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Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history

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Welcome to the Military history WikiProject! We are a group of Wikipedia editors that work on topics related to military history, theory, and practice.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them on our discussion page or by contacting the project coordinators directly.

What do we do?

Our goal is to build the foremost free-content encyclopedia of military history in the English language by:

  • Creating, improving, and maintaining articles that describe all aspects of military history;
  • Providing guidelines and recommendations for editors working on military history articles; and
  • Serving as the central point of discussion for all issues related to military history on English Wikipedia.

We are currently working towards five major milestones:

  • 11.7% Stub-Class
  • 47.6% Start-Class
  • 28% C-Class
  • 9.1% B-Class
  • 2.4% GA-Class
  • 0.3% A-Class
  • 0.7% FA-Class
  • 0.2% remaining

How can you help?

You don't have to join our project to work on military history articles. We welcome everyone who wants to help improve these topics, and encourage you—project member or not—to participate in all of our activities and take complete advantage of the support we offer.

Our list of open tasks contains thousands of articles that need different types of improvement. Article reviews and other discussions can be found on our list of article alerts (watch). Please feel free to select something that interests you and start editing!

If you would like to advertise your participation, you can formally join the project by adding your name to the list of members, or by adding one of our userboxes to your user page. Whether or not you join the project, you can sign up to receive our monthly newsletter, The Bugle, by adding your user name to this list.

What topics do we cover?

We generally consider any article related to historical or modern-day warfare or military affairs to be within our scope.[Note 1]

Most of our work focuses on eight broad areas:

  1. Military operations, battles, campaigns, and wars.[Note 2]
  2. Military personnel, including both leaders and common soldiers, as well as other people involved in military affairs.[Note 3]
  3. Military units and formations, ranging from small units to national armed forces.
  4. Military equipment and technology, weapons, armour, and vehicles.
  5. Military facilities and structures, such as fortifications, bases, test sites, and memorials.
  6. Military historiography, publications, and historians.
  7. Types and periods of warfare, the military histories of particular nations and groups, and general military science and doctrine.
  8. Depictions of military history in all media, such as video games, painting, sculpture, music, film, poetry, and prose.[Note 4]
Notes
  1. ^ The American usage of "military" is applicable here; in other words, the project concerns itself with any armed forces rather than only with land armies.
  2. ^ Other than a requirement for military or paramilitary involvement, we do not limit the events to which terms such as "war" or "battle" are applied; it is generally enough for the term to be used by reliable sources. Editors should beware, however, of interpreting such usage too literally; the popular media often uses them to describe civil law enforcement matters such as "gang wars" or "street battles", which are not typically within our scope.
  3. ^ Military service does not in and of itself place an individual within the scope of the project—particularly in the case of service in modern militaries. To qualify them, an individual's military service must have been somehow noteworthy or have contributed—directly or indirectly—to their notability.
  4. ^ We generally cover only those depictions for which a discussion of historical accuracy or real military influence is applicable. A distinction is made between fictionalized depictions of historical warfare and purely invented depictions of fictional warfare; topics sufficiently divorced from actual history that a discussion of actual military history would no longer be relevant to them—such as futuristic warfare in Star Wars or fantasy battles in Lord of the Rings—are not considered to be within the project's scope. However, songs and music with long military associations—for example, It's a long way to Tipperary and Lili Marleen—are within our scope.

What advice can we offer?

We maintain advice pages on content and notability related to military history articles, and there is a formal style guideline as well:

In addition, our Academy offers training and instruction on a wide range of subjects related to military history and Wikipedia.

Who coordinates our project?

The project coordinators are the designated points of contact for issues concerning the project, and are responsible for maintaining our internal structure and processes. They do not, however, have any authority over article content or editor conduct, or any other special powers.

Lead coordinator
Coordinators
Coordinators emeritus

To contact the coordinators, please leave a message on the coordinators' discussion page, or use the {{@MILHIST}} notification template on any other discussion page on Wikipedia.

How is our project organized?

We have organized activities within the project under four main departments:


A group of project members are currently undertaking a special project called Operation Majestic Titan which aims to create the largest featured topic on Wikipedia, covering every modern battleship ever planned or built.

Previous special projects have included work on the American Civil War, World War I and the D-Day landings.


We also maintain task forces to organize collaboration on particular military history topics: