Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Second Battle of Kharkov/Archive1

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[edit] Second Battle of Kharkov

I nominated the article because it went through a period of peer review, including between peers not necessarilly on Wikipedia, and I thought it would be fair to give it a chance. Even if it doesn't make it in the end, the experience and the comments should prove invaluable. In any case, the article is well written, informative, and in my inexperienced opinion, should stand a good chance. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Catalan (talk • contribs)

  • Comment You'll need some in-line citations. --Osbus 00:45, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Ditto on the inline citations, particularly in the "Conclusions" section. The section titles in the body should also be cleaned up to conform to the MOS; you may even want to consider merging them into blocks that aren't tied to specific dates. Kirill Lokshin 02:09, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Object for now. During a cursory review, I noticed the following: apart from the lack of in-line citations noted above, the structure of the article needs to follow WP:MOS guidelines. The most glaring example of the article not conforming to guidelines is the use of single quotes (') instead of double quotes (") or italics. Formatting of dates needs to follow WP:MOSDATE guidelines. Content needs to be wikified where appropriate. I will review the article in detail once formatting objections have been addressed. AreJay 04:33, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. Nice article, with inline citations or without them. Such formalities are bullshit. --Ghirla -трёп- 14:30, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Object Hahahaha! "Bullshit" perhaps, but bullshit without which there's no featured article nowadays. Per above on things that need to be fixed, though I would add that it's very well written and informative.UberCryxic 16:17, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
  1. I will get to adding notes a.s.a.p. JonCatalan 00:48, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
    1. And I added footnotes to several things that I thought would need them. JonCatalan 01:19, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
  • The referencing isn't good. I should be able to easily see where all the information came from, specifically. Parts of this article have no in-line cites at all, and others are scarce on it. Outstanding writing and outstanding referencing should be treated as two sides of the same coin. Everyking 09:51, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
    • After looking at this more closely, I object. Look at this bit, near the beginning: "Stalin attempted to read the mind of the German military, and was convinced that the Germans were on their deathbed, and ready to collapse. So he decided to exploit this conceived weakness within the German military on the Eastern Front by launching a renewed offensive during the spring." So basically, the battle, and therefore the defeat, is the result of Stalin's supposed irrationality. This is sounds to me like part of the politically-based myth constructed in later years which tends to blame everything that went wrong on Stalin. Here we have him attempting to read minds, making stupid guesses and overriding the advice of his generals. This looks like it could use some thorough work, relying on more rigorous neutrality and greater diversity of sources. Everyking 08:07, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
    1. I'll add some more inline citations, but umm, I don't know what you mean by "myth". The fact of the matter is that Stalin did tend to override the advice of his generals, and you can see that in STAVKA general directives [signed both by STAVKA and by Stalin]. But again, I'll add some more inline citations to back it up. JonCatalan 16:34, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
        • There are only 4 references and 8 in-line cites; two of the references are never used in any in-line cites. So basically the article is apparently constructed on two refs, Beevor's book on Stalingrad (reputedly very POV) and the Kharkov 1942 book. This points to the need for greater diversity of sources. I just don't believe you can properly construct an article like this on just two sources like that, especially when historians on the subject almost always come to their table with their own heavy biases and need to be balanced against each other critically. Everyking 08:26, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
    1. Well then maybe you should add more sources? I'll look for what I used those two other sources for and add the reference. IIRC, they were general overview books used for a quick general overview of the situation and to compare that to the more specific books. But I'll add more citations later. Glantz' book is full of more sources and actual Soviet/German/American sources [mostly the former] than I could ever hope to own. Furthermore, there are not very many published Spanish/English sources on the battle that give the level of detail he does. If you have some please share them. JonCatalan 16:34, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
  1. Eh, it should be using the new ref /ref and references/ tags. JonCatalan 17:26, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

As a Kharkov native I read this article with great delight. It is very well written. A technical comment: the Russian language name of the city is Kharkov while in Ukrainian (the current official language of Ukraine) it is Kharkiv (although the city itself remains primarily Russophone). Thus the name Kharkov is gradually disappering from the modern maps and is being replaced with Kharkiv. I am not sure if this is of any relevance to the article.