Talk:Macrinus/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Emir of Wikipedia (talk · contribs) 14:36, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

I hope to review this article soon. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 14:36, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

   All good here. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 15:19, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (reference section): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism):

   I added external links to Google Books for the references section Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 15:18, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

   The article encompasses his whole life, but is focused on his reign. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 10:53, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

   No problems here

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

   A browse of the article history reveals no edit wars taking place. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 10:53, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

6. It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free content have fair use rationales): Images are tagged, but no non-free content is present. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 10:53, 30 August 2016 (UTC) b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

   Images are minimal, but this is understandable given the period. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 10:53, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

7. Overall: Pass, pending a 2nd opinion from a more experienced good article reviewer. Update as I've put this on hold and will wait for the nominator to complete work on it. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 10:55, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

A possible suggestion for improvement is to the lead. Citations could be moved to the main part of the article, and it could be rewritten. I am however going to get a second opinion as I'm new here. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 10:53, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

1. Pass/Fail:

Hmm... you know, that's actually a good point. I'll move citations 2 and 3 from the lede and write them into the body of the article. I'll leave citation 1 as it's not necessary to repeat their full name more than once, and within the body of the article they should be referred to by a single common name, in this case Macrinus. I'll look to have that fixed by tomorrow. Thanks for the pointer. Mr rnddude (talk) 11:07, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Request for second opinion: There is a request for second opinion on the nomination page for general comment and for a specific comment on the lead section here. The moving of all citations out of the lead section and into the main body of the article is what is expected of peer review articles at Wikipedia in general. Since the lead section is supposed to be a summary of a fully completed peer reviewed article, then all of the citations should already be present in the main body of the article. The lead section is a summary of the completed article and does not introduce, as a rule, new references and new citations. The other general point on the article as a whole is that it appears a little on the short side for articles presented for peer review. The GA for Tiberius is substantially longer and less threadbare, with more thorough research. The article for Julius Caesar is again substantially more developed. Its really up to the nominator and the assessment editor here to decide the priorities at this time for enhancing this article. Cheers. Fountains-of-Paris (talk) 19:29, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

@Fountains-of-Paris: Thanks for the second opinion. I agree with you about the citations issue and will wait for them to be moved before passing. However I think the size is an non-issue as per Wikipedia:Very short featured articles which applies to FAs and so mere GAs have no need to be held to such a high standard. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 19:40, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Nominator's comments

Fountains-of-Paris, I sincerely hope you are not trying to compare Macrinus, an Emperor of less than a year and whose only source of contemporary knowledge is Dio, Herodian and the Augustan History rehash his work, to Julius Caesar of whom we have extensive knowledge for their conquests and dictatorship, or, Tiberius an emperor of 23 years. If you'd at least compared it to someone comparable like Galba or Vitellius, you'd perhaps understand why this article is on the shortside, or even Titus which is more than twice the length, but, also more than twice the reign. If you could point to where the article could actually be more expansive with your own research, I am not actually requesting this, then perhaps comment on mine. "Threadbare", you'll find very quickly, is not correct. If you'd like to see how extensive my research gets, look at Caracalla. I apologize if this sounds snippy, but, I resent my research being called "threadbare" without any hint of evidence that it actually is. And if you do have a source that I could access, by all means please provide, there's a section, "Aftermath" in Battle of Antioch (218) that needs a couple secondary sources before I re-submit for A-class that I haven't been able to find to supplement the current primary ones. Mr rnddude (talk) 20:32, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Also note; Macrinus has not participated in any campaigns, except his own short-lived one at Antioch, is notable only for having, possibly, incited the murder of Caracalla and also managing to tick off the entire Roman army. Titus by comparison lived throughout the reign of four emperors and campaigned against Judea before becoming Emperor. Mr rnddude (talk) 20:36, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

As mentioned, both nominator and reviewer need to be in agreement on this. For better or worse, other editors and readers of your article are going to notice that there are only about 40 cites in your article. I kind of like your response comment above and maybe mentioning something like this in the article itself that the shortness of his reign naturally makes the literature about him thinner than that available for other Emperors might be useful. As I said, its really up to nominator and reviewer to decide on this. Cheers. Fountains-of-Paris (talk) 20:40, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Fountains-of-Paris; Of course, and I indeed agree, I just felt that you comparison to Caesar, of all people, was a little unfair. I am actually currently looking at the article and I'll see if I can try to expand the article a bit, but, I reckon at most to 25k bytes (currently 21k). If need be I'll request for it to be put on hold for a few days, I don't usually need more especially when I've done related research. That's all presuming I find anything new that I could add. Mr rnddude (talk) 20:50, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

One additional thing. To the reviewer, please take a look at the article on Macrinus present in the German wiki, more than twice the length of the article here, I am very clearly aware, but, I bring this to your attention for an important reason. Please closely look at the citations, out of the 56 citations around 40 are to a single source, Dio, this fails WP:OR where extensive portions of the article should not be cited to a single source and also should not be cited to a primary source. I think this is relatively important to bring up as a fair chunk of what differs between this article and the German wiki article is based on this single aspect. I also cannot read German and have absolutely no idea what is in the Ikonographie and Rezeption sections, which is where secondary sources are actually being cited most. I think that I may be able to mimic the "Rezeption" section with a smaller section for damnatio memoriae, and am currently working on that, maybe worth 3k bytes. I will be updating as I go along, and if you come in and see fifty or so reasonably sized posts, ping me and I will work on removing all of my un-needed comments, for ease of access I have moved my comments to the section entitled "nominator's comments". Mr rnddude (talk) 21:12, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Other comments

While the prose is mostly okay, there are enough errors in sentences and punctuation that I am surprised to see the "well written" criterion ticked as "passed". For example, the third sentence reads, Macrinus' was by origin a Berber from Mauretania Caesariensis, As a member of the equestrian class he became the first emperor who did not hail from the senatorial class and the first emperor of Mauretanian descent. There is no reason I can see that the first word is possessive, and either the comma after "Czesariensis" should be a period, or the whole needs rewording. In addition, the first sentence of the lead's second paragraph needs a revision of some sort—it's one of a number when a comma is used to separate independent clauses where either a semi-colon or an added coordinating conjunction is needed.

There are also a number of issues in the Reign section. A few examples:

• I would also recommend revisiting the first paragraph under Reign, which should be clearer.
• There are some odd word choices, for example "exuberant payments" in that section's third paragraph, which could also use some revising.
• I would recommend a general copyedit to clean up the grammar, punctuation, and a bit in the tense department: that section's second paragraph has Macrinus would pay an indemnity of 200million sesterces, and "would" is an odd choice: he paid it, so just say that he did (and there's a missing space after "200" that should have been caught).

In short, a more careful review of the prose is in order. It is not at GA level currently, though with some work it could certainly attain that level. BlueMoonset (talk) 00:07, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Cheers for that, so main concern here is prose. I can go through it and try and clean up the issues. I'll ping you and Emir of Wikipedia when I have had a chance to go through it all. This should be done by tomorrow. Prose is generally what I am concerned about with my submissions, I tend to have long unwieldy passages where I try to cram in too much information. Again, thanks for the review. Mr rnddude (talk) 00:11, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

BlueMoonset, well I said tomorrow, but, perhaps today and more shocking perhaps already. I have fixed up the prose issues of the lede (I believe), I took a look at revising the first paragraph of "Reign" which I expanded slightly and cleaned up as well (I again believe). I shortened several long sentences as well by splitting them up into two sentences. I fixed up the issues under pointer two, exuberant -> exorbitant and three by changing would pay -> was forced to pay and also put the missing space in. I also did a general copy-edit fixing up several minor things as well. I can English, the question is, can I English well. I am aware that last sentence suggests that I cannot, that was the intention. Lastly, additional pointers welcome and thanks for doing the second opinion review. Mr rnddude (talk) 00:47, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Mr rnddude, as I mentioned, I believe "would" is an odd tense choice for a biography of someone long dead. With the exception of the prophecy, I'd advise changing all such uses to straightforward past tense: X happened, not Y would then do X. (Indeed, you added some extra uses of "would" in your just-completed edits, which is not advisable.) I haven't yet checked through the entire article. I'll try to do so in the next day or two, and point out what prose issues I find. Thanks for your patience. BlueMoonset (talk) 06:54, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Ah, I see, I'll go through a check for inappropriate uses of would, not a problem. Thanks for taking on the second opinion review BlueMoonset, at least for prose as I am unsure how in-depth you intend to go. Mr rnddude (talk) 07:06, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

I have just gone through the four articles which I have contributed most to and, after changing around 60 instances of "would", have come to the conclusion that I should be topic banned from the word "would" indefinitely. Evidence for the prosecution presented by Mr rnddude (talk) with topic ban for "would" enacted at 08:27, 31 August 2016 (UTC) by Judge Mr rnddude (talk) for an effective period of "indefinite" against the defendant Mr rnddude (talk). Mr rnddude (talk) 08:27, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Note to Emir of Wikipedia: As you are a new reviewer, and since you did ask for additional opinions, I was very surprised to see that, although I made it clear that I was still checking through the article for prose issues—having found a number of problems with the "well written" criteria after you had been ready to pass it—that you have gone ahead and passed the article. I can understand that you may be eager to review, but not to the point that you are listing articles that still have issues that need addressing. One obvious example that leapt out at me: the final sentence in the lead's first paragraph: He later conspired against and have Caracalla murdered in a bid to protect his own life.—"have" should be "had". The lead ends with This paved the way for Elagabalus to lead a successful rebellion to overthrow and later execute Macrinus in 218. Did Elegabalus actually order the execution of Macrinus (and of his son and co-emperor)? That's strongly implied here, but the body of the article just says that the two were executed. This sort of thing should also be checked, and questioned if necessary, as part of a GA review; there's also a prose error in that part of the article that needs fixing. BlueMoonset (talk) 22:44, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Just to the second point, Elagabalus ordered both Macrinus and Diadumenianus to be captured and brought to him for execution, Diadumenianus was killed when he was captured and Macrinus was killed at Archemius in Cappadocia after he'd broken his shoulder. I can expand on that section, also, point 1 fixed. Was a failure due to the massacre of "would" instances. Carry on, look forward to the GAR. Mr rnddude (talk) 23:14, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Sorry if I've been too eager but the prose of the article looks good, especially now that the excessive use of the word "would" has been removed. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 10:38, 1 September 2016 (UTC)