Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/French battleship Gaulois/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 Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 15 February 2020 [1].

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French battleship Gaulois

Nominator(s): Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 15:56, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Gaulois was a member of the first multi-ship class of pre-dreadnought battleships in the French Navy. Aside from having multiple collisions with other French ships, her peacetime career was fairly uneventful. When WWI began, she and her sisters were relegated to secondary roles as convoy escorts before they were sent to the Dardanelles to prevent the ex-German battlecruiser Yavuz from breaking out and to attack the fortifications defending the Dardanelles. The ship was badly damaged during one such bombardment in 1915 and had to be run aground to prevent her from sinking. Gaulois was repaired and returned to the Dardanelles. After a routine refit in France, she was sunk by a German submarine in late 1916 with the loss of only four crewmen while en route to the Eastern Mediterranean. The article had a MilHist A-class review about six months ago and I've made some minor tweaks since then so I believe that it meets the FA criteria. As usual I'd like reviewers to focus on any unexplained or unlinked jargon and infelicitous prose.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 15:56, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Source review - spotchecks not done

• Publisher for Caresse should be Conway Publishing, and both WorldCat and GBooks list a second editor
  • Title page just states "Conway" and lists Dent as assistant editor.

• Taillemite: suggest translating edition statement. Nikkimaria (talk) 21:10, 4 January 2020 (UTC)
  • Not explicitly allowed by the template, but I added a less tidy workaround.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 00:08, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

CommentsSupport by CPA-5

• Who made her a company or the Army itself? The lead doesn't say that.
  • The lede rarely names the builder, which was, in this case, a government-owned shipyard, the Arsenal de Brest.
• She was commissioned (armement définitif) on 15 January 1899 I don't think the French term is necessary it's the first time I see this in a French battleship.
  • The French defined commissioned in a number of different ways. Armement définitif is the one that comes closest to the term in English.
• Comte de Rochambeau in Lafayette Square, Washington, D.C. On 23 May D.C. is too common, we need to unlink it.
  • I think that you're overestimating the average reader's geographical knowledge.
• She made another port visit to Lisbon, Portugal, before arriving Modern-day Portugal didn't exist the link need to be replaced with the Kingdom of Portugal.
• ship made port visits in Thessaloniki and Athens, Greece I believe Athens needs to be unlinked.
• survivors of the April 1906 eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Naples Link Naples and explain that it lays in South Italy.
  • Linked, but I think that a simple addition of "Italy" suffices.
• Is it possible we can divide the refs in "References" into two lines? Because it doesn't look nice.
  • If you mean columns, done.

That's anything from me. Cheers. CPA-5 (talk) 14:07, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

• • • Thanks for catching all these niggles.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 00:19, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

@CPA-5: If you're up for it can you see if my changes are satisfactory?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 00:19, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

• Looks good to me. Cheers. CPA-5 (talk) 19:11, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

CommentsSupport by PM

This article is in great shape. I reviewed at Milhist ACR in July, so I don't have much to add here.

• the aft draught conversion doesn't match between the body and infobox
• other than Bris, is there any other information available on her captains?
  • Not easily accessed as there's no index in Taillemite
• there is a big gap between September 1906 and January 1909. Is there anything that can be added during that period? No reviews or notable port visits?
  • Nothing like that, but I've added a bit about her reassignments
• "The squadron was transferred to the 2nd Squadron" do you mean the division was transferred? It seems weird that a squadron would be transferred to another squadron
  • Good catch, clarified
• suggest "On 19 February, Gaulois supported Suffren as the latter ship bombarded..."
• is there anything known about her wreck, is it diveable etc?
• le.fantasque.free.fr doesn't look reliable to me to be an EL
  • No argument from me.

That's me done. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 06:24, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the review; see if my changes are satisfactory.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 00:45, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Support by Llammakey

• In the lead, the French for French Navy should be Marine Nationale, not Maritime Nationale
  • Merde! Je suis tres bête! ;-)
• The ship accidentally rammed two other French warships early in her career, although neither was seriously damaged, nor was the ship herself - too many "ships" - change one of them to Gaulois.
  • Good idea.
• Link Toulon in Construction and career
  • Linked in the lede
• Admiral Guépratte and his squadron returned to the Gulf of Saros on 11 March where they again bombarded Turkish fortifications.[25] They returned to assist in the major attack on the fortifications planned for 18 March.

Would rewrite as

"Admiral Guépratte and his squadron returned to the Gulf of Saros on 11 March where they resumed the bombardment of Turkish fortifications.[25] They returned again to assist in the major attack on the fortifications planned for 18 March."

• • Those were in two different paragraphs, but I've rewritten the second one to clarify that they returned to the Dardanelles for the 18 March bombardment.

That is all I could find that has not been mentioned by others. Llammakey (talk) 16:49, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Good to see you doing something outside your very appreciated gnoming! See if my changes are acceptable.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 00:54, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Changes are acceptable. Changed to support. Good job on another article. Llammakey (talk) 13:24, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Image review

• "File:Symonds and Co Collection Q22279.jpg": the source link is dead.
  • Fixed.
• There are five images on the right to one on the left. So maybe move "File:Cuirasse le Gaulois endommage aux Dardanelles en 1915.jpg" to the left; which may work better visually, as she is steaming left to right in this image.
  • MOS:IMAGELOCATION says that all images should be on the right with rare exceptions on the left.

I have always taken that to mean single images, as the next paragraph starts "Multiple images can be staggered right and left" and the one after "It is often preferable to place images of people so that they "look" toward the text." Gog the Mild (talk) 22:06, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Fair enough, but the ping-pong effect somewhat argues against that. In this particular case that wouldn't be a factor, but in that picture Gaulois is down by the bow and is steaming from right to left.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 00:24, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Gog the Mild (talk) 18:12, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for checking these.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:44, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Support by Wehwalt

Support. Seems the usual comprehensive job. Just a few comments:

• "metric horsepower" Might be worth a link
• "The sisters remained in Brest until they departed for Toulon on 18 January 1900." They never left the harbour from 30 September onwards? If they did, suggest adding "based" before "in Brest".

• It does seem rather unlikely that they remained in port for that amount of time!

• "Asiatic" some people don't like this word. Maybe Asian?
• Any salvage attempts or other later material? Probably not but I thought I should ask.

• None mentioned as the wreck's probably too deep to be economical.

That's it.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:19, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for looking this over.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 00:27, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

• Closing note: This candidate has been promoted, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FAC/ar, and leave the {{featured article candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Ian Rose (talk) 09:37, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.