Talk:Douglas MacArthur

Date format

Please change it to mdy. --2603:7000:2143:8500:EC64:FB79:7C07:7BDE (talk) 07:22, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

 Declined The article uses the proper format for US military biographies. See WP:MILFORMAT. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 09:34, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

"General McArthur" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect General McArthur and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 April 24#General McArthur until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 09:25, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

Public Image in the Philippines

Although this article mentions his reputation as a revered war hero in the United States, shouldn't it also cover his similar reputation in the Philippines as well? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vortex3427 (talk • contribs) 03:17, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Have you got a source on the subject? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 08:09, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

@Hawkeye7 I'll try to dig up more sources, but I have this Time article which is considered to be a 'generally reliable' source. Vortex (talk) 13:25, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Split?

Should this article be split? At 235 Kb it's well past the size limit for it, and seems to take an age to load up when editing. Any thoughts? Xyl 54 (talk) 15:52, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

Incorrect. The article is only 111 KB. On Wikipedia we use readable prose to measure prose size, not markup. (WP:PROSESIZE) What we have already done is the create subarticles: Douglas MacArthur's escape from the Philippines, Relief of Douglas MacArthur, Service summary of Douglas MacArthur, List of places named for Douglas MacArthur. So all you need to do it write a new subarticle, and the main article can be reduced a bit. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 18:19, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

Hawkeye7 Thanks for replying: I have to say I’m a bit unclear about the difference between readable prose and markup, especially if more than half this article (by that reckoning) is markup. I was mainly posing the question because the page was slow loading up when I was editing. Surely the quantity of the markup stuff affects loading time though, doesn’t it? But another angle on the page size, perhaps, is that at least one of the sub-articles (Douglas MacArthur in World War II) seems not as long as the section it is derived from: Would it not be appropriate to trim the WWII section here to a summary? Xyl 54 (talk) 22:24, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

The size of the markup has little if any effect on the reader. The reason is that the majority of the download is images. The one in the infobox alone is 2.2 MB, so twenty times the size of the markup in the article. The markup is affected by templates, and the use of non-ASCII characters, which take up more space. We can run into technical problems if the number of templates in an article gets too big, but that is not the case here. There is some argument that comprehensibility could be a problem if an article is large, but in most cases the reader is will either read the entire article however large it is, or else skip to the information they are looking for. In neither case are they better served by arbitrarily splitting the article. Since the article is a featured article, subarticles must be of similar standard before we will consider reducing the the main article. Douglas MacArthur in World War II is nothing more than the section that used to be in the article. No work has been done on it; all the maintenance has been concentrated on the main article. I will arrange for its deletion. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:59, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

Hawkeye7 I agree with you that the article does not need to be split. In my opinion, the article is an excellent one about someone with an exceptionally relevant history. I was going to suggest deleting any reference to Douglas MacArthur in World War II as it had not been edited in five years. Deleting the article itself is an even better idea. Dr. Grampinator (talk) 23:17, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

Ahh! Well, thank you for the explanations. Regards, Xyl 54 (talk) 22:42, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Not Really Similar to Operation Paperclip

"MacArthur gave immunity to Shiro Ishii and other members of Unit 731 in exchange for germ warfare data based on human experimentation. This was similar to Operation Paperclip,"

This is not the same, because it can reasonably be argued that production of armaments is a normal part of war, whereas inhuman experimentation on civilians and others is a war-crime, and the shameful failure to prosecute war criminals could even be considered a crime. This needs to be rewritten to make clear the nature of the choice that MacArthur made which is against all morality. The lengths that they went to to cover it up demonstrates their guilt. Muchado (talk) 15:45, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

I have removed the references to Operation Paperclip because they are not supported by the cited source, and re-worded what is left to match what the source does say. Failure to prosecute may be shameful but it is not considered a crime. It is quite common for district attorneys to decline to prosecute simply because they are short of time, personnel or money. MacArthur's role is not so clear-cut; he submitted reports and recommendations, but decisions were taken in Washington. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:47, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 20 March 2023

Please change X Native American codetalkers to Y Navajo codetalkers. 2603:B010:FFFD:53:49B5:BD2D:D0CC:200A (talk) 16:05, 20 March 2023 (UTC)