Talk:John Edward Brownlee's tenure as Attorney General of Alberta/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Arsenikk (talk) 23:44, 25 December 2009 (UTC)Reply

Overall the article is good and meets the criteria, except for a section without references. Because I suspect that you may be taking the article to FA, I have added some comments that go beyond that of the GA criteria. While not strictly needed to pass the article, I hope you appreciate the feedback (I know I would).

  • I was of the impression that boldface text was not to be linked. WP:BOLDTITLE states "Use as few links as possible before and in the bolded title. Thereafter, words used in a title may be linked to provide more detail:". Personally I would have kept the introduction un-bolded. However, I am not certain of this, so I will leave it to you and, if applicable, the FA reviewers.
    • I've de-bolded, as that seemed the most reasonable solution to me.
  • Perhaps mention the exact dates he was premier, not just the years. After all, the date of becoming appointed premier is mentioned.
    • I'm not sure I catch your meaning here.
      • I presume that he was appointed to office on a particular day, and similarly sat in the position until a particular date. I would have though that was important enough to mention in the lead, instead of just mentioning the years.
  • Is there an article on 'Attorney-General of Alberta'? If so, it should be wikilinked; if not, wikilink to 'attorney-general'.
  • Similarly, is there an article on the cabinet/government of Greenfield?
    • Nope.
  • The entire section 'Background' has no references.
    • Fixed.
  • First instance of 'Calgary' should be wikilinked.
    • Done.
  • I was of the impression that 'City, Province,' should have a comma after the latter, or am I incorrect/is it optional?
    • I can't find anything about this in the MOS. I wrote it the way that my gut thought was right; my gut's not infallible, though, so I'd be happy to see something authoritative one way or another.
  • Since 'MLA' is linked in the lead, it seems a bit redundant to link in the prose as well (particularly since it is written as an acronym).
    • Delinked.
  • Who is 'R. B. Bennett'?
    • Linked.
  • You use 'premier' mostly in lower case (which I believe is correct), but at the end of the first paragraph under 'Railways and natural resources', it has a capital letter.
    • Lowercased.
  • One paragraph down, the number of significant digits seems wrong, particularly in the number of acres (two) and ha (three).
    • That's the doing of {{convert}}. I don't touch that stuff; there be demons.
      • Fixed it up. Don't know why it is "malfunctioning", but I overrode the number of significant digits.
  • 'Alberta Liberal Party' and 'John R. Boyle' are linked twice.
    • Delinked.
  • Should the whole 'Québécois lawyer' be linking to 'Quebec', instead of just 'Québécois'?
    • Nope; fixed.
  • I was of the impression that the term 'In [year],' was to have a comma after it. The article has several instances both with and without commas.
    • This should be treated the same way as any other adverb, making it optional. The emphasis and flow shift somewhat depending on whether the comma's there.
  • 'three person panel' should be 'three-person panel', similarly with the seventeen-person committee two paragraphs down.
    • Done (except I changed it to "17-person", per WP:MOSNUM).
  • The sentence "The Alberta Wheat Pool was born." is rather short, and could be merged into one of the side sentences.
    • Not sure I agree here; I like the emphasis created by setting the sentence apart.
  • The caption says they were hanged, but the body doesn't.
    • Fixed.
  • I would personally have added some more images that were not portraits. Perhaps some images of railway construction in Alberta during the 1920, or of grain elevators or farming from the same period. I know this can be hard to find, but much from that time is in the public domain. This is more a suggestion than advice.
    • You're probably right about this. I'll try to change this in the next couple of weeks.
  • It would probably look better if the references were on two or three columns.
    • I'm using {{reflist|2}}, so it should already be in two columns. It doesn't show up as such for me, because columns don't work in Chrome (the browser I use), but it should work in other browsers.
  • Considering the process of creating a good topic, would it be appropriate with a navbox for Brownlee (now that there are four articles on him)?
    • Almost certainly. I have no confidence in my ability to do this usefully.

I am placing the article on hold. The only action that need be done to pass is reference the one section and a few stray places; the rest is just a tentative feedback in lieu of a suspected future featured article nomination. Arsenikk (talk) 23:44, 25 December 2009 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the review! Just a note that I won't be able to address the major issue (the unreferenced section) until Monday. I may or may not get to some of the other stuff until then, but I'd hate to see it failed because it happened to get reviewed at a time when my library and I were in different cities. Steve Smith (talk) 18:56, 30 December 2009 (UTC)Reply

That is fully understandable. Take the time you need—this is all about getting things done, not doing them the fastest during a holiday. Arsenikk (talk) 19:21, 30 December 2009 (UTC)Reply
I will pass the article. I left one comment about the date, which I hope I can trust you to fix without leaving the article on hold for another period of days. I also took the freedom of creating a navbox. Another piece of quality work from you, Steve, and hopefully not the last we'll see. Arsenikk (talk) 18:03, 5 January 2010 (UTC)Reply