Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Review

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The review department of the Military history WikiProject is the project's main forum for conducting detailed reviews—both formal and informal—of particular articles within its scope.

The department hosts two forms of review internal to the project:

• Peer review (an informal review meant to provide ideas for further improvement)
• A-Class review (a formal review of a candidate for an A-Class quality assessment)

It also provides a convenient collection of military history articles currently undergoing formal review outside the project:

• Featured article candidates
• Featured article review
• Non-article featured content candidates

Contents 1 Peer review 1.1 Battle of Kumanovo 1.1.1 FayssalF 1.1.2 Kirill Lokshin 1.2 Treaty of Versailles 1.2.1 Kirill Lokshin 1.3 Battle of Marston Moor 1.3.1 Kirill Lokshin 1.4 Operation Wilno 1.4.1 Kirill Lokshin 1.5 HMS Kelly (F01) 1.5.1 Kirill Lokshin 1.6 List of African American Medal of Honor recipients 1.6.1 Kirill Lokshin 1.7 Cambodian Incursion 1.7.1 Kirill Lokshin 1.8 Batu Lintang camp 1.8.1 Kirill Lokshin 1.9 Battle of Waterloo 1.9.1 Raymond 1.9.2 Kirill Lokshin 1.9.3 Arnoutf 1.10 Russian-Circassian War 1.10.1 PocklingtonDan 1.10.2 Wandalstouring 1.10.3 Kirill Lokshin 1.11 Iowa class battleship 1.11.1 Kirill Lokshin 1.12 Operation Menu 1.12.1 Kirill Lokshin 2 A-Class review 3 Featured article candidates 3.1 Puerto Ricans in World War II 3.2 Ioannis Makrygiannis 3.3 Boudica 3.4 Harry S. Truman 3.5 Domenico Selvo 3.6 Knights Templar 3.7 Battleship 4 Featured article review 4.1 Attack on Pearl Harbor 4.2 Nuclear weapon 4.3 Invasion 5 Non-article featured content candidates 5.1 List of United States Marine Corps aircraft squadrons 6 Archives

[edit] Peer review

Please add new requests below this line

[edit] Battle of Kumanovo

I have rewritten and expanded the article. I believe it now has the B-class quality, and I would like to hear some opinions. Thanks. Jova 17:24, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] FayssalF

Nice job. The article looks pretty and evenly distributed. However, more references are needed for such a detailed and developed article. Creating the red-linked articles (even as stubs) would be great. I've just created a couple. Still, B-Class seems appropriate. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up ®} 18:19, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Kirill Lokshin

Yep, quite nice overall, but still some areas that need work:

• More citations, and ideally a greater variety of references, would be helpful. As it is, the article is basically built from only one source.
• A longer, more detailed lead would be appropriate.
• I'd try to be more thorough with linking unit names. Pretty much anything at the division level and above ought to have an article eventually; so it's helpful to set up the links now. Many of the unit names should probably be (partially) translated as well, although you'll likely need to find an English-language source on the period to see what the conventions are here; the use of native-language names exclusively makes the article more difficult to read, I think.

Kirill Lokshin 18:51, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Treaty of Versailles

I think this article is very important and the article itself is well written in my opinion. I helped a little bit in some sections and thought it could use a peer review. Cheif Captain 19:07, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Kirill Lokshin

Not a bad start, but still lots of work needed:

• Citations are needed throughout.
• The bulleted lists should generally be converted to prose. As it stands, the article's overall flow is quite choppy.
• The mammoth "See also" section should be eliminated. Ideally, creating a navigation template for the treaties which ended WWI would remove the need for most of these links.
• "Alternative viewpoints" needs to be integrated into "Historical assessments", and both sections ought to be expanded. The question of whether the treaty was a good one has been the topic of extensive historiography, which can be discussed in rather more detail than is present here.

Kirill Lokshin 22:03, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Battle of Marston Moor

Recently underwent an overhaul. Strong potential for GA status in the future, maybe further. Looking for further suggestions on how to further improve the article. Thanks in advance. Qjuad 18:23, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Kirill Lokshin

Quite nice, but a number of things to work on:

• Maps! Ideally, both a strategic map and one or more tactical maps of the disposition and battle itself.
• I'd suggest using normal blockquote formatting instead of {{cquote}}.
• Is there a particular reason why the dragoons are listed separately from the rest of the cavalry in the infobox?
• The OOB should just be linked with {{details}} from the deployment section; it doesn't need a rump section of its own.
• The footnotes missing page numbers really ought to get them; they're not particularly useful, otherwise.

Beyond that, a thorough copyedit would be helpful, at this point. Kirill Lokshin 00:56, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Operation Wilno

This article seems to have grown beyond 'start' level, I and other editors would appreciate any suggestions you may have. I think it may be approaching GA-level of quality, unfortunatly there is a controversy surrounding its name (see also mine and Kirill's discussion here). If you could help us reach a consensus on a better name, this would be much appreciated. PS. I added extra info to talk, will be adding it to article soon.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  19:19, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Kirill Lokshin

I've already commented on the name, so I'll move directly on to the actual content:

• The map shows "German and Lithuanian detachements" near the action, but these don't appear to be mentioned in the text. What were they? The prelude section should open with a description of the strategic situation before getting into the action, I think; otherwise, it's a bit difficult to understand where things are starting from.
• Month+day dates need to be linked.
• In general, footnotes are neater when placed at the ends of sentences, not at random points in them. If there's confusion over what exactly is being cited, it's probably better to just indicate it explicitly in the footnote.
• The lead ought to be extended to two/three paragraphs.
• The "See also" section should be eliminated.
• {{en icon}} really isn't necessary; this is the English Wikipedia, so sources are assumed to be in English unless explicitly indicated otherwise.

Kirill Lokshin 00:45, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] HMS Kelly (F01)

I have reworked the old information, added an infobox, added external links, and included some service history not previously included. I think this takes the article to at least Start class, possibly B (although that might require a little more on Crete and the sinking), and I would therefore greatly appreciate a peer review. --Davidbober 18:35, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

It's looking better already. Thanks for the help, gentlemen. Bloody marvellous! --Davidbober 00:10, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Kirill Lokshin

Lots of things that can be improved, I think:

• I'm fairly certain that WP:SHIPS has a newer version of the infobox now; you might want to check what exactly they're recommending.
• The lead needs to be longer—a paragraph or two, at least—and should briefly summarize the entire article.
• The dates would be neater in parentheses than after commas, I think.
• Citations! As it stands, the article doesn't actually have any explicit references.
• The "HMS Kelly in fiction" section is quite stubby. I would suggest, if possible, rolling it into a combined "Legacy" section of some sort that would cover the aftermath of the sinking (what happened to the survivors, etc.) together with any other related material.

More generally, the article is quite terse; any further expansion would be quite welcome at this point. Kirill Lokshin 16:12, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] List of African American Medal of Honor recipients

Have worked on this quite a bit and would like for it to be a Featured List eventually. Any comments are appreciated. jwillbur^talk 00:14, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Kirill Lokshin

Some thoughts:

• The lead needs to be more self-explanatory for the average reader. For example, "the nation's highest military decoration": what nation? And so forth. The basic facts need to be stated explicitly; don't assume that the reader is American.
• The lists themselves would work better in table form, I think, than they do in the current mode of having bulleted sections with repeated labels.
• The choice of data presented seems a bit strange. Why is the place where the recipient entered service of interest? Why are birth dates given, but not death dates? The final rank achieved may be of interest here, as well.
• The "See also" section should be eliminated; these aren't that difficult to link in the text itself.
• Is homeofheroes.com a reputable source?

Kirill Lokshin 01:43, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cambodian Incursion

Have been working on this start-class article and am looking for some constructive criticism. RM Gillespie 04:42, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Kirill Lokshin

Quite nice, overall. I've fixed up some of the more obvious formatting and categorization points. A few issues to consider, though:

• Units, events, etc., should generally be linked the first time they're mentioned. For example, the Studies and Observations Group isn't linked, nor is the Tet offensive of 1969; the casual reader should be given an easy way of navigating to the background material on these.
• I'd suggest using {{details}} in place of {{main}}, as it produces a less cryptic rendering.
• A few points that need to be cited:
  • The quotes from Nixon at the end of the "Planning" section.
  • "Surprisingly, North Vietnamese forces did not oppose the evacuation, though they could easily have done so."
  • The paragraph starting with "John Shaw and other historians..." in the "Conclusion" section.
  • "Millions of Cambodians would pay the ultimate price as a result of those decisions."
  • (More generally, a few more citations in the "Supporting operations" and "Repercussions" sections might not be amiss.)
• The self-references to the article should be reworded; e.g. "whose fate was basically ignored by all but a few historians listed below" → "whose fate was ignored by most historians".

Kirill Lokshin 05:39, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Batu Lintang camp

I would like to get this article up to FA status and would be grateful for any input on any aspect of this article. Many thanks, Jasper33 17:54, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Kirill Lokshin

Quite nice, overall. A number of points for further improvement, though:

• {{Infobox Military Structure}} should be usable here, I think.
  • Done
• The lead should be considerably longer—probably three full paragraphs—and should be a brief summary of the entire article.
  • Done
• Section titles should generally omit a leading "The", per the MoS.
  • Done
• The "Compounds" section would probably be neater if it used definition-list formatting (i.e. ; Name : Description).
  • I'm not sure what you mean by this - MOS isn't any use (that I can see, anyway).
    • I've cleaned it up for you. Kirill Lokshin 00:24, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
      • Thanks Kirill - it looks much better now, and I shall know how to next time. Jasper33 07:38, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
• There are a great many quotes worked into the text without the necessary context; each quote should be introduced, at a minimum, with its source (e.g. "According to prisoner diaries, ..." or something similar).
  • Done. For two quotes, it was difficult to easily add the information without breaking the flow, so the information has been added to the footnote
• Month/day combinations should be linked to allow date preferences to work.
  • Done - I haven't linked months and years where no day is given (eg March 1942) or grouped dates (eg 15-18 August 1945). Is that right?
    • The latter type really should be linked in theory—as date preferences can be applied to it—but I don't know of any clean way of doing it, so it's probably okay to leave it unlinked. Kirill Lokshin 00:24, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
• The last three sections ("Post-war", "Batu Lintang camp in popular culture", and "Archives") are quite stubby; it may be better to combine them all into a single section (e.g. "Legacy" or something similar).
  • Done - now all under Post-war
• The "See also" section should be eliminated; all of those terms are (or should be) linked in the text itself.
  • Done
• The article is quite massively dependent on Ooi; it's almost certain that someone will ask about this during a FAC, so you should be prepared to justify the heavy reliance on him.
  • I agree that the article is Ooi-heavy. It is a two volume collection, introduced and edited by Ooi, of various memoirs and records from the POWs and internees, and so is an amazing resource. Jasper33 19:50, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Keep up the good work! Kirill Lokshin 21:55, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for all your comments, Kirill. I've sorted a couple of the quicker edits and hope to get the rest done tomorrow. Jasper33 19:51, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm afraid I have no suggestions or constructive criticism at the moment, but it's a very interesting subject, particularly the bit about the hidden radio. Fascinating, the kinds of tiny historical narratives that get totally hidden in surveys of the big picture. LordAmeth 08:55, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Battle of Waterloo

Three editors have been working on this pretty hard for sometime and I think we can sure use a review on our progress. It has gone from 0 inline citations to 75+ and the sources from 0 to 7. Whole sections have been added to provide a more neutral pov. Tirronan 18:47, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Raymond

Initial personal thoughts:

• Needs checking for spelling, grammar and typos (there are quite a few errors) and the article contains a mixture of US and UK spelling – it doesn’t matter which is used as long as its consistent – usually the –re –er / words

  Yes it does see WP:MOS#National varieties of English No Americans at the battle. --Philip Baird Shearer 17:02, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

• There are many great paintings of the battle and the only one in the article itself is rather poor.

• Similarly the picture of Napoleon is very poor (a statue in silhouette. At least give some info as to where the statue is situated). Wellington is ignored altogether.

• There a two pictures of the ‘Lions’ hillock’. Could be misleading having the first of these pictures where it is, certainly when considering it was not part of the battlefield’s topography.

• The picture in the section called ‘Prussian Advance’ is of little help or interest.

• Not sure having a quotation in the lead is a good idea.

• Most of the above are personal observations/suggestions. The English however, is less moot and will need a little bit of attention in places (although it’s not too bad overall)

Other observations:

• There are two references from D Chandler (same book). Only one edition is used in the notes (and then only once).

• The Notes refer to Siborne, HT who is not listed in the References.

• The notes section needs tidying up - I’m sure you don’t need to link to the References section.

  I like the links to the reference section it helps with navigation. --Philip Baird Shearer 17:02, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

• Glover, Chesney, Howarth are all quoted as sources but are noticeable by their absence in the notes. In fact most of the article is taken from just two sources, one of whom is: Hofschröer, Peter; 1815, The Waterloo Campaign: The German Victory. An unbiased source??

• I just got my copies of the Glover, Chesney, and Howarth, works from Amazon so I will be reading and citing them where appropriate.
• Peter is a personal friend of mine and I am quick to take offense at somethings folks have said about him, I will pass on this one except to say that I have yet to find an error with a source of his.
• Philip has run his New Zeland spell checker to make sure we are using the Queen's English
• Removed the picture from the Prussian advance section.

Tirronan 19:31, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Kirill Lokshin

Not bad, but a number of areas that need improvement:

• The citation format needs to be cleaned up—what are the "References" link doing there? Footnotes should always be placed after punctuation; and, in most cases, a single footnote at the end of a sentence is better than a footnote after every phrase. Most of this material isn't that controversial.

  Footnotes should not always be placed after punctuation. That is a SV thingy and there is no consensus on that issue. --PBS

  The Referenecs is a link to that section, it makes navigation around the page easier. It saves space rather than having all of the book details on every citiation. --Philip Baird Shearer 17:06, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

  The proper way of doing that is to give a short-form citation, not an unrelated link, no? (The short-form can be linked, of course; but the citation needs to remain relevant if the article is printed.) Kirill Lokshin 17:29, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

• The quote in the lead isn't really needed, and is lacking in proper context besides.

  I like it and it is an expert opinion on the battle. --Philip Baird Shearer 17:06, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

  Somewhat of a biased expert opinion, though. ;-)

  (In any case, it needs to be properly introduced; we can't place epigraphs inside a block of text. So "According to Wellington, ..." rather than "... - Wellington" is the better form.) Kirill Lokshin 17:29, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

• There are still {{fact}} tags that must be dealt with.
• The external links section should be greatly trimmed.
• {{main}} should probably be changed to {{details}}.

Beyond that, I'll echo Raymond's comments about the imbalance of sources being cited. Kirill Lokshin 13:07, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

thoughts and questions and actions.

Actions to date

• Removed quote
• Removed 2nd ref to Chandler
• I'll trim the links section
• If I get a chance I will see about ordering in a copy of Naufzinger to expand sourcing and reference (I am certain I misspelled his name)and get a copy of Chandler in my house and we can add to the citing. Right now 2 of us do most the footnoting I am hoping that will change.

questions

• I confess I don't understand the {{main}} vs. {{detail}}

Thoughts

• I am an American and I think another of us is a subject of the UK. I think that explains the switching of spelling conventions. We are going to have to work on that one I believe. I'll ask Philip if he doesn't mind editing to a British style since I believe it started out that way. Entirely my fault that we mixed them up.
• When we started upgrading the article there wasn't much on the Prussian contribution and after looking at various sources if you want to know where and which Prussian units were located and what they were doing you are probably going to end up referring to Peter Hofschröer. He has a level of detail on actions on that side of the battlefield that simply is not available anywhere else. I have David Hamilton-Williams book but there seems to be a great deal of anger towards that author and I am not that interested in causing controversy. I will say that I've known PH for a decade and never caught him going much beyond his sources. Exception here is that I don't agree with his take on Wellington I think he went too far on iffy evidence. You may notice I stayed away from the subject in the article. I do believe the article takes a fair and neutral stance resolving for the most part on what happened where without further comment.

Thank you so much for the help! Tirronan 16:23, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

• A good thing about peer reviews is minor mistakes like US/UK spelling inconsistencies can get ironed out before the review process, and annoying pedants like myself will be kept happy ;)

Book recommendation: See if you can get hold of Chandler’s ‘Waterloo: The Hundred Days’. A book that A. L. Rowse describes his account as “. . quite simply, the best I have ever read” Clear, unbiased and perfect for your article (as all Chandler’ books are).

Doesn’t matter though if you can’t get hold of it – it’s just a suggestion. Good luck. Raymond Palmer 17:18, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I've ordered Howath, Chesney, and Barbero, and I will have them in hand by the 29th so i should be able to fix the last of the ^{[citation needed]} in the article and add more citations with the other two authors. When I tried to order Chandler they wanted $350.00 for it... I'll pass. I looked at Elting but I wasn't very impressed. Tirronan 17:59, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

• I've added more from Chesney and 2 from Howarth, Chesney is amazing and its 100 years old! If you get a chance I'd get it. It turns out He and Peter H agree on most points.
• David Howarth isn't nearly as good unless you want to know more about the British army, and I did, but there you are.
• Barbero is refreshing to say the least.

Tirronan 03:38, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Arnoutf

Not bad, some copyedit maybe needed but that has already been mentioned above. One additional sugestion. The article reads relatiely smoothly which is very good. However, sometimes for this same reasons, it reads a bit like an adventure novel. For example the use 'pulverise' in the last line of the French cavalry attack section. The choice of words maybe reconsidered and changed to a bit less exciting and more neutral for encyclopedia purposes. But that is just a consideration.

I noticed a number of images and paintings have been recently added (after above suggestions). Some careful deliberation which parts of the battle, battlefield you want to show may furhter improve the article.

For the rest no additions to the guys above, looks good this article; good luck with furhter improvements Arnoutf 14:44, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

• I'll confess that I am a publishing author (poetry actually) but I didn't do that one. Point taken however and will look into that.
• I added the artwork I really like the Blucher picture (although I doubt that at that age he really looked that good). Tirronan 19:24, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Russian-Circassian War

A lot of online publications about this provides a lot of info, the main prose probably needs both to be slimmed down and enriched with more facts and less waffle IMO. Having recently had an article FA'd im very keen to get another rated as higher than a B, and am eager to hear your views, one request though could you please list your points with bullet points, it makes it easier for me to address them. Also I hope you don't mind that I write 'fixed' or something in bold next to these points, I won't edit the points themselves.

It needs a lot of work, so don't pull any punches! Fire away. SGGH 14:49, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] PocklingtonDan

I have a few concerns about this article. Normally I restrict myself to grammatical and structural issues, but I have issues of content here;

• I'm not convinced that the topic deserves the title "war", given that it is spread over 100 years, with lack of an agreed start date. A series of conflicts, invasions and resistance, certainly.

  what would you suggest as an alternative title? Historical documents refer to it as a war, but then these are circassian historians, so perhaps they would do so, that can't be ruled out. I am open to interpretation

• Was Circassia an internationally recognized state? If not, it would be hard to classify this as an inter-national war. Its existence as an internationally-recognized political state is also cast into doubt by the statement in the article that "The Circassia of the time was divided into two regions". It also seems clear that for much of this history this seems to be viewed as a matter of internal rebellion than foreign invasion.

  the article on circassia states it to be a region, yet it had a flag. Perhaps territory would be more suitable? the division is mostly geographic and ethnic, rather than political as is my understanding

• There is a serious lack of citations and none of the citations seems to be from Russian sources.

  A huge majority of the citations are from historians from the CBA, which is a circassian historial society based in New Jersey, US.

• The word "genocide" is contentious and doesn't seem to match the facts, which talk about forcible removal from land. This is similar to the Highland clearances in Scotland for example, but it is not genocide - "deliberate and systematic extermination". This section needs renaming to "Clearances" or similar.

  it was originally titled "genocide?" but the question mark has been removed. It is debated as to whether it was or not by historians, but yes the majority of deaths were on the move during the forced migration, so I'm not sure whether that counts? Also note the Circassian ethnic cleansing article

I want to make it cleat that these are all questions I want to put to you rather than statements of fact - I personally know absolutely nothing about this part of the world or this period of history. I simply have to question a few of the fundamental premises of this article. Many thanks - PocklingtonDan (talk) 18:16, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I understand :) I'm not taking these things personally. I have made some comments in bold to your points and will leave a note on your talk page inviting you to make more comments. SGGH 18:56, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi SGGH, I'm glad that you are able to take these comments in good faith! Based on your comments about where you got your information for this article, I would be extremely careful about ensuring that this article was NPOV and wasn't biased towards a Circassian point of view. I'm not convinced that this qualifies as a genocide, since the *intent* was land clearances, not deaths. I don't feel terms like this ought to be used lightly, since it reduces the impact when they are used.

I will lower the emphasis on the term and refer more to the migration, however I feel it is important to include that many believe it to be genocide, but i will make it clear that it is hotly debated

Also, if it wasn't a political state as I thought it might not be, then I'm really not sure that it can be classified as a war, especially not in the "Russian-Circassian" format that is used to differentiate national combatants. I don't want to to suggest a title really since as I say I am really unfamiliar with the topic, but perhaps "Circassian struggle for independence" or "Circassian rebellions" or something. I would like ideally for a title to be chosen that accurately reflects the struggle but also is as neutral as possible between the two competing viewpoints, I think this is important.

Russian occupation of Circassia?

I really don't want to provide much more input since I am almost uniquely unqualified to do so on this topic! I mainly just wanted to raise the issues and make you aware that perhaps some care should be taken with the article title and terms used such as genocide, these things can be awfully inflammatory if improperly or contentiously implied. I think some clarification is needed of circassia's political status, which would colour whether the article ought to b written from the point of view of an inter-national conflict or as an internal conflict between the state's military and an ethnically-defined region that sought to establish independence. Many thanks - PocklingtonDan (talk) 19:09, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

You make some very valid points, i will work first of all to tone down the use of genocide, and I will consult others on what topic title should be used. Hope you don't mind that i seperated your comments so i could put my bold points in between them. Cheers again! SGGH 19:15, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I can see that you have been working hard on the article to address various editors' comments and it is looking much better, keep up the good work! - PocklingtonDan (talk) 07:04, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I hope you make more comments as the work continues! :) SGGH 10:40, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wandalstouring

Hadji Murat by Leo N. Tolstoy might help you to get a more Russian POV on the subject, although it is not exactly a scientific source. Wandalstouring 19:52, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Kirill Lokshin

First, on the topic of titles and such: it's a mistake to view this conflict as one between two defined states. Circassia was not a defined, centralized state in the conventional sense of the term; it's more accurate to consider it as a collection of related tribes and clans. Neither, however, was this a conflict internal to Russia; while some parts of the region were indeed already under Russian control when it began, others were entirely outside of it, and were invaded and annexed later on. In a sense, this was really an expansion of a centralized state at the expense of its non-centralized-state neighbors; a decent analogy would be the Samnite Wars.

In any case, the question of what the conflict is called is distinct from the question of what the conflict was. It's not immediately clear whether there's any really common name for the conflict in English-language historiography—I would have picked "Russian-Circassian Wars" or "Russian conquest of Circassia", personally—but, in any case, looking at the sources suggests that "Russian-Circassian War" is indeed a historically acceptable term, at least in the absence of a more common one. We shouldn't shy away from accepted terminology merely because it isn't quite "correct".

Beyond that, some more variety in sources would be nice to have; but I'm not sure what may be available, particularly in English. Possibly there are some general historical works on the Caucasus by Western historians that could be used, at least for the major details? Kirill Lokshin 20:03, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I think combing the two concepts would be a good plan, keep the name of the article, but state that its wasn't a war in the conventional sense somewhere in the article. Will give it a go. SGGH 20:21, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I have run through with one round of cleanups that hopefully makes things more understandable, and represents the conflict correctly, opinions are welcome! SGGH 21:14, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Have run through the whole thign cleaning it up. Thoughts? SGGH 13:35, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Anyone? SGGH 09:44, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

A few more citations in the "Invasion of western Circassia" section might not be amiss, I think. Kirill Lokshin 11:32, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Have done so, the dependence on that one resource is unfortunate but it is the only step by step account of the conflict that I can find. SGGH 12:01, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Would this make GA with one more copy edit? SGGH 08:43, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

GA tends to be unpredictable; but I don't see why not. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 12:32, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

that's true, but will also open up the article to further constructive criticism to complement this review :D will do it later. SGGH 12:52, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

It finally made it through the GA backlog, I want to add some references from non-circassian sources before attempting to get it further. SGGH 10:20, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Iowa class battleship

I just completed a broad overhaul of the article to bring it back up to the current FA-standards. I am rather proud of the progress I made in the roughly three monthes I have been working on it, but now I need new eyes to check the page for anything out of place. I am also open to any new ideas for the page, if anyone has them. TomStar81 (Talk) 04:53, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Kirill Lokshin

Excellent work, as usual! A few things to consider, though:

• The article seems somewhat lacking in non-technical information; is there anything useful to be said about crew complements and such?
• Overall, the article is quite long; I would suggest that breaking out Armament of the Iowa class battleship as a separate article and considerably condensing the material in this one might not be a bad idea. (The new article could probably make FA rather quickly, for what it's worth. ;-)
• The section headings need to be in sentence case, per the MoS.
• Some of the external links seem questionable; are all of them really providing a useful additional resource? I would be hesitant to apply the label to the personal sites listed.
• The notation for units is inconsistent in some places; we have, for example, one section with "5"", "5 inch", "5 in", and "5in" all used. It'd be nice to stick to one or two styles and avoid the others.

Kirill Lokshin 01:30, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I forgot about conformity for the number and the measurement; I will see about correcting the unit notations so they all look the same. The external links area was a sort of repository for the websites I used to rebuild the page; some of those links were removed, others I forgot about. Its been cleaned up now to better reflect the page topic, although I may toy with the external links some to determine what should stay and what can be moved to other pages. Section headers have been adressed. Also, I do not quite follow your train of thought on the crew complement suggestion, could you elborate a little, please?

On the issue of breaking out the armament section: I could create a new article for the information if you want. Alternatively, I could use the accumulated information gathered during my time researching the systems and spin that off into each system's designated wikipedia article, leaving notes on the related articles about the US ships the systems have been installed in (ie: The system has been installed on US destroyers, cruisers, the Iowa class battleships, etc) and leaving a "main article" link from the related section on the Iowa class page. In this manner, we could update the other weapons system pages here while simulatously reducing the length of the Iowa-class page. Thats just a thought mind you, but as a guess I would say the weaponry task force would proabaly be overjoyed with the infomation acuasition :) TomStar81 (Talk) 03:53, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

After thinking about it I decided to move the section to the new page you suggested. It seemed like less work in the long run. TomStar81 (Talk) 02:19, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Looks good. It may be useful to condense the material in the main article even further, as it's still quite long. That's entirely up to you, though. Kirill Lokshin 15:56, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Operation Menu

Just rounding this one off. See what you think. RM Gillespie 21:28, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Kirill Lokshin

Nice article. A few points to work on, though:

• The lead should be lengthened considerably, to around three full paragraphs; as it is, it doesn't really provide a good summary of the article as a whole.
• Are there any other good images available? At the least, a map of the region would be useful; and some portraits of the major figures involved (which should be conveniently public domain) might be nice as well.
• The ending (particularly the "Cambodia was on the slippery slope to genocide" bit) seems a little too melodramatic. I would try for something a bit drier in tone, and avoid getting drawn off on the Khmer Rouge tangent too much here.

Kirill Lokshin 22:24, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

• Once again, thanks Kirill. Followed your suggestions and made some changes. RM Gillespie 15:55, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A-Class review

Please add new requests below this line

[edit] Featured article candidates

[edit] Puerto Ricans in World War II

This is a Self-Nom. To my surprise, I discovered that history books have omitted the contributions made by Puerto Ricans during World War II. I wanted to correct this injustice by writing an artcle on the subject because I believe that this is a story that needs to be told. With the help of other editors we have what has resulted in "Puerto Ricans in World War II". The article has passed GA and the FAC peer review. Tony the Marine 19:11, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

• Very nice, but can we get rid of the "See also" section somehow? The links shouldn't be too difficult to work into the text, I think. Kirill Lokshin 19:18, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Done! You are right. There really isn't a need for a "See also" section because all of these links were already worked in to the article. Tony the Marine 20:02, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

• Support- The quality of the article has been improved since I approved it for Good Article and the tag in the image that I pointed at has been fixed. -凶 23:31, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ioannis Makrygiannis

previous FAC

• Comment Nice article. Shouldn't general Makrygiannis and similar be capitalised to General throughout?-- Zleitzen^(talk) 17:12, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
• Comment:What are the improvements, since the previous nomination? Druworos, the main editor of the article, delisted himself the article, because he thought it was not ready. Unless sombedy shows me that something has changed since the previous nomination, I will be obliged to object.--Yannismarou 18:28, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
• Comment: Wow, who nominated this? An editor recently moved the article to Yannis Makriyannis, as more common usage, I wonder if that somehow messed something up and it was somehow accidentaly listed. Other than that, clueless here. Druworos 11:44, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
• Proposal This shows that Deucalionite nominated, but I don't think he/she knew that this was an archived nomination (started by Druworos). I propose someone, preferably the FA director, reverts deletes all of our comments and remove the nomination from WP:FAC.--Crzycheetah 20:48, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Boudica

former fac

Looks like it should be featured. Plenty of references, images, style seems clean. Just H 01:34, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

• Object. Half of the article's lenght is preoccupied with references in popular culture. The page contains listy sections, external jumps, and incomplete websource info. Recommend expansion, a copy edit, peer review and resubmission. Ceoil 01:50, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
• Object for the reasons above. This piece of information, "The 1990s comic book series Witchblade saw Boudicca as one of the original wielders of the Witchblade." is an example. I recommend removing all such trivia to a seperate article Boudicca in popular culture as soon as possible.-- Zleitzen^(talk) 10:07, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
• Object - not enough references.--h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 18:32, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Harry S. Truman

Old nom

I have renominated this article for featured article status. A great deal of revision, research, and citation has been done since its last nomination in August of '06. BYT 21:58, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

• Object A proper lead would not need 14 footnotes, it should be a summary of the body. Footnotes go after punctuation, not before, and with no space btwn the punctuation and the fn. The footnotes, especially the web ones, themselves are not properly formatted. See Gerald Ford. For a sample of ways to do it.Rlevse 22:54, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose, web references are an absolute mess. Also, are that many external links needed? -Phoenix 23:33, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

I partially take back the bit about the external references, Gerald Ford might have even more. In any event, It's not the determining factor for promotion here. -Phoenix 15:59, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Comment I fixed refs 105 and 106, which were inexplicably butchered, but you're right about the others.--Rmky87 16:22, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

All it needs and that regard is {{Cite web}} or the equivalent formatting, as mentioned below. -Phoenix 22:44, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose, agree with Phoenix. I suggest an extended stay at WP:PR to help tune up the article for FAC. You also might want to look at WP:CITE/ES or the cite templates. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:03, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose per above and suggest peer review. For web references, use {{Cite web}}. Happy editing, [sd] 14:32, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Okay -- thanks everyone, I'm withdrawing this again to work on implementing the good notes above. Much appreciated. BYT 00:02, 2 April 2007 (UTC) I think,personally, that it is perfect Featured Article material --j@5h+u15y@n 04:47, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Domenico Selvo

About two months ago I decided to make this article, my first FAC, about a random, obscure person who is not often written about. After digging through more Venetian history books than I'm willing to count, I wrote this entire article. I refuse to comment on my own writing style, so you can read for yourself if you think it is well-written ;-). This article has undergone an extensive peer review where four very kind users spent a lot of time weeding this thing out to bring you what you see today. The maps are courtesy of User:MapMaster who kindly made the after map (1084 CE) at my request. I hope you all think this article is worthy of FA status and I will address any concerns you might have here. Thanks a lot, JHMM13 23:05, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

• Excellent article, overall; a few minor quibbles, though:
  • The "See also" section should be eliminated.
  • "References and notes" should be changed to "Notes" and "Bibliography" to "References" (or "Further reading", if those works weren't consulted, but I'm assuming that they were).

    Before I change anything here regardng the see also and the references, could you please consult the discussion about this in the peer review? This is something I've been a bit confused about. I think it is important to have a "List of Doges" link, but I can't think of where to put it in the article. There's a mini discussion about the names of the sections. I initially had it as "Notes" and "References," but a question regarding the fact that there are notes mixed in with the citations was brought up and this is sort of what we agreed on. I'd love to hear your opinion on it.

    The standard usage I've seen in most FAs (and the one recommended by WP:CITE) is to use "Notes" for all footnotes, regardless of whether they're citations or discursive notes. If there's no other listing of references, this can be changed to "Notes and references"; otherwise, the (auxiliary, typically alphabetical) listing of references is under a separate "References" section. (There are some variations on this, of course.) The main thing is to avoid having a "Bibliography" section, since it's ambiguous as to whether the works listed in it were actually used as sources for the article, or are merely further reading material that may not have been consulted.

    Got it. I agree with you, and I've changed it.

    As far as linking the list of Doges: why not just add it to {{VeniceDogeSuccession}}? That would seem a more natural place for a purely navigational link of that sort; explicit "See also" sections tend to look like afterthoughts, and tend to be avoided in FAs. Kirill Lokshin 03:03, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

    Done and done. Someone else suggested this to me before in the peer review, but it must have slipped my mind. Thanks! JHMM13 03:19, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

    Ok, support from me, then. (You might want to double-check the punctuation in the footnotes, incidentally; I would have expected a comma rather than a period after the author's name. It may just be a style I'm not familiar with, of course.) Kirill Lokshin 03:24, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

  • The dates in the section headings would be neater if parenthesized, I think; i.e. "Peace and prosperity (1071-1080)" instead of "1071 - 1080: Peace and prosperity". Kirill Lokshin 01:24, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

    Done...good idea! Thank you for the "excellent article" comment :-D. JHMM13 01:40, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

• Support. All my concerns were addressed at the peer review. There is some room for improvement in the illustration but realistically, this is probably as good as it can be. Mangojuice^talk 03:14, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
• Support. Great work on an obscure subject. A very fine article. -- Pastordavid 17:15, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
• Comments -- 1. doge is not a very common word, so could the meaning be stated in the lead itself instead of forcing a user to click on the link? 2. His birth early life (ie not much is known) needs to be mentioned in the article. =Nichalp «Talk»= 18:51, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

  I added a few words detailing what a Doge is. Do you not think the words in the section "Life before Dogeship" are good enough? It mentions that not much is known about his early life. Thanks for your comment, JHMM13 02:14, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

• Support A very fitting expansion on a topic which didn't even have its own article only some six months ago. Very appropriate length, plenty of sources and clever use of illustrations for a relatively obscure topic. Peter ^Isotalo 10:03, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
• Support per Peter. —Randy Johnston (‽) 16:21, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose—1a; will change when work is done. There's much good in this nomination, but the whole text needs careful copy-editing by somone who's unfamiliar with it. Here are a few random examples of problems in the writing. (Please don’t just fix these examples.)

  • It is very difficult to work with a broad suggestion like this one. I've had, at the very minimum, four users thoroughly copyedit this article, one of whom had never even heard the word Doge before. I think the combined efforts of these four reviewers/voters and myself is worthy enough of counting as having found someone else who has carefully copyedited this article. At this point, the only truly useful thing to me is specific examples. Opposing it by suggesting you do not think it is "well-written" because it is not copyedited enough is not helping me very much. All I can do is fix these specific examples if they are in fact worth fixing.

Well, I can't change my Oppose, then. You need to network on WP to locate other contributors who are interested in this general area and who are good at copy-editing. It's basic to the process of preparing a FAC. What is here is not at the required "professional" standard. Tony 03:28, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

• • • I took a pass through, trying to see if I could tighten up the language a bit. I wrote hardly any of the text that was there, so I was easily able to read it with fresh eyes. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mangojuice (talk • contribs).

      I will see if I can tighten it up more. JHMM13 04:29, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

  • The structure of the opening two sentences has been compromised by additional information: "Domenico Selvo[1] (died 1087) was the Doge of Venice from 1071 to 1084. Selvo's election as Doge, a dialectical Italian term for leader, in 1071 was the first in history to have been recorded by a witness, thus providing a valuable resource for historians." Is there a reference for this recording? Who was the witness?

    Did you read any of the "Election as Doge" section? This was a very crucial point in that section and is referenced well to multiple sources, including a secondary source with the exact text (in Latin) of the original primary source.

    OK.

    • I removed that tidbit from the lead; it doesn't seem like a defining aspect of Selvo's period as Doge, although it might well have been presented that way in sources if they did not cover Selvo's reign in depth. Also, I removed the definition of Doge: sorry to Nichalp, but it's quite clear from context that a Doge is a kind of leader, and there's a bluelink to Doge for further explanation of the title... and the definition was cumbersome. Mangojuice^talk

      That's fine, but I would just have to remind you that this was an historically significant event, and an event that marks him as unique as a Doge, apart from the others. The election of a Doge was a very famous process that went on for centuries. I think it is significant, which is why I wrote a large section on it, so please reconsider taking that sentence out. It's up to you.JHMM13 04:29, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

      • If there's a way to integrate it better, I wouldn't mind it being there. But there's much more to say about Selvo's reign than that, and featuring that fact so prominently and separately from context makes it seem like a very strong judgement about its importance. The article already highlights the fact, it doesn't have to be in the lead as well... but it could be, if it didn't stick out the way it did. Maybe it could be integrated into the second paragraph of the lead? (Come to think of it, the first sentence of the second paragraph also sticks out: do we need to know, right up front, about Selvo's involvement in the building of St. Mark's?) Mangojuice^talk 10:30, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

  • "He successfully avoided conflicts with the Byzantine Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Roman Catholic Church at a time in European history when struggles for power threatened to upset the balance thereof. At the same time, he forged new agreements with ..."—Remove "successfully" as redundant. "Thereof" is over the top; reword. Remove "At the same time" as redundant.

    Successfully is redundant and I will remove it. What do you mean by "over the top?" Is it too difficult for some people to understand? Is it improper English in some dialects? I personally think "At the same time" is important to the flow of that paragraph. It might be "redundant," but at the same time, it helps avoid the sound of two similar sentences in succession. Leaving it out, in my opinion, would make it sound too much like a list.

    "Thereof" is nowadays hardly ever used, except by lawyers who should know better. It's arcane language, especially planting it right at the end of the sentence. It needs to be reworded.

    I'll see if I can reword it. JHMM13 04:29, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

"At the same time": it doesn't add anything; I think it should be removed.

• • • Thereof had already been removed. The sentence now reads "He successfully avoided confrontations with the Byzantine Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Roman Catholic Church at a time in European history when conflict threatened to upset the balance of power." (Thereof showed up when I objected in peer review to the use of "power" twice in the same sentence.) I agree that "At the same time" can be removed; will do momentarily. Mangojuice^talk 10:30, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
  • "Within the city of Venice,"—We've just had three instances of "Venice"; remove "of Venice", or the whole phrase.

    I agree. That might have been the result of a late addition somewhere. Reworded the last two instances of Venice referencing the city and then the republic.

  • "Beginning with the reign of Pietro II Candiano in 932 Venice saw a string of inept leaders such as Pietro III Candiano, Pietro IV Candiano, and Tribuno Memmo, whose reputed arrogance and ambition caused the deterioration of their relationship with the Holy Roman Empire in the west, the stagnancy of their relationship with the Byzantine Empire in the east, and discord at home in the Republic.[2] "—Getting rather long; consider splitting.

    I personally disagree with you, but I often tend to err on the side of a slightly longer, and in my opinion, more elegant sentence. This is probably unencyclopedic to some extent, so I'll make the change here.

Long sentences are questionable in any register nowadays.

• • • I actually like that sentence as written, but there were a few that I broke up as overly long.

  • "a rather unpopular figure"—"Rather" is unencyclopedic.

    Perhaps it is, but what might fit better? There is not just popular or unpopular, there are shades of grey to which I feel I must allude in this situation to adequately paint the picture. Maybe "somewhat?"

No, just remove it altogether.

• • • I found a few examples of this kind of thing and fixed them. IMO, adding flowery descriptions makes the sentences distracting: better to be brief and to the point.

  • "instilled several key reforms"—Does one instill a reform? Tony 00:52, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

    I think I'm probably just mixing up set phrases here. "To enact a reform" seems more used, what do you think? JHMM13 01:20, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

    • Anyway, here is the actual change I made, for full review: [1]. Mangojuice^talk 02:42, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

• Response to Tony: If your objection is only on the basis that too few editors have been involved, I have to strenuously object to that. This is an obscure subject of interest to few editors. JHMM13 has been the main writer, sure, but what about the peer review? You can't expect dozens of people to work on an article like this. 6 editors have been involved, which is 5 more than necessary for featured status. As for your specific comments, I made changes that addressed your complaints, and without you being more specific than "needs copy-editing" I'm not sure what else to look for that you might object to. Can you at least be more specific about the type of writing issue you see? I find the text holds together very nicely. Mangojuice^talk 10:30, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

• Support. You did a terrific job on a definitely 'obscure' subject where references, I'm sure, were hard to find. Well done!!! Mmounties (Talk) 06:20, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Knights Templar

• 2004 FA nom

Self-nom. This is an article about a major subject, the medieval order of the Knights Templar. The article went up once for FA back in 2004, and has been substantially expanded since then, with a MilHist peer review, and is currently at Good article status. The article still gets occasional POV wars, primarily because there's a lot of misinformation about the Templars out on the web, and there are also modern groups which claim to be the current incarnation of the medieval organization. But wherever possible we've stuck with high quality references which have been extensively double- and triple-checked, and done our best to make this article a hub which spokes the majority of the more speculative stuff out to other articles which we're working on separately. Assuming that featured status is approved, I'd like to see the article featured on October 13th of this year if possible. That will be the 700-year anniversary of the famous events on Friday, October 13, 1307, when King Philip IV of France had many Templars simultaneously arrested, charged with heresy, and eventually burned at the stake. I hope you'll find the article both informative, and interesting. :) --Elonka 01:17, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

• Support — looks quite good; I'll come back with some comments and suggestions later. — Deckiller 01:41, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose The second paragraph is very unfocused. Any article that references large tracts of land needs a Monty Python reference ;-) But overall, the article just doesn't feel right... too much in the narrative style with exposition about the situation.Balloonman 07:55, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Lead has been re-written. --Elonka 05:57, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
• Object mainly on the brilliant prose requirement. Grammar wonks are likely to hound any article that begins (not a sentence or a paragraph but) a section with however. That's one of numerous places where the prose could use a good copyeditor. Suggest withdrawing this nomination and routing through WP:GA and Wikipedia:Peer review. Durova^Charge! 21:23, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I stand corrected about GA (shame on me) and would gladly support if the wikignomes visit at midnight and remove a few weeds from this lovely garden. Durova^Charge! 03:41, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I've tightened up the writing a bit, let me know if you have any other specific concerns? --Elonka 05:57, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

• • Many FACs are initially opposed because of 1a; several (note the plural) copy-editors give the article a runthrough, and the oppose is withdrawn. It is not a situation that requires withdrawal and another peer review. I'll see if I can find time to give it a look; I do agree that the prose is a little flowery in some areas. — Deckiller 00:03, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

• We've given it a few more copyediting passes, working on thinning out some of the adjectives.  :) --Elonka 02:51, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

• Support It does look good. (aside, to Durova, it has gone through WP:GA. Cary Bass ^demandez 21:46, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
• Comment I agree that the prose needs some work, but a couple of good pass-throughs could probably fix that. The bigger issue for me is length: I don't know that this article is written in a good summary style. In particular, given that there is a main article (History of the Knights Templar), I wonder why the history section is 3,000 words -- it seems a bit much if there is another complete article on the section. Further, given the traffic this article probably receives - and the edit wars noted above, I wonder how stable the article is. On the plus side - great work with citations and pictures. -- Pastordavid 22:09, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Stability seems to be good right now. The main instigator in the most recent edit war, along with sockpuppets, has been blocked, and I haven't seen any problems re-emerge since protection was lifted. --Elonka 05:57, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
    • That's great. My other major concern is the "history of.." section. Please consider tightening that up with a some more concise writing. -- Pastordavid 16:02, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
    • Neutral. I would like to see the prose be a little more concise, but that is not a big enough objection to cause me to oppose. -- Pastordavid 19:23, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
    • I agree that the prose should be more succinct. I performed some sample fixes in the first couple sections, but it could use a runthrough by someone familiar with this topic. — Deckiller 19:25, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

• I shaved off another 20% from the History section, merging information to History of the Knights Templar instead. --Elonka 02:51, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

• Comment. -- I think it's in good shape. I'll keep my eye on proceedings here, and am expecting to voice support once concerns about prose have been addressed. There's some mixing of American and Commonwealth spelling: 'Rumors', but 'organisation', for example, which should be sorted. — BillC ^talk 00:58, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Support now. It's a great article, and very thorough. I learned a lot. I don't find the prose over-elaborate, but to be engaging. — BillC ^talk 21:42, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

• Fixed. --Elonka 05:57, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

• Support I like the structure and the information, and to me the prose is acceptable. J. Spencer 01:55, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
• Support. Well sourced and comprehensive article with an abundance of free images available; an ideal candidate. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 06:07, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
• Support. All of my concerns have been addressed; some great work has been done on the article in the last few days. This is a very fine article. -- Pastordavid 07:31, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

• Comment I did some cleanup and formatted the references; urbanlegends.about.com is not a reliable source. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 10:32, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

• Thank you for the reference formatting.  :) As for the about.com reference, though there is indeed unreliable information at other locations on about.com, I would argue that the particular article being referenced here,[2] meets the standard of reliability because of how well-sourced it is. --Elonka 18:24, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

• But since we have no way of knowing if the author is accurately reporting those sources, it would be better to go directly to those sources. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:51, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

• The problem with listing primary sources in this case, is that I feel that that strays too far into the realm of original research. The statement that we're trying to reference in the Wikipedia article, is that the date of Friday, October 13, 1307, is incorrectly associated with the legend of Friday the 13th. But going deeper on sourcing here, would involve referencing books from the 19th century that don't include the phrase.[3][4] Which is why I feel that it's better to reference the about.com article. It's well-written, directly relevant, has a clearly-listed author, cites its sources, and, most importantly in my mind, is not contradicted by any other reliable published source. As such, I think it's appropriate. --Elonka 23:16, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

• Thanks for the explanation; I would strike my object, but I didn't object :-) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:11, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

• Comment—Quite well-written, but many things need fixing, such as these issues that I found easily at random. Please find a copy-editor who's unfamiliar with the text.
  • "With little financial resources at the time,"—"few". Remove "at the time"?
  • "Poverty did not last long though."—Uncomfortable "though", especially as a back-reference at the start of a paragraph.
  • "Declared ... to be not subject to local laws"—Better way of saying this?
  • "Heavily-armed"—NO hyphen after "-ly".
  • "innovated ways of generating letters of credit for pilgrims"—Fist word inelegant.
  • "This may have been the first form of checking put into use"—Your piped link "checking" (US spelling, I guess) is confusing. Remove last three words.
  • "After several disastrous battles including the pivotal Battle of the Horns of Hattin," Comma after "battles" for nested phrase. Tony 22:21, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

• Comment Just gave it a full ce pass (as 216.194.0.238--frickin' loss of session data!). I'll give it another tonight.—DCGeist 19:41, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

• It was you I gave a flower to then! :) I support this article in its candidacy for featured status.--Alf ^melmac 19:45, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

• Query This bit from the Organisation section needs revising:

the knights, wearing white mantles and equipped as heavy cavalry; the sergeants, drawn from lower social strata than the knights and equipped as light cavalry

The "mantles" bit--covered very clearly elsewhere in the section--should be replaced with a phrase summarizing the social strata from which the knights were drawn in order to parallel and clarify the description of the sergeants. Were the knights all of noble birth? Mostly nobles, along with some rich members of the mercantile class? Or what?—DCGeist 00:53, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Fixed. --Elonka 03:21, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

• Support. I think this article is of FA standard. Kyriakos 14:45, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
• Support Looks great.—DCGeist 04:45, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I would put decline and fall at the end and maybe change the "History" Section into Rise fall and Decline stand-alones.Samrsharma 14:32, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Battleship

Self-nomination. A group of editors, myself included, have worked this article into a thorough, precise and informative account of one of the most important weapons of all time. The article has recently passed a thorough A-class review from WP:MILHIST, as well as detailed feedback from its Good Article nomination. It is a fairly long article with a prose length of 67k, but I think this is justifiable given that it covers hundreds of years of history and every major seafaring nation. The Land 08:52, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Overwhelming ToC -- needs to be compacted

• I've taken this on board and removed 14 subheaders.The Land 11:15, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

1. Pro western biased, modern-day biased -- battleships of the ancient world ignored/not mentioned
2. 67k not justified. Has immense scope for precis writing
   • The article has already been split twice during the recent development, with a great deal of material moved to ship of the line and ironclad warship. The most recent discussion about further splitting was at the A-class review: you will see there is no consensus to further split the article (there is also no consensus to split aircraft carrier, an article where the same sort of considerations apply). Many sections are already precis. 67k is long, but the scope of the article justifies it. The Land 11:48, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
     • With further trimming the prose size comes down to 61k. The Land 19:15, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
3. USA --> United States
   • Could you explain that? The Land 11:15, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
4. Parts of a battleship?
   • Most other articles about types of ship don't go into details about their naval architecture. I think the article covers the important bits of battleship in the discussion of their development and I'm concerned that a 'parts of the battleship' section might be duplicative or, given the changes over time, confusing. The Land 11:48, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
5. Types of battleships?
6. The Falklands War, a major recent war seems to be missed
7. ancient and modern day naval powers missing
8. Why are the Iowa class ships given so much prominence?
9. Battleship strategies (subs vs aircraft carriers vs battleship) hardly mentioned.

=Nichalp «Talk»= 09:33, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

• The Oxford English Dictionary says the word 'battleship' derives from 1794. What battleships of the ancient world are you thinking of? Furthermore, the use of battleships by Japan, Turkey and Russia is well covered and the A-class reviewers commented positively on the global outlook of the article.
• Types of battleship: the article goes into some detail about the evolution of battleships: pre-Dreadnought, Dreadnought, more modern types. We have covered most sub-descriptions of 'battleship', of which there are not many. What in particular do you mean?
• No battleships were involved in the Falklands War.
• I believe the article mentions every nation which has owned a battleship. Which do you think are missing?
• Iowa class ships were the only type of battleship in use for roughly 50 years. This inevitably means that they will crop up a fair amount.
• There is a section on strategy, and a continuous theme of the article is the tension between battleships and submarines and aircraft. Please be more specific. The Land 09:47, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

• Battleships are very large, heavily-armored warships with a main battery consisting of the largest caliber of guns. -- can this definition not be applied to the Turtle ships? which had cannons, were heavily amoured, and supposedly iron-clad?

• It would be OR to describe them as 'battleships'. This article is about ships which have been classified or described as battleships. Turtle ships never have been. The lead section does not describe every attribute of battleships - nor should it try to - but turtle ships are a) totally unrelated to battleships in terms of their evolution and b) markedly different in terms of their attributes, lacking iron/steel construction, engines, propellors. They have no place whatsoever in this article. Their place has extensively been discussed at Talk:Ironclad warship where there is currently something like a consensus. The Land 11:03, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
• This opening definition is indeed misleading. Pre-dreadnought battleships were NOT larger than ocean cruisers of that time. Dreadnoughts were smaller than battlecruisers (within the same generation). BTW, the "15000-17000 tons" for pre-dreadnoughts needs more specification. Standard displacement of typical 1st class Brit is less than 15000 (Canopus 13200, Majestic 14600 etc). NVO 23:37, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

• The first sentence will necessarily be an abstraction. The first sentence claims battleships were 'very large' not 'the largest', and while one can find exceptions it is true to a first approximation. However, I take on board your point and will clear that up in the pre-Dreadnought section. The 15,000 to 17,000 figure is Stoll's and not mine - sadly he doesn't make it clear that it is laden displacement, though Sondhaus accords with your figures. Not sure what to do about that. The Land 17:52, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

• How would one differentiate a battleship from a cruiser/destroyer and other types of warships? Needs to be mentioned. For example this suggests that the INS '"Rajput is a battleship, but then again the WP article INS Rajput (D51) mentions it as a destroyer

=Nichalp «Talk»= 10:36, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

• Rajput is not a battleship because she lacks armour or large gun armament. I am not sure there is a better way of putting it. The distinction between battleship and cruiser/destroyer on this basis is very clear at any point in time. The Land 11:03, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

INS Rajput is clearly a guided missile destroyer. I think the problem here is a confusion with the terminology. Instead of 'warship', 'battleship' has been used. This was explained quite good in the trivia section that was removed earlier. Especially how media sometimes confuses terminology and how some sci-fi series has added to this confusion by claiming all ships being 'battleships'.--MoRsE 11:13, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Further comment

• Length: this can be summarised further: eg:The first example of the power of naval aviation was the British air attack on the Italian naval base at Taranto that took place on the night of November 11 — November 12, 1940. The Royal Navy launched the first all-aircraft naval attack in history, flying a small number of aircraft from an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean Sea and attacking the Italian fleet at Taranto. -- nothing to do with the core topic

Changed that and did some other trimming. The Land 19:15, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

• Wikify years - 24 May 1941

  I think wikifying all years might just result in link clutter. How about I dewikify those years which are currently linked? The Land 16:29, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

  Only if the month and day is given See WP:DATE =Nichalp «Talk»= 19:10, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

• Unlink low value blue links: ram, war etc

  Done and done. The Land 16:29, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

• Replace hyphens by the dash (–) where applicable

  Done - might have missed one or two, will check later. The Land 19:15, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

• Use a non-breaking space between a number and unit ( ) 10 in
• Metric equivalents needed

With regards to units and metric equivalents, I am working on this but where a measurement repeats in a section might only give the full unit and equivalent measure the first time a value occurs. Where "12 in gun" occurs ever sentence, expanding it to "12 inch (305 millimetre gun" as MoS suggests woudl very much hinder readability! The Land 17:35, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the first instance was what I was looking for. =Nichalp «Talk»= 19:10, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

• =Battleships in strategy and doctrine= -- no citations

There are now. The Land 19:15, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

• The USMC?

• US Marine Corps - clarified thanks The Land 16:29, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

• USA --> United States; U.S. --> US: see Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Acronyms and abbreviations

• I have changed the one reference to US to U.S.. The MoS says that USA and USN are perfectly valid acronyms. The Land 16:44, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

  Not if it is mentioned with a list of countries. =Nichalp «Talk»= 19:10, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

  You might have said that the first time. I have changed the three instances when we has used USA in a list. The Land 19:23, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

• 2nd level sections needs to go. 4.2.x. 8.1 is also bad style.

• Got rid of 8.1 but I think sub-sub-heads are necessary for section 4 to flow. The Land 16:29, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

  That can be solved by summarising the text. =Nichalp «Talk»= 19:10, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

• =Dreadnoughts in the rest of the world= -- rest of the world is POV suggest it be changed to "...other countries"

Done. The Land 16:29, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

• Why is dreadnought in bold? so too Italy, Argentina and Chile?

Dreadnought in bold where? Re the countries: I have just deleted section headings for most of these countries, which served to emphasise them, so I wanted another way to emphasise them. While italics are normal for emphasis this article has a lot of ship names, which are all italicised. Using italics to emphasise the country names would run the risk of confusing people who assume the countries are ships. The Land 16:36, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

• I don't see any reason why they should be emphasised. MOS:BOLD does not mention the need for having bold text. =Nichalp «Talk»= 19:10, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

  Changed, no point arguing over it. The Land 19:26, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

• =Dreadnoughts in the rest of the world= Spain, Brazil, Turkey... did any of these countries' battleships go into active service?

  Yes. The Land 19:26, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

• Camden, N.J, Norfolk, Va. --> full name needed
• =The crucial Pacific battles= -- remove "the crucial"

Done The Land 16:29, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

• Re to Turtle ships: Turtle ships are not battleships, but the history section needs to mention how similar ships (by defination) were in existence. Just like Columbus 'discovered' America, it does not mean that America was uninhabited or undiscovered by humans at that time.

I strongly disagree. There are no sources to suggest the turtle ship is anything to do with the battleship. To say it is is original research. The Land 16:14, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

• Weasel terms: A far-sighted yet combative man, it is often held -- according to who?

Am sure a source could be found but it's somewhat off-topic so I've snipped it... didn't like that paragraph anyway tbh. The Land 16:29, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

More review later. =Nichalp «Talk»= 14:38, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

A comment

• Maybe the intro could explicitly state that a battleship is not any ship used for battle. Zocky | picture popups 16:05, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

• Support I support this with qualification:

its a staggeringly large topic and I am not sure that ship of the line shouldn't be a very short paragraph with the link to a expanded article as it is now. The ships of the line gave nothing but the concept of a large battleline to be transfered over to a battleship.

Inline citation should be improved entire sections are devoid of such.

Other than that I find it a smooth read (something we overlook too often here) well thought out and binds well together into an overall subject. Tirronan 17:12, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I've cut down the section on ships of the line. And there are now more inline cites in the strategy & doctrine section. The Land 19:15, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

• Support I could do with a few more citations for the article, but overall it looks good and it read well. My only major gripe was the small picture size; having to zoom every picture up to see the guns and such is really annoying. On a more humous note, it would seem that battleship's FAC nom and my FARC request for Iowa class battleship were requested at almost the exact same time. Hows that for odd? TomStar81 (Talk) 21:08, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

• Comment some of the citations aren't properly formatted. You should use the cite web or cite news template instead of just listing a web address. I'm slowly going through the article, but it seems decent.-BillDeanCarter 21:48, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I think they all now have author/publisher information and retrieval dates. The Land

• Comments as I go... whew this is obviously a long and complicated article.
  • Is there any reason for using long dashes twice in the opening paragraphs? This seemed really awkward to me... wouldn't normal hyphens do, or no hyphens at all? Sorry if this has already been belabored over.

No, I think I just got overthusiastic about replacing hyphens with longer dashes.... think I've sorted it out now. The Land 17:45, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

• • Intro is excellent otherwise. Perhaps a model intro, even. This awkward first paragraph though... it took my attention away from the content and made me think about the style too much.
  • "the first screw battleship ever" What is a screw battleship? Important in context but unfamiliar to many readers, should have a very brief definition, especially as there's no article to read to easily find out what the term means. "capital ship" is another term used several times in important context but never defined. But the meaning is more obvious with that one.

Thanks for that. That section has recently been trimmed and the context was, in the previous version, clear. I've removed the screw point because we're now not dealing with that particular subtelty in this article. (If you're interested, the relevant material is now at ship of the line and ironclad warship.). The Land 17:54, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

• • "out to be one of the most unusual, if not outright bad, designs ever built" I assume the source means "bad battleship designs", not just bad designs in general? Should be clarified though.
  • Again with the hyphens and dashes... why is it "all-big-gun" one paragraph and 'all–big–gun" the next? Then it becomes "'ll–big–gun concept" a paragraph later.

Same as above. The Land 17:54, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

• • "if no negotiated solution could be found" kind of comes out of the blue, showing a lack of political context in this article with respect to the pre-WW1 arms race. Thus far the article had successfully avoided having to cover any of the political conflicts that lead to the development of battleships, but the language here kind of begs the question of what is meant by a "negotiated solution" and what conflict was it in response to anyway? Is there any easy way to address this? Even a mention of the applicable article on the early 1900s arms race would be good. There's something about covering the arms race in such detail without even hinting at why there was one rubs me the wrong way. Granted this is an article on battleships, but they were built for reasons much more intricate than countries wanting big ships, and these reasons are important to mention. This is a complicated request, I'm not asking people to bend over backwards here... just wondering what people think. It eventually does cover this a bit better, so I suspect only a moderate tweak is needed earlier on, such as a sentence that begins, "An arms race began because of..." The rest of the article does what looks to be a fine job of covering political concerns without lingering on them.

Hope I've addressed this with this edit. The Land 18:19, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

• • The Land reverted my addition of the years for the Age of Sail, but I just copied the years given in the WP article. Some years for this time frame should be given in the battleship article.

I was pondering this. I can see why you added the years, but the age of sail] article gives little support to them and they're basically arbitrary; furthermore the ship-of-the-line wasn't the dominant ship for the whole period specified (line of battle not invented until 1640s). So arguably we shouldn't use 'age of sail' at all. I was just stuck for an alternative. The Land 17:45, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

• • Isn't "Jeune Ecole school of thought" redundant? Ecole is french for school.

Oui, mais c'est le Wikipedia anglais. Les rosbifs ne comprend tout les mots francais. The Land 17:45, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

• • The last two paragraphs under "Value for Money" are almost totally uncited. These are important, interpretative paragraphs, and I don't doubt they're backed up by sources though.
  • I will probably give a weak support if my above concerns are addressed or at least replied to. My main concern after them is that there are too many short, 2-3 sentence paragraphs, particularly early on... giving the body of this article a choppy feel to it. E.g. sections like "The Pre-Dreadnought" Some sections are brilliant, but the article as a whole is still a bit uneven. --W.marsh 17:28, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
• Comment the photos of Jackie Fisher and Vittorio Cuniberti are far too large. — BillC ^talk 01:20, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

  There is no size defined for them (any more): this accords with the Manual of Style, but does mean that if you have your image width preference set to 300px or so that portrait photos display very large. Can't see a way round it, as redefining them with fixed width would violate the MoS (and result in other people complaining ;-) ). The Land 10:01, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

• Article looks better now, except the lack of citations under the second half of "Value for Money". It would be nice to know where these arguments are from, for further reading if nothing else. It's pedantic though, so count me as a support. --W.marsh 01:13, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

• Comment. I'll be glad to support this concise and well-balanced presentation of a huge amount of information, once some details have been taken care of:

1. Please don't leave the delimitation of the subject uncertain. Above, Nichalp quotes the opening sentence: "Battleships are very large, heavily-armored warships with a main battery consisting of the largest caliber of guns," and proposes that the Turtle ships fit it. It seems to me a lapse of logic to protest that yes, they may fit it, but the article is about "ships which have been classified or described as battleships". See, that wasn't clear from reading the article. If that's the definition of the subject, then the reader should be told so, immediately, rather than be confusingly told that the definition of the subject is a matter of size, armor, and guns.

   I think this is quite a difficult point. A moon is like a planet, but isn't. There is a clear definition of what a planet is laid down by an authoritative body. By contrast there is no clear definition of what a battleship is. One cannot list all the planets in existence because we have no knowledge of many places that there might be planets. By contrast, one can list all the battleships that have ever been in existence, as defined (for instance) by the attitudes of particular navies or authoritative reference works. It is these ships that the article is about.

   We cannot include the turtle ship because calling it a 'battleship' is OR. There is an argument, though not a settled one, that in a coincidental but nonetheless important manner it shared characteristics of the ironclad warship, so it may deserve a mention in that article.

   Given the vast range of vessels which the term describes according to its OED definition, it is very difficult to pick a succint one-line definition (or, far more accurately, description). As NVO points out above, anyone who relies on the first sentence as a comprehensive definition of a battleship will find it includes battlecruisers (from 1907 to the 1940s) and first-class armoured cruisers (in the late 19h century). Read in a technical sense it also excludes all ships-of-the-line (no armour), broadside ironclad frigates (no main battery), and indeed previous generations of modern battleships (if a battleship has 16in guns and someone builds one with 18in guns it no longer carries 'the largest calibre'). To incorporate all of this subtlety into one short sentence is asking too much of the English language.

   Exactly how we resolve this I don't know. Once one regards the opening sentence as a description not a definition, and reads it in conjunction with the following paragraph, the problem goes away. Surely that is enough? The Land 19:17, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

2. There are far too many very short paragraphs and also short sections. Or there were, I've done a merge operation, but please check if you think it appropriate. You may want to do it differently, or at least want to re-cast some "topic sentences" (=first sentence of a paragraph), as some of them now no longer refer to all of the content of the paragraph. I do think a good deal of merging was necessary, but I was too ignorant to fix the consequences in some cases. (In other words, The Land, please fix the mess I've made... sorry.) Also I had to give up on simply merging pargraphs in the "dreadnoughts in other countries" section; it needs som more radical reconstructuring to make shorter 'graphs possible, I think.
3. POV alert: the narrative comes from a certain point of view in the World War II section. This is sometimes subtle—a general impression that the narrator is speaking from British or American soil—but sometimes obvious, as in the use of praisewords like "gamely" or "brave". (Guess which nationalities are capable of such qualities and attitudes? The Japanese? Wrong.) Finns seem like nicer people than Germans, too.

   I've rephrased the most egregious paragraph here- am just about to have a read for subtle pro-English bias. Bit surprised that no-one has pointed out that the page plays Rule Britannia if you read it for long enough ;) The Land 20:57, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

4. Minor detail: I've done some copyediting and proofreading (and restored many hyphens...) but I wasn't able to supply the missing Japanese ship here: "including HMS Victory, Warrior, the Japanese the Swedish Vasa..." What ship was this? Bishonen | talk 17:53, 21 March 2007 (UTC).

This was the Mikasa - I added it. --MoRsE 19:45, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

• Support - Well-written, it has lots of citations and references.--Bryson 03:48, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
• Comment The article states, "There were also several old ships of the line still used as housing ships or storage depots. Of these, all but HMS Victory were sunk or scrapped by 1957." What about USS Constitution? Does she figure into the mold of a ship of the line? TomStar81 (Talk) 22:21, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I would say no as the USS Constitution is a frigate, i.e. neither a ship-of-the-line, nor a battleship.--MoRsE 08:09, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

In that case you may want to make a note of that in the notes section; if the thoughts occured to me, it has probably occured to others as well. TomStar81 (Talk) 21:32, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

• Support although my views can be considered somewhat biased due to my involvement in the rewriting of the article I must say that I am very pleased with the current version. Most of the concerns that have been raised above have been addressed and it feels like that it is mostly the fine-tuning (minor spelling errors, minor rewording etc) that is left. I personally took care of the two last red links that I found there. --MoRsE 07:53, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose 60KB of readable prose surpasses WP:LENGTH; summary style should be employed to bring the prose to within guidelines. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:09, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Back for a second look; continued oppose, mostly 1c, uncited, and 2—new list:
    • Multiple instances of failure to conform with WP:MSH—pls fix section headings.

Mystified by this. Where do the headings not conform with the MOS? The Land 18:13, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

• • • Extensive uncited text; in the absence of citations, sections like "Value for money" and "Tactics" appear as opinion or original research.

Yep, some paragraphs lack inline citation, largely because they draw together material that has already been presented and where the same or a very similar statement has already been cited. The uncited paragraph in tactics basically repeats material from the section on WWI. I can whack in a few more 'ref = Kennedy' and 'ref = Keegan' if you want but not for a while. The Land 18:13, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

• • • Category in See also ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:48, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

fixed The Land 18:13, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

How is it that the featured article B movie gets a pass on this criteria? B movie comes in at 95 kilobytes long and Battleship comes in at a not that much smaller 86 kilobytes long. What are the strategies for fixing the Battleship article without losing the information? Obviously move the information to other articles, but how do you organize those other articles so that the information on battleships is at your fingertips?-BillDeanCarter 00:25, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Saying 60k 'surpasses' WP:LENGTH is untrue. The precise words are: "> 60 KB Probably should be divided (although the scope of a topic can sometimes justify the added reading time)". I think this is such a broad topic. The guideline also says: "Discuss the overall topic structure with other editors. Determine whether the topic should be treated as several shorter articles and, if so, how best to organize them. Sometimes an article simply needs to be big to give the subject adequate coverage; certainly, size is no reason to remove valid and useful information.". This article has already twice forked material away (to ship of the line and ironclad warship and there is no consensus for further splits. Regards, The Land 09:03, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Remember that a large part of this comes from the extensive notes and references section (almost 10 kilobytes)--MoRsE 09:54, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

B Movie recently underwent Featured article review due to its size, and Sandy said 60KB of readable prose (not including references). M3tal H3ad 11:22, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. However, B Movie remains an FA at 67k of readable prose.Indo-Greek Kingdom is 91k of readable prose and is featured. There is no guideline that says "an article cannot be featured if it is above X length" and there is no problem giving large subjects large articles. The Land 12:02, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Reading the B Movie FA Review is actually quite instructive. It's clear that SandyGeorgia has a fairly narrow interpretation of the article length guideline, but it's equally clear that the consensus is not to prevent something being an FA on this basis alone. The Land 07:05, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose. I think, in the light of Sandy's comment, that the size should be reduced - probably by at least 10 Kb. This should be done by weeding out redundant wording and by rationalising larger portions of text. In particular, there are problems in the prose. Here are random examples from the lead that indicate the need for a thorough run-through by a copy-editor who's relatively unfamiliar with the text. Don't just fix these examples.

Well, let's hope there's such a copy-editor who's going to come along and do so (and for all the other FAs where a near-identical comment has been left by this user). The Land 09:02, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

• • "better-armed and better-armored than cruisers and destroyers" - make it "better armed and armored than cruisers and destroyers".
  • "Battleships have evolved a great deal over time" - spot the two redundant words.
  • "to describe a developed type of ironclad warship" - Unsure why "developed" is included.
  • "and by the 1890s design had become relatively standard on what is now known as the pre–Dreadnought battleship." Clumsy clause; I'd be expecting something like "and by the 1890s, the design of ... had been standardised ...".
  • "In 1905 HMS Dreadnought heralded a revolution in battleship design, and for many years modern battleships were referred to as dreadnoughts." You need to add "since that time,".
  • "In 1905 HMS Dreadnought heralded a revolution in battleship design, and for many years modern battleships were referred to as dreadnoughts." But they no longer do? This brings up a larger problem in the lead: it appears to be a potted history, whereas many readers will expect more prominent reference to battleships as they are now.

Battleships 'as they are now' means trivia about museum ships. The article treats battleships as history, because they are history. The Land 08:45, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

• • "The global arms race in battleship construction in the early 1900s was a significant factor in the origins of the First World War, which saw a clash of huge battlefleets at the Battle of Jutland." Only in the origins of the war, and not its conduct/outcome?

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Tony1 (talk • contribs). Bishonen | talk 09:18, 27 March 2007 (UTC).

This is an arguable point - one could write a Ph.D. on whether battleships were more important in causing WWI or concluding it. The Land 08:45, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Featured article review

[edit] Attack on Pearl Harbor

Messages left at Shipwrecks, Hawaii, MilHist and United States. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:42, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

This article was featured in 2004 before the current process was in place and it falls short of the current criteria in a number of significant ways:

1. Point of view. The article is written from the point-of-view of the USA. The background section is a potted history of Japan, and the USA is scarcely covered at all. The 'strategy', 'plans', 'organization' of the Imperial Japanese navy get sections but only the 'preparedness' of the USA. This contextualises it in US-centric account of Japanese growth and aggression. It's perfectly possible to give a neutral account of Pearl Harbor in its historical context while still making it clear that this particular battle was an unprovoked surprise attack. The POV continues into the sections on the battle itself, with plenty of detail about the heroics of American servicemen, and even a list of the winners of the Medal of Honor, and little material about heroic behaviour of anyone on the Japanese side or honours granted.
2. Focus. The article strays too far from its subject. The Meiji Restoration and the 9/11 attacks have little direct relevance to the article. The article could be much shorter and better for it.
3. Style. The prose often falls far short of brilliance; there are stub-sections and list-sections.
4. Accuracy and Citation. Many paragraphs of the sections on the impact of the attack strike me as dubious. There are a number of 'citation needed' templates; there is plenty of contestable material which lacks citation.

Regards, The Land 19:30, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

This article has gotten some work done on it recently. After a sensible discusiion by both sides, some POV comments were removed from the beginning of the article. I disagree with the viewpoint that it lacks in Japanese comments and an explanation of their reasons for the attack. To add more would mean to go off topic completely. The 9/11 and Hiroshima/Nagasaki comments can be removed. However, the idea that it is US centric is tough to dispute, since most of the contributors are going to be US citizens. How many British featured articles don't have a strong British POV, for example? Overall, the article is strong, and should remain a featured article, in my opinion. CodeCarpenter 21:26, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Nuclear weapon

"Brilliant prose" promotion; message left at MilHist. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:46, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

This is a brilliant prose promotion which could benefit from a review and tuneup. See also and External links need attention/pruning (per WP:EL, WP:NOT, and WP:GTL). Citation needs should be reviewed (one source used — http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/ — doesn't appear to meet WP:RS). The WP:LEAD needs attention. At 17KB of prose, is the article comprehensive? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:41, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

• comment 5 sources are in the footnotes. That really isn't enough for a featured article.--Sefringle 20:33, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
• Comment: provide a short note of the sources at the end of each chapter, for example links to all internet sources. That can be done in half an hour. And wikify the url sources by adding the dates when you retrieved information from them. Wandalstouring 08:55, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Invasion

Messages left at MilHist and Kafziel. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:44, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I feel really terrible listing an article for FAR, but it's a learning experience as I've never done it before. Well, basically I think the article isn't quite up to FA standards. It's close, but I think the criteria back then is different to the very high standards now. Well, the bottom of the list feels a bit listy, with a very short description of a select group of invasion examples. The see also section is in the wrong place (I'd do it myself, but I thought I'd leave it for now to show the article's state...) On top of that, it is a lot shorter than one would hope for a large topic such as this. Other minor stuff is there, but over all I think the article needs a big expansion & removal from the listy elements (Maybe a larger section on the invasions?). I have no intentions of removing the article's status, merely hoping for it to get a makeover. Thanks Spawn Man 11:37, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Spawnman, can you please notify any relevant WikiProjects (usually listed on the talk page) and original author (usually on the FAC) with {{subst:FARMessage|Invasion}}? Thanks, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:53, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I did actually (forgot author though). Thanks for making me feel like a newb again who doesn't know how to edit on here.... :( Spawn Man 23:23, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorry — I didn't mean to do that :-) Just trying to get more nominators to do that work, as it's so tiring. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:19, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

• remove not enough material is sourced--Sefringle 20:38, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Sefringle, please don't declare "remove" unless/until it's moved down to FARC. Tony 23:21, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

• I think the prose can do with a run-through during this process. Tony 23:27, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Non-article featured content candidates

[edit] List of United States Marine Corps aircraft squadrons

Nominating this list for the first time. It has been my passion for more than a year now and has just passed an A-class review with the WPMILHIST project. I believe she is ready for this process.--Looper5920 04:52, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

• Strong support. This is one of the most comprehensive lists I've ever seen on Wikipedia. It's well-sourced, well-references, has pictures when needed, and is extremely organized. The lead-in is also fantastic. Wlmaltby3 06:24, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
• Support Very strong, organized and eye pleasing. Joe I 07:05, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
• Support, a great list that meets all criteria. -Phoenix 15:15, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
• Very strong support. Probably the best list I've seen so far on Wikipedia! No question this should be a WP:FL. RyguyMN 16:55, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose The TOC is definately overwhelming (see WP:WIAFL #2c). I suggest having a table TOC like that of List of California birds. (If you want, I can do it for you... I would have done it now, but it's getting rather late for me.). Also, move the sidebar further up the page. Apart from that, this is an excellent list. :-) Tompw (talk) 23:31, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Done I have made the changes to the TOC. I could not figure out how to keep the USMC template without creating a huge gap below the intro so I just dropped it. Hopefully this is what you were after. Cheers--Looper5920 00:29, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

• Support Though I agree with Tompw's suggestions Qjuad 12:44, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Archives

Peer review

• 2006
• 2007

A-Class review

• 2006 (promoted/failed)
• 2007 (promoted/failed)