Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Battle of the Netherlands/archive1

Battle of the Netherlands edit

First FAC

Self-nomination Fall Gelb : When the eyes of the world are directed at France, the war also rages in the Netherlands.A comprehensible,detailed and well-written article about a relatively unknown chapter of the second world war.The story of the heroic, yet futile struggle of a small country against the nazi juggernaut of 1940. Sander 20:53, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Weak object It's a very nice article, and I'd be happy to support if/when the references are cleaned up. I see two pretty decent sized problems right now. First, only 3 sources is somewhat limited for a featured article, as it isn't providing a very wide range of opinions/information. Second, see Wikipedia:Inline Citation, as that's a necessity. Definetly fixable, and I'd easily change my vote. Staxringold 21:13, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Object, for now. Needs some careful copy-editing and rewriting for clarity, more formal language, etc. Some examples of problems:

The first paragraph gives no years: "The battle lasted from 10 May until 17 May during..." and "The battle ended after the devastating bombing of Rotterdam...", i.e. bombing of Rotterdam in what year?

Passages such as: "The Netherlands had been neutral during World War I but — mainly because of the Boer Wars — at the time sympathies were clearly more on the German side, although the Dutch were shocked by the atrocities committed against the Belgian civilian population and sheltered more than a million refugees. In fact at the end of the war, when the German Kaiser Wilhelm II fled, he was given a castle called Huis ter Doorn in the Netherlands where he lived until his death in 1941." are unclear, with apparent non-sequiturs.

And phrases like: "The governments just didn't see it as 'such a big deal'" and "The Dutch equipment shortages were so bad it actually limited the number" are too informal, agrammatical and confusing ("governments" ? how many did the Netherlands have?). If these sorts of problems are fixed up it will be easier to judge what otherwise seems like a promising article. Pinkville 22:08, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. Fantastic article, but:

It lacks inline citations
The prose is not "brilliant" and isn't formal enough for an encyclopaedia.
There seems to be a NPOV problem in the "The Dutch forces" section (among others) - who, for example, thinks "the most obvious deficiency of the Dutch Army lay in its shortage of armour"? Statements like these need to be attributed to some authority, otherwise it's POV/OR.
The article peters out in the end - the last four sections seem to be afterthoughts.

Mikker ^(...) 00:26, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Object. The lead is too small. There are stub sections - The first days, The last days. No inline citations. Also, a map of the combat (in addition to maps of pre-war positions) would be nice, as well as more photos.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 17:19, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]