Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Hans-Joachim Marseille/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted 16:18, 9 February 2008.

[edit] Hans-Joachim Marseille

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I'm nominating this article for featured article because...

After the article has passed three separate A-class reviews I feel that it is ready for the "featured article classification".

The feedback initially was mixed in nature. Criticism was mainly about footnotes in the middle of sentences and comments about tables in the second half of the article. I believe that a number of editors that have worked on this article, feel comfortable with how the information is being presented now. The reason for this is mainly in the nature of presenting contradicting sources. We therefore broke down the information as much as possible in order to avoid generalizing statements about him over-claiming aerial victories. Thus you will find a number of citations in the middle of sentences.

MisterBee1966 (talk) 08:31, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

  • Support As I said at A-Class review, please try to address the hidden comment requesting clarification of "His mother married again and took the name Reuter, which adversely affected Marseille". Why and how did it adversely affect him? Because he didn't like the sound? Because he didn't like his stepfather? Because he disapproved of divorce? Because he was proud of his Huguenot ancestry? I would also move the "Memorials" section up to above the tables and redraft it as prose. DrKiernan (talk) 09:15, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment I gave an explanation. Please have a look and see if it adequately addresses your request.MisterBee1966 (talk) 19:46, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose for now. Its a nice article and has many good points, not least the excellent referencing, but I have a number of problems with it which prevent my support at this stage.
  • My biggest issue is the quality of the prose. Throughout the article, but especially in the early parts, the prose is very disjointed and stilted. Lots and lots of very short sentances constantly break up the flow and can hinder understanding in places. I have changed some obvious grammatical problems myself and noted some others below, but I think the entire article could use a copyedit to turn this prose brilliant. If this is still a problem in a week or so I could even have a go myself once my RL calms down. Its quite frustrating, because the tactical discussions are interesting and well-written but the biographical chronology tends to break up. (See below for a reappraisal)
  • I also feel that the insertion of references into the middle of sentances is a little disconcerting and breaks the prose up further. This only occurs a few times in the article but I would recommend placing references at the end of sentances rather than after commas unless they follow a quote or a fact likely to be challenged.
  • There are an awful lot of commas before words like and and but, often when they shouldn't be there. I have zapped a few myself but the punctuation in the article as a whole needs revising.
  • There are a lot of very short paragraphs, which further break up the text and look a bit listy. Merging some of the related paragraphs together, particulaly in the "Military service" section might help the flow.
  • The first reference has no page number and probably isn't necessary as there is no requirement for facts in the lead to be referenced provided they are referenced further down the page (and if this fact doesn't appear elsewhere in the article, then it should).
  • Not a comment on the article per se, but Siegfried Marseille could be red linked as he looks to be notable enough for an article of his own. (struck through as not relevant to the FAC review).
  • "While performing a slow circuit,": This sentance has no context, when? Where?
  • "Marseille's kill rate was slow,": we've just seen that it wasn't, so this sentance needs context or rephrasing.
  • What exactly is "an abnormal amount of milk"?
  • "On 1 September he was even more successful,": this paragraph comes in at least two paragrpahs early as the paragraph following it is talking about June of the same year.
  • "Marseille flew four different Bf 109F-4/Trop aircraft": This is a list, and as such it has to be better introduced and formatted.
  • "Many of the other top Luftwaffe fighter aces like Adolf Galland and Erich Hartmann regarded him as "the best"." if so then please reference it.
  • "Memorials": Can this list be turned into readable prose instead? (a query rather than an essential change)
  • The many lists and appendices at the end of the article are a curious choice and I think several can be usefully merged into the prose above instead, particulaly the ranks, absences from the front and the timeline. (again, just a query)
  • Lose the external links not used as references in the article (if they are interesting on their own stick them on the talk page instead).
  • Link or explain Wehrmachtsbericht.
  • I think the family information would actually work better dispersed chronologically through the text, with the events which happened after his death merged with some of the memorials into an aftermath or legacy section. As it is it seems detached from his life whereas in reality it wasn't. (struck through as I am bowing to your judgement on this one).

There are a few other things (I don't like I'm not convinced by the victories table where it is for example), but this list represents most of the immediate problems I have with this article. Fundamentally the prose would be good if steps were taken to make it flow more evenly, and the referencing is first class, so the article is not as far from FA as the list above makes it seem. Good work and regards--Jackyd101 (talk) 03:05, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

  • Comment Page ranges need en dashes. Epbr123 (talk) 10:56, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I would like to point out that the text that refers to Hartmann and Galland considering him the best was indeed referenced at the end of the Death section. I definitely don't agree that "the family information would actually work better dispersed chronologically through the text". The article is chronologically sound, the mention of his family after the Early life section is mentioned where appropriate (during his leave; June-August'42). An abnormal amount of Milk? It's exactly what it says, allot of it!!!! There is not a reference that can tell us exactly how much he drank! Marseille's life is not that well documented!! Dapi89 (talk) 13:11, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I've been discovering that a lot of what I typed last night was poorly explained, guess I was more tired than I realised. Just to reply to your comments, if his highest total is referenced elsewhere then you don't need to reference it in the lead. I still feel that presenting the family information in chronological order is a better way of incorporating it rather than a seperate section on its own, but if you have decided otherwise then that is fine. What I meant to say about the milk thing is that saying "he drank large quantities of milk" is a more encyclopedic way of indicating his milk consumption than "an abnormal amount of milk" - after all, what is a "normal" quantity of milk? If there are any other issues with what I said then please bring them up here or on my talk page, sorry I was so incoherent.--Jackyd101 (talk) 16:26, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

fair enough, I will remove it from the lead. true about the milk drinking this will be changed also. Dapi89 (talk) 19:57, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I read through the article once more, as I wasn't sure that my late night review last night was really a fair reflection of the article. To summarise my feelings, I still feel that the article's prose is stilted in places and could flow better, but I think that I was too harsh before in judging it; much of it is fine, its just in places where it doesn't quite work and I have pointed most of these out above. I'm not convinced by the article's layout, as I mentioned before, but I think this is really down to personal taste and will not base my oppose on this factor alone; if the prose is improved then the layout won't matter as much. So my biggest and really only issue here is 1(a) pertaining to the prose. Improve this and the article will come much closer to FA. Regards and sorry if I was unclear before.--Jackyd101 (talk) 23:58, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The prose is really not up to FA-caliber yet. I've listed out examples of prose issues from the first section, but the prose quality is roughly the same in the rest of the article too. (Karanacs (talk) 16:26, 7 February 2008 (UTC))
    • Need nonbreaking spaces between numbers and their units or qualifiers (ex 29 days)
    • Prose issues in Early life section:
      • "a family of French Huguenot ancestry" -> did both of his parents have French Huguenot ancestry? If so, I'd reword this to, "both of French-Huguenot ancestry"
      • "His father Siegried" is redundant, since his father is mentioned by name in previous sentence; pick one.
        • "later left the armed forces....Siegried later" -> too much "later" too closely together
        • Of the 5 sentences on Siegfried, four begin with "He" or "Siegfried" or "His father Siegfried". Can this be changed a bit?
        • The sentences on the death of his sister just don't flow well. It is also not clear if she is his full sister (daughter of Siegfried) or his half-sister (daughter of Herr Reuter)
        • "Marseille initially carried the name of his stepfather at school, a matter he had a difficult time accepting, and he retook the name Marseille in adulthood. " - sentence is clunky
        • During his Luftwaffe career was he considered a "rebel" or to have a "lack of discipline". In terms of a military career, I would think these are pretty different.
    • There are several one-sentence paragraphs throughout the article. These should be minimized if at all possible.
    • "received a good report for a term with the " - what does this mean?
    • "This was a humiliation for him, suspecting that his abilities were being suppressed so the squadron leaders could take all the glory in the air" - verb tenses don't match
    • what does this mean "wrote off four aircraft "
    • "failing to carry an order" - should that be "failing to carry out an order?"
    • Block quotes should only be used if they comprise more than 4 lines (see WP:MOSQUOTE)
    • The memorials section needs to be converted from a list into paragraph form
    • Are all of those tables at the end really necessary? I would remove the "Absence from the Geshwader" and "Dates of rank" at the very least. If that information is important it should be incorporated into the prose.

Karanacs (talk) 16:26, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.