Talk:William P. Ragsdale/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Caeciliusinhorto (talk · contribs) 20:22, 1 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@KAVEBEAR: Once again I find myself reviewing one of your Hawaiian history articles which has been languishing as a GA nominee for months. This one is rather shorter than Liliuokalani was, though!

At first look through, the article looks pretty good.

Initial comments:

Infobox and lead say that Ragsdale was born c.1837; section on early life just says 1837 without qualification. Should be consistent!

Changed.

Is it worth linking Ka Nupepa Kuokoa?

Linked.

Article described Luther Halsey Gulick Sr. as a "missionary descendant". I would read this as "descended from missionaries", but LHG's own article says that he was himself a missionary to Hawaii.

Changed to just missionary. He was both.

Do we know anything about Ragsdale's education? The fact that he worked as a translator for the Hawaiian legislature and a lawyer suggests that he was well educated...

Sources doesn’t give a clue.

Article says that Twain "returned to writing" a story based on Ragsdale's life: had he been writing a story based on Ragsdale before his death?

Changed to “later wrote”. It didn’t make sense before with returned.

Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 20:22, 1 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, one further prose comment: lead says that Ragsdale was "known famously for being luna or superintendent of the leper colony of Kalaupapa". "known famously" is a little strange: I would just say "known for". I have changed it, but feel free to tinker if you have a preferred solution.

Now for the GA criteria:

1a: Aside from my few minor quibbles above, prose is fine.
1b: Complies with MOS:LEAD,MOS:LAYOUT & MOS:WTW; MOS:FICT and MOS:LIST do not apply.
2a: Yes.
2b: Modern sources are reliable: two academic articles, and a history book which though written for a popular rather than academic audience, by a non-specialist, seems to have received good reviews and have been cited in academic sources. Older sources used to support non-controversial points or as sources of quotes. All fine.
2c: Everything is appropriately cited: no obvious OR problems.
2d: The copyvio detection tool picks up only the blockquotes from Twain and the obit., both of which are appropriately cited. I can't see anything which looks particularly likely to be plagiarism outside of that.
3a: There are a few places where I would like to see more detail (where/how was he educated? when did he start/stop working as a translator/lawyer), but I suspect this is one of those biographical articles where such information simply isn't available. And of course per the Croughton-London Rule we don't expect as comprehensive articles about such relatively minor figures as Ragsdale as we do about more major topics!
3b: clearly fine.
4: I see no neutrality problems.
5: Perfectly stable.
6a: both images used in article are out-of-copyright.
6b: images both relevant and with clear captions.

I'm going to go ahead and pass this.