Talk:Henry Lidgbird Ball/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Pickersgill-Cunliffe (talk · contribs) 17:40, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Knightmare 3112:, I'll take this. Before I take a proper look at the article a decision needs to made on whether it's appropriate for this review to go forward based on the sources used. The following sources are to me not appropriate for a GA and should be either removed or replaced before a review should go ahead:

• morethannelson.com: While usually a good resource for understanding the career of a naval officer, the content itself is unreferenced and the author is to the best of my knowledge an amateur. Having emailed Hiscocks before, I know most of his older content was written before he organised his sources and thus even he doesn't know where the information sometimes came from. While written in good faith, it is not necessarily reliable.

Replaced with better sources

• Project Gutenberg: An ebook site is not your best bet for a good source on the First Fleet. It provides a list of sources that you might very well use, but the page itself is not appropriate. Indeed, it cites Wikipedia!

Changed the source to Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay

• threedecks.org: An amateur forum-esque compilation of sources that often cites Wikipedia or is downright incorrect in what it says. There's a good reason people comment corrections under the articles sometimes! Most sources that are referenced, e.g. Winfield's BWAS volumes, are highly reliable and should be used instead.

Removed and changed to source that was referenced at threedeck.org, The Commissioned sea officers of the Royal Navy 1660-1815

I will await your response on how you wish to tackle this. Pickersgill-Cunliffe (talk) 17:40, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm happy with your changes to those sources, although I would note that there is an updated edition of Commissioned Sea Officers: Syrett, David; DiNardo, R. L. (1994). The Commissioned Sea Officers of the Royal Navy. Aldershot, Hampshire: Scolar Press. ISBN 1 85928 122 2. Despite this progress, there is still a lot to do on this article. The most pressing part of this is copyright violation with the Australian Dictionary of Biography; paragraphs 4 and 6 of Colonial Service are near to verbatim ripped from this source. The single sentence sourced to the National Centre of Biography is also a straight copy and paste. I would also ask that you double check your print sources for similar violations.

The majority of ships mentioned in the article are linked to their SIA pages rather than to the individual ships in question, which provides little to no help to the casual reader. More importantly, the article gives little to no attention to Ball's later naval service. Seven years and three ship commands are dealt with in a single line, which is hardly enough for B-Class. For example, you completely ignore Ball's service at the Battle of the Basque Roads in Gibraltar. Other naval aspects that are not mentioned (and this is not an exhaustive list) include:

• Ball's command of HMS Trident in 1801
• Service dates, e.g. vague "transferred to the East Indies station" should be noted as 9 July 1799
• Command of HMS Fury between December 1793 and 1795
• Exact dates are more useful, e.g. arriving in England on 21 April rather than just April
• Position as flag captain to Rear-Admiral Philip Charles Durham in Christian VII; similarly to Rear-Admiral Bartholomew Rowley in Zealand (of which his command began in 1805 I believe?)
• Location of services in Zealand, Gibraltar, and Christian VII
• You can't say he commanded Christian VII into 1813 if he went on half pay a year earlier
• Infobox does not include Christian VII command (etc)
• Commissioned Sea Officers is a reference book of promotion dates, so you can't have gotten "for his achievements in New South Wales" from that source
• Uncited text on command of Ariadne
• The action of 9 February 1799 could be much expanded on

This article also has difficulties with its prose, with short sentences occasionally being slung in as their own paragraphs with little context. For example, "In 1808 he applied unsuccessfully for the governorship of New South Wales" comes in completely out of the blue! I would also note that the lede is too short for this length of article and should be expanded.

I am going to put this review on hold to give you time to look at my remarks and decide what you wish to do with this; there is more to discuss but I have attempted to provide an overview of some of the more pressing issues here as a start. It might be best for this to be failed so that you are not under a time constraint to complete what could be a considerable amount of editing. Pickersgill-Cunliffe (talk) 17:14, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

It’s probably best to fail this for now, give me time to work on it --Knightmare 3112 (talk) 04:48, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Will do. Please feel free to give me a ping if you're in need of sources at any point, I'll be happy to help out. Pickersgill-Cunliffe (talk) 11:54, 4 January 2022 (UTC)