Wiki oddities

I know we need to take the wiki with a large grain of salt; but it's usually moderately accurate.

However, I just stumbled across a long standing group of ships, officers, and formations all claiming to be in War of Honor, and present at the 2nd Battle of Marsh, that aren't in the book at all!

I know I haven't run it all down yet (and need to stop for the night), but so far I found:
* 17 unsubstantiated ships (plus a couple of actual ones whose presence at 2nd Marsh is unsubstantiated)
* 10 unsubstantiated formations
* 13 unsubstantiated officers
(not to mention inserting references to all those above into various otherwise substantiated formations or battles)

Weird that someone would bother to create so much, seemingly out of thin air. And almost as odd that the (AFAICT) unsubstantiated pages seem to have gone unchallenged for over a decade.

I think I ran down all of this cluster of interlinked unsubstantiated entries.

37 ships
13 formations
22 officers

Plus 9 additional known ships whose entries include unsubstantiated claims of them being at 2nd Marsh.

All using HH10 (War of Honor) as their reference - but not having actually been mentioned there.

Could some of those simply be inferences? That is, ships that we know belonged to some of the formations that we know were at 2nd Marsh? Or characters whom we know were aboard said ships and we know those people were at the battle?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Could some of those simply be inferences? That is, ships that we know belonged to some of the formations that we know were at 2nd Marsh? Or characters whom we know were aboard said ships and we know those people were at the battle?

Maybe one or two, like the ships that we've seen elsewhere.

But the ships and officers I couldn't substantiate didn't appear in any of my ebooks. That said, they could have come from some non book, but BuShips or RFC source, and simply be misattributed. All of them. Misattributed to the same book.
But it's possible.


-----------------
Now for methodological completeness there were 7 books I didn't include in that search:
* What Price Victory
* A New Clan
* SITS 1
* SITS 2
* SITS 3
* Jayne's Intelligence Review: The Royal Manticoran Navy
* Jayne's Intelligence Review, Vol. 2 – The Havenite Republican Navy

The first two because I don't yet have them electronically; though I can't imagine any of them would be found in ANC.

The SITS books because they're in PDF and can't be handled by the notepad++ find in all files search I was using. (Though since they only go up to the start of the 1st war they wouldn't be much of a source for things around the start of the 2nd)

The Jaynes also only goes up to around the start of the 1st war; but also just doesn't (AFAIK) exist electronically (and my hardcopies are packed away somewhere). Though at least actual names for older DNs might have been plucked from there.

Also I used two slightly different methods of searching for the ships. Within WoH I simply searched for the ship name (e.g. Relentless), and simply manually handled the false positive when it was used normally; rather than as a ship name. For the broad ebook search I always included the HMS prefix (e.g. HMS Relentless) which eliminated false positives. But it could potentially cause some false negatives, since RFC will occasionally use a ship name without prefix; especially if talking about other ships within a squadron

I've checked into this and apparently the ships at least were sourced from posts RFC made on the Pearls of Weber website. Posts that concerned the ships Honor had available at Second Marsh.

I can't say for certain whether those same posts included the characters as well as the posts themselves don't seem to be accessible. Every time I tried to open any of the topics on the site it opened to a blank page.

CaptainPerseus wrote:I've checked into this and apparently the ships at least were sourced from posts RFC made on the Pearls of Weber website. Posts that concerned the ships Honor had available at Second Marsh.

I can't say for certain whether those same posts included the characters as well as the posts themselves don't seem to be accessible. Every time I tried to open any of the topics on the site it opened to a blank page.

Use web.archive.org to pull up cached versions of the pearls, for example: https://web.archive.org/web/20221225082 ... rington/0/

Which ships and formations and officers are they?

Shannon_Foraker wrote:Which ships and formations and officers are they?

Dug out my list.

Not in HH10 (as the wiki claimed they were).
Note1: if a ship has its classlisted in parenthesis that's generally because we do know of another ship of the same name, but a different class. (E.g. there was pre-pod SD HMS Thunder in the books that was lost in the battle of Nightingale)
Note2: for the personnel the info in brackets is what the Wiki claimed about them.

---------------------------------
SD HMS Admiral D'Orville
SD HMS Minerva
SD HMS Highlander
SD HMS Winton
SD HMS Duke of New Madrid
SD HMS Thunderer (Medusa class)
SD HMS Hancock
SD HMS Yeltsin's Star
SD HMS Barnett
SD HMS Macedonian
SD HMS Excalibur
SD HMS Morning Star
SD HMS Ibrahim
SD HMS Defender
SD HMS Gauntlet
SD HMS Challenger
SD HMS Kathryn Howard
SD HMS Conquest
SD HMS Harrier

DN HMS Baroness Bellisle
DN HMS Earl Sydon
DN HMS Matador
DN HMS Princess Alicia
DN HMS Prince Nicholas

BC HMS Repulse
BC HMS Athena
BC HMS Atropos
BC HMS Vengeance
BC HMS Valiant
BC Relentless
BC Retaliation
BC HMS Victorious (battlecruiser)
BC HMS Champion
BC HMS Dresden
BC HMS Truculent (Reliant class)
BC HMS Viper
BC HMS Ishtar

Battle Squadron 7
Battle Squadron 12
Battle Squadron 15
Battle Squadron 29
Battle Squadron 81

Battlecruiser Squadron 7
Battlecruiser Squadron 12 (RMN)
Battlecruiser Squadron 15
Battlecruiser Squadron 17
Battlecruiser Squadron 21

Light Cruiser Squadron 42

Destroyer Flotilla 7
Destroyer Flotilla 17

Alenka Overgaard [Rear Admiral and was in command of Task Force 34's Battle Squadron 12]
Michael Bourdonnaye [Captain, he was in command of the superdreadnought HMS Horatius]
Allen Djang [Captain, he was in command of the pod-laying superdreadnought HMS Thunderer]
Ernestine Fuller [Rear Admiral and was in command of Task Force 34's 29th Battle Squadron]
Steven Laufer [Rear Admiral and was in command of Task Force 34's 15th Battle Squadron]
Ilona Atwater [Rear Admiral and was in command of Task Force 34's Battlecruiser Squadron 21]
Kimiyo Ishada [Commodore and was in command of Task Force 34's 42nd Light Cruiser Squadron]
James Cardogan [Commodore and was in command of Task Force 34's 17th Destroyer Flotilla]
Eloise Silvestri [Rear Admiral and was commanded Battlecruiser Squadron 15]
Albert Hodges [Captain, he served as the commanding officer of the battlecruiser HMS Victorious]
Alecto Matheson [Commodore and was in command of Task Force 34's 7th Destroyer Flotilla]
Janice Smithwell [Rear Admiral and was in command of Task Force 34's 17th Battlecruiser Squadron]
Thomas Gates "Rear Admiral, he was in command of Battle Squadron 7"
Irene Houseman "Captain, she served as the commanding officer of HMS Defender"
Bruce Newman "Captain, he served as the commanding officer of the pod-laying superdreadnought HMS Revenge"
Erica Younts "Rear Admiral in 1919 PD, she commanded Battlecruiser Squadron 12"
Isabella Matthews "Captain in 1919 PD, she commanded HMS Implacable"
Veronica Lawless "Rear Admiral, she was in command of Battle Squadron 81"
Sogo Fletcher "Rear Admiral in 1920 PD, he was in command of Task Force Sidemore's 7th Battlecruiser Squadron"
Victor Hodgkins [Captain, he served as the commanding officer of the battlecruiser HMS Dresden]
Oliver O'Donovan [Captain, he was in command of the dreadnought HMS Prince Nicholas]
Samantha Howell [Captain, she was in command of HMS Harrier]

---------------------------------

Jonathan_S wrote:

Shannon_Foraker wrote:Which ships and formations and officers are they?

Dug out my list.

Not in HH10 (as the wiki claimed they were).
Note1: if a ship has its classlisted in parenthesis that's generally because we do know of another ship of the same name, but a different class. (E.g. there was pre-pod SD HMS Thunder in the books that was lost in the battle of Nightingale)
Note2: for the personnel the info in brackets is what the Wiki claimed about them.

---------------------------------
SD HMS Admiral D'Orville
SD HMS Minerva
SD HMS Highlander
SD HMS Winton
SD HMS Duke of New Madrid
SD HMS Thunderer (Medusa class)
SD HMS Hancock
SD HMS Yeltsin's Star
SD HMS Barnett
SD HMS Macedonian
SD HMS Excalibur
SD HMS Morning Star
SD HMS Ibrahim
SD HMS Defender
SD HMS Gauntlet
SD HMS Challenger
SD HMS Kathryn Howard
SD HMS Conquest
SD HMS Harrier

DN HMS Baroness Bellisle
DN HMS Earl Sydon
DN HMS Matador
DN HMS Princess Alicia
DN HMS Prince Nicholas

BC HMS Repulse
BC HMS Athena
BC HMS Atropos
BC HMS Vengeance
BC HMS Valiant
BC Relentless
BC Retaliation
BC HMS Victorious (battlecruiser)
BC HMS Champion
BC HMS Dresden
BC HMS Truculent (Reliant class)
BC HMS Viper
BC HMS Ishtar

Battle Squadron 7
Battle Squadron 12
Battle Squadron 15
Battle Squadron 29
Battle Squadron 81

Battlecruiser Squadron 7
Battlecruiser Squadron 12 (RMN)
Battlecruiser Squadron 15
Battlecruiser Squadron 17
Battlecruiser Squadron 21

Light Cruiser Squadron 42

Destroyer Flotilla 7
Destroyer Flotilla 17

Alenka Overgaard [Rear Admiral and was in command of Task Force 34's Battle Squadron 12]
Michael Bourdonnaye [Captain, he was in command of the superdreadnought HMS Horatius]
Allen Djang [Captain, he was in command of the pod-laying superdreadnought HMS Thunderer]
Ernestine Fuller [Rear Admiral and was in command of Task Force 34's 29th Battle Squadron]
Steven Laufer [Rear Admiral and was in command of Task Force 34's 15th Battle Squadron]
Ilona Atwater [Rear Admiral and was in command of Task Force 34's Battlecruiser Squadron 21]
Kimiyo Ishada [Commodore and was in command of Task Force 34's 42nd Light Cruiser Squadron]
James Cardogan [Commodore and was in command of Task Force 34's 17th Destroyer Flotilla]
Eloise Silvestri [Rear Admiral and was commanded Battlecruiser Squadron 15]
Albert Hodges [Captain, he served as the commanding officer of the battlecruiser HMS Victorious]
Alecto Matheson [Commodore and was in command of Task Force 34's 7th Destroyer Flotilla]
Janice Smithwell [Rear Admiral and was in command of Task Force 34's 17th Battlecruiser Squadron]
Thomas Gates "Rear Admiral, he was in command of Battle Squadron 7"
Irene Houseman "Captain, she served as the commanding officer of HMS Defender"
Bruce Newman "Captain, he served as the commanding officer of the pod-laying superdreadnought HMS Revenge"
Erica Younts "Rear Admiral in 1919 PD, she commanded Battlecruiser Squadron 12"
Isabella Matthews "Captain in 1919 PD, she commanded HMS Implacable"
Veronica Lawless "Rear Admiral, she was in command of Battle Squadron 81"
Sogo Fletcher "Rear Admiral in 1920 PD, he was in command of Task Force Sidemore's 7th Battlecruiser Squadron"
Victor Hodgkins [Captain, he served as the commanding officer of the battlecruiser HMS Dresden]
Oliver O'Donovan [Captain, he was in command of the dreadnought HMS Prince Nicholas]
Samantha Howell [Captain, she was in command of HMS Harrier]

---------------------------------

Were they in any of the books or anything else?

Shannon_Foraker wrote:Were they in any of the books or anything else?

Not that I could find <shrug>.

(There were a few others, not on this list, that were known ships from other books where the odd wiki entry was simply placing them at Sidemore during the start of the 2nd war. They might have been, but nothing in the books that I could find said anything about where they were at the time)

One of the wiki editors suggested that this all might have come from an old infodump or post from David Weber, in which case it'd merely be misattributed to HH10. But I can't recall seeing any such thing - and I've at least been through the saved infodumps quite a bit over the years. Lists of names and formations don't tend to be what's in there