Some public notes to myself on the provenance of the much used and much debated File:6 Star.svg (at right) which others might find useful.
Provenance
edithttps://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:General_of_the_Armies&oldid=579964989#The_Answer.21 ( a subsection of https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:General_of_the_Armies&oldid=579964989#Verifiable_six-star_insignia.3F ) gives the answer to the two key questions:
- Did the Institute of Heraldry ever do a sketch of this insignia? No they didn't. That part of the often-quoted provenance of the image is false.
- Does a sketch of this insignia appear in the Macarthur archives? Yes it does. That part of the often-quoted provenance is true. Further, it was even recognized in 1964 by the Army but never worn or held by anyone - whatever recognised means.
There's also mention of another 6-star insignia but no clue as to what it looks like. But the insignia recognized in 1964 is noted as having resembled the 1945 sketch which was in MacArthur's record from 1945 but is completely unofficial. It was drawn by a member of his staff with no endorsement or recognition.
There's a lot here to digest, but the upshot is, the insignia does appear in the archive (a primary source) and is verified in the correspondence from IOH (a reliable secondary source) as having received some sort of recognition from the US Army in 1964.
The rumour
editIt would be interesting to trace the now discredited rumour that the IOH prepared a sketch of this insignia.
But, it's unlikely to be possible to find out definitively, probably constitutes WP:OR even if we do, and in any case is likely to be trivial.
On the other hand, if we can find citable authorities that do repeat this rumour, that information would possibly be encyclopedic. What we'd then do is have a paragraph on this claim, citing both the correspondence from the IOH and whatever source(s) repeated the rumour. We should not under those circumstances express a POV as to which of the sources is accurate. We just report the various claims.
Until and unless we find such sources supporting the rumour, however, we're justified in taking the IOH at their word. The fact that some Wikipedia editors have (perhaps naively) repeated the rumour is not encyclopedic.
And before we get too hard on these naive editors (I think I was one of them), we should bear in mind that the rumour that the sketch did not appear at all in the Macarthur archives was also widely repeated and is now also discredited.
The other insignia
editI'm curious as to what the other six-star insignia in the Macarthur archives looks like, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Also possibly not encyclopedic, but if it's in the archives and cited by the IOR in their response to User:OberRanks it's at least borderline.
Deleted versions
editAs often (perhaps always!) happens with images moved to commons, some of the provenance of our current image has been deleted, but is still in the database, you just need admin powers to view it, and even then it's a cumbersome process. In this case this does not seem to affect the image's copyleft standing fortunately.
Image from which the current image was derived
edithttps://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undelete&target=File%3A6star.PNG×tamp=20070520042248 (sorry, as noted you need admin powers to view these deleted file descriptions, but immediately below the permalink is what it says in each case)
Deleted revision of File:6star.PNG (as of 20 May 2007, at 04:22) by user:TomStar81
A png version of the conjectured design of the so called "6-star" General/Admiral rank. I made this by modifying Wguynes's, 5-star ensignia. Since its based on Wguynes's original design I herby release this under his original tags.
There follow the GFDL-with-disclaimers and PD-USGov-Military-Badge copyleft templates
Original image
edit
Deleted revision of File:USAF.insignia.o11.collar.wag.png (as of 24 March 2004, at 21:15) by user:Wguynes
I, Wguynes, am the artist of this graphic. msg:GFDL US Armed Forces Officer Rank Insignia Paygrade: O-11 NATO equivalence: OF-10 Worn on collar
Wguynes hasn't been active for some years, so it's probably not worth asking where they got it from. Some likely possibilities are:
- The Macarthur archive
- Some secondary source based on the archive
- They made it up (it's a pretty obvious layout given the five star ensignia, so two people could easily have come up with it independently)
and there are lots of variations on these... maybe someone else made it up or got it from the archive or from a secondary source, etc etc etc..