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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/York City War Memorial/archive1

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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 by Sarastro1 via FACBot (talk) 21:32, 27 March 2017 [1].

York City War Memorial

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Nominator(s): HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 09:49, 7 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Following on from the North Eastern Railway War Memorial which recently made it through FAC, this is the second half of the story. the city council commissioned the same architect but had a tenth of the railway company's budget to play with; this and the proposed locations of both resulted in considerable controversy. Pevsner laments that the original, much more ambitious, scheme was abandoned in favour of this more modest memorial. The article is a shorter one, but I believe it's up to scratch. As ever, all feedback is welcome. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 09:49, 7 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by Yunshui

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Just a few notes from a straight read-through:

  • "the leading English architect of his generation" - would be nice to have a source for this quote.
    • It's from Historic England, but there's a bit of a distance between the quote and the reference so I've added a duplicate.
  • Lutyens designed the Cenotaph on Whitehall in London, which became the focus for the national Remembrance Sunday commemorations, as well as the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing—the largest British war memorial anywhere in the world—and the Stone of Remembrance which appears in all large Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries and in several of Lutyens' civic memorials. - bit of a mix of list punctuation; I would suggest the following:

Lutyens designed the Cenotaph on Whitehall in London, which became the focus for the national Remembrance Sunday commemorations; the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing, the largest British war memorial anywhere in the world, and the Stone of Remembrance, which appears in all large Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries and in several of Lutyens' civic memorials.

    • I like that. In fact, I like that so much I'm going to go back through all my other Lutyens articles when I get chance and rewrite them the same way!
  • the only two to stand as a civic memorial in a city - plurals suggest this should be "the only two to stand as civic memorials in cities."
    • Done.
  • whether the war dead should be commemorated with a building with a community function or a purely monumental memorial - I'm not super happy with how this reads: "with a building with" sounds clumsy, and the way this is worded makes it unclear whether "purely monumental memorial" is meant to equate to "building" or "community function".
    • Leave this with me for a day or two and I'll think about rewriting it.
  • The committee gave Lutyens a budget of £2,000 (1920) - would be nice to have an approximate modern equivalent value to this.
    • This has come up a few times in previous FACs. The trouble is the inflation template is essentially useless for something this old (the figure is only slightly more useful than if it was plucked out of thin air) and we haven't been able to come up with an easily translatable alternative. I'm open to suggestions.
  • but the committee opted for his second choice of a site inside the walls in the moat by Lendal Bridge, 100 yards (90 metres) from the proposed location for the NER's memorial. - I'm being super nitpicky, but this seems like too many descriptors ("second choice" "inside the walls" "in the moat" "by Lendal bridge" "100 yards from the proposed location..."). Probably doesn't need fixing, but it doesn't read quite right to me.
    • It's a bit wordy, but these are all vital descriptors—we need to know where it is and how it relates to the NER's memorial and the walls and Lendal Bridge are both relevant to what comes later, and it's noteworthy (especially in light of the controversy that followed) that Lutyens originally proposed another site.
  • Given the proximity to the city walls—Lutyens' initial proposal for which abutted against the wall... - this doesn't make sense; "for which" makes it appear that Lutyens proposal was for "the city walls", and "against" is tautological alongside "abutted".
    • Must be a relic of a previous rewrite; fixed now.
  • in the centre of which is the City of York's coat of arms. - maybe link Coat of arms of York?
    • Didn't know that existed! Linked.

Overall I enjoyed the writing style, though there's a bit of a preponderance of em-dashed parenthetical phrases. Interesting article, and a very enjoyable read. Yunshui 雲水 11:08, 7 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for your comments. I'm glad you enjoyed the article. I know I tend to overuse emdashes; I'll see if I can cut them down. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:08, 7 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I'm guilty of the same thing myself—I just like the damn things—but other parenthetical punctuation options exist (and variety improves readability!). Yunshui 雲水 15:14, 7 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Just as an addendum - I'm a little concerned about consistency in the citation formatting - there is a mixture of shortened footnotes, named references and inline citations, which I'm not sure meets the requirements of FA criterion 2c. Not actually sure what the procedure is for using shortened footnotes with web references, though. Yunshui 雲水 14:44, 7 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I can't see any sense in using shortened footnotes for a single-page web document and personally I've always liked this format because it's tidy and clutter-free. I can't remember anyone objecting to it in any previous FACs. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:08, 7 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Could just be my personal opinion then. If it hasn't been commented on in previous FACs (I don't do them very often) then it's probably fine. Yunshui 雲水 15:14, 7 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm happy to lend my Support - the fixes that can be done are done, I have every faith you'll do a fine job rewording the bit that hasn't been reworded yet, and while a modern financial equivalent would be nice, the pound is bouncing around so much with Brexit on the horizon that any non-templated estimate would be massively outdated in about twenty minutes. It's not a deal-breaker - I look forward to seeing this on the Main Page. Yunshui 雲水 15:26, 7 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Support on prose per my standard disclaimer. As always, feel free to revert my copyediting. These are my edits. - Dank (push to talk) 15:56, 7 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  • One comment: repeating Yunshui's suggestion above (with the semicolon fix): "Lutyens designed the Cenotaph on Whitehall in London, which became the focus for the national Remembrance Sunday commemorations; the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing, the largest British war memorial anywhere in the world; and the Stone of Remembrance, which appears in all large Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries and in several of Lutyens' civic memorials." There's nothing technically wrong with that, but it's slightly garden path-y, and a bit more involved than is ideal, perhaps. Another option is: "Lutyens designed the Cenotaph on Whitehall in London, which became the focus for the national Remembrance Sunday commemorations, and the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing, the largest British war memorial anywhere in the world. He also designed the Stone of Remembrance, which appears in all large Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries and in several of Lutyens' civic memorials." - Dank (push to talk) 15:59, 7 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
↑ This is better than my version. Yunshui 雲水 16:05, 7 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by Keith D

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Appears strange to have a couple of instances of metric first for the height of the monument, rather than being consistent with imperial first which appears to be used in other places in article. Keith D (talk) 01:58, 9 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Syek88

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My only issues are about prose, and in that respect I have general rather than specific comments:

The article is trying to do an awful lot with punctuation. In particular, it is replete with semi-colons, parentheses and parenthetical dashes. The punctuation is never ungrammatical. But the paragraphs are quite long to begin with, so long and heavily punctuated sentences make the task of reading quite difficult at times. Some examples:

  • 'Proposals for a war memorial in York were mired in controversy from the outset; a war memorial committee was established after a council meeting in May 1919 and the committee opened a memorial fund for donations in August, but six years elapsed before the City War Memorial was unveiled.' There is no reason why the semi-colon should not be a full-stop. It would be a much snappier read that way: introducing the paragraph with one punchy sentence. There are other examples in the article where a simple full stop would do the job better. 'Nonetheless, objections were raised after the approval;' is one.
  • The final paragraph of the article has two lengthy parenthetical explanations of the criteria for Grade II and II*. It is quite clunky, even lawyerly, to read. I think you would be fine, and the reader better served, simply by explaining the criteria in separate sentences. There will be many readers who don't know the criteria, so there is no need to apologise for explaining them by jamming them into parentheses.
  • There is one sentence in the "Inception" section that contains two parenthetical notes, which is two, and certainly one, too many.

There is also unnecessary use of passive voice. For example: 'The memorial was eventually unveiled by Prince Albert, the Duke of York (later King George VI), on 25 June 1925—six years after the memorial fund was opened.' The passive voicing of this sentence is not only unnecessary but makes the reader wonder whether the identity of the unveiler is relevant to the adverb "eventually", to which the answer is "no". Another example: 'The York City War Memorial was designated a grade II listed building...' The passive voice begs the question: designated by whom? Cast the sentence in the active voice and we will know. Another example is 'a war memorial committee was established after a council meeting in May 1919': again, established by whom? The preposition 'after' means that the reader is unable to make the otherwise obvious inference that the council meeting itself established the committee. I recommend going through the article sentence-by-sentence to identify unnecessary passive voicing because there is quite a lot of it. Turning these sentences around would make them easier to read and in many cases provide greater clarity.

This may all seem nitpicky, but I do think it reflects the difference between Good Article and Featured Article level.

I have checked the article against the source in footnote 1 only and discovered no problems. I can't verify the use of the Skelton source as it is not publicly accessible. The article certainly seems to be an easy pass on all other criteria. Syek88 (talk) 05:04, 11 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Much of what you're saying is good advice ... with the caveat that making something readable often takes a lot of work. It's not just chopping sentences in two. Concerning the passive voice: linguists are skeptical of much of the 20th-century admonitions against passive voice, even though there's general agreement that overuse of the passive is one of the signs of bureaucratese. And that should be avoided, of course. A readable and accessible treatment of what linguists have discovered on the subject can be found in Pinker's The Sense of Style. I'm bringing this up because I'm not sure if I agree with your advice on the passive above; for instance,why would I care which bureaucrat signed off on the grade II listing? And flipping around "The memorial was eventually unveiled by Prince Albert" to "Prince Albert unveiled the memorial" wouldn't find approval from style gurus or from linguists; see for instance Sense of Style, chapters 2 and 4. I note that someone has already rewritten that sentence (probably Harry), and the change looks good to me. - Dank (push to talk) 14:05, 11 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
It is good advice, and I'm aware of my overuse of dashes and semicolons, which why I've been through this morning working on readability. I don't have strong opinions on the passive voice in cases like these, but it harms nothing to re-write it where it's easy to do. I agree with you though, Dan, that the exact details of the listing process are a little too bureaucratic and the passive voice is better for concision (because the answer is "by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport on the advice of English Heritage, which is now Historic England"). HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:36, 11 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
It probably isn't particularly helpful of me to chip in again on passive voice in the middle of this review, but I do question the exceptionally broad assertion that flipping the Prince Albert sentence "wouldn't find approval from [any?] style gurus or from [any?] linguists". I do not think your (Dank's) single citation comes anywhere near establishing that. In any event, I think the largest problem with passive voice, not evident in the Prince Albert sentence of course, is unnecessary omission of the subject. When I read the article I did care who signed off on the grade II listing. I immediately asked myself whether it was the same council that approved the memorial decades earlier: if it were, that would have been an interesting fact. Or was it the national government? Or an independent non-government body given statutory powers? And we need not necessarily say "Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport on the advice of English Heritage, which is now Historic England". Something briefer and less specific may suffice, especially as it was presumably the Secretary's delegate rather than the Secretary personally. Syek88 (talk) 18:10, 11 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Images are appropriately licensed. Nikkimaria (talk) 20:10, 11 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Coordinator comment: I think this still needs a source review for formatting etc, unless I've missed one somewhere. One can be requested at the top of WT:FAC as usual. Sarastro1 (talk) 22:16, 24 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Source review

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The only point I can find to comment on is that Pevsner & Neave is cited as Pevsner, and Skelton & Gliddon is cited as Skelton. I'm not sure this is strictly wrong, since it's unambiguous, but I've never seen dual authors cited with just the first author's name and wanted to check that it was deliberate. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:17, 26 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Mike, thanks for looking. It is deliberate. It's just the way I've always done it. I didn't realise it was unusual. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 08:14, 27 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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