Back with the military historians: It's time for this year's edition of the Report looking at possibly our largest wikiproject: Military history. Since our last interview in June 2013, the project has had no break in its huge quest to document everything in their scope, that is, militaries and conflicts of the past. As usual, its participants were eager to answer the questions posed by The Signpost and update us on how they are doing.
These are previous editions of the WikiProject Report related to today's topic. For more old Reports, visit the archive.
It's time for this year's edition of the Report looking at possibly our largest WikiProject: Military history. Since our last interview in June 2013, the project has had no break in its huge quest to document everything in their scope, that is, militaries and conflicts of the past. As usual, its participants were eager to answer the questions posed by The Signpost and update us on how they are doing. So without further ado, here are TomStar81, Adam Cuerden, Peacemaker67, Hawkeye7 and Nick-D.
Can you tell us about any events that have happened this year at WikiProject Military history? Have there been any contests, reached milestones or promoted significant featured content in 2014?
TomStar81: Well the big one for us was the commencement of the centennial anniversary of World War I, which we marked with a handful of Op-Ed pieces, and added a new section to our in house news letter covering the major battles, campaigns, and events of the First World War for the project members to keep apprised of as we hit the anniversaries of these early battles in what may be one of the most important wars of the last century. Along with the centennial of World War I has come a slightly increased interest in both the World War I task force and Operation Great War Centennial, one of four so called Special Projects of the Military history WikiProject with the goal of covering World War I's major battles.
Adam Cuerden: My personal goal is to try and mark as many battles from the American Civil War and World War I on their 150th and 100th anniversaries, respectively using the featured picture process. The Battle of Franklin, a crippling defeat for the Confederate Army in the late stages of the war, will be marked on 30 November, and I'm pretty proud of my work on restoring a historical lithograph for that, but, honestly, I'm actually more happy about something that I had far less input into: I managed to find one of the artworks used by The Illustrated London News in their initial coverage of the Christmas truce in World War I. This was an event I would be ashamed had Wikipedia not been able to commemorate. It's not something I restored. The research to find it was "I know how to effectively use Google". But it's such an iconic event, and now we can commemorate it this Christmas.
Oh, and also, did you know there's photographs of the Battle of Nashville in the American Civil War? Actual photographs of the battle? Not yet finished, but... it's my current project, and it's amazing (and a ridiculously large amount of work).
Peacemaker67: Actually, the big one for me at Milhist in the last year is the 63-articleFeatured Topic Battlecruisers of the World. What an incredible achievement that has been! This is the largest Featured topic EVER in the history of WP (no footlights required). Five editors were honoured by Milhist in relation to this Featured topic, User:Parsecboy, User:Cam, User:The ed17, User:Dank, and User:Saberwyn. There isn't anything I can say to properly acknowledge what they have achieved.
I would also like to mention a topic close to my heart, one that is heavily centred in WP:MILHIST but also has a central role in WP:Yugoslavia, and that is Operation Bora. Bora is a focused initiative to improve articles pertaining to the World War II history of Yugoslavia to featured status. It calls for collaboration on a span of battles, biographies, and factions. In the last year, Bora has produced one FL, four MILHIST A-class articles, 18 GA's, and 35 MILHIST B-class articles. That is not to be sneezed at, particularly given the language issues in accessing sources. While it might not be receiving mass support at MILHIST, it has generated support across several WikiProjects, including WikiProject Serbia and WikiProject Croatia.
Hawkeye7: A recent milestone was the project's 300th Featured Picture. It has also generated over 800 Featured Articles.
Last time the Signpost spoke to this project in June 2013, we were asking about Operation Normandy, an initiative of the project dedicated to the 1944 campaigns. How has this subproject progressed this year, and with the 70th anniversary occurring this June?
TomStar81: I'm not sure how well Normandy has been doing since its not an area I'm well familiar with, (although by proxy, as a maritime history editor, I've worked on articles for ships that were involved in the operation). I do know that this past June a total of four articles – Australian contribution to the Battle of Normandy, Falaise pocket, Battle of Verrières Ridge, Operation Perch – were singled out for attention on the 70th anniversary of the Normandy invasion as candidates for main page appearances as Today's Featured Article, and after the discussions Operation Perch and Australian contribution to the Battle of Normandy were featured on the main page on 14 June and 20 July, respectively.
Can you explain the role of the "coordinators" of the project? How are they appointed? Do all of them perform their responsibilities, or is the work spread unevenly? If a coordinator is unable to due to time constraints or other reasons, are they able to easily to resign the position? Would you recommend that a similar system of leaders is introduced to other projects – do they bring advantages?
TomStar81: In point of fact we have been asked these question so often that we created two Academy Courses – Becoming a coordinator and Advice from former coordinators – to help better explain the role for our members. Essentially, coordinators are a system we have found that aids the project by ensuring that a minimum number of editors are specifically charged with the maintenance duties for certain project run initiatives, such as closing our A-class reviews and handing out certain Milhist specific awards (such as our A-class medals and the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves). We are not actually appointed, we are elected to the general position of coordinator by the community in an election held once a year (usually in September). Before the election takes place the coordinators will discuss the election to determine the exact start and end dates for the election, and to find a consensus on the number of slots to be filled. Once these two points are sorted out, the page is open for nominations and voting, after which the tally is added up and the users who qualified become coordinators. Our Lead Coordinator is also selected by this process, as we traditionally offer the role to the user with the highest number of support votes cast.
As to the rest of the rest of your questions, we do have issues with an uneven work flow on account of the fact that we volunteer to do whatever needs done, so we do have some coordinators that are overly active and others that are generally non-participants in the work load. If a coordinator feels that he or she is unable to do what is asked of them they may resign without prejudice, and we have had coordinators in the past that have resigned during a given term (which we call a tranche). Lastly, I've seen a number of projects that have adopted our coordinator system, which suggests to me that the system has its merits for a larger project or an intricate project, regardless of the community's approval or disapproval (lol) of the use of such a system.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
Peacemaker67: We have around a dozen coordinators in this project, and this has hovered about the same number for quite a few years. I have been a coordinator for the last year and a bit, having been on WP for three years or so. The coordinators have made a significant contribution to MILHIST, mainly through oiling the wheels. We do the bulk of the GA, A/AL-class, and FA/FL reviews, with support from other MILHIST members, including former coords, and keep the project moving forward. We administer the awards processes and ensure consistency in assessment, we ensure successes are celebrated, and coalesce around poor quality articles to ensure they are improved before promotion. Despite being tagged by some as "gatekeepers", we promote a lot of quality articles developed by new editors, and hold older editors to WP standards if they try "to slip one through". I think we do a good job in general. Do we get every article right, no. But, on average, we do a bloody good job. I don't know what a lot of other WikiProjects do, but many could do a lot worse than adopting our model.
Hawkeye7: In addition to the regularly elected coordinators, we also have two coordinators emeritus, Kirill Lokshin and Roger Davies. They were elected to this position on the basis of their long-term contributions to the project.
Is there any significance to the Military history WikiProject's coordinator's insignias? Which members receive which devices? When were the insignias first handed out?
TomStar81: To the right are the three insignias used by the Military history WikiProject's coordinators, all of which are based on actual military insignias. The Coordinators use the 5-star insignia, which was used in World War II by the United States Army and United States Navy to denote officers that held the rank of General of the Army and Fleet Admiral, respectively. The 6-star insignia is used by the Lead Coordinator for the project, and is based on a conjectured design for a US Army or Navy officer that would hold the rank of General of the Armies or Admiral of the Navy, respectively. The Golden 6-star insignia is used to represent our two Coordinators Emeriti, and combines the design of the 6-star General of the Armies insignia with gold stars, which were used by General of the Armies John J. Pershing. Upon his promotion to the rank of General of the Armies, Pershing was given leeway to design his own insignia for the rank. He opted to retain the 4-stars he already had, but switched the material to gold in recognition of his new rank. Congress never formally recognized his insignia, so the design was never considered official. The five and six star insignias for the lead and assistant coordinators (as the coordinators were known at the time) were first handed out around 2007, while our golden six star insignia was created around 2009 when we approved a motion to name Kirill Lokshin (talk·contribs) coordinator emeritus.
The current number of members is approximately 1200, making it one of the largest WikiProjects around. Have you been successful in attracting many new members this year, and how much do new participants tend to contribute to articles relating to this subject after they have joined; do some appear to forget their membership straight away?
TomStar81: Speaking just for myself, trying to attract new members to any project here is an exercise in futility since editors (and contributors in general for that matter) will always work on what they consider their own little part of Wikipedia. If it so happens that their little corner of Wikipedia happens to be one of the corners upon which our project has some invested interest then I consider it to be a victory for the project as it means someone cared enough to help us out with an article by editing and/or contributing. As for the project as a whole, were not particularly active in attracting new members since most of the editors here tend to be men and most men tend to have some interest in military history, so we do alright. That having been said, we are starting to see some of the generally apathy that has plagued Wikipedia the last few years creep into our project – notably, our members seem to have mentally shifted from full throttle to cruise control, so we've seen a slow down in participation in some projects, task forces, and review areas. We do have some members who join but contribute little if any, but on the whole most people who join stay with the project. I credit that to our size: with so many areas of military history you'd be hard pressed not to find at least one you have some interest in.
Hawkeye7: Go into many bookstores and you'll see a section on military books. The subject is accessible to a general audience in a way that subjects like mathematics are not. This gives us a much larger pool of expertise to draw on than some other projects, but not that Military History is widely understood or appreciated. Create a university unit entitled "Military History 101: World War II" and watch the lecture theatre fill with eager kids. (Gary Sheffield has done just that.) Unfortunately, universities don't work that way. If you want to have a go at writing about Military History though, this is the place. With all the work that has been done, I think Wikipedia can be intimidating to newcomers. Someone was recently looking at our conflict infobox, and it's been lovingly converted to Lua. I think it's awesome, but I know some people find it overwhelming.
How long have you been a member of WikiProject Military history? Do you prefer working on articles related to particular subjects, people, or time periods?
TomStar81: This past September I marked 10 years on Wikipedia, and I've been with the Military history WikiProject for roughly 8 years. I spend my editorial time working mostly with battleship related articles, although I've been known to flirt with armored warfare and battle/campaign articles from time to time.
This picture of students going to man the barricades could be an illustration to the scene of students going to man the barricades in Victor Hugo's 1862 classic Les Misérables, however, it's from 1870, during the Siege of Paris.
Adam Cuerden: I've been a sort of follower of the project for several years, I've only really become an active member in the last two, however, when I finally stepped in and said "someone needs to curate the military history photograph collection, and I want to do it!" Honestly, it was military history, in part, that first started my passion for historical imagery; I was working on articles about the plays of W. S. Gilbert, and was looking through old newspapers, when I discovered The Illustrated London News. Their coverage of the Franco-Prussian War was both beautiful and engagingly written. The shooting of the elephants at the Paris Zoo to feed the populace during the subsequent Siege of Paris is probably one of the most memorable images I... er... didn't bring to Wikipedia. Oops. I really wish I knew what Victor Hugo thought of it: eight years earlier, he wrote Les Misérables, centring on the anti-monarchist June Rebellion of 1832. Then, in 1870, French Emperor Napoleon III surrenders to the Germans, and... that's when things start to get really crazy. The French literally kick Napoleon III out of his emperorship rather than let him surrender for them. The Germans march on Paris. The French refuse to surrender. The French are starving. They shoot the elephants at the zoo, and refuse to surrender. The French surrender. The French form a socialist commune, and refuse to surrender. Seriously, why don't people study this? It's amazing.
Peacemaker67: I joined WP and MILHIST almost exactly three years ago. In that time, I have helped 11 FA/FL achieved that status, and a total of 21 articles achieve MILHIST A-Class, as well as something like 35 articles reach GA. In an area like Yugoslavia in WWII, that is a BIG contribution. I'm pleased about that, but there is a lot more to do.
Hawkeye7: I have been a member of the project for eight years. In that time I have helped 40 articles achieve FA/FL status, and 75 A-class articles. I like the project's comradely atmosphere, and its ethos of creating high quality content. Despite the prohibition on original research, many military articles have the finest accounts of a subject that you'll find anywhere. There's always a tug of war for me between writing articles on which I have special expertise and no one else is likely to tackle, and ones that appeal to a wider audience. Some people think that military history is all about battles, but it is a much broader field than that. Over the last two years my focus has been on improving the Manhattan Project articles. I have taken the main article to FA, along with articles on well-known scientists like Robert Oppenheimer and Niels Bohr; but I have also created articles on subjects that are not so well-known, people like Priscilla Duffield and Edward Creutz, and topics the Project Camel and the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project. These are not what many people associate with military history.
In your opinion, what is the single best achievement of this project?
TomStar81: Hard to say. A great many of the project's initiatives, standards, and systems have been widely adopted by other projects on site, while the project as a whole has maintained a wide and impressive array of quality content. If the measure of a project's success is based upon how many other projects look to us to solve issues relevant to them then I feel that this is our single best achievement.
MisterBee1966: I believe that I have said this before, in my opinion the single best achievement of this project is the global team spirit. Exceptions to this statement aside, I believe the project members embrace a common understanding that helping each is in benefit of the result. Many members of this project have joined us from across the globe, naturally with a stronger emphasis from English speaking countries. The challenge here is that we sometimes have to engage with people who may not speak the English language like a native speaker, like myself; this deficit however is more than compensated and allows for a much more unbiased view on a subject area that can have many shades of gray. I believe this to be the single strongest asset of this project.
Hawkeye7: It was great to see an article that I created on the Singapore Strategy has been translated into several languages, including French, German, Russian, Indonesian and Arabic.
Nick-D: I think that the project's A-class review process and the page where editors can request B-class assessments have been remarkably successful in encouraging editors to develop high quality articles. I'd also note the sheer breadth of the high-quality articles which have been developed through these processes.
Anything else you'd like to add?
TomStar81: We're always looking for a few good editors, so if you'd like to lend a hand we would appreciate the help!
That's all with this project until, hopefully, next year. In the next issue we'll be talking to some islanders and asking how they get their work done. Before then, feel free to browse the archive for older reports.
Discuss this story
I'm sorry that I didn't get a chance to respond here myself but great to see the participation of the editors above, and tks to The Signpost for running the interview! Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 23:08, 28 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]