Talk:Black Brunswickers

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	Black Brunswickers has been listed as one of the History good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can delist it, or ask for a reassessment.
	An entry from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on April 11, 2007.
September 20, 2007 Good article nominee Listed

Interesting article, but needs a rewrite by someone whose native language is English.

How about letting us know what "Brunswicker" means? Steve Dufour 02:59, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I see that this is mentioned but I missed it. Steve Dufour 03:00, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Native language English? My native language is English. I thought it was written fine. Does anyone else have similar problems with the article? --- ÅñôñÿMôús ^{Dîššíd3nt} 03:32, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

There is some, ah, clumsiness in the article: "most bitter disapprovers" for one. And these troops were dressed in black years (c 1809) before their commander was killed (1815), so that couldn't have been why they dressed in black. Finally, you cannot cite Wikipedia as a reference. Madman 13:25, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GA review

I have taken on Black Brunswickers for review under the Good Article criteria, as nominated on the Good article candidates page by User:Anonymous Dissident. You'll be pleased to hear that the article meets none of the quick-fail criteria, so I will shortly be conducting an in-depth review and will post the results below.

Where an article is not an outright pass, but requires relatively minor additional work to be brought up to GA standard, I will normally place it on hold - meaning that editors have around week to address any issues raised. As a precaution to prevent failure by default should this occur, if editors are likely to be unavailable over the next ten days or so, feel free to leave a message on my talk page so we can arrange a more convenient time for review. Regards, EyeSerene^TALK 13:21, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GA on hold

I have now reviewed this article under the six Good article criteria, and have commented in detail on each criterion below:

1 Well written FAIL

1.1 Prose

This is the main area that needs work. Although the text is reasonable, it would benefit from a general copyedit for grammar and clarity. There are quite a few instances of words that give the impression they have been plucked from a thesaurus without a full understanding of their meaning and usage ;)

I have given some examples of concerns below (this list is not exhaustive):

• "...a group of foot and cavalry infantry..." This needs clarification - I'd assume by "cavalry infantry" this means "mounted infantry"?
• "...who were formed in 1809 after the war broke out between the French and the Austrians" Which war? To give the article context, it would help to explicitly state this was during the period of the Napoleonic Wars.
• "It is known that the Duke was one of the most bitter disapprovers of Napoleon's occupation of Germany." Who is the Duke, and Duke of what? If this is Frederick William, this needs explicitly stating (maybe earlier in the paragraph where he is first mentioned). Also "disapprovers" is not a word - maybe replace with "critics"?
• "...they were, in consideration, reformed members of the Austrian Palace Guard" I'm not sure I understand this sentence, but I think replacing "consideration" with something like "actuality" might get closer to what the author intends...?
• "...because of their dark and morose attire[I], and their capture of Brunswick, temporal as it was..." To be honest, this entire paragraph needs reworking. However, I'd recommend replacing "morose" with "somber", and "temporal" with "temporary".
• "He died at approximately 6pm, within minutes of being shot." Replace "6pm" with 6:00pm" (see WP:MOS#Times)
• "The battle fought here at Quatre Bras is thought to be one of the most significant that the Brunswickers participated in, and it is this battle they are perhaps primarily remembered for." This sentence is rather vague ("thought to be", "perhaps"). Could this be reworded to give a more concrete assertion? (eg "According to X, Quatre Bras was the most significant engagement that the Brunswickers participated in, and it is this battle they are primarily remembered for.")

All Y Done -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 08:18, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

1.2 Manual of Style

The article generally adheres to the MoS. Headings and layout comply with the recommended style, and the lead is a fair summary of the article. Citations are formatted using the appropriate templates (always a pleasant surprise!). The only comments I have here are:

• There should not be two sections labelled "Notes". Maybe they could be merged... although my personal preference would be to see the two sentences in the first actually included in the article proper - there's some good stuff there that a reader might otherwise overlook.
• Some years are wikilinked and others not. Really only full dates (ie Day, Month and Year) should be wikilinked to allow reader preferences to operate on them; linking partial dates IMO rarely adds anything to an article.
• ref tags should directly follow punctation with no intervening spaces; there are a few instances throughout the text of references that don't do this.

All Y Done -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 08:28, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

2 Factual accuracy PASS

The article is pretty well-sourced, to reliable sources, and there are no significant gaps in the referencing.

3 Coverage PASS but see comments

The article coverage is focused although not particularly broad. More information on the battle honours etc of the unit (other than Quatre Bras) would be nice, but this may be down to a lack of suitable secondary sources (you'd know better than I). Personally I'd rather see less - and have it properly sourced - than more, but without references... so I'll pass this criteria and leave it as a suggestion for future improvement ;)

4 Neutrality PASS

The tone is neutral and the article contains no evidence of bias.

5 Stability PASS

From the article history there is no evidence of recent major changes or edit-warring.

6 Images FAIL

Both images used have suitable copyright licenses. However:

• The caption for the first, whilst adequate, could be more informative
• The caption for the second: "done" is rather unencyclopedic, maybe "painted" or "completed" instead?

All Y Done -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 08:29, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

As a result of the above concerns I have placed the article on hold. This gives editors up to a week to address the issues raised (although in some circumstances the hold period can be briefly extended). To help with tracking, editors may like to strike through each comment as it is dealt with, or use the template {{done}} after each comment.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or are ready for a re-review. In any case I'll check back here in seven days (around 22nd September). All the best, EyeSerene^TALK 18:39, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GA pass

Congratulations on an excellent copyedit on the suggestions provided. I have now passed Black Brunswickers as a Good Article, and listed it as such on the Good Articles page under History > War and military > Armies and military units. For the record, Anonymous Dissident contributed significantly to this GA pass.

Well done! EyeSerene^TALK 10:30, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 10:37, 20 September 2007 (UTC)