Talk:Albert Ball/Archive 2

Recent changes
Hi George, you've picked a very busy time of year for this series of changes, so I haven't had time to follow them all as they've occurred, but at a quick glance now I have some concerns. Leading off, I was under the impression that as this was a collaborative effort and we've got the article to a stable form that's passed its GA and MilHist A-Class reviews, we'd be signalling here any large-scale changes and their rationales. From a pragmatic POV, the average reviewer who supported the article for MilHist A-Class is going to check the changes made since then, find there's been over 100 (!), not be able to easily follow them all, and have to start all over again when it comes to reviewing for FAC. Anyway, as far as specifics go:
 * It don't think analysis of his technique belongs in the lead -- it's too much detail there and worked better in the main body.
 * I don't think we need lose the "friendly rival" and VC award mention re. Bishop; Ball's relationship with other Allied aces came up at ACR from memory, and is relevant.

A quick check in Above the Trenches shows that Bishop never scored an aerial victory during Ball's lifetime. I don't see how there is/was any rivalry.Georgejdorner (talk) 11:24, 24 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Comments on Ball's character and methods by biographers and those who knew him have been taken from where they originally appeared and placed elsewhere. The "killer" references for instance certainly shouldn't come under "Postwar tributes", I think they worked much better where they were, along with the introductory material on his technique.
 * "Posthumous awards" is too small a subsection, and should at least be combined with "Postwar tributes"
 * The point of the awards section was not to list the awards (that's for the infobox) but to report the citations for his awards in one place at the end so they wouldn't bulk up the main body too much. If we don't have the citations for the Legion of Honour and the Aero Club Medal then they don't belong here.
 * You may have been planning to address this at the end of your editing but right now there are too many short-short paragraphs.
 * In summary, while a number of clarifications and links have certainly improved the article, the wholesale shifting of material seems misplaced effort to me, when we should be checking out Pengally's book as the latest bio (I realise you've tried that but making other changes doesn't negate the fact that FAC reviewers will likely expect us to have consulted the book) noted earlier in this talk page. Seasons greetings, cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 01:19, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
 * P.S. Please don't think I'm against being bold, we don't all need to consult over every little change. Even a lot of changes aren't difficult to follow when they only modify text within a paragraph, because the changes are easy to spot. However when edits involve changing entire paragraphs around, the before and after views are no help because the paragraph restructure hides any text alterations within the paragraph moved (it's all red). Best as far as possible to make all word or sentence changes, give people time to check over, and then move the paragraphs with no alteration to the text within. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 02:08, 26 December 2011 (UTC)


 * George, have to say I endorse Ian's remarks - I fear some of your "re-arrangements" in particlar might be a bit off. Appreciate your enthusiasm and all that, but... might be an idea to give us a while to assess your efforts. Might add that you have found mistakes here and there that really DID need correcting - including some of mine (like that orphan sentence about the A.F.B.1 having lost its "advocate" - NOT mine and I never liked it - but thought it had gone in my rewrite of the A.F.B.1 bit and didn't realise it was still "lurking").


 * I have an overall concern - and that is that this article might be straying a little too far from the "encyclopedia article" and a little far towards the "condensed biography". Not necessarily talking about overall length here, just the nature of the kind of detail we go into. Overall we need to concentrate on the incontovertible, and summarise even that, where appropriate. To get an idea of what I mean - imagine the article on the jolly Red Baron (not to mention other aces) carried to this level of detail. There have been several books written just on the last five minutes or so of Richthofen's life - in this conext we are (I think appropriately) pretty brutal in the way this is summarised in our article. To return to the point in question, the detail surrounding combat successes (note avoidance of the word "kill" in this context) is one thing where I think we do on occasion go into a little too much intricacy of detail. To bring Ian's remarks into focus - I'm sure you'd both be at me if I attacked this aspect of the article at anything like the length you have over recent days!!--Soundofmusicals (talk) 03:03, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Okay, okay. I have "downed tools" here so you guys can catch up.

My aim is to rearrange the existing materials into a chronological flow, and to build some paragraphs with some focus. Previously, the paragraphs seemed diffuse to me. Please note that I neither added nor substantially changed any material. With two exceptions (which I will cover below), any excisions I made were part of the rearrangement process; I would copy material from one spot to another, then return to delete the original. I did this bit by bit in an attempt to allow tracking of the changes, with a minimal rewrite to make stuff fit at its new location. Apparently, I failed.

Please allow me to address specific concerns:


 * I moved analysis of his combat tactics to the lede because the lede is a summation of the article, and the analysis is a key to his combat technique. I feel that having that analysis in the lede will help the reader appreciate Ball's boldness and daring. Having that analysis in the main body pretty much in advance of any of his combats seems putting equine before cart.
 * I am not aware that I excised any material concerning Bishop and the friendly rivalry. (Perhaps it went by the board in a prior draft?) If I did, it could certainly be restored, as I did not intentionally remove it.


 * A later recheck of Edit history makes me aware that I did indeed cut some material on Bishop. Mea culpa. I shall have to dig it out and restore it.Georgejdorner (talk) 11:26, 22 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Followup: A check into Above the Trenches shows that Bishop never scored an aerial victory during Ball's lifetime. The excised material thus refers to a mythical rivalry between the two.Georgejdorner (talk) 11:30, 24 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I am a great admirer of the comments about his "killer" personality; it may be the best part of the entire article. However, his character was formed by his combat history, and I feel that these comments belong after that combat history's completion. Again, critter and cart.
 * I agree that "Posthumous awards" is too short, and should be recombined with "Posthumous tributes". I also believe the reunited sections should be more appropriately renamed.
 * I agree that the Aero Club and Legion of Honor listings should be removed from the awards section–especially since the Russian St George medal isn't listed (and probably some others).
 * Working on recombining those single-sentence paragraphs was going to be today's project.
 * I can't help you with Pengally until/unless my present library system adds an inter-library loan service.
 * The victory list I supplied should be "collapsible", to clear up the tail end of the article.
 * There were a couple of items for which I was going to request help when I was done: the photo of Ball in front of the Caudron, plus a double-check of the cites at the end.
 * Excision Number 1: I realized I had stretched a bit when I originally wrote that comment about the AFB.1 losing its advocate–so I lost the comment in this draft.
 * Excision Number 2: I deleted the factoid about the French school named after Ball because I couldn't verify it. If it can be reliably verified, I would be quite happy to see it reincluded.

Yes, folks, this is a collaboration. Ian, old cobber, I tend to be overawed by your technical skills at wiki-editing, and overlook your very considerable writing talents. My apologies for that. Soundofmusicals, I value your enormous background knowledge of the era, and your willingness to take fresh contrarian views of the material, and so I also tend to overlook your very real writing skills. To you also, an apology. This last round of edits did take care to preserve, as much as possible, the writings and research of previous editors.

Let me close by remarking, that if the present rearrangement of the facts seems so radically different...what was so great about the old arrangement?

Georgejdorner (talk) 20:31, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Lead too long?
Someone put up a template that the lead on this article was far too long - indeed it did read rather like a "Reader's Digest" version of the article rather than a brief summary. I have "been bold" and pruned the lead back a bit - any "unique" information (i.e. facts mentioned in the lead that are not fully covered in the main text) that has been lost in the process really needs to be ferreted out and reinserted there - I must say that I do not believe this is the case. Arguably, the lead is STILL rather too long (compare, for instance, the Red Baron's article, and in particular its lead. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 15:20, 13 October 2012 (UTC)


 * It's just got a lot of detail that belongs in the article body, squadron numbers & so forth.TheLongTone (talk) 15:27, 13 October 2012 (UTC)


 * The point was that the article itself is very detailed - so most of what I have cut from the lead was already well covered in the text. having said that, I've just moved a paragraph that really did add (quite important) information NOT mentioned elsewhere about his method of attack on his lone patrols - into the main text. Chronologically I'm a bit doubtful that this is the right place - but I've put it with other paragraphs about his "loner" character, where I think it belongs. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 16:30, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Did Ball ride a Harley?
Maybe. Maybe not. He was not only a biker, he dealt in motorcyles, which gave him opportunity to ride a variety of bikes.

However, the photo illustration extant of Ball on a motorcycle has Pengelly saying it's a Campion, while Bowyer claims it is a Harley-Davidson. I did some comparison between the photo in question, and internet photos of both brands in question. The rear fender positioning matches Campion. The internet photo of a 1913 Harley showed it without a front fender, while both Campion and the illustration in question had identical fenders. The illustrated bike also did not seem to have chain drive a la Harley.

So, my original research leads to a conclusion I cannot include in the article. But does the brand really matter? The point is that he was a dashing pioneer with both motorcycles and aircraft.

Georgejdorner (talk) 18:26, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Red spinner on the S.E.5????
What is our exact source for this? - suddenly I "has me darts". Two undoubted facts:

1. Ball DID have a red cone de penetration fitted to at least one of his Nieuports. This was not strictly a spinner as it did not revolve with the prop (and engine) but was fixed to the (stationary) crank shaft. It was NOT off an enemy aircraft, in fact some other Nieuports had something similar fitted, and I suspect it was an official Nieuport "option", albeit one that was seldom taken up.

2. McCudden (also an RFC ace, but a totally different person from Ball, and not to be confused with him!) DID have a red spinner fitted to his S.E.5 - this WAS taken from a German two-seater he had shot down.

I have a horrible sneaking little suspectification that somehow we may be confusing these two facts and coming up with something that actually never happened... --Soundofmusicals (talk) 05:16, 16 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Excuse me, but I've been "bold" here too - the factoid in question is actually unsourced - and seems unlikely. If BOTH ball and McCudden put LVG spinners on their S.E.5s than I think this (the very fact that the two of them did the same rather eccentric thing) would have attracted some remarks in the sources? --Soundofmusicals (talk) 07:11, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Notice you've made the excision; I just finished checking Bowyer, to whom both mentions are cited, and I didn't notice anything about one on his S.E.5, whereas he talks extensively about the Nieuport. So I think you've made the right call based on that at least. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 07:15, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Attitude to S.E.5
Hi SoM, to avoid us tweaking and re-tweaking, which might be (incorrectly) seen by outsiders as an edit war, I thought I'd just discuss here. Your recent edit is fine by me except for "hardly surprising", which I expect will be interpreted by reviewers as editorialising, even if supported by the source. Not having Pengelly at hand I can't necessarily suggest another way of putting it that's both accurate and dispassionate, so let's work it out here and then one of us can make the final edit (remembering George may also have an opinion). If Pengelly has made his own observation that it was "hardly surprising" or words to that effect, we could perhaps even quote him. Similarly, if he's reporting a general impression among Ball scholars or aviation writers, we could attribute it to that. In fact if you have a quote from a reliable source saying straight out that Ball was "pig-headed" about the plane in some ways (but justified in others) then I'd be happy to discuss quoting/attributing that too. He is such an admirable bloke in the main that I have no issue whatsoever pointing out that he was blinkered in some ways, as long as it's based on reliable sources and expressed in neutral (i.e. FAC-proof) language, or that if we use more opinionated wording then we quote and/or clearly attribute. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 03:15, 16 October 2013 (UTC)


 * One last attempt at something that avoids (as it should of course) any hint of OR or "editorialising". Hope this will let you and George get on with more important stuff rather than agonise too much about exact wording. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 04:52, 16 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Okay, fortune favours the bold, I'm perfectly happy with your new improved version! Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 06:29, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi SoM, don't know if you had more to do after this last edit but you eliminated a section heading... I'd really rather keep this article's structure intact while the FAC is going on -- stability is part of the FA criteria and with two reviewers offering their support in the previous version, unless something is outright wrong we should keep alterations to the minimum. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 03:16, 18 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks Ian - don't know quite what happened with the section heading - that certainly wasn't intentional! The para breaks I did were based on subject (like I was taught in grade 4 English composition) rather than length - but certainly not going to debate you on this, especially at this stage of the game. There actually seems to be a lot of snippets of information inserted at random in various places in the article... NOT going to go through it line by line, (especially at this stage) but it may be productive for someone to. Paragraphs that don't have a clear, single subject or theme can make writing (especially an encyclopedia article) very hard to follow. One thing I am a little concerned about are the references - some are "template-type" some plain - a few duplicate references (i.e. references to the same page of the same source) are properly consolidated, some not. Makes adding new refs a real pain. Bzuk did a nice job standardising and consolidating the refs. to my Fokker scourge rewrite back in March this year - might we ask him to have a look at this one? really makes a big difference. If the refs all make sense, are are all in the same format. Point taken about in being a bit late for changes - will lay off altogether now, at least until we have a definite verdict. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 12:37, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
 * No prob -- I liked the additional info you added, by the way. Re. the refs, yes I noticed there was some variation there and was planning to go through them myself to standardise. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 16:09, 18 October 2013 (UTC)