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Loyalist military personnel category

There is a need for a loyalist military personnel category, which I propose to call "Loyalist military personnel in the American Revolutionary War", a subcategory of "British military personnel of the AWR". The British military personnel category is for persons under British command and some of the individuals may not be British. I also propose to put all the Indian allies in this category at this time also (even though they weren't really loyalists). BradMajors (talk) 14:48, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good. (But perhaps "Loyalist military personnel of the ARW"? Or is there some reason for not matching the parent cat?) Kirill 18:16, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
"of" and "in" are not used consistently. For example, there is "Loyalist military units in the American Revolution", and "United States militia in the American Revolution". The "People of the American Revolution" subcategories have an assortment of "of" and "in". A possible alternative to "Loyalist" is "Provincial". BradMajors (talk) 19:33, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
AFAIK, the general convention (which is not necessarily followed properly here) is to use "of War" for a single descriptor, but "in War" with a preceding "of" descriptor, to avoid a double "of". So we have "Military units and formations of the ARW" but "Military units and formations of France in the ARW".
(The unit categories and the people categories usually won't follow the same naming pattern; people have the nationality at the front [e.g. "French officers of the ARW"] while units have it at the end [e.g. "Military units and formations of France in the ARW"]. There might be some category names that don't presently follow that convention as well.) Kirill 19:38, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
And the Loyalists unit category might be better as "Provincial units and formations of GB in the ARW", for consistency with "Military units and formations of GB in the ARW". Kirill 19:40, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
"Provincial units and formations of GB in the ARW" is a better name, logically the category name for members of these units would be "British provincial personnel of the AWR". BradMajors (talk) 21:11, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
Up at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2008 January 20#Category:Loyalist military units in the American Revolution, if anyone else cares. In retrospect, it would have been easier to just move the articles by hand. Kirill 11:35, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Reorganization of British military unit categories

Proposal to reorg the British military units of the ARW into the following categories:

  • Regular units and formations of Great Britain in the ARW
  • Provincial units and formations of Great Britain in the ARW
  • Militia units and formations of Great Britain in the ARW
  • German units and formations of Great Britain in the ARW
  • Naval units and formations of Great Britain in the ARW

Yea, Nea, or don't care? BradMajors (talk) 22:21, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Mmm, "German units and formations of Great Britain" reads a bit clumsily; I'd suggest a slightly more generic "Auxiliary units and formations of Great Britain" or "Mercenary units and formations of Great Britain" (or, alternately, a more specific "Hessian units and formations of Great Britain"). Kirill 22:26, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
"Regular units and formations..." is also awkward. BradMajors (talk) 12:25, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

SVG Flags

Hello everyone. I wanted to give everyone a "heads up" that I have been working on a number of SVG's for American Revolutionary Flags. Also, I am interested if there any flags that you like to see me work on. -DevinCook (talk) 20:49, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

New SVG version
New SVG version

Alive?

Is this task force dead? BradMajors (talk) 07:02, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Don't know but hope not. I've been looking at the to do list and trying to do some clean up where I can. --dashiellx (talk) 20:28, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
No, its not dead. Most of our task forces have the appearence of being dead, but in reality they serve a specialized function and thus don't recieve as much traffic as the parent project pages. TomStar81 (Talk) 20:36, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
I've been busy getting certain portals featured, but I hope to dedicate myself to the ARW soon.--Bedford 02:33, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Battle of Cowan's Ford

I have expanded the above article and was hoping someone would take a look and let me know if we can remove the Stub tag from it. Thanks. --dashiellx (talk) 20:18, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

American Revolution GA Sweeps Review: On Hold

As part of the WikiProject Good Articles, we're doing sweeps to go over all of the current GAs and see if they still meet the GA criteria and I'm specifically going over all of the "World History-Americas" articles. I have reviewed American Revolution and believe the article currently meets the majority of the criteria and should remain listed as a Good article. I have left this message at this task forces's talk page so that any interested members can assist in helping the article keep its GA status. In reviewing the article, I have found there are some issues that may need to be addressed, and I'll leave the article on hold for seven days for them to be fixed. I have left messages on the talk pages of the main contributors of the article along with other task forces/WikiProjects. Please consider helping address the several points that I listed on the talk page of the article, which shouldn't take too long to fix if multiple editors assist in the workload. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Happy editing! --Nehrams2020 (talk) 01:47, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Portal:American Revolutionary War

In a slight fit of boredom, I've started putting together Portal:American Revolutionary War. I'll try to get the selected content and the rest of the boilerplate finished in the next few days; but any assistance with constructing the list of major topics would be very appreciated, as would any other help or comments! Kirill 23:17, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Looks like someone beat me to establishing this. I'll help out if you want me too. It's a nice start.--Bedford 02:31, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
Please feel free! My experience with featured portals is a bit dated now anyways. ;-) Kirill 04:33, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
I was trying to figure out how to nominate a favorite picture for featured images. Vozmozhno? Image:PhiladelCampaignHessianMap.jpg
Smallbones (talk) 02:34, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

American, Patriot, Continental, or Colonial Army?

There's a minor question at Battle of Brandywine over what to call Washington's army. I reverted Patriot army back to American army. From looking around here it looks like Continental is preferred. Could somebody knowledgeable put a note on Talk:Battle of Brandywine just to be sure?

Thanks,

Smallbones (talk) 02:25, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Replied on talk page. Perhaps this task force could use a FAQ, or glossary, or style guide to help editors with the sometimes-confusing terminology of the War of Independence. Maybe something like Mr. Jespersen's Civil War style guide. —Kevin Myers 05:09, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
Agreed. The level of inconsistency between ARW battle pages is boggling. Just in infoboxes alone - flags vs. no flags, big flags vs. small, American on left and British on right, British on left and American on right, etc. etc. etc. Some battles have even become "German victories" because there was a Hessian unit involved! I personally use Jespersen's Civil War style guide on an almost daily basis as a resource. Alphageekpa (talk) 11:01, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

User Boxes

Since I am somewhat divided on just how "great" Geo Washington's actual contribution/generalship was I have been hesitant to use the standard user box for this task force. I created three new ones. I hope I didn't do anything incorrectly. Just wanted to expand the options.--dashiellx (talk) 12:06, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

John Gunby

I am almost finished creating this article, but would like some opinions. Especially on the Court of Inquiry section. I want to make sure this section appears a neutral as possible.

Thanksdashiellx (talk) 02:40, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Hey there Dashiellx. I just had a look at John Gunby, very nice job. I also added a period ;-) For your Court of Inquiry section, I think that it's neutral, but perhaps too cluttered with quote boxes - it almost reads like a conversation, and might not be quite up to MoS standards. If I were to try to work on this (which I have no plans to), I might try to do a little more describing of opinions and thoughts and less direct quoting - you can still cite the quote, as long as you're careful not to spin the opinion one way or the other. Just my two cents. Tan | 39 16:42, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Tan, thanks for the opinion. I made some changes to the Court of Inquiry section in line with what you suggested. If you have a chance, please let me know what you think. I'd really like to get this article to at least B status (I think I've satisfied all the of the criteria, but I don't think it is something I should be checking myself).
Again, thanks for taking a look and it is really nice to see someone else taking an interest in the Task Force. dashiellx (talk) 01:37, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
I think it looks much better - you took what, five or six quote boxes down to two. I think it reads better, and the ones you left are appropriate (for example, the text of the decision). Great job, Dashiellx. Tan | 39 02:38, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Hessian forces - separate or not?

Hey folks. An issue arose yesterday with including Hessian forces in the battle infoboxes, and I wanted to get some task force opinions on the matter (or, even better, be pointed out to where someone already hashed this out). I am nearing completion of a phase of work at Landing at Kip's Bay, only needing to place the in-line citations and do some minor cleanup. My next project is the chronologically logical Battle of Harlem Heights, which is start-classish and needs some work. I removed "Hessian Army" from the belligerants section of the infobox here, as it's my experience that there was no "Hessian Army", per se - that implies a large "sovereign" group of soldiers under completely separate command, when that wasn't the case. I don't think anyone will argue this. However, shortly thereafter, it was replaced in modified form, and with no explanation, here. Well, hmm. I started looking around at other battle's infoboxes to see if I could get some direction - and there is no standard on this. Battle of Long Island does not include Hessians as belligerants, although they clearly participated (and are listed seperately under the "strength" box), while the Battle of Fort Washington does include Hessians as separate belligerents. I left a notice similar to this one on the user's talk page and on the article's talk page, but there has not been an answer yet. Granted, it's been only a day, but I still think I should get some opinion here.

Although I think it's logical not to include Hessians as belligerents, I don't feel too strongly about it and could be convinced to go the other way, as long as we have some standardization. Of course, this opens up a much larger can of worms, in that there are many, many other issues with the separate battle articles that need to be standardized as well. For the time being, though, let's just figure out this small issue. Tan | 39 16:37, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

The Hessians were mercenaries, not really concerned with the overall conflict or having any stake in the result of the war itself, so I agree, that they are not really belligerents. Including them in the force "strength" area would be appropriate in my opinion.
Glad to see another person taking interest in the task force dashiellx (talk) 11:01, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
When this came up before, somewhere, I think the consensus was basically as you guys have it, except on those occasions where the Hessians (or any auxiliaries) were the primary or major force on one side of an engagement, such as the Battle of Trenton. As the guideline for the infobox says about the "belligerent" field:

This is most commonly the countries whose forces took part in the conflict; however, larger groups (such as alliances or international organizations) or smaller ones (such as particular units, formations, or groups) may be indicated if doing so improves reader understanding.

At Trenton, it would not exactly help the reader to list "British" as a belligerent, unless one wrote something like "Hessians (British auxiliaries)", which may be just a long way of saying "Hessians". Since the main purpose of the infobox is to help readers know at a glance what is going on, Hessians can be listed as the "belligerent" where they are the primary actors. —Kevin Myers 12:54, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
I think that's pretty much what common practice favors now. The key point, I think, is to make it easy to identify who's fighting whom. "Hessians (British auxiliaries)" may be wordier, but may also make it easier for a reader unfamiliar with the topic to understand that the Hessians were, indeed, in British employ rather than pursuing their own interests. Alternately, an appropriate link may suffice; the Hessian article is pretty decent, but I'd suggest considering whether a more focused article (e.g. Hessian regiments in the British military or something of the sort) might not be useful, if only as a link target. Kirill 15:08, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Another approach would be a title like Hessians in the American Revolution. Despite the title, the article would make clear, of course, that not all "Hessians" were really Hessians. —Kevin Myers 15:20, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
I know this is too late to contribute anything meaningful, but since this discussion ended with two dead links, here are the two articles that deal directly with the topic: Germans in the American Revolution and Hessian (soldiers). Mingusboodle (talk) 05:42, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Peer review notice

Hiya to the rare person who stops by here. I have listed Landing at Kip's Bay for peer review here: Wikipedia:Peer review/Landing at Kip's Bay/archive1. Please stop by and add your two cents! Tan | 39 01:10, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Pyrrhic victory discussion

This is an issue that seems to come up once in awhile. See my recent one-sided discussion at Ctsquared's talk page about his changing the Second Battle of Trenton's result to an American victory, from a Pyrrhic British one. My opinion is that this, like the Battle of Bunker Hill, was a pyrrhic British victory. Comments? Tan | 39 23:37, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

In any content dispute on Wikipedia, the very first question that must be answered is: What do the published secondary sources say? A common mistake Wikipedia editors make is to think that they should analyze the evidence and come to a conclusion, but that's original research and not allowed here. I'm not saying that's what either of your are doing; I'm just saying that finding out exactly what the sources say is the next step in resolving the question, rather than asking for other opinions. What does Fischer say? How does Ketchum characterize the outcome? If the battle was a "pyrrhic British victory", which historians have called it this? Discuss the sources rather than the evidence. —Kevin Myers 00:19, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Well, shoot. As a usually relentless advocate of WP:V, I can't believe I did this. As you probably knew all along, this is considered an American victory by two sources I have at hand. Griffith states, "Howe described Trenton as an unfortunate and untimely defeat" (pp. 342-3, although this is a sort of blanket statement from Dec. 26 to Jan. 3). Fischer states it less ambiguously on page 307 of Washington's Crossing: "For the American troops it was a great victory". Sigh. I'm going to hang my tail, change this back, and take this as a valuable lesson to never assume. Thanks, Kevin. Tan | 39 00:52, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
Ah, I never actually changed it. That makes me feel a little better. Tan | 39 00:55, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
On a slightly unrelated note, if anyone wants to get in on a discussion regarding a difference in references regarding the Battle of Harlem Heights, you can participate in a discussion on its talk page. Tan | 39 15:11, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Belligerent Discussion

There seems to be some disagreement on the team belligerent. In several info boxes for battles of the Revolutionary War, some have put United States and Great Britain as the belligerents while in others Continental Army and British Army have been used.

I really think this should be standardized. My understanding of the word belligerent is that it refers to a state or nation at war. Wikipedia's own entry for Belligerent I think is in agreement with me. I do not think belligerent means the forces those states/nations employ in the war.

Perhaps the info box templete could be expanded to include not only a Belligerent line, but a Forces line. This would be useful for battles in which only Militia were used or where Hessian forces were the only force engaged.

dashiellx (talk) 11:11, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

The "Belligerent" field was, until recently, labeled "Combatants". This creates some problems when one or both of the sides aren't "belligerents" by the modern definition of the term. Personally I think the field could be relabeled "Opponents", which could be used for states on war-level articles, and forces for small battles. Some discussion of this field is ongoing here, where I suppose we should continue the discussion since it's not specific to the American Revolution. —Kevin Myers 13:20, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Yes, I'd suggest waiting before the field name stabilizes before making any large-scale changes in response to it. Kirill 13:26, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Kevin, thanks for the heads up on the main project page. I also agree with Kirill that all changes to Belligerents be put on hold until some sort of consensus is developed. dashiellx (talk) 15:00, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Who Reviews Articles for Classification

Just wondering who reviews articles and determines if they meet the criteria for B and GA status? dashiellx (talk) 15:13, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Anyone can review articles against the B-Class criteria, but GA reviews go through a separate external process; see WP:MHA for more details. Kirill 15:31, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Thank you, Krill. As I wrote the John Gunby article, I don't think it appropriate for me to review it for B Status. I believe I have met all the criteria for B, if not GA. I was just wondering how to get someone to review it. Thanks. dashiellx (talk) 16:20, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Krill gave you the right link, Dashiellx - WP:MHA. List your article under "Requests for Assessment". The assessors there are good at doing it relatively quickly, such as editors like Roger Davies. Tan | 39 16:30, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Thank you Tan. I looked again and saw where to put a request. dashiellx (talk) 01:54, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Continental Army Organization

Does anyone know how the Continental Army was organized? I have heard/read terms like Brigade, Regiment, Company, etc... I pretty sure the term Corps was not used until later. And what was the organization below the company level? I understand Platoon is based on a 17th century term, but was that term in use during the ARW? dashiellx (talk) 01:41, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

List of Continental Army units gives a bit of the bigger picture. Regiments made up of companies were the basic building block, often organized into brigades and divisions. The terms "regiment" and "battalion" were used interchangeably. "Corps" was used at the time as a general description of a body of men, and used in names like Ottendorf's Corps. Continental companies were made up of squads. (British regiments used companies for administrative purposes but in battle fired by platoon.) You can read much more about this here. —Kevin Myers 03:44, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Thank you, Kevin. That makes it a little clearer. -dashiellx (talk) 14:53, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Eliminating "American" from American Revolutionary War

The is an ongoing debate at Talk:American Revolutionary War concerning proposals to eliminate the term "American" when referring to those folks like George Washington fighting the British. Since this is the most common term used in all Wikipedia articles on the Revolution, the elimination of this term would have repercussions that extend beyond the single article. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 15:45, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up, Tom, I appreciate it! Tan | 39 17:57, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
Glad to share -- it didn't seem like only a few of us should be enjoying such an uproariously good time. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 18:05, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
Yeah just what we need, more uproarers.  ;) --THE FOUNDERS INTENT TALK 18:36, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
Ha, yeah. Well, I tried to give an opinion without being too much of a dick. I realize that I might not understand the subtleties of the discussion, having stepped into it mid-stream. Tan | 39 18:39, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme

As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.

  • The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
  • The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
  • A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.

Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot (Disable) 20:58, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Siege of Boston

Hi. I have recently been working on the Siege of Boston, and am currently in need of some advice. During the siege, the Battle of Bunker Hill took place. I am not sure as to whether to include those casualties with the casualties from the rest of the siege. Should I break it up in the infobox? Or just not include the casualties from Bunker Hill at all? Thanks.Red4tribe (talk) 21:22, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

A-Class review for Battle of Trenton now open

The A-Class review for Battle of Trenton is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Woody (talk) 16:15, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for American Revolutionary War

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 23:17, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

A-Class review for Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette now open

The A-Class review for Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Cam (Chat) 05:54, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

400,785,587 drummers

For over a week the Battle of Brandywine article said that 400,785,587 drummers died from the battle; we might need some more watchers of the individual battles so this doesn't happen again.--Gen. Bedford his Forest 22:11, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Wow! As far as I knew, only 234,459,343 drummers were lost. Damn vandals! —Kevin Myers 22:52, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Peer review for Siege of Boston now open

The peer review for Siege of Boston is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Kirill (prof) 00:23, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

A-Class review for Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment now open

The A-Class review for Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! -MBK004 19:01, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Campaignbox American Revolutionary War: American Waters, actions before 1778

Hey, ho, I have a question about {{Campaignbox American Revolutionary War: American Waters}}, which I thought was better discussed here than on its talk page, since likely more people read here, and it may involve creating another campaign box.

I've been working on improving the articles in the early stages of the war (mostly Boston campaign-related, but also Invasion of Canada (1775)-related). In my travels, I've encountered a few articles about naval actions in 1775 (and just created one by splitting content from a less-appropriate location):

Someone put Battle of Gloucester into {{Campaignbox American Revolutionary War: Boston}}; my opinion is that it may be better placed in a naval campaign box, which brings me to the above captioned one. It is presently labelled: Campaign in North American Waters 1778–1782.

Presumably there are more naval events than the above three that rise to the notability of Battle of Gloucester. Options:

  1. make another campaign box similar to the existing one, seed it with those three
  2. change the label on the existing box, add those three to it

Comments? Magic♪piano 22:25, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

I would add those to the existing box and change the label to simply "North American waters". If we get more actions added in the future, we can split off new boxes as needed. —Kevin Myers 03:28, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
OK, I'll do that then. Thanks. Magic♪piano 14:56, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Merge Battle of Crown Point into Capture of Fort Ticonderoga

I've proposed to merge Battle of Crown Point into Capture of Fort Ticonderoga (discussion here). Crown Point was a minor military act, meriting at best two paragraphs mention in the Ticonderoga action; the current Crown Point article is fairly stubby. Magic♪piano 17:47, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Battle of Princeton

Hi,

I intend to start working on the Battle of Princeton which is, at the moment, in shambles. It will be a rather large task and I was wondering if anyone would care to help me, especially if you have a copy of Washington's Crossing by David Hackett Fischer. I have some other good sources, such as the Winter Soldiers by Richard M. Ketchum, General George Washington by Edward G. Lengel and 1776 by David McCullough. Anyone interested in helping either respond here or on my talk page.-Kieran4 (talk) 04:27, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

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