Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/John Babcock


 * The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page.  No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Closed / withdrawn by nominator -- Ian Rose (talk) 09:40, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

John Babcock

 * Nominator(s): Canadian   Paul  03:52, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I previously nominated this article here, over a year ago, for A-Class status, and it failed because of a lack of reviews, not for any particular content reason. I am renominating now because I still feel that my original reason for nomination applies: it has been certified as a good article for some time now and, now that he has died, I feel that all the resources have now surfaced for this article to meet the criteria. As Canada's final surviving veteran of World War I, he was not only an important historical figure for the country, but one of the final links to one of the largest military conflicts in human history. Canadian  Paul  03:52, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Comments. As always, feel free to revert my copyediting. Please check the edit summaries. - Dank (push to talk) 21:18, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Always happy to see Canadian English articles at A-class.
 * This may or may not be relevant, but the article for Frank Buckles (the last American WWI vet to die) survived A-class and then went up in flames at FAC. In the post-mortem, we decided that it was probably too early to try to get the article through FAC, because most of the sources were recent and overly positive in tone.  The first section, Early life, reminds me of some of the problems pointed out in the Buckles FAC.  I'm not sure what the standards are on this at A-class; I'd like to hear other opinions. - Dank (push to talk) 21:18, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I haven't read this article yet, but I think articles on subjects who were not notable for most of their lives and then suddenly became notable for something they did 90 years ago have inherent problems that there's not an awful lot editors can do about. It means that they might do well at fora like this, but not at FAC. HJ Mitchell  &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?   23:48, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Now Opposing, in part per HJ and Nick: those sources can't support an A-class bio article, but if someday a high-quality biography is published that you could use as a source, I'd be willing to take another look.
 * Also, you haven't taken action on or asked about any of the great advice you got from Nikki from last year's FAC. Understood that new nominators often won't know who to trust, or even know what they're being asked to do, but skimming that FAC and this article, I agree with everything Nikki said (as usual).  We don't have the reviewer resources available to do things twice; please either take her advice (and everything so far on this page looks good, too), or, if it doesn't seem right or you don't know what she's asking for, ask about it here before this A-class review closes. - Dank (push to talk) 13:29, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
 * In my defense, my FAC was closed before I even had a chance to read, let alone work on, any of those points, so I apologize if I had forgotten about them. Canadian   Paul  15:39, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Not a problem. - Dank (push to talk) 15:50, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Comments
 * There seems to be a formatting problem with the signature image
 * Need page numbers for newspapers without weblinks
 * FN 17 appears to be a web source, but no URL is provided
 * Some phrasings seem a bit colloquial - "wrestled freight", "pleasures of beer", etc
 * WP:OVERLINK - don't link very common terms, and don't link the same term multiple times - for example, Monarchy of Canada. Also, don't link terms in See also linked in article text. Nikkimaria (talk) 21:48, 13 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the comments! I've fixed the signature, but I want to go over the rest more carefully, so I will take care of them tomorrow. FNs 5,7, and 17 were all once web sources, but 5 and 17 have disappeared. I tried to search for 5 in the Toronto Star archives, but I couldn't find it, nor did a web search help, and 17 seems to have been permanently archived. I'll try a few more search tips and do what I can with WP:LINKROT. Canadian   Paul  05:56, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Let me know if you need help - I've got access to a few research databases that archive Canadian newspapers. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:08, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
 * If you could find anything on the Toronto Star one, that would be much appreciated... I'm not sure why it doesn't pop up in the archives... as for the other one, I'm sure that I could find another source to provide the same information, so I'll take care of that tomorrow. I've gone through and hopefully fixed all the linking issues, so I will go in and tidy up the colloquial phrasings tomorrow as well... my eyelids are drooping at the moment... Canadian   Paul  05:52, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Haven't been able to find it. To confirm: is it the Star, as you say here, or the Sun, as the article says? Nikkimaria (talk) 20:05, 17 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Oppose While a lot of work has clearly gone into this article, I think that it falls short of A class. A problem might be that it's still too early to write the article - a book or detailed magazine article on Babcock's life would help a lot as newspaper articles about veterans tend to be of limited use given that they're often reliant on the memories of very old people. My specific comments are:
 * The chronology of Babcock's life jumps around a lot for no clear reason - this makes the article quite frustrating to read. For instance, the 'early life' section suddenly jumps forward to the 1920s, and the first para of the 'After the First World War' section jumps repeatedly.
 * The details of Babcock's military experiences are vague. Some of the language is also highly unclear (for instance "he was stopped by the company commander." - a 'company' is one of the basic units of an army, and the Canadian Army would have had hundreds of them).
 * "Soldiers holding acting ranks in the Canadian forces receive the salary and allowances of the rank, but can be reverted to a previous rank at any time due to their lack of the necessary training or experience to hold that position permanently.[11] In Canada during wartime, individuals could be promoted to acting ranks in order to meet service requirements." - I'm not sure what the purpose of these sentences are. I don't think that this article needs to explain how the military rank structure works as we have dedicated articles on this topic.
 * "He received a Canadian Army pension that totaled $750 shortly after the conflict" - was this a one-off lump sum, or did he receive a regular pension?
 * "After the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 he attempted to sign up for active duty with the army's flying service (the United States Air Force was not formed until 1947), but was turned down for being too old.[7] He therefore spent World War II in the United States Army" sounds rather odd given that the US Army deployed millions of men overseas. The United States Army Air Forces is well known, and should be named rather than be called the 'army's flying service'.
 * What's the relevance of his grandson serving in Iraq? Babcock only spent a few years in the military (which he didn't regard as being particularly notable service) and this was common for Canadian and American men of his generation. Nick-D (talk) 08:09, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm choosing to withdraw my nomination. I think that a common idea is that his fame is too over-balanced to late in life to write an A Class article, so I'll agree with that and say that it's probably not worth keeping this nomination open. So nothing personal and no hard feelings - hopefully a book will come out some time in the future (but probably not). Cheers, Canadian   Paul  15:39, 17 September 2011 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.