Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Japanese battleship Kirishima

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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.
Consensus to promote Woody (talk) 16:39, 15 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Japanese battleship Kirishima[edit]

Nominator(s): Cam (Chat)(Prof)
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The third of the Kongo class battlecruisers, sunk at the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal in one of the two battleship duals of the pacific war. This article has undergone a gradual rewrite; recently passed a thorough GA. As such I am nominating for A-Class. Cam (Chat)(Prof) 05:25, 15 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

  • Sandy's post at WT:SHIPS suggests to me that to keep doing well at FAC, we're going to need more copyeditors who are in some sense independent of SHIPS. Not sure how we'll accomplish that, but one thing I can do is to do more with edit summaries and notes here at ACR, to give copyeditors the information they need. Up til now, most of my edit summaries have been "ce", because otherwise, I was afraid it would come across too much like your mother saying, "Sit up straight, eat your vegetables, comb your hair ...". If it gets annoying, don't look :) - Dank (push to talk) 18:16, 15 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Alright. Edit summary away. Cam (Chat)(Prof) 05:46, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "She was the third ship of her class, and was designed by British naval engineer George Thurston." Some problems here. "her class" is an EGG problem (named after Easter egg (media)), unless we're saying "lead ship of her class". We were also criticized recently at FAC for linking things twice (not sure how far that extends ... some of you may want to just avoid linking things twice within a section or two, but I aim not to link anything twice in the same article, it's safer at FAC.) If you write "her class", then sooner or later you're going to have to link Kongo class battlecruiser, and the two links to the same article may (or may not) draw attention at FAC. Next problem: there's going to be disagreement on whether "and was" should be removed on grounds of tightness. I went with: "Designed by British naval engineer George Thurston, she was the third launched of the four Kongō-class battlecruisers." - Dank (push to talk) 19:39, 15 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Traditionally, my approach has been to link things in the lead, then once again in the article, and that's it. I viewed the lead and the body as being distinct from one another, and I know that MoS with regards to linking used to work that way as well. Cam (Chat)(Prof) 05:46, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
From a selfish point of view, I prefer the one-link-per-article approach: when I'm reading through an article quickly checking the links, I can manage to remember if a link has appeared before; I can't remember if it's appeared once, twice or more. Recently at Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/SMS_König/archive1, we were criticized for linking "High Seas Fleet" in the first section after linking it in the lead section. OTOH, this isn't consistently policed at FAC, and many FAs have double links. With annoying little details like this, I try to keep it real: some editors are very interested in FAC even with all the little annoying rules, and many of our best copyeditors are trying to learn and follow FAC, so unless it's important to me (and this isn't), I try to avoid doing things that are going to draw a comment at FAC, from anyone, just to keep everyone happy. - Dank (push to talk) 14:25, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • We're very inconsistent on Armament and Armor sections, which is fine with me, but I'm wondering if we couldn't be a little more outsider-friendly. Ed leaves those sections out of Rivadavia and Moreno, leaving those details to the class article. This article has one short Armament section. Sturmvogel tends to go into some detail. I'm concerned that when we're recruiting copyeditors, they'll stop on the first section and think, "I don't know anything about this, and I don't want to know anything about this". Would it be possible to make Armament a separate section and put it at the very end of the article? Even though that's not chronological, I think for most readers it would help rather than hurt the flow. - Dank (push to talk) 21:14, 15 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
When I started writing battleship articles, I based my layout for the article on what Tom had done with the Iowa class articles, which had a small "armament" section that just gave a brief overview of the weapons without going into as much detail as the class article itself. That said, I can easily shift the location of that section within the article to the end if need be. I can appreciate that a copyeditor who feels they know little about the subject just gives up (it's why I don't tend to copyedit articles to do with astrophysics!). Feel free to move. Cam (Chat)(Prof) 05:46, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I like to recapitulate most of the infobox in a design and description section, although I sometimes leave out any description of the armor. If you do that then the armament section doesn't look lonely and out of place. To my mind the class article gets the detailed info on the evolution of the design and the description of the ship with a brief summary of the history of all the ships. The individual ship article is the mirror image with the focus on the history of the ship, although I obviously disagree with several people as to the appropriate amount of information suitable for a ship article. To my mind, for this class of ships, it's harder to get a feel for just how massively they were reconstructed unless you have a decent description of them as originally completed. In this case you could do this in the main body, or, perhaps, by adding another infobox; one showing as built and the other as of the last reconstruction.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 06:46, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I never thought of two infoboxes before. That might be a great way to make sure the information is present (and sourced as needed) without putting off readers and copyeditors (and possibly FAC reviewers) with the technical detail. If it's in an infobox, people will ignore it if they want to. Yes, I think I like this suggestion better than my suggestion, although I'm not sure if anyone's going to agree with me. - Dank (push to talk) 14:42, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • A copyeditor might notice that the majority of modern sources refer to ships as "it", and AP Stylebook recommends "it" (at "boats"). But most of our ship writers prefer "she", and I think there's some wiki-logic to that. What Wikipedia has that other references don't is a sense that the text is by, for and about people who are close to the material. Sailors who had to trust their lives to their ships always anthropomorphized their ships, and sources that rely on first-person accounts also tend to say "she". I draw the line when we start ascribing intentions to ship, but "she" seems relatively harmless and "authentic" to me. WP:MOSSHIP allows consistent use of "she" or "it". - Dank (push to talk) 22:45, 15 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Again, I based this somewhat off the precedent set by Tom when he wrote the Iowa . MOS allows either one so long as it's consistent, so I tend to anthropomorphize my warships. Cam (Chat)(Prof) 05:46, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I can't decide; does it make more sense to say that she was equipped with floatplanes, or equipped with flying-off platforms for floatplanes? - Dank (push to talk) 23:49, 15 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Depends which modernization you're talking about. With the first one, she was basically given a crane and floatplanes, so they were lowered into the water and then took off themselves. With the second, she was fitted with launch catapults and a crane. Cam (Chat)(Prof) 05:46, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah I goofed here. I was just saying that it didn't sound right to me to say that a ship was equipped with a plane, since a plane isn't "gear"; I could be wrong. My dictionaries are no help, except that Webster's NWD gives "outfitted" in the definition. - Dank (push to talk) 14:50, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I believe we had a source in Japanese battleship Haruna that said that these were the most heavily armed ships in any navy at the time; is that right? Do we have that ref here somewhere? - Dank (push to talk) 01:24, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Robert Jackson, The World's Great Battleships (2000). P. 48. "The Kongo class, displacing 27,940 tonnes...mounted eight 355mm and 16 152mm guns and could make 30 knots. They carried a complement of 1437 and outclassed all other contemporary ships". That's the one I used for that particular cite in Haruna. Cam (Chat)(Prof) 05:46, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hm. Okay it's your call; whatever you think is most supported in the text is what should go in the lead; that might be "outclassed" or "most heavily armed" or something else. - Dank (push to talk) 14:35, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Btw, per ref #7, that same page supports the "most heavily armed" bit. - Dank (push to talk) 20:54, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I removed "fast" from "fast carrier" in the lead because I thought it might confuse readers without a link, and I couldn't find a link. If you can define or link it, great, otherwise I'd recommend removing the "fast" in the rest of the article. We do link "fast battleship" so that's fine. - Dank (push to talk) 03:42, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough. By the time WWII floats into the periscope, I've never heard of non-fast fleet carriers. The distinction was mostly used when the British and French had old carriers that were converted from battleships that were far slower than those converted from faster battlecruisers and newer carriers (The French Bearn comes to mind. She could only make 21.5 knots; barely capable of launching and landing aircraft). Cam (Chat)(Prof) 05:46, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This does come into play somewhat with the U.S., although the distinction there was between the Essex-class fast carriers and the smaller CVLs (so-called "Jeep" carriers based on the Liberty ship hulls). I don't know how common the term is within nautical-focused histories, but I have seen them called "fast carriers" in works about Leyte Gulf. I've also seen TF 38/58 called the "Fast Carrier Task Force" in Wiki entries, so I would assume that using "fast carrier" here is acceptable.Intothatdarkness (talk) 16:55, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I like "Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia)" but I got reverted to "Dutch East Indies"; it's your call. It's standard in American newspapers to provide geographical references that people are likely to know if you're talking about an older name for a country or a small location the readers may not have heard of. Our naming convention is at WP:NCGN#Alternate names, and although that's specifically referring to page titles, by convention it's relevant whenever you're talking about something that is or could be a page title. The issue is that most readers don't click on links most of the time, even when they don't know what something means without the link, and most readers don't know 60-year-old names for countries, so in most cases, not giving the modern name leaves readers without a clue. I don't have a problem leaving out a modern name when inserting it triggers POV edits, but that's not true here. - Dank (push to talk) 15:15, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have no problem with people using {{ship}}, {{sclass}}, {{USS}}, etc., but in my experience, editors are not memorizing the 30+ number parameters, so they make every possible mistake with these templates, including linking a ship it when it's already been linked. If we can attract more copyeditors, they'll catch this stuff, but new copyeditors are not going to memorize the templates, they're going to leave it for you guys to fix. Just sayin'. If you could reduce the number of parameters and only use the templates when you feel it's necessary, that might help. - Dank (push to talk) 15:15, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't tend to use the templates for that exact reason. Their markup syntax just gets too complex for me to comprehend after a while. Cam (Chat)(Prof) 22:32, 29 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • In general, we should use the most specific link available. Mitsubishi was just added one place and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries another; probably, both should be Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, without linking the second. - Dank (push to talk) 15:15, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Links are appearing and disappearing so I won't tackle it now, but sometime before FAC, my advice is to link anything that a reader unfamiliar with ships isn't likely to know, and only link things once. - Dank (push to talk) 20:18, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Duly noted. Will do before FAC. Cam (Chat)(Prof) 22:32, 29 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • You start off hyphenating "Kongō-class battlecruisers", and then the hyphen comes and goes after that. Most SHIPS people hyphenate it. If you hyphenate, it's "Yamashiro- and Ise-class battleships" or ""Yamashiro-class and Ise-class battleships" or "battleships in the Yamashiro and Ise classes". - Dank (push to talk) 00:44, 17 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think I'd prefer to go with the first option. Cam (Chat)(Prof) 22:32, 29 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Should "front faces of her turrets" be "forward faces"? - Dank (push to talk) 03:14, 17 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support, per usual disclaimer, although it won't pass FAC without attention to some of the problems I mentioned. I would appreciate it if someone would check my copyediting. - Dank (push to talk) 04:09, 17 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comments:
    • no dab links, ext links all work (no action required);
    • images do not have alt text, and although it is not a requirement, you might consider adding it in (suggestion only);
    • I think that the images I licenced correctly, but it might pay to have someone with a bit more knowledge in this area take a look;
    • there is a mixture of date formats used in the article, for instance in the lead "7 December 1941", but in the infobox "March 17, 1912". All the dates should be consistent format, although it doesn't matter which format you use;
    • in the References section, some of the ISBNs have hyphens while others don't. I think these should all have a consistent style;
      • Style has been made consistent. Cam (Chat)(Prof) 04:11, 2 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • the Advisor script reports that the ISBNs for the Schom work and the book by Wilmott & Keegan might not be correct, can you please investigate and rectify if necessary?
    • in the Citations section you have a "Jackson 2007" source, but it doesn't seem to appear in the References section;
      • Should be "Jackson 2008", my mistake. Cam (Chat)(Prof) 04:11, 2 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • Can you please take a look at this again? I don't think this has been fixed. The issue is that you have citations that say Jackson (2000) [Citation #7 for example]; Jackson (2007) [Citation #4] and Jackson (2008) [Citation # 17], but in the Reference list you only have the full bibliographic details for Jackson (2000). This indicates that multiple works by Jackson have been cited, but there are currently only full bibliographic details for one of these. AustralianRupert (talk) 12:15, 2 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
          • Whoopsies. I've added the other book. My bad. Cam (Chat)(Prof) 02:35, 3 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • in the Citations section, Citation # 2 uses italics for "Parshall, Jon; Bob Hacket, Sander...etc", but Citation # 3 & 6 do not. If these are authors, and not the publishers then they shouldn't be in italics, but if they are the publishers then they should be (I think, either way it should be consistent). AustralianRupert (talk) 11:24, 1 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • These are the authors and the publishers. For consistency, I've de-italicized them. Cam (Chat)(Prof) 04:11, 2 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • I'll get to these as quickly as I can, though that probably won't be until the weekend. I'm moving across the country for school tomorrow, so I'll be unavailable for a few days. Cam (Chat)(Prof) 20:44, 1 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: all my concerns have been addressed. AustralianRupert (talk) 11:36, 3 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments -
    • What happened to the ship after it sank? was it raised and scrapped or is it still there? is it used as a dive site, ect.
    • Who rescused the surviving crew? Were they captured or saved by Japanese vessels?
    • Nobutake Kondō, the commander of this vessel, survived the battle it might be useful to mention that he was not among the dead.XavierGreen (talk) 22:02, 3 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments This is a very strong article, but I think that some of its wording needs to be improved for the article to reach A class:
    • "a line of capital ships" - the term 'line' seems a bit odd here. 'Type' perhaps?
Changed to "a group of capital ships", though I suppose "type" would work just as well. I always viewed type as being indicative of the distinction between battleship/battlecruiser, whereas different lines of ships were different classes; i'm just trying to avoid using "class" four-hundred times. Cam (Chat)(Prof) 14:27, 7 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • What's 'flash-tightness'?
In my reading of the term both here and elsewhere, it has to do with the ability to seal the various components of the turret and magazine off from one another. For example, the Royal Navy concluded that poor flash-tightness was one of the big problems with their battlecruisers at Jutland. That said, I haven't been able to find a hard-and-fast definition of the term so far. I'll keep looking. Cam (Chat)(Prof) 14:27, 7 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • "The main guns carried ammunition for ninety shots" - surely this ammunition wasn't stored in the guns. I'd suggest something like 'The ship's magazines could accodate ninety rounds of ammunition for each of the main guns".
Done. Cam (Chat)(Prof) 14:27, 7 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • "During her reconstruction, the 3" guns were removed and replaced..." - which of the two reconstructions was this? (the first, I assume)
The second reconstruction actually. The first was primarily an armour/propulsion upgrade. Most of the serious armament reworking happened in the 1930's. Cam (Chat)(Prof) 14:27, 7 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • What's 'Third Reserve'?
My guess is a designation of "First Reserve Fleet", "Second Reserve Fleet", and "Third Reserve Fleet"; basically what order you call ships up from reserve in. I could be wrong though. Cam (Chat)(Prof) 14:27, 7 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • The last sentence in the para which begins with "Six days after Kirishima's reconstruction" needs a citation
Done. Cam (Chat)(Prof) 14:27, 7 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • The para which begins 'On 11 November 1941' is unreferenced Nick-D (talk) 10:44, 7 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Partially because I don't want to over-rely on combinedfleet, this one may take a wee bit of time. I'm away from my bookshelves for the next month, and I only brought about 20 books with me to uni. I'll take a look around Carleton Library later today and see what I find. Cam (Chat)(Prof) 14:27, 7 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments
    • The collision with Fuji during fleet maneuvers, do we know who was responsible for that and if anyone aboard Kirishima wound up sacked as a result?
    • If you can find a way to sneak it into the last paragraph on the death of Kirishima, I would suggest noting that Washington was commanded by Willis Augustus Lee. Lee's intimate understanding of radar help him maneuver Washington into a position to wail on Kirishima, and this was of curse a factor in the death Kirishima. TomStar81 (Talk) 14:51, 7 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment—A1 citation quality:
    Bibliography: Hammel, Eric (1988). spell out location to meet style you're using. Jackson, Robert (2000). missing location. Willmott, H.P. & Keegan, John [1999] (2002). Smithsonian Books isn't as well known as UPs, may require location information (nice use of original year!).
I'll get to work finding the locations. Cam (Chat)(Prof) 03:29, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • References made without citation or bibliography, consider based on nature of the reference works (I for one haven't heard of Kirishima's Combined Fleet before today), Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships; Kirishima's Combined Fleet. Gets worse, you footnote references to these, the footnotes should indicate "as cited in..." and "as cited in..." respectively unless you sighted the original work yourself (or another wikipedia editor did so), in which case the originals should also be cited in those footnotes.
I'm following Wikipedia MoS with regards to how I've formatted the citations for combinedfleet and Conway's. Cam (Chat)(Prof) 03:29, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Short citations: Willmott (2002), p. 35. Remove year to meet your style (year only when multiple works by same author), or add year to all short cites. Fifelfoo (talk) 03:07, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Will do. Cam (Chat)(Prof) 03:29, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Nice presentation of a work in series: Morison, Samuel Eliot (1958).
The discussion above is closed. 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.
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