Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/Master of the Rolls/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 promoted by Dabomb87 16:03, 22 November 2009.

Master of the Rolls

 * Nominator(s): Ironholds (talk) 20:14, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured list because I feel it meets the standards required. Ironholds (talk) 20:14, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Hope these brief comments help. Perhaps more later. BencherliteTalk 21:01, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Quick-fire comments, in no particular order
 * You need to fix the sorting of the "period" column, as it doesn't work properly at the moment.
 * Fixed by removing sorting; that was my original intent, but the coding didn't work.
 * Fair enough, since it would only have duplicated the first column sorting anyway. BencherliteTalk 11:01, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
 * How about marking with symbols, or symbols and colours, those MRs who have also served as LCJ, or LC? (Sorry, Lord Chief Justice / Lord Chancellor, for those non-lawyers reading this!)
 * Hmn, could do. Green for LC (my little joke, lets see if anyone gets it) and red for LCJ? Ironholds (talk) 17:42, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
 * See below.
 * "Formerly the Lord Chancellor was the most senior legal judge in the land, but the judicial roles of the Lord Chancellor have now been removed as a result of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005." If you need this, and I'm not sure at the moment, I think you should clarify "in the land", and perhaps place it later in the lead - it's a bit unduly prominent at present.
 * Removed. Ironholds (talk) 17:42, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
 * who are officers of the Supreme Court – the Supreme Court of Judicature has now been renamed, in a dose of pure management-speak, to the Senior Courts of England of Wales ; see in particular Schedule 11, part 4, para 21 (gosh how dull am I...)
 * Indeed, to make way for the SCOTUK, I believe? If you're changing the name from House of Lords to avoid confusing people, having two courts called the Supreme Court is not really a vast improvement. I can understand their thinking. It seems somebody has already changed it to Superior Courts. In regards to dullness, I spent this morning in a discussion about poorly written statutes with my equity and trusts lecturer and said, straight-facedly, that "in my opinion the most poorly crafted section of any statute is Section 2 Clause C of the Wills Act 1963". Methinks I need to get out in the fresh air more. Ironholds (talk) 17:42, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
 * You say "Lord Clarke", but "Baron Neuberger". I'd suggest "Lord" each time.
 * Changed, and agreed. Ironholds (talk) 17:42, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Numbers 8, 21, 53 and 86 have dodgy dash spacing
 * Fixed.
 * Numbers 53 and 54 need their names piping
 * Piping? Ironholds (talk) 17:42, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
 * My mistake, I missed the Civil War overlap. BencherliteTalk 11:01, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
 * List of recipients?
 * Sorry, copied from one of my other FLs. You think that's bad, through one mistyping after a copy and paste I claimed that the Advertisements (Hire-Purchase) Act 1957 was actually the Divorce (Insanity and Desertion) Act 1958. Woops. Ironholds (talk) 17:42, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
 * The title "Head of Civil Justice" predates the 2005 reforms - it was brought in by the 2003 Courts Act, s 62, and the title is not necessarily limited to holders of the post of MR. Off the top of my head, I can't say if all holders of the title since 2003 have been MRs or not.
 * Removed; was present before my rewrite, I think. Ironholds (talk) 17:42, 29 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Ironholds, have you addressed these comments? Dabomb87 (talk) 23:46, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I've left him a reminder of this FLC. BencherliteTalk 14:41, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Crapsticks, forgot to watchlist it - my apologies. I'll get on to these points originally; my thanks to Bencherlite. Ironholds (talk) 17:35, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

OK, it's looking a bit better now. Further suggestions:
 * Instead of marking LC/LCJs, a column with brief notes e.g. Tom Bingham: "Lord Chief Justice 1996–2000; Senior Law Lord 2000–2008".
 * Done. Ironholds (talk) 10:57, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Some photos?
 * Will try and find. It was in my original idea, can't remember why I didn't do it. I'm thinking a row of photos going vertically down the right hand side. Thoughts? Ironholds (talk) 19:11, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Done. Ironholds (talk) 10:57, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I think the lead needs more flesh to it. After all, there is no other article about the office or its holders, so the more you can say, the better. BencherliteTalk 11:01, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
 * A former MR was kind enough to write an academic article on the office a few decades back, I'll dig it out of my external HDD archive. Ironholds (talk) 19:11, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Dug out, added a bit. The judicial websites are unfortunately not too revealing :(. Ironholds (talk) 12:35, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Comment The images need alt text per WP:ALT. Dabomb87 (talk) 02:58, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Dabs; please check the disambiguation links identified in the toolbox. Dabomb87 (talk) 00:49, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Done. Ironholds (talk) 10:26, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
 * There's still one dab link showing up in the toolbox. Dabomb87 (talk) 01:05, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Done. Ironholds (talk) 03:53, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Done. Ironholds (talk) 04:00, 6 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Support assuming the points noted below are addressed. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:10, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Sorry not to revisit the list after your improvements. I think that the photographs and the notes column are useful improvements; two minor points are that I think you need to confirm that your references verify the additional notes, for completeness, and as it's a sortable list, the offices e.g. LCJ need to be wikilinked each time. I think I mentioned on your talk page that I've got Denning's biography, which has some comments about the role of the MR (or at least the way Denning treated the office), which might interest you.
 * Further comments from Bencherlite

You may have missed it, but there was a big kerfuffle about red-linked items in lists recently, which ended up with the existing wording "a minimal proportion of red links" being kept. As I agitated against the removal of that criterion there, I suppose I ought to raise the issue here lest I be accused of favouritism! As Masters of the Rolls, all of the names would pass the notability threshold in principle, I would have thought. I know that the missing names don't have biographies in the ODNB, but do you know whether the missing names are completely unknown biographically, or could something be written from somewhere else? BencherliteTalk 16:08, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Some of the names are so unknown that the ODNB doesn't have entries (their failure, hah; I could write some with the sourcing I've got, easily), some I just haven't had any time to write, what with other projects occupying much of my attention. I'll link in the notes section tomorrow morning; feel free to email me the work at thedarkthird@hotmail.co.uk. On a slightly unrelated note, getting Denning to FA would be absolutely magnificent. If you've got bios and I've got bios, feel like working on it together at some point? Ironholds (talk) 17:55, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Wikilinked, and added the new references. Ironholds (talk) 19:50, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
 * There's a lot that's good about this list, but I don't think that it's of Featured standard without the missing articles; where articles can be written for such notable people, as you say they can, they really ought to be to represent WP's best work (as per the recent redlinks discussion). So, for me, it currently fails 5(a) since it does not have "a minimal proportion of red links".  Other people's views seem to vary, however, so I won't put anything in "bold type" and I'll leave it to the closing director to assess. BencherliteTalk 15:12, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Will other reviewers comment on how the red links affect their stance? Dabomb87 (talk) 15:40, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Supporting after all my issues have been resolved. I'd like to note that I've thoroughly reviewed the list, in particular for prose quality, source formating, source reliability, image copyright status, image alt text, and general compliance with MOS pages. Right now, the only way I see to further improve the article is by adding more images and removing the red links. Good work!  Good raise  05:49, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Elaborating on the red links as requested above: I will not oppose a list with less than 50% red links. The criterion is simply worded too vaguely for me to demand fewer.  Good raise  16:11, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Comments *In File:LordLindley cropp.jpg, the link to a source is broken.
 * The first sentence in Lindley's caption is a fragment. Mm40 (talk) 12:18, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Fixed the link to here, but will let Ironholds write his own caption! BencherliteTalk 12:22, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The link is still broken for me; it may be a problem on my part, but i doubt it. Mm40 (talk) 01:48, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm willing to let it pass, since I now assume it's an issue on my part if everyone else can access it. Mm40 (talk) 11:50, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I couldn't access it either, but I did a manual search through the VIA and picked up a copy of the new link. I've updated the commons page; it's http://via.lib.harvard.edu/via/deliver/fullRecordDisplay?_collection=via&inoID=243911&recordNumber=4&fullgridwidth=5&method=view&recordViewFormat=grid if you want to check. Ironholds (talk) 19:50, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Support - a nice list, Ironh. Shame I was too lazy to work on it.  Majorly  talk  20:29, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Eh, tis fine. Took me a couple of months to get around to it! Ironholds (talk) 10:44, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.