Talk:Pat Quinlan (Irish Army officer)

Overlap

Hi. I have attempted to improve some of the possible OVERLAP, CLOP, CFORK and related issues that could have been considered an issue in what is (effectively) a "split article". This has involved removing some of the copy and pasted content (from the original) which wasn't really related to the subject here. And some rewords accordingly. This has involved a reduction in CLOP/overlap rating - from a rating in excess of 94% to one closer to 88%. While, ultimately, the community may want to consider about any remaining overlap, this is (hopefully) something of an improvement. In the short term. Happy to discuss any further improvements or proposals. In medium/longer-term term. This may include, perhaps further summarisation in the "recognition" or "siege" sections. Given that these are largely already covered elsewhere. Guliolopez (talk) 21:15, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

• 1) Thanks, Guliolopez.
• 2) I'm fine with reducing overlap as far as possible, but I'm not quite sure what the best approach actually is.

• 2b) For a start, per WP:BIAS and per WP:UNDUE (and perhaps unavoidably so, given the nature of Wikipedia), I feel there's arguably far too much 'Irish' stuff in the Siege article, especially the Aftermath section, which is almost all about consequences in Ireland 40 or more years later, and says nothing about consequences in Katanga at the time, despite this being an article about a siege that killed large numbers of Katangans, a few non-Irish non-Katangans in the UN relief effort, and no Irish, and which also seems to have played a large part in the failure of Operation Morthor and the consequent reported damage to the UN's reputation, as well as the consequent temporary prolonging of the existence of an independent Katanga (incidentally one of the reasons why I put a CN beside the word Pyrrhic in the infobox) and a disunited Congo, none of which gets any mention in the Aftermath section.
• 2c) Probably the correct procedure is to split the Aftermath section into Ireland and Rest Of The World (or Ireland, Katanga, UN, etc) , perhaps hiving off the Ireland bit into a new linked article, or perhaps not.

• 2c2) Alternatively, given the lack of any current info about the Aftermath for Katanga, UN, etc, we need not split the Aftermath section, but we could move most of it into a separate Irish campaign article, linked from the Jadotville article by a See Also link, such as:

See also: Irish Post-Jadotville rehabilitation campaign

• 3) My original main concern was that I thought there ought to be an article about Quinlan (if only because I and others in Ireland might like to know something about this alleged and perhaps actual 'hero' we have recently discovered) and there wasn't, so the quickest way to create it necessarily involved a bit of overlap, to be fixed later if necessary per WP:WORKINPROGRESS, with the fixing perhaps largely done by others per WP:NOTCOMPULSORY (like you, I'm semi-retired, and anxious not to waste too much of my time on Wikipedia).

• 3b) I am a bit concerned about WP:BLP1E (mentioned by you in an earlier edit description) as the possible cause of there being no article on him before now, even though he is clearly notable for two related but basically separate items, a battle in Africa 56 years ago and a campaign largely about his reputation in Ireland decades later (incidentally the L (for Living) in BLP1E doesn't apply to him either, though I don't know how relevant that is).
• 3c) I note that in some sense Jadotville has elements of being Ireland's Isandhlwana and Rorke's Drift and Dreyfus Affair all rolled into one, making Quinlan in some sense Ireland's Lord Chelmsford and John Chard and Alfred Dreyfus all rolled into one, all of whom have their own Bio articles, as has Rorke's Drift second-in-command Gonville Bromhead, and quite rightly so in my view (and per WP:IAR if necessary), even though of the 4 only Chelmsford has any real claim to notability for more than one event.
• 3d) As for having a separate Irish campaign article, I'm not too sure, but I note that the not dissimilar UK campaign to pardon those shot in World War One has in a sense got 3 separate articles (Shot at Dawn Memorial, Pardon for Soldiers of the Great War Act 2000, List of books on military executions in World War I) while our somewhat similar campaign (both being partly about shaming people for alleged cowardice) has only got part of an article, and is in a location that is highly questionable per both WP:BIAS and WP:UNDUE.
• 3e) However my main concern is that some Afd doesn't get rid of this Quinlan article per BLP1E (and to some extent my reply here is partly to make a case against that).

• 4) But beyond that how people (perhaps including me, but more likely mostly meaning others) go about reducing the overlap seems largely a matter for them.

• 4b) But one suggestion that I do have is that the Battle section in the Siege of Jadotville article could be split to create a separate Surrender and repatriation section (that is after all largely or entirely not part of the battle) to which the Quinlan article could then link as a Main with just a one sentence summary (and citations) left in the Quinlan Article.
• 4c) The same could of course also be done with the Aftermath section, especially if that were split into Rest of the World (or Katanga, UN, etc) and Ireland sections, though I've already said that the Ireland section might be better in an article in its own right per WP:BIAS and WP:UNDUE.

• 4c2) Especially in this case one might alternatively keep everything that mentions Quinlan in the Quinlan article, and link to the other article as a See Also instead of as a Main, though doing so would presumably somewhat increase the amount of Overlap.

• 5) Regards, Tlhslobus (talk) 12:39, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Hiya Tlhslobus. Thanks for the prompt and comprehensive response. While I won't attempt to address every point, I will pick-up on a few:

1. AfD-risk. Absolutely. I totally agree. Hence my attempt to reduce the risk of an argument on WP:CFORK or WP:OVERLAP grounds. While I think these are now defused, and WP:ANYBIO well established, to further reduce the risk of a delete/merge argument (on WP:BIO1E grounds), we could perhaps expand the "non-Jadotville" content a little. In the Quinlan article of course. In this vein, if you have any more information (perhaps from the books that you listed in the "further reading" section), that might be useful to add. Otherwise I might take a look myself.
2. Irish-POV. Certainly. I do not disagree at all. There is an "Irish-centric" perspective on the battle and its aftermath. In the Siege article of course. While this is perhaps somewhat understandable (given that the bulk of non-fiction and fiction works were framed from the Irish perspective, and hence the source materials/references/etc skew to that perspective), it doesn't help from a WP:WORLDVIEW stand-point. If there are any (non-Irish) sources you are aware of, covering the Siege and its aftermath, I'll be happy to help address any UNDUE/BALANCE issues in the Siege article. I might take a look anyway. (Power's book does have some detail on events were perceived elsewhere. Like in Belgium. Or the UK. For example. While hardly a global or local view, it would be something).
3. Split 'campaign for recognition' to a 3rd article. Understood. While I understand the argument, in honesty I don't think this is the way to go. As above, if we can cover the aftermath for both protagonists ("Aftermath for Irish/UN", "Aftermath for Katangese/Congolese"), then there shouldn't be a need for further split. I don't think the events here are sufficiently involved to warrant significant splits and multiple sub-articles. (Not at least as each sub-article, as we found with the Quinlan article, would need to overlap quite a bit with the "main" article. To meet the requirements for reader context).

Cheers. Guliolopez (talk) 14:01, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

• 1) Sorry, Guliolopez, I'm not aware of any further info myself.
• 2) The books listed are basically the books from the Jadotville article, all of which necessarily contain further snippets about Quinlan (many of them irrelevant to the Jadotville article, but relevant to the Quinlan article), with the possible exception of the Katangese Gendarmerie book, which should perhaps be deleted except that it may (or may not) contain a useful Katangese view of Quinlan, either before and during the battle, or as a ceasefire negotiator, or as their highest-ranking UN prisoner afterwards.
• 3) I seem to have lost my copy of the only book I've read (decades ago) about Katanga, Conor Cruise O'Brien's inevitably biased but often informative To Katanga and back, though from what I remember of it he had nothing about Quinlan, but did say that the surrender caused some sort of alarmed reaction from Minister for External Affairs Frank Aiken (who may or may not have flown to the Congo as a result - I can't quite remember), and led to something resembling isolationism surfacing in some quarters in Ireland.

• 3b) That may or may not be appropriate for the Jadotville article, especially if an alternative break-up of Aftermath is into short-term consequences and long-term consequences.
• 3c) I don't know whether or not then as now nobody in Ireland bothered to ask what were supposedly anti-colonial white Irish troops doing killing Black Africans in their own country, but I'm now possibly getting a bit too close to WP:NOTFORUM. On the other hand I suspect that question may have been asked by some isolationists then, and the contrast with now might be worth mentioning in Aftermath if it's found in some reliable source. The question may also have been asked at the time by non-Irish sources. Of course none of that is the fault of Quinlan and his men, as distinct from people higher up.

• 4) But googling Pat Quinlan Jadotville gives over 50,000 results, and google books gives over 1400 book results for the same parameters, many with preview facilities. Googling without Jadotville may also give some info about him unrelated to Jadotville, but is perhaps far more likely to just give the wrong Pat Quinlan (while articles and books about other aspects of his life will presumably usually also briefly mention Jadotville). But presumably you are well aware of most of this yourself already.
• 5) And presumably you are also well aware that googling Jadotville without Pat Quinlan is probably part of the way to get non-Irish sources about Jadotvile, though I'm not quite sure how one excludes most or all of the Irish ones. The wider Wikipedia article on the UN operation in the Congo may also have some relevant stuff, though I note that Operation Morthor, which is a section of that article, seems to be completely or almost completely unreferenced, so it may not necessarily be all that helpful.
• 6) Cheers. Tlhslobus (talk) 15:17, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

At least one bit of personal info can be found here, where it says he was a pipe-smoker (and that's just the first place I've looked, so there may be quite a lot more out there).Tlhslobus (talk) 15:42, 31 October 2017 (UTC)