Friendly talk page watchers are appreciated. They may respond to questions on or edits to this page, especially when I am unable to respond quickly or when an additional response to an edit, question or comment would be helpful.
I should now be online most days, at least briefly, in the next few months, absent some unexpected RL matters or medical issues. If I expect to be offline for more than a day or two at a time, I will post a message here and on my user page. Donner60 (talk) 09:47, 27 June 2026 (UTC)Reply
I am also watching things here.
I have added a prioritized to do list to my user page. These have been getting done much more slowly than intended because of coordinator tasks and other unanticipated editing that needed more immediate attention. Donner60 (talk) 05:06, 16 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
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• Help:Introduction to talk pages. • Help:Using talk pages. • Excerpts Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines#User talk pages: While the purpose of article talk pages is to discuss the content of articles, the purpose of user talk pages is to draw the attention or discuss the edits of a user. Wikipedia is not a social networking site, and all discussion should ultimately be directed solely toward the improvement of the encyclopedia.
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I have noted in bullet points above the guidelines for good messages in general and for this page in particular
If messages are placed elsewhere (unless they are replies to a reply message that I have left in an existing section), I may either not see them or at least not see them very promptly. That will delay any reply from me to you. If you put a question or comment on this page but not at the bottom of the page despite the above request, and you can not find it if you check back, I have moved it to the bottom of the page in a new section with an appropriate heading if there was none given to the message.
As far as I know, IP addresses cannot be pinged.
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If your edit was vandalism, disruptive, uncivil, abusive or nonsensical, and you do not find the edit on this page, it is because I have deleted it.
If the edit is vandalism or otherwise abusive, in most such cases, I will also put a warning (or another warning if I have already placed a warning for vandalism) on your talk page, but will not otherwise reply to it.
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If some time has passed since I have logged on, a message may have become stale, or appear to me to be stale or no longer in need of a reply for some reason. In those cases, I also may not reply and will likely simply archive the message at the next archiving on aging messages/replies.
Barnstars and awards before July 6, 2025 are at User:Donner60/Barnstars. Some of the earlier ones kept here may be shown there as well.
Latest comment: 11 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
The Original Barnstar
Thank you, Donner60, for your straightforward review of the “Charles Thau” article. Your expertise (and time) to help get my 1st wiki article to B‑class status are deeply appreciated.
On behalf of the members of WikiProject Military history, in recognition of your election to the position of Coordinator, I take great pleasure in presenting you with the Coordinator's stars, and wish you the best of luck for the coming year! Hawkeye7(discuss)00:53, 30 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Citation Barnstar
This award is given in recognition to Donner60 for collecting more than 4 points during the WikiProject Unreferenced articles's NOV25 backlog drive. Your contributions played a crucial role in sourcing over 6,000 unsourced articles during the drive. Thank you so much for participating and helping to reduce the backlog! ~/Bunnypranav:<ping>15:30, 22 December 2025 (UTC)Reply
On behalf of the Military History Project, I am proud to present the The Milhist reviewing award (1 stripe) for participating in 2 reviews between October and December 2025. Hawkeye7(talk) via MilHistBot (talk) 00:30, 3 January 2026 (UTC)Reply Keep track of upcoming reviews. Just copy and paste {{WPMILHIST Review alerts}} to your user space
I will take a look at the article within the next day or two unless something delays me. I want to be more careful than I was with another reply recently which I did not get exactly right. "Grouping/name" does not ring a bell with me, but I may have forgotten it or think of it under another term. Did you see it on a page you can point out? Campaign may be described or defined on a project page but I would need to think about where to look for it. Closeness in time of the progression of battles and movement of armies may have something to do with it. I am reasonably sure that most, if not all, Civil War campaign names have been placed on a series of battles and movements by historians, and possibly contemporaries, for quite some time and they probably used names of a major battle within these movements. A few such as Peninsula, Antietam, Gettysburg and several others come to mind. Donner60 (talk) 07:20, 14 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 3 months ago9 comments3 people in discussion
Hi Donner60,
something got screwed up with the USCGC Dione A-class review. MilHist Bot closed the review as a fail, but then promoted the article's talk page. I also saw that you failed the review here because Phoenix was banned (back in January) as a sockpuppet. As the second nominator for the A-class review, would it still be possible to keep the review open as I am still active? GGOTCC06:42, 27 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
@GGOTCC: This is an edited and I hope is a more accurate and clearer comment on how to progress this than the one I posted at 22:21.
I forgot to change the bot's A class assessment when I put the "fail" into the current status. It is a separate entry which the bot does not change automatically. I have changed it to B.
I have edited the assessment review to change the status on the review page to "current" from "fail". I have not done this before and don't recall ever seeing it done. For the next 24 hours, I am counting on the bot reopening the review page. Perhaps a new review page will need to be set up to confirm supports and pass the assessment to A.
I think the bot should reopen the review within the next 24 hours. If it doesn't, I will need to find out how to restart it unless the supports can be otherwise confirmed. I assume that if a new one is started the current reviews and comments can be transferred to it which would result in it not having to start the reviews and comments all over.
So with your changes, we may just need to confirm that the reviews' support votes still apply. The previous reviewers can be pinged when it is again ready for confirmation of supports or any necessary reviews to finalize the supports.
Let me know if you do not see the review reopened after 24 hours and I will see if restarting it on a new page is necessary or whether we can just confirm the supports and pass it to A class. Donner60 (talk) 23:01, 27 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
Thanks, Hawkeye. I had not encountered this type of situation before. I thought I might be more or less on the right track but was not completely sure - as I think my comments showed. Donner60 (talk) 02:10, 28 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
@GGOTCC: I have carried out the required move. Could you re-nominate the article? That way it will be listed against your name. You can ask the previous reviewers to re-confirm their support. Hawkeye7(discuss)00:25, 28 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
Update: @Hawkeye7: MilHist Bot just closed the new review and reverted my new listing for the same reason as before. Is this MilHist Bot's fault for a new review so soon after the old one, or have I incorrectly renominated the article? I will not revert the edits yet, because I am not sure if that would break things further. What is the best course of action here? GGOTCC15:40, 28 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Citation Barnstar
This award is given in recognition to Donner60 for collecting more than 3 points during the WikiProject Unreferenced articles's March 2026 backlog drive. Your contributions played a crucial role in sourcing over 8362 unsourced articles during the drive. Thank you so much for participating and helping to reduce the backlog! – DreamRimmer■16:38, 28 April 2026 (UTC)Reply
Changes to user permissions made from Meta are now included in the local user permissions log (T6055).
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Latest comment: 2 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Donner, I've been working through the article for Elkanah Greer in fits and starts over the course of several months and there are some dates which the sources disagree on - could you please look up what Eicher has for Greer? I'm particularly interested in what Eicher has for date of birth, the date that he was replaced as commander of the Trans-Miss conscription bureau, and any inkling of what he was doing between his resignation and when he was appointed to the conscription bureau position. Hog FarmTalk23:55, 8 May 2026 (UTC)Reply
Eicher, John H., and David J. Eicher, Civil War High Commands. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. ISBN978-0-8047-3641-1, pp.266-267. (266): Born Paris, TN 11 Oct. 1825. Moved to MS, Pvt. 1st (MS} Rifles, Mexican War. Moved to Texas, planter, merchant. Grand C. in C., Knights of the Golden Circle, 1859. Col. CSA 3 Tex Cav, 1 July 1861; South Kans. & Tex (267): Aug. 1861. Cav B, Army of the West, 13 Mar. 1862-1 June 1862, wounded Pea Ridge Ark. Mar. 1862 resigned 1 June 1862; Brig. Gen. CSA 8 Oct. 1862; Bureau of Conscription Trans.-Miss Dept. 8 Oct 1862 - 26 May 1865; Texas Reserve Cavalry Forces 27 Mar. 1865-26 May 1862; no record of parole. Died Devalls. Bluff, Ark. 25 Mar 1877, int. Elmwood Cemetery, Memphis, TN. That is Eicher's information in its entirety. Nothing on the interim between the resignation and appointment to the conscription bureau. Warner, Ezra J.Generals in Gray: Lives of the Confederate Commanders. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1959. ISBN978-0-8071-0823-9 which you may have, at p.118 notes that Jefferson Davis was colonel of the 1st Mississippi Rifles, that Greer was grand commander of the Knights of the Golden Circle, wounded at Elkhorn Tavern, the alternate name for Pea Ridge as I am sure you know. Warner says Greer tried to reconcile the laws of Richmond with the laws of Texas, not entirely successfully. He lived in Marshall, Texas after the war and died while vising his sister in DeValls Bluff, Ark. Also says he was "slightly wounded" rather than just wounded. Also nothing on the June to October 1862 period. No contradiction in dates. Hope that helps. Donner60 (talk) 07:38, 9 May 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Hello Donner60,
New Page Review queue November 2025 - May 2026
Backlog update
At the time of this message, there are 15,282 articles and 32,951 redirects awaiting review.
After the January–February drive the article backlog was reduced to 15,179 articles and the redirect backlog to 19,053 respectively. Great job! However, both queues are growing rapidly and any additional reviews are highly appreciated.
2024 and 2025 NPP Awards
JTtheOG was selected as the NPP reviewer of the year for both 2024 and 2025, for reviewing the most articles amongst all reviewers.
Hey man im josh and MPGuy2824 won the Redirect Ninja Master Award for 2024 and 2025 respectively, for reviewing the most redirects.
Overall in 2024, one Platinum, two Gold, eight Silver, 12 Bronze and 45 Iron Barnstars were awarded. Additionally, 66 reviewers got the NPP barnstar for doing more than 100 reviews through the year. In 2025, one Platinum, ten Silver, 13 Bronze and 38 Iron Barnstars were awarded. Additionally, 38 reviewers got the NPP barnstar for doing more than 100 reviews through the year.
The experimental two-month long backlog drive concluded with 183 reviewers patrolling over 27,761 articles and 35,309 redirects, earning over 36,836 points. Congratulations to JTtheOG, who achieved first place with 6,484.6 points in this drive.
An attempt was made to get the New Pages Feed to sort by date marked as reviewed instead of date created. However we had to revert it due to bugs. We may try again in the future. You can subscribe to the Phabricator ticket if you're interested in following along.
The next GAN backlog drive will be held in June and will be co-ordinated by four editors. It will be mainly targeted towards those who are new to reviewing.
Latest comment: 2 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
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This is an odd one. I looked at the changes in the assessments during the early years of the article, which were mainly made by bots or by users assisted by AWB, as in this case. Of course, the user is supposed to check all of the changes made (and presumably should have been made) by AWB. I also looked at the article immediately before and at the times the b4 criterion was changed. An assessment for the b4 (grammatical) criterion before it was changed to yes had been erroneously entered as yes/no, apparently by a bot or user assisted bot. Despite a run-on sentence, b4 seems to have been met all along. The user making the change to yes for b4 to correct an error apparently was the reason the user changed b4 to yes. He appears to have determined that "no" for b4 resulted from an erroneous yes/no entry, not because the article did not meet b4. Once that correction was made, the article met all criteria except b1. However, the editor using the AWB seems to have neglected to change the overall rating to C as should have been done as a result of correcting the b4 criteria. That left the contradiction in place for 12 years until your recent work on the article.
At first I thought that these inconsistences were caused by conflicting bots and that start could be the appropriate starting entry for work done this month. But when I noted that the user, only using a bot for help, actually changed a criterion which was considered "no" due to a "yes/no" entry, I thought that C was actually intended by that user 12 years ago but that user in turn made an error by leaving the rating at start. This present a hard case to me in some respects. But I think I have to come to the conclusion that it was a C class article when you started to work on it and was not shown as such due to a mistake in matching the rating with the criteria met. (I certainly hope that no other such cases arise, although it seems like a judgment call of a sort, I do think the history of the assessments leads to the conclusion I am expressing in this case.) Noting run-on sentences may appear in this odd hour reply: if this explanation is unclear in some way, misses something obvious or otherwise leaves you with some question or different analysis, please let me know. 07:27, 29 May 2026 (UTC)
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Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Hello, I'm Qwerfjkl (bot). I have automatically detected that this edit performed by you, on the page Nerva, may have introduced referencing errors. They are as follows:
A URL error. References show this error when one of the URL-containing parameters contains an invalid URL. Please edit the article to add the valid URL. (Fix | Ask for help)
Latest comment: 9 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
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Latest comment: 4 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Hello Donner60:
WikiProject Articles for creation is holding a month long Backlog Drive in August!
The goal of this drive is to reduce the backlog of unreviewed drafts to less than a month of outstanding reviews from the current 3+ months. Bonus points will be given for reviewing drafts that have been waiting more than 30 days. The drive is running from 1 August 2026 through 31 August 2026.
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