User talk:Oberiko/World War II

Goals
I've got a few goals for this article:
 * 1) I'd like to follow Einstein's advice: "make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler". Due the sheer amount that has to be crammed in here, this is not the place to expand on any of it beyond what is needed to get a basic grasp of events.
 * 2) I do not go beyond four heading levels. More then that is, IMO, to specific for an article which has to contain the entirety of the war itself.
 * 3) I don't want a massive amount of "main article" links, I'd like to keep it to one per heading

Oberiko 20:55, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Background split
I split up the background information for Europe and Asia since I think it'd help with article continuity to keep them with their respective theatres. This is especially true for the Sino-Japanese War, which was originally a concurrent war, then became a theatre. Oberiko 20:47, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Views
Oberiko, I like the initiative, and I personally think we need to change the organization of it right now. The organization you have is very good in my opinion, splitting up the European and African Theatre vs. the Southeast Asian theatre, but in my opinion we should not split up the western allies and the battle of russia, because I feel as an article, this is more of a timeline, and although I see it acceptable to split up the japanese and german's wars, because the same enemy is fighting both the soviets and the western powers I feel that we should war against the western allies and the Soviet-German war. --LtWinters 21:05, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
 * My feeling is that they are rather separate wars, similar to the American fronts against the Japanese and German forces. Asides from some relatively minor troop movements from Germany's western front to it's eastern front, there was not a great deal of influence between them.  My other belief is that due to the sheer scope of the Soviet-German War (which involved larger forces then the entirety of the battles against the Western Allies) it should be a top-level heading.  It will also help continuity if it's not broken up by having several "and back on the other front..." inserts. Oberiko 02:16, 13 June 2007 (UTC)


 * There are several reasons why I don't want to merge them:
 * Merged theatres are messy - By having the Soviet-German War (SGW) merged with the German-Western Allies War (GWAW) we'll have a lot of breaks to "jump" back to the other the other theatre. This leads to disruption in article continuity.  The only exception I'd make is to preserve the "4th headers" rule and if several campaigns are part of a larger theatre and heavily connected; for example, the initial blitzkrieg assault on Europe or the actions in the Mediterranean.
 * Already segregated - There is a pretty big segregation between the SGW and GWAW, the only real connections between them are logistical. In other words, they only affected each other indirectly; something that doesn't require detailed explanation within each.  Basically we can keep them linked via small, one-sentence, updates ("The ... of the Western Allies forced the Germans to then divert precious resources from ...")
 * Scope - The sheer size and complexity of the SGW is at least equal to that of the entirety of the GWAW. Kursk or Stalingrad for example, were each larger then many individual GWAW campaigns.
 * Focus of expertise - Our writers are more likely to know about some theatre in its entirety rather then "WWII in 1943", this can help editors stay within their area of knowledge
 * Mirrors articles - By merging, we run the risk of many "main articles" for a section, which diminishes the "main" part. By having it segregated, we can have (usually) one main article per section, making it easier for readers to pick up expanded information (as before, there's no "WWII in 1943" article)
 * Would have to do the same for other areas - To maintain article consistency, we'd have to do the same thing for the Asia-Pacific theatre, which, with twice as many "primary" areas, would get quite messy, quite quickly. Some might then argue we should do the same for the entire article, instead of breaking it down by Europe and Asia.
 * Availability of time-line - There's already a detailed chronology available where people can read about the war as it happened, this can serve as complementary material to the main WWII article, which is about understanding the basics of the war itself. Oberiko 15:30, 13 June 2007 (UTC)