Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/German battleship Bismarck/archive2

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Ian Rose 15:07, 22 July 2012 [1].

German battleship Bismarck[edit]

Nominator(s): Parsecboy (talk) 13:34, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This is my second attempt here at FAC for this article. The primary concern over the article the last time around was the prose; the article has since had a copy-edit from one of the GOCE editors, which should have helped address those issues. I look forward to working with reviewers to ensure this article is an example of Wikipedia's best work. Thanks in advance to all who take the time to review the article. Parsecboy (talk) 13:34, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments. As always, feel free to revert my copyediting. Please check the edit summaries. - Dank (push to talk)

Continuing. "St. Nazaire": Probably drop the full stop (period) since this is BrEng. - Dank (push to talk) 00:04, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Search throughout for "St.".
"it was high speed and erratic manoeuvres to evade the torpedoes that inflicted more serious damage.": the high speed and erratic manoeuvres used to evade the torpedoes inflicted more serious damage.
"... loosened collision mats stemming the flood from the forward shell hole. Flooding increased, and eventually ...": loosened collision mats, so that flooding from the forward shell hole increased; eventually
"attempted to find him": attempted to find her
- I thought I had gotten rid of all of that "Hitler called Bismarck 'him' so we have to" nonsense...
"Fifteen aircraft comprised the second attack, which was launched at 19:10": the second attack comprised fifteen aircraft and was launched at 19:10
"The explosion caused serious damage to the port rudder assembly; the coupling was badly damaged and the rudder was then unable to be disengaged ...": The coupling on the port rudder assembly was badly damaged and the rudder could not be disengaged
"A suggestion to sever the port rudder with explosives was dismissed by Lütjens, who stated "We cannot endanger the ship with measures of that kind." He felt that the danger of damaging the screws, which would have left the battleship helpless, was too great.": ... was dismissed by Lütjens, as damage to the screws would have left the battleship helpless. - Dank (push to talk) 00:55, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Search throughout for "Dr.".
- You don't use periods in title abbreviations in BE?
  - It's not exactly wrong, but "Dr" is more common than "Dr." in BrEng, so mostly as a matter of avoiding frequent "corrections", we're usually going with "Dr" at FAC. - Dank (push to talk) 14:55, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
"opened fire. Almost immediately after,": opened fire, then
"Rodney fired two torpedoes from her port-side tube (a shell from Bismarck had exploded 20 feet off the bow and rendered the starboard tube useless—the closest Bismarck came to a direct hit on Rodney) and claimed one hit—a claim which, according to Ludovic Kennedy, "if true, [is] the only instance in history of one battleship torpedoing another".: Break that one up.
"One of the holes is in the deck, on the bow's starboard side. The angle and shape indicates it was fired from Bismarck's port side and struck the starboard anchor chain.": The hole was fired? - Dank (push to talk) 03:25, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- Everything should be fixed - here are the edits. Thanks for helping with these. Parsecboy (talk) 13:34, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Support on prose per standard disclaimer. - Dank (push to talk) 16:57, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

~~Oppose~~ for now per my unaddressed comments at: Talk:German battleship Bismarck#Edit warring over references in the Wehrmachtbericht. Sorry Parsecboy; this article has an awful lot to recommend it, but I can't support its promotion with a section which will be incomprehensible to most readers owing to the lack of context, and is basically wartime propaganda of questionable relevance to modern readers. I'd be open to discussing this further, and examples of recent works on the ship which also make a big deal about the ship being mentioned in these radio broadcasts would be helpful, but at best this warrants mentions in the body of the article rather than verbatim transcripts, and even then context is required. I also don't think that the short paragraph in 'Media portrayals of sinking' warrants its own section. Nick-D (talk) 09:43, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Nick is on the right track, but my support for his position is strictly as a copyeditor and as an observer of Featured Articles ... that is, I'm not saying that information about the Wehrmachtbericht shouldn't be in Wikipedia, it should. But never that amount of detail here; Featured Articles are meant to be very accessible ... Main Page stuff. By the time you've got all the readers to understand the significance of the report, translated all the text, explained the impact that such reports had on the German people ... you've gone past the limits of the attention spans of the readers who have made it this far in the article. Remember WP:PSTS, too; Wikipedia's style, and nowhere more than in Featured Articles, is not to regurgitate primary sources, but to summarize them according to their weight and set them in context. - Dank (push to talk) 11:42, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Those are all good points - I wasn't wedded to the stuff to begin with, so I don't see a problem with removing it. I've removed the direct quotes and added a short summary to the paragraph about media portrayals, and merged that into the previous section header.

By the way, is anybody else having trouble editing today? I keep getting a "loss of session data" error message, even though the edit window was open for less than a minute. Parsecboy (talk) 13:20, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I got several of those messages last night, so it wasn't just you. Mark Arsten (talk) 16:39, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder what the issue was - glad to hear I wasn't the only one :) Parsecboy (talk) 13:29, 29 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I've struck my oppose, and will provide a full review over the weekend. Nick-D (talk) 10:44, 29 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I look forward to it. Parsecboy (talk) 13:29, 29 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Image review - on what source(s) was File:Rheinuebung_Karte.png based? Nikkimaria (talk) 16:18, 29 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, I had asked the creator of the image during the last FAC, and a month later he blanked his talk without replying. He either didn't see it or didn't care to answer. At this point, it's probably best to just remove the map, as I don't think we'll get a timely answer from him. Parsecboy (talk) 16:22, 29 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

For what it's worth, I've added a fair-use image depicting the discovery of the wreck (here) - the FUR should be fine, but you might want to look at it to double-check. Parsecboy (talk) 02:29, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from PumpkinSky

Has the image Nikki mentions been removed?
- Didn't you look? :p
"(who was serving on the destroyer Tartar at the time.)" Seems to me the period should be after the closing parens.
Ref 117, "p. 538–540" should be "pp. 538–540"
- Sure should.

PumpkinSky talk 23:32, 29 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed the "p. 538–540" issue (fixed a few other bits, too). Br'er Rabbit (talk) 03:11, 30 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support ~~Comments~~

Link stem, boiler, superheated, shaft horsepower, knot, nautical mile, the 37mm and 20mm AA guns, catapult, list, trim
Not sure that "heaviest" is the proper word when describing her size. As you noted in the lede, only Vanguard was bigger and you might as well say it outright in the main body.
A note explaining why an US Navy pilot was involved in the search for Bismarck 6 months before Pearl Harbor is needed.
Other than these minor issues, the article looks good.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:07, 5 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- Links added, along with a note on Ensign Smith and a direct mention of Vanguard in the body - as for "heaviest", do you have any alternatives? Parsecboy (talk) 14:30, 5 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  - I'd probably use largest again since the following clause discussing Vanguard uses the only other formulation that I can think of off the top of my head.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 15:23, 5 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    - But then you run into problems with the definition of "largest" - Bismarck was longer than Vanguard (and shorter than Hood), for instance. "Heaviest" can only refer to displacement. Parsecboy (talk) 20:42, 5 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      - Good point, how about displaced more than any battleship other than Vanguard, or some such?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 15:07, 16 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
        What do you think about the wording now? Parsecboy (talk) 15:45, 16 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
        Looks good.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 19:58, 16 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

~~Comments~~ Sorry about the one week delay; I was much busier last weekend than I expected to be. Here are my comments:

The article is really well written - great work. I think that this is the most interesting of any of the battleship articles to date.
"Bismarck was the first of two Bismarck-class battleships built for the German Kriegsmarine shortly before World War II" - this is a bit misleading given that neither of the ships was completed before the war.
- Yeah, I had some trouble with the wording on this; "the late 1930s" isn't entirely accurate either. Perhaps the best course of action is to just remove that bit, since the construction timeline is in the next line.
Did HMS Prince of Wales really suffer "heavy damage"? From memory, she was back in action after a few weeks of repairs, and the article states that she was combat-ready not long after the Battle of the Denmark Strait
- Good point - removed that bit.
Note C seems unnecessary given that this material is in the body of the article (where it works quite well)
- I think you're right.
"The two German ships rained shells on Prince of Wales" - this sounds like a huge number of shells were fired, yet it's later stated that Bismark only fired 93 shells during the entire engagement. This kind of wording is appropriate for the Battle of Surigao Strait, but seems an over-statement here.
- You're probably right, though I'm having a bit of trouble trying to reword it. Do you have any suggestions?
  - How about "the two German ships continued to fire upon Prince of Wales" or similar? Nick-D (talk) 11:10, 9 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    - Works for me.
I'm surprised that there's no material on the desperate mood among the ship's crew after her rudder was jammed given that this is covered in several sources
- Added a couple of lines on that, and the demoralizing effects of the messages from Marinegruppe West.
The paragraph dedicated to James Cameron's assessment of the ship seems excessive: I don't believe that he's an authority on this kind of topic. Nick-D (talk) 08:31, 7 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- I've cut it down and merged it into the previous paragraph - how does that read now?
  - Looks good Nick-D (talk) 11:10, 9 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support My above comments have now been addressed. Nick-D (talk) 11:10, 9 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Maybe worth mentioning? KzS de:Harald Netzbandt was Lütjens chief of staff and next to Lütjens and Lindemann the most senior officer on Bismarck who had already commanded Gneisenau. He was very much involved in the decision processes and posthumously received the German Cross in Gold. MisterBee1966 (talk) 07:07, 8 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.