Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Alfred the Great/archive1

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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 not promoted 00:00, 11 February 2008.

[edit] Alfred the Great

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I'm nominating this article for featured article because I believe that it is a good enough article to be made so. It is historically acurate and seems to be a well written neutral page and is about a topic vital to England and the United Kingdom as it is about the founder of its original monarchy. Electrobe (talk) 14:47, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

  • Nominate and Support (Electrobe (talk) 14:47, 6 February 2008 (UTC))
  • Oppose Sorry, but there are insufficient inline citations to adequately assess its historical accuracy. The "Cultural references" section is off the main focus of the article and goes into needless detail. Stylistically, I don't like the short sections, the inclusion of weblinks within the text or the short lead. DrKiernan (talk) 14:56, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

If I look into this will you withdraw your opposal? (Electrobe (talk) 15:18, 6 February 2008 (UTC))

Yes, of course. But you may prefer to spread out your improvement effort over a longer timescale than this process allows. If this nomination closes without promotion, you can always re-nominate later on, once the points above are addressed. You could also ask for feedback at Wikipedia:Peer review, or consider a Wikipedia:Good article nomination, which will also provide feedback. DrKiernan (talk) 15:27, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I cant get rid of the Cultral references section without a consens from other editors however do you believe that I have covered your other points (Electrobe (talk) 15:42, 6 February 2008 (UTC))

Oppose The cultural reference section kills it, I mean a reference about a major historical figure does not deserve sub-trivial like "In episode six of the British comedy show At Last the 1948 Show, the sketch.. " and if the "latest biography" isn't in a references for further reading section, it does not belong here at all.

And I'm no citation counter, but whole sections are without references--Docg 18:14, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I understand your point about citiation it is curretly being dealt withj. As for the Cultral references as previously expllained i wish from a consens from other editors of this page (please note: that I am in complete agreement with you on this point but feel compelled to confer with other editors) Thank you for your constructive and most helpful comments (Electrobe (talk) 19:23, 6 February 2008 (UTC))

I have now created a section on the discussion page asking on views on whether or not to delete the cultral references section. If you would please help me in getting this section deleted it would be of much appreciation. Thank you. The link is [1] (Electrobe (talk) 19:33, 6 February 2008 (UTC))

Comments:

  • Childhood, please be consistent with your spellings - for example, the linked Aethelwulf of Wessex, Alfred's father, compared to Ethelwulf used later in the same section.
  • Same section, this last sentence: "Other sources however indicate that Alfred was the youngest of five sons. [4]" – two problems here, the ref placement, and then the sentence as a whole. Just stuck there out on its own, and you've already said in the first paragraph of the section that Alfred was "He was the fifth and youngest son". Presumably then, there are sources that claim he was something other than the fifth and youngest? But not mentioned?
  • Why is his marriage, at age 19 or 20, in the Childhood section?
  • Dashes, yes I know some people don't like these being brought up here, but try and be consistent. There's an mdash used to separate the years of his reign in the infobox, and a hyphen used in year ranges in the Childhood section. Suggest a check through for these things.
  • Under Alfred. This bit: "'secundarius,'" – that comma placement looks wrong to me. Possibly an AmE vs BrE difference, but does it conform to WP:MOS (I never really completely understood that whole logical quotation thing anyway - every time I think I get it, a comment from other people makes me rethink)? Should be double quotes anyway, from a look of the MOS. There are a few instances of these single quotation marks.
  • "four days later, a brilliant victory at the Battle of Ashdown on" – a brilliant victory? According to whom? As with Doc, above, lacking citations in various places, and certainly calling a victory "brilliant" strikes me as POV without a backing source.
  • The popular legend of the burning of the cakes: I thought that was pretty much agreed to be apocryphal these days, but you don't say so explicitly. Is it just implied by the the use of "legend", or am I just plain wrong :D ?
  • No mention of Ubba, or the Battle of Cynuit in 878?
  • I can foresee people commenting on use of words like "whence". See, I just did ;)
  • The last couple of paras of King at War, at least, are very choppy. "They did this. Then they did that. Then they did the other." Could do with a copy-edit to flow a bit better, I feel.
  • In Reorganisation, the use of "we" in "However, these new ships do not seem to have been a great success, as we hear of them grounding in action and foundering in a storm." – I thought this was frowned upon, except in specific circumstances (read something about it in some MOS talk page recently). Some of the MOS gurus out there (Sandy, Tony1, or others) may be able to confirm or refute that.
  • Citation style – seems a mix and match of in-line references, and some sort of Harvard variant , for example (Anglo-Saxon Chronicles) and (Brooks). Who is Brooks anyway? Don't see him in either References or Further reading, although I could have missed it.
  • While talking about references, please check ref#4 - an off-site link, with no supporting text.
  • In fact, the references could do with a thorough going through for full details, formats and so on. Is [www.treasurehunting.tv] a reliable source?
  • Punctuation – there are quite a few commas that I think are misplaced, or not needed at all. Now, commas are a particular weakness of my own writing, so I'm perfectly happy to be corrected here, but again it seems to indicate a copy-edit is needed.
  • "Alfred eventhough he was one of the best kings ever was very close to defeat." – POV, spelling, reference?
  • "It was to remedy these evils that he established a court school, after the example of Charlemagne; for this he imported scholars like Grimbald and John the Saxon from Europe and Asser from South Wales; for this, above all, he put himself to school, and made the series of translations for the instruction of his clergy and people, most of which yet survive." – "; for this ... ; for this". More evidence of a copy-edit needed.
  • "is solely Alfred's and highly characteristic of his genius." – POV. Indeed, POV all over the place: "the noblest of English kings"?
  • Would be it be worth mentioning that Cnut, also called "the Great", doesn't affect Alfred's being the only English monarch given the epithet, since Cnut wasn't English? Or irrelevant? Oh, I see it now, tucked away in a reference. But, going through it again, I don't see anything about any specific reason why or when he got the epithet. Was it for defeating the Danes? His scholarly works? His laws?
  • In Childhood, the article states that the Gaini is an unidentified district, but in Family it refers to the Gainsborough region.
  • Death and burial – October 26th -> 26 October.
  • Images, I would imagine, are hard to come by, but any chance of more? Even a scan of a page of the Chronicles, something like that. If not, no matter.
  • And finally, agree about the Cultural references section. However, looking at them, I see this: "A new biography of Alfred the Great by Justin Pollard was published by John Murray in 2005." And yet not being used as a source for the article, and not mentioned in Further reading.

That'll do for now. Carre (talk) 08:55, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Additionally, now I've checked a couple of on-line sources to try and verify some of the facts here, I notice that Charles Oman (here, p. 426) suggests Alfred may have been only four when he first went to Rome. Further, this (p. 72) states that Asser claimed the trip was in Alfred's fifth year, while mentioning that other sources claim his eleventh year (unfortunately, not giving those other sources). So, two possible things – does "fifth year" mean 5 years old, or does it means 4 years old and some days/weeks/months? And does the alternative age deserve a mention? Just something to consider, not to mention a couple of usable sources for you (although the second of them does seem very hagiographic to me). Carre (talk) 11:07, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
FWIW, just striking out the minor issues fixed by either the nominator, other reviewers, or myself. Carre (talk) 12:31, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The article is on its way, but it still needs a lot of work to meet the Featured Article Criteria. I don't think it can meet the criteria in the short amount of time available for the FAC process, and I encourage the nominator to withdraw the nomination, spend some more time on the article, and go to peer review or Good Article nominations first. Sometimes it's easier to do that with your first nomination, because you will get a lot of good feedback and learn a lot. I have listed a few examples of problems in the article. This is not a comprehensive list.
    • The lead is too short. See WP:LEAD for advice.
    • Why is the information about Alfred's marriage in the first paragraph of childhood? He would have been about 20 at that time, and then the next paragraph goes back to talking about him at age 5.
    • SEE WP:MOSDASH for when to use hyphens, ndashes, and mdashes; the article does not appear to be using them properly
    • There are whole sections that have no inline citations. This is now a requirement for FAs, so that people can verify the information in the article. There is also a mixture of inline and Harvard-style citations; one format or the other should be used.
    • There is a lot of talk about legends and stories. Do we know how much weight historians place on these events? If they are completely made up, then they probably ought to be left out of the article (or at least put in a separate legends section)
    • The citations need to be formatted properly.
    • The trivia section has to go.
    • The External links section should be trimmed.
    • Not all of the book in the references section have authors listed
    • The prose needs some work. The league of copyeditors might be able to help.

Good luck! Karanacs (talk) 17:14, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

  • Oppose The article has a number of issues, and these just are what I noticed doing a quick lookover. I did not go into depth on sentence structure nor on MOS details. So this is not a comprehensive list. I tend to agree that this article needs more work than can be dealt with in the FAC time frame.
  • Sourcing. Entire large sections not referenced to anything. Mix of reference styles. References are not formated in a consistent manner.
  • Pollard should not be in the further reading section, he should be a major source. Also look at Richard Abels Alfred the Great: War Kingship and Culture in Anglo-Saxon England Older, and somewhat dated but still useful, Eleanor Shipley Duckett's Alfred the Great: The King and His Kingdom.
  • Clean out the further reading section. No one is going to want to read for fun "Ancestral Roots"... it's a genealogical work, a very dull listing of genealogical information.
  • Same for the external links.
  • Gah, the cultural references section. Axe it. Anything vital should be worked into prose.
  • one picture has no caption.
  • Large numbers of statements read like opinion but have no citations. An example, the Religion and culture section, second paragraph, last sentence say "But the sceptics cannot be regarded as having proved their point." is definite opinion, but is uncited.
  • The King at War section has no citations and reads almost like a novel, especially the last few sentences in the section "The next year (896 (or 897) they gave up the struggle. Some retired to Nothumbria, some to East Anglia. Those who had no connection to England withdrew to the Contintent. The long campaign was over."
  • Lede is too short.

Those are just the concerns that jumped out at me before really settling in to read in depth. Strongly suggest serious work. If I was going to review this for GA, I'd fail it as it stands.Ealdgyth | Talk 17:39, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Thankyou everybody for all of your comments so far. I would just like to make a hole in one of the points by carre about the Battle of Cynuit. If you read carefully it reads that somebody other than Alfred led tha battle and as such it has no relevance to Alfred. (Electrobe (talk) 17:44, 7 February 2008 (UTC))

Yeah, I did know that Alfred wasn't at Cynuit, just thought it could be a nice background addition (it happened while Alfred was stuck in Athelney), Ubba being one of the more significant Danes threatening Wessex. However, having browsed through those sources I linked, I saw they didn't mention it specifically, so it's no big deal. Carre (talk) 17:53, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
  • The trivia/cultral references section has now been deleted. Other minor problems have also been dealt with. (Electrobe (talk) 18:58, 7 February 2008 (UTC))

Sorry, "other minor problems have also been dealt with": no they have NOT. Just from the first para last section I see: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Alfred_the_Great&action=edit&section=1 Editing Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Alfred the Great (section) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  1. "Very little knowledge of the Church under Alfred is known" - dreadful prose.
  2. "monasteries being especial points of attack" - ditto
  3. "for this, above all, he put himself to school"
  4. The whole thing is unreferenced

I could go on, but basically, this needs A LOT of work. Sorry to be harsh, but I'd suggest working with it for a bit, then going to peer review--Docg 19:08, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

I see where your coming from. However please note a said a few minor problems had been dealt with. You have just quoted some major problems. (Electrobe (talk) 19:32, 7 February 2008 (UTC))

  • Oppose. Sorry to oppose, but I think there's still a good deal of work to do here. The points raised by several reviewers above all seem reasonable to me; in particular I think the citations don't make it clear where the information comes from. I agree with Ealdgyth that the Abels bio is worth using too. I haven't reviewed for comprehensiveness because of the other issues, but looking at the history tells me that the article has not been revised all that much in preparation for this FAC. Alfred's a big subject, and there's quite a bit of research to do to get a major article like this to FA level. I'd encourage you to take some time to go through the material in the references in some detail and expand the article substantially. Mike Christie (talk) 23:05, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.