Talk:Revenue stamps of the United Kingdom/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Spinningspark (talk · contribs) 23:32, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Looking... I'll get a review done in the next couple of days, but one quick comment; I suggest you wikilink the first occurence of "d" to penny and the first occurence of "n/-" to £sd. I grew up with this system, but fewer and fewer people are familiar nowadays, even in the UK. SpinningSpark 23:32, 5 March 2019 (UTC)


 * Thanks in advance for the review! :) In the meantime I linked the "d" and "/-" as per your suggestion. --Xwejnusgozo (talk) 21:47, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Review follows. You may respond below each item if you wish, but please do not add tick marks or other graphic symbols, and do not strike through completed items. Some of these items are not GA requirements, but those that aren't are all easily fixable. The most serious issues concern sourcing, some of which could lead to GA failure; see in particular the References and Colonies sections.


 * Lead
 * Symbol confirmed.svg "...and they are still in use today." Such phrases are not time independent, since "today" is a moving target. Better to say something like "as of 2010, they are still in use", or whatever date the sources confirm stamps are still in use. See MOS:DATED.
 * Symbol confirmed.svg "...predate the first postage stamp, the Penny Black, was issued..." comma splice copyedit needed. This needs to be either "...predate the first postage stamp; the Penny Black, was issued..." or "...predate the first postage stamp, the Penny Black, which was issued..."
 * Symbol confirmed.svg "key type" or "key type stamp" should be wikilinked on first use (and repeat linked in article body)
 * "stamps for television licence" > "stamps for television licences"
 * Symbol confirmed.svg "Today, the only revenues..." MOS:DATED
 * Symbol confirmed.svg " some of constituent countries" > " some of the constituent countries"


 * Impressed duty stamps
 * Symbol confirmed.svg "Stamp duty". I can't see the justification in capitalising one word and not the other. If the convention is going to be to capitalise specific taxes, then both should be capitalised, otherwise it should be all lowercase.
 * Symbol confirmed.svg "...up to the present day..." could be removed. It doesn't add anything and is MOS:DATED
 * "...are still in use..." this should have "as of 2010" appended.
 * Symbol confirmed.svg "Stamps were issued by the newly-created Board of Commissioners of Stamps." When? Also, I don't think the name of the board needs to be in italics.
 * Symbol voting keep.svg Can we say what the £1 million stamp was used for? It's quite extraordinary that such a thing was needed.  I also suggest nominating this article at Did you know with that as the fact (it has to be done within seven days of the article being promoted to GA).


 * Adhesive revenue stamps
 * Embossed adhesives
 * Symbol confirmed.svg "In addition, there were also..." Redundant repetition, suggest dropping "In addition"


 * Key types
 * Symbol confirmed.svg "... for which the stamp was used for." That's ungrammatical, either "... for what the stamp was used for." or "... for which the duty stamp was used."


 * Other types of revenue stamps
 * Symbol confirmed.svg "(refer to the "Stamps affixed onto the taxed object" section above)". Phrases that rely on the browser rendering (eg "above") are deprecated. We also have a better way of referring to sections; suggest "(see )". Note: the link won't be red when actually in the article.


 * Ireland and Scotland
 * Symbol confirmed.svg "on a lower extent" > "to a lower extent"
 * County and city issues
 * Symbol confirmed.svg What is "Com. Southton" short for? Please give it in full or provide a suitable link.  I believe Southton is an alt name for Southampton (see this) which makes this repetition.  The actual marking on the stamps is a colon, not a period (see this Ebay item)


 * Crown dependencies
 * Symbol confirmed.svg Main article links should not be redlinks


 * Colonies
 * Symbol delete vote.svg Several facts cited to www.dalessandris.net fail verification. I won't list them all because I have concerns with that source anyway – see "references" below.
 * Symbol voting keep.svg "Most of the various British colonies..." This whole sentence is uncited. It is not verified by the reference nearest to it. AGF offline source.
 * Symbol confirmed.svg "The Colony of Jamaica might have used impressed duty stamps as early as 1804." McClellan doesn't say this himself, he says "according to Barber". So I think the citation should be "McClellan citing Barber" since McClellan hasn't stated it as fact.  The full Barber citation is on this page
 * Symbol confirmed.svg I'm not seeing verification for the 1855 date for adhesive stamps. In the only place the source gives that date it says "see below" for adhesive stamps.  It also says the "R" prefix excludes adhesive stamps.
 * Symbol voting keep.svg "The key types were also used to produce Military Telegraphs and Army Telegraphs stamps of the United Kingdom". Verification; the source does not mention key types.
 * Symbol voting keep.svg The whole of the part of the paragraph preceding this sentence appears to be uncited, or fails verification if it is meant to be the same source. AGF offline sources.


 * Images


 * Symbol confirmed.svg File:Legal stamp – £25.jpg has an inappropriate license. Stamps are Crown copyright, so a Creative Commons license is inappropriate, but since the Crown copyright has expired, it can be licensed as public domain.


 * references
 * Symbol confirmed.svg You have used the harvnb template in some references. There is meant to be a   parameter in the corresponding cite book template in the bibliography.  Without it you have a bunch of links that don't go anywhere.
 * Symbol confirmed.svg Is Barefoot a primary source? It's a sales catalogue no? The article very heavily relies on this one source.  I think we can probably accept that for GA in this case, but it is concerning.
 * Symbol delete vote.svg I'm struggling to accept www.dalessandris.net as a reliable source. The site is now dead, but a capture of the homepage shows clearly it is a personal website ("Welcome to my homepage"). Is there some WP:SPS established expert argument that can be used here?  I can't identify the author of the page.
 * Symbol confirmed.svg McClellan is also a personal website, but in this case I think we can accept it as a reliable SPS.
 * Symbol confirmed.svg Russell is listed in the Bibliography but is not used for any inline cites.
 * I have edited the article to include most of the suggested minor changes. I was unable to change the following issues:
 * Barefoot does not mention the date when the Board of Commissioners of Stamps was established. Perhaps we can remove the term "newly-established"?
 * I do not know what the £1 million stamp was (or still is) used for. Barefoot does not go into a lot of detail regarding impressed (non-adhesive) stamps.
 * According to Barefoot, "Com: Southton" referred to all of Hampshire except for the city of Southampton itself (which issued its own stamps). However it does not state what the "Com" states for, and I was unable to find any sources which state what this actually means.
 * I intend to write the Revenue stamps of Guernsey and Revenue stamps of Jersey articles later on, for now I'll write stubs which I'll expand later on.
 * I'll look at the Colonies and References issues in more detail later on.
 * Russel is used in reference 2
 * Xwejnusgozo (talk) 21:33, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, remove "newly-established". Without at least a rough date, it is quite meaningless.
 * Since the meaning is the county, then "Com:" almost certainly stands for comitatus, Latin for county. I'm not suggesting that should be put in without a source (although it is easily verifiable that the abbreviation "com." is used in other contexts for county), but we could at least add what the source actually says.
 * SpinningSpark 13:11, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

The current status of the article is a fail if there is no further action. Items are marked as follows;
 * Symbol confirmed.svg issue fully resolved
 * Symbol voting keep.svg issue has been answered, AGF that nothing further can be done
 * Symbol possible vote.svg awaiting response or action from the nominator
 * Symbol delete vote.svg potentially, a reason to fail the article
 * Symbol question.svg as yet, no response offered


 * I reedited the article to solve most of the issues specified above, and I created the stubs Revenue stamps of Guernsey and Revenue stamps of Jersey to solve the redlink issue (I intend to write decent articles instead of the stubs later on). I was unable to solve the following issues:
 * Regarding the verification for the 1855 date for adhesive stamps of Jamaica, this is clearly stated in Revenue Reverend. The 1855 issues are listed as R1/R2 in the "Revenue stamps" section. Perhaps the confusion here arose since you thought I was referring to the "Adhesive embossed" issues - while R1/R2 are not embossed but surface printed (typographed), they are adhesive stamps nonetheless.
 * Regarding the Military Telegraphs and Army Telegraphs stamps, the statement in the article is verified by this extract from the cited source: "military telegraph stamps were produced by the addition of suitable wording, "MILITARY TELEGRAPHS" or "ARMY TELEGRAPHS", to the ordinary British 'unappropriated die' stamps which were used for all manner of fiscal purposes at that time"
 * I think that the content in the D'Alessandris sources is reliable since all the items mentioned are also illustrated. However I also added additional sources for clarification. Unfortunately I do not have access to the most detailed and reliable literature on this topic.
 * Hope the article is more or less OK now. Xwejnusgozo (talk) 00:21, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
 * There is definitely still a problem with the reliability of sourcing. GA criterion 2b is quite clear on this; all inline citations are from reliable sources.  Adding additional sources does not overcome the problem of non-RS sources being in the article and it would have to be failed.  Wikipedia is also quite clear on what constitutes a reliable source.  In particular, self-published sources are generally not acceptable (WP:SPS).  Your opinion of the source, or the fact it included illustrations, does not change its status.  The sources that are SPS are D'Alessandris, Panting, and McClellan.  There is a major exception for SPS; authors that are established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications may be considered reliable.  I have previously said that I would accept McClellan on this basis.  Panting is quoting Hiscocks, who appears to be reliable, but it would be far better if Hiscocks was cited directly.  You have given no rationale, and I see none, why D'Alessandris should be accepted within the guidelines. SpinningSpark 15:27, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I removed the D'Alessandris sources, and all the statements which were sourced from there are now covered by the other sources. Regarding Panting/Hiscocks, I do not have access to Hiscocks so unfortunately I cannot use that as a source. --Xwejnusgozo (talk) 21:13, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I have now passed this for GA. I suggest that you format the ref as "Panting citing Hiscocks" in the same way as you did for McClellan/Barber. By the way, pings don't work if you add them afterwards, but there was no need in any case – I always stay watching an active review. SpinningSpark 17:57, 22 March 2019 (UTC)