Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators/Archive 9

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Assessment departement

Closed: Partially implemented with removal of historical statistics. --ROGER DAVIES talk 06:00, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

  1. The statistics in the assessment department have not been recorded since December 2007. Are we going to continue this and perhaps archive older data?
  2. I suggest to integrate statistics linking to the top viewed articles of wikipedia. Possibly, we can extract from among the top 1,000 or 5,000 all military history articles for each month.Wandalstouring (talk) 14:57, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
Regarding the first point, I was pretty much the only person to concern myself with updates to those counts. They're not difficult to generate—I can give a Perl script to calculate the percentages to anyone that wants it—but it's time-consuming to actually enter things into the tables, and it's not at all clear whether anyone actually cares. I'd suggest considering whether the effort spent maintaining the statistics is worthwhile if nobody makes use of them. Kirill 03:51, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
Re: 1. I take and support Kirill's point entirely.
Re: 2. I agree with extracting the top articles but, to be honest, think that the top twenty or thirty is enough. Beyond that it becomes a wall of data, especially if we update it monthly. Let's keep it short, sweet and simple. --ROGER DAVIES talk 10:03, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
So is there interest in continuing to maintain the monthly statistics? Kirill 17:15, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure there's much point in re-starting the monthly analyses especially as there's little evidence that they're consulted and it's so time-consuming for you :) In contrast, there is probably considerable benefit in producing monthly top twenty (or fifty or hundred) lists. --ROGER DAVIES talk 18:16, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

B-class criteria revisited

Closed: Implemented, --ROGER DAVIES talk 05:55, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

The current BCAD drive, which focuses on B-class articles, has given rise to several issues. Before I go into detail, here, for ease of reference, are the current criteria: 

{{WPMILHIST
|class=
<!-- B-Class checklist -->
<!-- 1. It is suitably referenced, and all major points have appropriate inline citations. -->
|B-Class-1= yes/no
<!-- 2. It reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain major omissions or inaccuracies. -->
|B-Class-2= yes/no
<!-- 3. It has a defined structure, including a lead section and one or more sections of content. -->
|B-Class-3= yes/no
<!-- 4. It is free from major grammatical errors. -->
|B-Class-4= yes/no
<!-- 5. It contains appropriate supporting materials, such as an infobox, images, or diagrams. -->
|B-Class-5= yes/no
}}

The first issue is whether there ought to be a minimum length for B-class. I have an open mind myself but note that featured articles are often quite short, around 1500 words.

The second is slightly more complicated. The argument goes that if an article is inadequately referenced (criterion B1), we have no means of verifying whether it complies with the inaccuracies requirements (criterion B2). This could be partly addressed by changing the wording of B2 to "does not contain any obvious omissions or inaccuracies".

The third is whether the supporting materials criterion (B5) needs to be explicit to explain that this is proportional to the article's length, i.e. the longer the article, the more bells and whistles.

Thoughts and comments? --ROGER DAVIES talk 09:54, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

1. I don't think we should establish criteria for article length because this can be very much influenced by the information available on a topic.
2. Suggestion is OK.
3. I don't think we should set anything in stone there, for some long topics there are hardly any illustrations available.
My 2 cents. Wandalstouring (talk) 10:09, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
I think unfortunately the B-class rating is abused a bit, sometimes people write 1k stubs and tag them as B; if that is all that can be written about the topic, then its notablitiy is questionable. Blnguyen (vote in the photo straw poll) 03:15, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
There isn't much more to say about some battles and I fully oppose inflated articles. Wandalstouring (talk) 15:27, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Wandalstouring's views on this topic. --Nick Dowling (talk) 11:02, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Nick in supporting Wandalstouring's views. Each article is different and it would be hard to have specific guidelines on length and supporting materials as each subject will have differing materials available. Woody (talk) 12:02, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) Some input on the second and third points above would be great. Or does the general silence on them mean "leave well alone" :) ? --ROGER DAVIES talk 13:49, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Suggestion 2 sounds reasonable, suggestion 3 I don't agree with. People may be tempted to overload a page with images, or some pages may not reasonably have any images available. Infoboxes are not compulsory, some people disagree with them. It would be wrong to impose some sort of arbitrary limit on editors. Woody (talk) 13:58, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Given that these are only B-class articles, I don't think that we should require much in the way of supporting materials like images. The appropriate infobox should be a requirement, however. How about ammending the wording to "It contains an appropriate infobox (if applicable) and other supporting materials, such as images or diagrams"? --Nick Dowling (talk) 23:36, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure about effectively making infoboxes compulsory. I dislike them myself and I'm not alone. They tend to be the trigger for silly disputes, based on over-simplification of the issues. --ROGER DAVIES talk 06:35, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
OK, I thought that there was now a consensus to include them based on the number of projects and drives which are focused on updating them. Nick Dowling (talk) 09:27, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
For ships it is reasonable enough as it is pretty much straight forward; the information exists and it is quantitative. Where it gets complicated is in battles and people bios as some of the info is much more subjective and the information can be quite unreliable. This is especially true for numbers killed in battles, for declaring "victors" etc. As such, they can be quite highly contested in articles. I remember one person withdrawing an FAC because one person refused to remove an oppose due to the article not having an infobox. Woody (talk) 14:25, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
Suggestion 2 is OK and I agree with suggestion 3. I think that when available the article should have a infobox or template as well as image if available. Kyriakos (talk) 21:47, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
I would completely agree with the second point. Regarding the third point, i'm supporting Nick's idea that we should change the wording in order to make clearer which/when certain supporting materials should be used. --Eurocopter (talk) 18:32, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

(od) We have consensus to change B2 to "does not contain major obvious omissions or inaccuracies", which I'll do in a moment. --ROGER DAVIES talk 18:39, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

What next?

Closed: Template changes and Tag & Assess 2008 implemented, --ROGER DAVIES talk 05:54, 4 May 2008 (UTC)


With Tag & Assess coming up, it seems a good moment to review what we want to do in the next couple of months. There are some thoughts based the experience of BCAD and building on discussions here over the last month. What I propose is a three-stage strategy. I'd really appreciate as much input on this as possible.

Stage 1: Tag & Assess 2008

We talked about starting this mid-April. As so many of our regulars are tied up with other things, I suggest we launch it on 25 April to run for ten weeks until 4 July.

It might be useful to use this drive for essential housekeeping, reviewing our 58,000 stub and start articles. The aim here would be to ensure that they are correctly and sufficiently tagged for task forces and class. We could use the opportunity to courtesy cross-tag for WP:Biography, WP:Ships and WP:Aviation.

Our autumn Tag & Assess could then concentrate on sweeping for untagged articles that fall within our scope and warehouse them in a recently cleaned system.

Implementation: Expanding worklists per BCAD, so that we generate them as needed. This allows a bit of strategical leeway to add in articles that need sorting that we might have over-looked. The raw material would be the Start-Class and Stub-Class categories.

Stage 2: Project class categories

Now might be a good idea to simplify the article classification structure. As a result of BCAD, our B-class articles are currently reasonably clean. Following on from this, it might be helpful to separate failed B-Class articles out so they can be worked up to B-Class.

Category:B-Class military history articles - This is the definitive B-Class list and is essentially for articles with completed all-yes B-class checklists. It would include the articles that were previously in Category:Reviewed B-Class military history articles.
Category:B-Class military history articles by task force - These would contain only articles with completed all-yes B-class checklists.
Category:B-Class military history articles with incomplete checklists - This is a temporary home for articles awaiting checklist completion and subsequent diversion to either the main B-class or Start-class categories.
Category:Start-Class military history articles
Category:Start-Class military history articles by task force
Category:Start-Class military history articles with failed B-class checklists by task force
Category:Start-Class military history articles with failed B-class checklists by criterion
Category:Start-Class military history articles failing B1 (references)
Category:Start-Class military history articles failing B2 (comprehensiveness)
Category:Start-Class military history articles failing B3 (prose)
Category:Start-Class military history articles failing B4 (structure)
Category:Start-Class military history articles failing B5 (graphics)
Category:Stub-Class military history articles
Category:Stub-Class military history articles by task force

Implementation: A mixture of manpower, moving categories by bot, and modifying templates I imagine.

Stage 3: Energizing the task forces

This has been brought up here before and the reaction was positive.

The modified category structure makes it possible for task forces to target categories for improvement. This will involve a degree of task force organization and is thus easiest handled at task force level. By breaking the numbers down to task force level, these jobs become manageable and less-daunting. The improvement could be either working up Start-Class to B-Class or Stub-Class to Start-Class.

The idea is to give coordinators a more active role in task force motivation and organization, and act as the primary point of contact. Ideally, we'd have two coordinators per task force for holiday and wiki-break cover. With about 50 task forces and ten coordinators, this would mean each coordinator adopting ten task forces. This is easy to implement: we just set up an adoption list and each coordinator signs up to various task forces.

--ROGER DAVIES talk 18:25, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Reactions

If the upcoming drive is going to focus on something other than untagged articles, it would be good to know that sooner rather than later, as it will affect the scripts I'll need to run to generate the worklists. ;-) As far as category schemes go, I'm not sure if perhaps some people are unaware of the features already available:

Kirill 19:30, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Part of my thinking was to humanise the system somewhat. Huge jobs are easiest tackled - in my experience (your mileage may vary) - by breaking them down into simple self-contained components, with a payoff of achievement at each stage. Aspects of the re-organising are, I agree, cosmetic but they will hopefully prevent editors being faced with lists of hundreds of articles in categories with vague names. What I'd like to see is a much simpler, much more transparent system so that people can understand what they're being asked to work on. --ROGER DAVIES talk 22:21, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
Hm. I don't really see the substantive difference:
Proposed Current
Category:Start-Class military history articles with failed B-class checklists by task force Category:Military history articles needing attention by task force
Category:Start-Class military history articles with failed B-class checklists by criterion Category:Military history articles needing attention
Category:Start-Class military history articles failing B1 (references) Category:Military history articles needing attention to referencing and citation
Category:Start-Class military history articles failing B2 (comprehensiveness) Category:Military history articles needing attention to coverage and accuracy
Category:Start-Class military history articles failing B3 (prose) Category:Military history articles needing attention to grammar
Category:Start-Class military history articles failing B4 (structure) Category:Military history articles needing attention to structure
Category:Start-Class military history articles failing B5 (graphics) Category:Military history articles needing attention to supporting materials
Anyone who knows what the categories are for won't really care; and anyone who doesn't will be as baffled by the the B# codes as by the current version, I suspect. The only real change is that the categories are (presumably) only being generated for Start-Class articles; that's feasible, but I'm not sure I see the point. Kirill 22:38, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
To be honest, my main objection to the existing category names was the sheer clunkiness of them, especially when they have the task force bolted on. However, the actual structure can be made considerably more opaque with a mixture of hiddencats (which hadn't occurred to me) and piped links. The point of separating out Stub from Start here is really to reduce overall numbers, to make the thing more manageable. Tackling the problem, one bite at a time if you like :) --ROGER DAVIES talk 18:12, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Well, it's all changeable via template, so it shouldn't be too much work to implement things regardless of what the names are.
We might also consider whether some more sophisticated prioritization approach couldn't be somehow useful here. At the moment, each criterion is tracked independently; but it would be possible to generate more precise intersection categories based on how many criteria fail, and which ones. For example, an article that passes 1/2 but fails 3/4/5 is a candidate for copyediting; an article that fails one criterion is likely to be an easier target than one that fails all five; and so forth. All of these groupings would be (reasonably) easy to generate; the question, I suppose, is whether any of them would actually be useful to editors looking for things to work on. Kirill 19:19, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

One idea that was briefly brought up at one point but never really discussed, incidentally, would be making Stub/Start/B assessments purely mechanical, based on the checklist criteria; in other words, an article with all five criteria met would be automatically marked as B-Class, an article with, one to four criteria met would be automatically marked as Start-Class, and an article with no criteria met would be automatically marked as Stub-Class. For that matter, if GA-Class were taken out of the scale, A-Class tagging could also be done automatically, with the net result that only the FA rating would need to be manually set. Kirill 20:25, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

It's an idea but I sense great resistance among the members to the checklists for anything other than B-Class. They are perceived as a lot of work for little benefit. --ROGER DAVIES talk 22:21, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Roger here, although the GA system has its many flaws, I think it serves a purpose. A lot of new editors see it as something to aim for that is relatively easily obtainable. Woody (talk) 22:31, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
Meh, fair enough. In any case, I've put together a prototype at User:Kirill Lokshin/WPMILHIST that automates the A/B/Start/Stub ratings (the latter two based on a one-criterion-passed threshold); anyone curious about how something of that sort would work in practice can try it out on any article by adding "User:Kirill Lokshin" into the usual {{WPMILHIST}} call. Kirill 23:04, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Taking this even further, one could potentially eliminate Stub-Class entirely, and collapse the system down to only four levels—not-yet-B (Start), B, A, featured—of which the first three would be assigned automatically based on the checklist and the A-Class review status. This would have the benefit of eliminating a lot of the error cases we're trying to catch; since the assessment would be determined by the criteria, there'd be no potential for cases where a grade was assigned in contradiction to them. On the flip side, there would no longer be any ability to indicate the level of an article beyond that allowed by the criteria, since the discretionary Stub/Start choice would be eliminated. Kirill 20:55, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

I think that removing the stub/start would be a step away from the WP mainstream, which would be a bad thing. We don't want to alienate ourselves from the rest of WP by using our own system. I do think that automatic ratings per the checklist is a great idea though I can see problems with it. If you have a three line stub but with a complete infobox with picture, it is still a stub though it will have two checklists filled in. (I am assuming the grammar is ok as well).
If we introduce more categories, then we will have a huge number of these cats on pages with 3 or more taskforces. If a page has 3 taskforces and only one criteria filled in will have four cats per task force, x 3 = 12 cats already. That is not to say that there aren't ways around it (HIDDENCAT etc) though I am not clued into all of that. If we can simplify it, that would be great.
In terms of taskforces, that should be good. I would be happy to take on a few taskforces and "energise them" ;). Woody (talk) 21:31, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
I doubt anyone will care if we choose not to use particular levels in the standard assessment scheme; that's already done by various projects. (The problems tend to arise only when projects make up new levels that aren't used by anyone else.) So I don't think that should be the deciding factor here. The real question is what we want the assessment system to provide. If the Stub/Start distinction is useful to the project, then it should be retained. Personally, I don't see it as particularly helpful, since it's basically nothing more than an indicator of article length more often than not, but obviously other people may have a different view of it.
If both levels are retained, then that limits the usefulness of automatic assessments somewhat because, as you point out, we can get a "stub" that passes some of the criteria. So I'm not sure whether it's really feasible to reconcile having both the length-oriented division and the length-ignoring criteria determining the assessment level.
As far as the number of categories goes, the system currently in place can generate up to 7 categories per task force (1 general, 1 assessment level, 5 checklist), which is pretty hefty. Perhaps we ought to tag all the assessment/checklist/etc. sub-categories as hidden. Kirill 22:03, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
With regards to changing levels, if you don't think it will alienate us, then fair enough. At the moment I think the difference between stub and start is the length. That is what most people use to distinguish them I think. I don't really see the importance of it at the moment, it is not really used for anything. Using an automatic B class will only work I think, if we abolish the stub/start or the length criteria.
A good example of a highly categorised page is Talk:Battle of Cape St Vincent (1797), one of many that I have come across. The vast majority of the page is taken up with cats. Using the HIDDENCAT feature should be something that we look into. Woody (talk) 22:28, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
Part of the thinking in my proposals is to make the categories less verbose and more transparent. Hiddencat is a fine idea too. --ROGER DAVIES talk 22:38, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
Essentially, I can think of four different levels of automatic assessment that could be used:
  • Automatic: —; manual: FA, A, GA, B, Start, Stub
    • The current setup
  • Automatic: A, B; manual: FA, GA, Start, Stub
    • Functionally equivalent to the current setup, except that scenarios that are currently marked as errors (i.e. where the assigned grade contradicts the review/checklist status) will be corrected by automatically adjusting the assessment instead
  • Automatic: A, B, Start, Stub; manual: FA, GA
    • Fully automated, with the checklist being used to separate Start from Stub, but somewhat difficult to do because the criteria aren't really well-suited to identify what's currently thought of as "stubs"
  • Automatic: A, B, Start; manual: FA, GA; eliminated: Stub
    • As above, except the criterion problem is removed by no longer tracking stubs, and instead judging articles solely on adherence to the five criteria; eliminates any urgent need to fill in a B-Class checklist for the below-B articles, since everything is filed into one level unless all the criteria are passed
Which of these is best is obviously an open question. I would say that, at the least, I see no benefit to the first option instead of the second, as I can't come up with any value to allowing errors to be entered and then having to correct them manually; but perhaps someone can come up with a reason why such errors are of interest. Kirill 23:56, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
This is an interesting and radical idea. But I cannot honestly see our editors being prepared to apply the checklist to 60,000 start and stub articles. It's not that they'll rebel, it's just that they won't see the point, largely because stubs are so subject to radical change. --ROGER DAVIES talk 18:12, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
True enough; I doubt people would be very anxious to fill in the checklists for so many low-grade articles. Versions 2 and 4 limit the need to do so (by not checking the lower grades, or combining them, respectively); but they have their own drawbacks, so I'm not sure if they'd really be a solution. To be honest, the main thing I don't like is the fact that the current template allows the rating and the checklist to get out of sync; but maybe that's just me. Kirill 19:19, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
It bugs me too :) --ROGER DAVIES talk 19:36, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I made an interesting discovery today: I have some down time at the moment before my next round of assignments are due, so I decided to get a little more involved here for a few days to compensate for my recent absence (be forwarned though, I won;t be here long). As far as this section is concerned:

  • I like the first suggestion becuase it falls late enough that I can get into the drive and work on the T&A over the summer, without school concerns. For others in the same boat as me more summer free time may translate to more wikipedia work, so this drive may fare better due to its time implementation. Two question though: should we do another post assessment feedback review for contributer input, and if so does the time frame given take this into account?
Absolutely, though one important point to remember from last time is that most work was done in the first three and last three weeks. And yes I think we should have a workshop afterwards. --ROGER DAVIES talk 20:36, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
  • On point two: I agree with Kirill that there really isn't much difference between the proposed version and current version. I vote we keep the current version, but I will bow to consensus (whatever that may be).
Indeed, the differences are largely cosmetic. This can be easily sorted anyway with hiddencats and pipes so it's not really an issue. By "keeping the current system", do you think that we should continue to lump stub and start articles together into a 60,000-article "attention needed" category system or separate them and concentrate on Start?--ROGER DAVIES talk 20:36, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
I think we need to seperate stub and start class articles, but I think that we shouldn't focus solely on improving the start class. I need to think more on this before doing any proposing or suggesting, my mind is still largely focused on school at the moment and I don't want to risk disupting that momentum to think about a non-school related problem at the moment. I will come back to it though if the opurtunity to do so arises. TomStar81 (Talk) 21:16, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
  • On point three, we could start by asking people to ask thier questions on the task force pages rather than asking on the parent project page. In this manner we can start shifting the focus of the project to the task forces while reserving the parent MILHIST page for discussions that effect all aspects of the project. Thats just a thought, of course.
For clarity, are you supporting the idea of coordinators adopting task forces? If so, we are close to consensus on this and it would be good to start implementing it. --ROGER DAVIES talk 20:36, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Not really, but consensus does seem to exist to go forward with the proposal, so I will stow my doubting Thomas's and give this shot to see where it goes. "Don't judge a book by its cover", as they say, and if it turns out to help the project then I will learn to like it/love it. TomStar81 (Talk) 21:16, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
  • On the issue of assessment: I agree with Kirill that we shouldn't move away from the WP mainstream, we don't need to generate unnessicary controversy. I like the idea of some automation for the assessments, but before any efforts to automate the system start we should come to a meeting of the minds on what exactly we as a project look for in articles when assessing them.
I'm puzzled here. Kirill's proposed system will move far away from the norm. Instead of typing "class=stub" etc, editors will need to complete a five-point checklist and update it at each change.
Sorry, that should be Woodys comment, which was "I think that removing the stub/start would be a step away from the WP mainstream, which would be a bad thing." I suppose after staring at my computer for long hours weeks on end everything has started looking the same :) In short: I like the automation idea, but I would like to see it firmed up some before rendering a verdict on the matter one way or the other. TomStar81 (Talk) 21:16, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

One last somewhat-related note: I had suggested that we may benifit from running a drive aimed at checking references and citations, both to ensure that they are accurate and within established parameters and to ensure that all pages using citations adhere to a single style insofar as the MoS demands it. Should we attempt to add an aspect of this nature to the April assessment drive, or should we put it off for a late date? TomStar81 (Talk) 20:03, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm. I don't see how we can easily check them. Can you explain a bit more? --ROGER DAVIES talk
That it exactly. It sounds good, it it probably needs to be done to make sure our articles are not citing tabliods or chatrooms or things of that nature, but we (by which I mean the coordinators) need to determine if this is a something worth doing, then if we gain consensus on that point we need to determine what exactly we want to check (inline citations, external links, book references, alleged intereviews with professionals, some of these, all of these, none of these, etc), otherwise this will only create confusion within the project. TomStar81 (Talk) 21:16, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
That really is a mammoth and near impossible task. How do we check book or magazine references without physically getting hold of them? To give you an example, there's another AfD going on for Leo J. Meyer. It all hinges on the nature of the coverage. I wanted to see the actual text of an article in an issue of Stars & Stripes from 1968 (which is cited). The cost of obtaining a photocopy is $100 and the lead time is 6-8 weeks. There are several other magazines cited in the same article which would require similar checking. It's just not practical, I'm afraid. --ROGER DAVIES talk 08:01, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I like the idea of energizing the task forces as it would be easy to maintain and control the taskforces if we had cooridnators looking after them. As for the B-class review section being used for stub and start, the only problem I can see is that for example, if a stub is an article that means none of the criteria and start being 1-4, what if a three line stub had an infobox, image and template, then it would be promoted. Kyriakos (talk) 21:33, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Good! We have consensus on Operation Energize Task Forces. On the automation idea, I think the only way it would work would be by adding additional criteria (including length, length of sections etc). These are things a human (usually) automatically registers when deciding class but a script can't. --ROGER DAVIES talk 08:01, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Moving forward

I'm conscious that we need to start the ball rolling very soon if we wish to open the next drive on time. To summarise the points above:

Stage 1 - Tag & Assess 2008
  • Start 25 April, end 4 July, with a post-end workshop.
  • Use the drive for housekeeping of our existing start and stub articles.
  • Ensure that Starts and Stubs are separately categorised to correct TFs and class is reviewed.
  • Remove checklist stuff from Stubs. (Or at least take them out of the checklist loop).
Stage 2 - Project class categories
  • Hide the organisational categories
  • Focus initially only on Start-class articles for articles needing attention ...
  • Have stubs in separate categories to be the subject of a future drive
Stage 3 - Energizing the task forces (Operation Empower?)
  • Consensus on coordinators organising TFs.
  • I'll post something shortly in a separate new section.

If there are no objections, can we press on with the above? --ROGER DAVIES talk 23:29, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

By all mean get started with 1, the sooner the better (as you noted). As for two and three, both sound good, and I think at this point both can be set into motion in a preliminary sense. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:39, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Let's see:
  • Stage 1: Please let me know what exactly you want the worklists to contain; at the moment, I'm not exactly clear on what set the articles should be from. As for the checklist stuff with stubs: do you want to just turn off the checklist display for stubs, then? It's already class-dependent (so that it doesn't display for GAs and higher, mostly), so it'd be trivial to (a) only make it show up in the template for Start- (and B-) class articles and/or (b) only generate the "needing attention"-type categories for those classes.
  • Stage 2: See above for the Start-Class stuff. There's a few templates used as headers for the bulk of the organizational categories; are we going to add the hiddencat stuff to them? That would hide most of the over-categorization mess.
Otherwise, just let me know what you'd like, and I'll try to implement it. :-) Kirill 01:54, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Stage 1: Probably Category:Start-Class military history articles and Category:Military history articles with incomplete B-Class checklists would be the best place to start. That way we can pick up from the completed stuff in BCAD. And yes let's turn off the checklists for stubs and initially keep attention needed for Start. The worksheets should closely follow the BCAD ones. We can use the same drill as for BCAd if you like. Kick off with 5,000 articles? And add to it as needed?
  • Stage 2: Sounds good :) You have to spoonfeed me the technical stuff: I'm at the bottom of learning curve :)
  • Another thought: while we're talking about the template, it would be useful to have the TF codes available from it cutting and pasting into the article. Would an extra button do this?
--ROGER DAVIES talk 02:41, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Kirill's checklist

Okay, let me make a checklist of stuff I'm to implement, and we can verify that everyone is on the same page:

1. The worklists for the drive shall contain (Start-Class) articles with incomplete checklists.
2. The worklists shall contain 200(?) articles each, starting with a pool of 5,000 articles, and expandable to as many articles as are in the category defined in #1.
3. The display & category generation associated with the B-Class checklist shall be turned off for articles assessed as Stub-Class.
4. The checklist and assessment sub-categories shall be marked so as to be hidden.
5. The individual task force categories shall be marked so as to be hidden.

There's no really good way, at the moment, to have the task force codes display in the task force itself, particularly as there's no criterion for whether an article needs them. As an initial step towards eventual implementation of something along these lines, we could do the following:

6. {{WPMILHIST}} shall generate a category containing all articles which have zero task force flags set.

A few other points mentioned above that would be reasonably simple to implement (but may not be desirable?)

7. Category:Reviewed B-Class military history articles shall no longer be generated.
8. (automation feature) A-Class articles which have not been marked as having passed a review shall be automatically downgraded to the next available class (rather than being flagged as needing attention).
9. (automation feature) B-Class articles which fail one or more of the criteria shall be automatically downgraded to Start-Class (rather than being flagged as needing attention).

Let me know which items I should implement. :-) Kirill 04:58, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm on board for 9, 8, 6, 2, and 1 at the moment. I need more time to really read into the remaining options before voicing an opinion on them. (PS: I got word that essays are gonna be due next week, so look for my presence here to decrease again soon.) TomStar81 (Talk) 22:47, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Reactions? In order:
1. This drive is to review all (32,000) Start-Class articles for task force and checklist
2.-5. Yep
6. Useful. Good idea.
7. Correct/ It's subsumed into Category:B-Class military history articles
8. Another good idea.
9. Yes, down-graded to Start and then categorised for "attention needed" per usual checklist.
Nice organisation. Thanks :) --ROGER DAVIES talk 22:50, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Hm. Question about #9: do you want this to work only downwards (failing B goes to Start), or upwards (passing Start goes to B) as well? It's a bit easier to implement if the Starts can be adjusted as well, but it can be done either way. Kirill 00:35, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
It would be great if it could go up and down :) --ROGER DAVIES talk 00:44, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Okay, the following changes to {{WPMILHIST}} are implemented and ready for testing at User:Kirill Lokshin/WPMILHIST:
  • The assessment grade is now assigned by the following process:
  1. If the page is outside the article namespace, a grade of "NA" is automatically assigned.
  2. Otherwise, if the page is marked as "DAB" or "FA", that grade is retained.
  3. Otherwise, if the page is marked as having passed an A-Class review, a grade of "A" is automatically assigned.
  4. Otherwise, if the page is marked as "GA", that grade is retained.
  5. Otherwise, if the page is marked as "A", "B", or "Start":
    1. If all five B-Class criteria are set to "yes", a grade of "B" is automatically assigned.
    2. Otherwise, a grade of "Start" is automatically assigned.
  6. Otherwise, if the page is marked as "Stub", that grade is retained.
  7. Otherwise, the page is marked as unassessed.
If a few people could test this version on some different articles, that'd be great; I've tried to do as much testing as I can, but more eyes are always better for code changes of this magnitude. Kirill 01:27, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
A couple of small points.
Can we have B1=yes|B2=yes etc as parameters instead of B-class-1=yes etc? It takes up so much less space on the talk page.
I may have asked this before, but can we have "y" and "n" as alt switches instead of just "yes" and "no"?
How do I test this by the way? --ROGER DAVIES talk 10:20, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
I'll look into using shorter parameter names and switch values; I know how to do it in theory, but I'm not sure how feasible it'll be to actually code them into the template.
As far as testing goes, just edit a tagged talk page, change {{WPMILHIST...}} to {{User:Kirill Lokshin/WPMILHIST...}}, and preview the thing to see whether anything is broken. Kirill 12:37, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Okay, understood on both points :) I'll report back if I find any snags. --ROGER DAVIES talk 13:26, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Do you want the "y"/"n" option to work for all the other yes/no parameters (i.e. the task force tags, the reviews, and so forth) as well?
I think I have a pretty good idea of how to neatly implement this, but it'll probably take me a few days to finish putting all the code together. Kirill 12:59, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
It would be neat if Y/N worked for Yes/No throughout, yes. Your help here is massively appreciated :) --ROGER DAVIES talk 13:26, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Looking good. After a bit of testing:
  1. When "|class= |" it doesn't read the checklist values though it does correctly set the class to B when class = start and the five criteria are set to yes.
  2. Still shows Category:Reviewed B-Class military history articles
  3. Categories aren't yet hidden
  4. "Show" doesn't appear
More later ... --ROGER DAVIES talk 15:57, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
  1. That was my understanding of what you wanted; the auto-adjustment is only active for B-Class and Start-Class articles. It wouldn't be difficult to have unassessed articles auto-adjust based on the checklist; but that would make the lack of auto-adjustment for Stub-Class more peculiar, I think.
  2. Really? I haven't been seen the new code generate it; do you have a more specific example? (If you mean that the category is still full, it won't actually empty until the new code goes live in the real template.)
  3. Yes, I haven't changed the category tags yet.
  4. The show/hide block doesn't display if there's nothing in it; presumably there's a case where you were expecting to see content there but it wasn't generated, but I'll need an example to figure out what the problem is.
Thanks for testing it! :-) Kirill 16:19, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
  1. I may have taken your "If all five B-Class criteria are set to "yes", a grade of "B" is automatically assigned." a bit too literally. And yes, it does avoid the stub/length problem.
  2. No, it appeared in the categories when previewed. I've tried this again and can't replicate it so I don't know what happened there.
  3. Ok
  4. The template isn't generating the "Additional information" line at all, at the moment.
No, thank you for doing it :) --ROGER DAVIES talk 16:32, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Regarding #4, are you by any chance looking at an example with nested=yes? That configuration doesn't have an additional [show] button for the extra info line. Kirill 19:28, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
No, I wasn't. Here's another one I've tested it in Talk:Jewish volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. The Additional information: line simply doesn't appear. --ROGER DAVIES talk 04:42, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Ah, noticed something. The Additional info line doesn't appear until a parameter has been set.--ROGER DAVIES talk 04:46, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Yes, that'll be the case now that the B-Class checklist isn't shown for unassessed articles. Kirill 05:13, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Except, it does show once a TF is assigned, even if class is untouched. I think the problem may be that just adding the basic template ((tl|User:Kirill Lokshin/WPMILHIST)) doesn't give any clues about how to fill it in. --ROGER DAVIES talk 06:38, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Kirill's checklist (update)

Closed: Implemented, --ROGER DAVIES talk 05:52, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Okay, more updates implemented on the sandboxed version of the template:

  • The B-Class checklist parameters may now be entered as "B-Class-n", "B-n", or "Bn".
  • The following parameters allow alternate forms of "yes" and "no":
    • B-Class checklist parameters
    • Task force parameters
    • Peer review parameters
    • Nested/small parameters

As before, help with testing would be very appreciated!

Also, some updates to the categories:

  • I've marked all the sub-categories as hidden, but I'm not sure if they need to re-cache for this to work, or if bringing in the tag through a template doesn't work as I expected. I'll post an update on this once I figure out what's going on.
  • I've added counts for all the attention needed categories to {{WPMILHIST Announcements}} and the corresponding task force templates; feedback on whether this is helpful would be welcome.

If anyone has other ideas for changes to the template, now is a good time to bring them up, since much of the code is being rewritten anyways. Kirill 19:39, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

I would add "B-Class-y", "B-y" and "By". Wandalstouring (talk) 08:41, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure how this differs from what the template currently does; could you perhaps provide an example of the exact parameter you want it to recognize?
And lowercase: b1, b2 etc would be nicer. (Easier to type, for me at least.)--ROGER DAVIES talk 12:34, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Will do. Kirill 14:34, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Okay, I've added "b-n" and "bn" as recognized options for the parameters. Kirill 19:40, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I've played around with this quite a lot. My main concern is how editors will get from stub to the checklist. At the moment, you set the class to Start or B before the checklist appears, which isn't very intuitive. Any ideas? I'll also still like to be able to cut and paste the TF parameters from the template somehow (or have a link to them in cut and pastable form). If we make this easier, more people will do it. --ROGER DAVIES talk 12:34, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

  • I don't think there's any reasonable way to have the checklist itself not appear for stubs but to simultaneously allow people to cut-and-paste it from the template for them. The only thing I can think of would be to display the checklist and allow it to be filled in, but to not generate the "attention needed" categories; but I'm not sure if that's better than what currently happens.
  • It wouldn't be difficult to add a direct link to the banner instructions, or perhaps even a full task force syntax list, into the template in cases where the "no task force" flag is set; but I think it would be prohibitive to do it in other cases, since we have no way of knowing whether it's still needed. Kirill 14:34, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
  • I've created a version with a copyable task force list at User:Kirill Lokshin/WPMILHIST2. I'm not sure whether the net effect is beneficial; comments would be very welcome! Kirill 20:03, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Not I'm not sure it is either :) Perhaps easiest is simply to have a link to the code panel containing the task force listing (which I can't find). Then people can just open it, if they need it, in a separate tab. --ROGER DAVIES talk 21:45, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Okay, I've changed it to a simple linked version; is that what you had in mind? Kirill 13:08, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
Yep. Perfect. Will it be accessible in nested versions? Or does it need to go above the [show] section for that?--ROGER DAVIES talk 16:11, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
Yes, everything in the normal template is also visible in the nested version; the show/hide button just moves up to the top rather than being midway down. Kirill 17:54, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
Unless anyone else sees something that needs implementing, I'll probably be taking the reworked template live sometime this weekend; so if anyone does want anything done before then, please let me know. :-) Kirill 02:19, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
Excellent news. I'll give it the once-over again this afternoon (UTC) and let you know if I have any bright ideas :)) Thanks very much, Kirill, for all you have put into this so far, --ROGER DAVIES talk 06:04, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

New code live

The new code is now live, and should be propagating across articles today. If anyone spots anything not working as intended, please let me know! Kirill 15:12, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Is there a reason that Category:Unassessed military history articles has populated with 100 articles? The articles have had the tags for a while now. Woody (talk) 19:36, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
Null edits seem to do it. Do we just need to wait a while for the Job Queue to go down from its current 9,000,000 +? Or do we need to null edit all the pages? Woody (talk) 19:48, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
I'd just wait for the job queue to flush through; it's too much work for too little benefit, otherwise. Kirill 20:31, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Request for A review closing

Closed --ROGER DAVIES talk 05:51, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Can someone else close Ed's two A-class reveiws please? I am refraining since I copyedited them. They are both pretty clearcut anyway. Blnguyen (vote in the photo straw poll) 01:46, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Done. --ROGER DAVIES talk 06:23, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikibreak

Closed: Coordinator list updated with "wikibreak" notice. --ROGER DAVIES talk 05:51, 4 May 2008 (UTC)


Greetings all,

I apologize to do this so shortly after being reelected Asst Coordinator - thanks to all those who supported me and voted for me and such - but I do think I'm on a Wikibreak. I've been even less active than usual in participating on this and other talk pages, both in Main space and within the Project; It's been at least a week since I've looked at my watchlist, and while I have not been particularly busy with schoolwork or anything serious like that, I've just not felt the desire to Wiki. Wiki's taken up *a lot* of my free time in the last several years since I started here, and I am happy to be now doing more reading, catching up on Battlestar, and just doing other things with my free time in general. I may return over the summer, or sooner, or I may not.

I apologize as well to make myself seem important or something simply by writing all of this, taking up space on the talk page.. I don't think I was ever one of the more active coordinators, anyway. Though I may not be checking my watchlist or doing much editing in the coming weeks or months, I shall continue to heed the call of the orange "you've got new messages" bar, and would be happy to answer any questions or address any issues that anyone wishes to direct to me personally.

よろしくお願いします。LordAmeth (talk) 05:31, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

We are here when and if you decide to return. Until then, take care. TomStar81 (Talk) 06:58, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm sorry to hear that. Let's hope your ennui passes soon :) --ROGER DAVIES talk 08:02, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Take care, and hope to see you back soon! :-) Kirill 11:09, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
OK. Have fun. Wandalstouring (talk) 13:54, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Have a good break and hopefully we'll see you back soon. Kyriakos (talk) 21:30, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Scope Ammendment?

Closed: Implemented, --ROGER DAVIES talk 05:49, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Number 8 in our scope description concerns when our project deams a fictionalized military-based pop culture representation worthy of our two cents, however I notice that video games are not mentioned there. Now I realise that such games do take liberties with historical representations of actual military history, but I feel compelled to bring this up becuase a limited number of games like the Medal of Honor series and World in Conflict are faithful enough to history that I think we may wish to include them in our scope. Before ammending our scope description on the matter though I decided to bring this up here, since some consensus needs to be reached on the matter. What do all of you think? TomStar81 (Talk) 06:50, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

The current wording seems to be flexible enough so that computer games can simply be inserted as another example alongside painting, sculpture, music, film, poetry, and prose - the note after this point makes it clear that we're only interested in accurate and/or particularly important fictionalisations. --Nick Dowling (talk) 11:30, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Yes, when that list was written, the items were intended to only be examples, rather than a full enumeration of what we cover. I don't think it'd be problematic to add video games to the list, but I think it's a wording change rather than an actual substantive scope change. Kirill 14:49, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Here's the full text:
8. Depictions of military history in cultural art forms, such as painting, sculpture, music, film, poetry, and prose.
Note that the project generally covers only those cultural depictions for which a discussion of historical accuracy or real military influence is applicable. A distinction is therefore made between fictionalized depictions of historical warfare and purely invented depictions of fictional warfare; topics sufficiently divorced from actual history that a discussion of actual military history would no longer be relevant to them—such as futuristic warfare in Star Wars—are not considered to be within the project's scope.
Perhaps changing "in cultural art forms" to "in all media" would fix it. The scope doesn't seem to cover music which is significan tbut not a depiction - Lili Marleen, for instance, is the march of the Special Air Service - and that is probably worth including too. --ROGER DAVIES talk 23:08, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Very well then. I wanted to make sure we were all agreed before going forward with tagging for fictional military things. As for the prose change, it looks good to me. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:40, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
At the same time, perhaps we should add something to the "Note" saying, something like:
"Songs and music with long military associations – for example, It's a long way to Tipperary and Lili Marleen – are within the project's scope."
Any thoughts on or objections to this? --ROGER DAVIES talk 08:45, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
I don't see any problems with it. Kirill (prof) 14:09, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
Anyone who is likely to object has had plenty of time to do so, so scope duly updated. --ROGER DAVIES talk 15:08, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
It'd probably be a good idea to make sure that at least the given examples are actually tagged for the project. ;-) Kirill (prof) 15:10, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
Isn't it just? (Now done :) --ROGER DAVIES talk 15:41, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Operation Energize Task Forces

Closed: Implemented. --ROGER DAVIES talk 05:49, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

The first step I suppose is to find who wants to adopt what. Easiest is probably with a table. The idea is that coordinators sign up for a minimum of ten task forces, so we have two or more coordinators for each. If we cannot cover this entirely ourselves (though in theory we should be able to), I suggest we ask project members to fill the gaps. Many members will welcome this and sign up, I think, as it's bound to be seen as a stepping stone towards coordinator.

Once we've "adopted" the task forces, we can add a hatnote to TF pages, showing the coordinators. --ROGER DAVIES talk 23:43, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Copied from Roger's talk page for more response: "I'll take the third slot for Maritime-warfare, National-militaries, and Military-aviation, if you'll accept a non-coordinator (with 22 support votes in the last election)?" -MBK004 02:01, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Can we think about shuffling around a bit so that every task force has at least one coordinator? I know this will mean taking on TFs that aren't necessarily of interest to you personally but it is essentially an administrative role. --ROGER DAVIES talk 22:55, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I was wondering why do we need three coords for each task force? I'm sure that one coordinator (max. two) will do... --Eurocopter (talk) 12:29, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
We don't need three per TF (but we certainly need more than one to allow for holidays, sickness, exams, wiki-breaks etc). I put in three slots so we could see where the interest lay. As per my message above, I'm now hoping that we can shuffle around a bit (maybe sign up for one or two more?) to fill the gaps. At the moment, for example, there are no coordinators at all so far for Baltic states, Korean, Polish, and Taiwanese, and many others only have one. --ROGER DAVIES talk 13:17, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
OK< I have added my name to the Baltic states and Polish taskforces. Kyriakos (talk) 13:25, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Good man! And I've added American Civil War (mostly cos I love Shelby Foote's accent). Can anyone else be persuaded to look again at what they've expressed interest in, especially those for TFs with three coordinators? --ROGER DAVIES talk 16:00, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


Task force adoption
Task force adopted Coordinator 1 Coordinator 2 Coordinator 3
Fortifications Woody Roger Davies
Intelligence Nick Dowling
Maritime warfare Woody TomStar81
Military aviation Eurocopter Nick Dowling
Military biography Woody Roger Davies
Military historiography Nick Dowling Woody
Military memorials and cemeteries Woody Roger Davies
Military science Nick Dowling
Military technology and engineering Wandalstouring
National militaries Nick Dowling Woody Eurocopter
War films Woody Roger Davies
Weaponry Wandalstouring Eurocopter Woody
African military history Wandalstouring
Australian military history Nick Dowling
Balkan military history Kirill Kyriakos
Baltic states military history Kyriakos
British military history Kirill Eurocopter Nick Dowling
Canadian military history TomStar81 Woody
Chinese military history Wandalstouring
Dutch military history Wandalstouring Woody
French military history Kirill Eurocopter
German military history Wandalstouring TomStar81
Indian military history Roger Davies
Italian military history Kirill Eurocopter
Japanese military history Nick Dowling
Korean military history Wandalstouring
Middle Eastern military history Roger Davies Eurocopter
New Zealand military history Nick Dowling
Nordic military history Kyriakos
Ottoman military history Kyriakos Roger Davies
Polish military history Kyriakos Eurocopter
Romanian military history Eurocopter
Russian and Soviet military history TomStar81 Kyriakos Eurocopter
South American military history Wandalstouring
Southeast Asian military history Roger Davies Blnguyen
Spanish military history Kirill Kyriakos
Taiwanese military history Wandalstouring
United States military history TomStar81 Nick Dowling
Classical warfare Kyriakos Wandalstouring
Medieval warfare Kirill Kyriakos Wandalstouring
Early Muslim military history Wandalstouring Roger Davies Kyriakos
Crusades Wandalstouring Kyriakos
Early Modern warfare Kirill Nick Dowling Kyriakos
American Revolutionary War Kirill TomStar81
Napoleonic era Kirill Wandalstouring Eurocopter
American Civil War Roger Davies TomStar81
World War I Wandalstouring Eurocopter Woody
World War II TomStar81 Nick Dowling Eurocopter

Implementing Op En TF

We're probably ready to go ahead with this. It would be great if everyone could check over the task forces they've signed up for and see if they want to make any last minute adjustments. (Broadly, we still have a few with just one coordinator.) Then, I suggest in a couple of days, we implement this. Initially, we could hatnote TF pages/talk pages with something like: Task force coordinator/s: name, name. A volunteer or two to do this, based on this list above, would be great.

Then comes the energisation phase :) Here are some ideas that have been raised over the last six weeks. Individual TFs can probably be encouraged to start one or two of them.

Task force portals

An idea that came up last month was to invite task forces to work up a portal each. This is probably a good moment to raise it as task force level and help provide the impetus/experience to achieve it.

Recruitment drives

Some thoughts on this included:

inviting TF members to recruit one new member each from outside Milhist and
placing advertising/reminders in related wikiprojects (ie French TF in Wikiproject France etc) to boost membership.
Old TF-related featured articles
We have about twenty old FAs (they're commented out in the Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history#Showcase) with citation (and other) problems. One proposal was a task force-based drive to improve them.
Permanent stubs
We still have 29,000 stubs. After some discussion, reactions to a stub improvement drive were luke-warm, with the opinion expressed that many were incapable of significant improvement. One proposal was to use the task forces to work on them. This may be to much too soon.
Article improvement (cut and pasted from Nick's post below)
How about encouraging members of the task forces to improve good quality articles to A or FA standard?
The "to do" box (from Kyrikos's post below)
Update the to-do box every month or so, to see if any progress has been made.
Reducing the "Articles needing attention" lists.
Encouraging editors to reduce these.

Have I forgotten anything? --ROGER DAVIES talk 09:59, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

How about encouraging members of the task forces to improve good quality articles to A or FA standard? I'm not sure about whether encouraging portals is a great idea though as they don't seem to be used much (based on the fact that they're rarely edited after they're established). --Nick Dowling (talk) 10:03, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
Excellent idea, thanks! TFs will, after all, have considerable autonomy over what they decide to implement so the bigger the spread of ideas the better :) --ROGER DAVIES talk 10:16, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
Another duty could to update the to-do box every month or so, to see if any progress has been made. Kyriakos (talk) 21:45, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
Nice one. Added. --ROGER DAVIES talk 22:27, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
That's a great idea. --Nick Dowling (talk) 09:47, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Roger, your last post gave me an idea. If for example, we see an article that needs attention or improvement on a TF's to-do list and we see on the TF's member list that it is in an editors area of interest, how about on of the TF's coordinators leaves a message on the user's talk page encouraging them to improve the article? Maybe to sweeten it up, we might be able to offer a reward, like a barnstar or chevrons for example. Kyriakos (talk) 07:18, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
Exactly the sort of thing I had in mind. Well done, --ROGER DAVIES talk 07:25, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Shaking the pillars of heaven

Closed: Overwhelmingly rejected. --ROGER DAVIES talk 05:48, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Here's an idea to mull over. The "all-change"-every-six-month system we have for coordinators is bad for continuity. It means there a lame duck period in the run up to the elections and a learning curve at the beginning of the next one. (As a secondary thought, August is not a good month for elections because of holidays and so forth.)

So let's split the coordinators into two tranches, electing one lead and four coordinators at each election.

Team A: Jan-Jun and Jul-Dec.
Team B: Apr-Oct and Oct-Mar.

This has numerous advantages. the main ones are: an infusion of new blood every three months and planning outside the six-month window. It'll also make it easier to manage the TFs.

Setting it up? Easy. We hold elections in Jun for one lead and four coordinators (term Jul-Dec). We run through the summer with a temporarily bloated number of coordinators. (This assumes that none of the existing coordinators stand in the Jun elections: it would be good if some did.) We defer the Aug elections to Sep (term Oct-Mar) when one lead and four coordinators are elected, bring the number back down to two leads plus eight coordinators.

The numbers are arbitrary. We might do better with one plus five, especially with the extra work, energising the TFs will bring :)

Thoughts? --ROGER DAVIES talk 03:03, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I can see two issues that ought to be considered before going forward with something of this sort:
  • The community as a whole is not overly fond of groups it perceives as needlessly bureaucratic; recall the fate of Esperanza. A month-long election process at each instance would mean that the project would be "holding elections" a third of the time; it's not clear whether the project's high-quality output will be sufficient to cause people to turn a blind eye to this. If the main concern is lack of overlap, staggered one-year terms might be an alternative to consider, at least in terms of not increasing the overall number of elections.
  • It's not clear what the purpose of having "lead" coordinators is if there are multiple ones; either dispensing with the gradation entirely, or devising some means of selecting a single lead, seems preferable to having dual leads.
Kirill 05:06, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
I think we're all right at the moment. A lot of the work is about minding the MHR page and updating the announcements and anyone can do that. I did it a bit before I read teh manual or became a coord. As for Esperanza, luckily we're not anywhere there yet. The current coords have probably contributed about 20+ FAs between them and probably another 20+ A class articles. Unlike the Esperanza coords who hardly had any stubs. The other thing about Esperanza is that was accused of skewing consensus from buddy voting. There aren't any FACs I can remember where any large number of MILHIST members went to support, let alone in a herd-like manner, whereas I can remember a few Pokemon FACs where about 30 ESP members all piled on even though the articles had mostly blogrefs, no refs etc etc..(even though they didn't ever write anything beyond stubs)... Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:23, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm new here, but I don't think that this as neccessary. In addition to the points Kirill raises, running the elections would suck up a lot of our and the project members energy and time. --Nick Dowling (talk) 09:00, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
I think the current system is working fine because people have a definite time of six months (one semester all over the world, important since we have many students) when they handle the extra amount of work. The learning curve issue is no argument because there are always enough senior coordinators running for office and we even developed the coordinator emeritus status. All in all I would only support an extension of the period for a year. Wandalstouring (talk) 14:12, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
I also support the current system, as elections in late-December are not such a good idea. Due to holidays, the participation would be even lower than in August. --Eurocopter (talk) 14:48, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
I support the current system as well. TomStar81 (Talk) 18:03, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
I support the current system that we ahve. Kyriakos (talk) 21:49, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

(od) Thank you for all the comments. It was very interesting. Just as a bit of background, this came up fleeting here and I thought I'd run it up the flagpole and, um, see who saluted it :) My main objection, funnily enough, is being in a state of permanent election (if you'll excuse the phrase). This could though be overcome by changing the coordinator term from six months to one year and thus having new people coming onboard every board six months. Any other thoughts, incidentally, would be very welcome, basically as a discussion point. --ROGER DAVIES talk 22:33, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Suggestion (A-class reviews)

Closed: Proposal drafted, --ROGER DAVIES talk 18:48, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

In the past I have seen articles fail A-class review not because they have been opposed but because they have only received 2 or less supports. I was thinking that if that is the case maybe we should extend the A-class review by a day and leave message on WT:MILHIST asking members to go to the review's page and give thri two cents. Thoughts? Kyriakos (talk) 06:18, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

As I often close A-Class reviews, when there are two supports for an article (and when I feel the article would not be promoted due to reduced presence in the review), I put my vote in and usually pass them. Also, a message is always posted on project's main talk page when a new A-class review is opened. However, I would support an extension of the review time by a day as well. --Eurocopter (talk) 12:10, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
We do have {{subst:Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators/Toolbox/A-Class review alert|Name of article}} ~~~~ to ask for more editors. Recently I haven't seen an A-Class review closed without the requisite number of !votes. Woody (talk) 13:23, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Well the A-class review for the Battle of Bonchurch has just passed its fourth day by a couple of hours and has two supports and no opposes. Would anyone mind to comment at the review page before it is closed? Kyriakos (talk) 13:40, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, I will put my support in, and therefore close the review. --Eurocopter (talk) 13:44, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Well, I was about to oppose it due to the dubiousness of its sources and the prose. I had begun doing fixes on the article, but hey, c'est la vie. That and I think Kirill's comments were spot on, it is hard to distinguish this "battle" from the other battles of that invasion. It wouldn't pass FAC as it is I don't think. Woody (talk) 13:57, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
But you had 4 days at your disposition to oppose it... However, I would like to move forward with the extension of the A-class reviewing time and would like to know if anybody disagree? --Eurocopter (talk) 14:05, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
I wasn't made aware of the need for a review until today as I had been busy in RL and with Victoria Cross recipients lists. I would disagree with extending the A-Class review time, we have FAC if you want a long review, although thankfully, even that is being kept down now due to the hard work of Sandy. There was no notice issued to the main Milhist page asking for more reviewers and if you looked at the page history, I had started doing little fixes which would indicate I was reviewing it. Anyway, it has been passed, we will see if the nominator goes for FAC. Personally, I would have seen Kirill's comment as an oppose but we all interpret reviews, comments and articles differently. Woody (talk) 14:13, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
It passed me by too. I try to make a point of commenting at every A-class review but I just didn't have time to get round to this one. --ROGER DAVIES talk 18:23, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
I think we should wait the complete week an A class review takes. It is very easy to support an article, but a good oppose needs much more time and often can't be done within the first days due to RL. Wandalstouring (talk) 15:07, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Yep, I agree with this. -Eurocopter (talk) 17:50, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Tes, I do too. --ROGER DAVIES talk 18:19, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

(od) Do we want to change the time period to a week then? --ROGER DAVIES talk 05:29, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

It was already agreed upon policy to have A-class reviews running for a week. Perhaps our new coordinators need a written reminder. Wandalstouring (talk) 07:47, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
That's news to me :) It says four days here. --ROGER DAVIES talk 07:54, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Yes, the A-Class review has always been a four-day process, as far as I know; I'm not sure where the week-long variant is coming from. Kirill 16:41, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
OK, sorry, my mistake we discussed the one week length when introducing A class review and then extended it from 3 days to 4 days. Wandalstouring (talk) 08:38, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

{od} So is there any support for extending the review time to seven days or shall we leave it as it is? --ROGER DAVIES talk 08:42, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I support the extension of the review time to seven days. --Eurocopter (talk) 18:35, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
I would put it to five days. Woody (talk) 18:38, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
In my opinion, only one day is not significant, as we don't usually close reviews exactly after four days. So, I really think that three additional days would be better than one for the A-class review. --Eurocopter (talk) 18:49, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Yes, but five would be a guideline, and I expect it to be enforced with the same "rigour" as the current 4 days. There is no need to double the A-Class review time, we have WP:FAC for that. Woody (talk) 18:54, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Which guideline actually? --Eurocopter (talk) 19:09, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
I have amended my wording, does that explain it? Woody (talk) 19:32, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Wouldn't it be better to make seven days guideline, which would be rigourously respected? --Eurocopter (talk) 19:54, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
You need leeway in these things. What happens if someone comes up with a highly relevant but actionable objection at 6 days and 23 hours? Do we still close it as fail, even though it would take an hour of work to fix it?
What happens if there are no coordinators around? Extending the days is not going to extend the number of reviewers, there is always a shortfall of quality reviewers. I think 5 days, a working week, should be long enough to gain the attention of reviewers. Woody (talk) 20:00, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Ok, then why we still discuss changing a guideline, if it's not/nor will be respected? --Eurocopter (talk) 12:36, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
Why not combine the two ideas: Leave an A-class review open for seven days, then after the week has passed close such reviews four days after the last dated comment? In this manner we extend the time and leave the closing of the such reviews open for interpretation since a comment added at the last possible moment would reset the closing time. Would this work? TomStar81 (Talk) 04:54, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

(od) Can I take it that there's no clear consensus for change? --ROGER DAVIES talk 04:24, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Maybe not. Even now the A-class reviewfor the Batle of the Kalka River has been on review for three days now and has one support and no opposes and faces failures do to lack of voting. Similarly the Erich Hartmann review after two days only has had one comment. Also, I was thinking if the editor doesn't have time too finish the review then maybe they can request an extended period of time to meet the comments. Kyriakos (talk) 09:28, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Would you like formulate that into a firm proposal, presumably something on the lines of:
Reviews will be closed by one of the project coordinators after four days have elapsed but the closure may be deferred for up up to n days by any coordinator to enable the reviewer to deal with matters arising or to garner additional support?
Or have I misunderstood you? --ROGER DAVIES talk 11:02, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

That sounds perfect. Exactly what I was thinking. Kyriakos (talk) 11:07, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

That sounds good Roger. Seems like a good compromise given the complete dearth of reviewers across all content review processes at the moment. Woody (talk) 12:15, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
I hope so. If Kyriakos can dot the I's and cross the t's of my crude draft, with a firm proposal, let's see if anyone else salutes it. --ROGER DAVIES talk 12:23, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Reviews

Closed: All done. --ROGER DAVIES talk 06:01, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi, on WP:MHA we have Glock pistol up for assessment. Does this fall under our scope, it is only used sparingly for military purposes. If it is within our scope, can someone assess it please. Also, to avoid the obvious charges of nepotism, can someone review James Joseph Magennis please? Thanks.

Oh, and Category:Unassessed military history articles is above 30 again. Some help clearing it would be appreciated. Thanks. Woody (talk) 16:51, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

The "backlog" has been cleared, though the reviews still stand please. Also, at WP:MHA we have a request for a second opinion on Eric William Wright. Anyone willing to do it? Thanks Woody (talk) 22:05, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Portals and peer review

Closed: Elegantly implemented, --ROGER DAVIES talk 06:03, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Does anyone know how the new procedures work for this is? Portal:British Army could really use a Milhist peer review. Should it be listed as a Milhist topic, or a Portal one? --ROGER DAVIES talk 05:26, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

I think we should list it at Wikipedia:Portal peer review as that is the hub of knowledge around Portals. I am guessing most milhist editors don't know what makes a great portal. We should transclude it at milhist so we can input on the content, but in terms of struture I think it has to be listed at Wikipedia:Portal peer review so we can learn from them. Woody (talk) 12:58, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I don't think it really makes a big difference where the page is physically, so long as the needed redirects are in place. Either the MILHIST peer review subpage can be redirected to the portal one, or vice versa; but the review can still be listed in both locations regardless. Kirill 16:42, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Is this the right setup? We have Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/Portal:British Army, a redirect to Wikipedia:Portal peer review/British Army/archive2. I have transcluded Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/Portal:British Army on the WP:MHR page. Do we want to turn the Picture peer review link into a Other peer reviews link? Or would that remove it from reviewers notice? Woody (talk) 18:25, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
(edit conflict) The template expects a "Portal:" embedded in the subpage, so our corresponding one is Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/Portal:British Army; hopefully I fixed all the links, but someone might want to check that. ;-)
As far as picture peer review goes, images don't generally get {{WPMILHIST}} tags, which makes the subpages something of a moot point. I'm not sure if anyone is still using that section, for that matter; there seems to have been a brief flurry of activity, and then nothing. Kirill 18:29, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
(Actually, I do think the template will work on an image or image talk page, so it would be perfectly possible to do for picture peer reviews what we just did for the portal one, and eliminate the separate section altogether.) Kirill 18:31, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
Shall we do that then, Wikipedia:Picture peer review/Quartermaster Dick Libby, USN, an Old Salt. is currently up at PR, a testcase? Woody (talk) 18:37, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
Good idea. I'm not sure if we want to put the {{WPMILHIST}} tag on the image page or the image's talk page, though; the template will generate the same PR link regardless. Kirill 18:40, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
I think talkpage should be fine. The image page usually gets deleted after the failed FPC or peer review as it is on commons. Do you want to do the honours, save edit conflicts again ;-)) Woody (talk) 18:48, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
Ok, I've created the redirect page at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/Image:Dick Libby.jpg and added it to the review page & announcement template; please check to make sure everything shows up as desired. Kirill 18:58, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
Looks great, working as expected I think. Good job. Woody (talk) 19:01, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

(od) Thanks very much, guys, for cracking that one :) As Kirill says, it also means we can ditch the separate Picture Peer Review section. --ROGER DAVIES talk 19:08, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

And so it is. Shall we just delete Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Review/PPR instructions? I am going to go on a PR archiving run now, it is getting a bit big. Woody (talk) 19:16, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
Yes, I think so. We could probably do with a write-up somewhere explaining how to bring in exotic peer reviews in simple easy-to-follow steps for people like me. Thanks for sorting the archiving, too. --ROGER DAVIES talk 19:20, 14 April 2008 (UTC)


(od) Can I be clear how this works?

  1. Create a new page as Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/"target name"
  2. Point the page as a redirect to the actual target page name
  3. Transclude the redirect page onto the Milhist peer review page
  4. Use the redirect page to publicise in announcements.

Is this correct? And if so, any suggestions for improving/clarifying the wording? Where is best to post this as instructions? --ROGER DAVIES talk 09:20, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that's basically correct, although I'd suggest copying the wording used for the regular peer reviews:
  1. Add peer-review=yes to the {{WPMILHIST}} project banner at the top of the article's talk page (see the project banner instructions for more details on the exact syntax).
  2. From there, click on the "request has been made" link that appears in the template. This will open a page to discuss the review of your article.
  3. Add #REDIRECT [[External peer review page location]] to the page.
  4. Add {{Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/Name of nominated article}} at the top of the list of peer review requests below.
This makes sure that we get a project tag in the appropriate place, rather than just having dangling redirects. Kirill 13:11, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for that, Kirill. I've added it to the peer review instructions. --ROGER DAVIES talk 14:09, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Heads Up

A MILHIST image with a corresponding article will appear tomorrow as the Pic of the Day (if anyone cares, the template is here). It may be worth watch listing the articles to keep an eye out for vandalism.

Thanks. I've added it to my watch list. --Nick Dowling (talk) 08:40, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
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