Talk:French cruiser Descartes/GA1

GA Review
The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.''

Reviewer: Usernameunique (talk · contribs) 20:11, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Lead
 * the unsuccessful search — It's implied by the lack of further discussion, but the fact that the search was unsuccessful isn't mentioned in the body.
 * Clarified in the body

Design
 * a war scare with Italy in the late 1880s — I think I've asked this before, but is there an article about this?
 * No, there isn't (or a relevant section in an article)
 * French Navy — Link to French Navy?
 * Done
 * The Descartes class were — This should be the "class was", no?
 * Fixed
 * 383–401 officers and enlisted men — No breakdown available?
 * No
 * She had a cruising radius of 5500 nmi at 10 kn and 1000 nmi at 19.5 knots. — Does "cruising radius" mean how far she could go one one tank of gas (so to speak)? Also, any reason 19.5 knots isn't converted?
 * Yes, and the speed is converted a sentence earlier
 * Perhaps FRENCH CRUISER Pascal should be introduced in this section, and are there any comparisons worth mentioning? Of course, most of that is best addressed in Descartes-class cruiser.
 * Added a mention of Pascal in the first para, but the two ships were more or less identical, so no comparisons warranted
 * That they were largely identical is itself worth mentioning, I think. --Usernameunique (talk) 18:07, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * But isn't that implicit in their being a class? The assumption is the classes are made up of generally homogeneous ships - it seems excessive to explain this in every article on a ship that's part of a class
 * Yeah, probably. I was thinking of this review, where the boilers were mentioned as varying by ship. But that's probably an exception to the normal rule. --Usernameunique (talk) 14:55, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Armor protection consisted of a curved armor deck — "armored deck", or is an "armor deck" a thing? Although if there's a way of not using "armor ... armor" that might be better.
 * Yes, an armor deck is a thing - see any of the mentions here
 * Is it a think that could ever be turned into an article? Even a red link could make it clear that it is a specific type of protection.
 * That's probably a good idea - we have articles on belt armor, torpedo bulkhead, torpedo bulge, etc, so I don't see why we wouldn't eventually have one on deck armor too.
 * No information on the interior?
 * Nope

Service history
 * Descartes reportedly reached — Why "reportedly"?
 * That's what the source says - "Descartes was reported as attaining 21.8 knots..."
 * On 25 October 1900, an accidental propellant fire aboard Descartes, part of a series of fires that resulted from unstable Poudre B charges. — The sentence is missing a verb. Any more information about the fire?
 * No, I don't have any information on casualties or damage, unfortunately; sometimes these events were reported in periodicals at the time (see for instance FRENCH CRUISER Forbin, but I wasn't able to track one down on this one)
 * At the start of World War I in August 1914, Descartes was assigned — What happened during 1908–13?
 * There aren't any records that mention the ship during that period
 * The first two sentences of the third paragraph jump from August back to July. Is there a better way of phrasing it?
 * Reworked
 * The declaration of war between France and Germany on 4 August interrupted these plans — Now I'm even more confused. I thought she was recalled home because of the war?
 * The war started in stages - Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on 28 July but France wasn't at war with Germany for several days (but just about everybody could see it coming)
 * Any more details on the WWI history? Was she involved in any fighting?
 * No, no battles of note took place in the Caribbean - Karlsruhe briefly tangled with a British cruiser but that's about it

Notes
 * Can "France" be given a different descriptor? It sounds like the country, or someone's last name. At the very least, it should be put in italics (to mirror Service Performed).
 * That's the title in the journal - the standard formatting for article titles is non-italicized (as opposed to the journal title, which should be in italics). There's no editor or author of the section listed, so we can't go that route either.
 * Shouldn't "France" and Service Performed have the year?
 * It's there - look at the end of the citation; formats for journal articles are different than books
 * Yes, it's in "References"—but in "Notes", the citations render as "Service Performed, p. 299" and the like, whereas every other short citation (e.g., "Brassey 1908, pp. 49, 53") includes the year.
 * Fixed the italics in the notes, but the years for Brassey's is only to differentiate between the different volumes
 * Right, I'd missed the ones on the left that don't have years. Looks good.

References
 * A lot of the public-domain works could probably be linked.
 * Highlighting this in case it was overlooked. --Usernameunique (talk) 18:07, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Is the first name for "Garbett, H." available?
 * No, unfortunately

Overall
 * , the nomination will probably have to be failed unless you add more specific publisher locations. Other than that, looks good. --Usernameunique (talk) 20:55, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * That's not in the Good Article criteria and I won't be doing that. Thanks. Parsecboy (talk) 17:22, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * , responses above. The comment about publisher locations was a joke—sorry if the context got lost along the way. --Usernameunique (talk) 18:07, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I wondered, but you know how they say humor isn't translated well through the internet ;) Parsecboy (talk) 19:46, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah, someone once suggested the invention of left-slanting italics to indicate things written in jest—not a bad idea. Left a few comments above, but nothing that requires edits. Otherwise, all looks good except the comment about linking to public-domain works appears to have been overlooked. --Usernameunique (talk) 14:55, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
 * , I see you've added most of the URLS; I've added the remaining two (of the public domain works), so am passing now. --Usernameunique (talk) 17:56, 11 June 2020 (UTC)