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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Italian War of 1521

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Italian War of 1521

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Another obscure—but quite dramatic, at points—war; the article is quite comprehensive (perhaps too comprehensive), and, if nothing else, has been cited with abandon. I await your comments :-) Kirill Lokshin 03:05, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Qualified Support. This is quite good. I do have two issues that I would like to see addressed/responded to. The first, which is simple, is that I think this ends a little abruptly; I would appreciate a sentence at the end along the lines of "The fighting would only cease for good in 15XX, when XXXX and YYYY happened...", or whatever would be appropriate, just to give a nice wrap-up feel. The second issue, which may just be a personal preference of mine, is the heavy use of clauses separated by dashes, which seems to break up the text to the point of interfering with smooth readability at certain points; I would like to see the use of such clauses reduced, although it isn't a huge deal either way. In any event, great article. --RobthTalkCleanup? 03:47, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    I've added a sentence to the end that gives some indication of the rest of the Italian Wars; I didn't want to go into too much detail there, as it's really a subject for other articles. As far as the dash-separated clauses are concerned, please see my response above; I'll see what I can do, but I have a certain predilection for the things ;-) Kirill Lokshin 03:53, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    I've gone through and removed some of the dashes in favor of other constructions; hopefully that has improved the article somewhat. Kirill Lokshin 04:10, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    The new end sentence is perfect, and the dash use is now at a level I'm comfortable with. Good work. --RobthTalkCleanup? 04:13, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: Very good article. Comprehensive, neat and tight formation. Good job. Tombseye 07:21, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question: Just a detail, but why are the Swiss mercenaries mentioned as combatant in the infobox? I understand that they did much of the actual fighting, but I would say they were just "in it for the money". I would think that large parts of the other armies were also made up of foreign mercenaries, and they're not mentioned in the infobox. Jeronimo 09:08, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    Good point, since they didn't really pursue their own political goals; I've removed them from the list in the infobox. Kirill Lokshin 10:10, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    Support Jeronimo 09:51, 17 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support on wheels. An outstanding article! -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 11:19, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support well-written. Anonymous__Anonymous 11:56, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Good article. Cvene64 12:30, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose for now. The thick, choppy writing -- and especially all those dashes -- get in the way of appreciating what is here. I also think more attention needs to be given to the organization of the paragraphs within each section and the introduction of clear leads. For example, the prelude section has numerous themes that are not drawn together, and a single paragraph at the beginning summarizing the overall themes would let you rewrite this in a more coherent way. In addition, the lead tells us who was in the war, but not what sides which country was on, so we enter the article trying to figure out some real basics. We can then figure it out, but it takes some work. Sam 13:34, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    I've clarified the lead and added some more summary material to the introduction of the "Prelude" section. I've also further reduced the use of dashes; unfortunately, I'm not sure to what extent the writing can be made less thick without omitting much of the valuable detail here. Kirill Lokshin 15:00, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    I won't get a chance to review until the weekend, but will look then. I may take a crack at a section to show how I'd do the "thinning". Thanks, Sam 15:17, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    That would be quite appreciated. I'll try to give it a few more rounds of stylistic editing myself; but I'm at a slight disadvantage, since I know what the text is supposed to say ;-) Kirill Lokshin 15:34, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    I think after the last few rounds of copyediting much of the more complicated sentence structure—and almost all of the dashes—have been cleaned up; how does the article look now? Kirill Lokshin 18:34, 18 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    Make that all of the dashes ;-) Kirill Lokshin 18:49, 18 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    It has come a long way. A lot of good work has been done, yet more is needed. There is a pattern of complex sentences with two thoughts joined together by a comma and the word "and." One or both pharses in the complex sentence has either a lengthy participial phrase ("by which time...") or appositive ("notably that of..."). This results in 3 or 4 thoughts fighting to be heard in a single sentence. A key to finding such sentences is that they usually have many commas. Break them up, and the flow will be much improved. A second problem is that there are many extraneous leads. "However..." is the favorite; "however" usually adds nothing and weakens the sentence. Many sentences also lead with a date, such as "in May" or "by August." There is nothing wrong with this some of the time, but there are simply too many of them. I edited to mix the dates up, putting some at the beginning some at the end. I would change my overall rating from "Object" to at least "Neutral" and probably even "weak support" right now if the only issue were the writing. However, in editing I also realized that this article suffers from being too strictly chronological. I get lost because the narrative moves among the different fronts without explanation. Someone grounded in the geography and time period will follow easily, but the average American reader who opens the front page to read this article will have little idea of what is going on. This article either needs to be organized differently, to separate out the battles on different fronts and to separate the political and military developments where possible, or it needs a section outlining the geography up front and a little more attention within to putting military and political developments in separate paragraphs. It may be that the prelude can be used for some of this. The article could also use a good map showing the major troop movements and battles, but I do not know how hard that will be. I did do some copyediting in the intro and in the "France at Bay" section. Since I have not done the reading, you will want to check my changes. Thanks, Sam 19:54, 18 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't really agree with you regarding geography versus chronology. Unlike more modern wars, warfare during this period did not involve well-defined or distinct geographic fronts; an army would take part in a campaign and then simply disappear from the region. It's my opinion that a chronological structure (which does, in almost every section, treat regions separately, because campaigns generally occurred in a single place) produces a narrative that's easier to understand than a forced split along geographic lines would; the same can be said for attempting to split political points (which, except for the prelude and ending, were only minor details) from the military ones.
    (The geography involved here is that of Western Europe. I think it's unreasonable to have an introductory course to European geography in every war article—the curious reader can simply follow all the links for various places that are already present in the text—and would point out that none of the FAs on such topics do so.)
    I will continue to work on copyediting and improving the wording and sentence structure, however. Kirill Lokshin 20:39, 18 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    Understood on the chronology; I do think historical FAs overwhelming follow a chronological sequence, in many cases to their great disadvantage, but I won't force my viewpoint on you there. Many of them also pull out key thematic elements for separate treatment (see, for example, the Martin Luther article), and establishing those themes can help hold the whole together. It is not the geography of major locations, like Lombardy, Provence or Milan, that worried me, but of Artois and Boccacia, for example. By the way, I'm withdrawing my opposition at this point - in rereading, there are a number of things done better here than other FAs. For example, I think the ability to put the story in broader historical context here is done better than the Martin Luther article, even if that one is better written. Best, Sam 02:26, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, Martin Luther is a biographical article (and on someone quite important in the "big picture" of history, to boot), which goes beyond pure narrative; discussion of the broad themes for this period is probably more appropriate to the base Italian Wars article than each of the individual episodes. But this probably isn't the best place to have a debate on the use of narrative style in general. ;-)
    Fair point about some of the more obscure locations; I'll try to add some explanatory wording when they're mentioned, at least where the actual locations are meaningful. (Did you mean Bicocca, incidentally?) Kirill Lokshin 02:56, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, Bicocca. I guess I made my point in a rather ironic way. Sam 03:02, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    I've added some brief comments about the general location to some of the more obscure places mentioned. If I notice any other ones that need it, I'll add them too; please let me know if you notice anything that strikes you as needing annotation. Thanks! Kirill Lokshin 03:26, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Support A terrific, well-sourced article. Prose could use help in certain spots, but it's not a big enough problem to cause opposition, for me at least.UberCryxic 15:02, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I tried reading the article thoroughly before voting but I could not. The writing is too thick at times. Sentences are too lengthy.Also, too many sentences with the following structure ("xxx ;yyy") can be confusing to the reader. A copyedit by someone unfamiliar with the text should be performed. If/when that happens leave me a message on my talk page. Joelito (talk) 18:06, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ok I made a copyedit. It should read a bit more smoothly now.UberCryxic 22:42, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Looks rather cleaner now ;-) Kirill Lokshin 00:05, 17 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have removed my oppose but I will not support yet. It still needs anothe round of copyedit but the article is marvelous as it is now. Joelito (talk) 14:10, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I also don't agree that a "proper" map is necessary for an an article to receive "FA" status if the rest of the article meets the criteria. A recent entry to receive FA- Battle of Midway, doesn't contain any kind of a map. A good map is nice, but it shouldn't be a prerequisite. Cla68 17:26, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Nicely done. I like maps, but don't think of them as indispensible. You may want to think about whether you're now a bit heavy on the images with the addition of these maps, though it's a nice collection of images. Sam 17:44, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! I could probably remove one of the maps if it's really a problem, but I think there's still enough spacing between the images that it doesn't look particularly crowded. Kirill Lokshin 17:51, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. This article looks really good, although there needs to be more info on the casualties in the battlebox. Mercenary2k 12:35 AM June 20, 2006
    There's no casualty information in the infobox because there isn't enough historical data to arrive at meaningful counts for the entire war. All we have are a handful of figures from indivudial battles, which doesn't account for smaller engagements, sieges, skirmishes, attrition, disease, and so forth; it's my opinion that having casualty information that's substantially incorrect is worse than having none at all. Kirill Lokshin 04:33, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
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