Talk:Comité National de Secours et d'Alimentation

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Comité National de Secours et d'Alimentation/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Madalibi (talk · contribs) 15:32, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

This article looks very good! I will review it tomorrow. Madalibi (talk) 15:32, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for taking this on! J'attends votre commentaire avec impatience ;) --Brigade Piron (talk) 15:47, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Voici quelques commentaires qui, je l'espère, aideront à pousser cet excellent article encore plus loin. I tend to be quite exhaustive, so forgive me in advance! :) Madalibi (talk) 03:38, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose, no copyvios, spelling and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

   The writing style is diverse and elegant, so the article is a nice read. A few minor quibbles:

• The Committee was established in September 1914 shortly after the German army occupied Brussels under the name Comité Central de Secours et d'Alimentation: makes it sound as though the German army occupied Brussels under the name CCSA!
• Comité National de Secours et d'Alimentation is rendered as "National Relief and Food Committee" (or CNSA) throughout, but the second section translates "Comité Central de Secours et d'Alimentation" as "Central Aid and Food Committee". Could you resolve this inconsistency?
• The initial direction of the Committee was taken over by Francqui. Not clear if he took it over from somebody else when the committee became national, or if he was in charge from the beginning.
• Both sections of the CNSA.... relied heavily.... for much of its operations. Problem of agreement.
• Heineman used his contacts to encourage foreign sources of food...: "to encourage foreign sources of food" sounds a bit awkward.
• ...the Committee's chief initial difficulty was obtaining the permission of the British and German governments to import food, and in providing guarantees...: "obtaining" and "in providing" are not grammatically parallel.
• It was also supported in its early activities...: the previous sentence suggests that "it" refers to "food". Rephrase to make it clear that it's the committee we're talking about.
• ...by the Belgian government of Charles de Broqueville: here it might be worth mentioning that this was a government in exile. And could you clarify the nature of that support? Did the Brocqueville government arrange shipments through French ports? Did it facilitate contacts with foreign governments? Did it raise money to buy food and supplies? Or something else altogether?
• Because the CRB was officially an American organization, the CRB was also necessary to assure that the food, once delivered to the CNSA was not immediately seized...: there is a comma missing after "CNSA".
• ...the CRB was also necessary to assure... and provided the international support necessary...: "was necessary" and "provided" are not grammatically parallel. I would suggest splitting this sentence into two.
• Once assured... What do you mean by "assured"?
• the German Governorate: is there a relevant wikilink to this government?
• ...the CNSA was criticized by the CRB which held it responsible...: could you switch to the active voice here to make the sentence more compelling? (...the CRB criticized the CNSA, holding it responsible... OR the even simpler ...the CRB held the CNSA responsible for...)
• ...this was dismissed... This is the only example of a vague pronoun standing for a noun in the entire article.
• or other disruption which might have arisen: disruptions should probably be in the plural, and "that might have arisen" sounds incomplete: rephrase to something like "that might have arisen if the Germans had had to feed the population of the occupied territories"?
• ...the precarious position of the CNSA within the occupied country: not entirely clear what this refers to.
• The Belgian government in exile supported the CNSA which they hoped...: should be "the CNSA, which they hoped"
• fulfill the day-to-day running of the Belgian state which the occupation made impossible for the official government to fulfill: the double "fulfill" and the somewhat convoluted grammar make this sentence awkward. Find a simpler structure?
• Historians have also compared the actions of the CNSA, such as providing unemployment benefits to Belgian workers in 1917, as echoing those of the an official government in peacetime as well as a symbol of national unity.: "those of the an" is wrong, and "compared... as echoing... as well as..." doesn't work grammatically.

All of these should have been addressed now...Brigade Piron (talk) 17:11, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

1. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (reference section): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

   Notes 1 and 2 are to Amara et al., which is an edited volume. The bibliographic entry should specify which article is being cited.

The Amara et al. book is a commentary and the sections cited are from the introduction, which is not clearly distinguished. I have however done as you say for the Nouvelle histoire... book.Brigade Piron (talk) 17:11, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

1. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

   I know too little about this topic to tell if all aspects of the topic are properly covered. We hear a lot about the international connections of the CNSA, but I think we should hear more about the concrete operations of the CNSA in Belgium itself. In various places in the article, we hear that the CNSA was allowed to expand its operations in 1915, that the Germans occasionally stole food, that they gave impunity to CNSA food (shouldn't this be mentioned under "Foundation and operations of the CNSA" rather than under "Evaluation"?), and that the CNSA's situation was in a "precarious position" in occupied Belgium. How does this all make sense together? Do we know more about the actual agreements there were between the CNSA and the German Governorate concerning distribution? Or are there any anecdotes that could illustrate the problems the CNSA faced? I also see from quick research on Google Books that the CNSA used the infrastructure of the Société Générale de Belgique (directed by Emile Francqui!) to facilitate distribution of food and goods. This makes sense of one of the major unexplained points in the article: how the CNSA could suddenly come up with 125,000 distribution points so soon after its foundation, and in wartime! Mention of the Société Générale would therefore make a fine addition to the article. Google Books (or rather a book titled La liberté de chercher: Histoire du Fonds National Belge de la Recherche Scientifique)[1] also tells me that Francqui met Herbert Hoover in China, another fact that might be worth mentioning.

Your point about the role of the Germans is certainly one I will try to find material on. I have added the SGB bit, though if you have a source to back this up, I'd be grateful for it to add. Although it's certainly relevant, it's true that most the CNSA network was done by unaffiliated volunteers in local committees across the country without real "direction" per se. Brigade Piron (talk) 17:26, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

I added the source for the SGB. Madalibi (talk) 05:16, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

1. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

   Generally neutral. The only sentence I felt was not neutral is this one (which happens to be unreferenced): The Belgian arm, however, felt under undue pressure from the CRB. What is "undue pressure", and how are we to judge? The emphatic "even" in the next sentence also suggests a partisan stance. :)

I'm afraid I don't agree. I don't say the Belgian group was under undue pressure, merely that it believed itself to be. I can only work within the source material available. The "even" refers to the extreme length to which the CNSA was prepared to go as a result of this feeling! Brigade Piron (talk) 17:11, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

My mistake! I had read "felt" as "fell". Madalibi (talk) 05:16, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

1. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

2. It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free content have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

   The description of File:Driemansschap committee for the relief of Belgium.JPG is only in Dutch/Flemish. Could you translate it into English or find someone who can?

Done. Brigade Piron (talk) 17:11, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

1. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

General comment: This is a highly readable and well-referenced little article. All the issues I raised can be addressed quickly, so there should be no problem promoting the article to GA status in the next few days! Madalibi (talk) 03:38, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

PROMOTED. The article is now clearly at GA level. You can find more sources on the CNSA if you type "Comité National de Secours et d'Alimentation" in the search box on http://books.google.com. This is how I found sources on Francqui, the SGB, Hoover, etc. Because the article is well-written and solidly referenced, I encourage you to submit it for FAC after you add details on German agreements with the CNSA and a few more aspects of the CNSA that you will find on Google Books. The article should then pass with flying colors! Madalibi (talk) 05:16, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Update on images

When I started my review, I asked a knowledgeable admin at WikiCommons to help me with the two images that are presented in this wiki, but I somehow forgot to look at his answer before passing the article! As it turns out, there are a few issues I should have mentioned during the review rather than now, but better late than never.

• For File:Médailles Commémorative du Comité National de Secours et d’Alimentation.jpg, in the words of Sven Manguard, The issue is that we don't have authorship information on the medal itself. We are told in the description that the medal was awarded in 1919. However we don't know what government did the minting, and therefore are missing some information about the copyright of the medal. In terms of this article, this is largely irrelevant, as the medal is {{PD-1923}} in the United States, which is the only nation whose copyright matters for English Wikipedia. If it is not in the public domain in the origin country, however, it will have to be moved from Commons to EnWiki. He concludes that this image "is good for inclusion in the article now, but may run into issues at FAC." Brigade Piron: could you add a statement that the medals were issues by the postwar Belgian government (if this is right), and perhaps the applicable license tag for Belgium to show that the medals are in the public domain there? This would clear the image for FAC.
• The other image, File:Driemansschap committee for the relief of Belgium.JPG, is in more serious trouble, because it has no date and author information. As Sven puts it, In all likelihood, this was created long enough ago that it would be PD-1923 in the US and {{PD-old-70}} in the source country. That being said, both the author and the date fields are given as "nvt". I believe that "nvt" stands for "niet van toepassing", which translates into "not applicable". The date and author are never not applicable, because without that information, it's impossible for us to determine the term of copyright. I would not use this file until this information is tracked down. He concludes that the image "should be removed, as it's missing soo much information to determine copyright status." Could you try to track down the missing information so that we can keep the image, or otherwise remove it from the article? Thank you!
  

Madalibi (talk) 04:07, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

I pulled the second image. You can undo it once you've supplied authorship/date information. Sven Manguard Wha? 05:02, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm actually quite surprised by this. Medal was, indeed, issued by the Belgian government in 1919. The postcard, however, seems another extremely clear case of {{PD-1923}}/{{PD-old-70}} as you say. I extremely doubt that postcards commemorating the CNSA were issued at all after 1920, never mind later. If you see here, there is an example of the same postcard which shows both sides; there is no name or makers' date. It's also worth noting that Brand Whitlock is named, simply, as "Ministre [plénipotentiaire]" rather than "ambassadeur" dating it to before 1919...Brigade Piron (talk) 08:37, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

• I didn't cite all of Sven's words. He introduced his comment by saying, "In all likelihood, this was created long enough ago that it would be PD-1923 in the US and PD-old-70 in the source country." And since "minister" is a diplomatic rank and the wiki on Brand Whitlock says that he became "ambassador" (the rank above "minister") in 1919, I think it's reasonable to assume that the postcard was made on or before 1919, and in any case before 1923. I think the point was not to doubt the origin of the card: it was to add the necessary information to the description box. Now that you've done that (though I'll let Sven confirm), it should be no problem to use the image! Madalibi (talk) 10:03, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

• It's fine. I'll stick it back in. Sven Manguard Wha? 18:16, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

• Oh, you already got it. Sven Manguard Wha? 18:17, 30 January 2014 (UTC)