Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Operation Charnwood/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 promoted by Karanacs 18:57, 18 August 2009.

Operation Charnwood

 * Nominator(s): EnigmaMcmxc (talk)

I am nominating this featured article for review because i believe it meets all FA criteria, after being worked on extensively for the past few months..

This was an Anglo-Canadian operation that took place during the Second World War Normandy campaign to capture the northern portion of the city of Caen.EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 09:01, 30 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Image check OK. DrKiernan (talk) 12:26, 30 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment: Images need alternative text, as per WP:ALT. MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 16:00, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Most alternative texts done, though I'm not sure how to do to for the infobox image EyeSerene talk 11:16, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Support per 1a. Mostly very nicely written. Really good article.
 * Could we have a map showing where Caen is – see the article on that town – and perhaps its French pronunciation could be given, as here)? Or did the troops pronounce it as "Cane"?
 * Map added per request. Dr. Blofeld       White cat 10:56, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks! EyeSerene talk 11:35, 31 July 2009 (UTC)


 * "3–400 casualties"—do you mean "300–400"?
 * Done EyeSerene talk 11:35, 31 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Don't like that template that forces "4-mile", rather than the more natural "four-mile"; but it's no big deal. Sure you want US units first? It's Canada, the UK, France and Germany, which are all metric. The date format is not US.
 * Rewritten manually (not sure if the template caters for spelling out the numbers?) EyeSerene talk 11:35, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Forgot... re units, the UK at least is metric in name only. Miles are universally used in preference to kilometres (though anachronistically metres tend to be used over yards). It makes for a horribly confusing system to have to teach :P EyeSerene talk 11:40, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I see the BBC has switched to metrics only—the David-Attenbrough-type programs. Thank the lord, we don't have to be bisexual any more. Tony   (talk)  15:01, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Heh, I hadn't noticed that (must be my low-brow viewing diet). There are moves every now and then to finally bury the Imperial system, but they're always quietly abandoned when no-one complies. EyeSerene talk 16:39, 31 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Is there a new rule about making images squint-tiny? Apart from saving my eye-sight, the captions wrap into one-to-three-word groups.
 * I tried removing the 'thumb' parameter, but they were too big. Can we force the image sizes (I've seen that objected to elsewhere)? EyeSerene talk 11:35, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes: "Bad Title Example.png"
 * This point gets brought up quite a bit. Images states "As a rule, images should not be set to a larger fixed size than the 180px default. If an exception to the general rule is warranted...." Then it explains how to do so as i have shown above.
 * Ive just added them but i dont think it has made much of a difference.--EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 16:38, 31 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Any reason bold is used under "Battle honours"?
 * It picks out the name of the honour, though I suppose enclosing it in quotes would work too. EyeSerene talk 11:35, 31 July 2009 (UTC)


 * "Operation Charnwood has been analysed to varying degrees."—Does this grab the reader at the opening of "Analysis"? Consider getting straight into it with the second sentence?
 * Done EyeSerene talk 11:35, 31 July 2009 (UTC)


 * St-Pierre Church caption: date format wrong, and even if US format were the default, a comma would be required.
 * Done EyeSerene talk 11:35, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Well done indeed. Tony  (talk)  10:16, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Support A masterful article on military history. You should be quite proud of your work. Well done! I think I can sort out the map for you.. Dr. Blofeld       White cat 10:47, 31 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Can someone advise about the tiny images? Am I right in thinking that the increasing penetration of Internet speeds that are faster than dial-up have nullified the argument that pics should be pretty small? To me, these are excellent pics that are spoilt by the tiny size. Essentially, they need to be double-clicked on to see them. What is the current practice? Tony   (talk)  14:58, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Well they are set to standard. You can always change your default px size to 250 or 300 in your preferences. I have mine set at 250px because I also dislike small images. Dr. Blofeld       White cat 15:47, 31 July 2009 (UTC)


 * In regards to the images, i believe there is a wiki guideline somewhere, that states something along the lines of except maps and the infobox image everything else has to be a thumbnail.--EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 16:19, 31 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, it's on WP:MOSIMAGES. Obviously setting sizes in the prefs doesn't solve the problem for passing readers. One solution might be to scale them up and re-upload, but although they'd look better on the article they'd lose resolution on commons. EyeSerene talk 16:39, 31 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I viewed the article with images in the default 180px size and they looked OK to me. A tad small, perhaps, but nothing out of the ordinary for an encyclopedia. Eubulides (talk) 06:01, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Comment. Done; thanks. Alt text is present but needs work. The lead image lacks alt text. File:Charnwood.svg''s alt text doesn't give the gist of the map's visual appearance to the reader (imagine that you're trying to explain what the map says briefly to someone over the telephone, and write that down). The location map's alt text is too generic; please supply better alt text (Location map supports this with its  option). The following phrases cannot be immediately verified by a non-expert who is looking only at the images, and need to be reworded or removed as per WP:ALT : "Imperial War Museum archive", "RAF", "British", "Allied", "French", "Caen" (only in "a street intersection in Caen"). The phrase "black and white photograph" is not that helpful and should be removed when it appears, as it's not that important to this article whether the photos are black and white or color (or even that they're photographs); see WP:ALT , example 2. Eubulides (talk) 06:01, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I've been over them again, though I still don't know how to do the infobox image (tried adding an alt parameter, but no joy). EyeSerene talk 07:48, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Just had a play round and it seems to be working now.--EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 12:53, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Excellent job, thanks. The battle map's alt text is longer than it needs to be, perhaps; I mention this only because the next time you write alt text for a map, you shouldn't need to write something quite that long. Eubulides (talk) 14:29, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks and noted; I'll try to be more succinct next time. EyeSerene talk 08:36, 4 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I hope the nominators do not mind the fact that I've gone through and resized the tiny thumbnail images in this beautiful article. The issue of image sizing is coming to a head at MoS talk, and there is almost certain to be a major change. I've used before-and-after links there to demonstrate the inadequacy of the default thumbnails (given that you've disabled your WPian user prefs in this respect, to see what our readers see). Tony   (talk)  04:51, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Works for me EyeSerene talk 08:36, 4 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Support: Very well done in my opinion. I think it is up to FA standard. — AustralianRupert (talk) 13:39, 4 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Comments – Sources check out on reliability, and the couple of online links function properly. I did notice that reference 77 has a page range of 196–297; is there any chance that this is a typo?  Giants2008  ( 17–14 ) 03:21, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
 * It is and i have fixed it.--EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 11:41, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Altogether this is very nicely done. Maralia (talk) 03:02, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Support Just a few very minor comments.
 * Some of the image captions are not full sentences and therefore should not end with a full stop.
 * Which ones are you referring to sorry?--EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 10:08, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Regarding the bolding in Battle honours: we don't use this for emphasis/distinction of a term. Bold text in the middle of an article is so unusual that it makes me think I'm looking at the target of a redirect, but that doesn't appear to be the case here. Quote marks would be a better choice, I think, and preferred by MOS.
 * I have looked over the MOS, it seems italitcs should be used here. So i have the relevent changes.--EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 10:08, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I've tweaked the last sentence of Note 7; please check this, as the sentence was incomplete in a way that it could've been due to a botched copy/paste rather than the simple grammar error I presumed it to be.


 * Comments - sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 15:58, 15 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Comments - some necessary MoS fixes (at the beginning) along with copyedits needed - 1. "Further information: Operation Charnwood order of battle" is redlinked. This is a problem. 2. Image in "Allies" is left under a third level heading, a WP:ACCESS violation. This image must be moved down a paragraph or to the right. 3. It is unnecessary to have four references for the date in the infobox: "8–9 July 1944 [1][2][3][4]". Reference clutter like this reduces verifiability. 4. "major Allied objective" - "Allied"? They are either "Allies" or "Allied Forces", not "Allied". 5. "and by 18:00 the British" commas are needed to separate "by 18:00" as it is a referential parenthetical statement. 6. "tactically Operation Charnwood". Your sentence does not allow "tactically" to be used in the manner. "tactically" would have to modify "success" - "was tactically a partial success" or "was a partial tactical-success". 7. "Strategically, it achieved mixed results, in that although it forced the Germans to pull back all formations north of the Orne River, it did not completely succeed in stopping the flow of units to the American front" Too many mixed clauses in this sentence with modifiers going to the wrong places. Make the comma after "results" a semi-colon and remove "in that". 8. Over use of strange tensing - "has been described". Just use "was described". 9. "the southeast of Caen, to acquire airfields and protect" You cannot just say "to acquire" in that clause. You would have to explain how that clause can serve as a proper parenthetical statement - replace with "in order to acquire". 10. "and on 7 June launched" - see comments for number 5. 11. "The intention was to encircle Caen from the east and west,[27] but I Corps, striking south of the Orne River, was halted by the 21st Panzer Division,[28] while XXX Corps's attack to the west of Caen stalled near Tilly-sur-Seulles in the face of heavy opposition from the Panzerlehrdivision." Too many mixed clauses. Switch the first comma for a period. Change the "but" to a "However," and remove the comma after "21st Panzer Division". 12. "In an effort to force Panzerlehr to withdraw, on 13 June the British 7th Armoured Division attacked the German flank" - "on 13 June" is placed improperly. Place it after "the German flank". 13. "On 27 June the 3rd Infantry Division’s" comma needed after "June". 14. "was beaten off," Is there a better term? It doesn't fit the tone of the rest of the page. 15. "Terry Copp calls" Please state who this person is. 16. "to capture Caen, and to" Improper comma - the first phrase is not complete so the sentence is not compound. Remove the comma after "Caen".

I was only able to get through half the page. Sources are in book form and I could not verify. However, few passages seem like they are problematic from general reading and phraseology. Ottava Rima (talk) 16:33, 15 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the comments i will attempt to cover them this week.
 * In regards to point 1, i do not believe this is a problem as it seems perfectly fine under WP:Redlinks; i do intend to create such a topic at some point.
 * I would also dispute the point raised in regards to "allied". It does appear to be a legitmate use of the word for example see here or other definitions that note that it refers to more or one states allied together etc--EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 16:15, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
 * As for "It is unnecessary to have four references for the date in the infobox: "8–9 July 1944 [1][2][3][4]". Reference clutter like this reduces verifiability." I dont see how this reduces verifiability, if anything it overwelming confirms these dates over the ones previously used in the article.--EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 09:53, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.