Wikipedia:Featured article review/George Fox/archive1


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

The article was kept by User:Marskell 11:38, 27 June 2008.

Review commentary

 * WikiProject Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and User talk:69.108.205.8 notified

This was featured in 2004 and appears to be abandoned (original nominator and contributor are no longer active). Minor problems include an insufficient lead. But more importantly, old unreliable sources are used (19th century) in the Harvard references. As for citations, only primary sources (i.e., his autobiography and his journal) are cited which would tend to produce a biased result. This should be written based on scholarly secondary sources like Ingle, mentioned as a useful source, but does not appear to be used at all. I think I can help bring this up to standard (got to check out if I can get some books), but I hope others can help here. --RelHistBuff (talk) 15:25, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Please complete the nomination by following the instructions at the top of WP:FAR to notify significant contributors and relevant WikiProjects, and post the notifications back to the top of this FAR. Thanks! --RegentsPark (talk) 15:45, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I notified the WikiProject. I could post to the nominator, Quadell, and contributor, AlexG, but I assume that would be as useful as notifying Emworth. The top 10 contributors are IP addresses. --RelHistBuff (talk) 15:51, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I see that. Perhaps a note on the IP address discussion pages for 86.158.6.105 would help (assuming that their edits were not trivial). Though I see that when you say 'abandoned' you mean it! (Perhaps adding an invitation to the article talk page - in addition to the notification - would also be useful.) --RegentsPark (talk) 16:00, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I did some cleaning up and in the process I should point out a correction. It turns out that his autobiography and journal are the same. It also appears that an early edition (Jones 1908) was used rather than the more reliable modern edition (Nickalls 1952). So basically the sources for this article are Fox's Journal (1694, Jones edition), Marsh (1847), and Schaff (1914, tertiary source). This means 1c is not satisfied in that it does not use "reliable sources and accurately represent the relevant body of published knowledge." --RelHistBuff (talk) 08:14, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Here's one thing I'm not too clear on: "His education was based around the faith and practice of the Church of England, of which his parents were members; this parish was strongly puritan, in this case Presbyterian." What exactly is being said here? "He was brought up Anglican, but his neighbours were Presbyterian", or "He was brought up as a puritan within the broad umbrella of the Church of England"? DrKiernan (talk) 07:15, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Not clear at all. It sounds contradictory. I took a look in the Journal and Schaff-Herzog and there is nothing about his education being based around either the Church of England or a Presbyterian church. It probably came from a secondary source somewhere. A question before working too heavily on the article. Would you be able to get one of the secondary sources, i.e., Ingle or Wildes? If so, then I will try looking for one of those in the library and then we could try to get the article in shape jointly. If I try to do this by myself, I know that it will take me a few months which is too slow to save it from being FARCed. We could conceivably cover different sections of the article and work simultaneously. --RelHistBuff (talk) 15:00, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I have access to the Jones, Penney and Nickalls versions of the Journal, Ingle's ODNB article (which I've used extensively so far), and Hodgkin's much earlier biography from 1896. I don't have access to either Ingle's book or Wildes. I could get access to other George Fox-specific material as I'm within driving distance of Atherstone and Hinckley local studies libraries but to be blunt I don't want to put myself out! I think splitting the work is a good idea. We could try to use different sources. Again, to be blunt, I don't fancy reading more than one book. We could also try working on it at different times, say me this week, you next week, so we don't bump into each other's edits. Whatever you want really, this is much more your field than mine. DrKiernan (talk) 08:08, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
 * OK, I will hunt for the books on my next trip to the central library. This will take me a couple of weeks as I don't go into town very often. As I don't have access to the ODNB, you could go ahead. If I can get the books, I will add to what you've done. --RelHistBuff (talk) 09:27, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

This article is worth improvement. I thought I'd invest five minutes in the first section, and set off to edit it. I was surprised to see a number of hidden comments, variations on &lt;!--Fox in Nickalls, p.3--&gt;. I'd guess that this means "Fox on p.3 of Nickalls' edition" and I'd be inclined either to convert it into a note or to add it to the adjacent note. But I do neither and instead hit the browser's back button,, because I don't know what motives the person had who either wrote it as a comment or commented it out. What has been going on here? Morenoodles (talk) 09:46, 26 May 2008 (UTC) Struck out by Morenoodles (talk) 07:21, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I am still working on integrating references from Nickalls into the article. DrKiernan (talk) 17:17, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Good job! Morenoodles (talk) 07:21, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

FARC commentary

 * Suggested FA criteria concerns are LEAD (2a) and citations (1c). Marskell (talk) 16:51, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

I see there's been some work. Keep us informed. Marskell (talk) 16:51, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
 * See above. DrKiernan (talk) 17:17, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I managed to get to the library yesterday and I am really sorry to say that the books are unavailable. They do not have Wildes. According to their catalogue, they have Ingle, but they cannot find the book (they have put a search for it). However, in my opinion, with the excellent work done by DrKiernan, this one should be a keep. Normally, it isn't ideal that Fox's autobiography is used as the main source, but I'd rather overlook this as it looks like in good shape right now and perhaps someone from the Quaker Wikiproject will finish the job afterwards. --RelHistBuff (talk) 15:37, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree that using an autobiography as a main source is not ideal, but we are using Fox's journal in an edited form and there are 20 references from a secondary 2004 source. I was also concerned that the sources all seem to be written by Quakers, but I'd rather not resort to using clearly bias works like the Catholic encyclopedia and the article seems neutral to me. I would be happy to keep this. DrKiernan (talk) 11:21, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.