Talk:E. T. Pollock

message: I'm sorry to say this but while this article is well researched and very informative, it is rather choppily written. Certainly this is a cut above the average Wikipedia article, but I think it needs a thorough copyedit for style and flow. I'll note that there are a few one sentence paragraphs. The writing in the "Early career" section stands out as needing work. Where he served and what position he took or was assigned needs to be included, but there is a way to smooth this out and combine sentences so this doesn't read (as it does now) as: "He was on ship X. He was then on Ship Y". He was then on ship Z. Putting this aside, one sentence is a real problem. This simply does not parse: "Oliver was unable to travel immediately to the Islands and the honor of being the first Acting Governor of the United States Virgin Islands was decided in an unusual way." How these two facts have been connected in one sentence is beyond the ken of any reader.--96.224.145.248 (talk) 06:15, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that the writing is poor throughout; perhaps the article will be cleaned up and better copyedited during its TFA-- if not, it should go to WP:FAR next week.  SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:54, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Sentence problem

message: Not sure, some military officers get a section titled "honors".  I love my Navy history, since I work forthem, and know of at least one honor for him, at Naval Surface Warfare Center, there's a conference room dedicated to him there for one of the buildings (1580 I think).  But I don't have anything to reference for it. I can't imagine he doesn't have more up at the observatory.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Egreena42 (talk • contribs) 12:59, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Honors 

message: This older FA has some sourcing concerns:
* Pollock's date of birth is never directly cited anywhere
* "and he was reassigned to New York, to see service in Cuba and Puerto Rico, eventually taking part in the Battle of Santiago de Cuba" - source is from April 1898, but can't support all of this, because Santiago de Cuba was fought in July 1898
* " In 1910, Pollock was reassigned to USS Massachusetts, where he was promoted to commander in March 1911" - one source is from 1907 and the other from 1910, so they can't support things happening in 1911
* "In the final days before the entrance of the United States into World War I, the US military was concerned that Germany was planning to purchase or seize the Danish West Indies for use as a submarine or zeppelin base" - I think this is something we should have a secondary historian for, not a 1917 news report
* "On August 22, 1924, Mars came within 34,630,000 miles (55,730,000 km) of Earth. The US Naval Observatory made no formal observations of the planet, but Pollock and the son of astronomer Asaph Hall ceremonially re-enacted Hall's 1877 discoveries of the moons Phobos and Deimos with his original 17-inch (430 mm) telescope" - sourced to something from August 20.
I haven't been able to get around to checking the sources (should be PD?), but it wouldn't hurt to check for WP:SYNTH, which is a hazard when piecing together large chunks of an article mainly from single news reports. If the concerns are not addressed, a featured article review may be necessary. Hog Farm  Talk 20:42, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[WP:URFA/2020A]]