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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Assassination of William McKinley/archive1

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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 GrahamColm 14:01, 7 April 2012 [1].

Assassination of William McKinley edit

Assassination of William McKinley (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Wehwalt (talk) 08:39, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article because... It meets the criteria, in my view, which I hope others will agree to. I hope I have captured a little bit of 1901 in addition to covering the assassination, a world where you could have a fair with a Triumphal Bridge, and a straight face. A spoiler: someone dies (two, in fact).Wehwalt (talk) 08:39, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments:

  • Are the two panoramas really necessary? The loading of the second image takes lot of time. The article will lose nothing if they are removed.
  • Images are good --Redtigerxyz Talk 16:13, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for reviewing the images. I think that, in general, we should take advantage of what resources are available to us to give the reader the maximum amount of understanding that we can. This article throws a lot of place names at the reader that he can't really understand because they all vanished when the fair closed and they disassembled the building. I would prefer to keep them, but let's see what people think during the course of this FAC.--Wehwalt (talk) 16:35, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(ec)Sources and images - spotchecks not done. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:44, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Missing subtitle on McElroy book
  • Olcott: link provided gives only "William McKinley" as title
  • Why use both mdy and dmy in references?
  • X in Temple of Music image is quite difficult to see at that size
  • File:McKinley_last_photo.jpg needs US PD tag, and is a page number available?
  • File:Temple_of_Music_postcard.jpg needs US PD tag
  • File:Mark_Hanna_at_Milburn_Mansion.jpg, File:McKinley_death_Milburn.jpg: page number? Nikkimaria (talk) 16:44, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
All those things are done. I enlarged the X photograph. I am reluctant to have the graphics lab play with it because the X seems to be in the image and so the reader should see it as it is. Thank you for your review.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:41, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support - I reviewed the article recently in a Peer Revew. The nominator addressed all my concerns at that time, and I support it for FA status. --Noleander (talk) 17:36, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your review, and for supporting.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:41, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Very well, I've removed them.--Wehwalt (talk) 21:30, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - read this one through and found it to be really engaging and deserving of the FA star. Great job! – Connormah (talk) 05:26, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Connormah, good seeing you. Hope all is well at Commons?--Wehwalt (talk) 08:26, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments. As always, feel free to revert my copyediting. Please check the edit summaries; WP:Checklist will explain some of them. - Dank (push to talk) 16:10, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Please go through adding second commas to dates and geographic names. It's tedious for me to do it every time, and it takes no longer to do it right than to do it wrong. See WT:Checklist for support for second commas in modern style guides. (The problem, of course, is that nothing succeeds like excess, and the journalistic writing our culture is awash in constantly drops commas whether it makes any sense to do so or not. As each comma rule dies, the style guides amend their guidance ... but they haven't caved on this one, yet.) - Dank (push to talk) 16:10, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I've added the ones I saw. If you see more, and are not inclined to change them yourself, please give me some idea of where you saw them so as to avoid eyestrain on my part.--Wehwalt (talk) 16:51, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Well, the first sentence in the lead and the first sentence in the second section are wrong. I stopped there. - Dank (push to talk) 17:03, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The missing space before 1901?--Wehwalt (talk) 17:23, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yep. - Dank (push to talk) 17:33, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't see any more besides the ones I already changed, but I will be on the outlook for any more. Thank you for your efforts.--Wehwalt (talk) 17:59, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. The intention here isn't to get cranky (though sometimes I succeed in that), the intention is to be realistic about my limits. I often venture outside Milhist at FAC, but when I do, I have more to do ... I'm not as familiar with the subject matter, and I'm not as familiar with what the nominator or wikiproject does and doesn't do well, so there's more to think about. So, I don't mean to be rude asking more from nominators of non-Milhist articles ... I just know from experience that if I don't, then it gets to be too much of a burden, and I stop. - Dank (push to talk) 18:17, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Not a problem.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:20, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • There's more to do here than I'm going to have time to do. What's worse ... it's not that bad :) So I don't feel right opposing or making demands, but it's more than I want to tackle. For instance, just in the lead:
  • The first three sentences: "The assassination of William McKinley ... The President of the United States, William McKinley ... President McKinley ...": repetition. This is one where I wouldn't repeat the page title in the first sentence, I might say, "William McKinley, President of the United States, was assassinated ...", then go with "he" or "McKinley" after that as needed. "Exposition" can be dropped from one of the two first sentences, too.
  • "ordinary citizens": This is a phrase that makes perfect sense to politicians, in the same way that "lower classes" is a phrase that makes perfect sense to the upper classes, but not so much to the lower classes. I'd go with "the public at a reception".
  • "when he was fatally wounded by two shots from the gun of Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist.": Tighter would be: when Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist, shot him twice. (We don't need "fatally" since we find out he died in the next 3 words.)
  • "In the wake of the hard times following the economic Panic of 1893, in which he lost his job, Czolgosz ...": It's not a hard and fast rule, but it's best to avoid two complex introductory phrases, in part because it increases the odds the reader will get lost ... and this reader is lost. Did Czolgosz lose his job in the Panic, or in the hard times following the Panic, or in the wake of those hard times? The "wake" of an event trails the event, so we're talking about some time after the hard times here.
  • "Influenced by a speech": Many grammarians grumble that they can't figure out what the word "influenced" means in general. I'm not sure what it means here.
  • "Czolgosz decided to kill McKinley, believing ...": I may have missed it, but I don't see in the text below that the decision was an immediate reaction to Goldman's speech. Also, I talk about "decide" a little bit at WP:Checklist#mindreading ... the question is whether the sources are sure that that's what was in his head, and whether we need to say that, or whether it can be reasonably inferred by the reader if you just say what he did. There's also the question of credibility; defendants on trial for murder are not likely to be objective sources of information on their mental state, when that mental state has a bearing on whether they're executed or not.
  • "After attempting to reach McKinley ...": "reach" more often means "communicate with"; the readers have to back up when they realize it doesn't mean that here. Not a serious problem, but Garner's, etc., call this a garden path.
  • "Western New York": I would probably lowercase "western"; someone correct me if I'm wrong.
  • "a turn for the worse": I don't worry about cliches unless a writer overdoes them, and you don't. My contract probably says I have to point them out, though.
  • "infection within him": I don't know what this is saying; I wouldn't say for instance "the liver within him", I'd say "his liver". Are you saying "an infection", or does "within" suggest something about the location of the infection?
  • "His health quickly deteriorated and he died early the next morning;": The death is a sufficient sign of deteriorating health, I think; we don't need the first part, unless you want to say something more specific about what was happening.
  • Having said all that ... I think the lead flows well and includes more or less what I'd like to see. - Dank (push to talk) 20:31, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Very cogent and thank you. I've made changes to the lede to address your point. No doubt other reviewers will comment regarding the prose as well. I appreciate your comments.--Wehwalt (talk) 21:11, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Happy to help. - Dank (push to talk) 23:57, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

SupportComment, leaning to support: I learned a great deal from the McKinley biographical article, to which I gave a detailed peer review, and I found this equally fascinating; I knew the generalities of the assassination but not the particulars, and it is a pleasure to see the story so well told. I didn't peer review this, so I am leaving on the article's talkpage a series of quibbles which you are invited to address. Also, I have a few general issues to raise here:

  • What, if anything, is the point of noting the geographic co-ordinates? I suspect this is a relic of a one-time obsession whereby every WP article recording an event was thus adorned, but I cannot see any purpose in it.
  • I think McKinley's presidential status should be given in the initial declarative sentence: "William McKinley, 25th president of the United States, was assassinated on September 6, 1901, inside the Temple of Music on the grounds of the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. The president was shaking hands..." (In any event there is a stray comma after the word "President")
  • I notice inconsistency in capitalisation of "President" in the lead.
  • I can't help feeling that the Leech quote that ends the article has lost an important connecting phrase in the ellipsis. As presented, the first part of the quotation has America looking backward, "turned from the challenge and the strangeness of the future"; then, suddenly, it is setting sail "on the stormy voyage of the twentieth century". Unless something is inserted between, the two halves of the quote seem contradictory.
It's actually a fairly long break, I'll add something but the intervening passage is too long to reproduce in full.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:09, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't see much value in the See also link, and I thought anyway that dedicated See also sections were now considered infra dig at FAC.

I'm sure these and the minor points on the talkpage can be quickly addressed, at which point I will be happy to support.Brianboulton (talk) 17:37, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your review, and for your perseverance. I've done all those thinks, or in some cases another editor did, for which I thank him. I've done my best with the Leech quote, which I think is worth keeping.--Wehwalt (talk) 19:21, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent job on the Leech quote. All other issues properly addressed (we'll probably always differ on the practicalities of comma deployment), and I have upgraded to full support. After your coup with the 1896 speech recording in the McKinley article I was hoping for something equally sensational here – shuffles of feet, shots, screams etc – but I suppose ther are limits even to your resourcefulness. Brianboulton (talk) 20:27, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I appreciate it.--Wehwalt (talk) 20:43, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]


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