Talk:63rd Expeditionary Signal Battalion

Copyright problem removed
Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: http://www.signal.army.mil/OLD/63sig/History.htm. Copied or closely paraphrased material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.) For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. C 1776 M Talk 23:13, 11 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Reverted per the discussion below. C 1776 M Talk 17:19, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Mar11 Edit
The copyrighted material was from US Government pages, are those in public domain??? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Autobahnsho (talk • contribs) 15:34, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I believe it may fall under public domain. If so, I don't think it'd be a copyright violation. Would it then be primary source only information though? Most of the well established military unit pages have many more sources for their information than just a single .mil site with it's sub-pages. C 1776 M Talk 15:52, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

It's not about this page vs. other military pages, it's the validity of the sources of this page. The quoted material is legal, or it's not... Autobahnsho (talk) 15:57, 12 March 2014 (UTC)AutobahnSHO

If the text of the article was the offending portion of the page why did you revert the entire page (also removing the infobox?) instead of editing and identifying the offending portions which could then be directly addressed?Cameronarndt (talk) 16:07, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi, Autobansho, I believe I agreed with your earlier point in my comment above. I continued the discussion bringing up another big prblem with the article. Battalions generally are not considered notable in the first place. So, having only one, primary, source does not establish notability. Please refer to the Military history project's notability guide. As it stands now reverting my revert doesn't fix the one of the main problems with the article,and that is that the unit probably isn't notable.


 * Cameronarndt, the process for reverting a page due to suspected copyright violation is clearly outlined in WP:COPYVIO. You revert to the last edit that didn't contain copyrighted data. You added the infobox at the same time you added the copy-paste from the external site. Thanks! C 1776 M Talk 16:12, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

C1776M, the page you linked says Battalions ARE notable. Autobahnsho (talk) 16:20, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Units and formations "3.Land forces units that are capable of undertaking significant, or independent, military operations (including combat, combat support and combat service support units). Examples include battalion-level or equivalent units"

Battalions are indeed capable of independent operations. 16:22, 12 March 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Autobahnsho (talk • contribs)


 * Yes, they are notable if they are capable of undertaking significant, or independent, military operations. Is this unit capable of that? C 1776 M Talk 16:28, 12 March 2014 (UTC)


 * C1776M you need to look at the full description of a noteable battalion level unit: "3.Land forces units that are capable of undertaking significant, or independent, military operations (including combat, combat support and combat service support units). Examples include battalion-level or equivalent units[3] such as 6th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment and 21st Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry;" The 63rd Expeditionary Signal Battalion is a support battalion... which is also expeditionalry. What is your argument?Cameronarndt (talk) 16:52, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

C1776M, After reviewing WP:COPYVIO the stated policy is to only revert a page only if all the content of a page appears to voilate the copyright. I don't see how the content of the infobox falls into that category.Cameronarndt (talk) 16:42, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Cameronarndt, I believe we've sufficiently established that it wasn't a copyright violation. Please see discussion above as reference. At this point, the reverted material can simply be put back. The section of the COPYVIO policy that states "check the page history; if an older non-infringing version of the page exists, you should revert the page to that version." is what I went off of. Yes I understood that I was also removing the infobox that contained no information but only links to similarly unreferenced pages. Feel free to restore the reverted information. The conversation has moved on to two different topics now. 1) If the unit meets the notability guidelines linked to above, and 2) if there are any third-party reliable sources available to establish that notability. I fully, and unequivocally agree that I made a mistake in reverting it, but I believe caution was the best option. Now we've had the opportunity to discuss the issue of copyright and all parties agree that it does not violate copyright. C 1776 M Talk 17:05, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Notability
Starting this section to discuss notability of the subject. C 1776 M Talk 17:08, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

This Battalion meets all requirements of [Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Notability guide]

For units and formations the appropriate subsection of the guide is item 3 of "Units and Formations"
 * Item 3 states: 3.Land forces units that are capable of undertaking significant, or independent, military operations (including combat, combat support and combat service support units). Examples include battalion-level or equivalent units[3] such as 6th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment and 21st Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry;


 * Because there is clearly no disbute that the 63rd Expeditionary Signal Battalion is in fact a battalion within the military of the United States it meets the criteria of being a Battalion sized unit.


 * Because the 63rd Expeditionary Signal Battalion is an Expeditionary battalion it clearly meets the criteria of being capable of undertaking significant, or independent, military operations as a combat service support unit.


 * Therefore the 63rd Expeditionary Signal Battalion clearly meets all criteria of notability Cameronarndt (talk) 18:13, 12 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I'd point you to the footnote referenced as number 3 on the page you quoted. Stating specifically where it was decided by community consensus that BN sized units where deemed not to be notable due to lack of sufficient sources establishing notability. Here and here. C 1776 M Talk 18:29, 12 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Your argument is invalid. You are using an illustration of an exception as proof of policy. The examples you point to are examples of deviations from the general policy. The burden of proof rests on you to prove that this article doesn’t meet the standards of notability. The article will of course benefit from more people working to improve it and adding references as I just did. If you would like to participate in improving the article this process would be much quicker.Cameronarndt (talk) 20:44, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Better delete all of these then https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&search=signal+battalion&go=Go Autobahnsho (talk) 20:26, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

The link to 2/18 Field artillery says "Our general position is that battalion-sized units or greater are notable; you can see the other artillery regiments deemed notable in this category, and there are just about thousands of battalion/regiment articles over various wikis. Short answer: yes." The final opinion about upmerge was an editor from New Zealand, the unit's listed history is 2003-2009.

The 436th Trans Battalion is "a reserve, non-combat military unit which has done only a single, very recent tour, as part of the Iraq War."

The 63rd BN in question is mentioned in older and recent news http://www.usarmygermany.com/Sont_2.htm?http&&&www.usarmygermany.com/Units/USFA%20Units/USFA_63rd%20Sig%20Bn.htm http://www.dvidshub.net/news/99583/63rd-expeditionary-signal-battalion-deploys http://www.wrdw.com/home/headlines/War_on_Terror_continues_Fort_Gordon_troops_deploy_to_Afghanistan_121121294.html (deployment end of 2012) http://www.desert-storm.com/soldiers/pit.html  (Desert Storm Units, signal is listed separately and only two Battalions are listed as entirety) http://www.cgsc.edu/CARL/nafziger/944UAMC.pdf (history of units in WW2) Autobahnsho (talk) 20:41, 12 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I didn't write the policy, just trying to cooperate to reach a consensus based on what's already been established. My personal belief is many (or most) BNs are notable, we just need to ensure we provide reliable, third-party sources. There are many articles out there that need improvement and many that should be deleted. I happened to come across this one doing new page patrols, this isn't personal in any way. I am simply trying to contribute to make the project and this article better, as we all are. C 1776 M Talk 21:11, 12 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Autobahnsho, those look like great sources, perhaps some of the information from those overlaps with the information already on the page and they can be inserted as in-line citations rather than just adding them at the end as external references? C 1776 M Talk 21:11, 12 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Cameronarndt, my argument isn't invalid. Those were deleted because they didn't have sufficient third-party sources supporting the information in the article. That is my argument, that the same problem exists in this article (and several other articles you've created recently that I've come across in the wp:npp). I decided to not nominate this one and all the others for deletion because I realized it was an ongoing problem, after I came across several of them. I am attempting to participate in improving the article, but instead of constructive discussion about where we can find reliable sources, we've spent the entire time trying to figure out who is right and who is wrong. As I said above, I happen to believe that US BNs are generally notable, the problem is we don't have many good sources covering them properly. A couple of the ones listed above may end up being good sources, but news articles or books would be best. I can try to look at them individually tomorrow, it's getting late here (Afghanistan) so I'm going to get off for now. Thanks! C 1776 M Talk 21:11, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Hm, looking things over...I think there's just enough here for notability to be established. - The Bushranger One ping only 22:12, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Reliable third-party sources
Starting this section to discuss sources. C 1776 M Talk 17:08, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
 * http://www.wrdw.com/home/headlines/War_on_Terror_continues_Fort_Gordon_troops_deploy_to_Afghanistan_121121294.html
 * http://www.fold3.com/image/269668396/
 * http://www.fold3.com/s.php#query=63rd+signal&t=657 — Preceding unsigned comment added by C1776M (talk • contribs) 21:26, 12 March 2014 (UTC)