This is an archive of past discussions with User:Abraham, B.S.. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
The Military history WikiProject coordinator selection process is underway, to elect nine coordinators to serve for the next six months. If you are interested in running, please sign up here by 23:59 (UTC) on 14 September! Voting starts at 00:01 (UTC) on 15 September and runs until 23:59 (UTC) on 30 September.
A new barnstar specifically encouraging and recognizing excellence in Milhist article creation and development has been introduced. Any editor who has made a significant contribution to three or more Milhist A-Class articles promoted since 1 August 2008 under the new A-Class criteria is eligible. Nominations for the medal should be made here; should list the three A-Class articles for which the medal is sought; and must be subsequently supported by three or more project coordinators, who will be responsible for making the award. Editors may nominate themselves or any other qualifying editor.
A new discussion about whether Milhist should adopt C-Class is underway. All comments are welcome.
The 2008 Tag & Assess Workshop is still open, seeking input on ways to improve the efficiency, user-friendliness and organization of future Milhist drives. All comment is welcome, especially from people who didn't participate in the drive!
Awards and honors
Durova has been awarded the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves in recognition of her exemplary work on military history featured pictures, sounds, and articles.
Ciao! Maybe you can help me with my new additions for two notable Turk commanders of the early crusades, Toghtekin and Mawdud. Consider: I'm Italian, and I translated them to English from French... Maybe they'll need some copyedit for language. Thanks and good work. --Attilios (talk) 07:49, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
I've had a look over the article - it looks in pretty good shape. I've made a few tweaks, but nothing major. To be honest, after Roger and Blnguyen had done their stuff, I hadn't expected to find much to do ;) It's an interesting article about a very brave man - all the best at FA. EyeSerenetalk17:16, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
Blamey
Regarding this edit, I think the line breaks are a good idea, but why expand the abbreviations? (Once again, the rank is now longer than the person's name - Is it not the person who is of primary interest, not his rank?) Thanks in advance, Pdfpdf (talk) 13:48, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
Hello there! I see you changed the sub-sections on this page from " ; " to " === === ". In the past I did this as well, but recently I began favoring the " ; " since it doesn't add to the table of contents, which I like to keep quite short, and the heading appears smaller and less in the way to me. I haven't reverted it, as that's not my way, just wanted to let you know why I did it. It's a small matter anyway! Kresock (talk) 15:16, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
Wark & Edwards
Hi, no problem with the reviews, I found the articles informative and interesting. I agree that Edwards is the weaker of the two, but I could not fault it too seriously against any of the criteria and think it still passes reasonably comfortably, especially with the clarifications you have made. I do think however, with Edwards especially, that further sourcing and expansion are necessary in order to make the next step and I'm glad to see that you are way ahead of me on that. Regards --Jackyd101 (talk) 06:14, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
Surprisingly enough, there actually isn't a great amount of information available on him. However, I do actually intend to expand it further; I have just purchased a copy of his biography on eBay and it should arrive sometime next week. With this as a resource, I should be able to expand it quite a bit further. If you are still willing to copyedit the article, then I will contact you once I have expanded it further, if that's alright with you? Thanks, Abraham, B.S. (talk) 09:17, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
Hm, if you find any relevant book on Questia you can ask Bilby (talk·contribs) to sent you the full text of it. He has access and writes stuff about Austrlaian war memorials. And you should probably try out without copyediting it, I'm not sure that mine does much good actually. I wrote Stan McCabe randomly without doing a ce and it actually had some really bad prose, and Jackyd gave it 8, and he gave BAW 8 as well.....YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 03:13, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
Harry Murray at FAC
Hey Bryce!
Just a thought but you may want to contact on their talk pages the people who have already commented asking whether they'd now consider supporting. --ROGER DAVIEStalk15:24, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
Victor Smith
thanks, i gave it a C as it was quite short. it was also had no pictures of the subject, i therefore counted this as a 'missing element' per C criteria but you're right that technically it probably still meets B criteria, Tom B (talk) 19:56, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
I believe that I have now pretty much sorted out Howse's early service history - after trawling through two biographies of the man, and also two other sources for the King's South Africa Medal, I am now confident that he was not entitled to the KSA. I have done some editing to his page as a result. PalawanOz (talk) 11:24, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
We've had a rather large bombshell dropped on us. The Wikipedia editorial team are aiming to release a version of Wikipedia on CD/DVD in time for the end of year holiday season. They've provided us with a list of 1333 Milhist articles they intend including.
The problem is that the quality of these articles varies considerably.
We've put together review page listing all the articles, in twenty-five article worklists. I'm hoping that 15-20 trusted editors can work through the list, weedying out problem articles and identifying suitable versions for release. The work is as far away from a tagging and assessing drive as you can imagine though, for convenience and ease of use, we've closely followed the traditional Milhist drive format.
This is, at the moment, an invitation-only review. The reason is that time is short and we can't afford too many mistakes. I'm only contacting experienced editors who performed very well indeed in the last two Milhist drives. I guess that working through a worklist of twenty-five articles will take between one and three hours to do. We're aiming to get the preliminary work done by next Sunday, so it's urgent too.
I do hope you can help but – if it's not too much trouble – if you are unable to participate at the moment, would you please let me know on my talk page? Thank you for your time, --ROGER DAVIEStalk17:19, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
Hi, I see you have edited and improved my article Australian prisoners of war in the Korean War. Thanks for the help. I was planning on improving it to a tabular format soon. Are you aware of a number of World War II sites located around the Central Coast?
Better, but you've left the text a bit clunky in places. Would you like me to de-clunk or will you do it yourself? Few typos too: e.g. Australian's; center etc. You need to take the size parameter out of the thumbs. --ROGER DAVIEStalk05:24, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
Incidentally, I've found a bit more material in Carlyon's "The First World War". I'll add it. (If you don't have Carlyon, run to buy him, though his "Gallipoli" is better.) --ROGER DAVIEStalk17:10, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
Hi Pdf, it is my understanding that the Duntroon of the era in which Hindmarsh graduated typically constituted a three year course. With this in mind, my guess is that Hindmarsh joined the ADF in 1973 1975 upon entering Duntroon. Hope this helps, Abraham, B.S. (talk) 12:18, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
That's consistent with what you had on the page, and with what I would expect. (You don't have a supporting reference, do you?)
However, User talk:Backswamp has just changed it to 1976.
Do you want to revert it with an edit comment saying "Evidence please", or shall I. Cheers, Pdfpdf (talk) 12:36, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
Sadly, I have no conclusive reference, but it is common knowledge that the Duntroon course formally ran for three years. I would revert if I was you, as the ball seems to be more in our court on this one. Cheers, Abraham, B.S. (talk) 01:43, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
Yes, it is sad, but not too surprising - I couldn't find anything either (but then, as you're aware, that isn't unusual!) I'll give him a couple of days to reply &/or react before I revert - feel free to do it yourself whenever you wish if you prefer. Cheers, Pdfpdf (talk) 01:50, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
Y'know, it occurred to me that we are assuming he graduated in 1978, and hence studied in 1975-77.
It's possible he may have studied 1976-78, and the author is taking the final year of study as the graduation year. Your thoughts? Pdfpdf (talk) 08:51, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
Promoted to brigadier[when?], he commanded a brigade in Malaya for three years, before returning to Australia[when?] and serving in a variety of positions which eventually resulted in his appointment as Chief of the General Staff with the rank of lieutenant general. Promoted to general[when?] after two years in this position, he was made appointed Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee which was reorganised as renamed(??) Chief of the Defence Force Staff[when?]the following year.
Yes, if you can do basic arithmetic, you can work these dates out, but if you want to know when something specific happened, you want the date there, you don't want to have to stop and work it out. Cheers, Pdfpdf (talk) 08:45, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
This was going to be a quick answer, but your reply is detailed and covers a number of points, so it would be rude of me give a vague & general response like my originally intended "I agree with most of what you have said".
" ... a position marking him as the professional head of the Australian Defence Force" bit. I believe this should be retained, ... - I had/have no problem with that concept being there. My change was based on my personal dislike of the phrase a position marking him as - I guess I threw the baby out with the bathwater.
" ... so I don't think the years of his promotions to brigadier or general are really required in the lead. ... " - In principle, I agree. In practice, you seem to have missed my intent. My comment was based on the idea of having a couple of "anchor" dates so the reader could easily determine what happened when. The idea was for simplicity and readability - not necessity.
"As for the last issue raised ... " - Yeah, I know. Again, my reaction was to the "unsmoothness" of the sound of the phrase, not to it's accuracy. (Yes, it's accurate.) I was looking for a different phrase that was both accurate and sounded better. As you could notice from the "??", I wasn't too happy with "renamed" but couldn't think of anything I did like.
"it seemed a little awkward" - I imagine you're well aware that I'm very much in favour of "making it seem less awkward".
"and I knew you wouldn't exactly be impressed" - Yes, you were right on that point. ;-)
"I also removed ... " - Not my preferred outcome, but your point is well argued.
"(I know how much you do like "It's an Honour", lol)" - ;-)
Changing subject, but only a little, I saw someone quote the Australian Govt gazette. Does everything in "It's an Honour" appear in either the London Gazette or the Oz gazette?
And changing the subject a lot, you can't be convinced to put in a summary table of awards, can you?
Thank you very much for your help in our review of the W0.7-nominated articles, which has proved to be a very worthwhile exercise. As the number of sub-standard articles found was much higher than anticipated, the coordinators are currently considering how best to follow this up, given the project's limited resources and the short time span – under three weeks - for making improvements.
The review has been a very worthwhile exercise and will lead to a major quality improvement initiative in the very near future. In the meantime, if you found any articles that you feel you could easily fix, I'd be very grateful if you invested a little time doing so. Please also feel free to nominate any articles for inclusion which you feel were overlooked. The procedure for this is here and the nominations should be made here. --ROGER DAVIEStalk07:41, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
Thank you very much for your much appreciated support in the recently concluded September 2008 Military History Wikiproject Coordinator Elections. I was thoroughly surprised to walk away with a position of Coordinator. Thank-you for your support, and I assure you that I will do my best to serve this spectacular project well. Esteemed Regards, Cam (Chat) 00:50, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
Notre Dame de Lorrette Cemetary - Arras, France
Blair Anderson Wark
I'll be happy to copyedit the article, although I can't guarantee it'll be soon (yours is third in the queue!). All the best, EyeSerenetalk08:01, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
Congrats!
The Writer's Barnstar
For your outstanding efforts in the Military history Wikiproject writing contest for the month of September 2008 I hereby award you The Writer's Barnstar. Keep up the good work! TomStar81 (Talk) 19:29, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
Content review medal
The Content Review Medal of Merit
Your recent spree in commenting on A-class reviews is appreciated and noted. Your services are amongst the most needed in WikiProject Military History, and I'd like to offer you this humble award in an effort to praise your work and motivate you to continue. Thank you, JonCatalán(Talk)21:28, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
The W1.0 Editorial Team have selected 1133 Military history articles for inclusion in the W0.7 test release. For convenience, these are broken by task force and you'll find a list on each task force headed "Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for [task force name]" on the task force talk page. You may nominate extra articles for inclusion or existing ones for removal. If you can improve any of the articles on the list, by adding references, or copy-editing, or cleaning up generally, please do so.
A new discussion has started about naming articles on Soviet WWII operations. All contributions are welcome as we hope to resolve this longstanding issue once and for all.
The debate over whether Milhist should adopt C-Class is continuing. All comments and suggestions are welcome.
Please accept this invite to join the Good Article Collaboration Center, a project aimed at improving articles to GA status while working with other users. We hope to see you there!
This bit needs clarifying (Lt is more senior than 2nd Lt):
"Promoted to lieutenant in the CMF during July 1915, he was appointed as a second lieutenant in the Australian Imperial Force on 1 February 1916,[1] and allotted to C Company of the 34th Battalion."
Although he was promoted lieutenant in the Citizens Military Force in July 1915, when he transferred to the Australian Imperial Force on 1 February 1916 he dropped a rank and was assigned C Company of the 34th Battalion as a second lieutenant.? Longer but clearer? --ROGER DAVIEStalk10:45, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
Chuckle:) "Murder your darlings?" This kind of thing is a stumbling block, which will make people pause and wonder. It's the old difference between substantive ranks and acting/honorary/local ranks. Here's another go:
"Appointed lieutenant in the CMF during July 1915, he tranferred to the Australian Imperial Force on 1 February 1916,[1] with the substantive rank of second lieutenant, in charge of C Company of the 34th Battalion."
In response to this edit, I was looking for info, and also discovered that the first two links at Peter Leahy#External links are now no-longer relevant. (At least the Official Photo link still works!) Other than thesetwo, I can't find anything particularly useful, and certainly nothing with his birthdate. (Note that the 9 July 2008 article says he's 55, but that doesn't rule out either date.)
Do you mind having a quick look and see if you can find anything useful?
Thanks, Pdfpdf (talk) 11:57, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi! You probably don't know me; I'm a reasonably new editor who has been working on the article Bruce Kingsbury. While I have improved it somewhat, another user recommended I speak to you about improvement, considering your experience. If you have a spare few minutes, it'd be great for you to have a look and give some hints. Hope to hear from you!
Thanks for the reply. I've run out of sources personally, (I'm waiting on the Silent Men to become available at the library) so if you have any additional texts that'd be perfect. The article is relatively weak in the background section. Thanks! \ / (⁂) 05:22, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions with User:Abraham, B.S.. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
