Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Kaiser class battleship/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 promoted by SandyGeorgia 05:25, 12 August 2009 [1].

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Kaiser class battleship

Nominator(s): Parsecboy (talk) 13:14, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

• Featured article candidates/Kaiser class battleship/archive1

Another one of my German battleship FACs, this article was significantly rewritten over the past couple of months. It passed GA in May and WP:MILHIST A-class review a few days ago. I think the article is at or close to FA standards; any comments that help me get all the way there are appreciated. I've added alt text to the images, though I'm still a little unsure of how that's supposed to be done, so if it needs work, please let me know. Thanks in advance. Parsecboy (talk) 13:14, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

'Tis good, as far as Cr. 1a goes.

• WP:LINK advises against the linking of common geographical locations (like Germany). Any reason to here? It's a very big article. I see that "German Imperial Navy" is linked a second later ...
• "Kaiser" is italicised at the opening, but not in the title. Is this correct?
• Minus sign for -8. It's in the edit tools under the edit window ("Insert" tab), before the multiplication sign.
• I think MOSNUM says to spell out 160 here: "160 99.9 lb shells".
• Avoid multihyphen bracket monster by inverting the order: "the ships had a 4 cm (1.6 in)-thick torpedo bulkhead" -> "the ships had a torpedo bulkhead 4 cm (1.6 in) thick".
• "yards"—do we provide metric equivalents for this situation?
• "caliber" is US spelling; I'd have thought this had enough reference to the UK to be otherwise, but maybe I'm wrong. Tony (talk) 12:36, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for checking this stuff, Tony. I'm not quite sure what you mean by your second bullet; do you mean the large bold title "Kaiser class battleship" at the top of the page. I am unfamiliar with any way of italicizing the actual title. I fixed the "160 -> one hundred and sixty", the bracket/hyphen issue you pointed out, and the missing conversion you mentioned. As for US/UK spelling, the way I see it, "national ties to a topic" only applies to British ships. Another issue is, I wrote my first FA, SMS Von der Tann, and I did try to stick with British English, since that was how it was originally written. I found this to be extremely difficult and time-consuming; I'm an American, and the time spent trawling the article for words I spelled out of habit in AE that needed to be switched to BE could have been more usefully spent elsewhere. I have since stopped doing this. Thanks again for your review. Parsecboy (talk) 14:42, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Support Ahoy there Good read but:

• "30.5 m (100 ft)" would make those pretty long barreled guns, any chance that was 30.5mm calibre?
• I'm not sure about "The ships lost speed up to 66 percent and heeled over 8 degrees" was that meant to be "The ships lost speed up to 66 percent when heeled over 8 degrees".
• The lead describes the ships as "raised and broken up for scrap between 1930 and 1937" but later you give March 29 as the date for the raising of one of them.
• the lead mentions their involvement in operation Albion, but I could find no mention of this in the main article.
• could you check your sources re their having 88mm flak guns, my understanding was that flak guns came later, after aircraft had become dangerous. ϢereSpielChequers 23:58, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for checking the article. Yes, somehow the template got messed up (probably a copy-paste error on my part, I'd guess); it should have been 30.5cm (12in). The speed loss and heel figures were when the ship was turning at the tightest angle, I apparently didn't say that in the text. Kaiser wasn't actually broken up until 1930, which is probably what I was thinking when I wrote the lead. I changed it to 1929 to avoid any confusion. Thanks for catching my forgetting of Albion, I'll add an appropriate section tomorrow when I have the time. As for the flak guns, they were indeed added later in the war. Groner's states "four [two] 8.8 cm/45 AA guns (2,500 rounds)", the "[two]" indicates that two of the guns were later removed. Further information on the flak guns can be found here. It does seem a little odd that the Germans were fitting AA guns to their warships, but I'd wager a guess it had to do with the Cuxhaven Raid of 1914. Thanks again. Parsecboy (talk) 00:55, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for that, may I suggest adding a note to the effect that they were originally built without flak guns but had later had .... installed. ϢereSpielChequers 08:47, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Alright, I've added the section on Operation Albion and reworded the sentence about the Flak guns to make clear that they were added to the ship later. Thanks again. Parsecboy (talk) 14:26, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, that was interesting. Two minor points:

• Four tubes on the broadside - unless they were on a turntable on the deck I'm assuming this was either two tubes on each side of the ship, or four on one side and none on the other?
• South America and South Africa, as Germany had a colony in what is now Namibia, I wonder if you might check whether that was South America and Southern Africa as it would be odd for them to go nearby and not visit their own colony.

ϢereSpielChequers 17:49, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, there were two tubes on each side of the ship, which I have now clarified. Groner's states "These ships participated in the first major trial overseas of a detached division, to South America and South Africa in 1913–14, with the light cruiser Strassburg." It doesn't say anything more specific about which ports were visited. It is entirely possible that the ships never visited German South-West Africa, the German African colonies were a sort of useless backwater (Herwig's Luxury Fleet has an excellent chapter detailing the utterly deplorable conditions in the German overseas possessions, pp 95–110). Parsecboy (talk) 18:07, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for looking in to that, thats me done; But looking at the picture of the Prinzregent Luitpold I think its a photo rather than an illustration, and you might want to talk to user:Durova as to how those photos could be restored. ϢereSpielChequers 19:46, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

• Comments - sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:16, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
• Support Well Done! TomStar81 (Talk) 03:43, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
• Support with one picky comment. Shouldn't the notes be listed as [Note 1] etc instead of [Notes 1]? "notes" is plural. --Brad (talk) 00:01, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
  • That's a good point. That's how I had been doing it in other articles, but at some point I randomly added the "s". Thanks for pointing that out. Parsecboy (talk) 12:41, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

• Support Wonderful job, no complaints from me Burningview (talk) 01:52, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

• Support Gave this one the tick in MILHIST ACR and it's only improved since then. One thing though in Operation Albion... You finish with the expression the German army held their objectives. First off, "the army" is singular, so you need "its", not "their". Secondly, I would say one "attains objectives", or "holds gains", but not "holds objectives" - suggest you substitute one of those alternatives I've mentioned... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 08:07, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
  • Thanks for reviewing it again, Ian. I fixed the wording issue as you suggested. Parsecboy (talk) 13:45, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
• Image review: Are we sure that File:SMS Kaiser steaming to Scapa.PNG is a work of the British government? It's an Imperial War Museum photograph, but does that mean that it was actually created by the British government? As well, the image's date needs to go on its description page. Steve Smith (talk) (formerly Sarcasticidealist) 19:36, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
  • It's really the only possibility; the German fleet was under British escort for majority of their trip from Germany to Scapa, which included observation blimps. Parsecboy (talk) 20:19, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
    • I'm satisfied with that (I'd missed that the photo was taken post-armistice, which is why it struck me as unlikely to be a British government photo). The date still needs to go on the description page, though. Steve Smith (talk) (formerly Sarcasticidealist) 20:23, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
      • I've added the date and a short caption. Thanks. Parsecboy (talk) 22:29, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
        • All quiet on the image front. Steve Smith (talk) (formerly Sarcasticidealist) 23:41, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

• The {{main}} templates appear to be incorrectly used in this article. "Main" is used when this article is a summary of that article. This article discusses one class of ships, so it's unlikely that it's a summary of a battle. The templates should be switched to a further information or see also. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:12, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
  • Hmm, I didn't know that before. I guess I have some other articles to fix as well. I've changed them all here to {{detail}}. Thanks Sandy. Parsecboy (talk) 10:18, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

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