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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Battle of Valcour Island/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Karanacs 03:06, 16 June 2010 [1].

Battle of Valcour Island

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Battle of Valcour Island (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Magic♪piano 13:23, 13 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The inglorious (or glorious, depending on whose side you're on) end of the Canadian campaign of the American Revolutionary War. Shipbuilding in the middle of nowhere? A naval fleet commanded by a general? Several characters who go on to later fame (or infamy, in one case)? Read on, and tell me if it's worthy of the FA star. (It did go through a MILHIST A review, which helped the writing a fair amount, and it has had some more work since then.) Thank you for your attention and constructive feedback. Magic♪piano 13:23, 13 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment—no dab links or dead external links. Ucucha 13:28, 13 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments
    • "The naval Battle of Valcour Island, also known as the Battle of Valcour Bay, took place on October 11, 1776, on Lake Champlain in Valcour Bay, a narrow strait between the New York mainland and Valcour Island during the American Revolutionary War."→Why does every MilHist article smash as many details together in the first sentence as possible? We've got time to start of slow and clear. "The Battle of Valcour Island was a naval engagement that took place at Valcour Bay on Lake Champlain in October 11, 1776." Throw the other details in their own sentence.
    • Considering the length of the article, I'm missing some of the details of the battle. Why aren't the fleet makeups described in prose at the relevant section before the battle? How Arnold slipped his ships past the British isn't mentioned. Colorful details!
      • Comment I've added some detail on Arnold's escape. I originally had a detail paragraph describing the fleets (essentially a partial order of battle), it was replaced by the full order of battle during the ACR. I can certainly add words of that nature back in. Magic♪piano 01:52, 14 May 2010 (UTC) I've added some prose on the fleet compositions. Magic♪piano 18:37, 14 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm not sure how much information is published, (I've only handled NHHC archives, so not sure what's actually been put out), but there seems to be stuff for a paragraph at the end about underwater archaeology (the Philadelphia, Spitfire—think they're trying to raise her, not sure if there's literature on that front.) Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 15:55, 13 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • Thank you for bringing this to my attention. After brief research, the Spitfire was found in 1997, and is now listed as an underwater historic site. I can certainly work something in on this. Magic♪piano 19:20, 13 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • By the way, large tracts of the Bratten book are about the recovery of Philadelphia; certainly more could be added about her recovery than the brief mention of her 20th-century history, but I think the article is already quite long enough... Magic♪piano 01:52, 14 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • Well, it's not really that long an article. I'm not saying I demand 50KB of prose on the battle (while influential, it was pretty minor), it's just that I see areas that could do with further elaboration that add interest and a bit more detail.
        • On another note, there's inconsistency in the article in regards to "Ship Name" vs. "the Ship Name". "The" should only be used when describing ship types or inspecifics, etc. ("the schooner Congress"). In all other cases it's left out (Royal Savage and Congress.) Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 16:43, 16 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sources comments

  • Citations
    • [9] and [51] are online sources and should contain links
    • [59]: "Bulletin of the New York State Museum Bulletin"?
  • References list
    • Malcomson book. There's something wrong with the attached note, which begins: "This work contains and detailed specifications..."
    • The second NHL summary listing needs its retrieval information fixing (the word "Retrieved" is missing)

Otherwise, all sources look OK Brianboulton (talk) 23:30, 16 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comments –

  • Background: "embarked on an invasion of the British Province of Quebec. Quebec...". The last two words should be further apart than this, to ensure against prose redundancy.
  • Prelude: "Shipwright was not a common occupation in the relative wilderness of upstate New York, and they had to pay extremely high wages to lure them away from the coast." Who are "they" in this sentence? Shipwrighters?
    • Don't mean to be a pain about this, but is "them" meant to be shipwrighters? (or whatever the correct term is). It turned out that "they" was also a bit vague, so I'm happy to see that fixed, but I'm still a little shaky on "them" since I don't see who this is referring to. I think it is builders, but there's no plural element before this in the sentence. Giants2008 (27 and counting) 02:17, 2 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "In addition to skilled help, materials and supplies specific to maritime needs also needed...". Why is "also" needed here? That's pretty redundant, considering the "In addition" at the start of the sentence.
  • Battle: Royal Savage, a red link, is linked twice in consecutive sections. Very likely, only the first is really needed to draw attention to that topic.
  • The Congress link in the same location seems to be the intended target for a red link in the prior section, unless they were two different ships.
  • A couple more repeat links to ships (Revenge and Philadelphia) are present here. An overlinking audit in the rest of the article would be a good idea.
  • Legacy: "his son sold the remains to National Civil War Museum." Missing "the" before the museum's name.
  • Two links each to National Register of Historic Places and National Historic Landmark in back-to-back sentences. If that's not overlinking, I don't know what is. Giants2008 (27 and counting) 00:36, 25 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Comments from mav
  • Over long sentence, last phrase should be its own sentence: "More than 70 islands dot the 435-square-mile (1,130 km2) surface, although during periods of low and high water, these numbers can change; the lake is relatively shallow, with an average depth of 64 feet (20 m)."
  • "head of navigation" sounds jargony. Please revise.
  • Third paragraph of ==Prelude== is huge and hard to follow. Please reorganize and split up.

Other than the above, prose, organization, image copyright and referencing look like they are up to FA standards. --mav (reviews needed) 01:35, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from XavierGreen
    • As far as I know there are no formal tabular casualty returns for this battle; sources like Beatson or that reprint official reports certainly don't have them. Accounts of the battle mention casualties incurred on a few ships, like Carleton -- I don't think there are enough of these to make it worth adding a column to the table. Magic♪piano 12:31, 10 June 2010)

There are a lot of Easter egg links, and a problem with the formatting of the tablein the "Order of battle" section. I'd also like to more review here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:01, 12 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what Easter egg links are, and I saw no problem with the table in the order of battle section. I reviewed this article carefully at ACR, and, figuring that Piano would bring it here, brought up most of my comments there. A new map was added, and more details on the lake to make it clear that it was full of islands, and a very BIG lake. I've checked the sources, and they were good, and I thought this represented as complete coverage as is possible with the state of knowledge about the battle today (more may be revealed in future digs, etc.). So I:

Support

Nice article. auntieruth (talk) 00:09, 13 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I've taken care of the easter eggs. I'm not quite sure what Sandy's getting at with the table formatting; I believe I copied the table format from one of the naval orders of battle that are FLs, and I didn't see any visible issues. I did remove some (for these tables) clearly extraneous formatting instructions. I'll ask over at MILHIST for a few more reviewers. (Thanks for the support, Auntie.) Magic♪piano 01:00, 13 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There's a bunch of empty space to the right of the table-- something messed up in the formatting (I don't speak tables). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:02, 13 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see anything untoward in either Firefox or IE with the table layout. The images that precede each table have spacing around them, but I don't think they should be bigger than they are. It's kinda hard to fix what I can't see. Are you saying the table is not taking the full width of the page, or that there is somehow (nonbreaking) whitespace making the page wider? Magic♪piano 19:39, 13 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Media this article contains a derived work of a 3D artwork located in the USA, File:Nathan-hale-cityhall.jpg, on what basis is this licensed as creative commons? Fasach Nua (talk) 23:54, 13 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

According to this page, the statue dates from 1893, and the sculptor died in 1937. It seems to me that is sufficient to make the statue itself PD. Magic♪piano 02:59, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Please tag the image subject as PD-old, and cite the source given Fasach Nua (talk) 05:40, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I have added {{PD-art-70-3d}} (which seems more suitable than {{PD-old}} in this case, since the photo remains CC) and updated the provenance. Magic♪piano 12:45, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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