Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Alabama Centennial half dollar/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 04:15, 17 December 2016 [1].

Alabama Centennial half dollar

Nominator(s): Wehwalt (talk) 22:56, 30 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about... you never know where an article is going to go once you begin the research and this one to my surprise led to a sidelight on the career of President Harding of which I was not aware. Commemorative coins are indeed a part of history if not a large part. Enjoy.Wehwalt (talk) 22:56, 30 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Source review / Singora

My article, Seri Rambai, is further down the list. It's got supports from DanK, BrianBoulton and Casliber, but will need a source review. Wanna help?

If yes, I'll do your source review as I did before with that Captain Cook coin. I guess you could email me the gear like last time. Singora (talk) 23:51, 4 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm traveling and am not in a position to send you all the docs. I'm happy to do your source review anyway.--Wehwalt (talk) 10:44, 5 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, thanks. You're welcome to get back to me later if/when you need a source review of your own. Singora (talk) 13:33, 7 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

What is the copyright status of the photo of the coin? Nikkimaria (talk) 02:35, 6 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This has come up before with Bobby131313 images and I believe I asked at a noticeboard at one time and the feeling was that uploading your own images to Wikipedia is indicative of an intent to license them under the Four Freedoms.--Wehwalt (talk) 08:40, 6 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Iridescent

In case of subsequent variation, this is the version on which I'm commenting. I've conducted no image or source checks and going on faith that every citation says what it says it does.

Lead

The "in 1921 to mark the 100th anniversary of Alabama's admission to the Union in 1819" is jarring, and "the Act of May 10, 1920" doesn't help. I imagine the reaction of every reader to the fact that the act deciding to mark the centenary wasn't passed until a year after the centenary will be "Huh? Why didn't they make arrangements for the centenary before the centenary year had passed?". I appreciate that the causes are touched on in the "inception" section, but there should probably be at least some acknowledgement in the lead that it took place after the event since my first instinct was that a vandal had been goofing with the dates.

This is not something about which I know anything, but are the images in the infobox really meant to be that brown? They look to me like either they've been in the bottom of a river, or that they're actually electroplated copper and the coating is wearing off, and presumably neither of these are the case.

Silver coins often exhibit toning, or really tarnish. It is, generally speaking, not considered a good idea to "clean" them, although in the past, this was often done. Still is, by some. It's the images we have.

The infobox has the mass and diameter of the coin in metric-only measurement, the thickness of the coin in both metric and imperial measurements, and the silver content in imperial-only measurement.

There was a formatting error I've corrected, and now the diameter shows in inches as well. I felt these were the most useful to the reader. The silver content is in troy ounces only because that's how silver is generally sold in the US. If I added the total weight in Imperial, then there would be the question of whether to use troy or avoirdupois. I chose not to go there (this is true of about forty or so coin articles.

Inception

"the members heard of other states which had gotten or which sought a commemorative coin"—what sort of numbers are we talking about? Was this a really commonplace practice which led to Alabama feeling justly left out, or was it a new fad which they wanted to be in on from the start? I know I can tell from the end navbox how many other commemorative coins there were, but the readers can't be expected to know that. (I'm also not a fan of "gotten", which seems a little inappropriately folksy to me.)

It's all traceable to the 1918 Illinois Centennial. From the sources, it looks like Maine saw the Illinois one, and then Alabama and Pilgrim (i.e. Massachusetts) saw the Maine one. However, Rainey, the Alabama congressman, was a bit vague about it, which I imagine is why Swiatek and Breen didn't say things as a definite fact. There's some discussion in the Alabama/Maine hearings of other anniversaries, but it's not fully accurate (for example, they say there was a coin for the Jamestown anniversary of 1907, but there wasn't.) I like to give as much of a play by play as I can, since this area hasn't been studied in depth, but it's all based on the very limited primary sources and I think it's best kept more or less as is. Gotten changed to "received".

Preparation

"Alabama Governor Thomas Kilby had a three-member commission headed by Owen"—who is Owen? She isn't mentioned prior to this point, and at no point before or after is it explained who she was. (I'm assuming she's a woman owing to the "her committee".)

Was this the first US coin designed by a woman? (Skimming through the other coins linked in the navbox it appears that it was, although a couple of other coins don't have their designers named.) If so, this should certainly be mentioned, since it will be one of the most interesting facts about this coin to non-enthusiasts, especially given that it's probably fair to say that 1920s Alabama was not renowned for its social progressiveness.

Yes, it was! Nice catch. I had to do some digging on this. I missed this because a couple of times previously women's designs were considered at some stage but weren't actually used. In fact, according to my source, it's the first coin of any country designed by a woman. I've put that in there.

Production, distribution & collecting

The long first paragraph here is very confusing to me. I think I've parsed it correctly as "They made 6006 of them in October and made the rest of them later; the official record says that the first batch were marked 2X2 and the later ones weren't, but this might not actually be the case", but it's taken me at least three read-throughs to grasp it.

Pretty much. I've divided the paragraph and played with it.

"the Pilgrim half lists for between $85 and $650 without 2X2…"—is this an error, as (if I'm understanding it) the Pilgrim half-dollar was an unrelated coin released at the same time.

Oopsie. I had cut and pasted that sentence to get the links and wasn't very careful, obviously.

These are all relatively minor points, and I assume I'll be supporting this unless anything problematic subsequently comes to light. ‑ Iridescent 09:48, 13 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Iridescent. I think I've dealt with those.--Wehwalt (talk) 10:54, 13 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Support (with the usual proviso that I haven't verified sources, but I've no reason to doubt they say what this says). It might be worth a final sentence noting how many other commemorative coins were issued subsequent to this, to put it in some kind of context. ‑ Iridescent 17:28, 13 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you indeed for that review and support.--Wehwalt (talk) 20:53, 13 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Support: Another facinating coin article from Wehwalt.--Jarodalien (talk) 15:23, 26 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Much obliged.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:59, 26 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Mike Christie

Just a couple of minor points.

"Numismatists Anthony Swiatek and Walter Breen speculated that": you might make this "speculate" to make it more immediately clear to the reader that Swiatek and Breen's speculation was not in 1920; it wasn't until the later part of the sentence that I realized they were writing about this later.
Not sure this is needed for FAC, but I'm curious: if Congress did not authorize the centennial commission as the vending organization in the legislation, how did they become authorized?

In practice, the Mint allowed orders from them and (I imagine) would not have allowed any orders from, say, Farran Zerbe or another promoter. These were early days for commemoratives.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:29, 29 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"Ohio's William A. Ashbrook": suggest "Ohio representative William A. Ashbrook" since I gather this discussion took place in Congress.
"James Fraser suggested that his wife, Laura Gardin Fraser, a noted sculptor, create the plaster models, and this occurred": "this occurred" is a bit clunky. How about: "At James Fraser's suggestion, the plaster models were created by his wife, Laura Gardin Fraser, who was a noted sculptor in her own right".
You have a link in a note to Cross of Gold speech#Background; I think this should be piped so the reader sees English text rather than the wikitext code for an anchor. Perhaps "see the background to the Cross of Gold speech", and link the whole phrase starting with "background"?

-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:54, 29 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've done those things, though slightly differently than you suggested in a couple of cases. Thank you for the review.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:35, 29 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Your fixes look good. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:56, 30 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks indeed for the thoughtful review and the support.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:57, 30 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Source review

Everything that needs a citation has one, and the sources are of encyclopedic quality. The only issue I encountered was that one source lacked a location, which I added for consistency's sake. All good here. --Coemgenus (talk) 19:00, 6 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Much obliged, thank you for that.--Wehwalt (talk) 02:27, 7 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Closing note: This candidate has been promoted, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FAC/ar, and leave the {{featured article candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Ian Rose (talk) 04:15, 17 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.