Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/SMS Dresden (1907)/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 Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 23:34, 20 March 2015 (UTC) [1].[reply]

SMS Dresden (1907)[edit]

Nominator(s): Parsecboy (talk) 16:29, 10 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Another German light cruiser, this one joined von Spee's squadron following the outbreak of WWI, and it was the only survivor of the Battle of the Falkland Islands in Dec. 1914. This ship was eventually tracked down and forced to scuttle at the Battle of Más a Tierra on 14 March 1915. You might note that the centenary of the sinking is a little more than a month away - I'd very much like to have the article through FAC in time to run on the centenary if at all possible. Thanks for reviewing the article. Parsecboy (talk) 16:29, 10 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Support on prose per standard disclaimer. I've looked at the changes made since I reviewed this for A-class. These are my edits. Parsecboy wanted to go ahead and nominate this, since an anniversary is coming up ... and that makes sense to me. All issues have been dealt with at A-class, and I expect it to pass A-class shortly. - Dank (push to talk) 16:39, 10 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Now passed A-class. - Dank (push to talk) 10:42, 11 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

A couple of prose issues Support: all the issues below have been addressed. They cover everything I found right to the bottom of the article. Maury Markowitz (talk) 17:35, 11 February 2015 (UTC) Nothing serious, but a few things stuck out.[reply]

  • "SMS Dresden ("His Majesty's Ship Dresden")[a] was the lead ship of her class, built for the Imperial German Navy (Kaiserliche Marine)."
Are we putting the translations to English in the parens, or the German? The rest of the article puts English in the parens, so I'd suggest the same here.
A good catch - I had forgotten to fix this when I rewrote the article.
Generally I found this statement to be a bit odd. Is it no more like "SMS Dresden ("His Majesty's Ship Dresden")[a] was a German Imperial Navy ship, the lead ship of her class."
Yeah, that's a good point - see how it's worded now.
  • "She had one sister ship, Emden."
Could this be combined with the former statement? A two-ship class doesn't seem to deserve three links.
Just cut it altogether - it's really not all that relevant to this article (or at least shouldn't be in the lead).
  • " twelve coal-fired Marine-type water-tube boilers."
Is Marine a proper name? If not, should it be lower case? Is this referring to the Kaiserliche Marine, and thus a specific type? If so, I'd like to see a link here, or some explanation of what it is.
Another leftover from the old version - Gröner always refers to them as Marine-type boilers, which seems to have been a translation error - it should probably have been translated as "naval boiler" (which basically means water-tube boiler)
  • "Dresden thereafter joined the reconnaissance force"
then instead of thereafter?
Sounds fine to me.
  • "She made it back to Kiel, where repairs were effected.[6] The repair work took eight days"
She made it to Kiel where she spent the next eight days being repaired."
Yeah, I wasn't really fond of how that turned out, but when I was writing it I couldn't think of a way to split the sentence for the citations, as the NYT article covered the fact that the repairs were in Kiel, and HRS covered the length of time it took - see how it's worded now.
  • "Regardless, von Spee and those who favored the attack on the Falklands won the argument.[32]"
There are five ships and four captains (three plus admiral perhaps?) have been mentioned. Am I incorrect in thinking "those who favored" means the captain of either Scharnhorst or Gneisenau? I found this bit a little confusing.
A good point - yes, the captains of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were the ones who supported Spee in attacking the island.

That's it! It makes for exciting reading. Maury Markowitz (talk) 21:48, 10 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Parsecboy (talk) 17:04, 11 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

  • Captions that aren't complete sentences shouldn't end in periods
    • Fixed.
  • Some of the images are a bit small to use at default size - can we enlarge them?
    • I have my defaults set at 300px - which ones in particular were you thinking?
      • The line drawing and the first two maps. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:00, 16 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
        • I forced the line-drawing and the second map to 300px, since those both looked fine on my screen as is, and the first map to 500px - how does that look? Parsecboy (talk) 18:22, 16 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • File:Dresden_class_cruiser_diagrams_Janes_1914.jpg: source link is dead, needs US PD tag
    • Cut the dead link - the citation to Jane's has been improved and should be sufficient.
  • File:Escadre_allemande_d'Extrême-Orient_1914_1915-de.svg: what is the source of the information presented in this map? Nikkimaria (talk) 02:18, 16 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Please add alt text for all images (only one currently has it). -Newyorkadam (talk) 05:28, 21 February 2015 (UTC)Newyorkadam[reply]

Added. Parsecboy (talk) 13:10, 23 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

John[edit]

Why was the article moved over into American English? This version seems to use UK ("metres") and thus WP:RETAIN would suggest keeping it there. --John (talk) 22:13, 26 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The first version had "paralyzing" instead of "paralysing", which is AmEng. Parsecboy (talk) 22:28, 26 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I hadn't seen that. The language of the guideline has the variety used in the first non-stub revision is considered the default (my emphasis) and I suppose it's a judgement call what constitutes a stub. I wouldn't oppose over this I don't think. I am still reading the whole thing. Nice work. --John (talk) 22:32, 26 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There's no real hard-and-fast threshold for where an article becomes Start-class, but the limit for DYK is 1,500 characters, and the initial version was slightly over 2,000. WP:STUB says "A stub is an article containing only one or a few sentences of text..." - which the initial version easily surpasses. Thanks, John. Parsecboy (talk) 00:15, 27 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I made a few slight adjustments. I may have a couple of questions before I support. It is looking good. --John (talk) 00:08, 28 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Question Why are we capitalising and italicising Maat? --John (talk) 22:49, 1 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose it doesn't need to be capitalized, but it's not commonly used in English, so it should be italicized. Parsecboy (talk) 13:23, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I'd agree with that, and I think it looks far better now. There was one other thing I wanted to ask but I can't remember what it was. It can't have been that important. I now
Support. --John (talk) 21:56, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Support Comments

  • Convert meter ranges to yards, not feet.
    • Good catch - though I left the second one since depth is usually measured in feet.
  • When I was researching the Otranto article, the biography of the ship that I looked at made no reference to any hits on that ship, despite German reports. There's also no mention of any hit in the ship's log.
    • Added a bit to clarify this.
  • Still like to see some references to the Warship International article on the hunt for the ship that I mentioned earlier.
    • Yeah, I don't know that I'll be able to include it given the very short time-frame - I put in the article request but we'll see if I get it in time.
  • Suggest combining these two sentences: Meanwhile, the Royal Navy had deployed a pair of battlecruisers, Invincible and Inflexible, to hunt down the German squadron. The British ships were commanded by Vice Admiral Doveton Sturdee.
    • I think John fixed this in his copyedit.
  • Nicely done.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 03:13, 27 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Support, with one minor quibble:

  • In "World War I", "What von Spee did not know was that..." sounds too colloquial. Maybe just "Von Spee did not realize that..."
  • That aside, I could find nothing that needs to be changed or clarified. Very nice article, good luck with it. --Coemgenus (talk) 13:39, 4 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • Sounds fine to me - thanks for reviewing the article. Parsecboy (talk) 14:15, 4 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Source review - spotchecks not done

  • Should use the same rounding for converted measurements in the infobox vs the article body
    • Should be fixed now.
  • Naval Review should be italicized
    • Cleaned up that reference.
  • Since AuthorHouse is a self-publishing service, what makes that book a high-quality source? Nikkimaria (talk) 15:49, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • A good point - replaced with a better source. Thanks as always Nikki. Parsecboy (talk) 16:57, 20 March 2015 (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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