Talk:George Meade/GA2

GA Review
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Reviewer: Hog Farm (talk · contribs) 14:38, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

I'll review this again but it'll be slow going. Hog Farm Talk 14:38, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Waiting til the end of the review to go through the lead, and will start with the beginning of the body


 * "the eighth of eleven children of Richard Worsam Meade and Margaret Coats Butler. His grandfather George Meade was a wealthy merchant and banker in Philadelphia" - cited source does not mention eighth of eleven children, does not mention Margaret Coats Butler by name, and it does not describe his grandfather as a banker, only referencing the merchant trade and land speculation
 * added Huntington reference to support Margaret Coats Butler and eighth child status - changed eighth of ten children to match Huntington ref - changed banker to land speculator to match ref Dwkaminski (talk) 20:14, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
 * "He was ruined financially because of his support of Spain in the Peninsular War; his family returned to the United States in 1817, in precarious financial straits." - [citation needed]
 * Added Huntington page 12 ref
 * I think it ought to be mentioned in the list of sources that Cleaves is actually a reprint of a 1960 work; this can be accomplished using the |orig-date parameter in the citation template
 * I updated ref date to 1960 Dwkaminski (talk) 20:32, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
 * The title of Hyde 2003 is wrong - should be "Speak" not "Speaker"
 * updated Dwkaminski (talk) 20:05, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

I'm going to take this section-by-section due to the amount of time it will take to verify the sources in each section. Hog Farm Talk 22:40, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
 * - I've updated the issues you mentioned in this first section. Dwkaminski (talk) 20:32, 26 April 2023 (UTC)


 * No mention of the severe illness in Florida in 1836 that Sauers and Cleaves report? Cleaves even implies that it was part of the reason he was assigned out of the state.
 * "He became a full second lieutenant by year's end, and in the fall of 1836, after the minimum required one year of service" - are you sure of this? Hyde p. 15, which this is sourced to, doesn't mention second lieutenant until after his 1842 re-entry. Neither Cleaves nor Warner mention such a promotion in this time frame, so that claim is probably spurious
 * Warner and Cleaves both mention a station at the Watertown Arsenal before he resigned, seems worthwhile to note in the article
 * "and was assigned to the staffs of Generals Zachary Taylor[21] and General Robert Patterson" - from a grammar perspective, either make the first general singular or drop the "General" before Patterson's name.
 * "In 1852, the Topographical Corps established the United States Lighthouse Board and Meade was appointed the Seventh District engineer with responsibilities in Florida." - WP:CLOP of the source, which says {{Xt|In August 1852, the Topographical Corps set up the United States Lighthouse Board, and Meade was named a Seventh District engineer with responsibilities in Florida". More than just changing a couple words needs done to avoid close paraphrasing
 * " Dean, Love, Reef Lights: Seaswept Lighthouses of the Florida Keys, The Historic Key West Preservation Board, 1982, ISBN 0-943528-03-8. McCarthy, Kevin M., Florida Lighthouses. University of Florida Press, 1990, ISBN 0-8130-0993-6." - any chance we could get page numbers here?
 * "When Bache was reassigned to the West Coast," - more close paraphrasing, almost identical to the phrasing in the source
 * Sauers p. 11 says that he was promoted to 7th District supervisor, which seems worthwhile to mention
 * Per Cleaves p. 49, Meade was supervising the Florida District and the New Jersey/Delaware one at the same time; recommend making that a bit more explicit in the text
 * "Absecon Light in Atlantic City and the Cape May Light in Cape May. " - sourced to Sauers, p. 11, who mentions neither of these things
 * "He also designed a hydraulic lamp that was used in several American lighthouses" - while this appears to be true, it is not supported by the cited source (Sauers), which instead only mentions Meade explaining the use of the Fresnel lens at the New York Crystal Palace
 * Recommend mentioning that Meade was actually assigned to the Lakes Survey in 1856; the current phrasing implies that he didn't go there until he became commander of it in 1857
 * " In 1858, based on his recommendation, instrumentation was set in place for the tabulation of records across the basin" - no, per the cited source, the instruments were not installed until spring 1859

I'm sorry, but I still don't think the sourcing is at a GA-level; I've found too many unsupported passage/omissions/errors here to be comfortable with the sourcing. I don't think the GA reviewer should have to line-by-line the article's citations like this. Going to go ahead and fail it here; I don't have time to continue to line-by-line for the rest of the review, and I don't feel comfortable not digging in that deep. Hog Farm Talk 23:05, 26 April 2023 (UTC) {{abot}}