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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Domenico Selvo

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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 03:22, 12 April 2007.

Domenico Selvo

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About two months ago I decided to make this article, my first FAC, about a random, obscure person who is not often written about. After digging through more Venetian history books than I'm willing to count, I wrote this entire article. I refuse to comment on my own writing style, so you can read for yourself if you think it is well-written ;-). This article has undergone an extensive peer review where four very kind users spent a lot of time weeding this thing out to bring you what you see today. The maps are courtesy of User:MapMaster who kindly made the after map (1084 CE) at my request. I hope you all think this article is worthy of FA status and I will address any concerns you might have here. Thanks a lot, JHMM13 23:05, 29 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Excellent article, overall; a few minor quibbles, though:
    • The "See also" section should be eliminated.
    • "References and notes" should be changed to "Notes" and "Bibliography" to "References" (or "Further reading", if those works weren't consulted, but I'm assuming that they were).
      Before I change anything here regardng the see also and the references, could you please consult the discussion about this in the peer review? This is something I've been a bit confused about. I think it is important to have a "List of Doges" link, but I can't think of where to put it in the article. There's a mini discussion about the names of the sections. I initially had it as "Notes" and "References," but a question regarding the fact that there are notes mixed in with the citations was brought up and this is sort of what we agreed on. I'd love to hear your opinion on it.
      The standard usage I've seen in most FAs (and the one recommended by WP:CITE) is to use "Notes" for all footnotes, regardless of whether they're citations or discursive notes. If there's no other listing of references, this can be changed to "Notes and references"; otherwise, the (auxiliary, typically alphabetical) listing of references is under a separate "References" section. (There are some variations on this, of course.) The main thing is to avoid having a "Bibliography" section, since it's ambiguous as to whether the works listed in it were actually used as sources for the article, or are merely further reading material that may not have been consulted.
      Got it. I agree with you, and I've changed it.
      As far as linking the list of Doges: why not just add it to {{VeniceDogeSuccession}}? That would seem a more natural place for a purely navigational link of that sort; explicit "See also" sections tend to look like afterthoughts, and tend to be avoided in FAs. Kirill Lokshin 03:03, 30 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      Done and done. Someone else suggested this to me before in the peer review, but it must have slipped my mind. Thanks! JHMM13 03:19, 30 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      Ok, support from me, then. (You might want to double-check the punctuation in the footnotes, incidentally; I would have expected a comma rather than a period after the author's name. It may just be a style I'm not familiar with, of course.) Kirill Lokshin 03:24, 30 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • The dates in the section headings would be neater if parenthesized, I think; i.e. "Peace and prosperity (1071-1080)" instead of "1071 - 1080: Peace and prosperity". Kirill Lokshin 01:24, 30 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      Done...good idea! Thank you for the "excellent article" comment :-D. JHMM13 01:40, 30 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. All my concerns were addressed at the peer review. There is some room for improvement in the illustration but realistically, this is probably as good as it can be. Mangojuicetalk 03:14, 30 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Great work on an obscure subject. A very fine article. -- Pastordavid 17:15, 30 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments -- 1. doge is not a very common word, so could the meaning be stated in the lead itself instead of forcing a user to click on the link? 2. His birth early life (ie not much is known) needs to be mentioned in the article. =Nichalp «Talk»= 18:51, 31 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    I added a few words detailing what a Doge is. Do you not think the words in the section "Life before Dogeship" are good enough? It mentions that not much is known about his early life. Thanks for your comment, JHMM13 02:14, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support A very fitting expansion on a topic which didn't even have its own article only some six months ago. Very appropriate length, plenty of sources and clever use of illustrations for a relatively obscure topic. Peter Isotalo 10:03, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per Peter. —Randy Johnston (‽) 16:21, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose—1a; will change when work is done. There's much good in this nomination, but the whole text needs careful copy-editing by somone who's unfamiliar with it. Here are a few random examples of problems in the writing. (Please don’t just fix these examples.)
    • It is very difficult to work with a broad suggestion like this one. I've had, at the very minimum, four users thoroughly copyedit this article, one of whom had never even heard the word Doge before. I think the combined efforts of these four reviewers/voters and myself is worthy enough of counting as having found someone else who has carefully copyedited this article. At this point, the only truly useful thing to me is specific examples. Opposing it by suggesting you do not think it is "well-written" because it is not copyedited enough is not helping me very much. All I can do is fix these specific examples if they are in fact worth fixing.
Well, I can't change my Oppose, then. You need to network on WP to locate other contributors who are interested in this general area and who are good at copy-editing. It's basic to the process of preparing a FAC. What is here is not at the required "professional" standard. Tony 03:28, 3 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • I took a pass through, trying to see if I could tighten up the language a bit. I wrote hardly any of the text that was there, so I was easily able to read it with fresh eyes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mangojuice (talk • contribs)
        I will see if I can tighten it up more. JHMM13 04:29, 3 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • The structure of the opening two sentences has been compromised by additional information: "Domenico Selvo[1] (died 1087) was the Doge of Venice from 1071 to 1084. Selvo's election as Doge, a dialectical Italian term for leader, in 1071 was the first in history to have been recorded by a witness, thus providing a valuable resource for historians." Is there a reference for this recording? Who was the witness?
      Did you read any of the "Election as Doge" section? This was a very crucial point in that section and is referenced well to multiple sources, including a secondary source with the exact text (in Latin) of the original primary source.
      OK.
      • I removed that tidbit from the lead; it doesn't seem like a defining aspect of Selvo's period as Doge, although it might well have been presented that way in sources if they did not cover Selvo's reign in depth. Also, I removed the definition of Doge: sorry to Nichalp, but it's quite clear from context that a Doge is a kind of leader, and there's a bluelink to Doge for further explanation of the title... and the definition was cumbersome. Mangojuicetalk
        That's fine, but I would just have to remind you that this was an historically significant event, and an event that marks him as unique as a Doge, apart from the others. The election of a Doge was a very famous process that went on for centuries. I think it is significant, which is why I wrote a large section on it, so please reconsider taking that sentence out. It's up to you.JHMM13 04:29, 3 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        • If there's a way to integrate it better, I wouldn't mind it being there. But there's much more to say about Selvo's reign than that, and featuring that fact so prominently and separately from context makes it seem like a very strong judgement about its importance. The article already highlights the fact, it doesn't have to be in the lead as well... but it could be, if it didn't stick out the way it did. Maybe it could be integrated into the second paragraph of the lead? (Come to think of it, the first sentence of the second paragraph also sticks out: do we need to know, right up front, about Selvo's involvement in the building of St. Mark's?) Mangojuicetalk 10:30, 3 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • "He successfully avoided conflicts with the Byzantine Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Roman Catholic Church at a time in European history when struggles for power threatened to upset the balance thereof. At the same time, he forged new agreements with ..."—Remove "successfully" as redundant. "Thereof" is over the top; reword. Remove "At the same time" as redundant.
      Successfully is redundant and I will remove it. What do you mean by "over the top?" Is it too difficult for some people to understand? Is it improper English in some dialects? I personally think "At the same time" is important to the flow of that paragraph. It might be "redundant," but at the same time, it helps avoid the sound of two similar sentences in succession. Leaving it out, in my opinion, would make it sound too much like a list.
      "Thereof" is nowadays hardly ever used, except by lawyers who should know better. It's arcane language, especially planting it right at the end of the sentence. It needs to be reworded.
      I'll see if I can reword it. JHMM13 04:29, 3 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
"At the same time": it doesn't add anything; I think it should be removed.
      • Thereof had already been removed. The sentence now reads "He successfully avoided confrontations with the Byzantine Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Roman Catholic Church at a time in European history when conflict threatened to upset the balance of power." (Thereof showed up when I objected in peer review to the use of "power" twice in the same sentence.) I agree that "At the same time" can be removed; will do momentarily. Mangojuicetalk 10:30, 3 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • "Within the city of Venice,"—We've just had three instances of "Venice"; remove "of Venice", or the whole phrase.
      I agree. That might have been the result of a late addition somewhere. Reworded the last two instances of Venice referencing the city and then the republic.
    • "Beginning with the reign of Pietro II Candiano in 932 Venice saw a string of inept leaders such as Pietro III Candiano, Pietro IV Candiano, and Tribuno Memmo, whose reputed arrogance and ambition caused the deterioration of their relationship with the Holy Roman Empire in the west, the stagnancy of their relationship with the Byzantine Empire in the east, and discord at home in the Republic.[2] "—Getting rather long; consider splitting.
      I personally disagree with you, but I often tend to err on the side of a slightly longer, and in my opinion, more elegant sentence. This is probably unencyclopedic to some extent, so I'll make the change here.
Long sentences are questionable in any register nowadays.
      • I actually like that sentence as written, but there were a few that I broke up as overly long.
    • "a rather unpopular figure"—"Rather" is unencyclopedic.
      Perhaps it is, but what might fit better? There is not just popular or unpopular, there are shades of grey to which I feel I must allude in this situation to adequately paint the picture. Maybe "somewhat?"
No, just remove it altogether.
      • I found a few examples of this kind of thing and fixed them. IMO, adding flowery descriptions makes the sentences distracting: better to be brief and to the point.
    • "instilled several key reforms"—Does one instill a reform? Tony 00:52, 3 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      I think I'm probably just mixing up set phrases here. "To enact a reform" seems more used, what do you think? JHMM13 01:20, 3 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • Anyway, here is the actual change I made, for full review: [1]. Mangojuicetalk 02:42, 3 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Response to Tony: If your objection is only on the basis that too few editors have been involved, I have to strenuously object to that. This is an obscure subject of interest to few editors. JHMM13 has been the main writer, sure, but what about the peer review? You can't expect dozens of people to work on an article like this. 6 editors have been involved, which is 5 more than necessary for featured status. As for your specific comments, I made changes that addressed your complaints, and without you being more specific than "needs copy-editing" I'm not sure what else to look for that you might object to. Can you at least be more specific about the type of writing issue you see? I find the text holds together very nicely. Mangojuicetalk 10:30, 3 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. You did a terrific job on a definitely 'obscure' subject where references, I'm sure, were hard to find. Well done!!! Mmounties (Talk) 06:20, 4 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. 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.
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