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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 promoted by Ucucha 15:05, 28 October 2011 [1].

Battle of Vukovar

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Battle of Vukovar (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Co-nominator(s): Joy, Prioryman (talk) 18:26, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Joy and I wish to co-nominate this article for featured article status. It has recently undergone a major expansion and rewrite to mark the upcoming 20th anniversary of the battle, which falls on 18 November 2011. The battle was a critically important event in the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s and will be the subject of commemorations in Croatia. It will also attract significant international media coverage, some of which has already begun to appear, in the run-up and on the day itself. I've set out to write this to featured standard from the outset and I'm pretty sure that it will meet many of the featured article criteria. It has already gone through an A-class review under the auspices of WP:MILHIST. Ideally, if we can complete this FAC in time, the article will be ready in time to mark the anniversary. Prioryman (talk) 18:26, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For reference: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_history/Assessment/Battle_of_Vukovar. Nikkimaria (talk) 20:14, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Note that some useful reviewing was done at the A-class review, but the article has not passed an A-class review. - Dank (push to talk) 22:26, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Copyscape review

- No issues were revealed by Copyscape searches. Graham Colm (talk) 19:29, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Source review

- Nikkimaria (talk) 20:14, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • "Croatian president Franjo Tuđman (left) wanted an intact Croatia to gain independence from Yugoslavia, while Serbian president Slobodan Milošević (right) wanted to change Yugoslavia's internal borders to unite all Serbs in a single state under his control." - source? (Also, why is one direction italicized and the other is not?)
  • Authors for Britannica articles?
  • Some newspaper articles are still missing page numbers
  • FN 145: italicization
  • References to The Economist should now be consistent. I'm now looking for any more analogous discrepancies (non-italicized ref vs. cite news). --Joy [shallot] (talk) 22:08, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Prioryman, do you have the source to "Vukovar police report terrorist arrests", Summary of World Broadcasts (BBC), 9 July 1991? The other SWB reference is attributed to a specific author, but that one isn't, so it may seem inconsistent. OTOH maybe I wrongly tagged SWB as something that should be italicized in the first place. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 22:12, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Be consistent in whether shortened citations end in periods
  • Fixed (I only found one such example, that of Marshall).
  • Ranges, even in titles, should use endashes
  • A couple of authors/editors appear to be lacking first names/initials
  • Be consistent in what info is included for locations - for example, Cambridge vs Cambridge, UK
  • When citing something specific like a quote to an audio/video source, please include a time ref
  • I presume you're referring to the Martin Bell radio broadcast. I'm not sure why it's in that list, it doesn't seem to be used as a source in the article; I assume it was meant to be an external link so I've moved it there.
  • I've added locations for all newspapers other than Virski list, as I don't know where that's published (hopefully one of our Croatian editors can advise). The only newspaper publisher info that I found was, again, for Virski list. I've taken that out for consistency. Prioryman (talk) 22:27, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Virski list is a local newspaper sponsored by the municipality of Vir; the publishing company is based in the same place.[2] It's not a particularly reputable source, I guess they're just a random paper that reprinted the Ministry of Defence's statistics - they could probably be found elsewhere. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 20:29, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Spotchecks (which were not done at ACR) of 3 source found concerns:

  • "Between August 1990 and April 1991, almost 200 bombing and mining incidents, as well as 89 attacks on Croatian police forces, were reported" is verbatim from the source cited
  • Article: "On the night of 31 April 1991, Šešelj personally visited Vukovar"; source: "Seselj, however, had personally visited Vukovar the night of 31 March" - notice the date discrepancy
  • "namely based on evidence collected while he was a prisoner of war in the Sremska Mitrovica camp in 1991" - the source mentions that Purda was in a detention camp, but does not explicitly connect that to the indictment
  • "In late October, an entire infantry battalion from Novi Sad in Serbia abandoned an attack on Vukovar's northern suburb of Borovo Naselje, threw away their weapons and went back to Serbia on foot across a nearby bridge" - the source says that the Novi Sad battalion and the group that crossed the bridge on foot were two different groups. Nikkimaria (talk) 20:14, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

So, in conclusion, Nikkimaria, are you satisfied with the article now? --Joy [shallot] (talk) 17:16, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Coolug

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Comment - just had a quick skim, this article is long, 153k long. I know not all of that is the prose, but it's really really long. Could some bits be split off and shortened? Coolug (talk) 19:42, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support - Well written and comprehensive, great article. Coolug (talk) 09:55, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(Moved by SandyGeorgia to this section) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:33, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Dank

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Support on prose per standard disclaimer. I just reviewed the article for A-class. These are my edits. - Dank (push to talk) 22:28, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

*Status report: There are concerns about inaccurate page numbers in the citations, so it would be helpful if we could find a way to get a random two or three of the references into the hands of reviewers ... Is anyone near a library that has the books or that can get ILL book loans quickly? Also, there's a request for additional copyediting. - Dank (push to talk) 22:23, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Tomobe03

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Comment Support because all my concerns have been addressed.--Tomobe03 (talk) 09:16, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • If UN force in "A UN peacekeeping force provided security during the transition period between 1996 and 1998." is UNTAES the sentence should probably go something like "The UNTAES provided security..." as the same paragraph establishes that there's UNTAES in the area.--Tomobe03 (talk) 22:16, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

John

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Oppose at present as it seems over-written and too long. --John (talk) 17:07, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Please note that I'm currently in the course of trimming the article. So far I've been able to reduce it by 1,867 words (a reduction of about 13%) to 12,256 words and 138 kB of Wiki text. This is already substantially shorter than Manhattan Project, mentioned above (15,233 words and 145 kB of Wiki text). I should be able to make further reductions later today. This will have the effect of breaking some of the page references temporarily so please bear with me. Prioryman (talk) 07:48, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • I've now reduced the article by 2,404 words to a total of 11,719 words - a reduction of 17% in the word count. The amount of wiki text has been reduced by from 151 kB to 131 kB, and the readable prose size has gone down from 86 kB to 72 kB. This is slightly less than Augustus, which according to Wikipedia:Featured articles/By length is the 100th longest featured article. Hopefully this will resolve the concerns about length. Prioryman (talk) 21:15, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It was improved by the trim, thank you. I took a pretty serious further hack at it, mainly trying to improve the style. Issues I tried to address included:

  • Active over passive voice; one example of many would be: "Ceasefires were violated by both sides, often within hours." amended to: "Both sides violated ceasefires, often within hours." The latter is shorter, carries the same meaning and is easier to read. More throw-weight per kg, so to speak.
  • Trimming out extra words without (I hope) changing the meaning.
  • "Finally" and "simply" should almost never occur in Wikipedia's voice, I believe, as nothing is final and very few things are simple.
  • Be careful about the difference between and and but as conjunctions, and ensure these are used with logical coherence. Compare

John likes pizza and Bob likes pasta

vs.

John likes pizza but Bob likes pasta.

See my user essay about one manifestation of this stylistic issue, if you're interested.
  • We don't use seasons to denote time unless it's germane to the context, as they are relative to where on the planet you are.
  • We should never employ journalistic flourishes like suffered a grim fate.
  • One important practical question; we had

After the convoy set off on 12 October the JNA routed it around the battlefield for two days. lay mines, bring in reinforcements and consolidate JNA control of the road out of Vukovar.

which looked garbled so I rewrote it as

After the convoy set off the JNA used the two days it took to lay mines, bring in reinforcements and consolidate JNA control of the road out of Vukovar.

Is this still true to the Ramet source, which I do not have for checking?
  • It's a beautiful and well-referenced article about a difficult subject; well done. I still want 24 hours to think some more before I support but I feel it's almost there. --John (talk) 08:27, 8 October 2011 (UTC) Finalized --John (talk) 09:18, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for your edits - the changes are mostly fine. I've fixed a couple of factual errors that crept in - it wasn't just the JNA that was responsible (or even primarily responsible) for looting, and the Serb claims about the bodies in the hospital grounds were made after the battle, not during it (as the hospital wasn't captured until the fall of the town). I've also restored "Vukovar - Final Cut" as it's notable (it won a significant film award). Regarding the convoy, I'm afraid your version missed the key point that it took two days because the JNA held it up while they were using it as cover - I've reworded this bit to make it clearer. Prioryman (talk) 09:44, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for fixing up the issue I identified. I am fine for the movie to be re-included as there is now a reference for its notability, which was lacking before. --John (talk) 18:50, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Why did you remove links to the ICTY Mrksic verdict in this edit? It looks like they just needed to be fixed to point to a working anchor and AWB instead removed them completely? Also, this edit wrongly contracted two references into a broken state. It's good that duplication of paragraphs was fixed, but please don't break stuff :) --Joy [shallot] (talk) 21:24, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I cleaned both of these up TTBOMK. The former anchor was functional, but then I noticed their style was somewhat inconsistent with the other references that include page numbers. Please verify it's all right now. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 21:39, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for the question and for picking up the mistake. Here's what seems to have happened: here was Prioryman's inadvertent duplication of the material, here is me using AWB to reduce overlinking (and I accept my edit summary could have been more descriptive) but noticing the duplication, and here I removed the duplication. If I had had more time I would have fixed the mess this made of the reference formatting, but I got distracted by something in real life (yes, I have one) and didn't get back until you had already fixed it. Thank you for doing so. If I had made my two edits in the opposite order it would have worked better. I still find it hard to believe that I didn't spot the duplicated paragraphs during my copyedit last night, and that nobody else did either. Oh well, it all worked out. I am sorry if you perceived my attempts to improve the article as "breaking stuff" as this was not my intention. --John (talk) 02:39, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • What are the remaining copyediting issues? Also, see my comment below about sources. Nikkimaria has only said that she found problems in her spotchecks - as I've argued below they all arose for different reasons and you can't generalise about it. I think it's rather unfair to oppose when you have given no indication of a specific issue that can be addressed. How am I supposed to resolve your concerns if I don't have anything specific to work with? Prioryman (talk) 07:51, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Fair question. I don't have specific problems at this point, hence the weakness of my opinion. I would like (no offence to you at all) another opinion on the sourcing issue as I can't check the sources. I worry that there may still be more copyediting issues, because each time I look I find more minor issues. Again, a second pair of eyes would be ideal. It worries me that the duplicated paragraphs stayed in the article for more than 24 hours unnoticed by anyone. So I still weakly oppose promotion until these issues are resolved. I am utterly sure they can be. --John (talk) 07:59, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It is, thanks. Prioryman (talk) 07:51, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. --John (talk) 08:05, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. I took another run through the prose, and I think I am now happy with the quality. Per Quadell's opinion below I now think I can support the promotion of this article. --John (talk) 04:09, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment and it is looking even better now, a few other people have looked it over, it now comfortably meets our criteria in the area of prose, and I see some discussion in article talk that will lead to even further improvement. --John (talk) 06:55, 20 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Quadell

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  • Comment: I feel strongly that it is not appropriate to source statement to Encyclopedia Britannica, in an article like this. (It would be similarly inappropriate for them to use our article as a source.) Since this only involves two statements, it should be possible to find a better source for these. – Quadell (talk) 18:52, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This article is comprehensive, but I don't believe it's too long or off-topic. It's clearly well-written, as I believe the MoS has been followed. (And obviously it's an important topic.) I'm leaning toward supporting, but my main concern is that the previous spotchecks revealed one copyright violation and three inaccuracies. These were quickly fixed, and I don't doubt the good faith and determination of the nominators. If there were more spotchecks, I would feel more comfortable. Does anyone know if the previous spotchecks looked only at only the four sources that turned up problems, or others as well that were unproblematic? – Quadell (talk) 13:54, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I did the spotchecks above. I checked only three sources, and IIRC found at least one problem per source. I have not, at this point, checked any other sources, and many of them for one reason or another are not accessible to me. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:35, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It's unfortunate that there were problems, but I don't think this should be exaggerated (not that I'm accusing anyone of doing this). The issues all arose from different sources - an old copyvio that had spread to multiple articles, a simple typographical error, a misreading of a source and another editor going beyond what a source said. I don't think you can generalise on that basis. It's a large and complex article (with nearly 200 references!) so some sourcing errors are going to be inevitable, but I'm confident that such errors are the exception. As for inaccessible sources, inevitably there will be many (a lot of library research was involved here) but ultimately some level is trust is going to have to be assumed in such cases. Prioryman (talk) 07:51, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I would instead say that we might expect people to have an issue with the attribution of a few contentious statements to books such as the Sebotovsky's "Battle of Vukovar", published by the Marine Corps University, with no listed ISBN, that Google doesn't know anything about. The cited text generally seems insightful, but the source looks a bit suspect. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 10:12, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, what a silly problem - the author's surname was misspelled. Found it and fixed it now. It's a postgraduate student research paper of a Croatian officer, the mentor is a US officer who also seems to be a published author, so it's now clear that it's a legitimate source. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 10:29, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Further spotchecks. Now that Šebetovsky's thesis is available, I checked all statements cited to it: 11 unique footnotes supporting 15 statements. (All footnotes refer to this version.) I found no verbatim copying or close paraphrasing. In the cases of footnotes 2a, 2b, 54a, 67, 68, 69, 71, 72, 73, 88, and 93, the statements in the article were fully supported material in the thesis. But there were two major problems: the statements sourced to footnotes 54b and 70b were not found in the source at all at the pages given. These are significant problems. In addition, I have two nitpicks. Footnote 2c is sourced to page 11, but both pages 11 and 12 were required to back up the statement. 70a, similarly, is sourced to page 27, but should be 26-27. These are minor issues, however. It's 54b and 70b that are the serious concerns. – Quadell (talk) 13:43, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I found those two and fixed them, the numbers were wrong. I'll also apply the other fixes you suggested. Thanks. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 18:21, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the corrections. I rechecked, and the statements are validly sourced now. In each case, the material was present in the source listed, but at the wrong page numbers. It was never a case of original research or plagiarism. – Quadell (talk) 19:50, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support. This was a difficult decision. Sourcing is sloppier than I'd like, and I'd feel better if every footnote were rechecked by the nominators. I strongly considered withholding support for this reason. Still, the material has been accurate and present in the sources whenever I've checked (despite problems with author names, page numbers, etc., discovered in this nomination review). I checked five more footnotes, finding no further problems. I do not believe there are significant inaccuracies, original research, or POV problems in this article. Beyond the sourcing examinations, I think this article is top-notch. Unlike John, I think the prose is very good and the content well-organized. In my opinion, this fully complies with our FA criteria, even if it's a close call in one area. – Quadell (talk) 20:04, 10 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ucucha

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Given the sourcing issues found, I think it'd be good if someone (perhaps one of the nominators) went over the remaining sources to check whether everything is all right. Ucucha (talk) 13:56, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Also, the article needs an image review. Ucucha (talk) 13:57, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
User:Ucucha/HarvErrors shows two minor problems: the reference to Kaiser (1995) (currently ref. 155) does not point to anything, and there is nothing pointing to the citation by Špegelj (2001). Ucucha (talk) 17:22, 16 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Those are both the result of recent editing; I've restored Kaiser and removed Špegelj, as the latter citation was used for some text that is now no longer in the article. Prioryman (talk) 17:32, 16 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
In connection with recent copyediting, I and others have been looking over the references. A reference lost in a previous edit was recovered, and a typo in an existing reference was corrected (it went to the wrong page number). Otherwise no further problems have come to light. Prioryman (talk) 06:40, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Images

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The following is a complete list of all of the images used in the article:
They are all under free licences but I will leave it to others more knowledgeable than myself to review them. Prioryman (talk) 20:58, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I believe these concerns should be addressed before promotion to FA. Jappalang (talk) 22:32, 19 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think these issues should all now be resolved. Prioryman (talk) 08:34, 23 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is quite a mess-- please ping Jappalang and have him indicate if images are clear. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:33, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Every issue he raised has been tackled, so he will hopefully be satisfied with the current state of play. Prioryman (talk) 06:42, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Apologies, my work is piling up. I found something weird with the PD template used for Croatian (and by extension Serbian) government works, and the answers I got made my doubts grow (see Commons discussion referred above). I understand it is no fault of the nominators here, but I think according to the FA criteria, we are trying to show the readers a "brilliant" article compliant with the policies and guidelines of the project; I believe a doubtful application of a template for its images would not follow this rule. Jappalang (talk) 04:29, 27 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Only the postcard is of concern now. Jappalang (talk) 10:47, 27 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
As I've removed it from the article, I think this last issue should now be resolved. Prioryman (talk) 17:44, 27 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I found supporting evidence for the postcard's public domain status, so it can be re-inserted if desired. Regardless, I have no issues with the images in the article now: they are all fine (verifiable public domain status or appropriately licensed). Jappalang (talk) 00:52, 28 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Would File:Sfrj.png be acceptable? --Joy [shallot] (talk) 17:52, 27 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

To be honest I don't think it adds anything. We already have plenty of maps, and the previous image selections for that section were specific to Vukovar itself - the ethnic majorities and the old postcard. This would just be a general map. Prioryman (talk) 20:17, 27 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I was simply searching for a free image :) --Joy [shallot] (talk) 07:24, 28 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ceoil

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Comment. This a very large and important article and is now over 130kb with many hands on deck. Managing sources in such circumstanced is very difficult to say the least. I take the main editors at face value and can see they have been at pains to present a balanced telling. But I also appreciate that they need to undertake an audit of sources per above, but my guess is that this will be relatively easily done and I dont anticipate any major issues coming from it. I see a substantial achievement here and look forward to supporting after the cross checking is complete. Ceoil (talk) 20:17, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

J&A

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Support. Nothing really noteworthy of criticizing here. One can find as much flaws here as in 90 % of other good/featured articles here on Wikipedia, generally speaking. You and I may lean towards different versions, but should both agree that the article is still fine the way it is. Prioryman did a very thorough research and managed to put it all on one place.

Just a couple of small side-notes, entirely irrelevant to my support. Personally, I think that there was never a need to shorten the article in the first place, since such a big event deserves an in-depth analysis and therefor justifies for up to 200kb of size. I already wrote that the article could use more images (for instance, this [3] in the section that deals with looting from castle Eltz), but Prioryman does not share my opinion, so therefor I must yield. Also, I think the 1912 image of Vukovar was more fitting in the background section since it showed how the city looked like before the conflict.

Reference no. 9 needs to be fixed, since the Bell source was moved onto the "External links" section. Also, I think that a link for Tomislav Mercep should me made in the "Prelude to the battle" section, to know that he was the leader of the Croatian paramilitary. Lastly, when one speaks about the "Indictments and trials" section, one could divide it into those trials led by the ICTY and the ones led by local courts. I am not sure, but does any one know how many people were indicted on the Croatian side for Vukovar? If there is no data, feel free to forget it. This concludes my rant. Cheers.--Justice and Arbitration (talk) 14:30, 16 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Reference #9 is now fixed again - it was broken as part of this review :) I'll have a look at the other issues too. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 12:28, 21 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You fixed the reference, all right, but now you removed what was originally saying in the lead. Namely, that it was the first European city to be entierly destroyed since World War II. Other sources also confirm it: [4], [5]. A noteworthy data that should be there. Furthermore, the new text that replaced the previous one now contradicts another sentence in the lead: one sentence says that 700.000 shells were fired at the town, the new says 2,5 million. You need to get your act together.--Justice and Arbitration (talk) 14:24, 21 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
They don't actually contradict - the old claim says "into the town", while the new claim explicitly includes surroundings - I'm guessing the discrepancy might even include Borovo Naselje. But it should be reorganized, yes. The Guardian article will do fine as a source for the old text. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 09:21, 22 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]


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