WWII Archives Manual of Style

Welcome to the official WWII Archives Manual of Style (shortened to WAMoS). The WAMoS is divided into different sections, the first being about the proper mentality of historical analysis, the second being about sources and citing them, the third

For anything that has to do with Multimedia (uploaded files), see the Multimedia Guide.

Principles of the historical process and debating on the WWII Archives

In order to participate in a history project of this magnitude, it will be required to have at least a basic understanding of the historical method, having debates, discussions, arguments, how to analyze sources, how to think critically, asking questions, and more. This is especially for those who just readily accept claims and sources as fact without questioning the source, where it came from, who created it, etc. Therefore it is vitally important to read this part of this article carefully, so as to fulfill the goal and philosophy of the WWII Archives. This not only applies to writing about historical events, but every kind of subject out there that could be written about on the Archives, such as your ancestors, places, other people, etc.

1 - Keep the conversation civil

In focusing with achieving the goal of the WWII Archives, everyone must debate and speak in a peaceful, civil, and respectful manor. Even if you strongly disagree with the opposing side's point of your, you must still speak respectfully, no throwing insults its just a waste of time

2 - Remember, history changes!

The study of history has constantly changed throughout time. It is through this reinterpretations, new evidence, questioning of the accepted view, and much more that has brought us to our interpretations today. Therefore to be a historian is to be a revisionist (unlike denialists and distortionists). If not, you're not doing history right, and we will never know the truth. The following are a list of useful pieces of advice for trying to get to what really happened.

2-1 - We all are biased

Every single person has bias. The human brain isn't perfect, no matter how neutral a perspective tries or claims to be, they are limited to what they had observed, their life experiences, how well they remember things, their upbringing, their environment, and their state of being. Even a video recording is biased. You can't see whats behind the camera, or behind that wall. The cameraman is also choosing what to look at. This extends beyond the sources. The people interpreting them are biased as well. This includes you, your parents, your friends, everyone you know, a genealogist, archeologist, historians, even a group of experts who have a consensus on a subject are biased. None of this means that everything we know is entirely incorrect, it just means that it is something we need to understand when interpreting or reading others' interpretations. Therefore:

Consensuses aren't always correct
You must recognize the potential and general bias you or others have when interpreting something

2-2 - Use the right question to question things

Among all the great questions you could ask that will get us closer to the truth, But is this actually true? is the most important. Whenever you hear a claim about something, whether from an interpretation of events or from primary sources themselves, that question is always the best thing to first ask. If you have a certain belief about something, ask yourself that question. It is by first asking this question that we could begin overcoming a myth, a falsehood, dogma, and other kinds of things that we get wrong.

2-3 - Being skeptical about sources and interpreting them

While you are interpreting any source, and especially having asked the aforementioned question, it is important to be critical about the sources you are reading. You need to put the source under scrutiny before you truly can begin to understand them. Before going over some of these questions, you need to understand what each type of source is.

Primary, secondary, and tertiary sources

There are generally three types of sources, which will be used in any claim, interpretation, etc to back up an argument.

First there are primary sources. A primary source is a source of info that was created by a witness and/or someone involved in the event or subject you're studying. For example a primary source for an individual soldier would be letters to him and from him, photographs and film of him, a journal or diary written by him, an interview of him or of someone who he told his story to or witnessed what he did, among many other things.

A secondary source is a source that interprets and analyzes the sources (primary or secondary) about the subject it is studying. This could include books, documentaries, etc. Normally, the WWII Archives would be considered a secondary source, because a big part of it is writing interpretations of events in the articles. However it could also be a primary source, if you are citing a digitized document, photograph, etc or an interview.

Tertiary sources are not that all important, it is just an index or consolidation of primary and secondary sources that doesn't add any more interpretations or analysis. Wikipedia among other encyclopedias fall into this category. Do not think that the WWII Archives is such though.

Context

One other thing that is important to understand of any source is its context that it was written in. This corroborates with the author(s)'s /source's bias. You will be able to understand the context by asking the questions below.

Critiquing the sources with these questions

The following are the kinds of questions that you should ask when interpreting, analyzing, and evaluating any source. They are important to try and figure out what the context, bias, etc of the source in question is.

For primary sources these could be.

Who authored/created this source?
When and where did they create/author it?
Who was their intended audience?
Why did they create it?
What are their perspectives and biases?
What are they saying?
What is the surrounding context behind this document and person?
What possible motives did they have?
How does it stand up to other sources, does it contradict them?
How did they create it?
How authentic is this source? is it the original or faithful copy?
How valuable is its content?

etc.

For secondary sources:

Who authored it?
When or where was it written?
What is the context (good in some cases)?
What sorts of perspectives or biases do they have? How do they try to mitigate that bias and be objective?
Are they trying to push a certain agenda?
What evidence do they use?
Is their evidence contextualized and represented well?
Is there evidence that they are leaving out?
Are there any contradictions in their argument?
Have anyone else, especially other researchers, scholars, and academics, said or peer reviewed their works and/or their argument?
Does their evidence support their claim?

etc.

With these kinds of questions, instead of just taking what you hear at face value, and question what you hear or read, you will be able to get on the path to finding truth.

3 - Back up your claim with good evidence, sources, and reasoning

When you've gathered your sources, you will begin to interpret them and use them to back up your claims. You must provide reasoning as to why your or others' certain interpretation of the sources is the correct one. Make sure as well, that there aren't other sources, evidence, and arguments that contradict or go against your claims and arguments, this isn't about winning the argument, its about advancing our knowledge.

4 - Be open-minded and willing to listen and accept the other side's arguments

In a historical debate it is always great to keep an open mind to other ideas instead of just clinging to one point of view. This is so that if a better interpretation of sources and evidence comes up on top over the other ones that you didn't believe before, it will be easier to accept them. Too often do people want for their point of view to be the truth, but its uncommon for people to actually be willing to accept that they might have been wrong.

Be neutral

Although as mentioned you and every other human being has some sort of bias, it is important to recognize that bias and try to view things from all perspectives and to question everything.

5 - Be clear about your argument/message

If you're going to write anything that will be backed up by evidence, you need to be clear about what you're saying and actually arguing. Read through what you've written before it is published. Make sure that you don't have contradictions or other errors as well.

6 - A good claim should be able to withstand going back through the sources

When making a claim, you must make sure that it can withstand going back through the sources, evidence, and context. You must look out for contradictions and address them if they don't agree with your argument or claims.

7 - Reach a compromise and see which argument is the best

History is not black and white, and often neither do absolutes actually work. Almost always is the true answer somewhere in the middle. You need to take the pros and cons among other things, making concessions and compromises, and taking what each side of the argument got right and try to form a new argument. People need to get out of the idea that one thing was absolutely true or wasn't true.

In doing this, the goal is to see which argument gets to the top or is the best of all of the interpretations of the sources. Unless if that argument is challenged, then the best argument has been reached.

Writing articles

This section deals with how articles are to be written.

How articles should be written

Be objective as possible. It is important to try and be objective as possible while writing a history, although it must be recognized that every writer has biases and therefore nothing written is neutral. However, it is still important to try and be objective and to try and fit yourself into the shoes of the person being written about or the situation.
Write in a chronological order kind of matter. This is not an encyclopedia, almost everything about a subject will be written out chronologically through the Background, event, Aftermath, Legacy, etc sections of each article, and each individual part will be written out as it develops, instead of the different aspects of the subject. Conclusions/claims about a subject will be written in two different ways. The first is when you are writing about a conclusion/claim that was made in the historiography of the subject. That will go in the Aftermath or Legacy type sections. Otherwise you can make a conclusion about something neutrally after you had just described events, sources, etc.
Write in neutral language. That is, do not use "you", "I", "me", etc unless if you are quoting something that uses those kinds of pronouns in reference to you or you and a group. Instead use things such as "He", "she", "they", "It is __ that…", "One might __ that…", etc, or just use names.

General structure of an article

There are multiple different types of articles, but an article always follows this layout:

Summary
Index table
Main information template box to the right
Article content
Citations
Bibliography
1. Works Cited
2. Other Sources (if necessary)

Types of articles

There are eight different types of articles. Each one's content is specific to its own type of article because of its subject. Each category has a category for those types of articles, and therefore whenever you are creating an article you must put it in one of these categories. The structure of these articles should be followed exactly as stated, unless if the editor is in a unique situation and sees something better as fit. For more broad type of articles the editor will have more of a choice to Under are a list of the different types of articles, with an explanation about each one. Under is a table listing each type of article, and each section of the article that should be used or recommended to be used in order.

- An article that describes a historical event.
Biography - Biographical articles are biographies of an individual person, or maybe even an animal or insect
Geographic Location - These describe geographical locations such as a town, city, mountain, ocean, forest, country, state, house, specific spot, street, etc explaining their history in chronological order
Group - Broad type of article that is about the history of a particular group. It could be a political party, a resistance group, a music group, an ethnic group, government, organization, branch of government, business, military unit, etc.
Technology - Another broad article type which includes things like vehicles, machines, tools, weapons, electronics, etc, something that serves a functionality built by humans.
Work - Another broad one that usually includes a work of art or literature. It could also be for example a famous scientific publication or some political manifesto. Generally if it is known enough to not just be a Multimedia Page then it deserves to be an article. Generally a Work article should be linked to one or more Multimedia Pages if possible.
Idea - The last kind which is also broad. This category fits things such as political, economic, scientific, mathematical, philosophical, religious, etc theories, concepts, ideas, laws, ideologies, beliefs, etc.
Other - If the thing you are writing about fits into none of the categories then it could be considered another type of article or miscellaneous.

Types of articles and their sections in order
	Event		Biography	Group		Technology		Work		Idea
1	Background	Context, what was happening before the event	Before birth	Background		Background	Not used if not necessary	Background		Background
2	Prelude	Just before the event	Childhood	Beginning/Creation/Formation	Can be one of these options	Development	May go with development header	Creation	Can be rewritten as The writing of …, The painting of …, etc	Conceptualization
3	Event	This section can be named whatever depending on the situation	Adulthood	Fall/Dissolution/Destruction	Can be one of these options	Production	Can be renamed, reused, and split into many different ways	Use	If necessary	Legacy
4	Aftermath		After death	Aftermath	Only if group no longer exists	Use	Can also be renamed, reused, and split into many different ways, unless if it is still used	Reaction/ Reception
5	Long term effects	Optional	Legacy	Legacy		Discontinuance		Legacy
6	Legacy	Can be merged with Long term effects Also optional				Legacy	Only if necessary

Units of Measurement

When putting units of measurement, the metric system will always be either the only one used, or used with another system of measurement (especially imperial). For the latter case, you will have one unit being presented, with the other in conversion in parenthesis. For example, "Exactly 270 miles (434.5229 km)." Whichever way that the source or context you are dealing with presents a system of measurement, will be presented first, with the conversion presented in parenthesis. For the context, if it is a country or group that uses a particular system of measurement (such as the US, Canada, UK, etc with the Imperial system) then the measurement will be presented in Imperial first. If the context is one that uses both metric and another system (for example in a battle in Europe that involved the US against the Germans and others), then metric will be presented first in metric then in imperial.

Different systems of measurement that will be commonly used include:

Distance and length
Mass
Time
Temperature

When dealing with time, the same applies as with the metric vs other systems of measurement. This time the 24-hour clock (whether its military or non-military using the : or not) in place of metric and 12-hour clock in place of the imperial system.

Other systems of measurement for scientific purposes can also be used.

Using the conditional perfect conjugation

On the WWII Archives, the conditional perfect conjugation (would have + simple past tense verb, such as would have had, would have wanted, would have walked), as well as the conditional perfect continuous (would have been + simple past) serves almost a second purpose other than its normal use. On the Archives it is also used to indicate something that can be guessed to be true, but no source has ever directly/specifically said it. For example, if you are writing about an individual soldier who arrived to a snowy front, and you know his unit began wearing winter clothes after arriving, then you would say "After getting off the train, he would have been given winter clothing, which his unit was given." Because the sources never directly say that he in particular got winter clothing, you have to use one of those conjugations. You can also use words to indicate possibility, such as "probably", "possibly", "likely", "unlikely", etc. Of course you will need to cite evidence as to why you think this is, so almost always will it be citing a section of another article. See the sections below.

Sources, citing, quoting, and linking

This section described how to cite, quote, and link.

Citing

In order to cite a source, you must click on the "Cite" option in the toolbar which will give you a list of options. You will then have to add a new template (the cite templates always start with the word "cite"). When citing any source that has a url, you must always archive that url in an archiving website such as web.archive.org. The archived url will then be added to the "archive" field in the citation options.

Citing claims made by others and ones only made users on the Archives' Discussion Pages

Generally if there has been someone, some researcher, historian, scholar, academic, genealogist, etc that has made a claim about something somewhere, and is accepted, it should be the thing that is cited along with the sections later in the article or in other articles (see the next section) that produce the evidence to back up that claim. If someone else had already produced a claim and the evidence to support that claim before you or others did, then they should be the ones given credit for it.

However at some point (usually coming up when writing about small subjects), there will be times when only someone or some people on the WWII Archives Discussion Pages have made a certain argument, claim, or point that you’d like to cite, that hasn't been made anywhere else. In this instance it is best to use neutral language when referring to them, but it is possible to use names as well. Otherwise if there isn’t any person that has made an argument or claim that you are making, it isn’t necessary to put it all down in the Discussion Page if it is a small subject. However if it is a larger or broader subject it is suggested that you do put your claim down in the Discussion Page (on something like a larger battle, war, a large unit, theatre of war, leader, etc).

Citing other articles

At first to the reader this may sound like a bad idea, "why would you cite yourself?" In truth, un a fundamental level, this isn't a site like Wikipedia. Each article is written by one or multiple users using multiple sources, therefore it isn't something "citing itself". The reason why we are actively encouraging the citing of other articles, other sections of articles, and other sections of the same article, is because it serves as making articles more organized, the process of writing articles more efficient, and access to the full list of detailed evidence and explanations more accessible and easier to find.

It would be less efficient to try to find external secondary and primary sources to back up a claim, when that has already been done on the Archives which goes into a lot more detail and has even more evidence. For example, if you were writing an article about a soldier, and you didn't have many sources about his experiences, and you have the article about his unit making claims about the general experiences of the unit in a battle, you could just cite the section of his unit's article to make a claim he went through the same experience. That would be a lot easier than having to recite the same evidence the unit's article already did which also goes into much more detail that the soldier's article will. It will be easier to also verify and check the data, claims, and evidence that is used/made.

This is why it is also great with data as well. If you knew the exact casualties of each company of a division during a battle, you can just cite from the division's article all the way through the battalions, regiments, etc down to the articles of each company that explain exactly who died and how in each company. That way anyone will be able to verify the statistics claims made in the article of the division.

A general rule of thumb is that the broader subject articles, the more they'll link to articles on smaller subjects that provide the most details about that subject. However this ultimately depends on the situation, and the editors must decide what they cite for what claim.

Linking

One of the main purposes of linking on the WWII Archives is linking to other articles. Any type of subject can range from any of the types of articles. This includes Geographic Location, an individual you mention (biographical), an idea, technology, event, etc. If there is a topic or subject that you mention, it should be linked to some sort of article on the Archives. The general rule of thumb is that the first time that thing is mentioned on the Summary section, or the first time mentioned in the Content part of the article, is when you link to that article. Notice how for both the Summary and the Content parts of the article, they're different. So if you mention WWII for the first time in the Summary, and link to the main article on WWII, then you will have to do it again if you first mention it in the content part. After that, for both sections, you won't have to link to those articles again.

There are two ways of linking. In both ways you click on the link button in the toolbar. The first is linking to an article on the Archives. You can either search for the article, or paste in the url (especially if it is a Multimedia or something else, although usually for those you'd cite them). The other is to link to an external site if needed.

Quoting

When quoting something, you are usually quoting one of the following:

Quoting someone saying something, or a short message
Quoting a document, letter, message, speech, something written, etc

For the first situation, you will use the "Block Quote" option in the dropdown menu on the left side of the toolbar. Every time someone speaks, it will be put in block quote. If you are quoting someone saying something in a foreign language, then you will put whatever was said in the original language, then press return, and then provide the translation.

For the second option, you will click on the "Insert" dropdown, then "Template". If you are quoting something in English, then you will search for the "Doc_quote_single_lang", to which then a template with an input field to type out what the document says will be given. Generally the text of a document should already be written on its Multimedia page, and you should just be able to copy it from there.Then there is the time when you have writing in a foreign language. In this case the template that you will be searching for is called "Doc_quote_multi_lang". For both the first and second templates, the first text box is the "content1" field. Then for the second template, it is "content2". Unfortunately you cannot use the toolbar from the editor and so will have to use sets of symbols and other html tags to format the text. These include:

: - indentation (the tab button)
- Bold
- Italic
- ^Superscript
- _Subscript
- Underline
<s></s> - ~~Strikethrough~~

There are other tags that you could find and use if you need. Finally you can combine the tags (put one set into another) to form a combination, like "<s>Hello</s>" for ~~Hello~~.

Another thing about quoting is the use of specific characters. If in a text a specific character is uesd, it should be represented as such. If in the case where you have someone who writes their i's without the dot like this: ı, then you have the choice to write either way, such as "lıfted", or "lifted".

Submitting articles

To submit a new article or an edit, you must click on the "Save changes..." or "Save page..." button, which will bring a pop-up. This will include a text box where you can detail the edits you have made. If you are saving changes to an edit, this will include an option in the pop-up to indicate that this edit was a "Minor edit". A minor edit is an edit that doesn’t really change the debate of the subject, such as a grammatical or spelling error, or in some cases rewording something (where it doesn’t change the meaning but makes more sense). However if a change becomes long enough it should not count as a minor edit.

WWII Archives:WWII Archives Manual of Style

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