Talk:Gerrit Johannes Geysendorffer

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Gerrit Johannes Geysendorffer/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: AddWittyNameHere (talk · contribs) 23:40, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer: Mike Christie (talk · contribs) 18:40, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

I'll review this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:40, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

No issues with the image tags. The sources are reliable as far as I can tell, not being a Dutch speaker.

Spotchecks. Footnote numbers refer to this version.

• FN 11 cites "The plane caught on fire and hit a building on the Lomstraat in Venlo, but reports conflict on the order in which this happened. The Delftsche Courant wrote on 23 June 1920 that the plane, while flying over Venlo, caught on fire as a result of a burst fuel tank and subsequently came down". Can you quote and translate the supporting text for this?
• FN 16 cites "A Fokker F.III captained by Geysendorffer, registration H-NABV". Verified.
• FN 5 cites "In early 1927, William Van Lear Black approached the KLM to charter a plane and crew." Verified.

Notes from reading through the article:

• Do we know nothing about him prior to 1918? Can we start with a section saying where and when he was born, and any information known about his parents and schooling? The Dutch article about him says he was the only one of eight children to survive to adulthood. Ah, I see there's a personal life section at the end. It seems odd to have his birth information at the end instead of the start.
• "accumulated 580 flight hours with the LVA prior to his hiring by the KLM": why "the KLM"? Isn't it just "KLM"? Though I see elsewhere in the article that you have "the KLM" again, so is that a Dutch usage? And this is said as if we know already that he was hired by them, but in fact the article only covers that further down. Suggest "accumulated 580 flight hours with the LVA by 1921" or "in the two years he flew for them".
• Judging from the Dutch Wikipedia, Luchtvaartafdeeling is worth a red link.
• The paragraph on N.G.G. Combinatie mentions the Venlo crash, and then goes on to talk about the plane, so it's a bit of a surprise when we go back to talk about the crash again in the next paragraph. Can this be integrated a little more chronologically? I don't think we need to foreshadow the outcome with "would be short-lived". If we just give the events in chronological order, without the Venlo subsection heading -- they form the company, they buy the plane and gift it to the LVA under conditions; they do demo flights in June, etc. -- then it would read much more naturally.
• "to deliver post and yeast": not an issue, but I'm curious: why was it important to deliver yeast? I would have expected him to be taking food or medicine if they'd been isolated for a while.
• "he also captained the first KLM lineflight to Paris": what is a lineflight?
• "KLM's promotion of its upcoming airline, Rotterdam-Amsterdam-Hamburg-Kopenhagen-Malmö": is "airline" the word you want here? That looks like a route, not an airline (which would be a company).
• "the symbol of a true line-pilot": I'm not sure what you mean by "line-pilot".
• See Van Lear Black; the bit about elephants charging the plane would be worth adding if you can source it.

That's everything on a first read-through. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:52, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

@Mike Christie Apologies for the late response, I am on a camping trip and ended up without internet connection for about a week.

I'll get on with responding to your raised points, but it might take a bit and several edits because I'm currently working from a mobile phone on a rather spotty connection.

AddWittyNameHere 11:19, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

No hurry -- so long as I know you're working on it it can wait till you get to somewhere where you can edit more easily. I'll check in with you again in a week if I haven't heard from you. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:32, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Managed to get to two points while you were replying. =) Some stuff will probably have to wait until I'm back behind a pc with proper wifi, but I might as well tackle everything I can do on my phone in the mean time.

• FN11: Gisterenmiddag heeft te Venlo een vreeslijck vliegongeluk plaats gehad. [...] Toen het vliegtuig boven de stad was is het benzine-reservoir gesprongen en vloog de machine in brand. De machine kwam terecht in de keuken van het huis van de heer Joosten aan de Lomstraat.

Translation: Yesterday afternoon a terrible air accident occurred at Venlo. [...] When the plane was above the city, the fuel tank burst and the machine caught fire. The machine came down in the kitchen of the house of mister Joosten at the Lomstraat.

That works. I think technically the first sentence ("... reports conflict ...") requires both the Delftsche Courant and the Zutphensche Courant cites, but I'm not going to regard that as a verification failure. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:52, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

• Re:personal information: From what I rememver, I found some further information while writing, but it's all either on bloggy personal genealogy sites, nothing that would stand up to en.wiki's reference guidelines, or trivial information in maybe-barely-reliable-if-you-squint sources, tbh. I can do another search once I'm back at a pc. As for the sections placement, I think I followed some other similar article's example in its current placement, I think--but hell if I remember which one from top of my head. Not married to its current location, however, so if you believe it's better placed higher up, I'll do that.

  No need -- so long as the information that you can source is present that's fine; I was more just checking that you'd looked for the personal life stuff. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:52, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

AddWittyNameHere 11:40, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

• Re:Luchtvaartafdeling: I would agree, but it's an existing redirect to the Royal Netherlands Air Force, so can't be redlinked (and is repetitive when combined with the link to Royal Netherlands Air Force right after), so that leaves either the current situation or linking Luchtvaartafdeling and delinking Royal Netherlands Air Force, I think. My personal preference tends to be to link the actual article title when it and a redirect are present this near each other, but let me know if you think the other way around would be better here?

  I realized that was the state of affairs after I'd posted the comment. Not an issue for this GA. I think I might suggest linking to Luchtvaartafdeling even though it just redirects to the article you link to later in the sentence, so that when the new article is eventually created the link will go there, but if you do that another editor is quite likely to come along and delink it later. Your call. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:52, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

• NGG Combinatie: Agree on the foreshadowing, will remove. You are probably right about the ordering in-section. Did it this way to avoid repetition of information, but I'll look at revising it into a more sensible order. Depending on how much work that ends up being, might be another "when I'm behind a pc again" job, though.
• Re:yeast--it's curious, isn't it? The first of two cites mentions there was a "groote behoefte" (strong need/want) irt yeast, but doesn't quite explain why. It's pure speculation, but considering the when and where, I'd expect that they had decent stocks of preserved fish (it was one of THE traditional fishing towns of the Netherlands), and probably other canned/preserved goods, but ran out of yeast for bread early.
• Lineflight, line-pilot, airline: Remnant Dutch-isms, thanks for pointing them out! Line-flight: commercial, regularly scheduled passenger flight between set destinations, on which you can book a seat (as opposed to a. non-passenger flights and b. charter flights). Scheduled flight is probably the closest English approximation, so will change it. Line-pilot: mostly a too literal translation of the Durch source given ("lijnpiloot"). Airline transport pilot or airline pilot are probably better terms in English, even if the implications/context now versus the 20s/30s are slightly different. (But then, the same can be said for the Dutch word lijnpiloot). If I replace line pilot with airline pilot, is that sufficiently clear? Airline: right, English is weird that way in that it uses the word for the service provided (scheduled recurring flights on the same "line"/route) to exclusively refer to the companies providing the service. I think the English terminology might be "scheduled flight service" when distinguishing between an individual scheduled flight and the (new/upcoming) existence of recurring flights between two destinations by a specific company, but not 100% sure.

AddWittyNameHere 12:26, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Final point, Van Lear Black: I'll see if I can find a source to add that bit.

Think those were all points, but it's easy to miss one on phone so let me know if I missed any, @Mike Christie. AddWittyNameHere 12:28, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Did indeed miss something. Yes, in Dutch it would be "de [the] KLM" not KLM without article in most contexts. Grammatical rules in regards to this are a little fuzzy, and not using an article isn't *wrong*, but in practice, especially when an organization's name includes a meaningful "core word" of descriptive function (groep, unie, maatschappij, bank, archief, etc. [Group, union, partnership, bank, archive, etc.]) the lack of one feels off--even when the full name is then abbreviated like is the case for KLM. (English does the same to a degree, at least ime, just not quite as broadly). If it reads unnatural in English, though, I can change it. As for knowing already, we do from the lede but yeah, not from the body of the article. I'll see what I can do about that. AddWittyNameHere 13:03, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

All right, other than the stuff to maybe add for which I'd need to look for further sources first, think I've implemented everything above now. AddWittyNameHere 13:28, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

The changes all look good; I tweaked a couple of sentences, but feel free to edit them further if you don't agree with the revised wording. One last thing to fix: the notes at the end are unsourced. I'm not going to insist you cite the usage of "Jan" (though to be honest I would cite it if you can; I cite everything) but I do think the statement about the heath needs a citation, and it should be easy to cite the note about Batavia. Once that's done I can promote this to GA. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:04, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Batavia now being Jakarta, and Groote Heide now part of Maas-Schwalm-Nette Naturpark now both cited. Might look for a cite for the Jan thing once I'm back home, but if it's not critical, no sooner than that--looking for references on a phone is a pain. Both of your revisions look fine to me. AddWittyNameHere 08:20, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Looks like the two cites you added are referenced but not actually defined? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:23, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Huh. I'll check where I messsed up. AddWittyNameHere 19:18, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

@Mike Christie should be fixed now, but would appreciate you checking to confirm, as I immediately am reminded why I usually refrain from editing on my phone. Too easy to overlook stuff like that when you can only see a few lines at a time. (The culprit was a missed closing ref tag) AddWittyNameHere 19:25, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

That looks good, so I'm passing this. Congratulations! And can I ask if you'd be interested in doing GA reviews? You're a very experienced editor and a good writer, and GA always needs reviewers. Either way, thanks for an interesting read. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:27, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

I would want a little more experience on this side of GA, but it's certainly something I will consider. Thank you for reviewing! AddWittyNameHere 21:20, 14 July 2024 (UTC)