Talk:Jean Gordon (Red Cross)

Requested move

The RM below is a converted technical request. See the Contested technical request. – Wbm1058 (talk) 17:46, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

• Jean Gordon (Red Cross Donut Girl) → Jean Gordon (Red Cross donut girl) (move) – I don't think "donut girl" is a proper noun and it is not capitalized in the article. 216.8.171.8 (talk) 12:42, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

I'd rather see this taken to discussion. Personally, I think Jean Gordon (Red Cross) would be sufficient. --BDD (talk) 15:54, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Moved. The move was supported by a narrow majority. None of the options is free of problems. EdJohnston (talk) 14:47, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

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Jean Gordon (Red Cross Donut Girl) → Jean Gordon (Red Cross) – Per suggesion. --Relisted. Chihin.chong (tea and biscuits) 08:56, 11 May 2013 (UTC) not an admin Apteva (talk) 18:49, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.

• Support as suggester. --BDD (talk) 20:30, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose – the proposed title makes little sense. The original suggestion at WP:RM was a technical move (not really necessary) to fix the unnecessary capitalization: Jean Gordon (Red Cross donut girl). I would have thought that non-controversial, but now BDD has made this unexplained alternative proposal. Why? Dicklyon (talk) 21:14, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Good disambiguators for people are generally occupation or affiliation. Jean Gordon (donut girl) would technically be correct, but that's a pretty strange disambiguator. If she's primarily known as a Red Cross employee (let's not touch the mistress issue), that's a good way to go. Compare to, oh, say, George Carpenter (Salvation Army) or Samuel Roper (Ku Klux Klan). --BDD (talk) 21:25, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

She's not actually known for much other than the Patton relationship. Red Cross seems like a misleading disambiguator; and donut girl would be too vague. At least together they mean something, so unless we come up with something better, let's just fix the case and move on. Dicklyon (talk) 22:02, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

• Unsure. I note that donut girl and wikt:donut girl are both redlinks as I write, with no local incoming links in either case [1] [2]. Something needs to happen, not sure what. Andrewa (talk) 16:00, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose (change of vote). Support redirect and merge as proposed below. The resulting redirect is harmless, and we can set up more appropriate ones later. Andrewa (talk) 12:04, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
• Support (change of vote). we know she was a Red Cross worker who served snacks; they did lots of other things too (liek talk to soldiers & write letters) Rjensen (talk) 01:04, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
• Support move away from Donut Girl. The additional disambiguator beyond Red Cross is unnecessary and unusual. Gobōnobō ^{+ c} 02:35, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. This article should merge to George S. Patton, where disambiguation is unnecessary. What the heck is a "donut girl" anyway? A girl who bakes donuts? The article doesn't say. What notable things did she do for the Red Cross? The article doesn't say. These "disambiguators" are too ambiguous without further explanation. If you must keep this as a stand-alone article, even though it sounds more like an extracted segment of Patton's bio than a bio of Jean Gordon, then Jean Gordon (Patton's niece), or Jean Gordon (Boston socialite), as this photo caption dab's her, would be more appropriate disambiguators. – Wbm1058 (talk) 02:11, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Oh, I see. Buried in the middle of the second section (sorry, I didn't read that far past the lead): "driving the doughnut and coffee trucks to Third Army units in combat..." So, that gives us a lead sentence (if we keep the current title):
    • Jean Gordon was a Red Cross worker during World War II who drove doughnut and coffee trucks to Third Army units in combat.

      Then bury all that secondary information about Patton in the second section. Not that I understand why anyone would be notable simply for "driving the doughnut and coffee trucks to Third Army units in combat." – Wbm1058 (talk) 02:28, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

      Exactly. (With apologies for the indenting, not altogether sure what's going on there.) If that's notable, then so is every member of the British army, and probably every citizen of Australia (I may be a little biased there). Looking forward to seeing my own article, I used to drive a bread truck serving some very notable hotels. See vote above, and discussion below. Andrewa (talk) 12:04, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

• Support as a disambiguator only needs to be specific enough to distinguish Jean Gordon (Red Cross) from any other John Gordon at the main Jean Gordon title or a variant. The doughnut bit seems a bit redundant unless there's another Jean Gordon in the Red Cross. K7L (talk) 00:11, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

Any additional comments:

Is this really a notable topic? There were many such photos, many such relatives of notable people, many such suicides, many such rumours, and even if the rumours were true, many such affairs. Where is the encyclopedic material? Where is there even any claim to notability in the article? Mainly I'm just curious at this stage. Since nobody else has even raised the question, maybe there's something I've missed.

But the two suggested disambiguators don't inspire confidence. She wan't particularly notable as a Red Cross Donut Girl, and even less so in the larger field of Red Cross workers generally.

The George S. Patton article currently mentions her twice.

The first mention [3] reads Depressed at the lack of prospects for new conflict, Patton took to drinking heavily and began several extra-marital affairs, including one with his 21-year-old niece, [[Jean Gordon (Red Cross Donut Girl)|Jean Gordon]].{{sfn|Axelrod|2006|pp=71–72}}. That puts a different slant on it, but is not balanced, as not all authorities agree that this particular affair occurred, to say the least.

Later [4] we read ...Patton's niece appeared again; they spent some time together in London in 1944, and again in Bavaria in 1945. Gordon actually loved a young married captain who left her despondent when he went home to his wife in September 1945.{{sfn|D'Este|1995|p=744}} Patton repeatedly boasted of his sexual success with this young women but his biographers are skeptical. Hirshson says the relationship was casual.{{sfn|Hirshson|2003|p=535}} Showalter believes that Patton, under severe physical and psychological stress, made up claims of sexual conquest to prove his virility.{{sfn|Showalter|2006|pp=412–13}} D'Este agrees, saying, "His behavior suggests that in both 1936 [in Hawaii] and 1944-45, the presence of the young and attractive Jean was a means of assuaging the anxieties of a middle-aged man troubled over his virility and a fear of aging."{{sfn|D'Este|1995|p=743}}. That puts a different slant on it again, and provides a great deal more material, but still makes her no more notable.

Perhaps merge and redirect this article to the one on her famous uncle? That would of course make the move request moot. The photo is the main piece of information missing from the article on Patton, and would enhance it IMO.

She appears to be one of the many hardly noticed victims of the war, but that doesn't make her notable either. Her one claim to fame seems to be her relationship to Patton, and while it's not pretty reading, it's mainly speculation. Andrewa (talk) 01:38, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

I suggest that the fact that she appears as significant figure in several recent major scholarly books makes her "notable" for Wikipedia. That is the RS consider her notable. Rjensen (talk) 04:05, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Specifically? The sources the article currently [5] lists are all books about Patton, with the exception of Murfett's Warfare in the 20th Century . I'm guessing that the material in this one is in connection to Patton as well. Being a significant figure in Patton's story doesn't make her significant in her own right, any more than the the children of movie stars are automatically considered notable enough for articles. Does she receive a dedicated chapter in any of these references? That would count for something. And similarly, if she doesn't that would count for something too.

More important for this move discussion, none of these books is about donuts or the Red Cross. Is there a better disambiguator, one that reflects the area of her notability? Andrewa (talk) 05:57, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

If the job of the disambiguator is to distinguish ABC1, ABC2, ABC3, then what we have does the job. Rjensen (talk) 11:35, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Disagree totally. The job of the disambiguator is the same as the rest of the article title: To identify the topic in a way that is recognizable to readers, unambiguous, and consistent with usage in reliable English-language sources. People who have heard of this lady will know of her as Patton's niece or alleged mistress or conquest or all three, rather than as anything to do with the Red Cross or donuts.

So the current disambiguator Red Cross Donut Girl doesn't do the job. Or perhaps it's better to say, it does some sort of job, but not a very good one. Andrewa (talk) 02:26, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Everybody who knows anything about her knows about her Red Cross connection. It's important that she was not in the military and Patton had no command authority over her. Rjensen (talk) 07:11, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Agree that the points made in the last sentence are important, but fail to see how that affects the article title.

As to the rather sweeping claim made in the second, even if true, so what? Everyone knows that New York City is the site of the Statue of Liberty, but we don't disambiguate it New York (Statue of Liberty site). We use the better disambiguator, which even more people would recognise because it relates to the reason for its fame... It's an important city.

The reason that this doesn't work in this case seems to me to be, she's not all that famous for anything. Yes, she's mentioned in Patton's biographies etc... And so I imagine is his sister Anne. And so? Notability is not inherited.

Please note, I'm not saying (and neither is anyone else as far as I can see) that the information concerning Patton's alleged involvement with Gordon is uninteresting, or unencyclopedic. People will continue to have a morbid fascination with exactly who she was in love with, and who she slept with, and why she killed herself, and whether Patton abused his position of authority in connection with all of this. The reliable information we have is scant but there is some, and it should be in Wikipedia. But her own life story apart from those details probably shouldn't be, if she's only of interest because of this one connection, and one superb photograph.

It's borderline IMO. Many, many women of the period had similar, sad stories, but few of them with people as senior as Patton. If someone can come up with a reference that makes her a major player in a public scandal at the time, that might be different. But the only people who seemed to care at the time were Patton and his wife. The rest is speculation. Andrewa (talk) 22:58, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Patton's deteriorating psychiatric condition in 1945 is a major topic for historians -- he was a senior commanding general and then governor of Bavaria. His relationship with Jean---according to d'Este, Showalter and other leading historians--is very revealing of his mental condition. A mentally ill general is serious scandal indeed. What would be abnormal behavior, I think, is boasting about his exploits when they were all imaginary. Rjensen (talk) 23:40, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, but that's still all about Patton. Was there any scandal at the time? Did her name come up in newspaper articles in sufficient prominence for others to ask who her parents were and where she went to school?

Alternatively, has there been any recent work that focussed on this lady herself, rather than just as a detail of Patton's story? I'm skeptical. Happy to be proved wrong. Andrewa (talk) 01:25, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.