Read, wRite and Research. Six Techniques to Get More from the Web than Google Will Tell You matches my research style almost perfectly. Below are some of my comments:

1. Use Search Engines and Wikipedia to Find Quality Research Sources
Of course I would never cite Wikipedia or take what it says at face value, but if you are investigating a topic you are not familiar with Wikipedia comes in handy in pointing you the right direction. Google Scholar, Google Books as well as the Search Inside function at Amazon are great for finding sources too.

2. Search Blogs for Specialized Experts Who Sift Through the Web for You
Technorati is your friend. With blogs numbering in the millions these days there is bound to be someone out there filtering your sources for you. Find them, and more importantly where/who they lead you to. Podcasts can be helpful, but are difficult to skim for specific information. Go through the shownotes to find relevant podcasts and listen to them while you commute. If something good comes up make a note, go back to the shownotes for more detail and follow-up.

4. Find Statistical Data on Government Sources
The World Bank StatsCan stat.go.jp SIPRI and countless other organizations make their data available in online databases. Many include downloadable spreadsheets that you can use in your own work.

Also, when doing research you will need some good tools. Here are a few of my pics:

• use del.icio.us to track your research on the web
• OttoBib for properly formatted bibliographies. Other people I know use EndNote
• a notebook app or personal wiki to organize your research and writing. I use Scrivener.
• a GTD app for keeping track of your next actions. I use OmniFocus.
• lastly Numbers for my spreadsheets and graphs, Pages for my page layout and Keynote for presentations.

I was just checking out the wikipedia article for the “Great Game“, a phrase coined ala-”World War II” to describe a series of political and military events and which all the namesakes to this blog were contributors. In the article, I saw this sub-section:

New Great Game
Main article: New Great Game

With the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the Cold War, the United States displaced Britain as the global power, asserting its influence in the Middle East in pursuit of oil, containment of the Soviet Union, and access to other resources…

The New Great Game? That phrase has been thrown around for years to describe the Cold War, the post-Cold War 1990s, the current exploration of resources in the Middle East, but how does it warrant it’s own article? Clicking the main article I found this priceless content:

The New Great Game is a current competition between the United States, Russia, China, Iran, Turkey, India, and Pakistan to secure reliable long-term sources of petroleum and natural gas through the construction of oil pipelines in the post-Soviet nations of Central Asia. The term was coined by Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid in reference to the original Great Game between the British Empire and the Russian Empire for strategic supremacy in Central Asia in the 19th and early 20th century.

And so begins a blog post posing as a wikipedia article. After this opening it goes on for pages, breaking out a Risk-style categorization of allies and neutrals, balancing interests, and an inexplicable temporal breakdown into three “phases.”

At this point it has been edited by dozens of editors and contributors, but examining the history of the article you can see how the kernel of this nonsense was first written by a now-deleted user “RoyalDutchEmpire,” and the bulk of the current nonsense was written by another now-retired wikipedia contributor KazakhPol (most edits since have been minor and grammatical). Both these contributors noted the primary inspiration for the article as “The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia” written by Lutz Kleveman. And that’s how a random opinion becomes a complete wikipedia article.

As for the CA view on Mr. Kleveman, to quote Younghusband from 2003 before this blog was started and when discussions of this nature were limited to email:

I think Lutz is a putz with an axe to grind.

First he steals Ahmed Rashid’s idea for the title of his book, and then he goes all imperial in a region that has floundered for the past few years. There is a lot of geopolitical posturing etc in Central Asia, but it is not as significant as the original Great Game…

In my opinion Lutz is just being alarmaleftist. Washington has started “waiting” in the Caspian region for the last couple of years.

If I had more time I’d nominate this blog-style essay posing as a real article for deletion. As it happens I’ve just made a note in the discussion section.

A common misconception, arising from children’s history books, Hollywood movies and real-time strategy video games (such as the scene above from ROME: Total War) is that pre-modern battles were fought by two sides with clearly distinct uniforms and easily distinguishable colors. This was in fact very rare—with the exception of some highly professional military forces such as those of the Roman and Ottoman Empires, peasant garb was the norm for most soldiers on history’s battlefields. How, then, did soldiers distinguish friend from foe on a complex battlefield?

Uniforms were rare, and color-coded outfits that we are accustomed to seeing on screen were unusual. Sometimes soldiers would wear a marking, ribbon, armband, or even a number to distinguish them from the enemy. But even if they had armor, that didn’t make it a uniform. For example, the terracotta army discovered in the tomb of the first Emperor of Chin revelas seven styles of armour, which do not appear to have been standardised within separate units.

Language and race could sometimes make differentiating between sides easy, but not always. Mercenaries have been common throughout war in human history, from the Greeks soldiers who fought for Persia during the time of Xerxes to the French Foreign Legion that fought its colonial wars.

And what about civil wars? During the English Civil War in the 17th century between monarchists and parliamentarians, soldiers from each side would be given a “watchword” for each seige and battle. This word would be known only by those fighting on the same side. In an isolated confrontation, an opponent would be challenged with the watchword and if unable to answer, would be regarded as the enemy and treated as such. In the US Civil War, in some battles soldiers would enter the field with numbers pinned on their backs, both to distinguish them and to make arranging the body count after the war easier.

Not until the 19th century and the rise of the state and nationalism did uniforms for soldiers become common. That complication is worth keeping in mind when you watch your next epic battle scene or play a video game.

Many thanks to Marmot for what must be the awesomest wiki article ever: Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars. Happy reading!