Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/South American dreadnought race

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

South American dreadnought race[edit]

Nominator(s): Ed [talk] [majestic titan]

Hello again everyone, it's been a seemingly long time. This is the lead article in my quest to get all of the South American dreadnought articles to FA, so it has the juicy bits of a Brazilian dreadnought order -> naval arms race between them, Argentina, and Chile -> completely brought to a halt by WWI. I hope you'll enjoy the narrative. Constructive and thorough comments from anyone are very welcome, as I intend to take this to FAC. Thanks, Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 09:50, 1 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • I was specifically invited to review this article. Fifelfoo (talk) 02:32, 2 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Spotcheck for copyvio, plagiarism, close paraphrase and citations supporting facts: issues, close paraphrase
      • Earwig copyvio: clear
      • CorenBot: clear
      • Sudden stylistic changes and random unique turns of phrase manually checked: clear
      • Spotchecked all of Livermore (20 cites); issues.
        • Endnote [17b] Article: "The Argentine government made a last-ditch attempt to preclude an arms race by offering to purchase one of the Brazilian ships, but when this was rebuffed, they sent a naval delegation to Europe to solicit tenders from armament companies to build warships for Argentina." ; Source: "Argentina made a final effort to secure naval parity with Brazil by offering to purchase one of the dreadnoughts; when this proposal was rejected, an Argentine naval commission sailed for Europe to receive tenders for the construction of two dreadnoughts and a number of destroyers." ; phrase ordering is the same, "Argentina" "avoid" "ship buy" "refusal" "naval" "to Europe" "build" "plural vessels" ; this appears as close paraphrase: The main point of difference is that preclusion of an arms race is a fundamentally different meaning to security naval parity. However, in all other aspects the expression follows that of the original. How close is close? I'm particularly concerned by the similarity of clause "by offering to purchase one of the"
        • [84b] Article: "In the end, Chile only bought Canada and four destroyers in April 1920, all of which had been ordered by Chile prior to the war's outbreak and requisitioned by the British for the war.[84]" ; Source: "The Chileans, however, contented themselves with the purchase of a single dreadnought and a few destroyers, all of which had been ordered before the war and had been taken over by the British Navy in 1914" ; Again, the verb clause, "all of which had been ordered" and the common presentation order.
        • These appear to be slips, I would suggest that you reconsider how you write single sentence article facts from single sentences in the source, review your sourcing generally for this (you probably remember how you wrote it).
      • Spotchecked "British and Foreign News," Evening Post, 12 September 1908 (clear);
      • Spotchecked "Acorazado Almirante Latorre," Armada de Chile, archived 8 June 2008. (clear).
    • Sources quality: excellent, scholarly, suitable supporting issues
    • Citation quality:
      • You need the location for Evening Post as there are many newspapers of this name ("Wellington, NZ")
      • Consistency of citation of volumes and issues of journals, "3, no. 27" versus "27: no. 3" (colons versus commas)
      • JSTOR links and OCLC links check out fine.
    • Thanks very much for all the work you put into this, Fifel. Both are rather large slips. I've addressed both of those issues and added "(Wellington)" after the Evening Post. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 06:09, 3 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]


CommentsSupport

  • I went through and made some minor changes...double check them.
  • All the sources are from your previous articles, but citing foreign language texts kind of implies you translated them and since most readers aren't fluent in those languages you should try to minimize it when possible. I noticed some of the citations were doubled with English language citations so I would cut the foreign language citation if they are duplicated.
  • I added some language icons to identify the non-english works; when you review the above you should consider adding the icons in the footnote entries instead of in the list of references.
  • Some of the Brazillian citations say 'Navios' but don't specifically say 'Brazil'; I'm not sure what if anything needs to be done but if that was in English you'd be asked to clarify which Navy.
  • Consider adding some kind of relative power indication to the summary table, such as guns, tonnage and/or speed.
  • The lead is missing information from the background section; I think it would flow better if it was in three paragraphs (summary sentence/background; construction; decline). Kirk (talk) 20:39, 7 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • I think the foreign language refs add depth, and all are online = can be translated via Google Translate if readers want to. They're also free to only review the English sources. :-) I removed the language icons per some of my previous articles – readers can tell they are in a different language by the titles and/or publishing information. Also, Chicago advises against identifying languages. "Navios" means "ships" in Portuguese; the word for "navy" is "Marinha" (hence the Brazilian Navy's name "Marinha do Brasil"). I actually thought about adding that information to the table, but I was afraid of including too much information in a relatively small table. I'll try a few things and see if I can get it to work. I've added more to the lead – what do you think? Sorry to argue against most of your proposed changes... Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 07:31, 12 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • I don't know what other editors think of the language icons; the icons are common WP FA articles but maybe its a different citation style. Citation 44 is an example of the duplication; its one of 5 citations for that sentence. Navios De Guerra Brasileiros (Brazilian Warships?) has been vetted before, but that was before it disappeared.
      • I mixed up ship and navy in PT (not a language I know very well!) but I think the citation for Serviço de Documentação da Marinha — Histórico de Navios should have the publisher as ...da Marinha do Brasil since that's the publisher for http://dphdm.mar.mil.br/. The lead looks good. Kirk (talk) 15:23, 12 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        • I believe all of the citations support parts of the sentence though! The publisher for that is "Diretoria do Patrimônio Histórico e Documentação da Marinha, Departamento de História Marítima", or something like the "Board of History and Documentation of the Navy, Department of Maritime History". Ie it's similar to the Naval History and Heritage Command. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 23:41, 12 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
          • I looked over the Chicago Manual of Style and I didn't see that explicitly but there is the option of putting unpublished foreign phrases into English in parens.
Martins Filho, João Roberto. A Marinha brasileira na era dos encouraçados, 1895-1910. Rio de Janeiro: FGV, 2010. to
Martins Filho, João Roberto. A Marinha brasileira na era dos encouraçados, 1895-1910 (The Battleship era of the Brazilian Navy, 1895-1910). Rio de Janeiro: FGV, 2010.
Its still seems questionable to rely on previously reliable sources which have now disappeared; also, its not a best practice to have five footnotes when four (or one!) will do. Somethings to think about for FA.Kirk (talk) 15:28, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
They were up on a different site for a longer period of time, and Poder Naval assured me that they were working to get them back up. Also they were linked to from the Filho online article, albeit at a time when they were directly accessible. Also you are right regarding the title... it'd be silly to not translate only one of them. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 08:25, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments As always, this is a great article Ed and this is very close to A class. I've got a few comments before supporting though:
    • "each ship marking a small increase in capabilities from the ship previous" sounds odd
    • "The growing dispute disturbed the British government, who had extensive commercial interests in the area." - was the British Government really running commercial operations? I think that you mean "The growing dispute disturbed the British government, as it had the potential to disrupt the extensive British commercial interests in the area." or similar
    • "Beginning in the late 1880s, Brazil's navy fell into obsolescence after an 1889 revolution" - what began in the late 1880s?
    • I'm confused by "Main articles: International reaction to the Minas Geraes-class battleships and International reaction to the Minas Geraes-class battleships" - this seems to be the same article, though one of them is a red link...
    • "A transition to a few large warships was finalized with the selection of Rear Admiral Alexandrino Fario de Alencar for the powerful post of minister of the navy." - this is really unclear
    • "heavily laden with seemingly underhanded tactics" - this is a bit over-written
    • "Even the British Times" - the 'even' isn't needed: the Times was the newspaper of the British 'establishment', and this is exactly the kind of stuff they published on a routine basis
    • "An option for a third Argentine dreadnought was provided for in the contract in case Brazil stayed within its contract obligations to order a third dreadnought." - seems needlessly complex (how about "An the Argentine contract included an option for a third dreadnought in the event that Brazil also ordered a third battleship")
    • "Chile, on the other hand, had a very predictable outcome." - this is a bit vague and needs some context
      • This still hasn't been fixed - it reads rather oddly. Nick-D (talk) 08:44, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Piping ' quarrels with shipyard workers' to 'industrial action' seems to be not needed - just say industrial action
      • This still hasn't been fixed. Nick-D (talk) 08:44, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • "and began to actively seek a buyer for their two ships so the profits could be invested internally" - were they really expecting to make a profit on second hand (and slightly outdated) warships? - 'revenue' might be the correct term
    • "Canada was sold for just £1,000,000, less than half of has been required to construct the ship" - needs to be tidied up Nick-D (talk) 10:40, 8 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Most of these should be addressed. I used "even" with the Times because I was thinking of their normally-neutral articles, as opposed to their editorials, but of course you are correct. For the ones I did not address: @ship previous, can you think of a better way to word it? It's a weird thing to try to put into words, at least for me. @"Chile ... outcome", the context comes directly after. Is that too unclear? @Piping, it's a a bit more descriptive this way, I think. @Profits, actually yes. Think of the context – World War I was on the horizon, and everyone was frantic to buy armament or keep it away from a potential enemy in case war flared up (which it did, in August). For a similar case, Brazil would have made money from Greece's offer for Rio de Janeiro, and while I don't have statistics on-hand for the Ottoman offer, I can't imagine Brazil's government would sell the ship for less of a profit than that. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 07:31, 12 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support My above comments have now mainly been addressed, through I've highlighted two which need a bit of work. Selling the ships for a profit makes sense in that context - I assume that the source uses the word 'profit' or similar? Nick-D (talk) 08:44, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Hmm. I would have sworn Livermore said just that, but he doesn't. I'll reword the article to reflect that. Thanks Nick – your checks are greatly appreciated. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 08:25, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support for half of it on prose per standard disclaimer. These are my edits. After "with the Baron of Rio Branco remarking that caving to the American demands would render Brazil as powerless as Cuba", you might or might not want to add something like "[whose new constitution allowed the U.S. to intervene in Cuban affairs]." - Dank (push to talk) 17:51, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Good thinking, I'll add that wording with a link to 1901 Constitution of Cuba. Thanks very much Dank, and I'm very happy to see you back. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 08:25, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Good to see you back at A-class too. Finished my copyediting, now supporting the whole article, except the last subsection, which is tagged as being under construction. - Dank (push to talk) 03:16, 23 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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