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Content Experts

This is a serious suggestion.

You "people" need some content experts. Otherwise, your historiographic efforts are going result in a meatless pottage of mediocrity.

Please consider using "Military Personages" instead of "People." A thesarus would be of immense help.

Best Regards, Philippsbourg

Military people categories

Apparently, as we discovered when trying to tag some of the relevant articles, the various military people categories are a complete mess, with inconsistent naming, structure, etc. I'd like for us to come up with a better scheme for this particular categorization tree. Hence, my initial idea:

At the top, we split Category:Military people into two category trees: Category:Military people by country and Category:Military people by type.

Category:Military people by country would be similar to all of our other "by country" categories, and contain things like Category:Military people of France and Category:Military people of the Holy Roman Empire. I suspect we'll have to stick with "Something of Foo" rather than "Fooish something" for the naming here, for the same reason we did it for the battles: some of the historical states we need to work with don't have good adjective forms, and we'd like a consistent naming pattern.

Category:Military people by type would contain both ranks (e.g. Category:Admirals) and other types (e.g. Category:Military engineers or Category:Military pilots). Maybe there's a better name for this?

The bulk of the scheme would then consist of sub-categories formed by the intersection of one of the type categories with one of the country ones: Category:Admirals of France, Category:Military engineers of Spain, and so forth. This should help keep each category to a manageable size.

Optionally, we may also want a third way of categorizing people: by conflict or period. My suggestion here would be to avoid creating too many categories and just to create a handful for the biggest conflicts: Category:Military people of World War II and Category:Military people of the Crusades and so forth. Individual articles could be included in both a country+type category and a conflict/period category, as needed. (There might be an issue here in terms of wanting to create categories like "French admirals of World War II"; I can't think of any good way to name them without resorting to adjective forms, which would then be inconsistent with the rest of the scheme. Anyone have any ideas?)

Any comments or suggestions would be extremely appreciated! Kirill Lokshin 17:40, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

How about

• Military people (I don't like "people" but can't think of a better word")
  • Soldiers
    • famous generals, admirals of France, Canadian Chiefs of Defence Staff etc. eg George Washington, Field Marshal Rommel, Alexander the Great, etc.
  • Sailors
  • Airmen
  • Elite Forces Personnel
    • Commandants of the US marines, Special Forces, Andy mcNab, Generals of the Waffen SS etc.
• Military Ranks and Appointments
  • Actual articles on the offices held - Admiral (the rank), Chief of the Defence Staff (Canada), General of the Armies, etc.

• Conflict or period is an option but unnecessary in my opinion - General MacArthur commanded a division or better in three wars, and was instrumental in peacetime policy also.

Get rid of all the other categories, keep it simple. General MacArthur goes under one cat only - Soldiers, a sub cat of Military People. You can then put him in a period category - ie World War I, World War II, Korean War, etc. Don't need a "Military people by time period" category really, do we?Michael Dorosh 17:57, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Err, if we don't break it down by country, those categories will be huge. And I'm not sure how useful—or maintainable—a full set of rank categories would be, given the historical and international differences in ranks. Kirill Lokshin 18:04, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

I just mean categorizing all the existent articles, like Gefreiter, Corporal, etc.

How about putting them into national categories, ie

• German military
  • German military people
  • German military ranks

That might be a better way to go. But is a Prussian a German? :) Then if you want to categorize by conflict, do it within the nationality

• German military people
  • German military people World War II
  • German military people 20th Century
  • German military people Wehrmacht era

or whatever.Michael Dorosh 18:16, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

The problem with the "Something of Foo" type name is that it's then inconsistent with related categories, e.g. Category:French World War II people. I'd prefer to use "Fooish something" type names given the choice and accept that for some odd cases it will appear odd. Leithp 18:00, 21 March 2006 (UTC) (after edit conflict)

Fair enough. I'd just like to get a more logical structure in place; the exact naming is a minor issue. Kirill Lokshin 18:04, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

So, in a case like Category:British Army generals, we would have a sub-category Category:British World War II generals or Category:British Army World War II generals? I'd prefer the latter, but I'm not fussed. Also, how do we get Category:Royal Navy admirals into Category:Admirals by country? Leithp 18:41, 21 March 2006 (UTC) Ignore that, it isn't a problem, as I should have realised. Leithp 18:45, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

"Get rid of all the other categories, keep it simple." If this means getting rid of Category:Women in war then I'm against it. Really, although I like the idea of rationalizing the categories (I've been doing a lot of that myself), I don't agree with the idea of setting up one architecture and shoehorning everything into it. How about Category:Medieval Knights Templar? Cross categorization is usually a good thing. It's draconic to assign only one category to an important general like MacArthur and demand that readers intuit our rationale. Durova 19:15, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Okay, here's a somewhat revised version of my original scheme, given as a few example category trees:

• Military people
  • Military people by country
    • French military people
      • French admirals
      • French generals
        • French generals of World War II
      • French pilots
    • German military people
      • German military engineers
      • German snipers
  • Military people by period
    • Military people of World War II → Maybe have another step in here for "French military people of World War II"?
      • French generals of World War II
  • Generals
    • French generals
  • Pilots
    • French pilots
  • Military engineers
    • German military engineers
  • Snipers
    • German snipers
  • Women in war

The primary categorization remains by country; the relevant sub-categories of a particular type can then be collected across country lines for easy access. I've also removed the separate "by type" category tree in favor of putting the top-level type/rank categories directly under "Military people".

Obviously, the categories need not be broken all the way down in all cases (i.e. sub-categories for specific ranks/conflicts/whatever should only be created if there are enough entries to fill them). I've changed the nationality descriptors to "Fooish people", per Leithp, but have stuck with "of Foo" for the wars, as some of them have names that don't lend themselves to the other form. Further comments are welcome! Kirill Lokshin 19:43, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I like the general logic. Could you include a miscellaneous category for groups that don't fit within the basic structure, mercenaries and such? Durova 23:40, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Presumably we would put something like that directly under "Military people" (similar to "Women in war"). Or were you thinking of something else entirely? Kirill Lokshin 01:33, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm thinking of a kind of catchall for categories that don't fit the scheme. As they collect and patterns emerge they might branch out into the main structure. Maybe having them directly under "Military people" would work. Durova 08:12, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Next question, then: how should we name the period/conflict categories? The current usage seems to be a mix of things like "Fooish War people" and "People of the Fooish War". My initial inclination would be to prefer the second option, for ease in creating combined country+conflict categories ("French military people of the Napoleonic Wars" seems somewhat less confusing than "French Napoleonic Wars military people"). And do we want to have "military people" rather than plain "people" for all of these, since some of the larger wars would presumably have broader categories for non-military people associated with the war in question? Kirill Lokshin

I haven't categorized many people because of questions like this. I think it only becomes an issue with a large and undifferentiated set of names. I created Category:Women in Medieval warfare because there were hundreds of unsorted articles in Category:Women in war. Durova 13:53, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, that's the whole point of coming up with a consistent naming convention ;-) My general belief is that category names should be predictable; in other words, if I want the category for French people who fought in World War II, I should be able to guess the correct category name just by plugging "French" and "World War II" into a known naming convention. Kirill Lokshin 16:42, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

First step

For a first step, how about cleaning up the very top level of categorization? We have:

• Category:Military people by nation (with about half the sub-categories using "people" and the other half using "personnel")
• Category:Military leaders by nationality
• Category:Soldiers by nationality (of which many sub-categories use "soldiers" to mean "military people", apparently)

My suggestion, then:

1. Standardize the names of the sub-categories of Category:Military people by nation as "Fooish military people". (Do we want to leave it at "...by nation" or move it to "...by country"? Is there some distinction between the two I'm missing here?)
2. Do the same thing for Category:Military leaders by nationality.
3. Rename or merge any non-soldier-specific sub-categories of Category:Soldiers by nationality into the appropriate "Fooish military people" categories. (Do we want to retain "soldiers" for all land forces, or just enlisted land forces, or something else? Or abandon the term entirely?)

Comments on this would be much appreciated! Kirill Lokshin 04:30, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

I think we should do away with "military leaders" altogether, certainly for the modern era. I initially thought it referred to military dictators, it's not a particularly great title for a category. Leithp 07:22, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

It would be easy enough to eliminate it, since there's only a few "military leaders" categories and most of them are just collections of the corresponding "officers", "generals", "admirals", etc. categories for the country. I don't think it'll produce any substantial problems with the resulting categorization, either. Kirill Lokshin 15:43, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Infobox Military Person in ACW

I have noticed a couple of these boxes appearing in some of the stubs for American Civil War generals. I would like to ask those who consider this a good idea (I do not, for reasons I will state below) to avoid adding these boxes to stubs; there are plenty of finished biography articles that could keep you busy. The stubs are obviously missing a lot of information and sometimes the information there is incorrect. Therefore, the person who expands the stub (often me), has to correct not only the text of the article, but also the box, which is a pain.

<soapbox>
I have pretty much ignored these boxes (both for battles and people, although not for campaigns, which are sort of useful) and do not create them for articles I write, but I do feel a need to make corrections in ones that others add to articles. In general, these boxes add very little to a well-written article, and their superficialities often make them pretty useless, although ignorable. They have negative consequences as well. They are a fertile ground for inconsistencies to spring up (dates of battles, casualties, etc.). They also pose a minor barrier to entry for new editors. The entire Wiki technology experience was originally designed to be trivial to edit, encouraging participation, and now Wikipedia is going really bonkers with all sorts of templates and boxes that make some of these files pretty darn complicated. As to the Military Person box, the first few I have seen are really sort of a mess. American Civil War generals had way too many commands, being promoted from 2nd Lt. to Major General in just 2-3 years, going from company command to Corps or Army command, and fought in too many battles to be summarized in a useful way; in fact, just listing the Campaigns would be onerous for many. Ranks are complicated by brevets and USA vs USV. Units, which change month-by-month sometimes, are mouthfuls like "2nd Brigade, 3rd Division, III Corps, Army of the Potomac" and "Hoke's Brigade, Early's Division, Third Corps, Army of Northern Virginia." If anyone attempted to make these boxes comprehensive, they are going to be two screens in length and disrupt the graphics for half of the article. If anyone is really interested in such details, perhaps we can agree on common formats for tabular command/promotion histories to appear at the bottom of the articles.
</soapbox> Thanks for letting me vent. :-) Hal Jespersen 17:48, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Your objections are on the side of the editors. Sorry to burst your bubble, but while Wikipedia is, as you claim, meant to be easy to edit, it's primary purpose is to quickly, easily, and concisely present information to readers. Infoboxes in general, along with the opening paragraphs (at least if they are written acording to the polcies of WP:HEAD), form a "quick scan" summary of the information. This is all some people want and need, and should be part of every article, as Wikipedia is not divided in "Micro" and "Macro" pedias like Britannica.

Standardized inboxes and templates provide a uniform experience for the reader - and admittedly they do so at a cost in complexity for the writer, but not a huge one. Infoboxes take about 10 minutes to work out how they work, and infoboxes pretty much all work alike - the information fields ARE specifically and (usually) clearly labelled. Given a choice whether to make the "Wikipedia experience" easier on the reader, or the author, I'll take the reader each and every time.

Additionally, standardized infoboxes provide a "template" for relevant information for an article. Including them in stub articles is important, and it gives editors/authors an idea of what is missing, and what needs to be added. In this case, incomplete boxes actually help the editors.

I am not an American Civil War buff at all, so I can't address the conflict specific concerns you have - although it should be pointed out the the infoboxes are not meant to be comprehensive in all cases, simply there to provide the major points. More detailed and complete information should be part of the article. You don't need to list someone's complete military history in an infobox.

In short, I agree that infoboxes add complexity for the author, but not a great deal, and the benefits to the reader outweigh these costs, and they even have benefits for authors expanding incomplete articles. - Vedexent 18:03, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

(after edit conflict)

Meh. In my opinion, the infoboxes are useful as summary information, particularly for long articles; but not as an end to themselves. The person infobox, in particular, has some very flexible fields ("Commands", which you noted, is one of them). The original intent was to have only notable ones listed (that is, where the person's commanding of them was notable, not where the unit itself was notable), but obviously we have people putting long lists of the person's entire promotion history in there, which is counterproductive to providing a summary. Any suggestions of how to deal with this (whether by having a guideline for what to list in the field or by removing the more problematic fields entirely) would be welcome.

(The battle infoboxes don't suffer from this as much, since they've been around for a much longer time, resulting in certain conventions for how they're to be used. The concern of inconsistent information is not, in my view, any more problematic than merely having any information appear twice in an article; it's quite easy to get inconsistent dates/numbers across multiple sections, for example.) Kirill Lokshin 18:07, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

---

The point about ease of editing was stated to be about Wiki technology, which was developed before Wikipedia was created. Although I certainly think that the reader is eventually the most important person, you cannot discount the importance of attracting good editors to the process. (And when I say "editors" I really mean "authors".) If you set the bar too high technically, you will suppress the interest of people in disciplines other than computer science or word processing from participating. Certainly not all of them, but perhaps a noticeable percentage. Well, anyway, my only real point was: please hold off on these people boxes for stubs in the American Civil War. There are hundreds of completed biographies that are better targets.

Since I wrote my original post, I have been thinking about why this is more difficult for the American Civil War biographies than for others, and I think the problem is that there is such an enormous interest by Americans in documenting that war that personalities who would be entirely forgotten in other wars are studied and discussed ad nauseum. Although I do not frequent the sections on, say, World War I or the Napoleonic Wars, I find it hard to imagine that there are biographies written about all of the brigade and division commanders in those conflicts. Hal Jespersen 23:44, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

That's probably a fair point. Certainly, the existence of very good single-book resources for the ACW has given us a much better coverage of junior commanders than we have for other wars, since enormous numbers of articles can be written with a few books, or even a single one. Kirill Lokshin 00:00, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

I re-interate: A person of average intelligence can figure out how to use an infobox in 10 minutes or less, and then they know it "for all time". Use of these does not represent a "barrier" to those who are not "people in disciplines other than computer science or word processing" - even though they are a barrier to those that aren't willing to invest 5-10 minutes in understanding how a table or infobox works. Given that use of a home computer requires a modicum of understanding, I don't think that the "technical demands" are unreasonable.

If there are problems with the fit of the infoboxes to these articles, then it might be better to work with the people maintaining the templates to make them fit better. There are enough people attached to this Wikiproject - or who are not attached to this wikiproject but have noticed the templates and are using them already - who are writing and editing articles on the American Civil War that I think asking people to stop using the templates is really not going to change much. Even if we put big warning signs on the front page, enough people would ignore it, or not see it, that they would still use it.

In short - it might be better to channel the tide, not swim against it. You may be right in your complaints - but as no one has direct control over how people use Wikipedia, I doubt that any central authority could govern something like that. - Vedexent 00:04, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, we're not really in a position to impose anything; we have enough trouble just getting rid of the more egregious misuse of these templates. If there's someone in particular who's adding infoboxes to stubs, it may be easiest to simply discuss the issue with them; but if it's not limited to any particular individual, there's little we can actually do to prevent them from being used. Kirill Lokshin 00:12, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

I've often added Warboxes to stubs, Siege of Saragossa (1809) being a recent example, and unless serious objections present themselves I will probably continue to do so. The benefits are several: it provides a good starting point for further expansion, and it also integrates orphans or near-orphans into their general topics via the Campaignbox. It seems silly to say, "only contribute to an article if you have the time to expand the narrative–otherwise, get lost." The information contained in the Warbox doesn't appear by magic, by the way; someone has to find and verify it. Judging contributions qualitatively is a dangerous thing to do. On occasion I'll create a longer article in one go (like Battle of Badajoz (1936)), but if I feel like taking smaller steps, that should be my prerogative. Albrecht 20:48, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Dining in

Please comment, and hope it was OK to use template on talk page. Joaquin Murietta 07:47, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Interesting, if a bit short (the Victorian regulations from the British army should beef this up a bit; I'll see if I can add some at some point). But shouldn't the article be at mess night? Kirill Lokshin 12:50, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I put a rediriect at "Mess night'. The US Navy, US Army and USAF call it a "Dining in" and the USMC and Coast Guard call it a "mess night". Will look up Victorian history.Thanks Joaquin Murietta 14:12, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough; I wasn't sure how common each term was. If you can find a copy, Farwell's Mr. Kipling's Army discusses the Victorian mess in rather exhaustive detail. Kirill Lokshin 14:20, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

If it's primarily a British tradition and the US version is directly based on British military practice then it should probably be under the British name. I don't really know anything about the subject though. Leithp 14:29, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

World War Two or Second World War

Has wikipedia standardized which of these two terms will be used consistently? In the Commonwealth, Second World War in the preferred usage and is a standard convention among "serious" historians. How is it translated from other languages? I believe the Germans refer to it as "zweite Weltkrieg"? World War Two seems to be an American term but I wonder if they are not in the minority? Michael Dorosh 17:36, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, I for one don't really know. Though I will say that the literal translation from Spanish is "Second World War", though, being a Yank, I know it as "World War II" in English.Andrew 17:42, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I tend to call it the Second World War and pipe link to World War II in British articles, though I'm not consistent in this. Interestingly the article itself uses Commonwealth English in the text but has the preferred American title. I find it jars more with World War I though, which is a term you rarely hear or read from British sources. I always refer to that as the First World War. Leithp 17:47, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, if it jives with more languages, perhaps it is something we might want to move to change consistently throughout Wikipedia? Not to denigrate the Americans, but the term "World War II" always seemed somehow less "serious". Not a huge deal, but may lessen confusion among the seriously slow-witted who don't know they are the same thing. Or more importantly, offer perhaps a tiny shred more of legitimacy to our work, if references are consistent across Wikipedia. On the other hand, it is not a POV issue the way "Second Manassas" vs "Second Bull Run" is. :) Michael Dorosh 18:10, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I suspect that a global change wouldn't be worth the massive effort and confusion (the naming of that war is a giant can of worms waiting to be opened; e.g. Great Patriotic War). Interestingly enough, "WWII" seems to be the more common abbreviation, even in places that otherwise use "Second World War" ;-) Kirill Lokshin 19:29, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

All around, "Second World War" does sound less amateurish to me. "World War II" tends to reek of American hip-talk, and I think one could make the case that it's less common in serious academic writing. But, like Kirill said, any attempt to change the naming would probably trigger a third World War, so the best solution may be to tolerate both. Albrecht 19:38, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I prefer "Second World War", but tend to just go with whatever an article has already used if it has, so as not to break the flow. --Loopy ^e 19:44, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

2100 Hours 30 March, 2006

Please note that the U.S. Army Center of Military History, the Chief Historian of the U.S. Army, and The Chief of Military History, U.S. Army, all use the term "WWII." The title of the huge series of official U.S. Army histories known as the "Green Books" uses the term "WWII." Ergo, it is not "amateurish" to use this term.

Best Regards, Philippsbourg

Point taken. Albrecht 03:38, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

I also, personally, prefer WWII. If it is "Amaturish" then "Second World War" is cold, distant and frankly a bit stuffy. But it is useful for lessening the monotony of overusing WWII. Judicious authors, with a good "ear" for text and flow, will know when and where to use either or both.--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 04:31, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

WWII is an abbreviation for "World War 2" ("Second World War" doesn't lend itself to abbreviation so effectively we use the same). To be good English (strictly) the sentence should make sense when the abbreviation (WWII) is replaced with the spelt out phrase. However I am certain I can find sentences starting "During WWII..." GraemeLeggett 12:59, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

In french its generaly refered as "Seconde Guerre mondiale"(Second World War) or rarely "Deuxième Grande Guerre"(wrough equivilant of World War Two, but its true translation would be Second Great War or Great War Two to be exact). I'm of mind to side with Second World War. The ending with "War" seems to be a stapple of the terminology (i.e. Second Punic War, Hundred Years War...) Yet, World War Two just rolls of the tongue....Dryzen 18:13, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Signature trick

Somewhat of a trivial thing, but I'd appreciate any feedback on my new signature trick, shamelessly stolen from the similar Esperanza one (it's the silver h and the page it links to, if it's not obvious ;-). Anyone have a better idea than silver for the color, incidentally? Our normal lightsteelblue looks close enough to the regular link color to be useless here. Kirill Lokshin 20:23, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Uh, how about red. Crimson. Blood. War. -- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai!} 01:08, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

You mean like this? Kirill Lokshin 01:29, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

A bit jarring sitting right next to Esperanza green, how about this: Kirill Lokshin :D -- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai!} 03:18, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Meh. How about something darker, like this? Kirill Lokshin 03:37, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I like pink better. :p -- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai!} 04:23, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Just kidding BTW, I think crimson or pure red work just fine. -- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai!} 04:24, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Orbat format?

Has anyone come up with a nice format for presenting orbat formats on wiki? I have one in mind.

As orbats are sometimes VERY long and VERY detailed, they take a lot of space. They're definitely notable, as an orbat is essential for comprehending any battle. But they're not notable enough to have their own articles. But a detailed orbat detracts from overall flow, style and formatting on many pages, especially those shorter ones, light on descriptive, but heavy on facts.

Therefore I present:

The collapsible table!

Nothing to see here. Move along. The good stuff is down below.

OK, so I just updated Battle of Shanghai (1937) with this awesomely cool gadget, for a partially completed orbat 1. before the battle; 2. right after start of the battle. And 3. 2 months into the battle; and 4. 3 months into the battle; and maybe 5. aftermath of battle are coming.

Orbat prior to 13 Aug 1937 (click to show):

National Revolutionary Army Shanghai City demilitarised on Chinese side according to Shanghai Ceasefire Agreement (1932) Wusong-Shanghai Garrison Units (Peace Preservation Corps) Imperial Japanese Army Shanghai Special Naval Landing Force - Rear Admiral Denshichi Okawachi 1st Battalion 2nd Battalion 3rd Battalion 4th Battalion 9th Battalion Special Naval Landing Force reinforcements as of 8/1/37 from 3rd Fleet 8th Sentai NLF 1st Destroyer Sentai NLF 3rd Destroyer Sentai NLF Izumo NLF

Orbat soon after 13 Aug 1937 (click to show):

National Revolutionary Army 3rd Military Region - Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (20 Aug 1937) 9th Army Group - Gen. Zhang Zhizhong 36th Division - Gen. Song Xilian 56th Division - Gen. Liu Ho-Ting 87th Division - Gen. Wang Ching-chin 88th Division - Gen. Sun Yuanliang 20th Sep. Bde - Gen. Chen Mien-wu Training Division (part) - Gen Huei Yung-ching Wusong-Shanghai Garrison Units (Peace Preservation Corps) 10th Heavy Artillery Regiment [sFH 18 L/32 150mm Howitzer] 3rd Artillery Regiment 8th Artillery Regiment 2 Heavy Mortar Units 2 Anti-tank batteries 1 Light Tank Battalion Imperial Japanese Army Shanghai Special Naval Landing Force - Rear Admiral Denshichi Okawachi 1st Battalion 2nd Battalion 3rd Battalion 4th Battalion 9th Battalion Special Naval Landing Force reinforcements as of 1 Aug from 3rd Fleet 8th Sentai NLF 1st Destroyer Sentai NLF 3rd Destroyer Sentai NLF Izumo NLF Special Naval Landing Force reinforcements 18 - 19 Aug 5th Battalion (Sasebo 1st SNLF, 16th Destroyer Division) 6th Battalion (Kure 2nd SNLF) 7th Battalion (Kure 1st SNLF) 8th Battalion (Yokosuka 1st SNLF, 11th Sentai) Shanghai Expeditionary Force – Gen. Sekikon Matsui (16 Aug 1937) 5th Tank Battalion - Colonel Hosomi 7th Independent Machine Gun Battalion 8th Independent Light Armor Company 9th Independent Light Armor Company Independent Light Armor Company 10th Field Heavy Artillery Regiment 24 Type 4 150mm Howitzers 4th Army Mortar Battalion 150mm mortars (1887) [Taki/PWf] Field Operations Anti-aircraft Artillery 3 platoons Field Air Defense Team 3rd Battery 8th Independent Army Engineer Regiment 6th Independent Air Squadron Shanghai Dispatch Signal Unit 5th Independent Heavy Artillery Brigade 48 150mm Howitzers 6th Independent heavy artillery Brigade 13th Field Heavy Artillery Regiments, 24 Type 4 15cm Howitzers 14th Field Heavy Artillery Regiments, 24 Type 4 15cm Howitzers Army Logistics Depot 3rd Division - Gen. ? (landed 22 Aug) 5th Infantry Brigade 6th Infantry Regiment 68th Infantry Regiment 29th Infantry Brigade 18th Infantry Regiment 34th Infantry Regiment 3rd Field Artillery Regiment 3rd Cavalry Regiment 3rd Engineer Regiment 3rd Transport Regiment 9th Division - Gen. ? (landed late Aug) 6th Infantry Brigade 7th Infantry Regiment 35th Infantry Regiment 18th Infantry Brigade 19th Infantry Regiment 36th Infantry Regiment 9th Mountain Artillery Regiment 9th Cavalry Regiment 9th Engineer Regiment 9th Transport Regiment 11th Division - Gen. ? (landed 22 Aug) 10th Infantry Brigade 12th Infantry Regiment 22nd Infantry Regiment 22nd Infantry Brigade 43rd Infantry Regiment 44th Infantry Regiment 11th Mountain Artillery Regiment 11th Cavalry Regiment 11th Engineer Regiment 11th Transport Regiment 13th Division - Gen. ? (landed late Aug) 26th Infantry Brigade 58th Infantry Regiment 116th Infantry Regiment 103rd Infantry Brigade 65th Infantry Regiment 104th Infantry Regiment 19th Mountain Artillery Regiment 17th Cavalry Regiment 13th Engineer Regiment 13th Transport Regiment

As you can see, these take VERY little space. When collapsed. If desired, the reader can click open one, a few, or all, or none, of the orbats given in an article. The "Orbat soon after 13 Aug 1937" is quite long (several pages printed, I think) when uncollapsed, but when collapsed it's only a single line... this way, it is possible to cram as many orbats as necessary into an article in a stylish, artistic, easily accessible way without overburdening the article with badly formatted orbats that hurt the eyes.

Thoughts? -- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai!} 04:19, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

PS. It is also possible to make the box disappear,

Like this!

No box this way.

-- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai!} 04:22, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Quite clever, but a few obvious questions (which apply equally to everything using these new NavFrame classes):

• Does it produce something acceptable when printed?
• ...in non-Monobook skins?
• ...in a text-only browser?
• Will it work properly with other floating templates or images?

Somewhat arcane issues, to an extent, but something to consider before starting to use this widely for actual article content. Kirill Lokshin 04:34, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

And, on a separate note:

• Any particular reason for not using lightsteelblue? ;-)
• "Orbat" is a really non-obvious abbreviation.
• Is it worth wikifying the regiments? Are they significant enough to warrant articles, or just short mobilized-and-destroyed type affairs? Kirill Lokshin 04:38, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

And finally (I promise ;-)), the relevant links in the TOC no longer work; the auto-scroll mechanism is broken when the heading is hidden in one of these frames. Kirill Lokshin 04:46, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

1. Printer out of ink. Maybe I'll try tomorrow in school. :x
2. The actual hide function is not functional for non-Monobook skins ATM. :( However, the segment is simply displayed as they would be when uncollapsed, except without borders or the hide/show button. So it displays fine, but not to maximum satisfaction. Does kinda defeat the whole point of having collapsible orbats if they can't hide on certain settings, though.
3. Yes.
4. Because it saves 5 letters. I've changed one of them to lightsteelblue just to appease you. :D
5. Easily resolved by a ==Order of battle (orbat/OOB)== heading, I think. Or we can just use "Order of battle".
6. Regiments? I'm not sure. For triangular and square divisions these are pretty non-descript I think. Unless they did something major on their own, I think they should not be "full" articles.
7. Hmm, a localised __NOTOC__, perhaps? I'm not sure. Or get rid of subheadings in these and just use bolded text and/or font size changes.

-- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai!} 05:01, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Given that a localized __NOTOC__ doesn't exist (and I don't think the developers will add one just for our benefit), we'd probably be better off using either bolded text or some sort of table-like format. Given how esoteric some of the code is, it might be worthwhile creating a template (e.g. {{Order of battle}}) for this; on the other hand, I'm not sure how easy it would be to make a template that won't break easily. Depends on what format we follow for the contents, I suppose. Kirill Lokshin 05:07, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, I just "printed" the page using Adobe Acrobat and as long as the boxes are uncollapsed when the page is being printed, they will appear just fine. I did discover a few problems with the campaignbox and formatting, but those were due to the TOC and images, I believe. I think bolded text works just as well in this case. I'm not a code monkey though so I don't think I'm up to the task of making a template like this. :( -- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai!} 05:24, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, the "printable version" css doesn't seem to deal with these properly; it'll leave them collapsed by default. Kirill Lokshin 04:52, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

---

It might be helpful to include links to a few excellent articles, as examples. Preferably not the World Wars, since those are way larger and more complicated than the average article one would be editting. Brock 02:43, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Killed vs. Dead, Civilian Casualties

Here are some points to consider:

1) At the risk of stating the obvious, some soldiers are Killed in Action, others are wounded and die of their wounds later. I'm not sure how military historians count the second category. I would guess that you are only counted as dead if you die on the battlefield during the battle.

2) Some soldiers die of non-battle related causes, most notably disease. These losses should not be discounted but I don't know how military historians count this category. These soldiers are not Killed in Action but when you look at total troop strength, disease takes a heavy toll in wars up until and including WWI.

3) I assume that the strength box does not look at civilian populations. Does the casualties box consider civilian casualties? The civilian death tolls in sieges such as Stalingrad and Tenochtitlan were horrific. In a siege, the civilians are as much a part of the battle as the soldiers.

I'm not trying to wage a polemic here. I'm just trying to understand what the guidelines are and suggesting that they might be refined to consider the issues mentioned above. Richard 18:30, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

I suspect that's it is a hight individualistic thing. I think in most cases, wikipedians quote the sources they are using, rather than evaluating a particular criteria. If professor Q.Academe says 5,000 were killed in the Battle of Pokamungu, in his book "Silly Wars and how they got that way", then that's the figure Wikipedians will use. Hopefully they will footnote/refernce it.

I agree that "casualties" is a difficult and slippery thing to figure out - but in most case that is left to the primary and secondary historians, not Wikipedians. - Vedexent 18:54, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

That's pretty much what I've seen happening. There are usually footnotes or other comments provided for particularly unusual scenarios. Kirill Lokshin 00:48, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Current military operations (US) use the acronyms KIA (killed in action), WIA (wounded in action), DOW (died of wounds),
NBI (non-battle injury), DNBI (died [of] non-battle injury). Civilian or non-combatant casualties
would be termed collateral damage. Hope this is helpful.

Thanks

Thanks for the newsletter on my talk page. This has gone a long way since the earliest days when I was involved in it. The idea of a project newsletter is good too; that kind of service could reawaken old interests. :-) Eclecticology 00:29, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

DSO Recipients

As indicated on the category page for Category:Recipients of the Distinguished Service Order - I've asked the creator of the page if this is really necessary? The Distinguished Service Order was practically a gimme for any halfway decent battalion commanders and recipients of the various militaries and services numbered in the 1000s. VC winners I can understand, even some of the rarer Orders, but the DSO? What is the consensus among Military history project members? There are so many categories that it seems like a waste to introduce trivial ones like this. See Bert Hoffmeister for an example of overcrowding of categories. Michael Dorosh 18:33, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, we've started a #Military people categories discussion above that'll eventually get down to this level ;-)

In general, though, I would think that this is probably over-categorizing; but it's quite pervasive (see Category:Recipients of the Purple Heart medal, for instance), and I'm not sure how we can really deal with it on a case-by-case basis. Kirill Lokshin 18:43, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, it's not as if we can't spare the b/w or storage space for this category. Can't hurt. Besides, it's not listing everybody who ever got a DSO. It's only for those people notable enough to get a Wikipedia article. If they're notable enough to get an article their DSOs are notable enough. So I think it can stay. ;) -- Миборовский ^{U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai!} 22:21, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

True, but the bottoms of certain articles are going to have a few dozen categories if we include ones for every decoration. Which isn't really a pressing issue, but just something to consider in the long term ;-) Kirill Lokshin 22:47, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. Many (who knows if most?) DSO awardees attain high rank and do something particularly notable in life to merit an article in Wikipedia - their articles just hasn't been written yet ;-) To me, these type of categories (with the exception of cats for MOHs, VCs, PVCs, etc.) seem impractical, unwieldy, and incorrigible. Having said that, they're probably harmless ;-) SoLando (Talk) 00:32, 4 April 2006 (UTC)