Talk:Weather ship/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Jezhotwells (talk) 19:37, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

I shall be reviewing this article against the Good Article criteria, following its nomination for Good Article status.

Disambiguations: none found.

Linkrot: two found and fixed, actually a missing period in the URL.[1] Jezhotwells (talk) 19:44, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Checking against GA criteria

GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

   On July 1, 1950, weather ship B ("Baker") went from being a jointly operated ship between Canada and the United States to a craft only operated by the United States. poorly phrased

   On July 22, 1950, the Netherlands and the United States jointly operated weather ship A ("Able") in the Atlantic. Just for one day?

   The Korean War led to the discontinuing of weather vessel O ("Oboe") on July 31, 1950 in the Pacific, with ship S ("Sugar") established on September 10, 1950 Why?

   There was no findable information about the reference I found, so that question can't be answered for the time being. I fixed your two line issues. Thegreatdr (talk) 05:36, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

   Weather ship V transferred in responsibility from the United States Navy to the Coast Guard and United States Weather Bureau on September 30, 1951. poorly written.

   Fixed. Thegreatdr (talk) 05:49, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

   Please get this copy-edited throughout. The prose is very poor, ungrammatical and unclear. I have made some minor copy-edits but the article should not have been nominated without copy-editing. As it stands the article begs more questions than it answers. It appears to be a list of disconnected statements, needs a good narrative flow and explanations of why actions happened.

   Organisation is poor. A section on the ships themselves, their origins, etc. Were any purpose built? would be good; a section on the governance of the Ocean Weather Service as well.

• I will look into it, but I didn't run across any such organization. If you know such an organization existed, provide a reference. Thegreatdr (talk) 20:56, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

P. G. Satow (1948). The Ocean Weather Service. Journal of Navigation, 1, pp 80-84 doi:10.1017/S0373463300034597[2] for instance, also [3] & [4]. Jezhotwells (talk) 21:31, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

1. The lead does not fully summarise the article, please see WP:LEAD.

No mention of German WWII service, no mention of which oceans covered,

1. The oceans mentioned are now covered. Sounds like you want more WWII "pre-history" in the lead, which can be added. Thegreatdr (talk) 05:54, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

   Well referenced, except for the table of ships and positions, reliable sources, no OR

   One more reference, and that issue will be resolved. Thegreatdr (talk) 19:16, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

   The article focusses very much on the US weather ships. Who operated those from other nations? I think the UK Met Office operated some at one time. [5], [6] and [7] may give some leads although they are no in themselves reliable sources. More detail could be provided about the different ways in which observations were made and collated by shore based establishments. A little about the establishment and governance of the Ocean Weather Service would be good. It should be made clear how the weather ships lost in WWII were lost, I imagine U-boats played a part. The capture of German weather ships was one of the crucial steps in the breaking of the Enigma code, so this should be noted. Do the weather buoys transmit their data to satellites? If so this should be mentioned.

   That's an easy one. The US National Weather Service provided a monthly bulletin which detailed the changes in weather ships, and I wasn't able to find references like that from other countries, like Great Britain. Since the US operated at least half of them at any given time, it's going to be weighted towards the US. That's unavoidable. Why would esoteric information about weather buoys transmissions be important to this article, rather than the weather buoy article? Thegreatdr (talk) 20:56, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

   It looks there is plenty of other information available if it is searched for, [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13] I think it worth mentioning how the replacement weather buoys transmit the information, also how the weather ships did. Also one other thing. How did they keep station? Steaming around in circles? This is typical of the type of detail missing. Jezhotwells (talk) 21:31, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

   Wow. I bet that information wasn't found because I had not uncovered the Ocean Weather Service during my round of searching 1-2 months ago. The search terms I was using included the words weather ship and ocean vessel. I find them now that I use your suggestion a as search term. That was very helpful. Thank you for your help. Information regarding how weather ships transmitted data is now in the article. Non-US info has been added. Thegreatdr (talk) 19:16, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

   Tagged and captioned.

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

   Overall this article is C-class, it has promise to be developed into a good article, but it needs a lot more work. I have pointed out shortcomings above. When it has been improved and copy-edited, please take it to peer review before renominating. Jezhotwells (talk) 20:39, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

   As you had mentioned about the article, this review opened up as many questions as it answered, which is a good way to start communication. The way this review has been conducted so far is one of them. I've consulted the wikipedia review criteria once more (I've reviewed nearly 40 articles myself) to see if quick fail was the best way to handle the issues you brought up, and for the reference and content issues, it might have been. Then again, those are nearly resolved now, after just over one day of editing. As for peer review, the wikipedia article on the subject says that it is meant for high-quality articles, which to me means GA or better. Since it is not GA by your definition, it's not going through peer review, which has turned out to be less than helpful for articles I've submitted for FA in the past. More feedback on problems with the prose is requested. Thegreatdr (talk) 18:47, 25 March 2011 (UTC)