Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/Snowball marches

Snowball marches

I am seeking ideas for further areas of improvement. I believe the article easily meets the B class criteria (as reviewed by an anon). However, that review gave no indication for areas of improvement. --Golden Wattle ^talk 23:59, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Cla68

It looks like a good start for the article, but I would suggest a few changes:

• Include Background (at the beginning) and Aftermath/significance sections (as the ending section) and place each march as sub-sections under an overall "Marches" section. Once all the details are included in each march's subsection, you can eliminate the "marches summary" section.
• You don't need to have in-line citations in the intro once that same information is cited in the main body of the article.
• Wiki-link all dates.
• Include a bibliography section in addition to the footnotes.

Cla68 00:24, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for yor suggestions. I will work on them. --Golden Wattle ^talk 23:04, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Eric Fraker

Just an idea, but to individuals not from snow-bearing areas, will "snowball march" be an immediately accessible concept? Where I'm from it snows from Thanksgiving to Easter, but I'm not sure someone in Saudi Arabia is going to have the same euphemistic understanding of the word "snowball".

Eric Fraker 15:38, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

• I appreciate the point you are making. Most of Australia is of course not snow-bearing either but of course our literary heritage allows us access to the idea. In looking for a name for the article I wanted to refer to the name they were collectively referred to at the time - and they were called "snowball marches" in 1915. They were also called "Recruitment marches" - which is a redirect to this article at present. Do you think I need to spell out the allusion?--Golden Wattle ^talk 23:18, 30 April 2007 (UTC)  Done
  • A sentance explaining the name, for those of us not immediately familiar with the snowball effect, would be of great use in the lead section, methinks. -- saberwyn 09:03, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Nick Dowling

This is a very good start to an article on what's a very interesting topic. I'd aggree with Cla68's comment that the article would benefit from more analysis. In particular, it would be interesting if the article discussed the factors which lead to the marches (patriotism and a lack of recruitment offices in the bush?) and placed the marches in context by discussing their overall contribution to recruitment into the AIF. It might also be interesting to seperate the discussions of how the marches are remembered and have been re-enacted into a seperate section rather than including it with the text on each individual march. --Nick Dowling 11:12, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. I agree that there needs to be some background on recruitment and the notion of a volunteer force. The marches by and large pre date the recruitment crisis of early 1916 which of course later gave rise to the first of two referenda on conscription. It suddenly becomes a big background topic which is currently not effectively covered I believe on wikipedia. I am giving it some thought.

I don't think lack of recruitment officers was an issue (I will try to check) but certainly it was a brilliant marketing ploy for declining enthusiasm for recruitment.

I do not get the impression that the re-enactments are a collective thing, rather they are very much community based and relate to the individual marches. If anything they relate to the collective sentiment about WWI triggered by Keating's sponsorship of the return of the unknown soldier to John Howard's quite numerous speeches on WWI and of course the increasing interest in actually revisiting Gallipoli and the resurgence of interest in Anzac day dawn ceremonies and marches. Regards--Golden Wattle ^talk 21:41, 3 May 2007 (UTC)