Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Incubator/2008 South Ossetia war

Organisation of articles

Repost from 2008 South Ossetia war:

Here is a list of articles to better illustrate matters:

• 2008 South Ossetia war - Very detailed, quite well written (despite recent slip)
  • Battle of Tskhinvali - Subarticle moved out, detailed, well written, deals with SO front
  • Occupation of Gori - Similar, deals with Russian army in Gori
  • Battle of the Kodori Valley - Similar, a little short, deals with Abkhazian front
  • Background of the 2008 South Ossetia war - Subarticle moved out, deals with background in terms of different interests
• Georgian–Ossetian conflict - Pretty messy
• 2008 Georgia–Russia crisis - Very messy, almost bullet point style, very detailed
• Georgia–Russia relations - Pretty messy, lacking updates for events after August 2008
• Georgian–Abkhazian conflict - Very short

Additionally, there are the articles about the earlier wars + subarticles.

As you can see, there are a total of 5 articles all going into the background of the situation in South Ossetia in more or less detail (2008 South Ossetia war, Background of the 2008 South Ossetia war, Georgian–Ossetian conflict, 2008 Georgia–Russia crisis, Georgia–Russia relations). On the other side, there is only one, smallish article for Abkhazia (Georgian–Abkhazian conflict). So the problem is really different for the two issues:

For South Ossetia, the main problem is to make all the different articles consistent and find some way of arranging them that makes stuff less confusing. For Abkhazia, the main problem is the opposite, there is hardly overarching connection at all. To mess things up further, Georgia and Russia are involved in both conflicts at the same time, so while being geographically separate, they go through similar stages at the same time.

Imho, all of these need to be tackled at the same time. Some ideas:

1. Move a lot more of the actual "fighting" (from active stage section) into the 3 Battle/Occupation subarticles to create space in the main article.
2. Considerably upgrate the Georgian–Abkhazian conflict into an overarching story about that theater.
3. Either create a new article about the war on the Abkhazian front or considerably upgrade this article with stuff about it
4. Consolidate 2008 South Ossetia war#Background, 2008 South Ossetia war#Prelude, Background of the 2008 South Ossetia war, Georgian–Ossetian conflict, 2008 Georgia–Russia crisis, Georgia–Russia relations:
   • 2008 South Ossetia war#Background should be shorter on SO and refer more of the historic stuff to Georgian–Ossetian conflict
   • Similar for 2008 South Ossetia war#Prelude, parts of which should be moved to the Background article
   • 2008 Georgia–Russia crisis should be completely deleted and interesting stuff moved to Background of the 2008 South Ossetia war, Georgian–Ossetian conflict, and Georgia–Russia relations

All that would leave: 2 "Georgian-XX conflict" articles with the big storyline, this article and subarticles with the fighting, the "background ..." article with all the detail we dont want here and "Georgia-Russia relations" with another big storyline from the Russian perspective.--Xeeron (talk) 15:39, 27 May 2011 (UTC)