Talk:History of the Rhodesian Light Infantry (1972–1977)

What's this article actually about?

This article covers way more than just the history of this unit, and is rather unfocused and bloated as a result. I don't understand what the detailed material on political developments, the nationalist forces, etc, is doing here - it belongs in a general history of the war, and its presence here has resulted in the article being over-long and gives the misleading impression that the RLI was the entirety of the Rhodesian military. I don't think that this is actually a GA as its not at all focused on the topic of the article. Nick-D (talk) 22:38, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Just to expand/clarify a bit, I think that there is actually a GA (at least) level article within the current material, but the material on the background of the war and the RLI's opponents and other units of the Rhodesian military should be sharply reduced so that this article is focused on the RLI. Nick-D (talk) 22:48, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Hello Nick. As the GA reviewer for this and History of the Rhodesian Light Infantry (1961–1972) this was also a concern of mine, although I guess I didn't see it as quite the issue that you have highlighted. I agree that these articles are highly detailed, and cover topics beyond just the unit that is its subject; however, my take at the time was that such details added a necessary degree of context to the actions of the RLI. I do concede that this might give the lay reader the impression that the RLI made up the bulk of the Rhodesian Security Forces, although I think both articles do refer to other units fairly consistently, including the Selous Scouts, the Rhodesian SAS, the Rhodesian African Rifles and Grey's Scouts. I still think these articles are of high quality and worthy of GA status though. Perhaps in the mid term some of the higher level political developments could be trimmed and upmerged to a parent article, such as Rhodesian Bush War in order to focus them a little better? Anotherclown (talk) 23:06, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

I would agree that the article is a little off focus and large sections could be included in the Rhodesian Bush War instead. Jim Sweeney (talk) 00:08, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

I was intending to finish the third part of this article (1977–1980) and then move choice parts over to the Rhodesian Bush War article in a separate round of editing (the Rhodesian Bush War article was going to be what I worked on next). The reason I wrote all of what I wrote here is simply because it wasn't yet on Wikipedia and this stuff is important for the RLI's history. I didn't want to confuse the issue by putting stuff on lots of different articles all at the same time. As I'm sure you can appreciate this is quite a big project and it helped quite a bit to be able to keep everything on track and in one place. If you're happy to hang on while I finish the third part, including the "bloated" political parts, I'll happily do the work myself and move everything over to "Rhodesian Bush War", which I do think needs considerable work. —Cliftonian^{the orangey bit} 05:56, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

OK, that sounds like a sensible approach all round. It's good to see such high-quality work on articles relating to this war. Cheers, Nick-D (talk) 06:05, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree. Thank you. —Cliftonian^{the orangey bit} 06:13, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

I changed my mind – I think that part 3 will take me a long time and this should not wait. I have just split off the Geneva Conference section into its own article. I will do a similar thing for the Victoria Falls Conference at some point over the next couple of days, while tidying this up at the same time. —Cliftonian^{the orangey bit} 13:43, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

See also the new Victoria Falls Conference article —Cliftonian^{the orangey bit} 16:51, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

What do you all think of it now? I have split off the two Conferences as given above, and am intending to split off more of the stuff about the protected villages, guerrilla tactics etc in time. There are now some gaps in the article's timeline, which I am going to plug over the next short while with some short descriptions of counter-insurgency contacts – I left these out before because I deemed the political stuff more important, but now I will go back and put some in. —Cliftonian^{the orangey bit} 17:16, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

That's a big improvement. Great work. Nick-D (talk) 05:09, 2 December 2011 (UTC)