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WP:MILPEOPLE

I've just made an edit to our notability guideline for people, changing the sentence

"Commanded a notable body of troops in combat"

to read

"Commanded a substantial body of troops in combat"

The reason I did this is because the associated footnote reads For the purposes of these criteria, a "substantial body of troops" refers to a capital ship, a division or larger formation, or their historical equivalents. Obviously this makes little sense when the quotation as given in the footnote isn't actually in the criteria.

However, I thought I ought to check with the project that my amendment is in line with our intention in creating the guideline. EyeSerene^talk 17:50, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

If memory serves, it used to say "substantial", so somebody must have changed it at some point. I can see why, but, with the footnote, I prefer "substantial", as some battalions and even smaller units are notable, but most majors/lieutenant colonels aren't. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 18:50, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Your memory serves you well. It was changed in this edit in April 2010 by User:Kendrick7. To give an idea of what we are talking about here, consider Boris Pash, who is presumed notable under this guideline because he commanded the Alsos Mission, which is definitely notable. (I was planning on fixing up this article in the near future.) There is also the case of Gordon Grimsley King, who commanded the 2/6th Independent Company at the Battle of Kaiapit. In both cases, I could fall back on "Played an important role in a significant military event", but we never defined what a significant military event was. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:29, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

We can't define it, but we know it when we see it? ;) - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 16:30, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Would anybody object if I proposed the incorporation of WP:MILPEOPLE into WP:Notability (people) thereby putting our project on the same footing as WP:POLITICS and WP:PORN? Hawkeye7 (talk) 19:46, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Equalling the porn project is as good-a-reason as any—after all, we do have the bigger, erm... project! ;) But seriously, incorporating it into the central guideline seems like a good idea. Just beware that some of the people who put a lot of effort into the failed bid to make MILMOS a guideline might feel a bit jaded about such processes. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:07, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Heh :) Thanks chaps, I thought it originally said "substantial" as well. Personally I support MILPEOPLE being incorporated into WP:BIO, but didn't we try it a while back and got blocked by objections of process-creep etc? If I had more time I'd try to find the diffs. Regardless, that doesn't mean we can't have another crack at it. EyeSerene^talk 20:52, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Please, please, please. I tried before, but the RfC said no v_v . I would support another attempt.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 19:27, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

I would support you on the matter of principle that wikipedia should be clearer on it's criteria, to reduce the amount of time spent policing and deleting articles (or to make that process more straightforward, again saving valuable editing resource). However, IIRC, the opposition on the matter of comparison with porn stars was " that was then - it wouldn't be allowed now" so that argument won't fly.Monstrelet (talk) 09:28, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps if we draft a proposal here first then? I think there's a good case for formalising MILPEOPLE on the lines Monstrelet mentions and because it covers a comparable number of people to those covered by the other guidelines at Wikipedia:Notability_(people)#Additional_criteria. We currently have roughly 42,000 military bio articles (with no guideline), compared to 40,000 actors & filmmakers; 43,000 academics; 68,000 musicians; 71,000 entertainers etc. EyeSerene^talk 08:58, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Since the last attempt was closed by the above editor, how would a proposed draft be worded?--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 18:56, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Proposal

I propose adding the following to the Additional criteria section:

• This formalises military people along the same lines as the additional criteria for politicians, academics and entertainers. Wikipedia:Notability_(people)#Additional_criteria. We currently have roughly 42,000 military biography articles (with no guideline), compared to 40,000 actors & filmmakers; 43,000 academics; 68,000 musicians; 71,000 entertainers.
• The purpose of formalising the guideline is threefold:
  1. It provides editors with a clear set of guidelines as to what is notable, for the purposes of creating and deleting articles.
  2. Given the large numbers of articles in this category, it saves us from endlessly going over the same ground, when consensus already exists.
  3. It makes it easier for editors to find the appropriate guideline.
• This guideline does not override WP:GNG. Failure to meet these criteria is not conclusive proof that a subject should not be included; conversely, meeting one or more does not guarantee that a subject should be included.

Hawkeye7 (talk) 05:12, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

I agree with that: those points reflect the long-standing outcomes of AfD discussions involving military people. I've taken the liberty of italicising will almost always though, as there are going to be some people who met those criteria but are not covered in reliable secondary sources. Nick-D (talk) 05:32, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

I support this, but I think it might help to first consider how we'll address the likely objections. Based on last time these were:

1. It's unnecessary/instruction creep/more paperwork/WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS/etc because everything one needs to know about notability is already covered by the GNG.
2. Some of the criteria are vague (specifically mentioned were 5 and 7)
3. It encourages an assumption of "presumptive notability" without sufficiently mentioning a need for verifiability against reliable sources

I'm not suggesting we can do much about some of these (the first objection especially), or even that they're all entirely valid, but points 2 and 3 might be worth further consideration.

On another note, I've changed "troops" to "personnel" in number 6 (because we mention ships). What would the air force equivalent be? A Wing? That might be worth adding too.

EyeSerene^talk 09:43, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Wing should be okay for the USAF; the Commonwealth air force equivalent would be a group.

BTW, and I daresay this conversation has been had before, while I think granting automatic notability to 2-stars, e.g. major generals, rear admirals and air vice marshals, is fair enough I'm not so sure about 1-stars, e.g. brigadiers, commodores and air commodores. Obviously my specialty is the RAAF and in my researches I come across a great many air commodores and my feeling is that those who 'top out' at that rank deserve mention only if they have some other claim to notability, e.g. commanding a large formation in wartime, or having been awarded the Victoria Cross, or been an ace. In practice this criterion would affect post-WWII 1-stars more than anything. What do others think? Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 11:28, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

I agree. I've made some additional tweaks to the essay as follows:

I've clarified, trimmed and combined some criteria which I felt were basically saying the same thing. I may well have mucked things up though so please make any amendments you feel are necessary! I'm not sure how we can clarify further - any ideas? EyeSerene^talk 10:27, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

That looks pretty good. I've italicised the 'senior' in the front of the generals though; there are a lot of non-notable generals these days! The wording around this might need to be strengthened further. Nick-D (talk) 10:45, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

I've added some extra examples; not sure how we'd further strengthen that item though (I have changed the emphasis you added but I don't know if that helps) EyeSerene^talk 15:18, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

The thing that's definitely wrong is that you've got the George Cross as a second-level award - it's actually a first-level civilian award (see Military awards and decorations of the United Kingdom). I suggest:

1. were awarded their nation's highest award for gallantry in the face of the enemy (for example VC, etc.) or their nation's highest civilian award (for example GC, etc.) in a military context.

Does this translate into other national systems? The UK's second-level awards are the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross, the Distinguished Service Order (for leadership) and the George Medal (second to the GC).

Secondly, in terms of rank attained, given that this is a guideline you don't need to be vague in the definitions, so I'd suggest:

3. held the rank of Lieutenant General (or equivalent) or held a significant appointment as a Major General (or equivalent).

Finally, you could happily lose "held a lesser rank but" at the beginning of 4 and 5. Antrim Kate (talk) 19:49, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

• Two suggestions: first, remove 'senior' from the generals - yes, there are a lot of WP:RUNOFTHEMILL one-stars around these days, but there didn't used to be (i.e. a one-star was "more notable" historically, if "more notable" is a thing) and also non-American/Western one-stars are likely to be "more notable" than those who get their stars out of a Cracker Jack box! Secondly, I'd suggest that the last line be changed from "are not notable" to "are likely not notable"; after all, there is an exception to every rule without exception, and only Sith deal in absolutes. ;) - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 20:15, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

• I agree with Ian about brigadiers, but all Australian brigadier generals are notable. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:03, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
  • I would not agree that all brigadiers/brigadier generals/commodores/etc are notable. I would strongly support Antrim Kate's guideline of Lt Gen/equivalent, or major general/equivalent when 'significant' meant that officer commanded in combat. We have too many Western general/flag officers with bios here who have done nothing but admin/tech development. Buckshot06 (talk) 04:00, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
    • Those are the notable ones. Command in combat is unimportant. Hawkeye7 (talk) 04:23, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
      • The list is not exclusive. We're simply trying to produce guidance on the sort of people who are likely to be notable. If an Australian brigadier general has substantial coverage in independent reliable sources, then they are notable because they meet the WP:GNG. However, command in combat is likely to be the main reason more junior officers are given that coverage; I'd guess most independent historians and authors wouldn't write about them otherwise. The intention is to clearly distinguish between very senior officers who despite a largely bland career have suitable coverage by virtue of their position, and others who also have that coverage but not due to their position. As suggested, Lt General/3-star General/Vice Admiral/Air Marshal/equivalent seems to be a good cut-off point for a presumption of notability based on rank alone. EyeSerene^talk 09:29, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Some points here, I like that we are trying to attempt to go for a guideline again, but I for one have seen three issues.

1) The note regarding the multiple grades of the Légion d'Honneur has been removed from the proposed guideline, which has been discussed before.

2) I am of the opinion that all flag or general officers are notable given the high level that is attained by the rank and post. Although NATO O-6 Ranks are more common now the size of the authority is often still substantial and is often of units or post that themselves are notable. Additionally flag or general officers are often special appointment positions requiring approval from a national legislature. Moreover, if we keep the wording as it was "a flag, general or air officer, or their historical equivalents" if a nation does not consider rank X to be a flag officer say Brigadier or Commodore then for that nation said individual would not fall under the guideline's inclusion criteria.

3) Although there is not a consensus for this in the past I am still of the opinion that those who hold the position of Senior Enlisted Adviser of a nation's armed forces, or department thereof, are also notable. --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 21:02, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

RfC: The use of medal ribbon pictograms in articles

The presence of medal ribbon pictograms in articles has been frequently discussed here and elsewhere on Wikipedia. Because of the re-occurrence of this topic, and the inconclusive nature of the discussions, the coordinators are requesting your assistance in developing a guideline that can be added to our project's manual of style.

Examples of different types of medal pictograms can be found here, here and here. Previous discussions have taken place in varying degrees of detail here, here, here, here, here and most recently here.

As the first stage of this process there are two questions we would like to put to editors:

1. Should medal ribbon pictograms be used in articles?
2. If so, where and under what circumstances?

At this early stage these questions are intended to prompt discussion rather than support/oppose type comments. However, please feel free to respond in whatever way and with as much detail as you wish. The responses will be used to formulate a guideline to be put before the project for consensus at a later date.

On behalf of the coordinators, EyeSerene^talk 13:01, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Discussion

I've been involved in this debate for a long time, and remain firmly in support of including said decorations and images in articles. I come from a US perspective, but I'm sure 90 percent of this debate lies with US articles. Here are my chief reasons.

1. I see this chiefly as a culture divide between American and other military attitudes about imagery of decorations in general. Almost any modern US military biography on a person contains a thorough list of decorations and medals. A quick look at WWII/Korean War casualty lists on abmc.gov and you'll see the time and effort put into accurately researching and maintaining them. Compare US Army unit symbols with those from other nations; US Army units have shoulder sleeve insignia, coats of arms, distinctive unit insignia and combat service identification badges...versus the Commonwealth unit formation patch. The US military has very strong cultural ties with symbolism and images. If we are to accurately cover US military culture, our articles should reflect that weight.
2. Moreover, US military members seem to place great emphasis on these symbols. The effort which has gone into existing "salad bars" -- even on otherwise low-quality articles -- have developed extensive systems meticulous of tables and charts. If we ban these from pages, we will never stop arguing with passing US military anons and IPs about how relevant these are, and they likely make up the majority readership on many of military biography articles. We'll have a nightmare of it, guaranteed.
3. Even an image-free list isn't a very informative in this case; the names of many medals and ribbons just don't lend themselves to that. Can you tell the difference between the Korean Service Medal, the United Nations Korea Medal, the Korean War Service Medal, the Korean Presidential Unit Citation, the Korea Medal or the Korea Defense Service Medal by their names or even a brief description? Five years into writing about the Korean War, I still can't. The images of these ribbons are far more visible in real life, and hence far more useful to the layman who sees them a lot, but rarely hears their complete, extended title.
4. Particularly when a major part of WP:SOLDIER is based on the decorations a person has won, it's clear the decorations add a great deal of encyclopedic value. In this profession they're just as important to career soldiers as the Grammys or Golden Globes for entertainers, and we have many a page dedicated to the awards won by performers, establishing a lot of weight on awards in general on Wikipedia. I would say it is fair weight to include awards, even if they are limited to a single section on the Milbio page.

I've seen a lot of complaints that "Wikipedia is not a picture book" when addressing this issue. To that end, I've tried to limit the images to the most space efficient means possible, this way for individuals and this way for units. I would oppose mandating an image list of awards in any article, particularly for soldiers of nations where less weight is placed on the images of decorations. I would also oppose extensive use of the images in the infobox, biography prose, or anywhere else save a compact section dedicated to them. This will minimalize the disruption, and ensure the images remain of secondary importance in the overall scheme of the articles. —Ed!^(talk) 14:13, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

I support Ed!'s excellent summary of the issues. I think there's a little room for compromise on the size of the images, but we can't shrink them so much that you can't make out the details, since the details are necessary to disambiguate the images. - Dank (push to talk) 14:33, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

The sections do seem unduly prominent, to my eye - it's the fact that they're isolated from running text, with a seperate header, and have a lot of whitespace on either side. Would it be possible to form them into a standard-ish infobox, which is maybe 300px wide and can be floated to one side of the article text as though it were an image? This might help counteract the "appearance of undue weight" issue, which is at the root of a lot of the discomfort some editors have. If it needs to be wide, perhaps we could experiment with a default-collapse wrapper - a lot of articles which have wide genealogical templates near the foot do this. Shimgray | talk | 22:30, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

For my part I wouldn't be opposed to experimenting with something like that. —Ed!^(talk) 04:44, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Most spaceflight articles have a rather clunky template showing the crew on them. This is what it normally looks like, with whitespace; this is a floated version embedded in text which I worked up as an attempt to make it less prominent. Does something like this look workable? Shimgray | talk | 22:47, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Once more unto the breach, dear friends...! I tend to agree with Ed on one point (nothing else, much as I admire his work!) and that is that there is a cultural divide here -- I lightheartedly referred to it myself in the discussion immediately above, preceding this RFC. Of course the divide isn't black and white -- some Commonwealth (or at least Aussie) editors like ribbon pictures, and not all American editors seem to want them. Broadly speaking, however, there's something there. Although I'd prefer one rule for all, because there are differences in the award distribution practices (as well as between WP editors' attitudes) I could probably live with US-themed articles displaying the awards and Commonwealth ones not. I also tend to have more respect for someone like Ed who puts in the hard work to create or improve an article in every way -- content, references, style, etc -- and wants to include the award/ribbon sections. I don't have time for the 'drive-by' ribbon-adders, whose only contribution to an article is pretty pictures. Incidentally, I'm quite aware that Ed probably had me in mind when he referred to those who say that "Wikipedia is not a picture book", and I don't back away from it (in fact my own terminology was more along the lines of "not a childrens' picture book"). Regardless of the point of using such images, they do overpower an article -- really, the ones I usually see look almost life-size, which is way over the top, and the articles that include two sets of the ribbons, one in a table giving their name and details, and another in the supposed manner the subject wore them (as has been pointed out elsewhere, prone to OR if nothing else) look even more garish. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 06:36, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

I see two issues here, not necessarily my exact opinion but elements of what I think and what I think others have expressed.

1. What seems to some to be a disproportionate amount of the article spent on stating the medals and awards. All important awards should already have been covered in the main text. So a separate section seems to be redundant. (I'll contrast this with battle honours for British units. Though the history of the article may cover the battles and wars a unit has been in these are not necessarily the same as th ename sof the battle honours.) The addition of the images for the medals and awards also adds to the space.
2. The creation of medal bars in the style as worn is possibly synth bordering on OR. Assuing they are recreated from what is known has been awarded and how it is usualy displayed.

GraemeLeggett (talk) 16:31, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

The way I see it, the amount of attention on the awards is almost moot. It's unhelpful and unproductive to tell someone to read through the entire prose for the awards, when it can be done simply with a list. And, as you said, sometimes, awards and honors aren't the same as the campaigns a person may have been a part of. As for the "as worn" rule -- there are strict orders of precedence in the US military demanding where each ribbon be displayed in relation to others, and for other countries it shouldn't be a problem; if campaign ribbons are worn in order they are won, the prose already establishes the order of campaign participation for the individual. —Ed!^(talk) 16:56, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

If the awards are significant, though, won't they be mentioned in the infobox as well, rather than just the prose? We're repeating the same information three times (in some cases, four, if it's very important and thus in the lede.) Shimgray | talk | 22:30, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

The infobox has never really lent itself to that, either. It's more of a "major highlights and basic info" piece. In general, just like how we don't include every engagement the person has seen, or every single unit a career officer has been through, It's been practice as far as I know to only list a few major awards. The infobox quickly becomes bulky and distracting otherwise. —Ed!^(talk) 04:44, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Before this strays too far, it's possibly worth pointing out that the RFC is about the medal pictograms, not whether or not all awards should be listed. NtheP (talk) 17:49, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. The point I'm trying to make is that the lists of awards are necessary, but an image-free list is unhelpful because the names of awards are very obscure. Hope I've been getting that across well. —Ed!^(talk) 18:54, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

If the medals are obscure then isn't the likelihood is that for the average reader, the picture means nothing either. Pictures normally serve to illustrate concepts, and captions to explain a picture. I'm not understanding what adding the medal ribbon intends to achieve. GraemeLeggett (talk) 20:20, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Not necessarily. As I said in my above example, there are half a dozen medals with similar names, and while people see the ribbons all the time on military uniforms IRL, they don't really read the titles of them very often, at least in the American military. We don't have titles for people who have won certain awards. —Ed!^(talk) 21:34, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

This is just my opinion, but that's where discussions start. I have no problem with pictorial representation of medals received by a subject of the article as long as it isn't intrusive to the body of the article text. Sometimes it's noteworthy to include in the body when a subject received medal X (usually high end 1st or 2nd rate medals of valor) and for what actions, but for lesser medals it usually is not. As it stands, most image displays of the medals received by a subject and citations attached to higher level medals of valor are usually left near the end of the article thus reducing the weight of the content. I am fine with how that is at this time. --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 18:28, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

I just noticed this discussion and as a former member of the US military I agree with Ed and Dank. These medals and ribbons are an important part of military culture and should be be allowed on the articles. ShmuckatellieJoe (talk) 18:48, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

• I write British military biographies, predominantly Chiefs of the General Staff (the professional head of the British Army), and these medal ribbon sections do my head in. These officers all have knighthoods and other huge honours and things like DSOs (also a great honour an highly coveted and not to be undervalued), but at least the first row or two of their ribbons will be honours they have received by virtue of the positions they hold (I think there's some statute or other that dictates that the top few officers in each service are always knighted), and these are mentioned in the prose. Indeed, most of them entitle the officer to post-nominal letters or honorific titles (like "sir") which are included at the very beginning of the article. The rest are usually so common that they're barely worth mentioning. I've never seen honours that are routinely awarded to thousands of people mentioned in print biographies of British officers (or anywhere else except the occasional hobby website), and those that are worth mentioning will be in the prose, in the infobox, and those with post-nominals will be mentioned immediately after the name. I appreciate that American military culture is very different to British or Commonwealth military culture, and that postnoms in particular are largely alien to some nations (especially those that have never had a monarchy), and so I would have no problem with separate systems by country but I oppose the use of these sections on British biographies.

  Aside from the relative insignificance (from an encyclopaedic point of view) of many of the medals and the duplication of the infobox/lead/prose, I have never seen one of these sections in a print biography of a British officer or even a list of anything but the most significant medals, and since Wikipedia is based on reliable sources, I don't see the wisdom in departing from every reliable source I've ever read to research an article. Furthermore, these sections (at least on British biographies—from the handful of American military biographies on my watchlist, there seem to be more sources for American officers' medals) are more often than not based on synthesis, original research, or just plain guesswork (example), though some are at least based on photographs (like this one). In addition, they attract constant drive-by edits, mostly from IPs who do little else, to add an unsourced medal, remove one they don't think the officer has, tweak the image or the name of the medal or something else (and it's difficult to justify reverting the addition of OR to OR), which makes it near impossible to keep it under control (and impossible to get an article through FAC with that sort of section in it). Finally, I think they're an eyesore, and even the ones with proper sourcing add little to no encyclopaedic value.

  Tl;dr? version: I oppose these sections for British officers because they're almost always original research or based on crappy sources, they're redundant, they don't appear in print biographies, they attract drive-by IP edits to add (even more) original research, and they're an eyesore. I have no opinion on the use of these sections for officers of other nationalities. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:25, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

  • Fully agree with Harry's points above. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 06:36, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

I apologize, but it looks as if I stirred up a hornets' nest with my question. All I originally wanted to know was how to place my ribbons on my page effectively. I've been in the United States Navy for almost 10 years. It hasn't always been easy, but I am proud of my accomplishments (portrayed by my ribbons/medals). The ribbons/medals/devices should stay, but they should be more intuitive and attractively displayed (not to mention exactly as on a person's uniform). I would appreciate any and all help that the community can provide. On a side note, how is the 4th award of the Navy Sea Service Deployment Ribbon displayed? Is it 4 bronze stars or 1 silver star? Also, what kind of star(s)? Service or award? Thank you, everyone, for your help. And, God bless America! Allen (talk) 21:03, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Don't worry about it, we were waiting to have this discussion for awhile. A lot of military types do include their own ribbons on their pages, and a lot of them vary in how they do it. It's really up to you, but we do have templates for ribbon display in our bio articles. I would look to a recent bio such as Jonathan W. Greenert, for help placing them. Consequently, we also put them in tables, such as here. —Ed!^(talk) 21:34, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

As Ed says, don't worry. We've been having this discussion as long as I can remember (and just finished the last big discussion a month ago...) Shimgray | talk | 22:27, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

I basically agree with HJ Mitchell's post above. The inclusion of medal ribbons are not helpful for almost all readers and are not in line with how biographies of military personnel are normally written. Nick-D (talk) 22:40, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

• I do agree with Ed and HJ that this seems to be a local-difference thing (is it UK vs. everywhere else, though, or US vs. everywhere else?), so hopefully any resulting guideline will reflect that.
• Regarding OR, I was thinking about the matter this afternoon, and came to much the same conclusion. In many cases, there's no comprehensive sourcing available for many people as to what they are entitled to wear - see, for example, the #Nancy Kulp section above. So, especially regarding minor awards, campaign medals and the like, we often have to fall back on original research, such as deciphering and "transcribing" photographs, logically deducing what would have been awarded knowing their circumstances, etc. Because the medal bar images require completeness - omitting something implies it was not awarded, rather than simply not mentioned - editors are likely to feel compelled to include loosely-sourced or assumed information rather than leave a gap. In most cases this is probably harmless, but it does seem like something that might come back and bite us! Shimgray | talk | 22:48, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Could be very bitey, if not material to start editwars over. Being imperfectly sourced, an editor could remove one or more elements of a medal bar display as "unreferenced". GraemeLeggett (talk) 23:01, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Actually, we've already had some degree of precedence for that. Tens of millions of US servicemembers lost records of their decorations in the National Personnel Records Center fire, so in cases where it's been confirmed the person's record was lost, we have generally tended to include only the awards we have a verifiable source to include, such as Michael J. Daly or Dolphin D. Overton. In general, this means only major awards are displayed with some explanation that we only add those which have a direct reference for them. So, some decoration lists rely on a compilation of sources and it's just fine if they're incomplete if we have an explanation that the references to complete it don't exist. —Ed!^(talk) 02:39, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

I am in two minds about this issue. Basically, I agree with Ed.

1. In some cases, the photographs show medal ribbons and the reader will likely be curious about them.
2. Many biographies do give complete lists of them.
3. The recipient may not necessarily be most proud of (or most notable for) the highest decoration awarded
4. In the case of someone who has earned a lot of medals, it seems wrong to omit decorations that would be included in the infobox if they had less.

Hawkeye7 (talk) 02:07, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

I think we'll get less push-back from Wikipedians if for instance in Jesse L. Brown the display is reduced to roughly 50% or 60% of its current size and put in an infobox inside another section, probably the last section of normal text. I'd vote for a sentence listing the names of the awards rather than a list or table to allow the infobox to be smaller ... if readers can't easily match the list to the awards, they could just hover over any award to get its name. - Dank (push to talk) 17:17, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

I actually quite like that format. If it were smaller, I would have no problem with it being there (but I till wouldn't include it on a British officer's biography—pehaps they do have more cultural significance in the States?). HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:25, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

• This is not an "US vs. everyone else" issue, it's a decoration vs. non-decoration issue. The articles on the awards have images of the awards. The images are just visually distracting clutter on bio articles. Even aside from other concerns raised. Just from a MOS:ICONS perspective this "cute pictures for their own sake" stuff has to go. Show me any newspaper article about someone that shows a bunch of image of medals next to the prose mentioning they were the recipient of various commendations. It's not typical usage in writing about military people. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 19:41, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
  • As a newspaper journalist, this brings up a good point to me. When I try to write featured articles, I aim to make them as self-contained as possible. It's a common enough criticism of Wikipedia by casual users that it's already too easy to get distracted clicking on links, without deliberately making them click on a bunch of links to figure out which award they're looking for. People really don't care enough to become avid Wikipedians, they just want to get the information they're looking for in the easiest way possible. I consider this a rare case where images really are more efficient at getting the information past more efficiently than descriptions. As for the newspaper quip, I would contend that an attitude of "images should be beneath us unless they're really important" is very old-fashioned, and the exact opposite direction the industry is taking. People prefer illustration where possible, as evidenced by declining use of newspapers as opposed to broadcast and multimedia journalism. To say we should avoid images "for their own sake" is denying one of the great advantages an online encyclopedia has over a print resource with limited space. —Ed!^(talk) 22:30, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

People prefer illustration when the illustration aids comprehension. The meaning of award ribbons is hardly obvious to the average person (hell, even I only recognise the VC, plus those my father gained in his war service) so they need their names next to them, which will of course be linked, which takes you to an entire article on the award that not only displays the ribbon but the medal itself. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 06:36, 12 March 2012 (UTC)y

Reply to SMcCandlish - I see the point you are trying to makre, but I don't agree with it and here's why. We are not a book or a magazine, we are something else completely so its comparing apples and oranges. Magazines don't have links, categories, infoboxes or a number of other things that are common on Wikipedia articles. I can say though that some magazines do show the whole ribbon display on occassion such as when discussing a Medal of Honor recipient. This is most often done in military magazines such as Leatherneck, the Navy/Army/Marine Corps times or the like but it does happen. We also need to realize that many of these newspapers and magazines would probably "like" to show them but cant do to limitations in space or color. ShmuckatellieJoe (talk) 02:38, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

The argument that we have different rules to print medaia because they have less space, we're online, and so on, doesn't really hold water. I've read many full-length biographies on Commonwealth military figures in order to write articles on them and even with that space to play with I'm yet to see one that illustrated the subject's medals -- most don't even mention the campaign/service medals, only the high honours and decorations for gallantry. As to online resources, the Australian Dictionary of Biography and the Oxford Companion to Australian Military History both have online editions (not simply scans, but dedicated online versions with internal links) and nether has been in any hurry to illustrate entries with medal ribbons either -- I'm afraid they'd start to lose credibility if they did. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk)

Responding from RfC bot... I've never thought about this one whit, but considering the general problem, inclusion seems unwarranted. People get awards all the time, but generally only the most renowned couple of awards even merit a mention in an article. Which trophies/ribbons/medals/awards should we display for Carl Lewis? What about Shawn White? What about Audie Murphy? What about Al Gore (see List of awards received by Al Gore)? If the award is worth covering, it can be covered in the text just fine. If it's not, then we probably don't need a picture of it. There is a sort of content creep that goes on with infobox-type (and navigation template) material, where tons of randomness gets stuffed in because it's easy to slip by sourcing when there is no significant text, and no expectation of footnotes. aprock (talk) 07:06, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

• I don't support the use of pictograms for basically the same reasons that other opposers have given above. In my view they bring little of encyclopedic value to articles. Although WP:MILPEOPLE has been mentioned, according to that essay only the very highest awards contribute towards a person's notability and where a medal is the main reason for notability it ought to be covered in great detail in the article anyway. I appreciate that to the article subjects their accumulation of awards may be very significant, but ultimately there's a big difference between a biographical article that tells us about the notable events of a person's life, and a curriculum vitae. If awards aren't significant (for example, service awards, campaign medals, good conduct awards etc), we don't really need to know about them. Of particular concern is the issue of WP:OR/WP:SYNTH based on photographs etc—and the reason this is an issue is that, as others have pointed out, reputable sources don't in my experience include that sort of information. EyeSerene^talk 09:41, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

I do support the inclusion of medal ribbons, because of their importance within the military - I would say they are second only to the rank structure. I do not see any reasons for distinguishing between the US and other nations - despite comments above, decorations are as highly regarded in the UK as anywhere else (ribbon colours are generally more subdued than some, but held in no less regard). My preference is for ribbons to be displayed at the end of an article, in rows with a table underneath to act as a key - this appears to be the cleanest and will take up the least space, so as not to dominate the text. Incidentally, if a ribbon display is taking up more of the article than the text, I would suggest that there is either insufficient text or the subject is not notable. Ribbons add information on the subject's career, as worn on their uniform, also add visual impact to an article, will educate readers as to the meaning of the ribbons, and may encourage them to seek more information, either within the article, or about the awards depicted. The fact that other media do not include these sections should not be a reason for us not to - we do not have space restrictions for instance - indeed their inclusion could provide a unique reason for people to come here. On the subject of notability, people seem to be suggesting that, if an award does not confer notability, then it should not be included, but this would result in many things having to be removed from articles - many subjects will be notable for just one thing in their careers, but we then include the remainder of their career in their article. It would also be appropriate to add to the description of campaign medals as being awarded for "being in a certain place at a certain time" the qualifier "where some people would like to kill you". Sources certainly need to be supplied for the ribbons displayed - no-one is suggesting otherwise. Antrim Kate (talk) 13:14, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Mmm, I don't normally like to pick apart other editors' comments but a few things here need clarification. Enough people, myself included, have said what they think of the "visual impact" of the ribbon images, so I won't spend more time on that. Regarding the suggestion that they "add information on the subject's career", well, in themselves, no they don't -- one needs an explanation in text to understand what the subject did in their careers, rendering the ribbons superfluous. As for "educating readers as to the meaning of the ribbons" and "description of campaign medals" -- those really belong in the medal articles themselves, along with the relevant imagery, not in individuals' histories. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 14:19, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

I think that touches on one of my main objections, though I forgot to mention the visual impact which I find to be jarring and out of place in a serious encyclopedia article. If an award is notable, the circumstances of its award should be detailed in the sources and explained in the text anyway. If it's not, why are we suddenly presenting our readers with an obscure pictographic symbol of that award? A picture of the medal itself might be more meaningful, but that's not what's being argued for and tbh I wouldn't support that either. We don't record every book a writer has ever written, or every song a musician has ever composed, or every event a sports person has ever won. Why do we need such emphasis in military bios on out of context, often irrelevant, and mostly trivial information? EyeSerene^talk 15:47, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Don't worry about picking holes in my arguments - this is supposed to be a discussion after all! And I obviously haven't put things across as well as I might: To someone who knows the meanings of the ribbons they will add information without them having to resort to the text of the article (and I'm certainly not suggesting that anything should be removed from the text). Technically, yes they are superfluous, but then so is the infobox, the table of appointments, and the introduction, all of which duplicate information that is in the article, but in a form that is designed to be helpful to the reader - the question is whether ribbons fall into a similar category. As for the meaning of the ribbons, yes that information certainly belongs only in the article for the medal concerned - the point I was making (again, badly) was that linking those articles from a table at the end of a biography could draw people to the articles on the medals. Lastly my comment on "description of campaign medals" was aimed at someone earlier in the discussion who described them as for "only being in a certain place at a certain time" - again I wasn't suggesting that be added to each and every biography. To EyeSerene's Point about non-notability, I thought I did cover that above - simply because an award is not notable in itself doesn't mean it shouldn't be included in the biography of someone who is notable for other reasons. And I don't frequent biographies of musicians and authors very much, but I certainly get the impression that some do cover everything they've ever done! Antrim Kate (talk) 16:36, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

I agree that we routinely record in biographies events that, in themselves, wouldn't merit an article on notability grounds. What I meant by my comments was more that we wouldn't normally think it worth mentioning in the article text that Private Jones was awarded a good conduct medal, or that Sergeant Smith received a campaign medal for serving in the Burma theatre during WWII. These are not distinctive, significant awards. To record them in the form of a pictogram, then, strikes me as both decoration for the sake of the completeness and at odds with WP:TRIVIA. Actually perhaps that best sums up my view: I see medal ribbon pictograms as the visual equivalent of a Trivia section. At the risk of bringing the word "cruft" to the argument, I think we perhaps ought to beware the temptation of imposing our own brand of 'milcruft' on Wikipedia :) And yes, I also agree that some musician/actor/sportsperson bios are crufty too, but I don't think that sets a precedent we should be eager to follow! EyeSerene^talk 17:10, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

I remain opposed to including anything other than valor awards in articles and/or pictorial representations. That's simply because, in many cases, there are a number of U.S. awards that could be considered "been there, done that, got the t-shirt" items. No offense is intended to those who have those ribbons, but it's simply what they are. Bill Mauldin had a great cartoon about ribbons (which I can't find online at the moment) that sums some of that up pretty well.Intothatdarkness (talk) 16:44, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

I just don't see it that way. I look at the issue pragmatically, and watching so many milbios over a long period of time, It frustrates me to engage in what feel like long, protracted edit wars with the whole internet fighting contributions like this which constantly pop up. Illustrations like these are what people care about seeing because, in terms of the variety of users contributing them, there's a neverending flood of newbies putting great effort into the picture graphs. Yes, I get that "reputable" sources don't do that, but Wikipedia is a source that gets direct input from people who care about the topics, such as people who've lived a lifetime in the achievement-driven military culture, instead of highly-educated historians in ivory towers telling everyone else what is significant. I know that's probably not a popular opinion since we're all trying to be taken seriously, but to lose sight of what the reader wants to see is to turn our noses up at the very purpose of what we're doing. It's just a road we don't want to take. —Ed!^(talk) 09:13, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

You have some idea how I feel then, Ed. ;) Except on British biographies, it's people randomly adding and removing medals, or changing the picture, or doing something else without sources, and the whole lot is unsourced (and unsourceable) anyway, so it's difficult to revert on the basis that it's original research. I'm also aware that such things seem to be easier to source for American biographies—I have a few on my watchlist. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 09:56, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

I definitely can Hah hah. Something I'm trying to make clear is that pictogram should not be an excuse for poor sourcing -- we need to deal with unsourced medals with just as much prejudice as any other unsourced information in a Bio. I get that different nations have different levels of information avaliable, which is why I'm saying we don't need to conduct OR or allow uncited ribbons in the articles at all; it's just fine if the list isn't complete, as long as we have what's cited. —Ed!^(talk) 10:11, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

I agree with EyeSerene's points above. To me it's about three things. Firstly how notable are some of these ribbons? As an example the US Navy & Coast Guard award a Marksmanship Medal which isn't a service medal but an achievement. In the other US services and in the UK (to name but two) if any indication of this skill is worn at all then it's a badge. So should we be including all the badges as well, for equality? (that's a rhetorical question - I'm not widening the scope of this discussion any further) Unless the circumstances of achieving the standard were unusual I don't see this as notable. Secondly how do the pictures assist in encyclopaedic knowledge? There are 2,234 articles in Category:British Army personnel of World War I of which 99.9% will have been awarded both the British War Medal and the Victory Medal (United Kingdom), (putting them into "been there, done that, got the t-shirt" category) the how much does it add to an encyclopedia to have the ribbons of these medals appear 2,234 times on various pages? Not a jot that I can see. In fact I would go as far as to detract because we have failed to separate the wheat from the chaff. This is not a denigration of what anybody has been through to earn any of the medals but readability of articles is about making them interesting and understandable, not deluging the reader with every known fact about a subject. Thirdly there are much appears to be made of "we should because we can", correct there are things that technically WP allows us to do; and precisely because we have those technical advantages e.g. links, categories, navboxes etc they are good reasons why we shouldn't push everything into one place and encourage click through to other articles. Finally, a plea, whatever the outcome of this discussion is can it agree that abominations like the layout of Frederick Charles Bothwell, Jr. are not the way to go. NtheP (talk) 17:24, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

To respond, I'll point you to this Cracked cartoon which is one of my favorite summaries of the problem. It's hard enough to get info from Wikipedia efficiently as-is, because it's just so easy to click on a link and get lost somewhere in a different topic, without us intentionally making it harder. The layman comes here to get the information as quickly as possible and leave, not to click on links for an hour to find what they're looking for (though I admit it's hard to avoid :D) and if we can use images like these to help people figure out which ribbon is which without them clicking around for 10 minutes, then we've done them a service. We shouldn't use links as a crutch to write articles that couldn't stand on their own. —Ed!^(talk) 09:20, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

That's Luddism. To extend the same argument to it's absurd length you could argue that we shouldn't use footnotes because it distracts the reader from the flow of the text. We shouldn't be aiming to satisfy the lowest common denominator but encouraging and stimulating interest and education. It's not elitism but about developing a rewarding experience for a majority. How many times have you looked at article here and by clicking on a link learned something new? Put all the information on one page an you lose one of the richest experiences WP has to offer. NtheP (talk) 09:38, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, there's a definite distinction between interesting and useful. Our readership encompass a large variety of people from different backgrounds. It's not pandering to the lowest common denominator to write with utility in mind, in fact I would think that is insulting to say. Professional writing strives to be as compact as possible because people don't care. They're here to get what they want and go, and unless they have an hour of time to spare, they really don't like being forced to sort through a bunch of links to find it. —Ed!^(talk) 09:46, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Ed, what possible encyclopedic value does this bring to the article? It's horrible! EyeSerene^talk 13:33, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

It's about the outside-looking-in perspective. People don't look at a photo like this and say to themselves, "ah, I see he has won four Navy Sea Service Deployment Ribbons." When I was in ROTC, military surrounded by non-military, people were always curious about ribbons. They would point and ask, "what is that one for? what about that one?" The fact is that people are interested in the awards and what they mean, and a non-illustrated list is of no value. It's too jargon-loaded. This is a rare case were images (albeit in far more efficient layouts, like these which I prefer) really are better at conveying the information. Nobody knows ribbons by their names, and it's insane to act like they do for the convenience of this argument. —Ed!^(talk) 14:56, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, I'm not arguing for a non-illustrated list either :) My point is that the information in that section seems to me to be textbook WP:TRIVIA. I accept your point that it's not particularly efficiently laid out, and I also accept that some people might find it interesting, but we could argue that last for other trivia too (and in fact such arguments have been made and rejected, hence Wikipedia's great clearouts of Star Wars/Star Trek/Game/etc cruft). To take one example, the Korea Defense Service Medal is awarded for spending at least 30 consecutive or 60 non-consecutive days in Korea. So what? It's not an achievement, it's a posting, and his time in Korea isn't mentioned in the article so presumably wasn't important in terms of his career. I agree with you that images are better than text at conveying medal ribbon information, but more importantly I believe that the information contained in those sections isn't something we should be conveying at all. EyeSerene^talk 17:31, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, but I don't see where you're getting Luddism from - all I think Ed! is suggesting is that a ribbon table will provide convenient links to articles on the awards, rather than have people search for them and maybe get distracted in the process. And you're agreeing with Ed! that what we should be providing is an educational experience, adding links to other relevant articles. And I agree that the examples that you and EyeSerene have linked to are horrible, but if we can agree on a simple, clean alternative then all of us here can head out and clear up things like that. Antrim Kate (talk) 14:16, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Luddism was slightly tongue in cheek, but the point is that if we are careful then it becomes a one stop solution rather than using what is available to us by way off assisting navigation and thus promoting education by exploration. I'm totally in favour of links but not the images, I've yet to hear answers to points raised about trivia, and encyclopaedic knowledge when like the Korea Defense Service Medal or the US Navy Marksmanship Medal they are not awarded for achievement but location and training. NtheP (talk) 14:37, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Apologies - Humour is always difficult to inject into an online discussion with people you don't know; and even harder to spot sometimes!Antrim Kate (talk) 16:58, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

NtheP raises a good point above, about, for instance, UK medals for WWI, which were pretty much identical, and I think it's fair to look at whether ribbons add anything to particular categories of biographies. For WWI I'd agree - they're not adding a lot; for WWII, however, medals were awarded for different theatres, and I'd be much more interested in someone with an Air Crew Europe Star or an Atlantic Star for instance than a more "ordinary" set. (Incidentally I did read the obituary recently of someone awarded both an Atlantic Star and a 1982 South Atlantic Medal.) For contemporary personnel I'd say there's even more reason, since people's careers will have taken many different turns. There was also a question earlier about people not known for military service, for instance Al Gore and Carl Lewis - Gore is a 'Maybe' for me, since his service was relevant to his career (or his father's) though if it was only an "ordinary" set then maybe not - it's well-covered in the article text. I can't see anything about Lewis' military service in his article, so my initial reaction is 'Probably not'.Antrim Kate (talk) 16:58, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

I have two principal counterpoints to NtheP and EyeSerene. If I understand correctly, you're both arguing that medals shouldn't have sections at all, instead they should be reduced to a nuisance and a mention in the prose. My first main problem with this is that comparing medals to the trivia sections is just apples to oranges -- even in a highly decorated soldier bio like Audie Murphy or Douglas MacArthur we're talking at most ten or so campaign medals that fall under the category of "been there" awards. It's pretty clear we're not just lumping any old complement in there, it's all official government decorations, and so we're taking a group of maybe 20 ribbons for a career officer and trying to split hairs by saying a few of them aren't notable when others clearly are. The ever-devolving trivia sections got to be miles long, and we still eventually ended up merging a lot of the relevant stuff into the prose when we got rid of those. It's really not that much of an inconvenience to include easily sourced decorations like these, and it will create an endless grey area where we're stuck wasting time trimming mentions of these campaign ribbons out of articles with extreme prejudice.

Second, this argument really fails to grasp the subjectivity with which we'd have to categorize the medals. With the current culture around the awards, the higher valor awards are becoming more and more rare, and so more and more coverage is focusing on lower ones. Medals of Honor are being awarded at a tenth of the rate in Iraq/Afghanistan as they were in World War II/Korea/Vietnam, and as a consequence I can say with decent certainty that every US Army recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross of the past 10 years would easily pass GNG with the coverage they received, outside of the WP:SOLDIER guidelines. The awards are changing as a result of this, too. The Bronze Star Medal used to be a low-level valor award, now it's got two versions which can be won by A) an officer who completes a deployment without messing up, or B) as a mid-level valor award. The Army Achievement Medal used to be a "been there and didn't screw anything up" award, and now it can be a low level valor award. The sources probably won't be able to distinguish the difference in the reason. Do we consider the Antarctica Service Medal a non-notable campaign medal? It's exceptionally rare. The Legion of Merit can be a valor award, or a good leadership award. The Distinguished Service Medal is exceptionally rare, but it's pretty easy to get if you happen to be a four-star General. Summary: Sources include a list of awards, and aren't always clear how the person got them. A medal can be given for very different reasons which we will rarely have a direct "they did the medal for this action specifically" statement. By the time we hammer out which awards are rare and/or exceptional enough to be "notable" we will have wasted ten times the effort of just including them. —Ed!^(talk) 18:44, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Arbitrary break 2

♠ Proposal for collapsible side box - Coming in very late...& haven't read every word of the discussion, so apologies if this is covered already. :( My big problem with the display isn't its inclusion as much as the size of the display. I'd rather, if it's going to be in, have an infobox line with a quite/very small "medals bar": clickable to expand, with links for each decoration, or a mouseover to name them, or something, to identify visually the decorations named in the text. A separate section seems overkill to me.

♠The "decoration creep" isn't helping this any, & it's probably indicative of bigger issues around promotion & military culture which could carry a page on their own IMO. Whole other can of worms... TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 20:59, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

• I'm also coming in a bit late. I have read most of the above, but my comment is general rather than specific to anyone else's comments. It occurs to me that it's going to be hard achieve consensus on this issue, but Trekphiler might well be onto something. Couldn't there be a collapsible box for this sort of content - either in the infobox or toward the end of the article? That way the list and images don't take up a massive amount of page space as some do now, but they're available for those who want to see it. There would need to be an agreed format to display the list, but given that it won't always be visible that should be a lot easier to agree on.

Personally I'd err toward putting a collapsible box in the article rather than the infobox (infoboxes are getting big enough as it is...), but either way I agree something should be done - if only to sort out messy examples like those linked to above and the unnecessary duplication at Donald Malarkey. Ranger Steve ^Talk 12:45, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

• • I'd be supportive of the idea, as mentioned above. I just can't find a good existing collapsible wikitable to try and demonstrate it right now. —Ed!^(talk) 17:09, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose images (unless small or collapsible) - [From uninvolved editor, invited by RfC bot] Yes, a list of the honors are important to document in text; but the layout shown in the examples is very large and obtrusive ... not very encyclopedic. Using imagery to that degree conveys an emphasis (to readers) that may not be warranted. Many of the medals gained by an individual are of virtually no significance. I'd suggest a policy against largish displays as shown in the examples above. As a compromise, I'd suggest (1) always at the bottom of the article; (2) limit the graphic size to maximum 30 x 12 pixels approx; (3) or leave the size large, but have the section collapsible by default (similar to a navbox). --Noleander (talk) 13:19, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Several people seem to be suggesting something like this:

I don't know whether this is the best way to do it, but in terms of "look and feel" this is certainly the sort of thing I'd like to see. Antrim Kate (talk) 00:38, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

I do like the above infobox. If this is still too prominent for people, here's an alternative. I can't find a way to make it collapsible, but that's the idea. We could probably incorperate this into the prose as a sidebar. It also means we don't have to have a complete thing of awards -- just the ones we have citations for. —Ed!^(talk) 01:18, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Ed, even I can live with your version, sorry Kate I still find the full width one too obtrusive but thank you for the persistence in seeking a compromise. Now what's the suggestion about location? Inside {{Infobox Military Person}} under |Award=? Later in the article? Hopefully not both :-) And are you suggesting that the awards are referenced in the template or should all be referenced to appear in the reflist? And we are only talking about awards and decorations not qualifications like pilots wings, marksmanship etc? NtheP (talk) 09:01, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

These look like good progress. I don't believe they should go in the infobox though - it's only meant to be a summary of the person's career, so having their entire award history, collapsible or not, seems a bit overkill. I'd suggest that the award section of the infobox should only be used for the highest award of note (eg. VC, DSO) for which there is content in the article. Ranger Steve ^Talk 09:43, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Of the suggestions above I prefer Ed's design for the same reasons as Nthep. As long as the box is confined to meaningful awards and is collapsed by default it largely addresses my concerns about trivia, undue weight and pictures for the sake of decoration. Steve makes a good point about the infobox, though I'd not object to it being placed below the infobox rather than as part of it. Awards sections often seem to exist solely as a vehicle for getting these pictures into an article; presumably confining ourselves to notable/sourced awards will mean they're already covered in the text and we won't need a separate section for that.

If consensus supports this compromise, I'd also like to see the default position being one of "no awards box unless a case can be made for one". What I'd like to try to avoid is the spamming of these across every bio article with the reason "because Milhist guidelines say we can". I suspect, as mentioned in the discussion above, they will largely appeal to writers working on US bios but be resisted for those of other nations, and something in the spirit of WP:ENGVAR might help to address that. EyeSerene^talk 10:25, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

I only floated the idea of the infobox so as to try and ensure that the discussion considers use not just the existence of the box. I agree with Steve's suggestion and also Eyeserene about possibly having it immediately below the infobox - do the widths align? A pet hate of mine is seeing a succession of infoboxes with differing widths. NtheP (talk) 10:48, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

I would say the best place to put the box would either be at the beginning or the end of the military career section, similar to an image, assuming it is best suited there. —Ed!^(talk) 13:10, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

I would say that mention's of the most notable award/medal (especially if the award/medal directly contributes to the subject's notability) should be included in the main infobox, with description of the award and events leading to it in the main body. All other less notable awards can be all included in the collapsed infobox underneath the other infoboxes with appropriate references to meet WP:BURDEN/WP:VER of course. If other less notable awards are to be mentioned, if it can be supported by an RS, it is my opinion they should all be included. For instance, I just meet with a docent, a retired Commander, with the Bonita Museum who mentioned that his father received two Citation Star on his WWI Victory Medal. These meant nothing to him, and probably wouldn't mean anything to casual readers unless they knew the significants of the stars, until he did some research and learned that they were equivalent to a 1st to 3rd degree valor medal (MoH, DSC, or SS). The Victory medal, and other similar campaign or event medals, have been described by others in the discussion as been there, done that, got the t-shirt awards, and thus are not significant enough mention in an article. However, it is my opinion that due to cases such as the one I mentioned above that such mentions should be included in the infobox being described above or as it presently stands in a section lower in the article that lists all the medals, awards, and badges.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 21:17, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

The example you've given is perhaps one where a case could be argued for including the information. However I don't think we should assume that automatically extends to all less significant medals, most of which really are been there, done that-type awards. EyeSerene^talk 07:42, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Precisely, Eye. I appreciate the effort Kate and Ed have made to suggest hidden template designs for the ribbons to render them more palatable for those of us who are dead against them, and both are definitely improvements over the styles we've seem previously. However I think we're hitting the same brick wall at least as far as Commonwealth articles are concerned. I still don't accept the need to display the "been there, done that" service/campaign medals (with or without ribbons), even if they can all be verified by reliable sources, which is rare in my experience. Take them away, and you're pretty well left with the high honours and decorations for gallantry that we already list in the infobox -- rendering further boxes redundant. In the example box Ed proposes, for instance, only the Gulf Medal would not (quite rightly, because it's simply a campaign medal) be displayed in the infobox -- so the argument may as well be, "should we display little ribbon pictures next to the honours and decorations listed in the infobox?" Well maybe we should, since we take as read those silly little country and armed service flags, and some people even like to add emblems for the rank as well. Okay, I'm joking about adding the ribbons there -- if I had my way, we wouldn't even have the flag icons, since they're so small as to be practically useless, and aren't always correct anyway as some service flags have changed over the years (e.g. the RAAF ensign). Plus I'm sure that Ed's design will still leave unsatisfied the die-hards who love to see all the ribbons displayed as worn on the chest (a display that, as we've noted, is always open to assumptions and OR). So at the end of all that I continue to find the simplest and most logical response is to leave all ribbons out. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 11:46, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Having browsed through the discussion (phew!), and alternately cooed and snarled at the points, one thing is clear: there isn't a consensus for the removal of separate odm summaries and graphics. For me, they add to articles, but, then, I'm not in favour of obliging readers to plough through blocks of grey text because "it's more encyclopaedic" (personally I think it's the reverse). I really like the collapsible boxes as they allow readers to select the information that they wish to view. If there's no objection, I'll try them out. Folks at 137 (talk) 13:07, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

There may or may not be consensus for removing such lists and graphics where the medals displayed are fully cited to reliable sources and there's no evidence of original research. However there's certainly no consensus for adding separate lists of medals and graphics either, so I presume that when you suggest "trying out" the collapsible boxes, you mean to do it where non-collapsible displays already exist. Well, I for one have no objection to you making such existing displays less garish than they are (for the moment at least) but I see no consensus to add any where they don't exist at all. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 13:35, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Too late! To be honest, I don't think there's a consensus against the addition of separate lists, either, although I accept that some editors - not all - are dead against. Anyway, I've added a collapsible box to Philip Vian and slimmed the list in the infobox. I think the presentation is reasonable, although it mitigates against additional info such as dates and citations. Thoughts? Folks at 137 (talk) 13:57, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

A backlog discovered

Browsing around, I discovered Category:Military history articles with incomplete B-Class checklists which contains talk pages that are missing B-class checklists. Since there are over 25,000 articles in this category, it seems a bit much for a single person to do, so maybe some MILHIST participants can help go through all these. 76.7.231.130 (talk) 04:42, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

I hate to sound defeatist, but many of us have tried and none have succeeded. Anotherclown (talk) 12:28, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Template:B makes this much more expedient. And WP:AWB is your friend. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 17:43, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

I think another BCAD drive is in order to eliminate the backlog, like the one we did in 2008. —Ed!^(talk) 14:39, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

That's not a bad idea and it should be relatively easy to set up. I'm happy to create the pages and start things moving if there's a general feeling that we need a drive to reduce this particular backlog. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:23, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

I would love to participate personally. The current backlog is twice what we had in 2008, so the need is dire I think. —Ed!^(talk) 15:35, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

I agree with SMcCandlish that some of this could be done with AWB, though this suggestion was dismissed several times in the past. Of course there are several things that would need to be manually verified but that could get the process started anyway. ShmuckatellieJoe (talk) 18:15, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't think that the backlog is that big of a problem, if you look to the statistics for a year ago the backlog has been reduced by 3,000 from the work of myself and others such as User:Adamdaley. If the anonymous editor believes he is doing the work alone I would respectfully disagree. The past month has shown stagnation in the assessment backlog removal across the board from personal breaks of various volunteers. Perseverance is required with any large backlog and I would hope nobody would become discouraged from the seemingly endless task.--MOLEY (talk) 02:31, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

So will there be another BCAD drive per Ed!'s suggestion or will it be left up to whoever chooses to work on this? 76.7.224.171 (talk) 01:31, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

This will be left to whoever wants to wade through 25,000 articles, I take it. 76.7.224.171 (talk) 13:40, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, even with the technology mentioned above, we're still talking about a lot of pages. Last BCAD dealt with a 13,000 backlog and we still didn't get it down to zero...the backlog now is 25,000. I think we really need another BCAD-type large scale initiative dedicated to this, it's just impossible for one person to do alone. —Ed!^(talk) 22:59, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

How long would it take to set up a BCAD contest? 76.7.224.171 (talk) 03:49, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

I'd say that this category needs some going through. I have been finding articles which are stubs but are assessed as start class on the talk pages. Besides the redirects which are still have WPMILHIST templates on the talk pages instead of the talk pages redirecting to the other article. Since it would probably take weeks (or months) of work for a single individual to go through all 25,000 articles alone, perhaps this would be a better job for a group effort. 76.7.224.171 (talk) 04:39, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Request for source for Rhino Tank article

Hi all,

I have been editing the Rhino Tank article and the following is attributed to a source, but via a weblink to the book and the link is dead. While i know it is pretty much accurate i dont have a source to replace the dead link. Does anyone have a source that supports the position that the bocage hedgerows were:

"sturdy embankments, half earth, half hedge"

Regards EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 16:02, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Looks like that quote originally came from a 1988 Army type report. See Busting the Bocage.... I added this after the quote at Rhino tank#Background. -Fnlayson (talk) 20:36, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Awsome! Cheers for that. :)EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 09:08, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Request for additional information on Rhino tank article

Hi all,

It would appear that the article covers mostly everything to do with the tank however it is short on examples of the use of Rhinos/Prongs in action (it currently only has one American and one British example of their use). Does anyone have any anecdotes and sources they could provide to expand the usage section?

RegardsEnigmaMcmxc (talk) 10:23, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

It might be worth trying to find a copy of Steven Zaloga's book Armored Thunderbolt. It's meant to be the best work on the Sherman yet produced (I can't vouch for it personally). Nick-D (talk) 07:58, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Missing biographies for the Norwegian medal Krigskorset

Hi, the highest ranking Norwegian gallantry decoration is the Krigskorset, and it is quite well covered in the Norwegian Bokmål/Riksmål version of Wikipedia, we both have an extensive article that also is featured, and we have a list of all the recipients.

In the list of recipients there is unfortunately some missing biographies of recipients and we have started working to have them all covered with articles. There is a thread with a total list on the discussion page of the list of recipients, any help in finding information and writing articles about the brave soldiers that got this medal, but still do not have an biography is much appreciated. Best regards, Ulflarsen (talk) 14:44, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

I think the best thing to do would be to find a translator to get some of those articles migrated to English Wikipedia. —Ed!^(talk) 17:13, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm assuming that the list has articles missing in both Wiki, in which case it may be worth creating stubs for the UK recipients. Kernel Saunters (talk) 09:49, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Looking for input on how to organize long division histories

Hello all. I've been doing some work on military unit articles, and I'm wondering what people would think about how we should organize some of the more popular ones. I've worked on a lot of the inactive US military units with short histories, but it occurs to me that some of the most famous and longstanding US Army divisions which have been in a lot of wars (ie the US 1st Cavalry Division, US 1st Infantry Division, 82nd Airborne Division, and 101st Airborne Division) have a huge amount of RS material to include. For less well-known units like US 7th Infantry Division which have only been in one or two wars, I've preferred to keep them one long article at the expense of some of the finer details. But these more famous units have a lot more coverage. Going off of the precedent set by UK 6th Airborne Division, I imagine they need sub-articles.

For example, I would envision a small novel of content for 101st Airborne Division. All of the following could easily be FA material:

• 101st Airborne Division
  • 101st Airborne Division in World War II
    • Mission Albany
    • 101st Airborne Division in the Battle of the Bulge
  • 101st Airborne Division in the Vietnam War
  • 101st Airborne Division in the Gulf War
  • 101st Airborne Division in the Iraq War
  • 101st Airborne Division in the War in Afghanistan
  • Honors of the 101st Airborne Division
  • Famous members of the 101st Airborne Division
  • 101st Airborne Division in popular culture

Compounded, of course, by the fact that its sub-units also have notability and a huge amount of RS coverage, much of which I fear may overlap:

• 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division
• 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division
• 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division
• 4th Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division
• 101st Combat Aviation Brigade
• 159th Combat Aviation Brigade
• 101st Airborne Division Band

My question is, does all this sound completely overboard? Is there some better way to cover these units with massive combat histories and RS coverage? Should we be trying to do the same with other divisions with multi-war combat records? —Ed!^(talk) 17:36, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

No, it sounds eminently reasonable as a means of keeping article length down. I really have no desire to read articles over 100K in length unless it's something that really, really interests me.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 18:23, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

(ec) Well, if there's sufficient coverage in scholarly sources to support multiple tiers of sub-articles, then I think it would be reasonable to structure the content that way. Having said that, I would be a bit careful with articles like Famous members of the 101st Airborne Division or 101st Airborne Division in popular culture; while they may indeed be legitimate topics for articles (although the first might be better structured as a list), they also have the potential to become trivia magnets, and will need a lot of eyes on them to keep them at a high quality level. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 18:24, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

I'd suggest starting with History of the 101st Airborne Division as the main article, and then split off child articles as needed. Nick-D (talk) 23:17, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Good idea, Nick. It may also be useful to avoid the brigade breakdown (as much as possible, anyhow), since the battalion-level of those brigades changes over time (even within specific conflicts...the 1st Cav Div provides a good example of this). If you stick with division and then the conflicts thought it might prove more useful.Intothatdarkness (talk) 18:08, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

I would very much endorse Intothatdarkness's views. Concentrate, first, on History of the 101st Airborne Division, then the conflict level articles would be my thought. Cheers Buckshot06 (talk) 22:58, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Should also say the lineage section does not need to remain as a stand-alone section; should be wound in in its individual sentences appropriately into the history section. Anyone who wants to read the official lineage in its original form can follow the links to the U.S. Army sites. Buckshot06 (talk) 23:05, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Quite so, especially since the official lineage doesn't always square with historical associations or activities.Intothatdarkness (talk) 14:02, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

The Battalion thing raises another question: with the Combat Arms Regimental System 1986 reorganization, the US Army deactivated its regimental headquarters, which is a nightmare for us. For any who don't know, the Army deactivated regimental headquarters but kept the battalions intact, so the "505th Parachute Infantry Regiment" does not exist, but the 1st Battalion, 505th Infantry and 2nd Battalion, 505th Infantry do. As a result, each battalion has a very different history. We have instances like the 73rd Cavalry Regiment, which now has four active battalions...assigned to four different brigades. My thoughts are to cover the history of the regiment as a whole on the regiment page with a short seealso section in the bottom explaining the battalions took on separate commands in 1986, and then for each battalion page, have a short "Origins" section linking back to the regimental page and then continuing from 1986. Does this sound good? —Ed!^(talk) 14:22, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

The whole CARS can of worms actually goes back to the 1950s, and under it battalion lineage is often traced back to specific companies in the original regiment (1st Battalion, Fourth Cavalry linking to Company A, Fourth Cavalry, for example). Only the old separate Armored Cavalry regiments remained somewhat intact for lineage purposes. I think your solution is a good one, but be aware that in many cases you'll have to go back to the 1950s or 60s to find the first historical split.Intothatdarkness (talk) 17:36, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Ed, the policy has been not to create separate pages for each regimental battalion. British battalions served with multiple different brigades, and can still have all their battalions' history together. There's no need for separate battalion pages unless they are separate battalions - everything can go in the original regimental page - thinking COHORT, among other things! This will also avoid the necessity for for a CARS/USARS split. Buckshot06 (talk) 20:09, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

I didn't think he was talking about creating battalion articles. It was more showing the association of battalions to specific regiments. But I could be wrong.Intothatdarkness (talk) 20:59, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

My concern then, based on my work with 10th Mountain Division, is the four component units are doing four different things at any time these days, especially with rotations in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan from 2003-2011. I could try a "component unit" subsection but this risks making the article very long. I don't really have a solution of my own, but the problem I'm facing with units is that nowadays, the US Army divisions, brigades and battalions keep getting reassigned and detached and doing their own things. —Ed!^(talk) 01:27, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

I think that we're going to need separate battalion articles as there were usually more battalions in a given regiment than in the British Army until recently so even regimental articles are going to be big if they cover the 3-4 battalions in each regiment with multiple deployments in the last decade. My main concern, as an OB guy, is that the components of each unit should be delineated with each major change in the articles. Of course that may not really be feasible for Iraq/Afghanistan deployments with battalions/brigades constantly arriving and departing. Nonetheless, snapshot OBs for specific dates would be very useful.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:01, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

One thing that might help is that I've just freed up 10kB in the original division article simply by removing the lineage, so careful editing will create much more room in the main articles. On regts/bns, I suggest we stick with the existing articles to start with, because all the precedent and existing links link to them, but if the articles are going over 100k+ size prescribed by WP:SIZERULE, we can start thinking about splits. Buckshot06 (talk) 03:36, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

With US units, you could very quickly end up with a huge pile of articles if you go down to the battalion level. The Brigade Combat Team stuff drastically reshuffled Army lineage, and created a whole mess of new battalions and such (especially in the cavalry community). While that doesn't mean they should be excluded (and I really think they need to be at least mentioned), I think we do need to be mindful of what could happen. Brigades might be a better stopping point with US units.Intothatdarkness (talk) 13:25, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Possible announcement of JSTOR accounts being made available to established editors in the near future

Details here Nick-D (talk) 07:56, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Help with Armenian Air Force

Hello,

A user has twice removed cited text from the first paragraph at Armenian Air Force#History. I checked the 2nd source (NY Times article) for the last part of the paragraph and adjusted some wording. However, I do not have access to the book reference to check the other text there. Thanks for any help here. -Fnlayson (talk) 18:11, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the help with this, Buckshot. -Fnlayson (talk) 22:32, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Iraq War in Anbar Province

Hi, I'd like to ask anyone interested in this FAC to give it a look. Neither this article nor (to my knowledge) this editor have been through A-class before, but the work looks promising. - Dank (push to talk) 00:53, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Any Arabic language speakers?

I'm trying to fix the proper interwiki link for 15th Division (Syria). Can anyone help or point me to someone who can? Buckshot06 (talk) 22:28, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

You could try Abjiklam (talk · contribs). He was very helpful with a recent issue involving Arabic translation at ANI. EyeSerene^talk 08:23, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

USSR and Nazi Germany totalitarian states?

I believe they were and I further believe that such belief is a mainstream view. I am having a discussion about this with another editor who disputes the validity of the term 'totalitarian'. I would appreciate the thoughts and views of MILHIST editors at Talk:Battle of the Korsun-Cherkassy Pocket#Propaganda. Cheers, W. B. Wilson (talk) 14:44, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Totalitarianism Bwmoll3 (talk) 14:49, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

I pointed to that article. I have now provided two citations, one from a work cited in this article as well as one from a book by Hannah Arendt. Thank you for the suggestion. Cheers, W. B. Wilson (talk) 14:53, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

I read the discussion, and I've not seen a better example of a political discussion splitting hairs in a long time. I try to avoid those kind of things, as they are never resolved to anyone's satisfaction. Bwmoll3 (talk) 15:01, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, except that exercises in relativism to excuse a straightforward description of a political system are unappealing. I'm no expert on political systems, but to argue that Nazi Germany and USSR were not totalitarian is where the hair-splitting occurs. And when we as a community prefer not to take part in such discussions, then it bodes ill for Wikipedia. Cheers, W. B. Wilson (talk) 17:34, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

This one is claiming a moral equivalency between Nazi Germany & colonial Britain that I find pretty disturbing. Colonial misbehavior, even brutality, inthe 19th Century isn't remotely equal enforced famine & engineered genocide. TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 19:51, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

I am surprised that what I think to be a relatively straightforward sentence is apparently so controversial. Thanks to all for the comments. Cheers, W. B. Wilson (talk) 05:10, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

The sentence, as written, states that it is because the states were totalitarian that they both claimed victory."Considering the totalitarian political systems of the Nazis and Soviets, it is not surprising that both hailed the events at Korsun as a victory." There are many instances in military history when both sides claim victory (there are few, or no, occasions of both sides claiming defeat in the same battle - maybe Hastenbeck) and it is never surprising, irrespective of their political systems. Citations that support the conclusion that it was because of their totalitarianism, as opposed to any of a dozen other reasons, national pride e.g., that both sides claim victory are needed.Tttom1 (talk) 14:53, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. I've said something similar on the talk page, as I don't see the relevance of the totalitarianism of the countries. Ranger Steve ^Talk 15:14, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Napoleonic Era Task Force

Hi,

As somebody who is extremely interested in the Napoleonic Wars, I want the Task Force to have a bit more attention. I would be very, very happy to help with the task force if we can get people working for it. I will be happy if you want me to start making the Napoleonic Era Task Force a working, significant Task force within Wikipedia: Wikiproject Military History. I will start work now, but please reply with your views as I really want to improve the Task Force.

Thanks, pbl1998--Pbl1998 (talk) 19:24, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

I share your views, and wish there was more active input in the American Civil War and Napoleonic War task forces, but should add that the majority of task forces are suffering low levels of interest at present. We have a low number of regular participants in the project, we lost long-term coordinators last nominations, and have lost some of the new coordinators since, and generally speaking member input is weak all round, in both coordination and project development. It is hard to develop interest for task forces, possibly because military history Wikipedians just don't seem to pay enough attention to the discussions here, and work in their own corners without looking to form team efforts. I have found that the lack of encouragement here has also affected my overall interest in Wiki, lately, and don't do too much editing, at present. So, I wish you luck in your own editing, but you may find it hard to get much support from committed members. Ma®©usBritish^[chat] 21:16, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

I'll second that. We're still fantastically well off in terms of participation when compared to other projects, but it's been tapering off for awhile. That's why you'll find that the task force talk pages are redirected to this page – we've had to centralize all of the discussions to ensure they receive comment. You are of course free to un-redirect the talk page if you find any other interested users. Good luck! Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 21:35, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

I wouldn't necessarily suggest changing the current talk page redirection scheme unless there's a significant long-term shift in a task force's activity levels; short-term bursts of interest often last only a few weeks, and I don't think we want to start having task force talk pages repeatedly being redirected and un-redirected based on momentary fluctuations in activity. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 00:14, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

I would suggest treating the task force itself as a secondary concern and focusing more on article-level collaboration. For example, you might start working on a group of related Napoleonic articles, with the goal of creating a featured topic on the subject. In the course of doing so, you'll meet and interact with the other active editors in the area—who may not be aware of or participating in the existing task force—and hopefully build up a core of collaborators. Once that's in place, it will be much easier to revitalize the task force, since you'll be able to work as a team rather than trying to do it by yourself.

(I suspect that something of this sort was the key factor behind the success of OMT; the core participants there were collaborating as an informal group before the formal infrastructure was created.) Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 00:14, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

I'd agree with the suggestion to focus on some of the articles. You could propose three or four interesting Napoleonic ones to focus on here, for example, and see who pitches in? Hchc2009 (talk) 22:01, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

2nd, 4th, and 5th British Airborne Divisions, and the 58th Division

The above units do not appear on the British Order of Battle as published by Lieut-Col. H.F.Joslen (a very reliable source on the British OOB for the war) however they each have an article. Glancing over the short articles, they are stated to be deception units only. They also appear as individual articles in the Allied military deception in World War II box.

As separate articles they appear to be a complete waste of bandwidth. I propose that they are deleted and their content merged into a single article regarding British deception units during the Second World War. If memory serves, as it is now the box is missing additional British deception units so the current articles do not even represent comprehensive coverage. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.8.192.142 (talk) 20:40, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Despite the claims of our article, there was a 58th (2/1st London) Division in WWI, so that at least shouldn't be redirected. In general, though, a single coherent article discussing the deception operations with a list of notional units would be a good idea - there's not much benefit to keeping them seperate. Shimgray | talk | 20:51, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Agree; reorganising these articles has been on my list for a long time. They should be merged into such a British deception formations in World War II article. Buckshot06 (talk) 20:57, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Cheers guys!

For info in such proposed article:

40th Infantry Division. The 43rd Infantry Brigade was designated on 9 November 1943 as the 40th Infantry Division for deception purposes. The brigade was in Sicily for "internal security duties on lines of communications". The battalions of the brigade (30 Somerset LI, 30 Royal norfold and 30 Dorset) "were given brigade designations; and every effort was made to appear to be a division. This included the adoption of a divisional sign featuring the diamond and acord of the Great War 40th Div.; these were made up locally and worn on uniform by the personnel of the 'division'-in reality, three battalions of low medical category men armed with personal weapons only and with a skeleton compliment of transport. The deception was played out until June 1944, when the formation was disbaned." (Chappell, p.23)

57th Infantry Division. "...formed in North Africa in November 1943, by the redesignation of the 42nd Infantry Brigade." The units were 30th Northumberland Fusiliers, Bedfordshire and Herts, DCLI, Green Howards, and Suffolks. Used the great war flash of the 57th Division: "The Derby 'D'". The division appeared on the German order of battle "(strangely, it [the flash] was shown as inverted from its Great War configeration) proving that the phantom 57th had done their job". (Chappell, p. 36)

British Battle Insignia (2): 1939-45 by Mike Chappell — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.8.192.142 (talk) 21:26, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Thankyou 82.8.192.142, that's really helpful to get that information, and especially with the references. Does the book provide any information on the deception airborne divisions? Buckshot06 (talk) 22:50, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

There is not. Sorry. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.8.192.142 (talk) 12:54, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

I've now created the resulting British deception formations in World War II article. Buckshot06 (talk) 05:19, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

May Revolution

There's a FAC open for the article May Revolution at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/May Revolution/archive4. All comments are welcomed. Cambalachero (talk) 02:17, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Editors opinions needed

There is a dispute on what the "lists of wars" articles should be like. Please see and contribute to:

Talk:List of wars involving Great Britain#List format / content

This involves a considerable change (essentially a removal of a lot of work) to not only the British article but the Russian one too (and others perhaps). David (talk) 17:18, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Added comments, cheers. Ma®©usBritish^[chat] 18:16, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Added comment as well. Hchc2009 (talk) 18:28, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks guys. That article was becoming a little forgotten in any case - I think it's quite a notable article and demonstrates Britain's rather prolific war-fighting across the globe, with just about every ally and enemy, over the centuries! David (talk) 23:44, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Might be helpful if you raise your points further in the talk page, otherwise it's just me and him butting heads, rather than reaching a conclusion for or against any particular setup. Cheers, Ma®©usBritish^[chat] 00:39, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Does anyone else care to provide input in this discussion? This guy is just going round in circles with the same minimalist nonsense, and not really presenting anything other than his own limited view of what a list should be. Some further thoughts on the article may help. Ma®©usBritish^[chat] 21:46, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

It is essentially the one editor v. all, so I wouldn't worry about it for much longer. His edits, which were uncalled for (he should have at least raised it on the talk pages before going ahead), are clearly not supported by interested editors. And I doubt any outside arbitration would assist him. David (talk) 23:31, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Ha. Now he's taking it to arbitration. He's really going for the long war. *sigh* Can interested editors (and it annoys me to have to ask this again) please chip in here. Thanks. David (talk) 11:24, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Norway's military in "some of the toughest battles" in Afghanistan

"In the spring of 2010 Norwegian soldiers were [participants] in some of toughest battles during the 10 year long Afghanistan mission."

The above quote concerns OMLT 3 (the third group of soldiers serving together as mentors/military advisors for Afghan soldiers/police)at FOB Ghowrmach. This article, http://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/artikkel.php?artid=10079837, was published in Verdens Gang. (Personally, I think that the journalists of this article have been somewhat sloppy and non-specific in the way they have expressed themselves.)

(These battles ran their course before the Norwegian ISAF soldier's battle of May 2, 2010, according to the context of the article.)

So if Norway's contribution was so significant, then in what section of what article should these battles be mentioned?

Are there any suggestions regarding any new articles that can be written about Norway's military in Afghanistan or related subjects?

I wouldn't mind (reading and) contributing to an encyclopedic version of Norway's military's successes and failures in Afghanistan.--Rugcity (talk) 20:54, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

This discussion is being sabotaged by an agenda pusher of Norway-releated subjects, see [1]. --Rugcity (talk) 21:20, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Start with the existing articles for Norway's military. Then if the content there gets lengthy, then a split may be in order. -Fnlayson (talk) 21:54, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

QRpedia

I'd like to draw your attention to QRpedia, a Wikimedia-UK project (applicable globally) which I help to run, to make mobile-friendly versions of Wikipedia articles available, in the user's referred language, via QR codes. It could easily be applied to sites of historic military history, be they archaeological remains, museums, or war memorials. I don't watch this page, so please drop a note on my talk page if you - or the institutions you liaise with - have any questions, or need assistance, or of you deploy QRpedia yourselves. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:49, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Greetings from GLAM-Wiki US

Invitation to join GLAM-Wiki US

tight Hello! This WikiProject aligns closely with the work of the GLAM-Wiki initiative (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums), a global community of volunteers who assist cultural institutions with sharing resources with Wikimedia. GLAM-Wiki US is a new community initiative focused on organizing cultural collaborations within the United States. GLAM organizations are diverse and span numerous topics, from libraries and art museums to science centers and historic sites. We currently have a backlog of interested institutions- and we need your help! Are you interested in helping with current or future GLAM projects? Join→ Online Volunteers We hope you'll join the growing GLAM-Wiki community in the US. Thank you! -Lori Phillips (Talk), US Cultural Partnerships Coordinator For more information visit→ The GLAM:US portal or GLAM-Wiki on Outreach

A-class reviews that need attention

Hello all, if anyone has some spare time and is keen to review an article, the following Milhist A-class reviews need some attention (listed in order of oldest to newest):

• Alsos Mission: needs another reviewer (open since 24 February);
• Kenneth Nichols: needs another reviewer (open since 24 February);
• De Havilland Comet: needs another reviewer (open since 3 March); and
• List of field marshals of the British Army: needs another reviewer (open since 10 March). Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 22:29, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

MoS & GEN Patton

The article George S. Patton has a wikilink to the article Master of the Sword, but it appears to be about a different subject then what is discussed in the article that it links to. Is there a need for a disambiguous page, or should a new section be added to the wikilinked article? --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 23:00, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

In Patton, I delinked from Master of the Sword because it pointed to the position at West Point and linked to the Mounted Service School (a redirect). I think the long term solution is a page describing the position generically, as distinguished from it existence at USMA. The subject is outside my technical competence.--Gaarmyvet (talk) 00:22, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

I set out to move Master of the Sword to "Master of the Sword (USMA)" then decided some agreement is necessary. It may also serve to add other Master of the Sword positions and their present and former incumbents to the existing page, using headlines for the individual positions. Are there such positions at places like VMI and the Citadel?--Gaarmyvet (talk) 15:44, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

It appears that there are other usages of the term "Master of the Sword" other than the position at West Point and United States Cavalry School. It appears that a disambiguous page is necessary and separate pages are required, and the USMA article be appropriately renamed. --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 02:02, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Interwiki to a Norwegian article about Norwegian ISAF soldiers and shootings and battle involving them

Can an article titled Timeline over battles involving Norwegian ISAF soldiers or Timeline over shots fired involving Norwegian ISAF soldiers be interwikied to the Norwegian article which is linked here, http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidslinje_over_skuddvekslinger_med_norske_ISAF-soldater?

The title of the Norwegian article can be translated as "Timeline over exchanges of firing (of weapons) involving Norwegian ISAF soldiers". The article includes mention of the battle where 9 Norwegian soldiers were wounded over a couple of hours (over half of the ISAF soldiers on that detachment returning from their patrol mission).

Or is there consensus that we can redirect to a future section of the article about Norwegian Armed Forces, "Timeline over exchanges of fire (of weapons) involving Norwegian ISAF soldiers"? --Tumorlenk (talk) 02:24, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Do we really need an article describing every skirmish fought by Norwegian soldiers in Afghanistan? That would probably violate WP:NOTNEWS. It would be better to create a Military history of Norway in the War in Afghanistan (2001–present)-type article which describes Norway's overall involvement in the war, and mention these as appropriate. Nick-D (talk) 10:28, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

"It would be better to create a Military history of Norway in the War in Afghanistan (2001–present)-type article"? Maybe you are right.

I believe in the importance of interwiki. Can someone please contact wikipedia.no (bokmål) at http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:Torget, and ask if Norges militærhistorie i krigen i Afghanistan (2001- ) is a notable subject for them. If they say yes, then maybe the idea of Nick-D, is the way to go.

(The mentioned Norwegian discussion, accepts questions in English.) --Tumorlenk (talk) 14:16, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Relatively easy copyediting jobs

We could really use some help on the FACs listed at WT:MHC#FACs that need copyediting attention. As copyediting jobs go, this is about as easy as it gets ... two-thirds of each article (except one) has been done, and the current and previous FACs by those nominators have detailed comments from copyeditors that may give you an idea what to look for. If you find nothing ... all the better, say so on the FAC page :) And please keep an eye on that section at WT:MHC, I'll add more FACs as they come in. - Dank (push to talk) 01:14, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Renewed Unit Citation discussion

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Salvatore Giunta#March 2012. RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 01:58, 26 March 2012 (UTC)Template:Z48

Category:Three-Cornered Conflicts

Category:Three-Cornered Conflicts, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has been nominated for deletion or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:08, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:BradTraylor/Battle of Imizu

Comment/judgment/vote by editors with knowledge of ja and Japan are needed. Thank you. Oda Mari (talk) 09:39, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Handwriting decyphering

Can anyone read the name of the chap seated on the ground at the front of this photo. Cheers. NtheP (talk) 11:31, 26 March 2012 (UTC)