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Good articleBattle of Wisconsin Heights has been listed as one of the Warfare good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
August 9, 2007Good article nomineeListed
September 23, 2007Good article reassessmentKept
Did You Know
A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on August 4, 2007.
The text of the entry was: Did you know ...that despite being heavily outnumbered, Chief Black Hawk's forces held off the American militia at the Battle of Wisconsin Heights long enough for many civilians to escape?
Current status: Good article

GA Review

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I have taken on Battle of Wisconsin Heights for review under the Good Article criteria, as nominated on the Good article candidates page by IvoShandor. You'll be pleased to hear that the article meets none of the quick-fail criteria, so I will shortly be conducting an in-depth review and will post the results below.

Where an article is not an outright pass, but requires relatively minor additional work to be brought up to GA standard, I will normally place it on hold - meaning that editors have around a week to address any issues raised. As a precaution to prevent failure by default should this occur, if editors are likely to be unavailable over the next ten days or so, feel free to leave a message on my talk page so we can arrange a more convenient time for review. Regards, EyeSereneTALK 11:35, 7 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

GA on hold

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I have now reviewed this article under the six Good article criteria, and have commented in detail on each criterion below:

1 Well written FAIL

1.1 Prose

This is the main area that needs some attention. Specific points are given below, but in general the text could do with a copyedit for grammar and article flow.

  • In places the prose is repetitive - there are too many mentions of Black Hawk's band consisting of noncombatants ie women, children and the elderly. This only really needs to be mentioned once, otherwise it comes over as NPOV.
Well the main result of the battle was that most of the non-combatants were able to escape. So it needs to be mentioned at least twice so the non-combatants don't come out of nowhere at the end. IvoShandor 19:02, 8 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Also related to the above, there is no need to specify "white militia" vs "Native Americans" quite so often - this is obvious from the article context, possibly inaccurate (given that the infobox states the US had native allies) and again comes across as NPOV.
Will remove most references to white, the problem with the Native American thing, often the sources don't specify whether the troops were Sauk or Fox, it was just a generic term to fill in but you're right I used it too much, I will intersperse, "Black Hawk's band" and "warriors" where it fits in.IvoShandor 19:05, 8 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Three U.S. spies crossed a small band of native warriors and pursued them to within a mile of their camp. Spies also killed two Sauk warriors before the battle proper began." Should this read "scouts" rather than "spies"?
I gave it a copy edit last night but will remove the redundancy and look it over. On the last point source says spies not scouts. IvoShandor 18:42, 8 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

1.2 Manual of Style

No problems here. The article complies with guidance for layout, headings, lead etc and is well wikilinked. Citations are properly formatted.

2 Factual accuracy FAIL

The article is pretty well sourced, with no glaring gaps. A few sentences could do with citations, but not to the extent of a GA fail. I have only a couple of comments here:

  • The infobox states "300 Menominee warriors" as US militia allies, but these are only mentioned in the aftermath and then only briefly. If they did not take place in the actual fighting, should they be included in the force strength figures?
I will clarify this. IvoShandor 18:42, 8 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • From the closing section: "At the mouth of the Bad Axe River hundreds of men, women and children would be killed..." - the article on the battle (Battle of Bad Axe) has the casualty figure as "more than 150", not hundreds.
That article has no sources and is wrong. (Wikipedia is never considered a reliable source for other articles btw).IvoShandor 18:42, 8 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Strike that, one source, but it is still incorrect. IvoShandor 18:43, 8 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

3 Coverage WEAK FAIL

Coverage is comprehensive and generally remains focused, apart from:

  • "After the battle, before dawn on 22 June, Neapope attempted to explain to the white officers that his group, which had been forced into fighting in the first place, wanted only to go back across the Mississippi River in peace. Having delivered his speech in his native Ho-Chunk language, Neapope found the whites unreceptive to his speech because the Ho-Chunk aligned with the militia had departed." I don't follow the relevance of this section - where did the Ho-Chunk come into the battle? Who is Neapope? Personally I think it distracts from the article focus and should be removed, but maybe you can think of a way to tie this in?
The point is they wouldn't let them surrender. I will clarify this, Neapope has an article so I am not going to go in depth here about who he was, I will mention that he was one of the leaders with Black Hawk. IvoShandor 18:45, 8 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

4 Neutrality FAIL

These points are dealt with in the Prose section above.

5 Stability PASS

From the article history there is no recent evidence of instability.

6 Images PASS

Both images used have suitable licenses and are appropriately captioned (although particularly with the Wisconsin Heights Battlefield image, there is some wierd duplication of content on the image page - not sure why).

As a result of the above concerns I have placed the article on hold. This gives editors up to a week to address the issues raised (although in some circumstances the hold period can be briefly extended). To help with tracking, editors may like to strike through each comment as it is dealt with, or use the template {{done}} after each comment.

Whilst I was reviewing I had a go at copyediting the first two sections (the introduction and Prelude), adding some background info to the Prelude to give context to the article. I hope you don't mind, and please correct any errors I have introduced ;)

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or are ready for a re-review. In any case I'll check back here in seven days (around Wed 15th August). All the best, EyeSereneTALK 17:23, 8 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Stuff done

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Here is a list of the stuff I have tweaked just for reviewer's reference.

  • Moved the section about Neapope's surrender attempt to "Aftermath." IvoShandor
  • Removed almost all references to white and Native American.
  • I would note, however, that I do not think this constitutes a POV problem, the key characteristic about this war was that it was a war between white settlers and a band of Native Americans who did not want give up their land. But I digress, I removed it anyway. IvoShandor
  • I have put in a request with an outside editor for a copy edit for grammar and flow, given that your comment came after I looked it over again I don't think my eyes are the best ones for the job. IvoShandor
  • I have went ahead and took a shot myself at the "Battle" section and will look at the others too, a second set of eyes can only help. IvoShandor
  • Upon reflection, spies and scouts are the same thing in a military context, I have switched the word "spies" with "scouts." IvoShandor
  • Found a source on the Ho-Chunk and added information about how they were sent ahead as a scouting party with a trader from Portage, Wisconsin. This in turn has allowed me to better clarify the "Neapope incident" which I moved to aftermath since it occurred during the evening, after the fighting had subsided.IvoShandor
  • Removed Menominee from the infobox.IvoShandor

I plan to continually add to this list above. Shouldn't take all seven days to complete points brought up. IvoShandor 19:21, 8 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Essentially I think only the flow/grammar remains to be addressed. My copyeditor said she will be on it within the next 12 hours, about 6 hours ago. Unless any of the points haven't been addressed to your satisfaction, I think we are almost there. IvoShandor 03:40, 9 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

GA Pass

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Congratulations on an excellent copyedit on the suggestions provided. I have now passed Battle of Wisconsin Heights as a Good Article, and listed it as such on the Good Articles page under History > War and military > Conflicts, battles and military exercises. For the record, IvoShandor and Cricketgirl contributed significantly to this GA pass (with five or more major edits in the last 50).

Well done! EyeSereneTALK 21:59, 9 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the review and the copy edits you, yourself did here. Excellent work by all. : )IvoShandor 22:02, 9 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

GA Sweeps Review: Pass

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As part of the WikiProject Good Articles, we're doing sweeps to go over all of the current GAs and see if they still meet the GA criteria. I'm specifically going over all of the "Conflicts, battles and military exercises" articles. I realize that the article was passed just last month, but I'm going through all of the Conflicts articles so I might as well make sure the article still has its high quality. I believe the article currently meets the criteria and should remain listed as a Good article. I made a few minor corrections, but there were no major problems with the article. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. I have edited the article history to reflect this review. Regards, --Nehrams2020 21:24, 23 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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An anon was adding some links to the see also. They would be appropriate but every one of them is already linked to in the article. No need to be redundant. --IvoShandor (talk) 06:33, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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