Talk:Robert Alexander Neil

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by AirshipJungleman29 talk 18:42, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

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• Comment or view
• Article history

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• ... that Sunday lunch with Robert Alexander Neil was called "the best intellectual thing in Cambridge"? Source: Robinson, Annabel (2002). The Life and Work of Jane Ellen Harrison. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199242337, p. 127
  • ALT1: ... that the classicist Robert Alexander Neil edited texts from ancient India as well as from ancient Greece? Source: Giles, Peter (1912b). "Neil, Robert Alexander" . In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 Supplement . Vol. 3. pp. 1–2; Zacher, Konrad (20 June 1903). "The Knights of Aristophanes Edited by Robert Alexander Neil". Berliner Philologische Wochenschrift [Berlin Philological Weekly] (in German). 23 (25). column 769.
  • ALT2: ... that despite placing top in his university class in Ancient Greek, the classicist Robert Alexander Neil initially decided to study medicine? Source: Giles, Peter (1912b). "Neil, Robert Alexander" . In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 Supplement . Vol. 3. p. 1.
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Yobidashi

Moved to mainspace by UndercoverClassicist (talk). Self-nominated at 12:53, 6 January 2024 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Robert Alexander Neil; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

• I find the first hook the most interesting here, so that's what I'll be reviewing.

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: - Offline/paywalled citation accepted in good faith Interesting:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Assuming good faith on the source because I don't have access to the source; otherwise nice high-quality article. Generalissima (talk) 03:50, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Era error

Hi UC, Indeed, I too prefer BCE. I was simply eager to take him back 1,000 years! I hope my changes were okay and thank you for another interesting article. Regards, JennyOz (talk) 11:16, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

As ever, greatly appreciated: I always look forward to seeing what I've missed when the article hits the front page. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 11:24, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Robert Alexander Neil/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: UndercoverClassicist (talk · contribs) 10:22, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer: Kusma (talk · contribs) 10:09, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Will review this one soon. —Kusma (talk) 10:09, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Content and prose review

Lead:

• "graduated with the university's second-highest mark" is probably clear, but I worry it might be misunderstood for a 2:1 degree (the second highest outcome achievable)
  • Yes, I can see the ambiguity (is this the second-best A or a B, in other terms?). Rephrased slightly to He graduated with a First, scoring the university's second-highest mark in tripos, in 1876.
• "Pembroke's Senior Tutor" what kind of position is that? (really a question for the body).
  • See below. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 16:11, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Early life and education

• How common were thirteen-year old boys at the University of Aberdeen back in the day?
  • Less unusual than you'd think, I believe: remembering that we're in a time before the National Curriculum or widespread access to "good" schools. Our article Scottish education in the nineteenth century has At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Scotland's five university colleges had about 3,000 students between them. They had no entrance exam, students typically entered at ages of 15 or 16, attended for as little as two years, chose which lectures to attend and left without qualifications. It goes on to say that this system was reformed in the 1890s, but it sounds as if Neil would have been unusually young if not shockingly so. None of his biographers saw fit to draw any real attention to it, which suggests that he wasn't considered a prodigy simply for going to university at that age. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 16:11, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
• "graduated from Aberdeen with a First in 1870" best to gloss First for the benefit of non-Brits, and to explain that it doesn't necessarily mean he was the number one best student.
  • Absolutely; done. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 16:11, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
• Do we know anything about the various scholarships he was awarded? It sounds like they were awarded on academic merit?
  • Usually, these things are simply for the highest examination mark in the subject in question: there are others (the Porson Prize at Cambridge, for instance) where you sit an additional examination or competition (such as Latin verse composition) and then the highest mark in that examination gets the prize. I can't find any specifics about these ones but I don't think there's any reason to think that they were/are anything remarkably different from those norms. There's a newspaper article here from 1882 which makes clear that they had similar prizes in most of the "prestigious" subjects (ie, Classics, Mathematics, Natural Sciences, Medicine and possibly some others). UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 16:11, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
• I was surprised to see the Numismatic Chronicle cited; the reason they write about him seems to be that RA Neil was elected a member of the Numismatic Society in 1892. Also, if I read the source correctly, Society president John Evans states Neil was a close friend.
  • Added both to the article; I think Evans is a big enough name that it's worth listing their friendship. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 16:11, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Academic career:

• "students [...] had to sit a Sanskrit paper in order to achieve a First" I assume that sitting the exam was a necessary but not sufficient condition?
  • Correct: you still had to score the necessary marks, but would only be given a Second if you hadn't offered the Sanskrit paper. I don't think you had to score a particular mark in that paper, as long as your overall mark was high enough. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 16:11, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
• The Senior Tutor seems to have become a full time admin position, but only recently? (I am curious because I have served in a position called "Senior Tutor", but not at a collegiate university).
  • Administration, particularly at the colleges, was pretty skeletal until fairly recently. Senior Tutor at Cambridge isn't a non-teaching post, or full-time at all: it's a post that a fellow of the college would hold, with additional responsibilities for (basically) keeping the undergraduates in line. In the late C20th, it was a fairly "big deal" job which involved a lot of things like discipline, dealing with academic or personal misconduct, setting the rules for college parties, and so on, but I suspect it was seen in Neil's day as one of those embuggerances that someone from the SCR had to shoulder from time to time. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 16:11, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
• Engagement with Harrison: not something you need to do for GA, but there seem to be a lot more sources about Harrison (like those cited here) that could be considered.
  • Oh yes, a lot has been written on Harrison. Did you find anything in there that was particularly relevant to Harrison and Neil, though? Mary Beard's biography of Harrison only mentions him very briefly, though I've added her as a source in relation to the engagement. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 16:11, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Assessment, honours and legacy:

• I have reduced the precision of the inflation value to two significant digits, feel free to revert.
  • Absolutely the right call; thank you. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 16:11, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

A fine biography of a scholar. There is only very little on his personal life, but I assume not much else is known? Do you know what Wace thought of his tutor? —Kusma (talk) 14:26, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

• I don't think Wace ever really wrote about him: he never produced a memoir, as far as I know, and doesn't seem to have written any obituaries for him -- he wouldn't have been old or established enough to have done so, really. Thank you as ever for these comments: replies above. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 16:11, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Source spotchecks

Numbering from special:permanentlink/1229385303

• 6: ok
• 11b: first Wikisource link is broken. Content OK.
  • See below. Problem was that the software automatically appends the content of |chapter= to the content of |wslink=, creating a broken link if you give the full link as the latter. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 16:31, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
• 11d: new Oxford DNB has "Bridge of Gairn", which looks more likely.
  • Good eye; fixed on both mentions. It's almost certainly Gairnshiel Bridge, but I can't find a source which definitively says so. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 16:31, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
    • I think it is a different bridge, next to the cemetery here: [1]. —Kusma (talk) 19:49, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
• 14: again, first Wikisource link is broken. Content fine
  • Fixed both of these. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 16:31, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
• 17: strictly speaking, I can't see that Neil Kensington Adam was "named after" Robert Alexander Neil, but it does look likely.
  • It's in Oakley, cited: [Adam] formed a close friendship with the classical scholar and orientalist, Robert Alexander Neil ... after whom he would name his first son. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 16:31, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
    • Perfect then. —Kusma (talk) 19:49, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
• 19: looks ok
• 28: ok

No major concerns. —Kusma (talk) 15:08, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

• • I think all of these are fixed or otherwise sorted above. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 16:31, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

General comments and GA criteria

Good Article review progress box Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV () 3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant () Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

• Prose is fine, minor comments above.
• No major MoS issues.
• Ref layout fine (but try to figure out what is wrong with the Wikisource links).
• Sources are fine given the topic and era.
• Only OR question is "named his son after him"; if you can't source this, just use "called his first son 'Neil'"?
• Other than the Numismatic Society I found, no broadness issues. More about his works would be nice, but there is some content about them, so I can't complain too much.
• Images look fine in sourcing, captions, ALT text.
• Is there really no image of RA Neil? Pembroke College might have something??
  • Wouldn't be a huge surprise for a scholar of his era: you can usually get one for C19th Oxbridge academics, but it does vary, and it helps if they had an illustrious enough position to get an official portrait taken (and Neil didn't). However, nothing ventured, nothing gained -- I've sent an email to the college to ask if they have anything we could use in their archives. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 16:40, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Done reviewing. Good work, not very much to do here. —Kusma (talk) 15:18, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

• Thanks, Kusma: replies above. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 16:40, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
  • All good. I did find another source whil trying to figure out the Gairn Bridge and Glengairn etc.: William Robertson Nicoll remembering his childhood friend. [2] Good for a few anecdotes I think, especially for early years. —Kusma (talk) 19:49, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

    An earlier British publication of the same text is here: [3]. —Kusma (talk) 19:55, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

    Anyway, I think this is a pass. @UndercoverClassicist, just pinging you here to notify you of my comment above before I fill the paperwork. —Kusma (talk) 19:58, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.