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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Fuji-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 Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 13:25, 21 January 2015 (UTC) [1].[reply]

Fuji-class battleship

edit
Nominator(s): Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 04:08, 17 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The Fuji-class battleships were the first ships of the type in the Imperial Japanese Navy. As Japan lacked the industrial capacity to built their own ships of such size and sophistication they were ordered from the UK shortly after the beginning of the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894. Completed several years afterward they participated in the Russo-Japanese War where one ship was sunk by mines a few months after the start of the war and the other participated in all of the major naval actions of the war. The surviving ship, Fuji, was reclassified as a coast defense ship four years later. Thoroughly obsolete by that time, she spent World War I as a training ship and was stripped of her armor and guns in 1922 for service as a school hulk. As always I'm looking for infelicitous prose, unexplained jargon and any surviving bits of AmEnglish.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 04:08, 17 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Support on prose per standard disclaimer. These are my edits. - Dank (push to talk) 05:12, 17 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

  • Naval Annual should be italicized
  • File:Fuji_class_battleship_diagrams_Brasseys_1896.jpg: what is the author's date of death?
  • File:Fuji_class_12_inch_gun_turret_right_elevation.jpg: if the author is unknown, how do we know they died more than 70 years ago? Nikkimaria (talk) 14:52, 17 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • The license for published abroad prior to 1923 has been deprecated and is supposed to be replaced by the standard PD-old and PD-1923 license in combination. Not sure why PD-old license says that the author died 70 years ago, but it's irrelevant because both drawings were published before 1923.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 16:33, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support my usual few quibbles:
Background
  • I think the first sentence tries to do too much, and should be split.
  • "the delivery of the three lightly armoured Matsushima-class cruisers" The word "the" before delivery implies to my ears that this is something you've mentioned before, which you haven't. Suggest "the three lightly armoured Matsushima-class cruisers ordered from France would ..."
Armament
  • "stowed in the turret were 18 shells that allowed a limited amount of firing at any angle before the turret had to be traversed back to its loading position." Usually I, as a lay person, can follow along fine with what you are describing, but this threw me. These are shells, what, that are fired? And why only a limited amount of firing at any angle?
  • I'm also inexperienced re ships, though I have been round the Belfast. My assumption was that early turrets could only be reloaded when faced in a particular direction, this limitation was resolved in later ship designs where turrets could be reloaded from magazines whichever way they faced, saving a lot of space in the turret. If that's right it could do with a sentence of explanation, if wrong then both Wehwalt and I are flummoxed by that bit and it would be safe to assume that some of the readers would be as well. ϢereSpielChequers 22:23, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Armour
  • "used superior Harvey armour of the same thickness" instead of ...
Ships
  • "The following year, during the Battle of Tsushima in May 1905" There's some redundancy here regarding years.
  • "the most senior officers" I'm not sure the "most" really conveys anything additional to the reader.
  • "their circumnavigation of the world" Unless the Ambassador went with the fleet around the world, advise changing "their" to "its". And I'd either pipe to our article on the US ambassador to Japan or to the person who held the post. Was he an ambassador or a minister in 1908, btw?
Well done.--Wehwalt (talk) 12:09, 21 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your comments. I've addressed the issues that you raised and hope that my changes are suitable.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 16:47, 24 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Looks fine--Wehwalt (talk) 19:14, 24 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support have made some tweaks, hope you like them. Some minor quibbles:
  • "This raised the number of crewmen to 652 and later to 741" from about 650 officers and men? Or is crewmen a term that doesn't include officers? Not sure what the and later relates to, it isn't obvious from that section, could it be the conversion to Japanese guns or did she get antiaircraft guns added after WW1?
  • Why did you choose that lead picture instead of commons:File:Japanese battleship Fuji.jpg?
  • The masts are quite prominent, worth a sentence of explanation? ϢereSpielChequers 22:16, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for looking this over. Usually, but not always, crewmen just refers to enlisted men, but my sources don't actually specify that and also don't say why the complement increased, although I'd suspect that the switch to heavier guns meant that they needed more men for the loading crews. The masts are typical of the period as they needed to support searchlight platforms, lookouts and signal halliards through the pitching and rolling motions of the ship in all weathers. I don't know how I missed that photo! I'm glad that you checked to see what else was available. I've moved the postcard down to the main body.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:13, 24 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Support - I reviewed the article at the ACR, and my concerns were all addressed there. I do have a few questions though:

  • "Emperor Meiji" - I've usually seen it in reverse order, as "the Meiji Emperor" (but then I'm no expert)
    • Me too, although I just went with the article's name.
  • Following on from WSC's question about the crew - the change from the 47mm guns to the 12-pounders was the sole cause of the growth in the size of the crew? That seems unlikely - the 12-pounders did use separate instead of fixed ammunition, but it still seems excessive to add around 6 men per gun/magazine, on top of the crew that was already there.
    • I honestly have no idea why the complement increased, although I agree with you that the change in the tertiary armament shouldn't have required so many extra men.
  • "At the start of the Russo-Japanese War," - I'd suggest adding "in early 1904" or something.
  • I might shift the photo of the Fuji model up a paragraph, as it's causing some sandwiching on my monitor (at work - shh!), and I assume it would be worse on wider screens. Parsecboy (talk) 14:22, 20 January 2015 (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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