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Status report for November 3

Trying to bring a number of separate threads together:

Project consolidation
We have, to the best of my knowledge, three outstanding projects that could be merged at the moment:
  • Castles: merge to Fortifications task force proposed; no feedback from project members; positive feedback from others.
  • Arab-Israeli conflict: merge to Middle Eastern military history task force proposed; positive feedback from project members.
  • Vikings: merge to Nordic military history task force proposed; no feedback at all.
I expect that we'll be able to merge all three in the coming weeks, unless something unexpected comes up.
Assessment drive
This is proceeding quite well. The newsletter with the announcement has now gone out; presumably now is the time when Roger wanted to put up the external ads as well?
Yep. Done this morning. I'll do a few more over the next couple of days. --ROGER DAVIES TALK 14:18, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
Should we put something up on the Community Portal? Do you know if the WPBIO drive did that? Kirill 22:00, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
I don't know. What do you suggest? --ROGER DAVIES TALK 12:31, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
Ah, found it: http://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Template:Announcements/Community_bulletin_board&oldid=139801745. Do we want to put up something like that? It's a bit pretentious, but might help us bring some more outside participants to the drive. Kirill 13:32, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
Future initiatives
We have a couple of things here that we might want to do once the assessment drive winds down a bit:
  • Old FA contest: assuming we have any old FAs left at that point. We could, if we desire, extend this to already-demoted articles, but that might be a waste of time given how much work some of them need. It'd probably be easier to get a random article to FA status instead.
  • Infobox conversion drive: this has been waiting in the wings for a while; there's still some preparatory work to be done, but I think this will be feasible in a month or two.
Internal housekeeping
Is there any interest in removing GAs or Stubs from the assessment hierarchy, or should we just leave things be for the time being?

As usual, any comments would be very appreciated. Kirill 17:16, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Incidentally, I've just run the first fully-automated update script on the member list. I've checked it over, and the output seems to be right; but I'd appreciate it if someone else could look over it and make sure nothing got horribly broken. Kirill 19:25, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
On another note, Grafikm has let me know that he's not going to be able to continue running the newsletter delivery bot. Does anyone know, off the top of their head, what other bots are doing project newsletter deliveries? It seems like the easiest thing to do would be to try and get one of them to do ours as well, rather than trying to set up a separate bot of our own. Kirill 17:48, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Second opinion needed on scope question

If anyone has a bit of free time, some other opinions at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Gheorghe Tătărescu on whether the subject is in-scope for us or not would be very appreciated! Kirill 17:05, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Category restructuring sandbox

In anticipation of a future effort to finally clean up the top-level category scheme and all the associated naming problems, I've set up a sandbox of sorts at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Category restructuring. Input would be very welcome; I think it will help significantly with getting something productive done if we can present a halfway-coherent plan to the project, rather than just asking for ideas without any concrete proposal to start from. Kirill 17:59, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Motto

Wouldn't it be nice for our project to have a motto? Just a thought.. --Eurocopter tigre (talk) 19:25, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Fabulous idea. Great thought.--ROGER DAVIES talk 22:03, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
Agreed. We should have a motto, but it would proabably be a good idea to keep our distance from any established mttos for current armed forces groups. In this way we can aviod favortism toward any particular nation or armed service group. TomStar81 (Talk) 01:30, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
I think it is a great idea. JUst thinking aloud I have a suggestion, how about They fight, we write. Feel free to disagree. :). Kyriakos (talk) 02:05, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
How about something along the lines of "The pen is mighter than the sword"; since writing is what we do :) TomStar81 (Talk) 07:10, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
I like it. Kyriakos (talk) 07:26, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Sounds good. Cla68 (talk) 07:33, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Cool, Tom. --ROGER DAVIES talk 07:53, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm glad everyone seems to like that; however, (refining my earlier comment a little), how about we go with "Our pens are mighter than swords"; in this manner, we can make it our motto by clarifying which project has the pen (our project, thats who :-). TomStar81 (Talk) 07:58, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Or even "The keyboard is mightier than the katana" or "The mouse is mightier than the mace" :) (Seriously though I prefer the unvarnished original.)--ROGER DAVIES talk 08:10, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Yes, the original does seem a bit better; we don't want to come up with something too dependent on wordplay. ;-) Kirill 11:39, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Indeed, plus a minor modifcation: "My pen is mightier than my sword" might lead to unfortunate typos :) --ROGER DAVIES talk 11:47, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
I see no problems with adopting it. (We should run it by the project as a whole before we do, though.) Kirill 11:42, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
I agree with both Kyriakos' and Tom's ideas, but I think the one proposed by Kyriakos sounds a bit more like a motto.. Anyway, if we adopt a motto, where should we use/place it? --Eurocopter tigre (talk) 17:30, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Provided it's reasonably short, we could easily stick it in lots of visible internal places (navigation bar, project banner, userboxes, welcome template, newsletter, etc.). Other than that, I'm not sure. Kirill 01:30, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
So, any other comments? If not, we can probably put the idea before the project, together with the two potential mottoes discussed here, and see what sticks. Kirill 02:32, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
Only one: We ought to be prepared for any other suggested mottos from the project and given them equal consideration, it may be tha someone else has a better idea for a motto than the ones siggested here. TomStar81 (Talk) 02:44, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
I don't see any problems with that. Kirill 02:50, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
Ok, I've started the discussion at WT:MILHIST#Project motto. Kirill 15:41, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Eyes needed at Steyr-Mannlicher M1895

According the talk page, the article was copied some time ago from the website on the talk page. I checked the net and found nothing substantial to support the claim, but just to be safe I would like a second opinion from someone higher up the contribution ladder. TomStar81 (Talk) 01:31, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

The last few paragraphs were all copied straight from http://world.guns.ru/rifle/rfl18-e.htm, as far as I can tell. I've reverted back to the version before the stuff found its way into the article. Kirill 02:43, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the help Kirill. TomStar81 (Talk) 08:54, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Chevrons @ 5,000?

Since we now have a contributer with a total of 5000+ articles for our tag and assess drive should we officially announce that the chevrons are to be awarded at the 5,000 mark? TomStar81 (Talk) 08:59, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

FayssalF has threatened 10,000, by the way. So we may need more than one new award. --ROGER DAVIES talk 10:41, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
The Epic Barnstar for 10,000, maybe? Kirill 17:38, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
And in between 5000 and 10,000? This gets tricky.--ROGER DAVIES talk 18:38, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps the editers barnstar? —Preceding unsigned comment added by TomStar81 (talk • contribs) 08:40, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

(Outdent) As this is now getting imminent, what have we agreed? We have three editors over 5,000. I suggest the Epic Barnstar for all three—they'll get the gold, silver and bronze wikis, too—and if Bedford has a Paypal account, I'll send him $50 for buy a few celebratory beers. Thoughts? --ROGER DAVIES talk 19:12, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

No problems here. Kirill 19:49, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Single article users

Any hints about how to deal with an editor who is effectively working on one article and following entirely their own agenda (which doesn't appear to include rigorous WP:NPOV)?--ROGER DAVIES talk 18:38, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

RFCs—formal or otherwise—are usually the way to go in cases like this. Kirill 18:40, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, Kirill. Informal might be a good route forward. --ROGER DAVIES talk 18:46, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Second Look?

I am begining to wonder if should have additional contributers look over other contributers lists when the assessment drive to ends to double check and see that all articles that we can tag have been tagged. From the tempo of messages beinig left on the talk page for the assessment drive I get the feeling some pople may be intentionally overlooking article that fall within our scope. Thoughts? TomStar81 (Talk) 08:43, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

I have been monitoring them a bit as we go and getting in touch with contributors if things are going wrong. I don't honestly think we will need to scrape around for articles afterwards; it's generating thousands and thousands of new articles, and just keeping track of those tagged will stretch our resources :) --ROGER DAVIES talk 09:18, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
Gotcha :-) TomStar81 (Talk) 10:37, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Status report for November 24

Without further ado:

Project consolidation
The Vikings and Castles WikiProjects have now both been absorbed into the associated task forces. The only things remaining are the Arab-Israeli conflict WikiProject, which should be getting merged in the near future, and the Scottish Castles WikiProject, which seems so narrow (and active) that I don't really feel like trying to swallow it at the moment.
Discussions on hold
We have a number of discussions that have wrapped up (for one reason or another) without really producing any practical solution. We'll presumably need to come back to these at some point; for the time being, to keep track of them:
  1. Rank capitalization: see WT:MILHIST#Rank articles: capitalization of title. This seems reasonably manageable, as we've only failed to move on this issue once.
  2. Personnel categories: this has been discussed extensively many, many times. Apparently there's some movement outside the project to standardize the various "Occupations by country"-type categories; but, regardless of that, we'll still need to deal with this eventually.
  3. Top-level categories: this one has been on the table a few times now, with no real resolution beyond the status quo. I've started up a sandbox at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Category restructuring, but the material there may not be what we need.
Future plans
A couple of things that come to mind:
  1. Infobox conversion: this has been piling up for quite some time now, particularly as we've recently upgraded a few infoboxes to cover some missing areas. Most of the instructions are still missing at this point, though, which limits the usefulness of the page for the casual template converter.
  2. Old FAs: do we need any major preparations for this, or should we just put the list up and announce it as a special contest?
  3. Vital articles: there's apparently some new contest that's been declared (Wikipedia-wide) offering prizes for improving "core" articles. It may be useful to go through that list and pick out any military-related articles we could work on; doing well in such a contest would be a good feather in the project's cap, I think.
Miscellany
I've asked Cbrown1023 to handle the delivery of our newsletter; so, assuming nothing comes up, that should be taken care of for the foreseeable future.

As usual, any and all comments would be very appreciated. Kirill 00:47, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Veropedia

I notice that some articles within our scope are being ported over to veropedia. Would there be any interest in modifying the WPMILHIST template to include a "veropedia=yes" option to show which of our articles appear over there? TomStar81 (Talk) 21:07, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. I admit I'm not terribly familiar with Veropedia or how it operates; if we have anyone in the project that works over there, their input would probably be quite helpful. Despite that, some thoughts:
As mere tracking, such a feature wouldn't be particularly useful, I think. There's no real benefit to the project in simply knowing whether or not an article appears on Veropedia (or any other off-site mirror, for that matter).
What would be useful, I suspect—perhaps moreso for Veropedia than for us—is knowing which articles aren't on Veropedia but ought to be. Here, an integrated tag could be quite powerful, since we could do checks based on other criteria (e.g. "FA- or A- or GA-Class + not in Veropedia = tag as eligible for transfer"). But a system like this would only make sense if there were some relationship, or at least an understanding, between the project and Veropedia; if Veropedia were willing to copy articles over based on our assessment of them, in other words. Whether the people involved in Veropedia would be comfortable with something like that, I have no idea; we'd need to discuss it with them, and I have no idea whom it would be worth contacting.
Personally, I think that such an arrangement would be helpful both for them (they'd have a ready-made list of vetted articles to move over, rather than having to hunt through them on their own) as well as for us (as we could essentially outsource the old "publication" idea to Veropedia). Kirill 21:38, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Poking around a bit, it seems that Danny may be the best person to ask about this; but, obviously, this would be dependent on there being interest on our side. What does everyone think; is this avenue worth exploring? Kirill 15:27, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

As I understand it Veropedia articles are taken directly from wikipedia, the article we edit here that are stable enough to be ported out are placed their. I found the place quite by accident after punching in the intro sentence fro the Iowa class battleship article here; it was something that caught my eye that I thought may be of interest to us here. TomStar81 (Talk) 07:38, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Lack of interest in A-class reviews

I've noticed that we are confronting with a lack of interest and participation in A-Class reviews in this times. For example, Battle of Vaslui, an article which easily meets all A-Class criteria, received only two support votes in four days (WPMILHIST guidelines says an article must have at least three support votes to pass - however, the article was promoted due to Kirill's good faith). Such things should not happen anymore, so I suggest that participation in A-class reviews should become one of the coordinators responsibilities and one of the facts considered during an eventual re-election. Thoughts/other proposals? --Eurocopter tigre 16:56, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

It's a workable approach, I think; certainly, if a few coordinators would make it a point to comment on incoming reviews, the potential for under-populated ones would greatly decrease.
On a mostly unrelated point tied in with the question of coordinator roles in general: a few months ago, a question regarding the Lead/Assistant split came up. Personally, I'm not sure that a tiered system is particularly useful for us now, given that the overall level of activity has risen considerably. Would it be better to do away with the distinction and switch to a straight slate of "Coordinators"? Or do people prefer the multi-level system? Kirill 17:48, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
In my opinion, we should have a straight slate of Coordinators only if all current coordinators(lead & assistants) have exactly the same role and attributions. If you think the Lead coord. would have other attributions/responsibilities than the Assistant ones, then we should keep the Lead coord. title. I also think that the Lead coordinator should have the ability to suspend/dismiss/replace assisstant coordinators which don't do their job properly. --Eurocopter tigre 18:02, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Well, I'm not sure whether I'm necessarily the best person to judge, but I don't really view the roles as being all that different. Do other people see them as being sharply distinct? Kirill 18:19, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Not really at the moment, but you are certainly more active than other coordinators.. --Eurocopter tigre 18:44, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
I rather like our current system; the only difference between the lead and the assistance is that Kirill is usually more active than the rest of us. BTW, has anyone handed out the award suggested for reviewing A-class articles? If we distribute that to a couple of people and make a big to-do out of it we may generate some interest in the process. And I do agree about ammending the role of coordinator to include looking into A-class review, but I would suggest including peer review with that ammendment as well. TomStar81 (Talk) 07:58, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
Yes, handing out that new award would probably help. If nobody gets to it in the near future, I can just go down the list and give one to the more regular participants.
If the only difference between the "levels" of coordinator is activity, incidentally, I'd take that as an argument against tiering rather than for it; there's no particular reason why our current system would select the lead to be the most active, other than coincidence. But that's just me. ;-) Kirill 13:36, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
(Note to self: needed image, dug up from the archives, is at right. It doesn't seem to have actually been awarded to anyone yet, even.) Kirill 13:45, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
The review problem—at all levels—is Wikipedia-wide, I'm afraid. I agree with Tom about awards for reviewers and making it more central to the coordinators' role (though some may see that as instruction creep). --ROGER DAVIES talk 08:10, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
With all due respect, this is our project, and I dare say that we are in a better position to judge what our coordinators need to do to maintain this project for the benifit of the entire encyclopdia. As I noted here, coordinators work for the benifit of their project, and thus may have certain executive roles reserved for those entrusted with the role. If requireing coordinators to take up the slack frequently present in the review process helps us, I think the benifits of instituting such a policy should outway any compliant from the instruction creep crowd. Thats my two cents (likely my last two cents for a while; I am only commenting now becuase I am about ready to go bed. Studying for these finals is exhausting...) :-/ TomStar81 (Talk) 10:11, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
One of the reasons that I always try to participate in A-class reviews (although I don't think I'm at 100%) is that I do think it's one of my primary duties as a coordinator. Cla68 (talk) 12:36, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Potential award recipients

I've gone through the various review archives for the past few months, trying to get a list of people that have participated repeatedly:

(Some of these are obviously more frequent participants than others, but the list is short even so.) I'd appreciate it if someone could look over and see whether I've missed anyone.

Beyond that, if there are no objections, we can make a first award of the review medal to everyone on the list, and announce it on WT:MILHIST. Hopefully that'll spur some additional participation in the reviews. Kirill 03:39, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Aside from the fact that I do not see your name anywhere on that list Kirill I say it looks good. TomStar81 (Talk) 07:35, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
Same here, Tom. I've fixed Kirill's modesty oversight, and awarded him the Content Review Medal, making him—appropriately—the first-ever recipient.--ROGER DAVIES talk 10:42, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
Thank you, everyone! Kirill 12:25, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
Ok, awarded to everyone, and announced at WT:MILHIST#Content review awards. Kirill 17:00, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Tag & Assess 2007

I've just been looking at the figures and the drive has slowed right down. (Inevitable really.) At this rate, we'll be lucky to hit 50,000 articles assessed. I was thinking of offering a supplementary cash reward for the most articles assessed 15-30 December. Thoughts on this? And any other ideas? --ROGER DAVIES talk 10:12, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Ok, it sounds good! --Eurocopter tigre (talk) 13:58, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
Looks fine to me (although I'm not convinced that it'll really make that much of a difference in the end). Kirill 19:26, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
Cash rewards getting "fashionable" these days? -- FayssalF - Wiki me up® 19:57, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
Having thought it over, I agree that it would probably make little difference. Coincidentally, tagging seems to have picked up again. --ROGER DAVIES talk 12:25, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
I'll wager that to be the result of more students getting into their Christmas Vacation. I know thats the case me :-) TomStar81 (Talk) 13:49, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
I guess so too. :) I hope some get very bored at home too and do a bit of wikignoming :)) --maroon">ROGER DAVIES talk 14:17, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
I have mixed feeling about that; if the other return to tag and asess the work will get done sooner, but if they do not return than that means more lists for me to do (and by extension, more rewards for me to get). Either way I look at it, its win-win :) TomStar81 (Talk) 14:25, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
That's true :) --ROGER DAVIES talk 14:28, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Dear all, I've been having a disagreement with user:Eurocopter tigre over exact copyright status about reproducing material from Air Forces Monthly. ET created five regional air army articles from AFM information, and I believe they give insufficient credit to AFM. As this involves a coordinator, despite ET saying 'yes' to my suggestion of raising it on the main talk page, I've brought it here first.

ET's text, 14th Air Army

The 14th Air Army (14 Vozdushnaya Armiya) of the Russian Air Force, was formed from the 14th Independent Army of the PVO from Novosibirsk, the 23rd Air Army of the VVS from Chita and the 50th Independent Corps of PVO also from Chita. Its zone of responsibilty covers a huge area in the Siberian Military District, and its headquarters are located in Novosibirsk. The aircraft are concentrated in the southern part of the territory, along the border with Kazakhstan and Mongolia. The current commanding officer of the 14th Air Army is Lieutenant-General Nikolay Danilov.

The most important force within the army is the 21st Composite Air Division, which operates a Su-24M tactical bombers regiment, a Su-24MR reconnaissance regiment and a Su-25 attack aircraft regiment. The unit is stationed in the eastern part of its responsibility zone, near the Chinese border.

  • reproduction of table of units from article
  • reference at the bottom: AFM Sept 2007
Original text, AFM Sept 07

14th Air Army of VVS and PVO; HQ: Novosibirsk

The 14th Army was formed from the 14th Independent Army of the PVO from Novosibirsk, the 23rd Air Army of the VVS from Chita and the 50th Independent Corps of PVO in Chita in the territory of Siberian Military District. It's zone of responsibility covers a huge area of 2,175 miles (3,500 km) from east to west and 3,100 miles (5,000 km) from north to south. The aircraft are concentrated in the southern part of the territory, along the border with Kazakhstan and Mongolia. Lt-General Nikolay Danilov is the commanding officer.

The most important force within the army is the 21st SAD mixed air division, equipped with a regiment of Su-24M tactical bombers at Dzhida, a regiment of Su-24MR reconnaissance aircraft at Bada and a regiment of Su-25 attack aircraft at Oloviannaya. The unit is stationed in the eastern part of its responsibility zone, near the Chinese border.

  • table of units and bases

I believe that there should be inserts when this kind of data is reproduced, along the lines that 'AFM says that the Army's zone of responsibility is X miles wide etc' because when an article is created like this from only one source, without saying that the text of the article is virtually a copy, it infringes copyright. This could have been avoided by finding some other data on the formation in question and adding it, but this was not done.

Am I right to think this is a copyright infringement or not? Buckshot06 (talk) 19:34, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

IANAL, but as far as I know, raw facts (e.g. statistics, technical data, etc.) are not subject to copyright protection; so the table of units is probably fine (but should be attributed regardless). Nor is there any need to have explicit in-text attribution for uncontroversial statements (but subjective ones such as "most important force" should certainly be cited directly to the person making them).
I think the only practical concern here is that the introductory sentences, as written, follows the language of the source too closely at some points; rewriting any similar phrasing would probably be appropriate. I don't see this as substantially a copyright issue, though. Kirill 19:42, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
The website notes the matterial to be copyrighted, but the lever for that is attribution: as long as the site is listed as a reference (or better still, cited in the article body) I do not see how this qualifies as copyright infringement. I do agree with Kirill statement about this not being a substational copyright infringment, although I would support a rewrite to make this a little more original. TomStar81 (Talk) 20:12, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
I rewrote the piece by saying several times in the article body that 'AFM says.. etc' and ET removed the references, saying it was sufficiently cited. Kirill, you would say, IANAL notwithstanding, that the 21st SAD sentance should certainly have a footnote in addition to the source tag at the bottom. Do I understand you correctly? Buckshot06 (talk) 00:34, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Yes, that's right. (But thorough footnoting is something that we expect regardless, so I doubt that in and of itself would be at all controversial. The in-text references are more likely to be so; I'd suggest using them only to attribute opinions, and just leave them off for purely factual details.) Kirill 00:48, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Right. The other half of the issue is that there are four other regional air army articles, plus 37th Air Army and 61st Air Army that are all in this state. Meanwhile ET is asking me, as a subscriber who has access to Jane's Defence Weekly, for a recent piece who covers the Romanian Land Forces - he wants to update the article. I have not sent the JDW piece, mostly because of this situation with the Russian air armies but also because I'd probably have to manually copy the text out - and he might do this kind of thing again! Would appreciate ideas as to what to do, as I'd very much like to see the Russian air armies pieces in a better copyright position but do not want to be inappropriately withholding information from people. Am I right to withhold the JDW article because of my copyright concerns over the other thing? Buckshot06 (talk) 02:40, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
In all honesty, that seems a bit unnecessary. I'm sure that ET had no intention of doing anything questionable vis-à-vis the copyright issue; it's just that, when dealing with particularly dense factual descriptions, it's sometimes difficult to gauge how much rewriting is needed. Once the two of you get a common understanding of what using such material entails—there seems to be some confusion regarding what manner of attribution is most appropriate—I can't think of any reason you shouldn't be able to collaborate effectively. Kirill 03:13, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Assessment and disambiguation pages

I've been poking through the pages tagged as class=NA recently, and many of them are lists, OOBs, and other material that should really be rated with the normal assessment scale rather than simply being shuffled off to "non-article" status. As far as the legitimate contents of that category are concerned, we have actual non-article-space pages (categories, templates, etc.), which are easy to identify automatically; aside from that, we basically have disambiguation pages.

I'm wondering if it would be worthwhile to add a distinct class to the template for disambiguation pages to use (allowing them to be categorized separately) and then deprecate class=NA. We'd then be able to bring all the other "non-article" pages back into the assessment system. The drawback of this approach is that it would involve sorting through about a thousand pages—the current class=NA ones—to determine whether they were disambiguation pages.

Would this be something worth doing, or is it likely to be too much trouble? Kirill 23:07, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I think it would be worth while; I know that WP:SHIPS has their template set up to allow editers to plug disambig=yes into the project template to classify the page as a disambigious page. I would also suggest create a "|class=list" parameter so we can classify list pages as such. I would not eliminate the NA parameter; that is as you pointed out useful for the categories and other such pages. Thats my two ceants. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:46, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
I've actually changed the template to automatically sort pages outside the main namespace into the appropriate non-article categories; there's no longer a need to explicitly mark them as class=NA. As far as lists go, I was operating under the assumption that our intent was to have them assessed on the regular scale as they move up to FL status. Is that no longer the case? Kirill 23:51, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Thats still the case. I am still struggling to get my sleep schedual back to normal, and as a result haven't been thinking things through all the way before commenting or replying to them, as would be the case here. TomStar81 (Talk) 08:36, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I've changed the template code to support the new class, and announced it at WT:MILHIST#Marking disambiguation pages. There will unfortunately be a brief swell in the number of unassessed articles as the disambiguation pages filter through, but that should hopefully be a short-term thing. Kirill 18:57, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Duplicate Talk Pages

How should we handle duplicate Talk Pages? That is: an article that has more than 1 Talk page pointing to it. Talk:Snohomish County Airport and Talk:Paine Field is one example. I'm new here; I haven't been able to figure this one out. Carl M. Anglesea (talk) 15:08, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

The Talk:Snohomish County Airport page is left over from a page move. I'll tag it for deletion. Thanks for mentioning it. --ROGER DAVIES talk 15:38, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
PS: This page explains all about deletion of pages: including what the criteria are and how to go about it. --ROGER DAVIES talk 15:42, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Can someone look in on Talk:Emergency Locator Transmitter? I believe this is another orphan talk page left over from a move. The history shows that other people think differently. Thanks. Carl M. Anglesea (talk) 20:35, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Okay, done. --ROGER DAVIES talk 20:42, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Tag & Assess

The official drive is ending on 31 December and, per the rules of engagement, at that point the Wikis for the top three scorers are handed out. However, I suggest we extend it, say until 31 January, for already-registered editors. Any tagging they do in January would be added to their existing tally and credited towards barnstars. If there are no objections, I'll proceed on that basis, and notify the editors concerned. --ROGER DAVIES talk 15:49, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Seems fine to me. Kirill 17:44, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
Actually, one point to consider: if this is only going to be for already-registered editors, do we want to continue widely advertising the drive? We'll probably wind up with additional participants signing up if we do.
Conversely, we could remove the major incoming links; that would probably make things simpler for us.
In practice, I don't think it'll make all that much of a difference as far as results are concerned; we've probably exhausted the available manpower a bit, so I doubt we'll get massive tagging over the next month. Kirill 18:37, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
Say run one last announcement on Noticeboard, tomorrow, and remove it plus the links in the template on 1 January? Sound right? Or dish out the Wikis as promised on January 1 and extend the drive generally for one month? And continue advertising it? --ROGER DAVIES talk 18:46, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
The first option might be the slightly better one, I think. Given the slowed rate, I doubt another month will make a big dent in the backlog, regardless of advertising. We'd probably have more luck rerunning the drive next year with an improved script to drastically reduce the numbers of false positives.
(But if others would prefer to extend the drive, I won't really object.) Kirill 18:53, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
Actually, I agree with you, I was just exploring the options. For the next drive–say at Easter?–it might be an idea to separate tagging for Milhist/task forces from Assessing as few people do both properly. The other thought here is whether it would be worth getting a user script (twinkle?) to help tagging. With all the TFs it's horribly complicated for newbies and slow for others.--ROGER DAVIES talk 19:06, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
I would suggest leaving a link to the unassessed articles; even after the drive ends there will prabably be a few hardcore wikipedians who, for various on and off line reasons, will continue to assess the articles there. Just a suggestion, but it may help the backlog in the interm. BTW, I got a new computer for Christmas, and I am trying to get all of my old, imporant stuff up and running on the new machine, so I am be off Wikipedia for a few more days while get things squared away here. TomStar81 (Talk) 20:09, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
Good idea of leaving a link to the unassessed articles. Good luck with your new computer and see you around soon ;) -- FayssalF - Wiki me up® 20:16, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
I propose closing the drive when it will be completed.. :-) --Eurocopter tigre (talk) 20:18, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
[Chuckle] :) --ROGER DAVIES talk 20:30, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
Why don't we make this a bi-annual occurance and run two tag and assess drives a year, seperating the two by roughly four to six monthes. In the interm why don't we let the drive end on schedual, but retain the assessment chevrons as an award for assessing the unessessed worklist left over from the end of the drive. In this way can still retain an incentive to encourage our contributers to clear out the backlog. I would also suggested reasessing the time we run the drive; October-December is the middle of the school year, and since it is our younger generation that came up with the computer and the internet savvy we may get better results from the drive by aligning it over a period of time when our school-based contributers have more free time to let loose on Wikipedia. Lastly, I would suggest that we come up post-assessment Q&A sheet to send out to our assessment contributers so we can get some feed back on what we can do to improve the next one; as this was our first major assessment drive I would be very eager to here what people thought of it, what we got right, and what we could improve on for the next one. Any comments on these suggestions? TomStar81 (Talk) 08:59, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
How would we need to schedule things to avoid the school year? We could run one drive during the summer, certainly; but what about the other one?
As for debriefings: good idea. Anyone want to put together a draft? Kirill 16:59, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Firstly, I think we need to stop the drive at some point as it will inevitably just lose momentum, and we need to keep a buzz going. It's a tedious job and people need motivating to do it. The sense of competition will certainly help that. That's why I think this drive should end on 31 Jan.
  • Secondly, I'm not persuaded that the bulk of the potential participants are at school. Certainly, the highest performing ones, Tom excepted, aren't. I'd guess an older profile. I'm also not persuaded that we need to sync to holidays (when, by definition, people take vacations). The secret is probably keeping the drive running long enough, say on a cycle of three months on, three months off, with people tagging when they can (evenings and weekends, or during quiet periods during the day). If someone is disciplined they can do 100/day every day with no problems. Many of the good-performing taggers, incidentally, have been relative newbies looking for something to do.
  • Thirdly, debriefings. Yes, okay. However, I'm not sure that a Q&A is the best way forward. My real life experience of these things is a very low return rate, so with a pool of a maximum of 90 respondents we may not get statistically significant results. What will certainly be more interesting is a debriefing discussion/workshop on a separate page, perhaps linked from here. That could expose grumbles, difficulties, ideas, etc much more effectively. I'll put something together tomorrow, that'll work for both. --ROGER DAVIES talk 18:46, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Regarding the variation of the timing: This I suggested from the viewpoint of the scientific methode: a hypothesis that altering the timing of the assessment drive may produce better results certainly warrents a look into, if for no other reason than to say that yes we did look into the idea. Who knows, it may yeild higher results, (or, admittedly, it may create an even higher backlog), but I do not know that for a fact, so it may be nice to determine that with certainty. On the issue of the debreifings, I will create a rough draft verion and leave it here for comments. TomStar81 (Talk) 22:52, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

  • Ok, here is a rough draft version. Feel free to add or subtract to it as you see fit:

With the conclusion of Tag & Assess 2007 the Military History WikiProject Coordinators are looking for input as to how future assessment drives can be improved. Below are a list of questions intended to provide feedback for the Coordinators so we can get a better idea of what we did well and what could be improved upon. Please make your answers as specific as you can.

  • Did you participate in the assessment drive? Why or why not?
  • Were the instructions clear?
  • What did you like about the drive?
  • What could we have done differently?
  • You may use the following space to add any further comments or suggests.

As for getting the word out to the people, I think the best thing to do is spread the word via the newsletter. After that...we can do one of two things, I think: come up with a system similar to FAC or FPC, where people can fill out an individual form (like Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history assessment feed back/username or something along those lines) and transclude that to a master page, or create the master page and have people leave there comments there. These are just suggests, and I would be open to hering anyone elses ideas on the matter. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:13, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

A single page would probably be sufficient for the expected level of response; subpages are just going to make things more complicated, I think. Overall, though, this looks good. Kirill 23:26, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Our Template

I've been thinking about our MILHIST template, and I have an idea I wanted to bring up. I was curious if it would be possible to modifiy the template to categorize those pages that no information on their associated task forces. Articles missing information on their task forces are missing out on a valuable resource for improvement, and I think we owe it to our task forces to red light articles with incomplete task force information. Thoughts? TomStar81 (Talk) 09:34, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

It would be pretty trivial to tag articles which have no associated task force (I assume that's what you were getting at?), but keep in mind that we don't actually have task forces for every topic, so the category wouldn't necessarily be something that could be cleared by tagging. Kirill 16:55, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
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