Talk:Egardus/GA1

GA Reassessment

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I will do the GA Reassessment on this article as part of the GA Sweeps project.

One concern is the lead. Per WP:LEAD the lead is to be a summary of the article. The lead is one sentence and hardly a summary of the article.

Ref [10] appears to be the thesis of the article's primary editor. This isn't appropriate per WP:OR. I'd welcome discussion on this point.

Another concern is comprehensiveness, when did he die? Did he marry? I know that there is little biographical information on him, is there anything else that could be added though?

Are there any images that can be added? Not necessarily of the man but anything that could be related to the article.

I will hold the article for one week pending work. H1nkles (talk) 02:15, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is the finest article about this composer on the internet; it exceeds Robert Nosow's article in the New Grove both in length and in depth. It is better than anything else you are going to find, and it was written by the world expert on Egardus. Citing one's own published research is fully in line with our policies. The person who wrote this is a professor of musicology at MIT, and is the world expert on this composer.

You want to know what I think? Either the GA criteria need to be reformed, and that includes having subject matter experts looking over articles prior to assessment, or you should just go ahead and delist it. It's not going to improve, since the world expert on Egardus correctly realized that Wikipedia is unfriendly to experts, and has gone elsewhere. I could improve it, but I have no respect for the GA process, having seen it turn my own articles into an illiterate hash of poorly-digested paraphrases from unrelated sources, and frankly I think it is more valuable to write good articles to an encyclopedic standard, than "Good Articles" to Wikipedia's arbitrary one. Thanks for listening, Antandrus (talk) 04:36, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hear, hear. — This issue really needs to be aired in a wider forum. Cuthbert is not alone, Jerome Kohl often finds himself in a similar position, especially regarding Stockhausen and his works. It is absolutely beyond me how Wikipedia can put a process in place to award GA and other ranks to articles without the requirement of expert knowledge in the subject. Bots are supposedly good at all sorts of things these days; why not let them assess articles? -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 06:28, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Double Hear, hear – Antandrus makes some very salient points here, although I very much doubt anyone at the GA project will take much notice. How do you think this will look to anyone who knows anything about this subject to see that Wikipedia doesn't consider it a "good article"? This is why WikiProject Opera basically boycotts the process now. Voceditenore (talk) 06:34, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Eh, I realize that the "Wikipedia vs. experts" is a very big issue that hurts the project, but could we maybe take this a little bit easier? The GA reviewer was right about the lead, so I expanded it. I also introduced some links and minor formatting changes. The concern about Ref 10 has already been addressed by Antandrus (i.e., this is not OR, as the source has been reviewed by experts and published). As for other problems: H1nkles, there is nothing more known about Egardus, as is noted in the article. The coverage is perfect. Adding an image is problematic, because he did live a long time ago, and 14th or 15th century depictions of Burges, Diksmuide or Sint-Donaaskathedraal (destroyed in 1799) are difficult to find (if they exist at all). Images of manuscripts are even more problematic, naturally. I couldn't find anything on Commons and doubt that we can find anything. --Jashiin (talk) 08:31, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There's an image of the Sint-Donaaskathedraal here but it dates from the 1735. Im not sure what it looked like in the early 1400's, but I suspect pretty similar. I'd be happy to upload it if it's felt worthwhile. Otherwise there's this: File:Brugge - Waterhalle 1294 - 1787.jpg. It dates from 1562 and the cathedral is on the left. Voceditenore (talk) 10:44, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Experience has taught me that one cannot be too careful with them cathedrals and churches (no pun intended). They tend to get destroyed, rebuilt, then destroyed again, or if not destroyed then at least expanded every 50 years or so, etc. Unless there's a good source reporting no major changes to the architecture during 1400–1735, I think the second image would work better.

Oh, and I found that we have two articles on the same cathedral: Sint-Donatius Church and St Donatian's Cathedral. In general, it seems that articles on churches are in a complete disarray, I'm afraid. What shall we do, merge into "St Donatian's"? --Jashiin (talk) 10:54, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I saw that duplicate. I'd say to merge. There's very little in the stub one apart from the map. By the way, the first image of the cathedral by Antonius Sanderus was actually done 1641-1644 - but was from a source published in 1775. It looks no different from the one in the 1562 map. The Dutch Wikipedia article says: "At the end of the 12th century the castle chapel was replaced by a spacious Romanesque Crucifixion with central tower, cloister and chapter house buildings. The 14th century nave and aisle were built in the Gothic style." and mentions no other significant alterations to the building. Voceditenore (talk) 11:09, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In that case I guess either image would work fine. I leave the decision to you. Going to merge the cathedral articles now. --Jashiin (talk) 11:43, 4 June 2009 (UTC) Update: merge completed.[reply]

OT: I don't know whether "crucifixion" also carries this meaning, but to be sure, a kruiskerk is a church with a transept; the same term is used in German as Kreuzkirche. The Dutch Wikipedia seems to be the only one with an article: nl:Kruiskerk and the German Wikipedia mentions it briefly at de:Kreuzkirche. Michael Bednarek (talk) 12:26, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

OT reply. The "crucifixion" was a product of the Google translator.;-) I'm sure the Dutch article was referring to a transept. Anyhow, I'll upload the Sanderus image. Voceditenore (talk) 13:15, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(outdent) Thank you for the above discussion, it shows that there are many editors who are committed to ensuring the quality of the work here at this project. Please also understand that my intent is the same. My comments were given with the motivation of helping the article to become better. The GA Sweeps project was implemented because the GA Criteria was drastically changed in August of 2007 and all of the articles passed through GA prior to this change require a review to ensure that they still meet the new, more stringent criteria. It is evident that this article does and I will gladly keep it at GA. I do hope that the editors will not give up on the GA process as I personally feel that (albeit flawed) it is one of the best ways to ensure a standard for quality among articles. Keep up the good work! H1nkles (talk) 15:02, 9 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]