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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 16:12, 31 July 2010 [1].

Russian battleship Slava

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Russian battleship Slava (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 00:53, 11 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article because I believe that it meets the criteria. Any comments regarding prose issues must provide enough detail so that the problem can be identified and fixed. Blanket statements that a copyedit is needed does nothing to help the article or myself in fixing things. There are a ton of pictures of the ship on Commons, but almost all have unidentified sources or lack enough information to determine their copyright status. Those used here are the only ones that I feel sure have no copyright issues.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 00:53, 11 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Support per usual disclaimer and per my comments at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Russian battleship Slava. I would appreciate it if someone would check my copyediting. - Dank (push to talk) 21:38, 11 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

media File:Naval_Ensign_of_Russia.svg is just hanging around in the article as if the reader should instantly know the meaning of this obscure piece of cloth, it should be annotated per WP:MOSFLAG Fasach Nua (talk) 20:58, 11 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

comment. The only human name in the text belongs to one of the historians. Throughout the article she emerges and acts all alone, like an ancient goddess. Human will ("the Sailors' Committee") appears only in the final act. And it's an article about the ship that has been the title subject of two (quite recent) history books, and the battle that inspired a bunch of novels and a feature film. East of Borschov 16:48, 12 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That's the same thing that struck me when I started reading ship articles on Wikipedia, how little biographical material there is compared with what you usually find in books. Are the people you'd like to see in this article notable enough for their own articles? Also: which books would you like to see as sources? I'm happy to get books through inter-library loan, though I'm at my limit so it will take about a week to order them. - Dank (push to talk) 17:01, 12 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I will not have time for lengthy research until August. The book by Barrett looks quite good. My experience with Rostislav and Andrey Pervozvanny (still in userspace) tells me that a good deal of people mentioned in the books already have articles in en-wikipedia. Although most of these articles are executives and royals, not shipbuilders and sailors, and very few naval officers of WW1. Slava is quite peculiar: being the last ship of the Borodino class, she was destined to be overlooked by the dignitaries. Then the Baltic Fleet went down in the Battle of Tsushima, and Slava became the only capital ship on hand. East of Borschov 17:52, 12 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
SV, the book is at http://books.google.com/books?id=JLw5KKz5RS0C&dq=barrett+slava&source=gbs_navlinks_s and most of it is visible in preview mode; I get 28 hits on "Slava". Do you have a sense of the scholarship? Do you want me to get on this (and the other things mentioned so far)? - Dank (push to talk) 18:12, 12 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I added a link to Admiral Bakhirev. I'm not sure who ordered Slava into the Gulf of Riga, Admiral Kanin? The only thing in the Barret book that is of note is mention of some complaints from the lower deck about Slava going back to the Gulf of Riga, but I don't think it was particularly significant. Barret looks pretty good as a reference for the article on Operation Albion, but not so much so for Slava.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 18:50, 12 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
A couple of interesting quotes from page 74 of Barrett:

The Slava had its main guns replaced during the war, and to universal astonishment, they could outrange the latest German dreadnoughts. . . . In 1916, the obsolete Slava by itself, hiding behind the minefields at Sworge, had held off Admiral Schmidt’s superior fleet of five battleships and eight cruisers for several days.

Kablammo (talk) 16:59, 16 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Already described.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 22:07, 16 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sources - in addition to the below comments on sourcing, I'd also like to note a slight discrepancy in the ship's length between the infobox and the article text. Nikkimaria (talk) 17:03, 12 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support Doug (talk) 02:44, 14 July 2010 (UTC) with minor comments:[reply]

  • "sortied to take the minesweepers under fire". Place the minesweepers under fire? Doug (talk) 02:44, 14 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Reworded.
  • The first and second halves of the last sentence of the first paragraph of "Battle of the Gulf of Riga" don't appear to connect well and could bear a rewrite. Doug (talk) 02:44, 14 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Not sure exactly what you mean, but I've split the paragraph and reworded a few things. How does it read now?
  • I find your instructions to reviewers 'amusing'. Keep up the good work, Dank. Doug (talk) 02:44, 14 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comments The writing could be improved. It is monotonous in places, with overuse of the same structure (subject, verb, object), and would be improved by more use of subordinate clauses and variety in terms referring to the ship. There are a remarkable number of "shes" in the article. The writing can also be tightened to lose extraneous terms. Kablammo (talk) 15:37, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    • Thanks for taking the time to identify specific things that need improvement; that's what I need to figure out what the problems are. I'm a little tied up right now, but I'll respond to your comments as best I can.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 17:50, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • I have to laugh; I think this is the first time ever that my writing has criticized for lacking enough subordinate clauses, etc. Wiki seems to reward fairly simple sentences; I've had to restrain my normal tendency for Baroque sentence structure. Nonetheless you make some good points.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 22:23, 16 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • I wasn't clear enough. Individual sentences were fine, I was just commenting on the number of times consecutive sentences started the same way and followed the same structure. One example which stood out was the first paragraph of the Service section in the nominated version, which now reads better. Kablammo (talk) 23:07, 16 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Examples:

  • Lede: The first two sentences of the second paragraph both begin with “she”, as does the last clause in the previous paragraph, and the fourth sentence of the second paragraph—four instances in five sentences. Why not use Slava or The ship or some other term? Mix it up some. Kablammo (talk) 15:37, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Description: 2d paragraph. “She had two 4-cylinder vertical triple expansion steam engines driving four-bladed screw propellers. “ Why not just say “Two four-cylinder vertical triple expansion steam engines drove two four-bladed screw propellers.”? Kablammo (talk) 15:37, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Wartime modifications: “She was reportedly fitted with two 47 mm anti-aircraft (AA) guns during the war, but she carried only four 3-inch (76 mm) AA guns in early 1917.” Two uses of “she” in same sentence. The second one can go. Kablammo (talk) 15:37, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Service: “She was laid down on 1 November 1902, launched on 29 August 1903, and completed in October 1905, too late to participate in the Russo-Japanese War.” Here is an example of where you can vary sentence structure. How about: "Laid down on 1 November 1902, launched on 29 August 1903, and completed in October 1905, the ship was too late to participate in the Russo-Japanese War.” or (better) “Laid down on 1 November 1902, and launched on 29 August 1903, the ship was not completed until October 1905, too late to participate in the Russo-Japanese War.” Kablammo (talk) 15:37, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Battle of the Gulf of Riga: “These hits did not seriously damage Slava and she remained in place until ordered to retreat.” How about: “These hits did not seriously damage Slava, which remained in place until ordered to retreat." Kablammo (talk) 15:37, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

These are examples; there are others. The writing has been much improved recently but there is room to improve it further. Kablammo (talk) 15:37, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Just my opinions, no one has hired me to be their copyeditor:
Inserting: I need to be more careful ... "no one has hired me" sounds like I'm bothered about something, and I'm not. What I'm saying is it's not my job to enforce any particular style; this is meant more as a discussion of reasons pro or con rather than as a "Thou Shalt" kind of thing. - Dank (push to talk) 17:24, 16 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Mix it up some": absolutely, and Sturmvogel generally does this. It's not easy to be consistently inconsistent in the wiki-environment, but that's an excellent criticism. I'll go through it now seeing if I can fix this.
  • "Two four-cylinder vertical triple expansion steam engines drove two four-bladed screw propellers.": probably "Two 4-cylinder" per WP:ORDINAL, but I get the point. I don't think it was precisely wrong here; you're asking us to change things up from one sentence to the next, and your suggestion sounds a lot like the wording in the very next sentence. OTOH, your suggestion is tighter, and I don't have a preference and don't mind if you change it.
  • "Two uses of “she” in same sentence": yep, I'll fix that.
  • "Laid down on 1 November 1902, and launched on 29 August 1903, the ship was not completed until October 1905, too late to participate in the Russo-Japanese War": I have a question for anyone who knows, my library doesn't cover this: was the ship intended for use specifically against Japan? Were deadlines missed?
    • The Borodino-class ships were not built for service in the Far East, they just happened to be completing when the war broke out and thus available to be sunk or captured at Tsushima.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 17:50, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • According to a source I have, construction of the Borodinos was accelerated after start of the war in 1904. Fortunately for her (and her crew), Slava was not completed in time. Kablammo (talk) 19:02, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • Okay, I'd rather not say "the ship was not completed until" then. - Dank (push to talk) 20:55, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
          • McLaughlin makes no reference to construction being accelerated. In fact he says that they were late in completing, which delayed the dispatch of the Second Pacific Squadron to the Far East. That does not mean that an attempt was made to accelerate their construction that apparently did nothing if the original schedule was unrealistic. Without more information I don't think that this is necessarily relevant to Slava as it's quite likely that workers were transferred from her to her sisters being the least furthest along.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 22:07, 16 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "These hits did not seriously damage Slava, which remained in place until ordered to retreat": depends entirely on what you think of "paratactic" construction, in the sense of "stringing together clauses and sentences without indicating the connections between elements". I think paratactic construction fits the Wikipedia model of collaborative expository editing very nicely; when people try to define the connection between elements precisely, they sometimes get it wrong, and even when it's right, it's just one more thing to argue over ... as we're doing here. If it's likely that the readers can deduce the correct connection on their own, why not let them do it? In this case, we've got a narrative going ... this happened, then this happened, then this happened. When you switch it up and put in a "which", it suggests to some readers that those two elements happened simultaneously; they didn't. - Dank (push to talk) 16:29, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Regarding the Battle of the Gulf of Riga, the lead currently says: "Serving in the Baltic Sea during World War I, Slava was the largest ship of the Russian Gulf of Riga Squadron that defeated the German High Seas Fleet in the Battle of the Gulf of Riga in August 1915."
    IMO that's a bit of a stretch as reading the article about the battle it seems that Slava was hit 3 times and had to withdraw. The Germans abandoned their mission because of allied submarines:
    "On 16 August, a second attempt was made to enter the gulf. The dreadnoughts Nassau and Posen, four light cruisers, and 31 torpedo boats breached the defenses to the gulf.[3] On the first day of the assault, the German minesweeper T 46 was sunk, as was the destroyer V 99. On 17 August, Nassau and Posen engaged in an artillery duel with Slava, resulting in three hits on the Russian ship that prompted her withdrawal. After three days, the Russian minefields had been cleared, and the flotilla entered the gulf on 19 August, but reports of Allied submarines in the area prompted a German withdrawal from the gulf the following day."  Dr. Loosmark  18:11, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Criteria 1(a), (d), (e), 2, and 4 all met. Kablammo (talk) 18:44, 19 July 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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