Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Henry, Bishop of Uppsala

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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 promoted 13:35, August 2, 2007.


[edit] Henry, Bishop of Uppsala

Bishop Henry is a former B level, then GA level and now after peer review from WikiProject Biography and co-operation with WikiProject Saints a probable FA candidate. The article seems to comply with Wikipedia:Featured_article_criteria. Kindly invest your time to review and comment on the candidate. --Drieakko 07:32, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

  • Support as contributer. Very well-referenced and exhaustive article on a figure is often not much more than a footnote in the history books. Pastordavid 17:06, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Rant Look at how much text is in the footnotes. I am well aware that many FAs have such parenthetical text down there, but it is by far the exception as the vast majority of our articles use footnotes only for citing sources; so I think it does a disservice to the reader. I'm not opposing, but if it were up to me that text would be inline. BenB4 09:36, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the worthy rant! I inlined many of the notes now and removed a few altogether. Some are still there on a kind of nice-to-know basis, but I'll figure out ways to get them away as well. --Drieakko 10:08, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, support, then, if you're going to be that way about it. :) BenB4 10:45, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Support I am very satisfied with the current version, as the article has been greatly improved recently. My last concern was fixed when Drieakko improved the notes and references. Still I would create atleast stubs on the articles which appear as red links on this article, as I was requested to do this myself for an article I nominated. Though it doesn't really have much to do with the article itself. Otherwise support for the candidate due to Drieakko's work on a quite hard topic, based on legends. --Pudeo (Talk) 13:31, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. The number of red links is now halved, mainly by creation of stubs. Managing the rest during the upcoming days. --Drieakko 14:41, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
All done now. --Drieakko 14:09, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Plain difficult and unattractive to read. Can you get a native speaker to smooth it out and make it more engaging? The whole text, not just my examples here from the top.
    • The opening is long, tortuous and uninviting. Who's engaged with the topic after struggling through this: "Bishop Henry, also known as Saint Henry, (pyhä Henrik or piispa Henrik in contemporary Finnish and "Heinärikki" in folk traditions, Biskop Henrik or Sankt Henrik in Swedish, Henricus etc in Latin; d. allegedly 20 January circa 1150[1]) was the name of one or more legendary medieval clergymen in Sweden and Finland."
    • And then there's no need for the next phrase, since we know it's legendary: "According to legends, Henry was a contemporary of King Eric the Saint of Sweden and died as a martyr in Finland. The historicity of the accounts of Henry's life, ministry, and death have been widely disputed." Try "authenticity" rather than the ugly "historicity".
    • "tremendously"—unencyclopedic (it's rather attitudinal and puffy).
    • I hate the way the infobox crowds the text. It's like reading a short-column newspaper. Can you remove the infoblot or narrow it? "Allegedly" is not the right word. Tony 03:51, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the comments. I cleaned up the lead as you suggested. For the infobox, it is the standard saint infobox in Wikipedia, crowding the text like the infoboxes do elsewhere as well. The subject itself is not attractive in general, and never will. It is for someone interested in medieval saint veneration and early phases of the Finnish church, hardly especially engaging to many people. --Drieakko 04:30, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
About the native copyedit, that has prior to the nomination been done by a native person from US. I am myself not a native speaker, so I am blind to certain issues regarding the fluentness of the text. However, please note that there is next to nothing available in English about Bishop Henry, and this is definitely the most complete ever presentation of him in English. In the lack of English sources, the whole thing is more or less bult from the ground up for Wikipedia. --Drieakko 05:00, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
The lead is improved from what Tony posted above, but I still think it could be better. It noticeably lacks any specifics as to why he's important, other than saying he's a legandary clergyman. Raul654 15:32, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the comment. I improved the preface further, hopefully getting the essential covered now. --Drieakko 19:44, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
I think he is most commonly referred to as "Saint Henry" in English language media, which is also the direct translation of his usual Finnish and Swedish names. However, as his position as a Catholic saint is rather unclear, the current heading is just neutrally "Bishop Henry". If more "Bishop Henrys" are to appear in Wikipedia, naturally rethinking the heading is required. --Drieakko 18:59, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
See Henry I, Bishop of Augsburg, the first of several found by search (also Frederick Henry (bishop) who is of course called Bishop Henry). This is our usual way of dealing with Catholic saints with a common name, like Augustine of Hippo. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:01, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Bishop Henry of Uppsala could be the most suitable new name for the article. The current "Bishop Henry" has been the name of the article since 2003, I think (revision) --Drieakko 16:00, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
As per article's talk page, "Henry, Bishop of Uppsala" has been shown to be the correct new name for the article. The move is proposed be done as the FA review has drawn to its conclusion, unless reviewers regard that best right away. --Drieakko 06:38, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
    • "Conquering Finland together with King Eric the Saint of Sweden and dying there later as a martyr"—Later? How could you die earlier? This makes WP look foolish on its main page.
    • So where's your boundary between digits and spelt-out numbers? I see "eleven" and "12th".
    • "(1286-1289)". Breaches MOS. See en dashes.
    • "The intense war period between Novgorod and Sweden"—"War period" is not idiomatic. "Period of war", or just "war"?
    • "Very" is usually "very" redundant.
    • Don't use contractions ("wasn't"). Have you read the MOS?
    • "to receive widespread acceptance"—no, "gain".
    • "Reality is known to have been quite different"—"THE reality was quite different".

If you've had a copy-editor go through it, s/he missed a lot. Please have it polished so you can be proud of it. These are just isolated examples. But congrats on improving it (a little). Tony 09:54, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out more to polish. Actions taken:
  • Fixed the "later" in the lead.
  • Digits are used for centuries regardless of the century, as WP:DATE seems to prefer. The "eleven" indicating the number of miracles is spellt out since using "11" would look a bit lonely. Is this acceptable?
  • En dashes fixed.
  • Fixed the "war period", "very"s, the one contraction and "receive" with "gain".
  • Fixed the sentence about reality.
Unfortunately I have no copy-editors in my disposal unless some member of the community wants to take the task of further polishing the text, if that is still needed. --Drieakko 11:31, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose These minor fixes needed: All fixed. Epbr123 10:36, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
  • "It is not known, if this was just a conclusion by the writer himself" – sentences shouldn't start with "it" when the "it" doesn't stand for anything. "not" shouldn't be used when easily avoidable. The comma is unnecessary.
  • According to Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Images, it is recommended not to specify the size of images. The sizes should be what readers have specified in their user preferences.
  • "In far more reliable sources, some Henry is mentioned as" - "some"
  • "That would make the claim about him coming to Finland together with King Eric a late innovation" - the "together" is redundant
  • "presumably meaning that all of the bones" – the "of" is redundant
  • "There is no mention of his burial in Finland." – sentences shouldn't start with "there" when the "there" doesn't stand for anything
  • "There is no sign in sources of a popular assumption" - "there"
  • "There is no pity for Lalli" - "there"
  • "There is some dispute if the translation took place" - "there"
  • "it is not known if the bishop operated" - "not"
  • "several papal letters have survived" – the "several" is redundant
  • "Valerius (1207-1219/1224)" - en dash needed in date range
  • "a 25-30 year gap before Thomas" - en dash needed
  • Only full dates or dates with a day and a month should be linked. Epbr123 22:12, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for your help! Comments:
  • Fixed all grammar ("there", "it", "not", "of", "several", "some", "together") issues that you raised.
  • Fixed en dashes that had escaped my earlier check.
  • Removed several image size definitions, however keeping a few for layout reasons, where the image should be clearly bigger or smaller than the default 180px.
  • I did not fully understand the remark about the date link. The few dates in the article that have a link, contain both the day and the month. Can you be more specific? --Drieakko 23:05, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
Years on their own shouldn't be linked.
  • "were still in place in 1720"
  • "were translated to Turku in 1300".
Also, the em dashes need to be unspaced, eg. "his bones — were translated"→"his bones—were translated". Epbr123 23:47, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
Unspaced em dashes and removed links from years. --Drieakko 06:50, 29 July 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.