carter 16:26, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

As a member I attest it is inactive. How would this merger be accomplished? I'd oppose redirecting, as it has some still-useful tools and/or historical discussions of interest, and will one day be revived (once we get more editors interested in Polish history). PS. Due to low levels of activity on various projects Poland-related editors are primarily centered around WP:PWNB, indeed.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk} 18:09, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

What would basically happen is that the page would be moved to a subpage of this project, probably Wikipedia:WikiProject European history/Polish history task force or something similar, and that the EH project's banner would probably provide separate assessment in time for the work group, when the banner gets worked on. John Carter 18:21, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, and because in form it would be a move, rather than a merger, the talk would just come right along with it and it would have no affect on page histories, just page locations. The real value is in the direct coordination by a more active project and the lack of any impression by members of this project that Poland was taken care of by its own project and could be ignored, in other words, the Poland pages would still get taken care of, even if no members of the Poland task force were around. Additionally, when a project is inactive, it's often because of too small a scope, this project would involve editors with an interest in the history various parts of Europe, including Poland, (and some would undoubtedly be interested in Europe as a whole) thereby drawing from a larger base of potential editors. By having a task force, those who wanted to specialize in just Poland would still have a place to discuss and coordinate Polish history without so much "noise" but those who wanted to generalize would be able to see more easily what was going on in Poland as well.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 06:40, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Can we do this and add a parameter to our banner for the task force? Like a "|Poland = yes" parameter? Could such a parameter add be used in concert with WikiProject Eastern Europe as well?--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 18:48, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

There has been only one comment from the Polish History Project and it was not what I would call an objection. Considering the inactive status of that project, I don't think there is a consensus issue. Let's just do this. John's proposed title: Wikipedia:WikiProject European history/Polish history task force is long, but it's consistent with the way WP:MILHIST names their task forces. What do you say?--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 02:45, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

I think Wikipedia:WikiProject European history/Polish task force would be a better name. The fact that the project if European history obviously means it's about history and it would be easier to find--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 18:53, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree, my only concern being that if it were to become a joint task force with a geographic or country project the name could become ambiguous.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 21:13, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. We wouldn't want to give the impression that we were creating a task force/work group for a country, but rather for the history of the country, and that would seem to require the inclusion of the word "history" in the name. -- John Carter (talk) 21:16, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

I suppose, do it then, include the "history"--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 21:30, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

•  Done at least the mechanics of the move have been completed, redirects checked, etc, got rid of the merge tags. Now we need to restructure the task force page so it doesn't reference itself as a project. How do we deal with members of the old project/new TF who aren't members of the main project? Also, I have not updated any lists, such as at WP:COUNCIL yet. I will make sure this change is also noted at Wikipedia:WikiProject Eastern Europe.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 05:31, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

• So, should I add WP:EH to the WP:HIST banner or are we going to have our own? I can make one if it's the latter. Either way, we'll need to start assessing some articles--Phoenix-wiki ^{(talk · contribs)} 14:51, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Project Overhall

Welcome and thanks for joining. I'm trying to revamp the project and work out the ins and outs of collaboration with Wikipedia:WikiProject History. I'm also working on some of the Romanian and Transylvanian articles and Portal:Transylvania. Unfortunately, I've found that many if not all of the other members listed are inactive, at least with respect to the project. Please feel more than welcome to mark up the Project page with what you see is needed and let me know what you think we can do to further the project. Thanks again.--Doug.(talk • contribs) 03:12, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks on both counts.

I would love to help out with a little revamping. I'd be interested in hearing what your potential plans / goals are.

Cheers! - Revolving Bugbear (formerly Che Nuevara) 17:19, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

You thought of running for the post of coordinator there by any chance? I think you would probably be qualified. John Carter 18:53, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

I apologize for my ambiguousness -- I was referring to a comment on my talk page about Wikiproject European History. I'm not aware of WP:EH having a coordination scheme, but maybe implementing one would be a good idea. - Revolving Bugbear 19:28, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, meant the coordinator for the History project, not the European history project. John Carter 19:44, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

What would you think about doing a serious overhaul of WP:EH to try and get the project running a little more coherently? I've started to outline some potential topics of discussion here. Cheers! - Revolving Bugbear 19:08, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

• This discussion involves at least three people and relates to Planning for this project, so I've moved it here. What about moving your sandbox work to Wikipedia:WikiProject European history/Strategy or "/Overhall" or something like that for discussion/cooperative work? --Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 20:50, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I was planning on doing so as soon as I was sure there was interest in doing this. Given your suggestion, I assume there is and will move it now. - Revolving Bugbear 21:25, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

The question about there being a EuroHist portal; I think there should be--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 18:52, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

I would like to build one as well. Before that, though, we should get to some assessing / improving, I think. - Revolving Bugbear 15:59, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Proposal

I've made a proposal at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council#What to do with WikiProject History--Phoenix-wiki (talk · contribs) 23:03, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Collaborations

It looks like this project is set up to have collaborations on particular articles but that the idea never got going. I'm going to change from the February 2007 idea of the Crimean War to a more or less randomly determined (make that less, just an article I like) new collaboration and I'll try to change it from time to time until someone starts suggesting something. Problem is articles desperately need tagging and, eventually, assessment so we can easily identify them as needing work.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 03:33, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

advertising

I think we need to do some more advertising. I've drummed up a first-round advertising banner proposal (for user / talk pages), which you can see here. Feel free to edit it for improvements. - Revolving Bugbear 22:03, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

If you mean it about "tagging" articles, I can file the bot request which will probably be answered. It'll probably be Betacommandbot, which some people think is malfunctioning, but i alys trsut comtupers, you don't? :) Seriously, I personally haven't had any trouble on the occasions I've had it tag articles before. John Carter (talk) 22:08, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I'll request one of those wikipedia ads like these:

Wikipedia ads	file info – show another – #109

Phoenix-wiki 22:12, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

John Carter: I meant for user pages, not articles. Phoenix: lovely idea :) - Revolving Bugbear 22:34, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I've put us on the Community Portal. - Revolving Bugbear 22:52, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Bugbear: Great idea, though I see what John is talking about, that really looks a lot like a talk page banner; doesn't mean it's not good or anything. I think John, that we need to do what you're talking about too. The total number of tagged articles is disgracefully low. I've used bots for tagging and stubbing in Ag but those are species specific and I'm still getting used to the whole CAT thing. If John can come up with some good CAT parameters, please send out the bots.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 03:37, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Project scope?

Before we seriously talk about tagging articles, we need to know what the explicit scope of this project is. Right now, I'm guessing Category:History of Europe, minus any subcats which fall within the explicit purview of any other "historical" projects, including Wikipedia:WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome, which doesn't use the "history" word. Does that sound acceptable to the rest of you? John Carter (talk) 22:18, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

That sounds acceptable enough to me.--Phoenix-wiki 22:38, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

It sounds like a reasonable definition. I guess we have to decide if we want to include antiquity, and I would specifically exclude things which are already tagged by other historical projects. I don't have a problem with large cross-over with other WikiProjects, although large portions of Greco-Roman topics will be outside of our purview simply because so much of that history took place outside of what we consider Europe. - Revolving Bugbear 22:41, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I'd opt to include Category:Prehistoric Europe and its subcats, simply because of the overlap with the later eras and the locations, but acknowledge the difficulties and possible disagreements there. John Carter (talk) 22:45, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Then I'm very much in agreement with you. - Revolving Bugbear 22:46, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Shouldn't we include stuff right up to present day, like the expansion of the EU?--Phoenix-wiki 14:09, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Are such topics generally excluded by Category:History of Europe? I wouldn't have an objection to including them in our scope, but of course there are already WP:EUROPE and WP:EU which will presumably work on these articles. - Revolving Bugbear 14:49, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I suppose they will.--Phoenix-wiki 15:53, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I concur with all said. Polish history needs to be included in any tagging operation, since their tags are now obsolete and we do need to update our banner to include a task force for Poland parameter. Maybe we could even get a bot to set that to "on" for anything in a Polish Category that we are otherwise tagging. Haven't looked yet at the Strategy page to see if anyone is commenting there, but there was a discussion of scope started there.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 03:41, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

• Regarding Scope: see Wikipedia:WikiProject_European_history/Strategy and discussion of same below.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 12:37, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

A better main picture

In the search for a better main picture, I thought one of Europe at the death of Charlemagne in 814 would be an appropriate image for WikiProject European history. Martintg (talk) 04:27, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

PS, I was bold and updated the pic on the project page so you guys can have a look. Martintg (talk) 04:29, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

• I like it a lot better than the 1905 map. We'll need to update it everywhere though (userbox, project banner, etc.)--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 15:19, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Okay, it's been updated it everywhere now. Martintg (talk) 17:54, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Much better, I think we are pretty much stuck with a map as anything else would tend to suggest something more specific (military, art, etc.). This map is much better than the 1905 map and the colors look better too (maybe just because there are fewer of them and they cover larger areas).--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 12:11, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

WP Former countries

Nice work getting this project started. As a partner project, I would like to recommend WikiProject Former countries. At WPFC we are primarily concerned with improving articles about former states (or former versions of current states) so they can be properly incorporated with other works. We also have a number of partner/child projects that focus on particular European states (eg. Prussia, Naples) - see the sidebar on the WPFC page for a complete list. If you have ideas regarding how our two projects can work together (and avoid duplication or overlap), I would be very interested in discussing the matter. - 52 Pickup ^(deal) 07:10, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Great! Mutual links between our projects would make sense together with links to your child/related projects related to Europe. In the case of task forces, dual (or more) parentage would be worth consideration, such as the way WP:MILHIST often does; that's also possible, though less meaningful with child projects.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 17:37, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good to me as well. John Carter (talk) 17:39, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

52 Pickup - take a look at our topic map/outline that we are working with at Wikipedia:WikiProject European history/Strategy, if you get a chance.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 12:17, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Strategy discussion

The following is merged here from our Strategy Page, the talk page to which will now redirect here, on the suggestion that no one will ever find the discussion there. If it doesn't make sense, look at the strategy page, which has a detailed "map" of the various projects and portals and that was the basis for these discussions - much of this will seem pretty disjointed without that. If it still doesn't make sense, maybe I can explain, maybe I need to refactor - it's mostly copied verbatim:

Historical Regions

Just to throw this into the mix, there are historical regions like Transylvania (this particular one has several separate articles devoted to it's history and a portal.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 21:57, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

• This was just a comment with respect to our "map" of the topic and related projects and in particular the questions posed at Wikipedia:WikiProject_European_history/Strategy#Defining_scope.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 12:19, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Deep questions

I tend to think some of the questions about the definition of history and historical articles should wait while we organize the project a little more. Some of that deserves to be discussed at the SuperParent Wikipedia:WikiProject History too. Definitely needs to be discussed though, don't get me wrong.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 02:24, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

• This related to the comments at Wikipedia:WikiProject_European_history/Strategy#Defining_scope.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 12:21, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Portal:European History?

I'm leaving the heading on the main sub page as it is important to the the "outline" of our scope but thought best to actually discuss here. I'm not sure, depends on whether there's enough interest in maintaining it in the first place and also, could it better be done by a section on Portal:Europe and a section on Portal:History, if not, it at least needs a link there, maybe still a section with a "for more information" link.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 03:46, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

• This was in response to the entry at Wikipedia:WikiProject_European_history/Strategy#Should_there_be_a_Portal:European_history.3F, the discussion link now links back to here.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 12:32, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Move discussion to main talk page

Just as a suggestion, I would recommend discussing these things at the top-level talk page Wikipedia talk:WikiProject European history. I'm not sure people think to check here. No reason not to keep it centralized. - Revolving Bugbear 17:56, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, I had initially intended to discuss what we were doing on the strategy page, more the form than the function, here. But I guess I should've gotten the hint when you didn't respond here either and you were working on the strategy page too. Good call, I'll rework merge and redirect the discussions - shortly I hope.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 03:07, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

 Done--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 03:20, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Relation to other WikiProjects

In regard to "There are a number of extant WikiProjects with large crossovers areas. Some are highly active, and some are defunct. How will we define our relationship to them?", probably a number of ways to slice and dice this. One approach could be to use this WikiProjects as a coordinating project for the other sub-projects: develop common templates, info boxes, article formating; and to fill the breach where a corresponding sub project doesn't exist or are inactive. Perhaps historical events of Europe-wide scope (say spanning 4 or more countries, e.g. Black Death, Protestant Reformation, etc) could fall under this project as well. Martintg (talk) 02:43, 17 January 2008 (UTC)