Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/USS Congress (1799)/archive2

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Karanacs 17:39, 2 March 2010 [1].

USS Congress (1799)[edit]

Nominator(s): Brad (talk) 10:13, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I withdrew the first nomination of this article as I realized that I had not explored another avenue in finding further information on this ship. Instead of searching books on ships or naval battles I found a wealth of information in biography's or autobiography's on some of the persons who themselves served on this ship. The result is a strongly expanded article that filled in a lot of previous gaps and also added information not previously mentioned. --Brad (talk) 10:13, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comments. No dab links or dead external links; alt text present and good. Ucucha 12:23, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Image check: All three images are marked as public domain and justified as such, and are from Commons. I would like to see a better caption for the picture of Commodore Rogers than just... Commodore Rogers. Maybe say when the drawing was made. --Pres N 15:59, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I changed it to John Rodgers ca. 1813 --Brad (talk) 06:18, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comments - sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 15:47, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comments It's pretty good. I got partway through it, but some of my comments might apply to the whole thing:

One of the most striking things about the writing is that you have quite a penchant for passive voice, sometimes to the detriment of comprehension. Please go through it—where the subject is known but you have eliminated it through passive tense, would the reader benefit from a switch to active voice?

For example: "proposals were made for warships to protect American shipping" Wouldn't it benefit the reader to know who made the proposal?" Much more elegant: "<Subject> proposed building warships to protect American shipping" and you get the added bonus of avoiding the awkward "make a proposal".
This one has a promising start: "Captain Sever ordered her sails lowered..." Active voice! But then you revert to "a 13-gun salute was fired".
Sometimes you use passive even when specifying the subject.. why? Example: "At daybreak her predicament was discovered by the lookouts."
"troubles with the Barbary States had been suppressed by the payment" Whew...

"if peace terms were agreed with Algiers" Would you object to "agreed to"?
"However, Congress and her sister-ship Constellation were re-rated to 38s because of their large dimensions, being 164 ft (50 m) in length and 41 ft (12 m) in width respectively." I'm not sure what "respectively" is doing... I would expect to see it if you gave the dimensions of each ship differently, but you imply they are the same.
"she was finally launched on 15 August 1799" seems to contradict "Congress set off on her maiden voyage 6 January 1800". If there is a difference that I'm not getting, it should be explained in the prose.
"While there, some of Sever's junior officers announced that they had no confidence in his ability as a commanding officer." By this time, I'd forgotten who Sever was and had to go scrolling back; you haven't mentioned him since before the Armament section.

--Andy Walsh (talk) 17:09, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I do have a penchant for passive voice even when I try and stay conscious of it. I asked two other editors to look over this article after the expansion and they both did some edits but had no further comments. My English composition is limited and I did address some issues you pointed out but I'm blind to whatever problems may remain. In particular to "proposals were made for warships to protect American shipping", the history behind getting the six frigates built is complicated enough that I'm working it out in the main article. There were several proposals made by several individuals and a whopping amount of political wrangling and infighting. To explain it completely in this article would be veering off topic. --Brad (talk) 09:35, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, in that case it would probably be useful for me to just go through and list any sentences that could potentially benefit from active voice. It's the sort of thing I can't fix myself because I don't have the information in some cases, but we can work through it. Overall, it hasn't far to go. --Andy Walsh (talk) 16:14, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I would appreciate that; thanks. --Brad (talk) 10:47, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have addressed further issues I found in the article. --Brad (talk) 06:40, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Since the problems from the previous nomination have been solved I am supporting this article. Ruslik_Zero 20:23, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support Another masterpiece. Well done, Brad. TomStar81 (Talk) 08:58, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 22:59, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.