Talk:Ben Carlin/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Sasata (talk · contribs) 20:42, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Hi, I'll review this. It may take me up to a week to get comments up (I'm spinning many plates). Sasata (talk) 20:42, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Comments I read the article carefully, and am quite impressed by the professional prose and organization. I'm reduced to very minor nitpicks below:

• perhaps link mining engineer in the lead?

 Done

• "Carlin served in several different theatres, including India, Iraq, Persia, Palestine, Syria, and Italy," Although it is arguably understood from the surrounding context, I'm wondering if it would be useful to link to theater (warfare) to eliminate any possible confusion with the other kind of theatre? Also, the text seems to need a slight tweak, as those locations aren't theatres (implied by the text); perhaps something like "Carlin served in several theatres in various locales, including …"

 Done. Sentence trimmed and clarified.

• "Throughout the war, the Allies had made use of a number of different varieties of amphibious vehicle; in particular, the Ford GPA, a modified version of the Ford GPW Jeep (also known as a "Seep")." grammar needs a tweak, as the clause following the semicolon is dependent. Maybe just change the semicolon to a comma?

 Done. Split into two sentences.

• ""…with a bit of titivation" the MoS says that ellipses should be spaced. But looking at the original quote from the source, it doesn't seem that a preceding ellipse is required?

 Done. Got rid of it.

• The phrase "All in all" is idiomatic, and perhaps not suitable for encyclopaedic writing?

 Done. Changed to "in total".

• link destroyer

 Done

• "he had considered abandoned" -> abandoning

 Done

• "purpose-built tank which was to be towed" which->that

 Done

• day-time -> don't think a hyphen is required

 Done

• "which battered the vessel during its time amongst the islands of Macaronesia." can the underlined be trimmed?

 Done. Modified slightly.

• "At Calcutta, a decision was made" can we reword passive voice to "Carlin decided"?

 Done. Cleaned up a few of the surrounding sentences.

• sea sickness should be linked earlier, and it's given as both spaced and unspaced in the article

 Done

• ensure that image captions that are not complete sentences don't have a fullstop, per WP:CAPTION

 Done. Some rewording.

• "Half-Safe was simply driven into the river" passive voice again

 Done

• the article suffers from overlinking: in general, major geographical locations shouldn't be linked (e.g., United States, Europe, China, India, etc.), and there are several duplicate links throughout the article (I have the handy "Highlight duplicate links" tools installed, see here)

 Partly done. I've remove some of the more blatant examples (i.e. two in the same paragraph), but I've generally linked some of the more article-specific terms (i.e. schools, uncommon places) once per section (for those who navigate via the table of contents, and might otherwise skip the first instance of the link). If there's anything major that you feel should be linked or unlinked, go ahead.

I'll be back in a while to check images and perform some spotchecks to make sure the sources are accurately represented. Sasata (talk) 06:35, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Eep! Completely missed this on my watchlist – sorry for the late response. I'll try and have a more detailed look when I get the time. IgnorantArmies (talk) 14:07, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I think I've picked up most of the things you mentioned. Linking isn't a big deal, so I'm happy to get rid of more of them if you think it's necessary. Thanks for reviewing this :) IgnorantArmies (talk) 11:57, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

More comments Sasata (talk) 15:58, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

• why not mention the appearance in Life magazine in 1950?

 Done

• mention he left much of his estate to his alma mater, and that he offered the Half-Safe to the Fremantle Maritime museum, per here?

 Done

• what makes ref#58 (ruk.ca) a reliable source? It looks like a blog to me. What about http://www.amphibiousvehicle.net? They claim that their source is Carlin's 1989 book, why not cite that directly? http://www.4wdonline.com/?

 Done. Found a recent (last year) newspaper article that involved an interview with Carlin's daughter, which is as reliable as anything.

• retrieval dates aren't required for online links of print sources (like newspapers)

 Done

• I notice that Carlin's and de Mente's books aren't used as sources, but only listed as "Further reading". Was there really nothing in these accounts that was worthy of citing? It's a little worrying to me that much of the article appears to have been constructed from contemporaneous newspaper accounts without appearing to use two of the major sources on the subject.

Unfortunately, I have no copies (and no immediate access to any copies) of Carlin's books, and I'm certainly not willing to shell out "$40.00 plus postage" for the privilege. I think the "bare bones" of the article are mainly sourced from more recent online articles (which in all likelihood draw heavily from Carlin's books). The newspaper articles generally serve just to fill out the details – where more recent articles might just say "he then passed through Europe", I can use contemporary newspaper articles to build up three or four detailed sentences. Although ideally more of the article would be sourced directly from the books, I really don't have that option, and I don't think it's that detrimental to the overall reliability of the article. IgnorantArmies (talk) 11:33, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Nor do I. It's something that might come up if you were to take this article to FAC, but I think the sourcing is sufficient for GA. Images are plentiful and all appropriately licensed. I think all of the good article criteria are met, and am happy to promote this now. Sasata (talk) 07:07, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Wonderful. Thank you for the rigorous review. IgnorantArmies (talk) 09:14, 22 October 2012 (UTC)