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A Work in Progress

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I have added this page as a work in progress. More text as well as more external links will be added soon. Dan D. Ric 13:34, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Plans

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Now that I've gotten the basics under control my plans are to add some images, then rewrite all sections to improve readability and add specific citations. Dan D. Ric 09:59, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Added a bit more to this. I still need to get some dates and notes in, though. Intothatdarkness (talk) 20:23, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
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Recent Renaming

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Was this change actually discussed anywhere? ARA is not a generic term, but rather a designation used by the Army for certain units during a specific period of time. If there WAS discussion, why wasn't a notice and link posted (at the very least) on this page? Intothatdarkness 13:53, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No, there is no evidence of any discussion, or any sourcing to support it. As you note, it's an obscure term, not a generic one, and only applied in this narrow context. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:01, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So why did the move take place? It feels like it's MOS overriding RS. ARA units were only active with two divisions, and even then only during the Vietnam War. It would be more proper in my view to leave the capitalization in place. Intothatdarkness 14:24, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I thought it being overwhelmingly lowercase in sources would mean it would be a routine uncontroversial case fix. Dicklyon (talk) 15:26, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
An example book source here caps it when defining the acronym ARA, but otherwise always uses lowercase. It's not talking about a different subject than what our article is about. Dicklyon (talk) 15:28, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Counting Google nhits, especially for a term which has such an obvious generic sense, is not WP:RS. TBH, I'm surprised just how common ARA shows up to be in that analysis compared to ara, given the overwhelmingly generic (and irrelevant here) nature of the term.
Also 'controversial' does not mean what you are using it to mean. It means likely to engender controversy. It does not mean 'right' or 'I definitely think it's right' it means 'other people are likely to disagree'. Now even accepting (as you've told us often enough) that we're just the little people with our little, unimportant opinions and we have no right to question you, then get over yourself. You are not the arbiter here. We still work by WP:CONSENSUS, and you are still going to have to respect that. Which means that you will have to go to the effort of WP:BLUDGEONing each decision one by one, not just citing WP:THINGS I HAVE ALREADY BLUDGEONED as precedent and WP:POLICY. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:10, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Dicklyon, I find the reliance on Google for this kind of thing disturbing, especially since this article concerns both a concept AND a very specific unit designation. That's why you see ARA as opposed to lowercase. It's not the same thing as Armed helicopter, as is explained in the lede and elsewhere. It's also good practice to put something on the talk page explaining your rationale and sources supporting the move, even (or perhaps especially) if you think it's not controversial. Otherwise it can make the move appear both arbitrary and capricious. Intothatdarkness 16:30, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The great majority of sources treat this as a generic concept, even if a couple of units were designated as ARA units. Most capitalization is for defining the acronym. I don't see how it can be considered a proper name, but I'll be happy to look at sources if you have some that make that point more clear. Dicklyon (talk) 16:55, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The main point is that your process is broken, or at the very least can appear arbitrary and based solely on your opinions. I would have thought you'd gather that based on the amount of controversy many of your renamings appear to have sparked across a wide range of subjects. The practice of "move first, defend later" doesn't feel very open to consensus to me. Intothatdarkness 17:03, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WP:CONSENSUS DOES NOT APPLY HERE Andy Dingley (talk) 18:08, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Nobody is trying to capitalise a generic term 'aerial rocket artillery' where that is referring to a generic concept. That's not what this article is about. This article is about some US units tasked for it, that were referred to by that specific and capitalised name. Will you be going after the 31st Regiment of Foot next? Andy Dingley (talk) 18:07, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's the name of a unit, so, no, I wouldn't "go after" that. Are there units with "Aerial Rocket Artillery" in their name? I haven't been able to find a source that supports that. And in any case, are you saying we should capitalize Regiment of foot? Dicklyon (talk) 00:17, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Dicklyon, is there no policy or behavioural guideline that you won't break in order to push your crusade against capitalisation? You reformat people's talk: page entries, you interject your comments into the middle of them, and now you're inventing actions just to ascribe them to me.
No, we should not capitalise regiment of foot. It is a generic term. We should capitalise 31st Regiment of Foot, as the same term is being used as part of a proper name. This makes a difference. Andy Dingley (talk) 07:56, 13 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly so. And by the same reasoning, we should not capitalize aerial rocket artillery, right? Dicklyon (talk) 15:40, 13 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Intothatdarkness, my process is pretty well aligned with guidelines, I think. There was no reason to have expected this move would be controversial. Compare the rest of my 100 moves of the last 30 days. Two or three have been objected to and reverted, but I was not able to predict which ones might get this kind of objection. Per WP:BRD, with the small fraction of my bold moves that have been reverted, we discuss. It would not be practical to have a discussion before every case-fix move, given how many WP articles are created by editors who don't know that our policy is to use sentence case, not title case, or editors who think their important topics ought to be capitalized even though they're not proper names. So I fix a lot of those, routinely, mostly without any pushback. Since you objected here, and Andy had the move reverted, I'm happy to discuss. But the issue is the capitalization of this article title, not my process, which has been proven to be better than 95% accurate. My collection of precedents is just to summarize (over a much longer time span) how those few discussions turned out. I must say I find the intransigence of a couple of military editors is a bit bewildering, and very frustrating. But I'm listening. If there's something in sources that implies capitalization necessary for "Aerial Rocket Artillery" when it refers to the topic of this article, I'd like to see it. Maybe I'll learn something and give it up. Or should we go straight to RM? Dicklyon (talk) 01:53, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

At this stage you seem totally convinced with the correctness of your position. I must say I find your insistence on this (to use your own words) "a bit bewildering, and very frustrating." But to return to this: Shelby Stanton's Vietnam Order of Battle (p 101) lists the full unit title for 2/20 Artillery as "2nd Battalion, 20th Artillery (Aerial Rocket)". It is capitalized. You'll also note that I normally used ARA in the article, which is a standard (capitalized) abbreviation for these units and their associated (unique) mission. Maybe you learned something from that, or maybe not. But based on what I saw in the discussions around capitalizing Western when it related to the literary and film genre I suspect this will turn into a long, drawn-out "death by process bludgeoning." Some might derive satisfaction from that. I do not. Those military editors who you find bewildering might be experts in their fields, who in turn find your insistence in following Wiki's often arbitrary or frankly bizarre MOS conventions bewildering when RS clearly indicate something different. Intothatdarkness 00:43, 13 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's great. I would definitely capitalize these words in the unit name 2nd Battalion, 20th Artillery (Aerial Rocket). I don't see how that supports your objection to lowercase aerial rocket artillery. Dicklyon (talk) 15:43, 13 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's ANY unit designated as ARA, not just 2/20. I object because the concept really applies in practice to only these units. Other armed helicopters were called attack helicopters or gunships, and the command and control arrangements were different as well. Having Aerial Rocket Artillery capitalized in the title doesn't hurt anything except your interpretation of policy but does recognize the unique role of these units as well as the fact that they were the only ARA units ever fielded. Intothatdarkness 16:22, 13 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I would capitalize those words in ANY unit designation (all 3 of the words, in all 3 of the units, like the Army does). But the current article says it's a type of unit, which it is; in a name, cap it. But "having Aerial Rocket Artillery capitalized in the title" hurts because it screams "this is a proper name", making one wonder, name of what? It's not. Dicklyon (talk) 22:44, 13 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't hurt any normal reader who's just looking to find the article. The only thing it hurts is a particular interpretation of Wikipedia's rather nonsensical MOS. Intothatdarkness 00:36, 14 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I accept that you prefer to capitalize important phrases, just as some sources do, depending on their style. You should continue to do so in your own writings, if that's your preferred style. But in WP, we have our own style, rooted originally in the technical necessities of being able to link things in sentences, which is why we use titles in sentence case. Personally, I find the style perfectly sensible and coherent, even if not the most common or favorite style for everyone. I'm sorry you see it as rather nonsensical; I can see why that would detract from your enjoyment in Wikipedia collaboration with editors like me who feel differently about it. Not much I can do to help there, sorry. Dicklyon (talk) 05:24, 14 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Especially when editors like yourself are dogmatic about anything related to their particular interpretation of MOS and condescending to anyone who doesn't agree with that particular point of view. And people wonder why Wikipedia has difficulty retaining editors with subject expertise. Intothatdarkness 17:06, 14 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 21 September 2024

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The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. Per discussion below. Best, (closed by non-admin page mover) Reading Beans 06:45, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Aerial Rocket Artillery → Aerial rocket artillery – Not a proper name, not a trademark, not the name of a unit, but, as the article states, "a type of armed helicopter unit". As a type, it's a generic, with no need for capitalization. And sources mostly use lowercase, by a large margin. So should we, per our guidelines. Dicklyon (talk) 01:22, 21 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • Some source stats: book n-grams show significant majority lowercase use.
  • Support - definitely doesn't meet the benchmark for treating as a proper name, per the ngram above.  — Amakuru (talk) 12:37, 21 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Weak Oppose Strong oppose Edit add: it appears to me that the PROPERNAME was probably "Field Artillery Battalion (Aerial Rocket)". You are probably still changing COMMONNAME to a generic term. Once again, changing a PROPERNAME to a COMMONNAME without any consensus. DOD history website is down just now, I'll be back with some "Edit add:" sources. Edit add: maybe.
How can you think that a search excludes a PROPERNAME??? You are again trying to confuse a proper name with a search to show it's not the majority use. Just because a term is in generic use doesn't exclude it's being used as a PROPERNAME also. And I believe that only the US Army ever used the term generically. You might want to familiarize yourself with US Army terms before you try to change them to your fringe MOS view. At least ask. Sammy D III (talk) 14:52, 21 September 2024 (UTC) Edited (edit conflict, written before reply below, where I'm going next): Sammy D III (talk) 17:33, 21 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Here's how: follow book links to find uses of the phrase, both capitalized and not, and compare the evident meaning. If the lowercase leads to a different topic from the uppercase, then the n-gram stats are not useful for ruling out proper name usage. But if the uses are interchangable, all referring to the same topic, then the n-gram stats tell us whether writers are treating it as a proper name or not. If a substantial majority consistently use uppercase, then so do we. But that's not the case here, so we use lowercase, per MOS:CAPS and WP:NCCAPS. Dicklyon (talk) 17:13, 21 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No. A proper name has nothing to do with searches, unless you can add them as a majority RS against the name. Otherwise, RS. Sammy D III (talk) 17:39, 21 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
How do you find RSs if not via search. Book search, in particular (and especially before 2010, when books started to be dominated by wiki-influence junk). Dicklyon (talk) 18:10, 21 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You might want to try READING it. And "wiki-influence junk"? That's you. The entire idea here is RS, if it's not, nothing counts. OR. Similar to what you are doing, changing what the RS used says. And you don't even bother to post it on MILHIST, you just do it. Sammy D III (talk) 18:25, 21 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The way the creator wrote and refed this article is here The lead was "Although sometimes used as a generic term for any armed helicopters, the term Aerial Rocket Artillery (abbreviated ARA, and sometimes just called Aerial Artillery) refers specifically to the armed helicopter units which were organic to the division artillery of the United States Army’s two airmobile divisions during The Vietnam War. The 2nd Battalion, 20th Artillery, 1st Cavalry Division and the 4th Battalion, 77th Artillery, 101st Airborne Division, along with Battery F, 79th Artillery, 1st Cavalry Division, were the only true ARA units that ever existed." Sammy D III (talk) 22:52, 21 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
All that just demonstrates the nom's case. It states explicitly that it's a generic term, and they lays out a narrower definition that is also a generic classifier (just a narrower one) of some specific units that do have proper names. The cats at my feet, Bunter and Hunter, have proper names. They are cats; that's not a proper name. They are also calico cats, which is a more specific categorization constrained in a way that excludes most cats, but that also is still not a proper name. Nor would be an even narrower categorization that was more exclusive, like "calico cats dominated by white" or "calico cats that live at [my address here]".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:15, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"Although sometimes used as a generic term for any armed helicopters, the term Aerial Rocket Artillery (abbreviated ARA, and sometimes just called Aerial Artillery) refers specifically to"...(underline mine) That was refed in 2006. You can show that those RSs are not accurate? Sammy D III (talk) 00:30, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have no doubt that they are accurate. It's simply immaterial. A descriptive classifier being narrower at one point than it was before (and effectively now being extinct) doesn't mystically transmutate it into a proper name. English does not work that way.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:44, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"I have no doubt that they are accurate. It's simply immaterial." Yes, I guess that RSs are "simply immaterial", no matter what they say. Well, this isn't my hill so you can show off your education to somebody else. Sammy D III (talk) 01:07, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per my previous reason. Although I'm sure this will end up changing in the end. As we all know random Google results trump anything else. In addition, the article focuses on the handful of units who actually PERFORMED this mission and HAD the designation Aerial Rocket as part of their official names (artillery wasn't added because they WERE considered artillery and were part of the their respective divisions' field artillery organization and not aviation). Intothatdarkness 15:38, 21 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Certainly I have no objection, as I said before, to capitalizing "Aerial Rocket" in the names of units. But that's not what we're talking about here, unless you're proposing Aerial Rocket artillery. Dicklyon (talk) 17:02, 21 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Subject of this article is clearly not a military unit. Intothatdarkness seems confused. The phrase "black cat" and "magic" are not a proper names, but if I start a band called Black Cat Magic, that phrase in the specific context of my band is a proper name, and this has no implication of any kind toward capitalizing either "magic" or "black cat" otherwise.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:08, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not confused. You might be, but that's neither here nor there. Intothatdarkness 00:14, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Schoolyard "No I'm not, you are!" isn't an argument. I've demonstrated what your confusion is, namely confusing A) a generic phrase that within a proper name is capitalized as part of the proper name, with B) the generic phrase being itself a proper name. You've demonstrated no confusion of any kind on my part. There is no question that a unit name like 20th Field Artillery Regiment (one of the aerial rocket artillery regiments this article is about) constitutes a proper name, even when conventionally shorted to "20th Artillery", but that does not magically transmogrify generic classifier phrases like "field artillery" and "aerial rocket artillery" into proper names themselves. That simply is not how English works in general, and it is absolutely, 100% not how English is used on this project. Feel free to over-capitalize every military term on earth in your own blog or social-media posts, as various writers who intensely focus on military stuff tend to do. It's not encyclopedic writing.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:24, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    As was posted earlier, Shelby Stanton's Vietnam Order of Battle uses the designation "Aerial Rocket" (capitalized) when referring to the units mentioned in this article. But feel free to ignore that as well. Obviously when it comes to anything around the MOS random Google stuff will trump RS, so have at it. Intothatdarkness 15:38, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I've already stipulated that we'd cap Aerial Rocket when in the name of a unit. Stop with the ridiculous strawman arguments. Dicklyon (talk) 15:55, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per WP:MILCAPS, MOS:CAPS, WP:NCCAPS, and the nom's reasoning and evidence. This is clearly a generic category of unit type, like "mobile artillery", "mounted infantry", "signal squadron", etc. (albeit one sometimes with a particular sense constrained to a single war, but still a generic classifier of proper-named units), not a proper name itself of any kind.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:08, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    PS: It'a also noteworthy that the units that qualify for this temporary classifying term all pre- and post-date that term's usage, and are (and have been for their existence) more stably classified as field artillery, yet no one is arguing that "field artillery" should be capitalized. I.e., the term "aerial rocket artillery" is in no way defining of these units, and there is no rationale for capitalizing it; this is simply another "try to stick in some capitals if I can get away with it" effort by fans of capitalizing everything with a miliary connection (and against the guidelines of their own MILHIST project, as well as site-wide ones). A short-lived subclassification of a stable, long-term classification is not somehow a proper name simply by virtue of a being narrower or temporary. US currency for analogy: The "dollar" (as a coin, a paper bill, or an abstraction) is not a proper name. The division of it known as the "cent" is not a proper name either. The now generally extinct notional currency unit (which did exist as coins, generally issued at the state level) known as the "mil" (sometimes spelled "mill" or "mille", and representing 1000th of a dollar) was 10 × more specific than the cent and short-lived, but it is still not a proper name "Mil[l][e]".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:40, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: The lead says "a type of armed helicopter unit". Types of things are generally not capitalized as types of things are not proper nouns. If there were a 1st Aerial Rocket Artillery Squadron, or a 33rd, those would be the names of units, those would be proper nouns. (Also, this is not an attack on capitalization or an attack on people interested in military issues. This is copy editing Wikipedia, making small boring changes, so articles match Wikipedia's house style.) SchreiberBike | ⌨  00:30, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support—Simple: (i) it's generic, and (ii) there's no "overwhelming" use of caps. Tony (talk) 00:55, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per nom. Not a proper name. The military always has a bit of a mania for capitalising everything; we do not. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:32, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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