Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Anne of Denmark

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 02:07, 1 June 2007.

[edit] Anne of Denmark

Anne of Denmark was queen consort of King James I of England and VI of Scotland and the mother of King Charles I.

If you'd told me when I joined Wikipedia that I'd be eating my time up writing an article about Anne of Denmark, of all people—even going so far as to buy a book on her by someone called Ethel—you could have knocked me over with a partridge feather. Anyway, this is the result: I don't think it leaves much out. Peer review here. qp10qp 03:13, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

• I think there's a problem with the dashes and all that jazz, as they should be &mdashes and hypehns where needed per WP:DASH. -- Phoenix2 ^{(talk, review)} 03:47, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Are you sure? I've used en dashes for date and page ranges, per the MoS and most usage guides. Can you give me an example? qp10qp 03:56, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

I suppose you're right; on further inspection I don't see any em dashes. Another minor concern is about the inline citations in the lead. I think it's preferable to leave those facts uncited if they're mentioned later in the article, since the lead is intended to summarize the remainder. -- Phoenix2 ^{(talk, review)} 04:45, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry to disagree with you again, but I know of no guideline that deprecates citations in the lead. The MoS says: "The lead should be capable of standing alone as a concise overview of the article, establishing context, summarizing the most important points, explaining why the subject is interesting or notable, and briefly describing its notable controversies, if there are any...It should contain up to four paragraphs, should be carefully sourced as appropriate, and should be written in a clear, accessible style so as to invite a reading of the full article." I have followed those principles as best I can in the present article's lead.

Some editors, it is true, prefer to keep citations out of the lead, but that is their choice. The way I look at it is that if the lead is supposed to be capable of standing alone, it would be a contradiction to insist that citations for it—the legs upon which it stands—be displaced to the main article text: in that case, the lead would no longer be capable of standing alone.

Following the guideline to the letter, which of course one doesn't have to do, the lead should be "carefully sourced as appropriate". Following policy to the letter, the relevant one in this case being Wikipedia: Verifiability, which a featured article presumably should do, "any reader should be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source". Policy makes no exception for leads: why should it? qp10qp 05:04, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

I would have to agree here; I see no problem with inline citations in article leads as long as they aren't overwhelming, and they certainly aren't here. - Merzbow 06:42, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree that there are no hard and fast rules about citations in the lead. I think that the editors have made good choices here - they have cited what could potentially be controversial statements. Awadewit ^Talk 07:43, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that was the thinking. There is even a reason I referenced her dates of birth and death: that the dates given are different from the ones that were in the article when I first came to it. If you change something like that, I think you should cite your sources. qp10qp 14:16, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

• Support This article is well-written, well-researched and appears to be comprehensive (I'm no Anne expert, so I can't say for sure). It is a pleasure to read and effectively conveys the life and times of Anne to a reader unfamiliar with the period; it also provides details that might interest a more knowledgeable reader. Another well-crafted article from qp10qp! I would only ask that a publication location be added for the the Renaissance drama book from Routledge in the bibliography; it is the only book without a location. I'm a fan of consistentency. Awadewit ^Talk 07:43, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Done.qp10qp 15:07, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

• Support - couldn't see much wrong with it at PR, and it's had its shoes shined and tie straightened since then. Yomangani^talk 23:15, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

• Support - Even a neophyte like me can tell when something's been properly polished. Only tiny quibble: what exactly does "exercised many members of the Scottish kirk" translate to for those of us not experts on ecclesiastical history? I'm presume she alienated them or such, but it's an unfamiliar term that's neither linked nor referenced. Old64mb 01:16, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. I agree that it's not clear. It was difficult to word that sentence since it's not certain whether Anne did become a Catholic, so I was trying to make that word express the whole range of paranoia, fussing, innuendo, insults, inventions and blather which the mere possibility of her conversion provoked from the kirk ministers. Anyway, I've now used the word "alarmed" instead, until the mot juste, if there be one, occurs to me. qp10qp 02:20, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

• Support pending a few minor nitpicks:
  • clinched the deal' unencyclopedic tone. Can this phrase be rewritten in more formal English?

I've changed it to "sealed the agreement". qp10qp 05:52, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

• • Most distressingly for Anne, James, in keeping with Scottish royal tradition,[49] insisted on placing Prince Henry in the custody of John Erskine, earl of Mar, at Stirling Castle.[50] This sentance is hard to parse. Can it be rewritten? All those commas make it hard to see who is insisting and who is distressing and who is in whose custody...

I've reordered it this way: "Most distressingly for Anne, James insisted on placing Prince Henry in the custody of John Erskine, earl of Mar, at Stirling Castle, in keeping with Scottish royal tradition." That's one comma less and I think more straightforward; the appositional paired commas for "earl of Mar" are unavoidable, I think, but I tend not to notice them, since the form litters all writing about Jacobean history.qp10qp 05:18, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Looks much better. The main problem was the "Anne, James," bit, which was confusing. The ambiguity has been removed. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 05:28, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

• • James's bisexuality is hinted at in a few places, namely in the "Betrothal and proxy marriage" section and again in the "Favourites" section; is there any scholarship on the effect of James's sexuality on the marriage or on Anne? I am not trying to sensationalize the article; but there are hints made here and there; it's been a few years, but having taken 3 courses in British History myself back in college, I seem to remember the whole Buckingam relationship was questioned both in HIS time and in OURS as possibly a romantic one. Even if baseless, even rumors of a romantic link between Buckingham and James must have had an effect on Anne? Is there any scholarship on this? I'm not witholding my support on this issue; I am more personally curious...--Jayron32|talk|contribs 04:57, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I've approached it in the same way as the books I've used. I have two biographies of Anne, by John Leeds Barroll and Ethel Williams. Remarkably, Barroll doesn't mention the issue once; Williams mentions it twice, and I've reffed one of those instances and put the quote in the notes: "All his life, except perhaps for six short months, King James disliked women, regarding them as inferior beings. All his interest was centred on the attractions of personable young men." Akrigg and Willson, writing fifty or so years ago, make sly insinuations along the lines of "he was not the sort of man to be passionate towards her", but I wanted to avoid that sort of innuendo. There is a book by Bergeron about James's homosexuality, but I am put off from reading it by his subtitling it "a novel", so I don't know if it says anything about Anne. As it stands, I've not come across a historian who directly analyses any effect of homosexuality or bisexuality on the marriage, as such. Maybe, since we can't know more than what the sources tell us, such caution is the best approach, especially because it would be against Wikipedia policy to combine two pieces of sourced information ("James preferred male company"; "James and Anne drifted apart") to advance the unreferenced position "James and Anne drifted apart because James preferred male company". qp10qp 05:41, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

That's fine. I was never witholding support over the issue; your explanation here makes plenty of sense and I understand why, in the absence of any solid scholarship on the issue, we would want the article to skirt it; it appears that reliable scholarship does as well, and we can only reflect that. Thanks for the explanation.--Jayron32|talk|contribs 05:55, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

• Support. It's excellent — beautifully written, polished, comprehensive as far as I can tell, nicely illustrated, and well-referenced (leads should have references when required just the same as any other section). Exactly what I've come to expect from qp10qp. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 05:49, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
  • I was under the influence that if such information is elsewhere in the article (as it should be because leads are summarizing) that it should be cited there instead of the lead; that's why I brought it up. My apologies. -- Phoenix2 ^(holla) 22:29, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. 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.