Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history
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Notice of discussion
A proposal at Talk:William D. Leahy that the article's date format Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:03, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
Raid on Bardia biblio question
Raid on Bardia Anyone know who Wilmott 1944 is? Thanks Keith-264 (talk) 11:09, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
- Check through the history and you can probably find the complete citation.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 13:30, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
- If you look at the Operation Sunflower article you'll find the citation for Wilmott. Something called Tobruk 1941 that appears to have been published in 1983 and is possibly a reprint of something that came out in 1944. It's listed as (1993) [1944]. Tobruk 1941 (Penguin ed.). Sydney: Halstead Press Intothatdarkness 13:35, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
- It's Chester Wilmot, Aus. war corres. who transferred to BBC in 1944 and made a broadcast about flying in on D-Day, available as "Transcript of a narrative recorded by Chester Wilmot, as BBC war correspondent with 6 Airborne Div, in a glider bound for France on 6 Jun 1944", although god knows where. But your Torbruk 1944 is available at the Internet Archive, here. ——Serial Number 54129 13:52, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks all, I checked the history to no avail, I wondered if it was Chester Wilmot because he wrote on the Desert War. Thanks all. Keith-264 (talk) 14:45, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
- Curious, though, Keith-264, as it was you that originally added Wilmot in March 2015... without the full ref. then either ;) ——Serial Number 54129 14:56, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks all, I checked the history to no avail, I wondered if it was Chester Wilmot because he wrote on the Desert War. Thanks all. Keith-264 (talk) 14:45, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
Well damn my rags! I didn't check my edits as I assumed it wasn't me. I must have adapted the Sonnemblume section from Sonnenblume. Regards Keith-264 (talk) 15:04, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
- No worries. It was nicely full circle really! :) ——Serial Number 54129 15:13, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
Bot assessment
Please ensure your assessment bot follows PIQA, because as of this post, it is not following this and posting differing assessments in the banner shells. Ktkvtsh (talk) 17:25, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
- I thought we opted out of PIQA? Hog Farm Talk 19:49, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
- That may be the case. My apologies. Ktkvtsh (talk) 19:51, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
- If you feel the bot has incorrectly assessed an article, report it on the MilHistBot talk page. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:42, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
- That may be the case. My apologies. Ktkvtsh (talk) 19:51, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
UGM-133 Trident II payload?
The text says it may carry "up to eight Mk-5 RVs". However, the infobox says 1 to 12. Those are good-sized warheads, so I would imagine it's the lower number, but neither has a reference. — kwami (talk) 03:44, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
- Trident II can carry up to twelve RVs, but the START II treaty limits them to just eight. In practice, they often carry fewer due to other treaty limits. reference Hawkeye7 (discuss) 05:04, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
Source review needed
If someone could provide a source review for Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Battle of Tinian, I would be most grateful. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 05:06, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
Good article reassessment for Combat Aviation Brigade, 10th Mountain Division
Combat Aviation Brigade, 10th Mountain Division has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Hog Farm Talk 13:47, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
Proposal: Improve citation format for SIPRI database results
Most members of this project are probably familiar with SIPRI's Arms Transfers Database, a vital source for information on the international movement of military equipment that is used in thousands of articles on Wikipedia. However, citing the database is more difficult than with most web sources, because it does not provide permanent external links to specific data. Instead, all citations on Wiki link to one of the database's search pages. Anyone who wishes to double-check a claim sourced to SIPRI must typically determine, on their own, what search parameters will obtain useful and relevant data.
I propose that we use the "at" parameter in the cite web template to list SIPRI database search parameters, as in the following dummy citation:
- "Arms Transfers Database: Transfer data". SIPRI Arms Transfers Database (Searchable database). Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. 0000-00-00. Recipient QQQ, supplier RRR, weapon category CatPlaceholder, designation NamePlaceholder, order/delivery completion/delivery year from 0000 to 9999. Retrieved 0000-00-00.
(Quote goes here.)
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|access-date=and|date=(help)
Here is how the source code looks:
{{cite web | url = https://armstransfers.sipri.org/ArmsTransfer/TransferData | title = Arms Transfers Database: Transfer data | author = <!--Not stated--> | date = 0000-00-00 | website = SIPRI Arms Transfers Database | publisher = [[Stockholm International Peace Research Institute]] | type = Searchable database | at = Recipient QQQ, supplier RRR, weapon category CatPlaceholder, designation NamePlaceholder, order/delivery completion/delivery year from 0000 to 9999 | access-date = 0000-00-00 | quote = (Quote goes here.) }}
I will personally use this format, or future versions of it, whenever I cite SIPRI from now on. Huntthetroll (talk) 21:14, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
- Single records can be accessed directly using the final entityId:
- https://armstransfers.sipri.org/ArmsTransfer/TransferData/transferDetail?entityId=245233 (Hohum @) 22:15, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks for confirming this. I was not sure whether it was reproducible. Huntthetroll (talk) 22:21, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
- It is possible that citing this way could require a large number of citations for a single statement. For instance, one sentence in the M48 Patton article currently reads thus:
Totally, when the Yom Kippur War broke out, Israel had 540 M48-series (with 105 mm gun) and M60/M60A1 tanks.
This single claim appears to rely on adding up the recorded number of vehicles received by Israel in at least three separate database entries, each of which would require its own citation using this method. There is also no way to show to a reader that any such series of citations includes all relevant entries from SIPRI, unless the reader searched the SIPRI database themself. Huntthetroll (talk) 00:08, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
WP:OR in lists of wars between country A and country B?
Dear colleagues, fellow military historians,
Something has been bugging about these various Lists of wars between country A and country B. Some of them are decent and have proper sourcing, while others are full of WP:UNSOURCED WP:OR / WP:SYNTH, especially when it comes to identifying so-called "predecessor states" of countries A and B, centuries before A and B existed, and that from a legal point of view may not be "predecessor states" of A and B at all. Example:
- List of wars between Russia and Sweden.
- It's sensible to regard the Swedish Empire and Union of Kalmar as predecessor of modern Sweden. In fact, it was just the Kingdom of Sweden this whole time. It's also fine to regard the Russian Empire, Tsardom of Russia and Principality of Moscow as predecessors of the present Russian Federation. But the Novgorod Republic? No. Novgorod was annexed by Moscow, and therefore wasn't a "predecessor" of "Russia".
- List of armed conflicts involving Poland against Russia
- This is a complicated article that probably deserves its own discussion. I've made some efforts to improve it myself, but I'm not sure about its future. In short, this just began as a DP helping readers to navigate between various articles called "Polish-Russian War"; the interwikis show that in other language Wikipedias this is still the case. But it has been expanded to include all supposed predecessors of "Poland" and "Russia". Again, what we call "Russia" here is quite doubtful. The Kingdom of Galicia-Volhynia, which despite what many post-2014 publications might suggest, is very rarely called "Ruthenia", let alone "Russia", in historiography. (The trend to call Galicia-Volhynia "Kingdom of Ruthenia" seems to have begun no earlier than 2015, if you carefully search for it on Google Scholar and Google Books). Like Novgorod, it was never a predecessor of the modern RusFed, because it was annexed by Poland and Lithuania. All wars in that section have lots of issues (2 of them are currently in AfD). Simultaneously, the way the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is identified as a predecessor state of Poland (exclusively) also raises questions, as its legacy has also been claimed by Lithuania and to a lesser extent Belarus and Ukraine. (Under international law, no successor state could probably be identified; everything after 1795 is arguably a new creation, such as the Duchy of Warsaw). And that is before we even start on identifying Kievan Rus' as a predecessor state of Russia as opposed to Ukraine (ideologically speaking the current Russo-Ukrainian War is in no small part about claiming the legacy of that medieval state). A little more justifiable is considering the Soviet Union a predecessor of the RusFed, as it is generally recognised under international law to be so, with the RusFed inheriting all treaties signed by the USSR, and memberships in international organisations such as the United Nations. Therefore, the Polish-Soviet War may reasonably be regarded as a war between "Poland" and "Russia".
- List of conflicts between Armenia and Azerbaijan is perhaps a good example of how this type of article might work after all. The opposing belligerents of the 1918-1920 war could reasonably be identified as predecessors of the modern states, and thus no WP:OR is being committed.
- Similarly, Indo-Pakistani wars and conflicts does not go back further than 1947, and seems a helpful and comprehensive overview.
So what we're getting is a mixed picture. There aren't many articles of the type List of wars between Fooland and Barland yet (probably fewer than 10 at the moment). In some cases it seems really questionable how a list is set up, while in others it seems fine and even very helpful. Therefore, I think we should develop some kind of convention for this type of military history list, the do's and don'ts, both for improvement of the current articles, as well as standards that potential future articles should adhere to. As outlined above, I think we should look at this from a legal perspective: can the former country C be identified as the predecessor state of the current country A under international law? If not, then we should probably exclude C from a list of wars between country A and B. E.g. Galicia-Volhynia (which is in historiography is sometimes actually considered a predecessor state of modern Ukraine rather than Russia) should probably be excluded from the List of armed conflicts involving Poland against Russia. Thoughts? NLeeuw (talk) 05:11, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
- @Nederlandse Leeuw, I have a similar concern. We shouldn't neglect articles such as "X's campaign against Y," "A campaigns in B," or "X's military campaigns and expeditions." I regret having created or improved such articles in the past. For example, in the article Campaigns of Nader Shah, the Mughal Empire, Ottoman Empire, and even the Russian Empire are listed as belligerents. To a newcomer, or someone unfamiliar with the historical context, it might appear that these empires allied against Nader Shah, which never happened.
- Similarly, in articles like Muslim conquest of Persia, Ahom-Mughal conflicts, Afghan–Sikh wars, and Gupta–Hunnic Wars, many figures are grouped into a single belligerent/commander list, and presented with a single result, overlooking intermediate outcomes that differed from the presented result. Interestingly, most of the people listed in the infoboxes never even faced each other.
- These are just a few examples, but several campaign-type articles have been similarly distorted. I myself created the article Ghaznavid campaigns in India, inspired by other similar articles, and now regret if it misled viewers. We can find several other military campaign-type articles where multiple campaigns are combined into a single infobox, creating confusion. A solution is indeed required to prevent readers from being misled by the infobox, which currently distorting the actual context. It is not surprising that many military conflict-type articles have only a few lines of written context but a large, misleading infobox. Imperial[AFCND] 07:39, 17 June 2024 (UTC)