Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review

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The peer review department of the Military history WikiProject conducts peer review of articles on request. The primary objective is to encourage better articles by having contributors who may not have worked on articles to examine them and provide ideas for further improvement.

The peer review process is highly flexible and can deal with articles of any quality; however, requesting reviews on very short articles may not be productive, as there is little for readers to comment on. Particularly high-quality articles can also be submitted to the A-Class review process, which serves as a more formal complement to this one.

All reviews are conducted by fellow editors—usually members of the Military history WikiProject. While there is a general intent to expand this process to allow for review by subject experts, the preparations for this are not yet complete.

Contents 1 Instructions 1.1 Requesting a review 1.2 Responding to a request 1.3 Archiving 2 Requests 2.1 Battle of Gythium 2.1.1 Kirill Lokshin 2.2 U.S. 8th Armored Division 2.2.1 TomStar81 2.2.2 Kirill Lokshin 2.3 Military of ancient Rome 2.3.1 Kirill Lokshin 2.3.2 Hal Jespersen 2.3.3 Yannismarou 2.4 Caesar's invasions of Britain 2.4.1 Kirill Lokshin 2.5 Union Army Balloon Corps 2.5.1 Kirill Lokshin 2.5.2 Hal Jespersen 2.5.3 oldwindybear 2.6 Coal torpedo 2.6.1 Kirill Lokshin 2.6.2 BusterD 2.6.3 Hal Jespersen 2.7 Battle of Wuhan 2.7.1 Kirill Lokshin 2.7.2 oldwindybear 2.8 Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships 2.8.1 Kirill Lokshin 2.9 War of the Grand Alliance 2.9.1 Kirill Lokshin 2.9.2 oldwindybear 2.9.3 UberCryxic 2.10 Battle of Raymond 2.10.1 Kirill Lokshin 2.10.2 Hal Jespersen 2.10.3 oldwindybear 2.10.4 Gw099 2.11 Caspian expeditions of the Rus 2.11.1 Wandalstouring 2.11.2 oldwindybear 2.11.3 UberCryxic 2.12 Mirko Norac 2.12.1 Kirill Lokshin 2.13 SU-100Y Self-Propelled Gun 2.13.1 Kirill Lokshin 2.13.2 Oberiko 2.14 Battle of Greece 2.14.1 Kirill Lokshin 2.14.2 UberCryxic 2.15 Fort Bliss 2.15.1 Kirill Lokshin 3 Archives

[edit] Instructions

[edit] Requesting a review

1. Add peer-review=yes to the {{WPMILHIST}} project banner at the top of the article's talk page (see the project banner instructions for more details on the exact syntax).
2. From there, click on the "request has been made" link that appears in the template. This will open a page to discuss the review of your article.
3. Place === [[Name of nominated article]] === at the top.
4. Below it, write your reason for nominating the article and sign by using four tildes (~~~~).
5. Add {{Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/Name of nominated article}} at the top of the list of requests on this page.

If an article is listed for a second (or third, and so forth) peer review:

1. Move the existing peer review subpage (Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/Name of nominated article) to an archive (Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/Name of nominated article/Archive 1).
2. Follow the instructions for making a request above (editing the primary page, which will be a redirect to the archive, into a new request page).
3. Be sure to provide a prominent link to the last archive at the top of the request (e.g. "Prior peer review here.").

[edit] Responding to a request

Everyone is encouraged to comment on any request listed here. To comment on an article, please add a new section (using ==== [[User:Your name|Your name]] ====) for your comments, in order to keep multiple responses legible.

[edit] Archiving

Reviews should be archived after they have been inactive for some time, or when the article is nominated as a featured article candidate. To archive a review:

1. Replace peer-review=yes with old-peer-review=yes in the {{WPMILHIST}} project banner template at the top of the article's talk page
2. Move {{Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/Name of nominated article}} from this page to the current archive page.

[edit] Requests

[edit] Battle of Gythium

I have raised this article from a sttub to a B in a week and I want to see want can be done to improve it. Kyriakos 08:50, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kirill Lokshin

Some suggestions, in no particular order:

• We ought to get at least a stub on the Roman-Spartan War, so that we can link to it.
• The second map should be placed on the left margin, to avoid forcing a gap after the infobox.
• The citations really need page numbers (or chapter numbers, perhaps, when no page numbers are available); as it is, giving an entire book doesn't really help a reader find this stuff in it.

More generally, any additional information would help; but I don't know how much is actually available.

(On a more minor point: is this actually known as the "Battle of Gythium"? From the description of the events, it would seem that Siege of Gythium would be a better title for this.) Kirill Lokshin 18:03, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Ok. Thanks Kirill. Kyriakos 20:12, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

It is known as the BAttle of GYthium. Kyriakos 20:15, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Ah, ok; if that's the term historical works use, we should follow their lead. :-) Kirill Lokshin 20:23, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] U.S. 8th Armored Division

I've made some fairly substantial edits to this article. I'd love some feedback on what else would help improve this.--Lepeu1999 21:29, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks to both below - exactly the kind of help I was looking for! Starting work on the improvements.--Lepeu1999 15:22, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

I've made some substantial additions to this based on the suggestions received. I know there is some clean-up still needed and am working on it, but I would love for this to be reviewed again as I believe it can 'graduate' from 'Start' class.--Lepeu1999 20:02, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] TomStar81

Its a good start, but the article does need work. My sugestions for improvement are:

• Expand the History section. This can be accomplished by:
  • Discussing the events sorrounding the divisions creation and the events surrounding its dissolution.
  • See if you can find anything about the battles that they were engaged in and briefly sum up the 8ths role in them.
  • Lastly, see if any additional information regarding the liberation of Halberstadt-Zwieberge, as that sounds like a major hilight of the 8ths campaign.
• Increase the inline citations.
• Consider adding the smaller number version of the inline citations rather than having external links for them.
• Find more references. Admittedly, this can be hard, but it will be worth it in the long run.
• See if any information on the type of armour they were using is avaliable; while I assume they would use Sherman Tanks, other vehicals could be in there that would be worth mentioning.

Those are my suggestions. I otherwise enjoyed reading the article. Keep up the good work. TomStar81 (Talk) 01:54, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kirill Lokshin

TomStar81 got most of the major points, so here are a few more minor ones:

• The listing of commanders and honors could be better done in the infobox (unless there's a potential for significant material beyond just the lists).
• The lead section should be lengthened (as the article itself grows).
• One very obvious piece of missing information (which could be nicely worked into a table together with the contents of the "Composiion" section: what was the strength (men, tanks, etc.) of the division?
• I would suggest converting all the inline citations to footnotes here, as working with website citations in Harvard-style is rather a pain (in my opinion, anyways).

Kirill Lokshin 02:52, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Military of ancient Rome

This is a relatively new article worked on almost exclusively to date by user wansdalstouring and myself. We've taken it a fair way in a short time but could definitely do with input, comments, suggestions for improvements from more editors. - PocklingtonDan 09:40, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

There may be some dispute on the use of bulleted lists in general. In this article prose has been avoided in order to create a bulleted "organized link list" in the second half of the article. In contrast to the usual non-structured See also section (which in all FAs is neither structured nor prose). While you surely can turn anything into prose, the effect of a fast and easy to understand structure is likely lost and this leads to differing opinions on the topic, so we would apprciate if other editors threw in their two cents whether or not such an approach does help the reader. Wandalstouring 08:39, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kirill Lokshin

It's definitely off to a good start. Some broad things to look at:

• Much of the article—particularly the second half—is composed of lists that can fairly reasonably be converted into genuine prose (with {{details}} applied as necessary to break out into sub-articles).
• The is a lot of crowding of diagrams in some sections; this is, perhaps, due to those sections simply needing to be expanded, but gallery-like layouts should probably be avoided in any case.
• More generally, expansion would be useful throughout the article.

I would suggest asking oldwindybear to comment on this review as well, as he knows a lot more about this particular topic than I do. Kirill Lokshin 21:55, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Kirill for the first peer review. Wandalstouring I have had a lot of toing and froing on exactly how much prose to insert in the "branches" section you refer to that is composed mainly of lists. This stems from our wish for the article to be a hybrid article/extended disambiguation page - since the topic is so huge there are separate articles covering a lot of the terms and areas covered more closely we didn't want to duplicate too much here. However, your comments are taken on board, and if this is the consensus, then we shall certainly expand that section to full prose. Thanks again for your input - PocklingtonDan 22:12, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I absolutely oppose converting these lists in the second half into prose. In this case it would be just like writing shopping lists in prose. Give some arguments why these short list are better off in prose. Wandalstouring 01:59, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

These sections shouldn't really be lists at all, but brief (one or two paragraphs, or so) summaries of the linked daughter articles. Someone reading this ought to be able to get a halfway decent overview of the material, not just a list of terms; as it is, this is a pretty decent attempt at a glossary, but it doesn't really indicate how all the items come together.

(Indeed, the short length of the lists makes is easier to change them to prose; you basically already have clusters of two or three decent sentences in each section, just broken up by bullets. There's no real gain in leaving them in list form here, as the lists aren't so long or so full of numbers/statistics/terms that they would flow poorly in prose form.) Kirill Lokshin 02:07, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Consider, for example, one of the sections in the article:

Ship types used

• Trireme
• Quinquereme
• Liburna

This could just as easily be presented as

The Roman navy included several types of ships, such as the trireme, the quinquereme, and the liburna.

What benefit of the first version has been lost in the second? Kirill Lokshin 02:12, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

(The fundamental point here is that prose is generally easier to read than seemingly unrelated lists of terms. There's no flow from section to section and from item to item in such a list-heavy article; it's quite difficult, when reading through, to understand what the underlying logical structure of the piece is.) Kirill Lokshin 02:14, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree that there needs to be a logical structure, but you have also taken the worst example for your point and this clearly needs workout. For example this section makes good use of the bullet form (and from the basic conception the article should follow such a style, while providing limited information to help the reader):

• Roman legion - almost entirely heavy infantry drawn exclusively from Roman citizens of any class

• Cohorts - sub-unit of a Roman legion

• Centuriae - tactical sub-unit of a Cohort

• Equites legionis - Roman legionary cavalry

• Roman auxilia - a formalisation of the earlier arrangement of using allied troops from the Socii and Latini who had received Roman citizenship after the Social War

The advantage of the bullet form like this is giving fast and easy to access links (and descriptions have not yet been added to all of them). This has clear advantages in this aspects to pure prose as all the disambiguation pages show. Wandalstouring 02:34, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, that's one way of doing it, but it's still basically a glossary. You could accomplish the same thing with easier-to-follow context, I think; for example, something like:

The Roman legion was almost entirely heavy infantry drawn exclusively from Roman citizens of any class. It was made up of Cohorts, which were further divided into Centuriae. Each legion had an associated Equites legionis, a body of Roman legionary cavalry.
The Roman auxilia was a formalisation of the earlier arrangement of using allied troops from the Socii and Latini who had received Roman citizenship after the Social War.

You have so much material that it folds into sentences pretty naturally; I don't really see the benefit of keeping it in bulleted form, given that you're not presenting some complicated hierarchy that needs graphical cues to be understood. Kirill Lokshin 02:41, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm happy to see what the consensus is on this but I do agree with wandalstouring that some of the ease of understanding of the overarching structure may be lost by turning this all into prose. Prose has te disadvantage that you have to read all of it to understand the structure, whereas a branched structure is much more easy to understand at a swift glance. However, I take on board your points and I'm hapy to go along with the majority consensus either way. - PocklingtonDan 07:59, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

As Dan pointed out there are some flaws to prose which would corrupt essential parts here. Take for example Military of the United States or British Armed Forces both articles present a similar topic with the use of bulleted lists. Notably the See also sections are not structured within and if they get any longer their practical use is quite in question. As for this see it as an organized link list that would normally be in the See also section. Wandalstouring 08:32, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, it's basically up to you how you structure the article. Personally, I (and many other editors) prefer prose to lists, so that's what I'll generally advise; but you're obviously free to do something else if you don't think that my suggestion is sensible here. :-) Kirill Lokshin 16:49, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

The use of blockquotes or bulleted lists can be discussed. This is not a structural, but rather an aesthetical question. In presentations bulleted lists seem to me by far more widespread than non-bulleted lists (such as the blockquote given as example below, thx to Kirill Lokshin).

Roman legions These units were almost entirely heavy infantry drawn exclusively from Roman citizens of any class. It was made up of Cohorts, which were further divided into Centuriae. Each legion had an associated Equites legionis, a body of Roman legionary cavalry.
Roman auxilias These units were a formalisation of the earlier arrangement of using allied troops from the Socii and Latini who had received Roman citizenship after the Social War.

So we could discuss this issue, although bullets are nice markings in my opinion. Wandalstouring 20:58, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, if it's a list, yes; but I was suggesting having the terms actually inside normal text, not given before it as if in a list (i.e. the difference between "Roman legions were..." and "Roman legions These units were...", the latter of which isn't actually a gramatticaly correct sentence). Kirill Lokshin 17:21, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Wandalstouring, all 3 separate peer reviews have all mentioned how they find the bullet points disrupt the flow and reduce readability - that's sufficient consensus for me to think that we need to change it to prose and so I have started to do so. I think the problem is that if you already understand the structure of the Roman military, the bullet points are a handy summation, but if you don't know the topic the bullet points are just a bewildering list of concepts - I now favour rpose for all these sections, making clear how each term is related to every other. We had our viewpoint, but I think it has to be shown not to stand up under scrutiny from readers perhaps unfamiliar with the tpoic. Cheers - PocklingtonDan 17:43, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hal Jespersen

(I am providing some comments because Dan requested that I do so. I actually know virtually nothing about Roman military history, besides what I learned in ninth grade Latin class, so will limit myself entirely to presentation issues, not military content.)

Thanks very much for your time on this Hal, I saw you had done some great in-depth peer reviews on other subjects and I thought your help would be invaluable on this article - I don't think its necessary always for every peerr eview to have in-depth knowledge of the article content. Thanks again - PocklingtonDan 08:16, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

• If this article is intended to become a Featured Article, it needs to comply with the FA guidelines, which say that you should have three or four paragraphs in the introductory section (the text before the table of contents) that summarize the content of the article.

Never mind FA guidelines, we can always vote and change them. So what argument do you have for more paragraphs in the introductory section? Any suggestions to help the reader to understand something better? More information? How do you want to summarize lists (the main aspect of this article)? Wandalstouring 02:23, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

We weren't shooting for FA status from this review as such, just hoping to tighten up the article and get some more eyeballs onit - PocklingtonDan 08:16, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Chicken and egg problem there as far as the lists are concerned. ;-)

More generally, the lead section should be a concise summary of the entire article; in theory, a reader should be able to read only the introduction and still walk away with the major points that would be covered in more detail in the body of the article. The current version doesn't really get into any of the material, but is more like a newspaper-style lead that tries to draw the reader in; that's not really the best approach in an encyclopedia, I think. Kirill Lokshin 02:27, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I'll take a look at trying to summarise article in 3 or 4 paras - PocklingtonDan 08:16, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

• The headings in section 7.1.1 are much longer than typical Wikipedia headings and make the TOC unwieldy.

Will try to reduce the headers for readability. Wandalstouring 02:23, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

• You should find a way of taking the microscopic text that is included in the images and turning it into real text to accompany the strictly visual portions.
• Headings such as "Funding and Expenditures" should follow style guidelines about overuse of capital letters.

No problem, will reduce them. Wandalstouring 02:23, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

• In the second table/image, presenting information that consists almost entirely of "unknown" is almost worthless.

There is no such info in wikipedia about things that existed, so there are two possibilities:

a)we do not mention anything as existant as long as there is no wikipedia article (or chapter in a wikipedia article) on it

b)We leave it red and hope for the proper article/chapter in an article to appear one day. I hope it makes little difference to understandability whether something is writen in red or black. I know FA articles should have no red parts, but whoever suggest this rule has not my vote. The usual solution to this problem is delinking red names and soon an article looks perfectly integrated. At least we try to find links that do somehow fill in for the missing articles. Wandalstouring 02:23, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm with wandalstouring here - I don't see any harm in having links to articles that haven't been written yet - they are valid topics/articles that really should have content and users are going to know by their red text that they aren't active yet. If consensus is to remove them, though, then again I'm happy to go along with that - PocklingtonDan 08:16, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

• The section "Command Structure" should have textual descriptions, rather than relying entirely on the microscopic images for information. Use the images, but make the text the normative information of the article.

Can be improved, but textual description will likely be much longer and to a lesser degree understandable. Wandalstouring 02:23, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

• In "Readiness" and elsewhere, use proper punctuation (EM-dashes rather than hyphens).

OK. Will work through it. Wandalstouring 02:23, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

• In "Engineering" and elsewhere, eliminate the use of bulleted lists. FAs generally don't allow them.

Nope, I don't mind FA criteria as long as an article is better to read. So are they a pro or a contra to getting information from this article and the way it helps you to find links? Wandalstouring 02:23, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

They're quite good at finding links (which is why they're used for disambiguation pages), but not so good at actually presenting information. Someone reading this article is not necessarily going to navigate around through all the links just to get an overview of the material; if the links were given within a summary section, they would have rather more context to them, and a reader would be able to get a decent idea of the material without necessarily needing to follow them all. Kirill Lokshin 02:36, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

There seems to be a compromise here of annotating the lists to give an idea of the content of the linked articles?? - PocklingtonDan 08:16, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

• You have some duplications in Notes. By using the name= field in the < ref > tag, you can specify multiple notes that have the same contents, without duplication. If you would like to see an example, a recent article I wrote has a few such instances: Battle of Kelly's Ford.

There are different opinions on this formatting issue and not everybody approves of the suggested style. Both are possible in FA articles. Wandalstouring 02:23, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

• You should find some illustrations of soldiers, ships, battles, etc. Featured articles almost always have a number of images (beyond your graphs).

I disagree about the use of images for images sake. For once I want to give an informative article without cozy legionaries. As Dan tried to point out this article has its roots in a disambiguation page and the aim was to maintain such a structure, but give a more informed disambiguation/link list page. Wandalstouring 02:23, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree with wandalstouring that a lot of images I see in articles are attractive filler that don't really provide an awful lot of information. Especially if we just threw in a photo of a modern recreation of a legionary soldier from the early empire, it just perpetuates myths of uniformity across time and unit types etc and isn't very helpful. If we did insert images of soldiers or ships, for instance, then to my mind it would only be worth doing so in both cases if it showed the historical changes and variations over time in a series of images, for example.

Good luck, Hal Jespersen 23:00, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks very much for the review, you've given us a lot to think (and argue!) about here. Cheers - PocklingtonDan 08:16, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, I had no idea my simple formatting suggestions would prove to be so controversial. I was making the assumption that you would eventually seek featured article status, because that is what most of the peer reviews I have seen are attempting to set up. If you are not seeking such approval, some of my comments are irrelevant. Certainly, if your goal is primarily to provide a series of bulleted pointers to other articles with little other added value, you will not have to worry about featured article status. Removing from my watchlist now... Hal Jespersen 16:10, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

We will work on FA, but the rules are not set in stone. So if we do get a good article by violating some of them it might be worth it. Wandalstouring 20:48, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Yannismarou

Although I'm not a specialist in the Roman history, I give this article a review because I was asked to and because it is really an important article, and I see that its editors (an interesting British-German co-operation!) are really determined to improve it. I'm sorry if I repeat things other reviewers said, but I did not read their reviews in detail. These are my remarks:

• I see somebody expanded the lead. Well done! Because it was too short. You can expand it even more if you wish to (by adding one more paragraph).
• "(for the military of the East Roman Empire after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, see Byzantine military)". I don't like where this parenthesis is placed. Wouldn't be better to place it befor the lead in italics, like that:

For the military of the East Roman Empire after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, see Byzantine military

• "In the late Imperial period, while equipment quality decreased, the military's numbers were significantly increased to cover the borders and suppress unrest. The circumstances of the Empire had changed; the Western Roman Empire now relied heavily on foederati units of mostly Germanic tribes living within the borders, who fought in the name of Rome during the Migration Period." I want to understand the syllogism of the editor. Do you mean that "the military's numbers were significantly increased", because the "The circumstances of the Empire had changed" and "the Western Roman Empire now relied heavily on foederati units of mostly Germanic tribes living within the borders, who fought in the name of Rome during the Migration Period". If yes OK. If not, I'd suggest rephrasing of the last period, in order to be clear that this is another independent topic, another idea not necessarily related to the previous period.
• Don't over-wikilink the article. For instance, Roman army or Roman Republic are linked more than once.
• "It is not thought that they constituted a significant proportion of troops even amongst the federated troops of the late empire." Citation? "It is not thought" without citation is a bit weasel.
• "See also: Crisis of the Third Century" I think the seealsos is better to go straight after the heading; not in the middle of a section.

*"Several additional factors bloated the military expenditure of the Roman Empire:

   * Substantial rewards were paid for the demeanor of "barbarian" chieftains in the form of negotiated subsidies and for the provision of allied troops[11]
   * The military boosted its numbers, possibly by one third in a single century[12]
   * The military increasingly relied on a higher ratio of cavalry units in the late Empire, which were many times more expensive to maintain than infantry units.[13]"

One of the many listy parts of this article. Why don't you make a nice paragraph here without bullets?

Easier to read, than a paragraph in this case. But we have been discussing possibly differnt structures, although your example is best suited for a bulleted list to make a limited number of points. Wandalstouring 17:46, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

• "Raubwirtschaft". I think the German term is redundant in an English article. Link to article Raubwirtschaft with just the English term.
• The images in "Funding and expenditures" and the next section are bigger than the text margin. I don't think this is nice layout and I believe that it needs fixing.

Smaller images would be of little valuze. Currently this section is mainly focused on the late Empire, so a text expansion is possible. Wandalstouring 17:46, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

• "Command Structure" is uncited.
• "Culture" is obviously stubby.
• "On the other hand, this also could mean the payment of immense subsidies to foreign powers[22] and opened the possibility of extortion in case military means were insufficient." Try to have the citations at the end of the sentence. Place it in the middle only if you regard it as absolutely necessary. See the paradox in this sentence: it gives the impression that only half of it has a verifiable citation, while the rest of it is uncited!
• The first paragraph of "Sustainability" needs referencing.
• "Forces were routinely supplied via fixed supply chains, although Roman armies in enemy territory would often supplement or replace this with foraging for food and the forging and repair of their own weaponry and tools." Another uncited sentence, which includes historical assessments presented as facts.
• "Engineering" is stubby and poorly written. Just a reference to Heather and three bullets are not enough to justify the existence of a section.

Sure, it has not yet been expanded, needs input. Greetings to oldwindybear. Wandalstouring 17:46, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

• I see again many Wikilinks of the same article, e.g. Roman Navy.
• "What is generally agreed on is that there was a site of habitation at Rome, if not during the Bronze Age Terramare culture then certainly during the Iron Age Villanovan culture that succeeded it." "Certainly" is a strong word and needs at least a citation to support it.
• "Archeology from the site argues against the traditional apocryphal tale of seven Roman kings during this period." Archeology "argues" via whom? Again verifiable sources should be provided.
• In many parts the article is poorly written and there are many typos. The over-wikifation is just an example. See also this sentence: "As with most of the villages in the region, the [[Romans] warred". Somebody wanted to wikilink "Romans" (again?!!!), but did a typo. But nobody saw this typo to correct it! This typo is now fixed along with another wrong red link. But be careful with these minor things! They give the wrong impression about the level of your effort!
• "By the 7th century BC, Etruscan civilization was dominant in the region. As with most of the villages in the region, the Romans warred against the Etruscans and by the close of the 7th century the Etruscans conquered Rome and established a military dictatorship or kingdom." Look again what I mean. In this shord paragraph "Etruscan" are wikilinked 2 times and 1 more in the lead→2+1=3!!! By the way, Etruscan leads to a disambiguation page. This is not a proper link.
• "Later Roman historians tell us that he reformed the army as a result of his transplanting onto the army the structure derived for civil life from his conducting the first Roman census." Which historians? You don't cite anyone. Weasel words!
• I don't understand these bullets at the end of "Military establishment of the Roman kingdom". Why isn't there any coherence with the previous part of the sentence or any introductory sentence before the bullets?

There was a very strong and negative echo on all the use of bullets. Someone is half through a rewrite. Wandalstouring 17:46, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

• The same and bigger problem with "Military establishment of the Roman Republic". It is difficult for me to follow the article in these sections. These bullets harm the article. Why isn't there a proper prose. In these sections the article has a really bad flow. It reads really bad! Obviously, I disagree that these bullets are better for the understanding of these sections. They are not! It is your choice, but, as far as I'm concerned, I've a great problem to understand these parts of the article and, therefore, I'm discouraged to continue reading it. "The ease of understanding of the overarching structure" will not be lost, because (for me as a reader) there is no ease right now!
• The same with the next sections until "Roman navy". I strongly recommend prose in these sections and bullets only where it is absolutely necessary. And when you use bullets, the flow of the prose must not be interrupted as it is now.
• The three sub-sections of the "Roman navy" are all listy. I don't know with GAC, but in FAC, if you go with these listy sections, I'm afraid you'll be sent back for another peer-review.

While information is very poor in wikipedia this was the least possible. Naturally it gets expanded. Wandalstouring 17:46, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

• "For the military of the East Roman Empire after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, see Byzantine military" So you treat the military of the East Roman Empire before the Fall of the Western Roman Empire? Then why I did not see this topic developed and analysed? How were the Western and the Eastern army organized after the division of the Empire? Similarities? Differences? Reprocussions of the military division for both sides?
• I think that your primary sources mentioned in Notes deserve also mentioning in "Bibliography" ("References" is a better title for me). Why only Livy is there? Tacitus? Polybius? What about them. And in my article I prefer to divide my references in primary and secondary sources, but it is up to you.
• And something else: The diagrams and the maps are really nice and congratulations to you for this work, but such a long and important article should have more pictures and not only diagrams and maps. Maybe a statue of a Roman soldier or a painting depicting an ancient Roman battle. Things like that. It is not just "picture for the picture". No! Pictures make an article look better! And encourage the reader to go and read it. A picture catches the eye of the reader and makes the whole layout of the article more pleasant, interesting and nice. This is my philosophy and I think that this is the philosophy of most encyclopedias!

Not mine. We will possibly put a balanced view of pictures to avoid encouraging prejudices. I have been negotiating for months to release several accurate pictures of different periods. But we do it right or not at all. There shouldn't be another Hollywood-Roman look-alike contest or cozy 18th/19th century paintings that happened to be on commons. Wandalstouring 17:46, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree strongly with this - that we either put in worthwhile pictures that add content or not at all - PocklingtonDan 18:10, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

As a principle, I also agree. The pictures must serve the article and not vice versa.--Yannismarou 19:23, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

In general, the article is informative and with good maps and diagrams. But it needs better prose and more coherent article flow, more pictures serving the article, some clean-up in some sections, expansion or/and citing in other sections. I have also some reservations about the coherency of the whole structure of the article, but we could see that after the prose is improved and the article reads better. Continue with the good job!--Yannismarou 14:44, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Wow, that's one heck of a review - thanks enormously for all your effort on this. It will take some time but I will start to look at each of the issues you raised. Thanks again, very much appreciated - PocklingtonDan 15:23, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

OK, I've run through the article and made several changes based on your recommendations. I shall work going forwads on improving the readability of the article, adding more pictures (although only where I feel they add something) and trying to expand some of the stub sections. - PocklingtonDan 17:19, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

While you used the critized bullets here to make your different points of arguments clearer, would it be possible to give short headers to different names in this style (List of ethnic slurs)?

Furthermore there is the suggested blockquote style (above by Kirill and modification by me). Would any of these solution be acceptable by FA standards? This way it is possible to keep the core idea for the use of bulleted lists uncorrupted: quick information access

For the more casual reader there is also a longer and detailed textual explenation offered. I hope to serve this way green as well as grey readers on the topic. Wandalstouring 20:37, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Wandalstouring, I'm not sure why you're still pushing this - the consensus clearly seems to be that prose is far easier to follow for a reader unfamiliar with the subject - the bullet structure of that article originated with myself (see edit history) and was only used to present a hierarchy of levels when we were deciding the superstructure of the various sections. A list is only useful if someone is already familiar with one of the terms and looking up what the term means (such as in the article you gave as an example). For the purposes of an encyclopedic article on a topic such as the Roman military, the majority of readers have been shown to prefer prose. I don't understand your resistance to this - I appreciate that it doesn't look as neatly hierarchical to you and me, but an article's clarity should focus on its readers, not its editors. Can we drop this issue as resolved? PocklingtonDan 20:57, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Layout is not writing style. I argue about the layout, not the use of ellipsis or prose. Wandalstouring 21:08, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, one minor point that seems to have gotten lost somewhere along the line (probably due to me not being clear enough about what I was suggesting): the blockquote formatting is something I used in the peer review to indicate quotes from the article. If you have the same material in the article, you can take off the blockquote tags; they're meant for quotes, and don't really do anything useful here except for adding an extra level of indentation. Kirill Lokshin 21:09, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Got it. Restructured to List of ethnic slurs style. Wandalstouring 21:31, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Caesar's invasions of Britain

As part of its A / GA nomination, someone suggested it needed a peer review, so here it is. User|Neddyseagoon 22:27, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kirill Lokshin

It's not a bad article, per se, but it has some major issues:

• The use of exclusively primary sources for a topic of this magnitude is somewhat worrying, particularly given that Caesar was not exactly the most impartial of narrators. Are there no secondary works on this?

Somewhere, trying to find them! User|Neddyseagoon 23:31, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

• The evaluations of the invasions' success or failure are most certainly something that needs to be sourced to the historians making them; making such judgements based only on primary sources is basically original research.

See previous comment on secondary sources.

• There are a number of very short sections and paragraphs that could be better integrated into the surrounding prose. The "Discoveries about Britain" section, in particular, is little more than a series of extended quotes strung together with very little additional explanation or commentary.
• The popular culture section does not seem to contain anything particularly notable, and might be better off being eliminated entirely, or worked into a footnote.

Probably something could be dug out about British reactions to Caesar's invasion, in the say, Renaissance period onwards, how it integrates into Geoffrey of Monmouth etc., to bolster / save this section. User|Neddyseagoon 23:31, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Nicknack 009 is doing some good work on this issue. User|Neddyseagoon 13:49, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

• The infobox should give (possibly vague) numbers for the strength of the opposing sides, or simply put "Unknown"; a list of types of troops with no indication of number isn't particularly useful.

Looking for - again, the only source for numbers is Caesar - I've multiplied the number of legions by the numbers in a legion, then added 'unknown numbers of cavalry forces'. User|Neddyseagoon 23:31, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

I'd actually move the Briton numbers up from the footnote into the box itself. Kirill Lokshin 13:56, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

More generally, I would suggest abandoning the "Discoveries about Britain" section unless significant secondary material on this topic per se can be located, and instead working some of the points into a broader "Historiography" section. The question of how Caesar presented these invasions in his accounts, and how other contemporaries and later historians did the same, is probably something that can be discussed at some length. Kirill Lokshin 22:59, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Stuff could be added from the archaeology of Iron Age Britain, seeing how it reflects on Caesar's observations. And then keep it under the 'Discoveries' title, and add a level 2 section on Historiography, on Caesar's self-presentation etc. (though might repeat stuff in de Bello Gallico), including a level 3 section 'the invasion in other sources' (eg Dio, Tacitus)User|Neddyseagoon 23:31, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

That would probably work, so long as sources are available to support everything. Kirill Lokshin 13:56, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Mais oui! User|Neddyseagoon 14:26, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Union Army Balloon Corps

I'm very fond of this article but have not been much involved in development. Page creator Magi Media has put some good thought and a heap of time into this important and intriguing subject. With his support, I've asked for this peer review, so we can get some eyes to help this along to the next phase (A-Class or GA status). For my part, I think the article could use a References section at the end, to collect important reading and better support the inline references recently added. I think the layout could use a tiny bit of tweaking. BusterD 23:06, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kirill Lokshin

Quite nice, overall. Some suggestions:

• {{Infobox Military Unit}} could be used on this.
• The article seems to begin in media res; the first section deals with the selection of the "Chief Aeronaut" without an explanation of what this position was and whence it had originated being provided. A section of background would probably be useful here.
• Headings need to be cleaned up, per the MoS; in particular, the use of a leading "the" should be avoided, as should linked terms (which should instead be given below the heading via {{details}}).
• Dates should be linked to allow date formatting preferences to work correctly.
• The rump "See also" section should be eliminated; the link isn't a difficult one to work into the text at some point.
• I would recommend not using "Ibid." in the notes; if the order is later changed, it can become extremely difficult to catch any resulting incorrect back-references.
• Footnote numbers should be placed after punctuation.

More generally, a few rounds of copyediting to weed out any remaining formatting and wording issues are probably a good idea. Kirill Lokshin 02:17, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hal Jespersen

Here are some procedural comments on an article that is otherwise very good. I will expand upon Kirill's comments.

• You should avoid links to external URLs that do not have a label; in other words, a link surrounded by [ ] single brackets that winds up being displayed as a number. There are two reasons for this: it is a moderate disservice to the reader to not know a brief description of what he is clicking on; in an article with numeric footnotes, these numeric external links are confusing, even though they appear in a slightly different type treatment.
• You should take care to get the correct ranks for generals, using titles such as Major General where appropriate. Although it is common practice in verbal references to abbreviate their titles simply as "General", we attempt to use a more formal style of writing in Wikipedia.
• I recently came upon a new template, {{reflist}}, which produces a superior display of Notes when you have a long list such as you do here. See an example in Battle of Antietam.
• Naval ships are usually listed with their names in italics. I would recommend you use that same convention for airships throughout.
• In your third paragraph, you list a number of battle names. You should link those to the Wikipedia articles on those battles and I would recommend that you use the Wikipedia names for the battles (for instance, Antietam instead of Sharpsburg), particularly since this article takes a Union viewpoint. (I sometimes do not quarrel with people who use the traditional Southern names in, say, a biography of a Confederate general.)
• After the section "The troubled Balloon Corps," it would be nice to have a paragraph about the future of this type of aviation, rather than implying that it ceased to exist. For instance, I believe the U.S. Army Signal Corps had responsibility for observation balloons for a time; I could be wrong. In any event, this will give you an opportunity to point to other articles in Wikipedia regarding military ballooning.

Hal Jespersen 19:50, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] oldwindybear

I think more citation is called for, but the biggest issue for me is something Hal brought up - what happened to Observation Ballons in the military after 1863? If you believe this article, the US Military never again had anything to do with signal (or any other type) ballons. This article strongly requires at least a paragraph telling us what the future held after the end of the Ballon Corps during the Civil War. old windy bear 15:52, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Coal torpedo

Something I have a family connection to; I think an interesting piece of Civil War history. I have removed some of what might be considered original research and added inline references. This is probably too obscure to ever be a featured article but I'd like to get it to good article status. Thatcher131 03:15, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. There are going to be some issues with original research here, so I have to tread carefully in what I can say in the article. For example, the fact that it's size is similar to a 6lb case shot is from a standard ordnance reference work, but the information that it holds 3-4 oz of powder is from my father, who measured the internal cavity in a coal torpedo in a museum in Vermont. Also, I should disclose that one of the external web links is to a site I created, so it should be independently evaluated.

The original photo is one I took; I had second thoughts about releasing it under GFDL. Maybe I'll have third thoughts about it. I have a CW-era photo of the Greyhound (pre-fire, of course) that I can add once I source it properly. I can definitely expand the section on its use (or rather, fear of it) in England post-CW, and I just realized I forgot to discuss the fact that Jeff Davis liked the idea so much he kept one in his office. Let me know any other thoughts you have. Thatcher131 18:22, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kirill Lokshin

In my experience, nothing is too obscure to be a featured article. ;-)

As far as this article goes, it's in very good shape. A few suggestions:

• Expand the lead out to two full paragraphs.
• Eliminate any informal—particularly second-person—language (e.g. "or best case, depending on which side you were on").
• The last section should be titled "Notes and references".
• Some more images would be nice, if possible; if nothing else, a photo of Courtenay might be good.
• More citations would be helpful, particularly for the exact numbers in the article, as well as for the point that "if the explosion didn't sink the ship, the resulting fire probably would".
• The "External links" section should be moved to the very bottom.

Hope that helps! Kirill Lokshin 05:14, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] BusterD

I believe I was the one who foolishly left such a pejorative ("obscure") on the talk page. Shame on me. ;-(

I'm very fond of this article and wish the earlier photograph was still present (copyright vio?), and do think this article has an important topic and considerable research demonstrated. Tend to agree with most of that Kirill has already said.

• Needs at least three to four images to breakup long blocks of text.
• Needs some categories, watch the new technology group for possibles. I think under sabotage there should be some categories to add. Haven't looked myself but I will.
• The article has a novel way citations are written, sort of obviates the need for references section, but I'd like to see such a short section pointing the reader to the bibliography. Look at today's FA Kochi (India). I always consider today's FA the model for current style. In addition to good line citation, there's a modest refs section to point the reader toward personal exploration.
• The stack of single line paragraphs at the end of the article is awkward and loosely connected to article; I say keep all but expand slightly for context.

Great job on a very interesting subject. Want to know more! BusterD 13:25, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Nice improvements already. Glad I can be a small part of keeping this fine article growing. BusterD 19:51, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hal Jespersen

I agree that this is an excellent article and endorse the positive comments and constructive criticism listed above. My only substantive comment would be regarding the assertion about Stanley Karnow. Did his book really "hint" this information or did he provide speculation that could not be corroborated?

My remaining comments are all quite trivial. Normally, I would make changes like this myself, but since you are engaged in this review process, I will leave them to you.

• To match the style of most Wikipedia articles, I would move your initial image to the top of the page.
• In the formal writing of Wikipedia we avoid contractions, such as "didn't."
• The style of the overwhelming majority of American Civil War articles is to use American English. "Amongst," used twice, is not typical American.
• Your first paragraph under Deployment includes three instances of "although" and should be rewritten to reduce these.
• You should apply some date formatting. I have an explanation in my little style guide: User:Hlj/CWediting#Dates.

Hal Jespersen 16:52, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Hal. I'm all-American, so I don't know where "amongst" came from; my boss is Scottish, maybe that's it. Karnow says the CIA prepared explosives to hide in the coal supplies for NV trains, but doesn't specifically say it was made to look like coal (although I'm not sure how they could be "hidden" otherwise). I can provide the direct quote, or maybe leave it out if its not a direct enough reference. Thatcher131 16:56, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

It is interesting information and I think your explanation here is worth including in the article, replacing "hint." Hal Jespersen 17:17, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Battle of Wuhan

This article was a stub with three sentences before I expanded it in July. I currently want to do further research & writing on this topic, and was hoping to get some peer reviews first for the article. AQu01rius (User | Talk | Websites) 04:45, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kirill Lokshin

Off to a good start. Lots of things to work on:

• More citations throughout (ideally from reputable historical works more so than from primary sources).
• Massive wikification would be appropriate; most of the units in question should (eventually) get their own articles.
• The list of commanders in the infobox seems somewhat excessive; I'd trim it down to the major ones only.
• The lead should grow in proportion to the article, reaching an eventual length of three or four paragraphs.

Overall, though, the most important thing is simply to add more material. This is obviously a major battle, and I'm guessing that there are enough sources available to expand the article significantly. Keep up the great work! Kirill Lokshin 02:23, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] oldwindybear

This is improved, but still needs some work. It was one of the most significant battles of the second Sino-Japanese War, and can still use more detail. It also needs heavy citation througout. However, it is vastly improved, and I don't want to discourage an editor who put a great amount of effort into this! You have gotten mostly there - do on and finish it up! old windy bear 15:20, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships

After adding significantly to the article I'd like a peer review for two reasons:

• I don't think the article is start class any more
• to see if the self reference to Wikipedia is appropriate.

And any other suggested improvements, of course. Thanks.--J Clear 17:25, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

• Please see automated peer review suggestions here. Thanks, AZ _t 22:41, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kirill Lokshin

Meh, this could still use quite a bit of improvement. In particular:

• There's no historical context. If possible, some information on the creation of the DANFS would be very useful; why did the Navy decide to publish it, who wrote it, etc.
• Any images of the books themselves? Or screenshots of the online versions?
• There's a lot of uncited commentary and statistics (e.g. "Something on the order of a few hundred entries out of the thousands contain something along these lines, though to varying degrees.", "the quality is generally good, although errors still occur throughout.", etc.).
• I would condense the lead down to two paragraphs and move the bulk of the material on the contents of the DANFS down into a section in the body of the article.
• More details on how entries are structured would be nice.

As far as the self-reference is concerned, it's a bit unexpected, but I'm not overly disturbed by it; perhaps others will feel differently. In any case, it needs to be cited with an example of an article using that label. Kirill Lokshin 02:02, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] War of the Grand Alliance

I've substantially updated the article. If you feel inclined, please tell me what you think Raymond Palmer 23:00, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

• Please see automated peer review suggestions here. Thanks, AZ _t 22:41, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kirill Lokshin

Very good article, overall; aside from the usual quibbles on formatting and layout, there are a few broader issues that I'll comment on.

The use of the pull-quote boxes as a layout tool for tangent discussions is quite interesting. It's not something that I've ever seen on Wikipedia, but I'm familiar with the idea from printed works. Personally, I'm not disturbed by it, but other people may object that the boxes interrupt the flow of the article. In any case, if they're retained, I'd suggest several changes:

• Change the boxes to use a template (to be created) for the formatting, to ensure that they can be changed easily.
• Enlarge the font a bit; it's not too bad in Firefox, but unpleasantly small in IE.
• Perhaps lighten the background?

Another suggestion would be to merge the Treaty of Ryswick article directly into the "Aftermath" section here (or perhaps create a separate "Treaty of Ryswick" section above it). There's not much of interest to be said about the treaty per se; in such cases, my preference is to merge it directly into the war article, both to give it more context and to avoid leaving a side article with no hope of real improvement.

A third issue is the question of whom to list under the "Commanders" field of the infobox. Political leaders is one possibility; but, given that some of them (Charles II!) didn't really play a significant role in military affairs, it may be better to list some of the more prominent field commanders instead. It's mostly an issue of personal preference, though, so it's entirely up to you.

Aside from that, the minor stuff:

• The infobox should list all the significant combatants; there aren't so many here that omitting parts of the list is worthwhile.
• The links to the major sub-articles should preferably use {{details}}.
• Using the CMoS date style ("1688–91") in the section headings may be a bit neater.
• I'm not sure that the parenthetical dates on the various treaties/edicts/etc. are needed; if someone is curious, they can just follow the link, and the text would parse a bit more easily without them.
• More generally, parenthetical explanations should be avoided where simple links would suffice, particularly for points that are largely tangential to the topic. For example, "electors (so called because it was they who elected the Emperor)" is clunky when "electors" could just be linked to the appropriate article instead.

Kirill Lokshin 02:22, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually it was I who insisted that we should replace field commanders with the leaders of the nations. My opinion is that only two kind of commanders should be listed in the infobox of a war, either the leader of the nation or a commander-in-chief over the entire armed forces of that nation. For example in the War of the Fifth Coalition it lists Napoleon I, as the leader of the French Empire, and Archduke Charles, as Commander in Chief of the Austrian army. But that's just my opinion.

The question of Charles II is a simple one, did he control the spanish state or was there someone else, like Richelieu in France during the reign of Louis XIII. Carl Logan 10:42, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, I suppose that's one possible approach. My preference—at least for earlier conflicts where a unified command structure is not readily apparent—is to list the major field commanders (as in, e.g. this article); but that is, again, merely a preference. Kirill Lokshin 12:51, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

A further point that's occurred to me: the formatting of the footnotes is fairly unusual. The style seems to be Author-Page-Title; all the style guides I've seen recommend Author-Title-Page. Is there some particular guide (which I presumably haven't seen) that's being followed here? Kirill Lokshin 16:53, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] oldwindybear

Very interesting article - I just have one major issue, but I think it is one that requires a decision. Under commanders, are we listing the strategic commander, the head of state, who literally initiated the conflict in which the entity now finds itself, or are we listing the battlfield commander? Respectfully, though I am not minimizing the role of the head of state, let me correlate this argument to the Battle of Waterloo. Would the monarches of the allied powers have been the commanders, or the Iron Duke and Gebhard von Blücher? (of course, with the French, obviously the state of head was the tactical battlefield coammnder as well, but this is not the case among his opponents) I would believe that from any military history perspective, while a "prelude" would list the political events that led to the battle, the battle itself should list as commanders those who led the forces in the field that day. old windy bear 19:33, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I brought that up too, and I think the article has been switched to list the major field commanders now. For a war, I've seen both forms of listing used. (For battles, this is not the case, as battle articles always list the field commanders of the actual battle, not the broader political leaders; listing political leaders under Waterloo would be simply incorrect.) Kirill Lokshin 19:49, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] UberCryxic

Let me just first congratulate you on a great article. Really terrific job. My main suggestion is that the article needs a light copyedit. I'll be happy to give it one before you take it to FAC; just drop me a word on my talkpage. Other than that...let's see:

-In the Aftermath section, I think it's best if you clarify that it wasn't all just status quo in the New World. France acquired Sainte Domingue, which would prove to be a very wealthy asset over the course of the eighteenth century. The inclusion of this information specifically is only my opinion, but I think a term like "status quo" is a bit sketchy.

-There is some information in the Irish theater section that doesn't belong there (like the mention of Fleurus, for one out of many examples). Wouldn't this be best placed in the Continental section?

I'm sure there's other stuff I missed, but this really is a phenomenal article. It makes me giddy and happy just reading it.UberCryxic 01:13, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Battle of Raymond

I have finished fleshing out all of my citations, so please perform a peer review of this article at your earliest convenience. Thanks! Tony Gunter

• Please see automated peer review suggestions here. Thanks, AZ _t 22:41, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kirill Lokshin

Very nice, but there's a variety of incidental things that need to be cleaned up before this would be ready for a A-Class or FA nomination:

• {{Infobox Military Conflict}} should be added.
• Disambiguation keys should generally be hidden when linking in text. For example, John Gregg (CSA) should be linked as John Gregg.
• One or more maps would be appropriate here; it's somewhat difficult to keep track of the geography otherwise.
• Massive wikification of geographic features, people, and units is needed. Pretty much everything at the regimental level and above has (or should have, eventually) its own article, for example.
• External links to content (e.g. Randal McGavock) should be avoided. If something is worth discussing, create an article on Wikipedia for it.
• Footnotes must, above all, avoid being cryptic. Things like "OR Series 1 - Volume 24 (Part III) Chapter XXXVI page 638" are absolutely meaningless to anyone who doesn't know what OR refers to.
• Multiple footnotes in the same place (e.g. after the first paragraph of the lead section) should be combined into a single note.
• The references should be more specific; the articles, in particular, need to have dates indicated. The website used as a reference also needs to be fully cited (with date of access and so forth); but, as it's just a copy of a published book, I'd try to cite the book directly instead.
• There are some examples of speculative or judgemental language present throughout the article that need to be eliminated (or else cited to the historians making such judgements). Some of the more obvious examples:
  • "what must have seemed like a stroke of luck at the time"
  • "his men must have been strickened with horror at their mistake"
  • "Luckily the creek made a turn here"
  • "wild with their easy victory"
  • "General Logan must have been near panic"
  • "A timely bullet"
• More generally, overly lively language (e.g. "The presence of artillery could only mean one thing: the force occupying the field before him was no mere raiding party, but at least a full Federal brigade.") should be avoided in favor of a somewhat drier formal tone.
• Some citations for the "Battlefield preservation" section would be nice.

Overall, the material itself is quite good, though; once the incidental issues are resolved, I think the article should have no trouble with an A-Class or FA nom. Kirill Lokshin 03:22, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hal Jespersen

A related note on footnotes: I think that Kirill's concern about the cryptic nature of the OR footnotes should be satisfied by including the following Reference prior to the Notes (which I see you have done):

• U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1880–1901.

However, please note that the Official Records are actually primary sources, not the secondary sources that Wikipedia prefers for citations. The ORs are the written reports or correspondence from the participants, in some cases edited for personal or political advantage by those participants long after the fact. They are essentially raw data that are equivalent to letters from soldiers or personal memoirs. Therefore, an article that is documented primarily with the ORs is not relying on the scholarly analysis of professional historians who interpret them along with other primary sources to draw conclusions. Just as an example, I have found that many casualty figures cited in the ORs have been superseded by more careful analyses by historians. WP:RS implies that the ORs should be used only for purely descriptive claims. I have not evaluated the specifics of the citations here. Perhaps they are all legitimate, but the overwhelming bulk of OR cites in relation to the secondary sources seems troublesome. Hal Jespersen 17:19, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

A couple of more comments:

• You should take care to use correct ranks for generals, identifying them as Maj. Gen., Brig. Gen., etc., rather than simply General.
• I find it useful to include geographic coordinate links in battle articles so that readers can see them in online maps. See Battle of Vicksburg for an example of how to include them in External links. Hal Jespersen 17:19, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

I can certainly understand the concern you guys have with using the OR as the primary reference for a wiki article. However, because this battle has been largely ignored in the historical literature, there is only one secondary source of analysis on the battle. This analysis can be found in Ed Bearss' three-volume set on the Vicksburg Campaign, and it is riddled with counter-factuals (not simply problems of interpretation, but assertions that can be directly refuted from the primary source materials). With almost no revision, Bearss' flawed analysis of the Battle of Raymond has been propagated into many subsequent works, the most recent being Timothy Smith's book on the Battle of Champion Hill. The problems with Bearss' take on the Battle of Raymond being what drove me to write this wiki in the first place, then I am loathe to make this wiki a regurgitation of a highly flawed secondary source.

Thanks for your input! Tony Gunter

I think the most sensible thing would be to note the historiographical issues explicitly within the article. In other words, rather than giving a straight narrative, make statements in the form "According to Bears, .... However, other sources state that ...". This would provide the full detail of the different accounts, while at the same time avoiding a judgement as to which of the sources is necessarily the most accurate version of events in case of disagreements. Kirill Lokshin 00:02, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Kirill on this. When there are disagreements among historians, you need to highlight such differences. Otherwise, by selecting your own view of the narrative, you are violating WP:NPOV and performing original research. I find it rather shocking to hear that the most revered living ACW historian, Ed Bearss, is accused of bollixing up a battle history, but will be interested to see how you portray this. By the way, other secondary sources you can cite are:

• Ballard, Michael B., Vicksburg, The Campaign that Opened the Mississippi, University of North Carolina Press, 2004, ISBN 0-8078-2893-9.
• Eicher, David J., The Longest Night: A Military History of the Civil War, Simon & Schuster, 2001, ISBN 0-684-84944-5.
• Grabau, Warren E., Ninety-Eighty Days: A Geographer's View of the Vicksburg Campaign, University of Tennessee Press, 2000, ISBN 1-57233-068-6.
• Isemann, James L., "Battle of Raymond", Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social, and Military History, Heidler, David S., and Heidler, Jeanne T., eds., W. W. Norton & Company, 2000, ISBN 0-393-04758-X.
• Kennedy, Frances H., ed., The Civil War Battlefield Guide, 2nd ed., Houghton Mifflin Co., 1998, ISBN 0-395-74012-6.
• Korn, Jerry, and the Editors of Time-Life Books, War on the Mississippi: Grant's Vicksburg Campaign, Time-Life Books, 1985, ISBN 0-8094-4744-4.

Hal Jespersen 01:07, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I will look into some of these other sources, but thus far I have only found sources that are tertiary sources more or less derivative of the information in Bearss (including Ballard and Grabau, and, not listed by you, Smith, Winschel, Shea, and just about every subsequent historian who has touched the Vicksburg campaign). I'm not sure why you would be so shocked to find errors in Bearss' section on Raymond, given that it represents a handful of pages in a three volume set (and thus represents a fraction of the effort he put into research on the campaign). The simple fact of the matter is those few pages contains at least 17 assertions that are either unsupported or directly refuted in the primary source material. As far as NPOV concerns, I can certainly understand the concerns you would have with matters of interpretation, such as value judgements, a point raised by Kirill and well taken. But the bulk of this article is taken straight from the primary sources with little interpretation. Tony Gunter

You may have difficulty coming up with a good Wikipedia article if almost all historians agree on a version of events and you disagree. You are not allowed to say, "Historian Smith states that [assertion] is true, but the following primary sources refute him." And you should not say directly that [assertion] is true, footnoting a primary source, and neglecting to point out that most secondary sources disagree with that assertion. You need to say something like, "Historian Smith's contention that [assertion] is true is refuted by historian Jones, who cites the official report of General Mumble and diaries from the 50th Tennessee." Otherwise, you are performing original research. One way around this dilemma, which I admit is not simple, is for you or an ally to write an article or book on the subject, have it published, and then cite that as a secondary source. But unfortunately, Wikipedia is not the place to right perceived historical wrongs. If all of this seems too cumbersome and roundabout, it would probably be acceptable to cast the majority of the article in what you believe is an appropriate interpretation of the primary source and have a section toward the end called "controversial historiography" or something in which you highlight the differences that the secondary sources have in a more general way. (It is difficult for me to make specific advance judgments in this case because I do not yet know what types of assertions you claim are in dispute.)

A few more comments about the article that may prove helpful.

• For a battle article of this length, I find it appropriate to establish more of a background of who the opposing forces are and how they come to the fighting. Although you technically have a lot of the background information included, and indirectly pointed to by the Vicksburg Campaign article, it is a bit scattered around the first half of the article and I believe that a number of readers would find themselves confused as to the context unless this material becomes more concentrated. I find it is useful to paint a rough picture of the order of battle of the opposing forces, not to the extent of a full list down to the regimental level as some people do, but at least the generals at the corps and division levels.
• Using the map from the Vicksburg Campaign article would be useful to set early context on this battle. The Grabau book I list above has an extensive series of battle maps about the tactics at Raymond as well.
• The use of section headers should make it easy to navigate through the article, but the oddly named "Chaos and irony" section does not help much for someone wishing to find the beginning of the battle description. We normally use drier descriptions, such as "Morning battle" or "Union assault."

Hal Jespersen 00:40, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

"Almost all historians agree" is a misleading statement. Bearss wrote a particularly bad interpretation of the Battle of Raymond as part of his three volume set on the Vicksburg Campaign, and the battle has been too small a fish for any other historian to fry. Most indicative of how bad Bearss' take on the battle: he places the federal artillery 1/2 mile away from the Fourteen Mile Creek Bridge, when several primary sources indicate the artillery were unlimbered a very short distance from the bridge. At first glance, Grabau appears to offer an independent examination of the battle in "Confusion Compounded" (which is essentially just an expanded version of his chapter in "98 Days"), and in fact he adjusts the position of the federal cannons, but much of his interpretation of the battle is inherited from Bearss, a close personal friend. No other historian has taken a serious look at Raymond. I think I'm having trouble understanding why using published primary sources would be considered "original research," especially if the secondary sources have identifiable errors. Worst case, though, I write an article dissing Bearss ... any suggestions on the venue? :) Tony Gunter

It's not so much that using published primary sources is original research—as long as the claims are purely descriptive, that sort of thing is permitted—but rather that deciding that Bearss is wrong and should be ignored is original research unless we can reference a reputable historian that's come to that conclusion.

That doesn't mean, of course, that we need to blindly follow Bearss' reconstruction; but we cannot omit it entirely, since NPOV requires that articles include all major viewpoints on the topic. My recommendation, then, is to give both versions in the text and let the reader decide which is the more accurate, should they wish to (e.g. "According to Bearss, the federal artillery was situated 1/2 mile away from the Fourteen Mile Creek Bridge. A number of primary sources, however, place it much closer to the bridge." and so forth). Kirill Lokshin 15:21, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

(Kirill and I typed our replies almost simultaneously.) I based my phrase "Almost all historians agree" on your assertion that there are no secondary sources for you to cite that are unaffected by the Bearss influence. If I misunderstood your remarks and there are in fact secondary sources that agree with your interpretation of the ORs, then you have no problem because you can simply cite those secondary sources. If you are footnoting an assertion with a primary source because all known secondary sources disagree with you, you have a duty to the reader to point out this discrepancy. This is relatively easy to do; see the footnotes for Battle of Gettysburg for examples (such as #14) on reconciling differences between sources. If you wrote an article on this topic for a magazine, you would not need to "diss" Ed Bearss, you would simply offer a new interpretation based on your research. There are a number of magazines to consider. I believe the one that is most credible to historians is North and South. Hal Jespersen 15:37, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] oldwindybear

This is a classic example of problems where there is a dearth of secondary sources. Hal covered the issue well on secondary sources and wording. I have run into this problem myself - the best way around it is to use the method employed by the footnotes for Battle of Gettysburg for examples (such as #14) on reconciling differences between sources. You can also quote primary sources, as long as you clearly identify them as such, and let the reader decide whether the historian or the primary source was correct. old windy bear 15:58, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Gw099

Good article I've added a Infobox to the page, please help finishing filling out the box--Gw099 01:52, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Caspian expeditions of the Rus

Advice is needed on how the article could be developed further, and whether there are POV or other issues that need addressing. In addition, I don't feel comfortable with the word "expeditions" in the title; maybe a better alternative can be proposed. Beit Or 18:52, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

• Please see automated peer review suggestions here. Thanks, AZ _t 22:42, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wandalstouring

The article could be part of an overview about the military activities of the Rus. I remember the siege of Constantinople. While the number of ships is mentioned, we should give roughly the number of men ~100 per ship in the raid on Constantinople for example.

Expeditions sounds quite OK, the objective were not only spoils, as the article tells. I see no POV issues. Perhaps a map of the region and the political entities you are talking about and some images of how the Rus warriors looked and how their ships looked. Wandalstouring 21:43, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] oldwindybear

I agree with Wandalstouring, this could be part of an overview article on the military activities of the Rus. We ought to relate their activities to the "Viking" era, and a better description of their tactics and weapons could be very useful. old windy bear 19:42, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

We should be very careful with that. my idea was writting about the Rus's expeditions to the Caspian Sea and to Constantinople while it might also be helpful to create an overview of the Rus' military expeditions or somehow a guide so you can easily find all other expeditions if you found one. Comparing them to the Viking only brings you close to the "Normanist-theory", I assume it would be better to mention the Viking, Baltic (Baltics, Finns and Slavs) pirates and the Rus' because the used a similar technique with their rapid boats and longships for surprise and great troop numbers. In combat they massively used of longbows and axes. This is also confirmed by the Hanseatic League that still faced trouble with similar equipped Baltic pirates, when the Vikings no longer posed a threat. Wandalstouring 20:02, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Wandalstouring Yes, that was precisely what I had in mind. They were still using similiar weapons and tactics long after the Vikings had faded into history. You have touched on what I wanted = and what I want to avoid as well. old windy bear 03:46, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] UberCryxic

Let's see....

• Any chance of getting some images in there? They don't have to be about these events specifically, but maybe some pictures of the Rus or their areas of activity wouldn't hurt.
• Citations. The article is extensively cited for its size, but one quote is missing a citation.
• Any social implications due to these mass invasions and movement of peoples?
• Nicely written.UberCryxic 02:44, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mirko Norac

This article needs a peer review by some people familiar with the military conflict Mirko Norac was involved in and what military role he played. Furthermore a better understanding of customs in this war and martial law in general could be helpful.

The big problem is POV pushing, read the good article reviews and the other peer review. I think the authors deserve some help. Wandalstouring 00:04, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

• Please see automated peer review suggestions here. Thanks, AZ _t 22:42, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kirill Lokshin

Well, it's still a fairly weak article in general:

• The lead needs major expansion.
• {{Infobox Military Person}} needs to be added.
• More citations throughout would be good; some of the current ones seem to be malformatted as well.

As far as the POV issues and so forth, some of the material in "War crimes" seems counterintuitively laid out. For example, the "Gospić killings" section begins with summarizing the events and then discussing the trial; I would suggest reversing the two, and having the summary linked explicitly with the criminal issue (e.g. "The court found that Norac had..."). Overall, though, I'm not sure what can be—or needs to be—done here; much of Norac's notability comes from the war crimes issues, so it's unavoidable that a large portion of the article will be devoted to discussing them. Kirill Lokshin 12:38, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Sure about that, but on the other hand he seems to be quite popular in Croatia (demonstrations for him) and his military achievements were recognized. From our point of view, we did hear about him, when he was accused of war crimes. But the logic that therefore nothing but the war crimes has to receive attention is not really objective.

The "Gospić killings" section has also been one of the issues I did not like, but as soon as you start an edit, you seem to provoke someone, so I wanted to discuss things here in a calm manner and have some people with experience on articles about controversial military commanders. Wandalstouring 13:19, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] SU-100Y Self-Propelled Gun

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by -Ilhador- (talk • contribs) .

• Please see automated peer review suggestions here. Thanks, AZ _t 22:42, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kirill Lokshin

Well, this is off to a good start, but there are some major issues that need work:

• There are no references and no citations.
• Is this article about the SU-100Y or the T-100? (For that matter, what is the T-100?) Is there a worthwhile distinction between the two? It may be possible to cover both in a single article, but a more defined structure is necessary.
• There's a dearth of technical data. The dimensions of the vehicle, in particular, should be reasonable to obtain.

More generally, the article is very short. If there's no more material to be added, it may be appropriate to consider merging it into something broader (e.g. Experimental armored fighting vehicles of the Soviet Union in World War II or the like); but the better option, of course, would be to expand it, if at all possible. Kirill Lokshin 01:54, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I'm very concerned that the article appears to largely be based on a machine translation of the French site listed in the external links. As far as I know, translations are derivative works of the original, and constitute a copyright violation unless authorized by the original author; can anybody confirm that point? (In the meantime, I've reverted the article back to the version before the material was added, which seems to unfortunately be in rather sorry shape.) Kirill Lokshin 02:22, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Almost certainly a copyvio as a deriv work. The images looks like they are about to get deleted as well (PD-Soviet no longer being valid). I'll try and bring it up to at least a stub. Megapixie 02:52, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Oberiko

Perhaps things have changed a bit, but this article doesn't look like it's even close to being ready for something like a peer review. Oberiko 11:08, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Battle of Greece

This article has been greatly improved recently. I want it to eventually be promoted to FA-class but I need your help! Periklis* 07:15, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

• Please see automated peer review suggestions here. Thanks, AZ _t 22:42, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kirill Lokshin

Quite nice. Some suggestions:

• More citations! There are still {{citation needed}} tags in the article at the moment.
• The images are quite crowded; I would suggest interleaving them along both margins rather than stacking along only the right one.
• The "References", "Further reading", and "External links" sections don't really need to be in a smaller font.
• Get rid of the "See also" section; if it's not worth linking in the text, it's generally not worth linking at all.
• Some way of getting rid of the giant template at the bottom would be great. It may have to wait until somebody actually creates Portal:World War II, though.
• Shortening some of the section titles might be appropriate, if that's possible. For the narrative ones, giving the corresponding dates in parentheses may also be a good idea.

Hope that helps! Kirill Lokshin 01:12, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, it does help, and I will be sure to act on your suggestions. Periklis* 08:43, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] UberCryxic

Overall, great article. My only significant suggestion is to get a copyedit before you nominate for FA. Contact me when you're and I'll glady give it one.UberCryxic 02:26, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I might hold you to that ; ) Periklis* 08:43, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fort Bliss

I have been working on this article for some monthes, and have already gotten some good advise for improving it from project members — notably oldwindybear — but I still need sugestions and ideas. I have had no hits on the Wikipedia peer review page since September, so I am filing a request here in the hopes that those who are intersested in military related material will leave some comments for me. Any suggestions here will be combined with those recieved during the assessment of Fort Bliss from last month.

• IMPORTANT I am in school at the moment, so if I appear slow to respond here have patients; its likely school work has me tied up. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:38, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

• Please see automated peer review suggestions here. Thanks, AZ _t 22:43, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Whew, thats a relief. I was afraid there for a moment that Kirill would be the only person offering any advice ;) TomStar81 (Talk) 08:20, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kirill Lokshin

This is quite good now; a few issues still need work, though:

• Heading should be sentence case.
• The last few sub-sections of the "Fort Bliss Today" section need to be turned into prose, rather than bulleted lists. I also question both the sourcing and the value of some of the contents; Wikipedia isn't really supposed to be a travel guide.
• Separating the BRAC sections out like that seems a bit counterintuitive; I would weave them into the main narrative chronologically.
• The units in the infobox should be wikified; I assume all of them are worthy of articles.
• Why "Southwestern United States" and not "Texas" in the infobox?
• "References" should be placed before "External links"

Kirill Lokshin 00:49, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

• At present I have answers for three of your points: 1) The BRAC section is/was created in accordance with the instructions on the talk page for the BRAC template. Those instruction may need to be looked at in a "past BRAC" sense, so that this information can migrate into an articles history section. 2) Believe it or not, I actually uploaded my Rough Draft version for the post with wikified units in the infobox, but of the entire group only two had prexisting articles. That may be an oversight on my part, so I will recheck the info. 3) Fort Bliss is listed as "Southwestern United States" and not "Texas" because the overwhelming majority of the land designated as property of Fort Bliss lies in southern New Mexico, primarily in the Doña Ana and Otero county area; therefore to say "Texas" would be technically correct but at the same time cut out most of the military ranges. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by TomStar81 (talk • contribs) .

• Ah, ok. Personally, I'd disegard the BRAC template and just go with whatever is more natural for the article; I doubt that the template in question was the result of extensive thought about the best structure, rather than just an easy way of making the massive updates necessary for the actual running BRAC round. Kirill Lokshin 12:49, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

• On Friday, scheduals permitting, I intend to spend the day in the archives room at the UTEP library. I will be looking over press reports for the '05 BRAC round to firm up the numbers, units, personel, and general scheme of the tranformation at the base. I will also look into the '95 and '88 BRAC rounds and see if I can turn up additional information for the realignment of Fort Bliss. When I do I will add that information here and then see about integrating the BRAC section with the mainstream history section. TomStar81 (Talk) 05:55, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

• Some new material for the '05 BRAC round has been added, I will add more as time becomes available. Right now, school work has me tied down. TomStar81 (Talk) 05:12, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Archives

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