Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Academy/What do Milhist task forces do?
 | This page is part of the Military history WikiProject's online Academy, and contains instructions, recommendations, or suggestions for editors working on military history articles. While it is not one of the project's formal guidelines, editors are encouraged to consider the advice presented here in the course of their editing work. |
If you look around on Wikipedia you will likely notice that we have projects that cover just about everything. Almost every conceivable subject has a project to facilitate the improvement of article quality. Unfortunately though, projects do not always harmonize with each other over content, and in some cases projects with very similar goals end up at odds over how to improve an article or how an article should even be improved or developed. To help solve this issue a number of projects – including ours – have set up a system where by a number of different task forces operate within the project.
Purpose of task forces[edit]
The task forces run by the project are essentially scaled down versions of a project. In exchange for giving up their autonomy in certain fields they are granted access to their parent project's departments and other resources that enable a task force and its editors to focus on specific areas of interest within their parent projects. This has the benefit of reducing unneeded bureaucracy and talk page headers and creating a uniform system of management for the parent project overseeing the task forces, which streamlines processes like article assessment and project outreach programs. Task forces also help break up a large amount of project related material into more manageable bites, which simplifies article development by presorting material into relevant categories. This helps editors easily locate articles within their area of interest.
The last thing our task forces do is ensure that editors who have an interest in collaborating can locate other editors who share a similar interest. In this manner, our task forces unite editors who have an interest in the given field of military history and allow these editors to function as a team to improve an article as they see fit.
Organization[edit]
Our task forces are split into three groups for ease of organizing: periods and conflicts, nations and regions, and general topics. The task forces we have are granted autonomy to take action as they see fit to improve an article, but they lack independent assessment, logistics, outreach and review departments. Instead, the task forces turn to their parent project – Milhist – where uniform systems are in place for discussion, to assess articles, send newsletters to all project members, match individual logistics needs with editors who have the skills needed to complete the task, and provide processes by which task forces can improve article quality in a uniform manner consistent with the wider project's guidelines.
Not all topics within the project's scope will be covered by a task force. In many cases this is fine; however, sometimes it will become necessary to create a new task force. For instance, the Military logistics and medicine task force is one of the project's newer task forces, being created in June 2016. Where an editor determines that there is a need for a new task force, it is preferred that the idea be discussed first to determine consensus. This can be done on the main Milhist talk page, or on the co-ordinators talk page. Once consensus has been determined, there are a number of pages and categories that need to be created, and some adjustments that need to be made to the Milhist talk page template, so it is advisable that experienced editors be engaged to achieve this.