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Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Mississippi-class battleship

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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Mississippi class battleship

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Nominator(s):Kevin Murraytalk
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I am nominating this article for A-Class review because I believe it is close to A class and I am eventually hoping it will reach Featured Article class. Any suggestion for improvement welcome. Kevin Murray (talk) 14:49, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comments This article is in good shape, but I think that it needs a bit more work to reach A class
    • The coverage of the ships' careers with the Greek Navy seems inadequate given that Greece ended up operating both ships for most of their service lives. The article's initial sentence that "The Mississippi class battleships, USS Mississippi and USS Idaho, served in the United States Navy from 1908 to 1914." without any acknowledgement of their Greek service needs to be fixed as a priority.
      • I've rewritten the lead to more prominently discuss the Greek period and removed some other detail.--Kevin Murray (talk) 19:33, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • I've added some interesting background material to put the specific facts on the ships into a historical context. One of the sources that I was reading today discusses the lack of information about the early 20th century Greek Navy; explaining that during the WWII German occupation much information was destroyed. There is more information at the individual articles for the ships, but these are weak in WP:V. There are several potentially strong resources with limited online viewing. It looks like these might yield some more good detail to round out the sections (unfortunately these are pricey to buy). I also have a reprint of an early 20th century Janes FS on order which might have some further details. --Kevin Murray (talk) 19:33, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • The paragraph which begins with 'Secondary batteries were considered "torpedo defense;"' needs a reference Nick-D (talk) 23:41, 26 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • I agree and will have worked on this. I've rephrased my statement as what I had originally written was pretinent to dreadnoughts, and the later use of predreadnoughts, rather than the designers' expectations for the predreadnoughts. I expanded the description in the text, then try to clarify in a note including the references. --Kevin Murray (talk) 20:23, 27 September 2010 (UTC)--Kevin Murray (talk) 23:14, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments
    • No problems reported with dab links or external links. Most of your images lack alt text though, and it would be nice to see that added before moving to up to FAC.
    • According to the dashboard tool, both you and Jim Sweeney have been the largest contributors to the article, but I do not Jim's name in the nomination statement. Has he been informed of the ACR?
    • The last sentence of the opening paragraph of the article reads awkwardly, can this be fixed?
    • This whole article could really benefit from a copyedit; you've got commas all over the place, most of which could/should be removed to help improve article flow, and many of the words choose for the sentence structure seem awkwardly placed which in turn reduce the ease of reading since. In at least one instance I found that a ship class name wasn't italicized, so that should be looked at too.
    • The second paragraph of the secondary battery section has the following line: "There were various opinions on the best combination of guns: all 8-inch (200 mm), all 7-inch (180 mm), or a mix of 8-inch (200 mm) and 8-inch (200 mm)." Somehow, I doubt very much that the ship would have a mix of 8in and 8in guns, perhaps 8in and a different caliber was considered instead?
      • Fixed.
    • You've got a lot of small section headers that in all honesty could probably merged to form larger headers to better cover the information present. Just something to consider, but I would encourage that this be done on at least some level since the people at FAC have in the past frowned on such small sections if they feel the sections serve no purpose.
      • Are you talking about the subsections in the armament section? I do feel that they serve a purpose as a mile stone for the reader as the discussion can get a bit tedious in the detail of the various weapons, especially for the novice reader. But if they need to go in order to conform to FA standards, I understand. --Kevin Murray (talk) 19:33, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Try and lose the see also section by working the links into the main body of the article. TomStar81 (Talk) 00:46, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Above all thank you so much for taking the time to help me here and leave this excellent advice. Cheers! --Kevin Murray (talk) 19:33, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think these ndashes were changed to a hyphen using a script.--Jim Sweeney (talk) 07:48, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: in the Bibliography, some of the works are formatted differently (for example the work by Gardiner and Lambert). This is because some use the template and others don't. I'd suggest adding the template to all of the books to ensure that they display consistently. AustralianRupert (talk) 11:32, 6 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • I believe that I've got the format consistent now among the works listed in the bibliography. --Kevin Murray (talk) 13:56, 6 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • Yes, should be fine now. However, before taking to FAC I strongly recommend adding the template to all the works. Currently only some of them have it, while others don't. As a result some of the ISBNs appear linked and others don't. Additionally, some of the ISBNs have hyphens and others don't. These should be made consistent. It's only a minor consistency issue, though, so shouldn't really hold the article back from A class, but might be an issue at FAC. AustralianRupert (talk) 06:51, 7 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments - if you need a see also section, by all means include one.
    • A lot of the images need links back to the source page – I think http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-usn/usnsh-m/bb23.htm contains all of the NH&HC ones.
    • All done with links to the source or original image at commons for those that I modified
      • WP:MOS#IMAGES advises against image sandwiches, like the one in the machinery section.
      • I've wrestled with this. I agree that it is not ideal, but I'd like to be bold here and stick with the two images for now as I see value in both. I have reduced the vertical size of these set them both to the right to eliminate the sandwich. Should be better now, depending on the viewer settings. I hope this solves the problem. --Kevin Murray (talk) 20:28, 6 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Friedman's U.S. Battleships was written in 1985, not '89...
    • I'd advise pinging User:WereSpielChequers and asking him to use his typo script (I think he uses one of those cool scripts... if he doesn't, he'll be able to point you at someone who does!)
      • Done - requested that he join our efforts. --Kevin Murray (talk) 20:37, 6 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • Pinged. Duly read through and made a few tweaks. I think the alt texts could do with rethinking, remember with alt text someone already has your caption but can't actually see your picture - either they are blind or accessing the article by mobile phone. So no need to repeat anything in the caption, and no point trying to explain every detail in the picture. But ideally one uses a dozen words to give a hint of what thousand words the image conveys. I've had a bash at one, hope that helps. Also I think the lead overemphasis the history of the design, and underplays the story of the two ships of that class. Later there is a section where each ship gets a near identical paragraph, unless I'm missing some differences it might flow better as "both ships had shakedown cruises off Guantanamo..... differing only in that....." The Greco Turkish war could do with some rephrasing, my memory is that the Greeks tried to take a large area of Ionia with many Greek communities, and the war ended with a large mutual ethnic cleansing. But significantly from our point of view the Greeks lost the foothold they tried to capture in Asia, whilst keeping the islands - I.E. the army was defeated but not the navy. There is also a dissonance between the lead and the Fate sections. One refers to decommissioning the other to reserve and auxiliary roles. ϢereSpielChequers 23:08, 6 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
          • Alt text: expanded to be more explanatory of the visuals and redundancies removed.--Kevin Murray (talk) 03:25, 7 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
          • Lead overplays the design: Moved some discussion to a new section and rounded out the lead.--Kevin Murray (talk) 03:25, 7 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
          • Combining sections on the ships: I'm not sure what the best course is here. Though these ships took similar paths in the U.S. Navy, because they were similarly disimilar to the rest of the new ships, they weren't absolutely tied at the hip. The problem with these "career" sections is that they are frequently disjointed facts formed into manageble paragraphs by sequence only. At WP, we can't really draw conclusions or offer opinions not offered in the source materials, and on most of these old ships the information is often uneven and limited. I'm concerned that combining these sections will make the flow more uneven and confusinig. My goal was to follow the guide of the FA article at Indiana class battleship, getting two excellent articles at either end of the U.S. predreadnought series, then fill-in over time using a consistent pattern. My thought is to keep these separate, but transfer detail to the articles for the individual ships, but keep the separate sections as consistent with the Indiana class article. --Kevin Murray (talk) 13:24, 7 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
          • Greko Turkish War rephrase and clarify: Resolved. --Kevin Murray (talk) 12:34, 7 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
          • Dissonance between Lead and Fate sections: I have clarified the nuance in the Fate section. --Kevin Murray (talk) 03:25, 7 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
            • Thanks, I've struck the resolved bits and done a slight rephrase re the war. It is still very contentious as to whether particular areas were majority Turkish or Greek before these events, but describing the area as mixed should be acceptable to both sides and more than adequate for the purposes of this article. ϢereSpielChequers 11:35, 7 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Did you know you can put citations in the notes? See [1] for how. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 20:00, 6 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Questions and comments

  • FWIW, I'd prefer a hyphen in the title and therefore also in the first sentence (Mississippi-class battleships), but I don't have the attention span necessary for another argument over TITLEs so I won't push it. - Dank (push to talk) 14:06, 10 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • The lead is too short for FAC for an article of this length. I probably would have asked for a longer lead at GAN, too. - Dank (push to talk) 15:22, 10 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • I've increased the lead to discuss more issues. Perhaps we could go further, but there really isn't that much that can be said without further explanation so we end up with a short article prefacing a long article. Many leads for ship articles summarize what the ships did, but these did very little. The story is in the failure of the ships and the process leading to their design. --Kevin Murray (talk) 01:59, 23 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not a fan of "albeit" (in Wikipedia) myself, because I prefer words that 90% of our readers will know, but I can't find any objections in style guides so I'll leave it alone. - Dank (push to talk) 15:42, 10 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Anyone have an opinion on "a Connecticut" to mean one of the Connecticut-class ships? I don't remember seeing this in the books in my library. - Dank (push to talk) 15:46, 10 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't want to be too fussy about headings, people spend too much time on Wikipedia arguing over titles and labels, but "Last U.S. Navy pre-dreadnought" doesn't feel right to me. We don't usually attempt to make a "point" in the heading, only to set context ... for instance, "Comparison with other classes". - Dank (push to talk) 16:01, 10 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Changed to "Pre-dreadnought." I took this out of the lead in the process, since the lead was overly focused on this issue. These ships have little claim to fame or significance, and this is among the few. When I first began cleaning up this and the articles around it, there was a mess regarding last-dreadnought status and confusion within and among the articles. Personnally I think that the Dreadnought definition is over emphasized as a benchmark, but ??? --Kevin Murray (talk) 23:07, 22 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per usual disclaimer. I don't disagree with the many positive things said above, and I'm sure we can massage this into an A-class article in time. Here's a list of some of the remaining problems. Other good sources of information on what we're looking for are in previous A-class reviews and edit summaries.

  • "This was the last pre-dreadnought": "This" is too far away from what it's modifying. "The Mississippi-class battleships were ..." - Dank (push to talk)
  • "for reasons of economy and compromise, the ships were considered inferior ...": Each word should play a role in answering a likely question (even if the answer is incomplete or imperfect) rather than raising an unanswered question. What "compromise"? It's not cost, because you just said "economy". - Dank (push to talk)
    • Hmm? This is a tricky one. The compromise was broader than economy, but too complicated to explain in that sentence. it is explained in the following sentence. I'm not really excited about the Pre-Dreadnought paragraph yet, though I think it is important. The reamaining issuse in your list have to do with that paragraph. Please see discussion on Pre-dreadnought section below. --Kevin Murray (talk) 01:59, 23 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]


'Discussion of pre-dreadnought section' Dank has made some very good points, all of which have been addressed, except several having to do with one pivitol paragraph, which was added after the article reache GA status, much of which was taken out of the lead, which seemed to be bogged in detail. Dank's comments are restated here for clarity: --Kevin Murray (talk) 02:09, 23 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • "for reasons of economy and compromise, the ships were considered inferior ...": Each word should play a role in answering a likely question (even if the answer is incomplete or imperfect) rather than raising an unanswered question. What "compromise"? It's not cost, because you just said "economy". - Dank (push to talk)
    • I'm meaning for this sentence to be a summary lead for the section, with the later discussion to provide the answer. I think that I disagree with you, but am open to being convinced of my error.
  • "those preferring more but less expensive battleships": unclear. - Dank (push to talk)
    • This is a clumsy concept, you woud expect one side to say we want fewer but better and the other to say we want more but less cost per ship. But the proponents of the higher tech ships would have preferred more ships, but each to be the best possible. It was not a zero-sum-solution.
  • "However, the next design, the South Carolina class, was a completely different approach ...": Neither "however" nor "but" would work here, because there's no contradiction or tension involved: the next class is better, and that's to be expected. (Copyeditors: see Chicago, 5.220, at "but".) - Dank (push to talk)
    • There is contradiction and there was tension. I'm just not getting the point across. The Missippi class was a departure from the progression, an intentional step backwards for economy and strategy (third rater concept as advocated by Mahan and Dewey), but ironically the next class was a radical new approach abondoning both economy and the third-rater strategy.
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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