Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/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.

Unsuccessful. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 01:49, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

World War I[edit]

Nominator(s): LeadSongDog come howl

I am nominating this article for A-Class review because it has been substantially improved since its last review. It seems appropriate to work to improve it for November 11. LeadSongDog come howl 05:01, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments - First, I assume that you mean for 11 November of next year because there is no way that you could get this up to Featured in time for this year.
- There are no dab links that need to be fixed.
- There are several dead links according to the link checker tool.
- Images need ALT text per WP:ALT
- There are still several fact tags in the article that need to be rectified. -MBK₀₀₄ 05:35, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

- - Thank you for your input. I did mean this year, but not featured, just A-class. Each year there is a flurry of interest at this time of year that fades away afterwards. LeadSongDog come howl 15:17, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

This needs a lot of work done to it to even reach A-Class.

Firstly, citation needed tags scattered throughout the article need to be fixed.

Lede is far too small

Opening Hostilities section far too small and uncited, the same for much of the Early Stages section.

And the Southern Theatres section

And the Eastn Front, which still has a tag

And New States section

In fact, let's just say most of the article is either uncited or undercited and also needs a great deal of expansion.

Beware of any kind of of pro-Western Front bias.

I think that will do for now. Frankly, I'm surprised this didn't go up for peer review first, then GA; there's no way this will be A-Class any time soon. Skinny87 (talk) 07:36, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

- - Thank you, that's very helpful. The path to recovery for a FFA was not exactly obvious to me. I suppose I should have asked first, but I was feeling Bold. Should I withdraw the request, or let it stand?

No, let it stand. I apologize if I came across as particularly critical.

No apology needed.

- - I've added the above to the todo list and we can get on with it. In previous reviews the article was criticized for being overcited, so in many cases the practice has been (rightly or wrongly) to rely on the use of {{main}} to support unchallenged statements.

There's only putting citations at the end of paragraphs or a few sentences, and then there's having entire sections uncited; the latter should always be avoided, with at least one citation per paragraph. Considering the varied source material for the subject, I'd be surprised if that were the minimum.

That seems a measurable objective, at least for controversial areas. For simple facts (e.g. dates and places) we may leave it to the {{main}} articles.

- - You comment that most of the article needs a great deal of expansion, but the article is already very long. Would you care to suggest content forks in order to keep this article's length acceptable while expanding?

I don't think length should be a major consideration; given the bredth the article has to cover, even as a summary, it will obviously be one of the longer articles on en.wikipedia.

- - The English-language literature has a pronounced Western Front bias for obvious demographic reasons. Our readership is typically more interested in the Western Front for the same reasons. Should we ignore this in pursuit of WP:WORLDWIDE?

In my opinion, definitely the latter; the other theatres and areas shouldn't be neglected and all should be represented as equally as possible.

That's my inclination too, but it will be a large undertaking.

- - Efforts to enlist input from the under-represented national perspectives have not met with much response yet. Any suggestions how to draw in more? LeadSongDog come howl 15:17, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I honestly don't know. I think we might just have to find editors who can at least translate important other language sources, or at the very least use english-language sources covering non-Western areas. Skinny87 (talk) 19:09, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Guess I'll try some project noticeboards then. I just hope we can get it to happen without too much strife between editors from places still fighting the propaganda war today. We've had some unpleasant go-rounds in the past between editors: Serbs vs Bosnians, Turks vs Armenians, etc, usually citing (and believing) their side's domestically published references. Many of these are not registered on en: so they show up as ip editors here. Needing their input precludes semiprotection when things get heated. Ah, well, such is a wikipedian's life.LeadSongDog come howl 20:39, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm feeling this is not ready. It will need to be excellent even as a Class-A, since it's such an exposed topic. But please, proceed with the work. Just a few niggles:
- Ref list needs auditing. First thing I checked was Ref 12, Fromkin ... err ... there are two Fromkin items. And gee, I hope that guy is authoritative, because the claim that military expenditure rose by 50% needs to be explained in a little detail, since there could be so many different variables.
- Interruptors: spaced en dashes or unspaced em dashes? Both are used.
The images need boosting in size, each scrutinised on the basis of quality (res, etc), height, caption length, relationship to surrounding text and images, and critically, internal detail. The Br. Grand Fleet looks like a bad case of skin rash and pimples. Austrian troops: the relevance, the detail, is impossible to make out. The corpses: amazing pic, and hugely dramatic. Bigger, please. Initial actions: please see the MoS on text sandwiching! Please note the change in WP:IUP on image sizes, which has loosened up about forced size increases. Experiment with 230–250px? Note that default thumbnail will increase from 180 to 220 next week, probably.Tony (talk) 09:58, 25 October 2009 (UTC) PS And yes, a bit more from the non-Allied perspective would be good. It would make this article special on the Internet. Tony (talk) 10:00, 25 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Tony, thats good actionable input. Will dupe to ToDo list.LeadSongDog come howl 02:24, 26 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - loving the work you've put in so far, but it's still not ready. For A-class, everything must be attributed to a reliable source using in-line citations. Also consider pinging Climie.ca (talk · contribs), who I believe began or was going to rewrite this article. —Ed (talk • contribs) 21:25, 5 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the encouragement and the reminder. Unfortunately Climie has just gone on wikibreak until January. Citing "everything" strikes me as an unusually high standard. Can you tell me where is this stated? Thanks, LeadSongDog come howl 15:14, 6 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

From the requirements, "all claims are verifiable against reputable sources..." It is necessary to have an inline citation for all material. For an article of this size and scope, that would mean having a lot. Generally, at least one citation at the end of each paragraph covering the information in that paragraph, as well as one after controversial or extremely specific information, or where you switch sources, is necessary. For my review of this article, expect to wait a few days, I try to read through the entire article before I comment and that will take me quite a while. – Joe N 01:43, 7 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Climie aka "Cam" started it here, but it's nowhere near complete. I believe that he was intentionally writing it short as well. If you are truly in love with World War I, perhaps you could take up the mantle, rent some of the books he used, and expand it on his sandbox page? I'd help you if you wanted, though my time would be limited by other commitments. —Ed (talk • contribs) 02:19, 7 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, more help is always welcome, large or small. LeadSongDog come howl 06:17, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments. Expect this to expand over the next few days as I look at it in more detail.

Please move some images to the left, for balance.
The lead and infobox should either be not cited at all, in which case all points should be expanded upon and cited in the text, or completely cited, not half-cited as they are now.
I've tried to do some stuff with it, but there are many places where images cause the section edit tags to bunch or be misplaced. Please fix these.
"The U-boats had sunk almost 5,000 Allied ships, at a cost of 178 submarines.[47]" Please provide some context for this, i.e. "By the war's end..." or something.
The following sections are in need of better citation:

Confusion Among the Central Powers
Serbian Campaign
German Forces in Belgium and France (This section also needs some changes; a decent part of it is on the Eastern Front, but this is not covered in the See Also link or Section title).
Trench Warfare begins, first paragraph
Naval War

As I said, expect all of these comments to grow. – Joe N 20:59, 8 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks you for the input.

If you're aware of good, balanced English-language sources on the Balkan and Middle-eastern fronts, that would be a big help. Most of the articles on these campaigns have only a few non-English souces that are of limited use to us.

I regard image bunching as a mediawiki bug that doesn't merit individual article attention. Sooner or later, the software will get fixed. If someone else wants to put their time into temporary workarounds, they're welcome to do so. LeadSongDog come howl 06:17, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Normally I'd agree, but this is a very heavily viewed article and if it is going to be one of our highest-rated articles it needs to be perfect. It really looks unprofessional to see what looks like errors in the code and bunched, useless section edit links. – Joe N 21:45, 11 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Mmm, OK. What I was going to do isn't going to work. Basically, general comments: every paragraph needs at least one citation at the end which covers all the information in it. If it relies on multiple sources, please cite each. Please get a very thorough copy-edit at one of the CE request places, to fix various incidences of bad grammar and unclear or ambiguous sentences. – Joe N 21:13, 14 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. There is quite a bit that needs to be done to get this article to A-class, although a good start has been made. Here are a few ideas:

The article needs more references. There are multiple sections that have no or very few references, and that include facts, statistics, or potentially controversial information.
There are two citation needed banners from 2008 - please see that these are taken care of and removed. No A-class article should have cleanup banners.
~~See also, main article and further information templates should be at the beginning of relevant sections, not the end.~~
Many of the web refernces in the article need publishers, some also need access dates and other relevant information.
~~Ref #41 (Coast Guard in the North Atlantic War) deadlinks.~~
~~Ref #143 (Letter) deadlinks.~~
~~Ref #156 (Die miserable Versorgung...) needs to note its language, as well as being properly formatted.~~
~~What makes ref #46 (Greek American Operational Group OSS, Part 3 (continued)) a reliable reference?~~
What makes ref #49 (On This Day - 23 November 1915) a reliable reference? Specifically, the site itself says "it is not recommended that this site be used for academic reference purposes..." Also refs 55, 56, 66, 67, 102 to this same website.
Ref #68 says "Meyer 2007, pp. 169-". Is there supposed to be a second page number to end the range?
~~What makes ref #97 (The Meuse-Argonne Offensive: Overview) reliable?~~
What makes ref #190 (The Lost Generation - myth and reality) reliable?
Some of the split references are linked to their corresponding bibliographic entry, while others aren't. Please standardize this.
Please repair the dab link, here.
Please make sure there are non-breaking spaces - - between numbers and their units of measurement.
Please standardize spelling to either British or American. For example, there is "armour" (British) and "realize" (American), as well as both spellings of defence/defense. The link here may help.
Images need alt text, see WP:ALT.
There are a lot of short paragraphs (one or two sentences) and short sections (one short paragraph) that should be expanded or combined. Probably the latter in most cases, considering the length of the article already.

I hope the comments above help in your quest for A-class and ultimately FA, before next November. This is a huge undertaking - thank you for doing so! Dana boomer (talk) 23:20, 11 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Thank you, Dana. I think I've now corrected many of your points, esp the weak refs, dablink, and BrEng, though there is still much to do on additional inline harvnb cites. Work continues.LeadSongDog come howl 18:40, 14 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  - I've struck the issues above that have been completed. There are still issues with BrEng/AmEng usage, I added a link that may help with this. I've also added a couple more things that I noticed to the end of the list. Thank you for your work so far! Dana boomer (talk) 19:12, 14 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    - The script was new to me, and surprisingly useful, but it also seems to hit a lot of false positives. I'm only seeing the reported AmEng, contractions, and dateth used in quotations and in citation template parameters (particularly |title=). The high rate of false positives rather obscures the real work to be done. I just left a note at User_talk:Gary_King#Peer_reviewer_script, who seems to be the current maintainer afaict. LeadSongDog come howl 21:24, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose – sorry, but this still requires significant work:

As stated above, referencing is a major issue. The "War in the Balkans" section, for example, only contains a single cite, and others are even more bare.
Alt text is required on all images.
A few more of the images should be re-aligned to the left, in order to give greater visual appeal.
There is quite a bit of whitespace between paragraphs in some sections due to the inclusion of several images.
The ranks of commanders/generals should be clarified.
The AIF was the Australian Imperial Force; no "s" on force.
Endashes should replace general dashes for use in date ranges in the prose, and page ranges used in citations.
All web sources require access dates.

It will take a lot of work to get this article up to standard. However, I would encourage you to keep up the excellent work, it will all be worth it in the end and it would be excellent to have such an article up to a high standard. Cheers, Abraham, B.S. (talk) 00:37, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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.