Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Barrage (artillery)

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.

Not promoted -MBK₀₀₄ 23:34, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Barrage (artillery)

Nominator(s): Cyclopaedic (talk)

I am nominating this article for A-Class review because I've taken it as far as i can, and I think it now gives a comprehensive and intelligible explanation of the subject. Cyclopaedic (talk) 20:03, 5 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Leaning towards oppose Sorry, but I think there may be some issues here that might take a while to sort through - I suspect a peer review might have been a better forum to discuss the best way to present the article and prepare it for a GAN of ACR. I'll give a flavour of my thoughts though:
- Prose: I think the whole article needs a thorough copyedit and possibly a few people's input to agree layout/style etc... Unfortunately I see a few typos, grammar, tense and prose problems, isolated paragraph/sentences, etc...
- Article Layout: I'm a bit confused about the evolution of barrages - did the creeping barrage precede the static barrage? Most of the paragraph on standing barrage discusses creeping barrages too, which makes me wonder whether static barrages are a variation of creeping barrages and should perhaps be a subsection of that section. Also the stuff at the end that explains the etymology of the word barrage might be better at the start of the article, rather than the end.
- Section layout: In each section the layout might need work too. For example in "WWII", the section begins with a focus on El Alemain, then describes the African campaign in general, then Tunisa. Best to start general and then focus in. Later in the section it starts to read more like a listing of a few examples of creeping barrages, rather than a flowing prose on the use of the tactic.
- References: There don't seem to be enough. For instance there are only 2 refs for the entire "Standing and box barrages" section. I'm usually quite generous about referencing, but there are so many issues covered in each paragraph that one ref just isn't enough to cover them all. In particular the whole "Use and misuse of the word" section almost looks like WP:OR. I'm sure its correct but it needs some refs for what look like opinions rather than agreed facts.
- History: I don't know about the history of barrages (so this article has been enlightening!), but the Boer war image doesn't look like open sights to me, and the image description calls it a barrage! I'm not saying the article's wrong, but I think it might need more refs actually stating that the barrage only evolved in WWI.

Hope this helps, and I'll be delighted if these issues can be rectified quickly, but I think it needs a bit of work. Ranger Steve (talk) 23:21, 5 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Object Hard data should be cited. There are numbers all over the place and sometimes no citation within 3-5 sentences. Also, after the WWII section the article just tapers out. If this tactic has died out, it should be explained why it has become obsolete. If it hasn't been obsolete it needs to be expanded YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 01:36, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose – sorry, but there are just too many issues with the article at present. In addition to those noted above, I have the following comments:

Single line/sentence paragraphs should be combined with other paragraphs.
The images require alt text.
Dashes used in date ranges in the article or page ranges used in citations should be replaced with endashes. For example, "1914-15" to "1914–15".
As noted above, references in general are lacking.
Websites used as citations should not be presented as raw URLs. I would recommend the use of Template:Cite web.
Cite # 16: "Hogg, pp 32 % 147". Umm, why is there a percentage symbol here?
Book sources listed in the "References" section require ISBNs. Also, it might be an idea to implement Template:Cit book here.
There really needs to be more detail on barrages in the article, particularly post Second World War.

Although this article does require a bit of work yet, please do not be discouraged and I hope you will continue to develop the piece. If this assessment does fail, I would recommend all of the above comments be taken into consideration and the article can be re-developed from there. After this, you might like to submit it for a peer review. :) Cheers, Abraham, B.S. (talk) 04:02, 8 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose I see atleast one paragraph without a citation. Thats enough to make this a Start-class article, and if its start class then it needs help satisfying the B-Class criteria before its comes here. In addition:
- None of your images use alt text, please go back and add this text to your visual media. You have one dead external link and a number of external links flagged as suspicious, please check and advise. No disambiguation links reported.
- You introduction is limited to examples from the world wars, surely you could get more info in there about the evolving use from Korea to the present.
- You skip straight to the creeping barrage. We are not talking about creeping barrages, we talk about the barrage; surely we can work in the history of the barrage before we get to the definitions of the barrage as presented in the section.
- The sanding and box barrages should be merged into the preceding section, which itself should be renamed types of barrages.
- Your article's skipping around on subject matter like an out-of-date record. Lets get some uniformity in the prose: introduction, history, modern day, definition and explanation of terms, future developments.
- Although its eluded to, your need to state clearly that this applies to naval artillery as well. That important fact is noticeably absent in the article.
I recommend that your withdraw this request and file for a Peer Review instead, its obvious that the article simply isn;t in a position where it can reasonably obtain an A-class rank right now. TomStar81 (Talk) 10:44, 8 January 2010 (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.