Wikipedia:WikiProject Military
First, an important note for everyone to remember:
A few Wikipedians have gotten together to make some suggestions about how we might organize data in articles about military organizations. These are only suggestions, things to give you focus and to get you going, and you shouldn't feel obligated in the least to follow them. But if you don't know what to write or where to begin, following the below guidelines may be helpful. Mainly, we just want you to write articles!
Australian Military History: WW2: Sparrow Force in Timor
WikiProject Military
Scope
A Powerpoint presentation of the battle that was fought by Sparrow Force (based on the 2/40th Battalion, 2nd AIF) in the vicnity of Kupang, Timor, in Feb 1942.
Parentage
Not applicable.
Descendant Wikiprojects
Wikiprojects for individual types of units may be of interest at some point (for instance, there were about 100 divisions of the US Army in WWII; each has enough story for its own article).
Related Wikiprojects
- WikiProject Ships is related; many of the ships it organizes are military in purpose, and are themselves military units.
- Wikipedia:History
- Wikipedia:Military Collaboration of the week
Participants
- Ctifumdope
- Chinfo
- David Newton
- Drizzt2 (WWII Guns and other firearms)
- Georgewilliamherbert (Modern military analysis, weapons systems, military / conflict geopolitics; Firearms article improvements)
- Gsl (WWI British & Anzac units, lists)
- Jniemenmaa
- Jpbrenna
- Kenyon (USMC-related articles)
- Mike McGregor (Can)
- Oldfarm (Prisoner-of-war & PoW Camps)
- SigPig (CF-related articles, nicknames)
- SoLando
- Stan Shebs
- ⇒ SWATJester
Ready Aim Fire! (US Army, infantry, special forces related articles.) - General Eisenhower
(talk of my war years) (talk here) (Help ME Improve) (war or [[User:General Eisenhower/Magic|Magic) - Wootking
- Foxhunt King (The Third Reich and WWII Wehrmacht/Luftwaffe)
Structure
Most country articles already have something such as Military of Greece that can serve as the root, while articles about alliances such as NATO are suitable for the few multinational militaries that exist. For dead countries, the military article may need only be a section within the country's article.
If there is a related civilian authority such as United States Department of Defense, it should be a separate article "off to the side", linked from the Military of X page.
Service branch articles
The first type of article describes a single branch of a country's armed forces. It may be necessary to create additional articles for service branches that no longer exist as such, or that have radically changed; these should also be linked from Military of X, mentioning the dates of their existence, so the reader can which is most relevant.
The service branch article should begin with context, and summarize the service's background and mission for the general reader in the first several paragraphs. Then there should be a section describing the current overall organization (but not listing all the components), a section with more detailed history, a table of current top-level components with links, and links to misc related topics. As usual, each of the sections may become separate articles if the overall article is large.
There will be several kinds of component article, details depending on the country, but categories may include formations, bases/facilities, commands, and functions. The service branch article should provide a table linking to all of these, again possibly indirecting through several layers in order to keep article sizes reasonable.
Formation articles
Formations are the divisions, fleets, and air wings that the rest of the military exists to support. Some are long-lived and others ephemeral, and sometimes the same name is used for different formations at different times. This has been handled for ships already via "index articles" such as USS Enterprise, which are like disambiguators, but more specialized.
For formations other than ships, article naming needs work - dozens of countries all have a 1st Infantry Division. Either prefixes or suffixes must be used to disambigulate such formations. There are obvious two possibilities for prefixes to disambigulate formations from different countries with the same name. One is to use a prefix associated with the country concerned, such as US 1st Infantry Division and British 1st Infantry Division. The other is to use a prefix associated with the organisation that the unit is part of, if that organisation is distinctive enough to allow disambigulation, and well known enough to be recognised by most people. An example of that sort of prefix would be RAF No. 1 Squadron
English language military units have been the most covered in the English language Wikipedia so far. This is not surprising given the much greater number of sources available on such units in English, and the larger number of people from the countries concerned contributing to the English Wikipedia. For example, when divisions are considered, there are articles on formations of that type from three countries as of 7 July 2003. One of those articles is on a Finnish formation, 6th Division (Finland), the others are all on American or British formations, for example, British 7th Armoured Division and US 1st Armored Division and US 3rd Infantry Division. The Finnish division uses a suffix to disambigulate, whereas the British and American division articles use suffixes to disambigulate. One other British division is covered, and eleven other American divisions are covered; one of which has a unique name which does not need disambigulation, another of which needs disambigulation, and the remainder of which follow the US prefix route for disambigulation. There are also a number of articles that have ready links to create new articles on military formations of several countries, and they tend to be on British and American military units, and follow the prefix conventions above.
Thus, so far it appears that British Army and United States Army formations that need disambigulation should use the prefixes British and US respectively. Ships of the two militaries are adequately covered by the existing rules on military ship article naming conventions. Higher formations of the navies of each nation do not have a sufficient number of articles for conclusions over naming tendencies to be drawn from existing material. With American formations, the obvious route is to use the prefix US, as the service concerned is the United States Navy, although USN is also possible. British higher naval formations are more difficult, since they form part of the Royal Navy. The abbreviation RN, which would be the obvious service-based prefix form, is probably not recognisable enough to use, so British is again probably the best prefix to use. Air Force formations are different again. US is again obvious for United States Air Force formations with USAF another possibility, but RAF is sufficiently well known as an abbreviaton for the Royal Air Force that it is probably preferable to use that as a prefix for RAF squadrons and higher headquarters.
Units of size down to regiment are likely to be worth an article; below that size the unit ought to have something notable about it that could not be explicated in a larger unit's article. It should be noted that certain formations are written down in specific ways. For example, it is correct to write V Corps, but not 5th Corps or Fifth Corps. Conversely, it is correct to write Fifth Army, rather than 5th Army. Article titles should follow those conventions.
A formation article should summarize who/what/when/where as succinctly as possible in the first paragraph, and commence with details only in the second paragraph and after, so as to help lost surfers get back on track. The details of a unit should include its origin and highlights of its operational history, composition (keeping in mind that a table may be necessary to describe changes over time), and mentions of notable commanders (a list of all commanders should be included if known, but is not absolutely necessary).
Ship and fleet articles can have pictures, while army and air force units can have images of their patches, as well as action shots of their members in action.
Base and facility articles
Bases and facilities are somewhat like formations that never move. Those articles should include geographical context, including links to neighboring communities, and economic information if available. Base pages can link to formations stationed there, keeping in mind that the information should be organized for easy update, since it changes a lot. Closed bases should get articles also, and there should be redirects from historical names, which will catch a bunch of currently-empty links.
Command and function articles
These are hardest to regularize, since the top echelons of a service routinely rearrange and reorganize themselves. Many of these articles can be short and consist mostly of dates of validity and links indicating relationships to other commands. Others should just describe the evolution of the function and relate it to the first formation adopting, statistics on usage, etc.
Hierarchy Definition
In general, militaries already have elaborate hierarchies that can be used verbatim. Long-lived formations will have gone through multiple reorganized hierarchies, and articles should be prepared to describe the periods of time during which a particular relationship existed.
Another possible form of hierachy definition is the order of battle. Such articles are usually in list form. Higher commands are least indented, and units subordinate to a particular command are listed after the command concerned, with a larger indent. Orders of battle can include commanders of formations, although for longer timeframes this can result in the article becoming cluttered. For longer periods of time, it is also necessary to define how long a particular unit controlled another unit, or how long one unit was subordinate to a controlling unit.
Lists
Various lists of military units are maintained:
Specialist lists (such as List of British divisions in WWI) are included in the See also section of the parent unit list (ie., List of military divisions).
Miscellaneous articles
Defeat in detail
This article was a two-sentence definition, listed for deletion; I have significantly updated (along with some others) and seek more input on improving it. Georgewilliamherbert 22:34, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
Templates
Templates are anticipated, but not defined yet.