Talk:Valley Campaign

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[edit] reverted formatting change

I have reverted the large-scale formatting change recently edited by "Civil Engineer III." I have written a number of these campaign summary articles and they are all in a similar style. The reason that third level subheadings are not used for battle descriptions in these articles is that it makes the table of contents unruly for large campaigns and the intent is that the battle descriptions are very brief; thus, having separate section headers is overkill. I would like to be able to revert only that portion of the many changes that CEIII has been making in my articles, but that is quite inconvenient. I would recommend that people who would like to make changes in well-developed articles contact the original authors and discuss their intentions rather than plowing in and making widespread changes without notice. As an aside, the gratuitous adding and subtracting of blank lines causes enormous difficulty in determining what substantive changes are being made, due to faulty version control software at Wikipedia, so I would ask you to avoid those wherever possible. (I really wonder why people find it necessary to make changes that will have no visible effects on the article.) Hal Jespersen 17:54, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

point well taken; will comply. however, they are not your articles. Civil Engineer III 18:41, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Yes, I know they are not my articles anymore. I use that as a shorthand for articles I wrote and maintain actively, but I am aware of the Wikipedia philosophy of authorship. And if we were discussing a single article, I would not have much to think or say about minor modifications, such as changing the format of headings. However, I have written over 250 articles and edited many more using a common style. I believe it is useful to have a degree of stylistic commonality across articles, both for readers and editors. So what might seem like a good idea for One particular article seems less attractive to me when it is one out of a dozen that now has a different look and feel. Many of the more important ones have my name listed in the maintenance box of the talk page, so it is possible for people to understand who an interested party is when they are considering wholesale changes, and I am always amenable to discussions on issues of this type in advance. (Although I am an electrical engineer by training, I can also be civil at times. :-))

By the way, another justification for the style used in the campaign articles is that the indented paragraphs describe specific battles and the out-dented paragraphs describe movements and events in between the battles. It would take a lot more headings to represent this sequence correctly, making the table of contents even more unwieldy. Hal Jespersen 22:50, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok. I now understand the philosophy of what is being accomplished and it makes sense. It just didn't seem to match some other styles I've seen in WP, but I don't guess that means much at this point; it is more important probably that there is consistency within one topic than consistency throughout the entire database, which is an impossibility. While I may not agree with some of the choices made (such as abbreviating military rank) I certainly don't have a problem with it. BTW, I do like your indent and outdent battle sequence, now that I step back and look at it. Civil Engineer III 15:34, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

As to the abbreviation of military rank, this is somewhat of a work in progress because there are many articles that have not been updated to this style. I selected this style because some of the articles have many dozens of generals mentioned and a lack of abbreviation takes the articles pretty unwieldy. (I also use a style that lists the actual rank, not General This and General That.) The abbreviations I use are a bit more user friendly than the ones in modern Army-related articles, such as BG and MG. (I am a former Army officer, so I am very familiar with the U.S. Army abbreviations in use today, but I am certain that many civilians and non-US readers are not.) Hal Jespersen 17:47, 11 December 2006 (UTC)