Talk:Russian battleship Potemkin

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Featured articleRussian battleship Potemkin is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.
Main Page trophyThis article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on October 9, 2016.
On this day... Article milestones
DateProcessResult
May 4, 2013Good article nomineeListed
July 24, 2013WikiProject A-class reviewApproved
September 30, 2015Featured article candidatePromoted
On this day... Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on June 27, 2007, June 27, 2013, June 27, 2015, June 27, 2017, June 27, 2019, and June 27, 2020.
Current status: Featured article

Untitled[edit]

It is usually written in simplified form Потемкин in Russia (instead of Потёмкин), but it is still pronounced in English "Potyomkin", not "Potyemkin" (in fact, it is pronounced "Patyomkin" because of unstressed "o") Pibwl 23:58, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Merge[edit]

Russian battleship Potemkin and Battleship Potemkin uprising are both integral to the history of the battleship. The content of this article is largely duplicated in the other anyway. They ought to be merged under the name of the ship. Michael Z. 2006-10-16 22:24 Z

Support[edit]

  1. (nominator) Michael Z. 2006-10-16 22:24 Z
  2. Support shoy 19:32, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Oppose[edit]

Discussion[edit]

WikiProject class rating[edit]

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 05:07, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

WW1 career[edit]

It had a notable career in ww1 clashing with Goeben (as a part of a squadron) several times, each time forcing it to retire.

[1] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.137.118.206 (talk) 21:07, 1 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Timeline section[edit]

The timeline section to some extent contradicts the origins section. The timeline section is also complete uncited. Please can someone add proper citations to reliable sources. (Communist propaganda films do not count as reliable sources.) If the timeline section cannot be provided with citations to reliable sources, it will be deleted.--Toddy1 (talk) 17:43, 26 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Main armament muzzle velocity "9,160 ft/s (2,792 m/s)"?[edit]

This is clearly an error. The muzzle velocity on naval guns of this sort is nowhere near the claimed 9160 fps. The 2792 claimed as "meters per second" might be plausible as "feet per second." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.127.187.149 (talk) 17:24, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Good catch.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 18:03, 31 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Engvar[edit]

As of this version from 2006 the article was stable and a non-stub in British English. --John (talk) 08:30, 5 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In popular culture[edit]

The Soviet SSBN appear in "The Spy Who Loved Me" carrys the name Potemkin. --95.222.191.133 (talk) 02:53, 27 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comments[edit]

I'm not well-versed in MILHIST conventions, so ignore at will:

  • "All dates used in this article are New Style" this note seems to be irrelevant.
    • Imperial Russia didn't adopt the Gregorian calendar reforms, so they were about 10 days behind the calendar used in the west.
  • Why is the Goeben referred to as Yavuz Sultan Selim in the lede but never elsewhere? Confusing easter egg etc. Suggest using Ottoman name during description of battle but state somewhere that this is the renamed Goeben.
    • Excellent catch; I've switched every reference over to the Turkish name.
  • "They were intercepted by the German battlecruiser" the ship is no longer German.
    • Indeed.
  • Is there a WP:MOS rule about nbsp between dates and months e.g. 2  October? I see nbsps before other units of measurement
    • No.
  • "Panteleimon and the other Russian pre-dreadnoughts" can't use "the" without previous mention, so change "the" to the specific number instead.
    • Reworded this bit, see if it's clearer for you.
  • Why aren't the other instances of renaming the ship mentioned in the lede?
    • Too much detail, IMO, for the lede.
  • "after the first dreadnought entered service" wl dreadnought (I didn't because there may be a specific wl), and explain that dreadnoughts supplanted/superseded (or whatever the correct military term is) the pre-dreadnought shis en masse so that's why Potemkin was relegated to secondary roles...perhaps say the dreadnoughts became the capital ships?
    • See how it reads now.
  • "The new design combined shorter guns with" I don't know how much detail is needed here but certainly need concrete comparison of Potemkin's with Peresvet's. Comparison should offer concrete details re why the former's guns were more appropriate.... I put "shorter guns" just as a placeholder; you need "[detail] guns with range [detail]" or whatever specific details the designers thought were more appropriate.
    • Reworked this as well.
  • Lose the final blockquote, add that the film is considered a classic of propaganda, and if you're in a particulalry expansive mood, you might even add that it was a favorite of Goebbels who constantly referred to it and exhorted movie-makers to emulate it
    • OK, lemme find see if I can find a cite for that statement.
      • I'm not so sure about adding a bit about the film as you suggested above, as the whole legacy section is tied to the ship's role in the movie and the mutiny's effect on later history.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 01:32, 12 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I never have been and never will have anything but grudging acceptance for the "one cite at the end of the paragraph" style. Forex, I believe direct quotes must be cited immediately. Please see the cite needed I added. • 

Lingzhi(talk) 12:43, 8 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

    • Just out of curiosity, what is your preferred method of citing? And you are indeed correct about the cite immediately following a quote, now to look it up... Thanks for your thorough review. I've made a lot of changes, so I'm anxious to get your opinion of them.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 00:50, 12 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
      • I'll try to keep looking at the article... As for cites, I suppose that to some degree it varies on a case-by-case basis, except for direct quotes. The latter should always be cited immediately, very preferably including the specific page number where the quote is found. As for other things, it depends on how many sources you can find, and how many details are unique to each source. Citing every damn sentence is massively annoying and n00bish; in contrast, many people (other than me) accept the "one quote at the end" method. A happy medium might be to write a "one quote at the end" paragraph then add in one or two "unique details" in each para from a source other than the one at the end. If 3 or 4 or 5 sources give the same info, especially in a historical account, surely there must be some few differences in the details offered. So first write out a paragraph. Find details that only 1 or at most 2 sources offer, and cite a couple or three of those to the relevant sources. Then kinda put a cite at the end, pointing to the most famous or authoritative source. That last cite kinda has implied scope over the whole paragraph. Does that make sense? But that's only if you have many sources... • Lingzhi(talk) 04:19, 12 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
        • It wasn't so much here because McLaughlin is the dominant source for all the non-Mutiny/film stuff, but my rule of thumb is to cite every time you change a source in a paragraph and otherwise at the end if everything in the para is from the same source. Sometimes I'll multi source things if the source changes every clause because it's just too damn annoying to splatter cites like that across a paragraph, but most times I don't really need to.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 05:03, 12 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
          • I agree. I dislike "one cite at the end", but many others think it's OK. And your other comments seem reasonable too. • Lingzhi(talk) 05:15, 12 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Transliteration[edit]

The transliteration that you're trying to use is not that used in any of my sources. What's yours?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 14:26, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ship owners[edit]

The infobox is for the legal owners of the ship, neither of which were the mutineers or the Romanians. Both of them had de facto control, not de jure ownership, which remained with the Russian Empire throughout. The mutineers had no legal authority to transfer ownership to the Romanians, who only hoisted their flag as a matter of punctilio before returning it to the actual owners.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:10, 5 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've deleted the Romanian career section of the infobox, for the reasons given above. I've also deleted your malformed citations as Bascomb has better and more thorough information. I've added more information on the hoisting of the Romanian flag and their taking possession the ship so I hope this satisfies you. I need to dig up a copy of the Warship International article to verify that Elisabeta actually fired blanck rounds at Potemkin, but I remain unconvinced that her actions warrant a separate article and will likely send that to WP:AfD. What you should do is add that bit to the article on the cruiser, but you need a page number when you do so.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 15:13, 6 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's worth pointing out that the IP you are dealing with here is User:Romanian-and-proud, who has been indeffed for sock-puppetry. If he resumes under another IP, let me know, and I'll block and/or protect the article as necessary. Parsecboy (talk) 16:09, 6 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"The ship was relegated to secondary roles after the first dreadnought battleship entered service in late 1915"[edit]

This sentence in the lead is ludicrous. The first dreadnought entered service in 1906 (HMS Dreadnought (1906). I presume "the first Russian dreadnought" is what was meant, and have edited the article accordingly. DuncanHill (talk) 00:14, 9 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Connection to the 1905 Revolution[edit]

Nowhere in the article does it state that the mutiny had any direct connection to the 1905 Russian Revolution. The naval mutinies had some of the same underlying causes, but had no significant effect on events in St Petersburg.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 17:07, 22 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tarpaulin[edit]

@Sturmvogel 66: Hi! To answer your edit-summary question, "Do you really think that most readers know what the fully expanded version of a tarp is?" Why yes, clearly I did. But then my high-schoolers consistently amaze me by not knowing words like "ewe" or "well-to-do," so maybe most readers don't know what a tarpaulin is. (Mercy on us!) I won't argue over the need for a blue link, but I will ask you to consider that if "tarpaulin" is too eggheaded (Who'da thunk?), why not go with the everyday tarp? Is "tarpaulin" a specialized word? If so, perhaps MOS:JARGON applies: Do not introduce new and specialized words simply to teach them to the reader when more common alternatives will do. Happy New Year! YoPienso (talk) 08:02, 31 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tarpaulin is used in my sources, but I added the link because I don't believe that most readers know the word's relationship with tarp. Since it is linked, I'm don't believe that it falls under MOS:JARGON, otherwise, I'd never be able to use bow rather than "pointy-end of the ship".--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 15:23, 31 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It's hard to guess which words people will know, and they seem to know fewer and fewer these days. I'm guessing you didn't realize a tarpaulin is a tarp, so you linked it. I knew that since I was a kid, so I felt linking was unnecessary. We do need to avoid overlinking per MOS:OL, and so I'm delinking "maggots". Surely the average reader knows what a maggot is!!?? Cheers! YoPienso (talk) 20:09, 31 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
If you're not sure that people know what a word means, why on earth are you delinking terms? I err on the side of caution as I think that peoples' vocabularies are lower on average than assumed by people who read for fun. Check your assumptions at the door. About the only term that I'd be confident that most people would know out of all of those that you delinked would be riot. I think that people would know what a maggot is, but not that it's a larval form of flies and similar insects, so let them click and learn if they care to.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:37, 31 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Please do not remove other editors' comments.
I'm de-linking per MOS:OL.
People do not need to learn more about maggots in order to understand that the sailors refused to eat maggoty food.
Check my assumptions but admit yours? We do have to assume some level of reading knowledge, and this subject seems to be on the undergrad level, which means it should be written at the high school level. That means we don't have to tell them what a maggot or a submarine is, but neither will they be interested in an in-depth study of exactly what a battleship is. Please see WP:ONEDOWN. YoPienso (talk) 21:02, 31 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't remove your comments; I don't know how that happened. I think that we have vastly different assumptions about what constitutes overlinking and, having been chastised more than once for not linking jargony terms in my reviews at GA and higher levels, I tend to be very plentiful with my links as I fail to see how they detract from the article. As for a high-school student not being interested in a detailed battleship article, consider that they might have been attracted by either the film or the music inspired by the most famous incident in the ship's history. I am very aware of my assumptions as I stated above and am perfectly willing to bear that burden.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 00:47, 1 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
And it occurs to me that if I was overlinking terms, how then did not one of my multiple reviewers inform me of that fact? This is a Featured Article, after all, and has had multiple reviewers and layers of scrutiny.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 00:50, 1 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I checked out that promotion to FA and decided not to meddle with it. But since you brought it up . . . here's the article as it was at promotion, 1 Oct. 2015, with a blazing red error right in the first line and 4 list errors in the infobox. The infobox was fixed 2 days later, but the language problem in the first line lingered until 30 Dec. 2017. Since that got by the reviewers, I'm not surprised the overlinking got by them, although I'm astonished such a glaring error right in the first line passed review and remained for over 2 yrs.
If your deletion of my comment was an inadvertent error on your part, no problem then. Here are the diffs: 1.Your removal. 2.My restoration.
Regarding assumptions, I assume you're retracting your dictum to leave mine at the door. Cheers! YoPienso (talk) 05:33, 1 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Nope! Those list errors are a result of code being deprecated after the promotion. And I suspect, but am not sure, that the language error is a similar case.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 14:38, 1 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The errors were there years before the promotion. The language error had been there since 30 Oct., 2006 and the infobox errors ever since it was added on 26 June 2008. YoPienso (talk) 17:51, 1 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sigh. That's not how it works. The code used to generate the list in the infobox was deprecated a couple of years ago which is why all of the old versions in which it worked properly show the list error. And I believe the same is true for the language code.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 18:31, 1 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oh. Please pardon my ignorance. Sincerely. YoPienso (talk) 20:38, 1 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Something of a drive by comment. I feel that the removal of a number of links was compliant with MOS:OL, eg submarine, maggots, rioting; and arguably marginally improves the article. However, I would consider "tarpaulin" a relatively specialist term and would guess - based on no evidence whatsoever - that the percentage of moderately educated English speakers would be in the single figures and so would support it being linked. As a drive by to the drive by, I didn't recall at first glance that "tarp" was US English for tarpaulin and would suggest that its use would make the meaning (even) less clear. Gog the Mild (talk) 20:42, 4 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'd be incline to leave the link to ship ramming and to squadron as well, different navies have different ideas about what constitutes a squadron, and the ship ramming can mean different things at different time periods - in the old times ships were intentionally rammed into others for combat, then later as that tactic became obsolete ramming became somewhat synonymous with ship collision, which is not per se the same thing. TomStar81 (Talk) 20:47, 4 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you both for your comments. For the sake of compromise I had agreed to leave the blue link on "tarpaulin," though I'm surprised two WP editors didn't know the word. Walmart--stereotyped as catering to the lower classes--advertises tarpaulins along with the abbreviated tarp.
Wrt ramming--the passage reads, "Captain Kolands of Dvenadsat Apostolov attempted to ram Potemkin and then detonate his ship's magazines, but he was thwarted by members of his crew. Krieger ordered his ships to fall back, but the crew of Georgii Pobedonosets mutinied and joined Potemkin." How could anyone take that as anything other than an intentional combat collision wherein one ship rams its prow into the enemy ship? It seems to me the previously linked article, Naval ram, would only confuse the reader.
Wrt squadron--the previously linked article does nothing to sort out the various ideas about what constitutes one; it merely defines it as a group of warships smaller than a fleet, which anyone reading this article should be able to comprehend.
Do we agree not to re-link the terms I de-linked? YoPienso (talk) 23:35, 4 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Let's wait for some more comments.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 23:45, 4 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Yopienso: I am well aware of at least several meanings of the word tarpaulin. I am even aware that in the 17th century English navy the lower class ship captains from the Cromwellian period who survived into the service of Charles II were nicknamed "tarpaulins". (I shall leave the reason as an exercise for the class.) You may wish to read other's inputs a little more closely. The nearest Walmart store to where I live is several thousand miles away, as they are for many users of English Wikipedia. The point of the last comment is that what may be "obvious" to one editor, may perfectly reasonably be obscure to another. Gog the Mild (talk) 00:02, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, Gog the Mild! To be clear, and repeating from my most recent post, I have already agreed to blue-link tarpaulin.
Digression--off-topic as far as improving the article goes, but germane to the discussion of tarpaulin--
The context of the word in the article suggests a protective sheeting, not a person who raised himself by his bootstraps.
I mentioned Walmart for its lowbrow connotation. Merriam-Webster online cites to a family's "in their blue tarpaulin home" in a recent Teen Vogue magazine--again, quite lowbrow and not aimed at the word-nerd audience. Those instances support my assumption that the average reader would understand the word. But, I'm not arguing to de-link it, even though that was by first instinct and remains my preference.
I don't know what you mean with "You may wish to read other's inputs a little more closely." What did I miss?
Sturmvogel: Yes, more comments would be good. Best wishes to both, YoPienso (talk) 01:11, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

To start with the initial dispute over tarpaulin which I see is now resolved. I had never heard of a tarp until starting on wiki, I have always known it as a tarpaulin. It would be just as possible that a reader from another area which uses a variant of English would never have heard of a tarpaulin knowing it solely as a tarp hence it should be blue linked to cater for all users. This really is symptomatic of many of the proposals to delink terms, it is coming from one variant of English usage only - maggots yep known in US UK and I think AUS but is it known in India, rioting - I can recall in UK when a withdrawal of labour in a state run industry was legally a riot? The other nautical terms I think are appropriate to link in a nautical article - squadron and ram have specific nautical usages. Battleship is best linked as it has changed over time, although submarine is invariably linked in articles I would hold that everyone knows what a submarine is (we would not link ship) but the place to debate that is I would have thought would be the project, not one random drive by edit in a featured article. I feel sad that so much editor time has been spent on this, bold is fine but really instead of doubling down finding more links to dispute a better response would have been OK but I don't agree Lyndaship (talk) 08:52, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note on "tarpaulin": In the US they are commonly known as a "tarp", but this article is in British English, so Webster and Walmart don't really count, do they? Sammy D III (talk) 18:11, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
They count doubly since they're American and demonstrate the British usage is well known in the USA. ;) YoPienso (talk) 04:21, 6 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
"Tarpaulin" appears to be UK English and is used in this UK English article. I said that "tarp" is "commonly known as a "tarp"" in the US. I thought that implied that "tarpaulin" might not be.
Your dictionary link uses "Sune Engel Rasmussen and Nazih Osseiran | Photographs by Lorenzo Tugnoli for The Wall Street Journal" in an article about Syria. That is your example of common US use of "tarpaulin"? Or was "Teen Vogue" the earlier example? They couldn't have used "in their blue tarpaulin home" for dramatic effect? Sammy D III (talk) 15:52, 7 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Small MOS issues[edit]

Hey Sturm, I know you saw my small edits on this page but do you mind to address these comments.

  • "attacked by the Ottoman battlecruiser Yavuz Sultan Selim" This is a sea of blue.
  • "her boilers to coal firing at a cost of 20,000 rubles" I think we should link this "rubles" to the "Imperial ruble (14th century – 1917)" section of that article.
  • In the image "File:Panteleimon1906-1910.jpg" the word circa needs a circa template.
  • I see that the article uses a lot of the word "feet" here. Per MOS:UNITNAMES we should write short written units fully a few times. So it should be reduced.
  • I think the Crimea needs the word "Peninsula" at first mentions in the lead and the body.
  • Both the February Revolution and the October Revolution are misleading. You already told put that all dates are used as New Style but they are not. So if someone clicks on one of them then they see it actually was in March or November. I think a note or so or a little bit of explanations is needed?
  • I believe that the section "Mutiny" has three lines which are sandwiched per MOS:SANDWICHING. Could you move the right images a little bit lower?
  • Could you also merge the last line of the section "Legacy" into the last paragraph?
  • "ship and ran her aground in Odessa harbour" Isn't the word "harbour" not capitalised because it's part of the proper noun?

These are all of them. Normally I'd do them myself but because some are bigger issues like the images and because my English isn't one of the best I'd better ask those to you and then we can discuss them before starting an edit war. ;) Cheers. CPA-5 (talk) 16:06, 31 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Well, shit, son, you done given me a lot to think about here! Especially about abbreviating units. I tend to spell most of them out each time, probably as a legacy of contests where I sometimes needed to scratch for every letter to make minimum length requirements. Lemme finish with the Bouvines and I'll start implementing your suggestions.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 16:17, 31 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]