Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of Stewards of the Manor of Northstead/archive1


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

The list was not promoted by User:The Rambling Man 15:45, 17 September 2008.

List of Stewards of the Manor of Northstead
I'm nominating this list, which I feel is an excellent Featured candidate, with an interesting subject and an excellent layout (although i'm hardly the most neutral person to judge that). Over the last two weeks i've built it from the ground up in my sandbox (compare before and after.) I've completed the list, created articles for every Member of Parliament who is present and put paragraphs after each date heading detailing particularly interesting resignations, as well as a little column to display which party the resigning MP was a member of. Ironholds 10:54, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Comments
 * Current ref 1 (O'Donoghue) needs a last access date.
 * Current ref 2 (A New England?) needs at the least a publisher and last access date. This is a book? It should be formatted as such with an author, etc.
 * What is "Baston, (2004)? I don't see another reference by that author listed? References need at least title, publisher and page numbers, and need authors, etc. when known.
 * Current ref 4 needs a last access date (BBC)
 * Is current ref 5 a book or a magazine article? Titles in " "'s usually means a journal article. Also, you should list it with the author's last name first to fit the other references.
 * Otherwise sources look okay. Links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:25, 30 August 2008 (UTC)


 * All done. Last access dates, ISBN's, so on; the whole kit and kaboodle. Ironho</b><b style="color:#696969">ld</b><b style="color:#000">s</b> 14:53, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Comments - I thoroughly enjoyed reading this article, but I have several concerns to be resolved before I could support it as a featured list:
 * It's not obvious why the tables are separated by date. Is there some historical significance to the dates 1885, 1900, 1918, 1931, etc., or were these chosen simply for convenience? Clearly, some of these years had general elections, but not all general elections are used as subdivisions. If there were changes in the procedures or other circumstances at these dates, say so. Otherwise, the article organization seems odd.
 * It was like that when I got it; I appreciate it's a poor excuse. I've contacted the user/admin who styled the original page asking why it is so. <b style="color:#D3D3D3">Ir</b><b style="color:#A9A9A9">on</b><b style="color:#808080">ho</b><b style="color:#696969">ld</b><b style="color:#000">s</b> 21:03, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * It's also not obvious why the general elections of 1885, 1900, etc., are entries in the table.
 * See above <b style="color:#D3D3D3">Ir</b><b style="color:#A9A9A9">on</b><b style="color:#808080">ho</b><b style="color:#696969">ld</b><b style="color:#000">s</b> 21:03, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I think there is too much detail here about some of the specific resignations, notably those of James, Beresford, Hastings, and Belcher. Presumably the scandals related to these resignations are covered amply in other articles; it seems unnecessary to provide full treatment in this list article. (Indeed, I wonder whether it might be possible for the table(s) to include notes about the reason for each MP's resignation.)
 * I thought that it might be interesting, and a good way of dividing up endless tables with interesting notes and pictures. Including a notes column might be awkward in terms of the width of the page. <b style="color:#D3D3D3">Ir</b><b style="color:#A9A9A9">on</b><b style="color:#808080">ho</b><b style="color:#696969">ld</b><b style="color:#000">s</b> 21:03, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The descriptions of the specific resignations lack necessary context. I am particularly bothered by the way the "Before 1885" section begins ("A prominent resignation during this period of time was..."), since the only information the article has given me on the "period of time" is the section heading.
 * Should be solved by the decision of above discussion. <b style="color:#D3D3D3">Ir</b><b style="color:#A9A9A9">on</b><b style="color:#808080">ho</b><b style="color:#696969">ld</b><b style="color:#000">s</b> 21:03, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The References section should be subdivided to identify "Index of Appointees to the stewardships of the Manor of Northstead and Chiltern Hundreds since 1850" as a "General" reference, while the numbered entries are "Notes." (For an example of this, see List of sister cities in Florida.) --Orlady (talk) 19:48, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * What do you mean? So the Index is a seperate section to everything else, or do you want notes as to where each name appears in the document. <b style="color:#D3D3D3">Ir</b><b style="color:#A9A9A9">on</b><b style="color:#808080">ho</b><b style="color:#696969">ld</b><b style="color:#000">s</b> 21:03, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * My thought was that the References section could be subdivided into two subsections: (1) "General", to hold the one reference that appears to have been the primary source for most of the article, and (2) "Notes" or "Specific" or something similar, to hold the footnoted reference citations. This type of split has been used in other lists (as well as non-list articles); List of sister cities in Florida is one example. Additional examples are New York Yankees seasons and List of Archbishops of Canterbury. --Orlady (talk) 00:10, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Fair enough, that should be easy enough to do; i'll get onto it now. I'm going to post BrownHairedGirl's response below (about why the tables are so divided)
 * Right, done. <b style="color:#D3D3D3">Ir</b><b style="color:#A9A9A9">on</b><b style="color:#808080">ho</b><b style="color:#696969">ld</b><b style="color:#000">s</b> 09:46, 15 September 2008 (UTC)


 * BrownHairedGirl's response
 * I thought that it would me more useable if divided up, and that general elections marked the logical dividing points, but that a section per Parliament was both too fine a division and too uneven. So in this edit I tried to choose elections which would divide the list into roughly equal chunks.
 * Where possible, I also tried to use elections which of themselves marked some sort of turning point, hence 1979 (beginning of the Thatcher era), 1918 (end of WWI, big extension of the franchise), 1885 (another franchise extension). Some points where a section break seemed appropriate didn't offer quite such a clearcut historical turning point, and 1900, 1931 and 1950 are not such clear points. I'll try to explain why I chose the dates I did, but I know that there was no clear standout date in those cases:
 * 1900 election wasn't of itself anywhere near as critical a point as 1906, but I chose it as the turn of the century and because it split the 1885-1918 period more neatly.
 * Some split was needed around 1930, leaving a choice between 19229 and 1931. Of the two, 1931 seemed marginally more significant as a change of era, because it ushered in 14 years of national govt.
 * Therefter, 1945 was much more of a political turning point than the alternative split point of 1950 general election, but 1950 privided a more even split. It a handy round number, but it also marked a major set of boundary changes, which seems relevant to MPs.

I've merged it all to one table, added a resignations column (about which i'm open to alternative wording suggestions) and seperated the refs. The merging now allows TRM's sorting suggestion, although I worry that might make it a bit table-heavy. <b style="color:#D3D3D3">Ir</b><b style="color:#A9A9A9">on</b><b style="color:#808080">ho</b><b style="color:#696969">ld</b><b style="color:#000">s</b> 11:51, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.