Talk:Richard Beale Davis/GA1

GA Review

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Nominator: Pretzelles (talk · contribs) 13:10, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer: Mike Christie (talk · contribs) 17:14, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

I'll review this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:14, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Images are appropriately tagged. Sources are reliable; a couple are fairly minor journals or newsletters but are being used appropriately as far as I can tell. Will do the spotchecks next. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:12, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Spotchecks. Footnote numbers refer to this version.

• FN 9 cites "During the Second World War, he served in the United States Navy Reserve. In 1943, he held the rank of Lieutenant (junior grade) and was executive officer of the V-12 Navy College Training Program at Emory and Henry College." Verified.
• FN 14 cites "In 1946, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship for post-military service scholars." Verified.
• FN 50 cites "The research for the book [Intellectual Life in the Colonial South, 1585–1763] took over two decades to complete." Verified.
• FNs 56 & 2 cite "On March 30, 1981, he died at Fort Sanders Hospital in Knoxville following a heart attack." Verified.

Spotcheck passes. Will read through and make any additional comments below, either tonight or in the morning. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:25, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

• The first sentence of the "Group memberships" section is uncited. This appears to be because it just summarizes what the rest of the section says. It's rare to see it done this way -- most editors automatically put a citation at the end of every single paragraph, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone stuck a "citation needed" tag on the end of the sentence. I'm not going to insist you change it for GA, but you might want to add a citation just to avoid it getting tagged later. You could also just join it to the following paragraph, as a topic sentence.
• "He served on the executive committee of the SAMLA": is that "the" intentional?
• "Gilmer was a lawyer, and had been hired": suggest "Gilmer, a lawyer, had been hired" as slightly more concise.
• 'Dumas Malone noted the benefit of having both sides of correspondence published in one place, praising its focus on both men and Gilmer's "poignant human story".' Suggest "praising the book's focus", or (to keep the tenses the same in both halves of the sentence) "and praised the book's focus". Having "its" seems to refer to the correspondence, rather than the book.
• I think it would be harmless to combine the last two short paragraphs in "Later works".

None of the above points are enough to prevent me from promoting this to GA; I'll take it on trust that you'll make your own decisions as to whether to implement any of the minor suggestions above.

You're an excellent writer. I see you've done one GA review yourself; can I encourage you to do more? Good writers make the best reviewers, and we're always short of reviewers at GAN. Either way, congratulations on a fine article and an interesting read. One last question: are you considering taking this to FAC? If so, I'd be glad to do a pre-FAC review for you and see if I can suggest any further improvements. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:37, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi Mike, thanks for the review and the pass: what a great thing to wake up to! The comments all seem good and fair enough, so I've gone ahead and done them.

I'm considering taking the article to FAC at some point in the future: my current plans are to publish an article on Chivers' Life of Poe within the next week and later write one on Davis's Intellectual Life in the Colonial South (and possibly his other books if they pass GNG). This means the section on Intellectual Life will be a bit more concise and lose the blockquote.

A pre-FAC review would be amazing, and I would appreciate it a lot! Pretzelles (talk) 14:28, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

OK -- sounds like I should wait till you've made those changes, though? Let me know when you think it's ready. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:37, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Hopefully they shouldn't take too long, I will let you know when it's all done! Pretzelles (talk) 14:41, 6 July 2024 (UTC)