Talk:General officer

Moved from my tp

Hi, you reverted my edit a couple times at General officer: "NATO general officer ranks are OF-6 – OF-10." - with an explanation of "already noted with reference in lead". However, only OF-9 ("general") is mentioned (later) in the lead section and its reference is only a note saying "since 1978" with no citation. Can you please have another look? Thanks, Facts707 (talk) 04:39, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Discussion regarding articles should be posted on the article talk page. That said, what you had added was already noted later in the lead, with a link to more info. Currently, general (full, or 4 star) is OF-9 and is the highest rank currently used. OF-10 is a special grade that is not in use. In the annex to this NATO style guide, OF-10 isn't even listed as an officer grade, but as a "National Title". There have been issues with some of your edits, if you're looking to make changes, I would suggest posting them to the talk page first, to get some feedback. (jmho) - wolf 16:03, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

As has been repeatedly discussed in the archives, even if this is parked at "general officer" instead of "general" where this article belongs, general/general officer has a much broader meaning than we are handling here and we are simply being precious pretending than Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, and the Byzantines and Mongols didn't have "real" generals because they predated the 30 Years' War and someone wants to show off they were awake and taking notes in BOLC. The very first line of Gaius Marius says he was a general, not an ancient-general-officer-lite-pseudo-equivalent. Ditto Scipio Africanus. Ditto Hasrubal. Ditto Sun Tzu. Ditto Guan Yu. Ditto all of Qin Shihuang's Mengs. Ditto Paranjothi. Ditto Subutai. It's in the second line of Maurice, but same idea.

All of those are completely correct English usages of the term, a use spread across thousands of high-profile articles. Every single one of them should be able to link that word and have the page at the other end cover the topic, not claim that it was impossible to be a "real" general before 1640 in Western Europe. At bare minimum, there should be a history section discussing the chief commanders of well organized premodern militaries whatever you want to call them, highlighting some of the differences in qualification, appointment, and responsibilities vs. their modern counterparts.

There doubtless has been such a section in the past and I don't want to get in a tug-of-war over this. We should just continue establishing a strong concensus that the article needs it so we can spank the people who think they're being helpful to readers by blanking necessary context and content. — LlywelynII 13:45, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

Interesting points. If you don't get a response in the next day or so, consider posting a notice at WT:MILHIST pointing to this thread, to hopefully get more attention. (I'm not sure there is a lot of traffic on this page). -jmho - wolf 06:29, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

I have gone through the page history, and as far as I can see, there hasn't been anything related to this. Most likely, because there isn't any broader meaning according to any WP:RS that I can find. The usage of general on all the listed pages is a clear case of anachronism, as it is much easier to understand for the average reader, rather than the original. What would be more appropriate, would be to change general in all those instances with a broader term, such as military commander. Skjoldbro (talk) 21:16, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Not remotely. Thanks for your research but we use WP:COMMON WP:ENGLISHNAMEs. The common English name of the military commander of a significant army or group of armies is 'general' and its specific use as a particular rank or set of ranks in the current US military is not the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and needs to be forked if it can't be made compatible with the more general use.

Beyond which, not to be accusatory or judgmental in any way, but the page was very much established with the general and common usage I'm talking about and not anything specific to the 30 Years' War or present-day Anglo-American ranks. — LlywelynII 12:05, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

@LlywelynII Good points. I am surprised both at this article's name and pitful quality. For now, at least let's move it. See RM below. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:50, 25 December 2025 (UTC)