User talk:Roger Davies

ARCHIVE

If you post a message on this page, I'll reply here to avoid fragmenting the discussion. So add it to your watchlist.
If I leave you a message on your talk page, it will be added to my watchlist. So feel free to reply to it there instead of here.

Coordinator election

Congratulations! You have been elected to serve as a coordinator of the Military history WikiProject. When you get a chance, please stop by the coordinators' work area and take a look at the various open tasks and ongoing discussions there. Kirill 00:29, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Congrats!

Assistant Cooridinator of the Military History Wikiproject, August 2007 — February 2008

Congrats on your election as an assistant coordinator. In honor of your achievement, I present you with these stars. I wish you luck in the coming term. TomStar81 (Talk) 01:00, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

• Congrats to you on your election as an asst coordinator! I look forward to working with you in the future. LordAmeth 13:46, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

• No thanks neccessary. Out of the list of candidates, I simply voted for those I felt would best serve the project. Hopefully I will never have to ask of you for assistance (other then just general questions on the projectpage), but if I ever do, it's nice knowing that the elected 'council' appears to be a well-balanced and unbiased group. Best of luck! wbfergus ^Talk 16:42, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

• Gl. Thx for thxing. Like I said to the few others who got elected, we need you guys b/c "we" are too lazy to do it ourselves. (Wikimachine 01:19, 10 September 2007 (UTC))

Welcome to WikiProject France

Welcome Roger Davies, to WikiProject France! Please direct any questions about the project to its talk page. If you create new articles on France-related topics, please list them at our announcement page and tag their talk page with our project template, {{WikiProject France}}. A few features that you might find helpful: The project's Navigation box points to most of the pages in the project that might be of use to you. Most of the important discussions related to the project take place on the project's main talk page; you may find it useful to watchlist it. We've developed a number of guidelines for names, titles, and other things to standardize our articles and make interlinking easier that you may find useful. Wikipedia:France-related tasks You can help! Vous pouvez aider ! Here are some France related tasks you can do: Requests: Gérard Garouste – Émile Peynot – more... Translation from French:See TRANSWIKI/French for details. fr:Formation territoriale de la France métropolitaine to Territorial formation of France – Loi constitutionnelle du 23 juillet 2008 to French constitutional law of 23 July 2008 – fr:Arbel Fauvet Rail to Arbel Fauvet Rail – fr:Merir to Merir – more... Stubs: Category:France stubs Category sorting: Category:French writers – Category:History of France Verify or Factual Accuracy: Gui de Ceriz – Rennes-le-Château – Simone Weil Update: Bischwiller NPOV : Foreign relations of France (Middle East section) – Torture during the Algerian War – François Mitterrand – Jean-Marie_Le_Pen – John Calvin – Marie Antoinette Wikify: Dida Diafat – French architecture Citations: Vichy France (section) – Falaise pocket – Charles de Gaulle – Vaux-le-Vicomte – Economy of France – Louisiana Purchase Merge: – Bourbon Family Compact Copyedit, Style or Cleanup: Antoine de la Sale – Albert Camus – Breton language – Claude Debussy – French Revolution – French language – Jean-Paul Sartre – Napoleon III of France – Nicolas Sarkozy – Picardy – Rennes – Sarah Bernhardt – Toulouse – Girondist – Louis XIV Expand: Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen – Vaux-le-Vicomte – Basque language – Being and Nothingness France-related Wikiprojects: Wikipedia:WikiProject France view • edit • discuss • history • watch If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me or any of the more experienced members of the project, and we'll be very happy to help you. Again, welcome, and thank you for joining this project!

--STTW (talk) 18:25, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

The Military history WikiProject Newsletter : Issue XVIII (August 2007)

The August 2007 issue of the Military history WikiProject newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.

Delivered by grafikbot 10:09, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your review!

Thank you for reviewing the article. Your comments are certainly appreciated. One comment that I didn't understand is the following:

• "Rather too densely written at the moment. Needs to drip-feed information so that it's easier to assimilate."

Can you explain what you mean by that?Bless sins 19:58, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

I think you are introducing too much new information in single sentences without explanation. For example, you say "These injunctions were honored by Umar during the early expansion of Islam", without explaining who Umar was, why he was important, what he did or when the expansion took place. If you assume that your reader knows little or nothing about the subject, and take everything step by step, it will be much easier to follow. --ROGER DAVIES ^TALK 06:54, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Re: Vimy Ridge

I'm absolutely interested in this project. I had an opportunity to do some background reading over the summer, but I'm now fairly busy (graduate school and all that), so I maybe a little slow responding , etc. Carom 00:48, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks

Thankyou

Thankyou for the chevrons and don't worry about the typo!! It is always good to have that nice orange bar at the top of the page. Also, i was happy to support you in the elections. Your work on the assessment drive already seems to have vindicated my decision! :) Good luck with it all and thanks again. Woodym555 09:48, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Georgia Tech

Hey, not that I'm complaining, but why did you tag the Wikipedia:WikiProject Georgia Tech/Articles page under the scope of WikiProject Military history? We can use all the help we can get (heck, we welcome it), but aside from some strong military ties in our early history which might put just a handful of our pages under you scope, I don't see a connection to our whole project. But again, who am I to argue with some extra help? :) LaMenta3 13:38, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry if that came off as WP:OWNish, but the only military ties I know of are our ROTC program, and in some parts of Georgia Tech's history. I didn't mean to turn down any support that you or anyone else in WP:MILHIST would like to contribute :) —Disavian (^talk/_contribs) 17:15, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Austrian generals

My French is not brilliant; would you be able to check and correct the one I've done - Frederick Bianchi, Duke of Casalanza? The relevant sections in French are still embedded in the article. If you can do that I'll fix up the other cleanup things afterwards. Thanks Buckshot06 17:11, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

No worries, I'll do the cleanups, though my real period is elsewhere as well (things like Russian Ground Forces). Sitting in your coordinator's seat, do you have any thoughts or advice for making the Rus & Sov TF part of the Russian wikiproject as well? Cheers Buckshot06 17:58, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I asked Kirill as promised. Here's the exchange:

On a related note, User:Buckshot06 asked me earlier how best to integrate the Rus & Sov TF with the Russian wikiproject. Thoughts? --ROGER DAVIES ^TALK 19:09, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Would be easy enough to do; but the reason we haven't done so in the past is because we weren't sure which project (i.e. Russia, SU, or Russian history) to work with. If we could get a clear answer on how those projects interact, we could go ahead and make the task force joint with whichever one was best. Kirill 16:39, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

the best way forward now is probably to raise it on the Milhist noticebaord, answering Kirill's questions. --ROGER DAVIES ^TALK 11:02, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Jackie Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher

I have put the following message on User talk:Proteus

Please desist from reverting the edit made by User:Roger Davies at 12:39, 15 September 2007. What Roger has done is to put in a useful footnote and a few minor corrections. If you know of a good reason for the article to not have these, please explain your point on the talk page, instead of reverting.

--Toddy1 20:48, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your message. I have added this article to my watchlist and added copious references to the talk page. --ROGER DAVIES ^TALK 09:32, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Roger - you have been doing good work on the article today. Fisher did a lot of important jobs; a man who had done any one of them would merit a good-size biographical article in Wikipedia. Do the sources you have at hand provide enough information to write a few paragraphs on what he did as Controller? And if so, do they mention the Leander's refit?--Toddy1 12:26, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Good idea! I was thinking it might be fun to get this up to FA. I've long been interested in Fisher and there's no shortage of material. User:Carom is interested in the Royal Navy and he could be roped in too. (We did the Battle of Arras (1917) together and are currently working on another project.} --ROGER DAVIES ^TALK 12:44, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I would be happy to participate in this.--Toddy1 12:52, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Roger, I've had a quick look and all the books I have checked use Jacky rather than Jackie. I did wonder if this was a UK / USA spelling difference but I don't think so. MacKay 'Fisher of Kilverstone' uses Jacky (US Author);), Hough which I have under 'Admiral of the Fleet' the US title - it was published here (UK) as 'First Sea Lord' - Jacky. Roskill's Beatty which I am reading at the moment. He quotes from various letters that Beatty wrote. Beatty spelt it 'Jacky'. I expect Chalmers volume of Beatty would confirm this. Marder (US author) in the preface to Vol 1 of From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow - Jacky. So there are quite a number to support Jacky as the correct spelling. I had a quick look at The Fisher Papers (Navy Records Society) but can't see any refs to either Jacky or Jackie in there. They may be in there but couldn't see anything obvious. As I say Roskill is quoting from Beatty's orginal papers anyway. Incidentially I checked the London Gazette re the of Kilverstone thing and from 1909 to 1920 all the references to him seemed to include 'of Kilverstone.' SirLancelot 19:32, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

MacKay, I see, in quoted correspondence, has Jackie as well. Morris' Fisher Face uses Jacky. Perhaps you could transfer the info to Toddy1's useful table? --ROGER DAVIES ^TALK 10:35, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

No it is not a UK/US thing. Virtually all the books I have use neither Jacky nor Jackie. However one that did is "The Jellicoe Papers" Volume I, edited by A Temple Patterson, pub Naval Records Society 1966. This uses 'Jacky' - however I only found 'Jacky' in parts written by A Temple Patterson. I admit that I have not checked every single reference.

Most books I have prefer to call him Sir John Fisher. Though "Naval Tactics", the pamphlet he published for private circulation in 1871, calls him J. Fisher.

Incidentally, every person I have met who calls themselves 'Jackie' is a girl.--Toddy1 22:04, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. the table, by the way, was very helpful. I'll start filling it in later. Perhaps you could do likewise with your refs.--ROGER DAVIES ^TALK 10:35, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Battle of Waterloo edits

Thanks for your tidy up of my edits. There are two things which I propose to change. 2 Juncture - Replace "at the juncture between the area where Wellington's allied army was cantoned to his north-west, and Blücher's Prussian army that was dispersed to the north-east" with "at the road junction between Wellington's allied army to his north-west and Blücher's Prussian army to his north-east".

I did not mean the road junction I meant the juncture OED "The place at which, or structure by which, two things are joined; a joint, jointing, junction." There was no specific road or junction there were several different methods by which members of the two armies could reach other -- which is why the word point was not IMHO the best word to describe the seam between the armies that Napoleon wished to pick apart.

But Napoleon didn't pile into the middle of two joined armies, he pushed his men between them to prevent them joining up. For road junction, I was relying on Naylor: "The Emperor's order had been categoric on the need to capture the intersection of the roads" ... "leaving the road junction in the hands of the allies created totally unnecessary difficulties for the French" ("Waterloo" (1960), p65.) In any event, my prime objective was to simplify the complexity of the sentence. It seemed a bit clunky. --ROGER DAVIES ^TALK 14:35, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

To imply that there was one road between then and one road junction leads to the implication that both armies were concentrated which they were not. Therefor there was more than one route between the dispersed armies. --Philip Baird Shearer 15:16, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I imply nothing of the sort. A road junction is always an intersection of more than one road. There were two main roads and Napoleon took the road junction at the intersection of them. But this is a side-issue: the real problem is the tangled complexity of the sentence. One way round it is to refer simply to "between the dispersed armies of Wellington to his north-west and Blütcher to his north-east". The article has already explained the composition of them.

--ROGER DAVIES ^TALK 16:20, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I think we will have to agree to differ on this one. --Philip Baird Shearer 19:47, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. I've had a look at the sources and will probably expand this section a bit in the light of that. I shall try to avoid contentious words :)) --ROGER DAVIES ^TALK 10:42, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

2 Cannon - Replace "Napoleon had 80 of his cannons drawn up in the centre to form a grande batterie. These opened fire between noon and 13:30" with "Napoleon formed a "grande batterie" of 80 cannon in the centre, opening fire between noon and 13:30". Comments? --ROGER DAVIES ^TALK 11:16, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Drawn up is a technical term for artillery think of "horse-drawn artillery" I do not see why you wish to replace it with words like massed or formed (although the OED suggests that it should be drawn-up). --Philip Baird Shearer 13:50, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

The OED and the more up-to-date SOED equally suggest "mass", which to my mind conveys the idea of the "grande batterie" more vividly - that's just my take on it. :)

Please understand that there is no element of squaring up in this. I made the changes in absolute good faith. If you don't like them, feel free to change them back. --ROGER DAVIES ^TALK 14:35, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I've just seen your edit note. I'm sorry that you're taking this personally. --ROGER DAVIES ^TALK 14:46, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I think drawn-up is a better word because it is a more accurate description of what happens with field artillery of that era. "Massed" does convey size, but it also has connotations of disorder. Of the examples given by the OED only "Thirty massed regimental orchestras" does not in my opinion have that connotation. --Philip Baird Shearer 15:16, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

You're looking in the wrong place: that's "massed" adjective/participle not "mass" verb. OED, "mass", verb (2), will give you:

• 1861 Musgrave By-roads 305 Instead of dispersing their force in brigades.. they massed them in phalanx form.
• 1878 R. B. Smith Carthage 116 His infantry he masses much more closely together and in much deeper formations than was common among the Romans.
• 1885 Manch. Examiner 10 Nov. 4/6 Austria is massing troops in Herzegovina.
• 1974 Times 8 Mar. 9/4 (caption) Syrian troops are massing opposite Israel positions on the Golan Heights.
• 1990 Vanity Fair (N.Y.) Nov. 156/2 Saddam had massed first 30,000, then 100,000 troops on their frontier.

The grande batterie link which you removed also uses the verb "mass" for cannon.

Consolidating the two sentences also gets rid the concordance problem. The first sentence talks of one grand battery (singular) and the second sentence talks about a plural (referring to the guns not the battery). My ", opening fire at ..." sidesteps this.

--ROGER DAVIES ^TALK 16:20, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I think we will have to agree to differ on this one as well because I read the example you have given the same way as the others and I still think that drawn-up is better than massed because that is what was done to the guns. --Philip Baird Shearer 19:47, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. The world would be a dull place if we all agreed. I think it will benefit the reader, though, if this is clarified and I will do so, suitably referenced, later. Plus, I have an exceedingly cunning plan that will keep us both happy choice-of-words-wise. --ROGER DAVIES ^TALK 10:42, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Causes of World War I

You recently downgraded the military history rating of the article "Causes of World War I". Was this because of some changes to the article, or simply the result of inadequate prior review? If you have some specific guidance to improve the article please pass it on. The topic is quite wide and controversial and therefore many have contributed making it hard to maintain high standards. I personally try to stay focused on the July Crisis. I am unclear why this is a military history article; its not intended to be of that character.

Werchovsky 17:20, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

It has all the makings of an excellent piece but it was rather generously assessed before. Adequate citations are a requirement for B-class. The article is at best sparsely referenced and at worst not referenced at all. On your other point, most people regard the political background to a war as part of its military history. Fighting is generally the physical expression of political activity and wars are usually fought with political objectives in mind. --ROGER DAVIES ^TALK 21:09, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

HMS Donegal

Precognition is just another one of my amazing powers. Good work with the Fisher article. If it doesn't get FA status then there's no justice! Benea 13:52, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

I had half a mind to do so. Give me a bit and I'll knock something up, no problem. Thanks, I was pretty taken with his story and thought it worthy of commemoration. pip pip, Benea 15:25, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

HMS Donegal (1858) as requested. Benea 19:01, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Ta very much for the barnstar! HMS Valorous (1851) written up. I also changed HMS Northampton into a disambiguation page since that ship already existed at HMS Northampton (1876). I made a few tweaks to HMS Valorous but nothing much, though I did add another ship. I also fixed the links at Jackie Fisher's page, and fixed the style a bit. Hope this is all ok? ttfn, Benea 14:28, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Not a problem, happy to help! Benea 15:49, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks

It's nice to know that someone appreciates that drudgery. Thanks :) Maralia 14:14, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

As an occasional drudgee myself, I feel your pain :) --ROGER DAVIES ^TALK 16:00, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Fisher

Yes, i was about to leave a note here asking what name you think the template should use. Given the ongoing discussion on the Fisher talk page i was pondering whether to change it. In the end i did and i tried to maintain consistency with the other names by using the "Knight" title. What i see now is that it should really be called Baron Fisher of Kilverstone in line with Cunningham. I think the highest title in the Order of Precedence should be used. Thoughts? Woodym555 16:16, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Your call entirely but (I think) we have consensus on the talk page, that though doesn't make it bullet-proof :) --ROGER DAVIES ^TALK

Gone with the old Baron Fisher of Kilverstone. All the others use the highest order of precedence although MPs seem to be noted over the top of hereditary titles. Amend as you see fit, looking at it, it might need "The" to be consistent with the other names. Woodym555 17:20, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Seems sensible. I'll leave it all to you, you've clearly got a better grip on the historical First Sea Lords than I have. --ROGER DAVIES ^TALK 17:25, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks!

		My RFA
		Thanks for your support in my request for adminship, which ended with 58 supports, 1 opposes, and 1 neutral. I hope your confidence in me proves to be justified. Addhoc 18:41, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Issy Smith

Apologies for my unresponsiveness last weekend. I've essentially been on a break within a break, interrupted only by a single comment at MILHIST. Your additions have been smoothly integrated into the article's admittedly rigid structure; however, the gold watch passage appears awkwardly placed in parenthesis. Perhaps it could be incorporated into note6? As said, your edits have enhanced the quality of the article and its comprehensiveness. Indeed, the final paragraph of the WWI section contrasts glaringly with his initial post-war difficulties. Oh, I noticed that you nominated Issy Smith as a candidate for FA status. I'm genuinely honoured that you believe it merits elevation and really appreciate your decision to act "unilaterally" (that's almost tantamount to WP:OWN ;-). Regards and happily continue your editing. SoLando (Talk) 15:20, 25 September 2007 (UTC)