Talk:Cannon operation

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Good article Cannon operation was a nominee for good article, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
An entry from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on April 18, 2007.
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B This article has been rated as B-Class on the quality scale.

[edit] GA failure

I'm failing this because for one thing, it's not broad. It wanders off its focus, doesn't cover things it either should or promises it will, and has one section without citations.

I'll go into more depth about these issues later. Daniel Case 07:18, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

OK. Here's a more detailed list of things that keep it from GA status:

  • Intro is too short.
    • Lede sentence simply redefines cannon. Anyone reading this who doesn't know what cannon are can simply click the link.
  • "Pre-Renaissance cannon" wanders off-topic, seemingly more interested in proving that cannon existed than telling us how they were operated. Seems to more properly belong in a history of cannon article.
    • The article asserts that during the siege of Constantinople cannon operation became even more logistically complex. But nothing leading up to that explains the logistics of cannon operation at that time or how that was simple.
    • Then, we get "The changing needs of cannon operation thus had a long-lasting effect on warfare." That's a very big check for an article to write, and it doesn't even seem to cash it. IOW, explain this effect.
  • "English Civil War period (1640s-50s)" is an awfully narrow period of history to focus on after "pre-Renaissance". OK, it's true that Cromwell and the New Model Army are of great significance in military history. Was there some significant change in cannon operation, as in many other things military, under Cromwell? I would assume that if a section is devoted to it, the article would tell us that. But all we get is a picture of a book page and a graf saying that a written manual of cannon operation from that period exists. Can we at least read about what it told would-be artillerymen?

    Also, it's uncited. The picture isn't enough.

  • The next section, on 18th- and 19th-century cannon operation, finally gives us something really connected to the subject. And we have good sourcing.

    But still, we have no real idea how this reflects a change from the preceding eras. OK, so the British used five-man crews during the Napoleonic Wars. Was this more or less than before? If so, why did they change it? Was it beneficial or not? Did other nations in those conflicts use the same method?

  • The list of cannon projectiles, and the accompanying picture, really should be a separate article. Content from it should only be in this article insofar as different projectiles may have affected the usual procedures of cannon operation.
  • I would probably keep the list of implements because it's a bit more germane. But all six pictures could be combined into one larger one.
    • "It was advised to have about twenty pounds of powder in a leather sack, to avoid making trains of powder." Advised by who? Cite this. "Accidents had been found to frequently happen when powder trains led to the magazine." Cite this.

Also, English/customary measures are used without their metric equivalents.

The biggest improvement that could be made to this article would be changing usual practice and beginning with a section describing the basics of cannon operation. The history section should then discuss the differences. We could also learn if any particular generals or officers developed the procedures and wrote about it, besides the one guy from the English Civil War.

I would also suggest, in addition to the above improvements and expansions, that there be a section on modern cannon operation, at re-enactments and that sort of thing. What safety measures are taken? You could look at the accident described under Snoqualmie High School and work some stuff from that in.

So, this article has a lot of problems that preclude GA status. I wouldn't even give it a B right now; it's start-class.

I will tag the problem areas appropriately, do a little fixing (mainly the metric conversion) and add it to the military history project, which has produced many excellent articles. Daniel Case 12:51, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Further review

I have been asked, after the failure and critique above, to provide further review on the article now that many of the changes I suggested have been made.

It's better but of course still needs some work. It is now more explicitly about cannon operation. However:

  • it is still missing some references (I will tag as appropriate in the article).
  • The overview section should be more general that it took a crew of men to do it and not take the 1771 Britannica as anything more than a particular example from that period in time. It should say that it was necessary to have separate soldiers do separate things.

    Also, the Britannica description seems to suggest it took four artillery officers per cannon, but then the more detailed description just below mentions only one officer needed. Were there perhaps four officers needed per unit? It would be good if we knew how big a typical artillery unit was. (Did it have any members whose job was purely focused on transporting the cannon (i.e., feeding the horses etc.)

    Generalizing more would allow the detailed 18th-century stuff to go down below where it belongs rather than referring the reader back up to something they've already read.

  • I'd like to read a bit about modern cannon operation, as I said, if there's anything significantly different there. Especially since usually just a charge is fired without a projectile. Daniel Case 16:55, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

A few more notes after reading through it again.

  • The Richard Holmes cite needs to be more detailed: page number and publication date per WP:FN.
  • There is a passing mention of naval artillery. This strikes me as a huge omission, since obviously you were going to operate a gun differently aboard ship than you would on land. Can this be researched and discussed? Daniel Case 16:55, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GA Failed

GA review (see here for criteria)
  1. It is reasonably well written.
    a (prose): b (MoS):
  2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.
    a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):
  3. It is broad in its coverage.
    a (major aspects): b (focused):
  4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.
    a (fair representation): b (all significant views):
  5. It is stable.
  6. It contains images, where possible, to illustrate the topic.
    a (tagged and captioned): b (lack of images does not in itself exclude GA): c (non-free images have fair use rationales):
  7. Overall:
    a Pass/Fail:

Many of my concerns echo the previous article reviewer's above. Here are some of my thoughts going through the article.

  1. "Overview": "lantern and ladle"? The section below describes them as the same thing.
  2. If these sections are quoted directly from the Encyclopedia Britannica, that needs to be made clearer somehow (block quotes, I'd suggest). I had to re-read it a couple times to figure that out.
  3. Maybe move a few of the basic projectiles from List of cannon projectiles with a See Also link above it.
  4. "Cannon Instruments": Again with the quoting. While "spark of fire" is a neat turn of phrase, I doubt that Wikipedians wrote it.
  5. "History": This entire section seems very Euro-centric. I noticed that the sidebar has a Korean cannon article, but this article makes no mention of it.
  6. "History": The section starts to wander off into cannon construction, it seems to me.
  7. Per above, the article makes little mention of naval cannon operation or modern cannon operation.

Better than last time, but needs some more work. Keep going, you'll get there! shoy 16:13, 12 July 2007 (UTC)