Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/William Claiborne/archive1

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 18:12, 25 August 2007.

[edit] William Claiborne

Self-nom after peer review and recent GA promotion. Geraldk 19:56, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - Unless there is evidence that the 1622 Indian Massacre affected him directly (in which case that should be spelled out) it might be a good idea to remove the picture of all those dead bodies, which is fairly distracting. Do we know whether his town or village was a victim of the attacks? BenB4 21:13, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

I was using it to try to demonstrate the difficulties of being an early Jamestown colonist. Do you feel it is distracting because it is too small to be readily comprehensible at first glance (and would therefore be acceptable if slightly enlarged) or is its subject matter itself distracting (in which case it would need to be scrapped, I suppose)?Geraldk 21:19, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

It's the bunch of bodies with nothing to explain them except a sentence buried in the adjacent paragraph. Let me try adjusting the caption to help.... There, I hope you like that one as much as I do. BenB4 00:16, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

• Another comment - There are a lot of repeated references here, many on adjacent sentences. I don't know whether this is in the manual of style, but I believe that it's common practice to shorten "Sentence one.^[1] Sentence two.^[1]" to "Sentence one. Sentence two.^[1]" and so forth. Since a lot of the references are from consecutive pages in their sources, I think you should do it. Noticing the same reference number over and over is a little odd. BenB4 00:25, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

• Done - have put one reference at the end of every consecutive series of sentences with duplicated references. Geraldk 01:41, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment I would recommend using the Harvard referencing templates for the citations since the article relies upon published scholarly sources, rather than websites and newspaper articles.Madcoverboy 05:51, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
  • The referencing style is entirely up to the discretion of the article's author(s). Raul654 20:56, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - The birth and baptismal dates listed under the "Early Life" heading appear to be incorrect. It says he was born and baptized in 1660, even though the top of the article says he was born in 1600, and even though the rest of the article describes his activities in earlier decades. The birth year is certainly mistaken, and getting baptized at the age of 60 seems unlikely, though it's of course not impossible.
  • 1600 is correct. Not sure how it got changed, but I've changes it back. Geraldk 11:41, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

• Provisional oppose
  • MOS breaches in infobox: en dashes should be unspaced; prefer two-digit closing years.
  • Sub-professional formatting in the absurd overlinking of dictionary words: "baptized", "apprenticed", "tobacco", "acre" and scores more. Please audit and remove the spattering of useless, untidy blue. Tony 01:58, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
• Is someone working on this one? It's FA material, but should be fixed before promotion. Tony 12:44, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I've addressed the second concern, but am not entirely sure that my edits addressed the first concern. Let me know if what I've done does not address it. Geraldk 01:37, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Having looked for this before, I do not believe that the two-digit closing is in MOS. Tony has never given a citation for it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:32, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

• Support, well-researched and succinct biography; didn't see any problems that should stand in the way of promotion. Christopher Parham (talk) 16:51, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

• Comment The MoS says that year should be wikilinked only when the year is particularly important for the article. The date has year, month and day; it is then wikilinked to allow readers to chose how it is formatted. Many years here need attention. Hmains 03:13, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

There is no consensus that years should not be linked, and the MOS actually reflects this lack of agreement: It neither forbids nor requires such linking. Hmains is among the editors who think that they should never (or scarcely ever) be linked. Other editors, such as myself, think that years should generally be selectively linked, typically by linking to the first occurrence of most years. The crux of the matter is the question of whether year-links are useful: Link-disfavourers assert that they are not. Link-favourers think that they generally are, with the usual rationale that they give ready access to historical context, especially in historical articles. So long as the year-links are judicious, they should not affect the bid for "featured" standing. -- Lonewolf BC 03:45, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Linking standalone years in every first instance serves no purpose. Such years are just mechanically and mindlessly linked and a detriment to reading. The purpose of linking is to provide context for the article. To provide context, the year article must have content that supports and elaborates the content of the main article. These year links do nothing of the sort. Read the year articles and state what 'context' each provides. This statement is for people who are seriously interested in improving articles, not someone pushing a theory. Thanks Hmains 05:33, 10 August 2007 (UTC).

This arguement belongs at WP:MOSNUM, not here. The usefulness of year-linking is a matter of opinion. Those who favour it generally do so because they think the year-links give useful (historical) context. A poor article at the other end of what should be a useful link is always possible (for any link, not just a year-link); the solution to this is not to do away with the link, but to improve the poor article at the other end. This is not to advocate linking years "mechanically" or "mindlessly". Ultimately, year-linking is a matter of judgement. Judicious year-linking should not affect an article's bid for "featured" standing. -- Lonewolf BC 23:11, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose—Requirement for professional formatting and MOS. Why are simple years linked? They're not even piped to pages that are remotely relevant to the article. Read MOS. Tony 10:17, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
• Further comment—The lone years are still linked. I strongly object to promotion unless they're fixed. MOS breach in the spaced en dashes in the infoblot. MOS breach in the final period in the second caption. MOS breach in the page ranges in "Notes". Tony 14:34, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Year-links are not against MOS. Tony's claim that they are is simply not true, so to that extent his opposition is wrongful. -- Lonewolf BC 23:11, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Comment:WP:MOSNUM:"Wikipedia has articles on days of the year, years, decades, centuries and millennia. Link to one of these pages only if it is likely to deepen readers' understanding of a topic."--Carabinieri 01:17, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Exactly: please justify each trivial year-link here, now, WRT how it is "likely to deepn readers' understanding" of this topic: Tony 12:37, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I would not link to any of these myself, except possibly for 1660, the year of the Restoration, and 1648, the year of Lord Calvert's death; but to make this a "strong objection" is patently disruptive bullying. Ignore objection, and consider from scratch. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:14, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

• Keep your bib out of this, Anderson, unless you've got something useful to say about the article. The MOS is quite clear on the need for links to deepen readers' understanding. Each needs to be justified. Tony 14:11, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - I delinked the single years (hopefully correctly) as I noticed that the nominator of this article has not edited since August 11 may not know about the opposition due to the linking. Mattisse 22:36, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
• Addendum - I also replaced dashes. I was not sure how to do the (c. 1600 – c. 1677 in the first line. Also, the issue of the final period in the second caption I am unclear about. The third caption has two sentences. That is probably not optimal. Mattisse 22:56, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

• Comment. It's a really good article and I'll support once the following have been fixed:
  • "The family's business was not enough to make them rich, and so Claiborne's older brother was apprenticed in London, becoming a merchant involved in hosiery and, eventually, the tobacco trade." Shouldn't that be "enogh to make it rich" since "family" is singular, or is this one of those cases, where British English prefers the plural pronoun? Anyway, the rest of the article is written in American English. ("baptized", "center", etc)
  • "His business acumen quickly made him one of the most successful Virginia colonists, and within four years of his arrival he had grants for 1,100 acres (445 hectares) of land and a salary of 60 pounds a year." Any idea how much that would be today? If today's value is not given, the figure seems kind of meaningless, to most readers (including myself) at least.
  • "By 1646, however, Governor Leonard Calvert had retaken both St. Mary's and Kent Island with support from Governor Berkeley of Virginia, and, after Leonard Calvert died in 1648, Cæcilius Calvert appointed a pro–Parliament protestant to take over as governor." According to webster.com, "protestant" is always capitalized when used in the religious sense.
  • The last sentence of the article uses an embedded link as a citation. Although I think this looks ridiculous, WP:CITE does allow it, but a "full citation is also required in a References section at the end of the article". I would recommend removing the link and adding a footnote with a proper citation, but adding the source to the article's list of references would be enough to satisfy Wikipedia policy.--Carabinieri 00:54, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

• MOS breaches:
  • Speaced en dashes in infobox.
  • En dash in "pre–Restoration", "small–time" and tons of others. Read MOS on hyphens. For some reason, they've been changed en masse.

When these are fixed, I'll change to support.

PS Why spell out this obstructive "Pages" in the notes. Most unusual.

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.