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Wikipedia:Featured article review/Gettysburg Address/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was kept 12:26, 12 January 2008.

Gettysburg Address

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Review commentary

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Notified primary contributors and relevant WikiProject. KnightLago (talk) 16:09, 22 November 2007 (UTC) WP Pennsylvania, SimonATL, BartBenjamin and Kaisershatner notified. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:14, 22 November 2007 (UTC)‎[reply]

This article became a FA in 2005. Below is a list of issues that I think need to be addressed.

*A number of references needed in history section, note the fact tags I added.

  • More information is needed about citation 10. This is a reference to the New York Times.
  • There are too many pictures jammed together on the right of the article.
  • A number of references needed in the Address section.
  • The Lincoln's sources section contains a one sentence paragraph.
  • Reference needed in the five manuscript sections.
  • References needed in Nicolay section.
  • The writing in the individual letter holders sections is not great.
  • References needed in the Under God section; this also poorly written with a long uncited quote.
  • The myths and trivia section needs to be incorporated into the article. Per the manual of style and WP:TRIVIA specifically, such sections are to be avoided.
  • The in popular culture section needs to be completely reworked also.
  • Sources have problems, see: 6, 8-13, 15-18, 20, 22, 24-33.

KnightLago (talk) 15:59, 22 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comments, also External links should be reviewed per WP:EL, WP:NOT (surely there is a DMOZ category) and references need to be completely and consistently formatted (see WP:CITE/ES). WP:MSH, WP:MOS#Captions (punctuation), WP:MOS#Quotations/WP:ITALICS and WP:MOSDATE attention needed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:18, 22 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Followup: I'm confused about the capitalization (and not) of "Copy", in the section headings and in the text. It's not consistent. Please see WP:MSH. Citations still aren't correctly formatted, and there are missing publishers. Date ranges should be separated by endashes, not hyphens (saw several in the citations). There are still [URL]s in the citations. There is still inconsistency in the emdashes (some are spaced some are unspaced). There are still links needed per WP:MOSDATE, for example, From July 1–3, 1863, ... and ... Wills originally planned to dedicate this new cemetery on Wednesday, September 23, ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:12, 3 December 2007 (UTC) Also, there is a completely strange citation method of mixing a partial citation template with some manual formatting items within individual citations; I've gone from never seeing this done, to seeing it twice today. Where is this coming from? If using the citation template, why not use all the template? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:18, 3 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Updated Concerns:

Looks like you have made a ton of progress, just a few other things:

  • Is there another citation for the two claims made in the first sentence? The claims: "most famous speech of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and one of the most quoted speeches in United States history;" are not supported by the citation there now.
Cited.Kaisershatner 17:42, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • The first and second sentences of the first background para need work, try breaking each into two sentences.
Broken. Kaisershatner 17:42, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Is the seventeen in supposed to be capitalized: "Although there is some evidence Lincoln expected Wills's letter, its late date makes the author appear presumptuous...Seventeen days was extraordinarily short notice for presidential participation even by nineteenth-century standards."
Yes. The ellipsis deletes the end of the first sentence and since the next item is the (capitalized) start of the next sentence, it should be capitalized.[1] (See AP stylebook/search "ellipsis" if you want to check).Kaisershatner 15:49, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Others believe that the delivery text has been lost, because some of the words and phrases of the Nicolay copy do not match contemporary transcriptions of Lincoln's original speech.[citation needed]
  • "This version has been described by historian Garry Wills as "the most inexplicable of the five copies Lincoln made," and is sometimes referred to as the "second draft."" needs a citation.
  • "He pronounced that speech in a voice that all the multitude heard. The crowd was hushed into silence because the President stood before them...It was so Impressive! It was the common remark of everybody. Such a speech, as they said it was!" It supposed to be capitalized? I am not sure if that starts a new sentence of what, but it doesn't look right. Check the rule for ellipses.
In this case, it is a direct quotation from the source in which "Impressive!" is capitalized, I think this is just 19th Century style, but it is a direct quotation in any case.Kaisershatner 15:49, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • You need publishers, even if just the name of the website for web cites. 19 seems to be an abbreviation of the website name. You also need access dates for websites. 49 shouldn't display the url like it does, the title should be linked.
  • For the external links, I normally link them fully, I changed one so you could see what I mean. But I have seen it done a number of ways.

That's all I got. Fix those things, and I think you will be great. Good work! KnightLago (talk) 18:01, 28 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. After putting many hours into this article trying to clean up the references and MOS issues, I'm concerned that there are serious issues in what I am finding about the sourcing. The example I give below occurs many times; it may not be the best example, it's the one I'm working on at this moment. First, the link was dead. Next, I found the link in the internet archive, and it's only a jpeg picture of the Everett copy of the Gettysburg address. The text says:

  • The Everett Copy,[1] also known as the "Everett-Keyes" copy, was sent by President Lincoln to Edward Everett in early 1864, at Everett's request. Everett was collecting the speeches given at the Gettysburg dedication into one bound volume to sell for the benefit of stricken soldiers at New York's Sanitary Commission Fair. The draft Lincoln sent became the third autograph copy, and is now in the possession of the Illinois State Historical Library in Springfield, Illinois, where it is currently on display in the Treasures Gallery of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.

But nothing in that text is verified by a link to a picture of a copy of the Gettysburg address, and with many samples just like this, I'm finding that although the text is sprinkled with citations that make the article appear to be well sourced, these citations don't actually verify the text in many cases. Sorry for the bad news, but this article needs to have every citation checked and verified. Showing a picture of the Everett copy of the Gettysburg address doesn't verify that it was sent to Everett in 1864, that Everett was going to sell a bound volume, that it became the third copy, or that it's now in Illinois on display. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:03, 11 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Also, there are still numerous unformatted citations; still working on those, but it's time consuming. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:11, 11 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I can't sort this out:
  • Charles Hale "had notebook and pencil, and as Lincoln spoke very slowly, Mr. Hale was positive that he caught every word.[70] He took down what he declared was the exact language of Lincoln’s address, and his declaration was as good as the oath of a court stenographer. His associates confirmed his testimony, which was received, as it deserved to be at its face value."[71]
It's a citation to one book source inside a direct quote cited to another book source. I think there may be some missing quotes in here; if not, it's unclear what book is being cited and what the exact quote is. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:18, 11 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I've done all the ref cleanup I'm able to do. I also had to remove a lot of strange retrieval dates for book sources that weren't attached to any URLs. Lastaccessdate is used to indicate when a URL was retrieved, so without a URL, they don't make sense; it's unfortunate the URLs weren't listed when the books were accessed. I tried to solve part of the sourcing issue by moving the images to Notes (a, b, c ... ) instead of References (1, 2, 3 ... ). Now that the images are distinguished from citations, it would be helpful if someone would go through and see if the article is sufficiently cited. There are a number of statements in the sections about each copy which appeared to be cited before, but weren't cited by the images, so now should be rechecked for verifiability. I think that's all I can do for now. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:24, 11 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There is also still a problem with capitalization. Each copy section has a capital Copy (example, Nicolay Copy), but within the text, we find uncapped (example, Nicolay copy). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:48, 11 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary

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Suggested FA criteria concerns are referencing (1c) and formatting (2). Marskell (talk) 17:05, 18 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously a lot's been done. Moving to get further comments. Marskell (talk) 17:05, 18 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, can you clarify what is meant by "formatting (2)." Also, I have to disagree about the sourcing - it is much better than when the FAR began and IMO it is currently at least adequate. Kaisershatner (talk) 16:58, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Per WP:WIAFA, 1c refers to the level of citation, while 2c refers to consistently formatted citations. I think I've gotten most of the 2c issues now. I'd like for others to look at the 1c issues. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:20, 22 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
^ e.g., see infra, Nicolay's statement that Lincoln brought the first part of the speech on Executive Mansion stationery.
Avoid using abbreviations like ibid: Wikipedia:FN#Style recommendations. Use named refs instead. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:11, 22 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Looks good to me. Well done, everyone. Marskell (talk) 12:24, 12 January 2008 (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 review. No further edits should be made to this page.
  1. ^ Everett Copy. virtualgettsyburg.com. Retrieved from internet archive 2007-06-14 version on 2007-12-10.
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