Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/Battle of Waterloo

Battle of Waterloo

Three editors have been working on this pretty hard for sometime and I think we can sure use a review on our progress. It has gone from 0 inline citations to 75+ and the sources from 0 to 7. Whole sections have been added to provide a more neutral pov. Tirronan 18:47, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Raymond

Initial personal thoughts:

• Needs checking for spelling, grammar and typos (there are quite a few errors) and the article contains a mixture of US and UK spelling – it doesn’t matter which is used as long as its consistent – usually the –re –er / words

  Yes it does see WP:MOS#National varieties of English No Americans at the battle. --Philip Baird Shearer 17:02, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

• There are many great paintings of the battle and the only one in the article itself is rather poor.

• Similarly the picture of Napoleon is very poor (a statue in silhouette. At least give some info as to where the statue is situated). Wellington is ignored altogether.

• There a two pictures of the ‘Lions’ hillock’. Could be misleading having the first of these pictures where it is, certainly when considering it was not part of the battlefield’s topography.

• The picture in the section called ‘Prussian Advance’ is of little help or interest.

• Not sure having a quotation in the lead is a good idea.

• Most of the above are personal observations/suggestions. The English however, is less moot and will need a little bit of attention in places (although it’s not too bad overall)

Other observations:

• There are two references from D Chandler (same book). Only one edition is used in the notes (and then only once).

• The Notes refer to Siborne, HT who is not listed in the References.

• The notes section needs tidying up - I’m sure you don’t need to link to the References section.

  I like the links to the reference section it helps with navigation. --Philip Baird Shearer 17:02, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

• Glover, Chesney, Howarth are all quoted as sources but are noticeable by their absence in the notes. In fact most of the article is taken from just two sources, one of whom is: Hofschröer, Peter; 1815, The Waterloo Campaign: The German Victory. An unbiased source??

• I just got my copies of the Glover, Chesney, and Howarth, works from Amazon so I will be reading and citing them where appropriate.
• Peter is a personal friend of mine and I am quick to take offense at somethings folks have said about him, I will pass on this one except to say that I have yet to find an error with a source of his.
• Philip has run his New Zeland spell checker to make sure we are using the Queen's English
• Removed the picture from the Prussian advance section.

Tirronan 19:31, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Kirill Lokshin

Not bad, but a number of areas that need improvement:

• The citation format needs to be cleaned up—what are the "References" link doing there? Footnotes should always be placed after punctuation; and, in most cases, a single footnote at the end of a sentence is better than a footnote after every phrase. Most of this material isn't that controversial.

  Footnotes should not always be placed after punctuation. That is a SV thingy and there is no consensus on that issue. --PBS

  The Referenecs is a link to that section, it makes navigation around the page easier. It saves space rather than having all of the book details on every citiation. --Philip Baird Shearer 17:06, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

  The proper way of doing that is to give a short-form citation, not an unrelated link, no? (The short-form can be linked, of course; but the citation needs to remain relevant if the article is printed.) Kirill Lokshin 17:29, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

• The quote in the lead isn't really needed, and is lacking in proper context besides.

  I like it and it is an expert opinion on the battle. --Philip Baird Shearer 17:06, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

  Somewhat of a biased expert opinion, though. ;-)

  (In any case, it needs to be properly introduced; we can't place epigraphs inside a block of text. So "According to Wellington, ..." rather than "... - Wellington" is the better form.) Kirill Lokshin 17:29, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

• There are still {{fact}} tags that must be dealt with.
• The external links section should be greatly trimmed.
• {{main}} should probably be changed to {{details}}.

Beyond that, I'll echo Raymond's comments about the imbalance of sources being cited. Kirill Lokshin 13:07, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

thoughts and questions and actions.

Actions to date

• Removed quote
• Removed 2nd ref to Chandler
• I'll trim the links section
• If I get a chance I will see about ordering in a copy of Naufzinger to expand sourcing and reference (I am certain I misspelled his name)and get a copy of Chandler in my house and we can add to the citing. Right now 2 of us do most the footnoting I am hoping that will change.

questions

• I confess I don't understand the {{main}} vs. {{detail}}

Thoughts

• I am an American and I think another of us is a subject of the UK. I think that explains the switching of spelling conventions. We are going to have to work on that one I believe. I'll ask Philip if he doesn't mind editing to a British style since I believe it started out that way. Entirely my fault that we mixed them up.
• When we started upgrading the article there wasn't much on the Prussian contribution and after looking at various sources if you want to know where and which Prussian units were located and what they were doing you are probably going to end up referring to Peter Hofschröer. He has a level of detail on actions on that side of the battlefield that simply is not available anywhere else. I have David Hamilton-Williams book but there seems to be a great deal of anger towards that author and I am not that interested in causing controversy. I will say that I've known PH for a decade and never caught him going much beyond his sources. Exception here is that I don't agree with his take on Wellington I think he went too far on iffy evidence. You may notice I stayed away from the subject in the article. I do believe the article takes a fair and neutral stance resolving for the most part on what happened where without further comment.

Thank you so much for the help! Tirronan 16:23, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

• A good thing about peer reviews is minor mistakes like US/UK spelling inconsistencies can get ironed out before the review process, and annoying pedants like myself will be kept happy ;)

Book recommendation: See if you can get hold of Chandler’s ‘Waterloo: The Hundred Days’. A book that A. L. Rowse describes his account as “. . quite simply, the best I have ever read” Clear, unbiased and perfect for your article (as all Chandler’ books are).

Doesn’t matter though if you can’t get hold of it – it’s just a suggestion. Good luck. Raymond Palmer 17:18, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I've ordered Howath, Chesney, and Barbero, and I will have them in hand by the 29th so i should be able to fix the last of the in the article and add more citations with the other two authors. When I tried to order Chandler they wanted $350.00 for it... I'll pass. I looked at Elting but I wasn't very impressed. Tirronan 17:59, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

• I've added more from Chesney and 2 from Howarth, Chesney is amazing and its 100 years old! If you get a chance I'd get it. It turns out He and Peter H agree on most points.
• David Howarth isn't nearly as good unless you want to know more about the British army, and I did, but there you are.
• Barbero is refreshing to say the least.

Tirronan 03:38, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Arnoutf

Not bad, some copyedit maybe needed but that has already been mentioned above. One additional sugestion. The article reads relatiely smoothly which is very good. However, sometimes for this same reasons, it reads a bit like an adventure novel. For example the use 'pulverise' in the last line of the French cavalry attack section. The choice of words maybe reconsidered and changed to a bit less exciting and more neutral for encyclopedia purposes. But that is just a consideration.

I noticed a number of images and paintings have been recently added (after above suggestions). Some careful deliberation which parts of the battle, battlefield you want to show may furhter improve the article.

For the rest no additions to the guys above, looks good this article; good luck with furhter improvements Arnoutf 14:44, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

• I'll confess that I am a publishing author (poetry actually) but I didn't do that one. Point taken however and will look into that.
• I added the artwork I really like the Blucher picture (although I doubt that at that age he really looked that good). Tirronan 19:24, 30 March 2007 (UTC)