Talk:French cruiser Descartes

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:French cruiser Descartes/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Usernameunique (talk · contribs) 20:11, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Lead

• the unsuccessful search — It's implied by the lack of further discussion, but the fact that the search was unsuccessful isn't mentioned in the body.
  • Clarified in the body

Design

• a war scare with Italy in the late 1880s — I think I've asked this before, but is there an article about this?
  • No, there isn't (or a relevant section in an article)
• French Navy — Link to French Navy?
  • Done
• The Descartes class were — This should be the "class was", no?
  • Fixed
• 383–401 officers and enlisted men — No breakdown available?
  • No
• She had a cruising radius of 5,500 nautical miles (10,200 km; 6,300 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph) and 1,000 nmi (1,900 km; 1,200 mi) at 19.5 knots. — Does "cruising radius" mean how far she could go one one tank of gas (so to speak)? Also, any reason 19.5 knots isn't converted?
  • Yes, and the speed is converted a sentence earlier
• Perhaps Pascal should be introduced in this section, and are there any comparisons worth mentioning? Of course, most of that is best addressed in Descartes-class cruiser.
  • Added a mention of Pascal in the first para, but the two ships were more or less identical, so no comparisons warranted
    • That they were largely identical is itself worth mentioning, I think. --Usernameunique (talk) 18:07, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
      • But isn't that implicit in their being a class? The assumption is the classes are made up of generally homogeneous ships - it seems excessive to explain this in every article on a ship that's part of a class
        • Yeah, probably. I was thinking of this review, where the boilers were mentioned as varying by ship. But that's probably an exception to the normal rule. --Usernameunique (talk) 14:55, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
• Armor protection consisted of a curved armor deck — "armored deck", or is an "armor deck" a thing? Although if there's a way of not using "armor ... armor" that might be better.
  • Yes, an armor deck is a thing - see any of the mentions here
    • Is it a think that could ever be turned into an article? Even a red link could make it clear that it is a specific type of protection.
      • That's probably a good idea - we have articles on belt armor, torpedo bulkhead, torpedo bulge, etc, so I don't see why we wouldn't eventually have one on deck armor too.
• No information on the interior?
  • Nope

Service history

• Descartes reportedly reached — Why "reportedly"?
  • That's what the source says - "Descartes was reported as attaining 21.8 knots..."
• On 25 October 1900, an accidental propellant fire aboard Descartes, part of a series of fires that resulted from unstable Poudre B charges. — The sentence is missing a verb. Any more information about the fire?
  • No, I don't have any information on casualties or damage, unfortunately; sometimes these events were reported in periodicals at the time (see for instance French cruiser Forbin, but I wasn't able to track one down on this one)
• At the start of World War I in August 1914, Descartes was assigned — What happened during 1908–13?
  • There aren't any records that mention the ship during that period
• The first two sentences of the third paragraph jump from August back to July. Is there a better way of phrasing it?
  • Reworked
• The declaration of war between France and Germany on 4 August interrupted these plans — Now I'm even more confused. I thought she was recalled home because of the war?
  • The war started in stages - Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on 28 July but France wasn't at war with Germany for several days (but just about everybody could see it coming)
• Any more details on the WWI history? Was she involved in any fighting?
  • No, no battles of note took place in the Caribbean - Karlsruhe briefly tangled with a British cruiser but that's about it

Notes

• Can "France" be given a different descriptor? It sounds like the country, or someone's last name. At the very least, it should be put in italics (to mirror Service Performed).
  • That's the title in the journal - the standard formatting for article titles is non-italicized (as opposed to the journal title, which should be in italics). There's no editor or author of the section listed, so we can't go that route either.
• Shouldn't "France" and Service Performed have the year?
  • It's there - look at the end of the citation; formats for journal articles are different than books
    • Yes, it's in "References"—but in "Notes", the citations render as "Service Performed, p. 299" and the like, whereas every other short citation (e.g., "Brassey 1908, pp. 49, 53") includes the year.
      • Fixed the italics in the notes, but the years for Brassey's is only to differentiate between the different volumes
        • Right, I'd missed the ones on the left that don't have years. Looks good.

References

• A lot of the public-domain works could probably be linked.
  • Highlighting this in case it was overlooked. --Usernameunique (talk) 18:07, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
• Is the first name for "Garbett, H." available?
  • No, unfortunately

Overall

• Parsecboy, the nomination will probably have to be failed unless you add more specific publisher locations. Other than that, looks good. --Usernameunique (talk) 20:55, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
  • That's not in the Good Article criteria and I won't be doing that. Thanks. Parsecboy (talk) 17:22, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
    • Parsecboy, responses above. The comment about publisher locations was a joke—sorry if the context got lost along the way. --Usernameunique (talk) 18:07, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
      • I wondered, but you know how they say humor isn't translated well through the internet ;) Parsecboy (talk) 19:46, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
        • Yeah, someone once suggested the invention of left-slanting italics to indicate things written in jest—not a bad idea. Left a few comments above, but nothing that requires edits. Otherwise, all looks good except the comment about linking to public-domain works appears to have been overlooked. --Usernameunique (talk) 14:55, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
          • Parsecboy, I see you've added most of the URLS; I've added the remaining two (of the public domain works), so am passing now. --Usernameunique (talk) 17:56, 11 June 2020 (UTC)