Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Plymouth Colony/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 21:24, 28 April 2007.

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Plymouth Colony

I have spent the better part of 2 weeks overhauling this article. It probably represents something like 30-40 hours of work on my part, and I think it has been brought up to featured status (if I must toot my own horn). Based on the WP:WIAFA criteria:

• Criteria 1:
  • (a)I think it has compelling, brilliant prose. But I wrote most of it.
  • (b)The article covers nearly all aspects of Plymouth Colony, including history, people, government, geography, and lasting legacy
  • (c)Factually accurate. The article is correctly referenced using inline citations to reliable sources. I used Nathanial Philbrick's 2006 work Mayflower for most of it, but there are many sections referenced to reliable web sources as well, especially The Plymouth Colony Archive Project at the University of Virginia.
  • (d)It is NPOV
  • (e)It is stable (Myself and one other editor have made the only changes to the article in the past two weeks)
• Criteria 2:
  • (a)The lead fully summarizes the article
  • (b)The headings are logical and well organized
  • (c)The TOC is reasonable
• Criteria 3:
  • All images are free-use images and are appropriately tagged.
• Criteria 4:
  • The length is appropriate to contain all relevent information, without delving into trivia.

I would appreciate your comments on improving this article further to Featured status, or if you think it is already feature-worthy, I would appreciate your support. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 03:30, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Comment I can see you've been thorough and it is nearly there and should get through but it needs a bit of a copyedit. I have just corrected a few typos on quick look-through and there are some clunky phrases that could do with some rewording. I will highlight them when I can - if you want I can have a go at them myself of just highlight them here. cheers, Casliber | talk | contribs 04:27, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for any fixes you care to make. I have no problem with you making any fixes as you see fit, or asking me to do it myself. Either way is cool. After all, I don't WP:OWN the article, and it would be WP:BOLD of you to make any fixes you see are needed.--Jayron32|talk|contribs 04:51, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Ok, made a few but this From the beginning, Miles Standish was intended to be the military leader... - sounds clumsy and I am not sure of your original intention. Should it be "had intended" or "was expected" or...? cheers, Casliber | talk | contribs 07:30, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

He had been hired by the Merchant Adventurers for his military training and they intended for him to be in charge of all military matters for the colony. You can word that however you choose. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 15:48, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose—This is well worth fixing up, and there's still time to do so. See if you can locate a WPian who's interested in the area (there should be many) and who's willing and able to offer fresh eyes for a good copy-edit; specifically, redundant wording and fuzzy expression need to be targeted. Search the history lists of current FAs and previous FACs, perhaps? Strategic distance is required. Tony 08:21, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I will make some requests on relevent wikiprojects as you suggest, however if you could point to specific examples that need reworking, I or someone else can see about making any fixes you require. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 15:48, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Let me know when it's ready to review again. Tony 22:41, 6 April 2007 (UTC) PS Wikiprojects are typically defunct; I suggest that you contact individuals. Need help locating them? Tony 22:42, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I would appreciate any help you can give. I have contacted about 8-10 editors individually, besides leaving notes at the talk pages of WikiProject United States and WikiProject Massachusetts. I belong to several very active WikiProject, though I would agree that frequently projects do go defunct. If you have any further suggestions, please let me know, or feel free to contact them on my behalf... Thanks for all of your help.--Jayron32|talk|contribs 01:27, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Update: Just so that everyone knows, the article has not been abandoned. Per the above requests that I seek outside help in copyediting this article, a request was put in at the League of Copyeditors for help with this one about a week ago. It has not yet been acted on. If anyone else has any suggestions on who to contact for copyediting help, OR if anyone would be so bold as to help out themselves, I would be much obliged. Some significant changes have been made by other editors since the above requests have been mad e, for anyone that voted oppose, please re-read it and see what you think. Thanks again! --Jayron32|talk|contribs 02:54, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I will do some copyediting. Awadewit 05:24, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Comment/Question Why do most of the citations for this article come from one book? There is so much great scholarship on the Plymouth Colony available! Also, Philbrick's book has its problems. No book is perfect, that is why one should rely on a multiplicity of sources; also, a broad range of sources allows one to understand how scholars in the field interpret an event (they don't all tell the history the same way). Wikipedia tries to present a neutral point of view, as you know {WP:NPOV), and just presenting one author's version of the history of the Plymouth Colony is not neutral, it is POV. (I quote from the New York Times review of Philbrick's book: "It makes sense, then, to choose relations with the Indians as the axis for a history of the Pilgrims. And yet, in making this choice, Philbrick glides over some other important elements. The Pilgrims were fervent religious dissidents, after all: their faith was the compass that guided them to these shores and the clock that tolled their hours. Philbrick doesn't pay much attention to it. And he makes a few puzzling errors: "In 1624, Holland purchased Manhattan from the Indians." The well-known date for that purchase was 1626.") Awadewit 05:37, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Reply, If you are implying that the information I have added from Philbrick's book represents a non-neutral treatment of the topic, could you point to some specific areas where an additional perspective is needed? This article also contains many citations from areas outside of Philbrick's book; I used The Plymouth Colony Archive at UVA for a lot of this as well, especially to "fill in the gaps" where Philbrick is silent (expecially on issues of Government and Geography). There are also citations from other sources, such as Pilgim Hall's and Plimoth Plantation's websites, a large part of the article is cited from the 1890 Massachusetts Gazeteer, some to other various US history websites. Is the complaint that there is only one print source? I don't rely solely on one author, though, as the above implies, there are many sources. The way in which a Print source is referenced, so as to find specific page numbers, may give the illusion that it is being used more than it is. Again, if you can point out specific POV problems, I can find more references to fix these specific problems. Thanks! --Jayron32|talk|contribs 06:02, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

The bulk of the history cites Philbrick's book and an 1890 newspaper is far from being a reliable source. Also, many of your web sources are unreliable and will need to be eliminated.

• www.mayflowerfamilies.com - This is a commercial site with advertisements; how do we know it is reliable (WP:RS) Why are you using it? Surely there is a list of Mayflower passengers in a scholarly source.
• Footnote 25 link is broken.
• www.pilgrimhall.org - What are you using this website for? Only the primary sources? If you are using primary sources to construct that entire paragraph (to which footnote 26 seems to refer, that is original research WP:OR).
• Footnote 32 link is broken.
• Footnote 34 links to a personal webpage (aol member page) that also contains a personal family tree. This is an unreliable source because it is self-published. WP:RS
• Footnote 36 also links to a self-published webpage by a genealogist.
• Footnote 46 links to ushistory.com, a commercial site dominated by ads. Who wrote this information? There is no way to tell, so how can we tell it is reliable?
• Footnote 50 links us to an essay by Martucci published on his own webpage.

I'll stop there for now. As for the POV problem, you don't seem to understand that reading a single book and writing an article based on that book is POV. Historians have differing interpretations of the Plymouth Colony and that need to be represented here. About half of your citations come from Philbrick and that is the majority of the history; therefore, you are telling Philbrick's version of the history of the colony. You do need to read more print sources on the Plymouth Colony; FAs are supposed to represent the best wikipedia has to offer - that means research standards as well. If you wrote a research paper in college, you wouldn't read just one book! You need to read books published by academic presses; these have been peer-reviewed by other scholars and fact-checked more rigorously than popular history books. These will flesh out your understanding of the Colony and what has been said about it. The article needs to present a range of views on the colony or at least the scholarly consensus, but how can you know the scholarly consensus if you have only read one book? Does the Philbrick have a bibliography? That should get you started. Awadewit 06:40, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Oppose This page has not been well-researched. It relies too much on a single source when there is a vast amount of scholarly work on the topic and uses unreliable web sources. Awadewit 06:40, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

If the editors want an example of POV in this article, all they need to do is look at the New York Times review of Philbrick's book that I quoted and their own article. Like Philbrick's book, the article is dominated by the story of the relationship between the Pilgrims and the Native Americans while leaving out much of the story of their religious beliefs. There is a little at the beginning of the article, but what happens to the Pilgrims' religion once they come to America? The article makes it seem like they fled religious persecution and then gave up the religion they were so committed to. This idea is conveyed through the focus on the Native American story and the lack of information on other parts of the story. Awadewit 20:00, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

• Thanks for pointing out these problems. This article needs more work, obviously, and is probably not yet feature ready. Thanks also for your help in copyediting. I am working on getting more reliable sources for the footnotes you have above; also I have several other histories of Plymouth Colony I intend to use to help round out the points of veiw on this, and "neutralize it". Thanks again for all of your help, and though I intend to get this up to featured status in the future, it is clearly not ready yet. Withdraw the nomination. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 21:30, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Update: Per Awadewits comments, I am seeking further print sources to neutralize this article, and expand certain parts, especially in the realm of religion and social history. I have several books in transit via interlibrary loan. When they arrive, I will return to the article to clean it up further. The article has not been abandoned.--Jayron32|talk|contribs 06:07, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose, images tagging is unverified, Image:Thanksgiving-Brownscombe.PNG was painted in 1914, the artist may well have lived more than 25 years afterwards, and that would invalidate the current public domain claim; no indication given as to publication of turn-of-the-century works, may still be copyrighted. --Iamunknown 00:25, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Reply. Artist died in 1936, 71 years ago. I have updated the tag to indicate that. If you have any other specific problems with the images, I can fix them. See this biograghy of the artist. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 19:14, 26 April 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.