Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/Battle of the Somme: order of battle

Battle of the Somme: order of battle
Review requested because I am certain there are omissions and comments regarding accuracy and improvement would be welcomed. Farawayman (talk) 18:51, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Kirill Lokshin
A few suggestions, mostly related to style and layout:
 * The current form of the title seems rather unwieldy; I'd suggest something along the lines of Order of battle at the Battle of the Somme, which is grammatically correct if nothing else, instead.
 * The explicit "source: []" lines break up the flow considerably. If there's no introductory material to which footnotes can be attached, I'd place them instead on the header line of the table itself.✅
 * By the same token, interspersing blocks of footnotes throughout the list seems overly confusing. It'll be easier to read, I think, if you just have a single, continuously numbered set of footnotes for the entire article.✅
 * I would link at least all of the divisions, and probably the regiments, to their appropriate article locations, whether or not the articles already exist; consensus in the past has been that formations at the divisional level or above warrant individual articles in the majority of cases. The same is probably true of most of the divisional commanders as well.
 * The layout of the divisional tables is rather confusing, since it's not clear what cells are nested under others, and what cells stand alone. I'd suggest using the same design as is used for the larger formations; for example:
 * {|class="wikitable"

Keep up the good work! Kirill [talk] [pf] 01:47, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
 * colspan="3" | Guards Division
 * colspan="3" | Major-General G.P.T. Feilding
 * rowspan="17" | Guards Division || rowspan="4" | 1st Guards Brigade || 2nd Battalion, Grenadier Guards
 * 2nd Battalion, Coldstream Guards
 * 3rd Battalion, Coldstream Guards
 * 1st Battalion, Irish Guards
 * rowspan="4" | 2nd Guards Brigade || 3rd Battalion, Grenadier Guards
 * 1st Battalion, Coldstream Guards
 * 1st Battalion, Scots Guards
 * 2nd Battalion, Irish Guards
 * rowspan="4" | 3rd Guards Brigade || 1st Battalion, Grenadier Guards
 * 4th Battalion, Grenadier Guards
 * 2nd Battalion, Scots Guards
 * 1st Battalion, Welch Guards
 * Pioneers || 4th Battalion, Coldstream Guards
 * }
 * In any case, the layout of the tables for each nation's formations should be quite similar, if not identical.
 * The French are mentioned in the introduction, but are missing from the lists. Were there French forces involved here; and, if so, is there any information available on their OOB?
 * 2nd Battalion, Irish Guards
 * rowspan="4" | 3rd Guards Brigade || 1st Battalion, Grenadier Guards
 * 4th Battalion, Grenadier Guards
 * 2nd Battalion, Scots Guards
 * 1st Battalion, Welch Guards
 * Pioneers || 4th Battalion, Coldstream Guards
 * }
 * In any case, the layout of the tables for each nation's formations should be quite similar, if not identical.
 * The French are mentioned in the introduction, but are missing from the lists. Were there French forces involved here; and, if so, is there any information available on their OOB?
 * Pioneers || 4th Battalion, Coldstream Guards
 * }
 * In any case, the layout of the tables for each nation's formations should be quite similar, if not identical.
 * The French are mentioned in the introduction, but are missing from the lists. Were there French forces involved here; and, if so, is there any information available on their OOB?
 * The French are mentioned in the introduction, but are missing from the lists. Were there French forces involved here; and, if so, is there any information available on their OOB?

Nick-D
This is a really interesting and well presented OOB. As well as agreeing with all the points raised by Kirill, my comments are:
 * Would it be possible to identify the Army and Corps-level units? (artillery, engineers, signals units, etc)
 * A lot of the brigades, battalions, etc, could be wiki-linked (for instance, I think that there are now articles on all the Australian infantry battalions of World War One). This would be tedious, but would add a lot of depth.
 * Why do the divisional OOBs only include their infantry component? It would be great if the artillery and other 'supporting' elements were also included. Nick-D (talk) 08:22, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
 * By the way, http://www.unsw.adfa.edu.au/~rmallett/ would be a useful source for the Australian units. Nick-D (talk) 08:40, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

GraemeLeggett
I concur with Kirill on some of the points.
 * table layout of the Divisions, at the moment the brigade composition run down and the pioneer battalions run across.
 * Your expository notes within the article (as opposed to pure reference notes) would be better grouped as a Notes section at end of the article so you get "Notes" "Citations" and "References" in that sequence. You are already using the reference group code so its not a great step to moving it to the bottom.✅
 * the great swathe of Allied divisions could do with breaking up into shorter sections, eg by role: Infantry/Cavalry or origin: British/Dominion or someother that makes it easier to move from the TOC to the readers point of interest.GraemeLeggett ✅(talk) 11:48, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Patar knight
Just a couple of points from me:
 * Expand the lede. What happened during the Somme? Who was leading each side? How many troops in total fought per side? Who won? Doesn't have to be too long, but it would be nice to have some context.
 * Wiki-link all units and the countries in the lede.✅
 * Sources in tables would look better embedded into the text as opposed to being separate. ✅
 * Titles for the tables are redundant to the section headers, and the date can be moved up to the header. ✅--Patar knight - chat/contributions 17:17, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Labattblueboy
Firstly, you deserve to be commended for getting this list together. Assembling a full order of battle can be an exhausting process. It’s certainly not an easy task especially when it comes to the German material. I certainly found so when assembling the Battle of Vimy Ridge order of battle. --Labattblueboy (talk) 15:33, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
 * For the German side, if you are able to get your hands on it, I would suggest incorporating data assembled in The German Army on the Somme 1914-1916 by Jack Sheldon. It would we nice to see greater detail on the German side, with the possible incorporation of German formations in the Formations per Battle section.
 * The German and British data should be presented in the same format. It would help in identifying where details could be expanded, such as the names of German divisional commanders.
 * I see no details regarding artillery or engineering units or formations on either the British or German side. To have a complete order of battle that would need to be incorporated.