Talk:Millennium Challenge 2002

I have taken a stab at making the article more neutral
Please someone review it and consider removing the NPOV flag. Riventree (talk) 17:36, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Isn't the entire «The Argument Over "Scripting"» section original research and should be removed? I see it was already removed once a while back, but added it back again. User 138798 (talk) 16:03, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
 * UM, no. It's just deduction. It's certainly not 'military propaganda', because the neutrality flag pointed out that the military perspective (not side, not propaganda) wasn't included at all. I added it simply that so both "sides": "This was a catastrophe and evidence of incompetance" vs "No, the general is making a mountain out of a molehill" would get a clear airing.
 * I tried to distill that into a single paragraph. And it's twice been rolled back by an anonymous user. I really don't know whyt a "there are two points of view" paragraph rates a double rollback.
 * Riventree (talk) 11:13, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
 * The anonymous user clearly documented the reason for removal: «This whole section is completely uncited»
 * The section written by you was original research and doesn't fit Wikipedia regardless of motive or content. User 138798 (talk) 18:35, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

NPOV Tag, January, 2020...
So I see that the NPOV tag has been on the article since April, 2017 - nearly 3 years now!

Looking at the discussion above, it strikes me that some people, who seem to have a more pro-US-military-establishment POV, are complaining that this POV isn't adequately represented.

It seem to me though that three years should be MORE THAN ENOUGH TIME for a reliable source reporting on such a perspective to be found and for the article to be edited accordingly.

Of course Wikipedia can only go with what reliable sources report, and if something of that sort hasn't been found already then it's probably not going to be.

If the media's coverage of this military exercise was primarily dominated by Paul Van Riper's narrative then that's just the way it is, for better or for worse.

So it seems that the only reason some users are wanting the article to continue to have the NPOV tag is as something of a "badge of shame" - as a matter of WP:I don't like it - rather than a serious desire to improve the article. Again, if reliable sources detailing other perspectives could be found, then they probably would have been already.

As such, I suggest removing the NPOV tag. -2003:CA:873C:B454:6DA3:83BB:EDB8:EC2E (talk) 14:01, 10 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Not finding reliable sources like...a direct quote from the Blue Force commander regarding the nature of the errors in the simulation that led to the fleet being sunk in a manner that's completely inapplicable to real-life combat? Hey, how about the ridiculously exhaustive final report that's since been declassified that describes quite clearly why the ships were re-floated on pages 58 and 59?
 * I mean, let's not even go into the fact that the article is written almost entirely around one fairly minor aspect of the testing (newsflash, early Red Force victories due to modelling errors aren't uncommon in simulations) and really doesn't cover much about the event aside from that.
 * Also, it is not valid to argue that an NPOV dispute has been resolved on the basis that it has not been resolved. Bones Jones (talk) 13:51, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
 * This is my first visit to the page, and from what I'm reading on the subject, it looks like all significant viewpoints published by reliable sources are already fairly represented. The IPv6 editor has a point that the disputes against the article's neutrality now amount to complaints that one POV isn't represented enough.  This would be fine if there was a clear neutrality issue, but there hasn't been a satisfactory explanation here yet and WP:I don't like it isn't a neutrality issue.  Furthermore, over the past three years, discussion about the neutrality dispute has become dormant, and there are concerns that adding further representation of the POV in question would be to give it undue weight through the bias of its sourcing.  The Template:POV documentation explains that these are valid reasons for when the template should be removed, and not doing so on a neutral article would itself violate the article's neutrality.  I'm going to make the change now.  --Tathar (talk) 05:28, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Secondary sources, conflicting claims and lack of context
Discussion regarding the neutrality of this page has been frozen for more than year and an half, but errors and misconception are still present within the article.

I've been comparing secondary sources with primary ones and found various discrepancies, especially regarding claims of the "scripted" nature of the excercise. For example many articles cited in this page claims that the whole exercise was scripted or steered to end with a decisive Blueforce victory, but this seems to be in contrast with the "U.S. Joint Forces Command Millennium Challenge 2002: Experiment Report ", wich cleary proves that the whole exchercise ended in decisive Redforce victory (page 602, F-17): "The Government of Red (GOR) was successful in achieving its campaign objectives, while the JTF-S commander was not able to meet his objectives. The GOR was able to retain most of its DIME capabilities though there was some degredation to GOR PMESII systems, particularly involving infrastructure and economic systems. The JTF-S DIME and PMESII were degraded across all areas of capability and systems"

Another questionable claim can be found in the 'Aftermath' section, which states that the airborne assault was entirely scripted as Red forces had to deactivate their air defense system. This is indeed not completely false or unfounded, but the wording and lack of context makes it sounds like it was a simulation of a combat envrioment that was deliberatery adutered, part of a larger wargame. The point of said airborne training has always been to evaluate and train various MEDEVAC / Logistic operations, not to conduct combat training, and so the presence of such enemy elements during said training was simply demmed not necessary.

There's also many problem with the sources listed in the Wikipedia page; with the exception of the two i added on my recent edit (U.S. Joint Forces Command Millennium Challenge 2002: Experiment Report and the M.C. Press Report) there's no primary source, and many of them are either biased or conflicting with primary ones. Many of the articles and blogs cited in the page have little or no sources, and sometimes seems like they're citing each other or repeating the same story. Some comes from reputable publications, other are obscure and probably biased (such as http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=6779&IBLOCK_ID=35&PAGE=3, wich is just an opinion piece).While the Experiment Report is very expansive and the official Press Conference do clear lots of misconceptions, it's difficult to find other serius analysis and reports (at least from my narrow POV).

Note: this does not mean that the whole excherise was not scripted or that Red forces had varing degrees or freedoom in wich they could operate, but it's improtant to realize that scripting of complex wargames and training simulation it's the norm in the army and law enforcment, as it can greatly improve training value and avoid degeneration of the excercise. Returning home on the first day of a 14 day exercise because everyone died due to glitches and faults in the simulation has no training value and it's overall a waste of money. Wargames like Millennium Challenge are not strictly designed to be won by Red or Blue forces by design. OPFOR (Reds) are meant to provide training value and challenges for Blue, and not to be an 1vs1 competitive envrioment (Pretty much in the same way your D&D master is not actively trying to kill you while playing, and the other way around).

I do believe that the articles need restructuring and better context, and i'd like to read from other users regarding the issue. Titan hs 2 (talk) 14:06, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia favours secondary sources, this is to, among other things, avoid original research. I suspect a section on the official results followed by a section on its other reviews could get around this. I agree the page needs work and I think I agree with your general direction just be aware of WP:SYNTHESIS. We are just here to report what has been said, without personal analysis, even when it is wrong. Dushan Jugum (talk) 19:28, 10 January 2022 (UTC)


 * I happened to revisit this page after checking through my past contribs, and I think I should respond to User:Titan hs 2 here on the matter of neutrality concerns. Without making any judgments regarding errors and misconceptions (the article text itself is my sole source of familiarity with the topic) I don't think that the citations in your first section actually contradict.  If they intended and steered towards a Blueforce victory, an actual Redforce victory would be unanticipated but not contradictory.  Having the odds stacked against you doesn't make it impossible to win.  Your second point is justification for adding clarifying language, but that's not a neutrality issue.  For your third point, I think User:Dushan Jugum's warning against original research in favor of secondary sources is correct and important.  Published first-party sources like yours can be useful and valuable additions to the article, but we should generally avoid treating those as better than other reliable sources, as that would introduce justified neutrality concerns and other issues.  If information in the article is indeed wrong or misreported, then reliable secondary sources refuting it should be numerous and easy to find for us to give their due weight to.  --Tathar (talk) 02:00, 25 April 2022 (UTC)