User talk:EagleWSO

==Welcome== Hello EagleWSO and welcome to Wikipedia! I'm glad you've chosen to join us. This is a great project with lots of dedicated people, which might seem intimidating at times, but don't let anything discourage you. Be bold!, explore, and contribute. If you want to learn more,

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Float around for awhile until you find something that tickles your fancy. One easy way to do this is to hit the random page button in the navigation bar to the left. There are also many great committees and groups that focus on particular jobs. My personal favorite stomping grounds are Wikipedia:Translation into English and Wikipedia:Cleanup for sloppy articles. Finally, the Wikimedia Foundation has several other wiki projects that you might enjoy.

There are a few crucial points to keep in mind when editing. Be civil with users, strive to maintain a neutral point of view, verify your information, and show good etiquette like signing your comments with four tildes like this: ~~~~ If you have any more questions, always feel free to ask me anything on my talk page or ask the true experts at Wikipedia:Help desk. Again, welcome! -- Draeco 22:10, 29 November 2005 (UTC) [reply]

Army unit names[edit]

I'm agnostic on changing all the "2nd"s and "3rd"s to "2d"s and "3d"s, though it seems like a lot of work. But why change the "U.S. *th Infantry Regiment"s? Don't any other armies have such units?
—wwoods 02:12, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I am not agnostic on changing the "2nd"s and "3rds" of US military units to "2d"s and "3d"s. I am curious as to the justification for doing so. For example, the US 82nd Airborne Division identifies itself with a 82nd and not a 82d. I would simply revert it, but want to find out your reasoning first. If the issue is US English vs UK English, I believe we need to stick to US English for articles originally written in US English (especially when they concern US military units). --Habap 16:01, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I have raised this at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Non-standard ordinal abbreviations. Your comments are welcome. Susvolans ⇔ 17:26, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

When you moved the 82d Airborne page you left about 75 double redirects. I have fixed these to link to the 82nd Airborne redirect page (created from your page move). Pending the outcome of the 82d vs 82nd the links can be redirected or relinked to which ever is the final name. Kaiserb 05:36, 2 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Army unit names[edit]

Please immediately give some justifiation for moving many many US army names or they will have to be restored to their original names. You must show that the new names are the generally accepted ones--File Éireann 14:40, 10 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Kindly give justification for changing the unit name of 332nd Engineer Regiment to 332d. I have official U.S. Army photos and documents which name the unit as 332nd (i.e. with the "n"). While I have seen the 332d variant, it does not agree with the unit name kept with the U.S. Army Center for Military History. The suffix will be restored unless definite justification can be made for the edit. Mfields1.

Many people unfamiliar with the U.S. military "policy" of using 2d instead of 2nd are going to be bothered by your changes. I was until I checked with my copies of the WWII Army History "green books" and found that they followed that policy as well. You might want to edit your user page to mention why you are doing it. This is a collaborative effort here and communicating such things directly is useful. John (Jwy) 20:04, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Empty articles[edit]

Please do not create articles which are devoid of text or other content, such as 12th_Infantry_Regiment, 8th_Infantry_Regiment, 47th_Infantry_Regiment, and 325th_Infantry_Regiment among others. Whether or not you intended to add content to those articles later, the Wikipedia:Stub guideline page offers some tips that will be helpful for creating new pages. Empty articles may be tagged for speedy deletion. - choster 19:22, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Camouflage Peer Review[edit]

Hello, you once edited Camouflage. You might be interested to know, this article has been nominated for peer peer review. novacatz 03:38, 24 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Naval Air Station Oceana[edit]

You changed the number of F-14 squadrons from three to two, but didn't change the overall total number of squadrons. I assume that your intentions were good, so I thought I would drop you a line to find out whether you have a source for your change and you just forgot to fix the total, or if you're not sure about your change and the total is correct as it is. The air station's homepage actually lists 17 squadrons, so I'll wait a little while to hear back from you before I revert the change. Kafziel 05:59, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The number of F-14 VFs is down to two. This I know from mulitple USN PA releases and thus edited. I don't know nor can I find the number of F-18 VFA right now, but if I count the number of VF/VFA/VFCs listed on the NAS Oceana wiki page it totals to 16 so I don't know where the difference between the number of sqdns on Wiki and NAS Oceana is. EagleWSO 07:15, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hm. Weird. Okay, well, I'll try to figure something out this weekend.

Hey, I see you went to DLI. Good times. Kafziel 16:13, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for cleaning up 82d article[edit]

I'd like to fill in a lot of the empty AF squadron, Wings, groups and NAFs. I notice you have done a lot of got work in that department. I appreciate the effort. Good to see a fellow DLI alumni help out with Wikipedia Muj0 16:25, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

4950th Wing[edit]

Can you explain further your reversion to this inclusion? Akradecki 02:22, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Military Unit Names[edit]

Please stop vandalizing military unit names, from your talk page it seems you have a history of this. Changing 2nd and 3rd to 2d and 3d is wrong unless those are the official unit designations. For instance, the 3rd SOS is officially designated as the 3rd Special Operations Squadron, not the 3d. If you don't believe me, see the official 3rd SOS factsheet. Nathanm mn 20:14, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think EagleWSO is now doing anonymous edits as 70.106.23.60. Nathanm mn 21:02, 27 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If either of you need to bone up on the official names of USAF and USA units then I would not reference the individual unit webpages. They are not created by professional historians, but most likely Public Affairs personnel and they use different rules than the official historians. For locating the official USAF names and numbers of units, please use AFHRA Research Division webpage. They are the official keepers of names, histories, lineages, honors and awards for all USAF units. That is where the official names of units come from. So if you want to perpetuate errors please do so, but do so informed.

If you are really in the Air Force as your profile claims, you should know how their publication system works. At the top level of the publication hierarchy, Air Force Policy Directives (AFPD) give a broad overview of a functional area, which are detailed by Air Force Instructions (AFI), Air Force Handbooks (AFH), Air Force Manuals (AFM), and Air Force Pamphlets (AFPAM). However, not all publications are authoritative. For instance, while most (if not all) Air Force Instructions are authoritative, Air Force Handbooks and Manuals aren't authoritative unless they state COMPLIANCE WITH THIS PUBLICATION IS MANDATORY on the front page.

AFH 33-337, The Tongue and Quill, has never been an authoritative Air Force publication. It's merely a guide to help airmen write and communicate better. Besides, it does not specifically explain how to write a number for a unit on page 326. The point it's making is completely orthogonal to your point. It falls under the heading: Capitalize the proper names of colleges, universities, organizations, committees and agencies, but not the common nouns that refer to them. Then there are two notes under that heading, the first one being the one you refer to:

NOTE: When using the abbreviated form of a numbered organization (e.g., ABW versus Air Base Wing), do not use th, st, or d with the number. When writing it out in its entirety (Supply Squadron versus SUPS), add the th, d, or st to the number.

What they're trying to explain is just to use cardinal numbers (1, 2, 3, 4...) instead of ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th...) when abbreviating unit names. Its choices for abbreviations are merely examples, not an imperative statement. I've noticed in the past that some of the examples (particularly memos) in The Tongue and Quill were completely wrong as to formatting, addressing, and other issues. The problem is that it's rarely updated. Many of the examples were just holdovers from previous Air Force policy.

There's another Air Force publication concerning written correspondence that is authoritative, AFMAN 33-326, Preparing Official Communications. Hopefully you noticed the reference to this publication on the title page of The Tongue and Quill. Unfortunately, however, it has no applicable examples.

Another Air Force publication (an authoritative one), AFPD 38-5, Unit Designations, does have applicable examples:

2nd Bomb Wing in A1.2.1 (page 3)
3rd Wing in A1.2.3.2 (page 4)

Now, I'm not going to claim these examples prove this is the one true method of abbreviating unit names. They're merely examples, like the ones in The Tongue and Quill, even though the actual stated purpose of this publication is about unit names and numbering.

On the AFHRA Research Division website, the only place it uses ordinal numbers is the pull-down menus, which were probably written by the website designer, not an Air Force historian. If you go to the lineage page of an individual unit, they avoid using any ordinal numbers and instead use only cardinal numbers. For example, see the lineage for the 2 Bomb Wing or the 3 Wing [sic].

To see what abbreviation is the official double plus good one for any particular unit, we'd need a copy of the unit's activation orders, but like the AHRA's lineage pages, they may not even list it.

I'm not convinced there even is an official method for abbreviating ordinal numbers in USAF unit names. My research thus far is inconclusive on that point. However, it's clear that your method is not any better than the more common abbreviations, which brings up the Wikipedia policy on naming conventions. It includes this paragraph:

Generally, article naming should prefer to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature.

On that note, 2nd is clearly more common than 2d, as well as 3rd more than 3d. In addition, 2d is easily mistaken for 2D (2 dimensional), and 3d for 3D (3 dimensional). If nothing else can resolve the conflict, Wikipedia has a page about naming conflicts, which although it's mainly about using controversial names, may help in this situation.

Cross-posted at my talk page. Nathanm mn 17:51, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to throw another spear into the melee - Since you update and create a lot of USAF unit pages, thought this reference might be useful if you ever get in an "edit war." AFHRA guide to heraldry, the paragraph under Figure 12 describes the use of th, st, and d as the only followers for unit numerical designations. This recently came up in some edits to the 22d SOPS that were changed to 22nd. See my comment below under FOIA TDRSS (talk) 17:38, 17 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Operation COOKIE MONSTER[edit]

Madrid Question[edit]

EagleWSO, I'm currently a student at the Naval Postgrad School studying to become an AF RAS (FAO). I'm in the Middle East track, but a buddy of mine just got word that he's going to be assigned to the embassy at Madrid. Would you be willing to talk with him about your time there? If so can I pass an e-mail on to him or pass you his e-mail to get in touch with?--Ndunruh (talk) 21:18, 7 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Freedom of Information Act[edit]

A lot of great historical information can be gleaned from FOIA; the AF has made it easy to put in a FOIA request with this new website, eFOIA. If you select web download for historical records, the AFHRA will place them on their respective Wing/Group or Squadron pages. I just did FOIAs for the 76th Space Control Squadron, and 544th ISR Group; the info was placed online with a couple business days. If you're interested in defraying the workload, I would suggest you put in a couple requests to get the official histories from the source. I've been doing space units and combat communications units with my FOIAs. TDRSS (talk) 17:45, 17 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Also, you have to be very specific in what you want. For example: "I would like to request any releasable information, to include lineage and honors history, heraldry blazon, list of commanders, subordinate units, list of unit awards earned, locations of unit, and a color graphic emblem of the unit logo for the following units:

I neglected to ask for the heraldry blazon (heraldry description of unit logo) and emblem, so I got just the lineage and honors history. Not good if I was looking for the unit logos to place on Wikimedia Commons. TDRSS (talk) 17:51, 17 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Page moves[edit]

You recently moved 65th Bombardment Squadron to 65th Special Operations Squadron by cutting and pasting the entire article. This winds up eliminating the history, which winds up violating copyright among other things. If you look at the menu at the top of the page, there's a drop down menu under "Page" "move Page' on this menu gives a quick way to move the page, its talk page and create a redirect while preserving history. I've asked an admin to do the move since it now has to be done over a redirect. Also you could source to material you'e added. Cheers. --Lineagegeek (talk) 18:34, 23 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks[edit]

	Little hot sauce
	For your continued editing for over a decade on articles about the United States Armed Forces, I hereby post a little spiciness onto your talk page. May it motivate you to continue to edit Wikipedia for many more years to come. RightCowLeftCoast (Moo) 09:36, 20 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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