Talk:Joshua Prawer

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Good article Joshua Prawer has been listed as one of the History good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can delist it, or ask for a reassessment.
June 26, 2007 Good article nominee Listed

[edit] GA Nomination: On Hold

GA review (see here for criteria)
  1. It is reasonably well written.
    a (prose): b (MoS):
  2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.
    a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):
  3. It is broad in its coverage.
    a (major aspects): b (focused):
  4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.
    a (fair representation): b (all significant views):
  5. It is stable.
  6. It contains images, where possible, to illustrate the topic.
    a (tagged and captioned): b (lack of images does not in itself exclude GA): c (non-free images have fair use rationales):
  7. Overall:
    a Pass/Fail:

This is overall a very good article. I do however, have a few minor things I believe should be fixed before passing it. They are:

  • Overall
    • Persondata should be added.
    • The first sentence of a paragraph should refer to him as Prawer. You should then refer to him by the pronoun 'he' the rest of the paragraph.
    • Red links should probably be unlinked.
    • Dates similar to 1947-8 should generally be 1947–1948. Date suggestions are per Manual of Style
    • Do any images exist?
  • Lead
    • First sentence should be: Joshua Prawer (Hebrew: יהושע פרַ‏אוֶ‏ור‎; November 22, 1917–April 30, 1990) was an (continue sentence as normal)
    • 'important historian' sounds a bit odd, perhaps 'notable historian'?
  • Life
    • 'acquired Yiddish' would read better as 'learned Yiddish' I think
    • Could you incorporate his parent's names somewhere?
    • "most of his family.." did he have any siblings? Was his father the only surving member of his immediate family?
    • 'colonies in the Holy Land.' Reference should come right after period.
    • Above suggestion applies to the sentence: Prawer began his teaching career at the Hebrew university in 1947 and (after fighting in the 1948 siege of Jerusalem[3]) soon rose through the faculty ranks.
    • Other roles
      • Reference at end of sentence: In 1963-5,[8] he chaired a committee of experts bearing his name that recommended a radical reform of the entire Israeli education system.
      • Last paragraph, references need to be at end of sentences.
    • Honors
      • Section could be titled: Honors and later life
      • Reference right after period: ...was elected as Corresponding Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America in 1967. [1]
      • What did he die of? and the last sentence in the section: Comparison of Zionism to the Crusades should go here.

General thoughts... There isn't an astounding amount of references but considering very few of them are web pages, it's plenty. Also, an actually useful "See also" section! Amazing! Add him to Category:1917 births and Category:1990 deaths and you'll be done! It's a great article and I'll be happy to pass it once you've made these minor changes :). If you have any questions about my suggestions, or you've made the changes, leave a note on my talk page. You will however, have to wait until Monday for me to pass it, if you make the changes by then, since I'll be a few hundred miles away from my computer this weekend. Good job! Psychless 22:37, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Implementing

Thanks for taking the time to carefully review the article. I have implemented most of the suggestions. I am sorry that I don't have answers to some of the questions you posed, as my knowledge is limited only to the stuff I found in researching Prawer. I also have a couple questions about two of the suggestions.

Content questions:

  • Parents' names, family info — I believe everyone in his immediate family died in the Holocaust. One source says his family was "wiped out" while another says most of them died but that some cousins lived after Prawer. I don't have any more information about that. He does have a son Ehud Prawer who may may be the same person as a semi-notable Israeli education expert, but I'm only guessing based on the fact that they share the same name.
  • Cause of death — None of the obituaries said the cause of death. He was pretty active into his late years, and in the interview half a year before his death he said he feels like he is still middle-aged. I don't have any other info...
  • Images — I searched far and wide on the Internet for a picture of him, but couldn't find anything. I thought of using a book cover to illustrate the Research section, but all the covers I found were boring and wouldn't add much to the article (and so wouldn't be compliant with the non-free content policy). I know that the paper editions of some of the newspaper articles on him carried a picture, but the electronic versions to which I have access don't have them.

Style issues:

  • Placing ref tags at end of sentence — I am hesitant about this one. It is a standard academic practice to place the ref immediately after the info that is being cited. WP:FOOT#Where to place ref tags says: "Place a ref tag at the end of the term, phrase, sentence, or paragraph to which the note refers," and WP:CITE#Footnotes come after punctuation also says that refs can appear mid-sentence. Perhaps I misunderstood what you meant?
  • Red links — If possible, I really would like to keep these. The three links: Richard Koebner, Ministry of Education (Israel), and Zalman Arranne are about topics that definitely deserve their own articles. I think WP:RED would encourage these red links...However, if you find them distracting then I will remove them. nadav (talk) 08:17, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Response

If the information doesn't exist than I can't ask you to include it :). It's fine, and a lack of images doesn't exclude it from GA. I was wrong about the reference thing, after closer look at Wikipedia policy. However...

Prawer began his teaching career at the Hebrew University in 1947 and (after fighting in the 1948 siege of Jerusalem[3]) soon rose through the faculty ranks. He became deputy dean of the Faculty of Humanities from 1953-55, was made professor and chair of medieval history in 1958, was dean of the Faculty of Humanities from 1962-66, and served as prorector at the university in the years 1975-78.[6]

→

Prawer began his teaching career at the Hebrew University in 1947 and (after fighting in the 1948 siege of Jerusalem) soon rose through the faculty ranks.[3][6] He became deputy dean of the Faculty of Humanities from 1953-55, was made professor and chair of medieval history in 1958, was dean of the Faculty of Humanities from 1962-66, and served as prorector at the university in the years 1975-78.[6]

I think it should be that way, otherwise it's unclear what reference the first and last part of the sentence is using. In Honors and later life... the sentence that starts: He was honored as a Visiting... that sentence needs to have a space after ref 6.

The date format is apparently fine to use. Make these very small changes and I'll pass it. Here is my updated bullet point review template, I'll just pretend you've already made the two changes I suggested above.

GA review (see here for criteria)
  1. It is reasonably well written.
    a (prose): b (MoS):
  2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.
    a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):
  3. It is broad in its coverage.
    a (major aspects): b (focused):
  4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.
    a (fair representation): b (all significant views):
  5. It is stable.
  6. It contains images, where possible, to illustrate the topic.
    a (tagged and captioned): b (lack of images does not in itself exclude GA): c (non-free images have fair use rationales):
  7. Overall:
    a Pass/Fail:

Psychless 16:21, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Looks good now. Might want to add a space after the flag in the infobox, [& symbol here]nbsp; if that doesn't work, but otherwise it's fine. It is now a Good Article :). Psychless 03:58, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
Yay! Thanks again for taking the time to examine the article. :) nadav (talk) 04:06, 27 June 2007 (UTC)