Friendly talk page watchers are appreciated. They may respond to questions on or edits to this page, especially when I am unable to respond quickly or when an additional response to an edit, question or comment would be helpful.I am also watching things here.
I am back, a little later than I anticipated. I expect to be online almost every day at least briefly. If I expect to be offline for more than a day or two I will post that here and at the top of my user page. Donner60 (talk) 01:53, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have added a prioritized to do list to my user page. These have been getting done much more slowly than intended because of coordinator tasks and other unanticipated editing that needed more immediate attention. Donner60 (talk) 05:06, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Please put comments or questions on new subjects at the very bottom of the page, use a new section heading, refer to the exact title of an article and sign your message with four tildes. If you send me an e-mail please leave a talk page notice. I am not always prompt at looking for new e-mails at the listed address. Donner60 (talk) 09:12, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
New messages, questions, comments: Put at very bottom of page, see text of this section
Please put new messages at the very bottom of the page. Thanks. Donner60 (talk) 08:39, 13 December 2012 (UTC) To clarify, the new item should not be below this message and not below the repeated message after my introductory paragraphs but at the very bottom of the page after every other item on the page. It will help me to understand what you are talking about to add a section heading, identify the article you are concerned with (if your question or comment refers to a specific article), using a link, probably putting the article title in the heading, and sign your edit with four tildes (~~~~) so I know to whom to reply. Keep an eye on this page because I may just reply here if the answer is simple and does not seem to be time sensitive. When I notice an out of order question or comment, I will move it to the bottom of the page and provide a heading if there is none already. Donner60 (talk) 22:32, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
If you have come here for information, or to complain about something, read the information at the pertinent links in the next two sections first. It may save both of us time as well as providing an immediate definitive answer. Current talk page items follow these sections.
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• Help:Introduction to talk pages. • Help:Using talk pages. • Excerpts Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines#User talk pages: While the purpose of article talk pages is to discuss the content of articles, the purpose of user talk pages is to draw the attention or discuss the edits of a user. Wikipedia is not a social networking site, and all discussion should ultimately be directed solely toward the improvement of the encyclopedia.
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Fixing format errors that render material difficult to read. In this case, restrict the edits to formatting changes only and preserve the content as much as possible. Examples include fixing indentation levels, removing bullets from discussions that are not consensus polls or requests for comment (RfC), fixing list markup, using <nowiki> and other technical markup to fix code samples, and providing wikilinks if it helps in better navigation.
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Note that it is proper to use <nowiki> and other technical markup to fix code samples.
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Put messages at the bottom of this page, please.
Please put messages, questions or comments at the very bottom of the page, i.e. after every other item on the page. If you put them here (immediately before or after this paragraph or section), I may either not see them or at least not see them very promptly. That will delay any reply from me to you. Please add a section heading, identify the article you are concerned with, and use a link, (if your question or comment refers to a specific article or edit), probably putting the article name in the heading, and sign your edit with four tildes (~~~~) so I know to whom to reply.
Where I may reply; and reasons why I might ignore or delete your message
Often I will reply on your talk page and may note or summarize that reply on this page. If you do not get a reply on your talk page, check back here. I may put brief replies here, especially if they do not seem urgent. Keep an eye on this page because I may just reply here, especially if the answer seems simple and does not seem to be time sensitive. If you have a user name, I will try to remember to ping you if I just leave a return message here. As far as I know, IP addresses cannot be pinged. When I notice a question or comment that was not placed at the bottom of the page, I will move it to the bottom of the page and provide a heading if there is not already a heading.
If you put a question or comment on this page but not at the bottom of the page despite the above request, and you can not find it if you check back, I have moved it to the bottom of the page in a new section with an appropriate heading if there was none given to the message.
If your edit was disruptive, vandalism, uncivil, nonsensical or abusive, and you do not find the edit on this page, it is because I have deleted it. In most such cases, I will also put another warning on your talk page, but will not otherwise reply to it. (I will reply, however, if you then leave a civil and reasonable followup with a legitimate question or comment and some reference or reasonable explanation related to the question or comment. Note that I cannot reply to a message which is incomplete or otherwise cannot be understood or reviewed on another page.)
If I do not reply to your message, but do not delete it or have archived it, it is likely because I took it to be a statement rather than a question or message that called for a reply. If some time has passed since I have logged on, the message may have become stale, or appear to me to be stale or no longer in need of a reply for some reason. In those cases, I also may not reply and will likely simply archive the message at the next archiving on aging messages/replies.
I occasionally get one of these notices. I fix the link or bracket, then delete the message, as the messages state is permissible, instead of further cluttering up these pages. Donner60 (talk) 05:13, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
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Thanks! I was glad to help. The Battle of Gettysburg is such an important milestone in U.S. history that it should be kept to a good standard. Donner60 (talk) 02:18, 10 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. It's something I can do for the project which relieves the frequent contributors from the task and can be spread out over a month. Donner60 (talk) 00:45, 7 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
On behalf of the Military History Project, I am proud to present the The Milhist reviewing award (1 stripe) for participating in 2 reviews between October and December 2023. Hawkeye7 (talk) via MilHistBot (talk) 00:32, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply] Keep track of upcoming reviews. Just copy and paste {{WPMILHIST Review alerts}} to your user space
Thanks! At least 40 more to come soon. The editor has done a good job of bringing these up to B class. He will be posting the remainder in the near future. Donner60 (talk) 00:43, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Most of the articles put up for manual assessments are easy enough to review due to the many outstanding contributors that we have to the project. Most are interesting as well. Donner60 (talk) 23:43, 3 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
February 2024 WikiProject Unreferenced articles backlog drive – award
This award is given in recognition to Donner60 for collecting more than 5 points during the WikiProject Unreferenced articles's FEB24 backlog drive. Your contributions played a crucial role in sourcing 14,300 unsourced articles during the drive. Thank you so much for participating and helping to reduce the backlog! – – DreamRimmer (talk) 17:56, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
On behalf of the Military History Project, I am proud to present the The Milhist reviewing award (2 stripes) for participating in 4 reviews between January and March 2024. Hawkeye7 (talk) via MilHistBot (talk) 04:28, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply] Keep track of upcoming reviews. Just copy and paste {{WPMILHIST Review alerts}} to your user space
G'day Donner60. Just popped by to say what a brilliant effort you have been making on checking the B-Class auto assessments. Thanks for all your work for the project! Warm regards, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 08:36, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
On behalf of the Military History Project, I am proud to present the The Milhist reviewing award (2 stripes) for participating in 4 reviews between April and June 2024. Hawkeye7 (talk) via MilHistBot (talk) 05:06, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply] Keep track of upcoming reviews. Just copy and paste {{WPMILHIST Review alerts}} to your user space
Thank you, Donner60, for your straightforward review of the “Charles Thau” article. Your expertise (and time) to help get my 1st wiki article to B‑class status are deeply appreciated.
On behalf of the members of WikiProject Military history, in recognition of your election to the position of Coordinator, I take great pleasure in presenting you with the Coordinator's stars, and wish you the best of luck for the coming year! Hawkeye7(discuss)00:53, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Should I create one and have it reviewed on the military history group? How do I create the geohack page with all the geolocation links? And where do I find casualties? I just saw one mention in the War of the rebellion records.
See the pages listed at Template:Navigation and positioning systems. If that does not provide an answer, you could ask a question at Wikipedia:Teahouse. The archive of past questions is so massive, I am not sure whether you can find the answer from the archives of that page. I am not familiar with the templates. I have copied some from existing articles and determined how to use them so many years ago, I would need to relearn them myself.
At https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015026937642&seq=935, you will find that Dyer's Compendium, a comprehensive work from 1904 which is the public domain, has an entry for October 10, 1863, which shows the Union casualties at 10 dead, 40 wounded. There are a few other compilations or sources for Union records but you would need to search them out. Dyer is a frequently used source.
Confederate casualties are more difficult to find overall, especially for small engagements. Even estimates are rarely found unless an author has tracked down some entry in the Official Records or some other source. Many Confederate records were destroyed near or at the end of the war. I don't know about any alternate sources besides the Official Records and the works of authors on specific subjects offhand.
In some cases, for new or relatively new editors, asking for a review at Wikipedia:Articles for creation is probably the best first step. For military history articles, you can request a peer review. See Wikipedia:Peer review. You will see that requests there can be directed to the military history project where one, sometimes more than one, users will provide comments. If you ask for an assessment, you may just get an assessment grade and often not much advice, other than a few general comments, on how to improve or upgrade the article. So that is not the best alternative for a more thorough review. I think that peer review is the best option to receive more comments.
Wikipedia:Reviewing, a list of pages to consult about reviews at different levels or for other purposes, might have more information about reviews and reviewing overall.
If you do not have the Backus and Orrison book, I can tell you that you find only a little more information than in Orrison's article about his upcoming book, the one just noted. I have a copy. The Confederate casualty figures are not given. There are a few more facts than there are in the earlier review. Other books that might have information about this action include Hunt, Jeffrey Wm. Meade and Lee at Bristoe Station: The Problems of Command and Strategy After Gettysburg, from Brandy Station to the Buckland Races, August 1 to October 31, 1863. El Dorado Hills, CA: Savas Beatie LLC, 2019. ISBN978-1-61121-396-6 and Tighe, Adrian G. The Bristoe Campaign: General Lee's Last Strategic Offensive with the Army of Northern Virginia, October 1863. Bloomington, IN: Xlibris Corp., 2011. ISBN978-1-4535-4990-2.
There are a number of online sources that can be accessed, even without a subscription in you do not need to download an article. JSTOR comes to mind. I can access, but not download, up to 100 articles per month. One problem I have with JSTOR is that the search engine returns far more results than are useful from the search items that I submit. I often don't need to look through all of them to find a few that appear to be useful (or occasionally to give up in frustration, I must admit) I am not sure whether the viewing of 100 articles was a break given to those who signed up during covid and has been extended for such users or whether it is genuinely available. In any event, JSTOR allows anyone to view old or government articles that are in the public domain without registering. You can find other sources at Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library.
In general, you usually may get more information from more than one editor by asking such questions on the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history. On a question relating to the American Civil War, I am glad to answer a question as best I can. So I might have answered on that page as well. There are other experienced editors who answer questions posed on that page as well. Some know as much or more than I do about the war and about some of them know more about templates and the like. I am by no means an expert on that topic.
I think you may have enough information to write an article on this action. I tend to be in favor of adding articles on small engagements, especially if there were casualties and some detail can be given, including where they fit into the scheme of things. Some might think that adding a section to the Bristoe campaign article would be enough. I think that a small summary of this action should be added to that article in any event since the campaign article now does not include anything about it. Donner60 (talk) 09:13, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! I appreciate the pointers! I do have the Backus and Orrison. I'll submit the article for review and edit the Bristoe campaign page to add the battle. Qstor2 (talk) 21:28, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I asked about the casualties because the OR shows that one unit the 120th NY reported 114 casualties. But I didn't see anything for Kirkpatrick cavalry.
Thanks. If I were writing this, I would use the OR and add a footnote that Dyer gives 50. I would also note that the cited sources do not give a number for the Kirkpatrick cavalry (if any). That should preclude any disagreements about sources and show that you looked at the best original and secondary sources for the numbers.
Also, if someone wants to be picky about using "primary sources", you can state that you mentioned Dyer, a secondary source. Also, I think that casualty reports are not the kind of statistic that a unit commander would overestimate for any reason that I can think of at this point. Sometimes I see assertions that no primary sources should be used but I don't think the guideline is written in a way that precludes them in all situations.
There are suspicions, perhaps with good reason, that some original sources aren't entirely trustworthy because they want to minimize or ignore mistakes or unfavorable facts or inflate accomplishments. But if there are no other reliable sources or the ones used appear reasonable for other reasons, I don't see any trouble with citing them. I wouldn't state those comments about the sources in the article or footnotes but you could use them as answers to any talk page question or comment, or to contest any attempt to delete or revert the numbers, if necessary. Donner60 (talk) 02:08, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have a draft if you had time to look at it. Thanks
I have been offline since November 11. I was out of town for much of this time. I am just getting back to editing. I saw that the article was still rather short and in draft form so it should not take much time to review it carefully. I think it also won't take a significant amount of time away from this month's backlog reduction drive work. I plan to take another look at it late today or tomorrow. Thanks for your patience. Donner60 (talk) 04:58, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No thank you! Some of the lesser battles weren't that long. I didn't set up the GeoHack page though. Not sure how to do that I can expand it if you think it needs "fleshing out" Qstor2 (talk) 16:57, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you have not found it yet, go to Wikipedia:GeoHack. In turn, that will direct you to a MediaWiki page GeoHack which appears to explain how to to do this. I have rarely used this so I can't add more about this from memory. I will take a few minutes within the next few days to see if I have any comments on whether and in what respect this can be expanded, or needs to be, for a B class assessment. Donner60 (talk) 22:31, 27 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Starting on 1 November, the month-long 2025 Article Improvement Drive will target a number of content improvement areas and backlogs. Participating editors will be in line for barnstars and other awards; articles from all aspects of the project will be eligible so there will be something for everybody. Interested editors are encouraged to sign up now!MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:17, 1 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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Hi Donner. I'm continuing work on the List of military electronics of the United States and the two sub-pages. You had made some recommendations, and said you would soon followup on some thoughts you needed to research. That conversation was removed from the assessment request page, so I hope you don’t mind my asking here… Have you come to a conclusion about every entry on a list article requiring cited sources? Thanks in advance. — TadgStirkland401(TadgTalk-Email) 19:38, 28 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It is fine to continue the discussion here rather than on your talk page. I am reasonably sure that every item requires a source, either individually or, if one citation covers all entries, to put the citation in the section caption or at the last entry. The last entry possibility is in line with a general citation guideline while the caption is an option accepted by military history project coordinators and experienced assessors. (If an article is assessed by the bot, the bot will not accept either option. However, I have not noticed the bot reassessing changes in articles so there is a possibility that old assessments may be outdated and uncorrected.)
I want to go back and gather up the various pages or sections from which I come to my conclusion - which I neglected to do as I went through them because I had not thourgh there would be several to consider when I looked around. I think there also may be the option of simply turning the now overall introductory article into a disambiguation page and inserting anything from that article that is not already repeated in the sub-articles into the new article's leads or introductions. That may or may not be the choice you will make, of course. It may depend in part on whether you leave the main article as CL class if needed to retain it. I also will probably run this past a current or emeritus coordinator for another opinion. I will want to wait a few days until the backlog drives are over.
Thanks for your patience with this. It is a useful exercise for me because this situation is a little out of the ordinary but could arise again. It will be helpful to have more detailed background or guidelines to have more certain class assessments and explanations. Donner60 (talk) 01:13, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, as you may now this is my first time participating in the Military History Drive so I am a little unfamiliar with some aspects. In particular, the allocation of points. One of the articles that I improved was Kingdom of Thessalonica which had B1 (references & citation) issues [1]. Does this gets 10 or 20 points based on the score table? Thank you. A.Cython (talk) 03:35, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have copied this question to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/November 2025 Article Improvement Drive. I noted there that User:Dumelow is the scoring guru and that from what I see in the edit history, it looks like a 20 point entry to me. But I would rather have Dumelow confirm that rather than rely solely on my interpretation, unless it appears necessary, or at least advisable, because the contest is about to close. I think he is monitoring this closely and will reply before the closing because he will make the final tally and make the awards. I can't be sure your times online will coincide, of course. Since I think he will make the awards, he will need to be sure there are no remaining questions and there are almost two days remaining before the close. Donner60 (talk) 04:53, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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By the time I saw this, the article had appeared on the project page. I am reasonably sure that the military history bot (milhistbot) transfers the article name from the GA nomination page. So you obviously proceeded correctly. As I recall, the bot only sweeps through new articles and other pages related to the project intermittently, possibly as infrequently as once per day. So while the nomination may have been recorded immediately, the bot did not see it until some time later. I am not a bot expert but I do know that some bots work immediately while others take their time. If something doesn't move for 24 hours or perhaps a little longer, there is probably something wrong with the nomination. Earlier than that, the user/editor will need to wait until the bot gets to it to see it on the project page.
This is long and tedious enough but FWIW, the bot only posts B class assessments on new articles that it makes, rather than human assessors make at the assessment request page, once per month. Eventually, a coordinator reviews those bot assessments because the bot occasionally gets an assessment wrong, including showing an article as a military history article when it actually doesn't meet the criteria on the main project page. Sometimes coordinators come across them earlier by chance, usually if a user/editor makes a request for assessment but the bot has already assessed the article. The bot apparently is not set to go back and change an assessment after improvements are made, however. In those cases, the user/editor must make a request to get the article reassessed. Donner60 (talk) 04:32, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No problem. One responsibility of coordinators is to help new users get started on the right track and more knowledgeable about Wikipedia. It is not all obvious. Someone who becomes more familiar with guidelines, templates, advice pages, etc. will become a more productive contributor to Wikipedia. I tend to elaborate a little more than some others. I think it is more helpful to be more detailed. It usually doesn't take me too long to go over facts and interpretations that I already know. Others do tend to be a little more specific and to the point, however. Perhaps that is better at least for some or in some cases. Donner60 (talk) 22:58, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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