Talk:Calendar (New Style) Act 1750/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Johannes Schade (talk · contribs) 07:29, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Welcome
Dear : I will be your reviewer for this, the first GA nomination of the article "Calendar (New Style) Act 1750". I see you nominated the article on 19 December 2020. I see it is rated B at present. The prose is 4544 words, a reasonable length. I applied the Rater script to your article, which calls ORES which rates your article "B or higher" with a confidence of 89.1%. This sounds all very positive. I start reading now. Best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 07:29, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

The 6 GA criteria (WP:GACR)
As we progress I will come back to this list and upgrade the symbols from to  occasionally passing by a.
 * 1. Well written
 * a) Clear, concise, understandable, grammatical, and correctly spelled.
 * b) MOS:LEADLENGTH, MOS:LAYOUT, MOS:WTW, WP:WAF, & MOS:LIST
 * 2. Verifiable and no original research
 * a) Notes, citations, & references MOS:NOTES
 * b) Inline citations
 * c} WP:OR
 * d) Copyright violations and plagiarisms
 * 3. Broad coverage
 * a) Main aspects
 * b) Focused
 * 4. Neutral
 * 5. Stable
 * 6. Illustrated
 * a) Copyright
 * b) Relevant and captions

GACR.1a Writing
The text is generally well and carefully written. It is normally concise and encyclopedic, but in some places uses law terms that are difficult to understand for the layman.

Comments on particular passages --- Date__(UT)__HR:MN       ObsEcLon    ObsEcLat $$SOE
 * In the section "Other clauses", 1st paragraph, the article mentions several sections of the Act: Section 3, Section 1 and Section 6. The reader might be surprised. Until here he never heard of the sections of the Act. --Johannes Schade (talk) 09:44, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Whoops, yes, well spotted and obvious now that you point it out. Various editors have used the words 'clause' and 'section' interchangeably. The Act only has clauses, no sections, so I will have to clean that up now. As to your more general point that we reach "Other clauses" without having seen 'any' clauses explicitly yet, I had best append clause numbers to each element the Provisions section (it was originally organised in clause order, which made it difficult to take in for a visitor who just wanted the essentials). --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 10:54, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I see that The current version at legislation.gov.uk uses the term 'Section' not 'Clause' so I have to redo... --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:22, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
 * ✅ --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:40, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I looked at your changes and wonder whether it is necessary to mention any of the sections of the Act at all. Most users will probably not consult the original Act and it probably does not matter for them in which section each discussed content is found. Is that not a concern of verifiability which should be dealt with in the footnotes?
 * Furthermore. The 1st section does not seem to work very well as an introduction. The title "Other sections" for a single 2nd level section seems odd: the one and the other: where is the "one" here? Such a single subsection is often called a "hanging subsection" and considered bad style (See the excellent text by Norman Fenton at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329917453_Improving_Your_Technical_Writing_Version_81) or https://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/~norman/papers/good_writing/Technical%20writing.pdf.
 * Good, because I didn't like it either! but thought that I had to do it that way because I got 'channelled' by the hanging subsection. So I have restructured #Provisions accordingly and IMO it reads rather better as a result. Does it satisfy now? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 13:10, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree that it is much better. However see my remarks under GACR.2b about how to cite Pickering.
 * In section "Start of the year" (would not "Start of year" be good enough?), last paragraph, the 2nd sentence starts with the words "This change". It might perhaps not be entirely clear which change is meant as the 1st sentence mentions more than one change: that of the start of the year but also about that in the date, but if you feel it is sufficiently clear I won't mind.
 * I changed it to "New Year's Day", then added an intro to explain that 25 March had been _legal_ New Year's Day since 1155. ✅ --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:31, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I feel that the title of the 3rd section, "Eleven days' difference between calendars and the change to the Gregorian calendar" is too long. See how it stands out in the Contents box. I would propose simply "Eleven days' shift" but there might be other solutions.
 * Changed to "Eleven day shift". ✅ --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:31, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
 * In that same section, 1st sentence "... was a religious one." This does not sound very convincing and might need a better, more detailed explanation. Why religious?
 * Easter is traditionally a spring holy day. If it moves into winter, it might create doubt among the church members. Remember this is an era where explanations about how the world worked were obtained from religion, not science, so any discrepancy between what religion said was going on in the skies and in the seasons that differed from what church members could see with their own eyes was a serious matter. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:04, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Dear Jc3s5h. Welcome at Calendar_(New_Style)_Act_1750/GA1. You are right of course, it is under that light that it needs to be seen. Johannes Schade (talk) 12:46, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I think that Johannes means that a better clue is needed as to the nature of the religious issue. So I have have appended four magic words: "the date of Easter". That gives context for the next sentences which explain. ✅ --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:31, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Easter is traditionally a spring holy day. If it moves into winter, it might create doubt among the church members. Remember this is an era where explanations about how the world worked were obtained from religion, not science, so any discrepancy between what religion said was going on in the skies and in the seasons that differed from what church members could see with their own eyes was a serious matter. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:04, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
 * If I understand this right: Easter celebrates the resurrection, supposed to have occurred on the 3rd day after Passover, but by tradition must be on the nearest Sunday to that date. Passover is on the 15th day of Nisan, a lunar month of the Jewish calendar, the first in spring. Spring starts at the spring equinox. Full moon is on the 14th day of each lunar month. Therefore observing the first full moon after the spring equinox allows to calculate when Passover and therefore Easter should be. The problem was that the spring equinox of 1750 happened on 10 March but should have been a fixed date in a solar calendar like the Julian and 21 March was the accepted right date for the spring equinox.
 * The date and time of the equinox of 1750 can be calculated using the Jet Propulsion Lab's Horizon system. The equinox occurs when the apparent geocentric ecliptic longitude of the Sun reaches 360° (= 0°). Here are the results, using the Gregorian calendar, produced by that system:

1750-Mar-20 16:00    359.9509046  -0.0002611 1750-Mar-20 17:00    359.9921859  -0.0002619 1750-Mar-20 18:00      0.0334661  -0.0002627 1750-Mar-20 19:00      0.0747453  -0.0002635
 * So the equinox in 1750 occurred in the late afternoon of March 20 in England, Gregorian calendar, which is March 10 9 in the Julian calendar. Jc3s5h (talk) 21:09, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Very well found. I feel you should incorporate that in the article. Johannes Schade (talk) 12:46, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Do we really? We may be in danger of creating a wp:FORK of the article Computus if we are not careful. It might be worth a footnote, perhaps?, would you do an appropriate limited update please?  --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:50, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
 * It seems to me this is addressed adequately by this passage: "The divergence had happened because the Julian calendar adds a leap year every four years, but this process adds about three more days every four hundred years than the earth's orbit requires. By 1582, the error had accumulated to the extent that the calendar date of the spring equinox had moved from 21 March by about ten days." Jc3s5h (talk) 19:23, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you, I agree. I also think that the pruning I have done to #Date of Easter will make it less likely that the question will arise in this article. So for the record, . --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 13:10, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

--- --- ---
 * (GACR.1a continues)
 * In section "The eleven day shift", 1st paragraph, would it be possible to specify the direction of the drift? You seem to say it was into winter. Would it be right to say that in 1750, before the change of calendar, the spring equinox was on 10 March instead of 21 March where it should have been?
 * The general goal would be to have the average date of the equinox be 21 March, but for any arithmetical calendar that observes a reasonably simple fixed rule, it isn't possible to make the equinox fall on 21 March every year. Jc3s5h (talk) 21:20, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
 * If we had continued to use the Julian calendar, 21 March would now be 13 days after the equinox. But as to your specific questions, yes, the Spring Equinox of 1750 was on 20 March NS (9 March OS), per User:Jc3s5h's calculation above. So now we have a further complication to explain and get us really bogged down in detail, losing our readers. I don't agree that we should pursue this. (well not yet, more discussion needed). --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:50, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
 * In section "The eleven day shift", 2nd paragraph, I would have used the definite article for the papal bull, thus 'the papal bull "Inter gravissimas"', otherwise 'a papal bull called "Inter gravissimas".
 * Agree, should be "the". ✅ --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:50, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
 * In section "The eleven day shift", 3rd paragraph, "Gregory's reform removed ten days from the old Julian Calendar", "old" is too much. There has not been an old and a new Julian Calendar. A bit further in the same paragraph "The additional Gregorian rule added the exception ...": if I understand it right "additional" is too much, "added" already says it.
 * Rephrased. ✅ subject to further comment. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:50, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

--- --- --- --- --- --- ---
 * The section "Date of Easter" should perhaps be renamed "Computus" or "Detail of the Easter calculation" or similar, or even "Change in the computus".
 * I disagree, because the Computus is a far bigger deal that given here. The second reason to keep this section title is that earlier one we said that the "reason to delete the eleven days was a religious one: the date of Easter"., do you concur? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:50, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
 * It's a close call, but I think "computus" is the right name for the whole process of calculating the date of Easter, and those who are reading this kind of article and don't already know what it means will benefit from discovering the meaning. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:10, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
 * True, but we also have to wp:think of the reader. So I have changed the section title to Calculation of the date of Easter: the Computus, which I think responds to both your comments. ✅ unless anyone is not content. --John Maynard Friedman (talk)
 * What you did is fine. Johannes Schade (talk) 11:36, 28 January 2021 (UTC)
 * The explanation given in the section "Date of Easter" is not easy to understand. Why was it necessary to change the computus as presented in the Common book of Prayer? What change was made in it? For whom was the computus section in the Common book of prayer meant? Things like Golden Number and Sunday Letter are not common knowledge. It might be beyond the scope of the article about the Act to go into such details of the computus. Johannes Schade (talk) 20:41, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, it is complicated! The Act tried to simplify it, got it wrong in the text but did a smoke-and-mirrors job to get the correct calculation into the Book of Common Prayer., could you advise here? My inclination would be to say less in this article and refer readers to Computus for the detail. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:50, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
 * It is complicated, and there have been a lot of calendar nuts who like to mess around with these articles. So I prefer to keep the detailed explanations in one article to avoid contradictions being introduced by those with an ax to grind. So I would like to see the details in Computus. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:14, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree, so I have taken the route of pruning all but the essentials, referring readers to that article. (Actually, that section of the Computus could do with being expanded with the pre- and post- 1752 status, if you are so inclined, I think it is a bit thin as it stands). So I am marking this one too as ✅ unless anyone is not content. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 13:31, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
 * In section "Leap day", 1st paragraph, 2nd sentence, I would have used past perfect instead of past and omitted the "it", thus writing "but had been authorised by the Act of Uniformity" rather than "but it was authorised ...", but perhaps I am pedantic. What do you think?
 * Agree. ✅ --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:50, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Further comment: on further study of the source, I concluded that this statement was wp:SYNTH because the source doesn't actually say that. No doubt there is a formal legal precedent that says so but I will not pursue since the statement is largely incidental. Deleted. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:15, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
 * In section "Passage through Parliament", 1st paragraph, 1st sentence, should it not read "government bill" rather than "government measure" in order to avoid confusing the reader by calling the same thing by two different names?
 * Yes, someone used the more formal term. Actually I think that usage adds a little bit of class but I will change it. ✅ --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:50, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
 * In section "Title of the Act", 2nd paragraph, 2nd sentence, I would not have used past perfect, thus writing "The old long titles proved " rather than "The old long titles had proved " because it was not specifically before the time of the Act that we are talking about.
 * I'm not sure I agree. Yes, the long titles proved cumbersome for many years (=> past continuous) but eventually someone decided to do something about it, making it past perfect. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:50, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
 * In section "Date of the Act", 2nd paragraph, the 1st sentence, please allow me to observe that MOS:OSNS instructs us "For either the Julian or Gregorian calendars, the beginning of the year should be treated as 1 January even if a different start-of-year date was observed in the place being discussed." I admit that compliance with MOS:OSNS is not part of the GACR, but you may want to comply with this one because of your special interest in OSNS issues. Accordingly, I think this sentence should read "The calendar reform bill was introduced in the session that began on 17 January 1751 (17 January 1750 in strict O.S, and 28 January 1751 in N.S.)." rather than "... in the session which began on 17 January 1750 [N.S. 28 January 1751]." Perhaps you can find better than "strict O.S.". I would have liked to be allowed to use dual dating for dates between the two possible beginnings of the year, but I am not writing the rules. Johannes Schade (talk) 12:46, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Here I think we really have to invoke wp:ignore all rules because this is the very moment when the system changed so we have to use contemporary dating if it is to make any sense PROVIDED that we make clear what we are doing and why we are doing it. So I have changed the text so that it reads The calendar reform bill was introduced in the session which began on 17 January 1750 Old Style [N.S.28 January 1751], almost nine months into a year that had begun on 23March 1750. Is that satisfactory? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:50, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I think it's long been the practice in Wikipedia that style guidelines do not necessarily apply to articles about the very topic that the guideline addresses. So no need to strictly follow MOS:OSNS as long as we're clear. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:19, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
 * In view of the change I made and Jc3s5h's comment, I mark this one as ✅ --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 13:31, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree this is fine I made me change my mind
 * In section "Scotland", 1st paragraph, 3rd sentence, I had to look up the special meaning of "recital" in Wiktionary. Perhaps its use can be avoided and "... as the register ... records" would be good enough. We can then have Plain English rather than Legalese.
 * Are we nae mair to hear a recital of wee William McGonagall's terrible tale of The Tay Bridge Disaster? :-D ✅ --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:29, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

---
 * In section Ireland, I wanted to felicitate you for having linked ready reckoner . :-) Johannes Schade (talk) 21:01, 27 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I did a double-take at your choice of verb ;-) Yes, I expected our American friends to misunderstand "pocket book" but the credit goes to Honandl2 for suggesting ready reckoner. Other attempts included pamphlet which is technically correct for the time but would be misunderstood by a modern readership. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:29, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

GAGR.1b Lead
The length of the lead is adequate and within the limits prescribed in MOS:LEADLENGTH. There are no problems with MOS:LAYOUT (MOS:NOTES being treated further down), MOS:WTW, WP:WAF, & MOS:LIST. ✅ Johannes Schade (talk) 21:01, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

GACR.2a Verifiability
Verifiable. The structure chosen for the presentation of the explanatory footnotes (under Notes), citation footnotes and the list of works (under References) has the disadvantage of presenting a "hanging subsection" (Sources). MOS:NOTES refers to "Help:Shortened footnotes" which proposes three heading called "Notes", "Citations" and "References" all at the 2nd level under the title of the article.
 * ✅ --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 23:21, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

GACR.2b Inline Citations
Additional citations. GACR.2b lists five types of statements that need to have citations: direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements, and contentious material relating to living persons. Citations need to refer to reliable sources. I think there are no such statements that do not already have a citation. ✅

Citations with problems. However, I think there are some citations that are so difficult to follow to their source that the citation is inoperative.


 * Section Provisions, 1st dotted-list paragraph, only citation. This citation gives the location in its |loc= parameter as "Preamble; Section I" directing the reader to the Preamble and Section I of the text of the Act in Pickering 1765a. Hovering on the superscript number and then over the Pickering in the tooltip that appears lets the reader discover the name of the Act "An act for regulating ..." but will readers really do this? They surely cannot be expected to recognise a title that they have never seen before. I strongly feel that this long name of the Act needs to be introduced in a proper Introduction that you should write and that will appear before the section Provisions.

Once the reader is on the page (p186) the reader will probable look for the word "Preamble", which is not there. Hopefully he will have remembered the name of the Act and find the "Act for regulating..." and find the preamble. Otherwise he might be utterly confused by all these big titles like "CAP. XXIII" of which he cannot make anything. He also might think he is on the wrong page. A page number would have at least prevented this. When he then looks for Section I it is not there neither. On p188 there is II so where is section I? You really do not make it easy for the reader or reviewer. Johannes Schade (talk) 21:01, 27 January 2021 (UTC) ---
 * I have added the long title in the opening sentence, is that enough? (there is a subsection later in the article that describes the various names in more detail). I have changed the citations in Provisions to give page numbers rather than section numbers and (for the first one that starts well down the page), appended a . Do I need to do more? Do we need the rp treatment on other cites of Pickering? from reviewer, please. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 23:54, 27 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I have eliminated use of the rp template.
 * Before:
 * After:
 * The first reason I changed this is that all the articles I've ever seen, if they make references to different pages in the same source, either use the rp template, or the sfn template, but never both. Mixing them is a surprise to editors and are likely to result in deterioration of the article as new editors become confused.
 * The second reason is the reader needs to scroll quite a bit to see the two different bits of information about where to look in the source. Jc3s5h (talk) 10:50, 28 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree, better without rp. Thanks you very much Jc3s5h . Johannes Schade (talk) 11:56, 28 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Accepted. In view of Johannnes's earlier remarks, I changed it slightly to read loc= pp. 186 ("CAP. XXIII"), 187 so that readers know where to start on p. 186. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:18, 28 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Dear John, it is very good to have added the long title to the lead, but it should appear in bold like the other names of the Act. Nevertheless I think the article needs a real introduction section. Thanks for giving the page in the citation. I would also give the URL and a comment in the "p" parameter such as " |p=186–188, under CAP. XXIII ". Note that the URL refers to the book in Internet Archive. I would combine 1765a and 1765b in the source list citing the entire book rather than chapters. There also, of course, the URL should be to Internet Archive rather than Google Books. I would not have a link to the Wayback Machine. I feel each entry in the source list should present only one clickable handle. It confuses the reader and slows him down when he has to make a decision about which one to click. However, I have in the recent past used chapters in the source list precisely as you do here and am still not very sure. I feel chapters should appear in the source list only when they are written by different, known authors. Johannes Schade (talk) 11:56, 28 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you Johannes. I shall need some advice about how to construct such an intro, clearly we don't want just to repeat the lead. The current section "Provisions" was written to provide a summary of the major aspects of the act.
 * Redoing the citations by the whole volume will take a few days... I agree about using archive.org, Google Books has been changed recently and become rather awkward to use. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:18, 28 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Citations of Pickering redone as suggested. The work had a collateral benefit: I found and corrected three other citations that were just wrong and added another entry to the list of Did You Know candidates – probably the best of the lot. I will leave it to Johannes to tag (or not) this item as 'done'. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:05, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Section "Leap day", 2nd paragraph, 1st Sentence. This concerns the Efn . This is not really an explanatory note. You cite but do not explain. Funny enough the quote starts on page 189, line 1, whereas the citation refers to page 194, which is very confusing. I propose to unwrap the Efn and use the Sfn in it directly so: Perhaps you intended to cite page 194. I think that should then be a separate citation. I think the Sfn's loc parameter should only be used when no page number can be given. I think the URL should end with the forward-slash after the page number, omitting the "mode/1up". These are only suggestions. The GACR say nothing about it except that the reader should be able to find the supporting material in the cited source. I will promote this to GA before I advance further into unsure terrain. Johannes Schade (talk) 08:45, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

GACR.2c Original research
OR. There is no problem with WP:OR. ✅

GACR.2d Plagiarism
There is no problem with plagiarism. ✅

GACR.3a Broad
The article addresses the main aspects of the topic. ✅

GACR.3b Focused
The article is generally well focused. ✅

GACR.4 Neutral
Neutral. No problem ✅

GACR.5 Stable
Stable. No problem. ✅

GACR.6a Copyright
Copyright is no problem: public domain or Creative Commons ✅

GACR.6b Illustrations

 * Relevance. The illustrations are relevant except the map of eastern North America, which should illustrate the territories in North America where the new calendar was introduced in 1750 but focuses on U.S. history being zoomed in on the 13 founding states. The map is colour-coded but has no legend. It omits Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, which changed calendar in 1750 just the same as the 13 colonies that would become independent in 1776. Florida was still Spanish in 1750. I feel a better map needs to be found or the figure should be omitted.
 * The article originally had a better map but unfortunately it was a copyvio and has been deleted. The best map that I could find [see right] that includes all of Canada is not a great map for our purposes – it doesn't show the Russian possessions on the west coast –  and I don't think that is good enough, so I have just dropped it as advised. ✅
 * I agree better without this map. It is not essential. Johannes Schade (talk) 11:36, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

Johannes Schade (talk) 21:01, 27 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Captions. The captions tend to be a bit lengthy. Some, especially the first, might be shortened by relegating content into an explanatory note.
 * The article originally had a better map but unfortunately it was a copyvio and has been deleted. The best map that I could find [see right] that includes all of Canada is not a great map for our purposes – it doesn't show the Russian possessions on the west coast –  and I don't think that is good enough, so I have just dropped it as advised. ✅
 * The first illustration is the memorial tablet that illustrates dual dating rather prettily and it really needs its explanatory caption. I'm not sure that this is the one you meant? Please clarify. from reviewer, please. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 00:39, 28 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I feel the caption of the first image could just be "Memorial plaque giving 28 January 1708/9 as date of death." The remaining information could go into an explanatory note for the profit of a reader might go and see the plaque in place. In a luxury edition one might also give a zoom in showing that date as it is written on the plaque. Johannes Schade (talk) 11:36, 28 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Reduced as suggested. ✅ --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:07, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Promoted GA. Johannes Schade (talk) 08:45, 31 January 2021 (UTC)