Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Boosey & Hawkes/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 not promoted 01:59, 24 July 2007.

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Boosey & Hawkes

This is my first attempt at nominating an article for "Featured Article" status. I've been working on this article for a while and, with the help of other editors and a reviewer, have got it to "Good Article" status. I believe it to be generally accurate and well-referenced. I'm interested to see if it can be taken to the final stage. Cheers, Jacklee 17:02, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

• Comment
  • "Boosey & Hawkes is a British music publisher. It claims to be the largest specialist classical music publisher in the world. Until 2003, it was also a major manufacturer of brass, string and wind musical instruments." The first two sentences should be combined to something like "B and H is.... that claims to be..." also if possible please cite the statement "claims to be the largest specialist classical music publisher in the world".
    • Rephrased the opening sentence of the introductory paragraph.
    • Comment – Is it necessary to provide a footnote for the above claim? The introduction summarizes material that is in the body of the article, and a citation is provided for the claim where it appears in the body.

Jacklee 16:09, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

• • "With subsidiaries in Germany, the UK and the US, the company also sells sheet music; provides ready-made production music for television, radio and audio-visual use; commissions and produces music for radio, television and advertising jingles; and administers copyrights owned by media companies." Could be: "the company also sells sheet music; provides ready-made production music for television, radio and audio-visual use; commissions and produces music for radio, television and advertising jingles and administers copyrights owned by media through itself (or something) and it's subsidiaries in..."
    • Comment – With respect, I don't think there is much difference between the current and proposed phrasing. I would suggest leaving the paragraph as it is. Jacklee 16:09, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Paragraph in "after the merger" that starts "By 1950, Boosey & Hawkes was..." needs more footnotes I think.
  • As does the paragraph following it.
    • Comment – All of the material in those paragraphs was obtained from the 26 April 2007 Telegraph newspaper article, which is cited. I suppose Helen Wallace's book Boosey & Hawkes: The Publishing Story (2007) could be cited as well, but since she also wrote the Telegraph article I'm not sure how much difference citing the book would make. Jacklee 16:09, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Remember I've only listed the negatives, there are plenty of positives so don't get disheartened, and remember my suggestions are only suggestions, you may disagree or have your own ideas. Good luck :) SGGH ^speak! 17:39, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to make suggestions for improving the article; I've responded to them above. Cheers, Jacklee 16:09, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

• Support Tony 04:56, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose A further copy-edit is needed to remove some of the redundancies, eg. the "both" isn't needed in "Leslie Boosey and Ralph Hawkes met in the 1920s when they were both on the Board of the Performing Right Society", and "several" isn't needed in "Despite several offers of about £115 million from a number of parties". There are also too many "also"s. I think "most famous" may be a peacock term in "The company was lampooned by The Goon Show as "Goosy and Borks" in their most famous episode, "Lurgy Strikes Britain"". Epbr123 19:26, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

• • Removed the words "both", "several" and "most famous" referred to above. But I don't think there is an excessive number of the word "also". Cheers, Jacklee 21:19, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
    • Those were just some examples. If the article gets a copy-edit by a third-party, I'll support it. Epbr123 22:43, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose. There is a huge gap in the company's history that spans from the mid-1970s to the early 2000s. I also found the following to be problematic:
  • "Boosey & Hawkes is a British music publisher that claims to be the largest specialist classical music publisher in the world." There has to be a way to find out whether this claim is true or not.
    • Comment – Well, I don't have a way to find out at the moment. This is a claim that is made by Boosey & Hawkes on their official website, but the basis for the claim is not stated – it's not known whether they are largest in terms of music scores published, sales or otherwise. Jacklee 23:11, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
  • What exactly does "Franco–Flemish origin" mean? As far as I know, Flemings speak Dutch by definition. Does this mean the family is from French Flanders? Just wondering.
    • Comment – This was information from Grove Music Online. I assumed it means that the family has both French and Flemish ancestry, but you might be right too. Jacklee 23:11, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
  • "The company was seriously affected by the House of Lords' decision in Boosey v. Jeffreys (1854) which deprived English publishers of many of their foreign copyrights." Could you be just a bit more precise? What does "seriously affected" mean?
    • Comment – I'll look up the case in the library and expand this part of the article slightly. I tried looking but wasn't able to access an on-line version of the case. Jacklee 23:11, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Why is there so little information about Hawkes' company before the merger? If more is simply not known, then I think this should be stated explicitly. Otherwise, the disproportion in coverage seems really odd.
    • Comment – Grove Music Online is pretty skimpy on information about Hawkes & Company too. Perhaps not enough research has been done about it. Jacklee 23:11, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
  • I would remove the link to German Wikipedia's Ernst Roth article. I think a red link or a short stub would be more appropriate.
    • Question – Is there a policy about linking to foreign Wikipedia articles? I can take out the link, but I noticed that the German article on was quite extensive, and so thought it would be useful to readers (well, at least those who read German – and I'm not really among them) to refer to it. Jacklee 23:11, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
  • "Sheet music sales soared during the War, enabling Boosey & Hawkes to buy Editions Russes which held the rights to the most valuable works of Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky." I think a short apposition explaining what Editions Russes was might be appropriate. I'm assuming it was another sheet music company, but that's not completely clear.
    • Comment – Hmmm, I haven't come across anything else about Editions Russes, though. Jacklee 23:11, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
  • "The company also purchased the lease of the Royal Opera House in London in 1944,[7] rescuing it from becoming a permanent dance hall and providing a venue for world-class ballet and opera in the capital." "World-class" according to whom? That borders on POV.--Carabinieri 00:16, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
    • Comment This rather like saying the phrase "Shakespeare is considered to be one of the great writers in English" is POV. Anyone with a passing acquaintance with opera and ballet would agree that the ROH is world-class. --Alexs letterbox 10:50, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
    • Comment – It was the Daily Telegraph article that used the epithet "world-class". Agree with Alexs letterbox though. Carabinieri, thanks for taking the time to comment. :-) Cheers, Jacklee 23:11, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

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 candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.