Talk:Premiership of John Edward Brownlee

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Premiership of John Brownlee/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Arsenikk ^(talk) 22:08, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

A few comments:

• Titles are only capitalized if directly in front of the name. (see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (capital letters)#Titles of people).
• Abbreviation (such as MLA) need to be spelled out the first time.
• The word "unonerous" is more complex than necessary (I think a lot of people don't know what it means). Other such words are "reprised", "onerous", "disingenuous" and "mused".
• "De facto" has been naturalized as an English word, so it doesn't need to be in italics.

Not much to put my finger on, but a few things (I fixed everything except point three above). Fix it, and you will have a good article. Otherwise, and interesting and well-written article that gives a matter of depth and intrigue into a period of Canadian history not often found on Wikipedia. Arsenikk ^(talk) 22:08, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your copyediting and review. I've made a couple of changes:

• I've delinked "Canada" since, per WP:OVERLINK, countries should not generally be wikilinked, and User:Tony1 would just make me delink it if I brought it to FAC anyway.
• "Member of Parliament" and "Member of the Legislative Assembly" are formal names to which the second paragraph of the MOS link you provided applies; it is no more appropriate to leave them in lowercase than it would be to do so with "President of the United States".

As for the third point, I'll grant you "unonerous", which is awkward as well as perhaps slightly obscure; I've changed it to "unobjectionable". I'm afraid that I cannot accept that the other four, all of which are in common use in popular and non-scholarly publications, are in any way too obscure or otherwise inappropriate. Steve Smith (talk) 02:18, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Delinking countries is a good thing. As for "unonerous", it isn't even in the dictionary. I am still skeptical to the four words in question, not so much because they aren't used, but because I do not expect an average 16-year old to understand them. I'll pass the article, mostly because I can't bother to argue about such a matter when the rest of the article is in so good shape. Hope to see more of your work around soon, and on behalf of everyone who didn't review your article, I am sorry that it took almost three months. Arsenikk ^(talk) 11:49, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Okay, so "unonerous" is more than a little obscure, if even the dictionary writers haven't heard of it. Yeah, that clearly had to come out, and thanks for flagging it. As for the others, there's probably a debate here to be had about the level at which Wikipedia should be written. My personal view is that we should emulate the level of language—not the style, just the level—of the better elements of the popular press, like the New York Times. Anyway, if people are online (which presumably they are, if they're reading a Wikipedia article), they have access to dictionaries; worst thing that happens is that they learn a new word or two. Anyway, thanks again for the review. Steve Smith (talk) 19:06, 31 October 2009 (UTC)