Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Sophie Blanchard

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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 21:04, 31 July 2007.

[edit] Sophie Blanchard

The first female professional balloonist, she learned the hard way that hydrogen and fireworks don't mix. When I started work on this I assumed that there was very little information on her, but some trawling through books has turned up rather a lot. There is a degree of disagreement between the sources on many aspects of her life and I've tried to cover this objectively in the article. Unfortunately, many of the main sources are in French; whenever possible I've tried to substitute an English version, but this has been impossible for a lot of the information. Yomanganitalk 11:38, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

  • Support Put simply, this is a great damn article. -- Kicking222 22:57, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Support Agreed, this article is short and to the point, but well written and has a good amount of citations for its small size; plus, a very interesting topic.--PericlesofAthens 23:25, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment a couple of things: cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:38, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
    • After a number of mishaps, in 1819 she became the first woman to be killed... - this initial clause juxtaposed with the next statement doesn't quite 'gel' for me. I think I'd remove it as it is a bit vague (everyone has mishaps?) - also its position somehow makes it look like it should be related to her death in some other way than 'ballooning is a risky profession'. Maybe a sentence stating something like that just before the death bit would be better.
      • I think we can take it that mishaps refers to ballooning rather spilling her tea, but I've expanded this anyway. Yomanganitalk 12:43, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
It wasn't the meaning of mishaps but how it juxtaposed with the next clause. Anyway, all nice now :) cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 15:59, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
    • The prose in the first section is more choppy than elsewhere but then I figure this may be related to the sparseness of the reference. Elsewhere the article reads well - as I mentioned I'd expand the mishaps into a sentence about the dangerousness or risks etc. she had.
      • That's a result of having copious information on her death and only a series of unconnected one-liners for the rest of her life. Considering the paucity of detail available I think it is substantially less choppy than it could be. Yomanganitalk 12:43, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
Interesting - Conditional Support once above fixed. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:49, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Support The redlinks should be removed if the corresponding articles are not going to be created in the near future. Otherwise, no problems with support for this article at all. --Ianmacm 20:22, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
    • Thanks for the support, though I disagree about removing the redlinks. Yomanganitalk 12:43, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
      • Redlinks achieve nothing without the corresponding article. A person will click on them and they go nowhere. Unless there is a likelihood that someone will create the article with the redlink, they should be removed.--Ianmacm 08:55, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
        • If the article will never be created I entirely agree. Yomanganitalk 11:51, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment
  • PDF sources need a "format=PDF" parameter in their citation template
  • Page ranges in the footnotes need en dashes rather than hyphens
  • Some full dates in the footnotes need linking
  • "The couple faced bankruptcy due to Blanchard's poor business sense" - "due to" should be used only if it can be substituted with "caused by". Epbr123 21:40, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Thanks for that Sandy. I've changed due to as since it was worth mentioning it obviously causes problems, though I'm not quite sure what you were getting at, Epbr123. Yomanganitalk 12:43, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
  • "Due to" means "caused by". People mistakenly think it can also be used for "because of". Epbr123 13:06, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Oh, got it. Modern usage is for owing to/due to to be used interchangeably for because of, but perhaps Fowler is still holding out on that one. Yomanganitalk 13:50, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
Also:
  • "Blanchard may have given some demonstrations of parachuting herself" – the "some" is redundant
    • I disagree. It is acting as a non-specific quantifier. It may not be entirely necessary to impart the information, but we could reduce the entire article to about five rather terse bullet points if that was the only aim. Yomanganitalk 23:48, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
  • The "herself" is ambiguous. Did she make make parachute jumps from the balloon? Epbr123 08:25, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
  • It is as ambiguous as the source which said something along the lines of "Mme Blanchard and others have demonstrated the use of parachutes after Garnerin's first jump". It is likely that the source meant to imply that she jumped herself, but it doesn't say that and it is the only source which mentions it. Yomanganitalk 11:51, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
  • I mean is the article trying to say she gave some demonstrations of parachuting herself out of the balloon? If not, is the "herself" redundant? Epbr123 12:43, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
  • The phrasing was meant to imply the same level of ambiguity as the source without reproducing it verbatim (albeit translated). She might have jumped from the balloon herself, and this is what I inferred from my reading, but she may have just demonstrated parachutes by some other means (such as dropping puppies attached to them). I think dropping the "herself" would make it read as if it was more likely that she didn't jump. Yomanganitalk 13:02, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
  • The Crotchets In the Air book in the reference section is dated 138.
  • Em dashes should be unspaced. Epbr123 22:25, 30 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.