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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/George Jones (RAAF officer)

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted 22:39, 7 January 2008.

George Jones (RAAF officer) edit

I'm self-nominating this for featured article because I believe it meets the criteria. It's been through peer review and A-Class review at the Military History project and is a current A-Class article for that project. Since its promotion I've added further detail but the structure remains unchanged. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 04:43, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support This is an outstanding article which provides both a comprehensive biography of Jones and a thoughtful overview of how the RAAF was administered during WW2. The use of references and photographs are also first-rate. --Nick Dowling (talk) 07:39, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Well written and well referenced article. I do have a few queries however.
  • "The suggestion even arose that Jones' selection was a mistake, based on the government's employment of a misleading organisation chart that implied he was the RAAF's most senior officer after Bostock, when in fact five others were ranked higher." - Did the government use (or were thought to have used) a misleading chart when making their decision or did the government issue a misleading chart after the decision? That is, was the chart developed prior to or after the decision was made? (I hope that is clear).
  • "His working class origins were also deemed as contributing to his suitability to a Labor government." Was this deemed as such by any one group in particular such as other officers, the public, historians etc.?
  • The possessive of Jones; is it Jones' (as is used consistently throughout the article) or Jones's as I was once told was the preferred rendering?
  • "Along with Bostock, Jones represented the RAAF at the Japanese surrender aboard USS Missouri in September 1945" - Is it worth linking to Surrender of Japan or Japanese Instrument of Surrender?
These queries are minor and support is given regardless. -- Mattinbgn\talk 08:14, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks, Mattinbgn. Good points and hopefully the first two are a little clearer with the minor rewording I've done: 1) the government used an org chart in good faith but got the wrong message from it (as mentioned, this is a suggestion by some observers, including former CAS Richard Williams, but not conclusively proven); 2) I've used "His working class origin has been seen...", i.e. it's an historical view, not necessarily a contemporary one. The possessive I just based on my own understanding of correctness. The link was a good idea and I've used it. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 11:46, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • All looks good. With the possessive, I agree with your use and I can't see a preference in the MOS so I am happy for it to stay as is. Good luck. -- Mattinbgn\talk —Preceding comment was added at 12:01, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Would the article title "George Jones (officer)" be acceptable? Capitals in the title just look a little screwy. Thoughts appreciated :) Daniel 10:28, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • While I'm not wed to any particular form of disambiguation, "(RAAF officer)" was used because the precedent had been set with Richard Williams (RAAF officer), which had no doubt been based on a host of British entries suffixed with "(RAF officer)", as well as "(Royal Navy officer)", etc. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 11:15, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support This is a very well written article and is very informative. It thoroughly deserves feature status. Gaia Octavia Agrippa (talk) 13:57, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Well-written and appears to be comprehensive, and David Underdown has quickly addressed all of the MOS issues I noticed. Karanacs (talk) 18:42, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Minor point of order and to gie credit where due, it was ian who fixed the MOS stuff, I just added a couple of details/cites. David Underdown (talk) 10:06, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment This article is very well-written and appears to be comphrensive. I found a few WP:MOS things that should be fixed, and then I'll support.
    • The article needs the WP:Persondata template
    • Please see WP:DASH; when used to break the flow of a sentence, an mdash should be used unspaced (see last paragraph of lead for example of the issue)
    • Need a non-breaking space between a number and its qualifier or unit (120 patrols)
    • Section headings should not begin with "The"
    • Need a citation for the quote "fallen through a crack in the boards on the deck" . I assume this is covered by the citation after the following sentence, but per WP:CITE, a citation should be placed after each quotation even if that causes duplicate cites. There's a similar issue in the Later life section
    • You might want to put a wikilink for Donald Hardman in the Legacy section

Karanacs (talk) 03:57, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Thanks, Karanacs. I've made changes based on all the points you've mentioned (please check they're what you had in mind) with one qualification: I was/am aware of the general rule about not beginning section headings with an article (definite or indefinite) however I think that if headings use a name that commonly takes an article, i.e. 'the "Morotai Mutiny"' and 'the Interim Air Force', then they should be written that way (like 'The "Short" and "Long" Parliaments' in the Charles I of England article). For that matter I reckon 'the divided command' reads better and is in fact more meaningful than 'divided command' but admittedly that's a little tougher to defend as it was never a name like the others, so I've let that one go. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 12:07, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, nice comprehensive article. If only he didn't have such a common surname, I'd stand more chance of finding additional refs for his CBE and DFC. Just one point on the CBE, should that be listed under "Awards" in the infobox? Obviously he doesn't get the postnom for both that and the KBE, but they were made as separate awards. David Underdown (talk) 12:50, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks David. Another fair point. I've seen this field in the infobox used a number of different ways, and spelling out the post-nominals was simply the most common in my experience, so I do it that way for all my comparable articles. That way made sense to me because if you list every single award (or grade of award) then you'd really need to put the date of each award in and then one might ask why not put all the ranks they attained, not simply their highest, and all of their years and then you could wind up with an infobox longer the than the body of the article. Okay, I exaggerate but the short and sweet style seemed preferable. Of course one could put tables at the end of the article listing every award/year and every rank/year (some do already I think) but again I see this as tending to clutter an article. My opinions, naturally, and open to discussion. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 13:46, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well, in my ongoing tidying up of London Gazette references (prompted by a websate change which broke most existing refs), I've certainly come across several articles which do list every grade of an order, and include things which don't confer post-noms such as mentions in despatches and foreign decorations (all with dates of award). On the point of comparison with rank, I think there is a slight difference in that it is very rare to skip ranks (though with war time temporary promotion, acting ranks, brevets and so on this is perhaps arguable), whereas the degree at which you are first appointed to the military division of the Order of the British Empire is to some extent at least dependent on your military rank at the time of appointment, so if you do nothing particularly outstanding as a junior officer you can still be directly appointed to the higher grades of the order if you then do something worthy as a more senior officer, whereas being appointed MBE or OBE as a relatively junior officer, and then being appointed CBE or KBE as a more senior officer perhaps shows a more consistent record of achievement. David Underdown (talk) 14:16, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support A very nicely written article, can't see any MOS points. The writing is excellent, concise yet comprehensive and the information it contains is comprehensive as far as I can tell. So support Woody (talk) 00:32, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.
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