Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici/archive2

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 not promoted by SandyGeorgia 22:24, 27 January 2010 [1].

Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici

Nominator(s): Jack1755 (talk) 20:24, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article because I believe I have finally resolved the previous reviewers' concerns. -- Jack1755 (talk) 20:24, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

<add>Conditional</add> Support - Alt text, external links look good. Article covers all the basics AFAICT. Well ~~written and~~ cited. No more flowery prose I could find but I'll let the previous FAC reviewers comment on that. BTW, Lorenzo the Magnificent was the second or third article I edited on Wikipedia 8 years ago. Once this FAC is done, please take a look at that article - it deserves to be much better than it is. --mav (Urgent FACs/FARs) 01:51, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hm. Adding Conditional to above per comments about prose below. I had thought that those issues were stylistic but apparently not. But I don't think those issues are insurmountable in the FAC period. I therefore condition my support on a massage of the prose along the lines of the suggestions below. --mav (Urgent FACs/FARs) 03:21, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Comment on refs

In notes but not refs: Miller
In refs but not notes: Rumford • Ling.Nut 14:49, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed. -- Jack1755 (talk) 15:47, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, regretfully: Although I agree that the issue of overblown prose is largely resolved, there are still considerable problems with the prose as it stands now. I have only checked to midway through the Electress Palatine section; the following are examples of things I found.

Clumsy wording needing attention (two examples):-
- "The Elector Palatine obtained the style Royal Highness from the Holy Roman Emperor for Cosimo III in February 1691." And why the italics? The parenthetical phrase which follows also has an italicised "royal".

???.For Emphasis, the MOS says to use italics instead of bold. -- Jack1755 (talk) 23:44, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

- "The Palatinate she arrived in was ravaged by the ongoing Nine Years' War—Louis XIV assaulted the Palatinate on behalf of his brother, Philippe of France, duc d'Orléans, who, as husband of a Palatine princess, lay claim to the Rhenish principality following the death of the heir-less incumbent, Charles II, on the pretext of her unpaid dowry—and at one stage, France occupied it up to Philippsburg." Impossibly convoluted and with faulty grammar.

Fixed. It's a single sentence; if you believe it's convoluted, then it can be broken up. -- Jack1755 (talk) 00:01, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Other problems noted:-
- In the lead: "first-lady" is not an hyphenated term.

Fixed. -- Jack1755 (talk) 23:59, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

- The sequence of sentences at the start of the Electress Palatine section is strange. Try putting the James II sentence at the start of the paragraph. Then the sequence becomes logical.

???. Could you explain this, please? I don't understand.

- In the same section we have "fearing" twice in quick succession.
- Paragraphs should not begin with pronouns ("She departed...")

???. That's interesting! The Oxford Dictionary of Grammar and Punctuation starts a paragraph with a pronoun on pages 128, 132, 134 and et al. Are you saying Oxford is wrong, Brian? How can I trust your other advice if you aren't telling the truth? -- Jack1755 (talk) 00:09, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

- She "fell" pregnant? Not the neatest way of putting it, it's not an illness.

???. It's in the wiktionary: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fall_pregnant. It's a British-English term. If you haven't checked already, Brian, the article is written in British-English. See the talk page. It's even used a newspaper. Amusingly enough, that article has five paragraphs starting with a pronoun! :D I wonder how that got past the editor, huh??? -- Jack1755 (talk) 23:44, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I doubt that the outstanding issues with the article can be resolved within the course of this FAC. I think it would have been better to have sent the article to Peer Review, rather than bringing it back here so quickly. Let's see what transpires, but I can assure you that you will get plenty of help at PR, should you take the article there. Brianboulton (talk) 23:35, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose I'd like to commend Jack1755 on his obvious hard work and dedication. I appreciate your contributions to Wikipedia. However, I'm joining Brian in I'm finding the prose a touch problematic. Quite frankly, it lacks the mater-of-fact tone that I hope to see in an encyclopedia entry. It has some passages that seem contrived, while others ring a bit too informal... I greatly fear that the nominator will be offended by these remarks. Don't be. Your hard work in doing the research etc. is both unquestioned and appreciated. Your present writing style is just not well-matched to that of an encyclopedia that strives to speak to the greater public:

"to the tune of"; "dubbed" seem informal. Perhaps other instances?
"The Viceroy, the Prince de Craon, whom the Electress disliked for his "vulgar" court, allowed the Electress to live undisturbed in her own wing of the Pitti, living in virtual seclusion, only on occassion receiving a select-number of guests under a black dais in her silver-clad audience room" seems tortuous. Forex, "undisturbed" and "in virtual seclusion" border on being redundant; the "vulgar court" bit seems extraneous, etc.
"In collaboration with the Holy Roman Emperor and Francis of Lorraine, she willed..." Are we sure that "collaborate" is the appropriate verb here?
"On one documented occasion" ... "documented" redundant.
"Peter's ministers, fearing that Princess Anna Maria Luisa may dominate Peter II and fearing she might have inherited Marguerite Louise's manner, declined." Sure it's grammatical, but the distance between the subject and verb seems downright Germanic. I'm also hesitant about the tense ("may")...
"heiress of the eponymous duchy" contrived.

...and so on. One thing I hate about content review is when I offer some examples of questionable prose, then the nominators fix those few examples and expect a second look. Please don't. The examples are intended to be representative, not comprehensive. Please do find a second (and perhaps third) pair of eyes to work on the prose – Malleus? Ealdgyth? Parrot of Doom? Deacon of Pndapetzim? Adam Bishop? Umm, I'm sure I'm forgetting one or two of those Middle Ages/Bishops/etc. editors. Anyhow good luck. • Ling.Nut 02:35, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your comments, everyone. I'm going to withdraw my nomination; now, it's clear to me that no matter what I do the article is never going to be featured. By the way Brian, I don't understand why you decided to exclude the above comments from the first FAC. If I had, I might not have re-nominated. Thanks. -- Jack1755 (talk) 14:06, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Don't withdraw the nomination, Jack. All the faulty prose can easily be corrected. The problem I am seeing here is a lack of reviewers who habitually use British English. Now as an American I am certainly not being condescending to my compatriots; however, we may as well calmly face it, many North Americans find British English words and expressions pompous when they're the norm on the other side of the Atlantic. For example "she fell pregnant" is standard British usage, yet to American ears it sounds odd. The tense "may" could easily be substituted with "would". It would be a shame to withdraw the FAC nomination when so much care and effort has been put into this most excellent and enlightening article. --Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 15:40, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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