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Government of National Salvation subsection

I think this section needs further expansion with developments with the government that occurred over time, but there are some aspects of the last current few paras that strike me as not NPOV. Nedic's propaganda about why he did what he did is relevant, but it needs to be balanced with other relevant sources. Unless someone objects, I'm going to start expanding it and moving material not directly relevant to the government into other sections/subsections. Peacemaker67 (talk) 09:14, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

The section needs to be cut-down in size and its content moved to the practically-empty Government of National Salvation article. A proper summary of said material should be sufficient here. That is the primary location where material on the GNS ought to be found. Would you consider adding your content over there? -- Director (talk) 09:18, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
Good idea. Some here, some there. There really is a lot of work to do on this article... Peacemaker67 (talk) 09:26, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
No, its not double the work. Just do there what you were going to do here, and I'll use parts of it to summarize here. Copy-paste. -- Director (talk) 09:29, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
I didn't say it was double the work... Peacemaker67 (talk) 10:52, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Serbo-Croatian name

Just a note. The addition of a Serbo-Croatian name in the infobox needs to be sourced, that much is true (as inclusion there implies official status), but a Serbo-Croatian name in the lead need not be explicitly sourced. Its actually suggested that all relevant translations be added there. I'll be adding the Serbo-Croatian variant of the name in the lead. -- Director (talk) 05:24, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

That's not my reading of WP:NCGN and Misplaced Pages:Manual_of_Style/Lead_section#Alternative_names. My understanding from them is that they should go in the Names section or footnotes. Peacemaker67 (talk) 05:47, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
Its been a while, but if memory serves I think it says so in WP:LEAD. I'll check it out again. -- Director (talk) 05:57, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
Yup, here it is . Basically what it says is that if there are too many foreign-language names, they need a separate section. Here we're only dealing with two languages, so I don't think we need another section or sub-section. But then if you'd like to move the German and SC names down south to the "Names" section, I wouldn't object. -- Director (talk) 06:01, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

wrong name

name of this page is funny. there is no reliable source that support this. page should have name serbia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by HuHu22 (talk • contribs) 11:02, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

please read the footnotes. Hehn and Pavlowitch are both WP:RS. Peacemaker67 (talk) 12:44, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
your footnotes are unable to be read. you have any that can be read by others? Misplaced Pages:Verifiability not support your footnotes. HuHu22 (talk) 13:26, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

infobox

location maps are standard for wikipedia infobox. why you want to have other map there? HuHu22 (talk) 13:32, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

this has been discussed recently, at length on this talkpage and on the MILHIST talkpage. Please read the discussion for a detailed explanation. Peacemaker67 (talk) 14:02, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
it was not. infobox map was uploaded in 2 July 2012. there is no any discussion on this page after that day. HuHu22 (talk) 14:15, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Requested move

It has been proposed in this section that Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia be renamed and moved to Military Administration in Serbia.

A bot will list this discussion on the requested moves current discussions subpage within an hour of this tag being placed. The discussion may be closed 7 days after being opened, if consensus has been reached (see the closing instructions). Please base arguments on article title policy, and keep discussion succinct and civil.

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Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia → Military Administration in Serbia – This article mostly speaks about German military administrators and it should have this title. There is just one google result for "territory of the military commander in serbia" and 101 google result for "military administration in serbia" Nemambrata (talk) 13:56, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

  • Oppose. The subject of this article is the occupied territory (the physical entity), not the military administration that had supreme authority in that occupied territory. The military administration of the occupied territory is of course discussed in the article, as you would expect. The title of this article was discussed at some length in front of the MILHIST community here and was decided by consensus with the oversight of an experienced MILHIST admin User:Buckshot06. Peacemaker67 (talk) 15:08, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
As I have pointed out already, this is not about an administration, it is about a physical occupation territory which was administered by the Germans. As far as WP:TITLE is concerned (ie the relevant WP policy) the first thing is whether there is a WP:COMMONNAME. This discussion makes it clear that there is not. Saying that a source uses a term is no good unless you look at each hit to see what the author calls it when they first introduce it. From that point in the text, they nearly all revert to something like 'Serbia' eventually anyway. This is common in English, not always so in other languages. Frankly, it is easier to use the shorter term once they have introduced what they are talking about, rather than use the name 'rump Serbia' or one of the other names on every occasion in the text. But given that they bothered to use a different term to introduce the territory in the first place, the later uses of the term 'Serbia' are not relevant to the case for 'Military Administration in Serbia' under the WP:COMMONNAME policy. Therefore, based on the references referred to at that link, there isn't a WP:COMMONNAME. To me, this issue is one about how the word 'Serbia' is presented in the title so that anyone looking at the title would not think that this 'Serbia' was a country. Other guidance from WP:COMMONNAME includes that ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined by reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources. This is, I believe, what is wrong with the title 'Military Administration in Serbia' and many of the alternatives that have been discussed before and the raw Google hits information that has been mentioned on this and other pages. They are ambiguous and inaccurate because they imply that Serbia was a state administered by the Germans. It was not a state, it was an occupation territory and it had an official name, we we have sources for (in German and English).
The second thing is to assess the WP:TITLE principles. When there is no single obvious term that is obviously the most frequently used for the topic, as used by a significant majority of reliable English language sources (ie no WP:COMMONNAME), editors should reach a consensus as to which title is best by considering the goals of: Recognizability, Naturalness, Precision, Conciseness, and Consistency.
It seems to me that most of the WP:COMMONNAME objectives are achieved by the use of a title including 'Serbia'. 'Serbia' is recognizable to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic, and it is also natural because it is a term that readers are likely to look for or search with as well as those that editors might naturally use to link from other articles, although I will say a couple of more things about that later.
In terms of precision, 'Serbia' is of course far too imprecise. 'Serbia' has many meanings over a long period of time, and in this case means a very specific thing, an occupation territory. The article title must be sufficiently precise to identify the topic of the article unambiguously.
The need for precision impacts on the goal of conciseness. We need to have a longer and less elegant title so that it is sufficiently precise. There is a fine line between 'Military Administration in Serbia' and using the official name. What I mean is that anyone looking for this territory will probably search for 'Serbia' (as per naturalness), be taken to the current 'Serbia' article, then have to go to the disambiguation page to find the 'Serbia' they are looking for. 'Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia' is as precise as it gets.
Finally, consistency. Titles of articles should follow the same pattern as those of similar articles. Unfortunately, due to the rather unique nature of the arrangements in the 'Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia', we really have nothing to go on.

For the above policy-based reasons, I believe that the official name 'Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia' should continue to be used because whilst it is not exactly the most recognisable or natural title (point taken, WW), the reality is that anyone looking for this will look for 'Serbia', then go to the disambiguation page where they will find it, whatever it is called. It is as precise and unambiguous as it gets. Consistency is not an issue for us here. Peacemaker67 (talk) 03:20, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

“Military Administration in Serbia” can describe both, authority in that occupied territory and territory itself and it is not correct that this name do not describe territory. You can compare examples: Military Administration in Belgium and Northern France, German military administration in occupied France during World War II. Current article name, “Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia” is barely sourced, not established in English language and it is name used by occupation regime for illegal entity that was not recognized by rest of World. Peacemaker67 say that this name was “official”, but it was “official” only in mind of German occupators. For most of World, occupation of Yugoslavia was illegal and any entity created by Germans in territory of Yugoslavia was illegal too. We should not promote illegal names in Misplaced Pages and we specialy should not promote them if they are not established in English language. Name “Military Administration in Serbia” is at least established in English and less controversial because occupation administration is less illegal than political entity created against international law. Nemambrata (talk) 20:18, 3 August 2012 (UTC)
Can you explain how the proposed title is misleading? Srnec (talk) 01:03, 3 August 2012 (UTC)
The subject of this article is the occupied territory (the physical entity), not the military administration that had supreme authority in that occupied territory. --WhiteWriter 09:38, 3 August 2012 (UTC)
If it's about the physical entity, then why no geography section? More seriously, why not just use a title like Occupied Serbia during World War II? Srnec (talk) 05:30, 4 August 2012 (UTC)
I agree to your proposal, Srnec, with all my hart. After this, please, propose that title, i find that the best. --WhiteWriter 09:19, 4 August 2012 (UTC)
No. This article deals only with part of the territory of Serbia occupied by Nazi Germany during WII. Not with other parts of Serbia occupied by Bulgaria, Hungaria, Italia and Croatia.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 09:41, 4 August 2012 (UTC)
OMG Antidiskriminator, we agree on something... red letter day. Although the Bulgarians did occupy nearly all of the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia by the end, but always under German overall command. You obviously mean the bits they annexed. In fact nearly all of the rest of modern-day Serbia was annexed by Axis states rather than just occupied. Peacemaker67 (talk) 10:24, 4 August 2012 (UTC)
Why? This is not blind voting, but discussion. --WhiteWriter 09:38, 3 August 2012 (UTC)
then at a minimum it would need disambiguation, and my point about conciseness is strengthened. Peacemaker67 (talk) 09:15, 3 August 2012 (UTC)
No its not. Don't try to misuse my comment to support your point. "30 vs 1" instead "101 vs 1" is still very high ratio. --Antidiskriminator (talk) 21:28, 3 August 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for the advice, but it's not my problem if you are supporting my point, and I will use it if it does. Which it does. Thank you. You are clearly confusing conciseness with your attempts at establishing that 'Military Administration in Serbia' is the WP:COMMONNAME. If that is what you are trying to do, because so far the only editor actually addressing the WP:TITLE principles is me. So far all I have seen to oppose my points is raw (or deghosted, whatever that is) Google Books hits and WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT. But back to conciseness. 'Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia' is 45 characters including spaces, 'Military Administration in Serbia (1941-1944)' is also 45 characters. Done. Peacemaker67 (talk) 22:49, 3 August 2012 (UTC)
What you did here is Straw man fallacy. You invented name that nobody proposed ('Military Administration in Serbia (1941-1944)') then you based your point on misrepresentation of an opponent's position (length of the proposed name).--Antidiskriminator (talk) 11:01, 4 August 2012 (UTC)
Absolutely not. I made a reasonable assumption that you were talking about conciseness, because you mentioned that some of the hits on 'Military Administration in Serbia' related to the Ottoman empire or something, so I just added the obvious disambiguation of the year range to eliminate the ambiguity. Peacemaker67 (talk) 11:12, 4 August 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment. @Nemambrata. Firstly, your references to two other articles about military administrations are not directly relevant here for a number of reasons. I assume you are referring to the principle of consistency under WP:TITLE. One of those articles is a stub, and both need more references, so I don't think it is appropriate to be drawing too strong a conclusion from them. They also differ in an important respect, in neither case did the military authorities appoint indigenous puppet governments. That is the reason I stated above that this situation is unique and I don't consider that consistency is relevant here. As far as the language issue is concerned, we have five sources that support this name as the official name. No-one has provided a reference for an alternative official name, so one source is as good as 500 in that respect. Your point about language is misleading, the official name was originally in German (obviously), and as non-English sources are widely used on WP, we ask editors to indicate their translation skills so we can get their help when we have situations such as this. I did that, and that about wraps it up as far as that is concerned. Your points about something being illegal is lost on me. What about the NDH? It was illegal under Western interpretations of the international law of belligerent occupation, but we have articles on WP about it, and we use its official name. That has nothing to do with this point. What WP policy are you referring to? I assume the declaration of independence by Kosovo was illegal under Serbian law, but that doesn't mean we can't create articles about it on WP. That would be censorship, and I'm pretty sure WP frowns on censorship. Peacemaker67 (talk) 23:26, 3 August 2012 (UTC)
    • Peacemaker, what I'm worried about is consistency. These occupation territories should be referred to in the same way wherever they're covered: as things are now, all except this one are referred to by the name of the administration itself (that is to say, the territory is called by the name of its administrative body). I would not mind any name as long as its used throughout for these sort of articles. Imo, this should be discussed at WP:MILHIST, and an overall consensus should be reached on the most appropriate name for German WWII military occupation territories. Of course, any pushing in the direction of "Vichy Serbia" is out of the question as far as I'm concerned. For now, I'm changing my vote, since here it apparently must be made blatantly clear that this territory is indeed a territory. Goodness knows we might hear "it isn't a territory its an administration, this is Serbia" one second after its renamed. -- Director (talk) 08:26, 4 August 2012 (UTC)
      • I think consistency would be more important if the other articles on this subject were as researched and developed. They are not. I also think the puppet government issue makes it more important that this be clearly a territory, and the latter issue clinches it for me. Peacemaker67 (talk) 08:41, 4 August 2012 (UTC)
  • One last point. These were the arrangements in this territory. The territory was commanded by the military commander, the military administration was one third of his staff (the other thirds were the economic branch and the police branch) and the chief of the military administration was in charge of the military administration branch (and directed the puppet governments on day-to-day issues). For example, in January 1942 Bader was the military commander in the territory, Harald Turner was the chief of the military administration, Franz Neuhausen was the economic chief, and August Meyszner was the Higher SS and Police Leader. They were all theoretically equal and all theoretically reported to Bader. You are essentially trying to rename this article so it only relates to one third of the military government of the territory, and you are excluding the military commander (who was the supreme authority and issued all the orders, appointed the puppet governments etc), the economic chief (who was basically the economic dictator of the territory) and the police chief (who was responsible for law and order in the territory, and was effectively in charge of the Serbian State Guard). Essentially the Google Books hits for 'Military Administration in Serbia' compare apples and oranges. The territory is the whole and you are trying to rename it to be a third of the whole. That's it for me, I'm sure the admin that closes this request already has enough to read and will look at the policy-based arguments for the naming of the article and make a wise decision. Peacemaker67 (talk) 11:53, 4 August 2012 (UTC)
  • Support – looking at the article, I can't agree with Peacemaker67's claim that the topic is the "territory" per se. It's about the history, the people, the administration, etc. The more concise title also appears to have more appropriate scope. Dicklyon (talk) 21:35, 4 August 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment – whichever title is chosen, we should fix the case error per WP:CAPS. There's no support in books for capitalizing either one (the current title is a translation from the German made by WP editors; both are descriptive, not proper names). Dicklyon (talk) 21:48, 4 August 2012 (UTC)
    • G'day Dicklyon, actually that is not correct. Hehn (a WP:RS) says it is the official name of the territory, and uses that exact capitalisation. Peacemaker67 (talk) 22:29, 4 August 2012 (UTC)
      • Was official name on English language, or German? --Antidiskriminator (talk) 22:59, 4 August 2012 (UTC)
        • You can follow the link to the article from the citation, but as you can see it is in both German and English in the source. Now, this is English Misplaced Pages, and the territory was occupied and governed by the Germans, so obviously the original name was in German, not Serbo-Croat. The local name in Serbo-Croat matters not, as the Germans were the ones that decided it. Hehn translates it into English in parentheses after providing the official name in German. Peacemaker67 (talk) 23:08, 4 August 2012 (UTC)
      • Not quite so. Hehn says "Officially labelled the Gebiet des Militärbefehlshaber Serbiens (Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia)." Now it's clear why all the caps in the German, official or otherwise, but there's not official name in English, so he made up a translation and capitalized it. No other book or paper that we know of uses this term. And no source has adopted his translation in the last 40+ years since he did it. Even if we adopt it, there's no reason to capitalize it, as there's no evidence that it's an official or proper name. Dicklyon (talk) 23:23, 4 August 2012 (UTC)
        • Good point Dicklyon. Peacemaker67 was also wrong when he said that local name doesn't matter. Local official name is, of course, very important. Per Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions: Local official names should be listed before other alternate names if they differ from a widely accepted English name. Peacemaker67, do you know what was local official name, used in official documents for this territory?--Antidiskriminator (talk) 23:32, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Reorganisation of article

I will wait until the move request has been closed, by I will flag now that if this article remains with its current title and scope, I will be reorganising it so that the issues that have been raised above are clearer. Why the section entitled 'Initial occupation' starts by mentioning Acimovic is beyond me. After the background to the occupation, the Germans reasons for keeping the territory under military occupation need to be covered along with why this area was defined in the way it was, then German military government structures need to be laid out, commander, administration, economic and police, then a chronology covering the first puppet government, commencement of the resistance, second puppet government, and major military operations in the territory with other changes as they occurred, with some administrative sections at the end. Peacemaker67 (talk) 12:24, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

It would be wrong to reorganize the article to match wrong title.
Besides the current consensus that it is wrong to rename this article from territory to administration this move proposal showed another consensus. That existing name should be changed.
I think it is best to start a new section in which all interested editors could suggest more approriate name for this article.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 12:49, 4 August 2012 (UTC)
Consensus? On this page? And wrong? The article title isn't wrong, I've explained in detail how it conforms with WP:TITLE, you WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT. Peacemaker67 (talk) 13:30, 4 August 2012 (UTC)
Its not WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Its almost nobody likes it. Just check the above discussion. Please don't continue with unjustified accusations. --Antidiskriminator (talk) 13:57, 4 August 2012 (UTC)
The accusation is completely justified. So the consensus is that everyone just doesn't like it? It is not about liking it, it's about whether it conforms to WP:TITLE. You have yet to refer to any aspect of WP:TITLE (the relevant policy). I have tried to draw you into a discussion of how the title conforms with the policy but you won't engage. The only editor that has is DIREKTOR, and he has only referred to the principle of consistency. Peacemaker67 (talk) 14:08, 4 August 2012 (UTC)
No your accusation is not justified. It is not about liking. It was explained in above discussion that the existing name is not COMMONNAME.
Your claim that I did not want to engage in discussion is also incorrect. I wrote four comments only today.
The problem with discussions like that is that a few people end up aguing among themselves and generate huge walls of text that drive away any outside editors who would otherwise be willing to participate in the discussion. In order to prevent that, I propose to all editors to refrain from further discussion, unless it is really necessary.
Don't perform major changes before proposing them and gain consensus first.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 17:11, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Peacemaker67, I do not think that current name of page that you defend conforms to WP:TITLE. This is what conforms to WP:TITLE: Misplaced Pages does not necessarily use the subject's "official" name as an article title; it prefers to use the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources. Name that you defend have only one source to support it and it is do not conforms to WP:TITLE. We can ask confirmation of this from administrators on this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia_talk:Article_titles Nemambrata (talk) 20:40, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

The page conforms to WP:TITLE, and you do not have consensus. This has all been discussed at huge length, and you folks lack understanding of the subject matter. There. That's putting it bluntly. There is only one other name I've seen for what this article covers, and that's "Military Administration in Serbia". I'm reasonably certain there's no other legitimate name in sources. When the RM closes, we'll have ourselves a general discussion on the naming of German military occupation territories at WP:MILHIST, there we will establish a (non-imaginary) WP:CONSENSUS, hopefully with the participation of other knowledgeable users. Until then, folks, lets not butt our heads against a brick wall.
Incidentally, Nemambrata, all your non-consensus edits have been reverted. Should you restore them, you will be reported as yet another in a growing line of suspicious WP:SINGLE PURPOSE ACCOUNTS, edit-warring across a wide range of articles to push a distinct POV. I'm not necessarily opposed to a title change, but await a consensus on the issue. -- Director (talk) 21:00, 4 August 2012 (UTC)
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