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Top-level categories

We have three somewhat confusing top-level categories:

Is there some reason why these could not be partially or completely merged? Category:Warfare, in particular, seems like an unnecessary split of the general type-of-warfare-and-such articles; and much of Category:Military (which, on first glance, should deal primarily with military units and so forth) contains general terminology. Any comments would be very welcome. Kirill Lokshin 00:36, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Suggest

  • Category:Military Conflict (which merges War and Warfare and includes non-war conflict like terrorism, anti-insurgencies, etc., and excludes stuff like War on Drugs, etc.)

and

  • Category:Military

Military Conflict to contain battles and history type stuff, Military to handle organization, uniforms, personalities etc.?Michael Dorosh 18:26, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Would "Military conflict" be a sub-category of "Military", then? It would make for a certain consistency, I suppose (i.e. "Military conflict", "Military units", "Military people", etc.). Kirill Lokshin 18:28, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
Having considered this some more, I think it could work quite well. We'd have a set of categories at the top like this:
This would allow us to get rid of a number of redundant or overlapping categories:
  1. Category:War
  2. Category:Warfare
  3. Category:Military history - once everything mis-filed here has been sorted, this'll be just an extra level of nesting on Category:Military history by country, so we can presumably eliminate it
Anyone see any significant problems with such a setup? Kirill Lokshin 22:47, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
No, I didn't mean as a sub-category, but now that you mention it, it does seem to make sense.:-) Michael Dorosh 23:10, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
I see "War" is itself in several categories - Categories: Conflict | Security | National security | International relations | Violence. I suspect Military Conflict would be a very nice subcategory of "Conflict" as well as of "Military". Michael Dorosh 23:11, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, most of those would just get transferred over. Sorting it this way should also eliminate the persistent appearance of War on Drugs in this category tree ;-) Kirill Lokshin 23:13, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
Another point that may need cleanup: do we need to have Category:Military tactics, Category:Military strategy, and Category:Military doctrines? I would think that some form of merge would be possible here, considering almost all of the articles are in multiple categories; but I'm not sure how many separate categories we need, and what the best name would be. Maybe collapse them all into Category:Military strategy and tactics? Kirill Lokshin 00:12, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
Why not Category: Military Science to cover doctrine, training, tactics, strategy, and operations? Or would that be confused with stuff like weapons design and metallurgy - ie true sciences?Michael Dorosh 00:40, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
Or the plural Category: Military Sciences which then includes your true science stuff.Michael Dorosh 00:45, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, we have Category:Military science too. It seems to be quite small; either malformed or just underpopulated. I'd like to avoid any confusion with actual sciences, particularly if those begin to intersect with Category:Military technology. (*sigh* We really need to clean up the entire category tree.) Kirill Lokshin 00:52, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
On the other hand, Category:Military science may be the most versatile option here, since it will allow us to deal with things like Category:Military logistics and so forth. Kirill Lokshin 22:40, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

For the name of the top-level category, Category:Military is, perhaps, not quite as expansive as Category:War. According to the military article: "While military can refer to any armed force, it generally refers to a permanent, professional force of soldiers or guerrillas." Conflict that lies outside the general definition of "military" — like tribal warfare — does not fit comfortably under a top-level category of "military". If something like tribal warfare is indeed within the scope of this project, then a wider top-level category (like Category:War) may be more suitable. --Kevin Myers | (complaint dept.) 03:19, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

On the other hand, we also have (from the same article): "Early armies may have been just men with sharpened sticks and rocks", and so forth.
I think that, from the standpoint of creating a functional categorization scheme—rather than a true semantic hierarchy—we'll be able to get away with including the few not-quite-military fringe cases under a top level "Military" category. Do you think that merging them would create a significant problem in practice? Kirill Lokshin 03:26, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Just a few points to add to the discussion, as someone from outside wanting to use the category system to browse through these articles, rather than someone involved with the project wanting to categorise things in the "right" place. The comment about "War on Drugs" not belonging in the War section misses the point that someone browsing through the "Wars" category would understand why the "War on Drugs" article or section was there. It would be similar to the "War on Terror" - an example of a poorly-defined and nebulous concept being called a War, while not being a conflict between organised armies. The type of war would be one way to divide up specific wars, while time period and location would be other ways to divide them up. You'd have "tribal wars", "guerilla wars", etc. There is a Category:Wars_by_type which seems to have tried to start doing this sort of thing. Category:Wars_by_country is actually wars by combatant countries, rather than location, which might be more useful. No-one seems to have tried dividing wars up by the time period. I'd suggest looking at the various categories under Category:History by period to see how this sort of thing is handled elsewhere. While looking at that, I found Category:Warfare_by_period, which might be helpful (it was under the Military category, not the War or Warfare categories - which shows that this overlapping structure is confusing). Carcharoth 16:21, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Fair points; the gist of the above discussion is primarily to eliminate the overlapping structure. Hopefully that'll clear up a few of these issues. Kirill Lokshin 16:26, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Proposed structure

Having sorted some of the random articles and categories scattered everywhere, I've come up with this proposal:

  • Category:Military - top-level category, replacing Category:War (which is to be merged there and to various sub-categories as needed). This might mean that a few not-quite-formal-military things are filed here, but I think the benefits of having a single root category to work from would be worth this.
My initial impression, without looking at the categories, is that I would expect Military art and War art to cover different things. I would expect War art to be the broader, more recognised term. I would be wary of trying to shoehorn everything into a "military" label. Often the "war" label is the better one, and sometimes they mean the same thing, sometimes they mean different things, and sometimes war is a subset of military and sometimes military is a subset of war. Carcharoth 12:13, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
This is a good example of things that don't fit a "war" label. Peacetime traditions and activities of the military would fit here, for example. My impression is that some categories fit in both war and military, but some categories fit only in one of war or military. This is probably why the two top-level categories emerged, and overall there should be some overlap, but not complete overlap. I would say keep both war and military, but tighten up the definitions of what should go in these categories, and definitely don't automatically try and make one the subset of the other. That just won't work. For the purpose of categorisation, I would define war as active military fighting, and related activities. Carcharoth 12:13, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Category:Military conflicts is probably a good one for actual fighting. As far as people, units, equipment, etc. are concerned, though, there's really no distinction between war-time and peace-time structures. Kirill Lokshin 12:25, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
My point is that a biographical article about General Lee, or an article about the structure of a country's army, fits comfortably in the Military category, but is harder to fit comfortably in the War category. My feeling is that most, but not all, subcategories of Category:War should have Category:Military as one of their parents, and that most, but not all, subcategories of Category:Wars should be a subcategory of Category:Military conflicts. The trouble is that it is quite clear that not all wars are military conflicts, and there are war topics that are clearly nothing to do with the military, such as civilian-related war topics. Wartime rationing is the only example I can think of off the top of my head. That should clearly go in category "War", so shoehorning War under Military just does not work. Carcharoth 12:42, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
I think the other problem here is that "Military" is already shoehorned under "War", so most of what seems like a good idea runs against the "don't place articles in both a category and one of its subcategories" principle. Maybe the best thing would be to have "Military" not be a sub-category of "War", and then draw a distinction between military people/units/places (primarily under military), actual conflicts (under both), and non-military war topics (under war). Kirill Lokshin 12:51, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Battlefields would nest under battles, would would be under wars. Remove from the military category, unless under a "military activities, including wars" category. Carcharoth 12:13, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Any comments would be very welcome! Kirill Lokshin 01:13, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I've added two more categories that I originally missed to the scheme above. Kirill Lokshin 11:14, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

In general, I find it helpful to distinguish between topical articles that give a general overview of a subject area with examples of specific items and events, eg surrender (military), general, and articles concerning a specific event or object, Instrument of Surrender of Japan, General Lee. Some articles mix the two styles. An example of this type of structure is seen at Category:Opera and Category:Operas. It seems to me that many of the military categories you list above contain topical articles that would fit well under the Military category. The subject articles tend to end up in things like "Wars" and "Battles" and "Generals" categories, and I would suggest that these link to the Military category by obvious names like "Military conflicts", "Military people" and so on. To link with related topics, you add links in the category blurb at the top. eg. At the top of Category:Military people you could put: "For general articles on military ranks, see Category:Military ranks. Carcharoth 12:13, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

That will be mostly true of the proposed scheme (as well as the existing one). In most areas, there's a further splitting (e.g. "Battles by country"), which means that the actual category ("Battles", in this case) only contains the general articles, with all of the specific battles nested a level deeper.
As far as the top-level category goes: there are few articles—and very few categories—that deal with non-war-related military matters, and basically no articles that deal with non-military-related war matters. I think trying to draw a distinction between military and war is somewhat counterproductive, in this case. In any case, the top-level category, regardless of the name, will act primarily as a holding pen for all of these sub-categories. I'm open to other ideas on the name, though; perhaps "War and military" (or "Military and war", or even "Warfare") would work better than plain "Military"? Kirill Lokshin 12:22, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
I think one problem here might be that you are trying to set up a classification scheme, which is different from a categorisation scheme. Carcharoth 12:42, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Proposed structure Mk. II

A (very rough) idea for an alternative scheme with two root categories, based on the discussion above:

Any better? Kirill Lokshin 13:04, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Looks good. It doesn't incorporate the distinction between Category:War and Category:Wars, and I thought Category:Military medicine might also fit under warfare, as I'm assuming it is medical techniques used in warfare. Medical military people might fit under both Military people and Military medicine. Also, where is Military history, or is that historiography - it is best to avoid technical terms in category titles - the reader browsing the tree has to recognise what this means. Otherwise, looks good. Carcharoth 13:43, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Wars will be mostly under "Military conflicts" (possibly with another sub-category for things like War on Drugs; not sure what the best name would be).
For military history, there's Category:Military history by country, which I neglected to list there; other than that, military history is basically equivalent to the union of these two category trees (with a few not-quite-history-yet current events in there; if this is a problem, maybe a "Current events in war" category to separate them would work, but I don't think this will be an issue). Military historiography is a slightly more narrow topic, and covers only historians and their writings. Kirill Lokshin 13:52, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
The other persistent problem is that "Warfare" is a terrible name for a category, since it's often used as a synonym for "War". We may want to leave it as "Military science"; alternately, we might create it as "Warfare by type" (e.g. "Naval warfare", "Jungle warfare", etc.) to match "Warfare by period". Kirill Lokshin 14:15, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Sounds good. I found where the "Wars on something" ended up... Category:War_on_something. Awful name, but it does fill a gap in the category scheme. See also Category:Political_neologisms. Carcharoth 14:16, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
So shall we move ahead somewhat along these lines? Or does anyone have objections to this scheme, or other ideas? Kirill Lokshin 03:37, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
I have no objections. I'll try and stop by and have a look every now and again, and occasionally tidy things up if they look like they need tidying. One thing that helps, for editors not terribly familiar with an area, is to use the category blurb area to describe the functioniing of the category in a way that is useful both to editors trying to place an article, and for readers browsing the category system. Otherwise, a category strucutre can degenerate over months and years until it is almost unrecognisable! Carcharoth 09:27, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
We've been trying to do this (most of the war and battle categories should have some explanation at this point), but doing so consistently requires figuring out the category scheme ourselves ;-) Kirill Lokshin 13:45, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
I've started putting together an actual overview/guideline here. Comments are, as always, quite welcome! Kirill Lokshin 01:58, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
The way I see it, there will be a considerable overlap between Category:Military equipment and the well-developed Category:Military aircraft, part of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Aircraft. It would be a good idea if these categories were connected in some way. -- Andres 15:18, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
Category:Military aircraft is actually a sub-category of Category:Military equipment by type. Did you have some other form of connection in mind? Kirill Lokshin 15:23, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
My mistake! I didn't check on the parent category of Cat:Military aircraft. Sorry and thanks for your prompt reply. -- Andrés 15:40, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

GA list sweep

On behalf of the Wikiproject Good Articles I would like to request assistance in sweeping the war section of the good article list to keep the articles inline with the criteria. We ask that when you are done this that you sign your name on this list so we know that the section was recently sweeped. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.192.45.135 (talk • contribs)

If anybody does have the time and inclination to do this, adding any missing GAs to the worklist would be a great help as well. Kirill Lokshin 21:53, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Cartography

Since apparently nobody watches the cartography page itself... ;-)

I've been doing some organization of the military-related maps on Commons, and it's occurred to me that manually maintaining a list of maps isn't as efficient as letting the category sytem take care of things, and just leads to a duplication of effort. In light of this, would anyone object to mothballing the local cartography page and just doing the relevant work directly on Commons instead? Kirill Lokshin 03:26, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. Andreas 08:30, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
I've copied the outstanding requests to the new request page (see below) and marked the page as inactive. Kirill Lokshin 02:45, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Timeline of Russo-Turkish Wars

Template:Timeline of Russo-Turkish Wars has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. This template contains potentially useful information but is orphaned at the moment. I've suggested that the timeline be salvaged out of the template into a better place; perhaps the participants here can find a solution. John Reid 10:34, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Welcoming new members

I've started a draft for a (hopefully brief) welcoming template that might be useful. Any comments or suggestions would be very welcome! ;-) Kirill Lokshin 16:20, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi. It's a very good idea. What do you think about including a suggestion to Project members to add the {{WPMILHIST Announcements}} template to their user pages, if they wish to do so? I've done it, and I find it very useful. Regards. -- Andres 14:12, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
Good idea; I'll add that. Kirill Lokshin 14:44, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
Are there particular objections to using the current form for the time being? If not, I'll go ahead and start using it when new members sign up in the future. Any suggestions for improvement are still very welcome, of course! Kirill Lokshin 03:56, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps a little extra work on the bells & whistles department? Nothing fancy, just a nice frame with an appropriate icon and an easy to read background color, you know, the works. It'll make it more appealing to newcomers. -- Andrés 04:52, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
That's right, fancy colours and tables seem to be in vogue right now. ;) -- Миборовский U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai! 05:41, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
Some basic eyecandy added; is that any better? Kirill Lokshin 16:35, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
Added {{WPMILHIST Announcements}} template to my user page. Been in the group from nearly three months and still learning some. The welcoming page is a good idea.Dryzen 18:44, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
Yes, much better now! :) Andrés 22:14, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Chadian-Sudanese War Campaignbox

I believe this conflict should enjoy a Campaignbox as normal. I don't understand why it was removed, or how these hooligans secured Kirill's complicity in their misdeeds. Albrecht 20:25, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Heh, sorry about that; I didn't realize it had just recently been blanked, so I assumed it was just something that hadn't been cleane up properly. Kirill Lokshin 20:29, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Map and information Request

I don't know, given recent comments, if the Cartography section is still open... so I'm making this here.

I'm trying to expand the Mercenary War article, and I'm not sure how to illustrate it. Does anyone know of a good map of the area around Carthage, around 240 BC? Ideally, I would like a map of that area of Africa, which lists Carthage, Sicca Veneria (modern El Kef), Tunis, Utica, and has the Bagradas River on it. Suggestions for general illustrations are also appeciated.

Additionally, if anyone who knows, or knows how to find, the geogprahical location of the box canyon known as "The Saw" in Tunisia, I would be very grateful if they could let me know. It is the site of the final battle of the Mercenary War (see Polybius, Histories 1:84-85) but I've been unable to find a mappable location for it. - Vedexent 00:43, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

As a cartographer I can find some of these (ESRI has a nice bundle with ArcGIS) yet I'm a neophite to the esoteric ways of licencing uploads.Dryzen 18:47, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Wanted articles subpage renamed

Just so everyone's aware, Wikipedia:Pages needing attention is being redesigned to make use of bot-generated lists of articles that need cleanup; the physical sciences are mostly done, and the history pages should be coming soon. In preparation for this, I've renamed the "Wanted articles" subpage to a more general "Article requests" page; once the relevant cleanup subpages have been generated, we can transclude them there for easy reference. We can probably put image-related requests there as well. Comments are, of course, welcome! Kirill Lokshin 02:19, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Regia Marina battles

I've listed Category:Regia Marina battles for renaming here, but there's some question of what the new name should be, whether the category is already at the best name, and whether it needs to exist at all. Any comments there would be very appreciated! Kirill Lokshin 11:57, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I would remove the subcategory and keep them in Battles of Italy. No need for the Italian Navy to have its own subcategory, let alone one historical incarnation of the Italian Navy. (unless there's precedent for this I'm not aware of) Albrecht 15:18, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
The general sense so far is for a "Naval battles of Italy" category, which isn't, in my opinion, strictly needed at this point, as "Naval battles" isn't that large; but at least the structure matches the other category types. Kirill Lokshin 15:46, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Cavaliers (royalists) to Cavalier

Please see the proposed page move from Cavaliers (royalists) to Cavalier on Talk:Cavaliers (royalists) --Philip Baird Shearer 01:24, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Timelines

If someone is interested, Wikipedia:WikiProject Timelines is a project which has some overlap this project and needs to be taken by the scruff of the neck. It has become moribund after the previous participants could not agree on how to proceed. --Philip Baird Shearer 14:12, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

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