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Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Devon County War Memorial

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

Article promoted by TomStar81 (talk) via MilHistBot (talk) 11:06, 12 October 2016 (UTC) « Return to A-Class review list[reply]

Devon County War Memorial edit

Nominator(s): HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts?

Devon County War Memorial (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

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I've been keeping a ow profile for a while, but I've been beavering away on a little project for the best part of the last year, documenting the 40-odd war memorials in English towns and villages (+1 in Wales) by the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens. Having reached my first medium-term goal of creating articles for all the memorials that din't have them, I'm now going back through to see if anything more can be done with those articles before I start improving the articles that already existed, so this is probably the first of several war memorials that will come this way. Sadly, this one is very much the poor relation to the city's memorial (by a different architect, but on my to-do list) and it's not as well-covered as some. Nonetheless, I think this is a respectable article; it breezed through GA a few months ago and I'd like a frank assessment of whether it's worth taking to FAC (my previous FAs have been much weightier articles on subjects with entire books dedicated to them). Thanks, HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 10:15, 3 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comments. As always, feel free to revert my copyediting. - Dank (push to talk)

  • "War Crosses": I'm not sure about the capitalization.
  • "THE COUNTY OF DEVON ...": Roughly speaking (roughly because I don't know for sure), FAC standards are that all caps are fine for very short quotations that were in all caps. Whether this is considered very short, I don't know.
  • Support on prose per my standard disclaimer. These are my edits. - Dank (push to talk) 17:50, 6 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Images are appropriately licensed. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:37, 8 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Almost supporting Looks like a decent article which summarises the literature well. I looked to see if I could find something on how much it cost to build, but couldn't find a figure. Some copyediting points below:

  • "stands just to the west of the cathedral, in alignment with the altar." - I wasn't sure about this phrasing. Does it mean that it faced the altar? Or that it faced away from the altar? Or was in some other sort of alignment? I suspect that this means it faced the altar.
    • I assumed it just meant it was in line with the altar (ie if you walked in a straight line from the cross, you'd end up at the altar—solid walls notwithstanding!).
  • "The area around the memorial was remodelled after archaeological excavations in the 1970s." " As a result, the area was remodelled by Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe,..." - this suggests that the remodelling was driven in some way by the excavations - could the article clarify what the link was? Why did the discovery of Roman remains mean that a processional way was built?
    • I was under the impression that the remodelling was done to tidy the area up after the excavation, but I can't find that in the sources. Bear with me while I dig out the book (I've moved house since I wrote this!).
  • "Lutyens was also responsible for Castle Drogo, to the north of Exeter." - certainly true, but the positioning of the text implies that his work there had a link to his constructing this altar; if so, probably worth spelling it out.
    • I've put this in a bit more context now; I don't think there's a direct connection (if there was Skelton would have had more to say about it).
  • "Despite this, the authorities were determined..." - which authorities?
    • Good question. Again, bear with me while I dig out the book.
  • "The memorial is one of two civic war memorials in Exeter, " - the tense here moves from the past to the current, and then back again, which feels awkward/ uncertain
    • I've slightly rewritten this; see what you think.
  • "Exeter Cathedral also contains memorials to the Devonshire Regiment and the Wessex Field Ambulance. The Devon County War Memorial Committee agreed to support the construction of a battlefield memorial at La Ville-aux-Bois-lès-Pontavert in France to honour the 2nd Battalion of the Devonshire Regiment, who endured particularly heavy fighting at Bois des Buttes during the Third Battle of the Aisne." - this bit makes the paragraph rather hard to read - it breaks up the first sentence and the main argument in the paragraph. Could it become a footnote, as it doesn't directly relate to the monument?
    • I've reworded it. I'd like to keep it in the prose because the proximity of so many different memorials is interesting, and the battlefield memorial is directly relevant since the county memorial committee funded it.
  • "At the unveiling ceremony, Lord Fortescue—chairman of the County War Memorial Committee—estimated..." - he's been introduced three paragraphs above, so I wasn't sure you needed to remind the reader as to who he was.
    • Fair enough; gone.
  • "The prince's visit" - I think the MOS would have this as "The Prince's visit" I think. Hchc2009 (talk) 11:33, 8 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]


Support Comments All good, but a few suggestions.

  • Section 1; para 1; In the sentence "the largest British war memorial anywhere in the world", "anywhere" may be removed. Because it doesn't add any details. Just "the largest British war memorial in the world" would be fine.
    • You have a point; I put it there because I din't want to give the impression it was the largest memorial in Britain (it's in France), as opposed to the largest memorial to British forces. Do you have a suggestion for an alternative?
  • Section 2; para 2; In the last sentence, it is "...our the 2nd Battalion of the Devonshire Regiment, who endured particularly hea...", I prefer "...our the 2nd Battalion of the Devonshire Regiment, that particularly endured hea..."
    • Sorry but I think "endured particularly" makes more sense—it's the losses that were significant, not the way they were endured.
  • Section 3; De-link the dup links of Dartmoor and Historic England from para 1 and para 4 respectively. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 03:07, 9 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Lead; The first line "The Devon County War Memorial is a First World War memorial designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens situa...." may be bit confusing to a general reader. For instance, at once, I mistook it as the first World War memorial that was built, instead of memorial of First World War. Please revise this sentence to eliminate this confusion.
    • I tweaked it slightly by adding a couple of commas and an "and"; do you think it's clearer now?
  • Could add citations to infobox as the military memorial template has field for the sources regarding the information mentioned in the box? This is not a must, but it would be good if you can. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 13:46, 9 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
As per MOS:LEAD, you may drop the citations. That's OK. But what about the reference number that is mentioned in the infobox? It is nowhere mentioned in prose nor cited. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 00:32, 10 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The reference number is the Historic England ID number, which is part of the title of reference #1 (it's also inherently self-verifiable, because the ID number alone is enough to find HE's records). :) HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:15, 10 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support as all issues were addressed. Good work Mitchell. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 02:11, 11 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks very much. I really appreciate you taking the time to review it. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 07:42, 11 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • @HJ Mitchell: The toolbox reflink checker reports that one of your external links is a probable 301 redirect, please advise on whether the tool is correct in this assumption or not. TomStar81 (Talk) 07:58, 12 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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