Talk:Westminster Assembly/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: SlimVirgin (talk · contribs) 04:36, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Checklist

Rate	Attribute	Review Comment
1. Well-written:
	1a. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct.	Just noting here that I've started reading this, and that I'll put some comments up over the next few days. I've left some comments below about the accessibility of the writing. It's very nicely written from a technical standpoint, except that some of the sentences are a little hard to parse, but it's very difficult to understand in places, even with liberal clicking of blue links. This is to some extent inevitable in an article like this, but the question is whether it can be improved – for example, by relying less on linking and providing succinct explanations in the text instead. It might help to read Wikipedia:Make technical articles understandable, which says: "Some topics are intrinsically hard or require a great deal of prior knowledge gained through years of further education or training. It is unreasonable to expect a comprehensive article on such subjects to be understandable to all readers. However, effort should still be made to make the article as understandable as possible, with particular emphasis on the lead section." It suggests writing "one level down": "A general technique for increasing accessibility is to consider the typical level where the topic is studied (for example, high school, college, or graduate school) and write the article for readers who are at the previous level."
	1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.
2. Verifiable with no original research:
	2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline.
	2b. 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).
	2c. it contains no original research.	I'm accepting in good faith that the article contains no original research.
3. Broad in its coverage:
	3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic.
	3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).
	4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.	I'm accepting in good faith that the article deals fairly with majority and significant-minority views.
	5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:
	6a. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content.
	6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.
	7. Overall assessment.	Failing for now because the nominator is not available to complete the review.

Discussion

Hi, I've started reading through this. It's very nicely written and I'm learning a lot! I'll leave some suggestions below as they occur to me. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 02:26, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you very much, I really appreciate it. --JFH (talk) 03:40, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Lead

• It would help to have some dates right at the start of the article. There's no indication of when this happened until the last sentence of the first paragraph. Suggest something like "The Westminster Assembly of Divines was a synod ... appointed in England in X to restructure the Church of England." Or give the dates of the First English Civil War (1642–1646) to orient the reader.
• "It was called during the lead up to ..." Better to use a different term, because "called" won't be clear to everyone.
• Need to say who William Laud was.
• A minor issue that I don't care about, but others will say that the article needs to be written in British English, so favoured not favored.
• Can you explain your terms a little as you go along, bearing in mind that this is for a general reader? For example, presbyterianism was adopted but not enough for some, and eventually they went back to episcopal church government. Unless the reader understands this already, she will have to click on the links. It would be better if you could explain in the text, even if only briefly in brackets.
• What is predestination to salvation?
• This sentence isn't clear: "The Assembly's Confession was the first of the Reformed confessions to include the covenant of works, in which God promised life to Adam on condition of perfect obedience." Also, should confession be upper case?
  • I attempted to address each of these, let me know if anything is still unclear. For the last bullet, my thought was that I'm referring to the Westminster Confession in particular, so a proper noun, but I could be wrong. I ran a script to convert to Oxford spelling (I don't know anything about Oxford vs. British, but Oxford sounds smart). I see it got rid of my "in order"s, but I actually think every instance looks better without it. --JFH (talk) 03:40, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

• I didn't know there was a script for Oxford spelling. I use that spelling too; the only difference (I think) between that and what Wikipedia calls British English is that Oxford writes, e.g. "organize" and not "organise." I've only ever found one example of a sentence needing "in order" to make sense; I kept a copy of it on some computer but was never able to find it again. :) SlimVirgin ^(talk) 01:44, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Here is the script: User:Ohconfucius/EngvarB. --JFH (talk) 04:25, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Background

• "They did not, however, leave the established church." I assume you mean the Puritans, but it's not clear.
• Again, a reader would have to leave the page to find out what this meant, and why Laud ended up in the Tower of London: "Committees were organized in the House of Commons to deal with various religious issues, leading to the imprisonment of Archbishop Laud and his supporters in the Tower of London and the abolition of the Court of High Commission and the Star Chamber, courts which had inflicted severe punishments on Puritan dissenters."
  • I tried clarifying, let me know if I missed what you're getting at. --JFH (talk) 03:40, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

• The changes look good. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 01:44, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Calling the assembly

• Minor preference issue: "presented to Charles on 1 December 1641" --> "presented to Charles on 1 December that year."
• "and two for each University": needs to be explained.
• "to assure that their local constituencies" --> to ensure
• "At a time when the majority of clergy could not read ...": surely not correct?

• I know the source (which I've returned) cites sources for that surprising claim but I can't find any support elsewhere right now. I think the source was rather zealous in his thesis that the divines were very learned. I've gone ahead and removed it along with the thing about how many had degrees, since it's useless without the context. I think the following sentence is good enough for the purpose of describing the divines.--JFH (talk) 04:25, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Revising the Thirty-Nine Articles

• Thirty-Nine Articles or Thirty-Nine articles? There's an example of the latter in this section.
• "thoroughly received and beleeved": typo
• "ought not confess" --> to confess
• Antinomians or antinomians?
• This section is difficult to understand because terms are not explained, and in addition to that some of the sentences are hard to parse. For example (a 64-word sentence with just one comma): "The antinomians were much more immediately threatening to the Assembly than the Catholics, and some of the divines were willing to support a statement for the article on justification which actually leaned in a more Roman Catholic direction than the original by suggesting that in justification the believer is made righteous as well as accounted righteous to oppose the antinominans as strongly as possible."

  I don't know whether there's a way to write the article to make it more accessible. The thing to decide is who you are writing for. A few Wikipedians have said they imagine they're writing for an intelligent, well-educated 16-year-old who has never heard of the topic, so everything has to be explained, but not dumbed down horribly. If you want to pitch it at another level, that's fine, but I think you may have aimed this at someone who already knows it all.

Debating church government

• "They have sometimes been labelled "Independents", however, they rejected this term ..." --> but they rejected this term, or if you want to keep "however," it needs different punctuation

Conflicts with Parliament

• "grosly ignorant": typo

Confession, catechisms, and the Directory for Worship

• Seems fine

Theology

• I wonder if some or all of this section needs to be higher in the article; for example, after the section "Calling the assembly."
• "After Adam broke the first covenant in the fall, God offered salvation apart from human initiative in what was called the covenant of grace ...": needs to be clarified
• "that Christ only died for those whom the Father had already" --> that Christ died only for those
• "for those whom the Father had already predestined to salvation in eternity": is there a more succinct way to say this?
• "set these two covenant": plural
• "The Westminster divines set these two covenant against each other rather than the Old and New Testaments, which they taught differed only in administration rather than in substance": needs to be clarified

Aftermath

• "in the rise denominationalism": rise of
• "as well as Particular Baptists": as well as by (makes the sentence easier to parse)

Break

Hi Jfhutson, just checking in here to make sure all is well. If you like I can put this on hold to give you time to look through it (for as long as you need, not just the usual week), or I can request a second opinion. Or some other option if you have a suggestion. Let me know what you think. Best, SlimVirgin ^(talk) 18:38, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Just noting that I've put this on hold until the holiday season is over. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 21:26, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Requesting a second opinion

We're now into February and Jfhutson is still not editing, so I have to decide what to do with this. It seems a shame to fail it, because clearly a lot of work has gone into it. On the other hand, the text is quite difficult to understand, and I would say unnecessarily so. I don't have access to the sources, so I'm having to take a lot on good faith and can't attempt a copy edit because I can't see what the sources say.

I'm therefore inclined to fail it, in the absence of Jfhutson, over the issue of the prose not being accessible enough, but I'd prefer to check with another reviewer in case I'm being unfair.

I'm pinging LT910001, who commented during the peer review and who might be willing to help here. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 02:49, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping, SlimVirgin. I'd be inclined to pass the article. In my mind the readability criteria can be interpreted quite broadly. It's quite tempting to want to rewrite an article to one's own concept of what is most readable, but I think this needs to be balanced against the writing style of others, and tempered by the expected readership of different articles. This article could certainly be improved, but having reread it, I don't think readability concerns these are sufficient to fail the review. If you still don't feel comfortable with passing the article, I'd be happy to either take over the review or review the article if it is denominated. Kind regards, LT910001 (talk) 03:19, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi LT910001, thank you for the response. If you'd be willing to take over the review, that would be very helpful. I feel uncomfortable that there's a fair bit of the text I'm not clear about, and at the same time I can't see the sources. That combination means there's a lot of the article that I'm not able to review, particularly without Jfhutson on hand to explain certain issues. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 03:29, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

On reflection, SlimVirgin, would it be possible for you to keep this article on hold while I address your concerns myself? I would be sad to see this article not promoted, but I wouldn't be able to make these edits myself whilst reviewing if the nominator is inactive. My internet connection is currently not reliable enough to address these concerns promptly, but I will have them addressed by February 15th if you're willing to keep the article on hold. LT910001 (talk) 13:53, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Yes, by all means, that's fine. Please take as long as you need. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 03:46, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi SlimVirgin, sorry, I set out to fix this article with the best of intentions, but I don't have the time and my internet access is too sketchy, so I will have to renege on this commitment. Kind regards, --LT910001 (talk) 08:31, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi LT, thanks for the note. I'll fail it for now and you or Jfhutson can renominate when you're ready. I hope he's okay and that nothing untoward has happened. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 19:12, 21 February 2014 (UTC)