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I am fairly new to Wikipedia and I found you under "editors willing to assist". I hope I am doing this right, and contacting you in the way you prefer. My apologies in advance if I have goofed.
The entry "Operation Storm" has numerous errors and is quite biased. I understand that this subject can get quite emotional and even heated when discussed between the two parties (Croat and Krajina Serb). This is no excuse for shoddy research and misleading documentation, however.
I was so shocked upon reading this entry, I first lodged complaints on the discussion page, and then marked it "This article has been nominated to be checked for its neutrality."
Where do I go from here?
Thank you in advance for your kind help
Civilaffairs (talk) 15:53, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for your quick reply (I am so amazed and impressed!).
I read the previous posts on the talk page, and yes, they are very argumentative and sometimes unhelpful. I gather this entry has mainly been under the control of a person on the Croat side of the argument, one who appears to be quite stubborn. In its present incarnation, this entry is certainly quite biased in that direction.
I know why disagreements exist, and will probably always exist. (Look at our own disagreements over the Civil War after all these years.)
Does this mean I should simply edit the entry myself, using verifiable references? It looks like it needs to be completely rewritten to me. I realise the Croat editor will probably simply undo whatever I write, but I may as well give it a try?
I did leave a note expressing my concerns at talk:Operation Storm (as you can see, it is the last entry there).
I will study the resources you have cited. Thank you for providing the links to them.
A question I cannot find the answer for: How to correct the "Notes" section of the entry which is in a protected template? As I explained in my note on the talk page, #12 is mislabeled with what looks to be, frankly, deceptive intent.
My sincere thanks, and my apologies for bothering you again.
Civilaffairs (talk) 17:25, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Excellent advice. Thank you.
I was puzzled about one thing you wrote, however: you should be able to present observations.
I thought this was a no-no concerning the entry itself, but possibly okay on the talk page. I thought it best to restrict myself to reports which can still be found on the UN website, such as applicable Reports of the Secretary General.
I will take your advice and perhaps edit just the first paragraph to correct the name of the UN Mission and its mandate, citing documents which can be found on the United Nations website, and see what happens.
I don't want to step on anyone's toes, but as more and more people are citing Wikipedia as a reliable source, I'd like to see it actually be a reasonably reliable source.
Again, many thanks and no need to reply this time round. I am most grateful for your assistance.
Civilaffairs (talk) 18:12, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Hi, and welcome to the Military history WikiProject! As you may have guessed, we're a group of editors working to improve Wikipedia's coverage of topics related to military history.
A few features that you might find helpful:
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask one of the project coordinators, or any experienced member of the project, and we'll be happy to help you. Again, welcome! We look forward to seeing you around! --ROGER DAVIES talk 07:30, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Hi there. I notice that you are looking for a user to adopt you within the Adopt-a-User scheme. I am willing to adopt you if you wish. I have taken the effort to convert the adoption request template on your user page to the adoptive offer template - per Adopt-a-User guidelines. If you could reply on my user talk page, I would be grateful. Thanks, Jhfireboy Talk 15:02, 14 April 2008 (UTC).
Ping! --ROGER DAVIES talk 22:36, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
If I might, a couple of comments about the Operation Storm concerns you raised:
"Blitzkrieg" is not so much a Nazi reference, as an obsolete term. Blitzkrieg was an early example of what, more commonly, is called a "combined arms operation", with close coordination of air, ground, and, where relevant, naval and special forces. Even there, a number of new terms and related missions have evolved, such as deep strike by organic ground forces fire assets, battlefield air interdiction, special reconnaissance control of national-level air assets, etc.
It's always touchy to speak of the "largest" of anything, as there may be different ways of measuring size. In the Batlle of 73 Easting, a company-sized U.S. force destroyed an Iraqi brigade. Was size relevant, or is relative combat power more important? Nevertheless, by pure headcount, I believe more troops were involved in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Were you intending to say "the largest post-WWII operation up to that time"?
Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 22:51, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
(copied on my userpage)
You might want to look at my user page User:Hcberkowitz, which gives an overview of the two sets of intelligence articles: CIA specifically, and intelligence cycle management, which focuses more on the organization and techniques of modern intelligence. It will also show what I'm trying to do on Iran-Iraq, not that I expect to write all those subarticles, but to counter, in a reasonable and fact-based way, that the US was not the only involved third country, and did not pull Saddam's strings. To the best of my knowledge, the only time Saddam had a string pulled was when it was attached to his neck. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 02:48, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
It will depend significantly on the length of the article. Recently, I did do a total rewrite of insurgency in my sandbox, put a request for feedback on the existing article webpage, and, after hearing very little, just replaced the article. The only comment I had on the sandbox version was that it was too academic and complex, but that raises a broad Wikipedia question: when is it reasonably to be expected that an article be accessible to a complete layman?
There's no simple answer, especially for something such as "insurgency", which, although it has had a technical meaning for decades, has become the "Iraq insurgency" according to politicians and media. They also tend to equate it to the "Global war on terror," which, to quote Francis Fukuyama, makes about as much sense as "global war on submarines".
I can't say that I remember seeing anyone demand that an article in the hard sciences, mathematics, and other disciplines be "accessible to the layman". That's somewhat more of a challenge in medicine, where laymen do look for simple explanations of things that are decidedly not simple.
It's a British saying, I think, that any fool thinks he can command a regiment, while it seems to be accepted that the equivalent-rank command of a warship takes many years of experience. You do see this a lot in military articles -- people want things to be simple that are not. Another saying, which has quite a bit of merit, is "amateurs talk tactics, dilettantes talk strategy, but professionals talk logistics."
When I started working on CIA, it was over 300K, more than half conspiracy theories, and with a very strong (if not large) group of POV editors that the CIA was responsible for every bad thing in the world. I'd say I approached it in two directions: trying to get subarticles established, and also going into much more historical depth on things, such as history and organization, that really belonged in the main article. Occasionally, someone would suggest that a part of the main article, such as the directors and their influence on the organization, belonged in a subarticle, and I didn't feel strongly about that so moved it. OTOH, there are a few editors with a broad knowledge of the subject that check the subarticles fairly often.
Sometimes, it's not worth the effort. I have several areas of professional expertise, but one is data network engineering. After a while, I gave up on the Computer Network Project, as I grew very, very tired of explaining, to people that fairly obviously were relative beginners, why certain oversimplifications, and at least one specific textbook, were wrong. The same arguments were fought every few weeks. The last straw, I think, came when I cited a peer-reviewed Internet technical specification, of which I was the lead author (perfectly OK with Wikipedia if there is that review), and a college student informed me that I was wrong because the same damn textbook said so. At that point, I took all networking off my watchlist. I've seen a couple of other people, with outstanding expertise in the field, give up there.
Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 03:44, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
An SPA account is an account that is used just to edit one article or a group of related articles. See Wikipedia:Single-purpose account for more detail. Hope this helps. Jhfireboy Talk 20:33, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Regarding your observations about areas where it's hard to get good articles (and believe me, CIA took a number of months of negotiation), in a way, I was happy I was on a business trip and had dinner in my room, since I rather made a mess of myself while listening to the local television news. Apparently, the station had sent out its first "foreign correspondent". Breathlessly, she opened with the dramatic comment, "the former Yugoslavia is becoming (gasp) Balkanized!"
Actually, my Uncle Bill was fond of soup sandwiches, but he'd put the can of condensed soup in the refrigerator, and then cut slices of the congealed mess. Yech. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 22:02, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
--(GriffinSB) (talk) 23:42, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
The Exceptional Newcomer Award | ||
Awarded to Civilaffairs for her great efforts in improving NPOV on Yugoslavia-related articles. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:32, 30 April 2008 (UTC) |
While Wikipedia has its frustrations, it has taught me a lot about dispute resolution. I really wish I knew if its basic assumptions will work; I'm also going to try some writing at another Wiki that doesn't allow anonymous editing and see if that will work.
Nevertheless, it's great to collaborate with people such as yourself. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 19:02, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
Hi, I've noticed you've made lots of links to undemocracy.com website in your "sources" page, like:
Just to let you know, there's a box on the holding page of each document[1] where it generates a templated description of the document of the type:
If you remove the <ref>, you can embed the link rather than have it as a footnote. And also, you can add in the date and title as extra parameters (the site isn't clever enough to automatically scan them from the PDF). So this looks like:
which evaluates to:
Also, don't forget to note backlinks to the discussions listed in the holding page, and the ability to point to specific pages in a document and highlight them, like so:
This is supposed to improve on doing hardlinks into the webpage, because if the site needs to get relocated, or the UN decides to allow links into its website, we can change one thing, and all the links will point in to the proper place. Also, they work if you're looking them up in a library.
If you have any questions, or experience some missing documents, please drop me a note on my talk page and I'll see what I can pull out.Goatchurch (talk) 21:35, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
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I agree with the projection thing that you wrote on Serbs of Croatia article. Editors who call others "vandals, nationalists, etc" are themselves those things. Mike Babic (talk) 15:55, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
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Vote to keep or delete this article here [2] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 153.39.144.157 (talk) 12:48, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
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Hello. I am just sending a message to see how you are doing. From what I have seen, you are doing well without my input. If you do have any questions, I am still here to help :-) Jhfireboy Talk 15:42, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
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Dear Civilaffairs, I noticed your name was under the participants' list of WikiProject United Nations. I wanted to invite you to contribute to the advancement of this project. Here's how you can do so: 1. Select the latest CC BY SA publications for which no articles have been created yet available here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_Nations/Open_Access_text/Education_publications 2. Follow the instructions available here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Adding_open_license_text_to_Wikipedia 3. Add the text to Wikipedia (either by creating new articles or adding content to existing ones). Since these are available under CC BY SA, you can copy/paste content and/or edit if need be. 4. Attribute the text using the 'Free-content attribution' template in the 'Sources' section. 5. Add your contribution in the table here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_Nations/Open_Access_text/Education_publications Don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions! Looking forward to working with you on enriching Wikipedia, one article at a time:)! C.recalde — Preceding unsigned comment added by C.recalde (talk • contribs) 10:43, 7 March 2019 (UTC)
Hey y'all, the April 2021 WikiProject Military History Reviewing Drive begins at 00:01 UTC on April 1, 2021 and runs through 23:59 UTC on April 31, 2021. Points can be earned through reviewing articles on the AutoCheck report, reviewing articles listed at WP:MILHIST/ASSESS, reviewing MILHIST-tagged articles at WP:GAN or WP:FAC, and reviewing articles submitted at WP:MILHIST/ACR. Service awards and barnstars are given for set points thresholds, and the top three finishers will receive further awards. To participate, sign up at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_History/April 2021 Reviewing Drive#Participants and create a worklist at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/April 2021 Reviewing Drive/Worklists (examples are given). Further details can be found at the drive page. Questions can be asked at the drive talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:27, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
Hey y'all, the April 2021 WikiProject Military History Reviewing Drive begins at 00:01 UTC on April 1, 2021 and runs through 23:59 UTC on April 31, 2021. Points can be earned through reviewing articles on the AutoCheck report, reviewing articles listed at WP:MILHIST/ASSESS, reviewing MILHIST-tagged articles at WP:GAN or WP:FAC, and reviewing articles submitted at WP:MILHIST/ACR. Service awards and barnstars are given for set points thresholds, and the top three finishers will receive further awards. To participate, sign up at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_History/April 2021 Reviewing Drive#Participants and create a worklist at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/April 2021 Reviewing Drive/Worklists (examples are given). Further details can be found at the drive page. Questions can be asked at the drive talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:09, 31 March 2021 (UTC)