Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/December 2013/Op-ed


 * By TomStar81

With 2013 nearly done it seems a good time for us to sit down and take measure of that which we have accomplished over the last twelve months, all the more so in light of some very impressive milestones and developments for the project.

To begin with, this year saw two milestones reached for the Military history Project: for the project as a whole our members ongoing commitment to creating quality content result in the Military history Project reaching its goal of having 750 Featured Articles. If you or someone you know has been a part of the Featured Article process, either as a writer or a reviewer, then you have our thanks and our congratulations. If you are feeling left out do not despair, we still have three more milestones to reach so stake your claim to a piece of quality content for a share in the glory on our next achieved milestone. The other milestone reached this year comes from Operation Majestic Titan, a special project of the Military history Project with the goal of seeing all articles on or related to battleships and battlecruisers achieve Featured Article status. This year, the project reached the first half of its goal with the passage of the Featured Topic Battlecruisers of the World, a colossal 63-article Featured Topic that currently holds the record for the largest Featured Topic on Wikipedia.

In the yearly Milhist coordinator elections the three editors sharing the position of Lead Coordinator were replaced by veteran editor AustralianRupert, while the election in general saw the return of a number of veteran editors and a handful of first timers.


 * By Nick-D

2013 was another productive year for the military history project. An interesting aspect of the year is that while there were no major developments (good or bad), a huge amount got done. In particular, the output of featured content (100 FAs as we go to press) and A-class articles (124) has been impressive, with several editors producing truly amazing numbers of high-quality articles: Hawkeye7 achieved the project's first A-class medal with diamonds, and Sturmvogel_66's Bugle article on the "Productivity secrets of an absurdly prolific contributor" provided a valuable insight into his tactics for rapidly producing articles and keeping motivated. The steady stream of "did you know" main page appearances for military-related articles throughout the year also suggest that the project is fostering lots of new and greatly improved articles.

So, what for 2014? A number of projects involving on and off-Wikipedia collaborations have been organised to mark the centenary of World War I (listed at World War I Centenary), and these will likely be of interest to members of the project: some planning work has also been done at WikiProject Military history/Operation Great War Centennial, and there's certainly lots of scope for interesting work! The 70th anniversary of what was arguably the decisive year of World War II could also produce some new collaborations (it would be nice to see the Operation Normandy special project active again, and the coverage of 1944 in the Pacific is woefully lacking in most regards). I'd also suggest that members of this project consider whether they know of any images which could pass Wikipedia's featured picture process as the project is currently somewhat under-utilising it.