Talk:History of Hertfordshire

GA review material

At the peer review, I was advised this article "should pass" a GAN. Let's see if the reviewer agrees!—S Marshall Talk/Cont 22:13, 10 August 2009 (UTC) GA Review This review is transcluded from Talk:History of Hertfordshire/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review. Starting review. Pyrotec (talk) 17:12, 12 September 2009 (UTC) Initial comments This article appears to be well-referenced, well-illustrated, and fairly comprehensive in scope. I took an instant dislike to the prose in the WP:lead and there are some one-sentence and two-sentence paragraphs; but article as a whole is probably GA-material. I will continue the review, section by section, but leaving the WP:lead (with its instantly dislikeable prose) until last. Pyrotec (talk) 21:29, 12 September 2009 (UTC) At present I'm only concentrating on "problems"; so if I don't mention a section that probably means that I regard it as compliant with WP:WIAGA. I'm sorry if this comes across as "negative"; but the good points only do get mentioned at the end of this review. Early history - This paragraph is fairly reasonable, well apart from the marketing hyperbole. Does it really "boast" several Iron Age forts: ref 3 only provides verification of one? It apparently has a "wealth of Iron Age burial sites in Hertfordshire, making it a place of international importance in the study of the period"? Ref 3 more modestly states "Several very wealthy late Iron Age burials are known from Hertfordshire including three from the Welwyn area, two from Baldock and a Caluvellunnian ‘royal’ burial from Verulamium, which is one of the most impressive burials known from Celtic Britain and Europe"; nothing about International importance. The paragraph is well referenced; well apart from the claim: "the Saxons partitioned the area between the Kingdom of Mercia and the Kingdom of Essex", which is unreferenced. Early Middle Ages - Tenth century - "vastly important document" - more subjective hype? -  Done Pyrotec (talk) 10:23, 13 September 2009 (UTC) It would be better in ref 14 pointed to some history (which is what it claims to WP:verify) rather than Top Stories. -  Done Pyrotec (talk) 10:23, 13 September 2009 (UTC) ...to be continued. Pyrotec (talk) 22:03, 12 September 2009 (UTC) Early history: Yes, there are several iron age forts in Hertfordshire. (This is, essentially, what "oppidum" means.) Sorry if my comment was too subtle, I was really objecting to the WP:peacock word boast. I was looking for a word like "has". Pyrotec (talk) 10:23, 13 September 2009 (UTC) Reference 3 says: "Indeed Hertfordshire is one of the best areas in which to study the late Iron Age in Europe and many of the remains are of international importance." Said claim is now referenced. It looks like you referenced an unreferenced claim in Early Middle Ages / Origins rather than Early history. Pyrotec (talk) 10:23, 13 September 2009 (UTC) Early middle ages: Aethelgifu's will is pretty important, yeah, hence note #5. I've cut "vastly", which sounds like peacockery. Reference 14 now points where I intended.  :) High Middle Ages - Eleventh century - Ref 23 is a book that has been converted into a (long) web page. A page number(s) aught to be provided - they appear in the right hand margin as, e.g. [Pg 4]. Twelfth century - I don't particularly like these one, two, and three-sentence paragraphs. They look more like bullet points without the bullets. Various changes made. I don't intend to combine the paragraphs in "twelfth century"; it's better to start a new paragraph when addressing a new topic, and I disapprove of this tendency to stitch paragraphs on unrelated topics together in order to make longer paragraphs, which is an artifact of Wikipedian GA criteria, not an aspect of good writing style. (Fowler's has nothing to say on paragraph length at all. Strunk merely says a paragraph should be more than one sentence, except in speech.) Since the sources I have available do not supply any more detail on these topics, expanding the paragraphs would just be an exercise in padding or waffle.—S Marshall Talk/Cont 11:21, 13 September 2009 (UTC) Late Middle Ages - Appears compliant. Renaissance - Sixteenth century - Ref 50 provides verification of the charter, but the previous statement about the three heritics appears to be unverifiable. Modern era - Appears compliant. WP:lead - Adequate, but could be expanded to provide a bit more "summary" of the main points. Overall summary GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria Quite a comprehensive summary of the History of Hertfordshire & well referenced. Is it reasonably well written? A. Prose quality: B. MoS compliance: Is it factually accurate and verifiable? A. References to sources: B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary: Well referenced. C. No original research: Is it broad in its coverage? A. Major aspects: B. Focused: Is it neutral? Fair representation without bias: Is it stable? No edit wars, etc: Does it contain images to illustrate the topic? A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales: B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions: Well illustrated. Overall: Pass or Fail: This is a good article and I'm awarding GA-status. It has taken some time to review it and I've made a few critical comments above, however considering the length of the article these were not all the significant. Congratulations on the quality of the article. Pyrotec (talk) 20:39, 15 September 2009 (UTC) Thank you, Pyrotec.  :)—S Marshall Talk/Cont 06:22, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Comments

I'm part of WP:HERTS and have no experience of this sort of article at FA, so I don't think I'm the best person to give the prose itself a balanced, objective look. For that reason I don't want to be the first person to post on the peer review, for fear that someone better suited will see these comments and decide not to review. Nonetheless, here are a few things I've picked up on my wikitravels that should help:

• There are a lot of one and two sentence paragraphs. While these are in some cases okay, the one sentence paragraphs on individual people from the same period should where possible be consolidated into a larger one. Even if the people are in no way connected, in most cases it would still be appropriate.
• Possibly worth mentioning Arthur Balfour- MP for Hertford for 12 years and later a British Prime Minister among other things.
• In the 21st century section,
  Main article: Hertfordshire
  is unnecessary.
• For maps, alt text should not name "England" or "Hertfordshire". In List of Parliamentary constituencies in Hertfordshire, I gave a map very similar to the first one the following alt text: "A small county slightly to the south and east of the centre of the country, completely bounded by other counties", with the caption "The county of Hertfordshire in relation to England." This is a bit wordy, but think of alt text as a substitute for what you can see, and a caption as an explanation of what the picture actually is.

I think the content needed for an FA is probably all there. The weight given to the various parts of its history is excellent, and the referencing is also very good. The main things that should be scrutinised are the MoS, and the grammar and tense of the prose.—Preceding unsigned comment added by WFCforLife (talk • contribs)

• Thanks for those comments. I've made some adjustments, and will make more.—S Marshall ^Talk/_Cont 00:13, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Comments

I liked it. Rare is an article which is not only well documented but also interesting.

I'm a stickler for comma use, so I went ahead and fixed three small errant commas in the article.

As to content, I would raise only two points. At note 64, you say something like this: "There was an attempt to assassinate the king." Rather than saying "There was . . .," I think a better phrasing would be to use the actor as the subject and an action verb. That is, "A group of landowners attempted to kill the king." Is it known who was behind the attempt?

Second, I see that some other people have commented about one-sentence paragraphs. I wonder if a correction of that did not produce the paragraph at note 71. that paragraph begins with the topic sentence saying that brewing was becoming popular in the area. Then, the whole rest of the paragraph has to do with witch trials. Were those things linked in some way? Perhaps cut the first sentence free again and add a follow up line about the volumes of beer that were being brewed or something.

I hope these comments are not too pedantic. I'm new to peer reviewing anything. Also, I am totally in the dark about formatting for notes, so I've not even attempted to weigh in on those. ProfReader (talk) 16:35, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

• Thanks for your attention. This article generally follows Fowler's for style, and accepts his views on the Oxford comma along with a semicolon to indicate a slightly longer pause (see also WP:ENGVAR).

  Personally I prefer shorter paragraphs, with one topic per paragraph, and I would much prefer to de-merge several of the paragraphs in the article. So many editors think otherwise, though, that I see little alternative but to tolerate the several mixed and run-on paragraphs.  :\—S Marshall ^Talk/_Cont 16:42, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Okie dokie. But, the errant commas weren't Oxford (serial) commas. A serial comma (which is optional) precedes a conjunction linking items in a series of three or more. For example, I bought eggs, bacon(,) and cheese. The problems that I changed were not that. They were examples of simple sentences with dual verbs. For example: John ran and played. There is no comma before the word "and" in that sentence. You only use a comma there if it is a compound sentence; that is, you use a comma only if you have two independent clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction. For example: John ran, and he played.

Comet

The "and about ten percent of the aircraft workers in England worked in Hertfordshire in the 1960s" fact for the post-war section seems unremarkable. How about replacing this with mention of the de Havilland Comet, the world's first commercial jet airliner and a proud part of Hatfield's history. Colin°^Talk 20:04, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

• It's a good idea. I don't personally have access to a source that discusses the aircraft's relationship with Hatfield, or I'd do it.—S Marshall ^Talk/_Cont 20:10, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
  • This should do. BTW: your web/news citations should have more details, such as author(s), publisher/work, date (of publication). Colin°^Talk 20:58, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
    • Thank you, Colin. It's nice to come up for air and talk about content rather than presentation.  :) I'll add that.—S Marshall ^Talk/_Cont 21:42, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Lead paragraph

Per WP:LEAD (see "Links" section):

Use as few links as possible before and in the bolded title. Thereafter, words used in a title may be linked to provide more detail:

'''Arugam Bay''' is a [[bay]] situated on the [[Indian Ocean]] in the dry zone of [[Sri Lanka|Sri Lanka's]] southeast coast.

Ground Zero | t 01:32, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

King's Weir image

Hi. Just had a look at this article. The image of Kings Weir is wrong. It is in fact is located in Essex close to the county boundary with Hertfordshire at Wormley, Herts on the The River Lee Navigation. I intend to remove the image from the article. If that is OK. (Northmetpit (talk) 09:34, 6 December 2010 (UTC)).

• Oops, you might be right! Replacing it with a different image.—S Marshall T/C 13:27, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

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