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Online reference material?

I've been compiling a list of reference material for articles on the Classical warfare task force page. It strikes me that at least for us and the Middle Ages task force many of the primary sources of information are in the public domain, and usually available through online e-text sources like Project Gutenburg. I suspect that conflicts more recent than the in the 19th century may start running into copyright issues, unfortunatly. And of course, there are many secondary sources that are quite recent, under copyright, and only available in print, so this idea isn't a panacea for researching woes :)

Still, I was wondering if anyone out there might know of other usable e-text sources (by this I mean texts, not sites - sites one can find though Google), and be willing to contribute their knowledge? Perhaps, if there is wide enough (scope wise) response and information, that a "reference department" along similar lines to the "cartography department" might be spawned? If not, I'll maintain a list on the CWTF page. Just something to think about. - Vedexent 17:39, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Many of the great British historians—Gibbons, Grote, Macaulay, and so forth—should be public domain by now. A reference department (bibliography department, perhaps, to avoid dealing too much with random websites) definitely has potential, both in terms of gathering links to public domain sources and in terms of creating an annotated bibliography in general. The key question is whether anyone else would be interested, of course ;-) —Kirill Lokshin 17:45, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Agreed with the proper annotated bibliography part! As for interest... I don't know :) I think the immediate respond to the peer review process has shown that there are at least some people interested in getting "their" articles into FAC status, inline footnotes are a must for that, and who wants to go "dig up" reference material if you can just pull out e-texts from the list :) At least, that's how I'd think, and it is why I've been making the list of online e-texts in the CFTF (although my proper bibiography format is a bit off). - Vedexent 17:50, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Regarding the Middle Ages task force, yes and no. Project Gutenberg tends to archive secondary sources. The Fordham University Internet Medieval Sourcebook provides more primary source material.[1] I'd caution against using these as a replacement for more recent scholarship. They're certainly useful up to a point and easier on Wikipedia's readers than a jaunt to the library, but their scope is limited and history isn't a static discipline. I've added a list of online sources near the bottom of the Middle Ages task force page. Durova 21:33, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
Quite true. At the same time, I think that having annotated bibliographies available—whether the books listed were available online or not—would be useful to the project; the proper place for this (a central location versus separate ones in each task force) is a somewhat separate issue. —Kirill Lokshin 21:42, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I think a central location is more likely to be expanded by users. Everyone is looking at the same list, and a particularily good book that a user may have read - but which isn't relevant to the articles they are currently working on - is more likely to be added to a central list while they're looking it over for other things, than to expect them to track down the relevant task force, find their list, etc. - Vedexent 04:27, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Here's my question about a central location: how would you organize it? Durova 14:34, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

In sections chronologically (c.f. the campaignbox list) and the alphabetically within that? So we'd have, for example: 

...
== Medieval ==
* Book 1
* Book 2
=== Crusades ===
* Book 3
* Book 4
=== Hundred Years' War ===
* Book 5
* Book 6 
...

and so forth. Rather more interesting is the question of annotations: would we want a single annotation for each book, or individual annotations by project members (mini-reviews, essentially), or some other approach? —Kirill Lokshin 14:49, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Interesting. What if a source covers several eras and conflicts? Durova 15:13, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
I suppose we could list it in multiple sections, or in more general surrounding sections (e.g. list a source covering both Crusades and Hundred Years' War directly in the medieval section). If we do multiple listing, we might have to follow the stub listing form of putting "see main entry under Blah" to keep any comments in a single place. —Kirill Lokshin 15:19, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
This is really a time you'd like a database driven web-app, where you can associate individual records with multiple categories. Unfortunatly, that isn't happening here on Media Wiki. Unfortunatly, I don't think the conflict based sorting will work either. How do you classify sources which deal with a particular aspect of conflict (e.g. the Roman Legion) over multiple periods, and multiple "wars"? In Roman history at least, most primary authors cover multiple conflicts.
How I started to do it in the CWTF (and havn't been keeping up, unfortunatly), was listing the books alphabetically, by author, and listing the "relevant conflicts" after it.
e.g.
The other alternative is to keep the Period/Conflict/Author organization, and resign yourself to the fact that some sources will have multiple entries.
OR, have a master alphabetical list, with multiple Era/Conflict indecies, linking to the master list entry for a given source. - Vedexent 15:25, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
If you iron out the details then I'll be glad to transfer the material I've gathered at the Middle Ages task force. Regards, Durova 02:01, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Possible formats

I see three broad ways of arranging this:

  1. Pure alphabetical. Pro: easy to maintain, no double listing; con: requires additional comments about each book in order to make topical searching possible (but we may want these comments anyway?).
  2. Chronological by broad periods (e.g. "Ancient Rome", "Napoleonic Wars") and alphabetically within that. Pro: easier to find related works; con: overlap problems, still needs separate sections for general works.
  3. Chronological by conflict. Pro: very easy to find things; con: utterly unmaintainable ;-)

I think that the first option might be the most effective insofar as it won't require any sort of complicated categorization scheme; but I'm not sure how put off people would be by the need to search by going through the summary descriptions.

As far as the actual listing goes, I was thinking of something like this:

  • Bibliographical listing, preferably in a standard style. (Chicago? I'm not sure how well MLA handles older works.)
    • Summary information: major topics covered and/or some comments about quality of coverage. How NPOV do we want to keep these, though?
    • Places to download (for public domain works). Does WikiSource handle Gutenberg texts, incidentally?
  • Next bibliographical listing
  • And so forth...

Comments? —Kirill Lokshin 02:22, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

In the example I posted, the "additional comments" I made were basiclly "cribbed" from the Table of contents ;-).
One problem I'm finding - and I talked to you about it earlier Kirill, was how to reference electronic versions of printed books - such as the project Gutenburg version of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Both the bibliography and the footnoting are a bit fuzzy at this point. I tried using line numbers in the footnote, since I was referencing a specific electronic edition. - Vedexent 04:10, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
The ideal long-term solution would be to find the needed citation in a print edition and cite that; this may not be immediately possible, though, and I suspect that line numbers would be better than nothing in the interim. —Kirill Lokshin 04:31, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
Regarding the three general schemes, my concern about centralizing things is that it could make these books less searchable. If someone is really interested in Medieval history then there's a good chance they'll visit the task force where they'll find a targeted list that might include a few things they'll use. I really don't see the value added in combining various periods and geographies into a single alphabetized list. Other than a few well known names such as Gibbon, it's just about guaranteed that potential editors will want to search by subject. A subject archive could be maintained centrally (if someone volunteers to do it), but again - how would this make the project more productive than having information in individual task forces? Durova 07:25, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
Good point; and the task force lists won't run into scalability problems nearly as quickly as a central one would. In my experience, "if someone volunteers to do it" probably won't be enough; the amount of work needed to produce a good subject archive—as opposed to an alphabetical list—would be overwhelming. —Kirill Lokshin 15:56, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Is there anyone in this group who has a Bot and would be willing to help me fix a problem? Well, a lot of problems? It has come to my attention that there are many hundreds of links to Confederate, which is an uninteresting page about Confederations in general. I started going through and editing them by hand, but am running out of steam. The task would consist of going to the What Links Here page for Confederate and editing the American Civil War-related links to be either:

  • [[Confederate States of America|Confederate]] or
  • [[Confederate States Army|Confederate]]

as appropriate. If is too much work to differentiate in that way, changing them all to the first would be better than nothing. Thanks. Hal Jespersen 20:59, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I think AWB might also work for this. It would be interesting to know if anyone here has a bot for future reference, of course. —Kirill Lokshin 21:26, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Wehrmacht experts? I need your help

I have this photo here that is bugging me. (Take a look.)

OK so this guy is weird. First of all he's definitely wearing a Wehrmacht uniform. But, he's East Asian. Then his collar and shoulder patches look like a Schütze's. But the German eagle thing on his uniform, that I thought was for officers? And then, his cap. Looks like a Japanese one. AFAIK no Japanese troops directly helped Germany or even went to Germany. That means no Koreans either. Probably not Chinese either, since we sent only officers over (IIRC). I've heard about a bunch of Mongolian soldiers who got captured while fighting in the Red Army and then forced to fight for the Wehrmacht. Could this be one of those guys? Anyone knows who this dude is? -- Миборовский U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai! 03:25, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

The rank appears to be Gefreiter, judging by what is visible of the chevron on his arm. The eagle was for everybody. I believe there were some Koreans captured in Normandy 1944, but can't remember where I read that. Andreas 15:20, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
The Normandy talk page discusses the presence of Koreans at Normandy, although it isn't mentioned in the article itself. --Loopy e 18:22, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
Looks like he is an unteroffiziersanwärter on top of it, based on the schulterklappen. See the page on NCO candidates at my website at This URL if you are interested in more info. Those definitely look like tress loops on the shoulder boards indicating he is in the training stream for NCO rank ([[Unteroffizier) Michael Dorosh 19:14, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Kiwis?

A call to any Kiwis here, or anyone who just happens to be quite knowledgable. Over the next week or so I'm going to be working on expanding Military history of New Zealand and I invite any support! It's alright at is it now, but there are some embarassingly lacking sections and it would be neat to get it towards FAC. I'll also post over at the NZ WikiProject. --Loopy e 04:25, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Battle of Krasny Bor

Any help with figuring out how to label the outcome of this would be much appreciated. —Kirill Lokshin 19:16, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

It's usually safer to say "More people were dead after this battle than before it" for an outcome... - Vedexent 23:10, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
Well, the situation seems to be resolving itself; hopefully the bloodletting won't start up again. —Kirill Lokshin 23:40, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
I am afraid your early optimism was misplaced. Ghirlandajo seems bent on bullying to push his POV. Andreas 08:52, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
The restructuring of the campaignboxes might provide some relief here. This is a good example of why we should be getting the WWII task force up and running as effectively as possible; they should ideally be able to deal with this sort of thing. —Kirill Lokshin 15:43, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Battle Box Victories

The excellent point has been made at the talk page of Battle of Krasny Bor - why does "Victory" in the battle box mean "win" or "lose"? Surely participants in battles defined these differently, and historians also interpreted these things differently. Perhaps we can move to a more results - oriented system of "Outcomes"? Examples

  • Stalingrad: German 6. Armee destroyed, city held by Red Army, German territoral gains largely nullified
  • Normandy Landings: Allies gain solid beachhead on 6 June, consolidated 7 June
  • Battle of the Bulge: German offensive stopped at great cost to Germans, all territorial gains nullified by end of battle

The problem may be wordiness, but would prevent arguments about less obvious outcomes such as, apparently, Krasny Bor. Michael Dorosh 00:36, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

The problem, as you said, is wordiness; and people will still argue over such things as "great cost", "gains", "nullified", "solid", "consoldated", and "largely" ;-)
More generally, I think that a few unusual WWII battles shouldn't be the tail that wags the dog here; the remaining 5000 years of military history do mostly fine with plain "X victory" (and the occasional "Inconclusive"). —Kirill Lokshin 00:46, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

How about split the differences: "Decisive victory", "marginal victory", "stalemate", "ambigous outcome", and "see text", with more "wordy" explanations expounded on in the article itself. - Vedexent 04:19, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

We already use most of those (particularly "Decisive Fooish victory"). My point was more to the effect that we shouldn't be using the box for extended discussions of specific objectives and so forth.
"See text" is sort of silly, in my opinion; readers should be looking at the text anyways ;-) —Kirill Lokshin 04:25, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Well... perhaps "see text" and "inconclusive" overlap. I meant it in those rare cases where the outcome of the battle can't really be summed up in a neat 2-3 word phrase. (The French won the naval battle, but only because the only ship not sunk in the conflict was under control of French marines, but it was an English vessel - and lest you laugh, I had something just that improbably happen in table top wargaming once - I don't know if reality has ever been that silly) - Vedexent 04:30, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

A little tangential, but worth mentioning...I hesitate to use battle boxes for Medieval battles. It's hard to establish reliable combatant numbers for many of these battles. Where they exist at all, they're often recorded by some chronicler decades later who fails to distinguish between combatants and noncombatants - and given the degree of disagreement between different chronicles regarding identical battles, probably just guesswork in a lot of instances. The battle box format tempts editors to insert numbers uncritically and tempts readers to view them equally uncritically. This convention is fine for modern conflicts, but becomes problematic for older eras. Comments? Durova 07:32, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

No problem; just omit the unneeded fields. You should still be able to make general statements about combatants and commanders even without having reliable casualty counts, no? —Kirill Lokshin 13:50, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

My thoughts on this matter are very simple and I hope I can persuade my way towards a consensus. I've made only minor amendments to the system I've seen built up through several years of unspoken precedent and convention, a system that in my view has provided its own approval and justification.

I base my rationale on important distinctions between the types of conflicts sharing the common template:

  • Battles, subject to very rare exceptions, should restrict themselves to "Victory," "Decisive Victory," or "Indecisive" (and possibly a few minor variants). I think the simplicity and uniformity provided in this manner are a huge bonus, and I've yet to find a conventional battle that couldn't be described, and described accurately, in these terms. "Indecisive" covers a very broad sphere of possible outcomes and yet has a fixed, precise, and (fundamentally) unambiguous meaning. Vedexent isn't wrong to suppose that some battles can have tortuous and confusing results, but this ignores the fact that we're not out to conduct original research—we can rely in these cases on an historical consensus of who won the victory (beyond the strict tactical outcome, a sense of victory usually emerges quite clearly when taking into account political and macro-strategic consequences, etc.)
  • Wars are the exact opposite. By nature their results are so subtle and complex that Victory/Defeat would almost never suffice to describe them accurately. Take, for example, the Austro-Prussian War. The article currently lists the result as "Prussian victory." It seems obvious. But what about Italy? Do we forget Lissa and Custoza? And if we contend that Italy lost, how do we communicate that French and Prussian pressure won them Venice anyway? What about the effects on the smaller German kingdoms? Who's going to dictate what "victory" and "defeat" mean on such a scale? The result fields for wars should instead rely on the peace treaties that ended them, where the reader can find a detailed account of the salient results and usually a good idea of how the war ended, why, and "who won," as it were. A few words summarizing the treaty is also okay. (Examples: Spanish-American War, War of 1812)
  • The third category covers all those articles that might use a Warbox but that are neither battles nor wars: raids, bombing campaigns, revolts, large operations (i.e. Second Battle of the Atlantic), operations in modern asymmetrical warfare (i.e. 2003 Invasion of Iraq, Operation Swarmer). Here, and only here, do I encourage the use of descriptive phrases to sum up results as concisely and accurately as possible.

I'll be happy to hear what all of you think. A consensus on this could potentially save us massive headaches like the piece of Hell that erupted over Battle of Krasny Bor (which, I maintain, was always a pretty clear-cut German victory—the result doesn't become "less obvious" just because more people yell about it). Albrecht 06:16, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't quite agree with you on the issue of wars. While there are certainly some wars where the outcome is complex enough to require further explanation (these usually coincide quite nicely with the wars where the concluding treaty is meaninful enough to have an article of its own), there are nevertheless plenty of wars where "Victory"—or even "Decisive victory"—is quite appropriate. See Third Punic War for an extreme example; but there are many others. (We also have a "Territory changes" field that may be brought into play here, incidentally.)
I think the simplest way of approaching this would be to permit using descriptive phrases only when simple "Fooish victory" is insufficient; whether that insufficiency is (a) because we're dealing with a large operation and the result isn't so clear-cut or (b) because historical literature doesn't agree on a "winner" in the conflict is somewhat irrelevant, in my opinion. Kirill Lokshin 12:43, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
I agree with this in general terms. The problem, in my opinion, can still generally be addressed along the lines I've indicated (i.e. treaties, if they exist, should take precedence over other descriptors). Albrecht 15:57, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
That works, provided we apply some discretion. Treaties that have their own articles can take precedence, but more trivial treaties probably need not be given precedence, particularly when there's a dozen of them for a single war (surprisingly common in medieval warfare, or any other situation where separate peace treaties were frequent). Kirill Lokshin 16:15, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
Sorry if this wasn't clear: I meant links to treaties; clearly, if it was too obscure to merit its own article, a treaty doesn't mean much. The "Treaty of Santa Maria" ending the 65th Padua-Mantuan War in the 15th century, I agree, isn't very useful. Albrecht 16:35, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
Ah, ok; we're on the same wavelength here, then. Kirill Lokshin 16:44, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
The problem with battles is that some have purely tactical significance and it is easy to determine the victor or whether it is indecisive (I generally use the term inconclusive), but others have strategic consequences. For example, the Battle of Antietam was: (1) technically, a Union tactical victory (because the algorithm is that the first army to withdraw from the battlefield is the loser); (2) tactically inconclusive in a less technical sense because neither army prevailed; (3) a Union strategic victory for a number of reasons that are described in the article. The Battle of Stones River is in exactly the same boat. So some flexibility is required if the results are described in a single phrase. On a different matter, I disagree with the need for the category "decisive victory" because it generally is only POV. Perhaps "strategic victory" might be a better term. Hal Jespersen 15:29, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
  1. I use "Indecisive" when the battle has reached a conclusion that has not yielded a victory to one side over the other. "Inconclusive," to me, means that the battle was broken off or interrupted before a conclusion could be reached. This is comparatively rarer and harder to qualify: naval battles, for instance, were rarely fought to "conclusion," so I generally use "Indecisive" in all but very clear cases of "Inconclusive."
  2. "Strategic victory" and "decisive victory" are different. There's nothing POV about labeling Austerlitz or Jena "decisive victories." In fact, it's hard to do them justice otherwise.
  3. To me, Battle of Antietam is simply a Union victory. In cases where one side did win a smashing tactical victory while the other nabbed a strategic victory that proved decisive, i.e. Battle of Jutland, putting both in the fields is understandable. But not so when tactical results are merely indecisive and strategic results favour one side (this, or vice versa, makes up the great bulk of historical battles). The casualties and opening paragraph should in any case make it clear what the exact tactical results were, which side withdrew, etc. The Warbox, in my opinion, need only communicate the overall balance of results. Remember, it's a summary box, not a place to write the article out over again. Albrecht 15:57, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
I agree entirely on the "Decisive victory" issue; something like Battle of Grunwald is a somewhat different type of victory than Battle of Gettysburg, and "Decisive" is really the best term we have to describe that. Kirill Lokshin 16:15, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
In my opinion, Michael brought forward a very important issue. It's not just about a couple of obscure WWII battles. History is filled with examples of wars, campaigns, and battles whose results were indecisive; there are other cases in which both sides claim to have "won". I'd suggest the "outcome" approach sounds like a good idea. If editors steer clear from adjectives and adverbs, wordiness won't be much of a problem. Besides, many editors are already doing just that. Take a look at the infoboxes of Yom Kippur War or Cenepa War, for example. Andres C. 19:30, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
Er, I don't think there's a problem with doing that for battles that were indecisive (although just putting down "Indecisive" may be better, in some cases, than attempting to draw conclusions from a truly indecisive battle). It's when you try to apply the same logic to battles that do have a clear winner (I don't think many people would argue that Stalingrad was a German victory in any sense) that it becomes problematic. Kirill Lokshin 19:51, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
I think Yom Kippur War and Cenepa War are pretty much in line with what I've suggested: avoiding the use of "Victory/Defeat" in favour of the treaty or descriptive result. In the case of the Cenepa War no article exists on the UN ceasefire, but for the Yom Kippur War I've gone ahead and made the change according to my ideas. Judge for yourselves. Albrecht 23:14, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

There was a serious dispute over this at Battle of Borodino. I answered the RfC. By the end of discussion I would have been happiest with "marginal French victory." I let the editors reach their own conclusion. Durova 02:22, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Battles: Force size

How should we record the the strength size of each side in a battle, taking reinforcements into question? My suggestion would be to have the initial number of forces and then a "+" for all reinforcements added; something like "500 + 450". I realize that there is a potential problem with forces being pulled out, but I think that's pretty rare in a battle (as oppossed to a campaign), so I think we can safely disregard that. Oberiko 14:32, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I think this can be done on a case-by-case basis, depending on what role the reinforcements play in the battle; anything from adding them directly to the strength if they arrive early to simply listing them as "20,000 on the way" if they arrive late (or not at all) might be appropriate, depending on the circumstances. Kirill Lokshin 16:10, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Our project is on Wikipedia's main page

Chausse is among today's selections for "...Did you know?" Durova 02:24, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Military tactics category

Does something like this exist? To help group e.g. articles like Human Wave Attack or Cavalry Charge etc. They are currently in the category ground warfare, but maybe deserving of a sub-category? Andreas 16:22, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Category:Military tactics, presumably. Feel free to clean up the categorization scheme there as needed; the many sub-categories of Category:War are a horrible mess, so any attempt at introducing more order is welcome. Kirill Lokshin 16:29, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
Oddly enough, neither Human Wave Attack nor Cavalry Charge exist as articles if the dead links are any indication.Michael Dorosh 16:31, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
But Human wave attack and Cavalry charge do ;-) Kirill Lokshin 16:35, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
Hmm, further, a look at that category seems more like a list of glossary terms than a true encyclopedia. "List of military tactics" seems awkward. Would there be a benefit to renaming it "Military tactics terminology" or something more encylopedia-like instead? Just a thought.Michael Dorosh 16:37, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Military Technology

I just looked at the articles on Camouflage and noticed a metric buttload of different categories; I took Military camouflage and put it in the category Category:Military camouflage because it was in Category:Military technology but surfing around the various categories, it seems like a lot of duplication - there are categories for personal equipment, military equipment, military, technology, military technology...yikes.Michael Dorosh 16:45, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Signature blocks

What do the different coloured letters in the signature blocks represent?Kirill Lokshin Leithp Michael Dorosh 18:19, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

In my case it's a link to my talk page, it's only a different colour to make it clearer. In Kirill's case it's a link to his Esperanza sub-page. Leithp 18:47, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
The green "e" is a trademark of Esperanza. ;) -- Миборовский U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai! 02:59, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Which is somewhat unfortunate for those of us lacking that letter in our names ;-) Kirill Lokshin 03:13, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Well, green "e" and "s" then, I suppose. :D -- Миборовский U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai! 03:22, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
In corporate world that would be called trademark diffusion. ←Humus sapiens ну? 04:10, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Infobox Conflict?

Not sure whether this is the right place. I'd like to propose a template for a long duration conflict (either low-intensity or with occasional flareups) similar to {{Infobox Military Conflict}} but with less required fields. The first candidate would be Arab-Israeli conflict, and later perhaps also Israeli-Palestinian conflict, The Troubles, etc. Is there such an animal already in existence? Your thoughts/objections are welcome. ←Humus sapiens ну? 02:53, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Err, only three (four?) of the fields are actually required; all the others are optional. Is there something in particular you're having trouble adapting for those conflicts? Kirill Lokshin 02:55, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
I feel that Result=still ongoing and Date=unclear or, at best, end of 19th century would not look good. Also, some params would need to change: Leaders instead of Commanders, etc. ←Humus sapiens ну? 04:08, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Actually, "Result=Ongoing" is pretty standard among conflicts that are still ongoing; and what conflict are you working with where you can't provide (even rough) dates? As far as the labels on the fields are concerned, it is possible to introduce a way of changing them, but it's something of a can of worms, so I'd to avoid it if at all possible; would using the existing "Commanders" field be a significant problem for you? Kirill Lokshin 04:18, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
I agree that "Result=Ongoing" is not so bad. The Dates we can probably come up with as well.
I'd love to reuse the existing framework, but I think the problem is more complex than just "Commanders": I'm trying to systematize protracting conflicts that include not only overt/covert/proxy wars, but also economic boycotts, political measures, demographic dimension, human rights issues, etc. ←Humus sapiens ну? 04:44, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
I'd say that anything substantially more oriented towards political/economic/demographic issues, rather than military ones, is probably outside the scope of the project; on the other hand, must all of these be included in the infobox? For a complicated conflict, it might be better to have a very short infobox (with just the required fields and the combatants, for example) and leave the other details to the article text itself. Kirill Lokshin 04:47, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
I'll think about it. I really hoped to reuse something already in existence that would be less generic than infobox ←Humus sapiens ну? 04:58, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Battle of Cannae FAC

Just an announcement that someone has put the Battle of Cannae article up for FAC consideration. - Vedexent 14:36, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

It's listed in the announcements box already ;-) Kirill Lokshin 14:38, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Ahh... that is what is meant by "Critique". To me that is something like "Review" - which is a seperate category I see.... hmmm.... - Vedexent 14:59, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, the terms on there could use some improvement. If you have any better ideas, please don't hesitate to suggest them. Kirill Lokshin 15:01, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
How about "Peer Review" and "Featured Article Candidate"? Just thought I'd suggest the obvious. :) --Palm_Dogg 19:31, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
The FAC line also includes FARC, FLC, and so forth, though. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 20:00, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Osprey Publishing

I recently made in inquiry to Osprey, as I know a lot of our articles use either text or artwork from them. Here is the response I got. Palm_Dogg 19:33, 23 March 2006 (UTC) 

Dear [Palm dogg],

Thank you for your email.  All our material (text & artwork) is our copyright and is protected by copyright law.
Anyone wanting to use our material must apply to us for usage via our official Application Form.
Artwork appearing on third party website must be of a low-resolution quality and we supply the a/w to you on disc.  

Please pass this onto your contacts at Wikipedia, and get them to contact us in each instance, when they want to use our material. 

Yours sincerely,

Diane Hurdley
Permissions Administrator
Osprey Publishing Ltd
diane.hurdley@ospreypublishing.com
Stealing stuff from Osprey is despicable and unfortunately rampant among "amateur" websites. Let's hold ourselves to a higher standard. Osprey has good stuff; but simply scanning it in is illegal and the mark of an amateur. We can definitely do better than that. Michael Dorosh 20:00, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure how relevant this is in any case. What kind of artwork are we talking about here? Osprey's stuff probably isn't fair use, but any actual (old) artwork used in their books is fair game as {{PD-art}}. Kirill Lokshin 20:03, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Where are these images? Which articles contain them? Who has lifted text from Osprey? This is the first I've heard of all this. Albrecht 20:09, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Well, I ran a search and came up with the following list. There are also these images: Image:Horagai-conchtrumpet.jpg and Image:Horo-Japaneseheraldry.jpg. I originally contacted Osprey regarding using some of their work for the Battle of Badr article (I ultimately didn't) but in the process found this page on potential copyright violations. Because there are a lot of Osprey works used as references, and because I couldn't find any specific policy regarding them, I asked them for a clarification. For the record, I am not lodging a complaint. I simply posted this here as an FYI. Palm_Dogg 20:34, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Good work on your part, Palmdogg. As I posted earlier in my spiel on maps, if someone with artistic talent takes, say, a map from an Osprey book and reworks it, it become original work. Newer Osprey titles are valuable sources of info (older titles very in quality a lot more), but as with any source, the info should be independently verified and corroborated in any event. Osprey is simply the most convenient source, not necessarily the best. We're free to use their info, as long as the source is quoted, we aren't simply copying entire tracts of text verbatim (credited or not), and aren't scanning anything onto WP unaltered - unless it is public domain info that is reproduced in Osprey and identified as such.Michael Dorosh 21:03, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
This is good to know. Anyone thinking of getting the Osprey Publishing Website Artwork package?Dryzen 16:42, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
I apologize. Those two Japanese images were scanned and posted by me. The horagai picture should be deleted, as it is obviously new. But the horo picture, despite being photographed and cropped and published by Osprey, is of an original work originally older than copyright law. If you feel it appropriate, feel free to delete that image as well. I just wish there were a place to find copyright-free images to use... and not WikiCommons; we need to find a font of copyright-free images to populate WikiCommons with first before it can become useful. LordAmeth 17:08, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, Osprey uses historical photographs and artworks and such in their publications as well. Those that are either public domain or the photographer has released rights to them should be fair game. But Osprey's original artwork (like the centre-fold illustrations - which are really good most of the time) and copyrighted photographs should probably need the copyright holders' consent before we use them. -- Миборовский U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai! 23:44, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Peer Review Request Uriah P. Levy

Please comment on this article, thank you. Joaquin Murietta 00:45, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

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