# Talk:French cruiser Descartes

This review is transcluded from Talk:French cruiser Descartes/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: Usernameunique (talk · contribs) 20:11, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Lead

the unsuccessful search — It's implied by the lack of further discussion, but the fact that the search was unsuccessful isn't mentioned in the body.
Clarified in the body
Design

a war scare with Italy in the late 1880s — I think I've asked this before, but is there an article about this?
No, there isn't (or a relevant section in an article)
French Navy — Link to French Navy?
Done
The Descartes class were — This should be the "class was", no?
Fixed
383–401 officers and enlisted men — No breakdown available?
No
She had a cruising radius of 5,500 nautical miles (10,200 km; 6,300 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph) and 1,000 nmi (1,900 km; 1,200 mi) at 19.5 knots. — Does "cruising radius" mean how far she could go one one tank of gas (so to speak)? Also, any reason 19.5 knots isn't converted?
Yes, and the speed is converted a sentence earlier
Perhaps Pascal should be introduced in this section, and are there any comparisons worth mentioning? Of course, most of that is best addressed in Descartes-class cruiser.
Added a mention of Pascal in the first para, but the two ships were more or less identical, so no comparisons warranted
That they were largely identical is itself worth mentioning, I think. --Usernameunique (talk) 18:07, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
But isn't that implicit in their being a class? The assumption is the classes are made up of generally homogeneous ships - it seems excessive to explain this in every article on a ship that's part of a class
Yeah, probably. I was thinking of this review, where the boilers were mentioned as varying by ship. But that's probably an exception to the normal rule. --Usernameunique (talk) 14:55, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
Armor protection consisted of a curved armor deck — "armored deck", or is an "armor deck" a thing? Although if there's a way of not using "armor ... armor" that might be better.
Yes, an armor deck is a thing - see any of the mentions here
Is it a think that could ever be turned into an article? Even a red link could make it clear that it is a specific type of protection.
That's probably a good idea - we have articles on belt armor, torpedo bulkhead, torpedo bulge, etc, so I don't see why we wouldn't eventually have one on deck armor too.
No information on the interior?
Nope
Service history

Descartes reportedly reached — Why "reportedly"?
That's what the source says - "Descartes was reported as attaining 21.8 knots..."
On 25 October 1900, an accidental propellant fire aboard Descartes, part of a series of fires that resulted from unstable Poudre B charges. — The sentence is missing a verb. Any more information about the fire?
No, I don't have any information on casualties or damage, unfortunately; sometimes these events were reported in periodicals at the time (see for instance French cruiser Forbin, but I wasn't able to track one down on this one)
At the start of World War I in August 1914, Descartes was assigned — What happened during 1908–13?
There aren't any records that mention the ship during that period
The first two sentences of the third paragraph jump from August back to July. Is there a better way of phrasing it?
Reworked
The declaration of war between France and Germany on 4 August interrupted these plans — Now I'm even more confused. I thought she was recalled home because of the war?
The war started in stages - Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on 28 July but France wasn't at war with Germany for several days (but just about everybody could see it coming)
Any more details on the WWI history? Was she involved in any fighting?
No, no battles of note took place in the Caribbean - Karlsruhe briefly tangled with a British cruiser but that's about it
Notes

Can "France" be given a different descriptor? It sounds like the country, or someone's last name. At the very least, it should be put in italics (to mirror Service Performed).
That's the title in the journal - the standard formatting for article titles is non-italicized (as opposed to the journal title, which should be in italics). There's no editor or author of the section listed, so we can't go that route either.
Shouldn't "France" and Service Performed have the year?
It's there - look at the end of the citation; formats for journal articles are different than books
Yes, it's in "References"—but in "Notes", the citations render as "Service Performed, p. 299" and the like, whereas every other short citation (e.g., "Brassey 1908, pp. 49, 53") includes the year.
Fixed the italics in the notes, but the years for Brassey's is only to differentiate between the different volumes
Right, I'd missed the ones on the left that don't have years. Looks good.
References

A lot of the public-domain works could probably be linked.
Highlighting this in case it was overlooked. --Usernameunique (talk) 18:07, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
Is the first name for "Garbett, H." available?
No, unfortunately
Overall

Parsecboy, the nomination will probably have to be failed unless you add more specific publisher locations. Other than that, looks good. --Usernameunique (talk) 20:55, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
That's not in the Good Article criteria and I won't be doing that. Thanks. Parsecboy (talk) 17:22, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
Parsecboy, responses above. The comment about publisher locations was a joke—sorry if the context got lost along the way. --Usernameunique (talk) 18:07, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
I wondered, but you know how they say humor isn't translated well through the internet ;) Parsecboy (talk) 19:46, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, someone once suggested the invention of left-slanting italics to indicate things written in jest—not a bad idea. Left a few comments above, but nothing that requires edits. Otherwise, all looks good except the comment about linking to public-domain works appears to have been overlooked. --Usernameunique (talk) 14:55, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
Parsecboy, I see you've added most of the URLS; I've added the remaining two (of the public domain works), so am passing now. --Usernameunique (talk) 17:56, 11 June 2020 (UTC)