Talk:Richard Beale Davis

Richard Beale Davis has been listed as one of the Language and literature good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Review: July 6, 2024. (Reviewed version).

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A fact from Richard Beale Davis appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 10 August 2024 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Richard Beale Davis first published Chivers' Life of Poe almost 100 years after it was written?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2024/August. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Richard Beale Davis.

Wikipedia

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Richard Beale Davis/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Pretzelles (talk · contribs) 13:10, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewer: Mike Christie (talk · contribs) 17:14, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'll review this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:14, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Images are appropriately tagged. Sources are reliable; a couple are fairly minor journals or newsletters but are being used appropriately as far as I can tell. Will do the spotchecks next. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:12, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Spotchecks. Footnote numbers refer to this version.

FN 9 cites "During the Second World War, he served in the United States Navy Reserve. In 1943, he held the rank of Lieutenant (junior grade) and was executive officer of the V-12 Navy College Training Program at Emory and Henry College." Verified.
FN 14 cites "In 1946, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship for post-military service scholars." Verified.
FN 50 cites "The research for the book [Intellectual Life in the Colonial South, 1585–1763] took over two decades to complete." Verified.
FNs 56 & 2 cite "On March 30, 1981, he died at Fort Sanders Hospital in Knoxville following a heart attack." Verified.

Spotcheck passes. Will read through and make any additional comments below, either tonight or in the morning. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:25, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The first sentence of the "Group memberships" section is uncited. This appears to be because it just summarizes what the rest of the section says. It's rare to see it done this way -- most editors automatically put a citation at the end of every single paragraph, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone stuck a "citation needed" tag on the end of the sentence. I'm not going to insist you change it for GA, but you might want to add a citation just to avoid it getting tagged later. You could also just join it to the following paragraph, as a topic sentence.
"He served on the executive committee of the SAMLA": is that "the" intentional?
"Gilmer was a lawyer, and had been hired": suggest "Gilmer, a lawyer, had been hired" as slightly more concise.
'Dumas Malone noted the benefit of having both sides of correspondence published in one place, praising its focus on both men and Gilmer's "poignant human story".' Suggest "praising the book's focus", or (to keep the tenses the same in both halves of the sentence) "and praised the book's focus". Having "its" seems to refer to the correspondence, rather than the book.
I think it would be harmless to combine the last two short paragraphs in "Later works".

None of the above points are enough to prevent me from promoting this to GA; I'll take it on trust that you'll make your own decisions as to whether to implement any of the minor suggestions above.

You're an excellent writer. I see you've done one GA review yourself; can I encourage you to do more? Good writers make the best reviewers, and we're always short of reviewers at GAN. Either way, congratulations on a fine article and an interesting read. One last question: are you considering taking this to FAC? If so, I'd be glad to do a pre-FAC review for you and see if I can suggest any further improvements. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:37, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Mike, thanks for the review and the pass: what a great thing to wake up to! The comments all seem good and fair enough, so I've gone ahead and done them.

I'm considering taking the article to FAC at some point in the future: my current plans are to publish an article on Chivers' Life of Poe within the next week and later write one on Davis's Intellectual Life in the Colonial South (and possibly his other books if they pass GNG). This means the section on Intellectual Life will be a bit more concise and lose the blockquote.

A pre-FAC review would be amazing, and I would appreciate it a lot! Pretzelles (talk) 14:28, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

OK -- sounds like I should wait till you've made those changes, though? Let me know when you think it's ready. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:37, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hopefully they shouldn't take too long, I will let you know when it's all done! Pretzelles (talk) 14:41, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by AirshipJungleman29 talk 23:20, 3 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

( Comment or view )

( Article history links:

)

... that Richard Beale Davis first published Chivers' Life of Poe almost 100 years after it was written?

Source: Chivers' Life of Poe, p. 15. "The state of Chivers' manuscript would suggest that he continued to revise the work at least through 1857, the year he died."

Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/William Beck (Wisconsin politician)

Improved to Good Article status by Pretzelles (talk). Number of QPQs required: 0. Nominator has less than 5 past nominations.

Pretzelles (talk) 21:19, 12 July 2024 (UTC).[reply]

For Richard Beale Davis:

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: - Offline/paywalled citation accepted in good faith Interesting:

QPQ: None required.

Overall: Promoted to GA on 5 July. The following sentence lacks an inline citation: "In 2010, Lofaro published Southern Manuscript Sermons before 1800: A Bibliography, dedicating the work to Davis and noting him as one of four contributing editors."

For Chivers' Life of Poe:

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: - Offline/paywalled citation accepted in good faith Interesting:

QPQ: None required.

Overall: Moved to mainspace on 12 July. The synopsis doesn't need citations. For this DYK nomination, only one QPQ is needed, as the nominator had four nominations beforehand. Skyshiftertalk 23:41, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Skyshifter: thanks for giving this a look! Sorry about the delay in fixing it, had some issues come up offwiki, but I should be able to get on with this very soon! Pretzelles (talk) 07:33, 30 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hey @Skyshifter:, I sorted that reference for Richard Beale Davis, so it should all be good now. Pretzelles (talk) 12:18, 2 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good to go! Skyshiftertalk 13:16, 2 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]