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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Ironclad warship

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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 13:35, August 2, 2007.

Ironclad warship

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Self-nomination; this article is a thorough treatment of a fascinating and neglected part of naval history, which has recently passed an A-class review from MilHist. Regards, The Land 18:04, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

We can do, but it's been like this since 2003 and there is no overwhelming reason to change it. The Land 18:51, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment — The lead includes the statement that "At the same time, it was often held that the ram or the torpedo were the crucial weapons of naval combat" but fails to explain why this is relevant to ironclads. It could mention, for example, that ironclads were designed for ramming, but their deployment tactics had to be modified to account for the torpedo. — RJH (talk) 18:34, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Have fixed this up, will return to it shortly. The Land 18:51, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. — RJH (talk)
  • Support Saw a few things I didn't like, but overall this looks good. TomStar81 (Talk) 22:03, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong oppose — Severe problems with the citations, which aren't very specific. When there is a specific claim being made, the reader shouldn't need to search through a whole book that has a much more general scope. Presumably, the authors will have found that specific claim on some page, or in some section of a given book. If there is a whole chapter about the claim in question, give the chapter; else, give the section or the pages — otherwise, the citations are of little use to readers of the article. "Naval Warfare 1815-1914" serves as a reference for over 20 specific claims (that the US Navy had no ironclads as the war broke out; that the Union was building two specific ships a bit later; that a specific ship arrived at some location at some specific time and so on), and not a single one of them has a page number or any information more than that, presumably, it is covered somewhere in the 270 or so pages of that book. As far as I can see, the other citations have the same problem. Even a direct quotation such as the one given for R. D. Hill in the "Before the Ironclad" section doesn't have a full citation to support it. In short, article doesn't at all comply with WP:CITE (full citations).
This is now fixed - at least, for the 97% of references where I have access to the source. The Land 14:46, 22 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Some other issues:
  • References/notes: Some irregularities — one book is cited like an article (quotation marks instead of italics for the title); one ISBN is not linked; if there is a reference section, why are some titles given only in the notes, and not in the references; at least one book cited without year/publisher; citation style in notes uneven (sometimes the author first, sometimes the title)
Think I've fixed this.
  • Not quite - some books are now present both in the notes and in the references section, the Northrop news is only in the notes. You're mostly there - just one more run to make sure that all the cited works are in the reference section, and referred to in some uniform way in the notes (author/pages appears to be the chosen style), and it's done. I'm not going to quibble about style (using the proper kind of dashes, space or not after "p."), but there should be uniformity. Go these last few remaining steps, and I'll withdraw my opposition. --Markus Poessel 15:19, 24 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sorted, I think! Everything listed in the notes should now be in the references; and every fn should be in the format, Author, A.N. "Name of Book" p.1-2 The Land 19:38, 26 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm counting more than 15 red links. Some of them look like they can be readily rectified - for instance, why does there need to be a red link for chilled iron if there is a WP article chill (foundry) which presumably would be appropriate here? If there's no article for nickel-steel, is there some useful subsection of steel that could be linked to? If the gas cementing link is red, would it make sense to link to Krupp armour? In short, the article doesn't look like anyone has made a thorough wikification check yet. Also, as far as I'm aware, editors presenting a FAC are encouraged to create stubs in order to keep down the number of red links in the candidate article.
  • Talking of wikification, has anyone checked the non-red links? Why, for instance, does mine point to the disambiguation page instead of the Naval mine page? Why does the link for the seasoning of wood point to the seasoning page that is about food, instead of seasoning (wood)? Why does at least one monitor point to the disambiguation page? Why does the ram point to a disambiguation page, when there appears to be a perfectly good article Naval ram (which even links back to ironclad)?
  • Lead tweaking: "The first ironclad battleship, La Gloire, was launched by the French Navy in 1859,[2] and was quickly followed by Britain and other major navies." — The warship was followed by navies? How about "The first ironclad...was launched...in 1859; Britain's and other major navies quickly followed suit" or something like that?
  • Lead tweaking: "After the first battles with ironclads took place at the 1862 Battle of Hampton Roads of the American Civil War" — singular or plural? Can several battles take place at a single Battle? Or is it more like "After the first fighting/engagements/encounters involving ironclads took place"? (Also, "involving" sounds more suitable than "with", since there wasn't some strictly non-ironclad force doing battle with ironclads.)
  • Two further tweaking issues I noticed while looking through the wiki links: "the British Cowper Coles" should probably be "the British inventor" or "the British Naval officer Cowper Coles". In describing the Japanese Imperial Navy, it would make sense to mention that Kotetsu was re-used CSS Stonewall. Markus Poessel 09:23, 11 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Lead has been written, did as you suggested with Coles. The Stonewall/Kotetsu link is mentioned.

The Land 14:46, 22 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Some copy-editing still necessary, though: Re-reading once, there's one double punctuation (comma, reference, semicolon), at least one lower-case that should be uppercase, and at least one misspelled word. Apart from that, at least from my point of view, it reads better now. Markus Poessel 15:19, 24 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
OK, those were the things that I found just randomly scanning the article - so there's definitely no guarantee that, say, I found all the instances of sub-optimal wikification. Markus Poessel 10:48, 10 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You are right about the wikification, which I will address. Regarding citations, I'd point out that WP:CITE said it rather differently when I nominated the article - [1]. I can address this but it will be a lower priority than the wikification. The Land 12:41, 10 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
WP:CITE has had this requirement for years, but it did apparently get lost in this revision by User:Christopher Parham and was only restored a few weeks later here. You seem to have had bad luck on timing for your nomination to fall into this specific period of time. Please don't take this issue lightly, though — having incomplete citations is almost as useless as having no inline citations at all, and it makes Wikipedia look very unprofessional — Potemkin encyclopedia articles, if you will. Wikification, as far as it concerns issues like readers having to make two clicks to go to Naval mine instead of a single click, is much less serious by comparison. Markus Poessel 16:02, 10 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think I've sorted the wikification issues. Next, the citations. The Land 21:16, 10 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Minor object. I expect those issues can be address easily. Don't we have any modern (color) photos of those ships? The article could use at least one. Lead should have no more then four paragraphs, it is also ilink light - terms like 'steel armor plates', 'explosive or incendiary shells' or 'coastal defence ships' - from the first few lines - need to be ilinked. 'There were many types of ironclads' misses citations for the last two types. 'End of the ironclad' could be expanded a little. 'Ironclads today' section needs more references, and transformation of the list into a paragraph.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  19:48, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Re the photos - ironclads are an under-photographed subject; at one stage I was worried too much use of modern photos would result in having too many photos of HMS Warrior. There is quite a good free image of the Huascar, which I'll include as well. References and other fixes I will attend to but I might need a bit of time to do so. The Land 20:16, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Am spending some time on this over the weekend, pelase don't close the discussion before then! The Land 14:36, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Lead is now shorter and more thoroughly linked. I've added the photo of Huascar. I had a look for decent copyfree photos of either the new Monitor model or the Cairo; and can't find any. The Land 14:46, 22 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support—well, I will support when it's received a run-through to fix things.
    • Provide metric equivalents.
    • MOS breach: spell out units and hyphenate when a used as a compound adjective: "36 6.4 in" (this may be an instance where MOS allows you to omit a conversion on the grounds of awkwardness). Also, spell out "36", in a rare instance of the need to avoid a clash of digit functions.
    • "Very" is usually very redundant. I can cope with "very long vessel", but not "very successful" straight after.
  • Where's your boundary between digits and spelling out numbers? (nine/10?) I see "sixteen" and "16".
  • There's the awkward U dot S dot and there's US.
  • "Amongst" -> "among": keep it plain.
  • Do not use hyphens as interruptors. See MOS on em dashes.
  • See what MOS thinks of hyphens after LY.

Tony 12:44, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Will deal with theissues you raise on Sunday. The Land 14:55, 27 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I've been through the units but nto sure I've got the guns totally right. I'm not helped by the fact that during this period one could classify a gun by the nominal weight of shot, or the calibre, or the nominal weight of the gun. I have attempted to provide a calibre in both metric and imperial for all the guns so readers have some sort of conistent basis for comparison.
Had another look and think I've got it this time. Though exactly when a calibre is used as an adjective and when as a measurement, I don't know. The Land 18:38, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
WP:ABB says that U.S. is preferred to US, so I've standardised on it.
Think I'm there with the numbers and appropriate use of mdashes.
Have de-veried the article (yes, I do seem to overuse it!) and I think you'll be happy with a number of other prose tweaks I've made.
Let me know if you have any more thoughts! The Land 13:12, 29 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose These minor fixes needed:
  • "It is often held that the power of explosive shells to smash wooden hulls" – sentences shouldn't start with "it" when the "it" doesn't stand for anything
  • "It took until 1881 for the Royal Navy to lay down" - as above
Not heard of that before. It is a perfectly valid English usage to do so. The Land 16:14, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • "with calibre increasing from 8-inch (203 mm) to 16-inch (406 mm)." - the use of "with" as an additive link should be avoided. It's best to use a semicolon instead.
  • "with the French laying down centre-battery ironclads in 1865" - "with" as an additive link
  • "with Britain possessing as many ships as the next two navies combined." - "with" as an additive link
Fixed the latter two of those; I think a semicolon would be clunky in the first instance
  • ly- words need to be fixed per Tony
You're going to have to help me here - I can't see them so you need to point some out to me. The Land 16:23, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • "There is no clear end to the ironclad period" – sentences shouldn't start with "there" when the "there" doesn't stand for anything
Again, never heard of that before. One might say "There is no such rule". The Land 16:14, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • "There were nonetheless real innovations from Russia" - as above
Fixed that. The Land 16:14, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Page ranges in the footnotes need en dashes rather than hyphens
Will sort eventually. The Land 16:14, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • "while receiving a number of shell hits which bounced off their armor" – the "a number of" is redundant
  • "with a number of innovations like" – the "a number of" is redundant
Done, thanks for pointing that out The Land 16:15, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • "were very influential on the designs" – the "very" is redundant
"Very" is not redundant in every case. In this case, I think it's justified.
  • "offered many advantages in terms of the engineering of the hull." – the "many" is redundant
Done The Land 16:14, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Birth of the Battleship: British Capital Ship Design, 1870-1881 - the date range needs an en dash instead of a hyphen. Other date ranges in the footnotes also need fixing.
Yes, will get round to it, dash formats in footnotes is not something I can get worked up about. The Land 16:14, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Noel, Gerard H U Noel et al" - is the Noel meant to be repeated?
Done The Land 16:14, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • "which weighed 6.5 tons," - is this a long, short or metric ton?
Long, throughout. I've made this clear on the wikilink on first use of the unit.
Fixed thanks. The Land 16:14, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There are no rules against starting sentences with "there" or "it", but they involve using passive voice, which should be avoided. Epbr123 16:35, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Take the point but I think it's appropriate in the examples we're discussing. E.g. "It is often held" is better than the vague "Many historians hold" or the excessively long "A long tradition of naval history holds". "It took until 1881" indicates that significant time passed, as opposed to "In 1881". And "There is no clear end" is surely better than "Naval historians agree there is no clear end" or "Naval historians cannot agree".... Unless you have a better idea about how to express these points! The Land 16:45, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
"The power of explosive shells to smash wooden hulls, as demonstrated by the Russian destruction of a Turkish squadron at the Battle of Sinope, is often held to have spelled the end of the wooden-hulled warship."
"The Royal Navy took until 1881 to lay down a long-range armored warship capable of catching enemy commerce raiders, Warspite, which was completed in 1888."
"The ironclad period had no clear end, but towards the end of the 1890s the term ironclad dropped out of use."
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. 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.
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