Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Queen Victoria/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 promoted by SandyGeorgia 23:54, 3 April 2011 [1].

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Queen Victoria

Queen Victoria (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

• Featured article candidates/Queen Victoria/archive1

Nominator(s): DrKiernan (talk) 12:32, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Victoria of the United Kingdom/archive1
Wikipedia:Featured article review/Victoria of the United Kingdom/archive1

This is a former featured article that was demoted, now re-written. DrKiernan (talk) 12:32, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

WP:FFA, has been on mainpage. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:15, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Comments

• Great choice for a FAC, I'm sure we're going to have fun with this one. Although I'm generally on the anti-adjective side of prose debates, it feels like this is missing an adjective: "It was a period of industrial, cultural, political, scientific, and military change". The point I'd want to convey to the reader who doesn't know much about the 19th century is that it was a period of rapid (or great or some such) industrial, cultural, political, scientific, and military change. YMMV. [That's it for now, I'm looking forward to reading this when I can.] - Dank (push to talk) 12:48, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
• Belated support ... I forgot to mention that I did read it, and it looks great. - Dank (push to talk) 13:54, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Comments by Johnbod

Resolved commentary moved to talk. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:26, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, I wouldn't call some resolved at all, but I'm supporting despite them. Johnbod (talk) 21:51, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Please move back to here anything that you consider important enough for me to hold up promotion over. Sorry if I goofed! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:04, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

No, that's ok thanks. They are done with anyway. Johnbod (talk) 03:53, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

• • Support, although I'm not pursuaded a purely chronological approach is the best. Johnbod (talk) 03:44, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Source review

• "Peel resigned in 1846, after the repeal narrowly passed" - source?
• "Queen Victoria remains the most commemorated British monarch in history" - source?
• "Australia's rapid growth and prosperity during her reign was due primarily to the Australian gold rushes" - source?
• "Victoria's royal cypher was the first to be used on a postbox" - source?
• Publisher and location for Fulford?
• The occasional use of citation templates has resulted in several minor inconsistencies in citation formatting, particularly punctuation
• Can you provide a time reference for the Jones documentary?
• Use a more consistent formatting for journal citations
• All ISBNs should be linked, and why are some in parentheses?
• In the Blood is a dab page
• Be consistent in whether you provide locations for publishers or not
• Publisher for Whitaker's Almanack?
• Ref 95 should be noted as a foreign-language source
• "50 European kings and princes" - given that the source says "foreign" kings and princes, and later mentions Indian princes, why do we assume the group referred to is exclusively European? Nikkimaria (talk) 13:58, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for such a careful analysis. Unsourced material removed; citations amended.[2] DrKiernan (talk) 21:39, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Comments from Lecen Why there are so many sentences without sources? --Lecen (talk) 23:54, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Because with 212 inline references I would prefer to have one reference at the end of a paragraph or section if the material is all from the same source rather than duplicate references, or not provide one for uncontentious facts (like the date of her birth or the outcome of a general election). DrKiernan (talk) 00:11, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Comments from GoodDay The article isn't ready for FA. Its title should be moved back to Victoria of the United Kingdom. Queen, is not her first name, see King Clancy, Queen Latifah. -- GoodDay (talk) 00:58, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Based on what? You should know that there was a long dicussion and voting in favor of the present name. After all, you voted there. This is certainly not the place to argue about this. --Lecen (talk) 01:12, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

The title is wrong. Therefore I don't endorse this article's FA candidacy. GoodDay (talk) 01:20, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

You are wrong. The nominator has no power to force the other editors who supported the present title to change their opinions. Again: this is not the place to discuss this. --Lecen (talk) 01:40, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

I oppose the FA candidacy for this article. The nominator is free to ignore my objections. GoodDay (talk) 01:44, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Your opposition would be more worthwhile if it made reference to the featured article criteria. Just sayin'. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:55, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not used to these FA candidacy things. I've withdrawn my oppostion here, but haven't changed my mind on the article title. GoodDay (talk) 02:02, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Comments from Tim riley An enjoyable article. A few points about the prose:

• Adviser/advisor – each appears once. The first is in a quote, but is the usual British form – better to avoid the American form, perhaps, in so very British an article. (The OED says "Adviser remains the usual spelling, but advisor is freq. used (esp. U.S.)")
• I'm not sure I follow your reasoning for capitalising and not capitalising "Queen/queen". In the Marriage section, for instance, it appears in both forms.
• Ditto with Prime Minister/prime minister – both forms appear, for reasons that are not obvious.
• Ditto with royal Houses – we have house of Orleans but House of Hanover.
• British government's approval for – approval of?
• the advent of the Crimean war – do wars have advents? Just "since the Crimean war" would suffice, surely?
• In 1866, she attended the State Opening of Parliament – first mention in a new para – would be better to use her name rather than the pronoun.
• an act removing Catholic rituals from the Anglican liturgy, – that's a lot of blue for one link; could you make the link shorter?
• she threatened to abdicate five times – can one abdicate five times? she threatened five times to abdicate would nail the ambiguity.
• threats had no material impact – Does the adjective add anything here?
• Sir Somebody Something – you are inconsistent about piping the Sir. I think piping it is much kinder to the reader's eye, (Sir Robert Peel rather than Sir Robert Peel) but you should be consistent one way or the other. The piping of the "Lord" in Lord John Russell is another reason for following suit with the knights, perhaps.
• Randall Davidson – a reference to his job title in the text would be helpful, I think
• Legacy section – on my computer (a wide-ish screen) there is a whacking great expanse of white space between the third and fourth paragraphs

22:03, 23 March 2011 (UTC) (Sorry - forgot to add my tildes.) Tim riley (talk) 22:07, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the review; changes made[3]. Capitalization should follow WP:Job titles, but I don't find the guideline particularly clear. DrKiernan (talk) 22:40, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Support. I am conscious that experts in the subject are commenting on this page, but as a layman I am happy to support the article's elevation to FA. It is well shaped and well balanced; the prose suffices; the referencing is formidable; and the images are first class. I think the nominator has done remarkably well to boil the huge amount of information about Her late Majesty down to a digestible article. It would be all too easy to ramble, but this article doesn't. I can see no FA criterion that it fails to satisfy. Tim riley (talk) 14:47, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

• Thank you very much, Tim. With all those detailed comments above and below, I was beginning to despair! DrKiernan (talk) 21:14, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Comments by Wehwalt

Resolved comments moved to talk. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:20, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Support Excellent job, the good doctor is to be congratulated (and I'd tend to blame the lack of education as monarch on the Duchess of Kent and on Conroy, who were betting all on being able to control Victoria, and part of that was keeping her helpless.)--Wehwalt (talk) 22:32, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Comment - just a passing comment here. Almost certainly too trivial to mention, but given that you mention the various assassination attempts, which undoubtedly made the police nervous, do your sources mention at all the case of Thomas Skaife, who invented a pistol-shaped camera (the pistolgraph) and apparently was surrounded by police when he aimed it at Queen Victoria during a procession (silly fool that he was for doing that): some sources? That story has always stuck in my mind! I also vaguely remember seeing some recent modern camera designs that you can hold and point like a gun. Seems the same mistakes keep getting made... Carcharoth (talk) 04:31, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

No, I've seen nothing on that before. Bizarre. DrKiernan (talk) 09:38, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Sources questions - and a few questions on the sources. Looking at the bibliography, I see six works that are published books on Victoria alone. In chronological order, these are: Queen Victoria (Strachey, 1921); Victoria R.I. (Longford, 1964); The Life and Times of Queen Victoria (Marshall, 1972 work reprinted in 1992); Queen Victoria: Her Life and Times 1819–1861 (Woodham-Smith, 1972); Queen Victoria: A Portrait (St Aubyn, 1991); Queen Victoria: A Personal History (Hibbert, 2000). Some comments and questions:

• Are these all the major (and lesser) biographies of Victoria that have been published? Have any been omitted? Are there any more recent ones, or ones currently being written? How much recent work in this area outside of published books has been done?
• By my rough count, there are around 117 references (out of 222) cited to Hibbert, which as the most recent source you use is to be expected. Could you briefly note how you've used the earlier works (you seem to cite some things to several of these works, which does help if you don't happen to have them all), and how you reconcile cases where the sources disagree, or where an earlier source alone is used.
• Some of the names of the biography authors I recognise as eminent historians. Others I don't recognise. Is it possible to give a very brief history (here, not in the article unless lots has been written on this) of the history of Victoria's biographers? I presume the later biographers built on the earlier ones, but which ones were the ground-breaking biographies, and which one was the first one? Was it Strachey's one? Currently the article says this:

  "Biographies of Victoria written before much of the primary material became available, such as Lytton Strachey's Queen Victoria, are now considered out of date. The biographies written by Elizabeth Longford and Cecil Woodham-Smith, in 1964 and 1972 respectively, are still widely admired."

  That answers most of my questions, but not all of them (you could, for example, explicitly state that Strachey's biography was published in 1921 - was that the first edition?). When did "much of the primary material" become available and what form did it take?
• You say that "Part of Victoria's extensive correspondence has been published in volumes edited by A. C. Benson, Hector Bolitho, George Earle Buckle, Lord Esher, Roger Fulford, and Richard Hough among others." However, you don't give a date for when these publications took place (you source this to Hibbert and St Aubyn, leaving the reader to find the details there). Given that this is such a large and extensive topic, is it not worth giving explicit details for these 'correspondence' works in a "Further reading" section, also pointing readers to the biographies that you use as sources, as I presume there is much in your sources that would also be suitable for 'further reading'.

A final point is that given that you take the time to say which biographies are outdated and which of the earlier ones are still admired, is there a reason you don't mention Hibbert and his biography in the article text? If Hibbert's work is now the authoritative work on Victoria, building on and improving on and expanding on, the earlier works, should the article not say this? You are also silent on the Marshall and St Aubyn works, though you do mention St Aubyn as one of her biographers. Is there a reason to mention the other biographers by name in the article but not Hibbert and Marshall? Carcharoth (talk) 05:05, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

I've used Hibbert for the most part because it is the most recent complete life by a notable scholar that I have access to. Walter Arnstein's Queen Victoria would be an alternative, but I don't have a copy. Longford's and Woodham-Smith's are easily the most admired; Woodham-Smith's death before the completion of her volume 2 (1861–1901) is often decried as a loss to biography.

There were biographies published during Victoria's life which are all either sycophantic or ill-informed. A book by Agnes Strickland had to be withdrawn. The Royal Archives has copies of "biographies" where Victoria has scribbled furiously in the margin "Rubbish!!" and "Not true!" and so on. I believe, the first "serious" biography was Sidney Lee's but it was published before any access to any primary documents. Lorne published a book in 1901, Victoria R.I., but I would probably call that a primary source rather than a biography. The first letters and journal entries (edited by Esher) were published in 1907 (letters) and 1912 (early journal), and so Strachey's was the first complete biography (apart from Lorne's) to have reasonable access to primary material. Personally, I would say the early part of Strachey is OK, which is understandable because it is constructed from primary sources published by Esher and Greville's memoirs, however it does contain some now obvious errors. The latter half of Strachey is now not comprehensive and rather thin in my opinion, but clearly very good for the time. The later letters and journal started to become available in the late 20s/early 30s, which I believe led to the first informed coverage of Victoria's political influence by a biographer (Frank Hardie) in 1935. Although, I'm not sure whether Ponsonby might have said something along those lines in the earlier 30s.

I do not know of any change in the way Victoria has been perceived by biographers since Longford. Longford, Woodham-Smith, Marshall, St Aubyn and Hibbert cover much the same material, which is why it is so easy to bundle references together. There is no need to say "this biographer says this, but so-and-so says otherwise" because they are agreed. The disagreements between biographies arise only when comparing the pre-primary material books with the post-primary ones, where I have obviously gone with the post-primary interpretation.

I would be quite happy to add some of the above into the article, and indeed probably am going to do just that in a while for the bits above that aren't my opinion, but to be quite honest there are so many books and so much material, something has to be left out. DrKiernan (talk) 09:38, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank-you for such a detailed response. I agree that some things have to be left out, but it is reassuring to know that the history of the sources (even those not used) is known in such detail. I'll be interested to see how and whether it can be worked into the article. The bit about the pre-Strachey biographies and Queen Victoria's scribbling on some of the ones published in her lifetime was particularly amusing. One important point - do you think Walter Arnstein's Queen Victoria should be mentioned in some 'further reading' section for balance? Carcharoth (talk) 03:37, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I'd rather not have an extra section. Ideally, we should stick in a single Arnstein footnote somewhere and that would give us an excuse to put it in the references! DrKiernan (talk) 08:02, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

My view, when you have a topic that is: (a) too large to be written about in one article; and (b) where the sub-articles are not yet fully developed or don't exist, is that for an article to make any claim to be 'comprehensive', it must point the reader to further reading. Wikipedia articles are really only a starting point for the interested reader. Once they have grasped the essentials of a topic, they should be able to refer to a section that enables them to read more if they so wish. The trouble with pointing readers to the works cited in the references is that this provides no guidance. Some of the works will be more suitable than others for further reading. Also, when only part of a work is used to cite something, there is still the need to alert the reader to whether the rest of that work is suitable for further reading. And if you don't have a particular work, it should still be mentioned. Not mentioning it at all arguably skews the article, as knowing that this other biography exists, but not mentioning it, is favouring one biography over another. So I think you need to either get hold of a copy of this biography, or refer the reader to it for further reading. At the moment, people reading this article are more likely to go and buy the Hibbert book for further reading than the Arnstein book (and many will not even realise that you have omitted mention of a major biography). For others reading this, the book in question is this one, published in 2003 (Queen Victoria by Walter L. Arnstein). Carcharoth (talk) 08:31, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

As you wish. DrKiernan (talk) 08:57, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank-you. As a reader (not just as an editor), I do appreciate extra touches like that. Having now found the time to read through the entire article (which is excellent), I have a few additional comments, which I will put in a new section below. Carcharoth (talk) 09:52, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Support. Very well-written and well-cited, this article deserves to be returned to the FA ranks. I had no idea so many people tried to shoot her! The only thing that jumped out about it for me was that you used semi-colons a great deal. I tend to do the same, and I've found that sometimes breaking it into two separate sentences reads better. But that's purely a stylistic point, not an objection. Also, the part near the end about her once-disputed parentage seems out of place. Is there a better place for it? Or is it there as the result of some prior discussion or compromise? --Coemgenus 18:42, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the support. The origin of the royal haemophilia surfaces occasionally on the talk page, e.g. Talk:Queen Victoria#Was queen Victoria a bastard?. I can't think of anywhere else it would naturally fit, unless all but the first sentence of that paragraph were moved to the Haemophilia in European royalty article. DrKiernan (talk) 08:02, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Comments

• The portrait in the collapsed box titled 'Queen Victoria's family in 1846 by Franz Xaver Winterhalter' is really nice. Is there a reason this is hidden away, forcing readers to click on it to show it? As far as I am aware, the image still has to be loaded, even inside the collapse box, so putting it there doesn't save any load time.

• I don't know. I guess because it's so big. I've revealed it to see what people think.

• The images used are well-chosen and diverse. Possibly I'd have liked to see a picture for the Empress of India section (there should be room, even with the wikisource box), and maybe less images in the Legacy section, but that is a minor quibble.

• Yes, I know. I was deliberately saving that spot for Von Angeli's 1875/6 portrait where Victoria stares rather starkly straight at the viewer. I wanted to use that particularly for the caption I had in mind: Von Angeli's 1875 portrait was admired by Victoria for its "honesty, total want of flattery, and appreciation of character". The only place I've found to steal it from (in color) is the ODNB but there's a strongly worded copyright notice on it, which scared me off. So, I was trying to find another version. Anyhow, I've selected my reserve option of a Punch cartoon instead.

• The last two paragraphs of the 'Legacy' section are unsourced. The material there (places named after her, Victoria Cross, and public holidays) is unlikely to be challenged, but it is something to be aware of in case there is ever a need to provide citations there. I hadn't known before reading that, that there is a Victoria Day in Scotland.

• No, I didn't know that either, but I did check and it is celebrated (in certain towns only not over the whole of Scotland). If it was challenged I'd probably prefer to take the opportunity to cut it.

• The items currently on the 'See also' list seem a bit unnecessary: Cultural depictions of Queen Victoria, List of coupled cousins, Small diamond crown of Queen Victoria, Victoria and Albert Museum. Unless this is a comprehensive list of articles related to Queen Victoria that are not already mentioned in the article, I would drop these or integrate them into the text. Certainly the crown and museum could be integrated with little trouble (the crown is in one of the images) and the museum could be mentioned in the 'places named after her' section. I'd drop the coupled cousins link altogether. Unless there are other items that could go in the 'see also' list, it would then be simplest to integrate the cultural depictions link as well, probably in the 'Legacy' section.

• I've chopped the section. I've never liked them anyway. But I've justed shifted the Cultural depictions link because the biographies don't really examine how she is portrayed in popular culture.

Overall, as I said above, an excellent article. I enjoyed reading it, and am leaning towards support. Carcharoth (talk) 10:06, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, responses interspersed. DrKiernan (talk) 17:04, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

The Punch cartoon is nice. Happy to support, and hopefully some of the subsidiary articles can be done over the next few months and years. That might also address Johnbod's desire for a more thematic approach, as subsidiary articles could do more to summarise opinions on various aspects, that there is little room for in the top-level article that this is. Some examples I spotted were a Diamond Jubilee article to go with the Golden Jubilee one, a wedding article (Royal weddings articles are all the rage at the moment, for some reason), numerous items associated with Victoria that could still have articles (I liked the one on Dash the spaniel!), and I'm sure some of the more famous artworks could have articles of their own. We even have an example of an article on one of the books: The Queen's Knight (Downer). I also liked The Triumphs of Oriana (1899). Anyway, just a few ideas. Carcharoth (talk) 05:12, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

• Support per discussion above. Carcharoth (talk) 05:12, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks. Yes, I enjoyed writing the snippet on Dash; it's one of my favorites too. DrKiernan (talk) 08:04, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Why is there hidden text and an image linked in the infobox? Infoboxes are irritating enough without that, but text should not be hidden anywhere in articles. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:59, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm uncertain what you mean. Which parameters should be disposed of? (Try to resist the temptation to say all of them!) DrKiernan (talk) 08:04, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm not a fan of infoboxes, so finding collapsible commentary there doesn't thrill me :) It's at "Queen of the United Kingdom (more...)" and "Issue more detail". No text should be hidden on FAs, not clear why that is hidden in the infobox. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:41, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

They're links not hidden text. I've made an edit to amend [4]. DrKiernan (talk) 14:34, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Better :) Terribly busy, but I'll get to this by the end of the day. I hope. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:36, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.