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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 and other content within its scope. Requests for B-Class assessment, which any reviewer may assign, can be made here.

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 content currently undergoing featured content reviews outside the project:

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

Finally, as part of our reciprocal peer reviewing collaboration, the department lists partner peer reviews for articles maintained by the Video games WikiProject.

[edit] Peer review

Please add new requests below this line

[edit] Byzantine civil war of 1341–1347

Hello! I have just finished writing this article, on one of the most crucial albeit somewhat forgotten conflicts in Byzantine history. I would like to take a shot at A or even FA status eventually, but before, I would like to have some opinions on its present quality, both in terms of prose quality and comprehensibility of the narrative, as well as on whether the coverage of the subject is comprehensive enough. Thanks in advance, Constantine ✍ 08:53, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Yannismarou

• "During the ensuing winter, heavy snowfall rendered campaign was impossible." Does this sentence have two verbs or is it just my bad English?
• "Kantakouzenos set out into Macedonia, hoping to break through to his wife, who was holding out at Demotika against the forces of the regency." Wasn't she in prison?
• Check the copyright status of File:Byzantine empire 1355.jpg.
• "To a lesser extent, the conflict acquired confessional overtones as well, as the supporters of Hesychasm were usually equated with the supporters of Kantakouzenos." I don't see any elaboration on that in the main article.
• Check the sources of the article's images. For instance, I cannot access the link of the source of File:John V Palaiologos.jpg.

I liked a lot the article. It flows very well; it is well-referenced; I think it will be soon FA!--Yannismarou (talk) 22:12, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

OK, thanks for the review. I fixed the first one, and clarified that Kantakouzenos' wife and children were actually at Didymoteicho, which was his base and residence. I also fixed the info & sources on the images. They are indeed PD, I hope it's OK now. As for the Hesychasm, traditionally, there was the equation pro-Hesychast=Kantakouzenist, which the later Byzantine writers themselves espoused. However this is more polemics and less fact: the actual record shows that the sides chosen during the conflict had little to do with one's preferences towards Hesychasm. True, the victory of Kantakouzenos also led to the adoption of Hesychasm by the Church, but that was not why the war was actually fought. I am still uncertain as to how exactly include this in the article, which is why I only mentioned it in the lead, with the "to a lesser extent" qualifier. It will be elaborated upon, but I need some time to think it over, and it is either way not crucial to the understanding and development of the conflict. Constantine ✍ 05:18, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] First Battle of Charleston Harbor

I have done just about everything I set out to do with this article, and now think that it meets B-class criteria. Another set of eyes may detect shortcomings, so suggestions for improvements are welcome. PKKloeppel (talk) 15:51, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

You need to properly capitalize all your sources' titles. Will reply later with more substantial comments. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 04:22, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

This style (i.e. sentence capitalization) is permitted by the manual of style. I use it because I copy and paste most of my bibliography from the Library of Congress online catalog, and I deem it too much trouble to revise it. PKKloeppel (talk) 15:48, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Jinnai

A quick glance over and it looks mostly like it just needs tightening up, ie removing excess words. The lead should be reduced to just explaining the main points. FE, the whole fourth paragraph could largely be reduced to a 2 sentances and merged with the last paragraph. Just tell people that the war didn't go as planned and on either side resulting in defeat for the union forces. Details should be left for the inidivisual sections.

red links should be avoided and the number the article has may be a bit too much.

Finally there are a few words that may should be removed. FE: "Keokuk sank during the night, fortunately with no loss of life,[...]" or "Later, a so-called "boom" was laid between Forts Sumter and Moultrie." a few others, somewhat, although, however, only, etc.

Other words to you can look to remove are ones like thus, in addition, etc. Finally do not start sentances with even, because and of course although (see above).陣内_Jinnai 04:49, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your attention.

1. I have revised the lead to accommodate your suggestions.

2. I have cut out the words you want me to get rid of, with one exception: the "Even Keokuk" in the last paragraph is left in to emphasize the fact that it would be unexpected.

3. The red links dismay me also, but I think the cure is to create the articles they would link to. I am particularly surprised that articles (at least stubs) for Battery Gregg and Fort Johnson do not already exist. As for the naval officers, I think that all three that are now red-linked are notable enough to be worth their own articles.

PKKloeppel (talk) 15:48, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Operation Badr (1973)

Around six months ago I made a rewrite of this article and since then, I have been continually adding to it. This [1] is how the article used to be. I think it might qualify for GA. I'm particularly concerned about prose and any NPOV issues. Any suggestions and criticisms are welcome. --Sherif9282 (talk) 09:56, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I created the initial stub on the topic many years ago, and am really impressed by the expansion you have undertaken. One thing I find lacking is any discussion of the political ramifications of the battle. Sadat became the "Hero of the Crossing" securing his internal position and that of the Egyptian regime. This gave Sadat the ability to sign peace with Israel, while the initial defeat also convinced Israel of the need to negotiate towards peace. - SimonP (talk) 14:25, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the review. The sources I have at hand do not go into the political impacts of the battle, so I can't back up anything I add on this topic, which is already sufficiently covered I believe in the Yom Kippur War. Cheers. --Sherif9282 (talk) 16:13, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I've added something about the political impact of the battle. I realise it has little to do with Sadat's widespread popularity after the war. This is something I'll certainly be able to do once I have new books on the topic. Thanks for your review. --Sherif9282 (talk) 08:46, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] AustralianRupert

I haven't read the whole thing through yet, but so far it looks comprehensive and well cited. A couple of points I have so far (mostly just nitpicks, but can help get it rated higher):

• Endashes are required for date and page ranges (check the citations list as there are many that require endashes), e.g. pp. 101-102 should be pp. 101–102);

Y Done --Sherif9282 (talk) 15:15, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

• Some sections are quite long and aren't broken up by an image, if possible I would suggest trying to find a few more images so that you can break up the long sections of text. I know you have quite a few images so far, but it would probably make the article a bit more visually appealing;

Articles on the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War have a very visible lack of images. There are tens of photographs available online, but only in forums, blogs, and the like. I just can't find any images with a suitable copyright.

• Emdashes are required in text rather than hyphens (e.g. "etc... - before any bridges were set up" should be "etc...— before any bridges were set up"

Y Done I made a few exceptions however (for example: anti-tank, air-to-air, and weapon designations like T-55, MiG-21...) --Sherif9282 (talk) 15:15, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

• possibly try to use convert tags for distances and measurements as some parts of the world use kilometres and some use miles. If you put in a convert tag it makes it conceptually easier for all readers. For example: 100 kilometres (62 mi) is achieved by adding the following: {{convert|100|km|mi}} .

Y Done --Sherif9282 (talk) 15:15, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

• In the citations list please check that all page ranges are denoted by "pp.", as I think some have just "p." which would indicate only one page (another nitpick, sorry).

Y Done --Sherif9282 (talk) 15:15, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Anyway that is it for now. Hope it helps. I will have a more comprehensive read over the article soon and provide more feedback if I can think of anything. This is not an area of history that I have much knowledge of, so unfortunately I can't really help with any of the content, mainly just technical stuff. Good work so far, by the way. — AustralianRupert (talk) 02:16, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the review. I really needed someone to point out the various technicalities that needed to be fixed. --Sherif9282 (talk) 15:15, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] David Fuchs

• Admittedly, there's the year of the operation in the disambig title, but it still reads odd that no mention of the actual date of the operation is made in the lead's first paragraph, especially when you start talking about when they planned it. "initiating the 1973 Yom Kippur War against Israel" or similar would fix that.
• "Under the restrictions of Israeli air supremacy, Egypt laid down limited objectives to pursue. Preceded by exhaustive preparations, meticulous planning, and an extensive deception operation, Operation Badr was launched in conjunction with Syria on October 6, 1973, a day that coincided with Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, and also coincided with the Muslim month of Ramadan." This reads as jargon. I know that what you're probably trying to say is that since the Israelis had the advantage in airpower Egypt planned a more limited offensive, but these statements don't necessarily link together well, and don't in fact seem to square with the body text (which says that due to air superiority the Arabs planned a multipronged strike to dilute the air force's effectiveness.) It's in this paragraph that I start seeing a major problem throughout the article, that of improper tone and POV language. This might in fact be an issue with the actual sources, which is also a worrying sign. The sentence tries to smash too much information on the significance of the date into the paragraph and sounds bad.
• POV, hyperbole: " daring assault that caught Israel and the world by surprise", "the supremely confident, even arrogant view"
• "A certain number of Egyptian commanders", if it's a certain number, why can't you tell us?
• File:Operation Badr.png missing key information, such as where it was originally published/date/author. As it stands it's licensing tag is invalid.
• "On October 6, at 14:00, the Fourth Arab-Israeli War began." I'm pretty sure it wasn't immediately called the "Fourth Arab-Israeli War". Just tell us that's when they attacked. We're not a history channel special.
• In keeping with tone problems, there's a bunch of weasel words and qualifying phrases which undermine the text, such as "all in all", "apparently", "Nevertheless", and such.
• Another worrisome issue, "discovering the Arab intention to go to war only nine and a half hours before the outbreak of hostilities"... the text that runs before makes it clear they didn't just open a door and "discover" that they were going to be attacked.
• MoS issues: incorrect use of em/en-dashes and hyphens throughout.
• Rundancies abound: try User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 1a: redundancy exercises (for example using the more verbose "as well as" instead of a simple "and").
• "It reached the opposite bank around 14:40 without losing a single casualty"; you can't lose casulties, only sustain them (or lose men); reword.
• "brought forward to breach a way through"; 'a way through' is redundant with the word breach, which if used in such context ("to breach") should be followed by a noun (what they are breaching). Reword.
• "By now company and battalion—size units of Israeli tanks and infantry begin reaching the Bar Lev Line, but are ambushed by Egyptian troops who prevent them from reaching their positions."; spot the tense errors.
• The article appears to use American English for most of its length, but randomly uses the BrEng "kilometre" spelling.

Overall it is my opinion that the prose needs a significant copyedit and audit for POV language. The article does not come off as neutral, and if the problem is with the sources themselves, a deeper appraisal of the article foundation may be in order. --Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^(talk) 17:27, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Jinnai

[edit] Montana class battleship

Previous Peer Review is here

Its been about a year since this article made FA, and now its time for its annual peer review. This is a routine maintenance peer review, I do not expect the article content to have shifted drastically since the FAC last year, but I am open to any suggestions for improvement. TomStar81 (Talk) 19:19, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Abraham, B.S.

Hi, Tom, just a couple of points:

• There are a couple of sentences at the end of paragraphs, and a paragrah or two themselves, that a without a cite and could probably do with one.
• As there are so many actual notes contained in the "Notes" section among the citations, it might be worth separating them into two different sections; one "Notes" and the other "Footnotes" or some such.
• If possible, it would be best if a few more of the images were aligned to the left, as the majority currently sit to the right.

Cheers, Abraham, B.S. (talk) 05:18, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Ed!

Same, just a few things to point out.

• The "Armament" section is the main place without citations. Some paragraphs could use more thorough citations while others (such as the first paragraph in the section) aren't cited at all.
• The books in the "References" and "Further Reading" sections should be put into {{cite book}} templates.
• I see a few links that appear multiple times in the article (Iowa-class, Battle of Midway, etc.) I would suggest skimming through the article's links again and making sure each link only appears once.

-Ed!^(talk) 20:40, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] I Corps (United States)

Article is a GA nominee, looking to get it to FA eventually. Please pay special attention to referencing and sources, they seem to be the biggest obstacle. -Ed!^(talk) 01:58, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Abraham, B.S.

Just a few minor points that stick out:

• All dates should be delinked.
• Endashes are required in date ranges used in the article, and page ranges used in citations.
• Level headings should not begin with "The" per MoS.
• I'm not sure how those listed as "Notable commanders" in the infobox have been ordered, but I think it would be preferable if the were ordered chronologically by the first of those men to command the corps down to the most current of them.
• The "References" section should probably be renamed "Notes", and "Sources" to "References".

Cheers, Abraham, B.S. (talk) 05:55, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Patar knight

I just skimmed the article, but I did pick up some things:

• In the Korean War section, only two engagements are wiki-linked (Inchon landings & Operation Ripper)
• In the Cold War section, you wrote: "The eastern half of the border was handled by the South Korean Army while I Corps took charge in the east.[30]" Is the 2nd east supposed to be "west"? Or were they in command of the South Korean Army in the east? This should be fixed or clarified.
• Honours section should be cited

--Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 14:24, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Gaia Octavia Agrippa

Just a few things:

• There are a lot of identical links in some sections, this need to be sorted out
• Years could be added to the notable commanders in the infobox to make things clearer
• The image that shows the structure of the Corps is not clear. It needs to be made bigger or moved.
• The history section is very large, it may need trimming down a bit.

Gaia Octavia Agrippa ^Talk | _Sign 15:20, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] 45th Infantry Division (United States)

Article is a GA nominee, looking to get it to FA eventually. Please pay special attention to referencing and sources, they seem to be the biggest obstacle. -Ed!^(talk) 04:15, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] EnigmaMcmxc

1. I have had a look at the refs and sources they look a-ok to me. Internet sources all appear to be US military or Gov, the one that isnt cites it sources.
2. "After a brief deactivation, the division returned to duty in the Korean War, defending U.N. lines against repeated attacks from Chinese forces" - This is in the lead, does this mean that the division did not have an offensive role in the war?
   1. By the time the division got to Korea the fight was mostly trench warfare, so not really. I clarified the lead to say that the division was "on the UN lines" -Ed!^(talk) 16:42, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
3. Too many dead links, they should be removed until the articles have been created.
   1. Removed most of the less important ones. How does it look now? -Ed!^(talk) 16:42, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
4. "Brigades were disbanded in favor of regimental commands" - what does this mean?
   1. From that point, the division contained three regiments instead of two brigades. I have clarified this. -Ed!^(talk) 16:42, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
5. "On August 1, the Division withdrew from the front line for rest and patrols." - it withdrew from the front to patrol? I think this needs to be clairfied a little.
   1. Clarified. -Ed!^(talk) 17:10, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
6. "Allied forces conducted a frontal assault on the Gustav Line stronghold at Monte Cassino, and VI Corps was detached from the Army Group and assigned to land behind enemy lines at Anzio, Operation Shingle." - Can this be reworded so Operation Shingle isnt tagged on the end?
   1. Done. -Ed!^(talk) 17:10, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
7. "part of a buildup in preparation for an invasion of mainland Europe in southern France to coencide with Operation Overlord.[15] The 45th Infantry Division, along with the 36th and 3rd Infantry Divisions were pulled from the line in Italy, however the planned attack, Operation Anvil, was delayed until August.[15]" - i think Operaiton Anvil should be introduced earlier, when talking about the division being withdrawn.
   1. Dome. -Ed!^(talk) 17:10, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
8. "The 45th Infantry Division participated in its fourth assault landing during Operation Dragoon on 15 August 1944, at St. Maxime, in Southern France.[10] The German Army, reeling from the Battle of Normandy pulled back after a short fight" - These 2 sentances need to be clairfied; surely the Germans facing this division pulled back after a short fight and not those up north that took part in a 3 month long slogging battle. I think it should be mentioned that the Germans were not simply just pulling back but something about their strategy should be mentioned as it seems they hightailed it back to Germany following Normandy and Dragoon.
   1. Clarified that the german's retreat was part of a larger overal withdrawal east. -Ed!^(talk) 17:10, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
9. "During this time much of the division's artillery assets fell under the command of the 44th Infantry Division" - what does it mean fell under their command? Where they transferred? The following sentance "It returned to VI Corps on New Year's day", is this in regards to the arty or the division - can this be clarified?
   1. Clarified both. The Artillery was attatched to the 44th Divison - it wasn't permenantly assigned to them, but it was sent to them temporarily to support their own assets. -Ed!^(talk) 17:10, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
10. "The division captured Munich during the next two days, and remained there until the end of the war on V-E Day.[10] During the next month, the division occupied Munich " - 2 points, the bit about VE day seems a bit awkward. 2, the division captured Munich and stayed there but only occupied the city after the war - that seems a little confusing.
    1. Tried to reword both points to make them more clear. -Ed!^(talk) 17:10, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
11. "Post-War Drawdown" - drawdown means?
    1. As the second grapgh in the section states, "drawdown" refers to the Army's massive reduction in size, cutting around 80 divisions of the force. I can't think of any better word for this in the section header so I just renamed it "post-war" -Ed!^(talk) 17:10, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
12. "The 45th Infantry Division was reconstituted as a National Guard unit" - the pre war section states this division was already national guard?
    1. The division was activated into the Active duty force from the national guard force during the war. I've tried to emphasize this at the beginning and end of the WWII section. -Ed!^(talk) 17:10, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Otherwise the article looks good and i dont see why it doesnt go right to the FA review now?--EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 16:17, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your input. I hope to put it up to FA as soon as possible, but first I am going through GA and Peer Review, then A-class, then FA. That way I can absorb as much constructive criticism as possible while improvine the article gradually. -Ed!^(talk) 18:21, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Skinny87

To me, it just strikes me as a bit bland and lacking in detail, especially for a division that fought through many of the major campaigns of the Second World War. Where's the use of the official history of the division, or more secondary sources like Atkinson that examine the various WWII campaigns? To me, it just doesn't seem to have enough detail; I realize there aren't exactly many divisional pages of a high quality to base this on, but I think more could be done. Skinny87 (talk) 19:11, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I'll try to look for some other sources to spice it up, but I'm not sure how much I can do. What parts do you think should be improved with more sources? -Ed!^(talk) 17:10, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Jinnai

My only comments, as much has been covered by the reviewer, is that some of the info in the After Korea section might be better moved to the legacy section, specifically those about the 45th Infantry Brigade. Also there is some minor prose cleanup. Its not major though, so for a GA its probably okay.陣内_Jinnai 22:08, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I've copy-edited the article, are there any prose issues you still see? and as for the legacy section, I thought the information on the 45th brigade belonged in the history because it is, by definition, an extension of the 45th Division's history. Which parts should be moved? -Ed!^(talk) 17:10, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

The opposing viewpoint is that the 45th Inf Bde is a separate formation almost entirely, sharing only a number. Unless anyone objects, I will move almost all of it to the 45 Inf Bde article. Cheers Buckshot06(prof) 17:32, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

It's not really necessary. Consequently I've also put the 45th Infantry Brigade up for GA, and it covers its subject reasonably well. I just assumed that, since the 45th Brigade shares the 45th Division's lineage it would be appropriate to include more details of the 45th Brigade since it is technically the same unit. -Ed!^(talk) 18:16, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Um, (1) both are formations, not units, being brigades/divs. Units stop at the battalion level, as far as I've ever heard. (2) One is a division and the other is a brigade - how can they be the same formation? IoH makes it clear - 'predecessor organization' - not the same formation. Buckshot06(prof) 18:26, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Good point. Thank you for providing the source! It looks like you're right and the 45th Brigade info wasn't necessary after all. -Ed!^(talk) 18:31, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Info about them passing on the lineage and heradly is still relevant to this topic though. However that's imo is more of its lasting legacy, ie that a brigade has taken the lineage and heraldry of a division which shared its number.
as for the prose, the only one I'm still wondering about is this line under Salerno and Anzio -- After linking up with the British Eighth Army that had advanced from the south, the combined force, under the Fifteenth Army Group was stalled when coming on the Gustav Line. -- Is the combined force refering to the 15th?陣内_Jinnai 18:28, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Buckshot06

Was the 45th Division the only one singled out for disbandment in 1968? If I remember rightly, the answer is no. A better answer may be at Manouver and Firepower: Divisions and Separate Brigades [2] which might give a picture with more context. Buckshot06(prof) 17:37, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Done. -Ed!^(talk) 18:14, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Sturmvogel_66

I'm a little confused about the transformation of the OK Militia Regiment into the 142nd. Was it simply renamed as the 142nd or was there something a little more complex going on? At any rate reassigned doesn't seem to be the proper word to use. Fix this sentence: On September 16, 1940, the 45th Infantry Division was activated into the Active duty force. Clumsily worded, use either mobilized or federalized. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 17:47, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] 24th Infantry Division (United States)

Article is a GA nominee, looking to get it to FA eventually. Please pay special attention to referencing and sources, they seem to be the biggest obstacle. -Ed!^(talk) 03:13, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Kirill Lokshin

A very nice article, overall. A couple of questions and suggestions:

• Is globalsecurity.org the best available source for the division's later career? I would have assumed that there must be more conventional coverage of the Gulf War in recent literature.
• "A division in name only" seems a bit glib for a section title.
• The article needs to be copyedited before moving to FAC; there are a lot of sections where the prose is very choppy (likely due to sentences being split along source lines).

Keep up the good work! Kirill ^[talk] [pf] 23:52, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] List of aircraft carrier classes of the United States Navy

I have done a lot of work to this article, and I wanted to know what needed to be done for it to be A- or FL-class material. Thanks, mynameinc (t|c|p) 21:30, 6 June 2009 (UTC).

[edit] Patar knight

A couple of points:

• The intro should start off mentioning the actual subject (US Aircraft Carriers) from the first paragraph, rather than going straight into a description of US Aircraft carrier history, which is confusing for readers, and doesn't provide a good summary
• The section headers are misleading. Most people would expect Yorktown to be in the WWII section. Also, the Pre-World War II section contains information on Pearl Harbour, which definitely during the war.
• In the WWII section, "On September 2, 1945, Japan signed the surrender agreement abroad the USS Missouri, ending World War II.[9]" does not pertain to Aircraft Carriers whatsoever, unless its paired with some factoid (e.g. By the time Japan...ending WWII, the United States had x amount of active carriers).
• The "Escort Carriers" section should be a sub-section of WWII, since all the escort carriers are from that time frame.

--Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 16:07, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] PKKloeppel

According to mynameinc, the person who requested this review no longer intends to edit Wikipedia articles, presumably including also this one. It is clear that he has not responded to Patar knight in more than two weeks. I have made some of the changes suggested by Patar knight, but have neither the time nor the resources to do a good job. Either someone else will have to jump in and do it, or we should forget about it. PKKloeppel (talk) 18:43, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

From a logistical standpoint, the review will be getting archived at some point, once it drops to the bottom of the review list. I'm not sure there's any benefit to explicitly ending it before that point; even if nobody is actively making the suggested changes, the list of suggestions may prove useful to future editors in and of itself. Kirill ^[talk] [pf] 04:05, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] List of destroyer classes of the United States Navy

I have done a lot of work on this article, and I wanted to know: what needs to be done for it to be A- or FL-class material? Thanks, mynameinc (t|c|p) 17:46, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Sturmvogel 66

You might want to expand on the flush-decker explanation; I don't find flat-deck anything close to a reasonable translation. I'd explain that they lacked the forecastle used by most contemporary ships and this single deck from stem to stern was called a flush deck in naval terminology. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:52, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Y DoneThanks, do that tomorrow. Did you notice anything else wrong? mynameinc (t|c|p) 03:13, 8 June 2009 (UTC) If anybody notices anything else wrong, please tell me here, the article talk, or my talk page. Thanks, mynameinc (t|c|p) 17:28, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] McComb

I perceive your approach is to compress multiple linkable source articles into a single article as a framework for your table. I am not a regular Wikipedian and only by accident discovered this page; also, I lack time for much more than review -- but in the interest of historical accuracy, I'm all in favor of seeing this done well. Accordingly, I took the liberty of making some edits of my own last week but misemphases remain. I'd be pleased to offer comment in the spirit of continuing education in lieu of making further edits of my own; is that what you're looking for? If yes, would it useful to point you toward resources other than what's available on the web? If no, would you tolerate reworking of some sections? I ask the question as the author of many of the articles you've cited in your REFERENCES and I'd be willing to work with you if we could find an efficient way. McComb (talk) 00:30, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] German battleship Bismarck

This article is one of the most famous warships of World War II, and as such, should be at a much higher quality level than it currently is. I am requesting this peer review to bring in outside eyes to help those of us who have been working on the article, so that we can improve it and eventually reach FA. In many areas, lack of sourcing is a problem; I'm more concerned with the soundness of the prose, whether there are any POV issues (Bismarck has both fan and detractor crowds), etc. Thanks for all comments in advance. Parsecboy (talk) 16:23, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Nick-D

Here are my comments:

• The 'Background' section should probably include a brief summary of her design
• The article doesn't cover the period between her commissioning and Operation Rheinübung - information on her trials, crewing, officers, training exercises, etc would be interesting
• I think that the coverage of Operation Rheinübung is too detailed - this really belongs in the dedicated article
• The photos are very well chosen, but could some photos of the ship on the sea bed also be included under a fair use claim?
• Does there need to be a dedicated section to the ship's war diary?
• I think that the 'References in the Wehrmachtbericht' section should be removed (and possibly moved to Wikisource?) as it doesn't add anything to the article which shouldn't already be in the prose.
• Information about what happened to the crew who were rescued would be interesting. Nick-D (talk) 01:30, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree with most of Nick's comments, especially about the one about the Wehrmachtbericht. But I will note that the discussion about the loss of the Hood needs to be cited. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 03:04, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] GraemeLeggett

Having reread the start of the article, I changed "Background" to "Building and commissioning" this made more sense in the context of a single ship than background. the section could use some attention:

1. Plan Z and Bismarck's part in it is split across the two paragraphs - there's sort of a half repeat of information which could probably be phrased better.
2. use as a commerce raider - it would be good to know when the decision was taken, but more so if functioning as a commerce raider she would be aided by other ships. The section states that she could tackle a battleship on convoy escort, but what of the remainder of a convoy's warships (eg cruisers and destroyers)- its left open as to whether Bismarck would be unable to tackle these as well or would be aided.

Her operational history

I personally would trim some of the detail, provided it remains in the relevant articles, so that her (brief) service is more readable. There are a number of digressions eg in on Norwegian agents. Some parts could be precised eg on the Bergen stop "Both German ships ..... British air surveillance." could be precised to

"It had been intended for both ships to refuel in Bergen. Prinz Eugen did so but Bismarck did not; their next refuelling would be from an oiler that was waiting in the Arctic at least one day's sailing away. Stopping in Bergen cost him a day and gave the British the opportunity to detect them."

Rediscovery
This section could have a simple precis before launching into the various subsections.

Wehrmachtbericht
the section adds the quotes but without any context as to what the Wehrmachtbericht was and to why these references were important, or what the reaction was to them. GraemeLeggett (talk) 12:03, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Simon Harley

My knowledge of Bismarck is limited to Breyer, a D. K. Brown/Garzke/Dullin article on her rediscovery, Preston's The World's Worst Warships and the Mearns book on Hood and Bismarck, and kicking around somewhere I have Ballard's memoirs and the relevant chapter on Bismarck, so I won't comment on the technical aspects of the article.

• The Rediscovery section confuses the hell out of me. The most obvious problem is "Ballard's third expedition" - when was his second? When was the third, since its date is not mentioned in the article proper? And how some of the sources, supposedly written in 1990, can have a bearing on this section is beyond me. Can someone with the knowledge sort this out? --Simon Harley (talk | library | book reviews) 10:05, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] British Army during World War I

I started tinkering with this article two weeks ago and one thing lead to another and here we are. I would like to get the article to A class, but think it has some way to go. Any suggestions would be appreciated --Jim Sweeney (talk) 19:25, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] LeadSongDog

• Lede is completely uncited, so should be carefully checked to ensure each statement is elsewhere in the text. I'd suggest hidden comments to say where. Y Done removed what I could not readily source
• Commanders:
  • When did French's term start? Why was he replaced? Y Done
  • "conduct during the war" or "conduct of the war""? Y Done
• Organisantion:
  • consider "any conflict" or "any external conflict"? Y Done changed wording
  • link first use of Guards, infantry, cavalry regiment, division, brigade, battalion, how big are these units? Y Done all linked the size of each unit is found via the link don't think we need it in the text
  • relate 3s6d/week to the modern equivalent Y Done
• Recruitment and conscription
  • not just men, women (esp nurses), boys (some of 14) volunteered Y Done good catch on the woman in ww1 , I have not commented on boys volunteering as officially they never did volunteers had to be 18
• Doctrine
  • the quotation "In every respect the Expeditionary Force in 1914 was incomparably the best trained, best organized, and best equipped British Army which ever went forth to war." is attributed in Beckett & Simpson p.38 to J.E. Edmonds' Military Operations, France and Belgium, 1914, Volume I, pp.10-11, HMSO London (1925) should be verified and properly attributed Y Done
• Artillery tactics
  • link first use of creeping barrage, indirect fire Y Done
• Communications
  • link first use of dispatch, trench wireless set, flags Y Done
• Life in the trenches
  • lice and rats didn't cause the diseases, they carried them. Y Done
• Gas helmet
  • see Heller, Charles E. (September 1984). "Chemical Warfare in World War I: The American Experience, 1917-1918". Combat Studies Institute. http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/Heller/HELLER.asp.

• that's all for now, perhaps more later.LeadSongDog come howl 18:12, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments --Jim Sweeney (talk) 19:47, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Nick-D

This is a very good article, and I think that I'll borrow elements of its structure for the Australian Army in World War II article I'm slowly working on. My comments are:

• The 'commanders' section is probably placed too early in the article, and could be expanded to discuss the backgrounds (and performance) of lower ranked officers as well. Eg, how did the Army identify its junior officers, how did men become divisional and corps commanders and did the system work? ID JUNIOR OFFICERS DONE
• It seems a bit simplistic to state that the Army's experiences with colonial warfare led to the adoption of offensive doctrine prior to the war - the same was true for the French Army (which took horrific losses as a result) as well as the Germans and (as late as 1917) the US Army changed wording Y Done
• You could merge the section on the BEF and Kitchener's Army into a single section describing how the Army's organisation changed over the war Y Done
• The statement that 'The British Army of 1914, was the best trained best equipped and best organized British Army ever sent to war' needs to be qualified - the source was published in 1925 and better trained and equipped British Army units have probably been deployed since. changed wording Y Done
• The 'Equipment' section is probably too detailed given that all of these weapons have their own articles Y Done
• It should be noted that British Empire forces were integrated into the British Army and used British weapons, organisations, etc, and were often led by British officers. Y Done
• The Royal Flying Corps and its eventual separation from the Army to form the RAF should be described. Y Done

Nick-D (talk) 04:32, 6 June 2009 (UTC) Nick-D (talk) 04:32, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments -I did consider the RFC but as I had not covered any of the other Corps in detail left them out Tank Corps Machine Gun Corps etc --Jim Sweeney (talk) 12:01, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Simon Harley

• A greater mention of the work of the Machine Gun Corps might be warranted, what with their use of indirect fire - could be described in the doctrine section. The whole section about the firing rates of the Vickers HMG is somewhat pointless if the reader doesn't know why such fire was necessary. --Simon Harley (talk | library | book reviews) 12:47, 10 June 2009 (UTC) Y Done
• Creation of the Tank Corps? When was it, why was it created? Y Done
• Harper at Cambrai - there's a lot of published materiel out there which questions the standard perception of his role during the battle. A World War I encyclopedia is hardly authoritative or representative. --Simon Harley (talk | library | book reviews) 14:30, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] German Unification

This article had a major overhaul in the past 6 weeks, and has had a Project Germany review, but needs the military history review as well. I am completely baffled by the instructions on how to move/copy/relink an archived peer review from 3 years ago to this new review. --Auntieruth55 (talk) 19:19, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] YellowMonkey

• If you are looking for GA and above, then they will expect you to have a citation (at least one per paragraph) to cover the info

::done.--Auntieruth55 (talk) 16:29, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

• Repeated references need to be merged. I will do some examples for you

see below, I saw your addition to the Kaplan reference. --Auntieruth55 (talk) 16:29, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

• Also for number ranges, ndash needs to be used instead of a small hyphen.

done--Auntieruth55 (talk) 16:29, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

• For Further reading, I think the blurb should be changed to rm "suggestions" and the sentence as otherwise the article seems to be endorsing certain books,m which isnt allowed YellowMonkey (cricket calendar poll!) 03:03, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

I'll go though and add the ndash, if that's the correct thing to use. I don't understand all your abbreviations, such as rm and m ....

the use of merged references I find extremely confusing to read, especially since most of them have different page numbers anyway.--Auntieruth55 (talk) 16:04, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Yellow Monkey's comments have been incorporated. Now what? What else should be done to move this along to a B? (or higher). --Auntieruth55 (talk) 17:47, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Skinny87

A large number of citations refer to a number of books, but don't actually have any page numbers; this needs to be fixed immediately. I'd also support merging references if the same page-numbers are used. For reference, rm=remove and m=moerge/move depending on the context. The article also seems to rely on Sheehan quite a bit - a bit more variety might not be a bad idea, there are more than enough books listed in the Further References section to use. Skinny87 (talk) 19:04, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Piotrus

The first and only instance of the use of word Poland was not wikified, leading me to note that the article needs many more wikilinks. Link to War of the Fourth Coalition added. I also wonder why the article doesn't mention that part of the "unification" included lands of the Prussian partition of Poland. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:25, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Army of the Tennessee

This AOT article was started and given its basic organization by others (with most prior edits by Jeremy Bentham and Hal Jespersen). It was rated "start class" until recently (with about 17,000 bytes). I have substantially expanded (and in some cases corrected) the article, adding discusson, references, footnotes, and images (now 54,000 bytes); the info box was modeled on the Army of the Cumberland page. During this process the article was upgraded to B class by The ed17; then a fair amount of additional work was done. The ed17 then assisted with some format matters. I believe the article is on a worthy subject and is now in pretty good shape and should have a higher rating. However, before requesting a rating upgrade, I would welcome input on the article. FWIW, this is my first request for a peer review. Thank you in advance for any input. Hartfelt (talk) 18:56, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

I have continued to refine the AOT article over the last week, but hope to have reached a resting point now. Many thanks to PKKloeppel for his various efforts on the article. Also, due to Yellow Monkey's comments, I have introduced some additional cites at various places. Especially after the addition of those citations, I believe that the substantive reliance on the memoirs of Grant and Sherman is really quite limited; the memoirs are cited mostly for reasons of color or simple facts like who led which column. (I might add that on detail points they are often more accurate than the historians who sometimes don't seem to have done their homework on such details.) Would appreciate any further comments, and thanks in advance. Hartfelt (talk) 21:31, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] PKKloeppel

Very thorough. My only negative criticism concerns a rather minor point of literary style. I think there are too many parenthetical insertions that should either be converted into subordinate phrases or dropped altogether. I will change some of them myself, but I do not have time to do a thorough job. PKKloeppel (talk) 15:41, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

You did most of what I thought necessary, and I have now taken care of a few that remained, so I think this issue is laid to rest. What is left to do now is cosmetic (but note that cosmetic issues are important to the gatekeepers for GA, A, and FA approval). (You see that I, too, can use parentheses. Tee-hee.)

1. Most dashes should be replaced by either – or —. I have started on this and will get back to it and hope to complete it later. You may wish to check my work.

2. The citations and references are not handled uniformly. You may, if you wish, use the cite template, which can be found here. It produces a form that I personally dislike, but at least it is consistent.

By the way, you can reply to my messages here rather than on my user page. Then other possible editors will be able to see that you are responding. PKKloeppel (talk) 00:52, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Pkk: Thanks again. I have tried to be attentive to consistency, but you are doubtless correct that there is not perfect uniformity, and I will look at your link and try to spiff things up. What is your reaction to the comment below by YM? Hartfelt (talk) 12:04, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Pkk, Thank you for the work you have done so far. Like you, I'm not thrilled by that format for references -- with dates taking priority over title. However, now that you have taken the trouble to change them all, we may as well stick with that format. (After you had changed only the first four or five I suggested that we restore the prior form for those references and find another approach to render them consistent. But developments have overtaken that suggestion.) BTW, may I ask the background for the alternative format you adopted to citations for the Official Records? Hartfelt (talk) 15:51, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

{PKK: Thanks again for your work on the references section for AOT. Now that the references are in order, is it OK just to use a short form for the notes -- like Woodworth, p. x, without more? That seems to be suggested by the article citations for beginners, also by something written in the peer review list by Yellow Dog. The reader can then refer to the reference list to get the title. Or do you recommend something else? Hartfelt (talk) 20:28, 26 May 2009 (UTC)} -- I have copied this message here from my User:Talk page so that other editors will know what I am talking about. PKK.

A short form is adequate, so long as the identification is unique. Wikipedia policy is given here. The "unique" requirement means, in the present case, that you will have to be careful when citing either Cox or Marszalek, as each of them is author of more than one book. Also remember that other editors may add additional material, including other books by your authors; what is identified uniquely today may not be uniquely identified tomorrow. Properly, that should be their concern, not yours, but keep in mind the varied backgrounds of our editors and be tolerant.

For what it is worth, I always include a short title. Because I prepare my notes by copying and pasting from a bibliography that I maintain away from Wikipedia, it is no more difficult than writing a minimal reference (for example, {Cox, Atlanta} is as easy to copy and paste as {Cox}). Although the likelihood that later editors will add material affecting the citations adversely may be small, I am paranoid or delusional or whatever enough to include short titles in all my footnotes; in other words, all citations are treated as if they have to stand alone. This is a price we pay at Wikipedia for our policy of never having a truly final manuscript.

Note that I do not wish to impose my system on you. I am merely telling you why I do what I do. Wikipedia policy is quite loose, and you can choose the truly minimal form if you wish; it would not be a deal-breaker in your effort to raise the article to GA-class. Have I answered your question? PKKloeppel (talk) 03:24, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] YellowMonkey

I have ot say that I am concerned by the usage of the memoirs of the involved parties, especially as this means that in some parts, entire paragraphs are cited to officers invovled, as bald fact. Involved parties have a vested interest in making htemselves look good. YellowMonkey (cricket calendar poll!) 03:58, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Yellow Monkey: Thank you for looking at the piece and raising this issue. In my view, your comment overstates the case about reliance on memoirs. I wrote having in mind the issue you raise and seeking to avoid falling into the category of original research. There are selected citations or quotations from the memoirs of Grant, Sherman, Lew Wallace, Howard, and Cox (I believe). These bring color and feeling to the piece, or else supply otherwise hard-to-find info like troop totals. I don't think puffing is involved (except possibly in Sherman's praise for the AOT and saying that the Carolinas march was very impt and more impt than the march to the sea). Moreover, professional historians are liberally cited, usually in addition to memoirs. Further, evaluative judgments (like the significance of various campaigns) have very much been left to historians of the caliber of Jean Edward Smith, John Marszalek, Jim McPherson, Steve Woodworth, and Albert Castel. So, in my view, the article does not deserve to be marked down on the ground you raise. However, if there are particular points or paragraphs of concern to you on this score, please identify them for special attn. Thanks again. Hartfelt (talk) 12:23, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

I do not agree with the objection. The material that is taken from memoirs is mostly simply matters of fact, and when opinion appears, it is surrounded by quotation marks (unless I missed some). To be sure, the authors of the memoirs are biased, but so are the historians, and it is easier to spot the bias of the former. PKKloeppel (talk) 15:34, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Ain't that the truth! Also, much as I respect the effort that goes in to writing a history book, the more I know about the CW, the more errors of fact I notice, including items of conventional wisdom repeated as gospel when the CW is simply not supported by the underlying facts. Still, the article as written tries to avoid the formulation of original or contrarian opinions and relies on well respetced professional historians for the evaluative conclusions. Hartfelt (talk) 15:45, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] History of the United Kingdom during World War I

I believe this article may be A class but would like a peer review first its been expanded by about 10 times by User:Jarry1250 and myself. --Jim Sweeney (talk) 09:48, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Indeed. (20 times actually.) It appeals to me as an article that could attract a great deal of interest among the greater public. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 15:22, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] AustralianRupert

I like what you have done with this article. I don't think I can add much to the review, but have one question:

• In the citations (see # 66), you have included the full bibliographic details (Gibbons, Verna Hale (1998). Jack Judge: The Tipperary Man. West Midlands: Sandwell Community Library Service. ISBN 1 900 689 073), where all the other citations seem to use abbreviated format in citations, then full format in references. Is there a reason for this? My suggestion would be to move the full details to the references section and use abbreviated form in the citation to maintain consistency. Also, there is no page number for this citation.

That is all I have at the moment. I will keep looking for those pesky hyphens and dashes. — AustralianRupert (talk) 14:59, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

(Can I reply here?) I just steamrollered a load more hyphens --> dashes using AWB, and I've moved the ref. I don't have a page number for it, as I don't personally have a copy, but I might try to search an online copy. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 15:07, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I see Jim's exchanged the ref for a different two now. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 11:26, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Hartfelt

Having myself today requested a peer review, I thought I should conduct one. Overall, I am favorably impressed with your article, but there is of course room for improvement. I have no expertise in your subject, and my comments reflect a single, uninterrupted read-through without written notes.

(1) Obviously, you have written with British background, spellings, and style. You might remember, however, that many of your English-language readers will be Americans, etc. and ask yourself whether you sometimes take too much for granted for non-British readers (as in not immediately identifying the sitting King in the royal family section, in discussing the maneuvers of government formation, and in assuming familiarity with the women's movement in England).

(2) Consider the flow of your outline. Does it make sense, for example, to interject "propaganda" between newspapers and magazines. Maybe propagana should go before or after both or be in its own category. There may be other such items. Given that you cover a grab-bag of topics, your effort will benefit from having the most logical sequence, creating the greatest flow. Should royal family go before government? Has more color and might be of more human interest to more readers.

• moved propaganda left monarchy after government Y Done

(3) I suggest streamlining the introduction and making it more inviting. Eg, remove the stuff about the Tsar and the qualification concerning women's issues. Make it agree with your outline.

• Required per MOS

(4) The royal family section would be improved by stating who the sitting king was at the outset. Y Done by Jarry

(5) There are many formal items needing attention. These includes seeming inconsistencies in spelling out or not spelling out numbers (see fifty one v. 17 in same section); method of giving year spans; extra spaces or missing spaces in punctuation around footnotes, etc. It also seemed to me that there are sentences that should be broken in two. Y Done

(6) I am not familiar with the two-tier footnote approach and don't really care for it. At a minimum, might it not be better to include some of the shorter ones in the text itself, rather than divert readers into the footnotes?

• One added into the text the others are better off as notes I believe Y Done

(7) Question: Given all the ships sunk, were there really so few deaths as you give.

• Checked the source almost 15,OOO in the Merchant Navy does not seem a small amount Y Done

(8) Suggestion: Find a way to discuss Winston Churchill's role during the war, as he is such an important and familiar figure to so many.

(9) I like your additional information links. Should there be more?

• Added as many as possible Y Done

I hope the foregoing is of some help to you, and that you get some comments from people with more substantive expertise! Good luck from here. I am going to go back into the article and make one small editing change. Hartfelt (talk) 20:41, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Ah good, I was starting to worry about that whole in my schedule for tomorrow. :) I agree with most of the above, and particularly the outside approach ones (1, 2 and 4). (6) I'm not so sure about (include in the text itself?); and though Churchill is famous as a person, he really didn't feature enough in these adventures to realistically justify (8). Point (3) arguably goes against MoS guidelines, but I do get where you're coming from. (5) I will correct and (7) and (9) I will have to research tomorrow. Certainly points to think about there, appreciated. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 20:59, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Jarry: Just wanted to clarify my point on footnotes. I am focused on the nb footnotes, which are textual rather than citations. Some are so short that they could be kept in the text, in a parentheses or worked into text, rather than diverting the reader into the footnotes to see a little piece of text. Then the reader has to check a footnote to the footnote. Hartfelt (talk) 21:19, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Ah, now I follow. The problem is that a couple really are neccessary, so you'd never be able to get rid of them all. But I'll give it a go. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 08:33, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Jarry: Re Churchill -- If Dardanelles caused govt to fall and Churchill responsible for Dardanelles, doesn't Churchill deserve mention? Also impt in naval readiness. You're the expert, but I think you would make your article more accessible by working him in a little, as compared to the forgotten figures who are now the whole focus. Just a thought. Hartfelt (talk) 22:23, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

I am by no means an expert, but the problem here is that there is a real temptation - that both Jim and I have been suppressing - to launch into accounts of the various battles and raids (such as in the Dardanelles). But I'm sure we could mention him briefly though. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 08:33, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments I have done some I believe Jarry is working on the others --Jim Sweeney (talk) 12:18, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Jarry/Jim: I see you have been at work, but hope you won't mind some addtl thoughts, for what they are worth.

(1) My question about few deaths at sea related to the 900 or so "civilian" deaths. Is that an accurate figure?

Yes according to the source there is another figure of 14,000 for the merchant navy which is seperate from civilian deaths --Jim Sweeney (talk) 13:34, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

(2) Churchill. Obviously, I'm just one reader, but I wanted to know more about Churchill. Without discussing the Dardannelles expedition in any detail, couldn't it be mentioned that Churchill was behind it, which you say caused the government to fall. Also, in the Navy section, why not mention that Churchill had emphasized preparedness before the war so the navy was well prepared, but he led the navy and army into the Dardanelles exp & lost his job. Also, his service thereafter in the army could be mentioned. In that connection, you have a single sentence about service by MPs. Should that be expanded? What was consequence -- did they remain in Parliament or have to resign? Was Churchill the most prominent? It is, of course, your article but I think you could make it more reader-friendly if you wove a little Churchill into it.

We already have the Winston Churchill and Winston Churchill in politics: 1900-1939 articles which cover him in detail --Jim Sweeney (talk) 13:34, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

(3) Because your article is necessarily a "grab bag," it necessarily has flow problems (unlike an article that has a strong time-line). I think you could help this with some attn to transitions. Why not, for example, start the Monarchy section with a topic sentence like "World War I led to profound changes for Briatin's royal family, caused by their close ties to Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm." Something to reorient the reader's attn to a new subject and tell them why it's a topic of interest.

(4) The Pankhurst gang. This reader wants to know who all the Pankhursts were -- sisters, cousins, mother/daughter? Seems striking that they were on both sides of the divide.

The danger is writing the History of the Pankhursts article which has been a problem all the time --Jim Sweeney (talk) 13:35, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

I think we can make room for a note about which one was the mother and which two the daughters. Duly Y Done. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 15:11, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Anyway, keep up the good work. Over & out, hoping this is of some use. (I'm going into the article to make a specific change; feel free to revert.) Hartfelt (talk) 12:40, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Jarry/Jim: I have belatedly focused on fact that you have a subsection on recruitment and draft; then a section on CO. Why not combine them into a single section addressing recruitment, draft, and CO all in one place under an appropriate heading. As it is, draft is mentioned in the subsection, then again and more informatively in the CO section. Also, the mention of parliament members in the military where it now resides is rather disruptive of the flow of the government section. Prior treatment was less disruptive. Hartfelt (talk) 16:54, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Indeed. Jim's moved the bits to their own section, and I've commented out the fact for now. We'll see how that develops. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 17:40, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Jarry/Jim: I see you have made many expansions and improvements (e.g., discussion of the role of the royal children in the war). I also want to note that there are some very nice parts to the article, e.g., the nice meshing of graphics and text regarding the Tsar and the zeppelins. Of criticisms, you may have heard more from me than you want to. If so, I apologize. Two last comments:

(1) The conscription section does not hang together for me. The Jan-March-May dates seem out of whack; the statements about married-single seem out of whack. Someone should pin this down and straighten it out. What was the date of the Act cited? When did policies change? Could married men be drafted or not?

(2) More important, please forgive me for saying frankly that I find the introduction off-putting. It seems to me rather disjointed, jumping around, and would not encourage me to drive on into the article. I urge you to spend some time to polish it. Shorten it some if you can, but in any event give it a better, more inviting flow. I have been tempted to try something myself, but it's your article and you can do a better job than I can if you put your mind to it. Remember, you only have one chance to make a first impression. I reacted negatively to the introduction when I read it first, and I still do.

Congrats on a worthwhile and improving article. Best of luck from here. Hartfelt (talk) 20:43, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Abraham, B.S.

Very good work. Just a few initial comments for now:

Lead

• The opening sentence in the lead doesn't sit well with me. "United Kingdom during World War I (1914–1918) was one of the Allied Powers" - this seems to be saying that World War I was one of the Allied powers. Could this be tweaked? Y Done
• It should be clarified in the lead when H. H. Asquith is mentioned that he was PM. Same with George. Y Done

Government

• "and the internal divisions within British politics that had plagued the pre-war years continued." - requires a cite.

  That's me. Should be in here somewhere (looks down at tome in front of him). - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 11:43, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

  Can't find it, so removing. Not integral to the article anyhow. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 12:34, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

• "failed Gallipoli Campaign in the Dardenelles, when many thousands of men had been lost for very little perceived gain" - "many" --> "several". Y Done
• It should be clarified exactly when George took over as PM. Y Done
• I think I've taken care of the few in this section, but remember that Acts of law should be in italics.

  Y Done, I think. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 12:34, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Cheers, Abraham, B.S. (talk) 00:42, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the review I think between Jarry and myself we have covered them all --Jim Sweeney (talk) 07:20, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson

This article has changed pretty much out of all recognition since the previous peer review (archived here), and has now reached Good Article status. I'd like to get this article up to FA standard by October this year at the latest, since after that I will be hard pressed to devote much time to it, and would appreciate any pointers or advice. Benea (talk) 18:57, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] YellowMonkey

I guess you have forgotten to remove some of the hyphens for ndashes.... YellowMonkey (cricket calendar poll!) 01:06, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Skinny87

The Trafalgar and subsequent sections are rather thin on the ground - I'd like to see some expansion there, as they're quite anemic compared to the rest of the article. Skinny87 (talk) 09:41, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Military career of L. Ron Hubbard

I have completely rewritten this article from scratch following concerns that the previous version - not written by me, I hasten to add - was excessively POV and based on original research. (Compare before and after.) The replacement article documents the military career of L. Ron Hubbard, who served in the US Navy from 1941-45 (active service) and 1945-50 (reserves). I would like to get it up to at least GA standard and preferably FA standard, and would appreciate feedback on the current text. I've avoided, wherever possible, quoting from primary sources but I should say up front that there are some primary source quotations simply to meet the demands of NPOV - the account would be extremely one-sided if Hubbard's own POV could not be quoted. -- ChrisO (talk) 00:31, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] YellowMonkey

• In number ranges, you're supposed to use a ndash instead of a hyphen.
• Usually multiply used books are listed in full in the a separate section and in the notes section it is just "Miller, p. 50." without needing to use ibid, especially as only one book is used for the given author
• Lead is a bit short and I don't think that US should be used three times in the first sentence; after the first mention of USDF, the fact US doesn't need to be stated before the MC and N. YellowMonkey (cricket calendar poll!) 00:39, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. I've actioned the first two points. I'll have a go at expanding the lead later today. -- ChrisO (talk) 07:43, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

I have now expanded the lead. Please take a look and let me know what you think of it now. -- ChrisO (talk) 11:10, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Jayen466

I commented on the article's talk page earlier today, unaware that this peer review was ongoing. Is it possible to place a more prominent reference to this peer review on the article talk page? Anyway, here a copy of my comments.

• The "Marine Corps Reserve" section states,

  "Although he was rated 'excellent' for military efficiency, obedience and sobriety,[4] he received an honorable discharge on October 22, 1931 along with the annotation "not to be re-enlisted."[5]"

• This synthesises two sources: Miller, who states,

  "Ron returned to Washington to report for two weeks' annual training with the 20th Marine Corps Reserve and was rated 'excellent' for military efficiency, obedience and sobriety".

• The other cited source, Atack, states,

  "On October 22, 1931, Hubbard received an honorable discharge from the Marine Reserve. In his service record, there is a handwritten note under the character reference: 'Excellent.' In another hand beneath this is written, 'Not to be re-enlisted.' There is no explanation of either statement."

• I suggest we lose the "Although" in our text, because it editorialises and subtly suggests there was something wrong with his performance. 1931 was peace time, so I wonder what "not to be re-enlisted" means in such a context. Could it mean that he simply had finished his stint of reserve duty? And Hubbard obviously was re-enlisted in 1941 (although not by the Marine Corps, if that is what is meant).

• "He got no further than Brisbane" seems to imply it was Hubbard's fault; sources say his ship was diverted to Australia instead. Suggest we use a more neutral phrasing.

• Streeter, who is cited, also includes praise Hubbard received from a senior officer for his navigating skills, "excellent personal and military character", etc.; I think to be balanced, that should be included too.

• This passage, along with some others, has an air of synthesis about it:

  According to the Church of Scientology, Hubbard was landed on the island of Java "in the closing days of February 1942" to search for "stockpiled weapons and fast, shallow-draft vessels." He was cut off by invading Japanese "and was only able to escape the island after scrambling into a rubber raft and paddling out to meet an Australian destroyer."[9] Another Church of Scientology account describes Hubbard as "Senior Officer Present Ashore in Brisbane, Australia" and states that "after fracturing an ankle in subsequent action, he was flown stateside (in the Secretary of the Navy's plane no less) as the first American casualty returning from the Pacific Theater."[10] The US Navy's files do not record this episode.[1]

• The sentence "The US Navy's files do not record this episode." appears to be sourced to the sentence "The US Navy files do not record the time that Hubbard is supposed to have spent on Java" on page 207 of Streeter. I think it would be better to move that sentence to before the sentence on the flight on the private plane, so it is used in the context in which the source is using it.

• Some sentences seem to be designed to elicit guffaws, e.g.: "The PC-815 sustained some self-inflicted damage when a misaimed burst of gunfire shot away the vessel's radio antenna and injured three of the crew." (unsourced; questionable relevance unless sources say Hubbard was the one doing the shooting and was censured for it); "Other documents on Hubbard's medical file stated that he had injured his back in 1942 after falling off a ship's ladder.[43]" (sourced to "Greenwald, David (1984-12-21). United Press International.", no further details given).

• A number of sentences don't have references, making verification difficult; given the contentious nature of the topic, I would recommend placing a ref after each sentence.

• In an earlier discussion on the talk page editors agreed that Melton was not a historian, and that there was no need to include his version of the submarine incident. I think I would like to have another look at this issue, for two reasons. Melton's account has since been re-published by Oxford University Press [3]:

  "It appears that PC 815 did engage and sink a Japanese submarine off the Oregon coast, a fact only recently substantiated because of the American government's reluctance to admit that the Japanese were in fact operating off America's Pacific Coast during the war".

• Secondly, this present article is almost exclusively based on Miller and Atack, and Frenschkowski, in the Marburg Journal of Religion, wrote,

  "- Russell Miller, Bare-Faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard, New York 1987. London 1988. The most important critical biography of Hubbard. Like Haack's and Corydon's books it is extremely polemical and very much tries to pull Hubbard to pieces who is seen as a dangerous megalomanic and notorious liar (especially when talking about himself). Miller has definitely exposed some inflated statements about Hubbard's early achievements, as they are represented e. g. in the preface to Mission into Time. On the other side the Church of Scientology has been able to disprove some of Millers assumptions. Hubbard's assertions about his military career in WWII, e.g., have been much nearer to the truth than Miller is trying to show, as can be seen from his naval records that have been made public during the processes following the publication of Bare-Faced Messiah (a complete set of the relevant documents is part of my collection). The Church of Scientology has also been able to verify Hubbard's statements about "Comander Thompson", the source of his early acquaintance with Freudian psychoanalysis. Joseph "Snake" Thompson (1874-1943) was Commander in the US Navy Medical Corps; his personal relation with Freud is documented by a letter written by Freud and addressed to him (in the Library of Congress, Washington. Copy in my possession). This material so far is not part of any bibliography of Hubbard."

– [4]

• This creates enough doubt in my mind to make me feel that we should not be relying on Miller's version exclusively; we have to represent significant viewpoints in proportion to their prevalence. At the least, I think we should attribute material that comes from Miller to him, and find room somewhere for Frenschkowski's assertion that parts of Miller's narrative have been disproved. Jayen466 12:12, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. I'll go through them in more detail later on today, but I'll make a few interim comments.

• We decided in the earlier discussion to exclude Melton not simply because he's not an historian but because his claims about Japanese submarines are not corroborated by any other reliable source, and in fact are actively contradicted by the standard histories of the Japanese navy's submarine fleet. There is literally no other source that suggests that any Japanese submarines were sunk off the US coast, by Hubbard or anyone else. I refer you to WP:UNDUE: "If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it does not belong in Wikipedia regardless of whether it is true or not and regardless of whether you can prove it or not, except perhaps in some ancillary article... Keep in mind that in determining proper weight we consider a viewpoint's prevalence in reliable sources." This viewpoint is presented in no reliable sources other than as a claim made by the Church of Scientology. Note that Melton cites no sources to support his contention - he says it's "substantiated" without saying what substantiates it. It's a textbook case of a red flag: a "surprising or apparently important claim not covered by mainstream sources" and a "claim that is contradicted by the prevailing view within the relevant community, or which would significantly alter mainstream assumptions, especially in science, medicine, history, politics, and biographies of living persons." If Melton is correct, then it overturns 65 years of scholarship and research and disproves all of the previously published evidence from official sources - US, British and Japanese - concerning this issue. We can't ignore the fact that there is a huge weight of scholarship contradicting Melton's assertion.

• As for Miller, unfortunately Frenchkowski doesn't say in what respects "Hubbard's assertions about his military career in WWII have been much nearer to the truth than Miller is trying to show." He doesn't actually dispute anything Miller says about Hubbard's WWII career. If there were specific issues of dispute, I would be more inclined to agree with you, but Frenchkowski doesn't give us anything to work with - it's just a non-specific general disagreement. It would be interesting to know what his specific concerns are, though. Maybe someone should ask him?

• Regarding Thompson, I don't see the relevance of that point - that was well before Hubbard joined the Navy. It's relevant to a general biography but not to an article concerning his military career.

• I take your point about the wording of the lines concerning the damage sustained by USS PC-815. It's not meant to "elicit guffaws" but to account for damage and casualties during the "engagement". I'll reword it to make that clearer. -- ChrisO (talk) 12:18, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I am in two minds myself about the Melton passage; other scholars, while praising Melton's book as a whole, have remarked that in his bio of Hubbard, he may have been too credulous. In the end, I just don't know. I wouldn't even mind mentioning that Melton has received such criticism, but we shouldn't sweep him under the carpet. Melton's book is used in many university courses on Scientology, and Oxford University Press is in the academic mainstream. Melton also mentions the dispute about the number of medals. Jayen466 12:41, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

(The Thompson reference is indeed irrelevant to this article. It was just included for completeness' sake. Jayen466 15:48, 14 May 2009 (UTC))

It's nothing to do with how "mainstream" Melton is. I'm sure he is regarded as a mainstream sociologist, and I have no doubt that his work is used in an educational context as you sau. The issue here is simply that he makes an unsourced claim in an area outside of his professional competence - military history rather than sociology - that no other reliable source supports, and that basically every other relevant reliable source actively contradicts. Let me walk you though this. Melton asserts, without any substantiation, that a Japanese submarine was sunk 15 miles off Oregon in May 1943. Only a handful of Japanese submarines were even capable of crossing the Pacific in the first place. Their service histories are well known and their losses are recorded in detail by the IJN, the US Navy and the Royal Navy. The specific submarine that Hubbard claimed to have attacked was recorded as having been sunk a year later. No Japanese submarine is recorded by any reliable source as having been off Oregon in May 1943, and no reliable source of any kind records that any Japanese submarine was sunk off the continental US coastline at any point in the war. Melton's assertion is not only made without evidence, it actively contradicts all of the published military histories of the US and Japanese navies. It's as if Melton was asserting that the Russians attacked Pearl Harbor rather than the Japanese. He's literally in a minority of one in making his claim. In that situation it doesn't matter that he is a mainstream sociologist or that his claim has somehow got into an OUP publication (their editorial standards have evidently slipped) - it's a textbook case of a red-flagged fringe claim from someone way outside his area of expertise. If we're trying to write a serious piece of military history Melton really does not have any place here. -- ChrisO (talk) 08:38, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

You are arguing from personal knowledge here. What you say may be true, but it is not verifiable from what you have written above. As you know, Wikipedia's standard for inclusion is verifiability, not truth. Oxford University Press is the exact opposite of a fringe source. Even if we believe in our hearts Melton is wrong, I still think we should mention him, along with such criticism as his bio in the book has received in RS, as suggested above.

As for Miller, he is not always correct either, according to Frenschkowski, who says that the Church has been able to disprove some of his account, as quoted above. Given that we rely so heavily on him, would you object to attributing the material cited to Miller in the text, i.e. "According to Miller, ...", and adding that Miller's account has been disputed as well, as per Frenschkowski?

I feel to be NPOV on this we should give no source complete credence. We should describe the dispute as accurately as possible based on what RS have said and refrain from setting ourselves up as its arbiters, knowing full well that none of our sources may be correct in every detail they assert. It might be worth adding a paragraph just on the available sources on this topic, and how their reliability has been assessed. If you like we could mention Melton's version of the submarine there, rather than in the actual military history section, along with a mention that his account was deemed too credulous by some. We could also mention Miller in the section describing the available sources, and say that Frenschkowski asserts some of his details have been disproven. I think that would help getting to an NPOV presentation. What do you think? Jayen466 09:58, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

• Marine Corps Reserve, Brisbane, Java, PC-815 damage and casualties. I've reworded these section to address your concerns.
• Miller. It's not accurate to say that the article is almost exclusively based on Miller and Atack. I count 36 separate sources - Hubbard's military career has been tackled by non-Scientologists for nearly 40 years, well before Miller and Atack got into the act. I've expanded the article to provide some more context (see Military career of L. Ron Hubbard#Documenting Hubbard's military career). Miller and Atack are simply the most recent and comprehensive treatments, but I've purposefully sought to include as wide a range of sources as possible.
• Sentences without references. If you can identify specific sentences that you feel need referencing, please do so and I'll see what I can add. Generally, if a sentence is without a reference the next reference you will find will be the one covering that reference. Multiple sentences (and in a few cases, paragraphs) are covered by individual references.
• Melton. It doesn't matter that Melton is a mainstream sociologist published by a reliable source. WP:NPOV's undue weight provisions are in some respects more important than that - even if a source is reliable it may not be suitable for inclusion. Fringe claims are inherently unsuitable for inclusion, particularly when they are textbook examples of red flags. Don't confuse fringe claims and reliable sources - a fringe claim can be made by a reliable source, particularly when the author is writing about something outside his area of competence. It doesn't make the claim any less fringy. The Imperial Japanese Navy's submarine force has been written about numerous times; the activities and particulars of loss are well-documented from Japanese, US and British records, as are the details of the IJN's activities off the US coast (which ceased after 1942). A number of books give the details: Retaliation: Japanese Attacks and Allied Countermeasures on the Pacific Coast in World War II (Webber, 1975); The Imperial Japanese Navy (Gordon & Watts, 1971; ISBN 0356030458); Submarines of the Imperial Japanese Navy (Carpenter & Polmar, 1986); Submarines of World War Two (Bagnasco, 2000; ISBN 1854095323); The Japanese Submarine Force and World War II (Boyd & Yoshida, 2002; ISBN 1557500150); and Imperial Japanese Navy Submarines 1941-45 (Bryan and Stille, 2007; ISBN 1846030900). Melton's claim contradicts all of these sources and the official war histories of the US and Japanese navies. I don't propose to waste any more time on it since it is so clearly an exceptional claim and Melton's unsourced, virtually throw-away line is not remotely an exceptional source. It does not belong in the article, period. -- ChrisO (talk) 14:13, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Close to half of our citations are to Atack and Miller. Frenschkowski is positive that Hubbard's church has disproved some of Miller's assertions about his military history. That deserves a mention somewhere. Are there any other sources detailing the disputes that followed the publication of the book? We should mention them.

As for citations, honestly, I would suggest citing every sentence. Cirt usually does that, and it makes a lot of sense on topics like this. Jayen466 13:18, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

• Thanks for adding the source on the I-76. However, this makes clear that the sentence

  "The I-76 (later I-176),[35] named by Hubbard as the vessel that he had sunk, was in fact destroyed off Buka Island in the western Pacific by USS Franks, USS Haggard and USS Johnston on 16 May 1944.[36]"

• is WP:SYN. None of the cited sources presents this information in direct connection with the article topic. We need a source saying, "Hubbard said he had sunk the I-76. In fact, the I-76 was later renamed the I-176 and sunk off Buka Island in 1944." If there is no such source, then this analysis is original research. JN466 08:57, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Hubbard himself said that he had sunk the I-76. This is quoted and sourced in the article. What is the difficulty here? -- ChrisO (talk) 21:33, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

It's a novel analysis. That alleged Hubbard quote is present nowhere on the Internet (including google scholar, google books and questia) but this Wikipedia article: [5] We are not supposed to perform original research here, but merely to cover what others have written about the topic, in this case the Military career of L. Ron Hubbard. That whole combination of the alleged Hubbard quote, the source about the renaming of the Japanese submarine and how and when and where it was sunk after it was renamed is not in any of the sources cited and is in fact unique to Wikipedia. JN466 22:45, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

I object strongly to your obvious innuendo that I have forged the "alleged" quote which, I remind you, is properly sourced. I'll invite you to withdraw that remark. Unless you are going to approach this by assuming good faith, I think this discussion is at an end. -- ChrisO (talk) 20:24, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Objection noted, and I did not mean to imply that you "manufactured" the quote. However, it is odd that it is nowhere available but this Wikipedia article, given that incriminating Hubbard quotes are usually liberally reproduced. I have obviously no idea whether you read the book yourself and can vouch for the accuracy of the quote, or if this is information inserted by another editor. I believe you mentioned you were not the original author of the article. More importantly though, the point still stands that even if the authenticity of the quote were confirmed, there is apparently no published source discussing any such Hubbard quote in connection with the renaming of submarines by the Japenese navy, and the sinking of renamed submarines. As such, the presentation we have in the article is original research as per WP:SYN. Our job is to present the points made in reliable sources, rather than combining sources in new ways to arrive at novel conclusions that so far have not been presented in reliable sources. JN466 20:42, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification about your meaning. This quote was in the original article and I'm not sure off the top of my head who added it, but I rechecked it (along with everything else in the article) and it is genuine. I have the original lecture at home (or more precisely, a published transcript of it). I'm away from home at the moment, so I can't check the fine details immediately, but it appears in a transcript published along with a set of cassette-recorded lectures that were published - if my memory serves me correctly - by Bridge Publications ApS of Copenhagen, Denmark, the main European distributor of Scientology publications. I don't recall the context of the quote off-hand, I'm afraid. I remember thinking it was rather random; Hubbard was in the habit of throwing in personal anecdotes to illustrate some point he was making at the time. The fact that it doesn't appear on Google Books is hardly a surprise, since Scientology is notoriously jealous of its copyrights. I don't think I've ever seen a Scientology book on Google Books.

As for your WP:SYN comment, I'm afraid you're misunderstanding what WP:SYN actually says. It prohibits us from "putting together information from multiple sources to reach a conclusion that is not stated explicitly by any of the sources," or in other words "A and B, therefore C". This is not happening in this article. "L. Ron Hubbard said he sunk the I-76, but the US Navy said he didn't, therefore he was lying" would be an example of original research through synthesis. No source could be cited to support that conclusion. But of course the article doesn't state this. It states: A, Hubbard said he sunk the I-76 and B, military historians say the I-76 was sunk a year later. It does not reach any conclusion or state that either party is wrong, so there is no C - no conclusion that would fall foul of WP:SYN. This sort of treatment is exactly what WP:NPOV requires of us, i.e. to present fairly conflicting viewpoints without endorsing them. We're not judging Hubbard here, simply presenting the fact that his view and that of the military/historical professionals are in conflict. -- ChrisO (talk) 17:55, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Just re-read the Smith and Jones example in WP:SYN. I think this is pretty much exactly analogous to it – in the example too there is no explicit statement that Jones did not commit plagiarism. The juxtaposition is enough, and it's SYN because the second source did not comment on the Smith/Jones dispute. But I don't blame you for trying it with this wording; we'll discuss it with the GA reviewer later on and see how it goes. JN466 23:49, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

You're still misreading WP:SYN. The Smith/Jones example (and indeed the page as a whole) says nothing about juxtaposition. It cites two paragraphs, the first of which juxtaposes Smith's and Jones's positions, and the second which draws a conclusion about those positions. The second paragraph is "the original synthesis ... because it expressed the editor's opinion that, given the Harvard manual's definition of plagiarism, Jones did not commit it" (emphasis added). By contrast, "the first paragraph was properly sourced" because it simply summarised the opposing claims as found in reliable verifiable sources. We are supposed to juxtapose rival claims without drawing unsourced conclusions. That's not synthesis - it's NPOV at its most basic. Smith/Jones would only be analagous if the Hubbard article was making a specific unsourced claim about the Japanese submarine, which it doesn't. -- ChrisO (talk) 00:03, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) Let me put the submarine passage in Smith & Jones terms:

Hubbard claimed in a lecture he had sunk an I-76 submarine.(on-topic [but primary] source a)

Now comes the original synthesis:

In fact, the I-76 was renamed I-176.(off-topic source B) The I-176 was sunk some time later, and elsewhere.(off-topic source C)

We do not have a published source on Hubbard's military career that presents this argument, encompassing these three logical steps, logically connecting these three items of information. That is why, in my opinion, the argument is original research. Also see WP:ORIGINALSYN. JN466 00:33, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

To avoid any suggestion of synthesis, I've tweaked the wording to read: "According to military records, the I-76 was destroyed off Buka Island in the western Pacific by USS Franks, USS Haggard and USS Johnston on 16 May 1944." Note that this is a straightforward presentation of claim and counter-claim. Hubbard makes the claim that he sunk I-76 off the Columbia River. The records cited in the article and by the referenced historians say that the same submarine was sunk off Buka Island a year later. I've removed the "in fact" which I agree was probably fringing on endorsing one side. I've also added a picture of the I-(1)76 to the article, moving across the citation that the I-76 was renamed to I-176. The picture comes from the same source as the citation. So what we now have is claim A, the I-76/I-176 was sunk by L. Ron Hubbard off the Columbia River in May 1943, and counter-claim B, that the I-76/I-176 was sunk by three US Navy destroyers off Buka Island in May 1944. There is no conclusion C, "therefore L. Ron Hubbard was wrong" - we simply have the claim and counter-claim without endorsement for either side. -- ChrisO (talk) 06:33, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

I appreciate the effort, though it does not change the basic problem that the source we cite for where the I-176 was sunk does not present this information in direct connection with the article topic, as WP:SYN demands. :( What you are doing may possibly be good original research, but it is not what WP is supposed to be doing. JN466 12:57, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Against my better judgment, I'm going to have one more go at explaining this to you.

You're claiming that the sources are "off-topic". The topic in the paragraph in question is the fate of the I-176. Hubbard presents one claim about the submarine's sinking. Military historians and the US Navy present a different account. We are not saying which side is right or wrong; we are simply documenting what each party says about the submarine's fate. It would be unbalanced and POV to cite only Hubbard's claim; as WP:NPOV says, "where multiple or conflicting perspectives exist within a topic each should be presented fairly." -- ChrisO (talk) 23:34, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, I appreciate your taking the time. We just have an honest difference of opinion on which sources are on-topic here. As far as I am concerned, the topic is Hubbard's military career, and we should quote sources commenting on that. Sources that do not present their information in relation to his career are out of bounds, in my view, and using them takes us into SYN territory. Now, you are putting together (1) a (fairly obscure, I think you'll admit) primary source from Hubbard himself, talking informally, swaggeringly, about a submarine he believes he sank, which he refers to as the "I-76" in that talk (2) a source not commenting on Hubbard, which says the Japanese submarine I-176 was named I-76 while being built, but renamed I-176 when it was commissioned in August 1942 and (3) a source not commenting on Hubbard saying the I-176 was sunk at such and such a date (1944), and at such and such a location. Now, according to our article on it, the I-76 was only ever called I-76 during its construction. What grounds do we have for believing that Hubbard knew the I-176 was previously called the I-76, and that he meant to refer to this specific submarine? If he didn't know about the name change, or just made the number up, or got it wrong, or meant to say I-67, what point is there detailing the fate of the I-176? The talk you are citing from Hubbard was clearly off the cuff; has anyone made an exhaustive review of whether he ever told the same story at other occasions, giving a different submarine identification? If he did, should we follow up all of those submarines' fates as well to prove that each one perished somewhere else, or survived the war? The point is that a number of key points in our article's coverage – that Hubbard knew the Japanese submarine I-176 was named I-76 during its construction, and therefore he was referring to the I-176 when he said I-76; that the talk we cite from him is the definitive source and account of his claim; or indeed that there was only one Japanese submarine ever named the I-76 – are not based on secondary-source coverage of Hubbard's military career. Their juxtaposition represents a unique historical analysis as regards the topic of this article, Hubbard's military career. Let's rather concentrate on what the sources commenting directly on Hubbard and his phantom submarine say. If they say, the Japanese Navy did not lose any submarines in May 1943, in it goes. If they say (and they do) that his superiors thought he was mistaken, it goes into the article. That is all we need to do: summarise the sources commenting upon Hubbard's military career. Best, JN466 23:06, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

I know that I am a bit late coming to the party, but in FAs I have used references that have nothing to do with the topic I am writing about to verify the accuracy of a point I am trying to make. For example: one source says that the Dutch Design 1047 battlecruisers would have been similar to Germany's Scharnhorst class. Including that in the article, I use a source that has nothing to do with the 1047s, but everything to do with the Scharnhorst's, to give the specifications for the latter that were not present in the first source. I see nothing wrong with this... —Ed (Talk • Contribs) 06:22, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] A-Class review

Please add new requests below this line

[edit] Kaiser class battleship

Nominator(s): Parsecboy (talk)

Another one of my German dreadnought class articles :) This passed GA some time ago, and after a bit more work, I think it's ready for A-class. I appreciate any and all comments towards improving the article. Thanks in advance! Parsecboy (talk) 14:02, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

• Comment(s)
  • No problems reported with your external links. Two disambig links need to be located and if at all possible fixed.
  • First Intro paragraph, last line, "As was usual for German battleships of the period, the Kaiser class mounted main guns that were smaller than those of their British rivals". Why was this usual? I would recommend on elaborating on this a little, it strikes me as something worth going into.
  • Our article on the German naval laws do not explain why the service life of the battleships was reduced from 25 years to 20 years. See if you can elaborate on this point, it definitely deserves a greater mention.
  • Propulsion section, first paragraph, second line: "...an alternative to the Parsons turbine monopoly." I would recommend linking to the Parsons article, even if we do not have one, and elaborating a little on the monopoly aspect since it seems important to the history of these ships.
  • The last part of the armament section references torpedo tubes as being common to the design of German ships at the time. Why? I would recommend elaborating on this a little.
  • Although not necessary, I would suggest trimming a little from the Jutland section, it seems rather long for the article's subject matter. I list this as an optional suggestion, so I will not hold this one against you if you decide not to trim the section.
• Otherwise it looks good. Well done. TomStar81 (Talk) 19:57, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] 7th Infantry Division (United States)

Nominator(s): Ed!^(talk)

The article is a GA and has seen a lot of work from me recently. Its peer review has recieved very little feedback compared to other articles I have up, and I feel it is time to move the process along. I will address any concerns directly on the review. -Ed!^(talk) 02:17, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Comments - just a few points that stick out:

• Generally, only one review should be open at a time for an article, so I would advise archiving the peer review if you are finished with it.
  • I was under the impression that only GA and A class reviews could not occur simultaneously. I was hoping that the Peer Review would bring in suggestions based on FA criteria, while the ACR would address problems with A criteria. But if it is required to only have one review open at a time, I will close the Peer Review. -Ed!^(talk) 05:20, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
    • I don't think it is formally required, but it is best not to have a simultaneous peer and A-Class review open; it just confuses things. Abraham, B.S. (talk) 05:26, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
      • I've requested to close the peer review in favor of keeping this one open. -Ed!^(talk) 05:52, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
        • You do realise you could have done that yourself, right? ;-) I have just archived it, but remember that if you wish to open a peer review on the article again you will have to move the original to "Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/7th Infantry Division (United States)/Archive 1" and open a complete new review. Cheers, Abraham, B.S. (talk) 07:38, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
• As I stated in one of your above peer reviews, I do not know how you have ordered those listed as "Notable commanders" in the infobox, but I think it would be preferable if they were ordered chronologically, with the earliest of the four placed first and the most recent last.
  • Done. Ed!^(talk) 05:14, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
    • Now they require endashes. ;-) Abraham, B.S. (talk) 05:26, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
      • Done. -Ed!^(talk) 05:29, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
• There are a number of puncuation typos throughout the article, with commas or fullstops missing. Please go through the article and fix these.
  • I have given the article a full copy edit, and looked over it again to fix what I saw. Are there any sections that you saw needing attention? -Ed!^(talk) 05:20, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
    • I have not had a full read of the prose, but skimming through I spotted a number of, as mentioned above, puncuation typos involving fullstops and commas. However, I think they have now mostly been addressed. Abraham, B.S. (talk) 05:35, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
      • I've looked through most of the article and added commas and fullstops wherever I saw them needed. -Ed!^(talk) 05:52, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
• Everything listed in the "Honors" section requires a cite.
  • Done. Ed!^(talk) 05:14, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
• Emdashes should be unspaced.
  • Done. Ed!^(talk) 05:14, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
• I think {{reflist}} is preferred over <references/> in regards to citations.
  • Done. Ed!^(talk) 05:14, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Cheers, Abraham, B.S. (talk) 04:38, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

• Comments I am gearing up for the first week of Spanish 1302, and am uncertain of my abiility to get back here an and preform a thorough review any earlier than wednesday, but I do have a few comments for you in the maen time:
  • You have no errors reported in your external links or disambig links, well done!
  • You have one malformed citation, it says there no such cite as liniage. That needs to be fixed.
• I will take a closer look at the article when the opurtunity to do so arises. TomStar81 (Talk) 13:55, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
  • Citation fixed. -Ed!^(talk) 16:37, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
• Good job. Now, as promised, the thorough review:
  • In the WWII section you have cited Field Artillery Battalions, a Signal Company, an Ordnance Company, a Quartermaster Company, a Reconnaissance Troop, an Engineering Battalion, a Medical Battalion, and a Counter Intelligence Detachment. While I grant that not all of these groups may have an article here I do think we could lik to the broader terms like "Engineering Batalion". See if you can find some articles to serve as suitable substitutes for the time being.
    • Done. -Ed!^(talk) 01:20, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
  • "...a bitter battle over freezing tundra against fanatically resisting Japanese." Having written WWII articles before I am aware of the extent to which the Japanese resisted the Allied advance, but as a coordinator I do feel obliged to point out that we do need to weigh our weasel words with care. I would suggest double citing the sentence if possible, or citing the words bitter and fanatical to a precise source just to be safe.
    • I agree. I simply removed the weasel words, tried to put more neutral terminology in there. -Ed!^(talk) 01:20, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
  • battle at Chichagof Harbor, if the propser name for the battle, needs to be capitalized (ie :Battle of Chichagof Harbor), and if it is the culmination of the island action then we probably have an article on it here that you can link to.
    • It's not a formal name, just the statement of a battle taking place there. I found the article for the Harbor itself and linked it. -Ed!^(talk) 01:20, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
  • In the Leyete and Okinawa sections you have two pictures lined up to the right, I would suggest altering them so that one aligns to the left and one to the right.
    • Done. -Ed!^(talk) 01:30, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
  • In the Okinawa section you have the line "After the fight, the division began capturing large numbers of Japanese prisoners for the first time in the war". Why did these Japanese surrender? Thats worth going into a little since most choose to fight to the death.
    • Done. -Ed!^(talk) 01:30, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
  • In the Okinawa section, the second to last paragraph ends with the line "but these plans were scrapped after the Japanese surrendered following the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.[36]" I would suggest linking to the article Atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki rather than linking individually to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Just a thought.
    • Done. -Ed!^(talk) 01:30, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
• Otherwise, it all looks good. well done. TomStar81 (Talk) 18:42, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
• Support I now believe this to be A-class. Well Done. TomStar81 (Talk) 04:34, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

• Comment This article is close to meeting the criteria, but needs a little more work:
  • "The 12th and 13th Brigades did not reactivate" it might be worth noting that this was because the standard US Army infantry division organisation at the time did not include brigades
    • Done. -Ed!^(talk) 16:28, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
  • "With the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor, the division was sent to Camp San Luis Obispo to resume its training as a combat division" - what was the division doing before that? The pre-Pearl Harbor training exercises described look pretty standard for combat units
    • I just meant that the division was moved to a new location to continue its training. I have changed the word from "resume" to "continue" -Ed!^(talk) 16:28, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
  • When was the 53rd Infantry Regiment replaced, where did it go and was the 159th Infantry Regiment transferred from another division or newly raised?
    • It was a new unit from the California National Guard. Clarified this. -Ed!^(talk) 16:28, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
  • The 7th Division didn't 'drive' the Japanese from Attu - as the text correctly notes, the remnants of the garrison mounted a suicide attack and were not withdrawn
    • Clarified. -Ed!^(talk) 16:28, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
      • The statement that the division "drove them from the island" is still there - this should be removed as its incorrect (it implies that the Japanese force left the island). Nick-D (talk) 10:19, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
        • Done. Ed!^(talk) 20:17, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
  • Did the 159th Infantry Regiment later form part of another division?
    • No. The regiment stayed on the island for some time and then returned to the US where it remained until the end of the war. -Ed!^(talk) 17:17, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
      • Could this be mentioned in the article? Nick-D (talk) 10:19, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
        • Done. Ed!^(talk) 20:17, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
  • A map of the Okinawan campaign would be helpful if one is available
    • Done. -Ed!^(talk) 17:17, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
  • Do you know why the ratio of wounded to killed was so low during the retreat to Hungnam? Normally more soldiers are wounded than killed - I presume that this figure reflects the division being unable to properly evacuate or care for its casualties during the retreat.
    • Around 2,000 of the killed were from Task Force Faith, which was completely destroyed by the Chinese, those who were too wounded to retreat were killed. Clarified this in the casualty count. -Ed!^(talk) 17:17, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
  • Was the entire division involved in the invasion of Panama? If so, limiting coverage to a single sentence doesn't seem sufficient.
    • Elements of the division participated in it, but as far as my sources say, all the 7th Division troops did was secure some of the northern military bases and hold them while the 82nd Airborne Division took care of the rest of the country. Clarified this. -Ed!^(talk) 18:46, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
  • What role did the division play during the LA riots?
    • Clarified. -Ed!^(talk) 18:46, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
  • The third para in the 'A division in name only' section is full of military jargon which needs to be translated (eg, what's a 'Small Scale Contingency Operations rotation', what was involved in the various training and evaluation functions, etc - I think everything you need to cover in the para is already there, it's just diffiult to understand as written). Nick-D (talk) 11:12, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
    • I've cut out military terms and replaced them with more descriptive ones. -Ed!^(talk) 18:46, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

• Support My above comments have now been addressed - great work. Nick-D (talk) 10:29, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] List of foreign recipients of the Knight's Cross

Nominator(s): MisterBee1966 (talk)

I am nominating this article for A-Class review because taking this FL-Class article to A-Class hopefully is just little more than a formality. MisterBee1966 (talk) 07:03, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

• Comments. While I tend to think FLs and FAs should be automatically granted A-Class, I do have a few brief comments on this one:
  • "The following soldiers and servicemen were awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross or one of its higher grades as a foreigner to the German Wehrmacht as well as the Waffen SS and police units." One would expect the list to follow more or less immediately after this, but it doesn't actually come for a few paragraphs. Rephrase?
  • The lead could probably use an outside copyedit, some bits of it were hard to follow, but I don't think there's anything about the flow that falls short of A-Class, so this is more of a general suggestion.
  • The lead could probably provide a better summary of the list. For example, it would be useful to discuss the nationality of the recipients (just adding them up and saying "The recipients came from X country. Country Y had the most with Z" or some such).
  • How about some images of the recipients? A very quick check reveals that free images are available of most of them. You might want to consider a column with pictures (as is fairly common in FLs of pictures) or perhaps just putting a few out to the side of the table. Cool3 (talk) 20:51, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

• I added some pictures. However the Victoria Cross lists don't have any pictures either and they are all FLCs too. I also believe to have addressed your other concerns, so please check again MisterBee1966 (talk) 09:24, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Comments

• I agree with Cool3 that the lead does require a bit of a copyedit, as the prose is a little mixed and does not fit well in some places.
• I am uncomfortable with the foreign recipients being constantly referred to as "soldiers and servicemen" as these words imply they were in the army when this is not the case with all of the recipients listed, for example Isoroku Yamamoto was a senior naval officer.
• The Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross only needs to be linked once in the lead; it is linked twice in successive paragraphs at the moment.
• I don't think the mention of Hans-Joachim Marseille is particularly necessary.
• As you have begun to add images of the recipients to the table, it would be best to add as many recipients’ images as possible. I know that a few of the recipients without an image in the table actually have a photograph on Wikipedia.
• I think it would be best if each table was uniform to each other. The columns in each table are slightly different in size, and it would be nice if all related columns in the tables are the same width.

Cheers, Abraham, B.S. (talk) 05:03, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

• Again I believe that I have addressed the issues. Regarding prose changes, I actively seek help here since English is not my native language. MisterBee1966 (talk) 08:56, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
  • I have struck my above comments which I believe have been adequately addressed. In regards to the prose, I think your best bet would be to obtain the services of a good copyeditor. Cheers, Abraham, B.S. (talk) 09:14, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

• Regarding the width of columns: I have applied the everything I read here Help:Table#Width, height. Here it reads "Note that style="inline CSS" has no effect with some browsers. If compatibility is important, equivalent older constructs like width="75%" should work on more browsers". Since the columns look very much aligned on my browser, I fear that total alignment may not be achievable. How shall I proceed? MisterBee1966 (talk) 13:08, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
  • Well, if that's the best you can do, than that is okay. Well done! Cheers, Abraham, B.S. (talk) 00:55, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

• Support. I could find no problems not being resolved above. – Joe N 21:06, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] British Army during World War I

Nominator(s): Jim Sweeney (talk)

I am nominating this article for A-Class review because it has received a major overhaul and I believe all major points of criticism from the peer review and GA-review have been addressed... Jim Sweeney (talk) 11:52, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

• Comment'. I haven't actually read it yet, but I think the lead is a bit too long. It's currently 8 paragraphs, while the MOS recommends a maximum length of 4 paragraphs. As several of your 8 paragraphs are small ones, I think you could probably keep most of that text by merging into larger paras. Cool3 (talk) 15:18, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose per the comments below.
  • When citing web sites with cite web, you seem to have used the author field only rather than the first and last fields (for example on ref 9). As such the names are displayed First Last, when convention (and what you do with the other sources) suggests you should use the Last, First format.

Changed to last- first format

• • Is there a reason not to capitalize the W in ref 25?

No and its now been changed

• • What makes ref 49, Encyclopedia Britannica, a reliable source? I remember an article saying they were less than fully accurate... (sorry couldn't resist)
  • "In 1914, no British officer had controlled a force larger than a division on active operations, and there were no established procedures or relevant experience to guide them in their decisions." Surely this an overstatement, by which you mean "no living British officer" In the wars of the past (e.g., the Napoleonic War

s) British officer commanded larger forces; this could be considered relevant experience. Certainly, also, the British (like all participants in the war) saw earlier conflicts as relevant, including the Russo-Japanese War, the American Civil War, and to a certain extent the Wars of German Unification.

Reworked

• • "As the commander in chief French's authority amongst the officer corps had been undermined by his participation in the Curragh mutiny in March 1914, when several officers threatened to resign rather then obey their orders to enforce home rule in Ireland, he became involved trying to get them to reconsider and promised Government support without the authority to do so and he later had to retract the promise and offered to resign." This is a terrible sentence, first of all you need a comma after "chief". Second, "his participation in the Curragh mutiny" makes him sound like a mutineer.

Reworked

• • "on the staff then a field command." should be than

Amended

• • "of which 12,738 were regular officers and the rest in the reserves." for balance, should read "rest were in the reserves"

Amended

• • I think the section on doctrine is a weak one. Among political scientists and historians, an unbelievable number of words have been devoted to the shortcomings of British (and indeed nearly everyone's) doctrine, particularly the "cult of the offensive". I find only one glancing reference to this in the sentence: "Expecting an offensive mobile war it had not instructed the troops in defensive tactics and had failed to obtain stocks of barbed wire, hand grenades or trench mortars." In order to be comprehensive, the article needs far more on this.

I think the paragraph above covers it The Second Boer War had taught the army the dangers posed by fire zones covered by long range magazine fed rifles. In the place of volley firing and frontal attacks, there was a greater emphasis on advancing in extended order, the use of available cover, how to use artillery to support the attack, flank and converging attacks, and fire and movement. The Army expected units to advance as far as possible in a firing line without opening fire both to conceal its position and conserve ammunition, then attack in successive waves, closing with the enemy in a decisive attack.

• • In the section on the Royal Flying Corps, you refer only to its role in reconnaissance. Although the role of air power in combat was not as significant in WW1 as in later wars, I think it deserves a mention.

Section expanded

• • I think more than one sentence would be appropriate leading into the section on the Western Front.

Expanded

• • during which the BEF is involved in the Battle of Le Cateau." Surely, you mean was (unless the battle is still raging)

Amended

• • Why have you chosen the order you did for the section on "Other fronts." The first sentence of that section "The British Army was involved in some comparatively obscure theatres of the war" seems to imply that all the fronts discussed will be obscure. There is certainly nothing obscure about Gallipoli or Mesopotamia (and probably nothing obscure about several of the others discussed)?

I did start in datal order which was canged when moving the sections around - they have now been restord to datal order. The section has been renamed Other campaigns which I think reads better and the first sentence has been changed.

• • "They varied in depth, but they were usually about four or five feet deep, with a built up wall to allow men to stand upright, the fire trenches were provided with a fire step built into the front wall, so the occupants could return fire during an attack." Reads poorly; I'd suggest rephrasing.

Reworked

• • " dug outs were made for living in, these gave shelter from the elements and shrapnel, but in the British Army dugouts" Please pick either dug outs or dugouts rather than using both (personally, I've seen dugouts much more commonly)

dugouts it is think I caught them all

• • "500 to 6oo" are those lower case Os rather than zeroes?

Amended must have read over this 50 times and never caught it

• • Is there a particular logic to what equipment gets includes and what does not?

No it was a matter of choice after a lot of thought, with 49 different artillery guns alone I could not include them all. I have added a further information heading with a link to the full list of weapons.

• • "The British Army during World War I, was the largest" Shouldn't have a comma.

Removed

• • " and bigger then the American Army" should be "than"

Amended

• • The first paragraph of the Aftermath section is ludicrously non-neutral. In particular "The BEF had also done something that no other British Army had done since the Duke of Wellington's army of 1815, or any British army has done since: it defeated the the main army of a European enemy on the mainland of Europe." suggests that the BEF won the war alone, right....

Removed the offending line

• • "The British Army tried to learn the lessons of World War I, and adopt them into its pre war doctrine, while trying to predict how advances in weapons and technology might effect any future war." If you're going to open this can of worms, then something on the Second World War is needed.

reworked

• A great article on a topic that's very hard to cover completely, but I think there's some room for improvement here. Cool3 (talk) 16:01, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

I think most points have now been addressed --Jim Sweeney (talk) 08

32, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

• Support: I support this article for A class, but have the following points:

• • in the Army Service Corps section, please check the amount of bread delivered. It currently says "4,500,00". Should this be "45,000" or "4,500,000"?
  • I know its nitpick, but please check the citations for consistency. Some have a "p. #" while others have a "p #". (The difference being the presence or absence of a full stop". Either way is probably fine, so long as there is consistency. I would do them myself, but I don't know which style you prefer (I assume it is "p #").
  • please check for irregular capitalisation, I have fixed some but there are other instances.
  • there is some inconsistency in the way in which numbers are treated. Generally I believe that numbers below 10 should be spelt and 10 and above use numerals. In some cases you follow this rule and in others you don't.

Other than that, very good effort. Well done. —AustralianRupert (talk) 00:20, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the review it was 4,500,000 and I think have changed all the rest of the points --Jim Sweeney (talk) 18:41, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

• Comment. It seems to be a complete and accurate article, but there are many places where it seems that punctuation was entirely omitted, and there are several paragraphs without a single comma in them. I'd recommend that you ask someone to do a through copy-edit of it preferably before it gets A-Class and definitely before it gets to FA. – Joe N 00:04, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

• Comment Agree with Joe N, the article really does need a thorough copy-edit in compliance with the manual of style. Some things I see:

Support provided the article recieves a copy-edit, I think it is now within A criteria. -Ed!^(talk) 16:59, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

• • In the lead, the "division" "brigade" and "corps" links are capitalized. Generally, unless a link is a proper noun it should not be. Someone should go though the article checking capitalization.

Changed

• • Some of the links are double linked. Most links shouldn't be linked to after the first reference.

Think I have got them all now

• • Punctuation isn't consistent. Per above, I see commas and periods being used interchangably in some parts of the article.
  • Sentence structure needs to be reworked. Some sentences are run-ons while others seem incomplete.

Also, is there any way the article could be split up? It seems like this process could be easier if we were dealing with 2-3 articles individually. It would also make promoting those articles easier. -Ed!^(talk) 06:40, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

A request for copy edit has been posted at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Logistics/Copy-editing/Requests - where do you suggest splitting the article ? its already split off from History of the British Army - I do realise its on the large side but this was the largest war the British Army was involved in etc. --Jim Sweeney (talk) 08:38, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Maybe the Campaigns (Sections 6 and 7) could be their own article? Weapons (Section 9) could do well on its own too. Wikipedia guidelines at WP:SIZE suggest articles not go much longer than 50 KB, but it's really up to you. -Ed!^(talk) 15:03, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

The article has been split with the weapons section forming the basis of a new article British Army uniform and equipment in World War I --Jim Sweeney (talk) 13:44, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I think that was a very good choice, though perhaps a very short and sweet summary should remain in a section on Equipment? Cool3 (talk) 21:59, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

• Comment: In light of the recent changes to the article, I wish to reconfirm my support for A class for this article (as previously stated earlier). Please note this is only one vote, I just felt that as the article had changed signficiantly since I voted, I should reconfirm my opinion. Cheers. AustralianRupert (talk) 03:51, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Copy edit in progress thanks to User talk:Twelsht. --Jim Sweeney (talk) 07:32, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] History of the United Kingdom during World War I

Nominator(s): Jim Sweeney (talk) User talk:Jarry1250

I am nominating this article for A-Class review because both User:Jarry1250 and myself have expanded the article by twenty times, its been through a peer review and we now believe its A class standard Jim Sweeney (talk) 11:49, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

• Weak support Glanced over article, seems A-class. I may change to oppose, neutral, or support, after thorough reading and critiquing. mynameinc^{Ottoman project Review me} 13:52, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

• Comment

• Ref's after punctuation.
• Watch over-linking: many terms are linked several times or more throughout the article.
• It needs a copy-edit. While I've done what I could, there are still places that need someone very good at copy-editing to clean up the prose; it sounds really unprofessional in many places now.

The biggest issue is the prose. While I am going away for a couple weeks and may not be able to check in and change to support, if a copy edit is done by someone very good at it who can improve the prose and the other minor issues I mentioned above are fixed, I can be considered to be in support. – Joe N 15:42, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree in part about the prose; I don't think it's brilliant, but "really unprofessional in many places" seems a little harsh. (I would say that though, I wrote ~half of it.) I'll try to get someone less inherently biased to have a look over it, of course. I couldn't find any refs before punctuation, I'm afraid. Maybe someone fixed them before I looked. Likewise with overlinking, I've had a look and while the same article is linked more than once, I can't find any instances when it wouldn't be awkward to backtrack to find the link (in the lead, for example). I'll go work on the prose some more now. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 16:06, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Moved some refs after punctuation and a couple of over links, there is a Requests for copy-editing at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Logistics. Thanks for the review --Jim Sweeney (talk) 16:42, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Apologies if I sounded harsh above, just bad writing annoys me. Thanks for the ref's and links, as soon as the copyedit is done I'll be satisfied. – Joe N 01:33, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

No problem. I don't like bad prose myself, just - sometimes it's a compromise. Working on it. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 16:09, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

• Strong oppose - (this version)
  • One self-redirect needs attention.

Ah, that'd be the one in the navbox at the bottom. I'll change it.

I've changed it. —Ed (Talk • Contribs) 21:44, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

• • What makes http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ reliable? (refs 2, 50, 52)

Its an educational website featuring on line biographies, primarily from the history of the USA and Britain the author is John Simkin (BA, MA, MPhil) a member of the European History E-Learning Project (E-Help), which aims to encourage and improve use of ICT and the internet in classrooms across the continent.

While I'm not convinced that this is the best thing to be citing information to, it seems reliable. —Ed (Talk • Contribs) 21:44, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

• • Same question with http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/index.htm (ref 5)

Its a Distance Learning University and College Degree site, written by a singularly accountable author (Chris Trueman BA (Hons), MA).'

While I'm not convinced that this, too, is the best place to be getting your information, it seems reliable. —Ed (Talk • Contribs) 21:44, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

• • Instead of what you have in ref 14, why not just cite the treaty? Digital Survivor should simply be a convenience link.

changed

• • Why is http://www.blacksacademy.net/content/3135.html reliable? (ref 17)

Blacksacademy is an educational database as Spartacus educational

The major question is who wrote it. For more, see Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-06-26/Dispatches.

• • Current ref 18 should be cited as if we were looking at the book; the Internet Archive is just a convenience link.

fixed I think

• • http://www.election.demon.co.uk/geresults.html gives an error. (ref 19)

• • What makes http://www.angelfire.com/pa/ImperialRussian/royalty/russia/survivor.html reliable? (ref 27)

The Author is Professor Kent Sole, Department of Politcial Science,Georgia Southwestern State University, Americus, Georgia.

• • Refs 47–49 could be cited to just "Royal Navy" (note capital N there...)

Changed

• • Why is http://www.historyofwar.org/index.html reliable? Also, why is "available on line" in there? There is a link... (ref 57)

It's a history site and has been accepted as reliable on featured articles see World War I ref 36 , 37 for example - Jim

(a) World War I is not featured. (b) Saying that it is used in another article does not prove its reliability. For more, see Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-06-26/Dispatches. —Ed (Talk • Contribs) 21:46, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

I think http://www.historyofwar.org/about.html provides good evidence as to the reliability of the site - accountability of authors, etc. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 09:48, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

• • Refs 60 and 61, http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1915/mar/01/damage-by-german-raids#S5CV0070P0_19150301_HOC_140 , are cited to "Hansard". Is this not actually Parliament? ("© UK Parliament")

changed

• • Ref 62 should use {{cite news}}.

fixed

• • Why is ref 77, http://www.greatwardifferent.com/Great_War/index.htm , reliable?

changed ref

• • Why is ref 78, http://www.irishcultureandcustoms.com/ArticleIndx.html , reliable?

changed book ref added'

• • Why is ref 79, http://homepage.eircom.net/~tipperaryfame/index.html , reliable?

now deleted above ref covers both

• • Why is ref 81, http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/, reliable?

removed ref - dont think its needs as there wiki links

• • There seems to be a lot of internet searching going on here. Perhaps the same effect, and much more reliable sources, could be found by visiting a library...? What I mean is, I can't believe that something like "German zeppelins bombed towns on the east coast, starting on 19 January 1915 with Great Yarmouth." cannot be found in a book. Yes, http://www.learningcurve.gov.uk/snapshots/snapshot32/snapshot32.htm is technically reliable (hence no objection above), but this will have to be replaced prior to any FAC, as it now requires that claims be verifiable against high-quality reliable sources. —Ed (Talk • Contribs) 04:34, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

I'll no doubt re-reference the Zeppelin thing to Beckett (most things are in his book). 70% of citations refer to offline sources now (after Jim made some edits). I'm not sure what to make of the Learning Curve; for the benefit of anyone reading this not familiar with the site, it's run by the National Archives, the UK government's official archive (and a government department in fact). Their responsibility is maintaining the archives of more than a thousand years of heritage here in the UK. On the other hand, whilst they have access to a far greater number of primary sources than any singe person, they do not attribute their learning material to any one particular author, and do not state any editorial guidelines. So it's a toss up really. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 09:54, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm not saying that it isn't reliable under WP:RS; I'm saying that it isn't a 'high-quality' citation. For more see Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-06-26/Dispatches. —Ed (Talk • Contribs) 21:44, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Naturally. Is there a list identifying the top band of reliable sources? Criteria for being "high-quality"? I'd be interested to read it; the only mentions in that informative Signpost article of "high-quality" were for referencing any contentious claims about living people with them, which to my mind gives a slightly different impression of what is required. Perhaps you ought reply on my talk page to avoid cluttering this review? Cheers, - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 09:11, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Comments Some concerns, mostly from a MOS standpoint:

• The article title uses "World War I", the infobox image caption uses "World War One", another image caption uses "WWI"...consistency, please.

fixed

• The lead contains a link to Masterman which, not surprisingly, is a set index page. I presume the intended target is Charles Masterman.

fixed

• Image captions need some cleanup: ending punctuation should not be used when the caption consists only of a nominal group, however extended it may be.
• Quotations should not be italicized. Ship names should be italicized (HMS Audacious, RMS Olympic) as should publication names (The War Illustrated).

fixed

• I see both unspaced emdashes and spaced endashes; while these are both acceptable forms per MOS, please pick one for consistency within the article.
• Nonbreaking spaces should be used between values and units of measure (1.4 million).
• Capitalization needs some attention. Why do we have "Prime minister" even when used as a title, yet "World War I Recruiting poster", "Women and the Suffragette movement", "Ration books", etc? Other iffy uses: Government, Navy, Army.
• Citation notes: Every citation needs a publisher. Time magazine and the Daily Telegraph should be italicized. One wonky date (12 May, 2002) needs a formatting fix. Citations 60 and 61 are malformed - what is this: Parliament? ("© UK Parliament"Hansard'.

fixed

• Quite a few publications listed in References are not cited anywhere (Bromley, HMSO, Morris, Murie, Pigou, The War Office). Have we lost some citations?

Bromley, Morris, Murie and Pigou removed can only think left in by error as the article evolvd

In general, this is in fairly good shape, but it would benefit from a copyedit. Maralia (talk) 04:25, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Featured article candidates

[edit] Unification of Germany

Nominator(s): Auntieruth55 (talk) 18:31, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured article because, after major revisions, it is broadly inclusive of the topic, plus focused specifically on unification, it is appropriately and amply cited, representative of a variety of widely accepted historiographic viewpoints, is well written and properly illustrated, and generally and specifically documents and explains the important factors leading to unification of Germany. In addition, it lays the ground work for problems that arose after German unification, and directs the reader to further articles on Kulturkampf, etc. I am the primary editor. In addition to informal assessments (see archive), the article has undergone several (archived) peer reviews, plus a good article assessment (listed). Thank you for your consideration. Auntieruth55 (talk) 18:31, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

File:Deutsches_Reich1.png.....the eng...lish language wikipedia? Fasach Nua (talk) 20:39, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

the file is from wikicommons, and is used in several articles in different languages. Are you suggesting that I should change the name of the file? (requiring everyone else to use an file with an English name) or perhaps duplicate it, and change the title on the picture? (equally pointless...why alter the image...?) The point of wikicommons is to share files, and that being the case, we need to share languages as well. Besides, the caption is in English. --Auntieruth55 (talk) 12:41, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Auntieruth55 - there is no need to change the name of the file. Note that the image description page uses both English and German, so there are no problems with accessibility. Awadewit (talk) 14:12, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

The issue is the content of the file, placenames should either be English or bilingual, unless the document is of historic significance, which this is clearly not! Fasach Nua (talk) 18:26, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

this was unclear from your original post. I've switched out the file for one of far lesser quality in terms of information, but it is in English. This switch is against my better judgment, because the first file had far more information, showing far more explicitly the "kleindeutschland" solution of a Germany without Austria, which is not as clear from the new map. It seems to me that we can pander too much to people who must have everything in English; the other map was understandable even a couple of 10-12 year olds here with me now. --Auntieruth55 (talk) 23:55, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

• Comments -
• Okay, you need to standardize your references. Some are Location: PUblisher, year others are (Location, Publisher, year).
• On journal articles, we customarily put the article in quotation marks and the journal title in italics. So Jürgen Kocka, "Comparison and Beyond". History and Theory, Vol. 42, No. 1 (February, 2003), pp. 39–44
• I'm unclear why you have a bibliography section if you give the full form of the reference in the notes section? Normally, when you give a bibliography section, it's to avoid giving the full bibliographical details in the notes.

Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:27, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm an academic. We AlWAYS ise a bibliography. Are you suggesting I take it out? It includes sources that are not cited, but which I read. And I'll standardize the references now. --Auntieruth55 (talk) 14:31, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

No, i'm more suggesting that if you have a bibliography, you just use a "short form" of the source in the notes. See Wilfrid or Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. for examples. And if you did not cite a work in the article, it should go in the further reading section, not the bibliography. On Wikipedia, bibliography is only for works actually cited, and further reading is for works perhaps read but not used. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:38, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't mean to be obtuse. I looked at OWH Sr and I don't see the difference between the shortform there and the shortform in Unification, other than minor punctuation differences? Once a source is cited the first time, unless there are two or more sources by the same author I don't use the title again, just name and page numbers. I would be happy to use a shorter form in the citations as long as it doesn't involve a-b-c-d etc. I don't like reading articles with the multiple cites using the a-b-c-d, because I find them very difficult to figure out. So, withint that constraint, I'm happy to change the citations to whatever they need to be.

re the merged bibliography and the "additional sources" or whatever we want to call them, I had them separated once, and a reviewer suggested I merge them for space. so I did. --Auntieruth55 (talk) 15:06, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

The main difference between what you have now and what's in OWH is that OWH never uses the full citation in the footnotes. Instead they are all short form, with the full citation only occuring in the sources section. does that make sense? Ealdgyth - Talk 15:11, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

not really. Short form is last name and page? I did look at it. There are at least a dozen, although not all, that have the full citation. It's not consistent at all. I also separated out the "Suggested Reading" (am I allowed to use that word, even if it isn't neutral?) again ;) and I went through the citations and made sure they were as short as I could make them. I guess a question is, what is the point of using the short form, is it just to save space??? --Auntieruth55 (talk) 15:26, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Example from your article. Footnote 1 is "David Blackbourn, The long nineteenth century: a history of Germany, 1780–1918. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, Epilogue" but you also list the full citation in the bibliography, is there a need to list it long in the first footnote? Anything in the bibliography should only be listed in "short form" in the notes, if you list any short forms in the notes. You can also list EVERY note long form, if you wish, but right now you're inconsistent, some are long some are short, some are always short, some are long in the first footnote and short later. The idea is that you're consistent and right now it's not. And you've still got a few spots of titles not in italics (see notes 62 and 63). Ealdgyth - Talk 15:44, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

I think I understand what you're saying. I consistently listed every footnote the first time in long form, and after that, in shortened form, as I would do in a paper or published article. I've gone through and eliminated the long form on all first footnotes, however, so this should work, I think. I'll check back after lunch (I'm on vacation right now, and have to pay attention to some others.)--Auntieruth55 (talk) 16:02, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

okay re citations and footnotes and bibliography. I went back through the entire article, and checked, rechecked, and fixed where necessary. Each citation, the first time, has a complete listing, and after that lists the author's last name, and the page number(s). If there is more than source for an author (such as for Blackbourn or Sperber), I've listed a shortened form of the title. In the bibliography, everything that is referred to in the text is included, but I did use the shortened form (shortened according to CMS, which I gather is the MOS here). I separated the material that is not directly referred to in the article, and listed it under further reading. If a journal article is the source, I've put the journal article in quotes and the journal name in italics, as you requested. So, everything is done consistently, according to style, by the book, so to speak. Hope this works. --Auntieruth55 (talk) 17:57, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Ba Cut

Nominator(s): YellowMonkey (cricket calendar poll!) paid editing=POV 08:15, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

An interesting, infamous but obscure Vietnamese warlord of the Hoa Hao religious sect. Basically all of the research done on the Hoa Hao is on their religious/political aspects and the military wing is basically neglected, probably because most historians regard them as little more than brainless bandits unworthy of study. For example, the book by Hue-Tam Ho Tai that I cited is regarded as the leading work on new peasant religious movements and has about 50 pages on the Hoa Hao and only about 5 sentences on this guy. YellowMonkey (cricket calendar poll!) paid editing=POV 08:15, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

• Comment. Interesting I agree, and I'd really like to see this article promoted, but it's not there yet for me. I'll give more detailed comments elsewhere if anyone's interested, but here are just a few examples of the problems I see, picked randomly:

• "Despite his weak military situation, Ba Cut sought to interfere with a fraudulent referendum that Diem was staging in order to depose Bao Dai as head of state." The phrase "interfere with" sets up a false expectation in the reader's mind that Ba Cut interfered by initiating the referendum, an expectation that's dashed as the sentence unfolds, and is therefore jarring.

• "Tho agreed to meet Ba Cut alone in the jungle, and was not ambushed." Why would a reader be expecting that Tho would be ambushed?

• "Ba Cut broke from the VNA in August 1954 with his 3,000 men, and began resisting it with force, whereas most of the other Hoa Hao leaders had accepted payments to integrate their forces into the VNA. The phrase "resisting it with force" seems strangely unidiomatic, and the tense switch between "broke" and "had accepted" seems a little jarring.

• "... possibly due to the fact that details of the planned attack ...". Everything here unless stated otherwise should be a fact, no need to underline that fact. "Possibly because ..."?

• "In mid-1954, General Nguyen Van Hinh, head of the Vietnamese National Army (VNA) of the State of Vietnam announced that he did not respect the leadership of Prime Minister Diem, and vowed to overthrow him. This did not materialise ...". What did not materialise? The vow or the overthrow"?

--Malleus Fatuorum 18:57, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I've fixed these and done another copyedit, please have a look YellowMonkey (cricket calendar poll!) paid editing=POV 04:02, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I think it still needs some serious attention. Just look at the first sentence for instance: "Lê Quang Vinh (1923 – July 13, 1956), popularly known as Ba Cụt (Short Third in Vietnamese, referring to a shortened third finger), was a military commander of the Hoa Hao religious sect, which had operated in the Mekong Delta." Had operated before what? Shouldn't that just be "operated"? --Malleus Fatuorum 04:16, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes it should have been. Obviously I was careless yesterday and left a few random words/typo in there. I've swept it again YellowMonkey (cricket calendar poll!) paid editing=POV 04:16, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Images fine, ideally should be moved to commons Fasach Nua (talk) 21:03, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

• Comments - sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:05, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Helgoland class battleship

Nominator(s): Parsecboy (talk) 13:49, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

I rewrote this article some time ago, and it has been working its way up the assessment ladder. It just passed MILHIST A-class review last week, and I feel it's at or close to FA standards. I welcome all constructive comments, thanks in advance. Parsecboy (talk) 13:49, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

• Support Everything appears in order. Well done. TomStar81 (Talk) 17:49, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

• Comments Your pics are all right aligned. Starting from the top they need to be right / left without left aligned directly under a ===subsection===. In your Footnotes there are instances of pp. 23, 24 and pp. 23-24 (for example); they need to be consistent. --Brad (talk) 00:25, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, the problem with the pictures is that most of them are in short sections, and according to the MOS cannot be left aligned (unless they're starting in the second paragraph). For example, Iridescent moved one that was left aligned for this reason. As to the footnotes, I'll fix those up when I get the chance. Thanks again. Parsecboy (talk) 01:58, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

• Comments - sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:03, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Siward, Earl of Northumbria

Nominator(s): Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 04:41, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

This article has received quite a lot of work, and I think it's ready for FA status. Most of the preparation was done several months ago, though then I held off nominating for a variety of reasons. I am satisfied the important points about this figure's life are now covered in reasonable depth, while the article has benefitted from the copy-editing and review talents of several other users, most notably Malleus Fatuorum (talk · contribs), Ealdgyth (talk · contribs) and Hamiltonstone (talk · contribs). You will note that the interesting but dubious saga-material about this figure has been included but not incorporated into the article by placement in text boxes. This is a good solution to the problem this poses, while it follows a growing convention in mainstream history writing to make use of such boxes (after the manner of Norman Davies) for such purposes. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 04:41, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Image review:

• File:Edward the Confessor 1042 1066.jpg is in the public domain one way or another, but my thought is that as a reproduction of what is effectively a two dimensional work it should be tagged differently, as User:PHGCOM may not have had any rights to it in the first place to release into the public domain.

• Disagree with image review. The object is not two-dimensional. I had an image of a 4000 year-old shallow bas relief rejected as not PD-old because it was deemed to be 3-D and therefore the photographer's copyright, which seems bizarre, but technically the photo is the uploader's copyright to dispose of. jimfbleak (talk) 09:02, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

• The question is whether the threshold of creativity is met in photographing a work. For that purpose, I can't see how either a coin or a shallow bas relief would be considered as three dimensional. Do you happen to have a link to the discussion where this occurred? Anyway, it's public domain one way or another, so this isn't a huge deal, but I'd like to make sure the tagging's done right. Steve Smith (talk) (formerly Sarcasticidealist) 17:09, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

• This sort of case was mentioned and the decision (relief of coins are considered 3D) in commons:Commons:Deletion requests/File:Kensington Runestone Kens3.gif. Jappalang (talk) 01:50, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

• Well, okay then. Striking this issue. Steve Smith (talk) (formerly Sarcasticidealist) 01:53, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

• File:EmpireNorth.JPG is derived from File:Cnut 1014 1035.jpg, which is tagged as being in the public domain in all jurisdictions in which copyright term is life of author plus seventy years, but the file has no information on the lifespan of the author (it's also unclear whether William R. Shepherd is the cartographer of that map, or the editor of the atlas, or what). Steve Smith (talk) (formerly Sarcasticidealist) 07:27, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

• William R. Shepherd died in 1934 and appears to have been the cartographer and author, so still scrapes in the 70 year limit jimfbleak (talk) 09:07, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

• The image in question isn't a big deal to the article. Just there to nice it up. I can easily replace it with another. Cheers, Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 21:19, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

• Although the concern has been stricken, the explanation that Shepherd died in 1934 and scrapes the 70 year pma is not correct. Shepherd is American and the atlas is an American publication; by US copyrights, publication date is the primary criteria. Luckily, the map in question was published at least as early as 1911 (allowing hosting on Wikipedia). A German company (its country of origin) holds the copyright, but they have never identified authorship, hence allowing the assertion of {{Anonymous-EU}}. Jappalang (talk) 01:50, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

• Comments - sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 18:57, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

*Comments (minor: expect to switch to support)Support

• This article has developed well, since its already good standard when I reviewed it at GAN.
• That is a fabulous "sources and background" section.
• 1) Should "Uhtred the Bold" be wikilinked to Uhtred of Bamburgh?
• 2)...that Siward's attack may be interpreted in the context of royal aggression". Can this be more explicit in some way - is the point that Siward's attack may have been an action undertaken on behalf of his king against a rebellious Eadulf? My point is to go beyond saying "in the context of" and explain that Siward was siding with one against the other - if I have read this correctly, of course!
• 3)"The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle relates that Siward had to call up reinforcements, but despite this, King Edward was successful..." The phrase "but despite this" here leads us to expect that, despite using reinforcements, Siward was unsuccessful. Better I think would be: "The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle relates that, although Siward had to call up reinforcements, the campaign against Earl Godwine was successful and led to his temporary banishment."
• 4)"dating to 1053 x 1055". I'm not familiar with this symbol - what is being denoted here, a date range?
• 5)"...Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, recension D:" There's that word again :-) Have you considered using the word "version", but wikilinking it to the entry on recension?
• 6)The very last para of this section on the "Expedition against the Scots" seems out of place (the one beginning "The Annals of Lindisfarne and Durham, written in the early 12th-century..."). This seems a discussion of the event that belongs near the start of the section, rather than after the analysis that precedes it. But I may be wrong.
• 7)"Siward died more than a decade before the death of Edward the Confessor, but despite this the Domesday Book recorded ..." I'm afraid as an ignorant person, I didn't get why this was "despite" anything. Something to do with chronology of events?
• 8)I work on two different computer monitors. On one the text in the text boxes is small but (just) readable; on the other it is literally too tiny to form legible letters. Add to that the possibility of a vision-impaired (not blind) user, and I wonder if something can be done about the text box character size? I realise this may create a layout issue, particularly for the long passage under "Emergence and rise to power under Cnut", and it may be that that passage would be best edited in some way. It is a colourful story, but not the shortest of extracts.
• Really enjoyable article, thanks. hamiltonstone (talk) 01:00, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

• 1) Wikipedia article take their names after certain conventions. In articles of this nature and time period, these are hardly ever the best for the text of articles, thus I find it that I mostly use redirects or pipes. "Uhtred the Bold" is his nickname and probably how he is best known. Maybe that article should be renamed, maybe it shouldn't, but I just thought it made more sense to call him Uhtred the Bold in this Northumbrian context than "Uhtred of Bamburgh". Not a biggie though.

• I musn't have made myself clear. I am happy with Uhtred the Bold, it just wasn't wikilinked at all. Don't want you to change the name in the article, piping is good. I just wanted a link. I ran a search and didn't find it earlier in the article. Did I miss one? hamiltonstone (talk) 00:38, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

• 2) reworded
• 3) reworded. The "despite this" was used for "despite having needed to call up reinforcements, Siward's side still won"
• 4) this "x" is used by historians to indicate that something cannot be dated to a specific year. Here "1053 x 1055" means [dates to] some point between 1053 and 1055 [inclusive].

• Suggest change to "between 1053 and 1055". hamiltonstone (talk) 00:38, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

• 5) Recension is the standard terminology in relation to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. It is less ambiguous than "version". Actually, rendering it "version" might be thought misleading. I think if someone's gonna ponder the point, rather than just skim over it, it is worth learning the meaning of the word. Learning the English language is after all a life-long experience. While I don't ever support making things unnecessarily obscure, the rough meaning of "version" will surely be picked up from the context.

• OK, I'm pursuaded. hamiltonstone (talk) 00:38, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

• 6) I will rework this later, probably using a new source (Aird, Normans and St Cuthbert)
• 7) The Domeday book records property owners and the values of property 1) on the day of King Edwards death and 2) in 1086. Thus, if Siward died ten years before Edward, he wasn't alive on the day of Edward's death. I added the date 1066 to make the contradiction clearer
• 8) Adjusted. Had to merge two paragraphs, but this worked out ok.
• Cheers for the comments. I drop a note here when I'm done with 6). Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 18:47, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

• Thanks. I trust you will deal with 6 and my minor other points, and have switched to support. hamiltonstone (talk) 00:38, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Alright, done. I think I've addressed the remaining points. Take a look and judge for thyself. :) Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 02:47, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Looks good. hamiltonstone (talk) 03:00, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Maiden Castle, Dorset

Nominator(s): Nev1 (talk) 18:31, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured article because I think the article accurately respesents current understanding of the largest Iron Age hill fort in Britain and its context. A wide range of sources is used, giving background, and the main authority on Maiden Castle is the article's main reference regarding the actual hill fort. Thanks in advance to anyone who takes time to review the article, Nev1 (talk) 18:31, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

• Support I think that this meets the FA criteria. Nick-D (talk) 08:14, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
• File:Sign_at_Maiden_Castle.jpg appears to be a derived work of a 2D copyrighed artwork, FA criteria 4 Fasach Nua (talk) 10:26, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

• I thought this was allowed under freedom of panorama? Also, images relate to criterion 3, criterion 4 is about the length of the article and staying on topic; do you object to the amount of detail or did you mean criterion 3? Nev1 (talk) 11:42, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

• Unfortunately, UK's FoP on artistic works is restricted to 3D arts. 2D arts are a no-go. Jappalang (talk) 14:29, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

• Well that sucks. I've removed the image no I have to work out how to request a deletion on commons... Nev1 (talk) 14:33, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

• Jappalang, I'm going to take the unprecedented step of saying that you're wrong about a copyright issue (albeit right in this case). Section 62 of CDPA88 says that it is not an infringement of copyright in the UK to photograph "buildings, sculptures, models for buildings and works of artistic craftsmanship, if permanently situated in a public place or in premises open to the public" (my emphasis). There's no obligation for said work of artistic craftsmanship to be 3D. I agree that you're right in this particular instance, as there's no indication that the creator of the sign had the conscious purpose of creating a work of art (and hence it's a "graphic work", not a "work of artistic craftsmanship"), but it's absolutely untrue that s62 doesn't apply to any 2D work; murals, mosaics, hand-painted tiles, stained glass etc all fall into "works of artistic craftsmanship" as opposed to "graphic works", and hence are covered by s62 and exempt from copyright. More on this here for anyone trying to understand the very confusing CDPA88. – iridescent 15:34, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

• I refer you to Commons:Freedom of panorama#United Kingdom, which states "The freedom provided by Section 62 does not apply to graphic works (which will typically be two-dimensional) such as paintings, murals, advertising hoardings, maps, posters or signs. These cannot be uploaded to Commons without a licence from the copyright holder even if they are permanently located in a public place." Jappalang (talk) 16:15, 20 June 2009 (UTC) Sorry, I thought you were disclaiming the 2D art portion. You are correct that there is a discernment between just 2D art and "works of artistic craftsmanship". I was overly generalising and apologise if that brought some misunderstanding. (Sidenote: I thought stained glass do not fall under "works of artistic craftsmanship"? I seem to recall a deletion that stated that effect... Going to look it up as it is obstructing a desired image upload of mine... ) Jappalang (talk) 16:18, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

• Comments - sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:47, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

• I quite like the panorama, but could it possibly be shopped a little so it's less obviously several photos. The levels of brightness unfortunately make it look rather amateur and it's kind of distracting. Majorly talk 16:44, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

• I've filed a request at the graphics lab as the necessary changes are beyond the capability of me and my software. Nev1 (talk) 17:03, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

• Irunongames (talk · contribs) an Tango22 (talk · contribs) have stepped up and between them improved the image and produced this. Thanks very much to both of them. Nev1 (talk) 22:20, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

• Support This is a well-written, well-referenced and comprehensive article which I consider fully meets the criteria for a FA. Peter I. Vardy (talk) 14:52, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose Support for the moment. This is largely because, although comprehensive and well-referenced, there are some significant flaws:
  • The lead. This is where my most serious concerns lie. Largely it fails to adequately summarise the information buried in the article, and concisely tell the reader what hill forts are. The first paragraph reads;

Maiden Castle is a hill fort in the civil parish of Winterborne Monkton, 2.5 km (1.6 mi) south of Dorchester, in the English county of Dorset (grid reference SY66938848). It occupies the site of a Neolithic causewayed enclosure and bank barrow used for growing crops in about 1800 BC, during the Bronze Age, before being abandoned.

There is nothing here to tell the reader without prior knowledge, what hill forts are and what their purpose was. There is a link to Hill fort, but a good article should be comprehensible on its own. The text at "Hill fort" states "A hill fort is type of fortified refuge or defended settlement, located to exploit a rise in elevation for defensive advantage. They are typically European and of the Bronze and Iron Ages. The fortification usually follows the contours of the hill, consisting of one or more lines of earthworks, with stockades or defensive walls, and external ditches." This article, in the main text describes hill forts as "town-like settlements". readers would not gain this impression from the Lead as currently written. Not all of the quoted information needs to appear, but a cut-down version of some of it does need to appear in the lead of this article.

The first sentence might better start "Maiden Castle is an iron age hill fort..."

Agreed, and added. Nev1 (talk) 01:23, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Re: the explanation of hill forts, I've made this change. The description from the main hill fort article isn't great, so I've kept mine simple (there's more explanation in the main body of the article). In fact, the main hill fort article is a disgrace, but I'm damned if I'd know where to start. Nev1 (talk) 01:23, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Better. I've made a small clarification to one sentence, adding "hill-top" - on the basis that the article should not assume knowledge. You might think it obvious that a "hill-fort" is built on a hill top, but that is not necessarily the case. Xandar 11:04, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

The last part of the second sentence above is poorly constructed. It might read better as "..and bank barrow used during the Bronze Age for growing crops, before being abandoned at some time after 1800 BC."

Fair enough, I've changed the sentence. Nev1 (talk) 01:23, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Okay. Xandar 11:04, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Other problems include:

• The section headed Early History is confusingly titled, since the article is about the castle, built around 600 BC, not the site. It might be better renamed Early history of the site, to avoid readers assuming the castle was begun in 4,000 BC.

• The section title has been changed to before the fort. Nev1 (talk) 01:23, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Fine. Xandar 11:04, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

• In the section "Developed hill fort", the following sentence appears:

In the Middle Iron Age, Maiden Castle underwent an expansion that ensured it was the largest hill fort in Britain and one of the largest in Europe, although according to archaeologist Niall Sharples it is, by some definitions, the largest in western Europe.

The word "although" implies opposition here between the two statements. It might be better replaced with "and" or make two separate sentences.

Agreed, it has been changed to "and". Nev1 (talk) 01:23, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Okay. dealt with. Xandar 11:04, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

The words "widely spaced" and "equally spaced" jar as used in this section, since they are capable of at least two meanings. Are we talking about the area of the forts, or their separation? It might be better to put "were built equal distances apart"

I disagree, it's talking about spacing rather than space; widely spaced is different to the hill forts being large and I don't think there's any ambiguity that "widely spaced" and "equally spaced" refers to the separation of the forts rather than the size. Nev1 (talk) 01:23, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Although this would not be a reason for failing FA, I have to say that I found this ambiguous, and was brought up short reading the passage. To say that "Dorset's three developed hill forts (Badbury Rings, Flowers Barrow, and Weatherby Castle) were widely spaced," is at best ugly, at worst confusing. Better phrasing should be found. Xandar 11:04, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I've added "apart" a couple of times to make things clearer and the sentence now reads "The developed hill forts in Dorset were Badbury Rings, Flowers Barrow, Maiden Castle, and Weatherby Castle and were widely spaced apart". Nev1 (talk) 14:06, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I still think it's a clumsy wording, but.... Xandar 20:33, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

• The section headed Roman activity and abandonment begins:

In AD 43, the Roman conquest of Britain began. Based on the "war cemetery", Mortimer Wheeler created a vivid story of the fall of Maiden Castle to Roman forces.

Since this is a new section in a long article, this sentence should briefly state what the "war cemetery" is. Mortimer Wheeler should also be identified. I presume he is a historian or archaeologist.

• I don't think so, the war cemetery is explained just a few lines above and explaining again what it is would lead to unnecessary repetition. Wheeler is already mentioned twice earlier, once in the lead where it's explained that he's an archaeologist who excavated the site, and again in the decline section where it's mentioned that he undertook excavations at Maiden Castle so I don't think explaining again is necessary. Nev1 (talk) 01:23, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I disagree. Wikipedia policy allows repetitions in long articles. where they aid user understanding. Much as you might dislike it, many readers are not going to read through the entire article. They will go straight to the section they want. (That's why there is a wikilinked menu in longer articles.) As such, in a new section you need to briefly explain important terms like these. The explanation of "war cemetery" is hidden at the end of the previous section. The identification of Wheeler is elsewhere. Why not simply reword to something like: "Based on his discovery of multiple burials of victims of violent assault dating from this period, archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler created a vivid story of the fall of Maiden Castle to Roman forces." Xandar 11:04, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Ok, it now reads "Based on the discovery of a group of bodies in the Late Iron Age formal cemetery that had met a violet death, archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler created a vivid story of the fall of Maiden Castle to Roman forces". Nev1 (talk) 14:06, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

• Measurements. the size of the fort is always described with reference to hectares and acres. A lot of people have difficulty visualising these measures. Could the linear measurements of the fort (feet/metres) not also be included somewhere?

• This is a slight problem, even if I thought that people didn't understand the areas used the sources are concerned about areas, not distances along the main axes. Which is a shame as it would give the reader some other measurements for an idea of the size of the place. Nev1 (talk) 01:23, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

It's not a major problem. More a suggested improvement. Xandar 11:04, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Instead of hectares and acres, the article now uses square metres and square feet which should be more widely understood. Nev1 (talk) 14:06, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

• Name. The origin of the name "Maiden Castle" does not seem to be mentioned. This would seem to be of interest, given the unusual name.

Xandar 22:36, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

• The name is already explained in the later history section and it's not really that unusual as there are at least three other places in England with the same name. Nev1 (talk) 01:23, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Again. This is quite important information, and should be more prominent. Naming is considered quite important in Wikipedia and some mention of the origin of the name should either be in the lead or, as many articles do, have a separate short section just after the lead. Xandar 11:04, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I'd suggest that the name isn't actually that important: it's either a modern construction or a name developed in the post-Roman period, neither of which bear much relevance to the site's most important phase (ie: the Iron Age). The name wouldn't have affected the site, so it's not that important. The name is only important as an afterthought IMO, as reflected in the works produced on the site where it's not even mentioned (the name mentioned by Ptolemy is given more prominence). Where the information is in the body of the article is where it is most relevant, but I have added something to the lead as the reader will probably wonder why the site is called "Maiden". Nev1 (talk) 14:06, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Okay. I think my main concerns have been satisfied. I can now support. Xandar 20:33, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

• Comments As you know I looked at this before submission to FAC. A number of things I would otherwise have pointed out have been resolved. I'm still going to be picky however and point out a few issues I have. From the lead:

'[...] and was similar to many other hill forts'. Many other hill forts where? Britain? Dorset? Personally I found it a bit ambiguous, but maybe it's just me.

Fair enough, I've added "in Britain". Nev1 (talk) 14:18, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

'[...] making it the largest hill fort in Britain'. I'm sure it is still the largest Iron-age hill fort in Britain, I think a mention of this should be included somewhere; even perhaps at the very end of the lead.

I've added another sentence to the lead to make it clearer that it's still the largest: "...making it the largest hill fort in Britain. As well as being the largest in Britain, it is by some definitions also the largest in Europe". Nev1 (talk) 14:18, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

'Later history' concerns me. I've seen it used before a number of times in this way, but it always bothers me. My interpretation of 'later' is 'at or toward an end or late period or stage of development', but this section also arrives at the present towards the very end. I'm not quite sure what to suggest though in its place.

Hmm, I'm really sure what else the section could be called. It's not exclusively about the archaeological investigations, and there's not enough information about the post-Roman and pre-modern activity to split the section. The investigations and the later use are still part of the history of the site. One alternative is "after the hill fort", but that doesn't feel quite right as it's still there and that's what the excavations in the 20th century were looking at. Nev1 (talk) 14:18, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

'In 1921, composer John Ireland (1879–1962) wrote Mai-Dun, a symphonic rhapsody'. I consider this to need a bit more detail. As you previously describe, the name 'Mai-Dun' is ' is not unique to the site and occurs in several other places in Britain', so is John Ireland actually writing specifcally about Maiden Castle? If its general then it's of no real value, but if it is then it just needs the briefest of mentions about it being specific (it's quite a short statement anyway).

A good point. It was the Maiden Castle in Dorset Ireland was writing about so I've clarified that in the article. Nev1 (talk) 14:18, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

That's all I've got so far. With or without making the above suggestions it's a fantastically well-written article and a pleasure to read. MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 13:05, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

• Almost Support interesting subject, well worth reading, just a few minor concerns,
  • I'm a little surprised as to what is and is not in the lead. Grid references and the village are minor details, but the Durotriges are not mentioned until quite late in the article.
    • The academics seem to be a little shy about the Durotriges and only refer to them in the immediate period before the Roman invasion. I think it derives from uncertainty about who they are. Without Ptolemy referring to them, we probably wouldn't know they exist. As a result, it's virtually impossible to say when Maiden Castle was in the territory of the Durotriges apart from immediately before the Romans arrived and it's been suggested that tribal identities only emerged in the Late Iron Age. Nev1 (talk) 15:18, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
      • Nicely handled, I think we simply don't know what the tribal structure of Southern England was apart from a little bit of information as to what it was at the time of the Roman conquest. Perhaps safest to refer to the era as Celtic as one thing that everyone seems to agree on is that the hill fort era is Celtic. However I still think the first paragraph emphasises some trivial stuff as opposed to this being "the largest Hill fort in Britain at the time of the Roman invasions." Grid references and parishes are worthy detail but I don't think they belong in the lead.
        • Even something as generalised as saying something is "Celtic" is problematic as academics have recently begun questioning whether this is a modern imposition on ancient societies and whether there was actually a "Celtic" culture. It's a complicated issue, so you won't see me editing many "Celtic" articles! As for the unimportant details, I've moved the information about the civil parish and the grid reference to the end of the later history section. I think mentioning Dorchester in the lead is fair as people need some point of reference to locate the place; as for the other stuff, civil parish isn't hugely important and the location is still in the infobox. Nev1 (talk) 18:10, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
  • 43AD was the date of the Roman invasion, but would you mind checking when Vespasian reached this far west, as I thought it was in his campaign of 44-48.
    • I thought the legions had to wait a season after Claudius left in 43, but according to Mattingly (based on Seutonius' life of Vespasian) the campagins in the southwest took place in 43–47. This has been added to the article. Nev1 (talk) 15:18, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
  • the references to "one of over 100 hill forts of similar size built in Dorset and Wessex" is misleading in that Wessex only existed in an era after the hill forts had fallen into disuse, when it did it was a kingdom of fluctuating area but Dorset was a core part of it.
    • Hmm, good point. How's this: "it was one of over 100 hill forts of similar size built in Wessex (of which Dorset was later a part) around the same time"? Nev1 (talk) 15:18, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
      • What does the source say about the area that the 100 were in? I think Wessex is misleading due to the chronology and imprecise as an area, so I'd prefer something along the lines of "it was one of over 100 similarly sized hill forts built around the same time in the area that now forms the modern counties of Dorset, Hants, ......" ϢereSpielChequers 16:07, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
      • The source says "In the first two or three hundred years of its existence the hillfort of Maiden Castle was closely similar to other hillforts in Dorset. Likewise the situation in Dorset can be paralleled throughout Wessex with probably over a hundred hillforts of comparable form and size constructed at this time". Wessex is defined in the glossary as "An area of central southern England which can be defined in a number of ways... For the purpose of this book it loosely refers to the area covered by the counties of Dorset, Wiltshire, Berkshire, and Hampshire but can also include parts of Oxfordshire and West Sussex". I've replaced Weesex in the article with these counties. Nev1 (talk) 16:20, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
  • If available; prominence, current ecotype and underlying geology are all details worth including in the article - see Hod Hill for a hill fort that covers those issues.
    • It's mentioned that the underlying rock is chalk, but I've not come across the prominence as opposed to height above sea level or the current ecotype. Hod Hill doesn't seem to have the relevant sources, any ideas where to find this information? Nev1 (talk) 15:18, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
      • I would have thought the sources would give some mention as to the prominence - you can calculate it from the contour map so I'd be surprised if one of the writers covering the topic hadn't mentioned the height above the village - it has repercussions both in the views and the defensibility of the site. ϢereSpielChequers 16:07, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
        • The English Heritage Book of Maiden Castle doesn't have anything on the prominence or any contour maps to work it out from. I'll take a look at Maiden Castle: Excavations and Field Survey 1985–86 and see if there's anything there... but that will have to wait until tomorrow. Nev1 (talk) 18:21, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Also I've made a few tweaks, hope you don't mind them. ϢereSpielChequers 14:28, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

• • • • • • Found it. Nev1 (talk) 17:29, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
            • Thanks for indulging me, I was sure there would be some coverage of that aspect. ϢereSpielChequers 20:05, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
• Support. Well written and comprehensive article. Ruslik_Zero 08:54, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose (for the time being) Badly organised and not well enough written. The problems with the article begin with its muddly, badly-constructed introduction. All the info is there, but none of it is well organised. I have made suggestions that could remedy this, on the discussion page. Every new section needs to start with a clear statement so that the reader knows exactly what the section is about eg. If the section is about the Neolithic period, then do not begin the whole section with the phrase "Excavations show....." The section needs to begin "In the Neolithic period....." This is about clarity of language, and writing it is quite easy, if you adopt that sort of formula. Amandajm (talk) 13:54, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

• I have replied to your comments on the talk page (although it would have helped to keep the discussion centralised here), and while you raise some valid points I can't say I agree with all of them. For example, as I've explained on the talk page, I think your suggestion of adding a title "History of site" is completely superfluous. As for you taking issue with the start of each section, the opening paragraph puts the section in context, with dates. Nev1 (talk) 14:26, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

• Support Now that the first paragraph has been improved, and the other introductory paragraphs slightly better orgainsed, I am happy to support this article as FA. Amandajm (talk) 01:46, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Image review: all images are appropriately licensed. Jappalang (talk) 12:43, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

• Support Comments just beginning a read-through now and might make some straightforward changes to improve prose, but please revert if you feel I have inadvertently changed meaning. I will note any queries below - Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:35, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Not a deal-breaker, but I do feel prose flows better when one decribes who obscure people are - e.g. Augustus Pitt Rivers (an adjective or two on who he is (a bit like the persons immediately following).

In around 100 BC the hill fort shrank, and settlement became focused at the eastern end of the site. - the hill fort actually shrank? Or better to just reduce this to "In around 100 BC, the settlement within the hill fort shrank to the eastern end of the site." (??)

it would have been visible from miles away - "several" miles away? or "many" miles away? "miles away" on its own sounds weird.

To sum up, the prose was repetitive in places, but I was able to trim a fair few redundancies readily as I liked the subject matter and the topic was a pleasure to read. The above quibbles are pretty straightforward and not enough to oppose at this juncture. Casliber (talk · contribs) 06:10, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the copy edit. I have added an explanation of who Sharples and Wheeler are on a few occasions, although I am wary of making it repetitious. I've changed the sentence about "shrinking" to "In around 100 BC habitation at the hill fort shrank went into decline and became focused at the eastern end of the site", which I think is clearer. As for "miles away", I've added "several" although the source is vague. Most importantly, I'm glad you liked the subject :-) Nev1 (talk) 17:33, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Battle of Corydon

Nominator(s): —Charles Edward ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 15:21, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I have put about three weeks into this article, made a few trips to the library, visited the battlesite, and used a book of my own for sourcing. It has passed a GA review, and an A class review from the Military History project. I beleive it is now comprehensive and ready for this process. —Charles Edward ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 15:21, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Support A fantastic article. The article is fully referenced, and I'm not asking any questions. I did some copyediting myself, and I find it to be well-written and illustrated. Reywas92^Talk 19:31, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

• Comments - sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:21, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
• Support: I believe that this article is appropriate for FA status, but have the following comment:
  • in the References section you have a subsection called "notes", however, just above there is also another section called "Notes". I like the way you've separated the two, but feel that they should have different names to avoid confusion. Perhaps the aside points should remain "Notes" and the actual page number references could be called "Citations"? Just a suggestion. Anyway, good job. — AustralianRupert (talk) 02:38, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
    • I have taken your advice, and changed the page notes to "citations". —Charles Edward ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 13:24, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Oppose on image issues as follow:

• File:John Hunt Morgan.jpg: copyviolation. In short, although it was taken during 1860s, it was never published until 1999 (creation is not publication). By US copyright laws (see http://www.copyright.cornell.edu/public_domain/), this means that it is copyrighted until 2047. Use File:The Late Rebel General John Morgan.jpg or File:John Hunt Morgan portrait.jpg.
  • I was under the impression that images were also public domain at 70 years after the creators death. If this image was taken in 1864, and the photragrapher was say 18 at the time, he would have had to lived to age 93 (highly unlikely in those days) for this image to still be protected. And in any case, each year that scenario becomes less plausible. —Charles Edward ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 12:38, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
    • US copyright laws are primarily based on year of publication, not death of author. 70 years pma apply only after the first publication is after 2002 or for works created after 1977 but first published with notice during 1978 to 2002. See http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm. Jappalang (talk) 14:03, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
• File:Alice Dean (1863).jpg: no information of its publishing, author, or date of creation? Is this a photo, a scan of an engraving? Lexington Rifles have not provided the source for this image, and it is doubtful they are the publishers of the image since Riverboat Daves has a worse but wider perspective scan.

Other Images are verifiably in the public domain or appropriately licensed. Jappalang (talk) 02:50, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I am not sure where this image is taken from, (I have seen it in books and know it to be accurate) but the same rational would apply as above - since the ship was destroyed in 1863, if the photragpher was 18 at the time the image was taken, he would have had to live to age 94 for this image to remain protected. —Charles Edward ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 12:38, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Same as above, US copyright is concerned mostly with first publication, not year of death. Jappalang (talk) 14:03, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Comments:

• File:Battle of Corydon with Morgan's Raid in southern Indiana copy.jpg: should be an SVG per WP:IUP. From where does the upper left portion (depicting the location on a larger US map) come from?

Awaiting feedback. Jappalang (talk) 02:50, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

• I don't know how to make an SVG, but anyone who does is welcome to convert it, I have the original image in a PSD format and could email it, and it is layered if that helps. Or if someone could tell me how to make it SVG in photoshop, i could do it. And the image of the breakoutmap was taken from a PD image on the commons. I can remove it if you think it is a problem. And in any case, it won't hurt anything to remove the two images. I can get others that are PD, but not of the same relevance to the article. There will be a reenactment next week and I can get some good reenactment photos as well. —Charles Edward ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 12:38, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

• Replaced with an SVG. Jappalang (talk) 06:46, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

• Ok I have remove the two images in question and put two different user-taken photos in the article instead. Hope to get some more relevant photos later next week at the reenactment. —Charles Edward ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 14:23, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

• If you are interested in verifiably public images of John Morgan, take a look at commons:Category:John Hunt Morgan. Jappalang (talk) 15:08, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

• Thats great! I didn't about looking there. Thanks. —Charles Edward ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 15:39, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Albert Kesselring

Nominator(s): Hawkeye7 (talk) 12:42, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured article because... I believe that it is an important military history article, about one of the most famous field marshals of World War II. It has passed Good Article and A-class article reviews. An Australian-German-Italian collaborative effort. Hawkeye7 (talk) 12:42, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

• Support This is a very interesting and comprehensive article which meets the FA criteria. Great work. Nick-D (talk) 11:03, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

• Comments -
• Current ref 153 (Royal Warrante of ...) needs a publisher
  • Done.
• What makes Bitner, Teddy Kesselring at Anzio a reliable source? Lulu Press is a self-publishing company.
  • It is not used as a source... Bitner added it to the bibliography himself a couple of days ago. I have removed it.
• Plochner ref needs a publisher listed.
  • Done.
• A note for other reviewers, note that Kesselring's memoirs are used as a source (not very extensively, mind you) so that should be watched out for. (From a glance at the number of times referenced, I'm not thinking it's gong to be a problem, but best to point this out now.)
  • They are mainly used for biographical details. There is the occasional reference to personal reactions. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:20, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
    • I wasnt' particularly worried, but better to point it out for others ... Ealdgyth - Talk 22:29, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 19:19, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

• Support–I performed the GAR on this biography and all pertinent issues were addressed. Apart from possibly a handful of serial commas (which I leave for the grammar experts to review), it remains in fine condition. Thus I support this page for FA promotion.—RJH (talk) 18:10, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Image concern needs clarification:

• File:KesselringDetentionReport.jpg: are we certain the detention reports are handled by the US forces? If the Museums' Reports are on courtesy loan from the UK archives, it would then fall under Crown Copyright, which expires in 1996, just nicely complying with the URAA. Of course, the reports could be jointly done by US and British forces. The document is in public domain, US or not, but we must make sure the license is correct.
  • Kesselring was a prisoner of and processed by the Americans. There was no joint processing of prisoners. He was later formally handed over to the British. The form is an American one. Hawkeye7 (talk) 12:57, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

All other images are verifiably in the public domain or free for use. Jappalang (talk) 12:22, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Could you crop the images used the article to rid of the German archive side panel? Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 15:40, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

• No. Hawkeye7 (talk) 07:28, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

• Comments Kesselring was one of the most frequently listed German soldiers in the Wehrmachtbericht, an honour that was not bestowed frequently. I have the Wehrmachtbericht in front of me and he is listed 13 times surpassing even Werner Mölders. I think this needs to be added somewhere to the article. Secondly, I would like to see the footnotes separated from the citations. I gladly address both the topic if you find this valuable to the article. Kesselring also received numerous other awards like the "Order of the Crown of Italy", why doesn't the article mention any of those? Personally I would expect that a GA article lists all of them. my 2 cents MisterBee1966 (talk) 16:52, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Another comment, all German nouns must be capitalized. There is one instance of Generalmajor in lower case.MisterBee1966 (talk) 18:57, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose. Comments. This looks to be generally OK, but I have a few comments:

• The prose is rather staccato in places, with quite a few sentences beginning "He did ... He was ... He qualified ... He helped ..." very close together. Doesn't really make the prose flow as well as it could.

• "From Early life: "The regiment was based at Metz, and was responsible for maintaining its forts." Err, yes, so what?
  • FWIW, I don't see the prob with this - not fascinating info but at least we know something they did... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 11:22, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

• From Between the wars: "As chief of administration, he had to create his new staff from scratch". He created his staff?
  • Yes he did... so? Hawkeye7 (talk) 07:30, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
    • Heh, I'm guessing the point is that some could read this as creating the staff members, Frankenstein-like. No prob for the initiated but might look odd to others... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 11:22, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
      • Oh, okay. I changed it to "assemble". Thanks for that one Igor Ian Hawkeye7 (talk) 23:43, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

• From Between the wars: "Like many ex-Army officers, he tended to see air power in the tactical role". The tactical role?
  • Yes... so? Hawkeye7 (talk) 07:30, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

• From World War II: ".. considered himself under Bock's orders" doesn't sound right. Perhaps something like "deferred to Bock in all matters relating to the ground war"?
  • No, that doesn't mean the same thing at all! Obviously, the air component commander will have to defer to the ground component commander in ground matters. What it is saying here is that when the ground component commander wanted something done, the air component commander (Kesselring) did what he was told. Not told him that he was not under his command. Hawkeye7 (talk) 07:30, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

• Several instances of the awkward use of "would", such as in "Air and ground operations, however, were to commence simultaneously, so there would be no time to suppress the defending Royal Netherlands Air Force". "Suppress" also seems a little unidiomatic here, might something like "overcome" be better?
  • "Suppress is a technical term. It means to reducing the ability to attack or defend itself. It falls short of neutralisation. Hawkeye7 (talk) 07:30, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

• "Although earmarked for operations against the Soviet Union, Luftflotte 2 remained in the west until May 1941." "Arriving in the West, Kesselring found Luftflotte 2 operating in support of von Bock's Army Group B." So which is it to be? "West" or "west"?
  • Changed to lower case Hawkeye7 (talk)

These are of course just a few examples of the kind of tidying up I think still remains to be done to this article.

--Malleus Fatuorum 21:13, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

• The link to "Officer cadet": it goes through the anglophone countries in detail, but not a mention of Germany, let alone Nazi Germany. Is it misleading? And it's linked again to the same place 20 seconds later (and I'd rather have the German word first time—is it done to link to the German WP article on fahnenjunker instead?) Is a piped section-link possible instead to the article on "Germany Army" or "History of the G A"? In any case, why the A for "army", especially when in isolation ("remained in the Army")?
  • A good rule of thumb is the capital letter is required when "the" is used. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:04, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
  • A better idea would be to upgrade the officer cadet article to include details about Germany; or write a new article. Hawkeye7 (talk) 23:43, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
• A wasteful link to "World War I": this is surely linked from the "Western" and "Eastern" fronts articles: WWI is just too vague to be useful, especially when specific related links are within half a second's read. I see "Western front" linked again in the lead. The text is on the high side of link-density, so opportunities for focussing the readers on the high-value links should be taken, if there are any. In fact, rationalising would pay for a slight expansion of blue for "Poland" (and by implication the succeeding link to "France"): pipe "invasion of Poland", and the reader will be more likely to click. (You've done this already for North Africa—good.) Linking is almost as skill-bound as writing prose!
• I'm trying to think how to make this sentence less clunky: "Albert Kesselring was born in Marktsteft, Bavaria, on 30 November 1885,[Notes 2] the son of Carl Adolf Kesselring, a schoolmaster and town councillor, and his wife Rosina,[3] who was born a Kesselring, being Carl's second cousin.[1] "
  • It could be split in two... I use this form for every biography. Hawkeye7 (talk) 07:33, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
• Why is "honeymooned" linked? "Apocathery" I can just cope with as a link.
  • Apocathery was linked because I had to look it up! Hawkeye7 (talk) 07:33, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
• "Italy"—I'd remove that link. There are so many high-value ones already, and the article on Italy is rather vague in relation to this topic.
• "He was also involved in secret military manoeuvres"—Better without "also"?
• Unhappy about linking "Colonel", an article that deals with the term in so many countries, but not Germany (although oddly there's an icon in the gallery there). Does it, did it, mean the same thing as in an anglophone army? Again, is it acceptable to link to the German WP, or to remove the link from the main text and insert in "See also"?
  • Yes. Oberst means "Colonel" in both the sense of the rank and the position (ie "honorary colonel" in the British Army). So the translation is a very good one. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:53, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
  • You can't link to a foreign-language WP. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:53, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I am going to apply WP:Bold here and change all instances of lieutenant colonel and above to the german corresponding rank. I previously changed all field marshal ranks in German field marshals articles to generalfeldmarschall Gsmgm (talk) 10:14, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

• Good! I'm quite happy with that. There was a bit of debate earlier as to whether using German would make the article harder for the general reade to follow. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:53, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

• Was 6000 RM a lot of money?
  • Yes. The linked article on Rieichmarks says (without source) that there were 4.2 RM to the US dollar = USD $1,400. This online calculator says that was worth between USD $18,000 and $22,000 today. However, many other generals got much, much more: Milch, von Rundstedt and von Kluge each got RM 250,000; von Kleist received RM 480,000; and Keitel asked for and received a tract of confiscated land worth RM 730,000. Added a note to this effect. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:53, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I haven't looked at the rest, but this suggests that a link audit and prose polish are desirable. It's still much better than the German WP equivalent: just out of interest, was it useful in the preparation of this nomination? Tony (talk) 05:50, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

• Yes. Originally the article contained a section translated from the German wiki which was based on a review of von Lingen's book. From there I found the German edition of her book. I contacted von Lingen and she told me that an English translation was in the works, so I waited until it was available, then replaced the footnotes with ones referring to the English edition. In the editing process, the original section was subsumed into the text.Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:04, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

• Support Gave it the tick at MILHIST ACR, believe it deserves the bronze star as well. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 11:22, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
• Support: I believe that this article is well written, well cited and illustrated and meets the FA criteria. Well done. — AustralianRupert (talk) 02:27, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

• Support - On the whole, this is a very well-written article. I just saw a one minor thing as I was scanning through the article and realized it was currently at FAC.
  • "Kesselring's evacuation of Sicily, which began a week earlier on 10 August, was perhaps the most brilliant action of the campaign. In spite of the Allies' superiority on land, at sea, and in the air, Kesselring was able to evacuate not only 40,000 men, but also 96,605 vehicles, 94 guns, 47 tanks, 1,100 tons of ammunition, 970 tons of fuel, and 15,000 tons of stores. He was successful because he was able to achieve near-perfect coordination between the three services under his command while his opponent, Eisenhower, could not." – The phrase "he was successful because" seems a bit unnecessary; is there any way that you could eliminate that?
    • Done. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:53, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Comment. I can't support this yet. The intro is not clear enough. It is perfectly clear to anyone who understands the history of the Wars, but it is not, to someone that doesn't.

It states that he was in WWII, in the first paragraph. Then talks about enlisting and WWI in the second parag. Then it talks about his role in 1936, but says he resigned.

Then suddenly he is invading Poland etc. There needs to be a clear statement that this invasion took place in WWII, and it needs a date. It needs to be clear that the events of this paragraph are events in the war that is discussed in paragraph one. This may seem obvious to you, but it isn't obvious to high school kids.

Amandajm (talk) 15:03, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Featured article review

[edit] A. E. J. Collins

Notified: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cricket, User talk:Brookie.

FA from 2005, some minor referencing/1c issues - however this one is actually not that bad, and the issues could be remedied relatively easily. Some issues however with images, which also should not be too hard to fix:

1. commons:File:AEJ Collins.jpg - would be helpful to know the actual source for this image, instead of just "a picture in the public domain on the internet".
2. File:Aejcollins rpkeigwin lr.jpg - could use standardization with the template {{Information}}.
3. File:Collinsplaque.jpg - Also could use standardization with the template {{Information}}. This one claims to be "issued as fairuse", but is concurrently licensed with free use licenses?
4. File:Aejcollins.jpg - For this one, a fair use rationale is given, but the image may actually be free use.

Cirt (talk) 13:56, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Lord's Resistance Army insurgency

Notified: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/African military history task force, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Terrorism, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Africa, User talk:BanyanTree, User talk:Ezeu, User talk:TreveX.

FA from 2005, referencing/1c issues throughout. Appears to have been some move issues as raised here. Also concern about small subsections and lack of comprehensiveness about the topic. Cirt (talk) 00:46, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

• Quick comments
  • Lead seems short.
  • Many sentences are unreferenced.
  • References" should be under "notes" per WP:LAYOUT.
  • Many of the newspaper articles are incorrectly formatted.
  • Regarding comprehensiveness: although I am not one to judge, as I know nothing about this, it seems to be a little short to adequately cover what is rightfully a controversial topic. —Ed (Talk • Contribs) 03:07, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

• Note Talk:Lord's Resistance Army#Merger proposal. I know of two people on Wikipedia who have the background to comprehensively upgrade the article: Ezeu and myself. I'm burnt out after five years of dealing with editors whose sole interest is itemizing how Christian or Muslim the LRA is, and Ezeu's March proposal to upgrade it was shot down by the editors who moved/split it. In my opinion, there's no need to drag this out for two weeks. Might as well stick a fork in it. - BanyanTree 08:24, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

• Images check OK. DrKiernan (talk) 13:51, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Krag-Petersson

[edit] Review commentary

Article fails 1c. Apart from two hobby websites, one book is cited, and no details are given wrt page numbers, just the name of the book. Images are dubiously tagged under 100 years after death but the designer died in 1916. YellowMonkey (cricket calendar poll!) 04:26, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

According to Commons (which the files are duplicates of), the copyright was valid during the owner's life plus 70 years, and as he died in 1916, the copyright has expired.--LWF (talk) 04:43, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

• There are many problems with this article; consider this to be a "delist" !vote when this moves into FARC mode.
  • There is too much of a reliance on one source.
  • Page numbers are needed.
  • Even when assuming that citations cover more than one sentence (and I'm not confident of that, with seeing multiple [2]'s in one paragraph), I still see much that is unreferenced.
  • I don't think refs 1 and 4 are reliable.
  • THis is without checking the prose... —Ed (Talk • Contribs) 02:09, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concern are citations, images. Also note the recent change to WP:WIAFA (1c) requiring "high-quality" sources. YellowMonkey (cricket calendar poll!) paid editing=POV 02:01, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

• Delist per above YellowMonkey (cricket calendar poll!) paid editing=POV 02:01, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
• Delist, per YellowMonkey (talk · contribs). Cirt (talk) 09:28, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Krag-Jørgensen

[edit] Review commentary

WikiProjects notified

• Problems with (1c) The article is almost entirely sourced to one reference and large amounts of unsourced paragraphs. The minority refs do not have publisher info and look like a personal website.
• A lot of listy bits
• Inconsistent formatting of numbers, etc YellowMonkey (cricket calendar poll!) 01:53, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
• Comment: Inconsistent formatting of numbers is an easy fix and shouldn't count, and I'm not concerned by the single reference source- the source could be the definitive text on the subject, making reference elsewhere redundant, for example. I do agree the article could use a few more references for some of the paragraphs, but generally it seems OK to me. Commander Zulu (talk) 03:22, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
• Comment: there are a number of paragraphs without an in line citation. The basic rule for B class is at least one per paragraph or block of information, so I imagine that for FA it would need this at a minimum. I would probably like to see page numbers in the citations, but that is not necessarily a must. On the whole, though, it has good content, seems well written, it is well illustrated, etc. Probably just needs a few minor fixes and should be able to stay listed in my opinion. — AustralianRupert (talk) 03:36, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
• Counter-comment (Comment on comment? Whatever :)) There are no rules that say you must have a certain number of cites per paragraph. There are rules that say that "Material challenged or likely to be challenged, and all quotations, must be attributed to a reliable, published source.", and in practice this does usually mean that at least one cite per para is necessary, but I wouldn't want anyone to think that getting to FA-standard means achieving a greater and greater density of citations. If you're using high quality printed media references, you can often get the desired result with fewer cites than if you're using a ragbag of random websites, for example. Rant over. :) 4u1e (talk) 17:08, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

No there isn't and definitely if you write a sport bio from web only you will need a different news/stats report for each game whereas with a dedicated biog it will all worked into the same place. But still, (1c) "well researched" generally implies that there is a variety of sources. YellowMonkey (cricket calendar poll!) 03:00, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Like I said before, the book the editor used might very well be the Definitive Text on the subject. There isn't always a need for many sources, IMHO. Commander Zulu (talk) 08:59, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Image problems: Sources and rationales required for File:Krag-Jørgensen-Hotchkiss.jpg, File:Krag-Jørgensen-Speed Loader 2.jpg and File:Krag-Jørgensen SNABB38.jpg. DrKiernan (talk) 10:56, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concern are citations, copyrights. Also note the recent change to WP:WIAFA (1c) requiring "high-quality" sources. YellowMonkey (cricket calendar poll!) 01:56, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

• Delist per own statement YellowMonkey (cricket calendar poll!) 01:56, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
• Delist, agree with above assessment by YellowMonkey (talk · contribs). Cirt (talk) 07:02, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Attalus I

[edit] Review commentary

Notified: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Classical warfare task force, User talk:Paul August, User talk:Sj.

FA from 2004, referencing/1c issues. Article seems to rely way too heavily on primary sources as opposed to secondary sources. Could use an overall copyedit pass and review for flow. Image review and cleanup/improvement of the individual image pages would also be helpful, images include: File:AtaloPergamo.jpg, File:Dying gaul.jpg, File:AttalusICorrected.jpg, and File:Attalus I coin depicting Philetairos.jpg. Cirt (talk) 07:02, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Yeap, it relies mainly on primary sources, although secondary sources are also used. It was one of the first FAs I read before my own ventures, and almost 3 years later I still regard it as FA quality. I am willing however to help adding secondary sources (through googlebooking only), if that is ok with Paul.--Yannismarou (talk) 18:14, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, of course. Paul August ☎ 04:00, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I'll start working, maybe as soon as now (!); definitely during the weekend.--Yannismarou (talk) 21:02, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concern are citations, copyrights. Also note the recent change to WP:WIAFA (1c) requiring "high-quality" sources. YellowMonkey (cricket calendar poll!) 01:59, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

• Delist, per FA criteria concerns. Cirt (talk) 07:04, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Are there any suggestions for changes to the article? Paul August ☎ 18:16, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Main concern iterated above is heavy usage of primary as opposed to secondary sources. Cirt (talk) 23:14, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

• O! We are fast here. As I understand the main argument for delisting is citations. I'll express my opinion about copy-editing as well, but, allow me to tell you, that, if somebody argues that the prose is not satisfactory, he/she has to present some concrete examples to support his/her arguments. Otherwise ... In the meantime, I'll start adding secondary sources. As I have made clear, I still believe that this is a FA, and for the time being I am weak keep.--Yannismarou (talk) 20:45, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
• On this subject, from these sources, secondary sources are more likely to summarize Livy than emend him. Most of the obvious secondary sources seem to have already been listed; I would also look at the first chapters of Magie's History of Roman Asia, for an idea of what is important enough to list in comparable space. It would be a virtuous act to check them thoroughly; but it's unlikely to change the text much. Justin (for what he is worth) should also be a primary source, IIRC. Weak keep Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:44, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Featured list candidates

[edit] List of Medal of Honor recipients for World War I

Nominator(s): Kumioko (talk) 19:53, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured list because it meets all the criteria. Kumioko (talk) 19:53, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Featured list removal candidates

[edit] Non-article featured content candidates

[edit] U.S. 7th Infantry Division

4 articles U.S. 7th Infantry Division
1st Brigade, 7th Infantry Division 2nd Brigade, 7th Infantry Divison 3rd Brigade, 7th Infantry Division

Nominating these articles for a Good Topic. Consists of four GA's, one for the Division itself and three for the subordinate divisional brigades serving under it. All are, of course, very closely related. -Ed!^(talk) 02:28, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Comments:

• Per 1(c): There doesn't seem to be either any common category that includes all four of the topic articles, nor does there appear to be a template that connects the four articles.
• Per 1(d): Given the name of the topic and the fact that the lead of the main article notes that the division is "best known for its exploits during World War II", I would fully expect the topic to cover World War II units (most of which, however, seem to be redlinks). Also, there's no inclusion of World War I units, either.

— Bellhalla (talk) 10:02, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

A template has been created linking the four articles. As for the units, the three subordinate brigades were parts of the Division during World War I under different names. Each of those articles explains the subordinate regiments of the 2nd and 3rd brigades, while the 1st brigade existed as a much smaller formation with no subordinate units. As for the World War II regiments, I did not see them as relavant to the 7th ID, as they are not assigned to the division permenantly as the three divisional brigades are. Several regiments were rotated in and out of the division during those conflicts and have no permenant connection to it, while the three divisional brigades were built to be permenantly a part of the division, and have all remained a part of it for much longer. -Ed!^(talk) 03:33, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Could you possibly lay out here what other units have been part of the division, and which years these units were part? rst20xx (talk) 14:53, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Sure thing. During World War I and the years after, the division consisted of two brigades:

13th Infantry Brigade 1917-1941 (became 2nd Brigade, 7th ID)

14th Infantry Brigade 1917-1941 (became 3rd Brigade, 7th ID)

During World War II the division was organized under 3 regiments, as part of an army-wide reorganization. For the next 20 years, three regiments would be attached to the division. This meant that any three regiments could fall under its command at any time. This meant that the regiments assigned to the division changed quite frequently, particularly in World War II. Here are the regiments that were assigned to the division at one time or another between 1941 and 1963:

17th Infantry Regiment (1941 - 1963)

32nd Infantry Regiment (1941 - 1963)

53rd Infantry Regiment (1941)

159th Infantry Regiment (1941 - 1943)

184th Infantry Regiment (1943 - ~1947)

31st Infantry Regiment (~1947 - 1963)

In 1963, 3 divisional brigades were created and assigned to the division. The 3 were created from the division's old headquarters element as well as the 13th and 14th Brigades. As far as the army is concerned, these are the same units as were active from 1917 - 1941, they were simply renamed.

1st Brigade, 7th Division 1963-1993 (from old Headquarters element)

2nd Brigade, 7th Division 1963-1993 (from 13th Infantry Brigade)

3rd Brigade, 7th Division 1963-1994 (from 14th Infantry Brigade)

The reason the regiments don't belong in this topic is that they are separate units from the division. They were only assigned to the brigade on a tactical basis (which was why two regiments happened to stay with the division for awhile while, for various reasons, the third regiment changed frequently.) They could be reassigned to other divisions as needed. However, in the case of the brigades, the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Brigade, 7th Infantry Division are part of the division on a permenant basis; they can't be reassigned to another division. As the three brigades were part of the division for over 50 years (compared to the 20 years of a few of the regiments) and since they are actually a part of the division (as compared to the regiments, which act as completely independent units) this topic is, from an organization sense, both complete and correct. -Ed!^(talk) 23:04, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

OK thanks. I get that from an organisational sense, this topic is in some non-arbitrary sense complete, but I am wondering whether from a historical sense it is - 22 years is a long time to be associated with the battalion. And that span includes the whole of World War II and the Korean War. And the history is the most important thing - it's what the overwhelming bulk of each of the articles in the topic are about. As a result, I weak oppose, sorry - rst20xx (talk) 09:08, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

• Leaning towards support I was going to quickly oppose the topic, but on a more careful look I realized that this is a truly valid topic. It is not featured, so I don't have huge expectations, and unless I am missing something I am supporting the topic. The only major thing I would like is to have a clear sentence in the intro of the main article saying that currently the division is composed of the brigade 1, 2, and 3. Nergaal (talk) 05:17, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
• Comment - this has been open for a month but has received very little feedback. More feedback would be appreciated - rst20xx (talk) 11:30, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Partner peer review