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Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/List of sieges of Gibraltar

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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. Anotherclown (talk) 09:33, 17 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

List of sieges of Gibraltar

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Nominator(s): HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts?


A slight departure from the articles I've brought here previously, but on a very interesting topic. Gibraltar is a tiny piece of barren rock off the coast of Spain, but its position at the western entrance to the Mediterranean and on the northern side of one of the narrowest gaps between Europe and Africa have given it military importance from the eighth century to the present day. The first settlers were the Moors of north Africa, who were relieved of it after some 600 years by the Spanish, who were in turn relieved of it by the English (who shortly thereafter became the British). Throughout its turbulent history, it has had an effect on world history utterly disproportionate to its size; the Great Siege was of course fought as part of the American War of Independence, but the Rock also played a key role in the War of the Spanish Succession, the War of the Castilian, and many other conflicts, not to mention the Reconquista. So there's something here for everyone, and I hope you enjoy reading. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 00:46, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

CommentsSupport; high quality work, and a fascinating subject! :) I've done some light copyediting and made some comments below. As usual, these are just suggestions for your consideration!

  • I'm sure you expected this but... the image placement is a bit jarring. I don't have a solution, or even strong opinion, but it did stop me on first opening the article.
    • You've lost me; what's up with the image placement? Or do you mean the huge centred image Prioryman added earlier? I quite like it, but it can be moved if it's an issue.
      • On my screen, it's the sandwiching of the text between the first two images followed by the big image + lots of white space. It just looks unusual, and I like my wiki articles ordinary dammit!! ;) It's a non-issue really, forget about it.
  • Confederate; link?
    • I've had a look, but I can't find one; I don't think the War of the Spanish Succession is especially well covered on enwiki
  • The first permanent settlers on the Rock ; I feel that on first use, this should be Rock of Gibraltar.
    • I can live with that
  • The Spanish Reconquista began later in the eighth century, but the campaign (which eventually took 800 years to force the Moors back across the Strait) did not reach the Bay of Gibraltar until the fourteenth century.; I feel this whole sentence is a bit confusing. I'd make it two sentences, and start by explaining that later in the 8C the Spanish began efforts to push back the Moorish invasion. It might also be worth briefly noting in the previous sentence the extent to which Moorish actions from Gibraltar were successful (I know it's only backround, so not the end of the world).
    • I've re-worded it a little. The raids had varying degrees of success, but I think (OR alert!) they more a nuisance than anything else, but they were a good excuse to try to capture Gibraltar. Not that Catholics needed much excuse to fight Muslims in the mediaeval Spain.
  • He sent an army under Alonso Pérez de Guzmán to take Gibraltar, which he eventually did after a month-long siege, and Gibraltar was settled by the Castilians for the first time; two different "he" I think? If so may I suggest He sent an army under Alonso Pérez de Guzmán to take Gibraltar. Guzmán's siege of the city lasted a month, and ended in success for the Castilians who settled in Gibraltar for the first time.
    • Good point. I've reworded it slightly.
  • Just as a style issue. Would the table looked a bit less cramped if the description column was shrunk slightly?
    • By all means play around. I hate editing tables; it's a near miracle that this one works, but if you can make it look better, have at it!
      • I'll have a go :)
  • The environmental legacy of military operations; does this need title caps for consistency?
    • Probably. Done.

That's all for now, I might go through and copyedit it a bit more later, but that'd really just be shifting letters for fun :) Its basically A-Class material at this stage. --Errant (chat!) 22:13, 11 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Tom. I think I've addressed everything, but if there's anything else, just let me know. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 23:41, 11 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yeh, all looks good to me! --Errant (chat!) 01:02, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

CommentsSupport by Peacemaker67 (send... over) 04:58, 4 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • in the lead, more explanation is needed of what the "Confederate capture" was. Despite there not being a useful link (per discussion above), most readers think of the Confederacy in the ACW.
    • I've tweaed this and added an explanation of the confederates lower down
  • Emirate of Granada is overlinked
    • Fixed
  • all images are missing alt text (not a requirement)
    • Added
  • there are a couple of bare links [1]
    • Fixed
  • all other toolbox checks are green
  • suggest you use the full "Henry IV of Castile" to avoid confusion with other Henry's
    • Done
  • what is "deposed in effigy"
    • In this context it essentially means he was deposed in absentia, but "in effigy" is the term used in all the sources.
      • This is the same as the "Farce of Ávila", when they symbolically dethroned a mannequin dressed as King Enrique?
  • "of the Franco-Spanish Bourbon dynasty"
    • Done
  • the sorting aspect of the table is unnecessary and potentially annoying (try clicking on the name column and see what I mean).
    • Fixed
  • not sure why Cranbery, NJ and Boulder, CO are linked in the refs
    • I usually link the palce fo publicaion unless it's well enough known not to need a link, and I think Oxford and London are wel-enough known that they don' needa link.
  • I am not sure about the huge amount of whitespace created by the central image. I suggest looking at an alternative arrangement of the images
    • I'm not sure what can be done. It would be a shame to exclude the image or display it at such low resolution that it's useless just because it creates whitespace. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:24, 4 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comments This article is in very good shape, and I have only the following comments:

  • "four between Spain and Britain from the Confederate capture in 1704 " - you should probably briefly explain who the 'confederates' were here given that by far the most common usage is for the South in the US Civil War
    • Done (further down) I think.
  • "Henry was deposed in effigy" - this is also not a common term - can it be tweaked?
  • "Plans were made for attacks on the Rock during World War II (Operation Felix) and the Falklands War (Operation Algeciras) but neither was implemented" - this isn't a great comparison. The Axis powers did in fact raid Gib during WW2, though the plan to occupy it was never enacted. The Argentines only intended to conduct a raid. Moreover, if the Argentine plan is mentioned here, the planned IRA attack should also be noted (not that it was anything like a siege either, obviously)
    • You're probably right; I've reworked it to just mention Felix.
  • As a question, the article repeatedly refers to 'the first recorded siege'. Is there any reason to think that there would be unrecorded sieges? (probably yes given the sparsity of sources on pre-modern history, but I thought I'd ask) Nick-D (talk) 10:28, 4 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Given how spontaneous and haphazard some of the "sieges" were, it's possible that that there were others, but I've removed one instance of "recorded" because it's not intended to imply that there were others. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:14, 14 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comments: to be honest, I don't know much about reviewing lists, so I only had a quick look:

  • I'm not sure about the title of the subsection "List of sieges": isn't this largely repeating the name of the article/list? Maybe just change it to "Sieges"?
    • I thought about that but I think "sieges" is too imprecise; I could live with "sieges of Gibraltar" if you thought that was any better.
  • "neither was implemented" --> "neither were implemented"?
    • Made moot by another edit
  • "File:Gibraltar northern approach 1567.jpg": there appears to be a big red warning label on this: "{{PD-Art}} template without parameter: please specify why the underlying work is public domain in both the source country and the United States". Are you able to address this?
    • Yes, fixed. Much as I love Commons, it's unbelievably complicated to find the right tag for clearly PD works.
  • in the General references section, are there pages for the chapter by Rose that could be added?
    • Working on this, but it may take a while.
  • the ref by Jackson is missing a year. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 11:28, 4 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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.
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