Talk:United States Army officer rank insignia

message: The graphic shows the insignia worn by Pershing as General of the Armies as 4 silver stars-- the same as General-- but the text says he wore 4 gold stars. I question the accuracy of the text, and think the graph is correct. I think the "4 gold stars" is a myth originating with the famous equestrian portrait of him, painted with gold stars, which were simply the product of the artist's interpretation or ignorance. Every historical source seems to agree that Pershing as General of the Armies continued to wear the same 4 silver stars insignia that he wore as a General. Nothing contemporary I have seen says he ever wore gold stars. And, in context, it wouldn't even have made sense for him to, since silver outranks gold in army officers' insignia-- as a whole section of this very article explains. Also, he was the only general officer in the Army at the time to rank above 2 stars, so it's not like he wouldn't stand out with 4. - Venqax (talk) 00:56, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  General of the Armies insignia (#2) 

message: I am curious as to why the order shown for the various ranks is being used, when shown from left to right. Military ranks are progressive; with very few exceptions, one doesn't get to a higher rank without progressing through each of the lower ones first. Every general officer begins as a 2LT, every admiral begins as an ensign, every command sergeant major begins as a private or specialist. Pay grades are even numbered for easy reference, from "O-1" (2LT) through "O-10" (GEN). See Uniformed services pay grades of the United States.Furthermore, the number of members of each rank decreases as rank increases, such that in, for example, a typical US Army brigade combat team, which might contain a total of 4,400 service members, it would typically contain 3,500 enlisted personnel (E-1 and E-2), 600 NCOs (E-4 through E-9), 90 second lieutenants (O-1), 45 first lieutenants (O-2), twenty captains (O-3), ten majors (O-4), three lieutenant colonels (O-5), and one colonel (O-6). So if one were ordering by quantity, ascending would be the sensible order.
An argument could be made for ordering a list from highest to lowest in some hierarchies, such as from the president to vice president to Speaker of the House of Representatives in the US political system, but this is quite different since there is not a linear progression from say, a city council member to the state assembly to the state senate to the House of Representatives to the Senate to the White House. Very often one only serves in one of those political offices, and one arrives in that office by election.
An argument could also be made for ordering a list from highest to lowest when arranged vertically, as this matches the standard hierarchical structure with greatest power at the top and least at the bottom. Even so, this is not uniformly done (no pun intended); for example, the standard book "The Encyclopedia of United States Army Insignia and Uniforms" arranges them vertically from lowest to highest rank. But few show rankings descending from left to right. That convention produces some confusing explanations such as found here where it states "The chart below shows the current enlisted rank insignia of the United States Army, with seniority, and pay grade, increasing from right to left" (emphasis added). It is very uncommon in any language which is read from left to right to describe or depict anything "increasing from right to left". From analog speedometers on vehicles to numbered sets in mathematics, to footnotes in publishing, the invariable order is from the smallest on the left to largest on the right, especially when smaller units are contained within larger ones.
The argument from precedent here on WP is not a compelling one, given how relatively short of a time WP has existed, and that its conventions are arrived at by amateur editors through discussion. Instead, I would lean on what print encyclopedias have been doing for decades, if not centuries. The Encyclopaedia Britannica displays the order of ranks progressively, from lowest to highest, as can be seen here in their article titled "Colonel": https://www.britannica.com/topic/colonel .I propose that we engage in a discussion as to whether or not to bring WP into accord with the Encyclopaedia Britannica and other illustrated encyclopedia which depict ranks in ascending order, from left to right. Bricology (talk) 21:32, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Order of displaying ranks