Talk:Unconventional warfare

message: Failing this, a secondary objective can be to emasculate the enemy before a conventional invasion.
Is emasculate really the right word? I was about to link it (cause I didn't know what it meant), but decided against. You see, reading that article was a real kick in the nuts. Surely somebody can think of a word less... ballsy. Neftaly 23:00, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

message: I personally regard the first as US doctrine for conducting an insurgency or fighting with guerilla tactics. If that is true for this article, then I wonder if this article is properly the expansion of the UW mission for United States Army Special Forces. Is that a reasonable assumption? We seem to have quite a few articles with very closely related topics.
Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 01:59, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  UW vs. insurgency vs. guerilla warfare 

message: I am interested in creating a useful article as well, but I disagree completely with the definitions in the text you restored, starting with the first two sentences:
Regretfully, I find the first sentence having no useful semantic content. It is rather like saying positive is the opposite of negative, without a context for either. The two most frequent uses of "conventional warfare" are warfare without nuclear weapons (or WMD if you prefer), and warfare between regular military units, typically combined arms. There is no single antonym of conventional warfare, which is why I reject this first sentence.
The second sentence appears to restrict unconventional warfare to warfare by irregular forces, when it is equally correct -- if, IMHO, useless -- to say unconventional warfare uses WMD against an organized military that only uses blast, bullets, and fire as humane means of causing the opponent to submit.
From a purely editorial and organizational standpoint, I did not write my contribution to be subordinate to the definitions you put into the lead. As a consequence, my text does not meet my own standards that say material should flow smoothly through an entire article. As long as your lead -- and I do consider it yours, since you apparently feel it's acceptable to dismiss "politics" when I offer a history of good faith effort to identify concerned editors -- is there, my material would have to be rewritten to have any chance of flowing, and I do not believe that can be done effectively.  I ask you not to insert my material as a subset of yours, as it was not written with that context in mind and I believe doing so induces errors.
So far, I have suggested bringing the article controversy to the Military History Project, which rated the article as needing work. I reluctantly suggested moving all of my content to a new article with a title clearly indicating that it is restricted to the U.S. doctrine of implementing its definition of UW. There's nothing US-centric about saying that the doctrines of a major military power can be complex enough to need their own article. Were I writing on Soviet nuclear strategy, the works of Marshal Malinovsky would be a necessary part, but not necessarily the concepts of Henry Kissinger or Herman Kahn. British and U.S. strategic bombing doctrine in the Second World War were radically different, and cannot be discussed, in detail, in a single article of reasonable length for Wikipedia.
These are two options, both of which you seem to be ignoring, persisting in asking me to alter my contribution so it fits into what you feel was a stable article, although perhaps 20 percent the size of what I added. I see no way to make my material work under the assumptions you describe, and ask that you do not, as a matter of Wikiquette, not to use it in a manner that I, as its author, do not believe it will work. This seems to be a complete impasse. You did not attempt to reach any consensus on the question to be presented as an RfC. 
In other words, I see no way in which we will reach agreement. Do you have any alternatives? 
If you wanted to check for globalisation of insurgency, I would welcome such review, but I am not willing to rewrite the material here to fit with definitions with which I do not agree.
Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 07:10, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Luckily you don't have to. Most of it is very useful information that we will retain when we make the U.S. Army definition of Unconventional warfare a subset of the global definition of Unconventional warfare. Thank you for the time and effort you have spent in contributing this useful information. The donation of your intellect to this project gives you exactly zero right to delete relevant data provided by other editors, but it makes the world a better place. I am hereby officially entering one ZS Time Dollar in your name to the Torrent Thanks Network and I encourage other Wikipedia TTN members to do the same. --71.89.59.150 (talk) 16:20, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Please respect my intended use of the specifics I wrote. This is a matter of courtesy, not [[WP:OWN]]

message: Hi there IP editor. It appears that you recently copied the contents of a page and pasted it into another with a different name. This is what we call a "cut and paste move", and it is very undesirable because it splits the article's history, which is needed for attribution and is helpful in many other ways. The mechanism we use for renaming an article is to move it to a new name which both preserves the page's history and automatically creates a redirect from the old title to the new. In most cases, you should be able to move an article yourself using the "Move" tab at the top of the page. If there is an article that you cannot move yourself by this process, follow the instructions at Wikipedia:Requested moves to request the move by another. Also, if there are any other articles that you copied and pasted, even if it was a long time ago, please list them at Wikipedia:Cut and paste move repair holding pen.  --Bfigura (talk) 21:43, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: What article name are you accusing me of pasting information into? --71.89.59.150 (talk) 14:46, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cut and paste moves 

message: :::A disambiguation page is a failure state for a language. It means that the term no longer holds any meaning by itself. It means that we can never use the term again without also applying a context to differentiate the concept we mean from the other concepts that use the same term. We should never strive to create a circumstance where we weaken the language, but only use it if nothing else will work to resolve a conflict.
:::Unless you want to expand the conflict, the issue in this case only involves whether or not UW as used in the US Army is a subset of the global UW definition. If there is any way to make that the case, for the sake of strengthening our language, I think we should strive for it. --71.89.59.150 (talk) 00:01, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm sorry, but regardless of your personal views, disambiguation pages are permitted by policy. Whether or not disambiguation is a "good thing" for language in general is simply not a relevant issue here. To quote from the policy page: "When an article title could refer to several things, a disambiguation page is needed. When the title usually means one thing but also has other meanings, add disambiguation links to the primary topic's article." I've argued (and others have agreed) that there isn't a simple, fixed definition of unconventional warfare (other than the non-definition of: warfare that is a conflict between conventional armies with conventional weapons). Unless you have some evidence of the existence of a widely agreed upon definition, policy seems to suggest that disambig pages are the way to go --Bfigura (talk) 00:10, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Let me make sure I understand what you are saying. You are asserting that what is good for the language is irrelevant to a definitional resource. Correct? --71.89.59.150 (talk) 00:23, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Not quite. I'm arguing that the only "goodness" relevant here is that defined by our policies and our manual of style. However, this is something of a moot point as I've G7'd the page in question. --Bfigura (talk) 19:36, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It sounds to me like the two of you are in agreement. The English language terms of Wikipedia, the most used definition resource on the planet, don't need to convey information. Wikipedia policies and Manual of Style weren't created to guide us in strengthening the language; they are collectively an end unto themselves. --Preston Wescott Sr. (talk) 04:52, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Clearly!. My point was that a meta-discussion of whether disambig pages are "good" for language isn't relevant to whether or not we should use them on wikipedia. (That should be governed by WP:DISAMBIG). Although at times I would have to agree that we do verge on instruction creep. --Bfigura (talk) 05:02, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

text: Again, moot point, but I'm not sure if that's supposed to be good or bad. --Bfigura (talk) 19:36, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Language terms don't need to convey meaning?

message: I've split Howard's excellent contributions to Unconventional warfare (U.S. Department of Defense doctrine) and placed the appropriate links per WP:SUMMARY. There seemed to be consensus that this material would be a good article in its own right, so I've placed it at what is hopefully a more precise name. --Bfigura (talk) 18:06, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Split 

message: Opening paragraph contains line: "This is typically done to avoid escalation into conventional warfare as well as international conventions."
Apologies, but I don't understand how this should be read, or quite what the final reference to international conventions is trying to say. Does it mean "This is done to avoid international conventions"? Or does it mean "This is done (because of) international conventions"? In either case, I don't really understand what is being said.
As I say, it's really very unclear. Can someone who grasps the thrust of it perhaps look at re-writing for greater clarity? 2A00:23C7:3119:AD01:F8C8:7D23:4D83:ACC2 (talk) 13:35, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  International conventions