Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Weaponry task force/Archive 2

Replacing AFV with Infobox Weapon
Here is the status of fields needing creation in order to replace AFV with Infobox Weapon
 * armour → has to be created
 * caption →caption
 * crew →crew
 * engine → has to be created
 * engine_power → has to be created
 * height →height
 * image →image
 * length →length
 * name →name
 * primary → has to be created
 * pw_ratio → has to be created
 * range →range
 * secondary → has to be created
 * speed_road → has to be created
 * suspension → has to be created
 * weight →weight
 * width →width

However, tank must be deprecated beforehand. (doing that :) I just deprecated it.

Grafikm (AutoGRAF)  20:02, 12 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Okay, so looks like the changes that need to be made would be to add:
 * armour
 * engine
 * engine_power
 * pw_ratio
 * primary
 * secondary
 * speed_road
 * suspension
 * Under some appropriate names. The "range" field might also need to be looked at to make sure the label is appropriate for vehicles.  I don't know when I'll get to these, but I'll try to add them over the course of the weekend. Kirill Lokshin 20:39, 12 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Range could be renamed range_road, to go with speed_road (or rename them both road_range and road_speed, now that template:tank's speed_off has been rightfully obsoleted). Perhaps an optional field for water_speed should be added, for vehicles which can swim or deep-wade.  Primary and secondary could be given more self-explanatory names like primary_armament and secondary_armament, or 1ary_weap and 2ary_weap.


 * Since the template will be able to hide empty fields, a few more could also be added, which we didn't want to add to template AFV because they would often be empty. Perhaps this should be discussed after the conversion.  Common fields in AFV books are: main ammunition, secondary ammunition, ground pressure, ford depth, vertical obstacle, trench, gradient, side slope, fuel capacity, milage, and individual armour values for front, sides, rear, top, bottom, turret front, turret sides, turret rear, turret top.


 * But we shouldn't let it get too cluttered. Maybe optional fields are not desirable—a strength of template:AFV is that you can glance at the fields and each is always in the same place.  —Michael Z. 2006-08-12 22:35 Z 


 * I think optional fields are fine so long as they don't descend into too much detail. An approach would be to group related values under one field; thus, the "primary armament" field could specify amunition, the "armour" field the individual armour values, and so forth.  This might create something a bit cleaner than having separate field for each "sub-value" we want.
 * Having said that, I have very little knowledge of what information is considered appropriate for an "at a glance" view of an AFV; those editors with more experience in that regard should probably be the ones to come up with a list of the needed fields. Kirill Lokshin 22:39, 12 August 2006 (UTC)


 * The more you load onto a single template the harder it becomes to employ. I recommend leaving AFV well alone rather than adapt "weapon". It does its job fine. GraemeLeggett 09:02, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, I was not the one to propose the idea, it was put in the todo by someone else. I just did the list of fields :) -- Grafikm  (AutoGRAF)  09:16, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Considering how much overlap there is, it doesn't really seem sensible (at least to me) to maintain two separate templates. Plus, we'll need to add most of these fields anyways, just so we can handle self-propelled artillerly properly; we might as well make sure it works for everything, in that case. Kirill Lokshin 12:14, 14 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not convinced - I think you are pushing two concepts together for the imagined benefit of a single template. Maintenance is not a great issue but inexperienced editor usage is. I'm not certain why a self propelled gun would need its range (I'm asusming) in its infobox. Looking at Modern British Armoured Fighting Vehicles (Terry Gander 1986) as an example the specs sections feature the vehicle stats and weapon descriptionis left to the text. GraemeLeggett 12:43, 14 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, any artillery should have a range (by which I mean the range of fire, not the vehicle range) indicated; it's one of the most basic points of interest about it. Aside from that, I'm not convinced that we actually have a problem with inexperienced editors not being able to figure out the template.  Certainly I haven't seen any complaints; and the various is_whatever flags mean that the template is self-correcting to a large degree. Kirill Lokshin 12:50, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Obviously, I agree with what Kirill said. :) -- Grafikm  (AutoGRAF)  17:38, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Would that mean that a self-propelled artillery piece would have both is_artillery=yes and is_vehicle=yes? —Michael Z. 2006-08-14 17:52 Z 
 * Yes (once the vehicle code has been inserted, obviously). Kirill Lokshin 17:53, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Replacing Weapon-missile with Infobox Weapon
Here what need to be changed:


 * builder → designer
 * caption → caption
 * ceiling → has to be created
 * date → design_date
 * diameter → diameter
 * era → remove, silly field
 * guidance → has to be created
 * image → image
 * length → length
 * name → name
 * nation → origin
 * num_built → number
 * operators → used_by
 * platform → has to be created
 * prod_date → production_date
 * propulsion → engine (has to be created)
 * range → range
 * serv_date → service
 * spec_type → ???
 * steering → ???
 * target → remove, silly field
 * type → type
 * variant → variants
 * velocity → velocity
 * warhead → yield?
 * wars → wars
 * weight → weight
 * wingspan → width?

It is just a proposal, I'm not sure about some fields

Grafikm (AutoGRAF)  21:05, 12 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Is that the only missile infobox, or are there others? I recall there was some confusion with missiles/rockets/etc. and their infoboxes. Kirill Lokshin 21:07, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm not the best person to ask. :( -- Grafikm  (AutoGRAF)  21:09, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Infobox Missile and AAM. Bukvoed 18:17, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

AFV
Okay, my first attempt at integrating AFV into Infobox Weapon. All the general fields apply; for the technical specifications,  must be set (as well as   for self-propelled artillery):


 * name → name
 * image → image
 * caption → caption
 * crew → crew
 * length → length
 * width → width
 * height → height
 * weight → weight
 * armour → armour
 * primary → primary_armament
 * secondary → secondary_armament
 * engine → engine
 * engine_power → engine_power
 * suspension → suspension
 * speed_road → speed
 * pw_ratio → pw_ratio
 * range → range vehicle_range

If anyone could test this out with some different configurations and see if it works correctly, I'd really appreciate it! Kirill Lokshin 05:34, 3 September 2006 (UTC)


 * So, has anyone tried this? I'd be quite interested in any feedback anyone may have! ;-) Kirill Lokshin 12:56, 11 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Okay, I've tested out a (crude—not filling in all the general history/usage fields) conversion on a few prominent tanks (T-54, Tiger II, Merkava, M1 Abrams, Challenger 2 tank); maybe we'll get some comments this time around. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 13:49, 15 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Can we see it on a self propelled gun, Deacon (artillery) perhaps, and something else other than a tank such as the Universal Carrier ? GraemeLeggett 14:39, 15 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Will do. (And thanks for bringing up self-propelled guns; I just realized that the mapping of the "range" parameter would conflict for those, and have added a "vehicle_range" parameter to allow both operational ranges and fire ranges.) Kirill Lokshin 14:49, 15 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Okay, I've added infoboxes to both of those. The UC is just a straight conversion; for the Deacon, I tried to fill in a few of the other available fields (using numbers from Ordnance QF 6 pounder, so I'm not entirely sure they're still valid for the version of the gun used there) to show some more of the possibilities. Kirill Lokshin 15:01, 15 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, as it appears for the Deacon at the moment, with self propelled guns the gun characteristics effectively run togther with the vehicle characteristics which makes for a mess visually. GraemeLeggett 16:07, 15 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Interesting. We could put horizontal lines inside the "Specifications" section to divide it visually into the following blocks:
 * General specifications
 * Ranged & artillery
 * Bladed
 * Explosive
 * Vehicle
 * I'm (somewhat) certain that these don't overlap on a conceptual level. Would this make it more readable? Kirill Lokshin 16:11, 15 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Like what I've added now, for example. Kirill Lokshin 16:37, 15 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Better, but the having added in the Primary armament field it is nowhere near the data. I'm still not certain htis is the way to go with vehicles. It might be better to follwo the aircraft lots way and have a infobox that covers the vehicle use similar to Infobox Aircraft and a separate characteristics in the text body — Preceding unsigned comment added by GraemeLeggett (talk • contribs)


 * Mmm, I'm not quite sure what you mean about the primary armament field; is it in the wrong block? It would be trivial to move things around, but you need to be a bit more specific about where they should be moved. ;-)
 * (The separate characteristics layout is possible even with the current infobox—just omit all the characteristics from there, and it will produce a similar development/usage box to Infobox Aircraft—but I think that forcing lists of numbers into the body of the article should be avoided if at all possible, as they're not a particularly brilliant form of prose.) Kirill Lokshin 12:57, 18 September 2006 (UTC)


 * So, anyone have further suggestions on this? What issues with the combined template would need to be resolved for a conversion to work?  (Or are the flaws so critical that there's no way to make a sensible combined template?) Kirill Lokshin 15:18, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

History of Soviet tanks/armour
[discussion moved from talk:T-64, in response to a good question at talk:T-64 —Michael Z. 2006-09-07 02:00 Z ]

It seems to me that we need an overview article about the history of Soviet armour which can summarize this in one place. It's very hard to get this picture without reading every one of the hardware-centric tank articles we have now, and even articles such as history of the tank and its various spinoffs are largely a list of models and new technologies. We also have tables at Soviet armored fighting vehicle production during World War II, but no summary of the salient points about them. —Michael Z. 2006-09-07 00:44 Z 


 * Seems very sensible. Especially if kept nice and concise. Would probably need very careful sourcing to keep it encyclopedic. Strong FA potential. How about History of Soviet Tanks - to limit the scope to just tanks ? I can easily see History of American Tanks History of British Tanks History of German Tanks, etc. Megapixie 00:56, 7 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I like the way you're thinking. Concise overview for sure, and there are a number of detail articles that could be spun off, such as Soviet tank factories, Soviet armoured doctrine, etc.


 * I thought of keeping it to tanks only, but I think the scope requires some discussion. The factories became clearly divided into the heavy ones which were capable of building medium and heavy tanks and self-propelled guns, and the many light factories and repair depots which built the light tanks and vehicles such as the SU-76 (and automobiles in peacetime).  But that is not a natural division for the article, since, for example, light tanks were important at first, and their demise is an important part of the story.  As light tanks declined, their roles were taken over by self-propelled guns and armoured cars, and this is relevant to the eventual development of the MBT as the only type of tank.  Biggest issue: limiting it that way threatens to define it as a hardware article, and I think it's important that it focus on the changing politics, military doctrine, technology and the factories, and of course various military actions, and only treat the individual vehicles as the product of all this.  Each vehicle is already covered in great detail in its article, so only the significance of each need be mentioned in such an overview—the strength of such an article would lie in tying it all together.


 * I also think it should be written from scratch from an outline, rather than throwing together parts of other articles. As you say, it would be nice to keep it well-referenced from the start, and concentrate on the summary, and it could grow into an excellent in-depth FA.  —Michael Z. 2006-09-07 01:15 Z 


 * I assume everyone has read the excellent Soviet/Russian Armor and Artillery Design Practices: 1945 to Present by Hill, Markov, and Zaloga? If not, it's a great input to this discussion and the eventual article upgrade... it has a lot of the historical details well researched and laid out in an accessable manner.  Georgewilliamherbert 02:21, 7 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Indeed - excellent book. One about the articles, they should probably fit in with the existing History of the tank, Tanks (1919-1939), Tanks in World War I, Tanks in World War II, Tanks in the Cold War articles. Megapixie 02:41, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

I think the Soviet topic is particularly well suited for this approach, because the individual factories and design bureaux have a continuous history of building AFVs from the 1927 to this day. Tank series were based on foreign designs and developed incrementally over long periods—The Soviets bought Christie's M1930, which became the BT tank and successively spawned the T-34, T-54, T-64, T-80 and T-84 Oplot of 2001. Conservative Soviet doctrine and design philosophy have also built gradually on the lessons of World War Two, sticking to particular themes which could make this a very effective article: broad in scope but with a clear big picture developed over about five major phases.

The UK and Germany would definitely work well in this way. US tank design seems to me to have developed in a more fragmented fashion, but I'm sure there's an interesting history behind that, too.

Looking at things in this way could also have a good influence on existing articles, like at Tank. —Michael Z. 2006-09-11 04:48 Z 

Nomenclature for British naval guns
I was interested in starting some articles on British naval guns, so took a quick inventory of what is already out there. So far we have;
 * 15 inch (381 mm) /42 calibre Mark I naval gun
 * 13.5 inch (343 mm) /45 calibre naval gun
 * 4.5 inch (114 mm) gun
 * 2-pounder gun

Obviously, there seems to be no systematic method for naming articles. The official designation of these guns is;
 * BL 15 inch Mark I
 * BL 13.5 inch (various marks)
 * QF 4.5 inch (various marks), until 1950s, when surviving guns became simply 4.5 inch Mark 5, Mark 6, Mark 8.
 * QF 2 pounder (various marks)

I would like to propose some agreed method to name the articles. There is already a fairly systematic naming system for (British) Army guns, e.g Ordnance QF 2 pounder and Ordnance QF 6 pounder, this simply follows the official designation (but drops the gun weight in hundredweights). The Royal Navy designation system is unique as far as I know, I therefore do not think that titles need disambiguated with the word "British". I also think including the mark is over-specific, as apart from the 15 inch and 16 inch guns, most guns went through a large number of marks. For this reason, and the fact that the Royal Navy does not include it in the official designation, I also do not think the calibre should be included; there are, for instance, L/55 and L/45 guns on the page 4.5 inch (114 mm) gun, which should we use? I personally amn't keen either on including millimetres in the title. These guns were never reported with a metric equivalent, or known by such (the sole exception being the foreign Oerlikon 20 mm (QF 20 mm) and Bofors 40 mm (QF 40 mm)). We do not have a page Oerlikon 20 mm (0.79 inch) cannon, likewise we do not include millimetre and inches in the title of the 2 pounder gun article. It also just makes the title that bit more complicated than it really needs to be.

My preferred choice for a titling system would therefore be designation, calibre in inches / shell weight in pounds, naval gun, e.g. BL 15 inch naval gun. The only shortcoming I can see with this system is where we have a case where a modern, unrelated weapon, is added into a page for historic guns due to a shared calibre - this is the case with the 4.5 inch (114 mm) gun page. However it would be my intention to move this to a page of it's own anyway.

Your thoughts would be appreciated, please do pick holes in my case as there is probably a lot I have missed. Emoscopes Talk 13:01, 11 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Do all the guns have an acceptable preceeding designation? Or are there cases where using it would be inappropriate? Kirill Lokshin 13:16, 11 September 2006 (UTC)


 * All weapons have a preceding designation, BL or QF (breech loading / quick firing). There are also historic designations such as RML (rifled muzzle loading) which are a bit out of my field of expertise. Mountings also had a separate Mark and designation (e.g. HA, CP, P, BD, UD, HA/LA). I've summarised and attempted to explain all these on the page British ordnance terms in order that I can pipe the abbreviations to the appropriate anchor in there. Emoscopes Talk 13:34, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

You're right that the examples you mention are poorly titled: the first three are horribly over-engineered, and the fourth overdoes the ambiguity. ("2-pounder" made me think of the tank gun, at least.) While a certain degree of horizontal consistency is a good thing, over-doing it could lead to titles that are neither official, and more to the point, aren't common names. I'd be highly inclined to go with the latter principle, to a reasonable degree "averaged" over generally similarly named classes, and taking precision into account. Alai 14:14, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'm inclined to go on a systematic system based on official designations. For instance, if we had a page QF 4 inch naval gun and anchors within that e.g #Mark XVI you could pipe a link in to the correct gun, e.g. QF 4 inch Mark XVI . This would work in all cases for British naval guns, as far as I know. Emoscopes Talk 14:26, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Given that that name gets zero google hits, it seems an unlikely contender for the "common name", and so is inconsistent with existing naming guidelines (unless you have better sources on the commonness of that reference than that admittedly crude measure). You should really either a) pick the most commonly used name (probably "4 inch naval gun", I'm guessing), b) pick the most commonly used name that's not ambiguous (dunno in this case), or c), my least favoured option, propose a naming convention (and I mean an actual naming convention, not just a wikiproject style note) to fix a particular conventions that instantiates and/or overrides NC(CN).  (Probably this is my least favourite option because of the horrendous mess the "US roads" people have just made of such an exercise.)  Alai 02:01, 12 September 2006 (UTC)


 * ''Copied to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Ships to merge with an ongoing discussion, please comment there. Emoscopes Talk 02:04, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Help on Japanese tank article
Anyone available to give a hand with the Type 97 Chi-Ha tank. I feel I am losing the battle against a contributor who seems to translate information and just drop it in, no matter that its a repeat of something already present in the article. I'm doing what I can to turn it into English (mostly BE, I'm afraid) but I I don't want to risk losing pertinent info in trying to get whats there into the correct grammar.GraemeLeggett 14:39, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Looking for input
Hi, I started List of infantry weapons and equipment of the Canadian military and I was hoping folks here could take a look. Thanks!Mike McGregor (Can) 10:15, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

(Moved from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/General weaponry discussion. Kirill Lokshin 19:13, 23 September 2006 (UTC))

Vote to collaborate on tank
Tank has been nominated for Wikipedia version 0.5, and to appear on the War Portal, but it needs some serious fat-cutting. Please vote to make it a WPMILHIST fortnightly collaboration. —Michael Z. 2006-09-26 23:04 Z 
 * It needs references more than fat-cutting, if you ask me. But naturally, I support... :) -- Grafikm  (AutoGRAF)  23:06, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Peer review request
There's a new peer review request for English longbow that may be of interest to editors here; any input there would be appreciated. Kirill Lokshin 16:39, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Peer review request for Amchitka
There's a new peer review request for Amchitka that may be of interest to editors here; any input there would be appreciated. Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 11:47, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Tank as Collaboration of the Fortnight
Tank has been selected as the project's Collaboration of the Fortnight; if anyone has some free time, contributions would be very welcome. Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 00:30, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Peer review request for SU-100Y Self-Propelled Gun
There's a new peer review request for SU-100Y Self-Propelled Gun that may be of interest to editors here; any input there would be appreciated. Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 01:45, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Mini-peer review request for Waster
I've been working on this article for quite some time and have come to think it is overdue for some outside evaluation. It isn't "done", as significant information needs to be added (feel free to contribute!), and for that reason I didn't nominate it for a proper peer review. Still, I'd love to have some people give it a look over and drop some comments off in the talk page - all criticism is open, constructive preferred. Thanks! --Xiliquiern 03:55, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Weapons-related hardware
Does our scope include hardware relating to weapons (eg., Ballistic Missile Early Warning System)? I'm assuming yes, until someone tells me otherwise... Jakew 18:18, 22 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I would think so, as it's clearly within the overall topic of "weaponry", even if it's not a weapon per se. We include things like weapons testing sites, for example. Kirill Lokshin 18:23, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
 * My thoughts exactly. And my, do we have a lot to do... :-| Jakew 13:50, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Merging the List of missiles by country with the List of missiles by nation
(I'm not 100% sure if this is the right place for discussing this, but after navigation around in the huge tree of pages in this project, I'll just post it here before I get totally lost in the project page jungle... --Wernher)

There's a request to merge the two lists mentioned above. I guess that would be a sensible thing to do. The "country list" is maybe the best of the two in terms of easy look-up, as it lists each country in alphabetical order, while the "nation list" goes by region. In any case, the region is listed in parentheses after the country name in the "country list" items, so we don't lose that info if the "nation list" has to go. Please comment. --Wernher 15:22, 25 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Seems perfectly sensible. The organization of the list is up to the editors, but there's no reason to maintain two separate lists in any case. Kirill Lokshin 15:25, 25 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Support. I don't see distinction between countries and nations to be needed here. So - let's merge it to "by country" list. CP/Mcomm |Wikipedia Neutrality Project| 17:45, 6 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Concur. Askari Mark Talk 18:14, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Project directory
Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 21:40, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Help with McMillan TAC-50
I created the McMillan TAC-50 article, which could obviously use a lot of expansion. Could you guys help get any relevant information on the weapon? Also, what would be the copyright on ? - KingRaptor 23:51, 27 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Gawd, that wiki's broken. The contact info for the image's author is listed as madorosh@shaw.ca, after some digging.  I would suggest emailing him and asking him if he would upload it to the main  commons.mediawiki.org site?  Georgewilliamherbert 00:20, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

AFV navboxes
Raoulduke47 came up with a good new navigation template for modern Soviet AFVs, and we've been developing it further at Template talk:PostWWIISovietAFVS. It incorporates some techniques that could really reduce the clutter of all the humongous WWII AFV navboxes, but needs some refinement. Please have a look at the latest version and comment. —Michael Z. 2006-10-31 04:38 Z 


 * It's worth pointing out that the show/hide div trick often doesn't work properly (and, when it fails, does so quite unpredictably). I'm not sure that it's a good idea to use it for actual reader-facing content.
 * The colors look very nice, though! ;-) Kirill Lokshin 04:45, 31 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Ack! It works fine in my browser (Safari).  I assumed it was okay because I found dozens of pages and templates that use the technique, but unfortunately no docs to tell me that it's broken. —Michael Z. 2006-10-31 05:20 Z 


 * I've started a docs page at NavFrame. Please link to this from relevant pages. —Michael Z. 2006-10-31 05:41 Z 

Latest example [updated —Michael Z. 2006-10-31 16:02 Z ]:

Compare WWII-era technology:

For background, please read Template talk:PostWWIISovietAFVS.

This is not bad. It would be nice to have it start with one category open (e.g., "tanks" on a tank article), but I don't know how to do that. The ideal version would have four tabs across the top and shuffle between four virtual cards, instead of having four independent stacked sections.

I'm not happy with the exclusive definition "after WWII": we can link to WWII, but this template isn't about WWII stuff. I'd prefer an inclusive description like "Cold War and modern Soviet and post-Soviet AFVs", but I can't think of one that reads gracefully. —Michael Z. 2006-10-31 05:30 Z 


 * I really like this! I had been hoping some bright spark might come up with a way to do this as there are a lot of hefty infoboxes on some thing sI am working through that could do with a bit of collapsing (particularly when 2 or 3 diferent IBs get stacked at the bottom of a page.) Nice work guys! Emoscopes Talk 12:30, 31 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Interesting point: I can see the point of the "Russian"/"Ukranian" headers, but it might be worthwhile to figure out some other way of formatting them, as they're quite jarring when seen together with the type designators (e.g. "The three types of air defense vehicles are guns, rockets, and Russians..."). Kirill Lokshin 13:17, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

True, maybe it would look better like this:


 * I've updated the modern box (above) according to this suggestion. Looks good, I think. —Michael Z. 2006-10-31 16:02 Z 

To see how it would look I changed the WWII navbox to the new format. Here it is:

Raoulduke47 15:30, 31 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Looks great. Suggestions:
 * Visually reinforce the hierarchy
 * Make the second-level header backgrounds lighter than the main headers
 * Check the font size: I don't think the sub-boxes need any font formatting at all
 * Subheaders don't need to repeat header info, since they're clearly under them.
 * Under "armored cars" the subheaders only need to say "amphibious" and "half-tracked" (omit "AC", or spell it out since there's now room)
 * For self-propelled guns, try two rows, with no subheader for the top row (since the main header already says "SP guns")
 * Aerosans: don't repeat the header, so it looks like armored tractors.
 * —Michael Z. 2006-10-31 16:10 Z 

Done!

Raoulduke47 17:50, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

A-Class review for T-26
There's a new request for A-Class status for T-26 that may be of interest to editors here; any input there would be appreciated. Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 16:35, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Fuses and fuzes
There's a discussion going on at Talk:Fuse (explosives) about what difference, if any, exists between the usage of "fuse" and "fuze" in a military context; any input from people with knowledge of the topic would be very welcome! Kirill Lokshin 23:32, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Depleted uranium and birth defects
Talk:Depleted uranium contains a comparison of the current version of Depleted uranium with a recent major revision which replaced a lot of what some people had been taking out of it over the past several months -- including information about birth defects and other genetics problems. LossIsNotMore 11:22, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

"Targeting" aircraft-related weapons
A few of us have been discussing the new Template:Aviation lists and I'm wondering whether the List of aircraft weapons and — more particularly — List of missiles really belong as "Aviation" lists. For one thing, they seem to be included in Aircraft's scope only by default and on its project page, aircraft-related weaponry is encompassed only by the words "and anything else related to Aircraft." Secondly, Aircraft's parent is "Transportation" and aside from Baron von Münchhausen and Slim Pickens' immemorable wild ride in Dr. Strangelove, air-launched ordnance doesn't seem to be a popular mode of transportation. Moreover, few of the aircraft weapon and missile articles covered by Aircraft are well-developed; even the List of aircraft weapons is poorly maintained. It would seem they might fare better — as well as be more properly located — under the purview of the Weaponry task force. What are your thoughts? (I've also posted this on the WikiProject Aircraft talk page in the interest of promoting some "cross-cultural" discussion.) --Askari Mark | Talk 18:11, 20 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Broadly speaking, I see no problem with multiple projects considering something to be within their scope; it's not like there's some special control over the topic to be gained here.
 * (Incidentally, the Military aviation task force would probably be another group that would be relevant here.) Kirill Lokshin 18:42, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

help for African military history
Can you help us expand the articles on African weapons?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:African_swords

Wandalstouring 00:53, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

medieval weapons
http://www.teutatesnet.de/Waffenschmiede/waffenschmiede.html

Stefan Fromm is a professional smith recreating knifes, swords, lances and axes from the Classic to the Early Middle Ages. His main focus is on the Celts. He can easily take images of his historically accurate artcraft (he was recommended for his work) and make the pictures available on wikicommons. The problem in such cases is that someone must ask him for it to avoid advertising. The email adress for contacting him is down on the page. You can write in English or ask me or any other German speaker to translate for you. Wandalstouring 22:06, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Requested articles
The requested articles departement gets reorganized. The requests get moved to the specific taskforce. In case of error move it to a concerning task force. Wandalstouring 11:09, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
 * STRATUS IVY
 * Dead Hand www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1690756
 * Bronekater Soviet Armored Motorboat Soviet riverine vessel used during the second world war. See here
 * TOS-1 Russian Army multiple rocket launcher with FAE warheads was used in the Second Chechen War. Global Security article
 * 60 mm M19 CAN Light Mortar
 * USS Stalwart - Not the current redirect page


 * Added to open task template. Kirill Lokshin 13:46, 7 December 2006 (UTC)