Wikipedia:Peer review/List of Royal Australian Air Force air marshals/archive1

List of Royal Australian Air Force air marshals

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I am looking to improve this article with the aim of taking it to MILHIST A-Class and, hopefully, FLC from there. However, I think it needs some improvement before either of these but am a little stuck for ideas. Ideally, I'd like to incorporate a column with the date of each individual's promotion to their respective air marshal rank, but with the exception of the air chief marshals and possibly air marshals I do not think I would be able to source this information. I know the "Senior command(s) and Notes" column as it currently sits probably isn't the best way to convey or present the information either, so am looking for ideas on that. I welcome any and all comments. Thank you!

Thanks, Abraham, B.S. (talk) 04:44, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Nick-D

I'm not terribly knowledgeable about senior RAAF leaders, but have the following minor comments:

• The article is well constructed, and appears very comprehensive - great work
• "As there are no appointments in the Australian Defence Force (ADF) at the five-star level, there is no prospect of a Royal Australian Air Force officer achieving the rank in a professional (i.e. non-ceremonial) capacity" - I'd suggest adding a 'currently' somewhere in here given that it's theoretically possible that such ranks could be authorised in the future (hopefully never though given that it would imply a huge deterioration in Australia's strategic environment and a massive expansion of the military)
• "or Chief of Capability Development Group" - you might want to note that this is part of the Department of Defence (I think) Nick-D (talk) 00:01, 25 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Thank you very much for the comments, Nick. I have actioned both of the above. Cheers, Abraham, B.S. (talk) 04:40, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Ian Rose

Surprising as it may sound, I have to admit that I’m not a great fan of this list, though I’m open to being converted. I think you've probably done as good a job as one could but I'm not sure of the list's value-add, especially given that its main source, the Air Power Development Centre's Air Marshals page, is online. The fact that the vast majority of the entries, i.e. most of the AVMs, are redlinked underlines for me its somewhat questionable utility. Yes, 2-stars seem to be automatically notable but this has raised concerns in the past and the proportion of redlinked entries here really throws the concept into sharp relief, particularly as their number will only grow as time goes on. There are still some AVMs notable in their own right awaiting WP articles (I listed most of them on the talk page a while back) but I think it’d be messy and a bit of a misuse of resources for someone to go to the trouble of creating a bunch of stubs, or at best Start-Class articles, for all the rest, especially since simply being a 2-star, without any other claim to fame, has always been only borderline notable on WP. The other thing is that if such short articles were created, they’d almost certainly be hijacked by those who delight in ghastly medal ribbon displays... ;-) For me, pretty well everything in this list is covered either by the APDC page, or the WP RAAF air marshals category if I want to find links to relevant articles. Sorry I can’t offer more positive criticism...! Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 03:25, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Just to elaborate, I feel that lists in WP really have to justify their existence and not be a sea of red or largely repeat similar lists elsewhere. To take an example, the list of RAAF wings that Nick and I are thinking of expanding upon fits the bill, I think, because there's no such list anywhere else that we're aware of and the relatively small number of red links are steadily disappearing (OTOH, it might be argued that it too has a fundamental problem, in that because there's no definitive list elsewhere we can't be 100% sure we've captured all that exist or have existed!). In the case of the air marshals there's an excellent list by the APDC that's detailed, illustrated, accurate and up to date. Only recently I let them know about a couple of issues (one of which Brice had pointed out to me) and they acknowledged and rectified them quite quickly. So taking all this into account, while I wouldn't go out of my way to oppose this at ACR or FLC, I don't think I could see myself supporting... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 07:00, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Will reply to your comments shortly, Ian, and attempt to sway your thinking and explain my rationale for the list. :) Cheers, Abraham, B.S. (talk) 03:04, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Dank

• A few comments:
• "vice marshal": usually hyphenated
• "That is, service personnel who have held the rank of air chief marshal (four-star rank), air marshal (three-star rank) or air vice marshal (two-star rank).": Sentence fragment
• "The Royal Australian Air Force was established in 1921 as a separate and distinctive branch of the Australian military forces. Modelled after the Royal Air Force which had been formed three years earlier, the Royal Australian Air Force adopted the same ranking system.": The Royal Australian Air Force was established in 1921 with the same ranking system as the Royal Air Force, formed three years earlier.
• "the 'father' of": double quote marks (in Wikipedia ... not generally in Australian English)
• "A further nineteen Australians have reached air marshal, 116 air vice marshal, and seven officers have retired with the hononary rank of air vice marshal.": nonparallel series. "A further nineteen Australians have reached air marshal and 116 air vice marshal; seven officers have retired with the hononary rank of air vice marshal." - Dank (push to talk) 17:23, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Thanks very much for the comments. :) I have tweaked the above with the exception of the hyphen. The hyphen is not consistently employed for the rank in Australian usage, it being more common now for the hyphen not to be used. Cheers, Abraham, B.S. (talk) 03:04, 19 June 2013 (UTC)