Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Tim Cross/archive 1


 * 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.


 * Not promoted - no consensus for promotion after being open for 28 days -MBK004 02:31, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Tim Cross

 * Nominator(s): HJ Mitchell  |  Penny for your thoughts?

I am nominating this article for A-Class review. It's the first time I've written an article of this quality from scratch and it made GA without any difficulty so I'm hoping I can take it further. All feedback and any suggestions for improving the article are most welcome. HJ Mitchell |  Penny for your thoughts?   11:04, 9 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Comments
 * No problems reported with dab links or alt text. Two external links are reported as suspicious, please check and advise.
 * Its a good article, but it seems a little thin on the details. Could anything more be said about place of birth, parents, family (mother/father and back up the line and wife children and on down the line), service, combat action, awards, education, masters thesis, or anything else of this nature? As it stands now the article should clear A-class, but details for the article are always apreciated; as the saying goes, the more the merrier.
 * Also, Congrats on your article being single out for assessment chart honors :) TomStar81 (Talk) 07:00, 10 March 2010 (UTC)


 * There's unlikely to be anything more available on his CBE, citations are not routinely published, and only the recommendations for awards prior to 1990 have presently been released to the public (info here). David Underdown (talk) 12:03, 10 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your time. I've managed to find a little more information though, obviously, there's not much information on his career until he gets further up the ranks and he doesn't appear to have seen any combat action (besides being GOC in Iraq). As for the external links, Checklinks highlights two links but both work perfectly- that happens quite often with links to several news sites, including the BBC. HJ Mitchell  |  Penny for your thoughts?   12:38, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
 * You've got a dead external link that needs to be dealt with before I can support. TomStar81 (Talk) 22:41, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Which? I've just run the link checker above and get a few things labelled as redriects on the BBC website (which I understand is a quirk of the way the BBC website works), but nothing labelled as completely dead.  David Underdown (talk) 11:47, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
 * That's the same conclusion I reached. Excluding the perfect links, I get 3 "redirects" but, as David says, it's a quirk of the way news websites work. HJ Mitchell  |  Penny for your thoughts?   15:34, 18 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Quick comment - something's wrong with the lead image proposrtion-wise... is it stretched one way? — Ed   (talk  •  majestic titan)  19:38, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what's wrong with it- it's how it appeared originally and I'm no good with fiddling with images. Any help would be appreciated. HJ Mitchell  |  Penny for your thoughts?   19:42, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Did the original creator stretch it somehow? Either way, is there a better free image of him anywhere? — Ed   (talk  •  majestic titan)  20:04, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I think it's just the way the picture was taken and no, I'm afraid there isn't. That was the only image of him I managed to find and I spent 3 weeks begging the author to release it under a free licence. HJ Mitchell  |  Penny for your thoughts?   20:21, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Alright then, no problem. :-) — Ed   (talk  •  majestic titan)  02:53, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Support - I don't see anything jumpin out. There are a couple references in the lede, which I seem to remember is typically frowned upon but other than that nothing major. --Kumioko (talk) 03:39, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Comments: A couple of comments from me. Not much wrong with this article, really:
 * in the High command section please check this sentence "at the same time, he commanded the Combat". It begins with a lower case letter;
 * the emdashes in Early and personal life should be unspaced per WP:DASH (each of them have one space that should be removed);
 * the endash for the service years in the infobox should be unspaced;
 * I'm not sure if this has been explained or not, but is there any information on where he was born and who his parents were? — AustralianRupert (talk) 04:41, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I've fixed the format issues (I'm not used to em/endashes). I have spent considerable amounts of time trawling through Google and Google news but I'm afriad I've been unable to find any information on his parents/place of birth etc. Thank you very much for your time. HJ Mitchell  |  Penny for your thoughts?   13:22, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
 * No worries, if its not available then that's fine. — AustralianRupert (talk) 04:44, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you again for your time. HJ Mitchell  |  Penny for your thoughts?   04:47, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Support: all my comments have been addressed. Cheers. — AustralianRupert (talk) 04:44, 21 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Oppose per criterion A2 (comprehensiveness). Sorry to be the fly in the ointment, but I think at A-Class a biographical article should be as informative about its subject's views and opinions as about their curriculum vitae. I came away from the article feeling as though I knew what positions Tim Cross had held, but I barely knew the man himself. Given his key involvement in some of the most controversial military operations over recent decades I think this is a significant issue. Fortunately I don't think it's a difficult thing to address; there appear to be a number of good online sources that discuss his serious criticism of Donald Rumsfeld's policy for the Iraq War, his religious beliefs in relation to military service and his thoughts about humanitarian work in Kosovo. I'm sure more can be uncovered. I hope this isn't too discouraging - you've done a really excellent job on your first scratch-built article so far, but I don't think it's quite ready for A-Class yet. EyeSerene talk 11:24, 25 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Support. Good job writing this. Rin tin tin 1996 (talk) 21:49, 25 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Oppose. For now. I agree with Eve, above, re comprehensiveness and re the quality of the article so far.  Cross's notability is based primarily upon his service in Iraq, and the article does not cover this, at least not in the detail.  It moves from this sentence: "On 9 October 2004, he was appointed General Officer Commanding Theatre Troops, Iraq; commander of all British Army forces in the Iraq War" (which has some obvious prose flaws ) to his retirement in 2007.  What happened in between?  What happened in his tenure as commander of the British force in Iraq?  What are the specifics of his critique of the operating plan?  We need to find someone who knows pictures who can fix that picture of him.  Auntieruth55 (talk) 21:12, 28 March 2010 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. 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.