Talk:Chief of the National Guard Bureau

Website

Currently, I cannot find an official profile for General Grass from nationalguard.mil. If you find one, please put it on the page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.36.153.170 (talk) 20:22, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Expansion

This is a good-looking article with no notices but on getting into it I find considerable difficulty in relating the references beyond the first few to the material. Moreover, the references are not properly specified. More importantly, there is a certain confusion about the National Guard on WP, which the article is not deep enough to clear up. Having been trying to organize the commons media on the NGB I think it is time to expand a few of the articles, which are mainly copied from material on the Internet (with attribution). The articles are barely above stub status, although the graphics is very pleasing. So, I'm trying my hand at expanding this article meaningfully.Botteville (talk) 08:21, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

Dual status tag

OK I think I see what you mean. You have not, however, stated what you mean, leaving me to interpret that. So, I am editing and shortening the paragraph. Thank you for your opinion. You can, of course, replace it with something you write, if that is your inclination. I have further to go on this.Botteville (talk) 12:08, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

I think it is superfluous to talk about the nature of the U.S. Code in this section. Perhaps just summarize how the guard is set up by the law, then go into the details in the subsections. This seems out of place here: "The Code is a codified statement of the national laws in effect, including those that define the government itself. This is not a fixed body of law. It is changed by Acts of Congress, including the substructure of the Department of Defense (DOD or DoD), as well as the responsibilities and duties its senior officers. In that sense the exact descriptions of the offices and the units depend on the year." - Tystnaden (talk) 00:39, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

I don't think I agree with you quite yet, if at all. I won't know for sure until I corral the sources. It is the "how the guard is set up by the law" that is the problem. It isn't set up any one way by the law. It depends on the year. I thought I would put the sources in proper format. In the first two notes, the verification of the text was very hard to find. You had to do a search through tangles of law code, and then you had to interpret the code. For the rest of the sources, forget it. They have nothing to do with the appropriate code. Moreover, I noticed that the code seems to change in some way or other just about every year. And finally, we are expecting the reader to be a constitutional expert on the government when most of them do not even know what the code is. So, if we are going to mention the code, I think we need to state what it is. If we are going to discuss the code, we need to make the reader familiar that it depends on the year, and then try to use the latest version. That is the point of that paragraph. It still seems to the point to me. The bottom line is, the article presents a lot of specialized legal and military concepts without introduction or explanation. I propose to lead into it with some explanations linking in articles from Wikipedia. We need more references than just obscure references to unlocatable law code. But, I can't do this all at once. My plan is to proceed from the general to the specific. What is the NGB and why do we need a chief? What purpose does he serve? I find that the office as it is today is mainly that resulting from the extensive changes in the military brought about by the abolition of the draft and changeover to a higher-quality but smaller military. The key concept was the first one of the change, the Total Force Policy. The position is much different from what it was before. So my plan is to rewrite this part getting more into the history and the Total Force idea. My big discovery on this material and on the military in general, is that there is no such thing as "the way the military is." The military changes so fast that the Internet can't even keep up with it. None of the units are what they were in WWII. Take a simple thing like Andrews Air Force Base. It is now Joint Base Andrews. Everything is joint, joint, joint. You can't just send in the marines. I get that from working on the thousands of media. Sorry to bore you with this. I suggest you let me finish with it. Of course if you would rather do it you can have it if you wish. However, you won't be just getting it! You'll be getting me as a critic also.I always look at the references. These were bad enough for me to take more of a hand. The ref should be properly formatted. Each ref should be relevant to and cover the text material preceding, whether a sentence or a few paragraphs. I like blue links, and so does WP. They often serve in place of a ref. So, it is up to you. I am a slow worker, and I'm trying also to do picture categories. I appreciate your bringing all this up. I can;t estimate its relevance until I get more done.Botteville (talk) 00:41, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Question on recent additions to CNGB article

@Botteville: I've been following your recent additions to the CNGB page. I'm wondering your thoughts on whether this content might be better included in another article.

Specifically, my question is do you think the recent content you added might be better included or merged with the content of the article on the National Guard of the United States?

My thinking is that the CNGB article is about a specific position within the National Guard hierarchy, and not the National Guard itself. In addition, the content that you've generated is not specific to the Air National Guard or Army National Guard, so I don't think it would fit into either of those articles. Also, because your content is about the National Guard as an organization, I don't think it would fit with the article on the National Guard Bureau, which is about the functions of a specific agency.

Can you let me know what you think? If you concur with my assessment, maybe we can work together on a way to add your content to or merge your content into the article on the National Guard. It may even be possible that other contributors are willing to help. From my reading, it seems you've generated a lot of useful material -- I'm just wondering if it makes more sense to include it in an article to which it's better suited.

Regards,

Billmckern (talk) 15:53, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your thoughtful analysis. Believe it or not I have had many of these thoughts myself. Before I go any further let me complete some thoughts. What is missing from the WP articles is the concept of the Total Force - in fact there is no article on it. Under the leadership of Martin Dempsey, CJCS until 2015, the Total Force is now becoming "Unified Action." I think you should read "Doctrine for the Armed Forces of the United States" (PDF). before you go any further. These wP articles started as stubs. They are barely beyond that stage now. I have to admire the organization and conciseness of the writing. These are good articles as far as they go. They have two weaknesses 1) They do not capture and transmit the sense of what is going on 2) The references are almost universally not up to par - not formatted properly, have not much to do with the content, and try to make do by referencing code that is now obsolete or has changed totally. We cannot "code" our way through this with any hope of comprehension. We need the analysts such as the one I just mentioned. Note that most of the articles have tags reflecting these weaknesses.

The National Guard Bureau is not the same organization as it was in the early 20th century. It is not the commander of the National Guard. It is totally in the Total Force category. Its entire mission is advisory. In the Total Force, the chief sits down with the joint chiefs and they determine who get activated and for what purpose. It also plays a vital part in training, which is always joint training now. The chief has an extensive staff including intelligence and two directorates, one for the army national guard and one for the air national guard. Now, I have not finished with this material. The main point is yet to come, the connections between total force (or unified action) and the NGB has yet to be made. If we were to move this material I think it should go under National Guard Bureau, which is entirely a total force advisory organization. I know the Chief article has a long list of chiefs of the NGB going back to heaven knows when. This is a specious list. The Bureau and its chiefs have changed totally. These chiefs don't all do the same thing and the Bureau itself is not the same. For accuracy we need to distinguish eras. WP is still thinking of the Guard the way it was before Viet Nam. The reason why I think it does not go under the two guards is this. They have a dual function: Federal and state. Under State they function more as they used to, a militia commanded by the governor to be used in emergencies. The national Guard Bureau concerns only their Federal function. It is only under the feds that they are candidates for joint force components. Their use in that capacity is now quite different. They are much more easily, readily, and selectively activated for that purpose. The DoD considers them a reserve component, which they are not in the state.

I don't say what I have written cannot be cannibalized and placed in other articles. The thing is, those articles have the same weaknesses as this one did before I started. Maybe you would want to put the dual nature under the Guard articles. You wouldn't want to put the Total Force material there. It might go under National Guard Bureau. The chief article still needs to be rewritten. I suggest taking the phase approach. For myself I would include the pre-guard phase, which keeps the continuity, but you would have to make sure to distinguish the functions of different phases. Actually, the possibility strongest in my mind is to write a brand-new article on the Total Force/Unified Action. The Total Force makes the services, and their reserves, and the Guard, components. The unified action adds civilian contractors and individuals and the troops of other countries to the repertory. A unified action force can use just about anyone it needs, while the total force plucks from the reserves.

I appreciate the polite way in which you speak to me. WP has come up a bit. Maybe the "Report" tab had made a difference. I think what you are seeing is the weaknesses in a group of articles. In order to address it fully one has to take on the entire group. I can't do that by myself so maybe I have been putting too much in the chief article. It can't reference the material in other articles because it isn't in any other articles. I was hoping to finish the thread I was on before we started to think of what goes best where. Under the next section, NGB, I was going to cover the Total Force character of the NGB, which despite its pseudo-references to obsolete code, is in no way covered. "Advisory" doesn't do it for the public although Congress knows what it means.

Where do we go from here? I can tell from your tone you are a responsible person on WP and therefore mean business. I cannot see how I can refuse such well-put request. I also know it would not do me any good to refuse it. So, I would say, follow the plan you have in mind. For me this would open up the other articles to rewriting and updating. I can't do all that work so I would have to take them one at a time. I'm sure we could improve them all right. I'm afraid that leaves the original Chief article in limbo. I would be going where my material goes. Only after the other articles are satisfactory would I feel I could bring the chief article up to date. The blue links are an important part of the process but you can't link to something that is not there, such as the whole development of the DoD since Viet Nam.

The next move is up to you I guess. I will continue to follow my thread until you get that mobilized. What I have written is not complete. It might be a few weeks or a month more before I get through the whole article. If you can't wait just go ahead. You propose dealing another hand. I will just pick up on the cards you have dealt and play on from there. I got into this area by sorting pictures and putting in the comcats. No one ever puts in the comcat; it is very confusing. I'm keeping that going on the back burner, so I have plenty to do. Lead on McDuff.Botteville (talk) 04:11, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Hi again. I'm thinking. It seems to me the whole section on total force can be dropped into its own article. The question in my mind is, how far has the code been changed to support the Unified Force terminology? Should that be yet another article? Does the DoD at this point clearly distinguish the two? If we put it all under Total Force Policy, would we not then have to split it subsequently? These are things I ponder as I do the research. The pictures show a progression pretty far into the unified concept, when all the new countries of east Europe now have joint units with US guardsmen. That is a pretty long way from the state concept of the guard, and that is quite a different use of the Guard from previously.

So, probably, the dual concept of the Guard should go under the Guard, unless that too should have its own article. "Dual" with regard to the Guard is actually being used by the DoD.

Well, I've met quite a few people in the Guard. I think it is useful that you can bring your experience if you are inclined to work on WP. I will be honest with you though. The authors of these military articles tend to want to write professional military articles with a high degree of presumption that the reader knows the concepts and the lingo. We've already seen this on WP in other fields. After a number of years of vociferous skepticism the academics finally caught onto the idea that their topics were being published here and read by millions of people. Then they took a hand at writing scientific journal type articles. Suddenly hundreds of articles dropped from comprehensibility. Eventually though WP readers started complaining. New tags were invented complaining that the article needed to be rewritten to make it comprehensible. For myself I used to write professionally to target audiences minimally acquainted with whatever topic I was writing about. That is the way I write here also or try to write. I think it is what the readers want. So, if your bent is to write articles as though from one professional officer to other professional officers, we probably are not going to agree on that aspect. That is why I cannot accept the implied suggestion by someone else that we write only the bare minimum and use only the code for references. I regard that as a flaw. It isn't what the overall reader wants. Sorry to bore you with this but it needed to be said. I'm going to take a few days break on this to distance my perspective. By the way, I'm older, educated, and have some military experience. I don't want personals to get in the way so I try to minimalize myself.Botteville (talk) 00:32, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

@Botteville: I'm an Army officer with over 30 years of National Guard experience. In addition to master's degree in US military studies, I'm a qualified US Army historian. I'm offering to help because I think my contributions can be useful in terms of ensuring the accuracy of the content you've created, and showing it in the most favorable light by ensuring it's incorporated into the articles that are most logical. I think I can help with that and make sure that the end result strikes a balance between being useful to the lay reader and being overly detailed and technical. I encourage you to look at some of my other contributions for verification. I'm the primary author on Lesley J. McNair, and I contributed a lot to Henry Wilson. Until recently, the Army National Guard article was largely my work -- I see that some recent edits have started to create separate articles from the content I previously included in the main article. I also helped a lot with William W. Belknap and Columbus Delano.

I'm not looking to step on you, or override you, or cause discontent by getting into an edit war. I think you've expended a lot of time and effort that shouldn't be overlooked or wasted, and I think I can help with improvements that make the best possible use of your work. That's it.

Billmckern (talk) 15:26, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

I suspected something like that Bill. So far your replies have been 100% professional. Thank you for taking a hand in WP. I think you see the the situation correctly. You pointed out a general situation that some of my material - on which I did in fact expend considerable effort - is not quite on the topic.

Much of the problem is in the fact that material to which I wanted to link is not on WP yet. Also, some articles are not that far along. How to proceed? I think there is a need for the material. Right now I am thinking of new articles, on the near-schizophrenic duality of the Guard (forgive me), another of the Total Force Policy, another on the Unified Force Policy (if that is what it is called) and a proper cleanup of the Chief article. It looks as though the only thing I might have that you don't (maybe) is a detailed knowledge of the formatting and some of the policies. Obviously, no one knows everything and everyone makes mistakes. So. These are only my tentative thoughts. We probably do need solutions. I think you can pretty well write your own ticket on this. I'm putting my work on it on the back burner and going back to commons categories and end-article clean-up (people ignore that terribly). This is because I want to read your views on what should be done. I don't guarantee we will always agree.

Thanks for revealing something about your credentials. I'm retired, but pretty busy in retirement. I was a technical writer and then a contractor in tech writing. I taught high school at one point. I got a BA and MA in Classics after an unpleasant stint in engineering. I had some time in a military school, from which you imbibe quite a bit about the military. I'm philosophic. I will not get into my views, which have been controversial. Right now I'm just around when I can be and while I can be. This is enough like tech writing so I can enjoy it despite the awful rude manners of some Wikipedians. Thanks again for your professionalism and when you are ready I look forward to your views and decisions on what is best.Botteville (talk) 18:53, 20 September 2017 (UTC)