Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Strategy

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Redirected here from Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators/September 2010#General comments, questions, etc.. To establish context, a selected portion of the discussion is duplicated below. EyeSerene^talk 09:13, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The election process has reliably produced an excellent group of coordinators; there is a certain 'old boys club' feel to it, but good new candidates do come through. Regarding reviewing, the main disadvantage it has over article creation is that reviewers are required to cover all of the FA criteria in a tightly constrained timeframe. On the other hand, reviewers could explicitly address specific criteria to reduce the burden and this could be facilitated by splitting the review into (transcluded?) sections by criterion. This would make the criteria clearer for new reviewers and they could focus on areas of interest to them or where they have particular skills. Realistically, reviewers on 1a, 1d and 4 may have no clue about 1c, but we are supposed to be experts in all areas to deliver a valid vote. On another topic, recognition of contributions in reviewing are appreciated. Doug (talk) 14:09, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

What Doug said, on all counts. Of course, the main thing we do right is to have a rocking A-class review process, which effectively gives us more time than most other projects to work on FAC issues. - Dank (push to talk) 14:23, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

On the contrary Doug, at FAC SandyGeorgia has encouraged editors to review in whatever capacity they can. If that is just one criterion, it's a small matter to say "criterion 1a looks good" or "oppose on criterion 3". Some people do just image reviews, and others focus on sourcing; some examine an article to see if it complies with MOS. You don't have to measure an article against every criteria as long as you state which ones you have. It's a good route for inexperienced reviewers, or for people who specialise in a particular area. It would be a good approach to adopt in the "rocking" A-class reviews. Nev1 (talk) 22:05, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Good idea. Nev, out of curiosity, why did you not consider running? You are a very dedicated worker here and I'm sure that you would do a good job at such a task.--White Shadows ^{Your guess is as good as mine} 00:49, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

I did consider it, but have some reservations about the position that are explained on my talk page. Nev1 (talk) 18:29, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Sorry Nev, I was reading that quickly as "reviewers" (plural), but I see he talks about individual reviewers later. No, individual reviewers can do anything they want. I give a standard disclaimer when I support at FAC. - Dank (push to talk) 01:25, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Nev. On the other hand, quoting 1a at review is a perfect method to introduce jargon, steepen the learning curve and ensure the need for a mentoring process. Perhaps that is desirable, but it should be an explicit choice of the project. I don't see downsides of sectioning reviews with the criteria for that section made explicit. A 'General' section would permit experienced reviewers to continue with their preferred style. Doug (talk) 15:33, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I really don't see how encouraging people to do something they're comfortable with rather than dive in at the deep end would intimidate people. It doesn't need to be bureaucratic, you don't need to create sections in reviews for people to compartmentalise their opinions, or anything else that's been over thought. All that a reviewer would have to do is state which criterion they checked the article against. Nev1 (talk) 18:29, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I think the main issue with reviewing only against selected criteria is that it complicates the promotion process. I don't see a problem with this when opposing, because a single unaddressed criteria-based oppose is enough to prevent promotion under the current system anyway, but when adjudicating supports the closing coord will need to distinguish support votes for the article as a whole from supports based on one criterion and weight them accordingly. EyeSerene^talk 08:13, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

If the choice is between a more approachable review system for the new and inexperienced and co-ordinators spending a little more time thinking about their decisions that's really no choice at all. Nev1 (talk) 14:32, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

I take your point, but I don't think we can dismiss this issue quite that easily. Currently promotion requires three supports and no unaddressed criteria-based opposes; under the system you suggest, it's possible an article could have its three supports but all could could be based on a single (perhaps even the same) criterion. Can we then legitimately promote the article? It's calling on the coords to make a subjective judgement call rather than - as now - a largely objective one. For me that's a big change in the coord role and I'm not sure we have the mandate or desire to do that. It would only take a few controversial decisions to call our entire A-Class review process into question. I think your suggestion is a good one, but to be fully integrated into the process it will require some hard thinking about the way we manage reviews. Perhaps the STT would be a good venue to explore this further? EyeSerene^talk 20:06, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

You still don't understand. This is aimed at inexperienced editors; the old hands who are currently involved wouldn't change their habits while newer edits might feel more comfortable commenting on only one aspect of the article. The purpose it to generate more interest in reviews rather than compartmentalise them, making life difficult for reviewers and co-ordinators. Obviously if there are only supports on certain criteria rather than the article as a whole, you wait for more reviewers. It's not rocket science. Nev1 (talk) 21:23, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

(od) I can't help but feel we ought to be having this discussion somewhere more central, but why not :-)

Speaking as someone pretty uninvolved with the A-class system at the moment (shame, shame, I know) - it seems "compartmentalising" works well for the B or GA reviews, with an easy breakdown of what is and isn't good to go, and it might well be worth trialling the model. I'd go for something like Doug suggests above - criteria headers, and encourage notes underneath each on the basis of "support / object / comment / query" - passing would then still require three approvals for each point, either explicit or inferred from general comments, but people would be able to clearly express "I am happy with the structure of this article and the text and the pictures, I definitely think the citations are screwy, but I don't have the slightest idea if it's actually correct, so please don't hold me to that bit" without having to leave unduly complicated remarks. In many ways this would be similar to what we have now, but it'd - hopefully - be a little bit clearer, a good bit easier to check off and close, and I can certainly see how being able to say "well, I only need comment on this little bit" would help draw people into reviewing. Perhaps we could run a review or two this way as a trial, and see if it's unwieldy or not? Shimgray | talk | 22:27, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

A trial sounds like an excellent idea. I am unsure if it will have positive effects, but we can at least try. Yoenit (talk) 09:42, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

One point that's just occurred to me is that some reviewers already review on single criteria, but they tend to mark their contributions as "Comment". I suppose formalising this practice would be another alternative; we could encourage new reviewers to wet their feet by contributing at a level they feel comfortable at, but reserve "Supports" for full-article reviews.

Re a trial, the current suggestion seems to be for trialling the compartmentalised review suggestion. Is that correct? EyeSerene^talk 10:00, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That wasn't my thinking at all when this all started, but if that's the consensus then have at it. Nev1 (talk) 17:19, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Would it be any use if I put together a demonstration of what a possible "compartmentalised" review might look like? I can knock one up tonight or tomorrow if so. Shimgray | talk | 16:38, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm excited to see your idea of how this might work, Shimgray. With regards to introducing 'gray area' into promotion by (objective) vote count, closes currently require a judgement call to see if all the criteria have been covered adequately. I have immense respect for good closers - they are the reviewer of reviews. Around the MilHist campfire we know each other pretty well and know which aspects we each cover. Most reviewers check an aspect they are familiar with: the person who has the skill to do a really good 1a & 1d and 4 check is often not the person with the knowledge, time and patience, and/or access to the resources to do a really thorough 1b & 1c, while others can be relied upon to check image copyright. Hence, separation between specific and general supports will help coordinators in their unavoidable judgement call. Doug (talk) 23:31, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

First draft

How about this? I was going to refactor an existing review, but it seemed simplest to do a very "bare" one with made-up comments. Thoughts appreciated. Shimgray | talk | 00:36, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Overall, I like the new setup; it definitely looks more inviting for a first-time visitor. A few general thoughts on the layout:

• The text of the five criteria might be more obvious set out in a box or quote template of some sort; as it is, it's not immediately obvious that those blurbs are explanations of the criteria rather than (possibly malformed) comments.
• Using level 3 headings is going to cause problems from a TOC perspective; currently, the TOC on the review page displays them, to allow easy tracking of the per-user headings in PRs, but this will result in a long list of repeated ACR criteria. I'm not sure whether the best solution would be to change these headings to not use header formatting, or to simply wrap the TOC up to level 2 (and possibly get rid of the heading convention for PRs, since it would no longer be useful).
• Assuming we go with this, it would probably be worthwhile to have ACR instructions appear in the editnotice for all ACR pages; we'll want an explanation of how to participate and what the various symbols and terms mean, at the very least.

Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 01:02, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks - please feel free to destroy any and all of the formatting! The reason most things are in "indented italic" is because I couldn't remember how to do pretty layout... a direct lift from the A-class section descriptions with links might be handy, then format it in an offset and it'll look quite tidy. The GA reviews have handy little "a) this b) that c) the other" reminders, which is why I went with the comments - perhaps we could try a staccato list rather than verbatim?

For headers, we could drop down to level 5? I believe that gets suppressed on the TOC.

I guess the next step is to tidy this and wrap all of the boilerplate into a preloading template - like {{GAList}} - then try it live on a couple of articles. Shimgray | talk | 01:11, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'll see what I can do in terms of cleaning up the formatting.

As far as preload templates are concerned, we can probably just modify Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Review/A-Class review preload boilerplate to output the new format for the duration of the trial. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 01:29, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nice work on the draft, Shimgray. Thank you! Further to Kirill's comments, do we also need the symbols? I don't think they're particularly intuitive and see no reason why we can't just stick with "support", "oppose" and "comment" (though maybe something like {{tick}} and {{cross}} would be more meaningful if we have to use graphics). EyeSerene^talk 09:08, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Support" and "oppose" would work fine, certainly - I was working from the GA preload so these were just the ones I had to hand :-) Shimgray | talk | 09:41, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I thought that might be the reason fwiw, I don't much like them at GA either! The criteria summaries at the start of each section is a good idea; that should be really helpful to new reviewers. EyeSerene^talk 12:59, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thinking about it, the main benefit of the images is that at a quick eyeball you can in theory see what still needs done, and easily spot lacunae, but as "two pluses" is still needing work, it's visually a bit counterintuitive. I wonder if hovering a five-point summary box at the side would work... hrm. I'll mock something up. For the time being, though, would it be worth my putting an article up for review using the new model, and we can try it out? Shimgray | talk | 11:25, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose it's what one's used to seeing - when I run my eye down a page I tend to take in "support", "oppose" etc faster than graphical symbols, but I'm sure regular GA template users are just as fast with the graphics :) I also feel that graphic-, code- and template-rich pages are off-putting to less technically-accomplished editors - they take longer and are more complicated to edit, and since our whole purpose is to attract new reviewers this might be counterproductive. However, I have no objection to exploring all the options :)

Re your review, personally I'd like to be a little clearer about how we close these reviews before proceeding with one. Again I have no objection to the trial and strongly support any initiative to encourage reviewing, but without a sound closure system any review is meaningless. In particular I'd like to get consensus on what mixture of partial/full supports we will accept for promotion (partial=support for one criterion; full=support for entire article). I'm assuming a single unaddressed oppose anywhere is still enough to block promotion.

One suggestion was that we wait for three partial supports for each criterion (ie five partial supports for A1, A2, A3, A4 and A5=one full-article support). I think this may be unrealistic, but might be workable if we remove the full-article review section and insist that reviewers who are reviewing the entire article comment separately under each criterion. However, the last thing we should do is alienate our existing reviewers; there's no guarantee we'll attract anyone new and we can't afford to lose the reviewers we already have. I'm really not sure what the solution is so any ideas are welcome :) EyeSerene^talk 12:05, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

From the perspective of a frequent A class reviewer and nominator, I find the lay-out proposed at User:Shimgray/A-test to be a bit off-putting. Dividing different reviewers comments up by the different criteria is a bit odd, and would encourage 'tick and flick' type reviews and could encourage some nominators to try to do only the minimum needed to meet each criteria (which can be a problem at times for B class assessments). If we want to go down this path, I'd suggest formating things so that each reviewers' comments against the criteria remain grouped together along with an 'other comments' field (a 'suggestions for improvement' field might also be worthwhile; I always try to make these suggestions in the articles I review and appreciate it when reviewers make them for my nominations). Nick-D (talk) 12:25, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Shim. Nick, not sure how to address your preference for keeping all your comments together. That's a go/no-go for this style, but I hope you wouldn't feel alienated by a test of a different style. I find it hard to picture this in the abstract but personally I'd drop the {{GAList/check|y}} - I've seen them used effectively at WikiMedia for short vote lists, but in general I find them a bit gimmicky. Also, I'd suggest taking out the pixel eating TOC, then that frees up the layout to put the headings inside the about box along the lines of:

The best part is:

I'd strongly support keeping that, regardless of the consensus decision with respect to review by criterion. Doug (talk) 22:16, 28 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So, where should we go from here? I think we have two options:

• Test out the criterion-specific review layout developed so far on a few reviews and see what feedback we get.
• Retain the combined layout but improve the instructions for reviewers using the material from the new layout boilerplate.

Thoughts? Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 04:56, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Whatever you decide, feel free to trial it on Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/ARA Rivadavia. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 05:12, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Have we got a set of promotion/failure criteria yet? (sorry to keep banging on about that, but it's quite important!) In answer to Kirill's question, I think a test might be worthwhile if we can sort out the former. EyeSerene^talk 09:17, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't it linked on the first header? WikiCopter (radio • sorties • images • lost • defense • attack) 04:08, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

To make things simple, how about we go with a FAC-style model: an article is promoted if:

• No significant objections are raised for any criterion; and
• At least three reviewers examine each criterion.

with "overall" reviews being considered as having examined all five criteria. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 17:35, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Moving forward?

So, are we in a position to test an entirely new format yet? Or should we table the idea for the time being and simply integrate some of the useful material from the current draft into the existing format?

Given the work that's being done with ACR from other angles—in particular, the new Academy course(s) being written—I would actually tend to lean towards the latter approach at this point. It may be best to develop our instruction/advice base further before proceeding; in the best scenario, it will make a new format unnecessary, and at worst, the new material can be used as background and FAQs for a new criterion-based format.

Thoughts? Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 04:41, 3 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It looks less intimidating... I would suggest changing it now, since it isn't a very major departure from current formats, it merely seperates the comments into topical fields. WikiCopter (♠ • ♣ • ♥ • ♦ • simple • commons • lost • cvu • onau) 17:16, 9 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I thought I would take a shot in the dark here make a proposal that we hold a 'March Madness' drive with the aim of reducing the number of articles listed in the various categories covered by the umbrella category Military History articles needing attention. In the long term I am hopeful that this may become a yearly thing, but for now I would like to see if there is any interest in this idea. In simple terms, we would start the drive officially at 00:00 UTC March 1 and let it run through 23:59 UTC March 31, with the bronze, silver, and gold wiki awards to be handed out to the top three contestants participating in the drive. This would be beneficial to our project for a number of reasons, not the least of which is helping to address the outstanding issues in the articles listed there. While it would be unrealistic to expect that the entire backlog would disappear some categories are small enough that in a 31 day period they could be brought down to zero. On top of that its been neatly three years since we last held a drive, and a little community hoorah spirit in helping us get project affairs in order would help both project moral and our administrative/assessment processes at the same time. What do you guys think about this idea? Is it worth pursuing, or should we forgo a project wide drive in favor of something else to help reduce the backlog? TomStar81 (Talk) 01:07, 4 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Tom, I'd support this. Of course, we'd have to have a bit of a think about how it would be scored, what tasks would be included, etc., but I think it would be a good way to generate some enthusiasm. AustralianRupert (talk) 01:24, 4 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is quite a good idea. One thing that we ought to keep in mind, in my opinion, is that the "needing attention" sub-categories are almost entirely auto-generated based on the B-Class checklist; in other words, reducing the backlogs in those categories simultaneously brings us closer to our overall B-Class target. The drive would thus be killing two birds with one stone. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 01:41, 4 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I like the idea as well. Perhaps we could base points off the various categories, with more points given for categories that are generally harder to take care of? Something like:

• Military history articles needing attention to coverage and accuracy (2 C, 17916 P) - 15 points
• Military history articles needing expert attention (2 C, 206 P) - 15 points
• Military history articles needing attention to referencing and citation (2 C, 29101 P) - 15 points
• Military history articles needing attention to grammar (2 C, 1772 P) - 10 points
• Military history articles needing attention to structure (2 C, 7370 P) - 5 points
• Military history articles needing attention to supporting materials (2 C, 7199 P) - 5 points
• Military history articles needing attention to tagging (3 C, 36 P) - 2 points
• Military history articles needing attention to task force coverage (289 P) - 2 points
• Adding (and filling out) B-class checklist to MILHIST banner - 2 points

All of the articles under the needing attention by task force categories could be scored according to the template above. I'm mostly just tossing numbers out, and there might need to be some discussion on which categories are actually "harder", but these are just my thoughts from the (relatively small, TBH) amount of B-class checklist tagging I've done. I think that Kirill is right that this will also increase the number of B-class articles we have, and it will also most like reduce the number of articles we have that are tagged with cleanup banners. Many of the "needing referencing and citation" probably have fact tags or references needed banners, those needing attention to grammar might have copy edit banners, etc. So, really, three birds, one stone. Dana boomer (talk) 01:59, 4 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Four, actually: If we due this on a yearly basis as I suggested then we ensure that backlogs receive a proper sweep at least once every year, which should help ensure that the backlogs stay at constant rather than rocketing ever upward as they seem to do. TomStar81 (Talk) 02:34, 4 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

One obvious question, since a lot of articles fall in multiple categories, is if these awards are cumulative.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:54, 4 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I see no reason why the points shouldn't be cumulative. It takes quite a bit more effort to improve an article that is missing four or five of the criteria (basically, stub class) to full B-status than it does to improve one small area. If someone is willing to go through the trouble of fixing structure, copyediting, adding references, improving coverage and accuracy and adding images/tables/maps/whatever, then IMO they should be rewarded more than someone who does nothing more than add a couple of pictures to an article. (And this is speaking as someone who, with limited military sources at their disposal, will be more like to be adding images and fixing tagging than anything else!) Dana boomer (talk) 22:06, 4 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with Dana boomer, IMO there is no reason they can not be cumulative. Since there does seem to be a consensus that this would be a good idea, should we develop it further (ie, suggest an awards layout, set up independent pages, etc), and if so should we start advertising for it in The Bugle? TomStar81 (Talk) 03:01, 10 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's probably premature to advertise the drive at this point—we have nothing to point people at, for one, and we're also going to be causing some confusion with the Wikipedia-wide backlog drive that's currently going on—but I think we can go ahead and start setting up the needed infrastructure. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 05:16, 10 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The infrastructure can probably be strongly based on something like the World War I contest, yes? Awards, the gold, silver and bronze awards, maybe with something superimposed over them, like the poppy for WWI? Can't think of something awesome at the moment though... Dana boomer (talk) 02:39, 14 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

At this point, should we move this discussion over to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Strategy and solicit more general input from the project? Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 10:29, 17 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think so. I'd be particularly interested in hearing back on the matter of making this a yearly event, since it could provide a check to the never ending backlog. For now though I would be content to seek additional input on the matter. TomStar81 (Talk) 05:24, 18 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Moved from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators#Floating a drive proposal. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 03:23, 9 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments requested

Based on the above discussion, we're looking to get feedback on several different points related to this drive idea:

1. Is this drive a good idea overall? Is it likely to interest enough editors and produce sufficient article improvements to make the effort worthwhile?
2. What articles should the drive cover? Is the above list of categories suitable, or should categories be added and/or removed?
3. How should participant's contributions be scored? What awards should be available?

Any other comments not related to the above points are, of course, also welcome. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 03:36, 9 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to reply:

1. I think this drive is an excellent idea.
2. The drive should cover the stub backlogs, assessment backlogs and articles not yet tagged at least. Beyond that, mere article improvement is already covered by the contest.
3. Scoring and awards should be determined after the first two points are determined. WikiCopter (♠ • ♣ • ♥ • ♦ • simple • commons • lost • cvu • onau) 17:14, 9 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Agree that this sounds like a nifty idea.

1. As said, this sounds cool.
2. I can handle tagging for the project, tagging for task force, adding assessments...
3. The scoring proposed above looks good to me. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 19:11, 9 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just a note, the GAN backlog is getting blown up (DYNAMITE, you! Get matches!) so it won't have to be included. WikiCopter (♠ • ♣ • ♥ • ♦ • simple • commons • lost • cvu • onau) 04:58, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Not personally interested in contests but article improvement is something I get involved in. Just to note that my experience is that you can go to an article to attend to one problem on a B class checklist and find others apparently missed by a previous assessor. As a learning exercise last year, I did a batch of single issue B class improvements. Out of 9, I identified 7 as needing further work on other criteria. Of the two I put forward for assessment, one was rejected by an assessor as needing work on another B class criterion. OK, small sample but it does potentially cause a scoring issue - what if the assessor has to reclassify downwards? For the contestants, will there be rewards for correctly reassessing, not just improvement?Monstrelet (talk) 08:28, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Since it is now past the middle of February, should we start creating the infrastructure for this and advertising it? Dana boomer (talk) 16:14, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Kirill? Don't ask me, I have no idea how to do this... Wikicopter _{what i do} s + c cup|former 23:52, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I can create the basic page structure and such sometime in the next day or so, but I'm going to need help with pulling together all the needed content beyond that. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 03:07, 19 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Starting the drive

Were these pages ever completed? What still needs to be done? The first of March is day after tomorrow (tomorrow for some of us), so we should get cracking on this if it's going to happen. Should we do a general member talk page notification like we did with the World War I contest? Probably a good way to get contributors... Plus get any final comments on scoring, etc. Just let me know - I should have some time tomorrow (Feb 28) to work on this if it's needed. Dana boomer (talk) 01:03, 28 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've posted the needed infrastructure at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/March 2011 backlog reduction drive (and subpages). Assuming that everyone is fine with the listed scoring and award structure, I think all we need is to set up the advertising; we should probably start by making announcements in all the usual forums, and can follow up with a general membership mailing once the drive officially starts.

I'm likely to be quite busy tomorrow, so please feel free to take the lead on this. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 02:43, 28 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good. I'll start posting notifications later today. Just one question - have we decided not to give points for the other three categories mentioned above (attention to tagging/attention to taskforces/adding B-class checklists)? Dana boomer (talk) 12:34, 28 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The first two are rather specialized maintenance issues; given their esoteric nature and the low numbers of articles, I don't think it's worthwhile including them in a drive intended for the general membership.

The third one is slightly problematic; keep in mind that the B-Class checklist generates the other categories, so it would be possible for someone to (a) assess a large number of articles as needing some improvement and then (b) submit those same articles as having been improved. (Granted, making work for oneself this way would still be possible even without assessment being separately scored, but at least it's not as obvious an approach.) Since we already have a large backlog available, I don't think we need to award points for expanding it at this point. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 12:38, 28 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

OK, works for me. Thanks for the quick reply. Dana boomer (talk) 15:34, 28 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've posted a notice to the main MILHIST talk page. Not sure if there are any other "normal" spots to post? Dana boomer (talk) 17:41, 28 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Once the drive opens, we'll want to add it to {{WPMILHIST Announcements}} and put up an appropriate banner at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators/Toolbox/Banner. We might also consider adding notices on the Community Portal and/or the Village Pump, as well as asking the Signpost to run a brief notice. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 23:53, 28 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've adding a message on the banner page - feel free to tweak. I'm not sure how we normally go about putting drive messages on the announcements page; could someone who's a bit more experienced please do that? Dana boomer (talk) 00:28, 1 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Done, on both counts. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 00:33, 1 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Notices left at the Signpost's suggestion page and the WP:Village pump (miscellaneous). Feel free to tweak. Dana boomer (talk) 22:49, 1 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure how closely the suggestion page is followed; it might be easier to make a specific request at Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Newsroom/WikiProject_desk#Sidebar_news_requests. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 12:29, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Moonriddengirl recently posted this at the Village pump. Probably it's not something that should cause us huge concern, but it may be worth keeping half an eye out for unusual/promotional edits to US Army-related articles. EyeSerene^talk 11:39, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I look forward to seeing more editors coming from the U.S. Army. As long as they follow the guidelines and policies of our community, I think they will be a great asset to our community. --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 12:06, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. We've had some quasi-official participation from the US military before, and I don't think we've ever had any problems with the editors involved; they tend to be quite respectful of our policies, and are primarily concerned with providing historical material (e.g. unit lineages and histories, archival photos, etc.) to where it can be of use to more readers, rather than with trying to advance any particular viewpoint on article topics. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 12:28, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree - I've seen some of the same activity (here for example) in the past, and have never been concerned about it. Parsecboy (talk) 13:09, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Quite. To be honest someone from the outreach department should probably be contacting militaries around the world to ask them to do the same! The Land (talk) 13:16, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is a good thing. The US Army Archives is a valuable resource that can add a lot to Wikipedia.Bwmoll3 (talk) 13:18, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In principle I agree - the more interested and knowledgeable editors the better. The tone of the general's comment though (assuming it was accurately reported) seems more about making sure coverage of the US Army's doings on the internet is 'on message' (the linked article relates to securing military funding). This could potentially result in spin on articles dealing with current operations such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's great that we attract serving military personnel who are, as Kirill says, respectful of policy and primarily concerned with adding historical material. The reported comments are calling for a different kind of editor though, and I think it's that we should be wary of. EyeSerene^talk 15:04, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

May I suggest that someone create a report to identify edits being made from US military IP's like the one that reports activity by members of congress? The Navy and Marines are on one big network for the most part so that should be easy enough to figure. The army and Aiforce may be a bit harder but it should be doable as well. --Kumioko (talk) 15:40, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I like Kumioko's suggestion. It seems to me there's 2 ways to look at this statement: a subtle order (couched as a suggestion) to put out Army propaganda, or an equally subtle order not to release anything sensitive. Given the Wikileaks controversy, do you think the 2d is more likely? (Nevertheless, the first may end up being the worse problem here.) TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 18:24, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Also for what its worth the Navy and USMC Ip is permanantly blocked due to widespread vandalism (theres about a million users). In my opinion there are several things driving this and I would be surprised if other services or departments don't make similar statements in the near future. Here are a couple of the obvious contributors to this:

1. The wikileaks issue is certainly one. Since directives say no Government Employee can view Wikileaks info even though its released and since some of this info has been added to Wikipedia articles already this presents a bit of a quandry to the Generals statement.
2. I also agree that there will be some who will take the "initiative" to cleanse the biographies of certain military or government individuals or articles relating to military topics. Assuming good faith I am hopeful that most changes will be for the positive but certainly there will be some POV pushing and whitewashing.
3. There has been a huge amount of interest lately to move government information and services to "the cloud". This includes Wikipedia, Facebook, Amazon (for various products and services), Using GMAIL or similar vice outlook or other client based apps, using things like open office vice the expensive MS Office, etc. This presents us with an opportunity to capitalize on these new "users" but at the same time I am certain that not all will have benevolent intentions.
4. In addition to the above there have been multiple policys from govt agencies on the use of Social media. It could be argued that Wikipedia is not social media but since it is mentioned specifically in several of these policies for the sakes of this it is. --Kumioko (talk) 18:43, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

IMHO, this will wind up being a net positive; we'll need to keep an eye out for vandalism and POV, but that's something we do anyway. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 22:27, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is probably bad rather than good news. If the US Army wants to take a WP:GLAM-type approach in which it helps Wikipedia editors to use the material it holds that would be great (though this isn't such a big deal given that the US Army is fairly open as far as armies go and everything it produces is automatically PD under US copyright laws). Calling for the use of Wikipedia to 'shape' a message alongside other social media reflects a total misunderstanding of what Wikipedia is about. The same kind of mindset from companies causes never-ending problems and I don't see why the US Army should be treated any differently. As some cases in point, I've seen a few AfDs in which people claiming to be soldiers have tried to delete articles on what they claim is their unit (in one case someone claimed they'd been ordered to successfully complete the AfD by an officer! - I hope that the poor guy was OK given that the discussion ended with a clear vote of keep) and some awful articles created by people claiming to be in the unit and editing to expand the unit's internet presence. To cut a long story short: if this is taken seriously it's going to generate POV editing and spammy articles. Nick-D (talk) 07:45, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That's pretty much my feeling too. Per Kumioko there will always be individuals who'll seek to spin articles; what remains to be seen is if this will generate organised information operations and psychological operations efforts to use WP as a propaganda tool. Maybe we should develop something like WP:GLAM to point editors to where necessary? EyeSerene^talk 09:12, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A GLAM type thing would go a long way to reducing your events that would substantiate concerns of those editors who see this call to edit wikipedia as a possible net negative. Creating such a GLAM would show new Army editors the rules of the road for our community, and being that they are use to a structured environment, will see what rules are in place and how their contributions will be judged, thus leading to a reduction of events that violates our guidelines and policies, and thus more positive than negative contributions. As far as POV, we all as editors attempt to edit with as much NPOV as possible, but there is a point of POV as to what article we edit (as we as individuals will trend to edit articles more often regarding subjects we're interested in) and how we edit them. To recognize that these Soldiers will come with a certain POV based on their individual experiences, as long as we remind them of the policies against not adhering to NPOV and keeping an article neutral, than we shouldn't have to much trouble (at least I hope). --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 12:40, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Two thoughts folks: 1) Keep in mind is that perhaps it would have inconvenienced the General's speech to split the message into "Let's get out message out on face book and twitter, and also update out information on Wikipedia". Perhaps it was a matter of spinning a flowing speech rather than directing troops to use Wikipedia for propaganda and if that is the case there is nothing to worry about. 2) Why not capitalize on this? Right now we have a the Wikipedia:Ambassadors program to work with college campuses and help them contribute. Why not start a Wikipedia:Military Ambassadors or Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Military to educate the military on Wikipedia and help them improve articles? Why doesn't someone preempt propaganda edits by reaching out to the General and his troops first?--v/r - TP 14:10, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Moved from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history#US General encourages use of Wikipedia to promote army's message. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 21:55, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

♠I like the GLAM & Ambassador ideas. It may be this is all overblown, since we can't know what was actually in the general's mind. That we've seen at least 2 possibilities is part of what concerns me: what do his subordinates think he wanted?

♠The prospect of WP being targeted for disinformation is even more disturbing. That's one I think is less likely to succeed, since the worldwide breadth of attention & sourcing will tend to protect WP; spinning media in one country is harder than spinning media everywhere. (Just beware the circular confirmation: one source says it, another uses that as its source, & now there are 2...which is what bit CIA over the alleged WMDs in Iraq. :( :( ) TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 23:53, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think we need to generate a false sense of panic here. This was just one more instance of an officer viewing Wikipedia as a tool, the way that some companies try to use Wikipedia as a means to make thier corporation look good. It's not the first time that a commander or public affairs section has tried to do this, and our current methods of monitoring NPOV, advertising, and referencing have been sufficient. This doesn't signify a new organized attempt to game the encyclopedia, it's just that this is the most senior officer to admit it.
I've seen this happen several times over my career as an editor, and generally, these folks tend to be poor editors. They usually don't understand referencing, they don't recognize NPOV, and they don't understand the collaborative process. I'd say that the vast majority of edits that are likely command-driven have been reverted; most of them end there, as the anon never checks back, while the continuous editors tend to get discouraged when they realize they can't just say anything they want.
So, in short, this isn't some kind of systematic POV-pushing, and there isn't really much to worry about. bahamut0013^words_deeds 12:48, 4 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Military ambassadors program

I think setting up a military counterpart to Wikipedia:Ambassadors would be a great idea, assuming we can get the logistics figured out. A couple things come to mind:

1. The (Campus) Ambassadors program is being run under the auspices of the WMF; while we could potentially run a military ambassador program independently as a project, it would doubtless be beneficial to get the Foundation's buy-in and support for the idea, even if only in principle.
2. The Campus Ambassadors are typically (though not always) drawn from the ranks of students/professors/etc. who have ready access to each university involved. If we're going to try and use a similar approach here, we would presumably need serving military personnel to take on the role, since random Wikipedia editors are unlikely to be able to visit military bases and such.
3. In a university setting, each professor is essentially free to choose to participate in the program. It's not clear how far up the chain of command we might have to go to find someone who could officially authorize a collaborative undertaking of this sort. (We may still be able to have military personnel participate as individuals, but that would be little different than what we have now.)

Thoughts? Is this something worth pursuing? If so, how do we go about it? Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 21:59, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would think a good place to start is with the Post and Unit History offices, to reach out to them. Here you have personnel that are used to writing in a professional manner and have access to much information which is both historically valuable and also I would presume, accurate and documented. This would be true for all branches of the military. Bwmoll3 (talk) 22:17, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Kirill, in response to your post above, 1) I already sent an email to Sage Ross with the idea and a link to the MILHIST talk page. 2) I, myself, an am active duty airman and a wikipedia editor and I am aware of a couple more. I am sure we can find others. 3) We could start by contacting Gen Caldwell's public affairs office.--v/r - TP 01:05, 4 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent; we'll see what Sage has to say about the WMF aspect of this. On the topic of contacting people, would you (or other military personnel) be in a position to do something like that, or is it something best done by a person outside the military? Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 02:03, 4 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think there's a key difference between current ambassador programmes and this suggestion in that universities, museums etc are primarily concerned with knowledge and its dissemination whereas armed forces aren't; they may look askance at giving official encouragement to something as off-mission as editing Wikipedia other than as a leisure activity. That said, we don't know until we ask and Bwmoll3's suggestion seems to be the most likely one to bear constructive fruit of the kind we'd hope for. EyeSerene^talk 08:45, 4 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've tried to collaborate with the United States Marine Corps History Division in the past, and while they are happy to help me with research on a specific topic, the response I've recieved from the working-level guys on extending a relationship with Wikipedia hasn't been warm. On occasion, I also interact with public affairs officers and unit personnel ordered to edit Wikipedia, and generally, they give up when they realize that editing entails referencing, NPOV, collaboration, and the like. Aside from small corrections (like changing the infobox to reflect a new commanding officer), they don't really embrace Wikipedia's need for commitment to make a substantial article. One officer in particular was in trouble over an AfD result, but he found my real name and rank on my userpage, emailed me, and I explained to his superior how the AfD process wasn't his fault and there was really no recourse over his unit's lack of notability.

That said, I would love to volunteer as a kind of liason between Wikipedia and the Marine Corps, whom I both love dearly. If I had the sanction of the Foundation to act as a kind of representative, then I think I could be taken more seriously. let me know, and I will contact both my local base's public affairs, and that of Headquarters Marine Corps. bahamut0013^words_deeds 12:48, 4 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure how the Marines do it, but it probably would go better for the Air Force if a Wikimedia spokesperson contacted SAF/PA. I think history offices and public affairs offices might jump at the idea. There is also the air force historical research agency that might like the idea. Air Force Services and Air Force Entertainment might also be interested. Unfortunately, I doubt anyone will listen to a E-5, so it'd have to come from the foundation.--v/r - TP 16:51, 4 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In my memories being in the Air Force, and I presume in the other services, these types of requests will go into the bottom of the in-basket. Unless there is direction from someone up in the chain of command, that supporting Wikipedia is part of the official duties of the unit, the personnel will likely only support Wikipedia unofficially in their off-duty time (as I presume some do now). Bwmoll3 (talk) 17:30, 4 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I got this back from Mr. Sage Ross at Wikimedia

[My real name],

Thanks! After this term, the ambassador program will (I think) be pretty open and flexible in terms of doing things like this. I think it will be necessary to orient more around active WikiProjects in order to find enough Wikipedians to support classes, so Military History is obviously a group with a ton of potential there.

You should get involved with the ambassador program! Apply to become and ambassador, and help set the direction we take this in. Or barring that, just post these ideas on the talk page of WP:AMBASSADORS... it's a great idea, but what direction we take things in for the ambassador program is not for me alone to decide.

-Sage"

Thoughts?--v/r - TP 21:11, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose that begs the question of administering such an ambassador program... do we want to simply have individuals applying to Wikipedia:Ambassadors, or centralize it within MilHist because, let's face it, we are one of the best-governed projects on the English Wikipedia, and the benefits of such a collaboration would be almost entirely within our scope (maybe some crossover with WP:SHIPS and WP:AVIATION). I mean, I'm very interested, and would I be doing myself a disservice to sign up now, or should I wait until we figure out some kind of intermediate system?

Personally, I'm leaning towards the idea that I should simply sign up now, and act as a kind of MilHist representative with the ambassador program to pioneer this new direction, but I won't deign to do such if other editors have a problem with it (or with me). bahamut0013^words_deeds 21:34, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would agree that having MilHist members participating within the existing Ambassador program would be a good first step, regardless of how exactly we proceed beyond that. While the WMF program is not necessarily directly within our scope—few, if any, of the courses partnering with the WMF have anything to do with military history—it would be worthwhile for us to be represented, both to ensure that we have the opportunity to work with the program if/when it expands, and to demonstrate the value of strong WikiProject participation to the WMF.

As far as organizing a program internally is concerned: while that may be the best eventual solution, I'm not sure that we, as a project, have the needed level of experience with off-wiki outreach to successfully undertake such an effort by ourselves. It may be useful to take on more limited outreach programs involving individual museums and so forth before attempting something of this magnitude. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 22:58, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm actually an online ambassador and a member of the online ambassador selection team if I can do anything to help... Also, I agree with Kirill's second paragraph. We're possibly the strongest project on Wikipedia, but offline is a very different world, one we have never ventured into outside of Wikimania (AFAIK). Still, it's an option worth exploring, if only so we get a little experience to decide if we actually want to make an attempt. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 04:57, 8 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely a good idea. I agree about approaching individual institutions until we have more experience (though eventually it might cut out a layer of bureaucracy if we could centralise it in-project). I have no problem with Bahamut and/or Ed representing the project, and I think focusing on museums (like the Imperial War Museum) is likely to produce better results than contacting militaries themselves. EyeSerene^talk 10:16, 8 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I agree that would be more beneficial for direct article improvement, but the ambassador program isn't necessarily meant to be a resource for current editors as much as it is a way to involve the community at large who doesn't edit regularly. I mean, it would be a great boon to get access to the kinds of materials and records that a museaum or research university has, but we have to consider the situation as it is. Right now, we have a wealth of potential editors in the US military (and I'm sure the armed forces of other nations as well) who regularly look to Wikipedia, and are occasionally moved to make an anon edit. Even though my contract will be up this summer, I'm in a position where I might be able to liason with public affairs offices and individual units who want to improve articles related to them (and other interests that include articles in our scope), but haven't often been very effective in penetrating our web of requirements (we toss out terms like RS, NPOV, citing, and so on).

I see this as a means of tapping into a resource that isn't a citable source: potential editors. The ambassador program at its core is about outreach, and the public policy is to get people involved rather than to improve researching for the current crop of editors; which I think will naturally come as we improve awareness and our reputation amongst the target audience at large. Once we start getting commanders on board with the concept of our policies and guidelines, and start getting some formal collaboration, the vast archives and networks will open up without us having to ask.

TLDR? Let me use an example. When I went to the History Division and asked them for resources, they tried to help, but they weren't interested in my end goal. If I go to them and offer to help them work with Wikipedia effectively, then the reception would surely be different. I'm going to sign up this weekend under those principles, if nobody raises an issue by then. bahamut0013^words_deeds 13:39, 8 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'd strongly suggest limiting approaches to militaries' historical bodies. These have mindset and data which would be of most benefit, and their entire goal is to promote understanding of their military and not necessarily promote whatever the messages of the day are. As they'd be more familiar with dealing with random requests from the public, they're also more likely to have appropriate processes to respond in a constructive manner. Nick-D (talk) 09:37, 10 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This seems to me like a wonderful idea. I'd love to see the ambassador program branch out in new directions like this. The best way forward I see is, first WP:MILHIST should figure out what it wants to do, and then put forward a proposal to the ambassador program. The best way in my opinion would be to have you folks who want to do in-person outreach participate as full, regular Campus Ambassadors (or whatever the relevant equivalent of "Campus" is for the institutions you want to work with), do the ambassador training, and help us improve how we do in-person outreach in general. But if you want to do something on your own, sort of parallel to the ambassador program or linked with it but independently managed, that could work too. But I think we'll all end up with a stronger program if we work more closely... especially since WP:MILHIST is a potential model for a lot of other WikiProjects, but most of the others won't have the resources and momentum to go it alone like you folks probably could.--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 14:13, 10 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Start at schools not bases

Why not start by doing something with the regular Ambassador's program? Meaning at a university, not with active duty military. Most of the military is a lot more involved in day to day operarations and not into history except tangentially in a class or two of officer training and maybe a little in boot camp. Military history courses exist at schools all over the place: ROTC classes, academies and just regular schools. I would make the outreach to regular history departments. See if you can get some professors who want to try a different sort of term paper or the like. It would allow you to use all the infrastructure of the Ambassadors program and kinda learn what you want to do, before going after active duty (and again, not sure that is really such a target rich environment...I think armchair generals of the videogame playing mode are more into the minutia of T-72 battles than your average nowadays tanker).TCO (talk) 12:09, 13 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That's not a bad idea. A related avenue to explore might be various military academies (whether official or private); I suspect any university outreach there would be likely to involve military history topics to one degree or another. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 18:42, 13 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think the Wiki Ambassadors is mostly working with profs in "public policy" whatever that is (civics, government, poly sci?) But in any case, it's probably next door to the history departments! And they have all the infrastructure and such for contacting schools. If you look at the AP Biology project that User:JimmyButler runs, its a great example of a prof using Wikipedia for term papers. Reaching out toe history profs and finding a few and then using the ambassador program would pretty much have you set. I would assume that any prof teaching a military history (or perhaps more broadly history with wars and stuff) would work out. PRetty much as long as he's interested in what you have than the match is there. And this is the "best project on Wiki" blabla.TCO (talk) 19:24, 13 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For the Academies, there probably is some synergy with the general populace in non-historical stuff. Articles on ships and aircraft and the like, where it is Jane's based. Maybe you can get them to haze the plebes into writing Wiki-content.  ;-) TCO (talk) 19:28, 13 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Late to the party. Although I support whatever Baha's got in mind, I'm also in favor of targeting history departments, museums and libraries. - Dank (push to talk) 17:53, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thoughts on my experience with the Army Center of Military History

Hey all, I was directed to this conversation by TParis, and would like to make some comments based on my experience as being a paid intern editing Wikipedia for the Army Center of Military History:

1. About policies, when I told my boss that their are policies about me not editing in order to modify how the Center was represented on Wikipedia (COI), he said no problem: that wasn't our directive anyway, as a Military History Center, instead our directive was to communicate the Army's history fairly and accurately. I get the impression any of the academic or information dispersal groups are not interested in changing or hiding things, but rather in clarifying them, so that what is public remains accurate. His words were: We will scratch Wikipedia's back and it will scratch us back (referring to the high traffic rates that it directed to the CMH website, especially due to citations to the medel of honor recipients which are maintained by CMH, interestingly enough the German Language Wikipedia article on the Medal of Honor was the highest traffic director from *.wikipedia.org, however the rest of the links and PD content on Wikipedia was creating a steady flow of traffic that rose regularly).
2. The Army is not ready, at least in the History end of things and also the in the Records system distribution, to completely and totally embraced digital means of presenting history or records to the public. As is the case with most government bureaucracy, they are very comfortable in letting things run as they always have. Only certain subgroups of that community see the value in expanding to web media, and it is mostly Army Librarians, University types and the people paid to manage web media. I would strongly suggest trying to engage the Army Librarians, they are always looking for ways to create greater impact then their small community of support (see http://www.libraries.army.mil/index.htm).
3. There are other communities related to the United States Military which desperately need some means of documenting their history successfully in a public space. A good example of how this has been done succesfully on Wikipedia is the History_of_The_Arkansas_National_Guard series created by User:Damon.cluck who is part of the history commission in the Arkansas National Guard their. I had hoped his activities would show how the CMH could engange the broader Army History community in documenting army history digitally, however I don't think much of anything came from that set of contacts :P Like I said some things are really slow to catch on. I think engaging the National Guards in various states to develop their historical documentation on Wikipedia would be beneficial for both communities, and might be one of those related communities outside of official Army Programs that may be useful (the national guard's documentation is mostly state focused and based within a really small community in each state, so I think you would have to fight far less Bureaucracy in this respect). The Arkansas History commission was started by the Governor at the state level because of lack of documentation for the guard. Wikipedia outreach to these communities might be an opportunity to write petitions to State Governors and Lt. Governors to get them engaged in encouraging the public documentation of their state's guard history. If we get all of the Guard historians talking, I think the more central programs in the Army will become more engaged. Their are probably amateur historians we could engage as well.
4. Most of the people I have encountered who are editing are unit PR or communications officers. If we wrote a briefing which could be a central page on Wikipedia for military members, I think they would know exactly what they could be doing, and would probably follow the advice.

Hope the thoughts help, Sadads (talk) 23:00, 14 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That's really helpful, and point 1 is encouraging; the CMH has a long history of placing its commitment to historical accuracy above promoting the Army. In regards to your last point, what are the duties of unit PR and communication officers? If they see their role as attracting people to their unit and bolstering its image then they might not be interested in developing well rounded articles. Nick-D (talk) 07:18, 15 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the ones I've come into contact with thus far usually have been given instructions like "fix the wiki article" or "publish out unit's history". I think I'll take a stab at writing an essay. bahamut0013^words_deeds 12:32, 16 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Review problem fixing

I've forgotten the layout of WP:MILHIST during my brunout, so I'll post this right here. There have been many discussions, threads, etc. about how MilHist A and Peer Review are overflowing. Why not implement the same style that DYK uses, make it mandantory for a nominator for A class or peer review to review one (or two, the number is arbitrary based upon the amount of requests) requests. This should help lower the backlog, freeing time up for more in-depth reviews. Any thoughts? Buggie111 (talk) 04:35, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I guess this would catch a few people who only make requests and don't actually review but most already seem to make a habit of reviewing others' when posting their own. The thing is of course that unlike DYK (and GAR), where it only takes one person to review one entry, at ACR (like FAC) it takes at least three reviewers for each entry and often more, so even implementing this we'll still be relying on the good grace of people like Dank and Rupert, who generally only review, and others who review a few for every one they post. Incidentally, I have no issue with the practice they've implemented in DYK, since I already made it a personal rule to review one for each I posted, but I note that for one reason or another it seems to take longer than ever to get one's DYK on the main page...! Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 05:06, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would certainly like to see a larger number of reviewers at peer review and ACR (or more accurately, a wider cross section of the project getting involved). This would help the project in a number of ways. I think working as a reviewer helps improve an editor's own article writing (to an extent), but also it helps keep the review system fresh. If the review process is reliant on only a few main contributors, the process is not as robust as it could be. Many of our peer reviews only get one or two reviewers when, ideally, they might need three or four to really iron out all the issues. The problem is less acute at ACR, although over the past year we have had a number of reviews closed where there were not enough reviewers (three or more). Having said all of this, I'm not sure that it should be made mandatory for a nominator to review (as some editors' skills are in content creation and not necessarily reviewing, and everyone is a volunteer, etc.). However, I certainly think it should be encouraged. In that regard, perhaps we could put something in the instructions (both peer review and ACR) suggesting that nominators get involved? Cheers, AustralianRupert (talk) 06:40, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Making a review mandatory by a nominator may seem inappropriate, but (having neither nominated nor been...) it seems to me, if you haven't looked carefully enough at a page to review it (regardless whether the review is formal), you've no business nominating it in the first place. That being true, nomination would seem to imply a de facto requirement for review before nom. Not to say I'd encourage more bureaucracy, just a "regularizing" (is that a word?) of practise. TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 16:35, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't like to review an article especially for A Class without a bit of knowledge on the subject. Of course thing like MOS and grammar can still be checked. Saying that there has been times when checking the Peer/A class review lists, that there has been nothing listed I would feel comfortable in reviewing. I have had a bit of a wikibreak but have not noticed a huge problem with reviews. Jim Sweeney (talk) 17:12, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I generally agree that it's good-form to review some articles everytime you nominate an article you've worked on for any form of review. The number of A class reviewers seems OK at the moment, though more would always be a great thing. The peer review process seems to be struggling though - the number of articles which are being nominated for PRs seems to be down and not many people are commenting on the nominations. For PRs any comments are great - even if you only read one part of the article the nominator will doubtlessly appreciate your comments. Nick-D (talk) 11:30, 11 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to propose adding a line (at Step 6 of Requesting a review) to the peer and A class review instructions. I suggest something along the following lines: "Once you have nominated an article for review, please peruse the list of articles that are also currently undergoing peer or A-class reviews and consider taking part. Although your involvement is not mandatory, it is encouraged." Are there any thoughts on this – does anyone agree or disagree with adding something like this? Should the wording be changed? Cheers, AustralianRupert (talk) 05:49, 14 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, that sounds good. - Dank (push to talk) 23:09, 14 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Moved from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history#Review problem fixing. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 22:31, 16 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think an important consideration to this point would be (if we decided to adopt it), how would we enforce this? Would we ask our reviewers to vett the nominator to see if he or she has done enough reviewing? Deny an article promotion based on this? Shun editors who frequently flaunt this requirement? I'm uneasy at the prospect of trying to legislate behavior.

It rather reminds me of the coffee mess at my last command. We had a large percolating pot, and a jar to drop in some change when a Marine took a cup. We had one real caffeine addict, and eventually (a period of months), he realized that he had become the only person contributing money for the coffee. He quietly bought a small personal machine, put it in his office, and we suddenly had no money to buy new coffee with. The colonel, of course, went bonkers and had us buy a lockbox, and anointed me as the coffee czar to set up a checklist, schedule, and log usage. Within a week, everyone was buying coffee at Dunkin' Donuts instead of at the coffee mess. We wound up getting rid of the pot. bahamut0013^words_deeds 12:00, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, mate, thanks for commenting. I think you've slightly misunderstood my proposal, though. I am not suggesting making this mandatory. All I am proposing is that a suggestion to review other articles is placed in the instructions as a reminder, or gentle nudge. I am opposed to making "quid pro quo" mandatory. IMO, it doesn't work in a voluntary project. To reiterate, my proposal is to add a Step 6 instruction stating: "Once you have nominated an article for review, please peruse the list of articles that are also currently undergoing peer or A-class reviews and consider taking part. Although your involvement is not mandatory, it is encouraged." As such there would be no enforcement. AustralianRupert (talk) 23:51, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That works for me, then. I know I highlighted a kind of worst-case; I know that most MILHIST editors are decent guys who would respect the coffee mess, but there is always one or two who don't. bahamut0013^words_deeds 11:21, 19 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, as no one seems violently opposed to this, I've added Step 6 to the instructions. Feel free to revert if anyone feels it is necessary. Cheers, AustralianRupert (talk) 13:15, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• I agree with Rupert's change, but I have a suggestion for improvement, even though this thread seems dead and buried. I don't think a quid pro quo review should be mandatory, but I don't think explicitly saying "but if you can't be arsed..." is going to encourage more participation. I suggest we create a new subpage somewhere that explains what editors can do to make themselves useful at PRs and ACRs (Dank's recent Bugle article could provide the skeleton) and link it from the instructions, then change step 6 slightly to say that editors are encouraged to review another article... here are some tips. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:00, 6 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I can see merit in something like that. Providing a link at Step 6 would probably increase its effectiveness (TBH, I'm not sure how effect it is currently, but I assume that providing a link to instructions on how to review, might help some first time nominators/reviewers). AustralianRupert (talk) 03:42, 7 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'll see if I can knock up a first draft of a begginner's guide in my userspace. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:30, 7 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • OK, first draft is at User:HJ/Fool's guide. Comments welcome. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:51, 7 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        • Did some savage tweaking, see what you think. - Dank (push to talk) 21:13, 7 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
          • Looks good to me. I played around with some more of the wording and re-added a little bit that you took out, but I'm open to discussion about those. After all, the aim is to put it in project space. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:33, 7 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
            • Sure, that's fine. - Dank (push to talk) 01:59, 8 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This looks good to me so far. I assume we're eventually going to turn this into an Academy course? If so, it may be worthwhile to merge in the other ACR-related ones (How to prepare an A-Class Review, Using the A-class review toolbox, and Performing an A-Class review) to create a single ACR course that's structured into beginner/intermediate/advanced sections. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 16:32, 8 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. - Dank (push to talk) 22:28, 8 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'd be hesitant to imply that this advice applies purely to ACRs, since it would hopefully be just as valid at PR or FAC, however ther's logic in consolidating all the advice into one page. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 00:43, 9 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

We could aim for one of the processes, probably A-class, and then describe briefly how PR and FAC reviews differ. - Dank (push to talk) 02:03, 9 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That works. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 12:55, 9 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I like the name. :P I think it's a great start. We might also consider a project essay that strongly encourages it, and then use it as a POINTy stick to beat offenders over the head with to gently nudge editors who haven't been diligent in maintaining a good nom/review ratio (under the theory that individual attention always works better than mass appeals... a lesson that Jimbo's god-banners could have used). bahamut0013^words_deeds 21:19, 9 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

PR Partnership

Since it appears that no other page transcludes your reviews, would it be alright to wrap your PRs in <onlyinclude> tags to make it easier for WP:VG/P to include your reviews? Thanks, MrKIA11 (talk) 19:30, 16 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No objections to a collaboration with VG, but I've been concerned for a while that our peer review process might be a net negative. This isn't to take anything away from the reviewers, particularly Fifelfoo and Rupert, but the feedback comes and goes, and it doesn't begin to cover everything. There's a cost to asking people to wait for a month, especially if they're expecting comprehensive reviews that never come. WP:PR (in the "history" subject area) might be one option; encouraging people to go for our (outstanding) A-class review process might be another, and if the article really isn't ready for A-class review, we could always "vote" to remove it and give them some general pointers on what to do to prep for GAN or A-class. Of course, if we encourage more participation at WP:PR, then we should make an effort to review there as well, but that might work; doing partial reviews works better in an environment where a variety of people are doing different types of review. Thoughts? - Dank (push to talk) 20:11, 16 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I was just referring to the peer reviews, not the A-class reviews. Our projects have been partnered for a while, but your review page simply transcludes our PR page, while our PR page transcludes your individual reviews, which for ever reason, does not get kept up very well. So rather than trying to keep with making sure we are transcluding all of your reviews, it would be easier to be able to transclude the entire section, as you do with us. MrKIA11 (talk) 20:50, 16 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I went ahead and added the tags since I don't foresee a problem. If there is a problem, feel free to revert. MrKIA11 (talk) 21:00, 16 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Everything looks good here; I assume everything is working properly at the VG end? Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 22:27, 16 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, no problems on our end. Transcluded nicely. MrKIA11 (talk) 23:27, 16 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the internal peer review is a negative; while less active (and, arguably, less integral to our collective article improvement) than in past years, it still provides as much, or more, feedback as the main peer review process.

Having said that, I agree that we've seen declining activity in this area, and that it would behoove us to consider ways to increase it. One relatively easy option would be to cross-list reviews by creating (and redirecting) the appropriate subpages for both review types; that would enable a single review to collect input via both processes, but without necessarily forcing us to adopt the archiving schedule, etc. used by the main peer review process. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 22:27, 16 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that sounds like a good idea. Perhaps, we should put something in the instructions to this effect? AustralianRupert (talk) 09:00, 17 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Moved from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history#PR Partnership. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 22:31, 16 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

C-Class pilot?

IIRC we left C class at some sort of piloting stage, with a technical fix needed to create an automated assessment. Did this progress and, if so, what was the result? Monstrelet (talk) 09:40, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The tracking categories for each of the B-Class criteria are being generated; see Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Open tasks#Articles that need specific improvements.

As far as converting this into an automatically-assessed C-Class rating, we're still uncertain of the correct combination of criteria, if I recall correctly. The results of particular combinations can be estimated by looking at the "... with no other problems" counts; for example, setting C-Class to require all criteria except B1 would produce ~50,000 articles.

If anyone would like to see other combinations implemented, I can add them fairly easily.

On a tangentially related note, we might also want to consider implementing FL-Class as a separate rating, to make tracking of our (growing) number of featured lists easier. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 20:22, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, here is a link to the previous discussion: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Archive 98#C-Class adoption revisited. AustralianRupert (talk) 23:48, 24 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Having refreshed my memory, I think the most strongly favoured option was an automated approach to class as C any starts which met B3,B4, B5 and either B1 or B2. If we could also have a bot which placed a B class checklist on all starts (personally, I'm lazy at putting checklists into articles I assess and I think a lot of others are too), we could encourage all editors to go to their watchlists and ensure the B class list is filled out as part of a "new category" operation, those hopefully impacting on the incomplete B list backlog. Monstrelet (talk) 08:38, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Do we want to generate a (B1 OR B2) AND (B3 AND B4 AND B5) combination category, so that we can see how many articles would be assessed as C-Class under this approach? Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 11:19, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Using CatScan on the toolserver, I found ~9900 failing B1 and passing all the others, and ~1600 failing B2 and passing all the others. So that's about 11500 C-class out of the 33,000 with complete B-class checklists. Shimgray | talk | 13:21, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If we apply the same proportion to those without complete checklists, we'd have about another 9000 - I think this is an upper estimate, as a lot of these will be stubs. Any B class reassessment would drop down some of the older Bs, which no longer meet modern criteria, but will be relatively few, I'd guess Monstrelet (talk) 13:58, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

15-20k total sounds plausible, yeah. Speaking of "older Bs", I wonder if this might be a good time - since we'll be updating a lot of ratings - to think about including, possibly via bot, a "last assessed at" date somewhere within the template metadata. We wouldn't have to act on it in the immediate future, but once it's there it means we've started building the framework for later "rating maintenance" in some way. Shimgray | talk | 14:19, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think the idea of identifying the most recent assessment should be standard for all classes... Something that was B-class even two or three years ago probably needs serious work to get there nowadays. Formal reviews are usually noted on the talk page, and while there is a proccess to review featured articles, I don't think that anything else is usually looked at often. I think the assumption is that once an editor "adopts" it and submits for GAR/ACR/PR, he or she will stick with it until it's FA... which is probably true most of the time, but that neglects anything B or lower. I think simply categorizing them by assessment date would be enough, and it's something a bot can do (I bet a clever bot can even look at article history to analyze the last time the template on the talk page was edited). A lot of editors in this project like to work in the GA/A/FA world because that gets them the glory, but the heart of WPMILHIST is in the scores of start and B-class articles.

I'm sorry, I think I meandered off the point. Yes, we should have the bot categorized "date last assessed", by quality and TF if possible. bahamut0013^words_deeds 19:16, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There's an "article history" template which records "events" like GA nominations, peer reviews, etc with dates, but usually once it's got to that stage there's an active user keeping tabs on it. We could try to add article assessment to that, but it would rapidly get overwhelmed by a page with incremental improvements and problems (start to B to C to B, etc) - in reality, I think we won't need any more complex metadata than "the most recent date someone looked at this and rated it was January 2010".

The simples approach here seems to be adding a datereviewed field in the template, updated by a bot (perhaps building off the changelog here, which already records all updates) or perhaps by something fancy involving substing (though I can't immediately see how!) with the option to manually enter a date for "has been assessed, approved, no change" for the cases where it's passed GAR/FAR or simply where someone's eyeballed it and agreed it retains the old level. That can then generate monthly categories in the same way as the backlog cats, broken down as needed, and a year or so from now we can start fretting about the oldest ones :-) Shimgray | talk | 20:34, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't a bad idea, necessarily; but it's highly dependent on getting someone to write a bot for it, as I don't believe anything currently in operation will perform this task.

Another issue that we need to consider is how deeply to break down the categories. Consider, for example, the following:

• Tracking articles project-wide will result in 12 categories created per year
• Tracking articles by class will result in 72 categories created per year
• Tracking articles by task force will result in 600 categories created per year
• Tracking articles by class and task force will result in 3,600 categories created per year

As should be obvious, more granular tracking will quickly result in a vast number of categories being created. Further, many of these categories are likely to persist for an extended period of time; I very much doubt we have the manpower to re-assess each of our 100,000+ articles every year. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 23:37, 25 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Mmm. It's probably going to be easier to stick with granular by month and nothing else, leaving it solely as a tracking class - if someone wants to focus on a particular field, then catscan can produce reports of them relatively easily. I don't see lack of updating as a problem per se - to my mind, this is mainly so we can keep ourselves aware of the issue! I'll have a think about what we can do to make the date-tracking work. Shimgray | talk | 00:44, 26 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I really like this idea. Yoenit (talk) 08:11, 26 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think bot support will be a problem, the BAG guys practically salivate over projects like this. We should have no problem finding someone to write code and pass it through the approval process; and I'm sure if we do this, other wikiprojects will follow suit and use the bot as well.

I've never seen catscan before... it seems useful. But that said, I don't have much of a problem with having 72 cats a year, over about six years of assessment, making about 432 cats (ten years if you count our predecessors, making 720). It's not like it would hurt anything, and we already have masses of assessment categories for each TF. bahamut0013^words_deeds 12:07, 26 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would suggest that the next step would probably be to contact the bot operators and see who might be interested in helping us with this. The template and category changes are relatively minor, but we need to get a bot lined up before they'll be useful for anything. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 18:21, 26 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The datereviewed field can be populated with the logging table data from the the enwp10 database on the toolserver. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 03:57, 27 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Time for FL-Class?

Following on from what Kirill noted above, I think it is time that we adopted the use of {{FL-Class}} as a class of assessment within the project. Our FLs are currently classified in Category:FA-Class military history articles as opposed to a separate FL one. We currently have 89 featured lists and growing. It would help with tracking purposes if we could split it out and I don't see a reason not to. To implement it we would need to add the assessment to {{MILHIST}} and then go through and amend the category on the 89 talkpages involved. What do people think? Woody (talk) 18:35, 26 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

We'd also need to create FL categories for the task forces, but that shouldn't take that long. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 18:42, 26 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with this proposal. AustralianRupert (talk) 08:16, 27 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I thought we already did. Looking at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment, I see that the only articles that get classed outside of the raw stub/start/B/GA/A/FA scale are task forces that overlap with other wikiprojects, like biographies. I believe that {{MILHIST}} already categorizes lists, categories, disambigs, files, portals, templates, and other non-article pages, and simply classes them as "NA" for assessment purposes (shouldn't the NA files be listed in the assessment scale boxes? I'm sure that while we have 112k articles, we have probably plenty in support pages, and that number might be interesting to see). We might as well add all of the featured content: lists, images, sounds, portals, etc. bahamut0013^words_deeds 12:29, 27 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't quite correct. Items outside of the article namespace (e.g. images, sounds, portals, user pages, etc.) are automatically assessed as "NA". Lists, on the other hand, can't be assessed automatically, since they're indistinguishable from articles on a namespace level. They're normally assessed using the corresponding article class; featured lists, for example, are assessed as "FA".

One thing that should be fixed is that disambig pages are reported as non-assessed. I've had to delete the project banner from a number of them to get them to stop showing up in our unassessed articles pages.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 22:32, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You can set class=dab for those. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 22:55, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The idea here, I think, is simply to diverge "FL" from "FA", while leaving the lower classes identical for lists and "regular" articles. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 14:07, 27 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That's the idea yes. A simple split of FAs and FLs. Woody (talk) 22:53, 1 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'll support that, but I'll also support further differentiation. bahamut0013^words_deeds 15:48, 2 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would also support that but oppose further differentiation. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 06:49, 16 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]