Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/Newsletter May 2009

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The Military history WikiProject Newsletter Issue XXXIX (May 2009)
From the coordinators
  • With end of year exams beckoning for many members, this has been a quiet month on the talk pages for Milhist. (If you are facing exams yourself, we all wish you the very best of luck!) During this quieter period, some of our most active reviewers are busy revising so it would be really appreciated if you can help with peer reviews or A-Class reviews. You can easily track articles needing review, by copying {{WPMILHIST Review alerts}} to your userpage.
  • This month sees our first newsletter editorial. The idea is to provide regular tips and hints to help editors get up to speed with our large (and sometimes complicated) project. This month's piece, by EyeSerene, explains the workings of the project's main template, which is at the core of the project's tagging and assessing activities.  Roger Davies talk 20:26, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Articles of note

New featured articles:

  1. 1968 Thule Air Base B-52 crash
  2. Arthur Henry Cobby
  3. Battle of Barnet
  4. Fort Ticonderoga
  5. Fountain of Time
  6. Neil Hamilton Fairley
  7. Operation Perch
  8. SMS Seydlitz
  9. SS Pennsylvanian

New featured lists:

  1. List of United States Military Academy alumni (Medal of Honor)
  2. List of United States Military Academy alumni (Superintendents)

New featured topics:

New featured pictures:

  1. The Battle of Schevening
  2. USS West Virginia (BB-48)

New A-Class articles:

  1. Albert Kesselring
  2. Frank Bladin
  3. Henry Burrell (RAN officer)
  4. List of Knight's Cross recipients of the Kriegsmarine
  5. List of Knight's Cross recipients of the Schnellboot service
  6. List of Knight's Cross recipients of the U-boat service
  7. Midshipman
  8. SM UB-14
  9. SM UB-16
  10. SS American (1900)
  11. Teddy Sheean
  12. Tucker class destroyer
  13. Yorktown-class gunboat
Project news
Awards and honours
Editorial: "How to use the Milhist template"

Welcome to a new occasional feature of The Bugle, where over coming issues we'll be exploring some of the roles, tasks, and technical functions that go into creating what archivist and researcher Simon Fowler has described as the best general resource for military history on the internet. As a project we can rightly be proud of that accolade, and we gratefully acknowledge the debt we owe to those dedicated editors from across Wikipedia that have helped to make the Military history WikiProject what it is today.

Many editors' first inkling of milhist's existence is when they spot our project banner on an article talk page. The banner can be easily added to appropriate articles by any editor, by typing {{WPMILHIST}} at (or near) the top of the talk page on a new line, and saving the page with an appropriate edit summary. This short form of the template will add the article to our project, and also flag the article as needing assessment and assignment to a task force by automatically adding it to the unassessed articles and articles with no associated task force categories.

As with many templates in use on Wikipedia, additional parameters can be specified. Possibly the most useful to include is the class parameter, because this will help out any editors who come along later to assess the article. To add the class parameter, edit the template markup to look like {{WPMILHIST|class=}}... and if you wish, have a read through the assessment guidance on milhists's quality scale and assign a rating from Stub- to B-Class yourself. A banner template with, for example, a Stub-Class article rating will look like {{WPMILHIST|class=stub}}. Because B-Class is assessed against a checklist it has some additional parameters, so when adding the project banner to an article talk-page, even if you don't intend to assess the article yourself it can be a real help to subsequent editors to include these too. This version of the template can be entered as {{WPMILHIST|class=|B1=|B2=|B3=|B4=|B5=}}. For detailed guidance on exactly what the five B-Class criteria are, see the B-class checklist.

Finally, when adding the milhist banner it's useful to assign the article to one (or more) of our task forces. This will help to bring it to the attention of those editors most likely to be interested in, and knowledgeable about, the subject. As with assessment, task force assignment is accomplished by adding a parameter to the template—in this case, simply the name of the task force followed by =yes (or =y). For example, to assign a Start-Class article to the Second World War and Canadian task forces, the template should read {{WPMILHIST|class=start|B1=|B2=|B3=|B4=|B5=|WWII=yes|Canadian=yes}}.

For a full list of all the banner template parameters and more detailed usage instructions, see Template:WPMILHIST; if you are unsure as to whether or not an article belongs with milhist or what task force(s) might be appropriate, or if you have any other questions, you are welcome to ask at our main project talk page. Happy templating! EyeSerenetalk

Simon Fowler, Guide to Military History on the Internet, UK:Pen & Sword 2007, ISBN 9781844156061, p. 7

To stop receiving this newsletter, or to receive it in a different format, please list yourself in the appropriate section here.