Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/World War II/Archive I

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[edit] World War II

former nom

Re-wrote a lot of this article. Expanded some sections, shrunk some sections. Added sub-headers, added more pictures, removed redundant pictures, etc. Spend a lot of time improving this article. I think this article is a FA. Mercenary2k

• Object. The Table of Contents is terrifying. The article is subheaded nearly to death, and a huge number of sections are far too short. RyanGerbil10 20:37, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

The subheadings were removed, making the TOC now about the same length as the TOC to the WWI article. Do you withdraw your objection now that its been changed? Drogo Underburrow 14:53, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

<sigh> Sometimes FAC is difficult. However, this article can't pass until there are no one or two sentence paragraphs. Anywhere. If there are only one or two sentences that can be said about something, it should be merged into another section. In my opinion, this isn't written in summary style at all. RyanGerbil10 16:18, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

We are working on eliminating all one and two sentence paragraphs. How is the TOC now? Drogo Underburrow 01:26, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

The article is getting much better. I am moving much closer to supporting the article, I have struck the "strong" from my objection. RyanGerbil10 23:46, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

• Weak Object100% Support Agree with the table of content. All images on the same side. Lincher 20:49, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
  • I object to these objections. The TOC is hideable and its the content that counts! Having all images on the same side actually helps - try making a similar page that works well at all screen resolutions without resorting to a similar tactic and you'll see what I mean. Pcb21 Pete 21:54, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
    • The TOC is a representation of article structure. If the TOC is bad, the article structure is bad. / Peter ^Isotalo 08:30, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
      • Getting better, I like the TOC now, as per the sections The Battle of The Atlantic, Eastern Europe, Lend-Lease, The Middle East, Western and Central Europe, Dieppe Raid and Europe in ruins, they are too small to get the info wanted when you read the article. Maybe pooling them with other sub-sections that are similar or adding text so that they get longer. If this is changed, I will give my support. Lincher 18:07, 15 April 2006 (UTC
        • The article is 80k right now, so we shouldn't make it longer.. The purpose of those little sections like the one on Dieppe is to put mention of them into the chronology, a brief summary in one or two sentences, and a link to the main article. So, somebody wanting to learn about Dieppe, but not very sophisticated at searching, goes to the WWII article, finds the Dieppe section, then takes the link to the main article. The format of the article is a chronology, not a history. If you want history, then we have to eliminate mention of Dieppe entirely, there's no room for such small raids, as one editor pointed out, objecting to its inclusion even in the chronology. So, would that satisfy you, if we eliminate the small stuff? Or do you want us to dump the chronology format entirely and write a micro history of WWII? Drogo Underburrow 18:47, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
        • I give my vote to this new reworked article, it looks much nicer like this, you see what you are interested in faster and it is easier to read. Sorry for all the hassle but it was worth the work since it looks far better to me. Lincher 13:21, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
• Object. The TOC is quite intimidating (although that in itself should not be enough to oppose), but the real issue for me is references. Yes, I know the subarticles are better referenced, but, considering it is WWII, probably the most written-about subject in all of history. As such, having a dozen or so references to me is not enough. Also, there is some poor prose, eg in the "East Asia and the Pacific" section. This could, and should, be an FA, if for no other reason than to show off how well we can do really important subjects, but it is not there yet. Batmanand | Talk 21:32, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Object to the objection. The top 8 or so references are a good choice for a general overview in my view (and run to many thousands of pages so we're hardly short). As you yourself say, the specific references are better in subarticles. Pcb21 Pete 21:54, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Then can I suggest a bibliography subarticle, such as Bibliography of the Rwandan Genocide, as a place to put a list of all of them? This is such an important topic, that must conform to almost impossibly high standards to NPOV and verifiability, that this (somewhat drastic!) measure is IMO necessary. Batmanand | Talk

I don't like that idea so much (the Rwanda article set was copied from the French Wikipedia and never fully sorted out). If I am reading about a particular aspect of the War and want some references, I don't want to have to go off to another article and then see the references are mixed with a whole load of irrelevant ones about other aspects. Actually verfiabilitity is trivial in this topic - it is such an overview that nothing detailed is being said. If you think there are NPOV or verfiability problems in this article then you should be specific about them. Pcb21 Pete 07:01, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Batmanand's obejction doesn't seem actionable to me. Just making a blanket request for more references is not reasonable. Just like with any objections it needs to be at least somewhat specified. 10+ sources is a lot for any topic, and this is supposed to be a summary. The amount of sources needs to be kept to a reasonable minimum or there's a very real risk of it expanding to astronomic proportions.

Peter ^Isotalo 08:30, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

First, my "not brilliant prose" criticism is certianly actionable. My concern with the references is two-fold. First is that I think they should all be in one place, as with the Rwandan example. If you do not want to do that then that is more a personal bias than anything else I suppose. But if you do not want to, then the references in the sub-articles need more work. I randomly clicked on a few of them, and Operation Typhoon has no references, Second Sino-Japanese War has one, Battle of Kiev (1943) has none (and is tagged for cleanup), and Operation Frühlingserwachen has none. I clicked on 6 articles in total, and 4 were poorly referenced, if at all. Batmanand | Talk 10:59, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

An FAC is about the article that is nominated, not its sub-articles. But the issue seems more or less moot since the basic problems of section hierarchy, quality of prose and such needs to be addressed before any serious attempts at proper referencing are made.

Peter ^Isotalo 20:54, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

• Object The article has been subdivided too much, to the point that many sections are only 1 or 2 sentences long. It's not necessary to split every possible subdivision into its own subsection (or sub-subsection, or sub-sub-subsection). - The Catfish 23:45, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
• Object. Article structure is too complicated, the prose is fractionalized and very bad in some places (Sentences that begin with "On...", anyone?) and the article is as huge and unwieldy as ever. We have so much information and so many articles on WW II, that it's hardly constructive to keep the main article at anything over 40-50 kB. Please remember to apply the concept of summary style when writing. Try to trust the sub-articles a bit more. / Peter ^Isotalo 08:30, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
  • 'Nother thing. There's just too many pictures. Even if more than half are removed, they're still highly representative for most theatres and aspects of the war. And, as pointed out, the actual picture layout is very unimaginative. / Peter ^Isotalo 20:58, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

• comment What about the debate about when the war started...such as with the Japanese invasion of China, etc?...Also, I liked the prior format of the article better. Rlevse 11:50, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

• Object. Intro is too many grafs; you could probably start to answer many of the objections here by consolidating a lot of the paragraphs. It would at least tame that monster TOC. I know it's not fatal to the nomination but I don't think a Wikipedia article should ever have a TOC so long it is the only thing onscreen for any portion of a downward scroll. Daniel Case 16:14, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

• Hate to say it but I don't know if this article will ever pass here. I have watched it and I'd suggest that there is a low-level, but still consistent and noticable instability that the page cannot shake. Most obviously, the intro changes regularly. With recent additions, it's still not accurate. "A primary part of the war began between Germany and the Allies. Germany was later joined by Italy, Japan, and others, jointly known as the Axis." Japan did not "join" Germany later. Japan was at war in China from 1937. This is just the sort of micro-debate that has (in my watching) always plagued this page. And the TOC? My God. I actually cited this page a while ago on talk for having a good but not overwhelming TOC. Now it's just "browse past this monster." Something radical would have to happen here (gutting a majority and agreeing on true summary style) before this could pass IMH(and sorry)O. Marskell 22:18, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

• Object. On the one hand, I feel that an article like this absolutely must reach FA status. On the other hand, the standard that an article like this must reach is very very high and it's not there yet. The main obstacles are the ToC, lead and terminal shortage of sources, as described above. Also the article makes some strange structural choices, e.g. outlining Japanese reasons for war before German ones. Perhaps the adherance to chronological order is a little too rigorous. The writing is generally good, although choppy due to the aforementioned over-sectioning problems. Loads of images, which is good, although I've not checked the copyright status of things like maps. Overall, the content (writing and pictures) is good, but its the peripheral stuff (sources, structure) that lets this down. Nevertheless Mercenary2k should be congratulated for his work so far on what is undoubtedly a tough article to write. Soo 23:52, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

• Object huge TOC, many short paragraphs, too many headers, and seeming lack of references. For an article like this with summaries, you could forego some of the inlines and just use a bunch of general references as well for backup. Just another star in the night ^{T | @ | C} 01:31, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

• COMMENT Ok Guys, I read your criticism of this article. I changed many of the sub-headers into Bold. It still looks the same but now, the size of the TOC has been dramatically reduced. Does this satisfy you guys??? Mercenary2k 7:00am, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
  • You've still got that choppy prose thing going on. Too many one paragraph sections. What's the use of all the headers? It would be better to work them into the opening sentence of the paragraph. Also you still haven't fixed the lead or the shortage of references. Soo 12:21, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

What you are asking for is a complete change of format, getting rid of the chronology, and introducing a narrative of the entire war. No doubt you want the narrative to be short, too, certainly no more than the 45k or so taken up by the chronology section right now. That is a tough demand. For one thing, the format right now makes it easy to add material. POV disputes are kept to a minimum, as the format calls for brief factual summaries of events, and a link to the main article. Analysis is kept out, to the main pages, where specialists can argue to their heart's content. A narrative format would make it hard to add new material, but people would do it anyway, sticking in prose that doesn't fit. It would breed endless POV disputes, since in order to keep things short and fit the entire war in a narrative, material has to be synthesized. Then arguments will rage as its very, very hard to synthesize material without getting POV. Attempts to be NPOV, by including competing interpretations, will then balloon the article and make it totally impossible. Drogo Underburrow 13:04, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Okay, you've convinced me. My other criticisms stand. Soo 20:35, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

• Comment - The criticism on this page is going to do the article more harm than good, as editors try to adjust the article. A good example: material is added on Operation Mars; but no doubt sensative to the charge that the article has too many small sections, the material is put into a paragraph that deals with Stalingrad. Now, a person is likely to miss the Operation Mars material as a result; Operation Mars was not part of the Stalingrad campaign, it was on another section of the Eastern front. Logically, it should be given a short section of its own, just a sentence or two and a link to the main article. The "monster" TOC made it easy to find things in the article. Now, editors are going to cut it down simply so it won't be as big, making material hard to find. The article used to have a logical design: short sections linked to articles on other Wiki pages. It was a chronology styled format. The article during the prior review in January was much the same; it got about 50/50 support. What has changed? Editors filled in glaring holes in coverage. For example, in January, when half the editors were ready to ok it for featured status, the article didn't say one word about the Western front after the Battle of the Bulge; nothing at all about the actual defeat of Germany in the West; yet the same period on the Eastern Front was covered in depth. Other areas were similarly completely missing, huge, huge sections of the war, for example in the Pacific were completely absent. - Drogo Underburrow 12:37, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I am sorry, on behalf of all the critics, that we have sounded a little harsh. FAC can be a temper-fraying, overly critical process, but the aim is always to make the article better. FA status is hard to attain - and for a good reason. These are the articles that will be on the Main Page; that are held up as models for others to follow; that people brag about on their user pages. As such, they need to be the best. Sorry if we have made the task sound impossible, but it is only because we have the integrity of FAs at heart. Batmanand | Talk 14:41, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Comment Drogo Underburrow has made some very valid points. If we turn this article from a chronological based article to one where we summarize it, its gonna get entangled in massive POV problems. It will never reach FAC status because the War is interpretted in different ways. Canadian editors would want to include Dieppe, yet Russians would want Operation Mars and other major battles on the Eastern front, Americans could include Battle of Huntgen forest, etc, etc... And if everything gets included and everything is covered in depth. This article could become a book. Doing this article chronologically is the best way. Everything that is important gets covered, nothing gets missed. Any missing information can be easily added. I went through this article, there are some grammer, sentence structure problems which need to be fixed. Other than that, I dont see anything wrong with this article. I think the amount of negative reaction to this article is shocking to me, as I and Drogo have spend a great deal of time improving this article. Mercenary2k 12:40, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Becoming an FA is tough and there should be no apologies for that. The article is good but it's not there yet. Don't take it personally. Soo 20:35, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Support --Xtreambar 04:22, 19 April 2006 (UTC) Support --this is the best it's been. Kudos to the author for hanging in there. Rlevse 10:09, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Ok Guys. Here we go Again. Major work done on this article. Massive improvements everywhere. Every major event of the War covered in chronological order. So I don't see any bias problems. This article is a FAC, just need your approval.--Mercenary2k May 13, 2006 2:24 AM

• Strong support. A fascinating article on an event that need to be remembered. -- Grafikm ^(AutoGRAF) 21:06, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

• Strong object; absolutely no attempt has been made to address (or even respond to) the points raised during the peer review. Briefly:

• Masses of extremely short and choppy pseudo-sections (most are only one paragraph; some are only one sentence) don't really qualify as brilliant prose.
• Insufficient use of inline citation; most of the article can't easily be traced back to any particular source, including piles of potentially questionable statements and statistics.

These are the same issues that came up during the previous FAC, incidentally; I don't think simply ignoring them will somehow cause the article to magically be promoted. Kirill Lokshin 21:08, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

What you are objecting to is not bad writing, but writing that is in a chronology format. Passages are short and choppy because that is how timelines are. Is it a requirement for FA status that articles not include lengthy timelines? Apparently in your eyes this is a rule. Drogo Underburrow 19:20, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

The requirements for a featured article are quite clear: the prose must be "compelling, even brilliant". Choppy writing—no matter how seemingly appropriate for creating a timeline—cannot, by definition, satisfy this. (This is, incidentally, why actual timelines are properly the province of the featured list.) Kirill Lokshin 01:02, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

• Object per Kirill Lokshin - 71.115.57.95 21:30, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
• Strong object. 10 references in a 91 kb article are not enough and I do believe that it should be possible to find sources on WW2. --Maitch 22:27, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
• Object - this is one of those articles which really should be featured, given the ridiculous amount that's been written about it, but this just isn't up to snuff. Also, the lead contains a sentence fragment. Find more sources, and deal with the suggestions from the peer review/last FAC. The Disco King 23:20, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
• Object. There are numerous issues with this article which need to be corrected:
  • The number of short paragraphs in this article is unacceptable. Many are one sentence long, and each section seemingly contains at least one of them.
  • There are no inline citations used in this article, which is an FA requirement.
  • Ten references for an article of this size an scope is not adequate, surely there is more material to be found concerning the topic.
  • I'm not an expert on copyright, but many images seem to have questionable or objectionable copyright or fair use rationale.

More work still needs to be done. RyanGerbil10 23:27, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

• Object per Kirill Lokshin - TomStar81 00:05, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
• Object per Kirill Lokshin. - Mailer Diablo 08:23, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
• Object. References need fixing. "ref_war" 2 to 4 and 6 to 7 don't appear to be linked to anything in the article. Chances are the points they referenced have been moved into one of the subarticles, but at the moment, the article uses 4 refs, not 10. GeeJo ^(t)⁄_(c) • 13:08, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
• Object Does not correctly follow Wikipedia:Summary Style: The ==Chronology== section should be spun off into its own article at Chronology of World War II and a good-sized summary left in its place. Makes no sense to have anything but inline links and mentions of individual battles and operations from the main WWII article. In other words, this article abuses use of 'Main article' links ; just link inline unless the 'Main article' is a real daughter of this article instead of an article in its own right. For example, an article on an individual battle would not be a daughter article of WWII (and thus not merit a main article link) while the Aftermath of World War II would. Trying to summarize so many stand-alone articles and put it into this one article has resulted in way too many very short sections and disjointed paragraphs. A much more high-level treatment is needed ; detail can be in daughter articles. Also needs a great many more inline cites. Granted, this topic necessarily will be one of the largest we have and thus need to go above the regular max size of 50KB of prose, but I think we can do a much better job of summarizing this topic so it is at a much more comfortable reading length. --mav 14:43, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I totally agree with this. The Chronology of World War II should be in prose and not just a collection of headlines like in the Timeline of World War II. --Maitch 16:48, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Those two links go to the same article. Drogo Underburrow 19:14, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I know. I'm saying that if an article gets made for Chronology of World War II it should be different from the style of Timeline of World War II, which means it should be written in prose instead of headlines.--Maitch 23:13, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

• Object. Sections aren't prosified enough, doesn't flow enough. Lincher 17:29, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

• Comment. Maybe breaking the WWII article in sub-articles where World War II would have big lines of what happened and World War II (1939), World War II (1940) ... would be where it goes in deep details in order to have longer sub-sections and not having a big WWII article. Lincher 17:29, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

• Strong Support. As per nomHezzy 18:37, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
• Support - The objections that the article is chronology based, or that the writing is choppy (of course it is, it is a chronology) are objections of taste, and have nothing to do with whether the article is of featured quality or not. It seems as if editors are judging not on the quality of the article, but whether the article matches a format they like. Drogo Underburrow 18:47, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
• Very Strong Object First as per syle/quality objections above. Second, parts of the article are extraordinary US-centric. The introduction has been recently changed to allude to a fringe theory. My attempt to work on this issue met with uncomfortably strong opposition. Myciconia 04:42, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
• Object: for something as important and documented and written about as World War 2, this article is excruciatingly thin on both citations and content. I'd like to see a lot of the images cleaned up too - they are causing a lot of formatting problems due to their abundance. Also, I feel the WP:LEAD is too long and doesnt give a quick summary of what it was all about -but rather appears to condense the timeline into a few paragraphs. Are subtitles like "the beginning of the end" necessary? they strike me as POV in many ways. Obviously we'd want to be avoiding a sort of "allied" account of it. -- Alfakim --  talk  22:12, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Object as per Kirill Lokshin: Chronology-only descriptions of wars are just plain annoying. Campaign-based formats are much more easily preusable, and more useful in descriptions of wars. In addition, a timeline already esixts that can be prominently linked. UnDeadGoat 00:43, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Support Excellent article. Love it. Great information.
• Comment. You are arguing about either writing a chronology or a campaign-based article. I wonder which style did Encarta and Encyclopedia Britannica use in their respective articles?
• Object because I think this needs to make better use of Wikipedia:Summary style. There should be more on cultural ramifications, which are vast (cargo cults, to give one example) -- World War 2 had the effect of moving massive numbers of people all over the world, causing their cultures to intermix. There should be a section on cultural depictions of World War 2. I think that, over all, it's too detailed on military history, which is only one important aspect of the topic. Some of the non-military history sections are also too uncomprehensive to satisfy summary style: "the home fronts" (and why the home fronts?) doesn't cover Japan or the Soviet Union at all. It needs inline citations throughout too. Tuf-Kat 03:35, 18 May 2006 (UTC)