Talk:USS President (1800)/GA1

GA Review

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In the process of starting the review. The Ga criteria are:
Well written:

the prose is clear and the spelling and grammar are correct No
it complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, jargon, words to avoid, fiction, and list incorporation

Factually accurate and verifiable:
Yes

it provides references to all sources of information in the section(s) dedicated to the attribution of these sources according to the guide to layout;Yes
it provides in-line citations from reliable sources for direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, and contentious material relating to living persons—science-based articles should follow the scientific citation guidelines; Yesand
it contains no original research. Yes

Broad in its coverage:Yes

it addresses the main aspects of the topic; Yesand
it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).Yes

Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without bias.Yes

Stable: it does not change significantly from day-to-day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.Yes, although editing only recently finished it appears
Illustrated, if possible, by images: Yes

images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content;Yes and
images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.Yes

I'm putting a hold on this. This article has a lot of really good things going for it. However, there is problem with the writing. there are numerous run-on sentences and a lot of passive voice going on. Some sentence are confusing.
Passive voice examples:

"She was one of the six original frigates authorized for construction by the Naval Act of 1794 and the last of those frigates to launch in April of 1800."

Run-on sentences examples:
Commodore John Rodgers would remain her commanding officer for several years and she was at the center of the Little Belt Affair, one of the incidents leading up to the War of 1812.

Maybe "Commodore John Rogers commander her for several years. The President was also at the center of one of the incidents leading up to the War of 1812, the Little Belt Affair."

Confusing sentences examples:
Enroute to Malta on 12 September, President was involved in a collision with Constitution as a result of a sudden change in wind direction, causing the latter much damage to her stern, bow and figurehead

Which ship suffered the damage to their stern, bow and figurehead? Both, one? Some damage to one vessel and some to another?

"Latter" would be Constitution as in the "former" would be President.

Punctuation problems:
President, the flagship of Commodore John Rodgers sailed from Fort Severn on 10 May in search of Guerriere.

Should it be "President, the flagship of Commodore John Rodgers, sailed from Fort Severn on 10 May in search of Guerriere." or perhaps "Flying his flag from the President, Commodore John Rodgers sailed from Fort Severn on 10 May in search of Guerriere." Just suggestions.

These are just some examples of problems noted. I think it needs a read through for the grammar and punctuation.--HistorianBell 22:30, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I will see if I can find one of those mythical copy editors to go through the article. --Brad (talk) 09:07, 8 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've gone through and done a bit of copyediting. Nice work on this article Brad! Parsecboy (talk) 12:23, 8 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I did a copyedit pass as well. I have two remaining comments. The first is that I'm not sure what the formatting "_Nymphe_ and _Meduse_" is supposed to indicate. Should it me "Nymphe and Meduse"? The other is that the phrase "unidentified ship" pops up 4 times in "Little Belt Affair". The only fix for that that I could think of would be to identify the ship earlier. You might be able to mix in alternative phrasing like "her quarry", "President″s prey" etc... but it gets dicey quick. Overall, a very interesting story. Cheers. Haus^Talk 08:05, 10 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I wanted to take Roosevelt's description verbatim so that people can see how confusing it was written. I'm not even sure myself if I interpreted it correctly. I copied it directly from the gutenberg work listed in the bibliography. I try to stay away from words like "prey" or even "quarry" because it starts to sensationalize the article. I will fix up the Little Belt section and thanks a ton for your edits. --Brad (talk) 09:45, 10 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think that since the Gutenberg project creates plain-text only documents, that the underscores were supposed to indicate underlining. Per MOS:QUOTE: "Some text styling should be altered. Of course the typeface will be automatically standardized; but generally preserve bold and italics (see Italics, above). Where the source is an old typewritten document such as an academic dissertation, underlining is almost certainly used to represent italics, and should be changed to italics as it would be by any book publisher." Cheers. Haus^Talk 12:10, 10 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've done more cleanup and fixed up the Teddy quote. I think this level should be acceptable enough to pass GA. --Brad (talk) 10:56, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I did a read through. The cleanup looks great. However, there are two things that I think still need ot be fixed. First, in the section on the Little Belt Affair, the sentence "President had had one sailor slightly wounded in the exchange, while Little Belt suffered thirty-one killed or wounded" has too many "had"'s in it. The other is, also with the Little Belt Affair section, where ti says that the President was recommissioned. Does that mean it was taken out of commission and inactivated (say like the USS Missouri?) If so, there's no mention of it. --HistorianBell 01:52, 13 September 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by HistorianBell (talk • contribs)

I fixed the had had issue. We can assume that President was decommissioned after her service in the First Barbary War but none of my sources told me when or if this happened. I can't say without having a source to cite to. However, her recommissioning in 1809 was noted accordingly. --Brad (talk) 21:05, 13 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Status has been changed to passed.--HistorianBell 05:16, 17 September 2009 (UTC)