Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/HMS Vanguard (1909)

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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.

Article promoted by Anotherclown (talk) via MilHistBot (talk) 10:30, 10 January 2018 (UTC) « Return to A-Class review list[reply]

HMS Vanguard (1909)[edit]

Nominator(s): Sturmvogel 66 (talk)

HMS Vanguard (1909) (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

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Other than becoming the only British dreadnought lost during World War I to non-combat causes (her magazines exploded in 1917), Vanguard had a typical career for a WWI-era British dreadnought. A few shells fired at the Battle of Jutland mid-way through the war and that was all the combat she experienced. Aside from a few other unsuccessful attempts to intercept German ships, her war consisted of monotonous training in the North Sea. I've addressed all of the points raised by the earlier reviewers and incorporated the points made by the last couple of FACs for this generation of battleships and believe that it meets the A-class criteria. Also updated it to incorporate the centenary of her loss. As usual, I'm looking for infelicitous prose, AmEnglish usage and any jargon that needs linking or explaining before I send this to FAC.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:38, 10 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Support from PM. I reviewed this when it was previously nominated and all of the points I raised have been addressed. I've also looked at all subsequent edits and consider it meets the A-Class criteria. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 06:04, 17 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Support: G'day, Sturm, nice work. I also had a look at this article when it was last at ACR and have reviewed the changes since then. I have a couple more suggestions/observations: AustralianRupert (talk) 02:15, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  • the launch dates are slightly inconsistent between the infobox and article
  • in the infobox a belt armour range of 8-10 inches is mentioned, but the body of the article only seems to mention a 10-inch belt, without clarifying the range
  • "plus that of Lieutenant commander Alan Duke" --> "plus that of Lieutenant Commander Alan Duke" (rank as a title per MOS:MILTERMS
  • suggest that maybe the final paragraph of the Explosion section could be made a section of its own (maybe titled Wreck, or Legacy)?
  • image licencing looked ok to me, but this isn't an area I consider to be a strength of mine
    • I've addressed all of your points, so thanks for catching these little infelicities. I also went back and re-reviewed the images, cleaning up a few potential problems, so maybe I can get through one of Nikkimaria's image reviews without any problems for once.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:31, 22 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • @Nikkimaria: G'day, Nikki, this one appears close to closure. If you get a moment, would you mind taking a quick look at the images to see if anything stands out to you? Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 08:43, 24 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Iazyges[edit]

Will start soon. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 03:50, 11 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  • "the Home and Grand Fleets." may want to change this to "the Home fleet and the Grand fleet", as a layman might believe that there were multiple Home or Grand fleets.
    • I think that the links will keep things straight for the reader.
  • ", among other more minor changes." Slightly confusing, may wish to change to:
    "along with other minor changes"
    • OK
  • "was performing numerous training exercises and then made another sweep" May wish to change to:
    "was performing numerous training exercises, before making another sweep".
  • That is all my comments. Happy to support as is. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 07:11, 24 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

  • Suggest scaling up the plan
  • File:British_Battleships_of_the_First_World_War_Q40389.jpg: need some more details on the background here - if this was created by a company, why would it be UKGov?
    • They were donated to the Imperial War Museum; the company is defunct so UK-unknown might be appropriate
      • Yes, would suggest switching. Nikkimaria (talk) 21:00, 28 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
        • Fae was the original uploader; I'm not sure that I want to change it without getting his reaction since it was done as part of a deal with the IWM.
  • File:HMS_Vanguard_postcard.jpg: to use that UK tag, you need to include details of steps taken to try to ascertain authorship. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:56, 24 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • If you'll go the source page you'll see the reverse was posted in 1916. Unfortunately, the name of the company has been overwritten and is illegible.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 14:22, 24 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Fae just confirmed that PD-UK-unknown is the proper license for this image and any other ones credited to Symonds & Co.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 15:03, 9 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • The postcard is from Raphael Tuck & Sons. You can see that particular post card here (full size image!), a 'real photograph' postcard here, and all of the cards in that set here. That said, I don't think this mucks anything up—"During the London Blitz of the Second World War the company headquarters was destroyed including greeting cards, records and originals [sic] images." I'd say that not having the company records would make it awfully hard to figure out who authored it. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 05:07, 10 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Follow up: The site says "The images on TuckDB Ephemera and TuckDB Postcards are of items / postcards created before 1928 putting them in the public domain. You are free to use them as you see fit." I have no idea why 1928 would be a crucial date in UK copyright law. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 05:13, 10 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Euryalus[edit]

Already has the required three ticks, but adding one more support with some extremely minor copy-edit suggestions below:

  • Design: Reference to "must have been lightly loaded" seems intuitive, but is that speculation in the source (apols I don't have access to Burt's book)?
    • Yes, I'd never dare to make such a comment myself ;-)
  • Modification: Wikilink tripod mast.
  • World War I:
  • Suggest adding "However" before "Submarine scares" to accentuate the association with preceding sentence.
  • I've used this same bit of text in about a half-dozen other FACs recently and nobody's complained about its lack, so I'm a little reluctant to change this.
  • First paragraph, "The 1st battle Squadron cruised ... and exercised its guns" as squadron is singular?
  • This one I'm honestly not sure about as BritEng differs from my native AmEng in how it treats collective nouns and associated parts of speech. None of the AusEng reviewers have commented on this earlier, so I'm not sure what to do here.
  • Fourth paragraph, typo in "Hickley."
  • Good catch.
  • Explosion:
  • Suggest switching the first two sentences, so we begin with where the ship was, and not what the crew was doing.
  • OK.
  • The third sentence, we haven't yet been introduced to the fact that there was more than one explosion, so the reference to the "first explosion" is mildly confusing. Suggest "There is no record of ... amiss until an explosion occurred at 23.20."
  • There's mention of a series of explosions in the lede.
  • Mm, I always kind of imagined the lede to be a separate "telling of the story," which is why the details are repeated in the article body. But up to you. -- Euryalus (talk) 04:25, 5 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Incredible nitpicking: Fourth sentence, possibly replace "She" with "The ship" for clarity as we now have three active elements in the paragraph - the crew, the explosion and the vessel.
  • Third paragraph, suggest replacing "much less obvious" with "unclear" to avoid using "obvious" twice in same sentence.

Other than that, an interesting read on a vessel that seemed to be always a little too late to the action. Other than the wikilink and typo, no need to come back on any of the above, they're just suggestions ahead of FAC. -- Euryalus (talk) 03:32, 5 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • Actually I thought I was creating a kind of symmetry with "obvious" because the second use has "much less" in front of it, setting up a contrast to the first use. Does that not work very well? Thanks for these comments, they're very helpful.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 04:07, 5 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • No worries, and no need to do anything with any of these suggestions except obviously the wikilink and the typo. Good luck with the FAC. -- Euryalus (talk) 04:23, 5 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - I don't see anything that needs much improvement. You might consider adding some of the context you did with Erin to the Jutland section (thinking specifically of the "During the Battle of Jutland on 31 May..." line) to flesh it out a bit. Parsecboy (talk) 21:32, 8 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - Well-written and comprehensive. That said:
    • Burt doesn't include armament costs, does he? I thought he kept those separate.
      • Burt does, but Parkes doesn't, so I had to add them together to make them comparable.
        • So why, then, is Burt so much less than Parkes? Did you forget to add them together? ;-) "Including her armament, her cost is variously quoted at £1,464,030[3] or £1,607,780.[5]"
          • Well, shit, I did forget to add the armament cost to Burt's total, but since it's only 142,000 pounds it really doesn't matter much. But now I'm wondering if I screwed this up on all my other first gen DN articles. I think that this is the secret to boosting your edit count, screw something up that you've propagated via cut and paste! No idea why there's such a big difference between them. --Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 04:24, 10 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
            • £1,464,030 + £142,000 = £1,606,030, which is pretty close to Parkes' figure... Perhaps you could say: "Including armament, the ship cost about £1.6 million.<ref>Burt puts the cost at £1,606,030, while Parkes quotes it £1,607,780; see Burt, p. 76, and Parkes, p. 503</ref> Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 04:30, 10 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • "Between 19:20 and 19:30, Vanguard engaged several German destroyer flotillas with her main armament without result and the poor visibility hindered Jellicoe's ability to close with the Germans before Scheer was able to disengage under the cover of darkness." -- could use some TLC. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 05:05, 9 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Fixed, see what you think. BTW, "totalling" is Brit Eng, so I've reversed that change.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 14:57, 9 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above 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.
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