Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Joe Warbrick/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Sarastro1 via FACBot (talk) 22:14, 6 May 2017.

Joe Warbrick

 * Nominator(s): Shudde  talk 19:07, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

This article is about the rugby union footballer who conceived of, selected, again captained the 1888–89 New Zealand Native football team that toured New Zealand, Australia and the British Isles. They averaged a game every 2.3 days while in Britain -- a ridiculous number -- and frequently had to field injured players just to compete with a full complement. The team was truly pioneering and consequently Warbrick was probably one of the most influential players of the 19th century. The article has been though GAC, FAC, and I've had the valuable feedback of a number of editors. I believe it's ready for FAC and look forward to any comments. Shudde talk 19:07, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Support Sirpottingmix (talk) 22:10, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Comments reading through now...Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 21:40, 15 April 2017 (UTC)
 * The match was very ill-tempered, with each side accusing the other of rough play - do we need the "very" here?
 * exasperated his foot injury. - you mean, "exacerbated his foot injury", right?
 * I think it is worth putting a line in about the win/loss record of the England trip as reading it one is left wondering....

Otherwise looks ok. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 21:49, 15 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I've addressed those comments. I appreciate you taking the time to give it a read. -- Shudde  talk 06:47, 16 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Hence, support on comprehensiveness and prose. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 11:56, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Support on prose Comments by Finetooth
 * I'm commenting as an outsider to rugby, which I have never played. Despite that, the jargon of the game seems clear to me in the article, and I find Warbrick's story interesting and its abrupt ending painful to contemplate. I made quite a few minor copyedits as I went. Please revert any you disagree with. Here are further suggestions and questions:


 * Lede
 * "In 1888 Warbrick conceived of, selected, and captained the privately funded New Zealand Native team." – This closely mirrors part of the first sentence: "later captained and selected the 1888–89 New Zealand Native football team". Eliminate the repetition?
 * I have tried something. It's not drastic, as I like the opening sentence of an article to firmly establish why a subject is notable. But hopefully my changes reduce the repetition a bit.
 * "He played for Auckland against the first overseas team to tour the country – New South Wales – in 1882. – Rather than using an Easter egg link, I'd suggest recasting to something like "In 1882, he played for Auckland against the first overseas team, the New South Wales Waratahs, to tour New Zealand."
 * I don't think it's too much of an Easter egg, but unfortunately I can't use Waratahs to disambiguate. New South Wales didn't pick up the moniker the Waratahs until a 1927–28 tour. The team in 1882 was actually known as the "Cornstalks"! I have tried to reword.
 * Background and early career
 * "... ,but eventually included several New Zealand-born, and foreign-born, Europeans... – Delete the three commas for better flow?
 * Done.
 * "Joe Warbrick was their third of five children." – Smoother would be "Joe Warbrick was the third of their five children."
 * Done
 * " His father married again after Joe Warbrick's mother died, and had a further seven children." – More clear would be "After Joe Warbrick's mother died, his father re-married and had seven more children."
 * Done
 * "at St Stephen's Native School in Bombay" – Readers from afar may mistake this for Bombay, India, at first. Maybe "in the former town of Bombay in the Bombay Hills of New Zealand"?
 * I've played with this, hopefully acceptable now.
 * "By 1879 he was living in Wellington, and represented the the province three times that season." – Rather than the Easter egg link to "the province", I'd suggest saying "represented Wellington province as a member of the Wellington Rugby Football Union".
 * Your suggestion doesn't quite work, but I've tried something. See what you think.
 * "New South Wales" became − Another Easter egg. Better as "The New South Wales Waratahs became".
 * I think in this case it should be too much of an Easter egg, as it's referring to them as an overseas team and not a state or colony.
 * Agreed. Finetooth (talk) 16:18, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Preparations
 * "whose national side had already developed a strong rivalry" − Another Easter egg. I'd suggest saying, "whose national side had already developed a strong rivalry known as The Ashes" rather than surprising the reader with the unexpected.
 * The rivalry is not known as the Ashes (unfortunately). So I have tried a note instead.
 * "publican" – I would suggest "pub owner" to avoid confusion with Roman tax collector, another kind of publican.
 * Publican is a very common term in New Zealand English. I doubt too many people, in the context of the article, will think he was Roman tax collector.
 * OK. "Publican" is not common everywhere, but I agree that readers will probably get the drift from context. Finetooth (talk) 16:28, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Retirement and later life
 * "Warbrick accompanied her and when they moved into position, barely two minutes after the party had moved, the geyser erupted killing them all." — I can't be sure whether this means two minutes after she and Joe moved or whether it means that the whole party moved closer to the geyser. Would it be better and still accurate to say, "Warbrick accompanied her, and barely two minutes later the geyser erupted and killed the entire party."?
 * Yes. Changed.
 * Impact and legacy
 * A short film, Warbrick, was released in 2009..." – Any idea who made the film or released it? Finetooth (talk) 18:21, 16 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes. Added some information. Also added a link to the film online.
 * Good addition. Using the link, I watched the film just now, which added to my appreciation of the difficulty of the sport. Finetooth (talk) 16:54, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your comments and edits. I checked through them and they're all very positive so thanks a lot. Hopefully I've addressed all your comments. Cheers. -- Shudde  talk 11:46, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
 * You are welcome. Very interesting article. I'm switching to support on prose, as noted above. Finetooth (talk) 16:54, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Comment The article mentions Warbrick playing against Tynemouth, but the link points to Tynedale RFC. The latter club are based in Corbridge, which is inland, a fair way from Tynemouth - could you check back with your source and see which it should be? There is no article for a Tynemouth club and none seems to exist now, but there could well have been in 1888. --Bcp67 (talk) 20:27, 21 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your comment. That's very well spotted. The source says that they played Tynemouth in North Shields on 7 November 1888. I'm not sure if the club still exists but havn't been able to find anything. For now I've removed the link. -- Shudde  talk 07:17, 22 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Support my issues, mainly trivial, addressed, good article, nice work (and a pleasure to work with the nominator on the tweaks). The Rambling Man (talk) 20:16, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Image review
ALT text seems good for me, and each image seems to be in a pertinent section. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 11:57, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
 * File:StateLibQld 1 188931 New Zealand native Rugby Union team, prior to a match at Lord Sheffield's Park in 1888.jpg: Might need a bit more detail on what kind of research was done to ascertain the author, and a fix for the broken link.
 * I have not been able to fix this broken link. This image was uploaded by a bot apparently from a collection by the Queensland State Library. The description and most of the information (categories aside) uploaded by the bot are consistent with other descriptions left with other copies of this photograph. Both the link included in the source, and the information included in the book Forerunners of the All Blacks (as per the description page) state that the date and location of the photograph are not certain, let alone who the photographer was. I'm not sure what else I can include as I've not been able to find any further information on the photo and it's possible photographer. This image was checked at a previous FAC (see here) so I am pretty confident (but not 100% certain) that the source link has not always been dead. --  Shudde  talk 17:07, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
 * ? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:43, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
 * The file has an alternative source and detailed additional information (I tagged the first link as dead in the description). That's sufficient information on its origin, especially for such an old photo. The unknown author is also only a minor issue - according to the image description a reasonable effort was made to look into this aspect. In short: both details would be good to have, but the image's copyright status is reasonably ascertained even without them (imo). On a sidenote, the photo's age is an advantage here. Would it be 20-30 years younger, it would be more difficult to argue for it. Hope these additional details help - I'd pass this image as OK. GermanJoe (talk) 20:45, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
 * File:New Zealand Natives football team black and white cropped.jpg: License seems sound to me.
 * File:Auckland rugby union touring team 1883 - cropped.jpg: Ditto
 * File:Joseph Warbrick, rugby player.jpg: Same, despite the complexity.
 * Thanks for that! -- Shudde  talk 17:07, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks . Hopefully this addresses your concerns ? --  Shudde  talk 17:59, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Seems like. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 18:33, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Source review – The nominator asked me for a review on my talk page, and it looks like this area in particular is what still needs attention. I went through the sources carefully, and other than a few minor formatting issues that should be simple to fix, everything looks good. This is what I found:
 * A link-checker inspection revealed that the links are in working order.
 * All of the sources appear to be reliable enough to meet FA's "high-quality" criterion.
 * The last reference in the list shows its publisher as ESPN. Shouldn't this be ESPNcricinfo instead, as that is the site where the article appears, not the main ESPN site?
 * Yes I think I've been told before (at a pervious FAC maybe) that this is correct. However it's technically "ESPN Sports Media Ltd" and I suppose the "work" is ESPNcricinfo. So I've gone and changed it. Hopefully this is correct. -- Shudde  talk 18:08, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
 * The Gallagher and Irvine references should have their publishers italicized, since they are print publications. If you don't want to use the newspaper= parameter of the cite templates (as those are the only news sources that aren't from newspaper archives), work= does the job just fine.
 * Time for a slightly annoying one: the ISBN numbers should all be of consistent length and style. This means that they should all be either 10 or 13 digits; WP:ISBN says that the longer style is preferred. To make achieving consistency easier, you can plug the numbers into this converter, which will even hyphenate the ISBNs if you want.
 * Am I correct in assuming that the McCarthy and Swan books are too old for ISBNs?
 * Yes they are unfortunately. -- Shudde  talk 18:08, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
 * In the Other section, I see two instances each of New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage and Ministry for Culture and Heritage as publishers. Pick one style and stick with it consistently. Giants2008  ( Talk ) 21:38, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks a lot for that. I really appreciate it. Hopefully everything has been addressed. -- Shudde  talk 18:08, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
 * All of the changes look fine to me. Giants2008  ( Talk ) 21:20, 3 May 2017 (UTC)


 * I was asked to comment here by Shudde. I actually gave this a look over before it was nominated and made a few suggestions at my talk page. Reading it again the only sentence that comes across poorly is He was killed in 1903 after him and the party he was guiding had ventured too close to the Waimangu Geyser and it erupted showering the group with superheated water. The rest seems fine. AIR corn (talk) 06:24, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your comment. Yeah it was rewritten after a request from another reviewer. I have tried instead "In 1903 he was killed along with several others by an eruption of the Waimangu Geyser." What do you think? -- Shudde  talk 18:55, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Sarastro1 (talk) 22:14, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.