Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Reg Saunders

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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.

Article promoted Hawkeye7 (talk) 12:12, 27 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Reg Saunders[edit]

Nominator(s): AustralianRupert (talk) and Ian Rose (talk)


This article is the result of a recent collaboration between myself and Ian. It has recently passed a GA review and I am nominating it for A-Class review because I believe it meets the criteria and would like to ultimately take it to FAC. I personally find Saunders' story to be an inspiring one; a man who rose from the ranks purely on the basis of his leadership in combat and in doing so, helping to cut through some of the barriers of race that may or may not have existed within Australian society at that time. Beyond that, in many ways (to me at least) Saunders epitomises the characteristics of a generation of Australians who, forged by the hardships of the Depression and the bush, proved their mettle in the crucible of war. I present this article for your scrutiny and hope that you too will be able to take something from the story of a remarkable, albeit imperfect, Australian. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 05:55, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • CommentsSupport
    • One dab link [1]:
    • External links all check out [2] (no action required).
    • Images lack Alt Text so you might consider adding it [3] (suggestion only - not an ACR requirement).
    • The Citation Check Tool reveals a couple of errors with reference consolidation:
      • Lennox 2005, p. 159 (Multiple references contain the same content)
      • Lennox159 (Multiple references are using the same name)
    • The images used are all PD and are appropriate to the article (no action required).
    • This sentence could probably be improved: "Employers regularly withheld payments for Aboriginal labourers at this time; Saunders refused to work unless he was paid his full entitlement, and his employer relented." Consider perhaps: "Employers regularly withheld payments for Aboriginal labourers at this time; however, Saunders refused to work unless he was paid his full entitlement, and his employer relented." Or something similar. (suggestion only)
    • "soldiery" or "soldiering"? (suggestion only)
    • "was sent to Greece to help defend against German invasion", consider instead: "was sent to Greece to help defend against a German invasion." (suggestion only)
    • "but the government would not accept Aborigines for the operation...", should it be "Aboriginals" for consistency with the rest of the article?
      • Not sure, sorry. AustralianRupert (talk) 12:06, 17 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
        • If you check the whole article I think you'll find we (and our sources/quotes) consistently use "Aborigine" as a noun and "Aboriginal" as an adjective, so according to that standard the above sentence is correct. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 13:12, 17 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
          • Grammer never was my strong suit (as the decades roll on I'm still not really sure what is though...). Anotherclown (talk) 13:20, 17 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • "Frustrated by the conduct of the war prior to Kapyong, he recorded that afterwards", would this work better as: "Frustrated by the conduct of the war prior to Kapyong, afterwards he recorded..."?
    • Is this a typo: ""I felt a sense of leadership of Aboriginal people and a desire to do something about Aboriginal situation, yes, yes"." Specifically it seems to be missing a "the" betwen about and Aboriginal". Of courses its a quote so if its correct thats ok (but it could still be edited with the addition of "[the]" or something like that. Also I wonder if "yes, yes" is really required. Might the quote be trimmed?
      • Not sure; I will leave this one up to Ian. AustralianRupert (talk) 12:06, 17 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
        • You're right about the "the", AC -- tks. Re. the "yes, yes", I thought of leaving that out myself but kind of liked the emphasis he'd given the statement -- however I'm not that fussed either way. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 13:02, 17 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Some of your short citations seem to use a format I have not seen before, specifically those with two authors. An example is "Ramsland; Mooney 2006, pp. 180–181", not sure what the MOS says to be honest but I think it may be more customary to present these as fol: "Ramsland and Mooney 2006, pp. 180–181" or "Ramsland & Mooney 2006, pp. 180–181". (suggestion only)
      • I believe that this is the result of advice from FAC. AustralianRupert (talk) 12:06, 17 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
        • Really??? I think FAC just makes this stuff up... our own templates don't even use that format! One day wiki might actually get a style and stick to it. Anotherclown (talk) 12:40, 17 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
          • Hi mate -- the point of that format is to mimic the style of the complete references at the end, which use semi-colons to separate coauthors. As I said to AR when we were working on the article, this style was requested of me many FACs ago, I've used it ever since, and it's always seen me through... ;-) Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 13:02, 17 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Overall, this article is quite good and its good to see the topic get the attention it deserves. Anotherclown (talk) 10:32, 17 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments' I've added content to this article over the years, but not to the extent that I think that I'm unable to comment on it. Overall, I think that this is an excellent article which does justice to its subject. I have the following comments:

  • "the first Aboriginal commissioned officer" - I think that "Indigenous Australian" is now used more frequently than "Aboriginal"
    • Well, I note that WP uses "Indigenous Australian", though I thought most of the sources -- which are generally quite recent -- used "Aborigine/Aboriginal". Could check on that, and of course happy to hear Rupert's opinion as well... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 11:48, 25 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • G'day, thanks for the review. I am leaning more towards Aborigine/Aboriginal in this case because I think it is clearer than Indigenous Australian, which could possibly relate to Torres Strait Islanders as well. However, I could live with it being changed. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 12:16, 25 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
        • OK, but I'd suggest changing it to 'Aboriginal Australian', given that 'Aboriginal' is a non-specific term. I should note that the place where I work is rather thingy about terminology concerning Indigenous Australians, so I'm probably not being representative of how most readers will react to this wording. Nick-D (talk) 23:54, 26 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • "After the ship was attacked in Suda Bay by German aircraft and began to sink, the men from the 2/7th, including Saunders,[19] were picked up by several British destroyers and disembarked on Crete" - Souda Bay is part of Crete, so this is a bit confusing. I'm not all that familiar with the Australian role in Greece and Crete, but I presume that the 2/7th Battalion was being transported to the island.
    • I might leave this to my cohort... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 11:48, 25 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • G'day, my understanding is that it was decided that they would actually go to Alexandria, but instead were landed on Crete after Costa Rica was sunk. I've tweaked it to try to make this clearer. Please let me know what you think. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 12:16, 25 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Can anything more be said about Saunders' time in hiding on Crete, and how he escaped from the island?
    • Heh, I believe it can -- I'd have to dig out the refs of course but I heard somewhere that he felt his complexion blended right in with the locals...! That and having taught himself to speak the lingo... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 11:48, 25 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • The sentence which begins with "He subsequently returned to Australia..." is rather long, and should be split into a couple of sentences. Nick-D (talk) 10:46, 25 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Sound fair -- plus we use "subsequently" again not long after so we should probably try and reword anyway... Thanks Nick! Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 11:48, 25 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • I've had a go at rewording this. How does that read? AustralianRupert (talk) 12:16, 25 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
        • Better -- I trimmed a bit and added the exact month he returned to Oz. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 15:59, 26 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support My comments have now been addressed. It's fantastic to see this important article in such good shape. Nick-D (talk) 23:54, 26 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support I had a good read of the text and made a couple of minor tweaks to justify my existence...also did a passover of some of the refs and didn't notice anything untoward there. When mentioned in the text, there is no wikilink to the First, Second or Korean Wars, although there is one for the (Second) Boer War - I thought it might be a particular style thing so didn't add them myself. Zawed (talk) 00:47, 27 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Heh, your existence is more than justified Zawed, it's been great to see another editor come along with an interest in Australian military biography... ;-) As to the links, I started delinking WWI and WWII in articles I edited a while back in response to what I saw as valid suggestions that they're such well-known and major conflicts that links were unnecessary, if not meaningless. Korea is probably not in that category however; I think I delinked in the infobox because we had some of its battles listed/linked. So I don't actually object to Korean War being linked but I don't think we should bother for WWI/WWII. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 02:26, 27 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the review, Zawed. Cheers, AustralianRupert (talk) 11:21, 27 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Image review With the proviso that I uploaded one of the images (File:Reg Saunders with Tom Derrick 1944.jpg), those included in this article are all PD. File:Reg Saunders leading his company in Korea.jpg might fall foul of the crackdown on post-1946 Australian images on Commons, but a) as it's a historically significant and irreplaceable image of Saunders leading his company in Korea it could definitely be uploaded under a fair use claim if that happens and b) based on the emails which have been sent to the Wikimedia Australia mailing list, I have some hopes that the AWM will add CC tags to these images in the next few weeks, though this may not eventuate. Nick-D (talk) 11:38, 27 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Nick. That would be good news. Cheers, AustralianRupert (talk) 11:48, 27 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) Tks Nick. Yep, something the image nazis don't seem to get is that their interpretation of the law (which still doesn't convince me) will likely result in a mess more images being uploaded to en-wiki, either as PD-Australia or under FURs. Anyway, we'll cross that when we come to it... ;-) Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 11:53, 27 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
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.
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