Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Contest/2012 Cleanup Campaign

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Our project has an impressive collection of high-quality articles. Sadly, there's a downside; there are still many other neglected articles, particularly on the militaries of developing countries, which suffer from poor sourcing, unreadability, and—worst of all—false information, such as exaggerated lists of equipment, exaggerated military statistics, and so forth.

In order to resolve this misinformation problem, we're launching a two-month article cleanup campaign, which will begin on Friday, 29 June 2012, and end on Friday, 31 August 2012. The scope of this campaign will include any article about a country's armed forces, broadly construed.

Instructions

• Add your name to the list of participants below.
• Clean up three articles by removing unsourced and dubious content. Pay particular attention to lists of equipment, and any descriptions of a force's overall strength (including statistics in info boxes), and compare them to a reliable source; any number, or any item on a list which is not supported by a source, should be removed. Also, please remove or fix obvious copyright violations or other serious problems.
• Add the articles you've cleaned up to your watchlist—this will help prevent damage in future.
• Add diffs showing where you removed demonstrably false data from these three articles to the list of results. The data must be outright false—for instance, sneaky number vandalism, rather than something merely outdated or slightly misidentified—and it must have been added before 24 June 2012. For each diff, tell us which source it contradicts.
• Congratulations! You've just earned the WikiChevrons!
• If you clean up even more—ten articles and ten diffs—you'll earn the Cleanup Barnstar!

Awards

• 
  {{WikiChevrons}}
  (clean up 3 articles)
• 
  {{The Cleanup Barnstar}}
  (clean up 10 articles)

Some hints and tips

• Bear in mind that many sources emphasise equipment acquisitions. If we're not confident that some asset bought in 1980 is still "in service", we shouldn't imply that it is, so don't word lists of equipment as though they're current. If you update a list to reflect what a recent source says, {{as of}} is a good tool to use.
• Good sources include SIPRI, The Military Balance, and Janes. The CIA World Factbook is good for a couple of details which often appear in infoboxes. Be aware of WP:CSB; foreign sources can be good too. If you need help with sources, just ask on the talkpage.
• Editors with access to library databases may be able to access an electronic copy of The Military Balance through Taylor & Francis Online.

Participants

Please sign up below with ~~~~. It's OK to join in after the start date!

• Nick-D (talk) 07:50, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
• Bomzibar (talk) 11:14, 25 June 2012 (UTC) But can't start before mid of July.
• GregJackP Boomer! 01:07, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
• gbawden ~~~~ - not sure if i will get to 3

Results

Buckshot06

• Military of Guinea - [1] removed non-existent Mamba APCs which are not listed in the IISS Military Balance 2012, plus several fixes to equipment figures. Buckshot06 (talk) 01:09, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
• Military of Senegal - [2] removed non-existent Ratel, Eland, VBX AFVs plus non-existent 75mm howitzers. All not listed in MilBal 2012. Buckshot06 (talk) 01:27, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
• Couple of absurd claims in the Ethiopian National Defense Force article removed - T-90s and M-109s Buckshot06 (talk) 10:12, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
• Kosovo Security Force - remove uncited equipment list and equipment list whose citation was a dead link. Buckshot06 (talk) 03:27, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
• Military of Mauritania - checked; army unit listing checks out per IISS 2012; army equipment listing major categories checks out per IISS 2012; most aircraft numbers check out per IISS 2012 with minor differences (WP notes that a Harbin Y-12 has crashed while IISS still lists 2!) and no false aircraft that I can see. Buckshot06 (talk) 03:39, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
• Military of Côte d'Ivoire - verification. Changed presentation of AW&ST 2007 aircraft numbers from 'current' to 2007; added up-to-date estimates of aircraft numbers from IISS 2012. Added major army equipment numbers' estimates from IISS 2012. Buckshot06 (talk) 07:53, 6 July 2012 (UTC) In addition I've rolled up Côte d'Ivoire Air Force, which consisted almost exclusively of an unreferenced aircraft table, into Military of Cote d'Ivoire. Some material which I can track the source for has been transferred. Buckshot06 (talk) 08:05, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
• Military of Ethiopia - much unreferenced data removed, some LOC data imported, plus new material and material from Derg. More assistance on the history of the Ethiopian military needed ! Buckshot06 (talk) 22:50, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
• Kenya Defence Forces - [3] completely uncited small arms list removed. Also [4], massive amount of Police and NSIS information moved to Law enforcement in Kenya. Buckshot06 (talk) 04:13, 12 August 2012 (UTC)
• Military of Burundi - [5] official structures imported from organic law of December 2004. Buckshot06 (talk) 22:45, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
• Royal Cambodian Armed Forces - [6] roll up effectively unsourced Fanboy article on a special forces unit that has gone for years without references. Also removed list of aircraft in army article; source given is SIPRI Arms Transfer tables, which would have little data on service affiliation, and IISS 2011 lists all aircraft with the Air Force. Buckshot06 (talk) 20:13, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Bomzibar

I fixed the name of a row of japanese Divisions, as it always was the same mistake all but the first one can only be counted as minor edits. I list only the ones where even the Kanjis were wrong:

• 1st Division (Imperial Japanese Army) Fixed name on basis of the Original units name in ja:Wiki. --Bomzibar (talk) 12:58, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• 2nd Division (Imperial Japanese Army) as previous. --Bomzibar (talk) 12:58, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• 3rd Division (Imperial Japanese Army) as previous. --Bomzibar (talk) 12:58, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• 4th Division (Imperial Japanese Army) as previsou. --Bomzibar (talk) 12:58, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• 5th Division (Imperial Japanese Army) as previous. --Bomzibar (talk) 12:58, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• 6th Division (Imperial Japanese Army) as previous. --Bomzibar (talk) 12:58, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• 8th Division (Imperial Japanese Army) as previous. --Bomzibar (talk) 12:58, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• General William C. Westmoreland Bridge was on the wrong Name.

--Bomzibar (talk) 10:43, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Nick D

• Djiboutian Army - referenced, expanded and removed some unverifiable material [7] Nick-D (talk) 10:42, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
• Djibouti Air Force - referenced and removed some unverifiable material [8] Nick-D (talk) 10:42, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
• Malaysian Army - referenced, updated and removed unverifiable material [9] Nick-D (talk) 11:04, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
• Royal Brunei Land Forces - nonsense and other unreferenced material removed, citations added [10] Nick-D (talk) 10:02, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
• Belize Defence Force - moved to correct name, unreferenced material (including a significant quantity of nonsense) removed and replaced with cited material [11] Nick-D (talk) 00:24, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
• Panamanian Public Forces - all sorts of nonsense removed, article expanded and referenced [12] Nick-D (talk) 01:14, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
• Paraguayan Army - removed unverifiable material, added references. The stuff about this army of 7,600 personnel being organised into nine divisions and three corps is actually correct! [13] Nick-D (talk) 01:57, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
• Military of Paraguay - clean up and referenced the air force's equipment. While the article's references are still lacking, the content generally seems OK [14] Nick-D (talk) 02:26, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
• Military of Burundi - updated and referenced [15] (this article is woefully lacking though) Nick-D (talk) 07:35, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
• Benin Armed Forces - updated and referenced [16] Nick-D (talk) 08:15, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

GregJackP

• Army of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina - referenced and removed some unverifiable material (armored vehicles) [17] GregJackP Boomer! 06:33, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Gbawden

• South African National Defence Force - added organisation structure - still needs some work
• South African Navy - added organisation and expanding command structure. Fixed citations, removed out of date section, updated history. Re-assessed as B Class, although no-one seems to have noticed Gbawden (talk) 08:28, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
• South African Army - re-structured the page and inserted organogram Gbawden (talk) 11:19, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Notes