Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Billy Butlin/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 not promoted by GrahamColm 18:29, 3 March 2012 [1].

Billy Butlin[edit]

Billy Butlin (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 11:06, 13 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article because I believe it to be a well written and engaging read about a significant individual who was well known in the UK during the 20th Century, I took it to GA and Peer Review in June of last year and felt it was then in the condition required of a Featured Article but I did not have the time to put it forward then. I just did the final checks and corrected a few rotted links and submit it as ready. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 11:06, 13 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Quick check, leaning toward oppose: Auree ★★ 16:57, 13 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • WP:OVERLINK: Essex is linked twice in close proximity in the First holiday camps section, and why are there wikilinks to common terms such as summer camp, amusement park and haunted house (which is erroneously linked to a Disney Land attraction)?
  • Link for Ref 47 in Websites returns an error.
  • Refs 2, 35 and 37 contain redirecting links. Title for Ref 2 needs to be updated as well, and why is Ref 37's title capitalised?
  • There's a raw </ref> tag in the bibliography section... and several raw urls and generally poorly formatted refs exist in References.
  • Books don't need retrieval dates, and watch out for excess punctuation (Co..)
  • I won't give a detailed source review for the references, but in addition to the above I'm seeing a lot of formatting inconsistencies, such as, but not limited to date notations, whether newspaper locations are given or not, errors in punctuation, etc. Actually, I'm seeing a lot of them without having given it a thorough check, so I'm inclined to oppose based hereupon. Auree ★★ 16:57, 13 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've done an OVERLINK clearup - I would say that the terms amusement park and summer camp, and even Haunted House aren't quite as well known in the UK as they may be in other parts of the world so linking them still seems appropriate.
  • Link 47 - The Grand Order of Water Rats Obituaries for 2003 still works fine for me - were you getting a specific error.
  • Redirects and titles fixed,
  • Seems it was just due to my connection then. Wikiinking and urls have been fixed now. Auree ★★ 10:56, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Fixed the formatting errors and removed the book access dates.
  • The additional punctuation was due to the cite template adding an extra period. I've removed the contraction period on Co to fix.
  • Generally I've preserved source name and title as given by the source but I will work on formatting these consistently. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 07:26, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Spent a lot of time on this this afternoon and have hopefully cleaned them all up. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 18:06, 18 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I haven't read the whole article yet, but at a glace it looks like a copyedit might be needed. For example in the First holiday camps section it looks like you have inconsistent comma usage: "In 1936 Butlin had proposed a new holiday camp..." and "On 30 January 1937, Butlin turned his business into a..." about a paragraph apart. Mark Arsten (talk) 21:25, 13 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's been copyedited twice now, (as well as by myself), obviously this has been missed, hopefully not much else has been. I've reworded the first sentence as it seemed to scan better in the new wording. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 07:26, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - it's an interesting article, but I don't feel it currently meets the FA criteria. Specifically:

  • 1a/d: there are grammatical errors (ex. "Butlin soon learned that the more likely people were to win; the more they would spend") and some problems with unencyclopedic tone (ex. "Butlin decided to set his own course in life and made his way back to England with only £5 to his name")
  • 1c: a couple of unsourced statements (ex. "launched a friendly takeover for £43 million (2011:£423 million), which both Butlin and his son agreed to accept.")
  • 1c: use of questionable sources, for example this
  • 2: WP:MOS violations, for example inappropriate capitalization in "Cherie is an Actress"
  • 2c: multiple inconsistently-formatted citations
  • 3: media problems - File:William_Butlin_Signature.png is tagged as lacking author info (should be easy to fill in), and according to Commons Canada applies copyright protection to signatures; same issues apply to File:Billy_Butlin_Attestation_Paper_(Front).gif. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:53, 18 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
those examples are now reworded - I'm sure the latter is a paraphrase of a Butlin quote but I can't identify the source to change it into a direct quote. Are there any other examples giving you concern?
All statements should be covered by the sources given. I've inserted a page number for that particular piece of information, and can only see another situation where (like the lede) the claim is cited elsewhere so a separate cite isn't given but I will do another sweep.
Ideally the song should have been a source about it's own lyrics, but we don't have a citation style for that - Hence the use of the web. The information in the source is verifiable and neutrally presented so shouldn't be a concern - but I've switched to a web newspaper instead.
I've done a thorough regexp search and can't see any other inappropriate capitalizations, though there are situations where I might have believed the noun to be proper (such as "battalion" in 170th (Mississauga Horse) Battalion) and have continued to retain these unless you feel they are also inappropriate?
Citations should be generally consistent now though I'm still double and triple checking.
These shouldn't be a problem; Butlin provided his signature under Crown Copyright (and this form has been released as such by the Canadian government) limiting copyright to 50 years from creation (meaning it went PD 14 years before Butlin died) - I've added author information as bes I can. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 18:06, 18 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Neutral Comments/suggestions: G'day, I made some minor tweaks to the early life section, please check that you agree with my changes and tweak as necessary. I didn't have a look at the full article; my area of interest is military history, so I mainly only looked at the Early life section. I have the following suggestions:
    • "His intention had been to sign up as a despatch rider, as the army already had a full quota..." Full quota of what? Do you mean full quota of infantry? It seems a little confused here;
    • do you know the date of when Butlin arrived in England?
    • do you know the date of when the 216th arrived in France?
    • do you know the date of when Butlin returned to England after the war (I assume that it was sometime in late 1918 or early 1919, but I might be wrong);
    • "works out at 1 in 700 for a 3 ring game". I think that this should be "works out at 1 in 700 for a 3-ring game";
    • in the World War II section there is a red linked image. I'm not sure if this has been deleted, or if the syntax is wrong;
    • there are some capitalisation issues, for instance "Shirley (Born 1931 to Dolly)". This should probably just be "Shirley (born 1931 to Dolly)" (there are a few examples similar to this);
    • the heading "Bibliographic Notes" should probably be "Bibliographic notes" per WP:Section caps;
    • the page ranges in the Bibliographic Notes section should probably use endashes instead of hyphens, and instances of multiple pages should probably use "pp." rather than the singular "p.";
    • there is some inconsistency in the date format used for the Retreived dates for the websites. For instance compare "12 June 2011" against "November 3, 2010";
    • in the Bibliography, the capitalisation of the titles probably should be tweaked in a few cases. For instance The Bantams: the untold story of World War I, probably should be The Bantams: The Untold Story of World War I (there are a few other examples that also should be adjusted to follow suite). AustralianRupert (talk) 08:26, 19 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • The Army had a full quota of dispatch riders - His intent was to sign up to be one, they would say "sorry, but our quota is full" and he would get a badge without actually having to serve.
        • Ah yes, I understand now. Sorry, for some reason I was misreading that bit. AustralianRupert (talk) 04:23, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
          • I had a go at rewording it. I think it is a little clearer now. Please check that you agree and adjust if you see fit. AustralianRupert (talk) 12:49, 24 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • I don't have any dates - The two relevant sources Allinson, and Dacre I only have in snippet form and while it might be able to extract dates from them I haven't been able to do so yet.
      • Dash added to 3-Ring.
      • Fixed - it was accidentally broken in a semi automated case correction,
      • "Bibliographic notes" corrected and also page ranges.
      • Dates should all be fixed now.
      • Capitalisation generally follows Google Books Usage, but I'm happy to tweak these.
      • I Still have the other capitalisation errors such as (Born.. to fix but will repair these as soon as possible. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 20:55, 19 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
        • A Couple of other date corrections done, and the capitalisations done also. I've also spent some time reworking most of the references correcting wrong/missing/miscategorised information and parameters. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 11:31, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
          • Your adjustments look good. I've had another quick look and had a go at doing some copy editing. I found a few things that needed smoothing, but I don't think I know enough about the topic to give it a proper go. Sorry. AustralianRupert (talk) 12:49, 24 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
            • No need to apologise, the work you've done already is a big help and much appreciated. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 19:13, 24 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Closing comments - I have decided that this FAC will benefit from being archived at this stage, and renominated after more work. In particular, look for WP:MOS issues such as periods in captions, and clunky prose. Graham Colm (talk) 18:28, 3 March 2012 (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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