Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Project Y


 * The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Article promoted by Anotherclown (talk) via MilHistBot (talk) 02:06, 22 January 2017 (UTC) &laquo; Return to A-Class review list

Project Y

 * Nominator(s): Hawkeye7 (talk)

The last of my series of Manhattan Project articles. This one is on the Los Alamos Laboratory. Hawkeye7 (talk) 23:40, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

Support: looks pretty good to me. I made a couple of minor tweaks and have a couple of nitpicks: AustralianRupert (talk) 09:03, 20 November 2016 (UTC)
 * not sure if the triple emdashes work here: "the problems of neutron diffusion—how neutrons moved in a nuclear chain reaction—and hydrodynamics—how..."
 * I think it works okay. Hawkeye7 (talk) 00:10, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * "desirable accommodation was the apartments built by Sundt..." --> "desirable accommodation were the apartments built by Sundt"?
 * ✅ Hawkeye7 (talk) 00:10, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * "Unlike his other project leaders—Lawrence at the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory, Compton at the Metallurgical Project in Chicago, and Urey at the SAM Laboratories in New York, Oppenheimer..." I think there should be an emdash before Oppenheimer here
 * ✅ Hawkeye7 (talk) 00:10, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * " burning 1 cubic metre (35 cu ft) of..." probably should be "meter"
 * ✅ Blechh. Hawkeye7 (talk) 00:10, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * "Groves personally issued instruction to clear Oppenheimer..." --> "Groves personally issued instructions to clear Oppenheimer" or "Groves personally issued an instruction to clear Oppenheimer"?
 * ✅ Hawkeye7 (talk) 00:10, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * All points addressed. Hawkeye7 (talk) 00:10, 23 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Comments. This is a great article ... I particularly like the images ... but it's also a very long one, and generally, your Manhattan Project articles don't have any trouble attracting reviewers. My current plan is to bail on this one, but if it gets stuck at FAC, I'll be back. - Dank (push to talk) 15:59, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I have a lot more images, including ones of most of the buildings in the Tech Area, and examples of the various types of buildings, but this would require galleries to display. Hawkeye7 (talk) 04:53, 24 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Support I just spent the last hour reading this article and, after that, I wish I could give some constructive feedback or note areas of concern but this is a very well-written (and extremely interesting) contribution and I can't find any issues. DarjeelingTea (talk) 02:22, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that. It was one of the last articles to be written, and benefited greatly from that. Hawkeye7 (talk) 04:53, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Support. I don't pretend to understand the physics, but this is very well written and appears comprehensive. A few queries, but I'm scraping the barrel for things to criticise!:
 * Did I scare everybody off with the diffusion formula? I wanted to emphasise that they were doing some science. The math isn't beyond high level - we could go through it step by step in a single lecture. Stan Ulam recounted the story of a mathematician at Los Alamos who had sunk as low as a mathematician can go - he had written a paper with a decimal in it. (Poor bastard.) Hawkeye7 (talk) 05:59, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I think if anything scares people off it's the sheer size of the article. It's so big that the page size script doesn't work; a very rough copy and paste into a word processor came up north of 12,000 words. If there's any trimming or splitting into daughter articles you can do, I'd recommend it. HJ Mitchell  &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?  10:52, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I had noticed that and it's weird - something technical is going on. The main article is much larger and doesn't have this problem. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:46, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it was the math. I have removed it and the page size script now works. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:39, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

— HJ Mitchell &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?  01:05, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
 * "The actual population was about 3,500 by the end of 1943" I assume this includes support staff etc? Does it include families?
 * Yes. Added this. Hawkeye7 (talk) 05:59, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * How did they maintain information security with so many people on-site?
 * The Technical Area was sealed off; but scientists had access to most of what was going on through the seminars. Hawkeye7 (talk) 05:59, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * "The MP Detachment, 4817th Service Command Unit" ... "The Provisional Engineer Detachment (PED), 4817th Service Command Unit" Is that right?
 * Yes, that's right. The 4800 series was a block of numbers allocated to the 8th Service Command. Hawkeye7 (talk) 05:59, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Are the accidental deaths that weren't science-related really worth mentioning? Canoeing and horseriding accidents could happen in any town.
 * Fair enough. Reduced to the two famous accidents. Hawkeye7 (talk) 05:59, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Are Oppenheimer's reasons for resigning significant?
 * Not enough for me to put them in his article, or for any of his biographers to put it in their books. He intended to return to teaching physics at Berkeley and Caltech; but this proved to impossible, as he kept having to go to Washington. Eventually he decoded to move back east. Hawkeye7 (talk) 05:59, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the review! Much appreciated. Hawkeye7 (talk) 05:59, 10 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Images appropriately licensed.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 00:28, 22 January 2017 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.