Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Operation Brevity/archive1

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

The article was not promoted by User:SandyGeorgia 04:05, 23 August 2008 [1].

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Operation Brevity

Nominator(s): EnigmaMcmxc (talk)

I'm nominating this article for featured article status as it has been extensively worked on to get it up to A class standard and the minor quibbles mentioned during that review and during pervious peer reviews have mostly been ironed out.EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 12:48, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

• Weak oppose—1a. Nice article; however, there are minor issues with the prose that should be dealt with. (Edit: italicized points are under discussion) Here are examples:
  • "Following their defeat the Italians were reinforced with the German Afrika Korps under the command of General Erwin Rommel." A comma after "defeat" would help.
  • "Going straight onto the offensive, Rommel drove the British and Commonwealth forces back across the border into Egypt, although he failed to take Tobruk, 100 miles (160 km) inside Libya." "Back" is redundant in this case. "Onto" can be replaced with "on".
  • "The commander-in-chief of the British Middle East Command; General Archibald Wavell, conceived Operation Brevity as a rapid blow against the weakened Axis front line forces in the area: Sollum–Capuzzo–Bardia." The semicolon should be replaced with a comma. You might want to replace "forces" with "bases" or something similar, since Sollum, Capuzzo, and Bardia are forts/cities. You might even want to list out the cities and forts for readability, but perhaps that's military format that I'm not familiar with.
  • "His primary objective was to gain more territory from which to launch Operation Battleaxe, the main offensive planned for June 1941, and inflict as many losses as possible on the opposing forces, while minimising his own." Since it's a long sentence with several clauses, you might want to insert a "to" before "inflict".
  • "A secondary objective was to exploit towards Tobruk as far as supplies would allow." This could be my own ignorance of the subject, but "exploit" doesn't seem right here; perhaps "penetrate", "press", or something similar?
  • "The operation was entrusted to Brigadier William Gott, who planned to advance with three columns; one along the coastal highway, a central column along the desert plateau above the highway, and the third out on the desert flank." You could use a colon instead of a semicolon here. "Out" is redundant.
  • In the last paragraph of the lead, Fort Capuzzo is linked again.
  • "The coastal column was held for most of the day at the first of its objectives; the foot of the Halfaya Pass,[1] and only succeeded in taking this position towards the evening." I already tweaked this sentence; hopefully it clarifies things a bit.
  • To tighten things up, you could replace "was withdrawn" to "withdrew" in those two cases in the third paragraph. I can understand the rationale for passive voice here (the generals gave the order to withdraw, not the actual forces), but I still feel "withdrew" makes the prose stronger.
  • In the second-to-last sentence of the lead, perhaps you could switch "called off" to "aborted"?
  • "Halfaya Pass, the only gain arising from the operation, was recaptured by a German counterattack eleven days later." "Arising" is redundant. I think "by" should be replaced with "during", as the German forces captured the pass, not the counterattack.
• The lead is well constructed; these are minor quibbles, and the lead summarizes the battle without using excessive military jargon. However, there are a few minor issues here, and I think the entire article could benefit from a copy-edit. — Deckiller 03:10, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Comments -

• The MilHist A-Class review threw up a couple of comments about the need for a better copyedit, and looking at the history of the article since, I don't think the nom has done himself any favours by not fully following up on this.
• Having said that, and as the editor who has done much of the copyediting on this article prior to the ACR, I believe the deficiencies in prose are such that this article is very nearly there. It would be a shame, for the sake of maybe a day's worth of effort to consign this article to one of the 4,760 articles awaiting copyedit.
• In particular, whilst I don't disagree with Deckiller's position, I do disagree with his rationale in places. Rather than bog this FAC down with what is essentially a nit-picking rebuttal of those points, I'll detail them on this FAC's discussion page.
• I do agree, though, that the punctuation needs more work for this to be promoted.
• Outside of the prose, I think there may be a problem with the use of Jack Crippen's drawing of Halfaya Pass. It is apparently licensed according to GFDL, which permits copies to be made for commercial purposes, yet the conditions of use as copied from the NZ govt archives URL and displayed on the image page explicitly state that the image cannot be sold. Further, the image page has a Non-free use media rationale for this article, which tends to contradict the GFDL license. --FactotEm (talk) 14:25, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

You brought up a couple solid points, and I responded on the talkpage. — Deckiller 17:02, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. We've both stated our cases now, and I'll leave it at that, in the hope that someone recognises that there is an FA nugget just waiting to be teased out here, and gets it through on this attempt. --FactotEm (talk) 17:15, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

More work required on the prose. This is a ripping yarn, and I'm keen to see it promoted. However, it doesn't yet pass our requirement of "professional"-standard prose. This is just the lead; it indicates the need for fresh eyes to scrutinise the whole text.

• "Following their defeat the Italians were reinforced with the German Afrika Korps under the command of General Erwin Rommel." Comma after "defeat" in a sentence this long. I see that my colleague Deckiller has asked for the same thing, but nothing was done about it. Optional commas are more likely in (1) longer sentences, and (2) more formal registers. Here, it makes the reading easier.
• "front line forces"—hyphen please.
• "in the area: Sollum–Capuzzo–Bardia"—the colon is ungrammatical. Why not remove it or make it "in the Sollum–Capuzzo–Bardia area"?
• "to" before "inflict"—Deckiller's right: better to add this optional item, because the ellipsis relies on rather a long interval. I'd remove the comma before "while" for better flow.
• I hate "exploit towards". If it's a military term, you might consider using "advance" instead so that non-experts don't go bumpety-bump on it. Are you trying to avoid the repetition of "advance", which occurs in the next sentence? Don't. Again, why do you ignore Deckiller's advice? (I do, however, agree with a few of your rebuttals overleaf.)
  • The advice that both you and Deckiller are giving is that, in order to reach FA quality, this article needs a copyedit from someone new to it. This is not being ignored. I don't believe that addressing specific examples provided in support of that advice is the response either of you are seeking. --FactotEm (talk) 09:33, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
• "... three columns; one along the ..."—Definitely a colon here to introduce the three-item list. It's a drumroll, too, so is exactly the tone you want. Comma boundaries can follow a colon, no problem.
• "The coastal column was held for most of the day at the first of its objectives, the foot of the Halfaya Pass,[1] and did not take this position until late afternoon." I found this difficult, and had to read it twice to get it; even now I'm unsure. They held it and then took the position? Huh?
• You've used quite a few passives that are unobtrusive, but here's one that would be much better in the active: "Deeper penetrations were made by the centre and desert columns,...". In general, avoid a string of passives; in fact, use active unless there's a reason to use passive.
• "but German counterattacks regained the fort"—slightly uncomfortable for some reason (the attacks were the means for people to regain the fort, yes?). Why not "but the Germans counterattacked and regained the fort".
• "The centre column, threatened with being caught by German armour in open ground, was withdrawn to Halfaya Pass"—the passive ... we know that someone ordered them to withdraw, so why not the active (then you'll avoid two passives in a row). And "with being caught by" is very ungainly. Try "The centre column withdrew to Halfaya Pass to avoid the ?onslaught of German armour in open ground", or something like that?
• "recaptured by a German counterattack"—not wrong, but consider "in" instead of "by". *You want US-style date format? No big deal, but I'm surprised. Tony (talk) 23:13, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
  • It looks like we agree on everything except for the "back" and "out" issues. If you see no reason to remove them, then I'll just stop pressing that point. — Deckiller 00:47, 10 August 2008 (UTC) [Sorry Deckiller, I should have been more direct; to me, both words do add meaning. Tony (talk) 13:06, 12 August 2008 (UTC)]
    • I havent had much time over the last few days to browse or work on the wiki so sorry about not being here to respond. The only comment i can not agree on here is the one regarding the wording around "exploit". This is the wording used by the Official History. When looking at the objectives the primary was to clear the areas mentioned of German forces, then and only if the force commited had not been too worn down would they advance on Tobruk. So the advance had not planned, it would be launched to exploit the situation as it unfolded.--EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 12:59, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Comments - sources look good, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 22:38, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

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