Wikipedia:Peer review/SR West Country Class/archive1

SR West Country and Battle of Britain Classes
How can the article be improved? Any constructive comments will be gratefully received. Eventually, once all comments received have been rectified, the article will be posted up for FA status. Thank you.--Bulleid Pacific 10:51, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Comments from The Rambling Man
Hello Bulleid Pacific, as promised, some comments to push this on its way... Hope some of these comments make sense and help. Let me know if there's more I can do to help, as always. The Rambling Man 20:36, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
 * The lead starts with "The SR West Country and Battle of Britain Classes..." while the title of the article is "SR West Country Class" and the infobox header is "SR Unrebuilt West Country/Battle of Britain Class". I like consistency, so if multiple names etc are used, be consistent with all of these parts of the article.
 * WP:MOS for section headings - just stick to "References" and don't over-cap, so (nationalisation) is fine, we're not dealing with proper (or German!) nouns here.
 * Don't like TOCleft on my browser (Firefox under MacOSX) so consider ditching it. It really squashes the Background section on both left and right-hand sides.
 * Spell check required, e.g. "primarilly", "unrebuilt" (the latter may be common train aficionado parlance but it doesn't work for me!)
 * rebuilt is bold, why?
 * What's a "secondary route"? Bear in mind for the non-expert reader, terms like this are difficult to comprehend.
 * Again, with FA in mind, you could explain or, at a minimum, wikilink terms such as "freight", "express", "chain-driven valve gear" etc.
 * "...larger Merchant Navy class.[2]" - that ref [2] needs to be made into a proper citation.
 * "..outshopping..." - what does that mean?
 * "...footplate spectacle plates..." - wow, another specialist term. FAs need to be accessible to all, you need to qualify this somehow, to make it readable to all.
 * Sometimes you use SR, sometimes it's expanded. Be consistent, and unless you're referring to the subject of the article, I'd stick with Southern Railway.
 * "...owns/regions/aircraft/personalities/squadrons ..." - this makes for grim prose. Reword required.
 * "(rather unfortunately!)" - I know what this means but it is colloquial, informal and non-encyclopaedic. If you want to keep the spirit of the meaning, I'm afraid you'll need to explain yourself!
 * "Southern" section needs to be flowed better, too many short paras, I'd make it one, or at most two, paragraphs.
 * Over use of parentheses. If something's worth saying, say it in prose, not in parentheses.  You'll easily be able to swap them for commas and the effect will be better prose and easier reading.
 * Same thing that I said about SR applies to BR.
 * "Thus 66 Squadron was the only BB Class member not to have a crest>" - what's happened here? Finish with a . rather than a > (obviously!) but another single sentence paragraph so flow it back into the previous paragraph.
 * "Individual class members list" section - not keen at all. With a section like this, you might as well create a standard looking "See also" section with just the wikilink in place.
 * "List of Preserved light pacifics" could be a sub-section, the heading is a bit strange (it's not a proper heading for a start).
 * "34023 Blackmoor Vale appeared in the 2002 film "Two Men Went To War" starring Kenneth Cranham and Leo Bill: a strange choice considering that this locomotive had not been built at the time of the film's setting. This sort of anachronism clearly didn't bother director John Henderson too much, as a postwar Bedford OB coach was also used." could do with being added into a new "Popular culture" section, the film could be wikilinked to, avoid "didn't" - should be "did not", what does "OB" mean? Do Cranham and Bill have their own pages?  Is "...a strange choice..." original research or do you have something you can use to cite it?

Comments from Bulleid Pacific
OK, I think I've sorted it out. Have another look and is there anything else? Cheers. --Bulleid Pacific 14:48, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Comments from EliminatorJR
Some terms that probably need a little explanation for the layman
 * semi-fast
 * route availability
 * post-nationalisation (it's in the Construction History paragraph but isn't linked until later)

The first paragraph of the "The British Railways batch" section reads a bit awkwardly to me, and might need recasting.

Though used in the first paragraph and the list of preserved locos, the term 'Spam Can' is never actually explained.

Hope this helps.  E LIMINATOR JR  TALK  22:22, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Comments from EdJogg
Thanks for the opportunity of learning about the GA/FA/Peer review processes -- very educational.

Having had yet another look at the article, and minded of The Rambling Man's comments, the following are some more comments for your consideration.


 * The article doesn't actually mention why they were known as "light pacifics", or at least, not directly. Might be a challenge squeezing this in. (Don't forget that the term "Pacific" is rather alien to a non- rail person, although I've added it to the Infobox to help).
 * Related point: should the term be capitalised ('Light Pacific'), since it is effectively a name, or all lower-case? (I would prefer the former, as it is usually used as a name rather than a description.
 * There's some overlap between the "Background" and "Construction history" sections
 * "Construction history" mentions Nationalisation without explaining what it refers to; other terms are also used before being defined
 * You rightly compare them to the MNs, but you miss the opportunity of describing features such as the 'air-smoothed casing' (which you refer to 'in passing' later) and other stuff (presumably) described on the MN page.
 * '"West Country Class" class scroll', quite apart from the unfortunate repetition, really needs a photo
 * Where were the plaques fitted relative to the nameplates?
 * Is it worth mentioning that, since scrapping, the plates are highly prized by the organisations concerned.
 * Would be helpful to link the colours if possible, or at least explain 'modified Southern Malachite Green' (etc).
 * Hammerblow?, "Modernisation Plan"? "Spam Can"? (used in loco list)


 * Hope this helps... EdJogg 23:14, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

(These comments were posted on the original peer review page (Peer review/SR West Country/Battle of Britain Classes/archive1) and were not seen. Many may have been addressed subsequently.)

EdJogg 23:57, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

A few more comments from EliminatorJR
HTH,  E LIMINATOR JR  TALK  21:42, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
 * In the Construction History section, the sentence that begins "Other refinements.." doesn't quite scan - should it be "Together with other refinements.." or suchlike?
 * In the same section, need to define the term "raves" in relation to the streamlined tender.
 * 'Unrebuilt' and 'Un-rebuilt' used through article - need to standardise on one form.
 * I've done a few minor copyedits.