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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Helgoland 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 20:41, 21 July 2009 [1].

Helgoland class battleship

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Nominator(s): Parsecboy (talk) 13:49, 30 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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I rewrote this article some time ago, and it has been working its way up the assessment ladder. It just passed MILHIST A-class review last week, and I feel it's at or close to FA standards. I welcome all constructive comments, thanks in advance. Parsecboy (talk) 13:49, 30 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comments Support Your pics are all right aligned. Starting from the top they need to be right / left without left aligned directly under a ===subsection===. In your Footnotes there are instances of pp. 23, 24 and pp. 23-24 (for example); they need to be consistent. --Brad (talk) 00:25, 3 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks, the problem with the pictures is that most of them are in short sections, and according to the MOS cannot be left aligned (unless they're starting in the second paragraph). For example, Iridescent moved one that was left aligned for this reason. As to the footnotes, I'll fix those up when I get the chance. Thanks again. Parsecboy (talk) 01:58, 3 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Oppose - I am not impressed by the prose, which is far from FA standard. The article suffers from redundancy—count the number of "also"s. There are poorly constructed sentences, e.g. "Of the need to step up naval construction due to the fact that Germany was becoming increasingly isolated in Europe, von Tirpitz stated, "The aim which I had to keep in view...for technical and organizing reasons as well as reasons of political finance was to build as steadily as possible." And, boring repetitions such as three consecutive sentences in the Lead beginning "The ships..". Some phrases are not complete, such as The ships had an armored belt that was 30 cm (12 in) thick at its strongest - strongest what? Here, The first major operation of the war that the Helgoland-class ships participated was the raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby on 15–16 December 1914 there is a missing "in". The article needs a thorough copy-edit; it does not represent our best work. Graham Colm Talk 23:44, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I've made some fixes to the article and reworded some sections. Let me know if there are more things that need to be fixed. Thanks for your review. Parsecboy (talk) 21:48, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, it's late in the evening in England, I will revisit the article in the morning. Graham Colm Talk 22:02, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The stats in the infobox are repeated in the prose, and cited there. Do you think I should add a note along the lines of "All specifications sourced to Gröner, pp. 24–25" in the "notes" field in the infobox? Parsecboy (talk) 19:29, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It certainly would't hurt, a short note such as "Source: Groner pp 24-25" or simply link it with the rest of the refs like "Source:[1]". --ErgoSum•talk•trib 21:42, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I moved a footnote into the "notes" section of the infobox. How does that look? Parsecboy (talk) 21:51, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Image concerns as follow:

  • File:Ostfriesland-2,000lb-bomb.jpg: Requires a source (url, document/archive ID, publication), since the US Government does not simply hand photos out on the street. I found a similar photo on http://www.history.navy.mil/library/online/navybomb2.htm, which states it came from the book, The Naval Bombing Experiments by Vice Admiral Alfred W. Johnson. A possible issue is that the press, having been mentioned many times and seemingly well-informed of the experiments, could have been the author of this photo (guest observers). A clarification is likely needed, perhaps a check through the book for the photographer is advised.
  • File:High Seas Fleet 1st and 2nd battleship squadrons HD-SN-99-02145.JPG: this is a German postcard (M. L. Carstens, refer to Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/SMS Seydlitz/archive1), appropriated by the US War Department. Scenario 1: Koch of the War Department photographed the postcard for the DoD database; that does not make him the copyright holder of the photograph (postcard). Scenario 2: Koch is not of the War Department, and is the photographer for the postcard; we need to find out his date of death to allow for copyright in the country of origin to have elapsed. Scenario 2 is very likely the case since the ARC (National Archives, http://research.archives.gov/search) sources his information from "Author's Sociale verdediging, 1982: t.p. (K. Koch) p. 5 (Drs.)", which is this book (1982)—an unlikely publication from a US citizen. and published in 1982 points to his death as uncertain. Until Koch's identity and life is affirmed, it is best to move this to Wikipedia.

Awaiting feedback. Jappalang (talk) 01:37, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for reviewing the images, Jappalang. I cut the second image, at least until I can find more info on K. Koch. I seriously doubt it's the Koch you found at Open Library (he'd have to be at least in his 20s to be taking pictures for Carstens, I don't think he'd still be publishing be publishing books nearly 60 years later). But until I find out who he was and when he died, the image will have to go. As for the first photo, it seems to have come from this document on history.navy.mil. The text is from Hap Arnold's book, but it doesn't indicate what the copyright status of the images is. If you think it'd be better, I can replace it with this one, which has a dead-tree source. Parsecboy (talk) 19:18, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Koch published his books as early as the 1960s,[2] so it is not implausible for him to be a 20-odd-year old photographer who sold his works to Carstens in the 1910s. After all, it is the National Archives who declared him to be the photographer. As for the Ostfriesland bombing, it would be preferable for the photo with a definite source to be used. Jappalang (talk) 01:22, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds good to me. I've switched the photo, so everything should be in order as far as images are concerned. Parsecboy (talk) 11:16, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I added alt text to all of the images (don't know if I did it right though, I've never heard of that before). Thanks for pointing that out to me, and for doing the first one. Parsecboy (talk) 19:26, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The alt text still needs a bit of work. For example, for File:Bundesarchiv DVM 10 Bild-23-61-55, Linienschiff "SMS Ostfriesland".jpg the alt text is currently "An illustration of the battleship "Ostfriesland" with a smaller boat alongside". The words "An illustration of" are redundant and can be removed. The word "Ostfriesland" should be removed, as it is not immediately obvious just from looking at the image. Other alt text instances have similar problems. Please see WP:ALT #What not to specify for more advice about this. Eubulides (talk) 08:16, 15 July 2009 (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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