Talk:Siege of Aiguillon

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Siege of Aiguillon/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Zawed (talk · contribs) 08:48, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

I will do this one. Comments to follow over next few days. Zawed (talk) 08:48, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Review completed, passing as GA. Zawed (talk) 08:13, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Good Article review progress box Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV () 3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant () Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

Initial stuff

• To the best of my understanding RE image licencing, the various image tags check out OK
• Dupe links: none
• Dab links: none
• External links check out OK

Infobox

No issues identified

Lead

• "French operations; and Lancaster": I think this phrase would read better if the semi-colon was dropped and the "and" was replaced with "while".

Done.

• The first two sentences of the last paragraph has "Normandy" three times. I suggest that the second sentence which deals with Normandy the person be reworked.

Reworked. A little differently from how you suggested.

• I feel the last sentence is probably too irrelevant given the focus of this article.

Deleted. (I was trying, probably poorly, to make the point that when the French lost the war-changing Battle of Crecy they were missing the best third of the army, which had been tied down at Aiguillon. Ie, to place the siege in its strategic context.)

Hi Zawed, thank you for again taking on one of my Medieval epics. The Hundred Years' War attracts such little attention that I feared that I would struggle to attract assessors. Your three points above addressed and I am ready for your next instalment when you are. Gog the Mild (talk) 16:55, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

Background

• I suggest swapping the maps around; the France in 1330 shows Ponthieu which to my mind means it is better placed against the first paragraph (which mentions Ponthieu) and also better identifies the Gascony region. The Location of Auberoche map is better placed against the Gascony section, since that section mentions most of the cities identified.

Quite right. Done.

• "the inhabitants had attacked the garrison and opened the gates to the English"; better state it is the town's inhabitants. Rather than the semi-colon, I think it would work better as a standalone sentence.

Both done.

Prelude

• "John had to issue orders"; I assume that these orders were to his troops, better explicitly state this.

Clarified.

• "It was barely short of theft at sword point from his own citizens." Is this what the source says? It comes across as editorialising.

If it were exactly what the source said, it would be a copyright issue. I have rewritten to be closer to the source's actual sentence, if, perhaps, not the sentiment of the source's paragraph.

• "The town was well stocked with supplies and materiel.[18] The defences were in a poor state.": suggest combining these two sentences since they are so short (and lead naturally into discussion of the walls etc...)

Done

Investment

• The caption on the image should probably mention it is of the Aiguillon walls.

Done.

• "The French armies assembled early and marched early.": early used twice in close succession. And do we know when the assembled/marched?

Rephrased. (No.)

• " They twice destroyed it, but it was completed by the end of May.": "it" suggests it was completed, suggest mentioning partially constructed bridge or similar.

Hmm. The wording of the source is ambiguous - unusual for this source - so I have replaced with the source's phrase. (And crossed my fingers re copyright.)

Operations

• " Dysentery broke out in the French camps": this reads oddly being placed at the end of the 1st paragraph. Could it be moved earlier? Depending on when this occurred, you may need to state "Dysentery soon broke out..."

Done.

• The last few sentences of the final paragraph of this section could be combined, it is jarring reading them as a series of short sentences.

Done

French withdrawal

• Could the first paragraph be condensed more? I feel it is a little too much detail. Perhaps: As he had the previous year, in 1346, Edward III assembled an army for action in northern France or Flanders. Given the deterioration of the English position in Flanders, the French assumed that to disembark his army, Edward would sail for a port in Gascony or Brittany; probably the latter, where Lancaster was heavily outnumbered.[33] To guard against any possibility of an English landing in northern France, Philip IV relied on his powerful navy.[34]

Condensed.

Aftermath

• No issues identified.

Sources

• The publisher name for the Vale ref doesn't need to mention the company's entity status so the Ltd can be deleted.

Drat! Missed it. Done

That is my review completed. Cheers, Zawed (talk) 09:18, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

@Zawed: All done. See what you think. Gog the Mild (talk) 21:56, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Looking good, passing as GA. I've added the GA template at the top of this page as well. Zawed (talk) 08:13, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

ACR

Hi Zawed. You were kind enough to assess this at GAN. It is now going through an ACR and I wondered if you might feel like having a look at it again? Thanks. Gog the Mild (talk) 17:19, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Gog the Mild I am happy to take another look. Cheers, Zawed (talk) 00:12, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

Biblio

Tidied references, changed date to year, hyphenated isbns, rm overlinking dup check, auto ed, revised EngvarB. All suggestive, rv as desired. PS do the references have to be in more than one column? Regards Keith-264 (talk) 07:18, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Hi Keith-264. Thank you for your usual excellent job of tidying the article up. Regarding the references being in two columns and indented, this is a deliberate decision and is intended to help those, like me, whose eyesight is past its youthful apogee. As I said to Peacemaker when he raised a very similar point about this at an FAC:

This is genuinely intended to be helpful for the reader. It may, again, be my failing eyesight, but I struggle with Wikipedia's bullet pointed bibliographies. I will scan up and down with my eye not picking out the one I want, especially when there are several works by the same or, worse, similarly named, author(s). I have seen indention used in several articles and use it in mine when the number of references goes over 12-15. I find that with most or all of the relevant surnames protruding it is much easier to pick out the one wanted. I would actually like this to be generally adapted as good practice as an accessibility issue.

More than happy to debate the approaches pros and cons. Gog the Mild (talk) 20:52, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

How much wine?

The article contains the following, "Before the war commenced well over 1,000 ships a year departed Gascony. Among their cargoes were over 200,000,000 imperial pints (110,000,000 litres; 240,000,000 US pints) of wine. (refs: Rodger 2004 pp=xix–xx, 79; Curry 2002 p=40)", which has been copy/pasted into a number of articles. I have edited it because it is wrong in several ways; it is OR, relies on a synthesis of the sources, and gives the wrong amount anyway. This was discussed at length a couple of years ago, but the wrong information was still here, so I have fixed it, here and elsewhere. Moonraker12 (talk) 17:36, 3 September 2022 (UTC)