Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/T-34

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[edit] T-34

Self-nomination: this article is about an important piece of military equipment which helped win the Second World War and influenced the design of tanks to this day. The article meets the criteria for FA, is quite stable, has undergone peer review, and been named a good article. —Michael Z. 2006-07-04 23:03 Z

• Support Balcer 23:19, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

• Object on a few minor points:

• The "See also" section should be eliminated. I think most (all?) of the terms are already mentioned in the article text, so this shouldn't be too difficult.
• "World War II", "World War 2", and "Second World War" are all generally used terms, but I'm pretty sure that "World War Two" isn't.
• Some of the epigraphs—in particular the Stalin quote—are of questionable provenance. They all need to be correctly cited, in any case.

And a more major one: the article is rather sparsely cited. Even allowing that citations have been given at the ends of paragraphs for everything contained there, this leaves entire sections without a single inline citation. In many cases, the uncited material is at a level of detail which really must be cited:

• "...with some drivers reporting that their optics were so bad they kept their hatch open slightly even in combat."
• "German commanders usually operated "heads-up", with the seat raised and having a full field of view, unless taking fire."
• "At the outset of the war, only about five percent of all Soviet tanks were T-34 variants; this increased to fifty or sixty percent by mid-1943 and was even higher by the war's end."
• And so forth.

This should be fixed before the article can be considered to be of featured quality. Kirill Lokshin 23:24, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Responding to some comments, more to follow later:

1. See also: I've worked a couple of the links into the text. Remaining are links to two reference lists, and Vickers Tank Periscope MK.IV—the last could be worked into a new, detailed section about changing tank equipment, but is too specific to simply add. (Is a "see also" section just bad style, or is it prohibited for FA articles?)
2. "Second World War 2/II/Two": "World War Two" shows up in Google more than "World War 2", and it is used in book titles and the BBC's web site. In my experience, spelled-out simple figures read better in running text than numerals, in terms of writing style and typography. I'll have another look at the article, and ensure that the usage is consistent and sensible. [Update: changed all occurrences of "World War Two"/"WWII" to "Second World War" or "World War II", except in quotations or titles. —Michael Z. 2006-07-06 16:18 Z]
3. Epigraphs:
   • Removed the unsupported "anonymous German soldier" quote.
   • Variations on "Quantity has a quality all its own" are very widely quoted in serious literature, usually but not always attributed to Stalin, but I don't think a verifiable original citation exists. I think it's common enough that it reflects a western view of Soviet industry, relevant to our view of the T-34's success. See also q:Joseph Stalin#Unsourced.
4. References: added a number of references; important ones still MIA are listed at talk:T-34#Drive for Featured Article quality. [update: I think we've addressed all of the outstanding references; please let me know what still needs attention —Michael Z. 2006-07-13 17:23 Z]

Thanks for the comments and support, everyone. —Michael Z. 2006-07-06 00:12 Z [updated 2006-07-08 07:32 Z]

It's looking much better now. As far as the remaining see-also links are concerned, any chance of putting them in particular sections with {{further}}? It's not much different, but at least it eliminates that ugly not-quite-section at the bottom. Kirill Lokshin 07:39, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I've moved the links to lists to the bottom of the appropriate article section, and removed the periscope link altogether. It can show up again in this article or in T-34 variants when someone writes in more detail about technical changes to the tank (that model periscope was standardized towards the end of WWII). —Michael Z. 2006-07-08 16:06 Z

Support now that the citation has been brought up to par. Kirill Lokshin 17:37, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

• Conditional support as I promised in PR. Agree with Kirill (the more citations, the better). One comment comes to mind: how do we determine the notability of factories? The 'Establishing and maintaining production' section has quite a few red links. Also, consider copying the quotes to Wikiquote (and adding more there).--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 23:36, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose for no inline citation, a see also section, and the list of the tank models that should be converted to a table with split-off stubs for details on the models. It can be fixed. Staxringold _talk^contribs 01:48, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

  There are inline citations (in the form of Harvard references), actually; just not enough of them. I disagree with you on the stub issue, though; unless there's some substantial amount of text to be written for the various models (and I don't really think there is), it's not a good idea to break out stubs for them. Permanent stubs are not exactly the most desirable of outcomes here. Kirill Lokshin 01:57, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

  I don't think the production models deserve separate articles: the Soviets mostly treated them as a single tank model for purposes of maintenance and resupply, and any particular tank could be found in the field with features from several "models" after a repair or overhaul. However, see the article T-34 variants for a much more exhaustive list. If the individual model descriptions need to grow somewhat, I'd rather turn each one into a paragraph starting with a bold model name, rather than clutter the article with more tables. A separate article could be used to present a very detailed table of data for all models (along the lines of Comparison of early World War II tanks). —Michael Z. 2006-07-06 00:20 Z

• All right, support as it is very well written, but please use inline citation in the future as it makes source checking oh-so-much easier. Staxringold _talk^contribs 17:55, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

• Conditional support Support - Good work on the article!

but a few things need to be fixed:

• • there are not enough inline citations
  • in the Combat effectiveness section there are a few, two setence paragraphs, maybe they could be blended together?

-- Underneath-it-All 04:09, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I've had a look, and these short paragraphs each addresses a separate point (although I broke a different too-long paragaph in two). I think they should remain as is. —Michael Z. 2006-07-08 07:04 Z

• Weak oppose as per Piotrus, Staxringold and Kirill. Fix the issues raised and I'll be happy to change to support. Also, don't get rid of the quotes, I must say I like'em :) //Halibutt 07:21, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
• Support - good article. Useful for me as an example of a good ru-tech article. --jno 15:59, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
• Support - great article on the history of the Soviet Union. --GoOdCoNtEnT 16:29, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

• Support providing red links are stubbed or removed. - FrancisTyers · 18:01, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment -- I don't think redlinks are at all mentioned in the FA specs... Themillofkeytone 15:29, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
• Support -- Informative and well-written. Themillofkeytone 15:29, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
• Support per above. Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 16:34, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
• Support without a doubt. A major project by MichaelZ handled brilliantly. Well worth its 24 hours on the mainpage. --Irpen 06:59, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
• Support - Very good article indeed. Afonso Silva 18:10, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
• Conditional support Looks good but article lacks inline citations so that people can have quick reference to it. The famous quotes are exceptionally notable.--MarshallBagramyan 18:07, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
• Support. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 12:44, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
• Support - In-depth and multifaceted.--Riurik 18:46, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
• Support. —dima/// 03:19, 18 July 2006 (UTC)