Talk:Battle of Medenine


 * Some old history is preserved at Talk:Battle of Medenine/Old.

Merge proposal
Battle of Medenine and Operation Capri cover the same event. Operation Capri contains more info and is the older article. Folks at 137 17:35, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
 * support the merge. Radagast83 20:30, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Page moved. Ucucha 14:51, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Operation Capri → Battle of Medenine — I think this article should be moved to "Battle of Medenine" because the WikiProject Military history Style guide recommend against using operational codenames for the article title and all sources that this article cite uses the name "Battle of Medenine". —Carl Logan (talk) 18:23, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

CE
Made a start on citations and references.Keith-264 (talk) 19:27, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Battle of Medenine
Copied from User talk:Keith-264

I noticed your reversion of my edit to the Battle of Medenine article and its edit summary. I had thought that Wikipedia editors are supposed to assume good faith, but your summary seemed to contain quite a bit of sarcasm. Therefore, I'm not sure what you assumed about me, but to start, I’ll comment that you have an interesting user page.

To answer the first part of the question in your edit summary, sure, I know what jargon is. It’s vocabulary or terminology used in a particular way by a group, trade, hobby, or academic field, and usually not understood or even known outside that context. Jargon abbreviations are the same, using abbreviations and acronyms instead of words.

Most of what I do as a Wikipedia editor is to try to improve its readability for general users, which is the intended audience. That’s my perspective on abbreviations and jargon as well. The LRDG abbreviation in the Battle of Medenine article was not useful for Wikipedia or its readers. Here’s why:
 * After its first use, it did not appear again for another seven paragraphs. At that point, it is unlikely to be remembered because it’s not a term the vast majority of people, likely well over 99% of readers, have ever heard before. It might be OK to do this with an abbreviation like "C.I.A." or "F.B.I.", but even then, we editors should recognize that Wikipedia is read not just by Americans.
 * Readers trying to learn about the battle probably have to pause and look back seven paragraphs to remember what LRDG stands for. So that’s not a good way to write, and there’s no way a good editor for a newspaper or magazine would allow it.
 * After its second appearance, it was used only one more time – in the next sentence, so there other ways to save space instead of by abbreviation.

To answer the second part of your question, sure I know how to abbreviate titles. A better question might have been whether I know when to abbreviate titles. I think it should be done to save space when a long title is repeated a dozen times in an article, or maybe even five times. But none of the titles in the Battle of Medenine did that, so it was not necessary to abbreviate them.

The final clue that LRDG was used as jargon were the other abbreviations that were also used without a need. I picked up on this when I re-read the article. OKW, IBMP, AGRA, KRRC, and CIGS all appeared once and immediately following the full names that they abbreviated, and therefore added no useful information. FFFC appeared twice, and GCCS appeared three times, including their first mentions. RA appeared twice, without being defined. I have again re-edited the article to avoid jargon abbreviations.

Please remember that Wikipedia is for a general and very broad audience. Articles should be readable – and pleasantly readable – by everybody. I recognize that this is very difficult to accomplish and challenging with some subjects that are inherently dense or require prior knowledge, including a lot of military history. I also realize that you are dedicated to and knowledgeable about this field. But Wikipedia readers are just as likely to land on a battle page without prior knowledge or background. It’s our job to get them to keep reading. And please take my comments as ways to improve Wikipedia, not personally.

Ira

Ira Leviton (talk) 21:02, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Your reasons are based on an inference about hypothetical readers and their putative inability to cope with abbreviation. I find this elitist, defeatist and self-serving. The full titles and abbreviations not repeated are there because it is a B class article and thus a work in progress. If you want them out, so be it but LRDG stays. perhaps this might help. Keith-264 (talk) 21:34, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Oh and having defined jargon you used it pejoratively, which seems illogical to me. Regards Keith-264 (talk) 21:55, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

{moved from K-264 talk page] Dear Keith,

Yes, I absolutely made inferences about hypothetical readers. All editors do that, or should. It's impossible to write a good article without an intended audience. You may not realize it, but you've done it as well – you would have edited the article much differently if you were writing a children's book. There is nothing elitist about doing this.

The new DAF abbreviation in your additional edits doesn't reappear until 16 paragraphs later, far too long of a gap to be useful. Again, this is a simple editing principle for non-technical material. Although the article is otherwise written well, the use of jargon and placement of repeat abbreviations is problematic, and although it amounts to a relatively small problem, that's the elitist feature the writing, because it assumes that readers are already familiar with the subject.

I was aware of the section of the Manual of Style that you pointed me to. However, just because something is in the Manual of Style doesn't mean that it should be followed without applying reason or that it's always the best thing to do; there is also this section.

There is also a lone "F" in the paragraph just before the "Battle" section. It's clearly a typo, but I don't know what it's supposed to be.

Ira Leviton (talk) 13:25, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

It seems to me that you want to have it both ways, which makes a discussion pointless. If you have your way, a fairly well-written B class work-in-progress will become an inferior version, written according to a lowest common denominator criterion, best left to American journalists. We should aspire to reportage, something better than that. PS did you know that "problematic" is jargon in your pejorative sense? ;O) Keith-264 (talk) 01:06, 13 November 2018 (UTC)