Talk:Crewe Hall/GA1

GA Review

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I'll have a look at this article as soon as I get the time, hopefully in a couple of days. From a quick glance it looks excellent though, should be a smooth process. Lampman (talk) 13:57, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Lampman. I'm away for the next few days, so I will only be able to address your comments from Monday. Regards, Espresso Addict (talk) 16:33, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Here is my review. Generally a very good article, but a few things that I would like to see fixed:

General:

• The Oxford DNB references (and also the Audley and District Family History Society one) have excessive linking which includes the author and work. Only the article title should be linked. For DNB I like to use {{Template:Cite encyclopedia}}, which I think give the best presentation.

I've fixed these using the citation template, to avoid mixing cite & citation templates.

History:

• "held the manor jointly with Barthomley": as far as I can see, Barthomley has not been mentioned as a surname up until this point, only a place.

Barthomley is a place not a surname; I've rephrased the sentence in an attempt to avoid this confusion.

• The caption "Sir Joshua Reynolds (c. 1775)" could give the uninformed the impression that the portrait shows Reynolds. This seems to be John Crewe, 2nd Baron Crewe, who is not mentioned in the article, but has his own article. Perhaps something like "John Crewe, 2nd Baron Crewe, as a child, by Sir Joshua Reynolds (c. 1775)"

I've restored the original legend (the text was hidden by a botched wikilink).

• "the Potteries": this term needs a wikilink or an explanation.

I've wikilinked as Staffordshire Potteries.

Main hall:

• There are some technical architectural terms here that need wikilinking, I'm thinking particularly of the sentence "balustraded parapet at eaves level".

I'm cautious of overlinking, but have wikilinked a number of terms where a suitable article exists. There are several terms which would be useful to link but where I could find no article that adequately addresses the sense in this article [centrepiece, light, spirelet, High Victorian, Jacobean (applied to interior), panelling, screen, gallery, Plenty, parlour, medalion, choir gallery]. I've avoided linking many terms which are in common usage (eg arch, storey), and also avoided relinking terms repeated under the 2nd level heading.

• "Green Men carving": wikilinking

Done.

• "Elements, Graces and Virtues" and "Time rewarding Industry and punishing Sloth": since this does not refer to the everyday terms, but to iconography, the terms should be wikilinked. The best fits I was able to find were Classical element, Charites, Seven virtues or Cardinal virtues, Father Time, Sloth (deadly sin), Diligence.

I've linked all of these but diligence, where I didn't feel the suggested article added very much.

I wasn't happy about diligence either, there should probably be an article on Industry as a cardinal virtue.

Appendices:

• "See also" goes above "Notes and references", per Wikipedia:LAYOUT.

Done.

That's about it, hope it won't cause too much trouble, let me know when you want me to have another look! Lampman (talk) 17:12, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your very rapid and helpful comments, Lampman -- I hope I've addressed them adequately. Espresso Addict (talk) 19:05, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Comments

• Re: Lampman's suggestion to use {{cite encyclopedia}}. The {{citation}} and {{cite}} families of templates ought not to be mixed in an article.

• Some parts of the text are squeezed between left- and right-aligned images.

--Malleus Fatuorum 01:58, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I know they insist on that at FAC because the citations will appear slightly different. The problem is that {{citation}} is hopelessly restrictive, and difficult to use with such publications as DNB. Anyway, my point was that first- and last name of author, title of article/chapter, title of book, and date of publication must be separate parameters, not all lumped together in "title".

As for the images, that can be a problem on smaller screens. On the other hand, it could be hard to avoid since this is an article that relies on a high number of illustrations to properly visualise the subject. You might be able to solve it by using {{multiple image}} to combine images that have a natural coherence. Lampman (talk) 14:23, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

It is not at all difficult to use {{citation}} for an ODNB article, or any other encyclopedia article.

You're right, I wasn't familiar with those parameters, cheers! Lampman (talk) 19:01, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

As I mentioned in my response to Lampman, I've stuck with the citation template for consistency. The image placement/sizing, as I'm sure you appreciate, is a delicate balance between the images being sufficiently large to be useful without having to click on them, legends fitting without running over too many lines, images being placed near the text that refers to them, large images going on the right, subheadings not running round images, &c&c. I've had another go at the layout giving a higher priority to reducing the text-squeezing effect, but there's a cost to all the other factors. I'm not sure that much more can be done without deleting one or more of the images, which I'm loathe to do unless you feel the article is going to be hard to read on low-resolution screens. Espresso Addict (talk) 19:19, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I understand the problem. I think that with what you've done the image aligment is probably OK now. I certainly wouldn't be complaining about it now if I was the reviewer anyway.

I think it's a nice article, Support ... oops, wrong review process. :lol: --Malleus Fatuorum 19:32, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I have no more objections, so I'll pass the article now. Good work, and thanks to MF for input! Lampman (talk) 19:55, 23 February 2009 (UTC)