Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/14th Transportation Battalion (United States)

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Overall, the deletion arguments based on a lack of independent coverage were stronger. Arguments for keeping included WP:USEFUL and WP:POTENTIAL. While it is true that it's better to fix an article rather than delete it, it has to fulfill the notability criteria first, which it fails to do. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 23:41, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

14th Transportation Battalion (United States)[edit]

14th Transportation Battalion (United States) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)
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In accordance with Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/436th Transportation Battalion (United States), non-combat service support units of battalion size or smaller have to have their notability clearly established. The information given in this unit's entry - purely barebones lineage and honours - is not sufficient to justify notability for a support unit at this level. Relevant material is available at Red Ball Express, and other articles such as 1st Sustainment Command (Theater) which detail overall support force contributions in U.S. Army campaigns. This article itself however does not justify the unit's notability. Buckshot06 (talk) 10:32, 4 August 2010 (UTC) (categories)[reply]

  • Keep - Okay, so I am a little biased at having created the article, but here is my 2 cents why this article was created and we should keep it. First, I have been charged with making public domain material from the Center of Military History available through Wikipedia. With this in mind, I sought to create expansible article from the material, such as this transportation battalion. I think the recent edits that I made to the article prove the expandability. Second, its public domain material, why not make it available on Wikipedia? Its better to have a referenced stub (which this was) then no stub at all and, in the long run, it is better for Wikipedia, because it makes yet another search term that directly brings people here enhancing Wikipedia's reputation as the first source for military information (with the CMH as the authority validating this. Albeit the search term isn't at the top yet, though I am sure it will be in several weeks). Lastly, deleting this article would be deleting Verifiable, useful information on American military force structure related to current events and a broad swath of US military history.
In the broader arguments surrounding the inclusion of military units in Wikipedia, I understand the reasoning behind excluding smaller units such as companies or flights, but independent support battalions, even United States ones, which are in plethora, are just too large to simply ignore. In this case, I stand largely as an inclusionist. Medium to Large government bodies should be one of the priorities of Wikipedia to include because they are funded by our readership and have the potential to effect the everyday lives of our readership, whether in the United States or Iraq as this unit does, therefore our readers should have the opportunity to be informed.
As I posted in my conflict of interest statement, I have no desire to edit war or prove disruptive if you find my above reasoning unsatisfactory for the consensus. Those are my thoughts, Sadads (talk) 11:52, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: would it be possible to convert the list-like lineage section into prose? For instance, if you use this information and find sources that discuss what the unit did to earn all those campaign credits, then there would be the bones for a decent article, which would demonstrate notability, IMO. Without this, though, it is arguable that the requirement for significant coverage is met. AustralianRupert (talk) 13:46, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • My reasoning behind not prosifying the lineages: My thought behind this was that I am getting paid to edit wikipedia 15-20 hours a week, with the intention of presenting CMH resources more accurately, I might as well concentrate on something that Wikipedia has as a perpetual problem: partial or incomplete citations and broken links. The thing about the lineages is that they are certified true statements of the unit's participation in events, with 100% supporting evidence for the assertions in permanent orders and official documents accessable, in some cases exclusively, by Center historians. My assumption was A) the PD text is professionally and precisely researched, therefore has plenty of sourcing behind it and therefore breaches notability threshhold and B) if I recreated that research it would become a time dump that would not allow me to do as much Wikipedia editing as I can beneficial to the Center and to Wikipedia: increased relevant links to pd books, citation fixing and link fixing. People are less afraid to modify content once it's there, then to create new articles so I thought it would be beneficial to build stubs from PD text. Sadads (talk) 14:03, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • Keep: seems like further expansion could be made, so I'm prepared to accept that the subject is probably notable. This source by Shelby Stanton provides some details of the battalion's deployment to Vietnam between 1965 and 1972: [1]. AustralianRupert (talk) 23:13, 7 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Leaning towards delete: At present the developing guideline at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_history/Coordinators/Strategy_think_tank#Possible_addition_to_MILMOS seems to indicate consensus that battalion sized units are generally notable. However, this still stands or falls on significant coverage in multiple independent reliable sources (WP:N), and at the moment I don't believe the article demonstrates this. Like Australian Rupert I think there's a definite possibility of improvement if the actual combat history was expanded using other sources, but IMO the CMH as a sole or main source doesn't provide enough in-depth information to meet notability requirements for a stand-alone article. EyeSerenetalk 14:24, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Is there really anything wrong with including expansible stubs though? I mean, if I went through Army orders and referenced each and every one it would be the exact same thing as the lineage, perhaps with a little more detail but not much for example, if I referenced for every award such as the one found at http://www.history.army.mil/html/forcestruc/HRC/2007/240-28_20071102_HRCMD.pdf, you would really get any more additional information, yet it would certainly pass your standard of notability. The Lineage and Honors certificate is, basically, an encyclopedic representation of a unit's military service. Again, I understand exclusion of really small units because of their relatively low impact upon campaigns etc, but simply being mentioned as a participant in any said campaign, especially as many as are in this unit's Lineage and Honors certificate, and the size of the unit, means they had an important impact on the history of that campaign. Large units don't simply ship to combat regions and do nothing. Besides the presence of the stubs, opens the gateway for new or inexperience users to start building on something we know to be Verifiable, instead of writing articles like 63rd Aviation Brigade (United States) or 972nd Signal Battalion (United States) where we have little or no verifiable information or have no clue where the information came from. And we know some overeager soldiers will start doing OR and make some of these pages. Sadads (talk) 14:47, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There's nothing wrong with creating stubs, as long as those stubs establish the notability of their subject. The general notability guideline states "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article", and expands on this by requiring those sources to be multiple secondary sources. In assessing notability I look for considerably more than a list - even if it is verifiable - of where the unit's been and what honours it's been awarded. To me the current article comes under WP:NOT#INFO and, because it duplicates the content already readily available on the CMH site without adding any value to it, begs the question "why do we need it?" Wikipedia is supposed to be far more than a mirror of other sites. EyeSerenetalk 20:21, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to endorse EyeSerene's arguments. If people would like to examine User_talk:Sadads, they will see I have pleaded him to use the enormous amount of very valuable information in CMH to create and expand worthwhile articles about really notable formations and units, not just copy out information from elsewhere on the internet. Anyone can do that, and in my view, there are much better ways a person actually at CMH could use wikitime. Buckshot06 (talk) 22:38, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

:::Pleaded? I am confused, all your comments on my talk page are in my archive here. I don't see anything requesting a change in activity. Sadads (talk) 22:42, 4 August 2010 (UTC) [reply]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Sadads#Notability_of_units_and_formations, immediately above your discussion on novels with another contributor. Buckshot06 (talk) 23:05, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment The article highlights the problem with using the site as a ref source. They were Cited in the Order of the Day of the Belgian Army for action at Antwerp How Antwerp was in the British/Canadian sector so how did an American unit get cited for action ? There must be a story there somewhere. There is also an impressive list of decorations which puts the seven awarded to the 506th Infantry Regiment (United States) to shame. Another question how does a military unit get a credit for a cease fire ? These decorations and credits may have be hard earned but there does seem a lot for a non combat formation. What is the criteria for the awards ? --Jim Sweeney (talk) 14:54, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
See http://www.history.army.mil/html/forcestruc/campaigns.html, http://www.history.army.mil/html/reference/campaigns.html, and http://www.history.army.mil/html/forcestruc/h2u-2.html for explanations. I think those should answer most of your questions. Sadads (talk) 15:06, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Also http://www.history.army.mil/html/forcestruc/ohpam.html#Lineage has a good explanation of the uses and development of them. Sadads (talk) 15:10, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ok so if I understand this correctly the decorations and campaign credits are the equivalent of battle honours in British and Commonwealth countries only awarded to all the units that were in the theatre at the time. I have no problem with that if that's how the Americans dish them out, but

I believe it does lower the notability of the award. So unless there is something else the 14th Transportation Battalion (United States) is noted for I am leaning towards Delete --Jim Sweeney (talk) 12:11, 5 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Leaning towards delete - IMO this unit seems non-notable due to a lack of coverage. That said I really don't want to discourage you Saddads from adding the excellent information seemingly available from the CMH. If more could be added from other reliable sources in order to establish notability then there is no issue. Anotherclown (talk) 05:57, 5 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think this decision and any others based on this logic, if it leads to a delete, should also lead to a thorough purging of articles in Category:Stub-Class military history articles, because many of them have as little or less WP:Verifiable information than this article does alongside your objections to notability. It appears WPMILHIST has become extreme hostile to stubs, hmmm, Sadads (talk) 11:46, 5 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Conditional Delete: If you could get a third-party reliable source besides GlobalSecurity, I'd be willing to say that there is enough notability for a battalion to keep this article. I don't mean the standard mass press release that says "unit so or so says goodbye to thier families as they deploy again" or mere news update (that's trivial coverage that every single unit will get in the local paper), I mean something that actually talks about this unit in a noteworthy sense or in a meaningful way. I'd also prefer the lists be converted into prose to make it more an encyclopedia article and less a data dump, but that's not a keep condition. bahamut0013wordsdeeds 13:11, 5 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Conditional Keep:This article needs to be expanded with a unit crest added; a written narrative of what the unit's mission is and its history. Where is it stationed at? What is its chain of command? According to the article, the unit has been around for over 60 years. Certainly there must be some unit history which can be found that says something more than a list of achievements. Did it land on Normandy on D-Day? What did it do there if it did? Korea and Vietnam also.... Given the unit has been a part of the Army for 60 years is a notable achievement, but the article needs to be more informative to a casual reader Bwmoll3 (talk) 12:52, 7 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment : I think my recent edits have provided enough sources for notability and expansability proof. Sadads (talk) 14:21, 7 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I would strongly disagree with this last statement unless the lineage, campaign participation credit and decorations are rewritten to be understandable. I know roughly what some of those anodyne Vietnam campaign names meant, but only because I've been reading about the war for over 20 years. The casual reader gains absolutely nothing from those three sections - it's military gobbledigok. Buckshot06 (talk) 23:45, 7 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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