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Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Runaway Scrape

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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.

Article promoted by Peacemaker67 (talk) via MilHistBot (talk) 03:06, 26 September 2015 (UTC) « Return to A-Class review list[reply]

Runaway Scrape

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Nominator(s): Maile66 (talk)

Runaway Scrape (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

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I am opening a new A-class assessment for this article, having requested an incomplete closure for the first one in December 2014. The reasons for doing so are on the article's talk page, but it was about balance between the civilians and the Texas army involvement. I thought it was best to give the other editor time to edit in the verified information they referred to. However, 7 months have now passed, and nothing has materialized. The military and civilian population moved together during the Runaway Scrape, up until Sam Houston ordered them escorted east as he marched towards the San Jacinto battlefield. I believe what's in this article is all we know about the civilian involvement. It's time to re-open this assessment. — Maile (talk) 13:44, 30 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]


Prior nomination here.

Image review

Checked Good catch. Research agrees with you. I have removed the image from the article. The Smithsonian sells a copy in their giftshop. The original was a donation to the museum, but it does not say anything about free use. I have tagged it at Commons with a link to the Smithsonian. — Maile (talk) 18:43, 1 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Support: I reviewed this last time and have reviewed the changes made since then. I have one suggestion/comment: AustralianRupert (talk) 01:31, 9 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • in the References, there is some inconsistency about how you present locations of publication. For instance, some have state locations, and some don't. Some spell out the states, and some use abbreviations. AustralianRupert (talk) 01:31, 9 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Checked AustralianRupert Thank you for the support. I've corrected the location issues in the References. Also, thank you for reviewing the changes. Reading this article after having been away from it for months, I realized it needed some editing in regards to flow and in paring down of unnecessary minutia that added nothing to the content. — Maile (talk) 13:03, 9 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Support. With only one minor nitpick.

  • Standardize hyphens in the isbns

--Tomandjerry211 (alt) (talk) 21:50, 11 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Checked Standardized. Thank you. — Maile (talk)
  • Comments Support - I have no knowledge of the subject but in the absence of other reviewers I have read over it in the interest of trying to move this one forward. Some points I could see are as fols:
    • No issues with the usual technical checks - images all have alt text, no dabs, external links check out, no duplicate links (although the tools are on the fritz again so I might of missed one or two).
    • Image review completed above and captions look ok to me.
    • Checked Perhaps wikilink Gonzales, Texas (once in the lead and again at first use in the body of the article).
    • Checked Likewise for a number of other place names in the lead: San Felipe de Austin, Washington-on-the-Brazos, Groce's Landing, Harrisburg, New Washington, and Galveston Island for instance.
Note: Groce's Landing has no WP article under that name or any other. — Maile (talk) 20:45, 14 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • Checked"two hundred seventy five Mexicans..." should probably just be 275 per MOS:NUMERAL.
    • Checked "Lt. Col. William B. Travis arrived with reinforcements...", inconsistent abbrev of rank here (elsewhere you mostly write them in full).
    • Checked Likewise here: "His men combined with Lt. William Smith's and volunteered..."
    • Checked Wording here seems off (over generalization) "and changed everything..." - perhaps consider something more exact like "considerably altered the military situation" or something like that (I'm assuming that is what was meant).
    • Checked"including three Texas Rangers companies" perhaps consider instead "including three companies of Texas Rangers".
    • Checked "Sesma's battalion of approximately seven hundred twenty-five men..." should be "725" per MOS:NUMERAL (as above).
    • Checked Likewise "The Texian army was a force of eight hundred ten volunteers", should "810".
    • I'm fairly sure Texian army and Mexican army are proper nouns and should be capitalized. You should probably also wikilink these at first appearance.
      • "Texian Army" is capitalized as a Wikipedia article, but maybe shouldn't be. That article started out as a redirect in 2008, and nobody has ever uncapped "army", but I think the article needs updating in general. In reality that term covers various incarnations of the Texas armies. The one Houston led was the Provisional Army of Texas, which does not yet have its own article. The Mexican army led by Santa Anna was the Mexican Army of Operations, which also does not have its own article. When the article says Texian army or Mexican army, it's not really using the title of those armies, so I wonder if capitalization is needed. How Karanacs wrote the Texas Revolution article was with the lower case "army" for both, pretty much for the reason I have given here. — Maile (talk) 20:45, 14 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • Checked"Lt. Col. James Neill was put in charge" → "Lieutenant Colonel"
    • Checked Is there a suitable link for Lynchburg? If so it should be linked here "this time through Lynchburg."
    • Checked "the Texian army crossed Buffalo Bayou at Lynchburg April 19 with nine hundred thirty men, leaving behind two hundred fifty-five", should be "930" and "255" per MOS:NUMERAL.
    • Notes and ref formatting looks fine, no missing bibliographic details that I could see.
    • Checked With just three categories it seems a little undercategorised, so you might like to consider if it should be added to any other relevant categorisies (minor nitpick - I don't have any suggestions for additional ones just an observation).
    • Overall, this article looks fairly good to me as someone who doesn't know the topic, although I think there are probably a few MOS issues that still need to be resolved. Of cse happy to discuss any you points disagree with or need clarified. Anotherclown (talk) 19:07, 14 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Anotherclown, I took care of everything except, as noted above, the capitalization of the armies. Thank you for your time on this. I'd like to know what MOS issues you see. I started out improving this article because it made no sense. I've been working on this almost a year, so maybe it's time to start thinking about FAC. Suggestions? — Maile (talk) 20:45, 14 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Gday. Those changes look fine to me so I've moved to spt. What I meant by MOS issues were the ones I listed above (which you have addressed) that was all. All the best taking this one forward. Anotherclown (talk) 10:02, 15 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks again for your time on this. — Maile (talk) 12:05, 15 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comments. As always, feel free to revert my copyediting. - Dank (push to talk)

  • "ad interim": Up to you, but I recommend replacing throughout, probably by "provisional", which is the usual term for this kind of government.
I see you made the change in one place, but I changed it back. The "provisional government" existed from November 15, 1835, until March 1, 1836.1. When the declaration of independence was signed on March 2, the ad interim government replaced it until October of the same year.2 Those are two different governments, with two totally different structures. I understand your reasoning, but the state of Texas calls it the "ad interim" government in all their records. 1, — Maile (talk) 12:24, 16 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, we're stuck with it, then. Sometimes you italicize ad interim and sometimes you hyphenate; I don't have a preference, but inconsistency annoys FAC reviewers. - Dank (push to talk) 12:55, 16 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I removed the italics on it. — Maile (talk) 13:11, 16 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
This may have nothing to do with how you see that term, but I did some editing on two sentences where the ad interim government was elected. — Maile (talk) 13:31, 16 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Dank did you mean to come back to this, or was this the end of your comments? — Maile (talk) 11:59, 19 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'm going to leave it there for now. - Dank (push to talk) 12:12, 19 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Back. "It was Sam Houston's responsibility, as the appointed commander-in-chief of the Provisional Army of Texas (before such an army actually existed), to recruit and train a military force to defend the population against the encroaching military might under Santa Anna.": I'm being lazy, but walk me through this ... at the time that he was appointed commander-in-chief, was there a military force marching on Texas? - Dank (push to talk) 17:22, 19 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Confusing, isn't it? I'll try to do a bullet-point explanation, most of which is actually in Footnotes 3 & 4
  • When this started, Texas was part of Mexico. The first skirmish with the Mexican army started in Gonzales in September 1835. There was the Mexican army, and in Texas there were local all-volunteer mostly-unpaid militias that answered to themselves, chose their own leaders and decided which skirmishes they wanted to be involved in. By 1835, the volunteers were under Stephen Austin, and then Edward Burleson. After Cos surrendered at the Siege of Bexar in December, the volunteer army disbanded on December 20.
  • The provisional government of 1835 decided in December that it would be a good idea to have a paid army, and they selected Houston to be in charge. No such army yet existed - Houston was expected to do the recruitment and training. At that time, none of the volunteer militias came under Houston. Texas was still part of Mexico.
  • When the Battle of the Alamo started on February 23, 1836, the Alamo was under Sam Houston's authority as commander-in-chief of the paid army, which included Neill, Bowie, Travis and Crockett - but not the volunteers inside. Texas declared independence from Mexico on March 2, and on March 4 put all the land forces - volunteers and paid - under Houston.
  • "Texian": If the thinking is that almost everyone coming across this article will have already read about Texians somewhere (on or off Wikipedia), then I guess that's fine, though it would probably be better to link it. If not, then a quick definition would help.
checkY Done
  • "Texian revolution": Readers will probably wonder if this is synonymous with Texas Revolution, or if the different name is meant to focus on some aspect of the revolution. Is it?
checkY Revised the first two sentences to clarify this. Thank you for noticing this.
Your edits are fine with me. Hope I've answered your questions above. Thank you for your attention to this. — Maile (talk) 19:19, 19 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above 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.
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