Talk:Fanny Mendelssohn/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Tim riley (talk · contribs) 08:45, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

Comments after first read-through. Try as I may, I can find little to quibble about, but these are my meagre gleanings:

• Lead

• "Fanny Hensel published a collection of songs as her Opus 1. The next year, she died of a stroke." A particularly perverse reader, e.g. me, might detect some causal connection between these two sentences. Perhaps safer to say "In 1847 she died of a stroke"?

• Early life and education

• Links – I think both or neither of Jewish and Christian should be linked. Neither, probably, I'd say.
• False titles – these are a particular bête noire of mine, and you must ignore me if you take a different view of the question. In my view, in "the son of philosopher Moses Mendelssohn), and Lea, née Salomon, a granddaughter of the entrepreneur Daniel Itzig" the first half would be much improved by giving "philosopher" a definite article to match that of "entrepreneur". Likewise "Musicologist Stephen Rodger", in the Style and form section.

• Felix and Fanny

• –ise -v- ize –"organised by her father" but "never materialized" later in the section.

• Marriage and later life

• In the fourth paragraph, the three citations at the end of the first sentence might perhaps be put in numerical order.
• Ref 41 – the current MoS diktak is that page ranges must have the full page numbers at each end: pp. 95–6 should be pp, 95–96.

• Compositions

• "illustrated by her husband Wilhelm" – could do with a comma before Wilhelm – not that there is any real ambiguity but it's the grammatical distinction between restrictive and non-restrictive: without a comma Wilhelm is one of her several husbands, and with, he is the only one. (The same is true of "their father Abraham" in the first para of Early life and education, but it doesn't seem to stick out so much there, possibly because the notion of two or more fathers doesn't occur to one.)

• Writings

• The three citations would be better in numerical order.

Over to you. I shan't bother to put the review on formal hold for such trivial quibbles. I rather think this article ought to be at FAC rather than GAN, but I'll duly apply the GA criteria when concluding my review. I'm enjoying this, and have learned a lot. Tim riley talk 08:45, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

Many thanks for this, Tim riley. I've made all the revisions you suggest, with the exception of the comma after Wilhelm, (where I have just removed "Wilhelm" instead as it was anyway superfluous). A number of the issues you raised (s/z, false titles) were leftovers from the American college rewrite of the article which I mention in my note below.--Smerus (talk) 14:04, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

Comment by Francis

At Wikipedia:Peer review/Fanny Mendelssohn/archive1#Legacy/reception I posted some suggestions regarding the treatment of legacy and reception topics in the article. Despite an initial promise by Smerus it seems like not much has changed to the article in this department since October last year (when the promise was made). Anyhow, even if some changes were made in the mean while the result today seems imho that my original suggestions have not yet been satisfactorily addressed. --Francis Schonken (talk) 12:17, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

• I undertook to review the content and structure and did so. The article as it stands is the consequence of my thoughts at the time. That involved the deletion of some unsourced and unverifiable opinions (e.g. that recordings got universal good reviews) which had crept in when the article was revised as a project by some US university students. The issues you mention may not I'm afraid have been addressed to your satisfaction, but they were to mine. It's now of course up to the assessor to consider whether this is a factor in their GA assessment. --Smerus (talk) 13:39, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
  • I don't propose to enquire into the content of the peer review. What I am required to do here is to scrutinise the present article and assess it against the GAN criteria, which I hope to do by the end of this weekend. Tim riley talk 16:24, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

Overall summary

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose quality:

   B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. References to sources:

   Well referenced.

   B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:

   Well referenced.

   C. No original research:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. Major aspects:

   B. Focused:

4. Is it neutral?

   Fair representation without bias:

5. Is it stable?

   No edit wars, etc:

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

   A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:

   Well illustrated.

   B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:

   Well illustrated.

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

Clearly meets every GA criterion in my opinion, and I am pleased to be able to promote it. Tim riley talk 08:08, 7 March 2021 (UTC)