Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/French military history task force/Archive 1

• Archive 1
• 2

Banner image

I've used for now, but it's not really a military history image per se. I'd like to avoid using a Napoleonic one, in order to avoid confusion with that task force; does anyone have better ideas for an image? Kirill Lokshin 17:44, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

An icon of an infantryman wearing le pantalon rouge? Then again, we are focusing on different eras. Andrés C. 23:07, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

That might work, actually, if we can find one that's still recognizable at a small size. Do you know of any good images offhand? Kirill Lokshin 23:52, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Not at this moment, sorry. Was just thinking out loud. Andrés C. 03:15, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

I took the liberty to replace it with a better, high-quality, non-gif version, in accordance with other shield icons. Take a look at Talk:Józef Antoni Poniatowski to see how it looks. //Halibutt 22:36, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Until we come up with a definitive image, I propose we use the French flag rather than the Fleur de Lys. On the one hand, it's easily recognizable by anyone out there; on the other hand, it'll help us reduce the size of the banner. What do you think? Andrés C. 14:04, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

The recognizability point may be a valid one; I don't know that reducing the image by a few pixels will really make a difference, considering the size of all the other images. (But it may be worthwhile to consider whether we should make all the task force images short and wide, rather than tall and narrow.) Kirill Lokshin 14:10, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I must say I liked the fleur de lys as the symbol is pretty much recognized in Europe - and the symbol is clearly associated with French history rather than modern France as such. It may however be a tad different on the other side of the pond. BTW, if you really insist on using the tricoleur rather than the fleur de lys, then there's also Image:PB France CoA.png ready :) //Halibutt 23:36, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I like it too - and of course is as French as the petanque :) - but to be honest, I still would go with the Tricoleur(by the way, the CoA is an excellent suggestion!) mainly for the sake of familiarity/recognizability to the eyes of the contemporary reader. Perhaps we should continue looking for something more neutral? I know that the tricoleur is so awkward an image for tagging an article about the Battle of Crécy, as the Fleur de Lys is for another about the Battle of Verdun. Andrés C. 00:14, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

The real problem is that the small size limits us to fairly simplistic images; anything too complicated just won't be recognizable. Aside from the tricoleur and the fleur de lys, are there any more-or-less commonly known symbols we could adopt? Kirill Lokshin 00:19, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Marianne would be too big, same goes for the cock, Grand Seal and the emblem they use on the passports. The latter one is completely unsuitable for a CoA (AAMoF it was designed to break all the heraldic rules; you know, the Republic cannot follow an aristocratic rule of heraldry) and is simply not recognizable. In fact it could be (and is) confused with the lictor's fasces, used by the Romans and then the fascists of Italy, not to mention the usage in the US. I'd say there's pretty little choice outside of the Tricoleur and the lilies. //Halibutt 01:13, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Funny thing...I had also thought about Marianne myself, and had been tinkering with Delacroix's version, trying to crop it so she could be distinguishable in an icon...to no avail :) There are a couple of good, public domain images of French soldiers from the Napoleonic era at NYPL digital gallery in case anyone wants to take a look. Andrés C. 01:53, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

The Lys keeps with the long history of the French militay, while the Tricolour's more connotative of the recent Republics in my mind.Dryzen 14:06, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

To reply a little bit to everything :

• 
  French uniform of the First World War with red trousers (needs a little of a cleanup)
• 
  Croped and resized version of Delacroix's Liberty guiding the People

I could also drop a few random ideas like

• 
  General's kepi (or an [Image:Musee-de-lArmee-IMG 1051.jpg Adrian helmet] if you prefer...) ?
• 
  flag of the FFL ? Its design is inspired of flags of the French Revolution, and similar ones are still used, so it is a quite "era-free" (though clearly Republican)
• 
  Légion d'honneur ? (same as above)
• 
  The Garde Républicaine ?

Anyway.. many more available at [Category:Musée de l'armée] and [Category:Military of France]. Rama 12:16, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

PS: it's tricolor, but noone says that in France (you'd say "drapeau tricolor") Rama 12:21, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

What about stubs?

While we are tagging articles, it would be good if we could identify related stubs (there are quite a few of them out there) in a way so we can come up with a nice to-do list. Perhaps a specific tag for stubs? Andrés C. 23:07, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I think there are a couple of topical stub tags (e.g {{France-battle-stub}}) that are already usable. As far as grabbing a complete list from the tags, I think someone put together a category intersect feature that could be useful; I'll try to see if I can find it. Kirill Lokshin 23:49, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Okay, found it. Assuming we manage to correctly tag all the related stubs with class=Stub (which is not-trivial in itself, but something that's getting done anyways), and once the database lag gets fixed, we could use the CategoryIntersect tool to find everything in both Category:Stub-Class military history articles and Category:French military history task force articles. See this, for example. Kirill Lokshin 00:08, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Nice. As you said, though, a trivial task it isn't. Andrés C. 03:05, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Categorizations

Ok, so I was bold :) and went on to create Category:Military people from France. We can always change the prepositions, or go with "French", as you prefer. For now, what we need is some parent category to begin to sort out this mess. If it's ok with everybody, let's just dump everything in here, so we can get a clear picture of what we are facing at this moment. Any thoughts before I get kicked out of the Task Force :) ? Andrés C. 04:17, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Being bold is good! I do think we ought to wait a little bit before settling on a name, in hopes of getting a project-wide decision to the various naming issues with these categories; otherwise, we'll be stuck with renaming everything later. In the meantime, though, collecting the various categories together will probably work as a good test case; if we can figure out a good way of organizing things, we can propose that the scheme be copied across the entire category tree. Kirill Lokshin 04:21, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I agree completely. In the meantime, though, I guess going with the from France solution seemed to me kind of a halfway temporary solution between French and of France. Another reason for me to go with the noun was the fact that, from the perspective of the task force, me might want the categories to look similar: wars of France, battles of France, military equipment of/from France, and so on. As I said, we can change the name of this particular cat once we all reach a consensus for the entire Project. Andrés C. 04:42, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Opération Daguet

Had a go at creating an article on Opération Daguet, France in the first Gulf War. Hope it's OK. Chwyatt 15:04, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Looks good. Kirill Lokshin 16:13, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Military history Collaboration of the Fortnight

The article Battles of Narvik which is supported by this task force is now the focus of the current collaboration of the fortnight. Please join in improving this article.Inge 12:46, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Help

Can anyone help me with inserting an image on Ferdinand Fochs tomb from the German article on him to the English? --Carl Logan 11:31, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

You'll need to save the image and re-upload it here (or to Commons), as there's no way to include one directly from de: Kirill Lokshin 12:06, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Juin and war crimes

I discovered a addition about war crimes on Alphonse Juins article, I removed the section because it lacked sources, I found nothing about it when searching about Juin on google and it is a serious allegation to make against a person. There is also a new article about those French war crimes: Marocchinate.

I am wondering if anyone on this taskforce has heard anything about those war crimes. I haven’t, but I am far from an expert on the Italien campaign in World War II. Carl Logan 19:13, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Paul Gaujac mentions those crimes in his book "Le corps expéditionnaire français en Italie", citing reports from French military archives (SHAT) about North African soldiers being punished for raping and looting. However, the allegations of "thousands of rapes encouraged by the French high command" sound highly suspicious and biased to me. Sadly, I don't know of a serious historian's work, that would confront Italian claims with French reports, on this subject. PpPachy 08:33, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Organisation armée secrète

Can I ask some people from this project to at least keep an eye on Organisation armée secrète? There is an anon editing from constantly shifting IP who will not discuss, and keeps making the same changes over and over, like changing "far right group" to "liberation group" (linking "liberation" to "political action" - this for a group who tried to assassinate de Gaulle) to inserting "Islamofaschists" (sic) and changing Algerian War of Independence to Algerian Communist Uprising. This may not be vandalism in the narrow sense, but it's pretty damned close. I have about 3000 articles on my watchlist, so I can only keep so close an eye on this. - Jmabel | Talk 01:21, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia: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 21:34, 25 October 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.

• Colonel de Bange, the splendidly-named inventor of a 90mm cannon
• Maschke Commission, set up to determine the fate of German WWII POWs (The Maschke Commission would later tabulate 4537 parish-registered deaths in these 6 worst RWLs, 774 from the others. They thought the actual death toll ...

http://www.cyberussr.com/hcunn/for/us-germany-pow.html) Wandalstouring 11:12, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Added to open task template. Kirill Lokshin 13:56, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Infoboxes

I have been thinking a little as to what to link to in infoboxes. After 1870, with the exception of Free and Vichy France, it should just be linked to France, not to French Third Republic or French Fourth Republic. What do you think? Carl Logan 21:06, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Seems reasonable; they're not really "different" countries merely by virtue of a change in government. Kirill Lokshin 21:09, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd contend that. For World War II we typically link to Nazi Germany, Empire of Japan and Kingdom of Italy (1861-1946). Considering that France/French could, potentially, refer to any of four organizations in that timespan, I think using the Third Republic is prudent when it is referring to a people-centric entity and not the geographical location. Oberiko 00:22, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, at least in the case of Germany and the KoI, they're fundamentally different "states", in some sense, whereas the 3rd and 4th French Republics were essentially continuations of the same "state", but with different legal systems. Would we then need to separate the Fifth Republic (which was just a constitutional rearrangement) as well? We generally don't give a country a new label each time it gets a new constitution (which, for some countries, is quite often), as far as I know.

But I don't necessarily disagree with your main point; if the article's editors feel it's more useful to the reader to link to the more specific article, they should probably be free to do so. I'm just not sure whether, in this particular case, those links may be more specific than is really useful; something like Modern France may be a better target than the individual political structures here.

In any case, I do recall we had a recent project-wide discussion to the effect that the links should be reformatted to use the plain country name, though; in other words, the infobox should contain [[Third French Republic|France]] rather than [[Third French Republic]]. Kirill Lokshin 00:37, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I definitely agree on the latter point, the F3R was, at the time, France; no need to make it explicit in the name of the link. On the former, I really do think it's more specific. "France" would have maybe a small blurb on the entirety of the Second World War, F3R would have a much more detailed and relevant information for situation of the time. Oberiko 22:45, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Jacques Camou

I recently stumbled upon General Camou and expanded and sourced it. However, I need help de-orphaning it—he doesn't seem to be mentioned in any of the linked articles! Lupo 13:08, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Interesting. The relevant articles are all so short that people of his level really aren't mentioned; we may need to wait until somebody improves those, or writes something on the specific units he commanded. Kirill Lokshin 13:47, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Template Organization

The system of requesting articles is being doled out to the task forces now. That means no massive communal list of requests any more, and much larger/longer lists within the task force templates. This task force already has a substantial list of requested articles, and they do not appear to be in any particular order. It would be a great help if anyone who was so inclined could take it upon themselves to put these into an order (preferrably some variation on alphabetical). Those of us who are moving the request list into the task forces (and you all are welcome to help with that as well) will of course do our part to aid in this process. Thank you. LordAmeth 13:42, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Battle of Crécy at WP:ACID

The Battle of Crécy article has been nominated at the Wikipedia:Article Creation and Improvement Drive. It is a key article for the Hundred Years War, and should be important for any encyclopedia, yet it is only start class and fails on referencing sources.

I thought I should notify the members of this task force --Grimhelm 16:20, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

French Expeditionary Forces in WWII

In the article on the Battle of Monte Cassino, the "Epilogue" section mentions the "French Expeditionary Forces" but there is no article on this unit. The French Expeditionary Force refers to a WWI unit. Can someone write an article on the "French Expeditionary Forces" in WWII so that it can be linked to?

--Richard 17:21, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Very poor translation of Claude François de Malet

It looks like someone just copy and pasted a Google translation of the article for Claude François de Malet. Please take a look. --AW 19:40, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

yes, it is an ugly sight. I've started copyediting, or rather retranslating. Soon time for the pièce de résistance, the attentat against the emperor.--Victor falk 14:38, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

request for help identifying French companies

Hello, I'm trying to improve Rwandan Civil War but can't figure out what French parachute companies were deployed in 1990 in Opération Noroît. I would very much appreciate it if someone who knew how to find such information could add that info and a ref to the infobox. Thanks! - BanyanTree 09:02, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

According to site the 1st and 3rd companies of the 8th Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment were deployed in Rwanda as a part of operation Noroît. Also at least parts of the 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment, 3rd Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment and 13th Parachute Dragoon Regiment was deployed in the area around this time. Carl Logan 10:26, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much! - BanyanTree 20:37, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Richelieu

Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal Richelieu has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. DrKiernan 06:50, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Siege of Cádiz

Just starting the above article, any help would be appreciated I'm finding it hard to find good sources. Thanks SGGH ^speak! 15:10, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

What kind of sources, offline or online?--Victor falk 16:58, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Battles of macrohistorical importance involving invasions of Europe GA Sweeps Review: On Hold

As part of the WikiProject Good Articles, we're doing sweeps to go over all of the current GAs and see if they still meet the GA criteria. I'm specifically going over all of the "Conflicts, battles and military exercises" articles and just reviewed Battles of macrohistorical importance involving invasions of Europe. I believe the article currently meets the majority of the criteria and should remain listed as a Good article. In reviewing the article, I have found there are some issues considering sourcing that should be addressed, and I'll leave the article on hold for seven days for them to be fixed. I am leaving this message at this task force, along with the other relevant task forces to the article, since the article falls under this topic and figured you might be interested in helping to improve the article further. The article needs some more inline citations, an expanded lead, and uniform inline citation formatting. If added, I'll pass the article. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. --Nehrams2020 00:13, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Morea expedition GA Sweeps Review: On Hold

As part of the WikiProject Good Articles, we're doing sweeps to go over all of the current GAs and see if they still meet the GA criteria. I'm specifically going over all of the "Conflicts, battles and military exercises" articles and just reviewed Morea expedition. I believe the article currently meets the majority of the criteria and should remain listed as a Good article. In reviewing the article, I have found there are some issues considering sourcing that should be addressed, and I'll leave the article on hold for seven days for them to be fixed. I am leaving this message at this project page, along with the other relevant task forces/WikiProjects to the article, since the article falls under this topic and figured you might be interested in helping to improve the article further. The article needs just a few more inline citations and if added, I'll pass the article. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. --Nehrams2020 01:33, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Battle of France Good article reassessment

This article has been reviewed as part of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/Project quality task force for GA sweeps. I think the article currently doesn't meet the requirements of the Good article criteria concerning sourcing. Although the article is well-sourced in many areas, other areas are lacking. I have listed the article at Good article reassessment to get a better consensus on the article's status. Issues needing to be address are listed there. Please join the discussion to see how the article can be improved to prevent delisting. If you have any questions about the reassessement, leave me a message on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Regards, --Nehrams2020 (talk) 02:03, 26 November 2007 (UTC)