Talk:Thomas Playford IV

message: An email to mail:helpdesk-l said:
Re entry for Thomas Playford IV (should be Thomas Playford V)
Please note that Sir Thomas Playford, the former premier, was not the
fourth in the line of Thomas Playfords; he was the fifth.  His great
grandfather, the 'fiery Baptist minister' (whom you mention and who came
from Barnby Dun in Yorkshire) was Thomas Playford  II.  His father, the
first Thomas Playford, lived and died in Barnby Dun. He was a foundling,
who never learned his parentage. I have done a good deal of research in
the UK on this matter, but without succeeding in tracing his ancestry.
Accordingly, the text needs to be amended for the Thomas Playfords up to
Sir Thomas Playford V. I can quote source material if you wish to check
on this.
Sincerely
Dr Phillip Playford AM
I am unsure of this, so I have refrained from changing anything yet. If someone wishes to verify this by contacting <phil.playford (at) doir.wa.gov.au> they may make the change. Alphax 13:17, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Original research. Once he convinces the South Australian parliament, he'll have convinced us. Ambi 14:28, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Hmm.  In researching this article I found no reference to Sir Thomas being no 5 in the long line of Thomas Playford's.  Of course, if citeable proof is made, then I'll be happy to have it changed.  --Roisterer 11:49, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The email above openly admits to having discovered this claim himself. The parliamentary website uses "IV", with no reputable sources claiming he was the fifth. When this guy convinces the parliament, he'll ahve convinced us. Ambi 11:55, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: He (IV) is, technically, Thomas Playford V. The original pastor that emigrated, Thomas I (the pastor), was the son of a Thomas Playford (a native of Yorkshire) and therefore would be II. History (and seemingly the family also) have ignored this technicality. That said, I'm still indifferent as to a change. michael talk 12:17, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Renumbering 

message: Any reason in particular why an FA article has a lead devoid of in-line citations? Timeshift 15:18, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This probably isn't the place to ask, but since you have: There's no hard-fast rule against it, and there are many reviewers who actually request cites in leads. My personal view, as in academia, is that citations are not needed in the introduction as it is a summary of the article, where the cites are more appropriate.--cj | talk 15:52, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Quick query

message: 45 sources for are 50+ paragraph article?  im not an expert in-wikipedia policies, but citations that low for a featured article is rarely seen....for good reason.  and that's not the worst part! the included sources are drawn from only THREE BOOKS...and...err..one internet citation.  over-dependence on few sources hinders credibility, and thus i must share my opinion that this article does not meet featured status requirements.  then again, im not really an expert...:D  just thought i should give my 2 cents.  cheers Wikifan12345 (talk) 08:51, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It is easy to ask for more references and a greater variety of them, but it is not so easy to do such a thing. Playford led a state of one million. Books on him are not legion, they are few. I would think it best not to judge, if one is to judge at all, before viewing the facts on the ground. Michael talk 13:59, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: well i believe that's more of a notability issue.  three books and 45 sources for a long "featured" article is absurd.   Wikifan12345 (talk) 21:33, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree. As you said, there are 45 sources for around 50 paragraphs, which means there is one source per paragraph. That is actually very common on featured articles, particularly on less-notable topics. That said, it is not the quantity of references that counts, but the quality, reliability, and verifiability of references, as well as factual accuracy. Juliancolton Tropical Cyclone 21:45, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

text:  yes but if each paragraph simple contained one verifiable fact that's acceptable, but these are 10 sentence paragraphs.  do you honestly believe a single source is sufficient to support many facts?  the sourcing is redundant since it's all from the same books.  we might as well just post the book and ditch the article.  not to mention this article is very hard to critique when the references are from books are not available on the internet. 3 books and one internet source is not sufficient, definitely not for a featured status article.  Wikifan12345 (talk) 21:57, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: For a simple answer to your question: yes, I do think that it is possible for one page of a book to support an entire paragraph. And books are actually encouraged to be used as sources, more so in some cases than internet sources. Juliancolton Tropical Cyclone 02:38, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: maybe, but i cant find a single featured status article with such low source count and lack of ref diversity.  unless im told the "committee" actually researched and went through each listed source and made sure it connected with the material, ill continue to protest.  aside from that, i still dont see anything spectacular about the article (in terms of prose, mechanics, grammar, etc).  makes me wonder why this article was chosen as one of the "best" in wikipedia.  eh?  Wikifan12345 (talk) 06:15, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, five people as well as the FA director determined that the article is one of the best in Wikipedia, just less than a year and a half ago. Before we continue to repeat ourselves over and over, is there any fact in the article that you actually question and believe needs to be verified? If not, I don't see what the problem is here. Juliancolton Tropical Cyclone 14:19, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

text: For a specific unverified fact, look down in the next section - the claim that Playford was the longest elected leader in the Commonwealth was wrong (and was quickly fixed once the article went onto the WP front page). This is what can happen when you don't have many sources, and most of them are old. This is not to diss Michael's excellent work - presumably be bought or borrowed all 4 books (not 3 as claimed by Wikifan12345), read them, then rewrote the article, which is probably more effort (and expense) than goes into many FAs, so all kudos to him. But perhaps 5 different sources (those 4 plus one internet ref), is not enough for a FA. Maybe a couple of years ago, but not now. Peter Ballard (talk) 07:02, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: This is ludicrous. Those resources are four books. Books are infinitely better resources than the websites which get relied on for many FAs these days, and since, y'know, they contain more information, more information can be sourced to them, hence less need for tons of website sources. We should be using this article as an example to follow. Rebecca (talk) 08:15, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

text:  Well, we would have liked to have had more recent sources to draw upon when writing the Playford article but considering he retired from politics in the 1960s, there is not a lot of recent sources to reference. Playford already has a number of thorough biographies written about thim, which doesn't leave much for the contemporary biographer to cover. --Roisterer (talk) 02:24, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Rebecca, that wasn't my only complaint.  There is over 50 paragraphs and only 45 ref for the entire article.  Do you honestly believe a single paragraph can be verified with only one source?  And make that 50 consecutive times in a row?  Wikifan12345 (talk) 20:23, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Er, yes. I'm getting the feeling that you're not a big reader. It's not only acceptable to cite sections to biographies, but it's a much, much better idea than using tertiary sources - which Wikipedians are more used to using than they should be because good secondary sources often don't exist on the sorts of topics Wikipedians try to get featured. Rebecca (talk) 04:49, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

text:  u still didn't answer my question.  i find it hard to believe that the o.a managed to verify 50 consecutive paragraphs with one source for each paragraph.  Wikifan12345 (talk) 18:04, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikifan12345, you are obviously not understanding what we are trying to say. In short, a book contains far more accurate and legitimate information than a website, and thus can be sourced to an entire paragraph, rather than the 10+ per paragraph that we are used to seeing in FAs such as Barack Obama and Global warming. If you still do not understand and honestly do not think this article meets the criteria, feel free to take it to WP:FAR, as arguing in circles here is doing nothing to help. Juliancolton Tropical Cyclone 18:15, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  why is this featured?? 

message: An observant editor noted that this claim was incorrect, and that Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore was elected leader longer (31 years). It occurs to me that Robert Mugabe has also been a commonwealth leader longer. I wouldn't be surprised if there were others. In the absence of a definite up-to-date list, maybe we should remove the claim?! Or just say it was the longest "at the time"? Thoughts? Peter Ballard (talk) 10:37, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Interesting. When I wrote the original article for Playford (which has been greatly improved upon from my poor effort) all the research stated that Playford was the longest serving leader in the Commonwealth. I eventually found that a former Belgian PM served longer but I was fairly confident that  there was no one in the Commonwealth served longer. Then the article spends 24 hours on the front page and we find he's down to fourth. --Roisterer (talk) 04:24, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Longest Commonwealth leader? 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: This isn't to continue the conversation of 13 years ago, but to open discussion on the format of the numbering itself. Tom was of course never known as Thomas Playford IV, since Australians have never taken up the practice followed by some families in the US.
To avoid American readers inferring that he was known as Thomas Playford IV, could the article be titled "Thomas Playford (IV)"? And similarly,  "...(I)"  and "...(II)" for his progenitors?
Or would these titles suit, with or without the numbers?:
•  Thomas Playford (I), 19th century preacher
•  Thomas Playford (II), 19th century South Australian premier
•  Thomas Playford (IV), 20th century South Australian premier.
Just a thought.  SCHolar44 (talk) 04:21, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: Generational numbering revisited

message: There is something wrong with this photo caption - in particular describing him as a Lt in 1915.  Firstly, there are no (visible) badges of rank, secondly the uniform is not an officers' uniform, but a private soldiers', and thirdly the "info" of the original photo (State Library of SA - surely a reliable source) states that he was not promoted to Lt until 1919.  I suggest changing it to something like "Playford in 1915, as a member of the 27th Battalion of the Australian Imperial Force".Baska436 (talk) 09:40, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Makes sense. The Drover's Wife (talk) 10:35, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  1915 Photo 

message: What is Cockburn's standing as an historian? I've not read his book, but some of the assertions repeated in this article (". . . dragged Australian soldiers from the beds of Egyptian prostitutes") would make Frank Clune or George Blaikie envious.Doug butler (talk) 22:12, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it'd be good to take a look at the book to really know what context these kind of claims were said in. Beneaththelandslide was a brilliant editor for his time, but our editorial standards have changed a lot since those days, and as his once-FA standard work is getting flagged for review people are picking up some issues. More broadly: I'm mainly familiar with Cockburn in the context of Don Dunstan, who (as far as I understand) he loathed and is generally viewed by Dunstan's supporters as being somewhat big on the hatchet-job. I'd probably side-eye any controversial claims he had to make about Dunstan that weren't backed up about other sources, but I'm not aware more broadly. The best thing I could find to give a generalised context is his obit in The Advertiser, which praises him for doing a bunch of important serious journalism but also suggests he had a tendency for "campaigning". The Drover's Wife (talk) 23:39, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stewart Cockburn 

message: An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect :Tom Playford and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 October 23#Tom Playford until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion.  — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 01:45, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Tom Playford" listed at [[Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion|Redirects for discussion]]