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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Fortress of Mimoyecques/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 Ian Rose 01:13, 29 January 2013 [1].

Fortress of Mimoyecques

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Fortress of Mimoyecques (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Prioryman (talk) 09:06, 1 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is the third of three related articles (the other two are Blockhaus d'Éperlecques and La Coupole) that I will be nominating for featured status. The other articles achieved featured status in September and December 2012 respectively (see Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/La Coupole/archive1 and Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Blockhaus d'Éperlecques/archive1). This coming March is the 70th anniversary of the start of construction of the three sites described in these articles and I envisage running a triple Today's Featured Article covering all three articles (see User:Prioryman/Heavy Crossbow FA blurb). In advance of that, I'm nominating this article, which is already a Good Article, for consideration as a Featured Article. Prioryman (talk) 09:06, 1 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support
Oppose
Comments only

Source review - spotchecks not done

  • FN13: page?
  • FN24: page?
  • Foreign-language sources should be identified as such
  • Compare FNs 5 and 27, check for others
  • FN32 is tagged as dead, as is 35
  • Why does FN36 have superscript pages in article body while other sources have pages in footnotes?
  • I've no idea where those came from - I didn't add them. Resolved, anyway.
  • Don't mix different types of citation templates
  • I'm going to need a hand with this, I'm afraid - can you point out an example?
  • Sometimes you use {{citation}} and sometimes something in the "cite" family ({{tl|cite book}, {{cite journal}}, etc) - pick one or the other and stick with it. Using both causes inconsistencies because they automatically present different formatting - compare FNs 33 and 39 for example. (Actually, while I'm here: beyond the template issue, comparing these two also gives an example of inconsistency in date format, which is still a problem here). Nikkimaria (talk) 01:12, 11 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Use a consistent date format
  • Be consistent in whether or not books include locations

Image check - all OK incl. revised gallery (UK government pre-1963, own work). Sources and authors provided. Only some minor comments and suggestions.

  • "Over 4,100 tons of bombs were dropped on the site, more than on any other V-weapons site.[19]" - this caption text would be better placed in the main text. It seems to be vital information and an image should assist in understanding the article, not add new facts on its own.
  • I am no fan of the second gallery: The header "... now and then" sounds a bit unencyclopedic. The first 2 images show only minor differences - do those minor changes really need illustration? The last image seems kind of unrelated to the first two. Suggestion: put the first one in one of the upper sections and work the other 2 as regular images into the museum section.
  • I've reworked the gallery so that it shows "The Mimoyecques site today" and replaced the first image with a different one. I don't really like the idea of working the images into the text in the way you suggest. Prioryman (talk) 21:17, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comments This is a really good article, and you've given me some sites to see whenever I visit northern France through this series of articles! I have the following comments, and have also very lightly copy edited the article (feel free to revert any or all of these changes as they're pretty minor)

  • "by 617 Squadron RAF" - the names of RAF squadrons almost always include the 'No.' before the number
Done. Prioryman (talk) 21:17, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "were limited by the short life of the barrels caused by high-pressure detonations" - this is a bit unclear. I had a go at trying to improve this sentence but failed - it might be better to split this into two sentences (eg, one on these guns and one on why they were of only limited effectiveness)
  • "chosen to house the gun. It had been chosen with care" - I'd suggest replacing one of these 'chosen's with 'selected' or similar
  • Notes 2 and 3 need references, and could be combined into a single note. You should probably explain the role and range of this gun.
  • "The western site was abandoned at an early stage after being disrupted by Allied bombing and only the eastern complex was built." - this sentence appears out of the blue - could it be moved down? It also seems to contradict the final sentence of the 'Design and construction' which states that the bombing had relatively few effects.
  • It's not a contradiction - I've explained this below. I also don't think it's out of place where it is. Because construction of the western site never got very far – just a bit of tunnelling, I think – it needs to be disposed of early in the article, which otherwise focuses entirely on the eastern site. The description, diagram, bombing etc refers almost entirely to that site. Prioryman (talk) 22:21, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "when the Germans were observed building railway loops leading to the tunnels into the eastern and western sites" - you should note that this observation was made by analysts studying the results of photo reconnaissance flights (or just say that the photo recon planes observed this, which is basically right and how stuff like this is often written)
  • "The Allied air forces carried out several bombing raids on Mimoyecques between November 1943 – June 1944 but caused little damage." - as above (if a large chunk of the site was abandoned, this seems to be significant damage)
  • It wasn't the sites themselves that were damaged - it was the construction work that was disrupted. The Germans couldn't progress it when they were experiencing dozens of air-raid alerts a day. This was the same issue that did for the Blockhaus d'Éperlecques. It wasn't until the Tallboys were brought in after June 1944 that the actual infrastructure of the sites was damaged. Prioryman (talk) 22:21, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Can you add that to the article then? If the Allies managed to delay this project through the bombing, that was an at least partially positive result for them (this seems a microcosm of the analysis which has found that while the bombing which took place from 1943 to late 1944 didn't cause the collapse of the German war economy its proponents had hoped to achieve, it nevertheless significantly suppressed German industrial production and may have been worthwhile on that grounds). Nick-D (talk) 07:04, 11 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The British action was taken without informing the French beforehand and infuriated the French leader, Charles de Gaulle, who considered it a violation of French national sovereignty." - I think that you could trim at least one of the uses of 'French' here, and possibly two of them as de Gaulle is well known.
  • The 12 August 1944 entry in the list of air attacks needs a reference, especially as it introduces an extra detail not previously noted (eg, that the aircraft exploded over Britain)
It's already cited in the article, so I've added another iteration of that same citation. Prioryman (talk) 22:21, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Is the link to the 19 March 1945 paper by Sandys the location where you sourced this from? It appears to be a database record without any files (that I could see!). Nick-D (talk) 10:35, 3 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Comments - will hold off on any decisions at this point. Support - all my concerns have been addressed. Very good article. GregJackP Boomer! 01:56, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Numerous images do not have "alt" text.
  • FN style in both "Notes" and "References" is not consistent, some end in periods, some don't.
  • All the FNs in "Notes" are now consistently without periods. Some of the references don't end in periods, but this seems to be due to the citation templates - I'm not sure I can do anything about that. Prioryman (talk) 09:58, 12 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • The way I handled it when I ran into that problem on bringing Ex parte Crow Dog to FA was to add periods to all refs and footnotes. When the template did not produce a period, I would add one right after the template, like this: <ref>{{citewhatever}}.</ref> -- note the period between the end of the template but before the ref close tag. Hope this helps. GregJackP Boomer! 17:47, 12 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Notes do not have any cited sources.
  • There were a couple of notes that were uncited that I felt were unnecessary - I've removed them. The remainder are either just trivial translations (note 1) or coordinates, which as far as I know don't need to be sourced. Prioryman (talk) 21:53, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Consistency in spelling, "organisation" in lead, "organization" in Reopening as a Museum.
  • Lead seems a little short, based on the length of the article, but I'm willing to discuss this.
Overall good work. GregJackP Boomer! 04:43, 4 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comments. As always, feel free to revert my copyediting. Please check the edit summaries. - Dank (push to talk)

  • I'll add them this time, but please put commas between independent clauses. (See my edits.) - Dank (push to talk) 20:21, 10 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "299° ± 30 minutes": " 299°, to the nearest degree" might be snappier and more readable, though perhaps if you really want to emphasise that it's 30 minutes and not 29, your way could be better.

Comments –

  • Subsequent investigations and demolition: A previous section mentioned that Sandys headed the Crossbow Committee, and it probably doesn't need to be repeated here. Neither does Sandys' first name.
  • "The British action was taken without informing the French beforehand and infuriated the French leader, Charles de Gaulle, who considered it a violation of French national sovereignty." Three uses of French in one sentence is a bit much. At a minimum, the last one should be taken out.
  • Reopening as a museum: I saw one sentence with multiple uses of "As well as"; one should be changed to prevent a prose redundancy.
  • "the museum welcomed 6,004 visitors, of which 55% were...". "of which" → "of whom"?
  • Air raids on the Mimoyecques site: 22 June 1944 entry has a spaced em dash, which goes against the MoS. Either make it unspaced or a smaller en dash.
  • If reference 5 is in French, that should be indicated in the citation as is done with other French-language refs used here.
  • Same for refs 27 and 33, and the last general reference in the bibliography.
  • Sorry to keep holding up a declaration of support, but I just noticed that the publisher for ref 33 isn't italicized when it should be, given that this is a print publication. I swear this is it from me. Giants2008 (Talk) 03:03, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Most important issue of the lot here: ref 35 is a dead link and has been tagged as such since September. I don't feel comfortable seeing the article promoted while it has a valid tag, and am not entirely sure why three editors have supported with it present. Perhaps the Internet Archive has a copy of the page, or maybe the conservatory has a more up-to-date page on its website; if this is a link to a print publication, as it appears to be at first glance, you could remove the link and tag while keeping the cite, since there is a page number present. Whatever you decide to do, this needs to be addressed before the article is promoted. Giants2008 (Talk) 02:41, 14 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delegate note -- Before we wrap up, just check that I've not introduced any probs with my tidying up in the air raids table. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 11:47, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Ian, I took a look and it seems fine to me. Prioryman (talk) 20:00, 28 January 2013 (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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