Talk:Francis Folger Franklin

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Francis Folger Franklin/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Cdtew (talk · contribs) 21:15, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

As a Franklinophile, I am happy to review this. I will have comments shortly. Cdtew (talk) 21:15, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

• First, as this is a topic primarily of interest in the United States, and as in colonial America the mdy format was most common as well (not to mention used predominately in Franklin's own writing), I have replaced your date formatting to mdy per WP:TIES.
• Next, I have added a notation that these dates are in Old Style/Julian calendar, due to the fact that Britain (and British America) did not adopt the New Style/Gregorian calendar until 1752.
• "In 1747, Franklin wrote to his mother that" - is the date on this correct? Wouldn't that be 11 years after his death?
• "was described as a "precocious, curious and special" child,[18], "a golden child, his smiles brighter, his babblings more telling and his tricks more magical than all the other infants in the colonies combined"" - since these are pretty biased quotes, you might want to say who described Francis this way. Was it Franklin? Deborah? Someone else?
• "Franklin's business was going well enough" - since this article is on a brief subject, it may be good to add more detail about how Franklin was supporting his family in the 1730's.
• "In 1772, Franklin's sister Jane Franklin Mecom, wrote him" - this is probably best in a later paragraph describing Franklin's reflections on his son later in life. It seems really out of place when Francis isn't dead yet.
• "'a string which had been drawn through the pustule of a smallpox victim.'" - since this is a quote from somewhere, it needs to be directly cited at the end of the quote.
• "Inoculation offered a mortality rate" - You might want to add something indicating this was at the time of Franklin's life
• ""The delight of all who knew him."" - this sentence needs a citation to a source.
• The sentence beginning "However, the choice of having Francis inoculated" contains a long quote in it, apparently from a source. It's best to remove this quote and to summarize/paraphrase it, because the encyclopedic format generally prefers to avoid long quotes from secondary sources.
• The quote beginning "In 1736 I lost one of my sons..." could be block-quoted per MOS:Blockquote, since its more than 40 words/100 characters.
• For fns 11 & 29, you should use "pp." instead of "p." for pages. You can do that by just adding another "p" in the |p=xx-xx}} part of your sfn's, making it |pp=xx-xx}}.
• Normally, I might find it confusing that you're using "Franklin" to refer to a person not the subject of this article; in this instance, though, I think it works, as Francis Franklin didn't do much, and his father is clearly the main actor throughout the article.
• I've made several edits to style and grammar, which you can find here. Feel free to raise any issues you have with my changes.

@Alexcoldcasefan: I've completed my review. All in all, this is a wonderfully well-written article about a very short life. Good work! I look forward to your responses. Cdtew (talk) 00:58, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

@Cdtew: I have edited out all of the problems stated above, with one exception: the 1747 letter Franklin wrote to his mother. I have double-checked the book source and it says 1747. I admit it is confusing, but here's the original letter [1]. I hope everything is alright now. --Alexcoldcasefan (talk) 11:20, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

@Alexcoldcasefan:} I've made one more change here, reordering the chronology in the final paragraph. As for the 1747 letter, having now read the original, I think I see the problem. The letter is referring to Franklin's cousins, which can be inferred because in 18th-century English, a serial comma was used to separate even two occurrences in a list (ie: one could have written "At the store to-day, I purchased an apple, and two carrots"). So here, he is describing one cousin surnamed Coleman, and two other cousins surnamed Folger. So, that being said, I think that sentence could be removed as irrelevant. Not only that, but the mention of Sarah tells us that the letter isn't mis-dated. Once that sentence is removed, this article is ready to go! Cdtew (talk) 13:51, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

@Cdtew: Done. --Alexcoldcasefan (talk) 14:24, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Checklist

Rate	Attribute	Review Comment
1. Well-written:
	1a. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct.	No copyvio detected after a random phrase search.
	1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.	No issues here
2. Verifiable with no original research:
	2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline.	No issues here
	2b. reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose).	Two areas need citation.
	2c. it contains no original research.	No issues detected here.
3. Broad in its coverage:
	3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic.	No issues here, just a little more background.
	3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).	Very concise and thorough
	4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.	One area to attend to, mainly due to attribution of a quote.
	5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.	No issues here.
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:
	6a. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content.	No issues here.
	6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.	No issues here.
	7. Overall assessment.

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