Talk:Battle of Bita Paka/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Auntieruth55 (talk) 23:46, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

GA review (see here for criteria)

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This is an interesting article, and I'm glad to see that someone picked up this battle and has taken some time to explain it. There are some issues to overcome before this can be promoted.

First, re prose...there are a lot of problems. In the first four paragraphs, I found incomplete sentences, verb tense strangeness (shifts, mostly), misspellings, and non-wikiness.

• stick to one tense. Past tense works well.
• check for spelling errors, then check again. since you spell Bita Paka as two words in your title, I think you should spell it that way in the text. You might write at some point, that it is also spelled Bitipaka (that should be in the lead).
• wikiness: German words (any non-english word in the English wiki) goes in italics. Generally, we would say Captain (Hauptman) Mayer. etc. Some people even put a link on the rank. Hauptman (Captain) Mayer. Or Captain Mayer.

• Focus: You've got plenty of the focus, but there is little in terms of the big picture. It would be helpful to have some background. Instead of jumping in "Following the British request for ..." (which should be after the British request), give us some background. Don't assume that everyone will know this is the outbreak of WWI. Tell us that. Then explain the situation, geographically, geopolitically, etc. ....What was the situation? Why did the British request help? How big (population) was this colony? (it was really small--Mead goes into that). Why was it strategically important? This is a problem throughout.

• clarity: be sure to say what you mean.

For example: Both the Germans and Australians suffered a number of casualties, while the wireless station was subsequently captured by the Australians following a day of fighting. After a day of fighting, the Australians captured the wireless station. Both forces suffered casualties. (because there were casualties that were neither German nor Australian!) The above is an example: there are other instances as well that you'll see if you look for them. This article would benefit from a general map and a specific map of Biti Paka and its relationship to Kabukaul. (and Kabukaul's relationship to...) Most of your English speaking readers are not going to be familiar with this geography. I added the distance from Rabaul to Kokopo(Herbertshöhe), but it would be helpful to use the convert template to show other distances.

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS):

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail: