Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/ARA Moreno/archive1

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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 23:33, 23 October 2010 [1].

ARA Moreno[edit]

ARA Moreno (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 20:19, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Moreno was one of two ships in the Rivadavia class. They were the product of a naval arms race between the three most powerful South American countries: Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. The first few years of Moreno's life hold interesting stories of possible sales, mishaps in construction, multiple groundings, running over a barge, and "the cutest little bar on any of the seven seas." The later service life was taken up with routine patrols, showing the flag, inactivation caused by economic troubles, and getting called "a strange vestigial sea monster" by The New York Times. Moreno can even claim to have held a world record, albeit only after she was sold for scrap – when she was towed to Japan to be dismantled, it was the longest tow ever attempted.

I think Argentina should have sold the battleships when they had the chance – what are your opinions? It passed passed a GAN in June and a Milhist A-class review in July. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 20:19, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Lead looks fine, except you may want to axe one of "belligerent" or "then fighting", up to you. The rest of it got copyedited sufficiently at A-class, but if anyone notices a problem with the copyediting, please holler and I'll have a look. Best of luck, Ed. - Dank (push to talk) 20:26, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Dank! Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 20:29, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You betcha. I have to agree with Tony ... I don't think many readers will be wondering what a US dollar is, so I don't think "US$" needs a link, but I generally don't like to start MOSNUM arguments :) - Dank (push to talk) 20:33, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment—no dab links, no dead external links. Ucucha 20:27, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comments - I'm not impressed by the Lead, which is not at all engaging.

The phrase, "built for the Argentine Navy in the early 1910s", begs the question by whom?
Good point, added "in the US". If I added "by Fore River", the reader would go "Huh?" - Dank (push to talk)
"Moreno was ordered in response to a Brazilian naval building program", ordered sounds odd to my ears. Is there not a better way of saying this? This whole sentence lacks flow.
Changed to "placed an order", does that work? - Dank (push to talk)
Here, " belligerent countries then involved in the First World War", belligerent is tautology.
The US was involved for a while before the US became a belligerent, but maybe just "countries then fighting" or "countries then involved" would be better. Ed? - Dank (push to talk)
I think "countries engaged in" might be better but I am not 100% sure :)
Works for me, done. - Dank (push to talk) 22:37, 26 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There is detail missing here, "The 1930s were occupied with diplomatic cruises to Brazil, Uruguay, and Europe". I have deliberately pasted the sentence in isolation to show how odd it reads to a first time reader. Perhaps it would be better to say that during the 1930s the ship was....?
Works for me. - Dank (push to talk)
This lacks logical flow, "Argentina was neutral in the Second World War, Moreno was employed little in those years — there is a conjunction missing and I am not sure that equating Second World War and those years works.
You missed the "As". There are several other ways to say it; we could put the second clause first if you like. - Dank (push to talk)
Yes, I missed the "As" - sorry. :-(
Done, good call. - Dank (push to talk) 22:42, 26 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think the Lead section needs a little more work. Please do not confuse redundancy with clarity. Graham Colm (talk) 20:58, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Done, thanks. - Dank (push to talk) 23:24, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Does "launched" need to be linked? Graham Colm (talk) 20:09, 26 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ed got it. - Dank (push to talk) 13:17, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment- Wow. I remember when I stumbled upon this as a stub. Nice work Ed. Buggie111 (talk) 23:38, 25 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Image review: Single image File:Moreno Battleship LOC 17604.jpg comes from the Bains News Service collection, which Commons has deemed as acceptable public domain material. No issues. Jappalang (talk) 05:05, 26 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Jappalang Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 05:49, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sources comments:

  • Footnotes 2, 3 (second part) and 4 need citations
    • 2/4 done, three is common sense.
  • I assume the Buraco and Ortiz book is in Spanish? This should be stated.
    • Chicago doesn't require it if the title is in the original language, see "[2]". {{cite web}}: External link in |title= (help); Missing or empty |url= (help)[3], page 24.
  • Livermore: JSTOR materials requires a subscription. This too should be stated.
    • I don't think this is required when I have an ISSN and OCLC there so readers can find a print copy... I don't want to clutter the citation up any more. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 05:49, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Otherwise sources and citations look OK. Brianboulton (talk) 14:00, 26 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment. I'm in agreement with GrahamColm that the lead section is clunky. It seems to be too much of a list of facts with little consideration for flow; try making compound sentences. Also, the last sentence of the article perhaps gives too much weight to a temporary world record and entirely fails to mention that the ship was scrapped. I realize that it was sold to scrappers, but its eventual fate following the tow is not supplied. ɳOCTURNEɳOIR♯♭ 15:38, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • The last sentence of the lead says it was scrapped. On the other point: "ARA Moreno was the second Rivadavia-class dreadnought battleship built for the Argentine Navy in the US in the early 1910s. She was named after Mariano Moreno, a key member of the Primera Junta, and her only sister ship was Rivadavia. Argentina placed an order for Moreno in response to a Brazilian naval building program and border disputes, particularly in the Río de la Plata (River Plate) area. She was launched on 23 September 1911 and completed in March 1915. A multitude of rumors spread regarding whether Argentina was going to sell the two battleships to one of the countries then engaged in the First World War, but both were delivered and kept. After Moreno was completed, a series of engine problems occurred during her sea trials." Which of those sentences do you think should be combined? - Dank (push to talk) 18:10, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • Honestly didn't recall the lead when I reached the end; I still think you should mention it. Regarding flow, does this look good? ɳOCTURNEɳOIR♯♭ 19:02, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • If the reviewers are happy, I'm happy. - Dank (push to talk) 19:17, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
          • I think I have addressed this, thanks NN! Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 04:24, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
            • Hmm, it sounds even worse with "The scrapping process began after." I've removed it; seems it would be superior without. ɳOCTURNEɳOIR♯♭ 18:26, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments: I think that this article is certainly very close to FA. I am doing some light ce (with mixed results), but some things I didn't want to change and prefer to leave to your discretion.
  • "Isabel Betbeder, wife to the chief of the Argentine Naval Commission—which was overseeing the Rivadavia class's construction—sponsored Moreno." → The part between the em dashes doesn't really flow smoothly, because except for the word "which" I'm not sure if it's referring to the chief of the Argentine Naval Commission, or the Argentine Naval Commission itself. Obviously, the word "which" suggests the sentence is referring to the latter, but at first I thought you had made a mistake in word usage and I was going to change it to "who". I think it would read better i "which was overseeing" was changed to "tasked with overseeing" (and it was definitely tasked by the Argentine government).
    • Agree, but I tried moving the part about construction to the sentence that dealt with construction, see if it works for you. - Dank (push to talk)
  • "Over the course of their construction..." → Maybe "During construction..." would be simpler. Less pretty, but simpler.
    • I don't have any objection to "during construction", but to me, "over the course" implies that it happened all along, while "during construction" means that it happened at least once during that time. I think Ed is trying for the former. - Dank (push to talk) 04:33, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The Argentine government, bolstered by socialist additions in the legislature..." → It's not clear what "additions" refer to (new legislators?).
  • "...he arrived in the latter on 22 October." → I'm not sure about my intuition here, but should it be "arrived at" instead of "arrived in"?
  • The article doesn't really specify (or maybe I missed it) how the Argentine government responded to pressures to not sell the ships. It's understood that the two ships remained in Argentine service until 1957, but it's not clear why the Argentine government did not sell the dreadnoughts during or after the First World War. JonCatalán(Talk) 20:53, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • The bills that would have forced the battleships' sale were defeated in the legislature. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 17:15, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support JonCatalán(Talk) 04:45, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Quick comment – Only one thing jumped out at me when I read this: Construction and trials doesn't need two State Department links. Giants2008 (27 and counting) 01:19, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, fixed. I'm still trying to find someone in our project who'll use WP:AWB's duplicate link checker on our FAC articles. - Dank (push to talk) 01:31, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 21:56, 4 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support Fifelfoo (talk) 01:37, 20 October 2010 (UTC) Oppose 1c: Incorrect use of measuring worth amounting to bad research. I have repeatedly stated my concerns below, and further debate is not elucidating them. Fifelfoo (talk) 22:57, 14 October 2010 (UTC) Provisional Support pending fixits. 1abcde 2abc 4. I was invited to review this article by ed17. I have probably seen this article at MILHIST, and may have previously commented on it in review. I obviously have continuing problems with the use of measuring worth. Fifelfoo (talk) 04:28, 13 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    2c, Measuring Worth should be cited correctly. ( Samuel H. Williamson, "Seven Ways to Compute the Relative Value of a U.S. Dollar Amount, 1774 to present," MeasuringWorth, April 2010. URL http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/ )
    1c, Note 2: Measuring worth, you need to indicate the calculation method used.
    1a, Notes 2 and 3 duplicate each other. You need to indicate the calcuation method used.
    1c, it would be highly difficult, if not impossible, to indicate the current dollar figures, as Battleships are purchased from GDP, and Measuring Worth does not provide an Argentine GDP figure. Perhaps you can sustain an argument that they were produced from US GDP and that Argentina purchased them out of a fluid foreign reserve capacity, and that their component cost as a proportion of the US economy to construct them is the important measure of inflation comparison... I don't find this suasive though.
    • I can fix the citation issue, but a few thoughts first. I understand (but never thought of) the problem of US GDP vs. Argentine GDP, but how far off could the numbers be? If they could/will be off, should I just remove the inflation statistics and just use 1910 USD/GBP? Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 14:21, 13 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Some questions. First, how is the sale figure denominated in the original source? Second, is it at all possible to just state the figure in normal terms in the Argentinian currency (I don't know what currency they were using then)? And a comment to Ed's observation: the deflators for 50 years of inflation between two different countries will be very different. Protonk (talk) 17:58, 13 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • There are two sources. In Conway's, they are GBP, while in Livermore, they are USD. I think there is only one monetary conversion in this article (from Conway's), but I'll need to fix Rivadavia-class battleship too. Also, thanks, that's what I figured! Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 18:08, 13 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • If the sale was carried out in USD or GBP, then you can use the dollar or pound figure corrected to current pounds or dollars without worry. If not you can give the value in pesos and dollars (in nominal terms) at the date of sale in the body of the text and remand a conversion to current values of USD to footnote). Protonk (talk) 18:42, 13 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
          • No, no you cannot, the money in USD or GBP came from the Argentine GDP; it was a dedication of foreign exchange reserves produced by the Argentine economy and directed to the purchase of battleships by the Argentine state. The fact that the trade was denoted in foreign reserves, doesn't change the fact that the generation of that value occurred in Argentina. Inflation across time has a number of measures. There's Consumer Price Inflation/ Retail Price Inflation/ Average Weekly Earnings Inflation which measure questions like, "How much was a loaf of bread?" "Were workers worse off in 1914 than in 1925?". Battleships are not purchased from this kind of money-over-time. Battleships are purchased from government share of GDP. GDP is a figure unique per nation-state. Argentina's GDP changed over time. The US GDP changed over time. The US GDP and Argentine GDP changed in different ways at different times. Argentine GDP inflation cannot be measured in terms of changes in the US GDP. When we talk about the money change over time of the battleship costs, we are generally interested in an idea of what exertion by a nation it cost to produce a battleship. We cannot measure this by inflating USD; as the exertion came from the Argentine economy. Fifelfoo (talk) 23:06, 13 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
            • Well... I'm not sure what to do here. Is it safer to just remove the 2010 dollars? Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 05:40, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
              • Safest to remove the 2010 dollars on this one. For US and UK battleships, US and UK GDP share converters ought to be fine. Fifelfoo (talk) 06:14, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
            • A few things. Inflation isn't really connected to GDP, this is a misconception prompted by a correlation for much of the 20th century and calculation of past GDP called the GDP deflator. While it is absolutely true that the inflation path for the Argentinian Peso is different than the dollar, it isn't connected to the different GDP growths. As for the purchase being used with foreign exchange reserves at some point, this is tautologically true but not terribly important. We are not tracking a specie mechanism on wikipedia--we don't need to record international trade in a specific unit of account for each country article. The argument that battleships are purchased with some different money than that which purchases bread is likewise unimportant. Money is fungible and not only that, the buying power of money has as much to do with how much bread it can buy as how many battleships it can buy. There is no store of national funds which could only be used for one and not the other. We can argue about the use of USD for the readers, a choice which I see as a convenience for the lions share of the reading base, but the actual conversion itself isn't misleading. A best case would be to find the original price, convert it to Argentinian Pesos, and inflate the price to current Argentinan Pesos. The WDI has inflation data on Argentina for the past 20 years, but no earlier (unless I am missing it). Protonk (talk) 16:05, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
              • I found Historical exchange rates of Argentine currency, so we should(?) be able to convert the 1910s dollars to pesos, but I'm not sure how to convert the pesos to USD. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 16:33, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
                • You can probably use that to get to the then demonomation of the peso. At that point you have to make a decision. You can leave the value in nominal terms in Pesos (what Fifelfoo is suggesting), or you can add a conversion to current dollars (what you had when the FAC started). Alternately, you can put the price in pesos (pick a pack of peppers too) and make a parenthetical note that the value is whatever in current dollars. You already have the value in current dollars so no need to convert back and forth. I'll see if I can poke around the Argentinian central bank's website for inflation data to make all of this easier. On a related note, is all of this making sense to you? I'd feel terrible if I (or fifel) forced you to make some change to the article which you didn't completely understand (or understand the reasoning for). Protonk (talk) 16:39, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
                • The more I think about it the less sure I am that we should show the price in current pesos at all. Showing it in nominal terms is fine, but argentina has experienced dramatic inflation over the latter half of the 20th century and I'm not sure we will be capturing much more than that in showing the price of the battleship in current Pesos. Protonk (talk) 16:43, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
                  • "Money is fungible" not in time sequence. Go read Measuring Work's papers. Or Marx on disjuncture and crises. Battleships are not purchased from a "Battleship account", but the purchase and production of battleships are reliant on the capacity of one class to inflict a withdrawal of GDP from, for example, the production of bread, and to convert that into Battleships. (Moreover, there is no fungibility in the economic dislocation required to convert a set battleship production process into non-battleship production.) Such decisions are made not in terms of the CPI inflation bundle time-series money; nor in terms of the cash inflation time-series; but in terms of capacity to convert GDP proportion to specific end. The fundamental question with a Battleship is not "how many loaves of bread would this buy," but, "What suffering was inflicted upon the economy of Argentina to make this purchase." Inflating an intergovernment cash price in USD against the US consumer price index is quite seriously ridiculous.
                  • From the article, the ship appears to have been purchased in a denoted USD price. This doesn't change the fact that the economy dislocated to produce the Battleship was the Argentine one. To produce a time-inflation representing the human cost of the Battleship you'd need to convert the purchase contract in USD into Argentine currency at time x, inflate against the Argentine GDP from x->y, and then convert back to an internationally recognised measure at time y. This would give you the equivalent decision cost. Battleships are not purchased out of the CPI bundle, nor the rate of cash inflation. Fifelfoo (talk) 21:55, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
                  • Ed, those conversion rates are interesting in themselves. But they're not a GDP inflator for the Argentine economy. If you use Measuring Worth, you'd be inflating in relation to the Japanese, UK, or US economic situation over time. Which isn't valid because the economic decision was made in the Argentine economy. It can't answer the question "What did this battleship represent in terms of the devotion of economic resources in 1910; in today's terms?" Fifelfoo (talk) 21:57, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
                    • This is becoming progressively more marginal, but I'll try and reply. I don't think that in giving current dollars for any figure we are attempting to compute the human cost of the purchase for any good. Even a battleship made in the united states represents a set of costs of which only one is dollar denominated. If we want to give a full indication of the human cost of battleship production (which we don't), we would have to talk about the cost of diverting resources into defense spending, the lives lost in construction and the different marginal benefit of that investment for equally costly counter-factual investments at the same time (think guns v. butter. The whole reason we correct for inflation on any article is a because if we give nominal figures, the reader will often estimate the real cost incorrectly. When you say that correcting nominal values using the wrong time series misleads the reader, you are absolutely correct. But that is as far as it goes. If the sale was undertaken in dollars we have three options: Convert the sale price to Pesos in nominal terms (or current Pesos, but this has other problems), use the nominal USD sale price, or use the current USD price, adjusted for inflation. I'm happy with 1 or 3 but we need to make clear why we are doing the correction. Protonk (talk) 22:16, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
                      • It seems Fifelfoo is arguing that the price should be started as a % of Argentine GDP at the time. I may have misunderstood. If this is true, it would be an interesting piece of information if it can be found, but it's a fundamentally quite different one to the present inflation-adjusted value of the USD sale price. 94.193.35.68 (talk) 22:20, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
                      • Using 3 "the current USD price, adjusted for inflation" is, as I've outlined above, impossible as no US time-series for money is relevant to the object. Using 1 "Convert the sale price to Pesos in nominal terms" isn't relevant, Argentine Pesos in 19XX don't indicate anything to the contemporary reader greater than USD in 19XX. Using the contract price in USD as signed, and not touching it is the best way forward. We have no credible Argentine time-series to inflate the value of the object purchased, so we should leave the values uninflated in the contract price indicated for the year. If readers misestimate the cost, bad luck to them. We have no way to produce a credible estimation for cost because we have no capital-good time series for the Argentine economy. Fifelfoo (talk) 22:36, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
                        • If we are no longer concerned with the human cost to argentinians (or gain, as they were selling the ship for scrap), then why aren't we reporting the price in current dollars? We know the exact dollar value in 1957 (or w/e), because the sale was denominated in dollars. Protonk (talk) 22:48, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Although my interpretation of the present debate may be incorrect, I think I can put the problem in simpler terms (and, if it's incorrect, then I present an all new problem altogether!). What Fifelfoo wants represented in the cost is the value of the peso in relation to its purchasing power, past and present. In other words, X amount of pesos bought A amount of bread in 1900. X amount of pesos translated into M amount of dollars, in 1900. But, scaling that value in dollars doesn't make sense, because the rate of inflation in Argentina has been independent from the rate of inflation in the United States. Furthermore, given that economic goods are heterogeneous, it doesn't make sense to compare costs relative to good X, only to the change in relative prices between the capital goods that were inputed into the construction of this battleship. Why not just leave the original prices? JonCatalán(Talk) 22:40, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • You can leave the original price, but if the original sale price for scrap was in dollars, then you run into the whole conversion problem again. People mess up real and nominal dollars all the time (especially as the time difference increases) and conversion to real dollars short circuits this conceptual problem. We need a compelling reason to leave it in nominal dollars. Protonk (talk) 22:45, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • I can think of two reasons: first, the scaled price would be incorrect, and second, doesn't this all add up to original research? JonCatalán(Talk) 22:52, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • I don't think the scaled price is incorrect in any mundane fashion. As for the OR bit, correcting for inflation falls under WP:CALC and is used frequently in {{Inflation}}. Protonk (talk) 23:15, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • " What Fifelfoo wants represented in the cost is the value of the peso in relation to its purchasing power, past and present." No, cost as share of GDP as a capital good; not CPI. We lack Argentine time series for either, so its a moot point. No time series for the Argentine economy => Impossible to compare value over time. Fifelfoo (talk) 23:02, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • I've removed the cost conversion, as it wasn't completely necessary in this article. @Protonk, I understood most – I have to have at least some knowledge in economics because of my college major. @Protonk/Fifel/Jon, thanks for a lively debate. ;-) I'll still need assistance in determining what to do with the cost conversions in Rivadavia-class battleship. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 22:35, 18 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment in the lead it might be a good idea to explain what the Primera Junta was as the average reader is quite unlikely to know what you're referring to. Maybe something like Named after Mariano Moreno, a key member of the first independent government of Argentina, Moreno was the second ship in the Rivadavia class. --Victor12 (talk) 14:29, 15 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Works for me, or "Primera Junta, the first independent government of Argentina". - Dank (push to talk) 17:24, 15 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
What do you guys think of it now? [4] Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 15:48, 16 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I flagged one line in the introduction that I don't understand with an inline query. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:29, 23 October 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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