Wikipedia:Featured article review/Iowa-class battleship/archive2

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

The article was removed by YellowAssessmentMonkey 23:35, 28 March 2010 [1].

Iowa class battleship[edit]

Review commentary[edit]

Toolbox
Notified: MBK004, The ed17, Sturmvogel 66, Climie.ca, Cla68 ... Military history Wikiproject, Wikiproject Ships, Operation Majestic Titan

I am nominating this featured article for review because...its been about 18 months since the article has seen a formal review of any kind, and in that time the article has accumulated some dust, so to speak. This includes a number of citation needed tags, a couple of dead external links, and butload of images that need alt text attention. In summary, I have reason to believe that the article needs attention on FA points 1c and to a lesser extent 2c. TomStar81 (Talk) 00:49, 14 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment - Friedman has an entire chapter on the design of the class, shouldn't he be consulted/referenced more? —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 01:26, 14 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • YES!!!!! Please, PLEASE, add more Friedman. I desperate to reduce - radically reduce - the article's dependency on the internet, and anything you could do to help meet that goal would be warmly welcomed! TomStar81 (Talk) 03:42, 14 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • Well, I will certainly try, but it'll take time; I would probably have to/will rewrite most of that section. Which takes time. I'll attempt to at least start this weekend. In the meantime, you should get on your inter-library loan system and obtain Garzke and Dulin's United States battleships 1935–1992, which covers the Iowa's design, service lives, and modernizations in the 80's. :) —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 03:52, 14 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • Also, what do you think of incorporating parts/all of North Carolina class battleship#Background? —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 03:55, 14 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
          • I think that incorporating parts would be a good idea, but we need to be careful since the article is already pretty big. At 122kbs, this really should be split up according to WP:SIZE, so keep that in mind when adding/subtracting. Also, can I trouble you to specify which section we are talking about? I assume that its history, but I want to be 100% sure. TomStar81 (Talk) 04:35, 14 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
            • I've got both Friedman as well as Sumrall's Iowa Class Battleships: Their Design, Weapons & Equipment available if you need me for citations. -MBK004 07:42, 14 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
              • The more the merrier, and the article needs citations. Anything you can do to help would be appreciated. TomStar81 (Talk) 21:22, 14 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
          • Started a rewrite of the Design section here: User:The ed17/Sandbox/Iowa class battleship. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 07:33, 15 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Alt Text - All images in the article are now compliant with alt text guidelines. TomStar81 (Talk) 04:36, 14 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks for doing all that work! Wow. The alt text looks very good, except that one image is missing alt text: Image:BB61 USS Iowa BB61 broadside USN.jpg. To some extent this is the most important image, as it's the lead and its alt text will introduce the appearance of this battleship class to readers who can't see the images. Can you please add it? Eubulides (talk) 05:31, 14 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    I got it. TomStar81 (Talk) 21:22, 14 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks. Eubulides (talk) 03:44, 15 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • External Links - All current external links in Green and Blue are checked and cleared for being current and updated. I have encountered an unexpected hiccup with the sole remaining redlink, and will need to locate an alternative source of material to replace the malfunctioning cite. TomStar81 (Talk) 06:48, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments This is still a good article, but it needs a comprehensive tune up to retain FA status. I've had a quick run through the article, and have the following comments:
    • Some material isn't cited
      • This should all be out of the article body now, save for two statements in the infobox.
    • Some of the article is written in the passive voice (eg, "primarily to provide anti-aircraft screening for U.S. aircraft carriers" could be changed to "provide anti-aircraft protection to aircraft carriers")
    • I spotted some typos through the article
    • The caption "A look from the waterline back at the ship. Note how fine the hull is; this was a central part of how the ships were able go 31+ knots, but it also made them very wet forward in rough seas" is confusingly written - which ship is it referring to, what's meant by saying that "this was a central part", "31+ knots" is informal and "very wet forward" won't mean much to people who are unfamiliar with naval terminology
      • I fiddled with the caption, let me know what you think. TomStar81 (Talk) 21:23, 14 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • This photo seems to have been removed
    • Some paras in the history section are a bit short
      • Rewritten, please tell me if this is better.
    • It's unclear what relevance the material on the London naval treaty has to these ships - this needs to be made explicit if the material on it is retained
      • Attempted to clarify by using a version by The ed17 (talk · contribs), let me know if this requires further improvement.
        • Seems OK now
    • The article has way too many notes, many of which contain material of limited or no relevance to these ships. Moreover, some of the notes are unreferenced.
      • Reduced the number of notes and those left should have sources, more or less. Is this better?
        • Some still aren't cited and notes 7, 13 and 15 aren't needed (the purple prose in note 13 is also out of place)
    • Writing that New Jersey was reactivated to "delivering the ordnance necessary for the escalating war in Vietnam" makes it sound like she was used as a cargo ship. Moreover, it's both vague and factually incorrect: while the ship's firepower was very useful, it was hardly 'necessary'
    • The sub-sections on the ships repeat their names too often - for instance, Iowa is in almost every sentence in the para on that ship.
    • Some uses of the term "enemy" should be replaced with the names of the national forces in question ('enemy' isn't NPOV when referring to a specific country)
    • What's a "Montana-class type torpedo protection system"? (this could be replaced with something like "the torpedo protection system planned for the Montana-class battleships")
    • "The Iowa-class battleships were among the most heavily armed ships the United States ever put to sea" makes it sound like the US has stopped putting ships to sea. It's also factually questionable; many of the hundreds of ships which have embarked nuclear weapons since 1945 had a much heavier armament than these ships, and the SSBNs' firepower is vastly greater.
      • Removed altogather.
    • "When commissioned these battleships carried a wide array of 20 mm and 40 mm anti-aircraft guns, which were gradually replaced with Tomahawk and Harpoon missiles" isn't correct; the guns were replaced with missiles when the ships recommissioned in the 1980s, and not 'gradually' over time
      • Removed altogether.
    • 'broadsides' shouldn't be italicised in "When firing two broadsides per minute"
      • Unitalicized.
    • The section on the Pioneer UAV seems over-long compared to the coverage of the other aircraft which operated from the ships
      • Shortened it.
        • The aviation section works much better now
    • The 'Engineering plant' section is heavy going for people (like me) who are not familiar with mechanical terms (eg, text like "However, at full throttle more power is developed in the low pressure turbine by expanding the steam from 50 pounds per square inch (340 kPa) to 29 inches of vacuum than in the high pressure turbine which expands the steam from 540 pounds per square inch (3,700 kPa) to 50 pounds per square inch (340 kPa)" doesn't mean a great deal to me; can this please be translated? ;) )
      • Removed much of the material, attempted to simplify whats left. is this any batter?
        • Looks fine
    • The 'Radar' section doesn't identify or discuss the make of radar the ships used during World War II, and provides too much detail on the AN/SPS-49 system. Technical details such as "The transmitter/receiver is capable of operation in a long (1.0 msec), medium (0.25 msec), or short (0.10 msec) pulse mode to enhance radar performance for specific operational or tactical situations. Pulse repetition frequencies (PRF) of 750, 1,200, and 2,400 pulses/second are used for the long, medium, and short pulse modes, respectively" could also be omitted in the interests of readability.
      • Shortened the section, working on obtaining WWII specs, will advise.
    • The statement that the USN didn't think about ECM until 1967 is questionable; US warships were fitted with ECM systems from 1943 in response to German rocket bomb attacks. Moreover, the history of the ships' ECM system isn't really relevant.
      • Removed entire section from the article.
    • The 'Reactivation potential' section is much too detailed given that there's an article on this topic and now next to no prospect of them re-entering service. Moreover, statements such as "members of the United States Congress remain skeptical about the efficiency of the new destroyers" seem questionable when they're referenced to a 1999 publication - is this still the case 10 years later? The section also suffers from weasel words (eg, 'This move has drawn fire from a variety of sources familiar with the subject') and implies that Congress has been unanimously behind keeping the ships, which seems unlikely.
      • Removed much of the section.
        • I think that it's still too long
    • The 'popular culture' section should discuss how these ships are portrayed rather than recount some of their many representations. Stating that news coverage of Wisconsin during the Gulf War is 'popular culture' seems questionable (and omits the vast amounts of coverage the ships received throughout their careers). Nick-D (talk) 07:59, 14 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • Removed the entire section.
        • Are there no sources which discuss how the ships were popularly perceived? The fact that 3 of the 4 are now museum ships and the 4th will probably also become a museum ship suggests that they're well-known and popular (it's not cheap to put a battleship on display).
    • I just realised that I didn't summarise my comments against the FA criteria, as is common in FARs. In short, my comments relate to 1(a), 1(c) and 4. I don't see why they can't be addressed within the period of the review though, especially given the enthusiasm and experience of the OMT editors. Nick-D (talk) 09:50, 14 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • Don't worry about it, like I said above, I have a pretty good idea about what's wrong with the article. The question now is can the OMT team save the article before it loses its bronze star.
        • Overall, the article is better, but not all of my comments have been addressed yet and Brad's comments below are quite serious. Nick-D (talk) 04:07, 31 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Brief comments
    • There're a lot of issues that need to be fixed, but I'll confine myself to those that stick out in my mind:
    • The design history is too long on stuff that doesn't matter and too short on stuff that does. I'd like to see a good discussion of the constraints, especially for time, under which the class was designed, to emphasize that these ships were flawed, especially in their anti-torpedo protection system, which, IIRC was going to be revised in the Kentucky and Illinois.
      • Its been rebuilt by The ed17 (talk · contribs), let me know what you think of the new section.
        • Better, I think, but still needs to emphasize that the design was a case of good enough, and that they didn't have the luxury of time to optimize everything, including the adoption of South Dakota's flawed torpedo protection system rather than that of North Carolina.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 17:29, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • The armor section needs more detail to disabuse people of the common notion that the entire ship was armored and invulnerable. Serious students know better, but that is the common perception, in my exasperated experience.
      • This needs to be lengthened with the normal description of the armor layout. Plus a summary of its effectiveness.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 17:29, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • There's too much detail in the propulsion and electronics section. Perhaps some of that can be dumped into articles on the relevant systems, but these are places where the article can profitably be shortened.
      • Shortened per your suggestion.
        • I've shortened it even more. The manning roster wasn't of much general use.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 17:29, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • I see references to Davis, but no Davis listed in the bibliography.
    • A better sense is needed of the changes made to the ships as they were mothballed and reactivated.
    • A little more detail is needed on the armament, IMO. I know that the subarticle covers that in good detail, but there needs to be a bit more detail. Forex there's no textual reference to the armored box launchers for the Tomahawks. I'd prefer to see something on the order on the amount of detail provided for Parsecboy's ship class articles. Oh, and BTW, I'm fairly certain that there are retaining clips holding the turrets in place, though I'll have to hunt for the citation.
      • I actually elected to shrink the armament section down dramatically on grounds that the material there is covered in much greater detail on the sub page. To be fair, at 122,000+ bytes, this article was big enough that WP:SIZE did factor into this decision, but I can readd the material if you feel its warranted.
        • I think a bit too much has been chopped from this section, but the armament subpage does certainly confuse the issue. Lemme think a bit more on what to do here. I think that we may need to put capabilities and numbers here and leave the details to the armament article.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 17:29, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • I don't think that my stash of Warship Internationals has much on them, other than some gunnery results, but I ought to be able to replace the hyperbolic quote currently used with some real hit percentages made during gunnery exercises.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 15:48, 14 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • Hey, I just had a guy point out that MOS:APPENDIX says that the bibliography comes before all notes, footnotes, citations, etc.! I had no idea and I can't say that I really like it as I'm used to seeing footnotes before the bibliography in books.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 05:17, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • (a) this is why MOS is just a guideline (b) that doesn't happen in practice (c) that needs to be changed (I'm doing it now) —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 05:28, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

  • I agree with everything mentioned above but must point out that using the Military Channel as a reference is ridiculous. The fact that the Military Channel considers anything worthwhile is a waste of time. It's references like these that lead to the general public's perception of WP as an enormous joke.
    • Its been removed.
  • Maintaining the article on a constant basis would help prevent the necessity of FAR's and the requirement that this article now has to undergo a large overhaul to keep it compliant. --Brad (talk) 22:30, 17 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • To be fair to the last point I do move to keep the content stable and current whenever possible, but I like to have those FAs I worked on rotate through PR or FAR(C) since this allows for greater feedback and helps reinforce a non-ownership mentality. We are all in this together after all, and its not like the FAR(C) is bad for the project or Wikipedia. TomStar81 (Talk) 03:58, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • To point out the reason why you're mistaken we can use USS Kentucky (BB-66) as an example. It was found to be in serious error several months ago because the given references did not match the text. But nothing has been done to correct those errors. A look at a cleanup listing for ship articles reveals that there are 7 Iowa class related articles that have been tagged for various issues; some as far back as October 2008. Those have not been corrected either. Furthermore, the last FAR this article went through the suggestion I made about not using the Military Channel as a reference was ignored and it is still in the article! I'm beginning to see why Gene is fed up and angry.
You may believe this is a group effort but I see no evidence of any group maintaining articles. What I do see is a bunch of people jumping in at the last minute to save an article from demotion yet still leaving behind serious issues. It takes someone with a personal investment in the article to make things happen on a daily basis and not ignoring them only to squeak them past a FAR. --Brad (talk) 06:40, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I've been in school, I've been the designated driver, I've been the psychiatrist, I've been the marriage councilor, I've been the voice of reason for my family and friends in their time of dire need, and on top of all of that I am a wikipedian. I admit that I have been doing a rather lousy job of maintaining the article as of late, but I point out that their is no reason why I alone must be expected to do all of the work. Its my name that's listed on the maintained template, but our wiki-wide policy is to be bold, and quite frankly I rely on other people to fork over their two cents on the article by suggesting things, adding cn tags, uploading pictures, and all that to help keep the article current. My investment in the article was making sure that for its time the major issues were addressed and that those coming after me would have sources to check the information; if I had known that one or two things that I thought relevant would result in a nuclear incident I would have refrained from the FAR altogether and just picked at it in my spare time. I'm sorry to see that my approach to the article has bothered you so, and will take greater care int eh future to move more rapidly on matters on great interest to the community members.
  • I'll leave this unstruck because the source is claiming copyright (rather unbelievably, I admit). DrKiernan (talk) 10:32, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment on long-standing conversion error: "Tomahawk could hit targets 1,350 nautical miles (2,500 km) away, more than 55 times farther than the 16-inch (410 mm) guns' 24-mile (39 km) range.[A 26][57]"
  • Go read your own note at the A26 link about this range, and look at the above and figure out what is wrong with it.
  • or just look at the fact that 1,350/24 = 56¼ (i.e. more than 55 times), and 2,500/39 = 64+ times; you wouldn't say "more than 55 times" if it really were "64 times", would you?
  • This really gets me po'd because it is more than 4 years since I added a comment about this very same conversion in this edit. Since then it has already gone through another earlier Featured Article review, too, hasn't it? Why is it still wrong? Gene Nygaard (talk) 22:54, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Of course, my comment was actually addressed to the earlier occurrence of the same measurement. I've looked into it a little more, and find that:
      1. My comment was added before this article appeared on the main page as a featured article. About 31 minutes before, if my calculations of time differences are correct, and depending on how well they had their timing down on switching articles at that time.
        • Does this strike anybody else as a strange time for those who were taking the article through the first FA review to have fallen asleep on the job, and not to have noticed the addition of that comment?
      2. Anyway, here is how my comment appeared, in context, back in 2005: They fire projectiles weighing from 1,900 to 2,700 pounds (850 to 1,200 kg) at a maximum speed of 2,690 [[ft/s]] (820 [[m/s]]) up to 24 miles (39 km)<!--I find it unlikely that this range would be in statute miles. Source?-->. At maximum range the projectile spends almost 1½ minutes in flight.
      3. My comment and those two sentences in their entirety remained exactly that way for about a year and three months after the article appeared on the main page.
      4. Then, in another FA review (the second? third?), it was TomStar81 who identified the miles and removed my comment, in this edit with the edit summary "installing updated version". It now read: They fire projectiles weighing from 1,900 to 2,700 pounds (850 to 1,200 kg) at a maximum speed of 2,690 [[ft/s]] (820 [[m/s]]) up to 24 nautical miles (39 km). At maximum range the projectile spends almost 1½ minutes in flight.
        • However, though TomStar81 did identify the miles as nautical, he unexplicably left the "39 km" as it was.
          • Maybe he just figured that sea miles are the same thing as land miles, just measured over water? Can't figure out why he would identify them as nautical miles, and remove my comment that they weren't likely to be the statute miles implicit in the conersion, without fixing the conversion.
      5. So then TomStar81's mismatched, not-in-agreement units stayed in the article for another year and ten months until Jan 2009, when anonymous editor User:75.18.123.60 changed it,[2] with no discussion on the talk page and no edit summary other than an automatically generated section header:
        24 nautical miles (39 km) → 20 miles (32 km)
        • That's how it remains now.
        • Note that the numbers were not in agreement before this edit. If any editor can come in and try to make them agree, that's a good thing. Of course, those who are most interested in the article should be watching, and ask themselves if the change was made in the right direction, or if the correct number was thrown out and the wrong one retained.
        • But that isn't what happened here. We had an anonymous editor coming in, and at his/her whim, with no discussion on the talk page and no references added and no explanation in the edit summary, changing both numbers, and changing back from nautical miles to statute miles as well. That has to be part of the maintenance Brad talked about above: "Maintaining the article on a constant basis would help prevent the necessity of FAR's and the requirement that this article now has to undergo a large overhaul to keep it compliant." But once again, the main contributors to this article were asleep on the job, negligent in keeping track of what was being done to the article.
      6. Note, of course, that this is just the tip of the iceberg with respect to the problems with ambiguous units in this article. Generalize the lessons learned, and review all of the ambiguous units of measure carefully, making sure that each is properly identified. Gene Nygaard (talk) 04:28, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • I've solved the matter altogather by simply removing every instance of measurement. Now we do not have to worry about incorrect conversions in the article's weaponry sections becuase there are none.
      • You haven't solved anything at all. You removed them with an edit summary saying "Missiles: trim, removing material better presented in the armament article". But that at most only transfers the problem, to a page incorporated by reference here. And nothing has done to fix the same or worse problems on that subpage--Talk:Armament of the Iowa class battleship#Miles problems. And since the first thing people want to know about those big guns, the most significant feature of these battleships' armament, is how far they can shoot, that's the one thing that should be included in the main article, even if the details are on a subpage. Gene Nygaard (talk) 23:04, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • I agree with Gene that the range figures, and probably shell/warhead weight, are the bare-bones figures needed to this article. Therefore I've deleted the stuff about the gun weight and re-added the range that I'd pulled from Navweps.com earlier. I've also added it to the armament article to replace the BS range figure there as well. Tom, don't be quite so enthusiastic when removing data from the article next time; I had a valid, properly converted range figure that I had to dig out of the history. Dunno when I'll get around to adding similar data for the other weapons so, Gene, if you want to help out here, I'd be grateful.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 00:03, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • References comments - this version
    • Ref 20 could do with a better source.
    • I don't think ref 39 and 60 is reliable.
    • Ref 51 (hazegray) is not reliable.
    • Ref 55 could do with a better source
    • Ref 69 is probably not reliable.
    • Ref 89 does not look reliable.
    • Is ref 90 linking to a copyvio?
    • Refs 93 and 94: the ship featured was USS Enterprise (CV-6), not the battleships.
    • It would also be very good to get rid of the Global Security refs. Tom, I'm trying to rewrite the Design section in my sandbox, but you need to go to your library and start re-sourcing/rewriting/reorganizing the other sections. We don't need background histories on the guns (statistics would be better, leave the rest to the actual articles), and there are too many section headers for too short of sections. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 00:17, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • Gotcha. I'll start digging through the university library and see what I can do.
        • I've pulled a couple of these out of the article, though I do not remember which at the moment. I lost library privileges when I graduated and now I can not check anything out, so it may be slow going at the various city and university libraries as I try and find print sources to replace the flagged sources. TomStar81 (Talk) 09:55, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. What with four (or is it five?) featured article reviews, starting over four years ago (it appeared on the main page in 2005, accd to the talk page), this article now has to be as close to "Perfect" as we can get.
  • The fact that an article under active FA review could go 33⁄4 days (90 hours) without an edit of any sort, not even somebody coming by to fiddle with the interwiki links, must be pretty good evidence of that perfectness. Isn't it? It was starting to look like there was nothing left that could improve it, until Sturmvogel 66 stepped in now. Gene Nygaard (talk) 03:54, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • There is always one more thing that can be improved. At the moment, I've been working with Ed's sandbox version, located at User:The ed17/Sandbox/Iowa class battleship, which is where I've been doing my fiddling. I'm trying to track down some of the books I used to site information here, but so far that's been an exercise in futility. I did take a pretty big ax to the article, just to let you know. TomStar81 (Talk) 04:21, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • Just a reminder that you haven't done anything to the article in the past four days, and that it isn't your private plaything to do with as you please. Make any changes in reasonable, digestable chunks on the actual page, so that what you are doing is apparent and reflected in the history of the edits to the article itself, capable of being easily reviewed by other editors. Don't just try to wash over intervening edits and throwing in as a fait accompli in one big mess something you have been tinkering with hidden from view of those watching the article itself. Gene Nygaard (talk) 18:53, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • Just another note: I realize that's the way you've done it in the past. In fact, that's how you did it in the edit where you:
          1. Removed my comment about statute miles, and identified those miles as nautical miles
          2. But did not change in the then-wrong conversion to 39 km
          3. Did not provide any references for making the change, even though I had asked for sources in my comment
          4. Did not make the same change in the range of the same 16-inch guns when it was mentioned elsewhere in the same article
          5. Did not take the hint and generalize this even further, looking at the rest of the uses of miles in the article to see if they were appropriate
        • Had you made this change in its own edit, some other editor would have had a chance to pick up on the problem and correct it. So just take this as a warning to do your changes transparently this time. Use an appropriate edit summary for each change you make, so it can be easily reviewed by other editors. Gene Nygaard (talk) 19:27, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
          • You're warning him? He doesn't have to do anything of the sort if he doesn't want to. A simple request would probably work better. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 23:14, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Strange that you would choose to paint yourself with the same brush. I didn't "ask" because I didn't intend to imply that there are any options. Sure, he can choose to ignore me, but that's it.

Did I forget to mention that it is User:75.18.123.60 who has provided the most accurate numbers for the range those 16-inch/50 guns in this article? Much better numbers than those of TomStar81. Had everyone not been asleep on the job a year ago, somebody might has asked him/her to provide a reliable source for those numbers--or just have taken a minute or so to find one and help the newbie out.

But those 16-inch/50 guns are one of the most noticeable features of the Iowa-class battleships. And the first thing everybody wants to know is, "How far can those big mamas shoot?" How can something like that have unreliable numbers in this article, after all its reviews, and on top of that, different numbers in two different places?

Now the important stuff: Were everyone not still asleep at the helm in trying to guide this article through its current review, somebody would have fixed those numbers in the article, providing a reliable source for them, in the 65 hours since I raised the issue in this discussion. It's bad enough that they've remained a mess more more than four years after the issue was first raised; sure, three more days isn't an awful lot more--if it weren't for the fact that it is supposedly getting another serious review of its problems at this very time.

So now the question is, do you want to join Brad's Brigade, and help provide some of that "constant maintenance" he called for above? Or at least, if not providing it yourself, making sure that we have transparent, well-explained edits to help other editors carry on that constant maintenance? Or would you rather fritter away your time, trying to help TomStar81 establish clear title in fee simple absolute to this little bit of unreal estate, so that he can do with it as his whim takes him?

Keep in mind that this is a supposedly mature article, one which has already been featured on the main page over four years ago, one which has undergone a zillion featured article reviews since then. It is not some stub article undergoing its first major expansion. Nobody should be jumping in at this stage of the game and "installing updated version" out of the blue, as Tom has done in the past even after it had achieved featured-article status. Gene Nygaard (talk) 18:11, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I find all of this a lot of sound and fury that accomplishes nothing. Can we spend all of this energy on something a little more productive? I've cleaned up the main armament section using navweaps for the data, something that could have been done years ago if anyone had chosen to be bold. As for the units issue I find that almost purely an artifact of using manual conversions rather than the template, a practice I've never understood.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:54, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
None of the various templates tell you if the miles you are converting are nautical miles or statute miles. None of the various conversion templates tell you which of the dozen or so tons used on Wikipedia are being converted; you need to figure out that yourself before using the template. Templates don't keep you from converting to less-than-optimal units, and templates don't always give you an appropriate precision in the results. And the one that takes well over a thousand template pages to work is so overwhelmingly complex, with contradictory workings with different units and a steep learning curve, that there aren't but a handful of editors who are really capable of using {{convert}}. Worst of all, that monster has trapped the unwary and thrown British spellings into thousands of articles using American English, such as the Nimitz-class article. I find many more problems with conversions done using templates than I find in conversions done without them. Gene Nygaard (talk) 08:11, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'll grant that the convert template isn't the easiest thing to work with. It was only after using it many, many times that I noticed that you can control degree of precision, spelling and adjectival vs. noun usage. It's all laid out in the documentation, but you actually have to read the damn stuff because it's really easy to over look. Forex, {{convert|305|mm|3|sp=us|adj=on|lk=on}} will render as 305-millimeter (12.008-in) with links to millimeter and inch. And some of what you bitch about is the problem with the source, not the template. I continually get mixed up if Conway's is using long tons or metric tons when I'm using it and I'm sure that I've confused the two when creating articles. In fact I have to go back and update my older, and not so old, articles with what I now understand about the template. So I see the template problem that you've identified as a user issue, not something intrinsic to the template itself. I find it far easier to use manual conversions that require me to use a calculator and add the stupid non-breaking space between the numbers and the units, but YMMV. I keep a text document filled with wiki code for terms that I use a lot and I've got most of the convert templates copied there so minimize any extra typing. One reason that I can be so productive and minimize the tedious parts of article creation.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 18:51, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Round 2 Getting better

  • The Naval Historical Center changed its name in December 2008 to Naval History & Heritage Command (just as I wrote it) so all of old naming needs to be updated.
  • I see at least two cites to veteran websites = Not reliable sources.
  • Citations are not consistent ie: periods or no periods Should be period (example) pp. 171–189.
  • What does pp. 108–23 mean? from page 108 back to page 23? Try pp. 108–123 instead.
    • I'd disagree with this. The last two digits in a range of pages is perfectly understood to have an implicit digit there because the range starts at first page and goes to the last.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 22:49, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Date of publication missing. Should be: Newhart (2007), pp. 90–101. etc.
  • Update the "retrieved on" dates. Retrieved in 2005 doesn't give me a lot of confidence that the article has been updated or paid attention to.
  • Conversions need work: Knots/nautical miles need the mph and mi conversions.
    • I thought I removed all instances of this, was this not the case?
  • Conversions are not consistent and or missing throughout the article.
  • The article is overlinked. Example: Okinawa is linked twice within two paragraphs. --Brad (talk) 22:25, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • I was expecting this, it is a consequence of the removal of material that terms once in thier own sections that have now been combined would be overlinked. I intended to make another pass to check for this the day I worked on the text removal, but thought it best to wait for updated comments so as to reduce the amount of go-back-and-fix-it work that needed to be done. TomStar81 (Talk) 01:25, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm finding far too many occurrences of citations not matching the text. In the Service history section alone I found 4 like that. Since these troubles have a tendency to get "forgotten" I'll just keep on looking and tagging after I find some Pepto. --Brad (talk) 00:57, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • I did not honestly believe that so much would be wrong with this article and I wasn't even able to check the book references. The most disturbing issue is the close paraphrasing from the FAS article used repeatedly as a reference. The paraphrasing is most apparent in the "Ships" section where in describing Iowa we have: On 19 April 1989, an explosion of undetermined origin ripped through her No. 2 turret, killing 47 sailors. which is a direct lift of the passage. Other parts of the article read exactly the same with a few word changes to mix things up. The second most disturbing are the citations given that have absolutely no content to back up the passages they cite. It's almost like someone went around sticking cites on things to make it look good. This article has serious problems and they should not be hand waved away like they were in the last FAR from 2008. --Brad (talk) 06:02, 30 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • @Brad, the stuff from Friedman should be alright (I just wrote it), but I can't vouch for the rest. @Tom, I can't stress how much we need that U.S. Battleships 1935–1992 book. I can source the ship service histories and designs from my book United States Battleships in World War II, but only from the 1940s to 1976. Anything after that isn't covered. @Everyone, I'm trying to get the time to start a more substantial rewrite, but being at home right now means I am away from my books, and when I get back to university I have a paper and three exams this upcoming week. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 20:25, 30 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • Interesting development here Ed. I happened across another Navy article on BB-61 where it appears that the FAS page has actually paraphrased (almost entirely copied) the Navy article without (plagiarism) proper attribution. I find it unlikely that the Navy article was based on the FAS article. Therefore I now call into question the reliability of FAS as a source. Regardless, Iowa class battleship paraphrases another source which it should not do. --Brad (talk) 00:34, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
          • Not to introduce a red herring, and correct me if I am wrong, but it looks like the chinfo link you gave is a copy of Iowa's DANFS article? I have no opinion on how reliable FAS is, but I'm sure a better source can be used. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 01:46, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
            • Yes, the ships section is currently paraphrasing the FAS article which was apparently ripped from the DANFS article. Still, the Reactivation potential section paraphrases the FAS article heavily and I'm not aware of any PD source that FAS may have used for that information. And I'm still finding errors in the article but I've given up on listing them all. --Brad (talk) 18:13, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Tom! In this difference you are citing to the NVR but you're linking to the DANFS article instead. In this difference you removed the maintenance tag saying "this is supposed to be here" but there is nothing in the DANFS article on New Jersey that backs up anything in the entire paragraph! The DANFS article history ends after the Vietnam era so why you would use it for anything past 1970 is beyond me. --Brad (talk) 00:34, 31 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Citation #[28] is used 8 times and references page 68 of the act. Page 68 contains wording related to the Army; has nothing to do with ships. --Brad (talk) 03:25, 31 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • If this is the citation I am thinking of then it was actaully dead but not picked up as such by the internet checker tool; and the only number I could get when I treid to determine what page the amterial was on was 3862. I am positive that even for a US federal document there are not 3,862 pages, so I left it for later. TomStar81 (Talk) 03:35, 31 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments (criterion 1(c)): It has been stated here that the "USS" prefix is not applied to vessels under construction. As stated by the Navy Historical Center here:

    The prefix "USS," meaning "United States Ship," is used in official documents to identify a commissioned ship of the Navy. It applies to a ship while she is in commission. Before commissioning, or after decommissioning, she is referred to by name, with no prefix.

    That issue needs to be resolved, and appeals to a few years of Wikipedia practice should not trump what the Navy itself uses. We should get it right. On a related point, I suggest that the use of the female pronoun not be applied to hulls under construction, especially Illinois, which was scrapped on the shipway, unless the Navy itself applied it to a hull which never became a ship. The few references to the uncompleted hulls can be rephrased to do without pronouns entirely. Kablammo (talk) 15:09, 31 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
WP:MILMOS states that ships may use the female pronoun or it, but that the article must use the same format through the entire length of the text (full text here). We therefore can not remove she from the article without going against established guidelines. Also, the USS prefix debate has no formal guideline umph to back it up, so at the moment the policy we have concerning ship naming proactices takes precident, and that policy states that articles should be located at the most common name, which for now remains USS Illinois and USS Kentucky, despite the fact that niether ship was completed. In other words, the status quo of the information is being maintained in the absence of a compelling reason to change it, although I will take the suggestions you offer under advisement. TomStar81 (Talk) 20:38, 31 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure the "USS [name]" construct is the most common, and Google results are useless given the number of sites relying on Wikipedia. Wikipedia guidelines and policies are not a substitute for reliable sources, and the US Navy source indicates these would not be classified as "USS". We can no more make them United States Ships than we can make all British liners Royal Mail Ships. And neither of these was ever a ship; Kentucky was a hull, and Illinois was not even that. To remove the "USS" from the names of these vessels would do no damage to a fine article. Kablammo (talk) 21:10, 31 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I see that DANFS does use the female pronoun for Kentucky. ("Her" hull actually got wet-- not sure that makes a difference.) Kablammo (talk) 21:58, 31 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The revelvent guidelines for the presence of USS are found at Wikipedia:Naming conventions, which states in part that "Articles are normally titled using the most common English-language name of the subject of the article." More over, as noted on the same guideline page, the "...practice of using specialized names is often controversial, and should not be adopted unless it produces clear benefits outweighing the use of common names," and that "...the choice of title is not dependent on whether a name is 'right' in a moral or political sense." Lastly, as note at the page, "if an article name has been stable for a long time, and there is no good reason to change it, it should not be changed." A discussion concerning this interesting nit pick is underway at WT:SHIPS, I suggest that the conversation be condense on thier talk page and kept off this page until such time as a clear consensus emerges for a change in the names, such as they were. Until that time, WP:NAME takes pressidence for both Illinois and Kentucky, unless a consensus of the majority of the editors at FAR feel that such a change is both necessary and warranted for the purpose of maintaining the article's featured status. TomStar81 (Talk) 00:00, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Where we disagree is the statement that the "USS" name is the most common-- I see no evidence of that. If anything, the "USS" is more specialized than the actual (state) name for the projected vessels. I have posted on the ship project page, but the issue is relevant to criterion 1(c) here as well. Kablammo (talk) 00:23, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - I have finished a complete rewrite of the "Design" section with information from Friedman's U.S. Battleships: A Design History. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 19:39, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question - what is the status of the rest of the article? I see many tags from Brad101 (talk · contribs) - are these being addressed, or is someone waiting for a source to come through inter-library loan so they can address these? —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 20:16, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • I've been addressing them on the weekends since milhist activity is usually low saturday and sunday, however the last time I went to work on the article you were editting it ed, and I did not want to cause an edit conflict, so I waited until today to do that. As for the other part of your question: I'm unable to check books out from the library, and I've lost my UTEP computer lab privelages, so I was going to use my laptop in the library to add information from some of the library books to help some parts of the article, but the week I went to do that my hard drive died. I should be getting the laptop back sometime this week, so you should see some level of additional material in the article then. I the mean time I am attempting to locate a book of mine that has class statistics for the article infobox material. TomStar81 (Talk) 00:15, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment isn't this practice that wp:ships has to put ALL of the older FA through FAR a bit excessive? There are hundreds of FAs that are in much poorer shape than a well-crafted 1.5 years old FA such as this. Putting every single FA such as this through FAR only takes time away from FARing those articles that do really need it. Nergaal (talk) 01:56, 18 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • I don't know about that, I usually run articles like this through PR every year to get feedback for improvemnt, and I opted for FAR this year becuase I thought I would get better feedback from this process. So far, I am pleased to report that has been the case. TomStar81 (Talk) 02:14, 18 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Conversion to BBG I consulted a Garzke and Dulin book printed 1976 which claims that the entire class was considered for conversion to guided missile battleships. This is only mentioned as applying to Illinois and Kentucky. This needs to be clarified. --Brad (talk) 22:47, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm going from memory here, but I recall that at the time of the reactivation of USS New Jersey for service in the 600-ship navy there were a number of ideas being floated around for conversions to the battleships; one of which involved the removal of a turret to allow for the installation of a 48-cell vls launcher for increased missile capability. I'll have a look at stillwell's New Jersey book on Monday, he covers the reactivation period so I ought to able to come up with something. For the hell of it, I'll check the naval publications of All Hands as well, maybe there's something in their about the proposal as well. TomStar81 (Talk) 22:52, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • I have that book and remember reading about it when I was looking at the conversion proposals for the North Carolina class battleship#Post-war alterations and proposals section. I'll try to add something, but I may not be able to get to it soon; have a lot of schoolwork still to do. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 01:53, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • This particular omission is supporting what others have said here about the lack of research. I found mention of it in the book about 2 minutes after I started looking at the Iowa section. If the information is indeed true then an entire section in this article should be dedicated to conversion proposals. --Brad (talk) 08:17, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Clarify tag The clarify tag that I placed in the article here was in reference to a conversation on the talk page that disputed the statement. If you can read the entire thread on the talk page without falling asleep or committing suicide there appears to have been some argument over the reliability of the source. With all of the argument and other comments made, maybe it would be best to just remove the statement about the ships moving sideways when firing a broadside. --Brad (talk) 08:17, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    • I'm attempting find sources for the armor section, since mine have been called into question; however, I am displaced at the moment and as such am having a hard time locating info for this area. I think to think that I have been addressing the issues in the article, although I guess from your comment I am not doing a good job with that am I? TomStar81 (Talk) 01:27, 5 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It's not a major problem, the speed of the article as it's just cooking away, and it's not like it's taking up reviewing resources or anything YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 00:21, 9 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well it's been around for a while and things have petered out and the few recent changes have mostly being deleting stuff that is unsourced, so I moved it down to refocus things, hopefully YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 00:51, 15 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Some final comments before I likely ask for a delist. Although there has been some good progress to repair the article it has in fact gone through several large "chop-outs" of information based on not having references for them. This isn't exactly the right way to go as now the article is not comprehensive enough. Overall I see a lack of initiative to gather reliable sources which have been pointed out as readily available. --Brad (talk) 22:28, 15 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Featured article criterion of concern are referencing/quality of research/sources, citations, comprehensiveness, images, focus, MOS (mostly units/numbers) YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 00:51, 15 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist - sorry Tom, but tags still litter the entire article and there is no section on armor now. Have you tried inter-library loan at your local library for United States Battleships 1935–1992 yet? :/ —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 01:18, 15 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Been out of town for the last week. No need to apologize either, this is what FAR(C) is for. I am trying to see about finding material here in the midland/odessa region, but due to circumstances beyond my control I have been unable to leave the apartment here since we arrived. TomStar81 (Talk) 19:40, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist Based on 1(b)-(c) and to a lesser extent 1(a). --Brad (talk) 02:02, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong delist per the tags. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • (Many otters • One bat • One hammer) 18:51, 27 March 2010 (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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