Talk:Richard Hakluyt/Archive: GA review

GA on hold

Nice work so far, here are some suggestions for improvement. Fix these and you'll have yourself a GA.

MoS

*The lead needs expansion it should be around double the current size given the article's length. Remember per WP:LEAD the lead is supposed to be a summary of the article, so just try to summarize what's there.

• Per the MoS section titles should not repeat the title of the article.
• Since it's about a person add WP:PDATA.
• The last few sections should be re-ordered to follow Wikipedia:Guide to layout.
• Individual years are half linked; either link all of them or none of them (I'd prefer none).
• Per the MoS section headers should not start with "The".
• No free use pics for the top right of the page? If not that's fine, as long as you've looked around, I'm sure you know that any pic from that era would be free use.
• Photographers names generally should not appear in pic captions except in cases where it's part of the release conditions.
• Per WP:LEAD nothing should be mentioned in the lead that isn't mentioned in the text (Shakespeare).
• Per WP:DATE, specifically this section, the birth and death dates in the opening should be fixed. — Full dates should be wikilinked though, I fixed one as an example. Personally I like to see them all in this order: April 22, 2007 if they're fully linked a user can set his preferences so they all appear that way or whichever way they prefer, see WP:DATE specifically here.

Prose

• "Family seat" is a not familiar to an American like me; link it, or if it can't be linked explain it.
• "...one Hugo Hakelute was returned Member of Parliament for that borough in 1304 or 1305." I have no idea what that sentence means, it's not clear to the reader using American English. Is Hugo Hakelete a thing? a person? Clarify please.

I understand this now, although maybe it could still use a little work in the future to integrate it into the context of the article, it seems a little off-topic somewhat maybe this is a cultural thing.

The fact that a person with the surname "Hakelute" (probably a variation of "Hakluyt") was associated with Yatton is evidence that the Hakluyt family had settled in Herefordshire. I think the sentence is all right, but if any editor feels he or she can improve it, they are welcome to edit it. Cheers, Jacklee 16:23, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Referencing

• Source 5 (NNDB) is not reliable, see the talk page of the article for that source and you'll see why that's the case.
• Sources 1 and 11 need publisher info, pub dates, and access dates.
• "Hakluyt's great collection, though little read, has been called the "prose epic of the modern English nation"."—quotes always need a source.
• "to Hakluyt, it has been said, "England is more indebted for its American possession than to any man of that age.""—same as above.
• "Hakluyt died on November 26, 1616 and was buried in Westminster Abbey; by an error in the abbey register his burial is recorded under the year 1626." Could use a cite, optional though not a big deal to me, not a deal breaker.

I could cite the 1911 edition of Encyclopædia Britannica, but don't know what source Britannica used. What do you think? Cheers, Jacklee 16:25, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Citing Britannica would be fine by me. Quadzilla99 13:10, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Done! Cheers, Jacklee 21:47, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

• "Hakluyt visited his guardian whose conversation, illustrated by "certain bookes of cosmographie, an universall mappe, and the Bible", made the young Hakluyt resolve to "prosecute that knowledge, and kind of literature"."—ditto.

POV

• "May be regarded as" is fairly close to weasel words, also it's so ambiguous as to be meaningless, change it to "is generally considered by scholars" or something of the sort and preferably get a ref (or refs) to show this is the case.
• "The first-fruits of Hakluyt's labours in Paris were embodied in his important work entitled A Particuler Discourse Concerninge the Greate Necessitie and Manifolde Commodyties That Are Like to Growe to This Realme of Englande by the Westerne Discoueries Lately Attempted," Important here could be contrued as POV (important according to who?) no big deal for me though. Fix it if possible, but this is not a deal breaker.

Probably ok, someone might nitpick over this at FAC.

I think it can't seriously be disputed that Hakluyt's book Particuler Discourse was an important work. It is clear from the article that the book was written to support Sir Walter Raleigh's expedition to colonize Virginia, and was presented to Elizabeth I. Cheers, Jacklee 16:29, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Okay, if you feel it doesn't meet the criteria for a disputed statement that's fine. In the future if you go for FA these kind of things often come up. Quadzilla99 13:15, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Prose

• "and appear to have settled in Herefordshire around the 13th century." Not very formal and somewhat ambiguous, make it more precise if it's uncertain say so in unequivocal language.

This could still use a little tweaking.

I think the current wording is all right. It's not known for sure whether the Hakluyts settled in Herefordshire in the 13th century, but the evidence shows that people with the name "Hakluyt" (or variations thereof) begin turning up in relation to Herefordshire from that time. Cheers, Jacklee 16:20, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

• "and the Bible", made the young Hakluyt resolve to "prosecute that knowledge, and kind of literature"." "young" is unecessary also informal.
• "Hakluyt followed this up with a book that he wrote and published himself" the "up" in here is unnecesary and informal, also self-published might flow better here (linking is optional).

Better I still like self-published, fine though.

Hakluyt certainly wrote the book, but according to the British Library's on-line catalogue the publisher is someone else. Of course, Hakluyt could have paid this other person to publish the book on his behalf, in which case it might be correct to say the book was "self-published", but I'm unable to determine whether this was the case. Jacklee 16:17, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Ah in that case it's fine, nice research there. Quadzilla99 16:23, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

• "and so to that of Sir Edward Stafford," "so that of" is unecessary extra wording and redundant here. If you're having trouble distinguishing sharply this could be done:"Hakluyt's Voyages brought him to the notice of Lord Howard of Effingham, and Sir Edward Stafford—Lord Howard's brother-in-law." You could probably just cut out the "so that of" and it will be fine as it is.
• "His object was to recommend the enterprise of planting the English race in the unsettled parts of North America, and thus gain the Queen's support for Raleigh's expedition.[7]" We don't use object in that sense here in America, if goal doesn't lose in translation to English I would use that. Although it's clear to me what it means it might not be to others.—Even better wording.

Mostly minor stuff could be fixed rather quickly if time and effort were put into it. Quadzilla99 03:16, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Note I added one more MoS issue up above. Quadzilla99 03:44, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Done! Cheers, Jacklee 16:20, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Editor's comments

Thanks very much for the useful comments that you've made above. I have a few queries about them and would be interested to read your responses:

• The "GA on hold" tag indicates that it will be in place for seven days. Does this mean that all improvements to the article have to be made within seven days, otherwise the article needs to be renominated for GA status?
  • I can fail it if I feel work is not being done at any time, if you disagree with my review you can put it up for review, or if you don't want to address my concerns you can just say so and it will get failed. You could then put it up again immediately, yes.
• "Per the MoS section titles should not repeat the title of the article." – The title of the article is "Richard Hakluyt" and none of the section titles have this name in it, so what is the problem here?
  • External links section. Remove the headers they're unnecessary, each link is self-explanatory. In general External links section don't have second level sections anyway, see here on FA Charles Darwin which has the same kind of external links (about, works etc.). Quadzilla99 16:31, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
• "Source 5 (NNDB) is not reliable, see the talk page of the article for that source and you'll see why that's the case." – I had a look at the Talk page you referred to, but there doesn't seem to be a definitive conclusion there as to whether NNDB is reliable or not. About half of the commentators seem to doubt its reliability while the other half think it's all right to cite it. Nonetheless, I don't have a problem with not citing it.
  • It's not look at Michael Jackson's executive summary:[1] or Laura Schlessinger's whole article:[2]
• I realize that there are a number of quotations in the article that are not attributed. I think these were lifted from the 1911 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica by a previous editor. I suspect they are from dedications and prefaces to Hakluyt's books or letters he wrote, but do not know their exact source. Should I either remove the quotations or paraphrase them so that they are no longer quotations?
  • Quotations are always supposed to have a cite per WP:CITE. Incidentally Britannica 1911 is available on Wikisource and Google books I believe. Quadzilla99 16:31, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
• A general point: you mention here and there that parts of the article would not be clear to an American audience, but isn't Wikipedia's audience international? I mean no disrespect, but should editors necessarily be writing articles so that they make sense to Americans? However, I take the point that what is not clear to an American might not be clear to people from other parts of the world as well. Cheers, Jacklee 15:54, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
  • The best way I could answer that is to say that there's one Wikipedia in English not two (or more), it's designed for all english speaking Wikipedians. Overall though, the changes to language explanation I suggested were so minor as to be negligible. If you worked on the problems here you could fix them in half an hour. This review is tame compared to ones I've gotten. I'm not going to get talk about the Michael Jordan prolonged FAC, which nearly killed me before it passed. Quadzilla99 16:31, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi, Quadzilla99, I've completed revising the article and would appreciate it if you would have another look to see if it qualifies for "Good Article" status. Thanks. Cheers, Jacklee 01:15, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

GA passed

Okay see my comments above, everything crossed out I would considered completely dealt with. Congrats, I think it's greatly improved. My recommendation if you want to get it to FA is to put it up for peer review and notify/ask some experts in the field to comment (just putting it up for peer review these days gets little response). Also you could seek out a solid copyeditor to look it over—it's always a good idea and could never hurt. Here's a couple I'd recommend: User:Tony1 (normally busy but a fairly renowned figure around here), User:Galena11, and User:Awadewit. If there's no rush you could put it here although that takes a month or two. Again congrats! Quadzilla99 01:57, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks very much! Will have a think about getting it up to FA status – am a little busy at the moment and won't have much time to work on the article for a while. Cheers, Jacklee 02:18, 25 April 2007 (UTC)