Talk:Legion of Frontiersmen

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What a bunch of walters!

Until recently, the Legion's many covert missions on the borders of the British Empire were shrouded in myth and legend - historians are only now beginning to discover the facts [citation needed]. !!!!!

aahhahaha bollocks!

A complete bunch of deluded plebs - visit www.arrse.com for the real story of these fools

Don't believe a word of it!

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The Legion of Frontiersmen in the UK has become the vehicle for a group of largely civilian military fantasists. Whatever the truth of its past, the modern legion is not much more than a fancy dress party.

Griz999 10:26, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Maybe, but it needs to be presented encyclopedically. I just glanced at some of the thread on arrse.com, and you know, some of that discussion might've been more useful here than unsigned comments by unregistered users calling names and adding nonsense to the article. Notice yours is the first one on the talk page that doesn't look like it was written by some 11 year-old delinquent. I assume most of the edits I've been reverting are arrse.com people. On that site it looks like there's a legitimate desire to set things straight, whereas here, most edits look like vandalism.

I reverted your recent paragraph, Grizz999, because it didn't conform to the basic policies: neutral point of view and attribution. Some other relevent guidelines: WP:Weasel, WP:Reliable sources, WP:COI, and WP:NOT#SOAP. I'm not the original writer of this stub, and I have no interest in glorifying them, but it needs to be informative and encyclopedic. It's been a low priority for me, but if there's some interest in getting it up to speed, I'll try and put some time in re-writing the historical stuff. Bobanny 13:10, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Bunch of dressing up walting mongs.

[edit] Revisions Necessary

IMO, there needs to be some differentiation between activities which are actually attributable to the Legion - i.e., the members who volunteered for service with the Belgians in the First World War and the formation of the 25th battalion of the Royal Fusiliers - from activities which may have been carried out by individuals who might, at one time, have been members, such as the alleged espionage activities before WW1.

The false claim that the Legion has an 'active search and rescue squadron' in the City of London should be removed: it has nothing of the sort.

It is also worth pointing out that the Legion has, historically, been highly schismatic and this is reflected in the various independent and semi-independent factions which are referenced on this Wiki page. Many of these factions appear to consist of very few people indeed, although typically they give themselves high quasi-military rank.

Finally, it seems to me entirely appropriate to provide a link to the discussion on arrse.com which provides an alternative version of the modern Legion to that presented by the Legion factions' own websites.

Griz999 11:46, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree with most of that. Their notability is mainly historical, and even then, more for social/cultural reasons than military. I’m thinking it should look something like this:

• The origins of the group and its founder.
• The context: the reasons why they became trendy among the upper crust, their inability to get recognition, etc.
• Their role in WWI, meaning the battalions they raised, the Belgian connection, serving as specials in London, the huge losses that devastated the organization. This doesn’t mean describing battles or dwelling on heroics that belong in other articles, such as the 25th (Frontiersmen) Battalion, Royal Fusiliers article. The espionage stuff deserves mention as a historical curiosity, but not with the emphasis it has now.
• The post-war schisms that paralyzed the LoF. You’re right, this needs to be made clear, but I don’t think anyone besides LoF members would be too interested in a play by play of all the splits and internal politics. Good for a Monty Python sketch, not an encyclopedia.
• The LoF today – incoherent as a whole, sectarian, past glories, lost without an empire, etc. IMO, what needs to be said about their activities today is that they haven’t found a niche in the post-British Empire world, and not much else. The ‘search and rescue’ theme seems to be common, but I haven’t seen any evidence that anything’s come of that. Even if there is some LoF member somewhere who’s saved someone or found something, that doesn’t mean LoF as an organization is notable in that field.

I disagree with adding the arrse.com site because there’s a pretty clear Wikipedia policy against using website forums as sources of information and good reasons for it. Also, this isn’t a battleground. That’s fine for arrse.com or a blog or whatever, but not an encyclopedia. Arrse.com is a private discussion between military folk intended for their own kind, and isn’t designed for informing the general public about anything. If the thing with the LoF misrepresenting themselves has generated 150 pages on that thread, surely something’s been published somewhere that’s appropriate for a source, i.e., not an anonymous rumour mill that has unverifiable information. ANZMI could be used, but they don’t say a lot about the organization, just a couple bad apples.

That said, there’s no compelling reason to have any of the LoF external links either as far as I can see. The rule of thumb for external links is to be selective and to only add the most useful. Usually with an organization the official website is included, but in this case there isn’t an official website that can convincingly speak for the entire LoF. Most of them aren’t very informative anyway. If you want to remove those links, I won’t object.

I’m not interested in spending much more time defending or debating what’s already in the article. As far as I’m concerned, what’s there is a placeholder until a total re-write can happen (I’m busy with other stuff, so it won't be done over night); but I’ll continue to revert vandalism and edits that make it worse by IP editors unwilling to discuss things on the talk page.

As a heads up, there’s another article, Australian Medal of Merit, that’s probably going to get merged here soon. It’s actually only two sentences; but apparently there has been some confusion that it’s a real medal awarded by the government.Bobanny 03:21, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the LOF external links should be removed, as none of them can claim to be the official LOF website. Also, I think that the category of espionage should be removed as well. Curtana 12:55, 2 March 2007 (GMT)

[edit] Merge from Australian Medal of Merit

Please merge relevant content, if any, from Australian Medal of Merit per Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Australian Medal of Merit. (If there is nothing to merge, just leave it as a redirect.) Thanks. —Quarl ^(talk) 2007-03-05 10:51Z

Done. Maustrauser 21:57, 5 March 2007 (UTC)