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Archive 1

Blackburn was promoted to 2nd Lieutenant in August 1914

This should surely read 1915? Rumiton (talk) 11:48, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

No comment received so I changed it. Rumiton (talk) 11:03, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
Yes, it should be 1915 for a number of reasons, and just to confirm our predjudices, ADB says:
" ... and was admitted as a legal practitioner in 1913. ... Blackburn enlisted as a private ... in October next year, [i.e. 1914], and landed at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915. ... He was commissioned second lieutenant in August, and served throughout the Gallipoli campaign and in France in 1916."
Pdfpdf (talk) 12:46, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

getting bottom line of ribbons to centre

I have tried putting </center><center> after each line, but it makes no difference to the bottom line which continues to be one place to the right?!? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alexmb (talk • contribs) 08:24, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

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Ribbons?

I wanted to get a fresh view on the pictorial presentation of ribbons and the table in this article under the section entitled "Honours and awards". I've just commenced work on this article as part of a slow-burn project getting all the South Australian VCs to FA. To me, the ribbon farm dominates the article and isn't terribly encyclopaedic. I think that honours and awards would be better presented as they arise as part of the prose, rather than in a separate section with the ribbon display and table. Thoughts? Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 00:50, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

OK, I've removed it for now. Happy to revert if there is consensus to include it. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 09:09, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
FWIW, I agree with your actions here, for the reasons you have outlined. Cheers, Zawed (talk) 04:40, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
Fully agree -- it's a drum I've banged a long time. I'm afraid the ribbon images have always reminded me of a children's book rather than an encyclopedia, and I find listing -- let alone illustrating -- campaign and service medals received by all personnel who've been in certain places for certain periods of time to be over-detailing. I say that having the utmost respect for those who've served in those places for that time -- they've already gone well beyond the call of the average citizen -- but in terms of a military bio those medals don't add anything. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 22:53, 31 December 2018 (UTC)


Some copy edit notes

I am reviewing the copy edit of the article for User:Eddie891 and leaving my notes here, for the consideration of this article's editors. The article is a solid GA, this is just some nit picking.

  • Lead:
    • Post nominals: There's a missing comma at the end of the post-nominals in the first sentence. This may not be easy to spot in the edit window because most of those commas are added by the template. I would tend to put the comma after the parenthetic birth–death dates. Also, it seems a little redundant to have the "VC" there right after his name, then in the same sentence to say he won the Victoria Cross (which the VC is already telling us). Without diminishing the importance of this, I would advise moving the latter part down a bit or at least making that its own sentence.
      • Hi, just butting in here, the way the post-noms, commas and life dates are arranged is pretty well the standard for military bios, not just in WP but I think in the real world, so best we keep that format. FWIW, the rest of these points seem very helpful, tks for your efforts Reidgreg. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 22:23, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
    • It saw its first real fighting in France on 23 July during the Battle of Pozières. I'm not sure how acceptable "real fighting" is, there might be a slight tone issue there. It might be a tiny bit unclear as to whether this was its first "real fighting" ever or its first "real fighting" within France. I might have changed it to: In France, its first major engagement was on 23 July...
  • World War I
    • Another comma, in the ship arrived at Alexandria, Egypt on 6 December we need a comma after Egypt per MOS:GEOCOMMA. Although not the biggest issue, articles will often have misplaced or missing commas, so familiarize yourself with the MOS guidelines and make a habit of watching for these while copy editing.
    • Acronyms. MOS:ACRO recommends giving the full term with the acronym on first use in the lead and body. (The post-nominals following a person's name in the first sentence of the lead are something of an exception, and a matter of perennial discussion, as we don't want to clutter the lead sentence with all of the expanded forms.) Although Victoria Cross (VC) is mentioned quite a bit in the lead, the lead can be rewritten at any time so we have to make sure that the body makes sense independent of the lead. Where Victoria Cross is first mentioned in the body, we should have (VC) immediately following it.
    • met by the state Premier, Crawford Vaughan This is a particularly nit-picky area of capitalization. MOS:JOBTITLE says to not capitalize titles unless directly attached to a name. So I think this should be either "met by the state premier, Crawford Vaughan" or "met by state Premier Crawford Vaughan".
  • Between the Wars
    • George V: It's stated that George V did not become king until after January 1920, but earlier that Blackburn received his VC from King George V in October 1916. It may be that the former is referring to George VI.
  • Java
    • For the block quote, I think the "emphasis in original" should either be immediately after the emphasized text or after the terminal punctuation, and also be in square brackets. MOS:ITALQUOTE recommends using italics instead of underlining for emphasis, which should ideally be produced with <em> markup. If there was other italic text in the quote, though, I'd agree with the underlining so that it was distinct.
  • Extra stuff
    • I noticed in one place at my browser window's width, a World War I had line-wrapped with the "I" starting a new line. You can avoid that by using a &nbsp; before the Roman numeral; it won't affect the link. It's not a bad idea to put non-breaking spaces with day-month, month-year (with no day) and number-unit combinations as well, if the article is reasonably stable.
    • Captions: If a caption forms a complete sentence, it receives terminal punctuation. Sentence fragments don't receive terminal punctuation.

Interesting article, well done! – Reidgreg (talk) 19:52, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

G'day Reidgreg, thanks very much for your comments. I believe I have addressed them all now. The underlining is in the original, so I've retained it. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 08:35, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
You're welcome! Ummm... you don't have to have (VC) after every time Victoria Cross is written out in full, just the first time in the lead and body. I will mention that we aren't bound to follow the styles used in sources, otherwise articles would be a hodgepodge of different styles. MOS:CONFORM states Formatting and other purely typographical elements of quoted text should be adapted to English Wikipedia's conventions without comment provided that doing so will not change or obscure meaning or intent of the text [and to] Generally preserve bold and italics (see § Italics), but most other styling should be altered. Underlining, spacing within words, colors, ALL CAPS, small caps, etc. should generally be normalized to plain text. If it clearly indicates emphasis, use italic emphasis ({{em}}) or, in an already-italic passage, boldface (with {{strong}}). But it's a minor nit-picky point and not required for a GA. I suspect this is mainly for accessibility as the em/strong markup will be interpreted by screen readers in a predictable manner for vision-impaired people. – Reidgreg (talk) 13:55, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
I don't think there are any more examples of the overuse of (VC) anymore, and I have changed the underlining to em. Thanks, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 01:09, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Short description

Could someone please change this back to "Australian soldier, lawyer, politician and a recipient of the Victoria Cross" (or similar). Leaving out the VC feels wrong, and many of the other recipients have the VC mentioned in their short description. It was deleted by someone who referred to it as a "trivial fact", which is about as crass a piece of summary as I've seen in a while. - 86.162.16.171 (talk) 11:44, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

I understand what the concern is, but Blackburn is known for a number of aspects of his military service, and WP:SDSHORT says we should aim for about 40 characters. Your suggested one is 78 characters. I think "Australian soldier, lawyer and politician" which is 43 characters, is sufficient. Perhaps we could drop "politician" as he was only one briefly and it doesn't contribute much to his notability, but including the VC in any way will blow out the characters well beyond 40. Happy to discuss alternatives. The one just inserted is way too large and includes the span of his life, which is completely unnecessary. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 12:42, 23 July 2021 (UTC)
”Australian recipient of the Victoria Cross" would suffice. It’s the reason he has an article, and we should flag the notability above the non-notable aspects I think. 2A00:23C7:2B86:9800:A905:BBF1:CB48:CE87 (talk) 08:48, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
It isn't the only reason he is notable, his command of the 2/3rd MG Bn and Blackforce are also relevant to his notability. Politician not so much, or even lawyer for that matter, although his role as coroner and on the court of arbitration certainly garnered a fair bit of coverage. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 08:59, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
If he received the VC he was obviously a soldier, so that doesn't need repeating, and his commands possibly wouldn't clear WP:GNG on their own. His VC is the reason he is WP:NOTABLE. "Australian lawyer and recipient of the Victoria Cross" is 46 characters, which is within the bounds of acceptability. - 2A00:23C7:2B86:9800:94D1:6B4E:7C8F:90EE (talk) 12:32, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
I don't agree with the VC being the only reason he is notable, but OK, done. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:23, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Discussion

He was born in the Colony of South Australia. You may wish to read the South Australia Act 1834. End of.150.101.89.147 (talk) 02:01, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

It would be great if you actually knew how to edit. You rendered his place of birth as "Woodville, South Australia, Colony of South Australia]". Learn to pipe links and the syntax to use when editing. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:19, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
It would be great if you did the same. Pfftt to you.150.101.89.147 (talk) 03:17, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
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