Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Verdeja (tank)

The following discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Verdeja (tank) edit

Promoted --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 06:02, 7 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm nominating the article Verdeja due to the amount of time I've spent working on it and its recent promotion to Good Article status. Furthermore, due to the lack of comments on the peer review I believe it has a good chance to make A-class. This bars necessary changes that might have to be made before people support the promotion, but these changes will be made when the issue is brought up. Ultimately, my ambition is to make it a featured article. In any case, thank you all for your time. JonCatalan (talk) 08:26, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. The article uses both Armor and Armour. The rest of the spelling seems to be US, so consistent spelling should be applied. Also, is it "reequip" or "re-equip"? Not sure myself. Also, the metric units quoted in the article should use the {{convert}} template with conversions to imperial/US units. Leithp 14:14, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Single years aren't usually linked, unless part of a date, i.e. 1 January 2000. Leithp 14:34, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Due to issues with the converter, including my failed attempt to change it to confer from meters to feet and inches I decided to do the conversions manually. From a look at other articles, it seems that these conversions are only necessary in the info box. Would I be correct to assume so? I think it would be a bit cluttered if I were to include these conversions for each unit of measurement I used throughout the article. From input from IRC the word should be re-equip; thank you for catching that. Single years and single months have been 'de-linked', and the reference of 'armour' has been changed to 'armor'. JonCatalan (talk) 14:48, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I certainly wouldn't convert 75 mm etc, I agree with you there. There are a few km/h speeds and perhaps some others that would be worth doing, though. Leithp 14:50, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Did you get them all? I noticed that some were converted when I started to edit. If so, thank you! JonCatalan (talk) 22:05, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think so, apart from the comparison table. Would the comparison table be better placed at the end? I'm not sure. Leithp 08:52, 3 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Can you confirm from the source that it was M37 and M44 howitzers that the US offered? I couldn't find any references to these guns on Wikipedia, which is surprising. Leithp 09:13, 3 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I tried to find the Wikipedia articles, as well. In specific, according to the stated source Spain received 12 M44 (155/23) and 18 M37 (105/19). To the right is an image of what I believe to a M37 of the Spanish Army (it looks similar to the historic photographs provided by my source). Here is an online source on the M37 and here an online source on the M44. Unfortunately, I don't believe I have an image of the M44 as they don't have one at the base of El Goloso; although, they do have a 203mm self-propelled artillery piece not covered by the source! And, regarding the comparison table, I'm not sure. I put it where it's at to offer some type of review of sorts. JonCatalan (talk) 10:47, 3 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting. Well, assuming you add the unit conversions to the table, I think I can quite happily Support. A nice article, very comprehensive. Leithp 11:04, 3 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment

There are several sources in the bibliography (notably the "García, Dionisío" ones) that lack a "retrieved on" statistic. Judging by the formatting of them, I'll take it that these are magazine/journal articles. Even so, you should still put the "retrieved on" date on that citation template.
On that note, is it possible to find a web-version of the articles listed? It would be helpful in citing the sources (most modern-journals are published as both hard-copy & web-format, at least from what I've seen)
I've done a quick copyedit of the lead.

Other than that, looks good. Cheers! Cam (Chat) 23:44, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Unfortunately, SERGA does not have web-versions of their articles. Yes, anything that does not have a retrieved date is from journals or books that I have published on paper. JonCatalan (talk) 23:57, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I'm able to take all of this stuff in stride. Seeing as there are virtually no other issues arising from the article, you have my

Support. Cheers! Cam (Chat) 00:52, 3 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Meets all requirements now. --Eurocopter (talk) 14:30, 4 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments.
- I think the outline could use some minor tweaking. It looks a little odd to have the Verdeja 1 as an H3 and the Verdeja 2 as an H2.
- Rif War needs to be disambiguated.
- Are the ten FT-17's Spain had at the start of the Civil War the same ones from 1919? If possible, it should be made clear.
- I'd change the sentance "The lack of armor prompted the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and Italy to supply both the Popular Front and the Nationalist armies with light tanks", it reads like the SU, Germany and Italy were each supporting both sides. Perhaps "At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, light tanks were supplied to the Spanish Nationalists by Germany and Italy, while the Spanish Republic was supplied by the Soviet Union."
- I think there's a bit to much mostly unrelated material in the article. Things like the upgunning of the Panzer I should probably be kept in a place like Foreign support during the Spanish Civil War.
- The comparison table should probably go at or near the bottom of the article, it would also help if the column and row headings were in bold and borders were added.
- I would try to get pictures of the Panzer I and T-26 that show the tanks at the same angle and accurately proportional in size to each other. Putting them into a single image montage would be of use.
- To make the images a bit more clear, you might want to grey out the background, like that done here.

Oberiko (talk) 14:53, 4 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Here is a point by point response/confirmation -

I made Verdeja 2 H3 and changed the overall H2 header to 'Develope of the tank'.
Done!
I cleared it up in the footnote, since it would have been a bit clunky to add it to the text.
I changed the sentece to: The lack of armor prompted the Soviet Union to supply the Popular Front and Nazi Germany and Italy to supply the Nationalist Front with light tanks.
The idea was to give a general background history of upgrade attempts on the existing fleet of tanks, in order to provide the country's justification for the Verdeja program. For example, had the Panzer Is been sufficiently upgraded I don't believe that the Verdeja would have gotten as far as it did.
Since you're the second member to suggest it, I will do it. However, I put it there to offer some type of introduction/overview before the reader went right into the text. But, if this opinion is flawed, then I will move it without a problem!
I will try next time I go to the El Goloso armor base, here in Madrid, but I'm not sure when I can go. Unfortunately, it's not an open museum (as in, you can't just walk in).
I'm not sure how to do that.

I will fix these issues as soon as they're cleared up! JonCatalan (talk) 15:15, 4 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Rather good. I enjoyed it. The biggest likeliest cause of trouble at FAC is the sources, which are mostly in Spanish, though this depends whether anyone picks it up. The applicable guideline is WP:RSUE. This basically says that for self-translations you need to provide the original text. I think you may have to change the way this is footnoted for compliance. Perhaps you could separate the source from its citation, in separate footnotes and references sections (see Operation Camargue for an example). Next in Footnotes, you could perhaps include the essence in Spanish of what you are relying on, with the translation. Imaginary example:

^998 Diaz (1957), p 45. En enero de 1939, se terminó el diseño del primer prototipo ("The first prototype was finished in January 1938")

--ROGER DAVIES ^talk 17:50, 4 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You might be correct, but I rather wait until it's brought up in the FAC. A lot of the footnotes cite over two pages (understandably, this book goes into much more depth than the article), and I think that this would be impossible to copy over. Some of the smaller claims, in my opinion, are not extraordinary. But, I rather wait and see. Or, do you suggest otherwise? I honestly don't know, and most of the time would rather play it safe, but this would actually be quite the task! JonCatalan (talk) 18:39, 4 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Up to you entirely :) As a halfway house, you might split cites and refs prior to FAC, to make it easier to add text later if you need to. But again this is your decision :) --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 05:59, 7 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.