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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Star of Bengal/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 archived by Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 06:37, 21 January 2017 [1].

Star of Bengal edit

Nominator(s): 凰兰时罗 (talk) 18:59, 8 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about a British/American sailing ship. 凰兰时罗 (talk) 18:59, 8 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, unprepared - Please go through your article and ensure it meets our MoS guidelines (image captions, use of hyphens and dashes jump out at me). This should be part of your preparation before nomination. I would also like to give you a friendly reminder about Wikipedia:Mentoring for FAC, which is strongly recommended and quite useful for first-time nominators. --Laser brain (talk) 17:00, 9 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Laser brain: Thanks for your critique. May I ask you to be more specific?
  • Whatever the issue is with the dashes, I believe that it can be fixed in 5 minutes, as long as the problem is well defined. I find MoS ambiguous on dashes, so may I trouble you for a quick mentoring on the spot?
  • With captions, I attempted to "draw attention to what is relevant to the text". Do you find all captions wrong, or just particular captions?
  • Finally, I read about mentoring, but putting articles for review yielded very little results for me so far. Thanks again, 凰兰时罗 (talk) 17:32, 9 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
What, are you saying the MoS isn't the wondrous and easy-reading document I thought it was? ;) The dash problem I noticed is your page range expressions. These should be uniformly en dashes. I see a mixture of hypens, en dashes, and even em dashes. These might be an artifact of what appears to be a copy-paste job from somewhere. Image captions that are not complete sentences should not have a terminal period. Those are just the things that I noticed. Mentoring is not the same as peer review—our FAC mentors can help you decide whether your article is prepared for nomination beforehand and help you through the process as needed. --Laser brain (talk) 17:38, 9 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Laser brain: Yes, it takes a lot of re-reading over and over again ;)
Checked I fixed the dashes (Hyphens are part of entries, not page ranges. These are for Lloyd's books which do not have page numbers. I believe they should stay, correct?)
Checked I removed the periods from captions.
Please, do notice something else, I would like to make sure that from now on all my edit/articles comply with the best practices. 凰兰时罗 (talk) 17:59, 9 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I've stricken my opposition, as the issues I noticed appear to be resolved. I may return with a full review if I can manage it. --Laser brain (talk) 00:19, 11 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Comments by Mymis
  • The companies should not be in italics, for instance, J.P. Corry & Co., Harland and Wolff, Alaska Packers' Association etc.
    Added the markings where appropriate.
That is not what I said, you should NOT write the names of companies in italics. For instance, Alaska Packers' Association -> Alaska Packers' Association etc.
Checked I apologize for the confusion, @Mymis: for some reason, I was absolutely positive MoS stated that those should be italicized that I misread your suggestion. (Confirmation bias...) Now I think I fixed everything.
  • Add Wikiprojects and stuff to the talk page of the article.
    @Mymis: Thank you for doing this.
I added just one, you should find more projects that this article is in relation to, for instance, WikiProject Belfast etc.
Checked Added four more.
  • TheShipsList.com -> TheShipsList.com. Should be archived as well. Also, is it a reliable source?
    Checked Since it raised doubts, I removed this completely. This source is inconsequential, as all the relevant information is available in Lubbock (1927). In fact, Lubbock was probably the original source for TheShipsList, but the website presented the information in more organized fashion.
  • Remove links in See also, as both Alaska Packers' Association and Joan Lowell are mentioned in the article many times already. You can add similar links like on RMS Titanic article, for instance.
    Checked I replaced those with the Titanic and another famous ship that was wrecked in Alaskan waters.

Mymis (talk) 16:11, 11 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your comments! 凰兰时罗 (talk) 17:48, 11 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove "The" from the section headings, for instance, "The wreck" - > "Wreck" etc.
    Checked Done.
  • In "Specifications" section, all three paragraphs start with the same words, quite repetitive.
    Checked I rewrote the beginning of the second paragraph.
  • Some statements in the article are oversourced, for instance, the sentence "Under the circumstances, 63-year-old novelist successfully assumed the command." has three references. Isn't one reference enough, why do you need so many? It's like that in many places in the article. Mymis (talk) 22:44, 11 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    This is a more complex issue. Let me explain first.
    1. In most cases, the multiple sources complement each other. For example:
      • "the Star of Bengal was the largest vessel in gross tonnage in service of J.P. Corry & Co., but in December 1874 she was surpassed by the 1,981 GT Star of Russia.[15][16]" The [16] is needed to make the statement, [15] is used to give exact GT for of the Star of Russia.
      • "While the Star of Bengal sailed under J.J. Smith & Co., her captain was H. Henderson.[5][43][44]" No single source covers the full range of years.
      • "The Star of Bengal was built by a famous shipbuilder Harland and Wolff Industries in Belfast, Ireland in 1873–1874.[4][5][6]" Several statements are packed in here, and I make sure that the fact that the ship was build there, the long dates, and the fact that Harland and Wolff is "famous" are all covered.
      • "During the next 54 minutes, the ship's hull broke in three pieces, and she sank at 55°49′30″N 134°17′0″W with just her mizzen topmast visible above water.[54][55][68][105]" Similarly, none of these sources have all four statements that are packed in these sentence.
    2. In some cases, my reasoning for supplying several sources is different. Per WP:REDFLAG, unusual statements require multiple sources. Hence:
      • "Even though it was quickly exposed as a hoax,[133][138][139]" — somebody's autobiography is declared a hoax – I supplied three sources.
      • "their role in the wreck remains uncertain.[38][126][127]" — even though no source known to me explicitly contradicts this statement, a couple of minor accounts may be stretched to do so, if taken in isolation and out of context, so I felt compelled to include several statements that unequivocally indicate uncertainty.
      • Finally, the particular example that you provided above also falls into this second category, because it's very unusual, perhaps the most unusual in this article. Normally, novelists with so limited maritime experience do not make successful sea captains. I initially read a note about this in Gibbs (1997). I also saw "G. Cupples" inserted as the ship's master in Lloyd's (1886), but I still was not convinced. I thought that Gibbs might have seen the same Lloyd's registry and jump to a sensational conclusion based on the same name which could have been just a coincidence. Only when I read an independent account of this incident in Lubbock (1927), I realized that this actually took place. Hence, I felt compelled to include all three sources that were required to convince me.
    So, if the logic that I just laid out for the two cases is generally correct, 95% of the sources should remain (I can comb the article a little to weed out possible extraneous 5%). If not, please advise, and I'll make some systematic changes. Thanks again for your comments! 凰兰时罗 (talk) 02:12, 12 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Even after I ran the standard scripts, the article remains heavily overlinked. Tugboat, for example, is linked six times. The sample cargo manifest and selected voyages list look like excessive detail. Worse, on mobile, they do not even remain hidden.—indopug (talk) 12:41, 13 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Indopug: Thank you very much for edits and comments. I don't mind de-linking or removing the two hidden blocks that you mentioned if there is a consensus in here for this action. This can be done promptly and easily. Let me explain, however, the approach that I exercise, so that I'm clear how to proceed in similar situations in the future.
  1. On Wiki-linking. Before I started editing, I used Wikipedia extensively. We all know that in modern world, people almost never read material continuously. As MoS suggests, a typical person reads the lead, then jumps to a section or two. Here is when I (as a reader) had issues with "under-linking". If I were to jump to a particular section, in an under-linked article, the only wiki-link to a term of interest would be way up in the body and hard to find. This is especially inconvenient on mobile devices, where retyping or page-searching is costly. Hence, in the absence of clear guidelines (correct me here if I'm wrong), I adopted the following rule for myself: one wiki-link per term per section. (This should not spread to common words that you kindly de-linked, – I appreciate your edits here – I just wasn't sure to what extent wiki-linking is normally done). What do you think of this approach?
  2. On the two hidden blocks. Again these can be easily removed. I know that on mobile devices, these blocks are displayed; however, the whole section is hidden, hence the blocks would be visible only to those who specifically opened J.P.Corry subsection. I added these examples, because I thought that they allow a much deeper understanding of the ship's trading routine, immersing the reader in the peculiarities of the past trade, including the length of voyages. I was just trying to make the reading more interesting – without these details, trading routine is just routine... So, do you still want me to (a) remove them completely or (b) shorten them considerably? I can also move the manifest a little further down, to make sure that mobile users start reading the subsection from the text, not from the manifest.
  3. Unused template parameters. I'm not going to argue this point as it's quite inconsequential for the article, but just a word of caution for the future. Contributing to the template when these unused parameters are removed is much harder, moreover it becomes almost impossible for novice users. On the other hand, I fail to see any harm that the presence of these parameters can possibly do. (Hence, I would remove only those parameters that cannot possibly be filled out in the future.
Thanks again for your contribution and for offering your opinion. Please provide some further guidance/confirmation, 凰兰时罗 (talk) 17:48, 13 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

  • File:StateLibQld_1_172019_Star_of_Bengal_(ship).jpg is tagged as lacking author info, and what is the status of this work in the US? Same with File:StateLibQld_1_170527_Star_of_Bengal_(ship).jpg, File:StateLibQld_1_171287_Star_of_Bengal_(ship).jpg
  • File:SanFranHouses06.JPG is tagged as lacking author info
  • File:Star_of_Bengal_moored_by_Fort_Wrangell_cannery.jpg: when/where was this first published?
  • File:MapStarOfBengalCrash.png: what is the source used for the route?
  • File:Cradle-of-the-deep-StarWreck-illustration.jpg: the copyright was renewed

Oppose pending resolution of some of these issues. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:14, 14 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Coordinator note: To reiterate what Laser brain said above, I really think this article would benefit from the nominator working with a mentor from the list found on this page. If you were to do this, and perhaps withdraw the nomination now to work on it with a mentor away from FAC, I think this would be a much smoother process. It is not a requirement, but I think it would help. Sarastro1 (talk) 21:19, 17 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry for late response -- I was traveling. I will address the issues on images anyways, but fine, I withdraw the nomination. If anybody is interested in my opinion, to me as a newcomer, this process comes out as odd. (Specifically, lack of dialog on important issues and disproportional attention to details which, as I can see, are usually corrected by bots -- all this is puzzling and create very little value for me as an aspiring Wikipedia editor.) Perhaps later on, as I get more Wikipedia experience, I'll change my mind. Thanks everybody for your time! 凰兰时罗 (talk) 20:48, 19 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Closing comment: Thanks for your feedback, 凰兰时罗. FAC does concern itself with prose and style more than other review processes in WP, but substance is very important as well. If you take up the suggestion to work with a mentor, they should be able to advise on this aspect as well. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 06:36, 21 January 2017 (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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