Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Edgar Speyer/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 User:SandyGeorgia 05:18, 20 December 2008 [1].

Edgar Speyer[edit]

Nominator(s): DavidCane (talk)

I'm nominating this biographical article for featured article because of the subject's interesting life and status as one of only a few people to be struck-off as members of the Privy Council. DavidCane (talk) 00:39, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments -

  • Strongly suggest expanding the lead quite a bit, it's very skimpy for the size of the article.
Will do tomorrow. They're always a bit short.--DavidCane (talk) 23:52, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Now done. --DavidCane (talk) 01:17, 13 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Overlinking - no need for "New York", the "German Jewish" in the Family section (as it's linked in the lead), "works of art", etc.
Done.--DavidCane (talk) 23:52, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Current ref 1 (Oxford Dictionary of National biography..) I'm assuming you're referring to the Barker, Theo ref in the References? Might make more sense to make the footnote "Barker".
Correct and done. --DavidCane (talk) 23:52, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Alphabetize your references, please
done. --DavidCane (talk) 23:52, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Current ref 2 does not go to the marriage record, just to the home page. What makes this a reliable source, anyway?
Unfortunately the search results are not persistent for any great length of time. The information here is the same as that used by Ancestry.com except that it is free and is complied from the original microfiche of the birth, marriages and death registers.
nothing particularly but, it's primarily provided as a link to pictures of his house.--DavidCane (talk) 23:52, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This seems to have changed somewhat since I originally linked to it. A better link would be to this which states the full dedication and which I have used instead. --DavidCane (talk) 23:52, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
They are the publishers in conjunction with Boosey & Hawkes of the score for Salome. Doing a bit more digging, I have found on the B&H site a direct link to the first page of the score showing the dedication, so I have linked directly to that instead. --DavidCane (talk) 23:52, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Intrinsically nothing, but the fact that he was a trustee is covered by reference 1. Reference 24 is supplementary to that, in part to provide some background on the gallery itself. --DavidCane (talk) 23:52, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Nothing particularly. I have found a reference since this was added in the new york times to his subscription of £1,000 to the Scott fund which I will replace this with.--DavidCane (talk) 23:52, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Data is from a list complied by the United States Geological Survey. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Antarctica and Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Antarctica/S6 for the same information on Wikipedia.--DavidCane (talk) 23:52, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This is a comprehensive list of stringed instruments (over 10,000 listed by nearly 300 makers (see the home page for the numbers), so I think it's safe to assume it's reliable.--DavidCane (talk) 23:52, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Current ref 56 is lacking a publisher
Publisher is Killick & Co. Reformed the ref to make this clear.--DavidCane (talk) 23:52, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
To determine the reliablity of the site, we need to know what sort of fact checking they do. You can establish this by showing news articles that say the site is reliable/noteworthy/etc. or you can show a page on the site that gives their rules for submissions/etc. or you can show they are backed by a media company/university/institute, or you can show that the website gives its sources and methods, or there are some other ways that would work too. It's their reputation for reliabilty that needs to be demonstrated. Please see Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-06-26/Dispatches for further detailed information.
Killick & Co. is a private stockbroker so I'm fairly confident that they check their facts thoroughly, however, the link is only to support the fact that they are now the occupiers of Speyer's house. Everything on the Killick & Co. "Our History" page is supported by information in other sources - principally the Sheppard reference which gives a detailed history of the house up to 1980 when it was the Japanese Embassy. --DavidCane (talk) 01:54, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:43, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Leaving the unstruck issues out for other reviewers to decide for themselves. Ealdgyth - Talk 02:10, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • This wholesale reversion [2] was rather unconsidered:
    • It's nice to avoid "this" clauses in formal writing when they can be rewritten. You reverted to "this was characterised by novels warning of the rising military threat" and "the parts of the Act of Settlement that prohibited this"
    • "Following the British declaration of war with Germany... Following a Royal Proclamation on 11 September 1914...." - you prefer two consecutive "following"s beginning a sentence?
    • "Accusations of disloyalty and treachery were made against him in the Press" - I had removed the passive and the capitalization of Press
    • "In June 1915, Sir George Makgill, Secretary of the Anti-German Union applied for permission" - needs a comma
    • "In December 1915, Lord Chief Justice Lord Reading, rejected the application" - doesn't need a comma
  • Eh? –Outriggr § 01:48, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry about that. I've been without a connection for a couple of days, so couldn't reply earlier. Something odd happened there as the only bits that showed up as being changed in your edit when I did a comparison were the changes about disloyalty, the Press and "normal" to "formal". I didn't see the other changes.
I reverted "the press" to "the Press" as I was advised during the GA review that the context required it to be capitalised. I reverted "formal" to "normal" because the contemporary Times commentaries on the case (now, unfortunately, locked behind a pay-per-view registration system) indicate that there was no process to be followed to remove someone from the Privy council or to withdraw a baronetcy, formal or otherwise - see the quotes in footnote 38. I probably missed the comma changes.
Now that I've seen the rest of your changes, I don't have a problem with them. --DavidCane (talk) 01:54, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Image review:

I've fixed this, the page has been moved within the same web site, although the image appears to have been enlarged and cropped on the current page. --DavidCane (talk) 01:54, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • The source link for Image:Solid, Punch, August 1911.png refers to an e-book. Can you give the page number or an exact link to the image?
    • Note: this e-book isn't paginated; no closer link is possible. The image appears in the book's Prologue - I've added that information. Brianboulton (talk) 23:31, 5 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for doing that Brian. --DavidCane (talk) 01:54, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • All other images appear to be fine. --Moni3 (talk) 16:06, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support: This is a very well-written and comprehensive article that tells a compelling story. I reviewed it at GA and have carried out a few minor tweaks during the course of this FAC review. I have just one question: The Legacy section contains the sentence "The former [deep level tube lines] may not have been built without the finance he raised with Yerkes, and would have struggled without his chairmanship". Can you clarify where these opinions come from? The only reference in the para ,([22]), is to a biography of Percy Grainger. Brianboulton (talk) 17:48, 15 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. The note (now [23]) from John Bird's biography of Percy Grainger is provided only with regard to his support for the proms. I have added a link in the Bird reference in the reference section to link to the relevant page of the book at google books.
With regard to the support for the tube, I was relying on the description of his actions in the third paragraph in the Financier section to support this implicitly. I have added a new note in this section (note [10]) which explains how Speyer bailed out the company to prevent it going bankrupt in 1908. I think the addition of this supports the argument in the legacy section.--DavidCane (talk) 00:36, 16 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - Sorry, but the biography did little for me. Why? There was only a tiny paragraph for 25 years. One third of his life is missing. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:59, 17 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Do you mean the first 25 years, the last 25 or some other period? The article covers the notable aspects of his life - involvement with the creation of the London Underground, philanthropy and the revocation of his nationalisation and Privy Counsellorship. Other than growing up and going to school, not much notable is likely to have happened before he became a partner in his father's banks when he was 22 in 1884 and nothing appears to be recorded. After his British citizenship was removed he lived in New York for the last ten years of his life and continued as a partner of the surviving American and German banks. After 1922, his appearance in the public record is fairly sketchy in the US and virtually non-existent in the UK. There are periodic mentions in the society sections of the New York times of his holidaying in the Hamptons and the like but I considered that to be trivia.--DavidCane (talk) 00:15, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
A person is notable. The individual events don't have to be notable. Encyclopedias contain non-"notable" information for a biography. At least place two or three paragraphs about his early life, education, etc. We need to see how this individual developed, various influences, etc. Ottava Rima (talk) 16:23, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
With regard to notability - I believe that Speyer passes the basic test at WP:BIO. He is the subject of secondary source material such as the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
With regard to his early life - There is virtually nothing recorded. What is known is already in the article as it stands. The problem is that, aside from the Barker biography in the ODNB (which is an update of the 1949 original in the Dictionary of National Biography by H. B. Grimsditch) there is no single source all-encompassing biography of Speyer. The ODNB's only information on his early life is the following single sentence:
"Educated at the Realgymnasium, Frankfurt, at the age of twenty-two Speyer became a partner in his father's three associated companies in Frankfort, London, and New York."
I have been unable to find anything else.
With regard to his influences - I could put in that his German parentage, German relatives and education in Germany gave him a pro-German outlook, which is fairly clear in any case, but that would be, largely, conjecture and original research as it is not covered in the ODNB or any of the other sources I have referenced. --DavidCane (talk) 22:02, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Additional comment: I can confirm from my own experiences that trying to get background information on Speyer is all but impossible. I have found nothing on the record about his early life beyond what is in this article. He went to school in Frankfurt, joined the bank, became a partner at an early age. His brother James Joseph, a year older, followed exactly the same path. I don't think it reasonable to sustain an oppose on the grounds that there ought to be more information available, when there isn't. Brianboulton (talk) 21:47, 19 December 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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