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Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/Bibliography of E. T. Whittaker/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was archived by The Rambling Man via FACBot (talk) 00:25, 3 March 2021 (UTC) [1].[reply]

Bibliography of E. T. Whittaker

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Bibliography of E. T. Whittaker (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Footlessmouse (talk) 02:16, 14 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured list because, other than I think it now meets the criteria, I am a relatively new editor and I want to get some experience in featured content, as the standards here are the highest. I ultimately want to both improve the article as much as possible and learn from the experience. I plan on nominating a couple of other articles for featured status once I have a better sense of how it all works. I am quick to respond and all comments and critisims are most welcome, thanks! Footlessmouse (talk) 02:16, 14 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved comments from ChrisTheDude (talk) 18:06, 18 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
;Comments
  • He was British, so I believe British spelling should be used per WP:TIES. Therefore it should be "Whittaker's bibliography in the Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society categorises....." and similar. Check also for things like "center"
  • "math and physics articles" - as per the above, we call it maths, rather than math :-)
  • "In 1956, Gerald James Whitrow stated that two of these two books" - think there's a typo in there ;-)
  • "It has remained in circulation for most of its lifetime" - does a book really have a "lifetime"?
  • "including Victor Lenzen," => "including physicist Victor Lenzen," (to give context to who he is)
  • "Dynamics[72] Uses Lagrange brackets to...." - could do with a full stop after Dynamics, given the capital on Uses. Same in a few other places
  • In the biographical table, people's names should sort based on surname, not forename
  • Think that's it from me - great work! -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 19:36, 14 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, ChrisTheDude I have fixed all of the explicit mistakes you mentioned and am going to plug the text into a British spell checker to look for other violations of regional English. Thanks for taking the time to review the list! Footlessmouse (talk) 20:32, 14 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Hi ChrisTheDude I have ran everything through a spell checker now and am quite confident I have fixed all spelling errors, including those due to regional English concerns. That finishes up all of the points you have made above. Thank you again for your review. Footlessmouse (talk) 03:19, 17 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
A couple more comments
  • I don't know if this was present before and I just didn't notice, but "The work expounded on the principle, traced its development Leibnitz," doesn't seem to make sense - why is the name Leibnitz there?
  • "Originally published in the 1945 Year Book of the Royal Society of Edinburg" - name of the city is spelt incorrectly
  • Other than that all looks great! -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 17:08, 18 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@ChrisTheDude I fixed the spelling error. I apologize for overlooking the full stops needed in the popular articles section. On the quote above, the paper argues (and, more importantly, the review summarizes the arguments) that Eddington's principle was really first developed by Leibnitz and then expanded by Eddington later. The full sentence "The work expounded on the principle, traced its development Leibnitz, discussed its mathematical basis, and addresses potential objections" could probably be broken up into two or three sentences to make it more clear. I'll think about it and get back to you. Either way, I will link to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Thanks again! Footlessmouse (talk) 17:20, 18 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
My query on that sentence is that it doesn't make grammatical sense. Presumably it should say "traced its development to Leibnitz" or "traced its development via Leibnitz" or something? Either way it definitely looks like there's a preposition missing......... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 17:46, 18 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@ChrisTheDude I am so sorry, it should have been "to Leibnitz", I cannot believe I missed that. It is fixed. Footlessmouse (talk) 18:04, 18 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Alexandra

  • Note that I'm not a mathematician (or historian). I'm more of an arts kind of person, and I'm judging the writing as writing - checking that it makes sense to me and that it is well written, rather than whether it is correct about the subject.
  • Please add brief descriptive alt text to all images, to aid readers with vision impairments.
  • I would recommend splitting the lead into two paragraphs for ease of reading.
  • Titles should not sort on the, a, an, etc. - "The beginning and end of the world" should for example sort on "Beginning and...". You can achieve this with {{Sort}}.
  • Sorting of dates is currently also broken (try clicking "Date" under the "Maths and science" heading, and you will see - 1950 is followed by three April releases from different years, then August 1928...). You can solve this by wrapping the dates in the {{Date table sorting}} template.
  • Otherwise this looks good! Please {{ping}} me when you have addressed the above, and I will be with you again asap!--AlexandraIDV 07:20, 16 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comments
  • It would be helpful to place his lifespan (year–year)[ref] after his name in the lede.
  • You should break the "Topic and Notes" column into separate "Subject" and "Notes" columns like in the first table.
  • I would remove the sortability of the "Notes" column.

Really a wonderful list. ~ HAL333 15:58, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Source review

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This one has certainly been waiting around for a while; a lot of refs, so this may take make a day or two to get through Aza24 (talk) 09:21, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Formatting

Publications

  • Looks good here

References

  • Refs 1 & 2 should be pp.
  • Ref 4 should be p.
  • ref 32 should be pp.
  • page ranges should always be with – not a dash (-) for refs 62 & 71
  • The "Further reading" should be titled something else, perhaps "Bibliography" or "Sources". On Wikipedia we only use "Further reading" as a list of additional sources that are not already cited, where as the current one seems to include a lot that are already cited. See MOS:FURTHER for more details
  • You had most of the journals and publishers linked; I tried to link some ones missing a link, but if you can take a glance to see if I missed any, it would be much appreciated

Both

  • In both References & publications you use four retrieval dates 25, 165 + 15 & 69. Looking for consistency: I would think that the publications 25 and 165 don't need it, since you don't include them for any other publication. As a web source, using it for ref 15 makes sense, but ref 69 is the only journal you include it for, and as such, I would think it ought to be removed there
Reliabillity
  • I have no doubts on the quality of sources used.
Verifiability

Comments by Dudley

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  • It would be helpful for context to give his dates of birth and death immediately after his name.
  • "three titles that remain in circulation over a century after their initial publications." You author a book, not a title. Also, maybe list the books here?
  • "in popular magazines like Scientific American" I would not describe Scientific American as a popular magazine.
  • "The bibliography includes eleven total books and monographs" "total" is ungrammatical and unnecessary.
  • "John Lighton Synge reviewed ten of Whittaker's papers when he wrote about Whittaker's contributions to electromagnetism and general relativity.[3] Among other tributes as part of the same memorial volume of the Proceedings of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society" What does "same" mean here? It would be clearer if you gave details of the memorial volume in the first sentence.
  • "several biographical articles, including one for Albert Einstein written just a few months before his death" Whose death - Whittaker's or Einstein's? Also I would usually take "for Albert Einstein" to mean commissioned by him. I think "about Albert Einstein" would be better.
  • " A Course of Modern Analysis, Analytical Dynamics of Particles and Rigid Bodies, and The Calculus of Observations" I suggest giving the year of publication in brackets after each title.
  • "Despite the success of these textbooks" Why "despite"?
  • "The book went through four editions, published in 1917" You only list three. Perhaps move the first edition details here.
  • No change needed, but I see that Aether theories does not mention Descartes and René Descartes does not mention Aether theories. This is obviously a gap in Wikipedia.
  • "The Calculus of Observations or A Short Course in Interpolation" There is confusion over the title here. First you appear to give alternative titles, then you combine them and then you say that A Short Course was the title of part of the book published separately.
  • "Kilmister later wrote a book on the topic, titled Eddington's search for a fundamental theory, which was published by Cambridge University Press in 1994,[36] and was itself reviewed by David Kaiser,[37] among others." Why is this relevant?
  • "Whittaker spoke at the annual Arthur Stanley Eddington Memorial Lecture in 1952, which was subsequently published by American Scientist" I would say "Whittaker gave the annual Arthur Stanley Eddington Memorial Lecture".
  • "He also wrote several popular articles in magazines such as Scientific American" I may be wrong but I doubt whether any of his articles would have been regarded by readers as "popular".
  • I would say obituary of Einstein, not for him.
  • There is a typo in publication 86.
  • "Book reviews" There is an excessive gap between this heading and the text.
  • "Popular articles" I think "Other articles" would be a better title.
  • I do not think it is helpful for readers to list reviews in the main text where you do not give details of what the reviewer said. Perhaps you could add a separate note section for these reviews.
  • A first rate list. Dudley Miles (talk) 18:29, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Footlessmouse are you going to return to this nomination? If we get no response in a few days, we'll need to archive this. The Rambling Man (Stay alert! Control the virus! Save lives!!!!) 08:03, 26 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The Rambling Man, Footlessmouse seems to be a on wikibreak (since Feb 4th), their userpage says they'll respond to pings but my ping from the 13th was left un-responded. I emailed them a few days ago about this, also to no response. If archived, I expect it would not be difficult for Footlessmouse to resubmit (when they have more time), and pass at a faster pace. Aza24 (talk) 01:31, 2 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Aza24 thanks for the update, much appreciated. The Rambling Man (Stay alert! Control the virus! Save lives!!!!) 08:39, 2 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Closing note: This candidate has been archived, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FLC/ar, and leave the {{featured list candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through.
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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