Talk:Siege of Port Royal (1710)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Siege of Port Royal (1710)/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: DustFormsWords (talk) 01:17, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I intend to conduct a Good Article review of this article. - DustFormsWords (talk) 01:17, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

1. Well-written:

(a) the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct;

Prose is clear and concise and spelling and grammar are correct. (I identified some small typos on my initial reading but have fixed them myself - please feel free to check the article history to confirm my edits are not errors.)

(b) it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.

This article complies with the Manual of style for lead sections.

This article complies with the Manual of style for layout.

This article ALMOST complies with the Manual of style for words to watch, but has this problem:

• "The northern force, according to some reports" - "Some reports" - what do the other reports say? Why don't we accept these reports enough to display them without qualification? Clarified Magic♪piano 17:49, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

• Looks good!  Done

The manuals of style for fiction and list incorporation do not apply to this article.

2. Verifiable with no original research:

(a) it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline;

All references appear in a dedicated and labelled section.

(b) reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose);

Assuming good faith for offline sources, all statements and quotations requiring citations are appropriately cited to reliable sources through the use of inline markers.

(c) it contains no original research.

I see no evidence of original research in this article.

3. Broad in its coverage:

(a) it addresses the main aspects of the topic;

This article addresses all the areas I would expect for an article of this sort.

(b) it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).

The article does not enter an inappropriate level of detail.

4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.


I am not aware of any relevant viewpoints not covered by this article. There is no evidence of bias in the article.

5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.

   This article does not appear to be the subject of any current disputes or edit wars.

6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:

(a) media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content;

Some small problems here:

• File:BayOfMaine1713.jpg - While it is clear this image is generally in the public domain, it is not clear who the author of the annotations is. They're presumably not present on the initial map; have they been added by John Thornton or by Magicpiano or by some other party?

• I've updated the image data to include annotation sourcing. Magic♪piano 14:56, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

• Looks good.  Done - DustFormsWords (talk) 04:05, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

• File:Daniel d'Auger de Subercase.jpg - The Canadian licensing on this image suggests that either the Crown holds the copyright, or that it is a photograph (which it clearly is not), or that the author died more than 50 years ago. The image documentation does not obviously support any of these assertions. Could you clarify the copyright status please? (The American licensing is fine.)

• This is arguably an issue with the {{PD-Canada}} template, which is present on other such templates, both on WP and Commons. I believe most copyright law does not distinguish between photographs and 2d artworks, so I interpret these templates to mean "photographs and other 2d artworks" even if they only say "photograph". (Given the number of non-photograph works I upload, I probably ought to push for changing this sort of language.) According to the discussion at commons:Template talk:PD-Canada, published works by unknown authors of this age are quite clearly PD in Canada. Magic♪piano 14:56, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
• That's good enough. It's clear enough that the image is able to be used, and at least one tag on the image correctly explains that position; if necessary, getting it perfectly described can wait for FA.  Done - DustFormsWords (talk) 04:07, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

(b) media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.

Images are appropriately used and captioned.

Overview - The initial review is complete. The article is clearly a suitable GA candidate. I only require answers to the two image licensing questions under 6a, and the "some reports" query under 1b. Subsequent to the resolution of these issues I intend to pass the article. Please also see my comments below for further ideas for improving the article after the GA process is complete. - DustFormsWords (talk) 02:38, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Overview 2 - The article now passes all the GA criteria and I will promote it accordingly. Congratulations! - DustFormsWords (talk) 04:08, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Further comments unrelated to passing GA

• Infobox - My understanding is that flag icons are deprecated in infoboxes; in any event the French flag icon does not appear to be displaying correctly. - DustFormsWords (talk) 01:28, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
  • Well, WP:MOSFLAG is a bit weaselly on the subject of flags in infoboxes; it formally discourages them, but carves out some exceptions. The MILHIST project is also somewhat divided on the subject (see e.g. this discussion). In my experience, most battle/siege articles I see (including Good and Featured articles) have flags in the box. I usually add them, in part because there are also gnomes who go around adding them, and this way the correct vintage flag is used. Magic♪piano 14:56, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
• Queen Anne's War template box - This article is listed in the template box as "2nd Port Royal". It's not clear from the article's lead why it should be listed in this way. (The lead refers to it as the third attempt to take the capital, and the word "second" does not appear in the article at all.) In any case I would have though the preferable way to list it in templates is under the correct name of the article. - DustFormsWords (talk) 01:31, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
  • The numbering in the template is based on the fact that there are two instances of "Port Royal" in the template. Conventions on this vary -- for example, the templates for the Seven Years' War use dates to distinguish entries, while those for the War of the Austrian Succession use ordinals. The wrinkle here is that the first two sieges occurred in 1707, and are described in a single article (because they were conducted by essentially the same expedition). It might be less ambiguous to change the template here to use dates... Magic♪piano 14:56, 8 February 2011 (UTC)