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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Swedish emigration to the United States

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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 02:18, 9 September 2007.

Swedish emigration to the United States

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Self-nomination. Bishonen | talk 20:20, 2 September 2007 (UTC).[reply]

  • Comment I really like this article and was going to ask you if you were going to put it up for FA candidacy. I have made one edit to this article and that was moving an image, and I have a little problem with how the images are displayed right now; The lead image is a poster of a ship that shows no record of traveling with emigrants between Sweden and USA. And her maiden voyage was in 1913 which is after the emigration started to slow down. Then you have this image that actually depict Swedish emigrants taking what is probably their last footsteps on Swedish soil. In my opinion these images should exchange place in the article. --Krm500 21:48, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Well, I dunno. I think there's something of a point in having the Atlantic crossing visually implied in the lead image. You wrote in the lead caption that the ship in the Gothenburg photo is "on its way to North America,"[1] but I don't see how it can have been. It's only going to England, whose earth those emigrants on the quays will step on to next. The people on board the Aquetania, on the other hand, are set to disembark in the New World. You can argue for either of the pics. I like to have the one more likely to draw readers in, by its colors and cool design, but change it back if you like... I expect it'll get changed more times than that over time. For instance, I think this one is a contender, too, if you want to focus more on the leaving than the arrival. On the individual level, the moment of leaving the home parish and saying goodbye to loved ones was surely more significant than the "Swedish soil" mystique. Or how about this? I love it! Bishonen | talk 07:51, 3 September 2007 (UTC).[reply]
  • Support. Top-notch. Christopher Parham (talk) 22:40, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. I too have been waiting for this article to become an FAC for a long time. It is worthy to be displayed to both newcomers to Wikipedia as well as experienced Wikipedians as indicative of the standards to which our content can rise, which has always been the central featured article criterion in my view. Newyorkbrad 23:04, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Very well written, amazing piece of work. Hello32020 23:11, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Looks excellent, but should the spelling be American and not Commonwealth English? --Spangineerws (háblame) 02:31, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. No edits from User:Bishzilla. Will consider changing to support if this is rectified, as the article does look excellent otherwise. ElinorD (talk) 11:07, 3 September 2007 (UTC) Okay, changing to Support, as it seems to have been at least worthy of 'Zilla's attention. An excellent, balanced article. And nice to see so many free images. ElinorD (talk) 19:06, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. The article meets the criteria with ease, in my opinion. The information inspires confidence, though I know little about the subject. It is meticulously presented and thoroughly referenced. Congratulations to the editor for a fascinating piece. I had no idea the Swedes used to be so bad mannered and drunk: how extraordinary. These days they seem so much the opposite, unless one goes to a Hives concert, of course. I also didn't realise the class system there was so rigid; I wonder if any of that lingers today, as in Britain.
A few small points:
  • The article might perhaps benefit from one more prose edit. Although it is very well written and the sentences are carefully constructed, the prose occasionally becomes stodgy, in my opinion. Dismiss the idea, by all means, but I feel there are too many sentences of similar length. A short sentence here and there might add variety and pep.
    • I totally agree, I think there's a woeful lack of rhythm, and too many sentences start the same way (subject+verb). I can't seem to get them to behave. Bishonen | talk
  • I sensed a degree of repetition on the point about the impressions of those who returned. I refer to the passages beginning "Many middle-aged or elderly immigrants returned briefly" and "A number of well-established and longtime Swedish Americans visited Sweden".
    • Everybody in Sweden was falling-down drunk the entire time in the 19th century, apparently. I agree about the repetitiousness, I was wondering if anybody would pick up on it... I just thought those culture clashes were pretty funny ("OMG that's not how I remember the place!"), so I guess I put in too much detail about them. :-( (There was much more at one point.) I probably ought to merge the two separate passages you mention. Bishonen | talk
      • Well, if the folks who left were religious reformers and extremists or if they landed in the midst of austere religious communities of Swedes in the New World, then they might have a pre-selection to tea totaling and alarmed frowning at the devil of drink. It would be like a Puritan coming back to visit London in 1665. He might (would, did) get all hoity toity about the decadence he saw compared to the New Jerusalem of Boston. Utgard Loki 13:44, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • The following sentence could be improved, I think (I hesitated to copyedit it myself in case I missed the full intention, which seems to contain three points): "Whether or not a prairie farm had been an immigrant's original dream, a growing proportion of immigrants stayed in urban centers, combining emigration with the flight from the countryside happening in the homeland and across Europe". I'd be inclined to cut the introductory clause and perhaps make a new sentence out of it.
  • "The Midwest remained the heartland of the Swedish-American community, but its position weakened in the 20th century". This opening to a paragraph seemed to promise information about this weakening, but it never arrived. The map shows that the heartland is still going strong, so I missed the point being made there. Is it that American Swedes are now more widely dispersed?
    • Well, the percentages in the rest of the sentence, after the colon, are supposed to show the weakening. "The Midwest remained the heartland of the Swedish-American community, but its position weakened in the 20th century: in 1910, 54% of the Swedish immigrants and their children lived in the Midwest, 15% in industrial areas in the East, and 10% on the West Coast." 54 % in the Midwest doesn't seem impressive for a "heartland". I suppose the point would be clearer if there was a previous, bigger, percentage to relate the 54% to? I haven't seen any earlier figures, though. I'll try to fix it up, somehow. Thanks very much for your comments. Bishonen | talk 21:11, 3 September 2007 (UTC).[reply]
Anyway, thanks for submitting this quality article. I'm so glad you haven't given up on the featured-article process. (If any gnats do come and bite you, please just swat them away.) qp10qp 17:49, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Minor question, turn of the century in paragraph "Swedish Americans" is here the change from the 19th to the 20th century? I assume it is but it isn't really clear. Garion96 (talk) 21:19, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Well-written, balanced, nicely illustrated and authoritatively sourced. Pia 04:33, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, assuming the following issues can be fixed.
    • You have nothing on Sweden's most important contributions to American culture, the Swedish Chef and the Swedish Bikini Team! Just kidding.
    • More seriously, why is "Crossing the Atlantic" a link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bishonen/Emigration#Crossing_the_Atlantic ?
      • What..? [Stares at the link in horror. Recovers slowly. ] Here's the deal. If you go to the article via my sandbox redirect, User:Bishonen/Emigration, all the links in the TOC—not just "Crossing the Atlantic," all of them—are links to URLs that contain the name of the sandbox. Try it. Now scroll up from the section you were taken to, and look at the name of the page. You actually aren't in the sandbox, you're at the real article, and all its sections are the correct latest versions—for instance, I revised "Crossing the Atlantic" substantially yesterday, and this is the newly revised version, it's nothing like the sandbox. So it's actually not serious, it's more mysterious. Does this always happen when you go to a page via a redirect? I tested a few examples, and yes, apparently it does. Try typing in First World War, click "Go" and get taken to World War I, and click on one or two section titles in the TOC: their URLs have "First_World_War" in them, not "World_War_I. Well, I'll be darned. Bug or feature? Bishonen | talk.
        • I'd be leaning towards bug, considering that when any of our downstream users, like answers.com, grab the article they would keep the full URL going to your sandbox. I fixed it. [2]
    • Redundancy in references: 24, 43, 51 "Swenson Center" can be combined by use of the <ref name=> parameter.
      • Thanks... but, no, I don't think saving two "redundant" footnotes out of 51 is worth the price of making the note numbers in the article non-consecutive (a peculiar and disagreeable system that I've only seen on Wikipedia ). The way I do it is more reader-friendly, in my opinion, as well as being a standard system (one of them) in academic publishing in the humanities. Bishonen | talk.
        • OK.
    • $1.25 per acre - WP:$ (basically link to United States dollar). --AnonEMouse (squeak) 18:37, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, from first reading this was one of the better articles, FA or not, I've read. As Newyorkbrad notes above, the way this article is presented - entirely comprehensive, encyclopedically-written, appropriate graphics - is a perfect example of what every article should strive to be. Moreso than some other featured article candidates, this article truly should be "featured" because, by featuring it, Wikipedians and readers alike can see what we strive for. Much kudos to Bishonen. Daniel 07:22, 7 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Leaning towards support I am almost ready to support this article. It was well-written and informative; I was especially fascinated to learn that the steamer lines won't open their records - what are they hiding, I wonder? Anyway, to the task at hand:
  • The article relies heavily on Barton. Could you make a case in the article for why the reader should grant his views authority? Is he one of the foremost historians of Swedish immigration or something like that? Currently the article simply identifies him as "an historian."
  • Well, the first mention of Barton is a link to our article H. Arnold Barton, which I think makes a case for his importance in the field—in an implicit and encyclopedic way, you know. Not enough? I'd rather not say anything in the article about Barton being the authority, because it's probably not the case. There's a big Swedish emigration project at Uppsala university, which has published some high-powered, though not as accessible, nor as large-scale, research on the U.S emigration. Some of that appears in my reference list. But I agree I rely much more heavily on Barton. Bluntly, I'd call this article rather thinly sourced. Well, it depends what your frame of comparison is, but it's not the kind of FAC that's based on reading everything there is to read, like, say, Kevin Myers' Pontiac's Rebellion. It's a little ironic that everybody's so nice about the sourcing of this one, while my last FAC, where I was a bona fide expert... well, never mind. Bishonen | talk
  • I agree that the article is thinly sourced (sorry!) and I guess I wanted some reassurance that the two major sources used (Barton and the edited collection of essays) are undisputed authorities in the field (letting the reader know this is never bad since wikipedia articles don't have the stamp of legitimacy of Britannica). Even if Barton is not the authority on Swedish immigration, is he at least an authority on Swedish immigration? I would worry about sourcing an article primarily to a non-expert, as I am sure you yourself would be. Just to be clear: nothing in the article led me to think it was poorly researched - I really appreciated the comparisons between competing explanations for the emigration, for example. (FACs vary so much, don't they?) Awadewit | talk 00:47, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • This may be a personal idiosyncrasy, but I dislike repetition of the lead's language in the article itself. To me, the article's language should be more precise.
  • Like, more specific? I agree. But I had trouble finding different ways of expressing everything in the Lead. The article text being already very boiled-down didn't help. Maybe rephrasing the Lead would be a more manageable task for somebody who looks at the page with fresh eyes HINT HINT ? Bishonen | talk
  • While the virgin land of the U.S. frontier was a magnet for the rural poor all over Europe - Is the land "virgin" when there were Native Americans on it?
  • Hmm... in a sense, yes. The land was virgin with respect to the plow, and you could argue—it has surely been argued—that the Native Americans lived on the land in balance with its ecology, and therefore without deflowering it. But if you think it sounds colonial, I'll certainly change it. (And maybe put Virgin land, a redirect to Frontier, up for deletion?) To me the phrase "virgin land" evokes Henry Nash Smith's classic Virgin Land: The American West As Symbol and Myth from 1950, but clearly that's no (encyclopedic) excuse for it. Bishonen | talk
  • Not all Plains Indian tribes were hunters - some were also farmers (not many, but a few). I don't know if they used a plow specifically, but I do know that they cultivated the land. This was drilled into me on school field trips as a child and I'm pretty sure it's accurate. See, for example, the Pawnee. The phrase "virgin land" does very much evoke Smith's book and others of its ilk, but its subtitle is particularly important: "as symbol and myth". I think whenever "virgin land" is used, the phrase should be used in an explicitly symbolic context like that. Obviously, I am not going to object on "virgin land" alone. :) Just something to consider. Awadewit | talk 00:47, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • It was lost to the Dutch in New Netherland in 1655. - How was it lost?
  • Search me. I was summarizing the "main article" New Sweden, which I didn't write. I could find out... if you think it's really interesting? Bishonen | talk
  • Can you connect the sentences together a bit more in the second paragraph of the section on the "17th century"?
  • It is a little bit odd to have section headings that skip the 18th century; could you rename them somehow?
  • Right, yes, it is. I've experimentally renamed the "17th century: New Sweden" section to "Early history: New Sweden and the Swedish American dream". It's too lush, though. I'll try to think of something better.
  • Newspaper advertising, while very common, tended to be repetitive and stereotyped in content. - What stereotypes? The ones explained in the earlier section? If so, perhaps a quick reference to those?
Er... I don't know. I was channelling my source, which didn't say. Bishonen | talk
Too bad. Awadewit | talk 00:47, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Swedish peasants were some of the most literate in Europe, and consequently receptive to the egalitarian and radical ideas that shook Europe in the 1840s - Please explain the connection between literacy and radicalness. I don't think that it is a given that literacy leads to liberal political views, is it?
  • Why, sure it is! Er. I mean, no, of course not. I meant that, being able to read, they knew about the new ideas, and so had the possibility of taking them on board. Rephrased. Bishonen | talk
  • As domestic servants in America, they … were treated as members of the families they worked for and like 'ladies' by American men, who showed them a courtesy and consideration to which they were quite unaccustomed at home." - I find this quote a tad hard to believe. Can you help me out?
  • I can't believe they were treated "as members of the family" either. But Barton has apparently interviewed people who could tell him, through family tradition, about such claims being made by the maids themselves. I think the answer is in the comparison with what working-class women were accustomed to in the old country— the horrors of rampant practical misogyny plus class pride, which appalled the visiting Swedish Americans so much. The women's previous Swedish experience of a) the way women were treated, b) the way servants were treated, presumably made them exaggerate the American contrast ? Plus, it's only human to want to validate one's momentous choice of emigration. In any case, I can't very well second-guess Barton's interviews. OK, I'll look at the rest later. Thanks very much for your comments, and for asking interesting questions ! Bishonen | talk 23:30, 7 September 2007 (UTC).[reply]
  • The second paragraph of "Swedish Americans" seems to repeat some of the information from the end of the "Late-19th century" section. Could these be condensed or differentiated?
  • Absolutely. I've condensed the second passage into a mere reminder. B.
  • I am unclear as to where the data for the second paragraph of "European mass emigration" is coming from. Is this Jerome as well?
  • Well, the information is apparently very uncontroversial and generally agreed on, but I got it from editorial matter in the Uppsala anthology From Sweden to America by Runblom and Norman. I've added a note to that. Maybe not the best kind of reference, but at least it means readers can, theoretically, check the info in a reliable source. Assuming they live near a university library in Sweden or Minnesota... :-P B.
  • The material on Dissenters and pietists does not appear to have a source.
  • Fixed. B.
  • If both of the Skarstedt's quotations come from the same place, perhaps you could put the footnote after the second one? Right now, it is hard to tell where that second quotation comes from.
  • Yeah.. I guess these things are all in what conventions you're used to. Me, I dislike leaving the first quote unattributed for even a short while, and expect that the same provenance for the second one will be unproblematically assumed. I've changed it to the Wikipedia way. B.
  • Franklin D. Scott argues in an influential essay that the American Immigration Act of 1924 was the cause. - It would be nice to have a note for this essay.
  • A note? But... well, I don't refer to any part of the essay or any fact taken from it, I just tell the reader it exists and was influential and had the thesis such-and-such. A note for it would only repeat exactly what its References entry says. Or do you mean a note to where somebody says it was influential? B.
  • I would de-link the words in quotations - it is hard to know what other people mean precisely with their words. It is best not to interpret for them. This is wikipolicy as well.

I have placed a list of smaller issues on the article's talk page. Nice work. Awadewit | talk 08:31, 7 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. 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.
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