User talk:CitrusHemlock

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The 2025 Core Contest Winners!

The winners of the 2025 Core Contest are announced 🎉. An great turnout with a impressive variety of articles and laudable improvements. The judges (Aza24, Femke and Casliber) would like to thank everybody who joined and congratulate the winners.

• First place (and a prize of £120) goes to Phlsph7 (talk · contribs) for his systemic overhaul of the Political Philosophy article. What was once an unwieldy entry—dominated by a sprawling history section of nearly three dozen subsections!—is now an accessible and well-structured survey of a complex and often polarizing subject. We particularly commend Phlsph7’s global, inclusive, and comprehensive approach. He has once again demonstrated exceptional skill in handling core topics with clarity and balance.
• Second place (and a prize of £100) goes to Dracophyllum (talk · contribs) for their outstanding work on both Trunk and Flower. The former was reimagined from a ~200 word stub into a richly detailed and impeccably sourced overview—an effort truly worthy of its dedicatee, the late and much-missed Vami IV. Meanwhile, their improvements to the Flower article transformed an already strong entry into an exceptional one, now well on its way to passing FAC.
• Third place (and a prize of £80) goes to Vigilantcosmicpenguin (talk · contribs) for his major development of the Niamey article. The entry now proudly stands among the finest city articles on Wikipedia—from thirty scattered references to nearly 400 high-quality academic sources. We particularly commend his inclusion of numerous French-language sources and thoughtfully comprehensive approach to the topic.

If you wish to start or stop receiving news about The Core Contest, please add or remove yourself from the delivery list. – Aza24 (talk) 21:11, 23 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Russian Conquest of Central Asia

If you are working on this, I suggest you look at "An Indian Officer" 's "Russia's March towards India". Despite its misleading title, it is a general history of the Russian Conquest and is equal or better than Morrison. Whoever wrote it was somehow connected to the Indian Intelligence Service during the Raj. I wrote the original version of the article from it. 02:28, 25 July 2025 (UTC) Benjamin Trovato (talk) 02:28, 25 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Benjamin! While I appreciate your contributions to the article, I strongly disagree with the use of Russia's March towards India as a source for several reasons. Most notably, the author did not have access to the correspondence, Central Asian histories, and wealth of information that modern historians such as Morrison, Olcott, and Hopkirk do. The other major problem is that the author, as an Officer in the army of British Raj, had a clear anti-Russian lean. While this doesn't necessarily mean the whole work should be considered biased, his ideological stance colors much of the book, especially sections on Russian diplomacy and geopolitical strategy. The sections on diplomacy and geopolitical strategy are further weakened by the authors belief in a Russian plan to invade India, a theory that has been thoroughly disproven over the past century. Even without this lean, the author was a military professional, not a trained historian, which weakens the book. While it should be considered an important contemporaneous perspective on the invasions, it is far weaker as an academic source than Morrison's book, which is rapidly becoming the standard work on the conquest. CitrusHemlock 04:37, 25 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The British point of view can be ignored since it does not interfere with the facts. The author does not write like a soldier – more like a diplomat or scholarly intelligence officer charged with keeping track of the facts. My guess is that the book was released by the Indian Intelligence Service. Modern research has not changed any of the basic facts, as far as I know. Morrison and Indian Officer are the only general accounts in English that I know of. When I read Morrison, I found no reason to modify what I extracted from Indian Officer. The only defect of Indian Officer is its misleading title. Benjamin Trovato (talk) 09:41, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I must emphasize, modern historiography on the Russian conquest, especially in the Anglosphere, has vastly changed from 1895 to now. One example selected from Russia's March Towards India is the analysis of the Khivan Campaign of 1839, on pages 112 to 113. In this excerpt, the author posits that "In the early years of the nineteenth century the Czar Nicholas and his advisers tried, by one great stroke, to secure a position on the borders of India..." and "Russia, with her frontiers at Orenburg and on the River Araxes, was quite unable to establish any permanent influence in the countries bordering India, or to destroy the stability of British rule in Hindustan." Through these quotes, we can see that the title is not "misleading" but the theory on which the entire book is founded. Russian activities in Central Asia are framed first and foremost as action to counter British India, and ultimately invade it. While the author may have the voice of a "diplomat or scholarly intelligence officer", this does not change the position he was writing from, an Indian officer arguing that India was about to be invaded. As Morrison argues in Killing the Cotton Canard and getting rid of the Great Game: rewriting the Russian conquest of Central Asia, 1814–1895, "Russia’s own fear of British expansion in Central Asia, only really came to prominence at the time of the First and Second Afghan Wars (Zagorodnikova 2005; Morrison 2014). Otherwise, it is remarkable how seldom British India featured in the calculations of the Russian soldiers and statesmen who planned and undertook the conquest of Central Asia. Any study of this period requires a more profound understanding of Russian intentions, motivations, and actions than is possible when viewing them through the lens of 'the defence of India'. As documents from Russian leadership and Russian historians have been made public and available to the English-speaking world, traditional English theories about Russia invading Central Asia as a lead up to an invasion of India have been increasingly proven incorrect.

This outdated framing also taints the factual basis of the work. Russia's March Towards India claims that the date on which the campaign was launched was chosen "as a counter-stroke to the British occupation of Afghanistan", while it is seen in Morrison's The Russian Conquest of Central Asia on page 89 that the campaign was planned for before 1838, but was postponed due to a steppe rebellion. While there are many more examples in Russia's March Towards India of incorrect facts, I feel I have made my point.

Due to these deep issues with the analysis and factual base of Russia's March Towards India, I do not believe that it should be continued to be used as a source in articles on the Russian conquest of Central Asia. CitrusHemlock 17:59, 28 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

True but not decisive. A CIA type makes his money by exaggerating the threat and keeping an accurate record of what the other side is doing. We can ignore the POV and use the names and dates. If there errors in facts, that is a different problem. I agree that the POV is a problem.Benjamin Trovato (talk) 01:49, 1 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Concern regarding Draft:Cyclonopedia

Hello, CitrusHemlock. This is a bot-delivered message letting you know that Draft:Cyclonopedia, a page you created, has not been edited in at least five months. Drafts that have not been edited for six months may be deleted, so if you wish to retain the page, please edit it again or request that it be moved to your userspace.

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Thank you for your submission to Wikipedia. FireflyBot (talk) 15:06, 10 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for WikiProject Military history coordinators is now open!

Nominations for the upcoming Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history coordinator election have opened. A team of up to ten coordinators will be elected for the next coordination year. The project coordinators are the designated points of contact for issues concerning the project, and are responsible for maintaining our internal structure and processes. They do not, however, have any authority over article content or editor conduct, or any other special powers. More information on being a coordinator is available here. If you are interested in running, please sign up here by 23:59 UTC on 14 September! Voting will commence on 15 September. If you have any questions, you can contact any member of the current coord team. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:02, 1 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Your nomination of Gabriel Green (ufologist) has passed

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Voting for WikiProject Military history coordinators is now open!

Voting for the Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history coordinators is now open! A team of up to ten coordinators will be elected for the next coordination year. Voting closes at 23:59 UTC on 29 September. If you have any questions, you can contact any member of the current coord team. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:25, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

DYK for Gabriel Green (ufologist)

On 20 September 2025, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Gabriel Green (ufologist), which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Gabriel Green ran for U.S. president on the platform of universal health care, free college education, and releasing secret government information on extraterrestrials? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Gabriel Green (ufologist). You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, Gabriel Green (ufologist)), and the hook may be added to the statistics page after its run on the Main Page has completed. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to nominate it.

History6042😊 (Contact me) 02:45, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Your nomination of Siege of Ak-Mechet is under review

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Your nomination of Siege of Ak-Mechet is on hold

Your good article nomination of the article Siege of Ak-Mechet has been placed on hold, as the article needs some changes. See the review page for more information. If these are addressed within 7 days, the nomination will pass; otherwise, it may fail. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of TheNuggeteer -- TheNuggeteer (talk) 13:43, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Your nomination of Siege of Ak-Mechet has passed

Your good article nomination of the article Siege of Ak-Mechet has passed; congratulations! See the review page for more information. If the article is eligible to appear in the "Did you know" section of the Main Page, you can nominate it within the next seven days. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of TheNuggeteer -- TheNuggeteer (talk) 01:02, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]