Talk:Frederick Townsend Ward

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.
Biography Portal
B This article has been rated as B-Class on the project's quality scale. [FAQ]
This article is supported by the Military work group.
This article is part of WikiProject Maritime Trades, a group of editors working to improve Merchant Shipping topics. To learn more or join the project, please visit the project page.
B This article has been rated as B-Class on the assessment scale.
Mid This article has been rated as mid-importance on the assessment scale.
MILHIST This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see lists of open tasks and regional and topical task forces. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.
Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale.

Contents

[edit] The Last Samurai?

I'm removing the two references to the movie The Last Samurai stating that the Tom Cruise character is based on Ward. This is seems to be an example of the internet-as-echo-chamber. Most of these statements contain similar phrasing to - or explicitly reference - either this WP page or an unsourced factoid at the IMDB trivia page for the movie. Which, needless to say, is no more a primary source than we are.

It's easy to find articles online, however, where the principals describe the historical inspiration for the film (short answer: Japanese history).

While I recognize the superficial similarity between Ward and Cruise's Nathan Algren, this narrative theme is hardly new territory for Hollywood (white officer heroically leads less-pigmentally-challenged soldiers in exotic locale). There is no element of The Last Samurai's plot (that I know of) which seems drawn from any particular event in Ward's life.

The current WP article states that Cruise was involved in an abortive attempt to adapt the Carr book into a film prior to The Last Samurai. (It'd be great if this was sourced.) I find it easy to believe that if Cruise was interested in playing Ward he also might find the Algren role appealing - and even (pure speculation, here) that he'd been actively pushing for a similarly-themed screenplay that was unencumbered by whatever complications "The Foreign Devil" project had. But - for our purposes, this doesn't matter.

72.70.72.170 (talk) 18:49, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] hero: POV?

"As it is, he is remembered as one of China's greatest military heroes". I don't think many Chinese regard him (and also Gordon) as heroes. To majority Chinese, those guys are just agents of imperialism and ruthless butchers.

Wiki contributors are not valid and quotable sources for articles. - Tεxτurε 18:24, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Rewriting?

"However, a certain Yankee trait of hypocrisy in the service of hard-nosed business interests was also held in esteem, or at the very least, politely left unacknowledged." This is A. not a sentance and B. also rather incendary in language. In refrence to this not being a sentance, where is the subject? 'a certain Yankee trait of hypocrisy'? no. 12.20.127.229 18:08, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] copyright

Large sections of this article seem to be taken directly from copyrighted sources, this article needs alot of work to bring it up to standards. Revision as of 06:41, 16 August 2005 is superior to the current version. 12.20.127.229 18:36, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Matthewdkaufman replies: With regard to the above comments - "sez you" - I have no plans to take lessons on sentence structure from you, but thanks anyway. With regard to sections of the article taken from copyrighted sources, all sources are properly attributed. Give me an example of a part of the article in which material was "stolen" from a published work without attribution before you make claims of this kind.
None of the above comments are mine (although I have added section headers in the hopes of separating out what are different topics of discussion). However, a bit of copyeditting would seem in order because mere attribution to another person's intellectual property is not sufficient to deal with copyright issues. Words such as "untimely" are POV; phrases such as "(see appendix)" are especially inappropriate since they don't help the wikipedia reader. rewinn 04:27, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Speculative Material deleted

I deleted the speculation about subject's departure from schooling since it specifically states that no-one has any evidence about the truth. Also deleted comparison to Grant since it specifically states the men never met, were not really contemporaries (according to the text), and all they had in common were that they were former officers unhappily employed. There's too much of that going around to encyclopedic. rewinn 03:32, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] DISPUTE B-class

1. I think this article should go back to Start class, since the sources are of poor quality, the possibly high-quality sources are not easily verifiable, the citations are not wikified (and are specific enough to demand it). The article appeared in whole cloth | here based entirely on three dodgy online public-domain transcription sources, with no reference to the two printed works (Carr and Cahill). Gilding has since ensued.

2. Has anyone attempted a thorough wikification of all citations? If not, I will. I'd dearly like to see a copy of those damned books, though.

--Lexein 05:05, 14 April 2007 (UTC)