User:Hlj/Why

This page contains boilerplate rationale for why I revert certain changes, allowing me to point here, rather than trying to explain in the one-line editing summary. Please note that this is simply a convenience for me and I am not using this mechanism as a means of cutting off debate on issues.

Please click Here to leave me a new message in my Talk page or Here to send me a private email.

By the way, please do not edit or post comments into this page itself. Use my Talk page or the Talk page for the article in question. Hal Jespersen 17:26, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Adjectives

From time to time, editors propose changing the summary battle boxes to indicate an American Civil War battle was "decisive." This section describes my rationale for removing adjectives such as decisive, major, minor, clear, or Pyrrhic.

First, these battle box summaries provide only scant information and cannot be expected to substitute for the text of the article. The place to describe the details of the aftermath is in the article, not the box, so that a full treatment of the information can be provided. In almost all cases, we have been able to achieve consensus on this single phrase by adopting the result text used by the National Park Service's Civil War Sites Advisory Commission battle summaries.

Second, most of these terms have no explicit military definition without further explanation. Many of them (major, minor, ...) merely represent POV and that POV would have to be justified, difficult to do in a single phrase. (See WP:NPOV.)

Pyrrhic is particularly subjective POV; there is no objective measurement that describes it and the percentage of loss required to trigger Pyrrhic status for a single battle is arguable. Furthermore, it could be argued that almost every large battle Robert E. Lee won was a Pyrrhic victory because he took heavy casualties that he could not afford in the long run of the war.

For decisive, the word means that something was decided, but without additional text the reader does not know what was decided. The Wikipedia article on decisive victory weasel-words by giving three choices for what was decided:

The campaign (as in the case of the Battle of Gettysburg)
The war. I would argue that there are no such examples in the Civil War, although there are some battles that are considered turning points. However, since the identification of turning points has no historical consensus, it is POV to designate them as such.
Simply a clear-cut victory. By this measure, the ACW had dozens of decisive victories, large and small, making the term pretty meaningless.

Thomas Goss, writing in the U.S. Army's Military Review journal (PDF of article) has an excellent article that gives a lot of background about what it would take for a battle to be considered a decisive victory, arguing that Gettysburg does not meet that test. His premise is "A decisive battle must directly lead to a rapid resolution of the contested political issues because the results on the battlefield caused both sides to agree that a decision had been reached." Gettysburg, in which both sides considered themselves victorious (at the time), and with almost two more years to go in the war, hardly satisfies the criterion.

Since all of these uses of "decisive" represent POV and have to be explained, they are inappropriate for a one-phrase battle box entry. What would we put if historians disagreed: "Decisive/Indecisive[footnote] Union victory"? (That is not to say that there are not decisive moments within battles. For instance, Pickett's Charge would probably be considered the decisive event within the Battle of Gettysburg because it clearly decided the outcome of the battle and all historians ought to agree on that point. But the battle boxes do not include such information.)

It is best for all concerned that all of these adjectives be omitted and virtually none of the ACW articles use them. In almost all cases, historians do agree on which side achieved a victory of some sort, so limiting it to just "victory" meets everyone's basic requirements without injecting POV concerns.

There is one notable exception that I am aware of that I believe is justified. The Battle of Antietam was indecisive on a tactical level, but it is considered a strategic victory for the Union and the battle box indicates as such (and which is also what the NPS battle summary says). This situation is described in detail in the text of the article, but it is a disservice to the reader who reads only the box to let the final result be listed as "indecisive." So, you might ask, why is this acceptable, but it is not for, say, Gettysburg? Well, Gettysburg was an unambiguous Union victory, both on a tactical and strategic level, so leaving it as "Union victory" is entirely correct, whereas Antietam listed as "indecisive" would be completely misleading.

Names

One of the minor controversial subjects in editing American Civil War articles is the selection of battle names. Some editors wish to make a point by selecting alternative names for battles, perhaps to show their solidarity with either the North or South. This is a disservice to the general reader of Wikipedia and we have attempted to link to battle articles using the actual name of the article, not one of its alternative forms. For instance, when referring to the Battle of Stones River, we do not use the term Battle of Murfreesboro (the name the Confederates used for the battle) in links from other articles, even from those articles about Confederate generals. (For those who might object to this, and suggest that an article about Braxton Bragg ought to use the name Bragg himself would use, I would point out that Franz Sigel probably referred to battles with their German names and no one would suggest doing that in the article about him.)

The collective consensus of Wikipedia Civil War editors has been to adhere generally to the National Park Service names for battles. See [1]. Although for strong Southern partisans it may seem unfair to allow the United States federal government to name the battles, this is the way we have chosen to do it and consistency across the articles benefits from this approach.

There are two deviations from this rule, one minor and one major:

Battle of Sayler's Creek. The NPS uses the more modern spelling, Sailors, but as explained in the article itself, most Civil War historians use the historic name.
Manassas. The NPS refers to the First Battle of Bull Run and the Second Battle of Bull Run by their Southern names, First and Second Manassas. The consensus of Wikipedia editors has been that Bull Run is a name more commonly used by the general public, so we have deliberately deviated from the NPS model. Discussions about changing this decision should be conducted on the Talk page for First Battle of Bull Run. However, pending any consensus change, there is no justification for widespread editing to explain in other articles that the battles had two names. That is explained adequately in the battle articles themselves.

One of the requirements of Wikipedia is that the information in it must be notable. There is a temptation for some editors to find any random reference to a Civil War battle or general in a modern cartoon, novel, or comic book and then mention that in the popular media section of the article. I do not believe that this is a proper part of a serious history article or biography. There are hundreds of novels in which real Civil War figures appear and it would obviously be impossible to track all of them, nor should we want to unless those appearances are notable. The following guidelines should be applied to notability:

If the historical figure is the central character in a novel, film, TV show, etc., that is a notable appearance that warrants mentioning in the article about that figure. If the figure appears in a way that is not crucial to the plot or is mentioned by one of the characters, that is not notable and should be omitted from the article. For example, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain is a central character in the novel The Killer Angels and Gettysburg (film). That is a notable appearance that warrants mentioning in Chamberlain's biography article. If a photograph of Chamberlain appeared in Lisa Simpson's bedroom, that would not be notable. (In the article about that Simpsons episode, a link to Chamberlain would be appropriate.)
The same holds true for events, such as battles. For instance, mentioning The Killer Angels, a Pulitzer prize-winning novel about the Battle of Gettysburg, may be appropriate in the article about Gettysburg. Gettysburg is also mentioned in Gone with the Wind, but it is only a fleeting mention and not central to the plot, and thus non-notable. (The Atlanta Campaign would be central to that plot.)
In the visual media (films and television), if a historical figure is portrayed by an actor of major notability (a leading man/woman or very well-known character actor), that would probably be notable.

Legacy

One of the requirements of Wikipedia is that the information in it must be notable. There is a temptation for some editors to find any random reference to a Civil War battle or general and mention it in Legacy or In memoriam section. For relatively obscure historical figures, it is not a problem to list all of memorials, but for a large number of prominent Civil War generals, this will be an information glut that could overwhelm an article. The following guidelines should be applied to notability:

Cities, counties, military installations, colleges, and significant geographic features named after the historical figure are usually notable. Roads on Army posts are so overwhelmingly named after generals that they are usually non-notable.
Less significant features such as roads, city parks, theaters, most public buildings, and high schools or elementary schools are not notable unless they are otherwise closely associated with the history of the person--in his hometown, nearby one of his famous battles, etc.
Public monuments, such as major statues, are usually notable, although in inverse proportion to the fame of the individual. For example, a complete list of all the statues of Robert E. Lee would include many non-notable entries, such as in front on some Southern courthouse in a town not associated with his life in some significant way.
Commercial establishments, such as General Pickett's All You Can Eat Buffet restaurant, are almost always non-notable.

Dashes

I use HTML coding for EN-dashes and EM-dashes (– and —). When editing the source for an article using the built-in Wikipedia editor, or an external editing tool using the Courier font, the Unicode version of these dashes is not visually distinguishable from a hyphen. Since the resulting article is visually identical in either case, I ask other editors to indulge my desires to be able to read the source code for these articles and not convert the HTML coding. Thank you. By the way, User:Hlj/CWediting#Dashes explains how to use these dashes correctly. And MOS:DASH acknowledges the use of the HTML coding style as the first choice listed for coding dashes.

Refs

Many hundreds of Wikipedia articles about the American Civil War use a common style for citations and references. The style is described in User:Hlj/CWediting#Citations and Footnotes and User:Hlj/CWediting#Refs and Links. Although this informal style guide is not mandatory for these articles, many members of the community of Civil War editors have adopted them, either explicitly or implicitly, giving the important articles in this series a common look and feel. Occasionally editors will attempt to modify the citations or add new citations using alternative styles. Or they will rearrange the end sections to use alternative headings, or to mix up the relationships between the short form citations (footnotes) and the list of references that support them. This disruptive editing practice is officially frowned upon by the manual of style. See the introduction to WP:MOS: "Where more than one style is acceptable, editors should not change an article from one of those styles to another without a substantial reason. Revert-warring over optional styles is unacceptable. If discussion cannot determine which style to use in an article, defer to the style used by the first major contributor."