Talk:Rupert Bruce-Mitford/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 15:15, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Comments
This detailed, readable and fully-cited article has evidently been a labour of love, edited to its current 180k (!) length by nom since 2016. It is of course easily comprehensive enough for GA, and I could pass it at once without discussion, but perhaps there are a few things that might be worth considering.


 * Redlinks like RBM's father in the Infobox and Early life are probably best removed.
 * He was actually notable in his own right, being a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. --Usernameunique (talk) 22:56, 29 September 2023 (UTC)


 * And by the way, the Infobox's Oxford, Oxfordshire, England is dangerously close to Adrian Mole (aged 8½)'s Oxford, Oxfordshire, The Midlands, England, Great Britain, The United Kingdom, Europe, The World, The Solar System ... (maybe lose the Oxfordshire, hmm?).
 * Point taken, done. --Usernameunique (talk) 22:58, 29 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Farrell, Robert T. is redlinked 3 times in the bibliog.
 * I try to fill in the author-link parameter for each cite template. Ferrell is clearly notable, hence why he's red-linked here. --Usernameunique (talk) 21:55, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
 * That's far from the topic of the article, and at the very least, idiosyncratic, but I guess not in direct contravention of the six criteria.


 * The bibliography indifferently mixes Sources (used in the text) with Further reading (not used, maybe not worth reading?). Would be best to list 'em separately; and given that the list is very long, maybe ditch the further reading ones really.
 * Those are all sources that I mean to cite; I've now gone through and added everything except the reviews and Wilson 2002, which I still need to get from the library. Do you mind if we leave those as a post-GAN project? --Usernameunique (talk) 18:04, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Take it on trust, eh? All right, if the other items get fixed.


 * The bibliography lists works by Charles Eustace Bruce-Mitford: why? Notability is not inherited by policy (in any direction), so I'd suggest we cut these (and remove mentions of them or links to them, if any), as clearly UNDUE.
 * They're cited in this sentence: In 1903, and likely on the basis of his book and articles on Weihaiwei, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society; he subsequently became interested in geography and vulcanology, writing additional works on the country. A secondary reason is that it's nice to have them grouped together if I ever get around to writing the article on him. --Usernameunique (talk) 23:01, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
 * OK. The secondary reason is definitely off-topic, even coatrackish, however.


 * The list of Publications includes Books (good idea), Articles (bit doubtful, we rarely list those for any academic), Chapters (usually a terrible idea, such things often repeat material found in both the above sublists), Reviews (why ever would we list these? They're very minor works), and the famous Other category (enough said, we should not be including miscellanies of minor contributions in a Good Article). The total list occupies some 98 kBytes, so it's contributing massively to the article's size. This could be fixed by hiving it off as a separate article (say, Rupert Bruce-Mitford bibliography or some such title) and leaving just a link to that behind (or perhaps a list of his books, with a brief cited review of each one?).
 * Per the relevant guideline, "Lists of published works should be included for authors ... Complete lists of works ... are encouraged, particularly when such lists are not already freely available on the internet." This is especially true for Bruce-Mitford; he published many works, including in obscure journals, but there is no list of his works (besides here) that is anywhere close to complete. (The second-most-complete list is in the auction catalogue of his personal library, which is held by only three libraries.) Tracking down all these works is one of the reasons why the article took seven years to build. As to whether the list should have its own article, the guideline says that this should be done when inclusion in a biography would be "unsuitable". But it's unclear why this would be the case here; the article is on the longer side, but it's clearly organized. --Usernameunique (talk) 01:52, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
 * "unclear": let me help you. The list takes up half the article. That is grossly unbalanced, and exactly the reason why such lists, when long, get hived off.
 * Fair, though I'm not sure what "balance" accomplishes. If you're reading a book, do you mind if the index and appendices account for half the pages? Not unless it makes for an unwieldy tome, which isn't an issue here. For that matter, splitting it into a separate list would not cut the article substantially, since a decent portion of the publications would still need to be included here. Meanwhile, there are some clear benefits to keeping it as one, such as that everything is in one place, and it makes it easier to see what Bruce-Mitford was doing and working on at every portion of his career--Usernameunique (talk) 18:23, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Glad you agree it's fair, as I'm going to insist on this, the books are fine bu the other stuff is not. Choice is a separate list or a shorter one here. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:44, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
 * We both have strong opinions here, which is not to say that either one is wrong. For my part, however, I would again note that the MOS states that "Lists of published works should be included for authors ... Complete lists of works ... are encouraged, particularly when such lists are not already freely available on the internet." The options are thus not trimming the list vs. bifurcation, but, rather, maintaining the list vs. bifurcation. Meanwhile, I would certainly expect (or at least hope) that an article on a scholar whose notability derives from his published output would include said published output. For similar reasons, many if not most Festschriften and bibliographic obituaries include such a list.
 * But reasonable minds may well disagree. Looking at the talk page for the relevant MOS page, the word "unsuitable" was chosen precisely because of such disagreement; the range of suggestions for the point at which a split was warranted ranged from 5k (the books alone would put us over) to half the length of the article (we're at about a third).
 * With all that said, how about this as a solution: we leave the list in the article for now. After I resolve a few of the lingering issues here (particularly uncited works in the bibliography, and more images), I take the article to FAC, and give you a ping. And if you still think the bibliography should be split, we let others weigh in there. Seem reasonable? --Usernameunique (talk) 20:59, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
 * No, GA ends with the reviewer and one decision box, you can't turn it into a pseudo-FAC because you like that better, best of three or whatever. Chiswick Chap (talk) 03:52, 14 October 2023 (UTC)


 * The list of Books (and any other works we agree to leave in the list here) could be reduced in dullness a little by replacing "Bruce-Mitford, Rupert" from all but the first entry with an "|author-mask=" (yes, there's a parameter for that in the Cite templates), such as "—————"; I find it works well at making a list of works look cohesive.
 * Done. To be honest, though, it doesn't look as streamlined as I was hoping. --Usernameunique (talk) 03:12, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, it is an improvement (thank you) but all the "Edited..." notes do intrude somewhat. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:36, 3 October 2023 (UTC)


 * The thumbnail of Folio 74r of the Ashmole Bestiary works very poorly: I couldn't make out those were eagles until I enlarged the thing. You might like to consider using a cropped image (using Commons's CropTool, it's on the menu on the left of the page in Commons, and is easy to use); or enlarging the thumbnail, or both.
 * Done. I was unsure at first—I kind of liked the idea of seeing the book spread open (as Bruce-Mitford would have first encountered it), and wasn't sure the resolution would be much of an improvement—but boy, were you right. It looks much better. --Usernameunique (talk) 18:31, 10 October 2023 (UTC)


 * The caption for the Sutton Hoo helmet should indicate the RBM connection.
 * Done. Long term, I'd like to get a more Bruce-Mitford-centric photo there... --Usernameunique (talk) 02:16, 3 October 2023 (UTC)


 * I'm not convinced the heading "Organisations" is appropriate; from RBM's point of view, the subject of the section would be "Appointments" or "Board memberships" or some such.
 * I ended up incorporating the material into the rest of the article and removing the standalone section; it did't quite work by itself, especially as some of his other memberships were already in the rest of the article. --Usernameunique (talk) 01:33, 11 October 2023 (UTC)


 * I confess I'm allergic to the use of "would" in biographies, especially as it appears to have two quite different meanings: "BM would take the tram to the British Museum", for instance, means "BM habitually took the tram..." (and that's the wording I'd suggest for such instances); while "he would obtain a Master of Arts in 1961" means "he went on to obtain..." or (simpler and better) "he obtained...", which again is how I'd suggest you reword instances of that type.
 * Reworded a bunch of these. --Usernameunique (talk) 02:11, 3 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Not keen on the use of "per" in "This, per Biddle, was 'the greatest collection of horology in the world'". Better is "Biddle writes that this was ..."
 * Changed to "wrote Biddle". --Usernameunique (talk) 23:03, 29 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Not sure that "agnostic to the issues" is right here; we don't want to say the MMA didn't know (gnosis=knowledge), but that it didn't care, which is not the same thing.
 * Changed to "untroubled by". --Usernameunique (talk) 23:08, 29 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Spot-checks are fine.


 * The images all seem to be properly licensed on Commons.

Well, that's about it. As I said, I'd cheerfully pass this article without further ado, but it's always best to ask a few questions first. Great work! Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:57, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
 * , you've obviously seen that I'm working on incorporating your good insights, but I just wanted to belatedly thank you for the review. I'll try to finish up shortly. --Usernameunique (talk) 01:08, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks again for the review,, and apologies for taking some time to respond to it all. All issues have now been responded to. --Usernameunique (talk) 21:01, 13 October 2023 (UTC)