Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Charles Darwin

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[edit] Charles Darwin

Old FACs
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This has been a Good Article for some time, with very good prose. Dave Souza has put a lot of effort into it, and we have now very thoroughly referenced it, which was the main remaining criterion to be satisfied. Please help us address any issues that arise, as this is a very important historical figure to have a featured article on. Thank you. Samsara (talk • contribs) 15:10, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

  • Comment. I would change the Greek endnotes to common Latin. --Brand спойт 15:28, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
    • Good point. I'd thought of that myself earlier. Fixed now. Samsara (talk • contribs) 15:43, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
      • I'd personally prefer Roman Numerals, but that works. Adam Cuerden talk 16:03, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
      • Support. Nice to see the article featured at long last. --Brand спойт 20:00, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Support, though partially a self-support as I helped with the citations. Adam Cuerden talk 15:39, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Support, essentially a self-support, many thanks to all who have contributed to transforming this article. .. dave souza, talk 17:05, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Support- Its all Greek to me. Seriously though, this is well written and has more references than you can shake a stick at. It is an excellent article about a very important topic and considering how much this man's life has been studied, a very nice summary. Good work. pschemp | talk 17:15, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Object, overall, excellent, but....a)solo years should not normally be wikilinked. You have some linked and some aren't. b) at least note a (check for others) is in the middle of a sentence. notes/citations go after punctuation. c) your web reference format isn't consistent. most don't have a retrieval date, so do but in the format "downloaded on", and some do but in the format "retrieved on"--be consistent, suggest using the "retrieved" format.Rlevse 20:18, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
    • On b), the guideline, WP:FN, states Place a ref tag at the end of the term, phrase, sentence, or paragraph to which the note refers. The ref tag should be placed directly after most punctuation marks, which is what we have done. Years have been delinked. Samsara (talk • contribs) 20:37, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
      • I haven't had a chance to read the article yet, but the web access dates should be good now, and ref punctuation doesn't always go at the end of the sentence. Sandy (Talk) 05:18, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. Great article, well done! --WS 20:32, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment: The "children" section needs to be expanded. On the other hand, the list of publications could be split off to a separate article in order to shorten the overall article, which is pretty long. Also it's a long list of references. Has any attempt been made to make sure that these are the most reputable sources? Good luck! -- Ssilvers 21:33, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
    • As all of the sections have been kept concise, the brief summary about Darwin's relationship with his children with dates and links to individual articles seemed appropriate. Having a list of books on the same page is useful for readers who want to refer to what came when, but don't want to go to another page: a link is given to the very full bibliography which the University of Cambridge provide at Darwin Online. Many of the references are to primary sources, the original books made available at that site. A lot of use has been made of the very reputable biographies by Browne and Desmond & Moore, which as it happens have recently been recommended by the Darwin Online founder and director Dr John van Wyhe on this page. Other sources have been checked against these main and primary sources for accuracy. .. dave souza, talk 22:48, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
    Please note that the "children" section has been expanded: any comments? .. dave souza, talk 19:12, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment The section entitled "Illness, natural selection, and marriage" needs to be renamed, since it isn't clear if all these things could happen to one person! TimVickers 22:08, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
    • The original heading for that section was "palpitations of the heart", a somewhat ambiguous quotation that Dave liked because it could be seen to refer both to his chest pains and his romantic involvement with Emma. Would you and others prefer this original heading? Samsara (talk • contribs) 22:32, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
    • If you can accept "natural selection" as being an idea rather than a process in this case, they all happened to Darwin in less than eighteen months! :) .. dave souza, talk 22:56, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
Support I'm happy with the revision and I also changed the Section called "Descent of Man, sexual selection, botany and old age." since this had a similar problem, with three of Darwin's areas of study mixed into one thing that happened in his life. TimVickers 17:23, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. Thinking about it, perhaps "Descent of Man, sexual selection and botany" would work better – the fact that it's the last "Life" section covers the old age point. .. dave souza, talk 19:12, 15 December 2006 (UTC) Implemented dave souza, talk 08:36, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Support While I agree some sections could have slightly shorter/more encyclopedic titles, these are very small issues. Staxringold talkcontribs 22:36, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Support Very well written, strong article covering the life and impact of Darwin. (Just be prepared for vandalism when this is the FA of the day.) Excellent work all! •Jim62sch• 23:07, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Support I've been half-paying-attention to the work you guys have put into this article, and it is extremely impressive. The picayunity (picayune-ness? anyway...) of these comments is a testament to how well-done this is to begin with. There's a few minor prose issues -
  • In the lead - 'wrote a series of books on plants, then one on earthworms' - 'followed by', maybe, or 'in addition to'?
  • 'Illness and marriage' section - the prose here is a bit disjointed due to covering both his relationship and his scientific interests during the same period in his life. There's a bit of a jump from his invalid aunt being cared for by Emma, to his studying earthworms - could use some sort of transition. (Also, 'intelligent but unmarried?)
  • Same section, second-to-last paragraph - in one sentence Emma is worrying about the afterlife, and in the next Charles is house-hunting in London. As apt as that may be, there could be a better transition here, if the house-hunting process is really important enough to include.
  • Not terribly relevant to this FAC, but this is as good a place as any - some of the daughter articles, eg Darwin from Insectivorous plants to Worms, are rather awkwardly named. Opabinia regalis 04:18, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for these pointers, I've tackled the prose issues and tried to make the "illness and marriage" section more informative, as well as adding "Overwork" to the title in case anyone got the impression that Darwin was idling in his sickbed ;) The daughter articles were named at a time when it seemed good to allow the name to be used in a sentence without a piped link, this could certainly be reconsidered but I'm not sure if the effort would be worthwhile: better suggestions welcome. .. dave souza, talk 06:52, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment: I'm not weighing in with a support because I've edited to article quite a bit, but I did do a very thorough informal review of the article (here) and, amongst other things, can attest (1) everything is accurate & NPOV and (2) all of the online refs support the claims made. Mikker (...) 05:08, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Support Just gone through it, and found a few minor things which I have fixed. Very comprehensive and good article. Just one thing, you may want to mention that Darwin's Sound is a glacier. I had to enter the article to find that out. Great work. --liquidGhoul 10:49, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
    • The image on that article is misleading - the Darwin Sound is an expanse of water - as it says, a navigable link between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Samsara (talk • contribs) 11:10, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Moderate Support - I'd rather have all the References gathered into inline citations as well as Darwin's iconic bearded picture in the infobox, but overall very worthy. Wiki-newbie 15:36, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
The references are now all linked from the inline citation footnotes, using the newish Harvnb template system. There was a lot of discussion earlier resulting in the decision that the image from around the time of publication of The Origin is preferable to the iconic image of Darwin's beard which he grew seven years after publication. .. dave souza, talk 10:16, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
  • I'm not convinced that this is yet "compelling, even brilliant" prose, as required. Here are examples just from the top.
  • "by convincing the scientific community of the occurrence of evolution and proposing that this could be explained"—"Occurrence" is definitely the wrong word here. "notion"?
    • "could"—use present-tense "can".
    • "His theories are now considered the foundation stone of biology"—Remove "now", and possibly "stone".
    • "The wildlife distribution he saw on the voyage"—The first item (three words) is awkward.
    • Unsure that "heretical" requires linking. Tony 06:07, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for these examples: it's prodded me to rethink what we're trying to say in the introduction and rephrase it accordingly. Nuances I've tried to incorporate include the point that he was already eminent before publishing his theory, evolution is a phenomenon which he demonstrated convincingly to the community of his day and, citing the linked biography, is "now the unifying theory of the life sciences". Life sciences redirects to biology, though I'd have thought it covered other disciplines. Geographical distribution of species set him thinking, and it seemed desirable to me to link "heretical" since it was literally heresy to the established church. However the linked article probably confuses rather than helps that point, so I've delinked it. I've previously checked over the prose of the rest of the article, will now try to re-examine it with fresh eyes. Thanks for that insight, .. dave souza, talk 09:51, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. An outstanding article, if a little long (especially since most of the sections have separate articles). Solid prose (as good as it gets by committee), and very well referenced, using well chosen sources among the (literally) hundreds of Darwin biographies out there. Come to think of it, now is about time someone wrote an article on the Darwin Industry.--ragesoss 07:10, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Support Excellent, well-researched, and well-cited. You'll have to watch the size, though, as it's edging towards the high end of readable prose size - I hope the article will maintain about 40KB prose size over time. Sandy (Talk) 00:14, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Support This is one of the best biographical articles for a scientist with which I am familiar. It is long, but the length is probably appropriate for a subject of this importance.Rusty Cashman 07:26, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Support Meets every criteria of WP:WIAFA with flying colors. Good job! --Jayron32 04:12, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
  • support good article Hmains 04:55, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
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