User:Grant65/sandbox

12 August 2016

Hi Ian,

One of the main reasons I am no longer quite so actively involved in Wikipedia – to the point of not even checking my Talk Page that often – is what I perceive to be a drift away from things that used to be basic principles of editing. And I am surprised and regretful that I feel I have to say the following to you – an experienced editor, whose work I respect – but I am equally surprised to have a few hours of, as you say "good faith", work on an article (No. 77 Squadron RAAF) reverted, in violation of fundamental Wikipedia policy, the MOS, editing guidelines and/or common usage in formal/encyclopedic English.

Most of what I am objecting to is covered at WP:FIXTHEPROBLEM, e.g.

Fix problems if you can, flag or remove them if you can't. Preserve appropriate content. As long as any facts or ideas would belong in an encyclopedia, they should be retained in Wikipedia. ...
Likewise, as long as any of the facts or ideas added to an article would belong in the "finished" article, they should be retained if they meet the three article content retention policies: Neutral point of view (which does not mean no point of view), Verifiability and No original research.
Instead of removing article content that is poorly presented, consider cleaning up the writing, formatting or sourcing on the spot, or tagging it as necessary. If you think an article needs to be rewritten or changed substantially, go ahead and do so, but it is best to leave a comment about why you made the changes on the article's talk page. The editing process tends to guide articles through ever-higher levels of quality over time. Great Wikipedia articles can come from a succession of editors' efforts.
Instead of removing content from an article, consider:
* Rephrasing or copy-editing to improve grammar or more accurately represent the sources
* Correcting inaccuracies, while keeping the rest of the content intact [...]
* Adding other points of views to the existing points of view to make the article more balanced
* Requesting a citation by adding the {{citation needed}} tag, or adding any other Template:Inline tags as appropriate
* Doing a quick search for sources and adding a citation yourself
* Adding appropriate cleanup tags to sections you cannot fix yourself [Emphasis in original.]

In particular, I'm talking about your request – to an editor whom you have dealt with over many years and acknowledge to be in "good faith" – to "stand by"(!) and your deletion/reversion of:

• maintenance tags like "cn"
• referenced material from new, recently-published and reliable sources, i.e.
  • Igor Seidov & Stuart Britton, 2014, Red Devils over the Yalu: A Chronicle of Soviet Aerial Operations in the Korean War, 1950–53, Solihull, England; Helion & Company (which I must admit is sometimes supercilious in tone, but does make use official records/accounts from both sides of the conflict – unlike most of the other/earlier sources)
• links to other, related Wikipedia articles (e.g. Battle of Sunchon (air)
• changes addressing NPOV (e.g. the one-side account of the action on 1/12/51)

As you know these are violations of:

• WP:BOLD i.e. there is no requirement for a good faith edit to "refrain from wholesale changes in one hit & w/o discussion"
• WP:OWN – individual editors do not unilaterally dictate content, even if they are the original/main author, or senior members of the project/s concerned – as suggested by the (borderline condescending) reference to "new info that I'll check"
• WP:BURDEN
  • Wikipedia:Inaccuracy – the fact that a GA or FA has "had many pairs of eyes on it" doesn't make it sacrosanct
  • "uncited sentences" are matters for maintenance tags, not deletion (e.g. were that the case, I would have deleted the claim re MacArthur etc)

On a more trivial, aesthetic/stylistic level, there is also no justification for "wholesale" reversion/deletion of

• allegedly "non-standard abbreviations" – I'm not even sure if you mean my:
  • use of sqn over sqdn (in which case I'd point out that if there is no standard abbreviation, then any common abbreviation is valid) or
  • changing of numbers larger than nine to 10, 99 etc, instead of "ten" and "ninety-nine" (a style which is now generally regarded as archaic in English
• my breaking up of long paragraphs that are not focused, "topic paragraphs", as per WP:MOS: "Paragraphs should be short enough to be readable, but long enough to develop an idea. Overly long paragraphs should be split up...")
• improvements in chronological sequence, i.e.
  • adding dates
  • discussing events that happened in 1950 after things that happened in 1951

Grant 05:17, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

Hi Grant, I too was surprised to find myself in the situation of feeling that a reversion of your bold edit was the best course of action but it's very difficult to follow changes made in one hit that alter structure, sequencing and referencing, as well as add new material and introduce style changes, especially when several of those that can be isolated don't seem to be improvements. Of course it isn't my call to decide unilaterally what constitutes an improvement, I've never suggested that an FA is set in stone, and clearly our interpretations of WP policy/guidelines are not identical, but I think it's fair to make it a bit easier for those who have the article on their watchlists to be able to work out what's changed and how. It's something I always try to do when I make changes to well-established articles. I had hoped before now to start a thread on the article talk page where we could discuss changes, and get input from other editors as necessary, but a couple of RL mini-crises delayed me. Since the discussion's here now, perhaps we can resolve a few things between ourselves and then take any remaining points of disagreement to the article talk to seek consensus from the community. To specifics:

• MacArthur requesting the squadron is cited to O'Neill; I don't have his book at hand to double-check but the fact is also referenced in Stephens' Going Solo, which similarly cites O'Neill.
• My concern about passages without citations doesn't so much relate to the new information as the existing info. In your rejigging of the paragraphs and sequencing you seem to have neglected to copy all the relevant citations as well. Under other circumstances I might've just copied the citations myself to fix the problem but this leads me to another point...
• I actually do not have an issue with making some paragraphs a bit smaller, I agree some are on the long side, but I think that your edit left us with too many short, even single-sentence, paras, which would make for a very choppy appearance that is not only out of step with the rest of the article but also with the structure of most quality WP articles. This also relates to another point...
• Re. chronology, again I'd like to discuss this and get consensus from others if we still disagree, but I don't think it's necessary for information to follow a rigid chronological order throughout an article or section, especially when avoiding strict chronology allows us to keep the thread of a particular concept intact. For instance I deliberately kept all the info about Steege taking the Meteors out of the air-to-air role, and morale suffering until Susans took over, together because I felt it was easier to follow, then went on to combats that had taken place in the meantime to keep that in one place. Your resequencing in fact introduced a factual error re. this point: you moved the passage beginning "As a result of these early clashes with MiGs, Steege became convinced that the Meteor was outclassed as a fighter" to after the 1 December 1951 action. In fact Steege made this determination after the actions in late August and early September, which is how it was presented in the previous version of the article.
• Now to new info, as far as I could make it out... Re. the Soviet pilots, I honestly thought I'd included this already as The Forgotten Few, the latest book on the squadron in Korea, has employed revelations from Russian sources and mentioned this: I can only conclude that I must've thought I'd added it with the bit about the MiGs observing but not engaging the Meteors early on, as Hurst talks about the Soviet pilots in the same breath in his book. By all means let's add this, I don't think you sourced it but I can cite it to Hurst anyway.
• The other major thing is of course the 1 December 1951 action, and I'll put my response here into bullet points:
  • I'm not sure how you characterise the original presentation of this as one-sided -- pretty well all sources on the squadron mention it lost three Meteors in the fight, and that's always been in the article. As for its MiG claims, I'm yet to see any source (at least until Red Devils) that disputes this, including Hurst, who as I say has made use of recently available info. I'm naturally quite cautious around combat victory figures, which is why you'll often see me writing "claimed" or "was credited with" a kill -- as opposed to the less equivocal "destroyed" or "shot down" -- including in this article, but Hurst, among others, was quite definite on the point.
  • Re. Red Devils, I was able to read a fair bit of the relevant material on GoogleBooks and I have to say that the sometimes anecdotal and even propagandistic tone of the author (assuming an accurate translation of course), as well as a couple of questionable claims, concerns me. For instance he seems to suggest that official Australian sources claim that Meteors and MiGs never clashed until 29 August, when most Australian sources I've seen agree it happened earlier in the month -- as presented in the article and sourced to Stephens (an official history). The author also suggests that Australian records glossed over the loss of the first two Meteors as a post-mission collision, yet it asks us to trust the Soviet records that say no MiGs were lost or damaged on 1 December 1951. Quite honestly, I don't care how many MiGs the squadron is credited with but I'd be interested in other assessments of this source.
  • Re. disputed number of MiGs involved -- again most Australian sources say fifty, but re-checking Hurst I note he reports the Russian commander as saying he had only two dozen MiGs, so I have no prob with us qualifying the article to say the Australians estimated fifty but the Russians maintain it was half that, which can be cited to Hurst.
  • No problem linking to the Battle of Sunchon (air) article.
• Re. the style points, this is of course minor compared to the above-mentioned concerns, but regarding those:
  • I'm sure you'd agree that terminology should be consistent throughout an article. I'm yet to see anyone among all the readers and reviewers of this or similar articles I've been involved in who has a problem with consistently writing the unit out as "No. 77 Squadron" -- I think that should be maintained.
  • Again, the presentation of numbers should be consistent throughout an article. You feel that using words is archaic but I think it helps in military articles because they're so heavily populated with figures, e.g. squadron numbers, bomb weights, gun calibers, etc. If you still disagree, fair enough, but I think that "all the eyes" on it at GAN, MilHist ACR, FAC, and indeed its TFA appearance indicates it's not controversial. Of course consensus, explicit or implicit, can change but I think that's something for the article talk page if you want to pursue it.

Well, I think that's it, I hope I've addressed everything. I don't think either of us enjoys disagreeing with the other, either re. the contents of an article or on interpretation of WP policy/guidelines, but I know we both want the best article that's possible. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 09:51, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

Hi again Grant, I hope you don't mind me not waiting longer for a reply but I wanted to make good on some of my responses above where I felt we were in broad agreement. After hunting around I found an Osprey book that seems to include similar info to Red Devils but without the questionable tone, and since many quality aviation articles reference Osprey I felt it would be an uncontroversial source to employ. These additions have of course made some already quite large paragraphs even larger, so I was planning next to split some of them, without changing the order of things, but I wasn't intending to do too much as I figure we have more to discuss on that point and others. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 11:56, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

Hi Ian,

Thanks for replying.

I don't disagree with most of what you have said here, or your most recent edits to the article – it was the wholesale reversion that pushed my buttons.

There may have been some inadvertent errors in my edits. If Steege was convinced before the "Battle of Sunchon" that the Meteor was plainly outclassed, then it makes some of his decisions, such as the style of operation being carried out on 1/12/51, extremely difficult to explain, if not worse? Perhaps there is something I am missing, or another explanation, but it isn't clear to me at least.

One sentence paragraphs are not unusual in encyclopedias and are (or were) the traditional style in Australian newspapers. There is a fine balance, I guess, between "choppy", chronologically ordered pars and the opposite extreme – which for lay readers can make articles hard to read and/or confusing.

In the absence of a chronological approach, I think a lay reader will be less clear about the significance of, in particular: (1) MiGs entering the war; (2) the retirement of Mustangs and (3) the weaknesses of Meteors.

Seidov & Britton's book is misjudged in tone and occasionally plainly wrong on factual grounds. That doesn't make it an unusable or even unusual source – only one that must be handled carefully. The suggestion about why the Meteors collided is plainly speculative and not an informed opinion. At the same time, in the absence of conclusive rebuttals from other sources, I think some of their more logical/reasonable statements should be included, e.g. the size of 176 GIAP and the claim that all of its MiGs returned to base on 1/12/51. On the second point, Seidov & Britton even name a Soviet pilot likely claimed as a kill by 77 Sqn – Stepa Kirichenko, because he spun out of control and recovered "500 metres" off the deck. (I can't remember if Seidov & Britton actually state that none of the MiGs suffered damage from the Meteor' cannons on 1/12/51, but that would be an less credible proposition – given the collective experience of the Australians and the fact that the MiG-15 was famous for withstanding punishment.)

On some of the stylistic points, we will have to agree to disagree. In specific regard to "Sqn" and, to a lesser degree, "Sqdn", the abbreviations were in official use going back to WW1 – and the "No." (itself an abbreviation) was frequently dropped. My usual approach when writing articles from scratch has been to use the full name at least once in the text and then abbreviate. But to each their own.

Grant | Talk 07:16, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply, Grant.

I take your point re. missions after Steege decided to take the Meteors out of an offensive air-to-air role so I've combed the main sources and added some context re. the subsequent missions. As the article says, Steege wanted the squadron out of MiG Alley, and all the encounters after early September appear to have taken place south of there, which is hopefully clearer now that I've added some details. I did tend to avoid such detail because I was wary of the Korean section overbalancing the article, which is after all about the squadron's entire existence, but if you think it was a bit confusing before then I'd rather add the detail. On that point, though, when I largely restored your additions re. 1 December 1951, I included the Soviet unit name but my preference would be to drop it, at least until/unless it gains a WP article, as it's the only time we mention an opposing unit in the article; I think the main point is to be clear the opponents were Russian, which we've done.

Re. Seidov & Britton, I'm hoping my substitution of the more neutrally written Osprey book, which fully supports the salient points re. 1 December 1951, does the trick.

Re. paragraph size, as I say, I agree they could be shortened and hope that we can compromise on something smaller than we have now but perhaps not quite as small as some of yours...! Would you be prepared for me to have a go and see what you think? Doing that would also afford me the opportunity to add a new image to the Korean section without sandwiching text between pictures -- the one I have in mind is of Spence in a Mustang, which I think would be fair given his place in the unit's history.

Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 01:46, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Hi Grant, saw your last edit. I still kinda prefer mine as I think there was less repetition... If we essentially stick with yours, would you have a prob with me removing "less than 25 MiGs were available to 176 GvIAP at the time" at the end, as we already referred to "at least twenty MiGs" earlier in the passage? I also still believe that including the name of the (so-far non-Wiki-notable) attacking formation isn't necessary since this article focusses on 77 Squadron, not this particular battle (in which article of course all unit names are worth mentioning), but I won't remove unless you agree. After this I might proceed with shortening paras as I indicated I would, and perhaps add another image or two, including Spence and his 'tang. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 00:05, 20 August 2016 (UTC)