Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/Battle of Magdhaba

Battle of Magdhaba

This article has been substantially rewritten including references, citations and illustrations. Could a peer review please reassess its ranking? --Rskp (talk) 04:49, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

AustralianRupert

Very interesting article in my opinion, and you've clearly invested a lot of time and effort in it, which is great to see. I believe that it is up to B class standard (although as per below there is one sentence that needs a citation). I have the following comments/suggestions, many of which are just nitpicking style/presentation comments which would help to take it to a higher rating (apologies for the long list):

• The lead is one paragraph too long. According to WP:LEAD, it should be no more than four paragraphs. Is there a way that you could consolidate one?
• If you are keen, I suggest requesting someone from the Guild of Copy Editors (requests made here) take a run through the article as they will be able to tighten up the prose a little. This will help for higher reviews like GA and beyond. For instance, the first two paragraphs of the lead are both single sentences. These could possibly be broken up in to a couple of sentences and consolidated;
• Be careful with where you insert wikilinks. It should usually be upon first mention. For instance, in the lead Ottoman Army is mentioned in the second paragraph, but it is not wikilinked until the third paragraph (should be shifted in my opinion);
• Be careful with the placement of commas. I think in some sentences they break up the flow of the prose as they have been used a little too much (a good copy editor would be able to help with this though);
• If possible, please try to insert more wikilinks. The Preamble section has none at all, but you could link the American Civil War, as well as possibly some of the locations;
• When discussing bodies such as "the War Office", I think you need to clarify what country's War Office, as this will help establish a neutral point of view in the article;
• there seems to be a mixture of US and British English used in the article, for instance "theaters" (US), but also "labour" (British), this should be consistent;
• terms like "Australian Flying Corps", "First Battle of the Marne" could be wikilinked;
• some of the distances could have conversion templates added (these show miles and kilometres, or also yards and metres, etc), such as that which is used in the lead;
• quotations should be encased in double quotation marks, not single per Wikipedia:MOSQUOTE#Quotation marks, however, please see the next comment;
• I'm not sure about using observations from individual soldiers, such as that of Ingham's about Chauvel's return. In this case it probably is not necessary. If it were about a pivotal point, maybe, but in this case I'm not sure that it is so I would suggest removing it and either replacing with your own words or leaving it out altogether;
• It is probably not necessary to always be so formal with use of ranks. On first mention use of the rank is fine, but subsequently it would be fine to simply use the subject's surname. For instance "Major General Chauvel" could simply be "Chauvel" after first being introduced;
• in the Prelude section, I suggest removing the dot points about Murray's appreciation of the Ottoman Army's reactions and just converting it to prose;
• use of the word "exposures" might be a little esoteric for some readers, might be simpler just to say "photographs";
• in the Advance to El Arish section, "Lines of Communication" should this be capitalised as such? Only proper nouns should be fully capitalised. Additionally, it might be a term that could be wikilinked;
• in the Ottoman defences at Magdhaba section, this clause seems not to agree: "...with the main defending force consisted of two battalions, each of about 600 men..." ("consisted" is the issue here, probably should be "consisting");
• in the Ottoman defences at Magdhaba section, "Flying Squadrons" - should this be capitalised as such? Only proper nouns should be capitalised;
• in the Ottoman defences at Magdhaba section, the date format is slightly inconsistent with the Manual of Style, e.g. "22 December, 1916" should be "22 December 1916" (no comma required for DD Month Year format);
• in the Ottoman defences at Magdhaba section, the following sentence needs a citation: "And they were unaware of the imminent arrival of a new British commander who had the forethought and logistical organisational abilities of Lieutenant General Chetwode and his staff";
• in the Battle section, the individual aircraft squadrons could possibly be wikilinked;
• in the Battle section, it might be more expedient to state that air reports were received "at regular intervals from 0750 until 1515", rather than the providing the long list of times;
• in the Battle section, "...The attack was carried out with great skill and boldness, every man showing an intelligent appreciation of the situation and fearless confidence in himself and his comrades" - this is possibly a little too much for an encyclopedia. We need to be careful not to take sides in our presentation of the facts;
• in the Battle section, "...bad shooting by the defenders being responsible for light casualties" could probably be reworded to say "inaccurate shooting...";
• in the Other views of the engagement section, I'd suggest removing the bulleted list and converting to formal prose, most of which should probably just be included in the Battle section, or possibly in the Aftermath;
• in the Aftermath section, "22nd December" should be changed to "22 December" per the Manual of Style which objects to the use of ordinal suffixes for dates;
• in the Aftermath section, there are a number of small paragraphs that could probably be consolidated;
• in the Aftermath section, "24 December, 1916" should be "24 December 1916" (no need for the comma);
• in the Aftermath section, "He reportedly said that in the history of war, he had never known cavalry to not only located and surrounded the enemy's position, but to dismount and fight as infantry with rifle and bayonet" - there is some disagreement with the verbs here (past tense endings in "ed" are the issue here);
• in the Aftermath section, "British Navy" is not a proper noun, so it should either be "British navy" or "British Royal Navy";
• in the Aftermath section, there is inconsistency in capitalisation of terms such as "Officer" and "Other Ranks", e.g "17 Other Ranks" and "36 other ranks" - these should be consistent, and I think as they are not proper nouns, they should be lower case;
• in the Aftermath section, there is inconsitency in the capitalisation of the term "Dressing Station", sometimes you have "Dressing Station" and then "dressing station" - I think it should be lower case as it is not a proper noun;
• some of the images could be left aligned to break up the text a little (suggestion only);
• the References could be formatted using the {{cite book}} and {{cite web}} templates. This would give them a cleaner appearance and would allow you to embed the url links into the titles if you so wish (suggestion only). AustralianRupert (talk) 01:20, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks very much. I have addressed most of the problems and hope the article can attract a good evaluation. But in the case of the Trooper Ingham quote, I do agree that his words don't enhance the issue at that point very much. But he does reflect the confidence and optimism the troops had to have, to be able to take the fight to a garrison so far from their own base in such arid conditions. --Rskp (talk) 05:07, 8 November 2010 (UTC)