Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/SMS Weissenburg/archive1

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 Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 14:14, 30 June 2017 [1].

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SMS Weissenburg

Nominator(s): Parsecboy (talk) 14:14, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Another article on a German battleship, this one had a rather lengthy career, under the German, Ottoman, and Turkish flags, and was involved in some fairly significant events (the Boxer Rebellion, the Balkan Wars, and World War I to name a few). The article just passed a MILHIST A-class review, after having been heavily rewritten since it originally became a GA back in 2009. Thanks to all who take the time to review the article. Parsecboy (talk) 14:14, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Image review

• Brassey's should be italicized
  • Done
• Suggest scaling up both maps
  • Done
• File:Brandenburg_Brassey's.png: what was the author's date of death?
  • Added
• File:SMS_Weissenburg_steaming_at_high_speed_NH_65755.tiff: when/where was this first published? Same with File:SMS_Weissenburg_NH_48568.tiff, File:SMS_Weissenburg_NH_88653.jpg, File:SMS_Weissenburg_NH_47896.tiff. Nikkimaria (talk) 17:55, 3 June 2017 (UTC)
  • Unknown, but the NHHC's position is that all photographs hosted on their site are in the public domain in the United States. Thanks Nikki. Parsecboy (talk) 18:47, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

Support Comments by Finetooth

I bring no special expertise in naval matters to this review, but the article's prose is quite good, and the content seems comprehensive. I have a few questions and suggestions.

General

• The images need alt text.

Design

• ¶2 "...heavier than other capital ships of the period..." – Link capital ship?

• Good idea

Construction to 1900

• ¶1 The six repetitions of "she" in this paragraph seem a bit much.

• Good catch, reworded a few of those.

• ¶4" While steaming back to Kiel, a severe storm hit the fleet, causing significant damage to many ships and sinking the torpedo boat S58." – Since the storm wasn't steaming, maybe recast as "A severe storm, striking the fleet as it steamed back to Kiel, caused significant damage to many ships and sank the torpedo boat S58."

• Good idea

• ¶6 "included stops in the Shetlands" – Link Shetland?

• Done

Boxer Rebellion

• ¶2 "The four battleships and the aviso..." – Link aviso, recasting to avoid link bump with Hela?

• Linked, but I think the general rule of thumb is three adjacent links, and I can't really think of a way to reword it to avoid two links that isn't clunkier.

1901–1910

• ¶1 "in an accident that damaged her ram bow..." – Link ram bow?

• Done

Italo-Turkish War

• ¶1 "Italy declared war on the Ottoman Empire..." – Why? What was the war about?

• A land grab, in a nutshell - clarified that in the text

• ¶1 Link "central battery"?

• Done

• ¶1 "Unaware that a war had begun..." – This surprised me. No radio? If not, why not?

• No clear reason why - the ship was originally fitted with a wireless set, and I'd assume it would have remained aboard when the Germans sold the vessel to the Ottomans. Later on in the article, there is a reference to the poor condition of the ship by the start of the Balkan Wars in 1912, and given the general level of neglect the Ottoman fleet was famous for, I'd think the wireless sets were simply inoperable.

• ¶1 "the fleet returned to Nagara" – Might be good to say where Nagara is. It's included in the World War 1 map later in the article, but it might be nice to know the location on first mention of Nagara.

• Good idea

Balkan Wars

• ¶1 "The Balkan League declared war on the Ottoman Empire..." – Maybe a sentence or half-sentence what the war was about? The link helps, but just a bit of an explanation would be nice.

• Added a bit to clarify this.

Battle of Elli

• ¶2 "completed a 16-point turn" − I think this should be explained, perhaps in a footnote. Does this mean 16 degrees of the compass? Is it important to say whether the turn was clockwise or counterclockwise? It's hard for someone unversed in these matters to imagine the layout of the battle scene. The illustration of the Battle of Lemnos is really helpful in that regard, though it depicts only one instant in time rather than a set of maneuvers.

• Linked to points of the compass - it should be pointed out that the Lemnos illustration is simply the order of battle, not representative of anything that occurred. Unfortunately there don't appear to be any maps of either battle

World War I

• ¶1 "the actions of the German battlecruiser Goeben – What actions?

• Linked to Black Sea Raid.

• That's all. Finetooth (talk) 17:53, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

• Thanks for your review! Parsecboy (talk) 12:26, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

• All looks good except for the missing alt text. Very interesting article that caused me to link through to articles such as Boxer Rebellion to brush up on my history. Assuming you'll do something about the alt text, I'm happy to support on prose, as noted above. Finetooth (talk) 18:06, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

• I've added alt text. Parsecboy (talk) 12:39, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

CommentsSupport by Peacemaker67

• In the lead, suggest replacing "along with" with "which also included"
  • Good idea
• the ihp and kW conversions in the infobox don't match the body
  • Good catch
• link Ship commissioning, Kiel Canal, Queenstown (Cobh), Qingdao (Tsingtau)
  • Done
• "Wörth and the other ships"? Should this be Weissenburg?
  • Yup, good catch
• "was in a state of disrepair"
  • Fixed
• per MOS:TIME, there should be a leading 0 in 9:50 etc
  • Think I've gotten all of these
• could probably dispense with Greek in "Greek Georgios Averof"
  • Good idea
• decapitalise "and the Navy"
  • Done
• "By (when in) 1915, some of Turgut Reis's guns" Perhaps "At some point during 1915" if that is what is meant?
  • Works for me.

That's me done. Great work on this article. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 03:06, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! Parsecboy (talk) 11:52, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Comments and support by Gerda

Nice readable ship life story! I made a few changes, - revert if you don't like. Only minor points, and already mentioned above, such as please supply alternate texts for all images. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:16, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for supplying the alts, and fixing the other minor points. Support. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:19, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Support Comments by Hmlarson

Few comments mostly related to prose:

1. Can you work the one book listed under Further Reading into the article as a reference and omit the Further Reading section? (Wikipedia:Further reading)
   1. I guess I don't really see the point - there's nothing wrong with a Further Reading section, and it seems sort of artificial to add a citation that isn't necessary.
      1. Seems superfluous for just one book. Hmlarson (talk) 03:06, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
         1. A fair point - I've added a couple of other books to the section. Parsecboy (talk) 12:11, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
2. Under Design - Can you provide a brief summary of the design background and who designed it before describing dimensions? Looks like there's some info that could be briefly summarized in a sentence or two in the Design section of Brandenburg-class battleship without duplicating the lead sentence of the Construction to 1900 section.
   1. Added a few lines on that
      1. Good addition. Hmlarson (talk) 03:06, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
3. Under Service History
   1. Suggested re-wording of second sentence: "Ordered as battleship "C", she was laid down at the AG Vulcan shipyard in Stettin in May 1890 under construction number 199."
      1. Works for me
   2. Three consecutive sentences start with "The ship" and could be slightly re-worded for better flow/readability.
      1. Done, good idea.
4. Under Battle of Lemnos
   1. Are there sufficient references for a Ramiz Numan Bey article?
      1. Probably, yes - he was a Fleet Commander of the Ottoman Navy, and general assumption is that individuals of that sort of rank will be notable.
5. Under World War I
   1. Add WP:INTERWIKI link to Guido von Usedom
      1. Done
   2. Are there sufficient references for an SS Üsküdar (1907) article?
      1. More than likely, yes - resources like Miramar should be able to provide a good deal of information.

Hmlarson (talk) 18:21, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your review! Parsecboy (talk) 12:29, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Solid work. Looks good to me. Hmlarson (talk) 03:06, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Source review from Ealdgyth

• One of my "random googles" turned up this which appears to be a guy ripping Wikipedia articles and publishing them as ebooks, since the print edition is from "Create Space". Just putting this here in case someone brings it up ... it's obviously the book plagarizing Wikipedia, not the other way around.
• I randomly googled three sentences and nothing showed up except mirrors. [ Earwig's tool https://tools.wmflabs.org/copyvios/?lang=en&project=wikipedia&title=SMS+Weissenburg&oldid=&action=search&use_engine=1&use_links=1&turnitin=0] shows no copyright violations.

Otherwise everything looks good. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:37, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for checking these, Ealdgyth. Parsecboy (talk) 23:16, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

• Closing note: This candidate has been promoted, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FAC/ar, and leave the {{featured article candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Ian Rose (talk) 14:14, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.