Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/T30 Howitzer Motor Carriage/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 archived by Laser brain via FACBot (talk) 11:10, 13 September 2015.

T30 Howitzer Motor Carriage

 * Nominator(s): Tomandjerry211 (alt) (talk) 18:10, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

This article is about a World War II half-track that was a self-propelled gun. It was designed as an interim vehicle until a better one with tracks came out. It served through the war in the European a possibly the Pacific theaters. It later served with the French during the First Indochina War. I believe this should be featured because it is a comprehensive article on the subjects and meets all criteria. Thanks, Tomandjerry211 (alt) (talk) 18:10, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Image review
 * Captions that aren't complete sentences shouldn't end in periods. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:30, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Fixed.--Tomandjerry211 (alt) (talk) 16:52, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Oppose. My position is simply that there's not enough narrative here to constitute a Featured Article. (The Specifications section isn't narrative.) - Dank (push to talk) 23:16, 7 September 2015 (UTC) See WP:FA?, 1a. ("its prose is engaging"), 1b. ("places the subject in context"), and 2b. ("substantial ... table of contents"). I'm not taking a position on whether it fails to do those things in any absolute sense; I'm saying that the four paragraphs of narrative (not counting Specifications or the restatement in the lead section) aren't as engaging, don't present as much context, and aren't as substantial as the narrative in any other FA I've seen (and I've read most of the short ones). This isn't a criticism of the writers or the writing; there's no requirement that everyone who shows up at FAC should have precognitive knowledge of what reviewers are going to say. I'm saying that I'm hard pressed to see how these four paragraphs, or any four paragraphs, of narrative could meet the FA standards reflected in our FAs and in practice here at FAC. (Full disclosure: there are one or two tropical storms FAs that I would have opposed on the same grounds, if I had weighed in. See User:Dr pda/Featured article statistics; you'll see what I mean.) - Dank (push to talk) 17:33, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Comment: I'd like there to be more here in general, although I'm extremely familiar with the difficulties of sourcing obscure or minor topics; sometimes there's just nothing more to find, and it's difficult to weigh comprehensiveness requirements versus simply absent literature. In searching, I found an non-RS that suggests at least one T30 survives in the collection of the Muzeum Wojska Polskiego; my inability to communicate in Polish makes that difficult to confirm. Mostly, I'd like to note that most of this article's text very nearly duplicates a self-published work by Ray Merriam. However, I am fairly certain that it is that author who copied verbiage from Wikipedia, rather than vice versa. The specific phrasings involved appear in our article in January 2015; the Lulu-printed work by Merriam has a publication date of March, and nothing similar appears in the 2014 first edition as best as I can determine. Accordingly, I do not believe this is a copyright violation, although I have no particular determination regarding promotion. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 16:37, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Coordinator note: / (unsure which account to ping), do you intend to respond to/address the concerns posted here? If not, I will archive the nomination. -- Laser brain  (talk)  14:55, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Fail it for now, and I'll be fixing the issues later.--Tomandjerry211 (alt) (talk) 16:02, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

-- Laser brain  (talk)  11:10, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.