Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Archive 74

message: Just to let people know, there's a page set up at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Category restructuring for some brainstorming regarding the top-level category scheme.  It's obviously just some very rough ideas, at this point—so please don't hold your breath for a formal proposal anytime soon—but if you would like to help out with the brainstorming, please feel free to drop by that page and leave some comments. Kirill 01:14, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Top-level category scheme brainstorming 

message: The peer review for Military of East Timor is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated!  Thanks! Kirill 16:03, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Peer review for [[Military of East Timor]] now open 

message: The peer review for United States Army is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated!  Thanks! Kirill 04:56, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Peer review for [[United States Army]] now open 

message: A member of the project, MBK004, is currently a candidate to receive access to administrative tools.  Other project members who have worked with him and have an opinion of the candidate's fitness to receive these tools are cordially invited to comment. --ROGER DAVIES talk 05:08, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  MBK004's administrator candidacy 

message: Hi, can I just give a farily large poke towards the outstanding featured list candidacies. Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of Knight's Cross recipients has been up for almost two weeks with no comments and the same for Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/Order of battle at the Glorious First of June. Could I ask anyone with spare time to comment on these lists. Thanks. Woody (talk) 23:36, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Open FLs urgently need comments 

message: The peer review for 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team (United States) is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated!  Thanks! Kirill 02:16, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Peer review for [[173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team (United States)]] now open 

message: Battle of Jutland has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Woody (talk) 14:51, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Battle of Jutland FAR 

message: I am not clear on how do we approve a B class for the article. I've recently finished expanding Battle of Kostiuchnówka, and I tagged it as B-class, but I'd like another editor to review if it indeed fills the necessary criteria. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk  19:44, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Done, I think it is B as well. Good work. Woody (talk) 19:53, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I think there are quite a few other unassessed B-class articles out there. Do we have a place to submit them for review? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk  04:48, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_history/Assessment for instructions on getting these assessments. HTH. Carre (talk) 07:57, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

text: Here's a link : WP:MHA#Requests for assessment --ROGER DAVIES talk 08:15, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: B-class assessment procedure?

message: For the above article (Battle of Kostiuchnówka) I have scanned, translated and uploaded a map (:Image:Map of battle of Kostiuchnowka 1916.jpg). As far as I know, there is no online map showing that battle. If there are other printed maps of it, I am not aware of them (I'd expect there are two or three in some Polish publications). In any case, I would like to disagree with the map deletion as "easily repleacable". To replace it, one has to find a Polish source with a map, and those are not common (dare you to prove me wrong). My argument for keeping it under fair use was that even if will exists to create a free map based on fair use, it is extremely unlikely there will be anybody out there who has both the will and ability to create a map and access to one of the few Polish publications with it. Hence we should keep the fair use map until a free version can be created. Would you say that this is a valid argument for undeletion? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk  04:53, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: In the U.S. a published map that old would be in the public domain.  Poland's copyright law still protects that map?  -- SEWilco (talk) 05:43, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: A map that 'old'  itself would be public domain. On the other hand a map drawn in (say) 1999 of this battle would not be (cf maps of the ancient world in modern publications are not necessarily public domain). Arnoutf (talk) 07:40, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

text:  The map in question has been drawn recently (2006 or 2007). So no, it is not in PD - although it is in a relatively rare newspaper supplement, which I doubt would be available in most libraries. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk  15:47, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Rare maps not fair use?

message: An article that you have been involved in editing, USS Illinois (BB-65), has been listed for deletion.  If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/USS Illinois (BB-65).  Thank you. TomStar81 (Talk) 08:21, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: AfD nomination of USS Illinois (BB-65)

message: :Image:AlfredPalmerM3tank1942b.jpg and :Image:Waldenburg1945edit.jpg passed FPC today.  There's also a new portrait at Wikipedia:Picture peer review/Admiral Farragut - perhaps my most ambitious restoration so far.  Feedback welcomed. DurovaCharge! 03:49, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: All already noted in the appropriate places (Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Gallery, among others); we coordinators aren't entirely useless! ;-) Kirill 03:56, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. :) DurovaCharge! 05:31, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Featured pictures 

message: The A-Class review for 1960 South Vietnamese coup attempt is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated!  Thanks! Kirill 05:10, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  A-Class review for [[1960 South Vietnamese coup attempt]] now open 

message: I'm using IE 7 but when using the reflist(x) function for notes, it doesn't seem to work; I simply get a long single column of notes. It does work, however, when I switch to Firefox. Is this problem unique to me only? Thanks.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.109.254.235 (talk) 11:58, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: In bried, no it isn't just you. Existing versions of IE don't understand the coding for multiple columns.  See template:reflist.  David Underdown (talk) 12:04, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah! thanks. Rebel Redcoat (talk) 12:07, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reflist 

message: The A-Class review for Krulak Mendenhall mission is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated!  Thanks! Kirill 13:25, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  A-Class review for [[Krulak Mendenhall mission]] now open 

message: Am I correct in thinking that all rockets and missiles under the scope of this project? And they currently fall under the Military technology and engineering task force? There is an inactive project, Wikipedia:WikiProject Rocketry and I'm wondering if there is enough interest here to have that project re-done as a WPAVIATION/WPMILHIST project task force, just like the Military aviation task force. Perhaps the Rocketry task force? To take a sampling of articles that link to , V-2 rocket and AGM-65 Maverick are currently tagged under the Military history project (just like (B-17 Flying Fortress). - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 18:07, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Missiles (as opposed to cargo or manned rockets) are under the Weaponry task force, no?  I'm not sure rocketry as a whole is really in-scope for us; something like the Saturn V doesn't really have much of a military significance. Kirill 18:10, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question of scope 

message: Regarding Wikipedia:Featured article review/F-4 Phantom II, do ya'll have an aircraft working group who can help evaluate the reliability of these sources?  WikiProject Aircraft is involved, but I'm confused at why MilHist isn't on board, and need help with these sources.  I'm concerned that most of the article may be cited to non-reliable sources; it would be helpful to hear from MilHist on the reliability of these sources.  
Questionable sources found so far in F-4 Phantom II‎.
* Greg Goebel's http://www.vectorsite.net/
* Somebody named Baugher, whose personal webpage index is dead:  http://home.att.net/~jbaugher1/  (These two are the source for an enoumous portion of the article).
* Can't determine authorship here:  http://www.tomcatalley.com/
* Personal website of Tornsten Anft http://www.anft.net/f-14/torsten.htm
* Can't determine authorship here, and whether this is a "real" or "virtual" museum:  http://www.wingsandrotors.org/
* Can't determine authorship here:  http://www.aero-web.org/
* Someone named Richard Seaman, The Flying Kiwi:  http://www.richard-seaman.com/
* Commercial, personal website:  http://www.flightchief.com/about.html
* Will add more as I work.
Best regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:08, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The link for Baugher website is wrong it should be http://home.att.net/~jbaugher/ it is often used for a source because it is a respected site for a large amount of information on united states military aircraftr serials and individual aircraft histories. MilborneOne (talk) 22:44, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: That's a relief, since a huge portion of the article is cited to Baugher.  I see you started correcting the refs; I'll finish up now.  Thanks!  SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:03, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Military aviation task force is what you want by the way. :) Woody (talk) 23:11, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks Woody; should I crosspost this there now, or would that be overkill?  SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:20, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I would recommend crossposting it. The more the merrier! Woody (talk) 23:25, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thanks, Woody (done); I think that's all I can do on that article for now.  SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:29, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Help with [[F-4 Phantom II]] 

message: Just to let everyone know: due to complaints about the effect of  on transclusion-heavy pages, I've changed the task force list display to render on a separate page ().  I've also exported the display code into a separate shell, so  now consists only of a meta-template call with the actual lists of announcements.  I expect this will be entirely unnoticeable to the majority of people here, but any comments are welcome. Kirill 04:15, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Updates to announcement template 

message: The A-Class review for Michael the Brave is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated!  Thanks! --Eurocopter tigre (talk) 14:32, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  A-Class review for [[Michael the Brave]] now open 

message: Kirill, you have permission to flog me with spaghetti if this should be on the Intelligence Task Force page, but I think it might be more generally useful. 
What I'm about to suggest I start is a page that is clearly OR/personal experience, but it would be meant as a research aid for the Project (or Task Force), not a general Wikipedia article. Does anyone know the policy on such things?
My specific proposal is that I start some text mentioning obvious, and less obvious, techniques for searching, first online, for US declassified documents. I no longer live in the Washington DC area, but I can also add guidance for researching materials from the various physical archives there.
It would be excellent if anyone could suggest this for other countries.  There is an occasional special case where a government tries to make as much information available as it can, when the reports are first written. I'm thinking of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, which is very good on publishing studies that, in the US, would be likely to be classified when first issued by the Intelligence Community.
Another possibility is listing some of the more useful research centers, government and non-government. For example, the US mid-level staff colleges and senior-level war colleges have one or more research institutes, which publish detailed studies that often disagree with the official national policy. Many of these colleges do offer masters' degrees, with theses that sometimes are classified, but are usually online -- and again may be strong disagreements, with thorough research, with Administration policy. One of the nice things about these theses (especially) and reports is that the author may have used classified material in the preparation, but obtained permission to have an unclassified summary in the report -- or simply wrote an unclassified report while having the knowledge of the actual situation, knowledge not available to the public. 
If I do this, where should it go?
Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 15:16, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: WP:MILESSAY. :-) Kirill 17:02, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Brillant idea thanks Howard. Make a note somewhere in there about The National Archives/Public Record Office at Kew, though obviously we have to be careful about OR. Buckshot06 (talk) 23:37, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I can access TNA digitised records free of charge, so I'm happy to check things out there, within reason, if people wish (though I wouldn't feel comfortable with providing copies).  The catalogue, "global search" (which will also throw up references to holding in other archives), and Documents Online are probably the most useful areas.  To verify British (and often Commonwealth) decorations, honours, dates of rank etc the London Gazette is useful, as is template:LondonGazette for formatting references.  Permission to wear decorations awarded by foreign governments is also gazetted.  Bear in mind that due to the OCR process used to digitse pre 2001ish issues, the indexing isn't entirely reliable.  David Underdown (talk) 12:32, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

text: Along the same lines, the Australian War Memorial is currently digitilising its massive holdings of Australian Army war diaries and placing them online at  While these are obviously primary sources and need to be used with care (especially as they're not always accurate) they're a great resource. --Nick Dowling (talk) 23:50, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Where to put "research aids" for the Project, which might be broader than a task force? 

message: This latest restoration could be a sensitive issue, due to the fame of the original photograph.  Some British editors might be offended.  So before I put this up for formal peer review please have a look: is this as inappropriate as airbrushing the crack from the Liberty Bell?  I've loaded a high resolution file of the original for comparison.  The Roger Fenton biography (and this New York Times article) provide background. DurovaCharge! 19:44, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Is now up for peer review at Wikipedia:Picture peer review/The Valley of the Shadow of Death. All comments welcome. Woody (talk) 17:13, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the note.  I solicited a couple of opinions privately and no one gasped in horror, so I've put up both versions. DurovaCharge! 18:46, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Seeking feedback 

message: The peer review for HMAS Melbourne (R21) is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated!  Thanks! Kirill 06:17, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Peer review for [[HMAS Melbourne (R21)]] now open