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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by SandyGeorgia 03:39, 23 December 2009 [1].

North Carolina class battleship

[edit]
Nominator(s): —Ed (talk • contribs) 04:24, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Toolbox

The North Carolina-class battleships epitomized the problem faced by 1930s designers: how to fit a maximum of firepower, armor and speed into a 35,000 long ton ship. Both ships of the class, North Carolina and Washington, served with distinction in the Second World War, with Washington sinking the Japanese battleship Kirishima in the Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. Both ships were decommissioned soon after the war's end; North Carolina was preserved as a memorial and still exists today, while Washington was broken up for scrap. The article passed a Military history WikiProject A-class review in September. Any and all comments are welcome! Regards, —Ed (talk • contribs) 04:24, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Awadewit image clearance moved to talk. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:26, 27 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Support 2c. 20:15, 19 November 2009 (UTC) Dates are consistent. Apart from noted below, citations are consistent. Resolved 2c at Talk: Fifelfoo (talk) 04:49, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment. Alt text done; thanks. Alt text is present and is of good quality (thanks), but there are a couple of problems:
  • Alt text is missing for File:USS North Carolina Fit out NARA 1941-04-17.jpg.
  • A few of the phrases in the alt text cannot be verified by a non-expert just from the image, and need to be reworded or merged into the caption; see WP:ALT#Verifiability. These include "Proposed" (in "Proposed schematics"), "Design schematic, more similar to the eventual design", "16 inch" (in "two levels of magazines for the 16 inch shells"), "instructions" (in "another yells instructions"), "The explosive force", and "The King".
Eubulides (talk) 05:03, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I thought that alt text viewers were supposed to use the caption and alt text together? I.e. so information in the caption should not be repeated in the alt text? For example, in the king image, the caption starts with "King George VI of the United Kingdom ...", while the alt text has "the King". —Ed (talk • contribs) 05:41, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Also, @"instructions", would you rather that it say a guy is 'yelling something unknown'? —Ed (talk • contribs) 05:43, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'd replace "the King" with something about a man in a naval uniform of very high rank. And for the other image I'd just say that the man is yelling at the other men. Eubulides (talk) 05:48, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hah, wrong edit summary, but does this satisfy your concerns? Sorry Fifel, I assumed it was Eubulides. :-) —Ed (talk • contribs) 06:03, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Most of the above problems have been fixed (thanks) and I struck them, but there are still some phrases that can't be verifiable by a non-expert who is looking only at the images (see WP:ALT#Verifiability): 'Proposed design "A"' (nothing in that image says it's proposed, or is "A"), 'Proposed design "XVI"' (likewise), 'The explosive force from the torpedo' (the image doesn't establish to a non-expert that it was a torpedo, or even that it was an explosion), '—the King—' (can't tell it's a king from the image; besides, the caption already says it's the King, and alt text shouldn't repeat the caption; just remove '—the King—' to fix the problem). Eubulides (talk) 05:52, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Schemes and torpedo are fixed, but I disagree on the last point... It seems like a good time to IAR. I fully understand what WP:ALT#Verifiability says, and what you are stating is within the letter of the policy, but I don't think it is in its spirit to willfully mislead a reader. Even the blind should know that he is the king, not a "high ranking naval officer" or "person decorated with ribbons" etc. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 07:14, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"Even the blind should know that he is the king" But the blind will know that he is the king, because the caption will be read aloud to the blind, and the caption says he's the king. With the proposed change, the blind will find out that he's the king at the same time the sighted reader finds out. Both sets of readers will look at the picture (or listen to the alt text) and will see (or hear about) a man of high rank; and will then later read (or hear) the caption, and find out that he's the king. That's a good thing: the visually impaired will get an experience that is similar to that of the sighted. But when the alt text says "the King", the visually impaired gets a different experience than the sighted: one that repeats the caption in an undesirable way. (Thanks for fixing the other problems, by the way; I've struck that part of my comments.) Eubulides (talk) 01:27, 18 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand how this is an "undesirable way". I'm not discriminating against the blind by ensuring they know which guy (ie the one with ribbons) is the king, am I? The caption does not—and should not IMO, because it ought to be obvious to people seeing the image—signify which one is the king. The blind do not have this advantage of seeing who is in front, hence the mention in the alt text.
Also, keep this in mind: "high rank" can equate to many different people who could be or were accompanying the King, like generals and admirals (and all of the accompanying ranks, like vice admiral or lieutenant general, etc.) —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 01:42, 18 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well, we've spent way too much time on this already, but removing the identification of the king from the caption would be a clear mistake. Most readers won't know the king from a hole in the wall. (These days, most readers won't recognize any British figure from World War II, other than Churchill.) All that's clear from the image itself is that it's some high-ranking guy. It's not at all obvious to a non-expert that the guy happens to be His Majesty. And "high rank" accurately reflects his title, regardless of whether the phrase is interpreted as rank of nobility or military rank: the king was Commander-in-chief of the British armed forces. Eubulides (talk) 04:57, 18 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You miss my point. (a) there is no identification in the caption as to which guy the King is, but (b) if I am describing what the image is to the visually impaired, I need to inform them which one is the king and not just say "a guy of high rank with many ribbons". "High rank" is accurate in a very ambiguous sense because it can be interpreted in so many ways. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 05:24, 18 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • "there is no identification in the caption as to which guy the King is" Yes, that is a problem, and as a sighted reader I at first thought that someone else was the King. But that is a problem that should be fixed in the caption (so that everybody can benefit from the fix) rather than in the alt text (where only visually impaired readers would benefit).
  • "if I am describing what the image is to the visually impaired, I need to inform them which one is the king" You need to inform everybody of that, not just the visually impaired. That is why that information should be in the caption. And once it's in the caption, then it should not be in the alt text, because alt text is supposed to not repeat what's in the caption. For more on this, please see WP:ALT#Repetition.
  • '"High rank" is accurate in a very ambiguous sense' For alt text that's exactly what is wanted here. All that a non-expert reader can tell from the image is that the person in question is high-ranking. Alt text should describe only the visual appearance of an image: it's not supposed to explain the image (that is the job of the caption, or of other adjacent text). In this caes the alt text should accurately describe the (limited) information that can be verified by a non-expert reader who is looking only at the image. For more on this, please see WP:ALT#Verifiability.
Eubulides (talk) 03:05, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- you have a point; hope I have clarified this.[2]
  • I regret that I still cannot budge. Describing the king as a "man of high rank with military ribbons" willfully and deliberately misleads a visually impaired reader, regardless of what is in the caption. Regards, —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 03:45, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • OK. Well, it's awkward, but I appended "(see caption)" to the "the King" in the alt text. Please bear in mind that the alt text is read aloud first, and that it normally cannot assume the reader knows what's in the caption. To help remind editors of this I put the alt text first in the Wiki markup for that image (that's the normal practice; see WP:ALT#Goal). Eubulides (talk) 20:11, 21 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Extremely detailed article thus far.--EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 12:22, 19 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

      • Thanks for the review! :-) —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 23:15, 20 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        • I currently don’t have the time to go over the rest of the article in such a nitpicky fashion (fortunately for you I guess!) however scanning over the rest of the article it all appears to be of the same high quality. So I have no problems supporting the article as I am sure you will address the one outstanding issue in regards to those two internet sources.
  • Support--EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 11:10, 25 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose for now. There are a number of niggling little things that are revealed by a careful reading of the text. I've fixed a few, but others remain, including:
  • "Five more design studies were put forth in late September ...". I've never heard of a study being "put forth" before. Why not simply "produced"?
Done (by Ed ... damn, I should have just procrastinated a few more minutes :) - Dank (push to talk) 21:56, 10 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) ::*[5], good thought. Dank, like five more minutes and you would have been clear. ;) —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 22:00, 10 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • "To meet the design requirement of 27 knots, the engine system was designed to supply 115,000 shaft horsepower (shp), but with the new technology, this was increased to 121,000 shp." Strange punctuation.
Fascinating ... that style of letting the readers know about a common unit abbreviation is common, but I don't see it once at WP:MOSNUM ... I do see for instance "kilocalorie (symbol kcal)". Is that what you'd like to see here Malleus, "115,000 shaft horsepower (symbol shp)"? It's such a common unit, used in the sidebar and footnotes, that it wouldn't be my call to write out "shaft horsepower" every time, but I wouldn't mind, either. - Dank (push to talk) 21:28, 10 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
My objection was to "but with the new technology". What new technology, and why "with"? --Malleus Fatuorum 21:51, 10 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The new technologies are the "several recent developments", I think. I see Ed removed the "with". - Dank (push to talk) 21:56, 10 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The outer two compartments, as well as the anti-torpedo bulge, were to be kept empty, while the third and fourth compartments were filled with liquid." The tenses seem inconsistent here. The bulge was to be kept empty, but the fourth compartment was kept empty.
Done by Ed. - Dank (push to talk) 21:56, 10 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • "the Vincent-Trammell Act limited company's profit from the ship's construction to 10 percent ...". Shouldn't this be "ships' construction"?
Done. - Dank (push to talk) 21:56, 10 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • "... while two unions ... were currently in conflict". Were currently?
Done. - Dank (push to talk) 22:02, 10 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Increased use of welding was proposed as a possible way to reduced weight and bolster the structural design efficiency". I don't feel I understand that phrase "structural design efficiency".
Removed "efficiency", I think "structural design" was meant. - Dank (push to talk) 22:02, 10 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • "... these men were reembarked in preparation for returning to the United States with troops returning home ...". Awkward repetition of "returning".
Done. - Dank (push to talk) 21:48, 10 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • "... many devices onboard the ship were fouled up". Hardly the right formal register for an encyclopedia article.
Done. - Dank (push to talk) 21:48, 10 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • "... she practiced for battle". Shouldn't this be "practised"?
Both the noun and verb are "practice" on this side of the pond. - Dank (push to talk) 21:42, 10 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm astonished that an "s" sound isn't represented as an "s" on your side of the pond, but nevertheless grateful for having learned something today. --Malleus Fatuorum 21:55, 10 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • "... the Bureau of Ships began to study what it would take to move these ships at 31 knots (36 mph; 57 km/h), four knots faster than their current attainable speed. These proved fruitless due to how much would need to be modified." What does "these" refer to here? "Current speed as of now?
Done. - Dank (push to talk) 21:48, 10 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • "However, no matter if the belt was taken off or not, the all of the hull form aft would have to be greatly modified ...".
Done. - Dank (push to talk) 21:48, 10 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The ships' powerplant incorporated a several recent developments in turbine equipment ...".
Done. - Dank (push to talk) 21:48, 10 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • "... a TDY jammer present in March 1946". What's a TDY jammer, and why was the ship made a present of one?
I Googled it and I still don't know. - Dank (push to talk) 22:02, 10 December 2009 (UTC) Ed? - Dank (push to talk) 22:06, 10 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

--Malleus Fatuorum 19:28, 7 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Malleus, thank you very much for your copyedits and concerns above. I will address the list above as soon as I can, but it is finals week at my college. I'll most likely be able to get to it Friday, barring a snow day tomorrow (we're supposed to get a decent amount, like 12–24 inches). Regards, —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 05:48, 9 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

  • I think this one is reasonably well-written (but hyphens please in 14-inch gun, etc? and should "in" as an abbreviation be used in main text?). Can this nomination be held here until the nominator has a chance to fix Malleus's issues? This is clumsy: "19,000 yd (11 mi; 17 km)–30,000 yd (17 mi; 27 km)"; couldn't it be "19,000–30,000 yard (11–17 mi; 17–27 km)"? And please note the requirement of a spaced en dash anyway when there are spaces within either element.
  • "Over the coming months"—next months (don't we know how many?)
  • "the latter's weight"—awkward possessive, and what is the latter?
  • Pic with caption "Proposed design "XVI", more similar to the final design"—why is it so tiny? Useless. Please see [[11]] for how to upsize. We shouldn't have to click on it to see what on earth it is, and people with slow connections are actually worse off if they have to click. I see another diagram that is hopelessly small. Please enlarge the size of many of the pics.
  • "King George VI of the United Kingdom"—"King" is black; the rest is blue. This is odd. Consider piping the first three items instead. Tony (talk) 13:57, 9 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The overall immune zone's outer limit"—why "overall"?
All done, Tony, except for image issues and hyphens on guns. I've browsed Category:Naval guns of the United States and I'm not any closer to understanding the conventions. - Dank (push to talk) 22:30, 10 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Will take a look at the images, but I'm not keen on forcing an increase in size if the default is supposed to be upped to 220px (assuming that is still going to happen?). Hyphens are a must, will go through and fix those (Dank, leave me a message on my talk if you want to know what the conventions are. They aren't difficult, but they vary per country, making it rather confusing). Not sure on "in", and not sure what you mean with your en dash comment. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 22:41, 10 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
We don't generally use acronyms without either linking them or saying what they stand for, unless it's obvious. And ... this is a pretty minor ... but you don't want to say that a wave was scrambled. It's okay to say that radar is scrambled because what's meant is that the signal, the information, is scrambled. - Dank (push to talk) 23:26, 10 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Good thought. Changed :) —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 23:54, 10 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
@Tony - hyphens[12], image sizes[13]. Regards, —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 02:33, 11 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestions The article could be much improved by attention to two areas.

  • Comprehensiveness The lede mentions treaty limitations, but the article does not give the area its due. All navies after the Washington Naval Treaty had to design battleships within treaty limitations, viz 35,000 tons of standard displacement, some 10,000 or more tons less than battleships then on the building ways of the US, Britain, and Japan. Those limitations meant tradeoffs between speed, calibre, and armour. US ships were also constrained by the lock width of the Panama Canal. While the subject extends beyond the scope of this article, it may be helpful to introduce the Design section with a short discussion of the problems posed by treaty limitations. That will put the rest of the relevant text on tradeoffs in better context.
  • Writing
    • "every design beside "II": You should break up this sentence, and the one following. You overuse dashes as punctuation. In many places a comma or period would be better.
    • "because, in the Bureau's view, the formula used to calculate its effectiveness was not realistic, and that a tapering of": "that" is extraneous.
    • "They were modifications of "XVI"—a design derided as "not being a true battleship"—that was 714 ft. long,": Can you rephrase this?
    • "turrets weighed slightly over 1,400-long-ton": tons, not ton, and the hyphens are unneeded as the term is not used as an adjective.
    • "The North Carolinas carried ten twin enclosed base ring mounts' worth of 5 in/38 caliber Mark 28 Mod 0 guns. Originally designed to be mounted upon destroyers built in the 1930s, it was so successful . . . ": "ten twin enclosed base ring mounts' worth" is stilted, and does not tell the average reader what a "base ring mount" is. The "it" commencing the second clause of the second sentence in context could mean the mount or the gun.
    • "The guns could be elevated to a maximum of 45 degrees; turrets one and three could depress to -2 degrees, but due to its superfiring position, turret two could only depress to 0 degrees." The guns depress, not the turrets.
    • "156,295-pound": why the hyphen?
    • "assisgned seventy-five": Spelling. It can be helpful to paste the text from the page (without markup) into a text editor with a spell checker.
    • "The engine system was divided into four engine rooms, all on the centerline of both ships": What does "of both ships" add?
    • "ranged from 16 in on both sides to 14.7 in": Not much of a range. Are there in fact only two values, one for sides, and one fore-and-aft?
    • "at either ends": "either end", or "the ends".

A sentence-by-sentence review of the text may show other items.

These comments are not an Oppose, and I may not be able to revisit this article for some time. Kablammo (talk) 02:41, 11 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Done with the writing bits (i.e. not comprehensiveness concerns), except "ranged from 16 in ..." - Dank (push to talk) 05:54, 11 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Re comprehensiveness, would using some of the relevant bits from Iowa-class battleship be enough? I can add a little more beyond what that says as well. No worries on not being able to revisit, becuase my WP time has been greatly reduced as well.
Re 16 inches, I don't have access to the source at the moment and Parsecboy (talk · contribs) wrote that section, but if my memory is correct, that is right. I should have the source again by Christmas and will double-check then. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 19:20, 12 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Re comprehensiveness: I hope I have addressed this? [14] It doesn't appear that Panamax affected the design much... —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 06:18, 21 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment
  • Thanks for the fixes. I still think "16 in turrets" needs to be "16-inch turrets". "In" is just too close to the preposition for the readers, unless part of the parenthetical unit conversion. There are lots of occurrences in this article. Tony (talk) 10:54, 11 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, missed that. Now done throughout, but I left "X ft Y in (Z m)" and similar alone. - Dank (push to talk) 15:48, 11 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Support wrt the quality of the prose. Some of the images are too small although there is room to enlarge them. The one showing torpedo damage in particular is very difficult to decipher without clicking on it. I have looked at the article as a non-logged in user with Explorer, Firefox and Safari. Graham Colm Talk 10:40, 13 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I guess Ed is still tied up with school, and I confess to incompetence in a variety of image issues. I see that Ed was concerned about making a change that would then get muliplied if the default thumbnail size is increased. Anyone who wants to take a whack at the image problem is more than welcome, as long as whatever you do is easily reversible (in one edit would be ideal!) if Ed disapproves, or if it needs to be reversed after the default thumbnail size increases. - Dank (push to talk) 13:41, 13 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I increased the size of the torpedo damage image. Dank was right re default thumbnail. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 06:18, 21 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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