Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Vale Royal Abbey/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 archived by Laser brain via FACBot (talk) 24 May 2019 [1].

Vale Royal Abbey

Nominator(s): ——SerialNumber54129 14:32, 22 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Back once again with the Vale Royal Royal Abbey. To some extent, this is FAC is an exercise in loss. Originally, in its bulk, the work of the one like Faeriesoph, and was of sufficient quality that Vale Royal itself lifted the article for their brochure. Embarrassingly, I didn't run a backwards copyvio search, and summarilly accused Faeriesoph of a wholesale copyvio. Fortunately Nthep was on hand to point out the obvious. I left this on their talk; unfortunately, I was right: they haven't and it isn't.

The article itself has passed an almost-thorough GA review in January, received an actually-thorough copy-edit from Miniapolis in April, and finally survived the gimlet eye of KJP1 in his capacity as Pilemeister-in-chief :) Many thanks to everyone involved. It would, of course, be a shame to waste that collective expertise, so here we are. Without Faeriesoph.

Good luck everyone—and thanks. ——SerialNumber54129 14:32, 22 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Faeriesoph

Yes, I wasn't very pleased to be accused of plagiarising my own work. No harm no foul though! I am about and will be happy to help get Vale Royal through FAC. Mediaeval monasteries are my special field, and I've already got the article on Netley Abbey to FA status Soph (talk) 19:01, 23 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Iridescent

I've had my eye on this one since a discussion last month on my talkpage about sourcing images for it. This is the version I'm reviewing; I haven't checked images or sourcing.

Lead

I'd be inclined to link Cheshire as well as the towns. Even quite a few Brits would have trouble pointing to Cheshire on a map or answering the most basic questions about it; to Americans and Aussies it's nearly as obscure as Uinta County would be to a British audience.
This article used "Prince Edward", but its sister article Darnhall Abbey uses "Lord Edward"; you should probably standardise on one.
The comma usage in The building, when work began again in the late-14th century was considerably smaller than originally planned, and the project also encountered other problems is kind of goofy; I haven't fixed them myself as I'm not sure which elements you want to emphasise.
he conversely accused the King's men of obtaining fraudulently forging his signature is again garbled.

Note: I'm pausing the review here as otherwise it will be a huge laundry list of nitpicks; just reading the lead and the first paragraph of the body there are glaring errors, presumably as a result of integrating your additions into the existing text. This needs a top-to-toe copyedit before we go any further—probably by someone like Eric who won't be afraid to nitpick; I'll revisit it in a few days. ‑ Iridescent 17:44, 22 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Iridescent; I should've known you'd be watching it. And should've asked your opinion, but I've already done that a few times. I've got rid of (I think) the glaring errors—malformed sentences and stray code mostly—and also gone through it more generally; could you opine? (Hopefully your points above were dealt with in the process, but I'll check tomorrow) Thanks for looking in here, in any case. Hopefully, it's salvageable; I thought EC had retired? Coincidentally, he did the GA review on the murdered Abbot Peter of this abbey. Nitpickfest indeed! Cheers, ——SerialNumber54129 20:03, 22 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'll pop in and have another look tomorrow. Eric Corbett is still about, although not very active; as VRA is so close to his main area of interest in south-west Manchester, he might be interested enough to have a look. ‑ Iridescent 21:47, 22 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Per my comment below in Eric's section, I'll hold off a few more days to see which way you want to go with this. While it's bad form for the nominator to canvass participants to a FAC, there's nothing stopping me doing so given that I had no input on the article; @Dudley Miles, Ealdgyth, Drmies, and Johnbod:. ‑ Iridescent 15:32, 23 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by Eric Corbett

I don't want to put a dampener on proceedings,but I'm afraid this does still need a lot of work IMO. To pick just one example "... the situation was exacerbated by the abbey not receiving monies rightfully due to them. Queen Eleanor had left it a legacy of 350 marks in her will" Is the abbey an "it" or a "them"? I could go on and on, but in summary Iridescent is right about the need for a top-to-toe copyedit. Eric Corbett 22:05, 22 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I really would recommend withdrawing this nomination. Here are a couple more specific points from the lead:

"Edward had supposedly taken a vow during a rough sea crossing ..." This vow is a bit mysterious; what did he vow to do? Are we to simply assume that he vowed to build a Cistercian abbey?
"When work resumed in the late 14th century, the building was considerably smaller than originally planned, and the project encountered other problems." Why is reducing the scale of the building a problem, as is implied by use of the phrase "other problems"?

Eric Corbett 14:50, 23 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I interpreted the "other problems" as following on from stripped of grants, skilled masons and builders in the previous sentence. Per my previous comment above, I don't feel the issue here is one of bad writing, but one of integrating the work of two people with very different writing styles (Faeriesoph and Serial Number), which has led to a disjointedness. (While I know some people like Casliber strongly disagree with the approach, in my experience the best thing to do when User:Carol wants to build on the work of User:Alice and User:Bob, is for Carol to rewrite a rough draft of the article from scratch in a sandbox completely disregarding the existing article, and only then reintegrate the work of Alice and Bob sentence-by-sentence in the appropriate places.) I wouldn't necessarily expect this be withdrawn—if you go through top-to-tail with fresh eyes most of the quirks could be ironed out in less time than it would take to withdraw this FAC and wait two weeks to renominate it. At the moment my position is "not supporting" rather than "oppose". ‑ Iridescent 15:27, 23 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Iridescent and Eric Corbett: I think I am eating my own words on the issue and have revised my opinion somewhat. I have tried recently to do more reworking of some snake articles, which have a lot of content that has to be reviewed and cleaned up.....and.....yeah...it's....taxing.. On other articles, I do think there are some that cope better with multiple editors than others. I think these historical ones, where there is a more consistent narrative required for the whole article, are possibly the ones that are worst off with multiple authors while some science and medical ones not so vulnerable. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:46, 24 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Cas Liber

Yeah prose issues - e.g. very first sentence, "Vale Royal Abbey, a medieval abbey and later a country house, is in Whitegate (between Northwich and Winsford) in Cheshire, England." - the verb ("is") needs to be what it is not where it is, so "Vale Royal Abbey was a medieval abbey (located) in Whitegate (between Northwich and Winsford) in Cheshire, England."

I think the prose in the lead needs reworking - I had to read a few times to figure out whether the building was still standing, and needs to be clearer. e.g. "it was partly (largely?) demolished after the dissolution of the monasteries, and remaining parts were incorporated into a country house" or something.

Aspects of the prose are engaging, but there is material I'd remove to make it clearer.

Overall it could be done at FAC, which would be a heavy slog, or at a Peer Review. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 01:11, 24 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Coordinator comment - Given the early proliferation of issues found, I think it's best to archive this so it can undergo further prep work outside of FAC. It may be re-nominated after the customary two-week waiting period. --Laser brain (talk) 16:21, 24 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Closing note: This candidate has been archived, 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. --Laser brain (talk) 16:21, 24 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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