Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/James Cook

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Withdrawn by nominator EyeSerene^talk 12:18, 23 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

James Cook

Nominator(s): Harkey (talk)

I am nominating this article for A-Class review because... It has been peer reviewed and considerably improved in the last month and I should like to proceed to FA in the near future. Thank you.Harkey (talk) 11:23, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments:

1) Lead needs a rewrite, I think. "Cook charted many areas ... by the Admiralty." doesn't strike me as encyclopaedic; nor is the legacy suitably addressed. Still needs that copyedit (particularly with regard to use of quotations) I mentioned. There's a space before the colon in note 1.

2) Some references also need filling out, eg. "Profile of Captain Cook Primary School at BBC News". There are a couple of references to Google books, which isn't how they are usually referenced. (eg. what is currently ref #60). Refs 61 and 62 are the same and can be consolidated via the "name" parameter (I don't know if you understand how to do that, if not, I can find you a link). #58 seems malformed. Is it actually the book being referenced if #59, or its review? Best avoid the latter; if the former then reference it as a book. #15, #17, #18 look like they need work. #42 does not have a page number (again a book that needs referencing as a book).

I'd like to see the latter point in particular brought up to speed quickly to give this ACR maximum chance of success. Would you like me to help you with it myself? I'm guessing you don't have much experience at this game. I had a look at this one at PR and I think it has strong potential. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 15:50, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

[Edit]. I notice some books are beneath, in which case it may just be a style problem and not a source problem. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 15:51, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your comments. As you noted, I am inexperienced in this field. I would value any help you are willing to give in editing the article.--Harkey (talk) 16:13, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments:

This needs a rewrite "...1752 promotion to mate (officer in charge of navigation)".

The link should be master's mate, note in the merchant service they were simply called mate (not a chief mate). Mates were not officers and were not in charge of navigation (that's the master's job!), they assisted the master with his duties. Hough says he was a master's mate on page 11, put a citation after you fix the wording. I thought Hough's description on page 6 was better since it specified he took an exam.

Hough doesn't have the detail of his temporary command of a cutter in 1756; it says the eagle was being refitted until 1757.
His promotions to lieutenant and commander need some more information; first, an ordinary seaman getting a commission was rare so I assume one of your sources mentions why they thought he was deserving on the rank. Second, he was 39 years old, which was also extremely old for a lieutenant; I would just put his age in that sentence. Similarly, his promotion to commander sounds like a reward to me based on the successes of the first voyage; I would cite this.
After promotion to Post-Captain Hough doesn't mention anything about an 'honorary retirement' (half-pay? a special reward?); if you have a source I would cite this. Kirk (talk) 16:39, 21 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments:

I've read through the peer review here and I see you were advised to bring this to MilHist A-class review (which is where we are). This puzzles me, as although he was a captain in the Royal Navy, and this brings it within the scope of MilHist, I would have thought that other WikiProjects might have been a better place to go for assistance with the non-military aspects of this article. Don't get me wrong, you are getting good advice above on the military parts, but what is really needed is a review of the exploration and scientific aspects. I don't know how much experience MilHist editors have with those topics, but what is needed here is careful consideration of how to balance the summaries of the voyages (what he is most famous for and about which an awful lot has been written) with the other aspects of his life (as this is an article about him, not the voyages). I'll add a few comments below, but what would be useful is to flag up the actual biographies of Cook and separate those out from the other sources, as where I would start is seeing which biographies of Cook have been used here (and which haven't). One question I would ask is how many of the actual books listed in the bibliography do you have, and how many were there when you started editing the article? I see from here that your first edit to this article was around this time last year, when the article looked like this. Could you summarise what has changed since then, and how much of the current text was added by earlier editors (this earlier text needs to be thoroughly checked against the sources provided)?
Having said that, I'll now make some more specific comments.
- The 'see also' section needs to be tidied up, as eight is far too many. Try and fold them into the main article with a reference and a link for each mention.
- The 'external links' section needs tidying up. Decisions need to be taken on which links should be here, which should be on other articles, and which should be used as references. The three biographical dictionary entires (Canada, Australia, New Zealand) are a good example of where things could be trimmed down. Either keep all three and expand under a "Further reading - biographies" subsection, or drop them altogether (though note them on the talk page). The alternative to trimming the external links (or moving them to other articles) is to do an expanded layout, grouping the external links by topic area, guiding the reader to where to read more on what could be a very large topic (depends on how successful the spinning out of the voyages to their own articles is). But most people will tell you to trim the external links and only use the essential ones. Any that might be useful for future editing (i.e. for use as references) should be recorded on the talk page.
- We should really have articles on the second and third voyages (we currently seem to only have an article on the first voyage). That would immensely simplify the organisation of this article.
- I would drop the 'Atlas portal' template.
- The image caption should say where the blue plaque is located.
- There are loads of pictures available to use (including this one that I took of a statue in London earlier this year). There should be some indication that you've considered the range of pictures available and consciously selected the ones being used here, with reasons for including each one. Otherwise there will be the potential for instability there as people try and add more pictures.
- It will be possible to track down the history of all the memorials and monuments and state exactly when they were commissioned/dedicated/unveiled. Currently, the article lacks these dates and details, with only one year mentioned (1993).
- The Runnymede/Kennedy mention is not needed.

I hope the above is helpful. I would be happy to read the article again and say more, but will leave it at that for now. Overall, I think a lot more work is needed, but as Grandiose says, the article definitely has potential. Carcharoth (talk) 00:21, 22 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. All the above comments are most helpful. I have already started to make the changes, with the easiest first. I have six biographies of Cook, as well as several books discussing various aspects of his achievements and legacy, to hand, and have already checked the facts in the article against them. I agree that we need at least two more articles on the voyages and possibly one on Cook's legacy. Some of the works listed in the bibliography are not cited in the article so could be moved to a further reading section, or to the talk page, without significant loss to the current content. --Harkey (talk) 13:54, 22 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think that the best course of action at this time would be to withdraw the article from ACR. I investigated the sources more thoroughly last night and realised that some of the books cited were less than scholarly. Also, the topic of James Cook, his voyages and legacy needs more consideration. Thank you all for your comments.--Harkey (talk) 10:18, 23 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Noted; a MilHist project coordinator should action this within the next 24 hours. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 11:26, 23 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.