Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/HMS Vanguard (23)

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

Article promoted Hawkeye7 (talk) 10:13, 1 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

HMS Vanguard (23)[edit]

Nominator(s): Sturmvogel 66 (talk)


Vanguard was the last battleship built and became a white elephant in the impoverished environment of post-war Britain. The article is written in British English and probably need to checked to ensure that no American English has been used.Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 14:58, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: while I am happy with many of the aspects of the article, the referencing of almost all of the "Career" section to a single source. It has an impact on "accurately represent the relevant body of published knowledge" (ACRI#1) and "comprehensive" (ACRI#2) - not that I accuse the source of bias, just we've seen that it is very rare to get the full picture from a single work, even a book directly on the battleship in question. It would be nice to see at least a second source woven in. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 14:01, 28 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, there's no other such book available to me. McCart is the best source in print for her career.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 17:04, 28 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I have found tantalising references to further material. For example, this US navy museum page describes a decision whether or not to convert to a missile ship. I've added one source (although your style of multiple references does not facilitate the sort of source I was using) and I would consider researching the missile conversion (or, possibly, referencing that site? It's US military). Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 18:35, 28 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I doubt that there were any serious plans to do so, but I've ordered David K. Brown's book on the post-war RN designs to see if he has anything to say. If not, then there wasn't even a real design study as to its feasibility, which means that it's not worth noting in the article, IMO. Thanks for adding the material from Piggott.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 19:32, 28 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
At long last the book's arrived and I've added a sentence to address the issue.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 23:56, 21 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment:
  • HMS Vanguard was a British fast battleship built during World War II and commissioned after the end of the war. She was the only one of her class and was the biggest, fastest and last of the Royal Navy's dreadnoughts, and the last battleship built in the world. For some reason, I was expecting to find this information in the article and not just the lead. Hawkeye7 (talk) 01:54, 3 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Wasn't Jean Bart the last to be completed? 24.177.99.126 (talk) 13:14, 14 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Good catch; I've changed the statement to last BB launched. Problem is that I can't find a reference that explicitly says as much. I could cite the entirety of Conway's or some other book as proof, but that seems rather awkward.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 18:02, 14 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: I find end-of-para only citations not sufficient, and I'd fail the article for a B-class review at WP:POLAND. Milhist mileage may vary, but I'd implore you to increase the citation density. Sure, end-of-para ref may seem sufficient for you know, but what if somebody splits a paragraph, or adds a sentence (referenced or not) into one? Then the reader is suddenly faced with unreferenced paragraphs, or misleading referencing suggesting that the (for example) middle of the para ref is for the beginning for the para. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 00:36, 9 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That would be your perogative, but nothing on en.wiki requires every sentence cites. Provided that the same source is used for the entire paragraph, one cite at the end suffices all the way up to FA.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 00:54, 9 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I am a FAC/MILHIST-A reviewer of citations and sourcing. I wrote WP:HISTRS in a pique of annoyance at bad sourcing practices, and want to increase the standards of history article sourcing to an equivalent to MEDRS's power in that field. Piotrus asked about dealing with a discussion issue surrounding these citations; and I requested that he point me to the discussion due to my strong interest in sourcing.
I've read the article as current. There are stylistic problems in ¶1 "Design and Construction" in that 10 claims are cited to two sources, one spread across 6 pages. If only a single claim is referenced against Raven and Roberts in that paragraph, it is normal style to indicate which claim derives from Raven and Roberts. ¶4 in the same section has a similar issue with courtesy to the interested reader.
¶1 in "Protection" shows a similar issue, with the citation of the length of the main belt being specific, but other claims listed against two sources without an explanation of which claims derive from which source.
Treat this as a reader courtesy issue. Imagine you're a reader excited about Vanguard (23) who wants to exhaustively engage with every claim, and look at your citations on that basis. Recently WP:Citing sources has updated its guidelines WP:Citing sources#Text-source integrity WP:Citing sources#Bundling citations are relevant. I'm not going to be proscriptive, but, it looks like in future you could consider being more generous to your reader? Fifelfoo (talk) 02:43, 9 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Consider a paragraph where Jones and Jones are responsible for most claims, but one claim comes from Roberts. A bundled citation could cover it as "For x, Roberts… ; Jones and Jones." etc. But it is stylistic, and the article as cited wouldn't seem to be held up from A-Class over this aspect of citations. Fifelfoo (talk) 02:49, 9 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I see your point and I generally avoid bundling to avoid confusing the reader. However, when a section of text is that is very closely interwoven using information drawn from two or more sources, I bundle as I see little point in splattering cite numbers every few words throughout a sentence or, worse, a whole paragraph. I realize that this isn't ideal, but detailing the bundling as you'd like when I'm providing a large number of facts in a small amount of space isn't worth the effort. An example would be: displacement, length, date of sea trials, beam, propeller diameter from Raven and Roberts; designed speed, draught, speed and horsepower on sea trials, designed horsepower from Garzke and Dulin. That's nearly the same amount of effort required to document the facts as it was to lay them out in the text. Where I can, I segregate the cites as I did in the first couple of sentences of the protection paragraph, but that's not always convenient and I'll make the reader look at multiple different pages to figure out what facts came from where.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 03:31, 9 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If I have a large disparity between sources with one fact going to one source and nine to another, then I specifically cite that source and repeat the other cite as necessary on either side of the single cite. Which is pretty much what I did in the first para of the propulsion section. I only bundle when the facts are pretty evenly divided between the sources.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 03:38, 9 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This sounds like a sensible strategy, especially given the highly technical data cited there; and, given that it seems reasonable and appropriate synthesis to treat such technical data as (effectively) a rather large single claim. I'm reassured that you've got stylistic control over this. I'd also note that when citing different material (opinions, political changes, budget statements, etc), that people often want a finer grain of detail, and that the types of reasonable and unreasonable synthesis are different. Fifelfoo (talk) 03:51, 9 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I am aware of the academic standards for citing and have been frustrated myself when trying to pin down a specific reference, so I try to do good. But I will note that this issue is Piotrus's hobbyhorse as demonstrated in [1] and [2].--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 04:07, 9 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This hobbyhorse of mine, as you put it, is essential to a project like wiki. I don't understand why some people, like yourself, refuse to consider the consequences of "editable by anyone", which mean that anybody can split paragraphs, insert content inside them, and such. The new version of source text integrity is a step in the right direction. You cannot have integrity without sentence by sentence referencing. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 15:52, 9 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I understand your concerns, I just don't think that it's a cost to worth paying to prevent. In other words, your cure is worse than the supposed problem.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 16:24, 9 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
What's the cost of my cure? Seeing more footnotes? How often do readers complain about that, or mainstream press, or anybody, really? Now, the problem of (potentially) unreferenced information is much more often heard about. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 17:36, 9 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That and adding those footnotes. And that's enough to put you in the minority on this issue as you already well know.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 18:33, 9 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I am used to being in minority; I remember when the minority dragged the majority kicking and screaming from the days of brilliant prose and "no footnotes needed" into the current era of inline citations. It's called progress, and it will continue :) --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 18:49, 9 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That's a good thing. And I'll revert any attempts to bomb articles with cite needed tags as I run across them.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 19:45, 9 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Piotrus, I too became aware of your hobby horse on this issue via the two discussions linked above by Sturmvogel and when you did this at a DYK I followed, Japanese aircraft carrier Amagi. Your logic has been resoundingly rejected in two community discussions, but you continue disruptive editing. At the Japanese Amagi article, you edit warred to re-instate citation needed tags even after it was documented on talk that the paragraph was cited, and then you did worse-- you made a WP:POINT edit to break the paragraphs, hence disassociating the citations from the content, and you did so in a way that started a new paragraph with a vague "this", so that the reader can't tell what "this" refers to. You have a) damaged an article's prose, b) edit-warred, and c) made a pointy edit against d) the consensus in two community discussions. Please stop unless you're looking forward to a visit to ANI. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:17, 12 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I am appalled that somebody with your authority would scoop to such underhanded threats and actively support damaging this project with poor referencing. But sure, I'll leave the MILHIST A-class reviews to others, if my standards of quality are not welcome here. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 03:59, 15 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Whoa, Sandy, Piotrus was asking for citations. Maybe too many of them (have you seen GA/FA reviews lately?) He was courteous and polite about it. It's perfectly reasonable to ask a little bit more than just end-of-paragraph citation for A-class article (end-of-para citations is the standard at DYK which is one of the things you've been complaining about a lot - understandably, so why flip here?). For some projects A-class is about equivalent to GA (and maybe even more), while for others it's a total joke. So, this is probably just a result of different expectations that people from different backgrounds bring into an umbrella project such as this. It seems that this was getting worked out one way or another (and actually, Fifelfoo was the first to bring this up) - the problem is you jumping in and threatening people with AN/I. Especially coming from someone who usually abhors that kind of bullying, it's very surprising and undue. Ay, come on you've been bullied yourself and rightfully objected when you saw it happen to other people. Don't take that kind of cheap recourse yourself just because you have a disagreement (which will always happen). Volunteer Marek  06:22, 15 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry that you both seem to have missed the point. Two discussions (now three that I've found) where consensus was against Piotr on requiring citations by sentence, edit warring on another Strum article to demand citations in a paragraph that was already cited, and a WP:POINT edit to that same article to break a paragraph (in a way that damaged prose). This is referred to on Wikipedia as disruptive editing, and dispute resolution is where such editing usually ends up. It is not courteous and polite to continue to ride a hobby horse after three times your proposal has been rejected by the community. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:22, 22 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The point is that you responded to my polite request with an unfriendly volley of personal attacks, and you got a number of facts wrong. While there is no community consensus to cite every sentence, there is no consensus that is shouldn't be done (and indeed it frequently is). I am very much within my rights to ask the editors to exercise high standards with referencing; at the same time I admit they do not have to heed my suggestions, which is why I disengaged from that article when it became clear that the principal author does not share my concerns. I still do not believe that all potentially contentious and controversial, non-BLUE facts in the article are properly cited, but if MILHIST standards do not require such levels of quality, so be it. More to the point of what I and VM noted, what you call a disruptive POINTed edit (splitting the para) was even accepted by the author himself as a good idea ([3]), so at the very least you are misrepresenting my edit in a pretty bad light. Such misrepresentation and calls for dispute resolution hardly contribute to a friendly and collegial editing atmosphere. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 00:59, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments This article is in very good shape. I've got a few mainly minor comments though:
    • "the biggest, fastest and last of the Royal Navy's dreadnoughts,[2] and the last battleship to be launched in the world." - 'last' is used twice, and could be replaced with something like 'final'
      • Done.
    • "Her design was begun before the war began" reads awkwardly. How about "Work on she ship's design commenced before the war" or similar?
      • Good idea.
    • "The main constraint of the construction of any new battleships was the limited capacity available to build large-calibre guns and their gun turrets, but using four twin 15 inches (381 mm) mountings in storage offered the possibility of bypassing this bottleneck and allowed the construction of a single fast battleship more quickly than building more Lion-class ships" - this should be split into two sentances
      • Done.
    • "The design was modified to increase protection against splinters on the sides of the ship's hull, the armour of the secondary armament was increased to resist 500-pound (230 kg) semi-armour-piercing bombs and the splinter belt's thickness fore and aft of the main armour belt was reduced by 0.5 inches (12.7 mm) in compensation. " - this is a bit confusing - the first part of the sentence appears to say that protection of the ship's hull against splinters was increased, but the last part appears to say that it was reduced
      • Clarified that it was the unarmored portions of the hull that received splinter protection.
    • "This was unsuccessful because insufficient skilled labour was available and that proved to be the bottleneck in building the ship." is awkwardly worded
      • How does it read now?
        • A bit wordy, but OK
    • "Admiral Vian transferred his flag to the carrier HMS Indomitable (92) which collided with Vanguard as the former was docking at Gibraltar on 10 February 1951. The hole in the latter's stern was not serious" - the (92) isn't necessary and I got confused about which ship was the 'former' and which the 'later' - why not replace this with 'battleship' and 'carrier' or similar to make things clearer?
      • Good idea.
    • The introduction states that "While refitting in 1955, the Admiralty announced that the ship was going to be put into reserve upon its completion" but this announcement isn't directly referred to again or referenced in the body of the article.
      • It's referred to by the simple statement that she was placed in reserve after finishing her refit.
        • I guess so, but the bit about the 'announcement' and its timing isn't really supported by the reference then, so you might want to tweak this. Nick-D (talk) 10:35, 22 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • The commons link needs to be tweaked so it points to 'Category:HMS Vanguard (ship, 1946)'. Nick-D (talk) 23:27, 19 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support My comments are now addressed - great work with this article. Nick-D (talk) 10:35, 22 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment/Request: My hobbyhorse Sturmvogel, but would you mind adding the flag officer aboard during the SA Royal trip? Was it Flag Officer Royal Yachts - seems unlikely - or another one? Also if you could work in Flag Officers aboard in other places it will make it easier for future articles referring to structures/FOs and others. Cheers and thanks Buckshot06 (talk) 12:47, 22 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that McCart even mentions a FO aboard during the Royal Tours, perhaps Grandiose can check and see what Piggott says. I'll check just to make sure, but I've mentioned just about every single FO who hoisted his flag aboard during the ship's short career because McCart covers that nicely.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 14:59, 22 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Agnew had been promoted to the rank of Rear-Admiral on 8 January, 1947. --Simon Harley (Talk | Library). 16:06, 22 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No mention in McCart of a FO aboard during the royal tour.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 01:12, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at Shirley North's Vanguard page, it would seem that Agnew was serving as a Captain despite holding the rank of Rear-Admiral. No doubt a contemporary Navy List would confirm that arrangement. —Simon Harley (Talk | Library). 10:16, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • CommentsSupport
    • One dab link [4]:
    • External links all check out [5] (no action required).
    • Images lack Alt Text so you might consider adding it [6] (suggestions only).
    • The Citation Check Tool reveals one error:
      • Raven and Roberts, p. 322 (Multiple references contain the same content)
    • The images are all PD or appropriately licensed (no action required).
    • "Using four twin 15 inches (381 mm) mountings...", should this be "four twin 15-inch (381 mm) mountings" (I think its used as an adjective here)?
    • Missing word here I think: "The ship's fuel supply was increased to 4,850 long tons (4,930 t) prevent...", should it be "The ship's fuel supply was increased to 4,850 long tons (4,930 t) to prevent..."?
    • Typo here I think: "...to modify the ammunitions hoists...", should this be "...to modify the ammunition hoists..."?
    • I think this should also be hypthenated: "Intended to resist the impact of a 1,000 pounds (450 kg) armour-piercing bomb ...", i.e. "Intended to resist the impact of a 1,000-pound (450 kg) armour-piercing bomb..."
    • "...newly promoted Rear Admiral Agnew...", should just be "...newly promoted Agnew..." removing rank at second instance following formal introduction per WP:SURNAME.
    • "Admiral Sir Michael Denny replaced Admiral Creasy as Commander-in-Chief...", should just be "Admiral Sir Michael Denny replaced Creasy as Commander-in-Chief..." per WP:SURNAME. Anotherclown (talk) 01:32, 26 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • All done, thanks for going over this with a fine-toothed comb. I always have problems with the surname thing as my training is always to use the rank.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:52, 26 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        • No problem at all. Adding my support now, well done. Anotherclown (talk) 03:32, 26 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support -- Performed my usual copyedit, somewhat cursory this time given the article has already had a fair few eyes on it. However I'd suggest you go over again before any FAC nom as there were a few terms here and there that might require a bit of explanation for the non-military audience. No issue for ACR though, and referencing, structure, detail and supporting materials look okay. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 23:34, 26 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support
  • A good article, a few minor points below:
  • It would be really useful if the term "belt" was explained in the main text though - it's linked, but is really important to understanding the "Design and description" section and is a specialist term. Hchc2009 (talk) 09:04, 27 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The flat transom stern was retained as it was estimated to improve speed at full power by ⅓ of a knot. This made Vanguard the only British battleship built with a transom stern." - given that you've specified the transom was flat, it would be worth clarifying if this made Vanguard the only ship with a flat transom stern, or any type of transom stern at all.
  • "the large flare applied to the bows " - I couldn't quite picture this.
  • " a "double cheese" Type 274 fire-control radar" - I was fascinated by what a "double cheese" radar might be! Any chance of a footnote?
  • "they were fitted for RPC in azimuth only" - did this mean the gun barrels could be powered up and down, but had to be rotated by hand? Hchc2009 (talk) 09:04, 27 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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