Talk:Serranus Clinton Hastings

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Good article Serranus Clinton Hastings 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.
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[edit] A short note

I'm the editor responsible for bringing this article from this to this. If you're confused about something while editing this article drop a note on my talk page. --Psychless 02:21, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GA Review

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:


  • There are several odd-sounding phrases in the text. Examples I found quickly include: "began having an interest in the law" (became interested?), "he got involved in the territory's politics" (just state how) and "his family moved to California and established a residence in Benicia, California" (his family moved to Benicia, Calfornia).
  • Also, the sentence "His family was to move there at a later time." doesn't seem to serve any real purpose. This becomes apparent in the next paragraph
  • There are several places where partial dates (e.g. December 1836). These provide little context, and should probably be removed. (See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Partial_dates
  • The links to Editor and Burlington are left ambiguous.
  • Several terms are wikilinked multiple times, providing no additional context - Hastings college of Law, United States House of Representatives, University of California, Attorney General of California, California
  • The article details a number of offices that Hastings held, but doesn't say much about what he did in any of them. Perhaps he did nothing notable, or perhaps more research is needed.

I think this article still needs some work to be considered GA. Acdixon 14:40, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Re check

The article is more comprehensive now, but the part from 1840-1846 is unconvincing. It needs to tell us what he did in those times, rather than just mark out the dates of each of his terms. If nothing useful happened, then the paragraph should be condensed to say that he had two consecutive terms instead of the date of every single term. There should be something interesting about teh election campaign at least? I don't think the exact date is necessary if there is nothing interesting about the period. Is there a reason why his family moved across the country? The sentences in the last section are very short and need to flow more logically. It appears to be a set of dot points strung together at the moment. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 03:37, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Due to some limitations I can not fix most of those things, here's why:
  • I'm sure something useful happened but I can't find any information on what he did during those times. If do a quick google search you'll see how difficult it was to find information on this man, some information just doesn't exist. I think the dates should stay in. Wikipedia is lacking coverage on the territorial legislature of Iowa. If I was to remove those dates people would assume that he served consecutive one year terms.
  • Are you talking about his campaign for Attorney General? I barely found who he was running against, much less his campaign. I hesitate to remove the date because I don't see the point of being less specific about it.
  • I'm assuming that his family moved across the country to be with him, but have no source to back my idea up. I also have no idea why he decided to move to California in the first place.
  • I tried to copyedit that last section, but it didn't go well. Do you have any advice? His later years aren't documented that well so it's hard to connect one idea to the next when they are barely related.

I hoped this helped address some of your concerns. Psychless 01:38, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

I guess it's a weak pass then. I mean there doesn't seem to be anything particularly actionable if the information doesn't exist or only exists in historical primary documents. It would make it difficult to get any further though, but good job with what was available. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 01:54, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, if I do ever come across more information on him I'll be sure to add it :). Psychless 15:08, 25 July 2007 (UTC)