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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Indiana class battleship/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 13:58, 8 June 2010 [1].

Indiana class battleship

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Indiana class battleship (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Yoenit (talk) 11:05, 30 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article because the article just passed a WP:MIL A-class review and I feel it should be able to reach even higher. I eventually plan on making this the main article of a featured topic about these early American battleships. This is my first FAC and I am relatively new to wikipedia, so I would like to ask reviewers to go easy on the jargon. Yoenit (talk) 11:05, 30 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sources issues

  • Ref 32: Not necessary to give the web address and the publishing organisation's name
    • Fixed
  • Ref 36: How do we know that this source is reliable? Who is responsible for it? Has any other organisation recommended it?
    • This also came up during the A class review. The website has a credit page which shows that Patrick McSherry made publications in several (naval) historical magazines and served as an advisor for four different video documentaries about the Spanish-American War. That being said I recently stumbled upon a publication from the Oregon Historical Society which also mentions the nickname, so I will shift it around later today.
      • Done, ref 36 now refers to an article in the Oregon Historical quarterly, which should be reliable. I left Spanamwar in as an external link, as the site provides a wealth of background information about the Battle of Santiago.

Otherwise, sources look OK, no further issues. Brianboulton (talk) 23:30, 30 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support -- apart from a few missing hyphens, I really couldn't find anything much wrong (on that subject, I was a bit surprised to see Spanish–American War with a dash not a hyphen, but I see it's that way in the article too)... Anyway, as far as this article goes, prose, detail, structure, referencing and supporting materials look good - well done! Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 11:52, 2 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments
    • With respect to "...their freeboard was too low to the water to deal well with the waves of the open ocean." Freeboard is a distance, and cannot be "too low". I am not sure of the correct use of the terminology, but this isn't it.
      • Your problem here seems to be that I can not describe terms freeboard in terms of low and high, but should use short and long instead? At least one source (Reilly & Scheina on p. 60.) talk about a "low freeboard" and I am pretty sure that if I check the others I will find the same description. Also try searching for "short freeboard" on google ("short+freeboard" 450 hits) and "low freeboard" ("low+freeboard" 14,700 hits). If you think "low" is fine but I can simply not refer to it using "too low" it is simply a matter using a different sentence structure, which is no problem with me.
        • After reading your comment again I think your problem had to do with the "too" instead of the "low". You said a freeboard can not be "too low", well these books [2][3][4] [5][6][7] disagree and I am sure you can find dozens more of relevant hits on google books [8].
          • Numbers of Google hits are not taken seriously as arguments. Per Freeboard (nautical) "In sailing and boating, freeboard[1] means the distance from the waterline to the upper deck level". Note that freeboard is defined as a distance. What you have said is equivalent to "one meter was too low". "The deck was too low to the water" or "The freeboard was too small" are ways of expressing what you mean. Doug (talk) 18:47, 8 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
            • I am not a native english speaker and the nuances of the language are not easy to understand here. You say that because freeboard is defined as a "distance" it should not be described in terms of "low" and "high" correct? Or am I allowed to talk about a low freeboard, but just not say it was "too low" Yoenit (talk) 19:23, 8 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
              • I apologise for not being clear: I will try to explain better with some examples:
                • Correct and informal: "The aircraft was low."
                • Correct but imprecise: "The distance from the aircraft to the water was too low."
                • Incorrect: "The distance from the aircraft to the water was too low to the water."
                • Incorrect: "The distance from the deck to the water was too low to the water."
                • Incorrect: "The freeboard was too low to the water."
                • Correct and informal: "The deck was too low to the water."
                • Correct: "The freeboard was too small."
                • "The freeboard was too low" is okay, since although the sentence mixes "low" as a relative magnitude and an independent metric of height, it will be understood.
                • In general, it is most precise to use "high" and "low" exclusively in the context of describing height where the endpoints of the measurement are obvious, as in a high or low building. For aircraft, altitude is preferred.
                • Regardless of the use of high or low in describing freeboard, it cannot be high or low 'to the water' - this is already included in the definition of freeboard. Doug (talk) 20:58, 8 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
                • How about ""...their freeboard was insufficient to deal well with the waves of the open ocean."? Doug (talk) 21:11, 8 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
                  • Allright, I will concede. Enough time has been wasted on something trivial. "low freeboard" is common naval terminology, but grammatical improvements have to start somewhere, so why not here. Yoenit (talk) 21:50, 8 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • You state that these ships were "equivalent to contemporary European ships", then you state that "Their turrets lacked counterweights, and the main belt armor was placed too low to be effective under most conditions." This is an apparent contradiction.
      • Equivalent in terms of armor thickness, speed, and fire power, the factors people (and governments) compared battleships on. Yes they had design flaws, but so had most European ships at the time. I don't mind changing the term "equivalent" to something less strong though.
        • Changed "equivalent" into "comparable", which should convey the meaning that the ships are similar, though not exactly equal. If anybody has a better synonym please replace, but I don't know any.
    • I apologise, but I have made a personal rule of not going further in a review if there are two problems in the first paragraph of the introduction. Please check all possible instances of factual inconsistency or sloppy use of terminology. Doug (talk) 01:45, 3 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • "Massachusetts was scuttled off the coast of Pensacola in 1920 and used as an artillery target." Was it used as an artillery target before or after being scuttled - this implies after. Doug (talk) 21:23, 8 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • After being scuttled. Information about it is rather scarce, but if I have to guess some part of the superstructure remained above the water and they fired on that. Yoenit (talk) 21:57, 8 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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