Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Gordon Steege/archive1

Gordon Steege

 * Nominator(s): Ian Rose (talk) 15:45, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Part 3 of a random/unplanned trilogy following on from Alan Rawlinson and Wilf Arthur: veteran of No. 3 Squadron RAAF in the Middle East theatre of World War II; fighter ace with precisely 8 confirmed victories; rose to command wings in the Pacific; left the air force with the rank of group captain after the war. Are you sensing a pattern here...? Thereafter things diverged: unlike Rawlinson who joined the RAF and Arthur who never resumed a military life, Steege re-joined the RAAF during the Korean War, where he didn't take long to ruffle a few feathers... Oh, one other thing all three have in common -- they've died too recently to qualify for an Australian Dictionary of Biography entry as yet (yes, I've thrown my hat in the ring)... Thanks in advance for your comments! Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 15:45, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Support from Gog the Mild
I'll get round to this. (That was a most peculiar nomination.) Gog the Mild (talk) 15:53, 4 April 2023 (UTC)


 * "After leaving school". Is it known when this was?
 * Sources don't state -- working backwards from his joining the RAAF in mid-1937 I guess we could assume he left school in 1933 but that's just me...
 * "he worked for three years at the Perpetual Trustee Company." Is it known what he did there?
 * Not till now but your dogged persistence (or insistence?!) has led me to find a source -- done.
 * Link strafing?
 * Done.
 * What does "forcing down" mean?
 * Umbrella term for brevity: three were shot down and two were damaged badly enough they had to crash land.
 * "as the Afrika Korps and a Luftwaffe contingent". Perhaps reverse these? As "a Luftwaffe contingent under General Erwin Rommel" may cause confusion. Or 'as the Afrika Korps under General Erwin Rommel, supported by a Luftwaffe contingent ...' or similar?
 * Let me just double-check the way the sources put it before replying/altering..
 * Wiktionary considers Stuka - upper-case S - to be an English word. If you don't, it should be in a lang template, not just in italics.
 * Mea culpa, you mentioned that at the last one -- done.
 * What's "a fighter sector course"?
 * "fighter sector training course" do it for ya?!
 * "to take charge of No. 73 Wing. The wing's combat units consisted of two P-40 Kittyhawk squadrons and a Supermarine Spitfire squadron." ... "Steege led No. 73 Wing on garrison duty at Los Negros, commencing in March 1944. The wing's combat squadrons—Nos. 76 (Kittyhawks), 77 (Kittyhawks) and 79 (Spitfires)". Seems a little repetitive for consecutive paragraphs.
 * I get you and wasn't entirely happy with it myself. My preference would've been to put the squadron numbers and their aircraft types in the first para and just the squadron numbers in the second, but it's a bit difficult to reconcile exactly which squadrons were there at the start. It was definitely 76 (Kittys) and 79 (Spits) but the third could've been either 77 or 78 (both Kittys) as a bit of unplanned swapping around occurred at the time. I'll have another read and see if I can make it any better...
 * "Steege was appointed the RAAF's director of operations in February. In December 1946 ..." → 'Steege was appointed the RAAF's director of operations in February 1946. In December ...'
 * Actually I don't think we even need 1946 for February as we mention the year shortly before so removed entirely.
 * "Steege had posted in to Japan in May". Possibly just 'to', or 'into'? And why "had" rather than 'was'?
 * The "had" because we'd backtracked a few months in the timeline, but see what you think of my rejig...
 * I don't understand why you're not sticking to chronological order, but whatever; it works well enough for a time-hopping pargraph.

Gog the Mild (talk) 13:28, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
 * "squadron was relegated". Seems PoV, I assume it is solidly sourced?
 * Well both refs are by official historians (though the works themselves are not official histories) and I think "relegated" reflects what they say about an ostensibly air-to-air combat squadron being used in purely defensive tasks. Apparently there was even talk of evicting the squadron from Kimpo because the Americans only wanted units there that were engaged in offensive roles.
 * Tks Gog! Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 17:18, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I am going to leave you with the "a Luftwaffe contingent under General Erwin Rommel" thought and support. Gog the Mild (talk) 18:50, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Tks Gog, reworded that along one of the lines you suggested, and re-jigged/clarified the 73 Wing fighter squadron situation. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 19:55, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Image review
Despite my consistent insistence that I am unversed in the art of Wikipedia images, in this particular case, I believe the article passes the image review. If someone could verify that for me, I would greatly appreciate it, but I do believe that everything appears to be in order. Unlimitedlead (talk) 20:50, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Unlimitedlead, it all looks good to me too. Gog the Mild (talk) 22:02, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Tks guys! Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 08:34, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

SC
Marker for now. - SchroCat (talk) 13:15, 5 April 2023 (UTC) More to come. - SchroCat (talk) 16:20, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Middle East
 * "the London Gazette should really be "the London Gazette
 * Done.
 * "Four days later, No. 3 Squadron re-located to Sidi Haneish, Egypt, having retreated 500 miles (800 km) and operated from nine airfields in ten days." Someone is going to refer to the consistency part of WP:NUMBERS, so it may as well be me...
 * Done (good 'ole MOS)... ;-)
 * Tks for those so far Schro... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 18:06, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Just four more from the rest: Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 12:03, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Korean War
 * "Tait had a daughter": Maybe "Joan" here, as the last Tait mentioned was Frank
 * "Steege himself flew few missions" ->"Steege flew few missions"?
 * "Convair 440 Metropolitains": sp? Wasn't it "Metropolitan"?
 * Tks, all done.
 * Sources
 * It's not part of FAC and you are under no compunction to do anything, but if you add  to your sources, then those of us with a script installed won't see an error message. No probs if you don't though!
 * Not a prob, done.
 * Tks again Schro! Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 12:42, 6 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Support Nice work, as always! Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 12:50, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Appreciated! Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 08:41, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Comments from Z1720
Non-expert prose review.

Those are my thoughts. I can support. Z1720 (talk) 21:44, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
 * No concerns with the prose.
 * Spot-checked the lede and infobox and the information is cited in the article.
 * Suggest archiving the refs
 * Heh, I find the archiving bot a bit all-or-nothing but you're right, on balance it's a good idea, especially as the beloved Australian government sites make a habit of rejigging their systems every few years -- will do.
 * Suggest wikilinking ref 58 to The Canberra Times
 * Nice spotting, I think I had an earlier ref to that paper where I linked but then replaced it with another -- will do.
 * Tks very much for stopping by, Z1720! Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 08:41, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Source review
I am fairly clueless about military history, especially Australian. But this FAC has gone a bit too long without movement, so I'll try my hand at a source review. Going through the formatting of the references section first. Will sleep now and continue tomorrow. —Kusma (talk) 22:21, 6 May 2023 (UTC) That's all. —Kusma (talk) 12:32, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Chisholm: could link Who's Who in Australia, reliability probably OK
 * Done.
 * Coulthard-Clark: PDF link is convenient, but are you sure you're not linking to a copyvio? Same for Garrisson and Stephens (x2)
 * The original links archived by the Wayback Machine are from the RAAF's Air Power Development Centre (or Air and Space Power Centre as it is now); they've always been freely available.
 * Coulthard-Clark at least is copyrighted by the RAAF, so they probably have permission to distribute the book. I don't know whether the fact that they no longer distribute the book on their website should tell us anything, but I'll leave this be.
 * A mix of ISBN10 and ISBN13, although only Hurst really needs to be ISBN13 (others probably have an ISBN10).
 * My aim is always to use the ISBN format as pertains to the edition I've used in the article, I've double-checked I'm following that rule.
 * Steege ref would look nicer (IMHO) with interviewer-last and interviewer-first instead of others. Suggest to link to AWM website instead of the Amazon AWS direct link to the PDF as there is little to no bibliographic information (and no audio files) on Amazon AWS. Do the "parts" of the audio given at the AWM website just correspond to the cassette sides in order?
 * Yes, the reason I went for the "other" parameter instead of the "interviewer" parameter is that when you use the latter you get "Interviewed by" right after "(Interview)", which looks superfluous. As to the link, I debated that myself but felt the PDF was more useful given any quote I use can be searched for directly and the "parts" I cite (e.g. "Cassette 1/Side A") are labelled as such in the transcript.
 * The PDF is linked directly from the AWM website. The direct Amazon AWS link just looks like a big flashing "unreliable source" sign. What you could do is cite the interview to the AWM website (which has all the detail one would like) and add a separate link (maybe called "transcript") after the citation template. You can't do that using the template because it doesn't have a transcript-url parameter, unlike Cite AV media. Don't ask me why, ask WT:CS1.
 * Okay I've linked to the top-level AWM page; the PDF transcripts can be found there anyway. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 13:04, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Location information sometimes includes Australian state/territory and sometimes doesn't (Melbourne and Canberra).
 * For capital cites (including variations like North Sydney and South Melbourne) or well-known locations like Oxford I omit the state.
 * OK.
 * "Grub Street" looked odd, but I checked that this is indeed the name of the publisher.
 * Reliability issues: the Llewellyn interview shouldn't be used in wikivoice, but as far as I can see, it is either attributed in-text or augmented with an additional source; is this correct?
 * Yes, I'm using for quotes or paraphrased recollections labelled as such, or prosaic information augmented by a third-party source.
 * The Harasser (ref 69) is essentially a newsletter; is there any better bibliographic information that would make it easier/possible to find? I couldn't find it in catalogue of the National Library of Australia, so I am not convinced this is a great source.
 * I agree with you but unfortunately I can find no other source mentioning him becoming patron and I think it's acceptable for an organisation to speak about itself reliability-wise. If you feel strongly about it I can remove.
 * If you can't find a good way to tell future researchers how to find the newsletter in a library or archive, then this should be removed.
 * Dropped The Harasser material, and added another snippet to maintain some flesh in the sentence. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 13:04, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Formatting of references appears consistent.
 * The many PDF + archive links in the Reference section look like a distraction at first glance, but actually link to different PDFs that contain the pages in question, so they are perfectly fine.
 * Many thanks, Kusma. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 08:55, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Some replies above, mostly the interview link and the Harasser are still causing me slight concern. —Kusma (talk) 09:38, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Ack/tks. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 13:04, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Happy with the fixes, this source review is a pass. —Kusma (talk) 14:15, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

Hog Farm Talk 20:24, 14 May 2023 (UTC)