Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Horses in World War I

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The following discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Horses in World War I[edit]

Nominator(s): Dana boomer (talk)
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I am nominating this article for A-Class review because I believe it meets all of the criteria, and I think it is one of the larger World War I topics to be worked on during the WWI contest. There have been extensive discussions on the talk page regarding what to include in the article and what not to include, as we are trying to keep the article focused on the horses themselves instead of ancillary information about the things surrounding them (extensive information on tack, cavalry uniforms, listing every WWI poem/picture that included horses, etc). Due to this, comments on comprehensiveness are especially welcome. Dana boomer (talk) 19:33, 7 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comments
    • No problems reported with the external links, dab links, or alt text. Well Done!
    • More to follow... TomStar81 (Talk) 01:58, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • See if you can link to any of the paintings named at the end of the article, and to any of the poetry named there as well. Otherwise, everything looks good. Fascinating read! TomStar81 (Talk) 06:28, 10 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • Tom, sorry for taking a couple of days to get back to the last comment. I have looked, but not been able to find WP articles about any of the paintings or poems mentioned. Maybe you had better luck? It would be nice to be able to link to them, but I'm honestly not enough of an art expert to be able to determine notability of paintings and create the articles myself :) Thanks for the comments, though. Dana boomer (talk) 01:35, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support TomStar81 (Talk) 22:38, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support Auntieruth55 (talk) 21:54, 16 March 2010 (UTC) Comments Very nice article, well researched and written. You do have some rough prose in places that you might want to fix.[reply]

For example, in the lead: Ultimately, because the Allies prevented the import of horses to the Central Powers, a lack of horses contributed to Germany's loss of the war. You mean the Allied blockade, right? Ultimately, the Allied blockade prevented importation of horses to Germany; the Germans could not replace the horses they lost.

(but presumably this was a problem for the Allies as well, even if there was no blockade for them).

Another example: Even before the beginning of the war, many British tacticians realized that increasing technology was changing the style of warfare, limiting the use of cavalry, and bringing an end to the era of mounted warfare. changing technology, changes in military technology, or something. Technology wasn't increasing. Advances in technology changed the conduct of military operations. Or something.
"Overwordiness" ;) : This belief in the usefulness of cavalry resulted in resources being reserved for training and maintaining cavalry regiments that were rarely used, as well as many troops and horses being lost in fruitless charges against enemy machine guns The persistence of the cavalry charge as an acceptable tactical maneuver resulted in ... Probably here also you need a summary of dragoons versus light cavalry (in Brit more or less the same but not elsewhere). Campbell was right, no doubt.
encountering trench warfare This is ambiguous. When they arrived at the Mons, they encountered a system of warfare, the trench system, that did not lend itself to cavalry attack.
I hope you see what I mean with this. I really like this article, and I will support it. I just think you could use another read through or two. Oh, btw, the old peer review needs to be closed. Auntieruth55 (talk) 20:55, 9 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Great ideas, I'll let folks know we have comments -- Not sure we are tracking things over here, is there any way to transclude this discussion at the relevant talk page? (Probably not, I suppose) Also, no idea how to close a peer review, can anyone help? Montanabw(talk) 23:57, 9 March 2010 (UTC) Follow up-- Made some wordsmithing changes where recommended, see if that makes the language clearer. Montanabw(talk) 04:37, 10 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the c/e, Montana. The PR isn't an old one, it's a new one that I opened around the same time I opened the A-class review. As far as I know, there is no prohibition against this. I opened the PR mainly to hopefully get opinions from some editors who were orientated towards the horse or warfare aspects, who may have a different view of some of the issues, or be able to point out jargon that the rest of us aren't seeing. I really like to have someone completely new to the entire subject go over my articles before FAC, just to make sure there's not something completely obvious that I'm missing! I do appreciate all of the comments here though! Dana boomer (talk) 12:52, 10 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

SupportComments While me going over this article again isn't a "fresh set" of eyes, it's gotten substantially better since the GA review last month. Maybe because I read it four or five times then, I'm not seeing much to talk about. Anyways...

  • "A January 2010 documentary by the History Channel also featured the horses of World War I." Is this worth mentioning in the lead? There's only one sentence about it further down.
  • I changed the last two sentences of the lead into one more generic sentence that summarizes both. Hope this works...
  • "Another memorial to the men of the Australian Light Horse Brigade and New Zealand Mounted Rifles, as well as two other corps representing aviation and camel riders, exists as the Desert Mounted Corps Memorial, or Light Horse Memorial, in Canberra, Australia." The 'exists as the' part seems rather clunky. Bradjamesbrown (talk) 08:10, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Changed to "is the" - better?
Thanks for your comments, Brad. I believe I have addressed the two comments above, please let me know if you think that further changes are needed. Dana boomer (talk) 22:46, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yep, Dana, much better. Bradjamesbrown (talk) 23:01, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • References comments - locations for Herwig, Jarymowycz and Pinney? Otherwise they look fine. "The First Shot: 22 August 1914" was a really interesting read. :-) —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 19:49, 15 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for the comments. I believe I have added publishers for the above, plus a couple more I found, and made them at least somewhat consistent :) And yes, I really enjoyed that article too! Dana boomer (talk) 00:50, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: I believe this article meets the criteria. Only a couple of minor points from me:
    • in the Central Powers section, the emdash should be unspaced per WP:DASH; there are another couple of examples in Casualties section as well;
    • the page ranges in the citations should have endashes. — AustralianRupert (talk) 12:41, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for the support. I believe I've taken care of these two things. I'm not that good with dashes, however, so I may have just messed them up further :) Please check my work! Dana boomer (talk) 20:31, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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