Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Clem Hill

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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 18:33, 24 March 2008.

Clem Hill[edit]

I'm nominating this article for featured article because I believe it meets the Featured article criteria, being a comprehensive, neutral and well-referenced account of the career of one of Australian cricket's early characters. His later career was the subject of some controversy, involving boycotts, fistfights and heated meetings. I believe a thorough GA review has addressed many of the stylistic issues and removed some of the ambiguou statements. I hope others find it as enjoyable to read as I did to write. This is a self-nomination. Mattinbgn\talk 07:56, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comments
Issues resolved, Ealdgyth - Talk 02:05, 18 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Notes usually come before References. See also would go before the Notes.
    • Is there an author listed for the Henry John Hill Aust DB article? Just asking since the Clem Hill one has one listed (I don't have access to the dictionary)
    • Don't shoot me for asking, but... is http://cricketarchive.com/index.html generally considered a reliable source? I'm not exactly up on cricket web sites. ** It also looks like cricinfo requires registration? Need to say "registration required" in the citations.
    • Is the "The Australians in England" a book that is hosted on the site? If so, can you list the page number (if possible).
    • The South Australian Cricket Association reference needs a publisher, you currently have Press Release in the publisher space.
Otherwise, the sources and links look good. Ealdgyth - Talk 15:17, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reply to Ealdgyth
    • This has now been done
    • No author has been listed, which is unusual for an Australian Dictionary of Biography article - see here for confirmation.
    • It is certainly reliable enough for the purpose it is used for here; provision of statistics. One of the general editors of CricketArchive is Philip Bailey, a leading cricket statistician. Cricinfo does require registration in places; another good reason to prefer CricketArchive for statistical information. The Wisden site needs registration as well.
    • The Australians in England, 1896 is an article in the 1897 Wisden Cricketers' Almanack and has been accessed from an online archive. This has now been shown in the reference.
    • The publisher was the South Australian Cricket Association. Using the referencing format in {{Cite press release}}, the name in the publisher field is the issuer - "publisher: Issuer of press release". Should I be using a different referencing format?
Thanks for taking the time to take a look at the article. -- Mattinbgn\talk 19:46, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Heh. A citation template for press releases. Learn something new every day. Sandy and/or some other MOS maven may tell you differently, but it looks fine to me, since it follows the template. (Hey, my normal field of editing, medieval bishops, does not exactly overflow with press releases...) Looks good to go to me! Ealdgyth - Talk 23:34, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Done, that's the easy part! On to the rest shortly. -- Mattinbgn\talk
I knew that RfA nom was worth something ;) dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 09:20, 18 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • "His batting style was nonetheless attractive" - How?
  • My source, Robinson, doesn't really say. "It was not simply that he scored quickly, but that his batting was always animated. He was constantly on the move, playing attractive shots."
Some of that could be weaved into there...talk about being a quick mover, etc. (if that's not mentioned - I forget!). dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 07:41, 19 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • "In total he was dismissed in the nineties five times" - Did I read this right? He got out 5 times in 10 years?
    • No, from 90 to 99 runs. Given the sentence before it — the whole phrase reads "In the 1901–02 season, Hill was dismissed in consecutive innings for 99, 98 and 97. In total he was dismissed between 90 and 100 five times in Test cricket" — I can't see that there's any context concerns here. If someone removes the preceeding sentence, yes, but at the moment I'd consider it fine. Daniel (talk) 10:27, 18 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • I have reworded. It is a little more verbose but much more clear to the non-cricket aficionado. -- Mattinbgn\talk 10:34, 18 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, looks better. Thanks for catering for me! dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 07:41, 19 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • "record partnership for the eighth wicket – 243" - I'm *thinking* that a different dash (em dash perhaps?) would be better suited here, if not a comma/semi colon. But I don't know.
  • should be an em dash and now is.
  • He has a ADB article but I don't think anyone is rushing to write an article any time soon. No reason to add it back until one is written.
  • "Rebecca, nee Saunders" - "nee" needs an accent acute, I think. Forget the character code :(
  • Done.
  • "Hill was one of eight sons and eight daughters" - probably should refer to him by his first name when discussing amongst other "Hill" surnamed-people. In any case, be consistent throughout this section - I see some "Hill" and some "Clem"
  • Now standard throughout the two paragraphs relating to his family.
  • "but the manner in which he made them" - specifically? Quick runs (Gilchrist-style) or what was it that was special about them?
  • Once again my source is not overflowing with details. "The way he made 21 on his debut against Victoria so impressed wicketkeeper Jack Blackham that he announced the discovery of another great batsman."
  • "the calibre of K S Ranjitsinhji and George Herbert Hirst." - slight POV? I dunno...
  • Slight, yeah but not needed. Reworded.
  • "played a brilliant innings" - is this a quote? Otherwise, I'm fairly sure on the POV here...
  • "Australia to 6/58[18]" - ref to end of sentence?
  • I can do this but this ref is more of a note explaining what 6/58 means rather than a source. Moving it to the end of the sentence I feel makes it less easy to find. Your thoughts?
  • "His 99 at Melbourne in the New Years Test was the first 99 in Test cricket" - redundancies - "99"?
  • reworded and I think it is now much better.
  • "with Wisden noting that he "play[ed] especially well".[55][54]" - swap the ref order here
  • Done
  • "The reply from McAlister — a member of the Board of Control who still bore some animosity towards Hill from past comments[59] — to Hill's request was" - should these be en dashes?
  • "Wisden obituary, [66]" - italics for Wisden
  • Yep
  • See also section should be external links
  • Of course, done

Cheers, dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 08:58, 18 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the very thorough review. I have addressed all points above except where mentioned. Please let me know what you think. Cheers, Mattinbgn\talk 10:34, 18 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 07:41, 19 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. – comprehensive and fully-referenced article which avoids peacock terms. I'm not sure that "Test" when used in a generic sense should be capitalised.--Grahame (talk) 02:44, 21 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Lingo alert: can you please run through again to address lingo not familiar to people who don't know cricket? For example, I cant' decipher what these mean (these are only samples):
  • Hill was at the centre of a riot at the Sydney Cricket Ground after he was given out run out in a Test match against England. (given out run out?)
  • Despite this, a school sportsmaster threatened to leave him out of the School XI if he continued to play the hook shot. (what is School XI? What is a hook shot? Why is a hook shot a bad thing?)
  • dismissed for a duck in the first innings and was 0 not out in the second as South Australia won by 10 wickets. (Not 0 not out in the second, no idea what that means).

Help. I noticed similar at Ernie Toshack; can you all try to make them easier on non-cricket readers? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:59, 22 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just to inform you on cricket (I'll leave it to Mattinbgn to make appropriate adjustments):
given out run out – being run out is like failing to reach first base in baseball before the ball. It might read better "adjudged run out", if you think that the two outs confuse.
hook shot – to quote Batting (cricket): "An aggressive, cross-batted shot played at a bouncer aimed at or near the batsman's head. The batsman must step inside the line of the ball and swing his bat around his head, hooking the ball around behind square leg, usually in the air and sometimes for six runs. It is a dangerous shot to attempt, but can be very productive." I don't think we want to say all that. A major difference between cricket and baseball is that in cricket you can play safe by hitting the ball into the ground and accumulate runs slowly but relatively safely. I suppose you could say "he continued to play the aggressive but risky hook shot."
0 not out – in cricket there are 11 batsmen and innings is over when 10 are out, ie there are not enough batsmen left to have a person at each end and so one is left "not out". You could say "had made no runs at the end of the second".--Grahame (talk) 06:45, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the elaboration Grahame. I will make suitable changes now. -- Mattinbgn\talk 09:47, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Sandy. I have had a shot at trying to wikilink more of the jargon and rewording where appropriate. Please let me know what you think. -- Mattinbgn\talk 10:28, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm struggling with this and with Ernie Toshack, and will need to work through both of them with care; may get to it tomorrow. Hopefully, the input from the non-savvy will pay out over the longrun :-) For example, what Grahamec see said above is still Greek to me (haven't looked at the article yet), and I am an (other) sports enthusiast; I suspect this is a combo of British English and not knowing cricket, but we should try to get as much clarity as possible, even for people like me :-) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:17, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
A little more context:given out run out, the point is that the home crowd disagreed with the umpire's call (which is not unusual in many sports) that a player was out. A hook shot is a shot that is strongly discouraged for normal players, but some good players get away with it and score many runs from it (which is the point of cricket). At the end of an innings all but three players are not out (and don't care) in baseball, but in cricket only one is not out and cares because it affects his batting average (which is most important in cricket) and because being 102 not out is much better than 102 out (because it suggests that he might have got much more, except that he ran out of partners). I would say in the context of this article that the reason that Hill was given out does not matter a lot (but there is no reason to leave it out), that all that needs to be said about the hook shot is that it is risky (and always discouraged by cricket coaches) and that while non-followers of cricket don't need to know that Hill was 0 not out in an innings or what this means, followers of cricket think it matters. It is not possible to give all possible context, baseball articles have arcane statistics too, even for somebody like me who has played softball in an Australian school and spent a year in an American school where I was not offered the opportunity to play baseball, but that was New York. I don't think the issue is British English, just cricketing terminology. Nobody in Australia (or India) uses the term wicket except in the context of cricket. That probably doesn't help much.--Grahame (talk) 03:36, 24 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
"what is School XI?" - XI in this context means "team". There are 11 players in a team and thus the school team is called the school XI. See 11 (number)#In sports for (a little) more information. -- Mattinbgn\talk 05:11, 24 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support Many people outside the sport don't realise what a complex game cricket is, and this makes writing these articles a challenge. I think the challenge has been met here and the editors should be congratulated. Yes, there are some esoteric aspects of cricket that will remain a mystery to uninitiated readers, but the editors have clearly gone to great lengths to help them. The bowling statistics have been kept to a minimum and, more importantly, shorthand notation has not been used. The Wiki-linking, which at first glance seems overdone, is very helpful. (I was amazed to see just how many cricketing terms have their own articles on Wikipedia). The article is encyclopedic, well-written and well-sourced, exciting and interesting. Having said this, a few oddities remain:

  • Hill had little luck during this sequence of nineties.— No Sandy, this is not a cricketing term; it's bad grammar. Does this mean —"during the late 1890s"?
  • The pair put on 60 runs in half an hour before Trumper was out— can't we just have— they scored 60 (more)runs?
  • Contrary to expectations leading into the tour,— This could be clearer, how about— "before the tour?
  • Hill did have a tendency to get out in the "nervous nineties", —This will sound odd too many readers. I would delete it.

And, finally, talking about deleting, that Excel chart doesn't add anything to the article. It's ugly, (what are those blue spots?), and will frighten novices into thinking that you need a computer to understand the sport, (which I secretly suspect to be true). In short, I would be proud to see this article on the main page, I am sure it would attract many more contributors to the project. --GrahamColmTalk 18:14, 24 March 2008 (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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