Talk:World War I

An event mentioned in this article is a July 28 selected anniversary

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Citation needed?

In the US Entry section the following is mentioned:

"whilst trying to broker a peace, this resulted in an increase in tensions with both Berlin and London."

Any link or reference to the peace attempts and subsequent reaction would be nice?

Also, on probably anal point ;-) the use of America(n) as a catch all term for the U.S. which occurs in many places in this article would be more accurately replaced with the term U.S. ?

Pmcelroy77 14:40, 19 February 2007 (UTC)Pmcelroy77

It's quite common and acceptable English to use American to describe things related to the United States. Haber 03:04, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Common it may be; acceptable it is not. Latin Americans also regard themselves as "Americans". Paradoxically, it seems to be the reverse with Canadians, who would do anything not to be called "American". Grant | Talk 06:36, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing your wisdom yet again. How about this: When the encyclopedia gets a mandate to rewrite the English language in the interests of fairness and inoffensiveness, then I'll consider this request. Until then the thousands of reliable sources that use the term "American" will be our guide. Haber 12:14, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Thousands of reliable sources use thousands of ambiguous terms all the time. Being reliable sources does not them infallible. Or unambiguous. See the article American:

American may refer to:

• A person or attribute of the Americas, the lands and regions of the Western Hemisphere
• A person or attribute of the United States of America

Grant | Talk 16:18, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

If I have you correctly, then you want to change the terminology to something more specific and less offensive, even though that will make the article inconsistent with the sources on which it is based. For example, in some of my contributions to this article, I have cited Keegan's The First World War. He has a chapter "America and Armageddon" and frequent references to "Americans". Why should we do things differently? Haber 00:19, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Keegan is an excellent source in regrad to military history, but if I remember rightly he refers to the Ottoman Empire as "Turkey", which is also incorrect. I'm not advocating changing direct quotations or using neologisms. Just that we use "United States", "U.S.", "U.S. forces", "U.S. citizens" (etc) wherever possible. I mean, I see and hear people from the U.S. using these terms all the times. Grant | Talk 00:56, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

He mainly uses Turkey. It's in the index as "Turkey (Ottoman Empire)". If you're proposing combing through the article and replacing every instance of "American" with some variation on "U.S.", I must oppose for the above reasons. Additionally, we'd be denying the right of the American people to self-apply whatever name they choose, and using terms that sound stilted. It sort of reminds me of when I see "UK army" in places instead of "British army". I'm sure it makes some people happy but it just sounds odd and is inconsistent with most of the literature. Say some young kid reads our article and actually follows up by taking one of our recommended books out of the library. Do you want him to be confused? Haber 04:25, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Might I ask why there are only 10 footnotes for this entire article? The "Basic Bibliography" is a nice touch, but even as far as Wikipedia goes, this is lacking.129.97.180.232 23:37, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Famous railcar armistice photo

I have been looking everywhere on the internet and can't find a photo of the famous photo of the signers of the WWI armistice standing by Foch's railway car shortly after signing. If it helps, it was in Compiegne on November 11, 1918. The railcar is significant - it's the same one that Hitler used to dictate France's surrender terms in WWII. Many kudos to whoever can upload a pic, preferably high quality! Or if you can let me know if there's any books with the photo in it. Thanks! FranksValli 06:48, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

The German Wikipedia has it: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Compi%C3%A8gne1918.jpg I don't know if we can use it from there. You may need to get a copy put on Wikimedia Commons. Regards, Grant | Talk 07:19, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Great! Thanks for the fast response. I'll put it on Commons later today. FranksValli 13:21, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

world war 1 was a reaction again people in the united states that helped kill bees

What? Were you actually trying to say something or just typing random things?Ryuugaki 18:28, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I think he's typing random crap. By the way, the railway carriage armistice photo is now available here: Image:Armisticetrain.jpg FranksValli 17:42, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Note that the wagon was not "owned" by Foch (see wiki on trains) but granted to Foch for military use by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. The French Wiki even has an article about the railcar (fr:Wagon de l'armistice). Tazmaniacs 18:07, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Cool, thanks for the info I updated the description on Wiki Commons. FranksValli 00:50, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Proposal: Return to feature status

Is anyone interested in returning this article to "Featured Article" status? I just reviewed the de-listing archive.

The article was de-listed because there are almost no internal citations. Therefore, we need to add internal citations. Because the article is primarily an overview that refers to a (large) set of more detailed articles, I suspect we can glean citations from the detailed articles. When we have a valid citation for each paragraph, we can nominate the article for FA status again. The article has a huge collection of general references: so large that most of them have been moved to a separate article. The problem is that we need "internal" citations: a citation to a specific reference for each assertion in our article.

A secondary reason for de-listing was that the quality of the prose has deteriorated, but I think this is minor by comparison and we can upgrade the prose as we add citations.

A tertiary complaint amongst the "de-listers" is that this article is too long.

If a project (e.g. the military history project) would like to take over, please place a comment here and tell the rest of us how to help. When that occurs, This proposal is terminated.

Proposal:

• If anyone wants to help, please declare an interest in a section of the article by placing a comment here. Then, go read the detailed article for "your" section and add citations to your section of this article. When you think you are finished, please leave another note to that effect here.
• If you can make "your" section more concise, please do so. You can move information from this article into the more detailed article if it is not already there, and then delete the information from this article. Clearly, you will need to use your judgement as to what must stay in the overview: ask for help here if you are uncertain.
• If you have a better idea, please leave a comment here.

A note on internal refernce style: This article as already adopted a reference style. Please stay consistent with this style. to add a new internal citation, add something like this example:

<ref name=Evans>Evans, David. Teach yourself, the First World War, Hodder Arnold, 2004.p.188</ref>

Thanks. -Arch dude 01:28, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Sections: (Please adopt a section here)

Before I say that I'll agree to this project or not, I want to know what you mean by "your section". Do we choose that or is that somehow already predetermined? Q E11even 03:36, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I just read through about half of this article (the first half), and have to say this is really a top notch read. In particular, I'm happy to see such a nicely sucinct description of the Schlieffen Plan - so often the basic concept behind the Plan gets lost in too much detail when discussed. All in all, a well done article! (the first half that I read, at least :P )Dxco 00:46, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Commanders

The defintion of commander will need to be cleared up. How do Wilson and Clemenceau qualify whereas Lloyd George does not (only Asquith is included for Britain). Additionally, these heads of governments didn't have official military capacities (at least not in their titles), so the heading needs to be re-defined as either military commanders or more general national leaders, both on the military and political front (which admittedly overlap in the case of World War One).

I think it's because the original authors of that section were trying to limit the commanders to the most significant? I don't know enough about WW1 to be sure though..Ryuugaki 18:29, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Having looked over the commanders list - perhaps it would be a good thing to distinguish between the political leaders and the senior military commanders by area. GraemeLeggett 08:56, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

The Great Gatsby

Is the any particular reason why The Great Gatsby is listed under WWI literature? IanW 01:27, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

• None I can think of so I'm going to remove it.Lisiate 21:52, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

--I have added great gatsby back on, because it is relevant. To main characters Nick and the title character Gatsby fight in the Great War. Aslo, most of the novel is set right after the war is over, and makes some references and allusions to the war. .User:Udora

• • And I've removed it again. The list is for works that are actually about the war. Compare Gatsby to the other works listed. All of them are either novels set in the war itself or memoirs from participants. Making some references or allusions to the war is not sufficiently close to put Gatsby in with the novels and memoirs listed. No one would describe it as a "World War One novel" and it just doesn't belong here. Lisiate 03:52, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Canadian Bias in this and other WW1 articles

A typical example... "Allied soldiers closed this breach at the Second Battle of Ypres (where over 5,000 soldiers, mainly Canadian, were gassed to death) and Third Battle of Ypres, where Canadian forces took the village of Passchendaele."

Now I really don't want to belittle the contribution of the Canadian forces but to me just looking at that sentence I would assume that the Canadian forces did most of the fighting at Passchendaele and took the heaviest casualties. However, if one looks at the casualty figures for the battle a different picture comes out. Allied losses were horrific even by WW1 standards. The British Empire lost around 300,000 men of which c.16,000 were Canadian - approx 5% of the losses. British losses at 2nd Ypres (the article on which is a particularly bad offender) were close on 60,000, French losses 10,000 or so, yet reading that article one would be surprised to know they were even there. Has someone, somewhere been adding large chunks from the "The Canadian History of the Great War" or some such? --LiamE 01:38, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I have noticed this to be pervasive. The ANZACs do it too. Please correct it when you see it. Haber 04:06, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Really? While I agree that the instance Liam has cited is a problem, I could find many articles where Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, and/or South Africans should be mentioned and are not, or only one of these countries is. Unfortunately, members of Commonwealth countries are often as uninformed as most Brits or Americans, when it comes to each others' history. By the way Haber, what nationality are you? Grant | Talk

An example is Gallipoli. I corrected this[1] soon after I became interested in Wikipedia. I'm American. Haber 04:04, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Someone added Arthur Currie, who commanded the Canadian Corps, to the infobox. Removed -- if we added every corps commander, the infobox would have dozens, probably hundreds of names. What do they teach in Canadian schools? That the whole history of the Western Front turned on Canada's contribution of four divisions?

Grant | Talk 02:46, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, as someone currently taking Canadian history in the public system... yes, thats what they're teaching basically. There is a lot of "Canadians were the most feared shock troops on the western front" and "Where Canadians stood the line never broke". Very exagerated descriptions of our valour.

Interesting, I thought perhaps the "(where over 5,000 soldiers, mainly Canadian, were gassed to death)" comment sounding odd was just me. I agree that, at least, that line in particular really stood out as kind of jarring. Is the significance of the Candian losses during this battle more noteworthy than the losses other nation's soldiers suffered from? If not, yank it. If so, then we should explain clearly how the Candian participation in this battle was a central element, and their losses a core component of a discussion of the conflict.Dxco 00:43, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

• • I suggest that you add it back on. There is nothing wrong with more information, as long as it is relevant and correct. You never what someone wants to know, and you shouldn't restrict the knowledge or material that is presented on a wikipedia article. I suggest adding a list of officers (generals,lutenents,etc.) in the "Other Names" section. =) Udora
    • Currie is (or was) mentioned in the article, and that is the way it should be. We can't justify including him in the infobox and not including many, many more significant figures. The infobox is supposed to be as brief as possible and its already too big at present, IMO. Grant | Talk 07:49, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Why is Austria's individual flag shown for the Dual Austria-Hungarian state?

In the combatants section, Austria's national flag is shown as the flag of Austria-Hungary. The flag of Austria-Hungary was a split flag with the left half being the Austrian red-white-red horizontal tricolour while the right half being the Hungarian red-white-green tricolour. I tried to post this on the site but it has been changed back to Austria's individual flag and not that of the dual kingdom itself.

If the flag is to represent the nationality of the Austrian commanders, then why is there not the Hungarian flag of the time on the site to represent the existing Hungarian commanders and others of provincial nationalities in the Austro-Hungarian empire? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by R-41 (talk • contribs) 16:23, 9 March 2007 (UTC).

Enormous numbers of missing military personnel?

Not a WWI authority, but at first glance the numbers given seem huge. 7.75 million missing soldiers? I had trouble finding online sources, but this one at firstworldwar.com lists under 2 million total missing personnel. Are we sure about the higher figures? Johnatx 07:42, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion of wiki philosophy

Who deleted the photo? My philosophy is to almost never delete material which was added in good faith? I feel Wikipedia is best served if all submissions are somehow given room, and those who feel something is wrong simply write their own response. Just wanted to note that. Thanks. --Steve, Sm8900 00:24, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Oil

I just did a search of this page to find that the word 'oil' appears only once - and then only applied to Germany fearing the loss of oil resources! Is it just me that thinks it should be mentioned a little bit more - and a little less one sided --- Sir Maurice Hankey, powerful Secretary of the British War Cabinet, wrote to Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour during the war’s final stage, to argue that oil had become absolutely vital to Britain and that oil resources in Mesopotamia would be crucial in the future.“Control of these oil supplies becomes a first-class war aim” [2] sbandrews (t) 15:19, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Sentence flow - para. 5 - suggested alteration of 'forced into the workforce'

Original: With the death or absence of the primary wage earner, women were forced into the workforce in unprecedented numbers

Suggested alternate: With the death or absence of the primary wage earner, women entered the workforce in unprecedented numbers out of necessity. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Wooster boy (talk • contribs) 20:11, 20 March 2007 (UTC). bbn vmngukgjngfvbgvjkgjvgkjgghgc

GA in zh.wikipedia

Please add {{Link GA|zh}} in interwiki section. Thanks! -- Givegains 13:32, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Military Personnel Attitude Towards the War?

Does anyone have any information about the soldiers themselves? As in more than the few instances of mentions of morale? I'm thinking it's pretty relevant to the war.. unless there's a page on this already? (Are my persistant question marks throwing anyone off?) Sorry about the poor layout skills, I'm new to doing this Talk business.. Ryuugaki 18:35, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Gas Warfare

According to The encyclopedia of weaponry (Ian V. Hogg) the first gas attack was on 27 October 1914, at Neuve Chapelle. But it Failed. So ..can anyone support this?

(one more gas attack agaisnt russia also...)

"After a successful test, a batch of these shells was used agaisnt British troops at Neuve Chapelle on 27 October, 1914."

Knexxx 07:02, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Mobilisation

Mobilisation != Mobilization. Please fix this embarrassing spelling error. Neodudeman

It's an acceptable variant, used by the British. See Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#National_varieties_of_English. Haber 21:00, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

500 edits in less than two months

Why have thousands and thousands of changes been made to this page? Many odd edits have been broached. Why is there so much confusion associated with WWI? Versions marked by opinions appear regularly. I find the constant revisioning to be strange. What causes that constant revisioning? The page should not be a political football. I am perplexed. The article is too huge, too. GhostofSuperslum 15:52, 3 April 2007 (UTC)