Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Background of the Spanish Civil War/archive1


 * 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 not promoted by Karanacs 18:52, 20 September 2011.

Background of the Spanish Civil War

 * Nominator(s): Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 13:21, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured article because I feel it is the natural progression for an article that passed both a GAN and has passed an ACR in all but name – I should point out that the ACR (here) has the required support and is well past the usual 28 day period and I have requested that it be closed. Owing to personal circumstances I have around a month until to go away and will start editing less, hence the nomination now. As far as the sources are concerned, I have Beevor (2006) still in my possession and will shortly have Preston (2006) and Thomas (1961). I thus await any comments you may have. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 13:21, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Comments. Copied from the A-class review:
 * "The background of the Spanish Civil War included a series of events leading up to Spain's civil war": The lead should be tighter than this, particularly the first sentence of the lead. - Dank (push to talk) 04:26, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Personally, I like the dense style of for instance the first paragraph, but many readers will want this to be a little less dense, with more explanation and context. - Dank (push to talk) 14:50, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
 * We had real trouble cutting it down enough to be a reasonable length which providing enough of the information to be a meaningful summary. As regards to the first sentence, I agree it's not perfect and would welcome any thoughts on changing it because a better alternative does not spring to mind. Perhaps if the phrase "background of the Spanish Civil War" was dropped, then there might be an alternative? Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 14:56, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
 * [Anyone have suggestions now that we're at FAC?] - Dank (push to talk) 13:57, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Another similarly named article uses "covers" after the title of the page, in place of "included" (and altered as necessary to make sense). An improvement, perhaps, but possibly short of a solution. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 14:09, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
 * How about "The background of the Spanish Civil War dates back to the end of the nineteenth century, when the owners of large estates, called latifundia, held most of the power in a land-based oligarchy." --Dianna (talk) 14:52, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Good flow, but it doesn't seem to give an opportunity to link the Spanish Civil War article itself (until, I suppose, the last sentence of the lead). For an article that's a sort of "child" article, I don't know if that's optimal. Happy to go with it, though, if it's not seen as a problem. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 14:56, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Try to come up with an excuse to link to that article somewhere in the first paragraph rather than the first sentence. - Dank (push to talk) 14:59, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Taken on, might need tweaking. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 16:07, 4 September 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm more comfortable with the rest of the writing (i.e. below the lead) ... I get what it's saying and it's well-organized, but it would help if someone would run through looking for ways to make things clearer and tighter. For instance:
 * "The country had undergone several civil wars and revolts. .... political power." You don't see news stories that say "A gunman killed a shopowner yesterday, and he also stole a comb and argued with the man." A "revolt" can last an hour and express disgruntlement, and politics is a given; civil war is in a different category.  If the revolts are important to this sentence because they led to civil wars, then say that: "Several revolts [you don't need to mention "the country"; we know what country it is] led [or had led, depending on the rest of the paragraph] to civil wars ...".  If what you're trying to do here is write a topic sentence or topic paragraph, and it's important to mention revolts and politics so the reader will understand the context of what follows, will understand where things are headed, then the structure should be something more like: the unresolved political struggles between [whomever] in [year] became a rash of revolts in [year], which set the stage [but don't say something that trite :) ] for a civil war ... (followed by a quick description of the war).  [It probably won't work to handle multiple civil wars in one sentence, war is by definition a big deal.]  That's all for now. - Dank (push to talk) 14:59, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
 * OK, I couldn't quite follow that exactly but have reformulated the paragraph to limited the "topic sentence" to just the first sentence and to remove the civil war/revolt dichotomy (in favour of a statement about coups d'états, given that the civil wars are mentioned in the following sentences and paragraphs). What do you think? Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 15:13, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Much better. - Dank (push to talk) 15:21, 4 September 2011 (UTC) Also ... sorry about that, what was unclear, the gunman analogy? - Dank (push to talk) 19:00, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
 * All the bits with the square brackets and round brackets were a bit hard to parse, but I did get it. Hard to put a general scheme for the sentence in one's head: neither a specific wording nor just what was wrong. But it worked out, I think :) Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 19:05, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Source review - spotchecks not done. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:45, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Note 6: why is the bibliographic info here rather than in Sources?
 * Note 3: formatting
 * FN 55: is this one author or two? If the former, why include first name? If the latter, need first names in source listing. Also, date is inconsistent: 2008 or 2009?
 * University of Wisconsin Press is a publisher, and as such should not be italicized. Check formatting of Payne. Also, it would appear that this is a book source reprinted online, not a journal? Nikkimaria (talk) 01:45, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Points 2 and 3 on your list I believe I have dealt with (I think the missing full stop was what you meant in #2 - is that the case?). On point #1 I've standardised it, but it doesn't have a page number. Is this a problem? There's one other viable source for those statistics, this report to the Council of Europe. Would welcome your thoughts. On point 4, yes. But I don't have the book, so I cannot guarentee that it's faithful to the print version. What template do you suggest? Would it be better placed under "Books" anyway? Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 09:05, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Montero Monero entry is fine, although check the edition formatting for consistency. As to Carroll, how did you access this source? The report would also be a viable source. As to point 4, definitely place under Books, and you can probably use if you indicate that the source consulted was the online version (probably using the format or edition parameter). Nikkimaria (talk) 12:19, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I will sort out #4. Carroll isn't my addition, that's partly why I don't have the page number. There are two options: make a couple of adjustments but leave as it is now, or take it across to the Council of Europe report completely. I don't know which would be better. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 12:26, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
 * After finding Carroll was published after the edition he was quoting (and thus, I suspect really and earlier edition) I've gone with the Council of Europe report. Found it quite hard to cite, any necessary changes can be made. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 13:07, 6 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Comment - very briefly, I was wondering why the article is named 'Background of' instead of 'Origins of'? You can see the pages on Wikipedia with those names here (Background of) and here (Origins of). Several war articles have corresponding 'origins of' articles (including WWI, WWII and the US Civil War), and several have 'background of' articles. Is there a difference or not, and if there is a difference, is this article intended to be broader than a 'origins' article, or is it just an 'origins' article under a different name? Carcharoth (talk) 02:10, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't believe so. I raised it at MILHIST and found there was no common term (if you take out the redirects, particularly). It's "Background to the Vietnam War", "Events leading to the Falklands War", there's five other "background of" (4 of which are wars) and 6-or-7 war articles using "Origins of". With no common term, I picked one I thought was most appropriate. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 07:50, 17 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Comment / Source review. I own Beevor and did some spotchecks on citations to his book.  They're fine and don't misrepresent the material, nor are they straight quotes.

Two passages that stuck out, though. "Poverty was particularly acute in Catalonia; there were acts of terrorism and actions by agents provocateurs in Barcelona." This is cited to Preston, but... it doesn't sound right. Poverty was acute everywhere in Spain, but I thought Barcelona and Catalonia in general did quite well with the industrial revolution and flourished from 1880 - 1920 or so, so poverty was less bad there? I mean, sure, there's all the classic Dickensian in-your-face poverty of kids working in mills and beggars who lost an arm in an industrial accident in the street, but this is better than masses of peasants in backbreaking farm labor that doesn't even make any money, which is what Old Castile ends up as. I'd be interested if other sources back this up. I'm going off memories of a museum on Barcelona / Catalan history in Barcelona, and it could be they were just self-hyping, of course, but Beevor also notes on p.10 that investment money went into Catalonia's industry, and that "in Catalonia especially, huge fortunes were made."

Secondly: "The elections of 1936 were narrowly won by the Popular Front, with vastly smaller resources than the political right, who followed Nazi propaganda techniques." Also cited to Preston. Whoa! The Nazis hated the Socialists so something very weird was going on here. Does Preston just think they had a similar style, mass rallies, unified will of the people, etc.? Or were Spanish socialists actually saying "That Hitler fellow had some good ideas on how to get elected, let's use 'em?" I'd like to see more citations behind a shocking claim like this, if possible, or else rephrased as "According to historian Preston, the techniques the Popular Front used were similar to those used by the Nazi party." SnowFire (talk) 23:04, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks. When I find the time, I'll pull the source for the first point, as I do understand the logic there. In the second, it's just a simple misunderstanding: it's the political right who followed Nazi propaganda techniques. I'll have a think if that can be clarified, it probably can. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 13:03, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I've altered the wording of that sentence (first point) to better reflect the source and hopefully clarify the logic. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 15:54, 18 September 2011 (UTC)


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