User talk:Donner60/Archive 1

Brevet Generals
I think that the work you're doing to the article has improved it immensely and dovetails with my plans for the article; however, I have one rather major disagreement, mostly because it's very heavily stepped on my toes in my own ongoing edits (which are only on hold due to involuntary downtime for my own computer). Deletion of Brevet personnel without pictures makes no sense. I have been linking to brevet personnel with preexisting articles, and deletion of any who didn't have them would be logical. However, as there are plenty of full grade generals without pictures in the article, this action seems a bit arbitrary, particularly in light of the fact that picture do exist for these personnel (brevet and non), and it's only a matter of time before someone (myself likely) manages to get those photos and just has to go right back into this article and add the entire entry, rather than just the article. The standard for inclusion, in my opinion, should be existing information, not existing photography. Plus, that was a lot of very hard work you just wiped away without discussion, so you can see why I feel a little cornered here, and I'm sure you would sympathize if you were to imagine someone else coming along tomorrow and randomly eliminating your edits. --IcarusPhoenix (talk) 00:34, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Much obliged; for the record, I've gotten no further (A and B) in adding them than you had in removing, and it is by no means all 1,367 - if I had to guess, I'd say I have been adding only about one in four due to my standard of avoiding redlinks. Anything after that is (at present, due to the aforementioned computer difficulties) is not my doing; indeed, I actually have a note to myself to remove one of the C's as being a brevetted officer with no article.
 * There are other issues on the horizon in this matter that I think we should consider now, and perhaps take to the talk page later to get the consensus of anyone else paying attention; the first issue is one relating to the size. Perhaps we should consider dividing the article into separate articles for the Union and Confederacy?
 * The second is specifically related to the Confederacy; due to the rather haphazard nature of Confederate commissions (officers of militias never mustered into national service, "irregulars", loss of records, the somewhat vague wording of CS Army regulations, officers in post-Vicksburg Kirby-Smithdom, etc.), the current list of Confederate generals is more one that we have academically accepted over the years, rather than one that is necessarily definitive. There are 137 more officers who could claim the title of "Confederate General" for one reason or another (including, among others, Jefferson Davis, who was briefly Major General of Mississippi militia before his election, and Raphael Semmes, who was given a Home Guard command and was widely referred to as "General" rather than "Admiral" after this point).  I feel that many of these people should be included in some way, but I've not yet considered how to best go about noting them.
 * The final issue is related directly to the brevet officers. I'm wondering if their inclusion shouldn't be somewhat more selective than I've been.  The overwhelming majority of these officers' brevets bear the date of March  13, 1865, due to an act of the War Department.  They were issued at any point between May of 1865 and June of 1869, and were, of course, signed by President Johnson rather than President Lincoln.  I'm wondering if their inclusion alongside that of the fifty or so that were brevetted during the war is necessarily justified.  I think it is, but I would like a second opinion on the matter.
 * As for your difficulty preserving the picture links, may I ask how you're editing? If you're using the more graphical/richtext editor, then doing much of anything is difficult - ironically, the more user-friendly they makes things, the harder it gets to actually get anything done.  Personally, I work directly in code-view, and have zero trouble managing to copy everything.  It saves a lot of hassle.
 * As I was typing this, by the by, someone (someone not logged in) added the "too-long" template to the article, so maybe we should look more thoroughly at the split issue.
 * --IcarusPhoenix (talk) 02:46, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I figured that you were editing in that format; wikipedia really didn't think that through when they created the new editing tools - they sort of forgot to beta test them.
 * As for the list, as much as I liked your edits, in retrospect, it does seem that you were maybe adding a bit too much information in the notations column. I think the longer introductory paragraphs, however, should stay, and I definitely think you should put back the pre-war officers lists; those existed in some form before you added to them anyway.
 * As for which additional officers to include, I'll go through the records in a week or two when my own system is back up and probably just make judgment calls on who should be included in the list and hope most people agree with my calls.
 * On a small side note, neither of us noticed until just now that we had messages left on my main page and not my talk page. Oops.  I've moved them over for the sake of form.
 * --IcarusPhoenix (talk) 18:05, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I think it's turning out rather well, though I still think the best way to kill that flag and get all the relevant information in is to split the article (something I think we should at least involve Kumioko in). I have many of the same questions about determination of length, but honestly, we are dealing with a large subject here, so a certain amount of length is essentially required, and the table format is the only way we're going to keep it in a readable fashion.  As for the photos, I absolutely think they should remain, as they add a certain amount of professionalism to the article.
 * As for notations, I think perhaps you're trending towards adding too much information again; other war service, education, pre-war ranks, etc. are all things that I feel should be left to the articles themselves. Political offices, medals of honor, interesting trivia (ex: Bartlett's duties at two Presidential death-beds), and family connections are all fair game for notes.  KIA is definitely a fair addition to the "Notes" column.
 * The next issue is one of citations. I think, in this case, the notes don't need citations.  We're talking about over 1,000 people already, and even if only 20% have notes, that still makes the citations section prohibitively long.  However, introductory paragraphs should have citations, and I think there should at least be citations to Warner, Allardice, and Hunt as our source material for the lists themselves.
 * The next issue is one of inclusion, and I shall start with the Union, as it is far more complex. We have before us two options; the first is making a separate page for brevetted officers this is only a list of 1,367 names in list format (not a table) with no pictures, notations, etc. as in the appendix of Warner.  I feel this is a mistake for two reasons; firstly, it does not say who was brevetted more than once, nor who was brevetted US Army vs. US Volunteers.  Second, there are some damned interesting notes to be had for some of these people.
 * The second option is a selection process, similar to the one I had been doing (where I only put those who had pre-existing articles). However, I think more stringent criteria are necessary, and I also think that it would work best if we do split the lists (which has the added bonus of allowing us to be more detailed about how generals are determined for each army).  So far, I've been working on a list of brevet officers that I think are worthy of inclusion; any who held major elected offices (statewide or national), all those brevetted by President Lincoln and not post-war, those with notable life histories of families (i.e. Charles Francis Adams, Jr. and John Jacob Astor, Jr.), those killed in action, and perhaps those whose brevets are USA rather than USV are currently going on my list of candidates for inclusion, some of whom I'll probably cross off on my second go through (the USA/USV issue is another one, but I'll get to that shortly).
 * For the Confederacy, the matter is much simpler in my opnion. I have a list of thirty-seven officers who I feel are worthy of inclusion, but I see no reason to put them in the main list.  Thirty-seven is a manageable enough number that they should be included in a separate table at the very end of the CSA section (or page).  They include militia generals who actually served in major actions (most of Jackson's Shenandoah Valley force was militia, for example), those promoted in Kirby-Smithdom, those who probably were promoted in the last days of the war but whose commissions never came through (since the government had collapsed), a couple promoted by President Davis who served in that capacity but were never confirmed by the Senate, and one whose commission arrived the day after he died (which on the Union list actually would merit inclusion in the main list, so its odd that it didn't here).  The other 100 can safely be ignored I think.
 * Now to address both the USA/USV issue and the matter of brevet rank vs. substantive rank, I think that we need to add another column to the Union list. Yes, I know this will bring the kb total back up a tad, but I think with how much you managed to cull and with a list split, we'll have more than enough space for it.  I think rank should be two columns; one for substantive grade, and another for brevet, since a huge number (possibly a majority) of general officers had one or more of them.  Also, I think that after each rank, we should probably add the academic standards of "USA" (US Army) and "USV" (US Volunteers), because this really does make a difference.  As Warner pointed out, it was entirely possible (and not uncommon) for a single officer to have four ranks - substantives and brevets in both the regular and volunteer forces.  This also lets us add the information that you had included in the list of regular generals without having to add an extra list.  I think it's relevant information, and we should have it.
 * That's my stack of commentary for now; I'm going to go back to selecting potential Union brevets for inclusion. I'll type up my CSA list in the next day or so if you'd like to see it.
 * --IcarusPhoenix (talk) 19:37, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Additional edit: I forgot to mention; in some cases, you've put things like "Chief of Engineers" and "Inspector General" in the ranks column; I noticed while going through additional CSA officers last night that a lot of them were mistakenly called "General" because they were colonels or below holding those duties. I think that information should be included, but I think it should be in the "Notes" column.  This of course doesn't apply to the early 1861 charts, only the war ones.
 * --IcarusPhoenix (talk) 19:41, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

List of ACW generals
First I wanna say good work. Cleaning up this list has been on my radar for a while now but I haev been invlolved with other things, primarily Medal of Honor recipients so I havent been able to get around to it. I left a comment on the articles talk page about splitting it as well (it wasn't me who left the page limit message BTW but I agree with it). Also, Just FYI too I was the one who originally added the branch with Union and Confederate because I was going to merge it into one big list rather than separate it but a certain editor left me some comments about my "activities" dealing with the page so I left it alone. It seems there are some editors who are particularly protective over certain topics. Just thought I would let you know since one stop by. The ACW topics seem to draw some, at times, heated debate. Good luck and please let me know if there is anything I can do to help in your efforts. --Kumioko (talk) 13:31, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

The Extra Generals
Right, so I've got my list of extra generals all written up; in the end, I found thirty-seven (of 137) other Confederate generals that I feel we should consider adding, and 250 Union (which, when you consider the 1,400 listed by Hunt and Brown, is surprisingly low... I was pretty brutal with my selections). Honestly, I think if we split the article, it shouldn't get too long (250 is fewer that the Confederates we'd be moving, anyway), and if we wish, we can have a multi-columned list (with no notes) of the remainder, either on that page or on a different one. In addition, this gives us more room to explain the nature of promotions and regulations, and write up completely separate information for both the Union and Confederacy, since most of their procedures were different. I also am still of the opinion that we should consider making two rank columns for the Union page, Substantive and Brevet; I think putting the brevet ranks in the notes section is too unwieldy. In the case of people with other notes (particularly those who held multiple elected offices, earned the medal of honor, had interesting family connections, etc.) it's hard to see the brevet rank immediately. For example, the entry for General Chamberlain would read thus:

Opinions? In theory, we could even put the link to Brevet in the column header, and leave it out of the individual entries, thus saving space. I wouldn't necessarily do this part immediately (I'd want to split the article first, after all), but if you approve of the inclusion of the extra names, I can get started on them this evening. --IcarusPhoenix (talk) 18:21, 13 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Right then; I've added 34 additional generals section to the bottom of the CSA section (I'm less interested them, and there are fewer, so I was just getting it done), as well as a paragraph of explanation. See what you think.  For tonight I'm done; tomorrow, I'll likely split the article really fast, turning the current article into a disambiguation page, and making List of American Civil War Generals (Union) and List of American Civil War Generals (Confederate).  At least, that's my current plan.
 * --IcarusPhoenix (talk) 05:43, 14 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I've updated the "A" section to the two rank-column format, and added/deleted Bvt. Officers as appropriate. I've also added/subtracted notes.  I figured I should do one letter and leave it until you looked at it and gave me your input, at which point I can move on.  Also, which of us should do the split?  I was thinking that might be something for you, since you've put so much effort into intro paragraphs.
 * --IcarusPhoenix (talk) 23:01, 15 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I actually did the A's all over again from scratch (which is why some brevets I'd added in the past fell off when they didn't meet my new criteria). It made the whole thing simpler, particularly when one works in code view like I do.  As for moving CSA "might have beens" down, I did actually notice a few that someone had randomly placed in the upper section and managed to eliminate or move them, depending on their service.


 * In the case of the images, when they just say a name and ".jpg", then someone typed something wrong, likely forgetting the brackets in the code; either that, or the file was deleted. However, I'm not seeing either or the width issue happening in the section I edited; i'll have to look at it on another computer, but on this one everything is looking exactly as it should - right image width (75 px), no missing images, etc.


 * Splitting the article will be a simple copy-and-paste job; I'll try to get to it tomorrow if I can, and just leave the introductory information intact for you to work with in both. The current page I'll just turn into a disambiguation page.
 * --IcarusPhoenix (talk) 03:15, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Introductory Article
I figured that I would leave the introduction to you to figure out, since you've put more work into it than anyone else of late.

As for a brevet list, I would think that we should have a single list (on its own page) of nothing more than names (like the appendix in Warner) and double up the notable ones - one brevetted before the end of the war, those brevetted who dies in action, those of notable name, major elected officials, etc. - inside the list as we've been doing. That seems to be working so far. I'm of the opinion that the overall brevet list hardly needs details, since of those 1,600 personnel, I'd guess that articles exist for fewer than 200 of them, if that, and most of the others probably aren't notable enough to merit articles. IcarusPhoenix (talk) 06:07, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Camp Douglas images
I've noticed you don't have any images of the Camp in the Article so i thought i might as well send you a link to the Library of Congress where they have pictures of guards, prisoners and sketches of the camp: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3a17854/?co=pga Hope it helps--87.70.124.157 (talk) 10:48, 4 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks! Now I can test whether I am savvy enough to actually insert one or more of these into the article.Donner60 (talk) 21:45, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
 * So far, I have been able to pull up only a sketch of the camp, not any photos. I think I need to see if I can get at them in another way, not through the link provided.Donner60 (talk) 00:39, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Glad i could help, even if only slightly:)--87.70.124.157 (talk) 13:56, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Alfred Gibbs
Great job on the Alfred Gibbs article. One reviewer commented about the intro being short. While it's true that intros can be up to 3 or 4 paragraphs, in my opinion a short one should not disqualify it from B-class. I'll review it as soon as I can. Djmaschek (talk) 07:18, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I have written an expanded introduction and saved the page so it is online. Even after the first expanded draft, I think the article was short enough that the short introduction from the stub could still be used. I agree that with the longer article, a longer introduction is appropriate and in line with the guideline. I am trying to figure out the comment on the footnotes. I had a couple of citation needed templates put on an earlier article where I had citations for 80 to 90 per cent of the sentences and the others seemed to me to be related but they were tagged anyway. So I would like to be able to have the right form for including more than one sentence in a footnote and not have it tagged. On the other hand, since I have figured out how to make multiple references to the same footnote, I suppose that form does not waste as much space and is not a real bad alternative.Donner60 (talk) 08:20, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Appomattox Campaign
Hi. I notice you have been doing some excellent updates of Appomattox Campaign articles. If you intend to do more of these, perhaps you should put the campaign article itself on your to-do list. I wrote it originally, but it consists almost entirely of stubs and NPS text at the moment. In my more recent campaign articles, I typically expand each of the battle articles themselves and then extract relevant sentences, paragraphs, and footnotes from those articles into the campaign article. A reasonable example is Franklin-Nashville Campaign.

I wonder if you would be interested in some suggestions on formatting. I have written a style guide for ACW articles and I'd say that 500+ of the significant Wikipedia ACW article use it: User:Hlj/CWediting. These are guidelines, not mandatory, but I see some value in having stylistic consistency across related articles. Here are a few general suggestions:


 * The lead section (those paragraphs prior to the table of contents) is intended to be a summary of the following article and, therefore, is usually not footnoted.
 * It is not necessary to footnote every assertion explicitly in an article. Of course, it is a matter of personal style, but I (and virtually all published Civil War authors) find that end-of-paragraph footnoting is usually adequate and visually less cluttered.
 * I see you are using Reference formatting much closer to mine, which is based on the MLA/Chicago standard, than to the clumsy Wikipedia cite template. If that is your intent, I have a very large collection of references correctly formatted in User:Hlj/CWbibliography. The following suggestions apply to citations.
 * When there are multiple authors, the first is listed with his surname first, but the others are listed normally, such as:
 * * Eicher, John H., and David J. Eicher. Civil War High Commands. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-8047-3641-3.


 * When you want to link to an external version of the text, you do so over the title of the book, such as Author, [URL Title], Publisher, etc. Don't drop the lengthy raw URL at the end of the entry. There are numerous examples in my list of references. You will see that even in those cases where the full text is available on Google or elsewhere, I also always include an ISBN or OCLC tag so that people can easily find printed copies in local libraries or bookstores if they choose. Examples:
 * * Kennedy, Frances H., ed. The Civil War Battlefield Guide. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1998. ISBN 0-395-74012-6.
 * * Hughes, Robert M. General Johnston. Great Commanders. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1893. . (And note that it is usually possible to abbreviate a Google book reference down to just its "id=" value.)


 * When I am citing an encyclopedia, such as the Heidlers', I use the author of the article as the citation, such as:
 * * Sauers, Richard A. "Ambrose Everett Burnside." In Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social, and Military History, edited by David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000. ISBN 0-393-04758-X. (Footnotes are then to Sauers, not Heidler and Heidler.)

Best regards, Hal Jespersen (talk) 16:57, 30 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Reply is on your user page. Thanks. Donner60 (talk) 23:03, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

I am happy to discuss any administrative, formatting issues, as well as substantive Civil War issues. You can either use this talk page interface or send me an e-mail; there is a link at the top of my user page. (I actually find e-mail more conducive to discussions.) I can also help with map issues, because I drew most of them.

My Bible for creating references (for books I do not actually have in my library, of course) is http://www.worldcat.org/. It provides ISBN numbers for all of the different versions of a book, and if it is an older book without an ISBN, it gives the OCLC. Try clicking this: and see how useful the information is to the reader. Another useful link is http://www.isbn.org/converterpub.asp, which is a tool that allows you to format the ISBN numbers with hyphens in the correct places.

You are correct that the Wikipedia template version is not required for citations and when I maintain an article, I push back on attempts to convert them, relying on the Wikipedia manual of style policy that you do not make arbitrary changes to an allowable style that is already used consistently within an article. However, one of the reasons that I can sit above the fray in this way is that I long ago decided I did not care about achieving graded status on any of my articles. Well in the past, a few misguided souls attempted to get some of my articles upgraded to featured status without my active cooperation, and it was quite painful to have to argue with an army of anonymous reviewers. They demand somewhat arbitrary changes, different sometimes from reviewer to reviewer, and attempt to hold you hostage until you agree. So I take satisfaction of having my own set of standards and I spend my time improving articles with substantive content, not worrying about the Wikipedia bureaucracy. (Perhaps if these articles had my name on them, I might think differently about the number of little gold stars that I have accumulated.)

The NPS summaries are not there because they are fabulous sources of information, but because in the early days (before I started editing in January 2004), the military history guys found that they were in the public domain and could be copied over wholesale to form the entire framework of American Civil War battle articles. There are still a nontrivial number of battle and campaign articles that use text directly copied from the NPS site. This is legally acceptable, but is considered plagiarism and therefore undesirable in Wikipedia. Eventually they will all be rewritten, I hope. You are right in your observation that there is a very, very small community of active editors in this space, so things move slowly. You can see my personal to-do list here: User:Hlj. But it is nowhere near being a complete list. However, the NPS summaries are reliable secondary sources, so if you find errors, they need to be treated as errors in other secondary sources. (My style guide has a discussion of how to deal with conflicting footnotes here: User:Hlj/CWediting. You might be surprised how many people do not understand the multiple point of view concepts described there.)

I confess that the NPS summaries have one additional positive factor. I have spent literally hundreds of hours arguing with people about changing the text in the information boxes of articles about the nature of the victory (Union victory, Union decisive victory, strategic victory, inconclusive, etc.) and I am usually able to convince people that since the CWSAC historians compiled information like this about almost 400 battles in one place, it makes sense to defer to them for a sense of consistency across all of our articles. So 90% of the time, I am able to assert "we use the NPS battle result" without receiving much more of an argument. And with a small number of notable exceptions, I am able to make comparable assertions about which name to choose for a battle. (By the way, in one of your articles you equated the term "Richmond-Petersburg campaign" with the "Overland Campaign." It is not. Richmond-Petersburg is the campaign we know on Wikipedia as Siege of Petersburg; the former is actually more accurate than the more popular latter. Since you are referring to this campaign only in passing, I would recommend omitting the alternative names anyway, because those are visible when the user clicks the link.)

Hal Jespersen (talk) 00:01, 31 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I put a further reply and comments to your second message on your user page. Thanks. Donner60 (talk) 02:09, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

One further thought about classifying articles. My philosophy is that I do the best job I can and follow as many of the guidelines as I deem reasonable. If someone else thinks improvements can be made, the Wikipedia ethic is that they can do it themselves, rather than put themselves into an exalted position in which they demand arbitrary changes that I have to make. Although I have not done an inventory, I suspect that about one third of the 300+ articles I have written would be classifiable as B or A without any further modifications. And, as you have seen, I have a large to-do list to improve the rest.

One further thought about the NPS: I assume you are aware that the Frances Kennedy book you are citing is a product of that same set of historians, amplifying the abbreviated material from the website into book length. I can't say that I have found very many errors in it, other than errors of omission because of its brevity.

On the issue of removing something from an article versus simply adding to it: I rarely get involved in well-developed articles written by someone else, so this is not an issue. When I approach an existing article to modify it, it is usually one of the shorter ones (often something I wrote myself five or six years ago), and then I go through a wholesale sweep of rewriting it almost from scratch, ensuring that everything is well cited. During that process, if some of the existing uncited material is thrown away, I don't worry about it. I figure that if someone really cares about a particular sentence, they can reinsert it, although now they will have to have a proper citation for it. In practice, this almost never happens.

On using a variety of sources: I assume you are aware of the Wikipedia guidelines on using secondary sources instead of primary sources, right? We generally do not have to worry about differing views of the participants because we rely on the professional historians in their secondary sources to weigh the reliability of each story. What is interesting to me, or frustrating, is to see how the basic facts of history (number of casualties, sequence of events, etc.) are expressed differently by different professional historians. Those are the cases in which we have to use footnote or text explanations to sort out those differences. Virtually every one of my large battle articles has disagreements of this type.

Finally, on Sayler's Creek: I am the one responsible for the short explanation in the existing article of why it is spelled that way instead of Sailor's (which is the way NPS spells it). Based on the campaign book by Chris Calkins, however, I think it should be changed. If you don't have the book, let me know by e-mail and I will send you the page that describes the issue.


 * Calkins, Chris. The Appomattox Campaign, March 29 – April 9, 1865. Conshohocken, PA: Combined Books, 1997. ISBN 978-0-938-28954-8. (Available on Questia.com.)

Hal Jespersen (talk) 21:02, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Bios
Not to bother you with too many comments, but since you seem amenable to it…

I have been on a low grade campaign to remove the references to "honorary" brevet ranks. The status of a brevet rank is actually quite complicated and sometimes they are admittedly used entirely for honorary purposes – in lieu of medals – but in other cases they are issued for arcane administrative reasons. So I always say something like "he was appointed a brevet major," leaving the characteristics of that appointment unstated. (It is also less than optimal to use brevet as a verb.)

The terminology US Volunteers or USV was not used in the Civil War. Although the concept is recognizable, I do not believe the term came into widespread use until the Spanish-American War – I have scanned through the Official Records and not found an instance of it. Therefore, in the ACW articles we say "of volunteers", although we usually do not even mention it unless we are trying to differentiate it from a regular army rank. Hal Jespersen (talk) 21:24, 31 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I have again left a reply on your talk page. Seems awkward but it is the suggested way to do it. Donner60 (talk) 22:45, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I followed up with some further thoughts on brevet award descriptions. You may end up reading both together but I thought I should make note of it. Donner60 (talk) 02:23, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

First, I wanted to verify that you received my e-mail. (The address that you gave with embedded underscores seems a little odd.) I would be perfectly happy with a sentence that said "he was rewarded (or his gallantry was recognized, etc.) with an appointment to brevet colonel." Finally, about the dates associated with the promotion. These appear very infrequently in Wikipedia because it is a little more difficult to unearth the information. I use the Eichers' Civil War High Commands and you have to go fishing around through appendices to find dates other than the date of rank: nomination, appointment, and confirmation. It is actually sometimes useful information in cases of substantive rank. If you look at the date of rank and just report that as the promotion date, it makes it appear as if officers were promoted right on the battlefield, having dates such as September 17, 1862, or July 4, 1863. By looking further, you find that they were nominated or appointed a few months later. I have made an attempt to indicate this for some of the more important biographies, but it is nowhere near consistent. Hal Jespersen (talk) 16:52, 1 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Reply and reply to following comments, and to included comments from you in a reply e-mail to a previous e-mail from me (starting to look complicated!), all in an e-mail from me to you that I just sent. Donner60 (talk) 03:24, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Refs
I saw your edits to Namozine Church and I can still offer some assistance with the reference formatting. Just an example:
 * Davies, Henry Eugene. General Sheridan. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1895. OCLC 693591497. downloaded December 27, 2010.

should be:
 * Davies, Henry Eugene. General Sheridan. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1895. . Retrieved December 27, 2010.

(I do not bother to put the retrieval date on books of this type, but that is the verb used by Wikipedia rather than downloaded.)

Also, in the short form citation/footnote you and I use, I would never include the name of the editor of a book. Simply the last name of the author of the article. The editor's name goes in the Reference citation. (I also do not bother to put the year of publication in the short form citation. In this case, yours is more correct than mine, but we all have our quirks. I use only the author's name and if there are multiple works by the same author, I disambiguate them by putting a portion of the title, which seems a little more user-friendly. For example: Hal Jespersen (talk) 17:05, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Woodworth, Jefferson Davis and His Generals, p. 6.
 * Woodworth, Six Armies in Tennessee, p. 22.


 * Reply is again on your page. Donner60 (talk) 18:00, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi. I would still like to know whether you received my e-mail or not.

The reason that I "published" my reference list is for others to take advantage of it. I keep it in a .TXT file on my desktop and just copy entries whenever I need them, so you and others are invited to do the same.

The difference between ISBN and OCLC entries is that the former is widely used and is automatically converted, whereas the latter requires the use of an explicit template.

It is certainly possible for you to point readers explicitly to a specific page in an online book inside each footnote and some editors do that. For instance: I do not because I think it is a big hassle and just overly complicates the "source code" of the article, making it more difficult for me to edit. My thought process on these articles is to make them as close as possible to articles in history books; historians never include copies of the pages they are referencing in footnotes. (That is also my justification for using compound footnotes, separating multiple citations with semicolons in a single footnote, rather than putting a whole string of smaller footnotes in the main text of the article. You would never see that in a book. But a lot of Wikipedia editors do that.) I tell readers where to find the information, but do not feel compelled to link them directly to it. If they are really interested, or question my sincerity or accuracy, they have ways to find the information, but the casual reader does not need to worry about that or get distracted by it.
 * Dabney, p. 296.

My point about the retrieval date is that this convention was created for citing websites, which can change day by day, so you need to reveal which "version" of information you are citing. However, in the case of a Google book, the information is frozen in time because it is a static representation of a published work. It should be no more necessary to include a retrieval date for a Google book than to tell the reader what day you went to the library to look at a printed book. But whatever keeps those reviewers happy ... Hal Jespersen (talk) 20:08, 1 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Reply and reply to last above comments, and to included comments from you in a reply e-mail to a previous e-mail from me (starting to look complicated!), all in an e-mail from me to you that I just sent. Donner60 (talk) 03:24, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Timeline
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Copyright problem: Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War
Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia! We welcome and appreciate your contributions, such as Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War, but we regretfully cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from either web sites or printed material. This article appears to contain material copied from from Wagner, Margaret E., Gary W. Gallagher, and Paul Finkelman. The Library of Congress Civil War Desk Reference. (2009) ISBN 978-1-4391-4884-6, page 59-63, and therefore to constitute a violation of Wikipedia's copyright policies. The copyrighted text has been or will soon be deleted. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with our copyright policy. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators are liable to be blocked from editing.

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 * If you own the copyright to the material: send an e-mail from an address associated with the original publication to permissions-en(at)wikimedia(dot)org or a postal message to the Wikimedia Foundation permitting re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License and GNU Free Documentation License, and note that you have done so on Talk:Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War. See Donating copyrighted materials for instructions.

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If you would like to begin working on a new version of the article you may do so at [ this temporary page]. Leave a note at Talk:Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War saying you have done so and an administrator will move the new article into place once the issue is resolved. Thank you, and please feel welcome to continue contributing to Wikipedia. Happy editing! Kirk (talk) 14:06, 1 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I have put comments in reply on the Kirk user talk page.
 * Thanks for your comments; the process needs both of you to step up and actually find these problems since you have all the books and this article is so long with so many sources and citations no one else is really going to be able to help. Kirk (talk) 20:29, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
 * That would certainly be preferable to wasting the work already done. Is this supposed to be done on a temporary page since the original page is blanked or does it need to wait until a review? Can the page be released in whole or in part after the review so that it might be better to wait for the outcome? Does the copyright review process affect this and should comments be made as part of that process or do the reviewers simply look at it without further comment? Donner60 (talk) 21:29, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Union General's List notes
I think you may be over-doing the notes section; entirely aside from the fact that adding so much information sort of defeats the purpose of splitting the list in the first place, all of that information is (or should be) in their primary articles; since this is just a listing, we don't need Eicher refs for every single one, we don't need what regiments they were in, and we don't need nomination/confirmations dates for their brevets (as the "to rank from" dates are in the rank columns). Personally, I've just been doing West Point classes, CMOH and Thanks of Congress citations, combat deaths, resignations, major political offices, important relations, and commission rejections and expirations and the like while I'm doing my formatting (A and H are now done, and I'm about to do any letter with only a few names in it - I, Q, U, and Z). Just updating the format of the "H" section added nearly 5,800 characters, so I'm wondering if we're not going to have to worry about another size warning soon... IcarusPhoenix (talk) 03:24, 20 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Reply left on your page. This note is for confirmation of that if you check here first. Donner60 (talk) 06:47, 20 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I will definitely be finishing the lists over the next two-three months (I hope no longer), because with the 150th, I think we have a good reason for getting our information up-to-scratch. In regards to those other users you mentions, I actually had a quick word with one of them (Farragutful I think) about a couple of his additions not quite meeting the criteria, and he got rather... rude.  That being said, he's also said that his additions were just incidental, as he's actually working on biographies for people from a specific state - Ohio, I think - so I'm content to ignore the incident and carry on with our work.  Indeed, it was this conversation that prompted me to format the "H" section (the addition of William Hoffman, which I did agree with).


 * I too have a complete list of brevets, though mine is also VERY low priority, and isn't that much more complex than Warner's appendix. It's more or less:


 * Major Henry Livermore Abbott, Bvt. Brigadier General, USV (March 13, 1865)
 * Colonel Joseph Carter Abbott, Bvt. Brigadier General, USV (January 15, 1865)
 * And so on. No tables, no complex code, just a bulleted list, perhaps in two columns.  Of course, for me, too, it may be months before I get to it, if ever.


 * In the CSA "extras", I do wonder about that issue at times; at least two were only not promoted due to the fall of Richmond and lack of a Congress, and several others were Kirby-Smith appointments, and almost certainly would have been full-grade if there had been communication between Richmond and the Trans-Mississippi. The fact remains though, that they never were officially generals, which is why we have an extras.  I'm content to leave them for now, in part because the list itself isn't as overly-long as its Union counter-part.


 * I'll punch out I, Q, U, and Z today or tomorrow, then move on to formatting the bigger letters.
 * IcarusPhoenix (talk) 17:08, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Further brief note on your page. Donner60 (talk) 05:34, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Article on George A. Porterfield
What a great article! Good job buddy. Please consider nominating it for WP:DYK. Kind regards.Calaka (talk) 02:39, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Not a problem! I take a look through the most recently created articles from time to time and rarely see such articles and if I do they are usually a lot shorter. Ah as for DYK, yeah I like the hook about him being one of the last. Make your nomination up at the DYK page and see what they say (sometimes they make suggestions I think to make it more suitable?). Anyway, keep up the great work. :)Calaka (talk) 09:34, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

DYK Nomination
I would like to nominate the article you recently created Battle of Fairfax Court House (June 1861) for did you know but cannot seem to find a good hook. All the ones I come up with suck. I would like to ask you if you could find a fact that is supported by a reference so that you could have some formal activity in the process. Regards.  maucho  eagle   ( c ) 22:22, 22 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Answered on your discussion page. Donner60 (talk) 22:33, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Also, the Battle of Fairfax Court House (June 1861) should be moved to Battle of Fairfax Court House according to policy. Regards.  maucho  eagle   ( c ) 22:39, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Noted on your page that there is more than one Battle of Fairfax Court House with another being later in the year 1861. I intend to add pages for at least some of these battles. They were all small but some of them did have more than passing significance. One was part of the preliminary campaign leading to the Battle of Gettysburg. Donner60 (talk) 22:50, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Well when you do start creating them let me know and I will create Battle of Fairfax Court House as a disambiguation page or better yet you can create it if you know what a disambiguation page is.  maucho  eagle   ( c ) 22:51, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Reply and thanks on your discussion page. Donner60 (talk) 22:55, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I put this message on your talk page:

You are quite efficient in managing and archiving your pages so I may be a little outside your procedure with my slow reply. If so, I apologize. I will leave this message here and on my talk page, for what it may be worth. I would have thought it easy to pick out a nice fact or two from this article but some relate more to the personalities and others are a little hard to put in capsule form. Here are a few thoughts.

How about something to the effect that 64-year old civilian and former and subsequent Virginia governor William "Extra Billy" Smith took command of a Confederate infantry company which was resisting a Union Army cavalry raid in the first land battle of the American Civil War, the Battle of Fairfax Court House (June 1861) after their captain, John Quincy Marr, had become the first Confederate officer killed in the war? Poland, Jr., Charles P. The Glories Of War: Small Battle And Early Heroes Of 1861. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2006. ISBN 1-4184-5973-9. Retrieved May 10, 2011. p. 240. (I cite the internet site for a preview of the book, but since I own the book, that really was unnecessary.) Poland's book has the most thorough and detailed modern account of this battle.

You might have to tighten up the language a little. To be precise, I suppose it would be necessary to add after the Battle of Fort Sumter but maybe that could be implied in a DYK?

A curious fact is that more horses were killed in the battle (9) - also 4 wounded horses - than the total number of killed and wounded soldiers on both sides combined (8). The sources are in the notes for the paragraph just before the aftermath section. On the other hand, I just added a footnote stating that Tompkins (in his report a day later, same source: Moore) said he "lost" 12 horses - perhaps three wounded horses died in the interim. Picking up on that, less specifically, there were more horse "casualties" than human "casualties" in the battle.

There are several other interesting facts about this battle but some of them may be more appropriately taken from articles about the key individuals rather than the article about the battle.

Note that I have made a few additions and clarifications in the article. One is a footnote which lists many, if not all, of the additional skirmishes and small battles that occurred at Fairfax Court House during the war.

I am afraid that although I think this battle is an interesting and little known incident at the outset of the American Civil War, and has some interesting facts connected with it, I am not sure I have come up with a snappy fact or two for a DYK but perhaps this will give you a lead on putting one together. Donner60 (talk) 07:48, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

My hero
That is what you are for that one... Since I had only made it through "A". If yours isn't ready to "go live" yet (as it were), you perfectly welcome to just paste the whole lot into my WIP page, and I can combine the two from there. If it is ready, how does List of American Civil War brevet Generals (Union) sound for the title? Either way, that's my next major thing to tackle, so I'll work on whichever you put up.

Also, last night I finally finished the reformat of List of American Civil War Generals (Union); I feel remarkably accomplished now! I'm going to go through today and tomorrow and do bits of proofreading and adding missing commission dates. Also, I may go through and remove extraneous links (New York is listed at least a dozen times for example, to say nothing of other states and offices). Whether I make each link occur only once per section, or only once period like the ranks are, I don't yet know. But for the most part, that sucker is done.IcarusPhoenix (talk) 17:27, 24 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Posted the new page. Further comments on your discussion page. Donner60 (talk) 23:02, 24 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, I'll give you this; you got a hell of a lot further on it than I had; in fact, as it stands, the page is about 150kB larger than the page I had planned, and about 80kB larger than the non-brevet page. I think we should actually eliminate the confirmation date column and drop the brevets only to the highest-achieved (both regular and volunteer), and maybe drop the unit column... though I actually kind of like that column in this situation, so I'm waffling on it.
 * As for the main article, I'm already working on getting all of the to-rank dates (finished A and B this morning) and will paste the whole thing across as soon as it's done. I also say don't worry about overlap of names: all of them should be on the brevets list.  Hell, if we get that one up to par, we may end up eliminating them from the non-brevet list, though I rather like having the important ones on there, so long as we make sure the notes on the brevet list match.IcarusPhoenix (talk) 00:52, 25 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Reply on your page. It is the usual procedure but it always seems strange not to at least confirm it on the same page as the message. Donner60 (talk) 02:05, 25 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Honestly, the lack of articles for these guys is pretty much the clincher argument for keeping the confirmation column; before I got to that, I was going to suggest something like the opening paragraphs of the substantive list in which I wrote about the difference between confirmation and to-rank-from dates, but since probably a majority won't get articles, I say you're right; let's leave it as-is and just flesh it out.IcarusPhoenix (talk) 02:27, 25 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Donner60 (talk) 02:48, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Big Bethel
Hi. The lead section is meant to be a brief summary of the article, from one to four paragraphs long, varying based on the length of the article. The section you have just added is about 3x longer than appropriate and may be longer than the article it is supposed to summarize. :-) Even if you intend to expand the article later, consider trimming the lead way down. Hal Jespersen (talk) 19:15, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Brevets
Hi. Long time no speak. I wanted to take exception with the change you made to the James Barnes article. A brevet appointment should not be listed as an award--it should be listed as a person's highest rank, such as Brevet  Major General. Our standard reference by the Eichers, http://books.google.com/books?id=Fs0Ajlnjl6AC&lpg=PA34&vq=brevet%20commissions&dq=eicher%20Civil%20War%20high%20commands&pg=PA34#v=snippet&q=brevet%20commissions&f=false, sums it up:


 * Brevet commissions have been misunderstood for years by army officers, as well as by biographers. Brevet commissions were neither honorary nor temporary grades as some writers have suggested. The usual errors consist of assuming that all brevet grades were issued only for acknowledgment of honors, and that they carried no practical authority. However brevet grades were issued as regular commissions and carried all the privileges of substantive grade, except within the regiment (line unit) to which an officer was assigned. Brevet officers were not "brevetted," but were appointed, nominated, confirmed, and commissioned in the same manner as were substantive grade officers. Senate confirmation for brevet commissions was required beginning on 16 April 1818.

I hope that you will reverse this change for Barnes and other articles you might have touched. Thanks. Hal Jespersen (talk) 20:50, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. I certainly understand that some of the Civil War generals were appointed to brevet ranks as a reward for service or gallantry, but it is not fair to say that all of them were. Is a judgment call whether to describe an appointment as an award and I think that using the information box in the article is a poor choice of a place to do that analysis. (This is a related issue to my campaign against using the term "decisive victory" in information boxes because there is insufficient space to discuss the pros and cons of the arguments.) I think you can make a case that an appointment made by Andrew Johnson had little military relevance, but information box is not the place to make it. So I think a rational choice would be to either list the highest appointment, brevet or not, in the rank section for all officers or to list no brevets. And since some of the brevet appointments were legitimate increases in rank, I think the former choice is the better one. Hal Jespersen (talk) 22:52, 28 September 2011 (UTC)


 * I think maybe I have a solution to this problem; first of all, I think it's worth noting that if you just look at brevets for general-grade officers, it isn't some of them who were appointed as a reward, but most (to the tune of 1,541 of them, or a whopping 96%). It should also be noted that a slight majority of the fifty-nine solely-brevet conferences of general grades were posthumous.  That being said, I am of the opinion that Searcher 1990's wholesale correction of officers' ranks to their brevets is an incorrect action, but not wholly so (I'm fairly certain that's who is currently doing it, anyway).  My suggestion is to do what we have done on the Union Generals list and put both substantive and brevet grades in the infobox, separated by a carriage return and possibly bulleted.  Realistically, Civil War-era brevets were very rarely used in the field for any grade short of Major Generals, and the post-Civil War Army ignored them completely when it came to field service.  When combined with the remarkable frequency of brevets posthumously or in the post-war years as rewards for service or for political reasons, I think it only fair to note substantive ranks on all articles as well as brevets.IcarusPhoenix (talk) 05:11, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually, he's already put a response up on his own talk page. It looks to me like he's onboard with the idea of placing both substantive and brevet grades in the infobox under "Ranks".IcarusPhoenix (talk) 05:47, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I rather gave up keeping up with Jesperson months ago; as for the brevet issue, I agree, which is why I think this works as a good compromise, and while I'm not going to actively go through the biographical info of every Civil War Federal officer we have pages for, I will make the correction when I happen to come across them; when I think on it, nearly a third of the pages on my watchlist probably ended up there after I had to edit out statements along the lines of, "brevetted by President Lincoln", because the original authors assumed so based on the March 13, 1865 date that we're so used to.IcarusPhoenix (talk) 18:55, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Point Lookout
I understand your decision for removing the citation on the Point Lookout article, and I appreciate the thorough reasoning which you provided. I have no problem with the revision. All the best. Chandlery (talk) 03:11, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

DYK for Alfred E. Jackson
Orlady (talk) 22:47, 4 December 2011 (UTC) 16:03, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Harris, et. al.
So far, I've not noticed any vandalism on the Confederate General's page, and only two incidents on the Union one; mind you, I'm of the opinion that far too much information is being added to the CSA page (birth/death/entire service records, and other things that basically are making even having bio pages almost unnecessary in some cases), but since the Confederate list has pretty much been your baby, I've left that to your judgment. As for Harris, I don't personally believe he meets the standards we have thus far used; when I initially went through Allardice for the "others" section, he was one of the ones I had disqualified. Everyone else on the "others" list either led troops in combat at their general's grade, was a Kirby-Smith appointment, or was notable for some other reason in their lives. In my opinion, Harris doesn't meet those standards, and to add him would lead us to add nearly one-hundred other names, most of whom aren't even notable enough to merit articles. What initially caused my notice, however, was the sheer number of edits the IP user had made - obviously, I suspected vandalism at first, but instead was pleasantly surprised to see that most of the edits were photo additions. However, the random off-site linking (making "Colonel" link to Find-A-Grave and linking almost their entire note off-site) is, if you look at the IP talk page, something the user in question has been warned about repeatedly, so it's just something we'll have to keep an eye out for, I suppose, now that they seem to have picked up an interest in the Civil War but have yet to learn how to use Wikipedia.IcarusPhoenix (talk) 04:45, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Thomas Hyde
Nice adds to the article on the general from Bath. Thanks. PRRfan (talk) 15:51, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Talkback
→ εϻαd ιν  ΤαΙk Ͼδητrιβμτιoης 14:42, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Nothing personal
It's nothing personal, we're on the same page (trying to make Wikipedia a greater reference). I support your good faith edits. Congrats on the extensive editing. Your résumé aside, in the instance of Ellen Spencer Mussey, you read that her husband was not actually a General (Civil War High Commands). I read different (American University College of Law). We both have credible sources, thus it's being discussed. In the instance of Sylvester G. Hill, you simply stated your reference to be a list of generals. There are dozens of lists of generals, so which list is your edit coming from? Can you see the confusion? Any editor could search each of your edits and nit-pick (some editors rely on their personal history of good edits to weigh on their edits rather than true references or citations), but it's more professional to seek a higher authority. Again, thanks for working hard to make Wikipedia better. When I edit, I think about if someone (such as you with good edit history) would have a problem with my edit/s. So, when I check edits, I expect them that have a substantial foundation. Keep up the great work, Donner60. You're doing great things here! Bullmoosebell (talk) 06:19, 22 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I replied in detail on your talk page. Briefly here, you are right that my abbreviated reference to the Wikipedia lists was too vague because there are many such lists and my reference did not clearly identify which list(s) I used. Of course, I should have noted the source, not the lists themselves, in any event. I have explained in greater detail why I believe the Eicher book is a better source. Thanks for your explanation and thanks for your service to our country. Donner60 (talk) 06:55, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

 * This barnstar is, in no way, in gratitude for your explanation, though appreciated (with humble apologies for any abrasive manner in which I bestowed my retort, you simply replied faster than I could award you). What you do deserves proper adulation for your service to this wonderful Nation by providing accurate and adequate information of the great citizens that have preceded us all. Bullmoosebell (talk) 07:36, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Also, in my experience, I've included the ability to email an editor directly (see the link on my user page) to avoid potentially embarrassing discussions. In other words, there are some instances where you & I would appreciate discretion (discussions offline rather than on a talk page where any editor can view history, even if deleted). I would like to work with you on future matters and appreciate your advice on my edits in the future. Feel free to email me through my talk page (or the "@yahoo.com" link on this paragraph).
 * As you know, there are MANY editors on Wikipedia. Many prefer to disregard the Manual of Style and blatantly ignore the punishment put forth by Wikipedia that they, just a day prior, were punished for that which they were barred from blocking (see Searcher 1990). So please understand my apprehension to allowing edits that encroach against what we both are striving to achieve. Bullmoosebell (talk) 10:01, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the dialogue. I'll look into what we discussed, and feel free to take the initiative on the issue you presented, if you have the time. Currently, my dance card is full to the end of the year and I fear I'll be enveloped with a lot of work. My suggestion is to find the Admin that blocked said user & present the circumstances. Thanks, again, for your diligence. Keep up the great work! Bullmoosebell (talk) 00:08, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The issue was looked into. It appears many of the edits included proper references. Still, there are admins watching this/these user/s to keep them honest, IAW Wikipedia's Manual of Style. Bullmoosebell (talk) 05:24, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Your vigilance has not gone unnoticed. The powers-that-be are in knowing of what needs to be known, so it's in their hands now. I really, truly appreciate the hard work you've done. Beyond in keeping with the honor and integrity of Wikipedia, you've bettered yourself and other editors, myself included. You spoke words previously, about being enlightened on certain edits. As a result, I have re-checked my edits, even a few of my previous edits, to ensure they are IAW (in accordance with) the policy that Wikipedia adheres to. I wish more Wikipedians could conduct themselves as you do. Sincerely, I look forward to working with you in the future. That's to mean I will be presenting future discussions for your interpretation. And, if you feel my assistance necessary, feel free to drop me a line or email me directly (bullmoosebell@yahoo.com) Regards, Bullmoosebell (talk) 07:21, 29 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Your recognition is most gratifying. I think you are way ahead of me on this count. Donner60 (talk) 07:46, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

DYK for William F. Perry
Casliber (talk · contribs) 16:02, 28 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Congratulations! Bullmoosebell (talk) 05:19, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Pique your interest
You and I seem pretty simpatico, and I'm glad to cooperate with you. If it may appease you, I started the article about William J. Carson (Medal of Honor) because he was in the unit I was in (15th Infantry Regiment). Your extensive research ability could contribute to his article. I wrote the article briefly shortly after returning from a deployment, where I took a class on our unit history (specifically recipients of the MoH, when which I noticed William Carson didn't have a WP page). My next big project is to create an article about every MoH recipient (so they have a Wikipedia article). I'll eventually start it through my Sandbox3. Also, feel free to check my Sandbox1 (article about my great-uncle) and Sandbox2 (article about Ralph Puckett) for your desired critique. Thanks, in advance, Bullmoosebell (talk) 08:32, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I've spent many, MANY, hours researching this soldier. What you read is what I've found. I don't declare that I have completed everything possible to the article. Those quote are, given the references cited, what I have found to be direct quotes, so I simply left the quotes as they were presented. Feel free to do as you wish, as I created the page, left it as is, in anticipation that someday, someone like you could make it better. Bullmoosebell (talk) 09:21, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Those additions seem outstanding. I can't wait to see the finished product & I really appreciate your hard work! Bullmoosebell (talk) 04:30, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

User:MadMax/Encyclopedia10
Thanks for your note on my talk page, and I'm sorry that my edit summary was not clear. I was working on the assumption that it was MadMax's intention to remove blue links, based on another similar page, and as he appears to have been inactive for a long time, I did not think it would be a problem. Lists of just red links, rather than red and blue, make it easier to keep track of progress re the addition of missing articles. I suppose I could leave the pages as they are, and create new 'missing articles' pages by copying the red links, with a credit to MadMax. Either way, thanks again for your message, and no worries about marking it as vandalism. Moswento (talk | contribs) 09:46, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

James Bintliff

 * Reply

Problem with the Generals' lists
So User:Brightgalrs, without once discussing it with anyone else, looking at the article histories, or bothering to read the talk pages (not to mention Consensus) has suddenly shown up and made a massive 22,000 character addition to List of American Civil War Generals (Union) and a 307,000 character deletion from List of American Civil War Generals (Confederate), both of which (particularly the latter) drastically change the very nature of both articles. When asked why, the user insisted that her (?) way was "superior" and that she would allow for no discussion on this point from anyone. As another editor of the page, I'm turning to you and a few others to ask assistance in trying to reign in actions that frankly border on vandalism. While some of her changes are more than welcome (additions of photos of Union officers, for example), the wholesale elimination of notations that were being worked on and the changes is format, to say nothing of refusing to discuss it with anyone else - either before or after - are, in my opinion, invasive. May I ask for you to take a look and give your opinion on the matter? IcarusPhoenix (talk) 20:32, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Response on your talk page, long comment on Confederate generals list talk page. Just able to respond now - though at length. Not much time to do more over the next two weeks. Donner60 (talk) 06:28, 3 April 2012 (UTC)