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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Italian Renaissance/archive1

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Italian Renaissance

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Originally a spin off from the Renaissance COTW, I have recently expanded and rewritten the origins and development sections. I have done little with the culture sections, which are outside my area of expertise, but they have been worked on by people who know the material. Antandrus especially deserves praise for his recent overhaul of the music section. This went through peer review last month and the concerns raised there have been addressed, except for the call for more external links, as after some hunting I couldn't find much worth linking to. - SimonP 15:38, July 16, 2005 (UTC)

  • Support 172 | Talk 15:51, 16 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Phils 16:19, 16 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object. This thorough and interesting article does not use footnotes. A bibliography alone is not sufficiant -- claims need to be referenced individually. Also, there remain some stylistic issues, such as some choppy phrasing, and a lack of commas where appropriate.
In short, three things need to happen in order for this article to attain featured status: (1) An editor with a keen eye needs to go thoroughly over the article, focusing on style and grammar (I did this for two sections); (2) The article needs footnotes -- for instance, when it is claimed that a city imported wool from Spain, there need to be a reference. Featured articles must be completely varifiable. (3) Finally, other editors with a good working knowledge of the Italian Renaissance need to evaluate the content, rather than simply be content with the fact that the article is thorough, seemingly comprehensive and well-organized.
I have worked on the style a fair bit, but not below the "development" section. This is an excellent article suffering from some stylistic problems, and while they aren't too difficult to fix, they're keeping it from it from attaining featured status. As soon as the style of the latter half of the article is addressed (I did the first half), I'll withdraw my objection. --Zantastik talk 11:29, 23 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
This article has great potential, and if these issues are addressed, I will enthusiastically support it. --Zantastik talk 15:00, 17 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I respect your objections, but I seriously take issue at your assumption that my vote was based on apparent comprehensiveness and good structure. I always take time to review the articles before I vote. Phils 17:01, 17 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object, for now, per Zantastik, numbers 2 and 3. While there are a few stylistic and grammatical issues, they are minor and I think the article is well-written as a whole. The lack of footnotes and sparse references, however, is much more troubling. Featured articles must be thoroughly verifiable; we shouldn't lower this standard simply because the article is long and well-written. - Jersyko talk 16:00, July 17, 2005 (UTC) I withdraw my objection. - Jersyko talk 00:38, July 18, 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for your comments. I personally do not feel that footnotes are needed for this article. It is a very general overview, and all of the facts here can be verified in any of the general texts listed in the references and specific theories are already given in text references. I also think it is wrong to assume that previous voters are basing their comments simply on style. 172, for instance, is one of the few professional historians who contribute to Wikipedia. - SimonP 16:06, July 17, 2005 (UTC)
I've added a few footnotes, there is not much I can do about #3, however. - SimonP 17:07, July 17, 2005 (UTC)
As SimonP has stated, footnotes are not a requirement for FA in very general survey overviews such as this one. Some of my own FAs have included many footnotes when necessary, such as George F. Kennan. But just last week I was working on History of Poland (1945-1989), which was featured without any footnotes. 172 | Talk 17:15, 17 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Actually the criteria make no such distinction. They say in part "and enhanced by the appropriate use of inline citations". That doesn't require footnotes specifically, but does need some kind of inline cites. That articles make it through without does not mean they shouldn't have them. So maybe this isn't a controversial subject and doesn't need 233 citations, but appropriate is not 0, 2 or 3 either. I suggest prioritizing by the top 10 or so most important or most central facts to this article, and cite those to the best source available. What's obvious and common knowledge to you is not to me. - Taxman Talk 18:48, July 19, 2005 (UTC)
  • Object, surely should mention the Crusades and the impact of contact with Islamic culture. -- Jmabel | Talk 17:35, July 17, 2005 (UTC)
    • I've added a couple sentences on the subject. - SimonP 18:22, July 17, 2005 (UTC)
      • I don't usually weigh in on FAC, so I'm not totally sure if what I'm about to say works, but… once others' specific objections are answered, count my vote toward the quorum for support. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:31, July 22, 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment While I maintain my three objections, I'd like to apologize to Phils and 172, for assuming that the fact that they did not comment extensively meant that they did not take their votes seriously. I was wrong, and I'd like to encourage both of them to keep up the good work here --Zantastik talk 18:16, 17 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object. The image Image:StPetersDome.jpg appears to be a copyvio. It's tagged as {{PD}}, but the image was copied from [1], and the copyright information on that site states "The Web Gallery of Art is copyrighted as a database. Images and documents downloaded from this database can only be used for educational and personal purposes. Distribution of the images in any form is prohibited without the authorization of their legal owner." --Carnildo 21:03, 18 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I continue to address some stylistic and grammatical issues present in this otherwise excellent article. The grammatical errors (primarily, missing commas) and the stylistic issues are not grave, but they all need to be addressed before the article achieves featured status. The addition of footnotes is very much welcomed; even though what 172 has said is correct, adding a few more wouldn't hurt -- raising standards isn't a bad thing, though I won't raise objections if this is not done. I invite others to look over this article for minor grammatical and stylistic issues -- having several editors going over this article with an eye for these issues is a good way to catch what I've missed myself. Note that many of my edits here have been from an anonymous IP. At any rate, I'll keep plugging away at this. --Zantastik talk 23:48, 18 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Object, but I anticipate supporting. 1) I will object over the lack of enough citations for a few reasons. They are important, and the type of subject does not make them less important. Even moreso, there are lots of statements in the article that are not at all obvious to a generally educated person, nor even assuredly correct. I'll just pick out an example that I saw right away. "The Medieval Warm Period was ending and the Little Ice Age saw agricultural output decline significantly leading to repeated famines...". Several points: the sentence seems to imply causality from the LIA to declining ag output. Is that well established? Isn't the LIA considered to be in full swing later than the period referred to anyway? There are more like that, and I can produce a list if you like, but the article's editors can see them as well as I can, I'd think. 2) The focus of the article seems in contrast to the facts of the time. Isn't it fairly well established that the Renaissance really only effected the small proportion of wealthy and educated people? The lead with "a period of great cultural change and achievement from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century." seems to imply the whole of society was radically changed. It may have been, but this is where my lack of knowledge comes in. That first sentence is then in contrast with the last few sentences of the lead, but there doesn't seem to be a bridge reconciling them. Further, the end of the lead mentions that most of society was little effected, but then the entire article focuses on that small portion of society that was. Maybe this is the standard way of thinking about the Renaissance, but it hardly seems comprehensive. I'm open to being proved wrong, but I think the article needs at least a decent section explaining what effects if any were felt by the majority of the population, or evidence for the fact that they were not effected. - Taxman Talk 19:22, July 19, 2005 (UTC)
    • I've added a bunch of extra references, and cleared up the wording of the LIA section. The Renaissance did only affect a very small minority of the population. For the peasantry and the urban poor life was pretty much unchanged from the Middle Ages. It is thus proper, and standard, to focus on the elite. You are correct that this focus should be explained, and that there should be some mention of the rest of the people. I have thus added a ==wider population== section. - SimonP 15:02, July 21, 2005 (UTC)
      • Very nice fixes, thank you. That new section seems to be enough to me. The only problem I see left is that the lead is still left contradictroy, where the first paragraph says there was wide change, making it sound like everyone was affected, while the third paragraphs disagrees with that. They need to be made consistent. Oh, and I left a note commenting that the LIA wording still seems to imply a causal relationship, but doesn't clearly establish or refute that. That needs to be fixed. - Taxman Talk 17:38, July 21, 2005 (UTC)
        • I've made some alterations to the intro. The change was great, but I made clear that great does not here mean wide. As to the second issue the general consensus is that the change in climate was a central cause of the famines and plague of the fourteenth century. The exact quote from De Lamar is that "these calamities were triggered by a remarkable climatic change that lowered the average temperature several degrees." I've made the causal link clearer in the text of the article. - SimonP 15:42, July 22, 2005 (UTC)
          • Ok, looks great. Since the rest of it does too, I'm quite convinced the article is feature worthy. - Taxman Talk 19:41, July 22, 2005 (UTC)
  • Support -- Cyberjunkie | Talk 11:50, 24 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
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