User talk:Parrot of Doom/Archives/2016/October

Today's featured article/November 5, 2016
Hi Parrot, here's another one of your FAC nominations at TFA, I'm working on the TFA text now. I've got it down to 1185; the hard cap is 1200 characters, and I usually don't go as high as 1185, but I wanted to leave it as intact as possible because I know the exact wording can be contentious in these articles. Please check the text to see if it's acceptable. - Dank (push to talk) 19:36, 22 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the help, I reworded it. See what you think - there were a few changes you'd made that might not be historically accurate. Parrot of Doom 08:21, 23 October 2016 (UTC)


 * "was captured and fined, after which he sold his estate at Chastleton": I reworded as "forced to sell his estate at Chastleton to pay a large fine". I don't think the typical reader will interpret your wording to mean he sold his estate on a whim, I think you're inviting them to make the connection to the fine ... that is, they'll understand the meaning as I phrased it, so if that's incorrect, it needs to be fixed in the lead.
 * For the other changes you made, if my wording reflected historical inaccuracies, that's a problem, because I was following the lead (and the article text, in a couple of places). If the lead needs work, please let me know, and I'll come back to this after you've rewritten. Otherwise, if something is inaccurate, please point it out.
 * "5 November 1605": It's customary at TFA to put any anniversary in the first or second sentence. That answers one of the first questions readers are likely to have, namely: why am I reading this?
 * (My wording) "His family were prominent recusant Catholics. ... after [James I] exiled priests and reimposed fines on recusants": I was disappointed you removed this, as it fixes the non sequitur (in the minds of readers who don't already know the story) of saying that he wanted to blow the king up because he was "disappointed" or because the king was "less tolerant".
 * "Catesby was educated in Oxford, but left college prematurely. Although he married a Protestant, in 1598, following the deaths of his father and his wife, he may have reverted to Catholicism.": I just don't think we have the space. We're working with a cap of 1200 characters, and to say everything we need to say to get the readers up to speed, I think we need to lose anything not essential to the story. Having, and losing, an estate is a big deal, and is relevant to motives. Being a member of a religion whose members are being exiled and fined by the state is a big deal. Dropping out of college is not as important as some of the other things. (We might have room for it, but I'd rather tackle everything else first). The lead suggests that he objected to the targeting of Catholics, that he took it personally, and that he reached out to Catholics for his plot. That's "Catholic" enough, at least for the short TFA text; we don't need to know exactly how Catholic he was. - Dank (push to talk) 13:27, 23 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Honestly, it's things like this that make me not care about Wikipedia. Do what you like. Parrot of Doom 17:21, 23 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm ready to engage if you are. I know Wikipedia hasn't always been kind to you, and I'll do what I can, but my job is to maintain standards at TFA. - Dank (push to talk) 17:42, 23 October 2016 (UTC)