Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/Blockhaus d'Éperlecques

Blockhaus d'Éperlecques

This nomination predates the introduction in April 2014 of article-specific subpages for nominations and has been created from the edit history of Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests.

This is the archived discussion of the TFAR nomination for the article below. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/requests). Please do not modify this page.

The result was: scheduled for Wikipedia:Today's featured article/March 25, 2013 by Bencherlite ^Talk 20:01, 15 March 2013‎ (UTC)[reply]

The Blockhaus d'Éperlecques, La Coupole and the Fortress of Mimoyecques were military complexes built in north-eastern France by Nazi Germany between March 1943 and July 1944. They were constructed by a large workforce of German specialists, civilian forced labourers and prisoners of war used as slave labour, and were intended to serve as launch sites for the Nazis' secret weapons, the V-2 rocket (pictured at La Coupole) and the V-3 supergun. The Blockhaus and La Coupole, located near Saint-Omer, were designed to launch dozens of V-2 rockets daily against London and other targets in England. The Fortress of Mimoyecques, near Boulogne-sur-Mer, would have housed the V-3 supergun, designed to rain 600 projectiles an hour on London. All three facilities were put out of action by intensive Allied bombing carried out in Operation Crossbow between August 1943 and August 1944 and were never used for their intended purposes. They were captured by Allied forces in September 1944 and partly demolished on Winston Churchill's orders to ensure that they could not be used to threaten the United Kingdom again. They were abandoned after the war, and opened to the public in the 1980s and 1990s as museums. (Full articles: Blockhaus d'Éperlecques – La Coupole – Fortress of Mimoyecques)

5 points per article for a nominal total of 15 points: 2 points for decennial date relevance (70 years to the day since Hitler ordered construction to go ahead), 2 points for nothing similar in the last 6 months, and 1 point for one of the co-nominators (Afernand74) not previously having a TFA. This triple TFA is the result of two years' work, including site visits and archival research, which was conducted with the intention of meeting this anniversary. Ordinarily a triple nomination like this would be an issue for the Featured Article Director, but as he is currently inactive, has not scheduled a TFA in over two months and has not responded to a discussion on his talk page posted a few weeks ago, this nomination has been brought here for discussion. Co-nominators: Afernand74 (talk), Prioryman (talk) 13:53, 7 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support per cited discussion, relevant, unusual, better together than each one single (perhaps we could group a mushroom family or a battleship fleet, to get rid of the backlog) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:52, 7 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Not convinced by summing the points like that, but that doesn't matter: this is an excellent suite of articles, and I heartily endorse the nomination. AlexTiefling (talk) 21:58, 7 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support - I like the idea and how it presents three featured articles. Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:25, 8 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support per what everyone else has said here. Double sharp (talk) 05:55, 8 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support Our editors who are willing to spend money on Wikipedia are to be encouraged in their work. This is an excellent set of articles which probably would not have been written anytime soon but for Prioryman. If there is consensus on this, I suggest it be respected.--Wehwalt (talk) 14:53, 8 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support. - Per Wehwalt. GabeMc ^{(talk|contribs)} 23:16, 8 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support. - Per Wehwalt and Gerda. Multiple hooks are rare here (unlike DYK) & are potentially a useful way of cutting into our backlog in some areas like milhist. A natural grouping. Johnbod (talk) 14:58, 14 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support—this would be a pleasant surprise. —WP:PENGUIN · ^{[ TALK ]} 15:01, 14 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support Hawkeye7 (talk) 09:36, 15 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Just for future reference, the fact that the delegates haven't removed this nomination, given the particular circumstances to which Prioryman refers, should not be taken as a precedent for similar nominations unless and until the rules are changed to allow this to happen (which may happen, we shall see). As the points are purely theoretical (since the points system was not designed for multiple TFAs, and claiming 1 point three times over for a first TFA doesn't really seem to work) I have removed the points total from the summary table above. Bencherlite ^Talk 23:58, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough, though I rather liked the idea that I might be able to set a record for the highest ever TFA score. ;-) Prioryman (talk) 00:01, 18 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It would definitely have an asterisk next to it in the record books to mark its dubious nature... Bencherlite ^Talk 00:06, 18 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, sadly, I can see that I'm not going to be able to set an absolute record under the current rules. If I write an article that's been promoted two or more years ago, is a centennial anniversary, a core topic, an underrepresented subject and nothing similar has featured in the last 6 months, I'll score 19 points. But I can never score the maximum 20 because I'll miss out on the bonus point awarded for not previously having had a TFA. Prioryman (talk) 00:12, 18 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Find a newbie co-nom. Then watch an evil delegate schedule it before you get a chance to nominate it at TFAR... Mwah-ha-ha! Bencherlite ^Talk 00:18, 18 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds like a plan! (the co-nom, that is, not the evil delegate's scheme). Now I just have to find a topic that matches all of those criteria and wait two years... Prioryman (talk) 00:28, 18 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support, since I have an idea for a possible future double nom myself and doing this would give it some precedent. Daniel Case (talk) 03:25, 18 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hasn't it been done before? Prioryman (talk) 20:07, 18 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Never in this way; the intent behind WP:Featured topics was to provide an appropriate venue for this type of thing, but FT kind of fizzled. The 2008 US elections had a double-header with both candidates given half the space, and a randomization script to prevent either getting precedence, but that was an unusual circumstance which was explicitly not precedent-setting. (It's just about workable regarding the US, with only two credible candidates in each election, but could you imagine the chaos of trying to apply this setup to a UK election, or an election with three major candidates only two of whom were at FA status?)
This situation is going to come up a lot with all the WW1 centenaries coming up, and I agree people ought to work out what the policy will be; Prioryman, I don't need to tell you that the other elements of the main page operate under strict rules to prevent any given topic from being overrepresented; TFA is not exactly popular at the best of times, and if it looks like an attempted land-grab on the main page by sneakily changing TFAs remit to allow practices that are forbidden elsewhere, you can expect a very noisy backlash from the OTD, ITN and DYK folks. – iridescent 20:48, 18 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I had no idea that TFA was unpopular with some folks; evidently that's a bit of wikipolitics that I've thankfully missed. I'm glad you mentioned WW1 as that's on my agenda as well - not from the point of view of writing featured articles but of coordinating them. I can envisage quite a few possible WW1 TFAs between 2014-18, but I think it would be a good idea to plan it out in advance and maybe group some articles in a similar way to what I've done here. Is anyone discussing this yet? I'm happy to get the ball rolling on a WP:MILHIST subpage if needed. Prioryman (talk) 20:53, 18 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I assure you it is (and in fairness a good deal of the criticism was valid when I was around, and I can't imagine things have improved). As regards WW1, if you poke Kirill Lokshin I imagine he'll know what's being done regarding it, or try the talk page of WP:MILHIST. – iridescent 21:05, 18 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

As an aside, today's POTD is a three-picture FP set: {{POTD/2013-02-26}}. Bencherlite ^Talk 14:23, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This link has just gone dead, according to the toolserver report - can you fix/replace it? Thanks. Bencherlite ^Talk 00:16, 21 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]