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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Sydney Riot of 1879/archive2

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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 Karanacs 19:52, 6 October 2009 [1].

Sydney Riot of 1879 edit

Nominator(s): –Moondyne, User:YellowMonkey 13:59, 25 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Note: WP:FFA, has already been on main page
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I am nominating this for featured article because I feel it meets all of the criteria and provides a thorough treatment of an interesting event. The article was a former FA and a TFA in February 2006. It was delisted mostly on concerns of inadequate citations. Since then has been expanded and thoroughly referenced, with particular assistance from YellowMonkey. –Moondyne 13:59, 25 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There's something odd with the FA archives - this may be the problem. Grateful if an admin can fix. –Moondyne 14:06, 25 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • It reads well and the prose is good. The image alt-texts are problematic, though. They all just rephrase the captions. As per WP:ALT, an image's alt-text should describe the visual dimension of the image and nothing more. —Anonymous DissidentTalk 16:49, 25 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Done. –Moondyne 00:11, 26 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Very interesting! I decided to read it because of the title and was ready to be disappointed when I found out it was about cricket, but it managed to keep my historical interest! Some random comments:
    • Could we not repeat "riot" in the first sentence?
Fixed. –Moondyne 00:11, 26 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • There are a couple of one or two line paragraphs that are not real paragraphs; there need to be three or more sentences. These little orphan ones should be merged or fleshed out.
Agreed and done. –Moondyne 01:38, 26 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm not sure the entire text in the reaction sections of everyone's letter is necessary, especially since they are so long. Martin Raybourne (talk) 22:35, 25 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I was half-expecting a comment about the letters. Their inclusion was discussed several times at the previous reviews and opinions were mixed. My view is the two letters in their entirety are important for context. They are the story of the backlash and a description or excerpts or paraphrasing just doesn't seem to work. If a reader wants to skip the indented letters they easily can. –Moondyne 00:18, 26 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I defer to your judgement, then. It's all public domain so there's no real issue aside from taste as far as I know. Martin Raybourne (talk) 18:43, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It already has been pruned YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 01:52, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Nice read, I made a few tweaks, hope you like them - if not its a wiki. A couple of questions "including many XVIIIs" - what were they?, "They put on 125 for the first wicket before Spofforth bowled Lucas for 51 and Hornby soon after for 67." - thats 118. I suppose there could have been 7 or more wides but that seems a tad high - can you check or were things different then? PS I think that including the letters works well. ϢereSpielChequers 08:38, 26 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your contributions and your comments. Cashman (1990) p.107: "So from 13 May until 1 September [1880] the Australians played only five games against first-class opposition and another twenty-five against lesser opposition, against XVIIIs." List of Australia in England matches (1880), plus two in Ireland in June and two more in Scotland in late September. Any more detail is too obscure to be included in the prose, but I will add these links as references. –Moondyne 07:10, 27 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The match record does confirm those numbers, and that extras were b 14, lb 3, nb 2 at the end of the innings, so it is quite feasible that there were 7 (or more) extras when the 1st wicket fell (118/248=47%; 7/19=36%). I'm certain I've read a contemporary newspaper account of the innings which discussed extras, but have lost the details. That's going to bug me now :( –Moondyne 07:10, 27 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well the number is referenced directly from the archival pages and, also Hornby fell a bit after so the No 3 batsman would have come in and could have added a few runs before Hornby fell YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 05:08, 28 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments - sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 18:47, 28 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - What a magnificent way to use wiki source. 10:51, 1 October 2009 (UTC)Decline concern at the slab quotes (if it makes me feel TL;DR, and is more than a screen length, its a concern). Paraphrase in prose while cutting length, only use the most pertinent and telling sections of the letters as quotes. Fifelfoo (talk) 02:19, 29 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    References are in unacceptable format; locations are missing for almost all works. Fifelfoo (talk) 03:46, 29 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    Incomplete might be a more accurate word. Locns added. –Moondyne 05:26, 29 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    With a history article, an incomplete reference is an unacceptable reference. Its somewhat like noting the margin of error, statistical correlation, or other basic academic structure of disciplinary acceptability. Fifelfoo (talk) 05:59, 29 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • There is no requirement in the FA criteria for locations to be listed for references. While it's always nice to have locations, it is not a requirement for FA. Opposing an article solely for that lack is unactionable. Ealdgyth - Talk 12:55, 29 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Could you link and quote that? Location is an essential element of source verification, particularly where publishing houses publish UK and US editions in the same year under the same house, which may have different paginations, and demanded by most style guides in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Given that this is a Sports History / Social History FAC, and the standards of history are highly demanding as regards quality citations, including location. Location is also remarkably easy to fix, easier than fixing missing or incorrect alts. Fifelfoo (talk) 13:42, 29 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Note that neither WP:V nor WP:CITE make any requirement that any citation system is required. Note at the top of WP:CITE, that the example given is lacking a location. You'll also note that the FA criteria don't prescribe any particular citation style, so editors are free to chose a style they are comfortable with, as long as its consistent. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:51, 29 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment very nice article, and (knowing very little about Cricket and Australian history) an interesting piece of history. I found the use of "Victorian" in the lede a little jarring - it might be common usage in Australia for someone from Victoria, but it sounds to me like it's referring to someone from the Victorian era! Also the blockquote letters seemed far too long. I understand they are in the public domain, and they are great historical documents, but perhaps a paraphrase and a link to a copy somewhere else would be more suited to an encyclopaedia.Davémon (talk) 19:29, 29 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments –
  • Images desperately need a check. Several are of the "life of the author plus xx years" variety, but there is no proof of when the author died in these cases. It may be possible for these to be public domain in another way; I'm more familiar with U.S. requirements than those of the U.K. or Australia.
    Several images replaced or notated as needed. I believe all are good as of now [2]. –Moondyne 14:16, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Completely agree with a couple of the other reviewers on the blockquotes. Brief quotations from them would be great, but re-printing the entire letters is just too much.
  • Background: "while promoters sought the best cricketers, they still had to agree terms with them." Should it be "agree to terms", or is the original how you would say it with British English?
  • Space needed after reference 9. I'm reasonably sure the Manual of Style calls for references inside dashes for situations like this. Why references should be inside dashes, and not other forms of punctuation. I will never know.
  • "Despite the presence of two professionals in the team, the team...". See the close repetition here? I'm guessing this would be "they" at the end.
  • "Cheating was a regular occurance in 19th Australian cricket". Missing a word.
  • "illegal bowling actions in order to use physical intimidation as a means of negating opposition batsmen." Little wordiness that's easy to remove and doesn't change the meaning.
  • "was prominent in his New South Wales pursuing a policy of condoning illegal bowling". I assume "his New South Wales" refers to Gregory's team? That was a shade confusing the first time I saw it.
  • Match: "he was however yet to make his first-class cricketing debut." Don't like "was" here; check to see if "had" is any better. I also wonder if "however" could be moved up; although it's meant to provide contrast in this sentence, I felt that it got in the way somewhat.
  • "At about 12.10pm in front of approximately 4,000 spectators". Manual of Style recommends colons for time, not periods. Not a big deal, but worth fixing up with these other suggestions. Giants2008 (17–14) 22:32, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Wordy fixes done. Still looking into the erf/dash. Images and quote not done yet YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 01:04, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Letters removed per suggestions above. Paraphrasing may need some tweaks. –Moondyne 02:04, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Expanded a bit to show the contentious/testy parts of the exchange. YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 06:19, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Ref 54 says both letters published in 1 April. NSWCA letter was written on 4 June. –Moondyne 02:09, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
YM fixed. It appears the NSWCA letter previously at WS was an abridged version only. Have expanded to full vesrion per NLA archive. –Moondyne 06:36, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Driver mug can be replaced with one on ADB, as date is known for sure for PD-Australia. Barton is fine. Coulthard is fine as he never left Australia so the painting must've been done in Aus. The rest, which appear to be taken in England, we don't know if the photographer died before 1939, in case they were 25 when the photos were taken and lived to 90, might have to be commented out. Unless an Australian one can be found for the Englishmen. 02:13, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for replacing the pic. Also added bit frome xpanded letter where they criticised Harris for encouraging the riot (in their opinion) YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 04:48, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - meets FA criteria. interesting read. Dincher (talk) 21:22, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose on criterion 3
    • File:Wg grace.jpg - This image needs to more information on the source. Either a link to the BBC website or specific information on which issue of Vanity Fair this was first published in.
      Done. –Moondyne 01:33, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • File:GCoulthard.jpg - A little bit more work needs to be done to find information on this image. It looks like a cropped head from a painting or lithograph. We need to make an effort to find the original artwork. The facts about the person's life present on the image description page are not relevant to the copyright - only facts about the artwork are. Unfortunately, we don't know any of those yet. Currently, there is not enough information to support the license on the image description page.

Thanks for working on these! Awadewit (talk) 20:12, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Although a central figure here, not a great deal is know about Mr. Coulthard except that he was probably more noatble as a footballer. (here's another pic) He died in 1883 aged just 27. As best we can tell he never left Australia—certainly he never left a record of having played cricket elsewhere. The picture appears to be of him in sporting gear, so its a safe bet that this is from a painting done in Australia. The image original source appears to be from the Wisden Group's Cricinfo website which states "Reproduced with permission from The Cricketer International", an monthly magazine (since 1921) now also within the Wisden group. There doesn't appear to be an image index for the magazine I can find. –Moondyne 01:33, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
User:RossRSmith has solved the puzzle and informed that the Coulthard image comes from here. WP image page is updated accordingly. –Moondyne 12:58, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Great work! I have stricken the oppose. Awadewit (talk) 19:25, 5 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - Interesting, well-written and comprehensive article.--Grahame (talk) 00:24, 6 October 2009 (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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