Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators/Archive 4

message: I suggest the new coordinators to form groups who are concerned with specific tasks. This way the work rests on more than shoulders and can run smoothly, even if some go on wikibreak. Wandalstouring 10:15, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ditto. -- FayssalF - Wiki me up® 04:25, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  coordinating coordinators 

message: Incidentally, what's the procedure when an article already has a higher than B-class status given by another project? History of cannon for instance is unassessed for Milhist purposes but is GA in History. Is it just given a Milhist GA or what? --ROGER DAVIES TALK 09:21, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: To my knowlage a GA-class article is not an in house ranking but a Wikipedia wide ranking, so unless I am mistaken it would be GA-class for our project purposes. TomStar81 (Talk) 09:32, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yep, GA and FA are determined by outside reviews, and any project can just mirror them.  The only higher ranking that we don't automatically copy is A-Class, since we have our own review for that. Kirill 15:08, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

text: Perhaps we need to note this over on the assessment chart; something to the effect that GA class articles are aforded full faith and credit by all projects, not just ours. If one person asks, then others have probably thought of it too. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:15, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Question: assessments

message: just a short inquiry. Who is going to maintain the contacts or should they be mothballed? Wandalstouring 11:43, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Mmm, I suppose the first question to consider would be whether the contacts program, as currently set up, is working as intended.  Personally, I don't think the results have been all that great—there seems to be little interest among the project membership in either being contacts or approaching the contacts directly—but maybe I just haven't seen the functioning parts. Kirill 16:36, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  contacts 

message: I've been involved in a discussion regarding the role of WikiProjects in the FAC criteria (Wikipedia talk:Featured article criteria#Unsure about #2).  The upshot seems to be that WikiProject guidelines will not be considered to have "official" weight unless they're part of the WP:MOS.  In light of that, I'm moving towards proposing a setup where we:
# Move our existing guidelines to a subpage.
# Redirect the subpage's talk page to the main project page, to retain a single place for discussion.
# Move forwards on getting community consensus to tag said subpage as a part of the formal MoS.
Does anyone see any reason why this would be a bad approach? Kirill 23:22, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No, I don't. I've been following the discussion a little, and this seems like a reasonable approach from our end. Carom 03:47, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't either. I glanced through it just now, albeit quickly, and I think that the idea is good, particular for the long run. If we add our guideliens to the parent MoS page then they should gain an additional measure of credability. One question though: what if our guidelines (or any other other project guideliens) change? Does this mean we have to work through MoS to get our in house guidelines change, or would we still retain control over our guidelines on a MoS page? TomStar81 (Talk) 06:43, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As far as I know, changes to subsidiary MoS pages are typically done via consensus on the associated talk page, which in this case would be the project's main talk page.  So I think, in practice, the project would be able to modify the guidelines at will (at least so long as we don't try to impose something outrageous). Kirill 17:16, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

text: I've started up the broader discussion at WT:MILHIST#Project style guide and MoS; hopefully we'll be able to move forwards on this in the near future. Kirill 17:29, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Manual of Style 

message: I got the thinking about this just now, while reading over the infobox on our stress hotline page: obviously, editers having problems with our MILHIST articles will (hopefully) seek some comfort on the page, but what about MILHIST editers who are getting flak from other projects/task forces they may or may not be invloved? If one of our guys has issues with a video game related article, or philosophy article, or something to that extent, can he or she complain and vent on our stress hotline page, and if so should we note that on the main stress hotline page? TomStar81 (Talk) 22:30, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: People can vent on any topic they desire, yes; but I think we need to draw a subtle distinction between venting and asking for help.  There's a distinction between a rant and a call to arms, in other words; "I'm having lots of trouble with project X and am really stressed" belongs on the stress hotline, while "Project X is causing trouble, we need to deal with them" is properly the province of the project's regular talk page(s).  I'm not sure if this is worth putting into writing, though. Kirill 01:07, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stress Hotline 

message: First off, I'd like to express my thanks to the assistant coordinators, who have been capably taking over a lot of the tasks I used to do myself.  Pretty soon, you guys won't need me at all! ;-)
More generally, some of the matters that have come up over the last two weeks:
# Project consolidation
#: The bulk of this has taken place successfully.  There are a few remaining stragglers: Castles, whom I have approached regarding a merger (with no response so far), and Arab-Israeli conflict, which is a hornet's nest that I don't particularly want to touch at the moment. 
# Manual of Style
#: The discussion seems to be proceeding, albeit slowly.  Now that the bulk of the guidelines are on a separate subpage, the remaining matter is largely one of being able to declare a sufficient consensus to stick a  tag on it.  Presumably we should bring up the matter on WP:VP at some point in the near future?  I don't really foresee many objections to this, though.
# Infobox conversion
#: I've made an attempt at going through some of the more reasonable parameter conversions.  Overall, the infoboxes can be divided into three categories:
#:* The easy conversions: I've drawn up the parameter matching lists for the bulk of these, so presumably they can be started on.
#:* The conversions we can't do yet: there are some infoboxes which include parameters we don't support (in particular, airport-related ones); we'll need some more work before they can be dealt with.
#:* The conversions I can't figure out: this is basically the Submarine to Ship conversion.  Really, someone familiar with how the ship infobox works needs to take a look at that one.
# Assessment drive
#: We have, I think, two open issues here:
#:* Awards: I haven't had time to draw up any clasps or such things yet; if anyone else wants to take a stab at them, they should feel free.  We don't have many in-house graphics experts, unfortunately.
#:* Redoing the lists: do we want to recreate the lists, excluding some categories?  This would be feasible, I think, but I'd need a list of categories to exclude.
# Reference desk
#: I haven't had much time to look at this yet, but I think we may want to start it as an entirely in-house thing to begin with, and then look at ways of pushing it elsewhere once we get it working.
Comments, criticism, suggestions, etc. would be very appreciated! Kirill 01:13, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: On the issue of an in house reference desk: If we can demonstrate that the idea will work here in a protected enviroment then we may have an easier time getting a real RD up and going on the WP:RD page. As for the Assessment Drive category suggestion: I think it a bad idea to exclude categoried, even if we only find one article that falls under our umbrella within those categorise then it is one more article we can add to our project. I think part of the problem is that we haven't really done this before, so their is a butload of work to be done, so if we make these a more regular occurance perhaps we can reduce the number of false hits we get. Just a thought. On an unrelated note I am having trouble with my home computer, so I am now having even more trouble getting here to help. Sorry if that incoviences anyone :/ TomStar81 (Talk) 02:07, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I really question the worth of going through the 8,000-16,000 in the major false positives categories in order to seek out the odd untagged milhist article. --ROGER DAVIES TALK 13:07, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

text: While traveling the past three weeks since I didn't have my books with me to get any article writing done, I started plowing through the unassessed list in alphabetical order.  It was a relatively painless task to undertake whenever the jet lag woke me up at 4 a.m.  I think I've gotten about halfway through, to about the middle of the "M's".  There's about 900 articles left to go.  It takes about two minutes to assess each article, so if I can do 30 a day I should have the rest done in a about a month.  Of course, anyone else is welcome to help out if willing or able. Cla68 12:57, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That is a relatively painless task. However, the 165,000 articles for tagging here, isn't.--ROGER DAVIES TALK 13:07, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ouch!  I was planning on being mighty proud of myself after finishing with those 900 articles.  165k is tough mountain to climb.  Cla68 13:18, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

text: You can still be proud for finishing 900 artilces. I'm proud that I have thought about thinking about getting started on working on another article to bring up to FA-class. Its all in the mind, and every little bit counts (: TomStar81 (Talk) 06:59, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Do you have any thoughts for making great inroads into the 150,000 articles in the Assessment Drive? I wish it could be done by wishful thinking too :) There was a fair amount of discussion of this a week or so back on this page, which you may have missed with your pooter problems. Basically, if we can get consensus for a broad strategy, and if no one else wants to handle it, I'm happy to coordinate the implementation. --ROGER DAVIES TALK 11:39, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem here seems simply to be one of scale - small projects are easily handled in -house, but something this large is not only daunting, but really too much for the project to handle alone, given time constraints, interest level, etc. WP:BIO had virtually no problem getting thousands of articles assessed through an encyclopedia-wide appeal, coupled with awards. I believe the merits of this approach were debated at various points, but I can't remember if there were any truly compelling reasons not to try and accomplish this through the efforts of the broader community. Carom 16:40, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes. I've had a look around their pages and cannot see how they issued the Wiki-wide appeal. Any pointers on this please?   —Preceding unsigned comment added by Roger Davies (talk • contribs) 09:09, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, if I recall correctly, the major advertisement was done through the community portal, specifically through a posting on :Template:Announcements/Community bulletin board. There may also have been something in the Signpost, let me see... Carom 02:35, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

text: This happens when you use outriggr's script - there's a fix, let me see if I can remember what it is... Carom 16:30, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, the section ["" has to be replaced with ["{"+"{WPMILHIST|class=}}". I think that fixes the problem, although I have no idea why (this was figured out by somebody else, and I don't remember who, so I can't give proper credit). Carom 16:35, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Unfortunately, it's still showing. Cla68 02:16, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That's because the monobook hasn't been changed - I didn't really think it appropriate to change someone else's...Carom 03:11, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I posted the issue at the help desk. Cla68 03:32, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

text: On this issue of an APB to Wikipedia for assessment aid: I think that would be the best idea to solve the problem; not that we can not handle the assessment drive, but the more help we get the faster the work will get done. IMO, Roger Davies, you should handle this as you see fit :) TomStar81 (Talk) 07:18, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

text: On a brief unrelated note: I glanced at the September newsletter and noticed SandyGeorgie's ciations for the chevron w/oak leaves. Would any one oppose noting in the letter that Sandy is the first non-project member to be awarded the chevrons? It seems like something we should note since the first time can, by its very nature, only happen once :) TomStar81 (Talk) 07:25, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Good idea; I've added a note to that effect. Kirill 12:28, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Status report for September 23