Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Battle of Marengo

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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.

Battle of Marengo[edit]

Nominator(s): Andynomite (talk)
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I am nominating this article for A-Class review because I have worked substantially on improving it in the last few days and feel that it meets the required criteria. Andynomite (talk) 17:38, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Technical stuff
    • No dab links or broken external links.
    • Last 7 images missing alt text. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 14:33, 9 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I was working on it. Now it's fixed. Andynomite (talk) 16:51, 9 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments It's great to see the article on this important and famous battle here at an A class review. However, I think that the article needs a bit more work before it meets the A class criteria:
    • It doesn't seem accurate to say that the French won the battle "in the last minute"
      • Why? This is a perfect example of a last minute victory. Andynomite (talk) 13:23, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • It's not precise and will confuse readers - the battle didn't come down to a single minute's fighting. Nick-D (talk) 10:58, 13 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
          • Would "in the last moment" be ok? Or have you got any other suggestions? Andynomite (talk) 11:45, 13 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
            • 'near the end of the day' perhaps. The battle wasn't won in a 'moment' or 'minute'. Nick-D (talk) 11:54, 13 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • The one paragraph sections should be combined
    • The 'Forces' section seems too short - you could expand this into a paragraph on each side describing the units involved in the battle and cover topics such as their prior training and experience and combat readiness on the day of the battle
    • The 'consequences' section seems too short given the important results of the battle
    • Miscellany and similar sections are discouraged under WP:TRIVIA. There seems to be a very interesting few paragraphs/section on how the battle was commemorated in here, but it should be more formally written and supported by citations. It would be interesting if this section discussed why the battle achieved such lasting fame.
    • Please provide the full publishing details (especially ISBNs) for the books you've used as references
    • Do all the external links meet the requirements of WP:EL? Nick-D (talk) 09:03, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Comments now addressed Nick-D (talk) 23:17, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment A1: Hollins, David in The Encyclopedia of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars by Gregory Fremont-Barnes (main editor). Article name? Editors don't get a by, they're not authorially responsible. Doubts about Greenhill, Pen & Sword presses; especially as there's negative reviews of the facticity of Smith, Digby (1998) in the Amazon sales page. Got reviews in academic journals indicating they're worthwhile? Fifelfoo (talk) 13:38, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Hollins solved. I've removed Smith because he was a left-over from when I started editing the article and had no in-text reference. Regarding Arnold, a quick search on Amazon([1]) reveals that, together with Hollins, they are the only English authors who have stand-alone books published on the subject. And Arnold's rating isn't bad at all. Andynomite (talk) 14:38, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • My impression is that Pen & Sword are the type of publisher who publish whatever books authors bring to them which the firm thinks will prove profitable, and don't either commission books or apply a lot of quality control. As a result, they're hit and miss - some books published by the company are great while others are awful. I've seen books published by Pen & Sword in major university libraries, so they should be judged on a book by book basis. Nick-D (talk) 11:59, 13 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments:
    • I think the lead is too long. It looks like five paragraphs, but the maximum is four per WP:LEAD;
    • In the Austrian plans and the preliminary French moves section, the emdashes should be unspaced per WP:DASH;
    • some of the ISBNs have hyphens but others don't, I think they should be consistent;
    • the page ranges in the Footnotes should have endashes;
    • I think that the timings are not presented per WP:MOSTIME#Time of day, which seems to indicate that it should either be "a.m." or "am" rather than "A.M.";
    • in the Consequences section: "The generals who had been hostile to him could see that the chance hadn't abandonned him." (The issue here is the contraction "hadn't" which should be replaced with "had not" and the typo "abandonned");
    • there is a mixture of British and US spelling, for example "honour" (British) in the Remembrance section, but "defenses" (US) in the Austrian attack section, "organized" (US) in the Remembrance section;
    • in the References section the second Hollins work should be formatted with the {{cite book}} template as all of the others are and it is currently not being presented in a consistent format;
    • in Consequences section, this clause "was minimised by Bonaparte who, from now on, would..." (issue here is the word "now", which I think creates a tense issue. I think it should be changed to "then" to maintain past tense);
    • in the Propaganda section, please check the spelling of "glamourized" - depending upon whether you decided to use US or British spelling (per above) it might need to be changed;
    • in the Propaganda section "captain Coignet" and "captain Gervais" - I think these should be capitalised as "Captain Coignet" and "Captain Gervais" as they are being used as titles/proper nouns in this case;
    • "Nowadays, a museum of the battle..." (The word "nowadays" sounds a bit informal to me. Perhaps you might say "Presently"). AustralianRupert (talk) 11:54, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • All done (I've opted for the British spelling). Andynomite (talk) 13:49, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: all my concerns have been addressed. AustralianRupert (talk) 22:05, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • There's an inconsistency with some of the page numbers being dotted/undotted in the refs YellowMonkey (new photo poll) 08:22, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support -- made a couple of minor tweaks to hopefully improve prose (feel free to revert if I adversely altered any meaning) but generally this looks excellent, well-written/referenced/illustrated -- great work! Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 06:47, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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