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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Cædmon

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Cædmon

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I am resubmitting this article for review, as I think most of the objections that can be answered have been. The main outstanding one is the request that no references be made in the article lead. I've played around with it, but not found a solution. I'm wondering if it maybe isn't that severe a problem. Here's a link to the previous discussion page: Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Cædmon/FACarchive1 - Daniel.odonnell 16:09, April 19, 2006

  • Don't forget to add the 4 tildes (~~~~) :-) The notes aren't that important, though if we could incorporate the facts into the article it would be great. Lead looks fine - good summary (helps with working towards 1.0). I can't agree with bunchofgrapes objection, the method of layout for this person is necessary because, from what I read in the text, their isn't that much non-legendary and undisputed material about his life. The most significant thing about Caedmon is really what he wrote, not so much his life itself. I think we need to take into account that this is not a modern day notable person we are documenting here. Maru's comments are also interesting, but I think somewhat misplaced. I have modidifed the text that deals with "most beautiful verse" to note that it was really Bede who said this. I hope I didn't alter your meaning! If this is wrong, feel free to revert. The ironic comment is not that bad, but if we could rephrase I would appreciate it (call me difficult). Other than that, I Support - fantastic work! - Ta bu shi da yu 16:31, 19 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Response (green="accepted and fixed"; red="rejected")
  • The ironic comment is not that bad, but if we could rephrase I would appreciate it (call me difficult): I've removed the "perhaps ironically". Not a hill to die on.
  • The notes aren't that important, though if we could incorporate the facts into the article it would be great: To be honest the notes in the lead are there to answer a couple of peripheral questions that readers might have but are outside the scope of the article--e.g. the number of named poets, etc. Adding them to the main body would drive the article out off the road, IMO. But not mentioning them would be a shame. In the case of footnote 2 and 3, they are an artefact of the referencing system. I've rewritten the relevant section of the lead and the main body to get rid of notes 2 and 3. dpod 22:41, 20 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Nice work. --Osbus 00:22, 20 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object. 2-sentence pgraphs are too short. expand them or merge them or rewrite them or restructure. dont have any sections with only one subsection (ie "other medieval sources"). non-standard heading sizes. shorten title of "source and analogues to the caedmon story" as it stretches TOC too much. "heliand", "general corpus" and "manuscript evidence" pgraphs too long. this reference makes no sense: "——————————. 2005. Cædmon’s Hymn, A multimedia study, edition, and witness archive. SEENET A. 7. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. ". "notes" should be before "works cited", which should be renamed "references". recheck formatting of note 25 and 28. lead should better summarize the content of the whole article. Zzzzz 23:08, 20 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Response (green="accepted and fixed"; red="rejected")
  • 2-sentence pgraphs are too short. expand them or merge them or rewrite them or restructure.: There is one two sentence paragraph in the piece (the first paragraph in Sources and analogues), and one one sentence paragraph (the last paragraph in Bede's account). If one were to combine the two sentence paragraph with the paragraph that follows it, one would have a paragraph that is 15 lines line--three lines longer than the Heliand paragraph you think is too long. Perhaps more importantly, the one sentence and the two sentence paragraphs are conclusions and introductions respectively. These a rhetorically distinct from the evidence that follows. Finally, paragraph is a logical/rhetorical unit rather than a visual one. While it is true that newspapers split paragraphs visually, most other genres don't except in extreme cases--which these are not.
  • dont have any sections with only one subsection (ie "other medieval sources"): This seems to me a request to sacrifice clarity to the Balaal of style. I tried it [1], but it produced a wall o' prose. The Heliand is widely recognised as a potentially special case among analogues to the Caedmon story. It seems not unreasonable to name it in the TOC and outline. Especially given your comment on the length of the paragraph it seemed unwise to make it worse.
  • non-standard heading sizes: how? The heading size is controlled by the CSS. The heading structure is sensible, so I don't know what you mean.
  • source and analogues to the caedmon story: I've renamed the section "sources and analogues" albeit with trepidation: in Caedmon's case there are two distinct scholarly discussions about sources and analogues: one about Bede's account, and another about the hymn. However, the outline should suggest at this point that we are talking about the biography, not the poem. As long as we realise that we are introducing ambiguity in our content in order not to stretch the TOC box too much visually, I'm reluctantly ok with this. Seems a bit of an odd choice to priviledge form over content, I must say, though.
  • this reference makes no sense: This reference is absolutely standard Chicago style... a recognised Wikipedia style guide. Are you really saying that you've never seen an author name replaced by a bar? If this is so, it makes one wonder about the range of genres behind your other style pronouncements. As a professional humanist and the son of a physicist married to a social scientist, I can assure you it's standard across the disciplines!
See also: WP:CITE#How_to_cite_sources. The style in this article is quite standard for the discipline.
While the use of the bar is certainly appropriate in printed works, it is not a good idea in wikipedia articles because if another editor comes along and inserts a reference between the two existing references (i.e., between the one with the name of the author and the one with the bar), the false impression will be created that the bar indicates the name of the author of the newly inserted work, rather than the name of the real author. Because of this, I have replaced both occurrences of the bar in the "References" section with the names of the respective authors. Polaris999 01:40, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
*"notes" should be before "works cited": this is something to take up with the template authors: as per wikipedia style (which I hate) references have been tagged using <ref</ref> rather than the simpler and cross-disciplinary inline style prefered by pretty much all professional style guides. The location of "notes" is automatically determined by the template: the template places them last. Thanks to Polaris99 who fixed this.
  • "works cited", which should be renamed "references": the current section title is standard bibliographic practice--in fact straight Chicago. While I don't care myself what they are called (as long as they are not called bibliography), style guides exist to regularise choices; given the problems you have with a bar replacing an author name, I'm not sure I should take this as an authoritative pronouncement on style.
See also: WP:CITE#How_to_cite_sources. The style in this article is quite standard for the discipline.
I also have no personal preference as to whether the section in question should be called "works cited" or "references", but it is rather established wikipedia style for it to be called "references". (I just did a random check of 20 Featured Articles and observed that all 20 of them use the term "references" ...) Polaris999 05:53, 24 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I just looked at Wikipedia:Citing sources and noticed that the section in question is labelled "References" there. This persuades me that wikipedia style prefers "References" and I am therefore going to make this change in the Cædmon article, which may, of course, be reversed if others disagree ... Polaris999 00:46, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • recheck formatting of note 25 and 28.: Thanks.
  • lead should better summarize the content of the whole article: de gustibus non est disputandum: I tried changing it even though I don't think it is a problem and had the changes rolled back. Some people at least seem to think it isn't a bad summary of the important points.

dpod 02:16, 21 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am not sure where the appropriate place to put this note would be, so am inserting it here. I had been expecting dpod to come onto this page and comment on the fact that I have resolved two of the concerns listed above by Zzzzz, and either approve or disapprove the changes I made. But, since dpod doesn't seem to be around at present, I think that I should mention that the concerns this reference makes no sense and "works cited", which should be renamed "references" have been addressed – satisfactorily, I hope. I also made an effort to address another concern mentioned by Zzzzz, i.e.: lead should better summarize the content of the whole article, but do not know to what extent I may have succeeded ... Polaris999 02:26, 26 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
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