Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/HMS Princess Royal (1911)/archive1

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 not promoted by Karanacs 02:07, 10 July 2010 [1].

HMS Princess Royal (1911)[edit]

Nominator(s): Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 00:54, 20 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article because it has passed a MILHIST A-class review and I believe it worthy of being a featured article. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 00:54, 20 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment—no dab links, no dead external links. Ucucha 06:27, 20 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support per usual disclaimer and per my comments at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/HMS Princess Royal (1911). I would appreciate it if someone would check my copyediting. - Dank (push to talk) 15:06, 20 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sources comment: all sources look OK, no outstanding issues. Brianboulton (talk) 17:00, 20 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - ~~no serious problems at all, but I still have a few comments:~~

Design. Who designed her / when? Am not sure General Characteristics sub-head is worth it as it's only one para

Added Watts. I rather like the format as given as I use it for most of my ship articles.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 04:19, 22 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Propulsion - I think 'measured mile' deserves a wikilink or explanation (it's an article we should have, really!)

Minor inconsistency between the Armament and Wartime Modifications section about turret names (Y vs X)

Fixed.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:41, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Armour After the Battle of Jutland revealed their vulnerability to plunging shellfire - reads oddly, 'their' could be the torpedo bulkheads from the previous sentence. (And in any case surely that change should be in the "Wartime modifications" section?

Thanks; I changed "their" to "a". - Dank (push to talk) 23:27, 20 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Good work! The Land (talk) 20:57, 20 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

More issues - having returned to this, I am actually more concerned than I was previously. This isn't due to a deterioration in the article, more down to me looking beyond the narrow technical issues which I read it for the first time. So apologies for not raising this earlier. But I am not happy with either the lead section or the quality of the prose for an FA.

Lead section is a bit too short; the first paragraph is mainly about the class, and the second is almost entirely about her career.

What else would you like addressed?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 21:55, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Example prose isses:

" During the Battle of Dogger Bank, Princess Royal scored only a few hits, although one was the hit that crippled the German armoured cruiser Blücher, which was then caught and sunk by the concentrated fire of the British battlecruisers." Needless repetition of 'hit', unclear whether 'hit' or 'Blucher' was caught and sunk, and basically combining 2 ideas in 1 sentence

Cleaned up.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 21:55, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"...to be as superior to the new German battlecruisers of the Moltke class as the German ships were to the Invincible class." comparison of comparison is uncomfortable.

I'm not sure that I see any issues here. It's a simple A > B > C comparison.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 21:55, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Princess Royal commenced initial trials on Polperro's measured mile"; who was Polperro and what was Princess Royal aiming to discover about his measured mile? To an uninformed reader it's not obvious what this means...

Deleted.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 21:55, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"They turned south at full speed at 11:35 a.m. when the British light forces failed to disengage on schedule and the rising tide meant that German capital ships would be able to clear the bar at the mouth of the Jade Estuary." I found this sentence confusing, even though I actually know what it means!

Lemme think on how to rephrase this.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 21:55, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How does it read now?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 06:31, 8 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

These are only examples - I think the article needs serious work on this point before it is ready to be an FA. Regards, The Land (talk) 20:59, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I ordered both Roberts and Tarrant from Amazon a few days ago ... not for this article, but they're the 2 main sources for this one. I need to consult the sources and check with Sturmvogel, and I also need to get a sense from you (The Land) of how much fiddling you'd like to see in the article ... are we talking about 4 sentences, 14 sentences, or redoing the whole thing? There are a lot of different opinions we need to respect simultaneously, and if you want a major rewrite, I'm not sure how easy that's going to be; see for instance the A-class review that I linked in my support. - Dank (push to talk) 21:21, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The structure of the article is fine (or will be if the lead is re-written). But each paragraph needs to be be re-read with the aim of improving the prose style. So my concerns are 1a (and 2a) of WP:WIAFA. This is an unusual objection for me, as normally with warships (which are one of my specialist areas) I am picky about sources, comprehensiveness, and facts and less picky about style... The Land (talk) 21:41, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

More examples will be needed to address your concerns. Simply stating that the article needs work is not satisfactory.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 21:55, 5 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment It looks pretty good. AirplanePro^Radio_Checklist 00:46, 22 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Images All images are in the public domain with appropriate licenses. Alt text is present on one image but not the others. For the sake of uniformity either add or remove alt text accordingly. Brad (talk) 23:04, 24 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not following that, I haven't been keeping up. Is there something wrong with the alt text? If not, why would removing good alt text improve an article? - Dank (push to talk) 23:08, 24 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently alt text is no longer a requirement for FA. Using that guideline I'm saying it should either be there on all images and not at all. Personally I think alt text is a good idea. Brad (talk) 06:18, 26 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I hate writing alt text, but I don't think that there's any real need here to be consistent about that given that most readers don't use it.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:35, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

One Comment Janes Fighting Ships of WWI (pg. 44) says that .....on trials, flames from the fore funnel rendered the fire controller station then over fore funnel on tripod, almost untenable. The article says that the fire controller station was added between 1915 and 1916. Both these facts could be correct, as the fire controller may have been removed after trials, to be re-fitted in 1915-16. I recommend either removing reference to the fire control director from the Wartime Modifications section, or keeping it and validating this issue. Further, looks good and reads well! BZ Farawayman (talk) 21:52, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Janes, as usual, has it about half-right and this is better explained in the class article. Both Lion-class ships were designed with the foremast, and the spotting top, originally positioned aft of the forward funnel. However, Princess Royal was modified before completion as the positions of the foremast and funnel were swapped. The original problem wasn't with the fire-control director, but rather everyone and everything in the spotting top was choking or overheating in the funnel gases, which were not actually flames.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 22:24, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.