Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Battle of Concepción

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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 User:SandyGeorgia 04:04, 17 July 2008 [1].

Battle of Concepción[edit]

Nominator(s): Karanacs (talk)

This is the second article I've written on a battle of the Texas Revolution. The battle was fairly small, and thus the article is pretty short. Very few records survived that can provide details from the Mexican perspective, although I've tried hard to keep the article from weighing too heavily towards the Texian side. Modern Texan students are indoctrinated in this time period, so please point out any instances where I might have forgotten to include enough background detail. Karanacs (talk) 17:42, 11 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support - prose is excellent. One thing: Couldn't you change group="notes" in the footnotes to something else? It's really odd to read "blah blah blah held the Mexicans off until blah blah blah.[notes 1]". Nousernamesleft (talk) 18:03, 11 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Maybe using group="Note" would make it more palatable? — Bellhalla (talk) 19:34, 12 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • Changed to note as suggested by Bellhalla. Karanacs (talk) 17:02, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Otherwise sources looked good, links checked out with the link checking tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 18:27, 11 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Unlink the date "October 28, 1835" in the infobox. Otherwise, looks pretty good. Gary King (talk) 19:11, 12 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Done. —Giggy 09:22, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • I realized that I would have to add nbsps to the dates if they were unwikilinked, so I just went through and rewikilinked all of them. Karanacs (talk) 17:02, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I am sorry you did that. I am one of those that has difficulty with the "sea of blue" and the lack of nbsps is a lesser evil. —Mattisse (Talk) 17:10, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support with a few comments:
    • In the lead it's referred to as the Mexican province of Texas. I don't know all the technical details of what constitutes a province vs. a state, but I've always heard it referred to as the state of Coahuila y Tejas.
    • In the first sentence of "Background" you might move the date either to the beginning of the sentence of the end. Right now it reads confusingly.
    • What about links to missions San Juan and San José in the "Prelude" section?
    • In the "Battle" section, how about "had in his belt" rather than "had slipped through the front of his belt"?
    • In the Karnes quote in the same section: I presume that's supposed to be damned but is semi-redacted in the source. Right now it looks funny like d-d is some sort of abbreviation. Maybe you could use an em-dash (d—d), or maybe start the quote later, or I don't know… ?
    • In the last sentence of the "Battle" section, why is the ellipsis in brackets inside the quote?
    • The first sentence of the "Aftermath" section is not clear. In the phrase "… but his forces had delayed their departure …", is his forces referring to one of the two pieces of Austin's command? (And how about "parts" instead of "pieces"?)

— Bellhalla (talk) 19:30, 12 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

      • Fixed Lead, Background, Prelude, and Aftermath section issues. I've actually found two different versions of the Karnes quote and have replaced the one used in the article for the other version that is a little clearer. I'd rather not change the wording on the knife through the belt. "Had in his belt" implies to me the knife was in a holster on the person's side (the usual position for a knife). In this case, Jarvis actually had the knife pretty close to his belt buckle, and it's location caused his injury to be a little worse than it might have been if knife and bullet had been on the side. Lastly, the [...] is because the only thing left out is a change in the tense of the verb. Instead of "careened" I used "careen," and since the word itself was modified I thought this was the best way to show that. Karanacs (talk) 17:02, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reviewing only image licensing: looks good. --NE2 11:52, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewing only prose and some MOS: looks like a Support from me. Well-written. Congrats.

  • I've audited the dates and removed the autoformatting to allow the high-value links to breathe.
  • MOS: no hyphen after "-ly"; more than one instance.
  • MOS: no spacing of em dashes—here one is and one isn't: "By October 20 the Texians—led by Stephen F. Austin, the first empresario to bring English-speaking settlers to Texas[Note 1]— had reached ...". Also, the juxtaposition of the Note number would be nicer if it weren't jammed against the dash (change to commas, or relocate note?).
  • "until 7:30 or 8:00"—I know the "p.m." is earlier in the sentence, but consider sticking another after "8:00".
  • Note 1: "compared with" for contrasts. "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day" (John Donne).
  • Seems appropriately referenced: I presume nothing more than the odd small string of words is duplicated from the references without quotes. (Not accusing!)

I like this article! TONY (talk) 06:48, 15 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Tony, I learned from the best ;) I've fixed the hyphens, spaced mdash, "an", and "compared to" issues. I couldn't figure out a way to include note 1 that I liked better than this, so left it for now. If there's more than a word or two duplicated from the references it is definitely unintentional - my notes tend to be bullet-pointed paraphrases from the source which I later rewrite into (hopefully) coherent text. Karanacs (talk) 14:31, 15 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, it's you, Karanacs. I hardly ever look at who the nominator is. We must get cracking on the Dispatch! TONY (talk) 12:22, 16 July 2008 (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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