Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators/Archive 10

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Contest Dept

The Contest department has just completed its twelth month of competition. Do we want to recognise those who have done well over the last year per some of the different categories listed on the page. I.E. ones such as highest average points per article etc. Perhaps we could use this "anniversary" to advertise the drive more... Do we want to issue chevrons for the last quarter, last month or not at all? I think some sort of "reward" would be helpful for morale and to encourage further contributions to the contest.

Newsletter

Do we want to do all of this before the March newsletter goes out? If not, anyone got anything to add to the newsletter before I send it out? Woody (talk) 15:21, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree that rewards would be excellent though we have to careful how we award them. The difficulty is that awarding for volume will favour long-established editors over new ones; highest average would be pretty meaningless if it's for one or two months. If we do do awards, I think they should be monthly rather than a flash in the pan. --ROGER DAVIES talk 17:23, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
How about we make use of the assessment rotation idea? We could award the contributers in question by selecting articles they worked on and putting them in the assessment chart, then annoucing the rotation in the newsletter and leaving a link to the new chart with the new articles. Thoughts? TomStar81 (Talk) 18:02, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
Not a bad idea at all, Tom, though I'd personally prefer something more durable (chevrons?). --ROGER DAVIES talk 18:07, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
As a sidenote, I have already updated the assessment chart for this month, mainly with these entries. Woody (talk) 18:04, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
Excellent. --ROGER DAVIES talk 18:07, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
Chevrons it is then. :) TomStar81 (Talk) 18:10, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Recuse. :). Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:51, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I see that the top scorer last month was Woody with Dreamafter in second place. Blnguyen remains the overall leader, with 188 points in total. Now I don't know what to propose because while I am wholeheartedly in favour of the principle of awards I prefer that they be spread around. To commemorate the anniversary of the contest (and to give a second month's publicity to it) I suggest that we give Blnguyen the Chevrons for his achievement thus far and the new Writer's barnstar to Woody and Dreamafter.

In future, I suggest we give a single award of the chevrons and a single award of the Writer's barnstar every month to the two editors who score the highest of that month's total and rolling monthly average (based on the past three months). To clarify, Editor-A scores 22 points this month; Editor-B 17; and Editor-C 14 but Editor-D scores an average of 18 points per month on a rolling three months. Therefore Editor-A gets the chevrons (because 22 is greater than 18) and Editor-D the writer's barnstar (because 18 is greater than 17). Does this sound fair? And I would like to hear from people who would normally recuse themselves. --ROGER DAVIES talk 13:17, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

FAC

Another note, should coords be more assertive in trying to help less acquainted people get up to speed... in places like FAC for instance, where it's hard to understand how MOS and ref formatting work...especially as this wikiproject takes pride in its high number of FAs, shouldn't the coordinators try to help with copyedit and formatting issues for those who are less well-versed....because the FAC success rate hasn't been that great... and if we help people who are less sure of themselves wrt FACs, it would increase the success rate and encourage them to write more FAs. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:23, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't think every coordinator is a good choice as adviser for these issues. Direct them to the corresponding section in our logistics department. Wandalstouring (talk) 14:05, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
I do a load of FAC stuff (probably too much sometimes). Articles that go through the whole Milhist process are greatly improved by it and usually slip through FAC relatively effortlessly. This is not because it's vote-stacked but because our internal review processes work very well. We do offer specialist MOS copy-editing in the Logistics dept (though I don't know how much it's been used yet: I must check). I do copy-edit for FAC, but sparingly because it can be incredibly time-consuming. I did one FAC copy-edit this week that took ten hours plus a couple hours more proof-reading on paper. In contrast, one I did a couple of weeks ago was easy-peasy. --ROGER DAVIES talk 23:07, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
No, we don't do vote stacking here...Blnguyen (bananabucket) 01:54, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Most visited articles

Copied from WT:MILHIST#Most visited articles

OK, since everybody seems to think the top 10 is a good start, could I ask our coordinators and/or people with the hitcount counting skills to do a survey from, say, 1 Jan 06 to 31 Mar 08 to determine what were the average top 10 (assuming this is possible)? Buckshot06 (talk) 23:14, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Does anyone here have the time to do this please? (I don't know where to begin, otherwise I'd do it myself.) --ROGER DAVIES talk 09:15, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Surely someone here must know where the data can be found. --ROGER DAVIES talk 10:23, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
http://stats.grok.se/ would be a start. Woody (talk) 10:39, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks very much, --ROGER DAVIES talk 11:38, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
The answer for Buckshot, of course, is that this data is only currently available for February 2008. (The dates switches don't work.) --ROGER DAVIES talk 11:53, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
It should be pretty consistent for all months. One way of getting around this is to take the median day page views for the 29 days to eliminate spikes caused by being on the front page or in the news or an anniversary. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:46, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
An interesting idea. Thanks, --ROGER DAVIES talk 17:38, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Tag & Assess o'clock

Well, it's pretty much Tag & Assess o'clock.

This 60,000-article drive is scheduled to launch on April 25. All the participants in T&G07 and BCAD have had colourful messages left on their talk pages; an ad has appeared at the community portal and there's a message on the project talk page. Nearly twenty eager taggers have already signed up. Just got to sit back and wait to see what happens, --ROGER DAVIES talk 17:36, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I would make one small suggestion: put a note in now about the workshop at the end so those who taper off after the first few weeks will be aware of it. Otherwise we may miss out on there input in the improvement process. TomStar81 (Talk) 21:55, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
I put invitations to participate in the workshop on everyone's talk pages last time. I'll add a line about it though. --ROGER DAVIES talk 04:22, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

(od) I'd appreciate it if one or two coordinator could help me monitor taggers' efforts. Some editors do it wrong and need a guidance at first. One I noticed wasn't tagging for task forces at all; and is now leaving the complete parameter list on the article's talk page. It basically involves looking at random edits and leaving (hopefully) diplomatic advice on individual's talk pages. All very informal and chatty, --ROGER DAVIES talk 04:22, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Thankfully, Woody has once again stepped up. --ROGER DAVIES talk 05:44, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Off the Air

Closed: Tom back on stream. --ROGER DAVIES talk 03:16, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm apraoching finals week and have decided to officially go on Wikibreak until after the last of the finals passes. At my doctors request, I will also have an endoscopy shortly after the finals to check up on my stomache condition since it has, of late, been a source of much physical pain. I hope to be back on here in force in a week or two, at which point I will get back to work for the project. Thank you all for your patience in the matter. TomStar81 (Talk) 05:02, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

  • Good luck with your exams and all the best with you endoscopy. Kyriakos (talk) 06:37, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Have fun Wandalstouring (talk) 17:26, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Yes, good luck, Tom. And don't stick your head round the door til you're fighting fit :) --ROGER DAVIES talk 17:44, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Yes, take care of yourself first; the coordination work will no doubt still be here when you get back. :-) Kirill (prof) 01:01, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikichevrons with Oakleaves nomination

Closed: Nom successful. Chevrons w/Oakleaves awarded. --ROGER DAVIES talk 03:16, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I'd be grateful for comments at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Awards#Hlj.

Many thanks, --ROGER DAVIES talk 05:42, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Eyes on this please? --ROGER DAVIES talk 18:45, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Closing discussions

I've just zipped through the past month or so's discussions, tagging them as Closed where it looks to me appropriate. (If anyone disagrees with any, just remove the Closed tag.) Perhaps the closed ones can be archived in a day or so to make live issues more prominent. --ROGER DAVIES talk 06:14, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

A-class review proposal

Closed: Implemented --ROGER DAVIES talk 18:47, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Following the discussion here, I think it may to time to get a general opinion about what to do. Firstly 'Reviews will normally be closed by one of the project coordinators....' as they are currently being done, should this stay so or should non-coordinators be able to close reviews? Due to the lack of reviewers at the moment, I think that if an article has no opposes but not enough support vote to pass then the review should be extended by 'n' days until it gains enough support or opposition. Also, it would be good if the article's nominator would be able to request an extension of 'n' days on the review in order to meet comments and opposition raised in the review. Also what should the amount of 'n' days be for the extension? To keep it simple a 'yes' or 'no' answers would be good for the proposals as well as any other comments or suggestions and thoughts for number of 'n' days. Thanks. Kyriakos (talk) 12:29, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

1. Non-coordinator closure
No. I've seen enough recent bizarre drive-by decisions at GA to resist drive-by non-coordinator closure. --ROGER DAVIES talk 12:44, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
No. I think that co-ordination should be left to do this task. Kyriakos (talk) 13:05, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
No. Woody (talk) 15:51, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
No. Nick Dowling (talk) 10:03, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
No. --Eurocopter (talk) 15:03, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
No. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 02:14, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
2. Extension by coordinator if an article has no opposes but insufficient support
Yes. --ROGER DAVIES talk 12:44, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes. Kyriakos (talk) 13:05, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes. Woody (talk) 15:51, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes. Nick Dowling (talk) 10:03, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes. --Eurocopter (talk) 15:03, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes, Blnguyen (bananabucket) 02:14, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
3. Request by nominator to extend to deal with matters arising
Yes. --ROGER DAVIES talk 12:44, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes. Kyriakos (talk) 13:05, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes. Woody (talk) 15:51, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes. Nick Dowling (talk) 10:03, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes. --Eurocopter (talk) 15:03, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes, Blnguyen (bananabucket) 02:14, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
4. Proposed period of extension

:Three days? --ROGER DAVIES talk 12:44, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

"of up to a maximum of three days" --ROGER DAVIES talk 15:56, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
I agree with three days, I seems long enough to work on matters. Kyriakos (talk) 13:05, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
3 days max. Woody (talk) 15:51, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Agreed. Amended my comment above. --ROGER DAVIES talk 15:56, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
I agree with the solutions above. Wandalstouring (talk) 13:29, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Yep, all looks fine to me. Kirill (prof) 17:41, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
I'd prefer a week, but 3 days is OK --Nick Dowling (talk) 10:03, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
Three days should be enough in my opinion. --Eurocopter (talk) 15:03, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

←Thank you, everyone. That looks pretty conclusive. I'll make the necessary updates. --ROGER DAVIES talk 17:52, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I've amended the instructions accordingly. Perhaps it could be checked and, if necessary, copy-edited by one of the usual mopper-uppers :))) --ROGER DAVIES talk 18:28, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
And anywhere else that I've been for that matter :) --ROGER DAVIES talk 18:47, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
Ok 3 days. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 02:14, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Contest dept troubles

I was surprised (and disappointed) to learn, over the last few days, about editors apparently gaming the system in the contest dept. It seems the potential for point-hiking is high by, for example, entering articles as stubs and self-assessing them as B-Class a week or so later, and entering articles at deliberately low levels for maximum points pick-up. It seems to me that there is great potential for endless bickering and wiki-lawyering. Now, I'd hate to spoil the fun ethos of the contest dept and the problem with rules is that the WP:BEANS principle soon applies to the things they prohibit. Easiest it seems to me is that the closing coordinator determines the entering and closing classes, at say 00:01 on day 1 of the month and 23:59 on the last day, with the explicit discretion to upgrade or downgrade as s/he sees fit. Thoughts? --ROGER DAVIES talk 13:29, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I have tried to do that when I closed them. There are a couple of editors who I have explicitly warned in the past to not assess their own articles. It is entirely upto the judgement of the closing co-ordinator if the assessment is not accurate and they should downgrade it if points-stacking occurs. I have to say though, given my recent experiences, it is a tiny minority (1 or 2) of editors who have done this. I have also tightened up the rules recently on the page regarding the dates and times after a disagreement sprung up about when to assess the article from. I think we have to be fairly loose on this, say an article is promoted to FA on 13:00 1 May (UTC), and the scores haven't been tallied up yet, it seems responsible to see it as FA for the purposes of scoring. Woody (talk) 13:35, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes, I think this isn't a particularly significant problem in practice. We've gently discouraged a few of the more enthusiastic editors from self-assessing too liberally, but I think the bulk of the contestants aren't trying anything of the sort.
More generally, it'd be nice to somehow automate the entry process—many editors don't enter the articles they're working on, but it might be theoretically possible to generate a month's entries simply by looking at the assessment change log—but that's not really a practical course of action at the moment. Kirill (prof) 13:55, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
I agree that the scale of the problem is small. I also agree that the assessment logs are far too large to try it I think. Woody (talk) 14:02, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes, the problem is small at the moment (though I noticed someone else at it this morning) but I'd hate to see the atmosphere poisoned over the next couple of months. Do we need to make the rule about coordinator discretion more emphatic? (I'll look at the text again later, I think.) --ROGER DAVIES talk 14:08, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
Well I guess you could give more points to FA, because that can't be stacked by self-assessment, but then again, upping the FA score benefits me because I am relatively trained in 1a and all that, so you might choose to ignore me. That's ok. But I think it has been a problem that one person (at least) has written a 1k prose article, equipped it with an infobox and pick, reffed it, and then awarded themselves 6 points. I'm well aware of the fact about small articles but I do wonder whether the reserves really were expended at 1k. I bet if they looked in books there would be a lotmore than on random internet sites. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:57, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
Let's forbid any self-assessments. Wandalstouring (talk) 08:46, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
Concur with Wandalstouring, lets ban self assessment. As to the question of automation, exactly how complicated would it be to automate the process? I ask because I lack technical knowlage on such matters, so I am trying to get a better idea of how hard the process would be. TomStar81 (Talk) 15:39, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
The assessment process can't be automated because a bot would have to judge content. What can be automated, is the calculation of achieved points per month with a quick check on self assessment(that can be easily tricked). Wandalstouring (talk) 10:31, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

(od} I've had a go at tweaking the instructions.

Current
  1. Editors wishing to enter will select an article they will work on; multiple articles may be selected, if desired. They will then have until the end of the month to make improvements to it.
  2. At the end of the month—or earlier, by request—the article will be evaluated, and points will be awarded based on its standing in the project's quality scale before and after the improvements made.
  3. Editor's point totals will be tracked, and monthly, quarterly, and annual winners will be recognized by the project coordinators.
Proposed
  1. The contest runs from the first to last day of each month. Editors nominate the articles they intend improving and have until the end of the month to make the improvements.
  2. Early the following month, the project coordinators will evaluate the entries and award points on the basis of actual improvement made, using the project's quality scale as a guideline. At their discretion, the coordinators may include points from A-Class and FA reviews which slightly overran the last day of the month.
  3. The coordinators will tally the nominators' points totals and determine the monthly, quarterly, and annual winners.

Love it? Hate it? Indifferent? --ROGER DAVIES talk 08:31, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Yep, that is a definite improvement that codifies our role more specifically and definitely. I think the wording of point 2 is a bit strange, perhaps A-Class and FA reviews closed slightly outside the alotted month. Overran just seems awkward to me, maybe just me though. Woody (talk) 15:58, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
Concur with the above. Also, for point three, could add something to the effect of "In addition to points, one article from each assessment class will be featured on the assessment scale"? If you make a point to note this we may help inspire people to work a little more on their respective articles. TomStar81 (Talk) 18:19, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
How's this?
Draft for discussion
1. The contest runs from the first to last day of each month. Editors nominate the articles they intend improving and and have until the end of the month to make the improvements.

2. Early the following month, a project coordinator will evaluate the entries and award points on the basis of actual improvement made, using the project's quality scale as a guideline. At their discretion, coordinators may include points from A-Class and FA reviews which close slightly after the last day of the contest period.

3. The coordinators will tally the nominators' points totals; determine the monthly, quarterly, and annual winners; and select one article from each assessment class per month to be highlighted as examples on the project's quality scale.

Any thoughts or changes? Or is this good to go? --ROGER DAVIES talk 20:18, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
Good to go as far as I can see. Woody (talk) 20:22, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
I've tweaked it slightly ("the project coordinators will evaluate" > "a project coordinator will evaluate") to avoid suggestions that the results need debated here amongst all the coordinators first.
Is everyone happy that this does not constitute WP:instruction creep? --ROGER DAVIES talk 20:29, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

(od} I've now updated the section, which I've renamed from "Contest rules" to "How it works". --ROGER DAVIES talk 03:27, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Possible Pakistan task force

Excuse my intrusion. Just wanted to note that I've begun tagging articles as 'Pakistan=yes' (that rather that 'Pakistani=yes') so hope that can be taken into consideration if we get to the stage of deciding on new task force tages. Best regards and thanks for all the hard work, Buckshot06 (talk) 03:48, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Noted. Thanks :) 16:24, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Project talk page notice

Closed: Implemented, --ROGER DAVIES talk 15:09, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

To help reengerize the task forces I would like to propose that we place a template at the very top of the main MILHIST talk page asking people to post thier comments or questions on the related articles talk page rather than the main MILHIST page. Before doing this though we would need consensus here to do it and we would have to agree on when we want people to post on task force pages and when to post on the main talk page. I created an example below so you could see what I mean. TomStar81 (Talk) 16:02, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

From the desk of Coordinator department of the Military history Wikiproject:
In an effort to reengerize our task force, we are asking all editers and contributers to make inquires on the articles associated task force page, preferably the one most related to the subject matter. If you question pertains to the project as a whole then add it here instead. Thank you for consideration.
Hi Tom. The idea's a good one though I'm not entirely convinced by the execution. It looks a bit as if we're going bankrupt :))) --ROGER DAVIES talk 16:23, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
Thats why I called this one an "example": I had a feeling it would need tweaked to some greater or lesser extent when and if the rest of you thought it to be a good idea. In the simpliest terms we could just add this to the top of the generic milhist template, but first we need more people to comment on whether this is a good idea or not. TomStar81 (Talk) 16:58, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
I think it's a good idea, but the draft looks far too formal. (Certainly, we shouldn't have anything like "to reengerize our task force" in there; people are not going to post their questions on pages they suspect of being deserted.) I'd suggest something much simpler:
In order to better manage the extensive traffic on this page, we ask that you please make inquires on the talk pages of the most relevant task forces if possible, and only post questions that pertain to the project as a whole here.
Kirill (prof) 00:18, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I think it is a good idea. It would be a good way to curb some of the traffic on the talk page. Kyriakos (talk) 02:40, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I like that. However, I'd suggest that the warning sign graphic be changed to something less confronting and the template include a link to the list of task forces to help direct traffic. Nick Dowling (talk) 03:36, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

(od) How about:

--ROGER DAVIES talk 04:38, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

The last version is OK. Wandalstouring (talk) 10:28, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
Pefect. Lets get it up ASAP. TomStar81 (Talk) 12:56, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
Let's leave for twelve hours or so here, in case anyone wants to CE it. Yes? --ROGER DAVIES talk 13:11, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
One little thing: for the first week or two, we may have to move some posts to the main onto relevent task force pages so people will get the idea. Any objections? TomStar81 (Talk) 13:07, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
Not from me, but I do suggest if we go down that route we leave the section header and a message saying "Moved to XXX TF" or similar. --ROGER DAVIES talk 13:11, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
Concur. TomStar81 (Talk) 13:21, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
Slightly copy-edited:
But this looks good to me overall. Kirill (prof) 16:47, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
Further nibbled at:
--ROGER DAVIES talk 17:29, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
That looks good to me. Nick Dowling (talk) 01:21, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

(od) I've added the banner but it's a bit lost at the top. Any ideas about better positioning? On a related note, perhaps we should reduce archiving frequency from 21 days to 14 days? A lot of the 21-day stuff is well past its sell-by date (FAC and A-Class article notifications) and just adds to the noise. Thoughts? --ROGER DAVIES talk 03:15, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I've tried my hand at pulling the text into the "Skip to TOC" banner above it, as I think having more narrow boxes is too cluttered; does that look any better? Kirill (prof) 03:21, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
That works well. Nick Dowling (talk) 03:23, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes, a lot better, thanks. Perhaps we could add a Skip to List of Task Forces link to integrate them better? Would a whitesmoke background for it work better, by the way, ... to visually separate it? --ROGER DAVIES talk 03:25, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes, adding the extra link sounds like a good idea. As far as the background goes, the box blends with the page a bit too much, I think; maybe it would work better with a blue border?
The other option might be to remove the announcements template; I'm not sure that the benefits of having an extra copy outweigh the cost of taking up so much screen space. Kirill (prof) 03:36, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
Much better with (presumably) a gainsboro border, I think. For the announcements banner, we don't we:
  1. Remove the "full version with task forces" panel (duplicated above)
  2. Collapse it to just the existing blue banner header with a [show]/[hide] toggle?
--ROGER DAVIES talk 03:42, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
Gainsboro is a very light gray, even lighter than the current border; is that what you had in mind?
I've added a collapsing option to the announcement template. As far as removing the bottom panel goes, I can't see any other place where that link appears. Am I missing something here? Kirill (prof) 03:51, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
No, it isn't. I meant the darker steelblue background used, for example, in the header of navbox.
Much neater with the collapsing option, I think.
The link to TFs will appear in the infobox above it. (Once it's added.)
--ROGER DAVIES talk 04:00, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
The link at the bottom isn't a link to the task forces themselves, though, but rather a link to the full-version announcement template with the task force open task lists all transcluded. I didn't think we were going to have a link to that in the upper box, since it's unrelated to discussion areas. Kirill (prof) 04:07, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
Fair enough, good point. --ROGER DAVIES talk 04:12, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
Do we still need "Skip to TOC"? --ROGER DAVIES talk
Possibly, since the collapsing box won't work for anyone with JavaScript disabled. I'm not sure whether we necessarily need to cater to that audience, but it's not as though the link is really hurting anything at this point. Kirill (prof) 15:00, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

APB: Template Problem!

Are you aware of the template problems showing now on the main talk page? Buckshot06 (talk) 00:08, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Hopefully all resolved now. Kirill (prof) 00:14, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Archiving of main talk page

To keep the noise down, shall we set the bot to archive on 14-days instead of 21-days? --ROGER DAVIES talk 20:31, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm all force it. TomStar81 (Talk) 21:00, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, personally, I would hand-archive all the dead A-review notices, since they become irrelevant after 4-7 days anyway, Blnguyen (bananabucket) 06:32, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
Is this ok? Blnguyen (bananabucket) 06:32, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
Funnily enough I was thinking of that too :) Yes, it's an excellent idea. I'll add a note to coords/open tasks as a reminder.--ROGER DAVIES talk

Proposed "Special Projects Dept"

If you have a minute, can you check this out please and add any comments? Thanks, --ROGER DAVIES talk 10:57, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

No new members?!

It seems quite curious to me that no new members joined the project since December 2, 2007 - while in the same period of the past year, over 100 new members joined us. I really don't have any idea what is causing this, but I think we should try to fix it. How about posting advertisements at the top of each Project's page/subpage? --Eurocopter (talk) 15:34, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

You may be looking at the "members" tab rather than the "active" tab. The history there shows new members joining regularly. --ROGER DAVIES talk 16:27, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
Wow, deja vu! ;) Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators/Archive 8#Where are the new members?. Woody (talk) 16:31, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
Where actually, Roger? --Eurocopter (talk) 16:59, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
Here. You can get to it from the nav template by clicking "show" on the "Project organisation" tab, then clicking on "Active", under "Members". --ROGER DAVIES talk 17:03, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
The active members list can be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Members/Active. This page is transcluded onto Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Members so it won't show up in the history of that page. Woody (talk) 17:04, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
Ok, thanks guys, looks like we don't need advertising for the moment :). --Eurocopter (talk) 17:43, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Logistics dept. How well is it working?

Any feedback on this? Are copy-edits being tackled? Research requests fulfilled? --ROGER DAVIES talk 19:03, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I've gotten copyeditting help there, so I know that the concept works, but I think we may need to make some subtle tweaks becuase it appears that the department has a backlog. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TomStar81 (talk • contribs) 19:28, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
Suggestions for achieving this? --ROGER DAVIES talk 19:33, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
Hmm, yes, there are some problems with the copy-editing department, as I requested a ce for an article during early-March and since then the copyeditor, User:Hcberkowitz, made only one edit to the article. Also, the status of the article's request, is "copy-editing" since 8 March. Clearly, we are confronting with a lack of seriousness and devotion besides the copy-editors. --Eurocopter (talk) 19:31, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. I know Howard is disenchanted with Wikipedia at the moment because of vandalism and conflicts with POV warriors. Any ideas for getting it improved? --ROGER DAVIES talk 19:36, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
Recruit from the league of copyediters, maybe? Or perhaps create a system where by those who leave an article here for logistical help are asked to review another article? Those are just off the top of my head ideas, but they may warrent looking into. TomStar81 (Talk) 19:46, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
LOCE is busier than we are. Hence the logistics dept alternative. I agree we need to get (a) more copy-editors and (b) encourage our existing ones to do a bit more though. I think this may be partly a seasonal problem: exam time and stuff, occupying both studenbnts and teachers. --ROGER DAVIES talk 19:54, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
Not necessarily more copy-editors, but devoted copy-editors certainly. I'm sure that if we find 5-6 really devoted copy-editors, we won't have any future problems with the CE department. --Eurocopter (talk) 20:15, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
I agree with you there. --ROGER DAVIES talk 20:16, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm a ashamed to admit it, but I forgot that people are still in school. I somehow have it in my head that when I get out of school everyone gets out of school. You may have a point there though. TomStar81 (Talk) 20:01, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
I asked User:SGGH directly for a review about possible improvements of Late Roman army through a copyedit and he replied swiftly and sufficiently. It's perhaps the problem that requests are not well directed. I guess that the specific requests do not appear on the radar of active copyeditors. We could improve the 'watchability' of their part of the logistics departement by creating an extra page only dedicated to copyedit requests. This would probably also work for the other sections of the logistics departement, although they are not yet accused of the same problems. It would benefit the introduction if the listed copyeditors get notified about this and there was also a note on the page for new copyeditors. Wandalstouring (talk) 15:51, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes, The direct approach does work very well. As for your watch page idea, this is easily done by breaking each of the "bureau" elements out into their own page - Copyediting bureau, Graphics bureau etc - and transcluding them onto the Logistics dept page. etc. --ROGER DAVIES talk 16:09, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
Thank you very much, Wandalstouring, for sorting out the copy-editing transclusion. --ROGER DAVIES talk 12:06, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
And Kirill too, for the fine-tuning, I see :) --ROGER DAVIES talk 16:33, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
Heh. I should ce some more...if I ever finiish with my own set. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:08, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Importance rating

We rarely use the importance rating (only in cases we import it from other projects). I suggest to expand our usage and base it on the amount of monthly clicks (2-3 days increased activity due to media coverage doesn't add much in a month, especially if within broad categories). The idea is to establish categories with borders of amounts of clicks and thus an automatable rating system. The benefit would be that we could better direct our improvement efforts to articles that face more attention and thus achieve satisfaction among a greater number of viewers. Of course, we have to coordinate this effort with the existing cooperations and their rating systems. Wandalstouring (talk) 15:41, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I disagree with reintroducing the importance rating. Even if we can automate it with page views, it is still arbitrary and will result in edit wars. Our project has such a wide scope, there are bound to be disagreements over ratings. I don't see the benefit in it yet. Lets see how the special projects dept deals with the top ten, then revisit it. Woody (talk) 15:49, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
I don't see why there should be edit wars over an automated process. There will from time to time be a new setting of the borders due to increased traffic, but this can be solved amiably with nice round numbers. Wandalstouring (talk) 15:54, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
I say that from experience with non-automated importance ratings. Generating importance from page views doesn't show the bigger picture either, Britney Spears probably has triple the number of views than Nelson or Napoleon. Page views is just as subjective as any other method: it varies over time and context. I think we should concentrate on the top ten instead of bringing in another new process. Lets get the current ones working properly first. Woody (talk) 16:00, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm personally not keen at all on importance tags but will go with the flow here on it. I also agree with Woody that we need a period of consolidation. --ROGER DAVIES talk 18:57, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
I see no harm in keeping small, centralized lists of visit data (as we're doing in the special projects department); but expanding this out to all articles will be unhelpful, since the bulk of our 60,000+ articles will have so few readers as to make any differences in their standings more akin to statistical noise than to any meaningful data. Kirill (prof) 03:00, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
We can always use book hits journal hits etc to gather a small list of important battles and such forth. Of course, we can break it down into geographical region and make things easier byt looking at them one by one, Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:07, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

TF drive?

In keeping with Rogers effort to reenergize the task forces some I would like to propose that sometime between now and the end of the year we hold a TF drive with the stated goal of adding the task forces to all existing articles that have no task force information (which at the moment is more than 9,000). If we can tag these articles as being within the scope of our task forces we can help reduce (if not eliminate) the un-task forced articles and provide the needed task forces for people to ask questions at since thats what our new talk page template asks contributers to do. Thoughts? TomStar81 (Talk) 03:46, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

A lot of articles are untagged because there aren't any available task forces, rather than because of incomplete tagging. How would we handle such cases? I was under the impression that people wanted to put a hold on new task force creation, particularly for the more obscure areas that some of these articles fall into. Kirill (prof) 03:49, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
Unfortuently there is no simple way to seperate those "sheep" articles from the "goat" articles, or in this case those articles that can't be task forcified and those that could but have fallen through the cracks. The idea here principly would be to find the those articles that could be task forcified and task force them. (Incidentally, this would probably also give us a good idea of where we do need to create task forces since those articles that can;t be classified are likely to share some commonalities). Its jsut something to think about at this point. TomStar81 (Talk) 03:54, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
Many of those will be allocated TFs during the existing T&A drive. (Category:Military history articles with no associated task force had over 12,000 articles in it at the start. It's now down to 9,800-ish.) --ROGER DAVIES talk 05:12, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Standing of A-Class articles

There's curently a proposal being considered to rearrange the assessment scale and place A-Class below GAs. In light of this, I think we need to give some thought to what, if anything, our response should be if this is adopted.

It's my belief that the change would be contrary to how we treat A-Class status within the project, and that the new scale would be unduly confusing to our members. I'd therefore like to (again) propose that we remove GA-Class from our internal scale (either in the event of a change to it, or generally), and let GA status be something entirely external to the project, and untracked from our end.

(But perhaps I'm being overly sensationalist about this.) Kirill (prof) 05:56, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I think that because MILHIST is one of the few projects with a functioning A-class program, then the prospect or otherwise of this thing being changed is quite dependent on WP-wide approval (or disapproval) of the A-class program. I think if we want to keep A > GA then we would have to ensure that MILHIST-A-review is more stringent than current GA, and having reviewed at both places, I don't think A is currently higher than GA, aside from the occasional corrupt or incompetent GA pass. Having said that I do recall Kirill writing on someone's talk page that he has a poor opinion of GA. But in any case, I remember an A-review where the refs were just an unformatted weblink, with nothing else, and I politely indicated this (without explicitly opposing), but most of the other reviewers were fine with it and it passed anyway. This would generally not pass GA. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 06:07, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
I think being vigilant about keeping A-standards higher than GA and trying to keep the hierarchy as it stands is the most convenient and efficient way. Particularly as the response time at A is much faster, but if it officially goes below GA, people might not use it. On the other hand, making A more detailed might make the reviewing a bit slower. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 06:10, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
I also get the impression that if anything changes, it would be the insertion of the C-class instead of turning things upside down. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 06:16, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
While I know some outstanding individual GA reviewers, my own experience of the system as a whole has been very mixed. I have seen reviewers who know next to nothing about the subject insisting on eccentric changes. I personally prefer the consensus approach of our A-Class because it smooths out idiosyncrasies.--ROGER DAVIES talk 07:26, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
I don't think that we need to take any action until if this proposal passes, but if it does I agree with dropping GA and keeping A. Our A-class reviews enforce much higher standards than GA reviews, and most A class articles don't need much work to reach FA standard. The GA process seems to be a bit of a lottery, and many GAs are pretty poor. Nick Dowling (talk) 10:18, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Nick: If it come down to a choice between GA and A, I believe we should jetison GA and stick with A. TomStar81 (Talk) 00:40, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment#Option F: Rename or remove GA-Class to separate the GA designation from WikiProject ratings. This is not abandoning, demeaning or anything else against the GA designation, it is however, removing it from the assessment scale. Woody (talk) 11:26, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Template conversion

Previous discussion: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators/Archive 8#Template conversion

I was wondering how this is going? Or has it gone? --ROGER DAVIES talk 07:30, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I fixed the typo in the title ;) Well, I have done most of it. The missiles have all been converted, all of the ship ones have been converted with the extraordinary effort of Haus (talk · contribs). The only ones left are Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:ADF Unit Box (about 20). I will get on them now. I had a doggy door template set up somewhere. Woody (talk) 10:16, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
Great! We don't need to involve Special Projects then. I'm glad to see Haus has been chevroned. What's a doggy door template by the way? --ROGER DAVIES talk 10:35, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Infobox conversion is the link by the way. Woody (talk) 10:28, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, --ROGER DAVIES talk 10:35, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
Doggy-door: It was Haus's idea actually. It is a really simple system to convert infoboxes. See User:Woody/Sandbox for the ADF one, or my missile one. Basically you replace the {{Infobox Missile with {{subst:User:Woody sandbox and it automatically changes the parameters for you. This is simple for normal infobox conversions, but for the ADF one, it doesn't work so well as it is about 5 templates stuck together. So you have to do a lot of prep work.
Damn cunning. Thanks for the explanation. --ROGER DAVIES talk 10:50, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
Incidentally, what should we do with non-articles such as No. 84 Wing RAAF. It is effectively an empty article as it solely consists of an infobox. Woody (talk) 10:45, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
Either ask the Australian or Aviation TFs (or both) to turn it into a stub or delete it, I'd have thought. --ROGER DAVIES talk 10:50, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes - there's been an ongoing project to flesh these out, and all(?) these units are large enough to be notable so please bring the remaining ones to our attention. Incidently, my first contact with this Wikiproject was defending the ADF unit infobox against Kirill's complaints that it was not needed - whoops! Do you have a list of the articles which still use this infobox? - found one at: [1] - I'd be happy to help with the conversions. Nick Dowling (talk) 11:06, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
Converted them all. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Australian military history task force#Empty stubs is the link for all the empty articles. Regards. Woody (talk) 11:39, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
Thanks Nick Dowling (talk) 11:46, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) Nick, I have also found Template:ADF Base Unit and Template:ADF Base Unit Box. Are these really needed? Woody (talk) 12:31, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

The first one looks like it's basically an airfield infobox with slightly different colors; I'm pretty sure we could just change it to that. The second isn't really an infobox at all, as far as I can tell, but rather a way to create a fixed-format table in the article itself. Kirill (prof) 13:00, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
No and no - they both seem to be nothing but hardcoded tables. Nick Dowling (talk) 10:22, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
Is this conversion acceptable? Woody (talk) 10:40, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
That's much better, though I don't think that we need to keep the 'Unit' column as those appreviations don't add any value. Nick Dowling (talk) 10:46, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
Removed the unit designations, duly converted the other templates and duly deleted them. Woody (talk) 11:24, 20 May 2008 (UTC)


I have again and again been reading GA articles that wouldn't pass our B-class assessment. For this reason I highly favour the exclusion of the GA-class from our project's rating system. Principally all our B-class are fit for GA, while vice versa it's not the case. Discussing to rate A-class below GA is arbitrary. Wandalstouring (talk) 06:40, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
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