From the coordinators

March, as you know, is an election month for our project, when we pick the coordinators for the next six months. We are seeking motivated individuals willing to devote some of their time and energy to the project so it continues to grow and prosper.

Also, I am making a personal appeal to each of you, the members of this project, to come out and vote for the candidates that run. These users will be responsible for managing the assessment process, answering questions, and making sure that the project's other needs are met. We have approximately 1,000 users who identify as being a part of our project, yet on average only about one-tenth of that number participate in elections. Moreover, as we typically hold referendums on major issues affecting the project along with these election, those who do not vote miss the opportunity to give their opinion on matters affecting the project as a whole. Remember, one vote always makes a difference. For the coordinators, TomStar81 (Talk) 23:47, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Articles of note

New featured articles:

1. Admiralty Islands campaign
2. Alexander Pentland
3. Anthony Roll
4. Battle of Winterthur (1799)
5. Cedric Howell
6. HMS Calliope (1884)
7. The Disasters of War

New featured lists:

1. List of battlecruisers of Germany
2. List of National Treasures of Japan (castles)

New featured pictures:

1. Australian military encampment, 1918
2. Injured Arriving by Boat at Balaklava
3. USS New Jersey, 1918

New A-Class articles:

1. Battle of Taejon
2. Bombardment of Papeete
3. First Battle of Maryang San
4. Henry George Chauvel
5. List of Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves recipients: 1942
6. Michael J. Daly
7. Nguyen Van Nhung
8. No. 1 Wing RAAF
9. Oswald Watt
10. Red Tail Project
11. Siege of Godesberg (1583)
12. SMS Goeben
13. Yermolayev Yer-2

Project news

• A discussion has begun concerning our military history manual of style's guideline recommending preemptive disambiguation on the naming of military units. As the outcome of the discussion will likely effect a number of pages within our scope we are seeking input from the community on whether the guideline should be changed.
• Late last year, several largely inactive task forces were merged. However, the mergers of the Australia and New Zealand task forces did not take place as there was no consensus for a new name. To resolve this, a discussion has begun and all editors are encouraged to participate.

Contest department

• The Contest Department has completed its thirty-fourth month of competition; and its sixth month under the new scoring system. A total of 82 articles were entered by eight editors. Kumioko came first with 110 points, followed by Sturmvogel 66 with 87 points. They receive the Chevrons and Writer's Barnstar respectively. Honorable mentions go to Auntieruth55 (59) and Ian Rose (36). Binksternet, Cirt, Radeksz and YellowMonkey also fielded entries. Please submit any articles you are working on for the March contest.

Awards and honours

• Brad101 has been awarded the WikiChevrons with Oak Leaves in recognition of his excellent reviewing and work on a sizable number of nautical articles that fall within our scope, producing a number of high-quality articles for the Military history and Ships WikiProjects.
• The A-Class medal has been awarded to Anotherclown for his work on Operation Coburg, Battle of Bita Paka and First Battle of Maryang San.
• The A-Class medal with Oak Leaves has been awarded to MisterBee1966 for his work on Max-Hellmuth Ostermann, List of Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves recipients: 1940–1941 and List of Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves recipients: 1942.

Editorial: Reliable sources in military history

Across Wikipedia, guidelines have been set up so that editors can vet sources for themselves. Links to some of these and a guide for checking if a source is reliable can be found in an excellent Signpost dispatch written by Ealdgyth (talk · contribs). However, for the majority of military history-related topics, we strive for more than just a basic reliable source. Specifically, we aim for peer-reviewed articles and books over, for example, most websites.^{[N 1]} Contemporary news articles or accounts can and should be mixed in (if possible) to give a picture of the general view point of the time—were they calm, afraid, unsure of what was going on?

Another major tenet is neutrality. If an editor rewrote the article Dieppe Raid using only the official Canadian history,^{[N 2]} we would have a problem; while it does contain a thorough and in-depth overview, a point-of-view can still be read. For one, it gives an undue amount of focus to Canada's input in the planning of the landing, and it would probably give an undue focus to their troops if a majority of the landing forces hadn't been Canadian. Granted, this is a book written to document that country's role in the Second World War, so you would hope it focuses on them, but this same reason makes it unusable as the primary basis for an article.

In this case, you would like to utilize a few recent, peer-reviewed books and journals, the official British, Canadian and German histories, possibly a few books written by historians from the aforementioned countries, and newspapers from that time period.^{[N 3]} Obviously this is ideal, but you need to represent all three sides in this (the United States would be a fourth, but they played only a minor role in the planning and invading). This neutrality aspect applies especially for battles and to a lesser degree biographies, but it can be utilized in virtually every article in our scope. For example, it could be beneficial to obtain Japanese accounts of B-29 Superfortress bombing raids or non-Puerto Rican peer-reviewed sources for that insular area's role in the Second World War. —Ed (talk • majestic titan)

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