Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/British Army during World War I

The following discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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British Army during World War I

Nominator(s): Jim Sweeney (talk)

I am nominating this article for A-Class review because it has received a major overhaul and I believe all major points of criticism from the peer review and GA-review have been addressed... Jim Sweeney (talk) 11:52, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

• Comment'. I haven't actually read it yet, but I think the lead is a bit too long. It's currently 8 paragraphs, while the MOS recommends a maximum length of 4 paragraphs. As several of your 8 paragraphs are small ones, I think you could probably keep most of that text by merging into larger paras. Cool3 (talk) 15:18, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose per the comments below.
  • When citing web sites with cite web, you seem to have used the author field only rather than the first and last fields (for example on ref 9). As such the names are displayed First Last, when convention (and what you do with the other sources) suggests you should use the Last, First format.

Changed to last- first format

• • Is there a reason not to capitalize the W in ref 25?

No and its now been changed

• • What makes ref 49, Encyclopedia Britannica, a reliable source? I remember an article saying they were less than fully accurate... (sorry couldn't resist)
  • "In 1914, no British officer had controlled a force larger than a division on active operations, and there were no established procedures or relevant experience to guide them in their decisions." Surely this an overstatement, by which you mean "no living British officer" In the wars of the past (e.g., the Napoleonic War

s) British officer commanded larger forces; this could be considered relevant experience. Certainly, also, the British (like all participants in the war) saw earlier conflicts as relevant, including the Russo-Japanese War, the American Civil War, and to a certain extent the Wars of German Unification.

Reworked

• • "As the commander in chief French's authority amongst the officer corps had been undermined by his participation in the Curragh mutiny in March 1914, when several officers threatened to resign rather then obey their orders to enforce home rule in Ireland, he became involved trying to get them to reconsider and promised Government support without the authority to do so and he later had to retract the promise and offered to resign." This is a terrible sentence, first of all you need a comma after "chief". Second, "his participation in the Curragh mutiny" makes him sound like a mutineer.

Reworked

• • "on the staff then a field command." should be than

Amended

• • "of which 12,738 were regular officers and the rest in the reserves." for balance, should read "rest were in the reserves"

Amended

• • I think the section on doctrine is a weak one. Among political scientists and historians, an unbelievable number of words have been devoted to the shortcomings of British (and indeed nearly everyone's) doctrine, particularly the "cult of the offensive". I find only one glancing reference to this in the sentence: "Expecting an offensive mobile war it had not instructed the troops in defensive tactics and had failed to obtain stocks of barbed wire, hand grenades or trench mortars." In order to be comprehensive, the article needs far more on this.

I think the paragraph above covers it The Second Boer War had taught the army the dangers posed by fire zones covered by long range magazine fed rifles. In the place of volley firing and frontal attacks, there was a greater emphasis on advancing in extended order, the use of available cover, how to use artillery to support the attack, flank and converging attacks, and fire and movement. The Army expected units to advance as far as possible in a firing line without opening fire both to conceal its position and conserve ammunition, then attack in successive waves, closing with the enemy in a decisive attack.

• • In the section on the Royal Flying Corps, you refer only to its role in reconnaissance. Although the role of air power in combat was not as significant in WW1 as in later wars, I think it deserves a mention.

Section expanded

• • I think more than one sentence would be appropriate leading into the section on the Western Front.

Expanded

• • during which the BEF is involved in the Battle of Le Cateau." Surely, you mean was (unless the battle is still raging)

Amended

• • Why have you chosen the order you did for the section on "Other fronts." The first sentence of that section "The British Army was involved in some comparatively obscure theatres of the war" seems to imply that all the fronts discussed will be obscure. There is certainly nothing obscure about Gallipoli or Mesopotamia (and probably nothing obscure about several of the others discussed)?

I did start in datal order which was canged when moving the sections around - they have now been restord to datal order. The section has been renamed Other campaigns which I think reads better and the first sentence has been changed.

• • "They varied in depth, but they were usually about four or five feet deep, with a built up wall to allow men to stand upright, the fire trenches were provided with a fire step built into the front wall, so the occupants could return fire during an attack." Reads poorly; I'd suggest rephrasing.

Reworked

• • " dug outs were made for living in, these gave shelter from the elements and shrapnel, but in the British Army dugouts" Please pick either dug outs or dugouts rather than using both (personally, I've seen dugouts much more commonly)

dugouts it is think I caught them all

• • "500 to 6oo" are those lower case Os rather than zeroes?

Amended must have read over this 50 times and never caught it

• • Is there a particular logic to what equipment gets includes and what does not?

No it was a matter of choice after a lot of thought, with 49 different artillery guns alone I could not include them all. I have added a further information heading with a link to the full list of weapons.

• • "The British Army during World War I, was the largest" Shouldn't have a comma.

Removed

• • " and bigger then the American Army" should be "than"

Amended

• • The first paragraph of the Aftermath section is ludicrously non-neutral. In particular "The BEF had also done something that no other British Army had done since the Duke of Wellington's army of 1815, or any British army has done since: it defeated the the main army of a European enemy on the mainland of Europe." suggests that the BEF won the war alone, right....

Removed the offending line

• • "The British Army tried to learn the lessons of World War I, and adopt them into its pre war doctrine, while trying to predict how advances in weapons and technology might effect any future war." If you're going to open this can of worms, then something on the Second World War is needed.

reworked

• A great article on a topic that's very hard to cover completely, but I think there's some room for improvement here. Cool3 (talk) 16:01, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

I think most points have now been addressed --Jim Sweeney (talk) 08

32, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

• Support: I support this article for A class, but have the following points:

• • in the Army Service Corps section, please check the amount of bread delivered. It currently says "4,500,00". Should this be "45,000" or "4,500,000"?
  • I know its nitpick, but please check the citations for consistency. Some have a "p. #" while others have a "p #". (The difference being the presence or absence of a full stop". Either way is probably fine, so long as there is consistency. I would do them myself, but I don't know which style you prefer (I assume it is "p #").
  • please check for irregular capitalisation, I have fixed some but there are other instances.
  • there is some inconsistency in the way in which numbers are treated. Generally I believe that numbers below 10 should be spelt and 10 and above use numerals. In some cases you follow this rule and in others you don't.

Other than that, very good effort. Well done. —AustralianRupert (talk) 00:20, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the review it was 4,500,000 and I think have changed all the rest of the points --Jim Sweeney (talk) 18:41, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

• Comment. It seems to be a complete and accurate article, but there are many places where it seems that punctuation was entirely omitted, and there are several paragraphs without a single comma in them. I'd recommend that you ask someone to do a through copy-edit of it preferably before it gets A-Class and definitely before it gets to FA. – Joe N 00:04, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

• Comment Agree with Joe N, the article really does need a thorough copy-edit in compliance with the manual of style. Some things I see:

Support provided the article recieves a copy-edit, I think it is now within A criteria. -Ed!^(talk) 16:59, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

• • In the lead, the "division" "brigade" and "corps" links are capitalized. Generally, unless a link is a proper noun it should not be. Someone should go though the article checking capitalization.

Changed

• • Some of the links are double linked. Most links shouldn't be linked to after the first reference.

Think I have got them all now

• • Punctuation isn't consistent. Per above, I see commas and periods being used interchangably in some parts of the article.
  • Sentence structure needs to be reworked. Some sentences are run-ons while others seem incomplete.

Also, is there any way the article could be split up? It seems like this process could be easier if we were dealing with 2-3 articles individually. It would also make promoting those articles easier. -Ed!^(talk) 06:40, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

A request for copy edit has been posted at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Logistics/Copy-editing/Requests - where do you suggest splitting the article ? its already split off from History of the British Army - I do realise its on the large side but this was the largest war the British Army was involved in etc. --Jim Sweeney (talk) 08:38, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Maybe the Campaigns (Sections 6 and 7) could be their own article? Weapons (Section 9) could do well on its own too. Wikipedia guidelines at WP:SIZE suggest articles not go much longer than 50 KB, but it's really up to you. -Ed!^(talk) 15:03, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

The article has been split with the weapons section forming the basis of a new article British Army uniform and equipment in World War I --Jim Sweeney (talk) 13:44, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I think that was a very good choice, though perhaps a very short and sweet summary should remain in a section on Equipment? Cool3 (talk) 21:59, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

• Comment: In light of the recent changes to the article, I wish to reconfirm my support for A class for this article (as previously stated earlier). Please note this is only one vote, I just felt that as the article had changed signficiantly since I voted, I should reconfirm my opinion. Cheers. AustralianRupert (talk) 03:51, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Copy edit in progress thanks to User talk:Twelsht. --Jim Sweeney (talk) 07:32, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Oppose for the moment. This is an article on the British Army in World War I then I really feel it needs to include a summary about the weapons. I agree that the article was too big with all the information from British Army uniform and equipment in World War I in it, but it does need a summary in the main article.

I would also suggest cutting down the Western Front section and remove the separate one paragraph headings which, in my opinion, slightly overwhelm the table of contents. (A3 The article has an appropriate structure of hierarchical headings, ... and a substantial but not overwhelming table of contents.)

Regards, Woody (talk) 15:32, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Section heading and some of the western front content removed and added a weapons section including the Lee Enfield, Vickers & Lewis machine guns, Stokes Mortar and the Mk I tank. the common artillery is pretty much covered elsewhere. There is also a link to British Army uniform and equipment in World War I. --Jim Sweeney (talk) 16:55, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Comment I don't oppose this at the moment but I don't think I can support it until we can reduce it a little bit more. I still note that this is a very long article and think there could still be reductions made. I notice there is a "trench warfare" section in the doctrine section as well as a large "life in the trenches section". Could they be merged and reduced somehow?

There are quite a few small paragraphs in the recruitment section, could these be merged and condensed? This doesn't seem to be a summary at the moment; Recruitment to the British Army during World War I would be an excellent place for some of this information to be moved to.

The same with "Commanders." This seems to be quite bloated, though again I can't particularly see where it can be trimmed, or where it could be merged to.

Summary: needs a bit more condensing until I can fully support it for A-Class and beyond. Regards, Woody (talk) 17:35, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Ok Trench warfare and life in the trenches sections condensed and combined, same with the recruitment section with content copied as suggested to the talk page of [Recruitment to the British Army during World War I] which I will add at a later date. Also trimmed the commanders section about as much as much as I think it will take. altogether removed about 5,000 bytes of content. But any further suggestions welcome. --Jim Sweeney (talk) 18:09, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Support Looks good. I can't help but think that some of the sections could be reorganised to somehow reduce the number of section headers. As it is, after re-reading it, I can't seem to think of the way to do it, therefore I can't in good faith oppose over it! I think that we could almost have a new fork about the commanders of World War I, possibly including the other service(s). It seems a bit big at the moment, but saying that, it is all very pertinent information given the page title. The article is still big, but other than forking the commanders, I don't see much scope for reductions if I'm honest. Excellent work so far. Regards, Woody (talk) 19:24, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Please note I am off on holiday and may not be able to respond to any changes as quickly as I would like. Thanks for the review. --Jim Sweeney (talk) 16:55, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

• Weak Support. I still think there's room for improvement, but I think it does pass the criteria. One remaining concern, though, is the lead which I do not think is a very good summary of the article. Also, it's beginning to occur to me that the article might benefit from some more context (i.e., comparison of the British Army experience to that of the French, German, American, etc.) Cool3 (talk) 15:50, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive. 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.