Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Mary Seacole/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 18:17, 6 May 2008.

[edit] Mary Seacole

  • Self-nomination. As Mary Seacole's initial GA nominator, I have improved the article from B status to GA, and significant changes occured during that process which helped develop the article and gave a good general copy-edit to the article. I'll do my best to address those concerns that are brought up. Rudget (Help?) 18:25, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
"Thousands of troops from all the countries involved were drafted to the area, disease broke out almost immediately, and hundreds died of fever (mostly cholera);" - sounds wrong(?) -- Naerii 18:36, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
Reworded. Rudget (Help?) 18:40, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Comment, want very much to support if the follow are changed:

  • This phrase: an inexperienced doctor sent by the Panamanian government, and the Catholic church, which paraded images of saints and prayed for divine intervention sounds a bit disparaging to Catholics, and although it may have been true, to keep this language, you'll have to cite the statement.
    • Re-worded. Rudget (Help?) 12:11, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
  • I read this sentence three times: Salih notes the use of a white American pidgin vernacular, contrasting with Seacole's clear English, as an inversion of renditions of "black" speech in contemporary literature, and as a claim of moral and intellectual superiority and still was unable to understand it. Can you rewrite it?
    • Re-worded. I've tried my best to understand it myself, but as I wasn't the original author of that statement, I interpreted in a more simpler sense. Rudget (Help?) 12:11, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Delink the dates that aren't connected to years.
  • This seems like a disjointed edit that never got rewritten properly: On one occasion attending wounded troops under fire she dislocated her right thumb, an injury which never healed entirely;[61] she often treated French, Sardinian and Russian casualties alike.
  • Is the term "knock-down prices" as informal as it seems?
    • Re-worded. Rudget (Help?) 11:10, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
  • There's no punctuation at the end of this sentence: over 1,000 artists performed, including 11 military bands and an orchestra conducted by Louis Antoine Jullien. The festival was attended by a crowd of 40,000[82]
  • A citation is needed here: "I have witnessed her devotion and her courage ... and I trust that England will never forget one who has nursed her sick, who sought out her wounded to aid and succour them and who performed the last offices for some of her illustrious dead"
    • Done. I'm pretty sure this quotation in this page came after the publishing of the English Heritage article, so to that end, I don't believe EH have copied content from the article. Rudget (Help?) 12:11, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
  • I fixed a couple evident copy edit issues. I suggest a fine tooth comb to make sure it's all taken care of.
  • The last three sentences need to be made into a single paragraph.

I enjoyed reading this article. I think you'll have to do some editing, but after the prose is worked out, it will make a nice FA. --Moni3 (talk) 20:52, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Ok. This sentence drives me nuts because I still can't understand it: Salih notes the use of American pidgin, against Seacole's clear English, as representational of a supposed white moral and intellectual superiority. Would it be accurate to say "Historian Salih notes that Seacole used American pidgin to satirize the assumed white moral and intellectual superiority, since she used her own clear English in everyday speech"?
Yes, the last three sentences in Recognition. --Moni3 (talk) 15:23, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Comment - I also enjoyed this article and hope it achieves RA status but have a few questions/comments:

  • In the lede the sentence "She operated boarding houses in Panama and Crimea while treating the sick." gave me the impression this was simultaneously & could be reworded.
    • Done. Rudget (Help?) 11:40, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
      • still not sure about that one
  • The units mile(km) should be linked on first use.
  • Is the Lord Rokeby mentioned one of those listed at Baron Rokeby?
  • Is the paragraph "West Indies was a lucrative outpost of the British Empire....." particularly relevant to the life of Mary Seacole? Although setting the context it doesn't seem immediately relevant.
  • still not sure about that one
    • Oops. Missed that out before. Done now. Rudget (Help?) 14:01, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Does the picture of a "Traditional Panamanian Building" add anything to the article?
    • Removed, after reflection, not much use in article. Shuffled around those that were remaining. Rudget (Help?) 11:40, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Are there any supporting references for the "hundreds who died" in 1854 in the Crimea (or even more accurate figures) as the level of cholera, as this seems to be a significant factor?
  • Where is Navy Bay - is she travelling from Panama or Jamaica?
  • I'm not sure about the phrase "Florence Nightingale took against Seacole" I know what you mean & it is supported in the subsequent paragraph, but is an unusual form of words.
    • Re-worded. Rudget (Help?) 11:40, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
  • I don't understand "both a Miss Nightingale and a Soyer" - what is a Soyer? does this relate to Alexis Soyer mentioned earlier? or the Soyer who described her young relative later in the same section?
    • Re-worded. Rudget (Help?) 11:40, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
  • But I still don't know what a "Soyer" is ?
    • Internet search seems to suggests it means chef in this particular context, so its been replaced. Rudget (Help?) 14:04, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
  • "In August Seacole was once again on Cathcart's Hill for the final assault on Sevastopol on Friday 7 September 1855." seems like a date conflict.
    • Copy-edited. Rudget (Help?) 11:40, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Back in London in 1856 we find her "considered setting up shop with Day in Aldershot, Hampshire, but nothing materialised" & later in the same paragraph we find her closing the shop.
    • Re-worded. I don't know why that was, copy-edited with replacement of conflicting statement. Rudget (Help?) 11:46, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
  • What does the comment about Jamaica being "politically changed in her absence" mean? had she been charged or was there unrest on the island?
    • Re-worded. Rudget (Help?) 11:40, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Several financial amounts are mentioned in her will - are these supported by ref 94?
    • Indeed they are. Rudget (Help?) 11:46, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

As a nurse I was vaguely aware of her contribution in the Crimea but I've learnt a lot from reading this article.— Rod talk 21:55, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

There also appear to be several broken external links (at least when I checked)

— Rod talk 22:20, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks I've struck through the ones I'm happy are sorted but there are a couple of others where I can't see what change has been made or that it has resolved the issue.— Rod talk 13:57, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Comments

  • What makes the following sites reliable?
  • http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ is a concern. When I've checked their articles on subjects I know, they are very simplistic and seem designed to reach a juvenile audience. While I've yet to catch them wrong on a fact, they definitely give a school child version of history. I would be leery of using them for much beyond basic facts or as a second source to buttress another source.
    • Like I said below, it's very hard to find any substantive resources out there, and so consequently only an autobiography, a few books and simplistic historical view by a school-orientated website are able to supply "good" references. I apologise for not using any other sources, but in the absence of them and the similarities between other FAs with a reliance upon autobiographies, I'd keep it as is for now. Rudget (Help?) 12:53, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Current ref 6 "Who's Who in British History" is the full bibliographical information given elsewhere in the notes? I'm not seeing it in the References section...
  • Likewise Salih? I'm not seeing a reference by that last name in the References.
    • Done. Fourth one down at Mary_Seacole#References. Rudget (Help?) 12:27, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
      • Since you list it in the references by Seacole, and only give Salih as the editor much further into the reference, you should either list the Salih ref as a separate title if you're using a long introduction written by Salih as a separate source, or just ref it as Seacole. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:32, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Current ref 50 "Spartacus Schoolnet" is lacking publisher and last access date. Also, see above for concerns about this site. It's also lacking a true title since the title of the page linked to is "Florence Nightengale"
  • Large chunks of the article appear to be referenced to her own autobiography? That would be a concern about relying too much on her own primary accounts.
    • The problem is that with the events happening over 150 years ago, its hard to find any other sources available for the article, and so consequently there is no other choice but to use the autobiography (and other reliable sources) as the primary references. Rudget (Help?) 12:27, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
      • I've pointed out some Google Scholar refs I found on a quick search. Not sure if you're able to get a hold of them or not. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:32, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Current ref 96 is actually linked to the Spartacus web page on Secole, not to a Punch magazine article. If you are using the quotation on the Spartacus site, you really should state that it's quoted on that site, because the current footnote implies you're using the Punch magazine article direct, not through an intermediary source.
    • Clarified. Rudget (Help?) 12:29, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Current ref 104 "Mary Seacole Leadership..." is lacking publisher and last access date.
    • Seems fine to me. Rudget (Help?) 12:28, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
      • It's 105 now, after some movement of refs. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:32, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Same for current ref 108 "New exhibition..."
    • Already done. Rudget (Help?) 12:28, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
  • http://healthweb.blink.org.uk/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=82 deadlinked for me.
Still on the road, so it will be less often updating things since I'm busy. Ealdgyth - Talk 04:36, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
    • Done. Replaced with Home Office link. Rudget (Help?) 12:37, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
I went over to Google Scholar and turned up these articles that might be helpful
Hope these are helpful. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:32, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
Unfortunately, I can't view them for some reason. Possible Google Scholar virus? Rudget (Help?) 13:45, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
They are links to published journal articles, not to the articles themselves. You'd need to either have JSTOR access, get someone with JSTOR access to get the articles for you, or get them through your library. I'll also note that she has an Oxford Dictionary of National Biography article, that should probably be consulted and would be a good source for basic information on her life. If you can't access it yourself, leave me a note here and email me and I'll email you the article. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:57, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
That is a good list of scholarly sources of the kind that should be used to source a bio; I usually pay for PubMed articles, or ask a friend to e-mail them. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:25, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
Asking a friend (who has paid for access to a database/JSTOR or similar service) to provide copies of these materials, may be a breach of a licence agreement and probably should not be recommended here.— Rod talk 19:26, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
You've got some assumptions in parentheses. Anyway, Rudget, the PubMed articles can be ordered thru Medline, or obtained in a medical library, and they are the kinds of sources that would be good to access. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:49, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm allowed to pass on any of my university's resources for "scholarly purposes" and I have here:[1]. Graham. GrahamColmTalk 23:08, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Support This is a brilliant article and a real pleasure to read, the prose is superb. For an encyclopedic article, I can't praise it highly enough, what a fascinating woman and an amazing life. There were some inconsistencies with British English spelling, but I think I got to most of them but please check. I don't understand the policy on linking of dates yet, so please check this too. (I saw an August 1926 that was not linked, but other dates were). Lastly—and this is probably not actionable—I don't like the spelling of Tchernaya. Chernaya means black in Russian and begins with the letter Ч (Ch)not Ц (Ts). But I see this erroneous transliteration is quite common, I will probably have to live with it. Oh, and well done by the way for another Wikipedia treasure. GrahamColmTalk 12:42, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Support I did the GA review with a recommendation that the copyediting and prose be tightened before FAC, and this seems to have been largely addresses. Two points that ought to be fixed

  1. refs 2,3 and 5 in the intro do not follow punctuation, contra MoS
  1. Done. Rudget (Help?) 10:36, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
  1. Opening five days a week and closing Sundays my maths isn't what it used to be but 5 + 1 doesn't quite make 7.
  1. Done. Rudget (Help?) 10:36, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Jimfbleak (talk) 05:50, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Oppose for now, mostly to do with comprehensiveness concerns and missed opportunities.

  • Perhaps spell out the feud with Nightingale in more detail? It wouldn't hurt to mention Nightingale's barking mad behaviour on her return to the UK.
  • Allegations of profiteering from the British Hotel?
  • Reasons why the British Hotel failed? (Overstocked when the end of the war came.)
  • Put the average nurse of the period into context? Nightingale's general fears were not unfounded: many were alcoholic old biddies, ex-tarts well past their sell-by date etc
  • Reasons why the UK benefits failed? (Extravagant expenses incurred by the promoters.)
  • Social climbing? The bizarre bequests in her will to members of the royal family (who didn't need it).
  • Count Gleichen. Which Count Gleichen?
  • More on Alexis Soyer? Chief chef of (I think) the Savoy in London at the time. He had a government brief to improve Crimean diet and invented a special field kitchen for the campaign.
  • The term "doctress" was used by Seacole of herself too.
--ROGER DAVIES talk 11:53, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
    • For most of these, I can write about them (especially the one regarding Nightingale), but I can't find any sources at all to back up the statements I could potentially make. Would that be a problem? On a side note, does not the article cover all of these aspects in its present revision? Some of these requests I don't find particularly practical, and with those comments in brackets to the left it appears to promote some sort of a POV siding with Mary Seacole against the introduction of Nightingale's perspective, I would be hesitant to add them. Rudget (Help?) 14:01, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
I think you'll find all my remarks covered in Robinson as it's the only biography of Seacole I've read. I don't think I'm introducing an anti-Nightingale POV as my remarks about the state of nurses back her view. --ROGER DAVIES talk 14:21, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
Ack, I know. I just don't want to be responsible for including potentially, what could be portrayed as, "damaging" material to an article with only one source to back them up. I've got some other content being forwarded to me however, that might help further. Rudget (Help?) 14:47, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

A few points on the lead:

  • "Seacole was taught herbal remedies and folk medicine by her mother, who kept a boarding house for disabled Crimean war veterans" - I doubt Seacole's mother put up many disabled veterans of the Crimean War (1854-6) when Seacole was young (before, say, 1826), nor, indeed, before the mother's own death (in 1844).
  • "Seacole was considered an expert on the symptoms of cholera." - by whom was she considered an expert?
  • Seacole "was only saved from adversity by the Commander-in-Chief of the British Forces, Lord Rokeby". What do you mean by "Commander-in-Chief of the British Forces"? Commander of the British forces in the Crimea? Or of the whole British Army? When was Henry Montagu, 6th Baron Rokeby either of these? The former were Lord Raglan (died June 1855), then General Sir James Simpson (resigned November 1855) (no article, it seems), then Sir William John Codrington; see Commander-in-Chief of the Forces for a list of the latter.

I hope these are not indicative of the whole.

Echoing Roger Davies, while there may be a dearth of primary sources, lots of secondary sources have been published in recent years. For example, there is no mention of or citations to Helen Rappaport's No Place for Ladies (published in 2007) - Rappaport owns the NPG portait, incidentally. Seacole - female, non-white, provincial, little or no formal training, herbal remedies - can easily be compared with and contrasted to Nightingale and the more formal medical establishment of the times.

I also noticed that your first edit to this article was on 30 March 2008, when it was, shall we say, quite well developed - already 49k long and 100 footnotes - and here are the changes since then. Some of the changes are a little troubling: I imagine the original editors had sources to justify the material that has been excised (for example, the behaviour of the Catholic church in Panama; details of Seacole's husband; Seacole's implicit claim of superiority over the Americans by having them speak a pidgin English, inverting the contemporary denigratory "black" pattern of speech; how lucrative the West Indies were to the British). I wonder if any of the editors who contributed to this article before you took it under your wing have anything to say. -- Testing times (talk) 22:52, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I think Rudget is busy in real life for the next couple of days, (?exams). It's not for me to answer the above, but we are collaborating on sources, [2]. I hope I will be forgiven for poking my nose in here. GrahamColmTalk 23:22, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
I believe Testing times was referring to ALoan. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:11, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
Well, yes; but I believe User:Giano II had a hand in this article too. -- Testing times (talk) 07:31, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Comment: I have just spotted the "self nomination." This page may have been developed and improved slightly, but for ever it always seemed the particular baby of User: ALoan, who often asked me for help and advice on it. I don't see that many vast changes. Giano (talk) 06:15, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Oppose per the inaccuracies and lacking details mentioned above. Assigning Lord Rokeby the position of Commander-in-Chief was done by Giano here. An easy mistake to make when knocking out a new lead and without expertise on the subject, but I find it worrying that the statement has not been altered since November 2006 even though the details of Rokeby's command have been retained unchanged—he is mentioned as commander of the 1st Division in the Crimea twice—and the article has supposedly been significantly changed and developed (amazingly, the stub started on Rokeby repeated this error, despite the source clearly stating that Simpson was the Commander-in-Chief and Rokeby Commander of the 1st Division—Giano's words obviously carry too much weight to be easily dismissed). This lack of rigour (the glaring error of her mother running a boarding house for Crimean veterans is another obvious example), coupled with the diff provided by Testing times, suggest the article as it stands is a slightly less accurate and less comprehensive version than when it was rated "B" (which just goes to show how useful the rating system is, I guess).Yomanganitalk 14:27, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

  • Closing note: I was silly to think this article would even get anywhere near FA; I don't have enough time to do all these corrections and as Giano points out, ALoan was the creator of this, but seeing as he is absent and I was the next largest contributor, hopefully it wouldn't matter. Nomination withdrawn. Rudget (Help?) 15:12, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
Please don't be too disheartened. No-one owns this article. It is a good article (not merely in the a Wikipedia:Good article sense) and not too far from WP:FA-standard, but there are some parts - mentioned above - that need modification, and there is more research to be done.
As to "largest contributor", don't confuse number of edits with size of contribution. -- Testing times (talk) 07:31, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.