Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/Warsaw Uprising (1794)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] Warsaw Uprising (1794)

I recently expanded the article, rewriting it almost from scratch. I focused primarily on the military aspect of the uprising, but the result might be too military-oriented for an average reader. Anyway, all comments appreciated. //Halibutt 07:18, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kirill Lokshin

Very nice! I don't think the military orientation is a problem, as this encounter was quite military in nature.

Some other points:

  • The overarching "History" heading seems unnecesary. Why not move its sub-sections up?
  • The setup of the references is a little bizarre. "Further reading" should definitely be its own section (and is usually bulleted, not numbered); the same is probably true for the general reference (although if you split that out, you should also include the fill bibiliographic information for the works cited in the footnotes.
  • Headings like "Day two" might look better as "Second day"?
  • I would stagger the images along both margins, but that might just be a personal preference.
  • Are the civilians mentioned in the infobox the National Militia? Or are those included as "soldiers" and the civilians are in reference to other groups?
  • You might want to be more specific on what you mean by "technical superiority" in the lead, as it's not a term that lends itself well to this period. Is this in reference to superiority in artillery, or something else entirely?
  • I think that abbreviations for military ranks should generally be avoided. They're often unclear to the casual reader, and don't really save much in terms of space.
  • The materials from the first two external links seem to be public domain. Any chance of getting them uploaded on WikiCommons/WikiSource?
  • Lots of redlinks that could use filling. I'm curious as to whether we need to link all of the authors for the reference works. Are all of them notable enough to sustain articles of their own?

Overall, though, very good article! Kirill Lokshin 17:10, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

  1. I generally like all important parts of the article to be at the same level: History/Biography, References, See also, OOB and so on. It's a matter of personal preference I guess, and I don't feel very strongly about it so feel free to move them up.
  2. It's a left-over. As a matter of fact both positions in the further reading section were mentioned in other publications, so they might as well be moved to General refs. Speaking of which, I'm not sure it's the best word here. General references are those used in preparation of the article, but not linked from any particular statement. Could you think of a better word here? Oh, and as to the numbering - I really like the idea that I could add "see also reference No.2" in the inline notes.
  3. Done
  4. We still lack images, I believe. All of them appear in the relevant sections, next to the description of what happened on the pic. I also like the text flow to be preserved, while left-aligned images IMO do not help that, but you're right that it's a matter of preference.
  5. Good one! Indeed, I used civilians and militia interchangeably. Fixed that now (hopefully).
  6. As to technical superiority - this is what I call a mental shortcut. Obviously the Polish regular units were no better nor worse than the regular Russian forces. The only difference was that the Russians had slightly more artillery and of a grater calibre. However, a large part of the Polish force was militia, armed with sabres, rifles, muzzle-loaders, pikes, anvils (sic!), hammers and anything they could find. That is not even comparable to regular forces. Could you think of a better wording?
  7. Never thought of that. As a temporary measure I linked all the first instances of usage of abbreviations to proper articles.
  8. All of Norblin's sketches related to the fights in Warsaw are already there (the rest in that gallery are related to other battles of the Kościuszko's Uprising). On the other hand the document could indeed be a nice addition, I'll upload it right away.
  9. In my previous FAC someone suggested that this was a good idea to link'em all, that's why I did it here. I'm sure we could safely unlink most of them, though perhaps writing at least stubs on them would be a more wiki-like approach. I'll see what I can do in my spare time.

Overall, thanks for your review. //Halibutt 09:19, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

2. "General references" is probably the best term in this case. If you were to use just plain "References", people would assume that the ones that have been directly cited are also listed.
4. I think it might be a bit clearer if you change over to adjective forms: "Although the Russian force had both numerical and technical superiority..." → "Although the Russian forces were more numerous and better equipped..." Kirill Lokshin 12:23, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Both things fixed now. //Halibutt 10:02, 18 July 2006 (UTC)