GTaillefer

Named 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 on this project, the reader must at least have a basic understanding of the historical method, mindset, and debates. Therefore read and understand this carefully. This applies to writing about and doing anything on the site. Here are the rules:

1 - Keep the conversation civil

Even if you disagree with them, speak and debate peacefully, civilly, and respectfully to one another.

2 - Our understanding of history changes

Through new interpretations, questioning, and new evidence, we have arrived at the current consensuses in history today. However it isn't perfect, so history will keep changing

3 - We are all biased

Every person who has ever lived is biased. Therefore every human record and artifact is biased. So also are interpretations/history books biased. You must also take your own bias into account!

4 - Question things

The best way to find the truth and get around dogmas and such is to ask, is this true? Whenever you hear a claim, interpretation, etc it is good to ask yourself this question to never get stuck in a certain way of thinking.

5 - Be skeptical about sources and interpret them

Following the previous point, you must be skeptical and critical about the sources you read, no matter how true they sound. Ask questions about their origin, motivation for being created, what they don't depict, its context, what was their audience, what was its purpose, what is their bias, etc.

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

When using sources to back up your claim, it is good to provide reasoning as to why the source supports your claim.

7 - Acknowledge contradictions

You must acknowledge contradictions within what you're reading and what you are saying. Is there evidence against your/their claim? You must acknowledge the contradictions, sources going against your claim, etc and provide why they might be at least somewhat right, or totally wrong, no matter how "bad" the source is.

8 - Be open-minded, willing to listen, and neutral

To not get into dogmas and get stuck on an idea, you have to be willing to be open minded and willing to listen and potentially accept at least some of the opposition's arguments and criticisms.

Therefore the best way to do this is to try and be neutral and mitigate your bias, viewing things from different perspectives and questioning yourself.

9 - Be clear about your argument/message

Try to be clear and concise when making your arguments/claims and citing your sources. Read before you publish

10 - Make sure the sources support your claim

Make sure that the sources themselves that you're citing actually back up your claim and aren't just a bad misinterpretation

11 - Reach a compromise to see which argument is best

The goal of the historical process is to see which interpretation of the historical subject in question is the best. Through these mentioned ideas, analyzing arguments, claims, contradictions, sources, evidence, etc, the people doing such will have to reach a compromise to see the best interpretation with the least contradictions and problems.

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. Each category has a category for those types of articles, and so whenever you're 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.

Event - Describing historical event
Biographical - Biographies of an individual person, animal, etc
Geographic Location - Describe geographical locations such as a town, city, ocean, mountain, country, house, specific place, etc, explain history in chronological order
Group - Broad, about the history of a particular group. It could be a political party, a resistance, music, or ethnic group, government, organization, branch of government, business, military unit, etc.
Technology - Something that serves a functionality built by humans like vehicles, machines, tools, weapons, electronics, etc
Work - Broad, usually includes a work of art, literature, etc. It could also be 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 Articles - 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 Articles - If the thing you are writing about fits into none of the categories then it could be considered another type of article or miscellaneous.


	Event	Biography	Geographic Location	Group	Technology	Work	Idea
1	Background: Context, what happened before event	Before birth: All these self-explanatory	Background	Background	Background: These can be modified to need	Background	Background
2	Prelude: Just before the event	Childhood	Formation and history	Beginning/creation/formation: One of these	Development:	Creation	Conceptualization
3	Event: Named depending on event	Adulthood		Fall/Dissolution/Destruction: Choose name	Production:	Use	Legacy
4	Aftermath: After event	After death		Aftermath: If group no longer exists	Use:	Reaction/Reception
5	Long term effects: Optional	Legacy		Legacy	Discontiuation:	Legacy
6	Legacy: Optional				Legacy:

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 only quote the following:

Quote someone saying something, or a short message
Quote 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.

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