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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 User:SandyGeorgia 02:43, 16 October 2008 [1].

USS Nevada (BB-36)

[edit]
Nominator(s): —the_ed17—


I'm nominating this article to be featured because it recently passed an A-class review and I feel that it is ready/almost ready. I'm not entirely sure about the quality of the prose, as I added chunks of info from different sources at different times... Basically, I fear that I am too close to the article and I missed some prose issues. =) Hopefully, there are none... Cheers! :D —the_ed17— 18:38, 5 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments Some issues I noticed in a quick glance:

  • The order in which you present the sourcing subsections—Bibliography, Notes, References—is strange to me for a couple reasons. First, these sections are usually presented in descending order of relevance to the article text (Notes, References, Bibliography using your section headers). Secondly, the order you used dissociates the References from the Bibliography.
    • Go Sandy! (she changed it)
  • 'See also' sections are for internal links to relevant articles. Your See also section lists other books on the topic; the best name for this would be Further reading (since you have already used 'Bibliography' in its other meaning).
    • Go Sandy!
  • Please tweak the Bibliography to consistently list authors by last name, first name (since that's the format you use in the References).
    • Go Sandy!
  • Some of your references have wikilinked accessdates. You can achieve unlinked accessdates in most citation templates by replacing the accessdate= parameter with accessyear= and accessdaymonth=.
    • =( I'll go through and change them.
      • Doing this changes the refs to "01-09 2008", which I don't like at all. Wouldn't it be simpler to change the {{cite web}} template so that it doesn't link the dates?
  • Formatting of page citations needs minor attention for consistency in punctuation (Bonner, 105. vs Wallin, 212–213). Note that dashes in page ranges should be endashes.
    • Will do.
      • Done and done.
  • Most, if not all, of the image captions are nominal groups—not complete sentences. These should not have ending punctuation.
    • Done.
  • Inch or the abbreviation 'in' should be used with the figures in the armor thickness section of the infobox. Additionally, when giving a range, the unit of measure should only be given once (not 13.5"–8", but rather 13.5–8 in).
    • Will do also!
      • Done.

These are all minor formatting issues; I'll try to get back for a full read of the article soon. Maralia (talk) 19:53, 5 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oops, shoulda read here first :-) When I take my first look at new FACs, I almost always correct ACCESS and LAYOUT issues :-) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:39, 5 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for that. =) —the_ed17— 23:01, 5 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Quick comments'

  • I've had to learn to live with "she" for ships, but there are an awful lot in the lead. Can you vary it a little? ("the Nevada"? "the ship"?). I see you use just Nevada further down; wouldn't it take "the" before it?
    • Any other opinions on "the"? I believe that you are not supposed to use it..I think that the ship is thought of almost as a person, and therefore has no "the". Am I right? (I've been wrong before...) —the_ed[[User:the_ed17/Newcomers|17]— 13:52, 6 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • En dash for year ranges.
    • Will hunt these down.
      • Dumb question...where? (I put one in the Bibliography, put I think that I overlooked what you are talking about...)
  • Ellipsis dots are ... spaced. See MOS.

Looks good. Tony (talk) 05:49, 6 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Question: with information I just added, I compare Nevada to Oregon, Connecticut and Delaware. However, do I use "BB-3", "BB-18" and "BB-26"? These designations did not start until 1920...and I'm in the pre-1915 part of the article (Design and construction). Any military history buffs want to help? (I'll post this on the WP:MILHIST talk page too.) —the_ed17— 01:41, 7 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments: The are a few things I have questions about.

  • First, in the opening paragraph, you have the sentence "Nevada served in both World Wars: in World War I, she was attached to the British Grand Fleet until the end of the war; in World War II, she was one of the battleships moored in Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked it." The "it" at the end is Peral Harbor, but in this case it may be better state that rather than imply that becuase it could be construed as meaning Nevada, and that would put your article at odds with naming conventions since ships need to be all "she/her" or all "it".
    • Changed to: "Nevada served in both World Wars: in World War I, she was attached to the British Grand Fleet until the end of the war; in World War II, she was one of the battleships that was sunk when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor." Is that better?
  • In the first section, you have the lines "Their tonnage was almost three times larger than the USS Oregon (BB-3) and almost twice as large as the USS Connecticut (BB-18). Also, the class was 8,000 tons heavier than one of the original American dreadnoughts, the USS Delaware (BB-28).[9]" Here the problem is plurality, we have two or more of one thing; which suggests that we are dealing with a class of ships, but the wording implies that we are only talking about one ship in a class (if there is a class, some of these lower battlewagons don't have a class). This needs to be resolved.
    • Changed to:

The Nevada class marked "another graduated step in the rapidly evolving American battleship".[10] When Nevada was originally built, The New York Times remarked that the new warship was "the greatest [battleship] afloat"[9] because her tonnage was nearly three times larger than the USS Oregon (BB-3) and almost twice as large as the USS Connecticut (BB-18). In addition, Nevada was 8,000 tons heavier than one of the original American dreadnoughts, the USS Delaware (BB-28).[9]

  • In the interwar year, the last sentence is "Nevada then served in the Pacific Fleet for the next eleven years." Do we know what she was doing? I don't expect anything too important, but it might be nice to see if anything pops up in her history during this time. I will not hold this against you if you can not find any information, this is merely an "I am curious" question.
    • A guess is that Bonner has that on Page 104, but Google Books won't let me view that page, (I don't own the book!) DANFS is where the "eleven years" statement came from, and Battleships in the U.S. Navy is a general overview of battleships and does not have that info.
  • Attack on pearl harbor, first sentence: "During the attack on Pearl Harbor, Nevada was not moored side-by-side with another battleship off Ford Island, and therefore was able to maneuver, an ability that was denied to the other eight battleships that were present." There are two problems with this statement: first, there were a total of eight battleships present, but this phrasing suggests that there were actually nine, eight other battleships and USS Nevada, not eight battleships including USS Nevada. This should be easy to fix. The other problem deals with manuvering: it is technically correct to note that the other battleships could not move, but IMO it should be noted of of the other seven battleships six were anchored at Ford Island; the seventh, USS Pennsylvania, had been drydocked before the attack and thus was not anchored at Ford Island during the air raid.

Otherwise it looks good. Well Done!

  • Can someone help me a bit with the Pearl Harbor map I added? It's huge because the key doesn't fit if it isn't huge!! -_-
  • need to re-word this sentence, 'cos I have too many "first"s....how?
    • "The class marked many firsts for U.S. Navy battleships: they were the first to have triple gun turrets,[11] to have a single funnel,[12] to have anti-aircraft guns,[13] and the first to be fired with oil instead of coal,[13][14] which gave them an engineering advantage.[8]" Thanks for the help, —the_ed17— 02:23, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • You could move this to the class page and that would solve your problem. If you needed it reworded, how about "The class was the first to have triple gun turrets, a single funnel, anti-aircraft guns, and introduced oil fired power plants which would give them an engineering advantage over earlier coal fired plants." TomStar81 (Talk) 03:46, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • Remind me aagain: who says that you suck at grammar? —the_ed17—
    • Also, with regard to images: the commons linker is there for a reason; if the people complain about the absence of images you can always tell them that the article's images are set and that there are additional images at the commons. TomStar81 (Talk) 03:49, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • I'm going to get rid of the key, I think, because it has no bearing on this article...then I can get the map smaller. Thanks! —the_ed17— 03:57, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        • There's nothing wrong with Tom's grammar—it's his spelling that makes me weep :) You should, though, add an 'and' in that sentence to complete the list ("gun turrets, a single funnel, and anti-aircraft guns, and introduced"). Regarding that map: I would make sure the key is linked on the map image page, but I wouldn't include the key on this article, as the gradient between most of the colors is so vanishingly small that it's not very helpful. Maralia (talk) 04:12, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
          • D 'And' is being added now. I will add the link now to the key in too...and the key is already out of the article :).
  • Support—I just commented before. But please note that supports carry only minor weight here. More important is the addressing of critical comments. Range en dash: I can't find it either. Just one substantive matter: the real value of the dollar amounts in 1912 was HUGE. When I looked at the $5M cost, I though, nah, that can't be right. It is very misleading. I wonder whether you might locate the table with dollar equivalents and insert the 2008 estimate. Anyone know where it is? There's a $50K amount, too. Tony (talk) 13:33, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments I copyedited the lead, made some MOS fixes, changed accessdate parameters in references (to remove linking on dates), and added a couple dates in the infobox from NVR. I will continue a copyedit later (headed out to run errands now), but it would help if you take a look at the changes I just made and carry on with fixing the accessdate formatting. One source comment:

  • The Abraitis source needs to be replaced. The author's site is indeed hosted at princeton.edu, but that doesn't mean he's a professor, nor would his being a professor mean he was an expert in a relevant field, nor would his being a professor in a relevant field mean that his website was necessarily a reliable source with appropriate fact-checking and publication controls. (Sorry if that comes across as condescending - just trying to explain where bad assumptions can trip you up when assessing a source's reliability.) In fact, at [2] Abraitis lists his occupation as "employed as a computer programmer by a "Prestigious Ivy League" institution".

Back for more copyediting later. Maralia (talk) 17:05, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • I liked that copy-edit!! Thank you!
    • Plehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.................that's where assuming something comes back to get me. I'll stay with the NYT source then, which says "a little less than 600,000 gallons". —the_ed17— 17:22, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • Finished my copyedit. I left one hidden comment/question in the text. Are you still working on replacing some of the less-reliable sources? I haven't gone over the references in detail yet. Maralia (talk) 04:25, 9 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        • Oh my goodness! Thank you! I saw the hidden comment, and tomorrow I'll leave a message for the guy who added that info in (Thewellman, I think? I'll check the history). References should be alright; Hazegray's info is reliable and none of the MILHIST A-class reviewers had a problem with it. The only non-RS is the Pacific wrecks.com one (the very last ref). I believe that it cites non-contentious information, but if the ref is seen as a problem, I'll remove it immediately. Cheers! —Ed 17 for President Vote for Ed 04:46, 9 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A few more comments, mostly on references:

  • HyperWar is not an ideal source; the author lists a bibliography, but it's site-wide (not page-specific). I would consider it a tertiary source at best, since he cites both secondary and primary sources in his bibliography. HyperWar is used to support the commission date in the article text, and some portion of the armament section in the infobox. The commission date is sourced in the infobox to DANFS; let's use the same source for the citation in the article text. For the armament, there are so many sources cited at the end of the section that I can't tell which source supports which data, but I would prefer to try finding a more reliable source to substitute for HyperWar there.
  • On a related note: I have a really hard time making sense of the armament section. There's so much information there, and almost nothing is linked (and 1920s should not be); it's just impossible to look up what guns she had at a given time. I'm sure I can come up with a better way to organize it, but this will just make it more necessary to break out the sources to clearly indicate which source supports which part of the armament text.
  • I notice that Ealdgyth questioned whether battleship.org (the Iowa Class Preservation Society's site) is a RS, and Tom explained why he feels it is reliable. I have a simpler question: why not drop this citation as it is the least reliable source of the four sources cited for the same sentence?
    • Done :)
  • Please add the parameter |format=PDF to any cite x templates for references that link to PDFs (the NYT links are all PDFs).
    • Done.

Maralia (talk) 03:27, 10 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support from Maralia I'm comfortable with the sourcing now. I gave the formatting a thorough going-over this morning:

  • Tweaked the armament section for similar formatting to rest of infobox
  • Removed HyperWar cite in armament as there were three other cites for the same fact
  • Replaced HyperWar cite on commission date with DANFS cite
  • Removed 'christened by' from infobox as the infobox is a mile long, the info is already in the main text, and we rarely put this (low importance) item in infoboxes anyway. Also moved the citation for it to the main text (which had a different cite)
  • Replaced templates on some New York Times citations; not sure why you used {{cite journal}} instead of {{cite news}}
  • Fixed date formatting in publication dates for NYT citations (they were using monthdayyear format but the rest of article uses daymonthyear)
  • Straightened out a weird problem where the converted draft figure (in meters) was listed under the Decks parameter
  • Added link to the NVR page into the {{NVR}} template
  • Removed a citation for an image as unnecessary
  • For the weird citation regarding her resembling the South Dakotas, I added the name of the book that the specs image was published in (Naval Recognition Manual) and the publication year (1943)
    • Thanks! I had no idea where the image was from...

Thanks for an interesting article. Apropos of nothing, may I ask why you picked this particular ship? Maralia (talk) 15:23, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the help! But that is a good question...I really don't know. For some reason that I can't remember, I've kinda "idolized" not the exact word I want, but w/e the ship since I became interested in Military History...so then I came here and I was like "Hmmm, I could improve this!"......so I did, and then it snowballed past the GA stage. =) —Ed 17 for President Vote for Ed 22:10, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • More notes: There is a mixture in both the article and the citations of US-style and international-style dates, even within one sentence, which is it:
  • Her keel was laid down on 4 November 1912, and by August 12, 1914, the ship was 72.4% complete.
  • Both citations and the article need to have a consistent date style.
    • I believe that this is done.
  • Can you address the text squeezed between images in the first section, "Design"? I'm not sure how to fix it, since these ever increasing infoboxes are taking over almost the entire lengths of articles.
    • Not really....the images are really only relevant to that section, so they can't be moved down...
  • I don't know what's happening in the infobox: some of the "×" are spaced, some aren't. Please see what WP:MOS says or aim for consistency:
  • 10 × 14-inch (356 mm)/45-caliber guns (2×3, 2×2 ...
  • Done.
  • 30% to 40% of what? With this new armor scheme, the protection tonnage was increased from 30% (in the New York class) to 40%. Total tonnage? And what is "protection tonnage"? Please watch the WP:JARGON; in fact, a jargon check throughout would be helpful: why isn't Dreadnought linked in the first sentence ?
    • I think that "protection tonnage" is the total amount of tonnage in a ship devoted to armor. I re-worded the sentence. The source used 30% of the New York's tonnage--but then in the next section it remarked that armor was 40% of the Nevada's displacement. I'm not sure, but I think that these (tonnage & displacement) are different, so I changed the sentence to only remark upon the latter.
    • Done.
  • What makes Hyperwar a reliable source, per WP:SPS and WP:V? http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/about.html
    • Would you like me to change ref #49 to reference the actual communique and then use HyperWar as a convenience copy..?

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:48, 14 October 2008 (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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