Wikipedia:Peer review/Papal conclave/archive1

Papal conclave
I've listed this article for peer review because I'd like to see if we could possibly get it to FA again after more than a decade, and I've never done an FA before. Personally I have some concerns on the sourcing as I recognize a few unreliable or self-published sources in the list (Guruge and Miranda in particular), but I am pretty good at sorting out reliability of sourcing on religious history articles myself. The thing I am looking for is seeing what would be needed to bring this up to FA standards.

Thanks, TonyBallioni (talk) 16:31, 3 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Hi Tony. "for almost a thousand years" wouldn't cut much mustard with many historians. Ceoil (talk) 17:29, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Removed. I don't have access to the Baumgartner article it is cited to, but his book on conclaves certainly doesn't make that claim, so I suspect it is unlikely he made the claim as presented in the article. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:58, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Tony, that level of vagueness would be a fatal red flag at FAC. I would comp for similar issues. Over all however, very nice work. Ceoil (talk) 18:10, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Ceoil, I wish I could claim credit, but it is not my work at all. Its been GA for years and I have been working on other specific conclave articles, and thought it might be worth trying to get the general topic to FA. Having never done one before, I thought peer review might be the best place to start to see what needs cleaning up in the article :) TonyBallioni (talk) 18:14, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Grand. I'm not seeing commitment here so advise against FAC. Ceoil (talk) 19:26, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
 * No, there certainly is commitment to the topic. I just have no idea where to begin on such a significant article that has been at GA status for over a decade and hasn't had any talk page conversation in three years. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:31, 3 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Comments by jfhutson

I can't commit to much right now as I'm busy irl, but here are a few comments.
 * This seems to focus on the process. I think to be comprehensive (a FAC requirement) you need to give a history of the actual conclaves. I'm not sure how you would want to do that, whether integrating it in with the history of the development of the system or as a separate section, but I was expecting to learn at least a summary about the conclaves.
 * Since you're looking for where to start, I would echo what you said about sourcing. Check out some good books and order some good articles, and hopefully that will give you direction. --JFH (talk) 14:39, 4 September 2017 (UTC)


 * There's already a history of the conclaves. The article as a whole is pretty comprehensive. To add more detail, it would probably be necessary to create a new article, to prevent this one becoming too long. Richard75 (talk) 11:08, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I went through the article and it almost covers each and everything. History section is bit short.Jeromeenriquez (talk) 14:43, 30 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Comments by Spintendo

There are a handful of additional sources the article could make use of that aren't already listed:

 Dissertations 





 Books 









 Journal articles 



— Spin tendo Talk 15:00, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

Just drive-by comments from me, I'm afraid: the topic is miles away from such areas of expertise as I may have, though I'll give the article a closer scrutiny if the nominator wishes me to. It certainly reads well, I think, from a cursory skim-through. I hope these few points are helpful, and if you would like my extremely inexpert comments on the content of the article I will gladly look in again. –  Tim riley  talk    22:39, 23 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Comments from Tim riley
 * Duplicate links: we are supposed to limit ourselves to one link to any other article from the lead and one in the main text. I didn't check systematically, but I spotted five links to Pope Benedict XVI and four to Paul VI. "Urbi et orbi" is linked twice in two sentences. I imagine there are other examples, and you need to check this carefully.
 * Also on links, we are meant to put the link in at the first mention, and there are five references to Pope Francis before he turns blue (in the seventh para of "Acceptance and proclamation").
 * Spelling: as far as I can see, BrE spelling – centre, criticised, neighbouring, recognise etc – is used throughout except for the section "Smoke colors", where apart from the AmE heading, we also have "color" and "colored" in the text.
 * The Manual of Style bids us capitalise titles when applied to a person but not when used generically, so "Cardinal Smith" but "the cardinals", "The Pope" or "Pope Paul" but "popes". Mostly you observe this, but I noticed "The Cardinals will also sing " and "both these Popes", and there may be other such cases.
 * I would not, for my part, have added the "By whom" tags, but they are not unreasonable, and it would be wise, and I assume fairly easy, as each already has a citation to a source, to expand each of the six statements to say who was criticising or describing. Likewise for the two "citation needed" tags.