Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/World War II categorization map

Guapovia's Suggestion
World War II by year World War II by country
 * World War II structures
 * World War II defensive lines
 * World War II fortresses

World War II events
 * World War II campaigns and theatres

World War II organizations
 * World War II people
 * World War II crimes

World War II equipment World War II awards and decorations

Events preceding World War II

Events Following World War II

World War II national histories World War II media
 * World War II fiction
 * World War II resources

World War II POW camps

Guapovia 20:31, 27 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I see your changes were to relocate ficition and the events preceeding and proceeding. I believe I gave the incorrect interpretation of fiction.  In this case, it would not be limited to films, movies and literature, but would also anything fictional related to WWII such as characters like Private Snafu etc.


 * I'm curious as to why you'd want to relocate the events preceeding and proceeding World War II? To me they are still events which are related to World War II. Oberiko 20:47, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Older Discussion
Good start, comments and questions below Wendell 20:33, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Question: you propose:
 * World War II equipment
 * is this a replacement of the current World War II military equipment category? Or a new top level category with sub-categories: military equipment, civilian equipment, other?
 * Off hand, I can't think of any notable civilian equipment that would fall under this category, so I'll change it.

Question: you propose:
 * World War II national histories
 * is this a replacement of the current World War II national military histories category? Or a new top level category with sub-categories: World War II national military histories, national non-military history occurring during World War II, others?
 * It would be a new top level category. Alot of nations went through a large amount of political turmoil without necessarily being totally military in nature (Sweden is the first that comes to mind)

Just comparing the current category scheme to this, the following seem missing:
 * Battles and operations of World War II
 * I wouldn't use this. Battles ill-fits with WWII since the line between battle and campaign is very blurred.  IMO, we're better of with a list page.  I've added an additional heading below where we can sort this out in more detail.


 * Concurrent wars to World War II
 * I personally don't really like this category, as there are only three articles and the Continuation War's status as not being a campaign of WWII is heavily debated. I would therefore eliminate this category and do the following:
 * Place the Winter War under WWII events and under the respective military histories
 * Place the Continuation War under the German-Soviet War and the respective military histories
 * Place the Sino-Japanese War under the Pacific War, Preceeding events and the respective military histories.


 * WWII maps
 * Can go under World War II resources


 * World War II espionage
 * Can go under World War II events


 * World War II people
 * On the list


 * World War II politics
 * I would do away with this. The category at the moment is a hodge-podge of things that are mostly unrelated.  I think that the political actions can be covered by the national histories.


 * World War II resistance movements
 * Can go under World War II organizations


 * World War II sites
 * Renamed to World War II structures. The reason why I don't like sites is that every battlefield could potentially be a site.


 * World War II speeches
 * Could go under World War II media


 * World War II stubs
 * That one I'll have to add. Oberiko 01:29, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Better format
Does anyone have any ideas as to how we can better represent the category map? My original impulse was to draw it up in Visio, but then it wouldn't be able to be easily editable by everyone. Oberiko 20:47, 27 January 2006 (UTC)


 * You can use ASCII art (see the main project page) but it takes a lot of work to get the alignment right. —Kirill Lok s hin 20:48, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Status of current World War II categories


 * Concurrent wars to World War II Can be covered in World War II events, World War II national histories, and/or Events preceding World War II
 * World War II politics Can be covered in World War II national histories

I should note that this is just a draft of the top level of categories. I would recommend sorting this out before moving on to other things like how what sub-categories we'll have for things like military equipment. Oberiko 01:29, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Tanzburg's Comments
--Tanzburg 10:14, 28 January 2006 (UTC) Also suggest:
 * World War II civilians
 * Civilians would go underneath people.
 * World War II partisans and resistance
 * Would go under organizations. Any individual partisan would fall under their particular resistance group.

Wendell's comments
Propose adding
 * World War II science and technology advances
 * would cover Manhattan Project, radar, jets, navigation technology, etc
 * Where would it go, under military technology? I can definitely see this being useful, but we'd need some pretty strict critiria to prevent people from adding every gun, firearm, ship and plane to it.

Just comparing the current category scheme to this, the following seem missing:
 * World War II forces and units
 * Can go under World War II organizations


 * World War II sites
 * Renamed to World War II structures. The reason why I don't like sites is that every battlefield could potentially be a site.

Battles category
I find that the "Battles of..." isn't really appropriate in WWII as there are many numerous campaigns and theatres that have that title (ie. Battle of France and Second Battle of the Atlantic), if we define those categorically as battles, then all other campaigns would be eligible. Additionally, many of the campaign and theatre categories have nothing but battles in them (indeed, a campaign is usually just a string of related battles); implementing "Battles of..." would give us things like Battles of the Western Desert Campaign which leave the parent category, Western Desert Campaign, empty except for the one child and also leaves us open to such things as Battles of the Battle of France. Oberiko 01:29, 28 January 2006 (UTC)


 * We could certainly avoid it entirely:
 * World War II
 * Western Desert Campaign
 * battles here
 * Pacific Campaign
 * battles here
 * non-campaign battles here
 * Given that we have campaignboxes to group the battles, there's no pressing need to have categories as well. —Kirill Lok s hin 01:46, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Category World War II forces and units
Given the current Category World War II forces and units, the Oberiko suggests it can go under World War II organizations. While true, it seems to add perhaps an unnecessary category level. Here is my proposal for Category World War II forces and units, not where it goes. We see how big this category is to determine what goes in it, and where it goes. Wendell 17:05, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Current:
 * World War II forces and units
 * Free French Forces
 * Wehrmacht
 * World War II Allied commands
 * World War II British forces
 * World War II Canadian forces
 * World War II German forces
 * World War II Italian forces
 * World War II Polish forces
 * World War II U.S. forces
 * World War II divisions
 * World War II groups
 * World War II military units

Proposed:
 * World War II military forces
 * Free French Forces
 * Wehrmacht
 * World War II British forces
 * World War II British Commonwealth forces
 * World War II Canadian forces
 * World War II Italian forces
 * World War II Misc Axis forces covers Hungary, Romania, etc
 * World War II Misc Allied forces covers dozens of smaller countries
 * World War II Polish forces
 * World War II Sovet forces
 * World War II U.S. forces
 * where each of the above have sub-categories of land units, air units, sea units, special forces, etc as needed
 * World War II divisions too many divisions to place all in 1 category
 * World War II groups too many divisions to place all in 1 category
 * World War II military units move into Misc Axis or Misc Allied forces


 * World War II military commands
 * World War II highest level military formations
 * hate the name, will think of better name
 * intent is to consolidate US Army Groups, German Armies, and Soviet Fronts, etc into 1 category
 * World War II Allied commands

I'm always agaisnst using "Misc." as it tends to be ambigious and some people tend to get offended when their nation is listed under it. I was originally thinking of having "Allied" and "Axis" as the top level, but that also causes ambiguity with nations like France and Italy which were on both sides at different times. For minor nations, they can probably link directly to World War II military forces without the need for subcategories.

I don't think we need to have highest level military formations as they weren't fully the equivalent of each other and shifted as the war went on. Probably best to have that kind of comparison in an article with an associated list page.

I think Wehrmacht should go under German forces (I assume that it was intended to.)

British Commonwealth forces might cause a problem. I recognize that that would include Austrailia and New Zealand, but wouldn't Canada and the U.K. also fall under it?

I think we should have World War II French forces on the top there and have Free French under that. That way it falls into line with the others and we can include France's contribution during the early phase of the war (Phony War, Norwegian Campaign, Battle of France) as well as Vichy forces after they capitulated. Oberiko 20:31, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

U.S. / American / United States
It seems pretty trivial, but Wikipedia tends to be all over the place on this. How do we want to refer to the United States for things like Military equipment of *nation* during World War II? I would recommend that we go with "United States". Oberiko 00:03, 29 January 2006 (UTC)