<p>Hey guys, </p><p>I was wondering if there was anything you wanted me to edit/create. I specialize in battles involving Germany vs USA and Germany vs USSR. If there is anything involving these two that need editing I encourage you to notify me. </p><p>Thanks a lot guys. </p>

<p>The point of this post is to gauge everyone's opinion on this matter as it is quite important to both how the wiki is seen and how articles are organized. As it stands at the moment, many titles on the wiki are not translated and are formatted according to how they were used. However, many are translated and formatted simply. Below are a few examples of what I mean: </p>

• Red Army - Not translated

<dl><dd><dl><dd>Should be either 'RKKA' or 'Raboche-krest'yanskaya Krasnaya armiya' </dd></dl></dd></dl>

• Luftwaffe - Translated

<dl><dd><dl><dd>Would be 'German Air Force' </dd></dl></dd></dl>

• A22 Infantry Tank Mk. IV Churchill - Not formatted

<dl><dd><dl><dd>Should be 'Tank, Infantry, Mk IV (A22) Churchill' </dd></dl></dd></dl>

• Projector, Rocket 3-inch, No. 8, Mk. I - Formatted

<dl><dd><dl><dd>Would be 'Land Mattress Rocket Launcher' </dd></dl></dd></dl>

• 1. Infanterie-Division - Formatted

<dl><dd><dl><dd>Would be '1st German Infantry Division' or '1st Infantry Division (German)' </dd></dl></dd></dl><p>What I am worried about is creating a double standard, where all the German names for example are written in German (generally because more people know the German names) while all the Russian or Japanese or Italian names are translated. At the same time, I do not want the things people search for to lead to dead ends. People are probably going to be more likely to search for 'Romanian Army WWII' over 'Forțele Terestre Române', yet I still want to keep original names for the sake of being unbiased/presenting history as it is. If anyone has any thoughts or comments, feel free to write them below. </p>

<p>Hello everyone, recently I had been thinking about how to encourage readers to contribute more of their knowledge to the wiki and among the thoughts I had was the idea, instead of focusing on the largest detract of editors (Described on the main page poll as 'No time'), we instead focus on how to solve the second two biggest detracts, both of which are things that I believe we can help. These are 'Lack of motivation' and 'Editing is too complicated'. It seems to me that it is possible that these two problems could go hand in hand, readers may lose motivation to contribute if they believe that they don't understand how to do so. Now, fiddling with the edit controls is not something we are allowed to do, but perhaps it is not the editing that people feel is too complicated. I have tried in the past to simplify our policies and citation rules in an effort to make them not look quite so intimidating, but I propose that we take it one step further. I am proposing the creation of a new project page, titled 'Recommended Reading', that has a list of all the websites, books, magazines, interviews, etc. that our editing team has used in the past and continues to use in the future. The content of this list will be generally voted upon as being reliable and good for use on the wiki. I have brought this idea forward here in the council forums because I wanted to see community feedback to it and collect some sample resources to be posted in the list. So if anyone has a good source they use often and would like to help new users start creating content quickly, please post it below. </p>

<p>As many of you may know, I've been trying to finish the banners for all the main list sections on the wiki. The last major list to be completed is the list for units. Now, I can get to work right away on creating the appropriate banners for the list, but honestly, I do not know how to organize the page. My first thought was to organize the page and have it list all units of the various nations down to the division level, however with the different branches of Army, Navy, etc. It became too much to fit on one page. I've compromised to what I put now, but I'm not satisfied with it. If you have suggestions, please write them below. </p>

<p>Certain weapon pages, like the MP 40 and M1903 Springfield , show historical photos of the weapons in action.  Others, like the MP 28 and the M1 Garand , show pictures of the weapons themselves.  Which should be the standard? </p>

<p>The question here is in the title. We can either combine the lists into one giant list like has been done for ships and vehicles, or we can leave them be.  </p>

<p>Note: Manual of Style V2 has been moved to here due to large size and format tests. </p>

<p>Hello everyone! Since it does not seem immediately clear, I'm going to go ahead and set up some guidelines for the creation of articles for vehicle specialty variants. As a World War II Wiki, I feel that it is very important that we cover certain vehicle variants in further detail than a paragraph or two in a section on the main vehicle page. I'm not saying that for example, a variant with minor changes to the hull deserves its own article, but major changes to armament, use, etc should be covered. </p><p>The guideline that I suggest be established is that all vehicle variants that have major changes in operation, structure, or armament can have their own article. I think that these changes should stick to vehicles for now since that is where most of the issue lies. I will need to think about how the same idea can play into aircraft, though that will come later.  </p><p>How this can be done from an organizational point of view, I found by accident. When testing the idea with the SdKfz 251/9, I rediscovered in a sense the fact that adding a slash makes a page a derivative of another. While convenient for German half-tracks which use the slash to denote variations, this won't be the same for other vehicles. My idea is to create pages such as M3 Half-Track/M15 Combination Gun Motor Carriage and then add {{DISPLAYTITLE:M15 Combination Gun Motor Carriage}} on the article so the title displays as M15 Combination Gun Motor Carriage, but the derivative function is still there. I will go on to test this later, but what concerns me is the possibility that this may damage the search structure of the wiki as well as be a mess when pages get moved. As always post thoughts and suggestions below.  </p>

<p>Hello everyone! I have returned from a day-long break with a new logo! I must say that for several hours work, it looks rather fantastic. I attempted to correct all of the previous logo's mistakes including the addition of an actually transparent background. I also hope that this new logo makes the distinction that we are truly a WWII Wiki, not just a US WWII Wiki. As always, post feedback below.  </p>

<p>Hello everyone, </p><p>Today I am announcing the latest change to how article quality is defined. Going through the categorization system, I went through many old articles that haven't been edited in a long time, some in more than a year. I was about to create a new template to mark them as deficient quality when I encountered the problem of stacking templates, e.g. the way the stub and need infobox templates are made, stacking them looks very bad. To fix this, I created a new series of templates that not only stack better, but detract far less from the actual content itself. They fall right into the corner of an article just as they should considering that it is not the reader who should be told that an article is a stub, but editors so that they may fix the article. I'll be experimenting with them for the next week or so and if they work well, then I'll implement them site-wide.  </p><p>The guide on the new icons can be found here.  </p><p>Please post suggestions below.  </p><p>EDIT: </p><p>The icons themselves may not be permanent. I didn't really know what else to use besides aircraft.  </p>

<p>Hello everyone! </p><p>I am highlighting this thread to alert everyone that after days of working to remove old categories, revamp new ones, and establish a good base moving forward, I am satisfied with the way that the category system is now. I'm not completely finished, but just about. Anway, I'll also go ahead and modify the Categorization Policy to better benefit editors and give far more information as to what is required. Perhaps what can be gained from this is the knowledge to be more careful about the creation of new categories so that the system doesn't get clogged up as badly as it was. My next target to fix will be the wiki Image Archive and as always I'll post another alert as to when that project is finished.  </p>

<p>Recently, I've been going through my collection of WWII historical texts and became frustrated by the fact that much of the text is not and cannot be made into what one may call a 'Standard' article. Many of the articles on the wiki are 'Standard' just because they are easily defined. An article about the 'P-47 Thunderbolt' will describe exactly as its title states. However, historical essays allow editors to delve into more abstract topics about the war. For example, the tactics used by American troops during the combat in Eastern France in the various urban environments of old cities to open farmland were never given a specific name, nor were they ever strictly followed as if they were fixed rules, yet they are an equally important aspect that I feel should be discussed. </p><p>A while back, this is why we created historical essays, to fix these issues. Be that as it may, I feel that simply leaving historical essays as blog posts in a specific place does not do them justice, it makes them seem as having less quality than a standard article. What I am proposing is to add historical essays as standard articles as long as they meet a quality check-list and follow certain guidelines. Those that do not can be kept as blog posts and revised until they do. </p><p>Proposed Historical Essay Guidelines: </p>

• Maintain the same quality of writing as per the wiki Manual of Style

• Have an objective and 'to-the-point' title (e.g. <i>The Development of the Flakpanzer ––> German Flakpanzer Development</i>)

• Be well cited and use reputable sources of information

• Be tagged as [[Category:Historical Article]] at the bottom

• Use logical H2, H3, H4, and H5 tags to create structure

• If possible, use wiki templates to link to other historical articles or standard articles (e.g. Special navboxes with titles like "Allied Pacific Island Tactics")

<p>This will not be the only major hurdle that I will be adding as a community notice soon, I have also noticed that the category system that the wiki uses is fairly vulnerable to collapse once too much content is added and may become confusing if work is not done to fix its core structure and work outwards. Once we decide if we want to go ahead with this idea or not, we can have a better idea of how to fix the category system. As always, please reply below.  </p>

<p>Hello everyone, </p><p>I've been reviewing some of the old projects started years ago on the wiki until I stumbled upon our old Wiki Twitter account. The account holder, Vapor Snake, has long been inactive on the wiki so I doubt I could actually retrieve the account, but I was wondering if the community wanted me to create a new one that I can manage and thus keep active. While I'm not a fan of social media, I do recognize the merits of having something like a Twitter account, particularly for gaining new editors. Please leave feedback, below. </p>

<p>Hello everyone, </p><p>Today I was editing the 6th SS Gebirgs. Division article and I realized that I've never really been satisfied with the way that 'Unit' articles on the wiki are formatted. Pretty much every other type of article has had some major change in the past to put it up to standards, but unit articles have stayed almost the same since the format was created. So I got to thinking what the best way of fixing them would be. As you can see on the article I linked above, I toyed around with the format a little bit, with more changes to come soon as I develop proper infoboxes and navboxes for unit articles. Notably, I feel that the commanders section should be bullet points instead and only written out when the commanders did something notable for their unit. However, giving it an H2 or H3 title and only having bullet points looks a bit strange to me. Perhaps a template can be created to fix this? Please post your responses below.  </p>

<p>I was wondering if these vehicles should get their own articles especially considering that many of these were used in active combat. For example, the Breda da 20/65 Ford 15a which was a series of captured Canadian Military Pattern trucks fitted with Italian anti-aircraft guns. Another may be the SU-76i which was the designation for Panzer III medium tanks fitted with Soviet anti-tank guns. The main problem would probably come with what to do with one time conversions and captured vehicles that were not modified such as the Beutepanzer M4-748(a). </p>